Refund (33 page)

I thought of my parents, leaving the house for the opera. I thought of the last time I had seen them alive. I thought of every gesture they made, one after another, each one leading to the final disaster. Or was each one random? What did any single action mean? I watched them put on their coats, my father's black wool coat full of holes, changing it for a brown one he didn't really like, my mother walking around, always ready to leave before he was, and looking at my sister and me and saying, “I have to stop to get something to eat.”

I looked at John Comet, standing there. The earth like a cracker under his feet.

“I can't tell you anything,” I said. “You can kiss me now.”

I stood up and grabbed his shoulders. I could feel his breath on my face; I wanted to taste it. He took my hand, and we walked out of the park to my car.

He stared at me; his face was utterly familiar to me. Fear.

“Oh,” he said.

We stood, examining each other. He did not move.

“I,” he said. It was a breath, a softness—I. I what? I want to? I don't want to? I am afraid? I can't? There was an expanse of air between us. What was the purpose of this? Love? My skin was as thin as silk; it barely contained me. He rubbed his hands over his face and stepped back. I stood perfectly still as he walked away from me.

T
HE NEXT DAY, WE WERE ON ORANGE ALERT
. T
HE PASSENGERS WERE
quiet, obedient during orange, looking at us with a damp-eyed gratitude that we would protect their little beating hearts.

Lester stood, looking official, perhaps knowing already who would go. The rest of us didn't. I stood with good posture in my uniform. I tried to imagine what I could do to convince him that I should stay. The others schemed in a similar fashion. Everyone was very polite, as though their old selves never existed, as though none of us had ever met.

“Can you pass me some new gloves? I do appreciate it.”

“I'm happy to do X-ray till noon if that would help you out.”

The best manners. Smiling. Who the hell were they? Clouds rolled across the airport, filling the runway with mist. Flights were landing, unloading their passengers back to earth. I saw the passengers, feet just touching the ground, rush out, to their loved ones, that most earnest of gestures; I did not know how I would be part of that eager, massing crowd.

Lester was walking around, looking at his clipboard. He walked over to me.

“Sally,” he said. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

A sec.

We walked over to a corner.

“Well,” he said. He coughed.

I waited. One sec. Then two. My hands froze.

“It's you,” he said. He coughed again.

“What?” I asked.

“I'm 90 percent sure. I can tell you end of day. You do a good job. I don't know why anything happens.”

What am I?
I thought.

“End of day, I'll give you the final answer.” He coughed again and walked away.

I walked out from behind the screen. I noticed the others watching me. I did not know what else to do. I went to my post.

John Comet. I could not stop thinking of him. On the grass in the park the night before. It was better to put my mind there, the wet muscular darkness, our breath, to be somewhere other than here.

And then there he was. His luggage rolling behind him. A different suitcase today, one I had never seen. Many compartments.

I tried to look professional, for the last time.

“May I see your ID?”

“Certainly.”

He smiled, his beautiful bright smile. It made me ache to see it.

“Where are you going?”

“Today, Philadelphia.”

“For what purpose?”

He took a breath. “Not sure.”

“Sir,” I said. “For what purpose?”

He looked at me. He blinked.

“Family,” he said.

I handed him his driver's license.

“Proceed,” I said.

So he walked on. Barefoot by the conveyor. Trudging on to somewhere. His innocence was illustrious and galling. My whole body was a question mark. About the mechanics of everything in the world.

Lester was looking at us. I followed his gaze. He was watching John Comet, who was standing, like anyone, while his luggage went through the X-ray machine. The lines were slow today, people somber, trembling. Everyone thought everyone else would blow things up.

And now Lester was standing. He was walking toward the X-ray machine. He was putting his hand on John Comet's shoulder.

“Sir, can you step here for a moment? We want to take a look at your bag,” Lester said.

John Comet's face was white. “Why?” he asked.

“Sir, we're on orange alert,” said Lester.

John Comet walked with Lester to a corner. I stood at my podium. I could see Lester start to unzip the bag. There were many compartments on the outside to unzip. One. Nothing. Two. Nothing. John Comet stepped forward. Three. Lester lifted a baggie full of lettuce and examined it. John Comet shook his head. Lester opened the baggies and sniffed the lettuce. He opened the main suitcase and lifted the lid. John Comet stepped forward and held his hand over the suitcase, as though to warm his palms.

“What the hell?” Lester said.

The beetles were inside the suitcase. I could see them, the four large ones, their shimmering shells, the almost dainty way they made their way across the suitcase. There were not just four. There were more, there were smaller ones, dozens, all of them moving like a shimmering square of purple/green silk. The other passengers
stopped as they walked by. There were gasps. Some of the beetles started to crawl out of the suitcase, gliding green jewels. They were beautiful in their gaudiness, their pure beetle-ness, but others didn't think so. A woman shrieked. Lester slammed down the lid.

“Agriculture!” called Lester. “For God's sake. Get them on the phone.”

A man placed his ID on the podium. I did not take it.

“Miss?” the passenger said, annoyed. “I have a flight to catch.”

I looked at him. I stepped away from the podium, leaving the passenger standing, boarding pass in his hand. I was running. “No,” I shouted. The word pierced the air; no one was supposed to shout here. I wanted to shout more. John Comet was looking around the security area. His eyes were burning, and his face reddened; now it was all over, for he looked as though he were going to burst. Lester. He was going to remove him, in a moment, he was going to apprehend his luggage, take the beetles, charge John Comet with god knows what. John Comet was looking for me. I knew this.

I thought of my parents just then, how they rushed through the door to the car that night; I thought of John Comet, standing, collar limp with heat, on a sidewalk in Miami, watching his son from across the street. I thought of how I did not know how I would be able to walk out of this airport now, how I would go on to the next thing.

And then I was running to John Comet, before they arrested him; I was running through the security area so fast the others looked up. I wanted to reach him before they took his suitcase full of the beetles he loved, those puzzled, glimmering creatures, before I could reach forward, before I could rescue them.

What the Cat Said

I
t was two in the morning when the cat spoke. It was raining again, great pale thunderclouds moving like ships through the sky. The bedroom flashed with white light. The children, earlier that evening, had tried, for the first time, to run away.

Now the cat was pacing the room. He was full of anguish. We were all trying to sleep. That was, in itself, a joke. No one slept very deeply, ever. Our boy was up the most. “My blanket fell off,” he said. “It's hot.” He stood by the bed. “I need to find my Yankee card.” He paused. “Now.”

He did not want to leave the day even after it had left him. It was a touching sentiment, though, for us, tiring. It was the gray hour of the morning when nothing seemed alive, the hazy moment before the march through our lives started again, before the sun was up and the dreary race continued, to eat, to be educated, to fill the wallet.

“I love you,” the cat said.

The words sounded almost choked, as though the cat had been holding this in a long time.

I thought my husband had said it, or our son. The cat looked at me. The room whitened with lightning, then went black again.

I did not love the cat. His name was (horrifyingly, and chosen by the children so it could not be changed) Cutie. His gray, matted hair floated through the house. He had the bad judgment to bring leathery, half-eaten lizards to us as gifts. I did not like his guttural yowl, his desire to jump into my lap. He had his sweet moments, but at the end of the day, I had nothing left for him. And it had been my idea to admit him to the family, to pretend I had more tenderness inside of me than I did, to test myself, though of course I said it was for the children.

“Was that the cat?” my husband asked.

The cat sat and stared.

We all had a bruising night. Our son, eight years old, was experimenting with disdain. “I want to run away,” he had said. Before he went to bed, he had packed up what he needed: chewing gum, a small golden trophy from T-ball, some autographed cards of Derek Jeter and Mickey Mantle and J.J. Putz, because he liked to laugh at his name. His sister looked at him, absorbing his tactics. She packed a Hello Kitty bag with a plastic comb, a pink crayon, and a pack of Smarties so old they had petrified.

“We are going to join the poor,” our son said.

They put their backpacks on their shoulders and marched, with great and sorrowful dignity, downstairs. He opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. They looked out into the great pulsing blackness of the night, the grinding machinery of cicadas. They stood, nobly, on the concrete edge of the porch.

No one stepped out into the darkness.

My husband laughed, unkindly.

“Don't,” our son said, running back in and slamming the door, enraged and relieved that he would not have to negotiate the wet
black maw of the night. They were stuck with us. They slapped uselessly at their father's big legs. They were so small. But so intent and full of plans.

They had been denied. Our boy had been disinvited from a playdate with Gary Snow. Gary Snow had a trilling laugh, hair as light as sunlight, and an exhaustive collection of baseball cards that he housed, oddly, in a casserole dish. Gary Snow had invited our son to his house and then had been invited to John Meyer's birthday party and suddenly, cruelly, cancelled.

The girl had also been betrayed. She had found the cat gnawing on one of her My Little Ponies. The cat lolled back, eyes glittering like a drug addict's, the pony's tiny pink leg in its mouth. The girl screamed as though the cat were murdering a living thing. “I hate Cutie,” she said. Now she peered into rooms to check to see if he was there first; she woke from bad dreams in which he tried to eat her.

The children had numerous and passionate complaints. The complaints both deflated and excited them. They wanted to find solutions! Their solution was to ask for more TV. They would watch TV until their eyes crusted over. They wanted candy, candy, candy. They lay on the floor in their underwear, their bare, summer-brown skin aglow in the false blue light. They were so beautiful, I wanted to eat them. All of us adults were vampires of their sweetness.

They knew.

They were staring at the television, eyes half-drooping. Something gorgeous was in the bright glare. They were straining to see it. That thing was adulthood.

They wanted everything, and we could only give them so little.

I heard the rustling; soon they would see through our grubby lies. Our pathetic attempts to shove them off to sleep at 9:00
PM
so we could have sex. Our insistence that more than half an hour of TV a night during the week would curdle their brains. My attempt to
convince the boy not to do Little League simply because I didn't like the other parents. They would recognize our lameness, our failure—and theirs—to live forever.

“When am I going to die?” the boy had already asked.

We mumbled, looked away, scratched our legs.

“When?” he asked, searching our faces.

Soon, in a big huff, they would pack up and move out. Trailing stuffed animals, baseball cards, My Little Ponies, the objects that they had coveted and which, at seventeen, would make them feel naive and small. They would head off armed with rock posters, black T-shirts that boasted scary sayings, green hair. They would think they were starting anew! They would have better lives than we did! Soon they would be disappointed by sex, or thrilled by it; soon they would feel things—sexually, emotionally—that we never had. Or they would feel less. We believed we had beat out our own parents on this score, but there was no knowing, really. No one said. We lay in our bed, the sheets damp with the chemical smell of spermicide, breathing hard.

“I don't like your toes,” my husband said. “How they rub against me.”