Marc Kaufman
The Restless
For most of our lives together we lived without TV. We had built on the side of a mountain between High Falls and New Paltz, all that hilly and green New York no one out of state believed existed. We were told from the beginning: no cable service. It didn’t matter. We survived the winters with word games, long nights of rented videos that became rented DVDs. Once or twice our son, Billy, came in the house complaining of things he couldn’t watch. We stayed firm. He didn’t really care. His heart was outside anyway.
Butthatspring was late in arriving, the cold and the snow held on longer than any of us could bear. We stayed in more. One night we sat next to each other in silence for almost two hours. It should have been okay, but it wasn’t. We shouldn’t have minded so much, but we did. Two days later we had a satellite dish put in. I thought the distraction would save us from each other.
So many choices, we watched whatever held our interest for more than a minute. I liked the dramas; police, medical, mystery. The single serving shows. The ones where you didn’t need to follow characters, where everything that could be resolved would be in an hour. I couldn’t be bothered with details. Alan worshipped the news. All of it. The Russian pipeline, the struggles of the yen, the rise in expeditions to Everest, the two Democrats bloodying each other over the nomination. Of course, there was the problem of the lingering wars and all that death. He watched the reports with a beer he hardly drank. I told him not to take it so to heart, not to take it so personally, it wasn’t our boy over there. It was sad, sure, and a real tragedy, but our boy was strong and safe. Our boy was at the ski mountain working on some new girl to replace the last one. He hadn’t been sick for more than a day since that illness visited his breathing for those two long weeks when he was a baby.
When was that? I don’t remember that, Alan complained.
When he was a baby, I said.
Where was I?
You were here. You slept with him in that chair. We were afraid. But it all turned out okay.
I don’t remember. You think I’d remember something like that.
Doesn’t matter. No use figuring out the mind, I said.
We left it at that.
There was some breaking news. A bomb had exploded on a road outside of Fallujah. Alan’s face became stolid.
I told him to turn the news off if it bothered him so much.
I told him many things. Like everyone, he listened when he wanted.
That month, he worried over Billy more. Whereabouts, destinations, departures, and arrivals, like one of trains he piloted from Fishkill to Manhattan. Billy reacted the way a boy his age does—first with indifference and then with anger and then with defiance.
Hey, Dad what’s the sudden interest?
It’s not sudden, Alan said.
Don’t you trust me?
Of course.
Then what’s your damage?
Neither of us knew what that meant, but by his tone and the way his shoulders were hunched and his gaze pointed, we figured it wasn’t complimentary.
Don’t talk to your father that way.
They both looked at me as though I should stay out of it.
Once or twice, I thought they’d come to blows, but Billy had a new girl and couldn’t be bothered. He yessed us to death and then did as he pleased. The girl’s name was Angelica, and I knew why he couldn’t stand to be away from her for long. There was something instinctive and sexual about her, someone you learned things from for later in life. Maybe I had been her. I hoped they were being careful.
Billy was late coming home one night, a particularly bad evening on the TV. Everything I wanted to watch was a repeat. We had talked about going out for dinner, but the temperature had dropped again, and we couldn’t find the energy or the courage to venture out. The driveway was long and steep and recently, with the buildup of ice, we’d had trouble getting the cars back to the garage. I tried to steer Alan away from the cable news channels. We even tried to have sex there on the couch, but I couldn’t hold his interest. He wanted to watch a debate over the word quagmire.
Alan, What’s the sudden interest?
It’s not sudden.
Do you have some other kid, I don’t know about?
His face turned against me. I sometimes said things I thought were funny but he thought were callous. Usually we would laugh about them later. He would let a similar comment fly, and we would joke about all the ways we were hypocrites and didn’t care. I could tell this wasn’t going to be one of those times.
No matter what I said he was going to wait up until Billy got home.
I went to sleep without him. It was cold in our room. The month before, the heating bill almost put us in the ground. We were still trying to find a lower temperature on the thermostat where we all could survive. The men in the house were proving better at this than me. I complained when I shouldn’t have. I knew all the reasons: Billy was off to school soon, money didn’t grow anywhere in our lives. We were comfortable enough, but only because we knew not to want what we couldn’t have. The satellite dish was our only real extravagance, and no matter how much I loved the shows, how addicted I’d become, I would have horse traded it in a second for fewer blankets, more heat, three more degrees, my husband in bed. How brittle and fragile my body felt those nights it dropped below zero.
I had lived here all my life and never liked the cold.
I was turning pancakes over when he came into the kitchen. Billy had been out late and still hadn’t gotten up.
The groundhog saw his shadow, Alan said, almost distraught about it.
Which one? The Pennsylvania one or the Staten Island one?
The Pennsylvanian one. The famous one. Wait…There are more than one?
That’s what I heard. And the reports conflict. Staten Island predicted an early spring. I said this to offer a hopeful alternative. It had the opposite effect.
Staten Island, That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Which one are we supposed to believe?
Whichever one you want.
It seemed a conversation best not to have.
Wait, is the other one a rookie? I’ve never heard of two. I can’t believe they’d let a rookie predict something as important as Spring. You figure they’d test him for a while. A controlled setting, with lamps maybe. How do we even know he knows what a shadow is?
Maybe the famous one is losing his edge. He’s old, like us. Maybe he’s more easily frightened now. Maybe the rookie is sharper. Either way, darling, it all comes down to math. Six more weeks of winter on the calendar.
I don’t think I can wait six more weeks.
At the time, I didn’t know what he meant, but I knew I didn’t like it.
That night I lay in bed listening to Billy down the hall talking on the phone with Angelica. His voice was hushed and guilty and in love. I couldn’t make out the details of the conversation, only that he kept saying her name in a tone plaintive and tender, the way you might when even the next room is too far away. Without knowing when it happened, my son had learned how to call someone to bed. I could tell, with both leaving for school soon, they were sure to cause each other problems. They would begin to believe things that weren’t true, that what was between them was stronger than it was, that they could survive the distance, the absence, or worse, that they’d want to.
Downstairs, Alan had burned another bag of microwave popcorn. The smell entered my nose and wouldn’t leave. I turned into the pillow. A little less hair these days for him meant a little less hair gel, a little less shampoo. He was hardly there.
I fell asleep wanting nothing less for Billy than heartbreak.
Tell me about it again.
Billy ate in giant forkfuls. I swear his jaw was hinged.
It’s like a class trip.
They leave you in the woods?
Not exactly.
Then exactly what?
Mom!
Can’t you just take a trip to Washington, see the monuments, maybe join a protest. It would make your father so happy.
That’s not funny.
Neither is you being eaten by bears.
That never happens.
It happens all the time. Those bears are thorough. They don’t leave much evidence.
Mah, you’re being insane.
Is that any way to talk to me? You wouldn’t even get past the first sentence with your father…For my class trip we stayed a couple of days in Manhattan. Time Square was dirty and dangerous. We were so excited. For the guys, if you looked old enough to be harassed by a prostitute you were beyond cool.
Manhattan is so over. There’s nothing to do there. The Midwest is the new center of power and influence.
He kept chewing as his headphones hugged the bottom of his ears and his thick sandy hair fell over his eyes. The conversation, like most things with him, was set to autopilot.
How much is this gonna set us back?
Nothing. I’ve been saving. The winter’s been awesome. Nice and long. Lots of private lessons at the ski hill. I made just enough and, if the spring holds out for another week or two, maybe I’ll make a little more. Put it to that college fund you guys are always whispering about.
He looked down and grimaced at his empty plate.
Got any more?
I guessed the ending to my police show five minutes in. It had to be the restaurant owner who didn’t like tomatoes. You can’t trust someone who doesn’t like tomatoes. It took the detectives another twenty minutes to even suspect him. You can’t blame them—they’re held back by the writing. Alan wanted the remote but wouldn’t reach for it. He knew it wasn’t his turn.
It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, I said to him during the commercials.
I bet it won’t.
Don’t be so negative. You never know what can happen overnight.
It gets colder. That’s what happens overnight.
Well, I think it’s gonna rain. We’re due.
You’ll see. Snow for sure.
He peeked at the remote with small traces of larceny in his eyes. I gripped it tighter so he knew I knew.
What is it? A speech? A debate? An update on another investigation? What this time? Another bomb, another shooting, another death?
Don’t talk that way…it’s ugly. Next commercial? Can I just check for a second?
Sorry. I know that one. I saw that movie where Jimmy Stewart goes to Washington. You yield the floor for a second and you never get control back.
The wind howled outside. Snow whirled about the porch. Alan peered out at the small satellite dish, the way you might at a dog left out in the rain. The picture on the TV compressed and bent for a moment but returned strong.
For a year when I was twelve, while my mother was going to night school for her accounting degree, my father took a second job fixing TVs in the back of a small appliance store in Fishkill. He had no training but had always been able to teach himself how things worked. He’d take me with sometimes, and I’d watch him test the circuits for small breaks. He knew if the tube was shot the problem was too expensive to fix. If he didn’t know an answer, he’d look up part schematics on microfilm and do his best. People most often complained of static. On the repair tickets he called it snow.
Alan turned back to me, Babe, you already know how it ends.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’ll be surprised.
You’re never wrong.
But I could be…
You’re not even watching.
I pulled myself away from him. He tried to follow with his arms, but I wouldn’t let him.We sat in silence for a few more minutes. Alan closed his eyes. It was the only way he could be still.
I think we should go somewhere. A trip. After Billy is off at school.
I don’t know, he said. Tuition is going to be expensive. His voice was low, resigned.
I have to get out of this house. Don’t you want to get out of this house?
I love this house – we built this house. Maybe you should go visit your father.
Florida’s not for me. Let’s go somewhere on our list, I said.
The list is for later. After we’re done paying for college.
I can’t wait that long.
We have too many expenses right now. He opened his eyes again, turned back to the TV, and pointed. See, you were right. It was the restaurant owner. You’re always right.
It was the worst thing you could say to someone, even if it was true.
The snow fell like exploding sacks of flour, blowing without weight or accuracy or direction.
Yesterday the TV said rain, now the weather people predicted the snow could last for days. I’d bet two of my coveted coffee cakes and a back rub on the rain. The cakes were already cooling. I used the last of the cinnamon and had to short the vanilla in the second batch. The cupboards were unprepared for a blizzard in April.
Billy had gotten clear a day earlier for his Montana school trip. Exposed in the woods, nearly alone was all I could think. He called in the morning to say he was safe. Cold, but lots of sunshine, he said. The air smells different here, Mah, like laundry. After breakfast they’re gonna teach us how to filet a fish. He sounded beyond alive, free in the world.
I stood at the sliding glass door that led to the small patio Alan had built some years ago. It was the one thing in the house he cared for more than the news. At the sign of the slightest accumulation, he was out there, clearing the planked boards. The satellite dish perched along the thin banister. I had thought it was going to be bigger. I thought we’d have to clear cut trees. Instead, it sat like a small, hooded child on the wood rail, face turned into the storm.
Looking back into the empty living room I could see us sitting paralyzed amidst the litter of empty popcorn bags, sharp edges of unfinished arguments, news of so many dead. The glass door was stuck, but I forced it open. The weather blew in violently past me. I stepped onto the inches of soft powder and wondered how much there would be by morning.
The satellite dish was clamped to the railing with two screws that were wet and difficult to loosen, but I was determined. It was at least ten feet to the yard below. My fingers slipped and burned in the cold as I worked the turns. Anger has always been my secret strength. Behind me, on the TV, a reporter stood on the side of 87 North, snow falling all around him, telling us what surely, we already knew: that the roads were slick, soon impassable; that wherever we were was safer than where we wanted to be. I felt the last screw come loose in my hand and before I could decide if it was exactly what I wanted, the satellite dish fell. I spun back to the TV screen, thinking the result would be static, but instead the screen blipped blue.
A message appeared offering some strange clairvoyance: No Usable Signal.
An hour later the phone rang. I was lying on the couch, a blanket wrapped around me—my punishment for going outside was not being able to get warm. I let it ring. It stopped for a few minutes and then rang again. The bright blue screen overpowered every other light in the room, but I couldn’t turn it off. Any life before this was a dream. No Usable Signal. I stared at the screen.
The phone was persistent. Finally, I picked up.
Where are you? I asked.
On my way, he said.
I could hear the wind behind him.
Is it bad?
We’ve seen worse. It’s gonna take more than this to stop the trains.
For the first time that season, he sounded brave and defiant. I almost forgot every fear that kept me awake over the past month.
Be safe, I said.
Babe, he said, I’m bringing someone with me.
I almost didn’t hear it. Who?
A friend. He got stuck.
Reluctantly I said, Okay…I’ll make food for us. Please, just take it slow.
Don’t go to any trouble. We’ll just have a drink and watch some TV.
Take it easy up the driveway.
He made a sound and then hung up.
His name was Edward, and they worked together. Edward walked up and down the cars taking tickets, checking passes, while Alan piloted the trains along the route. They had been on the same Metro North line for over a year, but I had never heard his name until now. For most of the night Alan called him Ed. Sometimes when they laughed or agreed, he was Eddie. I called him Edward, a choice we both seemed comfortable with. His face was ruddy, his head shaved bald. When he came in, he was wearing four or five layers under his uniform, making him seem bulkier than he was. If I found out he was over twenty-two I would have been surprised. They drank from a bottle of Macallan. I was into my fourth glass of cheap red wine. I couldn’t tell where the time had gone or if the world outside was still moving at its usual pace. The snow continued with conviction.
They stared at the TV.
It just went out? Alan asked.
Yeah, just, I said, and did my best not to meet his eyes.
Alan worked at the connections behind the TV. Nothing he did had any effect. He went to the wall and turned up the heat for the second time in an hour. Are you warm enough? he asked Edward. I’m gonna check the TV upstairs.
Some storm out there, Edward said. Wonder if we’ll be running tomorrow?
Of course, we will. This is nothing, Alan yelled as he left the room. Maybe we’ll get a foot, foot and a half, tops.
I don’t know, I said. It’s coming down fast and heavy. We might wake up covered.
Edward took some more large bites from his coffee cake.
Top notch, he said. You can definitely taste the difference between this and the store kind. Even the diner I go to…maybe ‘cause it sits out for so long.
Do you eat in diners a lot?
Not a lot.
Alan must be very fond of you ‘cause he usually never lets anyone near those cakes. Even our son has to fight with him. And these two he won fair and square.
He won them?
Yeah. I made a bet with him. I lost.
What did you bet?
That it would rain today.
Edward turned and looked out the patio doors and smiled. He had a way about him that reminded me of Billy, utterly lacking in guile.
Alan really saved me tonight…
What was the trouble?
Who knows? Maybe the alternator? The transmission is near shot. I was hoping to get it through one more winter and then junk it. I thought I was in the clear ‘cause it started so easy, but just when I turned onto the access road the thing seized on me…the whole panel lit all to hell. Then I called Alan. He’s a stand-up guy. Everyone at work thinks so.
Alan came back into the room and made a desperate sound. He walked to the patio doors and peered outside. It was clear what he was searching for. It made me sick to look at him.
Alan…forget it. We’ll worry about it in the morning. Just sit down. Relax.
His head snapped back at me like a whip, cracking at an idea so frightening that he would do anything to keep it away.
Edward got up and went to see what he was looking at, to see if he could be of any help. It’s okay, he said. Quiet news day anyway.
That scares me more, Alan said. When things get too quiet, I’m always expecting the worst a day or two later.
Edward put his hand on Alan’s shoulder and gripped tight. Yeah, it’s a real mess these days.
Alan turned towards Edward. His eyes were sad and calm and couldn’t, if they tried, hide how he felt for the man. They nodded in unison as though everything between them was understood. My plan, if it was even a plan, fired back at me. I’d thought it was an addiction. I had forgotten the small abundant tenderness in even pretending to understand.
They sank into the couch cushions, saying nothing. In their uniforms, they looked like separated Russian nesting dolls. Alan turned on the TV once again and found what he could have expected: nothing, only the blue screen.
The wine was starting to make the room spin. I felt insulated, warmer than I had in months. I got up, thinking for a second I was going to fall, but I managed to stay on my feet. I went over to them. I kissed them both deeply on the lips. Alan first. I held his face between my hands so there was nowhere he could go. I couldn’t remember the last time we really kissed. When I turned to Edward, I fastened my left hand to Alan’s. Edward smooth face seemed neither expectant nor surprised. No one said anything. I kissed them both again. Alan ran his hands over me the way a stranger would. He seemed to forget Edward was sitting there and it might have continued that way, if Edward had said nothing, if he had done nothing, but he also reached towards me and their hands came together over my breasts and for a second something dangerous and dark passed between us. Alan tugged me back to his attention, pulling fiercely. He said my name. I never liked my name.
I slid from him onto the cold floor. Edward leaned backed into the cushions and tightly closed his eyes.Minutes later he was fast asleep.
Alan switched the TV off and went to stand at the door. It’s really coming down, he said, maybe you’re right. Maybe by morning we’ll be covered.
No, I said, it’s nothing. Like you said, we’ve seen so much worse.
Three days later Billy came back to us banged up, his leg broken. The details of his accident were still unclear. Something about a tree he was climbing, a view he was chasing. He had a series of small cuts along the left side of his face, his lip was split, and he needed stitches to close a gash over his eye. The doctor predicted a small scar; Billy was over the moon. When Angelica came over to take care of him, he made up stories. He told her he wrestled a bear. He told her he fell trying to save a robin’s nest. She loved him enough to believe every iteration. I was furious at him and then furious at myself for being so angry. Every parental I told you so instinct I thought I’d be able to outrun, switched on. I couldn’t control them. When had I gotten so old?
Gonna make quite a graduation picture, I said.
I’ll always remember it, he said.
You would’ve remembered it anyway.
He shrugged and limped around the house without crutches.
With Billy back in the house the sex became quieter, but continued, as it had every night since the storm. I couldn’t tell if we were trying to prove something to ourselves or to each other – either way I didn’t care. Alan never mentioned Edward again. He came home quickly after work. We went to sleep at the same time each night. We never talked about it, any of it.
Spring came. We knew it would. We turned the clocks ahead.
My father flew up for the graduation. Off the plane I couldn’t believe what I saw, my father, near seventy, a child of the northeast his entire life, the first out of all of us to burn at the beach, now tanned and browned, as though he had lived forever under southern skies. He bought Billy luggage and gave him an envelope of money. He said he wanted him to travel. He said he wished he could have done the same for me.
We all went and brought flowers to my mother’s grave.
For the two weeks my father was there, my father’s voice filled the house with a deep baritone. He sat with Alan every night to talk about the souring and divisive mood of the country. When he spoke, I remembered every command he had ever given me, every story he told.
Billy joined them. He had opinions and deep beliefs about the war and surprised them both with what he knew. They let him drink beer. He did his part, acting like the taste was new and he was honored to be so trusted. He abandoned Angelica the whole time his grandfather was there. She would call and plead with him, sometimes arriving to disappear into his room for unaccounted minutes, but mostly they stayed separated.
It’s dangerous, I told him, to neglect her like that.
He didn’t care. He had yet to lose anything he couldn’t get back or replace.
Alan had the satellite dish repaired but we never turned the TV on.
One night we got drunk. All of us. We laughed at anything everyone said and passed out one at a time. I dreamed that nothing would change, my father would stay, Billy would never leave. When I woke up in the morning, Alan and I were frighteningly alone. I pulled myself up from the couch. Alan remained asleep in the same chair he had held Billy, new and sick, all those years ago. I thought something terrible had happened. I thought time had pushed forward. I couldn’t get my bearings until I heard voices outside. My father and Billy were throwing a ball around the yard. Even barely mobile, Billy was graced with effortless agility. I stood on the porch without a jacket and watched them. Billy hopped after every ball. He never fell.
The grass was slippery and wet, and I thought it would be dirty and brown for a long time, a month at least, to forget the weight of so much snow.
Born and raised in the Catskills in New York, Marc Kaufman moved to Tokyo more than ten years ago to take a teaching position. His work has most recently appeared in Cleaver Magazine, -Ette Review, Narrative Magazine, and F(r)fiction Online. He has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is currently an associate professor at Tokyo's Sophia University, where he teaches writing and serves as the faculty editor for the student writing journal, Angles.
