Inhalation, Expiration
by Beth Uznis Johnson
The house stinks like an old ashtray and thus became a house only smokers would buy. The burnt tobacco and ash have permeated to the studs. Through the heating ducts. Out the vents again until it absorbs into the carpet, layers of paint, garments in closets and resident pets. It has been sheltering smokers since its first owners in 1942.
The dog, Sasha, lays on her bed, unaware of such environmental effects, though she lifts her head each time the furnace coughs to life, wagging her tail as though catching the scent of an old friend. Sasha knows the life she knows, but anticipates something like glee at the prospect of being let outdoors into fresh air and disappointment upon being called back inside.
And now Joe is home, pushing into the back door. Sasha’s tail thumps, but she does not rise. Her bladder is empty. She’s comfy. And she knows Joe will come to her.
Joe notices the smoke smell when he steps inside. After thirty-three years, he realizes he’d become immune to it. He’s quitting smoking. He shakes his head, feeling stupid in the same way he feels stupid about being diagnosed with cancer. He kicks off his work boots onto the old woven mat, an artifact from his ex-wife, who moved out a dozen years ago. The dented linoleum floors and faded hickory cabinets make him tired. He thinks about filling a bucket with soapy water and scrubbing out the stench. He’s far too tired for that and what good would it do? It’s not like he didn’t know cigarettes smell bad. It’s not like he didn’t know smoking causes cancer.
His live-in girlfriend, Jenny, probably doesn’t notice it either. He’s glad she’s quitting, too. At least he’ll be able to tell his daughter, Nikki, that the relationship is strong enough for such sacrifice. Nikki likes when actions speak louder than words. Nikki hasn’t smoked a day in her life.
Joe swings the heavy back door into its frame, giving an extra push until the latch clicks and the weather stripping sucks and seals him inside. He thinks about the cremated remains of whatever has burned off all those butts over all those years. Seems like he can taste it now. Might choke on it if he’s not careful.
Jenny will be home in half an hour and he’ll have to deal with her. She’s been a wreck since the diagnosis and hadn’t liked how Nikki took it upon herself to drive right over, push their pile of bills on the kitchen table to one side and plug in her laptop to show them what she’d already found out about bladder surgery. His lungs weren’t the problem, but only a fool isolated possible damage to that organ. A human being, Nikki said, takes 23,000 breaths a day into the body. The nicotine and toxins travel where they travel.
The furnace clicks to life and blows musty air through the registers. Joe notices the dust kick up in the living room, its particles dancing in the stream of afternoon sun that slants into the room. He wishes a furnace could inhale, sucking the pollution back in, trapping it into the filter. He hasn’t checked it since last year. Tomorrow he’ll stop at the hardware store for a new filter. They’re perfectly white when he opens the box, without a speck of dirt or dust. The chore no longer seems like a chore, but something essential that a hero would do, the kind who reads and follows directions.
Change filter once a year, the box says. Nothing easier. The current filter has surely expired.
Sasha yawns, concluding with a lax yowl. Her pink tongue appears far cleaner than any other mouth in the house.
“Who’s lazy?” Joe says.
Sasha rolls onto her back to expose her smooth, papery stomach. Joe laughs at the notion of a rescue pit being dangerous. She wriggles around and drops her head to the side to be sure Joe pays attention.
“Rough day,” he says, appeasing her.
He notices the hard nubs of the dog’s nipples and brown splotches like liver spots. It seems strange he hasn’t observed these characteristics before. They got Sasha six months ago when Jenny moved in. The spots on the dog were simply spots on the dog. People go about their lives all the time without pause, without using the brainpower that surely exists somewhere, to hypothesize or rationalize or intuit.
One of those smart words that means to figure it the fuck out. Joe has been pondering them a lot.
Because, really, when you stop—truly stop—to think, everything seems a lot clearer. The directions are there. Change filter once a year. Microwave for 3-5 minutes. Even the emergency screening process at the airport, where he works, makes sense if you take the time to read the goddamned cheat sheet.
“Outside?” Joe says.
Sasha rests her chin on her bed. Jenny must have come home at lunch to let her out. Otherwise, she’d be dying by four o’clock. Joe takes note of his disappointment. He likes being outside now, especially in the chilly weather. Cool seems clean. He might smother in here. One solution, he realizes, is to light a cigarette, which would satisfy his craving, ease his headache and nullify the offensive smell of his house.
Smoking on chemo though, nothing could be more idiotic. He’d done it for two weeks already.
“The smoking has to stop,” the infusion nurse had finally said, standing up from where she’d been leaning over him to connect his port. They hadn’t talked about it; he assumed he stunk. She wore her ID badge on a lanyard decorated with little green and gold pins shaped like stars that read You Shine. Joe had mumbled a half-hearted acknowledgement, but the nurse met his gaze and held it. He felt like a child as he sat in the huge infusion recliner, powerless over the woman setting up a direct route to pump poisons into his veins.
“This is life we’re talking about, not a game. Nothing is going to kill you faster than toxic drugs like this blended with cigarettes. It’s a deadly cocktail.”
“Cocktail,” Joe said. “I’d rather stick to beer.”
“The jokers are the ones I worry about the most. I don’t want you to die and I barely know you.”
Joe didn’t answer.
“People don’t think it can happen to them. Well, guess what? It happened to you. You need to listen to our instructions to get well. Lifestyle matters.”
“You remind me of my daughter.”
“She sounds like a smart girl,” the nurse said. The way she looked at him so directly was unnerving, but she patted his arm and moved to the computer workstation to type some notes. Joe had wanted her to turn back and acknowledge that she meant what she said, and he’d better do it or else. She didn’t, though.
Any idiot can follow directions, Joe thought.
The medicine dripped from the IV bag to the line running into his body. He wondered how it absorbed into his flesh and bones and whether the drugs traveled through his veins directly to the tumor or, more likely, seeped to fill all the spaces like ink in a glass of water.
Biohazard, the bag read, with a symbol that looked like fan blades slicing the air.
The dog, Sasha, lays on her bed, unaware of such environmental effects, though she lifts her head each time the furnace coughs to life, wagging her tail as though catching the scent of an old friend. Sasha knows the life she knows, but anticipates something like glee at the prospect of being let outdoors into fresh air and disappointment upon being called back inside.
And now Joe is home, pushing into the back door. Sasha’s tail thumps, but she does not rise. Her bladder is empty. She’s comfy. And she knows Joe will come to her.
Joe notices the smoke smell when he steps inside. After thirty-three years, he realizes he’d become immune to it. He’s quitting smoking. He shakes his head, feeling stupid in the same way he feels stupid about being diagnosed with cancer. He kicks off his work boots onto the old woven mat, an artifact from his ex-wife, who moved out a dozen years ago. The dented linoleum floors and faded hickory cabinets make him tired. He thinks about filling a bucket with soapy water and scrubbing out the stench. He’s far too tired for that and what good would it do? It’s not like he didn’t know cigarettes smell bad. It’s not like he didn’t know smoking causes cancer.
His live-in girlfriend, Jenny, probably doesn’t notice it either. He’s glad she’s quitting, too. At least he’ll be able to tell his daughter, Nikki, that the relationship is strong enough for such sacrifice. Nikki likes when actions speak louder than words. Nikki hasn’t smoked a day in her life.
Joe swings the heavy back door into its frame, giving an extra push until the latch clicks and the weather stripping sucks and seals him inside. He thinks about the cremated remains of whatever has burned off all those butts over all those years. Seems like he can taste it now. Might choke on it if he’s not careful.
Jenny will be home in half an hour and he’ll have to deal with her. She’s been a wreck since the diagnosis and hadn’t liked how Nikki took it upon herself to drive right over, push their pile of bills on the kitchen table to one side and plug in her laptop to show them what she’d already found out about bladder surgery. His lungs weren’t the problem, but only a fool isolated possible damage to that organ. A human being, Nikki said, takes 23,000 breaths a day into the body. The nicotine and toxins travel where they travel.
The furnace clicks to life and blows musty air through the registers. Joe notices the dust kick up in the living room, its particles dancing in the stream of afternoon sun that slants into the room. He wishes a furnace could inhale, sucking the pollution back in, trapping it into the filter. He hasn’t checked it since last year. Tomorrow he’ll stop at the hardware store for a new filter. They’re perfectly white when he opens the box, without a speck of dirt or dust. The chore no longer seems like a chore, but something essential that a hero would do, the kind who reads and follows directions.
Change filter once a year, the box says. Nothing easier. The current filter has surely expired.
Sasha yawns, concluding with a lax yowl. Her pink tongue appears far cleaner than any other mouth in the house.
“Who’s lazy?” Joe says.
Sasha rolls onto her back to expose her smooth, papery stomach. Joe laughs at the notion of a rescue pit being dangerous. She wriggles around and drops her head to the side to be sure Joe pays attention.
“Rough day,” he says, appeasing her.
He notices the hard nubs of the dog’s nipples and brown splotches like liver spots. It seems strange he hasn’t observed these characteristics before. They got Sasha six months ago when Jenny moved in. The spots on the dog were simply spots on the dog. People go about their lives all the time without pause, without using the brainpower that surely exists somewhere, to hypothesize or rationalize or intuit.
One of those smart words that means to figure it the fuck out. Joe has been pondering them a lot.
Because, really, when you stop—truly stop—to think, everything seems a lot clearer. The directions are there. Change filter once a year. Microwave for 3-5 minutes. Even the emergency screening process at the airport, where he works, makes sense if you take the time to read the goddamned cheat sheet.
“Outside?” Joe says.
Sasha rests her chin on her bed. Jenny must have come home at lunch to let her out. Otherwise, she’d be dying by four o’clock. Joe takes note of his disappointment. He likes being outside now, especially in the chilly weather. Cool seems clean. He might smother in here. One solution, he realizes, is to light a cigarette, which would satisfy his craving, ease his headache and nullify the offensive smell of his house.
Smoking on chemo though, nothing could be more idiotic. He’d done it for two weeks already.
“The smoking has to stop,” the infusion nurse had finally said, standing up from where she’d been leaning over him to connect his port. They hadn’t talked about it; he assumed he stunk. She wore her ID badge on a lanyard decorated with little green and gold pins shaped like stars that read You Shine. Joe had mumbled a half-hearted acknowledgement, but the nurse met his gaze and held it. He felt like a child as he sat in the huge infusion recliner, powerless over the woman setting up a direct route to pump poisons into his veins.
“This is life we’re talking about, not a game. Nothing is going to kill you faster than toxic drugs like this blended with cigarettes. It’s a deadly cocktail.”
“Cocktail,” Joe said. “I’d rather stick to beer.”
“The jokers are the ones I worry about the most. I don’t want you to die and I barely know you.”
Joe didn’t answer.
“People don’t think it can happen to them. Well, guess what? It happened to you. You need to listen to our instructions to get well. Lifestyle matters.”
“You remind me of my daughter.”
“She sounds like a smart girl,” the nurse said. The way she looked at him so directly was unnerving, but she patted his arm and moved to the computer workstation to type some notes. Joe had wanted her to turn back and acknowledge that she meant what she said, and he’d better do it or else. She didn’t, though.
Any idiot can follow directions, Joe thought.
The medicine dripped from the IV bag to the line running into his body. He wondered how it absorbed into his flesh and bones and whether the drugs traveled through his veins directly to the tumor or, more likely, seeped to fill all the spaces like ink in a glass of water.
Biohazard, the bag read, with a symbol that looked like fan blades slicing the air.
*
Joe startles at the kitchen table when Jenny’s work boots clomp up the cement steps. Her keys rattle and scratch as she tries for the lock. Sasha’s collar jingles and the dog clicks across the linoleum. Joe finds his hands flat against the table; he doesn’t remember sitting down, or even getting up from where he’d sat on the bed studying the clothes in his closet after changing into jeans.
He’d been thinking about fibers and absorbency, the way the garments hung from metal hangers and how everything looked so thick in there compared to the twisted, metal wire. His entire wardrobe was saturated with the stench of his habit. He’d wanted to reach around the expanse of fabrics and the line of flannel shirts, old suits, the occasional holiday sweater, the extra uniforms for work folded over hangers. As though he could squeeze out the pollutants if he embraced hard enough. Like wringing out a washcloth or coughing with enough force to dislodge the gunk. Like coming so hard his insides felt emptied. Or throwing up until there’s nothing left.
“Hey, babe,” Jenny says, pushing into the door.
Joe eases back the kitchen chair and grips his knees. He wonders how long second-hand smoke taints the air and if the contaminated denim releases irritants into his skin. He wants to strip naked.
Jenny hangs her jacket and dumps the contents of her canvas bag onto the kitchen table. She’s glad she can take her iPod to work to listen to audiobooks on the line. She takes pride in sometimes listening to an entire book on her eight-hour shift. In today’s story, the couple met at an elaborate vacation resort, where they made love on the beach under the night sky and their biggest problem was how they could return home without the other. The female character was willowy and thin, often forgetting to eat. Jenny likes romance best, but picks an occasional crime novel to change things up. Her manager doesn’t care as long as listening doesn’t mess with her task list, which only has four components: lift, connect, position, release.
Two bottles of Coke roll out, one empty and one half-drank. Jenny doesn’t see the sense in handing over twenty cents to the random co-worker digging through the trash for returnables. That’s her money. She wonders if Joe sees she’s switched to regular Coke. She is off her diet. The only reason Jenny ever goes off her diet is to quit smoking.
There are no cigarettes amid her items on the table. No lighter. She hopes he notices. She tries not to think about the three greasy slices of pepperoni pizza she ate for lunch, followed by birthday cake for Jose. She sucks in her stomach, a habit she has, as if it might somehow make her uniform less tight through the hips.
“Hey, beautiful,” Joe says. “Come here.”
He still can’t believe a 34-year-old woman wants to marry him, a 56-year-old man, divorced and formerly a loner. She’d told him she used to want to get married and have children, but she always chose the wrong kind of men and spent too much time trying to make them love her. The next thing she knew, she’d hit her 30s, then her mid-30s.
Jenny has no desire for children anymore; they only seem to give couples a new reason to fight. Maybe she used to get off on an emotionally-charged argument with raised voices and eventual makeup sex, but she’s tired of that now. Joe seems to be, too. She thinks of Joe as both handsome and adorable. He likes how she fucks him with the desperation of an insecure woman, every single day and sometimes more than once. He doesn’t bother telling her she needn’t worry. No other woman has shown interest in him in at least ten years. She has no idea that the very thought of her uncertain expressions, smooth, young fingertips and tight pussy gives him a hard-on.
She wraps her arms around his neck from behind and moves in to hug him. She doesn’t care he’s older; his salt and pepper curls make him look distinguished and the crinkles around his eyes remind her he possesses far more wisdom than her, a nobody from downriver. Jenny grew up in a trailer park with a single mom raising three girls. How she and her sisters fought for the prized space in front of the bathroom mirror. Now she makes decent money and lives in a house with a yard. Joe has a good-paying union job at the airport and only a few more years before he’s eligible for retirement. They’ll travel, drink beers on the beach, make love in the waves. He rarely yells and never hits.
“How’d it go today?” she says into his ear. “Did you make it?”
“Yeah, I made it,” Joe says.
“Good for you, baby.”
When she pulls away, Joe realizes. Jenny stinks of it. She definitely does, like she couldn’t resist lighting up on the drive home before shoving her pack beneath the seat of her car or maybe in the glovebox. He fights the urge to clasp her wrists and smell her fingers.
“You hungry?” she asks, turning to the sink to wash her hands. She senses he’s worrying again about his treatment. She hates when he says that he’s sick because he mostly seems to feel fine. He’s going to get better, she is positive. It’s just something he needs to get through. Good things will happen, her mother always said. She didn’t have to be specific about how things might get better. It was the positive attitude Jenny appreciated. She wants Joe to be optimistic, to not let cancer consume his whole life. It impacts her, too. She doesn’t want it to consume their life.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Might as well eat. It’s all I got now.”
Jenny catches his tone and the implication that, somehow, Joe feels alone and unsupported. She wishes she knew what to say, but how could anyone know the right thing to say in these circumstances? Joe doesn’t appreciate her mother’s favorite line, calling it a “bullshit catchall non sequitur.” She reminds herself again that it’s not entirely her responsibility to make him feel better. He has to communicate, too, if he wants her help. She’s told him that plenty and he tells her she sounds like his ex-wife, reinforcing Jenny’s belief that men really are from Mars and women are from Venus.
Joe doesn’t know what he should expect, but it’s more than this. Does Jenny believe for a minute he can’t smell it on her? He’s always thought of himself as the blue-collar guy with intelligence. His decision to join the Air Force at 17, for example, was based on the fact that the military could jump-start his life. Growing up poor in Detroit sucked, but just because he had no money didn’t mean he couldn’t make it. And all these years later, he is making it. A good-paying union job. A pension to rely upon. A younger woman. Hell, he can retire in less than five years if he wants to.
“Lifestyle matters,” the doctor had said. “If you beat this, there’s a fifty percent higher likelihood of recurrence if you smoke. Has to stop. We’ll make a quit plan.”
Joe hates feeling like an idiot. Seems he is one after all.
Jenny reaches back to gather her bleached blond curls and pulls them through an elastic band, stopping before the end slips through so it looks like a bun. Joe watches. He hardly believes his impulse to yank her hair until she screams.
“You reek like cigarettes.”
Her eyes flash in surprise, Joe observes, as though she really thought he wouldn’t notice. “I know I got to quit,” Jenny says quietly. “I tried. It’s just stressful right now. Makes it impossible.”
She shakes her head somberly. She is ashamed for admitting her stress when he’s the one going through it. It’s her truth, though. No matter what happens with Joe, Jenny will always have her truth. Joe remembers Nikki reacting this way in high school when he caught her drinking. The same slumped shoulders and deer-in-headlights expression, probably sorrier to have been busted than sorry for the actual infraction.
Jenny turns back to the counter. “I’ll try harder, baby. I promise. I’ll do it for you. For us.”
Through the dark blue wash of her uniform, Joe sees the dimpled outline of her ass. “Choice ass,” he’d told the guys at work. She sighs and, from the way she lifts her arm to her face, he knows she is crying again. She’ll leave him before she saddles herself with an old guy with cancer.
He’d been thinking about fibers and absorbency, the way the garments hung from metal hangers and how everything looked so thick in there compared to the twisted, metal wire. His entire wardrobe was saturated with the stench of his habit. He’d wanted to reach around the expanse of fabrics and the line of flannel shirts, old suits, the occasional holiday sweater, the extra uniforms for work folded over hangers. As though he could squeeze out the pollutants if he embraced hard enough. Like wringing out a washcloth or coughing with enough force to dislodge the gunk. Like coming so hard his insides felt emptied. Or throwing up until there’s nothing left.
“Hey, babe,” Jenny says, pushing into the door.
Joe eases back the kitchen chair and grips his knees. He wonders how long second-hand smoke taints the air and if the contaminated denim releases irritants into his skin. He wants to strip naked.
Jenny hangs her jacket and dumps the contents of her canvas bag onto the kitchen table. She’s glad she can take her iPod to work to listen to audiobooks on the line. She takes pride in sometimes listening to an entire book on her eight-hour shift. In today’s story, the couple met at an elaborate vacation resort, where they made love on the beach under the night sky and their biggest problem was how they could return home without the other. The female character was willowy and thin, often forgetting to eat. Jenny likes romance best, but picks an occasional crime novel to change things up. Her manager doesn’t care as long as listening doesn’t mess with her task list, which only has four components: lift, connect, position, release.
Two bottles of Coke roll out, one empty and one half-drank. Jenny doesn’t see the sense in handing over twenty cents to the random co-worker digging through the trash for returnables. That’s her money. She wonders if Joe sees she’s switched to regular Coke. She is off her diet. The only reason Jenny ever goes off her diet is to quit smoking.
There are no cigarettes amid her items on the table. No lighter. She hopes he notices. She tries not to think about the three greasy slices of pepperoni pizza she ate for lunch, followed by birthday cake for Jose. She sucks in her stomach, a habit she has, as if it might somehow make her uniform less tight through the hips.
“Hey, beautiful,” Joe says. “Come here.”
He still can’t believe a 34-year-old woman wants to marry him, a 56-year-old man, divorced and formerly a loner. She’d told him she used to want to get married and have children, but she always chose the wrong kind of men and spent too much time trying to make them love her. The next thing she knew, she’d hit her 30s, then her mid-30s.
Jenny has no desire for children anymore; they only seem to give couples a new reason to fight. Maybe she used to get off on an emotionally-charged argument with raised voices and eventual makeup sex, but she’s tired of that now. Joe seems to be, too. She thinks of Joe as both handsome and adorable. He likes how she fucks him with the desperation of an insecure woman, every single day and sometimes more than once. He doesn’t bother telling her she needn’t worry. No other woman has shown interest in him in at least ten years. She has no idea that the very thought of her uncertain expressions, smooth, young fingertips and tight pussy gives him a hard-on.
She wraps her arms around his neck from behind and moves in to hug him. She doesn’t care he’s older; his salt and pepper curls make him look distinguished and the crinkles around his eyes remind her he possesses far more wisdom than her, a nobody from downriver. Jenny grew up in a trailer park with a single mom raising three girls. How she and her sisters fought for the prized space in front of the bathroom mirror. Now she makes decent money and lives in a house with a yard. Joe has a good-paying union job at the airport and only a few more years before he’s eligible for retirement. They’ll travel, drink beers on the beach, make love in the waves. He rarely yells and never hits.
“How’d it go today?” she says into his ear. “Did you make it?”
“Yeah, I made it,” Joe says.
“Good for you, baby.”
When she pulls away, Joe realizes. Jenny stinks of it. She definitely does, like she couldn’t resist lighting up on the drive home before shoving her pack beneath the seat of her car or maybe in the glovebox. He fights the urge to clasp her wrists and smell her fingers.
“You hungry?” she asks, turning to the sink to wash her hands. She senses he’s worrying again about his treatment. She hates when he says that he’s sick because he mostly seems to feel fine. He’s going to get better, she is positive. It’s just something he needs to get through. Good things will happen, her mother always said. She didn’t have to be specific about how things might get better. It was the positive attitude Jenny appreciated. She wants Joe to be optimistic, to not let cancer consume his whole life. It impacts her, too. She doesn’t want it to consume their life.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Might as well eat. It’s all I got now.”
Jenny catches his tone and the implication that, somehow, Joe feels alone and unsupported. She wishes she knew what to say, but how could anyone know the right thing to say in these circumstances? Joe doesn’t appreciate her mother’s favorite line, calling it a “bullshit catchall non sequitur.” She reminds herself again that it’s not entirely her responsibility to make him feel better. He has to communicate, too, if he wants her help. She’s told him that plenty and he tells her she sounds like his ex-wife, reinforcing Jenny’s belief that men really are from Mars and women are from Venus.
Joe doesn’t know what he should expect, but it’s more than this. Does Jenny believe for a minute he can’t smell it on her? He’s always thought of himself as the blue-collar guy with intelligence. His decision to join the Air Force at 17, for example, was based on the fact that the military could jump-start his life. Growing up poor in Detroit sucked, but just because he had no money didn’t mean he couldn’t make it. And all these years later, he is making it. A good-paying union job. A pension to rely upon. A younger woman. Hell, he can retire in less than five years if he wants to.
“Lifestyle matters,” the doctor had said. “If you beat this, there’s a fifty percent higher likelihood of recurrence if you smoke. Has to stop. We’ll make a quit plan.”
Joe hates feeling like an idiot. Seems he is one after all.
Jenny reaches back to gather her bleached blond curls and pulls them through an elastic band, stopping before the end slips through so it looks like a bun. Joe watches. He hardly believes his impulse to yank her hair until she screams.
“You reek like cigarettes.”
Her eyes flash in surprise, Joe observes, as though she really thought he wouldn’t notice. “I know I got to quit,” Jenny says quietly. “I tried. It’s just stressful right now. Makes it impossible.”
She shakes her head somberly. She is ashamed for admitting her stress when he’s the one going through it. It’s her truth, though. No matter what happens with Joe, Jenny will always have her truth. Joe remembers Nikki reacting this way in high school when he caught her drinking. The same slumped shoulders and deer-in-headlights expression, probably sorrier to have been busted than sorry for the actual infraction.
Jenny turns back to the counter. “I’ll try harder, baby. I promise. I’ll do it for you. For us.”
Through the dark blue wash of her uniform, Joe sees the dimpled outline of her ass. “Choice ass,” he’d told the guys at work. She sighs and, from the way she lifts her arm to her face, he knows she is crying again. She’ll leave him before she saddles herself with an old guy with cancer.
*
Joe sits beside Jenny on the couch. They have agreed on TV before dinner, but he’s not watching. He and Jenny, two sets of lungs breathing in and breathing out. Hadn’t he heard somewhere that, upon exhalation, the air humans breathe turns into something poisonous? Leave it to the uneducated, blue-collar fools to find a way to take in poison in both directions. Like obesity. Like alcoholics. The freaks on Springer.
“Maybe the wealthy have actually earned their air of superiority,” he remarks as men and women on the TV screen punch and slap each other.
“What now?” Jenny asks. She has calmed herself from her breakdown in the usual way: painting her toenails slowly—one by one—with her feet propped on the coffee table. The monotony of the repetition and tiny brushstrokes allow her to focus and tune out the bigger worries. She feels much better when she’s finished.
“Not that the wealthy don’t smoke, but at least they have good jobs with benefits to take time off once the doctor explains why there’s blood in their piss,” Joe says.
Jenny stares but doesn’t respond. She’s thinking about weeks earlier, when Joe explained why he’d seen the doctor. It hasn’t crossed her mind there has been blood ever since. She is overcome with panic. She is holding her breath. A drop of blue polish builds on the end of the tiny brush so she caps it before it drips. She wants to ask how much blood, like is the toilet water red each time? In her mind, the bleeding stopped the moment the doctor figured out what was wrong. She wonders how she could be so simple-minded about it, how naïve, and the magnitude of all she does not know—about bladders, cancer, Joe and everything else—zooms out around her so she is left a tiny speck on the earth.
“People have choices, Jenny. People have habits, like eating fried chicken or snack chips with more ingredients than the average person can read. But the evidence is always written right on the bag. And cigarettes,” he goes on.
She nods.
“For Christ sake, there’s everything but skull and crossbones on the packaging. Remember the duty-free shop in the Bahamas? On our cruise?”
Jenny did. The cartons practically shouted from across the room with the giant black print against the white cardboard: SMOKING KILLS.
“Think they’re dangerous?” Jenny remembers joking.
They’d bought a couple cartons anyway, along with a bottle of whiskey to take back on the cruise ship.
“Yeah, we exercised our right to choose,” Joe says. “Only now I see a couple rednecks in our matching tank tops buying poisonous products even though it says so right on the label.”
He presses his fingers against his temples and combs through his hair, stopping to hold his hair off his forehead long enough to ask himself: Why’d you do it, Joe? Did you enjoy being reckless? For breaking rules of good health? Did you think you were some kind of rebel?
He’d stood in the cruise ship bathroom later that night, in the dark and rocking side to side with the ship as he pissed with one hand against the wall. He was passing the poisonous remnants right out his dick, but only after they’d taken a tour of his insides along the way, leaving traces in his throat, toxins in his stomach, black tar smeared through his intestines before they pooled in his bladder, the holding tank.
The bladder stores urine for hours. He’d exercised his right to choose to house a balloon full of battery acid slowly eating its way through the latex like an obvious, juvenile science experiment.
“We aren’t rednecks,” Jenny says. She wants to believe Joe has pulled her into a better place in life. Rednecks can’t afford expensive cruises. Granted neither one of them had any college, but together they have enough to not just scrape by every month.
“Here’s something funny. I’m so pissed off I want a cigarette,” Joe says.
Jenny averts her gaze to her shimmering toenails. She wants one, too. What a jolt she gets from pulling a cloud of nicotine into her lungs, especially when she’s frustrated. Or stressed. Or pissed off at Sheila at work for being so lazy. She loves the celebratory smoke when the union wins the collective bargaining rally without a strike. She loves the cigarette after morning sex with Joe, while the two of them lay on their backs listening to the 6:09 train cross Rand Road. Though lately he rolls over and goes back to sleep while she is left thinking about how the smell of him has changed, as though something metallic is seeping from his pores.
Joe is also thinking about smoking after sex with Jenny, the woman too young for him who doesn’t seem to care and only wants to scratch his balls with her long purple fingernails and ride him until they come. Her raw determination to get him off is a way she shows her love, he knows, but what drove him wild in the past seems to have plateaued. It’s more work for both of them. Breathing in, breathing out. Pulling in god knows what and exhaling something even worse.
“Let’s take Sasha for a walk,” Joe says, standing.
The dog’s tail thumps the kitchen floor at the sound of her name. The gleeful rush brings her to her feet.
“I’m tired, baby,” Jenny says. “And my toes are wet.”
Joe wants air. He stands and gets the leash from the hook next to the back door. Sasha yelps, jumps onto her haunches and sprints a loop through the house.
“I’ll take her,” he says.
“Here, use the retractable. It’s easier.”
Jenny reaches into the drawer and pulls out a plastic contraption. It looks cheap, useless. Joe doesn’t move. She laughs, nervously, keenly aware that it is Joe’s house, the same one he’d lived in with his first wife. It has been years since she left and Joe rarely mentions Kathleen, but still. It’s impossible for Jenny to forget he’s been married to someone else. They built a life here, in this same house he’d raised Nikki, who is only four years younger than her.
“I’ll go, babe. Of course I’ll go with you, they’re dry enough for flipflops. Let me put this on her. Sasha, come!”
Sasha remains at Joe’s feet. Jenny walks over and squats, fiddling with the clip on the leash. When she reaches for Sasha’s neck to find the ring, the dog gives a low growl. Jenny stands and pulls her fists up to her collarbones.
“She growled at me!” Jenny bursts into tears. “Sasha!”
The dog looks expectantly at Joe so he shrugs at Jenny and clips the nylon leash onto her collar. The leash is sturdy, high quality. This leash, Joe thinks, was a good decision. He loops the strap around his wrist. Sasha heads for the door.
“You coming or not?” Joe says.
“I can’t go walking around like this. This is, just, too much.” Jenny snuffles and gestures toward herself as though she looks a mess. Which, Joe thinks, she does. Tears run through the mascara and black pencil around her eyes with the same ease a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser cuts through bathtub mold on a TV commercial. Jenny wipes beneath her eyes, using her long fingernails like canoes to scrape away some of the sludge. She rises with her index fingers extended and heads to the kitchen for a paper towel.
Joe follows the dog out the door.
“Joe,” Jenny calls, right before he swings it shut. He stands outside the threshold, but she can’t think of a reason to call him back. He looks as eager as Sasha to be outdoors. She doesn’t like the way relief has washed over his face and worries it stems from having physically distanced himself from her. She feels certain he’ll dump her and she’ll run back to Nathan even though she promised herself she’d never let him rough her up again. Fresh teardrops dot her uniform. “Never mind. Have a good walk, you two. See you soon.”
She closes herself inside the house. Hates herself for being the kind of woman who makes it all about her and can’t stop crying. Finds the pack of cigarettes hidden in the junk drawer and slides open the kitchen window. Blows streams of smoke over her right shoulder and waves it out.
“Maybe the wealthy have actually earned their air of superiority,” he remarks as men and women on the TV screen punch and slap each other.
“What now?” Jenny asks. She has calmed herself from her breakdown in the usual way: painting her toenails slowly—one by one—with her feet propped on the coffee table. The monotony of the repetition and tiny brushstrokes allow her to focus and tune out the bigger worries. She feels much better when she’s finished.
“Not that the wealthy don’t smoke, but at least they have good jobs with benefits to take time off once the doctor explains why there’s blood in their piss,” Joe says.
Jenny stares but doesn’t respond. She’s thinking about weeks earlier, when Joe explained why he’d seen the doctor. It hasn’t crossed her mind there has been blood ever since. She is overcome with panic. She is holding her breath. A drop of blue polish builds on the end of the tiny brush so she caps it before it drips. She wants to ask how much blood, like is the toilet water red each time? In her mind, the bleeding stopped the moment the doctor figured out what was wrong. She wonders how she could be so simple-minded about it, how naïve, and the magnitude of all she does not know—about bladders, cancer, Joe and everything else—zooms out around her so she is left a tiny speck on the earth.
“People have choices, Jenny. People have habits, like eating fried chicken or snack chips with more ingredients than the average person can read. But the evidence is always written right on the bag. And cigarettes,” he goes on.
She nods.
“For Christ sake, there’s everything but skull and crossbones on the packaging. Remember the duty-free shop in the Bahamas? On our cruise?”
Jenny did. The cartons practically shouted from across the room with the giant black print against the white cardboard: SMOKING KILLS.
“Think they’re dangerous?” Jenny remembers joking.
They’d bought a couple cartons anyway, along with a bottle of whiskey to take back on the cruise ship.
“Yeah, we exercised our right to choose,” Joe says. “Only now I see a couple rednecks in our matching tank tops buying poisonous products even though it says so right on the label.”
He presses his fingers against his temples and combs through his hair, stopping to hold his hair off his forehead long enough to ask himself: Why’d you do it, Joe? Did you enjoy being reckless? For breaking rules of good health? Did you think you were some kind of rebel?
He’d stood in the cruise ship bathroom later that night, in the dark and rocking side to side with the ship as he pissed with one hand against the wall. He was passing the poisonous remnants right out his dick, but only after they’d taken a tour of his insides along the way, leaving traces in his throat, toxins in his stomach, black tar smeared through his intestines before they pooled in his bladder, the holding tank.
The bladder stores urine for hours. He’d exercised his right to choose to house a balloon full of battery acid slowly eating its way through the latex like an obvious, juvenile science experiment.
“We aren’t rednecks,” Jenny says. She wants to believe Joe has pulled her into a better place in life. Rednecks can’t afford expensive cruises. Granted neither one of them had any college, but together they have enough to not just scrape by every month.
“Here’s something funny. I’m so pissed off I want a cigarette,” Joe says.
Jenny averts her gaze to her shimmering toenails. She wants one, too. What a jolt she gets from pulling a cloud of nicotine into her lungs, especially when she’s frustrated. Or stressed. Or pissed off at Sheila at work for being so lazy. She loves the celebratory smoke when the union wins the collective bargaining rally without a strike. She loves the cigarette after morning sex with Joe, while the two of them lay on their backs listening to the 6:09 train cross Rand Road. Though lately he rolls over and goes back to sleep while she is left thinking about how the smell of him has changed, as though something metallic is seeping from his pores.
Joe is also thinking about smoking after sex with Jenny, the woman too young for him who doesn’t seem to care and only wants to scratch his balls with her long purple fingernails and ride him until they come. Her raw determination to get him off is a way she shows her love, he knows, but what drove him wild in the past seems to have plateaued. It’s more work for both of them. Breathing in, breathing out. Pulling in god knows what and exhaling something even worse.
“Let’s take Sasha for a walk,” Joe says, standing.
The dog’s tail thumps the kitchen floor at the sound of her name. The gleeful rush brings her to her feet.
“I’m tired, baby,” Jenny says. “And my toes are wet.”
Joe wants air. He stands and gets the leash from the hook next to the back door. Sasha yelps, jumps onto her haunches and sprints a loop through the house.
“I’ll take her,” he says.
“Here, use the retractable. It’s easier.”
Jenny reaches into the drawer and pulls out a plastic contraption. It looks cheap, useless. Joe doesn’t move. She laughs, nervously, keenly aware that it is Joe’s house, the same one he’d lived in with his first wife. It has been years since she left and Joe rarely mentions Kathleen, but still. It’s impossible for Jenny to forget he’s been married to someone else. They built a life here, in this same house he’d raised Nikki, who is only four years younger than her.
“I’ll go, babe. Of course I’ll go with you, they’re dry enough for flipflops. Let me put this on her. Sasha, come!”
Sasha remains at Joe’s feet. Jenny walks over and squats, fiddling with the clip on the leash. When she reaches for Sasha’s neck to find the ring, the dog gives a low growl. Jenny stands and pulls her fists up to her collarbones.
“She growled at me!” Jenny bursts into tears. “Sasha!”
The dog looks expectantly at Joe so he shrugs at Jenny and clips the nylon leash onto her collar. The leash is sturdy, high quality. This leash, Joe thinks, was a good decision. He loops the strap around his wrist. Sasha heads for the door.
“You coming or not?” Joe says.
“I can’t go walking around like this. This is, just, too much.” Jenny snuffles and gestures toward herself as though she looks a mess. Which, Joe thinks, she does. Tears run through the mascara and black pencil around her eyes with the same ease a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser cuts through bathtub mold on a TV commercial. Jenny wipes beneath her eyes, using her long fingernails like canoes to scrape away some of the sludge. She rises with her index fingers extended and heads to the kitchen for a paper towel.
Joe follows the dog out the door.
“Joe,” Jenny calls, right before he swings it shut. He stands outside the threshold, but she can’t think of a reason to call him back. He looks as eager as Sasha to be outdoors. She doesn’t like the way relief has washed over his face and worries it stems from having physically distanced himself from her. She feels certain he’ll dump her and she’ll run back to Nathan even though she promised herself she’d never let him rough her up again. Fresh teardrops dot her uniform. “Never mind. Have a good walk, you two. See you soon.”
She closes herself inside the house. Hates herself for being the kind of woman who makes it all about her and can’t stop crying. Finds the pack of cigarettes hidden in the junk drawer and slides open the kitchen window. Blows streams of smoke over her right shoulder and waves it out.
*
Jenny’s mind drifts to the sex scenes in the novel she’s listening to and how despite using silly terms like member and her box of fire, she can still imagine the hero’s chiseled chest and narrow hips. Real people are never that perfect, but she craves these stories about desire. She also reads for tips on how to be better at sex, figuring the author has either had a lot of sex or, at the very least, a better imagination than her.
The back door swings open and Nikki stands there, dropping her keys into her purse and clutching a manilla folder to her chest. Jenny tosses her cigarette into the sink and frantically waves at the cloud she’s just released. She hurries to turn on the faucet and wash the butt down.
“Oh shit, what are you doing?” Nikki says.
She means the question earnestly, like, seriously, Jenny needs to be way more careful to not smoke in front of her dad or she’s going to get caught. Nikki knows Joe is walking the dog; she drove right past him and Sasha on the street, though her dad was staring off into the trees and didn’t notice it was her car. It’s not like him to be so distracted.
Jenny can’t believe she let her guard down and didn’t hear Nikki pull up. Well, that’s the cherry on the sundae that’s been her day. She imagines the conversations Joe and Nikki have when Jenny isn’t around. Joe’s daughter is in nursing school and acts like she’s the manager of his medical care. She’s always using advanced medical terminology as if regular people can understand a word of it. They don’t discuss Joe’s ex-wife, i.e. Kathleen, i.e. Nikki’s mother, but Jenny is positive she goes back to her mom and gives her the full report.
“Well, you caught me. What can I say?” Jenny says. She hates how defensive she sounds. She’s a grown woman and allowed to smoke in her own home.
Nikki tosses her purse and the folder onto the table, squeezes past Jenny and opens the cupboard beneath the sink for the Febreeze. She sprays enough to consume all the oxygen in the room. Jenny nearly shouts for her to stop it. Joe is way more likely to sniff out cover-up scent than actual cigarette smoke.
“I don’t care if you smoke,” Nikki explains, which Jenny doesn’t believe. “I don’t want him to smell it and be upset. He’s got enough to worry about.”
“I don’t think he mentioned you were coming over,” Jenny says.
“He wouldn’t have,” Nikki says. She realizes she should have called first, but her childhood home is directly on her route from work and she’s eager to pass along some medical research she printed out. Her dad needs to be informed about the decisions he’s making. She’s terrified he’s not going to fight for the best care. He’ll nod and do whatever a doctor tells him. Nikki watches her hands sort and re-sort the papers, her nails short and unpainted. Working hands.
The truth is Nikki rarely speaks to her mother about Jenny. Her mother’s interest in her father’s new girlfriend is even less than her concern for Joe’s health. Nikki understands her mother had to decide eons ago to distance herself from Joe, both physically and emotionally. She knew he’d kill himself eventually and she would not watch.
There are a few seconds of silence, in which Jenny grows increasingly uncomfortable. Nikki has noticed the furnace kick on. She hates how it belches up more of the same smell she remembers loathing growing up. Her mother used to scrub the floors, even the walls, but it never seemed to come truly clean.
“He’s going to be back soon,” Nikki says. “I want to tell you a couple things before he gets here.” She tries to use a companionable tone. They both love Joe. They want the best for him. But Nikki sees Jenny’s expression darken in a way that makes her positive Jenny only sees her as bossy and intense.
Jenny eases into a kitchen chair and waits for whatever instructions Nikki has about phone calls to make or checklists to check. Nikki kicks off her clogs near the door and slides back in her socks. Jenny sneaks a glance at Joe’s daughter’s trim figure in her medical scrubs. She’s fresh-faced and pretty, like her mother, whose picture Jenny has seen in old albums in the basement. Jenny thinks she’d look more mature with some makeup, but understands that two people couldn’t be more different than she and Nikki.
Jenny props her elbows on the table and clasps her hands, trying to appear calm and not bitchy. The last thing she wants is for Nikki to tell her mother that Jenny is anything but nice to her.
“Is he smoking? Please tell me he’s not,” Nikki says. She picks up the folder and slides out a stack of stapled articles and pamphlets.
“He did not smoke today, no,” Jenny says.
“Thank god. You know how important it is for him to stop right? He’s fifty percent more likely to have a recurrence if he smokes.”
Jenny isn’t sure what this means, but she nods. Nikki watches her intently so she nods more convincingly. She places her hands flat on the table and leans toward Joe’s daughter. She reminds herself people only want to be heard. Joe’s daughter is no exception.
“He shouldn’t be drinking either. Like, not at all. And I say this as a person who understands he’s a million times more likely to smoke when he’s drinking. You know what I mean? That’s his pattern.”
Of course Jenny knows what she means. Everybody smokes more when they drink. If it were anyone but Nikki, she’d laugh and say so. She’d make a joke and call Nikki Captain Obvious.
“Right,” Jenny says. “I get that. For sure.”
“And, I mean, you’re going to stop, too, right? At least around my dad? He’s going to need all the support he can get.”
“Definitely,” Jenny says. She’s planning to ask Joe if he wants to go out to Milten’s for burgers for dinner. The idea of a Diet Coke with her burger is so depressing she wants to rest her forehead on the table. She understands about the smoking; that she can keep to herself. But now no drinking either?
She thinks about that moment she feels a buzz, maybe halfway through her second beer, and how her body literally relaxes into the sensation. She pictures the alcohol running through her bloodstream, dissolving any clots and debris in its path. It’s sweet relief. Her breath catches in her throat as she realizes that the buzz causes yet another need: she’ll want to step outside to smoke. Nikki is right. She and Joe have been in perfect sync all these months and, even if they weren’t, Jenny likes the way Joe guides Jenny out with a hand on her shoulder so everyone can see he is with her.
Now Nikki is asking her, no, telling her to suppress not only their urges to smoke or to drink, but also to give up the unspoken signals between them that make them such a compatible couple.
“Thank you so much, Jenny,” Nikki is saying. “I know this isn’t easy for anyone. But making these changes will be worth it in the long run. You’ve got to trust me.”
“I trust you, hon,” Jenny says. She notices the furnace is running and stands to close the kitchen window. The weather forecast says a cooldown tonight and it looks like they’re right. No sense in letting expensive heat escape.
She watches Nikki sort through the papers on the table, pretending to be interested. She wonders if Joe’s daughter ever dates, which makes her think back to her ex, Nathan, and how they used to pour whiskey into each other’s belly buttons and slurp it out. She misses her old apartment sometimes.
Nikki would look better with longer hair, she decides, and wonders again if she’s a lesbian. God, she wants a drink. And a cigarette.
The back door swings open and Nikki stands there, dropping her keys into her purse and clutching a manilla folder to her chest. Jenny tosses her cigarette into the sink and frantically waves at the cloud she’s just released. She hurries to turn on the faucet and wash the butt down.
“Oh shit, what are you doing?” Nikki says.
She means the question earnestly, like, seriously, Jenny needs to be way more careful to not smoke in front of her dad or she’s going to get caught. Nikki knows Joe is walking the dog; she drove right past him and Sasha on the street, though her dad was staring off into the trees and didn’t notice it was her car. It’s not like him to be so distracted.
Jenny can’t believe she let her guard down and didn’t hear Nikki pull up. Well, that’s the cherry on the sundae that’s been her day. She imagines the conversations Joe and Nikki have when Jenny isn’t around. Joe’s daughter is in nursing school and acts like she’s the manager of his medical care. She’s always using advanced medical terminology as if regular people can understand a word of it. They don’t discuss Joe’s ex-wife, i.e. Kathleen, i.e. Nikki’s mother, but Jenny is positive she goes back to her mom and gives her the full report.
“Well, you caught me. What can I say?” Jenny says. She hates how defensive she sounds. She’s a grown woman and allowed to smoke in her own home.
Nikki tosses her purse and the folder onto the table, squeezes past Jenny and opens the cupboard beneath the sink for the Febreeze. She sprays enough to consume all the oxygen in the room. Jenny nearly shouts for her to stop it. Joe is way more likely to sniff out cover-up scent than actual cigarette smoke.
“I don’t care if you smoke,” Nikki explains, which Jenny doesn’t believe. “I don’t want him to smell it and be upset. He’s got enough to worry about.”
“I don’t think he mentioned you were coming over,” Jenny says.
“He wouldn’t have,” Nikki says. She realizes she should have called first, but her childhood home is directly on her route from work and she’s eager to pass along some medical research she printed out. Her dad needs to be informed about the decisions he’s making. She’s terrified he’s not going to fight for the best care. He’ll nod and do whatever a doctor tells him. Nikki watches her hands sort and re-sort the papers, her nails short and unpainted. Working hands.
The truth is Nikki rarely speaks to her mother about Jenny. Her mother’s interest in her father’s new girlfriend is even less than her concern for Joe’s health. Nikki understands her mother had to decide eons ago to distance herself from Joe, both physically and emotionally. She knew he’d kill himself eventually and she would not watch.
There are a few seconds of silence, in which Jenny grows increasingly uncomfortable. Nikki has noticed the furnace kick on. She hates how it belches up more of the same smell she remembers loathing growing up. Her mother used to scrub the floors, even the walls, but it never seemed to come truly clean.
“He’s going to be back soon,” Nikki says. “I want to tell you a couple things before he gets here.” She tries to use a companionable tone. They both love Joe. They want the best for him. But Nikki sees Jenny’s expression darken in a way that makes her positive Jenny only sees her as bossy and intense.
Jenny eases into a kitchen chair and waits for whatever instructions Nikki has about phone calls to make or checklists to check. Nikki kicks off her clogs near the door and slides back in her socks. Jenny sneaks a glance at Joe’s daughter’s trim figure in her medical scrubs. She’s fresh-faced and pretty, like her mother, whose picture Jenny has seen in old albums in the basement. Jenny thinks she’d look more mature with some makeup, but understands that two people couldn’t be more different than she and Nikki.
Jenny props her elbows on the table and clasps her hands, trying to appear calm and not bitchy. The last thing she wants is for Nikki to tell her mother that Jenny is anything but nice to her.
“Is he smoking? Please tell me he’s not,” Nikki says. She picks up the folder and slides out a stack of stapled articles and pamphlets.
“He did not smoke today, no,” Jenny says.
“Thank god. You know how important it is for him to stop right? He’s fifty percent more likely to have a recurrence if he smokes.”
Jenny isn’t sure what this means, but she nods. Nikki watches her intently so she nods more convincingly. She places her hands flat on the table and leans toward Joe’s daughter. She reminds herself people only want to be heard. Joe’s daughter is no exception.
“He shouldn’t be drinking either. Like, not at all. And I say this as a person who understands he’s a million times more likely to smoke when he’s drinking. You know what I mean? That’s his pattern.”
Of course Jenny knows what she means. Everybody smokes more when they drink. If it were anyone but Nikki, she’d laugh and say so. She’d make a joke and call Nikki Captain Obvious.
“Right,” Jenny says. “I get that. For sure.”
“And, I mean, you’re going to stop, too, right? At least around my dad? He’s going to need all the support he can get.”
“Definitely,” Jenny says. She’s planning to ask Joe if he wants to go out to Milten’s for burgers for dinner. The idea of a Diet Coke with her burger is so depressing she wants to rest her forehead on the table. She understands about the smoking; that she can keep to herself. But now no drinking either?
She thinks about that moment she feels a buzz, maybe halfway through her second beer, and how her body literally relaxes into the sensation. She pictures the alcohol running through her bloodstream, dissolving any clots and debris in its path. It’s sweet relief. Her breath catches in her throat as she realizes that the buzz causes yet another need: she’ll want to step outside to smoke. Nikki is right. She and Joe have been in perfect sync all these months and, even if they weren’t, Jenny likes the way Joe guides Jenny out with a hand on her shoulder so everyone can see he is with her.
Now Nikki is asking her, no, telling her to suppress not only their urges to smoke or to drink, but also to give up the unspoken signals between them that make them such a compatible couple.
“Thank you so much, Jenny,” Nikki is saying. “I know this isn’t easy for anyone. But making these changes will be worth it in the long run. You’ve got to trust me.”
“I trust you, hon,” Jenny says. She notices the furnace is running and stands to close the kitchen window. The weather forecast says a cooldown tonight and it looks like they’re right. No sense in letting expensive heat escape.
She watches Nikki sort through the papers on the table, pretending to be interested. She wonders if Joe’s daughter ever dates, which makes her think back to her ex, Nathan, and how they used to pour whiskey into each other’s belly buttons and slurp it out. She misses her old apartment sometimes.
Nikki would look better with longer hair, she decides, and wonders again if she’s a lesbian. God, she wants a drink. And a cigarette.
*
Joe and Sasha jingle through the back door. Jenny is flooded with relief. She knows Joe’s daughter thinks she’s using him for money and wishes she could explain the surge of tenderness she experiences when he swoops in to save whatever situation Jenny has managed to get herself into.
“Did you know that the best suitcases are made from polycarbonate?” he asks, unclipping Sasha’s leash and letting it drop to the floor. “That’s the same material they use for the bulletproof glass at the bank.”
“Hi Dad,” Nikki says. She wants to dive for her folder on the kitchen table and shove papers under his nose, but her father hates to be bum-rushed with information. Patience, Nicole, she tells herself, but it’s her mother’s voice in her head. She wants to believe her conversation with Jenny made an impact, that Jenny cares enough about not wanting to lose Joe to do the right thing. Nikki doesn’t get the age difference, but has concluded her father’s girlfriend—despite her daddy issues and obvious insecurity—is somehow satisfied by the idea of her father being “distinguished.” Jenny’s word, not hers.
“Today at work I pretended I had a sixth sense to detect which suitcases belonged to the smokers. You know, like I could see a haze lifting off them. The truth is I could smell them.”
“Now you know how we feel,” Nikki says, waving her hand back and forth in front of her nose. Jenny thinks it’s a bitchy comment, but Joe only nods and keeps talking while Sasha gives Nikki the full welcome treatment until she leans down and lets the dog lick her face. Sasha ignores Jenny and sniffs around the kitchen to be sure no one dropped any snacks.
“A bullet couldn’t get through, but the stink of cigarettes could. What do you girls make of that?”
Joe feels the emotion welling, but even he is surprised at the way his voice breaks. At the airport, he’d avoided the guys coming off break with it clinging to their hair and jackets. Despite having worked with some of them for over thirty years, they seemed dangerous now and too dumb to associate with.
“God, Dad, it’s going to be okay,” Nikki says. Jenny wants to embrace him, but doesn’t want to appear needy or dramatic. She stays where she is and says nothing. She reminds herself to keep breathing. Wills herself not to cry again.
“My car reeks. My house reeks. And, in between the two? Outside just now with the dog? It’s like my lungs are crackling back to life. Two days of clean air and I feel all the damage I’ve done. I can’t stop coughing. Why would I be such a fool?”
“You’re not a fool,” Nikki says.
“No, definitely not. It’s an addiction,” Jenny adds.
“The sky rarely gets this blue in Detroit. It reminds me of Cape Cod where I was stationed in the Air Force. It was the cleanest, bluest sky in the world. Remember the stories, Nik?”
“I remember. You started smoking when you were only 17. You were lonely and missed Grandpa and Uncle Frank so you came back home and you never quit.”
Joe nods, gazing out the kitchen window at the white clouds blowing past like an overhead conveyer belt. If only Wentworth hadn’t lit that first cigarette and passed it to him. Joe had thought it a million times over the last forty years. If only he hadn’t liked it.
He joined the Air Force to make something of himself. The one thing he’d done to better himself—or at least the habit he picked up there—would kill him in the end. Kathleen had been right. He’d apologize, but knew she could give a shit anymore. He moves to the table and sifts through the papers Nikki has obviously brought for him to read. He feels Jenny’s hand on his back, her nails scratching gentle circles across his lumbar spine. Goddamn, it feels good.
“For when you feel like looking through it,” Nikki says. She reaches up for her dad’s shoulder and squeezes it. He reaches back and pats her hand; truth be told, he prefers his daughter taking charge. Someone needs to. He’d rather it be someone with a lifelong investment who already knows his warts rather than a fiancée he’s still getting to know.
“Thanks, Little One,” Joe says.
“I’ll let you guys get back to your evening,” Nikki says.
Jenny is glad. One thing she likes about Nikki is the way she doesn’t linger or overstay her welcome. Jenny has had enough of the family talk and sees no point in dredging up past mistakes. She is Joe’s future. She’s hungry for dinner and hopes Joe is ready to go.
“Milten’s? You ready?” Jenny asks, praying Joe doesn’t ask Nikki to join them.
“After you,” Joe says, gesturing toward the back door and waiting for them to gather purses and keys. He follows them out, glad to leave the house for a while.
Sasha turns circles on her bed and lies down. She lowers her chin. Closes her eyes. Sighs the way dogs do.
The furnace clicks off and shudders until the house is still. The stale air hovers until the next breath.
“Did you know that the best suitcases are made from polycarbonate?” he asks, unclipping Sasha’s leash and letting it drop to the floor. “That’s the same material they use for the bulletproof glass at the bank.”
“Hi Dad,” Nikki says. She wants to dive for her folder on the kitchen table and shove papers under his nose, but her father hates to be bum-rushed with information. Patience, Nicole, she tells herself, but it’s her mother’s voice in her head. She wants to believe her conversation with Jenny made an impact, that Jenny cares enough about not wanting to lose Joe to do the right thing. Nikki doesn’t get the age difference, but has concluded her father’s girlfriend—despite her daddy issues and obvious insecurity—is somehow satisfied by the idea of her father being “distinguished.” Jenny’s word, not hers.
“Today at work I pretended I had a sixth sense to detect which suitcases belonged to the smokers. You know, like I could see a haze lifting off them. The truth is I could smell them.”
“Now you know how we feel,” Nikki says, waving her hand back and forth in front of her nose. Jenny thinks it’s a bitchy comment, but Joe only nods and keeps talking while Sasha gives Nikki the full welcome treatment until she leans down and lets the dog lick her face. Sasha ignores Jenny and sniffs around the kitchen to be sure no one dropped any snacks.
“A bullet couldn’t get through, but the stink of cigarettes could. What do you girls make of that?”
Joe feels the emotion welling, but even he is surprised at the way his voice breaks. At the airport, he’d avoided the guys coming off break with it clinging to their hair and jackets. Despite having worked with some of them for over thirty years, they seemed dangerous now and too dumb to associate with.
“God, Dad, it’s going to be okay,” Nikki says. Jenny wants to embrace him, but doesn’t want to appear needy or dramatic. She stays where she is and says nothing. She reminds herself to keep breathing. Wills herself not to cry again.
“My car reeks. My house reeks. And, in between the two? Outside just now with the dog? It’s like my lungs are crackling back to life. Two days of clean air and I feel all the damage I’ve done. I can’t stop coughing. Why would I be such a fool?”
“You’re not a fool,” Nikki says.
“No, definitely not. It’s an addiction,” Jenny adds.
“The sky rarely gets this blue in Detroit. It reminds me of Cape Cod where I was stationed in the Air Force. It was the cleanest, bluest sky in the world. Remember the stories, Nik?”
“I remember. You started smoking when you were only 17. You were lonely and missed Grandpa and Uncle Frank so you came back home and you never quit.”
Joe nods, gazing out the kitchen window at the white clouds blowing past like an overhead conveyer belt. If only Wentworth hadn’t lit that first cigarette and passed it to him. Joe had thought it a million times over the last forty years. If only he hadn’t liked it.
He joined the Air Force to make something of himself. The one thing he’d done to better himself—or at least the habit he picked up there—would kill him in the end. Kathleen had been right. He’d apologize, but knew she could give a shit anymore. He moves to the table and sifts through the papers Nikki has obviously brought for him to read. He feels Jenny’s hand on his back, her nails scratching gentle circles across his lumbar spine. Goddamn, it feels good.
“For when you feel like looking through it,” Nikki says. She reaches up for her dad’s shoulder and squeezes it. He reaches back and pats her hand; truth be told, he prefers his daughter taking charge. Someone needs to. He’d rather it be someone with a lifelong investment who already knows his warts rather than a fiancée he’s still getting to know.
“Thanks, Little One,” Joe says.
“I’ll let you guys get back to your evening,” Nikki says.
Jenny is glad. One thing she likes about Nikki is the way she doesn’t linger or overstay her welcome. Jenny has had enough of the family talk and sees no point in dredging up past mistakes. She is Joe’s future. She’s hungry for dinner and hopes Joe is ready to go.
“Milten’s? You ready?” Jenny asks, praying Joe doesn’t ask Nikki to join them.
“After you,” Joe says, gesturing toward the back door and waiting for them to gather purses and keys. He follows them out, glad to leave the house for a while.
Sasha turns circles on her bed and lies down. She lowers her chin. Closes her eyes. Sighs the way dogs do.
The furnace clicks off and shudders until the house is still. The stale air hovers until the next breath.