Today Will Be Different(49)

Alonzo pressed his back against the passenger door to get a wider perspective of me. “Thank you. But my hell is a private one.”

“Or not,” I said. “You know that book deal I have? It’s been canceled. My editor doesn’t even work in publishing anymore. She’s editing cheese in Nyack.”

“Oh no!” Timby cried. “Are we poor?”

“You and me?” I continued to Alonzo. “We’re artists. We’ve chosen a path that’s ninety-nine percent hardship and rejection. But we’re in it together. That’s what counts.”

“Save it,” Alonzo said. “You’re a woman with a rich husband. All I have to fall back on is an adjunct professorship. And they’re trying to get me fired from that.”

“Who is?”

“Color the Core,” he pronounced. “Or I should say, some Internet cry-bully from Tacoma with a bullhorn and a Facebook page. Under occupation, it says, conversation starter. Conversation starter! Her worldliness is confined to the echo chamber of social media. She wouldn’t know a poem if she wiped her mouth with one.”

“What’s her beef with you?” I asked.

“She somehow got her hands on my Intro to Poetry syllabus. Too many dead white males for her liking. And now she’s e-distributing a petition demanding my resignation. Langston Hughes is on my reading list. So is Gwendolyn Brooks. But they’re just ‘proof of my tokenism.’”

“She can’t really get you fired?”

“‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,’” Alonzo said wistfully. “Now college students won’t know Yeats said that because he’s the root of evil. Along with Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg. Oh, and me. You can’t forget white ol’ me. I’m evil too. I’d offer to die if that would help matters. But nope, she just wants me to lose my house. She’s got it all figured out. She’s angry, so she must be right.”

“I feel like there might be another take on all this,” I said. “But diversity happens to be one of the subjects I’ve proactively chosen not to care about.”

“You know what I do when people are arguing?” Timby peeped from the back. “I just agree with the last person.”

What’s-longer-a-cat-or-a-doughnut? blurted a computerized voice from the backseat.

Startled, I yanked the steering wheel, just missing the curb.

“It’s the concussion app,” Timby said, holding up the phone. He turned to Alonzo. “Mom hit her head.”

“Did she.”

“It asks you a question every five minutes,” Timby said. “As soon as you can’t answer, you need to go to the hospital.”

“In most cases a cat,” I said. “Happy?”

I’d followed the GPS to a random neighborhood. “Yech, Magnolia. Who would want to live here?”

“In a six-hundred-thousand-dollar house?” Alonzo said. “Me.”

“Joe’s never mentioned anything about Magnolia,” I muttered.

“Forgive me,” Alonzo said. “What are we doing?”

“Daddy’s been going somewhere without telling Mommy so she got the keys to his car.”

Alonzo looked back and forth between Timby and me.

“Since she hit her head, she’s been making bad choices,” Timby said.

I parked at the spot where the map’s dotted line came to an abrupt halt. We were in a development of uniform lots and modernish red-brick houses. The whole look was just the other side of groovy, the houses more heavy than light. I was surprised hipsters hadn’t discovered it yet. If I got out of today alive, perhaps I would discover it. It might be the perfect place to live out your life and die in your sleep, or at least go trick-or-treating.

I got out of the car.

The neighborhood possessed an eerie tranquility, the front yards with their rhododendrons and one Japanese maple strangely antiseptic.

Why on earth would Joe be coming here? There were no clues to be had.

I looked back. On the dashboard, through the windshield: JAZZ ALLEY. The envelope with our subscription tickets. It had been so light…

I reached in and grabbed the envelope.

“Why do you want that?” Timby asked.

I turned my back and ripped it open.

A single perforated sheet. One ticket for each concert. Joe had decided to go it alone.

“Oh no,” I said. “Oh-no-no-no.”

The door slammed. Alonzo calmly walked to a lawn out of earshot of the car and waited for me on the spongy grass.

“Maybe you want to talk about whatever’s going on?” he said.

Muffled music, a heavy beat, a sexed-up singer with an auto-tuned voice: Timby had climbed into the passenger seat and was bouncing happily to “his” music.

I took a breath.

“Somewhere along the way,” I said to Alonzo. “My marriage turned into an LLC.” I waved the tickets as proof. “Joe and I became two adults joined in the business of raising a child. When we first met, I’d have gone anywhere with the guy. I listened rapturously to whatever he said. I delighted in his every little gesture. You wouldn’t believe the places we had sex! We got married, and of course I thought, This is what life is. But it wasn’t life. It was youth. And now it’s Joe going to jazz by himself and me cracking jokes about how cold and erratic I’ve become. Twenty years ago I was Johnny Appleseed sowing charm and bon mots. If you stuck your finger in my cheek, it would have sprung back like angel food. Now, my face is a moo shu pancake and people cross the street when they see me coming. And this stomach. It’s disgusting.”