The Nix(128)

Occasionally they took trips into Chicago for Cubs games—always during the day, always preceded by an elaborate ritual where Henry packed the car with enough supplies to get them through any roadside catastrophe. He packed extra jugs of water for drinking or radiator malfunction. Spare tire, sometimes two. Flares, emergency hand-crank CB radio. Walking maps of Wrigleyville on which he’d written notes from previous trips: where he’d found parking spots, where he’d encountered beggars or drug dealers. Particularly rough-seeming neighborhoods he etched out completely. He brought a fake wallet in case of mugging.

When they crossed the boundary into Chicago and the traffic congealed around them and the neighborhoods started to change, he said “Doors locked?” and Samuel jiggled the handle and said “Check!”

“Eyes peeled?”

“Check!”

And together they remained vigilant and watchful for crime until returning home again.

Henry had never worried like this before. But after Faye disappeared, he became preoccupied with disasters and muggings. The loss of his wife had convinced him that even more loss was imminent and near.

“I wonder what happened to her,” Samuel said, “in Chicago, in college. What made her leave so quickly?”

“No idea. She never talked about it.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“I was so happy she came back I didn’t want to jinx it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, you know? I let the matter drop. I thought I was being very modern and compassionate.”

“I have to find out what happened to her.”

“Hey, I need your opinion. We’re launching a new line. Which logo do you prefer?”

Henry slid two glossy pieces of paper across the table. One said FARM FRESH FROZENS, the other, FARM FRESH FREEZNS.

“I’m glad you’re so concerned about your son’s well-being,” Samuel said.

“Seriously. Which do you like better?”

“I’m glad my personal crisis is so very important to you.”

“Stop being dramatic. Pick a logo.”

Samuel studied them for a moment. “I guess I’d vote FROZENS? When in doubt, spell words correctly.”

“That’s what I said! But the advertising folks said FREEZNS made the product seem funner. That’s the word they actually used. Funner.”

“Of course I’d also argue that FROZENS isn’t a proper word either,” Samuel said. “More like a word that is not a noun conscripted to dress like one.”

“My son the English professor.”

“Which I guess there’s some precedent for. Take the tuna melt. Or the corn pop.”

“The advertising folks do that kind of thing all the time. They tell me that thirty years ago you could get away with saying something simple and declarative: Tastes Great! Be Happy! But consumers these days are way more sophisticated, so you have to get tricky with the language. Taste the Great! Find Your Happy!”

“I have a question,” Samuel said. “How can something be both farm fresh and frozen?”

“That’s something that way fewer people stop and think about than you would expect.”

“Once it’s frozen isn’t it, by definition, no longer farm fresh?”

“It’s a trigger word. When they want to advertise to hipster foodies, they use farm fresh. Or maybe artisanal. Or local. For millennials, they use vintage. For women, they use skinny. And don’t even get me started on the quote-unquote farm where all this farm-fresh stuff comes from. I’m from Iowa. I know farms. That place is not a farm.”

Samuel’s phone dinged with a new text message. He made a reflexive move to his pocket, then stopped and folded his hands on the table. He and Henry stared at each other for a moment.

“You gonna get that?” Henry said.

“No,” Samuel said. “We’re talking.”

“Mighty big of you.”

“We’re talking about your work.”

“Not really talking. More like you’re listening to me complain about it, again.”

“How much longer till retirement?”

“Oh, too long. But I’m counting the days. And when I finally do leave, no one will be happier than those advertising folks. You should have seen the fuss I made about spelling jalape?o poppers with a Z. Or mozzarella sticks with an X. Popperz. Stix. No thank you.”

Samuel remembered how happy his father was the day he got this job and moved the family to Streamwood—their final exodus from crowded apartment buildings to the expansively grassy and well-spaced houses of Oakdale Lane. For the first time they had a yard, a lawn. Henry wanted to get a dog. They had a washer and dryer inside the house. No more walking to the laundromat on Sunday afternoons. No more carrying groceries five blocks. No more random car vandalism. No more listening to the couple fighting in the apartment upstairs or the baby wailing from below. Henry was ecstatic. But Faye seemed a little lost. Maybe there’d been a struggle between them—she’d wanted to live in a city, he’d wanted to move to the suburbs. Who knows how such things are resolved; there are other, more interesting lives that parents keep hidden from their children. Samuel only knew that his mother had lost the struggle, and she sneered at all the symbols of her defeat—their big tan garage door, their patio deck, their bourgeois barbecue grill, their long secluded block brimming with happy, safe, bechildrened white people.