Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,27
could get testy apropos bad health. Like if her eyesight were shot and she couldn’t see the frog, wouldn’t she pound on it in denial? Or if her ears were wrecked and she couldn’t hear the phone? Last week it had rung twenty times before she picked up, Olgo calling from work to say he missed her—they still did this kind of thing—and Kay saying, “Well, maybe if you bought a better phone I could hear it; this phone is pitched for bats,” followed by a slamming of the phone into its cradle and the cradle into the fridge. Apparently, his wife had something she needed to work out.
Kay gave Tennessee the mallet and leaned against the wall, which was padded in blue mats. “Basta,” she said, “Grandma’s moving on.”
Only the child had other ideas. She ran to where the frog had landed, east of the bull’s-eye, tossed it in the air, and swung. Frog baseball.
Olgo looked away. Last week, he’d tried to call Kay back. No answer. After that, he’d scanned his office, because you somehow expect the upheaval of your life to attract notice and are often disappointed to find otherwise. He was caboosed with problems he needed to unload. There was anxiety about his new job because he thought the Department of the Interior had hired him to mediate the Indian land claims, except no one had told him anything about them since. There was anxiety about his age—maybe sixty was not the new forty—and a sense that his daughter’s divorce imbroglio would bleed his pension dry. And finally, a growing fear that no one wanted to drink from the fount of wisdom that was, in the town square of his mind, its centerpiece.
He could not discuss these things with Kay—she was his wife, not his therapist—but he thought it best to talk to someone. So he’d cruised his office building, looking to offload. Except just having to walk the hallways, which were girthed for a bus, maybe two, and traverse the floors—caramelized rock, cream and liver diamonds—to pass eyes across the framed photos on every wall (nature is beautiful!) and the pastorals of farmers harvesting the land: this safari through Interior was to trade the humdrum of nine-to-five for a venture in self-pity.
“So were there lots of Helix there?” Kay said.
“I don’t know. I only have eyes for you,” and he kissed her on the cheek.
She swatted him away but smiled.
“And another thing,” he said. “I am doing something at work. I’m setting a big meeting up now. With the Cayuga Nation. We need to bring everyone back to the table, else one of these days there are actually going to be mini sovereign states all over the country. Wouldn’t that be insane? And wouldn’t that mean something if I could help?”
“I guess,” she said. “Though you’ve been saying that about the home front, too.”
“Hey, I offered. I told Erin she didn’t need a lawyer.”
And with this he stood up tall. Lawyers were adversarial by design—they did not know how to compromise—and so what his daughter’s divorce needed was the smooth handling of a man with skill.
“Must be some lawyer, though,” Kay said. “They’re meeting on a Sunday. Maybe Jim’s having an affair with her, too.”
“Kay!” He spit a little by accident. “I hope this mess doesn’t affect Tenn badly. Divorce is awful. Just look at her.” Though he was still looking at Kay, pleased to have fired a killer word of his own—divorce—which no happily married woman could hear without it reaffirming her vows in silence.
They looked. Tennessee was whaling on the frog and attracting other kids to the game.
Kay said, “I wish Erin weren’t coming with Jim. That guy is such a creep. All those Defense Department guys are creeps.”
“He’s not coming to socialize. I guess he has Tennessee for the rest of the weekend.”
“He’s a creep.”
“You liked him when they got married.”
“I liked you when we got married. What’s your point?”
Olgo blinked.
“I’m kidding,” she said. “But don’t look now—here they come.”
He turned. His daughter’s hair was cantaloupe and often gathered in a high ponytail, so that in a crowd you tended to spot it well before she spotted you. This had its benefits—for instance, the chance to wrest Tennessee from the execution of Mr. Parker (she’d given the frog a name because, she explained, every frog has a name) and to present her in fine form, shaped by an hour’s exposure to her grandparents, their bonhomie and warmth.