"Probation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mendicino Tom)

The Great Pretender

Step right up, folks.

Welcome to the greatest show on earth.

What you have here works. But there’s always room for improvement. What works can always work better!

This used to be easier. I don’t remember a lead ball swinging from my tongue.

Yes, ma’am. Yes, sir. And by the way, that truly is a lovely dress you’re wearing today, Mrs. Cleaver.

No, I haven’t sunk that far. Yet.

Competition. It’s the name of the game. Too many retail outlets all selling the same things, the same brands. Look at these Maidenforms you’ve got here. How many places in town can you buy these? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand?

I have to remember to customize the sell at this point for the size of the city I’m in. The problem is remembering the city I’m in. Which airport did I fly into this morning? They all look the same.

Remember. It’s not Maidenforms you’re selling. It’s you. You are your brand. And your space tells the customer who you are.

This is where the architect or the space designer or, God forbid, the interior decorator, intervenes, determined not to lose control, to put me in my place, remind me who I am. Just the fucking salesman. Sorry, the manufacturer’s rep. I’m supposed to take the dimensions and answer questions. The “space” belongs to them; it’s their prerogative. They are the artists. The sales boy should stick to describing the durability of the wood chip veneer.

I’ve studied my adversaries. I know all the types.

The neurasthenic aesthetes of indeterminate gender, swaddled in black turtlenecks regardless of the season, swooning over lighting concepts.

The foppish, overweight homosexuals with pinky rings and liquor on their breath, dropping fey hints, trying to figure out if “I am” and if “I’m available.”

Worst of all are the tweedy first wives of captains of industry, barely sublimating their bitterness, castrating every male in sight, adding penises to their trophy belts.

Don’t fight ’em outright, my Born Again National Sales Manager advises me, but you gotta resist them. You only have a couple of hours to score. Stay focused. Remember who’s paying the bills. And if Miss Snotty Designer convinces the client later that it’s all wrong, well, the deposit’s been collected and there’s no refund on custom jobs. Remember, it’s war out there and Shelton/Murray Shelving and Display intends to win!

He makes it sound so easy. Why is it so hard? Is it because I’m tired? Is it because I don’t care?

I don’t care? How could anyone not care about products like these!

Be a part of the revolution in slatwall! Don’t waste a precious inch of selling space! Make your walls work for you! Cost-efficient and durable! Powder-coated steel frame construction means it’s lighter and easier to install and eliminates unsightly aluminum brackets!

Make a bold statement!

Create the environment of your imagination!

Differentiate your product!

Build brand identity!

Reinvent your image!

Shelton/Murray Shelving and Design doesn’t just sell slatwall.

We create solutions.

Yes. I can do this. I can do it well. I can be the best. The early verdicts are in. The Born Again National Sales Manager is pleased.

Praise the Lord!

I just have to remember to be careful. Keep my hair combed, my shirt freshly pressed, and a stash of breath mints close at hand. Never let my rancid nights poison my days. Stay upbeat. Smile until my face hurts. Keep up the act. I ought to be able to pull this one off. Years of experience, a lifetime of lying, have prepared me for this. Oh yes, I’m the Great Pretender.

And if I truly hate this job so much, why do I dread Friday afternoon and the flight home? The thought of my mother, smiling, self-consciously not intruding, strikes terror in my heart. The flight attendant disapproved when I ordered a third scotch, sniffing at me as if I was just another pathetic middle-aged failure. The flight was full of them, overweight losers, moving their lips while they read the editorial page of USA Today, circling their wish list in the Air Mall catalogue, punching out sales memos on their laptops.

Don’t lump me in with them, I wanted to tell that waitress in the sky. No way. I’m different. And I have the arrest record to prove it.

I congratulated myself on resisting the temptation of a former Big Man on Campus gone slightly to seed stroking his penis in the restroom in Terminal B. I dutifully kept my Friday appointment with my counselor and managed to feign enough enthusiasm to please Mr. Born Again Saturday afternoon. Now it’s Sunday morning. I pull the sheets over my head and inhale the fabric softener. I close my eyes and dig into the familiar soft spots in this old mattress. “Andy?” I burrow deeper, hiding from her wake-up call. “Andy, are you awake?” The rhythm is so familiar I count to ten and whisper along: “Rise and shine.”

“I’m up.”

“Good afternoon, grumpy.” She goes back down the stairs. I want to sleep, but Sunday dinner can’t be ignored. The kids next door are playing Marco Polo in the pool. A lawnmower chokes on a stone. A motorcycle backfires. Farberware clatters downstairs and my mother is singing her kitchen song.

“Oh, playmate, come out and play with me…”

The furniture in my room is scaled for a ten-year-old. The dresser mirror cuts me off at the chin. The monster models and Mickey Mouse and the Hardy Boys have never been consigned to attic or garage or trash. Two storage boxes of baseball cards are in the closet. The worn old chenille bedspread is as thin as a sheet. It’s only temporary, I tell myself.

“Coffee’s on the burner. Dinner in an hour,” she calls. I pull on a pair of boxers and go downstairs. She offers to slice ham for my breakfast. I shake my head no and crumble a biscuit into my coffee. She makes a face, like she always does when I exhibit white-trash habits. I take a second biscuit and she tells me I’m going to spoil my dinner. She’s making stuffed pork chops, my favorite.

I decide not to shave. Then I change my mind, not wanting to disappoint her. We’re eating in the dining room and she’s set a lovely table. I want to do something thoughtful so I clip a late-season bud from her rosebushes and place it on her dinner plate, a small gesture I know will please her. She kisses me on the cheek, as happy as if I’d bought out Tiffany’s, and asks me to say the Catholic grace (she still calls it that almost forty years after converting to marry my father in a proper church wedding). I lie and tell her everything is delicious. She forgets things now, like salt, or she’ll salt twice. All I taste is the stainless steel flatware. I empty the pepper shaker over my food when she goes for hot biscuits. I do the arithmetic of mortality, counting the number of pork chops the future still holds. I clear my throat and chirp, telling her sure, I’ll have a second.

We never talk about why I’m here. I’d called her from exile, a thirty-bucks-a-night motel near the Greensboro airport, drunk and crying, spilling my guts. The next morning I was on her doorstep. Every picture of my wife had already disappeared from my mother’s home. Her only comment was it’s a crying shame when things don’t work out and we should be grateful we hadn’t started a family yet. I moved in, nowhere else to go, nowhere else I wanted to be.

She paid the fine and the lawyer, suggested a priest for the counseling, made the arrangements, and never mentioned it again. My father-in-law was also my employer. He contested my application for unemployment benefits and won. He made sure that no North Carolina furniture manufacturer would hire me, but I got work soon enough with the help of an old fuck buddy who worked in facilities for the national department store chain that is Shelton/Murray’s biggest account. It beats being put on the payroll of Nocera Heat and Air, the company my mother inherited after my old man died.

I never get personal phone calls. The only mail addressed to me is from divorce lawyers. I sleep through my days off. At night, my mother and I watch old movies on the cable channels. Saturday nights we go to the golf club for dinner. Over time, she is reacquainting me with each and every member. They look embarrassed, mumbling about how little I’ve changed. She won’t allow anyone to excuse themselves until they have shaken my hand and welcomed me home. The strain shows around her mouth. I know that she and my sister Regina have had words, arguing about my “situation.”

I imagine my sister is feeling triumphant, gloating over my sudden, ignominious fall from grace. I should be sympathetic. I understand it’s always been difficult, no, impossible, competing with the little prince. Her life would seem to be a success by any measure, at least if no one looked too deeply or asked too many questions. She has a thriving real estate business and the marriage to the golden boy, a bronze medalist in the giant slalom who’s become the most successful contractor in south Florida to have never been indicted or slapped with an IRS tax lien. The perfect couple lives in an umpteen-square-foot hacienda in Boca Raton ’s most exclusive gated community. Yet none of it seems to satisfy her. Something lives on, a nagging resentment from our childhood, nurtured by her stubborn refusal to accept that there is one competition she can never win, not even after bearing the three children who ensure that the DNA, if not the family name, will endure for another generation. My little sister, precious Gina, loved as she may be, can never depose the firstborn son.

And much to Regina ’s chagrin, my mother refuses to see my hobbling back to the nest as a failure. She says it’s absolutely wonderful having me home. She’s happy to have someone to talk to. About my niece and nephews, about the neighbors, about the recently deceased and the long dead. About everything and everyone but me. Which suits me fine.

We’re very comfortable here in the zone between questions left unasked and answers never offered. She’s made peach cobbler-my favorite-and serves it piping hot with vanilla ice cream. I squeeze it into mush like I’ve done since I was old enough to lift a fork. My mother sighs and tells me that my youngest nephew does the same thing. We’re so much alike she finds herself calling him Andy.

Dustin is his name. His goddamn mother practically willed him into being a little fairy by calling him that. Boys need names like Bob or Bill or Mike. One syllable. Not something that’s a synonym for Tinker Bell.

The both of you always have an answer for everything, my mother says, both of you too smart by half. That’s not the only resemblance she sees. He’s quite the sissy and refuses to touch a ball or a bat. A lonely little kid who does all the voices for his action figures because none of the boys want to play with him. She laughs, telling me some wiseass comment, wry beyond his years, he made to his mother about his favorite television actress. I grunt and squirm, trying to conceal that the obvious parallels make me uncomfortable and that the kid’s fey mannerisms, his refusal to blend in, his insistence on being different, embarrass me. I resent her obvious agenda, her assumption that I, of all people, should be sympathetic, willing to reach out and support the boy. Why him? Why aren’t I expected to forge some special relationship with his rough-and-tumble older brother, who’s showing the first signs of sullen adolescent rebellion, or his little sister, prosecutorial in her insistence that all things go her way? But for my mother’s sake, I feign a little interest, assure her he’ll turn out all right.

I’ve promised her I would mow the lawn. She fusses it’s too hot, wait until the cool of the evening. She says I’ve just eaten. She’s right, so I just lie down in the grass. She’s at the kitchen window, listening to Sinatra, meaning she’s thinking of my father, missing him, while she tackles her greasy pots and pans. I light a cigarette, hoping the nicotine will revive me. But my arm is heavy with sleep and the cigarette drops from my hand. The last thing I remember before drifting off is the hiss of grass scorched by the ember.