Men's Work

Frank Sutton’s fifteen-year-old cat seemed to enjoy rousting him from sleep only on Saturdays when he had the day off and could stay in bed an extra hour. Today was no exception. Fully awake, he shooed the beast from his chest with a muttered curse and dressed quickly – khakis and a starched button-down with an ink stain on the pocket. He was thinking of leaf-filled gutters, bacon and eggs, the divorce Cheryl had threatened last week right after church, for no good reason. The air between them had been tense in the interim, but she hadn’t mentioned the D-word since her initial threat. He didn’t think she was serious, not really, and blamed the outburst on her recent binge of diet and exercise, the refusal of an evening cocktail. Frank laced his Hokas with a grimace. Fine if Cheryl wanted to deny herself. Just leave him the hell out of it.

The cat led him up the hall to the kitchen, meowing like a royal herald. Cheryl sat hunched over their round oak table, a half-eaten bowl of Grape-Nuts grown soggy at her elbow. Her red-rimmed eyes spoke of another sleepless night. Three drips of coffee dotted the button-line of her blue pajamas. Years ago, Frank recalled, she’d worn satin negligees to bed. He’d been especially fond of a pink one until the day they discovered their four-year-old son playing dress-up in it. After that, anytime Cheryl wore the gown to bed, Frank kept imagining Davey sporting the damn thing at twelve and twenty and then fifty, looking like a drag queen in pink lace and satin. 

But Frank shouldn’t have worried about Davey. Two years ago his boy had died a hero, fighting a godforsaken war in a godforsaken country against a bunch of godforsaken heathens. These days, Frank was a godforsaken Episcopalian, trying his best to get from one day to the next without hurting anyone, himself included.

“Any chance we could have bacon and eggs this morning?” The cat curled herself around Frank’s legs. “Or pancakes?” He nudged the beast away with one ankle. “How about some pancakes?”

Cheryl drained her coffee. “Not for a man on Lipitor.”

Scowling, he poured a bowl of Grape-Nuts and covered them with skim milk, then took a bite and chewed, making a face at the flavorless nuggets. “What’s wrong with a plate of eggs now and then?” He reached for the sugar bowl and found it full of Splenda packets. “You used to love a big breakfast.” 

“That was when we were young and didn’t know better.”

He pushed his bowl to one side. “We aren’t even sixty yet. You talk like we’re ancient.”

Truth was, Frank felt ancient. And bitter. But except for Davey, he couldn’t say why. He had no complaints. The days of his youth had been downright pastoral. A world of bike trails, fishing holes, Little League, and Boy Scouts. In high school, he’d dated a girl who giggled a lot and never minded when his hands explored the geography of her upper torso the few times they went parking. Cissy Moss. Frank hadn’t thought of Cissy in years. He wondered if she slept in pink satin.

“Are you all right, Frank?”

He dumped the last of his cereal in the sink. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”

“Frank?” Her voice came out hoarse, trembly. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Cheryl.” He wondered what he’d do if she left him. He couldn’t imagine it any more than he could imagine life without Davey. Yet here they were.

When Frank brushed his teeth, the mirror told the truth about his age. His hair was shot with silver. Crow’s feet spread from the corners of his eyes, down his cheeks like a convergence of tributaries. He wasn’t old, dammit. Years to go before he retired from the bank. Just because he’d been passed over last spring by some candy-assed kid with an MBA, he could still get one more promotion before retirement. Didn’t loyalty count for something? He’d given his life to the bank, his whole career. Thirty-five years of service with all the framed certificates of appreciation to prove it. Senior vice-president of mortgage lending for fifteen. Once John Van Landingham retired – sometime late this year it was rumored – Frank would be in line for executive vice-president. He rinsed his mouth and smiled for the first time that morning. The smile did nothing to erase the grief in his eyes.

Grief. Frank had worked through his heartache within months of Davey’s death. He’d even said as much to Cheryl at dinner on what would have been Davey’s twenty-fifth birthday. She’d fled the table, knocking her chair over in the process. Shocked by her reaction, he’d found her in Davey’s bedroom, holding a worn blue baby blanket. 

“Do you think grief is something you can just check off your to-do list?” she’d asked, as if he had an answer.

But the question had startled him. He could face each day only because he buried his grief in the darkest vault of his heart. Every morning, he suited up for another day at the bank, smiled at customers and co-workers until his face hurt, pushed loan applications from one pile to another without noticing the individual lives his inattention touched: growing families, first-time home buyers eager for a fixer-upper, newly-minted millionaires, downsizing widows with too much yard and too many memories. Each piece of paper held a story Frank did his best to ignore because, in the end, grief made him selfish. 

He trudged to the garage with the cat on his heels. She arched her back and brushed against his leg but scooted into the azaleas as soon as the garage door groaned open. “Don’t kill anything that flies!” Frank called after her. He squinted as his eyes adjusted from the shadowy garage to the morning’s bright light. 

“Who you talking to?”

Frank looked down to see his neighbor’s boy. Jeremy or Jason or some other currently popular name. What had happened to those solid, respectable names like David and Robert and James? Why did parents nowadays feel the need to name their kids after actors and rap stars? Some young loan officer at the bank had named his kid Brutus.

Jeremy-Jason tugged on Frank’s sleeve. “Who you talking to?” The boy appeared to be four, maybe five. Freckles spattered his nose, and he wore a Superman cape safety-pinned to his shoulders.

Those freckles. Frank couldn’t help but think of Davey at that age. He cleared his throat. “I’m not talking to anyone.”

“Just now you said not to kill anything that flies. Were you talking to a pretend friend? I have a pretend friend. His name’s Weevil, and he likes grape Popsicles. Me, too. But my daddy likes banana Popsicles. Yuck.” He made a face, squinching his nose so the freckles came together like a school of tiny brown fish. “What kind of Popsicles do you like?” When Frank didn’t answer, the boy asked, “What’re you doing with that ladder?”

“Men’s work.” Frank shoved his hands into a stiff pair of leather work gloves. He flexed his fingers, shouldered the ladder, and studied an old cherry tree whose branches towered above the roofline of the house. The sky was deep blue and bare of clouds. He took a deep breath, grateful to be alive on such a fine spring day, and decided to tackle the worst of the gutters first, over by the cherry tree. Jeremy-Jason followed, yammering about his new baby sister. Frank tuned him out, settled the ladder against the brick, and began to climb.

The boy leaned his belly against the bottom rungs. “Want me to help? I help my daddy when he works outside.”

“I’ll just bet you do.” Frank batted a wasp zipping around his head before scooping a trowel into the muck.

“What?” the boy shouted. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

“Watch out now.” Frank tossed a scoop of gunk to the ground, doing his best to avoid young Jeremy-Jason.

“That’s nasty,” the boy said, wrinkling his nose. 

Frank let another wad drop, barely listening as Jeremy-Jason argued the merits of ninja turtles and somebody named Bluey. Frank wondered what the hell the kid was talking about. Would he know these things if he and Cheryl had grandchildren? And what would they talk about with those imaginary grandkids? Comic books? Cartoons?

Every Saturday morning until he started junior high, Davey had parked himself in front of the TV, eating Fruit Loops straight from the box. He loved Transformers, but sometimes he and Frank would sit together watching old Tom and Jerry videos, passing the dry cereal back and forth like a bag of potato chips. Frank swallowed hard and looked down at the yard where the neighbor boy was pretending to fly like a Marvel hero. Frank couldn’t help but smile. Davey had loved Superman. Frank, too. When he was a boy, he'd spent hours reading superhero adventures and Mad magazine, graduating to Playboy once he reached high school. He chuckled, remembering the time his mother had found a copy stuffed between his mattress and box springs. 

“What’s so funny?” Jeremy-Jason called up the ladder.

“The perils of youth,” Frank shouted over one shoulder.

“What’s that mean?”

“Nothing you’ll understand for a few more years.”

“Mama says that a lot.”

Out of the blue, Frank heard his own mother’s voice murmuring something about understanding when he got older. He pictured her in his boyhood kitchen, a yellow apron tied around her waist. He couldn’t recall the exact conversation but remembered the frustration of wanting – needing – to understand whatever it was she wouldn’t explain. He’d been about Jeremy-Jason’s age then, but the image was crystalline. Where had the time gone? Frank and Cheryl had been married thirty years. In another thirty, they’d be really old. Or dead. 

He paused from his work, one hand on the ladder, the other midair. The boy droned on down below, something about t-ball. Frank attacked the gutter again, trying to remember the circumstances of the elusive memory.

His father had always read the evening news at the same table he and Cheryl now used in their kitchen. Almost every night, while his dad perused the paper, Frank did his homework or built Lego sets, and his mother cooked dinner. Then she’d send him down the hall to wash his hands so she could set the table. One evening, on his way back to the kitchen, Frank had caught his parents leaning against that table, lips to lips, his father’s hands cupped around his mother’s bottom. Flabbergasted, Frank had backed down the hall, tiptoeing to his room to catch his breath. Then he’d ambled back to the kitchen, whistling “Dixie” of all things, as a warning to his parents. During supper, he kept looking back and forth from his mother to his father, wondering how they could go from making out with such wild enthusiasm to calmly eating pork chops and potato salad, all in a matter of minutes.

Another wasp whizzed past Frank’s ear. He glanced up just as a dozen or so swarmed from an eave, obviously disturbed by his work. He reared away in surprise, lost his balance, tried to catch himself. 

He tumbled backward, experiencing that slow-motion descent he’d heard tell of when a body falls, completely out of control. What had gone through Davey’s mind after he stepped on the landmine? Frank always imagined him sailing through the air with a look of surprise on his face. Sometimes he dreamed about it. The explosive jolt, the arcing seconds, the sudden shock of Davy’s body breaking ground. Now as he fell, Frank felt an airborne kinship with his son. 

He hit the ground with a hard thump. Jeremy-Jason let out a high-pitched scream then raced across the yard, yelling for his father. Frank drew in a shallow breath and let it out in inches. Blades of zoysia tickled his neck. Something touched his ear. He jerked away, imagining a wasp’s stinger. But it was their little gray cat settling next to him, sphinxlike, purring and warm and comforting. 

Glad of the company, Frank closed his eyes. His mind drifted to a Fourth of July parade when he was in kindergarten. He remembered jumping around to the horns and drumbeat of the marching bands, waving a little American flag on a stick, saluting the veterans as they marched by. Then the final float cruised past, pulled by a John Deere tractor. A girl dressed as the Statue of Liberty tossed peppermints to the crowd from the back of the trailer. The float turned a corner and disappeared, replaced by the cadence of shoes hitting pavement in lockstep as a Boy Scout troop brought up the rear. Band music faded. Horse droppings and empty popcorn bags littered the street. Frank had felt hollow when it ended. Even peppermint candy didn’t sweeten the disappointment he’d felt that day, knowing the parade was done, the excitement over. 

From a distance, Cheryl called his name. He couldn’t find his voice but raised a hand and waved in the general direction of the garage.

“Frank! Are you hurt?” Cheryl brushed the cat away and knelt in the grass beside him.

Another voice, younger and higher pitched, asked, “Is he dead, Daddy?”

“Stay put, son. Frank, can you hear me?” A strong hand grasped his arm.

Frank wiggled his fingers, blinked twice, and closed his eyes again. What was that boy’s father’s name? And why were they talking like he couldn’t hear them? He was fine. Just the wind knocked from his lungs. Maybe a bump on the noggin.

“Frank, do you know where you are?” the man asked.

He tried to sit up.

“Stay put while I make sure nothing’s broken.”

Frank thought how convenient it was that his neighbor was a doctor of some kind. Or was he a dentist?

Firm hands moved up and down Frank’s limbs, then palpated his ribcage. As the doctor poked and prodded, Frank watched a wispy cloud stretch across the sky. It reminded him of Cheryl’s bridal veil. She’d made a beautiful bride, so lovely he’d chewed the inside of his cheek raw to keep from weeping as she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm.

“Can you sit for me?” The doctor gripped Frank’s elbow and eased him up.

Frank rubbed the back of his head. He felt a little woozy. Cheryl kept touching his shoulder and then her mouth, fingertips back and forth, eyes runny with tears. She was still dressed in her coffee-stained pajamas. Frank was glad she wasn’t wearing a pink satin negligee. Jeremy-Jason would probably blab to the whole damn neighborhood about seeing her boobies.

Cheryl stroked Frank’s cheek. He reached for her hand and held it to his lips. Once they were back in the kitchen, he would take her in his arms. They would lean against the old oak table, and he would cup her bottom in both hands. He would kiss her, the way his father had kissed his mother all those years ago.

About the author: Ruth Pettey Jones has workshopped with Jill McCorkle, Amy Hempel, and Matt Bondurant. Her short fiction has appeared in The Milk House and The Tennessean.