Easy Street
(I haven't finished this story)
Martin heard the phone ring in Barry's cubicle. Then a pen clacked violently against the partition that separated their spaces.
"Honey, you can't be serious!" Barry exclaimed. "It's your turn to pick up the kids...yes, I under -- no, I do understand, Carolyn. But why should it be me? Hammond is expecting me to meet with a prospect later."
Martin waited during the long pause that followed, then heard Barry say, "okay" in a resigned voice. "Yeah, that'll be great if you can make the 7:52. Did you park in the regular garage? What level is the car on?"
"Can I stand in for you?" Martin asked, waiting a few minutes for Barry to finish fuming after disconnecting the call.
Barry looked up to see his colleague standing in the doorway.
"Nah, thanks anyway. Hammond wants somebody with my experience in this particular area, you know? He'll tap Farentino. He likes Farentino. Well, screw it." Barry brushed some imaginary crumbs from his shirt, then noticed a spot on his tie and swore.
"Then how about a drink after work?"
"I gotta get my kids!"
"So? Your place, then. After we pick up the kids. I'll take the train back into town from the station you and Carolyn use."
Barry scratched his head and left a tuft of black hair sticking up. He stared at Martin, trying in his unhappily muddled mental state to consider the proposition.
"Sure, what the hell."
Martin's primary motivation was supportive friendship but he also wanted a closer view of Barry's world in an upscale suburb. Single and thirty-eight himself, he knew he had to get serious about marriage and family in his future.
At 6:00 they crossed the building's marble lobby, walking between potted plants and around the fountain. Revolving glass doors that twinkled with reflections turned them out into the twilight. A Boston native, Martin still found the new skyscrapers of Boston, all chrome, pink glass and security guards, less than welcome. He and Barry walked past a small, crooked street where in a former time he had frequently had lunch at Zeppo's, an atmospheric, lower-level Italian place long closed. Near the T station a vendor in an earth-colored skullcap was hawking ten-dollar and green copies of the Koran.
Stacks of chairs were roped off in front of a restaurant where Martin had eaten more recently with Peter Farentino one hot day. He remembered the rare steak, the pounding August sun, and Farentino, all grinning white teeth, red tie with no spot, and class ring glinting as he rocked his highball glass at chin level and winked at the waitress.
Barry navigated the bumps and potholes of a parking lot before stopping at a shack to hand over his ticket and a wad of cash to a solemn Asian attendant. At a traffic light a seedy person appeared suddenly at the car window and tapped the glass with a torn Styrofoam cup. After quickly engaging the door lock, Barry tapped his fingers spasmodically on the steering wheel as his eyes bore into the horizon. He lurched ahead when the light changed.
"How can people fall through the cracks like that?" he said exasperatedly. "I used to be more idealistic, I suppose. Felt sorry for panhandlers."
"You've got plenty of company," Michael assured him. "The Summer of Love's been over for a long time."
Barry made a sour face and shrugged, uninterested in society's semi-glacial shifts.
"It's about half an hour to the daycare center, then it's another ten or so to my neighborhood."
"So you both take your car keys in case something like this happens."
"Yeah. Sometimes we drive in together, sometimes one takes the train. But the one with the car drops off and picks up the kids."
"Of course." Just picturing the arrangement reminded Martin of all the logistical pitfalls that must plague couples with children, jobs, homes to maintain and time to be found for visits to the dentist.
Not the slightest bit institutional in appearance, the day care center was housed in a large colonial with a long, sloping front yard. An expensive European car pulled up and blocked the driveway as if the driver had lived there. A tall women in a good suit alighted and strode erectly to the door. Inside, other parents in business clothes stood in the brightly lit foyer.
Suddenly a little girl emerged from one of the rooms and barged into the foyer, almost colliding with the tall woman. A little blonde of about four and wearing an unbuttoned red jacket, she ran out and down the lawn toward an older car with a dent in the back. A young woman in a skirt and sweater was standing by the car, her smile visible from a distance. As the little projectile flew toward her, a piece of paper artwork fluttered unnoticed to the ground.
"Hi Mommy!" she cried, running recklessly. "Hi Mommy!" She charged into her mother's arms, then scrambled up into the front seat in defiance of the new nanny-state Massachusetts law requiring young children to sit in back. Martin and Barry watched them drive away.
In the foyer the tall woman was serenely regarding her son, a well-dressed little boy, who stood very still as his coat was buttoned by the center's director, Mrs. Connolly,a middle-aged woman with curly gray hair and a cardigan sweather held around her shoulders by a little gold chain. He looked into her eyes and held up a small finger.
"Teenie weenie paper cut," Mrs. Connolly soothed. "Tomorrow it will be gone."
"Show Mommy your cut," the tall woman directed. He regarded her seriously, then plunged his hand into his pocket. Reservedly the mother returned the director's apologetic smile and left with her son.
Barry's twins, Jonas and Maxim, emerged from a room containing miniature chairs, colorful beanbags and a flip chart bearing the words "nice" and "share." Both boys dragged their jackets along the floor.
"Where's Mommy?" Jonas asked Barry ungratefully, then turned to size up Martin. Barry explained, then put forward a burgers-and-fries plan. "Take-out. If you're good."
Jonas turned away to watch his brother putting his lunch box into service as a stepstool in order to crumble a chocolate chip cookie into the fish tank.
"Neato," he admired. Barry lunged.
"Maxim, come down this minute! Do you want Mrs. Connolly's fish to die?" He looked around furtively.
"What the hell," Maxim muttered.
"I didn't hear that," Barry said through clenched teeth. He managed a smile and said goodnight to Mrs. Connolly.
On the way to McDonald's Maxim kept up a soft but steady beat of kicking against the back of Martin's front seat.
"7:52! 7:52!" Jonas chanted, slapping the back seat in time to the syllables.
"We're going to wait until we get home, now," Barry instructed after he successfully transferred the orders from the hands at the drive-thru window into the car.
"I'm hungry!" one of the boys cried with complete predictability.
"Me, too!"
"Hungry, hungry, hungry!" they chanted together.
The boys plunged their hands into the bags and Immediately the interior of the car filled with the addictive aroma of salty potatoes and greasy meat.
They drove past a manicured municipal park and the new high school with a pristine football field. Its goalposts stood dreamlike in a light fog beginning to creep across the town. A teenager glided by on a shiny bicycle with a headlight. Waiting to cross a street, two silver-haired women carried bags from a famous department store. When they passed a corner where a sign with an arrow pointed to the train station, Martin made a mental note of it.
Barry's handsome home was partially obscured by evergreen trees. The boys jumpted out of the car and raced each other in the dark to the back door, almost falling over a garden hose in the driveway.
"Wait for Daddy!" Barry cried.
Martin savored the atmosphere of the yard and its autumn foliage. He wanted to linger and listen to birdcalls overhead and the secret communications of tiny animals in the small thickets on property perimeters. He remembered childhood cookouts, where fathers had presided at the grill and mothers smiled from kitchen windows at children rolling in dewy grass with family dogs.
Barry got the boys settled with a dessert of chocolate ice cream and a DVD about kidnapped rich children planning their escape from well-muscled thugs at an isolated beach house. Then he rummaged in a lower kitchen cupboard and found some unopened whiskey.
"Christmas present last year," he said. "Good thing I had forgotten about it. He surveyed the possibilities of the fridge and spread his findings on the table. He and Martin gobbled bits of meat and cheese as they spread mustard on bread.
"Usually we're both home by now," Barry said to his sandwich. "I don't want you to think my kids are always plunked in front of the TV."
"I don't think that."
"I suppose Farentino is getting along cozy with the new client." Barry looked into the light amber liquid in his glass. He reminded Martin of the little boy with the paper cut.
"The guy's not a client yet."
"Yeah, well, when Farentino gets done putting on the dog...."
Martin knew it wasn't the right moment to point out that getting the account was what mattered, that Farentino's business development skills should be valued. There was no doubt that Farentino was a gold-star boy with the wind at his back. He was married but nobody seemed to know anything about his wife. He never looked harrassed or spread too thin.
"What have you heard about the merger?" Barry asked guardedly, watching the whiskey slosh as he drew little circles in the air with his glass.
"I don't know beans. Except..."
"Except what?"
"Well, you know Hammond never wanted to head our group. His big love is art and design. So he'll likely move over there with those people. I heard the guy being tapped to replace him views us as bloated and under-producing.
Barry sat up as if someone had poked his ribs with a stick. His eyes widened in terror.
"Don't panic, man! Heading a skeletal division wouldn't be any feather in his cap."
"Saving money would be!" Barry's electrified gaze monitored the whiskey level as Martin poured him another shot.
"I don't live in fear of downsizing," Martin asserted, striving for a carefree tone. "What's the worst that can happen? Put my stuff in storage, regroup at my folks for awhile."
"It's not so easy for me!" Barry ran his fingers through his hair until it was a tufted mess.
"And a working wife."
Barry rolled his eyes and worked his tongue around like someone trying to disloge a piece of broccoli from teeth. He downed the rest of his second drink in one gulp.
Martin glanced around the kitchen. It was clean and contained nice gadgets but lacked a certain lived-in warmth. A hanging cutting board didn't look used and fridge, when Barry had opened it, had revealed a bachelor-pad sparseness in content. There was no jello in matching dishes or leftover roast.
"But you have satisfactions," Martin prodded softly.
"Hell, yeah!" Barry bristled. "I've got my finger in all the important pies of life. Married, kids. This house isn't bad. We take nice vacations.
Their posture weakened by drink, they slumped in their chairs and chatted desultorily about the people at work, their senior-citizen parents who seemed to have done everything right, and New York City, where each had lived for a time. Martin heard a click in the living room and realized it had been quiet in there for a few minutes. He stood up to stretch and peeked into the living room as Barry slipped into reminiscence about his old life with Carolyn in Manhattan. The kids had fallen asleep and the machine had stopped. Jonas was on the floor, his arm stretched out toward a small, brown bear near his fingertips. Maxim was on the sofa in a position that would have caused an adult to wake up with a sore neck.
"I remember," Barry said, breaking into a dreamy smile. "I remember a beastly cold day in the City. You know the kind when the sky is deep blue and the temperature is around ten degrees and the snow is so bright you need sunglasses? We were on Fifth Avenue in the seventies, looking to get in somewhere warm and that's how we discovered the Frick Collection. You know the Frick?"
Michael nodded.
Barry moved on to the carousel in Central, where one summer he had ridden the horse right behind Carolyn, watching her go up and down as the trees went by in a sunlit green blur and the corny little machine pumped out a polka tune.
"My folks used to like visiting us in the City. We'd go on the Circle Line and to concerts at Avery Fisher Hall. Oh, they were crazy about an Italian restaurant in the east fifties. We celebrated Carolyn's promotion there. It was a year or so before she got pregnant. My dad was real impressed with the money we were making and raved about how we could save like bandits and retire early. We did a toast and the waiters hovered around, smiling -- you know how those foreign guys do that -- and my dad laughed and said, 'whoa-ho, you're on easy street now!' That was a nice night."
He and Martin sat quietly for a minute, thinking about old girlfriends, restaurant haunts and the unparalleled abundance of Manhattan. Barry frowned.
"You don't hear that expression so much now. Easy Street. I guess expressions change."
They chuckled like seasoned men looking down on language fads from the eminence of young middle age.
"But Boston and this house and yard, of course, are better for the kids," Barry said in a high voice. "And we have a nice guest room, which is nice for our folks. They're getting old, of course, so they like us to go there instead."
"Long drive?"
Two hundred miles to hers, two-fifty to mine. What the hell."
The phone rang and Barry banged his glass on the table. "Aw, turn that damned thing off!" It was Carolyn.
"No, actually, I'm Martin O'Brien, a colleague of Barry's. He's....uh....in the bathroom. May I take a message....oh, good....yes, they're fine." Martin rolled his eyes at Barry. "Okay, I'll tell him. I'm sure he will want to do that; it's dark now." Martin returned to Barry, who was sitting in a cowardly posture.
"Where's your coffee pot? Maybe you have some instant?"
"I don't want coffee."
"Yes, you do. You have to go meet Carolyn at the train station."
"Oh, jeez."
Barry made no move so Martin began rummaging in cupboards, finding a half-full jar of instant coffee, its contents somewhat stuck together. He placed two mugs of water in the microwave, dusted his hands against each other and made his mouth into a self-satisfied little smack.
"There we are. See what I good husband I'll make?"
I hope this one isn't going to be longer to type than A Normal Life
