It Being Fall

Matthew Roberson

Out and out again into the car. He’s not driving. Not. He turns for the seat belt and reaches and then lets the woman lean over and take hold and pull it to close with a click. She’s driving, the woman. She puts on sunglasses. She starts the car. Pushes a button to make the radio stop. She turns the wheel. She adjusts the mirror. She says she’s glad to see him, so he says the same, that he’s glad to see her, and then they move, stop and start, until the road ahead looks clear, and they don’t stop.

How are you, she asks. How have you been.

She asks, Are you keeping busy. The people, she asks.

Are you eating, she asks. Is everything alright, and he doesn’t know where to begin, so he says fine. Fine. Of course, he says, fine, though he’s not sure, and he can’t think of anything else, he says, And you?

Me, she asks. She moves her eyes from the road, studies him. She has long hair, brown, brown, and a thoughtful face. A kindness settles behind her eyes. Kindleness. Ninedelkiss.

You’re very beautiful, he says, though maybe he shouldn’t, and turns to watch the roadside between lamps and parking meters and signs and people along the sidewalks. Over it all, the sky feels gray. Just clouds, he says, and taps at the window, and taps higher and higher until he’s pointing up.

How many sounds. The door handle gives with a click. The car door cracking open, crack, then closing. It has a heavy sound. Then the woman’s door, the same, and then the car beeps, the locks snap. He wants to stand for a minute, to run his hands over the car’s smooth paint, but the woman is behind him on the curb, beckoning. She reaches, but he’s fine, he’s up there with her. He keeps his hands to himself, his elbows tucked in.

Thumb to first finger. Thumb to second. Thumb to third finger. Thumb to fourth.

The sidewalk is split, uneven, filled with weeds, cigarette butts, paper. Garbage piles against the buildings. The glass fronts on meters are scratched, hazy. The space between the meters feels regular.

Thumb to first finger. Thumb to second. Thumb to third finger. Thumb to fourth.

He is walking now, though he drove here. Drove. Walking and walking. He did drive, the clutch in and shift, starting at one, and clutch, and two, and clutch, and three. Clutch and four and brake, and again. Again.

But he doesn’t have a car with a clutch, doesn’t have a car, he doesn’t think, and he almost stops, but now a man is watching.

The man in a door opening, sitting. He holds a cardboard sign, but he doesn’t hold it so Rob can read. The man has a cup in front of him, and he looks at Rob. He doesn’t ask Rob to put coins in the cup. He doesn’t speak, so Rob tries to say to him, tries to open his mouth for words to come out but

He wants a cup, he says, a see you pee, which makes sense, it does, but the woman behind the counter makes a face. She asks what kind and what size. What kind. What size. She looks past him.

He doesn’t know.

He points, instead, to the rounded glass case covering food and then to the young man standing behind him, in headphones, and he says again he wants a cup, just a cup, and a cake, he says. He doesn’t care which one, and she doesn’t need him to, it seems. Cake, she says, and picks one. She puts it on the counter between them, and then, next to it, after turning for just a minute, a coffee, a cup

a white cup. It has a handle. A little steam sits on top. It’s six seventy-nine, the woman says, and he says, It’s six seventy-nine, which makes her angry. Six seventy-nine, she says. Six seventy-nine. Six seventy-nine. She turns to another woman in a hairnet. The young man behind Rob shifts, lifts one padded ear of his headphones. The man behind that man stares at the floor. A couple at a table turns. There are posters on the wall, full of rich colors, though the walls themselves could use some paint. Light passes through dust drifting in front of the windows. He needs to do something. Now he needs to, he knows, but instead he turns soundless to the women waiting, pointing. She’s saying sir, calling him sir.

She says Ma’am, Ma’am, and the woman beside him now says Yes, yes.

He wants to wash his hands, he says, holding them, then pushing open the bathroom door to a tiled room with a hook on one wall, and another hook, and another, and, on another wall a mirror and along a third a bench, built in, and feet approach, feet in shoes, and a voice swells and recedes in waves, words. Everything is fine, isn’t it, he asks the mirror and runs the water, loses himself in the sound of it and then finds his shirt neatly folded on the bench next to his pants, at their top end a belt.

He finds himself in boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

He doesn’t see anyone.

The man remembers coming in.

He finds himself wondering why he shouldn’t just sit and wait.

His shoes sit toes out under the bench, and he bends, straightens them. The laces he gathers into the open holes waiting for his heels.

Eventually, a voice comes asking, Can I help?

Excuse me, he says. He says, pardon me, excuse me. If I could. Please, could I. Sir, he says. Ma’am. Young man. Mister. Excuse me. A minute, he says. I’m sorry to bother. Could you. Excuse me. Hello. Sorry. Do you mind if I. I don’t mean to. I. I. Just. Please.

Then, again, outside. He slips off the walk, into the grass, and the woman asks, where are you going, so he turns to see what. She wants him to walk beside her. She holds a hand about to motion and then reaches his arm, his elbow, and uses it to guide him back. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know what’s the rush. What, he asks, and she doesn’t say anything. He says, What, and she says, Let’s, and then seems to consider. Okay, she says, but he goes back to the path, anyway. He looks at her feet in orange sneakers. Finally, she points. Why don’t we sit on the bench, she says, and though he doesn’t want to sit, that’s as good as walking, because he can still see the stretch of grass and the trees going red and the husks of acorns below them, the squirrels there, and the birds in the air. He wants to know where the lake is. The one with the shallows. They stretch out and out, he says. Then, it drops. You can see the line, he says, where the water goes dark blue. Very deep, he says. The kids can go out all that way but not any farther. That’s not here, she says. There’s no lake here, though

we went every summer. It was always cold. Everyone owned a camper, everyone else, but we did okay, Rob says and thinks of his son setting up a tent, untangling the rods and fitting them together and then slipping them into the narrow sleeves running down the not canvas, nylon, and his girl hammers stakes through the bottom rings and into the ground, a regular, thick sound, while Rob sits in the open back of their minivan, watching the two outlined in light, the sun at its highest, the only shade back under trees stripped of branches until their leaves higher turn in the little air. The boy stops to wonder why they aren’t pitching their tent back there, under some shelter, and all Rob can say, again, is bugs, buggy, gesturing, and he says that branches sometimes fall, and that the boy is doing a great job, and the girl, too, he says, and, if they want, they can tie the hammock up there, between those trees, and move the picnic table there, too, if they want, and then they can head down for a swim in the lake, only the girl has bent a stake on a root or a stone, calling to him, Dad, because she’s cut her finger trying to pull the stake out, or straighten it. We’ll get it fixed, he says, looking. It’s only a scratch, he says, and the woman asks what? Are you all right, she asks.

Still, he’s in the car, his legs folded up under the dash, the glove compartment, mirrored windows of stores slipping past. He reaches to turn the knobs for the radio, then the bumps of plastic that move the air vents, then settles both hands in his lap and considers. His nails are longer than he likes. His shirt cuffs he has buttoned one buttonhole on the left and two on the right. He’s not wearing a watch, though he always wears a watch. His pants have a seam and another seam and another running up the legs and another that runs across where they must have wrapped on a hanger. Circles of dust sit around the eyeholes of his shoes.

His face, when he reaches, it’s smooth, shaven, with a line of stubble along his jaw and at his Adam’s apple.

All the skin on his hands and his face, his neck feels loose. He pinches a fold together at his collarbone.

And the woman driving, the same questions. Are the people nice, she asks. She asks if the people are nice.

People are people, he says. Some people are nice, and others are not. You know that, he says, though now he’s not sure why. They behave, he says. Most of them, he says. The ones I know, he says, I think.

When the car draws to a stop, he reaches for the door handle.

No, the woman says, wait. It’s a light.

A light, he says, looking.

We’re not there yet, the woman says, and he wonders.

Where, he asks, and the woman tells him again. Right, he says, because he knew that.

Another light, and a turn. A stop sign. Turn signals on cars in front of them. Then cars and more cars, and he starts to say the right lane, they should be there, to turn, but he doesn’t. He watches a line of traffic in the rearview mirror. Keep two car-lengths back he says, and she smiles, says, Yes, you’ve told me.

I did, he asks.

A few times, she says, and they curl around and onto the highway, with more cars, and more cars. The speed limit is 75, she says, though he doesn’t remember asking. The trees farther back from the roadside flip past one, two, three, four, and the grass off the shoulder smears.

I spy, he says, and points to a bird, a fenced field set back.

Oh, she says, and, after a while, she says, I spy a cloud, and points. She asks what it looks like to him.

Eyes on the road, he says.

A man named Rob. Robert. Not Bob. Or Robby. Nor Bert. Norbert.

He walks along the path bordered by trees whose leaves have turned purple and curled at the edges. Leaf. Leaves. Leaves.

The cooling smell on the air, the touch of a small breeze. He loves the feel of small stones buried underfoot and fat tree roots and the sound.

He makes a sound, stifled, through his nose. A no. No’s.

Just past the path’s turn ahead, a flash of color through the trees, a color too bright to be anything but man-made, a jacket or hat, and then another, and then voices, laughing.

He doesn’t know. He wants to turn, to run. He wants to leave the path and lie still in the tangle of weeds and soft ferns and downed branches.

Soil. Spill. Spoil. Spoiled.

She asks if this one will do, right, a picnic table, but metal, and another, empty, over there, and another, and a long slope of grass folding down to a stone wall and a gate. Where we came in, he says, and traces the gentle road.

She has sandwiches, she says, unpacking a bag, potato chips. Tea, she says, setting a thermos on the table.

Apples, he says, and then he says, a picnic, and asks, why, and who, and, when he sees her crumpled face, he says, Oh, don’t be sad.

He says, You look like your mother, you know.

The woman says they have the rest of the afternoon, or as long as he wants, because no one expects her, not till dinner, she says, or he could come with her, she says, for dinner, and to visit, and she could drop him back after, if it wouldn’t keep him too late, she says, or they can just sit here and maybe have another walk, and she can get him home again, she says, right after.

Right after, he says.

He says, home again, home again, jiggety-jig, because

home is a high ceiling over a living room and dining room and a field rock fireplace between tall windows looking out over green hills stretched for miles, though the living room is narrower than he thought, with wood bookshelves built into the walls, the dining room a walk a walk through the oak floored entryway with a wide staircase rising to the right, and the windows aren’t large or covered by drapes, and the only thing to see out of them is a street and a yard where they sit, enjoying the evening and the sound of chimes and the small lights of fireflies, though this living room is on the right, with its cool dark and the TV against the wall, and the heavy carpeting, the room feeling smaller and smaller, he says, and the walls too white and a recliner he sits in, tilted just back

back through the glass doors, and in, past a tall table, to where the space turns to a hallway and a doorway without a door to a room with too many tables, he says, and a floor all scuffed tile, and he says nothing else, because a woman in long hair appears, comes around the table, smiling, saying, You’re back, she says, so he nods, and turns to the other woman beside him, and says

We’re back, she says, and they stand, and he looks down and waits.

The building feels too warm.

Do you want me to walk you, she says, pointing, to where, but, no, he doesn’t need that, he says. That’s fine, he says, thank you, and waits, but the woman doesn’t leave, doesn’t speak to the other woman, just stands, people passing and a vacuum cleaner buzzing.

Yes, the woman says, that’s fine, but asks if a hug would be okay.

What do you mean, he asks.

I mean, she says, but only asks again.

I don’t, he says, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t know.