Tonight, in Salt Lake, I’m feeling lucky again, and not just because I escaped the swinging Pinters. Three hours and thirty-five minutes, door-to-door, across the Great Basin to my sister’s mansion in the foothills along the Wasatch Front. I slept, I woke, I hailed a cab, I’m here. Don’t tell me this isn’t an age of miracles. Don’t tell me we can’t be everywhere at once.
Getting out of the cab and walking up the driveway, I set off a series of motion-detecting floodlights. The yard goes from dark to a Hollywood premiere. Wheels of mist surround the sprinkler heads buried in the fresh-mown lawn and their droplets splatter a trio of campaign signs for local Republicans. Otherwise, it’s quiet. My nephews’ mountain bikes lean against a wall of the three-bay, cedar-shake garage. This is Utah, the state of early bedtimes, and Jake and Edward are probably asleep now, dreaming of good grades and science fairs.
The peephole in the front door is faintly blue; someone, deep in the house, is watching TV. That would be Julie. Asif disdains pop culture. He came here from Pakistan to work and save, and the purity of his will is undiminished. Our family felt vaguely shamed by him at first, intimidated by his priestly poise and engineer’s exactitude of spirit, but that was our own unworthiness at work. He’s tough on himself, but he spoils his sons like princes, for which they’re none the worse, amazingly. If anything, they’re embarrassed by his lavishness and out to prove that they too can rise unaided, taking on extra science work at school and pitching in on chores like little sailors. I fully expect that by the time I’m old this branch of my family will be a minor dynasty, and I’m flattered that Asif has mixed his blood with ours. Except for my mother, we all are. She’s still cautious. She can’t believe this wealth is honest, somehow, and hoards savings bonds for her grandkids, just in case.
I open the door and set down my bag and case in the darkened hall. I smell a recent meal—encouraging. As a strict vegetarian in beefy Utah, Asif has had to learn to cook.
“Hello?”
“Down here,” Julie whispers. “Everyone’s sacked out.”
She’s dragged a couple of cushions off the couch and is sitting on them like a yogi, legs crossed, spine straight, watching an old Road Runner cartoon on a children’s cable channel. Beside her is a plate of cheese and bread and a tall glass of juice, but this looks staged. She hasn’t been eating. Her cheeks are two dirty ashtrays, gray concavities, and her hair, whose fluffiness tells me that it’s clean, doesn’t reflect the TV glow the way it ought to. The silk pajamas she’s wearing must be Kara’s. The top is bunched and wrinkled—it’s buttoned wrong—and the bottoms, they just look empty.
After I kiss her, I ask her, “Did you rest?”
“I tried,” she says. “I’m still buzzing from the drive. My van’s so big and shaky. Bad shocks or something. Nice jacket—out of a catalogue? It fits you. Must be nice to be shaped like people in catalogues. The wedding’s just going to be suits, no formal wear. Mom’s grumpy about it, but men look weird in tuxes—the kind you can rent in Minnesota, anyway. Those bands around the waist, they look like trusses, like something to hold in a hernia. Ryan?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a big plate of raisin cookies in the kitchen.”
“What were you going to say to me?”
“Stop staring. This is my ideal weight. Just hug me, Ryan.”
It’s the part I always forget, and women need it. Her body feels old and stony through her PJ top.
“I think your ideals are a problem,” I say.
“Yes.”
It’s always wise, in my experience, to turn off any nearby TVs or radios when trying to dissipate emotional tension; they have a way of blurting out bad thoughts, of lobbing idea grenades into the room. When I settle in on the sofa with the cookies, the Road Runner has changed places with Porky Pig. Is Julie just dying? A cleaver- wielding farmer is chasing Porky, over whose head looms a panicked thought balloon filled with hams and chops and bacon strips. Could it be any worse?
“I’m sorry about those dogs,” I say.
“It wasn’t them. It’s me. I ruin everything. Have you ever looked inside my car? It’s all old phone bills and spilled McDonald’s Cokes. I can’t catch up with myself. I’m underwater. I promise to do something simple, like walk those dogs, but then I remember another promise I made, and another one on top of that, so I make up a list with boxes and little checkmarks, but before I can finish it my pen runs dry, so I run off to find a pen, and then it’s quitting time. Pretty soon things have piled up so high I have to call in sick to clear my head, and when I come back they’re all angry at me, furious, so instead of buckling down, I run and hide. And it isn’t just work I’m talking about. It’s everything. It’s breathing. It’s sleeping. It’s feelings. Does this make sense?”
“It’s all about managing time.”
“It’s more than that.” She digs a raisin out of a cookie and eats it, the raisin, but leaves the rest untouched. “Anyway, I’m sorry I dragged you up here. You were on business and I screwed you up. Where are you supposed to be tomorrow?”
“Phoenix. I’m meeting my publisher. I hope.”
“Kara told me you were writing something. Wow. A mystery?”
“A business parable.”
“Is it long?” she says. “I like the long ones. So I can really snuggle in, get cozy.”
“Business readers don’t curl up with books.”
Julie rests her head on my knee. I stroke her hair. I’m ashamed to admit that her thinness has its charms, elongating and defining her throat and neck.
“That was the sweetest wedding present,” she says. “Keith opened it by mistake. You really splurged. Who told you we needed one? Mom?”
