Roy’s House
People just naturally gravitated to Roy’s house like filings to a magnet. The place had it all. And today, as always, he had thought of everything. Every detail—that was Roy. The pool gleaming blue and pristine—with a little flotilla of kids’ heads out in it, laughing, splashing. Chairs and tables where they needed to be. Umbrellas. A hot day. It was always a hot day at Roy’s house. Winter just didn’t exist there—as summer ended, even the idea of winter evaporated like Brigadoon. Some slab of animal on the grill—the aroma in the air. The stream of old tunes from the outside speakers, just the right volume. Plants, flowers in big pots. Citronella candles. Appetizer and side dish tables under a canopy tent. A sad clown with a handful of balloons drifting among the guests like a ghost. Ice chests lined up against the pool house wall—to which you add yours and deliver your mac and cheese to the side table, then come back and fish out a Killian’s and pop it.
Ah, first beer. Never again as good as that first swallow.
The sky is blue, the clouds big and lazy. A day like a dream.
You look around—everybody’s there—friends and strangers—laughing, talking. You’re here for one thing—fun. Recreation—in every sense. A day to just let go and be alive. A day that enables other days. Tomorrows. The kind of day life wouldn’t be possible without—not and let you be this self anyway. This self—these selves—don’t even try it, you know what self you are. But isn’t it all just a collection of selves? A sequence of acts and scenes with boredom in between? A deck of selves—can you really shuffle it and say pick one? Who’s picking whom?
Steady, steady. Take a drink.
Here’s Malcolm—what’s going on?—and Curtis—what’s up, man?—and Ava—a hug and cheek kiss—and—is that Lyle? Must be. It’s hard to look at him. Not out of fear that you will see him, but that you won’t. You just dare a glance and think, please just be Lyle.
You sit at the table, drinking, noshing—crackers, chips, some kind of spicy dip you eat because it’s there and after a few bites wish you hadn’t—and try not to get lost in those vacuums of silence that threaten to suffocate the whole thing. It’s hard to hold your friends’, or anybody’s, gaze, and you shudder when the clown passes by, but Roy’s in top spirits, as always, the perfect host, full of bonhomie, attending to all.
We’re drinking beer now but we’re going to me making music later—an anticipation about as good as sex. Or at least it used to be. The four-person rock and roll band—one of life’s few perfections.
A day like a dream within a dream.
You get up, move around—swimming trunks and towel in the car—maybe, maybe not—greeting other people, most of whom look familiar but you don’t really know them. Then there’s the clown—you try to evade him but he blocks your way, looking at you hard—offering you a balloon but you decline—what would you do with a balloon?—and ask him, Why don’t you smile?
Why should I? he says, and moves away.
You end up alone on the swing at the far end of the pool and watch the cars going by out on the road. A man you don’t know in a Hawaiian shirt has drifted over, pulling a smoke.
The same cars keep going by, you say absently.
He gives you an uneasy glance, then cheers up. Ah, just kids with nowhere to go, he says.
Pause. Yeah.
First in one direction, then later back in the other. They’re even 90s model cars, you notice. Every detail.
You watch the kids in the pool as you drift back to join the others.
Food, drink, laugh, talk. That’s about it.
The time for the music comes with a little buzz of excitement. The people file into the pool house and sit. It’s pretty good—the same songs but some of them get rocking. You especially play the songs Lyle loves. Those guitar riffs, those vocals, etched into your brain. Ava comes up for a duet or two. The same faces out there watching—like a creepy painting, as the clown morbidly works the room. Then a couple of dancers, but it doesn’t take.
Even with the music there are caverns of silence—vacuoles where it feels like somebody needs to rewind the world like a toy.
A day like a dream.
When it’s time to go, the bottom just falls out.
Don’t let your meat loaf, says Malcolm. There was no chance of him not saying that. You tell him, If you’re ever down by the river, drop in. The clown hears it and looks like he can see into your soul. After a glance, nobody looks at anybody—hopeless faces, streaked with tears—nobody wants to see it in somebody else.
You don’t even remember getting home. You had a bunch of beers but it’s not that. Standing by the grill as the crowd thinned, Roy looked old. Thinking of tomorrow can do that to you. Last glimpse of Lyle, packing up his guitar. You couldn’t not think of a funeral—what?—twenty years ago? It’s not shocking now. Nothing has the energy to stay shocking. You get your five seconds, then it’s just the way things are.
In the ruins, there’s nothing left for Roy to do but pay the actors, the clown, the drivers. He puts away the leftover food, leaving the rest for tomorrow. The eternal tomorrow. Storage closet of today. Always there—sometimes look forward to it, sometimes dread it—but always there to bargain with, he thinks, until the one day of your life it isn’t.
As always, Roy had thought of everything. Except that thinking of everything breaks your heart.
March 11, 2024