When Carl Came to Visit

It is curious that large places can become small after years of indifferent familiarity. Take this house. I know each crack in the floorboards that run along the living room’s western wall. There is a small hole in the fireplace tile. When I sit just so in the felt armoire that Denise took from her aunt’s home after that unfortunate accident, I can make out tiny pulses of smoke, which unfortunately waft into the house. Rather than patch the hole, Denise forbade me to use the fireplace.

When we moved in it felt so grand. But any space can become small, if given enough time. Two people can model their own interiority after the walls that surround them, forgetting the world outside. Forgetting all that had happened.

On Monday morning I woke alone in a lopsided bed. Denise’s half was cold. In the kitchen I put five scoops of coffee and two cups of water into the coffee maker. Then I poured the coffee back in the can and started all over, straining to calculate smaller portions that had once been familiar but that were now overridden with years of muscle memory induced by cohabitation. I was instinctually aware of the curious strangeness that accompanied this seemingly mundane change to my pattern. Denise had never traveled for work before. We had never spent a night apart in seventeen years, three months, and twenty-two days. Now a mid-career job change took her to a weeklong conference in Tucson, leaving the house feeling empty.

Carl would be landing in a couple hours. He called a month ago, saying he would be in town the very week that Denise was traveling. It was understood that he was asking to use the guest bedroom. Denise had been at the grocery store when he called. The prior evening we had been sitting at the dinner table when she told me that she would be going out of town for a week. She talked about the conference and her new colleagues and the aquarium they were going to visit while she was there and how it really wasn’t that uncommon to have to travel for work one or two times per year. 

I went outside to pull weeds and let my pasta carbonara go cold. I decided not to tell her about Carl visiting.

“It’s good to see you,” Carl said while I loaded his bags into the trunk. He looked curiously at the interior of the trunk, slightly concerned with what he saw.

“Is everything okay?” I said.

“Yes, of course.” He let the smile return to his face, as if he hadn’t noticed anything. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“I guess it has been. What brings you here this time?” But I knew the answer.

“Just work.” He gave me a knowing grin. I only smiled back with plain, unstated understanding.

We don’t discuss his work anymore.

Carl used to visit a lot. When we first bought the house he could be counted on for regular seasonal appearances, ringing in each equinox around the dining room table where Denise, ever the oblivious host, regaled Carl, ever the charming houseguest, with hours-long renditions of her gardening adventures. Carl lived in a city and hadn’t the slightest clue about gardening. Spade or sprinkler, it was all the same to him. But he humored her nonetheless and for that alone he was welcome whenever he found himself in town. I don’t recall who initiated the descent from friends to acquaintances, but it happened.

The first night we had takeout and after, beers in the living room. Carl picked at the paper label on his bottle. I saw him peel off a small piece and put it between the couch cushions. I wasn’t sure what to say. My mind was somewhere far.

I excused myself to go to bed.

In bed I though back on everything Carl and I had left unaddressed over the years. I should have put it all out in the open long ago. Denise too. She seemed to have found her avoidance mechanism with the new job. But me?

I stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours, unable to fall asleep and unwilling to stop thinking about the series of events that had put Denise and me in this situation. I thought of how different it was before I had met Carl and before I had introduced him to Denise. I thought about how suddenly everything had changed when we learned about Carl’s job. Denise always said it shows shallowness of intellect to discuss only work. I didn’t see it that way. But after I met Carl, I wish I had come around to Denise’s perspective sooner. Things began moving faster than we could anticipate. When we eventually came up for air we bought the house. We started gardening. Then everything just…settled. Carl never pushed the subject. But we knew it was there, always lurking beneath the surface during his visits, liable to be brought up at any time during any one of our dusty conversations around the dinner table.

Still unable to sleep, I walked downstairs and saw that Carl had lit the fireplace. The flames threw shadows that made the furniture look grotesque and worn. The whole room drooped under the weight of the flames.

“Still up?” I asked.

“I guess I’ve become a night owl in the last few years.”

“We don’t normally light the fireplace. Denise has a thing about the smoke.”

“Tell you what,” he said, “I won’t tell Denise you were lighting fires if you join me for a game.” I laughed. He gestured to the chessboard and then pulled up the second armchair. “What Denise doesn’t know…”

“Just one game,” I said. “And then no more fires this week. Seriously.”

“That’s the ticket! Black or white?”

“You choose.”

We started playing and things suddenly felt normal. The room became cozy. The tension between us dissipated, carried up the chimney and out into the world. Carl told me about a woman he’d been seeing. I filled him in on the latest book I had read. He mentioned his volunteering work. Suddenly it felt easy to be his friend.

Carl pulled a small silver box from his pocket. It was flat and had a clasp on the front. He flicked it open and placed it on the table.

“Smoke?” he asked.

“Oh man,” I said, staring at the line of fat joints in the box, “I haven’t done that in a long time.”

“So how about tonight?”

“Yeah right. Denise would…”

“Denise isn’t here.”

“I know, but…”

“...but,” he said, “Denise is at a conference. You can make choices for yourself.” He grinned that Cheshire cat grin; the same one he’d greeted me with at the airport when he had attempted to get me to ask about his work.

“This feels like middle school when Travis Wilson made me drink wine coolers behind the trash cans after fourth period.”

He laughed and pulled a joint out of the box. “C’mon, what do you say?”

I couldn’t believe I was doing this. Smoking a joint in my living room after such a juvenile attempt at peer pressure. But after the first drag, the only thing that I found shocking was that I hadn't done it sooner. And a lot of other things. Carl and I kept chatting and, ostensibly, playing chess. But all I could think about was how Denise was away at her conference and how much damn gardening I’d done over the years. With each additional toke on the joint I sunk deeper into a mixed up state, half joking around with Carl, carefree as possible, and half chewing on distinct wistfulness that was exacerbated by the walls of a house that I had seen too much of.

#

The next morning I stumbled into the kitchen like a tired, old bloodhound. Though I could barely open my eyes, the scent of coffee and fried eggs was unmistakable.

“Coffee?” Carl asked.

“Sure. Thank you.”

“Thanks for the game last night. I haven’t had a challenge in a while.”

“The only thing I did was move pieces around the board. I could barely keep track of whose turn it was, let alone strategy.”

“Well, it didn’t show. You’ve still got it.”

We sipped our coffee and ate the eggs. I toasted bread and pulled out a fresh orange marmalade that Denise had made. The coffee was unfamiliar, rich, strong, something Carl brought with him. It tasted nothing like the commodity beans Denise and I bought in bulk. 

We ate in silence. I dipped my toast in the egg yolk. Carl sprinkled salt over his plate and then dabbed at it with a paper towel after having poured too much. There was a screw lease on the table leg beneath me. I twisted it tight with my hand.

“I’m going into the city today for meetings,” Carl said suddenly.

“I’ll see you tonight then.”

“Sure. We’ll have dinner. Anything you want me to pick up on the way back?”

“No, I’ve got it covered.”

“You know,” he said, “you could come with me.”

“With you?”

“To the city. I want you to come tag along to my meetings.”

Carl looked down and started playing with his napkin. The air in the kitchen felt heavy, glutted with the weight of our intertwined history. 

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said. I stood to clear the dishes. Carl looked up from his napkin and looked me directly in the eyes.

“Where’s Denise?”

“She’s in Tucson.”

“I see.”

“It’s just a conference.”

“When is she coming back?”

“Saturday.”

“Right”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“What’s her flight number?”

“Carl…”

“Forget it,” he said, and stood up with his plate in hand, “I’ll be back tonight around six for dinner.”

I heard him open the front door and walk down the steps. From my seat I noticed a small crack in the wall left of the calendar. Because of my indexical knowledge of every detail of my home, I knew that it must have appeared overnight. Everything became hazy. Suddenly, the house felt like a foreign land, and I was a stranger within its borders.

#

Carl didn’t come home for dinner that night. I moved cold butternut squash and lamb chops to a glass container and put them in the refrigerator and went to bed. I struggled to fall asleep, my mind a warren of what ifs and if onlys as I flipped through Carl’s proposition that I join him during his meetings. Occasionally I drifted into the thin fugue state that separates wakefulness from the unconscious; that fitful place in between where absurdity and reality blend in fluid matrimony. 

Knocking at the front door drew me back to awareness.

“Sorry if you were asleep,” Carl said. “I forgot to bring my key with me this morning.”

“You could have called,” I said. “I saved you some dinner. It’s in the refrigerator.”

I turned toward the staircase.

“I left my phone too. I promise it wasn’t intentional.”

I looked at the small wooden bowl on the table by the door and saw the key and the phone. Perhaps it really was nothing. But I know what happens when Carl is at work. But if I paused for a moment and considered all available evidence it certainly appeared to support his story. He wasn’t lying, but he was soaked in rainwater. 

“It’s no problem. Come inside.”

I brought him a towel and lit the fireplace.

“What kept you late?”

“C’mon…”

“I want to know.”

“But you already do. You know how these things go.”

“I want to hear details.”

“No you don’t. Look around you. Denise is happy here. What interest could you possibly have in resurrecting all of that?”

“You were the one who invited me to join you downtown for meetings today.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have done that. It was stupid and I apologize. In fact, I think you should just leave things the way they are. You have a good life.”

“Sometimes I don’t know.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t say things like that.”

“Denise isn’t happy. Her new job, this trip, it’s all…just…” I paused and looked at the fire. Carl was picking at his beer label again, waiting for me to continue. When I didn’t, he took another sip of sip.

“Coming back to work wouldn’t make things better,” he said. “It’s kind of like being the chauffeur to a millionaire. You get to see the lifestyle, but it’s not actually yours.”

“But at least you get a taste of it. Isn’t that perspective useful? Doesn’t it keep you…I don’t know…alive?”

“You and I are different. This is all I know. I don’t have a family. I don’t have a wife. I don’t think I could. I’ve gotten myself in too deep. You’re lucky, you just don’t know it.”

“Maybe,” I said. But I didn’t believe it. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I had made up my mind about Denise and Carl and the garden and the whole damned situation.

I excused myself and went to bed. This time, dreamless.

#

The next morning I didn’t bother waking up to meet Carl. I couldn’t bother seeing him and being reminded of it all.

I waited until I heard him close the front door before going downstairs.

“Damnit! Start already!”

I looked out the window and saw him swearing and trying to force the ignition on his rental car. The vehicle sputtered. Dead battery. Carl came back inside, looking flustered. I pulled my beater from the garage, but the battery was indifferent to Carl’s schedule.

“Just my luck,” he said. “How easy is it to get a cab here?”

“You’d be better off walking. You’ll get downtown faster than a cabbie could find his way here.”

“I hate to ask this…” But ask he did. Albeit with a genuine apology wallpapered to his face. We transferred his things from the rental to the trunk. Once again, he lingered when I opened the trunk. He arranged his things. Some items looked familiar, but a lot had changed.

We drove for an hour in virtual silence. As green faded to concrete I felt an acute sense of loss, of something left behind. But as I looked ahead at the city before me, this feeling was replaced with tremendous vigor.

“We’re close,” said Carl. “You can drop me at this corner.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I can take you all the way.”

“You’re sure you’re okay with this? I really don’t mind walking.”

“I know. It’s not a big deal.”

I turned right into an alley, which opened up into an internal courtyard between the dilapidated backsides of several high rise buildings. A a couple dozen people were standing about. They seemed to cover every possible intersection of life. Young, old, different races, different genders. Designer handbags and rags. Some with the vestments of religion. No one spoke, no one moved, and they each had found a unique spot on which to affix isolated gazes. When Carl stepped out they lifted their heads and locked their eyes on him. They were transfixed. Each seemed to lean forward, drawn to Carl like flowers pulling themselves toward distant sunlight. 

Carl nodded politely and then unloaded his material from the trunk. The courtyard was bare, save a single black door. He placed his things just beyond the dark periphery of the doorway.

“Well,” he turned the crowd with a comforting smile, “why don’t you all come inside and we’ll see if I can help you.”

The people moved toward the door, some with more confidence than others. More than a few paused before crossing the barrier and took large, preparatory breaths. Soon the courtyard was empty, except for me, sitting in my car, both hands on the steering wheel. He walked toward me. I sat frozen, looking forward, unwilling to match his eyes.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said.

“Don’t mention it.” I kept looking forward.

“I told you I don’t have any ulterior motive here. But…”

I didn’t need to hear him finish the sentence. He had seen inside the trunk. As I look back on it, I clearly had made no effort to hide it. He knew my duffel bag was in there. I don’t remember when I packed it and left it there, but Denise never said anything about it. At some level she must have understood this would happen.

“I need a change, Carl.”

He nodded. “This is a big step. There is a lot more ahead of you, but once you go inside, all of this is over.” He gestured around him, to the world I had spent the last seventeen years definitively tied to.

“I know.”

“Denise, the garden, everything. It all changes once you step through that door.” He looked at the door. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I stepped out of the car. I didn’t stop to think. One moment I was sitting, the next I was at the trunk, popping it open and grabbing my bag. I stood next to Carl. My lungs shook when I exhaled. 

“It’s going to be alright,” he said.

We walked slowly toward the door, the duffel between us. At the entrance I paused to look at the sky, one last time. In that moment, at the precipice of old and new, as I stood ready to plunge into forever, the only thing I could think of was that I had forgotten to water the houseplants that morning. 

I stepped into the blackness.