Jerry

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Schwartz woke one morning and decided. It had been long enough. Eight years since his wife passed. Her smell had faded from her pillowcase, from her half of the closet.

He spent some time reclined in the living room, watching cartoons and reading the newspaper. The sports section featured an article about Stephanie Gilespe and some other girl who had broken her three-point record at the high school. He had coached Gilespe. She had heaved her jump shot from the chest, and he taught her to shoot over a defender.

Schwartz showered and dressed and scraped his face clean with a razor blade, washed the white whiskers from the sink basin. He retrieved the roll of trash bags from the kitchen. Took one by the neck and filled it with his wife’s toiletries, her trinkets, her jewelry, and when that bag filled he unrolled another. What was left of Alison occupied four and a half sacks, super duty.

He loaded these bags into his truck and rode the clutch down the driveway, its exhaust puttering in the cold as he added the bags to the canister by the road shoulder.

Schwartz drove around for a while. He passed the school where he had worked, peered through the window of the art annex where he had taught. Eased past the old gym. He ate lunch at the Picadilly.

When he returned home the trash canister was empty, tilted back against its open lid. He parked the truck and entered the empty house, and his footfalls echoed off the hardwood of the kitchen, bounced around the high ceilings. Schwartz watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, then changed into his pajamas.

He brushed his teeth and rinsed and spat, and the house creaked and popped. Doors quivered on their hinges, whispering. He woke in the night and went to piss, and when he returned the bedroom air felt occupied, like it had shifted around another. He heard an electric pulse of life and groped for it in the darkness. His hand met the footpost of their bed, and the buzz disappeared like a shock of static.



The next day Schwartz dialed 411 and asked for Stephanie Gilespe. He paced circles around the coffee table as the phone began to ring.

“Hello?”

“Stephanie Gilespe?”

“Speaking.”

“It’s Jerry Schwartz.”

“Who?”

He rubbed his neck. “From the high school.”

She still lived in town. She’d love to get together and talk basketball. Was Schwartz free that evening? Of course he was. They agreed on Starbucks, and Schwartz waited for the line to click dead before he hung up the phone.



At a quarter ‘til Schwartz pushed his knees straight—up, up, out of the armchair. He made his way down the hall, back bent like a C, neck out like a turkey. Stopped at the bathroom to comb the hair on the sides of his head—blonde made fairer by laces of gray. Three shirts hung from the door of the towel closet. He held each of them to his chest, and each once more. Decided on the blue with pinstripes. He dabbed cologne on his neck. The paunch swung like a rooster’s beard, and Schwartz touched it again, watched in the mirror to make sure it was real.

He worked the band off his ring finger and replaced it on his right hand, and he cut the lights before he left the room.



Schwartz parked on the far end of the lot at Starbucks. He straightened his collar in the rearview and stepped from the truck. Let out a little sigh when his feet met the cement and his knees bore his weight in full.

He recognized Stephanie on the patio and felt electric and alive and sick to his stomach. She sat on a couch with one leg propped on a table. He wondered why she chose a couch. He wanted to find out and he wanted to go hide.

After buying coffee, he approached the couch and tapped her shoulder.

“Stephanie?”

“Coach Schwartz? My God, it’s been ages.”

They talked about people from Stephanie’s grade and a little about basketball—aside from the article neither of them had kept up. Schwartz tried to make things relevant: What movies do you like? Do you travel? She smiled politely, and her dimples resembled his wife’s, and an emptiness was there—sudden as a side stitch and staying as a pebble in his shoe. He kneaded the soft skin of his finger.

She sat with a certain rigidity, her hands clasped in her lap, and Schwartz felt that he was losing at some game he hadn’t realized he was playing, his clock running out. He stretched his feet under the steel-mesh table and pointed his toes in her direction. Her feet remained neatly under her, and he felt childish and old at the same time.

The small talk sputtered out, and she rose to leave. He thanked her for coming. To his surprise, Stephanie limped her right leg and walked with a cane. When she disappeared into the dark of the parking lot he could still hear it clicking woodenly off the cement.

*

Schwartz thought it odd when Alison hadn’t answered the phone that December evening so many years ago. He always called before he left work, offering to stop by the store if she needed anything for dinner. She usually didn’t, and when he came through the garage, the slick legs of his warm-up pants whisking against one another, his wife was often mashing potatoes with milk and butter or taking bread from the oven. Schwartz was not lively in the evenings after practice—high school girls are a handful, basketball aside—but Alison was, singing under her breath while stirring pots and pans, sometimes humming over gaping holes in the lyrics only to pick back up at the next chorus. She washed dishes as she cooked, and she had a soft way of shifting her weight when she moved from the sink to the stove, pirouetting like a ballerina.

Schwartz liked to think that she was not naturally an evening person, that she did these things for him. Perfected the movements during trips between her office desk and copier and decided what to sing while sitting in traffic.

Her voice on the answering machine sparked an idea.

“Got a surprise for you,” he said when the tone sounded. He waited a moment for her to pick up the phone. “Hear what I said, woman?”

Nothing.

“Don’t start dinner,” he said, checking his pockets for car keys and billfold. “And don’t go running out on me, you hear?”



Schwartz didn’t much care for Chinese, but Alison liked it and there was a new China Star on his way home. He didn’t call ahead—just placed his order once he arrived and took a handful of fortune cookies from the counter. Moved to a porcelain chair with ceramic legs at a table painted with a dragon and one-by-one pulled apart their plastic wrappers and split the brittle crackers, extracted their folded slips of paper and piled them separate from the halves until he found one he liked.

The man at the counter mispronounced his name, and Schwartz rose, refolded his fortune, tucked it in his shirt pocket and swept the pile of debris from the edge of the table into his hand. He left the unopened cookies in a neat pile on the center of the table and carried his to-go order to the truck. Through the plastic shopping bag noodles and chicken warmed his thigh, and again his lap as he climbed into the vehicle.

The truck was below 1/8th tank of gas and Schwartz stopped at a Kangaroo, but he skipped the pump. The line inside was long. When finally Schwartz stepped up to the register he fished the slip from his shirt pocket.

“A Cash Four ticket,” he said. “Numbers three, twenty, thirteen, seven.”

A tired lady looked at the slip of paper, then Schwartz. She tore a ticket from the machine and handed it to Schwartz, who thanked her. She wished him luck.



The clock in the truck was very wrong, but Schwartz knew it was getting late. Beads of water had condensed in the take-out bag.

He reentered the house through the garage door and found Alison slumped on the couch, head dangling from her neck like a tetherball. Eyes closed, mouth open—the way his players dozed in study hall. A nighttime soap sounded from the television behind him, and he shook his head. He thought the corners of her lips tightened ever so slightly, but he couldn’t be sure.

He arranged the food boxes on the coffee table with two placemats from the dining room and poured glasses of sweet tea. He tried to step softly with the grace of his lover but he could not, so he resorted to a tiptoe, like Elmer Fudd hunting rabbits.

Schwartz crept behind the couch and took her by the shoulders. The thin skin of her collarbones felt cool, and he gave her a gentle shake. Her head rolled absently and she lurched forward, splaying in the little valley of carpet between couch and coffee table and spilling tea with a flip of her wrist.

Men in crisp uniforms took the body, and Schwartz answered a few questions outside. Then he returned to the couch and looked at her shape in the leather. When he sat, the leather pulled taut, and she was gone. He muted the television. Alone, he ate his portion of lukewarm chicken and noodles.

The answering machine blinked in the corner, and when finished eating he crossed the room and pressed play. Schwartz was surprised at the voice that filled the room—Hear what I said, woman?—what alien thing had spoken it, and had his Ali heard it before she’d gone?

*

Schwartz didn’t call Stephanie after they met at Starbucks. Late one night he saw an ad on television and drove his truck into town the next day. The electronics superstore was hideously lit, and the tile was immaculate. Schwartz felt like he was under a microscope. He wanted a sweater.

It took him some time to locate the computers. Employees bustled across the showroom floor speaking into headsets, fingers at their ears. He hefted the boxes of a couple models, then took a passing employee by the elbow. The boy looked puzzled.

“Can I help you?”

“Need a computer.”

“Mac or PC?”

“Maybe you could help me decide.”

The boy nodded with wide eyes. He began clicking a pen in his shirt pocket.

“PC’s have virtually endless computing power. A three GHz processor is standard, but Sony and Dell make plenty of models with more juice. RAM for PC’s is cheap. An extra fifty bucks will get you more than you’ll need for any model. The motherboards are also interchangeable, but running different hardwares on foreign operating systems can be tricky.”

Schwartz crossed his arms. He squinted at the boy’s bad skin. Maybe he’d taught his brother.

“Macs, on the other hand. You can’t do as much with the stock model, but there are plenty of upgrades available. The interface is clean and easy to use. Now, I don’t know if you’re interested in video games—”

Schwartz closed his eyes and waved his hand. “I need one with a camera.”

“Oh, you’re a photographer. Hobby or profession?”

“No. I want that video chat thing.”

“Get the Mac,” the boy said. “They’re easier to use.”



EPB set up Schwartz’s Internet the next day. That evening he locked the doors. He unfolded the laptop on the coffee table and plugged the charger into the wall. Lit some candles and cut the lights.

After a couple clicks of the trackpad he entered his credit card information, and a window expanded. A girl sat with her knees up in a loveseat, a bed cattycornered in the background against plain white walls. Her hair towered messily on her head, and she wore glasses with thick black rims.

“I’m Lexus,” she said. She was very tan.

Schwartz could see himself in a little box in the corner of his screen. He leaned close and squinted. “Gilespe,” he lied. He didn’t know why.

“What are you in the mood for, Mr. Gilespe?” She sat up in the chair and took off her cardigan. The tank top made her neck look longer.

“I’m not exactly sure how this works,” Schwartz said.

She smiled a little, then wiped it away. “Maybe you should tell me what to take off.”

Schwartz picked his lip. “Do you think you could grin like that again?”

“What?”

“Grin. Like you don’t want to, but you can’t help it.”

She looked past the camera.

“My wife did that,” Schwartz said.

The girl appeared frozen, staring at something sad and curious in the hidden half of her room.

“I’m old enough to be your father,” Schwartz said.

A pop-up flashed on the screen. $29.95 for another five minutes.

*

Schwartz managed the first day after his wife’s death same as any. He told Dez morning as he passed the reception desk. Whoever was on bus duty had already brewed coffee in the break room, and what was left of it was burning in the pot. He poured the dregs into a Styrofoam cup and stirred in creamer by twirling the cup in his hand, then measured grounds into a filter for whoever came next. The call-waiting light blinked on a phone in the corner, the phone from which he had called Alison.

It was Friday, so for his Art History classes Schwartz checked out an old television set from the library. It was ratcheted to a junky cart with a cargo strap, and he wheeled it to his classroom. All this before the parking lot filled with headlights and the buses dropped off their cargo.

A bell rang at 7:15, and Schwartz popped in a VHS about Monet. Some of the students were already dozing, heads in the crooks of their elbows. Schwartz cut the lights and drew the blinds. He paid no mind when the Knowles boy arrived twenty minutes late reeking of marijuana.

Second period came and went much the same way. The boys out of gym class peppered with spray deodorant.

During his planning period Schwartz took an insulated lunch cooler from the cab of his truck. He sat Indian style on the grassy hill that overlooked the baseball field and unpacked its contents—laid in a row: barbecue Lay’s and a Diet Coke and two ice packs shaped like penguins and a tuna-egg sandwich Alison had Saran-wrapped before he had found her. He ate the sandwich last and folded the plastic wrap into a square and placed the penguins and his trash in the cooler, tried to repack it with her neatness.



The girls led their own warm ups at basketball practice. The most he spoke was telling Stephanie Gilepse to set her screens higher. She set them at the elbow, which was lazy. High screens made it easier to get open behind the arc. The little things.

The captains broke down the huddle and then there was only Schwartz and Wilson—the team manager—a pile of steaming jerseys between them. Wilson scooped a load of them into both arms and started for the washing machine in the locker room, new as of last year. Schwartz followed, picking up what Wilson dropped and rehearsing the words, mouthing to feel them on his tongue.

They traversed the hardwood with the floor mops—Schwartz on one baseline and Wilson on the other.

“Hey Wilson, my wife died yesterday.” He stuffed his off hand into his pocket. “Thought I should tell someone.”

The boy kept sweeping, and the two grew closer towards meeting at center court.

“What’s that, Coach Schwartz?”

He kept his head down. “I thought I should let someone know that my wife died yesterday.”

“Are you serious?”

“Thought someone should hear it from me before they put it in the paper.”

The boy looked perplexed, like he was wrestling with some equation that wouldn’t add up. “Wow. I’m really sorry Coach.”

“Yeah. That’s okay.”

The two combined dust piles and shook out their brooms, and Schwartz pushed it towards the bleachers.

“What happened?” asked the boy. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Doctors said she had some brain aneurism. I came home and she was lying on the couch.”

Wilson examined his cuticles and frowned. “Why don’t you head home, Coach? I’ll finish the laundry. I have my own car now.”

Schwartz said he’d stay and lock up.

*

All the events of the day—breakfast, shower, lunch, watching a TV movie—seemed to lead up to the phone call. It had been a week since Starbucks. Schwartz had to dial information again—he hadn’t written down her number.

“Hey Stephanie, it’s Jerry. Schwartz.”

“What do you say, Coach?”

He wound the phone cord around his finger. “Have you eaten dinner?”

“I haven’t, actually.”

“Great. I mean, are you hungry?”

She paused. “I could eat,” she said.

“Do you want to? With me?”

“Thing is, I’m watching my grandbaby. His mom’s out of town.”

Schwartz hadn’t considered Stephanie as a mother, let alone a grandmother. He tried to see her cooking breakfast, helping with homework.

“Coach?”

“I’m here. Does he like spaghetti?”



He scrawled directions to the house on a legal pad and tore the sheet, tucked it in his shirt pocket. In the bathroom he combed his hair and applied more deodorant. He bagged noodles and sauce from the kitchen cabinets and hurried out to the truck.

She lived near the county courthouse; in a neighborhood where generations grew old in the same houses, where New York Life agents visited on porches while kids rode skateboards in the street.

He parked behind a Buick in the drive. Got halfway up the sidewalk before he realized he’d left the food in the car. When he returned, the porch light was on. He rapped on the screen door, and the inner door opened. A black boy squinted at him through the mesh.

“Oh God,” Schwartz said. “I must have the wrong house.”

Stephanie appeared behind the boy. “Hey, Coach. You find the place okay?” She opened the screen door and the boy retreated to some inner room.

“Fine. I found it fine.”

“That’s Dominique. My daughter’s boy.”

“Ah.”

They cooked together in the corner of a kitchen, sharing the little stove. Schwartz browned the meat while Stephanie stirred the pasta and buttered bread. She didn’t hum. Dominique watched over them from the bar, and Schwartz kept trying to wish him away.

“It’s funny,” Schwartz said in a low voice. “I didn’t realize you had kids, let alone grandkids.”

“My baby turns twenty-five next month,” Stephanie said.

Schwartz drained the beef with a strainer. He did some math in his head. “Play basketball like you grandmother, Dominique?”

Stephanie smiled. “He’s a little thespian,” she said.

“Theater is my calling,” the boy said.

“Is that right?”

Stephanie piled the noodles into a wooden serving bowl. She took the bread from the oven. “Just got a part in the school play,” she said. “And only in sixth grade.”

“That’s wonderful,” Schwartz said. He added sauce to the meat.

“It’s just a small role,” said the boy.

“Gotta play jayvee before you start varsity.” He shook his head at the idiocy of the line and looked over his shoulder towards the door.



Schwartz helped wash the dishes after they’d eaten. He kept trying to find her hands in the soapy water, but it seemed full of fork prongs and knife tips. Dominique was at his grandmother’s side, drying with a towel. When the dishes were replaced in the cabinets the three stood there in silence, listening to the water drain. Dominique buried his face in Stephanie’s soft belly.

“I need to put this one to bed,” she said.

“Yeah. I guess I need to hit the road too.”

“Getting late.”

“It is.”

The stove clock read 9:25.

“Go put your pajamas on, Sweetie,” she said, ushering the boy towards a back room. “I’ll be right in.”

Dominique disappeared down the hall, and she opened the screen door, taking up her cane from the corner. Schwartz followed her onto the porch.

“Thanks for coming over,” she said. “Bringing dinner.”

“Please. I should be the one thanking you.”

She gave him a strange look, and he felt foolish for saying that. Moths swarmed the porch light.

“I think it does Dominique good, to be around a man every now and then.”

“Your daughter isn’t—” he stopped himself. “That’s none of my business.”

“She takes after her mother. Thought if I could raise her without a daddy, she could do the same.”

Her frazzled hair looked wild, its shadow playing against the side of the house. She opened her arms for a hug, and he bent his face towards hers. She turned away, and he smashed his nose on her cheekbone.

“Christ. I’m so sorry,” he said.

“That’s okay.”

“Fucking stupid.”

“Jerry, it’s all right.”

He wiped his nose but didn’t check his hand. “I need to go,” he said.

“Me too.”

He felt like a balloon, leaking air the whole drive home.



The next evening he called her. Closed his eyes and listened to her voice on the answering machine. Was she still at work? Where might she work? He cheated through a game of Solitaire, the laminated cards whisking across the coffee table, slick against his fingertips. Then he called again and hung up after the second ring.



A couple weeks later, the Whitfield Bruins defeated Soddy Daisy 49-42 in their homecoming football game. Schwartz milled around the bleachers after it was over, watching the players seek out their girlfriends and embrace, pose beneath the stadium lights for parents holding cameras. Stephanie worked the concession stand. He caught a glimpse of her scooping nacho cheese from a crockpot. A few old-timers nodded from the ticket window as he made his way through the gate.

He started his truck and cranked the heat. The parking lot thinned around him, taillights flaring in the cold as cars filed onto the highway. Maybe half a dozen remained when Schwartz cut his engine and started up the hill towards the school, hands jammed in his coat pockets, bent against the wind.

The gym was unlocked, it always was. He made his way across the baseline to the lights board and selected the little two-prong key from his ring, but it no longer fit. Moonlight leaked through the windows high above the bleachers, panes broken here and there from stray dodgeballs, from lob passes gone awry. He stood still for a moment, blinking away the darkness.

When he could make out half court, Schwartz moved towards the equipment closet, arms out front like a seer. His key worked in the door, and he selected a ball from the rack. He squeezed it between his palms to test its air, tipped it back and forth, hand to hand. On the court, he dribbled to the basket, taking his time lest his feet get in the way. Sound filled the gym, the ball meeting the hardwood and its wonky echo yo-yoing off the walls. He banked layups off the glass—his legs didn’t have the juice for jump shots. He took care with each repetition: cradling the rubber composite in his fingertips, kissing the ball off the same corner of the glass, same swish of the net as the ball passed through the hoop.
The double-doors at the other side of the gym opened, and a silhouette entered and disappeared into the darkness. Schwartz held the ball and listened, a rhythmic clack accompanying every second footstep.

“Saw your truck in the lot,” Stephanie said, still far away.

“Right.”

“Marco,” she said.

“Polo.”

He pressed the ball into his chin and listened to her come closer. He saw her wandering blindly, and saw her discern him from the darkness. She lay down her cane at midcourt and stepped gingerly toward him, hands up and palms out. He bounced her the ball and she began dribbling it, passed it once between her legs, once behind her back. She stepped to the free throw line and shot and didn’t even draw rim.

Schwartz shagged the ball and passed it back to her. He stepped up to guard her, but she wouldn’t let him near.