The Third Planet From The Sun

“Where are we?” Lisa asked from the back seat of the car.

“We’re heading for Palm Desert, Sweetie,” her mother answered.

“No. I know that. I mean where are we right this instant?”

Her mother said, “What does it matter? We’re nomads now.  We’re—what’s the opposite of golf widows, Ned?”

Ned Horgan answered, “You’re part of my new beginning. Team Horgan.”

Lisa’s mother continued, “Got that? Team Horgan. Isn’t that something, Sweetie? Maybe we ought to get jackets with that on the back so that Ned can spot us in his gallery. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of Indian Wells. It’s a very prestigious golf course. Or the PGA Tour, for God’s sakes. The Professional Golf Association? Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer?” To Ned she said, “Television’s supposed to make kids so worldly wise—but what they don’

“This isn’t the PGA.” Ned glanced back to Lisa, then said to Lisa’s mother, “It’s not even close.”

Lisa’s mother said, “No. It’s not. But it’s like the PGA Tour.  It’s a stepping stone. Wouldn’t you say so, Ned?”

Ned agreed. “It’s set up pretty much the same way.”

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Lisa’s mother said. “Can you imagine the people this man has known, Sweetie? What a life. We’ll have to get him to tell you some time. And the places he’s been. Talk about well-traveled. Someday you’ll understand that there are some things you get in this world that they can’t take away from you, like who you’ve known and where you’ve been. Do you know who he was paired with the first time he ever played in a pro-am? Xavier Cugat and

Charro.”

“I didn’t even know who they were,” Ned said. “I was fresh out of school. I didn’t watch much television.”

“Of course not. You were always out on a golf course. You had your sights set high.”

“I’ll bet she’s never even heard of them,” Ned said.

“I’ve heard of them,” Lisa answered.

“Sure she’s heard of them,” her mother replied. “Who hasn’t? Coochy-Coochy, remember, Sweetie?”

“I said I remembered,” Lisa answered.

“I don’t see how she could remember,” Ned said.

“Some people take longer to find a direction in life than others. Ned was one of the lucky ones. He knew right away. Did you know that Oklahoma’s golf team has always been one of the best in the country? Do you know how many famous golf pros have played for the university of Oklahoma, Sweetie? Plenty, believe me. It’s a sport they really emphasize there. But you have to be good. You have to be ready to seize the opportunity. That’s how Ned got his scholarship, by being so good they recruited him right out of high school. It wouldn’t do you any harm to think about that. You’re diving, I mean.” To Ned, she added, “She has so much natural talent. Completely without fear. But I’m not sure that’s a blessing. I don’t think you really appreciate things unless you really have to work for them. When something’s just handed to you, you know? But how do you explain that to them? How do you make them see that they’re never going to be better than they are at the moment unless they really put in the effort? It breaks my heart to think how far this girl could get with her diving. They begged her to come out for her high school’s freshman team. I mean, with the gift she’s got for it? Well, you’ve seen her dive. I ask you.”

They were on their way to the desert. Palm Desert. Ned was going to be entered in a tournament at Indian Wells. Ned was a golf pro who had spent a few years after college playing on the PGA. When he couldn’t qualify on the PGA any longer, he played on smaller tournament circuits until, at forty-one, he couldn’t qualify for these either. That’s when Lisa’s mother met him, when Ned had to face the face that he just couldn’t qualify, that he had to get a real job like everyone else. This realization lasted all of three months. Somehow he had talked her mother into staking his comeback.  Like she could afford it.  Like she was a moneybags.  Right. What were the chances of that? Lisa thought the two of them deserved one another.

They met at the country club where Lisa’s mother was a server.  It turned out the only reason Ned was at the country club was because he was trying to hustle a job booking tee times. Lisa learned about his career the first time she had sex with Ned in the apartment in Tulsa—her and her mother’s apartment, that is. The first time she had sex with Ned was the first time she’d had sex at all and two things surprised her, that Ned could work up such a sweat over little of nothing, and that Ned talked as much as he did once the sex part was finished. That’s what she decided about sex that night: if you had intercourse with someone, he might just turn out to be a motor mouth, so you’d better be prepared.

“I just asked where we were,” Lisa said. “You’re driving. You’d think you’d know where we are. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“We’re on earth, Sweetie. Okay?”

“Earth is the third planet from the sun,” Lisa answered.

It was the first thing she’d said to her mother in a civil tone all morning, and this point was not lost, as Lisa could tell. In the mirror, her mother’s face relaxed. “You know,” her mother said, “I think you’re right, I think it is in fact.”

Late that afternoon, Lisa’s mother pulled into a cutesy motel called Knight’s Rest. It had a neon knight for a sign, his visor rising and falling.  The manager’s office was in a bungalow shaped like a turret. While her mother tried to register them, Ned said to Lisa from the front seat, “Don’t get any ideas.” She knew what Ned meant. Ned meant their intercourse. He meant keeping it a secret.

Lisa gave him her bug look. This was a look she gave people right in the eye to let them know they were no more to her than a bug, a cockroach maybe or some kind of beetle. She kept her eyes on Ned’s until Ned looked away, all of maybe a second.

“Just remember what I told you,” Ned said. “You can’t make it hard on me without making it worse for yourself.”

Her mother turned toward the car just as Ned was turning around in the seat. From the manager’s office, her mother shrugged, pointing her palms toward the ceiling. She couldn’t explain the holdup, apparently. Probably something to do with her credit card, Lisa imagined. Whenever they were trying to buy something with a credit card and you could see it was taking longer than you knew it probably should, this had to do with their credit limit, Lisa had learned. Lisa watched as the manager said something to her mother. The manager was an old man with a great shock of white hair that kept falling across his forehead. Lisa’s mother was suddenly all talk, all smiles. He picked up the phone and dialed a number, then put his hand over the receiver as Lisa’s mother offered instructions. As near as Lisa could tell from the manager’s expression, this was working pretty well. You had to hand it to her mother, Lisa thought, you really did. Her mother had once confided girl to girl that she did pretty well with what she had to work with. Lisa’s mother, that is. Lisa’s mother meant where men were concerned, and while Lisa neither argued with her mother nor offered her agreement, the truth was, Lisa thought so too—although most men were about as smart as dog poop in Lisa’s estimation, so it wasn’t like her mother deserved a prize or anything.

“Some people,” her mother said, returning to the car. Starting the engine,  she added, “You’d think we were dead beats.”

“I suppose he gets all kinds,” Ned said.

“That’s no excuse,” Lisa said.

Lisa’s mother looked puzzled. She had turned around in the driver’s seat in order to back out of the parking space, which meant she was facing Lisa, and their eyes met. Lisa knew what was going through her mother’s mind. She was trying to decide whether Lisa was taking her part or just trying again to cause trouble between her mother and Ned. While this was going on, Ned said, “See it from his side. A place like this—You can’t blame the guy. He’s probably mortgaged to the teeth. He has bills to pay whether he gets paid or not. You have any idea what the overhead is on an operation like this? You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. The profit margin on one of these little mom and pop operations—I mean, just to meet your overhead. I’d sure be careful, if it was the other way around. Business is business.”

Lisa’s mother was holding her breath, waiting to see if Ned would continue. Lisa rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. This gave Lisa’s mother the solution to what had been puzzling her: Lisa hadn’t been taking her part at all. Lisa had just been egging Ned on. She’d been showing her mother what an asshole he was. Lisa’s mother let out her breath in a long, quiet sigh, then, in a tone that sounded serious, said to Ned, “You’re right, you know? Business is definitely business.” With that, she touched the accelerator and backed across the parking lot. She backed straight across it without looking either way to see if there were cars coming, and didn’t stop until she had backed the car into the parking space before the bungalow where the three of them would be spending the night.

While Ned went after ice, Lisa’s mother got their bag from the car and put on her swimsuit. She looked at herself in the mirror over the desk. Looking over her shoulder, she patted the cheeks of her butt, and then gave Lisa one last try. “What do you say, Sweetie? Wanna join me for a swim?”

Lisa knew her mother meant. What else is there to do? I mean, this is life, Lisa. Get used to it.

Lisa gave her mother a look in return. She meant:  Your life maybe. Not mine.

Her mother said, “Are you hungry? What time do you suppose it is?” She looked about in a dozen directions. “Why isn’t there a goddamned clock, do they think you don’t care what time it is? I’d say it must be five or six, wouldn’t you. Right, five-thirty, probably. I understand there are tribes of Native Americans who measure a day by the sun alone. Even now. Have you ever heard that? Here, though, it’s something else, I imagine. They probably think if they put a clock in their  rooms you’re going to try and steal it.”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” said Lisa.

“At your age, of course, you have no sense of time. That’s your problem. Not that I’m finding fault. It’s just a fact of life. Minutes are days, weeks seem like years. I know. I mean, I’ve been there. It’s hard to imagine, I know, but I was your age once, and, at your age, everything seems permanent. It’s not, believe me. You think this is the way it’s going to be from here on out, you think this is what you have to look forward to from now on, but, boy, are you mistaken. Take this motel. 
Take a good look at this crummy motel, commit it to memory. Because if things work out, Sweetie, we’re never coming back. You wait: we’ll only stay at the best places. You know, Michelin Five Star, where they come around while you’re out to dinner and turn down your bed so you won’t have to do it yourself. They leave these little mints on your pillow. I’m serious. Individual little mints.”

Lisa’s mother went into the bathroom to get a towel to take to the pool. “I don’t like mints,” Lisa said.

Coming out with a towel, Lisa’s mother said, “Then you won’t have to eat yours. I mean, you can have anything you want at those places to eat, day or night. Mints are just the beginning. You just pick up the phone and presto!

“There’s nothing wrong with a place like this, of course. Not one single thing. It’s clean, well lit at night, I imagine. On our budget, it’s a very practical decision.  Right now? It’s a very good value. And for most people, it’s fine. Right? Then it’s fine. If this is all you’ve ever known? You don’t think twice about it, because—you know, why should you? What have you got to compare it to? Then this is just the best thing ever. The very best. Bar none.

“But while we’re staying here? I’ll tell you. There’s another woman and her little girl and they’re walking into a Five Star hotel on the arm of some man, and they’ll have a room that looks out on the ocean. It will have a balcony and Laura Ashley sheets and freshly cut flowers. And you know what? They’re not one bit prettier than we are. Their taste isn’t one bit better than our taste. They aren’t one bit more refined; they don’t have one social grace that you and I are lacking. The only thing that separates them from us is where we happen to be spending the night. We’re the very same. Identical. I mean, we could be twins with them.

“That’s why we have to keep our sights set so high, so we never forget that. So we never begin to think this is how it’s going to be forever.” She put the towel around her waist and opened the door of their bungalow. She smiled then. And in a tone where treacle is mixed with venom, added,  “Because if that’s the way things turned out, you know—we’d have no one to blame but ourselves.”

J. Boyer: RECENT SHORT FICTION: "Singles," The Redbridge Review: Online Journal of Art [UK], July, 2004, http://www.redbridgereview.co.uk/html/j_boyer.html "Allegiances," Carve Magazine, July, 2004, ISSN# 1529-272X (Shortlisted, 2004 Raymond Carver Award For Short Fiction) "The Night Mechanic," The Anthology of 2004 Biscuit Prize Poetry and Fiction Winners [UK], October, 2004, ISBN 1-903914-10-8 (Finalist/With High Commendation, 2004 Biscuit Prize For Fiction) "The Harmless Thoughts Of A London Gynecologist," The Persistence Of Dreams,"[UK], January, 2005, ISSN 1744-1102

Email: J. Boyer

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