Foreign Climes: Stories

Foreign Climes

STORIES

Lucy Ferriss

© 2021 Lucy Ferriss

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Brighthorse Books

13202 N River Drive

Omaha, NE 68112

brighthorsebooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-944467-28-9

Author Photo © 2021 Paul John Roberts

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Minnesota originally appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, The House of My Other Life in American Short Fiction, Concorde in Foreign Literary, Foreign Climes as The Difficulty of Translation in Michigan Quarterly Review, From the Roof as Road Rage in Roanoke Review, Sunset District as In the Sunset in Missouri Review, material from The Garage in A Sister to Honor, The Difficulty of Translation in Crossing Borders, and Old Man in Shenandoah.

For permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact the editors at info@brighthorsebooks.com. Visit us at brighthorsebooks.com. Brighthorse books are distributed to the trade through Ingram Book Group and its distribution partners.

For my sons, who brave new worlds

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

—The Analects of Confucius

Contents

Minnesota

The Garage

Atlantic City

Luxembourg

The House of My Other Life

Concorde

Foreign Climes

From the Roof

Sunset District

Old Man

The Road Taken

Minnesota

Finally, when I was eleven

, I got to meet my mom’s lover. She and I had flown into Palm Springs. I was a tennis player, and by a series of lucky breaks I had made it to the Easter Bowl. If you had asked me, I would have said I had not slept in a week. Every moment called for a state of high alert. I patted my chest sometimes, or my thighs, to be sure they still belonged to me, the boy who was going to national competition.

Now, don’t be overconfident, my dad told me before we left, which was his way of telling me I sucked.

Palm Springs rushed up at us out of the desert, like a city in a pop-up book. We lived then in North Carolina, and I had never imagined landscape like this—so many shades of brown, mountains pushing like giant pimples out of the skin of the bare land. Then we were on the ground, among the white buildings and bright billboards and palm trees. I figured that we had come into money, or something like money.

The hotel was in the shape of a star. Its rays, which the lady at the desk called pods, were named for Indian tribes. The center of the star was a huge oval swimming pool with little side pools like moons—a jacuzzi, a kiddie pool, a fountain. The minute we set our bags down in our room, I ran to explore. Can you remember our room number? my mom asked, pushing off her sandals.

Apache two sixty-six, I said.

Then you may explore by yourself. If you get lost, ask a person in a uniform to help you find your way back. I’m tired, she said. She smiled with the light in her eyes that told me how glad she was to have an energetic son. I’m going to shower, she said, and buff my nails.

Sure, I said, as if she’d made a joke.

My mom was neither a beautiful nor a plain woman to me. She carried my tennis bag and bought me sports drinks. When I looked up from the tennis court after a good point, she was looking down from the bleachers, smiling without showing her teeth, which were large and very white. She wore tennis shoes to my matches in case I needed her to warm me up on the court, though she never hit hard enough to satisfy me. Her fingernails were her own business. My dad laughed the rare times she tried to prettify herself, coloring her hair or plucking her eyebrows, which were heavy and highly arched. Dress it up and call it crème brulée, he said, it’s still pudding to me. Then he’d lick his lips and say, Don’t get me wrong about pudding.

But when she came to find me, watching a pair of eighteen-year-olds on the hotel’s tennis court, my mom’s nails glistened coral, matching the gloss she’d applied to her lips. In the desert air she looked dewy. Those boys are good, she said, perching next to me. We were both jet-lagged, though I didn’t recognize the symptoms at the time. The air sucked the moisture from my skin. The sun seemed out of place, insisting on its right to bear down. My throat was parched.

That’s Rajiv Deglani, I whispered back. He’s number two in eighteens!

Well, he’s very good, she repeated. She never spoke softly enough, next to the court. Rajiv, switching sides, glanced our way. Do you want something to drink? she asked me.

Ssh, I said.

Rajiv bounced the ball three times, stared at it a moment, then tossed it up for the serve. For a second it blocked the sun. That was Rajiv’s superstition, I figured, the bouncing and staring. Mine was to tap my right toe twice against the service line. When I received a serve, I tapped both toes and spun my racquet. My mom had complained that I was going through shoes for no good reason but toe-tapping. This was partly a joking complaint, because she was proud of how well I played tennis, but once or twice I’d caught her staring hard at the holes worn through the toes of an otherwise excellent pair of K-Swiss. She shook her head slowly, an unbeliever, before she dropped the useless things in the trash.

Rajiv’s serve had a lot of kick, but the guy on the other side managed to return it cross-court and get in position for Rajiv’s backhand slice, which held in the air a second before dropping just inside the baseline. Then the guy drove it down the line. Rajiv’s forehand return was a soft lob that the guy caught at midcourt and slammed to the ad side. The ball bounced over the fence and skittered underneath a thorny bush. I scurried down from the bleachers and retrieved it.

Thanks, bud, said Rajiv.

Is he here for the tournament? my mom asked me when I got back to the bleacher.

"Mom. He’s eighteen."

So? He’s a junior.

The eighteens are in Alabama this year, and they’re next week. I think he’s here for his brother, I said. I didn’t bother with the rest, how Sandeep Deglani was ranked number 15 in the country even though he’d just turned eleven. My mom was glad for me to do well, but the way the system worked was a mystery to her.

We watched Rajiv for a while. He lost the first set in a tiebreak, and then he and his opponent wasted time by the net. My mom announced that she for one could use a drink.

I want to play putt putt, I said.

It’s nine o’clock our time, Jimmy. You check in at eight tomorrow morning.

So? That’s eleven o’clock our time. I’m not tired.

We should eat something, she said firmly, and at that I was hungry.

About two years before, I’d put my foot down on kiddie meals. They were boring and not enough food, and I was too old for plastic toys. Since then, my mom ordered a glass of wine for herself and a meal for me. I usually asked for the calamari appetizer as well. She nibbled on bread while I destroyed the calamari, then halfway through my baked ziti I would be full, and she would dispatch the rest.

We settled at a table on the veranda. The rest of our time in Palm Springs, my mom pointed out, we would be eating elsewhere. But just for tonight, because we were tired, we could eat at the hotel. I nodded and checked out the menu, which wasn’t promising. Too much written in Italian, and too many cream sauces. It occurred to me that my mom was saving money by buying just one grown-up meal. If I had gone along with the kiddie-meal idea, she might have ordered exactly what it was she wanted—the grilled fresh tuna, for instance, or the ratatouille. But none of the other boys on the tour ordered kiddie meals. Their parents ordered a regular meal for the kid and regular meals for themselves and let the waitress clear half-full plates from their table, no regrets.

I ordered calamari; my mom got her wine. The air’s getting cold, I complained.

That’s the desert, she said, and right then her lover walked out onto the veranda.

Cynthia, he said.

If I’d been a dog, my ears would have gone up. Everyone else called her Cindy.

Lookie who’s here, she said.

Mind if I join you? he said.

He wasn’t good-looking. He was heavyset and had a goatee. His laugh was choked-off and nervous, heh heh. He stuck out his hand. Jimmy D, he greeted me.

I pulled my hand, a dead animal, out from under the tablecloth. Jimmy D was my tennis name. The other boys yelled it when they were cheering for me. My mom yelled it when she got really excited. But my dad called me Jim, and so did my sister who was in kindergarten. I liked the nickname right up to the moment it came out of my mom’s lover’s mouth.

I’m Drew, he said, taking the dead animal in his wide palm. I’m a friend of your mother’s, from way back. She told me you were coming out this way, and I thought, ‘Why not see Cynthia and her big tennis guy?’

Hi, I said. Mom, do they have marinara sauce?

I’m sure they do, honey, she said. It was like a clarinet was playing deep in her throat. Drew, join us. He’d already sat down. How’s your room?

I’ve told them I resent being a Pawnee, he said with a heh heh. Otherwise it’s all right. He picked up my mom’s menu, glanced for about three seconds, then folded it up. Jimmy D, he said, sizing me up. You need some real food.

Tell them ziti with marinara, if they have it, I said to my mom.

You like Mexican? he asked me.

My name’s Jim, I told him.

He nodded. Tacos, fajitas, you like those?

Sure.

We’ll get you out of here tomorrow, Jim, feed you good. He said this with his lips pulled back, as if he were going to eat me himself. As he settled into his chair, his knee bumped against my mom’s. I could tell from the way both their bodies did a little jerk.

What are you ordering, Cynthia? he said.

Oh. You know, she said, and gestured at the wine.

Growing girl like you. The lady will have the scampi, Drew said to the waitress, and I’ll have prime rib. Rare. Pawnee 106, the whole tab.

We’ll waste food, I said to my mom.

Shush, she said. Enjoy it.

After supper they left me in the game room. Some kids I knew had arrived—the number 18 from Texas and the number 25 from New York, both of them seeded for this tournament—and we played Mortal Kombat and pinball. The number 18 said this kid Jason had hooked him in Phoenix last month, and the 25 and I said we’d met up with Jason before, he was a cheater all right. We compared birthdays—the 25, who was a chunky Chinese kid, was aging up the next month, but the 18 and I were both in the twelves though winter. Want to do doubles with me at the Copper Bowl? I asked him. My partner Ryan aged up last month.

It was a risky question, because I was ranked 31, but he said, Might could. My partner’s movin’ back to Spain.

This was great news for me. I was good at doubles, because I was tall for my age and I attacked the net. All I needed was a decent partner. These guys in the game room with me, acting like normal guys, were the best players in the country. Now one of them would be my doubles partner. Mine! I ran back to Apache 266 to tell my mom.

She had stopped in—her pocketbook was sitting on the nightstand—but she wasn’t there and she hadn’t left a note. I chose my bed and started flipping channels. I told myself she had gone for a walk. She often did that, when we stayed at a hotel. She said watching me exercise all day gave her nervous exhaustion. She found the weirdest places to walk—gullies that ran behind the hotels and ended up in dilapidated parks, or paths that followed run-off creeks and took her the other side of the highway. I worried about her a little. That is, I worried that she’d get lost or kidnapped, and I’d have no one to drive me to the tournament site. My dad thought the whole junior tennis tour was a bad idea, so he would never come fetch me and take me to my match, if my mom wandered off.

I flipped among South Park, Six Feet Under, and an HBO movie with Harrison Ford. My head ached. I thought my mom ought to get back and bug me to go to bed. I pictured myself playing at the Copper Bowl with the number 18 kid; I pictured his cross-court forehand setting me up for a sweet overhead. I wanted to tell her about it, and I was mad that she wasn’t there. I thought what my dad would say if I lost his wife.

Back home, an older girl lived next door—with both her parents at first, and then, starting the year before, with just her dad. When I asked about her mom, she said, Oh, my mom has a lover now, as if a lover was something that mothers acquired at some point in their development, the way you got braces in middle school or a driver’s license when you turned 16.

Sometimes, when my parents fought, my mom got this distant, curious look in her eyes. It looked as if she were watching a movie, or as if she had gone for one of those walks in her head, and might not come back. When I had met Drew Heilbrun at dinner, I’d known right off that he was the answer. I just hadn’t got the question straight yet.

At ten-thirty, I called her cell phone. This was something I was supposed to do only in emergencies, since the hotel charged us a minor fortune to call long-distance and calling the cell was long-distance even if she was down in the lobby. But it didn’t matter because she didn’t pick up. Ten minutes later I heard her card slide into the lock.

Hey, she whispered, as if someone in the room were asleep.

Where were you? I said in my normal voice.

I don’t know. Just out, she said.

The guy who’s ranked 18 is going to be my doubles partner, I said.

That’s great, she said. Normally, she would gone on to ask who number 18 was, where she might have seen him play, how Ryan would feel if I kept playing with this other boy when we all aged up. Then she’d have congratulated me on being such a social genius. That was what she called me, because I got on well with people; she thought of herself as shy.

But all she said was, Look at the moon.

I sat up straighter in the bed and looked at my mother, standing by the hotel window. I felt how she was no longer there—in that hotel, in Palm Springs—totally on my account. Something else was drawing her away. My superstition kicked in: if her attention was divided, I would lose in the tournament.

Reading my thoughts, she turned away from the moon and pretended to be the mother she’d been a few hours before. I wonder who you’ll meet in your first match, she said, sitting