Free The Safety of Objects: Stories by A. M. Homes

over her chest.
    Bill’s Repair Man comes out of the house to get something from his truck. He’s grinning and Jim has the urge to punch him, but his children are staring at him, waiting to see what an adult does after being completely humiliated.
    Jim walks past all of them, up the steps, and into his house.
    There’s no reason I should know what a marigold is, he thinks, I’m the Flynch-Peabody Man of the Year.
    He goes up to the bedroom, empties the contents of the hamper onto the bed, spreads the dirty clothing out evenly, and lies down on top of it. He stares up at the ceiling, sucking his thumb, and occasionally rubbing a soft piece of clothing across his face. This is something he does to relax. He doesn’t think it is any stranger than a person taking a Valium, lifting weights, or immersing himself in some kind of tank. Emily comes in with her bottle and lies down next to him.
    “You’re dirty,” Emily says.
    Jim nods.
    “It’s okay.” She rests her head on his chest, sucks her bottle, and falls asleep.
    The phone rings, Jim gets up carefully, so as not to disturb Emily, and picks up the phone in the hall.
    “Hi, it’s Bill MacArthur.”
    “Oh, hi Bill, how are you?” Susan says, from the extension in the kitchen.
    Jim tries to remember who this Bill is. In the six months they’ve lived there he’s met four Bills, two Bobs, three Roberts, and a Robbie, and he can’t tell one from the other.
    “Good, good,” Bill says. “I’m just getting ready to run the kids down to the park and toss around the ball. I thought maybe you’d like to bring yours.”
    “What a nice idea.”
    Jim knows that if he’d gone downstairs a minute before and said, Honey, let’s take the kids to the park and toss a ball around, she would have looked at him like he was crazy.
    “I’ll stop by and you can follow me in your car.”
    Jim tries to imagine who Bill MacArthur is. What’s his relation to the real MacArthur? Doesn’t he have a job? A family, his own damn wife?
    “Kids, kids, where are you?” Susan calls, as she runs up the steps. “Get your shoes on, we’re going to the park.”
    “Can I come with you?” Jim asks, as Susan rubs a damp washcloth over Emily’s face, wiping off her sleep and the dirt from Jim’s chest.
    “You have to stay home and replant my flowers.”
    Jim feels as if he’s been slam-dunked. How can he do anything when she’s running off into the woods chasing wild balls with some guy named Bill?
    “Do you wear your ring?” he asks.
    “What ring?” Susan says.
    “You know, your ring?” Jim spins his wedding band around.
    “Oh that ring. You scared me for a minute. Of course, except when I’m doing the dishes. What makes you ask?”
    MacArthur’s horn beeps in front of the house.
    Jim stands on the landing, looking out the window. He tries to wave to Bill MacArthur, whoever the hell he is, but MacArthur doesn’t see him.
    Jim decides to take a shower outside, it will save him the job of cleaning the tub when he’s done. He takes a towel and a bar of soap and goes into the yard, hauling the hose after him.
    This is what men who don’t live in cities do, he thinks, imagining naked men in backyards all over Westchester and up into Connecticut. They shower out of doors, like Abe Lincoln. It’s the hearty way. The real way.
    He picks at the dirt embedded in his chest hair, and rubs what he gets between his fingers. He throws the hose over a tree branch and turns on the water—it is cool if not cold. Jim starts to sing. He lathers himself from head to toe, watching the dirt pour off his body in little muddy rivers. He rinses his hair and, when the soap is out of his eyes, looks into the bushes at the far end of the yard. There are two small faces pressed up against the fence. They are giggling. “Look at his pee-pee,” a small voice says. Jim turns away. They have ruined his moment. Is a man not free to do as he pleases in his own home, he wonders, to wash his own dirt from