I began here by noting how Rob used observations of others (including me) to fuel Float Plan. But what I believe makes this book a fulfilling read is the fact that it is pure Rob, a creative attempt to expose and maybe even celebrate the state of being human. Again, I’ll refer to something Rob included in one of our children’s journals. It’s a line Rob wrote to our daughter Sam, one she shared at his celebration of life. After describing toddler Sam’s antics, he noted that he had mistakenly turned the journal upside down before he wrote that day.
“That’s okay,” he wrote. “I’m a little upside down.”
Aren’t we all?
— Maria Hiaasen, August 2018
Chapter 1
The masked algebra teacher was drunk to the point of embalmment, as the blood orange machine dented his lap. Will Larkin bought the chainsaw online (“Choose the Best Chainsaw for You!”) and strummed its greasy fangs with his left index finger. A prick, ouch. He squeezed his finger to make blood, a drib. He drank again from a pitcher of mojitos infused with enough Myers’s dark rum to stoke a beach bonfire. Raising his pollen mask before each gust of drinking, the fall allergy sufferer knew he needed a posse of mojitos when the time came to act.
Nursing his first injury involving lawn machinery, Will left the back deck of his rental townhouse and went inside for a Band-Aid, the baby ones. He hoped his wife left him that much when she moved out this morning, hoped Terri at least left him Band-Aids and the biblical “Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker.” She left both – plus six coffee mugs from a fruitful litter of coffee mug parents. Baby bandaged, Will returned to his deck and mojitos. He needed an accomplice, but his network consisted of one dog, two friends, two parents, and Terri. He didn’t know any new people.
He waited for the recessed light of dusk. A red-shouldered hawk snagged a chickadee off their backyard A-framed feeder – a puff of dusty gray feathers parachuted to the ground.
Will patted his Poulan 14-inch chainsaw.
In time, partner, all in good time.
• • •
Last Sunday, omens.
Will forgot to put on his watch, a major breach in his morning routine. And when he reached for his off-white, un-lettered coffee mug, he sideswiped the cupboard’s corner and decapitated the ceramic handle. Will picked up the severed handle, light as a bird wing. Then, his Briggs & Stratton lawn mower that had never let him down wouldn’t start. Will pulled and pulled the starter rope until the handle snapped out of his grasp and whipped his hand. There would be no mowing.
Will moped over to their back deck where Terri was reading The New York Times. Every Sunday they carved up the Times – Terri crab-picking out “Week in Review and Business”. They believed themselves to be the only people under 30 who still got a newspaper. A couple of young-old souls, Will would say, gobbling up the sports section. He avoided the news, which made him antsy. News was always so loud.
“Don’t you care about climate change? Stormwater run-off? Syria?”
“I care about you.”
“I mean caring about something bigger than ourselves, bigger than us, Will.”
“I care about mowing our yard.”
“I’m being serious.”
He stared out into their woodsy backyard as if it was an ocean’s wobbly horizon. “Backyard watching” was his occasional Sunday morning pastime. The grandfatherly activity mystified Terri – that and how her husband waited, each year, for the return of a box turtle that once occupied the northern corner of the rental lot. The turtle never returned, a turtle he named Petey. Petey, the Non-Returning Turtle. Pining for a ghost turtle never struck Terri as something they both could enjoy.
“All right. Here’s something I care about,” Will said. “Maryland should have a law that makes air free at gas stations. No more paying four or five quarters for air.”
Who isn’t in favor of free air?
“You don’t know what the problem is, do you?” she said.
Will studied his hands, which appeared to be sprouting age spots. He would be 30 next year.
“Are you still pissed about the lobsters?”
In a rare solo run to Wegmans, Will found himself distracted by the store’s overhead train set and, in general, by the cavernous, cult-inducing Wegmanian vibe – but mainly by the awesome train. He wandered over to the seafood department where five, banded lobsters were stacked atop one another in a feature-less tank. He imagined a more exotic and natural existence for them. Could they survive in the creek way behind their townhouse? He had seen crayfish in Dan’s Creek and what were they but practice lobsters? The jovial man behind the seafood counter was more than happy to bag up five, 2-pound lobsters from Maine. Will left Wegmans forgetting every item on his list (TP, milk, pulp-free OJ, some sort of spatula Terri wanted) and returned home with $110 worth of live lobsters. And Wegman’s peach mango salsa. Never forget that.
While Terri took a rare Saturday afternoon nap, Will scurried down-slope to the creek bed with his special groceries. Lobsters, which are not prone to frolicking, hunkered down in the shallow slippery water and assumed their same docile positions in the bare fish tank at Wegmans. In a further disappointment, days later Will discovered the Freedom Crustaceans in no way adapted to life in the wild. They croaked. And the household still needed TP, milk, pulp-free OJ, and some sort of spatula.
“No, Will. This isn’t about your lobsters.”
“Then help me out here.”
“The problem is,” Terri said, “you’re here, but you’re not. You stare off into the back yard. You drift away. You’ve been drifting away, and I’m the only one who seems to notice or care. You don’t even know when you’re not here with me.”
“I’m here, I’m here. What do you want, Terri? Tell me.”
“I want a gazebo.”
Two years ago, their neighbors built a redwood-stained gazebo. Buffered by blooming forsythia, a 30-foot wooden walkway led from the Dunhams’ back door to the screened gazebo, which stood on five posts tucked into the woods both townhouses shared this side of Dan’s Creek. Chestnut and live oaks nearly suffocated the back yards of the houses built here in 1975 – the last suburban parcel developed in Anderson Woods. On fall nights, the elderly Dunhams could be seen dancing in the gazebo. Show-offs.
“I think a gazebo would be a nice change,” Terri said.
There was nothing wrong with their back yard. Plus, they had never talked about gazebos – especially on Sundays.
“Why do we need a gazebo?”
He heard the machine-gunning of a red-headed woodpecker drilling a tulip poplar. Chasing the morning sun, Will moved his deck chair. Clouds like shaving cream mounds slipped across the sky, as seashell chimes fluttered from a neighboring porch.
“A gazebo extends a home, creates a new room in the woods. Gives you a new perspective, a new place to be.”
Had she enrolled in a continuing education course in architectural drafting? Studied the pros and cons of cedar vs. pine gazebos? Vinyl vs. aluminum? Octagon vs. rectangle? Did she want her gazebo screened or one gone commando?
“You want a place to go that’s still your house but away from me,” Will said.
“I didn’t say that.”
She was saying that.
“We’re not getting a gazebo, are we?”
Will looked over at the neighbor’s yard. The stilted gazebo looked like it might tear itself from the townhouse and raft through their woods. Someone