Fast Lanes by Jayne Anne Phillips Page A

living room was empty except for a rocking chair in the middle of the naked floor. The room had been dismantled and holes in the plaster repaired; three large portraits in frames of uniform size were covered with painter’s cloths and propped against the wall. Above them were the faded squares of space where they’d hung.
    “Oh,” I said, “you’re painting.”
    “Well.” She surveyed the room. “We were going to paint three years ago, but we never did.” She smiled.
    Upstairs the hall was dusty. Plaster had fallen off the wallsin chunks and exposed the wooden wallboards. Bits of newspaper and chips of paint littered the floor; the master bedroom was clean but unused, and the other bedrooms seemed deserted: furniture pushed to the center of the floor, beds filmed with a fine dust.
    “You take this room,” Thurman said, “I’ll be across the hall.” He picked up a broom and began sweeping off the mattress. “I’ll get you some sheets.”
    I said nothing.
    He put the broom down. “Look, it was me who got the living room ready for painting—two years ago, not three. I’d hired painters to do that room and the outside; my father called them and told them not to come.” Thurman stepped over to the window, looking down at the lawn through streaked glass. “But that grass.… Still, he’s known I was coming for six weeks, maybe he planned this whole scenario. He won’t let me buy him a power mower or do any chores for him. We fight about it every time I come home. This time I’m not fighting.
    “Why is he mad at you?”
    “Because I bailed out eleven years ago. Eleven years is a lot of mad.” Thurman looked up at me. “And don’t be surprised if he doesn’t talk to you. His hearing isn’t really so bad but he pretends to be deaf. He’ll act busy the whole time we’re here.”
    We sat at the edge of the concrete patio in deck chairs.
    “My father was famous. He was known as the best high school football coach in the history of the state of Texas. Universities offered him jobs, but he wouldn’t move his family, he wouldn’t leave this house.” Thurman shook the ice in his empty glass and looked levelly toward the old wooden garage. His father stood in the open doorway with the push mower, frowned down at the turning blades as he pushed the contraption into the grass of the side lawn. “I knew he was famous from the time I was a kid. And my brotherswere famous, six and eight years older than me, both of them drafted to play ball at SMU after starring on his teams. And later I was famous, but not as famous as them. I played on my father’s last team and we went to the play-offs; he was sixty years old.”
    The mower made its high scissoring whirr as the old man shoved it back and forth. The slender wooden handle was as gray and weathered as barn board.
    “His kids aren’t going to cart him off anywhere, and no one in this posh neighborhood had better try it either,” Thurman said. “He was here first. And there are still people around who remember my father. If he wants to let his house fall down, or set it on fire or blow it up, I guess he’s entitled.”
    I watched Thurman’s father. He’d barely acknowledged my presence, though he’d discussed the mower with Thurman as they both knelt to wipe the blades clean with a rag. The old man was lean and stooped but he didn’t seem fragile.
    Thurman picked up the pint bottle between our chairs and colored the ice in his glass with bourbon.
    “Did you win?” I asked him.
    “What?”
    “Win the championships, the last ones.”
    “By the skin of our teeth. We were behind and tried a long last-resort run as the clock ran out. I played end and blocked for our quarterback, a fast little Mexican named Martinez. I was the last one with him, thought it was over and took two of their backs as Martinez jumped the pile of us. I wanted to knock myself out, too much of a coward to stay conscious if we lost. I came to ten minutes later with a concussion,