No one makes him do this. He can make money somewhere else.
He will get home and slide into bed and he’ll want to sleep and already he knows he’ll be out of bed by twelve, roaming the house, trying to empty himself of the numbers still moving through his mind, and finally he will give in, sit down, turn the TV on and stare. Stare for hours. Two hours or three. Bright infomercials and lost sitcoms and sad, heart-felt commercials. He likes the commercials best of all. And over time his mind will stop working. Finally it will let go. Emptied, dumbed down, left tired and somehow cold.
Then he’ll sleep.
This is his ride home. Guilty and tired and the numbers moving. Once more folding the results, turning them over, seeing them again.
And of course, like always now, just as it’s been for the past year, the numbers don’t work for him. The numbers aren’t right.
He’s never seen a number he doesn’t understand.
But he doesn’t understand these numbers. The company’s numbers.
And he thinks something’s wrong with him. He thinks that, finally, the company has moved past him. He thinks that, finally, he’s not able to understand. Finally the company needs someone else. Someone older. Someone more experienced.
Someone smarter.
He doesn’t understand. The numbers are balanced. They’re checked. The auditors sign off. His staff okays them. The bankers smile happily. Wall Street nods and nods.
But he can’t touch something inside the numbers. Can’t see some part of them.
And he thinks that Robbie always knows. Always, he’s sure. Always, he understands.
But there’s something, somewhere, that Cliff does not understand.
He doesn’t know how to change this. He doesn’t know who to ask for help.
How does Robbie see it?
The car hits another plate, lifting and even turning so slightly to the left now, stomach emptied and that glimpse of his mom and for some long second he even thinks that this will be his moment, his epiphany, the second when it comes to him and he sees and, finally, he can touch the very bottom, the very edge of the numbers he doesn’t understand.
And of course it is not that moment. You don’t see when your epiphanies come. They just come.
And so still, like every night, something, somewhere, does not make sense.
I wonder if I could maybe wake up the kids for a little while.
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