Cyril in the Flesh

by Ramsey Hootman

  Robin plunks her newly filled glass of water down on the table and seats herself opposite him. He keeps playing, hoping she’ll decide not to say whatever it is she’s going to say and just go back to bed.

  She doesn’t go back to bed. In his peripheral vision he sees her take a sip from her glass. Then she leans forward over the table, resting her head on one bicep. She yawns. “I just want you to be okay,” she says.

  “I will never be okay. Not ever. Not if you die.”

  “And you would be, if I didn’t?”

  A stray zombie shows up. He beats it to death with an axe. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not an option.”

  “Hypothetically.” Her arm unfolds toward him, palm up. “Let’s say the Devil appeared and offered my life in exchange for your soul.”

  “You’re assuming I have one.” He hits pause so he can look at her directly. “But yeah, I’d make that trade. I’d do whatever it took to keep you alive.”

  “Would you go to therapy?”

  He lets out a bark of laughter. “Therapy? For my obviously massive mental health issues?”

  “If I was gonna live, say, another decade.”

  “Sure, why the hell not.” He goes back to Minecraft. A minute later he glances up and sees her eyes are closed. “Your bed might be a little more—”

  “Shh,” she says, sharply. “I’m imagining us. Together. Ten years from now.”

  “Uh... okay.”

  “You teach piano and run a little custom pastry business on the side. Just for fun.”

  He snorts. “Am I still fat?”

  “Yeah. But you don’t hate yourself.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I just wish—” She seems to search for the right word and, not finding it, shakes her head minutely. She yawns again. “I just wish there was something I could do to help you.”

  It’s clear she’s not going to leave him to play Minecraft in peace, so he shuts it off and slots the controllers into place onto either side of the screen. “There’s nothing you can do.” He shoves himself back from the table and stands, taking the Switch back to the stairwell and stooping to set it on the fourth tread. “I should be the one helping you to...” He waves a hand. “Settle your affairs or whatever, but I don’t have a clue what to do, either.” With the house done, there’s nothing left but to sit and wait for the inevitable end.

  She blinks, slowly. “You want something to do?”

  He shrugs. "I could help you make videos or something. For the kids.” He'd done that for Tavis—not expressly because he thought he was going to die, but because he was deployed for long stretches at a time. Cyril had taped him reading picture books and singing little songs. Things like that. Not that this asshole wants to be the one watching Robin try to articulate what her kids need to hear at graduation, marriage, having kids—

  “Oh, God, no,” she says. “Yeah, I... no. I can’t do that.”

  He exhales relief. “Okay. Well. You want to take them to Disneyland or something?”

  She considers that. “No,” she decides, finally. “Marry me.”

  “I—what?”

  “Marry me, Cyril.” She stretches her arms, fists clenched, and then sits up, rubbing her eyes. “In person. Not just by proxy, this time.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “It’ll make the legal stuff a lot easier. With the house.”

  “Oh, well, in that case.”

  He turns to retreat to the couch upstairs, but she stands and comes up behind him, snugging her arms around him from behind. She plants a soft kiss between his shoulder blades. “Who are you to deny the last wish of a dying girl?”

  “Fuck you.” But also: “I can’t.”

  “Really?” She sighs in exasperation. “Can we not do this again?”

  “No, I—” He pulls her arms away and turns to face her. “There’s something I have to do first.”

  “Well, hurry up. Clock’s ticking.”

  Chapter 31

  “Hey, kid.” He taps Seth’s shoulder and, when the kid looks at him, gestures to the screen. “Wrap this up. We’re gonna take a walk.”

  Seth looks at him like he’s speaking in tongues. “A walk?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Come on.”

  Seth screws his face up into a scowl, but does as he is asked, tossing the controller onto the couch as he gets to his feet. “Nora!” he shouts, toward their bedrooms. “We’re going on a walk!”

  “Just us,” Cyril says. “I want to talk to you about something your sister isn't gonna understand.”

  “I understand!” Nora declares, somehow suddenly present.

  Fortunately, he’d prepared for just this contingency. “Kiddo, I left you a cookie on a plate in the kitchen. Seth and I will be back in a little bit. Try not to bother your mom.”

  All he has to say is “cookie,” and she’s dashing down the stairs. Is it just Nora, or are all younger siblings this good at working the system?

  “And yes,” he adds, answering Seth’s expectant look, “you get one too. Later. Come on.”

  He lets Seth go down the stairs first, catching up with the boy as he hunts for his flip flops in the bottom of the closet by the front door.

  “If this is about you and Mom getting married,” Seth says, as they stump down the front steps to the sidewalk, “she already told me.”

  “Uh, that’s funny, because I don’t remember saying yes.”

  Seth looks up in surprise. “You don’t want to marry Mom?”

  “That’s not—” He stops, tries to reformulate the sentence in a way that will make sense to a ten-year-old, and laughs. None of this can possibly be a surprise to the kid at this point; Cyril’s been sleeping in Robin’s bed for weeks. Not to mention their other nighttime activities. “I need to talk to you first.”

  Seth shrugs. “It’s fine with me.” He glances back at the house—wistfully. He is thinking of his game. Or the cookie. Probably both. “Can we—”

  “Gimme a break here, kid.”

  “Sorry,” Seth says, duly chastened.

  Cyril puts a hand on the kid’s head. They walk together in silence, slowly, to the end of the block. When they pause at the corner, Seth looks to him for an indication of which direction they should cross. Instead, Cyril turns to face him, putting a hand on the kid’s shoulder. He remembers having to stoop slightly to do that, only months ago. “Look,” he tells the boy. “The conversation we’re about to have is not about me and your mom. It’s about me and you. And... your dad.”

  “Oh,” Seth says. The last traces of humor fade from his face, and his gaze falls to the ground. Silently, he takes Cyril’s hand, and they cross the street, heading east towards the elementary school and away from the center of town.

  Asking Seth’s permission to marry Robin would have been cutesy and sweet, but it wouldn’t be honest. Because if this asshole objected to fucking Robin due to a lack of informed consent, how much more is it true with this kid? Seth loves him because he’s stepped into the vacuum Tavis left behind. Because the kid is ten, even if this asshole could tell him everything that went down, he wouldn’t understand. All he knows is that his father is gone, and Cyril stepped in.

  But someday, he’s going to Google the whole thing and watch the archived news footage and read the transcripts and the op-eds and think he knows what happened. And if Cyril doesn’t make the effort to tell him now, he’ll never be able to forgive.

  “Thing is, kid, I can’t tell you everything. Some of it you’re still too young to understand, and some of it is just—well, it’s between me and your dad and your mom. I, uh—I wrote a lot of it down. I’m trying to write out the rest. And maybe when you’re an adult I’ll let you read some of it, so you can understand where I’m coming from.” He sucks in a deep breath. “Here’s the thing, kid. I did some really bad things.”

  “I know. You were in jail. Duh.”

  “It’s not just that.” He doesn’t even particularly regret how that part went down. Because, in the en
d, going to prison meant an innocent child was saved. Nothing he might have accomplished as a free man in the past five years could possibly be worth more than that. “When your dad and your mom and I were in college—well, your dad was in boot camp, we were in college—your dad was interested in your mom. Like, he wanted to date her. But he wasn’t sure what to say. So he asked me for help, and I...” He makes a writing motion with one hand. “I wrote a letter to her. And your dad put his name on it.”

  Seth looks at him with eyes as round as moons. “Daddy stole your letter?”

  “No, I mean, he asked me for permission, and I... Well, I let him.”

  “Why?”

  That’s a good fucking question. He looks at the kid, and he realizes he cannot lie. Not even to himself. Cyril and Robin can do whatever they want—fuck, get married—but Seth and his sister are minors. They can’t consent to anything. At the very least, he owes them the truth. “Because I... also, uh. Really liked your mom. And I didn’t think she’d like me.”

  “Why not?”

  He snorts. “Uh... I was fat and kind of a jerk.” Still fat. Even more of a jerk.

  “So?”

  He looks down at the kid. Seth looks back up at him, unblinking. His eyes just like his mother’s, except that something of his father’s frank sincerity lives there, too.

  And in a flash of terrible clarity, this asshole sees the past as it might have been. Where, instead of penning his feelings for Robin and passing them off to Tavis with pretended indifference, he’d confided in his friend. Where Tavis had listened to his fears and insecurities and then looked him in the eye and said that same simple word: So?

  “Yeah, well, I—” He swallows, and then clears his throat. “The main thing is, I screwed up. And then I screwed up even more, because I kept on writing those letters and signing your dad’s name.”

  The puzzled expression on Seth’s face deepens into confusion. “You mean... my dad kept lying to my mom?”

  This asshole knows exactly what is happening here. Seth isn’t seeing his role in this—is giving him the benefit of the doubt—because he wants so badly for Cyril to be the good guy. “Look, kid,” he says, as they come to the next corner. “Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘history is written by the victors?’”

  Seth shakes his head.

  “In this case, it means I'm the one who’s here, alive, telling the story.” Cyril rounds the block instead of crossing again, not because he thinks he’s going to wrap this conversation up in the time it takes to get back home but because he’s not sure he can take much more. “If I was dead and your dad were here, he’d probably tell it very differently. You know me, and you like me, so you’re seeing everything from my point of view. But in your dad’s story, I'd be the villain.”

  A crease appears between Seth’s eyebrows as he tries to puzzle through this line of thought. “You wrote letters to my mom,” he says, finally. As if asking for confirmation that he’s understood the situation correctly.

  “Yeah.”

  “And my dad... married my mom.”

  “Yeah. But that’s—I mean. That’s just the first part. Because after that, your dad wanted out. He wanted to tell your mom the truth.”

  Seth gives Cyril a look that says he might be a kid, but he wasn’t born yesterday. “My dad,” he says, “used your letters to make mom fall in love with him, and then once he married her, he wanted to get rid of you?”

  “No, it’s not—” Cyril sighs. This conversation is not unfolding the way he had planned. “You know a little bit about how your dad and I tried to save Shafik. Your dad was the one who wanted to do all that, because he thought—well, it’s complicated. I can’t really explain all of that to you right now. The main thing is that what your dad was doing was dangerous, and I knew he was in trouble, and I had a chance to warn him, and—and I didn’t.”

  “And he died.”

  “Yeah.”

  Seth is silent. He looks down at his feet. “Oh,” he says, scrunching his toes against the foam-rubber flip flop soles. And there’s so much weight behind that one word. Cyril doesn’t even know if the kid remembers his dad, not really, but he’s felt the weight of his absence. His mom, struggling alone. Every birthday party, graduation, or award ceremony where his peers showed up with two parents. The awkward silences where his father should have been.

  They walk the rest of the way home without speaking. Cyril stops on the sidewalk path leading up to the front porch, in case the kid wants to go in alone. But Seth stops too. He stares at the ground some more, chewing on his upper lip. Then he takes a breath.

  “You made a really bad choice,” he says.

  “One I have wished I could take back every second of every minute since.”

  Seth looks up at him. Expectant.

  This asshole hasn’t the faintest clue what the boy is waiting for. He wants to turn away, to go inside and share cookies with the kids and never speak of this again. But he can’t. He won’t run. Won’t hide. Not anymore. He forces himself to look the kid in the eye. Pressure builds in his chest until, finally, he can’t contain it anymore. “I’m sorry,” he says. And with the words come tears. “I’m so sorry, kid.”

  There is no pause at all between his first strangled sob and Seth’s skinny arms thrown wide around his middle. “I forgive you,” the boy says, crying too. “I forgive you.”

  Finally, Cyril gives the kid a pat on the back and moves him gently away. And because Seth is ten, he opens his mouth to ask about the cookie. Cyril preempts him with a nod and a wave toward the house.

  “Say that again when you’re eighteen,” Cyril whispers, watching the boy dash up the steps. “And maybe I’ll believe you.”

  Chapter 32

  This is a story about an asshole who would like the woman he loves to know that there’s no greater demonstration of his feelings for her than letting her dress him in leather fisherman’s sandals, linen shorts, and a cream-colored silk Hawaiian shirt.

  “There,” she says, stepping back to survey the whole package. “You look—”

  “Like a fat tourist?”

  “You look cool.”

  “I am, in fact, sweating bullets.”

  “What’s the opposite of cold feet?” She disappears into their closet and, when she comes out, tucks a square of pale green silk into his shirt pocket, pausing to arrange it artfully. “You know you want me.”

  He hooks an arm around her ribcage, pulling her close. “I’ll take you right here.”

  She holds a hand up between their faces, then cocks her head to one side, listening. “Car’s here. Go on. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “You think I just take orders from you now?” He releases her.

  “You always have.” She shoos him with a hand. “Run along.”

  “Yeah, I don’t run.” But he goes.

  She has rented a vintage Lincoln Continental limousine that looks like it just drove out of a seventies political thriller, shiny as a pair of patent leather shoes. Robin’s father had kicked the bucket before Cyril ever met her, but he still feels like the old man would have gotten a kick out of it. When the driver—dressed in a suit from the same era—sees him on the porch, she steps out of the driver’s seat, leaving the motor running, and bows slightly as she opens the rear door.

  It’s slick, after he gets himself wedged inside. A plush leather bench seat the same cream color as his shirt (had Robin planned that?) faces a diminutive analog television topped with a mini bar. Two narrow seats on either side of the television look backward, perfectly situated for a tag-along journalist or whomever the political fat cat in the back was currently interrogating.

  He hears the front door slam and looks up to see Robin trotting down the steps in heels that match his shirt. She is wearing a beaded flapper dress, with a fringe that ends mid-thigh.

  He keys the electric window, which to his surprise still works, albeit slowly. “Wrong era,” he says.

  She nods as the chauffeur opens the door again.
“I look fabulous.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  She hops in next to him, tossing her little clutch purse onto the opposite seat. “Say it.”

  His eyes follow the slim line of her dress downward. “You are… delectable.”

  She slides an arm around his shoulders. “Oh, that’s a nice five-dollar word. Any more where that came from?” Her eyes leave him, briefly, as the driver’s door opens and the chauffeur slides in. “Thanks, June!” The driver tosses a silent wave before pulling into the street.

  He clears his throat. “Does that thing, uh—”

  “June? Can you roll up the divider?”

  Another wave. The divider slides up. Like the windows, it’s tinted nearly black.

  “Did you cut her tongue out?”

  Robin laughs. “I told her not to talk to you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want the chauffeur crying in our wedding photos, that’s why.” She leans forward, reaching for her purse, giving him a view of the back of her dress, or rather lack thereof. It hangs off her shoulders in a loose U that drops all the way to the small of her back. “Lemme text Greta and let her know we’re leaving.” She pulls her phone out and brings up Google maps. “Traffic’s clear, at least for now. We might actually get there early.”

  He runs a finger from the nape of her neck to the bottom of her spine.

  She smacks his arm away without looking up from her phone. “You are not messing up my look before we get our photos taken. Oh! I gotta text the photographer, too.”

  He snorts. “Photographer.”

  She tucks her phone back into her purse and turns to face him with a grin. “We’re gonna look amazing. Trust me.”

  “We look like drug dealers.”

  “Or mafioso!” She grins as she tugs his shirttails down. “You look so—” She searches for the word, and then shrugs. Her smile softens. “Come here, big guy.” She grabs his collar and leans in for a kiss.