In the Shape of a Man

by Paul Clayton

  “You do it or I will!”

  “That’s crazy! We can’t do that!”

  A plate crashed and Mommy came out of the kitchen and went into Christine’s room. The door slammed and Reynaldo could hear Mommy and Christine crying in there. Reynaldo wondered what the pound was.

  Later Reynaldo heard Daddy come out of the kitchen and turn the TV on. He came down the hall as far as Reynaldo’s open door and paused. Reynaldo watched him stare at Christine’s closed door. Daddy turned and seemed surprised to see Reynaldo watching him. He smiled sadly. “How are you doing, Reynaldo?”

  “Okay, Daddy. I love you Daddy.”

  “I love you too, Reynaldo. You had better get ready for bed.”

  “Okay, Daddy.” Reynaldo got down off his chair and flipped down the covers on his bed. What’s a pound, Daddy?”

  “Ah, nothing. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

  “Is Mommy gonna take me back?”

  “Nobody’s taking you anywhere. Don’t worry. Mommy’s just upset. She needs to talk to somebody, that’s all. Now you better get to bed.”

  Allen took a beer from the fridge. He went into the living room and sat in front of the TV. He popped the can and took a long pull. He picked up the TV remote and surfed the channels. He stopped at the cartoon network, seeing Wile E. Coyote tying himself to a rocket. The Road Runner blasted by him and he lit the fuse, that look of smug superiority on his face. The fuse burned down but instead of hurtling him down the highway to catch the Road Runner, the rocket blew up.

  Allen stared, not laughing. How pathetic is that? he thought. Even a stupid cartoon seemed to mirror his life. Wasn’t he every bit as ineffective? Hadn’t everything he tried to save his family, to repair it and keep it together, blown up? He’d tried to get himself and Tina into counseling; she wouldn’t hear of it. He’d tried to get her to go with him to see a priest; she wouldn’t go. He’d even recruited her brother, Tomas, to make his case to her. That was a bust. Allen had been in the next room, listening. He remembered Tina’s voice slowly rising to anger until she was shouting at Tomas, “Don’t tell me how to raise my kids! This is my house! This is none of your business!”

  Allen took another sip of the beer. He’d written the lawyer, but hadn’t heard anything back. He’d even included a self-addressed, stamped envelope, for crying out loud. Everything he tried was checkmated. It was hopeless. He glanced up at where the family pictures used to sit on the mantle. Reynaldo wasn’t the only one who would be hurt by this. There was Christine too. What was all this anger and fighting doing to her? She seemed to have already found her escape into the TV. When she watched it she seemed willfully oblivious to everything around her.

  And, Allen thought, what was he doing to cope? He became suddenly aware of the cold can in his hand. Other than drinking more and more? A kind of paralysis seemed to be slowly taking him over. Whenever he sat down and tried to think logically about their problems, the specter of a breakup loomed out of the gloomy fog like a shoal of rocks spotted by the tillerman at the last moment, too late to steer the ship to safety. Then his mind would grow numb and shut down.

  “Wait a minute,” a little voice in his head seemed to say. “If one thing doesn’t work, you go on to the next. You don’t give up!”

  Allen blinked dully. Had he given up? He drained the beer can, washing away the discussion. “I don’t know,” he said aloud. He went into the kitchen and returned with another beer. He sat and popped the top. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered. His life was turning to shit. Pure shit. He put his feet on the coffee table and surfed the channels, settling on the Nature channel. The camera slowly panned across a jungle river bank. The announcer was droning on in a thick British accent about the giant snake, the anaconda.

  Reynaldo couldn’t sleep. He got out of bed and went out into the hallway. He saw Daddy sitting in front of the TV. Reynaldo looked back down the hallway at Christine’s door. He knew Mommy would not come out tonight. She would sleep in Christine’s room. Reynaldo crept down to the living room. Daddy didn’t hear him approach as he watched the TV with his back to him. On the TV, an animal that looked like a large rat hurriedly crossed a jungle clearing. It came to a swamp and stood on its hind legs, quickly looking around, its little black animal eyes full of worry. It jumped into the water, making a splash, and started swimming. Somewhere else, a big snake raised its head at the sound. It slithered down the mud bank and entered the waters of the swamp. The rat thing looked around suddenly, sensing danger, then swam forward in a fury. The snake went under the water. Reynaldo watched open-mouthed as the water erupted and the coils of the snake engulfed the rat thing like huge thick ropes. The rat thing struggled frantically and the snake encircled it with more coils. Reynaldo saw the rat thing’s eyes full of fear and pleading. He imagined Mommy’s face on the rat thing as more coils encircled it, the look of fear freezing into a look of motionless nothingness. He watched, enthralled.

  Daddy turned and saw Reynaldo. “Reynaldo! What are you doing out of bed?”

  “Sorry, Daddy. I wanted a hug.”

  Daddy quickly changed the channel to the news. He got up and came around the couch.

  “Daddy,” said Reynaldo. “Are there really big snakes like that outside?”

  Daddy smiled sadly. “Nah. In the jungle, maybe. There are people who have boas as pets, but they don’t get that big.”

  “Why not, Daddy?”

  “Oh, they probably don’t get enough food to grow that big… and being kept in a cage, they can’t grow that much.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Daddy said. He knelt to Reynaldo. “Now, you go to sleep, okay?”

  “Okay, Daddy.”

  Reynaldo got into bed and Daddy turned out the light. Reynaldo thought about the snake on the TV. He wished he had a giant snake for a pet. He could keep it under his bed. If Mommy hit him again he could send it out at night to squeeze her neck like it did the rat thing.

  Reynaldo heard Daddy turn the TV on out in the living room to some people laughing. A beer can popped. Reynaldo remembered the other place he’d lived at before Mommy and Daddy took him. The lady there smelled like flowers. She never hugged him and he couldn’t remember her face. But she never yelled at him and she never hit him. There were two other kids there and the sick man who was always in the bed, and a friendly cat, and a shade tree in the yard. There was a sandbox too, and a little pool. Reynaldo wished he could go back. He would miss Daddy. And he would miss Christine too. Maybe Daddy could go with him. No. Daddy would not leave Christine. Daddy loved Reynaldo, but he loved Christine too.

  Reynaldo sighed sleepily. He wished he could go to work with Daddy in the mornings. He fell asleep.

  Allen sat in the darkened van across from the closed Olympic gas station. Tina had locked herself in Christine’s room and he had been too upset to sleep, so he had taken a ride. Five, six years, how long had it been since his mother had died? Sometimes it seemed like she was still alive and that the phone might ring and she would be on the other end. When she was alive she would never identify herself when she called, never say hello, just launch into a discussion, asking him about this or that. She was a little odd, had been for the last ten years of her life, but harmless and always warm and kind. What would she think of all of this craziness?

  Allen grew tired of sitting. He started the van and drove to McCoy’s. Four big Harley Davidson hogs sat in the parking lot. Inside, the old bartender sat in front of the taps again, the TV on. As Allen entered, rough laughter and cursing came from the back room. He sat a few stools down from the old man and nodded a greeting.

  “The same?” the old man asked.

  “Yeah. My name’s Allen, by the way. What’s yours?”

  “They call me Lou.”

  Lou set the tall pint of beer on the bar and slid it down toward Allen. Allen was about to say something when raucous laughter echoed from the back room. A man came out carrying a pool cue menacingly, like a weapon. He had a full bea
rd and long hair and wore a cutoff dungaree jacket, like a Hells Angel biker. The old man, Lou, raised his head inquisitively.

  “Tar come by yet?” the biker asked him.

  Lou shook his head and the biker went back into the other room without a glance at Allen. Allen looked away from Lou to the TV where a basketball game was in progress. He drank half the beer down and felt better. He stared at the bottles on the bar. “Lou,” he called. “Give me a shot of bourbon whiskey, will you?”

  Lou took a bottle from under the bar and wordlessly poured a double into a tumbler, sliding it down to Allen. Allen took a sip. He felt the heat of it course down into his belly and he felt lighter, serene. Why did everything in his life have to be so fucked up? He watched the game for a while. He took another large gulp of the whiskey and seemed to ascend up into the blackness of the night sky. Looking down, he followed the darkened roads back the way he had come until he came to his house. He passed effortlessly through the locked door and floated down the hall. He hovered over his wife and then his two children in turn as they slept in the darkened house. He longed to reach down and touch them, but he could not.

  Chapter 18

  Tawny swept the hair from her station and thought again of the Mexican woman. She wondered if she’d see her this evening. The week before, when Tawny had been sitting on the steps, the woman had walked past and her belly had looked empty and she didn’t have her kids with her. The woman had also seemed troubled and hadn’t looked over to smile a greeting at Tawny the way she usually did. Tawny had watched her walk slowly up the hill and wondered if she was all right. Had she had her baby? Or had she lost it? The woman had not shown up the rest of the week and now Tawny worried about her.

  Vince Rinaldi came in the shop and took off his jacket. Tawny smiled and waved him into her chair, glad to have someone to talk with to take her mind off of things. Vince looked great, as usual, and Tawny enjoyed the attention he gave her. The last time he was in he’d complemented her choice of shoes and her slacks. “They show off your figure nicely,” he’d said.

  “When are you and skater boy gonna drop by my cabin?” Vince asked.

  Tawny’s smile faded at the reference to Rad. Since he’d gotten involved with the Save the Mountain people he had seemed a little distracted and distant. And there had been that chick that drove him home. Despite her telling herself that it was nothing, it worried her a little.

  “One of these days,” she said. “Rad’s schedule is really hectic now. He’s involved with an environmental group.”

  Vince’s hand had snaked from under the part in the cloth she’d covered him with and he touched her on the back of the hand that held the comb. An electric tingle went through her.

  “You could come by yourself, you know.”

  Tawny smiled and pulled her hand away. “How much are houses going for up at the lake now?” she said.

  After Vince left, Tawny again swept her station. As she put the broom away it was close to four and quiet. Outside in the mall there was a fair amount of foot traffic—mostly teens just let out of school; they moved along in pairs or small crowds, checking each other out slyly. Across the corridor in front of the toy store, a Hispanic couple talked heatedly. Dressed in a peasant gown, the woman was small, slender and beautiful, despite the penny-sized birthmark on her cheek. She seemed to be pleading with the man. He was about twenty years older than her, a head taller, and reminded Tawny of a picture she had seen in one of her textbooks in school of an Inca Indian. The hat he wore was certainly from that part of the world—a woven woolen job with earflaps hanging down. Looking like a couple from a visiting ethnic dance troupe, they would have drawn stares a dozen years earlier, Tawny realized, but not now, and not here on the San Francisco Peninsula.

  Wishing a customer would come in, Tawny looked over at the empty chairs. She looked back out at the corridor. The woman was now walking off, her head down, a worried look on her face. Tawny looked back to where the man had been and was surprised to see him still standing there, staring straight at her. She looked away, fussing with the combs on the Formica topped counter. She looked back. He was still staring at her. He smiled, evidently enjoying her discomfort.

  Tawny felt a chill. She acted as if she’d heard the phone ringing and went over and picked it up. As she brought it to her ear and said hello, she looked back at the man, but he had gone and she sighed with relief. “Well, thank goodness for that,” she said to the dial tone, then hung up.

  Tawny took the magazines off the seats and returned them to the rack. She thought again of the Mexican cleaning woman around the corner from her house and wondered if she’d be walking up the hill today. She really should speak to her. How long had she been saying hello and watching her make the climb up the hill to the bus? Three or four months? Four or five? Six or seven?

  Tawny looked out the plate glass window. In the toy store across the corridor, a boy who couldn’t have been more than seventeen, carried a sleeping baby in a baby carrier on his chest. They were having them younger and younger. And where the hell was the mother? She must be in another store, Tawny decided. The boy took the baby off his chest and lay the carrier on its back on a stack of cardboard cartons. Tawny didn’t think that was safe. If she was the mom she’d give him a good talking to. The boy moved off a little and another teen came down the aisle. He started tugging at one of the neighboring stacks of cartons, trying to get a toy down to look at. Tawny watched in amazed horror as the baby’s carrier rocked back and forth. She was starting for the door when, to her horror, the cartons tumbled and the baby went down.

  “Oh my God!” she cried, “Jesus Christ!” She threw down her apron and opened the door just as the original boy returned and picked up the baby—upside down by one of its legs! It was a toy, Tawny realized, a very lifelike toy, but a toy just the same. “You goddamned brat,” Tawny said under her breath. “That’s it,” she declared to no one as she retrieved her apron from the floor. “It’s time to go home.”

  Tawny began closing up. As she readied to leave, she remembered that tonight was the City Council meeting about the road and houses they wanted to put on San Bruno Mountain. Rad was scheduled to speak, along with some other local people, to try and convince the Council members to spare the trees, his big beautiful medicine trees, as he called them. Tawny felt a glow as she imagined him addressing the local powers that be. She was proud of him already.

  Chapter 19

  Two days after Allen’s fight with Tina, things still had not gotten back to normal. Tina and Christine ate their dinners alone. After they finished and vacated the kitchen, Allen would take Reynaldo in and feed him. This evening after they finished, Allen decided to go see Tina’s brother and sister-in-law. Maybe he could again enlist them to talk to her. He didn’t feel good about constantly bothering Tina’s family with their problem, and it seemed disrespectful of Tina, but he felt that he had no choice any more. He cleaned the dishes and took Reynaldo to his room, putting him to bed.

  Allen had always liked Tina’s brother, Tomas. Tomas’s large, sad eyes hinted that he had seen more than his share of life’s sufferings in his almost-sixty years. And he seemed to have turned his life’s observations into an earthy wisdom that many native-born Americans lacked. Tomas was only about two or three years away from retiring from his job at the fire department. Allen calculated that Tomas, as a fire fighter with thirty years under his belt, probably made as much money as Allen did working as a engineer at FMC—not bad for an immigrant with only a high school education. Tomas’s wife Susan was Anglo, and worked as a secretary for the school board. They had worked hard, saved, and done well. They owned a house in Millbrae, a nice suburb of San Francisco, and together they had raised a son, Hector, who was now an undergrad at UC Berkeley, majoring in political science. When last Allen had talked to him, Hector said that he intended to go on to study law at Boalt Hall. Allen marveled at how well Hector had turned out so far. Obviously, Tomas and Susan knew a thing or two about child rearing.
This realization buoyed up Allen’s hopes as he rang their bell.

  Tomas opened the door, smiled and let Allen in.

  “Who is it?” Susan called from the kitchen.

  “Allen.”

  “Oh,” said Susan, coming into the hall. “Are you guys fighting again?”

  “Yeah,” said Allen. “Tina’s angry with Reynaldo again. She hit him across the knuckles for messing up on his writing.”

  “Come on in the kitchen,” said Tomas.

  Allen followed them and sat down at the kitchen table. Tomas took a can of beer from the fridge and popped the top, handing it to Allen. Susan busied herself washing some dishes in the sink. Tomas frowned in concentration as he sliced an onion on a cutting board on the table. Some kind of sauce was simmering on the stove.

  “What’s so bad about a rap across the knuckles?” Tomas said, pausing in his slicing. “I got my share of them when I was growing up.”

  “Yes,” said Susan, “and you probably deserved it.” She smiled at Allen. “And so did our son, Hector. But not from me.”

  “Yeah,” said Tomas slowly, “I’m the enforcer.” He winked at Allen. “Every kid can use a good smack once in a while.”

  “Yeah,” said Allen, “but she hit him so hard he’s got a bruise.”

  “What?” said Tomas wryly. “Did he need to go to the hospital?”

  Allen smiled a sad smile. “Of course not. It’s not that bad, Tomas. But it seems like Tina never lets up on him. Why can’t she let him play more? Why does she insist he sit in his room all the time writing and memorizing definitions?”

  “Allen,” said Tomas in a brotherly tone. “My father had a good job with the Government in Mexico City. We had a big house, servants... But he wanted his kids to grow up in America. When he came up from Mexico, he spoke hardly any English, and he had a wife and two children to support. He taught himself the language. He used to study words from the dictionary every night.