by Chris Stuck
She mimics you again. “‘Black girl, are you not self-aware?’ I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about half the time. You’re such a freak.”
“If that’s true, then why do I feel so out of place here?”
“Elementary, my dear Black boy. It’s because you’re a bigger freak than everyone else.”
Again, she’s right. You are kind of a freak.
* * *
Five months ago, you and Lily were living in Los Angeles, barely scraping by. For years, you both stitched together adjunct teaching jobs at five different community colleges, logging a grip of miles on the old Subaru Brat you shared, all so you could cobble together a whopping $24K a year each. You have a master’s in English lit, a dissertation shy of a PhD, but you haven’t quite harvested the fruits of your labor. The closest you’ve come is teaching composition. Rhetorical monkey work. Essays and shit. It sucked.
Eventually, you guys tried your hands at editing, freelance life, textbooks and manuals. You have an eye for detail, a knack for words and rules, but unlike her, you were too much of an asshole to really care about the work. You said goodbye to office jobs and ended up driving trucks just like your father because it was easy. You wouldn’t say you’re a pessimist—others would—but you always had doubts about the longevity of your academic career anyway. Even through college, you kept your CDL up to date, just in case your life somehow shit the bed, which apparently it had. It was the one thing you never told your father, that you were still driving. As far as he knew, you were a published academic, the head Negro homing in on chair of some English department. Whatever bullshit you could come up with to make him think success had somehow kissed you on the taint.
Through the lies, you wondered why you even went into academia. Why did you break your ass to earn two, almost three, degrees in something you now think is about as interesting as Parcheesi? Books. Yeah, words. You got it. You were just bored with it now. You were much more comfortable in a Peterbilt or a Mack, double-clutching, bouncing along, a full load of rock or sand or rubble steadying your course. Mr. Blue Collar but with an Education. After a while, though, even that grated on you. You thought you’d become your father. Your only soothing thought was, At least I’m in LA. Thank God it’s not Rock City. And that’s exactly when you were pulled back.
In April, you got a call from your father’s foreman, Frosty. (His last name is Flake. You’re not making that up.) He said your father had been acting funny, “forgetful and such.” Your father had made a few deliveries to the wrong locations. One day, he dumped a load of riprap in the middle of Broad Street and was found wandering from his truck, muttering, “How do I get home from here?”
You flew back and drove straight to the quarry. At the town limits, you saw the WELCOME TO ROCK CITY sign, and the taste of vomit burned your throat. You hadn’t seen your dad in five years, not since your mom died, and when you went into the quarry office, he was reclining on a sofa with his legs crossed, his ratty fedora covering his face. Frosty had stopped letting him drive, but your father kept showing up for work. You took him home and spent four hours trying to convince him you were his son. For some reason, he wouldn’t stop smiling. “Dad, c’mon,” you said. “This isn’t funny.” You hoped he would magically be okay so you could leave, but he kept saying, “Nah. My son doesn’t look like you.”
When you asked how you looked different, he gave you a grim glance, rubbing his hands together like he was cold. “Well, for one thing,” he said, “you’re Black.”
* * *
Say, “Where’s Tyrone?”
“Don’t where’s-Tyrone me,” Billie says. “Jesus, this is the lamest affair ever. All we talk about is your wife and my husband.”
“Who said we’re having an affair?”
“Me,” she says. “Makes it sound more exciting.”
“I’m just making conversation, Black girl.”
She stabs out her cigarette. “Ty’s at home, dickhead, probably snoring in front of the TV. Happy?”
Hesitate. Then say, “Why the hell did you marry him?”
“Who else am I gonna marry? You?” she says. “You left before I had the chance to chase after your goofy ass.”
Look away. Don’t acknowledge that. Turn it around. Say, “Do you love him?”
“Enough. Do you love Lily?”
Shrug and say, “Enough.”
“See, don’t ask shit like that if you can barely answer yourself.” She puts two fingers in her mouth and whistles to the bartender for another drink. “You know Ty hasn’t gone anywhere except work for ten years. Just sits his skinny butt in that recliner all night, wakes up the next morning in the same clothes. He could get a job testing recliners he’s in it so much.”
“Does he eat?”
“Yeah, the recliner’s got a little refrigerator built into it. He keeps snacks in there.”
You want to laugh. But don’t. It’ll look bad. Say, “Interesting,” and let it go.
You actually know Tyrone. Or, you’ve seen him at the yard. He drives a truck at the quarry, too. Who doesn’t? He’s the only guy you’ve ever seen who smokes cigarettes and chews tobacco at the same damn time. A little guy, kind of mopey and timid. The fact that he and Billie are married has got to be one of the wonders of the world.
“At least he’s not cheating on you.”
“You kidding? That TV’s his girlfriend, got him pussy whipped,” she says. “We got a thousand channels, and he knows what’s on every last one of them.” She brings her mug to her lips, is about to take a sip but then pulls it away. “Not to mention he can’t drink. One beer and he’s gotta take a nap.”
Something’s really in her tonight, but you don’t think it’s the alcohol. You’ve seen her more smashed than this and didn’t learn half as much about her marriage. Maybe she senses it’s the end. You’ve been distant lately, shrugging off drinking with her. Don’t think about it now. Say, “Is Ty religious or something?”
“No, just boring. He don’t even wanna screw.” She swirls the last of her beer in her mug. “His first wife died on him. I mean, like, literally. They were doing it, and something, a vein, I think, popped in her head.”
“An aneurysm.”
“She keeled over right on him. He’s been messed up ever since.”
“Jesus,” you sincerely say. You aren’t heartless.
A server who has just come on shift, the skinniest girl over twenty-one you’ve ever seen, walks over to your booth balancing a tray of beers. Her name is Tammy Faye. She has no calves. She sets Billie’s refill down, and a swallow spills on the table. “Hey, girl,” Billie says. “I’m not paying for that.”
“It’s your last anyway,” Tammy says. “Musty said you’re drinking us dry.”
“Well, tell Musty his butt stinks.”
Tammy leaves, and Billie’s right back on Tyrone.
“You know, I catch him crying sometimes. I mean, slobbering on himself.”
“He can’t get past it, huh?”
“What do you think?”
Say, “Maybe you should just get out of here.” You mean the town, the state, the country, shit, the planet, so she can see the world, get some perspective. But she thinks you just mean the bar.
“After this beer,” she says. “We’ll go then.” She lights another cigarette off the one she’s finishing. “You know what her name was?” She looks at you and smiles devilishly. “Delilah. She was white, of course.”
Say, “Of course.”
“But ain’t that pretty? Delilah?” She says it like it’s the name of her own child. “I wish my parents had named me that.”
“Then you’d be dead, and he’d be crying over you.”
“Yeah, but who the hell names a girl Wilhelmina anymore? Ma and Daddy really dicked me on that.” She lets out one chuckle and falls into a trance. Then she wakes up as if an alarm’s gone off. “Why are we talking about him?” she says. “This is the lamest affair ever.”
Say, “Black girl
, I think we’ve known this from the beginning.”
* * *
For some reason, disliking your roots astonishes your wife. At dinner tonight you had one of the dumbest arguments ever. It was junk food night. That’s where you are in your marriage. You name your dinners. You have fish night, chicken night, beef night, vegetarian night, Chinese night. There are so many nights, so many different combinations, that you’ve lost track and have to keep a calendar on the fridge.
Since it was junk food night, Lily had just brought home a take-and-bake pizza from a place called the Pizza Castle, which is inside your local gas station. You being you, you had to comment. You were already late meeting Billie, and maybe the guilt surrounding that made you a little skewed. “The words ‘Pizza’ and ‘Castle,’” you said, “should never be paired ever. It’s like naming a Mexican place the Taco Château. It doesn’t make any sense.” She ignored you and handed you a slice. You took a bite and had to keep talking. “This isn’t even pizza. It has crushed-up Doritos on it. The Italians would spit on us for eating this.”
“Who cares what the Italians think?” she said. “It’s a taco pizza, and I like it. It’s different. I’m sorry to say, but ever since we’ve been here, you’ve become an elitist.”
“What’re you talking about? I’ve always been an elitist. How do you think I got out of this place?”
“Stop acting like a snob. This is where you’re from.”
“You’re lucky,” you said. “You actually like where you’re from. Do you know how hard I tried to lose my twang? I listened to zillions of language tapes just so I don’t sound like I’m on Hee Haw.”
Your father, whom you’d already fed, was in his room turning his electric razor on and off. Since you were little, he’s played the trumpet every night after dinner, but now he confuses the trumpet with the razor, and you have to listen to Flight of the Fucking Norelco all night. He’ll turn it on, let it run for a few moments, and then turn it off. He’ll set it down on the bed and just stand there looking at it. Then he’ll pick it up and turn it on again, the whole time mumbling, “I can’t get the right tone out of this thing.”
Trying your best to ignore the buzzing, you continued your manifesto. “I might as well buy an old Camaro, paint a Confederate flag on the roof, and start listening to Merle Haggard.” Truth is, you’re probably the only Black guy who kind of likes Merle Haggard.
“You’re painting with too wide a brush, mister,” she sang. It was at that point that you thought, I can’t believe I’m actually married to a white woman who calls people “mister,” like she’s somebody’s grandmother, like you’re a little terrier. It’s one of those things that make you stop for a second and wonder why you even married this goofball. Somehow, you fail to remember that she uprooted herself from LA to come to your hometown to help take care of your father. Maybe it’s just the fact that she loves Rock City so much that bothers you. You’re starting to dislike her most of the time. She loves that the town grocery store is simply a cinder block structure the size of a normal convenience store, with tiny shopping carts. “Everyone has so much character. Everyone is so real,” she said. “There’s no artifice.”
“There’s plenty of delusion, though. Why do you think the two liquor stores in town have drive-through windows?”
“Oh, Nicky,” she said. “You’re always your own worst enemy. You’d get more done if you didn’t think about how bad everything is wherever you are.”
She’s right, you thought. This is your problem. You’re too smart for this world, but then again, you’re too much of an asshole to believe that. Really, you knew you were just being a dick.
“You’re from California,” you said. “This is a novelty for you. But you don’t know these people.” Your father clicked the razor on again. “Do you know what everyone says when they get excited around here?”
She let her head flop to one side as she chewed. “What do they say?”
“Hot dang doodle. Lawdy Lawdy Miss Clawdy. Good googily moogily.”
She looked off for a moment and bit the tip of her index finger. “Hot dang doodle?” She whispered it a couple of times. She wants to be a writer and loves any new phrase that she can scribble in her Moleskine. “I might use that.” She jotted down the phrase. By the way, she’s already started a novel set in this place, and you’re secretly afraid it’s about you.
All that kind of made you lose it. “Jesus Christ!” you said.
“Nick, calm down. You’re looking at everyone like they’re stereotypes.”
“The foundations of all stereotypes are built on fact.” You don’t even know why you said that.
“Not a rigorous argument.”
You pushed your pizza away. “Fine, then. Look at us. The big Black man with his white wife.”
“Stop it,” she said.
“You think we’re not a stereotype? We’re one of the biggest ones.” You kept talking, even as you saw her face redden. You said something about you being her Mandingo. You pounded your chest. But it wasn’t until you referred to her as “pink toes” that she finally exploded.
“Fuck you,” she said and then froze. Your wife is so regulated, so in control, that she can’t even curse without scaring herself. It’s the same reason she only ever wanted to have sex in the missionary position. You told her this, like an idiot, and what did she call you? You guessed it.
You wanted to tell her that she forgot to call you “Mr. Asshole,” but your father clicked his razor on again. You and Lily looked to his bedroom. You stood up from your chair so fast it fell back and clacked against the floor. You ran in there and snatched the razor from him. “Give me this fucking thing!” It took you half a minute to turn it off. “It’s not a trumpet, goddammit. It doesn’t play music.”
You watched your father tremble like a startled child. He could barely look up at you. “Boy, please don’t take my things.”
As you told him to stop calling you boy, the razor turned back on. “Boy is not my name. I am Nick. My name is Nick.” You couldn’t believe you were introducing yourself to your own father. “Why can’t you remember my fucking name?” You knew why, of course, but you’ve been over the edge since you’ve been back. The fact that he still doesn’t believe you’re his son might have something to do with it. You hate how he always looks at you with a smirk, as if he thinks you’re an imposter and it’s so funny to see how far you’re taking this charade.
You looked down at him as he held his hands out like someone receiving communion.
“Nick?” He looked up hesitantly, as though he wasn’t sure he was saying the correct name. “Can I please have my instrument back?”
The razor still buzzed. You turned it off. You set it in his palm and wrapped his fingers around it.
* * *
Billie hits you on the arm. There will be a bruise there tomorrow. “You better be treating Lily right,” she says. “Or I’ll kick your ass, Black boy.”
Rub your arm but try not to show that it hurts. “What’re you talking about, you Amazon?”
“You better not be mean to her.”
“I’m not. But what business is it of yours?”
“Us women gotta look out for each other.”
“Do I have to remind you that I’m here right now with you instead of her?”
“Hey, don’t blame your wickedness on me. I’m not telling you to stay. Go home to your lily-white Lily.”
Say, “You’ve drunk at least a keg so far by yourself. Let’s get out of here.”
She tilts her beer mug from side to side. It’s mostly suds. “After the next one how about.” She starts to stand up and falls back into her seat and laughs. She stands up again and waits a moment to maintain her balance before coming over to your side of the booth, flumping down next to you.
She scoots over, and your legs bump. “You know what would be fun later?” She’s having a hard time keeping her eyes still. She rubs them to get them to focus. “Let’s go for a swim,” she says. “D
own at the quarry.”
You’ve had only three beers, but your eyes are burning, too. Lily is probably on the phone with her friend Linda in San Diego, the one she talks to about you. “I don’t know, Black girl. It’s getting a little late.” Check your watch. Show her that it’s ten thirty already.
She grabs your arm and raises it up and down like a well pump. “C’mon, you pussy. You can go for a swim.” She taps her cigarette out in the ashtray and looks at you as seriously as you’ve seen her. “Remember?” She raises one eyebrow and then squints the opposite eye. It’s as seductive a look as she can muster.
You two went swimming there not long after you got back to town. This was when you had sex. “Once was enough,” you say, but it comes out wrong. It sounds like you’re talking about a prostate exam.
She turns away and swallows. You’re not sure if she’s fighting back vomit or rejection.
Say, “Don’t you remember how bad that water used to smell, how bad we would smell when we got out?” Try to make her laugh. “We smelled like a deer’s ass.”
“So what? It was still fun, getting out of the water, all that rock dust drying on us. We looked like ghosts, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, I wanna be a ghost tonight, goddammit!” She slaps the table with the flat of her hand, and a saltshaker falls over on its side.
You want to look at her, but you can’t. You’ll probably say yes just to get her to shut up.
“We’re going,” she says. “That’s final.”
“Bullshit. Black girl doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“We’re going after I finish my next beer.”
“They’re not gonna serve you anymore,” you say. “Black girl is already drunk.”
* * *
Maybe it’s just you, but why does it seem like every wife confiscates her husband’s sex life at some point, without consulting him at all? It’s another one of your tired arguments, but in your case, sadly, it’s true. You and Lily haven’t been intimate in quite some time, since before you left LA. Naturally, this plays on your mind. You’re only in your early thirties. You and Lily have been together for six years. You should be getting plenty, but you don’t. Even before your dry spell, your sex life had already fallen into a once-a-month, don’t-even-think-about-foreplay chore. And that was if you were lucky. Now you get nothing, and all you can think about is when you first met, when you fucked like hamsters. Up against the wall, upside down. Naked yoga with a side of rumpy-pumpy. Is it your fault it isn’t like that anymore? Admit it, you have put on some pounds. You do like beer and french fries a little too much. Maybe she doesn’t want to die of asphyxiation under your big old belly.
