“You don’t recover. Believe me,” Becky said. “When I was pregnant with Gavin, I tell you, I was as bad as one of them kids that rode the short bus to school. Still am, evidently.”
“There’s a hormonal reason for that,” I said. “Pregnancy has a negative impact on the neurons in the parts of the brain responsible for spatial memory, particularly the hippocampus.”
They all just blinked at me.
“Don’t mind him,” Sara said, discarding my input with a flick of her wrist. “He just talks to hear the sound of his own voice.”
Becky laughed and snorted. “Taylor is the same exact way. Though he’d never use such big words. Anything over five letters gives him fits.”
“I never had that problem,” my mother said. “Loss of memory or anything like that. Pregnancy was a breeze with Coulter. He rarely kicked. I didn’t gain that much weight. No morning sickness. I ate a lot of Hot Tamales, though. Heartburn got a little bad sometimes.”
“Oh, I get the weirdest cravings,” Sara said. “I mix together peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and diced cucumbers. It’s like going to heaven.”
“That’s not so strange,” my mother said.
“Not at all,” Becky said. “I used to douse pancakes with buffalo wing sauce.”
Dad made a face like he felt nauseated. My mother and Sara chuckled.
“That actually doesn’t sound all that bad,” Mom said. “Coulter and I, we used to have breakfast for dinner at least once a week. Eggs Benedict or French toast or biscuits and gravy. It was always our little tradition. Not that we mixed together wing sauce and pancakes, though.”
“I remember that,” Dad said. “You wouldn’t let me cook the eggs in the bacon grease.”
“It’s just so unhealthy that way,” Mom said. “A heart attack waiting to happen.”
It was odd hearing my mother reminisce about us together. She had this nostalgic tone to her voice, a slow and repetitive cadence that gave her the air of a storyteller spinning a fairy tale, which surprised me. She was the one who had left. She was the one who had said that it became easier to cope without me over time. She was the one who effectively ended any semblance of a normal relationship. It made me jealous in a way I hadn’t felt before. Despite the fact she’d abandoned me as a child, she could remember fondly those memories that came before her desertion without the slightest hint of shame or guilt. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t remember those happy times. It was like I’d erased those memories, or she had fabricated them, a form of manipulation maybe, to make me let her back into my life, or possibly a result of her mental illness, a lie born of her intrinsic neurosis.
“You just have the one child?” my mother asked Becky.
“Two actually. Gavin and Kyler. Gavin’s seven, and Kyler’s three.”
“They are wondrous, aren’t they?” Mom beamed, her cheeks flushed like an alcoholic’s. “Does your husband hit them like he hits you?”
“Jesus, Natalie,” Dad said. He covered his face in embarrassment.
“Excuse me?” Becky asked.
“Does he strike the kids?”
“I’m so sorry, Becky,” Sara said. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“I’m only trying to help,” my mother said. “You should go to the police. Even if he isn’t hitting the kids.”
Becky stood. She assumed an aggressive posture, hunched forward with her finger outstretched like a mother scolding a child. “You, lady. You—you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I truly do not mean to offend,” my mother continued. “I lived through a family life of dysfunction myself, mostly of my own doing.”
“I don’t have to take this,” Becky said as she moved toward the door.
Sara struggled to her feet and followed Becky, apologizing as she did so, but Becky didn’t stop, slamming the door as she left. The reverberations rattled the collection of family pictures on the wall, and we all jumped despite anticipating the slam. Sara followed after her into the hallway, and my mother looked befuddled, like she couldn’t believe someone could be offended by such a question. This bewildered me even more, her incredulity. She spoke of wanting to make amends, with me, with my father, but she couldn’t even filter her own consciousness. It was like she had no control over her actions. I simply couldn’t understand it. Was her amends simply a fleeting impulse, not governed by rational, deep desire? Would she, once she grew bored, leave me once again?
I had to admit it seemed likely.
“You really know how to ruin a perfectly nice conversation, don’t you, Natalie?” Dad asked once Sara and Becky had left.
“I’m sorry. Denial doesn’t help anyone, though. My therapist says you must confront your problems if you ever hope to heal.”
“No one gives a damn about your therapist, Natalie,” Dad continued. “Apparently he isn’t worth a damn. You’re still bat-shit crazy.”
“This is some of the dysfunction I was referring to earlier.”
I couldn’t help but feel like a child again, hearing my parents argue. Strangely, I didn’t have any memories of them fighting, though surely they did. People fight. Especially people living in proximity. Human nature always trumps good intentions.
“Dad, listen. It’s not a big deal. Maybe she needed to hear that. Maybe it’ll do some good.”
“All I’m saying is that she is a stranger. It’s not our place to interfere.” He pointed to my mother. “It’s definitely not her place.”
“Please don’t turn this into something it’s not, Marcus. This has nothing to do with what I did to you and Coulter years ago.”
Dad didn’t say anything. He crossed his legs and averted his gaze, biting his tongue. My father had never been a confrontational type, instead opting to turn the other cheek, allow whatever crime had been committed against him to go unpunished.
I couldn’t help but feel angry myself, at my mother for her nostalgic, perhaps untrue stories, her unfiltered intrusion into a stranger’s life; at my father for allowing my mother to eat away at him, his inability to stand up for himself, or others for that matter; even at my wife for reasons I couldn’t really articulate. But it was there, like a heat burning underneath my ribcage. I could feel my blood pressure heighten, my pulse thumping in my wrists, in my neck.
But then it came to me. I hated her for running after Becky, for sympathizing with her. It was irrational, I knew, but her act seemed to communicate that beyond sympathy, there was empathy, too, like she was a battered and abused wife, that I, like Becky’s husband, was guilty of some abysmal crime. It was like she was accusing me of something.
After a few moments, Sara returned, accompanied by Becky. She appeared much calmer, even obsequious. She had the look of a pizza delivery girl, waiting for a tip that wouldn’t come.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel embarrassed.”
An awkward silence ensued. I seethed. Dad seethed. Mom sat there vindicated. And Sara stroked Becky’s back, like a mother comforting a child. The whole moment was akin to an infection. We could all feel the hard lump festering, the tender skin throbbing with a deep contusion. It wasn’t an ordinary clogged pore or an under-turned hair. It was staph instigated by an arachnid bite. Mashing it wouldn’t help. Hydrogen peroxide wouldn’t help. All of us would have to wait for it to come to a head, and then slice it away with a scalpel in one satisfying cut.
When Coulter first smelled smoke, he thought Sara may be burning a candle, or lighting a fire, or maybe a bit of spaghetti sauce fell onto a lit stove-top burner. It was an odd occurrence, smelling smoke, but common enough that at first he didn’t panic. He was in his study reading a lecture Richard Feynman had given years before about the conflict between religion and science, noting how cowardly such a brave man had sounded, how so insincerely diplomatic, when the smoke alarm sounded.
When he and Sara had first been dating, she asked him what he would take with him if the house were on fire. She answered first, l
isting family photographs and her grandmother’s cookbooks, beloved heirlooms and keepsakes mostly. But Coulter always thought this to be shortsighted. New memories could be created. The pictures remembered fondly with nostalgia. It would actually grant them a sort of mythos that may even be more valuable than the things themselves. He wouldn’t grab his work or his books either. His work was always backed up on servers at the university, each day saved and stored so nothing would be lost. The books could all be bought at discount prices online. The thing was, he never had an answer for Sara. He would, if the opportunity ever arose, simply walk out of the building, empty handed.
He rose from his desk and out of instinct hovered his hand above the doorknob. Hot. The flames were not far outside the door. In fact, he could feel the heat emanating from the crack under the door and hear the crackle of the wood splintering from the extreme heat. Smoke began to billow in from the vents and from underneath the door. He’d have to go out the window. It was a few feet away, and he could see his expansive yard, a willow tree whose branches swayed in the breeze like a child’s tire swing just abandoned from play. He could see the creek that separated his property from his neighbor’s to the south. There was a sandbox out there that he had built for Isaac when he’d been small. He hadn’t played in it in years, of course, now in high school and hardly ever home. He’d rather go out with his friends doing who knows what. Smoke weed. Break into the abandoned hospital west of town. Huff paint. Conduct experiments on alternative rocket fuels. Orgies. Coulter had no idea because his son wouldn’t talk to him. It had all happened so quickly, this distance. When he’d been younger, Isaac used to climb all over his father like a jungle gym. Now, when Isaac was home, Coulter noticed a change in his tone, one of annoyance and exasperation, the way his mother sounded sometimes when Coulter hadn’t done some chore he’d promised he’d do. When Isaac’s friends came over, he’d scurry them upstairs and lock the door before Coulter would be allowed to introduce himself. He avoided Coulter’s smiles and waves when they were in public, at a school function say, when Coulter spotted him from across the room. Perhaps it was a gradual change, this transformation from dependent child to independent teenager, but that’s not how it seemed to Coulter. Just yesterday Isaac had poured over Coulter with love, and today he couldn’t stand to be around his father, as if embarrassment was a natural side-effect of being in his presence. Coulter pretended this didn’t bother him and suffered silently, but this was a façade. Isaac’s shame at being his son was the hardest thing he’d ever had to endure.
Coulter could hardly see through the smoke. Thick and dark and full of ash, it clung to his lung tissue, making it difficult to breathe. He got down on the floor and crawled over to the window. He pushed the window open and pulled himself to safety. Turning back, the roof had collapsed just west of his office, and flames burst forth as it engulfed his family’s home. Everything would be lost. Family portraits vacationing in Yellowstone and faded pencil marks on the wall where they’d measured Isaac’s height growing up. His publications, framed in shadow boxes in his office. His diplomas. Sara’s wedding dress. The armoire given to her by her mother. All gone. That didn’t really bother him, though. He was just glad his family wasn’t home. They were safe. That was what was important.
Sirens sounded from the street, and Coulter walked up the hill toward the front of his home in order to greet the firemen. There were two trucks out front, about eleven firemen in all, dressed in full gear, large yellow coats and black helmets. Their boots clamored along the pavement as they dragged their hose within firing range. Before Coulter could let one know that no one was inside, they unleashed a jettison of water that had so much force Coulter was amazed the burning home didn’t collapse underneath the pressure. Coulter, exhausted, sat on the road and watched the firemen extinguish the blaze. It was an awesome sight, these men working in tandem. It wasn’t long before they had the fire under control.
A crowd had gathered as the firemen worked. Coulter scanned their entertained faces. Dozens of onlookers watched the show. There were so many of them that they blended together, their faces dissolving into featureless slates of flesh. However, across the street, just where the tree line started and backed into about forty acres of woods, Coulter thought he saw his son, standing alone, holding a gas can.
The airport wasn’t busy. Cabs didn’t jockey for position in the unload drive. Passengers didn’t push to hail one before their hands froze. Bag handlers didn’t compete for tips. The first snow of the year fell, the ground not cold enough for the flakes to accumulate, instead melting as soon as they hit pavement. No wind blew. It was uneventful. It was peaceful.
My father was going back to Oklahoma, having to return to work. Although spring is his busy season, an unexpected winter mix was heading toward Oklahoma City. They wouldn’t get more than a few inches more than likely, a mixture of freezing rain and snow. It would turn to slush and clog the roadways for a few days. But the city would come to a standstill. Commerce would halt. Traffic would be zero. The citizens would curl up by a fire and watch Christmas movies even though it wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet. It made me a little nostalgic in a way. When I’d been young, I conducted experiments, studying the effect of cold on our neighbor’s dog’s shaven paws or testing the density of water as it approached zero degrees Celsius from below freezing and above it. Sometimes my father helped. Other times he didn’t. Mom reviewed the paper I prepared afterwards, correcting grammar and punctuation and logical fallacies. Then we would all get together and celebrate a job well done. We’d rent a movie or go out to eat at The Garage, a little burger joint where we could get buffalo patties and loaded cheese fries.
It had been strange seeing my father and mother interact these past few days. When I’d been a child, they had been aloof and distant and cold toward each other. The last memories I had of them together tended to be short and marked by one-word sentences. Yes. No. Later. Bye. But lately they had talked. They had fought. They had screamed at each other and acknowledged that the other one existed. I should’ve been happy about this, but I wasn’t. Growing up, my father and I had always enjoyed this us-versus-them mentality. It was just us against the world, a united front. But now that wasn’t the case. We all had our own side. There was the three of us—disparate, distinct, and unyielding.
“Will you be coming back?” I asked him. “When the baby comes, I mean.” We were standing on the curb, just outside the ticket counters and the line for security. It was long, but not long enough to cause worry. Every few seconds the line would bumble forward a step or two, followed by the drag of bags along the hard floor. It almost seemed synchronized in a way, like a choreographed stage number casted with dreary automatons.
“Of course,” Dad said. “I’m not going to miss the birth of my granddaughter. You just better give me a heads up if she comes early.”
“It’s a he.”
“You never know.” He winked. “Sometimes those nurses can be wrong.”
That seemed unlikely, but I didn’t feel like arguing.
“Mom seems to be happy.”
“She has a grandbaby on the way. She’s seeing you again. She’s happy. I don’t know how long it’ll last. I never could tell with her. One minute she was ecstatic, the next I was hiding scissors from her lest she cut herself.”
“She cut herself?”
Dad stuck his tongue in his cheek as if questioning how he should answer. “I was always afraid she’d hurt herself. It became unbearable at times. Especially near the end.”
He unzipped a compartment in his bag and pulled out his itinerary. He scanned it, and felt his pockets for his belongings: wallet, keys, cell phone. He did all these things without thinking, I knew, a nervous impulse. Despite chasing tornadoes for a living, the man was scared of flying. Funny, sometimes, what makes people afraid.
“Was she happy with me?” I asked. “When I was born, I mean.”
“Was she excited?”
I nodded.
“We
ll, yeah. Of course, yeah.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“It’s different. We were first-time parents. We were broke. We were scared. I’m sure you can attest to that.”
A traffic cop blew a whistle at my cab and waved it forward.
“In or out, bub,” the cabbie said. “I’m blocking traffic here.”
“Just a second.” I turned back to Dad. “So she loved me?”
He sighed, his breaths white puffs, and laid a heavy palm on my shoulder. In an instance, I felt twelve again. “Of course she did, Coulter. I know it’s hard to imagine given what she did. But she did. I’m sure of it. She just didn’t know how to show it. She didn’t know how to take care of herself, let alone you.”
It was hard to believe that she’d ever been happy, though I hardly remembered her being around. I remembered her being depressed. My last memory of her she’d been passed out and poisoned from carbon monoxide, slumped over the steering wheel to her luxury sedan. Then again, according to Mom, that had never actually happened. She’d said I’d found her inside the house, writing a suicide note. Odd, though, I could still make out that moment, my mother unconscious, my confusion, the smell of car exhaust. Not knowing which was true, my memory or my mother’s, made the whole act surreal somehow, as if the two contradictory accounts marred the validity of the whole act. This prompted so many more questions. Did we have fun with each other? Was I a difficult child? Distant? Loving? What did she enjoy doing? Did she read scholarly evolutionary biology articles for the hell of it? Did she not learn to swim until her early twenties? When she’d left, my father and I never really spoke of her. Dad would out of the blue tell me she liked her sundaes with extra pecans and a dash of salt or that she liked to let the air out of her tires so she had a viable excuse to go late into work. I wanted to ask her if that was true, if that’s how she actually remembered things. I really wanted to know because the more I thought about it, the more I realized I knew absolutely nothing about her, and the things I thought I knew I now questioned.
An Elegant Theory Page 13
