by Ben Marcus
“You said, ‘What is a cousin for if you can’t put your finger in her vagina?’ ”
Paul closed his eyes. “I did not. Please tell me I didn’t say that.”
“Oh, you did.” Carla laughed. “Several times.”
He shook his head. “I am so sorry. What an asshole.”
“You were bad!” she yelled, and she slapped his leg, laughing.
He nodded. “I was bad. I think I still am.”
“Oh?”
Carla took this as flirtation rather than self-pity. Whatever Paul had once been—the rogue, troubled high schooler, doing stupid shit and justifying it with arcane philosophical arguments—he wasn’t those things anymore. No way.
“You still coming to blows with Daddy Morton?”
“No.”
Paul chuckled and shrugged it off. A real conversation was out of the question, and that was probably for the best.
“So,” she said. “Wife, kids? Wait, no, let me guess. You’re gay. You’re gay! Is that what you mean by being bad? Oh, my God, you’re not gay, are you? Jesus, Paul.”
The old Paul, the Cleveland Paul, would have said, Should I finger you to disprove it? But tonight’s Paul, new or old, disgusted with himself or just tired, tried to smile. He didn’t have to uphold any principles in front of a shitty hotel with a woman he’d never see again. Though hand sex with a cousin occupied an unassailable place in the erotic universe—he’d stand and testify to that if he had to, and he felt sorry for anyone who hadn’t tried it.
Paul looked up at the black tower with the shining portholes, the bright, glowing orbs rising into the sky like spotlights. He said how cool the tower was, how unusual. It was unlike any other building he’d seen.
Carla made a face and said, “Blech.”
“What?”
“That’s our hotel,” she said.
“It’s a hotel?”
“Yeah. We didn’t want to stay there, but there were no rooms anywhere else. I guess they can’t get any guests, so it’s empty. I kind of hate it, to be honest. It’s weird. But it’s cheap, and that’s good, because this trip cost us a fucking fortune. Holy smoke.”
“Oh,” Paul said.
They both looked at it again. If Andrea were here, she’d get it. Or maybe she wouldn’t. How could he know?
“Well, I guess I should be heading inside,” Carla said, and that was that, a big flameout.
“Yeah, back to the Bergers,” Paul said.
The Bergers. His mother and father. Alicia. Rick, who wasn’t a Berger in name but loved the Bergers more than the Bergers did. Paul’s son, Jack, was a Berger, too, of course, one of the youngest, and so was Andrea, even though she hadn’t changed her name. He could have been strolling through the reunion right now holding Jack and showing off Andrea to everyone. But the idea had been to test the waters. Even Andrea had agreed that Paul should visit Cleveland alone first. And when she’d said this he had been so relieved that he’d had to hide it from her. It wasn’t that he didn’t want his family to meet Andrea; it was that he didn’t want her to see him here. Him with his family. That was the concern. The Paul of Cleveland, with his mean tone and low aims. She’d hate him forever.
Just then an ambulance pulled up and some paramedics tumbled out. They sprang the stretcher and pushed it right at Carla and Paul, stopping to hoist it over their heads and carry it up the steps, into the Holiday Inn.
Paul and Carla watched it go.
“You think that’s for a Berger?” Paul cracked.
“It’d better not be,” Carla said. “If Beaner choked I’m going to rip my husband’s heart out.”
She disappeared inside and Paul remained on the steps, thinking maybe he’d call home. Or maybe he’d cross the street to the black hotel and ride the elevator to the top so he could look through one of those portholes. Except what was so special about that building, anyway? He’d forgotten.
That night, before getting into bed, he set his alarm, packed his bags, scheduled a car service. It had been easy enough to change his flight, but all they’d had was one leaving at 4:00 a.m. It didn’t really matter. He figured he’d sleep for two hours, then wait outside for the car, so that no one else would have to wake up. This way he’d skip the good-byes. With luck he’d be home by late morning. He could dismiss the sitter, take Jack to the park. He couldn’t decide what would be better, leaving Andrea a voice mail or surprising her when she came home from work.
Rick walked into the bathroom while Paul was brushing his teeth, then backed out, apologizing. Through a foam of toothpaste Paul told him it was okay, waved him in. This would be their peaceful encounter, Rick sitting on the toilet lid waiting for Paul to spit and rinse.
“That was fun tonight,” Paul said.
“It was so great.” Rick shook his head. “And the toasts, oh my gosh. Amazing.”
The toasts. Paul must have been outside.
“What your mom said. I mean, I choked up. That was just…”
Paul could only agree. What his mom said. Never in his life had he seen his mother make a toast.
“I love family,” Rick said. “All of that family, together.”
“Oh, hey, did someone get hurt tonight?” Paul asked.
Rick looked confused, as if this were one of Paul’s trick questions.
“I saw a stretcher go into the hotel,” Paul explained. “I thought maybe something happened.”
“Hmm, no,” Rick said. “I mean, not that I know of. But I was dancing it out pretty hard.”
“Okay, that’s good,” Paul said. “Tell my sister good night.”
“Will do, buddy. Good night yourself.”
The two hours of sleep didn’t happen. Paul lay awake and looked at the clock until eventually it was time to wait outside for the car. He crept downstairs with his bags, dropped them at the door. He’d get a drink of water in the kitchen, maybe grab some fruit for the trip.
At the kitchen table, shuffling an amber colony of pill bottles, sat his mother. She didn’t hear him come in, and he startled her.
She clutched her robe, looked past him into the dark hallway. Why was it that he still frightened her?
“Pauly, what are you doing?”
He mumbled, wishing he hadn’t come in. His car would be here in a few minutes, and now he’d have to say good-bye.
His mother noticed his coat, figured it out, and he couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or relieved. Why not both?
“I have to get back,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Paul, for what? Stay with us. Why do you have to go?”
She could not possibly want an answer. But maybe it was ugly of him to assume the worst. Maybe this was it. His sweet mother was sitting here asking. He would tell her.
“I’m a father, Mom. I’m married. We have a little boy. Jack. We call him Jackie. He’s two, Mom. He’s already two!”
His mother cried.
“Pauly, it’s okay, honey. I don’t know how else to tell you, but it’s okay and we love you and we will always love you, and I wish you believed us. You are our little Paul, always.”
She reached out to him across the table and he took her hands.
“But, Mom, it’s true.”
Had he really lied that much? Was his credibility gone forever?
“Sweetheart, I know it is. Of course it’s true. I would love to meet him, I mean, to see him. What was his name, your boy?”
Oh, God, did he yell. He yelled the most awful things. He hit the table, stood up too fast. Something fell over, and now his mother truly wept, and she threw her arms up as if he were about to strike her. But why would he hit his own mother?
For years he would attempt to dismantle this moment. It was among the most useless activities a mind could pursue, the revision of shit that had really fucking happened, yet somehow it became the activity his mind fell into the most.
He heard his name, barked by his father.
His dad was here now. Why not Alicia? Why not Rick? Get everyon
e together.
“Paul, you will not do this. Not to your mother.”
His father trembled, ready for battle.
“I’m not, Dad. I’m not doing anything.”
Paul backed away, giving his poor father courage.
“Go on now, Paul. Please go.”
“Okay, I will. I’m sorry. I was telling Mom something. About my son.”
“We believe you, Paul. We really do believe you. The woodworking, the family. We do.”
Together they nodded up at him. Tell him what he wants to hear and maybe he’ll leave. Were they even his family? Was this even his home? Or maybe they did believe him, and this was simply what it felt like to be believed. It felt wrong—it felt like nothing.
Paul determined that if anyone asked him, in the years to come, he’d say that if you’ve ever scared someone, even accidentally or as a joke, that person will flinch when he sees you. Even if you did it because you yourself were scared, because you were small-minded, or small-hearted, or because you had small aims and should never have been let out of your cage when your little life began. You might not notice it, but the people you have scared will flinch, on the inside. You will have to cross the street and give those people a wide berth. It is the most considerate thing to do. Just let them pass.
He left the house and rode the car service through the dark streets of Cleveland to the airport. He’d fly home, take the shuttle to his apartment. When he’d settled in, maybe he’d write his parents a letter. Put together a photo album, Xerox the marriage and the birth certificates. Would that suffice? He’d tie up a bundle and mail it to them. In their own time, they could examine the evidence of their son’s new life. They could do it without him standing there. Paul would send proof and then he would wait. He’d be many miles away, where he could do no harm. At their leisure, they could examine the parts of their son that would not hurt them.
I Can Say Many Nice Things
Fleming woke in the dark and his room felt loose, sloshing so badly he gripped the bed. From his window there was nothing but a hallway, and if he craned his neck, a blown lightbulb swung into view, dangling like a piece of spoiled fruit. The room pitched up and down and for a moment he thought he might be sick. The word hallway must have a nautical name. Why didn’t they supply a glossary for this cruise? Probably they had, in the welcome packet he’d failed to read. A glossary. A history of the boat, which would be referred to as a ship. Sunny biographies of the captain and crew, who had always dreamed of this life. Lobotomized histories of the islands they’d visit. Who else had sailed this way. Famous suckwads from the past, slicing through this very water on wooden longships.
A welcome packet, the literary genre most likely to succeed in the new millennium. Why not read about a community you don’t belong to, that doesn’t actually exist, a captain and crew who are, in reality, if that isn’t too much of a downer on your vacation, as indifferent to each other as the coworkers at an office or bank? Read doctored personal statements from underpaid crew members—because ocean life pays better than money!—who hate their lives but have been forced to buy into the mythology of working on a boat, not a goddamned ship, separated now from loved ones and friends, growing lonelier by the second, even while they wait on you and follow your every order.
And yet, when Fleming thought about it, this welcome packet, fucked up though it was, even though he hadn’t read it, most certainly had more readers than he did. More people, for sure, read this welcome packet than had ever read any of his books or stories. This welcome packet commanded a bigger audience, had more draw, appealed to more people, and, the kicker, understood its cherished readers better than he ever would with his sober, sentimental inventions of domestic lives he’d never lived, unless that was too flattering a description of the literary product he willed onto the page with less and less conviction every time he sat down at his laptop.
Maybe he’d actually learn something about writing if he read the welcome packet. Maybe in his class he should instruct his students not to write short stories but to write welcome packets.
The room spun and he clutched the bed. It would be two straight weeks of this seesawing, punctuated by mind-raping workshop sessions in a conference room, and the occasional blitz of tropical sun if he could stand it. He had planned to get in shape for this trip, just to medicate a minor quadrant of his self-loathing apparatus, but when that hadn’t happened, when instead he had fattened further, he bought new T-shirts, one size larger than last year. He looked okay in them. Not really that bad. He would just make sure not to take one off in public. Even in private, actually, he had cut down on the nudity. These days the shame had followed him indoors.
Would an oceanside room have made much difference? The brochure—which he had read, so he could fantasize in advance about where he would be sleeping—had called his room a gorgeous interior cabin, as if deep within a cruise ship was the fat, dripping heart you fought toward with your fork, where the treasure and sex and delicious food was hidden, and not just the exiled lodging for hired instructors on boats with a so-called educational component.
He was talking out loud in the darkness. He could do that because he had no wife with him in the bed, no baby in the next room. They stayed home, thank God, even though Erin wanted to come with him, wanted to bring the baby, made a case that it would be so fun for little Sylvie, even though little Sylvie had not shown an aptitude for fun, or, well, happiness in general. Don’t blame the baby, though! Don’t blame the baby, you monster! He wouldn’t, if he could help it. The baby would be blameless. Cute little thing.
Anyway, if he’d brought them, and paid for them, because their passage was not included in the deal, they’d be going home in the hole, financially. Don’t let’s go home in the hole, he’d sung, trying to be funny. Erin didn’t laugh, because that wasn’t actually even the line from anything, and that wasn’t how jokes worked. If he went on the cruise alone, he’d calmly argued, strictly to discharge the obligations of his employment, and not to have fun, absolutely not, they wouldn’t be in the hole. Near it, maybe, clawing the surface of the world as their legs were sucked under, but not yet fully in the hole. Erin looked at him with her sharp face and her knife-chopped hair, bangs of razor perfection, chastising eyes and bones—the whole of Erin so fatally sharp that he was silently criticized by her appearance, criticized for more or less everything he’d ever done, even things from before he knew her, finally rebuked by the mere sight of her, and she didn’t have to say a word. Now that was power. That was a serious wife. Somehow, or probably because of this, he was still stupidly, weakly in love with her, even if more and more it seemed that he wasn’t fully sanctioned to touch her, a restriction instituted without any discussion he could remember. Perhaps in private she had feverishly quilted a force field around her body, stitching the damn thing by hand, and now it was finally complete. It didn’t hurt to touch the force field, it just made him feel not wholly terrific. Erin seemed to know, anyway, that when they didn’t have the fun she dreamed of it wouldn’t be Sylvie’s fault. You can’t blame everything on a baby. Or maybe even anything.
Yet one day, he figured, years from now, sitting across from each other at a lawyer’s office downtown, if that’s even how these things worked, they would blame whatever came to mind. Babies, houses, jobs, each other, themselves. Or maybe not. Maybe they’d be fine. Hard to say.
So he was alone, with nothing much to account for except, of course, the morning’s reading, the prep, the prep, the prep, and then the fucking horror of holding a class on this ship.
But he was so lucky! This was so great! How amazing to go on a cruise. His colleagues had stood around pretending to be jealous, and he’d held his ground pretending to deserve it, swallowing his dread. He had no choice in the matter. His student evaluations stank and he hadn’t done much university service. Service being the word for sitting in rooms with profoundly powerless people exercising a kind of hypothetical problem-solving, as if anything they ever said, a
nywhere, would ever get implemented ever. Really ever. There was a Zen purity to the enterprise. Circular effort, in a vacuum, in outer space. He needed to engage in more of this, and somehow he needed to improve his student evaluations. Wouldn’t this trip be a chance to collect a batch of raves from his little cruise-goers, who would surely be more susceptible to joy, with the sunbathing and cocktailing and theme dancing, and therefore be more likely to pass on that happiness to him?
Or are the happy even more protective of their mood, having finally arrived at bliss, clinging to it and in no way inclined to transfer such riches to the likes of him? Maybe so. But this time he had a strategy. Some old-fashioned hoo-ha from the school of please don’t hate me. He would get his students to praise him by stroking their egos so hard, relentlessly stroking the shit out of every region of their egos, even the heretofore untouched areas of their egos they never knew they had, stroking them down sleek and smooth, that the students would curl up and mewl like stuffed animals with robotic voice boxes, purring and saying gaga and dada and yes, please, give me some more.
Not, you know, that he saw students as beasts or babies or stuffed animals or anything like that. These were real people! Like you and me! They fucking actually existed for real!
Up on deck nothing was happening. It was dark. The ocean, the sky, the ship. Sweet hell, the silence was nice. Whatever waves had gripped them earlier were gone. Everything was still. Not even the waiters were awake. Something was doing in the kitchen, though. A light burned under the door. Powdered eggs were getting mixed in water by a big, industrial paddle, maybe. The frozen planks of scored sausages, ridged like washboards, were getting knifed into singles.
He sat by the pool, leaning against the railing, because the deck chairs weren’t out yet. The boat felt steadier now that he was outside. They’d left New York Harbor yesterday, so where were they now? He had no idea how fast they were going, or how you would begin to calculate their whereabouts, and it didn’t really matter. They were on the Atlantic Ocean, which was nuts. They were fucking at sea, and in a few hours it would be time for the workshop. It was, actually, pretty great. Surrounded by dark space and dark water and nothing real. A fairly delicious portion of wind pumping off the sea at the perfect temperature. He wanted to thank someone for that and say, Nice going. You nailed it. Perfect use of wind in this setting. My compliments. Erin would, of course, really love it here, on her way to the islands, the occasional dirty coast threatening in the distance. Hot, salty air in the afternoon, stinging her sunburn. She’d be out on the deck early—not this early—swimming laps before the kids took over the pool with their savage games. The bashing, the mayhem, the vampire aggression. Even little Sylvie, if you could keep the fast-crawling gal on a leash so she wouldn’t splash overboard and disappear forever, even Sylvie, his daughter, wrapped in so much flotation she’d look like a life raft, would very certainly, if he had only let her come, have had lots and lots and lots of fun on this boat.
