by Patti Abbott
“Why did you come back here?” he asked after a long silence. “Why now?”
She shrugged, holding a cloth in those misshapen fingers as she cleaned her sunglasses.
“I nearly came back last year, you know—when your father died. But we decided it wasn’t a good idea. Oh, yes,” she said seeing the surprise on his face. “I kept up with things.”
Was he supposed to admire this? And we? Who was we? The man who put that ring on her hand, who bought her expensive clothes. Pat waited for her to explain it, but she didn’t.
“So I decided to wait a year. That seemed like the right amount of time.”
“Show Dad some respect, huh?” His eyes narrowed as he slipped off 1-94 onto a state road. “Was it Dad’s fault? Your leaving, I mean. Did he hit you, beat up on you?”
This was certainly possible. His father veered between violence and neglect with his sons, seldom finding a characteristic in any of them to like. One son was too smart for his own good. Another was lazy. The third, a delinquent—a ne’er do well.
“Did he have other women?” Pat put his foot on the gas. “He hinted there was another man. That you ran off with someone.” He took a deep breath. “Or were three sons too much?”
She shook her head quickly. “Tom would’ve preferred it be another man. Sort of thing he could understand.” She paused. “Did he hit me, you ask? Oh, why blame it on him. Let’s say, I left because I couldn’t stay. Not with a man who made every day a living hell—a man who hated me. But I shouldn’t have left my sons with him and that certainly wasn’t why I left. It was why I stayed so long, in fact.”
Her voice had a rote quality to it. Like she’d rehearsed these lines many times. “I should’ve at least taken you, Patrick? Your brothers were nearly grown and could take care of themselves.”
“Pat,” he said, wiggling away from her even though she hadn’t touched him. “I prefer being called Pat.”
The light turned green and he pulled out too quickly, nearly hitting a car. “And Rick and Chuck weren’t grown yet—not even in high school.” His voice had grown angrier, and he shut his mouth with resolve not to sour a second day.
When he saw the familiar store with its cheap woven baskets and colorful rugs, he knew where he was headed. Had he always meant to come out here?
“Thought you might want to see Rick’s house—he lives out this way.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” She gripped her handbag the way older women do. “You said Rick wouldn’t want to see the pictures. And if not them, certainly not me.” She sighed. “He was always the one most like your father. Like Tom.”
Pat gave a half-laugh. “Yes, he’s most like Dad. But let’s show you where he lives at least.”
He made several turns and pulled up in front of a split-level. The yard was unkempt. Circulars littered the lawn, soggy from an early morning shower. The house needed paint, the attention of someone handy with tools and such, but it seemed unlikely to happen. Together, they peered at the house.
“I don’t think he’s home. Pat.”
“I’ll knock just in case.”
He got out of the car, strangely jaunty now, and headed up the walk, skirting a stray dog leash and his overturned bowl.
The elderly man next door put down a pair of trimming shears and walked over, flipping his shades up to reveal teary eyes. “Allergies,” he said, wiping them with a handkerchief. “I shouldn’t be outside. Look, he’s never up this early on a Saturday,” he said, jerking his head toward the house. “You don’t wanna wake him.”
“Maybe I’ll check anyway. Give a knock.”
“Suit yourself,” the man said, heading back toward his shrubbery. “He won’t like it though.” He turned around suddenly. “Ain’t puttin’ the house up for sale, is he?” he asked hopefully.
Pat shook his head.
“Maybe we should go,” his mother called from the sidewalk. She was standing outside the car. “Patrick! This wasn’t a good idea.”
“Pat,” he corrected her and knocked louder.
Suddenly the door swung open, and his brother stood before him wearing briefs and a Dire Straits tee shirt. He looked at Pat as if he’d never seen him before.
“Pat?” he said, trying unsuccessfully to focus his red eyes.
“I’ve brought someone out to see you. Mother’s in from wherever it is she’s been for thirty years.” Pat stood back, giving Rick a clear view.
Rick looked wearily at the car, blinking his eyes until they focused. “Still a little prick, aren’t you?”
Each word came out of his mouth louder than the last. He reached behind him and came through the doorway with a baseball bat in his hands. “Always knew there was a good reason for keeping this bat next to the door.” He started toward his mother, giving the bat an experimental swing. “Fuckin’ bitch,” he said, in a low growl, raising the bat. “You’re gonna get what you deserve….”
“Now look, Rick,” Pat yelled, inserting himself between his brother and mother. “You don’t want to do anything rash.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mother trying, unsuccessfully, to climb back in the car, shielding her face from her son’s words. It wasn’t clear to him that he didn’t want his brother to reach her, to smash her self-satisfied head into smithereens. Did he want that? Rick was still moving forward, pushing his much lighter brother along with each step. Backing Pat down to the sidewalk.
“I’m dialing 911,” said a voice from behind the fence. All three of them froze and looked over. “Probably be here in about five minutes.”
There was a long pause. “He calls 911 on me every few months,” Rick said, tossing the bat on the lawn. It spun a few times before stopping. “S’okay, Methuselah. I’m goin’ inside. As for you,” he said, looking at his brother, “get the fuck outta here.” He narrowed his eyes as he looked toward the car. “Looks older than Dad did even. Ugly bitch. Monster!” he yelled even louder, growing agitated again.
Pat got back in the car, watching uneasily as his brother staggered back toward his house. Could he be drunk at noon?
“Patrick, why did you do that?” Margaret Olson removed her sunglasses. “I understand you want to punish me. But why Richard? You must’ve known how he’d react!” Her voice was indignant.
He put the key in the ignition. “Why him? Why Richard?” He copied her inflection. “Well, Dad pretty much put Rick in charge after you took off. Rick showed even less aptitude for mothering than you. That wasn’t the first time I’ve seen his baseball bat, or his fist, or the dark floor of a closet, or the buckle on his belt. Usually he doesn’t put a weapon down so easily.”
She winced. “Didn’t your father step in?”
“You must know the answer to that one.” He sighed. “Chuck put an end to it once he outgrew Rick. It was a long time ago now.”
She was saying something, but he was still turning over the image of Rick going at her with the bat. Would Rick have pummeled her with it? Didn’t she have it coming after all? Showing up here as if things could be easily fixed by a quick visit.
He headed back to 1-94 since there was no point in making the trip home a long one. A trailer carrying half-a-dozen motorcycles edged in front of him, barely giving him time to hit the brakes. Pat watched in horror, more horror than he’d felt at Rick’s house, as the truck skidded on some oil, and the back gate swung open. The metal ramp slapped down, then bounced, spouting sparks each time it made contact with the asphalt. The last motorcycle in the fleet began an inexorable slide down the ramp. Driverless, it appeared to be manned by an otherworldly force.
Pat hung back for a minute, trying to put enough distance between his car and the truck to pass.
He was able to pull into the left lane in time to see the first motorcycle hit the road, bounce twice, and topple over. A second cycle began the slide. Patrick accelerated more, hearing horns, screeching brakes, a random scream, a skid. No sound of a crash though, and miraculously, in his rearview mirror, he
saw the truck pulling off onto the shoulder. Two black motorcycles lay in the road, toppled. A man had sprung out of a car and was diverting traffic.
“At least no one was hurt,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Miracle.”
“No thanks to you taking me there,” his mother said. Locked in her own misery, her own recent trouble, she’d missed the entire event. He was astounded. Did those sunglasses blind her?
“Or are you talking about your childhood again? Is that what you mean?”
“Both,” he said, not mentioning the accident he’d just averted. His voice shook, but she didn’t notice.
“I don’t know what I expected coming here,” Margaret Olson said with irritation as they approached her hotel. “I thought some kind of connection….” She put her hand on his arm. “I’ll be here another day. Maybe Stephanie and you…”
He shook her hand off, reached over, and opened her door, waiting impatiently while she made her way. She walked stiffly, cane in hand, to the hotel doors.
He drove home quickly and called his wife. Told her about the accident, but not his mother. That could wait. Told he was coming to Chicago to sit on the proper chair. She laughed once she understood his meaning.
Although there were cards and the occasional awkward phone call growing up, he’d only one memory of his mother and that one perhaps induced by a photograph—yes, another photo—that an aunt had shown him. She’d drawn him aside at a family gathering in Toledo, whispering that he shouldn’t ever mention what she was about to show him.
“Tom would kill me,” she said, screwing up her face. She held out a picture of a young boy and a woman on a horse at a fair or a circus perhaps. “That’s her,” the aunt said. “That’s Maggie.”
What he thought he might actually remember must’ve happened after they climbed down from that horse, or perhaps before they climbed on. Someone—a man—maybe his father warned his mother not to stand so close to the horse’s hind legs.
“You don’t want to test him,” the man had said. “Horses are known to kick if you stand there.”
Pat remembered his mother, bristling with anger, scooping him up, his legs flying with the sudden movement, fear clutching at his stomach. She’d stood even closer to the horse’s rear after that: the horse nervous for a moment, shifting its weight, whining. He could feel his mother’s heart pounding under her shirt as she stood her ground with him clutched to her.
And suddenly it was over, and she put Pat down and began grooming the horse. “Don’t tell me about horses, Tom,” she’d said.
Was it Tom? Was it his father trying to protect him? It could’ve been some other name she’d said. He was uncertain about that. Or about what happened next. Or what happened the day after that. Even the day she disappeared was lost to him. Even that day.
TONGUES
The girl in the dorm room next to mine speaks in tongues. I hear her late at night when the other girls are asleep. Karin often sounds angry, like the voice of God in her head isn’t joyful.
It’s spooky listening, knowing she’s pacing her cell-like room and speaking in gibberish for hours. The syllables rush out of her mouth and bang up against the wallboard. If I put my palms on the wall, I can feel the vibrations.
No one else on our floor ever mentions it.
Speaking in tongues is not as common as you’d think—even here at the Southern New England Bible College. My parents sent me here, not realizing that non-Episcopalian Christians don’t play bridge and drink martinis on Saturday night. They don’t do the Peppermint Twist or French kiss. The students at SNEBC believe their bodies are God’s temples. They’d never slip between their starched white sheets without first pressing their knees to the floor in prayer.
At Karin’s church, parishioners give testimony and lay on hands. They are sweaty with salvation. Karin likes to tell me the story of how she got saved. It happened in an aqua-colored Thunderbird as she was weighing the sin in letting her boyfriend unhook her bra.
Was Karen born knowing “tongues” or did it come to her like a taste for artichokes came to my father months after he returned from Korea? In daylight, Karin looks normal, pretty in a wispy way. She baby-sits for a woman who once dated President Kennedy. She works the dinner shift at the second cash register in the cafeteria and I watch her from behind the dessert counter where I restock the applesauce and Jell-O. Her checkout line moves faster than the other one.
In December, Karin invites me in to watch “Color Me Barbra” on her contraband TV. She teaches me stuff, telling me that my favorite song on my Lawrence Welk album is actually a movement from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto # 1. She waxes my legs and irons my hair. Looking pretty is part of God’s plan for me, she explains.
Sometimes Karin comes inside my room at night, mumbling the words I hear through the wall, letting her tongue flutter like a Rufous hummingbird near my ear. I can smell her breath—it’s anise or licorice. I am shuddery with its nearness. She is hot and cold at the same time, pressed up against me.
In the cafeteria later, I stare at the picture of Moses on Mt. Sinai over the tray table while holding a flashlight for her. She empties both cash registers in seconds, dumping the contents into her rattan basket purse. When the campus police arrest Jean-Jacques Guiteau, Karin seems surprised and puts a dollar in the canister being passed around for his defense fund. His picture from the yearbook is glued to the front. He’s smiling and you can see the gap in his teeth. Someone says they’ll be sending him back to Haiti or Trinidad.
On Valentine’s, Karin invites me to spend the weekend babysitting with her. We take the children duckpin bowling and feed them hamburgers and grapes. Later Karin and I look for things the Spragues won’t miss. She goes over my haul with a practiced eye, telling me that paste jewelry and ceramic birds are junk, but pockets a bracelet and a cashmere scarf.
Karin lights candles in the living room that night, drawing my trembling hands to the flame, making me kneel with gravel under my knees on the tile floor, telling me I’m a bad influence and that she didn’t steal things before I was assigned to the room next to hers. I look up and see the little girls huddled on the steps. Their bare legs look like pincers in the half-light.
Two uniformed men come for Karin. Mrs. Sprague removes the gravel from my knees with tweezers and bandages my hands, shaking her head and asking me why I didn’t tell anyone about Karin. You two are students at a Bible College.
I want to tell her that a love for Jesus isn’t the only kind of love.
THE TORTOISE AND THE TORTOISE
The hallway where I walk is fitted with indeterminate colored carpeting that accommodates itself to our secretions: piss, puke, shit, grease, blood. Institutional décor as Alma, my late wife, called it when we visited her mother thirty years ago. Alma never had to face it. They fished her out of Lake Michigan at age fifty-five, looking like a waxy trout and smelling to high-heaven.
My fellow residents are lined up in wheelchairs or seated with their walkers pulled close. The lame, the maimed, and those with no name, seldom cede even the narrowest of paths, and I knock into a heavy-set woman with one leg lopped off at the knee. She gasps, and the ensuing tears ricochet through her wrinkles like the ball in a pinball machine. This isn’t the first time we’ve collided. An aide—self-identified—as Red Shoes, comes running, looking ready to kick my walker out from under me. Instead, she shakes a finger.
Lately I have fallen into the group characterized as troublesome.
Of the forty-odd people here, I remember only a few names. I share mine with the man across the hall. Staff refers to us as the “Two Georges.”
I’ve told them repeatedly that George was the sixth most popular name in 1920, but the phrase lives on despite that. I have nothing against the other George, a nice enough man, but I date the beginning of my downward spiral to his arrival and the loss of dignity that came with the invention of that phrase.
I also remember Mrs. Miliken. Yesterday, they found her in some man’s bathroom t
rying to insert his sizable dentures into her hoo-ha. A new form of oral sex, no doubt. This piece of information traveled down the hall faster than the A.M meds. I’m not sure if she was a tart before the disease set in, but her behavior seems to come naturally. Mrs. Miliken flirts with anyone she spots through the cataracts she refuses to have removed. I wonder if it was my bathroom they found her in. I can’t always remember little things like that.
For some time, I was the liveliest cock here. I’d always thought of myself as dull. My wife and her mother shared a disdain for me, a well-aired disgust. I kept quiet and did what was expected. Never earned much in my job as a bookkeeper, but it was enough to have a small house, a used car. We got by, though not without a medium-level buzz of discontent.
But eventually I arrived here—on my feet and carrying my own grip. We don’t all come in the door that way. More than one resident has been wheeled in on a stretcher. More than one has sobbed or begged to go home. Never happens.
Yes, I found my niche, beating the lot at bingo, at WII bowling, at almost any game in our ridiculously meager supply closet. Last year, I led the Mardi Gras Parade, handed out candy to visiting grandchildren at Halloween. I was that sort of old man. Santa Claus himself.
I only let the inner George show his face when an aide tried to manhandle me. It was usually at night. Then the abuser might find his foot under my walker or a mess to clean up in the john. I can pee in my bed with the best of them. If wearing Depends is the penalty for my retribution, I can do that too.
Father Ryan was admitted three weeks ago. The former resident next door bit a nurse and ended up on the third floor. No one ever returns from the third floor. It’s Armageddon up there from what I hear. You only see the third-floorers at hymn-sing on Sundays or when families are invited in. Public occasions. Within days of her removal, painters were plastering holes, and trying to get rid of the musty scent from the fifties she managed to track down on HSN. Another oddity: she wore lipstick above and below her lips, but never on them. You can get used to anything over time.
