The Ask

by Sam Lipsyte

  Whereas me, I still had a decent shot.

  Nearly every day now I passed the man's house, that yard. The playhouse was gone, but there were still some ancient cigarette butts wedged between the sidewalk and the first flagstone of the walkway, and often as I passed I whispered, "Jimmy Easter, Jimmy Easter, Jimmy Easter," until the name conjured nothing, failed to spook. But then I would very nearly see the boy and the girl in their sweatshirts, climbing through the grimed window of the playhouse, and I would feel a jangled shiver, like shaves of ice in the blood, which was maybe just my nerves trying to shield me, to throw up some farce of hauntedness, of spirits lingering, to save me from the brute fact of their oblivion.

  Nine

  Late, I sprinted through drab, tidy streets toward Christine's. Her brick two-family was an exact replica of every other house around here, including mine. Much as I feared the advent of the me's, architecture alone was against it. There weren't enough lofts or factory floors. Kids needed big, decrepit spaces for their parties and orgies and suicidal Sunday afternoons. The buildings in these precincts had been designed for only one thing: to house, and disguise, the fester of families.

  When I reached Christine's I was sweating, heaving. I could have used a nice vomit. I should join a gym, I thought. But then I'd just vomit in it.

  Christine's brother sat in a canvas chair in the driveway. Nick had the build and the hair of a picture-book giant, a merry bipolar glint in his eye. He worked occasional construction jobs and sometimes held down the day-care fort while Christine cruised the borough in her minivan.

  Nick nodded, waved. The pink plastic rifle in his lap had leaked, wetted his tracksuit pants. Frantic children danced around him, screamed, struck Nick with lengths of garden hose. Nick raised his rifle, launched dark ropes of liquid at the more brazen tykes.

  "Gun me!" said one kid.

  "I'm poopy man!" called another.

  Bernie appeared to be absent from this frolic.

  "Milo," said Nick. "How you doing?"

  "Good," I said, ducked a late burst of crimson spray. "Just here for Bernie."

  "No, I know," said Nick.

  "Have you seen him?"

  "What?" said Nick. "Yeah, sure. But first, I was just thinking. How would you like to make some money?"

  Nick lowered his rifle, looked over at the boys still cowering from his fusillade.

  "Go play with those wood scraps near the garage," he called.

  "Sure, I'd love to make some money," I said. "Money is one of my favorite things to make. But I should really find Bernie right now."

  "Yeah, no, go ahead, guy. Just that I got this deck job at the end of the week and my assistant crapped out on me. I need a helper."

  "Deck job?"

  "I build decks. Like off the back of a house?"

  "Got it."

  "Interested?"

  "Ah, maybe," I said. "I'm pretty busy. Can I let you know? I'll let you know."

  There was a whiff of the volatile about this man that always put me in modes of appeasement, of friendly deferral.

  "Yeah," said Nick. "Let me know."

  "I will, I promise. I'll let you know."

  "Good. It's a deal."

  "What's a deal?"

  "You letting me know."

  "Yes, that's a deal. Have you seen my kid?"

  Nick tilted his head, a new shine in his eyes.

  "Your kid? Is it one of these little homos?"

  He swiveled in his chair, opened up once more on the boys where they crouched near the ruins of a doghouse.

  "Soup's on, motherlovers!"

  What he shot at them, I realized now, was some variant of Vitamin Drink. The children squealed and dove into the splintered wood.

  "No, not one of these particular little homos," I said, jogged past Nick and climbed the side staircase.

  The house was low-ceilinged and dark and as I crept through the kitchen I could almost have been some Hollywood SEAL with a pistol in my hand, an avuncular sergeant in my earbud. I could almost have been any one of the righteous manhunters I'd portrayed in cramped hallways since boyhood, but I was not, felt the dull sear of that notness now.

  More howls broke through the roar of a television as I turned into a carpeted parlor, slunk past a flimsy rack of cut-glass bowls, china dolls, and other sad lady collectibles, toward the light of a dusty bay window.

  I knew this room from past pickups and now I felt an odd flutter in my gut. Bernie could be facedown in the shag, choking on a cherry sucker from that quartz dish on Christine's coffee table. No longer the high-tech avenger, I'd end up a different character in the same Hollywood movie, the stunned father with his kid's limp corpse in his arms, the collateral damage cutaway.

  But Bernie had not choked on a sucker. Bernie was not dead in the shag. Bernie was chewing another boy's penis. The boy screamed as my son gnawed denim. Hunched before the giant TV, where a prelapsarian New York Yankees highlight reel looped swank Jeterian feats, the boys, in their backlit shadow-play agon, jerked like Mrs. Cooley's beloved Balinese puppets.

  "Daddy!" shouted Bernie, lifted his head from the drool-dark pants of his prey.

  "Hey, little man," I said. "Ready to go home?"

  Bernie hopped up, did his funny lope across the room.

  "Say goodbye to Aiden," I said, recognized the other boy now, the rabbit-eyed only of another Christine regular, a single mom who sold cell phone plans from a storefront on Ditmars Avenue.

  "Bye," said Bernie.

  "Bye," called Aiden, perhaps distracted by the swell of martial melodies surging from the plasma. Blue Angels navy fighters streaked over old Yankee Stadium, the bond forged between two of the best-funded teams of their time.

  I lifted Bernie into the crook of my arm, passed back through the kitchen, snatched our canvas supply bag, stepped out the door.

  The children shivered in the grass, their hair and skin faintly iridescent. No longer the lawn chair hunter, Nick had taken a knee, a precarious pose for a man his size. He leaned on the rifle stock, the bright barrel wedged in his mouth. He bucked his head away, mimed the rifle's recoil in slow motion, let the weapon clatter to the asphalt.

  "Just like that," he told the children.

  "What are you doing?" I said.

  "I'm telling the kids a story about my brother."

  "Do you think it's appropriate?"

  "What does that mean? Appropriate? Is that a fancy word for having no balls?"

  "No, it just means-"

  "I know what it means."

  "Okay, Nick, I'm sorry if I-"

  "Don't worry about it. You were not wrong to wonder. Why is he showing kids how to eat a bullet, right? But this is not what it looks like."

  "It's not?"

  "Not completely."

  "Oh."

  "And our deal still stands."

  "Yes, it does," I said. "Come on, Bernie. See you kids later."

  "Bye!"

  Nick turned back to his rapt flock.

  "See, my brother wanted to plaster the wall with his brains, but the round went through his cheek. Right here, see? Took out a wad of cheek meat, but he survived. After that he started going to this megachurch in Connecticut. We don't talk much."

  I hoisted Bernie to my shoulders, carried him across the street.

  "Daddy?"

  "Yeah, Bern."

  "Is Nick bad?"

  "No, I don't think he's bad."

  "Is he sad?"

  "Maybe he's a little sad."

  "Is he angry?"

  "He might be a little angry."

  "I bit Aiden's winky and mashed his face."

  "Yeah, Bern, I saw. Why do you think you did that?"

  "I wanted to."

  "Why do you think you wanted to?"

  "I didn't want him to have his train."

  "Was it his train?"

  "Yeah."

  "'Did he share it with you?"

  "Yes."

  "So, what was the problem?"

  "He had i
t."

  "Okay, Bern. Maybe you should have been happy he was sharing it with you, though. That was nice, wasn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "So, do you think it was right to bite and mash?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "I wanted to."

  "You baffle me, Bern."

  "What's baffle? Like waffle?"

  "It sounds a little like 'waffle,' doesn't it? You've got a good ear. But baffle means I don't know why you bit and mashed Aiden."

  "I told you why."

  "I know, you wanted to."

  "Daddy?"

  "Yes?"

  "What's depressive?"

  "Who called you depressive? Nick?"

  "Nobody."

  "Bernie, tell me. Who called you depressive? One of the older boys?"

  These poor kids, they gleaned these terms at random, overheard them from afternoon TV, dinner chat. Or else the language of pathology was affixed to them by some shrink Mengele eager to stuff them with Ritalin and Zoloft.

  "Who said you were depressive, Bernie?"

  "Nobody, Daddy."

  "Are you sure?"

  "You're the depressive, Daddy. Mommy said. On the phone with Paul."

  "Who's Paul?"

  "Paul from work. He's an artist."

  Paul did design for Maura's firm. Some animation websites also featured his cartoons. I'd met him in midtown once, when I picked up Maura for her birthday dinner. He seemed pleasant, if not a little bland, a tan, lanky guy who wore expensive vintage clothing. I'd kept waiting for Maura to tell me he was gay-she'd declared herself a devoted fag hag when we started dating, said it might even interfere with her quest for heterosexual companionship-but she'd never said anything about Paul's preference. I knew better than to ask.

  "Right," I said. "Paul from work."

  "Paul is going to make me a whole little movie of superheroes. On his computer. That's what Mommy said. Are you a pansy, Daddy?"

  "Wait," I said. "Did Mommy say 'depressive,' or 'pansy'?"

  "What's a pansy?"

  "It's a flower, Bernie."

  "I love flowers. I pick them for Mommy but she gets mad because other people need to enjoy them."

  "That's right. Mommy's right."

  "You're a nice pansy, Daddy."

  "Thank you, Bernie."

  "You're welcome."

  Most nights after dinner Bernie and I retired to his room to play guys. We'd each grip one of his grotesquely proportioned action mutants, bash them together, growl.

  "I will defeat you and meal you, Wolfsquid, Scourge of Decency," I might say.

  But now Bernie appeared at the threshold of a new phase. The last time I had offered up my services, he shrugged.

  "I just want to go to my room and unwind," he said.

  Later I went in to tell him a story. He'd become critical of the saccharine bent of my bedtime sagas.

  "Don't forget the evil," he said now.

  I worked up some woods for him, some trolls, some berry-picking children. I put the evil in there. Finally a hippo ex machina rescued the children from the castle of the Lanky Animator.

  Soon Bernie was asleep, or down, in the parlance of our suffering set.

  We cooked pork chops from the corner butcher. Maura patted the meat with a Cajun rub. I made the salad, stirred in the vinaigrette. This was our time. The sacred hour of our sacred institution. I sipped some sour Malbec Maura had brought home from an office party and decided not to prod about Paul, instead told Maura about Nick's offer, if only for the chance to launch some jokes at the giant's expense, get my girl to cackle again.

  "Maybe you should do it," said Maura.

  "Are you serious?"

  "Well, this Purdy thing can't take up all of your time. Seems like you're just waiting around for the next meeting."

  "He's been out of town."

  "Okay, so, maybe you can try doing the deck. You might enjoy the exercise."

  "If I can handle it. Could kill me."

  "If Nick can do it, you can do it. That guy's not exactly fit."

  "Maybe I will," I said, and maybe meant it. A day in the sun, some hard-earned under-the-table cash, it sounded promising. I'd once been a painter, after all, a fellow who worked with his hands. Now I could be a carpenter, like Jesus. I felt flushed with the idea of Jesus, the Jewish craftsman Jesus, and also the shit wine.

  "To decks," I said, raised my glass. "Decks are America. The hidden platform where the patriarchy is reasserted."

  "What are you talking about?" said Maura, who knew what I was talking about, had dabbled with perhaps a bit more coherence in the same college theory I had, but probably wanted me to focus on how I salted the salad.

  "I'm talking about our homeland, honey," I said, poured more wine, gulped it, flusher now, warm with that feeling of wanting a feeling that maybe had already fled. Where had the feeling gone? It wasn't in the wine. It wasn't in the pork chops Maura tonged from the broiler.

  "America," I said, "that run-down demented old pimp. Can't keep his bitches in line. No juice. He's lost his diamond fangs, drinks Tango from a paper bag. A gummy coot in the pool hall. The wolves, those juveniles, they taunt him."

  "Gummy coot?"

  "Whatever," I said. "You get the point."

  "Not really," says Maura. "It's retarded."

  "Retarded ha-ha or retarded peculiar?"

  "Wait. Be quiet."

  We froze, listened for sounds from Bernie's room.

  "I thought I heard him," said Maura. "Sometimes I'll be at work, in a meeting or something, and I'll think I hear him crying. It's weird. He's been sleeping through the night for a year but I still… Anyway, what were you saying? America is an alcoholic pimp?"

  "You used to love my raps. My riffs. I thought that's why you married me."

  Had she caught the edge of true panic beneath the joke panic? Did she know it was Horace's riff? You really had to hustle to recruit the right people to prop up your delusions, but the moment somebody broke ranks, or just broke for a protein shake, the whole deal teetered.

  "I know it wasn't my soap opera looks," I said. "I thought you loved the way my mind worked. Its strange loops. My sense of humor."

  "Shhh," said Maura. "Shut the fuck up."

  We froze again, listened for moans, the beginnings of wails. It wasn't so onerous these days, but some moments still brought us back to Bernie's infant months, both of us on tiptoes, petrified we'd wake the baby, lose those seventeen minutes of email catch-up we believed our sacrifice had earned us. We were like the Frank family in their Dutch attic, but with email.

  "Okay," said Maura, signaled the all clear. "So, what were we saying? Soap operas?"

  "Yeah," I sulked. "Soap operas."

  "Don't be such a queen," said Maura.

  "Save that terminology for your gay lovers," I said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I mean your lovers that are also gay."

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "What's your problem?"

  "I don't have a problem."

  "Is there something you want to say to me?"

  Why was I such a diseased fuck? It had to be society's fault. I loved people, all people, except for the ones with money and free time.

  "No," I said.

  "Are you sure?"

  "I know you think I'm homophobic, but I'm not. You're the one who betrayed all your gay friends by having a baby."

  "Most of my gay friends have babies now."

  "You call them your gay friends. That's homophobic right there."

  "You've really lost me," said Maura.

  "I don't like animation. I like live action."

  "Let me have a little time with that one."

  "I don't care what people do behind closed doors, or open doors, or out in the street or in a coffee shop. I don't care what you do. Suck cock in Starbucks all day. Just don't be happy. And don't call me a depressive pansy behind my back."

  Maura stared.

  "I'm j
ust kidding," I said.

  Maura did not move.

  "Really," I said. "Please, I don't know what I'm talking about."

  "No, you don't," she said.

  She looked beautiful there near the window in moonlight. I moved to her, tried to kiss her, let my hand fall to the strap of her dress, but she shoved me, gently, away.

  "I'm sorry, Milo. I'm just… I'm just all touched out."

  "Touched out?"

  "I know you understand."

  "Do I? Does Paul know that?"

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "Don't be paranoid, Milo."

  "Don't make me paranoid. Especially to avoid guilt."

  "I don't know what you're talking about. Paul's really kind of an idiot actually."

  "I'm an idiot, too!" I shouted. "Don't you fucking see it, Maura! I'm an idiot, too!"

  Maura's eyes got beady. Bernie's wail, low at first, gathered up for the sonic cascade.

  "Yes, Milo," whispered Maura. "I do see that now."

  Bernie soon returned to sleep, but in that moment we probably both recalled the all-nighters of those first few years, Maura always the one to rise and slip into Bernie's room. Once in a while I'd pretend to be about to get up, even pull the sheets off my legs, but Maura would push me back down in disgust. She'd lost years of slumber. A point came where Bernie had suckled for too long to start a bottle, but I could have intervened, insisted I live my share of nightly hell. But I didn't. I liked the sleep. I still felt guilty about it, but I was not about to let the feeling devour me. I had learned long ago how to refine the raw guilt into a sweet, granulated resentment.

  There was, for instance, the lullaby question. Maura sang the boy "Silent Night" almost every night. Operation Foreskin Rescue was one thing, but did she have to fill Bernie's brain with Christian death chants? Someday I thought I might go in there with an X-Acto blade, Jew-cut the little crumb right back into my tribe, my half-tribe.

  T.C.B., Abraham-style.