Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz

by Chris Lynch

  Alex held his stretch long enough, then straightened up. When I tried to do the same, he clamped his hands on me and started arranging me like a store window dummy, He kicked my feet sideways, farther, farther out until they were crying from missing each other. They had never been separated before. Then he pushed my upper body forward and down. “You can do it,” he said.

  I did not want to lead him on. “No, I can’t.”

  “I can get you there.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  This went on for a few more minutes until I began making sounds like those realistic crying baby dolls when you flip them over on their backs.

  Finally he let me up, but it was only so that we could perform much the same duet through standard toe-touchies (“Everything God wants me to touch is already within arm’s reach, Alex,”), calf extensions (“Ankles are only supposed to bend the other way; I saw it in a book,”), and the thoroughly perverse thigh-stretch thing where you bend over forward while pulling your foot up in the air behind you so you look like one of those self-feeding bird doohickies on people’s desks (“Did my mother say you could do this to me?”).

  Through it all I was made to watch the poor, fat sap in the mirror, and I wanted to cry for him, then I saw the relief on his face when it was done, and I wanted to cry for him. I didn’t cry, though, because it wouldn’t have been a very gymly thing to do, and I was afraid one of the old tough guys would come over and slap me like General Patton.

  “Wow,” I said, wiggling around to feel every screaming, betrayed muscle I had. “That was tough. But I’m glad I did it. Thanks, Alex.”

  This close. I was this close to crying, no matter who I embarrassed, when he told me that that was just the warming-up part.

  Fortunately we were on the bikes, and I was sweating like the rain forest within seconds, so my red face and teariness wouldn’t bother anybody.

  “So what did you mean,” I said, “everybody peeks because how else are you going to know?”

  “Everybody wants to know,” he said insufficiently. You would think he was the one needing to conserve breath.

  “Know what?”

  “Know what everybody else has got, and in what proportion.”

  I wouldn’t have imagined my face could get any redder than it already was. Which just showed the limits of my imagination. Why did they have to have mirrors facing you from every vantage point? Were they not aware that some of us were here for the very reason that looking at ourselves was a very painful experience? On top of the painful experience of torturing ourselves with these evil contraptions. There had to be some skinny guy behind that mirror, with all his skinny friends, with nice wavy hair, watching us and laughing and eating whatever canapés they wanted to without worrying about it at all.

  Red face aside, I had to ask. “Are you saying guys are all... looking at each other all the time? Looking at, like, all their stuff?”

  “Yup.”

  “Like, their stomachs, and their muscles, and...”

  “Yup. And especially the type of guys who come to a place like this. Comparison is rampant. Though not as obvious as what you were doing.”

  Not sure here what I was thinking or what I was hoping to get out of it, but right at that point I began pedaling madly on the stationary bike very much like a person who thought he could escape any and all unpleasantry pursuing him.

  What I accomplished, of course, was exhaustion and nausea.

  “It’s okay, Elvin,” Alex said nicely. “It’s natural.”

  He stopped pedaling and got off his bike, which caused me great joy because that meant I could too.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Really,” he said.

  That was a relief. He put an arm around my shoulders and led me across the room.

  “And don’t worry about your anatomical incorrectness. You’ll be fine.”

  When I stopped short and froze in the middle of the room like a statue, Alex did not. He continued right on and plunked himself down in the seat of some weight-lifting machine.

  My anatomical incorrectness.

  I was not to worry about it.

  You know, funny thing was, I hadn’t considered worrying about it recently.

  “What are you doing?” Alex called across the way, squirting the fire with lighter fluid. “Come over here, will you?”

  It was like I was released. Like there was a giant elastic band previously attached to my waist that had now been cut. I ran—toddled like a giant baby, really—toward my uncle.

  “What incorrectness?” I demanded quietly.

  “Oh, Elvin, it’s not anything—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped.

  “Good,” he said. “Now here, sit at this machine next to me. It’s just got about thirty-five pounds on it, so you’ll be fine. Just push gradually, away from your chest like I am here, and—”

  “Is it my mole? It’s my mole, right? I’m never coming back here again. I can’t believe I took my mole out in public.”

  “Lift the weights, Elvin; you’ll feel better.”

  I lifted the weights.

  And here’s the miracle: I felt better.

  I pressed the weight off my chest, extended my arms all the way, held it a couple seconds, then let it down again. I was mimicking my uncle’s motions, and it was working out fine. Push up, breathe out, drop it back, and breathe in. I did this twelve times and stopped when he told me to.

  My arms felt. My chest felt. Felt not like I had pushed over a building, but like, anyway, something was inside them at least. I could feel blood moving through my upper body, where it was usually just pooling there.

  And my head. My head was just a bystander in all of this. But my head felt like it loved it.

  I did another set. Felt even better. We moved to other machines, ones to isolate my biceps, my triceps, my pectorals, and give them the attention they deserved. Muscles that had been isolated in a completely different way up till then, isolated right out of any thought I ever had. I could feel my muscles getting gradually, no, rapidly, weaker and wibbly as time ran out on my weight-lifting experience. But it was a good kind of wibbly, even when I was killing myself on the most unnatural machine that made me push my arms together, trying unsuccessfully to get my elbows acquainted with each other, but very successfully to bunch up a lot of fleshy material in front of me.

  But I noticed a more unexpected thing going on. Alex was wearing down even quicker than I was. He was, in fact, just sitting on the seats of the machines through most of my last few stops. Occasionally he would put up a lift, or put one halfway up. Then he would adjust the weight down again, try again, and stop again. By the end he was just keeping me company.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Sure, ya,” he said through short, shallow breaths. “It’s just that the weight bit, it’s really not my thing. I just do it, really, as a part of the program. Keep my weight up, keep me stronger.”

  “Keep your weight up? I never heard of that. Is that a thing that people do?”

  He laughed a wheezy laugh, then stood up.

  “Ya, some people. And it just makes me feel a little unwell from time to time. I’m better with the other stuff. Let’s take a nice walk together. You want to take a nice walk together?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said, and followed him to the treadmills.

  And he wasn’t kidding. I hadn’t paid too close attention before, but it was obvious now as I checked out my uncle’s back view. He did not share my physique. He was a very lean model Bishop indeed. And when he walked, his knees never quite straightened up all the way. He didn’t look built for weight lifting. Or for walking, for that matter.

  But walk we did. We sidled up on adjoining machines and headed off for the horizon yonder. Or, our reflections in the mirror yonder.

  “Elvin,” Alex said over the hum of the treadmill and the padding of footfalls. Then, when he was supposed to say something more, nothing happened.
r />   I looked at his reflection, waiting. His reflection looked back at me. There was no sign that anything more was coming. There was a friendly smile, at least.

  “Was that a question?” I asked after a minute. I clocked it on my red digital display panel. I had also burned fourteen calories.

  “Nah,” he said. And then, nothing.

  I clocked another minute. My face started flushing again, my sweat building up again.

  “Did you want to ask me any questions?” Alex said. “I figure, after all... there must be questions.”

  I thought about it for nine seconds. “No, thanks.”

  “Ah, come on.”

  “Okay. Right, how old are you?”

  “That’s your question?”

  “Ya.”

  “Okay. I’m not yet fifty.”

  “What a coincidence. I’m not yet fifty myself.”

  “There ya go. Loads in common.”

  “Really? What else then?”

  “Your dad.”

  Sweat was coming thicker now. On both of us. We were not setting such a torrid pace, just a brisk stroll really, but it was enough.

  “And?”

  “Food. We both love food.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? What does that mean, maybe? You telling me you’re not sure you love food?”

  “No, I’m saying maybe you don’t. I never saw such a skinny food lover as you before. I think maybe you’re an imposter.”

  “Hah,” he laughed, then coughed a little, then slowed down his treadmill a tic. “I wasn’t always like this. I was nearly as big as yourself once upon a time.”

  “You were not.”

  “I was so.”

  “Wow. How’d you fix it?”

  “You wanna know?”

  “I wanna know.”

  “You really wanna know?”

  “I really want to know.”

  “Ah, you don’t really want to know.”

  I was thinking about coming over to his treadmill and tackling him to demonstrate my desire to know. Instead, I reached over and yanked the little emergency stop cord on his machine and stopped him in his tracks.

  That was when I could hear him panting and wheezing.

  “Thanks,” he said, mopping his brow with a sweat-gray wristband.

  I kept walking, and staring at him. My intense footsteps sounded thumping loud and intimidating now. Must have been what broke him.

  “Okay,” he said, his breathing more even, “the trick is, you gotta curb your appetite.”

  Then he slapped me on the back and started walking toward the door. “I can’t do this anymore, Elvin. I want to head down to the pool area. You staying here, or you want to come down?”

  Curb your appetite? The answer to mankind’s biggest, fattest, sweatiest conundrum is to curb your appetite? No way, this matter was not closed.

  In fact, so anxious was I to catch up with Alex and yank from him the secret of the waist smaller than the inseam, that I forgot to shut the treadmill off. I instead sort of pivoted—no, pirouetted—on the moving mat, found myself startled and disoriented with the floor moving beneath me, then surfed for the last 1.2 seconds before being dumped, on hands and knees, on the rug.

  I looked around quickly for the most important thing, to see if anyone was watching, and only almost all of them were. I returned to the machine, coolly and politely wiped away my sweat, then tailed after my uncle.

  “I can’t curb my dog, never mind myself. How can curb be the whole answer?” I said when I caught up to him at the lockers. He was sitting on the bench untying his sneakers.

  “Because,” he said, pausing to look me in the face. “Because it just is. This is the story, nephew. This is a lot of what brings me here. Appetites. The only real answer, to everything, is getting your own appetites under your own control. I’m gonna be straight with you here, Elvin, so stop me if at any point you can’t deal with the reality of—”

  “Stop,” I said.

  He looked startled. He looked disappointed.

  “It was just a joke, Alex. I do want you to talk.”

  “Oh. Good. Thing is, appetites are the devil.”

  “Stop.”

  “It wasn’t a hilarious joke the first time, Elvin.”

  “No joke now. Question. I just wanted to know before you went further, if this is going to be a devil and Jesus and all that kind of talk, because if so maybe... maybe not.”

  “No, it’s not. Not really, anyway. I meant the other kind of devil. Just, what bedevils you. Your own devils. Yours, mine, like that. Nephew, appetites are our curse. Your dad, he got killed by appetites. Your dad ate and drank and smoked himself to death. My appetites have been trying to get the better of me for forty years. Bishops been appetiting themselves into oblivion for as far back as anybody cares to look, and if anybody cares to look at you, young man, they would have to conclude that you are an A-one example of a Bishop. And I care to look.”

  I could probably count on my thumbs how many times in my life somebody had talked me into submission. If I wanted to keep track anymore, I was going to have to sprout a third thumb.

  For several long seconds my uncle stared up at me, waiting to see what I was going to do about all this.

  But I wasn’t going to do anything but stare back. I was choked up and choked back about some part of what my uncle had to say, or all of it, or what there was yet to be said that hadn’t been said, but I didn’t know which, and it didn’t matter. It wasn’t even that he brought any fresh bolts of lightning, because if I was in a completely honest mood, I would say I recognized that message like it was the phone number of an old friend I never called anymore.

  Alex knew as much, or his face was good enough to say so, and then he went silently back to undressing and redressing for the pool.

  I was looking forward to going to the pool, which sounded like relief, though it would probably turn out not to be. I dressed as quickly as I could and tried to keep my attention focused on my own business, even if peeking at somebody else was truly the done thing. I did not have to do it.

  Except that I did.

  I let my eyes wander as Alex stripped down. I didn’t think about it; I just did it. I didn’t want anything out of it; I just did it. I didn’t control it or feel good about it; I just did it.

  And I did it modestly, but that was enough. For when I let my eyes fall on my uncle’s feet as a starting point, I saw something. Or, the lack of something.

  He had two toes on his right foot. And they weren’t even consecutive toes. They were the first and last toes, the dad and the baby toes, with what seemed like miles of pink, crinkled skin in between them. There was even a pattern to that skin, like the pinchings along the crusty edge of a homemade pie.

  “The trick to the peeking is not to get so hypnotized that you forget that you are not, in fact, invisible to others.”

  “I was not peeking.” I had kicked my sweaty sweats away and was desperately shoving myself into my bathing suit in that hurried way that causes the inside liner to get all rolled up and then one leg hole shrinks to about one-tenth your actual leg diameter so you get the one leg in and wrestle flamboyantly with yourself and your suit and your leg, hop-spinning in an awkward semicircular, seminude version of a dance you might see at an old-world wedding.

  “Do you want some help with that?” Alex said with a laugh.

  “No, I do not want help with this,” I said, finally surrendering to humiliation—I should really carry a white flag with me at all times—and unrolling the now completely balled-up bathing suit down over my legs before easing it smoothly back up again.

  “Less hurry, more speed, as they say,” he said.

  “Is that what they say?” I said.

  “I think so. Now what do you say we head for the pool.”

  He headed for the pool, showing me his back.

  This time, it had to be on purpose, what he was showing me. No peeking was necessary.

  Alex’s back, his n
arrow, pale back, was pocked with a small minefield of what looked like bullet holes trying to heal. But if they really were that many bullet holes, my uncle Alex was the Terminator. Or the undead.

  Either way, he was shaping up to be a pretty unhealthy-looking guy for somebody with a health club membership.

  I followed him, and as we walked through the big foot trough where you are forced to delouse your feet before going into the good water, I could not help myself. Under the six inches of water, the foot took on 1950s horror creature features, like a big, pink, elongated crab of a foot, and there I was staring again.

  “A bunch of your toes are not there, Alex.”

  He looked down, shocked. “Damn. They must have come off in my sock again.”

  I hopped, briskly, out of the foot wash pool.

  He followed me, briskly.

  “Diabetes,” he said, catching me by the arm and holding on.

  “What?”

  “Diabetes, Elvin. Diabetes ate my toes.”

  “You have diabetes?”

  “Sort of. I did have it, just like lots of folks in our line, I’m afraid. Gotta watch yourself there, young Elvin. You got sweet blood. We all got sweet blood, which is our flavor.

  “But I had the diabetes and then I didn’t. It got fixed. Doctors put me on a diet and some pills. They cut out all my favorite sweeties and replaced them with all manner of sugar substitutes. Got cancer from the sugar substitutes, though, so I guess you’d have to call that a win-some-lose-some, good-news-bad-news, Lord-giveth-Lord-taketh-away result there.”

  “Cancer? You got cancer and diabetes?”

  “Not anymore. Cancer went away. I got better. While I was in prison.”

  I stopped walking and firmly removed my arm from Alex’s grip. I faced him down. Well, I didn’t face him down. I frankly didn’t even know what facing somebody down would look like, unless it was like when Grog had an accident on the floor, and then when I saw it I stared at her and then she faced down at the rug rather than facing up at me. And even that example wouldn’t entirely hold up because accident was an inaccurate word because Grog soiled the carpet intentionally and even came out to the kitchen and tugged me gently by the hand to show it to me, just like Lassie bringing the sheriff to the fire down at the old mill. She’s so like Lassie, Grog.