Full Frontal Fiction

by Jack Murnighan

  Sleep deprivation—and witnessing a retarded blow-job—made me feel kind of paranoid that whole damn night. I kept smoking cigarette after cigarette. Kate Anderson-Malloy had told me at orientation that sometimes state people come out to check on group homes in the middle of the night to make sure the staff isn’t getting paid for sleeping on the job. I kept seeing headlights scatter across the walls all night.

  Plus there was my whole ex-boyfriend thing brewing too. I was being stalked, so to speak. He didn’t know it, but his ass would soon be in jail. Anyway, to keep myself busy, I started snooping through the filing cabinets over by where the scales are, near the door to the basement, in the little makeshift office there.

  I got out Tom A.’s and Tom B.’s files. I read Tom B.’s first. It said right at the start that Tom B. suffered from moderate mental retardation and also possible schizophrenia. He could talk but had trouble with his speech. He had lived his whole life in an institution in Columbus called the Orient, but was sent here when it closed down, as was Tom A. In fact, at that place, according to Tom B.’s file, both Toms had a reputation for being “obsessed with each other’s presence” so much that they often had to be split up and put into separate parts of the institution. Usually, though, according to typewritten reports in the file, they found their way back to each other. Tom A. could not talk, and was more retarded than Tom B., so his file was pretty skimpy, except I read one part about when he was four years old, his stepdad burnt him with cigars.

  By that next morning, which was a Saturday, I knew the whole damn story by heart. Since no one had to go to the sheltered workshop, Kate Anderson-Malloy had written me a note in the log that said they all could sleep in till eight. I made a big breakfast, to let them know I was an okay chick. I mean, the works. Now that I’m a full-time shift supervisor, lead direct care in fact, I just put out the boxes of cereal and gallons of milk and they go at it. But that first morning, I made waffles and heated up the syrup in the microwave, had some sausage patties that I also nuked. Full glasses of juice and paper napkins, picnic-type dinette table set, like the Waltons were about to come down and eat. It was ready around 7:45 that morning and no one was up, so I got antsy and went down the hall again, like the warden who makes breakfast.

  When I woke up Tom A., he looked at me like the way—I’m sorry, this sounds pretty awful—like the way my cat does. Lonesome inside, without the capability to explain, and yet also relieved that he was off the hook from having to tell me anything. In fact he smiled at me, and I said, “Why, aren’t you chipper!”

  I almost added, as a joke, “Looks like you got some last night.”

  But I didn’t.

  He sat up. His belly hung down quite a bit. He had a boyish face though. I noticed on his back all those cigar scars. He walked over to me and put his hand out, like a gentleman in a silent movie.

  I shook it. He let out this huge scream that about killed my ears.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I went and got Sally, this little woman with Down’s Syndrome who may have had Alzheimer’s too. She was in her canopy bed in her pink bedroom—that’s the way her sister painted it for her. She had on a pink flannel nightgown and looked like a melted doll in a play-house.

  I got Damon, a black guy with a big head that had water inside it. He had a pump installed in his skull that kept the water from drowning out his brain. I knew all this stuff from Kate Anderson-Malloy and from the files. I knew Damon used to live with his prostitute mother and she used to sell him out to freaks. He was very quiet and could only say, “Mona Lisa.”

  Got Larry up. He talked too much. Soon as he was up, he started gabbing.

  “Hello. You’re new here. Your name is what? May I ask what?”

  His eyes were open great big. He was sitting on a rocking chair in his room with posters of big-breasted women hung on the walls with black electrical tape. Tall and bony with a big bald head and very red lips.

  “Anita,” I said.

  “We ain’t going out anywhere today,” he said, looking out the window. You could totally tell he hated going outside.

  “Okay,” I said. “I made breakfast for you.”

  He turned his head toward me and clapped his hands in an exaggerated, almost sarcastic way, but his voice seemed for real. “How nice,” he said. “Don’t smoke around me. I have asthma.”

  I said okay.

  Tom B. was the last one, as his room was at the end. There was Michael Jordan staring at me. His door opened as soon as I got there, and he was in a pair of dress pants and a wrinkled mint green dress shirt, feet in brown vinyl slippers. He looked uptight and yet really wanting to please. His eyes still had sleep in them. I saw him from last night, naked, going down on Tom A.

  “Breakfast is ready,” I said.

  “Tanks,” he said. Speech impediment.

  “You’re welcome.”

  His smile was unnerving, shaky around the edges, and it almost made me angry at him.

  “Tanks berry much,” he said, and then started walking toward the kitchen.

  I followed behind him. All of the retarded people were seated at the picnic table now, and the shock on all their faces almost made me burst out crying. It was like Thanksgiving with breakfast food. I know I’m sounding like some sentimental idiot, so I won’t go on, but they really loved what I’d done, and it had been a while since I got that kind of reaction from anybody.

  “Look at dis Tommy,” Tom B. said to Tom A. “Look what she did fow us.”

  Tom A. smiled bigger. He grabbed his fork in one hand and his knife in the other, like any minute, any minute.

  “Mona Lisa,” Damon said, his voice very low. “Mona. Lisa.”

  My relief came in at eleven. She seemed a little drunk too. A lot of drunks work in group homes, like it’s their way of paying penance: a vodka binge, then they go in and wipe up a retard’s ass and they think they don’t have to quit drinking. But this woman, named Raquel, could be drunk but it didn’t seem obnoxious, even at eleven in the A.M.

  Right when Raquel walked in and went down to the basement to clock in was when Archie called me, my drug-dealing ex-fiancé. This job was sort of my antidote to all I had just gone through with him, kinda like I was paying penance too but just for being a total fucking fool. But Archie kept following me. I mean, I was living with my dad, and I was moving all my stuff out of the town house we were at one time sharing, and every time I went to get more stuff he was there, hangdog in the face. Sometimes when I was going around doing my business and shit, I would see him in his Escort in the rearview mirror with that same hangdog, stalker look. Like he was having his picture taken for the cover of Pathetic Small Town Dope Dealer magazine.

  “What? How did you get this number, you son of a bitch?” I was whispering, hoping Raquel wouldn’t hear. Everyone was out in the living room, watching VHl, doing whatever. Tom A. and Tom B. were sitting on the love seat, of course. Holding hands. Sally was in her pink sweatsuit, on the floor, talking to a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Larry was really the only one watching the TV, while Damon rocked in his lounger with his eyes closed, kind of like Stevie Wonder does.

  “I hired a private detective,” Archie said. He laughed.

  “Bullshit. Listen, I’m at my new job, and I am trying to make something outta myself.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “So it’s over.”

  “I love you so much.”

  “Go smoke your crack, Archie. Just fucking go smoke your crack.”

  I hung up. As if she’d been waiting at the bottom of the stairs for me to finish, Raquel marched up, her hair all ratty-looking, in a pair of nylon sweats and flannel shirt. She smelled like perfume and cigarettes and just the thinnest vapor of Jack Daniel’s, almost sweeter-smelling than the perfume.

  “Hey,” she said, not looking at me.

  I had just finished up with the kitchen, so I was ready to go. Pulling an eleven to eleven was more than I thought it would be.

  Raquel looked out in t
he living room. Then she got panicked sort of. She turned around and told me, “You’re letting Tom and Tom sit out there like that?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Good God, if Kate found out . . . ”

  Raquel yelled, “Tom. Hey Tom. Don’t hold Tommy’s hand now. You guys split up. It’s time for some alone time. Okay?” Raquel’s smile was nervous, like she was talking to someone during a hostage crisis.

  Tom B. looked up, responding to being called Tom. He smiled. But his eyes were afraid at the same time. He blew out a sigh and let go of Tom A.’s hand and stood up and went over beside Sally on the floor, small and polite like a little Japanese guy.

  Raquel turned to me. “If you let them do that, they don’t know when to stop. They’ll get so into each other, they’ll not know when to quit. One time they locked themselves in the bathroom for a day and all they did was—well—you don’t want to know. Let’s just say they went through a whole bottle of hand lotion.” Raquel laughed into her hand. She flopped down at the picnic-type table, lit up a cigarette.

  I smiled. Sally was talking to Tom B.’s foot now. I wondered just what the fuck I was getting myself into. Heard Archie’s voice in my head, pleading. At one time, he was gonna do construction and I was gonna go back to community college for something in nursing. Ha.

  “Guess I’ll go,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Raquel said, smoking.

  She stood up and, with her cigarette dangling, walked out into the living room.

  “Look at all my babies,” she said kind of loud, but then she looked up at me and her eyes were real clear. They were the eyes of a drunk lady who used to have kids but for some reason lost them and now she was in a roomful of retarded people that she was claiming as her own, and she was saying it like a joke on herself, on the retards, and on me. But it wasn’t mean-spirited. It was pathetic and it was sweet.

  I laughed a lot right then. Probably from being so sleep-stunted. Tom A. and Tom B. were trying to sneak off for a quickie, and I saw. So did Raquel, squatting next to big-headed Damon. She grabbed two throw pillows from the couch and tossed them at both the Toms, hard.

  “Stop right there.” Her voice was joking and not.

  They stopped, went to separate corners like obedient prizefighters. I wanted to give them permission right then. Go for it. I wanted to get the hell out of there worse though.

  I left that day without saying anything else. Thinking I was not ever going back.

  Time sure flies when you’re having so much fun. So to speak. I mean, it really does. That was about a year ago, all that I just explained. Of course I went back for my next shift. Actually, if I remember correctly, I got called in to cover the other drunk lady’s shift, the one who never came back.

  Now Raquel and me go out and get drinks together all the time. I am on my way to becoming a drunk-lady-direct-care-worker myself. Raquel and me practically run the place.

  Some things, even with time, don’t change, however.

  “You want to get together?” It’s Archie. I’m standing in my dad’s house right now and can hear Dad out in the garage sawing on something.

  “Good God,” I say, and I laugh because Archie’s voice sounds so familiar and yet shocking, like a CD you think is fucked-up and you press play and it’s not.

  “It’s me.”

  “You were up for six years.”

  “Time out for good behavior. Plus Butler County ain’t got no room, and it was my first offense.”

  He laughs, smoky-voiced. I can picture him, going bald but with a rugged face, and skin color like dank wood. And his mouth, I always can remember that fondly. Big-lipped and smiling with strong white teeth. He is so into dental hygiene.

  Dad comes in sweaty, mouthing, “Who is it?”

  I just roll my eyes. “Listen, I gotta go.”

  I hang up, and Dad looks at me: “Archie?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You had that look. He calling from jail?”

  Dad is washing his hands in the sink, over all the dirty dishes. He is a tall guy with freshly cut hair. He goes to the barber three times a month. On disability because of his back, so it’s about the only place to go during the day, outside of his old work site and I think they might have told him to stop going there so much. Now he spends his time out in his garage/workshop making things like a vacuum cleaner with a digital display. Inventions he hopes to patent. He takes a lot of pills for pain.

  “No. He’s out.”

  Dad dries his hands on paper towels.

  “Wow,” he says. “You know what, I had a vision.”

  Dad thinks he’s psychic. He even has a license to be a practicing one and goes to psychic fairs in Cincinnati and Dayton. Even has business cards: ROLAND SIMMONS, L.S.P. (Licensed Spiritualist Practitioner). With that license, he can legally marry people. He’s marrying Tom A. and Tom B. tonight, in fact. Not legally, but still.

  “You did?” I say.

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to say nothing.” His eyes go so sincere, like Bill Clinton, when he talks psychic talk. It’s a sad yet joyous thing, his psychic powers. Like a person who can’t read suddenly being able to. The psychic stuff is one of the primary reasons Mom dumped him though.

  Dad looks at me with big puffy Darvon eyes. “But I saw you and Archie together in a motel room.”

  He laughs but stops.

  “Thanks, Dad. There is no way.”

  I go into the living room. I’ve straightened it up for the wedding tonight. It’s all planned. Me and Raquel planned it. I have white and sky blue streamers and I made a cake and punch. Dad’s technological shit is still everywhere in piles, cables and old TVs and VCRs and computer monitors and stuff, but I scooted all of it around to make it look like an aisle. At first, we were gonna rent a hall, but that would have drawn attention to it. This is sort of a secret operation, of course. If Kate knew, or if Tom A.’s brother, his legal guardian, knew, we’d all be fired, possibly up for charges or something.

  “Think about the headlines, Anita,” Raquel said one night at Applebee’s after work, over cocktails and cigarettes. “Two Group Home Workers Force Clients into Homosexual Marriage.” We got tickled and started making up juicier and juicier ones, ending with: “Shotgun Homosexual Retarded Marriage Performed by Crazed Psychic While Group Home Workers Get Drunk and Laugh Their Asses Off.”

  Anyway, Tom A. is being made to move, or at least that’s the threat. Kate Anderson-Malloy caught them one morning, about four months back, doing it in the bathroom, and since then she’s been on a campaign, although she’s totally professional about it. At a staff meeting, where all of us gather at the main office in Middletown, Kate, kind of flabby with really nice hair and an excellent pantsuit, got into a sort of tirade. I mean, she’s a bitch, like most managers afraid of doing any real work are, but also there’s this weird, loud lovingness in her face as she pronounces her proclamations, like against her compassionate instincts she’s always having to tell us these things. And so she looked at all of us in the paneled conference room, and she went:

  “Look. We have tried everything with those two. I mean, I’m not against love. I’m not against human sexuality. I’m against obsession. Those two are obsessed. I mean, I talked to Mr. Allen, Tom A.’s guardian, last night on the phone, and he told me they’ve been like that since they were boys, and it’s hard to stop that kind of behavior. I mean, you can’t. So we’re just gonna move Tom A. over to Franklin Street and move Juanita from over there to our place. Juanita’s real cute. You guys are gonna love her. I mean, Tom A. and Tom B. can still see each other, but supervised. I mean, what I’m afraid of is that they are gonna end up hurting each other. Physically. There’s all kinds of issues here. I mean, when I walked in on them the other morning, Tom A., excuse me, but Tom A. was anally penetrating Tom B.”

  The way she said “penetrating,” I had to laugh. Raquel looked over at me, and our eyes kind of got conspiratorial.

  When Kate looked at me, she had to l
augh too. I mean, it was funny. Eric, another guy who works with us, laughed, and then all the people, mostly new hires, well, we all got the giggles until finally Kate had to stop us.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “This is the people business, and yes, the people business can be pretty funny. But let’s just try to make this happen smoothly, okay?”

  Then it got quiet, like we were all suddenly little kids and Kate Anderson-Malloy was the teacher.

  Dad’s standing at the podium he made for the wedding. It’s in front of the living room window where the TV used to be. He looks kind of silly, standing there, politician-dumb, like he is thinking how to talk about a big issue in little-people language for the masses.

  But I love him. One of his visions about me, and he usually has them after eating late at night, is that I am going to be famous somehow. He sees me getting an award on a show.

  “Now,” he says, making sure the hair he combs over his bald spot is still in place, “so I’m just gonna treat these two like man and wife?”

  “That’s what we want,” I say.

  The phone rings again, and we let the machine get it. It’s Archie’s voice. He’s singing this Boyz II Men song I used to really like, “The End of the Road.” It kills me, and I get embarrassed, Dad standing there, smiling.

  “What a singer,” Dad says.

  Archie stops then, and the answering machine has that hang-up dial tone sound for a sec. I get closer to the podium, pretending like I’m one of the Toms so I can see what it looks like. Dad’s eyes go serious. He says, “So this is the wedding of Tom A. to Tom B.” He’s reading it off an index card. Practicing. What a perfectionist.

  “Ladies and gentleman, I now pronounce them Tom and Tom.” The plan was secretly hatched in the basement, by the time clock. Raquel was taking a drink from her Super America mug, filled with vodka and red pop. One time she offered me a sip and I took it and, boy, was it vodka and red pop.

  Anyway, it was the evening right after the staff meeting where Kate told us Tom A. was gonna have to move. We were both kind of bummed, and Raquel said, “You know, all Tom B. has ever talked about was getting married to him. I think that is so sweet.” She took a big drink.