by Dan Lopez
He swallows the pill without protest. “I see,” he says, then lumbers over to Peter. “What’s with you?”
“He has a migraine,” she says. “Leave him alone.”
“It’s just a headache,” Peter says.
“Hmm.” Thaddeus puckers his lips and scratches his thumb against the stubble on his chin. “Never had one.”
She pours a glass of orange juice and drops some bread into the toaster. “They’re not pleasant. Come on. Come over here. Leave him alone. Breakfast will be ready in a minute.”
“Did you take aspirin? Cheryl, did you give him an aspirin?”
“Of course I did. Did you take your pill?” She watched him take it, but quizzing him forces him to shift his focus away from Peter.
“Yes,” he says.
“Good. Drink the water, too. You never hydrate enough. And here, sit down. Breakfast is ready.”
Hands in his pockets, he ignores her and continues hassling Peter.
Watching them side by side like that, she can’t help but note the vast differences between the two men. One is small and the other large; one is contemplative and the other bombastic. But more than physical traits or even personality, what she notices most is their divergent philosophical approaches to life. Even supine and battling a migraine, Peter projects an aura of selflessness, of collectivist sympathies that Thaddeus completely lacks. He’s an anachronism, she thinks: indulgent American patriarch, circa twentieth century. In moments like these, she wishes she could send him to some museum to be cataloged and locked away like a dusty antique cannon, to be decommissioned, disarmed and stripped of the ability to destroy every fragile thing she’s built. It would serve him right. But she wavers. It’s not entirely his fault; he’s just too bulky, too impractical for modern life. He wasn’t designed for it like Peter was. She’s just the sucker who got stuck with him. But that’s age. She selected from the choices she was given at the time and now she has to live with it.
“Thaddeus! Come on. Leave Peter alone. He’s not feeling well and your breakfast is getting cold,” she says, even though the toast is still in the toaster.
“The aspirin will make you feel better. No big deal.”
He’s finished with Peter, but instead of returning to the kitchen, like she’s asked, he ambles around the room and stops in front of a framed print. “Where’s Gertie?”
“At day care,” Peter says. “Steven dropped her off.”
“I just told you that.”
“Oh.”
She parrots what Steven said about the importance of maintaining a schedule, glancing at Peter all the while to gauge his reaction. See, she wants to say, I can be a team player, too. But if he’s impressed he doesn’t let on.
“Why don’t you sit down?” she tries again, in a softer voice this time. “Your food will get cold. Do you want eggs?”
He waves her off and continues to stare at the art on the wall: a pastel cascade of curves and fleshy arabesques.
Of course she recognizes the expressionist vagina immediately, remembering when Peter purchased it and how proud he was to find a rare, signed lithograph. She wills Thaddeus to walk away from the print. But he doesn’t. He ponders it, tapping a finger against his pale lips.
Move on, she thinks.
He opens his mouth but remains silent. Hesitantly, he points at the painting before arching an eyebrow. At last he shrugs. “Modern art. Not my thing.”
“What a shame,” she says, masking her relief. “Now, do you want eggs or not? I don’t have all day.”
He doesn’t answer, but she makes them anyway. Otherwise, he’ll eat only toast, and the doctor’s orders were very clear about taking the new medication with a full meal.
“When it comes to art I stick to the masters,” he announces to the room. “Master Michelangelo. Da Vinci. Master Picasso.” He crosses the room and cozies up to Peter on the couch. “And my favorite master”—he pauses, drawing out the moment—“Master Bater—only did naked women. Ha!”
“Oh, for the love of—”
“Good one,” Peter says, pressing the ice pack tight against his eyes.
“Just a joke,” he says, slapping Peter on the thigh. “I know you boys don’t like that stuff.” He stands up. “No big deal.”
He lumbers on, breath heaving. With each step, he looks older and less surefooted than usual. Perhaps there’s something wrong with his inner ear, which is affecting his balance. He has been mishearing her a lot lately. There could be a connection. Plating his eggs, she makes a mental note to ask the doctor about it the next time they go in for a checkup.
She serves the food and this time she demands that he come eat. He complies. Perched on a stool, he nudges the eggs with a fork.
“You need to eat with these new pills,” she says, pointing at him.
He nods, but before long he stands up, grabs a piece of toast off his plate, and makes his way back to the couch. He taps Peter on the shoulder and asks if he’s ever been deep-sea fishing, chewing while he talks.
Breakfast didn’t work, but she has other tactics.
“Thaddeus,” she says, “it’s such a nice day. Why don’t you go for a walk?”
He shrugs. It’s clear that she’ll have to convince him, but it’s fine. She knows how to do it.
“Peter isn’t feeling well, and I’ve got all this cleaning to do. You’ll just be bored here. Go on, it’ll do you a world of good. Go explore the neighborhood.”
“Steven won’t be back till tonight?”
She smiles and nods. “That’s right. We have the whole day to ourselves.”
His shoulders slump, and she knows that he’s agreed, but she’s not going to take any chances today. Grabbing him by the arm, she leads him toward the front door, bypassing the more convenient garage out of fear that something in there would distract him or trigger a comment that she can’t walk back. Using the front door presents a logistical problem, however. Three steps separate the living room from the landing for the door. With his balance problems, she’s not at all confident in his ability to manage the steps on his own, so she guides his feet, taking great care that he doesn’t trip.
He shakes free of her grip. “I can do it.”
“I just don’t want you to trip.”
“Stop babying me!” He blushes, offering an apology.
“It’s okay,” she says, because saying, I’m used to it, would further aggravate the situation, and the priority at the moment is getting him out the door, not her feelings. “Don’t forget your hat, and here, let me put some sunscreen on you. I think I saw some in the hall closet earlier.”
He presents his arms. “Whatever you want.”
She fetches the tube. The cap is crusty and its contents are expired in all probability. But its efficacy is immaterial. The purpose of the lotion is not to protect him from the sun; it’s to keep him distracted so he doesn’t say or do anything that might offend Peter. It works. As she applies the lotion, he quietly peeks out the thin windows flanking the door.
“You don’t want to be stuck in here all day,” she says with a smile. “Maybe somebody’s sunbathing by the pool. Or there’s a gas station just past the gate. You can buy some lottery tickets. Maybe you’ll get lucky and hit the jackpot. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Lucky.” He snorts. “Do you know what I’d do if I won the lotto?”
She shakes her head no and rubs the last of the lotion into his skin.
“I’d buy Gertie a mansion. And a boat for Stevie. Remember how much Stevie liked to go fishing?”
“Very good. Go on now before it gets too hot.”
The floppy brim of his hat dips over his thin brow, and sunscreen smudges his nose where she neglected to rub it in all the way.
“Do I get a kiss?”
She could walk away. After last night he deserves it, but in that foolish hat, stretching out those doughy hands and bending that droopy smile, he looks so vulnerable that she can’t help herself.
“We’ll be all
right,” she says, pulling back. “Okay?”
He sighs and nods.
“Good, okay.” Staring at him, she tears up, but she restrains herself. They are so close now. She needs to focus. Steven will cool off. Peter will help her. “Now, be careful, okay? Don’t get into trouble.” Then she kisses him again and the kiss lingers.
“Oh?” He wiggles his eyebrows, making her smile in spite of herself. “I’ll be careful all right.” He reaches lower, but she shifts away.
Patting his belly, she points at the door. “Go.”
Heavy, hot air pours into the house. The light causes her to squint, but he steps out without a problem. “Don’t stay out too long, okay? It’s hot.” He agrees and pulls the door shut behind him. The few sips of water he had with his pill won’t keep him hydrated for long and he’s never done well with prolonged exposure. The first winter they spent in Florida was also hot, and even then, when he was so much younger, he’d taken them all to the beach to escape it.
He was still at the firm then, doing mostly pro bono work, and there wasn’t much money, but it didn’t matter. On the morning of Christmas Eve he piled them all into the old Buick, the one with the missing rearview mirror and the ice-cold a/c (the car was falling apart but at least that still worked), and made the hour-and-a-half drive out to the coast for the weekend. On the way, they passed through the flat expanse of sawgrass that filled the St. Johns River watershed (low in the dry season), and she marveled at how it continued all the way down to the slash pine flatwoods and cypress hammocks of the Tosohatchee preserve over the horizon. They passed through small towns and a dusting of homesteads before arriving at Cocoa Beach, its glittering shore giving way to the bellowing Atlantic. “We’re here,” he announced, rolling the Buick through the gravel lot, the parking brake catching with a crunch though it was hardly necessary (the land in Florida was so much flatter than what they were used to up north). Check-in at the hotel wasn’t for a few hours still, so they took turns slipping into their swimsuits in the Buick’s backseat, and a moment later they raced down the scorching sand and dove into the pounding surf, holding hands.
Only newcomers swam in the winter, but they wouldn’t learn that for a few years yet, not until their bodies adjusted to the climate, and anyway, the crisp water felt good on a sweltering afternoon. For the moment, the beach belonged to them, and they didn’t know that the water was anything but perfect. They splashed around like seals in the surf, and even though Thaddeus had never been a strong swimmer, he took Steven out past the breakers and showed him how to make his body rigid to ride the swells back to the beach. She treaded water off to the side, keeping a vigilant eye out for the sharks she feared lay in wait to destroy her family. They never came, and over the years she was lulled into believing that they never would. When Steven wasn’t bodysurfing with his father he entertained himself by tormenting the jellyfish that had washed up onshore, cutting open their quivering sacks with a sharp bit of broken shell.
A rocket launch was scheduled from nearby Cape Canaveral for that evening, its payload an unmanned satellite programmed to collect atmospheric data over a period of nine months. And huddled together on a large beach blanket spread across the weathered planks of the municipal pier, they anticipated lift-off like they hadn’t anticipated anything else in life, because it was vacation and they’d splurged on mahi-mahi sandwiches slathered in tartar sauce and garnished with thick lemon wedges and served in oval baskets of red plastic from the concession at the head of the pier. Steven ran wild into the shadows along the splintered planks, calling out to her every few minutes to see if it was time yet.
“No,” she said, and though she could hear his voice she couldn’t see his face in the failing light and it worried her. “Come over here where I can see you.”
“Come over here where I can see you!” he replied, because even as a child he was willful and didn’t like being told what to do. He found a struggling fish on the planks and squatted over it, pulling its fins off before kicking it back into the ocean.
“You’ll get snatched,” she said, “and don’t expect your father or me to do anything about it.”
Instead of scaring him into submission as she’d hoped, her words emboldened him. He asked a hundred follow-up questions. Who would snatch him? What would they want with him? Was this a planned or an opportunistic occurrence? When at last she exhausted her ready responses, she conceded to making the whole thing up.
“Nobody is going to snatch you,” she said, “just come over here. You’re making me nervous.”
“I thought so,” he said, laughing and running to the edge of the pier. It was a kind of compromise. At least he stayed close to a light. He leaned over the side and shouted back, “Nobody can catch me.”
She worried that he might fall in, but she didn’t have to worry long because a moment later the giant thrusters erupted in a brilliant silent flash on the horizon, and within seconds a plume of orange smoke arced across the magenta sky, propelling the craft to escape velocity. Steven came rushing to her side. Lift-off resembled nothing she’d ever seen before, and she remembers thinking how wrong it seemed that atmospheric study required such brute force. At least they were spared the deafening roar. Only a dull rumble made it across the water as far south as the shabby Cocoa Beach municipal pier. She was glad for the distance because that small amount of noise made the launch real without overpowering her with its violence. Steven—his skin sticky from all the salt and gritty from sand—squeezed between her and Thaddeus. His black hair smelled like sunscreen and heat, and she breathed it in deep before kissing his ear. Together the three of them watched until the thrusters fell off into the broad sea and the tiny capsule carried on, reflecting the sun’s rays that continued to shine uninterrupted beyond the curvature of Earth, until the capsule, too, disappeared, falling into invisible orbit and leaving behind the billowing trail of exhaust that had propelled it so effortlessly into space and that the jet stream was already dispersing into the indigo sky.
They spent that night in a squat, roadside motel with cable television and beds that would vibrate for a quarter. While Steven showered, they made love frivolously like teenagers, Thaddeus tickling her at the same time that he silenced her giggles with playful kisses. She’d forgotten her pill that morning, though she’d always been good about it. She did the math quickly in her head. One skipped pill wouldn’t matter and, anyway, weren’t they on vacation? The next morning was Christmas and they gave Steven a small Scouts knife that he’d been wanting. Thaddeus surprised her with an engraved locket, which read: To my wife, Cheryl. You’ve saved my life. It wasn’t until the car ride home that she realized she hadn’t even packed her pills. When she thinks about it now, she wonders if maybe she’d left them at home on purpose.
Back in the family room, Peter sticks his head through the blinds and watches the backyard. Dust motes bandy about in the shaft of sunlight grazing the top of his head. She can’t worry about Thaddeus anymore. The heat has zapped her energy. A few dishes remain in the sink, but that responsibility, too, she defers, drifting toward the couch. There’ll be time for it later. With a sigh, she sits down.
“You two have such a natural rhythm,” Peter says. A forlorn smile plays on his lips, and she wonders for a minute if perhaps he’s envious of them, of Thaddeus.
“Give it time. What you call ‘natural rhythm’ is the result of decades of negotiations and fights.”
“I wish I could make Steven stay as easily as you get Thaddeus to leave.”
“What makes you think I wanted to get rid of him?”
“It just seemed that way.” He turns around and lets the blinds flop shut. His finger lingers on the window ledge. “He’s always at that shelter.”
“That he gets from his father. Not the shelter bit, but the need to be constantly doing something.”
He crosses the room and selects a book from the shelves, leafs through the pages for a moment before returning the volume to its place.
“Is
there something you want to talk about?” She broaches the subject carefully, but it did seem odd that Steven took off last night like he did and then offered no explanation this morning. Even at his worst, Thaddeus never stormed off like that, leaving her to guess at his whereabouts.
“Oh? No.” He smiles. “I’m just in a funk. Ignore me. I wanted to read the paper, but I’m afraid my headache will come back.”
“Well, then listen to the radio. It doesn’t bother me. I should take a shower soon anyway.” She pushes back a stray hair. She neglected to brush her hair this morning or to even wash her face, opting instead to do damage control with Steven—not that it got her much.
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. I’m just going to sit here for a minute. Then I’ll go up and shower. Play whatever you want.”
He tunes in to public radio in time to catch the tail end of a report about the police finding the body of a young Asian male propped up against the obelisk to the Confederate dead downtown, the victim of an apparent strangulation. Between the reporter’s baritone and the ceiling fan thrumming overhead, the tension that has built up all morning eases from her body. Showering can wait. It feels so refreshing to stretch out on the couch even if it’s only for a second. There’s something naughty about the way the body contorts itself during a stretch, makes itself felt, and she can’t bring herself to do anything but luxuriate in the invigorating tingle that comes with flexing all her tired muscles simultaneously. If she moves at all, it’s to pass an absent hand over her stomach—flat, more or less, even after all these years—while considering Peter. He hasn’t even unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt. Certainly, it can’t be for her benefit. Some fashion maven she is. Her hair is a mess and, thanks to all the wrinkles in the fabric, her pants resemble a topographical relief map.
