Please Don't Come Back from the Moon

by Dean Bakopoulos

  "Should we keep this?" Mack would ask.

  "No reason," my mother would say. "Pitch it."

  "Sentimental reasons?" Mack would say.

  "It's junk!" my mother would say.

  I stayed down in the basement and wondered what my mother was calling junk. One of my first-grade art projects? Kolya's old soccer uniforms? My father's rusty pocketknife?

  On Sunday night, Holly called and asked me to come over. She told me to pack an overnight bag. She wanted to take me somewhere before she left.

  "I don't know," I said.

  "Michael, " she said. "Don't play games."

  When I got to her house, she was sitting on the floor in the living room, watching T.V.

  "Where did you get that television?" I said.

  "It's part of the landlord's stuff," she said.

  Across the room, about ten small boxes and two large suitcases were packed neatly in the corner. There was also a guitar case, a small duffel bag, and two backpacks.

  "I'm glad you answered the phone," said Holly.

  "You never try to call me," I said.

  "I want you to come somewhere with me," she said.

  Friends of hers who owned a B&B near Lake Michigan had called to offer her a suite for a few days. They'd had a last-minute cancelation. Holly wanted me to go with her.

  "It's about three hours away," she said. We can leave first thing tomorrow."

  "Don't you have to work?"

  "I quit," she said. "I'm leaving town, remember?"

  "You never said it was official."

  "I'm saying it now," she said. "Remember, I am going to send for you? From the desert?"

  "Sure," I said.

  In the bedroom, the closet, the dresser drawers, and the top of the nightstand were empty. The room was swept clean. I went to the bathroom. The clutter of lotions and candles and herbal oils was gone. I pissed and went back to the bed. I fell asleep in about thirty seconds, listening to Holly let out a series of long, slow sighs.

  When she woke me up the next morning with a mug of hot coffee, her hair was wet and she was wearing a skimpy, clingy black sundress with thin straps, and black, high-heeled sandals that sculpted her calves. I'd never seen her in anything so shamelessly sexy, and it made the day feel full of promise. "Get up, brush your teeth, put some pants on, and let's get out of here."

  She wanted to drop off my car in Maple Rock. She said the landlord was showing her place and didn't like prospective tenants to see old cars in the driveway.

  "The sooner he rents it," she said, "the sooner I get out of my lease and get my security deposit back."

  I parked the car in front of my house but didn't go inside. I figured it was pretty empty by then, and I didn't want to see.

  Holly drove us west on I-94, and though she seemed a little happier, she didn't talk much. I would've talked, but I couldn't think of anything to say. I had never stood at the end of a relationship without hate and anger and hurt swimming around it. She rolled down all the windows and her little Toyota was like a wind tunnel. Holly didn't seem to mind. She listened to NPR and read the occasional billboard aloud. She woke me up when we left the freeway so I could help her read the map.

  "You can quit pretending to be asleep now," she said. "We're almost there."

  I had not even so much as checked into a motel with a woman before, and had never set foot inside a B&B. At first I felt like I was trying to pull off some sort of scam. But Holly's friends, Joe and Mary Carpenter, ran a nice place and mostly stayed out of our way. Joe, who wore his gray hair back in a ponytail, gave us a lot of guides to canoeing, biking, and fishing opportunities in the area. He kept talking to me about Hope College, which was nearby, I think because he wanted me to tell him whether or not I was still in college, but I didn't take the bait. Besides, I would be in college for at least a few more years, so my answer wouldn't help him figure out my age anyway.

  Joe said to Holly, "I don't know if you still enjoy the occasional taste of the herb, but we have a little shed out back that is the appropriate place to partake of the peace pipe."

  He looked at me and winked. "Purely for medicinal purposes."

  "Hahahaha," I said. It sounded obnoxious and Holly looked at me with a twisted-up face that meant "Shut up."

  Our room was called the Forest Room, and everything was made of wood. It had a bathroom the size of my bedroom at home, with a Jacuzzi. The first thing I did that afternoon was fire up the Jacuzzi. I kept waiting for Holly to take off her clothes and come in with me, but she got on the bed and fell asleep. When I finally got out of the water, my skin was wrinkled and steam was coming out of my pores. I toweled off slowly near the bed, half hoping that Holly would roll over and smile, grab my towel and pull me into bed, but she didn't. We went into town and had an overpriced dinner at an Italian restaurant packed with rich people from Chicago in their weekend getups—designer Windbreakers, pleated Dockers, and long, loose dresses. Back in the room, I could tell Holly just wanted the night to be over. She undid my zipper, had me sit down on the bed, and took me in her mouth. She got up, brushed her teeth, and came back to bed in her pajamas. The whole affair took about three minutes, and she fell asleep right after we were done.

  The next morning Mary, gray-haired and willowy, made us a wonderfully big breakfast while Joe highlighted some of the things we could do. Despite several cups of strong coffee, however, Holly and I went back to bed after breakfast. I woke up later, went for a walk along Lake Michigan, then came back to the room and hit the Jacuzzi again. After I was dressed, I woke up Holly and we went into town and ate fish sandwiches and fries by the water. We drank some beer and then watched the sunset on the beach. The wind pushed our hair back, and gulls circled and called above us. We were silent and tender with each other when we got back to the room. We moved in slow motion, and sometimes Holly stopped moving altogether and just stared at me, pushing my hair out of my face.

  The next morning, we left the B&B after breakfast and spent the car ride home talking about Joe and Mary Carpenter. Holly told me their whole story—how they had been high-powered ad execs in Detroit for a decade before Joe had a breakdown, how Mary had miscarried twice and never conceived again, how Joe used to have long periods of time where he would go up north and live in the woods by himself, not contacting Mary for weeks at a time.

  "And now I guess they've got things pretty well figured out," she said. "Don't they seem happy?"

  "Totally," I said.

  "It's a beautiful little place," she said. "It just proves to me that you can be happy no matter what, as long as you can carve out a quiet niche for yourself."

  Near Detroit, we got silent again. As we drove through the streets of Maple Rock, every block seemed to give me some bittersweet memory, but to Holly they were just names—Mansfield, Whitlock, Sheehan, Elm. My stomach got that watery feeling again, the same feeling I had gotten the first time I had visited her.

  My house was dark, and the FOR SALE SIGN was gone. Holly hopped out and opened the trunk. She handed me the duffel bag. She shut the trunk and threw her arms around me, then gave me a long, slow kiss on the mouth.

  "Is this the last time I'll ever see you?" I said.

  "Maybe," she said. "But I will send for you."

  "This is my house now," I said. "We could live here."

  "I suppose we could," she said.

  We stopped and looked at the small, dark ranch as if we were really contemplating settling down there and living together forever.

  "We could get married," I said, and suddenly it sounded like the perfect idea. "We could totally do that!"

  "You're a sweet, sweet man," she said.

  "I'm serious," I said.

  "I'll miss you," she said. "A lot."

  "Marry me," I said.

  We kissed and she got into the car.

  I was tapping on the window when she drove away.

  ***

  I WENT INTO THE HOUSE alone and turned on all the lights. The moving company had
done their work. The living room was pretty much how I remembered it. Mack and my mother had left me the couch, the two armchairs, the television and VCR. They were buying brand-new things for their house. Still, some things were missing: there were no pictures on the wall, and my mother's bookshelf was empty. In the kitchen, the cupboards were pretty much empty, though my mother had left behind some dishes and a few pots and pans. Her cheap silverware was in a drawer near the sink. There was a note on the table with their phone number. Where are you? We'd love for you to see the new house. Please call us.

  I went down the hallway. Kolya's bedroom, the one I used to share with him before I'd moved down to the basement, was empty. There was no trace of him except for an old Tigers pennant sticking out of a garbage bag in the middle of the floor. My mother's bedroom was empty too, the hardwood floor freshly mopped and shining. When my father had lived with us, there was a deep blue carpet in that room, and the walls were a periwinkle color that my father used to complain about. It gave him headaches, he said, and made it hard to sleep at night. I could picture the two heavy oak dressers, wedding presents from my father's long-dead parents, and I could picture my mother and father and their matching white bathrobes hanging on hooks next to the door. I could smell not just my mother's fragrances—soft, lilac-scented perfumes and baby powder—but my father's Old Spice too, his stale coffee and cigarettes, his scotch.

  I stretched out on the floor. My head was spinning amid a rush of dreamy memories. Did I hear my father's voice in the empty room, or did I feel my mother's cool hand touch my cheek? I did. Did I hear Kolya running down the hall, calling out for a Popsicle? I did.

  Did I think of Holly? Did I miss her? Did I want her to appear, too, in that tormenting parade of ghosts? I did.

  But it was just the floor and me. I thought about sitting up, but stayed there, flat on my back, until much later, until the light had come back to the windows, until the room was bright with morning, until I swore I could feel my heart chakra filling my rib cage with heat and flame. I felt it turning, burning, struggling to turn around and go forward.

  7. Capable of Love

  MOST OF OUR MOTHERS, your wives, they've moved away. They now live in condos in Canton and Livonia and Westland, and some of them live with men, men who are cleaner, better dressed, and more polite than you ever were. They have steady jobs, retirement plans, crisp clean foreign cars, hairless knuckles.

  These are the kind of men we, or anybody for that matter, should like. Still, we can't help it: we regard these men with suspicion, and when we are invited over for Sunday dinner, we feel as if we are dressed poorly or as if we look pathetic, waiting for roast beef or lemon chicken to be heaped on our plates.

  When these men get up to clear the table, our mothers seize the moment we have alone and lean in, touch our arms, and ask, "So you're all right, honey? You're okay?"

  Of course we are!

  We still live in those houses, the ones you left. We've stayed behind, long past the time we should have moved out, and our mothers simply turned the houses over to us, moved in with their new husbands, worked their new jobs, lived their new lives.

  On the walls of our houses, there are posters of retired Detroit athletes, such as my poster of Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell, the Tigers' great second base—shortstop combo from the eighties. On the bookshelf, next to my high-school Spanish book, is a cigar box full of ribbons from a summer league swim team. On my dressers are buttons boasting photos of me and my old homecoming dates. Sweet girls. One of them now lives in Korea or Taiwan or somewhere with missionaries; one of them dates a golf pro with perfectly muscled, tanned forearms; one is earning a Ph.D. in women's studies.

  It's hard to get rid of all this clutter when you've never left your mother's house.

  Our houses—your houses—need new roofs and new paint and our driveways need resurfacing. These houses are rich with smells I can't explain, like clean, damp towels, like memories. On weekends, we mow the lawns and trim the hedges, we do all the maintenance we can that doesn't cost any money, and we look around at our yards, our trim lawns and sidewalks swept clean, and we say, here it is, here is the order in our lives, here we are in Maple Rock.

  Sometimes we have girlfriends who move in with us, and they are impressed that we are homeowners. They look at our master bedrooms and white kitchens and think, this, this is a man I could marry. But sooner or later, something disintegrates: maybe it's our fault, maybe it's not. Sometimes, someone will break into the house, or there will be a rock thrown through the window, or there will even be gunshots in the night. Maple Rock is not quite what it used to be. Sometimes these incidents signal the end of our relationships. Other times, the women we are trying to love accuse us of moodiness, drunkenness, and indifference. They say we spend too much time and energy on our friends, on our buddies. They say the word buddies as if it's an embarrassment.

  "When we look at you," they say, "it's as if your eyes and your minds are somewhere else, it's as if your thoughts are in outer space, as if you refuse to listen to us and connect to the things we say. You are incapable of love!"

  We do not fight these accusations. We allow the women to leave without much pleading. We've long ago lost the idea of permanence as a possibility. We stagger around for a few days, drinking too much, finding their pink razors in our showers, their long brown, red, black, or blond hairs on our sheets, their washcloths drying by our sinks.

  We do not discuss these women when we are sitting happily around a table at the Black Lantern, drinking pitcher after pitcher. The women seem to happen and then disappear. Eventually their scents, their strands of hair, go away.

  When I think about you, the disappeared men of Maple Rock, I sometimes wonder if you all are capable or incapable of love these days. For the record, if you are now capable of love, we consider that unfair.

  8. Knights of Labor

  WHEN GEORGE BUSH'S SON was running for president, he did not come to the Polish-American Hall in Maple Rock. We did not see George W. give any campaign speeches, though he did speak at a closed luncheon of the Detroit Businessmen's Club, which wasn't really in Detroit. It was in Livonia.

  Still, we would boo W when he appeared on the television in the bar, throwing pretzels and popcorn at his smug, self-important little face. We did not want him in Maple Rock.

  We despised him, the way he sauntered all over Washington, D.C., alongside his father. We hated watching him work the crowds at his campaign stops, his father—who had been president the year our own fathers disappeared—beaming with pride, shaking the hands of the Yale men who would get his son the job. We knew his father pulled all the strings, paved all the roads to get him where he was. When we got fired from a job or arrested for urinating behind the bar, or when the insurance rates went up on the rusted-out cars you used to drive, and when you, our fathers, were not there to help us, we hated George W. even more.

  When George Bush Sr. would talk about his son, George W., he'd always say about how proud he was of his boy. Fuck him!

  We didn't imagine you were proud of us. What did we care?

  BY THEN WE WORKED, all of us, at the new Maple Rock Mall, on the west edge of town that used to be Rotary Park. The city had sold off the park to a developer because of the economic impact the mall would have on our region. Nobody seemed to care much. It was one less place for high-school kids to drink and screw.

  So when the mall was finished, we got jobs there, as promised. Our grandfathers used to work the afternoon shift at Ford Rouge and Dodge Main, carrying busted-up metal lunch pails. At six o'clock they'd sit down to dinner far from their kitchens, eating cold cabbage rolls and city chicken, drinking lukewarm coffee from their thermoses. Our fathers walked into factories and warehouses and fluorescent-lit buildings every morning, brown bags stuffed with Fritos and bologna sandwiches and an apple or a banana. We ate our lunches and dinners every day at the Maple Rock Mall food court—chili dogs and cheddar beef sandwiches and Taco El Grandes—with the buzz of
shoppers and elevator music around us.

  We were walking into the food court. It was nine in the morning. We'd stayed at Happy Wednesday's well past midnight, drinking union-made Miller Lite, and my brain was a piece of steel wool scratching around in my skull.

  "Be proud of what you do," Nick said. "That's what the man said."

  "Who?" I said.

  "Bill Clinton. Do you remember? When he was running for President and he came to Maple Rock? That's what he said: 'Be proud of what you do.'"

  "We work at the fucking mall," I said.

  "I know. But we work. We should be proud of that," he said. "At least."

  "Okay," I said. "Fine. What brought this up?"

  "It's an election year," Nick said. "I was just thinking about it. About pride."

  "All right," I said. "I'm proud."

  "But that's not enough. You need to take pride in your work, or at least in the fact that you get up for work every day."

  "Okay, I'm proud."

  "No. Not just proud, Mikey. You're a Knight of Labor."

  "Okay," I said. "I'm a Knight of Labor. Will you shut up?"

  "This will make us famous," he said.

  The last time he had said that, we were twelve years old and he was trying to climb a TV antenna outside Channel Two. I was hoping his vision had evolved.

  "What will?" I asked.

  "You'll see," he said. "The wheels are spinning, Mikey."

  ***

  OUR PAL TOM SLOWINSKI worked at Top Banana Smoothies and Shakes. He was the assistant manager. Most days, he worked alone, and he made up a special batch of Miami Mambo, a strawberry-banana-pineapple concoction that he spiked with vodka. If you wanted to partake of this special formula, you just asked for the Mall Employee Special. It cost five dollars. Tom wasn't greedy or stupid: he'd put three bucks in the register, to cover the cost of a regular Miami Mambo, and keep two for himself. Good weeks, he made an extra two hundred bucks in cash and nobody noticed. If you came to Maple Rock Mall in the late afternoon, there was a good chance that your sales associate was spinning pretty hard on a Miami Mambo buzz. It made the days go by with ease. It made $6.50 an hour seem almost worth it.