by Owen Thomas
“I’ve played my part.”
“What are you doing?”
“What, now? Nothing.”
“No, really. So far today; past couple of hours. I want to know.”
“Made breakfast. Made Ben’s lunch. Cleaned up breakfast. Dropped off Ben at school, came home, switched the laundry, cleaned up after Hollis, watered the plants…”
“And is that what you want to do tomorrow and the next day and...”
“Gayle.”
“Sorry.”
“It is my life.”
“I know. I know. Shit. I’m terrible. So is Hollis home?”
“No. He disappeared someplace. Again. After peeing all over the bathroom.”
“Ick.”
“He just… he won’t sit down. He stands and sprays. I’m the one who cares.”
“How’s it going with you two?”
“He doesn’t like that I left, but he’s pretending he doesn’t care. He’s a good man. He just is who he is. No sense trying to change him.”
“If you won’t come, you should write something.”
“What?”
“Seriously. Write something and I’ll read it. Or Meredith will read it.”
“Write what?”
“Whatever you would say if you were there in person.”
“But I’m not going.”
“That’s what I’m saying. We’ll read it for you.”
“No. No. I don’t…”
“Why the hell not? You get to have it both ways. You get to stay home and clean urine – good, hooray for that – and, without sacrificing any of that, you get to send out a message to thousands of people, millions of people, who need to hear …”
“I wouldn’t know what to say. I…”
“That’s crap, Susan. You know exactly what to say. You didn’t have a problem knowing what to say for the Fingerhut campaign.”
“It’s too late now anyway.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve got until the end of the week. Email me.”
“I don’t really do much email. I never really…”
“You got a fax?”
“No. Well, Hollis does.”
“So, write it up. I’ll swing by and pick it up before I head over to the rally.”
“…”
“You owe me this.”
“Owe you? Why do I owe you?”
“Because you had a really good time, because I kiss like a God, because I showed you all of my tattoos, and because I… shared.”
“Shared what? Oh…”
“Yeah, oh. And you’ve still got some, don’t you?”
“It’s safe.”
“Hollis know?”
“God no.”
“You owe me.”
“Okay, maybe I owe you.”
“Think about it at least. We need your voice, Susan.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll think about it.”
CHAPTER 44 – Hollis
Susan was in the kitchen with Wolf Blitzer, talking about the war. There were others in there with them, voices Hollis could not recognize. The voices were not taking turns. Wolf was asserting control.
…raise a good point Senator, so let’s wait and get Ms. Donnelly’s answer …
Hollis closed the front door and dropped his keys into the bowl. He dropped them from a height such that the distinctive tinkling of metal into porcelain might be clearly heard from the kitchen. He waited. Listened. But nothing of his arrival had been heard, clearly or otherwise, from the kitchen.
…wait, wait, let me finish. That’s not what I was saying…
He did his best to hang on to the feeling; to maintain his new found, endorphin-fueled sense of peace and vitality. He was alive, by God. Alive. Still in the game. Mixing it up. Shaking off the years like so many drops of lake water from the back of a bird dog.
And that’s what life really was, after all – lake water. Life was a lake. Like ol’ Buckeye Lake cupped in the hands of an August afternoon. It was cool and smooth and ridiculously uncomplicated. It existed to swim in and float on. It existed to enjoy. And that was enough. It received him into its bosom without question, without judgment, accommodating every movement, every stroke, every plunge, every plundering of its silver coffers. The lake does not know our age. It knows only our heart; our willingness. And Hollis Johns was, by God, as willing as he ever was to dive into those waters. As if he were still ten years old, marking his father’s shadow up on the surface, up on that skiff-shaped cloud floating in the watery sky, pole in hand.
…not at all what I was saying…
Today, by God, he had tuned his body. He had pumped iron and skipped rope and rode the bike and walked the treadmill. He had goddamned run the treadmill, is what he had done. He was still vital. Still willing. Today he had stepped back into the water. Back into the lake. Today he had gone swimming. Well, kind of. He had gotten wet anyway. And he felt … what… great, is how he felt. Great. Reborn. No, not reborn. He had never been dead. Affirmed. He felt affirmed. Validated. Hell, Charles Compson had thought he looked like a million bucks. Thought he had life by the balls. The balls!
…I think that misconstrues my point, Senator. I think you are not even trying …
His head still throbbed. Hollis tested the wound gingerly with a fingertip. It came back watery and pink. He rubbed it away into the palm of his hand. He didn’t want to think about his head. His head was fine. He wanted to hang on to the buzz; the high.
…you are entirely missing my point…
It helped that the music, the memory of the music, was still blasting through his brain. (…but I wanna knooowww for suuuurrre!) In a pique of enthusiasm, ramping up onto the freeway, he had sent his radio searching for the sound, the sonic feeling, that had retaken his body after a single afternoon of exertion. (Wild thing!)
It is a short span of frequencies between “Classical” and “Classic,” instantly bridging the decades recorded forever in his body, rocketing backwards from the Johann Sebastian of his sixties to the Troggs of his twenties; from Air on the G String all the way back to Wild Thing! And lo and behold: after all these years, it turns out that the man he was, is the man he is. (You make my heart sing!) He had certainly matured over the years. Deepened. He was infinitely more sophisticated in every respect. And yet, even with all of that refinement, he was still intimately in touch with the raw vitality of his youth. (You make everything… Groovy!)
So he had driven himself home from the Columbus First Family Health Club packed within a raucous, pulsing cloud of nostalgia, his head pounding with old forgotten feeling and the ache in his muscles confirming with every turn of the wheel that he was still a force to be reckoned with on the physical plain. Look who I’m talkin’ to, Charles Compson had said. Hollis Johns, his good friend, had life by the balls. (Wild thing… I think you mooove me.) And wasn’t that the truth? Didn’t he, in fact, have life by the balls? Hadn’t he made his mark? (…but I wanna knooowww for suuuurrre!) Couldn’t he still fuck like a stallion? Oh, he was far from done in this world. (Wild thing!)
So he had rolled the window down and turned the music up and he had not cared who might have seen him or heard him, at least until he was off the freeway and pulling up to a stoplight, where he had turned the music down, nearly off, as a matter of courtesy to the two college girls in the lane next to him who had their own music blaring: Garbage! – [something, something], Garbage!
They had smiled. He had smiled. The passenger had winked. It had seemed like a wink, anyway; it was hard to tell for sure since her hand was at that moment pulling a wisp of fine windblown hair from across her face and tucking it behind her head. The driver was pulling a goopy pink wand across her lips, smiling into the mirror. They had laughed as they bobbed and undulated in their seats. Garbage! – [something, something], Garbage! Hollis had bobbed his head to music, making no secret that he was hip to the vibe. Garbage! – [something, something], Garbage! That’s when the passenger had looked his way. It had probably been
a wink. No, he was sure it had been a wink.
The light had turned green. Hollis had let them speed off until the full intersection had separated their red LeBaron coupe from his midnight black Seville. Then he had accelerated, sharply, burning a little rubber, giving chase, overtaking, passing, winking back. A jaunty wave. He had then turned up the volume. Turned it way up as though he was adjusting his own adrenaline. The song had changed, but he hadn’t cared. He blew the doors off the little cheap-ass LeBaron, singing into the wind like he was shouting an anthem. …I really wanna know! Whooooo are you?! Who, who, who, who…
But now, standing in the foyer, Hollis knew that the music in his head was not all that it might have been. Sure, it focused his attention on the possible. On the present. On the future. It calibrated his heart to a more appropriate rhythm. It reminded him powerfully of how good – no, how vital – he had felt on the drive home. But the music in his head had been disappointingly ineffective at getting him from the car to the front door. Every second brought to him little shovels full of pain. They were accumulating.
The muscles in his arms and legs seemed to have bunched into hard knots. They had begun to feel like wet ropes that had twisted and re-twisted and then dried and shortened in a hot bleaching sun. Alighting from the car, reaching into the back seat for his new Pack Mule gym bag, stepping out of the car, bending down to release the trunk, walking to the back of the car, opening the trunk, stuffing all of his new athletic gear into the bag, closing the trunk, walking from the driveway to the front door, had all been surprisingly difficult tasks. It had felt like wearing a suit that was two sizes too small, except that the suit was a suit of muscle and tendon and connective tissue worn beneath the skin. His arms suddenly did not reach as far into the back seat as they were supposed to reach. Closing the car door, he had tried to stand to his full height but the inner suit was too small, pulling his shoulders down into a slight stoop so that the twisted ropes that connected his clavicle to his pelvic bone might have some slack.
Each step across the driveway pulled up short as though the pavement three feet in front of him was just too far away. The bag in his hand seemed that it might contain an anvil, or a small automobile engine, and it stretched the ropes in his left arm. But the ropes were old and knotted and they were now simply too short to allow for a full extension of his arm, which meant that he needed to flex his bicep. So he did, keeping the bag a little higher above the earth than gravity would have liked. This, he found, was almost as uncomfortable as fully extending his arms, but there was little choice. His muscles creaked like worn pier lines holding a large ship against the pull of the sea.
…that’s not right. You don’t understand what you’re talking…
The bag hanging from his hand, pulling urgently for ground against the rest of his frame, reeked of sweat and chlorine and the formaldehyde of new clothing. He probably should have taken it on down to the laundry room or at least left it in the foyer on top of his shoes. But there were forces at work within Hollis Johns that were far greater than the pull of gravity and the inelasticity of tired muscles. Leavening forces. Wild thing forces. He kept his grip on the bag and headed down the hallway to the kitchen.
“Hey,” he said nonchalantly, leaning rakishly up against the doorframe.
…I disagree with that, Wolf. I’m sure Ms. Donnelly means well, but …
“Hi.” Susan’s response was flat and reflexive, like she was clearing her throat.
She sat at the head of the dining room table, her back to the kitchen doorway in which he stood, in the seat which by family custom and practice, at least in the days when the family dined together, was reserved for Hollis. Her head bent low to the surface of the table as she recorded her perfect looping script into a blue spiral notebook. She paused, holding up a finger so that she might finish her thought without interruption. She tucked her hair behind her ears and continued. Hollis held his peace, waiting, watching the back of her head tremor with the furious movement of her arm. An unruly stack of mail sat perched on the far side of the table. A white ceramic vase burst with purple lilacs from the back yard. The air smelled… what… sweet. Cloying.
She did not look up at him, but continued writing. Hollis shifted his gym bag from his left hand to his right, leaning up against the opposite doorframe.
“What are you doing?” he asked finally.
“Hmm?” She stopped and looked up, craning her neck and shoulders around to face him. She smiled perfunctorily. Oh. Nothing. Writing a letter.” She closed the notebook and put down the pen. The television fulminated from the kitchen behind him.
Well … no… well, Wolf, let me…
No. I’m afraid… I’m afraid… Wolf…
“A letter?”
“Where have you been? Is that a new bag?”
Hollis looked down at the bag, as if surprised to see it hanging from the end of his arm.
“Hmm? This? No, I’ve had this awhile.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“MmmHmm.”
“Still has a tag on it.” She pointed.
“Mmm. Been meaning to cut that off.”
“So where were you?”
Hollis stepped back into the kitchen and opened a drawer that held an assortment of pens and clips and notepads and scissors. He snipped off the tag, glancing over at the television as he returned the scissors and closed the drawer. Wolf’s brow furrowed. The senator kept up the pressure.
No, Ma’am, you’ve had your turn. It’s my turn. Let me finish. You’re tragically misguided if you think that we can protect this great nation from the likes of Saddam Hussein with diplomacy and …
Saddam is gone, Senator. He’s gone. We have him.
We don’t have his people. We don’t have al-Quaida.
Oh come on…
“Hollis?”
“Mmm?”
“Where have you been?”
“Mmm… just working out.”
“Working out? You mean like exercising working out?”
“MmmHmm.”
“Where?”
“The Club. First Family.”
“First Family? We cancelled that years ago.”
“Mmm.” Hollis shook his head.
“We didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I use it. That’s why not.”
“You’re telling me that for all of these years we’ve been paying for an active membership to a health club that we don’t ever use?”
“I use it. What is that smell?”
“What smell?”
“You don’t smell that? It smells like…”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Probably the lilacs. They’re fresh.”
“It’s not lilacs.”
“Since when did you start working out?”
“Mmm. A while. I have a routine. He sauntered slowly back to the doorway.
“What kind of routine?”
“A regimen. An exercise regimen. Cardiovascular. Anaerobic. Lifting weights. Stationary bike. Stair climber. Laps in the pool. Jump rope. It keeps me tight.”
Hollis slapped the side of his stomach with the flat of his hand. He forgot he was holding the price tag to the Pack Mule, which spiraled lazily down to the floor.
“Keeps me in shape,” he said, bending to retrieve the tag, his back and shoulder muscles silently screaming in protest. God, what had he done to himself?
“Hollis. What on earth has happened to your head?” She stood up from the table and before he could straighten, she was picking her fingers through his hair like a chimpanzee looking for bugs.
“Oh, that’s nothing.”
“Hollis, your head … is bleeding. It’s swollen.”
“I hit it on the side of the pool. Just a bump.”
“You need to put some…”
“Oh, Susan. It’s fine. It’s fine. Just…” He shooed her away like an obnoxious bird. “Just relax. Never mind my h
ead. It’s fine.”
Susan straightened and looked up into his face, now only inches away.
“Your cheek. What happened to your face, Hollis? Is that a rash or something?”
He had grown so accustomed to the burning sensation that he had forgotten about it. He touched the side of his face. It felt raw and hot. Susan pushed his chin with her fingers so that she could scrutinize his profile.
“That’s a scrape. That’s not a rash. What…”
“It’s that new sponge,” he said, surprising himself. “That exfoliator thing in the shower you always want me to use.”
“What? That did this?” She touched his cheek carefully. He turned and pulled away. “It didn’t look like this earlier.”
“Probably just coming out. I’m fine. Stop. I’m fine.”
She snorted comically. “Good grief. How hard are you scrubbing?”
“Susan, I’m fine.”
“You’re other cheek looks okay, that’s good. How’s your ass?”
Hollis saw that she was laughing to herself. Laughing at him, to herself. She returned to the table and sat down, still laughing, looking at him to react.
“Very funny.”
“You don’t have the skin of an old sea captain, Hollis. You have the skin of an old banker. You have baby skin. You can’t luffa your face like … like you scour a pot with steel wool.”
…No, no, no…
You should see the letters and hear the phone calls that come into my office on any given day expressing great distress and shame over the conduct of a very vocal minority of Americans protesting this war…
Hollis picked up his bag and headed back for the hallway. Whatever had impelled him to venture into the kitchen in the first place was long gone.
…Now. We are over there. Okay? In the desert. That decision has been made. Our President, our Congress, have made the decision. Our brave men and women …
“Hollis, I’m only teasing. I’m sorry. Hollis…”
“You’re fine, Susan.”
“Where are you going?”
“To put these clothes in the laundry, if you must know.” As he turned, the blue notebook on the table caught his eye. “Who’s the letter for?”
