The Language of Men

by Anthony D'Aries

  His long silver radio on the workbench glowed an emerald green. Springsteen barked about the skeletal frames of burned-out Chevrolets. I searched for a Phillips-head screwdriver. First, I removed the brown plastic shell without much trouble. The recorder could either run on batteries, or I could open a small door in the back and unravel a power cord. The cord was a nuisance now, so I cut it with a large pair of tin snips. With the turn of a few screws, the recorder lost its form, began to look like something completely different than what it was. I switched out the Phillips with a short flat head and poked around the recorder's insides. Tiny blue wires, soldered at each end, connected all the different parts. I cut each one. All that was left was a tiny motor. I jabbed at the pieces of plastic that kept the motor in place, until it finally broke free. A two-inch cylinder. No more screws. No more wires.

  I held it to the light, but I couldn't see through it. I tossed the cylinder on the workbench and stared out the window. Now what? I grabbed my father's permanent marker and quickly wrote a list of curse words. Right in the center of his workbench. I didn't even have to think:

  Cocksucker

  Motherfucker

  Asshole

  Shithead

  Twat-kisser

  Dick-face

  When I was done, I was out of breath. I felt empty. Not hollow, but satisfied, relieved. The way my father must have felt after cursing out a driver who cut him off or a telemarketer who called during dinner. The curves and angles of each letter were shiny, but soon the slick ink faded to a dull black. I hid the marker behind the workbench. I sat on the vinyl stool for a moment. My breathing returned to normal and I could almost pretend the words were not on the workbench. I stood up and grabbed my father's Army knife and sliced up the stool, cutting it into strips like a Fruit Roll-up, then pulled out the dry-rotted yellow foam. I carefully returned the knife to its spot in the wall.

  I rode my bike back to Billy's house. As soon as I stepped onto his front lawn, I felt safe. Jeanie had already picked up pizza for everybody, so when I walked in, she pulled the ottoman over to the dinner table and gave me a paper plate.

  Soon, the phone rang.

  "Get that, Bitchy!"

  "Billy! Don't talk to me like that." She reached for the phone. "Hello? Yes. Oh, yes. He's right here." Jeanie offered me the phone, but I shook my head and stood up.

  "Tell him I'm on my way."

  My father was waiting for me in the driveway. His eyes were hidden behind black sunglasses. As long as he kept them on, I could pretend he didn't see me. I pulled my bike into the driveway, and he pushed the sunglasses up onto his bald head.

  We didn't talk. I followed him to the garage and we stood above the words for what felt like hours. Then he pointed to the stool, the stuffing scattered on the floor, just as I had left them. I felt like the whole garage should be wrapped in CAUTION tape, like a crime scene. My father lit a Winston.

  "I don't get you, boy. Just don't get it." He exhaled. "Did you think I wouldn't see this?"

  I stared at the words and the pieces of yellow foam on the floor.

  "And this," he said, pointing at the stool, "this here's the kicker. What did you use for that?"

  "My Swiss Army knife."

  "I gave you that to use for other stuff. Not to destroy shit."

  I nodded and waited. A part of me thought if I waited long enough, the director would yell "Cut!" and this whole scene would be over. He took another long pull on his Winston and exhaled as he stubbed it out.

  "Get some soap and water, boy. Start scrubbin'."

  As he walked away, I realized the radio was playing faintly, but I couldn't tell what song it was. In the doorway, my father stopped and turned around.

  "Got an A+ for spelling, though. God damn."

  17

  IN THE SUMMER, my father was indestructible. He stretched himself out on a lawn chair and baked in the sun for hours. My mother turned red walking from the house to the car but my father, without a drop of sun block, could work outside all afternoon and never burn. Occasionally, his shoulders would peel, but all he had to do was rub his hand over the dead skin and it flaked off and disappeared.

  I watched him drive a posthole digger into the ground. His vein-laced biceps trembled as he wrenched the handles apart. Bending at the knees, bracing himself, tendons in his neck pulling the tan skin taut across his throat, he extracted the digger, its mouth shut, metal lips clamped on brown soil and severed roots. The digger left a large hole in the earth, and the root's frayed white ends were bright against the dirt. He emptied the digger into a pile, measured the distance between posts with footsteps, then slammed the digger into the ground once more.

  "Gonna look good, boy," he said, twisting the digger deeper. "Not like that plastic piece of shit Mitch put up."

  Our neighbor's fence suddenly appeared ridiculous to me, so clean and fake. White plastic passing itself off as wood. It even had phony grain and knots, as if somewhere in the world, white synthetic trees were harvested for this purpose, to give Mitch and a few others on our block the impression of wood, the illusion that plastic could protect them. My father and I used real wood.

  Hurricane Gloria had recently torn through Northport, burying the streets in broken tree limbs. Hard rain had pasted oak leaves on the sidewalks like green hands. The Long Island Sound swelled above the docks downtown, backed up drainage systems and choked exhaust pipes. Pneumonic cars of all makes and models coughed up and down our block. Our neighbors' decks and porches, the Hess Station's awning and storefront windows on Main Street, our fence and our swimming pool were all destroyed. I was most concerned about our pool. I had pool parties every year for my birthday and didn't want that to stop. My father said there was a law: no fence, no pool.

  I handed him one of the tall, smooth posts, and he dropped it into the ground with a hollow thud. The posts stood at attention like exclamation points, quietly punctuating our progress.

  "Better blow up those Little Mermaid swimmies, boy. You'll be floatin' in no time."

  My father liked to work, especially after work. In the summer, he came home from Waldbaum's supermarket in the early afternoon with a giant watermelon perched on his shoulder. Tossing his keys on the table, he gave my mother a kiss ("Hey, toots") and walked out onto the deck. I was in the pool, floating on a package of hotdogs. The supermarket often gave my father free pool floats, leftover promotional items from a Memorial Day sale. Each year, my brother and I floated on a different wheel of cheese or processed meat.

  Without a word, he took a few short steps and launched the watermelon, arching it over the grass. It hit the surface like a bomb, gushing water into the air. The waves rocked my hotdog float, almost tipping me over. I rubbed the water from my eyes and watched him twirl a toothpick with his tongue.

  He dragged the lawnmower from the shed and wrapped a green bungee cord around the handle, securing the safety kill switch. He liked to smoke while he cut the grass and it was a nuisance to hold the safety switch and a Winston at the same time. My mother muttered about his carelessness as she knelt in her garden, propping up sunflowers with wooden stakes.

  With the roar of the mower, my father became a mime. When he passed the pool, he shot me wide-eyed, open-mouthed looks or pointed out a blue jay pecking the bird feeder. If the blade chopped a stick or hit a rock, I watched his lips form short, sharp words. He paced the grass in even strokes. Sweat began to soak through his tank top. He peeled it off in one swift movement and tucked it into his back pocket. I watched his biceps tremble each time he turned the mower. His muscles reminded me of the sacred stones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the hard, tan rocks that encased precious diamonds. My father caught me staring and gripped the air with his right hand, tilted it to his mouth. I translated: Ginger ale, boy!

  The inside of our house was freezing, quiet except for the television in the living room. It was on most of the day, even if no one was watching. In the mornings, before my mother took me to school, she turned the t
elevision on for our dog.

  "Keeps him company," she said.

  My father flicked his Winston into the bushes. Small blisters of sweat gathered on his shoulders. The mower roared as he drank. He had several pink spots on his back and arms. There was one on the top of his head that I couldn't see then but I knew was there; I stared at it when he fell asleep on the couch. After years of "naggin'," my mother convinced him to have some of his freckles examined. The doctor removed a few of the darker ones. The biopsies came back normal, so he figured he could stay in the sun as long as he liked. And he did.

  I used to think heat made a sound—that I could hear those blurry ripples rising off a hot highway or the hood of a car. It was an electrical hum I couldn't shake from my ears. Floating in the pool, I had stared up at the oak leaves waving their final goodbyes before Hurricane Gloria, and listened to the heat.

  When my father told me it was the cicadas and not the heat, I wasn't relieved. In the summer, we collected their shells and lined them on his workbench in the garage. I hunted for them in the backyard, plucked them off trees or the shingles on the house and added them to our collection. We built an army out of their brittle hollow shells. Brown, legs like needles, bulging eyes, a slit down its humpback where the larger insect had emerged. They were terrifying. I couldn't imagine what the bigger bug looked like. I took a few of them to the side of the house and crunched them beneath my sneakers like little dead light bulbs, never certain they wouldn't flicker back to life.

  One day, I saw something dead in the driveway. It was a giant insect with a long plump body and black eyes. Its iridescent wings seemed baked into the asphalt. I crouched down and rolled a pebble at it, shocking it back to life—wings vibrating, slapping the asphalt. It bounced as if on a hot skillet, flipped and hovered, then darted at me and crashed into the back of my hand. I yelled, running into the house.

  "Whatchu think been comin' out those shells we got in the garage?"

  I didn't believe him. This thing was huge; no way it could fit inside that brittle shell. Later, as I lay in the pool on my hotdog float, I thought about the sound of heat, how there must be thousands, millions of creatures waiting in the trees.

  III

  BUNGLE IN THE JUNGLE

  I don't want no grandkids, boy. Least not right now. Don't mean nothin', you bangin' around, just clean up after yourself. Cable guy was here last week, and the poor bastard just about needed a chisel to pry your bed off the wall. What'a'ya doin' stuffin' rubbas back there? Get rid of them things. This ain't no Easter egg hunt.

  It's that one with the big hooters, ain't it? Well, glad you're bein' safe. That's important. Ain't like when I was your age. Now you catch something and that's all she wrote.

  You talk to your brother 'bout all this, right? He knows. 'Less you want Mom to do it, which I doubt you do, boy. What else is there to say? It is what it is. Like I said, don't mean nothin', you havin' fun. Don't have to be worryin' 'bout pickin' out drapes or shit like that.

  It was a different time back then, boy. People got married right outta high school and if you didn't have kids by the time you were twenty-three, twenty-four, older folks started lookin' at you like somethin's up.

  Like with Mom. She and Haggemeyer were engaged. I was with Maddy. But by the time I got back from Vietnam, somethin' changed, you know? Lost that lovin' feelin'. All the dough I was sendin' back from Saigon, Maddy was spendin' it. Bought herself a new 'Vette. I was in love with her jugs—there was no romance there—but still, what a burn. And I guess Hag, I don't know, I never got that whole story, but Hag started screwin' things up with Mom.

  Didn't bother me none. They broke up, but we all still hung out. If it bothered Mom, she never said anything.

  The night I asked her out—I go over to Grandma and Grandpa's house and knock on the door and Mom answers. Musta been nervous, you know, cuz I'm on the porch doin' the friggin' Ethiopian Shim-Sham.

  No, wise guy, I didn't ask her to share a "so-dee-pop." I didn't get a chance cuz Grandma was listenin' the whole time from her bedroom, and once she heard where the conversation was headed, she yelled, "Well, it's about time!"

  So, how'd we get here, boy? That's right. I was tellin' you to be safe.

  18

  WORD SPREAD FAST. Party hook-ups often did. One of my best friends, Joe, shunned me without a thought. The rest of my friends, guys I'd known since kindergarten, whose lives I could trace through the home movies my mother shot—the baseball and football games, Halloween parties, and Christmas plays in elementary school—turned away from me and didn't look back. Some lasted longer than others; one or two held on for a few weeks, sat with Mia and me at the back of the lunchroom, but they didn't last long. They, too, slowly left our table, like leaves falling off a tree. From the way they ignored me in the hallway, you would have thought I was dating all of their ex-girlfriends, not just Joe's. But one was bad enough.

  Sorry, dude. Bros before hos.

  I felt heroic in some small way—Joe can't tell us who to love!—plus I was part of that insignificant group in high school, the male members of which rarely got asked out on dates, let alone hooked up. It was sort of an achievement for all of us that Joe had managed to score Mia in the first place. I had dismissed notions of rising to the top of the social world long before—rich jocks and cheerleaders, brand new cars. I remember walking between the BMWs and Hummers in the student parking lot, feeling like I was wandering in a museum, searching for a tour guide.

  Though I couldn't move up the social ladder, I couldn't let myself sink to the bottom, either: grow a thin, scraggly beard or wear shorts and boots all year long. I despised the limitations of my class—comfortable knock-off Polo shirts, jeans, sneakers, clean and boring haircut—not a jock, not a nerd, not a theater dork, art weirdo, or a dirtbag. But I understood that mediocrity offered a kind of camouflage. I blended in.

  Overnight, I became a different breed, half of a Siamese twin. My arms grew around Mia's shoulder; her arm connected to my back. We shuffled down the hallways. I used to watch those creepy couples with my friends and had laughed when they walked by our lunch table. Now, I was one of them—attached to something stronger than myself.

  Mia didn't have many friends. She was pushy, always standing up for herself and telling people what's what. If she didn't tell you off her mother would. We would sit in Mia's room watching Pretty Woman as her mother, a tough Italian lady with short curly hair, argued with the principal, or a neighbor, or another parent. Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable, she would say into the phone, as if she were lecturing a child.

  Since we didn't hang out with anyone else, planning the weekend was easy. Like the benefits of school uniforms: restrictive, but reliable. Mia had a hot tub in her basement. Her mother came down to check the laundry, the thermostat, asked if we wanted something eat and then sat in her robe on the recliner, the three of us gazing at the TV like a staring contest. Eventually, she gave up and went to bed. We flipped through the channels for the next fifteen minutes or so, listening to her mother brush her teeth, flush the toilet, and finally shut her bedroom door.

  Mia and I stripped each other and stood kissing in the cold basement, the TV on mute. My bare feet felt the slick wooden steps leading up to the hot tub. She stood behind me with her hand on my lower back, running her nails around my waist. At the top of the steps, we stood side-by-side staring into the steaming water. I kissed her again, and slowly submerged myself to the neck.

  *

  Don had been in California for almost a year by then. I moved into his room the week he left. One of the first things I did was paint the closet door. He had painted a giant eyeball on it, red veins branching out in every direction, with glow-in-the-dark paint. The first few nights I couldn't sleep, and the neon eye glowed. Even when I pulled the sheet over my face, the glow seeped through. I smothered it with several layers of black paint.

  It was fitting that I moved into my brother's room when I did. I was beginning to choose between friends
and girls. A little distance was growing between me and my parents, and for some reason it was just so damn easy to sneak things or people in and out of that room. My old room was right on top of my parents' bedroom, but when I was in Don's room, I was the farthest away I could possibly be without leaving the house.

  My parents took a hands-off approach with me and my brother. They allowed us to make our own decisions, to determine what was good, what was bad. So my brother drove his $75 Volare to New Paltz at a hundred miles per hour or tripped out at the golf course and pushed the carts off a cliff. I found a girlfriend with a hot tub and soaked until my fingers turned to prunes.

  Perhaps my parents were stricter with my brother. Maybe they held onto him a little tighter and he struggled like some feral animal. My brother had a wild look to him: catlike eyes, sharp features. I had cheeks grandmothers were always threatening to gobble up. My brother moved too fast for that.

  *

  Mia and I began eating lunch in the library because it was more comfortable. I tried to convince myself that it was nicer in the library, quieter, and that was why we were there. We weren't hiding. We weren't social refugees huddled in the corner picking at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, watching the silent parade of laughing students march by the windows. We were in love.

  "I can not wait until graduation," she said.

  "Me neither," I said. "Be done with all this crap."

  Graduation was like an oasis, a cool paradise free of old friends and their harsh glares. It was also three years away. We ticked off the days like children preparing for Christmas.