Vexation Lullaby

by Justin Tussing

  How much time would pass before he woke up beside someone again?

  Out on the street, people were already going about their days. He caught himself glancing back the way he’d come, as though he expected someone might be following him. His hotel lay in a particular direction, but for the time being he was just glad to be walking.

  When he came to a corner store, he ducked inside and bought a premade latte. He expected to feel a hundred times worse, possibly at any moment.

  In front of a deli lunch shop, there was a picnic table shaded by a blue-and-yellow-striped umbrella. He took out his phone and dialed Judith.

  “Good morning, honey.”

  “How is corporate life treating you?”

  “I made a hundred pendants yesterday.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Across the street a boy stood waiting for a bus. He was skipping flat rocks across the road, as though it were a pond.

  “Actually, one hundred and three.”

  “Are you going to jump right back into the harness today?”

  “Where are you?”

  It took Peter a moment to remember. “Lexington, Kentucky.”

  “You and I visited there once when you were little.”

  “We did?” Knowing that he’d been there with Judith made Peter feel better somehow.

  “It was a long, long time ago.”

  “Wait, so are you making more pedants today or not?”

  “I’m done with pendants. I think I’m going to make cuffs.”

  “Like cuff links?”

  “No, like Wonder Woman.”

  They’d watched the show together on their thirteen-inch television. “Cool.”

  “That’s not a word I associate you with.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What I mean is that I don’t hear you use it much. You like precise words.”

  “I think I have to ask you some questions.”

  “Okay,” Judith said. “Give me a second while I go to my studio.”

  From the little fragments of sound he could picture her whole journey, a stool scraping across the tile floor of the kitchen, the rattle as she opened the wonky front door. He heard her shoes scrape along flinty path that led to her studio—a gardening shed Rolf had fitted with a pair of salvaged windows.

  “Go ahead, I guess.”

  “Cross told me there was more than just one song about me.”

  “I’m not hearing a question.”

  “Did you know that there was more than one song?”

  “Lots of my friends made things. You were also in paintings.”

  “We’re not talking about someone from your painting club.”

  “When I met him, he said he’d given up on music. He was going to be a gentleman farmer, or something like that. After you were born, he sort of appointed himself your guardian. He’d follow you around the yard. I remember he said you gave him new eyes. At some point he started writing songs again.”

  A man stopped in front of Peter. “You can’t sit here. Customers only.” The deli was open now, apparently. Peter stood up and walked on.

  “He told me he wants to make me successful.”

  “If you only take one piece of advice from me, don’t accept anything from him.”

  “You have to tell me why not.”

  “I don’t think I do, honey.”

  “What’s ‘Purple River Serenade’?”

  “He promised he’d never bring that up with you. He gave me his word.”

  “A fan asked me about it. I gather it’s a song.”

  “We had a big fight about it. He didn’t think I’d recognize your initials in the title. I made him take it off the album. That was the end of our relationship.”

  “You said ‘relationship.’”

  Judith paused. Peter could hear her breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. “I’m allowed some privacy.”

  He’d expected to feel bad, but not like this.

  “Honey, listen to me. Get away from him. If his fans put things together, there’ll be no end to it. You don’t understand how they feel about that song.”

  “But there wasn’t a song.”

  “He released it after Alistair was born, or, I guess, rereleased it. He only changed a line or two. Alistair has spent his whole life trying to live up to a song his father wrote about you.”

  A cab cruised by on the other side of the street and Peter found himself flagging it down. “I quit last night.”

  “That’s good, honey.”

  At the end of the block, the cab did a U-turn and pulled up beside him.

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “Nobody here knows what it is a doctor does.”

  “I’m telling you now, when I get off the phone with you, I’m calling him.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can,” Judith said, “but I still have to do it. I’m your parent.”

  Peter got into the cab. The smell of barbeque was overwhelming, and it was coming off of him.

  The cabbie said, “Where you going, big man?”

  Peter found his room key and showed it to the driver.

  He’d about finished gathering his things when someone knocked on the door. He looked through the peephole at Alistair.

  “I can hear you in there. Let me in. I’m not going to assault you.”

  Peter unlocked the door and went back to tidying the room.

  Cross’s son opened the door halfway, sniffed the air, then stepped in. “Doesn’t smell like you slept here.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Alistair rolled his shoulders. “I’m having Wayne pack for me. I told him my back hurts too much.”

  Peter didn’t look up. “If you’re looking for a doctor, you’ll have to find someone else. I quit the tour last night.”

  “You don’t strike me as the quitting type.”

  “This may be my first time.”

  “Let me know if you need any pointers. I’ve got a fair bit of experience in the matter. I’ve quit Pop Warner football, pilot lessons, a handful of bands, rehab, mindfulness training, two master’s programs, and Spain.”

  Peter felt sympathy for Cross’s son. “How do you quit a country?”

  “I tried to live in Majorca, but it kept trying to kill me, so I quit. In Spanish you say ‘lo dejo.’”

  Alistair opened up the mini-bar, grabbed a candy bar and an orange juice, then made himself comfortable on Peter’s bed.

  “You know they charge you for those.”

  Alistair turned his head to the side. “I’m aware that my father’s corporation is picking up the treats, yes.”

  Peter ducked into the bathroom, noted his swollen cheek in the mirror, his tired eyes. Still, he thought, he could have looked much worse. “Did you stop by for a reason?”

  “What happened with the Kiwi?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  Alistair finished the orange juice in one long pull. “I’m glad you decided to quit the tour.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I was going to try to convince you it was time to go.”

  Peter looked up from his packing. Alistair’s face was set. He wasn’t kidding. “How were you going to do that?”

  “I guess I was going to start hitting you.”

  “When I answered the door, you said you weren’t going to assault me.”

  Alistair took a bite from the candy bar.

  “So,” Peter asked, “why do you want me to leave?”

  “I was eight when the old man went back on tour full-time. At first my mother and I tagged along, but there were too many people demanding things from him. Now I have to share him with my nephews and nieces.”

  “Did you think I was going to try to steal him from you?”

  “You’re the son he wanted. Look at the trouble he went through to ge
t you on tour.”

  “Has he ever asked you to join him on the road?”

  “Every time we talk.”

  “So why have you stayed away?”

  Alistair aimed his index finger at his own head. “Look what being around him does to me.”

  Peter grabbed a cranberry juice from the mini-bar. “I think you’re missing my point.”

  “That wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Peter said, “I hope you get your life together.”

  “I hope you get your life together, too.”

  77

  After we’d crossed into Tennessee, I asked Rosalyn a question. “What would you say if I told you I don’t want to go to tonight’s show?”

  She didn’t turn toward me, but I watched her lips pucker.

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Stop,” she said.

  “You mean stop the car?”

  “No, stop saying impulsive things.”

  We were west of the Appalachians. A band of maples and small oaks crowded the highway. Every so often there’d be a break in the trees and we could glimpse the patchwork of fields around us. The landscape was neither grand nor inspiring, but it was pretty enough. I tried to make a point to take it in, to be open to it.

  Had I been saying impulsive things? Perhaps, like Cross, I contained myriad selves.

  “What if I’m serious?”

  “That’s not fair to me, Arthur. If you don’t go, you’ll probably regret it, then you’ll regret meeting me. I don’t want that responsibility.”

  I drove another mile.

  “You asked me to take you to a show, and I did, as a favor.”

  “Don’t make everything into commerce.”

  I would bleed before I knew I was cut; that’s how sharp she was.

  “For a while now I’ve felt as though the world owed me a reversal of fate, yet I’ve been the one unwilling to accommodate change.”

  “Arthur, are you trying to make me dizzy again?”

  The highway unfolded before us, the laziest of rivers.

  “I guess I need to ask you a question.”

  I turned to catch her face. I’d seen her excited before and, because of her health problems, I’d seen her scared, but I’m not sure I’d yet spotted happiness.

  Rosalyn turned up the car’s fan. “Don’t drag this on forever. Enough preamble.”

  “Tonight, would you not go to the show with me?”

  She bit her finger. “Wait! Do you mean you don’t want me to go, or you don’t want either of us to go?”

  We flew over a little creek and the glimpse of moving water spurred me on.

  “Neither of us goes.”

  Rosalyn reached over and squeezed my forearm. “Promise you’re not trying to make yourself into a martyr.”

  “Martyrs are selfless. That’s not my modus operandi. I’m fundamentally selfish.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Arthur.”

  “How does The Holy Screw end?”

  She turned her face from me. “You can never read that book. I forbid you.”

  I held up my phone. “Tell me or I’ll look it up right now, while exceeding the speed limit.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  I started typing into the search bar.

  Rosalyn snatched my phone. “Ruben goes into cardiac arrest and dies in her bed. It’s very sad.”

  “Oh.”

  “Plus there are complications.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She’d snuck him into a convent.”

  “I believe I’ve been waiting to meet you for a long time.”

  We traveled two more miles into Tennessee.

  “That’s a very nice thing to hear.”

  “Can I say something else?”

  “You may.”

  “I think I needed to meet you more than you needed to meet me.”

  “Oh, Arthur, that’s your narcissism talking.”

  “But still.”

  78

  Peter took a shower. He washed his hair twice to try to get rid of the smell. He dressed in his boring clothes, brushed his boring teeth. Looked around the room twice to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind.

  There was another knock on the door.

  Peter undid the bolt and Cross walked in, shaking his head. “In the fall of ’75, someone drove a plumbing-supply van into one of my old cow pastures. He set up an orange pup tent and this chimney-looking thing he claimed was a telescope. For the most part, he kept to himself. Sometimes he’d come over to the house and ask to borrow my phone. He wore his hair slicked back with Vaseline and parted just above his right ear. He looked like an IBM engineer in the midst of a bender. He was always carrying some Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback—judging by the covers they might have been titled Nympho on Mars.”

  The amateur stargazer, Peter knew, was none other than his own absent progenitor, the guy his mother referred to as the Scientist. Peter had first uncovered his name flipping through a calculus workbook Judith was using to shim up a wobbly electric range.

  “When someone told me there was a girl in his tent, my first thought was she must be a robot.”

  “Where was your farm?

  “New York. A place called Round Hill.”

  “The guy with the telescope was Lawrence Brand.”

  “You resemble him a little bit. You’re both . . .” Cross made his hand into a fist.

  “Violent?”

  “Tight.”

  “I’m working on that.”

  Cross leaned his hip against the edge of the dresser. “I’m not your father.”

  “I never thought you were.”

  “Alistair has never quite believed me.”

  “He thinks you went to a lot of trouble getting me out here.”

  “And how do you see it?”

  “Maybe you were curious about me, but I think I was bait.”

  “I used to love you.”

  Peter felt his heart grow heavy. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “I was lost when I first met you. Music didn’t make sense to me. I had too much money and too many friends. You would go on these pointless walks and I’d tag along for something to do.” Cross bent over and lifted Peter’s bag. “Most people think that if you save a person’s life, then that person is indebted to you forever, but in some cultures if you save someone’s life, you become responsible for them, like their guardian. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “I didn’t save your life.”

  “You didn’t save my life when?”

  Peter reached out a hand and took back his bag. He pushed past the singer and out into the hall. The doors of the elevator yawned open in perfect choreography and he stepped inside. He felt free.

  Before the doors closed, Cross slid in beside him. “Are you just going to go back to Buffalo?”

  “Rochester.”

  The car descended in its track.

  “Did you ever love Judith?” Peter asked.

  Cross paused. “That’s harder to say.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “It’s strange how I can remember you, but you can’t remember me. I wish I could give you something that could make you remember.”

  “I promised someone I wouldn’t take anything from you.”

  The trip was nearly over.

  Cross said, “Why are you smiling?”

  The elevator halted. A chime sounded in the ceiling, then the doors slid open.

  At a glance Peter saw twenty or thirty people, ordinary folks who wore faces that were rarely recognized. They’d reached the lobby.

  Cross said, “It was nice seeing you again.”

  Peter didn’t even turn around.

  79

  The Waffle House sign looms above the downtown.

  I get out of the car and wait for Rosalyn. When she gets out, I take her hand and we walk, our fingers interlaced, acros
s the parking lot. I feel knitted together, and not merely with her—I feel more resilient and engaged than I have in a long time. I raise my chin and Rosalyn and I march toward our reflection in the plate-glass picture window. Between our growing faces, on the other side of the glass, I see a hand shaking—my daughter’s waving to us. I see myself smiling as I wave back.

  When we get inside, Gabby stands beside her booth, waiting. Her hair is long and pulled back behind her shoulders. Her face is pink—she looks tentatively happy. We hug. I kiss her ear. Then, letting go with one hand, I introduce Rosalyn.

  Gabby steps forward.

  Rosalyn says, “I hope you don’t mind my tagging along.”

  “I dragged her here,” I say. “I’m sorry we’re late.”

  “No. No.”

  Rosalyn and I slide in on one side of the booth.

  “You’re beautiful,” Rosalyn says, to Gabby, and I think, Yes, she is and, yes, it’s a surprise that I have a beautiful daughter.

  “So,” I say, “where’s this fellow?”

  Gabby actually blushes. “It’s going to be a while,” she says.

  “You look great,” I tell her.

  A waitress comes by and takes our drink orders.

  Gabby turns in the booth and roots through her pocketbook. She hands over a banded-together sheaf of white office paper.

  The first thing I think of is Patricia serving me with divorce papers when I was sitting poolside at a motel in Mexico City and happy, it seemed, for the first time in my life. That’s what I told myself then, but there was another voice inside me telling me that I’d been happy before. I wouldn’t have felt conflicted about getting served if I’d never been happy with Patricia. In fact, if I was unhappy about anything, it was that the divorce was real and the marriage, such as it was, was done.

  Rosalyn flips through the pages, which, to me, look like a series of Rorschach tests. “Oh my god, Arthur, you’re going to be a grandfather.”

  I am.

  Deeper in the stacks we find pictures that show his ancient scrunched face, his bandy frog legs.

  “How far along are you?” Rosalyn asks.

  “I’m at seventeen weeks. I just finished my first trimester.” Gabby stands up again, pulls her shirt above her smooth stomach. “Can you even tell? I’ve still got six months to go. The doctor says April 6, that’s my due date.”