by Katy Kaylee
“He’s on his own.”
That was great as far as I was concerned. We made plates and instead of sitting at the table, we set up tv trays and took over the television. It was subtle, but Nathan and I had subconsciously taken a side against Macon.
In bed later that night, Nathan rolled up against me and his hand went down to my crotch, petting and gently prodding me. I tried to summon the relaxation and respond, but it was no good. “I can’t,” I whispered.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“It’s too crowded here in the burrow.”
“Christina, you’re not letting Macon get to you, are you?”
“I can’t help it. I…uh… I see him disrespecting you and I can’t stand it. He’s a lousy example of my generation and I’m embarrassed on his behalf.”
“Christina, he’s my problem, not yours. You don’t have to take responsibility for him. You’re here to be with me, and I’m here because this is where I live and I want you here with me.”
“I know. I want to be here with you, too… but not with people listening in.”
“People? Or Macon?”
I didn’t answer.
“That’s what I thought. Sleep well,” he told me and turned to his far side while I lay in the bed, miserable.
9
Nathan
I drove Christina home. She was working very hard at not discussing what had happened the night before. She kept up a stream of meaningless jabber aimed obviously to keep me from asking personal questions. She seemed to be very determined not to talk about my son. Why was that?
All day long as I sat through my appointments, I was there in body only. It’s a good thing that my job involves listening and little speech. I don’t think patients realize that the room is always filled with their words alone. The psychologist’s mind is drifting to problems of his own; in fact he may even be finding his own answers in the patient’s droning on and on. After all, even with all those years of schooling, he’s still just like everyone else, except he gets paid to listen. It’s really that simple.
There was something bugging me about the interaction between Macon and Christina. She’d never been around him and yet her sensitivity to his habits, even though they were annoying, didn’t deserve the off-the-wall reaction I’d seen from her. If anything, I’d expected her to be extra nice to him as all my dates had been—trying to win his approval. I stopped on the way home and picked up some steaks and a nice bottle of wine. The store was busy. The checkout lane was ten carts long but there weren’t any options, so I stood and just watched the people around me. It was a contrast from seeing patients, who were always on their best behavior as though I was the people police who would have them locked up for lying or admitting they smoked pot. Patients were on their guards. People in the store weren’t. Mothers spoke sharply to their kids who reached for candy on the nearby shelf. Men came in and bee-lined it for the liquor aisle. There was a young couple ahead of me, roughly Macon’s age. He was trying to tell her about his day at work. Someone named Raymond had apparently overstepped his authority and he was ranting about the unwanted attention it had brought his way. She, on the other hand, was reading a dog-eared magazine from the rack in the check-out, totally ignoring him. When he finished with Raymond, he began in on her, complaining that she never listened. She told him he was a broken record and that launched a whole new conversation that anyone with twenty feet of them heard plainly.
That was when it hit me.
Macon and Christina had bickered like a married couple.
I tossed the steaks and wine back and burst out the door of the store and headed home. Macon was on the sofa, as expected. I pulled the plug on his gaming console and he looked up in protest.
“What the hell?”
“Okay, Macon. Be straight with me. You already knew Christina, didn’t you?”
“What the shit?”
“Tell me the truth, damn it!”
“Let her tell you.”
“No! You tell me. Where did you know her from?”
Macon chuckled, like an monster with a wonderful secret that he savored and played with mentally to seek its greatest advantage.
“Wouldn’t you just love to know. It seems that for the first time in my life, you really need something from me instead of the other way around. What do you know? So, the question comes, am I going to tell you what you want to know? Should I lie and tell you everything will be okay, just like you told me so many times in my life. Why are we pretending? Do you think I don’t know my life is messed up? Do you think I don’t realize I haven’t amounted to anything? Why do you suppose that is? I’m the son of a God damned psychologist and probably symbolize the biggest failure in his professional career. I spend my days on the couch playing video games and eating junk food. That’s really what’s getting to you, isn’t it? You can’t figure out why Christina and I are at odds after just a couple days. Oh, you think you might know, but it would be just too horrible to believe. Shall I put you out of your misery, Dad? Okay, here goes. Steel yourself, yes, I knew her before you did. You want more? It’ll cost you the truth always comes with a price, you should know that. Just like you charge your patients, a big flat fee. This is really going to cost you. Here it is, ready? Yes, she and I were a couple. Yes, she and I lived together. No, we were never intimate. Why, you ask? Because, Dad, among all the other fouled up things in my head is an aversion to women. I’ll let you sort that vent out. So, take her. I never took her, not in that sense, because I’m simply not interested. I don’t want to be around her and I know the side of her that can be a bitch. She’s all yours.”
I listened to his diatribe, my stomach rising and sinking with every sentence. How could I have known him his entire life and not seeing what was right there before me? Now, there we were, psychologist and son. The son feels unwanted, disrespected, overlooked, and his response has been to fulfill the promise of being worth little, even to his own parent. Was I shocked that he was telling me he was gay? I have to be honest. Maybe just a little more shocked than I would be with a patient, after all, this was my son. I thought I knew everything about him. I felt naked and blind.
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Is that a question that comes with concern or disgust?”
“It’s a question coming from a father who feels he may have let you down.”
“May have? Let’s count the ways, but then, oh, your reputation would suffer, wouldn’t it. No, we mustn’t do that. If you’re not earning money that means I starve, too. Let’s just call it a draw, shall we? One of those chicken or the egg things. It doesn’t matter, there’s nothing you can do and neither can I. It is simply who I am. The question is, can you accept it?”
“Of course.”
“Now, now, don’t be too hasty. Can you accept it because you feel required to professionally or is this accepting it like the fact that I eat junk food and play video games all day? Are you acknowledging it with the hopes that you can change my mind down the road?”
“Of course not. It doesn’t work that way and you know that as well as I do. I have no problem with your sexuality. I do have a problem with my sleeping with a young woman who also occupied your bed.”
“I told you. Nothing happened. She tried, good God she tried. It didn’t do any good. I wasn’t interested, I was limp and eventually she gave up and became my mother. Yes, you heard me there. She became my mother. I let her do the cooking, wash my clothes, clean up after me and earn whatever little money we had that went straight to the landlord. She did it all, I did nothing but play, just like you see me doing now. She had enough, and she left because of it. Is that what you’re going to do? Are you going to ask me to leave?”
I shuffled my feet, looking at the carpet and the crumbs of Cheetos. “Under the circumstances, it might be the best thing.”
“I thought you might say something like that.” Macon nodded with a knowing look and began wrapping up his video games. “That’s how you do it,
isn’t it? When it becomes difficult, you look the other way. You have always done that. Well, Dad, it’s okay. I’m used to it.”
“Here, this should be enough to find yourself somewhere decent to live for a few months. I’m here, but it’s time you run your own life, however you choose.”
“There you go, that was simple enough, wasn’t it? Once again, you turn your head and look the other way because it’s simpler that way. Let’s hope Christina doesn’t need much from you. Let’s hope she can truly take care of herself. Keep your money.”
“No, take it. It’s not guilt money. You’re my son and I love you. I’m concerned about what happens to you and I don’t want you living in some filthy alley.”
“You mean like the one where I lived with Christina?”
I had to admit, that stung. I didn’t want to think of either one of them is having called such a place home. I knew I couldn’t keep him with me. We’d rub against each other constantly and eventually, it could even come to blows. It had nothing to do with Christina. I could have seen to it that she had a nice place to live and I could’ve stayed there with her. This wasn’t about rejection of Macon, either. He was right. He knew what he was doing. He had chosen his life and it was time I left him to it. I tossed the pile of bills onto his game console. “Buy yourself a cell phone, will you? Let me know the number and keep in touch.” I turned around and left the house, driving to the end of the block and waiting. I’d catch her before she walked in on him. I didn’t want her hurt. Two of us were already miserable, and it sounded as though she’d already done her time.
10
Christina
I went to Nathan’s burrow that night, prepared to cook dinner and avoid looking and Macon’s direction, no matter how hard he provoked me. It was a new game and I was learning the rules. There was one thing for sure though, Nathan was smart and eventually he’d catch on. Imagine my surprise when I discovered he already had and that Macon was gone.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I told him. “He needs you.”
“And you don’t?”
“I’m different. I know how to take care of myself, I’ve been doing it long enough. Macon never learned that. Besides, he’s your family and I’m not.”
“Don’t waste your energy feeling sorry for him, Christina. Macon makes his choices as he goes and he has to live with the outcome. I do love him. And you’re right, he is my son. But, he’s a man on his own and he has to learn things himself. I can’t tell them. Anyway, I don’t want to give you up.”
“If you say so.”
As a days went by, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had somehow ruined Macon’s life. There was no telling how low he would stoop to remain an object of pity. That’s how he’d played me all those months and I could see then that it was the same technique he used with his father. I loved Nathan, but our life together had changed. My stomach was a constant cement mixer and my nerves were shot. I started to miss days at work and naturally, my bank account reflected that. Nathan saw what was going on and wanted to help.
“Move in with me,” he begged. “That trailer isn’t a decent place for you to live. I worry about you.”
“Don’t. Don’t worry about me, that just makes it worse for me.”
“Give up the trailer and move in here with me.”
“I need my space, Nathan. That’s nothing against you, believe me when I say that. It’s just that I’ve been on my own for so long, it’s the only way I know. Even when there was someone else living in the trailer, I lived alone, in my head and came and went as I pleased.”
“You can do that here, too. I won’t keep tabs on you. I just don’t want to lose you.”
“Don’t push me, Nathan, please don’t. It will only push me further away. Let me get there on my own and in my own time.”
His shoulders sagged. He was feeling defeated. I suppose from his point of view I couldn understand it. His son had left and now I was close to doing the same thing and he done nothing wrong, nothing to deserve it. Life just worked out that way sometimes, and it was crap. But what was anybody going to do.
That’s when everything changed. I was feeling crappy in the mornings. There was that dark little voice in the back of my head whispering about the night that I’d slept with Nathan and lied about being on birth control. I knew when I did it there would be recriminations. Damn! Couldn’t I get even the smallest break? I chose Thursday simply because it was Thursday and stopped by the free clinic on my way home. The doctor confirmed my suspicions, solemnly handing out the bottle of prenatal vitamins in a heavy dose of advice. “Do you want to keep it?” He asked.
“Well it wasn’t what I was asking Santa to give me, but it is mine is going to stay that way.”
“There are resources out there for unwed mothers.”
“You mean welfare and food stamps and all those nice little mechanisms the government uses to keep control over you and your child.”
“It’s not all as bad as at,” he pointed out.
“I can do this on my own. I don’t need any handouts.” I saw the look in his eyes, the pity and the disbelief that I was strong enough and capable enough of making ends meet with a young baby in my care. I wasn’t there yet. I had nine months. I’d come up with something in the interim.
I had decisions to make. Sure, I had the trailer, such as it was. I supposed I could make a small nursery in the living area, close enough that I could get to the baby and a few steps. I’d convert the bedroom to a sitting room with a bed. People had done it before me and I could do it, too.
That’s when I made the decision not to go back to the burrow. Nathan already had one problem child, he didn’t need a second. And I was just independent enough to want things my way. He was older, he had money and connections. He could probably even find a way to take the baby away from me, I’d be damned before I let him take it. I was making a stand even though I couldn’t afford it.
11
Nathan
Christina had become a missing person. I knew why and I hated the reason, as well as her decision. Macon must have lied. They must have been much closer than he’d let on. For all I knew, the whole story about him preferring men might have been a bullshit lie to throw me off the trail.
I wondered if Macon had told her that I knew. That would certainly account for why she was giving me a wide berth. She didn’t want to hear the recriminations—didn’t want to argue that she hadn’t known until it was too late. Could I believe that?
That’s when it hit me. Was Christina in on it? Had Macon put her up to getting close to me so they could both milk me out of money? After all, if I were to marry Christina, she would own half of whatever I had. Were they capable of such deception?
I ran my hand down my face, trying to wash away the crap thoughts I was having and focus on the drive to my office. I knew better than to draw such stupid conclusions. I was letting the germs from my patients cover my mental health immunity. Life sucked.
That night I threw a frozen dinner in the microwave and climbed into my sweats. The computer was dusty. Up to that point, I’d had a life. Christina and Macon had lured me out of it, but that was about to change.
I fired up the dating site where I’d met Christina. The first thing I did was dig into my mail and delete every letter we’d exchanged. I blocked her from seeing my profile and me from seeing hers. I was blocking her from my life in general. I missed the hell out of her, but the possibilities that were running through my brain were tearing up my gut. I needed drain my brain of memories; of her soft skin, the way her eyes sparkled, the warmth of her when I fucked her and the way she held my cock. Jesus! It didn’t matter which buttons I pushed. She was there, forever.
A window popped up. Her name was Libby.
Hi!
Hello
I’ve seen your profile on here and was hoping some day you’d tap me on the shoulder.
Is that right?
I think you’re cute.
She was sucking me d
own the funnel. Her photo was obviously twenty years old, judging by the hairstyle and her clothing. She wanted me to ask; I could feel it. She was unattractive, easy, and that made her absolutely perfect.
Would you like to meet for a drink?
Really? I’d love that. Where and when?
Can you make The Golden Mug on 4th Street at 9:00?
Tonight?
Sure.
See you there.
I’d never been to The Golden Mug, but the exterior didn’t lie. It was exactly the kind of place I expected. Trashy. Libby blended right in with the other customers. I’d pre-ordered her a beer and she slid onto the stool with a practiced ass. We went through the small talk and her hand strayed, finding its way to my upper thigh, and higher. She grinned and her gums gave away the fact she was wearing dentures. My stomach flopped. Lifting her hand from my leg, I shook it and stood, giving her my arm. Her face lit up as I called a taxi. She asked me to excuse her for the ladies’ room. I nodded and told her I’d meet her out front. Libby sailed out shortly after, an extra poof of perfume trailing behind her. The taxi pulled up and I opened the back door and helped her in. “Enjoyed meeting you,” I said and closed the door, watching the vehicle pull away from the curb.
I felt like crap driving home. I had never planned to sleep with Libby, much less offer her anything more than a drink. I’d become a base human being, all in the name of revenge for something that no one had done to me. I needed to see my own shrink.
When I got home, I took another steaming hot shower, trying to wash off the guilt, the self-recriminations and the feeling that I took advantage of a human being only because I was trained in how the mind works and I had to the power to do it. I was despicable, to say the least.
