by A M Homes
“What do you aspire to?” the father asks. It is clear from the tone of his question that she shouldn’t try to answer. “When I was young,” he says, “it was a certain success, a career, a wife, a child, and after that a club, a boat, a country home, a better wife.”
“Let’s leave it for now.” The mother stands and begins to clear the table even though they’re still eating.
Her eye, her swollen blindness, her sluggish, drugged state have impeded her coordination. She has dropped food on herself. By meal’s end she is dotted with samples of everything served—a piece of corn hangs in her collar. Wallace, the family dog, is working in tight circles, licking the floor beneath her, nosing into her lap, getting what he can.
“We used to play with real balls, white balls, none of this neon green, flaming magenta crap,” the father says. “It was a civilized sport, a good game.”
“My serve’s harder than yours,” Matt says to his father.
“No doubt,” the mother says, patting her son on the head, running her fingers through his hair, remembering when…
The old man opens his eyes and looks first at his son and then at the girl. “I hope you teach him good,” he says, and then turns back to his son. “I’ll play you this weekend. I’ll kill you.”
“I have balls,” the little one says, although no one (but me) is paying attention.
A pie. Mama makes a pie. Before she loses her marbles, she makes me something to eat. She goes into the kitchen, takes out her mixing bowls, and starts adding things: flour, salt, baking soda. With her bare hand she scoops Crisco out of the can.
“Peel,” she says, giving me a knife.
With her hands she mixes the things in the bowl, throwing in more flour, an extra pinch of salt. She takes my apples, chops them, sprinkles them with sugar, cinnamon, and a splash of orange juice. She moves fast, frenetically.
“Don’t you need instructions, a card with the rules written on it?”
She taps her head. “Memory,” she says, rolling out the crust.
She is baking as though it’s a game, as though everything is make-believe.
I want to tell her that in order for it to work, it has to be done a certain way. I want to say something but don’t.
The pie goes into the oven. It begins to smell, the smell of apples melting. It begins to smoke.
“Fire,” I cry. “Fire.”
“It’s just the juice,” she says, not even checking. “The juice burning off.”
The pie is gone. I make a tambourine out of the tin, punch it full of holes and hang bottle caps off it. Mama dances around the yard while I bang my tambourine.
Mother is gone—the tambourine has been sold to the Museum in Cincinnati. Burt told me as much.
Is there still a chance I could have some pie?
Back at the house, dinner has come to a standstill, a serious impasse as my characters have stopped eating and speaking and are now sitting, staring at their plates daydreaming for five minutes or more. The terrible trance is broken by the jingle of bells, distant down the block.
“Good Humor,” the littlest one shouts, slapping his hands on the table. He rushes to the door. “Good Humor,” he cries, unable to get the latch. Again there is the tinkle of the treat wagon, and Matthew and the girl are just behind him, all three quickly out the door.
A position held by many I’ve known, one I myself turned down on numerous occasions. It is, simply put, too complicated, rather hazardous, what with all the driving, the serving of the cones, the continuous and unrelenting need to pull the cord that jingles the bell, and all the while trying to do one’s own work. No doubt I would have wrecked the wagon on my very first day. But for those who are more surely coordinated, less inclined to spin the head around and crane backward while moving forward, straining to get one last glimpse, for those who can handle such, it is a wonderful job. A true calling. And there is an ease to the operation: one simply rings a bell beckoning the young ones to submit themselves for inspection. Veritable herds to choose from, and if one doesn’t like the choice, one simply drives to another hamlet, the Middlesex of one’s choice.
The jingle of bells and all the children, our girl included, are caught in a Pavlovian response. They are out of the house and down the flagstone path before the mother makes it to the doorway, shouting, “Do you need money?”
“We have money,” the kids scream back as though this is the least of their worries.
“Get me something,” she cries out. “Something good. And you better get Dad one, too, or he’ll eat yours.”
They wave her away and race down the street. It is early evening, not yet twilight; the sky is a deep blue, the air holding the heat of the afternoon. The ice cream truck is ahead of them. They run, overcome with apprehension, the fear that the truck will drive off before they arrive— they’ve seen it happen before. Just as they come upon it, the driver lets out the brake and rolls away, a-jingle. And the fact is, the drivers do it on purpose, especially where fat little kiddies are concerned. As the chubby child nears, the truck pulls a few hundred feet farther down the street and pauses. As the hefty hefalump again closes in, the truck eases another two to three hundred feet down the road— a teasing tug-of-war repeated several times before the driver grows bored, pulling away entirely, causing tubby to turn homeward, to deepen his depression. Or the driver, if given to a kind of sadomasochistic sympathy, will tease and taunt and then stop, ultimately letting the obese infant have his reward, figuring to have made him work for it, to have made the ice cream better than good, a treat actually earned.
Like precocious playmates, proper pals, our girl follows her boy up the sacred staircase to the family’s private quarters. Good Humor in hand, they are temporarily returned to a world of childhood, of make-believe where all is goodness and nice. And in his room, his cramped but special cell, they circle each other, spinning, turning the tension tighter as they struggle to keep a space between them, as they dance in rings around each other, like dogs sniffing.
She is the teacher, he is the pupil. She is the girl, he is the boy. She is older, he is younger. She has the power, he has the power. Neither knows what they are doing. It is a tie, a dead heat; they spin and spin and suck on their melting ice cream sticks. They circle until they slowly settle, until they are dizzy and nauseated from the duck, duck, goosing version of musical chairs, until she is left sitting at his desk and he on his bed, each hiding behind the melting bricks of ice cream that hang precariously off their wooden sticks. He finishes first, leaving a chocolaty ring, an outline and guide around his mouth. Again and again, she wipes at her lips, craving to keep them clean. But it is impossible to stay untouched, untainted, in such a situation, and without noticing she drips onto her shirt.
They look at each other but don’t smile.
His room is like that of any boy, decorated with furniture of his parents’ choosing, augmented with sporting equipment and dirty clothing. On the bedstead is a clock radio, a pile of sticky Popsicle sticks, and a large wad of hardened green gum. Low on the wall, down behind the bed, where no one but an expert, an archaeologist of greatest experience, would think to look, are gray-green smears, chunky crumbles, fragments of discharge, the nose picked and smeared, boogers. His sheets, thoroughly visible due to the unmade nature of the bed, are well-worn, thoroughly loved Batman sheets. For the boy, they are a source of power. Putting him to sleep in this bed is like slipping him into a battery recharger for the night. Head positive, feet negative, and with eight hours of solid charge each night, he glows, positively shines by morning.
What to do? What to do? What do these children do? Talk about? After all, they have never really spoken before. Nothing that one could consider a conversation has passed between them, and now they are alone, like this. What will happen next? My heart races. I am watching with my hands over my eyes. I want to know and yet I don’t want to know. The suspense is killing me. If you haven’t noticed it, you are a fool. This is the beginning, the true start of
things, the time when, without speaking, they simultaneously acknowledge the real reason for their meeting. Sometimes you are such a fool that I wonder what you are doing here, playing these pages. Perhaps you would be better off with the World Book, a nice quiet encyclopedia.
“Wanna see my stuff?” he asks.
She nods.
He gets up and moves to whip out his things, his collection of cards—baseball, football, etc. He shows her the cards and talks about how he is a generalist, specializing in nothing, dabbling here and there, sampling this and that, sure that someday, some piece of it will be of enormous value, which piece he can’t quite be sure.
“Know what else I’ve got?” he says, peeling back the closet door, pulling the light chain. “Records. I have all my father’s old records. I’m building a collection. Used to love the Beatles, but now I like Jimi. Jimi Hendrix?” He begins to play air guitar and dance around the room. He comes close to her. She is reeling. He jerks open a desk drawer and flashes a succession of neatly ordered boxes.
“And candy,” he says. “I collect candy. Theme candy. Java Jaws. Pandemonium Puffs. And glasses. I have a small collection of gas-station glasses. They’re downstairs. Every time there’s a new glass, I make my dad fill up or get an oil change, whatever it takes.” He falls silent and rummages through the drawers. There are things from school: ruler, compass, calculator, pencils and pens, metal fragments, pieces of this and that, spare parts.
“There’s another collection, something I make myself,” he says, taking a small white cardboard jewelry box out of the drawer. “Promise not to get grossed out. I mean, I know you will, but like, swear not to hold it against me or anything.”
“I’d never hold anything against you,” she says.
He seems hesitant, suddenly shy.
“I swear.”
Still dubious.
“Show me. I want to see.”
He opens the box, lifts out the cotton, and tilts it in her direction. In the corner she sees a few small raisiny, shrively things.
“Scabs,” he finally says. “I pick my scabs and save them. Dried out they’re crispy, kind of chewy. The flavor changes depending on what generation it is, whether it’s blood-based or peroxide. It’s kind of complicated, a science, knowing how, when to harvest. But they’re good. I pick them, put them in this box, and then every now and then grind one up between my teeth. Am I the strangest guy you ever met?”
She shakes her head. “No, but you’re very sweet.”
The boy looks at her as if she hasn’t heard a word he’s said, as if she’s entirely missed the point. “And you’re cute,” she says. “And I bet you taste great.”
He blushes and starts to rattle his box. “Want one?” She nods. “Fresh,” she says, pointing to his knee.
There is a thick crustation across the mid-kneecap, dark and heavy, close to mature. The edges poke up slightly.
“A little accident on the gravel about a week ago,” he says, flicking it with his fingernail.
She drops to her knees and crawls across the floor toward him, kicking the door closed along the way. He scoots to the edge of the bed. His legs are hanging over. She licks the knee, the scab, to soften it, to wash and ready it. The flavor is a wondrous rich mix of dirt, sweat, and blood. She licks slowly and then, with the long nail of her index finger, pries, peeling the scab up. It comes away slowly, painfully, leaving a pink well that quickly fills with blood. She presses her tongue to the coming blood and draws it away. The well refills and then overflows the wound, running down his leg. She holds the scab to the light of the Luxo lamp on the desk.
“A good one?” she asks.
“The best,” the boy says, still breathless from his surgery.
She slips the scab into her mouth. He shudders. She is eating him. He’s never seen anything like it. His eyes roll up into his head; he falls back onto the bed.
Fainted. Out for the night.
Without a word, with only the smallest smacking sound of her sucking the scab, she goes to his desk, opens his notebook to a blank page, and scrawls, Tomorrow at three, her words going out of the thin blue lines. And then she goes downstairs to the living room, taking care to tuck her treat between cheek and gum so as not to lose it, not to swallow too soon. She stops to thank his mother and father for their hospitality. “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome, dear. It was a pleasure having you. I’m sure the boys really enjoyed it.”
The girl nods and moves toward the door. The mother shows her out. “Your eye is going down,” she says. “That’s a good thing. In the morning you’ll forget it ever happened.”
The girl doesn’t speak. She works her teeth back and forth over the lump of flesh, the piece of their boy between her bicuspids.
“You know,” the mother says, stopping her at the door, “you probably don’t do this kind of thing, but if you’re ever inclined, I’m always looking for a baby-sitter. Don’t say anything now, but think on it.”
“Again, thank you,” the girl mumbles, taking great care not to lose the bit between her teeth. “And good-night.”
NINE
Prison. A sour old mop and bucket. Bleachy smelling salts of Clorox lift me from my thoughts. The man mops with a mixture so strong that if the job is well done—the way it should be done—when he is finished, we will be thoroughly scrubbed; our floors will be clean, our lungs will be clean, and our thoughts will be clean. I wish him all the luck. The bucket sloshes as he comes toward me. The gray tentacles of his mop dip into my cell. “Wash?” he asks.
“Sure, why not?” I say, lifting my feet from the floor. He makes a quick sweep of the place and is gone. I sit watching the water evaporate] the smell of his stale mop curdling, becoming high and thin like milk that has turned.
“Let me see it again,” Alice says.
I know what she is referring to and instantly blush. “Oh, don’t be a dolt, show me,” Alice says. “I just need to see it.”
Clayton, the pathetic fuck, shuffles into my room, feet scraping the floor as if he’s sanding himself down, the scrape, scraping of his soles like two sheets of sandpaper mounted on wooden blocks, like the noise we used to make in elementary school under the guise of music and drama. He sits on the edge of my bed. Speechless. Whatever he might want to say would mean nothing, all words and deeds are useless. He knows that, but as a shark keeps swimming, a man keeps talking.
The Guiding Light is over. Josh has returned to Springfield for the wedding even though he’s upset that there’s a new man in Harley’s life. As Julie repeats her vows, Bridget arrives and starts reading her the riot act.
All too much. The television is off.
“I’m thinking of piercing my dick,” Clayton finally says. “Putting a nut and bolt through it, so I can fuck you like a truck.”
“Only the finest for you,” I say, tweaking the ivy leaf that hangs off his left titty.
He twists away.
“How about a lip plate; that way when you’re pouting, it won’t be so obvious.”
Fishwife. Nelly. Tired old queen. My surprise at myself, my horror, quiets me.
We stew. There is no point in getting up and running out. There is nowhere to go; his cell, my cell, what difference does it make?
“Do you want your mail?” he asks.
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
As usual there’s plenty for me, none for him. Requests on university letterhead for an interview, an extensive study, a few questions to be answered, research papers, a book.
I respond politely. For someone with a reputation such as mine, it is important to behave oneself, to be mannered and kind. At least on paper.
Dear Monsieur or Madam,
Thank you for your kind letter. I am hardly the fellow you think me to be. I am shy, hesitant to involve myself in studies such as the one you describe, although I am sure it will be insightful and entirely original—a work of great value. But I, being who I am and things being what
they are, beg to be excused from this round. However, if you are open to suggestion, I would wholeheartedly recommend several men here, in particular my buddy Clayton, who allegedly—and more than once—fucked men on the Christopher Street pier and then pushed them into the Hudson River where they drowned.
To hear Clayton tell it—and he rarely does tell it—the men he fucked were so taken with the events, so absorbed with the back and forth of the in and out, that when it stopped, when Clayton breathed a sigh of deep relief and shot high into their asses, the men surged forward, flinging themselves into the water. And Clayton, so suddenly drained, so recently depleted and a non-swimmer himself, would go to the edge and simply scream, howl at the water, at the night, offering his arm, his hand, his fist, to the men, who were already dipping under, flailing far from Clayton’s reach.
Again, thank you for your interest and good luck with the project.
All best—
* * *
Mail. There is a letter from her. I do my little Gene Kelly, tapping my toes, counting the pat-patter of my heart, my hands, my feet, the echo of the tapping, the metronome of movement, the keystrokes of her Smith-Corona. She is tapping the keys, tapping to tell, and I am tapping my toes, titillated, ready to receive. I save her for last, hoping Clayton will grow bored with the habits of my correspondence. I answer each as I open it, defending myself against the heavily writ tomes of maniacs and wanna-bes, the romantic rhymes of curious widows, and occasional outbursts from the parents of my old girls—you’d think these would be censored, that the same protection that keeps me from them would keep them from me. “I don’t know what kind of man you are,” they say. But of course you do, that’s why you deign to write. I answer everything, to everyone I have something to say, today more than usual. I write for hours, hoping Clayton will tire and take leave of his own accord, leave and allow me to enjoy my girl, alone, as I must. He plays with a pad and pen, drawing perspective boxes within boxes, heavy black lines. The doodles of a depressed man.
