She waves to me across the dining room to indicate that she’s taking the call outside.
I wave back, at the ready should Trev require assistance.
“Bad idea, Bob,” Elsa says, closing the back door behind her. I can still hear her muffled voice as she passes below the window. “It’s a little late for that now, don’t you think? . . . I’ll tell you how I know, Bob. Because for the past four or five . . .” Then I lose her as she drifts deeper into the backyard, though I can still see her as she begins pacing with the cordless beneath the big maple.
Poor Bob will never have closure. He’ll never live down his mistake. What does he hope to accomplish with this phone call? And what is his bad idea, anyway? Does he simply want to talk to Trev, to run into the same brick wall over and over, to be judged for his failings yet again? Maybe he wants to fly out from Salt Lake City and sit at the bedside of his son, or what’s left of his son, to plead his case. I can’t help but wonder whether Trev might secretly relish his father’s testimony. Who is to say that deep down Trev’s little boy isn’t still fighting to win approval? But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trev will permit no such drama, and probably, in his position, neither would I. Trev will hoard his advantage until the very end, withholding the one piece of evidence that might ever absolve his father, namely, that he still loves him.
As Elsa continues her pacing in the front yard, Trev beckons her, and it is I who answer his call. The bedroom smells of sweaty feet and turning fruit and the inside of an aspirin bottle. The shades are drawn against the sunlight, and the respirator hums on the nightstand beside him. A few dusty shafts of light cut across the foot of the bed. On the sill above his head, stuffed animals are lined shoulder to shoulder: a bear, a penguin, one of those singing grapes from the old commercial. On the wall at the foot of the bed is a Misfits poster, right beside a Nike poster that proclaims, “We are all witnesses.” The low dresser is completely bare on top but for a plastic box of pushpins and a folded black T-shirt.
“What’s up?” I say.
His eyes sit deep in their bruise-colored sockets. His lips are cracked. I see no evil genius flashing in his blue eyes. I’m disgusted by the sight of him, repelled not by his condition but by a complex stirring of emotions I can’t process.
“Where’s my mom?”
“Outside on the phone.”
“My dad?”
“Yeah.”
He rolls his head heavily to one side, away from me, then rolls it heavily back until he’s staring at the ceiling.
“Dude,” I say. “Check it out: I banged an Oompa Loompa this weekend, swear to God.”
Trev doesn’t offer so much as a smirk or the bat of an eyelid. “Could you go get my mom?” he says. There’s a rasp in his voice eerily like a death rattle.
“Do you want any water or anything?”
“No. Could you get my mom?”
“I can turn you.”
“I just want to talk to my mom,” he says, unable or unwilling to mask his impatience. “Could you get her? Please.”
He lolls his head back toward the wall again, looking agitated.
I know that I shouldn’t take it personally. Somewhere in the Fundamentals of Caregiving textbook there’s a whole paragraph devoted to such matters. But Trev’s dismissal stings like a betrayal. Already I regret the impulse to sting him back. This is not about me, I remind myself.
“You sure you don’t need to go to the bathroom or anything?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
I turn to leave, then turn back. “Oh, and I was lying, you know. I didn’t fuck shit.”
“I know,” he says.
From the dining room window, I wave to Elsa, and she begins making her way toward the house. I catch the final snatches of her conversation as she clomps up the wooden ramp and through the back door.
“Yes, I promise, I will. Bob, I’m hanging the phone up now.”
And Elsa makes good, at least on her final promise, replacing the phone in its cradle with a sigh.
three feathers
Sharing a barren and seemingly endless parking lot with Target, the Dollar Store, Papa John’s, and Office Max, the Three Feathers Casino projects little in the way of pretense. Its very shape offers no relief from rectangularity beyond a negligible slope in the cedar-shingled awning, and a pair of sad-looking totem poles flanking the entrance like panhandlers. On the outside, the giant gray edifice broadcasts none of the opulence, possesses none of the gaudy flourishes—no fountains, no doormen, no pissing cherubs—that I’ve come to expect in casinos. Just those hard-luck totem poles looking all the more miserable in the rain and a dented yellow cab idling out front.
Checking my fly and mussing my thinning hair, I enter the lobby, where I’m greeted by the cold stink of conditioned air and stale smoke. The riotous clanging of a thousand one-armed bandits, the pulse of garish light from all quarters, the muffled protestations of Buffalo Springfield over the house intercom—all of it is an assault on my senses. The worn carpet is a fussy and overworked pattern somewhere between Mayan petroglyphs and art deco. The patrons themselves are something out of Nathanael West: a groping horde of doughy Midwesterners, hopeful against all odds as they waddle up and down the aisles with their plastic tumblers heaping with tokens and their colons packed with reasonably priced buffet fare.
The dinner theater is none other than the Bayside Circus, opposite the buffet and behind the dollar slots. Never mind that there’s nothing resembling a bay within four miles. Never mind that the place is practically empty. What impresses me the most about the Bayside Circus is how badly the proprietors have botched the circus theme. This is not the Cirque du Soleil. Not even the Teatro ZinZanni. If Chili’s opened a strip club, it might look something like the Bayside Circus. Through the narrow entrance and past the hostess station I see a slice of tawdry stage, lined with Christmas lights and speckled with glitter. Center stage, in a puddle of murky light, hangs the vacant trapeze bar. Nothing about this place—neither its busy decor nor its high ceilings nor its odor of fried chicken and mop water, nor the fact that it’s too dark to see your food—is appetizing. One look at the hostess in her tight pink leggings tells me that she could use a Brazilian. No sooner has this hairy attendant greeted me at the podium than I spot Katya across the dining room in her fringed blue leotard, serving oversized cocktails to a party of revelers.
While there’s nothing particularly nimble or athletic in Katya’s comportment, she is not without a certain knobby-kneed grace as she circles the table balancing a tray in one hand and dealing out drinks with the other. Her big hair has been wrestled into a knot on the back of her head, presumably to keep it out of people’s food and avoid wind drag. Without that mess of hair to compete with, her dramatic jawline and big avocado eyes are all the more striking, even in this dull light at a distance of forty feet. My instinct is to turn and flee before she sees me. Instead, the hostess leads me the length of the dining room, seating me not ten feet from where Katya is delivering the last of her cocktails. It’s still not too late to lower my head and avoid detection, but why come this far? What do I hope to accomplish here? Am I really trying to win a girl or just unraveling my most recent failure to some pitiful conclusion so I can keep feeling sorry for myself?
Though she passes within three feet, her chin held high, Katya does not recognize me. Not until she comes for my drink order. I see at close range that her leotard has a few snags in it and looks worn about the edges. The low light is agreeable to her complexion. Her crazy hair threatens to explode the little bun on the back of her head.
“Oh. Hey,” she says, almost like a question.
“I tracked you down,” I say, regretting the stalkerish implications immediately. “Don’t worry,” I add, in attempt to right my ship. “I’m not stalking you or anything.”
This doesn’t seem to ease her mind. “Um, o-kaay,” she says. “Well, that’s good. So, can I start you off with something to drink?”
“J
ust a Coke, I guess.”
“Pepsi okay?”
“Sure.”
She scratches the order out onto the pad.
“So, how have you been?” I venture.
“Not bad. Really busy. My plate’s way too full right now, with school and work and everything else.”
“Did you get my note?”
She wants to say no—I can see it in her eyes as she hesitates.
“Oh, yeah, thanks,” she says.
“I hope I didn’t scare you off.”
“No, it was sweet, thanks. I’m just really busy.” She steals a glance over her shoulder to the wait station, then toward the stage.
“I didn’t know you were in school. That’s cool. What are you studying?”
“Just basic stuff.”
“Math? Lit? What?”
“Yeah,” she says glancing back toward the wait station once more. Her body language is shifty and impatient, her manner slightly hurried—all of it suggesting that she’s in the throes of a dinner rush. But the place is dead. The din of the surrounding casino bleeds in through the false walls, dinging and donging, as Katya awaits my order.
“How come there’s no net?” I say, nodding toward the stage.
“Huh?” she says, unable to belie what I’m beginning to suspect is annoyance.
“No safety net, I mean.”
She looks to the stage, then back at the bar. “Yeah, well. It’s static. So it’s not like I’m flying through the air or anything like that.”
“Did you ever see that movie Trapeze?” I venture. (I rented it two nights ago for this very reason.) “With Burt Lancaster? Totally cheesy, but some of the trapeze stuff is—” I stop myself when I see that her body is actually stiffening before my eyes, like she’s drawn a deep breath and held it in.
“So, uh, do you need another minute? I can have Misty come by for your order, if—”
“I’ll have the fish-and-chips,” I say, without opening the menu.
“Soup or sal—”
“Soup.”
“Okay,” she says, dotting an i and turning on her heels. “Right back with that Pepsi.”
What kind of world is it where you write a poem for a girl and she holds it against you? What benevolent God would conceive of a dynamic where the impulse to nurture repels? I had hoped to get beyond her pity, and it looks like I’ve succeeded, one way or another. It is Misty who delivers my Pepsi as the lights dim. The party behind me begins to jockey their chairs around and reach for their coats, even as Katya, in her sad garish leotard, takes the stage and approaches the bar. The wooden stage sounds hollow beneath her steps. When she turns to face the dining room, scrupulously avoiding my gaze, her tenuous beauty fails her beneath the murky glare of the spotlight. Her big eye sockets look alien. Her sloping forehead is freakish. Her bare knees look like frozen game hens. And to think she pitied me.
Katya mounts the bar, swings her legs up, and dangles by her knobby knees for a long moment, as though concentrating her energies. Her spine runs straight and dimpled down the length of her back. Upside down, all the missing sequins of her leotard come to light, exposing little piebald patches like dry skin. Arching her back in a Bird’s Nest, clutching the rope a foot above the bar, Katya expertly swings herself headfirst and backward into a shaky handstand. Slowly, she collapses herself like an accordion on the strength of her stomach muscles, splaying her legs in a V as she folds herself nearly in two. By the time she swings her legs out in front of her into an L-sit, we are alone. The revelers have cleared out. Misty is probably out back smoking a cigarette while my soup grows cold. Katya cannot help but feel me there, folding my arms and hating her, as she swings a seven-twenty, reversing her hands, and comes to an abrupt stop with her back facing me. How can I hurt this woman if I can’t even reach her? And why should I want to? We all run hot and cold, so why blame Katya? She spins a quick one-eighty, reversing her hands once more, and comes to rest facing me. I narrow the focus of my hatred right between her hairy eyebrows. This is for your pity. And this is for withholding it, you crazy bitch. But Katya looks right past me.
I stand, fish out my wallet, drop a twenty on the table, and turn to leave without looking back. When I hit the cold stale air of the casino, all I can feel is shame.
this is not a funeral
Before we go feeling sorry for Bob, who flew nearly halfway across the country to make an appearance at the bedside of his ailing son, let’s talk about Bob’s tactical errors. Number one: flying halfway across the country uninvited (nay, conspicuously discouraged), not to mention totally without warning, is just the sort of flight decision that got Bob in trouble in the first place. Moreover, showing up on the doorstep at 7:50 a.m., five hours before Trev’s customary waking time, demonstrates not only a lack of consideration but a complete disregard for the order and routine that Trev stands for. And finally, the flowers.
“Jesus, Bob, it’s not a funeral,” says Elsa, who has canceled her lessons again.
“They’re for you,” he says.
Elsa takes the bouquet and tosses it on the cluttered credenza in the foyer, knocking over a mug full of pens and pencils. “How thoughtful.”
“Well, are you going to let me in?”
Elsa steps aside, and Bob enters the foyer. He’s dressed in pale green Dockers and a forgettable dress shirt, and he looks like Al Gore before Al Gore got fat: mild, average, palliative in his dullness. Yet for all this mild-manneredness, there is something distinctly clownish about him. Maybe it’s his short legs and long torso or perhaps his oversized dress shoes. Though I’m predisposed toward not liking Bob (the guy is a deadbeat, after all), I can’t help but sympathize with him—perhaps it’s because we’ve both made such a hopeless mess out of fatherhood, or because we’re both so well acquainted with rejection, or because we both yearn so badly for forgiveness. Or maybe it’s just because his fly is open.
“Bob, this is Ben, Trev’s caregiver.”
“Hello, Bob,” I say, from my station on the couch.
Extending a hand, Bob advances two steps, landing squarely on the cat’s tail with one of his loafers. The cat darts behind the entertainment center, a hair-raising caterwaul and a brown blur.
“Bob Conklin,” he says, proffering a business card. The business card just says Bob Conklin with a phone number, nothing else. “Pleasure to meet you, Ben.” His hand is clammy, his grip a little too firm but not in a confident way.
“Likewise,” I say.
Elsa rolls her eyes for my benefit, then promptly takes leave to alert Trev.
Bob looks around vaguely, as if he might sit down. “I’ve got a deaf neighbor,” he informs me, apropos of nothing.
“Is that right?”
“Yep.”
“I knew a deaf lady once,” I offer.
“How about that?”
He decides to peruse our giant map, rocking ever so slightly to and fro on his big loafers, furrowing his brow in concentration as though fascinated.
“What do the pins signify, do you know?”
“Muffler Men are red, museums are blue, dead celebrity parts are black, and everything else is green.”
“Hmmph,” says Bob. “Interesting. Elsa did this?”
“Trev.”
“Ahh, I see.” But Bob doesn’t really see—he looks downright puzzled. “How does he reach?”
“I do the actual pinning.”
“Ahh, I see, I see. Very interesting.” He runs his flattened hand over Wyoming and Colorado, as though it were a relief map, tilting his head curiously like a golden retriever confronting a quadratic equation. “What does it mean?” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean why does he mark them?”
“I guess I don’t have a good answer for that one. It’s just something we do. Your, uh, zipper, Bob.”
“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” He fastens his zipper about two-thirds of the way and turns his attention back to the map. “So, what’s this in Salt Lake City?”
> “Virgin Mary in a stump.”
“Ahh. I see.”
As he ponders the map with an expression somewhere between genuine curiosity and mild abdominal cramps, it’s hard to resolve Bob with the villain I’ve come to expect. I expected denim and a five-o’clock shadow. A slight fog of gin, maybe some tattoos. If ever a guy seemed innocuous, if ever a guy seemed benign, it’s Bob. Doubtless, he’s squashed a few butterflies with those clunky loafers along his life’s path, surely he’s trampled a few unwitting hearts, not the least of which his son’s, but never on purpose, it would seem. To me, he seems no more capable of malice than he seems capable of grace. Here is a man that does not make decisions. Decisions make him.
“So, then, the whole thing is just . . . sort of . . . what, then?”
“Sort of an exercise.”
“But I thought you stuck the pins in?”
“Not a physical exercise, Bob. Just something to do with our time.”
“Ah, I see.” He runs his hand across the mid-Atlantic, over double Dumpsters and mystery houses. Surely, he can hear the low conspiratorial voices from the bedroom, and surely he must know they do not bode well for him. It is an awkward moment. I know he means well, and I believe he’s sincere; still I want to shake him by the collar.
“He’s a neat kid,” I say. “I wish I had half his guts.”
“Hmph. Me too.”
“And he’s really funny. He makes me laugh constantly. ”
Bob turns toward me. He’s smiling, and there’s nothing mild about it. “Yeah?”
“A couple weeks ago, we’re mapping—the four-corners area, actually—and we come across Bingham Canyon, the Biggest Pit in the World, and Trev says, ‘I thought Clifton, New Jersey, was the biggest pit in the world.’ ”
Bob takes his smile up a notch just as Elsa reemerges with a businesslike comportment. Why do I feel as though she’s caught us in the act of something?
“You’ll have to try back at three o’clock, Bob.”
Bob looks at his watch to find he’s not wearing one. He looks disappointed, even beaten, but resolved to this setback. At some point during his short visit his shirttail has come untucked. The cat still eyes him warily from behind the entertainment center.
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving Page 7
