by Chuck Kinder
Ralph went to his daughter’s bedroom, for she was his chief suspect, especially now that Paco had more or less moved back in, with the understanding he would confine his criminal activities to Ralph’s daughter’s bedroom, such as selling drugs to the scumbag neighborhood children out of the bedroom window instead of the kitchen. As always, a low, persistent growl was emanating from behind the door of Ralph’s daughter’s bedroom. Ralph was no fool, and although they denied it, Ralph knew his old pal Killer was back lurking about the premises. And he had evidence of it. Just the other day Ralph had found a turd the size of his arm in the back yard. When he thought he could see his own breath in the chilled air before his daughter’s bedroom door, Ralph realized that he was the one going crazy, not Alice Ann. And his daughter’s door felt cold to the touch. Just the other day, upon catching Ralph holding a cat’s head under the faucet at the kitchen sink, and not buying his excuse that he was simply giving kitty a drink, Ralph’s daughter had expressed her displeasure by spinning her head around on her neck a few times and growling with guttural animal sounds unlike any Ralph had ever heard this side of a horror movie. Ralph decided to forgo discussing the purloined liquor with his daughter and her beau for the time being, and he tiptoed backward away from her door. Ralph would clean out that nest of vipers first thing in the morning, in the bright light of a brand-new day, when Alice Ann was home.
Ralph was astonished that his son's bedroom door, which was pulsating with the insane vibrations of rock-and-roll, was unlocked. As Ralph turned the doorknob, which felt hot to the touch, it occurred to him that he had not entered his son's room in years. The first thing Ralph noticed, once his eyes adjusted to a flashing strobe which froze the room in bursts of painful light, was that the walls were now painted black, which did wonders to frame the Day-Glo posters advertising those killer, cannibal bands Ralph’s son revered so, who played that pure Charlie Man- son music loaded with catchy lyrics extolling the kicks kids could cop cutting the throats of their parents. In the confusion of the flashing light and throbbing music, Ralph didn't spot his son at first. Then he saw him lying over on the floor beside the bed, a form motionless except for the nervous, twitching illusion created by the light. What Ralph realized immediately was that his son was as naked as the day he was born.
Ralph tiptoed across the room to his naked son. He reflected upon the fact that he had not seen his son naked since he was a little boy. The first thing Ralph registered, with a strange twinge of pride, and then with a wave of resentment, was that his boy was hung like a horse. And then Ralph recalled bathing his son as a little boy, and how even back then Ralph had been amazed that the tot had a tool that looked like a third leg. What Ralph realized in the next moment in amazement was that his son was wearing a rubber.
Ralph glanced about the room, fearful some beautiful, naked teenage girl would suddenly sit up and scream at the lurking, leering, dirty old man for being where he did not belong, there in his own son’s room in his own house. Ralph looked on the far side of the bed and then tiptoed to look in the closet. Then Ralph noticed the used rubbers scattered all over the floor, a dozen or more, a snow of shed skins and opened condom packets. Ralph picked up one of the torn-open condom packs from the floor and studied it in the flashing light. It was his brand, all right. And the girly magazines all around the floor Ralph recognized immediately as being from his own private stash, which he kept under lock and key in a file cabinet in his office. Oddly enough, each of the magazines was turned to pictures of some of Ralph’s own favorite babes. Ralph looked back at his naked son and shook his head in confusion. Why would anybody, even somebody as weird and weak-minded as his son, waste a perfectly good, not to mention expensive, rubber just to jack off, that’s what Ralph wanted to know. There was no explaining it. It was a notion beyond all comprehension.
When Ralph’s eyes fell upon the neck of the botde sacking out from under the bed, he was not surprised. He bent and picked it up. Ralph knew that the bottle of ancient Scotch was a dead soldier even before he lifted it to his lips. There was evil in the world, there was. Pure, palpable evil that pushed at the world and made it turn, and it had leaked into the world through the lust of Ralph and Alice Ann’s own loins. This evil naked bad omen at Ralph’s feet was their fault alone. They had brought forth this abomination with their abandoned fucking, and now the whole world would have to pay the price. Ralph studied his son’s reptilian face, glistening with sweat, his jaw working, his little lizard lips twitching even in his coma in time to the blaring beat. Ralph looked around the black walls of the room at the posters which glared at him in the throbbing light like leering, evil icons, mocking him and all he stood for, mocking the truly moral man he knew was buried somewhere deep inside him. Ralph rushed around the room slashing one poster after another with his dad’s precious pearl-handled pocketknife, which until that very moment Ralph had forgotten he was carrying open and ready for business.
In that scary movie, The Omen, what had finally convinced Gregory Peck that the boy he had thought of as his own son was really the Son of Satan was the birthmark the boy carried, triple sixes, 666, on his scalp, which Gregory Peck had uncovered when earlier he had cut the sleeping boy’s hair in order to find out the truth once and for all.
Consciously willing himself cold and unrelenting, every nerve alert, ready to do anything necessary in order to find out the truth once and for all, Ralph knelt down beside the naked boy. The boy’s hair was as beautifully blond and long as Alice Ann’s, but Ralph could not believe how slimy it felt running through his fingers, as he lifted it section by greasy section and sawed away as close as he could to the boy’s scalp, which was slow going with the dull blade of Ralph’s dad’s precious pearl-handled pocket- knife. Ralph was dripping with sweat, exhausted, and his hand actually ached by the time he had cut away enough handfuls of the boy’s hair to fully examine his scalp for the telltale birthmark and finally convince himself that the evil boy was truly his own son and responsibility and nothing he could blame on the devil.
Ralph held his drunk, passed-out, naked, and nearly bald boy’s head in his lap, and he reflected upon how much they were alike, after all. Holding his nearly bald boy in the strobing light like that, Ralph couldn’t be sure where one of them started and the other ended. Ralph had always thought that his son had the sort of personality you could store meat in, but maybe he had been wrong from the start. Maybe it wasn’t too late to take his nearly bald boy fishing again, teach him those tricks the boy in turn could pass down the generations, and perhaps Ralph could, if he searched his memory long and hard enough, recall some of those secret hot spots his own dad had shown him beside the lost rivers of his childhood.
Ralph kissed his boy on the mouth, kissed him good night on those dear, lizardlike lips. Ralph began to weep then without sound, something else he had learned to do from his dad, how to cry your heart out without making the least sound. Ralph began to rock his naked, nearly bald boy in his arms. What could Ralph teach his son so that he wouldn’t go down some of those same old wrong roads? What sort of advice could Ralph give his poor, weak-minded son that he wished his own dad had given him that might spare the boy some of the heartbreak and misery and moves under the cover of darkness from town to town? Ralph put his lips against his son’s somewhat clean ear, and in order to be heard above the blaring madman music in the remote chance that anything could actually penetrate his son’s alcoholic coma, Ralph shouted lovingly, May you not be like your dad! May you not be like your dad! May you never be like your dad!
Crying at Will
Lindsay flushes the toilet twenty times at least. Until there can surely be no trace of the blood that had gushed from her body. Lindsay curls there on the floor and hugs her knees to her bare breasts. She is still bleeding. She clutches a fistful of toilet paper into her crotch. Lindsay’s eyes seem to float away from her, to float up slowly, and then they stop somewhere near the ceiling, and they look back down with disgust at the abandoned body of some naked,
bleeding girl curled up into a ball on the cold floor.
Then Lindsay hears her name being called: Lindsay. Lindsay. Her called name comes floating in under the door. Lindsay. Softly. Lindsay, are you okay? Are you all right in there, kiddo?
Lindsay reaches up and unlocks the door.
Are you okay? Jim says. Jim holds Lindsay and says, What’s wrong? Are you all right?
I’ll never be all right again, Lindsay says.
What? Jim says.
You don’t understand.
Huh? Jim says.
My heart is broken, Lindsay says.
What? What did you say?
My stupid period just started. Or something started.
Your period? Jim says, and strokes Lindsay’s hair.
I haven’t had a real period in weeks, months. Did you know that, Jim?
Your period?
Oh, I spotted some. But I really thought I might be pregnant. I really did. Did you know that, Jim?
Pregnant?
If I had been pregnant, Jim, what would it have been for you?
For me?
Would it have been wonderful or awful?
It would have been all right, Jim says, and rubs the back of Lindsay’s neck.
Well, it doesn’t matter now. You needn’t worry now.
Maybe we should get you to a, you know, hospital or something. You know?
I don’t need to see any fucking doctor or go to any fucking hospital. I don’t need any fucking doctor to tell me I’m not going to be a mother. I don’t deserve to be a mother.
Sure you do, honey, Jim says.
I feel awful.
Maybe we should call somebody or something.
I’ll be all right, okay? I just feel awful right now. And I smell awful.
I don’t smell anything.
Don’t patronize me, Jim! Just don’t fucking do it! I know how awful I smell. I want to get in the tub, Jim. Help me up.
Come on, Jim says, and helps Lindsay to her feet. With his arm around her shoulders Jim leads Lindsay from the hallway toilet around the corner into the bathroom. Lindsay begins to shiver violendy. Jim grabs a large towel around her and helps her balance on the edge of the huge old tub. Jim puts the plug in the tub and turns on the hot water.
I want a bubble bath, Lindsay says.
Jim picks up a box beside the tub and sprinkles the steaming water with blue bubble-bath beads.
I want the candles lit, Lindsay says.
Sure, Jim says. He gets up and lights the dozen or so scented candles Lindsay keeps arranged on top of her grandmother's old oak towel cabinet. He turns off the overhead light and then kneels and swirls the blue, sweet-smelling beads around in the hot water with his hand.
Don’t burn your hand, honey, Lindsay says.
Jim turns off the hot water and begins running a thin stream of cold, swirling it into the hot, testing the water constantly. A small blue bubble breaks from the surface of the foamy water and floats up into the air before Lindsay’s face. She watches it rise in the candle flame like a tiny golden balloon and then disappear.
Here, Jim says, and slips the towel from around Lindsay’s shoulders.
I’m just crazy. Everything is crazy.
Jim helps Lindsay ease down into the steaming fragrant blue bubbles.
Does it feel okay? Jim says.
It feels okay.
I’ll wash your back if you want, Jim says.
I’m still just a fringy, Lindsay says. —I’ll always be some sort of fringe-element character who doesn’t fit in. I’ve never fit in anywhere in my life. Not in high school. Not in college. Not even in my own family. I’ll never be a real wife and mother.
You’re my wife, Jim says. —The last time I checked.
I don’t feel like it, Jim. God, I just want to have a normal life. I don’t care anymore if I’m not even really happy. Just so I’m not desperately unhappy. I’ll settle for that. I just want to be at peace with myself. I’m just tired of feeling that the only place I want to be is far away from myself. Jim, do you love somebody else?
Say what? Jim says.
Are you in love with another woman, Jim?
What other woman?
I just want for you to tell me if you are. I won’t cause any trouble for you. I promise I won’t. I’ll simply go away quietly. You’d tell me the truth, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t lie to me about something like that, would you?
No, Jim says. —Is the water okay? Is it too hot?
The water is perfect, hon. Jim, hon, get in the tub with me. Would you?
Oh, I don't know. Let me wash your back. Would you like me to wash your hair?
Are you afraid of something? Are you afraid some of my smelly blood might get on you?
No. Nothing like that.
Please.
Okay, Jim says. He slips off his clothes and eases into the hot water at the end opposite Lindsay.
Jesus motherfucken Christ holy shit, this water’s hot! Jim says. —I mean, it’s really hot.
Lindsay cups sudsy water and lets it fall over Jim’s chest.
Ouch ouch fucken ouch! Jim says through clenched teeth.
I love bubble baths, Lindsay says, and lies back in the blue bubbles, her breasts like little islands on the surface of the water. — Jim, honey, are you still getting those nosebleeds?
No. I mean, hardly ever.
What does that mean?
It means hardly ever.
That really frightens me, hon. That morning I woke up and found blood all over your pillow scared me to death. Will you agree to see a doctor if I do? Would you let me make you, us, an appointment tomorrow?
I can’t tomorrow.
I mean simply make the appointment tomorrow.
Okay.
Do you mean it? And none of this the-doctor’s-appointment- is-in-the-mail business.
Sure. Okay.
It’s the dope, Jim, that’s what’s making your nose bleed. And you, we, should really slow down in the booze department, too.
I know, Jim says. —I’ve already started. I’ve cut way back.
I just don’t want to be worried sick all the time, Lindsay says, and she slowly rolls some of Jim’s chest hair around a finger.
—Worried about your nosebleeds. About the booze and dope. Worried about your and Shorty’s dope deals, which I know are dangerous.
They’re not so dangerous.
Worried about you getting caught and going to jail.
At least you’ll know where Ralph and I are.
Right, Lindsay says, and laughs. —But most of all I’m worried about your health.
I’m okay.
I’m tired of being worried and sad all the time.
Please don’t start crying, honey.
Like this? Lindsay says, and gets up on her knees in the tub and leans forward over Jim, her long hair falling like a curtain about his face. —I can cry at will, Lindsay says, and lets her tears fall on Jim’s face.
Are you crying at will right now?
Sure, Lindsay says, and lets the tears drop.
Cool, Jim says, and touches Lindsay’s wet cheeks with his fingertips. He brushes the tears away.
I learned that when I was on the stage in college, Lindsay says, and eases back in the water. —I can cry on cue.
