by Kevin Wilson
“I found some coke in my bag that I didn’t even know I had, just a tiny amount, but I took it and it’s made me feel a lot better.”
“Oh, Peanut, you can’t be doing that here,” she said.
“I don’t do coke,” he said, as if she didn’t understand, never understood. “That’s why it was so weird to find it. I mean, I used to do it a lot, but I’d stopped a while back, but it just turned up in my bag. It’s good that the airport guys didn’t find it, huh? Actually, it gives me some reservations about the thoroughness of their work, if they can’t find drugs in people’s bags. What else are they missing, you know?”
“You can’t do drugs in my house. I can’t have you doing that to yourself,” she said, knowing that, if he refused or promised but then backslid, there was little that she would actually do to punish him. He was an adult. What could she do? She’d taken him back into her home. It seemed impossible to send him back out.
He might, she now realized, never leave.
“I won’t. I promise. It’s gone now, the coke. I just needed something to get over the trauma of the band breaking up. These three months are going to be therapeutic, I think. I can get my life in order and then, when I go back to Portland, I’ll be ready for what comes next.”
The thought of Adam going through her kitchen, turning her nights into days, forever present in a house that she had gotten used to being alone in, once again made her nervous. She had not considered the physical presence of him, his body always arranged on a piece of furniture with such apathy and sloth that it seemed barely able to hold his liquid form.
“I do want you to rest, to get yourself back in a good frame of mind,” Gina said, already prepared for the rest of the evening to be ruined. “But I think three months is long enough that you should look for work.”
Adam paused, considering his mother’s advice, and then picked up his sandwich. He took a small bite, nodded his approval, and then set the sandwich back down. “What now?” he said.
“A job, maybe?” she asked.
“Well, I just took that coke, so I won’t pass any drug tests for a while. Maybe in a month or so I can look. I’ll check online.”
“Well, I know Martha Morgan’s son runs a landscaping company. I don’t think, if I asked her to tell him that you need work, that he’d make you do a drug test. He runs it all himself. I don’t think he’s set up for drug testing.”
“Landscaping,” Adam said, nodding. He did not seem able to blink. “Maybe. Sure, maybe.”
This was as much as Gina could ask for on the first day of Adam’s return home. He was no longer crying uncontrollably. He was considering work. He had made dinner. Gina would accept this with gratitude.
The next day, Gina let Adam sleep as long as he wanted, and she started to return to her daily routine. She realized, with some embarrassment, that there was little that anchored her to the world. She ate and kept her house cleaned. She watched some TV. She played card games on the computer, though Adam’s presence in the office now kept her from that particular pleasure. She had never had many friends; her husband was her closest confidant, and even he was sometimes so distant from her. But somehow, someway, she had made a life for herself without her husband, without her son, and she had carefully cultivated it. Now, with Adam in the house, his twisted form snoring beneath thin sheets in his old bedroom, she realized how sad her life might seem to him. Then she realized that Adam, in his state of grief, would probably not notice the particulars of her routine. She was safe from scrutiny, an unintended benefit of her son’s self-absorption.
She wiped down the kitchen counter and rearranged the pantry; at half past one, she heard Adam making noise upstairs. He was excavating, searching, she could tell by the sound of objects being precariously lifted and dropped. A few minutes later, she heard the strumming of a guitar, and she took it as a cue to check on him.
When she opened the door, Adam reacted as if he had been abusing himself. The reverberation of the last plucked string echoed in the silence between them. Finally, Adam said, “I found my old guitar.” He held it up, a child’s model, comically small in Adam’s giant hands.
“I see. I’m glad I kept it,” she replied. “What was that you were playing?”
“Nothing much,” he said, blushing. “It’s just a slowed-down version of ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun.’ I find it helps calm me down.”
“Cyndi Lauper?” Gina asked, feeling confident that she had it right.
Adam nodded, though Gina could not tell if he was happy or sad that she knew the song. Then, like a funeral dirge, Adam began to strum the guitar again and sing, “I come home, in the morning light, my mother says when you gonna live your life right,” his voice so clean and sad that it made Gina want to cry.
Adam then stopped playing, considered something, and plucked a tune that was jangly and fast, fingerpicking without effort. “Bob Dylan,” he said to his mother, and then he sang, “It don’t even matter to me where you’re wakin’ up tomorrow / But, Mama, you’re just on my mind.”
“You know a lot of mother songs,” she remarked.
“Well,” he said, continuing to play the guitar, “I don’t think that’s his biological mother that he’s referring to.” He played a little longer, then nodded. “Maybe, though. Interesting enough.”
“I like Bob Dylan,” she offered.
“That’s what I should have done from the beginning,” he said. “Solo. Just me and my guitar. It would have been so much easier. I wouldn’t have to split the money. Wouldn’t have to share the women. Wouldn’t have to drive around in some beat-up van with people I hate. Wouldn’t have to share the spotlight.”
Gina thought that Adam had rarely shared the spotlight, even in a band. She could not imagine what his life would have been like if it had been only him in the music videos. Though she allowed that he had always deserved the attention, had been the unique talent in the band.
“So,” Adam finally said, putting the guitar on the bed. “How is this going to work?”
“How is what going to work?” she asked.
“This,” he said, gesturing to the walls of the room. “You and me in the house together. Do we divide up the chores? Do you give me an allowance? Do I have a curfew? Do we watch TV together every night?”
“You’re an adult now, Peanut,” she replied. “I’m happy to have you here for the time being. But I’m on a fixed income. I can’t give you much money. I think it’s best if you look for a job, something to keep you busy, so you’re not just stuck in the house all day. And you’ll have some spending money while you figure out what you’re going to do next.”
“I bet if I played a few solo concerts in Nashville, I could make some good money,” he said, eyeing the old, child-sized guitar, wondering if it would hold up to a performance or two.
“I think you need to take a little break from music. Just get things in order so that, when it’s time to go back to your place in Portland, you’re mentally prepared for your new life.”
“I don’t have any other skills, Mom,” he said, defiantly. “I’ve played music since I was a teenager. I don’t have a college diploma. I haven’t had a nine-to-five job ever.”
“Well, I know you could get this landscaping job. You used to cut our grass,” she offered.
“Fuck,” Adam said softly, shaking his head. It was clear to Gina that he thought she didn’t understand his particular unhappiness, but he was wrong. She understood exactly what was happening, that he had devoted his life to something that had ended before he was ready. And now he was alone. She knew this. She knew what it felt like. She also knew there was nothing to be done for it. You simply picked something else and lived with it.
“You’ll be outside, working with your hands. You’ll make some money. You’ll be tired at the end of the day and you’ll sleep well.”
“It sounds so awful,” he admitted, “but, fine, okay, I’ll do it.”
“Good,” she said. Now she would call an old friend
that she did not know very well anymore and beg for a job for her son. It would be humiliating, to ask the favor, to admit that her son was in need of some kind of structure. But it would clear up the space in the house, would reduce the amount of time that they were together, wondering where they went wrong.
“Can I have an advance on my pay?” Adam asked. “I’d like to buy some beer today.”
Gina went to find her purse, and she heard Adam again playing that pressed-wood guitar, exorcising sounds from it that were so carelessly perfect.
Three days later, Gina packed a lunch for Adam as he waited on the front porch for his ride to work. He wore a pair of hiking shorts and a stained gray T-shirt that said JESSE JACKSON FOR PRESIDENT in red letters. He had covered himself in so much sunscreen that he looked like some kind of cave-dwelling creature, unused to light.
“I’m nervous,” he admitted, when Gina brought him the minicooler, fruit, bologna sandwiches, two bags of chips, some granola bars, a bottle of Gatorade. “I feel like the technology of lawn care has gone right past me and I won’t be able to keep up with the other guys. I haven’t mowed a lawn since I was a teenager. I can just see all the other guys showing me how to use the weedeater and laughing behind my back.”
Staring at him in his tiny shorts, his legs so pale and, strangely, hairless, Gina felt the stabbing pain of not being able to control the life of your child. It was like he was five years old, waiting for the bus to take him to kindergarten. He had that same lost, faraway look on his face, trying so hard to reassure Gina that he wasn’t terrified. She wanted to hug him. So she did. She leaned down and kissed his cheek, holding him for as long as he would allow. “You’ll be fine,” she said.
“I better be,” Adam said, softly.
It had been a huge embarrassment, calling Martha Morgan, asking for charity. “Well, Tyler is always looking for good help,” Martha had said cautiously, after expressing surprise at hearing from Gina. “But is Adam really interested in this kind of work? Shouldn’t he be producing music or doing jingles for an advertising company?”
“He wants to do something physical,” Gina lied. “He wants to work with his hands.”
“That’s great,” Martha said. “Not enough men are willing to get dirty, to really work for their money.”
“That’s so true,” Gina replied, hating herself.
Her own husband had spent his entire adult life hating work, saving money for retirement, dying almost immediately after he stopped working. “Only fools work hard for their money,” he would say, defeated. “Rich people, the money just comes to them.” Like Adam, she had thought at the time, cashing residual checks so large that it seemed obscene. But what happened when the money stopped coming to you? What then?
A few minutes later, a huge truck, pulling a trailer filled with all manner of lawn care equipment, a bit of overkill it seemed to Gina, parked in front of the house. Gina heard her son gulp, the action so loud it seemed comical. She knew not to touch him, to show affection. Martha Morgan’s son, Tyler, so confident that his chest seemed puffed up to a ridiculous level, strode toward Adam, who quickly picked up his cooler and ran over to the truck. Tyler waved to Gina, who waved back, and then he shook Adam’s hand. He pointed to Adam’s shirt, shaking his head, and then snapped his fingers. From the truck, which was filled with middle-aged Hispanic men, an orange T-shirt flew out the window and Tyler caught it without looking. He handed it to Adam, who looked back toward his mom and then, after a slight hesitation, took off his Jesse Jackson shirt, revealing his pale, concave chest, and pulled the orange T-shirt, which read MORGAN’S LANDSCAPING, over his head. It was a size or two larger than it should be, but Adam did not complain. One of the men in the truck got out and levered the seat so that Adam could climb into the back, which took some effort. As the truck drove off, Gina waved but could not see Adam clearly enough to know if he waved back.
She spent the rest of the day sitting at her dining room table, waiting for Adam to call, to tell her to come pick him up, that he had quit or been fired. When five o’clock came and went, she worried that something had happened to him. At 6:30, she heard the rattling equipment in the trailer, and she ran to the porch to find the truck coming to a stop in front of her house. Adam crawled out of the truck, shook hands with one of the other men, and then stood on the sidewalk while Tyler strode with great purpose toward him. Tyler counted out a handful of money and gave it over to Adam, who immediately folded it and put it in the pocket of his shorts. Tyler clapped Adam on the back, which made Adam recoil from the impact, his shoulders rising up to his ears, and then he carried his cooler to the front porch, right past Gina. Tyler waved again to Gina, who only nodded, walking inside and closing the door behind her.
“How was it?” she asked, almost crying.
“Fine,” he said. “Really hard work. Lots of carrying stuff from place to place. I’m going to be sore tomorrow, I’m sure. The other guys were nice, though. None of them really speak much English, so that might have been why I think they’re nice. One of them gave me a cigarette during a water break. Tyler told them that I was a rock star, which was humiliating, but they had no idea what he was talking about.”
“Do you want dinner?” she asked.
“I’m just going to drink a beer and sit in the bathtub and take some Advil and go to bed. I gotta be ready to go again tomorrow.” He fished a beer from the fridge and then slowly trudged upstairs. He stopped halfway up and then walked back down. He reached into his pocket and produced the money. He took one of the twenties and handed it to Gina. “This is to pay back the money you loaned me for that beer,” he said. Gina accepted it, though she didn’t want the money. Then he hugged her; he smelled so musky, so earthy.
“I love you, Mom,” he said.
“I love you, too, Peanut,” she replied.
Thirty minutes later, after Adam had run a bath in which he was still soaking, Gina ate her dinner and watched a TV show; suddenly, she heard Adam upstairs, that loud, jagged crying, bouncing around the tile of the bathroom. He cried for nearly forty-five minutes, long enough that he turned the water back on to heat up the tub again, but Gina let it happen, knew not to disturb him. He was coming to terms with something, and it would not help to make herself known. When there was silence, she turned off the TV, slowly crept up the stairs, and slipped into her own bedroom, realizing that she had been holding her breath the whole time.
After a few days of stability, Adam finding landscaping to be a fairly straightforward job that suited his focus, he called Gina to say that he was going out for drinks with the other guys. “But they don’t speak English, right? What are you going to talk about?” she asked, not wanting him to be drinking out in the larger world, preferring that he have a few beers in the bathtub and cry himself into exhaustion. That, she reasoned, was manageable. She could locate him, could understand him. The thought of him at some bar, holding on to the money he had just earned, made her nervous.
“They know enough English. They know more English than I know Spanish, right? They asked me. That’s good. It means that they accept me. I’m going to just have a few drinks.”
“Okay, Peanut. I’ll leave the light on in the hallway. Don’t stay out too long.”
At eleven o’clock, no shows left to watch, nothing left to clean, still no sign of Adam, she considered getting in her car and driving around until she found him. She had called his cell six times, always going straight to voice mail but she was hip enough to know not to leave a message; she imagined him rolling his eyes as he listened to the first few words of each message, her voice growing more and more quavery with each call.
Still, she was worried, paced the kitchen, snacked on some candied bacon that Adam had made on a lark the day before. She thought that the other men might have tricked him, taken him to some kind of underground fighting club and stolen his money. And then she realized that it was only eleven o’clock, late for her but not for a man who mowed grass all day and drank beer all night. She
would have to adjust her expectations to accommodate her son’s new circumstances.
She went to her bedroom, and, as she prepared for sleep, she listened to the debut Dead Finches album, her son’s voice reassuring her that he would return. By the time she had fallen asleep, she had forgotten that her son was anywhere other than inside her own head.
She awoke to the sound of conversation coming from downstairs, whispery voices that were much louder than whispers should be. Drunk whispering, she understood it to be. She recognized Adam’s voice and almost walked out to the hallway to check on him, but then she made out the other voice, a woman’s, and she pulled the covers up to her chin. The woman was laughing, and Gina heard the fridge open, beer bottles clinking, and then her drunk son and this drunk woman climbed the stairs, giggling the whole way up. Gina was frozen in place, knew she should go back to sleep, but instead she stared at the clock, counting the hours until Adam had to be back at work, finding the number so small that it seemed pointless to do anything. A few minutes later, Gina heard, to her own horror, the sound of the sofa bed creaking with effort, the woman moaning. It went on and on, grunting and creaking, for what felt like hours, and Gina turned on the TV in her bedroom, flipped to a cooking show featuring an impossibly attractive celebrity chef, and turned the volume as loud as necessary to drown out the sound coming from her office. But she could still hear them, impossible not to.
When it was over, some more laughing, whispers, Gina turned off the TV. She wondered if she could sleep but found that the stress of the situation had exhausted her. She needed to use the restroom, but she closed her eyes and waited for the morning. Just before she drifted off, she heard her son’s voice and the strumming of that goddamned kid guitar.
“Baby, you’re gonna be mine,” he sang, and Gina swore under her breath and placed a pillow over her head.
At 6:30 the next morning, nothing left but to grit her teeth and do this thing, Gina knocked on her son’s door.
“Yes,” the unknown woman answered through the closed door.
