A Tapless Shoulder

by Mark McCann

  Signed off work, for a few weeks to start, come back how many times for how long? See how I feel then. Okay, wait, did you just refer to the upcoming year as then? Check blood, something about numbers, every time? Okay. We didn’t want to get ahead financially ever, this is really good timing, holy hell. No physical activity that may bruise my sides. But, the year, this part sounds serious, okay, no rough housing. I got it. Oh, liver and spleen, yeah, they’re where? And they could haemorrhage? Bleeding out; that sounds bad, oh, die from that, right. Okay. There’s a lot to this, everyone else just slept, didn’t they? This is way more complicated than I expected. Oh, it’s worse for adults, yeah, of course, well, that’s why I waited.

  How long? No, I… wait. Okay, there it was again, I really think you believe there are some things that go without saying here when you say it could last up to at least a year or more. Say you’re kidding. You didn’t even laugh or say you were kidding. Like why are you saying that again the same way you did the first time? You didn’t say you were kidding this time either. It’s not getting funnier by not saying it. They say don’t shoot the messenger and it’s not your fault I caught this, but I probably hate you.

  Well, I don’t get it. FUNNY. Yeah, I got that. Where the hell from though? Like, I just, it doesn’t seem possible… unless I got it from when I was here for depression. Mmmmmmmmm, that’s good doctor’s office. I felt ill at the thought of what my contraction of this stupid illness was implying: I was super gross. Yeah, I’m not listening. You’re still talking. I stopped listening a while ago, but, hey, did I bite my nails? Do I bite my nails? Yeah, by all means carry on. Just know, mentally, I’m checking out, hitting snooze, or no, hell, the plug’s coming out of the wall. I could sit here all day, looking at your doctor face. Hell, we’ll see what else I can catch.

  I stared blankly. I may have been wrong, but if I was right, after washing my hands at work I was pretty sure I had to touch eleven different things before I actually ate my lunch. That couldn’t be right, could it?

  Well, talking doctor face; I’m a depressed insomniac with mono. I have two very young boys and my wife goes to school all morning and then to work in the afternoon and doesn’t get home until after midnight. Right, yup, I just need lots of rest and I’ll feel better. Did you say, ‘holy hell,’ or was that me?

  Chapter 31 … CRAP, My Legs And Arms Are Shorter And Everything Is Farther Away … And Now I’m Tired From Just Looking … or … Uh-oh Brother

  Ding Ding came running down the hall and peered into his room where I was putting some of his clothes away into drawers and, it seemed, wherever I could cram them. I could hear his brother making his way down the hall as well, only to be overtaken by some sort of distraction that created a lot of noise, but didn’t last long. There was no crying, so I continued what I was doing. “We’re on an adventure,” Ding Ding said to me with a smile. “We’re searching for Gramma’s secret mattress.”

  I laughed. A month ago we had all spent a few nights at Katie’s parents’. The boys in a bed in the guest room, while Katie and I shared an air mattress in the living room. Ding Ding was fascinated by how the mattress deflated and could be rolled up and put into a bag to be stored away for another time. Now it was her secret mattress, and every now and again, when he remembered it, it was cause for grand adventure. I was so impressed. He left and went into our room, then his brother’s, and then was back. “Where are your pants and underwear?” I asked.

  “I lost them in the bathroom,” he said like I should have known.

  I shook my head; had I blacked out there for a couple minutes? I wasn’t positive if I had or hadn’t and it didn’t change the fact that the pants were off. “You have to tell me if you have an accident, okay? Or if stuff you’re wearing just suddenly disappears; tell me that, too. Please, so I can help you, get you back to where you’re wearing clothes, and that, okay?” I asked – Knuckle Butt, who was now standing where Ding Ding had been. “Go tell your brother what I just said,” I muttered, and went into Ding Ding’s room to put the rest of the clothes away. I was certifiably tired; each step I took reminded me of running, and now the boys were playing games with my head, and those were just the problems with me in the house at the moment. I took three deep breaths.

  I was sitting on the couch, done with the few things I was going to do for the day, when Ding Ding came to sit with me. We watched Knuckle Butt push a toy tractor around on the carpet, bumping it into things, saying ‘uh oh tabow’ and ‘uh oh bwanket’ and ‘uh oh cowch.’ Ding Ding looked up at me and I smiled. “I’m sitting with dad,” he said, “My brother is dad. Dad didn’t bite me.”

  “O … kay,” I said, slowly, and nodded my head, “no one should bite anyone… ever.”

  Ding Ding bounced himself into the back of the couch several times before jumping to the floor. He looked around the room then climbed onto the coffee table, which I picked him up off of, adding sternly, “We do not climb on tables, Ding Ding.” He seemed unimpressed with his lowered stature in the living room, but accepted it by saying, “My Lego hand is very handy.” He held up his hand that was now in the shape of a U.

  “As long as it’s handy,” I smiled at him.

  “Where’s my armpits?” he asked before I could sit back down.

  “Right there, and there,” I pointed and smiled.

  “Uh oh,” Knuckle Butt said somewhere off to my right where I couldn’t see him. I directed Ding Ding out of the way with a hand on his head so I could get by him and the coffee table; I could only see Knuckle Butt’s legs from where he was sitting beside the loveseat. I went farther and stopped. He was sitting with the bucket of the toy backhoe on his head. I laughed. He looked at me like a boy with a backhoe on his head, and said, “Uh oh hair.”

  I began to laugh even harder and then sat down beside him with a tremendous smile. I believe he then began to dig me, “Uh oh, da e,” he said. I grabbed a diaper and told him I needed to change him.

  “What the heck are you doing?” Ding Ding asked like the sight of me changing his brother was suddenly strange to him.

  “I’m changing Knuckle Butt’s diaper. Um, and maybe we don’t say ‘heck’ in this house.” I thought about it, I didn’t know, maybe we did. I got up and then Knuckle Butt got up, and did something similar to howling at the moon, except with grunts. I messed his hair, “I love you,” I said, and went to the door to the garage to pitch the unwanted diaper into the garbage can.

  I sat back down. I could hear Katie in the kitchen getting something out of the cupboard where the pots were. Ding Ding was looking at a book. I watched him proudly.

  “Da e, da e,” Knuckle Butt called out as he came at me with a head full of steam and his face full of excitement.

  “Yes, yes, what is it, what is it?” I said with the same enthusiasm.

  “I hath to tell you thumb ting,” he said with a lot of oomph in his ting.

  “Okay.” I smiled.

  “I hath to tell you thumb ting,” he said again.

  “Okay, I’m listening, go,” I leaned forward.

  “I… I hath to tell you… thumb ting.”

  “Um, yes, what is it? I promise I’m ready, please tell me.”

  “I hath to tell you thumb ting.”

  “Okay, yes, I know, right, and you have my full attention, let’s hear it.”

  He climbed up onto my lap and put his face close enough that our noses touched, “I hath to tell you thumb ting.”

  “What is it, Knuckle Butt, ready, set, go, tell me, now, please,” I said laughing.

  “I hath to tell you thumb ting,” he said, yet again, with his lips now against my face as he said it, “I hath to, I hath to tell you thumb ting,” his lips moving up and down against my cheek as he spoke. Believing I’d gotten all the information I was going to; I lifted him from my lap and set him on the floor.

  “Wow,” I smiled, “you better go tell mom.”

  Chapter 32 … All Hail Captain This Guy

  We were in the parking lot
of Costco, one of those stores where the sizes and quantities of products went only from big to too much. Among our needs had been a crap load of diapers. That was like their medium.

  I had set Knuckle Butt into his seat, buckled him in, and hopped into the passenger seat. While Katie was buckling Ding Ding into his car seat, a couple older than us came toward the SUV parked beside us. The lady’s face bore a seriousness that caught my attention. She leaned toward the man and was saying something while they both stood watching Katie or us or our van. I wasn’t sure. The man came between the vehicles, and looked at the door of his vehicle, at which point the obvious dawned on me; he was seeing if we’d hit his door with our door. Something that I knew had not happened, oh, but how my principles love to answer when idiocy calls upon them. My being tired was a ramp for them to launch from. Would he have done that had we not been there? It just seemed so odd, so shallow and so stupid, plus, what would he have done had there been a ding or a paint rub? Yelled at my wife? Demanded we pay for the damage? For a moment I thought of sprawling from the passenger side in order to kick the driver’s door open with both feet, just to see what he thought then.

  “Is it okay?” I blurted hurriedly, letting the end of the question careen off into a bank of exaggeration with guns and empty bags.

  I was out of our van and between our vehicles before he’d even raised his head.

  He had allowed Katie to open her door, while she thought he was simply waiting to get into his car.

  “He thinks we’re idiots, well, him and his wife do, they share the same mentality, it’s this big,” I said and pinched the air. I looked at him squarely now, face to face. He was at a loss for words, and looked quite apologetic, he knew I knew, but I was way too curious by that time to let it go. “I guess we look like people incapable of opening these big heavy car doors without exploding them into the vehicle next to us. In fact, I didn’t know there was any other way. Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Stupid, that a car door’s doorstop isn’t the next car? I can’t believe we didn’t know that.” Katie’s open door was preventing his escape and I loved it. “Look,” I said, serious now, “watching that just really struck me as idiotic; no way I could not call you on it. Like, really, it blows me away that when your wife said to you, oh, make sure they didn’t whack our car, instead of looking at her like the idiot she was being, you ran over and checked. Wow, now if you’re wondering where I’m coming from, and just how serious I am, maybe take another look at our van. Obviously I’ve got nothing to lose. Seriously, shut up. So, like, was it us? Are you guys like ‘EESH, a family! And not one of them is over fifty. This can’t be good for our property.’ Don’t look at me like that, you’re the retard. Hey, kids, look, behemoth ignoramus!” My finger was pointing at his face. I looked at them excitedly, they weren’t paying attention. I turned back, “Look, I don’t know what you’re thinking, that’s why I’m asking. I haven’t been trained in idiot; I don’t get your ritualistic idiot acts, I’ve only ever seen them done.” I moved my head forward and opened my eyes as wide as I could. Annoyance had replaced his fear, and humiliation had brought forth anger. I saw it in his eyes, it was what I was waiting for, looking for, and why I’d switched to using hooks in the first place. I mean, how many times did I have to say idiot before he took offence to it? “It must be hard living with frivolous worries. I wouldn’t give a shit if you were just shallow or paranoid, but it’s a bit more than that isn’t it? It’s about us, but, man, see there, that’s the real mistake. You can live poorly every day of your life if you like, but to say the wrong thing with your finger pointed and me at the end of it, now that is an error in living. I’m trying to excuse you, trying to help you, trying to justify you, stretch your shallow being into something it’s not because you’re an asshole; plain and simple. Oh, look at you: that looks like fury. Look and your wife would like to add something. Okay, thank you, bye.” He’d persuaded her to get back into their vehicle with a record amount of words, though I wasn’t even sure I’d heard one. “Keep it simple eh, anger, that’s awesome, no thought for you, let’s just react and react and react. My stuff, my life, my ugly, me no like.”

  I moved forward and this startled him; he had been distracted by my prattling, but he now saw in my eyes how serious my anger had grown. It was usually my tattoos that did it. Nervousness took hold of him again, but awkwardly this time.

  He seemed to be considering his options. I leaned my body slightly forward, my head a little more, and continued, “You need to really think about this. You have no idea how serious this is.” I paused as though our very discussion was regarding life support, “This decision could affect the rest of your face.”

  Chapter 33 … Stoop and Coop

  One could hardly call me a happy camper, but I at least knew never to stray far from the wonder and warmth of the fire; lose sight of that and one is just cold and alone. It was a truth I dared not deny, and the basis upon which I set much of my sentiment. - Here is a beautiful flower, and like the both of us, it’s going to die – happy valentine’s day! I knew to keep a good part of that to myself.

  We were having a get-together and had invited a number of people over who had young children too. I guess it wasn’t so much the age that mattered; it actually appeared to be more of a height thing. Hey, come on over and bring someone about yay high. And so they did. Now the little lengths they brought ran around and around; chasing the dog, getting into trouble for chasing the dog, and then waiting a moment before they chased the dog again. Nate was the exception, height wise, not to the not-listening. He had been helping them strategize a plan to corner the poor dog for the petting of a lifetime. He kept yelling things like, “Hey, kid in blue, no, other kid in blue, blue number two, that way, that way, that way!” Finally I got the dog to follow me like I knew where salvation lay and put him out in the backyard for a break from it all “Nate,” I explained to him after, “we don’t really want them chasing Steven, we especially don’t want them to learn how to corner him. At least when they chase him, they’re all trailing behind and all he has to do is stay ahead of them.”

  “Ah, right, sorry man, I guess they’ll just have to CORNER ME, AAHH,” and he went running off into the other room where it sounded like he threw himself into a box of toys. The older kids were the fastest to get in there after him, while the younger kids pursued him gradually like he was the world’s weakest magnet.

  I said hello and made small talk with everyone: the parents, the relatives, the friends. Then I stood still, in a nondescript moment, and drank a beer. My mind felt like drying mud. I wondered what frame of mind I would soon find myself stuck in. I knew I was tired and my mood wanted to swing from just feeling blah to rage far too quickly and for no real reason other than for being tired. My pretending to watch the kids had fallen apart once Nate got involved and scattered the herd. It became far too much work at that point. I fielded questions from everyone about my mono, where I had gotten it, well then where did I think I had gotten it? Apparently, guesses were the next best thing to knowing the actual truth; who knew, maybe a clue would arise. My being off work made the topic extra exciting. Yeah, it was of course nice I didn’t have to work and have mono, that was nice, but I was quite adamant that I would rather have not been so tired. The woman at the short-term disability place didn’t get what fatigue was or that I was flat out on the floor as much as I could be. She wanted bigger and better reasons from me. I grew tired of trying to explain it to her and cared less about her responses to that. It was more than tired. I used to get tired after a long time of being awake, now it was more than that, with some kick, and the added feeling like I would barf if I didn’t shut my eyes as soon as possible.

  My main objectives for the day had become to stay awake and to avoid Coop. He had gone to school with Katie, and he and his wife, from whom he had since split, had become friends of ours. Kate claimed it would be “nice” to invite him. I thought it would be “torture,” but I kept that to myself as I was being tortured enough
just by standing, so what was a bit more. He was bringing his daughter, whom Knuckle Butt just adored, and so I blamed the both of them for the relationship.

  The problem with Coop was he loved to spout things that changed your life undesirably and forever. “You heard about that…” and it would go from sounding innocently informative to something that was just so not innocent or informative. And always at that moment you would say to yourself, I did not need to hear that ever in my life. Tales of his just gouged the sheen off one’s smiling face and put vagrant images in their mind like unruly patrons that were now there to stay.

  “We need to think as we go, and stop watching. All we do is watch this and watch that. I saw the whole thing happen, I got it on video, and it’s on YouTube. Did you see, did you watch, did you open your eyes; it’s crap, it’s impartial and it is zero commitment,” he said snappily like his conviction had rhythm. We knew it was the introduction to something we didn’t want to know and we braced ourselves.

  As Coop continued, I nudged Nate, “Scariest part is he sounds like me, but doped up on angry pills and like he, maybe, studied for this or something.” He nodded in agreement, and when Coop had finished we raised our arms in the air and shouted “Amen!” I shut my eyes and shook my head while Nate clasped his hands in the air and shook them like he was going to throw some dice on up into heaven.

  The problem was that I didn’t disagree with him. I didn’t disagree with him at all, but where he was specific, I was hypothetical, if I even made it that far. And where he was angry, I was just sad. I think I hated that the most. What angered him seemed to give him purpose, while the things that angered me sent me deeper and deeper into depression. The thought of having to deal with him while I was exhausted struck me as just too much to handle. If I was trying to put together the sentence, ‘Hey, that is the worst pant waistline to actual waistline ratio I have ever seen, particularly on someone wearing jogging pants,’ Coop was remodelling your kitchen with a baseball bat in the name of ‘trying to find the cookies.’ In short, where I was stumbling with my complaints, he was loudly delivering his like a pastor delivering a sermon. At least my spiels came out in fractions and small doses so one couldn’t choke on my deliberations, I thought. But not Coop, no, he found the awful and spelled it out to you; detail by detail, terrible, awful, ugly and permanent detail, always about things that just should never have happened. I was disgusted by horrible occurrences that gained celebrity status; their perpetrators included. I felt I was doing well enough without knowing them intimately, thanks anyways, Poop!