The Icicles

by R. W. Clinger

  In the semi-offered light from the evening and pre-nightfall, Willa accepts the gift. “You’re too kind. Both of you. You’re making this holiday special, and I’m glad you’re both here to enjoy it with all of us.”

  Willa escapes to the kitchen to help her husband and mother find the candles, flash lights, matches, or anything to create light. Off she goes, leaving Jonah and Sandy alone in the living room, near the foyer.

  * * * *

  The lights flicker on, off, on, and eventually off again. It resembles a horror movie that’s hard to watch in the dark because one’s eyes play tricks on them. Jonah sees a new shadow appear in the living room and knows it’s Jake: on the taller side, handsome, skeleton-thin. He looks more like a scarecrow with long arms as opposed to a human. Jake smells like pot. A white joint hangs above his right ear, and he’s sporting a three-day beard.

  Jake crosses the space between his sister, brother, and Sandy. He hugs Jonah first: gently, nothing muscular. “Good to see you, bro,” he says, releasing his sibling. He shakes Sandy’s right hand. “Nice to meet you, Simon.”

  “Sandy,” Jonah and Willa say in unison.

  “My bad. Mom told me your name is Simon,” Jake says. He sees the case of wine on the floor: ten bottles remaining out of twelve.

  Jonah removes two bottles from the case and passes the pair to Jake. “Merry Christmas, little brother. Love you.”

  Truth: Jonah can go off on Jake, calling him a waste of human being who has amounted to nothing, and that Jake’s a piece of shit who is taking advantage of their parents because he still lives at home, eats their food, uses their electric and…

  It’s Christmas Eve, though. The time of love and family to come together. The celebration of spiritualism and goodness. It’s not the time for Jonah to go postal on his younger sibling. So Jonah keeps his mouth shut and plans on not wrecking the holiday; he’ll leave it up to his mother, of course. God knows Pam Icicle can ruin another holiday just as she’s done in the past!

  “Thanks,” Jake says. He gives a brief hug to Jonah and then Sandy. Silence follows. It’s slightly awkward, and the room turns hollow.

  It’s Jake who ends the silence. He winks at Sandy and removes the joint from behind his ear. He passes it to Sandy, chuckles, and says, “Merry Christmas, bro. This one’s on me. Get nuclear, toasted, blitzed…whatever you want to call it.”

  Both Johan and Sandy watch Jake escape to his basement, crashing there for the next hour. Pot smells will waft up and through the vents, filling the Icicle home with secondhand smoke, giving the family and Sandy (or Simon) minor buzzes.

  * * * *

  While Jonah and Sandy make their way upstairs, taking the room Jonah used as his childhood bedroom (the place where he thought of a naked Matt LeBlanc and masturbated almost every night during his teens years), they hear Pam’s critique of Sandy, her snippy voice floating out of the kitchen.

  “I don’t like him. He seems arrogant, and he’s too tall. Plus, he smells like one of those fancy male colognes. You know I don’t like that. Men who wear cologne cannot be trusted. He’s probably a spy for the Russians. He’s probably one of those Hilary supporters who want to put my Trumpy behind bars and…”

  In the lead, directing the two men towards their room, Jonah says over his right shoulder, “You are getting a full dose of the Icicles, Sandy. Let me know when you’re ready to leave. We can be back in the city by nine, reconnected to normalcy.”

  Sandy chuckles. “Honestly, I love this. It’s nice to be a part of a family, especially with brothers and a sister. I miss the closeness, honesty, and blasphemy.”

  The two men stand in the bedroom, concealed from the rest of the family. Yellow moons, blue stars, and colorful planets decorate the ceiling. A poster of the movie Fight Club, starring a bloody-faced Brad Pitt, hangs on the back of the closed door. King and Koontz paperbacks with battered spines fill a shelf. Madonna and Bon Jovi CDs are stacked on a triangular-shaped desk in one of the corners. The bed is a full, just enough room for one person, not two. The grown men will obviously have to sleep on top of each other; high school life repeated for both of them.

  “I’m sorry you miss your family,” Jonah says, knowing the Keyes are somewhere in Guam where Sandy was born and raised. “I pray every day Kim Jon-un doesn’t nuke them. Lately, it’s become a possibility. Not a day goes by without a nuclear scare from our president and North Korea.”

  “I pray, too. And, yes, I miss my parents. What loving son wouldn’t?”

  Jonah drops his bag to the floor and hugs Sandy. They kiss.

  Then Bobo bangs on the bedroom door and uproariously yells, “Are you two queers sucking each other’s dicks? Don’t make me come in there and show you how it’s done!”

  “Come in, guy!” Jonah calls through the door.

  The door opens, and Bobo stands in the upstairs hallway with a flashlight. He sports a pair of boxer-briefs and nothing more. The white material clings to his body. An outline of his deflated and six-inch cock causes Jonah and Sandy to stare at his center. The cock is cut and easily two inches thick, quite visible through the sheer material. A thick line of black hair falls from the base of Bobo’s tight navel, into the rim of his underwear.

  Google-eyed with his tongue sticking out, Sandy whispers, “He looks like fucking Superman.”

  Bobo chuckles. “I do have super powers. Let me show you one. Check this out.” He pushes down the boxer-briefs to his knees and shows off his naked dick, triangular patch of black pubic hair, and dangling balls. “It’s porn stuff, isn’t it? Gays love me for it. They beg me to put it inside them.”

  All of Bobo’s body is porn stuff: his abs, broad shoulders, pert nipples, hips, dick, and balls. Everything. There’s nothing ugly on the man. Think Thor or gladiator. Think J.T. Watt from the Pittsburgh Steelers. Think…

  Sandy murmurs, “He’s a god. Maybe Hercules or Poseidon.”

  “Do you want to watch it get hard?” Bobo inquires, manhandling his dick with his right fist, stroking it up and down, attempting to create an erection. “Queers love to watch it get hard. Plus, I spray like a fucking fire hose, too. I’m not talking about a drip here and there. I’m talking about a fucking sperm shower. Goo flies everywhere. Another treat the queers enjoy.”

  Behind Bobo, on the opposite end of the hallway, Willa hollers to her husband, “Bobo, what are you doing?” She flashes a beam of light on his frame, illuminating his naked hips and athletic bottom. “Bobo, pull up your underwear. Now! My brother and his boyfriend aren’t going to sleep with you! Control yourself. And go put some clothes on.” She tromps towards her soul mate, huffs, and yells, “Bobo, you can’t put your dick into everyone! Although you think you can, it doesn’t work that way. What did Dr. Millford tell you? Do you remember? Tell me you remember.”

  The moment between husband and wife becomes manageable. Bobo shakes his head. He pulls up his boxer-briefs and spins around. He meets Willa in the center of the hallway’s length.

  Willa hugs and kisses him. She says in a calmer tone, “You almost have an erection. That’s not good. Think about dead penguins. Remember how Dr. Millford told you that? Dead penguins. Dead penguins.” She calls out to her brother and Sandy, “I’m sorry about this scene, guys. Bobo can’t help what he does sometimes. Jonah, you know what I’m talking about.”

  Oh, boy, Jonah does. “No problem, sis.” He closes the bedroom door, once again left alone with Sandy.

  Sandy asks, “What’s Bobo’s condition? What’s the problem? Who’s Dr. Millford? What’s this about dead penguins? And why was your brother-in-law going to jack off for us…or whatever?”

  Jonah wants to laugh, but he doesn’t. He shakes his head and holds Sandy’s hips. “Bobo suffers from hypersexuality. He has an increased libido. It’s related to his bipolar syndrome. Bottom line: he can’t help it when he swings his dick around and wants to have sex with us and everyone else. Bobo’s under Dr. Millford’s care at the West Erie Rehabilitation Center. He’s in a program f
or his sexually-related disorder. It’s why my sister hasn’t divorced him because of his affairs. Bobo can’t help that he’s driven by his sexual hunger. Unfortunately, he can’t always control it. He’s different, and we understand his condition. Dr. Millford has recently told him to think of dead penguins when he becomes excited.”

  “Damn, I never met a person like that.”

  Jonah warns, “Just lock the bathroom door when you’re in there. Bobo likes to pay special visits to its users.”

  “I’ll remember that. Thanks for the warning.”

  * * * *

  Less than an hour later, the decision is made that the Icicle family will have Christmas Eve dinner at The Flying Peking Duck, a Chinese restaurant on Straub Street overlooking Lake Erie. The reason is simple: the electric is still off by seven o’clock, everyone under the roof is starving, and the furnace hasn’t been on for hours, freezing the entire family, including Hornfuzz.

  After exiting their bedroom, Jonah and Sandy take the stairs down to the first floor.

  Jonah’s mother sees him on the middle of the steps and calls up from the living room, “Jonah, go find your father. Tell him he has to go with us. It’s a holiday, and we all have to have dinner together. Duty calls. He’s not getting out of it.” She has a flashlight in her right hand, shines the beam of light into Sandy’s eyes (he squints and turns his face to the right, away from the blinding light), and she barks, “You, Simon, move the case of wine you brought. Someone’s going to trip over it. I don’t want a lawsuit from my own family and their friends. That’s the last thing I need.”

  “His name is Sandy, mom,” Jonah says, rolling his eyes, irritated. “And stop blinding us with your flashlight.”

  She drops the flashlight’s glowing-white beam to the living room’s floor. “If he were Sandy, he’d have a vagina and breasts, which he doesn’t. So that makes him Simon. Case closed.”

  “She’s so offensive,” Jonah says to Sandy. “I’m sorry.”

  Pam shines the flashlight’s golden beam into her oldest son’s eyes, flicks it off and on, off and on, and snaps, “What did you say? I heard you say something. What was it? Don’t even tell me you were disrespecting me. You know I won’t tolerate that, Jonah.”

  Feeling exhausted, Jonah sighs. “Nothing, Mom. Nothing at all. I’m going to find Dad. Then we can all leave for dinner.”

  * * * *

  Bill Icicle cannot be found. Jonah determines this after looking in seven different places: the basement near the hot water tank; the attic; outside near the garbage cans that smell like fish oil; inside the closet (there’s just enough room for Bill to squeeze inside, sideways) in his bedroom; behind the shower curtain in the bathroom on the first floor; inside his Taurus, which is parked in the back alley, behind the house; and somewhere in the garage, which houses Pam’s Prius, bicycles that are never used, and holiday decorations in giant, plastic tubs that were probably purchased at the local hardware store.

  No can do. Jonah comes up empty-handed. Bill is hidden, and well. If anyone knows how to play hide and seek, he does, and Jonah knows this from his childhood. His father has always been the master of hiding. Because Bill is only five-eight and thin as a nail, he can fit pretty much anywhere. Flag poles have more mass. So do knitting needles.

  Jonah returns to the living room and gives up the game. He provides his mother with the unfortunate news. “Look, Mom, I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve looked everywhere.”

  Pam flips her lid; not that it takes much in the drama department for her to accomplish such a feat: “What do you mean you can’t find him?”

  Jonah rattles off the list of places he has looked for his father.

  “Bullshit!” she screams. “If I want something done right, I have to do it myself!”

  “I’m hungry,” Willa whines. She stands next to Bobo in the small foyer. They are shoulder to shoulder, looking restless.

  “Me too, Mom,” Bobo softly says.

  It’s Jake’s turn to add his two cents’ worth to the complaining. “I just smoked the biggest fucking bud, and I could eat an entire Taiwanese family of six. I’m ravenous!”

  Willa says, “Mom, let’s just leave Dad here. He probably doesn’t want to go anyway.”

  “Quitters!” Pam says. “You’re all a bunch of quitters! I can’t believe we’re all related.” She tromps out of the living room with her flashlight swinging at her right side and barks over her shoulder, “I’m going to look for him! If anyone knows where a husband is, his wife will. I know of all his hiding spots.”

  “We’ll be in my 4Runner,” Willa says, taking control of the situation. “We’ll wait for you there.”

  Willa and Bobo leave the house first, heading to Willa’s 4Runner in the driveway. Jonah and Sandy follow behind.

  Jake brings up the rear, giggling. He chirps, “I think I smoked too much, dudes. I’m dizzy as fuck. That shit I’m growing is fucking unbelievable.”

  Bobo laughs.

  Willa mutters, “Jesus Christ, we’re in a circus.”

  Jonah sings, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

  Sandy keeps quiet, shaking his head, grinning from ear to ear, apparently taking everything in. Jonah knows Sandy is missing his parents in Guam more and more, but he seems to be having the time of his life with the Icicle family and their entertaining dramas that should be scripted and made into a comedy for Bravo or Netflix.

  * * * *

  Bobo says behind the vehicle’s steering wheel, “How long do we give Mom?”

  “Three minutes. Not a second more,” Willa answers, sitting beside her husband in the front passenger seat.

  Jonah and Sandy sit in the second row of seats. There’s enough room for Pam. If Bill decides to come, Jonah will have to slump over and sit on Sandy’s lap, cramped. No problem. This will give Bill and Pam plenty of room for the ride to The Flying Peking Duck for dinner.

  Squeezed inside the rear compartment of the 4Runner, eating his kneecaps, Jake laughs, obviously high. “I’m going to light one back here, kids. Get ready for your fucking buzzes, bees.”

  “No!” Willa and Jonah yell in unison at their brother, filling the vehicle.

  Jake continues to chuckle.

  Once quiet returns among the passengers, Bobo leans into his wife, thinks he’s whispering, even though everyone can clearly hear him, and says, “I’m getting hard between my legs. My dick is touching the base of the steering wheel.”

  Sandy can’t help himself and begins to laugh, hunched over. All of this is madness. Unbelievable shit in the Icicle family. A comedy of errors since the moment he arrived.

  Jake guffaws and calls out from the rear compartment, “Take it out and beat that fucker off, man. No one will watch! We’re all family, man. We can fucking handle it.”

  It’s an outraged Willa who spins in her seat, turns into a monster that resembles something out of the pages of a Clive Barker novel, and screeches, “Shut the fuck up, Jake! Don’t you know when to keep your mouth closed? Can’t you understand he’s working with Dr. Millford about things like this? Can’t you respect him and the situation?”

  Laughter ends on Sandy’s part.

  “Sorry, man,” Jake whispers, calm.

  Everyone becomes quiet.

  Quiet.

  Quieter.

  There’s a flicking and metallic sound in the rear of the 4Runner’s interior. A minimal red ball of light illuminates the compartment. Jake inhales, exhales, and fills the vehicle with a cloud of marijuana smoke.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Jonah turns postal. He lunges upwards, out of his seat, cracks his skull off the roof of the 4Runner, spins around, and quickly bends over the seat behind him. Pissed out of his mind, he snags the joint from his younger brother and smacks Jake in his right temple with an open palm. “What the fuck, Jake? Didn’t we tell you not to light up?”

  Jake laughs, coughing. Once he comes to, he says, “I have a condition, just like Bobo does with his dick. Don’t you nu
t bags get it? Besides, it’s Christmas. Don’t you want me to be happy?”

  Willa, Bobo, and Jonah holler at the same time, “Fuck you!”

  Sandy chortles. He removes the joint from Jonah, takes a hit, passes it back to his boyfriend, and exhales. Being a peacekeeper, he says, “Everyone calm down. Let’s pull ourselves together. We’re all hungry and cranky. For now, let’s just be quiet and enjoy the silence.”

  Willa agrees.

  Bobo agrees.

  Jake heavily sighs, but agrees.

  Jonah wets two fingertips with his tongue and extinguishes the joint. He passes the joint to Sandy, who smuggles it away for later use. He also agrees to Sandy’s request.

  Silence.

  Stillness.

  Someone’s stomach growls.

  Bobo rifts, excuses himself.

  ‘Tis the season in the Icicle clan. Fuck yeah, Sandy thinks.

  * * * *

  Two minutes later, Pam exits the Tudor without Bill. No surprise. She walks towards the 4Runner, opens the rear passenger door behind Willa, and climbs inside. The first thing she rattles off is, “Jake, have you been puffing a joint in here?” She doesn’t give her middle child time to answer. “Bobo, boy, drive fast. Mama needs some food.”

  The drive to the Chinese restaurant turns out to be the most normal event during Jonah and Sandy’s visit north. Jake takes a nap in the rear compartment, lightly snoring. Bobo is instructed by his wife where to turn.

  Willa points into the fresh darkness and says, “Make a right here. Turn left. Make another left here.”

  And Pam, quiet as a church mouse, possibly silent before another rage-fest, sits next to Simon (Sandy), holding her Dooney & Bourke purse, the most expensive personal item she owns, on her lap.

  The Icicles end up at The Flying Peking Duck shortly after seven. No other cars are in the parking lot. Like ducklings, they make a single file line and walk through the parking lot and towards the restaurant, still quiet, overcome with a flood of different actions and emotions that only seem normal in a circus. Jake showcases a smile, always high. Willa looks perturbed, with screwy eyebrows and wide eyes. Bobo’s mouth hangs wide open, proving to be a clinical misfit among the group. Sandy resembles someone who is confused, constantly looking from his left to his right, a stranger in a strange town, seeking out something… anything remotely familiar. Jonah looks stiff, arms at his sides, knees barely mobile, head solidly upright like a soldier’s.