Fight No More

by Lydia Millet

  “Tough times,” he said. “I was a pissant too, at your age. It passes.”

  Answer not ready. Answer not formerly prepared, dammit.

  Fall back on Latin. The Romans had something for him. He searched his lexicon.

  “Caveat emptor, dude,” he said.

  “Let the buyer beware?”

  He nodded at the man sagely, though truth be told, hadn’t expected the guy to translate it.

  “You like Latin?”

  Oh no. He wasn’t falling into that trap. No heart-to-heart with beer belly for the fatherless kid.

  “Hate it,” he said.

  “I get it,” said the guy. “It’s all about the hating.”

  “Well, Jeremy, we’ll leave you to your private activities,” said the woman, and walked past him and out the door. She smelled of something good. Warm, not too sweet, not chemical at all, but with a touch of spice to it. Familiar.

  The man grinned, shook his head.

  “You’ll be OK,” he said. “But. You think we’re all assholes. You won’t hear this. I’ll still say it. Hating’s easy. Couldn’t be easier. It’s just a default setting. The easy way out. It’s all the rest that’s actually hard.”

  Then he turned and galumphed through the door.

  Shit save him from turning into a guy like that.

  But he didn’t feel like watching now. He let the screen go blank. He didn’t want content. Content be damned. He wanted to be empty, empty like a glass. Transparent.

  Out in the hall again, he listened for a while. After a time he heard the front door close. Weird; he was almost disappointed. Bad to have people here, but somehow worse in the aftermath.

  He wandered back toward the mamacita’s lair. On her vanity there were cosmetics by the score. Once he’d seen a price tag on a pot of her face cream: four hundred bucks. That was so desperate. The lotions and the powders hadn’t helped.

  When he was little, sometimes they’d gone to parties without him. Beforehand she’d let him watch her dress. Nothing too perv, she always had a lacy slip on by the time she let him in. He used to watch her put up her hair. Like in the movies: rich kids watched their mothers get ready. Good feeling. Dinner parties and evening wear. She’d been so deft with bobby pins it looked like sleight of hand. Magic, he called it then. He flashed to one time when her long hair, in the space of a few seconds, was transformed into a great shining round atop her head.

  That shit looked elegant. Audrey Hepburn. “Magic, mama.” She picked him up and twirled him. He’d been so small. Hard to believe.

  He held one lipstick, then another. He sat down in her chair. If he were more cross-dressing, he’d cover his face in all her makeup shit. But that wasn’t his bag. Though true, it would be perfect maternal horror-show. He’d freak her out, when she came home, if he was done up all clownish and faux-femme. That’d be a fast ride to prescribed counseling, although his mother would also say—like she had said about that neighbor kid—gender fluidity is perfectly natural. Still, counseling would be called for, which he, of course, would never attend. “You don’t want to hurt me, Jemmy. I know you don’t. You know how much I love you. You’re all I’m living for.”

  There were also perfumes, bottles dusty. The deadbeat used to give her those. He picked up a bottle, spritzed here and there. You could watch the vapor descend. If he were more stoned, he’d spritz them till they were all empty. She’d never know. Didn’t use them. Just kept the bottles there, like rows of soldiers keeping watch. Shit yeah. Slight clouds. They settled on the vanity’s counter, dulling the brown shine, darkening the denim over his knees.

  That was the smell. One of the perfumes was the same the house-selling woman wore. It made him remember . . . or no, it made him want to remember. He couldn’t reach it. Back when he wasn’t old enough to know himself—that was when it was from.

  Velut arbor ita ramus. “Just like the tree, so is the branch.” Never never. She showed her sadness like a split bone poking out of her skin. Compound fracture. A form of nakedness that could never be attractive.

  Well, not him.

  “I show no bones,” he said aloud.

  The guy with the beer belly had it wrong. Not hatred, just anger. There was a difference. One was like rock, the other like fire. The ancient elements.

  Sure, fire burned. It was supposed to. It scorched and made stuff black, everything brown or black or ash-gray. Burn and scorch, throw flames, spray paint. Tag everything, holmes. He owed no apologies. And anyway, that tint was real. The world was covered in it.

  The world, when you looked at it coldly, was tinted with anger. The screech of rubber on asphalt. Metal and concrete.

  He was letting that beer-belly Santa give him a lump of coal. This down feeling. Forget it—no. Had Santa brought it, though? Or had the coal been sitting there? The coal had been sitting there. Since paterfamilias had left, sowing his seed in younger soil.

  The Dadster’s clichés weren’t ironic. He really meant that shit.

  Himself, he’d stopped believing in Santa by first grade. The big kids down the street gave him the 411. All harsh, like Fucking Santa? You must be a moron. Too bad. When you believed, the world was tinted differently . . . like “Magic, mama,” and then she lifted you. Because you were small, you could be held, flown through the air and delighted, like that single moment was the same as forever.

  Back then, you didn’t even worry about feelings. You hadn’t learned to pity yet. You didn’t need anger if you didn’t feel pity.

  He had to do something. Doing never, lately, among preferred activities. And yet, if the shoe fit . . . but what could he even do?

  She liked flowers. Adored flowers, she once said. Simple. Easy. Not asking so much. Was it? But she never got them. Not anymore.

  She was a baby bird on the sidewalk, flapping with broken wings. When he thought about her he was close to feeling that brittle snap himself. His own wrist. Or a leg cracking. It wouldn’t be the pain he minded but the helplessness.

  Bullshit.

  He had her card.

  That shit, now he could do. Not one bunch, not even ten. A house of flowers. True, they were strapped for cash. Ergo, selling. But if—she said they were in bankruptcy. She said they were headed for Chapter Eleven. Like volume at 11, just like that vintage Spinal Tap hilarity. Turn the volume up to 11. He’d Googled they forgave all debts. In Chapter Eleven.

  Part of the reason he didn’t feel so bad about the Coy Cheerleader. It was just digits into the morass. Drop in the ocean. OK, so, several drops.

  That was the plan. Nothing fancy. Plain and simple. House full of flowers. Not cut flowers because they died too fast. They’d die all at once, turn the house into a brown forest of death. Too depressing. No, flowers in pots—that plant place she liked on Sunset. Silverlake. He’d bring them back in truckloads. What did he have—three hours? Or four if she worked late. Maybe he’d have them delivered. Money was no object.

  When she walked in, a thousand blooms. No gray or brown there. Orange, yellow and red. Transit umbra, lux permanet. “The shadow passes, but the light remains.”

  A part of her, sure, would be quite amply pissed. The rest of her would remember, even when he was gone. Moved out, too old to live at home. For all the time after, when she would have to be alone.

  He went down to the garage, took the keys off the hook and got into the work truck. The only solid thing Lord Vader had left them. Waited as the garage door cranked up, waited longer as a nanny passed on the sidewalk with a stroller in front of her and a little kid toddling behind. The rich parents were the only even half-smart ones: outsourcing. He’d never gotten what was in it for parents. You saw them everywhere, fussing around their kids, doing dumb small shit. Always bent over fastening things, unfastening them, wiping the offspring, pushing or pulling them, sitting them in small chairs, rolling them, swinging them, feeding them with small spoons. Servants for no money. There was a word for that.

  Weird how everyone wanted to act wild, then in
the next breath tame. It happened overnight. You partied, then you got married and turned in your balls. You lined up to turn them in. Eagerly packaged them, tying a bow on top.

  If you didn’t have kids there was still a chance, maybe. Because even married, as long as you didn’t have kids you could keep doing drugs. Go out a lot.

  Nursery, it said on the sign, like the little plants had their own rattles and cribs.

  But inside it was disappointing. There weren’t as many flowers as he’d expected. There were mostly leaves and stems. Green parts. Even the flowers were mostly lame. Not like starbursts, not like glamour. They just sat there.

  Goddamn. Nothing was ever fucking splendid. Never splendid. Goddamn.

  Was he supposed to go home with a bunch of ass-bushes? Pots of ass-dirt?

  Bullshit.

  He kicked a pot. Hurt his toe. Looked closer. The blooms on it were seedy and bluish. Agapanthus. Stevie’s Wonder. Sun to Part Sun; Hybrid.

  Seriously? A plant named for Stevie Wonder?

  Sick.

  “Jeremy?”

  No way. Nuh-uh. The new wife. Lora. Pregnant as shit.

  “Uh,” he said. Grunting ape-like.

  “Jeremy! Hey! It’s so great to see you! You still haven’t been by the house! But what are you doing at a garden store?”

  She reached out and hugged him, her bag sliding off her shoulder and hitting him as the baby bump nudged where it should never go. The floor slanted down, plus she was just the wrong amount shorter than him.

  So wrong: through a veil of skin and blubber, his fetal half-sister was barely three inches from his D.

  He looked past the new wife’s shoulder at a fat frog. It was a planter thing, made out of china or whatever, and out of it stuck a bunch of those ugly flowers you saw on cement doorsteps. Wrinkled. A pylon-color orange. The frog’s bulgy, heavy-lidded eyes made it look sly and evil, like it would slurp out a tongue and gulp your head.

  “Nothing,” he said, pulling back. “Dad here?”

  “At work. I wanted to surprise him with some new plantings. I’m not actually putting them in. I can’t even touch my toes! Just buying them for the gardener. How about you? You running an errand?”

  It was wrecked anyway. Dumb idea.

  He shook his head. “I should go.”

  “Hey. Will you do me a favor first?” she asked, and winced like asking hurt a bit. “Can you come with me? Pull that cart and maybe load my plants into the car? Five minutes, that’s it. I promise.”

  He’d come for the sake of his mother, now here he was serving Public Enemy Number One. Normally he didn’t say much to the new wife. Safer that way. She acted nicey-nice, plus she actually seemed to mean it, so it was hard to hate her guts once she got all up in your grill. Ergo, he kept his trap shut.

  Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur: “He is wise who talks little.”

  But now she’d cornered him.

  He grabbed the handle of the plant wagon, walking behind her to the parking lot. It reminded him of the old Radio Flyer he used to pull around his stuffed animals in. His favorite was a camel that smelled bad from having its foot sucked. Where had the camel gone?

  Of course you got too old for toys and didn’t use them anymore, all that was fine. But where was the camel?

  In a landfill somewhere.

  He loaded the plants for her. They were boring.

  In the background the child bride chattered on about him coming to dinner. How the Dadster would be “over the moon” to see him. Total bullshit. His father hadn’t been “over the moon” in his life. Over a slut’s ass cheeks, maybe. His eyes were dead like a shark’s.

  Flowers filling the house. What a cheesy idea that had been.

  Before it had seemed kickass. Now, cheesy and stupid. Clearly a Mary Jane moment.

  Slamming down the SUV hatch, he saw a blur of movement along some bushes near his feet. A cat. Small. Gray, with patchy fur. Looked homeless. Did it smell homeless? Could a cat get B.O.?

  “Oh my God. Is that a kitten?”

  She went scrabbling after it, but she couldn’t bend over far enough. Chick was basically a human water balloon, dangling and wobbling on a stick. Stand back! That thing could burst.

  She made a wheezing noise, then staggered sideways against her car door.

  He’d ask if she was OK, but it wasn’t in the bylaws. Whenever it randomly occurred to him to act normal/human to her, he thought of the Dadster hitting that. Made him wish he had the talent of spontaneous puking.

  Slowly she righted herself, mouth-breathing.

  “That poor little guy’s gonna get run over,” she said. “Don’t you think? All that traffic? Like twenty feet from here? Oh my God. It’s just a kitten!”

  It was small, sure, but looked ancient. A cat Gandalf. Merlin. A wrinkled graybeard. If it was human, it’d be bent over and carrying some kind of gnarled staff. Gumming and mumbling.

  Luckily it wasn’t. Say what you like about a decrepit cat, it was still better than a decrepit human.

  It faced away from them, tail waving, head under a bush, and then turned around with something in its mouth.

  “Oh!” said Lora. “Oh no! Is that a little mouse?”

  Child bride thought fleabag feral cats were cute kittens. She thought moldy hotdogs were itty-bitty mice.

  She thought his father was a great guy.

  He could see the package, greasy litter under the hedge.

  “It’s, like, a Hebrew National,” he said.

  She looked relieved. “Hey. But won’t you come over later? Please? Just come have dinner with us? It’d be so great!”

  He shrugged. She kept staring at him and smiling. All hopeful, like she was hanging on his answer.

  Finally he did a half-nod. Grudging. That way, if she tried to hold him to it, he had a way out. What did they call it in the CIA? Deniability. Yeah. Plausible deniability.

  On the way home he saw a billboard with a puppy on it. Maybe that was what he should have gotten, a puppy. His mother was allergic to cats but not to dogs. His father never let her have a dog when they were married but she was always drawn to other people’s. Scratched them behind the ears, obsessively bought gourmet treats for them. Once she’d driven a platter of leftovers to the pound to give to the homeless pitbulls, waiting to be put to sleep. But the pounds didn’t want it. Something about too much cream. So she threw out the platter, right there at the pound.

  After, she said to him: “I mean, this is exactly what’s wrong with the world.”

  Maybe what she needed wasn’t anything like flowers. Maybe that was like, a Band-Aid. Some people let their babies cry for hours, just to teach them to shut the fuck up. Probably worked. But then the babies grew up and turned into psychos.

  Still, maybe what she needed was tough love. It was too late for her to turn psycho, anyway. Late-onset psycho wasn’t a thing. Her shrink didn’t do shit, was what it sounded like to him whenever she told him the stuff the shrink had said. Her shrink just basically agreed with her.

  He drove the truck into the garage again. Her car was there—she was home.

  In the kitchen she stood by the sink. She had cooking stuff out, a pan and some noodles, but she wasn’t cooking yet. The water was running and running, just flowing right down the drain, but all she did was stand staring out the window, her hand frozen on the tap. You’d think something amazing was happening outside. A naked marathon.

  “I’m going over there,” he said abruptly.

  He opened the fridge, peered around for sodas. She always said they were bad for his skin. But he’d stashed a couple of cans.

  “Going . . . ?” she asked. Her little-girl voice. Distant.

  “To his house. For dinner.”

  The tap was still running and she didn’t turn around. He caught a glimpse of the telltale red-and-white logo, pushed aside a lead burrito in tinfoil. Closed the fridge door. Popped the tab.

  The Dadster was an asshole, fully certified. But life went on. Actually, it co
uld be funny to watch his dickhead personality play out. Like, comedy. If you put yourself outside it like you were watching a movie, then shit, it could really crack you up.

  Step outside, holmes. Then laugh like a hyena.

  Plus, the child bride tried to be nice to him 24/7. That baby mama worked hard. She had fresh skin, a peaches-and-cream complexion. Even fat with the fetal intruder, she was a yummy mummy. No one could deny it.

  He could step outside himself and laugh, but his mother could never. She didn’t know how. He went up behind her, reached out with his left hand and turned the water off.

  She was still staring out the window. Any second she’d start crying. He knew the signs.

  “I went out to get you flowers,” he said. It made him nervous to say it now, it was so hokey. But he forced himself. “But none of them were good enough so I didn’t get any. Sorry. Anyway then that Lora girl showed up and made me carry plants into her car and nagged at me for like ten straight minutes to come to their house tonight. I had to say yes. She basically tricked me.”

  It was a lie, but a white lie. Still: enough tough love for now. Just going over there was bad enough.

  “It’s good, honey,” she whispered, nodding. “No, you should go. It’s healthy.”

  But he was supposed to be angry, wasn’t he? He did the angry, she did the sad. Division of labor.

  “It’s good for you to spend time with your father,” she said. Turning away, she lifted the back of a hand to her face, maybe wiping a tear, maybe not. Couldn’t see.

  “I will. But I don’t want to,” he said.

  That at least he could give her. Wasn’t a house full of flowers. But better than nothing.

  “You’re sweet. But you don’t have to hate him to be loyal to me. Go. Have a nice meal. And if you have to get stoned, wait till you get home.”

  “I will,” he promised. The Dadster typically smelled it on his breath and went Republican, droned on about how stoners would never bring home the big bucks, did he always plan to be an underachiever, how many spare brain cells did he have to waste by killing them. He would a hundred percent wait.