One Foot Off the Gutter

by Peter Plate

  I never went away, never submerged. Never mind who my father was, whether he was young or old, green eyed or blue eyed. Never mind the man who got her pregnant and who left in such a hurry, that in later years, she could never bring herself to say his name. And never mind that in her parents’ eyes, I learned to see myself as their bastard grandson. Forever stained as the progeny of their promiscuous daughter. Who’s to say what could’ve happened if circumstances had been different. I might not have ever joined the police force.

  I dropped my combat overalls, bulletproof vest, riot boots, and gun and belt on the bathroom floor alongside Alice’s matching peach-colored satin panties and bra. I lifted my arms and stretched. Steam from the shower stall was billowing from the ceiling to the floor. I scratched my balls absent-mindedly feeling the gray routine of the day seep out of me.

  “Coddy? Is that you?”

  The mist covered shower door opened; the aluminum and glass framed door screeched to a halt and there was Alice smiling at me from under the chromed nozzle. I stepped into the dwarfed stall, slammed the door behind me and without saying a word, Alice put her arms around my unshaven neck, rubbing her stomach against the tangle of hair that decorated my paunch. I encircled the small of her back with my hands, stroking the down near her tailbone. Alice banged into the tiling on the wall behind her as I was having trouble staying on my feet; the years of wearing the riot boots had given me a case of arthritic swelling. My feet were like the rest of me, splay boned and overloaded with unwanted flesh. No one could ever accuse me of being a ballerina.

  The hot water supply was inexhaustible. It was the only good thing about the apartment, unless you were partial to shag carpeting. The suffering on my face must have been as bad as a tornado in a Texas town; it took me a full minute to realize Alice was stroking my neck and arms. She was murmuring into my chest hair, saying, “Hush now, baby. It’s going to be all right, I promise you. Just wait and see. Now be quiet and let me hold you.”

  Alice cupped my balls with her hands, holding the sac in her bridged palms. This quieted me down almost instantaneously. I was grateful for her sympathy.

  If you needed to calm a man, the technique was elementary: you had to hold him where he lived. Where the center of his terror was located; where the source of his pride was centered; where his idea of entertainment began. A man could create ideas with his brain, but his spirit lived below his navel. Every woman knew that.

  “We’ll be okay,” she said through the water. “Whatever we do, we’re doing it together. This is something that involves both of us.”

  Alice was wet and half blurred, a mirage in a hot cavern. Our eyes met; hers were a green darker than normal. Mine were a coal blue that stuck out of poached egg bulges.

  “I got some good stuff today at the farmer’s market,” she said.

  “Yeah? What did you get?”

  “I got fruits and vegetables. I’m thinking of experimenting with vegetarian cuisine.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said with derision.

  “Don’t be silly. I have a vegetarian cookbook. I’ll think of something that will taste yummy.”

  I was beginning to suspect Alice harbored secret powers. I was curious about how she spent her days. I thought it might not be wise to ask, that her strength came from me not knowing what she was doing. That was a presumption on my part, but I went with it. I kept my opinion to myself.

  “Do you want to get out?”

  “What? Is the hot going out of the water?”

  “Got any clean towels?”

  “On the hook behind the door.”

  I removed her hands from my balls and raised them to my lips, kissing them gently, understanding the gift of her touch. “See you in a minute,” I said. Then I kissed her gossamer slick hair, pulled the shower door half open and hopped out.

  The towel was where she said it was, behind the door. A royal blue towel fit for a king. I reveled in the thick, clean newness of the thing. It was perfect, just me and the steam and below my navel, the warm imprint of Alice’s hands on the place where I lived.

  seventeen

  doctor Dick?”

  He looked up from his appointment book, bleary eyed and confused.

  “Yes, nurse? What is it?”

  “The patient is ready to see you.”

  How much more work could he take?

  “Good. Could you please have her chart out so that I can refer to it?”

  “Certainly, doctor. Is that all?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She left his office in four, neat, quick steps. He sank back into his leatherette easy chair and rubbed his eyes. It had been a nightmare of a day with his caseload quadrupling overnight. The next appointment was the last one of the afternoon. For that, he was grateful. He’d been working so much, that at the end of each day, his hands palsied from sheer exhaustion. It was a queer sensation when your hands wouldn’t obey an order.

  He walked down the hall to the examining room. He passed a nurse supervising a string of prisoner-patients from the county jail. A bunch of them were hauling an iron lung from the supplies room. The doctor was struck dumb by the iron lung; it was a cold war era antique, something out of the 1950s. He was amazed by its mammoth size; he hadn’t seen one in twenty years.

  The doctor knocked on the door to the examining room to let the patient know he’d arrived. The nurse had forgotten to bring the patient’s chart; it should have been in a manila folder hanging on the door. He did not like that; the knot in his stomach contracted another notch.

  “Hello in there. This is Doctor Dick. May I come in?”

  Since he didn’t get an answer, he assumed that meant a silent assent. He pushed the door open and entered the room. It was the last appointment of the day.

  The patient was sitting on top of the examining table. A rather attractive blonde woman in her mid-thirties, wearing one of those starched, bleached, off-color hospital gowns.

  “Hi. I’m Doctor Dick,” he smiled.

  She didn’t say anything.

  He sat down on the stool next to the table. He mustered up the very last of his good will, then he realized he didn’t know her name. He felt befuddled, as though the cabling in his brain was becoming unraveled. When he asked her what it was, she told him.

  “It’s Patsy,” she said with a hint of ambition.

  Her voice aroused him just ever so slightly, causing a scant lock of hair to rise up along his crown.

  “Well, thanks for telling me. I’m Doctor Dick.”

  “I know that,” she said. “You already told me.”

  “I did, didn’t I? Oh, well.”

  The doctor attempted to interject a humorous tone into his comment, but his failure was obvious. The patient’s somber face was devoid of expression. The doctor noticed she was slender; her skin was clear and apart from having half moons of sleeplessness under her eyes, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her.

  “Doctor, I’m having a problem.”

  I like that, the doctor said to himself. She’s taking the initiative here.

  “What seems to be the matter?” he asked.

  “I want to have a baby, but I don’t think I’m able to.”

  The doctor took a more penetrating look at the patient. The topic of fertility was a sensitive issue. He didn’t want to upset her, but that might be unavoidable. Above all, he’d have to be honest. He sat down on a stool.

  “There could be several reasons why this is happening to you,” he began. “Some of them may not have anything to do with your ability to have a child. More bluntly stated, the, ah, problem may not be yours.”

  “What do you mean, doctor?”

  Astonishment crept into her voice. It sounded feigned to the doctor; he didn’t believe it for a minute.

  “The problem could be with your husband or lover. He might be sterile, or he might be suffering from a low semen count.”

  That took a moment to sink in. She mulled over the significance of what
he said. “What can I do?” she asked.

  “As you probably know, when you made this appointment, it was with a general practitioner, not a specialist. I’m not a gynecologist. You could bring your husband in here. I could take a semen count on him. A lab test would give you the results, and I could talk to both of you about your options. But with you, I don’t know.”

  “I know what you are,” she said, coolly staring into his eyes. “That’s why I’m here. I want you to examine me.”

  There was an oblique tone in her voice; he couldn’t make out what it meant. He had to be tactful and polite. The best thing to do would be to oblige her. A few minutes of that, and he’d be on his way home. She gazed at him and said nothing. He was conscious of her eyes on his face.

  “As you like then. If you’ll let me check your vital organ signs, it shouldn’t take long. Please slip off your gown so that I can listen to your lungs.”

  She removed the garment from her shoulders with a self-conscious shrug. From long experience, the doctor could tell she was modest and proud. He took the stethoscope hanging from his neck and placed it against her sternum. She lowered her eyes, then raised them to meet his gaze. The doctor flushed and broke off eye contact.

  “Is there anything wrong, doctor?”

  “No, not at all,” he said all too quickly. “Now let me see...Please breathe in and out...Yes, that’s good.”

  He hadn’t noticed her eyes until now. They were as translucent as the filtered water in a swimming pool. She didn’t betray any sign of emotion. He thought it would be smart to do the same.

  “What is it, doctor?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” he said. “Your health is fine. Very good. Yes, it’s excellent. But this is a superficial examination. Maybe you could tell me about your husband. Is he in good health?”

  He wanted to get away from her, but he also found himself responding to her. Those swimming pool eyes were drawing him in.

  “My husband is a hard working man without any interests outside his profession. He takes good care of me. I have almost everything I want and need. But he is completely preoccupied with his job. He doesn’t seem interested in me as a person, as someone he is intimate with, if you know what I mean.”

  The doctor tried to remain unperturbed.

  “Sometimes I think we’re incompatible,” she said.

  She took her time to let the words find themselves. She sounded resigned, as if regrets were approaching her from all sides.

  “I wonder what we’re doing together. He might be sterile. I wouldn’t know. We haven’t been...no, that’s not it. We should be having, you know...but we’re not.”

  It was time to put an end to this. He was learning quick; whatever she liked, he shouldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, getting to his feet. “I don’t think I can help you on this. From what you’ve told me, I sympathize. But this is a situation where a family or a marriage counselor would be of greater use to you. If you like, I can refer you to other professional services. My nurse can give you some names.”

  She leaned back on the examining table and lifted the gown above her thighs. He’d hoped she would do that; he wished she wouldn’t.

  “Can’t you help me, doctor? I need a man to make a baby with me. Please, no one has to know. It will be our secret.”

  The doctor opened his eyes, batting his lashes to get the mucus out of them. He threw back the covers and lay there, letting the sweat evaporate from his superheated body. Patsy was snoring by his side. A night breeze was falling through the opened bedroom window. The black sky was an upside down bowl flung against the rooftops.

  There was a shadow hanging from the window sill. The shadow jumped off the sill and snaked across the hardwood floor. The doctor watched it move toward the bed. The shadow jumped on the blankets at the foot of the mattress. The doctor’s heart was hammering frantically in its cage; a drop of sweat rolled down his temple and dripped into the collar of his pajama top. The shadow skipped across the down comforter and bounced off his face: the moon was passing over the abandoned building next door.

  eighteen

  alice was drinking in my troubled face, letting her emerald clear eyes swim across my mouth. I was stationed where I usually was on such occasions, on the other side of the kitchen table. She was trying to reach out to me. But I wasn’t having any of it. I had a heartful of flint to contend with. I didn’t want to say anything, preferring instead to study the ashtray laying on the table.

  “Did you get enough to eat at supper, Coddy? Didn’t those lamb chops come out good?”

  “What am I supposed to say, Alice? It goes without saying, lamb chops are god’s gift to hungry men.”

  Behind us, in what was supposed to be our living room, the television was flickering. The black and white screen was out of focus. The television was on its last leg. We couldn’t afford a new color set and I had already said I wasn’t going to pay the cable rates. That didn’t bother Alice. None of the shows were memorable or interesting, anyway. She had the tube on for company whenever I wasn’t around. It didn’t matter what the program was. When the volume was turned down, the television became Alice’s silent acquaintance.

  “I’m telling you, this weather is getting to be too much for me,” she said. “I never understood why this part of the county was so damn hot.”

  She fished a pack of Newports from her purse. She’d always been partial to mentholated fags. I watched her, but acted like I wasn’t. That was my way of keeping tabs on Alice. The little cunning things I did that fooled nobody but myself.

  “Alice, I ain’t got a thing to say about the weather, forgive me.”

  She didn’t mind my silences. That was a lie. A bold-faced, dishonest lie: she’d learned to live with them over the years. Maybe she’d learned to lie. That was more to the point. Alice had learned to lie to herself. She’d learned that and other rules about being a cop’s wife early in our marriage.

  The number one edict was that you had to give your husband extra room for uncontrollable displays of great emotion. He might kick a hole in the living room wall, which I had done. If I kept it up, we’d lose our cleaning deposit to the landlord, a grand sum of one thousand dollars. A cop might break some dishes on the kitchen floor. But more importantly, a cop’s wife had to endure the long days and weeks when her wedded husband said nothing at all. Silence was my forte. I had crushed many a lesser man’s balls by simply not talking to him. But my wife was an entirely different subject.

  “You want some coffee, Coddy? I was thinking of making myself a cup of decaf.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “I saw the Harlows at the mall this afternoon. They said to say hello to you.”

  “Who are the Harlows?”

  “You know who I’m talking about. You arrested the eldest one last summer in the city. His name is on the tip of my tongue.”

  “It was John. John Harlow the junkie. You could always find him in a laundromat. He kept saying it was because he needed the telephones in there. We thought it was because he liked the smell of lint.”

  “I remember him. He was always pleasant to me whenever we ran into each other.”

  I gave her an evil smile.

  How she’d learned to live with my silences, some people would call it resignation. Silence didn’t come easy to her. Alice liked to have a good chat. She used to think she’d get dreadfully introverted if she didn’t talk to her heart’s content. But that was how she used to be. Being around me changed everything. Silence was the price you paid for being married to a cop.

  “How’s Bellamy?” she asked.

  “Bellamy is Bellamy. He irks me half to death, and I couldn’t get on without him.”

  For motives that are still not clear, I had stopped talking early in our marriage. It was the only method I knew how to use to cope with the job. Alice spent months trying to lead me away from whatever precipice I was allowing myself to slide off into. She exhibited great bravery, but I held myself back w
ith autistic stubbornness. Time performed its logic—Alice became angry. She saw there were two routes to follow with her resentment. She could adopt a code of arguing and fighting, or she could make a tentative peace with the silence.

  In the long run, neither tactic worked. I would come home from the station and go straight into the bedroom. Completely shattered from the day, I’d lay down on the covers without taking off my scuffed riot boots and say something about how it had been a lousy bus ride back from the city. Then I’d clam up until the following morning. At which point, she’d cook me breakfast, and we’d start all over again. The wheel of life beginning anew and that sort of thing.

  “Whatever became of John Harlow, Coddy?” Alice asked.

  “I busted him for intent to sell and he went to prison, Alice. He went to Soledad on a six year bit. That’s what happened to him. And if those other Harlows start wanting to say hello to me, tell them to fuck off.”

  “You don’t have to get hostile, Coddy. They didn’t mean any harm.”

  “My ass, they didn’t.”

  It was funny how someone could think they were the same person they’d always been, thinking they would remain faithful to their original selves until the day they died. The truth painted an alternative picture: you were changing so rapidly, that if you weren’t careful, you might not recognize yourself after awhile. Especially if you had the misfortune of seeing your own life through someone else’s eyes.

  “You don’t know those people, Alice.”

  “You mean the Harlows?”

  “Damn straight. They’re trouble. You tell them to stay away from you.”

  “Why are you being like this?”

  “Are you serious? I’m being practical.”