Pathologies

by William Walsh

  Dick's mustache represents a sort of second puberty for him. The only thing Dick regrets about his mustache is that he didn't grow it sooner. I want to close the door on this issue, lady. I want to put it to bed. Historically, I can think of no other actor who grew facial hair late in his career. There's only Raymond Burr and Orson Welles, but the real story with them is that they were actors who simply grew obese and then grew facial hair to direct attention away from how fat they had gotten. Dick's mustache was a great career move. In fact, it was my idea that Dick grow the mustache. I thought a mustache would look good on Dick, and I was right. I wish I could grow a mustache like Dick. But my facial hair looks like it belongs on another part of my body. Really. Forget it. I grow a mustache, and it looks like I left my zipper open.

  Diagnosis: Murder has a lot invested in Dick's mustache. Dick's mustache is insured against any "unforeseen natural occurrence or intentional act of sabotage that might damage or render professionally unusable the cultivated hair between the nose and mouth of Richard ‘Dick' Van Dyke." So in case some nutjob like you, lady, douses Dick with a depilatory, we'll be able to settle with our insurers and pay Dick and all other salaried employees of this production company until such time as Dick's mustache has grown back and he can begin performing again as Doctor Mark Sloan, Diagnosis: Murder, CBS, Friday nights, eight o'clock.

  We all attribute the phenomenal success of Diagnosis: Murder to Dick's mustache. Dick's mustache has become a talisman around here. On days when we're shooting, all the actors touch Dick's mustache for good luck, and Dick's mustache always delivers. The only time an actor flubs a line is when they forget to touch Dick's mustache before a scene.

  If only you could touch Dick's mustache. You wouldn't want Dick to shave his mustache off after you touched it. It's silken. It's warm. It breathes. It transmits energy to your fingertips when you touch it. Dick's mustache is like a smile of its own. I can't imagine why you're not on board with Dick's mustache, lady. Obviously you're a fan. You love Dick Van Dyke. You should love Dick's mustache. I understand that it might have been hard at first to get used to seeing Dick Van Dyke with a mustache, but you should have accepted it by now. Come to terms with Dick Van Dyke's mustache for your own good. Dick's not shaving. End of story.

  MARKSON MAILS IT IN

  Novelist has nearly exhausted his ephemera. Nearly.

  Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart. All decomposing now.

  James Joyce preferred soup to stew.

  Michael Landon. FDR. Bill Gates. Dennis Rodman. George W. Bush. Weird Al Yankovic. Johnny Carson. Childhood bedwetters.

  Novelist once saw a horse and its rider—a beautiful teenage girl—vomit simultaneously after eating unwashed green apples from the same tree.

  Novelist can’t recall the best season for pears.

  Elephants love peanuts; it’s a shame that peanuts aren’t as large as watermelons.

  Queen Elizabeth’s recent visit to the United States—too soon.

  Novelist would like to shit in A-Rod’s cap right before he puts it on.

  When life gives you lemons…An apple a day…two platitudes that are rarely stated completely yet still convey full meaning.

  Pepsi. Breasts. Nulliparous vaginas. Hugh Hefner’s three favorite things in order of highest preference.

  Hemingway was an ass man. As was Gertrude Stein. And Irving Berlin.

  Novelist wishes Wikipedia came along in the early 1980s.

  Luther Burbank died crossing the street with an orange in one hand and a tangerine in the other.

  Marcel Marceau had a lovely singing voice.

  Picasso never painted houses.

  Francine Hurd Barker. Nicknamed Peaches at birth. Marlene Mack was the second Peaches. Linda Greene the third. Only one Herb. Herbert Fame née Feemster, a former police officer in Washington, DC. Peaches & Herb.

  Boswell failed to mention that Johnson had sticky hands.

  Sometimes a banana is just a banana, Freud should have said.

  If Christ had been born a giraffe it would have been impossible to crucify him, said the six-year-old boy who lives next door.

  Novelist always wanted a Citroen. Closest he got was a ’74 Saab purchased in 1988.

  Emily Dickinson loved the smell of mothballs, but she often had trouble holding their wings.

  SWITCH

  Tripped. On your shoelace. Mother F. You want to think of the word shoe. But instead the word ship comes to mind. You have been training yourself to think one word at a time in order to think faster. You tried speaking one word at a time. But it did not work. You sounded slow.

  You begin thinking of M, your ex. To think of her faster, you think only of the initial of her first name, not her full name. M was a wild woman. Sexually adventurous. She went down on you in a theatre on your first date. When you called her for a second date, she asked where you were going to bring her.

  The theatre, you said. She knew what you meant.

  Nobody credits you for your irony. Nobody.

  After breakfast, you finish the crossword early so you take a nap. You are compiling a list of words that are used almost exclusively in crossword puzzles. You added two more to your list today: din and lard. Din comes up a lot going down, and lard, too, comes up mostly going down but also, every so often, across.

  You met M at the bus stop the week your van was in the shop getting painted root beer brown with carbonation bubbles rising to the foamy white rooftop. She said hello to you every morning, smiling nicely. You returned each hello with a polite greeting and small nod of your head. When she noticed you examining the poster for The Play Within a Play being staged at the Orpheum Theatre, she said, I have tickets. And she asked you if you would like to go to the theatre with her.

  You and a mirror. Your teeth are too small and too much of your gums show when you try to smile. You have bad hair. Your nose is too big for your face. Your chin is too wide. A way to describe your chin would be monstrous. But the small teeth soften the effect: A dragon that breathes smoke but not fire. Your neck is thick, connecting your head to your body abruptly, like a sledgehammer meeting round shoulders.

  M pointed to the photograph of your brother, and said, You look a lot like your brother.

  Her tone was accusatory, derisive. Like you stole his facial features and you lack imagination because you bear a family resemblance to a male child born into your family two years before your birth.

  You wanted to tell her that he is in prison. But he was not in prison. He’s a career criminal who has never been convicted.

  He belongs in prison, you said.

  As you leave the bank, you hear a woman say the word limp to her young son, and you are reminded that you walk with a limp. You have been limping ever since you were twelve years old and your brother twisted your right leg while demonstrating a wrestling move. You were about to start wrestling back when he twisted your leg beyond the point it could twist without the kneecap popping. Even after two surgeries in high school, you still limp.

  In the photo M looks like a female leprechaun, with her pug nose and impish grin. Place a spinning basketball on her index finger, and you’d have the Boston Celtics’ mascot in drag. She grew up in Futon, Vermont. Her parents were Deadheads, true hippies, as was everybody who lived in Futon. She was a jock and didn’t fit in at school. She was very competitive and longed to be a three-sport varsity athlete at one of the elite boarding schools—she didn’t care which one—in western Massachusetts or central Connecticut.

  Your brother has a lot of the same facial features, the chin especially. But he is a dragon that breathes fire. He has always been a bully and you his chief apologist.

  He used to borrow your clothes when he went out on the weekends.

  If I get home early, he’d say. I’ll teach you how to play switch.

  You went to the theatre with M every night for two weeks straight. Same play. On one Sunday, you went to the theatre for the matinee and evening shows. You knew parts of The Play Within a Play by hear
t. But the theatre was expensive and The Play Within a Play was not a good play.

  Guy taking tickets at the theatre was one of those fat guys who leans back on his heals, his thick double-chin rolling onto a heavy chest. He had to tear your tickets individually. He didn’t have the strength to tear two tickets at once. The exertion would have given him a heart attack.

  He knew what you and M were up to in the balcony. He snuck up on mouse feet and would have caught you in the act if his wheezing didn’t announce his presence.

  Sometimes a man can outlive his bad reputation, even if he doesn’t change his ways.

  Sarsaparilla. Birchbeer. Rootbeer. To the undiscerning tongue, these three beverages taste the same. Fortunately, your customers—big city dwellers—pay top dollar for your concoctions. Still, it ain’t easy being you. You lack a cohort, a consort, someone with whom you can cavort. You are an expert on sarsaparilla, root beer, and birch beer, but that does not seem to rank with the ladies. Six months ago, you grew a mustache, wore it for a week and then shaved it off. Nobody noticed. Nobody said a thing.

  Your brother calls from the police station.

  Bail, you ask.

  No, he says. Line-up. And he tells you what to wear.

  This isn’t the first time. Your resemblance is close enough to introduce doubt into the mind of most witnesses.

  You’d had a girlfriend for a month, and you were exhausted physically and financially. Isn’t it always the way, you think, when one part of your life is going good and you’ve gained a measure of control, something (or someone) comes along and messes with another part of your life. You would have been perfectly content to focus solely on making your business a success for the next several years, and then, after banking your first million, maybe then you would consider embarking upon a sexual romance.

  You had no money for the theatre, so you didn’t call M for a week. During that time, she called you twice, but you didn’t answer the phone. The third time she called, you picked up.

  What gives? M asked. Don’t you want to go to the theatre?

  You told her that you hadn’t called because you don’t have money for the theatre and you didn’t want to let her know that you were broke.

  Silly, M said. I don’t care if you don’t have any money for the theatre. I still want to see you.

  You asked M if she wanted to come over and watch TV.

  I’m going to fix you some dinner first, she said.

  M knocked on your door promptly at six o’clock. She had a grocery bag filled with food. There was a long loaf of French bread sticking out of the grocery bag. She went straight to the kitchen.

  You smelled the bread, fresh lettuce, garlic, onions, peppers, and the paper bag itself. There was a six-pack of beer at the bottom of the bag. She gave you one and shooed you out of the kitchen.

  M cooked you the bloodiest and best steak of your life. Smothered in grilled onions. Mushrooms, and peppers. Garlic mashed potatoes. Glazed carrots. French bread with butter. And she even made dessert: chocolate pudding with whipped cream.

  After dinner, on the sofa, M said, We’re not people anymore.

  She was talking about the war, which was all over the TV. Every channel.

  We’re not people, she said again.

  You switched off the TV. M slipped her shoes off and put her head in your lap.

  Let’s make a list, she said. A list of places where we can go that are free or, at least, cheaper than the theatre.

  Great idea!

  When you were sixteen years old, your parents committed suicide three days apart from each other. In both instances, it was your brother who found the body. You wanted to ask about suicide notes, but you were afraid to know.

  You miss M. You miss M’s blue eyes. You miss M’s orange hair. You miss her Ms. Pac-Man mouth. She’s all gulp, except when she’s smiling. You told her, You have the whitest teeth I’ve ever come across.

  Now you have some money in the bank. Your business is booming. Foodies in New York City and Los Angeles love your sarsaparilla.

  You get your first fan letter. A customer from New York City says he drank your essence of sarsaparilla straight out of the bottle because he didn’t understand that he was supposed to mix it with carbonated water. That’s how he takes his sarsaparilla now: Straight up.

  Did you know that your brother has freckles on his dick, M asked you?

  How do you know that?

  He just told me. He got freckles on his dick from his new tanning bed.

  Switch is a game with two players. Player one puts his left thumb in his mouth and his right thumb up his ass. Then player two says, Switch.

  You didn’t care that M was an alcoholic because she was sexy about it, not sloppy. Wine warmed her up. Tequila revved her up. Vodka made her think that everything you said was funny.

  Your brother drinks beer all day long every day. From noon to midnight. He gets out of bed at noon and has his first beer in the way another man would have a cup of coffee. He doesn’t stop drinking beer until he goes to bed, promptly at midnight. At minimum, he polishes off a twelve-pack every day, sometimes as much as a case. He is rarely ever what you would call drunk. On occasion, he will admit to being half in the bag. On occasion, he will admit that he has a little glow on. His drinking moods run from ebullient to indignant. From sunny to surly. From affectionate to hateful.

  The only thing you ever outgrew were your baby shoes.

  Every student, teacher, and administrator at Ampersand High wanted your brother to drop out. And that’s exactly why he wouldn’t. He purposely had himself kept back two years so he would be in your grade. You did all his homework. You wrote all his papers.

  M sits on the bench outside the Police Station. As you approach, you sense her momentary confusion. She thinks that you are your brother and that you’ve been released.

  You embrace her and she begins to weep. You can tell that she’s a bit drunk. She says, I knew you’d come to help him out.

  Your brother is dressed in a shiny track suit with new-looking sneakers. It’s near to St. Patrick’s Day, so he’s wearing his green. He looks pleased that you’re in old chinos, a blue button-down oxford, ancient sneakers.

  He gives you his a comb and says, Comb it straight back. Be sure to make the face I taught you when they tell you to step forward.

  M orders Death by Chicken Parmesan and you order Beer-battered Deep-fried Steak Tips. The waitress looks at your brother and says, And for you, sir?

  He hands her the menu, says, I want everything. Everything.

  BUNNY

  Bunny Yeager had a camera. Bunny Yeager had big ears. Bunny Yeager smelled of turpentine. Bunny Yeager disliked carrots. Bunny Yeager never learned to ride a bike. Bunny Yeager debuted at seventeen. Bunny Yeager rose at sunrise. Bunny Yeager packed one bikini in an ancient suitcase. Bunny Yeager shot in color. Bunny Yeager liked girls wet. Bunny Yeager read Spillane. Bunny Yeager hopped to it. Bunny Yeager detested piety. Bunny Yeager posed Bettie Page on a synthetic bearskin rug. Bunny Yeager wrote a fan letter to a teenage Natalie Wood. Bunny Yeager said, “More like that.” Bunny Yeager owned two boats. Bunny Yeager voted republican because she knew it pleased her dad. Bunny Yeager said, “What’s up, Doc?” Bunny Yeager touched herself in the darkroom, underneath a hot red light. Bunny Yeager received communion. Bunny Yeager paid her bills. Bunny Yeager wasn’t one for making friends. Bunny Yeager smoked menthol cigarettes. Bunny Yeager never married. Bunny Yeager pinned a fluffy tail on Hugh Hefner. Bunny Yeager seduced men in their sleep. Bunny Yeager played backgammon on the beach. Bunny Yeager loved to say, “Please disrobe.”

  THE SNOWMAN ON THE MOON

  Green cheese? Nope. Try frozen sand. Frozen sand everywhere. When all you see is frozen sand, you learn to hate frozen sand. But then you realize that you're made of frozen sand, mostly, with an admix of lunar regolith for footing.

  Who made me and why? That question used to keep me up nights. I always knew that my creator was a man because my
being lacks all subtlety. I was endowed with no style, and my anatomy lacks anything by which I could measure my manhood. Turns out he was an astronaut. Of course. A playboy during that era. But sentimental about his Midwestern childhood and, at the time he made me, filled with romantic notions about his career. I understand he's divorced now. No kids. Blames the sterility on his space travel. He didn't mention me in his memoir. At least, I didn't find myself listed in its idiotic index.

  I was a total improv job. I get the large, rolled snowballs, stacked biggest at the bottom, medium in the middle, and small up top. But I don't get the carrot nose. The two eyes made out of coal. The uneven stick arms. The mismatched mittens that don't want to stay on. I don't get the top hat, either. Or the scarf. Useless. Thanks for the scarf. How about a warm coat? Three buttons frozen on my chest, but no coat. No. Not a lot of thought went into my design. He just used whatever was handy, taking his inspiration from God knows what.