Odd Adventures with your Other Father

by Prentiss, Norman

  His tone of voice struck me wrong. A scientist’s clinical detachment as he waited for lab results, but a perverse curiosity, too.

  “I think we should let him go.”

  “Go where? This isn’t some turtle you brought home in third grade, Shawn. You can’t plop it in some stream back where you found it, back where it belongs. This doesn’t belong anywhere.”

  I got really steamed. “You see what Sullivan did to him. I don’t care what it is. No living thing should be tortured like that. It deserves—”

  Jack looked up at me while I ranted. It’s almost like I was trying to yell loud enough to knock the homunculus out of his hand. It rolled slightly toward the tip of Jack’s fingers.

  It rolled onto its back, and I saw its face.

  My sympathy had wavered toward he rather it as I spoke, but now all words dried to ash in my throat. Throughout my travels with Jack, I’d seen a lot of unusual, disturbing things—some of the worst actually projected from the darkest corners of Jack’s imagination. But this . . . This was by far the most horrifying, demonic thing I’d ever seen. I was overcome with horror and disgust.

  The vileness of the creature had such an awful air of unreality that I wondered if it wasn’t one of Jack’s visions. He’d conceived his worst possible glamour, to punish me for my sanctimonious lecture against cruelty to animals.

  Jack saw my revulsion, and he turned his attention to the monstrosity asleep in his palm.

  (Asleep! I tell you, Celia, even in its inert state that foul homunculus radiated pure evil. It breathed the demon’s sleep of malice, contented by thoughts of families torn apart, skin flayed from bodies and bones crushed into gravel against twitching nerves, infections poured like acid down gasping throats—and the victims birthed again in agony, to suffer these same torments anew.

  I sensed all this from that weak, motionless form. It bore some scarecrow approximation of a human shape, but it wasn’t human. It wasn’t animal, either—not in any sense we’d use the term.

  That demon was no projection from Jack’s imagination. Jack understood it, too. He was as horrified as I was.

  His wrist jolted, and the creature rolled off his fingertips and onto the carpet.

  It landed on its back, that horrible face still in plain view.

  I saw a twitch at one of its eyelids. A fist flexed where an arm had bounced against the floor, and I knew its vile fingers were ready to uncoil.

  (I’m not proud of what happened next, Celia, especially after my earlier pleas against animal cruelty.)

  The demon was already so appalling in its stiff, powerless sleep. I couldn’t bear the thought of those terrible limbs in motion, the spark of consciousness burning sinister from its open eyes.

  I was the one standing. I brought my sneakered heel down on the demon’s head, and it cracked like a hard-boiled egg. I twisted my heel back and forth, grinding the pasty discharge into the carpet.

  I did worse after that. I was like a kid who tore wings off a fly. Jack didn’t stop me.)

  #

  Nine o’clock the next morning, Jack told me he had a promise to keep. We walked to Forty-Fifth Street. While I ordered coffee and pastries at the bakery across the street, Jack went to the Box Office at the Booth Theatre and bought us tickets to Sunday in the Park with George.

  Well, ticket singular.

  “Don’t be upset. I got you a better seat since we didn’t need two together.”

  Hopeless. I tried to explain that I wanted to see the show with him. That was part of the fun.

  “I’d probably hate it,” he said. “I’d be all restless in the seat, ruining the show for you.”

  “No you wouldn’t. You’d like it.”

  “Maybe I could go back and get another one.”

  “Never mind.” I couldn’t stay mad at him. Not after what we’d been through last night. Not after Jack cleaned up the awful mess I’d made, disposing of the gory evidence and not speaking a word about it afterward. “I’ll see it by myself. Thanks for the ticket.”

  (You got me. Maybe a little passive aggressive whine snuck in there, too.)

  “Now I wanna go.”

  “That’s okay.”

  And it was. But Jack had an odd, guilty air about him for the rest of the morning. We window shopped around Times Square, then picked out a nice French place on Restaurant Row for my pre-theater lunch.

  Finally, after the waiter brought us each a small portion of prix fixe flan, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “I’m not mad,” I insisted.

  “About what?”

  If he’d forgotten my snit about the show tickets, then what was he thinking about?

  So guilty. Secretive.

  I figured it out. “Oh no. You’re not going back there.”

  “Our hotel? I’ll get the bags when it’s time for us to head out, but—”

  “You know what I mean. The Rialto, maybe. Or Sullivan’s hotel. You’ve been planning to investigate all along, and you bought that play ticket to keep me from interfering.”

  Jack sighed. “I have to find out the truth. I’ve got some theories, but I need to know if I’m right.”

  I was afraid of what he might learn. I wasn’t sure how hard I’d bonked Sullivan with that champagne bottle—though there wasn’t a lead story on The Today Show about a celebrity rushed to a local hospital. Or the morgue.

  There was that other matter, too. “He tried to rape you, Jack.”

  “Well, I’m ready for him this time. He won’t be able to trick me.”

  “You’re not doing it,” I said. “Not alone.”

  #

  So I didn’t see my Broadway musical. Not during that trip at least.

  Instead, I accompanied Jack to Sullivan’s Hotel. We took the elevator to the third floor, walked past those same photographs Jack’s drugged mind had transformed into a cry for help.

  Room 314.

  “Should we knock?” The idea seemed so ridiculous to me.

  “He’s expecting me,” Jack admitted. “I called him this morning while you were taking a shower.”

  When the door opened, I thought we’d picked the wrong room. He wasn’t Sullivan—though he wore the same tweed sports coat Sullivan chose for yesterday’s movie premiere.

  His head was down as he backed away from the entrance. As he ushered us into the room, closing the door behind us, it wasn’t Sullivan’s walk. It was the walk of a desperate, defeated man. He’d lost his confidence. His presence.

  He’d lost something else.

  (It’s going to sound really bad to say this, but here goes. Now, you know I don’t like stereotypes of any kind, and I’m especially sensitive about gay stereotypes. I also hate people who say things like, “the reason they’re stereotypes is because they’re sometimes true”—and those people will laugh and smile, proud like they have some I-just-say-what-everybody-else-is-thinking courage, and they get huffy and offended if you don’t agree with them and laugh, too. I hate that.

  But Sullivan’s walk, okay . . . it was a gay walk.)

  “Do you have it?” Sullivan looked ready to cry. He looked like he hated himself—his desperation, the weakness in his voice.

  “No,” Jack said.

  “Look, I’m suh-suh-sorry about what I tuh-tried to do to you.” In addition to the occasional stutter, his voice slipped into a faint lisp. He grimaced, as if he couldn’t help it. “I need it buh-huh-back. You thaid you’d bring it.”

  (Well, I’m not going to mimic him anymore. When Jack revealed the homunculus had died—thankfully not mentioning that I’d done the deed—Sullivan looked from one to the other of us then collapsed into the armchair and started weeping.

  It’s tough to see anybody cry like that. Even with what I knew, I felt a little sorry for him. A little.

  He didn’t tell us everything—and what he did say was hard to decipher with all those sobs. Unmanly sobs, if I have to describe them.

  We already knew the official version of Sullivan’s biography: only child,
raised by working class parents, always dreamed he’d become a famous actor. Turns out he always knew he was gay, too, and quickly figured out his desires didn’t fit with his leading-man aspirations. Like a lot of young men, Sullivan chose to suppress everything about himself that might appear gay. Even at ten years old, he perceived that part of himself as twisted and deviant—following society’s lead at the time, and going even further with his own sense of shame and frustrated hopes.

  Sullivan began working on his “masculine image.” He didn’t play team sports at school, but he created his own rigorous exercise regimen. His family couldn’t afford voice or movement coaches, so Sullivan trained himself to speak in a deep accent, designed his own version of a powerful, manly walk. He practiced acting by memorizing and recreating scenes from his favorite adventure films.

  Initially, the masculine veneer seemed false—a mannered performance, a costume put on to fool others. He worked harder and harder to suppress his true self. Then something happened.

  He wouldn’t tell us the full secret. My guess is that, just as he was a self-taught actor and voice coach, he’d grown so desperate that he became a kind of self-taught necromancer. He saw himself as deviant, wished so hard to banish that part of himself—and in some supernatural way, Sullivan succeeded. His desire manifested outside his body, in the shape of a homunculus. But it was a twisted homunculus, as sad and ashamed as its creator—a withered manifestation of unnaturally repressed desires.

  That’s how Sullivan’s acting got better. He took lead roles in high school plays. After one low-budget movie he left for Hollywood, where he landed a studio contract and appeared in a string of mid-level action flicks—the dream he always wanted.

  At a cost. The studio couldn’t allow any queer gossip about their third-tier action hero, so Sullivan’s modest success pushed him even further into the closet. As each of Sullivan’s masculine performances continued to convince audiences and costars alike, I believe that, over time, his hidden homunculus grew even more withered and hideous.

  Think of all the lies he told to his female costars, wooed then dropped in quick succession. Add those fervid moments when Sullivan succumbed to his true desires: a male prostitute paid from the studio expense account; anonymous encounters in a public men’s room; an occasional fan drugged at his hotel, the young man waking the next morning with vague, unconvincing memories. Sullivan loathed himself after each of these episodes, and that loathing shaped new horrors into the form of that awful homunculus.

  Celia, can you understand now why I reacted so violently at sight of the creature’s face? It offended my sensibilities on such a deep, personal level. The manikin was the twisted shape and face of homophobia: the terrible idea that segments of society would encourage gay people to suppress their identities—and that a young boy or girl would participate in that idea, their whole lives suppressing any hope of love.

  You’re right, Celia. I shouldn’t feel bad that I killed it.)

  #

  “I can see I’ve gone on longer than usual with this tale, so I’ll give quick answers to those few questions you asked.

  “Why did Sullivan use the manikin in his final film? And why did he place the creature on display in the middle of Times Square? Well, as much as he needed the creature to further his career, as much as some obscure rules of necromancy insisted he keep the homunculus close to him, Sullivan surely hated the creature, too. He really did torture it on purpose, I think. He gave it enough consciousness to perform its magic, but also enough to let it experience pain—baking in the hot sun, nearly suffocating in a closed satchel.

  “As for the movie itself, by casting his darkest secret as the title character in The Manikin’s Revenge, I think Sullivan was trying to make some kind of artistic statement. For once, he included his whole self in one of his movies—all the while hoping nobody would recognize the truth. Hiding in plain sight, as it were.

  “Another possibility: Sullivan might have wanted to be found out. The world does not like to be fooled, and he’d kept that secret for a long time. He let his career control him. Sullivan was the true manikin all along, a puppet who let the studio pull his strings. That’s a heavy burden, and he must have wished for strength to be free of it.

  “So you want to know what happened to him? I’m pretty sure Grant Sullivan’s still around, but he’s not making movies anymore. There never was a third season of Mason for Hire. Once he’d come out of the closet, the network couldn’t use him anymore for their tough guy private detective show. He wasn’t convincing any longer.

  “And maybe he was never that convincing to begin with. I’ve watched some of those movies again, and the queer subtext is so obvious—I can’t believe any of us were ever fooled. I wonder if it’s because I’ve grown up, and his movies lost the appeal they held for me as a child. But maybe something happened to the movies, too, a kind of retroactive magic after I crushed the life out of that awful homunculus.

  “You can decide for yourself, Celia. I’ve got a DVD of The Manikin’s Revenge. It’s not the 1985 release, exactly: it’s one of those comedy shows where they add jokes over a film’s original soundtrack, as if audience members shouted comments at the screen.

  “They’re merciless about Sullivan’s performance, especially his voice and the way he walks. They make jokes about the manikin, too. Doesn’t seem that funny to me, but it’s supposedly a popular episode among the show’s fans.”

  Chapter V

  Shawn headed to the nurse’s station on the third floor of the Kennestone Hospital. He identified himself to a sleepy eyed on-duty nurse, said his daughter should have been moved from the Emergency Department. “She’s here. I called ahead. I’ve been driving for hours.”

  “She might still be in transit.” The computer monitor reflected in the nurse’s glasses, and he thought he saw a game of solitaire flick off the screen. Her fingers went to the keyboard. “Spell the last name, please.”

  He did, and spelled Celia’s first name, too, since people often got it wrong.

  The duty nurse wasn’t typing quickly enough. She made a “tsk” sound, pressed the backspace then typed again.

  Shawn couldn’t help but feel frustrated and afraid. This was the first time he and his daughter had been apart for any extended period. It was one thing for her to be at summer camp. Another thing entirely for her to be in the hospital after an unexplained fainting spell.

  “She’ll be in Room 217.” Not the nurse, but a man’s voice from behind him. “Celia’s fine, but they’re running more tests.”

  Jack’s dad.

  Shawn turned around.

  Edward looked older than the last time he’d seen him—partly because he was older, partly due to the late hour, the worry lines and dark circles under his eyes. Jack never much resembled his dad: different body types and faces, the father rounder in both respects. Still, Shawn could trace glimmers of his partner’s features in this older man—the eyes, the way his brows arched as he talked; and the voice itself, scratchier and embracing the Southern accent Jack worked so hard to suppress, but still comparable. Meeting him again brought unexpected comfort, but pain as well.

  Edward’s reaction was also mixed. He kept a polite distance, even though he typically greeted even strangers with a hug. What were he and Shawn now? Not family, surely. Those ties were broken once Jack died.

  You broke them, Shawn. You didn’t have to.

  That unspoken accusation lingered between them, a deep hurt he knew Jack’s father would always carry. But Edward had that irrational optimism, too, was probably thinking Celia’s accident could be a precious gift, an occasion to reunite the family.

  His wife would announce something like, Welcome back. Edward and I have decided to forgive you.

  But this visit wasn’t about them. Shawn was here to see his daughter, judge for himself that she was okay.

  He wasn’t even sure how Jack’s parents had gotten involved. Charlotte’s message arrived before the hospital call, but he liste
ned to it afterward: she wasn’t quite clear, said something about the camp or the hospital contacting them because Celia had fainted. Charlotte mentioned how she and her husband had been talking with Celia, and she spoke in familiar terms—as if she suddenly knew everything about her granddaughter. She implied Shawn was aware of this new arrangement. Approved of it.

  He looked past Jack’s father to a small waiting alcove a few doors down from the nurse’s station. A row of plastic chairs was bolted to the wall, with another row facing. Charlotte sat in one of the wall chairs, her hands folded in her lap, watching them.

  “They talked about a head X-ray,” Edward said. “Just a precaution. She fainted, but she didn’t hit her head. I caught her.”

  “You were there when it happened? At the camp?”

  “No, at our house. We’d been driving for a while, and I guess she got light-headed.”

  “You took her?” Shawn could barely process what he was hearing. He assumed there had been a few phone calls or emails Celia neglected to mention. Instead, Jack’s parents had tracked his daughter to summer camp. They somehow managed to steal her away and drag her to their home—for the weekend? For longer?

  “No, the ambulance brought her. We didn’t want to risk anything. But she’s okay, I’m telling you.” He winced as he spoke, as if afraid he would start yelling. Or had already been yelling.

  His arms might have been waving, too. Something caught Charlotte’s attention, anyway, told her that Edward hadn’t managed the greeting as well as she’d hoped. She stood and took measured steps toward them, preparing to pick up the pieces.

  Shawn turned away from her, back to the nurse receptionist. “I want to speak to a doctor. Someone treated my daughter, right?”

  The woman consulted her computer screen. “It’s not updated yet. Once they check her in, we’ll have better information.”

  “But I’m her father. I should know—”

  “I talked to the intern downstairs,” Charlotte cut in. She’d stepped close beside him, and now lifted her hand as if she wanted to straighten up the items on the receptionist’s counter. “He thinks it’s probably dehydration.”