by David Vann
“Almost there,” Gary says. “Can it. You can be crazy with me, but don’t do that to Mom and Dad.”
“Yes sir.”
Houses along the water and their own coming into view, long narrow lot with hedge and lawn out front, the small sturdy white house with its bay window for breakfast, where his father always sits and is sitting now, fat blank face staring at the lake.
They roll in the driveway along pansies and petunias his mother plants constantly, and the pomegranate tree. Side entrance up red concrete steps. Large two-story garage ahead where a hundred antlers are stored, hung in the rafters. The house and the garage places that refuse to be only that, storing too much time and memory.
“I feel like my brain is going to break from all the memories here,” Jim says.
“Nothing like that,” Gary says. “Say nothing like that to them. I mean it.”
“What do I say then?”
“I don’t know. Say it was good to see your kids. Talk about what Fairbanks is like now. Just play pinochle and talk about our usual whatever.”
“Well that all sounds solid. Should get me through a couple minutes.”
“Time isn’t this thing you have to get through. It’s nothing. Just live your life.”
“But that’s the whole thing. Right there.”
“Just can it. Seriously.”
“Yeah, you should be a therapist.”
“No thanks.”
“What a loss to the world of therapy.”
Gary is up the steps and has opened the creaky screen door. Not one of them ever bothering to give it a bit of oil over the last forty years. It made the same sound when Jim was a kid.
Pavement uneven beneath him, cracks and the steps threatening to shear off. Ants everywhere, even in winter. His memories of them are only in summer.
The small entryway, like a pantry off the kitchen painted yellow and never used for anything. Then the green beans on the stove in a pot, where they’ve been cooking for hours or days. Just beans and water, no effort at flavor, sodden mush that could be swallowed without chewing. Direct nutrition. The same stainless steel pots from his childhood, same stovetop, nothing ever changing here. Same dark green linoleum, all overwhelming. Long narrow kitchen with his father sat at the end in the bay window and his mother at her station at the sink, hands resting on a dish towel.
“Hi Mom,” Jim says, because it’s silent and they all seem to be waiting.
“Well,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says. “That about sums it up.”
Her lips tight, worried, and so many wrinkles now in her face. His own mother grown old. And so he’s been here long enough. It’s not early, really. Thirty-nine was old in earlier times.
“How have you been, Mom?” he asks, making an effort, and her lips open a bit, her head tilting to the side in worry and love.
“Oh we’re fine,” she says. “Busy with the church. Easter.”
He doesn’t know what to say in response to that. What do you say to nothing?
“Wow,” he finally says. “Preparing early.”
She’s wearing a blue floral pattern, something she’s had for decades now. You could call it a shirt except it’s too thick and goes too low and has a kind of ruffled collar, almost like in Shakespeare’s time.
“What do you call that kind of shirt?” he asks.
She clutches at the fabric between her breasts with one hand and looks worried. “Just a blouse I guess,” she says.
“You’ve had it for so long.”
“Yes.”
“I think my head is going to split from how nothing has changed here. I could be fifteen years old and everything looks the same. You look old now, and you’re bigger, and you have that loose neck, but otherwise you could be the same. You have the same hairdo as then, seriously the same hairdo you had in 1955.”
“Jim!” She says it in her sharp way to discipline. Leaning back slightly, as if trying to see him from a distance.
“Sorry,” Jim says, and he wonders why Gary has said nothing, not stepping in to tackle him or shut him up. His father is watching, fat hangdog cheeks and bald head, only tufts of white on the sides, sun spots and red-brown skin. Hands hanging, one over the back of the seat and the other off the edge of the table, thick fingers like potato wedges sat too long in the display. “Well?” Jim asks. “Anything to say, Dad?”
“You don’t talk like that,” his father says.
“Yeah,” Jim says. “Yeah. And what was the point of that?”
“We stopped in Cloverdale on the way,” Gary says. “Had a corn dog, but we should still be hungry enough for lunch. It was a while ago.”
“Well good,” his mother says. “Go take a seat at the dining table and I’ll serve the food.”
“And Dad, you’re wearing the same thing.” A zippered thin green sweater, but not loose knit. Made for hunting, a bit of camo. “I don’t know what that’s called either. It’s not a sweater, not a jacket, not a vest. What do you call that?”
“That’s enough,” his father says.
“Have you been fat that long? When did it first happen? Because I remember you stretching whatever that is since I was a kid. And is it really the same one, or did you just buy the same thing over and over?”
Gary has a hand on his arm now. Another wrestling match is necessary, apparently, right here in the kitchen tossed in with the overcooked green beans and the hidden stock of a hundred worn green hunting sweaters and a hundred blue floral blouses burying them until they’ll disappear into the sinkhole that’s opening up right here. Jim can see himself falling through eternity wrapped in the clothing of his parents, a kind of birth vision, arms and legs ruffling.
But Gary doesn’t do more. Just holds his arm, and somehow that has stopped Jim at least for the moment, because of the vision.
“Camo in the kitchen,” Jim says. “Because you wouldn’t want anyone to see you here. Have to remain invisible.”
And his father does that, on cue. Doesn’t say a thing or change his expression, which is of nothing, bovine.
“Cud,” Jim says. “All cud. This house, this life and family and all our years. I would shoot you just to get a reaction.”
“Jim!” his mother says.
“Sorry,” he says. “You’re right. Everything is fine. It really was fine. Empty but that’s okay. I don’t know why it stopped being okay.”
“It’s just the pain in your head,” his mother says.
“Yeah. And more than that.”
“Just the pain in your head,” she says. “You need to get sinus surgery or better medication, or some pills for your mood, something. It’s just a chemical imbalance.”
The earnest look on her face, believing all this and wanting to help. Isn’t our mother going to be the last person we think of, right at the end, however we end? Why isn’t it in her power to do more? Why can’t family stop anything or reach anything? “I wish you could do more,” Jim says. “I wish you could help. I need help. I really do. I can’t find my way back, and I don’t know what happened.”
“We’re here to help you,” Gary says.
“Like the trees.”
“What?”
“The trees want to help too. They’re trying their best. Just can’t talk and don’t have arms and can’t go anywhere because they don’t have legs. But they’re doing what they can.”
“It’s just the pain,” his mother says. “Can’t they give you something for that?”
“I’m on pills now for depression or whatever. The roller coaster. Trying to re-lay tracks on flat ground. A coaster that just goes round and round but you don’t need any restraining bar because it’s not going to do a loop or roll or climb.”
“How can the doctor talk like that?”
“He didn’t. He just said the pills will make everything worse for two weeks, and good luck to you pilgrim.”
“None of this makes sense,” she says.
“That’s right.”
“You we
re always so bright, and so happy.”
“I wasn’t happy.”
“Yes you were.”
“Okay. I was happy all the time.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Talk like that.”
“You mean agree with you?”
“This isn’t you.”
“It’s all that’s left, whatever it is. What else could be called me?”
She looks down, turns back to the sink, folds a small dish towel and then smooths it, over and over, with one palm and then another. Floral pattern again, but pink, small imaginary flowers, more perfect than real ones but faded from so many washings. Her mouth open just a bit.
“You look so worried,” he says.
“Well I am.”
Her breath slow and labored, her whole body tense. Her chin a kind of loose bulb but even that looks tense.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “None of this is something I’m trying to do to any of you.”
“Well we should have lunch,” she says. “Before the venison is cold. You can carry the platter to the table.”
So Jim lifts the yellowed ceramic platter with its pilings of venison breaded and fried, dark crumbed shards. Simple food but good, and he’s ready to try. Just sit and eat and chat about nothing and think nothing.
The dining room so small and carpeted, low ceilinged and dark, one curtained window looking out to the lake. Sideboard with glossy plates and cutlery, a tray of photos and knickknacks in front of the window, too many things loading this place. Small bedside table holding a thick yellow phone book and the old green phone. A step down to the living room through an archway. California architecture, small but with archways after the stars.
“Looks good, Mom,” Gary is saying, and Jim has somehow already sat and has a piece of venison on his plate. He missed a few moments of transition, not sure where they went. He wants to agree but can’t say anything, only nods his head.
Green beans wet and exhausted beside the meat, and scalloped potatoes thick with cheese.
“Dear Lord,” his mother says, her hands clasped together in prayer. “Thank you for this food and our family joined together, and please help my boy Jim. Help guide him and comfort him and make your love clear. Help get us all through this difficult time. Please Lord, and thank you. Amen.”
“Amen,” Gary says. Jim and his father remain silent. Jim hasn’t thought even to fold his hands.
“Do you believe, Dad?” Jim asks. “Did you ever believe?”
“You don’t ask that question,” his mother says.
“I want to know, Dad.”
“Let’s eat,” his father says.
“Do you believe in god. Did you ever believe in god. That’s what I’m asking.”
“I know what you’re asking.”
“Well then?”
“Because you have a problem doesn’t mean I have a problem.”
“But I come from you.”
“A long time ago.”
“You made me. And I want to know what made me. Where do I get this feeling that I’m a piece of shit? Is it from you or is it from Mom?”
“Jim,” his mother says. “You were in the church all your life.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Well you make it sound like it was bad, like we hurt you.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“You need to take some responsibility,” Gary says. “You made your own choices. Cheating on your wife. Divorce. Rhoda. Living on your own. Not seeing your family. And even not going to church. Your choice, as I said yesterday. I don’t go to church, and I don’t feel guilty about it.”
They’re all still cutting pieces of venison to eat. Somehow the meal is still happening, knives and forks working. He can taste the butter. Fried in butter, everything they eat, with these same breadcrumbs. Catfish, crappie, bluegill, steelhead, venison. Only the birds are cooked differently, basically just stuck in the oven plain.
Jim chews and chews, rubbery and gamey, blood in the butter, and finally swallows. “You’re right,” he says. “It is my fault. I guess that’s the problem. Somehow the fact that I destroyed my own life makes me feel sorry for myself, and that’s even more dangerous, the self-pity. I don’t know how it works or how to stop it. I want it to be someone else’s fault because then I’d be fighting on my side at least and might get somewhere.”
“How can you talk like that?” his mother asks. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It does. If I can’t fight for me there’s no way out. And for some reason I haven’t been able to for a long time.”
“All you have to do is stop.”
“That’s what Gary says.”
“Well he’s right.”
“Shut up for just a sec. I’m thinking. I feel like I’m close to something.”
“Telling your mother to shut up,” his father says. “You leave now.”
“Stop being small for just a minute. Just shut up and let me think.” Jim is barely holding on to some recognition, something true about how he might find a way to fight for himself, some spatial sense of that riding alongside his current self, only an arm’s length away, something he can almost touch.
“Leave!” his father yells, and this is so rare, so unbelievably rare for him to raise his voice, to respond or care about anything, all they can do is stare at him, all of them.
“It’s you, Dad,” Jim says. “You’re finally here. Welcome to the family. We last saw you about thirty years ago.”
His father rises and comes around the table faster than Jim would have thought possible, more nimble, a fist grabbing the back of Jim’s collar, knuckles against his spine, hoisting. He doesn’t resist, finds his legs under him and is marched through the kitchen out the screen door and down the cracked concrete steps and still that fist pushing him forward along the driveway toward the road. So hot here in summer, baking, so many years of memories of this concrete, cold and wet now, and his father stops the moment Jim’s boots hit the dirt and gravel portion.
His father lets go and walks over to the gate, swings it closed now, a gate wide enough for the whole driveway, never used, and Jim had in fact forgotten about it. But now he’s on the other side. The gate blocking him from the driveway, and the hedge blocking him from the lawn. A small no-man’s-land before the road. He never realized until now that this small turnaround area was not part of the home. Anytime he played here as a kid he was in foreign territory without even knowing it and could have been lost.
His father has not paused for conversation but has gone back inside. No surprises there.
So Jim traverses the no-man’s-land and then the road, not even looking for traffic, not caring, but of course is not run over, and when he reaches the other side he wants to continue to the lake, the small beach and tules, but a wire fence has been put up by the association just recently for insurance concerns. Someone might fall or drown and sue the local homeowners, because that all makes sense. So he climbs the fence, feeling like a convict on escape day, struggles at the top because the toes of his boots are too big and rounded to get any grip in the links. And the wire thin and hard on his hands. But he gets his legs over and jumps down. One hand catches a bit and he can imagine a finger popping off but it stays intact for now.
Chunks of concrete here before the beach, and maybe that was the concern. His son has a long scar on one shin from them.
So much litter along the water’s edge, blue and red soda cans and white Styrofoam making a kind of flag in the tules, and the stink of green scum and rot, bloated dead carp. The lake was always putrid at the edges but the water itself was clear. Now huge mats of algae are clogging it up and turning it all green even in winter.
He makes divots in the rough sand, what there is of it, remembers a beach and swimming, but how could he ever have thought of this as a beach? He shot ducks from right here back when there were ducks and it was legal. He remembers the spray for mosquitoes, also, all the po
ison spread on the water. Remembers waves, very rare, and flooding over the road and lawn and up the first two concrete steps to the house. Remembers how brown the water was then. Remembers kissing Jane Williams right here, standing in this same place how many years ago on a summer night, trying to feel under her bra, because hunks of fat are everything.
The water farther out, with the light reflected, looks cold, one of a thousand shades of gray that water and sky can do. This day not the same as any other, resistant. It won’t be shaped by his memories. And he has no idea what to do. Stand here or go back inside or walk somewhere else and leave. How is he supposed to decide?
All he can think of is Rhoda. Whenever there’s a moment not filled with something else she comes flooding in, unstoppable. The ache for her. She’s somewhere in Lakeport. She’s purposely not told him where, but he can find her. He knows where her sisters and brother live, every one of their houses, knows the restaurant they own, the pool company, knows where they eat and drink. No one can hide in this town.
So he climbs the fence again, wire digging into the back of his leg when he straddles the top, and jumps down onto the safe side. The horrors and dangers of the waterfront escaped, the homeowners breathing their collective sigh. He’d like to slip a giant butter knife under the town, just at the water’s edge, and then flip the whole thing into the lake.
14
The driveway gate is not locked so he swings it back to the pansies. Resistance is futile. He is the unstoppable Jim, Giant Jim, riding a new and improved euphoria, euphoria with purpose.
He gets in the truck, where Gary has left his keys in the ignition, one more sign of growing up in a small town, and backs down the drive in a sober fashion, slowly, so as not to alarm anyone. They should be running out of the house now and stopping him, but of course that isn’t happening. His father sitting in the window again, gazing expressionless, Jim in his passing no different than clouds in the sky.
He backs into the street without even looking, willing the quick end, disappointed as always, and drives toward the center of town. The diner Rhoda’s sister and brother-in-law own, a good place to start. Except that then she will be alerted. He takes the bend to Safeway and his dental office and pulls into the parking lot. He needs a plan. Here is where Rhoda worked for him, where they first met, where they first fucked. A sacred place of origin, capable of pointing the way. A depressing little brown building, a woman emerging now with her son after a bit of torture. Causing pain every day. It’s supposed to be one of the reasons dentists have the highest suicide rate, swapping every year or so with psychiatrists, who are obviously fucked. Otherwise why would they be in that profession? But the dental suicides are a little more mysterious maybe.