Cyril in the Flesh

by Ramsey Hootman

  “I never asked you for anything.”

  “Oh, but you’d sure as hell take it from me, wouldn’t you?”

  He glances at the kids’ bedroom door. “Jesus Christ, you’re gonna wake—”

  “Don’t you fucking lecture me about my own goddamn kids.”

  He retreats to the kitchen, where the pots are still soaking in sudsy dishwater. Why won’t she just leave him alone? “Look,” he says, opening a cupboard. He pulls out a package of Double-Stuf Oreos. “I’m gonna spend the night in the barn.” There’s a folding cot in the back about the size of his prison bunk. “Tomorrow I’ll—”

  “What, leave? Run and hide?” She spits the words. “Fucking coward.”

  He lets himself through the laundry room and out the back door. The screen door slams behind him, and then immediately screeches open again.

  “I don’t care what you want,” she calls after him, as he plods down the hill. “Or whatever the hell you’re afraid of. You fucking owe me.”

  He is back within the hour. Not to apologize or capitulate, or even because all the Oreos are gone (though they are), but for the most infuriatingly banal reason in the world: he needs to take a shit. Fortunately, she doesn’t burst out of the bedroom to renew the confrontation. As he does his business, occupying himself with a game on his phone, there is a small, regular noise in the background which he assumes to be produced by the water heater in the hall. She’d replaced it a month past, but the new unit had been making ticking noises at odd hours. But as he steps out of the bathroom, the flush of the toilet fading away, he realizes that what he has been listening to are her muffled sobs.

  Is she an idiot? He knows she is not. But he is not worth even a fraction of this melodrama. Never before, and certainly not now. “Shut the fuck up,” is what he wants to tell her. Instead, he stands motionless in the hall outside her door.

  Abruptly, she falls silent. Having realized, perhaps, that his footsteps have not plodded back outside. Waiting.

  “I don’t deserve to be loved,” he says.

  Her voice, when she answers, is bitter: “But I do.”

  What he spends the next hour doing, before he returns to the barn, is so patently obvious it’s not worth recording. (Hint: it involves the fridge.) It doesn’t help. It never does. It is only ever a momentary distraction, a temporary anesthetic. But if it’s any consolation, this time he doesn’t even achieve that much relief.

  Fuck her. It’s what she thinks she wants, isn’t it? Just fuck her, and get it over with. She’ll realize it was a huge fucking mistake, and that will be that.

  He can’t.

  What he did to her before was bad enough. She was completely ignorant. He took advantage of her. And now—now she thinks she knows. She thinks she understands what he did and who he is and what she wants. But she doesn’t. Not really. She doesn’t know all he has thought and done. All that he has wanted to do. The things he didn’t say. And if she was vulnerable then...?

  She’s twice a mother now. A widow, now. She is dying, now.

  And it’s not just about letters, this time. Not just mental manipulation, as bad as that was. No. Doing what she thinks she wants—what he has made her want—would be rape in every sense of the word.

  It is, perhaps, a very fine an arbitrary line.

  But it is a line. And it is one he will not cross.

  So he does what he has always done. He hides. He eats.

  And he writes. Not pretty. Not persuasive. But as much of the garbage piled inside his head as he can bear to disgorge. All of these stupid fucking words. He tries to tell the truth.

  If, somehow, she can read this, and still claim to want this asshole in her—

  No. Damn it. Get it right, for fucking once.

  Robin. If you read this, and still claim to want me in your bed—

  What am I supposed to do? I could never tell you no.

  Chapter 27

  Robin

  Jesus Christ, Cyril.

  Christ.

  I don’t even know where to begin. I mean, I knew you were fucked in the head, but reading this is like looking at you through coke-bottle glasses or in some kind of warped funhouse mirror.

  Let’s just get this out of the way first, so we’re 100% clear:

  You are fat. Yes. I am aware. Oh my God, am I aware. Thank you.

  But if I can get my breasts cut off and still be sexy, guess what? You can be fat and attractive, too. You have goddamn dimples when you smile. (Not the smirk. Your real smile.) Do you know how many guys can pull off that half-assed perpetual 5 o’clock shadow? I love how your face is soft and scratchy at the same time. (Yes: because you are fat.)

  Your hugs. God. You know who hugs like that? My dad. After he died, I had these dreams where he was hugging me again. I’d wake up crying, because even in my dreams I knew he was gone. Remember after Tavis died, when you came with me to Nora’s ultrasound and I broke down? You hugged me then, and even though I hated you somehow it still felt like going home. After you went to prison, the dreams started again, but it wasn’t my dad anymore. It was you.

  And your voice. Oh my God, Cyril, your voice is like whiskey. Sometimes when you read bedtime stories to the kids I just sit in the other room, listening. Why do you think I’m always asking you to sing when you play the piano? Complete fucking turn-on.

  There. Now it's in ink, so you can’t edit it out or twist it around later.

  You know, I think the only completely honest thing contained in this flaming dumpster fire of self-deception is the fact that you lie best by omission. Here’s the thing, though, Cyril: You’re no longer living by proxy. You’re here, with me, and I have eyes and ears. So let me fill in a few blanks.

  How about teaching my son to make macaroni? You skipped right over that scene, didn’t you? Let me tell you how it went. He got frustrated and angry and tried to quit, but you stuck with him. You talked him through every step. You made jokes, and he laughed. And when he sat down to dinner—dinner that he made himself—oh my God, his smile. Did you legit not notice me trying not to cry?

  I haven’t seen my son smile like that since you went to prison. He wasn’t old enough to understand why you left. And then his grandma died. And I got sick. And then fucking COVID cut him off from all his friends. He’s so empathetic, so open to everything, everyone—he carried it like a backpack full of bricks. You lifted the weight of the world off of his little shoulders. Do you have any idea what that means to me? You helped him be a kid again.

  And Nora. Daily meltdowns. Sometimes hourly. Neither Greta nor I could get her to sit down for more than ten seconds. Forget school. Then you come in and teach her how to play the piano. And don’t give me that “oh she has natural talent” bullshit. Yeah, maybe, but she’s also five. She can’t even brush her teeth without running off halfway through. But she can play Hot Cross Buns and Twinkle Twinkle, because you sit with her at that bench every single day, redirecting her every ten seconds without ever losing your cool. Her confidence has skyrocketed. She’s stopped crying at night. Hell, Cyril, she’s even started eating her goddamn vegetables. Yeah, you’re a monster, all right.

  Then there’s how you make everything a game for the kids, and make sure they're fed and dressed and bathed—pretty sure this is the cleanest my kids have ever been—and really, truly play with them. You make sure each one of them gets a little one-on-one time with me every day, just like you always, always make sure I have a clean mask in the car and a fresh glass of water by the bed.

  That’s a lot of fucking blanks, Cyril.

  I can already hear the excuses you’re making in your head. It’s not you, it’s just the kids naturally maturing. They're just excited because you’re someone new. It could have been anyone. And even if it is your doing, none of it matters, because oh my God you killed your best friend.

  Please.

  Maybe I didn’t know who Tavis truly was, but I lived with the man. He was nobody’s fool. He was military, Cyril. Not just a grunt, but a
Navy corpsman attached to Marines. He knew the risks he was taking far better than you possibly could. You sat behind a keyboard. He was living on the front lines.

  Maybe you wished for his death. Maybe you could have done more to stop it from happening. But you did not get Tavis killed. That burden belongs to the Afghan who wired the bomb. It belongs to the officer who ordered Tavis to be in the wrong place at the right time. And it belongs to Tavis, who decided the life of a kid half a world away was the hill he was willing to die on. Don’t dishonor his sacrifice by trying to rob him of his agency.

  Here's a question. Tavis had everything—looks, friends, talent—and still called you his closest friend. Why? He never invited you out with the guys. Or to our house for dinner. Now that I think about it, did he ever even show himself in public with you, anywhere? No. He was happy to come to your place. Alone. I don’t have a lot of friends, but even I know that’s not how friendship works.

  When I first met the two of you, you were a brilliant student with a smart mouth, if a little... rough around the edges. I resented you because you took Tav’s time, but mostly? I was intimidated. Everyone assumed you’d end up in Silicon Valley making millions of dollars. But by the time Tavis died, you were a six-hundred-pound recluse. You don’t get like that without someone to enable you.

  Consider why you’re so desperate to paint yourself the villain. Maybe it’s because, deep down, you know that if you aren’t the antagonist in this story, you’re the tool.

  Is that why you can’t trust me? Are you afraid that I, too, might be manipulating you? Or have you just spent so much time lying to yourself that it’s impossible to recognize the truth?

  You’re a liar, Cyril. But I’m not.

  Believe me when I say I want you.

  Stage 5

  Acceptance

  Chapter 28

  Reader, he fucks the girl.

  If morbid curiosity demands to know how a four-hundred-fifty-pound guy with a gut like a half-inflated inner tube sticks his dick in a chick, feel free to consult Google for all the fat fetish porn nobody ever wanted to see.

  “You’re terrible at this, you know that?” she says, peering over his shoulder as he types. “It was warm. And comfortable. And loving.” She squeezes his arm. “You were nervous.”

  He. He was nervous.

  “Maybe you have issues acknowledging your own feelings, but I’m not obligated to sustain your clever literary device. You were nervous. You said a lot of stupid, vulgar things. But you were funny, too. You listened, and you tried. You were good to me.”

  Now who’s a liar? It was like fucking a whale.

  “I like whales.”

  The only reason he is still composing this absurd narrative is because she begged him to continue, so if she doesn’t want him to delete the entire document, she had better quit reading over his fucking shoulder.

  “Fine, fine. I’m out.”

  Jesus.

  The morning after. He wakes to the rhythmic crunch of swinging pickaxes. It is Monday, and the kids are enjoying their twenty minutes of Minecraft before, from their perspective, breakfast magically materializes on the table. Next to him, Robin sleeps with mouth slightly open, one arm out-thrown over her head. Beneath the comforter, her toes curl against his calf. He watches her breathe, revisiting every curve of her body in his mind. She jerks, slightly, when the pickaxe chunk is drowned out by a cartoonish explosion and Nora’s shriek of delight. The kids are detonating whatever they’ve built.

  Tavis died with the roar of combusting ammonium nitrate in his ears so that five years later, his best friend could lie next to his wife, listening to his kids gleefully exclaim over laying waste to a world on a screen.

  “Hey,” she says, smiling sleepily. She stretches, groaning, and reaches for him.

  If she thinks this monumental climax is a moment of transformation, of redemption, of transcendence for him—well, she hasn’t been paying attention. Wishful thinking. Try again. Here is how this asshole responds, the morning after she’s given herself to him: he grunts and rolls out of bed.

  “Cyril?” Her fingers, as he shrugs away, trace soft tracks down his arm.

  He grabs a change of clothes from the closet and leaves the room, pretending not to see the disappointment on her face. The hurt and hope deflated. But he sees. Oh, he absolutely does.

  What does she expect? Consummation changes nothing. It’s a moment in time, no less and no more. He showers and makes breakfast and runs the kids to Greta’s and Robin goes to work upstairs and he puts the laundry in the dryer and life goes on just as it did before.

  He doesn’t call her to lunch, but she comes anyway. It is a silent meal.

  “Cyril,” she begins again, finally, inevitably. “I realize I project an aura of unassailable confidence, but we just did the most intimate thing two people can do and now you won’t even look at me and I’m starting to feel just a tad insecure. Can you just—”

  “Look, I did what you wanted. I didn’t agree to massage your ego, too.”

  She just looks at him. Then she draws in a breath and lets out a heavy sigh.

  “What? Did you think this meant something?”

  She tosses her fork down onto the table and stands. “I know it did.”

  “You believe whatever you want to believe.” She was an idiot to trust him. He’s only giving her what she deserves.

  “You realize this is completely transparent, right?” She stacks her cup on her plate and picks up both. “You’re in love with me and you’re terrified to admit it and last night you made yourself vulnerable for ten whole minutes and now you’re scared of rejection so you’re pushing me away.”

  He snorts. “Yeah... you know what?” He uses his fork to rearrange the potato salad on his plate before inserting it into his mouth. “I’m gonna do us both a favor here and be honest.”

  “Please do.”

  “It actually just wasn’t that good.”

  She spends the next week meticulously replicating every detail of Victorian gingerbread trim from the lower half of the house to the upper exterior, hanging out of windows and clambering over scaffolding like she’s actively trying to get herself killed. Outside of what’s strictly necessary for the care and feeding of children, she does not speak to him, and he does not wait for her to ask him to move back to the couch.

  It’s not until the nine-day mark that Seth, bless his oblivious little heart, finally detects something amiss. “Hey,” he says at bedtime, “is Mom mad at you?”

  There's no real way around this question. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I hurt her feelings.”

  “Can’t you just say sorry?”

  “I could, yeah.” And she’d come running right back, because apparently there’s nothing he can do or say that will convince her he’s not worth her time.

  “Why don’t you?”

  Because it’s better this way. “Because I don’t want to.”

  Seth’s eyes get big. As if the idea of an adult being intentionally spiteful is a concept he has heretofore never dared consider.

  “Hey. Asshole.”

  He hits pause on Minecraft, which he’s started playing even when the kids are gone. Right now, they’re doing school at Greta’s, and he’s sitting at the dining table with a bag of goldfish crackers. “Oh, are we back to that?” He prefers it, actually.

  “Come upstairs.”

  “Not if it means—”

  “It means if you want to keep living in my house you better mud some damn sheetrock.”

  And because he has no right to refuse her anything, even now, he grabs a handful of goldfish and trudges up the stairwell.

  “I’ll tape, you mud,” she says, all business. She hands him a giant putty knife and an aluminum pan filled with goop.

  “Yeah, uh, once again, I have no idea what we’re doing, so you’re gonna have to—”

  “Look.” Rather than explain, which she’s terrible at even when she bothers, she
takes back the pan and putty-spatula-thing and demonstrates, scooping gray goo and applying it to the crack between two pieces of drywall. She scrapes the spatula clean against the edge of the pan, then uses it to point down the length of the crack, all the way to the corner. “Just keep going. Bucket’s over there when you need a refill.”

  It’s comparable to icing a cake with Jiffy. His first few attempts are messy, and a glob lands on the subfloor, but then he catches the rhythm.

  “Scrape your knife every time,” she says, from behind him. “Otherwise, it’ll dry and then I gotta scrub it with steel wool. And make sure the edges are smooth.”

  “Aren’t the irregularities part of the character?”

  “No. Oh, and don’t go too wide.”

  He straightens to level a glare at her. “Look, you want help, or do you want to do this yourself?”

  “What I want is to get this done quickly and not have to come back and redo your shitty-ass work.”

  He muds. Behind him, she dips long strips of white paper into a five-gallon bucket of water before applying it over the crack he’s filled with mud. She’s twice as quick as him, but each time she catches up to him with the tape she goes back and runs over their work with a wider spatula, smoothing tape into mud and mud into wall. When the sun hits the front window, she opens everything up and turns on her industrial floor fan, orienting it so the air flows straight through from one side of the house to the other. The windows, hallways, and rooms are all arranged for optimum air flow. He is still drenched in sweat.

  Three rooms, a bathroom, and the hall. It takes four hours to work around to the spot where they’d begun. He scrapes the spatula one more time before dropping it into her bucket.

  Robin looks down into the milky-white water. “What are you doing?”