by Wally Lamb
Our real father could be anyone in the whole wide world.
Anyone but Ray.
6
Hi Dominick,
Thad & I are off to mixology class, we’re learning cream drinks tonite! Guess who called? CONNIE CHUNG!!
She wants to interview your brother. (Details later!)
If you have one of my Lean Cuisines for supper, could you not eat the vegetable lasagna. Thanks!
Love, Joy
P.S. Call Henry Rood!!! (That guy’s a pain!)
I read the note without really reading it. My brain wouldn’t stop flashing sights and sounds from Hatch: Thomas’s leg chains, his shabby Bible going through that X-ray machine. I walked around the condo, yanking down blinds, putting on lights. Passing the TV, I turned it on for the relief of the squawking.
In the bedroom, I eased myself out of my jeans and into a pair of sweats. If I felt sore now, I was probably going to feel a hell of a lot worse tomorrow. The first thing I was going to do was get my brother out of that snake pit. Then I was going to get a lawyer and sue their asses off: the state of Connecticut, the hospital, that fucking guard who’d kneed me. I’d have that son of a bitch hanging by his balls before I was through. So what if I’d gotten a little out of control? So fucking what?
I went back in the kitchen for a beer. Did we still have those Tylenol with codeine left over from her root canal? Where had I seen those things? Not in the medicine cabinet, of course. Not with Joy’s “system.” Keeps aspirin in the phone book drawer, peanut butter in the fridge. “Where’s the vacuum cleaner bags?” I asked her the other day when I was cleaning out her car for her.
“Under the couch,” she says, like that was the most logical place in the world.
The answering machine had . . . six, seven, eight blinks. Fuck. I hit the button.
Beep. “This is Henry Rood, 67 Gillette Street, and this is my fourth call in three days.” I clamped my eyes shut and saw that peeling three-story Victorian headache of his. Saw Rood and his wife with their little his-and-hers potbellies, their rosy alcoholic faces. “I’d like to know when in hell you’re going to get back to work over here, if that’s not too much to ask. If at all possible, I would like to be able to look out my office window by the time the snow flies and not see your scaffolding!”
Before the snow flies: that was cute. Well, not tomorrow, Henry. There was no way in hell I was going to be climbing up and down ladders for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. I was going to be down at Hatch, figuring out how to spring my brother. Shit, I’d hire a fucking helicopter if I had to. Get him out of there like they did in that Charles Bronson movie the other night on HBO. . . .
Beep. A hang-up. A freebie.
Beep. Somebody at the something-something Examiner wanting to interview Thomas. When hell freezes over, pal. Order yourself a cream drink. Get in line behind Connie Chung.
Beep. Did I have this one right? Some guy from New York wanted to be my brother’s booking agent? I closed my eyes, leaned my forehead against the kitchen cabinet. Reached out and hit the stop button without looking. Shit, man, when was this whole thing going to end?
There were four cans of Lite in the refrigerator. Sixteen-ouncers. After I’d specifically told her not to get Lite beer. She was going to make a great bartender, the way she listened. I grabbed the beers by the plastic ring anyway. Yanked one, popped the top, chugged a third of the can nonstop.
I looked through the cupboard, the freezer. Fished through Joy’s Lean Cuisines. Considered the turkey tetrazzini. With the portions they gave you, eating those things was like foreplay. Plus you had to wait around for twenty minutes. There were a couple of hot dogs in there—left over from the Ice Age from the looks of them. A can of Chunky clam chowder in the cabinet—New England chowder, naturally, because I’d told her I liked Manhattan.
I hit the message button again. Beep. “Ray Birdsey. 3:30 P.M. 867-0359.”
Real considerate, Ray. You never can tell when I’m going to go prematurely senile and forget the family phone number. I told myself I should call him back. Let him know about the mix-up—about having to leave Thomas at Hatch. He was his stepfather, wasn’t he?
Beep. “This call is for Joy? From Jackie at A New You?” I picked up my beer again and drank. “Just wanted to let you know that the cocktail dress you were interested in is here now. We’re open every day till five-thirty. Thanks!”
If she was running up her charges again, she could forget about me bailing her out. What had we been invited to that she needed a new cocktail dress, anyway? I stopped the tape, took another swig.
I closed my eyes and saw Robocop again: ice-blue eyes, acne scars. What had he said? “This one’s crazier than the brother.” I opened up the soup and poured it into a pan. Threw in the dogs. Canned soup and hot dogs for supper. And where’s the woman of the house? Over at the community college learning how to mix cream drinks. Poor Ma was probably rolling over in her grave.
God, my testicles were killing me. Where were those codeine pills, anyway? I’d seen them someplace. . . . Okay, I admitted it: I’d acted like a jerk down there. Saw now that I should have played it calm and cool. Story of my life: acting like a hothead, especially when it came to Thomas. But did that give the bastard the right to knee me in the nuts? What I should probably do was get back in the truck and drive over to the emergency room at Shanley. Have them examine me. Get it documented in case I decided to sue. I should sue, too—go after that guy personally with some shark of a lawyer. Knee him back, in the bank account. I had witnesses, up to and including that social worker who’d poked her head out the door. Only there was no way in hell I was going back to any hospital tonight. I popped another beer. Went looking for those pills of Joy’s.
They were in the medicine cabinet after all, behind her Oil of Olay. She gets logical every once in a while. Has a temporary bout of organization. I washed down a couple of pills with the beer. “Caution: may cause drowsiness.” Shit, man, let it happen. Let this day end. . . . Ever since Thomas cut off his hand, I hadn’t slept for shit. Had woken up like clockwork every night at two-thirty. Gotten out of bed and sat there on the couch in my skivvies, channel-flipping past Sy Sperling and Hawaii Five-O and that muscle guy who claims a flat stomach’s the way to happily-ever-after. . . . When I closed the medicine cabinet, I saw Thomas’s face in the mirror.
Had they at least given him something to zonk him out down there? Was he at least sleeping through this nightmare? If anyone hurt him, they were going to have to answer to me. They were going to have to cry for mercy.
Back in the kitchen, I reread Joy’s note: cream drinks, Connie Chung. Good God. I balled up the note, shot it toward the garbage. Bricked it.
It figured, didn’t it? The one night I could have really used a little moral support and she’s out at bartender school with her little gay boyfriend. Thad the massage therapist. The Duchess. I’d started calling him that when we went over to him and his boyfriend’s house for dinner and he made those duchess potato things. Joy hates it when I call him that: the Duchess. “You’re homophobic,” she said the other night. Which I don’t really consider myself. My opinion is, they can do anything they want with each other as long as they don’t invite me to the party. . . . Homophobic. Where’d she get her psychology degree from? Geraldo Rivera Community College?
This was Joy’s big plan: she was going to learn bartending and then moonlight until she paid off the rest of her MasterCard. Back in ’87, after her second marriage busted up, she’d gone on a nine-month charging spree. Shopped till she dropped. She still owed $8,000, down from $12,500 since I loaned her a thousand and the collection agency started attaching her pay down at the health club.
That’s where I met Joy—down at Hardbodies. It was after Ma died. After Nedra Frank hijacked my grandfather’s life story and disappeared. Dessa and I had been history for about a year and a half by then, and it still hurt like hell. Leo was the one who kept bugging me to join up at Hardbodies with him; they
were running one of those two-for-one “buddy membership” specials. I kept telling him I didn’t have the time or the interest to join a gym, but he wore me down. Talked me into it. Fucking Leo, man: Mr. Car Salesman. Mr. Bullshitter. He could talk a Tahitian into buying snow tires.
We go way back, Leo and me—all the way back to 1966: summer school remedial algebra. He’s my ex-brother-in-law, too—married to Dessa’s sister, Angie. I was best man at Leo and Angie’s wedding, and he was best man at Dessa’s and mine. They got married three months after we did. It was your basic shotgun situation: Angie was three months pregnant. She lost it, though. Miscarried while they were on their honeymoon in Aruba. God, if that kid had lived, it’d be what? Seventeen by now? Eighteen? Everyone thought it was an accident—Angie’s pregnancy—but come to find out, she did it on purpose. Leo told me a while back, after they ended up in marriage counseling. She just came out with it one session: that she’d wanted to get married because her big sister was getting married. When she dropped that little bombshell, Leo was pissed !
She’s good people, Angie, but she’s always been jealous of Dessa. Always looking over her shoulder to see what Dessa has, who loves Dessa better than they love her. When the four of us were newlyweds—Leo and Angie, Dessa and me—we used to hang out together all the time. Go to the beach together, go to each other’s apartments and play cards. It got a little intense, though. All that unspoken competition. If Dessa hung baskets on our kitchen wall, Angie had to go home and hang some on hers. If we got a sleep-sofa, Angie and Leo would suddenly need a sleep-sofa. Angie finally got the upper hand when she had Shannon. Dessa and I had been trying for years to have a kid. Had been to two fertility specialists—put up with one humiliation after another. It’s funny, when you think about it, though: of the two couples, Dessa and I were the ones everyone predicted would last. Us included. “They’re never going to make it,” we used to say about Leo and Angie. They’d fight all the time, right in front of you. In front of Dessa and Angie’s parents, even. One time, we were all over there for dinner and Angie started chucking dinner rolls across the table at Leo. He’d said she was fat or something, I can’t remember. Easter, it was. Greek Easter.
The reason Leo wanted me to join the health club with him was because he’d auditioned for this new sports drink commercial down in New York, made the first cut, and then gotten stiffed. (Twenty years out of acting school, nine years selling cars, and he’s still waiting for his big break in show biz. You want to say to him, “Wake up, Leo! It didn’t happen!”) When he pressed the casting director about why he didn’t get the part, she told him that he was the right age—they were targeting baby boomers—but that they were looking for somebody with a “better bod.” Leo had begun to put on a few pounds around the middle; even I’d noticed it, and I don’t usually notice shit like that. It practically killed him when he heard that, though. She might as well have stuck a dagger in his heart. “Look at this, Birdseed,” he’d say, pinching a little of his spare tire. “A knit shirt, man. That’s the acid test.” He wouldn’t drop it. It was like he was facing his immortality or something. Leo’s more vain about his appearance than any woman I know. Always has been. Which is kind of funny, because Angie never bothers with makeup or dresses or any of that stuff. Lives in jeans and sweatshirts: what you see is what you get.
I actually started liking it down at Hardbodies, though. Not the weight machines or the exercise bikes or any of that shit. There aren’t enough hours in the day as it is and I’m going to waste time riding a bike to nowhere? What I liked was the racquetball. Smashing those little blue balls against four walls felt good to me in a way nothing else had for a long time. Felt therapeutic, I guess. Racquetball spends you, you know? Sweats the piss and vinegar right out of you. Those little rubber balls can be anybody.
I met Joy the first day, right when Leo and I walked in the front door. Joy’s the membership coordinator—the one who gives you the tour, then signs you up and takes the photos for your ID card. “Okay, there, good-looking,” she said, from behind the camera. “Smile!” Said it to me, not Leo, who’s never passed by a mirror he hasn’t fallen in love with. “I’ll laminate you guys and you can pick these up at the desk after your game,” Joy told us after she took our ID pictures.
“Or,” Leo said, leaning over the desk, “we can skip the game and you can just laminate us.”
She shut him down cold just by the way she looked at him. Iced the guy.
“You know, Leo,” I told him as we headed toward the locker room that day, “you’re like in a time warp or something. Women these days hate that kind of talk.”
“Bullshit,” Leo said. “You mark my words, Birdseed. That one would screw anything.” He held up the handle of his racquetball racquet. “She’d screw this. She’d screw you, for Christ’s sake!”
That first day, she was wearing one of those ass-hugging pink Lycra things and a pink sweatshirt knotted around her shoulders. Okay, good-looking. Smile! That one little comment was like a life raft tossed to a drowning man.
I asked her out two or three visits later; I’d just beaten Leo and some other guy three games in a row in this round robin thing we were playing. I was feeling a little cocky, I guess. Leo dared me to and I just did it. It wasn’t until after she’d said yes that the cold sweat crept over me. For one thing, Joy’s a very good-looking woman—short, blond, in great shape from all those machines at the club. For another thing, she’s fifteen years younger than I am. Joy was born in 1965. The year Sandy Koufax pitched his perfect game against the Cubs. The year after the Mustang came out. Joy’s mother’s only five years older than I am. Nancy. Now there’s a trip. On her fifth husband: Mr. and Mrs. Homeopathy. They’re always sending us yeast and extracts in the mail, which we keep for a while to be polite and then flush down the toilet. Joy’s last “stepfather” was a junkie.
It turned out better than I expected, though—Joy’s and my first date. It went great. I picked her up at work and we drove down to Ocean Beach. There was a full moon out; the sky was clear. We played Skee-ball, ate soft ice cream. Danced on the boardwalk to the music of these goofy father-and-son Elvis impersonators. The son was dressed all in black—young Elvis. The father was fat, white-jumpsuit Elvis. End-of-the-road Elvis, which, at Joy’s age, is the only Elvis she remembers. They took turns: first the son would do “Heartbreak Hotel,” and then the father would do “Hunka Hunka Burning Love.” It went back and forth. Everyone was dancing and singing along, and every guy there was checking out Joy. I don’t know, it just felt like I was back from the dead or something. Felt like: okay, Life After Dessa. This is doable after all.
I cut up the hot dogs and poured the soup in a bowl. Invented a new recipe: Clam & Hot Dog Chowder. I found some saltines that were so stale they were almost bendable. You say to her, “Joy, just twist the wrapper on the end so they’ll stay good,” and she stands there, looks at you like she’s from some other planet. Which, in some ways, it almost seems like. It’s the age difference. We both try and tell ourselves it doesn’t matter, but it does. How couldn’t it?
Here’s what Ray said when I told him we were living together: “Jesus God Almighty, she’s only twenty-three years old and she’s gone through two husbands already?” I hadn’t made any big announcement or anything—hadn’t sent him a notice that she’d moved her leotards into my dresser, her futon and wicker furniture into the living room. Ray just called one morning and wanted to know who the “chippy” was who was answering the phone at 8:00 A.M., so I told him. And that was his response. Not “Gee, I’d like to meet her.” Or, “Well, it’s time you moved on.” Just, “Twenty-three years old and she’s already gone through two husbands?” See, Ray was always crazy about Dessa. Used to call her his “little sweetie” and stuff like that. He could even get, I don’t know, playful with Dessa. He treated her a lot nicer than he ever treated Ma. It would never bother me much when we went over there, but then later on it would. Dessa used to always say how “needy” Ray was, how “o
n the surface” his insecurities were. She was always declawing him for me—analyzing him to the point where my stepfather seemed almost sympathetic, which I hated. “Hey, you didn’t have to grow up with the guy,” I used to remind her. “He’s a lot more mellow now than he used to be.” Ray’s always assumed that Dessa’s and my divorce was 100 percent my fault. My failure. That his “little sweetie” was blameless. Even though she left me. Even though I was the one who wanted to try and work things out. The only one of the two of us who’d meant “for better or worse.”
It was great for a while, though—Joy and me. She’s from Anaheim, California. She’d been out here almost three years but hadn’t really seen that much. We used to travel on weekends—up to the Cape, over to Newport, down to New York. For a while, the only sex we had was in motels. Joy had a studio apartment and a roommate, so that didn’t work. And, I guess this was stupid, but I just didn’t want to do her on Dessa’s and my old bed. I finally drove that thing over to Goodwill and bought a brand-new mattress and box spring. It was pretty wild, though—all that motel sex with Joy. It was like a drug or something. Here she was fifteen years younger and she was teaching me things.
Leo says it’s a trend: that younger women are much sluttier than women our age. He and I were driving home from Fenway when we had that particular conversation, I remember. New York had just humiliated the Sox. “I didn’t say she was slutty,” I corrected him. “I said she was uninhibited.”
He laughed out loud. “Slutty. Uninhibited. Same difference, Birdseed.” We’d just stopped at the drive-thru at Burger King and were cruising along the Mass Pike, me driving, naturally. Leo’s stuffing his face and talking about blow jobs: women who like it versus women who are doing you a big favor; women who swallow versus women who won’t. He wanted to know which category Joy was in.
“What do you mean, what ‘category’?”