Good for Nothing

by Brandon Graham

  “Okay,” he says as calmly as possible. “Well. Let’s get down to business then. I was going to ask if you would consider waiting for me to move out until I meet with Dr. Hawkins this afternoon.” He turns and checks the time on the microwave. “But I guess if there’s no point, then there is just no fucking point. I will go and pack now, if that’s okay with you.”

  He stands and shoves the chair back too far. It tips and smacks against the kitchen floor. “Thought maybe it would save us some money if we could work it out. But if your mind is made up, there’s no point in having a conversation.” He turns to pick up the chair, trips over the wooden legs, and stumbles into the refrigerator. A decorative cookie jar, a smiling pig in overalls, tumbles off the top of the appliance. Flip grabs for it and knocks it onto the counter, where it busts against a glass canister of all-purpose flour. A cloud of white dust and jagged ceramics fills the corner of the kitchen.

  Lynn is on her feet. “Leave it,” she says. “I’ll take care of it. You don’t even have shoes on. You should go pack.”

  Flip looks down at his hairy toes. She’s right. He could easily cut his foot, and that would hurt; pain is not his favorite thing, he doesn’t do pain well, never has. So he capitulates, taking cautious steps out of the kitchen, his shoes dangling from one hand.

  “That was your grandmother’s cookie jar,” he says before he leaves. “Right?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of it. Go pack.”

  Flip goes to pack.

  In the office, two Mexican men are working. One is on a ladder in the middle of the room putting new wooden blades on the ceiling fan. The ceiling has been patched and painted where the fan gouged a hole in the plaster. The carpet has been replaced and much of the clutter has been packed in boxes. The walls are painted, the trim cleaned up, and a giant desk pad calendar with a tasteful floral border is convincingly covering the paint stain on the desktop.

  He keeps moving down the hall toward the front of the house. Through the front storm door he watches a rent-a-truck back into the driveway. Lynn’s mother, Coleen, and Dylan are giving contradictory hand signals to the driver to indicate in which direction he should veer.

  He passes two men on his way up the stairs. One carries a bucket of dirty water, the other a carton marked Master B-room. He says, “Hey,” and bobs his chin at them. They brush against his gut as he presses himself into the corner.

  On the upstairs landing, he pauses. Sara’s door is open, the bright afternoon sun reflecting off the walls. He hears her moving around and raps his knuckles against her doorframe.

  “Knock knock knock,” he says.

  “What?”

  “It’s me,” he says.

  “I know. What do you want?”

  He peeks his head into her room. The walls are yellow with a Holly Hobbie border around the top. The curtains, pillows, and bedspread are white and lacy. But the yellow walls are covered in posters of pop/punk bands, hardcore rappers, and gender-bending club acts. The room has half-filled cardboard boxes scattered across the floor. Sara is kneeling in the mouth of her closet, her back to him, shoving stuff from one corner into another.

  “I wanted to talk to you for a minute. That’s all. Can I come in?” he asks.

  “I guess you’re already in,” she says without turning to see.

  He watches her leaning deeper into her closet, rummaging, pitching things around, and cussing.

  “Are you upset?” he asks lamely.

  “No shit I’m upset,” she replies. “What gave it away?”

  He assumes her question was rhetorical in nature, and he has found it best not to respond directly when she gets like this, so he says, “Looks like I’m moving out today. I wanted to say I’m sorry that you had to deal with this. I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry about all the upheaval. And most of all, I want you to know I love you. I have always loved—”

  “Shut the hell up, Dad,” she stands and gets in his face as best she can. “You don’t have any idea what’s going on around here. You don’t love me. You know how I know? ’Cause if you loved me, if you loved your family, you wouldn’t make us move. You wouldn’t lose your job. You wouldn’t be so fucking pathetic and self-centered.” She shoves him on the shoulders. Then she hugs him, pressing her cheek against his chest and trying to hook her fingers together at the small of his back. He touches her newly purple hair. He wants to lift her to his chest and hold her, but he knows she hates that.

  One weekend when she was little, Sara fell off some monkey bars at the neighborhood park. It knocked the air out of her. Flip ran over, scooped her up in his arms, and looked down into her four-year-old face. He told her it would be all right, to be calm. He told her he would take care of her, not to worry. He told her to breathe, just relax. And she had looked up with wet eyes and nodded because she believed him. Moments later, as if by magic, she was ready to play some more.

  He wants to tell her the same things now, to see her nod back at him, trusting what he says. But, “I will do my best for you,” is all he can muster. “Please know that I will miss you and I will do my best for you. I really will.” She breaks away and turns back to the closet. She snorts loudly and wipes her face on a T-shirt from her floor. Then she kneels down and goes back to work. He pauses before leaving her room.

  “Sara, what do you mean by, ‘you don’t have any idea what’s going on around here’?”

  Sara stops moving. “I was just upset,” she says. He knows she’s hiding something. He thinks it must be something Lynn has said, something about him.

  “Maybe you could tell me what you meant? Maybe it would be all right to tell me. It would help you to tell someone,” he says. “Has your mom said something to you?”

  “Dad. You are a fucking idiot. You and Mom have had your whole lives to grow up and get your shit straight. This is my time to be a wreck and make stupid mistakes. You’re supposed to be stable and reliable and dependable and supportive so I can survive growing up. You’re supposed to be wise and consistent. Helpful. You know, mature. Parents. But instead you two are in as bad a shape as I am.” She is back on her feet and shaking a stuffed rabbit at him.

  “I need help sometimes. I need advice. I need a car that fucking runs. But, instead I’m packing my closet and getting ready to move. Probably out of the school district. Classes have only been in a couple of weeks, and I don’t know if I will be here or in some other school; with my luck, somewhere else. With no friends, no car, and no boyfriend. No parents worth a shit and a needy little brother that I will be expected to babysit, but not get paid for. You are fucking my whole life up.” She throws the bunny down hard for emphasis. She’s trembling and red. The house is quiet. Flip imagines the house cleaners listening and looking through the floor at the bottoms of their feet.

  He clears his throat and says, “Has your boyfriend been pressuring you? Did you two finally break up? He was no good for you anyway.”

  She screeches in primal frustration and screams, “Go to hell, Dad!” She shoves him back out of her room and slams the door in his face. His shoes are knocked out of his hand. It might have been more dramatic if the doors weren’t so light and cheap. Instead of crashing and rattling the whole house like a good solid wood door, this one just makes a kind of whoosh and thump. They really don’t make things like they used to.

  He considers knocking again. He wonders if her tummy is feeling better. But he decides now’s not the time. He bends to catch his shoes on hooked fingers before leaving Sara to her own feelings.

  At the far end of the hall, in the master bedroom, much of the debris he accumulated over the past several months has been removed. The bed has been stripped, and on the bare mattress lays an open suitcase and his empty toiletry bag. He pitches his shoes at the suitcase.

  After momentarily considering having a breakdown, he disregards it and goes to work in the bathroom, finding the familiar rhythm of packing surprisingly comforting. When he had a job, he traveled almost every month. He m
oves through his process ritualistically, and tries not to think too much. Thinking never helped anything.

  He fills his toiletry bag, and is relieved not to need to refill the tiny bottles and shove them in the clear quart zipper bag he uses for liquids when he flies. As he finishes, he’s winded and wheezing so he closes the toilet and sits on the lid. Over the past year he’s lost his job, his body, his dignity, his wife, his kids, his sanity, his self, and now his home. If I had just managed to kill myself, I’d feel so much happier now.

  He doesn’t want to move, but also knows if he doesn’t stand now he may never get moving. He stands up, knees crackling, stretches his back and rocks his neck. From the medicine cabinet he grabs a prescription bottle of pills with the label torn off. He shoves the bottle in his shorts pocket.

  In front of his closet he stares at his power suits, dress ties, leather shoes, and pressed white shirts. None of the suits fit. The waists are too small, the legs too narrow. His chest is too massive; he can’t move his arms if he shoves them into the jackets. The belts are far too short to meet around his circumference. Lynn didn’t bother laying out my garment bag.

  Insulted, he finds the garment bag crushed in the back of the closet. He chooses his largest, best suit with its matching ensemble, including shoes, cufflinks, and a watch. While he’s at it, he grabs all of his watches and stows them. Then he fills the suitcase with socks, boxers, and running suits. He piles in T-shirts, giant khaki shorts he has never worn, three more new shirts, and a pair of running shoes, which have never been used for running. He looks for his robe, but it’s missing. Lastly, he unwedges the snapshots from the edges of his dresser mirror and puts them in his pocket with his driver’s license and debit card.

  He sits on the end of the bed and works at putting on socks and his Asics. It’s hard to keep his foot cocked onto his opposite knee, and he can’t quite bend far enough. Finally, panting and half proud of his accomplishment, he tightens one lace into a perfect bow.

  He hoists the garment bag, suitcase, and workbag, then lugs them downstairs. As his feet hit the first floor, Dylan blasts by him, nearly causing him to trip. “Where’s the fire?” he asks.

  “I gotta poop,” Dylan says as he races down the hall. Flip watches him disappear into the bathroom and fail to close the door. He feels a malicious presence behind him and recognizes the sensation: his mother-in-law. He turns awkwardly in the tight space and sees her standing there. She’s waiting for him to move.

  “I’m all packed,” he says. He lifts his suitcase a bit as evidence.

  “I see,” Coleen replies coldly.

  He thinks she might say more, waits a few moments.

  “I’ll just go around,” she says, and turns her back on him and heads out the front door.

  “Bitch,” he says quietly. The suitcase beats against the wall, leaving a mark. He tries to rub it off, but it doesn’t help. He sets his stuff in the hall next to the bathroom.

  Dylan is sitting sideways on the toilet, his cheeks red with effort, knees wide apart, his junk pointing right at the doorway.

  “Dyl,” Flip says. “Please remember to close the door when you poop. Pooping is private.”

  “Okay, Dad,” Dylan grunts. “Sorry. I was in a hurry.”

  “It’s okay, Dyl. Just try and remember.”

  “Ooooh Kaaaay,” Dylan says as he finishes his business. Then he reaches for the toilet paper, makes a dubious effort to clean himself, and starts to pull up his underwear and shorts in one twisted mass.

  “Wait,” Flip says as he moves into the bathroom, kicking the door closed behind him. “You need to do a good job wiping.” He hands Dylan more toilet paper. Dylan takes a few moments to be more thorough, jerks his pants back on and shoves past Flip on the way out the door.

  “Wait,” Flip says again. “You need to flush the toilet. Then wash your hands.”

  “Oh, right,” Dylan says. “I forgot.” He flushes the toilet and makes for the door.

  “Wait. What about your hands?”

  “It’s okay, Dad. I didn’t get any poop on them.” Dylan holds up his hands to prove it.

  “That is not really the point, Dyl. You always have to wash your hands. You know that. You can’t see germs, and pooping is germy business.” Flip turns the water on in the sink. There is pink paint dried in the bowl. He digs at it a bit with his fingernail and most of it comes right off. “Wash,” he says.

  Dylan sticks his hand under the tap and then turns it off. He drips water on the floor as he turns to go.

  “Wash with soap,” Flip says. Dylan washes with soap. When he reaches for the tap again, Flip says, “Let your hands drip over the sink, buddy. That way you don’t get the floor wet.” Dylan lets his hands drip over the sink. Flip gives him a hand towel. Dylan dries his hands, balls the hand towel up tight, and leaves it on the side of the sink.

  “Wait,” Flip says. He considers explaining and demonstrating how to hang up a hand towel, but he’s already tired of listening to himself. Instead he says, “Dyl, I’m going to be leaving for a while. I will miss you. You are a good little guy.”

  “Mom already told me,” Dylan says.

  “What exactly did she tell you?”

  “I don’t know,” Dyl says. There’s no point in probing further.

  Flip notices Dylan is wearing a T-shirt with the Lakeside Amusement Park octopus mascot on it. “Nice shirt, Dylan,” he says. “I wish I had gone with you guys. Was it fun?”

  Dylan looks confused. Flip taps the picture on Dylan’s shirt. Dylan stretches his shirt out and looks down at it. He processes the image and text. Then he says, “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, it was real fun. I drove the bumpy cars and Grandma bought me a big bag of cotton candy.” Figures.

  His mother-in-law was always trying to buy his children’s affection. He couldn’t decide if he was more offended by her actions or her success. He says, “Good to hear. Well, I will see you in a few days, I guess.”

  “Okay,” Dylan replies as he heads out the door. Flip hears the storm door bang open and slam shut. He dries the sink and drops the hand towel on the bathroom tile, shoves it around with his foot to mop up the water. Then he folds and rehangs the towel over the rail. He picks up his bags and walks to the kitchen.

  Lynn and his mother-in-law are whispering by the kitchen sink. His mother-in-law stops talking when he enters, turns, and goes out through the mud room. A faint cloud of flour dust still hangs in the air, but the evidence of his accident with the cookie jar has been disposed of.

  “I’m packed,” he says to Lynn.

  “I see.” She fills a glass of ice with tap water and drinks it down. Then she upends the ice in the sink, and leaves the glass standing on its head.

  “So, maybe you should have a seat,” she says. He sits at the table like before. She takes her place and looks at her notes. “I found a place you can stay. We could only afford to pay for two weeks. It’s an efficiency apartment. It’s part of the Lakeside Motor Court.” She doesn’t look at him.

  “I thought that place was closed down,” he says.

  “You remember where it is?” she asks.

  “Sure I remember,” he says.

  When they were in high school, he’d rented a room and taken her there. It wasn’t the first time they’d had sex, but it was the first time they had sex in a bed without fear of interruption. They had parked on the side away from the road and stayed for two hours, about the same amount of time as the movie they were supposed to be seeing.

  He wonders if she remembers and if this choice is a coded message, some kind of subtle encouragement or sentimental nod. He wants to ask her about it, to let her know he remembers too. But he doesn’t say anything.

  “Well, they have converted half the rooms into suites with kitchenettes,” she explains.

  “Sounds perfect,” he says. He honestly doesn’t care.

  “Well, I’ve had to empty most of the bank account. So be careful with the bankcard. There is basically no money left.”

&n
bsp; “Got it.”

  “You better get going, I guess.”

  “Okay,” he says. He stands and picks up his bags.

  She stands too. She pats him on the shoulder.

  “That’s it then,” he says. “Do you have the number? To my room?”

  “You are in Suite Three. Just pick up your key at the desk.”

  “I will,” he says. “Thanks for making the arrangements. But, I meant the phone number. In case you or the kids want to get in touch with me.”

  She looks at him as if he is a chronically slow-witted cousin who should know that she is perfectly capable of finding the number to his room if she needs it, and he has a cell phone that the family knows by heart.

  “Oh,” he adds, hoping to say something she deems useful. “When the unemployment comes, let me know. I will come sign it. You can put it in the bank.”

  “It came already,” she says. “I signed it for you and will deposit it later today.” The news deflates him. Signing over his unemployment was the only useful contribution he knew how to make to his family.

  “I guess this is bye for now,” he says. The emotions hit him and his voice breaks as he says it. Tears roll down his round cheeks and catch at the corners of his mouth. He can taste the salt of them when he tries smiling apologetically. So much for Strong Flip.

  He takes a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry about all this. Call me if you want to know how it goes with Dr. Hawkins. Or if you need to drop the kids by for a while, you know, while the house is showing, or something.” He swipes his car keys from the counter and slips them in his pocket as he stomps toward the mud room.

  “Flip. I don’t love you,” Lynn says before he can leave.

  “Clearly,” he spits back.

  “But, the truth is,” she continues. “I don’t love me, or the kids, or life right now. I’m too stressed. Too angry. But mostly too exhausted to feel anything. I get up. I do what has to be done. Then I pass out. Maybe if you ask me in a few months I will have a more definitive answer.” She is not crying. Not at all.