* * *
AFTER, THEY SHARED a cigarette, then a joint. They talked. Plans. Hopes. The past. They now officially had pasts.
She said, There was a story you were going to tell me. Back in sophomore year. Before we broke up.
He knew what she meant. And she could tell he knew. He didn’t say anything. Then he said, Oh man.
It was about your mother, Anna said. I’ve always wondered.
Oh man, George said again.
She said, Well, it’s your mother… so you’re the only man involved.
Huh? he said.
Oh man is you, she said.
Oh man is I, he said, repeating back to her with a stunned sound.
He looked at her with an expression she could only think of as panicked and begging.
It’s okay, she said. Never mind.
He said: Oh man is the universe. I mean I’ve never told anyone this.
I know, she said.
I mean I haven’t told anyone I know personally. There were… He paused and waved his hand slightly. Professionals.
There had in fact been a social worker and Wyndham, the cop, and then a therapist he’d gone to for a while, paid for by the state.
She touched him. Hand on arm. She kissed that shoulder, still bulging out at her as on the night they’d first met. He breathed.
He told her. He called it, in his head, the intolerable night. It was the memory of it, the fact of it, sitting like a stone or a dam, something that fell there, that he didn’t want there, that made it intolerable. His mother, some period of time before the culminating event, had begun coming to his room while he slept, not that often—he’d guess, looking back now, once every few weeks, more than a few weeks? Hard to tell—coming to his room to kiss him, to touch his shoulders and chest.
With shoulders and chest specifically named out loud as zones of violation, Anna felt a bloodrush of alarm, absolutely a physical terror, a terror of her own desire specifically for his shoulders and chest, now and past, an instant of adrenalized shame at pleasures already taken there—and only the sharpest sense of the impermissibility of her pulling away from his body at that moment kept her against him.
He felt it. He felt her body tense up there but instead of pulling away she’d pulled herself tighter against him. Her muscles needed to react and they’d pulled her toward him instead of pushing away. He would realize all this not in the moment but after, later, looking back, would realize too her reaction was a measure of at what cost he told this story. It—the story—carried around it an atmosphere of shame that was noxious, that one yanked back from, despite all affection and commitment. Despite sympathy and love. It was good to know this. He would later admire her ability to pull closer to him there, at that moment, not to jump back but to embrace him: it would become a memory like a sword.
He told her the basics, with some details, but not all, no single telling of it could fit it all, all the ways he felt, all the moments recorded in a heightened sensibility, emblazoned as such on his psyche. He didn’t know, couldn’t say, how long it had gone on, his mother’s visits—some months at least. He had, he told Anna, admitted none of it to himself until later. What he thought was that he was having exciting dreams, a woman’s caress in the darkness, a woman’s deep, desiring kisses.
She knelt beside the bed, he said. She knelt as if in prayer. I can see this—but how can I, how do I know this, when I was asleep?
Anna waited.
It was in his head, he told her. It was in the dreams, but in the dreams as he remembered them. He never saw a face, or a body, though he knew she was kneeling there. He saw but he didn’t see. A dream-not-a-dream, like something he’d imagined but imagined so well, so clearly and over so sustained a period of repeated imaginings, that it was virtually the same in quality of memory as something seen—seen though he’d never known himself to have seen it. Through these nocturnal visits he’d lain, adamantly still, adamantly closed-eyed, converting everything to dream, to a series of dreams, which he experienced over the course of those months, even close to a year, when he was sixteen and seventeen years old. They were still in there like that, like a series of dreams remembered even though he knew later they were not dreams, remembered like the tidal-wave dreams he’d had in the eighth grade—he could still say, I remember what those dreams were like. She might have begun when he was fifteen. He’d been big early, muscular of back and shoulder and arm, thick in the chest. Man-sized. He always thought in this regard about how she’d opened the door once to come into his room when he was fifteen and he was spread-legged on his bed jerking off and she’d seen him, seen all of it at once, and said Oh! and closed the door and tried to apologize later. Perhaps this had caused what came afterward.
Part of the horror was that the dreams—of kisses, of hands on him—these sensations felt almost supernaturally good. And he would be hard—and this became part of it later, this awareness of his cock and her interest in it. The best sex dreams of his life—the best sex dreams of anyone’s life because the sex was real, even if up to a certain moment unconsummated.
Ah, but then. But then she couldn’t resist, could she—telling it now to Anna, his hatred of his mother rose in him, hate and hate and hate and beneath that a pain like fury, a boiling cauldron of pain—of course she had to touch it of course she had to stroke it through his sweatpants until the night she lowered the pants and stripped her panties, which moments later he, on waking, really waking, horror-waking, saw there on the floor, as obscene an image as he could have invented: and she was pulling up her nightgown and trying to climb on him. He woke with that—even he couldn’t sleep through that, that was too much even for his repressed and starved sexuality. He shouted—he remembered it in a palpable way, could still feel it in his chest and throat, this shout, like a roar from some depth of self-knowledge and anger he hadn’t quite known existed but recognized as his own—and he rose up and pushed her off him as if he’d been attacked by a monster. She flew five or six feet and then was on the floor and saying oh jesus my shoulder I think you broke my shoulder jesus christ and he stood over her, his pants pulled back up, barely able to keep himself from kicking her. He snatched a flannel shirt from the chair and left, it was autumn, he had no shoes on, he was accustomed to that from the waterfront, he walked the half mile to the middle of town, to the Town Green, which was by Town Hall, the name maintained as if this were the eighteenth fucking century—then again, the town was founded in the seventeenth fucking century so who knew—there was a heavy dew, a mist along the ground, the wet grass in this small park wetting his feet and soaking the trailing bottoms of his sweats so when he sat he turned them up to his shins and the air chilled his wet skin and then he listened, trying to empty his mind, to the late crickets who in song foretold a fall that had already arrived. The sound of crickets had been, his whole life, a comfort to him, though portentous too, for the fall, a new school year, and who knew what was coming? He thought about this sitting there. He was a senior now, there were no more surprises left for him in Saybrook, certainly not now, after what she’d done, that was the ultimate surprise.
Some time passed. He sat. The cold air, the sky, cloudy, above slightly to north and west behind the clouds a moon pushing through its pale light. He tried to slow his breathing. It did slow, eventually. Then a police car came by, U-turned to his side of Main, stopped. Out came the cop. Walking over with more stride and energy than was comfortable for George at this time of night and in his frame of mind.
What’s up, son? the cop said. Kind of late.
George pondered how to answer this.
The cop said, I’m going to need you to look me in the eye.
George looked him in the eye, as requested. He said his mother’s name. She was not unknown to the police, a heavy drinker, a woman of high temper.
There’s probably been a call, he said.
The cop went back to the car, spoke on the radio. After a time he replaced the radio, walked back to the bench.
It wasn’t exactly a fall, George said. Again looking the cop in the eye. Something familiar there. He wanted to drill into the poor man’s brain, with its cop wariness, its ambivalent cop half-curiosity.
George said, I found her climbing all over me in my bed. I woke up, threw her off. She was drunk.
Cop stared at him then shook his head. That’s not a good situation, he said.
No, said George.
Now you’re out here in the cold, said the cop. He shook his head again. He was a young guy, not much beyond his early twenties. George thought he recognized him. The cop had the same realization.
Do I know you from the boatyard? the cop said. You work for O’Connor in the boathouse?
I know your boat, George said. The thirty-foot sloop? From Holland? That’s a beautiful boat. I used to look at that boat every day.
It was my grandfather’s, the cop said. He bought it in Denmark, not Holland. He sailed it to Belfast and then to Plymouth and then to here. Crossed the Atlantic in fifty days, with a crew of three.
Wow, George said. Shit. I didn’t recognize you with the hat on. You sail with that blond woman. She’s good. I mean, she sails.
You watched her, huh? the cop said. That’s my wife.
Sorry, George said.
No, the cop said. I’ll tell her you said she’s good, it’ll make her day.
Tomorrow, George said.
Yeah, tomorrow, the cop said. I used to work for O’Connor, back in high school. He still got the crucifix in the office and all those skin mags on that shelf right underneath? And industrial-size jar of Vaseline in the head?
Yup, George said. He could see it dawn on the cop that O’Connor’s pornography might be a dangerous zone of conversation given the tenor of the evening.
Yeah, well, the cop said. You’re George? George Langland? Toffhill Road?
That’s me.
Anyone I can call for you, George? You can’t stay out here. Technically the green is closed and you’re underage and it’s three in the morning.
George sat forward, gripped the front of the bench on each side. No, I’m good, he said. I’ll just go home.
Hop in the car, the cop said.
I can walk, George said.
Hop in, the cop said.
It seemed like something close to an order. George followed him and got in the passenger door, which the cop was holding open.
What’s your name? George asked him when he was behind the wheel.
Wyndham, the cop said. Out here, Officer Wyndham. In the boatyard you can call me Teddy.
Teddy, yeah, I remember hearing that. Officer. Officer Wyndham.
Wyndham smiled at that. I’m hungry, he said. I’m due for my break. You hungry?
George said, I don’t have any money.
It’s on me, Wyndham said. He lifted his radio, looked at George.
You also don’t have any shoes but I can take care of that, I think.
Then he spoke into the radio: This is one-eight I’m going seven-seventeen at… he looked at his watch. Oh-three-twenty-two, he said. Over.
Roger that, one-eight. Disposition of the Langland kid, over?
Wyndham looked at George. Kid’s with me for the seven-seventeen and then I’ll drop him at his house, over, Wyndham said.
Roger that, Mother Teresa, over.
And out, said Wyndham.
Wyndham took him to the Eden Roc on the Post Road. When they got out of the car Wyndham told him to wait, opened the trunk, and pulled out a pair of black cop shoes.
Here, he said. Put these on. They’ll be big. Just flop in them.
Three thirty in the morning and there were some people there that George knew and that he knew were not straight, not at that hour in that place, and they sat up almost comically rigid and brought the volume and hilarity down sharply when the cop walked in behind George. He would have some heavy explaining to do. It was about my mother. He could hear himself saying it. They’d get that. Mumble something and look away. Shit, man… The diner had, to the right of the entrance, a large room, three glittering glass chandeliers lighting it, with tables and round-backed wooden chairs with red leather trim, and to the left a long counter with booths along the windows, which is where George and Wyndham and anyone else local and young and sensible would sit. One of the booths was open. The waitress flirted with Wyndham, called him honey. He ordered grilled swiss and bacon on rye, cup of tomato soup, fries.
What about you? he said.
I’ll have the cheeseburger.
Get the deluxe, Wyndham said.
Cheeseburger deluxe.
How you want it cooked, baby? Wyndham was honey, he was baby, and they were a neat little happy family.
Medium.
American cheese?
Yes, said George. Mayo on the side, please?
Sure, baby. She whisked up the menus. Iced tea?
Wyndham: Yup.
George said that was fine.
Wyndham sat and looked at him. You didn’t realize how much shit a cop had to wear and carry on him until you saw him distributing it on a booth bench and table in order to sit down. The radio looked like it weighed eight pounds. Wyndham had knobbed it down to low static and murmur.
What I’m supposed to do, Wyndham said, is report you and get you to a social worker.
I’m eighteen, George said.
No, you’re seventeen, you’ll be eighteen in a month.
George looked at him with the question of how did he know.
They have it in the files. I got it on the radio. In any case, you need to be eighteen but if you were eighteen you could be looking at assault for your mother though that wouldn’t likely go anywhere. It would get on your record and make life difficult later. Colleges and jobs. Have you ever been arrested for a felony is what they ask you. Not have you been convicted. You’d have to say yes. So better to be in the social work category.
I don’t want to be in any category.
Wyndham pointed out—in circumspect language—that people who break their alcoholic mother’s shoulder ex-post that alcoholic mother trying to climb in bed with them don’t just shrug that shit off and go scrape and rewax the hull of some rich guy’s sixty-eight-foot yawl. He should find a friend to live with for the rest of the school year and that’s where the social worker would come in.
How much of a shit storm if you live somewhere else this year then split for college?
A shit storm, George said. I don’t know how big.
Well, see, the social worker and someone like me or a superior, some cop, we tell your mother this is the way it’s going to be and she has to accept it. It can be done all voluntary and nice and not change your legal status which is a big fucking deal.
After the food Wyndham took him home; his mother was not back yet from the hospital. In his room, the underpants were gone. In pain and incoherence, she’d known enough to pick them up. Crazy like a fucking wild boar. Not a fox: something that ate the fucking foxes. He tore all the sheets off the bed and put the spread back on and lay down on top of it. Put the radio on. Vin Scelsa overnight out of New York—Allman Brothers then the Band, okay, but then Pink Floyd came on—first the heart beating and then the laughing man and the screaming woman and with that last he twisted himself around to turn it off. Then silence; he stayed in the dark on his back. Wind blew the oak branches outside his window, they scratched the roof, and the yellow streetlight beyond the tree cast pale shadows on his ceiling and walls, shadows of the leaves in undulation, like penitents in a ritual dance.
He told Anna a lot of this, not all, of course—there was too much. It was hard to hold back, he had every detail in his memory, all the moments and images, live as rats.
Before school ended the following June she was dead, of liver cancer. The final months were bloating and jaundice and a kind of toxic dementia from the poisons left roaming her bloodstream… He wasn’t wi
th her then—he was staying in a basement bedroom, with black light and lava lamp and Hendrix poster, a room abandoned by the brother, away at school, of his friend William, whose family lived down by the water. He went fitfully to see her. He was profoundly aware—aware in a ghastly and irredeemable way—of abandoning her. Quickly she was dead. Her final weeks were another story to tell, later. At the end, she couldn’t speak: she stared at him with large imploring eyes. Among her legacies, or his inheritances, was that for a long time he didn’t get women his own age—with their uncertainties and mixed messages and essential fear, which translated itself to him as rejection. From early on and nearly ever after he would feel the greatest sexual urgency and intimacy with women of sexual experience far beyond his own, the further beyond, the better. This part he didn’t say to Anna. She wasn’t crying full out but her face was streaked with tears, which she wiped away. She kissed him: yes, on the shoulders and chest and lightly on the mouth, he could feel the mix of salt and cold from the drying tears and the warmth of her wet mouth.
I’m so sorry, she said. Her head now on his chest. So sorry.
Thank you, he said. It’s, I’m surprised, it’s actually enormous, to tell it. It’s like wow look at the size of that iceberg, once you turn the sonar on.
She coughed a laugh at this.
Thank you for telling me, she said. Her voice muffled by the pectoral muscle her mouth lay on. They were still naked. Inevitably he got hard and inevitably they ended up joined again; it was slow, they grazed against each other like two sheets touching breeze-swayed on the line, until the very end, when he and she were both finished, neither of them having come, which made it a little sweeter, more tender, without that loud crescendo.
Crazy Sorrow Page 12