Orphan Pirates of the Spanish Main

by Dennis Danvers

  * * *

  We all meet him at the airport—Katyana wants Dylan to experience the airport. We’re a joyful little family unit, Dylan at his giggly-gurgly best, when I spot Ollie coming down the glass hallway, and my fears are confirmed. Something’s seriously wrong. He’s nice, sweet even. Katyana’s gorgeous, and Dylan adorable, but this is my brother we’re talking about. He doesn’t even give me that look I’ve come to expect from any male who meets her and discovers we’re married. He cradles Dylan in his arms and smiles at me with poignant envy. Is this really my brother?

  There’s an election looming, nasty inflammatory billboards everywhere. No matter which side you’re on, it’s loathsome to live in a battleground state. Ollie stares past the shrill slogans at the trees. We even go through a roundabout on the way home, a virulent passion of my brother’s for some reason, and he says not a word, just gazes forlornly at the lovely Richmond architecture, looking like he might start crying any minute. Maybe he’s remembering when he used to live here, when Mom and Dad were still alive. He shows a spark of life when he comes inside the house and the dogs are all over him—we both like most dogs better than we like most people—but something’s weighing on him. This cooking business is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m thinking the worst, some horrible wasting disease. Guilt geysers up inside of me. I haven’t been the best brother in the world, and now he has weeks to live. I feel awful.

  He doesn’t care. It’s not about me. When I get him alone, he confesses that he and Camille are separated, that she said she couldn’t stand to live with a seventy-one-year-old man who still has serious issues with his parents when they’ve been dead for more than forty years. She said some things that weren’t very nice, made all the worse because they were true. Ollie’s a mess.

  “Issues? She says ‘issues’?” She’s a semi-retired counselor, though I’m not sure who or what she counsels about.

  He nods, snuffles. “She’s right,” he says.

  Maybe she is, but she doesn’t have to say issues. Makes him sound like a client. He just needs to open his eyes and see. Ollie seems to have no idea what a gift it is to have had exceptional parents. Mom was an artist, though she never tried to sell anything, painting hollowed-out eggs, neckties, paint-by number landscapes with the palette changed so as to depict a scene from her home planet—never anything ordinary and mundane, no big-eyed girls or forlorn clowns. She made sculptures out of trash before everybody was doing that. The house always smelled like one glue or another. She threw herself into mosaics for a while. You never saw her without this tool, like pliers with jaws, that she used to snip the tiles. The sound drove the dog crazy—I guess it reminded her of having her nails cut—so when Mom had completely covered the kitchen counter, she abandoned mosaics so Natasha would come out from under my bed.

  The mosaic was a city with domes and minarets and obelisks and ziggurats. Mom told me what they were when I asked. There was a lot going on. When you looked real close, some little chip of tile up along the roofline looked like a cat, or there were shadowy faces looking out the windows. She made it without a picture or plan or anything. Just snip, snip, snip, gluing down these pieces until she was done. I asked her if it was a real place, and she said, “Not anymore. It’s how I remember it.” The next thing she said was something like “Don’t you have homework?”

  “I have to go,” Ollie says to me now. “We both have to go. To the abyss.” The abyss is where Mom and Dad’s earthly lives ended.

  No, we don’t, but I have to say I’m intrigued. This isn’t like him. I figured Ollie gave up on bold symbolic journeys a long time ago. I tried going to the abyss and didn’t make it, thank goodness. Once is enough for me. “All this because of a few allspice berries, an overly cautious soup? What’s going on, Ollie? Oliver. I don’t see the connection.”

  “I received a message.”

  “A message?”

  “From Mom.”

  Before I can tell him he’s nuts, he hands me a postcard. On one side is a photo of a sand painting I’ve seen before. On the other is a map of a portion of New Mexico with the abyss marked with a red X. “Your Father Needs You!” is written in Mom’s loopy cursive. It’s postmarked Tucumcari, ten days ago.

  Mom’s last artistic obsession, in the months before she and Dad took off for a vacation in the southwest, was a sand painting. Like the Navajo, she explained. She spent weeks just assembling the jars of different color sand. Dad would bring jars home from his travels. It took her a day and a night to sift the thing onto the garage floor, grain by grain, until it took up the whole garage. I was home for the summer, just out of college. Ollie had his own place, just out of the military. He’d come over for dinner to celebrate our birthdays, a few days apart.

  After dinner, Mom had us take off our shoes and told us to walk out in the middle of the sand painting, me and Ollie both, but Ollie refused. Mom got pretty upset. Couldn’t he do this one small thing for her? What did it matter why? While they continued to argue, I walked out into the middle of it like she asked, messing up the perfectly precise design as little as possible. It was sort of Navajo, I guess, with these long spindly guys standing like a chorus line, but their eyes were big almond eyes, and they had multi-colored angel wings. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

  She had me sit in the middle of it at the feet of the spindly-legged angels, while Ollie wouldn’t shut up about how stupid it was to make something like this and then just screw it up, that she needed help, that there were therapies, new drugs and treatments, but Mom ignored him and spoke to only me if he wouldn’t listen, as if he weren’t there: “Don’t let them change you. Don’t let them define you. Don’t let them diminish the things you love. They don’t mean to, but they will if you let them.” She said some other things on the same theme I don’t remember exactly. Ollie never listened. For years I wondered who “they” were. I’ve come to realize she meant humans.

  Dad called us inside for dessert while Mom vacuumed up the sand painting with a Shop-Vac.

  A week later they were gone, plunged into the abyss, an obscure site in New Mexico Mom just had to see. They had been planning this trip even longer than she’d been collecting grains of sand. Some say they didn’t die, that they were headed home. I guess I’m one.

  I stare at the postcard now. It’s the sand painting on the garage floor. She took a bunch of photos of it with a camera mounted on the garage ceiling before the big fight with Ollie. I’m trying to imagine how and why it’s now, impossibly, a postcard in my hands. “How come I didn’t get one?”

  “Cause you stepped into the sand painting, and I didn’t. That’s why you’ve healed, and I haven’t. I did some research. That’s what they’re for. Healing. Mom was trying to heal us. That’s why I’ve lost my sense of smell.”

  I don’t see the last connection, but I let it pass. He’s actually taking something unusual Mom and Dad did seriously, for once, instead of seeing it as further evidence they were crazy. I don’t ask why, if I’m all healed—whatever he thinks that means—he needs me to tag along on this foolish journey, because I already know. He would feel too ridiculous otherwise. I’m the one who supposedly believes in this wacky alien shit. I’m the one who should be getting spooky postcards in the mail, not him. He needs his little brother along to boost his confidence that he hasn’t totally lost his mind. Late-onset schizophrenia is just one of many judgments out there for an old man who starts talking crazy, but you can always tell your little brother, right? He won’t rat you out.

  * * *

  I tell Katyana Ollie wants me to go out to the abyss with him, and she immediately says I should because he’s my brother, “and how many things has he ever asked you to do for him?” Katyana’s big on family loyalty. But then I get to the part about the postcard, and she stops me. “Let me see it.”

  She looks it over front and back, shaking her head. I think she might cry. “I have to go with you,” she says.

  “You’ve seen this bef
ore?”

  “It’s one of Daddy’s alien artifacts. Look at the handwriting.”

  “I did. It’s my mom’s.”

  “Not the message. Your brother’s address. It’s Daddy’s handwriting.”

  I’d completely missed it. The mailing address is even a different color ink. The lettering, tiny, precise printing. I’ve seen it before myself. It’s Dr. Deetermeyer’s, Katyana’s father, who first introduced me to the idea of my parents’ alien origins. He’s been missing for almost a year after a nervous breakdown, or whatever it’s called now. Katyana was pretty upset when he wasn’t around for Dylan’s birth. He’s done it before, taken off for parts unknown, only to turn up months later, sometimes with a new identity, a position at some new university. Katyana’s the only one left to go looking for him. He’s as wacky as a bag of cats, but he’s a fucking genius at the same time. It can be hard to suss out the borderline.

  “You’re saying he sent this card?”

  “You don’t think it’s from your dead mother, do you?”

  “But what about the message? It’s her handwriting.”

  She shrugs. “Then she wrote it when she was alive.”

  “I thought you believed in magical stuff.”

  “That doesn’t mean I believe in ghosts who mail postcards with Forever stamps.”

  Her dad would have had Ollie’s address. He kept a huge database of all of us born to alien parents—who are essentially aliens ourselves—which explains a lot about the course of my life. He’s tried to interview as many of us as possible. This may have been his attempt to pique Ollie’s interest, so he would agree to such an interview. Deetermeyer wouldn’t send it to me for fear of Katyana finding him and revealing him to whatever institution he’s bamboozled into funding his research for his definitive work on aliens among us. As a genius without real degrees, his references are all aliens like me.

  I would rather believe in aliens than ghosts. Katyana’s beliefs don’t matter: He’s still her father. She has to go find him regardless. No one else will. Her much older sister has washed her hands, she says. This from one who claims Jesus is the answer no matter the question. Katyana’s relieved to finally have a clue to her father’s whereabouts and a little pissed off to have to pursue it at the same time. She has a baby to take care of, for Christ’s sake. Katyana is nothing if not adaptable, however.

  She smiles. “A big trip. Maybe that’s exactly what we need. We haven’t been anywhere since before Dylan was born.”

  “What about Dylan?” I ask. “We can’t just leave him.”

  “Of course not. He can experience the train.”

  “Train? Who said anything about a train?”

  “Don’t you think it would be fun? More comfortable with Dylan and all. We can treat your brother. He’s really low. He’s much nicer than you said. You’ll have time to bond, you know? See the country? Daddy’s not going anywhere in the middle of the semester, and neither is the abyss.” Even though ours is an unconventional marriage of convenience, scarcely a marriage at all, there’s one thing you should know. I will do anything on Earth she asks. I adore her.

  Ollie bridles at first. The train? (He hates Amtrak on principle.) But Katyana puts Dylan in his arms and pretty soon Uncle Ollie—Katyana calls him Ollie, and he makes not a whimper—is completely onboard.

  * * *

  That still leaves the dogs. What to do about them. Boarding costs a lot of money. They come out weird, like you would expect intelligent social animals to be after being locked up in a cage for too damn long. Katyana suggests we ask Bill, a retired Unitarian minister and fellow child of aliens, to look after them. We both know him from the dog park. I say retired, but actually they practically forced him out after most of his sermons dwelt on aliens for nearly a year. There was some sort of settlement to make him go away, and he bought a condo a couple of blocks from the church. We’re on his balcony having coffee. This is where he sits on Sunday mornings and watches his flock pass by, imagining them feeling guilty for silencing the truth and banishing the messenger. That Unitarian guilt can be some nasty stuff. It comes at you from all directions, and no ritual can resolve it. His pug Clyde’s in my lap. I’m rubbing his belly, and he’s wiggling and snorting.

  Bill’s glad to take care of Myrna and Avatar but is eager to discuss other matters. We haven’t had a chance to talk since Katyana and I got married.

  “What’s it like?” he asks.

  “Wonderful,” I say.

  “I can imagine. She is so fucking hot.”

  It’s obvious we’re not talking about the same thing. “She is that, but we’re not fucking.”

  “You’re kidding. Why not?”

  “For starters, I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “Can’t. Dick no work. Since the prostate surgery. The surgeon says it should, but it don’t.”

  “What about drugs?”

  “Read the possible side effects sometime. I can verify those and more, but what they didn’t do was stiffen my dick. I was seeing blue and turning red. I felt like a cartoon character. All for an increased risk of heart attack. One’s enough for me, thanks. Trust me. There’s worse things than a limp dick.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “It doesn’t come up in casual conversation. Besides, it makes people uncomfortable.”

  Bill pauses to think about this, about how he does indeed feel uncomfortable. “So I don’t understand. Why did you marry her? You figure you’ve married so many times, what’s one more?”

  “I married her for the same reason I have always married. I love her.”

  “Why on Earth did she marry you?”

  “She wanted Dylan to have a father. I claimed paternity. Dylan’s legally my son. By marrying we seal the deal legally for him, even if we divorce later.”

  “You’re nuts. Why would you do a thing like that for her? You hardly know her. She’s crazy on top of that.”

  “And you’re not? C’mon Bill. We connected. She saved my life. I was headed for the abyss, and she turned me around. It’s a small thing, to make their lives easier. They’ll have a place to live and a tidy sum when I’m gone.”

  “You make it sound like it’s next week.”

  “It’s always next week, next minute. You have to live now. You can’t wait around until you’re a better person to do the right thing. Katyana told me you used to hit on her. Would you fuck her if you could?”

  His eyes grow huge at the thought. “In a heartbeat.”

  “But you wouldn’t take her in, marry her, help raise her kid?”

  He makes a face. Am I nuts? “Who’s the real father?”

  “A rock star who denies paternity, her ex, who would put up a stink if she pressed it. He doesn’t want to complicate his assets and piss off his current girlfriend with a son. I have very simple assets and no girlfriends, and I rather like having a son.”

  “You change diapers?”

  “Of course.”

  “God, I hated that.” Bill and his thirty-something son are what he calls “estranged.” He always makes it sound like the grinding wheels of fate have yielded this sad result, symbolized by the middle finger his son raised to him in ninth grade, calling him a hypocrite and his church “stupid.” Sounds more like adolescence and a pompous dad to me, but I’ve never had a son. It was in his quest to understand his failed relationship with his son, as he calls it, that Bill first discovered his alien origins.

  So the son never heard the sermons that got his dad bounced from the pulpit. I wonder what son would think of father now, a sad faraway look in his eye that might be for his son, for his flock, or it might be the blanket loss of dementia, though Bill seems sharp enough to me. Just a little nuts. The view from the pulpit must get to you after a while. I’m reminded of Myrna perched on an ottoman in the back room of the house watching her chaotic flock of squirrels. It’s her favorite thing to do. How crazy is that?

  Clyde, sensing Bill’s need, rolls ove
r in my lap, plops down on the floor, and leaps onto Bill’s knees like a flying ham. Bill cradles him in his arms. Clyde gazes at him in bug-eyed adoration, snorting sweet nothings, and Bill tells him what a good boy he is.

  I rise, bid farewell. “I’ll bring the dogs by in the morning. Our train leaves at ten.”

  * * *

  I’m in the berth above, Katyana and Dylan sleep below. The ceiling is close, the stars beyond. We’re rocketing through the night inside the pleasant roar of the train. I lied to Bill in a way, made it sound like nothing: Impotence. Trouble is, desire persists. Can even grow. Like a cancer. Another unwelcome manifestation of overenthusiastic life.

  I’ve just spent the day traveling with my beautiful wife and child who look at me as if they don’t know we’re all pretending to be a happy family who love one another. She cradled my white-whiskered face in her hands before I ascended to my berth and said, “Thank you for being such a sweet, sweet man,” and kissed me softly, lovingly, on the lips.

  She had no intention to render me sleepless, to break my heart. Sweet means patient mostly, not being a self-centered asshole. It’s amazing how many men find this difficult. This is no easy journey we’ve undertaken, and I’m not talking about the train. Sweet’s easy. I can do it in my sleep, but dreaming of sweet Katyana, I can’t sleep. Longing with no relief. Not a problem I had foreseen, not a bad problem for a man my age to suffer from. I could just not care anymore, like the surgeon said would happen eventually, inevitably. Not that I put much stock in what the surgeon says these days.

  I roll out of bed and head for the snack bar, where I find the conductor at one end doing his paperwork, and Ollie in the middle checking his messages. The concession is shut down and dark.