by Miles Klee
Mom and I were somehow split from Dad and Aidan. We glimpsed a three-seater that looked empty, save one well-dressed man staring out the window. Shoving closer, we discovered a woman in a black silk dress lying across the bench, her head resting in the man’s lap. Even I could tell she wasn’t sick, that this was some fixed possessive posture, a sculpted warning. His finger made circles in her hair. Mom pointed and said: “Here.”
I wouldn’t sit. I wouldn’t say why, and I didn’t know how. These people soaked into me like acid. I said, “Let’s Go,” and Mom said: “Don’t Be Ridiculous, Cal.”
“Is this seat taken?” Mom asked like she didn’t know. I came undone, looked down, trying to muzzle this panic.
“Sorry?”
The man’s finger froze mid-circle. Jutting bones in his cheeks that dreamed of escape. Dirty smear of passing smokestacks and bald trees on the other side of glass.
“Can my son sit here?” Mom asked.
The man glanced down at the woman, who sat up. She wore dangling icicle earrings that swung with indignation. She flattened straight brown hair against her skull, slid over and mauled us with her eyes.
My eyes bored into the empty seat. How a child’s private shame evolves. Standing there, near tears, convinced my precious agony could kill. Mom sensed hesitation like only mom could. She said, “Sit here, I’ll stand next to you.” With a hand on my shoulder I obeyed.
I moved my body against the aisle armrest, away from the couple. The metal on my skin was cold. . . yes, that would work: take stock of the million discomforts. The train smelled like wet garbage. Floor was sticky. Babies kept crying. But these two invaded even my litany. They spoke in stage whispers. I caught what the woman said, sotto voce.
“Can’t believe that bitch.”
She said it to the man but threw burning glares at us, and said it again, “That bitch.” Mom stared straight ahead at nothing. My hands got clammy and tight. The woman kept saying it every so often, muttering “That bitch, that bitch.” I wanted to sink, slip down between the seams. “That bitch,” she said, “that bitch,” and always waited till I’d almost put it out of my mind before saying it again, a bit louder each time.
Mom would later claim she confronted the woman, shut her up. “If you have a problem, we can get the conductor,” that was the line. Really, she shuffled her feet. I examined and reexamined my shoelaces. We tried to lose ourselves, to make our deafness plausible.
*
I’d been to one other parade, as an only child. In misting rain on Saint Patrick’s Day, my birthday, we stood on Fifth Avenue and watched a river of people stomp by. A parade expressly for me: it was simpler to say that, my parents reasoned, than explain sainthood. I’d waved, sitting on Dad’s shoulders, to drunken redheads and bagpipers, thanking them for celebrating with me. They knew that green, with its numberless natural shades, was my favorite color. I cheered at banner-waving policemen and towering floats and shamrocked ancient immigrants. It wasn’t strange, their generosity. I was lucky that way.
An odd icon’s death day. Banisher of snakes. I never discovered the lie because it never took root. Hearing the story, memory stalled. The sole impression: sitting high, squinting at pins of water. The crow’s nest. Dad’s hair. It silvers in my hands.
*
I stayed off Dad’s shoulders this time—too old, I decided. Aidan enjoyed the view instead. I heard snare drums, boots slapping pavement. Sounds dulled by walls of flesh. Wind clawed at the streets. A nor’easter’s wind without the storm. Parades aren’t something to cry at. Even so, there thousands stood, weeping at the sight. Bladed air extracting tears. Below its wrath, my eyes were dry.
This was when the balloons rebelled. The weather proved too much for their handlers, who yanked desperately at ropes meant to control the sagging characters. Spider-Man swiped the face of a silver office tower with extended fingers, then turned to kiss it. Bits of a window washer’s scaffold popped loose and fell to the street like a handful of toothpicks. Woody Woodpecker could hardly stay afloat—he folded as a knifing gust put his beak to the street. The Cat in the Hat, piloting a fanciful Seussian vehicle, tipped a street lamp that flattened some woman, we heard. The papers, already bankrupt at that point, followed her coma for a week. Garfield swooped low, collapsing on a pocket of disbelieving spectators before teetering unsteadily on. Ambulance sirens boiled out of the distance. Santa Claus concluded the carnage. Blood, I thought, could be happily lost in his red velvet stuff.
*
We trudged back across the blood-drained island. Featureless skies began to spit—water flung off a fish gasping for life. I said nothing to my family; they tried to pretend this misery had been worthwhile. Mom asked if we loved this or that and wasn’t it neat to see so-and-so. We passed a nest of shivering hobos.
“I always feel worse for the homeless this day,” Dad said.
Near Penn Station, we came upon a group thrusting pamphlets and petitions at passersby who sped along. They had a wall of posters displaying Asian people—some badly hurt, some dead. People on the sidewalk were imitating the pictures, pretending to torture or be tortured. I asked. Mom explained. “They’re protesting these people being cruel to other people in China because of their religion. They’re asking us to notice.”
A woman lunged out to hand me a flyer. My left eye rumbled in its bed. I snatched the paper, dropping the crumpled result in the gutter, and walked on. I saw a man sitting cross-legged on a mat some yards away, eyes closed, meditating. Untouched by surrounding noise and grime, the picture of serenity.
Maybe, I’ve told myself since, I wanted to remind him what trouble lay all around, and that is what tilted my reason askew, scraped my insides, hollowed me out. But consider all the dropping you’ll do in your days. See if that stops it. Take the worst thing you’ve done, and the best. These are two people with nothing in common.
Accelerating toward him, hanging wetness sprinkled me urgently. A vanishing crack as fist met nose, sincerely fusing. Cells in my knuckles and his startled expression interlocked, dragging each other out of place, bits of us both suspended in rain. I struck him again, trying to break the face. I couldn’t. He clutched at my arms, refusing to fight back—maddeningly—and rolled onto his side. Hands over his slick red features. His bloody hair stuck to the mat. My parents tried to pull me from him, this grown fetus, but my feet lashed out and found his spine.
*
I didn’t speak anymore that day, as much as Mom stormed and swore. This was the first time I heard her say “fuck,” and I saw Aidan’s ear twitch at the curse. He sensed how different this was and wanted to get out of the way, seized the first chance to run upstairs. “What if he’d pressed charges?” Mom asked. “Where do you get this from?”
Dad: “And do you have anything to say for yourself?” As if I could talk the logic of hate into them.
I didn’t come down for Thanksgiving dinner, and Mom gave up calling me after two tries.
*
By the next day, I’d resolved to stay in my room. The needs to eat and eliminate did not seem obstacles, mysteriously. I woke early out of habit, sat up and stared at the wall. In an hour, Mom came in without knocking, puffy-eyed, same as she had when Grandma died. I was lying awake then too, and waiting. Now I tasted the menace again.
“Cal,” Mom said. “I don’t know why you did what you did. And I don’t think you’ll say. You are a determined young man, is all. That’s why you’ll go far.” She was crying. I didn’t try to stop her. “I know that you want what you want when you want it,” she continued. I knew the blanked guilt of missing desire. Exactly what wish had left me? “You’ve always known exactly what you wanted. I remember once, when you were little—you know Duck Soup, that Marx Brothers movie you loved? ‘Hail, Freedonia?’ “ I gave the slightest nod, saw its slow and certain shadow on my blanket. “Once, I know you didn’t mean it, but … I thought of this when you … One day, they didn’t have the video to rent. Someone else had taken it out. I’m sure
you don’t remember, but when I told you we couldn’t get the movie, you hit me. Just hit me in the face. And that’s what I thought of yesterday, because you … it felt like a slap in the face again … “I listened to her sad sounds and swallowed dryly. “You didn’t mean it then, and you didn’t mean it yesterday. Cal: You’re so good and smart and wonderful and you know we’re so proud of you, but maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see someone who—”
I was atomized. I would never own these deeds. A thousand clashing points of dark, dead but reassembled well. Mom’s eyes searched and with a blink confessed. Her love could not disguise me. No love could make me good again.
AIDAN /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY
Opening the fridge door, I see Henri’s economy-size box of popsicles has found its way onto my side, crowded over by soggy Fong Friday’s containers. Sorry, but isn’t it common knowledge that frozen things go in the freezer? The purple puddle collecting at the bottom of the crisper says no.
A note on the counter reads:
Think I clogged the sink.
It doesn’t have a garbage disposal, does it?
Sorry again about last night, must not be sleeping enough.
xoxoxoxo,
H
Has to be more than nocturnal habits: what coincided with our accident was an unmistakable fit. But I don’t wander to the topic of his health these days, no matter how plainly it fails him.
As for the garbage-disposal query: a thousand times no. I reach into the drain, grasping a handful of ominous mush. There’s nothing to account for Henri’s ignorance here—he practically grew up in this house. Inherited, along with money, from his grandfather, who subjected it to a barrage of amateur carpentries that give each room its funhouse angles. Yet Henri somehow lacks a muscle memory of that wonky raised step as you exit the sunken living room, or the dimmest idea of where one might find the fuse box (don’t think I haven’t shown him). I’m grateful for a bed and roof, but if I weren’t around, it’s doubtful this stack of rotted shingles would still be standing.
A postscript to his note, scrawled hastily:
P.S. Do you have that dictionary of trucker lingo or know where it is??
Just what I need: the CB radio version of Henri, except instead of chatting up actual truckers, he’s pestering me, and after every bit of jargon he asks, flush with undue enthusiasm, “Know what that one means?” I eat a stale bagel over the sink, making a mental note to hide that dictionary as soon as I get home. Beneath Henri’s memo, I scratch:
No, no and no-er. Call tree guy. Get life.
I run up to his room and knock on the door. No response. Inside, the place is stuffed with boxes from an online pet store. Tremble to think what that’s about. Then I recall that Henri started sleeping in the third floor bedroom a couple days back.
“Henri,” I’d said, “why could you possibly be moving to a smaller, hotter room up another flight stairs?”
“Because,” he began. Then he tripped coming out of the living room. “I always forget that’s there,” he explained.
I take the rest of the stairs up, stepping carefully on the groaning wood. This has got to be the only house I can think of with such an impractical staircase: narrow, spiral, smack in the middle of everything. I knock on his door, and Henri grunts on the other side.
“What’s up,” I say. “You doing okay?”
“Thinking about … religion.”
“Don’t waste your time. Maybe you could stop by the Second Chance office and look for non-philosophical employment instead.”
“I think you have to have had a job and lost it to qualify?”
“Call about the tree, then. You’ll have roughly all day to get it done. Left you a note in case you forget. Bye, champ.”
I head back down, stopping off to grab my crumpled tux. Reception last night was abysmal. Father of the bride paid for two extra hours of party, and Phoebe kept dropping shrimp into my pockets.
I gulp water in the kitchen and open the dishwasher. Someone’s put dirty dishes in with the clean. I throw the cup in the sink instead. Turning to leave, I whack my head on the open cupboard door and ask why. Two peeled ceilings overhead, Henri shouts curtly. Probably wants me to pick up junk food on the way home. I think he’ll live.
*
I expected the few usual nuts and Anastasio, but their enthusiasm must be spreading after all: some thirty people are milling about, a few out in the street, admiring the Virgin. An alarming pair of camping tents is set up on the lawn. An approaching car does a sustained honk, the unshaven driver coasting easily into rage.
“Fucking Christ-lickers!” he screams through an open window before swerving around the crowd and squealing off, his license plate dangling by a screw.
I pick out Anastasio immediately, talking with a few other guys it seems he might be related to. Or I’m just racist like that. He sees me too, and we converge at a spot in the middle of the crowd.
“Good morning,” he beams, much bubblier today.
“What is this?”
“What is what?”
“This … this!” I gesture at the tents, like: what else? Anastasio opens his mouth with honest surprise.
“I’ve contacted a few friends in the state about making pilgrimages to our miracle here.”
“Are you kidding? This is nothing, a fluke, a dumb …” I’d been expecting something more convincing, or at least coherent, to come out. Anastasio folds his arms. He’s about five foot six but can look shockingly regal when he wants to.
“But this can’t be legal, can it?” I ask. “Our property … can’t have you camping out on the front lawn.”
“I spoke with your friend Henri,” Anastasio says with a hint of indifference that confirms he has this angle covered. Nothing good could come from an interaction between these two, and I grimace accordingly, law enforcement X’d out on my list of possible allies. “He was most gracious to have us and said we must remain.”
Most of the growing clan is gathered around the tree’s burnt shell. Two young girls kneel on its bulging roots, which must actually hurt, jet-black hair grazing their hips, lips moving silently. What harm am I thinking will come of this? I can’t quite let myself relent.
“Henri said that? When?”
Anastasio shrugs, glances at a bulky digital watch. “An hour ago. He is the house’s owner, yes?”
“He. He is, but I sort of … yes.” Sounding dumber by the minute.
“Marvelous,” Anastasio grins. “We would be honored if you wished to attend the service tonight. I have invited a priest from our parish.”
“I have work.” My hands fumble, searching for an unneeded gesture. Finally they fall to the side in defeat. “Yes. So. I have to get going now. Work.”
“O. Have a nice day,” Anastasio bids.
“You too,” I try to say, but vocal cords aren’t vibrating, and Anastasio is gone already, to supervise the raising of a third tent, which forms a diamond with the other two tents and the tree.
*
“Phil looks like he could use another drink,” Phoebe pities from afar as she sets a table. Phil, a Chinese waiter who is by unspoken agreement always slotted to work the sushi station, is getting an earful from the bride about the wedding band setup. The rest of the family shuffles into the ballroom cautiously, avoiding her line of sight.
Mike, the curly-haired amateur magician working bar tonight, is wadding a napkin into his clenched fist, oblivious until I rap the counter with my knuckles.
“Watch this,” he demands, then opens his hand, dropping a crumpled napkin. He scowls at it.
“Yayyy,” I drone, clapping mindlessly. “Give me a cranberry juice. For the bride, so feel free to dress it up.” Across the room, she squints at a towering floral centerpiece, then begins to either rearrange or wrestle it.
“Guy doesn’t know what he’s in for,” Mike laments, mixing the drink.
“You married?” I ask, not actually interested.
“What do I look like,�
� he says, head rearing back, “a fucking gay?” He slides the fake cosmo over to me, winking. I respond with a weak thumbs-up and snatch the glass away.
*
Cocktail hour goes smoothly, discounting the elderly woman at table eleven who makes a habit of pinching my arm when I ignore her, much to Phoebe’s amusement.
“Now you know how it feels,” she taunts, smiling perfectly.
“Who said I didn’t like it?” I counter. I pretend to adjust her crooked bowtie, but really I’m studying her flawless face, the hazel-yellow eyes that flit nervously down when I touch her clothes.
*
In the kitchen, Roy heaps a vegetable medley on plate after plate, as he’s done forever. Dewlaney, this kid whose first name no one seems to know, watches as he works, shoveling steadily.
“You notice that’s always his job,” Dewlaney says in a low voice, smirking. “Check out that pimp chain.” A plain gold necklace swings from Roy’s neck, the cross cutting with glare through wisps of steam.
“Heh,” I shrug, “what a player.”
“Yo, Phoebe,” Dewlaney shouts into the humidity. When Phoebe, on her way back out, turns around, he taps his lips with a middle and index finger.
“Not now,” Phoebe yells back, pushing through the door.
“Fuck her, anyway,” Dewlaney says. “Coming to Heat-22 tonight, Kilham? Those strippers take all my money, but it’s worth it. Whole frat’s going.”
“Shit. Can’t tonight.”
“Yeah, you’ve got somewhere better to be,” Dewlaney prods, placing metal covers over his dinners. On the other side of the counter, Donald narrows his eyes at us, peeved about whatever makes him so constantly peeved. “Your loss,” Dewlaney relents. We take up our trays again and leave the kitchen together.