The Ha-Ha

by Dave King

  When Sylvia says it’s time to leave, I have to remain a moment, rearranging myself on my bench, and I picture the convent building and my old speech therapist and my idiot neighbor Dwayne in quick succession, just to calm myself down. Then we pile into the truck to take Sylvia to her residence. She sits in the middle, between Ryan and me, and it happens again. I don’t know what’s gotten into me—I’m never horny—but today I’m crazed, and my erection’s so undeflectable that I’m afraid I’ll catch it in the steering wheel as I drive.

  Sylvia directs me to a square, three-story house a few blocks from her facility. It’s not a bad house, only shabby, clad in brown asbestos shingles with false white plastic shutters. A huge pot for cigarette butts like those in the garden of the dry-out place sits on the porch, and even if I didn’t know this place had no permanent residents, I’d guess it anyway from the forlorn atmosphere. And Sylvia suddenly seems forlorn herself. “Look, guys,” she says, “that was just so nice sitting in the—do you mind if I don’t bring you in this time? It’s dreary, and it would break the spell.” A man with a shaved head and wire glasses gazes at us from the porch, and she adds, “Oh, Christ, there’s the law. Probably wouldn’t let you in now, anyway.” For a moment it seems she may start to cry; then she straightens her shoulders and turns to Ryan. “Well, my big darlin’ Snake, this sure was a wonderful surprise! Mama loves you, remember that always. If we can, maybe we’ll do the same thing next we—well, let’s see.” Ryan throws his arms around her, and she holds him tight. “I’ll call you, baby.”

  She asks me for a moment, and I get out of the truck. My deflated boner’s no longer a threat. We walk a few steps across the grass, and Sylvia kisses my cheek, but as the bald guy jumps off the porch she mutters, “Yes! Yes, I have people who care about me, you jailhouse bastard. I went off on a Saturday for a little time. So fucking what? Curtailed privileges? Jeez!” Her eyes water, and she says, “Look, Howie, this is going to be an altercation, and I really don’t want him to see it, okay? So take off quick and we’ll talk soon. Thanks, hurry, love you.” Then she pushes me away.

  33

  THE RADIO PLAYS ONE SONG, then another, and I wonder if Ryan’s second-guessing the joyful reunion with Sylvia. But he only says, “Okay, here’s the players who are pretty bad,” and I have to smile. I suppose the inconsistent heart is childhood’s great liberty, and if Ryan let the phone ring for weeks out of sheer sullenness and anger, yet still feels swept away by his mother in person—well, is my own response to Sylvia so different? Now he says, “Howie! Think we should go get my bat?”

  We drive down their street, and Fartin’ Martin’s in his yard. Does this kid never go inside? With him is a girl who looks just like him, and both kids are wearing swimsuits. The sister has an inflatable sea-horse ring clasped around her waist. “Hi, Ryan,” she says with singsongy flirtatiousness, and the two jailed Rottweilers take up the cry. A dad appears, smoking a pipe, and the girl shouts, “We’re going to Magalloway Pool.”

  Fartin’ Martin pads toward us. He’s got a pale, round tummy, and his flat nipples are terra-cotta colored. The boys put their heads together a moment, then Ryan looks up. “Can I go swimming?” he asks. The dad and sister amble over, and the dad gives a satisfied puff to his pipe and says he’s Martin Reed, senior. Ryan says, “This is Howie.” We shake hands, and it’s a done deal. I’ll wait here.

  Ryan runs up the three front steps of his house. He crouches defensively by the flowerpot, as if the Reeds could never imagine where to look for the house key; then the screen door slams raspily. A moment later it slams again, and he comes out in orange surfer trunks and hops bandy-legged down the steps. He gives Far-Mar a shove, and it seems going home is exactly this simple. Halfway to the Reeds’ car he shouts, “Five-ish, Howie?” I give him a wave.

  When they’re gone, I scout out the bat in a corner of the garage. I find a Wiffle bat and ball, too, and I put all three in the bed of my truck. I get Sylvia’s mail from the box and shuffle through advertising flyers as I stroll up the walk. I’m thinking about nothing. Then suddenly I’m in her house, and the screen door wheezes behind me. I can smell the faint, airless scent of Sylvia’s housekeeping supplies, and I remember she loves to clean when she’s on a binge. I think of her bingeing and cleaning and bingeing and bingeing until she was too strung out to clean anymore, and I think of Caroline carting her away. But for some thin dust, the place is impeccable.

  I stand there a moment, clutching the mail. The house has no vestibule, so the instant I enter I’m right where she lives. All around me, on bookshelves and low tables, are the interesting small objects Sylvia loves to collect. An antique brass bird with a spring-catch beak for needles; a toy car that went through a fire. Glass paperweights and souvenir statuettes and antique teacups on wooden stands, dried flowers and shells and odd-shaped thingums Ryan created in art class. There are photographs, too, murky in the dim light, but I know them by heart. Photos of Ryan at every age, in all possible moods, and photos of Caroline, of Bindi, of college friends, of Sylvia’s folks with Syl and Caroline after the baby was born. I’m here, too—once—in a shot I’m ambivalent about: Sylvia and me at a summertime picnic, snapped by my dad soon after I came home. When he gave it to her, she said I looked brooding.

  All these photos and keepsakes are so familiar that I rarely give them a thought when I come in. In my mind, I walk through the door and this is my house, and I call out, “Honey, I’m home!”—a phrase so familiar it’s become a joke. Sylvia doesn’t answer, but I hear her chuckle. She’s in the kitchen making sandwiches. There’s a knife-tap on the mayonnaise jar and the movement of a shadow on wallpaper. I take a breath.

  The house smells fresh. It’s summer, and we keep our windows open. I don’t smoke a pipe. I’ve brought our boy back from baseball practice, and I can’t wait to tell my wife how he hustled when he hit that double. “You should have seen it,” I’ll say, and give her a soft peck. “Beat the throw by a mile!” Then Sylvia will say she’ll catch a game soon, and that’s enough to look forward to, because really it’s father-son time, this Saturday morning sports thing, and that’s how we like it. In the winter, ice hockey. My kid’s fearless on the ice.

  Sylvia and me: not the sad, gray Sylvia of “Let’s just go,” but the pink-cheeked, upbeat Sylvia of today, though with longer hair, if I have my choice. And no history of drugs, no long disappointment. No dead-ended art career, no bitter edge, either. No flat-faced underdogs or circles of exclusion, no single-motherhood or numbing secretarial work, no scarring young grief . . . no teenage grief! And of course, I’m different, too. Alone in our kitchen, we two will chat about the game and what she did while we were gone and how well Ryan’s doing in school. I’ll brace a hand against the cupboard above her head and watch her lay out the bread for sandwiches, then add some of the roasted peppers I like so much. Slowly I’ll lean against her, touching her back with my chest and feeling her hips soft against mine. Sylvia will rub demurely against me; then she’ll cut each sandwich with a carving knife and ask if I’d like to eat outside.

  I would, but can we hold off, please? Our boy’s off with his friends, and we have no housemates, so our privacy’s our own. Hungry as I am, I pull her toward me, and she knows what’s coming. I plant a kiss on her neck and rub her abdomen, and she turns to face me, running her fingers through the short curls at my neck. My skin pebbles until I’m nearly blind with . . . Oh! But I don’t want this to go too quickly, so I hold her still and close for a moment. She’s mine, and I’m so gentle. She is mine.

  Sylvia’s wearing a yellow cotton dress with big white buttons up the front. I’m sliding a hand between the buttons when one pops off and hits me in the chest, then clatters away. I could tear this whole dress off, pop, pop, pop!—but I kiss her cheek, her neck, her ear, and ease her onto the clean kitchen floor. It’s any room in the house for us: the floor, the table, in front of a mirror, wherever the mood strikes. My wife’s crazy about me. This is our home.

  Sylvia�
��s eyes are closed, her lips parted. I kiss her as I set her down, then undo my belt and the hitch of my Bermuda shorts. She raises her head and finds my mouth, and though I’ve been holding back, I kiss her harder now, and her lips give against mine. I tug at the buttons of the yellow dress and spread the fabric, then pull back to look at the thin waist, the small, round breasts. A pair of panties with a pattern of flowers and a bra that clips in front, which I undo. My shorts have slipped to the crook of my knees, and I kick them away, toward the doorway and the whole empty house, and Sylvia pulls me over her, grappling at my boxers and my ass and hiking my shirt up under my arms. Her fingers tear through the hair on my sternum; I press my face between her breasts. I’m absorbed by the feel of her skin—soft, powdery, so lightly textured. For a moment that’s all there is: let me be consumed! A stand of soft, mysteriously filmy blonde female hairs gathers in a line due south of her navel, and I give these hairs a lap with my tongue. Sylvia tugs at the panties, and when she lifts a knee I rub my cheek on her thigh, then I’m where we both want me, my face in her curly pubic hair. I’m on the linoleum, my hands clenched tight between my legs. Hump and grind! There’s a peak where her labia separate that’s like a swirl of taffy; I go for it with my tongue, and Sylvia gives a high gasp of joy. I’m done fooling around now, I’m impassioned, I get serious! I stick my tongue out just as far as I can, and I’m pushing, pushing with my feet and humping my own hands on the kitchen floor and gasping and heaving and grunting, shouting for joy and using my tongue, my lower lip, my stubbly chin, whatever, on the soft, sweet bald spot at the very zenith of her pussy. This is something we were both too shy to try those few times before I went to war, but now—now!—we do it all the time. Sylvia’s hands are lost in space for a while, but when I feel her fingers in my hair I crawl up her body and put my mouth to her ear. “I love you,” I say, my strong hands working between our legs. I kiss her breathlessly and settle my weight so she can feel me. I stifle a laugh. “I love you,” I say again; I say I love her! And Sylvia gasps, sucking in her breath, and tells me she loves me, too.

  Which is not, of course, what really happens. Instead, I walk in a kind of daze through the spotless house, down the short bedroom hallway to where Sylvia’s room is in front and Ryan’s in back. A drawer is open in Ryan’s room, and the clothes he had on this morning are heaped by the door. Otherwise, everything’s in place.

  Sylvia’s bedroom is white, with tiny tea roses on the wallpaper. I lie down on the bed and undo my fly, then I go whole hog and shrug my pants to my shins. I hike my T-shirt to my armpits, and I can feel her quilted bedspread under my ass.

  It doesn’t take long. I’m good at this, believe me, though I do it more now from habit than desire. I close my eyes and stick out my tongue, I place my free hand way down under my balls, and I think again of the big-buttoned yellow dress I’ve invented, and of Sylvia’s soft, fragrant, enveloping skin. The way she’ll gasp and shout out loud—and suddenly I’m finished. I come silently, despite the empty rooms, but I come a lot. One small, wet dollop hits me on the chin, and I’m weightless for a few dizzy instants.

  I lie on her bed, catching my breath. My stomach’s a stew of semen and body hair, and in a sort of caress I gather the wet with my palm, then pull my T-shirt down to blot. I don’t want anything dribbling on the bedspread. With my free hand, I reach down awkwardly and pull an edge of the fabric over me so I’m in a kind of dark pod, scented with Sylvia’s laundry detergent. It’s the type of place I could stay forever, but almost before the gunk has crusted I jump up, thinking of Ryan’s return. He’s not due for hours, but I can’t take any chances, and I want to get Sylvia’s lawn mowed for her, too.

  34

  IT TAKES ME AN HOUR to decipher Ryan’s practice schedule, and even then I’m not sure I’ve got it right. Ed Mesk has abbreviated the days of the week and reduced the dates to digit-slash-digit, and once night has fallen I sit on my bed and puzzle over his broad, loopy handwriting. All the housemates are out, and Ryan sleeps silently in the next room. He was really tuckered. Now the big leaves on the catalpa slap together in a sudden gust, and a minute later it starts to rain. I go down to the driveway and roll up the windows on the truck, and the smell of the rain is so sweet and strong that I stroll to the porch and settle in the old rattan glider to watch the cloudburst. The rain pounds the porch roof and splatters hard on the asphalt road, then suddenly desists.

  I’m accustomed to sitting alone at my house and waiting for the hours to tick by, but lately—even without a job—I’ve been too busy to sit around. Maybe that’s for the best, because I don’t know how I’ll cope when this ends. It’s fine to take an evening when the boy’s asleep and watch the puddles dry up in the street, but I wouldn’t want a steady diet of it; so I wonder what my options will be, and I think of Sylvia. Remembering my ripe behavior at her house this afternoon, I’m pretty embarrassed, but the memory of the barbecue joint makes me feel good. I think of sitting with my arm around her—first time in decades—and how she turned with tears in her eyes when the bald guy leaped from the shabby rehab-house porch. How she praised the baseball glove and said getting to know my life was her new resolution. What she said at the end.

  Across the street, a car turns into a driveway. A man and a woman get out, and as she sidesteps a puddle he offers his arm. They enter the house, and a little later the door opens again, showing a stair hall that’s the mirror image of mine. A teenage girl steps onto the porch and stands in the light of the doorway, chatting with the woman. The man appears, and he and the girl move down the steps toward the car. As he helps her around the puddle, I realize he’s taking the babysitter home, and suddenly I can’t help wondering what we looked like at that barbecue restaurant. Sylvia’s the second of my two great burdens, but isn’t it possible we looked like a family? Even considering Ryan’s race? But there’s a limit to how far I should go in this direction, so it’s good my thoughts are interrupted. Laurel’s little Beetle comes shushing down the wet road.

  I go upstairs and get the practice schedule, and I meet Laurel in the kitchen. She’s all dressed up: tailored slacks, a bit of blush on her cheeks. “Oh, Howard, what a night,” she says, and kicks off a pair of black, pointy shoes. “You know, I just do not do enough cultural stuff!” I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I open two beers, and Laurel presses the cold bottle to her face. Evidently a client gave away tickets to the ballet, and just for a moment I wonder if she went alone. And Laurel studied ballet for most of her childhood, so she knows just how difficult the steps can be. One particular dancer did something magnificent, and there was an excerpt from Swan Lake and a modern piece with bare-chested men. The response was thunderous . . .

  I stifle a yawn, and Laurel says, “Sorry, I’m rambling. But if you’d seen this girl, how young she seemed! They talk about ballerinas floating, but really—” I might be more interested if she acted it out.

  At last she says dryly, “Thank you, thank you. You’ve been a wonderful audience,” and glances at the paper I’m holding. “What you got there?” I lay the schedule on the table. Laurel says, “Hmm. Okay, this is . . . ‘Practice sched—’ Oh, my gosh, Howard, I forgot all—how was it?” I nod, and she says, “That’s terrific.” I feel better now, and I want to tell her I got involved, too, so I indicate a bunch of kids and point to my chest. She doesn’t get it. I gesture the kids again—I’m patting many small heads—then make a throwing movement. “Okay,” says Laurel. “He got to pitch?” I shake my head and try once more: kids, me, throw. I leave Ryan out of it. But still Laurel knits her brow. It’s not like her to struggle so with making me out, but it’s not like me to have so much to say. And now I think I started with the wrong topic, but before I describe Ryan’s hit, she yawns. “I’m really sorry, Howard. Maybe I’m tired or my mind’s elsewhere. I’m just not—but I can help with this.” She picks up the paper and confirms what I already suspect: “Looks like he’s got long practices Saturday mornings and shorter ones, five forty-five to sev
en, two evenings a week. And this here’s the locations: ball field Saturdays, then Healy Boulevard during the—what’s Healy Boulevard?” It’s the Mister Luster Kleen shop, but Laurel doesn’t expect an answer. Tapping the paper thoughtfully, she says, “You know, there’s no games listed. You got any other papers?” I shake my head. Forget it, forget it. I’m tired, too.

  We blink at each other. Ordinarily we do better than this. Laurel bites her lip and says, “Well, Howard, I’m sure glad we both had successful days,” and bends acrobatically to pick up her shoes. Suddenly, whatever flurry of connection we ignited at the water park has gotten short-circuited, and as I head upstairs I think how much easier it was to discuss baseball with Sylvia. And I completely forgot to tell Laurel about Sylvia.

  35

  THE WEEK PASSES, and we fall into the routine: practices twice weekly before supper, then Saturday mornings at the paired ball fields in the park. I’m back to my old habit of breakfast for the household, but I no longer wake up wondering what to serve. Instead, I think about my day with Ryan, and it’s amazing how easily we fill the hours. One day we rent in-line skates and troll through the big city park, Ryan zipping ahead like a bug. Another day we drive north and rent a canoe. I’m spending a lot of money, but I want no regrets. Sometimes Ryan and I play catch in the back yard, but mostly I leave baseball to the Snakes. I’m more content than I’d have imagined with Mister Luster Kleen’s baseball, but I’m not one of those sports-crazy adults who ruin kids’ lives.