The God of War

by Marisa Silver

  I must have fallen asleep sitting up because I was woken when the front door of the trailer opened against my back, pushing me off the steps and onto the ground.

  “Sorry, man. Didn’t know you were camping out,” Richard said, helping me up. He dusted off my back like I was a jacket he meant to put on. Craning his neck to see the starry sky, he drew in a long, deep breath. “Not a bad idea, camping out. Your mother’s kind of sleep is impossible to sleep next to. It’s like lying beside a corpse.”

  “So I don’t get my room back tonight?”

  “Tough not having privacy at your age.”

  “You too,” I said, thinking of the sounds I’d heard them making.

  A slow smile crossed his face. “You don’t miss a trick,” he said. “C’mon. We’ll get her out of there.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

  “No. A boy should have his space.”

  Reluctantly, I followed him back inside. The door to my bedroom stood open, and I saw my mother asleep on my bed, her form outlined by the sheet. One pale leg was exposed and in the spill from the outdoor floods it looked like marble. Richard slid his hands underneath her shoulders and knees and started to lift her. “Get the sheet,” he whispered. But before I could, the sheet slid halfway off her revealing a breast and the hair at her crotch. I froze, not because I had never seen her body but because Richard was there, and my mother was unconscious, and everything felt illicit in a way it never had before. I didn’t want to touch her. She murmured something in her sleep and turned her head toward Richard’s chest.

  “Can I have some help here?” he hissed, irritable under the strain of her weight.

  Trying not to touch her skin, I adjusted the sheet and stood back while he carried her out the door. His movements were precise and stealthy. I wondered whether this was what war was like: carrying out missions in the jungle in the middle of the night, communicating only through sharp whispers and swift gestures, making sure not to do anything random that might increase the likelihood of being seen and killed. The ease with which he moved made me think he must have carried a lot of bodies away from further harm and that he must have been very calm around dead people.

  In the living room he motioned for me to pull back the card curtain. He passed through and laid Laurel on her bed. When he covered her with unexpected gentleness, I understood for the first time that the feelings that traveled between my mother and Richard had nothing to do with me. I felt betrayed, not by them but by my younger self who had naively accepted everything and had not looked beyond the near horizon of my life to see how insignificant I was. Richard brushed hair off her face. He let his hand linger on her cheek then removed it swiftly like he was pulling a pick-up stick out of a pile, trying to trick the other sticks into not recognizing their loss.

  “Sayonara, kiddo,” he whispered, signaling good-bye with an ironic salute as he left the trailer, closing the door gently behind him. When I heard the engine of his Jeep start I turned the lock on the door, listening for the sound of its secure, final snap.

  Neighborhood gossip was finally confirmed by an article in the local newspaper a few days later, which reported that a Mexican farmworker had been found drowned in the sea. There was no report of a missing gun and no indication that the man had been shot. There was speculation that he had killed himself but this was unconfirmed. My mother and the others in our neighborhood shook their heads at the news, let it linger in their minds and on their lips for a few days. But after a short while, the death of that stranger became just another one of the unquestioned comings and goings that we took as part of the natural history of our desert home.

  EIGHT

  At Malcolm’s third session a light and unexpected rain was falling, so Mrs. Poole allowed me inside her house. She told me that I could do my homework in the living room but that I was not to turn on the television because there was no door separating the living room from the kitchen.

  “You can sit there,” she said, motioning me toward a low cushioned chair next to a shelf full of books. “Use the lamp. You don’t want to hurt your eyes.” She watched me while I took my seat as if she didn’t trust me to follow her directions. As I turned on the lamp, I worried that I’d already made a mistake and would be banished again, but she smiled and returned to the kitchen without saying anything further.

  The material on my chair was a rough orange plaid that matched the material of the couch. Brass rivets connected the cushions to the chair, which made me imagine castles and thrones. From where I sat, I studied the room. Rough bricks surrounded the fireplace. Four of them stood out from the wall, and small porcelain figurines perched on them like people deciding whether or not to jump. A set of shiny brass fireplace pokers and brooms stood next to the fire screen. The miniature tools appealed to me and I wanted to hold them, swing them around like swords, and pretend I was in a castle and these were my weapons. But I knew that if I moved them Mrs. Poole would find out. There was something about the order of the room that was undeniably deliberate. I could feel her hand on each object, placing it just so. The window shades were drawn against the harsh sun, and the twilit room felt as if a spell had been cast on it.

  Every so often I heard Mrs. Poole and Malcolm, their voices rising above the low buzz of the house’s electricity like the apexes of waves. Carefully, I laid my books on the burled shag carpeting and inspected the photographs on the shelves. There were many framed pictures of Mrs. Poole and a man I guessed to be her husband. He wore a beard and mustache and black, square-framed glasses. In one picture he wore the khaki uniform of a state trooper. Being in the presence of a policeman, even just the photograph of one, made me acutely aware that I was disobeying Mrs. Poole and that I should be doing my homework. In the kitchen, she was still chanting to Malcolm in her firm, insistent voice: “Book, bah, bah, book…Can you say that?”

  Farther along the mantle sat framed shots of Mr. and Mrs. Poole standing with Kevin. In one, he was younger than in the photo on Mrs. Poole’s library desk—he might have been my age. He didn’t have pimples, and his face was fuller and softer. He stood in front of the Pooles’ house, a red, child-sized suitcase at his feet. In another, he was older, standing astride a dirt bike, while Mrs. Poole stood to his left, looking at him as if he were a curious stranger.

  A chair scraped against the kitchen floor. I hurried back to my designated seat, picked up my notebook, and pretended to work, but Mrs. Poole did not come into the living room after all, and my eyes wandered to the coffee table. Mrs. Poole subscribed to Ladies’ Home Journal and Cosmopolitan and a TV fan magazine, which I picked up. I turned to an article about Charlene Tilton. The picture showed her posing in a tight dress, and the outline of her nipples showed beneath the thin material. Malcolm let out a shout, and I dropped the magazine back onto the pile. Remembering my mother’s instructions, I went to the kitchen doorway to see if he was upset. His back was to me. Mrs. Poole held up her hand to stop me from interrupting.

  “Look at my face, Malcolm,” she said in a firm voice. “Look at my eyes.”

  As I drew back into the living room I brushed against a lamp. All the lampshades had pompoms hanging from the edges that matched the material of the chair and the couch and that now swung in unison. In a glassed-in porch off the living room, a pygmy lime tree stood dangling small globes of unripe fruit. The house did not feel like a place that could accommodate the mess and noise of children, and I wondered what it had been like when Kevin lived there.

  When I returned home that afternoon, I was rattled by the riot of objects in our trailer: Malcolm’s book towers, my mother’s jars of creams and bottles of lotion, the brightly colored Mexican blankets she threw over the backs of the couch and chair to hide stains. At dinner that night I did not tell Laurel about Mrs. Poole’s house, or about the firm tone she took with Malcolm. Laurel would put an end to the sessions if she thought Mrs. Poole was cruel. And I didn’t think that Mrs. Poole was mean. She was just demanding in a way I knew Laurel would find
fault with because she didn’t like people to tell her what to do. But I liked it. I felt eager around Mrs. Poole and excited about the possibility of pleasing her.

  During the following days, I thought about Mrs. Poole often. I looked for her in school. I was not prepared to talk to her but when I saw her moving quietly down a corridor or heading to her car at the end of a day, my heart sped up. I couldn’t explain to myself why I liked her or why the days between Malcolm’s sessions began to feel long and pregnant with anticipation. She was very businesslike and did nothing to ingratiate herself to me. She was fastidious in a way that could only engender the ridicule of children, and most students I knew made fun of her. She was “uncool,” as withering a personality defect as any for the kids I knew, but I wanted a place in her systematic universe. And so my attraction to her became something covert and so all the more potent.

  SHE AGREED TO PAY ME two dollars an hour to weed her garden. “You need to be productive,” she said the following week, when I brought Malcolm to her house, “and I have a lot of things on my plate.” Before she took Malcolm inside, she showed me how to identify which plants were good and worth keeping and which were weeds that would kill her vegetables. “It takes a tremendous amount of diligence to grow these things out here. You have to fight and fight,” she said, more to herself than me as she idly ran her hand over a green tomato. “These won’t get anywhere on their own.” She pointed out a row of beans and next to it, a row of zucchini. “It takes fortitude, really. And cunning. You have to play a trick on the desert because it will kill everything valuable.” She leaned down and carefully pulled a plant out of the ground so that its roots remained intact. “This is one of the worst. It just proliferates like a virus.” She held up the twiggy yellow-green plant. I knew it was cheese bush. Once, Laurel had crushed one of the spines between her fingers and held it to my nose, laughing when I reacted to the rotten scent. I had chased her, waving the bush at her, trying to force her to smell it too, and we had wrestled and screamed happily. Mrs. Poole tossed the plant onto the ground by the side of the garden. “That one is not worth saving.”

  At first I was uncertain which plants I should keep. I didn’t want to make a mistake and disappoint Mrs. Poole, so I carefully pulled out the roots of every plant that was not a recognizable vegetable so that she could replant if I’d guessed wrong. I knew my mother would never kill these plants. She might touch them and run her fingers along their leaves the way she ran her hands over her children’s heads as a way of knowing us.

  At the end of Malcolm’s session, Mrs. Poole frowned at the collection of plants I had laid in a neat row on the grass. “You’ve created more work for me,” she said.

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “You have to be sure if you’re going to do the job.”

  I felt myself grow small.

  “Tell your mother she needs to practice with Malcolm,” she said, handing me a sheet of paper. “I wrote it down. Once a week isn’t enough to make a difference. Your mother has to do the work at home.”

  I waited. “You said you were going to pay me,” I said finally.

  “You didn’t do what I asked.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s exactly fair,” she said. “I’m not trying to cheat you, Ares. Two dollars isn’t a lot to me. But you get paid for a job well done.”

  On the ride home, I tried to hate her but all I could think about was what it would take to win her praise.

  “Christ,” Laurel said that evening when she read Mrs. Poole’s note. “This is ridiculous.” She laid the paper on the table and went to the cupboard. While she took out a pot and filled it with water, I read the note. Practice normal social intercourse, it said. Malcolm must ask for something before he is given it. Encourage him not to grab. Encourage him to make eye contact.

  Laurel ripped open a box of spaghetti. “Normal social intercourse,” she said. “It sounds like something dirty.”

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK, I SAT in Mrs. Poole’s living room listening to her as she worked with Malcolm. Her voice was catlike, drawing back, lunging forward, pouncing when she thought she might get his attention, purring when she tried to coax him to do something. When the session was over, she handed me a typewritten list. “This might make it easier for your mother,” she said.

  I rode home fast, remembering only occasionally to look back to make sure Malcolm was keeping up. Once we were outside our trailer, I stood astride my bike, unfolded the list, and read.

  Address Malcolm by name when you talk to him. If he doesn’t look you in the eyes, take his hands so he can focus on you.

  Model speech. Narrate what you are doing, i.e., “I am cutting an apple. I am handing you a slice of apple.” Repeat nouns with frequency. Avoid the use of “this” and “it.”

  When Malcolm misbehaves, i.e., grabbing, hitting, not following directions, show him your displeasure by crossing your arms and looking away from him.

  It was already dark when Laurel came home from work. Richard was with her. She glanced at the note lying on the table then walked toward her room.

  “You’re supposed to read it,” I said, picking up the letter and following her.

  “Are you a cop? Are you going to turn me in?”

  “No,” I said miserably. “But Mrs. Poole says…”

  Richard took a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator. Malcolm danced around him.

  “No beer for you, man,” Richard said. “That’d be bad for you in ten different ways.”

  “It is TOO HOT!” Laurel said, emerging from her bedroom. She wore her bathing suit underneath a loose dress. “Put on your suit, Ares.”

  “It’s already dark.”

  “Don’t be such a downer. It’s a full moon!” she said. She grabbed towels from the rack in the bathroom and fished out Malcolm’s shovel and pail from underneath the couch.

  Moonlight spilled on the water making it look like undulating yards of iridescent silk. On the shore, Malcolm squatted and began to dig. Laurel lifted her dress over her head, slid off her shoes, and waded into the water. The bottoms of her yellow bikini slid up between her buttocks, but she didn’t bother to adjust the material. I couldn’t bear to look at her body, which seemed grotesque to me. Richard stood with his hands folded over his chest, watching her with amusement as she twirled in the water. The picture of Laurel’s naked breast and the forest of her pubic hair came to my mind, and I felt disgusted to think that Richard might be sharing this same private image. Laurel stood in the shallows, her hand shading her eyes as if it were the middle of a bright day. When she turned to the side, I could see the exaggerated sway of her back.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing!” she yelled, wading farther out until she was submerged up to her waist. She held her hands out to either side of her, then suddenly brought them above her head, pitched forward, and dove. She emerged, letting out a groan of pleasure. “Come on!” she called.

  “Oh, hell,” Richard murmured. He stripped off his shirt, jeans, and underwear and ran naked into the water. He lunged for her and she screamed with delight.

  “Ares! You too!” she called. She moved her hands in wide arcs on either side of her, brushing her fingers over the surface of the sea as if smoothing down wrinkles in a dress. “Look at this!” she said. “It’s so beautiful here!”

  I looked at the dry, cracking dirt by my feet, at the dead tree branches that lay scattered as if flung by Malcolm in the grip of a tantrum. “It’s not beautiful to me,” I said.

  “What?” Laurel shouted. “I can’t hear you!”

  Richard tried to grab her, and she laughed and swam away from him then turned and swam back. I felt the way I did at school dances, when I stood by the wall of the gym, full of derision and jealousy for the kids who laughed and danced and seemed to know what to do with themselves. But the time when it would have been possible for me to pull off my clothes and join my mother was in the past. Laurel kicked through the shallows toward the shore. Richard follow
ed, his penis swinging between his long legs. He toweled her off, and she even let him reach between her thighs and dry her there.

  “I think I was working on a beer somewhere a while back,” he said, throwing on his clothes and heading toward our trailer.

  Laurel scraped her fingers through her hair. “You used to love to swim,” she said to me. She studied my face, and when her eyes traveled over my body, I became self-conscious. She smiled as if she had come to some private conclusion.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re doing.”

  “Since when am I not allowed to look at you anymore?”

  “It’s gross.”

  She laughed. Malcolm walked toward us, holding a tin can that had been floating so long in the water its label was gone.

  “That’s a keeper,” Laurel said appreciatively.

  I was furious because she laughed at me, and because I felt trapped between a life I had once enjoyed and one that felt miserable and lonely and bitter. I remembered watching old war movies where the two sides marched toward each other in long lines until they reached some invisible dividing marker, at which point orders were given and guns were fired. I had not understood how a soldier could be made to walk into such certain death, but now I understood the lethal combination of anger and humiliation and fear that could make a person head toward oblivion.

  “See?” I said, to an argument I needed to start. “That water’s a garbage dump. You’re going to get some disease in there.”