Well

by Matthew McIntosh

  When it came to sex, Shannon was usually the one to start it, more than me because after that first attempt I was pretty timid. I went to the library and I sat there one Saturday when I was supposed to be at work, looking through psychology books, trying to find out what’s the cure for being impotent with a girl, when you used to get hard just thinking about her. I read up on the subject, but none of the books had any real advice and I felt embarrassed if anyone saw me reading sex manuals and Sigmund Freud. Shannon was usually the one to start it, but like I said, afterwards she’d sometimes cry and hold on to me tight. I’d tell her to hold on as tight as she wanted and, to take the sting out of whatever was hurting her mind, I’d tend to hold on to her too. When we finally did have sex, after a bunch of embarrassing attempts, it was that first time my parents left for the weekend. They hadn’t been anywhere just the two of them since before I was born and my brother, who’s three years older than me and mentally disabled, or retarded, had just gone to live in a home about two hours away. My mom was real broke up about it. We dropped him off at the home—it was sort of like a hospital, except that on the outside they had gardens and yards and people walking around—and the fact that it was more like a hospital scared my mom really bad, and she started crying and getting all hysterical, probably with guilt, and she started kissing Joe on the head and saying “My baby” over and over. This sent him into a crazy rage. My brother is six inches shorter and fifty pounds heavier than me. My dad had to manhandle him to the ground along with some help from a hospital employee, while my mom bawled into the arms of a nurse and I just stood there quietly, wondering if I’d ever have sex with Shannon and if we’d ever get married and if so, if we had kids, would any of them look like Joe. They had him on the ground with his hands behind his back screaming, and they dragged him that way, screaming, down the longest, narrowest hallway you’ve ever seen and this echo hit me, even when they were out of sight, this echo that raced down to the end of the hallway and back at me again, that sounded like a rat on fire, screaming for his life.

  That’s what I told Shannon that night at my parents’ house, that he had screamed like a rat on fire, and she stared at the ceiling and finished puffing down the last of the cigarette I gave her. We were in my bed and we were both naked and I was amazed at the whole feeling of being locked up in sex, but that amazement that I had in me, and that relief also, gave way to guilt as all I could think of afterwards, as we lay there next to each other, was that look on Shannon’s face when I finally managed to get inside her, and my brother being dragged down the hallway like a rat on fire, and my old man with sweat dripping down his forehead from wrestling his retarded kid to the floor—but Joe was a man now wasn’t he?—and a dazed look on his face like, “My God, what have I done?” as if he had doomed the world to some terrible fate, and maybe he had. At least his world. “You’ve got to look out for your own,” he used to tell me when I was younger and embarrassed to be seen with my brother. You couldn’t reason with Joe, there was no order to his mind, it was all scattered and jumbled and chaotic. You had to walk on eggshells. He’d freak out on you, then he’d look at you like he’d never seen you before. “Don’t do this. Don’t do that,” my mom would say. “No loud noises, don’t touch him, but don’t make him feel unwanted,” because she knew, or she thought, that underneath his dumb ugly look, he knew exactly what was going on, and he had order in his mind. But my dad would say, “Look out for him, Andrew. He’s your brother. He’s family,” and I know he was thinking of this as he watched them drag my brother off, kicking and screaming, and as he took my mom out of the arms of that nurse and as they walked away to fill out paperwork, forgetting about me, still staring down that empty hallway, where my brother had disappeared.

  The lights were off but the curtains were open and Shannon had the covers pulled over her chest, and in the moonlight one side of her face was in shade, but the one closest to me was lit in white, and her skin looked china white and her mahogany hair looked gray. I talked for a long time more about Joe and the trip to the home and how my parents didn’t say a word the whole trip back, because I didn’t want to get to the real issue or I didn’t know how to get to the real issue, and that was: why after all this time of wanting to make love to a girl, why could she only cry afterwards and hold tight to my arm like she was sad or afraid, or was remembering something, or knew there was something that she couldn’t remember. We smoked cigarettes and looked at the walls and at the crosses made of shadows on the ceiling and I kissed her on the forehead, which was very warm and smelled like something I couldn’t put my finger on (and still can’t). Then I said, “Did it hurt?” and she nodded her head and I thought she might cry again but she didn’t. And I was suddenly sickened by myself and I wanted to crawl away from her and hide in a corner or run from my own house, because I was so ashamed of myself and I thought about sex and the act itself, and really, what a horrible fucking thing it is. But then she said, “That’s not why I was crying. I don’t know why I was crying but not because of that,” and then she kissed me on the chin.

  This put me at ease a little, but we didn’t have sex again for two months after that and it took even longer for her to lose that scared, painful look on her face those times we would do it, and the way her body would tense up and she’d clutch the sheets as if she was afraid if she let go, she’d go hurtling through the roof and lose her place on earth, sort of the same way my brother had when they dragged him down that narrow hallway. And it’s right now occurring to me that your brain is like that hallway and it’s so easy to go hurtling down it and it takes such an effort to fight against it, and it takes more than only someone next to you who’ll let you hold them and tell you what everyone wants to hear, that everything will be all right.

  I’d tell her this when she’d cry or when she’d wake up from a bad dream. Everything will be all right. But being how we are, and how two people can be completely different, no matter how they fit together, and no matter how many times you tell someone that everything will be all right, things aren’t always all right.

  Sometimes I’d get very quiet and Shannon would make every effort to get me talking. She’d ask me what’s on my mind, and I know she was only trying to do what I did for her and that is to simply be there for her, to be someone she could clutch or hold on to. But no matter how much I liked her, or even possibly loved her (or love her now for that matter), there was nothing she could do to put me at ease, and above all, to rid me of the weight in my head, to unclutter my mind. When I feel this heavy inside, I usually go down to the pier and stare off into the water, at night especially, when it’s quiet and no one is around, and where the lights on the hills behind me light up where I come from, and the dark of the ocean lays out there like a calm blanket that I know nothing about. It’s like the dark parts of my mind I can’t put my finger on.

  Why, for example, did I get so angry when Shannon would ask me too many questions and ask me about Joe and growing up when I didn’t want to talk that way? And why do I have a feeling that my parents are so unhappy with their lives and with the two of us? Why do they need to get away? And the question I ask myself all the time is why, when I am so attracted to Shannon, why was it so difficult to have sex with her?

  Because though I make it sound like it’s no big deal sometimes, it’d take me such a big effort to make myself be able to get inside her. Sometimes it’d take hours, sometimes it wouldn’t happen at all. Sometimes she would do everything she could to make me get hard and finally on those occasions where nothing happened, she’d collapse off of me and lay there exhausted from trying to get me going with her mouth, and while she couldn’t see me, the whole time I’ve been staring up at the ceiling or at the roof of the car, biting my lip and tearing up in my eyes, trying not to make any noise, and I’m so frustrated and ashamed because I am a man and to make her do all those things just so we can be together, seems sickening and shameful. On the times where it would work (and this could be after hours, and me finally rub
bing up against her like a fool and sometimes using my hand) she’d roll over onto her side, which is where we’d learned is the easiest way, and she’d help me in, and I’ll feel like screaming, hoping I won’t lose it and have to start again, so I’ll go at it real quick, trying to get it over with, and poor Shannon has to feel all the aggression that’s not meant for her at all, but for me, and I come very quick. Which is when, when it was over, she’d turn over and kiss me and sometimes cry and hold tight to me, because she remembers something, or nearly remembers something that’s so painful she’s got to hold on to me—who she says she loves—and convince herself that the two things, while they’re the same act and probably feel the same to her too, have nothing in common.

  My parents leave most weekends. My mom, who’s been moping around the house in a funk since my brother left, cries when she thinks no one’s around, and stares off through the walls when she thinks no one’s looking. My old man has taken a different approach to dealing with the guilt. He yells at me for the slightest reasons, and sometimes takes to pushing me around.

  Most weekends they drive two hours away to a motel called the Eight Arms in Port Townsend. The hospital where Joe is living at is nearby. They spend the weekends there. My dad sits around in the motel room all day, watching sports on cable and drinking beer, and my mom spends most of the days at the hospital, visiting Joe. At night, they mostly stay in, although some nights they go out to eat, and maybe a movie. Sundays at four, they pack up the van and drive back home.

  Shannon would come over and stay with me on the weekends. I asked her once if her dad knew where she was and she gave me a look that made me stop right where I was at. More than once, she’s come over with a new bruise on her face that I never tried to ask her about.

  How different can two people be? Once, when we were alone and watching TV, Shannon said to me, “What one thing did you want more than anything when you were a little kid?—You know what mine was?”

  “What?” I said.

  “For my mom to come back to life and for my dad to die.”

  I held her closer and being resilient, didn’t say anything, just took a drag off my cigarette and listened to her breathe off to sleep. I can’t say it’s the thing I wanted more than anything, but when I was little, I used to wish that my brother would die and that I wouldn’t have to listen to him anymore, or see him, or smell him, and I wouldn’t have to defend him to the neighborhood kids who used to make fun of him and me. Sometimes I would wish it was me who would die, because the thought of me actually wishing something like that on my brother was too painful to face, being a little kid, especially all the times my mom would work to convince me that he was just like me, but different, and that I really loved him very much.

  On one of my trips to the pier a few months after Joe had been gone, I said out loud, “There’s your subconscious, always fucking with you,” because you know, there’s just nothing there to be done, short of psychotherapy, and in most cases who would want to remember something so horrible? It probably goes like this: The doctor lays you down—let’s use Shannon for an example—he lays Shannon down and he says, “You cry and clutch Andrew’s shoulder after he finally manages to have sex with you. Let’s find out why,” and then he makes her remember every detail (the feeling, the smell, the size, the shape) of what I think happened to her and what she knows, but really can’t remember. He opens up her subconscious and he drags her down that hallway, kicking and screaming like she’s a rat on fire, and you know she doesn’t want to see it, she can’t bear to see it, and then he says, like it’s a magic trick, “Done! That’s what happened!” Sometimes I think we’re bound by the parts of ourselves that we have the least control of.

  My brother, who has the body of a man, wears extra large diapers because he shits himself. He doesn’t walk either, it’s more of a lunge like a claymation doll, and he spins his head this way and that, opens his mouth and spits out the craziest choking sound. He drools on himself and blows snot down his face, but my mom, up until the day we all drove him to the home where he now lives, would take him to the barber shop on the first Tuesday of every month, and buy him new clothes every September during the Back To School sales. She would also take him for walks on nice days, leading him along like she was the caretaker of the zombie division at the local zoo. Then there’s my dad, who hardly ever came home until very late and couldn’t be in the same room as Joe for ten minutes before he’d either start yelling at him or go storming out of the room; he’d tell me anyways, when the kids from our street would yell at me and I was tired of defending whatever smarts my mom claimed Joe had, “You’ve got to look out for your own! He’s your brother! He’s family!” But my dad works hard at a print shop for twelve hours a day; he got tired of coming home to a house that smelled like shit-filled sweatpants and the constant noise—the constant drooling, “Na! Na! Na! Na!” and the screeching and the times when Joe would start flailing around madly, trying to crush, batter and break everything within the circle of his outstretched arms.

  One night I was watching TV and listening to my parents creak around in their bedroom through the ceiling. My old man came downstairs and sat next to me in front of the TV, and he handed me a beer and took a giant pull off of his and said, with a hand on his huge but strong belly, “We’re taking your brother to a home. Someplace where they can take better care of him.” He looked sad, but he looked angry too and I realized what it was that made Joe so difficult for him and for me also, and it was this: No matter how much we walked on eggshells or defended him, or tried to love him and to talk nice to him and clean him, no matter how much we did these things, Joe would never recognize us. He’d never be able to point to a picture of my dad’s broad frame and fat stomach and recognize that it was his father, and he’d never be able to look at me, skin and bones, and know that I was his brother. We weren’t his in the same way that he was ours. My dad looked sad and as he sat there, he looked sadder and sadder, until the angry part of his face left him completely. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t make a sound. I thought if I were to sigh or take a deep breath, that would somehow hold me responsible. I could’ve told him it was the wrong thing to do and maybe they wouldn’t have sent him away, or I could’ve told him it was a good idea and maybe they would’ve felt better about it, but I just sat there, looking at the TV, holding this beer in my hand. After awhile he got up and went back upstairs, which was probably more to his liking, and now I could breathe again.

  Shannon didn’t tell me that she was pregnant. But she did tell me that she had an abortion, which is weird I guess. She never mentioned that she was pregnant even after she knew I’d found out, and I can’t see the point in it except maybe she didn’t want me to have to think about how it was I found out. We stopped having sex, and I didn’t touch her. We went out to places and she still loved me and she probably still loves me, although we are broken up, and I probably still love her too.

  What happened was her dad got a phone call from Dr Birch at the clinic and Dr Birch told him that Shannon was pregnant. This goes against all sorts of confidentiality laws, I know, but what can you do? My parents had left for the weekend and I was watching a movie on TV called Vertigo, and I hear someone bust through my front door. It’s a great big oak door so you can really tell when someone throws it open. It rattled the walls and I turned around in my easy chair and there’s Shannon’s old man, standing in the doorway with his arms out at his sides, but bent at the elbows all menacingly, and a crazy look on his face like he was a lunatic. I didn’t say anything. I was so surprised and plus, he was my girlfriend’s dad and what could I say? The next thing I know he’s running at me, calling me all sorts of names, and I try to scramble away but Shannon’s dad is as tall as me and built thick like my dad and he’s fast, and he’s on top of me in a second and he’s got his hands around my neck and his hair is hanging down and he’s choking me, I feel my throat collapsing so no air can get through and I’m thinking I’m going to puke or pass out, then I
start thinking this could be IT, like I’m gonna die. The whole time he’s calling me a skinny fuck and a faggot and he’s talking about Shannon and using words like slut and bang and knocked up. Right when I think I’m really going to die, his hands get soft on my throat and he stands up and walks out like nothing happened, but I don’t see him because I’m on my side, coughing and gasping for air and if you were there all you’d hear would be me on the floor coughing, and the movie on the TV, and me bawling my eyes out for a very long time.

  I didn’t call Shannon although I wanted to. I was sure she was getting a beating at her house, but I didn’t call her. I wanted to get my dad’s gun and go over to her house and knock on the door and when that crazy fucker answers, to blow his brains out, or at least to go get her and drive her away from that lunatic. But life isn’t a movie and I’m not heroic. I wish I was but I’m not.

  I didn’t tell my parents but what does that matter? My parents drive off to the Eight Arms Motel almost every weekend. My dad watches the Raiders or the Lakers or the Kings or the Dodgers, and my mom has grown tired of having no one to tend to during the weekdays and so she waits for the weekends and walks down that narrow hallway to my brother’s room on Saturday and then again on Sunday and so everything’s all right.