by Homes, A. M.
I put my bag in the car and go to the Chinese restaurant. They are starting to know me.
“You want same, you want different?” they ask.
“Same,” I say.
“You a lonely man,” the waiter says, bringing me my cup of soup.
Back at George’s, I feed and walk the dog, and then I plug in the timers, setting the lamps in Nate’s and Ashley’s rooms to turn on at half past six in the evening and off at ten o’clock. The rooms are neat, empty, like rooms from a catalogue rather than rooms that are lived in. I think of children’s rooms as overstuffed monuments to experience, collections that define their lives so far: a rock from a beach, a pennant from a game, a souvenir hat from a family trip. Here it’s all been edited down to what fits neatly on a shelf. Everything is fixed, as though life has been suspended or otherwise delayed. The stillness leaves me depressed. I think of Nixon and his note keeping, Nixon and his endless legal pads, his tapes, his extensive and alas incriminating library of recordings. I think of Richard M. Nixon, named after Richard the Lionheart, son of King Henry II, brave soldier and lyricist, and realize that I don’t know enough about Nixon and his relationship to stuff. I make a mental note to revisit the subject.
I go back downstairs and phone the children at school. “Is this an okay time to talk?” I ask Nate.
“Yeah,” Nate says.
“I’m not interrupting study hall or football practice?”
“It’s okay,” Nate says.
“Ummm,” I say. “So I just wanted to say hi and see how you’re doing.”
“Okay,” he says.
“You’re doing okay—that’s great,” I say.
“I’m not doing anything,” he says, and then there is a pause. “Except that she doesn’t call, except that it’s all too quiet, I keep forgetting that Mom is dead, and I kind of like it that way. It’s better when I forget; better with her not dead. When I remember I feel sick.”
“I can imagine,” I say, and then pause. “When did your parents usually call? Was there a set schedule, once or twice a week?”
“Mom called every night before dinner, between five-forty-five and five-fifty-five. I don’t remember Dad calling.”
“It must be very strange,” I say, and pause again. “Tessie is getting along well. I take her for walks—I kind of get the sense no one ever did, she doesn’t like to leave the yard, but once I get her past the end of the driveway she’s okay.”
“There’s an invisible fence,” Nate says.
“Must be—she’s very well trained. Only goes out of the yard if I pull on her. Like I have to fight her to leave.”
“That’s because the fence gives her a shock.”
“What fence?”
“The invisible fucking fence,” Nate says.
“An invisible fence is a real thing?”
Nate sighs, painfully. “There’s a small box on the dog’s collar, that’s the transmitter; if you take her out of the yard, take that off; otherwise she gets a shock. Even if you go out in the car with her, you have to take the box off.”
I look at the dog’s collar; the box is there, totally obvious.
Nate continues, “There’s a bigger box mounted on the wall in the laundry room, next to the burglar alarm, that controls the invisible fence—the instructions for everything are in the drawer under the microwave.”
“It’s amazing that you know all that.”
“I’m not retarded, I’ve lived in that house my whole life.”
“There’s a burglar alarm? I just bought a home security system.”
“We hardly use it, because once it went off and scared everyone too much.”
I fish through my pocket for the hardware-store receipt. “Is there a code or something you need to know to turn the system on and off?”
“It’s all in the book,” Nate says. “Read the book.”
“All right, then,” I say.
“I better go,” Nate says.
And I make a mental note to call again soon, like tomorrow at five-forty-five.
Ashley can’t talk. That’s what her roommate says. She’s in the school infirmary with strep throat. I call the nurse.
“Why didn’t the school call me?” I demand to know.
“Who are you?” the nurse asks.
“I’m the uncle,” I say, incredulous.
“We don’t call uncles, we call parents.”
“Well,” I say, preparing to deliver an earful, “clearly you’re a page or two behind.…”
And with that the cat hocks up a hairball, and I simply say to the nurse that I will call again tomorrow expecting to speak with Ashley, and that for now she should give Ashley my love.
“Are you on the call list?” she asks, but I am already hanging up.
I almost vomit cleaning up the hairball. Both the dog and cat look at me rather pathetically as I’m down on my knees scrubbing the carpet with seltzer and a sponge.
When I’m finished, I go into Jane’s Amazon account and send Ashley some books. It’s super-easy: Jane made a list of gifts in the computer. I pick a couple and click “send to Ashley.” I spring for the extra bucks for gift wrap. “Feel Better Soon,” I type. “Lots of Love, Tessie (Your Dog) And Your Cat, aka The Hairballer.”
A little while later, the sharp clink of the mail slot catches Tessie off guard. She barks frantically as another note slides onto the floor.
“Tomorrow will come.”
“Yes,” I say to Tessie, “tomorrow will come, and I should be prepared.” My cell phone rings, startling me. “Hello?”
“Is this the brother of George Silver?”
“Who’s this?” I ask.
“Dr. Rosenblatt calling from The Lodge,” he says, pronouncing “The Lodge” like it’s supposed to mean something special, like the words themselves are encoded.
“You called my cell phone.”
“Is this a good time to talk?”
“I can hardly hear you. Call me on the landline, I’m at George’s house.” I hurry into George’s office and pick up the phone on his desk as it starts to ring.
I’m standing on the “wrong” side of the desk, looking at George’s chair, at the bookcase behind his desk, at the price tags still on the backs of his picture frames.
“Should I sit down?” I ask.
“Whatever is comfortable for you.”
I circle around the desk and settle into George’s chair, facing photos of George’s kids; Jane; George, Jane, and the kids; Tessie; Tessie, George, Jane, and the kids.
“As far as you know, has your brother ever suffered any head injuries, concussions, comas, any previous accidents other than the most recent one, which I have some notes on?”
“Not that I know of,” I say.
“Any illnesses such as meningitis, rheumatic fever, malaria, untreated syphilis?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Drug use?”
“What does he say about that?”
There’s an awkward pause. The doctor begins again: “In your experience, does your brother use drugs?”
“He self-medicates, medicine for this, medicine for that.”
“Is your brother a sex addict?”
“The thing is this,” I say. “As much as you think you know somebody, there are some things that one never knows.”
“How about his early life? He doesn’t seem to remember much about his childhood. Were you punished, spanked, or beaten?”
Unexpectedly, I laugh.
“What’s so funny?” the doctor asks.
“I have no idea,” I say, still laughing.
“There are rules,” the doctor says. “Boundaries that exist for a reason.”
I stop laughing. “We weren’t spanked, screwed, or otherwise taken advantage of. If anyone was beaten, it was George who was beating them—he’s a bully.”
“So you experienced your brother as a bully?”
“Not only me, others as well, many others. I could give you names and number
s—the effects are still being felt.”
The psychiatrist grunts.
“How would you describe your brother?”
“Large,” I say. “Inescapable,” I say. “Actually, he is small, medium, and large, it fluctuates. He is a person whose size fluctuates, whose mood fluctuates. He can be very intolerant of others.”
“Your experience of him is one of intolerance?”
I pause for a moment. “What about you?” I ask. “How do you describe yourself and what you do?”
He doesn’t take the bait—maybe he doesn’t even know it was bait.
“Our approach is to treat the whole person, the family, the community in which we live. Mental health begins with each individual, but mental illness unchecked spreads exponentially.” As he speaks his enthusiasm swells, as though the idea of an entire mentally ill country is amazing, a perfect storm of challenge. He takes a calming breath and shifts back to a more modulated voice. “We’ve run a battery of tests on your brother—blood, brain scan, standardized intelligence panels—and are wondering if you’d consent to have the same tests done, for comparative purposes.”
“I’m not so sure I want my head examined.”
“You don’t have to decide tonight.” He pauses. “Let me ask you another question: beyond your mother are there any relatives of your parents’ generation still with us?”
“My father’s sister.”
“Would you be willing to pay a visit and ask some questions?”
“Perhaps,” I say, unwilling to admit my own curiosity about why no one in the family has spoken of Aunt Lillian in years—was there a falling out?
While the doctor is talking, I’m on George’s computer. Like a reflex, I automatically start Googling. First I check the ten-day forecast on the Weather Underground and then without thinking I type in “Sex+Suburbs+NYC,” and a thousand sites pop up, as though the computer itself goes into hyperdrive. I put in the ZIP code, and am filling out the quick search. I am a MAN looking for a WOMAN between 35 and 55.
What’s my e-mail? the computer wants to know. My e-mail address, [email protected], feels like something left behind, like it belongs to another person in another time. I craft a new one, [email protected], certify that I am over eighteen, and voilà. It’s surprising how fast you can find naked women online.
The doctor is asking about food allergies: peanuts, wheat, gluten…“Was George a picky eater? Did he have issues with his clothing, finding tags irritating? Did he rock or spin?”
“He threw rocks,” I say, “right at people’s heads.”
“Again,” the doctor says, “that’s your opinion.”
“He frequently threw rocks that hit people in the head,” I rephrase.
“Bad aim,” the doctor says. “And what about food?”
“He didn’t throw food.”
“Did he eat it happily?”
“In our generation there wasn’t an option not to like something, you either ate it or you didn’t. You wore the clothes your parents bought you—or you wore the ones your cousin wore before you—there wasn’t a lot of choice.”
“Did he have trouble in school?”
“He liked school. He was big for his age, and there were a lot of people he could pick on. At home, funny enough, my father thought of himself as the boss, which didn’t go over so well with George.”
I’m seeing breasts, lots of breasts. Apparently, women photograph their breasts and post them online and, depending on how far you’re willing to drive, you can date a woman who is large, small, ginormous, subtle or not.
I’m filling out forms, describing myself, my hobbies, my income, eye color, hair pattern, all in haste to locate a woman who might want to meet me, who might want to do more than meet me.
“So—it was only the two of you growing up?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And George and his former wife had two children?”
“She wasn’t his former wife, she was his wife.”
“They had two children?”
“Correct.”
“And the children, where are they now?”
“Away at school. Nate is doing okay, and Ashley is in the infirmary with strep throat.”
My mind wanders to what’s on-screen; I am glad to be doing this under professional supervision, able to devote only a portion of my attention to what’s before me, and equally glad that my “professional supervisor”—aka George’s shrink—has no idea. If I were left alone with these sites, I would be overwhelmed. It’s all more than I’d ever imagined. Why have I never done this before?
The doctor senses my distraction. “How do the children deal with their father?”
“Well, since he killed their mother, I think that changes things. I don’t think it’s clear yet to what degree. The last time they saw him was at the cemetery when they were burying their mother.”
I am going through photo after photo, a veritable fleshy catalogue of human anatomy. Who knew that people would advertise themselves so explicitly, by showing their bare bits, it’s so…animal kingdom.
The doctor is still speaking: “We’d like to encourage you to come up. Could you stay overnight, spend some time with us?”
“I can’t,” I say, not really listening. “I’m staying at George’s and I’ve got his pets to care for.”
“Perhaps you could bring them—George misses the dog.”
Online, someone has posted: “Are your breasts filled with milk? I j’adore breast milk and would like to meet a lactating or pregnant woman for daytime feedings. If you like I will also bury my face between your legs and tongue you to orgasm after orgasm till you tell me to stop. No reciprocation required. I’m a professional MWM, D/D free, nonsmoker, gentle & respectful. Would like to do this on a regular basis at your place.”
“Do you think you might come up sometime?” the doctor asks again.
The ads are so specific, so uncomfortably arousing, that I have to look away from the computer for a moment.
“I’ve been there,” I say, distracted. “Just the other day, I drove all the way the hell up there with his stuff and didn’t exactly have what I’d call a good experience.”
“Yes. The hope would be that a scheduled visit would go better.”
“We will see,” I say; I am a million miles away.
“We’ll talk again soon,” the doctor says.
“Sure,” I say. “Call anytime. I’m always here.”
I am in the glow of the computer, bent like an old man hunkered down for the duration. The cat and the dog come to check on me.
“Suburban Mom seeks friends for lunch, NSA.”
I mistake “NSA” for “NASA” and wonder what the hell the space program has to do with women in suburbia making dates. I Google “NSA” and find it to be an acronym for everything from the National Sawmilling Association to No Significant Abnormalities and No Strings Attached—which is apparently the most modern and intended meaning.
Somewhere between two-thirty and three in the morning, I fall asleep at the computer in mid-chat, and the woman I’m talking with asks, “Are you texting while driving?”
“No,” I type, “not asleep at the wheel but at the desk.” The woman I was chatting to was (or said she was) the wife of a cop, waiting for her husband to come home—she says she manages her anxiety about her husband’s work by Internet-sexting.
The next night I am at it again, craving something, thinking it would be nice to have someone to share my wonton soup with.
I post a listing of my own. There is a corporate headshot of George on his computer, taken a few years ago, when his hair was better, when he was thinner. I upload it as my own. “Home Alone—Westchester Man Seeks Play Mate; tired soul craving nourishment—meet me for a smoothie, my treat. NSA.”
A minute after I post it, a woman e-mails, “I know you.”
“Doubtful.”
“No, really,” she says.
“Happy to chat, but trust me no one knows me.”
&nbs
p; “Photo for photo,” she says.
“Okay,” I say, and it feels like a game of cards—Go Fish. I search George’s computer and find a photo of him on vacation, fishing pole in hand. I upload it.
She sends a photo of her shaved crotch.
“I don’t think we’re on the same page,” I type back.
“George,” she writes, terrifying me.
“?,” I type.
“I used to work for you. I heard about the accident.”
“I don’t follow,” I type, full well knowing exactly what she’s talking about.
“I’m Daddy’s little girl. We pretend Mommy’s gone out. You ask to check my homework. I bring it to your office 18th Floor 30 Rockefeller Plaza. I do whatever you tell me to—I never disobey Daddy. You ask me to suck your cock, tell me it tastes like cookie dough. You’re right. And then I bend over your desk, my breasts sweeping pens off your blotter while you have me from behind. The office door is open, you like the possibility that someone might walk in.”
“Tell me more,” I type.
“Oh come on George, it’s okay. I’m not with the network anymore. I quit. I got a better job. My new boss is a lesbian.”
“I’m not George,” I type.
“Your photo,” she writes.
“I’m the brother.”
“You don’t have a brother, you’re an only child,” she types. “That’s what you told everyone, you were an only child, the apple of your mother’s eye.”
“Not true.”
“Whatever,” she types. “Goodbye and good luck, George.”
In George’s home office, I find a small digital camera, shoot some pictures of myself, upload them, and see how bad I look—I had no idea. Retreating to the upstairs bathroom, I give myself an ersatz makeover, combing, shaving, trimming, using Jane’s hair gel to coif my chest hair, which has recently turned a kind of steel gray. I put on one of George’s pressed shirts and take photos again, progressively undressing myself, shirt unbuttoned, shirt off, pants unbuttoned, unzipped, naked to the underwear line. I upload the photos—create a profile, “Ever heard of the Lonely Professor?”