Man of the Year

by Lou Cove

  Perversely, I’ve gotten what I wanted all these years: Papa, all to myself. As furious as I am, I take comfort that we are bound together by the rending. At home in the ashes of the last. We’ll eat our meals together. Listen to Duane Ingalls Glasscock on BCN every Saturday morning. Maybe we’ll even smoke pot together.

  I start sleeping on the floor of the TV room next to Papa’s room, drifting off to Twilight Zone reruns and repeat viewings of The Exorcist, convinced if I watch it enough times I won’t be scared anymore. Take that, Man of the Year.

  I try to explain the story to Papa but he’s disgusted. “Feh. Why do you keep watching that kind of shit?”

  “You took me to see Jaws when I was eight. What’s the difference?”

  “Well, we didn’t watch it in bed, for one thing.” He eyes the silver chain around my neck, a snake that’s dangling against my greenhorn chest hairs. “Where’d you get that?” he asks curiously.

  “Punk rock girl at school. I told you.”

  “Girls giving boys necklaces. It’s all coming full circle. Good for you. She’s a punker?”

  “Yeah. Veronica. She has bleach-blonde hair and wears these crazy clothes. The whole school hates her but they just can’t see past the window dressing. She’s the cutest girl in the school.”

  “Good. Good for you. Sounds different from Sarah, yes?”

  “Is Lenny Bruce’s real name Leonard Schneider?”

  Papa laughs. “So it is. And what ever happened to Gretchen? I never see her anymore.”

  I shrug. Gretchen is just too rough around the edges, and I don’t need any more rough in my life right now. She tried a couple of times, but I just didn’t answer the call.

  “It’s good to try different things. Experiment. I never did. The fifties weren’t so good for that. You dated a few, maybe kissed a few, got married early.” He quiets again. Then, “Listen. Speaking of. I have a bit of news. House business. Do you remember Mrs. Heffernan?” We’ve had many guests at our table but Papa’s colleague from work is memorable. Well, maybe not on her own, but who could forget when her husband sneezed all over himself at dinner? He laughed at someone’s joke and let loose a herculean butterscotch and olive gusher all over his sweater. Enough to fill a shot glass. Uli was so mad he missed it.

  “You mean Mrs. Booger McBoogerwitz?”

  “That’s not nice. Not how you should remember her.”

  “Kind of hard to forget. And you tell that story all the time.”

  “Fair enough. Anyway, coincidentally, she and her husband are also getting divorced.”

  “Because of the snot?”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” he says, but he smirks in a way that suggests the snot might have been part of it. “It’s a difficult time for her,” he says, regaining his footing, “and she has no place to live. So she’s going to stay with us for a while.”

  “With us?” I’m incensed, and I don’t know the half of it yet.

  “It’s the least we can do.”

  *

  In a fit of desperation I call Grandma Wini.

  “I don’t think they’re ever going to get the family back together again,” I weep into the phone.

  “I know, my love,” she says, weeping back at me on the other end of the line. “I know. I can’t take it. I can’t stand it. This is the most terrible thing that has ever happened to me.” Pause. “And I know it’s the most terrible thing to happen to you. You don’t deserve this.” Then starkly more sober: “No, you don’t deserve it.”

  “Can you talk to him? Can you make him try to get the family back together again?”

  “Oh I can’t, I can’t,” she wails, losing the momentary resolve. “It’s not my place. He’s a grown man. And you know your father.”

  But what do I know about my father, really? Only what he wants me to know. That, and what he can’t successfully hide.

  *

  Danielle Heffernan arrives with a few bags and a guitar and takes Amanda’s old room at the end of the hall. She wears tweed business suits during the day but at night she loses her formal edge. Strawberry blonde hair frames her freckle-sprayed face, demure little nose, and her apologetic smile. She could be one of the girls at Salem State College. And her seemingly genuine interest in me adds some light to empty old 31.

  “Tell me about The Silver Surfer,” she says, picking up a new book-length special edition.

  “This one’s by Stan Lee,” I explain. “He created all the best. I think it’s going to be a collector’s item so I keep it in plastic.”

  “I’ll be careful,” she assures me, slipping the book gingerly from its protective envelope. “Wow. ‘The Ultimate Cosmic Experience’? That’s quite a claim. Is he actually surfing in space?”

  “Lou,” Papa intrudes. “I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Hold on,” Danielle says. “We were in the middle of a conversation.”

  “Guys … Danielle … Can we just…” Papa’s exasperation is annoying. “Can we return to the real world for a second?”

  “Let’s not and say we did,” says Frank, standing in the open doorway to the TV room.

  “Jesus!” Papa springs up. “Can you knock before you barge in next time?”

  “Since when?” Frank asks. “Does Jack Tripper make Larry Dallas knock? No. Oh … Hi, Chrissy.”

  “Danielle,” Papa reminds him.

  “I know, I know. But it’s such a swingin’ pad around here now. Very free. Very ’80s.”

  “Four’s a crowd,” Papa huffs.

  “Hint taken. I just came over to say that I’ll be away for the weekend and was hoping you could water my plants.”

  “Done. But I thought you got a roommate.”

  “Off in his old Corvette with his new girlfriend. Another one scraped off the bar at the Pig’s Eye, I’d imagine. So I thank you for the neighborly kindness … And you’ll walk my dog?” Frank adds.

  “You don’t have a dog,” Papa and I say in unison.

  “Just testing. You’re good. Arrivederci, people.”

  “Hey Frank,” I jump up to follow. “Can I borrow some records?”

  “Sure, ragazzino. I just bought In cars, daduhm, da dum daduhm.”

  “Wait, Lou…” Papa calls behind me, but I am down the hall and through the swinging door that leads to Frank’s apartment. I don’t enjoy his serious talks anymore.

  *

  I return to my room with the Gary Numan album and a copy of Diamond Dogs. I felt fine all day but as I lay the record on the turntable I feel exhausted and my mood turns black. The Aladdin Sane–era Bowie glares at me, now half dog, neutered by airbrush and disturbingly exposed. It’s apocalyptic and depressing.

  I look at the clock. Seven p.m. I wake up at eleven, the needle still bumping back and forth at the end of the vinyl. I stop the clicking, head back to my bunk, then turn and run to the cold black pitch of the bathroom and puke the day’s meals in three torrential heaves. My face, my body, all my skin drips with sweat. I peel off the clothes I fell asleep in, find a dry pair of pajamas, trade the boggy sleeping bag on the top bunk for the guest bag on the bottom, and slip inside, shivering wildly.

  When I wake again Danielle is standing beside the bunk, her head level with mine.

  “You feel hot,” she says, stroking my greasy hair.

  “I got sick last night,” I say, feeling like Amanda, so pitiful after she barfed her eggs.

  “I noticed,” she whispers softly. “You managed to leave a bit behind on the bathroom floor. I went skating in the dark in there.” I turn my head to spare her from the smell I’m tasting. “I told your father that you should stay home from school today. I’ll hang out and keep you company.” I nod, press my face into the flattened pillow, grateful for the advance work she has done on my behalf. “Take off your shirt.”

  “Hm?” I ask, craning my neck to see her.

  “I brought some alcohol up. It will help cool this fever.” I follow her instruction, feeling awkward at the exposure. I lay we
akly on my stomach, try to hide my chest, new nipple hairs and blackheads sprouting between my pecs. “Come down to the lower bunk here.” The isopropyl pours cold and rubbery on my back—a violent sensation that makes me jump. If she were my mother I would be screaming, refusing further treatment. But I just hold my breath, curl in on myself, and wait for her warm hands to work the alcohol off.

  Like Carly, Danielle brings an open affection into the house that’s been missing. But Danielle is a different breed: conservative in dress, Catholic in faith, Irish in descent, and totally alien to me. I should be turned off by the conventional, doting way in which she treats me. I should be wishing for my mother to be nursing me back to health. But Danielle attends to me with a sense of focus I haven’t known before. No other kids compete for her care. The idea that I have a physical or educational need that would go unattended is anathema to her. And beyond this sense of obligation, she seems genuinely interested. In me. Reading a book? Let’s discuss. Want to learn guitar? I can teach you a Beatles song. Sick? Stay home. I’ll take care of you. In a way, I feel more like a child than I have for a very, very long time.

  “Oh, you’re so tense!” she laments kindly. “How does a boy get so tense? It doesn’t seem right.”

  “I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Of course you do. I know that. But you’re”—pressing harder—“carrying”—harder—“it”—twisting my shoulder muscles—“in … your … back…” I scrunch my eyes at the exquisite pain and press deeper into the Wonder Bread mattress bunk, a complicated little feeling blooming between my legs.

  *

  I still have a fever when Papa comes home. He appears in my room with copies of MAD Magazine, Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four.

  “You need anything?” he strokes my head awkwardly. “Want some tea?”

  “No. Not right now.” I’m glad he’s making this effort but it should be Mama.

  “OK. Shout if you need anything.” And then, just before he’s out the door: “By the way. I’m going to let Danielle start sleeping in my room. I think she’ll be more … comfortable.” Shivers replaced by the nuclear heat of a core breach. “OK? Amanda’s room’s too small, anyway.”

  Even if I could answer, I wouldn’t know how. He’s not asking for permission. He never does. That vacuum of silence in my room is the first moment of truth we have had in so long. Papa waits to see if I will bite, dig deeper, question his authority. I hold, hoping he might open, give, tell me what is really going on. How is it, really, that we are alone here? And who is this woman, really?

  We should be able to talk, to have an honest conversation about what is happening to our family. We stayed behind because we are men, facing a hardship that should be surmountable if we stick together and share the weight. If we tell one another what risks we are facing. We could be Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. But we’re not. I don’t ask questions. He doesn’t offer answers.

  *

  Valentine’s Day comes and goes. I spend the evening with my bong and a pile of chalky heart candies I got from some girls at school.

  “Where’s Danielle?” I ask when my father comes home from work alone.

  “Looking at an apartment,” he says, stirring cottage cheese into my noodles.

  “Is she moving out?”

  He answers, not looking up from the bowl. “She’s looking at an apartment.”

  “Where’s she going?”

  “Back Bay. It’s a very fancy section of Boston. I’m getting my own apartment in Boston, too.”

  “But you said we’re staying here,” I blurt. “You promised.”

  “I know,” he says, handing me my dinner. “But this will be easier. You’ll like it.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. It’s decided. We’re going. Come be with me in Boston. It will be great. Danielle and I have fallen in love. It’s a wonderful thing,” he says softly, eyes damp and hopeful.

  “This is the reason you and Mama aren’t living together anymore. This was the reason all along.”

  “No. No. I promise you. This is just something that happened. I know this is a terrible time for you. It’s a terrible time for me, too. But Danielle is a wonderful person. I think you can tell that by now. She’s wonderful. Don’t you think? Teaching you to play guitar. Taking care of us…”

  “I don’t care! That’s not the point! You promised you’d never get divorced. And now you are. You promised we could stay in Salem. And now you’re saying we can’t. Why should I trust anything you say anymore? Anything?”

  I look him in the eye now. So hard, but I don’t look away. His face reddens, mouth twists below the handlebars of his mustache. “Because,” he says. “I’m your father.”

  “Not good enough anymore,” I tell him, no longer angry, just empty. “I thought it was. It should be. But you don’t deserve the title if you don’t act like one.”

  “Listen to me.” He adopts a tone that suggests he’s trying to slow us both down, but looking in his eyes I can see him searching. He’s trying to find the right answer. He doesn’t have it this time.

  “No. I don’t want to listen. I always listen to you. Now listen to me: You did this. You did this. And you’re not even sorry.”

  “No,” he says softly. “I’m not.”

  His eyes search mine, hurt but resolved, and I realize he is finally telling the truth. This family, the way it has been, it isn’t what he really wanted. All the people he surrounded us with here? Frank? The Cuban Cutter? Glovey Butler? Even Howie and Carly? They were his way of filling gaps we couldn’t possibly patch for him. Happiness gaps. Or unhappiness gaps, smoothed over with colors and characters and cocktail times. We were never enough. He needed to assemble an entire cast to move the play forward and get himself from Act to Act.

  Staring at him I see now that he’s found his leading lady. He can stop being the director and start being the star in his perfect little life performance. What we all wish for, maybe, just not for our dads. Dads are supposed to support our dramatic productions, not the other way around.

  Hawthorne, that old Salem scribe, said happiness “in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.”

  Papa didn’t follow Hawthorne. He followed his all-American, God-given right to the pursuit of his happiness, and he caught it, without dreaming it.

  Why, then, would he ever say he was sorry?

  *

  They’re gone within a week. The house is on the market for just a few days before there is an offer. The new owners agree to keep Frank on as a tenant and he agrees to take me in. I feel a fleeting sense of triumph. I’ve beaten back the tide of the family tsunami, exited Papa’s lame midlife crisis and set my own course.

  But as Frank helps me lay my threadbare sleeping bag on the nappy couch in the downstairs foyer of his apartment I feel a surge of panic and, then, a ferocious anger. I barely hear Frank’s offers of kindness over the whoosh of bad feeling. When he excuses himself I pull my journal, school kit, and Bucky Kerchak out of the travel bag Papa gave me before he left (“every man needs a good rucksack for his adventures”) and sneak through the second-floor swinging door into the house that, just yesterday, was mine.

  *

  31 Chestnut is void of sound, furniture, everything but packing boxes. I walk through the space where the pool table once was. Through the strange gap left behind where the dining room table had once been. Where Howie unfolded his centerfold and Carly smiled through puffy eyes. Where Mama fed us cottage cheese and noodles and Papa taught us how to know you’re alive and how to fight a girl.

  Where we danced.

  Nothing on the second floor. Nothing on the third. The movers came and went while I was at school. I am as empty as my home has become.

  Howie and Carly’s room is the coldest, exposed in the front corner to February wind. In the glare o
f the bathroom light Mama’s recipe painted on the shower wall is a false offering to a family that no longer eats here. Howie’s zucchini potato pancake bird looks on, angrily. They’ll paint over all of this, whoever they are.

  No. I’m not empty. I am fury. I am hate.

  I walk to the end of the hall, nearly black with dusk, open the door to the tall linen closet, and climb the shelves to the highest one, just inches from the ceiling. There, I set Bucky against the back wall, leaving him as best I can in a standing position. As soon as he seems stable, I balance against the top of the closet, lock my feet onto the wooden shims that hold the shelves, and brace with my belly as I scribble on the last page of my journal.

  When it is done, I tear the page free, place it over Bucky’s face, and thrust the sharp tip of my compass through the paper, through Bucky’s head, and into the forgiving cedar behind it. Leaning back, I stare at him, impaled, dead eyes veiled by the greeting I have left behind for the new residents of my old house:

  GET OUT!

  They’ll find this one day. They’ll be frightened and they’ll leave and I’ll sneak back in again. I just need to stay with Frank long enough, make sure he doesn’t do anything gay to me, and then I’ll have the house all to myself.

  Giving Tongue

  “Hey, hey…” Frank says gently. He is rubbing my back.

  Was I screaming in my sleep? “It’s time to wake up. You overslept.” I bolt upright on the sofa, the feeling of his hand still crawling on my skin. How long has he been sitting here? How much of me has he touched? All these months sleeping on his couch and I still haven’t convinced myself he doesn’t want me to be his boyfriend, though he’s never done a single thing to make me think he wants anything except to be a surrogate dad.

  “There’s coffee here,” he points to a mug on the ottoman. “You can have whatever you want for breakfast. I’m off to work.” He smiles, looks at me searchingly, frowns. “Are you OK?”

  I nod, still trying to catch my breath. A sound comes from upstairs, on the other side of the house. My side. I grunt.

  Frank pulls on a jacket and stops at the door. He looks up, listens, shakes his head with resignation. “I’m sorry,” he says. I nod in return but can’t speak. So many things are unspeakable now. “Hang in there,” he says. “It will come back around. What feels like a bullet in your brain today will be like a splinter in your finger tomorrow. You can count on that. I promise.”