“Wait,” he tried to say. The fall had knocked the wind out of him. Marie sat up, holding her forehead, straddling the dome of his torso. She reached behind and dragged her hand across the front of his sweatpants until she found the halfhearted swelling, and then she yanked at his waistband until he lifted his hips despite himself, helping her get them down almost to his knees. “Wait,” he said again. His heart felt like a foot trying to kick its way out of cement. “I need to sit up.”
Marie dismounted and crouched next to him. She offered a hand and helped pull him into a seated position, his back against the wall. Greg’s head felt swelled with blood, sweat pilling up on his forehead and cheeks. His throat felt raw and he couldn’t catch his breath. Was this a heart attack? He’d read that the pain begins in the left arm, but his left arm felt the same as his right arm did.
“Shh,” Marie was saying. “Count to ten.” She took his hand and drew the numbers into his palm: 1, 2, 3 … He preferred stopping at 9, which was the last solo integer. But he let her go to 10, because it felt good, and because his breathing was evening out. “I’ll get you a glass of water,” she said.
He heard her run the tap, drink a few gulps herself. When she returned she sat next to him and they passed the cup of water between them. It was a glass from their married days. He remembered keeping one just like it on his nightstand to sip from in the middle of the night, or to pass to Marie on the odd night that they’d both been drunk enough to want to fuck.
“What was that?” he asked.
Marie finished what was left of the water, then pushed the glass across the tile. It came to a stop by a woven magazine rack she kept near the couch. “I don’t know,” she said.
Greg’s body felt tired, like he’d just jogged a mile. His ass pushed into the tile floor uncomfortably, the tile pushing right back just as hard. He shifted so he was facing Marie.
“It’s like when you’re young, time matters so much,” she said. “We took so many pictures of GJ, do you remember? And then when you’re old, you realize time only matters when you say it does. They’re just pictures.” She looked at him. She had a red smudge on her forehead; she must have smacked it when they went down. “It was just a divorce.”
“I think I know what you mean,” he said. He crawled over and retrieved the glass, then held it to Marie’s forehead. Her face was the same face, just let down a little. She was still Marie, the Marie he’d loved and hated.
She took the glass from him. “I’ve been alone a long time, Greg.”
“I know you have.”
“It’s hard to love someone you don’t like. It takes everything out of you.”
“He’ll come back,” Greg said. She nodded. They sat in the quiet for a while. The microwave beeped every ninety seconds. He closed his eyes and counted. His ass felt numb, which was just as well. He heard Marie shift, and then he felt her hand on his. He kept his eyes closed while she shifted again, moving over him. This time there was no kissing, just breath in each other’s ears, the soft rustling as she removed her pants and then his jockeys, Marie murmuring, “I have to wet you first,” her mouth on him but just for two brief swipes, and then the plunge in. Still a shock, that plunge. Still a miracle, that wet grasping warmth, especially now, when it felt like his whole body was numb and had been for decades. It was a marvel, how you learned to do something with someone and you never forgot it. It felt like he and Marie were helping each other through a necessary procedure, like getting gas or a root canal. They had made GJ and they were a family and this was a familiar thing, this pushing and pulling, this working together. She still made the same noises, still that series of gasps near the end. She still knew how to bear down, grip him at the base with her vagina, and let them pulse together. How did she learn how to do that? Deb often stopped moving, stock still, receiving him the way a statue receives the chisel. His mouth flapped open; he leaned his head back, breathing hard, pulling in strands of her hair and then blowing them back out on the exhale. Marie stood and went into the kitchen, coming back with two red-and-white-striped dish towels. She handed one to him and began dabbing at herself, openly, nothing to hide. Greg did the same, wiping and folding and wiping and folding until the towel was the size of a hoagie.
Marie pulled her pants on and slid down the wall beside him. “Tell Deb that now we’re even.” She had always assumed that he and Deb had had an affair toward the end of their marriage. But it hadn’t been Deb; it had been another woman, what was her name? Blond curly hair. On his knees before her. Hand job at the drive-thru. He had been drunk nearly every day back then and these were the only things he remembered of her, foul keepsakes he rarely drew upon. He’d let Marie think it was Deb so she wouldn’t have to wonder if there were others. Not to protect her, but to protect himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” she said. “It’s what I wanted.”
He did his best to shimmy his pants back on, but without standing up he could only get them to web across his crotch. The doorbell rang, two short notes like a child’s piano. Marie looked at him like he’d invited someone over and hadn’t told her. Whoever it was began to knock, first in friendly raps and then more urgently, as if the person had turned his or her fist and begun to really wail on the door.
“GJ,” Greg said. It flew out of his mouth before he had the chance to truly consider it. But who else could it be? He pushed himself onto his knees but Marie was faster. She tried to run for the door but tripped over the glass and fell, crawling through the shards as fast as she could.
“Wait,” Greg said. Now he was on his feet, too. Marie’s knee was leaving wet red stamps across the tile. “You’re bleeding, just hold on!” He tiptoed over the glass, pulling his pants up the rest of the way, trying to avoid slipping in the crimson smudges. Marie pulled herself up using the door handle, undid the two dead bolts, and swung the door open. A short Asian woman in a ballcap stood there, holding a pizza box.
“Oh, fuck you,” Marie said. She let the door swing shut in the woman’s face. She turned and walked past Greg, down the hall into the bathroom. “Fucking tile floors,” she yelled. He heard the water running. He found a broom in the small closet by the kitchen and swept up what glass he could see, used the dish towel he’d cleaned himself with to wipe up the blood. When he was finished he could still hear the water running. He crept down the hall, not sure if he should intrude. He remembered the bathroom they shared at the second house they lived in, back when GJ was only about five or six, how the toilet and shower were behind a door, how it felt like he’d never take a shit alone again, how privacy became one of the commodities they bartered back and forth, his in the morning and hers at night. He’d often fall asleep before she’d leave what they came to call the water closet, and eventually he realized she was doing that on purpose.
Marie was sitting on the bathroom counter with her feet in the small bowl sink, holding a washcloth to her knee, letting the water run down her ankles and into the drain. Greg turned it off and sat across from her.
“I’ll take you to the garage first thing,” Marie said. “To pick up the RV. And then I’ll go file a missing persons report.”
“Thank you.” The box of bandages was still on the counter. Greg took one out and unwrapped it. Marie moved the washcloth and he could see a small cut, its little sliver of blood. He pressed the bandage to it.
“I really thought it was him for a second,” she said.
“Me, too.” It had seemed to make sense, in that moment, things finally clicking into place; GJ showing up at his mother’s house because it was really the only home he had. Lured there, maybe, by the psychic pull of his parents together in the same place, the vibrations of worry. But what made even more sense, what was even more likely, Greg realized, was that a stranger would show up at the wrong unit with a pizza.
“I guess it’s good he didn’t see us like this,” Marie said, folding the bloody washcloth.
“Right.” Greg wondered if GJ was al
so sending psychic vibrations to him and Marie, if he was somewhere concentrating very hard on getting his parents to hear him, if it was pulsing out of his subconscious like squiggly green fumes in a child’s drawing of a trash can. Would he truly drive home tomorrow? After only three days? He couldn’t decide if it was more pathetic to do that or to keep driving aimlessly around Florida, coast to coast, sweating years off his life. But he also couldn’t decide if he was ready to drive home, wait for Deb in the parking lot of the rental place, lean in and kiss her cheek through the window, pretend nothing had happened. He had become an expert at doing that toward the end with Marie. She was right; time mattered only if you believed it did.
But in a sense nothing had happened. He’d had sex with Marie, who was once his wife, who was the mother of his missing and very sick son. Sex was a survival mechanism that led to the survival of a species. He and Marie were Parents of the Lost, a species all their own. They had reached for each other and done what had to be done to keep surviving. In the mirror above the sink he could see both of their faces. The him that wasn’t looking into a mirror felt forty-one. And he knew Marie felt forty-two. In the mirror they leaped forward nearly twenty years. Half of his ass was hanging off the counter. His belly felt as large as his wingspan. The acne on his neck was red and irritated. Marie had mounted that? He felt grateful to her, and sorry for her.
She blotted her feet with a hand towel. “I’m going to bed, I think,” she said. “The sheets are folded on top of the dresser in the guest room.”
Greg nodded and thanked her, but then he followed behind her into her room and into her bed, and they lay on their sides face-to-face, the way they had when GJ was an infant and every noise he made was a bullhorn of terror in their hearts, and they slept until the sun made a dull yellow line in the thin space where her curtains met.
The shitty blue truck. The shitty brown car. A slightly less shitty red car. Kisses with tongue, then kisses with no tongue, then no kisses. A silver convertible. Kmart photo shoots, comb marks in his and GJ’s hair. Fabric ties, silk ties. Their beer phase. Neighbors, friends. Inside jokes. Their wine phase. Innuendo, endless innuendo. Working late, working weekends, “working.” Cocktail phase. Road trips, car games, buckets of ice in the motel hallway. Their highball, straight-up phase. Dad, can I have a sip? Sure. Mom, can I try? Sure. Picnics, evening television, yelling. The blinking VCR clock. Eight o’clock. EIGHT OH ONE! Sex, mean sex. Lingerie for Christmas, the wrong kind. Shoulders and neck stiffening to cement. Can you? Can you just? Jesus Christ. I’m trying as hard as I can. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock, blink, blink, blink. Dad? Mom? Mom, where’s Dad? Dad, is Mom okay? Shut up, kid.
The last time Greg saw GJ it had been at Christmas. This was the thing he couldn’t bring himself to face. He’d come down on his own; Deb had decided to fly to California to visit her sister for the holiday. Greg rented his usual room at the Ramada and waited for GJ at the hotel bar on Christmas Eve. Lately he and Marie had forgone gifts or money as presents, since GJ tended to sell whatever he was given or spend the money on drugs, but on that day Greg had a present, a new leather wallet with GJ’s initials and a crisp fifty-dollar bill inside it. It was Christmas, and he wanted to give his son something, and he was tired of worrying what might happen.
GJ was late, but he was always late, plenty of time for Greg to steady himself on another Maker’s. It was raining outside, as close to a white Christmas as Orlando ever came. When GJ finally walked in his hair and shoulders were wet, and he whipped his hair back and forth like a dog. He was wearing an old button-down shirt of Greg’s, purple and green vertical stripes, tucked into a pair of relatively clean jeans. He had put on weight, which made Greg smile, because it meant he wasn’t using. He’d been out of rehab for four months; maybe it had taken.
“Hey, Dad,” GJ said, closing his thick hand over Greg’s. Greg pulled him in for a hug, GJ’s hair wet on his cheek.
“You hungry?” Greg asked.
“A little,” GJ said. “But hey, is that the Volvo parked right out front?” GJ asked. Greg had been trying to pull him toward the bar, envisioning finishing his drink while GJ ate the peanuts and popcorn, and then settling up and walking to dinner, rain or no, at the sushi place two blocks away. But GJ didn’t budge.
“Yeah,” Greg said.
“You can’t park on this side of the street anymore,” GJ said. “Only cops and city vehicles can, now that the mayor’s office is just next door.”
It felt surreal, talking to GJ about something as banal as parking. That GJ knew there was a mayor, much less where his office was, made Greg feel like laughing, hugging his son all over again. Even better: it felt like GJ was trying to brag to Greg, to show him that he had changed.
“Guess I better move it, then,” Greg said.
“No,” GJ said. “You’ve been drinking.” He nodded his head over Greg’s shoulder, at his two empty glasses. Rehab could sometimes make GJ a teetotaler, right up until he fell off the wagon himself. “I can move it.” He held his hand out for the keys.
GJ’s eyes were clear, the pupils a normal size. He smelled clean; not even a trace of cigarette smoke. Four months out of rehab and showing up in a nice shirt. Greg pulled the keys out of his pocket and dangled them in front of GJ.
“You can park it in the Ramada garage,” he said. “They’ll just charge the arm and the leg to my room.”
GJ grinned. “Order me a Coke,” he said. Greg watched him jog back the way he came, holding the door for a woman running in with a newspaper over her head and then ducking back outside himself. The woman settled at the bar, using the small cocktail napkins to dab the rain from her arms. Greg felt so happy, so hopeful, with the delicate warmth running through his body from the Maker’s and the night he was about to have with his son. He told the bartender to get the woman a drink, whatever she wanted, on him, but the woman shook her head, said she was waiting on a friend.
After twenty minutes Greg walked through the gold doors, down the short hallway, and out into the parking garage. There were inkblots of oil, the smell of air freshener and exhaust. Plenty of empty spaces. He walked over to the attendant and asked if a Volvo had come through.
“Nothing in the past hour,” the attendant said, flapping her newspaper.
Greg went back to the bar to wait. Another Maker’s and then back out into the garage. The attendant shook her head when she saw him coming. The bartender hadn’t seen his son come back in. GJ wasn’t answering his phone and neither was Marie. Greg thought about calling the police, reporting his car stolen, but it was Christmas. Instead he took out the fifty from the wallet and paid the bartender for his drinks, walked away without his change.
In the morning Greg saw plenty of cars parked along the mayor’s side of the street. At the corner he saw the Volvo, its right front tire at an angle, the whole car at a diagonal. GJ was asleep in the passenger seat, his mouth open and his eyebrows furrowed as if he were in the middle of yelling. Greg tried the driver’s door and it was unlocked. He got in and slammed the door, but GJ didn’t stir. It smelled like booze and vomit but Greg couldn’t see where it was coming from. The striped shirt from the night before was in a wet wad in the backseat; a parking ticket was stuck to the window. Greg honked the horn and GJ twitched, his arms flopping open. He looked around, like he had no idea where he was, and when his eyes fell on Greg he began to cry.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” GJ said. He was crying so hard that he wailed into his hands, like he was trying to catch the sounds. “I’m sick,” he said. “I’ve been doing things.” He doubled over, wailing louder now. The seatback behind him had a large splash of something white on it, likely the vomit, Greg realized. “I do things for money. I don’t even know why I need it so bad. Last night I let a guy—” He started heaving, and Greg reached across him to open the door. GJ turned and vomited onto the sidewalk. Greg could hear church bells ringing out, Christmas morning, a child is born. GJ had once told him his car had been stolen, that it was parked in th
e driveway of a guy he knew but he couldn’t remember where the guy lived. Greg called the cops and they tracked the car down to the home of a man that said GJ had sold it to him for five hundred dollars and two six-packs. Another time, GJ said he’d been forced to sell drugs for a man who held his girlfriend hostage, so he’d done it, and that’s how he’d gotten arrested. The lies came to GJ as easy as air.
“Hey,” Greg said, in as calm and soothing a voice as he could muster. “Hey, son.”
GJ pulled himself back into the car, his face red and puffy and slimed with tears and snot. He hadn’t cried this hard in years, not since he was a child and things mattered to him. But Greg couldn’t bring himself to believe him.
“I’m done,” Greg said. He reached into the backseat and grabbed the shirt, holding it out to GJ. “I want you out of the car.”
GJ took the shirt, looking from it to Greg like he wasn’t sure what either were. “I—I need help, Dad,” GJ said.
“I know you do,” Greg said. He began lightly pushing GJ on the arm, nudging him to get up and out. “And I hope you find it.” It was something one of the television addiction counselors said. I hope you find help. Without me, it implied. You’re on your own; we’re all on our own. His own mother had changed the locks as soon as he went away to college, disposed of him as easily as the quarter-inch of ash at the end of her cigarette that she tapped into a dish. He suddenly felt a perverse, angry gratitude to her for that kind of a push; it had gotten him out of that house for good. Greg pushed against his son harder, GJ not so much pushing back as hunkering down, determined to stay in the car. Tough love, self-preservation, both of them hanging off a cliff; who would Greg save? He felt a surge of rage course from his trunk into his arms. Fuck you, he screamed inside his head at his sweaty, sick son. Fuck you for being weak.
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