You Can Never Spit It All Out

by Moore, Ralph Robert

  Longish white silver hair, high forehead, glasses, neatly-trimmed gray beard and moustache, portly abdomen.

  She glanced away from the lawn mowers for a moment, wistful look on her face, when as sometimes happens in public, she inadvertently looked right into his eyes.

  He stopped at the eye contact without seeming to realize he had, pulling the toilet seat closer to his side.

  She gave him a quick grin, not too wide, because two molars on the right side had been pulled a few years back.

  His magnified blue eyes looked back at her, registering her long blonde hair, slightly goofy, age-lined face, slim figure in her flowered dress and sports jacket.

  "Hi!"

  She tried to think of something to say. "Are you a plumber?"

  His white eyebrows drew together. "No! Why would you…?"

  She tilted her head towards the toilet seat in his arm.

  "Oh!" His cheeks reddened. "No, it's for…personal use. I'm a professor. College professor."

  She turned away from the mowers, to face him directly. "Wow. What do you teach?"

  "English. Composition, mostly. I teach a creative writing class."

  She raised her eyebrows as a short guy in overalls passed between them carrying a coiled garden hose. "Really! I used to write poetry. I never tried a short story, though."

  He smiled at her, red in his cheeks fading. "Want to know how to write? Just sit at a typewriter, open a vein."

  She tilted her head. "It's a great line, but the last person who quoted it to me wrote greeting cards."

  He leaned back, still grasping the toilet seat to his side. "Someone who's not afraid to be rude!"

  She smiled at him, looking away, looking back as he stepped out of the way to let two women pass. Handsome face, a bit full, but with his broad forehead, gray hair and beard, he looked like one of those older men you immediately think of as intelligent and cultured. No wedding band.

  The corners of her lips curled up, elfin, profile looking off, giving him a chance to study her face, blonde hair, swell of her breasts in her blouse. God, how often she had done that. Like shaking hands. Hoping they'd look, hoping they'd be the one she hadn't yet found, and she was growing old. She swung her eyes back while he was still looking, caught him, smiled into his eyes.

  He raised his thick shoulders. "So, are you buying a lawn mower?"

  "No!" Dipped her knees, reached out, stroked the black handlebar of the nearest mower. "Each place I've lived, quite a few places by now, I always end up at the nearest Home Depot by my second or third day in town. Usually in the lawn mower section." In a gentle voice she said, "I just like looking at them."

  "Really? Why?"

  Rolled her green eyes. "I've never lived in a house since I moved out of my parents' home, long, long time ago. I kind of think now I probably never will live in a house, ever again. But I like to dream."

  He bent his big head. "I'm sorry."

  They started dating.

  He lived on campus, one half of a duplex. Lots of books, mostly paperbacks. His bedroom was small, one window, above his bed, like in a horror movie. She showed him some of her poems, from thirty years ago, one of those things you have to do, on a first or second date, like if she had mentioned when they first met she could, while standing, touch the tip of her nose with her right big toe, at some point she'd have to slip off her high heels.

  He read the poems carefully, reaching sideways occasionally, blue eyes still glued to the stanzas, for another sip from his wineglass. When he finished, he carefully placed them back on his kitchen table, as if they were made of cloth, stroked his beard. "They show genuine promise."

  She tilted her head back, finishing her own glass of wine, reached for the bottle (which she had brought). "You're so full of shit, Brian."

  "No, really…"

  "One winter morning as a child/Upon the windowpane's thin frost I drew/Forehead and eyes and mouth the clear and mild/Features of nobody I knew."

  He scrunched his lips, eyes to the left. Looked up. "James Merrill?"

  She nodded.

  He lowered his shaggy head. "There is a difference."

  "So why'd you say my poetry was good?"

  He turned shy. "I didn't want to hurt your feelings. I like

  you."

  "And?"

  He meekly cleaned one thumbnail with the other. "I don't know what you want me to say."

  "And, you want to fuck me."

  His broad forehead raised. "There's that."

  But she didn't let him fuck her, that night, or that weekend when she invited him over her apartment, which looked much nicer, bright colors, potted ferns, to cook spaghetti for him, Kim out with her friends, although she did let him, during their goodnight kiss, put his hands through the undone buttons of her blouse, onto her bare breasts.

  He had been married twice before, in his fifty-six years, once in his twenties, once in his forties, but each marriage had eventually devolved into long drinking sessions late at night, windows shut, blinds drawn, each trying to cause as much psychic damage to the other as possible before passing out. "The best thing that ever happened to me was getting old, losing some of my testosterone. I used to get so jealous, filled with such rage."

  When Claudia did finally let Brian into her bed, it was the first time she had had sex in over two years. Which would have been amazing to her younger, dog kennel self.

  He took off his clothes, bending over to pull off his underpants, dark socks. Cock only half hard. He self-consciously put his hands on either side of his big belly, trying to parenthesize its roundness, embarrassed his body didn't look as perfect as it once did. "All that good cooking of yours!"

  It was more her fucking him, as she knew it would be, as perhaps he knew it would be. At first she tried to not appear too knowledgeable, nobody marries a whore, although by now that feigned inexperience was a bit farcical, given her age, but at some point over that weekend, hungry herself from too long a sexual dry spell, she just let go. Sunday evening, chicken and dumplings simmering on her stovetop, aromatic, she came for the first time with him, while he was sitting naked on a kitchen chair, she on his lap, facing him, skinny legs on either side of his full thighs, fingers running through his sparse hair while he pumped his cock up inside her, nice and steady, with the confident hip thrusts she had spent Friday and Saturday summoning.

  After they had been lovers for a few weeks, he asked her one morning, fork and knife cutting up his eggs, just curious, why there was always a Kleenex on her side of the sheets when they woke.

  She was embarrassed. "I don't know. It makes me feel safe. Like a security blanket."

  He tried to lift the entire wobbly orange yolk up to his lips, on the tines of his silver fork, failing like we all do, yellow dripping from his lips, onto his white plate.

  "What is it with that town you have in the back room?"

  She brightened. "That's my table-top village!"

  "Really? Is it a kit, or…"

  "No. When I was a kid, still living at home, I started creating what I thought would be the perfect town. The town I wanted to live in, eventually. At first, it was pretty primitive, just the essential buildings, a church, a couple of homes, a few stores, a funeral parlor, then it expanded to this incredible grid of main streets, side streets, fire houses, libraries, police stations, country mansions, farm houses. I built all the miniature buildings myself, late at night, with a pen knife and bottles of lip stick. Do you remember West Side Story, that song, There's a Place for Us? That's what I've tried to create. Somewhere good, peaceful, joyous. Like people feel around Christmas time. Somewhere safe. A place for me. I pack it up each time I move, in labeled cardboard boxes I've kept for decades, unpack it, reassemble it, in each apartment I wind up in."

  He took her to a faculty party.

  She was tall and nervous, in a green sports jacket and red calf-length dress, going right away to the floating tray of martinis with tooth-picked green olives, but careful to sip. A few of
the faculty wives came over, drew her into a conversation about the new Tolstoy translations, where she was able to hold her own, sweat dripping out of her armpits. The wives seemed to like her, laughing at her jokes. After half an hour of standing with a barely-sipped drink in her hand, Claudia felt, I can do this.

  A young, long-haired brunette with freckles on the bridge of her nose came up from her blindside, standing in front of her with two of her girlfriends, sloppily sipping red wine. "So, are you a grandmother?" She scrunched her dark eyebrows.

  Claudia raised her chin. "I have a daughter, but she hasn't gotten pregnant yet. I'm sure she's trying." She smiled.

  The brunette dipped her head. "Forgive me for asking, but are you like missing some teeth?"

  Claudia stared into the other woman's brown eyes, seeing the keratotomy slices radiating from her black pupils to eliminate wearing glasses.

  Brian came over, wearing the hounds tooth jacket, brown leather elbow patches, Claudia bought him for the party. He was a little drunk, enunciating carefully. "Angela, you're my best grad student, maybe ever, but you can be a real asshole."

  The young woman stepped back. Tossed her hair. "Excuse me for being observant. That's what a writer is supposed to be." She flicked the tips of her right fingers at him, left with her entourage.

  On the night of her forty-ninth birthday, Claudia picked up the black phone in her apartment, pressed different push buttons, creating a modern, discordant melody.

  An old man's voice answered.

  "Dad?"

  "Is this Claudia?"

  "Yeah!" She nervously wrapped her thumb through the tightly spiraled coils of the receiver's cord. "How are you?"

  "How am I? I'm fine. How are you?"

  She ducked her head, sitting alone on her bed. "I'm fine, Dad."

  "You sound drunk."

  "Maybe. A little bit."

  "Where's Kimberly?"

  "She's out." She cradled the receiver to the side of her face. "Her and some friends. Male and female. She goes by Kim now. Kimberly was too girly."

  "Kind of young to be dating."

  "She's sixteen, Dad. That's what kids do now. They go out in groups. It's not individual dating anymore." She paused, wondering if the call was a bad idea. "Everything's groups now."

  "You shouldn't be drinking with a young daughter. What kind of an example is that?"

  "Anyway, I'm dating this really great guy now, Dad. He's an English professor."

  Nothing from the other line in her ear. Then the voice of an old man came back. "Yeah?"

  "Yeah! He's a professor at Texas University."

  "An English professor?"

  "Yeah! His name's Brian. Brian Wicker. I thought I'd call and let you know."

  "Is he married?"

  She felt really hurt. "No, he's not married, Dad! What kind of daughter do you think you raised?"

  "Well, that's good. If he's a college professor, presumably he's more stable than the others."

  "He's very stable. Brian 'Stable' Wicker."

  "Well, that's good." He cleared his throat. "Hell of a thing, I don't hear from you in over ten years. Do you think that's right?"

  "It's been a rough time, since Keith and me broke up."

  "How's Kimberly?"

  "She's good. She's in that difficult phase, that early teen phase? Where she hates her mother, calls her an alcoholic and a whore?"

  "It'd be nice to have a picture of her."

  "Do you have e-mail?"

  "No. I've heard of it, but I don't think I have it."

  "I'll mail you a picture of her. I took some a couple of years ago. She's really turned out nice."

  "That'd be great."

  She bent her head, sitting alone on the side of her bed, silent tears falling. "Do you love me, Dad?"

  The old man voice went away, came back. "You know, the thing is, I didn't expect you to call me tonight, I haven't heard from you in over ten years, I'm in my living room watching the Discovery Channel. Frankly, I'm a little off-guard."

  "Why did you and mom abandon me?"

  The voice came out tired over the line, a thousand miles away. "Been through this with you a hundred times over the years. We never abandoned you."

  "You left me! We were all living together in the house in Santa Barbara, and you and mom just suddenly decided to move to Chicago–"

  "I was transferred! By my job! Jesus Christ, I've explained this–"

  "–And what about me?" She started crying. "What about me? I was all alone in California! I didn't know what to do. You never once asked me to join you. I kept listening to you two planning everything, and you never once said anything about me coming with you."

  "You were twenty-four, Claudia!"

  "So? I wasn't ready, Dad. Do you know how scary it is to be in a big state like California all by yourself?"

  She heard a sigh over the line.

  "Why are you being quiet?"

  "Do you remember when you brought that guy home while you were in college, I don't remember his name now…"

  "Devon?"

  "That's it. You know, off the subject, he shouldn't have had the name Devon, because that carries certain expectations. He really should have been called Clem or Elmer or–"

  "He wasn't a loser. Why do you think everyone I went out with was a loser?"

  "Anyway, I was nervous about meeting him, you told your mother in a letter you loved him, you never said that before about any of the mutts you showed up with, and Hiram was there that weekend, remember?"

  "Your army buddy."

  "That whole weekend, Devon and Hiram got along great. I figured it was easy for Hiram to joke around with him, because Devon wasn't dating his daughter. I felt like I should be the one watching TV with Devon, playing poker with him. Because I was your father. But I didn't know how to do it. I had a couple of drinks to loosen myself up, Jane kept catching my eye, tilting her head at Devon, I stood outside the doorway to the living room, trying to think of something to say to get him in conversation, but when I sat back down on the sofa, he and Hiram were already in the middle of a big conversation. It made me jealous. How buddy-buddy Hiram and Devon got. And all I could do was watch. Anyway. Are you okay, money-wise?"

  "Yeah. I mean, things are tight, but…"

  "Give me your address. I'll send you something."

  "You don't have to do that, Dad."

  "Well, it's up to you. If you want to, give me a mailing address and I'll send you some money. But I'd really like to see some photographs of Kimberly."

  For the Fourth of July weekend, Claudia went out of her way to prepare a real feast for just her and Brian, Kim at a troubled teens boot camp.

  Barbequed ribs, southern-style fried chicken, steaming stack of fresh-shucked corn, butter sliding off the kernels, homemade yellow and orange cole slaw, green beans simmered with bacon and garlic, fresh corn bread muffins.

  They sat at her kitchen table, heads down, eating without talking, going through square after square of pulled-off paper towels, dark fingerprints left on the roll.

  When Brian was finished, wiping his lips once again, he pushed his chair away from the table, sat back, holding his stomach. "Man!"

  They were both more than a little drunk from the Coke and vodkas they drank waiting for the mid-day meal to be ready, so toddled off to Claudia's bedroom, pulled their clothes off, got into bed, falling asleep without any sex other than a sloppy kiss on the lips.

  When they woke, the bedroom windows were dark.

  Claudia reached up into the top shelf of one of the kitchen cabinets, pulling down a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red. Brian bent over her dishwasher, lifting out two tumblers.

  By six o'clock in the evening, they were both just shy of head-spinning drunk, limbs heavy, sitting on the kitchen floor, legs out in front of them.

  Like a lot of people their age, he said, "I never thought this would be where I'd end up."

  "Tell me about it."

  "Didn't feel this way living in En
gland."

  Whenever they met new people, he worked the fact he once lived in England into the conversation within the first half hour, no matter how off-subject. It was when he was in his late teens. She found it endearing at first, then irritating, then, once she fell in love with him, endearing again.

  Sitting on the kitchen floor next to him, drunk as he was, she draped an arm over his shoulders. "When you were in England, did you eat a lot of fish and chimps?"

  "Hmmm? Sometimes. In London. Mostly I ate beef." He thought about it. "Lamb, sometimes."

  "How were the chimps?"

  "Not as good as the ones I'd get in France, where they'd have a real potato smell."

  "So, you like eating chimps?"

  "They're okay."

  "With a little salt and ketchup?"

  He put a veined hand on her knee. "I've met someone."

  Her sweet, elfin face shifted gears. "Huh?"

  He didn't look at her. "She's a graduate student."

  Claudia sat up straighter against the dishwasher. "Wait a minute. What?"

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to happen."

  "Who?"

  "Is that important?"

  "Brian, what's going on?"

  "It's Angela."

  "That brunette that was really rude to me at that party?"

  "I'm so sorry."

  "But you defended me against her!"

  "Well, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since that night."

  Claudia snorted, intense green eyes looking at his profile. "Are you breaking up with me?"

  He hung his head. "She says she loves me. She's twenty-four. At my age, I'm never going to have an opportunity like that again." For the first time, he did look directly at her. "I have to grab the brass ring."

  Her shaking hands poured herself a fresh drink. "How does she like your limp dick?"

  He hung his head. "It's not limp with her."

  She chugged her drink, poured a fresh one. "You're leaving me?"

  "Claudia, listen…"

  Her wrinkled face was bright red, tears streaming. "Don't you want me anymore?"

  "Can we–"

  She spat in his face, little pink swirls in her pearly gob. He angrily swiped the spit from the bridge of his nose, eyes furious. "Get out!" he shouted, even though it was her apartment.