Kids of Appetite

by David Arnold

  I smiled for Vic.

  The Madifesto dictates: bells are loud.

  VIC

  Some time ago I did some computing. (This was before I found comfort in numbers; I was not very good at computing yet. But I was very good at using a calculator to do my computing for me. At this, I was an absolute ace.) Assuming the average person sleeps 8 hours a day, they are left with 960 waking minutes, or 57,600 waking seconds per day; assuming the average person blinks every 5 seconds, that’s 11,520 blinks per day; assuming each blink lasts the average .1 second, that is 1,152 seconds per day spent blinking, or 19.2 minutes. Multiply this by 7 days a week, times 52 weeks a year, times the average male life expectancy of 78 years, and you are left with a grand total of 9,085.44 hours which the average male spends blinking.

  Further computing verified this as 378.56 days.

  54.08 weeks.

  1.04 years spent blinking.

  The average male spends just over one year of his waking life with his eyes closed.

  I spent years being upset, bitter about my differences. When I looked in the mirror, I saw only the abstract. There was no splendor to be found. I did not understand how to find the advantages of my disadvantages. I did not see the beauty simmering underneath.

  Not yet.

  But Dad did.

  Which is why he gave me the calculator in the first place.

  * * *

  Mad dropped the rope, covered her ears with both hands. I covered mine, too, wishing I hadn’t left my sunglasses at home. The bell rang loud from its origins in this little stone tower and out across the snowy fields and all through Hackensack. I pictured this: a flock of birds multiplying, swarming the streets of the city, singing the same two notes over and over as they flew.

  Chirm-chong! Chirm-chong! Chirm-chong!

  Mad took a step closer.

  Inches away now, those gray eyes blinked. And blinked again. And again. And I watched her, uninterrupted by annoyances such as the closing of eyelids. Just like Dad taught me, I found the advantage in my disadvantage.

  And the bell tolled.

  And the birds sang.

  And still, Mad inched closer.

  . . .

  . . .

  Long ago I had resigned myself to the possibility that I might go my entire life without ever being kissed. Ergo, all the nodding and one-word answers. Especially around the unique ones, the smart ones, the ones I found pretty. (If magazines and movies were any indication, there was quite a discrepancy between the ones I found pretty, and the ones everyone else found pretty. But hey.) And here was Mad: unique, smart, my kind of pretty.

  Yes, a kissless reality had not been outside the realm of possibility for me.

  But my realm, it seemed, was ever-expanding.

  Time slowed, and I cashed in on a few of those nonblinking milliseconds. Mad’s hands were pale white and pink from the cold, and they looked like freshly blown glass. The yellow hair, the yellow hat, the gray eyes, the rainbow jacket: Mad was an easel. Mad was fireworks. Mad was an exploding star in space, exploding in my face, a simultaneous extreme opposite of the highest order.

  Her lips moved. There were words, but they were impossible to hear over the bell.

  “What?” I said.

  She spoke again, slowly this time, emphasizing each word so I could read her lips.

  “I’m going to kiss you now,” the lips said.

  My realm of possibility exploded. Or imploded. Or some other word that hadn’t been invented yet but meant: to shatter or blast on a cosmic, interstellar, and multigalactic level.

  My lips replied, “Okay,” and like a mirror, the two of us moved toward each other.

  Toward.

  What a word.

  Wet, cold lips outside. Molten lava in my blood. Paralyzed, incapable, shy, impotent in my brain. Don Juan, loverboy extraordinaire in my heart. Every smile I’d ever coveted poured out of me and into Mad. And I felt her teeth, and I felt her tongue, and I felt her lips on mine. And I reached up and ran my hand along the shaved side of her head, felt the countless tiny hairs, and the skin of her scalp, and her scar, and fuck you, Ling, we are not so alike. And I never felt more like my dad, who I missed, and who taught me to think with my heart.

  One hundred things my heart thought while I kissed Mad in the bell tower:

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

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  I am a Super Racehorse.

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  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

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  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

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  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Raceh
orse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a Super Racehorse.

  I am a motherfucking Super Racehorse.

  * * *

  We walked back downstairs in the semidarkness, my brain on overload, swinging from one thought to the next like an overzealous chimp between branches.

  Here is what I knew: we kissed.

  Here is what else I knew: I wished we were still kissing.

  Did Mad wish the same thing? Did she like it at all? Would she ever kiss me again? Probably not. Probably I sucked at kissing. Probably I kissed like an aspiring car rental entrepreneur who wore fancy suits and loved Winston Churchill biographies. But maybe not. Maybe I felt like a Super Race-horse because I was a Super Racehorse. Maybe this, maybe that, probably yes, probably no, back and forth between branches, e’er the overzealous chimp.

  I am the monkeyman.

  Back in the sanctuary, Baz sat in a pew, holding Coco’s head in his lap, while Nzuzi sat behind them, staring straight ahead like he was watching a movie.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Baz.

  I looked at Mad. She was smiling.

  She liked it.

  My heart was so full, I thought it might explode into the ether, creating some bizarre new solar system whose inhabitants ate only love, drank only hope, and breathed only joy.

  What a substantial galaxy that would be.

  Baz gestured to the back of the church. “Madeline. Vic. This is Father Raines.”

  Only now did I see him—the man standing in the corner. Even in the dim church, I quietly observed the man’s blue eyes, his wispy-white hair, his black robe/white collar combo. He looked quite natural, actually. As if he’d been planted and grown, cultivated from the unforgiving stone floor.

  I imagined my second favorite Matisse: The Dessert: Harmony in Red. But it was also known as The Red Room, and I liked that better. In the painting, the table is red, the walls are red, the chairs are red. A woman sits at the red table and all around her, stems and branches and vines grow, seeping from the red redness, and even though it’s strange and a little unnerving, it seems natural, because of course life in the painting had grown from the red. Where else would it grow?

  Of course Father Raines had grown from the church. Where else would someone like him grow?

  He cleared his throat, looked from Mad to myself. “I see you two have met the Iron Maiden?” He pointed a single finger up, and for a moment I thought perhaps the Iron Maiden was some strange epithet for God. “The bell,” he said. “I named it after my favorite band. Though I must say, it’s a pity she was cast from iron, rather than bronze. She’s quite rusty.”

  “Your favorite band is Iron Maiden?” I asked.

  “Well, their earlier work,” said the father, pulling up his cloak like roots, stepping lazily toward the pews. “The later albums are rubbish, don’t you think?”

  We stared at the old man as if he were an attraction in a museum. Actually. No. We stared at him as if he were a vicar with a distinguished palette for Iron Maiden discography. And as impossible as it seemed, there was something about him that was entirely familiar. I couldn’t place it, but I’d seen him somewhere.

  “That your bus out front?” asked Mad. “God’s Ducks?”

  Father Raines’s eyes lit up. “God’s Geese is a mission. Every December, we drive a small population of the Hackensack homeless south for the winter.”

  “You migrate,” said Mad.

  “The northern winter is a cruel animal for the homeless, especially the elderly population. To that end, the National Coalition for the Homeless has connected us with a program in Tampa that sets up subsidized housing and Medicare. I may not be able to put their lives back together, but I can see that they don’t freeze to death in the meantime. I’ve posted flyers at the local shelters, inviting the homeless to attend my homily this Sunday afternoon, after which we host a charity potluck for gas and travel expenses. We’ll hit the road precisely at four. Precision in time is a lost art, don’t you think?”

  “Must be a long drive,” said Mad.

  “I take a parishioner with me, and the two of us take turns driving through the night. It’s actually quite a treat. Anyway”—he tossed his hands in the air, as if giving up on the thought—“Mr. Kabongo informed me you’re looking for a wishing well.”

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to waste your time.”

  “Oh, you’re not wasting my time at all. It’s right out back.”

  . . .

  . . .

  “What is?” I asked.

  “The wishing well. Though I daresay it’s frozen over.”

  . . .

  We all looked at one another for a second, until Baz stood, picked up Coco, and started down the aisle. “Thank you, Father. We will not stay long.”

  Father Raines nodded and lumbered around the side of the pews, brushing his hand along the walls as he walked toward the door marked CHURCH OFFICE. And suddenly I knew where I’d seen him before.

  “I’ve seen you in photographs,” I said, following him around the pews. Father Raines stopped just short of the door, only a few feet away now, his long robes swinging slightly from the sudden shift of momentum. “My parents got married here. Bruno and Doris Benucci. It was a long time ago. You probably don’t remember.”

  The priest studied me differently from before, as if trying to place my parents’ features in my own face. (I’d spent hours trying to do the same thing to no avail. My features were islands unto themselves.)

  . . .

  “Doris wanted a destination wedding,” he said.

  My mother’s name sounded so natural rolling off his tongue, a familiarity that comes from experience.

  “What?” I asked.

  “People remember lots of things for lots of reasons. I happen to remember every wedding I’ve ever officiated. Your mother said she’d always wanted to get married by the water, even if it was dinky little Ocean Grove. But her mother—your grandmother—wouldn’t hear of it. Now how did she put it? Oh yes. ‘A real church for a real wedding.’”

  As I listened to his story, I felt like this: a small boy carrying a suitcase, walking on the distant horizon, the line between my Lands of Somethingness and Nothingness growing thinner by the moment.

  “Your mother looked radiant,” said Father Raines. “I’ve always felt that a bride’s happiness is contagious, you know, and as happy as your mother looked, I’m quite certain the guests were downright giddy. I know I was. Just before I began the service, your father turned to the whole church, and said, ‘Everyone, follow us!’ He grabbed your mother’s hand, and they walked out that door.” He pointed to the door behind Baz. “The guests were baffled, but more than that, I think they were curious. Their two reasons for attending the wedding had just walked out the back door. What could they do but follow? Your grandmother and I led them outside, and there we saw your parents standing by the wishing well, holding hands. That day, your father managed quite the feat. He found a way to please both his mother-in-law and his soon-to-be wife. They were married on church grounds, and they were married by the water.”

  “It wasn’t in the pictures. The wishing well, I mean.”

  Father Raines smiled from the roots of his feet to the topmost branches of his wispy hair. He bent down on one knee and whispered the rest of the story. “You won’t believe this, but the minute I pron
ounced them husband and wife, it began to rain. As if God Almighty wanted to do his part in contributing water to your mother’s wish. All photographs were taken inside.” He tilted his head to one side, a wide smile growing on his face.

  “What?”

  Father Raines unearthed his root-feet, said, “You look just like them,” and shut himself in his office.

  I turned and saw my young parents kissing, laughing, loving, living. And there was something to be said for the fact that I’d just had my first kiss in the same church where they were wed. And there was something to be said for the fact that we’d found four of the five places on Dad’s list. And there was something to be said for the fact that, for the first time since he died, I felt like part of a real family. There were lots of things to be said, and if not for the knot in my throat, I would have said them. But the weight in my backpack felt like a thousand bricks, and the pounding in my head was incessant, and I could not hear the miracles of then for the realities of now.

  The Realities of Now:

  There were probably hundreds of little wishing wells scattered here and there, things I didn’t know, could never know about my parents.

  Because no matter how well I thought I knew them, they had had a life before me.

  And it sure seemed like most of the good stuff happened before I came along.

  MAD

  I followed Vic out the back door, trudging through and across and between the snow falling and the fallen snow. An absolute blizzard of prepositions. We passed spindly trees and tall thorny shrubs and, pushing through a patch of overgrown vines, finally arrived at the long-forgotten wishing well—frozen over, just as Father Raines had predicted. The well looked like a fire pit—small, circular, stone, and, under the top layer of ice, coins remained sheltered until March or April or whenever the cold decided to thaw this year.

  Baz set Coco down, and we all held hands in a circle around the frozen well. Before accepting my hand, Vic kneeled down, unzipped his backpack, and pulled out his father’s urn. He leaned over the well and, with the full force of his weight, dropped an elbow through the sheet of ice.

  I suddenly remembered a picture of my own parents’ wedding, where Mom and Dad stood in front of a church, and he dipped her and they kissed deeply, and Mom’s veil blew in the wind like a white flag. I tried to put myself there now, next to them in that picture. Where would I be standing? What would I be doing? I tried to put myself beyond the church, and into the inner sanctum of time itself. But I couldn’t imagine it. I’d seen the photos, but I couldn’t quite put myself in them.