Trauma

by Graham Masterton

Ray muttered, “I like it.”

  Duke opened his arms to heaven. “Oh, that’s wonderful. You like it. Shows how much of a gourmet you’re not. And why do you always side with your mother? That’s a personal insult you’re eating. That’s a personal insult to me. Why don’t you just admit it? You’d rather eat something that made you sick to your stomach than agree with your old man, wouldn’t you? Well, I hope it sticks in your throat, the both of you!”

  He threw down his napkin, scraped back his chair and pushed his way out of the kitchen. The swing door twang-thumped backward and forward and then stopped. Bonnie sat looking at her meal, her fork poised, not moving. The overhead light made her look as if she were in a play. Ray continued to eat for a while; then he gave up, too.

  “Did you really like it?” asked Bonnie.

  “Hey, it was great.” She noticed that he had picked out all the raisins and left them around the rim of his plate.

  They cleaned up, scraping the remaining food into the sink. There was still quite a lot left in the pot, but Bonnie emptied that into the sink, too. She washed the plates in silence for a while. Ray stood beside her with a dish towel, waiting to dry them, tall, blinking, with coat-hanger shoulders and hair that always looked as if he had just woken up.

  He was seventeen years old, the same age that she had been when she had given birth to him. She found it almost impossible to believe. Had she really been that young?

  Tonight Ray was wearing his favorite T-shirt with LA CORONERS DEPT printed on it. Duke hated it, or said that he hated it. “I hate that. You want people to think you’ve got unhealthy interests, or what?”

  Bonnie stacked the plates into the hutch. “Your father’s so touchy these days. I’m beginning to think that it’s me.”

  “Why should it be you? What have you done?”

  “Tell me what I haven’t done. I’ve started the cleanup business, right? And I’m still holding down my regular job at Glamorex. You can’t blame your father for feeling a little inadequate, can you?”

  “He could find a job if he wanted to. He doesn’t even try. Just sits on his duff all day watching Days of Our Lives.”

  “Come on, Ray. He hasn’t worked in over a year now. It’s not so much that he’s lazy.… He’s just kind of out of the loop.”

  “That still doesn’t give him the right to take it out on you.”

  “I’m a big girl now, Ray. I can take stuff like that.”

  Unexpectedly, Ray came up to her and put his arms around her and pressed his cheek against her shoulder.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing. I just wish that you and Dad could make up.”

  She found herself stroking his spiky hair. “We will. I promise you. We’re going through a difficult time, that’s all. Everybody goes through difficult times.”

  “But it’s every day. It’s every single day.”

  Bonnie snapped off her bright yellow rubber gloves. “Never mind. How about a cup of coffee?”

  Ray lifted his head and looked up at her. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  She laid both hands on his shoulders, smiling. “You can ask me anything you like. I’m your mother.”

  “Dad—you know—do you still, like, love him?”

  Bonnie looked into Ray’s eyes and they were the same color as hers: palest faded blue—the blue of cornflowers found pressed between the pages of a family Bible.

  “That’s a very complex thing to ask me,” she said. “And all I can say is … there are lots of different answers, and even I don’t know what they are.”

  “I knew you’d chicken out.”

  “Oh, yes? At least I didn’t Mexican chicken out.”

  He came bursting into the bedroom at 2:34 in the morning, stinking of beer and cigarette smoke. She lay in bed pretending to sleep while he tilted and ricocheted from one side of the room to the other. His shoes tumbled across the floor and then—shackled by the legs of his pants—he fell full length onto the bed, right beside her.

  “Bonnie …” he breathed. His breath was so rancid that she had to turn her face away. “Bonnie, listen to me. I love you. You don’t even know how much I love you. You don’t have any—shit!” he said, as he tried to kick his pants off his ankles.

  “Know we always argue—know that, baby. But it’s not always me. Sometimes—sometimes it’s you. I mean you work all day and you work all night and you hardly even look at me and think, That’s my man. That’s my man. And a man … needs that kind of reassurance, baby. Needs that kind of respect. And what happens to me? I’ll tell you what happens to me. I lose my job to some wetback. And then my wife—my dear devoted wife of seventeen years, my baby, my queen—what does she do? She rubs … she rubs salt in the wound, man. That’s what she does. Salt. Not only does she cut off my nuts, she serves them up for dinner and calls them cojones.”

  He clenched his fist and began to pound the pillow. Spit was flying from his mouth, and Bonnie pulled up the sheet to protect her face. She wasn’t frightened. She just wanted him to stop shouting and let her get some sleep.

  “Mexican chicken, for Christ’s sake! Mexican chicken! I mean, like, twist the knife or what? Don’t you think I feel—nothing enough already?”

  Bonnie turned over and put her arm around him. “Duke, you’re drunk. Try to get some sleep.”

  “You think I’m drunk? I’m not even half drunk. I’m—I’m—injured.”

  Bonnie stroked the back of his neck. “Injured,” he told the pillow, with even greater vehemence. “I’m injured.”

  In the dark, Bonnie could still picture what he looked like when they first dated. Thin, almost effeminate, with a high black pompadour and such a cool way of walking and talking. He was funny, he was sharp, he was always’ the center of attention. He could blow twenty smoke rings, one after another. His friends always called him The Dook and mock-bowed whenever they met him. But even The Dook grew older and left school and had to find work; and that was when The Dook discovered that being able to blow smoke rings was no substitute for having vocational qualifications. The best job that he could find was rewiring automobiles—and then, when he asked for a fifty-cent raise, the company sacked him and brought in a Mexican electrician instead, for two dollars an hour less.

  He raised his head. In the dim light from the bedside alarm clock, his face was glistening with tears. “You’re not going to leave me, are you, Bonnie? You still love me, don’t you?”

  “Will you hush up and get some sleep? I have to be up by six.”

  “You don’t have anybody else, do you, Bonnie? I’ve seen the way that Ralph Kosherick looks at you. Like his eyes are bulging out and his goddamned tongue’s dragging on the rug. You wouldn’t screw Ralph Kosherick, would you, Bonnie? Tell me you wouldn’t screw Ralph Kosherick!”

  “For Christ’s sake, Duke, will you stop?”

  She closed her eyes and tried to think about something else. Every time Duke got drunk, he raged about Ralph, and the truth was that Ralph was smart and presentable and even attractive in a rather too brotherly kind of way, but there must have been something that Duke saw in Ralph that represented everything he hated to the point of incandescence. Education, and middle-class values, and pants that only just skimmed the tops of his shoes.

  “I’m telling you, Bonnie. I could take Ralph Kosherick by the neck and I could physically strangle him, I promise you.”

  “Duke, you’re drunk.”

  He sat up like a Polaris missile going off. “Drunk?” he roared. “Drunk?” He grabbed the pillows and threw them across the room. “I’m your husband and I’m trying to tell you how much I hurt inside, and I’m drunk? Well, excuse me! Maybe I should just forget about trying to talk to you and do what Ralph Kosherick does to you!”

  “Duke, sweetheart, will you please just stop shouting? I have to get up early tomorrow and Ray has school.”

  “Who gives a shit?” Duke screamed at her. “I don’t have to get up for anything! I could lie in bed all day
and it wouldn’t make any difference!”

  “Duke—”

  Without warning, he dragged back the sheet, climbed on top of her, and pulled up her nightgown. The clock faintly illuminated her big, rounded breasts and her big, rounded stomach. She said, “Duke—no—” and tried to pull her nightgown down again, but Duke forced her thighs apart.

  “You and that goddamned Ralph Kosherick. You and that—goddamned—Ralph—Kosherick.”

  She felt him between her legs, as soft as a baby mouse. He put his hand down and tried to squish himself into her, but he couldn’t. He pushed his hips forward, grunting with effort. Bonnie lay patiently and waited for him to stop trying, which he eventually did. He dropped on top of her and sobbed into her ear, his stubble scratching her neck and his tears dripping over her shoulder.

  She gave him little pecking kisses and stroked his pompadour. It was so much thinner these days.

  Things to do on Wednesday

  Bonnie kept a small Ninja Turtles notebook in her purse, which Ray had given her when he was twelve. There were only a few pages left, and she was going to hint that she needed a new one soon. She took out her red ballpoint pen and made a list of everything she had to do today.

  Collect dry cleaning from Star-Tex

  Remind Ralph about Moist-Your-Eyes promotion

  Meet Susan for lunch 1:30

  Collect truck tire

  Buy pork chops, ice cream, bathroom tissue

  Call Mike Paretti re insecticide

  She had heard from Pfizer that there was a powerful new chemical for clearing out screwworms and she was interested to know if Mike had tried it. She was disgusted by maggots and blowflies and other parasitical insects, but at the same time she found them fascinating. An expert entomological pathologist could often tell from the parasites in a person’s body just when they had died, and how, and even where they had been killed. There was something else about parasites, too. It was their total disregard for human beauty and human tragedy. They were blind to everything but their own appetites.

  The Day Job

  Ray came into the kitchen, yawning, his hair sticking up like Stan Laurel’s. He opened the fridge and stared into it for almost half a minute. Then he closed it again.

  Bonnie finished off her list, folded it and tucked it into her purse. “You’re up early.”

  “Urgghhh … I have to finish my math homework.”

  “Your father didn’t keep you awake, did he?”

  “Only me and half of greater Los Angeles.”

  He took a loaf of bread out of the larder and spread three slices with peanut butter, almost a half inch thick. Then he cut up two bananas and arranged them on top of each slice. He switched on the television, folded up the first slice of bread and started to eat it. He ate the same thing every morning. He had read in some men’s health magazine that bananas and peanut butter helped you to put on weight.

  The kitchen was painted bright yellow, with bright yellow checkered curtains. In the morning sunshine, it looked like the set for a 1960s cornflakes commercial. Sydney Omarr, the psychic, had once told Bonnie that yellow was her lucky color. He had also told her that she would see more death than most people see in thirteen lifetimes. She hadn’t believed him, but that was four years before she had started Bonnie’s Trauma Scene Clean.

  She said, “Your father’ll get over this. You wait and see.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Ray was absorbed in watching Scooby Doo.

  “He’s a good man, really. He finds life … confusing, that’s all.”

  She stood by the sink, finishing her decaf. She looked at Ray, expecting him to turn around and say something, but he didn’t. After a while she tipped away the rest of her coffee, rinsed her mug and gave him a kiss on top of his chaotic, sweaty hair. “I’ll see you at six. I shouldn’t be later than that. Pork chops tonight.”

  “‘Kay, Mom.”

  There was a pause. Then she said, “Ray.”

  He didn’t answer. He knew what she was going to say, and she knew he knew.

  She said it all the same. “I love you, Ray. Things are going to get better.”

  Outside the house, the driveway was only just wide enough to accommodate their two vehicles: Bonnie’s Dodge truck and Duke’s eleven-year-old Buick Electra. When they had first moved in, Bonnie had imagined that they would live here for two or three years and then buy someplace much more spacious, with a pool that you could swim more than two-and-a-half strokes in before you hit the concrete edge on the other side, and the neighbors’ barbecue smoke didn’t billow in through your kitchen window. She had imagined four or five orange trees, a hot tub, and maybe even a view.

  That was thirteen years ago, when Ray was only four years old. She didn’t think about the four or five orange trees or the hot tub anymore, and she didn’t expect a better view than a gray-painted fence. But she kept on selling Glamorex cosmetics and she kept on scrubbing away the stains of other people’s traumas, and she knew that she had to be working so doggedly for some reason, although she would never allow herself to face up to what it was.

  She liked Barbra Streisand. She liked “Evergreen” so much that she played it over and over. Not when Duke was around, though.

  She drove over to Venice Boulevard in Duke’s Electra. The air-conditioning didn’t work, and the seats were patched with silver duct tape. By the time she reached Venice Boulevard, her blouse was sticking to her back. She found a parking space only half a block away from the Glamorex offices. As she hurried along the sidewalk, an elderly man in a white golfing cap gave her a wide, denture-crowded smile. A real geriatric, about eighty-five years old. “Say there. Nice gazongas.”

  At first her brain didn’t register what he had said. But then she stopped and turned around and called out, “Hey!” The sidewalk was empty. She almost thought that she must have imagined it. She hesitated for a moment, frowning, but then she pushed her way through the revolving doors into the ice-cold lobby and click-clacked her way across the polished marble floor to the elevators.

  Up on the fourteenth floor, headquarters of Glamorex of Hollywood, Inc., dozens of cardboard boxes were stacked all over the reception area and along the corridor. Joyce Bach, the distribution manager, was standing in the middle of all this chaos with her frizzy black hair looking even more disorganized than ever. A half-smoked cigarette dangled from her glossy red lips (Scarlet Siesta), and every time she spoke she dropped ash on her royal-blue suit.

  “Would you believe it? They’ve delivered less than half of the fall hail-color range. And they’ve printed the Millennium Face-Glow packaging upside-down. Like, who’s running this operation, orangutans?”

  Ralph Kosherick came out, holding a clipboard and looking harassed. He was a tall man with slightly stooping shoulders and a big, rumpled Fred Mac-Murray kind of face. Every time she talked to him, Bonnie felt an overwhelming urge to take out her nail scissors and trim his shaggy black eyebrows. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and purple suspenders that kept the cuffs of his pants flapping an inch above his polished black Oxfords.

  “You’re late, Bonnie,” he said, without checking his watch. “But … since you look so ravishing this morning, I’ll forgive you.”

  “I hope you say things like that to your wife.”

  “Of course I say things like that to my wife. I just make sure that she’s out of earshot. Don’t want her getting big-headed.”

  “You’re a terrible man, Ralph. Where am I scheduled today?”

  He flapped his way through the papers on his clipboard. “I want you to make a call to Marshall’s first, and then go over to Hoffman Drugs to see what new stock they need. I’ve moved your Millennium promotion to three o’clock.”

  “Okay, that suits me better. I have a lunch date at one-thirty.”

  “Cancel it. Let me take you. I’ve found this new place on Melrose where they do stuffed vine leaves to die for. Meet me back here when you’ve finished at Hoffman.”

  “Ralph, that’s
very generous of you. But like I’ve said before, I think we ought to keep our relationship on a strict professional basis.”

  “I like the sound of strict. I’m not too sure about professional.”

  “Won’t your wife ever beat you?”

  “Vanessa? Are you kidding? She can’t even beat me at Scrabble.”

  Bonnie collected her boxes of samples, and LeRoy, the mail boy, helped her carry them down to the street. He had a personal stereo in his ears and he moonwalked toward her car in time to his faintly heard music. Bonnie had to slam the trunk of Duke’s car three times to shut it, and then she said, “What’s that you’re listening to?”

  LeRoy lifted one earphone and frowned at her as if he didn’t know who she was. “Say what?”

  “I said, what’s that you’re listening to?”

  He handed the earphones over and Bonnie listened for a while. Techno dance-beat drumming, endless repetitive riffs, and somebody singing over and over again, “Wake up the dayyudd … you kill me bruvva … wake up the dayyudd …”

  She gave the earphones back. “That’s very nice. I think I’ll stick to Billy Ray Cyrus.”

  The buyer at Marshall’s was a small woman called Doris Feinman, who wore a black suit and so much foundation that she looked like an understudy for a Noh play. She scattered Bonnie’s lipstick samples over her desk and took all the caps off and muddled them up.

  “What’s this one called? Blood Orange? It’s an interesting shade, but don’t you think it sounds a little menstrual?”

  “We can change the names. Absolutely no problem.”

  “Well, that’s good news. I don’t care for Cranberry Climax either. Who thinks these up?”

  Bonnie didn’t answer, but kept her mouth fixed in a tight approximation of a smile. Just because Glamorex was one of her smaller suppliers, Doris Feinman always had to go through the same ritual of messing up Bonnie’s samples and making scathing comments.

  “This eyelash thickener … it comes out way too blobby. Women these days don’t want to look like Goldie Hawn. It’s too mindless, too submissive, don’t you think?”