It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  In a final, weak show of defiance, Ray mutters, “I’ll do what I want to.”

  But there’s no conviction in his voice, and he winces when Dan says, “That’s just it, Ray. You don’t want to. Trust me.”

  For a long moment, no one speaks. The world around us has stopped, a snapshot of this exact second, I see everything around me at once—the screen door half-open as Aunt Billy steps outside, Caitlin picking over the sweet and sour chicken on a plate our cousin Emily holds out to her like an offering, a flash of dusky ankle as Kenny’s girlfriend starts down the porch steps. All sound has melded into a high-pitched cacophony, something you’d hear in a movie, a rustling of a crowd with no voices bright enough to stand out by themselves. Ray’s going to say something, I think wildly, he’s going to be a smart-mouth and Dan won’t put up with it, he’ll lunge across me, he’s a soldier, he can kill with his bare hands and I can’t stop him, I can’t, I love him to death and I can’t stop him, I’m not that strong.

  Then Ray looks away, into the congealing mess in his take-out container, and the world rushes back into motion, double-time to make up for the lost moment and speed up to where we are. Noises deafen me—talk and laughter and the slap of the screen door, the creak of a step, they pound my brain and I swallow the rest of my beer to drown them out, I gulp down the second can, as well. I’ll get Dan another one. I’ll get it now.

  As I start to stand, Ray sniffles a little and tells me, “I’m sorry.”

  I glance over at him but he’s still glaring at his food, like it’s to blame. “Me too,” I say, and I am, God I am, so damn sorry, he just doesn’t know.

  The cooler’s by the door. I dig two more cans out of the melting ice and shake the water from them as I walk back to where Dan waits for me. He and Ray don’t look at each other, don’t speak—all that needed to be said is out, isn’t it? Nothing left to go on about. Sinking down between them, I hand my lover a beer and give him a tight grin. “I drank your other one.”

  “That’s okay,” he tells me. And suddenly it is. I feel loose and wobbly and frighteningly thrilled, the way I felt after the first time we ever had sex. Mine, I thought then, my mind racing with the possibilities that one word conjures up. He talked with Ray and things didn’t go bad, my brother apologized, things are going to be okay. Why? Because of Dan. He says it’s okay and it is.

  I finish my third beer without realizing it. Still thirsty, I eye the half-empty can by Dan’s knee. “Are you…?” I ask, pointing at the drink.

  He looks up from his dinner to frown at me. “How many have you had?” he wants to know. Sheepishly, I spread three fingers across my thigh. “Don’t you think that’s enough?”

  “One more,” I say, nodding to get him to agree with me. My fingers walk from my leg onto his knee, up his thigh, to his crotch, and I manage to poke at the pillowy spread between his legs before he laughs and moves my hand away. Not very far, though, and his fingers hold tight to mine. “Half of one,” I compromise.

  That gets me the rest of his beer. Once it’s gone, I’m thirsty again, and I start to stand but my legs don’t want to cooperate, they feel like the noodles I’ve been eating, long, limp strands that threaten to spill me onto the floor. One step and the world spins around me like a child’s toy. “Woah,” I laugh, reaching out. I find Dan reaching back.

  “You’re a little bit lit,” he tells me, easing a strong arm around my waist.

  I raise my forefinger and thumb to my eye and squint through the inch between them. “Just a little bit,” I agree. I let him lead me through the crowd—so many people! Shoving and bumping me, talk talk talk talk talking until their words buzz through my head like the beer. Thirsty, I think, watching the cooler come closer and closer as we near the door…but then we’re inside, no more food, no more party, no more drink. “Dan?” I ask, confused. “I want…”

  With a hand on the knob to our door, he stops. “What do you want, hon?” he asks. He waits patiently as I think this through.

  “The bathroom,” I announce. Yes, I definitely want to go to the bathroom. I need to, before we go to bed. Tenderly my lover takes my elbow, slips that iron-like arm around my waist, leads me through the kitchen and down the hall to the bathroom. “You wait here,” I tell him at the door, pointing at the ground for emphasis.

  That makes him laugh. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he tells me. For some reason I find this funny, the funniest thing I’ve heard all night, I start giggling and can’t stop. Take a piss, wash my hands, brush my teeth and almost choke on the toothpaste because I’m trying not to laugh. Nothing he hasn’t seen before. I hear the words echo in my mind and my eyes water from holding in the fun.

  He makes me sit on the closed lid of the toilet while he brushes his teeth and washes his face. Then he takes a damp cloth to my face, like a mother cleaning up a little boy. When we’re ready to go, I stumble into the hall before he can catch me. “Watch your step,” I tell him, and he laughs. My giggles come back, chased by hiccups that leave me breathless, even though I don’t really see what’s so funny about what I said.

  Into our room. He strips me down, underwear and all, then pulls back the covers on the bed. I fall to the mattress gratefully, scooting up against the wall to make room for him. It’s dark but I watch him undress anyway, a silhouette in the shape of a man. Nothing I haven’t seen before, I think sleepily. Then he’s in the bed with me, the covers pulled up to our chins, and his arms circle around me again. For a moment I think we should make love—I need him, the way I needed the beer earlier, I’m thirsty and this time he’s what I want. But he pulls me to him, my back to his chest, my butt fitting into the hollow of his crotch perfectly. “Night, lover,” he murmurs, kissing my cheek. When I grind back into him, his arms tighten around me. “You’re not in the mood,” he tells me.

  My head spins, my eyes are heavy, I can’t keep them open. “I’m not?” I whisper.

  He shakes his head. I believe him. He kisses the back of my neck, and somewhere between his hands on my body and his breath on my skin, I fall asleep.

  Chapter 45: Seeing Things

  I’m aware of being awake. Not waking up, exactly, but a subtle shift in consciousness, almost like coming to my senses after fainting, one second nothing and then I’m simply here, eyes closed, alive.

  With a piercing ache just above my right eye that feels like something pick pick picking away at my brain. A headache, I think, groaning as I roll onto my back. Just what I need. Four beers last night—three and a half, if you want to get technical about it—what was I thinking? Thirsty, my mind whispers, and at first I think that’s a reply. But as I yawn and stretch in the narrow bed, careful not to disturb Dan, I realize that my throat is raw and scratchy, parched, not a memory but thirsty now. My tongue tastes of stale beer, my breath smells like a brewery, I must look real fine this morning. In rare form. Hung over for my aunt’s funeral, it’s like the punch line of a bad joke.

  When I try to sit up, my head throbs and I fall back to the pillow, trembling. Please no, I pray as waves of nausea wash over me. Please no, God, please. I don’t want to be sick. Beside me, Dan snuggles closer and snores softly, each breath a rumbling grumble, his arms folded across his chest and pressed into my side like he’s trying to huddle up for warmth. Only it’s hot in here, too hot, I kick the blankets away as I roll onto my side. My stomach churns in protest and I curl into myself, backing up against the wall so I can bring my knees to my chest, my arms wrapped around my waist, my head hunched down between my shoulders. My brow rests against Dan’s forearm, which is cool and dry but warms quickly. I’m sick.

  The pain behind my eye flares brightly then dips away, rushes at me again, dissolves, hurries back—moving slowly, I inch closer to Dan, and even though he’s asleep, his arms unfurl as he feels me near him, they envelope me, draw me in, hold me against the heart beating in his chest. One rock-hard nipple pokes my closed eyelid as if pointing out where it hurts. Between us, my knees lean on his thighs, and hi
s hands strum down over the nubs of my spine before his arms tighten, trapping me. I burrow closer.

  It seems like I lay for hours before my stomach finally settles, but my headache doesn’t want to fade away. I’m not sure of the time—early morning, most likely, since there’s no sun coming through the window yet and Dan isn’t awake. He’s military, rolls out of bed at 0600 hours on the dot day in and day out, regardless of weekends or vacation or holidays. So it’s pre-dawn, then, the house quiet, everyone else still asleep, everyone but me. I would be asleep, if not for this pounding behind my eyes. It woke me up, I swear it’s going to stab at me until I simply give in and die. Nothing can hurt this much and not kill you.

  Aspirin.

  The word floats through my subconscious, searching for something to connect with. An image surfaces—my mom bent over the medicine drawer yesterday, rummaging through bottles of pills and cough syrup for Penny’s prescription. In my mind I see the drawer open before me, an apothecary overflowing with the promise of health. Smooth white pills to soothe the pain. That’s what I need, something in there, something to make it all go away.

  If I can stand. If I can walk that far—the idea roils my stomach and makes my head hurt worse. But I have the whole rest of the day to get through and if I can get started now, if I can get a handful of pills to calm this raging pain in my head, if I can just get out of bed, I should be able to make it, I should be okay. Here’s hoping. Please, God, I pray, a litany that tumbles through my head over and over again, please, please.

  Somehow I make it out of bed. Step one. When I first pull back from Dan, though, there are a few tense moments where I’m sure he won’t let me go. “Baby,” I whisper, the hoarse voice frightening me in the early darkness—is that mine? “Let me up. Dan…” His arms are constricting bands around me that tighten the more I try to get away. I don’t want to wake him up and I’m about ready to give in and call it quits—I’ll get aspirin later, what’s a few hours with pain like this?—but at that moment he relaxes and I slip from his embrace. As I climb over him, he rolls into the warmth I’ve left behind, burrowing into the pillow that still smells of my hair and hugging the blankets where I slept to his chest.

  When I stand, my head clouds over in fast, sharp pain and I swoon, almost fall back to the bed, I’d surely wake Dan up then, but the sensation recedes like the tide and I’m okay, I tell myself this just to make sure, “I’m okay.” Okay—cold, but okay. Freezing, in fact, naked and shivering, what happened to the heat in this place? Turned down low for the night, I think, that would be my dad’s handiwork. Heaven forbid he sweat in his sheets. He sleeps in longjohns this time of the year and piles on the covers with no regard for guys like myself who like to sleep buck naked and curled up against a lover for warmth. Having the heat down is fine while I’m asleep but the minute I step out of bed, I’m an icicle. Add goose bumps to my list of ailments today.

  Beneath my feet, the wooden floor is cold and hard. What was I thinking, getting out of bed at this hour? Aspirin, I remind myself, but now that I’m standing, the headache isn’t as bad as I thought it was. In fact, it’s almost bearable. Almost. But I’m up, I should at least take a look in the drawer—I know the second I lie back down, all the blood will rush into my head and it’ll start to throb again. I don’t need that. I don’t want it. Without turning on the light, I shuffle around until I find the sweater I wore yesterday and dig my toes into it to warm them up. Then, bent at the waist, I let my hands drift over the wooden boards, so empty now that we cleaned this room out, so bare. Just crouching down like this brings the pain flaring back to life, as I knew it would, and where the hell is our suitcase? When the room was packed with shit, it sat open on the floor by the bedside table and now I can’t find it, I’m going to have to turn the lamp on anyway, I don’t want to wake Dan up, it’s too damn early—

  There. My hand closes over the handle and I pull the suitcase to me. It scratches over the hardwood floor but it’s a small sound, Dan doesn’t hear it in his sleep. Fumbling through our clothes, I find a pair of shorts. Dan’s PT trunks, though I don’t realize this until I pull them on and they mold to my ass and cock—definitely not mine. I’m not in the same shape he is, I have an office job, I don’t get a week out in the field every month or so to work off the fat that settles in my hips and waist. “You’re not fat,” Dan tells me if I mention it, and to emphasis his point, he’ll crawl between my legs and bite at the sensitive skin along my inner thighs. “This is all padding,” he says with playful nips that drive me crazy. “I like you soft. If I wanted a hard, lean boy, I’d get with someone in my unit, but I don’t like that kind of guy, Michael. I like you.”

  And admit it, I think as I pull a t-shirt down over my head, also his, you love his teeth on you, his tongue, his strong hands. If this headache goes away anytime soon, I could wake him up a little earlier, just for some quick loving. I seem to remember him telling me I wasn’t in the mood last night but that’s bullshit. When am I ever not in the mood for him?

  When it’s the day of your great-aunt’s funeral, my mind whispers. Suddenly the air around me drops another ten degrees, the hair on my arms stands at attention, the skin on my ribs shudders with the chill. Whatever ardor I felt shrivels like my balls, tiny walnuts of ice, I rub at my crotch to warm them up again. I’m not going to think of the funeral just yet. Another few hours and the sun will rise, it’ll be daylight officially, I’ll have to focus on that but right this minute, when I’m the only one awake in this place? I’m not going to let my mind drift in that direction. I’m going to get the aspirin and get back into bed. I won’t think any further than that.

  Moving quietly, I unlock the door and ease it open just wide enough to slip through. There’s no one in the kitchen—at this hour, I didn’t expect there would be—but the room is brightly lit from the backyard spotlight that shines in through the windows above the sink. My dad and his damn beacons, as if the mother ship has landed outside. I pull the door to our room shut behind me so the light won’t shine in there and bother my lover. Something like that wakes him up, he’s likely to think it’s heaven’s light shining down. Can’t have a normal porch light like everybody else. I’m sure that says something about my family, something I don’t even want to touch.

  The kitchen table has been cleared of the take-out boxes and soy sauce packets, napkins, chopsticks, all the paraphernalia of dinner last night. A few crushed beer cans top an overflowing trashcan, set in front of the back door as a blatant reminder for whoever heads that way to take the garbage out with them. On the counter by the sink, still sitting on a bed of newsprint, is Caitlin’s pumpkin, lit only with the light from the window behind it. Shadows inside the hollowed-out gourd seem to move as I walk by, making the chiseled leer appear to widen, the carved eyes follow my steps. It doesn’t know me—the thought comes unbidden to my mind, drawn from some primal well deep inside. Something I read years ago comes back, one of the reasons for dressing up in costumes for Halloween, to confuse the spirits of the dead still wandering the earth. I’m dressed in Dan’s clothes right now, it won’t know who I am, it can’t get me, I’m safe.

  Another step and the wicked gleam in those dead eyes disappears. It’s just a pumpkin, it can’t get anyone, I know, I saw Aunt Bobbie clean it out this afternoon, I watched Caitlin cut into the hard flesh. What I thought was a treacherous snarl is nothing more than a jagged slit, scary eyes are just empty holes I could poke my fingers through if I wanted to. I don’t want to. I’m not going to touch the damn thing. I don’t like it.

  A noise behind me makes me whirl around, on edge. The house settling, I tell myself, that’s all it is, but for a moment I see something, someone, I see Evie as she was the last time I was down here, five years ago. She’s sitting at the table with her large, tanned arms crossed in front of her, and I know who it is she’s waiting for. It’s me. I never came back here, I don’t know why, I just couldn’t seem to fit it into my schedule and now look at what’s happened, she’s died, I
’ll never see her again. I’m sorry, I think, watching her watch me. Or rather, stare through me, like she doesn’t see me, I don’t exist for her. As I think this, her clear brow furrows, her wide mouth pulls down into a caricature of sadness. “Michael?” she asks, her voice as hollow as the pumpkin on the counter.

  My arms break out in fresh pimples of fear at the sound. It’s the same voice that used to tell me everything would be alright when I was a little boy and fell down or broke something or got in trouble yet again with my mom. The same voice that laughed in delight when I called to tell her I would be going to college. The same voice that sympathized when I came home in tears that time Stephen left me at the playground, pissed because all I could talk about was Joe Kneesi. The last words I ever heard in this voice were, “I miss you, boy.” And those big arms wrapped me in a strong hug—how could they be gone now? How could that voice be silenced? How could a heart like Evie’s, so large that there was no end to her love—no matter how much she poured out on us, there was always more, always—how could a heart like that cease to beat? How could it fail and just give up? How could someone like her possibly die?

  “Michael?” she says again in that eerie echo of her once vibrant voice. Here, I try to say, I’m right here, but the words won’t come and she continues to look through me as if I’m the ghost. It’s the clothing, I think, of course—I’m wearing Dan’s shorts, his shirt, she doesn’t recognize me. Costumes to confuse spirits of the dead, wasn’t that what I read? She never met Dan. She doesn’t know his clothing, she doesn’t know me.