by Brady Udall
Well, crying like that made him feel a little better, and staying in his room wouldn’t be so bad—at least he wouldn’t have to do chores. Out in the hall, Parley was waiting for him. Parley was two years older and could run faster and throw farther and make musical armpit farts everyone thought were hilarious. Rusty tried to walk by, but Parley stood in his way with his arm against Rusty’s chest, and whispered, Fag. Rusty pushed past him, but Parley stayed right with him, doing the musical armpits and singing, A-Faggety-Fag-Fag-Fee, A-Faggety-Fag-Fag-Foo.
One of the sorriest things about Old House was that it was really old, with squeaking floors and clanking radiators, but the worst part of it was you had to march up about six hundred stairs to get to the Tower, which was where they made Rusty stay, most likely because they wanted him to reduce in size his sizable love handles. So he climbed, huffing and stopping once in a while to let some spit dribble out of his mouth, while Parley was with him step for step calling him the world’s most out-of-shape homo.
Rusty spent the next two hours in the Tower bedroom, which was not his bedroom at all, but a room that belonged to Parley and Nephi, who promised to murder him in his sleep if he kept up his snoring, which was why he now slept with a hammer under his pillow. They had sturdy beds with nice fluffy pillows, while he slept on a foam rubber pad on the floor.
For the thousandth time, Rusty read the sign hanging above the dresser. A few months ago Aunt Beverly made a bunch of them and hung them up in everybody’s bedroom, even put one in the bathroom. In her flowery, old-style writing it said:
Christ Is the Head of This House
The Unseen Guest
at Every Meal
The Silent Listener
to Every Conversation
See if that doesn’t creep you right out.
No, this was not his bedroom, or his house, and Aunt Beverly, no matter what anybody said, was not his mother. His mother was back at Big House, where he belonged with his real brothers and sisters, who were all, honestly, a bunch of a-holes too. He had to live in Old House with Aunt Beverly’s family because somebody had the big idea to do an interfamily exchange program, where children from the different mothers went to live at the other houses, so they could all love each other and understand each other, and have no divisions or strife among them, which was all a big fat gyp.
People said the exchange program was his father’s idea, but Rusty and everybody else knew that all of his father’s big ideas were really Aunt Beverly’s, and that Aunt Beverly got this idea from the Jensens, a family in the church who were always trying to be cooler than everyone else, with their brand-name clothes and Six Flags vacations. Last year the Jensens signed up for the Foreign Exchange Program and got two Japanese kids: a sister and a brother. You should have seen them dumb Japanese kids! One minute they’re back in their little paper house in Japan eating Chinese food with chopsticks, and the next thing they know they’re in the Jensen compound with eighteen new brothers and sisters and four mothers and having to stand in line for a bowl of cornflakes! They were only there for a couple of weeks before somebody alerted the authorities, who took them to a regular American family in Colorado where they didn’t have to wait half an hour for a chance at the toilet.
So now that Parley was gone, Rusty sat on one of the beds that wasn’t his and looked out the window. It was a bright day, the sky blue and without a cloud, but cold enough that there wasn’t a lot going on in the side yard or the pastures beyond. He watched a couple of Brother Spooner’s cows trying to hump each other, which was fun for a while until he realized that they were doing it only because they were as bored as he was. He watched Raymond the Ostrich strut around in the smaller pasture next to the Spooner home. People said Brother Spooner used to have dozens of ostriches at one time, he was planning to make millions of dollars selling them for ostrich hamburgers, turning what was left over into cowboy boots and those feathery scarf things dancing ladies wear, but it turned out there weren’t a whole lot of people interested in eating something that looked like a giant mutant turkey. So Brother Spooner had gotten rid of all his ostriches, except Raymond, who had once attacked a kid from town who was trying to siphon gas from the Spooners’ tractor, and because Raymond had run the kid down and kicked the living dookie out of him and defended the Spooner way of life, he was now considered part of the family.
After the cows stopped humping and Raymond disappeared behind the feed bin and Rusty could not look out the window a minute longer, he crossed the room and regarded himself in the mirror on the closet door. His face was still red from crying, and blubber showed through the gaps in his shirt. He was sort of fat all right, and the owner of a shirt so raggedy and stained it looked like he had stolen it off a dead hobo, but he was no fag.
“Fag, you say?” he asked in his Scoundrel accent, which always made him feel better, doing the squinty-eyed thing while taking a drag from an imaginary pipe. “Get a hold of yourself, man, you may be many things to many people, but a fag? My dear man, I dare say not.”
5.
OLD HOUSE
Look closely and you’ll see: in this house there is trouble. There has been trouble here for a good many years, though you’d hardly know it by appearances. The children, rambunctious as always, scamper and gossip and play, the mothers busy themselves making dinner, and the father—where is he, anyway?—labors somewhere in the outer precincts of the backyard.
No, nothing obviously the matter. If you didn’t know any better you might think: domestic sweetness, familial bliss. But look a little closer, get right up close, and you can’t miss the off-kilter rituals, the sorrows nursed in isolation, the back-door transactions, the mini-dramas of dread and anxiety and longing. At this very second, for example, you’ll find Daughters #2 and #3 in an upstairs bedroom, hatching a plot of revenge on Daughter #5 for being a kiss-up and a tattletale and exposing their respective crushes on two of the best-looking boys in the valley, while Daughter #5 herself is curled up in her hiding place under the stairs, trying to stanch the most recent of her spontaneous nosebleeds, which she believes to be divine punishment for impure thoughts and questionable intentions, and because of which she has become a tattletale and Miss Goody Two Shoes in hopes of getting on God’s good side. In the woodshed you’ll find Son #4 weeping bitterly and eating his own earwax. In the front room is Daughter #10, right out there in the open, sitting alone on the lavender Queen Anne divan, talking openly, idly to her dead brother, Son X, while two of her living brothers, Sons #11 and #6, aim their homemade rubberband guns at the back of her head and count: one, two, three. And maybe, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice Mother #2 slipping into the hall bathroom the second it comes open to give her wig a quick adjustment and stuff her latest and rather unpredictable roll of stomach fat under the band of her pantyhose—she wants to look good for her man tonight!—and coming back into the kitchen, letting out that braying laugh with which she tries to hide large and complicated feelings.
The house, a gothic Victorian with a jagged roofline and a three-story tower fashioned from blond sandstone, makes proud display of its odd-shaped rooms and narrow hallways and tilting staircases—an architecture that, despite Mother #1’s every attempt to suppress such things, encourages factionalization and secrecy and disorder. Away from the warm bright center of the house where the mothers try to outdo each other in the kitchen, there is a shadow world of disputed territories and black-market economies, a shifting and complex geography of meeting places and neutral zones and sour little crevices and dusty pockets where children go to steal a few desperate moments of solitude.
Mother #1 has done everything she can to battle such chaos, to sniff out any hint of sloth or insurrection. Not that anyone cares or notices. Not that anyone expresses any gratitude at all for the way she endeavors daily to improve these children’s souls, to clean up their diction and straighten out their morals and impart to them an appreciation of their divine legacies, their celestial bloodlines. Not that anyone, includi
ng the adults who sometimes share the house, pays any attention to the dozens of placards she has made using her self-taught calligraphy skills, placards that feature suggestions, warnings, reminders, and admonishments placed in strategic locations around the house:
On the front door: Please Remove Shoes
Below the doorbell: Ringing Twice May Be Necessary
In the foyer: Please Place Shoes in Shoe Box—Neatly and Quietly
Above the foyer light switch: Turn Off Light When Not in Use
And so on as you make your way through the house. The upstairs bathroom, known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, requires eight placards all by itself:
On the door: Please Keep Locked When Occupied
And under that one, another: Please Respect the Privacy of Others
Under the toothbrush rack (which features nine toothbrushes lined in a neat row, each plastic handle bearing its owner’s name in the same Edwardian script): Remember: Use Only Your Toothbrush and Your Toothbrush Only
Next to the toilet paper holder: No More than Four Squares Per Use, No Fewer Than One
On the wall next to the tub, under a plastic blue egg timer on its own ceramic shelf: Showers Two Minutes Maximum
Above the toilet: Lid Down When Not in Use
And below that: Boys, Lift Seat When Making Water
And below that: Boys, AIM!!! Please and Thank You
At the top of the stairs on the wall of the landing there is a large black-and-white portrait of Brigham Young, his meaty face pressed into a frown of dire warning, as if to say: Don’t even think about it.
You cannot take five steps in this house without being reprimanded or corrected or warned, without being reminded that rules and laws are what separate us from the worst aspects of ourselves and are all we have to keep sin and ugliness and anarchy at bay—and that is exactly how Mother #1 would have it. No one in this house has any idea, but Mother #1 is well and personally acquainted with sin and ugliness and anarchy, and she has come to know that rules and commandments and laws, if you hold to them fast and believe in them with your whole heart, can save your life and maybe even your soul.
Likewise, no one in this house would have any idea that Mother #3 has her own inner life, small though it may be. Mother #3, more than anyone in the family, is easy to miss. She speaks, if she speaks, second or third or fourth. You can walk right past her, as her own children often do, without seeing or noticing a thing. One of the children, Daughter #11, has started a rumor that has been picking up steam among the under-seven segment of the domestic population, that Mother #3 is disappearing, fading in and out, flickering into nothing at inopportune and often comical moments, like a ghost in a black-and-white cartoon. For so long she has asked for nothing, required nothing, taken nothing, only given. It is the story of so many mothers in this small valley and, for that matter, in the larger world that she has heard so much about. It’s very simple: she has given too much, and now there is very little left of Mother #3.
From the kitchen she calls for someone to bring up some potatoes from the cellar but, as usual, no one pays her any mind. So she goes down herself, and comes upon the Three Stooges in their customary spot next to the old industrial boiler, practicing some native sport that seems to involve kicking each other repeatedly in the behind. Boys, she says, gathering the potatoes from the bin, boys, boys. But they go on as if she weren’t there, kicking, guffawing, groaning in mock or possibly real pain. The Three Stooges love each other dearly—anyone can see that—and they demonstrate it by slapping, tripping, and choking each other silly. They are inseparable, these three, except when they are separated, which is most of the time, when Stooges #1 and #3 go home to Big House, and leave Stooge #2 behind to pine after them, jealous of the life they share without him. Stooge #2 is a born worrier, and his worries tend to center on an uncertain future in which he and the other two stooges will be separated for good. He is only seven years old, but he knows about things like jobs and death and marriage, things that could steal him away from his brothers and them from him, and the thought of these things only makes him punch and kick and squeeze them harder, sometimes with such force he worries he might one day truly hurt them.
Upstairs in the kitchen Mother #3 hands Mother #4 a bowl of washed potatoes and wordlessly they begin to peel. After so many quiet nights spent in her small duplex, Mother #4 still marvels at the great wash of sound that never recedes, only falters for a moment and then rushes back like a stiff breeze coming off the sea. Even in the midst of all this commotion she knows none of it really belongs to her, and marvels at the strange fact of her dearest wish: to be part of it, to give in to its distractions, to find herself the owner of a life lived rather than a life endured. And then she looks into the face of Mother #3, worn smooth and almost featureless, with moist eyes that can’t settle on anything more than a heartbeat at a time, and she knows this is a very dangerous wish. She could so easily become Mother #3—or Mothers #2 and #1, for that matter!—and she wonders what it is she wants, exactly, what in heaven’s name has brought her here.
Mother #3 takes the peeled potatoes to the stove, leaving Mother #4 to look out the window at the broad gray shapes of dusk. Mother #4 can’t help it, she searches the backyard for any sign of her husband. She wants him to be out there in pooling dark, watching her. She wants him to know how lost she is.
Where, then, is this husband, exactly? You can be certain he is not paying any attention to the house. If he were, he’d see that in the dark it looks radioactive, full of careening particles, the chaos of warm bodies. He’d be more than a little threatened, and rightfully so, by so much heat and light.
At this moment the Father is hiding, as usual. His secret lair is the ground floor of the Doll House, a ramshackle two-story playhouse made of plywood and cedar shakes whose construction he abandoned three years ago after the death of Daughter #9. After the funeral he boarded up the windows, except for the small one that faces west, put a padlock on the tiny door, spray-painted several black X’s on the walls and ramparts, and condemned it, declared it off-limits, henceforth and forever.
When he’s at Old House and wants to be alone, which is most of the time, he sneaks out here (he keeps the key to the padlock on a retractable janitor’s key ring) and squats on a milk crate, his head occasionally bumping the splintery ceiling, his face framed by the small window that looks out across the river to the Spooner place. Often, he engages in a long-distance staring contest with an ostrich who patrols his territory with a haughty air, like a retired industrialist who has nothing left to do but admire all he owns. One day—and he has fantasized about this in great detail—he wouldn’t mind going over there and breaking the thing’s neck.
This spot, this is where he was sitting when it happened. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here now, doesn’t know if it’s self-punishment, or escape, or a refusal of time’s passage. Some part of him, he knows, will be sitting here all his life.
It used to be that when he was alone like this he talked to God: What am I supposed to do? Please tell me what to do. But since Daughter #9 has been taken from him he has kept his silence.
Now, in this secret place, he allows his mind to go wherever it wants. Tonight, for instance, he is thinking about tomorrow morning, how he will wake early when the house is asleep and load up his pickup and make the long drive to Nevada. He considers how easy it would be to blow right on by the Highway 19 exit to continue on toward someplace where the living is free and easy, where there is no one to please and the obligations are few. He knows he is capable of such a thing; he has done it once already, abandoned one life for another.
He has been engaged in this kind of thinking for many months now, but lately his thoughts have centered on a woman, a dark-skinned stranger, and somehow for him she has come to comprise—in her short, muscled legs and her braided hair and her bright laugh—his desire for release, his dreams of escape. He believes, in a way that he doesn’t fully understand, that she might be the one to save hi
m.
Tonight, the darkness has swallowed everything except a bright wire of gold along the horizon. The Father watches the wire grow thinner and finer until it disappears, leaving behind a residue of lavender and blue. Very faintly, as if from some kinder and simpler time, the voices of his children rise out of the murky dusk, reminding him that there are things to do, that he has responsibilities of a certain kind, that he is, whether he likes it or not, the Father. The voices are louder now, calling for him to come in. He loves these children. He does, he loves them so much. He looks out the window. He stays a little while longer.
6.
THE STATE OF HIS SOUL
THE PUSSYCAT MANOR SAT JUST OFF STATE HIGHWAY 19, ITS TINY patch of lawn a perfect, unnatural green in the middle of this high desert plain. The brothel was an old ranch house with three different mobile homes attached at odd angles, giving the structure the aspect of a train wreck’s aftermath. The sign out front—PUSSYCAT MANOR—GIRLS GALORE—featured an extremely curvy cartoon cat in lingerie stroking its own tail and purring in blinking pink neon: PRRRRRRRR. Eleven o’clock in the morning and the parking lot was two-thirds full.
Slumped down in the front seat of his pickup, parked in the back corner of the lot next to a pair of dumpsters, Golden watched customers of all stripes—sweating tourists, businessmen, a couple of pimple-faced Marines—come and go. He’d been sitting here half an hour, wiping the sweat from his brow, taking toots off his Afrin while Cooter snoozed peacefully against his thigh. “If you’re going to do it, do it,” Golden suggested to his reflection in the rearview mirror. “If you’re not, then get back to work.” Apparently, this bit of self-motivation did the trick. He waited until the coast was clear and hustled across the parking lot, wincing at the hard light and clutching at his thighs to keep his keys from jingling in his pockets.