by Jon Pineda
From this path we can see into the back of every house we pass. I feel like I’m on a set, behind the scenes of some movie about bored rich kids. Most of these homes have clear bay windows with no shades. In one I see a room filled with silvery items, a gilded-framed painting with its own soft lighting.
* * *
Main Boy swipes at a screen on his phone and we enter through an unlocked door on the side of the garage. The garage is so spacious my breathing almost echoes. The floor is smooth and sanded, with no oil stains, no warping. You could fit where I live with my father and Dox and Fritter on just one side of the garage. On the other side, you could put the river and a few homemade boats.
* * *
“Come on,” Main Boy says, and I follow him inside the house. He saunters down a hallway lined with hip waders hanging above a row of mud boots. He’s like a little prince that’s returned to the kingdom he’ll inherit. When I see the artwork, my chest warms. Somber-toned paintings of pheasants are on the wall, and off to the side, wooden pegs hold heavy coats and red-checkered hats with lambswool flaps for the ears.
On the next wall over is a series of more paintings: Brook Trout, Brown Trout, Rainbow Trout. The fish are brighter than any I’ve ever seen in real life. For a moment, I feel like I’ve stepped inside one of my mother’s L.L.Bean catalogs.
* * *
I remember once pretending I was one of the models. She was dressed in a heather cable-knit sweater and cupping a mug of perfect cocoa. She was smiling dreamily at her husband, clad in a matching sweater. I hadn’t thought it through to where their kids were. Maybe they were smart and didn’t have any. I imagined my husband on his way, just a few pages over, to where he would have his pick of lavish sports gear. Nights when my parents fought in their bedroom, usually over money and the bills beginning to accrue, I would sometimes fall asleep dreaming of the fish my fake husband and I were going to catch together. It was going to be a good life, if I could help it.
WHEN MY FATHER WAS STILL a professor at the college, I once asked him if he would teach me to fly-fish. It was shortly after my mother told me the story about her uncle and the river. I’ll never forget how my father answered me. He didn’t come out and say he thought that stuff was too expensive. What he did, instead, was put down the anthology he had been scanning, reviewing what he’d cover in his poetry lecture that evening. He started patting his speckled tweed coat, then checked the matching vest he wore with it back then. Each of his touches made his eyes jump.
He acted truly surprised to find every pocket empty of money. He even giggled at the same time, too, which, when I allow myself to think back on it, sits wrong with me. I’ve always thought of him as possessing a penchant for cruelty, but only with those he loves.
My mother was trying to decipher her dissertation notes. She was preparing for her defense and couldn’t be bothered with us. She had been translating the poems of Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. The bâtards, she called them. Any scrap of paper she found she covered in poems, even the backs of envelopes from medical bills, of which there were more and more. I knew this because whenever one used to arrive, my parents would argue. But now the bills weren’t bills anymore. She didn’t seem to care about them as much. She would hold them up and recite translations she had written in French. Her cursive I could usually read, but not when it was in another language.
* * *
I wish my father had just admitted he didn’t know how to cast a fly rod, or to do anything remotely physical, for that matter. Or that on his professor’s salary, we didn’t have the money budgeted for such a hobby. But he didn’t. He just kept playing his body. He drummed the empty pockets, making himself laugh. I felt sorry for him. No, that’s not quite right. I felt sorry for myself. I was the daughter of a fool. When I could take it no longer, I stood up and walked away.
To his credit, he immediately stopped, though he had already shown me he was the kind of person who needed an audience, who needed people to view him in a particular light. My father implored me several times to come back and listen to his explanation. It felt good to have a choice I had created, to have this man want something I wasn’t going to give.
* * *
I disappeared down the hall of our little white shotgun-style house. I walked onto the broken sidewalk. Four more blocks and I would arrive on a manicured college campus. Packs of students were howling at one another between classes, thrilled a weekend of parties and general mayhem was upon them.
My father called me back into the house. In my mind, I was gone. I was walking the campus. I could clearly make out the geometries of land bunched with glowing flowers and green grass. The terrain was shorn and chemically treated. Each square of grass was like a little prison. I kept going, drifting. I wouldn’t turn around. He stomped out onto the porch and huffed a few more times, but I was already years younger, sitting quietly on a stool in a bright pink-and-blue classroom.
ALONG THE WALL WERE WOODEN shelves of identical size, stained a radioactive lime hue. Each cubby was filled with baton-size crayons and equally colorful plastic lunch boxes with graphics from television shows like Dora the Explorer, Powerpuff Girls, and the Power Rangers. Inside the lunch boxes were sugar-dusted snacks and wrapped peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Taped to each shelf were the names of every child in my kindergarten class.
I remember my teacher calling for me. “Pearl? Pearl?” She was trying to get my attention, but I sat there on a stool and continued to search for my name. I wanted to see it written among the others. That was important for me, to see I had a place just like they did.
“Pearl?” she said again, standing over me now, and I recall recoiling at her sudden swaying presence, draped as I was in her shadow. When she grabbed my wrist, I would not look up. And when she pulled on my wrist, yanking me from the stool, I kept staring at the names. The children in my class laughed nervously.
I fell to the floor and let my arm stay raised, as if I knew the answer to some other question. Surely it was not to the one my teacher had asked—“Pearl? Pearl?”
I let my weight slip to the bottom of me. My teacher must have sensed the increased resistance. She must have taken it as an attack on her, for she pulled my wrist—there is no other way to explain it—as if it were a handle on a pump and she was thirsty. But no water came. She kept yanking and pushing down on the handle, but still no water. I wasn’t going to cry.
My body slipped lower and my wrist lifted higher until I felt my shoulder give. Then, and only then, came the tears. It was the water this woman had wanted all along. Sometimes I think this teacher was my mother, but I know that can’t be true. My mother would never do such a thing.
MAIN BOY AND I STOP in front of a study. Brown leather couches are on either side of the room, framed by forest-green curtains that hang from ornate bronze curtain rods engraved to look like bark. It’s the floor that startles me. It’s an even spread of thinly glazed muted-pastel pebbles. I take one step inside. I close my eyes. When I open them, I’m standing in the middle of a mountain stream. The only thing missing are speckled trout.
* * *
“And that’s my father’s baby, right over there.” Main Boy points. A fly rod hangs on the wall. I walk over, slowly. I feel like I’m meeting a movie star. The artist’s name is stenciled in cursive near the immaculate cork handle. The cursive makes me think of my mother as a girl. She’s sitting on the pier. She’s watching loops unroll across the sky.
* * *
The rod itself is a piece of art. It’s so beautiful. Wrapped around the metal guides are bands of red silk thread layered with clear laminate. I don’t dare touch it, though I want to trace my reflection trapped in its polished reel.
Main Boy grabs my wrist. “What are you doing?”
I jerk away. “Don’t grab me.”
“Then don’t try to touch it.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I could tell you were.”
“You’re wrong.”
>
Main Boy tells me he’s never even stood as close to it as we’re standing to it now. I feel bad because he thinks he has to lie to me. He’s not the only one.
MAIN BOY’S BEDROOM IS OVER the garage. Everything here belongs to him. The room has a high cathedral ceiling because of the steep pitch of the roof, and a pair of curved skylights, each one the length of a canoe. I’m in a church, except I’ve never been in an actual church.
“Are you hungry?”
“No.” I try not to grab my stomach.
“Well, I could eat.”
“Okay. I could, too, I guess.”
“Good. What do you want?”
“I’ll take anything. It doesn’t matter.”
“Define anything.”
“I don’t care. Whatever.”
“Define whatever.”
“Stop being a dick.”
“Define dick.”
* * *
Main Boy takes off down the stairs. I hear him yelling, “Estrella,” and saying that he’s hungry. I look down at the floor, embarrassed for him. That’s when I see my shoe prints. Every step I have taken is on the room’s plush white carpet. It’s evidence I was here.
IN ONE CORNER RESTS AN acoustic guitar cradled on a stand, its fretboard a swirl of elaborate pearl inlay. The body of the guitar floats in the air. I grin, picturing Dox strumming this immaculate instrument. In another corner is a television monitor the size of a sheet of plywood. It is just as long and flat. Underneath the monitor are three different gaming systems, each one lit and lined up, with a number of jewel cases stacked on the floor. Off to the side of the cases are an open laptop and a few video cameras on tripods. There’s also a stand with mounted lights, the huge canister types that would be used on a stage. Maybe it’s me, but one of the cameras looks like it’s pointing right at his bed. All thoughts as to what this might mean fall away when I spot the open door to his private bathroom.
* * *
A huge, gleaming showerhead is surrounded by clear glass walls. Next to the shower is a Jacuzzi-type bath. The tub looks like the bottom of a giant clamshell. I think I’m in love.
* * *
Main Boy comes up the stairs carrying a silver tray of sliced meats and bright orange and creamy white cheeses. Everything is rolled and pierced through by toothpicks with crinkled red plastic on the ends. I take a handful and just start inhaling.
“Slow down, Pig-Pen. You’ll choke.”
“Does that shower work?” I say between bites.
“Yeah.”
“Do you mind?”
“What?”
“Do you mind if I take one?”
“Right now?”
I nod.
“I don’t mind.” Then he smiles. “Can I take one with you?”
HE TAKES OFF HIS SHIRT. His chest is slender and pale, but under his neck there’s a rash of color, like it’s been scrubbed with sumac. “I’ll go start it for us,” he says.
I grab more of the food and try not to eat it too quickly. It’s hard because I can’t seem to chew fast enough. I barely even taste it.
Main Boy disappears around the corner. There’s the sound of water.
I wonder how long I can remain a secret, living out where I do.
* * *
I take off my shoes first and immediately grimace at the funk of my body. I pull off my ball cap and fan the air. My hair doesn’t move it’s so full of grease. The belt I had cinched and knotted takes the longest to remove. It drops to the carpet and spirals slowly like one of Fritter’s dreadlocks.
“Where are you, girl?” Main Boy says.
I cup my chest, but it’s pointless. I don’t have anything. I let my arms drop. I’m still that younger version of me dancing on the pier. Nothing has changed in the years since. My nipples are the only things starting to look womanlike, and even then, that’s pushing it. They have spread, yes, the center of each one slowly filling, but most everything else is kaput.
I look around the room.
I can already feel the water, its beautiful burn.
I wonder what my mother would say, if she could see me.
I wonder if I’ve forgotten the sound of her voice.
I try to remember. I close my eyes. Some things just won’t come back.
* * *
“Are you still there?” Main Boy says again, but it could be my body talking to me, or me to my body. And here, at least, was this chance to pretend. I wasn’t going to drift. I was here, in this enormous house, with a boy waiting for me to answer.
How difficult could it be, to pretend?
I pull off my shirt.
“It’s okay,” I tell myself. “You can do this, Pearl. You can do anything.”
IF A BODY IS ABANDONED, does it become a poem?
EVEN THOUGH WE KNOW IT isn’t true, Dox says that he delivered me with the help of an alligator midwife, that my first blanket was a patchwork of muskrat pelts, the seams held together with sun-dried honey. He says he wrote a song the day I was born, and he taught it to the bobwhites and the orioles. If I listen up, I can still hear traces of my birth song in woodnotes, though he admits these random birds were terrible students. He sounds like my father and destroys the dream.
* * *
I was in the kitchen helping my mother make a salad to go with the marinated kebabs that were cooking on the grill. We had gone to the farmers’ market in our little downtown. She said we could buy whatever we wanted. We had bought lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes. She was showing me how to slice them with my fingertips bunched up in a certain way so that I wouldn’t cut myself. “Let’s no one get hurt now,” she would say. I took great care slicing the cucumbers.
My father was on campus for the spring commencement ceremony, and we knew that he would soon be returning home, dressed in his black robe and crushed-velvet striped regalia, looking like the other faculty in attendance. My mother and I were ready for him to walk through the door so we could make fun, calling him an emperor penguin or some such, but as he stomped onto the porch, ready to give a quip about the ceremony, the phone in the kitchen rang. My mother picked it up, maintaining her smile, as if to say to me, “You still give him hell, Pearl.” I was happy to do so, but as I watched her listening to the caller, I could see the edges of her mouth begin to fall.
My father walked in the house at that moment. He was watching her, too. My mother brought her hand up to her hair, as if the bun had come undone. She turned from us and, while still on the phone, walked into the other room. When she came back, she was her old self, pleasant to a fault.
My father had to ask because he needed to know. He was insistent. She said she would tell him later. I didn’t dare say a word, but my father, like I said, couldn’t help himself. He asked again. She tried to speak in code on my behalf, but he wasn’t having any of it. Even I understood it was news she had been waiting to hear, but that it wasn’t the results she had expected.
My father finally took off his black mortarboard and tassel. He must’ve realized he wasn’t going to get a laugh from us now. My mother picked up the knife and began to cut the rest of the tomatoes. She didn’t bunch her fingertips like she had just taught me to do. I watched even though I knew what was going to happen. The blade went so deep it must have touched bone. She didn’t flinch. I must have been staring because she just turned to me and said, “Look away, Pearl. I don’t want you to have to see any of this.” But I couldn’t look away.
* * *
It was later when my father told her he had been invited to a conference. But he also said he didn’t have to go. It was on the West Coast, after all. I listened to my parents through the bedroom wall we shared. He was saying he would cancel the trip, and my mother told him, “Don’t be stupid. You spent a lot of time on that paper.”
“Not as much as you have with your boyfriends.”
“Boyfriends? You mean Rimbaud and Verlaine? Is that what you call them?” She laughed.
“Whichever one threw his infant son against
the wall.”
There was a pause.
“You were listening,” my mother said. “I could kiss you right now. Do you know that?”
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, I heard them again.
“I can’t keep saying I’m sorry,” my mother said. “I can’t do that.”
“Maybe you can get another test.”
“I’m done with pills. I’m done with tests.”
“We should know everything.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. They put a fucking needle right here. I think we know.”
“Okay.”
“I watched it go in. You didn’t watch it go in. I watched the fluid come out.”
There was a long pause.
The silence was like a bubble in my chest.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” my mother said.
“You’re not yourself. You haven’t been yourself in a very long time.”
“Fuck you.”
* * *
They started to argue. I wished they would stop, but they couldn’t help themselves. I don’t think she told him her uncle had died. There was more I didn’t know about either of my parents, but I was used to that. It didn’t matter what I knew.
Marianne Moore lifted her head off my leg and looked at me.
“I know,” I told her, but I didn’t know.
AFTER WE SAW MY FATHER off at the airport, my mother didn’t drive us home. She said if my father was going on a weeklong trip, then we could do the same. She let her arm float outside the window. The trees and the road signs and the towns we passed that day all looked like they could have been painted on a long sheet of butcher paper. Someone was cranking a wheel and winding the long roll like a stage prop. It felt real and unreal at the same time. I found a station that played Top 40 music, but the knob of the radio wouldn’t stay still. There was a wash of static every time we hit a bump in the road. Voices kept trying to come through.