The Fearsome Particles

by Trevor Cole

  Gerald had let that ding and that look in his son’s eyes roll around in his brain while he scanned the room for other insidious elements. Drugs were on his mind; was Afghanistan not the opium capital of the world? “Now, Kyle,” he’d said, keeping his voice low and approaching his own son the way he’d once seen a television trapper come up on a wounded elephant seal. “I notice you’re clicking on the Bet Max button there. And I was just wondering how much money – is it real money you’re betting, son?”

  And his sweet, logical, chemistry-studying son had turned to look at him once more, and this time he spoke.

  KYLE: Of course it’s real fuckin’ money, Dad. Whaddaya think I am, a pussy?

  And it was after that, when he’d been staring at the back of his son’s almond shell hair, trying and rather pathetically failing to make sense of what he’d just heard, that the cat, from somewhere high above, had leapt onto his neck.

  Which reminded him, that was another thing he had failed at.

  And all of his failures, Gerald told himself as he sped home, were the product of inattention and inaction. He hadn’t lost the ability to prevent these disasters from occurring, he’d lost the impetus and the will. Somehow he had become still, as if anxiety alone were initiative, and by becoming so he had opened his house to blights that had no business coming inside. So tonight he was resolved – he was taking back control, and all the avenues for ills would start being closed.

  Gerald saw the highway-side doughnut shop that he passed every night approaching on his right, and as if to make concrete the notion of a material change in his character, he decided to not merely watch the doughnut shop go by and wish he had stopped for a Honey Glazed or a Cinnamon Strizzle, but to turn onto the exit ramp and go in. The decision came upon him with such force that he began to twist the wheel and change lanes without signalling, which he realized only when the silver minivan lodged in his blind spot blared a protest that went far beyond what was warranted, in Gerald’s view.

  “Don’t sit in someone’s blind spot!” he shouted at the minivan as it passed. It was never satisfying for Gerald to yell at a driver who’d done something stupid; it was a demonstration of impotence, nothing more. But he yelled it out all the same as he squeezed the wheel and made it across two lanes just in time to catch the ramp.

  In the doughnut shop, still bristling, he stood third in line behind a stooped grandmother holding the hand of a small pig-tailed girl about four, her hair sown with plastic daisies, and a man Gerald assumed to be a truck driver by his unshaven face, dark-blue work clothes and astonishing obesity. Unlike the grandmother and child, who seemed to be pointing at and discussing the merits of each variety of doughnut displayed on the pull-out shelves behind the counter, the truck driver seemed to know exactly what he wanted, because he spent his time staring out the window and rummaging in his pants.

  Gerald had in mind something with icing. He’d always been an icing-doughnut man, much to the chagrin of Vicki, who for as long as he’d known her had considered doughnuts of any kind, and icing-doughnuts in particular, to be gauche. Anything gauche was, to Vicki, a great malevolence. It was why he’d never stopped at the doughnut shop on his way home from work, because he couldn’t bear the arm’s-length shame, and the thought that he had allowed Vicki’s snooty sensibilities to interfere with his enjoyment of icing-doughnuts all this time made Gerald even more infuriated than before.

  With no thought for Vicki’s apparently fragile state or his contrition over the carriage clock skirmish, he pulled out his cell phone and dialled her number. “Vicki,” he said into her voice mail, “I just wanted to let you know that I’ve stopped at the doughnut shop on the way home from work, and I’m having an icing-doughnut.” He made eye contact with one of the women behind the counter and nodded, just to let them know he was coming and looking forward to it. “Probably a chocolate icing one, if they have them, I can’t see at the moment. But that’s what I’m doing. Really going to enjoy it.” He was about to hang up, but added, “If you’d like me to bring one or two home for you, just give me a call on the cell. It’s” – he checked his watch – “just after eight.”

  He folded up the phone and let it slide into the silk sheath of his pants pocket.

  The huge truck driver turned and gave Gerald a sheepish look. “My wife and kid are expecting two dozen Boston creams and I can’t find my goddamn sticker card.”

  Gerald smiled.

  “You collect the stickers?” said the truck driver.

  “No,” said Gerald. “But maybe I should.”

  “It’s a good deal. After a dozen dozen you get a dozen free.” He was checking his shirt pockets now, rooting around the buttons with parsnip fingers. “Goddamn thing, probably left it on the seat.”

  “Going a long way, are you?”

  The truck driver, reaching for the wallet in his back pocket, frowned up at him, apparently confused.

  “I mean” – Gerald motioned out toward the truck parking area – “are you in the middle of a long run?”

  The man sniffed, rifling through his bills and receipts. “I look like I run much to you?”

  “No,” said Gerald. “I mean – sorry. I was just thinking of your truck.”

  The truck driver knotted his brow. “What truck?”

  I am killing myself with assumptions, thought Gerald.

  “Hey listen,” said the large man, “would you mind saving my place in line? I just gotta go back to the car and see if I left that sticker card on the seat.”

  “Not at all,” said Gerald, happy to help someone he had mentally damned to a life of trucking. “I’ll wait here.”

  The man winked and gave him the thumbs-up. “Be right back.”

  Gerald watched the man hurry out the door and across the parking lot as fast as his enormity would allow and toyed with the idea of getting a sticker card for his own family. Kyle wouldn’t object; he ate just about anything. And the horror on Vicki’s face would be priceless.

  “Sir?”

  Gerald turned to see that the grandmother and child had finally gone, and the counter girl was waiting for him.

  “I’m not next,” said Gerald. “There’s someone in front of me.”

  A shimmer of bewilderment glided across the girl’s face. “But there’s no one here,” she said.

  “He’s just gone to his car; he’ll be right back.”

  The girl cast a searching gaze out the window and back at Gerald. “He’s gone to his car?”

  “He’s gone for his sticker card. I’m saving his place in line.”

  Someone behind Gerald coughed.

  “There’s people waiting,” said the girl, whose orange-and-white paper cap sat square on her head, suggestive of someone who took pride in her work, which Gerald would normally have applauded. She smiled insistently at him and Gerald smiled back.

  “He’s just going to be a minute.” Gerald turned and saw three people in line behind him. “It’ll just be a minute,” he repeated.

  “What are we waiting for?” said a wind-breakered woman at the end.

  “Some jerk gone to his car,” said a middle-aged farmer-type behind Gerald.

  A brokerish-looking man in the middle looked at the ceiling and sighed.

  “This is ridiculous,” said the woman.

  Gerald began to feel hot, and a little damp. He wanted to take off the jacket of his suit but he feared these people would mistake the movement for some sort of capitulation, and he had given the obese man his word.

  “He was in line before us,” said Gerald, addressing the queue. “He’s trying to treat his family. You would want the same courtesy.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” said the farmerish man, who seemed farmerish to Gerald because he was wearing a mesh-back cap. “I wouldn’t have fucked off to my car in the first place.”

  Had none of these people ever tried to do something nice for the people they loved? Could a man not want to bring home doughnuts and invest in doughnut treats to come? Was it not
something that forgave a two-minute delay? Gerald turned back to the counter girl for no other reason than he needed moral support.

  “We don’t even do the stickers,” said the counter girl. “That’s the other place.”

  Now he understood that he was standing in defence of a lost cause. A false hope. He was a bleeding and beaten tomato can of a prize fighter unwilling to go down, noble to a degree but mostly pathetic and cringe-making.

  The broker tapped the farmer on the shoulder. “Just go ahead,” he said.

  “I should,” agreed the older man.

  “Do it.”

  Gerald was about to make a last desperate gesture and block whoever tried to move in front of him, but before he needed to, the obese man reappeared.

  “Sorry! Sorry! I’m here!” he wheezed, cramming himself between unmoveable chairs and the people lined up. “Thanks, man,” he said to Gerald when he made it to the front.

  “Unbelievable,” muttered the woman in the windbreaker.

  The fat man, out of breath, slapped his sticker card on the counter. “Give me two dozen Boston creams.”

  Behind the counter, the girl in the paper cap offered a small fixed smile. “That card doesn’t work here,” she said. “It’s for the other place.”

  For a second, the fat man seemed in shock. “No way,” he said. “Really?”

  The girl, in response, merely seasoned her smile with pain. “Do you still want the Boston creams?”

  Looking up at the signage, as if for help, the man sighed. “Nah,” he said, turning. “Forget it.”

  “Infuckingcredible,” said the woman.

  At the counter, Gerald reached for his wallet and smiled in a way he hoped was sufficiently apologetic. “One doughnut with chocolate icing, please.”

  The girl looked blankly at him for a moment. “Sorry,” she finally said. “We’re out.”

  For the remainder of his drive home, Gerald blinked against the fatigue of his day and did what he could to revive his debilitated sense of purpose. A few self-righteous cranks lined up for doughnuts were not going to dissuade him from taking the actions he knew needed to be taken. He steered his GS 450 into corners with precision, he accelerated out of them with resolve, he proved to himself over the final twenty minutes of his commute that he was every bit as focused and determined as he’d been when he wrapped up his meeting with Sandy Beale. And by the time he pulled into the driveway at 93 Breere Crescent and pressed the dashboard button to open the two-car garage, he had come nearly all the way back.

  He slid his sedan into its slot to the left, well clear of Vicki’s Camry (which was as usual parked too close to the middle for comfort) because he didn’t trust her in her current state not to open her door into his side. It meant leaving barely enough room on the driver’s side to get out, but Gerald willingly put up with a tight squeeze against the poured concrete wall if it meant not having to worry about Vicki.

  In the darkened house he set his briefcase on the breakfast nook table and listened for sounds of life. There were none. Kyle was no doubt in his room, betting away the money Gerald and Vicki had set aside for his tuition, and didn’t it strike Gerald now as the purest folly to have given his son access to the account. Gerald hit his forehead with a balled fist for not having thought of that detail before – a whole day of luau-slot losses could have been averted. Well, that would be solved in the morning. First thing. And before then other measures would be taken.

  “Vicki?” he called and waited. “Vicki!” he called again.

  From some distant part of the house, a soft voice answered. “I’m here, Gerald.”

  “Where?” he shouted.

  “Up here,” came the barest reply. It sounded as if it had come from upstairs.

  Gerald grabbed his briefcase and swung through the kitchen and centre hallway toward the foyer, paused to drop his briefcase inside the door of his den, then continued up the stairs.

  “Vicki,” he shouted as he climbed, seizing and pulling on the banister every few steps as if he were hauling fire hose to the scene of a blaze. “I noticed, darling, that once again you parked too close to my space in the garage.” On the second level he hesitated outside Kyle’s door, listened for a moment and considered going in. But he felt it was only fair to make his wife aware of his intentions before he took any decisive steps.

  “Vicki?” he called.

  “Up here,” she called back, using the same soft voice she had used years ago when she had laid Kyle in his crib and didn’t want to wake him.

  She was on the third level, probably, Gerald thought, in the turret room, where she sometimes liked to sit and look out over the ravine. “It’s really the smallest thing I’m asking for,” he continued as he made his way up. “Ten inches more, a foot at the most, is all I need. Then we can both get in and out of our cars with no problem.”

  He grabbed the baluster near the top of the stairs and pulled himself up the last step. The turret room was at the end of the short hallway, past a small bathroom and a guest bedroom that was never used. Its door was open.

  “Vicki?”

  “I’m here,” she said with a voice low and quiet enough to have suited prayer in church.

  He walked down the hall toward her. “Vicki, what are you doing? Why do you sound hypnotized?”

  When he arrived at the door of the turret room, he saw exactly what he’d expected: she was sitting in a wingback chair, by the window, in the manner of a woman retreating from the world and into her thoughts. But she wasn’t looking out the window, she was staring at something on the floor, next to the door.

  “It’s kept me here for the last hour,” she said, staring.

  Gerald looked down, next to his feet. Against the wall, by the brass-plated heating vent, sat Rumsfeld with its tail wavering behind it in the air like the head of a snake.

  “I wouldn’t make any sudden moves,” said Vicki. “Every time I try to get out of this chair it hisses at me.”

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” said Gerald. “I could have brought some sort of weapon.”

  “I wasn’t going to have a conversation with you across three floors.”

  “Well, we have to get rid of it.”

  “I know. Get something to shoo it away.”

  “I mean completely. Out of the house.”

  She had been leaning with her elbow on the arm of the chair. Now she lowered her head into her hand. “We’ve talked about this, Gerald. We can’t just get rid of the Campeaus’ cat.”

  “Look what it’s doing to us!” The cat hissed and Gerald pressed against the door jamb. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “It’s causing us incredible amounts of stress.”

  “Not for me,” murmured Vicki. “I haven’t had any trouble with it until now.”

  “Isn’t that enough? Look at you! You’re being held captive in your own home. How many times does that have to happen?”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  Gerald used a minimal, non-sudden gesture to indicate the floor below. “If you won’t think of yourself, think of Kyle. What about him? Have you talked to him? He’s in no condition to deal with something like this.”

  “Kyle hasn’t said a word about the cat. I think you’re most worried about yourself.”

  “How dare you!” Gerald found the strain of trying to express his anger and frustration through a whisper hugely taxing. It reminded him of their quarrels years ago in the bathroom, where Vicki had insisted they lock themselves away, whenever little Kyle was awake. “And if I were thinking of myself, which I’m not, I wonder why that would be? I’m only the one constantly under attack.”

  “Gerald.”

  “It’s not as though I can count on you doing anything to help,” he croaked. “You had your chance when I was choking to death.”

  She was rolling her head in her hands. “Do we need to go over this now?”

  “I wonder how many husbands can say they were choking to death on an olive, while trying to bring a late-night snack to
their wives, and their wives couldn’t even administer the Heimlich manoeuvre to save them.”

  “I said I was sorry!”

  “How many choking husbands have had to climb a set of stairs and throw themselves, stomach first, onto the end knob of a railing –”

  “It’s called a finial.”

  “– while their wives stood there, worrying about a stain on the carpet?”

  Vicki stood up suddenly. “Good work, Gerald.”

  “I still have the bruise!”

  She motioned toward the floor by the heating vent. “It’s gone. You’ve scared it away.”

  He didn’t care about the cat. He was unbuttoning his shirt. “Look at this. Look at this purplish area, right here, under my breastbone.” He realized the light was bad. She couldn’t see. But he opened his shirt anyway. He spread his shirt the way Superman did, and his bruise from throwing himself on the finial to save his life was his own Superman emblem. “Look!”

  She walked by him and out the door.

  “This plus my legs!” shouted Gerald. “And this!” He pointed to the scratch on his neck as she continued down the hall. “I’m being killed!” he shouted. “I’m being killed in my own house!”

  Recovery came with a generous glass of Youngerton Pinot Noir. Gerald drank it alone, in his den, while Vicki prepared herself for bed. She had left dinner for him on the island in the kitchen, the same dinner she had been delivering to Kyle in his room at around the time he was phoning her about doughnuts. Under the citrine halo of his desk lamp, he spread the cloth napkin across his knees and lifted utensils weighted with lead and his own sufferance. For a while he made an effort to chew through the asparagus spears and slices of lamb leg pasty with congealed fat, but he decided he didn’t have the appetite for it. When he laid down his knife and fork, and pushed the plate away, he realized it was the most effective action he had taken all day.

  He returned to the kitchen, searched the rack, and found another bottle of the Youngerton. The cork of this one seemed fused to its green glass neck and for a time someone coming into the kitchen would have witnessed Gerald kneeling on the floor with the bottle between his knees, applying the critical leverage. Cork released, he stood in a splay of light from the range hood, listening to the machine-like scouring made by the base of his glass as he swirled it over the island’s marble top, and reviewed again, as if worrying a bad tooth, the special futility that had come to define him. In a field of snow, he was the man who huddled naked, without the courage to lift his arms and reach for a coat.