Amateur Barbarians

by Robert Cohen

  The problem with marriage, Teddy thought, was that people stopped looking at each other as photographers do. Stopped seeing each other as if for the first time. Then every so often started again. Then stopped.

  “Do I look like a mind reader, Teddy? Because I’m not. I just absolutely refuse to play that game.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I won’t sit still all day and pose for you. I won’t pretend to smile and I won’t twist myself into positions to satisfy your curiosity. I’ve got things on my mind too, you know.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Actually he didn’t know, had scarcely bothered to imagine what Gail might be thinking about these last weeks—he’d assumed that she’d been thinking about him. But probably she hadn’t.

  “I need you back, okay? I need you to put the camera down and get out of your bathrobe and start working and living like a human being again.”

  “Okay, fine. You’ve made your point.”

  “And while you’re at it, you might trouble yourself to touch me once in a while in a way that isn’t strictly accidental. Or has this Meta-person made you take some kind of purity oath too?”

  “Shhh, okay, okay. Come here. Look, I’m putting it down, I’ve got the lens cap right here, I’m snapping it on.”

  “Too late. I’ve got to go. You’ll have the monastery here all to yourself.” She poured some coffee into her travel mug and added milk. “Disappointed?”

  “What can I say, Gail? I’m just trying to keep up.”

  “Well, try harder.” She tasted the coffee and grimaced. “Ugh. So bitter. What kind of beans are you using?”

  “Ethiopian,” he said. “Harar.”

  Pronouncing the name was like clearing his throat—harsh, spasmodic. He did so with particular relish. Rimbaud, he’d have gone on to tell her if she’d been even half-listening, had spent the last part of his life in Harar, trafficking in this very coffee. He’d done some research on the man at the college library. Another mad genius wandering in the desert. Another white guy on the lam, going native. Teddy was thinking of doing a paper on him for Meta McVay. Extra credit.

  “It’s supposed to be the best,” he said. “Anyway it’s fourteen bucks a pound.”

  “Tastes burnt.” She poured her cup out in the sink.

  “Are you kidding? This is from where coffee started. They’ve been growing coffee in Harar since the dawn of man.”

  “Gee, you’d think in all that time they’d figure out a way to make it not taste burnt.”

  “Try adding a little sugar.”

  “No thanks,” she said. “And while we’re on the subject, you may want to hold off on the sweets for a while yourself. You might even consider putting down the camera and trying out that pricey new treadmill you bought without consulting me.”

  “One step at a time. I need to finish the basement first.”

  “Is that what you call what you’re doing down there?”

  He watched her through the lens as she gathered up her wallet, her phone, her tissues and Tic Tacs and allergy pills, and stuck them deep in her purse. The neat snap her glasses made, when she folded them up, was like a meter ticking.

  “Why not? What do you call it?”

  “Honey,” she said, “I can’t tell what’s being started anymore and what’s being finished.”

  Later that afternoon, Mimi came home from the town pool, took a twenty-five-minute shower that exhausted the hot water, and wrapped in her leopard-spotted bath towel, padded out barefoot to the hammock. Teddy, weeding the garden in T-shirt and knee pads, looked up and waved. Mimi did not wave back. Maybe she hadn’t seen him. Or maybe she was still mad about being grounded. Or maybe she’d committed other felonies that summer besides the ones he knew about and now felt guilty about those. Or maybe she was on her period, or hungover from staying up two and a half hours past her clearly stipulated curfew the night before with her obnoxious friend Lisa, or maybe she was just worn-out from a long, hot day of working for a living. A feeling Teddy of course knew well, as it was both different from and similar to being worn-out from a long day of not working for a living. Not working, and not much living either. Just taking his pictures, and weeding his garden, and waiting for that evening’s class to start as the gnats inscribed their mad, scribbling calligraphy in the air around his head.

  “Hey, Mims, check it out. You’re going to like this.”

  Earlier, he’d set aside a snakeskin he’d found flattened in the grass, certain that for all her apathy she would find its freakish, morbid beauty thrilling. Now he stood dangling his prize. It swayed in the breeze like a hypnotist’s watch.

  “You wouldn’t believe how light this thing is,” he said. “You can see right through it!”

  Even now, faded and crinkly and dry, the snakeskin still retained its form and markings. Mimi’s eyes however remained closed. The girl he used to have to drag out of science museums, the girl who could name every animal at the zoo and its country of origin, who’d tear the brown wrapper from the new National Geographic before she’d so much as wriggled out of her coat, was no longer interested in such things. She too had shed some skin along the way.

  Reluctantly he laid down his find, set the sprinkler on low, gathered up his tools and the lettuce and chives he’d picked, and went into the house. The kitchen was cool and dark, a sanctum. He placed the lettuce leaves in the sink as an offering to his wife, a reminder that all evidence to the contrary, his powers of hunter-gathering were undiminished, washed the dirt off his hands, and leaned in for a drink. A water pitcher with an activated-carbon filter made of crushed coconut shells was in the refrigerator, but he preferred to drink straight from the tap. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and went to browse in the pantry. The shelves were crowded with things he had no desire to eat. He recalled what Meta McVay had said, how when everything is accessible nothing has value. Maybe she was right. Sometimes the very plenitude of the pantry seemed a disincentive to hunger. On the other hand, what did a woman like Meta McVay know about American life? She was a foreigner, she lived in Brooklyn. Probably she didn’t have a pantry. Probably she lived on hummus and beer, like Danielle’s roommates at NYU. That was how the starving-artist gig worked. You starved. You lived like an anorectic teenager with no family or responsibilities. No, he would never become an artist with a pantry like this. A house like this. He should have burned it down, the house and the pantry both, when he had the chance.

  But of course if he had, then all these inconsequential little items in the pantry he so dearly loved—the corkboard full of old art projects and news clippings from the local paper; the pencil marks on the wall delineating the girls’ inexorable growth; the screw-top mason jars full of homemade salsas and sauces and jams; the malted milk, the chocolate powder, the old honeys and syrups and granola bars—all that sweet stuff would be lost forever.

  Down the street he could hear the McDurfee kids splashing in their backyard pool. Summer’s day. What the hell, he’d whip up some milk shakes. Surely Mimi would wake up for that.

  He unscrewed the lid of the malt jar. Only a tiny bit of powder lay scattered at the bottom, but the smell of it—dry and chalky, subtly sweet—flew up his nose like a drug. His head began to swell. The flywheel of memory whirled. Christ almighty, he was not a sentimental person, he did not want to live in the past. So why did the past insist on living in him?

  He’d bought the malt powder for Philip’s last visit, the previous June. The guy was down to ninety pounds by then. They’d sat out on the screened porch in the dusky half-light, in cool wicker chairs, listening to the crickets, the shrilly cries of the birds, while the fireflies did their on/off thing on the other side of the mesh. Gail and Sonya were at work in the kitchen, opening cabinets and slamming them shut. Then a clunky, chaotic roar. Milk shakes for Philip—the doctors had prescribed three a day—and margaritas for them. Live it up. Bruno whined and paced, unsettled by the noise of the blender. As if time itself were being pulverized, ham
mered senseless in the next room.

  The only problem was, Philip couldn’t handle three milk shakes a day. He couldn’t handle two. He couldn’t handle one. He lay wasted against his chair, slack-mouthed, eyes yellowed and smoky, his lap swathed in Gail’s plushest fleece blanket. His pants hung loose. There wasn’t much of him left. The flesh was fleeing his cheeks; the hollows of his face lay pooled in shadow. All that was human was receding. What remained was just this frail cage, this basket of bones.

  “Want a sip of this?” he offered. “I’m full.”

  “No thanks. I’ll just work on my margarita here. That one’s all yours.”

  “All mine.” Philip sighed. “I’m tired of milk shakes, frankly. Too much of a good thing. Even the kids are tired of them.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No kid in America gets tired of milk shakes.”

  “Mine do. It’s just one of many ways they’re being warped by my experience.”

  “The kids are all right. Trust me.”

  “Sure, they’re insulated by youth. They still live in the wonderful world of Disney. Dancing bears. Lovesick beasts. Singing lions.” Philip’s voice was flat, impersonal. The shake had left a mustache trace on his upper lip, a joker’s leer. “This cancer business bores them. It taxes their imagination.”

  “Yeah, mine too.” Teddy felt a hot pressure behind his eyes, inflating his head like a tire. “Christ, Philly, I don’t know what to say. It’s like this is the first real thing I’ve ever dealt with. I don’t even know what the other stuff was about.”

  Philip smiled. His eyes had begun to close. Bruno, responding to some high, imperceptible signal, sat up and nuzzled the dying man’s hand. “And people say you’re superficial,” he said.

  “They do? Who?”

  “Well, Mom and Dad for starters. And Sonya of course. And me. Pretty much everyone who knows you basically.” Philip set down his milk shake; it sloshed onto the table. “Sorry. I can’t drink this shit.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “No more milk shakes. That’s my new policy.”

  “Fine.”

  “And no more casseroles either. We’re up to five a week on the casseroles these days. Apparently no one down in Wayland’s too concerned with the obesity crisis.”

  “You can’t blame people for trying, Philly.”

  “I don’t. I blame them for failing. The good thing is, I don’t have to pretend to be nice anymore. No more niceness. I don’t have the energy to make people feel better.”

  “You don’t have to make me feel better,” Teddy said.

  “Are you kidding? You’re the worst of them all. Get a load of yourself in the mirror sometime. That drippy, morose look. It’s ghoulish. I liked it a lot better in the old days when I was the one feeling sorry for you.”

  “Why on earth would you feel sorry for me?”

  Philip didn’t answer. His bruised eyes were fixed on the glass. “Sure you don’t want this?” For all his efforts, little had been drunk. “It’s actually pretty good. Remind me to tell Gail. And believe me, when it comes to milk shakes, I know the difference.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Mom made good ones too, remember? She put in Ovaltine or something. She used to give me extra you know. Because I was so skinny.”

  “Yeah, you were a real runt. I was embarrassed to be seen with you, if you want to know the truth.”

  “I don’t,” Philip said. “I’m at the point where I prefer the other.”

  “Anyway you’re wrong. Mom didn’t give you extra just because you were skinny. She did it for spite. It was all about making me feel bad.”

  “Boo hoo, here we go. The Real Victim of the Family Award goes to—”

  “It’s true, Philly. You were always the good baby, remember? The one who never woke them up crying in the middle of the night. It was your report card they put on the refrigerator. Mine got stuck away in a drawer with the bills and the stamps.”

  “Nobody likes a whiner, Bro.”

  “You should have heard them. ‘Ah, Philip,’ they’d say, ‘with his books and poems, his little pen-and-ink drawings in that spiral notebook of his. So soulful. So sensitive.’ To me they’d say this! As if I should feel proud, having this sad-eyed god for a brother!”

  “Not that you resented me for it or anything.”

  “You were the favorite, Philly, let’s face it. You were the favorite and I was the fatty, the big crude oaf with hair on his back. End of story.”

  Philip fell silent, his brow furrowed like a walnut shell. He reached for one of his little morphine sticks and stuck it in his mouth. The pain-management people had given him a whole case. But it still wasn’t enough; he chewed them up like lollipops. “Come to think of it, it wouldn’t have killed you to lose a few pounds.”

  “Yeah, I carry too much weight around. I always have.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s how you’re built.” Philip closed his eyes now for real, sucking away at the white stick, his face slack, cheeks concave in the dusk. What little color the day’s light had lent them was gone. Who knew the loan would be recalled so soon? Saliva leaked from the corners of his mouth. The drug was working its way through his membranes. “Wait—” His eyes popped open again. “What were we talking about?”

  “My girlish figure.”

  “No, we were talking about ends of stories.”

  “Oh, shut up, would you? No one’s talking about ends of stories.”

  “Well, guess what,” Philip said. “They better start.”

  And would it have killed him, Teddy thought now, to take a sip of that goddamn milk shake when it was offered, instead of leaving it on the table to go flat? But it was just one of many irretrievable mistakes.

  For Mimi of course a milk shake would have no unpleasant associations: it would simply be a milk shake. A cold drink. A peace offering, a tension breaker, a little summer indulgence to remind her that her father, for all his brooding preoccupations, was still capable of boyish, impetuous fun. He dumped in the milk, the banana, and two scoops of ice cream. Then one more, because that was the sort of fun thing boyish impetuous people did. Just blend and serve. Across the street the McDurfee kids were playing Marco Polo. He heard their calls and taunts, their blind flailing lunges. A mean game, Teddy thought. And he should know: he’d been meaner at it than anyone, back in his own childhood pool, that flimsy oval of corrugated tin. The old man had bought it on sale, the same way he bought most things; any half-decent cannonball sent the water flooding over the side. For the death of the grass below Teddy would of course shoulder the blame. That was the drill, out there in the backyard. Philip shivering blue-lipped in an oversize towel; their mother facedown in the chaise, a Pall Mall smoldering in the ashtray, trailing wistful lines of smoke; Teddy getting his ass handed to him by the paterfamilias, who, still dressed for work, had not even opened his mail yet, while, on the domed grill, a flank steak soaked in its peppery marinade, waiting for the coals to turn white. Okay, you wouldn’t have called it a happy childhood, but on balance? At least they had a pool. At least they had a grill. At least they had a steak, however impregnable beneath its black, bitter crust. Back then they didn’t obsess over ultraviolet radiation or secondhand smoke or polycyclic hydrocarbons (though arguably these were the very agents of Philip’s early death); they didn’t run off every two minutes to check the e-mail or cell phone or PalmPilot (though arguably they’d have enjoyed being more connected to other people); they didn’t fret about kids reading Doc Savage and James Bond instead of something heavy and difficult to enrich their SAT scores (though Mimi could have used some enrichment). No, they’d lie baking in the mortal heat of the sun, wreathed in coils of unfiltered smoke, listening to a ball game on the transistor radio and gazing up contentedly at the Chinese paper lanterns their parents had strung along the patio for a dinner party and then never taken down, the barberry hedges both wall and screen, both fruit and thorn. That was the summer. And nothing was demanded or expected of y
ou but play and rest and the consumption of cold, fattening drinks. Just blend and serve…

  True, the milk shakes looked, when he poured them out, now somewhat cementlike, and some essential flavor seemed to be missing from the taste. But maybe some essential flavor was always missing, Teddy reasoned, when you tried to engineer a reality from an abstract impression, a vague residue of memory in your head. They were still pretty good milk shakes. He filled up two glasses, set them on a wicker tray, and shouldered open the back door to the patio.

  Out in the flower garden Bruno was curled up in a hole he had dug for himself, his nose deep in his own ass.

  “Hey, look what I made,” he called to Mimi.

  Mimi, her fair head lolling on one shoulder, moaned some low resistant threat in her sleep. Never mind that once upon a time he’d been the one in the hammock, and she’d been the one emerging enthusiastically from the house, begging him to attend to some whimsical concoction she’d whipped up with her mother to please him. Now she didn’t move. He set the tray down beside the book she’d been either reading or pretending to read, splayed facedown on the grass. Mr. Bridge. Teddy frowned. Three long, demeaning phone calls to Rick Moyer, the snotty young principal at the high school, to get her into AP English, and here she was, seven pages into the first book on the summer reading list, and dead to the world. What was it composed of, this mystifying apathy and impassivity of hers? This ability to be proximate to things but not participate in them, to read books without ever quite turning their pages, to drive for hours without ever quite speaking to the driver or ever quite looking out the window, to love your parents without ever quite being affectionate to them or ever quite conceding their reality?

  Her towel had fallen open just far enough to reveal the absence of a bathing suit underneath. This too annoyed him.

  The sprinkler was twirling rings over the garden, tsk-tsking through its metal teeth.