Under the Rainbow

by Silvis, Randall;

  Wobbling like a tenth-round knockout he enters his home, breathes the sweet stuffy air, and shuffles toward the glow of the television set.

  “Where are your glasses?” fuzzy Jessica asks.

  “I wrecked the car,” says Donald.

  “My god!”

  “Just a minor thing, a little dent. I swerved to … miss hitting a dog. And I bumped into a street sign.”

  She is coming toward him now, concerned. “Did you hit your head or something? What happened to your glasses?”

  “Well,” he begins, but now she is picking something off his shirt.

  “What’s this stuff all over you? Why, it’s … it’s glass, isn’t it? It looks like powdered glass.”

  “When I plowed into the street sign,” Donald says, “the impact drove my head against the window. Not my head actually, just the corner of my glasses. And when that happened, the glasses flew off, see, and they hit the dashboard, and well, it was the strangest thing, Jess, the lenses just exploded.”

  “My god,” she says again. Her fingers are in his hair now, feeling for a lump.

  “I’ve got an extra pair downstairs.”

  “Wait,” she says. She leans close and sniffs his cheek. “Have you been drinking?”

  “I had a quick one afterward. Just to steady my nerves.”

  She continues to sniff. “You smell like perfume too.”

  “The accident,” he says, “gave me a nosebleed. Some woman came by on the street and lent me her handkerchief.”

  “Let me see,” she says, and stands directly under his nose.

  “There’s no more blood, I cleaned my nose in the bar where I had a drink. Now let me go please. I need my other glasses.”

  In the basement, in a drawer in his battered desk, he finds them. Oh, the world is too sharp-edged and bright! It lacerates the soul.

  Jessica calls down from the top of the stairs. “Need any help?”

  “Found them,” he says.

  “Are you coming back up?”

  “In a minute or two.”

  “Maybe we should have a doctor look you over. Okay?”

  “I’m fine, dear,” he says. “It was just a bloody nose, no big deal.”

  “Why don’t you come up to bed now?”

  “You go ahead, I’m just going to check my messages first. Is Travis home?”

  “Of course,” she says.

  “I’ll be up in a few minutes, sweetie.”

  She says nothing more, pauses, waits, then wanders softly away. He hears the television click off, hears Jessica’s footsteps padding up to the second floor.

  Donald sits on the worn sofa. Sags in the middle. He takes off his glasses, leans back, closes his eyes, picks a fleck of glass off his scalp. He feels, somehow, that he has escaped with his life. A strange kind of victor. Survivor of a very stupid war.

  “Just a short message tonight, bud.

  “I’m feeling really tired tonight.…

  “I bet you wonder why I never seem to call when you’re in, don’t you? Well, it’s funny. But I can tell, I mean I just seem to know somehow. I sit here with my hand on the phone, and I think about calling you, and I can sense whether you’re there or not. If you are, I wait awhile and try again later. It’s weird, isn’t it?

  “I’m discovering all kinds of strange abilities I never knew I had.…

  “Anyway, I don’t want you to get the idea I’m still angry because you followed me that day. Or that I don’t want to talk to you. Jesus, I want to talk to you so badly, Don. I just … can’t. You know?

  “In a way, though, that’s what these messages are all about. I mean I am talking to you, right? And lots of times … lots of times it’s as if I can even hear you talking back to me. It’s like a real conversation almost.

  “I guess that’s kind of hard for you to understand.…

  “Anyway, to the point.…

  “Fuck, I’ve forgotten what I wanted to say. I called for a particular reason, honest I did. I just can’t remember what it is just now. Son of a bitch.

  “Sorry if I disturbed you, bud. I feel so fucked up sometimes.”

  It is after nine AM before Donald can drag himself downstairs, push himself downstairs, a long tepid shower having done nothing to enliven him. He has performed all of his morning ablutions in their natural order, shaving showering brushing combing and dressing as ritualistically as a priest administering extreme unction, yet he feels no less unholy than he did the night before, no more prepared for the glare of another day. His muscles are rubbery but there is no bounce in his step, no spring in his summer.

  The kitchen is empty but for Deirdre, who makes it seem emptier still. She is seated at the breakfast nook, sipping coffee, smiling enigmatically. Donald, after the brusque shock of seeing her there, recovers sufficiently for a perfunctory nod of hello, then aims himself toward the counter and their Taiwanese plastic brewmaster, CoffeeSan.

  “Somebody doesn’t look so hot,” Deirdre says, sounding happy.

  Donald keeps his back to her, keeps his mouth shut as he fills a mug with coffee.

  “Guilty conscience keep you awake?”

  Slowly he turns. Sip of coffee, insincere smile. He says, “I dreamed you had triple sixes tatooed on your forehead.”

  Deirdre blanches. Five seconds of abject terror before she gets a grip on herself. “That’s nothing to joke about, young man.”

  And his morning shines a tiny gleam brighter. “Did you know that, according to the most recent Newsweek poll, eighty-eight percent of America believes that Jerry Falwell is the antichrist?”

  But he has gone too far, he has crossed into the absurd. “So you’re not the only moron in this country,” she says.

  Brief fight, quick defeat. Donald asks, “Where’s Jess?”

  “It’s after nine, where would you expect her to be? She’s at the flower shop, earning a living.”

  He grimaces as if stuck with a pin. “How about Travis?”

  “Somewhere outside,” she says. “He’s been awake since dawn. He said he got up to watch the sunrise. After that he made breakfast for his mother and me, banana waffles. Too bad you couldn’t get out of bed. After that he took some garbage bags and said he was going to pick up litter along the streets.”

  Donald shakes his head in wonder. “What a boy.”

  “There’s something seriously wrong with him, I agree.”

  “He’s a little too good maybe. He’ll grow out of it.”

  “Do you know what he told me this morning?”

  Something unbelieveable, Donald thinks. Grandma, you’re pretty. Grandma, you’re sweet.

  “He said he doesn’t believe in Hell.”

  I’ll make him spend a night at your house, Donald thinks. That’ll change his tune.

  “He said that everything, everything, is a manifestation of ‘the spirit.’ Even drunks, even murderers. He said there is no such thing as evil.”

  Has he ever seen you naked? Donald wonders, and smiles at his coffee.

  “You know what I blame this on, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Donald says.

  “I blame it on you, Donald. On all those drugs you took when you were in college. You and Jessica both, I warned you but would you listen to me? Marijuana, opium, heroin, LSD—”

  “Grass, Deirdre, we smoked a little grass. That’s all we ever did.”

  “You were doped up everytime I saw you. I don’t know how either of you managed to graduate.”

  “The professors were all doped up too.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me a bit.”

  “I always wanted to try LSD,” he muses, “but I was afraid of it. I was a chicken hippie.”

  “You messed up your chromosomes, that’s what you did.”

  “Don’t you have some unwed mothers to harass this morning?” he asks. “An abortion clinic to picket?”

  “I don’t go on duty until noon.”

  “You protest in shifts?”

  “And do you ha
ve anything productive planned for the day? We can always use another soldier in the war against Satan.”

  He wants to tell her that he has already been wounded, already bludgeoned and crippled, that he has lost too much blood already, he has no malice to give away. Instead he says, “I have other things to do,” and he refills his coffee cup.

  “You know, there’s a slim possibility,” Deirdre says, “I mean it’s highly unlikely but it is something to consider. Because there is a possibility.…”

  Donald pauses, his back to her. He waits.

  “… that Travis is demonically possessed.”

  Donald chuckles so hard on his way to the basement that hot coffee splashes from the cup and sizzles the back of his hand. His first happy pain of the day.

  Donald eases his car close to the curb, his foot on the brake. Through the open window he calls to his son, ten yards ahead. Travis grins. “Morning, Dad!” From each hand swings a half-filled green garbage bag.

  “What would this neighborhood do without you?” Donald asks.

  Travis does not like to be complimented. “Somebody would do it.”

  “Feel like taking a ride into the city with me?”

  Travis gazes up the street, spots a lonely piece of litter far away. “Gee, I would, but.…”

  “I have to deliver some pictures to an editor. After that I’ll take you to lunch, okay?”

  “What about these?” Travis asks, and hoists the bags.

  Donald shuts off the engine and tosses his son the keys. “Put the bag of recyclables in the trunk,” he knows his son’s routines nearly as well as he knows his own, “and throw the other bag in the back. There’s a dumpster behind the 7-11.”

  He feels a kind of triumph in having gotten his son to accompany him. Now the dilemma of knowing what to say. And for a long time there is only silence between them, although Travis seems comfortable enough with it, he smiles at the scenery, he takes it all in, needing not even the radio to entertain him, no sexually-charged thump and scream to set him at his ease.

  “Not much summer left,” Donald observes finally. “How long before school starts—a couple of weeks?”

  “Seventeen days,” Travis says.

  “Looking forward to your junior year?”

  “Sure.”

  You look forward to everything, Donald thinks, and that’s the problem. How can you look forward to your junior year and at the same time look forward to killing yourself? How can you look forward to living and dying?

  “I’d think you’d want to make better use of your summer vacation than using it to pick up other people’s trash,” he says.

  Travis merely smiles.

  “Why aren’t you hanging out with your friends? Skateboarding, chasing girls, shoplifting at the mall?”

  “Being alone doesn’t bother me, Dad. It’s by preference. So don’t worry, okay? I like how I spend my time.”

  Donald is about to argue the wisdom of an anchoritic life when he remembers suddenly his own youth, the long hours spent alone in the woods, the cultivation of a discipline of silence, of wanting to see but not be seen.

  And so he says, “I was the same way, I guess.”

  “You liked being alone?”

  Donald nods. “But I was afraid to admit it to anybody.”

  “For fear of appearing different.”

  “I reckon so.”

  “I like being different,” Travis says. “I revel in it.”

  “You’ve got a lot to revel in.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What troubles me though … what worries me … is what you think about when you’re alone.”

  “What did you think about?”

  Donald tries to remember. “Unlike you, I was not a happy child. I was what my mother called ‘overly sensitive.’ I cried a lot.”

  “What about?”

  “I never really knew. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, I would be overcome with a terrible sadness, and I would start crying. I used to think it was because I could somehow feel the world’s pain, all the suffering and grief. These days I’d probably be labelled a manic-depressive. Except that I’m never manic.”

  “I sometimes think I can feel the world’s joy. So maybe I’m manic-depressive too. Except that I’m never depressed.”

  “Together we comprise one fullblown nutcase.”

  “Manic-depression is very common among artistic individuals, did you know that?”

  “Seems a big price to pay for something nobody values anymore.”

  “I would give you some of my happiness if I could, Dad. I really wish I knew how.”

  Donald is about to say that he would gladly share some of his condition too when it dawns on him, it hits him hard, no, he would not. He does not want his boy to be sad, not ever. Donald would rather be selfish with his sorrow, hoard it, swallow every drop of poison himself. But then he glances at his son and he sees the concern in Travis’s eyes, the sympathy and affection. And Donald realizes sadly, guiltily, regretfully, that he has shared some of his grief already.

  Donald’s editor on this assignment appears barely half Donald’s age. Donald is watching him now, watching James, yes he certainly looks like a James, like an individual whose mother has called him James, not Jimmy, never Jim—maybe Jamie once: upon his induction into Phi Beta Kappa perhaps—since the moment of his birth.

  He has probably been wearing those same clothes since he was born, Donald thinks, the Ralph Lauren chinos and pastel plaid shirt, blue cloth belt with brass buckle, Italian leather moccassins, pink socks. He has probably been shaking his head in this very same way, making similar squeaks of disapproval by sucking air between his tongue and cheeks, since his very first glimpse of the world.

  James, with his stylishly-cropped blond head stylishly cocked, intermittently sucks air between his cheeks and tongue, flashing his perfectly bonded teeth, as he leans forward over the desk upon which Donald has spread his contact sheets, page after page of Liliputian photos. Occasionally James examines a particular photo with a magnifying glass. He then leans back and, sucking air, shakes his handsome head.

  Donald is not used to an editor such as James. Donald is used to editors grizzled and cynical, smelling of cigar smoke and salami sandwiches, paunchy old men in sweatstained white shirts, mustard stains on the tie. There used to be just such an editor working for this magazine, for every magazine, but they are all gone now, retired, all charter fishing in the Sea of Cortez. The world is run by Jameses now, and it is a slick world Donald can not get a grip on.

  “If you don’t like them, just say so,” Donald says finally, knowing how long this dawdling can be protracted, almost eager for rejection.

  “It’s not that, I do like them,” James says. “You have a fine talent, a rare talent, there’s no question about that. A superlative eye. An awesome gift.”

  Donald waits. He counts to twenty. “So?”

  “I’m puzzled, Donny. I’m a bit … confused.”

  Donald flinches when called Donny. He is called Donny at times by Jessica, by Wright, but coming from James it offends him. He considers calling him Jimmy in return. Better yet, Jimbo. But he wants more than the kill fee for this assignment. He needs more than the kill fee. Travis is waiting in the anteroom and Donald wants to stroll out there ten minutes from now and say, “How does lobster sound for lunch?”, not “Let’s go grab a burger.”

  So Donald says, “What is it that puzzles you, James?”

  “I’m trying to remember the exact nature of this assignment.”

  “Various shots of the city,” says Donald. “Capture the flavor of the city. Its ethnic richness.”

  “Exactly!” James says.

  Donald counts to twenty. “So?”

  “I just don’t feel it from these pictures, Donaldo. I’m sorry, maybe it’s me but, they just don’t move me.”

  “Call me Donald,” Donald says. “All right, James?”

  “Everybody in these pictures looks so blue to me. So … if you’
ll pardon the expression … down tempo.”

  “These are hard times,” Donald says.

  “These are grand times. The best of times!”

  “The assignment was to capture the look of the city. Who knows the city better than the people in these pictures?

  “They wear this city on their faces.”

  James is staring into the magnifying glass, his face only inches from the desk. “Are these street people?” he asks, aghast. “My god, these are street people! Just look at their shoes, their clothes. That sixties-kind of crumpled look.”

  “You wanted an honest depiction of city life, didn’t you? So there it is. Right there in front of you.”

  “This isn’t my city, Donnyboy. This isn’t the city I see out my window. These people aren’t my friends and colleagues. I sent you out to find that city. To show how dynamic and energetic and on the move we are. How relentlessly exciting we are. But these.… I can’t use these pictures. Not a single one of them. To be honest with you, I’m not very comfortable just having them in the building.”

  Donald scoops up the contact sheets and slips them into his portfolio case. “You’re the editor.”

  “You want to try again? I can give you until tomorrow.”

  “I think I’ll just cut bait on this one, thanks. You’ll send a check for the kill fee, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “I hope it doesn’t put too big a dent in your allowance,” says Donald as he reaches for the door, a last feeble jab as his knees cave-in and he goes down for the count.

  But James is young, he’s quick, he lays him out with an uppercut. “What you get paid? That’s bubblegum money.”

  Donald wobbles into the anteroom, he wears a dolorous smile. He prays he will not puke. “How does lobster sound for lunch?” he asks.

  Donald steps onto the sidewalk and stops suddenly as if blinded by the sun. He looks up the street and down, he blinks, such a noisy place, so fast, nothing will come into focus.

  “Should we pop in on your mother?” he asks, unsure of in which direction lies the flower shop. “Surprise her? Invite her to lunch?”

  “You seem tense,” Travis says. “Is something wrong?”

  “I lost the assignment.” Why lie?