Mysterious Skin

by Scott Heim

  “That’s just what he needs,” my father said. He squinted toward the tree, to other obvious book-shaped gifts. “Let me guess. Those are Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, and Bigfoot.” He reached for the Loch Ness book, skimmed to the center’s photo spread, and tossed it back to Brian. “A load of bunk,” he said.

  My mother received a bottle of White Shoulders perfume from Brian and me. She tipped the bottle against her thumb and streaked a drop beneath each earlobe.

  My gift was last. I tried to conceal a blush as I unwrapped a boxful of bras from my mother. “Whoa-ho-ho,” my father said.

  “You can always use new underthings,” my mother said. The lights flickered emerald green against her face. “No matter where you’re living, Little River or San Francisco.” Brian watched my reaction. I smiled at him, and he looked away.

  That night I woke to hear my parents screaming downstairs. Whenever this happened, I usually sandwiched my head with pillows. But that night their bickering amplified. When my father yelled “Fuck you” and my mother fired “Fuck you” back, I knew they meant business.

  I opened my door and padded into the hallway. There was Brian, listening at the top of the stairs. They had woken him, too. He put a finger to his lips when he saw me.

  “Sick of everything in this life…” It was my mother, and it sounded as if she’d been crying. The radio mingled with her voice, a tinny chorus of children singing the first verse to “O Holy Night.”

  My father cleared his throat. “Then why don’t you just end it all.”

  “Why don’t you just go to hell.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere you’re going to end up.”

  I held my breath. I knew Brian was doing the same. The electric heater in his room made a hollow click, the sound of a knuckle, cracking.

  Stomping feet, a drawer opening, and the clink of kitchen utensils floated toward us from downstairs. I heard the crash of knives and forks and spoons dumped onto linoleum tiles. This was my mother’s method of expressing her rage: the kitchen was her territory, and she could just as soon serve my father meals with the silverware as stab him in the throat. Once, after a fight at dinner, we’d seen her fling a plate at the wall as if it were a Frisbee. The scratch was still there.

  They continued shouting. But this time, their words had a finality that made it clear they had wearied of fighting, that twenty years of it was enough. Looking back I think it didn’t matter that the following morning was Christmas. Somehow my parents must have known that Brian and I sat at the top of the stairs, listening. I believe they wanted us to understand that it was over.

  “Fuck you,” my father said again, and then he was off. He tore through the house, the door slamming behind him. He revved the pickup’s engine once, twice. He sped from the driveway, tires skidding in icy puddles.

  Silence. I imagined my mother standing in the kitchen, silverware strewn around her feet. Amid that quiet, my mother blew her nose. For some reason, I found that hilarious. Brian looked at me, and we both clamped hands across our mouths to keep from snickering.

  My mother blew her nose again, and the sound trumpeted toward the second floor. This time, Brian’s laughter burst from his mouth, resonating in the air like a shook tambourine. He sprinted down the stairs, taking them three at a time. I heard him trace our father’s path through the house, out the front door. He’ll freeze out there, I thought. He was still laughing when the door slammed behind him.

  I tiptoed down. I didn’t want to see my mother’s tear-streaked face, but I figured I should help her clean the mess. “Are you okay?” I asked. She wasn’t in the kitchen. I stepped into the living room: toppled chair, overturned lamp, cinnamony-smelling potpourri spilling from a chipped bowl. A slice of pumpkin pie lay smashed in the floor’s center, leaking a dollop of whipped cream like a teardrop. The fire in the hearth had fizzled out, but the Christmas tree’s lights still blinked, casting rainbows over the wadded remnants of wrapping paper.

  I turned and saw my mother. She shuffled toward the window, unaware of my presence. She bumped her shin on the fallen rocking chair. “Owee-owee,” she said, and I remembered her speaking that way when Brian and I were kids, when we’d come to her with scratches or cuts. She continued to fumble forward, her arms held out as if offering something to the dark. It horrified me to see her like this: she had always held reign over these rooms, and was now suddenly blinded and clumsy within them. When she reached the window, she brushed aside the curtain. “You’ll catch pneumonia,” she yelled to Brian. Her breath misted the glass.

  I slid into a pair of boots and walked outside. Snow fell in orderly specks, dusting the evergreens. Somewhere, far away, a sparrow was shrieking. I followed the footprints. Brian, dressed in his pj’s and gym socks, stood on the hillside, facing the field. In the distance, the taillights from my father’s truck became smaller and smaller, two minuscule rubies dissolving into black. I wondered if he had used his new key chain to start his engine on this, the night he had finally left.

  When the lights on my father’s truck were completely gone, I waved toward his unknown destination. “That’s that,” I said. The words seemed awkward and inconsiderate, and I immediately wished I could take them back. But Brian hadn’t heard me. He lifted his head and stared at the sky. He had stood just like that years before, on the night we’d seen the blue lights in the air above our field. Now, nothing resided there but the snowfall, a mass of white that blanketed any trace of moon and stars.

  Head still raised, my brother began to dance. He swiveled his hips and stomped his stocking feet, arms reaching out, fingers scratching the air. He was smiling, sheer bliss spelled out on his face.

  Behind us, my mother opened the window. “Pneumonia,” she repeated. I knew she was leaning her head outside, snow sequining her hair and her face, the face no longer lined with concern about the man who’d left us. She was only thinking of the two people who really mattered, her kids.

  I didn’t turn around. Instead, I joined Brian in his dance. I was eighteen, and in three days I would be abandoning Kansas for San Francisco, perhaps leaving forever. I didn’t care how foolish I looked. I lifted my arms and twisted my feet in the snow’s thick carpet. The snow began coming faster, shattered bits of gemstones zigzagging through the air. It was a celebration. Brian and I danced on the side of the hill, almost as if dancing on my father’s grave, as the torn pieces of sky tumbled around us like confetti.

  six

  NEIL MCCORMICK

  Once I stole a bicycle. It was as simple as swiping a gingerbread man from our kitchen’s beehive-shaped cookie jar. But the thrill I got from the bike was more profound. I searched the evening street for snooping pedestrians, lifted my leg over the seat, and pedaled down the block. The icy breeze stung my face. I ended up on Seventeenth Street, at Wendy’s house. “My new set of wheels,” I told her when she opened her front door. I’d grown too tall for my old bike years ago.

  Her mouth formed a precise O. She said, “That’s a White Bicycle,” as if each word took an exclamation point. Then her amazement faded, and she got the same idea as me. “Let’s find the spray paint.”

  The bicycle metamorphosed from white to black. I furthered its makeover by covering the handlebars and back wheel guards with stickers that Wendy had taken from her favorite punk bands’ LPs. On one, Charles Manson’s eyes peered out. I stuck it on the seat.

  I laughed just considering the scandal. One year before, the Hutchinson community had started a program called the “White Bicycles.” Volunteers had bought ten white Fujis, then placed them at various spots around the city. Residents could ride whenever the need arose—when their legs tired, when they were tipsy, when a knife-wielding attacker chased them, whatever. The rider parked the bike for the next person.

  I considered the program a big joke, but it didn’t concern me until the day I committed my crime. That morning’s Hutchinson newspaper headline had announced the one-year anniversary of the White Bicycles. In a gigantic photo, teena
gers stood grinning beside the bikes, their hands on the seats. I recognized so-and-so and his girlfriend from school. They were just the sort of people I hated—the kind who regarded life as a hunky-dory trip in a helium balloon.

  “Tonight I get the last laugh,” I said. The spray paint sizzled from its can. The balls of my fingers had turned as black as olives, and I jabbed them into Wendy’s ribs.

  Wendy borrowed her little brother’s Schwinn. The night was cold, lacerated by wind, so we donned scarves and stocking caps and raced toward Monroe Street. On the way there, we passed a stretch of road construction. A chunky female traffic cop waved an orange, diamond-shaped sign at us. “Slow down, goddammit, slow down!” Wendy hated being lectured as much as I did. She lifted her fist from her handlebars and shook it at the cop.

  We parked in my garage. Mom had left the porch light on for me. Tiny icicles hung from our roofs edge, gleaming like fangs. Inside, Mom was sliding a tuna-noodle casserole into the oven. She had crumbled barbecue potato chips across the top layer of noodles. It was her third week off booze, and she’d been concocting new dishes every night. Wendy rubbed Mom’s shoulder. “Smells delicious, Mom,” she lied.

  Mom kissed her cheek. “Weatherman says tonight will be the first snowfall,” she said. “It might be a white Christmas. You can stay for casserole, Wendy.” We hadn’t dined with a guest since Mom’s last boyfriend.

  I turned on the stereo. The annoying deejay began introducing the next song in his top-forty countdown, so I quickly switched it off. TV was better. On screen, a “Gilligan’s Island” rerun played in black and white. The girls wanted something from Gilligan. Ginger fluttered her eyelids and massaged his neck while Maryanne displayed a just-baked coconut cream pie. Nonexistent humans giggled and guffawed on the laugh track. Wendy asked me how much I’d take to screw the Skipper. “A hundred,” I said. The Professor? “He’s not bad. Fifty.”

  When I said that word, Wendy looked at me and arched an eyebrow. For weeks we’d been discussing the easiest ways to make money, namely prostitution. I’d been reading about the concept for years in my stash of porno magazines. Wendy called me obsessed. I’d even written my freshman term paper on the topic. I’d given it the predictable title “World’s Oldest Profession,” but I was content with my B minus. During my research, I’d found a dusty hardback in Hutchinson’s library that listed cities where older men pay hustlers top dollar for a fuck, a blow job, whatever.

  Recently I’d discovered hustling even went on in Hutchinson. Christopher Ortega, a not-bad-looking kid in Wendys sophomore class, claimed he did it on the side. He lingered around the playgrounds of our city’s Carey Park on weekends, thumbs in pockets, watching as lonely middle-agers circled the roadway. “Fifty bucks is my charge,” Christopher had said, and I believed him for the simple fact that he hadn’t lied to us about these sorts of things before—i.e., he supplied us a bag of pot when I didn’t believe he sold drugs, and once, when I accused him of faking being a queer, he’d rammed his tongue into my mouth on the spot.

  “I’ve been thinking about hanging out in the park,” I told Wendy. It was the third time I’d mentioned it that week.

  Wendy leaned to peek into the kitchen, then turned back to me. “I’d rather see you make a buck some other way.” A wave of fishy odor floated into the living room. Wendy pinched her nose and continued in an altered voice. “But fucking’s perpetually on your mind anyway, so you might as well get paid for it.”

  I watched the woman on the TV commercial choose the less-expensive detergent over the most popular brand. “Old guys will pay anything to get off with someone else. Anything different than their own hands,” I said. “It’s that feeling of a young guy’s skin touching theirs. Think of it as a service. They could get something from me, and I could get something from them.”

  “True.” Pause. “But be careful. I know that sounds dumb, but even Hutchinson has its freaks. You’re only fifteen. You could trick with the wrong guy. I’d find pieces of you scattered everywhere.”

  “You’ve been reading too many books,” I said. I could sense Wendy’s eyes drilling into my face, so I looked down. Paint smudges blackened my sweater sleeve. “Besides, it’s not that I haven’t done it already. For a little money, I mean.”

  She’d known this was coming. “Coach?” she said. She was the only one I’d told about what happened that summer. I’d confessed everything to her, again and again. Wendy could practically hear Coach’s voice herself, could smell his breath, could feel the texture of his skin.

  She repeated the word, this time without the question mark. “Coach.”

  The stolen bike propelled me from poverty to affluence. The following Saturday afternoon, I slipped on an extra pair of socks, downed a plateful of leftover casserole, yelled good-bye to Mom as she headed to work, and rode toward Carey Park. The idea of money for sex thrilled me like nothing before.

  A thin layer of ice sheeted the pair of ponds that flanked the park. The golf course and basketball courts were empty. I lowered the stocking cap around my ears.

  The johns didn’t take long to spot. Four or five different men drove back and forth, around and around, circling the park in outdated cars. The guy in the Toyota Corolla and the guy in the Impala—it was almost identical to Mom’s car, its color a shade darker—tapped their brakes when they passed my bicycle. I trudged alongside the park road, pretending not to notice. But I did notice. The idea of their wanting to pay for me rendered me breathless, thrilled, delirious, flustered…. I glanced into their windows, searching for any scrap of attractiveness, any absorbing or aberrant facial feature that might lead to me enjoying the actual sex.

  I lapped Carey Park for thirty minutes, then stopped the bike at a playground. I tried to remember everything Christopher had told me. “Look innocent, yet old enough to be legal.” “Empty the emotion from your face.” “Smile crooked-mouthed; you look cuter.”

  I walked toward the brightly painted circus animals, the ones hooked to concrete blocks by heavy springs. I sat on an elephant, and the cold metal stung my ass. I watched clouds curl through the sky, and in seconds the Corolla parked. I squinted at the driver; saw his dark curly hair and mustache. A finger poked from a crack in the passenger seat window and motioned me over.

  Bingo.

  Already I’d scored. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I opted for the direct. “You’ve got cash?”

  “I’ve paid fifty before, and I’ll go no higher,” he said. I must have looked like a pro. I nodded and opened the car door.

  He said his name was Charlie. He’d been married, divorced, and had married again. Three kids—a boy and two girls. “I’m in Hutchinson on business,” he said in a gruff monotone, “and my business is marketing snack foods.” I took a good whiff of his car, and it smelled like those orange cheese crackers with the peanut butter filling. He must have predicted my thoughts, because he offered me a package. I grabbed it and chowed down, then looked Charlie over. He wore a green suit, a name tag, a Santa Claus tie. His hands fidgeted at his face, the fingers returning again and again to touch his chin, as if it might crumble. I slid closer to him, and he patted my knee and massaged it. He shifted into drive and watched the road like the eye of a needle.

  “Cops patrol this place,” Charlie said. “Even when it’s freezing outside, they’ve got brains enough to know what’s up.” His hands were shaking. “Let’s get a room somewhere.”

  That “somewhere” was the Sunflower Inn. Room 102’s welcome mat spelled hospitality with two ls. The bed was comfortable, but the room was creepy. An orange bedspread showed a fist-sized black stain; the TV hadn’t been dusted in what seemed decades. A draft from the window sucked the corner of an orange curtain in and out of the room like a massive lung.

  I unlaced my shoes. “Go slow,” Charlie said, “we’ve got all hour.” I thought, one hour equals sixty minutes. Sixty divided into fifty equals about eighty-five cents per minute. I couldn’t help grinning at that, which Charlie no doubt took to m
ean sensual pleasure. He started massaging my back.

  He set the pace. I hardly touched him until he unzipped my pants and wormed three fingers inside. Then I pinched at his nipples, tickled the hair over his belly, rubbed his crotch through his slacks. I’m good at this, I thought. He pushed me onto the bed. He knelt beside me and shoved his head in my lap, his head bobbing and zigzagging as if filled with fizz. His tongue darted around my balls. It felt as flat and cold as a Popsicle.

  I naturally thought of Coach. Charlie paled in comparison. That summer was six years past. I’d fucked around with a few guys since, but they’d been in my age group, hadn’t enraptured me much. I traced the outline of Charlie’s ribs and wondered where Coach was now. I knew he’d moved from Hutchinson. At school, I’d heard a grapevine story about someone’s parents being suspicious, causing Coach to quit Little League. At that precise moment, he might have been lying on a bed in some other state with another kid like me. For all I knew, he could have been dead. That idea seemed incredibly romantic. If I’d been alone and high, my imagination would have roamed—me dressed in black, lumbering toward Coach’s open coffin, a tear on my cheek, to center a single white lily on his motionless and impeccable chest…. Charlie’s grunt made my fantasy evaporate.

  While Coach’s fingers had “caressed” me, Charlie’s merely “touched.” My mind drifted, and Charlie stopped blowing me. He lifted his head and stared at my dick. “Come on, kid, you’re losing your hard-on.” I apologized. His head plunged back in.

  Charlie sucked, and I fidgeted on the bed. My watch’s minute hand moved from nine to ten to eleven. Coach’s mouth had felt so much warmer than this. He had massaged the backs of my legs, his entire hands fitting over the muscles in my thighs. My dick and both balls could disappear into his mouth, and I would feel the clamp of his lips around my entire sex, trails of saliva streaming to the knees I’d scuffed from sliding into home plate.