by Lisa Hannett
Is he free?
Has he already eaten?
Does he have room for one more?
No-one goes into detail with Mama. All she wants to know is how many cookies are in those plastic containers of theirs, and do they have nuts? Tub can’t abide nuts. What kind of jelly is inside those donuts? Blueberry’s his favourite. Is that pie Key lime? Homemade or store bought? Topped with whipped cream or meringue?
Tub isn’t all that picky, really. He’ll take what’s brought. Always has.
Mama just wants to make him happy.
Hand hovering near, but not touching, elbows or the small of backs, she steers Tub’s guests past the rusting swing-set he used to love as a kid, past the junked cars Gene never got round to repairing, past Wendy’s banana-seat bike and the cardboard lemonade stand she set up outside his trailer years ago, past the half-blind pitbull chained near the windowless door. Lifting his old head, the dog whuffs until Mama shooshes him. She knocks with the great ugly ring Gene gave her, then walks in without waiting for Tub’s say-so. She knows he’s home. Of course he is. Where else could he be?
“Thought you might be hungry,” she says, every single time, barely pausing to gauge his reaction. Doesn’t matter much if he shrugs or shakes his noggin; she’s quick to turn back to the entryway. Quick to beckon folks in.
Today it’s a guy, late-twenties or early thirties, the skin on his cheeks a red mess of acne scars. He’s short as Mama; so short he’s got to roll up the legs of his blue coveralls. Still wearing a tool-belt, he whips off his hard-hat and clutches it to his chest. Bows his head, almost respectful, like this was a church or courtroom or something, instead of a dust-quiet, low-ceilinged, wood-veneered caravan. Gaze lowered, he holds out the hoagie he brought for Tub. Family sized, melted cheese and mustard seeping through the paper wrapping. When Tub doesn’t get up, the guy looks to Mama for a cue.
“Go on,” she says. She waits until he scuffs his work boots on the welcome mat just inside the door, then leaves them to it. On the gravel outside, her sneakers crunch a hurried retreat.
“Don’t mind her,” Tub says. “She’s always discreet.”
The guy winces. Partly out of embarrassment, Tub knows, partly at the feathery pitch of his voice. Such a girlish noise produced by such a monstrous blob of a man; it’s hideous. Repulsive. Even Tub shudders to hear words whispering through his thick lips, lisping around invisible scars, cursed runes burnt into the tender flesh of his mouth. Ridged reminders he’d rather forget. He doesn’t talk if he can avoid it.
Instead, Tub smiles his thanks for the sandwich. Invites the man to dig into it himself. Go ahead, he says with a nod, pointing at the lone stool tucked beneath a card table. It’s lunchtime. Whatever’s left over, Tub will gobble up when he’s alone. For now, he watches nervous nibbles become open bites, the muscles in his guest’s temples throbbing in and out as he chews. Grease loosens the tongue better than liquor, Tub knows. Soon enough, secrets will spill like crumbs down the repairman’s front. All it takes is time.
When the sub is half gone, the guy’s posture stiffens. He rewraps the offering, puts it aside. Brushes scraps of bread off his face. Stands and walks over to the ever-unfolded sofa bed. Tub pats its wide armrest--there’s no room on the mattress beside him--and waits for the man to climb on.
Once he’s straddling the support, boot heels thunking into the upholstery, he begins, as they all do, by mumbling some variation of I don’t know how long this has been going on ... Don’t rightly know how it started ... In the scheme of things, this guy’s sins are far from the worst Tub’s seen. A telecom worker, he jacks into the cables he’s supposed to be repairing, jacks into porn hotlines, racy 1-900 numbers, then spends too many of his billable hours in public johns, jacking off. Missing appointments and call-outs. Coming home late without ever earning overtime. Spurting his sex drive into scrunched toilet paper, saving none of it for his wife.
“I feel awful,” he says at last. It doesn’t matter if Tub believes him or not. What matters is he’s here now. A supplicant only Tub can help. A burdened soul begging to be lightened.
Squinting, Tub searches for the deepest hues of the man’s guilt, the heaviest blooms. Around his palms, on his lap, in his crotch, the air is contused, blue and black and purple, wavering like steam off a fresh-baked loaf. Each person’s regret carries its own shade, its own awful whiff. Without really meaning to, Tub catalogues them by colour and stench. This guy’s is a vinegar bruise. It wells most densely at the sides of his head.
Tub opens his mouth.
“Hush,” he says, gripping the line-worker’s skull, pulling him close. “Hold still,” he says, slurping all traces of the stain from around the man’s ears. Gulping it down like oysters, swallowing the slime whole. When he’s done, only a milky-blue scum remains, just another smear on the guy’s uniform.
Immediately, the added weight bulges in Tub’s gut, an extra roll flabbing dimples around his middle. Ten pounds of shame, he’d guess. Give or take.
“Don’t mention it,” Tub says as his guest smiles wide, springs off the sofa-bed. They always feel better--buoyant, carefree--after bloating him with their worries. Glutting him with their problems. Keeping him fat, obscenely well-fed.
“Really,” he says. “Don’t.”
* * *
He’d still been skinny--delicate, even--that night Mama came into his bedroom and found him bawling in the dark. Wrung out, incoherent, somehow made scrawnier with tears. Wearing nothing but his little boy swim trunks even though he was almost thirteen then, almost a man. His piss-soaked undies bunched at the back of his closet, buried under the shoes he’d outgrown but couldn’t bear to chuck out. The sleeping bag wet beneath him.
Just a nightmare, she’d said, pulling her fake satin robe snug. Drawing its ties in hard around her tiny waist.
Just a nightmare, she’d said, after he’d choked back his sobs, mustered his nerve, and told her.
Finally.
Mama’s tone was tighter than the springs on his single bed that night, straining as she perched beside him. Hush now. Tighter than the arm she’d wrapped around him. Hush. Firm as the kisses she’d pressed into his temple and forehead. Rigid reassurances. Dry and cold.
A nightmare, she’d said. That’s all.
He’d thought, then, she must be right.
It had just been the once, hadn’t it?
Hush, hush.
Maybe he’d misremembered? A week had already passed, seven sleepless nights since-- Seven nights shivered away in the dark, hour after hour afraid to close his eyes, to hear the door hinges wheezing open behind him, the linoleum floor shuddering, to feel that stumbling, stop start stop, that fumbling at his quilt, stop start, to smell that whiskey fog grunting closer, closer. Afraid of that rasp, of stubble, of zippers. Afraid of that sickening tug. That tobacco grip on his lean face. That unreal taste.
Unreal.
Maybe Mama was right.
Just a nightmare.
It couldn’t be real.
Maybe he’s always been wrong.
But.
All those wakeful nights later, a residue of chlorine and salt-coated fingers still squirmed on his tongue, dribbled down his chin. Right then, he didn’t get what it was, what it meant. Why the blue cloud of it dragged him down, why it made him feel so open. So exposed.
Oh Toby, Mama had said, sitting, pulling him to her chest. From the hallway, a thin bar of yellow light angled into his room, slicing across the bed. The streak cut across Tub’s face, severing Mama’s head and shoulders from her torso. In that moment, he noticed cobalt lines pooling along the sharp bones of her sternum. A maroon blob pulsating between her breasts.
Cheek pressed against Mama’s skin, Tub had wept himself hollow, puffy and hot, while she stroked the sweaty hair off his brow. Her hands were dried out from bleaching Gene’s work shirts, her fingertips starched, rasping. He recoiled at their touch, then covered it by forcing himself to hug her. Snuffling, he breathed in a strange m
ix of spices Mama had never worn before. Black pepper and aniseed. Sour cherry. Tonguing tears and snot from his upper lip, he tasted something else, something that stung like jalapeño. Something that set his eyes watering once more.
Carefully, he licked again.
Hovering above her heart, Mama’s disbelief was a smoked chicory coal that burnt all the way to his gut when he swallowed it. Her excuses were gobs of overboiled Swiss chard. Over these clung a wispy mesh of self-reproach, sticky as cotton candy. Without thinking, he’d sucked it all in. Filled his face, his heaving belly. Forced it down.
Better, she’d sighed after a minute or so, once the air was clear. Tub knew it wasn’t a question. As his middle pudged out, some of the stiffness had left Mama’s spine. Lard swelled around the elastic waistband on his swimsuit while her embrace had gone limp. Lips curving with relief, she’d nodded. Just a nightmare.
Making breakfast the next morning, Mama had sung her favourite hymns. She’d opened the window above the sink, hooked the gingham curtains up to let sunlight stream in, flung the screen door wide. Puddles on the back porch reflected a clearing sky. Gusting into the kitchen, the breeze was fresh but damp, carrying the dregs of rain.
“Every new day is a brand new start,” she’d said, piling the square table with flapjacks, bacon, bowls of maple syrup and whipped cream. For Tub, she’d baked a dozen chocolate cupcakes. Mama must’ve been up for hours, he’d thought, as she served him up one of the paper-wrapped treats, letting him dip the buttercream icing into a plateful of colourful sprinkles. Meanwhile, Gene had guzzled black coffee, chain-smoked strong cigarettes. Asked for a poached egg, runny. Mama’d smiled, unfazed, as the pancakes went cold. After she’d clunked the dish down on Gene’s placemat, he’d shaken a small blizzard of salt onto the soft white mass. Punctured the yolk with a nicotine-stained finger, stirred.
Once Gene had left for the service station, Mama told Tub to stay put, eat his fill. Eat, EAT. She’d holler him outside when she was ready.
She had a surprise for him.
Four rashers of bacon, a buttered short stack, and three cupcakes later, Tub heard barking in the backyard.
“Toby,” Mama called. “Come on out!”
Too full to run, he’d thudded outdoors, down the crooked steps, thumping to a stop at the sight of Mama playing tug-of-war with a lively, grey and white pup. “Remember Mrs Ennis telling us about that scrappy little fighter of hers? The one she’d housebound a few months back? Well, this here’s one of six reasons why.” She’d huffed a bit as the young pitbull strained against the leash. “This is Wally.”
Stocky even then, the dog had more muscle in his blunt jaw than Tub had in total. His brown eyes were pointed slits, but Tub liked to think they were smiling. Hard to tell, though, since Wally’s snub snout was wrapped tight in ugly leather straps.
“So, listen. Mrs Ennis and me were talking just now ... ” Mama had paused, checking and rechecking the contraption’s buckles. “She’s mighty keen to pay you a visit. Just to see how Wally’s settling in. Just to chat.”
Looking up, Tub had seen the lady from two lots over ambling down the long drive from the highway, green rainboots mud-spattered, the hood on her red slicker pulled up to cover her curlers, half-concealing her face. A foil-covered pie plate was balanced on her mittened hands. Unable to bark, Wally whimpered excitedly. Mama patted his wide head, riffled his short ears, then turned to Tub. “Leave this muzzle on the whole time Mrs E’s here, okay? But, otherwise? Feel free to go’on and take it right off when you’re alone. You got me, Toby?”
* * *
Tub’s more than twice as old as he was then, not to mention seven or eight times as heavy. 600 lbs, give or take, at his last weigh-in a year ago. Doc Rennalds said he’d soon grow too big for the scales in his office, if something didn’t change--and quick. You can’t keep eating like this, lad, Doc had told him, frank and clinical. After scribbling contact details for a nutritionist, he’d looked Tub up and down, then added a referral for the local shrink. The strain on your heart alone ...
No point hauling himself back into town, Tub had thought at the time, just to be gawked at. Scorned. Told what he already knew.
Not that he can make it there now, even if he wanted to. The cab of Mama’s pickup isn’t built for folks like him, and hiring a taxi-van is out of the question. Too expensive, Gene says, by which he really means too goddamn embarrassing. Doesn’t really matter: even the short trip from Tub’s trailer to the car is more than he can manage nowadays. The motor in his mobility scooter gave out not long after his knees did--and since there’s no way in hell he’ll ever ask Gene to fix the thing, that’s pretty much that.
Using canes, he can lever himself from one side of the sofa-bed to the other when Wendy comes in once a week to change the sheets. But by the time she’s finished, he’s sweating so bad onto the fresh cotton, she may as well not have bothered. Ditto when Mama helps wrangle him into clean track pants, clean T-shirts, clean boxers. Ditto when she gets him up to the john. Ditto when she makes him strip every second day so’s she can hose him off on the bathroom tiles.
He’s too big now to fit in the shower.
Only Wendy still calls him Toby. By now, everyone else in Kaintuck County knows him as Tub.
Even Mama.
Even him.
* * *
Mrs Ennis was the third grown-up to bring her blues into Tub’s bedroom.
“It’s nothing, really.” She’d forced a laugh, discomfort blotching the soft folds under her chin. Sitting next to him on the little bed, just as Mama had the night before, Mrs E stared down at her hands. At the threadbare toes of her sweatsocks. At Wally, whose warm side was pressing against Tub’s bony shins, tail whacking as he wriggled and waggled, trying to get at the apple crumble the lady’d put on the bedside table. The spicy-sweet scent of cinnamon and brown sugar almost overwhelmed the pall of antiseptic and sour grapes clinging to her scratchy wool sweater. She cleared her throat. Plucked a bit of fluff off her jeans. Looked anywhere but at Tub.
Realistically, Mrs Ennis explained, realistically she knew he couldn’t magically make her start winning. That wasn’t why she was here, though of course she wouldn’t say no to an upswing in her luck. Having said that, she was sure to make back what she’d lost. Just one more trip across the river to Chippewa Springs Buffet and Casino and she’d recoup all the mad money they’d socked away, her and Mr Ennis. And she had more than enough time to play with--Mr E wouldn’t notice the coin tin was empty before Friday night, when he went to grab a few bucks for his after-shift bourbons--it wasn’t time that was the problem. Not even a problem, she’d corrected, so much as a hitch. Sure, she’d spent every last token she’d had, but it wouldn’t take many to get back on top. One of Mr Ennis’ retirement bonds would do the trick, and he’d never even know it was gone, he never checked those accounts, and he’d be more than grateful when she tripled its worth. Really.
“Yer Ma mentioned ... ” Mrs E said, fingers twisting on her lap. “She said you could ... ”
Tub understood. Most folks are slow to change secret habits. It’s always so much easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. But it’s even better not to feel the urge for forgiveness at all.
“Slip this arm out your sweater,” he’d said, pointing to the one closest to him. As she unbuttoned the cardigan and lifted up her shirtsleeve, Tub saw the pert muscles, the sinewy forearm, taut from pulling slot machine handles over and over and over. Holding her hand, he leaned in and gently gnawed the purple knotwork guilting her limb, slurped its loosened strands like spaghetti. When he was full, her bicep was soft as an empty leather wallet. She was the happiest loser this side of the Manatawk river.
Nowadays, Mrs Ennis drops round once a month. Sometimes bringing meat trays she acquired at a silent auction, baskets of sugarplums she snagged at Bingo, brandied fruitcakes she won in some raffle. Other times bringing heavier mouthfuls, sharp and desperate, tainted with unkept promises. Gutful after gutful of e
dible complicities.
Sweet or sour, Tub accepted them all.
* * *
On a scale of, say, white lies to genocide, gluttony is definitely less sinful than murder. Willing blindness is on par with oversight. Enabling is better than crushing a spirit. Anything beats feeling starved.
Between guests, Tub thinks about such things.
Scooping chocolate ripple into a salad bowl, he ranks remembering as worse than forgetting. Feigning ignorance as worse than fessing up. Shifting blame as worse than taking responsibility for wrongs done--but that’s a tricky one. That one’s hard to decide.
There’s a see-saw in his mind, ever-creaking as he tries to strike a balance between bad and deplorable. Between heinous but bearable, and irredeemable soul-blistering crimes. Between what happens, what has happened, and what should never be.
Between nightmares and reality.
He abandons the bowl. Spoons ice cream straight from carton to gob.
* * *
“Opportunity makes the thief,” Marty from the Buy ’n’ Save quips while Tub nibbles at the store manager’s fingers, gaining forty pounds of his kleptomania. The sin’s grimiest at the ink-stained tips, clumped on cuticles and hangnails. Tub munches the coconut rush of not getting caught, the pineapple thrill of pocketing things he don’t and won’t never need. When he’s done, Marty leaves a twelve-pack of Twinkies on the bedside table. Visibly struggles not to sneer.
Next afternoon, Kaintuck Public’s sophomore quarterback comes over with half a box of the same. Clement’s skin is dark, but not so dark it conceals the blush that accompanies his last-minute, part-eaten, unoriginal goodies.