by Lise Haines
A few feet away Mom placed a flat square of black metal meant to hold an outdoor umbrella in place. Picking up a few wide pieces of pipe, she set them vertically on top of the disk, then stood back several feet to consider her plan. Lola did the same with her own pieces of smaller pipe, placing them on the square. I don’t know if she understood what Mom was up to since she was so young when our mother stopped sculpting, though she seemed eager to join in. Either way, I doubt Lola realized how her own well-being was bound up in Mom’s first new work.
When they came upstairs a short while later Lola barged into my room and shut the door behind her, the way she did when she really needed to talk or just be around me and not have to talk. I sensed this was the former, so I didn’t remind her that she needed to knock first. I took her winter gear as she squirmed out of it, setting the boots and jacket and snow pants over a chair near the radiator to dry. Maybe I looked a little flushed from the heat because Lola crawled into bed with me and asked, “Do you have a temperature?” She got me to lean forward. She touched my cheeks and forehead and pronounced, “Nope. Cool as a cucumber.” That was Mom’s expression.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said.
“I might be a doctor someday.”
“I would bring all of my children to see you,” I said.
After a long silence she furrowed her brow and asked, “Did Mom tell you who he is? She told me.”
“Yes,” I said. “And then I recognized him. Not at first, though.” I didn’t want her to feel cheated, thinking all of us knew and she didn’t.
“But you’re sure now?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Am I supposed to love him?” she asked.
In that moment she looked prepared to believe anything I would tell her. I kissed the top of her head, then looked her in the eyes, our foreheads practically touching. “I think things have to feel right to you, Lola. Like with Mom. I never have to tell you how to feel about Mom.”
“So I get to decide?”
“I’d say that’s what you should do. Take your time, and when you’re ready, you decide.”
“He doesn’t smell like my father.”
“Ah. I love you, Lola.”
“I love you.”
And this seemed to satisfy her, at least for the moment. Lola curled into me and fell into a quiet state while the trains rocked by. I did some reading, and eventually I drew her hair into a long ponytail and whispered close to her ear, waking her when Mom knocked to say dinner was ready. I said I had eaten late and needed to take a bath, though the apartment was filled with the smell of stir-fry, something she knew I liked.
That’s when a friend sent me a text: Did you see this?
While I sat by the window, L trains going by, I watched an Auto-Tuned video. There was the face I made as I tugged Lola from the store, the clown cupcake crushed in my other hand; the manager coming over to the register; every last item removed from the bags as Mom stood there in her shame; Art stopping to see if he could help.
It was called SNAP.
Checker: You can’t get household items on a SNAP card.
Mother: No one told me. No one told.
Checker: They didn’t give you the list? The list?
Mother: What’s on the list? No one told me. What’s on the list?
Checker: Cosmetics, paper goods, things from the deli.
Mother: May I talk with the manager?
Mona: Don’t, Mom.
Mother: I have to get these things.
Mona: Don’t, Mom.
Mother: I only have fifteen dollars.
Mona: Don’t Mom.
Mother: May I talk with the manager?
Mona: Jesus.
Mother: No one told me.
Mona: Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
There were 3,247 hits already. It’s not that I was dumb about this kind of stuff, but the reminder of how things can travel away from you hit hard. I felt as if I should brace for anything now: floods, plague, famine. I was ready for an invasion of locusts. I thought of the time Geary had me go through Depression-era photos from Parks and Lange, Wolcott and Rothstein, Lee and Welty.
I filled the tub, and as I soaked I was reminded that in the morning four people would be fighting to use the leaky faucet that had made a patch of rust by the drain and a toilet with a seat that threatened to come unhinged. I thought of my father’s thick facial hair clinging to the white foam of his shaving cream and slowly settling in the sink’s catch until Mom would fish it out.
When I was in my robe I recognized her cleanup sounds in the kitchen and heard my father’s storytelling voice. Cracking the bathroom door open, I angled a hand mirror around until I saw Lola standing at a careful distance from him. He was sitting on her bed. And though she wasn’t curled into him the way she would have been with Mom or me, I was worried that she was becoming mesmerized.
“And so he lost his sheep and his cows, his ducks and his pigs …”
“Everything,” Lola said in her knowing way.
“Yes, exactly. Everything. He was a man who had nothing left but the clothes on his back and a small rucksack. And so he began his journey.”
“Is this story about you?” Lola asked.
Lola was a smart girl, but she had never been weirdly smart like one of those kids who reads Remembrance of Things Past or Harry Potter by themselves in kindergarten. I couldn’t imagine that she knew the word rucksack, yet somehow Lola had used one of her mental drill bits to peer into Dad.
“Maybe in some way,” he said.
I wiped the fog off the mirror to see how Lola took this information.
“Why did he lose everything?” she asked.
“Well, this particular man, the man in the story, had done something he couldn’t forgive himself for.”
There it was. He was finally able to say it. The ills visited upon our family came from that moment. He would always be driving away from that mother and child trapped in their car pleading with him to save them.
My mother stopped what she was doing and leaned into the doorframe that separated the kitchen from the living room, a dish towel thrown over her shoulder. I don’t think she wanted to hear what the man had done, but even more she didn’t want Lola to hear because she interrupted to say, “Let me know when you’re ready to have me trim your hair, Richard. The kitchen would work.”
“We’re almost done,” he said.
“Lola can wait to hear the rest later.”
“So he was a bad man,” Lola concluded.
“Or a good man who did something he regretted, something he was very sorry about.”
Then he reached out, as if he was about to put his arm around Lola’s waist. But Lola moved away and said, “I have to see what Mona is doing.”
“Don’t you want to hear how the story ends?” he asked, defying our mother. “I think I want to.”
“I have things to do,” Lola said.
My father had always unwrapped his stories slowly, sometimes in serialized form. They were the presents he crafted for days, the way some fathers toil at a lathe and band saw to produce toys for their children. They were the trick stories: the ones that suggested that stories, like people, are no more reliable than a bet. And sometimes, when he’d had a drink or two, they were the stories he lodged in your heart or taped under your rib cage, where they might eventually detonate. Until I understood this I used to lean in too close, listen too hard, trust too much. But not Lola. Lola wasn’t buying any of it.
His favorite story, or at least the one he seemed to like to tell the most, was about the day the sky opened up and money fell in a hard rain. It fell right on top of a man going off to work. The money poured down, and he removed his hat and filled it to the brim. He filled his pockets, his hands, even his mouth. I remember asking once if the money in the man’s mouth was in bills or coins because I knew from my mother that if you swallowed a coin, you’d choke. My father laughed and told me I took things too literally, like my mother, and then
I had to go ask her what literally meant.
I sometimes wondered what it was to have enough money, what mysterious amount that might be. And then I found myself wishing for a sudden windfall that would be the right amount. I hoped a distant relative would leave us a fortune in rare coins or that I would trip on a bag full of thousand-dollar bills on my way to school. As soon as I understood what my father did for a living I hoped our house would burn to the ground while we were out at the store so a truckload of insurance money would be shipped to us the next day. And when that money finally appeared, I would give it all to my father so he would have enough.
Of course now we were in a different kind of game.
Lola knocked on the bathroom door and asked if I would read to her before bed. “I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, finishing my makeup. I heard Mom and Dad moving chairs around in the kitchen, sheets of newspaper being unfolded. She did a decent job of haircutting, even if it ended up a little sculptural at times. Either way I imagined he was grateful to lose the long, straggly stuff. He couldn’t look like the man who had lost everything for his business luncheon.
When Lola fell asleep and I was done with my own reading, I carried her into the dining room, where Mom pulled back the covers. I held all of Lola’s weight in my arms for a moment and then gently slid her next to Mom.
The TV had been moved around, and I figured it was about making sure Dad wouldn’t have to strain his eyes from where he rested on Lola’s bed. It made me realize we’d had few moments of TV or radio quiet since he’d come to stay. He was in the middle of a crime show, and some woman’s corpse, stabbed twenty-three times, was being prodded and poked by the forensic team discussing the case. As I went into my room and shut the door, I wondered if he identified more with the team of experts or the corpse, and I wondered when my fury would hit the open air.
My father was like a street renamed by a city that always manages to get you lost. And I didn’t want to be lost anymore.
I heard Mom call softly to him from the other side of her barricade, “You’ll have to turn it down, Richard.”
“No problem,” he said in a kind of wonder, his voice straining above the work of the detectives. Perhaps he had become a little hard of hearing. It’s possible he lowered the volume a notch or even two, I wasn’t sure, but I bet she was chafing. I imagined her rubbing her forehead the way she did sometimes when she was looking for answers. I didn’t understand her long patience, and I hoped she was starting to doubt her decision about taking him in or back or whatever she was doing.
I heard her go into the bathroom and eventually get back into bed. I turned out my lights, and that’s when I heard his voice drift from the living room and seep around the edges of my door like a house fire.
“Maybe Lola would like her bed back,” he said to Mom in a beguiling tone. “I could rub your shoulders, help you relax a little.”
“Securing that job tomorrow will help all of us relax,” she said. “But if you aren’t ready to sleep, you can take a walk or something. I hung your coat up in the front closet.”
As an afterthought she said, “You can use the can of mace in my purse.”
When my phone thrummed against my pillow a short while later, it was Ajay. We talked for a while, and our conversation quickly became sleepy and random until he asked about my father.
“It’s like watching a bad remake of a bad remake. He’s breaking everyone’s heart.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“My mother has this generosity she can’t shut off. When we lived in Evanston, I was looking for a pan to heat up some soup one day, and she told me the Veterans’ Association had called, and they had run down a list of household items people need the most. Pans with lids were big on the list. So she took all but one of ours, boxed them up, and left them out by the curb for pickup.”
“Are you thinking about leaving?”
“Right now I have to look out for Lola.”
“I have this vague memory of my mother saying something like that to me about my grandfather the day they were killed, that I should look out for him.”
“And that seemed right to you?”
“At the time it seemed funny to me, I was so little. Now he’s having his share of difficulties. He really should stop driving. At least I think I’ve finally made him realize he can’t use a welding torch anymore. His business partner, an old friend, said my grandfather can be useful in other ways in the office, so he’ll continue to go to work for a while. But some days he’s angry one minute and tender and emotional the next.”
“I think he gave all of his metal stash to my mother.”
“He said she’s making something quite unique in the backyard. I guess they talked for a long time. I think he respects your mother very much now.”
When I grew quiet again he changed course. “You asked about Constantina.”
“And you didn’t want to talk about her,” I said. “That’s all right.”
“We were together for a year. We had a group of friends in common, and it was easy to be together at first. We weren’t in love. At least I wasn’t. I did the tat on a kind of dare. When we fell apart I found out she was huffing spray paint.”
“I can’t imagine.” Though I could when I thought about her eyes.
“She told me she likes the gold and silver colors the best. And glue. She loves glue. She started showing up unannounced. For a long time I’d say okay because I worry about her and I thought I could help. But I call her aunt now as soon as Connie shows up, and her aunt takes her to a clinic.”
I wasn’t expecting her to be Connie.
When I heard the shower going the next morning Mom and Lola were still sound asleep.
Dad had left Lola’s small bedside lamp on. He’d laid out an outfit in the shape of a man. Suit pressed and ready to go, shirt fresh from the cleaners. Belt, cufflinks, and two ties to pick from, handkerchief, boxers, undershirt, and socks. Alongside this the leather briefcase Mom used when she showed her sketches to clients. Key chain with a lone apartment key, wallet, and phone. Shoes on the floor paired up. Every last thing ready for the interview.
I opened his wallet to find a picture of Mom in the top window where someone else might have kept a credit card. I was sliding my fingers into the sections of his billfold when the shower shut off. I placed the wallet back on the bed and went downstairs.
I used Cynthia’s bathroom and crawled into bed with her. She had blue silk sheets shredded at the bottom from her boyfriend Luke’s toenails or rough heels. There was a big white comforter.
“Poor baby,” she said once she realized I was there and she had a chance to see the clock. She told me, in this drifty way, how Luke used to ride his motorcycle out near Ravinia while he was on Ambien. “You want some of that?”
“That stuff will knock you on your butt,” I said.
“Some people have a little give in their systems.”
Sex, basketball, riding elevators up and down waiting for the cables to snap, head shaving. She told me about life in a trance state. “I knew this girl,” she said, “who could cook six-course meals while she was on the stuff. Somebody posted a video where she’s asleep, roasting chickens.”
“No, thanks. I just came down to avoid my father for a while.”
“I was terrified of everything thanks to mine,” Cynthia said. “Until I met Luke. He says you either get with love or you treat it like a weed. Most people dig it out by the roots or scald it with boiling water—but he isn’t like that.”
“I’m sorry he had to go away.”
“He needs to be alone for a while. It’s killing me.”
“There was a boy I liked in high school named George,” I said. “One night we parked near the lighthouse in Evanston and started to make out. Each time a car streamed by its headlights washed over us in the backseat. A sharp flash and a trail of red. Then all of a sudden this shipping truck passed so close I screamed into George’s mouth. Driving home that night, we got stuck beh
ind this street sweeper. We sat there, completely awkward, waiting. All I could think was that the driver of the street sweeper would be out there all night cleaning up after a bunch of accidents like us.”
“Your dad’s getting you all worked up,” Cynthia said.
“And all Mom’s doing is trying to hold the world together. Each time it drops through her fingers and shatters she runs around telling us not to step on the pieces, not to get our feet shredded on the fucking pieces.”
“I don’t think your mom has mean bones, though, do you?” Cynthia asked.
“No. I think she’s a giant, actually.”
“We’re lucky if we get one of those. Hey, I have to show you this site where there are people photographed flying and …”
“That’s trick photography.”
“I know, but it looks real. Here’s my question: When you’re having those flying dreams, do you run into phone lines and shit?” Cynthia asked.
“I just fly. It’s like walking without gravity. Or swimming without water. I had one dream where I went to flying school and someone taught me how to do loop de loops.”
“I’m sick with envy,” Cynthia said.
“But I had one where Ajay set himself on fire.”
“There are videos where people start tiny fires in their palms with that hand-cleaner gel. They’re supposed to put them out immediately, only some people get taken to the ER with second-degree burns up to their chins.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“I think the only way you can stop that kind of dream from happening again is to have sex with him.”
“Right,” I said and climbed out of her bed.
“God, I wish Luke would set himself on fire in my dreams.”
“No. You don’t. At all.”
“We could change your hair color before you go to work,” she said. “I bought some new neons.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “Just coffee.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek and stumbled out to the kitchen.