World Gone Missing

by Doyle, Laurie Ann;

  The thing was he hadn’t always been the kind of guy who screamed, but a guy who would, occasionally, leave a hot cup of Earl Grey on the nightstand so Helena could have it there first thing after she woke up, a guy who’d spent hours in Holly Park one Sunday morning riding Toby back and forth on his bike, holding the back of the seat until the kid could keep a wobbly upright going, a guy who once at San Francisco State—where he’d studied math for a hot minute before heading into construction—had stood outside Helena’s dorm window in the night fog singing “Dear Prudence” at the top of his lungs just to hear her laugh.

  Only this morning, he’d said nothing, nothing about the cracked tooth, his hours spent staring sleeplessly up at the dark ceiling. He’d just tossed the toast he’d burned in the trash and stuck his head deep in the refrigerator as if he were desperate for something. Toby yelled he’d get himself to school and slammed his way out of the house.

  Tob. Tall for fourteen, tall and too skinny with a beaky face that, Lewis had to admit, looked a lot like his own at that age. He hadn’t wanted Toby to storm out like that. But what could he do? Helena had launched in—why was he always shouting, always forgetting, so tired, irritable? She was sorry his father died the way he did, but why couldn’t they talk about it? Just talk.

  Lewis let the blue of Karr’s eyes examine him. Talking was okay. Talking was fine. But yelling—he’d never say this to Helena—sometimes yelling felt so hellaciously good.

  He sighed out a breath.

  “Just another moment here, Lew.”

  He looked up to see Karr’s face half-hidden by the hand he still had in Lewis’s mouth. Pain shot up his cheekbone.

  Last night, just as he was falling asleep, Helena had slid her palm along the small of his back, the faintly hairy triangle she claimed to love. All he’d been able to do was mumble, “Let’s not,” and move his exhausted body, his wrinkled dick to the far side of the bed.

  “Should be fine now,” Karr said, extracting the needle. “Good and numb.”

  Lewis blinked. The pain now was happening to some distant body far below his. Numb was not the word. Good, not the word. Couldn’t give a damn, better. This was what he’d been waiting for.

  “Ready?” Karr had put on thick magnifiers, glasses that blurred his eyes a darker blue.

  Lewis motioned with his head yes.

  “Close your eyes, Lew. You know, debris can go flying.”

  Colors floated across the back of his eyelids. Soft yellows, granular blue. Which turned into electric green. The drill had started up. The sound rose to a bone piercing whine that wrapped itself around his brain.

  Breathe, Lewis, a voice somewhere inside him said. Not his voice really, but a weird combination of him, the nitrous, and what? He wasn’t sure. Something bigger and at the same time smaller. But a voice he listened to when it got going in his head.

  He inhaled.

  Exhaled.

  The colors faded and ran and shapes formed. Women. Long hair flying in the wind. Palm trees thrashing. Rain. The National Geographic, he remembered, the page open on the chair. Not the story about planets exploding, that other one. Women throwing themselves on a wet casket, faces twisted with grief. Men’s arms holding them back. Men everywhere. Lewis felt his mind reaching backward.

  “Turn a little to the right, please, Lew,” Karr said. “That’s fine.”

  Lewis turned, breathed. Now he was floating, sinking, bobbling again against the ceiling as if such a thing as a drill didn’t exist, as if a dead father, an angry son, didn’t exist. In. Out. In. His body hollowed, air filling his fingertips. He became a long tube of effervescent breath. His brain glowed.

  “Suction, please.”

  When Molly used that dental thing to suck out his mouth, her arm touched his. Then, the soft tip of her braid. He couldn’t help thinking about that hair, the light hair on her arms, the fine line he imagined running past her waist. Her pubes, were they blonde, too? Out of another darkness in his brain, something else rose, women, different women, lying on the thick, low branches of trees, all of them blonde everyplace a woman could be. He must have been all of fourteen, that magazine open, too, the page stretched so he could see everything. Lionesses, the women looked like, cheetahs half-hidden in leaves, ready to pounce, ready for anything.

  Lewis felt something at the core of him swell, press against the zipper of his jeans. A nice firm press. Definitely firm. He would have smiled but a hand was in his mouth.

  “A little wider please, Lewis. That’s fine.”

  Then—his father had burst in, ripped the magazine out of his hands, thrown it across the room, his eyes glittering with anger. Or was it shame? His father’s arms, Lewis remembered, the long dark force of them, the black hair.

  This! his father yelled, spitting the sound, This is how you spend your time! Well, time is something you’re not going to have much of anymore, buddy. Time is going to get pretty scarce around here, what with all the chores you’ll be doing, all the weeding and raking and mowing and hauling—

  Lewis felt hard bits of metal—or tooth?—hit the inside of his cheek. He closed his eyes tightly together. He wouldn’t think about his father, the yelling, rage, disappointment. He’d focus instead on his tooth, what was left of his molar, caught in the light of the drill that was attached to an arm that was attached to a human being.

  “Open your eyes now, Lew.”

  The drilling noise stopped, the air felt strangely empty. Lewis’s eyes opened. He saw latexed fingers mounded in his mouth, Karr’s brown head, and the edge of Molly’s nearly white one. The light above his head glowed, the one-eyed light. He brought in another breath. His arms and legs softened, became as distant as the arms and legs of the two bodies moving around him. He remembered dead leaves and grass stretching across the lawn in perfect piles. Perfect, or else redone. Decades passed. Suddenly, it seemed, his mother called to say his father was in the hospital with pneumonia. Which by three o’clock the next morning had gotten worse. Much worse. Lewis blinked.

  “A little to the left, please.”

  His eyes floated beyond Karr’s. In the fluorescent diamonds of the light lay something. A question, maybe. A dream question, the kind you recognize instantly the moment you enter the dream, but always slips away as soon as you’re awake. Lewis felt his lungs fill, rise like wings from his chest. He turned.

  “That’s fine.” The drill started again.

  Was this how his father had felt at the end? Turn left. Right. Open your mouth. Close. People leaning over him, pressing forward. No. Yes. Good. Fine. A white bibby thing under his chin, too. His father’s mouth open, pink, no teeth, like a bird’s. A bird too old and sick to bite anymore.

  “Water?” Lewis had asked his father. He was surprised how much he cared. “Can I get you some water, Dad?”

  No, nothing by mouth, the nurse had said. Not even water. Your father could choke and that would be dangerous, his lungs what they are. But when the nurse went off to wherever she was always going off to, Lewis couldn’t help it. The old guy needed something. So dry and gray there in the hole of the hospital bed. His freckled hands on the sheet. Here, Lewis said, holding out some day-old 7UP. Only a sip, Dad. Just a little bit.

  But his father had choked, coughing, his face turning a violent purple, a color like blood but bloodier, his eyes bulging, his yellow hands jerking as if every little jerk was a syllable or a word or something that he, his son, should be able to understand, at least a little. Lewis was sure he’d killed his father, and all the nurses would come rushing in, see his father thrashing, swing their heads around and stare at the plastic straw still in Lewis’s hand. How could you do that? Kill your own father?

  Some blade-thin part of himself wondered if he’d wanted his father dead. That thought swirled through his brain. But his father had gone on to live two more days.

  No—Lewis felt his brain light up—n
o way he killed his father. It was his father who’d tried to kill him! In the garage that time when he was a senior. About his taking off for Amy’s, or the D in typing, or ramming the station wagon into the fence. One of those things, probably all of them. He remembered the carving knife in his father’s hand, still wet, shining under the fluorescent lights, the knife his mother had just washed up, so it must have been Thanksgiving or one of those sorry holidays when he was supposed to hang around all day and gratefully watch his father pour down one drink after the other until the littlest thing—a lost shoe, nicked door—would set him off, anger rising in his face like blood in a cut.

  Only this Thanksgiving, Lewis decides he’s taking off without a word. He turns to go but there’s his father in front of him, yelling, You get back in the house. Now! Lewis keeps walking and suddenly his father’s lunging, missing, missing, lunging, the sucker’s so wasted he can’t even keep the knife in his hand, metal clanging on the cold cement floor. His father’s fist crashes into Lewis’s chest, tumbling him to the floor so all he can do is kickkickkick at his father’s skinny legs and Lewis sees how easy it is, how sad a forty-nine-year-old man really is, so he jabs his foot one more time good and hard and knocks his father over, their bodies rolling, heads butting, hands clawing, hitting mops, brooms, the lawnmower, all that rage down to the core spewing open and oh-so-fucking free, and before he knows it, Lewis is running, anywhere at first, then to Ocean Beach, empty this time of year, cold, where he spends the whole day and then night on the freezing sand, shells digging in his ears like broken teeth.

  In the morning, he decides to go home—the old man has to be cooled off by now—so he picks up one sand-filled shoe and the other until in the distance he hears the whine of a motor. His father, for fuck’s sake, is mowing the lawn, mowing like it’s June and not November, making patient, straight rows as if his life depended on it, as if the grass isn’t brown and stubbly, his father dead set against looking at him, determined to make this one day like any other.

  “Lewis.” Karr’s voice sounded far away. “We’re ready for the temporary. I’ll just need a minute to prepare.”

  Karr’s thick magnifiers were off, his eyes still and waiting. Molly had vanished.

  Lewis adjusted the mask. “Okay, Ed.”

  But Karr didn’t turn back to the sink as Lewis had expected. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Lew.” Karr buzzed the chair up some. “How are you doing?”

  “Good.” Lewis sucked in a breath. “We’ll be done soon, right?”

  Karr nodded. “I mean, since your father passed.”

  It took a moment for Lewis to register these words. Passed, he hated that expression. “Me? Fine.”

  “Are you grinding more at night?” Karr’s tone was calm and insistent.

  “I’ve always grinded at night,” Lewis’s shoulders rose. “Nothing new.”

  “Two cracked teeth in three months. Not a good sign, Lew.”

  Lewis looked at his feet, way down at end of the chair. He could almost see the dust from the lot where he’d been working yesterday rising off the tips of his boots. Karr had Weejuns at the bottoms of his legs, loafers polished to a high glow. Asking was one thing. But getting into his business, that Karr shouldn’t do.

  “I’m fine,” Lewis said firmly. He watched Karr turn around and go back to work.

  A question pressed up against the light, refusing to let him go. Lewis remembered staring into his father’s mouth, the toothless mouth warped by the hard cone of the oxygen mask, the mask not yet removed. His father’s green-blue eyes were flat, all the way open. And his chest: no rise, no fall, no nothing.

  But was it nothing? Because his father’s body was still there, his fingers up on the white sheet, the freckled hands Lewis remembered now not hitting, punching, grabbing, but magically reaching out to catch even the wildest pitch, the crazy balls he’d lob high over his father’s head as a boy. His father fielded every curve, every furious grounder, all the pop-ups, and the up up and aways. Nothing had to be perfect then. The blue dream of night would come on, stars slipping between the trees, and still, they would play. Was that the dream last night? Lewis remembered hands, old, young, hands swinging forward, reaching back, one, then the other, and the other, and all the others until they became a fleshy blur, the satisfying dark smack! of the ball flying somewhere above so high and hard and sweet. He remembered his father’s mouth laughing. Then open, there in the hospital bed. Refusing to close.

  “Just another minute, Lew. You’re going to like how this looks.”

  His boss had wanted him back on Monday, two days after the funeral. He’d had to practically beg for the rest of the week off, and when his boss finally agreed, he acted like he was so fucking swell. The house had to get up, didn’t it? The windows installed, walls trimmed, joists rolled. “But you go ahead, Lew,” his boss had said. “You take the whole week.”

  “Open wide.” Karr smiled down, holding the tooth between his fingers

  Lewis opened his mouth as much as he could. He felt Karr’s hands again.

  It’d gone fast that week. Too fast. People told him all kinds of things. Not just Sorry, but He’s at peace now. For the best. You’re in our thoughts, Lew. None of them had any idea who his father was. Who he—Lewis—was. Helena didn’t know, her own parents were still alive and kicking. How could he explain—answer the questions she kept asking—when he didn’t know himself? He kept trying to nail it, frame his feelings in hate.

  Then the good would come.

  The good would come when he was least expecting. The smallest thing could bring a memory on, the sight of a wild pitch across a grassy field, a collar flipped up against the wind, the wrinkles on the back of some stranger’s hand.

  Lewis blinked, harder this time.

  When Karr fit the new tooth over the stump of the old, a sour taste ran down the back of Lewis’s throat. He’d forgotten that bitter taste, tried not to breathe. But his chest rose and fell as if it belonged to someone else.

  “You doing all right, Lewis? We’re almost done here.”

  Lewis felt something wet roll out from the corner of his eye. It slid toward Karr’s hand, his busy hand. Breathe, Lewis told himself.

  Now tears were burning their way down his throat, dripping inside his ribs. Lewis twisted his fingers tightly together. This should not be happening. Maybe alone, or at home with Helena and Toby someplace downstairs. Not here. Not now.

  A second tear slipped out.

  Karr dabbed at the wet line with a corner of the white bib. He looked closely at Lewis. “Sure you’re all right?”

  Lewis stared up at Karr, his eyes wide and hard to read. Maybe old Karr wasn’t so bad after all. The way he knew things. Lewis went to say something, but instead of a tongue he found a thick mass wadded in his mouth, dry as cotton.

  “Yeah,” he managed.

  “Good. Let’s let you clear.” Karr switched the nitrous to oxygen, and lifted the mask away. The chair buzzed and suddenly Lewis sat upright, his ankles below knees, Karr’s picture window stood before him again. The first tear fell in a crooked line down his neck, erasing itself silently under his gray T-shirt. The brilliant edges of Karr’s walls turned into right-angles and beige surfaces. His once delicious breath became flat, ordinary. He couldn’t feel half his face. But his fingers—Lewis tapped the armrest a couple times—his fingers were there. Spongy, but there.

  “Okay, Lew. All set.” Karr flipped the light up and away.

  Lewis nodded, turning not toward Karr but the window. The branches growing against the glass looked different, darker green. It wasn’t fruit hanging off them, he saw, but the buds of something just now coming on. A wind tossed one back and forth. Helena could tell him what these things were.

  Helena. Lewis sighed. And Toby. They would be home before him, the house quiet. Too quiet. Sorry, he’d say, there in the living room or kitchen or wherever
they happened to be. I’m sorry about everything. What they’d say back, Lewis had no idea.

  He eased one foot out and felt for the floor.

  Ask For Hateman

  It’s like there’s this invisible wall between us. My father’s still in the park, but now he’s got this blue recycling bin in front of him. He pulls out a crushed Coors can, a Gatorade bottle, and a dirty wine jug, inspecting each carefully. He stares at me across the street—my heart nearly bursts through my chest—then away. Of course he doesn’t recognize me. It’s been forty years since we last saw one another. My father’s grown thin, his face narrow and his beard white and scraggly. But his shoulders aren’t hunched like you usually see in old men. He’s wearing this floppy hat covered with buttons, blue, green, black all flashing in the morning sun. What looks like a leopard-skin thong sits twisted around the hat band. I want to walk across the street, but my feet won’t go.

  “Ma’am?”

  The voice is deep and has a police-like authority. I’ve seen cops in the park, too, walking stiff-legged across the wet grass and hassling anyone who gets in their way. When I first turn around that’s what I see—a policeman, this tall man in dark blue bearing down on me. Then I realize the deep-set eyes are staring more at one another than me, and his feet are half-shoved in their shoes and the heels bouncing. His legs stop moving for a moment and the eyes focus in.

  “You have a beautiful chin,” he says.

  I’ve never thought of my chin as anything but bony, too skinny like the rest of me.

  He nods. “You’ve been by. I noticed. More than once.”

  Back in Ohio, I was sure it’d be easy. Just walk up and say, “Hey, Dad. It’s me, Toni.” Or Smudge or Pesto or Briar or any of other names he gave me. Names I never heard out loud but read on postcards from California. I brought a few with Dad’s ant-like black writing. The problem is I’ve been in Berkeley three days now and can’t get any closer to my father than ten feet.