Calf

by Andrea Kleine

  He clicked open the case and pulled out the guitar. In one uninterrupted motion, he laid back on his bed with the guitar lying flat across his wide middle. He held on to the neck with one hand and let the rest of his limbs go limp. The guitar rode up and down on his soft stomach as he breathed in and out. Jeffrey enjoyed its gentle weight resting on his body. He felt no need to strum when he was already receiving pleasure.

  His mother’s clacking heels on the floor upstairs brought him, reluctantly, back to reality. He rolled himself up to a sitting position with the guitar propped sideways on his thighs. Jeffrey hunched forward and let the instrument support his weight. In Jeffrey’s private universe, he was a lonely movie hero searching for comfort, for a life that didn’t ask anything of him, but provided for him, loved him, and didn’t bother him and didn’t ask him to give anything up. Jeffrey felt small. Jeffrey wanted to reserve as much of Jeffrey as possible for himself. The shrink presented a quandary: it would buy him some time, but eventually his parents would want to see results, and Jeffrey knew that at the end of the series of prescribed visits, he would have no results to give. He would have to stay one step ahead of the game.

  Perhaps, Jeffrey thought, my lie is worth living.

  JEFFREY REACHED ACROSS the table for a second pork chop and a second helping of mashed potatoes. His father looked up from his plate, noticed the transaction, and paused his mechanical chewing long enough to speak.

  “Don’t you think you’ve had your fill?”

  Jeffrey froze with the spoon hovering between the serving dish and his plate. It bobbled above an uncovered sliver of wood that shined from his mother’s daily wipe-downs with Pledge.

  “It seems to me you’ve had your fill.”

  Jeffrey dropped the spoon back into the large bowl, letting it land with a wet plop.

  “He’s a growing boy,” his mother said quietly.

  “He’s growing more sideways than up. And he’s no boy. He’s a man. When I was his age . . .”

  And here Jeffrey dropped out. He was an expert at it. He didn’t even need to take LSD, he could just flip the magic switch inside his head and his father’s voice would be tuned out. He usually replaced him with a Beatles song. Some nights he went through entire albums in his head.

  But he was still hungry.

  His mother was harder to block out.

  “I just don’t believe in denying someone food if they’re hungry. You can’t just say, ‘Don’t eat.’ You have to be organized about it and start a diet. Otherwise, it’s not healthy.”

  His mother would have to back this up with a magazine article if his father was in an arguing mood.

  The black plastic spoon handle was pointing at Jeffrey, calling him back to the dim dinner-table universe. It was a microphone beckoning him to sing. It was whispering, “Show time!”

  “I have an announcement,” Jeffrey said demurely into the plastic mic.

  His mother looked at him and nodded encouragingly. She probably thinks I got a job, he thought. His father rolled his eyes and kept on eating.

  “I’m moving out.”

  Although it hadn’t yet materialized on his face, Jeffrey felt a beam start to glow inside his soft chest.

  “Did you get the job at the club?” his mother asked. He had interviewed for a kitchen job at their country club where his dad played golf with business cronies. It was eons ago and he never heard back. When he went in and filled out an application, the other kitchen workers looked embarrassed for him. He was crossing a line. Just as some kitchen guy with tattoos and a hair net would never be allowed to play golf at the club, Jeffrey would never be allowed to work in the kitchen. He learned his place. He was better than that.

  His father chewed, waiting for an answer.

  “I’m moving to California.”

  Jeffrey could see his mother’s throat tighten in a panic. His father stopped chewing but didn’t swallow. Jeffrey imagined his father’s food melting into liquid and mixing with saliva in the pocket of his cheek.

  “What do you plan to do out there?” his father asked.

  “I plan to move out there to live.”

  “But what do you plan to do? Do you even have a plan?”

  “My girlfriend, Pam—”

  “You have a girlfriend?” His mother was turning to putty.

  “My girlfriend Pam is going to be an actress and I am going to try and break into the music business.”

  “Break into the music business doing what?” His father was a hard sell.

  “Writing songs. Writing songs for movies and TV shows.”

  “What makes you think you can do that?”

  “Every TV show has a song. Somebody’s got to write them.”

  “Don’t you think they hire professionals to do that? Do you know anyone who does that?”

  “He certainly does know a lot about music,” his mother piped in trying to defend him. “He has all those records. And the guitar.”

  “I thought you were interested in painting.”

  “I can do both.”

  “No, you can’t. You need to focus on one thing. That’s your problem. When something gets too hard for you, you switch to something else. You never get good at any one thing. It’s about commitment, Jeffrey. You made a commitment to go to college and now you’ve reneged on that. Do you think Jesus kept changing his mind about what he believed in? No, he held fast. He made other people come over to his side, to his beliefs. That was his attitude.”

  His father shoveled another forkful of food and dumped it in his mouth. Jesus ate this way too.

  “And who’s this girl?” he asked.

  “She’s my girlfriend.”

  “Where’d you meet her?”

  “At school. I told Dr. Gans about her.”

  “You can tell Dr. Gans about her but you can’t talk to us? Does Dr. Gans know about your big plans?”

  Jeffrey knew that the best answer was no answer. Keep them guessing then spill it all.

  “I thought it would be best to tell you in person, as opposed to just leaving you a note.”

  It worked. His parents looked truly shocked.

  His mother was about to cry. She asked Jeffrey what he was going to live on until he found work. He told her he still had some Christmas money left and a savings bond from Grandma. That worked too. His mother knew it wasn’t much. Jeffrey saw the tear buds sprout from the corners of her eyes, as though the skin of her face had stretched to its limits and began to bleed tears.

  “Where are you going to live?” his mother asked as tears dribbled down into the napkin on her lap.

  “We’re staying with some friends of Pam until we get our own place.”

  “Your mother and I would like to meet this girl before you take off across the country with her.”

  “She already left. She’s out there already. She left a couple days ago.” That was a good one, he thought, fast and smooth.

  “When is this migration taking place?” His father was agreeing a little too easily, Jeffrey thought. It was as though he wanted him gone.

  “Saturday.”

  Jeffrey hadn’t really decided on a date before that moment. Part of him wanted to say, “Tomorrow,” for dramatic effect, but he thought it might be too over-the-top. Saturday gave them three days to adjust.

  Jeffrey didn’t want to say anything more. He was looking for a way to end the conversation. His father solved this for him. He placed both palms flat on the table and stood up, pushing out his chair with the backs of his knees. He looked at Jeffrey and walked away from the table.

  ON SATURDAY, JEFFREY’S mother drove him to the airport. His father had gone into the office to catch up on paperwork but left a greeting card on the breakfast table that said: “I appreciate the risk you are taking to move your life forward. I wish you luck. Work hard. Love, Dad.” It was a typical note from his father. Jeffrey got similar ones on his birthday.

  His mother kept circling, looking for a place to park, growing more and more an
xious. On the third sweep, Jeffrey asked her to let him off at the curb with the red caps. Jeffrey got out and pulled his guitar and suitcase from the trunk. When he walked around to her window to say good-bye, Jeffrey knew she had been crying. She had snuck in a quick tissue wipe when he removed his luggage and now her makeup was smeared from left to right. She had enough time to wipe her eyes, but not enough to check her face in the rearview mirror.

  She put on a big I’m-proud-of-you face. She looked like a doll that was melting in the sun.

  “Here, Jeffrey,” she said and reached for her purse. She pulled out a white envelope from the bank and pressed it into his hand. “It’s a little something to help you until you get on your feet. Put it somewhere safe.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And I’d like to meet this girlfriend of yours. I’m glad she’s from around here. That way you can visit together.”

  “Okay.”

  He leaned in and gave her a hug. He didn’t like to get too mushy in public, but he figured he owed it to her for the bankroll.

  As Jeffrey walked into the airport terminal, the sliding glass doors magically parted to let him in. Welcome, they said, the world is yours.

  Jeffrey thought he could go anywhere.

  THE GAME OF LIFE

  After New Year’s, Tammy and Steffi visited their dad for the first time since they moved to the DC house. They went to his apartment and he made dinner—Howard Johnson’s fried clams from a box and frozen Tater Tots he heated up on a cookie sheet in the oven. Tammy thought they were both quite good dipped in ketchup. Tammy and Steffi spent the night on his living room floor in sleeping bags they had brought from home. The next morning he took them out to a restaurant for breakfast. Tammy and Steffi ordered waffles with strawberries and whipped cream on top. It was like eating dessert, but technically it was breakfast.

  It took longer for their dad to drive them home than it used to. It used to be that if they left his apartment when one TV program was over, but before they showed scenes for next week, they could get home in time for the next show or maybe only miss the opening theme song. Now it took about an hour, or fifty-five minutes to be exact. It might be even longer since they started from the Waffle House and not from their dad’s apartment. When they got to Bemis Street, Tammy’s dad didn’t shut off the car and get out, he just turned around in his seat and said, “Okay, bye,” as he reached back to give them a kiss. Tammy and Steffi didn’t get out of the car right away because they were waiting for him to park. After a minute, Tammy realized he wasn’t going to get out, walk them to the door, and talk for a few minutes with their mother. Tammy pulled on the handle and got out of the car; Steffi followed her, scooching across the seat, her skirt dragging up over her tights. They walked up the steps to the front porch and their dad drove off.

  Kids in DC got Reagan’s inauguration off from school in January 1981. Tammy asked her mother if they could go to the parade, but she said no. Tammy asked why not, and her mother said, because I didn’t vote for him and it’s too cold. She said she never understood why they had that parade in January when it’s freezing outside. Tammy said the New Year’s Day parade is in January and her mother said that’s different because it’s in California and it’s warm all the time there. The next day back in Mrs. William’s classroom, they took down the yellow construction-paper ribbons that were taped to the windowpanes. The hostages in Iran were released on Inauguration Day.

  Tammy and Steffi and Hugh settled into a walking-to-school routine. After their mother and Nick left for work, the three of them would sit on the front porch steps and wait for the other neighborhood kids, the ones who lived farther away from school and deeper in the nice neighborhood, to make it to their house. Gretchen and Monique lived on the same block of 46th Street as Steffi’s friend Kirin; Tammy and Steffi lived closer to school on the corner of 43rd. Monique didn’t walk to school because she took gymnastics in the morning, but Gretchen and Kirin would hook up with Tammy, Steffi, and Hugh at 43rd Street and walk the rest of the way with them.

  Gretchen thought it was cool that there were no grown-ups at Tammy’s house during the day. She didn’t care that Tammy had to baby-sit Hugh after school half the time or that they weren’t allowed to watch TV in the living room. Gretchen said, “At least you have some privacy and your mom’s not snooping around all the time.”

  In Steffi’s room there was a big closet that didn’t have any doors and an old three-drawer dresser was shoved inside and took up most of the space. Steffi and Kirin would stand on top of the dresser and sing songs to the radio, using a hairbrush as a microphone, and Gretchen and Tammy would pretend to be deejays. “That was Juice Newton’s ‘Queen of Hearts’!” “I’m Kasey Kasem.” “And I’m Wolfman Jack.” “You’re listening to Q107—Capitol Rock!”

  Tammy didn’t really like playing with Steffi and her friends because they were younger than her and not as mature. Gretchen didn’t seem to mind. Tammy thought maybe it was because Gretchen was an only child and she didn’t get that having a younger sister and half brother was annoying. But when Steffi and Kirin started lining up stuffed animals to play “school,” Gretchen agreed with Tammy that the game was stupid, and she and Tammy stopped hanging out with them, stopped waiting for them after school, and kept the separator door between the bedrooms shut.

  Steffi and Kirin were more annoying than average third graders because they liked to show off and pretend they were smarter than Tammy and Gretchen. It made them crazy that Tammy and Gretchen kept the separator door shut and didn’t hang out with them anymore because they had no one to make fun of and embarrass and rope into one of their stupid games. They finally came up with something a few weeks later. Tammy and Gretchen came home from school and heard footsteps running across the upstairs hallway. When they got up to Tammy’s room, Steffi and Kirin peeked at them through the window of the separator door and burst out laughing.

  “Oh,” Steffi said, “it was just you.”

  Tammy ignored them and asked Gretchen if she wanted to do homework in her bedroom or downstairs at the dinner table. She could hear Steffi and Kirin whisper something to each other because they were right on the other side of the separator door. They giggled quietly for a moment and then slowly turned the knob.

  Steffi was pink and puffy from laughing. She still had a tiny blue mark in her cheek where she once accidentally stabbed herself with a pencil. The doctor had said it would work its way out, but it was still there.

  Kirin took a deep breath and held it, smiling.

  “Do you want to see something?” Kirin asked.

  “What?”

  “Do you want to see it or not?”

  “What is it?”

  “First you have to tell us if you want to see it,” Steffi said.

  Steffi always said idiotic things like that.

  “How am I supposed to know if I want to see it if I don’t know what it is?”

  “Because we won’t show it to you if you don’t say you want to see it.”

  Tammy didn’t say anything. She tried to ignore Steffi. Steffi was just trying to embarrass her in front of Gretchen.

  Kirin looked back and forth at Tammy and Steffi like a dog waiting to see what was going to happen. She wore her bright blonde hair in two ponytails on either side of her head. This also made her look like a puppy with floppy ears. And she had a goofy expression. She had big blue eyes that were too shiny and her mouth was always trying to suppress a grin. Tammy didn’t have a dog, but she knew this was what they were like.

  Gretchen plopped down on Tammy’s bed, opened her math book, and muttered, “Whatever,” without looking up.

  “Fine,” Tammy said, figuring it was the only way to get rid of them.

  Kirin’s eyes bugged out and she and Steffi ran down the hall. When they came back they stood in front of Tammy’s bed hiding something behind Steffi’s back.

  “Look!”

  Steffi thrust her hands in front of Tammy.

  They were pictures.
Pictures of her mother and Nick. Naked. There were a couple of her mother totally naked sprawled out against their rainbow bedspread on the floor of their bedroom. There was one of Nick lying on the rainbow bedspread, his legs stretched out and his feet crossed at the ankles. There were five or six in all. The last one was of Nick. It was Nick totally naked taking a picture of himself in a mirror. The mirror was on the back of the closet door in their bedroom. He was standing sideways, one hand holding on to his penis, holding it straight up, big and stiff. He had his head turned to face the mirror and his other hand held up the camera in front of his face.

  Tammy heard the bed creak as Gretchen stood up and looked over her shoulder. Gretchen half snorted and half laughed and said, “Oh my God,” but Tammy didn’t say anything and she didn’t look at Gretchen. She couldn’t stop looking at the pictures. She kept flipping through them, stopping on the last one of Nick. This time she noticed he was wearing socks. And his watch. He looked like a skinny robot. His arms and legs were like sticks from a stick figure and the camera covered his face like a mask. She could still see his hair. And underneath the camera it looked like he was smiling. Tammy couldn’t quite see his mouth, but it looked like he was smiling. Like he was proud of himself. Or he knew something he wasn’t going to tell you. Two little balls of light had hit the mirror and bounced off. That was from the flash. Tammy knew it was. She knew because it was her camera.

  That’s what made her keep staring at the last picture. She could tell when Steffi first handed her the photos that they were from a Polaroid camera because of the black back and the white frame with the thick part on the bottom. Tammy knew they were Polaroids, but she didn’t get it until she saw Nick standing there with his penis in one hand and her camera in the other.

  Tammy didn’t want to mention the camera part to Gretchen. She was too scared to think that her mother and Nick had used her camera. How did they get it? Had they snuck into her room in the middle of the night while she was asleep? Tammy kept the camera on the shelf above her desk, but she didn’t want to look at it right now to see how many pictures were left. She didn’t want to draw Gretchen’s attention to it. Gretchen might tell Monique or someone. She might tell someone else. And it was gross. There was something gross about it. About them using her camera. Had they bought their own film for it? Tammy wanted to know. It was expensive. Almost six dollars. It was expensive because it was Polaroid and you didn’t have to pay for developing. Tammy didn’t even take that many pictures herself because it was so expensive and she had to pay for it out of her allowance. It was like they had stolen from her. They had done it once before. Tammy kept her savings in a tin peanut brittle can leftover from when she was a Campfire Girl in the third grade. Once she had come home and her peanut brittle can was on the wrong shelf, and when she looked inside, ten dollars was missing. She had saved up almost thirteen. Tammy ran hysterically to her mother and said they had been robbed. Her mother said they hadn’t been robbed. She and Nick had taken the ten dollars because they needed gas money. Tammy cried and said they didn’t even ask her. “If you keep this up,” Nick said, “you’re not going to get it back.”