The Opposite of Music

by Janet Ruth Young

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you get him a pizza?”

  “Because he can’t eat pizza right now, and he isn’t hungry, anyway.”

  “Well, all right,” Dad says.

  “Dad, since when have you felt hungry? Jodie, didn’t Linda tell you he’s on a restricted diet?”

  “Why?” Jodie asks. “He already looks awfully skinny to me.”

  “I can’t explain the whole thing to you. It’s very complex, and it involves enzymes and things like that. My mother can tell you.”

  “It’s almost time for your wafts, Dad,” Linda says. She puts the bowl containing the pomegranate and its seeds aside. She takes a lemon half out of the refrigerator and peels off the plastic wrap.

  “What’s a waft?” Jodie asks.

  “It’s a special technique I use, where I squeeze a lemon under his nose and the oil from the lemon’s skin perks up his olfactory bulb.”

  “Where is the bulb? Right there in his nose?”

  “No, in his brain. So it makes his brain work better.”

  “Do you really think it helps?” Jodie asks, as they both hover over Dad in the living room.

  “See? Squeeze, stimulate. And that makes his brain better.”

  “I can’t believe something like that could really work.”

  “Maybe I’ll let you try it sometime after I show you the proper technique.”

  “I don’t know if I want to.”

  I’m waiting next to Dad with the newspaper that was just delivered, so we can start the crossword puzzle.

  “Why are you here again, Jodie?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?” A piece of hair with a purple barrette falls in front of Jodie’s eyes, and she bats it back against her freckles.

  “You were here yesterday, too. Don’t you have anywhere else to go?”

  “I wanted to come over and help Linda.”

  “Help her with what? She doesn’t even do anything other than juice a lemon once in a while. I’m the one with all the responsibility here.”

  “You don’t seem to me like you’re doing all that much.”

  “I am. I have a very ambitious program going on here.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, Billy.”

  “I’m not upset. We just have stuff to do right now. Just keep your opinions to yourself, okay?”

  CITRUS CITY

  Linda has gotten the idea that Dad would benefit more from constant stimulation of his olfactory bulb than from separate wafts of lemon oil or fresh lemon, so she comes home with a small lemon candle from the Dollar Store, which she and Jodie light in the living room near where Dad and I are playing cards.

  “No you don’t,” I say.

  “No I don’t what?”

  “Somebody’s going to knock that over and cause a fire. Candles are for two things, Linda: churches and birthdays. Do you see either of those in this living room?”

  “Stop trying to be such a big boss.”

  “Why do you think I have to be home day in, day out? Because I’m the only one with any sense around here. So put the candle out.” I look at Dad’s hand. He has three threes, and if he gets a fourth one he might be able to win. I try to remember how long ago one of us turned over a three.

  “It won’t fall over. It’s in a votive glass. And what about Dad? He has lots of sense.”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Now put the candle out, and don’t start me arguing in front of Dad. It just upsets him.”

  “Dad’s doing better. He slept for two hours last night. That’s because of my upping the lemons.” She balls up the wrapper from the candle and puts it in the pocket of Grandpa’s overalls.

  “Why do you two always fight so much?” Jodie asks.

  Dad gets up and starts pacing again. “That’s a good question,” he says.

  “Always?” I say. “Oh, I thought you were saying your own name, Always. Because you’re Always Here!”

  “Why are you getting so angry again?”

  “Look, Jodie, we’re under a lot of stress in this house. I don’t think you realize that we have some very serious problems going on with my father’s health. I don’t know if I need to talk to your mother or what I need to do, but we have to arrange for you to not be here so often.”

  “I like having her here,” Linda says. “She makes me feel better.”

  I put away the cards and go into the den to see what’s on TV. Dad stops pacing when he sees Michelle Kwan in a figure-skating competition. So the four of us watch that with the sound off. Jodie says Michelle is like a soul dancing. I like Michelle’s triumphant yet humble openmouthed smile.

  TREATMENT REPORT: DAY 69

  Mom has been using jumbo shrimp as the seafood choice, and Dad is happy that something he likes, something he used to order when we went to a restaurant, is on the program. Mom has been cooking the shrimp with extra garlic, per E. Sutter, and we all eat the shells and the tails, too.

  Last night Dad had an unbelievable sleep performance of four hours. This means he is finally getting better. I spent all day in school wondering what’s causing this improvement, so we can build on it. Could it be Michelle? The shrimp? The calisthenics? Could the candle really be doing something? I’ve noticed that Dad may be getting bored by the affirmations, so maybe I should pick a single really good one. “We are one”?

  After weeks of feeling sleepy in school, I’m beginning to feel more alert. Linda and I both believe that the special foods are improving our brain function.

  We did it. We’ve turned it around.

  TREATMENT REPORT: DAY 71

  Dad has stopped eating shrimp because he says they remind him of curled-up babies. Mom offered him sardines instead, but he says they look like corpses stacked up in a concentration camp. The past couple of days he has eaten only a forkful or two of four of the brain foods, so he also has to take vitamins and supplements in pill form. But then, once in a while, he gets a craving for nuts.

  Linda is gloating. Yesterday she ramped up the aromatherapy by going from one candle to two, each the size of a drinking glass. Then a girl at school who normally doesn’t talk to me asked, “Bob, why are you wearing insect repellent in the winter?” When I asked Mom if we could stop using the candles some of the time, she said no. But are they doing any good? Is Mom backing Linda up only to make Linda feel she’s contributing something?

  Dad was awake the past two nights and very agitated. Mom stays up as long as she can but sometimes asks me to take over at two or three a.m. so she can nap. I walk Dad around the house, sometimes saying affirmations at the same time. I no longer can be sure if anything’s helping, but I don’t know if I should say anything to Mom. Maybe it would make more sense to continue as we are for a few more days, just in case the situation breaks. When Dad started on meds, the doctor said the chemicals had to build up in his system. Maybe it’s the same with the food, the light, and the other cures.

  PAPYRUS

  “What’s all this?”

  “We’re mashing up leaves.”

  “Why.”

  “We’re going to make paper.”

  So this is Linda’s revenge. Shredded brown stuff, pulpy and stemmy, lies in a puddle of tea-colored water in the bathtub. Linda is using the potato masher, and Jodie has the wooden thing you use to pound meat—a mallet, I guess it’s called.

  “Get this mess out of here. I’m not running a day-care service, you know.”

  “This isn’t a mess,” Linda says. “It’s a worthwhile endeavor.”

  “You never have any fun,” Jodie says. “Is that why you’re mad?”

  “No, it’s because every time I open a door, you’re behind it.”

  “Do you want to make paper with us?”

  Mom had to go in for a special meeting at her office yesterday morning. Pudge was pressuring her to name a date when “all this” would be over and things at Brooksbie would get back to normal. I had to wait for Marty to show up at the house before I could leave for school
. Then Mom was enraged at my allowing Dad to sit in front of the light box, between my watch and Marty’s watch, a total of two hours. She said he will have to skip the light box for a few days because she thinks it’s dangerous. I said I thought that was a mistake, even though deep down I’m not sure it’s doing any good. And of course we had to pretend everything was okay, because we were talking in front of Dad.

  When I managed to get Mom out of the room, I told her that I couldn’t meet my family obligations if Jodie was going to be over all the time, that I would have to be paid for babysitting. “I’ll take care of Dad,” I said. “I’ll even take care of Linda. But I won’t take care of Jodie.”

  TREATMENT REPORT: DAY 75

  Dad went back on the light box today, starting small with ten minutes. I could have pushed to do more, but oh, well. He skipped it entirely for a few days because Mom thought he had had a light box overdose. He seems tired, so we’re scaling back on both the affirmations and the calisthenics.

  Most days he has been eating just a few forkfuls of the brain foods and maybe some nuts and a yogurt. But Mom thinks it’s important for him to get his seafood component so his brain functioning will improve. She offered him either tuna salad or crabmeat salad, but he wouldn’t eat it. Then she asked if he would eat lobster if she bought it, but he said no, so she isn’t spending the money. He lost a lot of weight last week. Would it be better for him to eat just anything to keep his strength up (as Jodie originally said)?

  I told Linda I couldn’t stand the candles anymore and demanded that she remove them. Complained about it to Mom, who sided with L.

  POISSON/POISON

  At dinner Linda and I are sitting at the table, eating our cooked salad. Dad has eaten only a small bowl of strawberries and is standing behind his chair. Jodie is miraculously absent.

  “That’s not enough,” Mom tells him. “Remember? You have to have some seafood every day.”

  “I can’t eat any more,” Dad says. “I’m full.”

  She already told him yesterday that if he doesn’t eat seafood he will have to take a drink of fish oil. She rustles a paper bag on the counter and comes back with a small cocktail glass.

  “You have to drink this,” Mom says.

  “Does it taste bad?” Dad asks.

  “No,” Mom says, and she takes a sip from it. “Look, I’m doing it.” Then she starts to cry.

  “Are you lying to me, Adele?” Dad asks her.

  “No,” she says, and she starts crying again.

  Then she leaves the glass on the table and goes to her room to get ready for bed. I pick up the glass. Linda and I both sniff it. It smells terrible. Mom stays in her room with the door closed, Dad is agitated, and I walk him around all night.

  A DISTANT SHORE

  A mouthful of steak-and-cheese challenges my jaw. The cheese forms a white glaze over knots of shaved meat. Bubbles of fat pop against the roof of my mouth. My mandibles ache. This is not a dream.

  I whisk inadequate napkins one after the other from a dispenser to absorb the grease. “Another one?” Gordy asks.

  I say no, still chewing, and chase the meat with black cherry soda that rinses clean and dry, almost salty.

  Gordy finishes his soda, and the door of the sandwich shop pulls closed behind us on a spring. Sand washes across the threshold and rubs the soles of my sneakers.

  “I’ll pay you back sometime.”

  Gordy shrugs. “Forget it.”

  We walk down the road to a beach. A recent sleetstorm has left pockmarks in the sand, and the tide has gone out, leaving patterns like dragged hands in the wet areas, Vs within Vs within Vs. Our shadows walk with us dully.

  Everything on this beach seems humanish to me. The moon, already visible at four p.m., resembles a fingernail clipping, and the fallen shreds of curly brown and black seaweed are snips from a giant’s beard.

  “What a great place.” The beach is right near Gordy’s house. It might even be a private beach. Once again it strikes me that everything about Gordy seems excellent. He’s one of those preppy, well-rounded types and will probably be way more successful than me.

  “Do your parents have a boat?” I ask.

  “My dad has a modified lobster boat. It’s in the marina for the winter.”

  Crap. I said “your parents” instead of “your father.”

  “We go out fishing for the weekend once in a while. Maybe you’d like to go with us sometime?”

  On the spectrum of moronic things to say, asking about someone’s dead parent as if they are still living is probably at the far end. How could I do this? Gordy’s mother died shortly after they moved to town, of cystic fibrosis. People were talking about him when they first got here, because when his mother brought him in to register for school, she kept spitting blood into a handkerchief, right in the administrative office.

  “Sorry. I forgot about your mom. Stupid.”

  “That’s okay. It’s not as bad anymore. She spent the whole last year talking to me about what to expect. That part was harder than it is now.”

  Then he surprises me by tossing an imaginary Frisbee. I catch the Frisbee and set the figures in my mind on it—the mother and father, little kitchen figures, diorama-like. I set them on it and whirl them out to sea, on their problem-plate, their Thought-Frisbee.

  I walked out again! I walked out and left Linda in charge! Linda and Jodie are in charge of Dad. If Lucky Linda knows so much about what he needs, and Jodie is so indispensable, they will do a fine job taking care of him. I don’t know whether Linda will tell Mom or not.

  A barge heading into the harbor makes an engining thrum that carries. Gordy and I race to the end of the beach, where a copper-colored granite shelf is ideal for sitting but sends cold through the seat of my pants. At our backs is a stone wall. Above it, trees have twisted into tough survivalist shapes.

  Gordy pulls a knit cap from his coat pocket. “Can you picture me out here this summer, maybe on the Fourth of July, with Brenda Mason or some other girl? I would have a blanket all spread out, maybe a portable grill. We’d be watching the fireworks over the harbor. You could come out too. Maybe it could be a double date. Who would you bring?”

  Out on the water, the barge has cut its motor and a tugboat aligns itself behind it.

  Is there anyone I can want? The prettiest girl I know is Lisa Melman, but she’s in Linda’s grade, and anyway, she’s not as nice as her mother.

  “I’m trying not to think too much about that stuff now. I’m trying to stay—I can’t think of a better word—pure.”

  “Pure with girls?” Gordy asks.

  “No, pure with thinking about only one thing at a time.”

  The tugboat, pushing, and the barge, gliding, are little and big, like the two-space and the five-space boats in the Battleship game. Concrete thoughts of chores to be done at home soften and rise. Mists, wishes, smoke signals. I’m not there. I’m here now. I got away.

  “How is your dad, by the way?”

  What to say? I brush the powdery sand into arcs with one hand.

  “He’s much better.”

  “That’s great.”

  “What was wrong with him, anyway?”

  “He was depressed.”

  “That must have been rough. He seems like a great guy.”

  “He really is.”

  “Glad to know he’s better, then.”

  I rub my palms together slowly and watch the grains fall. “It takes a while to get better in a really obvious way that you would see by looking at him or talking to him, but things are getting better…underneath. It’s more like an improvement in a different layer. An unconscious or subconscious layer.”

  “The human mind is fascinating, isn’t it?” Gordy says. “I’ve always wondered about stuff like that.”

  “He’ll probably be fully recovered soon. Maybe you can come by the house again.”

  “That would be great.”

  We’re both lying back now, watching scuds of clouds move in to smother the
moon.

  “Do you want to get an ice cream or anything?”

  “No, thanks. The sandwiches were enough. I should go home soon. I left without charging my headlight.”

  An arm of land reaches around the harbor. Across the water from us is a castle built by an eccentric inventor. It contains all kinds of things he lifted from humble little towns in Europe. A pipe organ, a reflecting pool of blue tile, even the coffin of a young girl. At the edge of the horizon, lights fall slowly from the sky—not shooting stars, but airplanes making their descent into Logan.

  “Right after my mom died,” Gordy says, “I would sit and look out here. Not toward Boston, but past it, where you could just keep going. I would try to convince myself that if I went far enough there was a place where we could all still be together.”

  “I know.”

  The sky darkens, but we lie on the rock like sacrifices. Then rain comes, hitting our faces like a metaphor.

  TREATMENT REPORT: DAY 77

  Dad refused to take his vitamins and supplements because he thought they might be unsafe. Mom was upset that he didn’t trust her, and she is still getting over the fish oil incident. She bought some nutrient milkshakes in small cans, and Dad agreed to drink one.

  A THREAT

  Mom is at the supermarket. I tell Linda that the lemon candles are driving me berserk and that if she does not remove them I will tear a hole in her plush Garfield and stuff the candles inside. We’re in her room, and I’m holding the Garfield and a pair of scissors. She leaps. We scuffle (quietly). We stop scuffling as Dad shuffles by.

  Linda looks in a book Mom bought and calls Jodie, who comes over with two new lavender candles from the drugstore, each the size of a coffee can. Linda explains to Jodie the healing properties of the new candle scent.

  I tell her the new candles are perfumey, cloying, and sickly sweet and I am sure Dad would feel the same, but she says too bad. She threatened two days ago to tell Mom about my leaving the house but has not done so yet. Jodie says I am a bad brother. It’s obvious from Mom’s expression when she gets home that she’s noticed the new candles, but she doesn’t say anything.