Lit Riffs

by Matthew Miele

  “No, no, no,” I say—screw this sick-to-my-stomach feeling—“I’ll tell you what is a joke. Getting a working mother out of the library to come here for nothing. Scaring kids at school for no reason.”

  Stampp blinks as if I’d shook him from a long sleep.

  Which gives me more backbone. “I can’t believe this! Mr. Plates here dawdles around with the secretary downstairs and makes me look tardy, plus, for Christ’s sakes it was a joke, the auction thing. And coming to my boys’ school? Is that allowed? Do you intimidate little boys to get your jollies? Do you have like a quota of honest people you have to mess with every month?”

  “Mrs. McQuaid—”

  “I’m a taxpayer!” I even stomp my foot, a little. This isn’t me: more often than not I’m by the card catalogs forcing a sweet grin when comb-over perverts breathe garlicly in my face. But now anger’s lifting a sob halfway up my throat. “I am a taxpayer!”

  “Mrs. McQuaid—”

  “Mr. Stampp, I have a really good girlfriend at the Palmetto Standard.” Which is a lie. But it seems to work; Stampp’s started to rub his forehead. I take a step toward the door. “You know I did nothing wrong, Mr. Stampp. I have rights. I also have my congresswoman’s phone number.”

  “All right, Mrs. McQuaid.” He chuckles sadly—I take that as a good sign. “All right now.”

  Plates gazes at me with this heavy-lidded, almost-smiling look that—I could swear—seems halfway dirty. It reminds me of some smirks that got me into trouble in the old days. But I’m out the door so fast, it’s like Plates’s own fat hands are pushing me from behind.

  When I get home, Dylan’s standing to greet me, his teeny Oscar Mayer out, the floor a puddle behind him. I want to yell, but I’m afraid to, as if they’d bugged my house or something.

  That Saturday, someone rang our bell. I answered in my robe, and there stood my ex, Dave the Rave.

  “Hey, kitten,” he says, this close to pornographic with those jeans two sizes closer to my measure than his. His mindless blue eyes still look right inside me. Of course he’s doing his normal, droopy-necked lean-in, and his face—which has gotten a little puffy—moves too close to mine. Dave the Rave deals in the discomfort of women.

  It’s noon, I haven’t brushed my teeth, so I aim my talk away from his nose. “What now, Rave?”

  “That’s it?” His voice comes as a raspy warning about how far desire could throw you if you let it. He’s wearing a giant, silvery belt buckle. Had he always been so damn pale? He says, “That’s all you got for me, Nan, in my old bathrobe?” His belt buckle reads, rhythm rave.

  “Come the fuck inside, already.”

  By the time the Rave’s pigeon-toed his new cowboy boots over the stained part of the rug, the kids have barreled in. Dylan can’t stop screaming, “Dad, Dad, Dad,” in his Hendrix footies. “Dave the Rave! Dave the Rave!”

  Mo just ticks his head back: “Dads, what up?”

  Before long, little Dyl is standing one foot in front of the other, toes circling into the floor. “There’s this program, it’s in school”—the kid’s talking faster than normal—“and ‘contemplation’ is when you go into your head and you stay there and decide what’s wrong and right, and if you’re smart, you choose what’s right.”

  “Your father and I have to talk now,” I say.

  Dylan stares at his circling foot. “When I’m bored, I watch TV in my mind.”

  Mo interrupts his brother with a nasty little laugh. “Dad, how’d you have such a faggot for a son, yo?”

  The Rave’s been inside the house less than a minute, already he’s massaging his eyes and groaning. After a second he thinks of how to answer Mo. “Hey,” he says, “that’s what I asked Dr. Himmelfarb when you popped out, Morrison.” This gets big laughs from Dyl. After that, The Rave turns serious: “Now, you guys just let me talk to the old lady, okay?”

  This hushes the kids, but it doesn’t get them to leave. Before I know it, the boys are running around the kitchen, quietly, and Dave the Rave and I sit face-to-face at the table. His curly (dyed) black hair looks like a poodle stretched out from his scalp down his back.

  “So, Nan,” he says, “what’s this about the F-reaking BI?”

  I turn to the boys. “Okay, get away now. Get away, kids.” And, surprise of the week, they leave without a stink.

  “First, Dave,” I say, “it’s not the FBI, it’s the FSACWCCA.”

  He snorts and shakes his head—his take on an adult-type stare. He’s given me that look twice before, once when I told him I was pregnant with Dylan, and it’d take too long to go into the other time.

  “Oh, Dave,” I say. His Drakkar aftershave is all cinnamony in my nostrils. I try not to look into his baby blues or hear this motherness in my voice; I want to punch him in his perfect turned-up nose. “Don’t pretend that I am what you are, okay?”

  “Nan”—he’s sighing—“how am I the fuckup this time?”

  I sigh right back. Arguments that could take ten hours or years often come down to one short sigh or two.

  “Look, baby.” He actually tries on the stupid smile I won’t fall for anymore—pouty and built on what he’d like you to believe is kindness. “I just don’t need the F-reaking BI calling. Not for my little guys. What father wouldn’t be upset …”

  “Don’t start with that.” His sister Rae told me that he’s having problems with Sheri—a hussy, by the way, that Dave first met when she cleaned his teeth. “I think you should go now, Rave. Get out.”

  For the longest time, he squints like a cowboy trying to see an Indian across the prairie. I start to drum my fingers on the table. This isn’t much of a game of chicken; we’re both pretty sure I’m not really kicking him out. A wind hisses its way inside through the goddamn kitchen window he never caulked.

  Then the Rave turns his huge, smooth hands palms-up. We both look at his long, beautiful fingers for a time.

  “How’s the music going?” I ask finally. “Still doing grunge ten years too late?”

  He squints at me again. The wind’s stopped, and I bite my fingernails a little.

  “Don’t do that. It augments the roughness of the cuticle,” he says.

  “Listen,” I say, “I don’t think they’ll call again.” When I close my eyes, I get a picture of the openmouthed, zombieish look on the Rave’s face every single time I’ve seen him at the drums. Or having sex with me. “The FBI, I mean.”

  “I don’t think so, either, Nan.” He runs a hand through his hair, it takes him nearly five minutes. “Not that I’d know what those type of guys would do, though.” His face looks baggy and colorless. “Okay, the important thing is, I want to do right by the boys, and I know I haven’t, so don’t bring it to the fore. Because, hearing about the internet thing, I was just—”

  “Don’t, Rave.” My ex is the only guy who I always know exactly what he’s going to say. “Dave, don’t say ‘concerned.’ Not you.”

  Next afternoon, tired after pickups at the supermarket, the drugstore, the Blockbuster, and cold after getting caught in the rain, and grateful to get out of my bra, I sat on my throne, eyeing the thin black stripe that pointed across my bathroom ceiling. Brown curlicues raked out from its sides. Not to mention the sink was discolored, the varnish chipped. I was depressed, I admit that.

  Soon I hear the kids sneak into my bedroom, which is officially off-limits for them; guess they don’t know I’m on the toilet. I can hear them enough to make out the words “Mr. Plates”—but I have to work to catch the rest.

  It’s Morrison who says, “Don’t you agree it would be cool?”

  “Um, do you really think?” says Dylan. That boy can be so sincere.

  “Um, do you really listen?” Morrison cries. “What’d I just say, bullcrap bag? Yes, I think. The Rave thinks so, too, right?”

  My stomach squeezes into a fist. I can’t be sure what they’re talking about; of course I imagine the worst. Not a word has been spoken in this house about Plates or the FSAC-whatever sin
ce that time watching Rugrats. Are they talking about how great it would be to live with their dad?

  Fine. Let Junior Gourmet survive on Chee·tos, let him try to sleep when there’s band practice at 3 a.m.

  Maybe I’m being crazy; who knows what they’re saying? I flush the toilet and just sit there, pulling my robe tight around me.

  The boys say it at the same time: “Mom?” Morrison says, “Are you home, Mom?”

  “Um, do you really listen?” I yell. “What’d I tell you about playing in my bedroom?”

  “Sorry,” says Morrison. “Um, sorry,” says Dylan in his sissiest voice.

  “What have I told you little jerks?” I come teeth-clenched out of the bathroom, but they’re already gone.

  Next night, Plates was at my door, grinning over his cardigan.

  I led him to the kitchen, let him drink my coffee. I thought, What if I poison the cream?

  Yes, I’d been stupid to go on eBay, but this had nothing to do with that. You couldn’t tell me that what was happening to us wasn’t just fate. Fate with its fat hands had me like a dog on a leash.

  “It’s simple,” Plates tells me as he sips. He purses his lips, barely touching the cup, and I can picture him as an eighty-five-year-old dame or duchess. “We had occasion to talk to your children three times this past week, Mrs. McQuaid, as you know.”

  “Oh,” I say. You’d think nothing could surprise me anymore, but this sucks all the air out of my lungs. “I didn’t know.” I make myself stare into Plates’s grays and not look away this time.

  “Yes, I think you did know,” he says, soft enough to sound apologetic.

  Setting my eyes on his arched, pretty eyebrows, the sweat dots under his nose, watching the point of his tongue tap wet and pink on his bottom lip, I have an unexplainable flash of the two of us dancing till we’re out of breath and sweating—I have to turn away into my coffee cup. I don’t realize I’m pinching my own knuckle until it starts to hurt. I don’t stop it.

  “Why wasn’t I present at such a meeting?” I ask.

  “We have—concerns. The department, I mean.” He blinks, giving the gentle, head-cocked smile most people show only to little kids who they’re tucking in at night. “Here’s a line from your son Dylan, received Tuesday last. He said, ‘One thing I learned is, when your mom is mad at your dad, don’t let her blow-dry your hair, ’cause it’ll burn on your scalp.’”

  “Why?” My eyes are closed. I imagine blood dribbling from my knuckle, just one bead forming. “Why wasn’t I present at such a meeting?”

  His condescension comes out as a loud huff from his nose. “Your husband—David McQuaid?—he’s been present.”

  After that, I’m not sure I hear anything Plates says. But I start to get my brain around what’s happening to me, to us.

  Hours later, the kids are asleep. I go into their room; I don’t turn on the light. I step to Morrison’s bed. He can tell I’m there, he always knows things in his sleep, and he pulls away. Dylan, he looks so skinny, sweet-dreaming across from his brother. After a while I go back to the kitchen for more coffee. I don’t feel like sleeping.

  Another working afternoon, I find myself at the Human Services building, sitting in a fluorescent-lit, speckle-tiled conference room across from Mr. Plates and Mr. Stampp. There’s a wide-button, black phone between us. Everything Stampp is doing—the way he lisps a little and scratches his huge shaved head as he stares—seems meaningful, cunning somehow, and scary as hell. His humid yellowy eyes look like soap bubbles shivering on pavement.

  When it’s my turn to speak, I go, “Gentlemen.” It’s like I’m watching a movie, that’s how I’ve planned this speech. I’m wearing my tan pants suit. “You’ve got to admit, sirs, it’s most extremely hard to believe that one incident, one joke—”

  “Mrs. McQuaid,” Stampp cuts me off. He tilts his face toward the ceiling to calm himself. Then he fixes me with those damp eyes. “Isn’t there something else you’d like to admit to us today?”

  Panic gurgles in my stomach like the last slop of foam in a sink. I turn to the window almost hoping for another slow shower of envelopes; there’s only burnt-edged clouds and the top of that elm tree from a different angle. “I don’t think so, sir, no.”

  “Oh, really?” This is Plates. He’s giving me quick little nods and breathing loudly from his mouth.

  “Mrs. McQuaid,” Stampp starts to say …

  I don’t need to hear any more. I know exactly what he’s talking about. It’s this: the night I found out my ex had been meeting with Plates, I went on-line for another kid-auction joke.

  You may be wondering what would possess a woman to be such a moron. Doesn’t every stupid mistake seem a mystery, once you look back on it?

  At the time I’d been angry, wound up, drained, scared, desperate for a stress killer; I’d felt low and spiteful and hungry for a laugh at their expense. I can’t tell you how badly I wanted a laugh at their expense. The last time I’d done the eBay thing it had been a lot of fun. Nobody learns her lesson in one huge jump. Most of us climb the ladder one rung at a time. Who knows, maybe I hate myself. Looking to unload two brats, I’d typed stupidly, stupidly.

  Anyway.

  Now I’m missing most of what Stampp’s saying, but I zone back in on: “We are not going to take any direct action against you, Mrs. McQuaid.” He’s smiling. I try to look calm, but by this point my anger just about suffocates me.

  “But we are going to support your husband for custody,” Stampp says, scratching his bald head. “If it goes to trial—which we believe and frankly hope it will not.”

  “Trial? Dave the Rave? He doesn’t—”

  “Yes,” Mr. Stampp says. “He does.”

  Plates passes a folded-up notepaper to Stampp, who flattens it on the table and begins reading. “ ‘To whom it may concern. I admit and acknowledge that as a father I haven’t always done particularly good’ ”—Mr. Stampp half-smirks his fat half-smirk at Mr. Plates before going on—” ‘but, regarding that, I have decided with all my heart that I want to be the father that their mother as you can see, cannot. I love these children and care for them …’ Should I skip to the part, Mrs. McQuaid, where your ex-husband expresses his doubts that you are a good person ‘on account of disposition’?”

  Plates speaks up, his face gone red as a blister. “You’d be smart to listen to what I’m about to tell you. Negligence is no more unusual in my day-to-day than are blaring car horns on Meadows Street.” I’d never heard the guy use a loud voice, and now it’s like he’s got a megaphone. “Did you slap Morrison’s hand ‘until it was red’ not long ago? Keep quiet, Mrs. McQuaid, I’m going to tell you a story.” Plates is rubbing his own fat hand as he snorts. “Nineteen months back, a businesswoman told a large audience at a Republican fund-raiser that she was going to give herself a well-deserved break. How? By placing her kids in the closet for a few weeks. A funny joke, I am sure. I’ll wager everyone laughed. Two months later, it was I who found those kids, still in that godforsaken closet. This woman virtually warned two hundred people she was going to do it, and we received not a single concerned phone call.” The whole time Plates lectures, I’m focused on his teeth; I could swear they’re more level and full than before.

  “You may see yourself as a woman posting a joke on the internet.” He leans in, elbows on the table, his eyes trying to bore into me. “I see a woman starting the ride down the ski slope marked ‘unstable.’ When your son Dylan falls down, why is it that you ‘never’ pick him up? ‘Never’ is his word, Mrs. McQuaid. Why are the boys too frightened to venture into your bedroom? Is it because you yell at them? There is quite a case built up here. We are helping the case be built, to be frank. There exists a pattern.”

  I turn to Mr. Stampp, whose eyes are like the ice at hockey rinks, that blue almost colorless.

  “Dylan’s a funny kid,” I say. My voice is in rags. “He’s always goofing off. That’s why we call him The Goofer. Really, we do. He likes being The Goofer.”
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  No one’s listening.

  Stampp tells me something and picks up the phone to start dialing, and when he passes me the receiver, I want to be nice to Dave the Rave, to sound like I’m not upset.

  “Hello,” Dave says. I catch my reflection in the window. My hair is gray.

  The receiver gets damp with my sweat before the Rave and I start talking to each other.

  Years and years ago we’d spent a few hours on Hilton Head. This’d been the dawn that Morrison was conceived. The Rave’d been on tour with The Lilacs. We hadn’t been together in a while, and the band was set to run off again.

  Dave and I saved cash by sleeping on the beach, not that it was so romantic with the bitter cold sand, and my mouth dry; still, at the best moment the sun was rising and the water was rising, The Rave slept on his side near me, his hands tucked under his face, his bangs covering up his eyes, the air smelling like seaweed and like salt and Drakkar, and with a flicker of the brain, I knew then his baby was in me, don’t ask me how I knew it.

  It’s not like I’d thought of ponies and nannies, a big stone house. But we’d have to make a family now, I’d told myself.

  Dave and I worked a deal on our own. No courts; easy peasy. I said fine, big shot, try it for a month—Dave’d see if he could deal with the costs of kids and such, costs that are more than financial, as I told him. He swore he’d get up early enough to drive them to school, so they wouldn’t have to change districts.

  The boys couldn’t hold back from crying, of course, when The Rave rolled up this sunny morning—not even Morrison. I didn’t say a word, just opened the fucking door, handed my ex a bucket, a mop, a towel.

  “What the hell’s this?” Dave’s baby blues got all squinty and his mouth had trouble. His shirt showed lightning bolts around the word Alcoholica.

  I cracked open the door a little wider and let Dylan walk out. “You’ll see,” I said. My voice broke, but I managed to pat Dylan on the head without losing it too badly.