The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards

by Robert Boswell

  Lucinda

  Mistress of the Future

  Readings, Advice, Help

  What man alone in the world wouldn’t want to enter a building bearing such a sign? Especially when the Lucinda in question had eyes the faint blue of ice and a mouth that never quite closed, the endearing gap between her painted lips a dark, slippery shape like the reflection of a crow on moving water.

  They sat opposite each other in her rattan chairs that first time, their knees touching.

  “You’re nervous,” she said after taking his hands in hers.

  That impressed him, although any fool could have felt his hands tremble. He managed to nod.

  “A little,” he said, his voice cracking.

  Her lids slid over her eyes, which still roved about, their movement shifting the contours of their delicate hoods. Her body began to sway and her head tilted back. Although her breasts were wholly concealed, Teddy found that her bare neck, revealed so completely by this posture, became a sexual organ. The vertical furrows formed by the backward slant seemed so private and erotic that he could not quite catch his breath.

  What she had to say to him does not matter. Lucinda had no power to reveal the future, and about this she had no delusions. Neither was she an out-and-out charlatan, as she did believe herself to be sensitive to the needs of others and a help in their lives. She had taken two counseling courses at a community college in the suburbs. She had read books on how the body and mind might be healed. She also knew instinctively that vague suggestions had more power than direct predictions.

  With Teddy, she spoke a lot about his past: “There is someone important, a woman or girl, I think, who has never really understood you.” She touched on the present: “You’re not entirely appreciated by your employer, and you’re not really fulfilled there.” About the future, she hedged. “Someone is waiting for you to call. Only you haven’t met her yet—or maybe you have met her but didn’t realize how important she would become to you. She doesn’t even know she’s waiting. Poor girl.”

  That sort of rubbish. The traditional enticing murk.

  From the moment that her sinuous neck caused him an erection, Teddy Allen was hooked. He was the sort of man who could not grasp for long any idea that was not tied directly to a physical object, and so each time he returned to talk with her, her ideas seemed new and fresh, enlarged by his inability to hold on to them. The initial visit had cost a mere ten dollars. He now paid from thirty to fifty dollars, depending on the intricacy of the session. He owed rent. He had hocked his stereo system. He had begun eating just once a day. The backpack he had taken from an unlocked Lincoln had provided a wristwatch he had sold for ninety dollars. A pair of women’s shoes had taken up most of the bag, but he hadn’t yet sold them to the thrift shop. They would not bring much, despite their obvious elegance and relative newness. They did not quite smell new. Better than new somehow. He kept them near his bed.

  Lucinda opened the door before his hand could reach the knob. He knew she could see out through the dark glass, despite his inability to see in. He knew this, but he also credited her for fathoming his approach, the swinging door further evidence of her powers.

  “My,” she said, tilting her face to study his. “You have some kind of story to tell me, don’t you?”

  He thought, perhaps, she could see that he loved her. Then he remembered the priest and nodded.

  “Someone’s been to my apartment bothering me.”

  He hadn’t even gotten to eat because of the priest’s interference. Should he talk to her of his hunger? It seemed to him unnecessary to explain.

  Lucinda took his hands, sending an electric tingle through his limbs as she led him to their chaste and conjugal chairs.

  Because Mrs. Corbus had no Mr. Corbus, his disappearance an event of much local notoriety, and because Mrs. Corbus had become so arthritic at the age of forty that she could not do it herself, it had fallen to Father McEwen to be responsible for the thrashing of her children. Her requests rarely came more than once a month, and in five cases of six, Father McEwen could negotiate a settlement between mother and child—additional chores to be taken on, a period of time without friends over, a ban on telephone calls. But twice or thrice a year, he had to beat one of her kids. He knew she was not entirely stable in the head, and yet she provided for them. They owed her their help and respect.

  His own father had preferred fresh-cut birch limbs the thickness of a large man’s finger at the grip, narrowing to pencil width on the impact end. They had to be fresh cut or the limbs would break after the first laceration. Father McEwen had two permanent scars from such switchings. Mrs. Corbus, who taught seventh-grade history, supplied him with a paddle that a shop teacher had fashioned for her. The paddle had a handle with an indentation for each finger, and on the business end, five drilled holes each large enough to hold a cigar.

  Father McEwen worked very hard to avoid paddling any of the Corbus lot, but when it came time to administer the swats, he rediscovered, each time, the pleasure that comes from having power over another. He did not like to see their fear as they undid their belts and lowered their pants, but he nonetheless enjoyed it. He did not like to hear them yelp, but gratification crept into his body anyway. This, of course, was not the whole story. He felt morally obliged to apologize after each swing, and despite the directions of Mrs. Corbus, he required that they keep their underpants on. That he found furtive satisfaction in this ugly act made him work all the harder to achieve a compromise between mother and child, which was what redeemed him. No one could entirely resist the pleasure of such dominion over another, but the good recognized the debasement of others as something to be resisted, while the evil and weak sought it out.

  This evening in the dim light of the Corbus kitchen, Father McEwen attempted to negotiate between Mrs. Corbus and her daughter, Aluela, who had commemorated her seventeenth birthday by celebrating the night through, getting home at dusk the following day just after a policeman standing on her stoop had explained to Mrs. Corbus for the third time why they were unwilling just yet to file a missing person report. Aluela’s arrival humiliated as well as angered Mrs. Corbus, her arthritic clubs flailing at the girl with such vehemence that the policeman had restrained her and advised Aluela to lock herself in her room until her mother calmed down. Once released, Mrs. Corbus called Father McEwen’s number and left a message on his machine. He had not wanted to come. The whiskey he’d had at Teddy Allen’s and the purloined beer he’d sipped in the rectory had encouraged him to visit Mallory’s Room, a bar he often frequented with parishioners, the pretense of listening permitting him to drink, the drinking permitting him to listen. A boxing match on the tube became his excuse for coming. A few of the boys from the refinery had insisted he join them, and no one would let him pay for a whiskey or beer. He wanted sleep and the forgiveness of Christ. He had no desire to hear of the Corbus children’s latest transgressions.

  Aluela Corbus had come full into puberty, a feminine weight settling into her thighs, her breasts taking shape, acne pocking her face, a coat of cheap makeup covering her discolored cheeks. She claimed she had fallen asleep at a girlfriend’s house, a lie so transparent that Father McEwen did not even attempt to get at the truth. He simply stated that she was too old to be spanked, which sent Mrs. Corbus into a rage.

  During her rant, Father McEwen spotted one of the Corbus boys lingering by the kitchen door to witness his sister’s subjugation. The priest in him cared more about the boy’s pleasure in his sister’s pain than he did about their mother’s litany of accusations. It did not occur to him that this feeling stemmed from his own guilt.

  He stepped to the doorway to run the boy off. It was Patrick, the younger Corbus boy, who had been arrested for shoplifting just last month.

  “Get on with you,” Father McEwen said to him. Patrick had been caught with a bra and panties stuffed into the tops of his boots. Gifts, he’d claimed. “You have homework, I’ll wager,” McEwen said.

  Pat
rick pushed his yellow hair from his forehead and gestured for Father McEwen to come with him into the living room.

  “I’m occupied.”

  Patrick said, “I know where she was.”

  “Sure, you do,” Father McEwen replied, stepping to the hall. “Look, turn on the television if you have to. Just give us some room to breathe here.”

  The boy presented an exaggerated expression of exasperation. His brother, the father recalled, had moved out of the house. Only Patrick and Aluela remained.

  “Go on,” Father McEwen insisted.

  “Fine,” Patrick replied, turning his back. “Eat your peas with a knife.”

  The turn of phrase almost made Father McEwen laugh. He had a fondness for Patrick Corbus. The boy had once come to the parish to ask God to help him with his math. His sincerity had touched McEwen, and the complexity of the math had shocked him. That had been before the boy’s father vanished, and in the three years since the disappearance Patrick had gotten into one scrape after another. In confession, he had failed to even mention the shoplifting arrest. Father McEwen had made the salvation of the boy a special project, but his duties had kept him busy, and he’d all but forgotten about it.

  A slap and squeal came from the kitchen. Father McEwen hustled back. Aluela was bent over the table and her mother had spanked her bare buttocks with the flat side of a butcher knife.

  “Stop that now,” Father McEwen called.

  Mrs. Corbus tried to swing the knife again, but it slipped from her hand and ricocheted off the wall behind her, landing on its point and sticking upright in the gray linoleum. She glared at him.

  “I don’t have the strength,” she said. “You whip her. You whip her or I’ll do to you. I’ll do to you and her both. You whip her.”

  Father McEwen jerked the hem of Aluela’s dress over her behind, but he jerked too hard and the dress snapped back. He pulled at it again and successfully covered the girl’s pimpled butt. He couldn’t see what had happened to the girl’s underwear. Mrs. Corbus threw open the closet door. A broom handle fell forward against her shoulder, and she shoved it fiercely to the floor. The paddle hung from a metal hook.

  “It’s no use getting that,” Father McEwen said, yanking the butcher knife from the floor and placing it in the sink. The girl did not move from the table. “Leave it,” he said.

  Mrs. Corbus could not wrestle the paddle from its hook. Arthritic pain brought tears to her eyes, and as she dropped her arms and leaned forward, a tear ran down her nose and fell onto her shoe. Father McEwen saw its descent and heard it strike the leather.

  “You whip her,” Mrs. Corbus demanded hoarsely, “or I’ll take this mop handle to her.”

  “All right, then,” Father McEwen said. “Leave us alone.”

  “Do I have your word?” Mrs. Corbus demanded.

  “You do.”

  “Her father named her,” Mrs. Corbus accused. She sighed then, regaining her strength, and straightened. Softly she added, “Little bitch.”

  She left the room by the back door, the same thing Teddy Allen had done earlier in the evening, leaving McEwen with trouble to ponder.

  He might have struck the girl just to keep his word, although he was also considering slapping the paddle against his own hand to make enough noise to please the woman, but when he turned to Aluela, who still lay prone on the table, he saw that her skirt held a red streak of blood.

  “God forgive,” he said. When his hand went for her skirt, she tugged it up, expecting him to swat her. “You’re bleeding,” he said, the impression of the blade a red welt stretching across the girl’s behind. The sharp end of the knife had cut into her, a thin incision on either side of the buttocks’ cleft.

  He did not consider calling the girl’s mother back to tend to her, though he took a step to stare out the window. Mrs. Corbus had wrapped her withered arms around herself and walked huddled against the cold across the street. He returned his attention to the girl.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her softly. “You must be bandaged.”

  Her eyes were already wet, and now she began to sob.

  Father McEwen unrolled a strip of paper towels, dampened them, and laid them across the wound, covering the remainder of her nakedness with the bloody skirt. He stepped to the door and called for Patrick.

  Patrick Corbus ran to the kitchen door, moved not by the call of his name but by the desperate tone in the voice. The red face and man’s shoulder protruding from the door, the big hand holding the same door tightly against the body, spoke of secrets, of the illicit. Patrick’s first thought was that his sister had done something to the priest, but he was standing there on his big feet, flustered yet unharmed. Which meant that the priest had done something, and that desperate tone had been one shaped by guilt and fear of exposure. These impressions flashed through his head almost too fast to leave a residue. Patrick was not merely a smart boy; in many ways he was brilliant. His gifts had gone unrecognized by the nuns who taught him; they could not penetrate his guises to see what lay underneath. By the time he pulled up just short of the door, he had deduced that his mother had lost herself again and left the priest to clean up her mess.

  “What has she done?” he said.

  Father McEwen mistook the pronoun. “Forget your prying for a moment and fetch me some bandages.”

  The human body, at times, must do nothing, must stand as still as the plastic torso on a crucifix. As Father McEwen saw it, the boy froze for a second and then regained his senses and ran to the bathroom to get the necessary medical supplies. But Patrick’s mind ran faster than Father McEwen’s in any case, and in a moment such as this, when the father was close to panicking, Patrick’s thoughts rained while the father’s dribbled. From the second that he stopped his forward movement to the instant that he reversed himself and began his gallop to the medicine cabinet, Patrick saw in the red orbit of the priest’s face a dozen human failings—dishonesty, desire, drunkenness, delight in the suffering of those who opposed him. These failings did not distance the priest from Patrick but made him human. He could see the father had lost some faith in God. He guessed that Aluela was not fully clothed, and understood that their mother had stripped her for a beating. What a pounding reason took in the deluge of reasonable thoughts. The boy could see it all with a rapidity that made the most complex things appear simple. The priest was embarrassed by his own desire and fearful of it. Patrick’s mother was tormented by her husband’s desertion of her arthritic body. That her husband had abandoned their children did not bother her. She would not have hated him had he taken her along and left the children in the moldy house to fend for themselves. What other course could her revenge take but to seek the bones of those same children and break them?

  His sister, in that frozen moment, stood naked in his imagination, her hand shyly covering the brown patch of hair between her legs. An image speaks volumes to an agile mind. He had stolen the bra and panties for his sister, but he could not confess this without revealing the intense derangement in the Corbus house. Their mother had shredded Aluela’s undergarments, accusing her of a deadly sin she could not name. Patrick had known many names for it, though, and as he spun to sprint to the bathroom, those words appeared before him in red letters tumbling through the air like the rolling credits of the cinema: the sin of clear breath and heartiness, the sin of the unbuggered body, the sin of fine fettle, the sin of upright bones and pliant flesh, the sin of energy, the sin of the muscles’ easy contraction, the unapologetic and hateful sin of health.

  The priest’s voice shook, as did the telephone in his hand.

  “I cannot leave them here with her,” he said. “She’s gone off the deep end, and I can’t permit her to harm these children.”

  He spoke to Liam Hitchens, a middle-aged man with a large family and modest income, a devout Catholic, bald but for the slap of hair he parted just above the ear to saddle his bare pate. His wife, Mary, was a woman so physically attractive that Father McEwen had more than once fall
en into doubt about his calling in her presence, wondering whether he could still find comfort in a woman’s arms. Liam had never been handsome, and time had been cruel, having stolen his hair and eyesight, silver glasses perching on a nose grown too large. Mary, on the other hand, was incapable of aging, no matter the number of children she bore. In Liam’s secret heart, that place secret to even himself, he wanted her to succumb to age as he had; their six children were the products of this desire. He could never consciously conceive such a motive; he could only act upon it. Therefore, he had decided that it must be his Catholic upbringing that had made their family large, which encouraged him to consider himself religious. He became devout by failing to understand himself and substituting the handiest excuse. Which is not to say that he did not love his wife. Not even God held his heart so securely; without her, he wouldn’t have needed a god.

  “It has the sound of trouble,” Liam said. “I wouldn’t want Mrs. C. to know where they were staying. I’ll have to check with Mary. She’s at the Rexall getting hose. If she doesn’t wear hose, the veins in her legs will pop and make blue streaks you can see with your own eyes. So she claims. Do you need me to come there? I’d rather not. My littlest is got some project about the earth’s core due tomorrow and it involves magic markers and tracing dinner plates.”

  “I’ll bring them,” Father McEwen said. “It’s just Patrick and Aluela. The other one’s moved out. Living at the Y or some such place.” He didn’t want to give Liam a chance to ramble again and so added, “We’d better make haste. I don’t want a scene.” The dark window to the dark world that fronted the Corbus house held white flecks of snow. “It’s snowing. Wouldn’t you know it?” Before putting down the receiver, Father McEwen said, “Snow” instead of “Good-bye.”