Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale

by Chuck Kinder

  What’s inside the little glass pyramid, Ralph?

  You want to know what’s inside that goofy, goddamn thing? You really want to know? Food for the gods, that’s what.

  Why, Ralph?

  Living proof that pyramid power truly works. It can preserve things forever. Why do you think those old Egyptians put their dead pharaohs in pyramids? Pyramid power! That’s why. To preserve those royal stiffs throughout the ages. Yeah, just ask Alice Ann and her fruitcake friends all about it. Here’s what I, for one, think of pyramid power, Ralph said, and jumped up. He rushed over to the counter and picked up the glass pyramid. He smashed the egg in the sink and then ran water and turned on the garbage disposal.

  Consider that a demonstration of my personal opinion about pyramid power and its living proof, Ralph said. He picked up the blue-green sandwich and waved it at Jim. —You hungry? Here, help yourself. This bologna sandwich has only been under here a month or two! Take a bite, Jim. Be my guest. You’ll love it. It’ll taste like goddamn King Tut.

  I think I’d prefer some pizza, Ralph, Jim said. —With pepperoni. Jim held the nearly empty pint bottle up before his leaky eyes. —We need fresh supplies pronto, Ralph.

  Where are those women? Ralph said. He started to throw the blue-green sandwich into the sink, but hesitated. He paused and then put it back on the pyramid’s little platform. He took an egg from the refrigerator and gently placed it upon the platform and then repositioned the glass pyramid. —No sense in getting Alice Ann all riled up, Ralph said, and then he smacked his forehead and said, Mother of God!

  Ralph rushed back to the refrigerator and threw open its door. He pulled out the vegetable bins in the bottom and jumped back and smacked his forehead again. —We had four bottles of Mumm’s chilling. We had to drive almost all the way to San Jose to find a liquor store foolish enough to take a check of ours. Do you know what a bottle of Mumm’s goes for these days? I’ll tell you what it goes for. An arm and a leg is what. Will you look at what’s left, Ralph said, and brandished a single bottle in the air. He slammed the bottle onto the kitchen table, making three pink cats leap for their lives. Ralph sat down at the table heavily and held his face in his hands.

  I say we pop that sucker, Jim said as he polished off the pint.

  Those wives are up to something, I’m telling you, Ralph said. —They should have been here by now. I’m telling you, they’re out fucking bikers.

  Bullshit, Ralph. Not Lindsay, anyway. Satisfied brides don’t go around fucking bikers.

  Come on, Ralph said. —Let’s go out to my office. I’ve got some bourbon stashed there. I’ll get us some ice to take.

  Ralph threw empty ice tray after empty ice tray against the kitchen wall, where they crashed and clattered like castanets.

  Hey, Uncle Jim, Ralph’s daughter said from the doorway. She was wearing a black Grateful Dead T-shirt with a skull and cross- bones on its front, and her unshaven legs were bare. —Hey, what’s all the fucking noise out here, anyhow?

  Hey, kiddo, Jim said.

  Why doesn’t anybody but me ever fill up the goddamn ice trays around this house? Ralph said, and threw one final empty ice tray against the wall.

  Don’t lay that trip on me, Dad, man, Ralph’s daughter said.

  Did you and Paco graze all the goodies your mom made? And I want the truth about this matter!

  God, Dad, man! There wasn’t nothing to eat in like the whole fucking house, man. I guess you think it would have been cool for me and my old man to like starve or some shit, huh? Did you bring any toilet paper, Dad, huh?

  I just got toilet paper the other night. I got a family pack of toilet paper. Charmins.

  Sure, Dad. Well, like there’s not any shit paper in the house now, Ralph’s daughter said, and took a handful of paper napkins from a drawer. —And you’re looking at the last of the napkins in the fucking house, too. My asshole is so sore I can hardly sit down, man. Did Mom pick up my tampons, Dad?

  What? How would I know a thing like that?

  I’m getting pretty fucking bored with sanitary napkins, if you know what I mean, Ralph’s daughter said, and waved the napkins at Ralph.

  That sort of business is between you and your mother. Leave me out of that sort of business. What I want to know is what happened to the three bottles of expensive Mumm’s we had in the refrigerator. Was that your work, too? And Paco’s? We were planning on having a celebration with guests here tonight before some criminal broke and entered this house and stole us blind.

  So like where is Mom, anyhow? I need those tampons, man.

  They’re right behind us.

  So that Lindsay chick is actually coming over? Wow! Far- fucking-out. Me and Mom read her letters. So how’s married life, Uncle Jim?

  Far-out, Jim said.

  So where’s the missing Mumm’s? Ralph said. —Quit trying to change the subject. I’m going to get to the bottom of this matter. I’m going to put my foot down around here for a change.

  Hey, Dad, man, me and Paco will pay you back okay, so how about being cool, all right! Paco’s got some bread coming, dig? Anyhow, we were celebrating a little ourselves. I got my period, man.

  Here, Ralph said. —Here, he said, and handed his daughter the botde of Mumm’s.

  Hey, far-out, Dad, Ralph’s daughter said, and took the bottle. —Sometimes, Dad, you aren’t such a big asshole. Sometimes, man, you can be a really hip dude.

  As Jim and Ralph started to leave the kitchen, Ralph stopped at the stove and above it removed an oddly out-of-place print of a green pepper, revealing a hole in the wall. Ralph fit his fist into the hole. —This is my work, Ralph said. —You know, I always dreamed of owning my own home someday. I dreamed it would be a house filled with laughter and joy and serenity and music, you know, classical music, and grace. That was once my dream, old Jim. I ask you, was that such an impossible dream?

  3

  Ralph turned off lights as he and Jim made their way back through the house. In the game room Ralph’s sister-in-law Erin’s twin blond boys were roller-skating on the flagstone floor. They skated about slowly, aimlessly, the metal wheels clacking over the flagstones. The boys’ jaws were slack, their wet red mouths hung open, and their unblinking blue eyes looked as though they could have been painted on those faces, which were white as mushrooms. At the room’s far end a television set blared unwatched. Somebody had dialed its light deep purple and it was tuned to one of Jim’s favorite religious channels out of San Jose. A purple preacher dressed in a suit of sequins was praying at the top of his lungs for dollars to fight the devil, who, it seemed, was on the verge of winning city council seats for homosexuals. Ralph and Jim stood at the sliding glass doors that led out to the back yard, and they watched the skating blond boys. The twins skated slowly about each other, weaving, circling, somedmes one seeming to lead nowhere in particular, and then the other, like reflections freed and moving in and out of an invisible mirror. Clicking a switch on the wall beside the sliding glass doors, Ralph turned off the bright overhead lights of the game room. The blond twins skated on in their solitude and oblivion, around and around, slowly, enchanted in the purple light.

  Those boys never give me a moment’s trouble, Ralph told Jim as he clicked another switch and they stepped through the sliding glass doors into a back yard flooded with yellow light. When they reached Ralph’s office, Ralph fumbled his keys out of his pocket.

  They picked my locks again! Ralph said. —I’ve changed locks out here ten times at least. Nothing works. Nothing keeps the little criminals out.

  Ralph hurried across the dark room. He turned on a desk light and picked up a coffeepot and shook it at his ear. Ralph chuckled and then drank from the coffeepot spout.

  Fooled the little bastards this time, Ralph said, and handed the coffeepot to Jim. Ralph picked up two coffee cups from the desk and tossed their contents into a wastepaper basket, then ran his fingers around the cups* rims and handed one to Jim. —Wonder what our wives are doing, Ralph said. —We were fo
ols to get those two together, much less leave them alone together.

  They seemed to hit it off, Jim said, and took a drink. —Why are you so paranoid, Ralph?

  It’s Alice Ann’s fault, Ralph said.

  How so, Ralph?

  It just is, that’s all. She can’t lay every single thing on my doorstep, Ralph said. Ralph cocked his ear as though he had heard something, and then he tiptoed across the room and stood up on the chair by the wall. He slid the framed photograph of Hemingway aside and peeked through the tiny hole.

  Anybody home? Jim stage-whispered.

  Nope. She’s hardly ever home these days. More’s the pity. Wonder what has become of our wives, old Jim?

  How did you feel when you saw Lindsay today, Ralph? Jim said, and took a drink from the cup.

  Me? What do you mean?

  I’m just curious, Ralph. I don’t mean anything really.

  I already told you. She was a sight for sore eyes. I hold Lindsay in the highest regard.

  I hold Alice Ann in the highest regard, too, Ralph.

  Jim, we have to go look for our wives. We’ve got to find them before it’s too late. I’ll bet there’s a happy gang of bikers somewhere right now.

  I just don’t understand you, Ralph. Your enduring paranoia and lack of trust. So Alice Ann may have made a few slips over the course of her life. Big deal. Considering your track record, you can’t hold anything against her.

  Slips? What do you mean slips?

  Our wives are both wonderful women, Ralph. But human beings make slips, Ralph. To err is human, right, Ralph? After all, you weren’t exactly being virtuous when you were involved with Lindsay, now were you, Ralph?

  I want you to tell me what you mean by slips, Jim. Jim, you owe me the truth, as you know it. Go on. Tell me. Just do it. Come out with it, Jim. What do you know about Alice Ann and slips? You know things I don’t know in the slips department, don’t you, Jim? Okay, let me ask you this, do you have any solid evidence, Jim? All right, just tell me the worst. Don’t hold anything back. Give me both barrels of the truth, Jim. No. No. Wait a minute. If it has to do with bikers or sailors or tattooed truck drivers, just keep the truth to yourself. If it’s about sordid characters and blowjobs or any other monstrous acts of love, Jim, I don’t want to know, after all. Jim, you don’t know what I’ve had to deal with. Jim, Alice Ann has a tattoo on her behind. There it is. Out in the open at last. God knows when or where she got it. I hadn’t taken a really good look at Alice Ann’s behind in ages, when one night when I was about half sober she climbed out of the shower and was parading around nude, and by God I saw it. There it was! I thought it was a little bruise at first. But it wasn’t anything of the kind. It was a parrot. A tiny green-and-gold parrot on my wife’s behind. How does a man deal with that sort of revelation, I ask you? She said she just got it on a whim once when I wasn’t around for a few days and she had no idea where I was, as though that were excuse enough for such outrageous behavior on her part. But even if that much is true, think about what it means. It means that at the very best she bared her behind so that some sordid tattooed stranger could get at it with a needle. Too much, I say!

  Settle down, Ralph. Listen, I don’t know anything about any slips. I’ve been busting your chops about the slips business.

  But why, old Jim? You got me all worked up, Jim.

  I know, Ralph. I don't know why I treat you mean sometimes. I love you like a brother. No. I know why I’m being mean to you tonight. You’ve seen the naked body of my wife, Ralph. I hate that about you, Ralph.

  You can’t lay the blame for that on my doorstep. What difference does it make, anyway? Besides, since we’re on the subject of Lindsay, a subject you brought up, do you have any idea how I felt when I heard that you had gotten involved with her? Do you have any idea of how I felt to have the lie put to so many of my hopes and dreams?

  You were and are a married man, Ralph, so to speak.

  I don’t want to think about these things, Ralph said, and sat down heavily. —All I know is this. I’m going to set my house in order once and for all. I’m going to try, anyway. We’ve got an appointment with some shyster the day after tomorrow. For all the good he’s going to do me. I’m not walking into that shyster’s office with any illusions, I’ll tell you.

  You probably won’t go to jail, old Ralph. Not a first offender like you. If your mouthpiece is any good, that is. And if the prosecuting shyster isn’t out to make an example of you. Anyway, what’s the worst you could pull? Six months maybe. A year at the outside. Eighteen months. Probably easy time at some white- collar criminal country-club farm. Hoeing in the fields. Milking some cows. And if you’re lucky enough not to spend any time in a county lockup you might not even get buggered.

  What? Get what?

  Buggered, Ralph. You know, butt-fucked.

  Butt-fucked? Me? I don’t believe that for a minute! They go for boys. I’m too old. I’m a man of forty or so. I’m nearly over forty. I thought they went in for boys. Young, tender boys. Tender chickens is what they call those boys. I’d hang myself if I ever got buggered. I swear I would. I’d hang myself in my cell. With my belt. With my shoestrings, if I could manage that.

  They confiscate your belt and shoestrings, Ralph.

  Then I’d choke myself with my own bare hands. What’s holding our wives up? That’s what I’d like to know.

  You see, Ralph, rape is an act of power and aggression. It doesn’t really have much to do with sexual attraction or gratification. Basically, Ralph, you’ll just be another piece of white meat for the brothers to shame and humiliate and cornhole.

  But why me? I’ve always been, you know, a liberal when it comes to, you know, civil rights. I, for one, just thought the world of Martin Luther King. I read most of Malcolm X.

  But how are the brothers going to know that? Nope, Ralph, you’ll just be another white-meat avenue in old payback city.

  Did you ever get buggered when you claim you did that time?

  I’ll tell you what I did. As soon as I hit that lockup, I found out who was supposed to be the meanest motherfucker in the joint. I took the cat on. I’m not claiming I won, but I fought him good enough that nobody ever wanted a piece of my ass.

  I’ve had two fights in my life. And both of them were before I was ten. I lost them both. And one of them was with a girl.

  I’ll teach you some moves and holds. So you won’t be totally defenseless. But you’ll probably have to get an old man.

  An old man? What old man, Jim? I don’t want an old man.

  Some tough brother who’ll protect you for sexual favors.

  Sexual favors? Never! Exactly what kind of sexual favors?

  It’ll be either him or an endless line of brothers or Paco’s tattooed cousins. You be good to him, be his sissy, sit down when you pee, spend some quality time on your knees, and he’ll be like your motherfucker in shining armor.

  Never! Ralph said. —Not in a million years!

  Take my advice, Ralph. As soon as you hit that cellblock, be mentally prepared, and don’t try to bullshit your boyfriend or think you can outsmart him. The first thing that big motherfucker will ask you is do you want to be the momma or the poppa. And you, Ralph, thinking you’re making the best of a bad situation, and that you’re somehow smarter than him because you’ve been to college, you’ll probably say you’d rather be the poppa, right, Ralph. Well, forget outsmarting him. Your boyfriend will just give you a big grin and drop his drawers and say, Okay, Poppa, you just come on over here then and suck Momma’s big dick.

  I think I’ll just go hang myself right now, Ralph said, and put his face in his hands. —While I still have my belt. I wish those women would get here.