Frank clicks off the TV and goes into the bedroom he used to share with you.
After a long while you grow sleepy again. You are right on the edge of sleep, being pulled into it when something pulls you out of it. It is a warm moist popping sound, like a ripe seed pod bursting open. The popping is followed by a high-pitched whirring sound. Wet pop whirr. And the sequence of sounds repeats over and over. Wetpopwhirr. Wetpopwhirr. Wetpopwhirr.
You get up and tiptoe to Chandler’s door. Wetpopwhirr. Wetpopwhirr. A flash of stark white light squeezes out from under the threshold and through the jamb. Wet pop. Flash. Whirr. Wet pop. Flash. Whirr.
And you can hear faint childish giggles, but you can’t tell if they are coming from the boy or from Chandler.
You tiptoe back to the couch and pull the stinky blanket over your head.
WetPopWhirr.
“What? You think I’m paranoid? You don’t know what paranoid is. You don’t know the feds. You don’t know what they’re capable of. They can see you from outer space. Satellites. Are you kidding me? Please. They can pinpoint you. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”
Chandler’s voice wakes you. It is morning. He and Frank are sitting at the little spindly card table set up in the kitchen. There is a framed mirror laid out on the table. An oval mirror with a smooth white frame. The frame is plastered with decals of Barney the purple dinosaur.
Chandler uses a razor blade to cut lines of dirty white powder on the mirror’s surface. Clackclackclackclackclackclackclackclackclack. He nudges the mirror across the table and sings softly while Frank does his line. “I love you . . . You love me . . . We’re a hap-py fam-il-y.”
He pulls the mirror back, hunches over it, and sucks up his own line. His head whipsaws back and he pinches his nose shut.
“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Goddamn! I don’t know what Uday is cutting this shit with. Drain cleaner, maybe.”
Chandler dips his fingers into a purple plastic Barney mug and snuffles the moisture from his fingertips.
“Sweet child o’ mine, that feels better!”
You walk into the kitchen trying to pretend that this is normal, and really, it’s not that much different from living with Harvey. You open one of the cabinets and find a box of Cookies & Cream Pop Tarts. There is only one left and the foil wrapper has been torn so the delicious breakfast pastry is stale and dry.
“I’m telling you, you don’t know the feds. What they’re capable of. You think I’m kidding? I kid you not. I’ve been under surveillance before. Why do you think I got rid of the computer? When we lived in Atlanta, they had a van parked outside my apartment for three weeks. Three weeks! You remember that, Frankie? You were just a kid. Doing kid stuff. Not a care in the world. I did all the worrying. All the looking out. Had my phone tapped. You can hear it. Little clicking noises every thirty seconds. Telltale sign. Didn’t get me, though. See, if you’re paranoid, they can’t get you. It’s the ones who don’t believe—don’t believe—who get caught. Plus. Plus I’ve got Bessie on my side.”
Chandler reaches for a kitchen drawer behind him and extracts a snubnose revolver. It’s short and fat and ugly. He points it at you.
“Bessie never lies. She is the way. My Bessie’s house has many rooms. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? She is the way. She is the truth. Billy, do you know what the truth is? Bessie’s truth?”
You shake your head. You are scared. The dry tasteless crumbs of Pop Tart in your mouth go even drier and you are afraid you will choke.
“Frankie, tell him. Tell him Bessie’s truth.”
“Death.”
“Yes! Yes sirree bob! Death! Death is the truth. Death is the way. That’s why Bessie never lies. She always tells the truth.”
Chandler stops aiming at you. He strokes the gun like it’s a pet hamster or something.
“With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, won’t you say you love me too?”
You look over to Chandler’s bedroom door. The smooth protuberance of the brass deadbolt stares at you like a dead eye. You wonder if the boy is locked in there. You still have half of the dry crumbly Pop Tart left. Maybe you should slide it under the door so the boy has something to eat.
Maybe he is not even in there. Maybe he’s at home lying in his own bed, warm under a quilt his grandmother made with the smells of the bacon and eggs and pancakes his mother is cooking filling his nose.
You eat the rest of the Pop Tart yourself.
Clackclackclackclackclackclackclackclackclack. Chandler hunches over the mirror, his arm a blur, the razor blade chopping up and down, up and down, like a sewing machine in a third-world sweat shop. Clackclackclackclackclackclackclackclackclackclack. And you look at the closed bedroom door and you think, Wetpopwhirr. Wetpopwhirr. Clackclackclackclackclackclackclackclackclack. Wetpopwhirr. Wetpopwhirr.
And then Chandler is sucking water off his fingertips and pacing the cramped floorspace, his black muumuu flowing like a Stevie Nicks video.
Chandler looks at you and says, “I have a friend. A customer, really. Yes, a customer. He . . . well he has a taste for . . . one of my products. Frank met him, didn’t you, Frankie?”
“Yeah, seems like a real nice guy.”
“He’s a gardener. Runs a crew at the Lovejoy estate across the creek, outside Helen, in Stockmar County. And my friend tells me they are still hiring groundsmen for the spring and summer.”
Frank speaks up. He looks you in the eye. “We thought of a plan, Billy.”
“Clean-cut teenagers,” Chandler continues. “Hard workers. That’s what they want. Told Uday I knew of just such a young man—”
Frank still has your attention. “We thought of a way to make some money. So we can afford to leave here. Maybe go to Canada.”
“Canada?”
“—graduated early. Needs a job to save some money before he goes off to college. Squeaky clean. Squeaky. Squeaky, squeaky, squeaky. And studious. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent. Yes! All those things. Yes! And on top of all of that, he’s a taste-treat! A real taste-treat.”
Chandler puts his puffy hand on your shoulder and speaks in a solemn, father-knows-best tone, “Billy. My boy. My son. You’ve got a J-O-B.”
And you think, Wetpopwhirr.
Clackclackclackclackclackclackclackclackclack.
It’s hot. It’s so hot that the heavy khaki pants and workshirt Uday gave you to wear are soaked in sweat. You are smothering. And the droning of the riding lawnmower combined with the heat is making you sleepy. So sleepy.
There are two other boys on mowers zooming up and down over the gentle dips and rises of Mr. Lovejoy’s private golf course.
You see a battered golf cart crest a hill. It’s Uday, smearing his face with a dirty bandanna. You stop mowing and wait for him. His cart sidles up to your mower. He extracts a bottle of water from the dingy Igloo cooler secured to the back of the cart. Just like Harvey’s.
“For you,” he says and passes you a water bottle, blessedly cold, sweating beads of icy moisture that catch the sun like flashbulbs popping.
Uday leans his body out of the cart and extends his hand so that he can pat your knee.
“Billy. Billy, Billy. You like it here, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, it is hot, yes? You take shirt off, but long pants.”
“Okay.”
“I am clear? You take off shirt, but long pants.”
“I can take off my shirt, but shorts are against the rules.”
A giant smile breaks across Uday’s face. “Yes! Mrs. Lovejoy. Her rule. No shorts. Must wear long pants. You are doing good job your first day.”
Uday wipes his brow with the dirty bandanna. It must be made out of raw polyester because it doesn’t absorb any of the sweat, just pushes it around his face in grimy little swirls. He stares at you. You stare at him. Waiting. His smile falters.
“You take off shirt.”
You don’t want to take off your shirt. Your body is skinny and pale. You want to keep your body concealed.
“You take off.”
Apparently it’s not an option. You really don’t want to. Fuck. You unbutton the top button and Uday’s smile reappears. You work the rest of the buttons and Uday smiles and nods like a parent watching a child eat his vegetables. It’s good for you.
Uday smears his brow. “You see Mrs. Lovejoy?”
“No, sir.”
“If you see her, you say ‘yes, ma’am.’ Okay? ‘Yes, ma’am.’”
“Okay.”
You’re not hot anymore. You feel cold. Exposed. You stand up and tie the workshirt around your waist.
“Good! You are good boy. How old you are?
“Eighteen.”
“Really?” Incredulous, but humoring. “That’s nice.”
Uday motions across the rolling green expanse, to the house in the distance.
“You don’t go up there. I cut, okay?”
You nod and return Uday’s smile.
“You are a good boy. Eighteen.”
Uday is smiling again, but you don’t see it. You are looking at the house in the distance.
* * *
You sleep on the couch that night. But you are too tired and sunburned to actually sleep. The noises keep you awake. And the corresponding little flashes of light that slither out from under Chandler’s closed door.
You hate yourself.
You hate yourself so fucking much. You stand here dripping from the shower, hoping one of the Latino boys will look up and see you in the window. And want you. Want your naked body. Because nobody else wants it. Darrin doesn’t want it. No, Darrin Lovejoy most certainly doesn’t want it. He doesn’t desire it. But he wants others to believe he does.
And you cup your breasts. The breasts Darrin Lovejoy bought and paid for. Artificial. Plastic. And you let the smooth palms of your hands awaken the nipples. And you wish one of the workers would look up here and see you and want you and desire you. That the sight of your naked body would produce a physical response in them. Through the glass and through the air you would cause pupils to dilate, blood vessels to both relax and constrict, saliva to dry up, blood to race, tissue to harden.
You hate yourself. This is what you’ve become. A woman who is not dried up but might as well be. You are preserved. Shellacked and encased in archival Mylar. Unused. But you want to be used.
You would leave him. You tell yourself that you would leave him. Every day you tell yourself that. Several times a day. But you can’t. It’s not the money. The money is nice, but money is meaningless to you. That sounds like such a fucking lie, but it’s true. Money is worthless. Money has no value. Money is clean and sterile and useless. What has money done for you?
It is because of Cris. You did not know that it was possible to love something so much. You love your daughter harder than Earth pulls the Moon. This is why you can never leave. This is why you are trapped. Because Darrin loves her as much as you do. If it is possible, he might even love her more. He would let you go, but he would never let you take Cris with you. And you could never live a life in which you did not see your daughter every day. You could never live a life in which you were not the person to wake her up every morning with butterfly kisses on her cheeks, tickling her so that she woke up every morning with giggles instead of grumbles. You could never live a life in which you were not the one who made her egg-in-the-hole toast with organic eggs and the special gluten-free bread. What if you got divorced and Darrin remarried, and the substitute mother forgot and used regular bread? Or used margarine instead of pasture butter? Or forgot to replace the HEPA filter in the kitchen? Or didn’t make Cris’s bed with anti-allergen sheets? And you could not live a life in which you were not the one to give Cris her bath at night and tilt her head back just so because even the no-more-tears shampoo burned her delicate eyes.
And the sad part was that Darrin could not live that life either. He had to have his Crisium—he never shortened it, never just called her Cris—here every day when he came home from work, when he got back from his business trips. Darrin could never tolerate coming home to a house in which his Crisium was not here waiting for him. He could not tolerate a life in which even one hug that was meant for him might be given to a substitute father. He would do anything in his power to prevent that. And Darrin Lovejoy had quite a bit of power. Money. He had money, which was the same thing as power. Money was not so meaningless after all, was it?
And so the same old thoughts spar in your head like past-their-prime boxers, no clear winner. You are stuck. Preserved and unused and stuck.
And while your thoughts are boxing in your mind, your gaze never leaves the window. And you are being watched. Not one of the strapping Latinos or Indians, or whatever the hell they are, but a white boy you’ve never seen before. A skinny pale boy who looks like he might break. And your first impulse is to step back from the window. Conceal your nakedness. But you don’t. You hold the boy in your eyes until he averts his gaze.
Sex. Sex is power too. You’d forgotten that.
You are getting pretty good with the mower, zipping around like the other boys. As the golf course gives way to the lawn and the house, the landscape is dotted with islands of flora. Not azaleas and tulips and irises and pansies like you remember your mother planting in beds around your house. These are exotic, strange plants and flowers that you are unfamiliar with. Some unfold from the ground like little old ladies. Pale spindly things. Others are lush and buxom like unused women. And there is a grouping of spidery stalks that erupts irregular red, orange, and yellow tendril-like petals. Like party streamers. No, like flames. They look like dancing flames. You crane your head back to keep looking at these flowers, because they look for all the world just like fire spreading through the flower bed. You don’t notice that you clipped the edge of the landscape island with the mower.
And then you see her. Marching. That is the only word for it. Mrs. Lovejoy is marching across the lawn, heading straight for you. She is wearing sandals, white shorts, and a yellow tube top. Sunglasses that seem as big and round as pizza pans. The tube top exposes the tops of her breasts, warm and brown like the backs of sleeping puppies. She is waving at you, a cigarette clamped between fingers trailing white smoke. Her mouth forms words. Angry words.
You halt the mower, idling. You have no choice. She saw you. The other day. Looking at her. Spying on her through the window.
“Did you see what you just did?” she shouts at you over the rumble of the engine.
You tilt your head like a quizzical dog.
“Would you turn that thing off?”
“What?” you yell back even though you understand her.
“I said turn that—”
You cut the engine.
“—goddamn thing off,” Mrs. Lovejoy yells into the now quiet day.
“Sorry,” you say.
“Did you see what you just did?”
You shake your head.
“Well, the flowers you just ran over were imported from China. Extremely rare.”
She drops her cigarette onto the grass, and then she is down on her hands and knees, pawing through the confetti-like mess your lawnmower has left in its wake. Mrs. Lovejoy rises to her knees, her hands cupped in front of her, her eyes angled upward to you.
“Orb of the Night. It’s called Orb of the Night.”
In her cupped hands is an ovoid pouch made of fleshy coral-colored petals. Like skin.
“It opens at night,” she says and forces the petals back, exposing the silky red interior to the sunlight it was never meant to see.
You swallow hard. It feels like the two of you are looking at a pornographic image instead of a broken flower.
“You killed it,” she says and tosses the remains to the ground like a nurse tossing out the remains of an abortion.
“I’m sorry. I’ll pay for it.”
Mrs. Lovejoy finds her cigarette smoldering in the
grass and performs CPR on it, puffing it back to life. She stands. She is taller than you. She takes a long, final draw from the cigarette and exhales a flower-like plume of smoke. You can see the anger leaving her.
“Are you new?”
“Yes, ma’am,” you say, and it occurs to you that if she saw you run over the flowers in the split second that it happened, then it was either incredibly bad luck or she has been watching you.
“‘Ma’am,’ Oh, I like that. And what’s your name?”
“Billy.”
“Billy? Well, Billy, as I was saying, that flower was extremely rare. I don’t care about the golf course or the gardens, but these, all this, is mine. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be very careful from now on.”
She reaches out and almost touches your bony chest. But she pulls her finger back at the last second.
“Better put your shirt back on. You’re getting pink.”
“Yes, ma’am,” you say and watch her walk away.
She is blond and thin and big-breasted like the girls at school who do not look at you. Except she is old. Old enough to be your mother. She is the kind of girlwoman who can choose any boyman she wants. And you are never that choice.
Throughout the rest of the day, whenever you look up to her window, she is there, looking down at you. Night comes and you are the last one here. Everybody else has gone home. It is a five-mile walk through the woods and across the creek to get back to Chandler’s, but it is thirteen miles by car. You kept finding things to do to occupy you as the others left. And finally Uday left. And you are alone in the garage.
You know what you want to do. It is time.
From the garage window you look up at the house. To the window where Mrs. Lovejoy displays herself to you. She is watching you and you are watching her. Two windows and two hundred yards separate you. She is performing for you. Showing. There is a word for it when animals behave like this. Presenting. She is presenting herself to you. But you are not responding. Because what she is offering, what she is presenting, is not enough. You need more. You look down at yourself and no, it is not enough. You are shriveling. Mrs. Lovejoy is not enough by herself. Maybe because it isn’t a secret anymore. Maybe because she is complicit. You need something more to make it work for you. Flame. You need fire. You search the shed trying to find something that you can hold in your free hand while it burns. All you can find is a pinecone on the floor. You know that the sticky pine sap will flame nicely and your erection returns in fiery anticipation.
Abnormal Man: A Novel Page 6