The Voices in Our Heads

by Michael Aronovitz

  I’m seventy-nine years old now, gray, bent over, broken. I keep waiting to die, and I just don’t. I’ve thought of killing myself more times than you could imagine, but I have deferred time and again from being afraid of the pain. I also stand terrified that there is no God, no afterlife, no heaven or hell, just darkness. Terrified that my Danny would be gone forever.

  See, he visits me. Once a year. On the first hint of snow.

  He comes from the walls. Walks the floorboards real as can be. I can see through him, but he’s clear as day, fourteen years old, my gorgeous man-child, and he’s smiling, always smiling.

  He also refuses to notice me. I call out to him every year, tell him I love him dearly, get on my knees and beg his forgiveness, but he dismisses me, mouths animated conversations with phantoms, keeps his eyes focused above me. I’ve timed his visits. Always twenty-three minutes exactly, the length of time he lay there with bags of frozen vegetables on his face, crushed by the fact that his father wouldn’t stay there to comfort him. Twenty-three minutes of disgrace, capped off with the walk of shame down the stairs with the help of his mother. The last twenty-three minutes of his conscious life.

  Addy was the best friend I ever had, but Danny was my soulmate. I talked to him in his car seat as if he were a grown man, told him about my plans. I let him sit in my lap and steer the truck in the graveyard, made him spaghetti with butter, stayed up past his bedtime making scary shadow figures with the Rayovac, then going forehead to forehead, whispering our dreams to each other. When he was six he told me he prayed on the North Star every night that he could be like me when he grew up, and when he was seven he refused to sit on the sofa unless my arm was around him. At twelve, he hit a bases-clearing double to win a game against Springfield in the interleague championship and, mid-ceremony, signaled me down from the bleachers, handed me his trophy on the third base line, and kissed my cheek in front of his teammates. He was a saint who drew people to him, like those thirty-year-old women who opened up to him at pool parties, like the ugly ducklings and the cheerleaders who let him love them equally.

  I’ve got no books anymore. Don’t need them. There’s enough pain and awareness in the air without them, especially with this he-man tradition of putting our sons through shit they aren’t ready for. We do it because our fathers did it to us, and every father down the block might be doing it better. We train our young boys hard, we rehearse them, drill them, harden them up for the stage, the arena: the schoolyard, the ballfield, the bus stop. Danny was a soldier serving his father’s ghosts.

  Now I am slave to his.

  I see him. There is a portion of the wall where the brick was never covered nor finished, mortar popcorned and slathered, hardened by years, cracked and scabbed. My Danny bleeds out of this, takes shape, half transparent, but real as the world. I am on my knees before him, and he is looking past me, mouthing some secret or anecdote with a glint of mischief in his eye. He’s imitating someone, making a face, but I don’t get the joke. He’s physicalizing a catch he made in center field, clearly narrating each slow-motion step, but I can’t peg the particular game.

  I tell him I love him, and he doesn’t hear me.

  I tell him I’m sorry, and he looks away.

  Something snaps in my head, and everything gets vivid. This hard floor has always been my stage, this room my arena, and Danny my potential watcher. We’ve switched places now, elder and child, and I’ve got to earn his favor. It’s time to enter my own rite of passage, my moment of truth. I’m scared as hell, but it’s all relative, isn’t it? I raise the gun to my head and pray there won’t be all that much pain. I pray there is a God. And right before I pull the trigger home, I pray that my Danny might stand ready after all these long years to take this ugly, ugly duckling with him to glory and finally call things even and equal.

  TOYS

  The Addict

  January

  Timing was everything, and the whole morning couldn’t have been more fucked. They were long past induction over at Whitman Heights Elementary by now, and probably damn near through with the classroom management DVD featuring the poorly acted hallway scenarios and bogus hierarchies, the latter furnished through convoluted terminology bolded up in graphics made to refashion some hypothetical fifth-grader’s temper tantrum into something one could measure quantitatively in the heat of the moment. All shit. McFinn knew. He’d helped write a similar one when he was back with Ludlow & Barnes Marketing. His anger stage-levels had been called “Student Emotionality: The Anti-Productivity Scale,” and were laid out as: the stage of non-approachability, the stage of cognitive repression, the stage of reaction/rejection, the stage of schematic aggression, and the stage of actualized violence, all narrated by some actor with silvery hair, a fancy tie clip, and a honey-coated voice usually reserved for psychologists and child molesters. Though a bit dated by now, he still made quarterly royalties off of it. He didn’t even have a Ph.D.

  McFinn steered around a mud-splattered Comcast truck that had just blocked the right lane and thrown on its blinkers. Someone behind him screeched tires, then beeped long and hard. He gave a parade wave and a crooked glance in the rearview. The image back there was a dark outline in an Acura. McFinn locked the doors just to be sure and glanced down at the clock inlaid in the dashboard. Again. 11:17. He hit the gas for effect, jammed the brakes as if he hadn’t expected to, and hunched over the wheel, tailgating a black Ford pickup with Yosemite Sam stenciled on its mudflaps. By now, Markowicz had looked around for him, ad-libbed at the podium, and slid into the next segment, the latest assessment model the district had bought into, since it was policy to cram these mid-year staff developments chock-full of the latest “research.” Last time McFinn had checked (and he always checked) the most aggressive conglomerate currently in bed with the union was Lawson, Bagwell, and Natherford, who hired social scientists to interpret that research and draw up solution abstracts that at least bordered on political correctness. From what Markowicz had said (McFinn did consulting for her on the side as well as providing her staff their retirement options), it was some bullshit about differentiating the assessment models for various racial demographics, all delivered through professional nomenclature that almost made it seem dignified that they were lobbying for separate rules for the black kids, and therefore, separate columns revealing their testing results when it came time for the governor to dole out annual funds. God bless America.

  McFinn clenched his teeth, dearly wishing that city streets had breakdown lanes he could cheat into, if even for a block or two. He had been slotted in after Johnson’s speech about phonics, and how Whole Language was left-wing bullshit, and how her students were going to chant the letters and their sounds all the way through the upper grades, and how it was the responsibility of her teachers to make damn sure those kids knew the difference between a long A and a short A by this point in the year, and fuck your little learning stations and reading rugs and picture walks. She made the teachers chant it all back to her as if they were her students. Like Abraham Lincoln in his “blab” school. It was the perfect segue to his financial planning power point presentation. They’d just been chanting, for God’s sake! The blood was flowing, and they were anxious to go make a difference! Now was his chance to convince them of how valuable they were, and how special they were, and that it was time for them to think about them for a change. But going after the classroom management DVD was tough, and following the assessment presentation, hell. And if they squeezed in the lecture on spec. ed. law before you had a chance to tell them that most people didn’t plan to fail, they failed to plan, you could kiss the idea of holding their attention for more than twenty seconds goodbye, out the window, see ya.

  McFinn pulled into the faculty parking area. He’d been a teacher once. Lived in a twin. Roughed it.

  This was better. He was late, but his charcoal gray Beamer was nicer than any car in the lot. He was overweight, but the Brunello Cucinelli underneath the cashmere camel luxury topcoat made him look li
ke some robust monarch, certainly not your average Joe in a wife beater, sitting on the couch eating kettle chips, burping and farting. Perception was everything. He wrestled off his pinkie ring and stuck it in the divider compartment between the seats, and checked his face in the rearview, looking for anything hanging in the nostrils, anything stuck between the teeth. Rush or no rush, they had to trust him, especially the virgins fresh off their little four-year bachelor’s degrees. Rookies. The thought of the bonuses McKloskey had promised him for these signings almost gave him an erection. Almost. He had to take a whiz, and what had been treading at the bottom of his thoughts back at 28th Street, slumming around, only building ever so slightly red light to red light, had suddenly become sort of urgent.

  The wind was fierce outside, keen, hurt his eyes a little, and he hoped they wouldn’t tear up. More to primp up in the bathroom, more delay. He reached into the back and pulled out his leather carry case, carefully, carefully, then shut the door, beeped the alarm on, and walked around the car twice checking the windows and doors anyway. Old habits died hard. His shoes clicked on the cement, and he told himself for the umpteenth time that they didn’t sound like high heels and fishnets, but power, raw masculine power.

  His balls felt like hard blue marbles, and the pressure from behind them and up two inches or so suddenly entered emergency status. Damn, this came on quick, he felt it behind his eyes for Christ’s sake. High time to make an appointment with the urologist. He had to walk around a jagged crater in the sidewalk blocked off by a haphazard pentagon of white and orange striped sawhorses marked The Philadelphia Water Department, and for a split second wondered if he’d peed himself, just a little. Too cold to tell. Seemed the injustices were never ending.

  “They’re expecting you,” Ms. Jackson said, looking over her glasses and up across the long, off-white counter top. She had student files piled on either side of her, and the phone was ringing. He’d brought the cold in with him, and he knew his face looked both chalk-white and freezer-red. Fucking candy cane. Jackson hadn’t changed one bit, thick eyelashes, a little jowl action, foundation slathered on so thick it turned her caramel skin a bit orange. She’d cornered him last year to sell him on God. He’d nodded, smiled, and looked at his watch when he just couldn’t stand it anymore. Faith was fool’s magic. Hope for the hopeless who weren’t smart enough to read the fine print on the pamphlets the faith-salesmen were handing out. Formula as old as man himself.

  “Bathroom,” he said like a question, eyebrows arched. She pursed her lips and nodded her head toward Markowicz’s office. There was a door next to it, unmarked. Clearly faculty only. When he tried it, the thing was locked. Of course. Jackson had been watching the whole time, phone parked up by her ear yet not against it, palm over the voice cup.

  “You can use the student bathroom by the cafeteria. I’ll call Dr. Markowicz and tell her you’re on your way.”

  Right. Busy principal. Always wore a headset.

  Right. Cafeteria. Markowicz liked it better than the auditorium, brighter overheads, more personal.

  And of course, to get to the boy’s room he had to pass right through the front end of it by the juice machine. A heavyset woman wearing a hairnet and carrying a pan from the steam table almost crashed into him. To his right, the faculty all sat according to grade level at round tables, their eyes drifting over, he could feel them. Markowicz was at the podium, and it was one of those moments between ideas. Silence, for all but his whispered “Excuse me,” after which he and the lunch lady did that little dance for a second where they each tried to go around but went the same way, his sheepish index finger up toward Markowicz, “Just one more minute, please,” and his damned wingtips clicking on the hard floor almost loud enough to make an echo. He heard a few polite giggles, and he ducked under the archway, turned the corner, and wrenched open the lavatory door.

  It was dingy as hell in here, one of the plastic light panels missing from the drop ceiling, but at least it was clean, no water collected around the floor drain grate, no trash surrounding the industrial yellow container under the Fort Washington towel dispenser. Smelled like some high concentrate liquid cleanser, steep and ripe, the kind that gave you a quick headache. McFinn put his laptop case on the floor against the wall as gingerly as he could at this point and elbowed his way into a stall. He could have used one of the urinals, but besides the fact that they were knee-height and awkward, he’d been gunshy for some time now. Even with a gallon and a half like this to uncork, open spaces made him hesitate, and God help him if some fourth-grade teacher walked in and stood next to him, dick hanging out there in parallel as if it wasn’t a custom too sick to really be allowed for in public. The guy would probably be this friendly son of a bitch and start up a conversation, his healthy prostate blasting his proud stream into the receptacle hard enough to wear a layer clean off the urine cake, McFinn’s own tinkling down in a pathetic stop-’n’-start he’d have to nearly get a hernia initiating, no thank you.

  He shut the door, used his shoe to flap up the seat, and tore open his coat. It was tight in here, and he had to work for a minute to pin the tails of his overcoat back behind him with his elbows. Now, he was short-armed, and he had this image of Barney the dinosaur in his mind as he struggled open his blazer button and fingered down the zipper, fingers feeling fat like his bladder, screaming, his eyes were screaming.

  Then they were closed, and he moaned with it for a second. At the halfway point, the moan had been long cut off, and his eyes opened up, relief in sight, and everything was righted in the world again, manageable, winnable even. The wall in front of him was riddled with graffiti.

  I hate it here.

  Then go find another stall.

  Tamika sucks donkey dick.

  Lyle lets drunken monkeys give it to him in the butt.

  Turn a promise to a lie and you will be the next to die.

  Wait, where had he seen that before, that last one? It was written in a child’s block printing, right behind the peak of the toilet pipe’s elbow joint that looked like a leprechaun’s top hat that got stepped on. McFinn closed his eyes and thought back. Wasn’t that the urban legend over at People First? Something about a girl with a jump rope who died in the school and haunted the toilet? Something sounded different, and he opened his eyes. He wasn’t in the bowl anymore, that was it, he was pissing right on the wall-saying. His stream cut off immediately, and he still had a bit to go yet. Shit. Would anyone conclude that it had been him pissing on the wall? He squinted. The words weren’t the same now; in fact, the initial script wasn’t there at all anymore. Written in pencil and weeping down a bit in the middle where he’d partly erased it with urine, were the words,

  Risk temptation

  He blinked. Now those words were gone, and the saying read,

  You only need fear what the wind may blow near.

  It had the same weeping and dripping down center, just a second or so more advanced than the inscription that had just read Risk temptation.

  McFinn looked over his shoulder in that dumb sort of knee-jerk response, and saw only the top of the stall door, close to his nose, slightly bent, a dent at the right corner with a bit of rust in it. He looked back. The original saying had returned now, wet with his spill, made nearly invisible dead center where the words to a lie had been. McFinn snorted. He spread his feet and unloaded the rest straight onto the polished block wall. It was nothing but a squirt at this point anyway, and fuck ’em if Mr. Janitor couldn’t take a joke, fuck all you witches, warlocks, and ghosts. That shit was for dumb-asses who lived in trailer parks, knocked on wood, had black cats named Sabrina, and bought into Amway. Cryptic shit on bathroom walls? Please. When was the last time he had been to the eye doctor, anyway?

  He zipped up, backed out, and made for the mirror. He looked good, a little thick in the neck, but his color was back.

  And glasses would be a plus. They’d make him seem more intellectual, more fatherly.

  Bend over, Lyle. Let’s talk annuiti
es.

  He’d missed his slot, so Markowicz put him up in a tenth-grade social studies room where he could present to one small group at a time, two before lunch, and the rest during the afternoon session where downstairs, the rest of the educators would be responsible for evaluating core texts and coming up with ideas for the motto and mission statement. McFinn didn’t mind, small group was good, even better than the lecture hall set-up, even though there was no projector or computer hookup. No worries, he’d just read the presentation the way his forefathers had, or whatever.

  Still, when he tried to pull it up, his laptop wouldn’t cooperate. Blank screen, nothing. He was sitting at the teacher’s desk in front of the white board, pre-class work scribbled on one side, a homework assignment about chapter five and the Constitution scribbled on the other. There was a world map on a corkboard to the right behind a table with old art projects on it, and a timeline pieced together and pinned to the drywall above the cubbies to the left, the section outlining the Industrial Revolution unstapled at one corner and curling down like the wing of some wounded bird.

  “Everything OK? Need something?” one of the teachers said, front row, end seat, far left. He was a skinny bastard with windblown hair. He had a goatee to match the hair, and spoke with a slight emphasis on the s-sounds to make him sound sensitive and intelligent. Real save-the-day type. Probably wanted to stand side by side in the can talking politics, holding peckers, and comparing flow rates.

  “No, I got it.” McFinn hit the Ctrl/Alt/Delete one more time, and the screen flashed light blue.