by John Jodzio
“I guess we’re going to do this the hard way,” Cal says.
I watch as he lifts up the television and carries it over to the window. He leans it on the ledge and pushes it out. I run to the window just in time to see it crash down on the parking lot below.
“Doesn’t that feel better?” Cal asks me. “You’re freed from your yoke.”
After he says this he opens his arms like he wants to give me a hug, like he’s trying to be my new dad. Instead of a hug, I take a swing at him. It’s an awkward and telegraphed punch from a gangly, weak arm and he ducks it easily.
“Not a good idea,” he says, putting up his fists and starting to circle me. “I’ve been taking stage fighting classes for years.”
He circles me for a few seconds and then rifles a punch into my stomach. I buckle over, out of breath. Luckily, before he can get in another shot, Ellen comes home.
“Everything okay in here?” she asks.
“Just a little roughhousing,” Cal tells her. “No big deal.”
The next morning, Tater’s sick. One minute he’s eating his kibble and then the next minute he has a seizure. I carry him over to Ellen’s bedroom and bang on her door.
“It’s Tater,” I yell.
The door swings opens and Cal stands in front of me in his underwear.
“Something wrong with your little doggie?” he asks.
I can tell from his voice that he’s involved in this, that it’s revenge for me taking a swing at him yesterday, that it’s revenge for simply existing in my sister’s life. I see Ellen behind him, lying on the bed in her bra and panties, wearing her sunglasses.
“Please help,” I ask her.
Ellen gets up from the bed and slowly taps her way over to me. Tater’s breath is shallow and then it stops.
“What’s the matter?” she asks, like she can’t see that his eyes are shut, like she can’t see he’s not breathing, like she can’t see the black foam that’s gurgling out of his mouth. I hold Tater’s limp body up to Ellen’s face like he’s a sacrifice and she’s some old-timey god who can snap her fingers and bring him back to life. There’s a dead dog right under her nose, but Ellen does not step back, her nostrils don’t flare.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
I wrap Tater in a fleece blanket and put him in a wicker basket and bring him to the park. I blow up a big bouquet of balloons and tie them onto the basket. I write him a note that says “I will miss you forever” and then I let him go.
Frankie makes his way over to me and we stand side by side as Tater floats away.
“That was a nice ceremony,” he says. “He’ll obviously be missed.”
We watch Tater move south, toward the ocean. Frankie takes a sip from his bottle of whiskey, then he hands it to me. I take a swallow.
“Where do you think he’ll end up?” Frankie asks.
I tell him about the local elementary school that puts their school’s phone number on a scrap of paper inside the balloons and lets them go. I tell him about how they get calls from faraway places, places you’d never imagine a simple balloon could get.
“They get calls from Peru,” I explain to him. “From Russia. From Kenya. They get calls from everywhere.”
When I get home, Ellen bangs on my bedroom door with her cane.
“Was your friend lost again?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “But I gave him the directions he needed.”
“I could smell the liquor all the way from here,” she says. “It was like you two were sitting right next to me sipping on your bottle of hooch.”
I want things to go back to how they were. I want Tater’s warm body lying at my feet. I want to relax on the couch in my apartment with my sister while we watch our reality shows together, while we talk about how this or that strategy could work or backfire on someone, while we discuss how this person is a bastard or how that one is nice.
“I saw Cal with another woman,” I tell her. “A blonde. I heard Cal call her ‘honey’ and saw him slap her ass.”
After I say this, I see Ellen’s eyes bulge a little, but she catches herself quickly, focuses them on a spot on the wall above my shoulder.
“You’re lying,” she says.
“Ask him,” I say. “Just ask Cal and see what he says.”
The next morning, I go to the party supply store and I purchase two large helium tanks and a bunch of balloons. I roll all of this stuff over to Frankie in the park.
“No helium until later,” I tell him. “Okay?”
Frankie nods. I walk back to my apartment building and kneel down in the bushes by the front stairs. The window of our apartment is open and I can hear my sister yelling at Cal.
“He says he saw you with her,” Ellen says. “He described her in detail.”
“He’s a liar,” Cal tells her. “He’s jealous of what we have. He wants you back and he wants me out of here.”
“You’re still seeing her, aren’t you?” she asks. “You said you weren’t but you just can’t stop.”
There’s more yelling and then the door slams and Cal bursts out the front of our apartment building. I slide out of the bushes and walk up behind him with a two-by-four.
“Hey, Cal,” I say.
Cal turns around to see who’s calling out his name and before he can lift his arms to protect himself, I swing the board and nail him on the temple and he crumples to the sidewalk.
Frankie comes across the street with the wheelbarrow and we throw Cal inside and roll him over to the park.
“We’re all set,” Frankie says.
I see the hundreds and hundreds of balloons that Frankie has blown up.
“Is this going to work?” Frankie asks. “Is he too big?”
We tie balloon bouquet after balloon bouquet onto the wheelbarrow. For a while we think it’s not going to work, that Cal’s too heavy, but soon he lurches a couple of inches off the ground. We tie one more bunch of balloons onto the wheelbarrow and then Cal lifts off, climbing up into the air, over the trees.
I turn and look up at my apartment window. Ellen is standing there, looking down at us through her binoculars. I push the helium tank toward Frankie.
“Knock yourself out,” I tell him.
Frankie puts the nozzle from the helium tank up to his mouth and inhales.
“Your turn,” he tells me.
I wave him off, but he won’t take no for an answer.
“All right,” I say. “Just this once.”
I take the nozzle from Frankie and put it up to my mouth. I take a deep breath in. I see Cal floating out over the city, higher and higher, heading out toward the ocean.
Soon Ellen runs out of our apartment building, not using the cane, not wearing her sunglasses. When she gets close, I call out to her. I yell out to my sister in a voice that is my own but that is also much higher and much more fierce.
ACKERMAN IS SELLING HIS SEX CHAIR FOR TEN BUCKS
It’s a garage sale and Ackerman is selling his sex chair for ten bucks. It dangles from a beam in his garage. Underneath it there’s a set of cross-country skis and a bread maker. The sex chair is brown leather. I check the tag—it’s Swedish—very high quality. I inspect the various fucking holes—it’s in great shape, very gently used.
“That’s priced to sell,” Ackerman yells to me.
I had a weekly thing with Ackerman’s wife, Elaine, before she died. Every Tuesday night we met at a motel and screwed. She kept telling me she was going to leave Ackerman, but she never did. One Tuesday Elaine didn’t show up at the motel and when I drove by her house a few days later I saw a hearse and a bunch of people dressed in black.
“What happened?” I asked one of the kids standing in her yard.
“Aunt Elaine crashed her car,” he said.
There are a couple of other people roaming around in Ackerman’s garage too. There’s a young girl flipping through his record collection. There’s an old guy rooting around in a box of tools. Ackerman’s middle-aged, not much older t
han me. He’s way too young to have lost a wife, but maybe too old and too sad to look for another one.
“That chair’s gonna go quick,” he says. “I wouldn’t dillydally.”
Ackerman’s right. There’s already another guy eyeing it. I look at this guy and can tell exactly what he’s thinking. He’s thinking about the chair’s possibilities. He’s thinking about where he could put it in his house, who he could talk into using it. He’s not thinking what I’m thinking—how I miss Elaine so damn much that I stopped by her husband’s garage sale to buy something she once sat in or touched or that still held the scent of her shampoo. Before this other guy pulls out his wallet, I pluck the price tag off the chair and hand Ackerman my money.
“Sold,” he says.
Ackerman pulls the chair down from the rafters. Everyone else is gone now; it’s just me and him. Grief isn’t a contest, but suddenly I want it to be. I want someone to invent a grief-testing machine and then hook both of us up to it so I can show Ackerman I miss his wife way more than he does.
“You’re really gonna enjoy this chair,” he says.
What a normal person does now is says “thank you very much” and walks back to his car. This isn’t what I do. Now that I’m here, I realize how badly I want to get inside Ackerman’s house to see what other things of Elaine’s I’m missing out on. The only way I can figure out how to do this is to pretend to faint. And so that’s what I do. I roll my eyes back in my head and make my legs go slack and down I go.
“Oh shit,” Ackerman says.
After I count to twenty, I open my eyes.
“Let’s get you somewhere cool,” Ackerman tells me.
“Yes,” I say. “Let’s.”
I sit on Ackerman’s couch and eat a banana. I assure him I’m fine, that this happens to me once in a while.
“Low blood sugar,” I say.
He hands me a glass of water and I drink it down. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of talk radio for company. I don’t care what the topic is—sports or celebrity gossip or politics—I’m just really scared of it being quiet. I want to ask Ackerman what he does to fill up the silence, how he copes with Elaine being gone, but I can’t let him know I’m anything other than a random garage sale pervert.
“Great house,” I tell him.
I look out the window into his backyard. There’s a garden bed with some sweet corn and cucumbers, there’s a patio with a fire pit. Elaine always complained about Ackerman being selfish, not paying enough attention to her, but he seems nice enough to me.
“You want to see the rest of the place?” he asks.
The last time I shoplifted anything was in high school, but each room Ackerman and I walk through I shove something of Elaine’s into my pocket—a five-by-seven black and white of her at the beach, a fridge magnet, a dart from the rec room. When Ackerman goes to take a piss, I slide into the bedroom and shove a pair of her panties into my pocket.
“I’m really sorry about all this,” I tell him when he comes back.
“It happens,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”
We’re standing on his front porch now, staring out toward the street. A car slows down for a speed bump. It’s a convertible, full of teenagers. When they go over the bump they bounce around, laugh their asses off. Ackerman stares at them and I see tears form in his eyes. I understand how something insignificant can suddenly overwhelm you, how any old thing can dredge up a memory that knocks the breath from your lungs.
“You want to grill up some burgers?” Ackerman asks.
“Sure,” I say.
Ackerman fixes me a drink, tosses the meat on the grill. We sit on the back deck and watch the sun slide down below the horizon.
When Ackerman clears our plates, I run to the bathroom. I shove some fancy soaps and a hair brush of Elaine’s into my pocket. While I am in there, I hear a glass shatter. Then another one. Then another. The shattering is spaced out enough that I can tell Ackerman hasn’t had an accident, that he’s doing this on purpose.
When I get out there, he’s already got the broom out. He’s sweeping the chards into the dust pan.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Just a little clumsy,” he tells me.
When I leave, Ackerman follows me to my car. I move in a measured way, weighed down by all of Elaine’s curios. While I’m loading the sex chair into my trunk, that pair of Elaine’s panties I stole accidentally falls out of my jacket pocket and onto the ground. I quickly kick them under my car and turn back toward to Ackerman to see if he’s noticed. His lips have pursed and his eyes are held in a squint. He’s not looking at me, he’s gazing up at the clouds in the night sky.
“We should do this again,” he says.
“Definitely,” I say, offering a handshake. Ackerman lets my hand hang out in the air for a long time, but then he finally grabs it.
“I’m a hugger,” he says, and before I can stop him Ackerman pulls me into his body, surrounds me. I squirm a little at the beginning of his hug; wonder if he can feel everything else I’ve stolen from him pressing against his body, wonder if he can feel the picture of Elaine, or if maybe the dart is poking him in the thigh. He doesn’t say anything so I settle in, get comfortable, hug him back. We stand there for a long time. I don’t let go until he lets go.
THE INDOOR BABY
From his bed, my husband Mitch yells for fresh air and sunlight for our son. He argues that this is child abuse; that Swayze needs to be an indoor/outdoor baby, not just an indoor one.
“For the love of God, Mona,” he tells me, “stop this now.”
I empty out Mitch’s catheter bag. I bring him his protein shakes. I flip his body to keep the bedsores at bay. While I care for him, Mitch never fails to remind me that he used to charge enemy bunkers and root around in mountain caves, always ready to meet his maker.
“Of all the crazy shit I’ve seen,” he says, “what you’re doing to Swayze is the shithouse craziest.”
We live in an isolated area, in a rambler surrounded by a thick stand of Norway pine. Our winding driveway is washed out, treacherous even in daylight. Mitch’s parents died years ago and the only visitors we get now are my mom and James, the delivery boy from the grocery store. I’ve tried to convince Mitch that Swayze’s safer living like this, but Mitch won’t be convinced.
“This isn’t about his safety,” he yells, “it’s about your irrational fear.”
Mitch was a ranter even before that landmine took his legs, but since then he’s gotten much worse. I usually play the role of the good wife and let him scream and gnash his teeth all he wants, but sometimes when his rant gets especially lengthy or loud I open up the Bible of indoor baby rearing, Nurture Against Nature, by the noted Swiss pediatrician and agoraphobe, Dr. Gustav Halder, and I drown Mitch out.
“The sun does not keep your baby safe,” I yell at him this morning after he won’t stop grousing. “The night sky does not help raise your child. Clean, crisp air does nothing for your baby’s well-being. Wide-open spaces do not thrust your kid on a path to become a productive member of society. You do not plant a seed in the ground and a little baby sprouts up. Your baby came from the womb—and as you know from previous chapters—the womb is the most indoorsy organ of all.”
Tonight I feed Swayze in the rocking chair by his crib. He’s a good eater. I put him up to my nipple and he goes to town. The doctor called him a miracle baby and I couldn’t agree more. He shouldn’t be here, but here he is.
It certainly wasn’t easy. Mitch and I tried forever to have him. We emptied out our savings accounts to see the best specialists. I took Clomid after Clomid. Our sex life turned perfunctory, timed by tiny shifts in my body temperature and punctuated by me hurriedly pressing my thighs tight into my chest.
One day I had enough. I tossed the pills into the trash and shoved my basal thermometer into the junk drawer. I crumpled up the cocktail napkin on my nightstand where I’d charted when my eggs were going to drop. On my to-do list under “Clean window b
linds!” I wrote the words “Adopt a cute child!” Mitch and I never actually got around to discussing adoption because shortly after I wrote this phrase down, his reserve unit was called up into action.
“You knew this could happen,” he told me as he pulled his duffel bag from the crawl space and shook out the sand.
I touched the gray patch of hair on the side of Mitch’s head that was shaped like a maple leaf. He pressed his lips against my neck. He slowly ground himself into my hips and I dug my fingernails into his shoulder blades and pulled him down onto our bed. For the first time in a long time I didn’t care what my body temperature was or if my cervix was going to be receptive. For the first time in a long time it was unplanned and desperate. When we were finished we were lying on the floor of Mitch’s closet near his clothes hamper. Somehow one of my hoop earrings had fallen out of my ear and clamped itself around his ankle.
“You’ve done your part for God and country,” I told him as I untwisted my legs from his ass. “Can’t it be someone else’s turn?”
Mitch stood up and grabbed all of his underwear from his underwear drawer and dumped them into his suitcase. I’d fallen in love with Mitch because he had thoughtful eyes and a strong chin and because I fit into his chest when we danced, but I’d also fallen in love with him because he was a man who never shirked his duty. Now I realized that I was willing to love him a little less in one way to love him a little more in another.
“Honey,” he told me. “It’s everyone’s turn. It’s everybody’s turn always.”
When Mitch left, I missed hearing his gentle snoring fill our bedroom. I missed how his long fingers could always fix that crick in my neck. I missed the good chicken chili he made on Sunday nights.
A few weeks after he was gone, I went to the doctor to get a mole on my leg checked out. The mole had looked like a skinny Ohio for my entire life but had suddenly morphed into a fatter Tennessee.