by Susan Perabo
“I’m going to the pool,” Paul said, though water was not what he was after. He wanted only to be alone, away from his tiny father, alone with the suffocating heat and the shouts of children and the voices of strangers.
“Want some company?” Sonny asked hopefully.
“I just feel like bein’ by myself for a while,” Paul said.
The day was hot but overcast, so the pool area behind the hotel wasn’t very crowded. The diehard tanners, those eking out the last of their vacations, slicked lotion across their already charred bodies. A few shivering kids — no sun to warm them — took turns leaping off the diving board. The bronze lifeguard sat atop his tower, swinging a whistle on its lanyard. Paul spread his blue Nittany Lions towel on a lounge chair and lay back, closed his eyes. In the row of chairs behind his, two women were discussing a mutual friend who was going blind for reasons no doctor could determine. It’s hysterical, one of the women said in a low, knowing voice. She’s never been able to pull herself together. The other one sighed, and they both lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Paul drowsed, imagining this woman who could not pull herself together (from what? after what?) clumsily feeling her way through a once familiar house, lunging from one piece of furniture to the next. In his half-sleep the house was his own and the blind woman had the face of his mother. She was helpless, blind and alone. Why had he left her?
“What’d you say to him?”
He started awake. Ian was standing over him, dressed in his tattered jeans and a brown button-down shirt that wasn’t buttoned. His Pennsylvania-pale chest looked sickly amidst the California tans that surrounded him.
“Wha’dya mean? Who?”
Ian jerked his thumb at the hotel. “I asked him where you were at and he just about bit my head off. You didn’t tell him about last night, did ya?”
“No,” Paul said. “I didn’t tell him.”
Ian moved to sit on the lounge beside Paul’s, then snagged his dummy foot in the Penn State beach towel and toppled onto the chair awkwardly, face first, causing it to scrape a few inches on the concrete toward the row behind them. The friends of the blind woman blinked and frowned.
“Son of a bitch,” Ian said, his cheeks flushing. “Try to keep your shit out of my way, okay?”
“Sorry.”
“Now listen,” Ian said. He adjusted himself quickly in the chair, turned to Paul. “We made a pact, me and him. So do me a favor and fake you don’t know.”
“I can’t just pretend I —”
“Just leave him be for a while, jocko, don’t think about it. Play along. Then in a couple days you might forget about it, if you don’t keep reminding yourself every minute.” He coughed hoarsely, slapped himself in the chest, smacked his lips. “You got something to drink down here? Got a Coke or something?”
“No.” Paul nibbled on his thumbnail. “Is that what you do?”
“What?”
“You know, play along. Pretend.”
Ian shrugged. “I guess so. Whatever, you know. Play along long enough, you start wondering yourself. Like, when it’s only you who knows, maybe it don’t even count. Like it might as well have happened the way everybody thinks. Majority rules or something, you know?”
“It counts,” Paul said. “It can’t not count.” He looked toward the pool. On the diving board a tanned muscular boy about his age sprung from the lip of the blue board, turned a tight somersault in the air, then knifed into the water.
“You do that?” Ian asked, nodding toward the boy as he emerged, breathless and smiling, at the edge of the pool.
“That? No way.”
“I used to think it would be cool,” Ian said. “Watched it on TV sometimes, Olympics or whatever, watched those guys go off that high board. How cool would that be? Doing all that shit while you’re fallin’.”
“You should try it,” Paul said.
“Right, jocko. What am I gonna do? Hop to the end of the board?”
It was easy enough to forget. Except for in the hot tub, Ian looked whole. He still walked as if he had a stone in his shoe, but you got used to it, stopped noticing. Paul had had a teacher once with a wandering eye; it was like that, or like ET, like how halfway through the movie you forgot how ugly he really was.
“When I get back I get my real one,” Ian said. “My real fake one, you know, the one that’ll do more stuff. This one’s temporary, a piece of crap. But they can’t make you the real one until the leg heals up all the way.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Nah. Sweats like a bitch, though.”
The boy was on the board again, his brown back to the pool, his heels edging off the metal tip. He breathed deeply, his lips in the shape of a whistle.
“Didja think about it?” Paul asked.
“What?”
“About what you were doing. When you did it.”
Ian sighed. “You think it’d cross your mind, right? Like hey, dimmo, you’re chopping off your foot. You need this foot, idiot. Like, you’re gonna have to walk with it and shit. But I didn’t think anything like that. Not until after.”
Paul chewed the inside of his lip. “What’d you think after?”
“What are you now, Perry Fucking Mason?”
Ian drew a crumpled cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. The gate to the pool area squawked open and clanked closed and Paul glanced up. It was his father in his navy blue swim trunks, a hotel towel slung around his neck. He looked around helplessly for a moment and then caught Paul’s eye, smiled, started toward them.
“Dickhead,” Paul muttered under his breath.
“Cool out,” Ian said. “He’s still your dad.”
“What’re you guys up to?” Sonny asked cheerfully, approaching with a phony bounce in his step. He tossed his towel on the ground between the two lounge chairs.
“Tanning,” Ian said. “No more white titties for me.”
“That’s a relief,” Sonny said. He slapped Paul’s foot. “Wanna go for a swim? Wanna race or something? I’ll give you three strokes.”
Paul shook his head. “Ian can’t go in the water,” he said.
“So Ian’ll be the judge. He’ll be the starter pistol.”
“Bang,” Ian said, ashing on Sonny’s towel.
“We’re talking,” Paul said, settling himself further into his chair. “We’re having a conversation.”
Sonny looked back and forth between them, an uncomfortable smile twitching on his lips. That’s right, Paul thought, now you’re the odd man, the third wheel, the runt of the litter, the cheese standing alone. I’ve had my turn, and Ian’s whole life has been his turn. So now it’s your turn.
“Okay,” Sonny said. “We’ll race later.”
Paul watched his father dive into the pool, then smoothly take the length of it with a practiced, flawless crawl stroke; his flutter kicks were powerful and even, barely gave up a splash.
“Hey, jocko . . . wanna go to Disney?”
Paul grinned, certain it was a joke; he imagined Ian would rather trek across the Sahara than set foot in Disney. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious,” Ian said. “We leave now we get there in time for lunch.”
“What do you want to go to Disney for?”
“Wha’dya think? Rides, man. Space Mountain.”
Paul grimaced, recalling vividly his last roller-coaster experience at Six Flags in New Jersey, the certainty of his own death he’d felt at the crest of that first hill. “Rides are stupid,” he said.
Ian smiled, tossed some hair from his eyes. “Chicken, huh? Gobble gobble.”
“That’s turkeys.”
“So? You in or aren’t you?”
Paul watched his father’s feet slap against the gleaming blue surface of the pool, his toes, his ten toes, spiraling the water in his wake. He closed his eyes.
“All right,” he said. “I’m in.”
“This way!” Ian shouted, already quickening his stutter step as they passed through the entrance gate. But Paul needed a mom
ent. He was, despite the events of the past days, still twelve years old and thus stunned into stillness upon entering the Magic Kingdom. Shoot, he decided in an instant, it probably wasn’t the stuff that made heaven so great; it was that everyone there was so damn happy. And so it was at Disneyland. Looking at the crowds swarming around him, it was hard to imagine that there was any sadness left in the world. Even the adults — faces that had surely been pinched and creased from traffic and parking and the $48.50 to get in — looked now as if unweighed by any burden.
“Come on!” Ian had stopped several yards in front of him, was beckoning him forward. “You gonna stand there all day lookin’ like a retard?”
Paul skipped to catch up, then followed Ian into a store called The Mad Hatter.
“What’re we doing? Ian, what —”
“First stop,” Ian said soberly. “Mouse ears.”
There might have been a thousand of them, arranged neatly on a long table that stretched nearly the width of the store, perfectly identical but for size, black felt beanies with two plastic circles sticking up on top. Ian grabbed one and fixed it delicately on his head.
“No way,” Paul said.
“Listen, dimmo. We’re at Disney. This is what you do at Disney.”
Ian looked beyond ridiculous: ragged jeans, black boots that could stomp the shit out of Donald Duck, a faded gray T-shirt, and a Mouseketeer hat flattening clumps of dirty black hair against his forehead.
“Are you stoned?”
“Screw you,” Ian shot back. “You think I’d have to be wasted to wear these? It’s Disney. It’s part of the package.”
“We’ll look stupid.”
“You’re such a pussy. See, it’s cool if we make it cool.” Ian snatched a hat from the table and set it atop Paul’s head, stepped back. “Oh yeah. You’re the man now.”
“Where’s a mirror?”
“No mirrors. You go on faith. Didn’t you see The Lion King?”
He had this way about him, Paul thought, especially when he was smiling the sloppy smile, the one absent of any trace of snarl or sneer. You could see how he’d come this far in life without getting killed, how he must have talked himself — maybe grinned himself — out of a thousand deaths. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe, as his father’s face had changed, shifted shape, so too had Ian’s.
By the middle of the afternoon they had ridden most of the rides. Space Mountain they braved twice in a row, and Paul was pleased to see that Ian seemed even more petrified than he was, white-knuckled the safety bar on the steep descents instead of flinging his arms in the air as tradition dictated. In Fantasyland they rode Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, It’s a Small World, and Peter Pan’s Flight. (“Peter Pan’s a fag,” Ian informed Paul. “You know that, right?”) Then they stopped and ate lunch on a bench outside Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. Ian scarfed down a hamburger and two hot dogs and was in the middle of his second Goofy Ice Cream Pop when an overweight girl dressed as Sleeping Beauty wandered by.
“Hey, babe,” Ian yelled. “Need some kissin’?”
“Gee, I’ve never heard that one before,” the girl said snottily, though she slowed her pace a bit. “Nice ears.”
“You like ’em?” Ian stood up and stroked the plastic ears seductively. He had a bubble of vanilla ice cream on his chin. “Know what they say about big ears, don’t you?”
They decided to try the Mad Tea Party next. It sounded innocent enough — how bad could a pink teacup be, really? — although the sign at the front of the line warned passengers against boarding if they were pregnant, wore a pacemaker, or had ever experienced motion sickness. It neglected to mention Goofy Pops. Paul had a ball, screamed his head off with everybody else as the dizzying speed made everything around him disappear into wild streams of color. But by the time they were done spinning, Ian stumbled off the ride a unique color of his own.
“I’m dying,” he said, staggering in wide circles, one hand on his belly and the other flailing for Paul’s arm. “Help me, man. I’m dying.”
People were staring at them with a mixture of concern and amusement. A little boy tugged on his mother’s sleeve and said look at that funny man and Paul had to stop himself from laughing. If Ian’s friends could see him now, he thought, the toughest guy in Casey TKO’d by the Mad Tea Party.
“Let’s do the boats,” Paul said, steadying him, praying Ian wouldn’t throw up on him. “They go slow. You just look at stuff.”
There was no line for the Storybook Land Canal Boats; it wasn’t exactly a thrill ride. Passengers swooshed slowly down a makeshift river in little wooden boats, passing animatronic Disney characters along the way. Ian plopped down on his wooden seat, hunched over cradling his stomach. His mouse ears fell at his feet.
“Never eating again,” he moaned. “Remind me . . .”
“You already got a beer gut.”
“Thanks, jocko. That’s real nice.” He raised his head and took a deep breath, let it out slow. “Hey, blame the old man for that anyway. He’s the boozehound keeps restocking the bar.”
Paul shifted uncomfortably on the hard seat, then gave up and sat on his hands for some padding. “He didn’t used to be like that. Drinking so much. I mean sometimes, every once in a while, but not every night.”
Ian considered, rubbed his stomach. “I’m thinking it’s the movie,” he said eventually. “It’s gettin’ to him. And he don’t even know it. He still thinks he’s having a good time.”
“Wha’dya mean?”
“Well, you know . . .” He shrugged, shook a cigarette from his pack and lit it.
“You can’t smoke here,” Paul said.
“You rather me puke?”
They were quiet for a moment. Paul trailed his fingers in the lake; it was warm and silky, felt as much like oil as water.
“What about the movie?” he asked.
Ian took a drag from his cigarette. “Seems like every day he watches he gets a little crazier. You know how it is, right? You tell a lie, a big fat one, and for a while you spend so much time covering it up you don’t have time to even think about it. You’re too busy, you know, tying up all the loose ends, gettin’ your story straight.”
“Talking about it to anyone who’ll listen,” Paul said. He thought of all the interviews, his father on radio and TV, his father in print, the lie winding its way out into the world. And then — worse — that night at Bonanza, his father sitting there in that booth talking about Ian screaming, Ian crying, Ian being afraid.
“Right,” Ian said. “So then everybody knows the story. You pulled it off. You’re a fucking wonderboy. But now that everybody’s bought into your bullshit you don’t having nothing to do anymore but wade around in it twenty-four seven. And then you start to notice how bad it stinks.”
“He tell you that?”
“Shit, no.” He ashed in the water, onto the claws of Sebastian the crab. “All I know’s the stink’s gettin’ to him.”
Paul rested his elbows on his knees. To his left, on a small AstroTurf Island, loomed the cursed castle from Beauty and the Beast; every few seconds a wooden door on the top floor would creak open and the plastic Beast would stick his head out, look around warily, then duck back inside.
“So what happens?” Paul asked.
Ian shrugged. “Nothin’,” he said. “He goes home, boinks your mom, starts working again, end of story. Movie stuff’s over, people start forgetting, he starts forgetting. He lives with the stink.”
You keep the windows open, Paul thought. You keep the air moving. You fill the house with other smells: dinner, perfume, Mop & Glo. You blame the smell on the dogs, the radiator, sweaty socks. When it’s really bad you hold your breath and make for the door.
“What about you?” Paul asked.
“What about me what?”
“What do you do? When we go home?”
Ian tossed his cigarette into the water. “I dunno. Weird thing is, I keep forgettin’ I gotta go back at all.”
Paul thought about wh
at waited for Ian in Casey: his yammering mom, the goners by the Hess Station, his real fake foot. No wonder he kept forgetting about it; it wasn’t like he had much to be homesick for.
“You still feel like puking?” he asked.
“Nah.” Ian grabbed his mouse ears from the bottom of the boat, fitted them again on his head. “I’m ready for the Mountain. One more time, no hands, and then we head home, yeah?”
“Sure,” Paul said.
They returned to Tomorrowland. It was late in the afternoon, and the line for Space Mountain was twice the length it had been earlier, snaking back on itself twenty times over. To entertain themselves they guessed at the lives of the people immediately preceding and following them in line. Ahead of them were two young couples (“Newlyweds?” Paul suggested, to which Ian scoffed, “They’re still pawin’ each other . . . no way they’re married”) and behind them a middle-aged father with a pretty preteen redhead. Definitely a weekend visit, they decided, based on the way the father was talking to the girl nonstop, asking her what she was studying in school and how many gerbils she had and what position she was going to play in softball when the season started.
“I hope my parents don’t get divorced,” Paul said.
“You and me both,” Ian said. “ ’Cause don’t think I won’t be taking the blame for it.”
Paul thought of that judge again, the kindly one with the white hair, looking down at him, waiting patiently for an answer. But surely his father would be out of the running as far as the law was concerned. Surely his father’s character would be used as evidence against him. He’d probably show up in the courtroom drunk, stumble in unshaven and poorly dressed. He’s mine, his father would say. He belongs with me. And his mother would be sitting behind a long wooden table, tight-lipped, would be shaking her head grimly, all ready to take her precious boy home and lock him up in the house until he turned thirty. Ian, he’d have to tell the kindly judge. I choose Ian.
“Hey, watch it!” Ian shouted.
Paul was knocked off balance by someone — someones — pushing past him in line. It was a couple of black kids; they continued forward, squeezing themselves against the yellow iron bars to shimmy past the two young couples.