by Nicole Fox
“Disgusting,” I repeat.
Mom smiles, nudging me in the shoulder. Her multicolored dress flows around her. “You heard me,” she says. “Disgusting. You smell like a trash heap. So the first order of the day is to take a shower.”
She turns away and she and Andre speak in broken Italian to each other—Mom because she can’t speak it and Andre because he has an apple in his mouth—and then she turns back to me. “Well, why are you still standing there with that silly look on your face? I won’t ask again, young lady. It’s time for a shower!”
“Mom . . .”
“Don’t Mom me!” She grabs me by the wrist and drags me to the bathroom. “In, now!”
“This is abuse,” I tell her, fleeing into the bathroom. “I just want you to know that.”
“The way you smell is abuse!” Mom exclaims. She smiles to take the sting out of her words. “I’ll leave clean clothes just outside the door. I’ve already laid out fresh towels for you.”
Maybe the LA heat is doing more serious work on me than I realize, because as I stand under the blasting shower water I smell myself changing, from sweaty and damp to clean and fresh. I stand here and remember that last time with Fink, the time in the shower, my legs wrapped around his hips and my arms around his shoulders. I remember the way he looked at me, and how it made me feel as though this meant something, this was going somewhere. It wasn’t the same-old routine of distance and awkwardness. I felt as though I’d finally bypassed that first awkward stage of a relationship and accessed what I see so frequently in other couples: actual affection, actual love.
I shake my head as I stand in front of the mirror, looking at the dripping-wet moron in the steamed glass. “He doesn’t care,” I whisper. “He only cares about himself, and his club. He doesn’t give a shit about you.”
“Are you okay in there?” Mom calls.
“Fine!” I call back.
“Okay, well, I’ve left you a nice dress and some strappy shoes. It might be, I don’t know, nice to dress up a little and go into town. What’d’you think?”
I think it sounds horrible. I think I’d rather lie in bed watching TV and touching myself and then feeling bad for touching myself. I think I’d rather close my eyes and picture Fink, picture myself sucking him and then stabbing him, and then sucking and stabbing him at the same time. I think I’d rather let myself fall deeper into this rabbit hole. But I know Mom. She’s not really offering. If I say no, she’ll hound me all day.
“Okay.”
I get dressed in a pink-and-blue dress, the fabric so light the mildest breeze disturbs it, and then join Mom in the dining room, which leads to the front door. “Oh, how beautiful!” she cries.
“I’m not a kid, Mom, to be dressed up and gushed over.”
“I never said you were a kid, did I? But come to think of it, you are acting a little like a kid.”
“I’m just resting.”
“For three days. Four, if I let you have your way. Lying in bed and not eating for three days isn’t resting, dear. It’s being love-struck, lovesick. You’re ill, but not in here.” She waves her hand mystically over her belly. “But in here.” She waves her mystical hand over her heart.
I wince when she does it over the belly. Mom doesn’t know about the baby yet. I haven’t found the right time to tell her. Maybe I’ll tell her today; maybe that will be her reward for dragging me from my comfortable purgatory. Let her choke on that.
I smile at the grim thought, far grimmer than I usually have. I guess three days of self-isolation will do that to you.
“I don’t like that look,” Mom says. “I’m going to turn away from you now. When I turn back, you better not be looking at me like that. Alright?” She turns back with exaggerated slowness.
I stick a fake grin to my face. “Better?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“It’ll do,” Mom says. “Though you still look angry.”
I sit in the passenger seat of Mom’s hot pink Tesla, waiting as she messes around smoothing down her dress and adjusting her handbag, and then stare out the window at the beach as we make our way into town.
“I thought we’d go to this absolutely adorable gluten-free pizza place I know. What’d’you think?”
I think . . .
“Sure,” I say, knowing that, just like coming out, that phrase means I don’t have any choice at all.
“Let’s treat ourselves a little. Pig out.”
“On gluten-free pizza.”
“It’s vegan, too.”
“Okay, Mom. Let’s pig out on gluten-free vegan pizza.”
The pizza place is decorated with pictures of water creatures, seals and whales and dolphins, the seats covered in shell patterns and real shells glued to the underside of the table like chewing gum. Mom orders a large seaweed and pepper pizza and smiles at me when I make a vomiting sound.
“So,” she says, resting her chin on her hands, “just what has gotten into you, dear? I know it’s this man, but really, does he have a magic cock or something?”
“Mom!”
“What else do you expect me to think?” she says, way too loudly, impervious to embarrassment. “You can’t go around with that look on your face and expect me not to be worried. Okay, let’s lay it all out so we can get to the bottom of this.”
“You’re not my therapist.”
“Look at me.”
I do. She stares at me openly, kindly. “When have you ever known me to let something go?”
“Never. It’s one of your worst qualities.”
“Then you’ll know I’m not letting this go. I want you to tell me, Nancy, exactly what happened between the two of you. Start at the beginning and leave nothing out.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. “You really want to know.”
“Yes.” She stares at me sternly. She’s like a mountain, solid and immovable.
I take a deep breath. “Okay, then.”
I tell her about what happened between Fink and Dad, following him to The Mermaid, and everything else. I end with being pregnant and him sneaking out on me. Mom’s jaw falls more and more as I talk. She doesn’t touch her pizza when the waiter lays it before us, just keeps staring at me until her jaw looks like it might detach from her face.
“Wow.” She closes her jaw with an effort, and then drops it again to take a mammoth bite of pizza. Mom has the unique ability to talk coherently with a mouthful of food, an ability which caused me much disgust growing up. “I don’t know what to . . . just, wow, Nancy. That’s a lot to take in. You’re pregnant. You’re pregnant!” Something clicks inside of her. She leaps around the table and throws her arm over my shoulder, squealing so loud I’m sure I feel my eardrum pop. She kisses me sloppily on the cheek. “This is wonderful news!”
“Didn’t you hear the rest of it?” I say.
I’m always amazed to see Mom like this, giddy and girlish, when during my childhood she was so often downcast, mouse-like, the sort of woman to quietly scoop up shards of glass after her husband has destroyed her favorite vase. She kisses me again and then returns to her chair, ignoring the stares of the people around us.
“I heard the rest. But what of it? Can’t it be fixed? It sounds to me like a classic case of he likes you, you like him. But you’re both young and you think your little quirks are special and terrifying, like all young people do.”
“Don’t patronize me, Mom.”
“I’m not patronizing.” She takes another huge bite of pizza, swallowing a bare second after chewing. “I’m just giving you some wisdom. He walked out on you. Why do you think he did that, dear?”
“Because he’s an asshole.” I clench my fist, picturing him silently creeping around my bedroom, pulling on his clothes as I lay there oblivious.
“Come on. Think deeper than that. Do you seriously believe that he sat up and thought to himself: This is going to make her really upset? Ha, ha! This is going to drive her crazy! Why would he do that? Let me tell you something about men. They’re scared o
f us all the time, scared that we’ll trap them or change them in some way, and the worst part is, they want that. They want a family—what single men call being trapped—and they want to change—what single men call being boring. They don’t want to roam like wolves for the rest of their lives. But sometimes we have to, well, we have to be patient with them.”
“You were patient with Dad,” I mutter. “And that didn’t exactly go well.”
Mom flinches. I feel instantly guilty.
“Mom . . .” I touch her hand. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “No, no, it’s fine. You’re right. I was patient with your father, too patient, but that was because I thought he loved me more than his addiction. I was wrong. I suppose that before you decide to try and get this boy back, you need to ask yourself if he cares about you, truly cares, deep down. Is he like your father, or is he a good man?
“A good man,” I answer without question. “He’s just . . . yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe he’s just scared. But it still pisses me off.”
“Of course, it does.” Mom takes another bite and says between mouthfuls: “Who ever said men wouldn’t piss us off? If they didn’t piss us off, they’d have nothing to do from sunrise to sunset!”
We both giggle. For the first time in years, I feel like I have my mom back.
“Did that boy really hit your father?”
“Yes,” I say. “Quite hard. He was all right, though. I think he was too drunk to really feel it.”
“Wow, poor Bill . . .”
We meet eyes and giggle again. I feel slightly guilty for giggling at Dad, but at the same time it’s a relief to be able to make light of the situation.
“We shouldn’t laugh,” Mom says. “I loved him once, you know. I was at college, studying literature. I was at a party and in came this handsome man in a suit and a tie, dashing and smooth. That night he let me hold his deputy badge. We walked under the stars. It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful night of my life. And so I gave myself to him, and I fell for him, and it was only once he had me safely stowed away that he started drinking. Maybe he did it on purpose, or maybe he thought he didn’t have to treat me nice anymore because I was already his. I don’t know.”
“Do you hate him?” I ask.
“For a long time, I did.” She nods. “But now I just pity him.”
“I pity him, too. It’s funny, Mom, but part of me was scared that Fink would turn out like Dad. That’s why I was so pissed when he ran out on me. But Dad never ran out, did he? He just stayed and made us miserable. Dad and Fink aren’t the same.” It’s a simple fact, but one that hits me with the force of a revelation. “Dad and Fink aren’t the same,” I repeat.
“It certainly doesn’t sound like they are, dear.”
I stand up. “I need to go, Mom. I need to go back to Salem.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now! I need to see him!”
We drive back toward Mom’s apartment, me in the passenger seat chewing my fingernails and wondering how this will work out. I don’t want to be the woman showing up again, jack-in-the-boxing back into his life, but at the same time, I don’t want to go the rest of my life without seeing him, or to raise a child alone when there’s a chance for a real family.
“What will you say?” Mom asks as I shove my clothes into my suitcase.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “But I’ll think of something. This is his last chance, though. I swear.”
Mom takes my face in her hands, looking at me with fire in her eyes. “Stick to that,” she says. “Maybe Fink is different. It sounds like he’s different. But stick to your promise. Otherwise, you’ll end up like me, giving a new last chance every day. How many times did I say that, Nancy? He must have had thousands of last chances!”
“It’s okay, Mom.” I wrap my arms around her, pulling her close to me. “It’s his last chance. I’ll stick to that.”
Chapter Twenty
Fink
I sit at The Mermaid, drinking whisky, watching the room idly. Mostly I just think about what I’ll say to Nancy when I see her. How will I even start to apologize? Maybe she doesn’t know why I walked out on her, but I’ve been thinking on that and I’m not sure how cold I was when I stowed the test. Maybe I made it obvious. I can’t remember. My world was shattering in half and I had no damn clue what to do.
I’m five drinks deep when I start to picture that man, sitting on the toilet seat and then storming out. He looks like a bastard, I decide. He looks no different to how I picture Dad. I drink up and go to take a piss, closing my eyes and thinking of Nancy, thinking of being with her in her apartment instead of here, standing in a reeking toilet with nothing but whisky to warm me up.
I return to the bar to find Snake and the Old Man, as well as about ten other club men, sitting around my booth. Snake nods to me, and then nods to the bottle of whisky. “I fuckin’ told them,” he says, grinning. “As soon as we walked in and I saw that whisky, I knew it. I just knew that it’d be you. I said to them: who’d be drinking a whole bottle of whisky on his own?”
I grin as best as I can, though I’d prefer if I was left on my own. It’s been a whole damn day since I learned where Nancy is, a whole damn day of doing jack shit except for thinking about what I’ll say to her when I see her. I guess it’s been a day and a half now, I reflect as I sit down. The sun must’ve set if these hounds are here and not at the clubhouse.
“You haven’t been by the club,” the Old Man says. “Is something wrong?”
“Is something wrong?” I shrug. “What’d be wrong, except that lately I’m starting to wonder if this is the life for me, or if I didn’t just fall into it because it was easier than staying in high school or dealing with my mother’s death? Maybe that’s what’s wrong, Joseph.”
“You don’t mean that,” Snake says. “Do you?”
“I reckon I do. I reckon I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it. I’m tired of living a life I’m not even sure of. I’m tired of living a life when I don’t know if I’ll be able to look at myself in the mirror in ten years. Hell, if I’ll even be alive to look in the mirror in ten years.”
The men around me lean in, listening.
“Are you sure?” the Old Man says. “You need to think about what you’re saying. Once we unpatch you, Fink, there’s no coming back. You’ve earned the courtesy of not being shot in the back of the head, but that’s all. You can’t say a thing like this and then change your mind later. Are you just blowing off steam here, or is this real?”
“I think it might be real,” I say. “I entered this life when I was a boy. I was a fuckin’ kid full of rage and fight and spit, and I’ll always be grateful for you folks for letting me in. But I don’t know if it’s the place for me anymore. In fact, I’m almost sure it’s not.”
“Well, shit,” Snake says.
“Shit is right,” the boss mutters. “This puts us in a bad spot, Fink. We don’t normally let patched members just up and leave. That’s why we patch ’em, you see.”
“Then kill me.” I look around at the men. “Kill me or let me go. Those are your choices.”
“Kill you.” Snake laughs. “We’re not going to kill you.”
“The Old Man’s right,” the boss says. “You’ve earned the right to leave if you wanna leave, but you can’t stay live in Salem no more, and you can’t come to the clubhouse or our bars, and we’re not responsible for anything that happens to you. Those are the terms. You can take them, if you want.”
I’m going to say yes when he swaggers in, Michaels with the scar down his face, with five, six, seven . . . thirteen men swagger in behind him, all of them dressed in civilian clothes but walking with the gait of cops, that walk that proclaims to the world that they’re too big and bad to have to give a shit about little insects like us. Michaels swaggers right up to the boss and smiles.
“How you doin’, Markus? Having a good time.”
“We’re fine, officer,” the boss says, barely ke
eping the anger from his voice. “There’s plenty of room here for everyone. How about some drinks on the house?”
“You think we’re here for drinks?” Michaels walks past the boss and stops at my table, looking down at me with his thumbs hooked through his waistband. “Howdy, Fink. How’s your evening going?”
“It was going fine until twenty seconds ago.”
A few men snigger.
“Oh, that’s funny.” Michaels smiles and raises his eyebrows, causing his scar to shrivel up. “What a funny fuckin’ man you are, Fink. I wonder how funny you’ll be with lead in your belly.”