by Andrew Roe
Now, however, there is no soundtrack. Only two bodies, one storyline. You’ve arrived at your desired destination—well, desired is perhaps too strong a word. You’ve thought about it. Wondered about it. What would it be like if. And now it’s here. Live. In real time. You’ve both laid the foundation for what is about to happen/not happen. And you are still standing there at the bed. You are still naked. Your penis curves a bit to the left, her right. You are either half erect or half limp.
To be clothed, at home, driving, navigating a wiggly shopping cart while spending way too much time deliberating over what you should buy: they are all better options than this, than being naked. You can’t even enjoy the essentials anymore. Sex, sports, food—when was the last time food was anything more than fuel? You’ve lost the ability to relax, to “chill,” as your son would put it, he of the weekly phone call, which has become a duty, a penance for you both, but it’s all you have, so you hit the speed dial button every Sunday evening at approximately the same time, the conversations growing shorter and shorter, devolving into a clipped Q&A format, you like a probing journalist, and he like an interview subject who doesn’t want to disclose too much. Looking back—and why not look back when you’re nude in front of a coworker, collapsing sexually, with your budding belly catching the faintest hint of stale air conditioning—there have been failures, sure. Not as grand as some, but certainly worse than others. A connect-the-dots trail of fuckups and stutters and regrets. This is not the life you envisioned, ever. Somewhere your son is sleeping in a room you’ve never been in, never seen, in another state, in another time zone. He is twelve and moody. And somewhere your wife sleeps next to a new and improved husband: taller, sturdier than you, financially more secure, more vigorous, more ambitious, more everything. He has a goatee and listens to smooth jazz. He works out three times a week, minimum. You remain skeptical about the timing of everything. Your wife says she met him after, after she knew it was over. It had nothing to do with Clay. You say no. She, your wife, has always been hazy on the chronology of the whole thing, perhaps wanting to spare you the pain, perhaps wanting to bequeath you a lifetime’s supply of uncertainty and tunneling doubt. You thought your marriage was fine, rock-solid. Sadly, you still think of your marriage as fine, rock-solid, even though the divorce papers were signed more than three years ago. And counting. How could two people who shared so much and were so close be so far away from each other, then and now? You’d really like to know.
Does my face, my body betray all this? you wonder. Sure. Probably. Most likely. Though she—Barb, not your wife, the naked woman’s name is Barb Sobol, she works as an assistant to the director of human resources and lives in Burbank and was born in Minnesota and is lactose intolerant but once a week likes to treat herself to a grande Mocha Coconut Frappucino in spite of the repercussions afterward—doesn’t seem to display any recognition of this. She pulls the comforter and sheets back. And that is that. Underneath it is.
But before she retreats into bed, she pauses. This you notice out of the corner of your eye. How should you proceed? Do you start mumbling excuses or carry on as though everything was fine and hope for the best? Then it happens: eye contact. However, you fail to hold her gaze for very long; it’s quick, brief, a camera flash of time that dazes you, makes you blink. You look away. Look away and note the framed photographs on the dresser. Vacations. Lakes. Wet hair and uncomplicated smiles. But this is evidence you’d rather not confront. So you concentrate on the open closet that’s behind her, that’s overflowing with clothes and boxes and shoes, as if it’s inadequate, not enough to contain what needs to be contained.
Wait. Barb has said something. You realize this belatedly, after the fact. She’s waiting for a response.
“Sorry?” you ask.
“Are you okay?” she says.
And it is not until you hear this sound, her voice, Barb Sobol’s voice, concerned and maternal, that you fully concede to yourself that no, you are not okay. You have been crying. For some time, apparently. Here, on the cusp, on the verge of sex, fucking, intercourse, coitus, relations, whatever, the first real opportunity for such contact since you don’t want to say when—with your wife, that’s when, with the woman who still circulates in your blood and probably will forever, and how you long for the time, only moments ago, when you could be classified as half erect—and you are crying. Maybe it will pass. Maybe you’ll be able to follow through despite all this pregame activity. You can still perhaps redeem yourself here.
But the heaving keeps coming, it’s a vibrant, sucking rush, and everything’s blurred and wet and you’re out of breath and you don’t know when it will subside, soon, you hope, soon, but it might take a while, and this is what you want to tell Barb, sweet, sweet slightly gap-toothed Barb, who deserves better (don’t we all), just to give her a general heads up about what’s going on, to reassure, to let her know that it’s not her fault and she deserves better, only you can’t talk right now because of the heaving, the continuing influx of added air, but you will be able to, talk that is, at some point, soon perhaps, the words will rise eventually, and that’s what you’d say if you could.
RENTERS
The dream was about horses. I was riding one. Or at least I think I was riding one. Because really, what I remembered most later, right after waking up, during that fuzzy but somehow also kind of clear spell of time when dreams are still picture-fresh and haven’t started to run away from you yet—what I remembered most about the dream was this feeling of movement. There was the wind pressing against my face, the soft coolness of that. And my body bouncing up and down. And closing my eyes. And then with the wind again as I seemed to go faster and feel lighter, all without having to hold on to anything. And then, finally, forgetting my name and who I was and all the things that were piling up and not going away. But it all stops abruptly, a rope pulls me back, back, because my brother, Ryan, has apparently hit me. Hard. Twice.
“Get the fuck up,” he says, pounding my shoulder a third time just because.
Ryan is older, fourteen as of last month, when he announced that he would be spending his birthday with his new high-school friends and not his family. Recently, too, he decided that cursing makes him cool. And who knows. Maybe it does. I wouldn’t be the person to ask.
Still cloudy-headed, still pasty-mouthed, I mutter something back to my brother. Not words, really, more like caveman grunts. The idea behind the sounds, though, is hey, what gives, what’s going on? Ryan understands. More and more we don’t even have to speak to communicate. It’s mostly our faces and our eyes and the way we nod or point. And that’s usually enough. He’s my brother, and I know him better than I know myself. We share a room, a bathroom. And, of course, our parents. We know things that no one else knows.
But there’s one last thought before Ryan rips off the blankets and calls me a dork-wad and I have to admit defeat: can you close your eyes in a dream, can you fall asleep in a dream, can you know that you’re both sleeping in your bed and also sleeping in your head?
“Dad,” Ryan tells me. And that’s all he has to say.
It’s strange being awake this early. The alarm won’t go off for another hour at least, and the world outside is dark and quiet and unknown. People sleeping or maybe rolling over, taking showers, spraying on deodorant, zipping zippers, doing whatever it is they do in the morning. Except, I guess, people who live in different time zones. To them it’s later in the morning or afternoon or even at night, their day might even be over, those people across the oceans in places you see on maps and globes but who still somehow don’t seem real.
I start getting dressed, my clothes cold from the night before, which I hate, which means I’ll never be warm all day. It’s Tuesday. Tomorrow is Wednesday. I listen but there’s nothing. Which is weird. The silence. No TV, no dishes, no doors. And no Ryan complaining about this or that, or me being told that I pay attention too much. It’s rare, the quiet now, like finding a quarter in your pocket that you forgot about, and if
it wasn’t for my brother digging like a dog for a pair of clean socks I’d be able to almost enjoy it.
Secrets are hard to keep in our house because you can hear everything from everywhere. And that’s because it’s mostly empty and there’s not much furniture, and so sounds echo through the rooms and down the halls and up the stairs. We’re renters, is the thing. We don’t own the house, it’s not actually ours, and everyone in the neighborhood seems to know this. Because our lawn is brown. Because we don’t have a barbecue in the backyard. Because the leaves never get raked. People walk by with their dogs on leashes and their babies in strollers and instead of saying hello they smile without showing their teeth.
But I remember the first day we moved in, six months ago, and how it was this big deal, moving from an apartment where not all the windows opened to a house—a house!—where you had to walk outside to get the mail. Even though we couldn’t afford to buy what the house needed, what would make it more of a home, we’d go from room to room, excited by all the space, the possibilities there. My parents talked more, watched movies together. Ryan and I tried harder, too.
It didn’t take long, though, before our new life felt like our old life, with just a different place where we slept. Once we were sort of settled in, the neighbor ladies with the hair and nails brought us casseroles and cold cut platters. They looked around: Where was the cushiony sofa? The dining room table and matching chairs like so? The glass cabinet with snow globes and sports trophies? The framed pictures of kids who get straight A’s and make their beds without being told to? We had none of that stuff, just the basics, what you could pack in a rented U-Haul trailer, our dad’s truck, and our mom’s Nissan Sentra. They looked and looked and looked but didn’t find what they were looking for. They asked what kind of mortgage we had. My parents were melting, their bright future slipping through their fingers like sand. Ryan burped. The ladies didn’t come back.
Just as I finish tying my shoes (they’re tight, I’ll need another pair soon but I haven’t said anything yet), Ryan buzzes past me and says, “Move it ass-dick, let’s go.”
And so we barrel down the stairs like firemen who just got a call. I ask Ryan for details about what’s happening and he says shut up and mind your own beeswax jizz-head and I say come on and he says all right: “Dad shows up and I’m like dead asleep and he wakes me up, he keeps shaking me until my eyes open and I’m like what? He’s got the breath, and but he tells me to wake you up too and to then meet him in the truck in the garage, pronto, in five minutes, which was like five minutes ago already. There. Satisfied, Sherlock Holmes?”
From the kitchen we can hear the tired rumble of the truck’s engine. And then there’s nothing to do except go into the garage and there’s our father in the front seat, waiting. We squeeze in, squeeze together, the three of us, and try not to look at him but we do anyway. His eyes are red and puffy, and his mouth is open like he’s just heard something he can’t bring himself to believe. He hasn’t shaved. His whiskers seem sharp, sharpened, like they could cut your fingers if you touched them. Basically he looks like he’s been up all night. Which he has, I guess.
I notice the car doesn’t have much gas, maybe an eighth of a tank. I don’t say anything, but I’m worried. I don’t know where he’s taking us. Or why.
For just a moment, a blink-and-you-forget-it-before-you-even-know-it one, as we’re backing out of the driveway and onto the street that’s our street, technically, but has never really felt like our street, I think that maybe he’s kidnapping us. But since nowadays he usually doesn’t want much to do with us, why, I wonder, would he go to all the trouble and risk of going to jail and winding up on America’s Most Wanted? It doesn’t make sense.
He stops the truck. We’re not moving. Ryan and I look at each other, then at the house, out there in the dark and cold, no lights on, with our mother sleeping inside.
He says, “You guys have never seen where I work, have you?”
We both shake our heads: no.
The walls are thin. I walk in on conversations. My mom calls her sister practically every night. I don’t sleep well. Plus how sound travels, the echo effect. This all means, then, that I know more than I probably should. Ryan doesn’t listen as much as I do. Especially now that he’s older, wants a guitar, has touched girls behind the Circle K on Lincoln Boulevard.
“What’s the point?” he likes to say. “What’s gonna happen is gonna happen either way, the folks are the folks, and I’ll be outta here when I’m outta here, so what the fuck?”
And I guess he’s right.
First, side streets. Then the freeway, where there are only a few other cars, all with their headlights on, two white beams pulling them forward against their will. I watch them as they pass or we pass. The people inside hold their giant lidded cups of coffee and take long slow sips like they were drinking a secret potion that makes them live forever, or at least longer. Their hair is still wet from the shower and they check themselves in the rearview mirror. They sip and stare. I imagine they all have their radios going. The news. Traffic. Weather. Sports. The voices of men and women who tell you about the world.
As he drives my father has a toothpick in his mouth. This is normal. More often than not there’s a toothpick between his lips. Now he scrapes his teeth with it while his other hand rests on the bottom part of the steering wheel, the way he always drives, like he’s barely controlling the car. When he’s done working his teeth, he sucks on the wood, switches it from one side of his mouth to another, as if he can’t decide which is the better place. Then, sticking with the right side, he dangles it there. It’s so familiar that without a toothpick his face seems wrong. When I picture him it’s always with the toothpick, a small pointy weapon that’s part of his mouth, a warning.
My mom hates the toothpicks. She tells him use some floss, it’s gross. He tells her he likes the old-fashioned things, if it was good enough for his father, then it’s good enough for him. And every time she finds a soggy toothpick on a table or counter or even the floor, she holds it up, like evidence, as if saying “See?” and then throws it in the trash.
He changes lanes, then changes back when the car in front of us is going too slow.
“Aren’t you guys excited?” he says. “You should be excited. But you don’t look excited. Don’t you want to know what your father does for work, where he goes every day?”
We did. We definitely did. We only knew that our father worked in an office and wore a collared shirt and a tie and slacks and his blue windbreaker, and pretty much everybody there was stupid except for him and this one other guy, Donald, who came over to the house once and broke a lamp. But we were silent. We were stone. We were TV sets without the sound on.
“Come on,” he keeps going. “This’ll be fun. I know it’s early but Christ. Perk up already. Show some enthusiasm for your old man. We’re the men here. Just the men. This is what I do every day. Make this drive. Look out at this road, these streets. Count down the minutes until I get there. Ten. Nine. Eight. How many miles are left. Getting closer and closer. And I’m not doing this for my health, you know. If it was up to me…God, you guys are thick. What am I going to do with you?”
He looks over his shoulder and changes lanes again.
Ryan is a way better name than Steven. I’ve given it plenty of thought over the years, and I’d take Ryan over Steven any day. But that’s not the way it worked out. I’m Steven. Ryan is Ryan. That is something that isn’t going to change. Even if, when I get older, and I do all the legal stuff you have to do to officially change your name, I’d still know, deep down, underneath the new car shine of Keith, of Kyle, of Tyler: I’m Steven.
And Ryan would always be older, too.
Now there’s Tony Pennisi. Now there’s Rory Hines. And Charlene Moorehouse, with her tight shirts that show off her navel ring. They call. They come by. They leave and go places. Ryan is home less and less, and I want to be gone, away, too. Instead I stay in our room, reading the books I check out
from the library, finishing one and then picking up another, thinking of what I’d be doing if Ryan were there.
Ryan says there’s a lot I don’t understand, that I’m still just a kid. His world is getting bigger. And mine, it seems, is getting smaller.
We reach the right freeway exit and now there’s some light in the sky, cracks of color here and there. Every now and then I look at the gas gauge and worry. We go on one of those streets that seem to repeat itself every few blocks: gas stations, Home Depots, Taco Bells, Burger Kings. After that some apartments or a storage place or a used car lot, and then the same scene all over again.
“I’m hungry,” I announce. It’s one of those things where I hadn’t planned on saying anything, it just came out on its own.
“It’s barely even light yet,” my dad says, and then makes a fist with his right hand and blows into it several times; the heater in the truck only half works. When he’s done, he goes on: “Who gets hungry this early? Usually you’d be asleep right now. How can you possibly be hungry?”
“Well I am is all,” is what I say.
Right then we happen to be passing a McDonald’s, big surprise. I can tell he’s in one of those moods where he’s too tired or too distracted to argue. So he turns into the drive-thru. The voice from the speaker where you order is all wah-wah-wah like the teachers in Charlie Brown.
Me, I get two Sausage McMuffins with egg. Ryan orders pancakes and orange juice. My dad: coffee plus a hash brown.