Mixtape: A Love Song Anthology
Page 21
“Leftovers?” she said, and scraped her pallet clean of the greys and dusky blues.
“We already ate them for lunch,” the boy told her matter-of-factly. He was right. The kid was always right, despite being raised by two absentminded parents.
“What do you think we should do?”
“Spaghetti is easy. Even Dad can make that.”
She straightened his hair with her fingers and sighed at his beauty. Before Ove had gone from salt and pepper grey to shocking white, he’d had dark hair and brown eyes to match. Hers was a rich chocolate—the same shade as her eyes. Her son was towheaded, warm golden skin and astonishing emerald eyes. He didn’t burn, but freckled instead, abundantly until the freckles began to connect into a patchy pattern that took over his summertime shoulders and the bridge of his nose.
“Spaghetti it is then,” she kissed his forehead and covered up her work.
“That one will sell for a million dollars and they’ll put it in the Met,” Ove Dexter told her, smiling from ear to ear.
“If you alone like it, I’m satisfied,” she said.
“I love it,” he told her. They walked slowly back to the house, hand in hand while a chorus of peepers sang and opened their eyes to the dusk.
* * *
Marilyn didn’t have a lot of friends, but her neighbor Paula was a confidant. They were around the same age, both married, but Paula didn’t have children—she had dogs. Dogs, which were treated better than most humans. Paula was a cynic, a straight-talker, and loather of bullshit.
Paula was married to Scott, but they were the same age, unlike her and Ove. The couple struck her as being stuck in the decade that was cool when they were teenagers and never stepping into the modern age. Their clothing was out-of-date, as was their hair, and the music they listened to. Marilyn found their denial of the progression of time comforting in an age where the world was saturated in upheaval and violence.
One evening, while sitting at Paula’s kitchen table, drinking Captain Morgan with Coke, smoking, and listening to the Counting Crows, Marilyn found herself in the midst of a streak of jealously. She watched Paula and Scott make their way around steaks on the grill and chopped salad, and opening a bottle of wine, while it dawned on her that in their bubble, there was no 9/11.
There wasn’t continuous war in the Middle East, a refugee crisis, worsening natural disasters due to a disastrous climate. They’d given up paying attention some time after a president and a blow job. Paula once confided in her that their move to the island was an attempt to escape reality and retire at thirty.
She was envious of their certainty that they could just keep on thriving, ignorant of the perilous balance of a world sometimes teetering on the edge of ruin.
“Do you want dessert, Mar? I made banana pudding,” Paula asked. Their house was coated in dog hair, even though all of the outdated furniture was covered in yard-sale blankets. It was a patchwork house, haphazard additions had been added on throughout the years without so much as a nod given to the original design or style of the entire structure.
Marilyn worked some of the dog’s fur off her skirt and let it sail to the floor. Her belly was heavy with red meat and red wine, her eyelids drooping, mind and body ready to shut down.
“Sure. We never have dessert. Ove and Ove Dexter don’t like it,” she told her friend, pushing Bailey, the golden retriever’s nose out of her crotch for the twentieth time that evening. The boys had gone to see a play in town and she’d opted to stay home.
“Maybe he wants to emulate his Dad. It happens,” Paula clucked. She got up to take the orange bowl full of pudding out of the freezer.
Marilyn went to respond, but the comment tripped her up.
“Well, what do you mean? It could be an inherited trait?” She bristled on the defensive, ready to defend the secret with her life if she had to.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Paula said. She looked ready to drop the dessert. “I guess I just assumed you Murphy Brown-ed it and used a donor because Ove was too old.”
Scott handed her a look that told Marilyn they’d clearly discussed it. He grabbed a beer and his cigarettes and excused himself to the backyard, avoiding the topic.
“You gotta admit, they look nothing alike,” Paula said, driving the coffin nail in farther.
Marilyn was dumbstruck and moved her mouth like a fish out of water. It wasn’t so much that her friendly, early-nineties-stuck neighbors had her all figured out, it was the idea that if her child’s paternity was so glaringly obvious, then who else assumed, or felt they knew conclusively, that Ove Dexter’s father was not the old professor with whom he ambled about.
Was it the real reason why the schools on the mainland wouldn’t accept her child? Did everyone look at their family with suspicion and doubt?
“I guess I did, I mean, I did use a donor of sorts,” Marilyn stumbled over her words.
“Ove doesn’t know?” Paula intuited, refilling Marilyn’s lowball with fresh rum. “It goes great with the bananas,” she told her in explanation. Paula extinguished her cigarette in the ashtray and lit up another one in anticipation of a good story.
Marilyn took a swig of the strong concoction she hadn’t had since parties in high school. The glass was bottom heavy, the ice cubes cooled the sides, and the drink sweated against her fingertips. She shook her head and extracted a tiny piece of tobacco from the tip of her tongue with her pinky and thumb, lit cigarette in hand.
“Or maybe if you know, then everyone knows, including him. It is a small community with lots of rampant gossip.” Her conjecture wasn’t accusatory toward her friend, it was merely an observation as she realized what she thought was so well-hidden, could in fact be, abundantly clear to even the casual observer.
“Not even a peep of any theory has ever left this kitchen,” Paula said. She placed her hand over Marilyn’s in either solidarity or reassurance. Marilyn balked at her own stupidity. It was a tiny, isolated community. A hair out of place was discussed at the grocery and over-the-counter in the local diner as coffee was poured and money exchanged. She’d believed her truth was shrouded in secrecy, when in reality, it was on full display.
“I’ve been wearing blinders,” she said absently. “It’s a deliberate screen that I’ve placed there myself.”
“People probably don’t even notice. I mean, same race—ethnicity. Some genes are recessive and—”
“It’s all right. You don’t have to sugarcoat. I’ve done enough of that myself.”
“He looks Irish, and you’re what again?”
“Mostly Hungarian. Ove is Swedish and Italian.”
“It’s his eyes. That color is supernatural—it’s extra-terrestrial!”
Marilyn thought of Decker’s eyes and then pushed the memory out of her mind. She looked down at the dog, who was still insisting on a head scratch even though she’d been steadily going at it for the last fifteen minutes.
“Mar, I didn’t mean a thing, honestly. I’ve got nothing but respect for you and your family. God, the art you make alone is . . . The kid is a fricking genius, everybody knows that, and Ove is wonderful. It doesn’t matter how you got there—am I right?”
“You got there,” Marilyn finished. She squashed out her cigarette in the ashtray and downed the rest of her drink.
Maybe the time warp neighbors weren’t so quaint after all, maybe they were actually terrifying. Or perhaps it was the whole world was a hostile and unfriendly place.
“Thanks for dinner, Paula. I think I’ll head out. The boys should be back soon and I’ve got to let the dog out anyway.”
“Listen,” Paula said as she stood. “I hope this doesn’t change things. I love you guys, and I don’t judge.”
She kissed her neighbor on the cheek and ran home to change her dog hair blanketed clothes. If Paula and Scott knew, then more likely than not, Ove was well-aware of her manipulation of fate, and the sins she committed along the way.
* * *
It was then, their civic duty to attend the run-down, nearly macabre, nostalgia-filled fest. Eat funnel cake and hotdogs and scramble themselves silly on dangerous rides run by traveling hillbillies with suspiciously low intelligence. They swung Ove Dexter between them every three counts as they perused the games and yellow lightbulb-lit food stands. The air was perfumed with spun sugar and wailed the demented polka calliope of circus tunes on repeat.
“Ove Dexter, what would you like to eat?” Ove Sr. asked.
“Is there someplace to get a salad?” he looked up at his father in wonder. A carnival obviously wasn’t their kid’s jam.
“How about you and I go ride the bumper cars?”
Ove Dexter jumped at the idea and Marilyn waved as she watched them go. She strolled through the gauntlet of games, while the vendors called out the stakes into microphones with auctioneer speed, but classic carnival cadence.
“Step right up, Ma’am, try your luck on this one here tonight! You look like a lucky lady, step right up and spin the wheel. Going once, going twice.”
She took in their faces and their painted-on enthusiasm that registered as sinister under the garish lights. The humid breeze tasted of salt, and Marilyn licked her lips. She squinted up at the top of the Ferris wheel and marveled at the fact they transported it here. A wheel of wonder and lights turning against a night sky and surrounded by ocean. It was worthy of a picture—maybe even a painting—if she painted those kinds of things.
Her attention spiraled back down to ground level when she heard a laugh that felt quite familiar, but the sound made her start, nonetheless. Her eyes ran up the end of the gauntlet to the source. The culprit was a man with a young, pretty woman on his arm, both of them loaded down with stuffed animals, LED light toys, and inflatable team spirit sticks. They marched happily down the aisle, both enchanted by something funny he’d said.
“Lucky sonofabitch,” she thought to herself.
She would recognize the boy’s father in the poor visibility of inclement weather, or camouflaged with new facial hair, or even disguised in full costume. His energy was vibrant and it spoke to her as it had since the moment she’d met him. She stood bone still in their path like there was no way to avoid the encounter, when she had plenty of time to whip around, or even make a total run for it—if that was what she truly wanted.
But his malachite eyes flashed forward as if driven by the same force. When their gaze met, she gasped and he dropped some of his hard-won prizes. Then she heard the boy’s voice, telling his father he needed to use the bathroom. She caught their figures in her peripheral vision, and it was too late to stop the last chime on the clock from sounding. Her time was up and she froze.
Decker’s verdant eyes merely scanned the smaller, but equally vibrant jade of the boys’, then flashed back to her face, again to the boy, this time taking in Ove Sr. as well. He looked the boy over once more and then directed a furious glare her direction.
“Mar, I’ll take the boy to the lavatory,” Ove Sr. called to her.
“Okay, I’m going to ride the Ferris wheel!” The spontaneous decision came at her fast. She pivoted on a dime and took off running to the base of the giant rotating death trap at a thief’s velocity. And a thief she was, because she’d stolen something precious that didn’t belong to her.
Decker took off after her and his pursuit made her run faster than she knew she was capable of running. She hated heights, and also knew you couldn’t run from the truth, but said, to hell with this, as her body moved on adrenaline and pure cowardice.
She swept through the crowd and deftly cut the line. He pursued her with a predator’s precision and possibly a father’s determination, but that was still only for her to know—she’d be zip-lipped to the grave and refuse to tell him anything.
Her heart finally stopped pounding when she was escorted into the metal seat and the bar lowered over her heaving chest. She checked his position in line and figured she’d be, at least, a few cars away from him. It would give her ten minutes to form a two-bit-catch-penny plan. Claptrap excuses? Explanations? Half-truths, or maybe play the dumb innocent card?
She placed her hand over her heart and praised the cosmos as the wheel jerked and began to wind her backwards and away from him.
Then Decker did the unthinkable, and stage-dived off the safety railing straight into her shoddy, chipped, pink-painted buggy. Marilyn screamed as he tumbled into the dolly head-first. He sat at the bottom across from her so she had no choice but to look him in the eye.
“Of all the low stunts, I’ve ever seen, yours takes the grand prize,” he told her, jumping right to the kill.
“Speaking of stunts, how the hell did you do that?”
“Mosh pit practice in college, I guess. I hit my head though.”
“I think it’s bleeding,” she told him. She produced a meagre tissue that promptly got snatched by a warm gust of wind.
“That my kid?” he asked her, scratching his chin.
“Biologically speaking, he is your offspring.”
He laughed, and looked out the footwell to the miniaturized crowd below.
“You’ve got a way with words. It’s Marilyn, right? You could have asked, you know.”
But she didn’t ask. And she couldn’t have asked in the moment, because she was hell-bent on the outcome and took no prisoners in the process. Maybe he would have said yes, but none of that mattered now.
“Don’t plead innocence. You know what happens when you ejaculate inside a woman without using protection.”
“I honestly thought it was some kind of fetish.”
“Please don’t ruin my life,” she whispered to the stranger she knew so intimately, a man whose blood ran through the veins of the beloved boy she’d adored since the moment one single cell separated into two.
“What’s his name?” Decker asked. He seemed drunk to her if she didn’t know better.
“Ove. Ove Dexter,” she added hesitantly.
“In homage to me or after the television show?”
“Neither, well both, I mean. My husband doesn’t know.” She struggled with words that appeared inadequate to encompass all she needed to communicate to him.
“Decker is my last name. My name is Dallas. I’m guessing you’re not Marilyn French either.”
“Dallas Decker,” she blurted. “It sounds like a porn star.” She abandoned her filter completely.
“Says the lady who fucks like one,” Decker clapped back, raising his chin at her.
Marilyn blushed a deep crimson, bit her knuckle, and tried to suppress all the funny feelings that jumped to attention with those words. She wanted to tell him to go away and leave her alone, to never come looking for them, but thought better of rashness, realizing one wrong move could take her down—permanently.
“What do you do?” he asked, catching her off guard.
“I’m a painter. Landscapes. A researcher by trade until I started making money off of my work. What about you?”
She wondered if he lived on the island and how it was possible a run-in hadn’t happened before.
“I’m an oceanographer. I teach at the University of Toronto. Came down here on a sea-level project to measure the topographical changes effected by global warming. Then I met you and forget about numbers. You made my whole world go topsy-turvy for a while.”
Oceanographer. Well, that explained a lot.
“And this time? Is she your wife?”
“Hannah? No. My girlfriend. I was impressed with this place and
always wanted to come back.”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Marilyn looked wistfully toward the sea and felt the gravity of her own selfishness.
“You’re beautiful. And so is our child. Does your father know?”
“Ove? Ove is my husband.” She’d gotten the comment before, and didn’t take it to heart. It was his white beard and the tweed jackets with elbow patches, the pipe of tobacco he insisted on chewing while they strolled in the evening.
“I see,” Dallas told her.
She’d been bracing for his ire, his see you in court, paternity tests, and visitation rights—the works. The man could irrevocably destroy her life if he were inclined to. But maybe Dallas was so kindhearted that he was, once again, about to bestow upon her the most sacred gift.
He pulled a small moleskin notebook from his back pocket that appeared to contain lists of double digit numbers. Sea levels perhaps, or maybe he was a spendthrift and diligently balanced his checkbook. He scribbled some notes down, tore the paper, and handed it to her.
“Write yours down, Marilyn, and no lying this time. Your lies are criminal.”
She scanned the scrap of paper and it appeared to contain his full name and email, his phone number and address in Toronto. His blood type, his ethnic heritage, and the briefest of family health history. She squinted to read his scrawl and made out: Father, heart attack 63, mother, breast cancer, 69.
“I’m so sorry,” she said as she frantically wrote out the same.
She tore it off and handed it to him, but when he went to grab it they missed, and it lifted off into the air. They watched it glide back and forth slowly as it descended to the funland below.
“It’s okay,” he dismissed the mishap. “I don’t really need it. But keep yours, god forbid he need a kidney or marrow transplant someday.”
“I can’t . . . I don’t know how to thank you.” Tears freely streamed down her face.
“I’m not letting you off that easy. I want you to tell him, tell both of them—in fact, the sooner the better. And I’d like to see him when he turns eighteen, but the choice is his. You don’t even have to come. I’ll pay for the plane ticket and he can stay the summer or whatever he wants.”