“Maybe tomorrow. Steve’s probably waiting for his dinner. Besides, the way you’re scarfing that down, it’ll be gone by the time I get out of the store.”
“Or you could go back after dinner,” he said. “I’ll buy you some cigs for your trouble.” He reached his arm around her shoulder and gave her a little hug. “Cause you’re such a good mom.”
She smiled back at him. “It’s a deal.”
They heard the rattled snoring the moment they entered the house.
Danny shook his head. “I think the walls are shaking. How am I going to sleep with that? How do you sleep?”
“Ear plugs. But you’ll be upstairs.”
Sammy came tearing around the corner to greet them. Nancy scooped him into her arms and said she needed to take him outside. On her way out, she showed Danny the staircase leading to the upper bedroom.
“No way can I get up those,” he said. “The steps are too steep and too small.”
“Never thought of that,” she said. “How about the hide-a-bed in the family room? And there’s a TV in there.”
“That’ll work.”
When Nancy came back in, she got paper plates and placed the food containers on the dining room table. Danny suggested they watch TV, so she filled two plates and joined her son in the family room.
By the time Steve woke up, it was dark outside and his stomach was rumbling. He slowly sat up in bed and saw that it was ten o’clock. He wondered if he’d missed dinner. He glanced toward Nancy’s room, saw that she wasn’t there, and headed to the kitchen. Walking past the half-empty bucket of chicken on the table, he caught a whiff of the unmistakable aroma. He turned on the light and, relieved, spooned what was left in each container onto a paper plate. Heading back to his room, he heard voices and the blare of the TV, so he circled back through the living room and in his best stealth move, peeked slowly around the corner to see who it was.
“Hey, big guy! I see you,” Danny called out.
Oh, no. Danny’s here, thought Steve. I forgot. “Hi, Danny.”
“Why don’t you grab some dinner and join us?” Nancy asked. “I’ll just eat in my room,” Steve said as he walked away, words trailing behind him. “I just woke up. The TV’s too loud. I don’t like TV.”
Danny drained his beer. “Who’s he talking to?”
“Steve talks to himself a lot.”
“Would you get me another one of these?” Danny held up the empty can.
“Comin’ right up.” Nancy took the plates and beer cans and went to the kitchen where she found Steve holding a gallon jug of milk. She reminded him to take his evening meds, and he showed her the handful of pills before he threw his head back, popped them in, chasing them down with a few gulps of milk. “You’re way ahead of me,” she said, as she took a beer out of the fridge.
“Beer?”
“For Danny.”
“Dad hated beer. I used to drink it some, but I don’t drink at all now.”
“Good for you,” she said. “By the way, how was your doctor’s appointment today?”
“It was okay, but she wants to change one of my meds. I don’t know what I said wrong.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t you. That’s just what doctors do.” Nancy almost suggested calling Sylvia but held her tongue. “When are you supposed to start with the new one?”
“I’m not sure. Probably after I’m finished with the old one. I have six left.”
Danny should be gone by then, she thought. “Let’s not worry about it now.”
Steve went out for his final round of iced tea before Friendly’s closed. He got back around eleven. From the garage, he had to pass through the family room where he found Danny asleep on the couch. The TV was still on, wasting electricity. Just like his mom, Steve thought. He probably sleeps with it on all night. Steve wanted to shut it off, but didn’t want to make Danny mad. Why isn’t he sleeping upstairs anyway?
The next day when Steve woke up and headed to the bathroom he found it occupied, so he went upstairs. When he came back down, Danny was looking through the refrigerator in his Jockey underwear. Steve recoiled at the sight of the metal leg and the naked man in his kitchen—well, almost naked. He couldn’t imagine the nerve of Danny to parade around like that in his house.
“Hey, Steve. Can I get you some breakfast?”
“Not unless you get dressed first,” Steve said, already in his bedroom by the time he finished the mumbled sentence.
“Or we could go out for breakfast,” Danny called out. “My treat.”
Steve sat on his bed, contemplating the offer. It sounded pretty good, but he hoped Danny wore long pants to cover his leg. But he couldn’t ask him to—that wouldn’t be nice. Free breakfast two days in a row. “It’s a deal,” he yelled back. “I’ll drive.”
Danny was in the hallway now, outside Steve’s door. “You have to drive,” he laughed.
They went to Bob Evans, famous for its pork sausage. To Steve’s relief, Danny wore jeans and a T-shirt. He felt sorry for him with no leg, or half a leg, and felt lucky that it wasn’t him. He couldn’t fathom not being able to drive, and he offered to take Danny wherever he needed to go.
“Mighty nice of you, Steve. I don’t want to put you out, though. You’ve done enough by letting me stay at your house.”
“No problem.”
They had breakfast, puffed away on cigarettes, talked about their athletic days, sports figures, and college football teams. Danny flirted with the waitress, who seemed to like it.
“She sure is a cute one, don’t you think? Great knockers.”
Steve looked down at his plate, laughing, but nodded in agreement. “I was trying not to stare.”
“You can check ‘em out without staring, you know. Anyway, lots of women think it’s a compliment when you look ‘em up and down.”
“You mean the trashy ones,” Steve said.
“Who cares? You’re not going to marry them. I sure wish I hadn’t.”
“I’ll never be married,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t know how to get to know a woman that way . . . I can’t even . . .” Steve poured more iced tea in his glass and wondered how this subject ever started. How had he managed to open his big mouth?
“You mean you can’t get it up?”
Steve shot Danny a glance. “Because of my meds. Can we talk about something else?”
“No problem. Let me just tell you that I couldn’t either when I was taking a lot of medication for my leg. Or if I’ve had too much to drink. Have you tried to jack off?”
Steve suddenly felt like talking about this. He never had before, and Danny was so easy-going about it. “In the bathtub I used to, but nothing works anymore.”
“I used to do that, too. While I looked at sexy magazines. Sometimes that helps.”
“You mean like Playboy? I haven’t seen one of those in years. I like to look at underwear ads sometimes.”
Danny leaned forward. “Have you ever had sex?”
“No. My fraternity brothers fixed me up once with a girl who was, you know, easy. But I couldn’t.” He shook his head. “It was terrible. I didn’t even know her!” Soon after that, the fraternity elected Steve as house chaplain, and no one tried to thrust an uninvited sexual encounter on him again.
“But do you ever think about it? Having sex?” Danny seemed to be enjoying himself.
Steve wished he’d wipe the grin off his face. “Sure. I think about it.”
“I have a few dirty magazines if you want to see them. We could stop by my house to get them.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But not if they’re really gross. Like porn flicks. The guys in college watched them, but I couldn’t.”
“I don’t think you’ll mind these,” Danny said. “Let’s go.”
11
Huge breasts. Nipples. On hands and knees, their bare butts staring you in the face. Lace underwear that you can see through—even pubic hair—and their legs are spread open like they want sex. They’re just whores. Steve was dumbst
ruck.
Danny just kept flipping the pages, pointing to the teasing girls, mouths open, tongues licking their lips, fingers spread on their privates. “Check this one. Now those are tits!”
Steve wanted to stop looking but he couldn’t. He thought of his dad’s ballpoint pen with the picture of a woman in a black one-piece bathing suit, one hand on her hip, like a beauty pageant contestant. When you turned it upside down, her bathing suit slowly disappeared, just drained right off of her. Steve kept it in his nightstand drawer and took it out every now and then, but it was nothing compared to these. “They’re so beautiful. But why would they need to do this?”
“For the money.”
“The love of money is the root of all evil. The Bible says so. Maybe I shouldn’t look anymore.”
“Why not? Don’t you like them?” Danny picked up another magazine.
“I like to look, but they’re bad . . . it’s like devil worship. I might not be able to stop seeing them in my head.”
Danny laughed out loud. “So what?”
“I might have bad thoughts.”
“That’s the whole idea!” Danny lit up a Marlboro and Steve took out a Newport.
With Danny narrating and talking dirty, Steve kept staring at the pictures, at every thigh, breast, and “pussy”—Danny’s word. He began to sense a slight stirring in his loins, an unsatisfied craving, a feeling he hadn’t had for a long, long time. It frightened him a little, but he wondered if he could still get a hard on. Maybe Danny was right—the meds were probably the reason he couldn’t, and Steve wanted to find out. Missing two or three days wouldn’t hurt. He’d done that many times before, but then, he didn’t want to end up in a psych ward again either.
Danny eased forward on the couch and reached for his arm crutches.
Steve jumped to help.
“I got it, big guy,” Danny said. His good leg shook as he struggled to gain balance and finally got up on both legs. “Gotta take a leak.” He nodded at the magazines and smiled. “You can keep those if you want. You know, give it the ol’ college try.”
“Maybe I will,” Steve replied. Steve believed the devil was inside of him and always had been, as it was in everyone, lurking, waiting for the minute you let your guard down or hung out with the wrong people. Was Danny the wrong people? Probably. Making him look at dirty pictures and urging him to play with himself again—to masturbate— proved it. He remembered when he was little and played “doctor” with his sister, Sylvia, and the neighbor girl across the street. They’d hide in the walk-in closet upstairs and check each other’s “tinkers.” He’d get hard, and he liked it. The girls would laugh, and he would too. That was before any of them knew about sexual intercourse or masturbation or orgasm. Come to think of it, he didn’t know how babies were made until the fifth grade when they had sex education in school. A big, fat, ugly nurse, in a dark blue uniform with a cap to match, drew a uterus and a penis on the blackboard and a long line showing where the penis went inside the vagina. He and his friend got kicked out of class because they couldn’t stop laughing. He never looked at his parents in the same way after that. It seemed so gross to imagine them “doing it.” He wished he didn’t want to have sex, but he did, and now more than ever.
Steve took the magazines and stole upstairs to his old room where nobody would disturb him. He’d been spending more time in his old room since Danny had moved in. He’d lay on his bed, on top of the covers because the air conditioner hardly worked up here and it was so stifling hot. He smoked and talked to himself, or to the little boys whose innocent voices came and went, always asking the same thing: “Help us go home. We need to find our home.” Steve felt so sorry for them and tried to console them, “It’s going to be okay. I’ll try to help you find home.” But they never seemed to know where home was, so he didn’t know how to help. When he didn’t hear them for several days, he figured they’d found their way. He had no one else to talk to and found he missed them; they’d kept him company. And then, out of nowhere, they’d be back. He felt comforted and knew they felt it, too. They might giggle and sound happy for a while, but they always ended up asking him the same thing again, and it left him feeling sad.
He stretched out on the bed and undid his pants, reaching under his Jockeys. He held his soft, shriveled penis in his hand and stroked his scrotum with his fingers. With his free hand, he opened a magazine and imagined the beautiful, natural-looking blonde—mouth open slightly, tongue touching her lower lip, with dark, hard nipples—reclining next to him, her legs open, just asking for it. And he wanted to give it to her. He picked up speed, rubbing harder, hoping for some reaction, but it kept flopping from his hand. Even so, the arousal seemed to climb higher and higher and he kept going. Over and over, he retrieved the limp sausage, praying for an erection. Sweat poured off of him and he felt almost light-headed. “You want it, don’t you? I’ll give it to you,” he gasped. The sudden burst from inside took him by such surprise that he cried out as if in anguish. His heart was racing and he thought he was having a heart attack. Semen squirted all over his khakis and dribbled into his palm, down his groin, matting his pubic hair. My dick never got hard. How can this be?
He lay there a moment, exhausted, trying to catch his breath. Then he worried that Danny might’ve heard him. He sat up to listen. Nothing. A wry smile crossed his lips. I had an orgasm. The sticky, milky ooze gave off a sweet, fungi smell like clotted cream, a smell he never noticed before. Probably ‘cause I was always in the bathtub. He didn’t like the smell. He looked down at his soiled Jockeys covered with his slime. Looks like tapioca pudding. Yuk. I hate tapioca pudding. He got up, letting his pants drop to his ankles and stepped out of them. He glanced back at the magazine with a look of disgust and quickly closed it.
Steve went to the half bathroom and washed his hands several times. He put his Jockeys in the sink; the smell was overpowering, and he started gagging. He grabbed a washcloth, stuck it under the running water, and scrubbed the matted hair. Water dripped down his legs and onto the floor, forming a small puddle. Naked from the waist down, he hurried to get some clean underwear from the chest of drawers—luckily most of his clothes were still upstairs—and a pair of jean shorts. He started to retrieve the soiled khakis to throw them down the laundry chute along with the Jockeys but realized he didn’t want Nancy to find the evidence. I’ll have to wash them! I don’t know how to do the laundry. Maybe I could just throw them away. He decided to figure it all out later. He wadded them into a lump and stuffed them under his bed. He was so tired. He sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette, thinking about what he’d done to himself. It was Danny’s fault. He put out his cigarette and decided to throw the magazines away. But it felt so good. God doesn’t get mad as long as you don’t hurt somebody else, does He? He fell back on the bed, his legs dangling over the edge, and mouth open, hands placed gently across his bulky chest, he was out like a light, snoring louder than ever.
A loud rapping on the bedroom door at the base of the steps woke Steve up with a start. He bolted upright and looked around. The magazines were strewn across the bed. He quickly started stuffing them under the mattress.
“Hey, Steve,” Danny called out. “You asleep up there?”
What does he want now? Steve grumbled back, “I was.”
“Sorry, just wanted to tell you Mom called, and she’ll be an hour late.”
“So?”
“I just thought if you were going out again, maybe you could take me to get some cigs. I’m out.”
He flopped backward on the bed. Danny’s wearing me out. How many more days will he be here? “Be right down.”
The next day, the kitchen remodel was finished: white counter tops, white porcelain sink, white tile-like linoleum flooring with small, dark blue squares adjoining each corner, and wallpaper with clusters of fruit and flowers on a white background adorning the walls against the maple wood cupboards. Steve thought the change was remarkable.
Since Steve usually resisted any cha
nge in his parent’s home and wasn’t involved in the remodeling plan, he was relieved when Bill, the contractor, had managed to save the fifty-year-old red-and-white Vitrolite tile that served as the backsplash. “It still feels like the same kitchen, but now it looks classy,” he told Nancy. He was proud of the new table and chairs and the hanging light fixture he’d helped select.
“Let’s celebrate tonight with my mean pot roast,” Nancy said. “And we’ll eat in the dining room on real plates!”
That evening, Steve joined Nancy and Danny for dinner, since they weren’t eating in front of the TV. As they sat down, the phone rang. Sylvia’s voice came over the answering machine, and Nancy hopped up to answer.
“Well, how are you?” Nancy sang.
Sylvia hadn’t called the Ohio homestead for at least two weeks and now was a good time. She was feeling more at peace than she’d felt in a long while. Her son, Trevor, had been clean and sober for six months, a milestone for him. He was still in sober living, taking the bus (cars weren’t permitted—too much temptation for an addict) to and from work as a waiter in a nice Italian restaurant. In short, he was thriving. Sylvia still hadn’t told Nancy about him, however, but thought she would on her next visit in November, the year anniversary of their dad’s death.
“Good enough, thanks.”
“What’s up?” Nancy asked.
“I haven’t talked to you guys in a while, and I just wanted to check in.” She was glad to hear the kitchen was finished on schedule, asked when the painter was to arrive, and finally how Steve was doing.
“Everything’s just hunky dory here,” Nancy said. “The kitchen looks terrific and Steve is thrilled.”
“I can’t wait to see it. I also wanted to ask Steve about his appointment the other day with Dr. Pandi. Did he mention anything to you?”
“As a matter of fact, he did. I guess she wants to make some changes to his meds, but not until he finishes what he has or something like that.”
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