Watch Your Mouth

by Daniel Handler

  “A New Man,” I said, “has already been created, Ben.”

  Everyone looked up, Ben last. He scanned my face like he couldn’t place me. Then he could. His face fell. Then he blinked and composed himself for the others.

  “Joseph.”

  “And it’s coming this way,” I said. I wasn’t saying what I’d planned at all, the words coming out all wrong and raw.

  “Joseph,” he said again, with a wide smile. Then, to the faithful: “Will you all excuse us, please? This young man—this man, he’s—he needs my help. Alone. Will you please excuse us?”

  “I thought problems were solved quicker,” Al said, “more quickly, when we all worked together.”

  “Not this time,” Ben said. The others were already leaving.

  “Like the Amish. Building together. Barn-building.”

  Ben widened his smile from maître d’ to bouncer: Get the hell out of here. “Please, Hal.”

  “Al,” he said, but scurried. We were alone. I thought with the disciples gone he’d drop the patriarch bit but when he turned to me I saw it still clinging to him. “Joseph.”

  “Ben,” I said.

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How have you been?”

  “Fine,” I said. “I mean—look, Ben, I came here to tell you—you probably don’t know—I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what you must think—”

  “What I think?” Ben said. “You should read my book, Joseph.”

  “I’ve been reading little else.”

  “Then you know,” he said, “that we think much less than what we know. We know much less than what we—”

  “Ben, somebody’s after us.”

  “—love. What?”

  “And I’m afraid it might be me.”

  “What?”

  “What happened, Ben? What happened that summer?”

  Ben nodded sagely and outstretched a hand until I had to sit next to him on the log. “I knew that’s what was worrying you, Joseph. I knew you would come and find me.” I had forgotten all this, his surefooted serenity, all wise and wrong. All those dinner-table speeches where he’d take a position and just stay there, like ugly condos. “As soon as I started lecturing all over the country, I knew that you and people like you would come to me for help. I’m honored to be able to give it.”

  “Ben—”

  “Look at me. Look. At. Me. Do you need help or do you not?”

  “Something happened that summer that I—”

  “Why did you come here? You came here for help, am I right?”

  Behind him the fist flapped in the evening breeze. “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

  Ben sighed expansively and put his plate down on the ground. “Have you ever looked through a thesaurus?”

  Over by the grills a group of men laughed. Dirty jokes, maybe, or perhaps they’d worked through that. “What?”

  “A thesaurus. One of those books with words that mean the same thing, have you looked through them?”

  “No. Yes. I guess so, you know, at Mather.”

  “Do you remember what’s under the word manly?”

  “Ben,” I said, “We can’t—we don’t have much time, and—”

  He held a hand up, definite but calm. “Do you remember what’s under the word—”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t remember what’s under the word manly.”

  “Two-fisted,” he said. “He-mannish. Hairy-chested. Mighty. Red-blooded. Ready for anything. What do you think of that?” What I thought was that ready for anything wasn’t in any thesaurus, anywhere. “And where do you think you find words like honorable, or decent? Delicate? Womanly , that’s where. Is that fair?” The last light was fading, the paper plate a grey glow on the ground, the coals of the grill making silhouettes of the men cleaning up. “I asked you a question.”

  “What?”

  “Is that fair?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “Exactly right, Joseph.” I was embarrassed at my little surge of pride. “It’s not fair. But that’s the unfair system on which so many other things are built. Gender. Families. Professions. Religion—is that why you’re here, because of the rabbi?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you would have known. Rabbi Tsouris is dead.”

  “What?”

  “Excuse me, Dr. Glass. We’re done cleaning up here and we’re going to go inside now.” One of the men was holding a salad bowl like it was something sacramental.

  “O.K., Bruce. Joseph and I need a few more minutes. I’ll be in shortly.”

  “Will you make sure the coals are out?”

  “Yes, Bruce. Thank you.”

  Bruce pattered off into the dark, closing the flap behind him. Now we were really alone, all the men chattering inside the tent, silhouetted against flashlights. I took a breath. “He died mysteriously, right, Ben? Something with mud, or drowning, and nobody knows what, right? Right?”

  Ben blinked. “No. He—he shot himself, Joseph. He—”

  “What?”

  “It’s true. He, well, obviously he was very unhappy, and I guess he thought it was time. They called me all the way out here. I was flattered that in Pittsburgh they’ve heard of my work. God is now here, his note said. Not that I approve of suicide, of course, but if he really thought that—”

  “What?”

  “He’s dead, Joseph.” His shadow shrugged: Get used to it.

  “I’m sorry to tell you like this. I thought you’d heard.”

  “When did it—”

  “Just a few days ago.”

  I tried to count backwards to Good and Bad Cops, but it made my head ache, too much time lost in a driving blur. I couldn’t remember when things had happened. “He shot himself?”

  “Yes. What did you say—mud?”

  “Yes, mud. Like Cyn. Like—”

  “What?”

  “Like your son.”

  “Stephen? I haven’t talked to him in years. I never talk to him. Is he alive?” He smiled mildly, Is he alive some sort of joke, or some reference that wasn’t reaching me.

  “Um,”

  “I never talk to him. We’re taking some time away from one another, to better focus. At least, I am.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Ben blinked. In the tent somebody was playing an acoustic guitar. “My son—”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you would have—they said they were trying to reach you—”

  “Stephen is—” Ben stood up, his face disappearing above me in the dark. From nowhere he kept talking. “Are you—? Stephen?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. The men started a song as I heard Ben vomit onto the grass of the new field they were singing about. The stench flowed over to me in the pitch black, a dark and deep smell like he’d eaten not only the salmon but the salmon’s whole life. It was a smell of dark water, of river and mud. It made me gag but I didn’t move. Ben threw up again but I didn’t budge from where I was. I felt something shift in me, like finding solid ground, like walking, at night, around someone else’s house. Where is it, in the dark? Where am I? There it is. The steps. The fifth step: Admit to yourself, to another human being and to a Higher Power the exact nature of your wrongs.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, into the black where another human being, and maybe even a Higher Power, waited for me. “I think it’s—no, I won’t lie. I know it’s my fault.” I heard Ben gasp, his feet lurching back and forth unsteadily. Though I couldn’t see a thing I felt the solid presence of his body over me, anchoring me. “I don’t know what happened, I can’t exactly remember, but I know that it did happen. And I’m trying to seek help. Something about that summer changed me. I don’t know what it was.” I took a deep breath, and the dark smell filled my lungs. But I wouldn’t stop. “Maybe it was the sort of love Cyn and I had. Or maybe the sort of family you all were, you know, so close. All that quality time. Maybe I was jealous or something. But I b
egan to—I began to think that you were doing terrible things. I mean not you. All of you. It’ll sound crazy to say this, but I really thought you were all sleeping together. I thought I could hear you all, late at night. I thought I saw something. But I’m realizing now it must have been my imagination. Just my dirty mind, my horrible fantasies. I don’t know how I ever believed you were all—incestuous.” Ben gasped again, and then I heard a raw exhale, like he’d been hit in the chest. Like him I wanted to get it all out until there was nothing. “I’m sorry, because out of my guilt and shame over this I began to imagine something else. I began to imagine that your wife—that Mimi was going to get—that she was going to avenge what was going on—and that she was going to do it with—well, with something I clearly picked up from the operas she was doing. You remember the golem one, you know, the big clay figure? I heard Mimi talking that over with the rabbi and it got into my head that she was making one. I mean a real one, an actual monster to get revenge on her family.”

  From his gurgling I heard Ben laugh, a sound ripped from his throat, a sound more of pain than humor with a coppery, bodily scent to match. “I know it sounds absurd, but that’s really what I thought.” Everything was making sense to me now, like a series of steps: my fantasies of Cyn’s family and Mimi’s revenge, all cooked up in the grime of my mind, like the stench in front of me. “I can’t remember what happened at the funeral, Ben, but I know it was my fault. For years I thought it was a golem—which is crazy, I know, but—that’s what I thought. And now I know.” Ben was crying now, the sounds strangling out of him in little gasps like a dying fish. I could hear his shoulders shaking, his brittle bones creaking over the sound of the men in the tent. “I don’t know what happened—I guess maybe I cracked, with all the stress of Mimi—it’s no excuse. But I think I attacked Cyn. And I think I attacked Stephen. I think you and the rabbi and who knows who else covered it up. Maybe you didn’t want me to go to jail. Maybe you didn’t know what happened yourself. And I’m grateful. But it made me forget, too. Soon I didn’t know what was going on, what was real and what wasn’t. I’m so sorry—I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, Ben. And I’ll do whatever you say. Turn myself in, or, I don’t know—I don’t know what I can do. But it has to end here. It’s my fault. It’s the exact nature of my wrongs, Ben. And I hope you’ll find it in you to forgive me.”

  It was quiet, except for the ruptured sound of the doctor’s breath. For some reason even the crickets had stopped, and the men weren’t singing. I don’t know how long I’d been out there. I waited in the midst of that earthy scent for Ben to speak. And he tried to, I think. I hope. There was one more sound from Ben, a sort of low growl, and then a wet collapse, a damp ripping. Something splattered on my lap. For a few seconds I couldn’t take it in, my fingers sliding through the mess of liquid, and a soft wet texture like fruit. An earthy putty, and then shards of something which felt like pottery. Like broken pottery, something which had cracked and then shattered, and I knew. The smell of clay. The raw gurgles. The dark shadow, the solid presence of a body, still over me. These were pieces of Ben’s head in my lap, and we weren’t alone. I had admitted my wrongs to myself, to another human being and to the Higher Power that was now here.

  Step 6

  It’s amazing how quickly you can reach the next step, when your heart’s really in it. I heard myself try to say something to the golem, a guttural syllable. I steadied myself on the log and felt a piece of Ben’s hair beneath my palms. I rolled off, onto the wet ground, and tried to stand up. Inside the tent I could hear men whispering. Some of the lights were going off. In the morning they wouldn’t need them, the sun rising up over another death of clay and violence, linked to his son, his daughter, by mystery and blood. Something which had happened when I was alone. Something without witnesses.

  “My fault,” I heard myself say to the golem. “Me!” I tried to stand up but something wet struck my knee and I fell back down. I felt it step towards me with sure, slow purpose, invisible in the night but unstoppable, like a dream you have and can’t get out of your head. “Me!” I stretched out one hand and pulled at the grass, then the other, trying to drag myself away from this mess by my own volition, my own skill, if I could. I felt the air swish by me in an arc, arms swinging where they thought they could find me. It was best not to stand. I pulled myself along the earth, kicking my legs free of something which felt like a hand. I thought if I couldn’t walk I could crawl, but that was no good either: something turned me over, logrolling my body like it had known how to do it since birth. “Me!” I was on my back now, with the Eureka skyline blocked by a dark form as familiar as my own shadow. My chest heaved with breath, slower and slower, steady now. The next step already, bing bing bing: I was entirely ready to have the Higher Power remove all my defects of character. Two hands, wet with clay and my victim’s blood, closed in on my neck. I was ready for it to be over. I couldn’t believe there could be any more.

  Step 7

  It was all a dream. I told myself I had dozed off, studying for my Kafka final at Mather: As Joseph awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself asleep in his car by the side of the road, dazed and encrusted with mud like a gigantic squashed insect.

  No. I washed up in a gas station bathroom and, looking in the stainless-steel plate serving as a mirror, threw up into the sink, rinsed my mouth from the faucet. The police—what time was it?—the police had undoubtedly been called by now and were finished interviewing all the liberated males. I could see them in my motel room, Eurekan variations on Good and Bad Cop, poking through my duffel with one of those metal sticks they use to pick up a gun, collecting hairs from the drain and putting Breaking the SPELL in a sealed plastic bag to keep the fingerprints on it. I’d pay for my next room with cash so I wouldn’t blink on some computer screen. I could stay far away, cross the state line, drive through the wilderness, hole up somewhere until this whole thing blew over. It was my fault, I figured, ignoring Ben’s exhortation to “escape self-judgment.” If there were really a monster somebody would have seen it. If there were really a it would have killed me. At breakfast in a diner I squeezed my cantaloupe half until the rind broke and the meat of the fruit slopped into the bowl. I could do it. A skull was tougher, sure, but hadn’t Bad Cop said you were supposed to have superhuman strength under duress? And if moving to a town to stalk my girlfriend’s brother, fleeing the police and killing his father wasn’t duress, what was? The waitress gave me a look when she took away the bowl and I vowed to wear sunglasses next time. I merged into whatever highway seemed most convenient, let the reflector-glows of exit arrows guide me wherever they wanted. In hotel rooms I propped myself up on the courtesy pillows and flicked through the TV, while I bent and straightened my knees. So maybe she could bend her knees, no matter how sick she was. It meant nothing. I was the wrongest person who had ever been: colossally wrong, my enormous misdeed finally freed from the basement of my mind to lumber across the doorknob in plain view. By day I ate little, and froze with paranoia whenever a patrolman drove by, his face inscrutable as clay. By night I’d pull the cheap blankets over my body and try to think of what to do next, now that I’d already asked the Higher Power to remove all defects of character but it had just walked away. I wasn’t dead. It wasn’t a dream. I dragged the armchair over to the door, slipping it underneath the doorknob like in a TV show, and whether it was to keep something out or to keep me in was anybody’s guess.

  And then it came. Sometime during some night, some limb of mine had flicked the car radio to maximum volume, so the next bleary morning when I put the key in the ignition the voice spoke to me like God: “Lost?” the radio boomed, over a windand-sea sound effect. “Confused and adrift? Today’s young people can find the job market a hard place to navigate. Higher Power Employment Agency can be your lighthouse.” Now a foghorn, a tugboat. Some sound-effects technician loved the metaphor. “Come in for a free evaluation and information session about our counselling and placement services. Let Higher
Power”—here the seagulls, the creaking of ropes—“guide you safely to your future career.” I pulled over to much impatient honking, riffling through the ashtray for pay phone money. I needed counselling and placement, and free was what I could afford. An English major for three years at a prestigious university and I’d been felled by a spelling mistake. It was H-I-R-E. Hire Power Employment Agency.

  “A lot of people make that mistake,” Marc said cheerfully, showing me into a tiny office dominated by a photograph of the open sea. Expect the Unexpected, the caption said, inexplicably; was there a giant squid lying in wait under the surface? “These people tell me, ‘It took me forever to find you in the phone book.’” His voice rose unpleasantly as he imitated these people. He was in his mid-forties with a terrifyingly fit body and wireframe glasses. Marc was calling me Joe. I wasn’t calling him anything. I took a seat with quiet and simple faith and a Styrofoam cup of warm and weak coffee. I was comfortable.

  “Comfortable?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. I’d sworn to myself to tell the truth.

  “Soooo,” he said, heartily and at length. He opened up a file which contained a form I had filled out in a waiting room full of photographs and captions. “Mather College,” he said, approvingly.

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t graduate.”

  “No. Or, not yet.”

  He smiled in a way I could see he imagined as winning. I tried my hardest to be won. “That’s my boy. So why’d you leave?”

  “Incest.”

  “Just weren’t interested, huh? Well, it’s good you figured that out. You don’t want to be in college if you aren’t focused on it. Interest is important, Joe. Interest is important. So what have you been doing since then?”

  “I worked at a summer camp in Pittsburgh,” I said. “A day camp. And then—well, skipping ahead, then I worked at a bookstore in Pitts—here in California. Through New Year’s. Didn’t I write this down?”

  “Yeah, but I like to get a feel for things in person.”