by Reif Larsen
Sensing a weight he could not name, Kermin started to sleep several nights a week at his communications shop, tinkering away with dismantled cathodes and diodes and dusty vacuum tubes—the tender ligaments of long-distance communication. When he had nothing to work on, he passed the nights turning black-and-white televisions into color and back again.
Radar turned three. He was constantly speaking now, as if making up for lost time. His finger extended, he pointed at the world around him.
House, he said. Birdie. Doggy. Raisin. Man. Choo-choo.
After every word, he would look back at Charlene, seeking confirmation. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if she did not nod in agreement, if she instead taught him all the wrong words for things. What if a birdie became a man and a choo-choo became a raisin? She had the power to completely rewire his perception, to enclose him within a false reality. Except when she started to think about her son’s development in this way, she would feel the panic begin to rise—at all the choices she had and hadn’t made, all of the thousands of parental failures she would only come to realize later, when it was already much too late.
Time’s persistence had slowly dulled her preoccupation with the doctor’s verdict. Life settled into the uneasy routine of homebound motherhood, a life she had never thought would be hers. She woke; she made Radar breakfast; she took him to the playground; she made lunch; she read him a book; she napped with Radar; she went for a walk with Radar; she made dinner; Kermin came home; she put Radar to bed; she and Kermin watched television until he began to snore
Repeat.
Still, even if her day was consumed by the business of mothering, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was still an impostor, as if all of this would be taken away from her at any moment. And a part of her wished it would be, even though she could not imagine her life any other way.
And then, nearly nine months after her final meeting with the doctor, on a day like all the rest, Charlene opened the mailbox and found a cream-colored envelope lying inside.
“Dr. Thomas K. Fitzgerald,” read the return address. She caught her breath and then tore open the envelope. The typewritten letter alerted her to a forthcoming article in the next month’s Journal of Investigative Dermatology concerning their son’s “chronic hyperpigmentation.” Standing by the mailbox, Charlene brought the paper to her nose. She searched for a hint of the doctor’s aftershave but found only the elliptical aroma of ink and his secretary’s cheap lilac perfume.
The wait each day for the mail’s arrival became excruciating. Charlene began to hate the mailman, shooting him looks of reproach when he did not deliver what she was looking for.
“You cannot fix him,” Kermin said out of the blue one night as they sat watching a fuzzy episode of Three’s Company on the refurbished Zenith television. “He is not broken.”
She was so startled by this declaration that she didn’t say anything at first.
“You know that’s not what I’m trying to do,” she said finally.
“I don’t know what you are trying to do,” he said.
“Kerm,” she said as he got up and began adjusting the aerials.
“Kerm,” she said. “You have no idea what it’s like.”
On the television screen, John Ritter dissolved into static and then became whole again. Kermin moved the antennae about like a conductor, quietly swearing to himself, but after a while it was no longer clear whether he was trying to clear up the picture or make it worse.
• • •
ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, Charlene unlocked their mailbox as usual and nearly cried out. Inside was the beckoning glint of plastic wrap.
“Hey Kermin!” she yelled. She reached for it slowly, her hand trembling. A diagram of a hair follicle graced its cover. She felt herself recoil. Her son’s condition was not worthy of the lead article? A finger loosened the plastic seam on one side. She inhaled its pages, again searching for his elusive aftershave, but all she smelled was the buttery, slightly sterile aroma of processed paper and glue.
“Kermin!” she called up the hallway. “It’s here!”
She was searching the table of contents for the doctor’s name, the electricity flaring out into her fingertips. His name, his name—she wanted to touch his name. And there it was: page 349.
Kermin came down with Radar in his arms. He took a seat on the bottom step.
She read. Neighbors came and went around them. When she was done, she looked up, bewildered.
“So?” said Kermin. “What does it say?”
“I don’t know,” she said. The article was short. Barely three pages. She had expected it to be longer. She thought real science would demand pages and pages. Not this.
Radar was singing to himself, “Den we all say goodnight bunnee. Den we all say goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.”
Kermin rubbed his son’s head.
She sat down beside them and read it again. This time, she even read the figures and the footnotes. Radar grew bored and began walking up and down the stairs, counting each railing as he went. Kermin leaned over and looked briefly at the page, then shook his head.
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated. “I’m not sure it says anything.”
Indeed, as far as she could tell, “On an Isolated Incidence of Non-Addison’s Hypoadrenal Uniform Hyperpigmentation in a Caucasian Male” was nothing more than a professional shrug of the shoulders. “The unusual uniform darkening in this individual can be linked to a marked increase in melanocyte-stimulating and adrenocorticotropic hormones, though all other pituitary and adrenal gland functions appear normal,” Dr. Fitzgerald wrote in his conclusion, hiding behind the oddly disembodied language of the medical professional. “No doubt further genetic studies need to be performed to ascertain the precise catalyst for the over-production of these hormones, which are not present in either parent or gene group. In all other areas, however, the patient is a normal, functioning male infant. Chance transmutation, it seems, has struck again” (354).
Fig. 1.2. Patient R, Longitudinal Section 8
From Fitzgerald, T., “On an Isolated Incidence of Non- Addison’s Hypoadrenal Uniform Hyperpigmentation in a Caucasian Male,” Journal of Investigative Dermatology 72: 351
“Chance transmutation?” said Charlene. She slowly collapsed onto the bottom step, let out a long, withering breath, and covered her face with her hands.
Radar came back down the stairs. “Why mommy sad?”
“I don’t know,” said Kermin.
“Someone mean her?”
“Come,” he said. He took his son by the hand and led him back upstairs.
• • •
THE NIGHT AFTER they received the article, Kermin, a man who did not drink but was clearly drunk, barged into their evening bubble bath, shortwave radio in hand.
“There is no more tests!” he said. “Jebeš ljekare!”
“Kerm, careful!”
He swayed. “No more tests, do you hear me?”
“Okay, calm down. Don’t yell so loud.”
“And no more doctors!”
“Okay.”
“Fuck this Fitzgerald so-and-so.”
“Kerm.”
“We know more than he does, and we know nothing! If he cannot find such-and-such, then there is nothing to find. Moj sin je zdrav.”
He reached into the bathtub to touch Radar’s head and tripped, dropping the radio into the sea of bubbles. The shortwave, chattering away, sputtered, slurped, and went silent. Charlene screamed, thinking they would both be electrocuted. She clutched their child to her chest. Radar, dark and radiant against his mother’s pale skin, began to whimper. Kermin grasped clumsily at his machine and promptly fell into the bath with them.
A shocked silence. And then Kermin started to laugh. After a moment, Charl
ene joined him. They laughed and built a tower of bubbles on Radar’s head, who waved at his crown. The air parted, the clouds receding. They did not have to fix this anymore.
6
It was a clean break, or as clean a break as you could hope for. In the months that followed, Charlene felt closer than she had ever felt to Kermin. They started sleeping together again for the first time in almost a year, though she still insisted on using at least two forms of birth control.
Perhaps sensing their daughter had turned over a new leaf, her parents offered to help them buy a house, an offer that Charlene begrudgingly accepted. They moved out of their apartment in Elizabeth and into a single-family faux colonial on a tight suburban street in Kearny, away from the Serbian community that had sustained and battered them. The sultry S-curve of the Passaic River formed the real and imagined border between their old lives and new.
Charlene brought all of her books with her—boxes and boxes of them. There was ample shelving in the new house, and she spread out her collection across several rooms, their spines clustered according to color. Visiting the new house, her mother said the library looked like a Rothko painting.
“It’s not a bad thing,” she said. “Just different.”
Soon after, Charlene hung white sheets in front of the shelves, as if to protect the books from an imminent construction project that never came. The sheets, once hung, were accepted and then forgotten, and would remain in place for the next thirty years. To fetch a book, you had to step through the curtain into another realm, into a mausoleum of forgotten bindings.
Kermin also moved his business across the Passaic, to a lonely little block in Harrison, next to a synagogue and a karate studio. Without the cultural patronage of the Serbs, he had trouble attracting new clients, and what little business which had sustained him in Elizabeth quickly dried up. Kermin sat in his new shop, surrounded by his electronic parts, and waited for the jingle of a bell that rarely came. He was perhaps the best TV-and-radio repairman in New Jersey, but he was not a people person, and the tiny television had not quite caught on in America in the way he had predicted. Americans liked big and bigger, and, most often, biggest. When things broke, they were more likely to buy a new one than fix what they already had.
Once settled into their new home, they enrolled Radar in a local day care. For the first time since his birth, Charlene felt comfortable enough to release him into the care of others.
“He must meet friends, kids, boys, everyone,” said Kermin. “So he can be normal.”
The day care was a brick-and-pastel compound called Shady Dale Tots. The playground out front was padded. There were two neon turtles you could ride like ponies. The adults at Shady Dale Tots cooed and pinched Radar’s cheeks. After his first day, Radar asked Charlene why there were no doctors, only other kids like him.
Her newfound free time terrified her. In the mornings, she would often sit with a copy of the Star-Ledger, a perpetually disappointing, perpetually comforting cultural artifact, reading and half reading, taking little sentence-long sips from stories that outlined the misfortunes of others. One morning, after burning clear through the local news, Charlene suddenly found herself in the classifieds—rare territory she usually found a touch gauche, a touch desperate even for her tastes. (Who would go public with something like that?) But now, faced with these crowded columns of informal commerce, she found herself voyeuristically scanning the personals and job listings and for-sale items. A thousand potential worlds awaited her attention. The personals were particularly mystifying, for the carefully ascribed acronyms and decontextualized details (“SWDM, 58 seeks SWF for LTR. I’m a Catholic-turned-atheist”) made each sound like an encoded diplomatic cable rather than an intimate come-on. In some ways, their impossible brevity reminded her of the obituaries that she had once collected as a child, but these missives were not meant to memorialize a life gone by. The personal ads had been crafted by living, breathing people who were awaiting actual responses. Their summary was like a death before death.
It was then that her eyes fell upon a nondescript ad in the bottom right-hand corner of the page:
DO YOU HAVE A SENSITIVITY TO TASTE AND/OR SMELL?
The International Flavor and Aroma Corporation of Elizabeth, NJ is looking for select, qualified candidates for several entry-level flavorist, perfumer, and quality control positions. Industry and/or science background helpful but not necessary. Apply to: IFAC H&R, PO Box 4923, Elizabeth, NJ 07207
Charlene read the ad twice through and then once more. She took a pair of scissors and carefully cut it out with four neat little snips. When she was done, the slip of newspaper lay by itself on the table. She fetched a piece of paper, fully intending to respond, but when she tried to write a reply, she found she had nothing to write. After several attempts, she gave up. She hid the ad inside a recipe booklet and tried to forget she had ever seen it.
Still, she realized she needed to find some type of job. Kermin’s business was floundering, and even with the financial assistance of her parents (who were incidentally also paying for Radar’s day care), they were in increasing need of a steady source of reliable income. Maureen, mother of Bryan, one of Radar’s day care buddies, found Charlene a position as a part-time receptionist at the semi-upscale hair salon where she worked. The pay wasn’t much, but it kept her busy.
One day at day care pickup, Charlene and Maureen lingered, chatting. Maureen was quietly becoming one of her few confidants. Close female friends were unusual for Charlene, who naturally drifted toward the gruff honesty (and the associated sexual complications) of male companionship. But Maureen was perky and kind and eternally optimistic—everything that Charlene was not.
“I was all, ‘If you try that again, we’ve got a problem,’” Maureen was saying. “You know what I mean, honey? You just can’t take that from people.”
Charlene, half listening, watched the children. She was aware—not for the first time—of their incredible whiteness. They appeared almost sickly under the fluorescent lights, as if they had never been exposed to the sun. The boy with the bowl cut whose name she could never remember was playing a block game with Bryan. Radar sat in his usual spot in the corner, contentedly rewiring one of his radios. At first the teachers had frowned upon having such dangerous elements in the classroom, but when they witnessed the degree to which Radar was consumed by his electronics, they had reluctantly made an exception.
And then Charlene saw the boy with the bowl cut stop and point at Radar. He was pointing right at him. The boy said a word—she couldn’t hear what it was, but his face had twisted into a scowl when he said it, giving him a momentarily precocious air of menace. Charlene stood and stared at the boy thrusting his finger in the direction of her son.
That little shit.
She resisted the urge to go over and slap him. Why on earth was he pointing like that? What had he said about Radar?
“Charlene? Are you okay?” asked Maureen. “What is it?”
The boy was pointing, and now he was saying something to Bryan, next to him, and they were both laughing and kicking at the blocks with their little feet. Charlene could not believe it. Bryan was laughing, too. Bryan was supposed to be Radar’s friend.
“They’re laughing at him,” said Charlene.
“At who?”
But Charlene was already running over. She grabbed the boy’s hand.
“Never,” she hissed at the boy. “Never, ever do that. Do you hear me?” The boy looked bewildered for a moment and then began to cry. Charlene plucked up Radar and hurriedly left the room.
“Wait, Charlene! What happened?” Maureen called after her, but she did not stop. She ran to the car and did not bother putting Radar in his car seat before driving away.
• • •
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, perambulating Radar down Harrison Avenue, Charlene was lost in thought when she felt the baby carriage hit something. She looked
around and saw a black couple in their seventies standing next to her. The man was holding the chassis of Radar’s carriage. Beneath a battered newsie cap, he studied Charlene with sad, elephant eyes magnified by a thick pair of grubby eyeglasses. His knuckles were dry and white with age.
“I’m sorry,” said Charlene, thinking she must’ve clipped them by accident. She tried to push forward but could not break free from the old man’s grip.
“Herb!” His wife grabbed his arm and tried to pull it off the stroller.
He pushed her away and lifted a finger at Charlene.
“You got some nerve, you know that?” His voice like a memory, pressing against her chest.
“Herb!” his wife said again. She uncoiled his fingers from the carriage. “I’m so sorry. He doesn’t know what he’s saying these days.”
She took out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. “Come on, love,” she said. “Let’s go get you some goulash.”
Charlene was paralyzed.
“It’s not what you think,” she finally stammered.
The woman turned and placed her hand on Charlene’s arm. Her eyes were warm.
“I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing, really. God bless,” she said. “So many out there who need good homes, no matter what color they is.”
• • •
THE ENCOUNTER DOGGED HER. It filled the folds of her consciousness. She kept seeing those cataract eyes, large and unblinking behind his Coke bottle glasses. A soft man filled with such malice. She wished she had confessed all to this couple, explained to them what had happened and why, sought their advice, sought their forgiveness. On more than one occasion, she found herself back at the place of their encounter, hoping she might run into them again.
She had always struggled with insomnia, but now she stopped sleeping altogether. After consulting a doctor, she began relying on an array of potent sleeping pills. If she did not take enough, she would not sleep and would wake up nauseated, tired, and depressed. If she took too many, she would pass out and wake up nauseated, tired, and depressed. Every night became an exercise in threading the needle. Days began to blur together.