Most Unnatural

by Liam Llewellyn

  As the semen kept flying, Cordo lost more control of himself, of his orgasm, and Tom clamped a hand over Cordo’s mouth to shut him up, at the same time reaching orgasm himself, feeling Cordo’s anal ring tightening and loosening around his pistoning penis more times than you could count. He ejaculated inside Cordo with a violent grunt in place of guttural yelling and praises to the heavens, sweaty body still thrusting long after he’d stopped cumming, as though he were some automaton whose mainframe had gone haywire.

  He pulled out and leaned over Cordo to lick his semen from where it had hit Cordo’s lips. Then Tom collapsed on Cordo, both thoroughly exasperated, and Cordo put his arms around Tom, hugged him closely, smelling his hair.

  “I love you,” Cordo whispered.

  Tom listened to Cordo’s heart slowing, rubbed Cordo’s stomach.

  “I love you.”

  They lay refracting, the sweat and semen creeping down their inner legs onto the bed sheets, which were soaked in sweat already. Then they both smelled it at the same time. They sat up, saw the shit stain Cordo had made on the bed—not terrible but there nonetheless.

  “Fuck,” Cordo muttered.

  Tom got out of bed and then so did Cordo, turning red. Tom removed the sheets.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be,” Tom said, smiling. “Comes with the territory.”

  He threw the soiled sheets into the hamper in the closet, then took Cordo’s hand to lead him into the bathroom, where he started the shower. They were silent as they both got in, got wet, and started washing themselves.

  Then, after Cordo’s butt and Tom’s penis were clean, they stood still in front of each other, appraising the other’s body. They might have both been trying to conceive of something to say but there was nothing. They smiled at each other and fell into more electric kissing. They slept separately that night, Cordo sneaking past Amelia’s lighted bedroom door to get to his own.

  He and Tom talked about it the next night after he and Amelia got back from the university and Amelia went upstairs to her room.

  Tom and Cordo went out onto the front porch with coffee and sat in the misty glow from the garage light.

  “Did you mean what you said…at the end?” Cordo asked.

  Tom smiled bashfully.

  “Yeah…Yeah. Did you?”

  “Yeah.”

  They sipped their coffee.

  “Maybe I couldn’t see striking up a lasting relationship with a random guy, let alone spontaneously hooking up with one,” Cordo said. “But with you…I could. Spend the rest of my life with you.”

  Tom chuckled.

  “Is that too much?” Cordo asked.

  Tom shook his head.

  “No. I just can’t believe this is happening.”

  “Is it?”

  Tom nodded, smiling.

  “Yeah.”

  Thus began a good period in Cordo’s and Tom’s life, one of the better in recent memory.

  They decided not to tell Amelia, although that didn’t mean she wouldn’t know, you know how perceptive she is. If she knew anything was different between them, though, she didn’t say, focusing on her work at the lab and reading up on how to care for her soon-to-be-born.

  Cordo decided he would not go back to work until after the baby was born. That gave him six months. He and Tom discussed their living situation and agreed it was too soon to move in together, though Tom said he thought Cordo and Amelia should continue to stay with him for a while, to make sure everything was OK and would stay that way when they went back home.

  Cordo’s days were his own. He walked around the town and soon became recognized by his repeated appearances and was waved to and he waved back.

  He found the Stillaguamish River to the north of town, followed it east, then south. He did this every day, trekking farther and farther each time. One day he broke off into the hilly forest on one bank, wandered around in complete unpanicked disorientation, then happened upon a small lake with a paved road on its opposite bank. There was a bench and an old cold barbecue stove down on this side. He sat down and looked at the water’s surface rippling in the light summer evening breeze. He followed the road back to Tom’s.

  Espying a perfect writing ground, Cordo soon brought along with him a notebook and a pen to this lake and spent hours writing at the bench on his knee. He could have driven here, with a fold-up table and maybe a comfortable camping chair, but he didn’t, chose to walk here spartanly.

  One day after returning from the lake, Tom and Amelia still three more hours at the lab, Cordo found a voicemail on his cell phone, which he intently left behind always. He listened:

  “Mr. Tendler, Greg Carter, Titus Pharmaceuticals. I got your number from your office, they said you were on an extended vacation. I’m calling to ask if you remember our meeting several years ago, I made you an unofficial offer to come work for Titus. I’m calling now with an official offer. Please give me a call so we can discuss it.”

  Cordo hung up, tried to process this. He went into his bedroom, to his laptop, looked up Titus.

  The first headline was from three days ago, a Times story: ‘Titus Pharm files for U.S. Supreme Court audience.’

  He skimmed the story: Titus, after exhausting its appeals and losing lawsuits in lower courts in the 30 years since their delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, was filing for a writ certiorari in the hopes of getting the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case and hopefully order the Securities and Exchange Commission to write a recommendation to the NYSE that Titus be listed once more.

  He scoffed with dry humor, blocked Carter’s number, and let the matter vanish from his brain.

  Second trimester tests boded well for the baby.

  “Do you want to know the sex?” the ultrasound technician asked as she scanned Amelia’s jellied belly, Cordo sitting beside the examination table as they all three watched the monitor, which you could mistake for a black-and-white storm monitor in any other environment.

  “It’s a girl,” Amelia said.

  The technician looked at her, as though she were going to say, “Actually, it’s…” but then she paused.

  “That’s right…”

  Cordo smiled, looking at the monitor more closely, then glanced at Amelia, who looked at him as though he’d just told a humorless joke.

  In August Amelia started attending Lamaze classes. Cordo went with her and as they sat in the floor, Cordo behind her as she leaned back against him, he caught the suspicious glances of more than a few mothers, fathers, and the instructor and he knew what they were thinking and he scowled at them.

  Amelia started school later that month. She’d worked in the lab all summer and had received four grants for a total of $20,000. Despite Cordo’s and Tom’s and even her OBGYN’s recommendations she wait until after the baby’s birth to return to school and work, there wasn’t much to indicate she felt at all overwhelmed or stressed.

  Shortly before she started her last year of undergraduate work, she and Cordo and Hester moved back to Everett. Tom helped them move.

  Outside the house looked fine. The first sign of something amiss was when they entered: The alarm didn’t sound.

  Cordo nor Tom noticed this. It was Amelia who alerted them to the silent air. Cordo checked the alarm keypad: It was black. As they neared the kitchen, they smell the stench of rot. The fridge and freezer were dark, warm, the food spoiled, moldy, leaking.

  Amelia stayed back on Cordo’s order. He and Tom entered the living room again coughing and Cordo went into the garage and checked the circuit breaker: All the toggles were off.

  Cordo sighed warily, turned them all on. The alarm started its countdown suddenly. He went back inside, lights on in the kitchen and down the hallway and living room now, just as he remembered seeing it last. He input the code and shut off the alarm as Tom and Amelia watched him.

  “Check for anything missing,” he instructed them.

  Amelia headed for her bedroom while Cordo and Tom went into t
he master. Cordo stopped upon entering, looked around. It might have felt different, alien, but was it really?

  The vomit was still in the floor, dried and stinking, the shattered whiskey bottle shards, empty pill bottles, the pills themselves…but Lourdes’ picture was missing.

  Cordo looked around the room, saw the walk-in closet light was on. It hadn’t been the last time he was here. He went in, saw the picture lying on its face on a shelf of books. He looked up, saw the crawlspace entrance—shut—directly above.

  He unfolded the stepladder, opened the crawlspace: All the bags of pictures and Lourdes’ effects seemed to be there. But he still took them all down, handing them to Tom, who emptied them onto the bed.

  Rummaging through, Cordo found all the jewelry was there. He pondered this, looking over all the items. Then he stopped.

  “Her hairbrush,” he said more to himself than to Tom.

  There was no hairbrush on the bed. They went into the hallway and met Amelia.

  “Anything missing?” Cordo asked.

  “My hairbrush.”

  Camille Lourdes Tendler was born on October 13. She weighed 8.6 pounds and was perfectly healthy. Cordo had been in the delivery room with Amelia, who had given birth with none of the agony and effort of women in films and television but rather with an unsettling equanimity, and he was with her now once Camille was cleaned and put in a pink blanket and brought to her mother’s arms.

  Cordo watched Amelia’s face, perhaps expecting a smile, tears, something cliché but true. But in Amelia’s face there was only fascination, even awe, as though disbelieving she, her body, was capable of such creation.

  She passed her over to Cordo not long after and he cradled Camille dearly, stroking her face with his finger, smiling with his own awe, cooing at her.

  “She’s beautiful,” he said.

  Amelia didn’t reply. Cordo gazed into Camille’s heavy-lidded weary eyes.

  “I suppose you’ll want to make Tom the godfather,” Amelia said.

  Cordo looked up.

  “She’s your daughter, baby.”

  Scrutiny of Cordo now from Amelia, as she must look through a microscope lens.

  “You’re fucking, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Cordo looked up at her as though she’d just unveiled a pistol.

  “We are…in a relationship.”

  “Couldn’t make it work with women, so you’ll give the other sex a shot.”

  Cordo ground his teeth, held Camille closer to himself.

  “What is wrong with you?” he asked in a whisper. “You’re so goddamn smart, why can’t you figure it out that I’m just…trying to have a life…get over your mother…”

  He used one hand to wipe his eyes. Amelia scoffed.

  “You’ll never get over her.”

  “I will never stop loving her but I have to get past her…I don’t wanna be alone all my life.”

  Showing the first readable emotion in her face, Amelia glowered at him.

  “Fuck you,” she spat.

  Cordo stared at her with wide eyes, then slowly chuckled. He stood and went out with Camille.

  Later, he and Tom looked at Camille through the nursery window. Cordo’s face showed the swelling of prolonged crying but he was dry now.

  “God help me if she turns out like Amelia,” he muttered.

  Tom stroked his shoulder.

  Camille’s birth certificate never received a father’s name.

  From the moment they took Camille home, she cried. Cordo might have had confidence bordering on arrogance in his abilities to withstand and assuage her—perhaps Amelia really hadn’t been so difficult when she was young—but he soon found the tricks that hadn’t worked with her—talking with her around the house, putting her in her cradle on top of the washer and dryer, playing quiet classical music—also failed to calm Camille and she didn’t tire of crying and screaming, stayed up long into the night.

  And so that long-lost beaten-down feeling resurfaced in Cordo but Amelia did not seem to mind Camille’s wailing. She grew exhausted from the lack of sleep, sure, but didn’t become irritable, anxious, despondent as did Cordo, perhaps making him wonder whether he were especially sensitive to the littlest disturbance.

  But that couldn’t be the case, for invariably when Tom came over, he himself always appeared exhausted at some point or asked for some aspirin or got a beer. So was it really Cordo or was Amelia just especially patient?

  After the first month, Tom remarked on Cordo’s appearance, which had not been so ghoulish since Amelia was a baby. Tom suggested he get back on trazodone, the miracle drug that had given Cordo a sedated peace long ago. Cordo said he couldn’t do that, what if Amelia needed him during the night?

  “Then she’ll wake you up. But there’s no reason you should be suffering. It’s not your responsibility, she’s Amelia’s daughter.”

  Cordo smiled at the revelation and got an appointment for the next day and changed his prescription to trazodone. He slept better starting that night.

  Amelia was obliged to take some time off from work and school. Cordo stayed with her a few days, then had to return to work himself, leaving only Margaret with Amelia and Camille, who soon wore on the nanny’s patients. Never, in all the children she’d cared for in more than 50 years, had she heard a baby cry so fiercely for so long.

  She stayed on, however, at least for the present, trying all her tried-and-true tricks to calm Camille, who was incorrigible.

  Amelia would start up at school again in the spring. Until then Cordo spent most of his downtime at Tom’s.

  They had not made love nor scarcely kissed since school had started in the fall. So after work most days, they each drove to Arlington, spent several hours at Tom’s, then Cordo went home, Tom sometimes joining him in order to spend time with Amelia and Camille and then spending the night in Cordo’s office-turned-bedroom, listening to music in his earbuds to drown out Camille’s crying.

  And through it all, Amelia somehow remained at peace.

  As Camille got older, Cordo suggested taking her to the pediatrician—Amelia’s own—to see if he would prescribe medication—such as the equally heaven-sent promethazine—to help Camille sleep, perhaps recommend her to a sleep clinic—you know you had terrible night terrors when you were a baby, she could be having them too.

  Amelia scoffed, as though Cordo were some ignoramus telling Einstein about physics.

  “She’s my daughter, if you wanna do things your way, go have another yourself.”

  Cordo threw up his hands, started spending nights at Tom’s, and Amelia let Camille cry on.

  She spoke to Camille in French, Swedish, Latin, and English, read to her and showed her pictures from books of botany, horticulture, plant biology.

  Cordo watched them in Amelia’s bedroom—also Camille’s nursery—from the living room, saw Amelia cradling Camille as though she were her baby sister and not her own daughter. Cordo couldn’t help but grimace the more she talked about plants.

  Cordo tried to spend more time alone or at Tom’s with Camille, offering Amelia some time alone to rest, to read, do things for herself, which she’d not much been able to do since Camille’s birth, and she reluctantly agreed.

  So for a few hours, Cordo could drive Camille around town or to the ocean, listening to Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Robert Palmer, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, The Who and tried reading her Hemingway, Mailer, Ellison, Lovercraft, Joyce, Fitzgerald and watching The Sopranos, The Dark Knight, The Tree of Life, The Thin Red Line, The Deer Hunter, Amadeus, Roseanne, Frasier, There Will Be Blood, countless other shows and movies.

  But none of it ever silenced Camille’s crying for nearly as long as did Amelia’s reading to her of plants.

  One night over Tom’s winter break, he and Cordo were watching TV at Tom’s house while Amelia and Margaret were with Camille at Cordo’s.

  “How was work?” Tom asked.

  Cordo shrugged.

  “I miss not going.”

 
Tom chuckled.

  “Not interesting?”

  Cordo thought.

  “I don’t know. I’m just not excited about any of it.”

  “How come?”

  Cordo shook his head.

  “I don’t know. I’m not contributing to the world.”

  “Journalism informs people.”

  “But everyone’s so suspicious of it. And rightly so. When I worked for the college paper, I wrote this story—it was right after that big earthquake in Nepal in 2015—it was about that—I interviewed the school’s Nepalese Student Association. They talked about how their families back home thought the answer to their problems was money, which I guess is true. They asked their kids in the states to send them money so they could rebuild their houses and villages. One of my interviews said to his parents, ‘You ought to rebuild the house so that it’s earthquake resistant,’ he was an engineering major, rattled off some stuff about how California buildings are built. But the parents said, ‘Oh no, that won’t work.’ My interview said most of Nepal, bureaucrats and government officials don’t trust science.”

  “Like Creationists.”

  “Exactly. And I’ve interviewed scientists and Creationists and they don’t trust me—I’m writing features, not hard news or investigative stories. How low on the fucking totem pole am I?”

  “I’d say below whale shit but still above used car salesmen and lawyers.”

  Cordo bit his lip.

  “What attracted you to journalism?” Tom asked.

  “I was deferred to a journalism class in high school after a creative writing class failed to form. I enjoyed it, I was good at it.”

  “You were good at writing.”

  Cordo considered this.

  “Yeah. One of the tenants of journalism is to seek truth and report it. I don’t think that ever appealed to me—I was never interested in informing the public.”

  “But giving them something good to read.”

  Cordo nodded.