“What number is that?”
“Be nice to Mister Clover. You can make or break this thing. Years from now, I don’t want to be sitting at this table all alone. I don’t want to be sitting at this table while you’re out screwing some little tart. Men are never alone. I don’t want to be sitting here waiting for you to come to the door with a bundle of joy. You shouldn’t expect that of me.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t know it yet, but it’s what you expect. And that’s fine—it’s what you’re supposed to expect. But we’ve been through a lot together. Be nice to Mister Clover. This is the least you can do.”
He nodded gravely. He said nothing. He did not look at the cake, or ask for the cake. His feet grew hot in their slippers.
“Happy Birthday,” she said. “I mean that.”
He bowed his head at these words, as if at a blessing. A few minutes passed. They listened for Clover. For a moment they heard a rustling, and Goldie tilted her ear toward the noise, but it stopped. It was not Clover.
Paul felt a tickle on the back of his neck, a faint shiver, a signal that something in the room had changed. He looked around. Nothing had changed.
His mother said it again, louder: “Happy Birthday!”
Nothing had changed, but he felt they were being observed.
One time, maybe a year ago, he’d woken to noise from his mother’s room. What began as a mild whimper became louder, strident—her voice, then someone else’s—louder, urgent, not pained exactly, not right either. The sounds overlapped; he could tell there were more than two people in her room. Paul rose, crept into the hall, and saw her door halfway open. His mother was in bed with Chuck. He knew Chuck—Chuck the Schmuck, his mother said—but there was another man there too, a man he didn’t recognize, a man kneeling at the foot of the bed, hair to his shoulders, elbows on the covers, his back to Paul.
A scarf over her lampshade lent the room a deep, plummy cast. Her dress lay on the floor. Her shoes. Her underwear. Chuck, with a grunting laugh, pulled the covers over his head. Now all Paul could see was his mother’s torso, her head propped on two pillows. Her face was flat, unthinking; she might have been watching TV; she might have been waiting for the dryer to finish at the laundromat. Under the covers Chuck became a bobbing lump. His mother hummed. They watched. Meaning everyone. Chuck, hidden, doing whatever he was doing, that was a kind of watching. The man at the end of the bed, he watched while he squeezed her foot through the blanket, while he murmured, “That’s the music, that’s the music, honey, keep singin’ that song.” And Paul, behind them all, watched. Then Paul saw that the stranger, the kneeling man, lifted a hand and touched, lightly, the back of his own neck. He ran his hand up and down the nape. It was as if the man had felt a shiver, as if his body knew that he, too, was being watched. Paul took a breath, prepared to flee, sure he’d be found out—but the stranger did not turn around. His mother’s noises changed, came now through her teeth, like a child mimicking a train, chugachugachugachug. Paul wanted to turn around but could not. Her sounds rose and fell. Chugachuga. Then her face was no longer a TV-watching face, a waiting-for-the-dryer face. Now it was the face of someone in pain, or, no, someone preparing for pain—a face as a needle comes at your arm. At once Paul’s own neck tingled; at once he knew that there was someone else, someone behind him, also watching. But he didn’t turn. No one turned. No one moved. In this way, necks tingling, he imagined a train of people watching his mother, one after the next, each sensing the other’s presence but not willing to look, not wanting to confirm the feeling, because to confirm it would be to take their eyes off Goldie, and who would do that? Goldie arched her body, threw back her head, the skin of her throat purple in the light. Her soft locomotive chugging rose in volume, picked up speed, until it exploded—until it was the whistle that warns of a crossing—I’m coming, save yourself—the good municipal scream—the stay away, stay away.
He ran back to his room. He felt sick and dumb, wanted to puke, to stop the thudding of his heart and stop the hotness in his stomach. He was wearing footed pajamas. How he despised them, their stupid feet, their long zipper! He’d never wear them again.
“My birthday boy,” Goldie said. “Where does the time go?”
He said he didn’t know.
“Ten years. A whole bleeping decade. Can you tell me where it goes?”
She was wrong about time. It went too slow and headed nowhere. Time was a commercial on repeat, a loop of advertising, buy this or that or this or that, it doesn’t matter what, buy something and be glad for it. His childhood would never end. He would be ten forever. He would never eat the cake. He would never have a toothpick in his penis or a virgin bride. He would always be Paul.
He said, “Time is dead.”
Goldie laughed, “My wise guy!”
He never saw those men again, not Chuck or the stranger at the foot of the bed. Still, ever since that night he sensed eyes everywhere. The woods were eyes. The kids at school had eyes under their eyes. Soon enough his mother was dating Freddy Marino, one of the God crew, on whose pocketknife handle was etched Be sure your sin will find you out, so for a while everything was on the up-and-up.
4
Thomas watched. He did not peep. Peep implied furtive glances, an eye against a crack in the wall, implied perversion and greed and contempt. He told himself: This is not peeping. This is one human being in awe of another, and could awe be criminal? Only if it was not real awe. Only if it was need or disdain disguised as awe. He needed nothing from her. He felt toward her only a throaty tenderness. So he gazed at this woman and her son, this family, as it were, in an open, reverent manner, damp-eyed, curious, but always, he told himself, with reverence that obliterated prurience. He looked at them through the bottom corner of a large, uncurtained window, not some crack in the wall, not some secret camera. It was looking, just that, no tools, no greed, no need for reciprocity, no touching of the body. He made sure his breath was slow, his back straight, as if to demonstrate his decency. If he’d come upon a true peeper he would have beat him up. He would have genuinely felt like he was defending her honor.
He first saw Goldie in a diner. He and Janice had been sitting in a booth, negotiating the end of their relationship. Of course he hadn’t known that then—he thought it was just another argument and they’d fuck it off. They ate steak and eggs, fought with the ketchup bottle. It was dusk, one of those sad places that serve breakfast all day.
Goldie, in the company of a toddler, sat at a booth toward the back, in his line of sight but behind Janice. He watched Goldie eat a slice of pie, watched her chew in a slow, wincing way. The sign over the counter declared OUR PIES VOTED BEST EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. Voted by whom? What was pie like on the other side of that great river? Thomas had never seen the river, never been west of it, let alone tasted Western pie. The diner was stuffy, wood-paneled, a stag head above the cigarette machine, a baseball player’s photo, autographed in grandiose loops, framed above the counter. There was a little jukebox circled in pink neon affixed to the wall of the booth, and Goldie shuffled though its offerings absently. She drank a lot of coffee. She wore many silver rings and an electric blue shirt with buttons in the shape of diamonds. Her eyes were elsewhere. Even when she talked to the kid, even ordering more coffee, even moving her lips faintly as she read song titles, her eyes were elsewhere. Every now and then she’d come to for a moment, startle back into herself; then she’d hastily minister to the kid, wipe crumbs from his face, offer a spoonful of whipped cream. Her tenderness was compensation. The kid was strapped into a high chair. His feet in green sneakers hung heavily. His face had the full, polished redness of an old man at the beach, blunted by decades of sunlight. The kid, too, seemed elsewhere, would startle when he noticed a spoon aimed at his mouth or when his mother’s hand, in that impulsive instant, smoothed his hair.
Her face was round and rouged. The wide mouth winced as she ate. Her hair was big, wavy. She clearly was not satisfied with the pie,
not satisfied with anything.
Thomas wondered if he could change that. How? He didn’t know.
Now, eight years later, the face of the son was more artfully, vigilantly blank. A balloon tied to the back of his chair, a cake waiting between them, while she talked and drank and ran a finger along her clavicle. She was talking to pass the time. Thomas could not hear all the words, but he could watch her mouth move. He could tell she was talking just for talking’s sake, but the kid was listening. Of course that’s what kids did, listened to everything, took it all in. They heard their mothers say louse and dud and fraud. They heard their mothers say This child is killing me. It went beyond hearing; it went straight to the gut.
Eight years ago, Janice had said, “The way you eat your eggs has always struck me as weird.”
“Nixon uses ketchup.”
“If you care about having a relationship with my mother, you’ll resign.” Janice’s mother, born-again, could not abide his work. “You take the tiniest bites.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“There are openings at the hospital. Marnie told me. And don’t do that. You did that to spite her.”
“Did what?”
“They’re looking for nurses.”
“Jesus Cripes. Better?”
He saw that she wanted to say something but was afraid. “Marnie said it’s great over there. Good benefits.”
“I like my job.”
Janice said she truly didn’t care what the hell he did, didn’t care how many babies got butchered—perhaps they wouldn’t be in this jam if she herself had paid a visit there—but yesterday her mother agreed to provide free day care for Jade on the condition that he quit.
“But you don’t work. You’re home all day, Janice. Why do we need free day care?”
She shot him a look of wounded hatred; she could manage that beautifully, join woundedness to any aggression, so that you felt pity despite yourself.
“I am dying in that apartment. I am not cut out to stay home all day with a—” She paused. “I’m sad,” she said finally. “I want my mother’s help. Maybe I’ll take an art class.”
“Yes, take an art class. We’ll pay for a babysitter. We don’t need your mother dictating our lives.”
“She’ll give us money!”
“I don’t want it.”
“We need it.”
“Not on that condition.”
“She’s got a point. It’s dangerous at the clinic. Weekly threats. Bombs and all that bullshit—you said so yourself. That note on the doctor’s windshield? Marnie said the hospital’s great. Nice people. Good benefits. Doughnuts on Friday sort of thing.”
“Doughnuts?”
“And flexible hours.”
“I don’t like doughnuts.”
“You like crullers.”
He shrugged. It was true.
“That note was terrible.—What are you looking at?” She turned. “Her?”
“I’m looking at you.”
He looked at his wife’s face, hard, to prove it.
“You’re looking at her. You’ve been looking at her since we sat down.”
“Please do yourself a favor and take a breath.”
She said, “She’s got a fat face.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’m sad.”
“Sad how?”
“Sad I want to run the fuck away. Sad I want my mother to love us.”
He knew it was the wrong question. “Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know. How should I know?” She frowned. “Chicago? Toledo? Orlando? It doesn’t matter. You see?”
He sighed.
“She’s a cow.” She jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. “I’m miserable. Can you help me?”
He didn’t know and said so.
“Look at you. Look at you looking at her. My mother is right. You murder things.”
They sat at the table for a long time.
Now he wanted nothing. He did not desire entrance. He was not a father or a husband or a nurse or a son at these moments. The woods moved around him. He kept himself in shadows, his face close to the glass. His mind swung like a bell between his women.
5
At last Clover arrived, shaggy-haired, in fatigue pants and a white dress shirt, Birkenstocks, a camera case slung across his body, a special copper bracelet on his wrist meant to obliterate aches and summon inner peace. His neck was reedy, eyebrows raised. He apologized for being late. The life of an artist, he said, and wound his finger around his ear a few times to mean crazy, crazy, a crazy life. Goldie murmured deferentially. He ruffled Paul’s hair, sat down with them at the table, tapped his fingers on its edge. He said he loved the place, its cavelike quality. He said it felt like a dark, quiet aquarium. She offered him a drink, gin, beer, bourbon, but he accepted some water.
“I’ve made a cake,” Goldie said. “It’s Paul’s tenth birthday.”
Again he ruffled Paul’s hair. “Well well,” said Clover. “The big one-oh. You feel different today, man?”
“Not much,” said Paul.
Goldie clapped her hands.
Clover leaned back in his chair, rubbed his gut as if sated. “I’m afraid I can’t partake of the cake. I don’t do refined sugar.”
“It’s just got regular sugar,” Goldie said.
“Sugar, dairy, empty carbohydrates, booze. They cloud the mind,” Clover said. “Plug the bowels. You ever had a colonic?”
Goldie shook her head.
“Best thing in the world. You’d love it. Rids the body of all toxins.” He gestured to the cake.
“Interesting,” Goldie said. The cake now struck her as rude—she felt ashamed, as if she’d told an off-color joke.
“Woman over in Munroe does ’em. Calls herself ‘Sunny.’ Sunny put my testimonial on the front of her brochure. You’d be amazed at how good you feel afterwards. Like taking a long swim in an ocean. That kind of pure, open clean.”
“It sounds just fantastic,” she said, but she didn’t really know what a colonic was. She had a vague sense it had something to do with the asshole, but probably not, because why would he be talking about his asshole on a first date? She had to remind herself it wasn’t officially a date. The date was to come. In the meantime, she would learn about colonics. In the meantime, she would remove the cake. It seemed dumb now, sitting there coated in sugar, an emblem of her ignorance. Goldie stood, gave Paul a warning look, and picked up the cake. She carried it into the kitchen and placed it on top of the refrigerator. When she returned she held three oranges. She set them on the table, said, a little shyly, “Do you do oranges?”
“Oranges I do. Oh yes sir,” and he took a bite straight into one, through the peel. Chewing, the corners of his mouth glistening with juice, he extolled the virtues of orange peel, of bitter foods in general, rose hips, certain medicinal weeds, and then moved on to the pleasure of jumping freight trains (here he turned to Paul and warned him to wait a couple years), nude beaches, and Mapplethorpe, a viciously nasty photographer, and by nasty he meant exceptional.
“Speaking of Mapplethorpe,” he said, “you ready to say a little cheese?” He patted his camera case.
She had been ready forever. She touched her hair. “Do you like what I’m wearing? I can change. I have a black dress, too. Or something different.”
He squinted at her dress, frowned, but said, “You’re perfect.”
“The necklace?”
“The necklace we could do without.”
She unhooked the clasp and it fell onto her lap.
It’s starting, she told herself. She stood up. Her head felt slow, heavy, but her heart was going fast. Clover was dashing—it was an old-fashioned word but felt exactly right. He had a kind of vigor and carefree quality she’d never known in a man. Paul’s father had been slow. His lazy body with its paunch and bulges never moved like Clover’s, never with such fast, confident surges. She’d never known a man to use words like Clover, or one who paid attention to his i
nsides or to weeds or art. She wanted badly to kiss him. She felt slow next to him, and had the sense that a kiss might slow him down, or speed her up, somehow even them out a little.
Clover winked at Paul, who sat in his chair, watching as Clover took his mother’s picture, first against the white wall, like a mug shot, just to get going, and then propped on her elbows on the floor in front of the fireplace, then collapsed on the couch, then fully clothed in the empty bathtub. He was an artist. This is what artists did: shots of people wearing clothing in the bathtub, shots of pretty women making ugly faces (“Uglier,” he commanded, “no, uglier”), shots with her hands covering her face, shots of her knees, several of her feet, toenails, which she was glad she’d painted.
“Top-notch,” he whispered, camera flashing, “top, top-notch.” She liked his splayed elbows, wide stance, liked even his remonstrations, which made him seem serious: “Quit the pouting” and “We’re not going for Miss America here, Goldie.”
When he asked her to lift up the skirt of her dress and sit on the toilet she said, “Really?”
He began to talk about the duty of the subject, the strangeness of real art and the tyranny of received ideas, but then he interrupted himself, sighed, said, “No, not really.”
She liked it very much when, between rolls of film, he commented on the cleanliness of the house. She thanked him. But then he said, “I can smell the cleaner you used today, Goldie. Ammonia, bleach, both are serious health risks. Bad for the kid and bad for the earth. I’ll give you some literature on the subject.”
After a while he stopped taking pictures. He drank a glass of water, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He promised he would show the photos to the manager at McFee’s.
“Do you think he’ll like them?”
“If he has a dot of sense. What do you think, Paul? You think your ma looks hot?”
Paul said that he did. Yes, sure, pretty.
“Hot,” Clover corrected.
“Hot,” Paul said.
“Incendiary,” said Clover, and slapped his thigh.
The Sweet Relief of Missing Children: A Novel Page 3