Murders Among Dead Trees

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  I feel a familiar ache down the right side of my abdomen. It’s like a flashing red light in a car dashboard that won’t shut off, reminding me that I’m getting too stressed. Soon after my wife left, I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which was a tremendous relief because I was almost sure it had to be bowel cancer. My entrails tie themselves in knots, though I’m not sure what the ratio of figurative to literal is in that statement.

  “I know what the problem is, now, honey!” I told her after my colonoscopy confirmed the best case scenario. “Everything is okay!” I smiled as if I was looking right at her, though she held a phone to her ear on the opposite coast. I live in Poeticule Bay, Maine with a window to the Atlantic. Josy had run as far away as she could from me and our kids, all the way to the Pacific, short by nine blocks.

  “No, Pierce. You don’t know what the problem is,” she said.

  That was the moment I knew she wouldn’t be back. I really was playing the part of steadfast, even courageous, father in a made-for-TV movie with Bill Pullman or Bill Paxton. I’m never sure which is which. “Us” is now just Pierce and Emily and Frankie Murphy. For a long time I thought that Josy was my solution. She opted out of that equation.

  Bob, my doctor, is more understanding than my soon-to-be ex, which really cemented my feeling that “us” — Josy and Pierce — was over. Understanding is the greatest service my doctor has done for me, though that’s not his fault. I don’t have any problems Bob can solve with pills.

  Oddly, telling yourself you have hypochondria, rather than a respected, telethon-worthy disease, is no comfort. All hypochondriacs are eventually right. Even the word hypochondria confuses me. I know “hypo-“ means “less.” I don’t know what “-chondria” indicates, though I’m guessing “time.” Josy said it meant I had “less spine.”

  The pulse in my left ear became much louder one morning. It was annoying, then worrying. I listened to my pulse like a clock ticking down, like my heart’s works were unwinding. I got up from the couch where I had been watching TV and plunged into the medical books I’d bought at a garage sale. How common could cancer of the eardrum possibly be? I found nothing much there and was getting anxious so I called Josy about it, forgetting the time difference and waking her up.

  “Is it a whiny tone?” she asked, her voice raspy and, I had to admit, sexy.

  “No, I think that’s tinnitus, a steady high-pitched sound in the ears.” Then I realized what she really meant. “Thanks anyway, Josy. Go back to sleep.”

  I went to see Bob about it. The fact that I was suddenly aware of my heart pounding with each beat didn’t seem like a good sign, but he seemed unconcerned, careless even.

  “This kind of thing just happens,” he shrugged. “There isn’t anything to be done.”

  The room suddenly came into sharp focus. Bob’s stethoscope seemed shinier and the floor seemed dirtier. This possibility of there being no possibilities was a new idea to me. We are so drowned in our self-empowerment and self-help culture, we’re sure we can overcome any difficulty if we just concentrate and…what? Be magic? Fish don’t see water, but we are deluded, self-help fish in a daydreaming sea. We do not notice the illusions through which we swim.

  “There isn’t anything to be done,” I said, as if trying to find my bearings. “There isn’t anything to be done.” Like testing an unfamiliar phrase from a guidebook.

  Bob quirked an eyebrow as my face lit up. My ear still pounded, but I was happy. The cure for the melancholia of the abandoned and soon-to-be divorced isn’t a nervous fling with a new date discovered on an Internet site. That’s distraction, not displacement. My listening ear began to heal my broken heart in that moment. In between the beats, I heard the words: The cure is to first, give up. Beat. Give in. Beat. Let go.

  I felt light.

  Soon, I promised myself, when I hold Frankie, I won’t wish Josy were here to hold him, too. I’ll keep him to myself and love him twice as much. When Emily comes down to breakfast, sullen and looking for a fight, I’ll be ready with pancakes, sweet maple syrup and a smile. Soon, I won’t be faking that smile.

  The self-help fish pretending to be a brave man will write his own script. Not all old things are treasured antiques. Some things, once broken, can’t be fixed.

  Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m still a deluded fish, but the hook is out. Josy never called me so I finally stopped calling her. If happiness stays out of reach, I’ll settle for dignity.

  THE SUM OF ME

  I read this story at an open mic night at a writing conference in Victoria, BC to enthusiastic applause. For the remainder of the conference, people looked at me sympathetically, asking if I was okay. If they had been willing to buy me dinner, I would have milked it. Since all they offered was sympathy, I assured them I’m a fiction writer and suggested that, ultimately, this is a hopeful piece.

  Writers are never identified with their heroes, but blow up a few cars in fiction and everybody has a sneaking suspicion you’re a homicidal maniac. Okay, they aren’t necessarily wrong about that last part.~ Chazz

  Stay-at-home dad.

  40.

  Broke.

  This is not the future I did not plan. The future I did not plan, but thought somehow would take care of itself, is not taking care of itself. Squeegee kids aren’t broke like me. They aren’t still paying for a vacuum they bought on credit last Christmas. Credit card debt is kicking my ass, or was, until my dad intervened and I discovered there are prices to be paid which are much higher than the interest on VISA.

  I have no excuses and, like the rest of my generation, no clue. My wife, Cecelia, has a nursing job at an old folk’s home and I take little freelance editing jobs here and there. My main occupation is to watch our two boys and rub Cecilia’s feet when she gets home after a long shift. We have her tiny retirement investment plan. The statements go unread because neither of us read Bewilder, an alphanumeric language only understood by people in the financial services industry. We hope it works out.

  My father learned his financial skills from his parents during the Depression. Grandpa was an Episcopalian preacher in Poeticule Bay before the roads were paved, when everything arrived by boat. The congregation often fed the minister’s family with cod and lobsters rather than feed the collection plate a few coins. Dad scraped up a little money here and there and somehow became what it seems no one can be anymore: The mythic Self-made Man.

  Dad would lie in bed and plot his escape from poverty while his brother counted pennies into a mason jar each night. Childhood was so short then, it was almost imperceptible. They did escape. My father’s generation had smaller dreams and the discipline and savvy to make those lies true. They made something of themselves and I have no idea what that might feel like. Instead of selling things, my wife and I had kids and bought stuff off the TV because that was our little slice of the American dream. We trusted the Future, but the banks killed it and the government never arrested anyone for Future’s murder.

  My uncle is still alive, too. He gambles his ample retirement fund with various Vegas casinos and heart by-pass specialists. Dad and Mum were snowbirds. After she died, he gave up on Poeticule Bay, Maine permanently and moved to Boca. He watches the sunrise and the sunset, takes pictures of pelicans wheeling over the water like pterodactyls and ponders his only son’s squandered potential.

  “We never needed much, certainly not near as much as kids today think they need. I still don’t need much,” Dad says. “If it comes down to it, I could live off a greased rag for a month.”

  Dad’s speaking to me over the phone, but he sounds like he could be talking to himself. I guess that’s true since, while he talks, I’m thinking of my boys and how all their friends have iPods now. The technological future is finally here and the party rages on without my kids.

  Dad graduated from pennies to folding money, mason jars to stock portfolios. When I was a kid asking for a few dollars to buy something, his answer was always the same. “Why do you think you need that
, boy?”

  I was not deprived exactly. Dad provided clothes, food and shelter. But my wants? My wants eclipsed the sun. I wanted to fill my room with books and toys and music because that is how you buy happiness. Less is not more. Less is less.

  My father wanted my childhood to be as short as his was and my room to be as bare as a monk’s meditation chamber. I denied him that satisfaction so long, I still don’t feel like a man. And yes, he still calls me “Boy.”

  Dad owned Poeticule Bay’s only hardware store. Early each morning he went off to work freshly shaved and optimistic. Each night he shambled home to supper, miserable. By the last spoonful of dessert he resolved that tomorrow would be better. What I did not understand then was that the tomorrow he was thinking about was the far-off tomorrow, the arthritic future wandering Floridian beaches alone collecting shells.

  Retirement is not in my future. I have fitful dreams of being a writer. That is the same retreating mirage I saw on the distant horizon when I was eight. There are haphazard moments of clarity when I compose eagerly. Then I turn on the TV and fall asleep. Words with promise have died. Clever lines form skeins of sentences. I reach in spasms. I worry I’m already too late. The bills mark time.

  Awake and rubbing my eyes, I am smack in middle age on the brink of last chances. I am halfway between those early promises and the sum of me. That distant horizon still recedes. I am not a bestselling author whose book is soon to be a major motion picture. I’m not even a grown-up.

  Yet.

  In this frame of mind, I made excuses to Dad why I could not load the whole family in a jet and wing off south for a visit. I let slip that I could not come because my wife and I had to pay off credit cards. I said too damn much.

  Dad called back at seven the next morning. My debt had been gnawing at him through the night. The kids were still in bed so I was, too. “Time you got up, boy! I suppose Cecilia was at work an hour ago!”

  He’s not big on preambles. Why don’t I have call display on the phone by the bed?

  I didn’t tell him I was up till three last night writing. That would just be another mistake to hold on to and bring up at Christmas. “Is the book done yet? When do we see it in stores and how much will you be paid? How much, boy? That doesn’t sound like much.”

  I thought about telling him the kids were painting each other with glue again and that I had to hang up. I didn’t, though. I listened because he was talking about giving me money. His was a generous offer of an interest-free loan to kill the credit cards and raise the possibility of a future without debt.

  I’ll owe him.

  Instead.

  Again.

  I said I’d think about it, like I still had a choice and pride.

  Later, when I looked upon my innocent boys’ debt-free faces, I had to remember how to build a smile. Each grim facial reconstruction soon fell from my lips and I had to rearrange my face again. When they want the latest robot dinosaur, will my card be maxed out again? Will their memory of me be The Failure Who Always Said No? How different is that from the Self-made Man who says, “Why do you think you need that, boy?”

  What will happen when they grow up? When they go to college and fall into the same — or a deeper — debt trap, I will pull them out of that hole if I have a rope. No money? No rope. No hope. There lies the soul of shame’s pain.

  Each New Year’s Eve, Cecilia and I say this will be the year we “get some breathing room.” We’ll save money…somehow. We’ll win the lottery or I’ll sell my novel or…something. What’s likely to change since we aren’t doing anything different? We never speak of this secret aloud for fear that, like some magic curse, the danger will only be made real in the speaking.

  I’m worried about the slow, spreading stain in the bedroom ceiling. Will roofers even accept a credit card? How much will new eaves troughs cost? Will the furnace die this winter?

  “How much?” Dad asked.

  “Ten thousand,” I said. I braced myself but he did not say anything. The weight of the silence on the phone line stretched out. His disappointment was that heavy. My scalp burned and my body felt skinned by rusty carrot scrapers. “Five hundred a month okay?” I ventured.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Promise you’ll cut up your credit cards?”

  The next pause was mine, the startled kind.

  “Yes,” I lied. What if I have to rent a car or get a hotel room for some ugly, unforeseen reason? I think about the roof, the furnace, the eaves troughs, the latest dinosaur robot and the look on my boys’ faces when a classmate gets a new computer. My father will not understand why I will never cut up my credit cards.

  I must have that safety net for emergencies, even if it could hang me. I could try to explain my situation, what my real life is like. That’s definitely what I should do.

  “Um…Dad?”

  Go ahead, I say to myself, sweating and now out of my body. Tell him! Tell him that the best things in life aren’t free! Tell him iPods buy love and happiness. Explain how you’re asking for $10,000 because that’s all your stupid pride can bear to ask but you could ask for twice as much and still not cover your debt! Tell him there’s little hope but you wish he shared your dreams for success, anyway. Give him another reason to call you “Boy.”

  “Yeah?” he says.

  All he’s got waiting for you is the sucker punch of a loan, judgement and condemnation.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Yeah.”

  I hang up the phone, my head hot and pounding. The kids are watching a SpongeBob rerun. My wife won’t be back from work for another hour. I could steal a nap.

  Instead, I sit down. I dream big.

  I write.

  VENGEANCE IS #1

  Fact: My wife is a psychologist and she must not be happy with all I ask her to edit, especially this story.

  I also approached her with trepidation when I asked her to read the chapter about Group Therapy in Higher Than Jesus. She’s a sport.

  What intrigues me about this story most is the voice of the character. It’s sort of my tribute to Jay McInerney’s book, Story of My Life, a book the critics didn’t appreciate. Later, McInerney wrote books I didn’t get but I loved his first three books: Ransom, Bright Lights, Big City and Story of My Life. Bright Lights, Big City influenced me especially. It gave me a lot of false hope that kept me going as a very young worker drone in the publishing industry. That book also inspired me to write The Hit man Series in second person, present tense. It worked out well. ~ Chazz

  Fact: Most shrinks — like 99% of them — are pretty much nuts. Psychos are attracted to the profession. Here’s how I think it happens: Neurotic parents breed and send their neurotic kids for treatment. They get sent to therapy when they’re young. At first, nobody wants to talk to some useless stranger about why their parents hate them (why else would they be there?)

  Then kids end up sitting there spewing about how miserable it is to live at home when a couple of hundred years ago, you’d be out of the house and free from domination much quicker. A couple thousand years ago, there would be no Xbox but you’d be off on your own by the time you were, like eleven or something. After awhile —after all that review and scab-ripping — once the hate is really ingrained, the patients notice that listening to nuts go on about how fucked up their parents are (fifty minutes at a time for a whack a money) looks like a pretty sweet job, if you have to have a job.

  Psychos become psycho-counselors. That’s when they’re officially cured. Turning patients into colleagues, picking the fruitcakes from the crazy orchard (yeah I know what a mixed metaphor is) is like, the greatest success the fields of psychology, psychiatry and social work is likely to ever have. I know. I’ve sat in enough of their waiting rooms looking at old magazines. When I started out, none of the waiting rooms needed new paint jobs. Mama wanted to start at the top. When the best and most expensive didn’t work out, we went down the ladder.

  For instance, we’re standing in the kitchen. Ma is in her PJs with a
coffee cup holding her up even though it’s after school. Ma is big on appearances when she goes out the door, but inside the house, it’s housecoats and the fuzzy grizzly bear slippers she gave me for Christmas and then decided they were warmer and cuter if she wore them all the time. Ma’s looking at me with this perpetually surprised look on her face. It’s hard to figure out what she’s thinking because she always has that bat-right-out-of-the-fireplace look since she tweezed her eyebrows so much they don’t grow back anymore.

  She’s standing there with her bare face hanging out saying, “Oh, Georgie, I was talking to Mrs. Whositz at Sobeys and she said her Tanya’s psychotherapist really helped her with her anorexia.”

  “Damn it, Ma! You were talking about me in the goddamn Sobeys!”

  “Don’t swear. And perhaps you could supply me with a list of what places I’m allowed to speak about my daughter.”

  “Sure. It’ll be a fuckin’ short list.”

  “Don’t swear.” Ma always says that in the low tone —“well-modulated” three therapists back called it — which makes me think she’s back on the Valium. If you take Valium for a long time — I googled — your lungs someday don’t work anymore so maybe it is a long-term solution. “Well-modulated” is supposed to calm me the fuck down but it doesn’t seem to work, or maybe it’s supposed to keep Ma relaxed, I’m not sure.

  Anyway, back to my for instance: “I don’t know what you’re so upset about Georgie! I wasn’t blabbing about your mental health. We were talking about Tanya’s success.”

  “Tanya’s a bitch.”

  “Yeah. So? You can be, too, dear.”

  “Goddamn it, Ma! What does Tanya’s anorexia have to do with me? I don’t have anorexia. I wish I did. I tried it and it made me hungry.”

  “Well, eating disorders are all on the same rainbow, Georgie.”

  I should get tips on puking from Tanya but she’s got a thing about fat girls. Can’t really blame her for that. I mean, everybody’s got a thing about fat girls. Especially me. I read that if you have fat friends, it makes you feel like it’s okay to be fat, too. Of course, there are people who want us to accept ourselves, love ourselves no matter what. That seems unreasonable to me. I mean, the people who say that are either old, fat broads who are tired of trying and just want to drop out of the popularity contest we call Life, or they’re experts who are these skinny bitches who have somebody else do their makeup. I mean, it’s just ridiculous, you know?