This Wicked Tongue

by Elise Levine

  Hello? Martin says. Now that he’s at this threshold, he’s anxious to step across.

  Yes, she answers before he’s said another word—she sounds peevish, impatient. The answer is yes.

  Mom?

  Why do I always have to explain myself? she says, then quickly adds, I’m sorry, you’re breaking up.

  Martin’s phone beeps. Then silence. Punishing him. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  Though he knows that for better or for worse, his mother would never entirely turn from him.

  Marked cognitive decline, Will reports, hopping in the car at arrivals, just back from an early fall performance in Chicago. He spent an afternoon with Martin’s mother, Will’s first time in the townhouse in which Martin partially grew up. Disheveled appearance, unfocused eyes, Will says. Inability to follow the conversation. Yellow sticky notes plastering her dining table and bannisters and walls. The notes say things like NOT HERE! and FIX THIS. When asked, she wouldn’t or couldn’t tell him for whom or what they were intended.

  Martin charges onto the expressway. He slams the brakes and lays on the horn when a car tucks in front of him. He swings into the passing lane and accelerates again. He feels embarrassed, furious—exposed. TOP SECRET MY ASS, he thinks. He sucks ancient bile down his throat.

  Okay, Martin says.

  In Chicago the leaves might be starting to colour but here it’s a humid, hot day and Will knocks up the AC. Not okay, he says. I’m telling you, this is for real.

  The car tears along. Listen, Martin says. You don’t know fuck-all about my mother. She’s always stuck those notes over everything. They were originally meant for the workmen who were supposed to fix the place when we first moved in. Nothing ever got fixed but she kept writing the crazy anyway.

  Will taps his thigh with his fingers in lieu of humming annoyingly. Martin knows. And appreciates. He’s glad he can’t hear the distracting rhythm beneath the racing lilt of the tires. He needs to focus. He suspects a nefarious plan to have his mother move into the guest room here and help care for the baby Will wants so badly.

  Suck that, hard. Hard as Martin’s brain punching his brain-roof, pow, wham. Got it all figured out, haven’t you? Martin wants to yell. How come you know everything? You and my mother both, in cahoots.

  And what, Martin thinks savagely, does Will even know about such things or think he knows? Only the distortions Martin’s mother might proclaim. So Martin can’t even trust that she’s as bad off mentally as she’s making herself out to be, skilled manipulator that she is.

  For years growing up he believed he had some kind of cancer gene, which she apparently had him tested for as an infant. An infant! Had him thinking he’d likely die young without her constant oversight. As an adult he’s had himself tested—more than several times, no joke—and guess what? No such problem, according to the medical experts.

  Martin jets out of the passing lane to pass a speeding semi. Cahoots, he thinks with a measure of self disgust at having aped one of his mother’s quaint, paranoiac words.

  What’s for real is this, Martin says. She’s always been bat-shit.

  More tappety-tap from Will.

  Well? Martin says. Well?

  I think you’re going to have to face some decisions for once, Will says.

  Martin has so far resisted—successfully resisted, in his view—making a decision about a baby. What’s more, he possesses no qualms about neglecting to do so regarding his mother, if news of her deterioration does turn out to be true—something he’ll allow for, in theory. He intends such success to continue as long as stars fly over the earth and rivers flow to the sea—cue the janky music—and The World As We Know It still exists in all its injurious, unequal glory. Which any spin through the news cycle on his tiny screen tells him won’t be forever—don’t blame him—but it will last for at least a while longer. So Martin also successfully resists the urge to slam his hands against the wheel and charge the car into the next lane and the next, the ditch, FUCK.

  There’s that non-budging kid-weight on his chest again. A form of family, Martin supposes. Which reminds him of his dad. Somewhere in small-town Colorado—near Steamboat, the last place the dude seemed to live, the last Martin did a search for him on the internet—is there a man who remarried and fathered new kids who might resemble Martin? Family he’s never known he has? And sure as shit—to use another old-timey fave phrase of his dad’s—doesn’t want? Martin hasn’t seen the loser since high school graduation, which he nearly missed, driving from an out-of-state gig through the night to arrive red-eyed and unshaven and growling curses at Martin and his mother through mossy teeth. For so much of Martin’s life it had been Martin and his peculiar, dependably manipulative mother. Until Will, who is more than enough for Martin. Adding in Will’s mostly reasonable, tolerant, smart family—give or take, because what family, Martin supposes, is truly perfect?—who Martin prides himself on getting along decently with.

  I make decisions all the time, Martin says, forcing himself to speak so calmly his gut aches, though the pressure on his chest lets up. I chose you, didn’t I? he continues, aiming against all hope for a charm that channels Will’s usual disposition, but which Martin at heart disbelieves he himself possesses. As such, he says, trying to sound convincing, shouldn’t you go a little easy?

  As such? Will says, clapping his hands together in unbridled delight. My god, where do you come up with such things?

  Martin shrinks. Or rather he swells with diminution, an enlarged sense of smallness. He knows full well the verbal tic derives from his stubbornly unhappy childhood. In stark contrast to his dad-fueled uses and abuses of swear words, the phrase is part of his brittle attempts to rise above, construct meaning out of chaos, blah blah insert therapy speak here.

  As such, he feels ashamed at the stilted phrasing of his youth. At his infelicitous growing up. His undying resentments.

  But he is unwilling to back down. To be pushed around over this matter with his mother—almost anything but this. As fucking such, he says.

  Language. He winces at the sound of his mother’s admonitory, eternally replicable voice in his head.

  Where do you come up with this garbage? Will says. Delusional, much? Loud and clear, okay? She needs your help.

  How many fucks did you give today? Will asks when they arrive home from the airport.

  Please let this end, Martin thinks. This sniping that is mean as ass.

  He and Will are in the kitchen. Martin is on the stepladder, changing a bulb that has just burned out. He screws in the new one, wondering what joke he might be in, and steps down.

  Language, he says, trying a joke for real, given his own propensities.

  Will opens the refrigerator door. Zero, he says, answering his own question. You gave zero fucks.

  Martin feels a chill seep from the fridge as Will’s head disappears inside. WILL, Martin wants to yell. DANGER, WILL. Is this it? Has Martin pushed Will so far?

  What are you looking for? Martin says, feeling skinned, eyes raw with salt.

  Carrots.

  Behind the apples.

  Will emerges with a lemon in each hand. He hip-shuts the fridge door and juggles them.

  Martin picks up the stepladder, clanks it harder than necessary as he folds it flat. I give all the fucks in the wide fucking world, he says.

  Will stops with the lemons. He holds his hands up, a yellow orb in each palm. Yeah? he says. About what?

  Us.

  Yeah but, Will says.

  But?

  We’re not enough, Will says, bopping the lemons together once for each word he speaks.

  Code from a bad dream, Martin thinks—though he’s never dreamed, not that he’s aware of. Which used to concern his mother. She’d try to trick him into more talk, with her, with another shrink. All of which he began to suspect, as he got older, that she’d weaponize, us
e against him. Shrink him good. At a certain point he refused.

  He leans the folded stepladder against his side. He looks around the kitchen, which he’s successfully prevented her from seeing for real, in person. Describe the room for me, Martin replays in his head. Though his mother has, with admirable self-restraint—or the actual forgetfulness of mental decline—never asked about the house. In his head now he tells her. The expensive backsplash and custom shelving and other bougie, privileged shit. And Will—WILL. As such, HAPPINESS.

  LET THE FUCK GO, Martin begs the hunk atop his heart.

  You catch that, Martin? Will says. WE’RE. NOT. ENOUGH.

  No? Martin says helplessly. No?

  Is she really as bad as Will claims?

  Had she ever been as bad, a different type of bad, as Martin remembers?

  He last saw his mother two years ago. He’d flown to Midway and steered his rental to a Hyde Park significantly more chipper than he’d remembered. A sleek new corporate hotel towered over 54th Street and an apparently decent wine bar graced the lot once owned by the failed food co-op. Crime was up, though. He’d read about it in the local news he still secretly followed after all these years. Valois’ See Your Food still existed, as did Rajun Cajun. Reassured, he parked in his mother’s visitor spot, noted the swept-looking easement. She buzzed him in the townhouse’s front gate and the front door swung open and she embraced him as she hadn’t at his Atlanta wedding, where she’d reserved her one warm hug for Will and merely shaken Martin’s hand. He hadn’t seen her since. Why would he? He felt awkward, standing with her on the stoop of the townhouse while she wrapped him in her arms, as if he’d only just realized he were inches taller than her and unsure where to put his nose.

  Let me look at you, she said, clutching his wrists and holding him at arms’ length. Unusually her nails were done, a waxy scarlet he complimented and she went curiously girlish for a second, crinkling her eyes and tittering, a hand to her mouth to hide her crooked incisors. The gray-brown mane tied back as always. A faded yellow shirt Martin recognized from his childhood. Droopy faded blue shorts, also familiar seeming. She appeared to have neither gained nor lost weight. Except for the new veins popping in her hands and arms and the skin folds around her elbows, the more deeply etched frown lines on her face, she didn’t seem to have aged much since Martin was eighteen and heading off to college on the east coast.

  He went upstairs with her and sat on the same couch she’d bought deeply discounted when they’d first moved in. She served him a glass of tap water. She’d recently co-authored an important paper, she told him. Very important. On medication and hallucinations. In addition to her job at the VA, she now had a teaching appointment at Northwestern. He knew, he said, Will had told him. When Martin got up and paced she smiled her smug smile. Post-its to herself—DRY CLEAN CURTAINS, CALL LARA and more—lathered the window frames, the kitchen counters and cabinets. Who was Lara? Martin didn’t ask. He asked after his uncle and aunt and the cousins to whom Martin had never warmed. His mother shook her head as in DON’T ASK.

  Could he go through his old stuff? he asked, papers and finger paintings she’d long ago claimed to have stored in giant plastic totes in the townhouse’s attached garage. He didn’t say, but what he really wanted was to recover his treasured vintage bot posters, portraits of early GOFAI, Good Old Fashioned AI—one of the few cherished parts of his past, already old when he was a kid—and frame them for his office at school. Also, acquired in his late teens, the poster from the Adler Planetarium gift shop of the Algol star system in the constellation of Perseus. Algol, in the snake-haired Gorgon’s head—Gorgon in the Ancient Greek tradition, Medusa to the Romans. Head of the ghoul to early Arabic astronomers. Demon star in English. Among the brightest stars in the heavens. Among the unluckiest. Ptolemy in the second century associated Algol with violence, especially decapitation. Made sense. Medusa the serpent-haired, able to turn men to stone with the horror of her gaze, herself ended headless, slain by Perseus’ sword. In an amusing coincidence that Martin had once upon a time cherished, Algol was also ALGOL—short for Algorithmic Language, the influential body of computer programming languages that enabled much of life today, and Martin’s work. So he also wanted that poster for his office. He thought his super-bright students might get a kick.

  His mother shook her head again.

  Do you still have my things? he asked and in his precise, overcompensating voice he heard hers.

  In that moment he knew she truly might have done it—purged his to-him priceless belongings. Par for the course, he thought wretchedly. As a kid, after his parents’ divorce, she’d allowed Martin two beautiful Bengal cats, who he’d adored. But she’d insisted on their full-time confinement in the first-floor bathroom. For years. Until Martin left for college and she re-homed them without consulting him. He’d arrived for Thanksgiving that first semester and they’d vanished. It was his last visit with his mother until this one.

  Do you? he repeated sharply on that check-in, hoping to cut through her haziness. An intentional one, he assumed. Spiteful. Though he did note her once-penetrating gaze had drifted more to fog than steel over the years. Have you got my stuff? he said, trying not to let his alarm show.

  So many questions, she said. I’m tired of them.

  That night two years ago now, while she slept—after the early dinner of microwaved frozen organic palak paneer and freezer-burned burritos, and her efforts to also ply him with frozen organic jelly donuts she offered to defrost in the microwave, and then the lumber past dog-walking neighbours who seemed confused about who she even was when she stopped to introduce Martin to them, followed by bedtime herbal tea concocted from several re-used and differently flavoured bags—Martin tiptoed down the stairs to peruse the garage. Clean as a whistle, a phrase his mother herself might have used. No shelves, boxes, junk. The floor immaculate enough to eat off.

  The morning after Martin and Will’s fight—after long dark hours of cold insomniac shoulders—Martin and Will brush their teeth side by side at the double sink in the master bathroom. You don’t know me at all, Martin hazards through mouth foam, somehow unable to give it a rest.

  Will spits and rinses, angles the base of his toothbrush into its charging port and meets Martin’s gaze in the mirror, lips curling in contempt the way Martin’s mother’s do.

  Martin spits. And you don’t know her, he says, speaking to mirror-Will. I’ll go, I’m going, but there’s no point. Happy now?

  Will’s expression turns from disgust to one of suspicion. He breaks contact with Martin’s reflection and turns toward Martin-Martin.

  Now Martin stares at mirror-Martin, whose chin trembles. Whose mother loses her mind. Whose mostly gentle, kind husband wants a baby. Or what? NOT HERE! NOT YET. FIX THIS. Martin—which one?—wands his tooth brush to and fro. TO WHOM AM I SPEAKING? he silently, desperately asks.

  How hard can it be? To try?

  Fucking hard. But he does it—torques his neck to face Will, breaking the spell. I am not alone, Martin inwardly counsels himself. I am not in this alone.

  Which he knows. He knows!

  And doesn’t know, not really!

  This is his problem—he knows that much. That he doesn’t really know when he’s with Will or Martin’s own barbed, barbarous boy-person. Or with that boy’s mother.

  And Will—how is it that he’s been changing into someone else without Martin noticing? A terrible lapse, he realizes. To see Will in one way only. Classically trained pianist, accomplished creator of string quartets and works for chamber orchestras and more, fearlessly forging ahead in a field riddled with restrictions for those not of the white male variety. The tenacity. The talent, of course. But now, also, this desire for a kid and contradiction, messiness. For room in Martin’s heart for his impossible mother. Will—fearless AF. Unlike Martin.

  I’ll see for myself, okay? he says. Take a good look.

 
Will lifts his arms. Hug, he says.

  Martin’s arms dangle uselessly by his sides. His big head droops. Hug, he says.

  Martin attempts to sleep on the plane. He attempts to dream. No luck.

  Or is it his luck? Lifelong, sheer and dumb. Otherwise what blooming traces might he behold? Theme-and-variation, genetic-code shebangs coursing through his brain in unruly metaphors, an ungovernable language. Un-chartable as an eerie, furling landscape through which to wander making choices determined by what our great-great-grandmothers and her forbears and offspring ate for breakfast. And that’s just life, folks, Martin imagines some chipper narrator summing up. All we are, all we do, and then—where were we? we think, Martin thinks. Where was I even and who am I?

  Fuck dreams, he thinks.

  At his Atlanta wedding four years ago, Will and his Delaware lawyer family—mother, father, older brother, plus a distinguished-looking grandmother with a PhD in education and aunts and uncles and cousins with various educational and cultural and business pedigrees, and interesting-seeming spouses and whatnots, the whole clan Martin was aware he was romancing—met Martin’s mother for the first time, at a smart downtown bistro. Apple didn’t fall far from the tree. My goodness he takes after you. Martin winced through what he hoped were obligatory remarks meant kindly and watched his mother—large and awkward in an uncharacteristic cream-coloured skirt suit, her mane tamped with a taupe ribbon tied in back—fumble through the introductions. She looked pastier than usual, less tall and broad shouldered than when Martin was growing up. She seemed uncertain of herself, surrounded by Will’s elegant and accomplished family. Martin tried not to feel ashamed of her, even as he pushed his own shoulders back, trying on the posture of Will’s people. Even when she pursed her lips in distaste after a sip of champagne during the pre-nup toasts and Martin carefully arranged his own lips in a self-satisfied smile.