Midlisters

by Burke, Kealan Patrick

  I did, begrudgingly, turning my chair around to face her. She dropped to her haunches before me, her fingers on my knees.

  "Look, you do what you do and you love it," she said. "You can't not do it, and I understand that. You may not believe me, but it's the truth. You also need to have a life outside of it all, though, a life outside of this house."

  "Why?"

  "To stay sane, I guess. To meet people. To make friends."

  "What do I need friends for when I have you? And in case you've forgotten, I spent seven years in an apartment the size of a valise. This house is a serious upgrade in space for me, a goddamn cathedral in comparison, and it's all the room I need. And you are all the company I need."

  She stared long and hard at me then, until I had to seriously repress the urge to squirm. Then she shook her head, just slightly.

  "Well it's not enough for me."

  "What do you mean? You get out plenty."

  "Yeah, to work." She rose, walked back to the door, head down as if following her own footprints. Then she turned. "But look what happened today. You called, and I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I stepped out of routine and you went crazy."

  Get up, go to her, hold her. Instead I sat and stared. "Crazy? That's a bit harsh, isn't it? And more than a slight exaggeration."

  "You know what I mean. It surprised you. And that reaction made me realize where we are. Let's face it, I come home every night and you're still at that bloody computer. You don't have regular work hours. You're always working. I know why you need to be, but I need you too. So if anyone's having an affair," she said, nodding to indicate the computer, "it's you. With that thing."

  "When did I say anything about an affair?"

  "I'm not an idiot, Jason."

  I threw up my hands. "So what do we do about it? You want me to quit?"

  "You know I don't. But I also don't want you assuming I'm doing something wrong if I'm not breaking my neck to get home in time when chances are you won't even notice."

  I thought about that a moment. She had a point. "Okay."

  "And I want to go out more."

  "Fine."

  "And not always with you."

  "With who then?"

  "Friends."

  "Friends I know?"

  "People from work."

  "All right."

  "Good." She exhaled heavily, ran her fingers through her hair. "It's just that sometimes I need more space than this…cathedral of ours…can offer."

  "I understand. Do what you need to."

  She studied me carefully, trying to read from my face what she couldn't from my tone. "Are we okay?"

  I summoned a smile, the same one I would use in the future for those retainer-wearing slackers at my book-signings. "Yeah, we are."

  She returned my smile, closed the distance between us in a few short spaces, then clamped her cold hands to the sides of my face and mashed her lips against mine. I patted her thigh—an awkward paternal gesture—and she straightened.

  "I'm starving. Chicken pasta?"

  "Sure."

  "Great. Won't be long. You can tell me your news over dinner." She disappeared into the kitchen, where I heard pots and pans clattering around, and the swollen pop of a wine bottle being opened. She sang while she cooked. Happy again, now that our little squabble had been put to bed, and the wrinkles ironed out.

  But they hadn't been. Not for me. I loved her and didn't doubt she loved me. I just didn't believe she was telling me the truth. Even after the information she'd volunteered I felt as if there was something she was hiding from me.

  Confused, and helpless, I rose and headed for the couch, scooping up Cyclopean Heart on the way.

  * * *

  I got through eighty-seven pages of Gray's novel before Kelly finally hollered at me to wash up for dinner, and I rose in something of a daze, my head filled with images of megalithic spacecraft and pale bookish women in tight latex costumes, and addled by nigh-on impenetrable techno-speak and space-jargon that should have come with a glossary for idiots like me. The story wasn't interesting in the least, but only because it was firmly rooted in a genre I disliked with an intensity that impressed even its bearer. Sex and science fiction might float the boat—or anti-gravity aerocraft—for some, but give me some bare tits, a deformed hillbilly and some power tools and I'm happy. But even though what I'd read of Gray's novel left me with the distinct impression that The Quest to Deflower Abrasively Hyper-Intelligent Pussy on Pluto would have been more apt a title, I was nevertheless alarmed to find myself stricken with a thought usually reserved for the efforts of the masters of my own genre: Goddamn I wish I'd written that.

  Now, let's be clear about something here: I never have and never will write a space opera, with or without long, rambling but oh-so-poetic descriptions of masturbation in zero gravity or frantic lesbian sex lit by Venusian sunrise. It's not my bag, as they say, so I was far from impressed by Gray's chosen subject matter. Every chapter or so someone lost their clothes and ended up wearing a man or a woman or some alien hybrid with freakishly oversized genitalia instead.

  It was ridiculous, and cheap, and he was very, very good at it.

  The proof was in my inability to stop reading the damn thing. Even when Kelly hailed me, I speed-read to the end of the chapter I'd been perusing, with an only half-subconscious vow to return to it as soon as I was done with dinner. Had I been tasked with reviewing the book, it might have been one of the most confusing and uneven in recent history. My remarks would be mostly derogatory, with perhaps a quote about how, if my work was often cited as misogynistic, then Kent Gray should long ago have been burned at the stake, which of course would have been a ridiculous and unfair statement, and one I would not have adequate proof to back up should someone contest it. The truth was, despite his stereotypically chiseled male heroes and the apparent reduction of every female character but the elderly (and sometimes even them!) to sex objects, in reality (the fictional reality of Gray's book, that is) the women controlled the worlds and the fate of everyone in them, and though they might gladly throw themselves at the hero's feet, more often than not they were measuring his ankles for shackles, and not the kinky kind.

  So guys got to emulate the bronzed ripped hero with the bonus of sex scenes aplenty; the ladies got a well-written love story, with the bonus of sex scenes aplenty, which they would be clever enough to read as manipulation on the part of the female antagonists; and sci-fi geeks got their spaceships, jargon, lusty alien hybrids, and inter-planetary machinations. Plot, myriad subplots, character development, action and romance, all present and accounted for, and all of it detectable in the first eighty-seven pages. All of it written with the same words I used to write my books, only Gray used his as if he'd sat naked on a giant blank canvas for three years, meticulously selecting each and every one until even the most implausible scenes read like poetry. I'd read plenty of books over the years that had left me feeling inadequate, as if the best thing I could do would be to throw my computer out the window and get a job at McDonalds. I'd encountered no shortage of stories, written by folks who'd been active in the field half as long as I'd been, that brought tears to my eyes they were so damn good. So there was no valid reason, at least on the surface of it, why Kent Gray's work should become the sole target of my envy, and Gray himself the focus of my ire. It could have been because his was the work at hand when Kelly "stepped out of routine" and quashed my enthusiasm for what I had been pretending was a less than important deal to me, or maybe it was because what little I had seen of Gray in the cross-genre magazines that were delivered to my door in brown envelopes on a monthly basis, was enough to persuade me he was worth envying, worth hating. Maybe it was nothing more complicated than the presence of his book in my office at the wrong time, left there by a woman I was firmly convinced was cheating on me.

  Whatever it was, the seed had been planted.

  After a quiet dinner broken only by my announcement of the news, which Kelly greeted with overblo
wn and near-hysterical enthusiasm (no doubt to compensate for crippling it earlier), I took a shower. And later, while Kelly curled up on the couch to watch TV, I sat at the computer and did some research on the man with whom I would most likely be sharing a table at the upcoming convention in Baltimore.

  Chapter 5

  Ten days later. Audrey Vassar on the line.

  "Mr. Tennant, I'm calling to offer my condolences on your loss, and to convey on the behalf of The New England Aurora Convention our sincerest sympathy in this time of—"

  "That's very kind of you, Audrey, and I appreciate it, but I'll still be attending."

  "Oh. Oh, I didn't…" I could almost hear her quickly changing out of funeral clothes and back into formal. "That really wasn't why I called. We just heard about your father, and wanted to let you know we're here if you need anything."

  I couldn't help but grin, and considered asking if she could bring my father back and instill in him the appreciation for me or my career that he'd managed to resist since the very first day I mentioned it. But I'm not that cruel, and though Audrey sounded like a recorded message even when she wasn't trying to offer generic sympathy, I felt no ill will toward her for trying. "Thanks for that. Really. But I'm fine."

  "Were you close?"

  "Sadly, no."

  "That's a shame."

  "It is. It is. But what can you do?"

  "I suppose that's what it comes down to. I was never very close to my father either."

  I cleared my throat—the best way I could think of to indicate to Audrey that although I appreciated her calling, I really didn't have any desire to listen to an account of her own familial dysfunction. Thankfully, she got the hint.

  "Anyway, I should let you get back to things. I hope you'll be okay."

  "I will, Audrey. Thanks again."

  "You have my number."

  "I do."

  "See you at the convention."

  "Count on it."

  * * *

  My mother came to visit after my father died. Colon cancer had leached the life from him, and though the doctors said he put up a valiant fight, it was my mother's opinion that he'd quit as soon as they wheeled him into the hospital.

  "They might as well have given him his last rites right at the door," she told me, with a bitter shake of her head. "Man like Ronald, too good for a hospital, too good for doctors."

  "And everyone else," I said, surprised at my own bitterness, which drew my mother's watery gaze up from the floor as if I'd cast a lure into the briny deep and snagged a pair of cold stones. But then she nodded, faintly, and looked at my computer screen, maybe at her own reflection in the glass, or the ghost of all those words I'd hacked out on it, which I suspect she believed contributed to my father's lack of a struggle at the end. Mrs. Tennant, I'm afraid your husband's gone. Terminal disappointment, it was. Hell of a thing. Kelly hovered in the background like a beautiful ghost, feeding and entertaining the intermittent visitors, most of whom were from her school and not anyone I knew, there to offer support despite not being fully sure who'd died. More than once I caught myself studying the small crowd, hoping to find among them a viable candidate for my wife's adulterous affection. But there were no lingering glances or intimate touches, no sidelong glances or dry mouths, no hastily severed conversations when I entered the room, no extended periods of absence for Kelly or anyone else. Nothing.

  But my attentiveness did not go unnoticed.

  "Are you worried?"

  I glanced from the crowd to my mother's taut, terribly aged face, then down into my drink. "A little."

  "Are things not going well?"

  I shrugged, raised my head at the sound of Kelly's muffled laughter. A tall, patrician looking old man with a hawk-like nose and a slicked back skullcap of silver hair was stooped forward, whispering into her ear. And my wife, a hand over her mouth, eyes wide, was listening in shameful fascination to whatever he was saying. Another elderly man flanked her, this one with a shock of white hair rising from a liver-spotted dome of a skull, and a maroon handkerchief poking like a leering tongue from the pocket of his pinstriped suit. He watched his colleague knowingly, anticipating the punch line.

  "They're going," I replied, and took a sip from my drink. "I'm just not sure where."

  A pained look crossed my mother's face. "She loves you, you know."

  "Yeah. I do."

  "Then why worry?"

  "Because…" I looked back down into my glass, at my eye trapped in amber. The great irony of my being a writer is that outside of the page, I'm not the greatest communicator. Oh I can talk until the cows come home, but very rarely is it anything personal, anything I really need to talk about. Listen to me being interviewed on the radio, or read one in a magazine and you'll see what I mean. All the long answers are about writing. "Because I don't understand why."

  And that was the truth of it, even as I watched my mother smile and relax her shoulders in what I assumed was preparation for the great "Is That All It Is? Pshaw, You Silly Goose!" speech.

  But instead, "We all question what our partners see in us now and again," she said, clasping her hands together, and checking to ensure Kelly wasn't within earshot. "You know how difficult your father was to live with. You don't know how many times I asked myself why he bothered to marry someone he barely seemed to tolerate at the best of times."

  "I can imagine."

  "No," she said, her smile turned down at the corners. "No you can't. Not after a few months of marriage, you can't. Give it twenty-five years of doubt and see what it does to you. But this," she said, casting another quick glance at Kelly, "is a good thing, a new thing. You need to give it time, and stop looking for the cracks, because if you look hard enough, you will find them, and you'll pry them wider without even knowing you're doing it. Kelly's a good woman, but you'll only get out of this bond what you're willing to put in." She nodded for punctuation, and sat back.

  I did the same, appraising her as I let out a breath that seemed to take half my weight with it. "That's pretty profound, Mom."

  "Eh," she said, waggling a hand in the air before her. "Years of daytime TV have to be good for something." She chuckled then, but it was an automatic addendum to her words, tacked on and utterly devoid of sincerity.

  How could there have been any genuine mirth to it? My father—long-regarded as an ogre by a punk kid who, when not railing against anything that interfered with his goal of being the next Stephen King, was distributing handwritten, stapled-together manuscripts loaded with decapitations and mutilations to the relatives at Christmas—had been the love of my mother's life. The man I'd feared every time he came home from the steel mill pissed off, a six-pack of Old Milwaukee tucked beneath his arm, wearing a scowl so deep it made tar pits of his eyes, was still the man who had romanced her, taken her dancing, had driven her to Niagara Falls one summer's night to get down on bended knee and ask her to ride shotgun with him to the end of the road.

  All my life she'd been a not entirely trustworthy interpreter, turning my father's grunts, sharp gestures, and muttered responses to me into terms of endearment, or encouragement. Even as a child I didn't buy it, but though I appreciated her efforts I'd never understood, and still couldn't, why he'd never cared for me. I'm sure—unless I've repressed the memories—that I never gave him a specific reason to dislike me, to treat with less respect than he'd offer someone who took his seat on the bus. Unless that was it? Maybe when I'd come along, I'd annexed my mother's affection, inadvertently shutting him out, leaving him to fend for himself and play father to a child he resented.

  An alarming thought, and one I quickly stowed. Besides, while children are intuitive, and damn near precognitive creatures—blessed, and often cursed, with the ability to read adults—they can't determine what isn't shown in the eyes, can't follow the trail if they can't see where it begins. My father was a locked door, always. The room beyond a mystery, so anything I might surmise now was little more than speculation, gleaned from dusty recollections
and tainted by hurt.

  "What are you going to do now?" I asked her, to sever the thread of my own thoughts and divert her attention from my situation.

  She gave a long lingering sigh. "Move on," she told me. "What else is there to do?"

  "You're welcome to stay here for a while."

  "That's good of you, Jason, but you have enough problems without me getting in the way."

  "You wouldn't be in the way."

  She raised an eyebrow. "Honey, when it comes to situations like yours, parents are always in the way."

  "I could come stay with you, you know, for a few days."

  She leaned forward, and put a wrinkled hand on my knee. "You're needed here."

  Jesus, I thought, when did she get so old? I'd made a point of visiting her at least three times a year, outside of holidays which we alternated with Kelly's parents, and had never noticed before how much she'd changed from the picture of her I always saw when she was in my thoughts. I was afraid that one of these days only her voice would be recognizable, everything else loosened around her thin frame like an ill-fitting glove, as if God's Laundromat had returned to her the wrong costume. I was more than afraid; I was terrified and saddened. She had always been a face in the audience, bearing witness to my spotlighted theatrics when the houselights had gone down. Invisible, but there.

  I reached out and took her hand. "Thank you," I said, in a low voice.

  She looked genuinely surprised. "For what?"

  "You know what."

  "Well then, you're welcome, for whatever it is."

  "And I'm sorry about Dad." I made a point of not specifying just which part I was sorry for—his death, or my relationship with him in life, and she didn't ask me to. We just sat there, exchanging sad smiles, reminiscing a little, and generally catching up. I vowed to call her more, and visit whenever I could. She gave me a look that suggested it was nice of me to say, but we both knew it would last only until I was sure she wasn't going to wither away now that the sunlight my father had represented in her life had been snuffed out.