by Dale Peck
Hey, Miss Davis. Davis is all ready to go. Just let me get him.
I stood in the living room with Davis’s mom. The only light came from 7th Heaven and the tip of Davis’s mom’s Capri when she took a drag. There was a white mark on the left side of her upper lip, but I couldn’t tell if it was a scar or just a crack in her lipstick.
You named your son Davis Davis?
Pfft. She sucked in smoke like she was doing a whip-it. Poof. The smoke she exhaled felt damp on my face, like it was full of spores.
I named him after his daddy.
She fixed me with a kind of dead gaze, and I should have known to drop it. But I didn’t.
I didn’t know you were married.
Pfft. Poof.
Who said I was married?
Suddenly a scream came from the back of the house.
I . . . said . . . in . . . a . . . MINUTE!
Oh goddamn that child! Davis’s mom whirled on her wooden heels, caught her balance on the wall, then thumped heavily down the hall. Davis! Quit your fussing and get on out here!
Davis was in my bedroom. He’d dragged the chair in front of the dresser and stood on it, looking at himself in the mirror. He had my mom’s hairbrush, and he was brushing his hair down the side of his face with long even strokes. He wore one of my T-shirts, which he’d made into a sort of nightgown by cinching it below his chest with something that I thought was a shoelace.
Ninety-sixteen, nineteen seventy-three, nine two nine two nine—
He says he has to do both sides a hundred times, my mom whispered.
He can’t count to a hundred.
That’s sort of the problem.
Davis continued brushing. His mouse-brown hair was charged with so much static electricity that it followed the brush up and down like a swarm of cobras transfixed by a flute.
Ninety-ninety, one huntert.
Davis put the brush at a perpendicular angle to the edge of the dresser. When he stepped down from the chair his nightgown rode up a little, and I could see he wasn’t wearing any underwear. He looked not at his mom, or mine, but straight at me.
Ready to hit the sack, big boy?
And, sashaying, he walked the three steps to my bed and plumped the pillow invitingly. I wondered if he thought the pillow was the sack he was asking me to hit.
Nothing moved except for Davis’s mom’s right arm. Three puffs of smoke filled my bedroom. Finally she hung her Capri from her bottom lip and walked over and grabbed her son and swooped him onto her shoulder with one final oof of smoke. Davis’s eyes never left mine until his mom turned around unsteadily. Inside my shirt his legs straddled her right boob, and the nipple was visible beneath her T-shirt, and mine.
He don’t know what he’s saying. He’s just a little boy.
A thin singsong filled the room. It was Davis, singing “Fever” in a falsetto whisper.
When you put your harms around me
His staticky hair shot straight out from his head and attached itself to his mom’s as though thoughts were passing between them via wires.
Penis, I said.
Davis giggled.
An incessant honking drove me to the kitchen, where I found my mom’s boyfriend, Dan, sitting in front of a children’s toy that was basically the dashboard of a car, complete with steering wheel and electronic horn. This wasn’t as strange as it sounds. No, nix that. It was every bit as strange as it sounds. Dan, you see, spent all his spare time “adapting” famous riffs from classical music for the horn of his 1999 Renault Something or Other, which he thought would get him on TV one day (Why, yes, Regis, I do play an instrument: the French horn). So you know, first of all, that he’s a winner, and, secondly, that his neighbors love him (the toy, in fact, was a “gift” from one of them, who heaved the box through his living room window). That night he was practicing something he called “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” which nonpretentious people know as the theme to 2001. The steering wheel was smaller than his hand, and, what with the intense look of concentration on his face and his wild hair—bushy and uncombed on the sides but thin on top—he looked like a circus clown in a midget car. His “fondness” for Hawaiian shirts didn’t help, especially since most of them were “pre-owned.” With Dan you had to use a lot of quotation marks.
The clock over the sink read a quarter past eight.
Dan? Hey, Dan? Dan? Dan? Dan? Dan? Dan? Dan? Dan?
Dan finally looked up. There was an innocent expression on his face, as if he was surprised to find that he wasn’t alone.
Huh?
Open the pod bay doors, Dan.
Dan blinked.
Huh?
He means the horn, honey, my mom said in the kind of voice you’d use to talk to a five-year-old. Playtime’s over, dear, it’s time for din-din. She turned from the oven holding the casserole in mitted hands. Stopped.
Huh.
What? Dan said.
Davis only set two places at the table. Davis? Honey, where are you anyway?
He turned out to be in the dining room, where he’d set two more places, complete with paper napkins his little fingers had folded into convincingly birdlike shapes, and a few bits of clover blossom in a glass, and a candle, lit. Because the table was so high, he was kneeling on his chair instead of sitting on it. He looked like an altar boy at a shrine. There was something worshipful in his expression.
Blaine? Darling? I thought tonight we could renew our vows.
Davis, I told you not to play with matches. My mom blew the candle out, spattering wax over the tabletop. Now come on, grab your plate and come in the kitchen with the rest of us. Blaine, grab your plate.
In the kitchen, Dan had replaced his toy with a beer. There was a crunching sound as his spoon broke the crust on the top of my mom’s tuna casserole.
My mom smiled hopefully. The recipe called for just a little bit of dirty sock cheese sprinkled over the top. I was afraid it would make it less crispy but it seems to have worked out okay.
Dan systematically skimmed off the top layer of casserole, which everyone knows is the best part, and put it all on his plate. He pushed the gloopy remainder in front of me.
Here you go, Bland, dig in.
Bland was Dan’s idea of a joke.
Dan was a bit of a jokester.
He watched intently as I spooned noodles on my plate. My mom’d been seeing him for about a year at that point, which was pretty much a record for her. I’d managed to stay out of his way, mostly, because he preferred to take my mom back to his place to screw, mostly. A lot of times he just sat in his car and honked, usually “Shave and a Haircut” or the Woody Woodpecker song, but sometimes he treated us to a couple of bars of Beethoven’s Fifth or Ninth, or the Lone Ranger theme, which I have to admit he played amazingly well. When he did stay I usually left, or went to bed.
A few drops of cream of mushroom soup spilled on the table.
Oh, Bland, look at that! Looks like you could use . . . a tissue. With a flourish, Dan pulled one from the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt.
My mom stifled a snort, barely.
Blaine has the sniffles, Davis said, snapping the tissue from Dan’s fingers and blotting up the soup. He also has all his hair.
My mom let the second snort fly.
The things that come out of that boy’s mouth! She pulled his plate towards her and scooped casserole and green beans onto it. It’s almost eerie how grown-up he sounds.
If you ask me, what was eerie about Davis wasn’t that he talked the way he did, but that he talked the way he did and still managed to pick up on what was happening in the part of the world that existed outside his weird little brain. For example: my mom’s nails. They were, in fact, freshly painted. Not red, as I’d thought, but purple.
Why thank you, Alice, Davis said when my mom slid his plate back in front of him.
And then: It’s so nice to see you helping out around here. Now that Blaine’s home.
My mom’s grin hardened. Like I said. The things that come out of that boy’s mouth. She spooned green beans onto Dan’s plate, mine, then served herself. Shut up, Blaine. You’ll understand when you have kids of your own.
Alice raises a good point, Davis said. When are we going to have children of our own?
Dan got up, got a second beer from the fridge.
I mean really, Blaine. What do we do it all for, if not to leave it to the next generation? It won’t mean nothing to us when we’re dead and gone.
Standing behind Davis, Dan made the universal symbol for crazy over his head.
Is it a crime that I want to have children, Blaine? Davis pushed his plate in front of my mom. Load me up, Alice, tonight I start eatin’ for two.
Dan returned to his chair, set his beer down heavily on the table.
Why don’t you start with that, Davis? my mom said. If you want seconds, there’s plenty.
But Davis was looking at me, his face as round and deep and full as my mom’s casserole pot. I wanna have triplets and name them all after you: Buh-lay-un. C’mon, baby. Stick a bun in my oven. Knock me up. Get me in the family way. Take me right now, on the kitchen table. Let’s do it like teenagers!
Davis! my mom said. Blaine is a teenager. You are five years old.
Dan was staring at Davis with a look of fascination and disgust. What really bugged me, though, was that I knew the same expression was on my face.
Good Christ. What uncle fucked that little boy?
Dan’s dumb-ass comment made me think about what Davis’s mom had said that one time—about Davis being named after his daddy—but my thoughts were cut off by a smack. My mom’s hand, Dan’s cheek. Not particularly loud, not particularly hard, but apparently hard enough to piss him off. Before either of us knew what was happening he was holding my mom’s wrists in one hand, squeezing her jaw with the other. Her fork clattered to the floor.
When I think of a new life growing inside of me! Oh, Blaine! I know that’s what god put me here for! To bring a little love into the world!
Uh, Dan. You wanna let go of my mom?
Shut up, Blaine. This is between your mom and me.
If there were more loving homes in the world, there’d be less violence. Less war. We could start a revolution, Blaine. You and me. Right here, in our own home.
Uh, Dan? I made a little knocking sound on the table, and Dan looked over to see that I had my knife in my hand. That’s really not cool.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Davis rubbing his belly with one hand. Full men rub their bellies vigorously with their whole hand, but pregnant women only use their fingertips, only touch gently, as if afraid to wake the child slumbering within. As with everything else, Davis got the details perfect. Only the body was wrong.
Dan let go of my mom and settled back into his chair. Jesus Christ, Blaine, calm down. It wasn’t nothing. He picked up his beer and drained it in one long glugging gulp.
My mom unfolded her napkin into her lap. I’m sorry I hit you, Dan. But you shouldn’t talk that way about Davis. Especially not in front of him. Blaine, she added, picking up her napkin and patting her lips, although she hadn’t started eating yet. Put the knife down, please.
Dan burped, and then he picked up his fork and began shoveling a green-and-gray mixture of tuna casserole and green beans into his mouth. Somebody should get that boy help.
It was unclear whether he meant me or Davis. My mom looked at me and then she looked at Davis, as if trying to decide.
Jesus fucking Christ, she said finally. Where the hell is that woman? Her eyes looked at the left side of her plate, the right. Not seeing her fork, she picked up her spoon and started eating. It was a teaspoon, so she was forced to take Davis-sized bites.
Davis had already finished eating, and held his plate out for seconds. I wondered if he thought being pregnant just meant you got fat.
But Davis’s mom didn’t come, and at ten o’clock, with Davis curled up next to me on the couch—Dan was already in bed—my mom said it was time both of us hit the hay.
He can bunk with you.
Aw, Mom. Why can’t he sleep on the couch?
My mom looked around our living room. Some rundown places look better in dim light, but ours looked worse: the shadows in the warped paneling seemed like actual holes, and the upstretched arms on the dancing figurines my mom “collected” (she found a box of them at a garage sale and bought the whole set for ten bucks) looked like sinners running from the second coming. The picture frames on top of the TV were dark rectangles, and at this point I can’t even remember whose faces hid inside them.
He’s five years old. That’s just too depressing.
It’ll be like camping.
My mom shook her head. Not even camping is like camping anymore. Now take a pillow from my bed. Preferably the one Dan’s using.
I carried him down the hall. I was surprised by how light he was. I wasn’t a big kid, wasn’t particularly strong, but Davis felt lighter than the pillow I tugged from beneath Dan’s snoring head. Dan didn’t wake up at the jerking motion, but Davis did, and when his unfocused eyes squinted in my direction I remember I wanted him to say something that’d make it clear the whole Davis-in-an-apron thing was just an act. That he knew who he really was. Who I really was. Instead he curled his arms around my neck and turned his face into my chest and whispered, Finally.
I pulled his shorts off him, laid him on the outer edge of the bed, then got undressed and climbed over him to the side next to the wall. I figured it was better he had the outside, in case he had to pee in the middle of the night. I realized I’d forgotten to give him his pillow, which sat on my dresser, on top of my laptop. Circuits crossed, fired, fizzled: the pillow from my mom’s bed, the laptop with its pictures of Tina, Davis’s whistling breath on my right side, the cold flat wall pressing against my left shoulder. I mean, Jesus Christ, who needs to look up a recipe for tuna casserole?
Voices came from the other side of the wall:
Who took my pillow?
I’ll take your pillow, mister.
Aw, baby, you’re not still mad? You know I didn’t mean nothing. A pause. That kid gives me the creeps. It’s really got to come from somewhere.
Oh, Dan. Dan, Dan, Dan.
What? What, what, what?
If you were a parent, Dan, you wouldn’t care where it came from. You’d care where it was going.
Let’s face it: the reason I didn’t want Davis to sleep in my room was because nighttime was when I jerked off. My penis poked above the waistband of my boxers like a loaf of French bread sticking out of a grocery bag. I tried lying on my back but the blanket seemed to caress the tip. I tried lying on my stomach but the heavy weight of my body made me want to grind my hips into the bed. I turned on my side, and there was Davis, all of four inches away, and that was just weird. I turned to face the wall. I tried angling my penis so that it lay under the waistband of my boxers, and it popped out of the fly. Apparently my penis didn’t like being angled. I tried to think of the severed heads of chicken, the hair in the bathtub drain, the motherboard in my computer. Apparently my penis was not put off by abstract thought. I found myself wondering how the French got their bread home without busting the loaf in half: it bumped against everything.
Penis, I whispered, and laughed at my own joke.
The stereo went on in the other room. Hooked on Classics, Dan’s favorite camouflage. In approximately seven minutes he would patter out a bit of “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” or “Rhapsody in Blue” on the bedside table. If nothing else, his presence in our lives had been educational.
A few inches behind me, Davis turned. His breath came louder, and I realized he was facing me. In the quiet, his silent voice was strangely present, a singsong bouncing back and fo
rth between my ears to the accompaniment of the creaking bedsprings in the next room. Davis’s words, the things he talked about doing, were a pretty straightforward imitation of the women in his life—his mom, and, let’s face it, mine—crossed with women he saw on TV. The fifties sitcoms Nickelodeon ran ad infinitum, with their bright-faced beaming slaves in starched aprons and permanent waves, and the ones on my mom’s soaps, who were a different kind of caricature, all sucked, tucked, fucked. The combination could only be called freaky, especially when it came wrapped up in a five-year-old boy’s impossibly tiny, incredibly fragile body. I remembered the weightless weight of him in my arms. Was I ever that small, I wondered. Was my mom? Dan? It seemed impossible that someone like Dan could’ve passed through such a stage before turning into his adult self, omnivorous, with a bladder that could hold a quart of urine and fingers that bruised, broke, smudged, and made music from the strangest sources.
Sometimes I felt like Dan. I wanted there to be a revelation, a single incident to explain away Davis’s behavior. The uncle or grandpa teaching Davis things he was too young to know, an overabundance of some chemical in his brain. But as far as I knew there was nothing like that. Aside from the general fucked-upedness of his existence, I mean, which was no more fucked up than mine or anybody else’s that I knew, there was no abuse, sexual or otherwise, no traumatic witnessings, no blows to the head. It seemed that Davis just knew what he wanted. That he was one of the few people in this world who wasn’t afraid to ask for it.
As if reading my mind, Davis sighed. His whisper wasn’t all fake sexy like the voice I’d been hearing in my head. It sounded like the voice of a little boy whose mom’d forgot about him a long time ago.
Blaine? Please?
You shut your cakehole, Davis. Just shut your fucking mouth.
See, the thing is, I wasn’t like Davis. I couldn’t let my mind go far away like he could and still keep track of the world around me. But when I tried to focus on the things that were right next to me, they ended up losing their edges a bit, and the next thing I knew there was a knife in my hand. Or a penis. Or my mom: why was it that she looked at pictures of gay guys who were all hairless and oiled and curved like, well, like really hard women, but then she went and picked a guy like Dan out of the lineup, whose only curve was his beer gut, and hair everywhere but where it was supposed to be? What I mean is, how come he made her happy, when she seemed to want something else?