headshots
by
Idabel Allen
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Idabel Allen on Smashwords
Headshots
Copyright 2012 by Idabel Allen
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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To Leroy, for making the move.
A big shout out to Amy Fouche Bills for a killer book cover and to Kendy Wazac for her editorial efforts. Thanks be to Krista Creel and Angela Ripper for their applying a foot to my backside, and to my patron saint in whom I am well pleased.
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Headshots
Chemical Reaction
On Going Deep
Molasses
Pushing Through
Geography Lesson
Sacrificial Milk
Preview Chapters for:
CURSED!
My Devastatingly Brilliant Campaign to Save the Chigg
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Chemical Reaction
Even with his eyes closed he sensed her movements, soft, cautious in the darkened room. They were so careful at night not to disturb him as they checked to see if he was still with them. And he was. When they leaned close he smelled their work on them, the touch of life and death and medicines and cleaning products lingering on their efficient hands. Even the male nurses smelled this way, as if the job of caring for the ill had stripped them of their sexes for the greater good of healing.
Healing. He supposed he was doing that. That’s what bodies do. And yet Daniel felt weaker than he ever had in his life. He was flat on his back, literally. His every need was being taken care of. Being a patient took some getting used to. And he felt their care, their absolute desire to heal him and he was humbled. To have that type of love in your heart, for even a stranger, astonished him.
In the early morning hours as the timid dawn tiptoed into the dark room, he slipped between dreams, fleeting and unfathomable. In one he was digging with a spade, the sharp metal piercing the earth’s flesh, uprooting the black soil. He dug and he dug and he dug, but nothing was uncovered but more dirt. Then the dream was over, leaving Daniel puzzled for about three heartbeats until he slipped into another dream in which he was playing baseball. He was wearing his high school uniform but the game was in a large stadium, bigger than anyplace he’d ever played before. The stands were filled with fans chanting his name, Dan-iel…Dan-iel. He stepped out of the batter’s box and took it all in. They were counting on him to hit a grand slam and drive in the winning run.
But he never saw the pitch. Something fell or crashed with an outraged clanging of metal in the hallway beyond his closed door. Daniel’s eyes popped open and his heart pounded fearfully in his chest. What was that noise? Where was he? Why did he hurt so? Why was his right arm bandaged from shoulder to wrist?
Then he was awake and remembered the screaming ambulance ride the afternoon before. He’d been rushed through the emergency room on a stretcher, a team of doctors and nurses on each side of him, running through the halls with his body. He’d been burnt.
The dayshift nurses were not as careful or cautious as their night-time counterparts. They were a perky bunch, hardy in their duties, not ones to shy from fouled sheets or weeping wounds or burnt flesh. One nurse, an older woman named Doreen, wore pink scrubs littered with little hopping bunny rabbits. When she noticed Daniel staring at the rabbits she said, “The little kids like ‘em. Think they’re funny.”
Daniel froze as if being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He said, “My mom’s name is Bunny. She’s pretty funny too.”
“That right?” the nurse said, pushing his breakfast tray to his bed. Runny eggs, toast, and two anemic strips of bacon. “My son’s name is Carl. Carl Grandberry. He’s a senior with you at Lincoln High.”
Daniel nodded, thinking of Carl’s lanky brown body shooting past him on the track, leaving him behind as if he were standing still. Looking at Doreen, he knew where Carl got his height and the wide, sloping smile he always wore. Daniel said, “Carl’s alright, I guess,” feigning disinterest, holding back a laugh as Doreen shot him a withering look.
“You bet he is. And he told me about you catching yourself on fire in chemistry.” As she spoke she buttered his bread and applied grape jelly. Then she pointed the plastic knife lined with butter and jelly and crumbs at him and demanded, “Why you want to get all burned up like that with graduation coming up? Ain’t you got any sense?”
“It was an accident,” he explained. “We were getting ready to do an experiment. I guess I leaned too close to the burner’s flame. I don’t even know when it happened. My jacket was on fire all of a sudden.”
Doreen removed the foil lid of his orange juice. “Carl said you lost it in class.”
“Yeah, I have a habit of freaking out when I’m on fire.” He reached for his juice with his left arm, aware of the sedated pain pulsing in his other arm. He didn’t mind the pain really. There was something comforting, even reliable about it.
“Well, see that you don’t freak out in here.” She gave him a brief authoritative look as if to show she was not about to let anything happen on her shift. It was the same kind of look the school secretary gave whenever someone asked to use the phone. Although she smiled, he sensed she was wary of him but he didn’t understand why. And then, in a flurry of efficiency she was gone.
His mother, Bunny, arrived shortly after breakfast and stayed with him throughout the day, chirping about the room, making friends with the hospital staff, enjoying herself he thought. He was not surprised. That was his mother.
Other relatives came on that first day, and then the next, but he escaped them all by falling into the heavy cloud of sleep. By the third day his mother had returned to work, and his hospital life settled into a monotonous routine. By now he knew that the burns on his arm were serious, but there would be little scarring and he would not need a skin graft. Antibiotics were pumping throughout his body to prevent infection and the doctor was satisfied that the antibiotics were working.
When he awoke on the third afternoon, Daniel discovered a woman standing over him reading from a manila folder. When she realized he was awake she adjusted her silver, horn-rimmed glasses that made her triangular face appear quizzical and alert. She blinked for a moment as if trying to recall why she was there and then said, “Hello. I’m Dr. Pilsner.”
Daniel did not say anything. Fuzzied with sleep and pain medication, everything seemed unreal. Nothing was sharp or had edges. Everything felt as if it would dissolve before his eyes. He was thankful for the bright fluorescent light pressing down on him, holding him in his bed and his bed to the white polished floor.
“Mind if I pull up a chair,” she asked, pulling the chair up as she spoke.
Daniel tugged his white sheet up to his chest and then hugged it close. The other doctors and nurses had not sat down with him. He said, “Where’s Dr. Nelson?”
“I’m not sure.” She sat down and placed the manila folder on her lap. “I’m the hospital psychologist. I’d like to ask you a few questions."
“Why?” he asked, “I’m not crazy.” He’d never spoken to a shrink before.
“I never said you were,” she said in a distracted voice, scanning the open folder on her lap. “I just want so see how you’re feeling, make sure everything is alright.” Her voice was brisk, northern. She was definitely not from Tennessee.
Daniel rubbed the sheet between his thumb and forefinger on his left hand, feeling its soft coolness. He noticed the way her dark short hair shined against the bright white walls. He did not mind this. She was younger than his mother, maybe in her late thirties. Her arms were tanned and toned in her short-sleeved shirt. She wore no jewelry. His mother never left the house without full body armor: necklace, earrings, bracelets, rings.
Dr. Pilsner closed the folder and offered him her full attention. Her blue eyes were pale but clear. She had an intelligent, no-nonsense look about her that made Daniel sit up and pay attention a bit more. She said, “How are you?”
“Great.” Daniel smiled broadly, not minding the directness of her eyes.
“I see,” she answered slowly. “And your arm?”
“It hurts, but the pain medicine helps. It itches too.” He glanced at the bandage. “Feels like I’m growing fish scales under here.”
She removed the cap from her pen and said, “I guess that’s to be expected.”
“I should expect fish scales?” he asked in mock alarm.
“No,” she looked up from her notes, puzzled. “I meant the itching. That’s to be expected.” She glanced down at her notes again.
Daniel suddenly thought of her as a fish, or fishlike: cold, unemotional in her silvery satin shirt and her slick black slacks. He said, “Are you always this serious?”
“As a heart attack,” she replied as she finished writing. But when she looked at him there was a spark of unexpressed mischief in her eyes. “Now I’m going to ask you a series of question and I want you to answer as honestly as possible. If you don’t know the answer just say you don’t know. Okay?”
“Okay.” He prepared for another round of questions about diabetes or heart disease in his family. But those were not the questions she asked, and the ones she did ask caught him off guard. Is there a history of mental illness in your family? Are you depressed? Have you he ever been depressed? Have you ever thought about suicide? Do you have trouble controlling your emotions? Have you ever purposefully hurt yourself? Have you ever destroyed property? Hurt animals? Do you burn things?”
Daniel answered “no” repeatedly, growing more and more uneasy as she marked his answers in the folder. Why was she asking him about this junk? What was going on?
When the questions were exhausted she said, “Sounds like you’re a pretty healthy young man. No problems with anger, depression. No family history of mental illness.”
Daniel let out a long sigh of relief, still trying to decide what to think of her. This was all new to him, but he could see she was very comfortable asking such personal questions. This is what she did every day, this was her job and he sensed that she was good at it. He felt he should trust her, not because she was an adult and a doctor, but because she expected it.
“I want to discuss what happened in class.” Dr. Pilsner turned a page in the folder and then clicked her pen. “You were in chemistry…”
He told her about the experiment and about lighting the burner. “A few seconds later I was on fire. I guess I just got too close to the flame.” The pain in his arm intensified as he recalled the fiery blaze rising from his white lab coat.
“What happened after that?”
He thought for a moment. “I was on fire and then someone pushed me into the emergency shower in class. It happened kind of fast.” Daniel inhaled quickly and then scratched his nose. There was an overpowering staleness in the room, in the air, that irritated him. He couldn’t place it, but it was something he had encountered before, in smaller, more fleeting doses. He said, “It reeks in here.”
Dr. Pilsner ignored his comment. “What else happened?”
“What else? I don’t know. I might have yelled and stuff. I mean, one minute I’m fine and the next I’m on fire.” He lowered his eyes and admitted, “It was kind of weird I guess. Scary.”
“I’m sure it was,” she said. She had a funny look on her face like she was trying to decide how to say something. When she did speak her voice was a bit flatter, a bit more uncompromising.
“Your classmates gave a different account of the incident.” She paused and he knew she was watching for his reaction. But he did not have one. He only waited to hear what she had to say.
“Witnesses said you lifted the burner to your jacket and purposefully caught yourself on fire. They had to force you into the emergency shower. If it weren’t for your friends you would have been burnt much worse.”
“That’s a bunch of bull,” he said with a short laugh. “I guess they also told you about the time I threw myself in front of a freight-train? Or the time I belly flopped off the water-tower? Did they mention anything about self-mutilation? I like to cut myself like a teenage girl. Also,”
“Daniel, this is nothing to joke about. Harming oneself is,”
“Look, we were doing an experiment. I accidentally got too close to the burner and my lab coat caught on fire. That’s all. I didn’t burn myself on purpose. That’s crazy.”
Dr. Pilsner consulted her notes. “Your friend Adam said you’ve been upset lately.”
Daniel said, “He’s not my friend,” but it didn’t help. Adam was with him, always: down at the creek, throwing rocks at the beaver dam, riding bikes to the abandoned house, haunted and forbidden. Howling down deserted back roads in a rusted-out Firebird, their blood boiling fierce with alcohol in the humid black night.
“I thought you two were close,” Dr. Pilsner said, flipping through her papers, searching for something. “You both play baseball for the high school.” She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. She said, “But you’re not friends?”
“That’s right,” he answered, seeing Adam on the mound again, blonde hair spilling out of his red cap, ball in glove, glove pressed to chest. Squatting behind home-plate, Daniel extends two fingers. Nodding, Adam winds his arm and releases. The pitch is perfect, inside and low. The ball lands with a solid thump in Daniel’s glove. Strike!
“Adam stated you’ve been acting strange ever since Christmas. Stand-offish,” she said. “He mentioned episodes of forgetfulness, even blacking out at least once.”
“Well, yeah, once. Our team played a tournament at the University of Tennessee. We snuck into a frat party. They had about ten kegs of beer and a pogo stick competition.” Daniel couldn’t help but grin. “I blacked out, but so did Adam.”
“Pogo stick?” Dr. Pilsner arched an eyebrow. “That must have been some party.”
“It was.”
“I’m just trying to figure out,” she said, tapping the end of her pen on the folder, “why you quit the team your senior year? Don’t you want to play college ball?”
Daniel removed the sheet from his left leg and pointed at his knee. “See those scars? I was in a car crash a few months ago. No big deal except this knee’s shot now. I’m a catcher. Can’t catch with a busted knee.” He covered his leg quickly as that dull metallic buzz sounded softly in his ears as it did whenever he thought of the crash.
“That must have been devastating.” Dr. Pilsner’s face softened. “My son catches too. Little League. It would break his heart if he couldn’t play anymore.”
“It’s not so bad,” he said, wishing she would leave now, right now. “I’ve picked up other hobbies, like collecting dead bugs.”
She adjusted her glasses and said, “Why do you feel the need to joke about this?”
“Who said I’m joking?” Dr. Pilsner stared at Daniel until he finally said in a tired voice, “Alright, so I’m joking.”
“I thought as much,” she said.
“Look, I used to play baseball and now I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I want to hurt myself. It just means I can’t play baseball. That’s all. Adam’s kind of,” Daniel thought of what he wanted to say, “melodramatic. A male drama queen.”
“Drama queen,” Dr. Pilsner said skeptically. “That brings us to girls. According to witnesses you called out a girl’s name when you caught fire.”
“Oh, yeah. I hollered Valerie’s name. For help. She was at the table in front of me.” She filled his mind, thick chestnut hair curling about a heart-shaped face, soft, pale freckled skin and round hazel eyes that made you lose sense of everything else. And her scent, honeysuckle and tanning lotion, oh God it was…it was…
“The report says you caught yourself on fire after Valerie looked at you.”
“That’s just stupid. Why would I do something like that? It doesn’t make sense.”
She said, “You’re right, it doesn’t. This Valerie, how well do you know her?”
Daniel studied his teeth-ravaged fingernails. He said, “We’ve been friends since third grade,” seeing her again, naked and trembling on the wet grass in centerfield, glowing ghostly white beneath the frosty moon and the spilling stars, her heart racing against his, her hazel eyes open to his.
“Were you two intimate?”
The question took a few seconds to reach him and when it did it startled him. “What? No,” he lied, “we never…” his words trailed off. His eyes swept through the colorless room, searching for something, but for what he was uncertain. He sniffed and frowned.
Dr. Pilsner leaned forward. “Is something wrong?”
“Geeze, it really stinks in here! Like a lint trap. I’m sorry but it’s been bugging me for days.” Daniel scrunched his nose and sniffed again. “God, this is so familiar. Know what it smells like? It smells just like when my dad was in the hospital. It used to make me want to puke.” Daniel pulled the neck of his hospital gown over his nose.
Dr. Pilsner inhaled slowly. “I hadn’t really noticed it before. But you’re right, I smell it.” She added apologetically, “I don’t have a good sense of smell.”
“He was in this hospital, here. They had all kinds of tubes running in and out of him.” Clear tubes, red tubes, tubes filled with yellow urine, yellow father urine. A tube to push air into his chest, another tube to suck mucous from his lungs.
“Why was he in the hospital?” she asked, pen poised to write again.
“Pneumonia. I was only ten so they didn’t let me in the room until he got really bad. They kept him in a coma to fight the infection.” Daniel’s voice drifted lightly from him “He never woke when I visited.”
Then he was there again, in that room, watching his father’s chest rise and fall as the machine pumped oxygen into him. There wasn’t much he remembered about those visits except the still whiteness of the room and his silent prayers for his father. And that smell, that noxious blend of infection and decay.
Dr. Pilsner sighed. “Pneumonia’s tough. Your dad, he,”
“Died,” Daniel answered in a bright, shiny voice, blinking in the white walls.
Dr. Pilsner’s looked at him carefully. “You don’t sound very sad or upset.”
“It was a long time ago. What can I say? He’s gone.”
“How would you describe your relationship with your father? Were you close?”
He thought about it. “Yeah. We were close. I missed him when he was gone.”
“And now?”
His door opened and Doreen entered the room carrying a vomit green plastic tub of fresh bandages. He groaned. “And now it’s time for my bandage to be changed.”
“So it is,” Dr. Pilsner said. “Well, I think I have everything I need for now. You get yourself better, alright?” She closed her folder and stood. “We’ll talk again soon.”
When she reached the door he said, “It was an accident. I promise. I’m not…I wouldn’t do that. It was just that damned lab coat, always hassling me. I hated it!” He smiled to show Dr. Pilsner that he was joking, even though he really felt like crying. He didn’t want to be in that hospital, that same hospital where his dad died. He didn’t want his arm all burnt up. He wanted to be at school or behind home plate. He wanted, oh God how he wanted, to lie in the centerfield grass with Valerie, in the night, together, alone, safe.
“Coat hassling you? What kind of nonsense are you talking now?” Doreen fussed as Dr. Pilsner left the room. “You just keep still now and don’t hassle me and we’ll get along just fine.”
Daniel succumbed to her care, relinquishing his bandaged arm as if it were no more part of him than a battered sneaker. His thoughts were in the classroom and he replayed the events in his head. He remembered setting up the burner, lighting it. He had turned to check the notes in his notebook. And then someone said something, called his name maybe. When he looked up his arm was engulfed in flames. He looked to Valerie and called to her for help. Remembering it now was like remembering a dream, the way her eyes widened and her mouth fell open slightly. The way the color drained from her cheeks. She called his name and the sound of it filled him with such bursting love. He had wanted to tell her it was okay, he was okay. But then hands were on him, rough, violent, pushing him until he was under the shower and the cold water drenched his fire.
Two days later Daniel sat in a small consultation room with a generic wood coffee table and a box of tissue sitting useless on one corner. On the colorless wall there was only a cheap circular clock ticking away the irretrievable minutes of life. In one corner, an Easter lily was dying a death of indifference. No one would notice. No one would care.
His mother sat next to him on the edge of her seat perched like some flamboyant bird ready for flight. Her shirt was too bold, an explosion of tropical colors with fruity names: papaya, mango, and kiwi. Her lips were the color of passion fruit, her skin bronzed and oiled. Although his mother was small, she made the room feel busy, crowded.
Dr. Pilsner sat across from him reading the manila folder in her hands labeled ‘Daniel Berman’. He studied her hands which were tiny like a child’s, but dry and wrinkled like an old woman’s. She did not take care of her skin, this doctor, and Daniel decided her attention must be fixed on other things. But what? Assisting with lobotomies? Administering electric-shock therapy? There was no telling.
“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Berman,” Dr. Pilsner began. “Looks like Daniel’s ready to be released from the hospital.”
“Yes, we spoke with Dr. Nelson this morning,” his mother answered, smiling. “I’m so glad. I just want to get him back home.” She patted Daniel’s bandaged arm lightly. Her deep orange nail polish made him suddenly feel queasy and he had to turn from her to the blank, white wall.
“That’s what we’re here to discuss,” Dr. Pilsner said, visibly dampening Daniel’s mother’s enthusiasm. “We don’t feel Daniel is ready for home just yet.”
Daniel opened his mouth, but before he could say anything his mother exploded, “What are you talking about? He’s ready to be released. The doctor said so.”
“Released from this hospital, yes, but not to your care.” Dr. Pilsner spoke as if she were trying to calm an injured animal on the verge of attacking. “Not just yet. Daniel is being transferred to a mental health facility.”
“I don’t understand,” his mother said, twisting the gold bracelet on her wrist.
“A nuthouse?” Daniel said softly. “But. I mean,”
“Daniel, I know you’ve told us this was an accident,” Dr. Pilsner began. “But your classmates insist the fire was intentional. Because you tried to harm yourself, state law requires that you undergo a full psychiatric evaluation. So when you leave here tomorrow you will be going to Manor Hill.” Daniel and his mother stared at Dr. Berman who added, “We believe this incident was a cry for help.”
“But it was an accident,” Daniel exclaimed in frustration, turning to his mother who grabbed a tissue from the box and twisted it in her hand.
“I should have known this would happen,” she said, her small voice growing larger with each word. “I should have had him checked out. But I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know. His father had just died and I thought he was just upset. And I was so alone, scared really.” Her eyes beseeched Dr. Pilsner to believe her.
Dr. Pilsner encouraged her with a nod. “We talked a little about his father’s illness.”
“It was right before Christmas. His father collapsed one night in the bathroom. We thought it was the flu, but he couldn’t shake it. And he was always very healthy.” Her voice broke when she added, “The ambulance took him away and he never came home again.”
Dr. Pilsner made a note in her folder and then said, “Mrs. Berman,”
“Oh please, call me Bunny,” she laughed, touching the frosted tips of her golden hair with her manicured fingers. “That’s what everyone calls me. Like I’m some old floppy rabbit or something.”
Daniel felt himself falling inside, falling and falling and falling at the sound of his mother’s voice. He’d heard this all his life. Bunny the floppy old rabbit. And there was no stopping her, no shutting her up. He closed his eyes and focused on the dull metallic sound that was so clear in his ears. Mental facility…
“Well… Bunny,” Dr. Pilsner began uncertainly, “losing a loved one is never easy.”
Bunny sighed. “It’s just so sad. I’m all Daniel has and I’m not as young as I used to be. Of course not everyone thinks I’m that old. Would you believe I’ve had three invitations for dinner this week to help take my mind off Daniel’s accident?”
Dr. Pilsner stared at Bunny blankly for a second before saying, “You said you should have known this would happen. After his father’s death. What did you mean?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel watched his mother look down at the wadded tissue in her hand. “Well,” she began in a hesitant voice. “It wasn’t really anything. Just he cut his hands in the kitchen. An accident you know. Fell on some glass.”
Dr. Berman looked at Daniel. He shrugged reluctantly into the conversation. “I was running in the kitchen and fell into a window. I must’ve tripped.”
“A window?” Dr. Pilsner looked puzzled. “You broke the window?”
“Oh yes, he did.” Bunny gave Daniel a reproachful look. “And let me tell you that was one expensive window.”
“You must have been running pretty fast,” Dr. Pilsner noted. “Why?”
“What does that matter?” Bunny asked, flaring up, filling the room with her multi-colored emotion. Tension circuited her body, electrifying the stale air. “It was after his father’s funeral. He was upset.”
Daniel stared at the white walls, wishing his mother and the doctor would go away. He just wanted to be alone. Dr. Pilsner asked him something but she sounded as if she were under water. Then her hand was warm on his knee. When he looked at her she said, “Were you running because your father died?”
He said, “I guess so,” but then shook his head. “No. It wasn’t. I don’t know. It seemed like,”
“That’s enough!” Bunny slapped her thigh. “You’re tormenting him. Hasn’t he,”
“I haven’t thought about this in a long time.” Daniel’s voice rose from him tenuously, cutting through his mother’s words. “I remember they put my father in a hole, the grave. We tossed some flowers on him and they covered him with dirt. And that was it, he was gone.”
He was gone. Daniel still couldn’t get over just how final his father’s death was. There wasn’t any three strikes and you’re out rule. There weren’t any rules with death. Death happened no matter what you said or did, it happened no matter how good, or how strong a father was. And his father had been good and strong. He had been Daniel’s compass pointing the way to manhood. When he was gone, the compass was gone. Daniel was lost.
Dr. Pilsner said, “And then, after the funeral?
“Huh?” Daniel said, lost in his thoughts. “Oh, afterwards we went back to our house and had a party.”
“A party? Do you mean a wake, or a gathering?” Dr. Pilsner asked.
“What I mean,” he said in a low voice lost in remembrance, “is a party.” He thought, what I mean is people, everyone we knew, together in the house, with lots of food, and drinks. What I mean is people crying and fussing, yet some laughing, enjoying the free day off work. It was like they didn’t even care that he was dead, unbreathing, unmoving beneath the earth, hidden from all, lost to me forever.
“I remember my aunts, pulling at me, finding me everywhere I hid, pushing food at me, pulling at my sweater, telling me how sorry they were, asking me how I felt as if they didn’t know how I felt, as if they couldn’t guess at what I was feeling or imagine it themselves. Pushing and pulling on me, trying to, trying to…”
“I’m not going to sit here and let you do this to him.” Bunny was on her feet, towering over Dr. Pilsner and stabbing the air before the doctor’s surprised face with her long, orange fingernail. “My son does not belong in a nuthouse with a bunch of crazies. I’m not going to stand for another second of this…this interrogation!”
But Daniel’s voice held her in place. “I had to get away from them, I mean, my aunts. They were relentless, wouldn’t leave me alone. So I went to the laundry room. But…” Daniel shook his head violently.
“It’s alright, Daniel. It’s alright, you’re okay,” Dr. Pilsner said in a soothing voice, ignoring Bunny’s overpowering presence. She stood over the doctor, tense, not breathing as if waiting for something.
He said breathlessly, “I went in the laundry room. To hide. But you were there,” he stared up at his mother with incredulous eyes. “With a man, a stranger, I’d never seen him before. But he was no stranger to you. I mean, you were holding each other, in that way you know, embracing as Daddy lay in the grave. I looked at you but I couldn’t say anything.”
Daniel paused because there was more to it. Then he remembered seeing his mother with that man and how he’d suddenly wanted to be with his father, to warm him, to keep him company, to not let him be buried alone in that dark grave.
His voice broke when he said, “I didn’t know what to do so I ran into the kitchen and smashed my arms through the glass window.”
Once more he felt his arms go through the sun-filled glass, felt the new sharp edges rip deep into his pale boy’s flesh; saw his red, red blood running down onto his mother’s yellow roses, staining them.
“Shut up,” his mother said in a low guttural voice. “Just shut up! I’m so goddamned sick of your whining. Always whining about your daddy. Well let me tell you about your father. He was a lying cheat, taking up with every new intern in the office. You want to drag up the past? Well how about last Christmas when that little girl told you she was in love with your friend Adam. She told you to stop bothering her and what did you do? Wrapped that new truck I bought you for Christmas around an oak tree and tore up your knee. Pretty smart huh? Lost your baseball scholarship and any future playing ball. And that little girl still doesn’t want you anywhere near her. Bet you didn’t tell the doctor about that did you?”
Dr. Pilsner said, “Mrs. Berman.”
“I told you to call me Bunny!”
“Okay, Bunny,” Dr. Pilsner said in a careful voice. “There’s no need to get upset. Just take a deep breath.”
“No doctor, I’ve taken enough breaths. I’ve sat by long enough. Maybe if I’d said something or done something earlier Daniel wouldn’t be lighting himself on fire.” She turned to him and said, “Which, by the way, was a real class act.”
“They were messing around!” Daniel shouted, feeling his blood rushing through every part of his body, boiling and churning. “He had his hand up the back of Valerie’s shirt right there, like I couldn’t see.”
Dr. Pilsner said, “Who had his hand?”
“Adam! Adam had his f-f-fucking hand there and she didn’t even care. She liked it. Valerie fucking liked it. I could see that she did.” He looked at Dr. Pilsner to see if she understood. He felt his mother there, above him, but he couldn’t look at her.
Dr. Pilsner said, “You were angry.”
“Angry?” He started laughing but then stopped abruptly. He hid his face in his hands and said, “No, no no… I wasn’t angry. No.”
“If you weren’t angry why’d you catch yourself on fire?” his mother demanded.
“It was an accident,” he answered in a quiet voice not meant for his mother, or the doctor, but for himself because he could not believe what they said, could not accept it. “I didn’t…I couldn’t. Not that. That’s crazy.”
“Now think,” Dr. Pilsner said leaning forward, drawing his eyes to hers. “You got Valerie’s attention, remember. You got her attention and then you ran your arm through the burner’s flame. You caught yourself on fire.”
Daniel pulled his bandaged arm to his chest, rocking softly as tears dropped hot on his face and he whispered, “Oh God, oh God, oh God,”
Then he saw himself, in class, Adam and Valerie at the table before him, their backs to him, Adam’s hand up the back of her shirt and it was too much, too much. Holding the flame of his burner to his arm, he’d called her name, once. When she turned to him all he knew were her deep hazel eyes on him, seeing him, only him. And she was all he saw or knew. He did not feel the fire engulfing his arm, did not feel hands on him, pushing him to the shower, did not hear the cries and shouts about him. All he knew were her eyes, as he’d known them before, in the outfield, in the grass, beneath him and a billion stars.
And that was all there ever was or ever would be.
* * * * *
On Going Deep
On Dogs
That’s a damn shame. Dog like that with all his ribs poking out. If that was my dog… But it ain’t. I ain’t had a dog in years, its hard enough taking getting my own self fed. But shoot, if he was mine, I wouldn’t let his damn ribs poke out. I’d find him something to eat.
His name is Barrel so I say, “Barrel, how ‘bout you and me head up to Chicago and shack up at Brenda’s place. How you think she like that? Shit. She’d kicked my ass that’s what.” This makes me laugh but then the chocolate lab is all scrunched up against the brick wall like he’s afraid I’ll kick him. Like he’s afraid to be touched. Shit. That damn dog ought to know.
I tug on Barrel’s chain until he turns those miserable, brown eyes on me. I say, “When things settle down at home I’ll take you back with me. And if Brenda don’t like it she can go to hell. What’s she gonna do? Call the police on my ass again? Shit. If I had you I’d say run on Brenda, run on down to that lesbian Trina. That’s right. Do what you’re gonna do ‘cause I got a dog and don’t need your drunk-ass, drill-sergeant shit.”
Brenda is my old lady and the reason I’m down in Memphis. She gave me the boot last week out the clear blue. And there wasn’t no damn reason for it, only she’s got issues. Shit, we all got issues. So I just took my ass down to my sister’s house in Tennessee. Hell, let Brenda have her space. Let her run on down to Trina if she wants. I tell her, “Go on now, have at it,” like it don’t bother me none. And maybe it don’t.
I look out over Teresa’s backyard at the flowers all red, pink, purple and blue. The grass is greener than any I’ve ever seen and the swimming pool water looks as clean and blue as window cleaner. Teresa done good, she done real good. I see all this and know Barrel ain’t ever going anywhere with me. Not even when he ain’t being cared for proper. I could do better for him and that’s a damn shame. Shouldn’t be that way is all.
Crouching down in my ragged jeans I hold my hand out to Barrel. “Come on now, it’s just Ray.” But he won’t come to me. Damn Mark anyway. Why’s he want this dog for if he’s just gonna neglect it? I asked Teresa what we’re gonna do ‘bout this dog, but she says we’re gonna do nothing. Now how’s that? Mark don’t deserve this dog and she knows it. But Teresa ain’t got it in her to say no to that prince of a son.
Still I know it just ain’t right for a dog not to have anyone to love him or care for him. I’d care for him. I’d hide him inside my coat on the bus. I seen someone do that once. He had one of them chew-wawa dogs just tucked up in a coat with his face popping out. Right there on the bus. Ain’t that something? I’d like to do that.
Barrel is looking at me, wanting me to rescue him. He needs someone to help him. I see it, but what can I do? Shit. I shrug with a heavy sigh and hang my head. “I know boy. I know, I know, I know.” When I stand up I’m all lightheaded. Ain’t no-one around, just me and him. I clasp my hands together and wonder, “What we gonna do?”
On Brothers
“I gotta be getting my tail back home, that’s what I’m saying. I got things to do. Business to take care of. Can’t be holing up in Memphis all year. It’s a nice vacation and all, but shit.”
I shift the plastic bag to my other hand and keep on walking with my head down. My boots are two sizes too big so I watch my steps. I don’t want to bust my leg on a loose rock and get stuck here. I got to get back home, got business to take care once Brenda settles her ass back down and can stop throwing shit at my head.
“Too bad I ain’t got a little truck to carry me back home. Had me a truck, I wouldn’t be hoofing it to the grocery every morning that’s for damn sure.”
Then I hear someone slowing down behind me, a vehicle with a low growling purr. Then a sporty silver car pulls up next to me and stops. I jerk back off the road and stare with my eyes wide. “Whaaaaaaaa?” What I mean is, ‘what mother-uh-uh is this?’
“Ray, that you?” It was Teresa’s ex, Carlton.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah man.” My eyes jump back and forth. I hold my paper bag tight under my arm ‘cause Carlton’s flat eyes are eating away at it. That’s how Carlton is, always looking to trip you up, to take what’s yours. He ain’t a big man, but him sitting in that growling car with his black sunglasses and his manicured nails makes me feel small. And Carlton likes making me feel small, always has.
“You’re out early. Need a ride? I’m heading into work.” Carlton’s looking down at me like we ain’t even been brothers for near forty years. And him sitting in that sports car that ain’t even American when I ain’t got nothing but a pair of second-hand work boots on my feet. Now ain’t I his brother-in-law? Seem like a successful man like him could throw me a bone now and then. How’s he going let me have nothing when he’s got everything? It just ain’t right.
“Maybe next time.” I shuffle my feet and say, “Just out picking up a few things from the grocery. Stretch these old bones. We ain’t young-bloods no more, know what I mean?”
But he don’t know what I mean. Carlton was born rich, his daddy and his granddaddy were lawyers. He ain’t never known how cold it gets when that thick fog rolls in from the lake at night and there ain’t no-one and no-where to go to. He ain’t never woke up on a park bench or under an overpass, stiff and aching with just a sheet of newspapers for cover. Hell, Carlton ain’t known a lean moment since he come up. Now he gonna give me a ride? Just roll on forward Carlton, roll on. I don’t need nothing from you.
“Come on, get in,” Carlton orders like he was my daddy. But hell, he ain’t my daddy. Shit. My old man would’ve grabbed a handful of Carlton’s thick gray hair and jerked him through the window for leaving Teresa like that. Then the old man would’ve danced a jig on Carlton’s liver. My old man didn’t play and I ain’t playing either, not with Carlton.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll catch you later.” I place my hand on the package under my arm and then nod up the road. “I’m almost to Teresa’s. Go ahead and go on.” Go on up to your downtown lawyer office and stick it to someone else. I ain’t studying Carlton today.
“You sure? Won’t take a minute.” Carlton glances in the rearview mirror, already looking to leave. Then he goes on and leaves me on the side of the road like I was some worthless piece of trash he done tossed out the window. But that’s alright, I don’t need him. I just need me a little truck. But shit, he ain’t even considering me or that little truck. Like a little truck was anything to him.
At Teresa’s house I put my beer in the refrigerator, then carry one with me to the television and turn on a John Wayne movie. It was that western, the one where he’s a sheriff. Can’t remember the name, but he’s one bad mother. People think they bad nowadays. Think they could mess with the Duke. But that ain’t nothing but asking for trouble. Shit. I done had trouble. I ain’t asking for more.
“Oh hell, Duke, hell. Give it to ‘em. That’s right, that’s right.” I rock back in Teresa’s rocking chair and Carlton slips from me. I see Barrel lying outside breathing easy in the sun and I breathe easy in my chair with my beer and the Duke.
On Elvis
“Hey Uncle Ray, who’s the biggest musician to come out of Memphis and…”
Golden boy Mark is sitting on the couch messing with me. He knows I know the answer. But that’s alright. I know what he’s about. I take a drink, belch and then put my hand to my ear. “What’s that?”
When he repeats his question I cock my head and roll my hand for him to continue. “Alright, come on, come on, lay it on me. Don’t hold back now.” Mark’s a good kid, a smart-ass, but he’s eighteen and that’s alright. He’s stayed with Teresa when his parents split. Mark don’t know how good he’s got it sitting there working hard at looking ragged in his mall clothes and his spiky hair. Looking ragged is the one thing I ain’t never had to work hard at. Shit.
Mark says, “And has sold million of records and…?” smiling that slick smile at me like I don’t know what he’s doing. He’s like Carlton, thinks he’s smarter than everybody else. Shit. I know a little something too. I know.
I sit forward in my rocking chair and nod my head expectantly. “Come on now, don’t leave me hanging. I can handle it Mark, I can handle it. Come on, roll with it.”
“And dresses real nice and is real good looking?”
“Ah hell, Mark, wasn’t nobody more handsome than Elvis.” I feel my face get hot. “Why you think they call him the King? Can’t nobody top him.”
Mark shakes his head, “Nope. Not Elvis. Justin Timberlake.”
“Whaaaaaaa?” I fall back into my chair, clutch my hands over my heart and demand, “Who the hell is Justin Timberland?”
“Timberlake,” Mark corrects like he knows something just because he’s got him a brand new four-wheel drive truck and a job answering telephones after school at Carlton’s office. Shit. He don’t know nothing, not yet. Give him a few more years, that smirk’ll be off his face for sure. That’s all he needs, little time, little experience. Then his blonde head’ll know the flow, he’ll know.
I turn to Teresa. “T, you hear the shi—hear what’s coming out your son’s mouth?” She smiles on the soft leather couch in her red and white jogging suit, just home from playing tennis at her club. Her hair’s still soft with a coppery shine while mine is the color and feel of a wire brush. Her skin’s still smooth and tan. She looks twenty years younger than me instead of eight years older and pushing sixty. How’d that happen is what I want to know?
“He’s messing with you, Ray.” Teresa stretches her legs out on the glass-topped coffee table next to three large books with pictures of angels on the cover. I like looking at those books while she’s nursing at the hospital. There’s one angel that looks just like Mama with dark curling hair and a sad smile that’s too far away even in the picture. That’s my favorite.
T adds, “You know Elvis is the real answer.”
“That’s Mr. Presley to you, Mark,” I say lighting a cigarette. “Your mama ever tell you I met him?” I waggle three fingers in the air. “Three times. And he spoke to me once.” I look to T for backup and she nods.
But Mark just grins and flaps his hand dismissively. “Yeah right.”
T blows smoke delicately from her mouth just like that time when she was thirteen and Daddy caught her smoking behind that church on Highland. She didn’t smoke for a long time after that. Or talk or eat. It hurt too much. T says, “Three times, Mark.”
But Mark has to keep on. “Didn’t you used to follow him around all the time at night and pretend to be his bodyguard and karate partner? Didn’t you get thrown in jail?”
“There’s that, there’s that. But I was only busted once, that time down on Vance.” I shift my eyes to T for a second and say, “He’s a little too young for all that. But you know what I’m talking ‘bout.” She’s inspecting her manicured nails. They’re red too.
Then I lean forward in my seat until I’m about out of it and jab my cigarette at Mark. “Know who Brenda likes? Ever hear of Mekallica? Brenda loves that band. Mekallica.” Then something pops in my head and I say, “By the way T, Brenda call yet?”
T thinks for a second. When she says, “Not that I know of,” I notice there ain’t nothing black and rotting in her mouth. It’s all straight white pearls in there. Mark too.
“If she calls let me know. I got some business to discuss with her. Now that other one, the man,” I hold my arm out to T and snap my fingers repeatedly. “You know, the man in the big office… The Man, T, the Man.”
T and Mark look at each other confused until T’s face opens up. “The president?”
I settle back in my chair. “That’s the one. He calls, tell that son of a b,” I remember Mark is in the room so I say, “Tell him I ain’t taking his call. Just Brenda.”
We laugh because I’m funny. That’s why Brenda likes my ass, I make her laugh. Long as we don’t drink too much it’s good like that. But when Brenda and I hit it hard, things get rough. Too many things come up from the past. It don’t even matter that old shit happened long before we met. We just turn on each other when we ought to be helping the other out.
Only my ass is sick of always having to fight about things we did or done wrong. Or had done wrong to us. I know there ain’t a damn thing I can do about the past except keep it in the past. Only, I ain’t ever figured out how do to that. Shit. Brenda ain’t either.
So I play along with Mark, let him think he’s slicking me, pretend everything’s all fun and games, keep T laughing while I’m here ‘cause she hasn’t figured it out either. With all her clubs and her church group shit and her new downtown townhouse overlooking the river, Teresa still got that same scared rabbit look in her eyes from when she was little.
On Texas
I’m sitting in my chair, watching a dance competition, feeling pretty good with my beer in my hand and Mark has to go and say, “You ever been in the military Uncle Ray?”
Mark has that smile on his face again, the slick one.
I take a drink of my tall-boy and say, “Nah, nah… nah. They wouldn’t have me. And I wanted in so bad. Broke my heart. Things would have been… I tried five times. Once in Denver, twice in Tulsa.” My memory fades so I ask T for help about the other places.
T says, “I don’t know, Ray. What about Texas?”
“Oh hell T, I didn’t do nothing in Texas but get the hell out as soon as I could. Remember when Daddy took me down to Texas after Mama? Godda,” Mark is looking at me so I say, “Ever tell you about the time Daddy had us sleeping in that field off the main highway with all them hobos?”
T’s head bobs up and down. She says, “I know about that one,” and smashes her cigarette in a clear, glass ashtray shaped like Florida.
“How we were sleeping in the tall grass and a damn car run off the highway into the field and ran over the man sleeping right next to us. Killed him dead.” Just saying it makes me lose all the air in my body. I take a deep breath then empty about half my beer into my mouth.
Mark shrugs his thick line-backer shoulders. “Why were you sleeping in a field?”
“Whaaaaaa?” I stop rocking my chair and shoot Mark a stern look. “You want to go deep, huh? ‘Cause I can go deep Mark, way deep. Can’t I, T? I can go deep.”
T nods. She knows, she knows.
“Go deep?” Mark laughs. “Sounds like a football play.” That slick smile again, but that’s okay, that’s okay.
“Oh I got a play, Mark. Let me lay this on you.” I take another drink and belch softly. “After Mama died from the cancer¸ the girls were all grown and scattered to hell. I was only twelve, the youngest, so I stayed with the old man and slept wherever the hell he said. You would’ve too.” T and I looked at each other. She knows.
T says, “He got up to two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle for a while. He was all bull, especially when he drank.” She gives me a wide-eyed look even after all these years.
I say, “Remember that time he got a little worked up and the cops wouldn’t even come out when Mama called.”
Mark says, “Why not?”
“Why not?” I nearly shout. “’Cause they were scared of him. Shit. We all were. He was a big mother-uh-uh. Big one. And bad too. B A D, bad.” Thinking about Daddy makes my stomach tight and my beer sour in my mouth. If only Mama had lasted a little longer. Shit.
“Yeah right.” Mark flexes his arms and crosses them over his chest.
I turn to T. “Remember that woman from the Red Cross he married after Mama? You ever know she had him thrown in jail for thirty days for dislocating her jaw. Oh no, no, no, T. She wasn’t having none of that.”
T laughs and says, “What about the other woman he married, the one in Alabama? What was her name?”
“The other one.” I scratch my beard and think. “Hell, I don’t know, Gladys I think. I was in that reform school down in Houston when he was with her. You know he never divorced any of them women T?”
Mark says, “Reform school?” like he just heard I was someone’s wife in Alcatraz.
I say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s when the old man took off and left me on my own in Texas. The state picked me up ‘cause I didn’t have anywhere to stay. Spent my fourteenth birthday digging a ditch. How you like that, huh? How you like that?”
I turn to T. “And I’ll never forgive those blankety-blank aunts of ours letting me rot like that. They could have taken me in, Sally or Penny. But hell no. Not me. I had to dig godda… dig ditches out in that sun.” I look at the boy. “And let me tell you Mark, that sun was hot. It was hot, hear me?”
Mark won’t look at me. Like he’s embarrassed at what’s come out of my mouth. T’s just nodding her head and I can’t keep my eyes on them. I look out the glass door and catch Barrel sniffing around his empty food bowl.
I say, “Mark, you need to feed your dog and get him out off that chain. He don’t look so good. He looks kinda…” I looked at the dog again. “Hell, I don’t know. He don’t look good. You need to do something for him.”
Mark shrugs and says, “I fed him this morning.”
“No, no, no Mark. No, no, no. That dog ain’t had no food since yesterday. You get on out there and feed him. Give him something to eat. It ain’t right. That dog is depending on you. What you want him for if you ain’t taking care of him?”
Mark looks at T. “I fed him this morning.”
T says, “Ray, don’t get so worked up. The dog’s fine. It’s alright.”
“But it ain’t alright, T. It ain’t,” I say, leaning towards the glass door. “Look at him out there, left all alone. Just look at him.”
They look but they don’t see what I see because they don’t know what I know. They don’t know nothing.
* * * * *
Molasses
“They sorry. They ain’t nothin’ but a pair of sorry no ‘counts.” I stare down the dusty lane where Arliss and Terrance had run.
Terrance had said, “You best stay with the womenfolk, Molasses,” and Arliss had laughed. Then they rushed on down the drive, horsing around, pushing each other, stirring up the red dust with their bare feet; Arliss and Terrance when it had always been Arliss and me. Now I sit on this raggedy porch with flies and gnats buzzing ’round my head like I was some stinkin’ dog while they out running wild like a pair of Injuns.
But even still, I want to be with them, them boys, even if Terrance is thirteen and Arliss is just past twelve. Even if I am only almost ten.
“Molasses. Hmph!” I stick my chin on my fist, elbow on my knee and search the drive for a sign of them. “Don’t think I ain’t knowing where you two knuckleheads is going,” I whisper, “‘cause I know. And I gonna laugh my head off when you gets yours.”
Still, I’m sure sorry in the gut to be stuck on this porch with the blazing sun sittin’ right on my shoulders and nothing but a dirt yard before me and a couple of chickens pecking ‘round, too stupid to know any better. Bet them chickens would rather be out with them boys too. It’s only me and them chickens and this makes me feel low-down and mean so I throw a dirt clod hard as I can and hit that rooster right in the head.
Still it don’t make me feel none better like it should.
The screen door bangs shut behind me so I whip around. Mama’s standing there with big pink and blue curlers piled high on her head. Mama done wrapped a belt around her waist just to hold that big bag of a black dress to her bones. She so tiny Arliss already has to look down when she speak to him. I figure I’ll be doing that soon but I don’t like to think on it. Mama’s face so tired all the time. It gonna be all the more tired by the time I look down into it.
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