Authors: David Foster Wallace
Then I heard John Wayne's stride in the hall outside, light and even and easy on floors, the stride of a guy with stellar calf-development. I heard his low sigh. Then, though the door was too far behind me to see, for a moment or two I could somehow tell for sure that John Wayne's head was inside the open door. I could feel it clearly, almost painfully. He was looking down at me lying there on the Lindisfarne carpet. There was none of the gathering tension of a person deciding whether or not to speak. I could feel my throat's equipment move when I swallowed. John Wayne and I never had much to say to one another. There wasn't even hostility between us. He ate dinner with us at HmH every so often because he and the Moms were tight. The Moms made little attempt to disguise her attachment to Wayne. Now his breathing behind me was light and very even. No waste, complete utilization of each breath.
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Of us three, it was Mario who had spent the most time with Himself, sometimes travelling with him for location-work. I had no idea what they spoke about together, or how openly. None of us had ever pressed Mario to say much about it. It occurred to me to wonder why this was so.
I decided to get up but then did not in fact get up. Orin was convinced that Himself was a virgin when he met the Moms in his late thirties. I find this pretty hard to believe. Orin will also grant that there's no doubt Himself was faithful to the Moms right up to the end, that his attachment to Orin's fiancee was not sexual. I had a sudden and lucid vision of the Moms and John Wayne locked in a sexual embrace of some kind. John Wayne had been involved with the Moms sexually since roughly the second month after his arrival. They were both expatriates. I hadn't yet been able to identify a strong feeling one way or the other about the liaison, nor about Wayne himself, except for admiring his talent and total focus. I did not know whether Mario knew of the liaison, to say nothing of poor C.T.
It was impossible for me to imagine Himself and the Moms being explicitly sexual together. I bet most children have this difficulty where their parents are concerned. Sex between the Moms and C.T. I imagined as both frenetic and weary, with a kind of doomed timeless Faulknerian feel to it. I imagined the Moms's eyes open and staring blankly at the ceiling the whole time. I imagined C.T. never once shutting up, talking around and around whatever was taking place between them. My coccyx had gone numb from the pressure of the floor through the thin carpet. Bain, graduate students, grammatical colleagues, Japanese fight-choreographers, the hairy-shouldered Ken N. Johnson, the Islamic M.D. Himself had found so especially torturing — these encounters were imaginable but somehow generic, mostly a matter of athleticism and flexibility, different configurations of limbs, the mood one more of cooperation than complicity or passion. I tended to imagine the Moms staring expressionlessly at ceilings throughout. The complicit passion would have come after, probably, with her need to be sure the encounter was hidden. Peterson-allusions notwithstanding, I wondered about some hazy connection between this passion for hiddenness and the fact that Himself had made so many films titled Cage, and that the amateur player he became so attached to was the veiled girl, Orin's love. I wondered whether it was possible to lie supine and throw up without aspirating vomit or choking. The plumed spout of a whale. The tableau of John Wayne and my mother in my imagination was not very erotic. The image was complete and sharply focused but seemed stilted, as if composed. She reclines against four pillows, at an angle between seated and supine, staring upward, motionless and pale. Wayne, slim and brown-limbed, smoothly muscled, also completely motionless, lies over her, his untanned bottom in the air, his blank narrow face between her breasts, his eyes unblinking and his thin tongue outthrust like a stunned lizard's. They stay just like that.
She wasn't dumb — she figured it was likely that they'd let her loose just to see where she'd go.
She went home. She went to the House. She got one of the last trains before they closed the T, probably. It took forever to get from Comm. Ave. down to Enfield Marine in her clogs and skirt in the snow, and melt soaked the veil and made it adhere to the features below. She'd been close to removing the veil to get away from the outside-linebacker of a federal lady anyway. She looked now just like a linen-pale version of what she really looked like. But there was no one about in the snow. She figured if she could speak with Pat M. Pat M. might be prevailed upon to put her in quarantine with Clenette and Yolanda, not let in no law. She could tell Pat about the wheelchairs, try to convince her to dismantle the ramp. The visibility was so bad she didn't see it til she cleared the Shed, the Middlesex County Sheriff's car, fiercely snow-tired, lights going bluely, parked idling in the roadlet outside the ramp, wipers on Occasional, a uniform at the wheel absently feeling his face.
He says 'I'm Mikey, alcoholic and addict and a sick fuck, you know what I'm saying?’
And they laugh and shout out 'You definitely are' as he stands there rocking the podium slightly, blurred a bit through the linen, smearing one side of his face with a laborer's hand as he tries to think what to say. It's another of these round-robin-speaker deals, each speaker picking the next from the smoky lunchtime crowd, jogging up to the fiberboard podium trying to think what to say, and how, for the five minutes each is allotted. The chairperson at the table up by the podium has a clock and a novelty-shop gong.
'Well,' he says, "well so I seen some of the old Mikey come back out yesterday, you know what I'm saying? Fucking scared me to see it. What it was, I was going to take my kid down to the lanes and bowl a couple. With my kid. Who he just got the cast off. So I'm all happy and whatnot, got the day off, see the kid. Quality sober time with the kid. So on and so forth. So I'm all on the happy wagon and like that, about seeing the kid, you know what I'm saying? So, what, so I call up my cunt of a sister. He's living back with them, with Ma and my sister, so I'm calling up my sister to see can I come get the kid at such-and-such time and whatnot. Because you know how the judge said I got to get one of them's fucking consent to even see my kid. You know what I'm saying? Because of the restraining order on the old Mikey, from before. I got to get their permission. And I, what, accept that, I say OK, so I'm calling up all accepting and on the happy wagon for my sister to consent, and she out of the goodness of her heart she makes me wait while she says she's got to check it with Ma. And they consent, finally. And I, what, accept that, you know what I'm saying? And I say I was going to be there at such-and-such time and whatnot, and my sister says ain't I even going to say thank you? Like with the attitude, you know what I'm saying? And I say 't the fuck, what, you want a fucking medal for letting me see my own kid? And the cunt hangs up on me. Oh. Fucking oh. Ever since the judge with the order, it's with the attitude over there, the cunt and Ma both. So after she just hangs up on me a little of the old Mikey I think starts to come out and I go over there and yes all right I got to be honest I do I park on the grass of their fucking lawn, and I go up and go up and I see her and I'm like Fuck you you cunt, and Ma's in the hall behind her in the door, I go Fucking hang up on me why don't you, you should go for some fucking counselling you know what I'm saying? And they don't neither one of them like that verbal comment too much, right? The cunt almost starts laughing and goes, like, I'm telling her to go for counseling?’
Crowd-laughter.
'I mean I ain't exactly coming over there with long-term sobriety, right? And I accept that. But the cunt's got the hook on the door and she's going Who the fuck are you to be telling me to go for fucking counselling after the sick fucking little like stunt you and that bimbo pulled on that kid who only just now even got the cast off? Oh, and no sign of the fucking kid anywhere. Just her and Ma through the screen door, all over the place with the attitude. And now they tell me to get the fuck off their porch, No they tell me, as in like Permission Denied, consent to see my own kid fucking refused. And the cunt still in her fucking bathrobe after noon, and Ma behind her half in the bag already and hanging on to the fucking wall. You know what I'm saying? My serenity's like: See yaa! And I say up boat-ayouse's asses, I'm here for my goddamn kid. And now my sister says she's going for the phone, and Ma's saying The fuck, get the fuck out, Mikey. And plus did I mention no sign of the kid, and I ain't to even like touch the screen door, not without consent. And I'm wanting to fucking kill somebody here, you know what I'm saying? And my sister's getting the antenna out on the phone, and so I go OK I'm fucking leaving, but I like grab my balls at the both of them and go Eat me the boatayouse, you know what I'm saying? Cause now it's the old Mikey back, and now / got with the attitude now, also. I'm wanting to light my cunt of a sister up so bad I can't hardly see to get the truck off the lawn and leave. But and so and but so I'm driving back home, and I'm so mad I all of a sudden try and pray. And I try and pray, driving along and whatnot, and it comes to me I see irregarding of their fucked-up attitude I still need to go back and apologize irregardless, for grabbing my balls at them, cause that's old fucking behavior. I see for my own sobriety's sake I need to go back and try and say I'm sorry. The thought of it just about makes me puke, you know what I'm — but I go back and pull the truck up out front on the street and pray and go back up on the porch, and I fucking apologize, and I go to my sister Please can I at least see the kid to see the cast off, and the cunt goes Fuck you, get the fuck out, we don't accept your fucking apology. And no sign of Ma, and the fucking kid there's no sign of him, so I got to accept her word and don't even know for sure if the cast is even off. But why I needed to share I think is it scared me. I scared me, you know what I'm saying? I was at the counsellor's after and I told him I go I got to get some kind of hold on this fucking temper or I'm going to end up right back in front of the fucking judge for lighting somebody up again, you know what I'm saying? And God fucking forbid it should be somebody that's in my family, because I been that route once too many times already. And I go like Am I nuts, Dr., or what? Do I got a like death-wish or what? You know what I'm saying? The cast just only now finally comes off and I'm wanting to light up the fucking cunt that's got to consent I should get closer than a hundred m.'s to the kid? Is it like I'm trying to set myself up for a drink or what exactly is it with this spring-loaded temper, if I'm sober? The temper and judge is why I fucking got sober in the first place. So what the fuck is this? Well fuck me. I'm just grateful I got some of that out. It's been up in my head, renting space, you know what I'm saying? I see Vinnie's getting ready to fucking gong me. I want to hear from Tommy E. back there against the wall. Yo Tommy! What are you, spanking the hog back there or what? But I'm just glad to be here. I just wanted to get some of that shit out.’
The man's pants' crease was gone at the knee and his Cardin topcoat looked slept in.
'It was good of you to grant me an easement.’
Pat M. tried to recross her legs and shrugged. 'You said you weren't here professionally.’
'Good of you to believe me.' The Assistant District Attorney for Suffolk County's 4th Circuit up on the near North Shore's hat was a good dress Stetson with a feather in the band. He held it up in his lap by the brim and slowly rotated it by moving his fingers along the brim. He'd re-crossed his legs twice. 'We met you and Mars at the Marblehead Regatta for the McDonald's House thing for children, not this summer but either the sum—’
'I know who you are.' Pat's husband wasn't a celebrity but knew a lot of local celebrities, from the mint-reconditioned-sports-car upscale network around Boston.
'Well it's good of you. I'm here about one of your residents.’
'But not professionally,' Pat said. It wasn't a question or verification. She was cool steel when it came to protecting the residents and House. Then back home in her own home she was a shattered husk of a wreck.
'Frankly I'm not sure why I am here. You're just down the hill from the hospital. I've been up at Saint Elizabeth's off and on for three days. Perhaps 1 need to simply air this. The 5th District boys — the P.D.s — speak well of the place. Your House here. Perhaps I need simply to share this, to work up the nerve. My sponsor's no help. He's simply said do it if you want to have any hope of things getting better.’
Anything less than a combination thoroughgoing professional and AA-longtimer would have at least hiked an eyebrow at one of the most powerful and remorseless constables in three counties saying sponsor.
'It's Phob-Comp-Anon,' the A.D.A. said. 'I went through Choices
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last winter and have been working a program of recovery in Phob-Comp-Anon a day at a time to the best of my ability ever since then.’
'I see.’
'It's Tooty,' the A.D.A. said. He did a pause with his eyes closed and then smiled, still with his eyes closed. 'It is, rather, me, and my enmeshment-issues with Tooty's . . . condition.’
Phob-Comp-Anon was a decade-old 12-Step splinter from Al-Anon, for codependency-issues surrounding loved ones who were cripplingly phobic or compulsive, or both.
'It's a long story and not a particularly interesting one, I'm sure,' the A.D.A. said. 'Suffice to say that Tooty's been in torment over some oral-dental-hygienic-violation issues that have their roots we're discovering in some issues from a childhood whose dysfunctionality we — well, which she'd been in denial about for quite some time. It doesn't matter what. My program's my own. The hiding the car keys, the cutting off her credit with different dentists, the checking the wastebaskets for new brush-wrappers five times an hour — my unmanageability's my own, and I'm doing what I can, day by day, to let go and detach with love.’