The Dwelling: A Novel (46 page)

The edges of the man wavered, features shivered. The nose, long and sleek, grew bulbous and mottled with red. The eyes darkened, became shot through with red veins. The great height that he had first seen shrank. The girth widened. His old man looked into Richie’s eyes with a kind of longing that Richie felt through the fog of drink.

“Dad?” The old man smiled. He raised a hand in a practiced gesture, and one Richie remembered with complications. In the raised hand was a glass. Amber liquid sloshed. His father did not speak, but Richie heard it in his head:
Salud.
It was not raised to lips (as it would have been,
Salud,
to his brothers and his mother, his mother’s face a mask, smile plastered thinly, that would be early in the evening; as the night wore on, the toasts would be fewer and finally they would be gone and the old man would just sit at the table leaning closer and closer to his drink, silent except for the unintelligible mumbling and the clink of the glass on the table, the splash of bourbon or whiskey into the glass all of it repeated repeatedly his mother’s mask stiff and angry by bedtime and the reek of another burned dinner in the oven kept warm because his father didn’t like to eat at night when he was pouring a few). But the smile stayed there, on his lips, also a practiced motion. The old man’s facial expression changed only with the slackening of his muscles as the night wore on. The smile was one of acquiescence,
I mean no harm. Don’t mean it a bit.

The glass caught light from somewhere and sparkled. Richie stared into the face of his father, dead nearly fifteen years, victim of his own submission, not to his mother but the bottle, and felt longing for him. The
salud
of earliest evening, the Saturday mornings when he was
feeling a little rough today little man
and they would slip out, the four of them, for bacon and eggs and coffee
hot and black please
while his mother slept or fumed behind the closed door of the big bedroom.

“Dad?” Richie whispered, afraid that his voice would frighten him off break some spell and he would be without him. It sounded like a sob.

The figure wavered and Richie’s father was gone.

In his place was the tall man. He smiled broadly, dragging it out over large yellow teeth, his lips stretching uncomfortably over them, their wrinkles smoothing out and appearing in his cheeks. The smile was broad and pleased. The Rajah.

His lips did not move but, as with his dad, Richie heard him.

Do you hurt?

He looked down to the computer screen with just the corner of his eye. The words on the screen sat passively, like little soldiers, waiting.
At your go.

(eat it up)

Richie looked back at the man. “No,” he said.

The old man smiled. And faded into the black.

Then the moaning began. Low, at first, high-pitched like animal wails, the howls of pain from something young. Richie strained to see the place where the man had been, but the sound was everywhere in the room; he swung his head around. Everywhere seemed to be movement.

He backed up to the hatch, something flew by him, hands outstretched, flashing past in a split second. Under the low growls of pain and fear were soft sobs, hiccuping sobs. The noise rose to a cacophony and he pressed his hands over his ears. He stumbled backward, one foot hitting his glass and sending it falling down the hatch. He heard it break on the bare floor. He followed it, tripping first on the edge, catching himself on the ladder and then, in haste, missing the last step and toppling down to the floor of the hall, where it was bright and cool. He hit the floor right knee first and pain shot up through his leg and into his hip and he groaned, throwing his head back. He brought his knee up and cradled it.

He rocked, briskly rubbing his injury. Broken glass sparkled in the hall light.
Dad.
Drunk even when he was dead. Drinking. His version of heaven. Richie’s knee ached and he wondered if it was bleeding. He looked up through the dark hole of the attic. His head throbbed with the beginnings of a headache. The hall smelled of bourbon. Like his dad.
Salud.

Silence fell down around him. The only sound audible was the hum from his computer, still on, and he listened to it.

He sat that way for a minute, then stood up and hobbled, limping, to his bedroom. He pushed open the door and fell onto the bed, leaving all the lights on downstairs, the light on in the hall, the computer on upstairs, and the music on downstairs, although he didn’t remember it playing before. Not since Jen left.

Let it play. Leave the lights. Let the neighbors think there’s a party going on.

Salud.

Just before sleep and alcohol claimed him for the night he thought
the DTs. Bad really bad Bramley.

(do you hurt)

Rare November sunshine streamed through the tall windows that Mia Tia was famous for, and glanced off the china and glasses. The sun was so bright, reflecting as it did off the fresh, thin layer of snow outside, that it made some places in the restaurant hard to look at. It was too bright, and Glenn Darnley could feel the beginnings of a headache. A tension headache. A bright patch of sun on the floor seemed to dull and fade the carpet, and she tried to make out the pattern. She didn’t feel dizzy exactly, but things were swimming around inside her. She dared not look at her plate.

She took a sip of wine from her glass and it did not help, might, in fact, have made the nausea worse. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply in an attempt to stave it off.

“Glenn?”

She was having lunch with Gavin and Helen, their treat, a fact that had not gone unremarked upon when Gavin saw what she’d ordered.
For Chrissakes, Glenny, have a steak! It’s my treat!
On the plate in front of her was a small, unadorned salad and a piece of grilled fish—no sauce. Between the two was a small pile of roast potatoes coated in some sort of Creole batter that Gavin had insisted was ambrosia and that she
must
try. He’d piled a half-dozen on her plate and teased her about watching her figure. She had meant to counter with a remark upon his growing waistline, and would have, if she hadn’t believed deeply and sincerely that if she opened her mouth all that she had thus far eaten and drunk would come sailing up and onto his medium-rare steak and potato ambrosia.

“Are you all right, dear?” Helen asked. Glenn opened her eyes to Helen’s soft brown ones, frowning in concern. “You’re just pale as the tablecloth,” she said.

Glenn pressed a hand to her cheek and smiled wanly. “I’m fine. A little indigestion, I’m afraid.”

“From what?” Gavin bellowed. “There’s nothing on your goddamn plate!”

She shrugged gently. “I’m afraid I might have an ulcer,” she said. “I just can’t eat the things I used to. If you don’t mind—” Glenn pulled her purse into her lap from the floor and rummaged through it for her antacids. She put two into her mouth discreetly and chewed. “There. Better in a flash,” she said, without conviction. Lately, the antacids had not helped. She chewed the thick chalky tablets and kept her smile firm.

Helen stared her down, kindly. “I’ve never heard of someone going pale from heartburn,” she said.

Glenn swallowed the rest of the tablets and they left her mouth coated and dry. Awful things. She picked up her white wine and sipped.

It occurred to her very suddenly that it was not going to stay down. She grabbed her napkin, muttered an
excuse me
through it and moved very quickly to the ladies’ room.

She flushed the toilet a second time and wiped her mouth again with the napkin from the table. It was fouled with vomit and saliva. She grimaced, folded it into itself and stepped out of the stall, mortified, unsure as to whether she had ever vomited in a public rest room before in the whole course of her life.
Who says life stops at fifty?

Helen was waiting for her. “Are you all right now?” she asked. She handed Glenn her purse, left at the table.

Glenn nodded, taking it. She put it down beside the sink and turned the water on, letting it run cold.

“I don’t suppose you’re pregnant?” Helen asked wryly, while Glenn rinsed her face and mouth with cold water from the tap. The rest room was empty except for the two of them. Her mouth tasted terrible; like tinned peas, or something equally distasteful.

“I don’t think so. Unless I’ve been sleeping more deeply than usual.”

Helen did not smile. “Has this been going on long?”

It wasn’t the first time that Glenn had vomited after eating, but it was not information that she was about to share. Not even with Helen. Maybe with Howard, if he had been there. Thinking of him made her feel worse. “I’ve likely got some sort of bug,” she said.

“Well, let me tell you what I’ve noticed,” Helen said. “You have lost about ten or more pounds since the fall. I saw you in your yellow dress at the broker’s luncheon and then in that same dress at Thanksgiving. It hung on you like a hanger at Thanksgiving.”

“Isn’t that good?” she said, trying to sound light. She rinsed the napkin under warm water and then patted her face with it. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was pale.

“You pop Tums like they’re breath mints. You never eat anymore. My god, Glenn! Even Gavin noticed. Are you sick or what?”

The two women locked eyes. Glenn shook her head. “I’m sure I’m fine.”

Helen pressed her lips together. Then she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue just a little way. She pressed her teeth into it.

Glenn frowned. “What on earth are you doing?” she said.

Helen did not smile. “I’m biting my tongue. Please go to the doctor.” And with that she left the room.

Glenn opened her purse and took out her comb. She fixed her hair and reapplied makeup, which improved her color. Her stomach felt awful. There was an ache, almost omnipresent, but after vomiting it always felt hot, like a wound broken open and not healing well. There was a hardness there that she could feel only from the inside; she had tried on numerous evenings to feel something by pressing down on her abdomen—fingers searching, terrified and vainly, for a lump, a tumor, a place where the pain was worse than everywhere else.

Rarely could she eat anything anymore of any significance. She kept her meals very small, these days, and very, very bland. She had tried buttermilk, her mother’s remedy for upset stomach, and for a while that had seemed to help. Certainly an ulcer was not out of the question: her mother and an aunt had both suffered in their lifetimes, and had given up eating their own famous pickled eggs due to it. Horrible combination: of all things to give up, pickled eggs seemed a choice preordained.

She put lipstick on her mouth and patted the excess on a piece of tissue that she pulled from her purse. She looked much better. Except for the hollows around her eyes and the slackness in her cheeks.

Twelve pounds, it had been. Maybe more by now. She hadn’t been on a scale in two weeks, but the weight seemed to be falling off with an alarming regularity.

Very bad sign, weight loss. Diabetes. She’d had a cousin with diabetes, she thought. She had fuzzy memories of surreptitious blood tests in the home of a distant aunt, and the adults whispering concern.

’Course, diabetes didn’t make you throw up, did it? Glenn patted her hair, still fashionably short, and smoothed the front of her blouse over an unfamiliarly flat belly. The weight had come off so quickly she had yet to get used to it. She looked pretty good still. She supposed, eventually, she would look worse. She didn’t have a thin frame. She needed a little meat on her large bones. That was what made the weight loss seem so alarming to a tiny, delicate thing like Helen. It was the big bones jutting through the fine fabrics Glenn wore. She pushed open the door to the ladies’ room and felt suddenly as though the whole restaurant would be watching her. As though they had known.

She’s sick, you know. Poor thing. Her husband died last year.
But, of course, no one was watching, except Helen, who still had a slightly suspicious look on her face, the sort reserved for mothers. Gavin was chewing, and had another bite of steak on deck. He smiled happily at her, sauce on his outer lip. Her stomach flopped.

No appetite, either. She would have to stop lunching with others.

Richie woke to the phone ringing. He opened his eyes to sunshine, blazing through the uncurtained window, and flinched against it. His head thudded with a tremendous headache, a monstrous headache, a headache of epic proportions.
In the corner, introducing Richie Bramley, the lightweight champion of medium-sized publishers everywhere! And in this corner! Ladies and gentlemen, the Headache! No contest whatsoever!

The phone jangled sharply into his very bones. He willed it to stop ringing. Briefly some of the night came back to him—the argument with Jen. Remorse hit him worse than the headache. But it was not as long-lasting.

He yanked himself out of bed, grimacing against the pounding in his head
Excedrin Headache #568 the one where the guy kills himself
and ran down the stairs grabbing the phone on the ring.

Mouth full of snakes, he said, “Hello.”

“Dad?” RJ seemed to scream it into the phone.

His head pounded and his stomach felt queasy. He hadn’t thrown up after a night of drinking in about three years. He would get a sign for the bathroom, “900 Vomit-Free Days,” if he kept it down.

“What’s up, RJ?” he said tiredly, pained.

“Are you okay? You sound sick or something.”

“I’m fine. What’s up?” Razors stabbed his temples. Rocks rolled in his stomach. Bits and pieces of the things he had said came back.
I don’t care what you do. I just wanted to get laid.
And the never to be forgotten,
Just fuck off.

“I need you to pick me up from the Science Center tonight. We’re out at three and me and Jason are going there to use the library for the science project. Mom’s got a late meeting and she can’t do it, and if I take the bus, I have to walk about four miles and, anyway, I have to be back by six for my math tutor. Okay?”

Richie felt like his brain was maybe swollen. It felt like it was pressing against the front of his skull. The voice on the phone cut through it like a rock through a window, and yet he was strangely outside it. As though he was still drunk. He tried to think how much sleep he’d had. “What time is it?” he said.

“It’s eight-ten,” RJ told him.

Eight-ten? He couldn’t have crashed until three or more. He couldn’t remember. He’d drunk a lot.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the Understatement of the Day, heard right here at Richie Bramley’s House of Drunk a Lot?

“Okay?” RJ repeated. “Pick me up around five? Is that good?”

Richie just wanted to crawl back into bed. Maybe to lie there and die. He’d take a couple of aspirin, maybe some orange juice. Alcohol strips the body of vitamin C.

“Yeah. Five o’clock,” he said.

“Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Late night.” Guilt flooded over him then, the horror of chatting to his little boy with a hangover the size of a horse. The specter of death standing beside him, poking him with his stick.
Na na na boo boo.

“Oh, sorry,” RJ said. “’Kay, I’ll see you later, Dad. ’Bye.”

He hung up and the dial tone was somehow that much worse in his ear and Richie put the phone down, standing on weak, unreliable legs. His body felt like it desperately wanted to shake, but the effort was too much. He stood there for a moment, then stumbled to the front door and opened it, allowing frigid nearly December air to rush over him until he was chilled. It smelled good and cool, and distracting. When he shut the door he felt like a piece of shit again.

What am I doing to myself?

He walked into the kitchen on shaking legs and opened the fridge and got a glass of orange juice. He found the aspirin in the cupboard and swallowed four. He stood there for a moment, leaning against the counter, and thought,
That’s not so bad, maybe I’ll just stay up now.
Then the juice hit the stomach and rumbled threats, and he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cool front of the cupboard door and wanted to die.

He went slowly and painfully back to bed.

*  *  *

When Richie woke up for the second time that day, he was feeling better but still rough. He wandered downstairs and checked out the clock on the mantel. It was after noon. He’d slept most of the day away, and what he thought about first was the book. He wondered, painfully, if he had lost the momentum he had built up over the previous two days, and castigated himself. The headache was better, but present, and he felt foggy and tired. And contrite.

While coffee brewed he did a quick damage-control assessment and decided there was little he could do except maybe shift some karma around by putting in a day’s work at the computer and making it count. He could call Jen, but he didn’t think she’d want to hear from him just yet. He would give it a couple of days: a couple of days would soften the things he’d said,
Just fuck off
and
just wanted to get laid,
and give her some perspective on maybe how
he
felt, having bullshit news like that piled on him. It was a bitchy, princessy thing to do:
Oh Richie I’m so sorry I’m getting married but I want your
approval
so I won’t feel like the shit I really am.

He went to the front door to get the paper. He’d play with the crossword as usual and go on up to work on the book. Maybe later he’d go for a walk. The fresh air would clear his head.

Richie pulled open the front door and lying at his feet was a small cardboard box with an envelope taped to the top. A light dusting of snow covered it. He bent down and picked it up, shaking the snow off. “Richie” was written across the middle of the envelope in Jennifer’s handwriting. The box was taped shut.

He stared at it for a minute, and then looked up the street for her car. There were no cars other than his parked on the street and, in any case, no footprints on the path, just a fine layer of new snow. He nodded, knowing this was not good (
maybe I shouldn’t open it it could be a bomb, ha ha)
and reached around and casually got the paper from the mailbox. He took both inside.

He poured himself a cup of coffee first, very aware of the box under his arm, as though it were a live thing, writhing with some kind of malice. The kitchen was still full of dishes stacked haphazardly from the night before. The table was in the dining room, still covered with the tablecloth his mother had given him, although the wrinkled folds were a little less prominent. It was stained here and there with drops of red wine. Two empty bottles sat on top. The bottle of bourbon—half-empty, in true alcoholic fashion—was in the living room, uncapped.

He took everything, coffee, paper, small box, with him to the table in the dining room, two sides of him arguing as to what was in the box. What the letter said. Apology? I’m coming back, here’s a present? Dead flowers and a cryptic note, maybe. He pushed it to the other side of the table and Richie pretended to read the paper. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of eagerness.

His resolve lasted no more than a second or two. He pulled off the envelope and opened it.

There was no greeting. It said, “Here are the few things left from ‘us.’ I would like back my roaster, my pink sweater that you stole, and the ring my grandfather gave you for Christmas last year. It is a family heirloom and I don’t think you should have it. I would appreciate your dropping these things off at Karen’s, then we won’t have to see each other.” It was unsigned.

Could be from anyone, ha ha.

His heart fell into his stomach. His stomach went hard and cold. His face twisted into a pained look that stiffened his cheeks, but made his mouth feel weak and shaky, as though he was going to cry.

He opened the box.
Shit.
First thing he saw was the little black velvet box, and he didn’t have to open it to know what was inside. Two years earlier, after a huge fight about his drinking, he had bought her a promise ring, a little delicate thing with a small diamond, worth nothing at all to a jeweler. The tiny rock, he’d written in the card that went with the ring, was supposed to be the “seed” from which his promises would grow.
Ha ha.
She’d been moved to tears. He took out the box and opened it, hoping it would be empty. It wasn’t. The ring was firmly inside the fine velvet slot. He closed it and looked uncaringly at the other things. A ring of keys from the old place. His gold chain from the eighties that he’d given her to wear. His Mets T-shirt, rolled up and shoved into the corner. His single pair of cuff links (which she had stolen); a card to him from his brother in L.A. And that was it.

Could be from anyone.

He leaned his head on one hand and covered his face with the other. His headache returned and his heart pounded. For a second he thought he wasn’t going to be able to breathe. His eyes hurt. They wanted, he knew, to cry.

No. He’d take the pain. He’d earned it. It was his.

(eat it up does it hurt)

Richie’s head shot up out of his hands and looked at the ceiling. The old man. Had he dreamed it? Does it hurt? he’d said. Does it hurt? Something had been on the computer. A poem. Hurting.

He swallowed, his mouth dry. He took a gulp of hot coffee.

Eat it up sweet pain,
something like that. Written on the computer. His dad, standing there in the middle of the room, raising a glass to his son. Like a warning.

The room felt small and close. His eyes glanced at the bottle of bourbon (half-empty) on the living-room table and, just looking at it, he could taste the bitter, sharp smell. He’d been very, very drunk. A bad drunk.

He’d dreamed it, of course. It was so symbolic. Dreamed it or hallucinated the whole thing. Some alcohol could do that to you. (And if he hallucinated, how far away was his first blackout?)

At the edges of his mind, various realities, epiphanies threatened, poking into the sides of his consciousness like little wasps. Blankly, he moved them away.

I’m going to have to watch my drinking,
he thought. On the heels of that was the announcer, proclaiming the Second Understatement of the Day. He ignored it and piled the few things into the box, stuffed the letter—
could be from anyone ha ha
—into the box on top and closed it. It got shoved onto the buffet where it was lost among other stuff, the junk and miscellany of everyday life, letters, bills, keys, piles of change and books. You could hardly make it out with all the other stuff.

Richie opened the paper to the crossword and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. He would get upstairs and then everything would be fine. A good day at the computer was all he needed. All he ever needed. And pretty much all he hadn’t fucked up yet that day.

Before going up, he grabbed the spotlight from the toolbox at the back door. Encased in the bright yellow cage was a 120-watt bulb. It cast light for miles. He took it with him to the attic.

All the way up he felt defeated and he hadn’t even started.

Richie stared unproductively at the screen for a good two hours. The crossword puzzle was on the small table where his mouse normally sat, completed; he’d read Ann Landers, his horoscope and, out of desperation, an article about Cher. There was a review about a jazz compilation that he thought sounded pretty good, but if he was honest, he might have said the same thing about a review of
The Monkees: A Retrospective.
He’d smoked a pile of cigarettes and finished his coffee.

He wrote a page that wasn’t bad, but had been hard in coming with at least as many words deleted as kept. Around two he decided he needed a break, something in his stomach and another couple of aspirin to stave off the headache that was coming back, a bad one, that he could feel niggling at the back of his neck, that probably had less to do with his hangover (still in good standing) than the bad morning. So he gave up and went downstairs, toying with the idea of walking downtown, a little fresh air, and boxing up a pile of Jennifer’s shit and sending it to her. See how she liked it. Maybe he’d save that particular thrill for her wedding day. Just thinking the words sent fresh pain into his chest and the headache he had hoped to ward off banged into his skull.

He poured himself more coffee and made a sandwich out of leftover steak, saturating the bread with mustard on one side and ketchup on the other. He cut the meat as thin as possible and the smell turned his stomach slightly, but he had to get something into it. There was nothing else unless he wanted RJ’s cereal, or peanut butter. Neither seemed a comparable prospect so he took the steak sandwich into the dining room and pulled out the rest of the paper.

The sandwich was not sitting nicely in his stomach and his head was pounding anew. He pushed it farther away because the smell was getting to him. He closed his eyes against the pain in his head and just tried to breathe quietly and evenly.

You know what you need?

Everything, in the space of one day, seemed to have gotten away from him. The day before—the trip to town—had been full and easy and
good
.

You know what you need?

His body ached to sleep, or just to lie down and be still. He wished the same for his mind.
Just wanted to get laid. Just fuck off.
There was no way he could lie down then and hope to have a nap. His head would spin with the folly of his death-wish.

The demon liquor.

You know what you need?

Richie carried the remains of his sandwich into the kitchen and took a couple more aspirin. If he took too many more, his ears would start to—
you know what you need?
—ring. He rinsed the glass, which had only held water, and dried it carefully on the dish towel hanging off the handle of the fridge. It caught the overhead light and sparkled. Déjà vu.

You know what you need?
Without thought Richie wandered into the living room, his gait casual and at the same time completely deliberate. At the sofa he leaned over and picked up the bottle (half-empty) of bourbon and poured himself one.

It was awful going down. And instantly soothing and warm, like the voice of an old friend on the phone.