I’m never like this,
another swore.
It’s the lights, it’s the gambling, it’s the city.
He looked at her skeptically.
Fine,
she said.
I’m lying. It’s none of those things.
What is it, then?
he asked.
It’s you,
she admitted.
But that one had only hours left. He promised to stay in touch, but after a few uninteresting letters back and forth, he abruptly stopped the correspondence.
Most of the girls had big hair, teased and puffy at the crown, flipping up at the sides, like Mary Tyler Moore’s. More than one had a chipped front tooth.
If a girl lived in town, she’d end up wanting to
know
him eventually. He was guarded and distant, a young man who didn’t want to be known, and when a girl asked him why he held back or whined that he didn’t talk enough, he’d pull away even more, not answering her phone calls or stiffening at her touch. She didn’t know shit about his life, she’d say, she didn’t know where he went to high school, where he was from, what his favorite color was, or what his favorite item was from the buffet cart at Circus Circus.
“Do you like the crab cakes at the Flamingo or the salmon cakes at Harrah’s?” some girl would want to know.
“Come on, open up,” she’d whine.
Or, “You could be a killer,” she’d say, teasing.
“Open up,” she’d say again.
“
You
open up,” he’d say, kissing her neck or ear, encouraging whoever she was back into bed.
The big-titted chubby one, Marla, was smart and pushy, though. He actually dated her for nearly a year. Her family was from Las Vegas and she grew up in a suburb on the outskirts of town. She was a senior at the University of Nevada, studying psychology and political science. And she wanted more school after that, good God, graduate school, which Martin thought was an oxymoron. She wanted to teach college one day, maybe even run for office.
Marla wasn’t interested in how he felt about the Flamingo’s crab cakes or Harrah’s salmon, but she wanted to know if he was bullied as a kid or if he was the bully.
“Neither,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” she insisted.
“Neither,” he said again.
“Everybody was one or the other.”
Marla wanted to know why he showed up in Nevada all alone and why he’d stayed so long. She wanted to know why he never talked about his family or feelings. Where did he see himself in five years? How did he feel about the war? Did he ever get so sad that he couldn’t get out of bed? She wanted to know why Martin’s only friend was that skinny guy, Elmer, and she wanted to know how he felt about President Carter and the Panama Canal.
The girl didn’t let up.
“Why won’t you let me in?” she’d ask.
“Come on, tell me what you were like as a boy.”
“What were you like as a teenager?”
“What did your parents say when you told them you were leaving?”
“Can’t we just do what we’re doing?” he’d say.
One night after sex, they were spooning on the couch, naked, and he was so relaxed, nearly asleep, when she started up. “Tell me your secrets, Marty.”
He tried to ignore her and she asked him again.
“Damn it,” he said, sighing, taking his hand away from her breast and running it angrily through his hair.
“I need to know where you come from—and not just the city, either. I know it’s the beach. I know you grew up surfing and smoking pot, but I need to know more,” she said.
He picked up the remote and turned on the television set, where young men who’d been soldiers were now hippies with long hair and ratty beards, holding signs and chanting protests.
“For instance, why weren’t you drafted? I don’t even know that.” She stared at the young men on television.
“I’m fucking color-blind and my feet are flat. You happy now?”
“No, I’m not happy.”
“This isn’t working.”
She took the remote from his hand and muted the TV. “A guy can’t escape where he comes from. He has a history, and even if he’s all clammed up, not telling anyone, he’s still who he is.”
“You’ve taken too many psychology classes, that’s what’s wrong with you.” He snatched the remote back and turned up the volume. Sadie had hopped up onto the couch between the two of them, demanding to be touched. Martin rubbed her fur, her head and ears, and the cat purred loudly.
“I need some time alone,” he said without looking at Marla.
With a huff, she got up off the couch.
He stood up too, and they were looking at each other.
“You’re a dick,” she said.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Fuck you, dick,” she said.
And then, surprising himself, Martin pushed a naked Marla against the living room wall, her big tits bouncing, her mouth stretching into a horrified, blubbering circle.
“You crazy dick,” Marla said, using her hands on the wall to gain traction and stand up. She swept up her blouse from the coffee table and put it on. “I tried hard with you, dick. And you know what? You
were
the bully,” she said. “That’s right, I knew it. A bully
and
a dick. You were. How many kids did you torment? The short one, the fat one?” She was really crying now, stepping violently into her jeans, and buttoning up her blouse. She buttoned it up all wrong, the collar uneven, and she was trying to fix it on the way out the door.
After he heard her slam the main door to his apartment complex, Martin sat down at the kitchen table and thought about things. Regardless of what she called him, he shouldn’t have pushed her against the wall. He almost loved her, her soft body, each perfect curve, and he loved her brain and her mouthy opinions. On a good day, he even loved her questions. Sure, he had no intention of answering them, but it was good to know that she gave a shit. She was right, he was a dick, but he wasn’t always such a terrible guy, and as a boy he certainly wasn’t the bully—she was wrong about that.
He thought about Manhattan Beach. He thought about the hospital and Penny the nurse, who seemed to suspect his secret and seemed to forgive him. Leaving that little girl banged up by the curb would always be the worst thing he’d done, the thing he couldn’t shake. But that little girl was a teenager now, probably fine, all patched up and probably even walking and getting into her own kind of trouble.
• • •
When Martin got caught at the restaurant with his hand in that secret fridge, the boss fired him. He took a couple of weeks off, gambled and hung out with a depressed Elmer, who was also fired, and then filled out a few applications for jobs. Within the month, Martin started waiting tables at a more casual seafood shack downtown. He liked it better, no more starched uniform or shiny shoes. He liked the way the creamy clam chowder smelled as he carried it to the tables, and he liked that the little old lady boss asked everyone to call her by her first name, Ilene, and that she gave the employees an endless supply of chowder and hot bread when they worked at least a six-hour shift.
Ilene had gray hair that she wore up in a messy bun. She wore funky floral dresses and dark nylons that she pulled up to her knees. She was sweet and approachable, always wanting to sit down and flatter you while you counted your tips.
“You’re some kind of waiter,” she’d say.
“What a bright future you have,” she’d tell them.
Martin talked to Ilene the way he hadn’t talked to anyone in years. He told her about his family’s restaurants and how he wasn’t sure he’d ever return.
He admitted he lied to his father on the phone.
He told her that he used to drink too much, but he was getting that under control.
He said he always wanted to go to school but didn’t know what to study.
He told her about his cat Sadie’s antics.
He said that he didn’t know how to talk to girls his own age.
He told her he didn’t drive.
He admitted he was afraid he would always be a disappointment.
At her urging, Martin signed up for morning cooking classes, which kept him out of the bars and casinos during the week. He found that he didn’t drink as much at home. Sometimes just a couple of beers relaxed him fine and helped him to sleep.
He was surprised how much he loved the cooking classes, how he looked forward to the mornings when something particularly interesting was, as his teacher said,
on the menu
. He was learning how to make a mean omelet: flat, perfect eggs, how to chop onions and heat them into honey before folding them over with pink cubes of ham. He was learning how to whip cream into a sturdy point and bake a flourless chocolate cake, how to make French sauces, frittatas, roux and pilafs, a Thai-spiced fish.
“Tell me what you made in class today,” Ilene would say when he arrived at work. He’d be putting on his apron and she’d stand there, listening carefully to each word he said.
Twice his family came out to visit, this last time a few days ago. His parents pulled up to the curb in a new light-blue Caddie with his sister and her baby, Billy Jr., in the backseat.
Martin watched them climb out of the car from the upstairs window. He stuck his head out and hollered hello and waved. They looked up at him, smiling, waving back.
Sandy, who now ate her food and was a normal, healthy weight, handed Billy Jr. off to Martin’s mom. She walked to the back of the car and opened the trunk. It seemed she was struggling to pull out the two oversized suitcases and Martin wondered why his dad just stood on the lawn with his arms crossed. Getting the suitcases out of the trunk was something that his father had always insisted upon doing; even when Martin was a teenager and could help out, his father shooed him away.
After dinner his parents went for a walk on the Strip and he took his sister and the baby back to his apartment. She put Billy Jr. to sleep on the couch and they moved into the kitchen, where she told Martin that she was pregnant again and so happy. She explained that Billy Sr. was working long hours these days, that they were saving up to buy a bigger house and that’s why he didn’t come out this time. She said that she hoped they’d see Martin back in California this Christmas.
“You know the restaurant business,” he said. “I can’t get time off. It’s busy season.”
“It’s sad that you never come home,” she said.
They sat together at that table, drinking coffee, the cat purring in Sandy’s lap, and he told her about cooking school, his new job and boss, and about Marla, pretending she was still his girlfriend when really he hadn’t spoken to her in nearly a year.
“Where’s she now?” Sandy asked.
“Visiting her folks,” he said.
“I’d like to meet her.”
“You’d love her,” he said.
“Is she
The One
?” his sister said, raising her eyebrows.
“Possibly,” Martin said.
Sandy told him how all that talk about cooking and omelets had made her hungry and coaxed him into making her some eggs even though it was ten o’clock at night and they’d had dinner only a couple hours earlier.
While she was finishing up, dragging her toast across the plate, she admitted that there was something she needed to tell him.
“What?” he said.
“It’s about Daddy.”
“What about him?”
“He’s sick,” Sandy said.
“Sick?” Martin leaned forward and looked at his sister.
“It’s his heart.”
“How sick?”
Sandy’s face suddenly looked long and tired. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Mom wants you to come home, Marty. Dad could go at any time.”
“He ate a big dinner. He’s out gambling. They look so happy. It can’t be that bad,” he said.
“It is,” she insisted. “The doctor wants to do surgery, but Mom thinks it’s too risky.”
“He doesn’t
look
sick,” Martin said.
“You can’t see his heart,” his sister said.
HANNAH STOOD
in the door frame. She looked at them and wondered what was wrong. Outside, skateboarders whizzed past the house, wheels loud on the pavement. One kid screamed another kid’s name. Someone called someone a pussy. She shifted her weight from one crutch to the other, wondering if Azeem had decided to leave her mom or maybe they’d stopped loving each other. Or maybe they still loved each other but one of them loved someone else too, maybe he was insisting that they open up their marriage, and maybe her mom, despite the book written by that very happy couple, still didn’t want to.
But that wasn’t it.
He wanted her mom to describe the dream she’d had last night about Hannah’s leg. It was important, he said. She should know these things, get ready for them.
“Tell her,” he said.
“No.” She took a sip of her coffee and stared straight ahead.
“You should tell her,” he pushed. “I’m the psychologist.”
“You’re not a psychologist
yet,
” she said.
“I’m studying. I know what’s healthy. I understand mental health.”
She shook her head.
“Honesty is important. Getting it all out in the open. A family should talk about things. It’s important that she know. I’ll tell her,” he said.
“It was
my
dream.”
“Describe it then.”
“It’s cruel.”
“She needs to understand that there’s more to it than walking.”
Hannah shifted her weight again. “Tell me,” she said.
“I had a silly dream,” her mom said.
And he described it.
And he wouldn’t stop talking.
And he kept talking even though he knew that he was hurting both of them.
The dream was about hamburger meat.
Hannah was seventeen, not fourteen, and she loved a man. The man was older, say twenty, and Hannah wanted to have sex with the man, but was too upset about her skinny leg.
It was ugly.
It looked like polio.
He wouldn’t love her if he saw it.
It would scare him.
He would take one look and walk away.
Her mother went to the freezer and pulled out a pound of hamburger meat.
She let it defrost on the counter.
It was all she knew to do.
She carried the meat to Hannah’s room.