This Is Between Us (14 page)

…

You don’t like the expression
head of hair
.

“It sounds like a skull with a wig inside of it,” you once said.

Maxine was parading around the apartment one day with a pink wig on, saying, “How do you like my head of hair?”

“Stop saying that,” you told her. “It makes me think of the word
skull
, and
skull
makes me think of death.”

“I wonder what it feels like to be dead,” said Maxine innocently.

“You’re twelve years old,” you said. “You won’t be dead for another hundred years.”

Maxine stopped and frowned. “I’ll have to wait so long,” she said.

You kissed her on the chin and said, “Life is good. You’ll have a good life all the way to the end. I just know it.”

Later on, you felt bad and told me you said it all wrong. I told you that it was fine, and that you were a sweet and beautiful mom. You cried yourself to sleep.

…

That Halloween, the kids had two neighborhood friends over and we dressed the four of them up in different-colored sheets with eyeholes cut out so they could see. They were the ghosts from the Pac-Man game. You and I wore big bulky cardboard costumes painted yellow. Yours had a red bow on top and lipstick painted around the mouth. We were Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man.

At the end of the night, after the other kids went home, Vince seemed sad. “This will probably be the last Halloween I go out for. I’m going to be too old next year,” he said.

“You’re never too old,” I said stupidly.

“But I’m getting too old for a lot of stuff,” said Vince. “All of my stuffed animals are in the basement. I think Hot Wheels are stupid now, but I used to think they were so cool. And I want to get rid of my
Star Wars
posters. Roberto has posters of rated-R movies on his wall.”

I popped some M&M’s into my mouth and put my hand on his knee. “It’s okay,” I said. “That’s just part of life. Even when you grow up, you go through phases of liking new things and getting bored of old stuff. I just realized last year that I don’t like the Beatles anymore. And I used to think army boots looked good on women, but now I’m kind of scared of that.”

Vince spread a handful of candy corn on the table in front of us and made it into the shape of a heart. “Remember last year when we watched
Sleeping Beauty
on Halloween?” he asked. He paused for a moment but didn’t look at me for an answer. “I’ve probably watched that movie like thirty times.”

“Probably more like two hundred,” I corrected him.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “But that’s the last time. I mean, I didn’t know it when we were watching it, but I don’t think I want to see it again. For a long time I was scared of the witch but now I don’t really care. Does that mean I’m growing up?”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s a good thing. You used to be scared of
Scooby-Doo
and the ‘Thriller’ video too, but now you can watch more mature movies with us.” I thought about that phrase for a second:
mature movies
.

It was weird to see Vince feeling contemplative and nostalgic. I thought about the other Disney movies that we could finally pack up and move to the basement, along with some of the dustier toys taking up room in his closet. He was a little hoarder who never threw anything out. I decided I’d wait a few days and round that stuff up while he was at school. I’d take it to the basement or donate it to Goodwill and hope he didn’t notice the parts of his past disappearing. It was like a graveyard down there, underneath us.

…

That Christmas felt different, maybe because Vince and Maxine were less excited about it. Instead of asking for numerous things like they had in years past, they had a hard time thinking of one thing. Like they were too cool to ask now. And since they were getting older, it was hard to guess what they might like—so many things could be seen as “too young” or “too old” for them.

We let them open one present each on Christmas Eve and we watched their faces to gauge their reactions. Maxine got a makeup kit from your aunt in Missouri and seemed happy about that. Vince got a pair of racquetball rackets from your brother. He looked confused at first—his expression asked:
When did I ask for these?
—but then he realized that we would have to get a membership to a gym with courts and he became excited by the idea of that.

On Christmas morning, you opened your present from me—a new camera—and started testing it out. We figured out the timer and took photos of all of us together. We stood in front of the tree, arms around each other, like an ordinary family. I secretly thought of those photos as presents to myself.

I sat on the couch and watched the cat cleaning himself.

Sometimes he sat and watched me take a shower.

One day, the cat and I watched you take a shower. Your hands were so graceful. Slow motion. It’s so interesting to see how we clean ourselves in this world.

…

Sometimes I wanted to talk to you for a long time, like kids staying up all night, going on about the smallest things. I loved how your voice got hoarse after a few drinks or a few hours. I wondered what you’d sound like as an old lady.

I admit that I occasionally drifted off when you talked and I got lost in the sound of your voice instead of the words. But you’d pause at just the right moment and say something strange and crazy and wonderful. Something I’d never heard anyone say. Like the time you said, “I want to wear you like a bear suit.”

I would even call your phone to hear your voice talking on the outgoing message—the cute way you said
thank you
at the end.

…

One time I came home and found a bunch of broken dishes in the sink. Some pieces of them were on the counter and kitchen floor as well. You were having a bad day and wanted to see what it would be like to shatter something. I found you in the bedroom, crying. You were wearing some kind of goggles or protective eyewear. I was glad you’d taken some precautions before having your fit. You told me you were upset because Maxine had flunked a class and then used your credit card without telling you. And you had also gotten your hair done that morning and thought it turned out horrible. And then you got in trouble at the library for someone else’s mistake. And then you burned the chicken we were going to have for dinner and the car battery was dead.

“Feel better now?” I asked you.

“Will you clean up my mess, please?” you asked me.

I went back into the kitchen, swept up and gathered the pieces and slivers as much as I could. You came up behind me and held me hard. Your hands gripped my shirt and a couple of buttons popped open.

“Don’t walk around in here with bare feet for a while,” I said.

“Will you do everything else around here for the rest of the day, please?” you asked. “I still have some shitty feelings inside.”

I told you I’d take care of everything and make it good as new eventually. You leaned over the kitchen sink like you were going to throw up into it or scream down its pipes. I watched you and waited, but nothing happened.

…

Vince came home from school with something dangling from his right ear. He slipped by quickly, like he was trying to hide something.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said.

I went to his bedroom but the door was closed. I knocked before opening it a crack. He was on his bed, pretending to get his homework out. He had a hat on, although he never wore hats. “Let me see,” I said as good-naturedly as I could. He moved his head so I couldn’t see. I laughed, and he laughed back nervously. I saw the earring. The expression on his face was trying to tell me it was no big deal. He was still rustling through his school folders.

“A lightning bolt?” I said. “I thought you were supposed to start with a stud. Where did you do this?”

“I got it with Roberto. He got both ears pierced.”

I put my hand on his shoulder to assure him that I wasn’t mad, but I wondered if he knew the difference between having his left or right ear pierced. “Why did you do that side?” I asked him.

“Because my hair is parted on that side and it looks better that way,” he said. He thought about it for a few seconds and probably figured out what I was thinking. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “This isn’t the 1980s.”

I wanted to be cool about it, but I did feel something, like a sort of left-out-ness. I looked over to the corner of his room and saw a stuffed animal that we’d won at a carnival about five years before. I had knocked over some stacked-up cans and won it for him. We named it Carnival Bear, and when we got home that day, he had to introduce Carnival Bear to the rest of his stuffed animals. I remember Vince’s little voice introducing the “family.”

I looked at Vince’s lightning bolt. It looked like something I would have wanted in my ear when I was a kid.

…

Our neighbors from across the street came over to say hello while you and I were sitting on the porch. This seemed weird at first, since we didn’t ever talk to them. They were about our age, maybe a little younger, but they had old-people names like Marge and Cecil. We would see their kid playing by himself in their front yard a lot. We invited them to sit in the two empty lawn chairs. We formed an uncomfortable circle.

“We feel like we should tell you about something your son said to our boy,” Marge said, looking at you. You looked at me as if hoping her gaze would follow. I could tell it wasn’t going to be good.

I cleared my throat and said, “What is it?”

Marge’s mouth snapped tight and Cecil spoke this time. “He told our son, Clyde, that there was a new candy bar that he should ask his mother for.”

My stomach dropped. I knew what was coming next.

Cecil lowered his voice and whispered, with a mix of anger and embarrassment, “He told Clyde that it was called a
BJ
.”

I sat there, pokerfaced.

“He asked his own mother,” Cecil started to say, and then turned his head.

“He asked
me
for a
BJ
,” Marge said. It seemed strange that she emphasized the word
me
.

“I am so sorry about that,” I said. “I will definitely have a talk with him.” I stammered some more apologies and then awkwardly transitioned to some softer small talk. I was laughing a little in my head though, recalling how I had done the exact same thing to a younger neighbor kid when I was twelve. And how I’d told the story about it just the week before, when I was getting drunk at our friend’s barbecue. Vince was playing croquet nearby, but I knew now that he was also enjoying my loud, loose tongue. The bad gags of delinquent youth. Sometimes it’s hard to stop them from bleeding over into the next generation.

…

Something happened with your brother that I never told you about. We were out having drinks and he asked me if I’d ever been with a man. I told him I had a few times, but I preferred women. He asked me about my experiences, and then asked me how it was with you. He can sometimes look a lot like you, so it was especially odd to talk to him about this. I changed the subject.

When we were driving home, he unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out quietly, so that I wouldn’t notice. He grabbed my hand and tried to put it there but I pulled away. “What do you think you’re doing?” I said. I didn’t tell him to put himself away or say anything else.

“I just wanted to show you,” he said. He was stroking it slowly. We drove around a block of shops and restaurants and I wondered if anyone else could see what he was doing.

“You’re going to get us in trouble, Daniel,” I said, turning the car onto a darker side street.

He told me to pull over, and I did. I turned and watched him. His face was like yours, but different. He asked me if I liked to watch your face when you came. He asked me how often we had sex. He asked me if you gave good head. He said, “Put your mouth on it like she does.”

I told him no, and then he asked if I wanted to see him come. I said yes, and he kept going. He lifted his shirt a little, and I saw his cock pulse and ejaculate on his belly. It was all over his hand. He found a napkin in the glove box and delicately wiped himself up. “Can I watch you now?” he asked.

“I don’t think I can,” I said, though I probably could have. I felt myself becoming coy for his benefit.

He reached over and put his hand between my legs. “I’ll be ready whenever you are,” he said.

…

One of my friends knew I needed extra money, so he got me a side job at a women’s health club. I helped out with their self-defense classes. I had to be the guy in the big padded suit that the women released their suffocated rage on. But before that could happen, the instructor—a military-looking woman with one of the biggest and strongest asses I’d ever seen—ran through several scenarios of would-be attack. Everything she said started calm but ramped up into a shouted series of slogans about self-preservation and empowerment. I found myself getting worked up by her words as well. When the time came to lumber out onto the wrestling mats, I wanted myself to be the rod that their lightning smacked.

I did this job for twenty classes. The first hit was always the worst, maybe because of the pretend scenario. I was to approach the instructor from behind, ready to grope her like a creep. Just as my padded hands inched hotly to her ass, she would turn slightly and smash the side of my oversize head with her elbow. Then she would turn and give me a swift kick between my legs, while screaming, “No! Stop!” Or sometimes she would just yell a guttural and beast-like noise, something between a scream and a sickening retch.

When it was the students’ turns, I enjoyed it more. Their hits, screams, and kicks were sloppier and usually weaker, and didn’t hurt as much in the suit. I felt like I was in a protective shell, like a turtle made of thick foam. My head was covered by a giant orange bell-shaped helmet that smelled terrible by the end of class.

I talked to you about these classes and even urged you to take one. I found myself being transformed by the experience. I was proud to be part of this process where so many women would learn how to take care of unwanted attention, and I would sometimes exaggerate my pain or my tumbles like a professional wrestler. But I also found myself slipping into the head of an attacker more and more. I wanted to find some new maneuver that might allow me actually to get a feel of the instructor’s ass. I think she would have given me a playful but competitive nod after class and said, “You got me that time, but watch out tomorrow.”

On my last class as the attacker, you signed up without telling me. When the instructor called me out, I waddled from the locker room and saw your face, looking slightly nauseated or scared. But when it was eventually your turn to defend yourself from me, you did so admirably.

You beat the shit out of me like a pro. It was like you forgot I was in that suit, like it really was someone else, maybe someone from your past, who did something to you that you couldn’t erase. I was on the mat and you were standing over me, screaming, “No!” I thought I saw steam or smoke rising out of you. Some kind of ghost floating out of the back of your head.

…

One morning, you showed me an obituary for a woman named Cynthia who had died at the age of fifty-two. It didn’t say how she had died, though. It listed a funeral service in two days and said she had “lived a rich life that was full of loving friends and valuable work for her community.” There was a list of relatives who were still alive, including a daughter and her own mother. Two ex-husbands had also survived her.

“My father had an affair with this woman,” you told me. You were frozen in front of me, like you weren’t sure what to do with yourself. A kettle of hot water started whistling loudly on the stove behind you. I got up to take it off the hot element. I asked if you were okay.

“I don’t know,” you said. “It’s just unsettling to think about now. I met her once, but it always stuck with me in a strange way.”

I looked at the photo next to the woman’s obituary. It looked like it had been taken when she was in her thirties. She was wearing jeans and a fuzzy-looking white sweater. She had long, straight blonde hair and was slim and tall, like she could have been a model. But her smile looked odd, like she wasn’t used to holding her mouth that way. “What happened?” I asked you.

You poured hot water into a cup with lemon and honey and looked at the steam rising from it as you gathered your memories. “My dad was on some kind of committee or board or something. It was a charity thing, and Cynthia was part of it too. He had meetings every week, or so he said. I was in sixth grade. I remember that because I hated sixth grade and my father was never around to help me. We had a party one night at our house, and I had to walk around with trays of different kinds of hors d’oeuvres. It was fun at first, but I got bored pretty fast. I met Cynthia and thought she was really pretty. She had a cute hat that she let me wear. It was like a Chanel hat and I thought she was probably rich so she might let me keep it. My mom saw me walking around with it though and she made me give it back. I looked around for Cynthia to give the hat back and saw her and my dad, alone in the kitchen. She was leaning over to grab something out of our cupboard and dad grabbed her ass and squeezed it. I’m sure this happened really fast, but to me it was like he had really felt her up for a long time.”

Your voice cracked when you said “long time,” but then you laughed a little and continued. “She stood up and playfully slapped his butt back and they almost started wrestling. I think they were a little drunk. I hid behind the door so they couldn’t see me. I heard my dad say, in a weird quiet voice, ‘I’ll get you later, on the drive home.’ I hadn’t heard his voice sound like that before. I made some loud stepping noises so they could hear me and then I came into the kitchen. They took a step back from each other, and I handed the hat back to Cynthia. I felt this rush of heat go through me and I said, ‘I don’t want this anymore.’ She took it from me and smiled, just like the smile in this picture.”