“Fuck you, Frank.”
“Yeah, well, you never were a very grateful person, were you, Rena? Selfish, self-centered, I guess that’s the way it is for people like you. Never think of anyone else, because you don’t have to. Especially now that you’re rich and famous, huh? Don’t have to do squat.”
“Let me tell you what I don’t have to do, Frank. I don’t have to work for some hick banker from some hick town because I’m young and I’m dumb and don’t know any better. I don’t have to run his errands, I don’t have to go parking with him and I don’t have to put his ugly prick in my mouth. That’s what I don’t have to do.”
Frank slowly takes in the apartment. “Well, I did what I came to do. He’s your brother. As far as the house goes, I’ll stop forestalling the taxes and the town will take it in receivership sooner or later. And I guess that’s it.”
Rena sits still until she hears the door close. Then she cracks another Budweiser.
THE TURKISH DRIVER FLICKS HIS SAD EYES TO THE
rearview every few minutes, as if to check if she is still back there. His clean-shaven face has a blue tint of stubble and his coal black hair stands thick and straight like fur. He is rigid, as if girding for a fight. Rena stares at his muscular neck. What would it be like to touch it? Halfway to the hospital he murmurs into his cell phone and the language is a tattered blend of raw consonants and mewing vowels.
At the hospital, the Turk carefully positions the town car behind an ambulance, leaps from his seat and pops the door for Rena. He smells of mothballs and citrus. Don’t they grow poppies in Turkey? Aren’t Turks bad-asses? Didn’t Fred tell me they massacred the Armenians? Rena wonders what his penis looks like. As long and dark as a skinned turkey neck, probably. As she approaches the front of the tan brick building, he grabs a white rag out of the trunk and begins to polish the Lincoln.
Rena checks in through layers of security and a variety of glum personnel, most of whom are in uniform. Everyone is Black or Latino. Everyone looks tired, worn down. The smell of sour cafeteria food hangs in the air like a threat. You get stuck in here, you don’t get out.
The scuffed stainless steel elevator rises with sturdy torque, stopping once for a few people in pale green smocks. They all bear name tags and no one gives Rena a second look, which unnerves her. One man clutches a thick knot of latex hosing. She sees no patients.
When Rena gets to Billy’s wing, she finds herself in an empty corridor dead-ended by a locked steel door. Beside the door is a large button. She pushes it and waits. Eventually a nurse comes through and Rena, ignored, slips in.
The ward features a smaller glass-walled room built into its center. In the room, three black women in white are filling in reports. Outside, a dozen chairs face a television set. A half dozen patients watch the set. One stands alone by a fruit juice dispenser, fumbling with a cup. A male patient next to Rena says, “Hey baby. How we doin’ today?”
Rena thinks, maybe I should just try to find Billy’s room without help.
“I said hey, baby, how’s the weather out there? I heard on the news that it’s ’sposed to be a nice day. I wouldn’t know. They keep the air under control at all times. All kinds of infectious germs floating around. They float right in the door, attack the brain cells directly. So your best bet while you’re in here is don’t breathe. If you don’t want to catch nothin’.”
A woman wearing a kerchief on her head is slumped in a chair scribbling in an “easy” crossword book. She says, “Shuttup, D.”
“Suck my big black cock.”
“I seen it. It ain’t so big.”
“You never seen my cock. You wish you did.”
“What’s a five-letter word for happiness?”
“Joy.”
“That ain’t five letters.”
“Yes, it is. You jus’ don’t know how to spell.”
A female patient in pajamas, white socks and flip-flops trudges by, glances at Rena, enters the glass-walled room, picks up a piece of ruled paper, scratches her ass and leaves.
Rena enters the sanctuary. “Excuse me?”
One of the women, as if noticing her for the first time, says, “Uh-huh? How can I help you, sweetheart?”
“Uh. My brother? Billy Cook?”
“Billy? Should be in his room.”
“Where…?”
“Number 222. Just down that way. I think he’s resting.”
“Can I just go in?”
“Oh, sure. Knock first, though, don’t want to scare him. Has a reputation, but he’s a pussycat.”
A thin window has been punched into the blond wood door. From the outside, it looks like any hospital room. Not a prison. Not an asylum. “Billy?” She steps into the gloom, leaving the door open behind her, letting light seep in from outside. The room is empty. A vacant impersonal space for madness. And then she sees the shape. The hospital bed has been pulled into the middle of the room. No sheets, no blanket, and on the bare waterproof surface a long thin body is laid out like a corpse.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought this was my brother’s room.” The man moves, very slowly, as if arthritic, and leans over to touch something beside him. Recessed luminescent lighting flickers on, green yellow. The man sits up. A croak: “Reba? Is that you?”
Blue eyes, made all the bluer by the russet skin, the scruffy beard, the gray pajamas. Sibling.
“Oh, hi.” If I run, will he run after me? Does he have the strength?
“I’ve been waiting for you.” An old voice, whistling like wind through a forgotten canyon.
“Uh-huh. Well, here I am, Billy.” She wants him to see how good she looks. Her armor against his anger. But when he raises his face the orbs are bleached with pain. In them is a flicker of Billy.
“I’ve been waiting a long time, Reba.” He coughs.
“Billy, what happened to you?” She has to pee badly.
“I’ve been sick, Reba.”
He is Billy and he isn’t Billy and the territory between what she sees and what she knows stretches out like a war zone. Almost a year has passed, but he is so much older, tens of pounds thinner, and since when has Billy been able to grow a beard? And my god that scar reaches almost down to his neck.
His eyes are dull blue fire. The fury has been replaced by wincing fear, cushioned in flesh creased by a hundred sleepless nights. Her whole life, she has known one fact, that Billy is big and Billy is strong. He has always been her rock. And now, here he is, skinny and fragile.
Holding his hand up to his face, he begins to quiver. Is he crying? God. And how did he get so damn thin? Hands like claws, fingernails yellow and thick. Reba keeps her distance while he sits on his bed, hand to face, tears running. On the wall, someone has Scotch-taped a kid’s stick figure of a boy standing on a hill. In the corner of the drawing is a scrawled signature: “Billy.”
“OK. Now. Listen. Stop. Stop that or I’ll have to go.” Did my brother draw that picture?
“It’s just…Jesus, Reba.”
“How did you end up here, Billy?”
“I went looking for you. When you didn’t come home.”
“I called, you were never there. I called you for months.”
“When?” He gazes at her with wet uncomprehending eyes. Like a kid, she thinks. “You know, I’ve been trying to get back home. But they took the van away.”
“Who took the van?”
“You know.”
“You should have called me.”
“How?” He lies back on his bed and stares at the ceiling. When he moves to scratch his nose, he’s like a man sculpted from lead. The syllable hangs in the air.
Rena thinks, he wants me to feel sorry for him and I’m not going to. She says, “When did you decide to grow a beard?”
Billy doesn’t answer.
“Listen, Billy, I don’t have to be here. And to be honest, neither do you. You’ve got a home. That’s where you should be.”
“I can’t leave. I’m mandated.”
“I’ll talk to them.”
“Yeah. You do that.”
“I’ll talk to them right now.”
Billy addresses the ceiling. “You think you’re so smart. Think you’re so special. Rolling in dough. I’ve seen the pictures. I had a collection, but they took it away from me.”
“I’m going to go talk to them, Billy.” My bladder is going to burst.
“Reba. Stop pretending you don’t know. It just makes me angry when you pretend. You know why I’m here. Trying to teach me a lesson, trying to punish me. Does saying I’m sorry change anything? The Chinese girl, she didn’t mean any harm. And I’ve talked to the therapist here and he said masturbation is not incest. Not. But this is what you wanted, right? And you know, Reba, if it makes you feel any better, I’m so ashamed of what I did. And I wish, I wish I could make it up to you. But I don’t see why I have to be penalized like this. All these Negroes and Spanish, you know how they feel about me. They cut me to pieces. Do you know, that they spit on me? Talk about me behind my back. They want to fight me. All the time. All the time. Especially the blacks. They all want to fight me. And why? Because you told ’em to. How’s that supposed to work? Explain that to me! I sit here and try to figure it out and I can’t. Can not. And you know, a little forgiveness wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I can’t help it. It’s just something out of my control…”
“What is?”
“I don’t want to say it again.”
“Billy, stop talking crazy. I know this is some kind of act to make me pity you, and I’m not going to do it.”
Silence.
She tries again. “Why on earth would I want to punish you, Billy?”
“You watch me from the pictures and I know you know, because you can see what I’m doing. And God I don’t mean to. Shit, I’d cut it off if I could. I even asked if they could give me an operation. They do that here. Just leave me a little stub to pee with. But they won’t even give me the electroshock.”
“Billy, you’re scaring me. Stop it.”
“I’m the one locked up and you’re scared. Hah, that’s a funny one.” Billy coughs.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’m tired. I need to sleep.” He closes his eyes. Rena waits and he keeps them shut, still as stone. He doesn’t look angry at all. Rena counts to one hundred, then walks out of the room. It’s only after she is back in the locked corridor that she thinks to look for a bathroom. But it’s too late.
THEY HAVE SET THEMSELVES UP FOR THE BEST VIEW,
glasses of Chardonnay perched upon the railing. Cape Cod Bay stretches before them, an undulating canvas of shifting flecks of black, violet and orange. An American flag lies slack against its pole. The sunset diffuses through the reed beds on the headland. Below, children dig the last hole of the day and straggling beach-walkers stroll. Somewhere, someone is playing a bagpipe. The outgoing tide laps against the barnacled two-tone jetty, each retreat a little weaker as sandpipers scurry through the slick piles of gulfweed.
Rick points to the shrubs embedded in the sea grass. “See the red orange things on those thorny bushes? Those are rose hips. Like the stuff you get in health food stores. A natural source of vitamin C.”
Laura says, “It’s getting cool down there. Does Henry need a T-shirt?”
Rick thinks, the sea is the biggest thing in the world. Bigger than mountain ranges. I can see it, but I can’t imagine it. How long would it take for that surf to roll me into its stony bottom and shred me to pieces? How long before there was no trace left of me?
The evening breeze kicks up and lifts Rick’s mood. The flag stirs and a massive flock of gulls returns to wherever they come from each morning. Rick thinks, this is good. His next thought is, I wish I had a cigarette.
The original plan was that Rick would commute to Cape Cod every other weekend. Long weekends. But they hadn’t stuck to the plan, so in a kind of compromise, he had come up for a full week. Arrived around three this afternoon.
Laura says, “You want to get fried clams for dinner? Put the kids to bed early?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Don’t sound too enthusiastic.”
“I’m always enthusiastic. Lemme unpack. I’ll shave if we’re going out.”
“Don’t shave. Well. I mean, yeah, shave. For later.”
Rick enters the rented shore house and the smell of knotty pine and sea sand embraces him. Shaving as foreplay, thinks Rick. Like drying the dishes. Are we as pitiful as Ed and Jane when we have sex? A puff of ocean air lifts the white lace curtains. Rick pops his suitcase and grabs up a mass of socks and underwear, proud that he’s brought clean clothes. Clothes he has laundered on his own.
At a picnic table outside the roadside diner the family calmly digs into their food. The children are too worn out for frenzy. When they get back to the dark house the meal sits heavy in their guts. Everyone piles onto the Scotch-plaid couch to watch a video on the old VCR. Trina falls asleep almost immediately, Henry fights it, but he’s a goner, too. Rick and Laura transfer the limp bodies to the bedroom, tucking them in beside a lit night-light and an assortment of collected shells.
Rick loves the volume of Laura’s body, her large full breasts, her wide butt. He likes that she isn’t fragile, that she has a heft. Is she gaining weight or am I getting smaller? It doesn’t matter. Her body is my home.
After fifteen years of marriage, he knows how she wants to be touched. It all happens without much thought. Once they’re past the preliminaries and the small talk, Laura eases herself into her pools of pleasure and Rick muscles his way into his. He’s no longer Rick the doctor, the husband, the dad, instead, he’s a stiff-legged and shaggy satyr, forcing his hard red prick into the wood nymph he’s snared. She urges him on to the nasty thing. He’s corrupting the nice midwestern wood nymph and she likes it. Loves it! Everything connects to everything else, he isn’t a man anymore but the person he has always been, the bad, bad boy, and he’s having his way.
She transforms again and she becomes all the women he has burned for, stared at on all those long, long school days, his brand-new pubescent hard-on trapped under his tight jeans. Laura becomes the teacher, the school nurse, the crosswalk lady, all of those women of his youth whose breasts were so carefully shielded beneath layers of blue gabardine and underwire brassieres. These women knew he wanted them and that’s why they leaned so close, why they smiled at him, why they drove him crazy with their intoxicating perfume of hair spray and antiperspirant.
Well, here is one of those ladies now, one that is letting me touch her breasts, her back, her ass. I can do all the bad things. I can fuck the teacher, the lady behind the counter in the candy store, the next-door neighbor in her pink terry-cloth bathrobe bending over the flower bed in the morning, flashing the whiteness of her bosom. Here is the college babe on the subway glancing up from her novel, the firm-assed Latino chick in tight stone-washed jeans standing in line at the deli, the bitch flashing tan marks and thong-strap, every last one of them.
They all want him and he is ready for them all, ready to break them into a million fragments like a suicide bomber of love. The women, not Laura, the women, the bellies, the spread pussies, the hard-nippled tits, the belly buttons, the mouths open, sucking on him, wanting him, needing him.
Rick figures Laura is out there somewhere twisting and twirling weightless in her own dimension of lust. Romantic love is too limited to accommodate the carnal moment. Look, her eyes are shut tight, she’s focusing on something inner. That’s all right, we couldn’t be more together on this familiar ride through unfamiliar terrain. Whip the horse harder, lean forward and spur. Faster, straight down the mountainside. All of us, me, Laura, everybody, flags waving, trumpets squawking, in a roar of dust and hooves, like Custer’s cavalry, into oblivion.
Rick watches Rick. He has to think about himself as he cums, think about the stupid antique bed squeaking out its annoying rhythm, think about the sheet tangled around a toe, about the fact that he’s cumming. I’m no libertine or sex machine, I’m a man handcuffed to my own self-consciousness and insecurity and so I have to obsess about myself even now, even in this most unconscious moment. Why can’t I shout, bite, punch? But I can’t. Mustn’t wake the kids.
Rick bucks a few more times, then holds on tightly to his wife, like a life raft. A wave of tremendous well-being fills him. I love this woman. The world begins and ends with her. We are happy and warm together. We are husband and wife as completely as any husband and wife ever were. Sex is the best thing ever invented. I love you, Laura!
Laura groans, “You’re heavy” and Rick rolls off. As he lies next to this “wife,” this stranger, someone named Laura, he thinks, OK. Here we are. At rest, happy with each other. This is something I cannot be with anyone else in the world. This is serenity. I love her. I love what she is and how she is. We’ve done this, we’ve gotten this far. I hope nothing ever happens to her, even though I don’t really know who she is and she doesn’t really know who I am. This is as good as it gets.
Rick can tell by her soft even breathing that she is probably not thinking about anything in particular and he is happy that she is happy. She falls asleep with an arm draped over his chest.
Thirty minutes later, he extricates himself and gropes his way down the stairs into the unfamiliar blackness of the kitchen. He slips out through the creaky screen and finds his old friends, the stars. Cool, humid air wafts over the roar of the restoring tide. The warbly laughter of an invisible young couple rises from the warm sand below. In the dark deep sea stretched out to an invisible horizon fish are swimming. Lovers, fish, a man smoking. The right feeling of a half hour ago has already melted into the outlines of a concept. Not enough.
The remainder of Rick’s vacation time is a loosely organized string of meals, day-trips and shopping. Almost everything involves driving. Children fester in the backseat, the local radio station plays “oldies but goodies” and they retrace the same two-lane highway, pass the same antiques shops and gas stations again and again. The traffic inevitably clogs and Rick focuses on the bumper of the car in front of him as Laura chatters happily. When she spies a collectibles shop or a farmstand they pull over and park. As they examine the bruised furniture, the chipped pottery and wicker-ware, Rick thinks to himself, I’m being a good husband.
In the late afternoons, Rick tries some athletic swimming, making a straight line parallel to shore, back and forth. He likes to swim, but not this much, and as he pushes himself along, he considers all the good it’s doing his heart. He goes for long walks by himself, another good thing. That’s what vacations are for, for doing all the good things you never do. Rick gathers up the kids, drags them into the water, pulls them out over their heads and they churn like drowning kittens. On the beach Laura reads her novel under a beach umbrella.
Rick has brought along his old fielder’s glove and prods Henry into a game of catch. After a while they both get tired of the charade and sit in the sand. Henry asks his father, “Will you and mommy ever get divorced?” Rick says “No, of course not!”—knowing that Henry is curious because one of his first-grade buddies has parents who’ve just separated. Henry wanders off to find his Game Boy and Rick takes his place next to Laura. He gets high on Mount Gay Rum and his eyelids droop under the slanting sun.
Although the plan is to bliss out on white wine and grilled fish and make love on top of the quilt at least every other night, it doesn’t work out that way. By the end of each day, Rick and Laura are too relieved to have the kids in bed to attempt anything more than shelling roasted peanuts in front of the TV.
The evening before Rick heads back to the city, they bicker, then end up watching the local news on cable while holding hands. At a quarter to midnight, Laura checks on the children and announces she’s getting her cramps, so she’s going to bed. Two commercials in, Rick gives up on the TV, feeling guilty that they have ended the week without a final seal of affection. He creeps up the steps and finds Laura asleep or pretending to be asleep. He thinks, I should lie next to her and hold her.
Rick strips off his bathing trunks and polo shirt, flosses in front of the large bathroom mirror. Too many lights in this bathroom. His flesh, which early in the week was bright with sun, now sags from the fried fish meals and butter-dipped lobster. The first four days he had jogged on the beach as the sun rose and got tanned for the first time since the middle of winter when they had taken that trip to Orlando. He was liking the way he looked and felt. But by halfway through the week, he was sleeping in every morning. No wonder Laura doesn’t want to fuck me.
His body is padded with fat, his shoulders slump and instead of his father’s black Astroturf Rick has nothing but swirls of fuzz on his chest and back. His eyes are bleary. Tufts of wire sprout from his nose and ears. His crown is thinning. And his limbs ache even when he’s done nothing more than push a cart around the huge vacationland supermarket. He flosses and spits pink.
The next day, on the five-hour drive back to the city, Rick misses Laura and the kids. On the other hand, he’s relieved to be on his way. He dials the cruise-control to seventy, chain-smokes and sings along to sad songs on the radio. He lets himself cry amid the Corollas and the minivans.