Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (37 page)

Ralph went to his daughter’s
bedroom, for she was his chief suspect, especially now that Paco
had more or less moved back in, with the understanding he would
confine his criminal activities to Ralph’s daughter’s bedroom, such
as selling drugs to the scumbag neighborhood children out of the
bedroom window instead of the kitchen. As always, a low, persistent
growl was emanating from behind the door of Ralph’s daughter’s
bedroom. Ralph was no fool, and although they denied it, Ralph knew
his old pal Killer was back lurking about the premises. And he had
evidence of it. Just the other day Ralph had found a turd the size
of his arm in the back yard. When he thought he could see his own
breath in the chilled air before his daughter’s bedroom door, Ralph
realized that he was the one going crazy, not Alice Ann. And his
daughter’s door felt cold to the touch. Just the other day, upon
catching Ralph holding a cat’s head under the faucet at the kitchen
sink, and not buying his excuse that he was simply giving kitty a
drink, Ralph’s daughter had expressed her displeasure by spinning
her head around on her neck a few times and growling with guttural
animal sounds unlike any Ralph had ever heard this side of a horror
movie. Ralph decided to forgo discussing the purloined liquor with
his daughter and her beau for the time being, and he tiptoed
backward away from her door. Ralph would clean out that nest of
vipers first thing in the morning, in the bright light of a
brand-new day, when Alice Ann was home.

Ralph was astonished that
his son's bedroom door, which was pulsating with the insane
vibrations of rock-and-roll, was unlocked. As Ralph turned the
doorknob, which felt hot to the touch, it occurred to him that he
had not entered his son's room in years. The first thing Ralph
noticed, once his eyes adjusted to a flashing strobe which froze
the room in bursts of painful light, was that the walls were now
painted black, which did wonders to frame the Day-Glo posters
advertising those killer, cannibal bands Ralph’s son revered so,
who played that pure Charlie Man- son music loaded with catchy
lyrics extolling the kicks kids could cop cutting the throats of
their parents. In the confusion of the flashing light and throbbing
music, Ralph didn't spot his son at first. Then he saw him lying
over on the floor beside the bed, a form motionless except for the
nervous, twitching illusion created by the light. What Ralph
realized immediately was that his son was as naked as the day he
was born.

Ralph tiptoed across the
room to his naked son. He reflected upon the fact that he had not
seen his son naked since he was a little boy. The first thing Ralph
registered, with a strange twinge of pride, and then with a wave of
resentment, was that his boy was hung like a horse. And then Ralph
recalled bathing his son as a little boy, and how even back then
Ralph had been amazed that the tot had a tool that looked like a
third leg. What Ralph realized in the next moment in amazement was
that his son was wearing a rubber.

Ralph glanced about the
room, fearful some beautiful, naked teenage girl would suddenly sit
up and scream at the lurking, leering, dirty old man for being
where he did not belong, there in his own son’s room in his own
house. Ralph looked on the far side of the bed and then tiptoed to
look in the closet. Then Ralph noticed the used rubbers scattered
all over the floor, a dozen or more, a snow of shed skins and
opened condom packets. Ralph picked up one of the torn-open condom
packs from the floor and studied it in the flashing light. It was
his brand, all right. And the girly magazines all around the floor
Ralph recognized immediately as being from his own private stash,
which he kept under lock and key in a file cabinet in his office.
Oddly enough, each of the magazines was turned to pictures of some
of Ralph’s own favorite babes. Ralph looked back at his naked son
and shook his head in confusion. Why would anybody, even somebody
as weird and weak-minded as his son, waste a perfectly good, not to
mention expensive, rubber just to jack off, that’s what Ralph
wanted to know. There was no explaining it. It was a notion beyond
all comprehension.

When Ralph’s eyes fell upon
the neck of the botde sacking out from under the bed, he was not
surprised. He bent and picked it up. Ralph knew that the bottle of
ancient Scotch was a dead soldier even before he lifted it to his
lips. There was evil in the world, there was. Pure, palpable evil
that pushed at the world and made it turn, and it had leaked into
the world through the lust of Ralph and Alice Ann’s own loins. This
evil naked bad omen at Ralph’s feet was their fault alone. They had
brought forth this abomination with their abandoned fucking, and
now the whole world would have to pay the price. Ralph studied his
son’s reptilian face, glistening with sweat, his jaw working, his
little lizard lips twitching even in his coma in time to the
blaring beat. Ralph looked around the black walls of the room at
the posters which glared at him in the throbbing light like
leering, evil icons, mocking him and all he stood for, mocking the
truly moral man he knew was buried somewhere deep inside him. Ralph
rushed around the room slashing one poster after another with his
dad’s precious pearl-handled pocketknife, which until that very
moment Ralph had forgotten he was carrying open and ready for
business.

In that scary movie, The
Omen, what had finally convinced Gregory Peck that the boy he had
thought of as his own son was really the Son of Satan was the
birthmark the boy carried, triple sixes, 666, on his scalp, which
Gregory Peck had uncovered when earlier he had cut the sleeping
boy’s hair in order to find out the truth once and for
all.

Consciously willing himself
cold and unrelenting, every nerve alert, ready to do anything
necessary in order to find out the truth once and for all, Ralph
knelt down beside the naked boy. The boy’s hair was as beautifully
blond and long as Alice Ann’s, but Ralph could not believe how
slimy it felt running through his fingers, as he lifted it section
by greasy section and sawed away as close as he could to the boy’s
scalp, which was slow going with the dull blade of Ralph’s dad’s
precious pearl-handled pocket- knife. Ralph was dripping with
sweat, exhausted, and his hand actually ached by the time he had
cut away enough handfuls of the boy’s hair to fully examine his
scalp for the telltale birthmark and finally convince himself that
the evil boy was truly his own son and responsibility and nothing
he could blame on the devil.

Ralph held his drunk,
passed-out, naked, and nearly bald boy’s head in his lap, and he
reflected upon how much they were alike, after all. Holding his
nearly bald boy in the strobing light like that, Ralph couldn’t be
sure where one of them started and the other ended. Ralph had
always thought that his son had the sort of personality you could
store meat in, but maybe he had been wrong from the start. Maybe it
wasn’t too late to take his nearly bald boy fishing again, teach
him those tricks the boy in turn could pass down the generations,
and perhaps Ralph could, if he searched his memory long and hard
enough, recall some of those secret hot spots his own dad had shown
him beside the lost rivers of his childhood.

Ralph kissed his boy on the
mouth, kissed him good night on those dear, lizardlike lips. Ralph
began to weep then without sound, something else he had learned to
do from his dad, how to cry your heart out without making the least
sound. Ralph began to rock his naked, nearly bald boy in his arms.
What could Ralph teach his son so that he wouldn’t go down some of
those same old wrong roads? What sort of advice could Ralph give
his poor, weak-minded son that he wished his own dad had given him
that might spare the boy some of the heartbreak and misery and
moves under the cover of darkness from town to town? Ralph put his
lips against his son’s somewhat clean ear, and in order to be heard
above the blaring madman music in the remote chance that anything
could actually penetrate his son’s alcoholic coma, Ralph shouted
lovingly, May you not be like your dad! May you not be like your
dad! May you never be like your dad!

Crying at Will

Lindsay flushes the toilet
twenty times at least. Until there can surely be no trace of the
blood that had gushed from her body. Lindsay curls there on the
floor and hugs her knees to her bare breasts. She is still
bleeding. She clutches a fistful of toilet paper into her crotch.
Lindsay’s eyes seem to float away from her, to float up slowly, and
then they stop somewhere near the ceiling, and they look back down
with disgust at the abandoned body of some naked, bleeding girl
curled up into a ball on the cold floor.

Then Lindsay hears her name
being called: Lindsay. Lindsay. Her called name comes floating in
under the door. Lindsay. Softly. Lindsay, are you okay? Are you all
right in there, kiddo?

Lindsay reaches up and
unlocks the door.

Are you okay? Jim says. Jim
holds Lindsay and says, What’s wrong? Are you all right?

I’ll never be all right
again, Lindsay says.

What? Jim says.

You don’t
understand.

Huh? Jim says.

My heart is broken, Lindsay
says.

What? What did you
say?

My stupid period just
started. Or something started.

Your period? Jim says, and
strokes Lindsay’s hair.

I haven’t had a real period
in weeks, months. Did you know that, Jim?

Your period?

Oh, I spotted some. But I
really thought I might be pregnant. I really did. Did you know
that, Jim?

Pregnant?

If I had been pregnant, Jim,
what would it have been for you?

For me?

Would it have been wonderful
or awful?

It would have been all
right, Jim says, and rubs the back of Lindsay’s neck.

Well, it doesn’t matter now.
You needn’t worry now.

Maybe we should get you to
a, you know, hospital or something. You know?

I don’t need to see any
fucking doctor or go to any fucking hospital. I don’t need any
fucking doctor to tell me I’m not going to be a mother. I don’t
deserve to be a mother.

Sure you do, honey, Jim
says.

I feel awful.

Maybe we should call
somebody or something.

I’ll be all right, okay? I
just feel awful right now. And I smell awful.

I don’t smell
anything.

Don’t patronize me, Jim!
Just don’t fucking do it! I know how awful I smell. I want to get
in the tub, Jim. Help me up.

Come on, Jim says, and helps
Lindsay to her feet. With his arm around her shoulders Jim leads
Lindsay from the hallway toilet around the corner into the
bathroom. Lindsay begins to shiver violendy. Jim grabs a large
towel around her and helps her balance on the edge of the huge old
tub. Jim puts the plug in the tub and turns on the hot
water.

I want a bubble bath,
Lindsay says.

Jim picks up a box beside
the tub and sprinkles the steaming water with blue bubble-bath
beads.

I want the candles lit,
Lindsay says.

Sure, Jim says. He gets up
and lights the dozen or so scented candles Lindsay keeps arranged
on top of her grandmother's old oak towel cabinet. He turns off the
overhead light and then kneels and swirls the blue, sweet-smelling
beads around in the hot water with his hand.

Don’t burn your hand, honey,
Lindsay says.

Jim turns off the hot water
and begins running a thin stream of cold, swirling it into the hot,
testing the water constantly. A small blue bubble breaks from the
surface of the foamy water and floats up into the air before
Lindsay’s face. She watches it rise in the candle flame like a tiny
golden balloon and then disappear.

Here, Jim says, and slips
the towel from around Lindsay’s shoulders.

I’m just crazy. Everything
is crazy.

Jim helps Lindsay ease down
into the steaming fragrant blue bubbles.

Does it feel okay? Jim
says.

It feels okay.

I’ll wash your back if you
want, Jim says.

I’m still just a fringy,
Lindsay says. —I’ll always be some sort of fringe-element character
who doesn’t fit in. I’ve never fit in anywhere in my life. Not in
high school. Not in college. Not even in my own family. I’ll never
be a real wife and mother.

You’re my wife, Jim says.
—The last time I checked.

I don’t feel like it, Jim.
God, I just want to have a normal life. I don’t care anymore if I’m
not even really happy. Just so I’m not desperately unhappy. I’ll
settle for that. I just want to be at peace with myself. I’m just
tired of feeling that the only place I want to be is far away from
myself. Jim, do you love somebody else?