How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets (12 page)

T
HE BUZZER SHOOTS through his brain like a dart. He bolts upright. Buzzer.

Buzzer, again, there it goes. Someone buzzing.

He looks at his clock. Midnight. He’s still dressed, on his bed; his TV is on.

He stumbles through the living room. Dean is sleeping soundly on the couch. Evan picks up the intercom.

“Hello?” he asks.

“Open up.”

Mica? Is it her? Evan presses the button that unlocks the downstairs door. What’s going on? He waits.

Knock, knock, knock.

He opens his door.

Ah. It’s her. Hair pulled back into a low ponytail, she wears a long peach-colored dress with so many little buttons on the front, the top five unbuttoned to reveal the heave of her breasts, the bottom twenty opened to create a provocative slit that exposes just enough-thigh per stride. She’s holding a satchel. She has a big smile on her face.

“You’re back, ” he says.

“You said, ‘See you later.’”

“How did you find me?”

“It’s called a phonebook. You should try it sometime. It gives you addresses, and it doesn’t even need batteries.”

He smiles so hard he thinks his ears might fall off. She’s back. His heart is racing. He holds his finger to his lips, points to Dean.

He locks the door behind her, carries her bag as they tiptoe to his room and close the bedroom door behind them. They stand in the flickering darkness grinning at each other.

“I like your dress, ” Evan says.

“You do?”

“I didn’t expect you.”

“I know.”

She moves toward him and kisses him, pushing him back with her body until he’s fallen backward onto his bed and she’s fallen on top of him.

“You smell clean, ” he whispers.

“I took a shower.”

“I didn’t. I must smell.”

“You smell good, ” she says.

They kiss each other and the kissing quickly becomes passionate. They feel around; grope. She squeezes parts of his body like she’s checking for ripeness, it’s a squeeze that reads, “Am I gonna buy it or toss it back.” It’s firm and possessive. Her hand reaches for his crotch, squeezes.

“Hello!” he squeals.

“Do you like that?”

Like it? He loves it. He loves it because his dick is actually hard.
It’s alive!
She has a magic touch. She unzips his jeans, slips her cool hand inside his underwear and takes hold of his—

“Wow!”

“Am I moving too fast?” she asks.

Moving too fast? No way. He’s afraid if she doesn’t move fast enough someone will take the air out of his erection and that will be it.

“No, no. It feels good.”

She pulls her hand out and sits up.

“What?” he asks.

“Uncomfortable pause, ” she says.

He is confused.

“I thought about pre-doing this, but I figured that would be tacky. I didn’t want to assume . . . you know . . . this would happen.”

“I don’t get—”

“Unless you’ve had your tubes tied . . . because
I
haven’t.”

“Ahh . . .”

“I’ll be back in a minute, ” she says.

She climbs off and looks for her bag. When she finds it, she grabs it, goes into the bathroom and closes the door.

Jesus Christ. He’s about to get laid. Holy shit! What should he do? In the movies the guy always takes off his clothes at this point. Is that what Evan’s supposed to do? Strip down and get under the covers? He has no idea. Because, honestly, he hasn’t had sex in a while.

Sometimes, Evan likes to think of his half-decade of abstinence as an aesthetic choice. Having felt the power of sex at such an early age, having experienced the truth about sex, that it is an activity specifically designed to create new human beings, it was only right for him to avert his eyes.

But that’s just the façade. The real reason is that the anti-epileptic medication he’d been taking for most of his life stopped working five years ago, and suddenly Evan was having seizures all the time. The doctors scrambled to contain his brainstorm, and they tried dozens of drug cocktails until they found just the right mix. But the new medication, while effective at suppressing his seizures, also suppresses his libido. What a choice.

No doctor will admit the medication causes Evan’s impotence, though they do agree that it may diminish his sexual desire to below “functional standards.” Still, the onus of his impotence is placed squarely on his shoulders: he just doesn’t want it enough. And, under these circumstances, they’re right. He doesn’t want it at all. It only takes a few failed tries at sexual encounters before you get a little gun-shy. Nothing quite as humiliating as having a naked girl pulling on your dick trying to make it come to life for you.

But that’s neither here nor there. The fact is, right now he
does
feel aroused. And maybe if he and Mica work quickly enough, they can pull this thing off. As long as he doesn’t focus on it too much. He should focus on something else. Like music.

Like what kind of music should he put on? Classical? Jazz? Maybe jazz. Or maybe not. He looks into the CD compartment of his boom box. Early Elvis Costello. Classical in his own way, but too dated for a date. He’s so nervous. What if he goes limp in the middle of it? What if he stays hard but prematurely ejaculates? Christ, he doesn’t have any condoms. She may ask to see an AIDS test, but he was never tested. What a disaster.

The bathroom door opens slowly. The light is off inside. Out comes a body, a figure, a long series of curves and bends, hips and ankles, a belly and breasts. It is completely, one hundred-percent naked. It is Mica, as she was meant to be seen.

She makes her way to Evan, taking her time. He is standing next to the boom box. She sidles up to him, kisses his neck, then bites his ear. He curls, but not away.

“You like that.”

“Yes.”

She rubs against him.

“We have a little problem, ” she says.

“What’s that?”

“I’m naked and you’re not.”

She helps him off with his clothes. They work their way to the bed. Her flesh is cool and soft and resilient. They climb onto the bed; this time he’s on top.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“I’m so hot, ” he says, and immediately feels like an idiot. What a moronic thing to say. Jesus.
I’m so hot.
What he meant to say was:
you’re
so hot, you’re making
me
hot. But he didn’t say that. He said something totally embarrassing. It just came out. Sex talk is the most absurd thing ever. That people say things and announce things that they never would under normal circumstances. Sex is a drug. It makes you goofy. They might as well be doing whippets. He’s mortified. She can see right through him now. She knows all. She’s about to leave him.

But instead of leaving, she says, “I’m hot, too, ” and he realizes they both have the goofy sex disease.

He positions himself between her legs.

“Gentle, baby, ” she says.

She reaches down to help him in, and Evan could have died, right there, died a thousand times, ready to do it, make love to Mica, and she’s holding onto his lifeless dick.

He slumps on top of her, buries his head in her hair.

“What’s the matter, baby?” she asks.

“I’m sorry, ” he mumbles.

“About what? About that? Don’t worry about it.”

“I was hoping it would hold out.”

“I’ll get it up for you, ” she offers.

“It’s my medication, ” Evan says. “It has an unfortunate side effect.”

“Your epilepsy medication?”

“Yes.”

“So . . . it won’t go back up?”

“No.”

“That’s unfortunate, ” she says.

“Yeah.” He shrugs. But that’s life in the fast lane. You want to dance? You have to pay the piper.

He lifts himself off of her and rolls onto his back. He stares at the ceiling.

“Aren’t there other medications?” she asks.“I mean, it’s not permanent, is it?”

There are other medications. And they’re all poisons. They will all kill him. He has been made effectively sterile by the giant pharmaceutical corporations. He is defective, and he should not procreate. Not even recreational sex. It could lead to more idiots who would run in front of cars and get hit and smash their skulls against the pavement and get epilepsy. Dumbshits. They should all be rounded up and killed.

“So, tell me about it, ” she says after a minute.

“What?”

“Your epilepsy.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell you about it right now.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

She sighs, but accepts it for what it is, apparently, because she is Mica and she is enlightened. He is convinced of that. She is the Enlightened One.

“You remind me of my father, ” she says.

Evan raises his eyebrows, still looking at the ceiling, surprised by her comment.

“That’s very Freudian.”

“I didn’t say you were
substituting
for my father. I said you reminded me of him.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, when I was little and I would watch him play—”

“What did he play?”

“Alto sax—well, he played everything, but the sax was his instrument. When I would watch him play, he would get this faraway look on his face, like he’d left his body or something, like his soul was in a different place, where the music comes from, but his body was still there playing the instrument.”

Evan glances at her.

“I look like that when I play?”

“It’s hard to explain, ” she says.“A lot of people get faraway looks on their faces when they make music. But with my father, it was different. Maybe ‘faraway’ isn’t the word.” She struggles. “
Apart
.
Separate.
It’s like he would break through to a different dimension to where—I don’t know. . . . When he was dying he played all the time, all day long. I would watch him. I think it gave him some kind of comfort to be someplace where he existed without his body, you know? A place where only souls and music exist. It was his way of coping with the cancer.”

“Epilepsy isn’t fatal, ” Evan says with a quick, hard laugh.

“Oh, I wasn’t—”

“You know, I’m not sure I’m into this thing about my being your father.”

“Evan—”

“I don’t have cancer and I’m not dying.”

“Evan!” Mica says sharply.“Listen to what I’m saying. Listen. I’m not saying you’re my father, or even anything like him. I don’t want you to be. I’m saying that when I first saw you play, I saw something in your eyes that I used to see in his, and I realized that I already knew you—that we already knew each other—and then in the restaurant you asked me to marry you and I thought you felt the same way—”

“I thought you’d figure I was joking.”

“I
know
it was a joke, Evan. I know.” She sighs and closes up. God. He’s screwed up another relationship.

“I’m sorry, ” he says.

“No. You’ve got a lot to deal with.”

She gathers herself, gets to her hands and knees, slips her hand down, cups his balls.

“You may not be a rock, but I can still get you off, ” she says, moving down.

“No.”

No? She hesitates. He hooks his elbow under her arm and flips her over on her back. Reversal: two points.

“I can get
you
off, ” he says.

He kisses her belly, moves down.

“Evan—”

“Shh, ” he quiets her.

“Evan—”

“Shh. Shh.”

“Oh, Evan.”

HE WAKES TO a tickle on his throat. The first sign of gray morning light is waiting outside his window. Mica is awake, propped on her elbow, watching over him, tracing his scar with her fingertip.

“Tell me, ” she whispers.

He shakes his head.

“I’ll torture you.”

“I’ll never talk, ” he says. And he means it. She may be good at a lot of things, but he knows already that she’s no match for him in the art of concealment. He’ll wait for her to get desperate, and at just the right moment, he’ll lie to her. And she’ll believe it. And that will be that. Mica’s a tough girl, but she wears her emotions on her sleeve. Evan wears his under many layers of scar tissue.

“No?” she asks.

He shakes his head. She sighs, stands; she’s fully dressed.

“Where are you going?”

“We don’t want to set a bad example, ” she replies.

She’s too understanding for a normal person. Perhaps she’s an alien. He starts to rise.

“Don’t get up, ” she says, then, doing her best Arnold, she warns, “
I’ll be back.
”

She gathers her things, gives him a kiss on the forehead, and slips out of the room.

He closes his eyes and urges himself back to sleep, but he can’t quite get there. He hangs just on the edge of it. It’s not uncomfortable. His body is, for all intents and purposes, asleep. But his mind gets no rest at all.

T
HE DAY PICKS up where the previous one left off. Mica returns with a box full of Krispy Kremes that she and Dean devour recklessly. They are a team. They are instant oatmeal: add water, make family. Evan is sure that, deep down, none of them are convinced of the legitimacy of their venture. But they are all having a good time, so who’s Evan to burst their bubble?

They enjoy themselves without remorse. They laugh and joke as they explore Underground Seattle, take a ferry ride across the Sound to Bainbridge Island and back, watch the seals, eat lunch at the Aquarium. No one will let it end. One more thing, one more thing. Every time the afternoon begins to wind down, it is one more thing. Until they are standing in front of Market Seafood at the Public Market late in the day, watching the thick-handed men hurl twenty-pound salmon across the counter, bellowing words of caution as tourists cower in mock terror: sustenance as entertainment. Perverse, in a way. A twisted interpretation of the food chain. Sadistic performance art. But only if you’re the salmon. Otherwise, it’s good, clean fun.

Mica asks one of the flashy fishmongers to filet her a slab of red flesh. She turns with her catch and announces that she’s cooking dinner for Evan and Dean. She buys produce at the produce stands, wine in the wine store, ice cream where ice cream is sold, and then they retire to Evan’s apartment where she flies through the kitchen cooking furiously, cleaning nothing, until the sink is piled high with pots and pans and a frighteningly self-assured dinner is set on the table.

Evan and Dean exchange a look. It’s an unfamiliar look of complicity between virtual strangers. She’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s happy, she’s motherly, she’s sexy, she cooks. . . . If she does laundry, she’s got the job. They laugh at themselves.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing, ” Evan says with a giggle.

“Nothing, ” Dean repeats, same giggle.

She gives them a look, then concedes and sits. They plow into the food, which is wonderful, naturally. The conversation is lively and convivial because that’s how they contrive it to be. And then it happens.

“What’s that sound?” Dean asks.

“It sounds like someone talking, ”Mica says.

They listen carefully. Indeed, there’s a soft mumbling in the background that sounds like someone talking. Who could it be? A neighbor? A television? Maybe a clock radio alarm that accidently went off due to a power outage? No. It sounds more like . . . an answering machine.

Oh, right. Evan had turned off the ringer in the living room because he didn’t want it to disturb Dean’s sleep. They’re talking loudly, the music is on, they didn’t hear the ringing.

“It’s the phone, ” Evan says. He stands. “I’ll see who it is.”

He goes into his bedroom, and the voice becomes much clearer. It is a woman’s voice. She is upset.

“. . . I don’t understand, ” she says. He knows that voice. Tracy? “You said you’d be here in the early afternoon. I haven’t heard from you. Are you hurt? Should I call the police? You said you’d bring Dean home—”

Oh, shit, it’s not Tracy’s ghost, it’s Ellen. He told her he’d bring Dean home on Sunday. Today is Sunday. Oh, shit. He grabs the phone.

“Mrs. Smith?”

“Evan?”

“I just walked in.”

“Is everything all right? I’ve been worried sick.”

“Oh, I totally . . . totally—”

“What happened?”

“—forgot. I’m so sorry.”

A long pause that sounds remarkably like Ellen composing herself. Evan envisions her thin, pale fingers flitting through her hair.

“We were having such a great time, ” he adds for good measure. She’s pretty shaken, he can tell.

“I was so worried, ” she practically whispers.

“We were having a good time and the day just flew by. I don’t know how I could have forgotten.”

“You could have called.”

“I know, I know.”

“I was worried you might have gotten into an accident, ” she says.

“No, no. Why would you think that?”

“Oh, Evan, ” she cries, breaking down.“How could you ask me that? My daughter was just killed in her car and you tell me you’ll bring Dean home and you don’t arrive, how am I
not
to think that you two aren’t dead, also? Why
wouldn’t
I think that? Oh, Evan.”

She sobs uncontrollably into the phone.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Smith.”

“Please, Evan.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Oh, Evan, ” she bawls. “Please bring him home tomorrow. Please.”

Evan hesitates before he answers. He hesitates because he feels somewhat caught. On the one hand, he wants to yield to authority, give Dean back to his rightful owners. On the other hand, he’s had such a good time with Dean and Mica, he doesn’t want it to end.

“Evan?”

But it has to end. Logically, that’s what it must do. End.

“You’ll bring him home tomorrow, won’t you?” she begs.

“I’ll bring him home tomorrow, ” he says. “I’ll have him there by two.”

“Really?”

“Two o’clock, Mrs. Smith. Dean will be on your doorstep at two o’clock tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Evan.”

Don’t thank me. Thank the devil, who just got a soul real cheap.

He gets up from the bed and turns; he starts when he see Dean standing in the doorway.

Dean lets his presence be felt in the dim room; it’s a clingy presence that seeps into the edges; as he grows more mature his presence will change; it will continue to develop until people who know him will call him wise, magnetic, charismatic.

“I have to go to the bathroom, ” he says cautiously.

“Sure.”

“There’s only one.”

“I know. Go ahead.”

Dean steps into the bathroom and closes the door.

What has he heard? What does he know?

He locks the door.

Ah. He’s heard everything. He knows everything. Between a father and a son, sometimes, no dialogue is necessary. The simple act of locking a bathroom door can be enough . . . simple, but no less symbolic than the construction of the Berlin Wall, which, after all, was erected in a single, dark, lonely, Teutonic night. What does he know? He knows everything.

“WHO WAS IT?”Mica asks Evan.

“Dean’s grandmother.”

“Everything all right?”

“She was just checking in, ” Evan lies. He’ll have to tell her soon. Right now she thinks that Dean is a permanent fixture in Evan’s life. He’ll have to burst that bubble, explain that he’s shipping Dean out on the next slow boat. Then he’ll tell her what
status epilepticus
means. The rhetorical version of a one-two punch.

“Listen, ”Mica says, “I have to confess something.”

Confess?
She
has to confess?

“Remember when I told you guys I had to go out of town soon to mix a track for a movie?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I’m going to Jamaica for about a week-and-a-half. I mean, it’s not a big deal. Just so you know.”

“Yeah, sure. Sounds like fun.”

“Ugh. It’ll be a
ton
of work, but . . .”

Jamaica. Evan wishes he were going. Ganja capital of the world. He’d like to stuff himself into one of Mica’s bags and get air-freighted down there.

Dean emerges from the bedroom and skulks back into the dining room; he slides into his chair. He stares dully at his plate; he doesn’t make a move toward eating; his arms are limp from the shoulder.

“Everything all right?” Mica asks.

“Yeah.”

“I was just telling your dad . . . I’m heading off to Jamaica tomorrow morning. I won’t see you guys for a couple of weeks.”

“Oh?”

“It’s work, not vacation. If it were vacation I’d blow it off in a second. You guys are too much fun. But I’m expected. There’s a studio down there where some musicians like to record, and I’ve been requested.”

“Oh, ” Dean says.“Okay.”

They try to continue dinner, but the fun is all gone. Mica is full, Evan pushes some food around his plate, and Dean sits sullenly, staring at his fork.

“You feeling okay?” Mica asks Dean.

He shrugs.

“Stomachache?” She wonders.

“No.”

“You look pale. Are you warm? Evan, does he have a fever? Maybe too much sun? You should drink some water.”

She fills his glass from the water pitcher on the table.

“Maybe you want to lie down?” she offers.

Dean moves his head slightly—a move that might be construed as a nod—pushes back, scraping the chair legs on the floor. He hoists himself from the seat and trudges off, head hanging. Mica watches after him, then reluctantly stands and begins clearing the table.

“He’s upset with me for leaving, ” she says.

Evan agrees that Dean is upset. But it’s not what Mica thinks.

“I wish I could change it, ” she continues. “But I can’t.”

“That’s not what he’s upset about, ” Evan tells her. She’s holding onto a stack of plates that she’d taken into the kitchen, but there’s no place to set them so she brings them back to the table.

“What?”

“He’s not upset about your leaving. He’s upset about something else.”

“What?” she asks.“
Us?
You and me?”

“No.”

“Then, what?”

Now’s the time to tell her. She walked right into it. If only everything were this easy. Ask a question, get an answer. Easy. Not like the many longstanding secrets he’s kept from his parents. Things that are too complicated to unravel at a single gathering.

“You might want to sit.”

Piqued, she sits. “I’m ready, ” she says.

Evan takes a big breath.“Dean is my son. He’s been my son his entire life, but I’ve only known him for the past week.”

Her eyes narrow and her jaw sets.

“Are you angry?” he asks.

“Go on, ” she says.

“His mother, Tracy, died. And I got a call. I went to the funeral and met Dean. And then his grandparents were having some kind of drama and his grandmother told me to get him out of there, so I did. I brought him home with me. And now she just called and said she wants him back—actually, she called a couple of days ago and I told her I’d bring him back today, but I forgot because we were having such a great time. Now she wants him back and I think he overheard me talking to her, telling her that I’d bring him back tomorrow, and I think
that’s
what he’s upset about, not that you’re leaving. Not that he wouldn’t be upset about your leaving. But he’s
more
upset about the other thing.”

“That’s interesting, ” she says. She’s clearly seething, but her anger is masked behind a detached coldness; she might kill him right now, or she might walk away and let him suffer for the rest of his life.“But I’m more concerned about life
before
this past week. I’m interested in how it happened that you
didn’t
see him for his entire life. How did
that
work?”

Oh,
that
part.

“I got Tracy pregnant, ” he says.“We were in high school. She moved away. I mean, her father moved them away, that’s obvious now. She didn’t want to move away, she wanted to go to Reed.”

“Reed.”

“College. Small, liberal arts, Portland.”

“I know.”

“Well, she wanted to go there. But she couldn’t go with a baby. I mean, how could she? She wanted to go to college. You know, live in the dorms and stuff. How could she do that with a baby? She couldn’t.”

“So, she didn’t.”

“I don’t know
what
she did. I mean, I don’t think she went to Reed because they moved away, and she, obviously, had the baby.”

“But the plan was for her
not
to have the baby.”

“Well, the plan, as I recall it, was that she was using birth control and she wouldn’t get pregnant.”

“But you weren’t.”

“What?”

“Using birth control?”

“Sometimes. I mean, I was just a kid.”

“Babies having babies.”

“Look, ” he says, “the more you find out about me, the more you’re going to hate me. Believe it. I’m a bad person. I’m stupid. I’ve wasted a perfectly good life. I’ve had every chance. I’m the eldest son of a famous, wealthy, white male heart surgeon. You can’t beat that in America. I could have picked up the Old Boy Handbook and found myself listed as the number one pledge. I have no excuses. Everything bad that’s happened to me is my own fault. So maybe we should cut it short and you can hate what I am and we can save ourselves a lot of trouble.”

She looks at him crookedly.

“Boo-fucking-hoo, ” she says.

“I don’t—”

“Evan. Listen closely. I don’t know who your girlfriends have been in the past, but here’s the deal: try that self-indulgent self-pitying bullshit with me one more time and you’ll never see me again. You won’t even see my shadow again. Got it?”

Evan nods. Message received.

“Now quit the whining and tell me what happened. You didn’t want to go to Portland with her, you had your own life, you didn’t want the baby.”

“No!” Evan says strenuously.“No, not at all. No, no, no. I
wanted
the baby. I really did. I didn’t care about college. I had no plan to go to college. I was in a band. Hell, the summer after I graduated high school all I wanted to be was a rock star. Are you kidding? I was willing to move down to Portland and marry Tracy and we’d raise Dean together. I’d go on tour when I had to. No, no—”

“Okay. So, what, then?”

“She wanted an abortion. That’s what she wanted.”

“How did you know?”

“Well, she said something like, ‘I’m not going to college with a baby, ’ and then she said something like, ‘I need money for an abortion.’ It wasn’t tricky.”

“No, I guess not.”

“So I gave her the money. But you have to understand,
I
wanted the baby. I asked her to marry me. I told her I’d move wherever she wanted, I’d quit the band, I’d get a job, whatever she wanted. She said no. She said she wasn’t going to college with a baby.”

“Ouch, ”Mica says.

“Yeah, ” Evan agrees.

“Fuck you, you liar!”

They turn, startled by the new voice. Dean is in the living room, watching them.

“I hate you, ” he shouts. “I hate you, you liar!”

Evan feels like he’s been shot in the stomach. Dean’s been standing there the whole time. Evan can’t believe it. It makes him sick; Dean heard the whole thing.