Hush Hush (21 page)

He walked out, stood listening until he heard the pan clanking on the stove again, and sat down at the bench, picked up a carburetor, and thought about his breakfast. She’d bring it out, she wouldn’t break the eggs, but she’d overcook them, they’d be solid, but when you’re hungry, who cares? He thought of his mother, standing out on the porch, what the farm did to her, always tired, and angry, and it was because they didn’t have any money, and that was why his father never talked about anything else, wanted him to run off to a desert island, and make a million there.

•  •  •

The kid arrived at seven. He was big and, except for his light, klutzy hair, rugged looking, not at all what Lucas had guessed. Liz led the way through the living room, and they settled at the kitchen table.

“I hate my name,” the kid said, after Liz had introduced them. “I sound like some movie star everybody forgot about.”

“Gloria Graham.”

“Lucas,” Liz said, but the kid laughed and nodded at him across the table.

He and Liz had found the table at a Goodwill store—an old green-marble formica dinette table with an aluminum band around the edge. He had gotten the bumper shop to re-chrome the legs. It looked brand new, resurrected, but the kid treated it like it was just some dumb table.

“You even know who Gloria Graham was?”

“Lucas!” she said again.

“Well,” Gordon said, “I saw her in a movie, with Robert Mitchum. He’s a doctor. She owns these horses, a stallion and a mare. When she finally goes to bed with Robert Mitchum, the horses go berserk.” He giggled. “It was funny. It was a real fifties movie.”

“Well, shut my mouth,” Lucas said.

Liz laughed.

The kid was leaning forward, broad-shouldered and big arms, looking like he played on the line. A tackle or something. What must it be like to be a tackle, Lucas thought. Go around saying, I’m a tackle. I’m a mechanic. I’m a genius. The names they give us to call ourselves.

“Gordon watches a lot of movies,” Liz said.

“I hear you’re a genius, Gordon.”

The kid looked at Liz, back at Lucas.

“I’ve got to get the vegetables cut up.” Liz pushed her chair back from the table. “You all will excuse me? Gordon’s thinking about quitting school, Luke. Maybe you can help him with that.” She pointed toward the hall door. “In the living room.”

The kid started to say something, but Lucas said, looking at Liz, “We can help you.”

She pointed again. “Help most by staying out of the way.” She stared at him, held the look an extra second, then went for the refrigerator. “It’s Thai chicken. Sometimes this comes out, sometimes it doesn’t. When it comes out, it’s terrific.”

“You watch TV, Gordon?” Lucas said, taking his glass from the green table. “You want to watch TV?” He walked into the hall, turned into the living room.

The kid followed, close behind. “I—I usually watch
movies. Do you have Showtime? There’re some great movies on Showtime. And HBO and Cinemax,” he said. “They’re pay channels.”

Lucas looked at him, pointed to the couch, sat in his chair. “Yeah, I know. But my trust fund was late this month.”

The kid shrugged, smiled with his eyes, a six-year-old. He sat forward on the couch, stiff, like a museum exhibit.

Genius, Lucas thought. Should have a brass plaque. “You know the first time I heard someone say, ‘I only watch movies’?” he said, rubbing his hand, looking at it. He glanced at Gordon. “It was a while back. It’s okay to do it, just don’t say it.”

The kid put his hands on the couch, lifted himself, settled in the identical position at the front edge. “You—You’re a car mechanic? But you used to be a psychologist,” he said. “I thought about trying to be a psychologist. Must be strange. I mean, being both. I mean, you must have been smart.”

“I was in school,” Lucas said. “Seems like forever. I was never a psychologist.”

“Did she really say that, about me?” the kid said. When he said ‘she,’ he held the word in the air as long as he could.

Lucas laughed. “Yeah, I’m afraid so.” He picked up the remote control and punched the TV on, no sound. The picture flashed and then came in. A living room, unbearably sterile. Some pale black people talking. Lucas looked around his own living room, at the secondhand furniture, and the tables and couch he’d built and she’d sewn. Number 2 yellow pine modern, her snotty colleague had called it. But he wasn’t being snotty. Liked it better than I do, Lucas thought. Wished he had built it himself.

“It’s a great view,” the kid said. He was looking out the big front window, at the streetlights and the streets sloping
down away from the house. “I like to just watch cars drive up and down. Wonder what they’re thinking, the drivers. I imagine them going to meet somebody.” He laughed, a short little laugh. “There’s this cop in the McDonald’s every Friday night. His cop car is always outside. He’s always sitting with this nervous looking woman. She’s beautiful, but she’s nervous. They’re in love, I think. It’s great. She has her hair up, like …” He put his hand to the back of his head. “Her hair is beautiful, too, just pulled up tight. They’re always in the corner, at a corner table. Hiding. It’s great.” As he looked at Lucas, the wild smile began to fade from his face. “You and Miss—”

“Liz. You can call her Liz.”

“You and … Liz … are like that,” the kid said. “She talks about you.” He looked away. As the energy slipped out of him, his wide soft face looked empty, dead. A big, dead kid, a shape.

Lucas closed his eyes, hearing his breathing. Kitchen, he thought, and got up from the chair, then picked up his glass, pointed at Gordon’s. “Hey. You want something? A beer?” He was staring at the quiet boy. “Anything?”

The kid shook his head.

•  •  •

In the kitchen, Liz was standing at the sink. “I’m a jerk,” Lucas said, “a proletarian ex-genius jerk. I thought I was over it. But I’ve—” She was holding one hand wrapped around the other. She was white. The counter stretched off under a mess of paper towels, plastic bags, cut up tomatoes and peppers and onions. Ginger root cut like pale gold poker chips. The big knife, with blood on it.

“I’m all right,” she said. Tears in her eyes. “Only I only don’t feel very well.”

“Let me see it.”

The sink was full of blood. Her index finger was dark, with a crescent-shaped cut curving in a black line at the side of the tip. He put his arm around her shoulders. “Emergency clinic,” he said. “Okay?”

“No,” she said. “No. I’m not spending forty-six dollars on a stupid little cut.”

“Is it throbbing?” He drew his arm away, put it back.

“You cut yourself worse than this all the time. I feel so stupid. I want to sit down.”

He led her to the table, lowered her onto one of the chairs. “Did you wash it? Put some—Some—”

She nodded. “It was like a big fat flap on the end of my finger. But I put some pressure on it and it went right back.”

“It’ll be all right,” Lucas said. “It’ll be okay.”

“I wasn’t looking what I was doing.”

“It’ll be okay. You just sit there.” He walked back to the refrigerator, reached in for a beer, and set it beside the cut vegetables on the counter. He looked back at her, opened a cabinet, took out a glass, and took the glass and the beer over to the table and poured for her. “You drink. We’ll cook,” he said. “Gordon!” he shouted. “Need you in here.” She looked sheepish, drying her eyes before the kid got into the kitchen.

He arrived all smiles, lumbering through the hall doorway and over between them, his light hair soft and babyish, his bulk not quite under control, until he saw her at the table.

“She cut herself,” Lucas said. “She’s okay. Just a little shook. We’re going to do dinner, though. You and me. Okay?” Lucas put his hand on Gordon’s shirt, pushed him up to the counter.

He stood at the counter, confused, half-grinning and
half-frowning, a big kid a thousand miles from home standing in a strange kitchen, looking at the bloody knife the woman that he loved had just used to cut herself, and at the food, red, white, green, gold, that she had cut with such care into wedges and slices and shapes revealing an unbearable sort of perfection, scattered over the kitchen counter. The kid was staring at them.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Lucas said, and he saw the kid’s eyes soften. “Let’s get to work here.” He picked up the knife and dropped it into the sink. “And I’ll tell you stuff. Like, what happens to a genius.” He turned the tap on.

Lucas saw twenty years into the future, saw the kid standing, with a puzzled look, just as he was now, but smoking, at some window somewhere, thinking about this particular lie, the one he was telling him.

“You know what happens to a genius?” Lucas put his hand on the faucet handle, looked at Gordon, smiled. “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. He turned the water off. He shook his head again. “Absolutely nothing. So, the
first thing
all us geniuses do … is relax.”

Gordon was nodding. Without being told to, he had begun herding the cut vegetables into groups, delicately guiding them through the debris on the counter with a fork, whispering.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following magazines in which these stories first appeared:

Thanks also to Bill Henderson, Pushcart Press for reprinting “Hush Hush” (
Pushcart Prize
, XVII) and “Claire” (
Pushcart Prize
, XXIX)