It Feels So Good When I Stop (23 page)

He glared at me while sucking away.

James had assured me there was no way it was going to rain. I pulled into the parking lot of the John Glenn Middle School and let Roy loose. The playground was a lot closer to the building than it looked from the road. A window of the classroom nearest the swing set had two crude gender representatives painted on it: a football and a horse with a pink mane. I could see the faces of kids dying at their desks. The teacher was a middle-aged woman. She was startled when she turned and saw me standing so close to the other side of the glass. I waved to her, one caretaker to another. She started to wave back, but stopped herself.

“We’re not hurting anybody, right, Roy? ” I pulled my knit hat from my pocket and concealed my homeless-guy hairdo. I showed off some fatherly affection by kissing Roy’s cheek, then looked back into the classroom. I felt so sorry for Roy. He had his whole life ahead of him.

The playground was built for kids much older than Roy, so I had to sit on the swing and hold him in my lap. He didn’t like it at first, but as soon as we started moving, everything was fine. It was kind of nice holding on to him. His fat fingers were white from squeezing the iron chains. He laughed more and more the higher we went.

I glanced into the classroom. The teacher was now talking to a man who resembled the father on the show
Family Ties
. I could see yellow in his beard. They exuded the same kind of distrust. They had me made for a pedophile fishing for a keeper, using little Roy as bait. I swung him less high. He wanted to get down and run around, so I let him.

“Careful, Roy. Careful.”

He was standing in a depression worn into the ground, fucking around with the swing. I tried to pick him up and move him somewhere safer, but he screamed. Both teachers looked at me, so I left him where he was. He pushed hard on the swing. It came back and smashed him in the mouth. I knew he was going to cry like a motherfucker because for the first few seconds he made no sound at all. He just looked like he was screaming.

I picked him up and hugged him while he wailed. He was touching his mouth. His top lip was already swelling. I lifted it. One of his front teeth was outlined in a fine bead of blood. I touched the tooth, and he screamed. It was loose. I rocked him back and forth. His arms were so tight around my neck, I could have let go of him, and he would have stayed attached to me. I kissed his face and told him it would be okay. I gave him a drink of milk from his sippy cup. That calmed him. He left some bloody, milky drool around the mouthpiece. Seeing that almost broke my heart.

I sat back on a swing and tried to seat him on my lap, but he wanted me to hold him. He rested his head on my shoulder. I put my hand under the back of his coat. My fingers played over his ribs. It scared me to think of how easily they could be broken. I gently rocked us without taking my feet off the ground.

I wondered if Marie’s son, Sidney, had been more or less afraid while dying than Roy was just then. Or are dying and a shocking whack in the mouth one and the terrible same when you don’t know any better? I protected Roy with my body, but no one can protect someone forever.

Both teachers were watching from right up against the window.

“He’s okay, for fuck’s sake.”

WHEN WE PICKED James up at the boatyard, I told him right away about Roy’s accident. James almost seemed excited to see the wound.

“Let’s see that wobbly Chiclet.” Roy resisted, but not enough. “Oh, you’re okay. You’ll live to get married.”

“You think it’s still in there good enough? ”

“That thing’s not going anywhere.” It was one of the few times I was glad James was a know-it-all. “I’ll tell Pamela I walked into him, just in case.”

James asked for his car keys by sticking out his hand, palm up. “I tell you what, though. I don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do when Roy starts talking for real.”

We stopped at Spunt’s on the way home.

“Awesome football game,” Ricky said, like I’d played a key role in East Falmouth’s victory. He was wearing an enormous Boston Bruins home jersey. He looked like he’d been born without hands. “I’ve been waiting for you to come in. I got you something.”

“For me? ” I asked.

James was drinking from a quart of milk, watching us. Ricky reached into his hip pocket and removed a twenty-dollar prepaid telephone card, still in the cellophane wrapper. It had pictures of flags on it.

“So you won’t need to change dollar bills into change to use the pay phone.”

I was touched. “Oh, man, you got to let me pay for that.”

“Why? It’s prepaid.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

James did, I’m sure. I could see him composing a string of homophobic cut-downs he would have delivered with relish if Ricky had been merely stupid.

Ricky showed me the price breakdown on the back of the card. “See? Six cents a minute. Now look.” He raced over to the phone card display and came back with both a five-dollar and a ten-dollar card. He turned them over on the forest green Formica counter. “Seven cents a minute. And eight cents a minute.” He raised the twenty-dollar card and exclaimed to the room, “This one’s got the value.”

James nodded in agreement, then polished off the quart of milk.

Roy was trying to lift a gallon jug of blue windshield-washer fluid.

 

WHILE JAMES GASSED UP the Suburban, I slipped out to the phone booth and test-drove my new phone card. I used a nickel to scrape off the scratch-ticket coating that concealed my access number. I jumped through the dialing hoops, then punched in the main number for
Redbook
. I had 325 minutes available for the call. I dialed Jocelyn’s extension, and again I was rerouted to the receptionist.

“I’m sorry, she’s no longer employed by
Redbook
.”

“What do you mean? ”

“She doesn’t work here anymore.”

“You’re kidding? Since when? ”

The receptionist went into protection mode. “I’m sorry. I can’t say.”

“Did she ever come back from her honeymoon? ”

“Sir, I really can’t—”

“You can’t or you won’t? ”

“Is there someone else you’d like to speak to? ”

“Joff.”

“Who? ”

“Joff Something-or-other.”

She humored me and searched the directory. “I’m afraid there’s no one named Joff working here, either.”

I hung up and dialed Jocelyn’s apartment. Still no answer. Still no answering machine. I bludgeoned the telephone with the receiver, then started walking back to the Suburban.

Jocelyn could have been anywhere: languidly drifting past a Grecian island with a Moroccan financier named Sergio or buying a box of fucking Spic and Span at the C-Town on Ninth Street. Maybe Roger Lyon III flew her over to meet up with the Australian leg of the Fifi tour, or some fucking shit like that. Lyon III seemed like just the type of strategically neglectful, dashing egomaniac who could bring a high-strung girl like Jocelyn around.

James stopped tapping his watch when he saw my face. I opened the passenger door.

He spoke over the top of the truck. “What happened to you? ”

“What a fucking mess.”

James smiled. He enjoyed that he understood all too well. “What she say? ”

“Nothing. I can’t reach her. It’s like she disappeared.”

“Good. Talking to her’s the worst fucking thing you could do.” He slapped the roof. “No. Seeing her is the worst thing.” He started imitating the “weaker” sex, whichever sex that was. “ ‘Maybe we should meet for a coffee and just talk.’ Next thing you know, you’re caught—balls deep—back in the penis flytrap. Fuck that.”

“I know, but it’s fucking hard,” I said.

“Damn straight, it’s hard. But you have to be tough. What did Ronnie say, ‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists.’ ”

“I thought Reagan did negotiate with terrorists.”

“Depends on who you ask. All I’m saying is, you talk to her, and just like that, you’re set back months.”

“I know, but—”

“Like in AA, when they give you a badge for every week you’re dry. That’s all fucking good and well, but you fall off the wagon, and those badges don’t mean shit.”

“What if you’re meant to be a drunk? ”

“I don’t know. I guess, be a good one.”

A pristine navy blue Chevy Impala from the early seventies pulled up on the other side of the pumps.

“Here comes Mr. Fucking Magoo,” James said. “This is all I need.” An elderly man got out and squinted at the gas prices. “How are you today, Mr. Mahoney? ” James called over.

“Fine.” It took Mr. Mahoney a few seconds to process just who James was. “Jimmy. I didn’t recognize you.”

“It’s the gray hair.” James took off his hat and slicked back his temples.

“I don’t see any gray.”

“Oh, it’s there.”

“Least you still got some.” Mr. Mahoney ran his hand over his bald head. It was as shiny as a priest’s.

They chuckled, each pretending to know the mythical inner peace that’s supposed to come to aging men.

Mr. Mahoney grabbed a small, triangular wooden block from his dashboard. He slid the nozzle into his gas tank, then wedged the block into the nozzle’s handle so he could fuel up hands free. “How are your mom and dad? ”

“They’re doing great,” James said. “Thanks.”

“That’s fantastic. Give them my best.”

“I certainly will. And give mine to Mrs. Mahoney.”

“It’s a deal.” The old man walked toward the store, leaving the rigged pump unattended and racing toward a potential overflow.

When the coast was clear, James removed the block of wood and tossed it in the trash. “That man should not be allowed to drive.” He finished filling Mahoney’s tank the old-fashioned way. “No shit, they should retest all of them at sixty-five.”

 

JAMES’S MOTHER DIED of bone cancer a few weeks after Roy was born. I went to her wake. It was open-casket. She looked like that nineteenth-century sailor they found preserved in a block of Arctic ice. I never met his father. He died not long after James and Pamela started dating. He was out fishing alone in his boat, and he had a stroke. They said he wouldn’t have lived even if he’d had the stroke in the emergency room of Mass General. That made everyone feel better.

“ PRETTY COOL, HUH?” I said. “A twelve-inch, stainless-steel skillet with an aluminum sandwich bottom.”

“What do you know about aluminum sandwich bottoms? ” Jocelyn said snidely. “You read that off the box.”

I knew when I saw my mother’s return address on the package that Jocelyn was going to have an issue with what was inside—whatever it was. I didn’t feel like getting into it with her. We stood in my kitchen looking at the new skillet gleaming on my dulled, shit brown electric stove.

Jocelyn shook her head like something was a crying shame. “And she sent that to you out of the blue? ” She knew damn well where it came from.

“Yup.”

“That’s weird.”

“It’s a fucking gift from my mother.”

“It’s more complex than that.”

“Oh, it is? ”

“Yes. I see it clear as day. Obviously you don’t.”

“Give me a break. Can’t my mother buy me a pan? ”

“It’s the only pan you own.”

“It’s not my only pan.”

“Correction: It’s the only usable pan you own. I wouldn’t wash my feet in your cookware.”

“They’re not that bad.”

Jocelyn skipped right over the sorry state of the rest of my pots and pans. “She’s still taking care of you. And you let her.”

“That pan is taking care of me? ”

“If you can’t see that, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

Jocelyn’s mother was a sclerotic-livered concern-sponge, the Bizarro World opposite of my own. Right then I felt like rubbing her nose in it, but that would have been cruel. So I rubbed her nose close to it. “You sure you’re not just a tiny bit jealous? ”