Lawnboy (6 page)

Her beauty faded after the wedding. You could see it happening in their pictures, when she traded in her makeup for jeans and workshirts, as if she’d told herself that this was it—the end of possibility. “Where’s the girl I married?” Sid teased, hugging her from behind. “Where’s the beautiful girl I was so proud of?” He couldn’t get to her, though. After all, she’d gotten what she’d wanted. And now the only thing left to do was to have a baby.

She thrived once Peter was born. He was long, gangly, with tufts of dark hair, overly large ears, and a curious bump on his temple where the forceps had clamped. Eight pounds, seven ounces. Handsome, she knew he was going to be handsome. And it felt good to say that name again, Peter, as if her boyfriend had inhabited her baby to keep her company once again, to bring her back to life.

For five years he was the most important thing to her. She took him to the supermarket, to her gynecological appointments, to lunch at the Silver Wheel with her friend, Astrid Muth. She wouldn’t even consider a babysitter, wouldn’t let Peter for one minute out of her sight, convinced that mishap was lurking just around the corner. Peter grew anxious, cranky when she wasn’t around. On his first day of kindergarten, after promising he’d never cross the street without the assistance of the safety guard, he strayed far behind the others, fearful, shy, only to find that the fifth-grader in charge was already off duty. He trudged up the wrong side of Avenida Bayamo. He sat down on the curb across from the house and waited—ten, twenty minutes—before Mrs. Feldman, hanging up violet socks on her clothes tree, spotted him.

“What’s the matter, Pete?”

He was sobbing now. “The safety went away. I can’t cross the street.”

Mrs. Feldman glanced in both directions and crossed over to him. There wasn’t a single car in sight.

“Do you want me to help you cross the street?”

Peter gazed up at Mrs. Feldman. Her body was huge, luminous, the size of a planet. He swiped at his nose and nodded.

“Okay, honey. Look both ways. And take my hand.”

He took her hand. Once on our yard he skittered across the grass to the back door, forgetting to thank Mrs. Feldman.

“You tell your mother to watch you,” she called.

“Okay,” Peter said. “Bye bye.”

And years later I was born, and things changed once again.

***

We’d passed the critical point. It seemed that we’d crossed some mine-strewn landscape, that if we weren’t meant to be together we’d have found out by now. I wanted to take William out to dinner, to give him a card, to buy him a pair of boxer shorts patterned with pink cocktail glasses and swizzle sticks, but I stopped myself, as if doing so would only have called attention to the possibility of conflict. Remarkably, there was no conflict between us. We were learning to live together, falling into our respective routines as all companions do. What was the point of deeming that an accomplishment?

And yet there was the issue of the bed. Were we becoming too comfortable with the situation? Were we too afraid to wrest ourselves out of the familiar, with William on the couch, and me on the floor with my blankets, sheets, and pillows? We certainly had sex—good, ravenous sex, though it was less than I’d expected. Once a week? Once every two? Was something wrong? One evening I’d even convinced myself I preferred sleeping this way to having his warm body curled around mine, grasping me, taking me with him as he turned from side to side. After all, for most of my life I’d slept alone, liking it, imagining it the only possibility for a good night’s sleep.

And yet?

It was time to do what I’d been putting off. One afternoon, while William was away at work and I was home alone, I walked into the master bedroom to check out the mattress. Couldn’t I fix it myself? I sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing slightly, staring at the framed photos of Lorna and Poppy. They covered every square inch of the dresser—images of his former life, which unsettled me sometimes. Where were the pictures of me? I looked at Lorna. It was hard to imagine he’d ever been married to her, with her expensively treated hair and plucked brows. Even more unsettling was Poppy, whom I’d never met, and never cared to. Though we were close in age, we’d probably never get along. I studied her tilted, heart-shaped face, the precise, calculated sweep of hair across her forehead, knowing she would have all but ignored me in high school because I wasn’t interesting or fabulous enough.

Or maybe I wasn’t giving her a chance.

I bounced again on the bed and decided to check out the underside. I crawled upon my hands and knees, left eye close to the floor. Dust, nickels, chewing-gum wrappers, used rubbers—it was enough to make me lug the vacuum from the closet. In about ten seconds I discovered the culprit: a dislodged support board. I hefted up the mattress with one arm, slipped in the board with the other, and that was that. I laughed. I started laughing so hard that I couldn’t stop. It was strange to think that we’d exiled ourselves to the living room for this.

I lay on the restored bed, basking in the light of my accomplishment. The palms outside the window threw golden shadows on the wall, weaving. I felt so good that I unwittingly pulled down my pants to my ankles, palming the head of my dick, not intending to come, of course, but consoled by the ministrations of my hand. I realized how much I’d missed jerking off, how I’d always thought it an essential activity, a primary component in the development of one’s imaginative life.

Glancing up, I saw William standing in the doorway.

I had no idea how long he’d been watching me.

Immediately I wriggled up my pants and sat up, my face hot with shame. I was too unnerved to laugh at myself.

“What are you doing home?” It was only four o’clock; lately he hadn’t been coming in the door until nine.

He looked harried, uncomfortable. He walked over to the window and pulled open the drapes, flooding the room with a yellow light.

“I fixed the mattress,” I declared. My voice sounded starved, panicked, as if I were trying too hard to please. What was the matter with me? He wasn’t my father.

He flopped deliberately on the bed.

We were silent together. I sat down beside him, diminished and disabled, entertaining the possibility of him spanking me across his lap. I’d pull in my breath, eyes squeezed tight, jerking at the sting of his slaps. The heat swarming in my butt. Afterwards, he’d hold me in his lap, wipe away my tears, tell me he’d be kinder to me from now on, a better person. I took a photograph of us in my mind, a tableau.

“So you’re home,” I said, venturing an observation.

“Yeah,” he said. He leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head. He pulled in his lips. “We had a bomb scare at the station.”

“A bomb scare?”

“A bomb scare. Terrorists. They sent everyone home until further notice. Station’s off the air. Turn on the TV.”

I reached for the remote. The picture was snowy, the audio a harsh scratch. I shuddered. “God,” I said, picking at my lip. Why hadn’t I recognized that my lip was chapped?

William closed his eyes. I rested beside him on the bed, wanting to recapture the uncharged emptiness of everyday life. How could I calm down? How would I interpret this moment, years in the future: masturbation, spanking fantasy, terrorism, bomb threat? And yet a part of me liked the unsettling rush: I wanted to have sex. I wanted to climb on top of William’s prone body and fuck him, savagely, with gritted teeth, like an animal, though I didn’t think I’d get away with it.

“I worked hard all day,” I said suddenly. “I vacuumed the living room, I scoured the rust stains from the kitchen sink, I did three loads of laundry, I walked the dogs in the storm—” The blood was beating in my ears. Was I more upset than I knew? “And that was all today. Would you like me to show you what I did?”

Cautiously he opened his left eye. “I know you work hard,” he said, “I’m sorry,” and offered me a sad, depleted smile.

Inside of me a door creaked open. I felt vindicated—yet exposed and repentant. We stood. We walked into the kitchen where we fixed ourselves an ample, pleasant dinner: rice wine, peanut sauce, stir-fry. That night we still slept in our usual settings, the repaired bed glittering in my mind like some remote island.

Sometimes I worried that I wasn’t a complete person, that I couldn’t label myself. What if I was just a composite of everyone who’d passed through my life—strangers, family, friends—all of whom had inhabited me, taking over my thoughts and gestures before departing, leaving me defenseless? Looking back, I saw how I moved not in a straightahead line, but in lopsided, parabolic circles. I pushed myself out, I reigned myself in. I craved sex, I didn’t crave sex. I wanted to transgress, I wanted to conform. I wanted to be brilliant, I wanted to be a mindless fool.

Was I becoming myself? Or was I stalled, trapped before some rust-clenched gate while everyone else was getting somewhere?

***

The night before William’s trip to Key West, we finally ended up together in the master bedroom. I didn’t know quite how it happened, but that seemed to be beside the point. I lay beside him, my chest flooding with gratitude and energy. I held him closely under the hot tent of the covers. His body felt foreign, huge to me.
Hold me back,
I thought.
Hold me so tight that it hurts. Keep close now. Stay, stay, stay.

The next morning we waited at the front window, watching for Lilo Patrick, the reporter with whom he was working on the assignment, to pull up in her yellow Toyota. He stood beside me, jittery, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He’d been anxious about the project—something about the recent decline of Key West—the incursion of national chains, the dearth of affordable housing, the dead-end alcoholic culture—none of which, William believed, established a single point of view. My pulse quickened in the core of my chest. He was to be gone for the entire week. I didn’t want him to leave, especially now that we’d finally become so comfortable with each other.

At two past eleven—the designated time—Lilo pulled up front, her car engine purring, finely tuned as a sewing machine. I motioned to walk through the front door, until he stopped me, asked me to stay put.

“But why?” And then I remembered that he didn’t want Lilo or anyone at the station to know about me, so much so that I was not to answer the phone, but to let the machine take the message. “It’s a high-powered job,” he’d once explained. “I mean, I don’t think I’d get fired, but you never know. I don’t want to chance it.”

I looked downward. A vault of emptiness opened inside me. “You better go,” I said miserably.

He kissed me, before opening the door. The dogs stepped backward in the foyer, already lonesome, already resigned. Soon enough they’d start longing for him, cocking their heads at any sound of footsteps outside. “You’ll take good care of the dogs?” he asked. “You’ll give them walks?”

“I’ll take good care of the dogs,” I singsonged. “I’ll give them walks.”

He looked at me curiously. “You’ll behave yourself?”

I tried to connect with his gaze, but couldn’t. His words seemed laced with all sorts of innuendo and danger. Did he expect me to spend the entire week locked inside with cartoons and a full refrigerator?

“I’ll miss you,” he said dully.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

“Call you tonight,” he said. “Take good care of yourself.”

“You too.”

He shrugged. “I’m off.”

I lay on the couch, both comforted and alarmed. The house seemed oddly centered: all the various pieces of furniture in their proper place, the two Dobermans lying like sleeping Sphinxes beside me. It occurred to me, when I thought about all I’d been through, the collisions with my parents, my separation from Peter, that I was lucky. Once again I reminded myself that I could have ended up on the streets, strung out, penniless, hacked to death.

Then, for whatever reason, I remembered something else about last night.

“I’m not going to see you for seven days,” I’d whispered.

We were lying in bed, in the still seconds after the lamp had been switched off. Across the street an animal—dog? raccoon?—was rooting through somebody’s trash cans.

“Eight days,” he corrected.

I thought about eight whole days by myself. I reached over for him, pressed my palm upon his taut stomach. I waited. Nothing. Then I waited longer.

“I thought we could make love or something,” I said.

My voice sounded tentative, vulnerable. I couldn’t stand the sound of it. I couldn’t stand the way I had to ask for it, begging, as if it cost him. Already, in memory, I could taste him, like blood, like steel, and now that I’d had him, it wasn’t enough. I needed more, even though I knew my wanting was going to do me in someday.

He heaved a tired sigh. I already knew his answer.

I turned away, moving to the farthest edge of the bed until my face pressed up against the wall.

***

I plodded through the arcade in my workboots. I kept my expression remote and aloof as if to indicate that I wasn’t new at this. But I was dying inside. I wasn’t ugly. I wasn’t desperate, hopeless, dumb. Adult book stores: weren’t they meant for those who led secret lives, who hated themselves? Who else would put up with nasty attendants, filth, that fruity metallic smell? But I’d walked the entire seven miles, not even bothered by the sand in my sneakers, the blisters on my feet.

I kept threading down the halls, if only because I couldn’t stand still. I didn’t want anyone to greet me, or touch me, or pay me the slightest bit of attention. But I liked being in the thick of it, little dramas of pursuit and rejection crackling around me like fires. Gathering my nerve, I glanced at the faces of the—customers? There was an old man—tall, slouchy, wedding band tight on his finger—who might have been on his way home from choir practice. There was a coke dealer, I presumed, with vibrant blue eyes and sunwrecked hair. There was a businessman, sleeves still crisp from the cleaners; a dark-skinned guy with tiny red rings in his ear. All told there were nearly a dozen—fat, skinny, old, young, rich, poor—none with anything in common, but for a melancholy expression, which clearly masked what I felt too: a longing for escape, otherness, transgression, connection.