Other Plans (3 page)

Quickly he doused the light. His ear was finely tuned. He hadn't been caught with his light on in ages. He didn't feel like answering any questions or talking to anyone right now.

He sat in the dark listening to himself breathe. Then, silent as a cat, he crawled through the room's opening into his own bedroom, pretending he was a second-story man, or perhaps a rapist, creeping with great cunning and boldness to the bed, prepared to place the chloroform-soaked rag over the mouth and nose of the beauty lying asleep, supine, starkers. Just as he reached out, she opened her eyes, like Snow White, and sighed, “You've come at last.”

He made it to the bed, just in time. He heard footsteps coming up the stairs, down the hall, stopping outside his door. He knew they would check on him, see that he hadn't succumbed to crib death or, worse, run off to some gin mill. He wondered if they would ever stop checking on him, and he knew they would not. When he was gray and gnarled, or bald and bulbous, however it went, they would continue to run a bed check on him. As long as they were around. Maybe he'd be one of those sons who continues to live at home well into his dotage. And theirs. The way they did in Ireland. The thought made him want to laugh out loud. But caution prevailed. He saw himself, middle-aged, querulous from dentures and/or irregularity, still having his television time rationed, his work habits overseen. If he ever went on a honeymoon, which was doubtful, they would run a bed check on him from their room next door. Of that he was sure.

Actually, he thought, that wouldn't make a bad skit. Middle-aged gent with extravagantly sexy bride, escorted on honeymoon by doddering parents, who made sure that everything was on the up and up.

The door opened. His eyelids fluttered, but not unduly. He hoped she wouldn't stand there looking at him too long. He rather liked the look of the supine and starkers beauty and was afraid his mother would frighten her off. Timing. In affairs of the flesh, as in most others, timing was all.

The door closed. He lay rigid, waiting for the sound of silence out there.

“He's asleep,” he heard his father say. So. It had been his father giving him the old one-two all along, willing those fluttering eyelids to part. His father, the architect. The idea startled him into wakefulness. Long after the house had settled down for the night, creaking and groaning its tired old bones, and the beauty had picked up her marbles and gone, he lay staring at the ceiling. There was something about a dark and quiet house that made for a wakeful night. There was something decidedly unsettling about knowing his father had stood on the threshold of his room, gazing fixedly at him without a by-your-leave. It was hours, or so it seemed, before he stopped thrashing, turning, thwacking at his pillow, which unaccountably had been filled with lumps of coal when he wasn't looking, and slept.

2

When he tottered downstairs the next morning, the brash sun already had the kitchen in its grasp. He kept his eyes at half-mast in an effort to shut out the glare, the brilliant colors in the wallpaper. He had a theory, well-tested, never proven, that if he stayed in a semicomatose state until he reached school, his mind would be better able to cope with what the day held.

His mother, alas, had a theory diametrically opposed to his. Hers was the hot cereal bit. Hot cereal to warm the body, feed the brain, coat the tongue. Resolutely he picked up his spoon and, in full truck-driver crouch, attacked the bowl of lumps she'd set so proudly before him, sending clouds of steam into his face. If she ever turned out a vat of lump-free gruel, she'd feel in some small way she'd let him down.

His mother watched him eat and thought what lovely bones he had. And his head was beautiful. Well-shaped. She loved having him around the house, even though he drove her crazy at times. He needed a new sports coat, she mused. Those sleeves barely covered his elbows.

He looked up, caught her watching him. “Hey, Ma. Quit it. You make me nervous when you stare at me.” Her morning face was slick with moisturizer. She moisturized the bejesus out of her face ever since she'd turned forty. Locking the barn door after the horse had been stolen, she called it. Kiss her good-bye in the morning and you slid off the edge of her cheek. Her lashes, palely brown, barely discernible, lay against her face, delicate as the wings of a moth. When she was suited up to meet the world, they were thick and black and lustrous. He liked her morning face better. She seemed to him then to be less a mother, more a friend.

“You're getting army,” she said.

“My arms too short to box with God,” he said.

“I'll have to see if I can find you a jacket at the Thrift Shop. I'm working there today. I'll look for one.”

“Ma,” he rolled his eyes. “One request. Lay off the Thrift Shop, okay? Those clothes you bring home from there always smell like cat.”

“Anybody call last night?” she asked, ignoring his crack about cat smell. He knew she would buy him a jacket at the Thrift Shop, one whose sleeves grazed his knuckles. She would take it to her little man who would shorten the sleeves at great price.

“Yeah. You did,” he said. She gave him a look. “And also my money man—my broker—and a couple of girls hit me with obscene phone calls. That's about it.” He washed down some lumps with a swallow of milk laced with coffee and studied the ceiling, trying in vain to remember any more calls.

“John, I can tell from your expression that someone did call. Who was it?”

“Oh yeah. I forgot.” He took another swallow and swirled the café au lait around like mouthwash.

“Les called,” he said as slowly as he dared.

“I knew it!” she crowed. “What'd she want?”

He shrugged. “Nothing much. Just checking to see how we all were. Said she wanted you to send some chocolate chip cookies.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her push up the sleeves of her bathrobe, an old one of his father's she'd managed to shrink pretty much down to her size.

“John, I haven't got all day.” He could hear his father moving around upstairs.

“She said to tell you she's coming next week on her spring break.”

“I thought so! Wonderful! When, exactly? Why on earth didn't she let us know beforehand?”

“She did. This is beforehand. She's not coming until Sunday.” He took his cereal bowl to the sink and squirted water into it, sending the remaining lumps down the disposal, fleeing for their lives. “She's bringing a friend.” He watched his mother's eyes dart around the spotless kitchen, checking for pockets of filth she might've overlooked.

“A friend? Who?”

“She didn't say and I didn't want to pry,” he said primly. “All she said was her friend was outrageous.” Leslie had brought several young men home her first year at college and they'd been reasonably wimpy, he'd thought. Feckless, his father had called them.

“It must be a girl,” his mother said.

“How do you figure?”

“If it was a man she'd say he was interesting or attractive or amusing, but she wouldn't say ‘outrageous.' You're sure she didn't say who the friend was? That's not like Les.”

“Nope.” There was no reason to withhold information from her. Still, he liked doing it, liked being the sole person in the house who knew Leslie's friend was a girl. His father appeared in the doorway.

“Does anyone know where my gray socks are?” His father thrust out one bare foot, giving him a significant stare. His father was paranoid about him stealing his socks. Which he did only when desperate. “I can only find one, John. Did you take any socks from my drawer?”

“Dad,” he said, “I wouldn't be caught dead wearing your socks.” If only the dog hadn't died. Check the dog. He must've eaten it. Why don't you order an autopsy? Check out the poor bastard's stomach. One sock, hardly chewed, only a little bit slimy. Death due to one chewed sock.

“Henry, I put some clean socks on top of your bureau yesterday,” his mother said. “Did you check there?”

“What a strange place to check for clean socks,” John whispered as his father limped back upstairs, as if wearing one sock made for some sort of disability.

The telephone rang. His mother, by virtue of superior maneuvering, got to it first.

“Hello? Yes, he's here. He's eating,” she said, which wasn't true. “All right.” Her voice was irritable. It must be Keith.

“I've got probs here.” Keith's voice was low and raspy. “She got herself clobbered last night. Brought some guy home for a nightcap and the guy started throwing things and hollering and some asshole of a neighbor called the cops. I didn't get much sleep.”

His mother pointed her ear at the phone as if it were a dowsing rod and she was searching for water. He moved away from her. No good would come of it if she heard what Keith was saying.

“Yeah, that's all right,” he said in a phony, bright voice. “I can handle that. Sure, fine.”

“What?” said Keith. “Tell Gleason I have an earache. Or herpes. I don't care what you tell him. Tell him I'm on my way to the doctor. If he asks, that is. I don't know when I'll make it to school. Maybe not at all. Front for me, okay? Some day I'll return the favor,” and with a ghoulish laugh, Keith hung up.

“What'd he want?” She always knew when something was up. Besides that, she didn't trust Keith.

“He overslept.” He busied himself with his stack of books. “Wants me to tell Gleason he'll be a little late.”

“I bet.” Pursing her lips, she said, “It's a wonder that kid gets to school at all, with his home life.”

What did
she
know about Keith's home life?

“I've got to split, Ma. See you,” and he grabbed his jacket from its hook on the back of the kitchen door. He almost had it made when his father reappeared and nailed him.

“I'd like to talk to you tonight, John,” his father said.

“You find your sock?” He looked pointedly at his father's neat gray ankles.

“Yes. Thank you for your concern.” His father didn't like to admit that he couldn't find things.

“Block out your time this evening so you can do your homework and still fit me in.” His father's voice was excessively polite. “It's time we talked about your future, your attitude. Where you're going.”

“I'm going to school,” he said, smiling to show he wasn't being a smartass.

“You know what I mean, John.” His father fiddled with the dial on the TV, looking for his favorite newscaster. With any luck at all there'd be a shot of the president taking off for the weekend, and his father could shoot off his mouth and let off some steam talking to the president, telling him all he ever did was wave to the peasants on his way to his weekend place. There was nothing like the sight of the president, taking off or staying in the capital, to distract his old man. It was magic.

“Just pull yourself together so we can discuss your plans this evening.”

Why couldn't he say “tonight” like other guy's fathers?

“I don't have any plans, Dad. I can fit you in.” Behind his father's back, he made a face. His mother widened her eyes at him and said, “Get a move on or you'll miss your bus.” He knew she'd like it if he kissed her good-bye. But he didn't feel like it. He let the door slam behind him and, as the damp February air filled his lungs, he lifted a finger to the sky to show what his father could do.

Head down, bucking the wind, he trudged to the bus stop. If he timed it right, he and the bus would round the turn together. He enjoyed racing alongside while the kids inside peered out, cheering him on, shouting so the bus driver, who was his friend, would order them all to pipe down. Sometimes, when he raced like that and listened to the sounds of cheering, he pretended he was in the Olympics, on his way to a gold medal. Or imagined himself Jimmy Connors. Or even Chris Evert Lloyd. When it came to winning, he was totally asexual.

This morning, no matter how he dragged his feet, scraping them over the frozen ground, no matter how much he slowed down, he couldn't win. He had to wait even after he reached the bus stop, stamping his feet, watching his breath rise in the cold air.

“So. You're an early bird today, eh?” Gus, the driver, swung open the door to let him in.

“More like the worm.” He lurched down the aisle to the back of the bus, hoping for a seat next to someone he didn't know. In his bones rested the knowledge of a bad day coming. Keith calling, his father lining him up for yet another session in which he did all the talking: If he didn't shape up, he'd wind up in a bread line. Or selling apples,
à
la the Great Depression. If he didn't pull up his socks and get serious, he could forget college. A good college, anyway. He had heard it all a hundred times.

If he'd been able to race the bus, maybe he could've worked off the sweat. As it was, a heavy weight lay on his chest.

His mother's hot cereal?

Perhaps. More likely, the weight of impending doom.

3

“Mr. Hollander, sir? Doctor will see you now.” The nurse was plain, sallow-skinned, her small eyes made smaller by blue eye shadow applied with a heavy hand. As Henry followed her down the ball to the doctor's office, he could see her shoulder blades through her uniform. She flattened herself against the office door to allow him room to pass and he noticed a birthmark on her neck, dipping down into her white collar. A birthmark the color of eggplant; aubergine, unsightly. He wondered why it hadn't been removed when she was a child. There was no excuse for leaving something that disfiguring on a girl baby. Or a boy baby, either, for that matter.

The doctor stood as he entered. He must look as old as he felt. It was only recently he'd begun feeling tired before the day was half over. Only recently, too, he'd taken to examining his face in the mirror and realized he was beginning to show his age.

“Good morning, Mr. Hollander. Nice day. A bit nippy, but nice.” There were the formalities to be gone through. The doctor was alarmingly young. With his chubby cheeks, strawberry-blond hair, and freckled forehead, he looked like a very large child. The doctor's hands, however, were reassuring. They were strong and capable, square-nailed, clean, the hands of a good doctor. Hands were more important in this case, he reasoned, than faces. He sat in the chair indicated by the nurse.