So Much for That (22 page)

Carol dispensed the usual clatter of pills. Once Heather was bullied into getting ready for bed, Flicka loitered at the table, taking deliberately too long to grind her meds. The girl was an incurable busybody, and sensed something was up. Her mother would gladly have frustrated Flicka’s nosiness, but at length couldn’t contain herself. Searching out stray chickpeas with a whisk broom, Carol muttered to Jackson flintily, “So, you must be happy.”

“As it happens, I’m not in a bad mood,” he said. Feet on an adjacent chair and sipping his second beer, he adjusted himself by discreetly shoving a hand in his pants pocket. “But I get the impression that’s not what you mean.”

“You’ve seen the news?”

“Oh, that.” He was relieved. Of course, Carol wouldn’t allude to certain other issues with Flicka in the room. Still, any subject they discussed these days had an ulterior quality, and he was grateful for even this tiresome a diversion, just as Carol was grateful for sweeping the floor. “Why would I be ‘happy’ that Terri Schiavo died?”

All the in-laws’ avenues of legal appeal having been exhausted, at the husband’s request the Floridian’s feeding tube had been disconnected two weeks earlier. The poor woman had actually lasted longer than her doctors had expected.

“Well, all that unnecessary
expense
,” said Carol. “You and Shep
must be tickled pink. Now we can send her IV and a fresh set of bedding to Africa.”

“I guess I’m relieved for her that’s she’s out of her misery,” Jackson said cautiously.

“But according to you, she couldn’t feel anything. She didn’t even exist, in your view. So how could she experience any misery to end?”

“Honey, I have no idea why this story is so important to you. You didn’t know her; she wasn’t your best friend. There were only a few snapshots to suggest what she might have been like when she was a human being.”

“She was still a human being; that’s the point! And she was murdered. As surely as if someone had shot her between the eyes.”

“But
I
didn’t kill her. So why are you mad at me?”

“You did kill her. Your way of thinking killed her. Oh look, that woman isn’t pretty and entertaining anymore, so let’s just pull the plug! So who else would you like to dispose of while we’re at it? Who else is too expensive or inconvenient? Old people? Or kids with Down’s? Would you put them in a gas chamber because they couldn’t pass your ‘eighth-grade’ test? It’s a slippery slope!”

“Oh, spare me the ‘slippery slope’ routine!” Jackson cried. “We live on a slippery slope, like it or not. It’s amazing any of us can stand up. We do kill people. We give serial killers lethal injections and we mow down the Taliban in Afghanistan—”

“Not if I had anything to say about it we wouldn’t.” Carol reined herself in, glancing at Flicka in dismay. It was now too late to shoo her from the room without implying that at sixteen she wasn’t welcome to participate in discussions of the evening news with her parents.

“Well,
I’m
happy she’s dead,” said Flicka.

“Flicka, don’t you dare say that. Ever. About anyone. It’s ugly.”

“What’s so ugly about it? Terri Schiavo was brain dead and no use to anybody. She was all fat and couldn’t talk, and just blobbed around in bed.”

“So now we’re killing off fat people, are we?”

“I bet if that lady knew she’d turned into a blimp, she’d of pulled the plug on herself. She was all into bulimia and stuff.”

“It’s not for us to judge what’s ‘good life’ and ‘bad life,’” said Carol, “or what someone would prefer when they can no longer speak for themselves. Human life is sacred, sweetheart. In any form. Don’t ever forget that.”

“I don’t see what’s so damn
sacred
about it,” said Flicka stolidly.

“Sometimes it’s crummy and dumb. Getting all messed up about Terri Schiavo kicking the bucket is like bawling ’cause you stepped on a bug.”

Flicka was deliberately winding her mother up, pushing her to cross a line; it was a point of unity between Flicka and her father that they were both dying to see Mom lose it. Carol would not lash out, lest her daughter become ‘upset.’ But the whole purpose of parental reprimand was to make your kids upset. If you didn’t affect them, you’d failed. So how could Carol be a stern, responsible parent who set firm ‘boundaries’ without throwing the girl into the FD version of anaphylactic shock?

“And you?” Carol said coldly. “How would you feel if someone talked about you like a bug?”

Though she knew she wasn’t supposed to, Flicka took off her glasses and rubbed an eye. “Sometimes I feel like a bug. I don’t see why being alive is always supposed to be so great. I think it stinks. In fact, I can’t stand it. You can have it. Terri Schiavo is lucky.”

If Flicka didn’t have FD, Carol might have slapped her. But Flicka did have FD.

“Being alive is pretty wonderful compared to the alternative,” Jackson offered.

“How do you know?” said Flicka. “Me, I think ‘the alternative’ sounds great.”

“Sweetie, you’re tired,” said Carol. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“Yeah, I’m tired,” she slurred. “Of the whole thing. Sweaty sheets. Itchy eyes wrapped in Saran Wrap like leftovers in the fridge. Never being able to walk down the hall at school without that geeky health aide on my heels—”

“Now, we had to campaign long and hard with the Board of Ed—” said Carol.

“I
know
we were ‘very fortunate’ they agreed to pay for her, but how
am I supposed to make friends? Laura’s a goon, and she hovers. Never gives me any space. She’s mostly scared if I trip or choke she’ll get sued. Always calls me ‘hon’ and ‘pumpkin,’ and I hate that.
And
I’m tired of sleeping with that oximeter on my finger. Stupid beeping sound. The way the alarm wakes everybody up. When half the time there’s nothing wrong with me, and the machine is just fucked up. Sleeping with that oxygen mask over my face. Not being able to turn over because of the feed to my g-tube. Setting my alarm for one and four a.m.—”

“Look,” said Jackson, “we told you—”

“I
know
you’re ‘happy to fill the bag for me.’ But I don’t want you to! I want
somebody
to get some sleep! You did that for years. Stumbling up in the middle of the night because your kid needs another can of Compleat. Like running some junky car that’s always leaking oil. The point is, I’m sick of it. It’s all bullshit.”

“Sure it is!” Jackson declared cheerfully, sweeping Flicka into the air by her underarms; she was so tiny and light that it was easy to forget she was sixteen years old. “But it’s all we’ve got. And you and Heather are all we’ve got. So you hang in there just to be nice.”

Sometimes Flicka herself forgot that she was sixteen years old, and she curled onto her father’s shoulder as he carried her upstairs.

I
hate it when she talks like that,” Carol said as they got ready for bed. “I know she doesn’t mean it, and it’s probably down to the Klonopin and Depakote. They both list ‘suicidal ideation’ as a side effect. So she doesn’t really understand what she’s saying, but it still disturbs me.”

“She may have a better idea of what she’s saying than you think.”

“In that case, she’s cruel. What about us? reminding us all the time, as if we need reminding. She uses the FD thing to goad us.”

“Sure, she does. You use what’s handy, right?” When Carol unsnapped her bra, Jackson felt a stirring, followed by a sharp, throbbing twinge.

“What’s that smell?”

Jackson sniffed. “I don’t smell anything.”

“It’s been nagging me all night. In the kitchen, wafting in and out.
I thought maybe something had gone off in the pantry, but now it’s up here.”

“Oh,” he said sheepishly. “I’ve been having trouble with my guts. Could be the chickpeas.”

“I know what a fart smells like, Jackson. It’s not methaney; it’s rank. Like spoiled meat.”

He shrugged. “You’ve always had the more sensitive nose. I’m not getting it.”

“Do you think some animal might have died under the house? I don’t think a rat would do it. A cat, or a raccoon. If this keeps up, I’m afraid you’re going to have to look for it.”

“Ought to be some advantage to living with a handyman. That’s the sort of fun job gets called into Knack every day.” Having thrown his shirt on the chair, Jackson sauntered into the master bath in slacks.

“You’re doing that again,” said Carol.

Jackson raised his voice over the splash of his urine; the choked stream shot in uneven bursts, and it stung. “Doing what?”

“Closing the door while you pee. You’ve done that for weeks. Since when are you so shy? I’ve seen you pee several thousand times.”

Last week Carol had tried just walking in, and found the bathroom door locked. That hadn’t gone down well—she thought he’d lost his mind—and he’d concocted some cockamamie explanation about how he was used to locking the bathroom door at work and just wasn’t thinking; thankfully she’d not called him on the fact that urinals had no doors, nor questioned why he would now routinely take a leak in the men’s room at Knack in the privacy of its single stall. Nevertheless, locking the bathroom door thereafter would have raised more suspicions than the extra security was worth. So tonight she was able to poke her head in unannounced. “Come on,” she said teasingly. “You know I kind of like it.”

Cutting the exercise short, he stuffed himself back into his pants before he could completely squeeze off, and dribbled inside the fly. “Too late! Thrill’s going to have to wait for another night.”

More than one thrill had waited for another night for some time. “I can think of a way you can make it up to me.” Carol put her arms around
him from behind, her bare breasts warm against his back. Christ, this was far later than he’d planned to schedule the unveiling, and the “contagious skin condition” was approaching its sell-by date; pretty soon, Carol wouldn’t buy it.

Still, he figured he could eke it through one more evening or so, the way you can sometimes coax a surprising number of extra brushings from a toothpaste tube to all appearances shot. “I’d love to make it up to you, sunshine,” he said, fumbling to fasten the safety pin on his boxers. “But you know what the doctor said about the skin thing. I guarantee you don’t want this crud.”

Carol stiffened, and dropped her arms. Grazing past her to the bedroom, Jackson’s gut clenched. There did come a time when you had to concede that the Colgate was kaput.

“Skin conditions aren’t usually contagious.”

“Well, this one is. Like athlete’s foot.” He was a little insulted, as if he wouldn’t have thought his pretext through.

“I Googled the name of this ailment of yours. No match.”

“I told you,” he took off his watch with his back to his wife, “it’s very rare.”

“It’s virtually impossible that a medical problem you share with as few as five people isn’t cited somewhere.”

“Maybe you spelled it wrong.”

“
Genital cortamachriasis
, right?” (Granted, the name of his apocryphal scrofula sounded uncomfortably close to Heather’s
cortomalaphrine
, but he’d had to invent it under duress.) “There are only so many plausible ways to spell it. I tried them all.”

“Sounds like IBM ain’t getting its money’s worth!”

She would not be jollied. “None of this explains why I can’t see it. The rash can’t be that bad. And if it is that bad, then I
really
need to see it. That part of your body is part mine.”

“A man has his pride.” Jackson slipped off his slacks, careful not to tug the boxers along with. They were at the tail end of the laundry cycle, and the elastic on these last-generation boxers was weak. “The cream seems to be working, but it’s taking longer than I’d hoped.”

“What cream?”

“The cream! Jesus, why this third degree when I’m only thinking of you?” Reasoning that the best defense was a good taking-offense—a meeting of consternation with umbrage in return—Jackson flailed his arms for effect. “I don’t like sleeping beside your naked body in my underwear. I don’t like going without sex. I’m just trying to protect your health, at some sacrifice to myself, too—”

The flailing came at a price. With his arms outstretched, Carol reached swiftly for both side seams of his boxers and yanked them to his knees. She reeled back a step, and then she screamed.

Carol was not a squeamish person; as for poking about an unfinished basement with a flashlight looking for a rotting raccoon, Carol’s level-headed temperament suited her far better than her husband for the job. The truth was, he may never have heard her scream before. It frightened him. If nothing else, the horror on her face enabled him to see his penis with nauseous objectivity for the first time.

It was the wrong color. Red, but not the cheerful cherry red that it had sometimes turned in its athletic adolescence. It had the purplish undertone of raw liver.

The sutures above his balls were binding. The flesh bulged from their constraint. A glistening yellow ooze seeped from between the threads. Liberated from the swaddling of his boxers, the smell rose more sharply. Though the effluents of one’s own body are generally less noxious than other people’s, this stench made even Jackson a little woozy. The animal from the basement had crawled upstairs.

But worst of all was the shape. It did not look like a dick.

In truth, he had never been entirely won over to the phallic worship of his peers. When he was eight or so, a little girl at the playground had intruded on him peeing in the bushes, and had screamed in much the same spirit of reflexive horror as Carol had a moment ago. Presumably the girl had never seen a penis before, and she was unimpressed. “Oooh, gross, what is that thing, it’s disgusting!” she’d cried as she ran away. And then there was the other time, in gym in junior high. He’d barely entered puberty; still wet from the showers, he’d been cold. Neverthe
less, the jibe from a much bigger kid had smarted:
looks like you’re packing a baby carrot and a couple of lima beans
. Thereafter, the boys had tagged him “the Vegetarian,” a term whose innocence to his teachers’ ears protected his classmates from punishment for bullying. For that matter, the very word
penis
had always sounded like something silly, trivial, and measly. Ever since Jackson could remember, his fifth appendage had seemed subtly alien to him, apart, and capable of betrayal. It was this very sense of the extrusion being not quite a part of his body that may have enabled him to experiment with it.