Blind hearts - 16. Crazy People

Not with an irregular occurrence, Alex’s father would sigh a little wish to own a houseboat. Whether it was enjoying the freedom to get lost in the Pacific or the rollicking insecurity of water living or the putative community of ne’er-do-well houseboat owners, nothing about owning a houseboat made sense to Susan. Alex remembered the summer road trip to Phoenix, the town of Quartzite wavering in a steel glare, and his mind hiccupping with apoplectic wtf’s as they drove past a giant white ‘Q’ baking in the sun. The view commanded a puzzled silence before Susan said with a bitterness that was both shocking and comical, “Grandkids can’t run around in a houseboat.” To which Alex replied absently, “Dad, have at it. I’m too gay to want kids.” Another hour later at a gas stop, he had been left behind in the car while they headed on through the garish pickings of a convenience store. He could see his father, mother, a pair of old birds, observing him from inside. Their togetherness was touching, like a solid couple assured of another hundred years of love and prosperity, but all at once, it felt bluffly alien. Suddenly they stood like twin scientists at the zoo, opining cerebrally on a new fangled animal imported from the ass side of the Amazon. Then it made such a disorientating sense to Alex; he had unwittingly come out to his parents.

Over the years he would boast, his parents were cool about the gay thing. David had no innate symbols to comprehend his nature and when he did not understand, he defaulted to silence. Susan, queen of all things sensible, had nothing to say either, not even the obligatory ode to everlasting motherly love. Susan did ask him six months later, “Is it necessary to be gay?” He did not remember his reply. Most probably he had sputtered a squib or something equally declawing to normalize the displeasure of embarrassment, but he could, at moment’s notice, recreate the wambling senses of that instant—the feeling of realizing that the old lady, whom you had written off as a turtle at the poker table, was really a snake.

When he thought of Frank, in the car, both wanting him and rejecting him, his feelings shriveled before the apparition of Susan huffingly drying the dishes as a lively thrum decayed away with the echoes of her question. He had to admit, she was right. Nothing of his wanting and desiring and pining was necessary. Not one instant of it.

And he ventured to Susan’s bedroom, defeated and yet determined. Susan, like an opulent sow, lay in the bed, surrounded with the squares and triangles of an unfinished quilt. Her pale pulpy feet were entrenched in there with the tassels of a coverlet. He wanted to abandon himself upon her and sink deep into the fabric and solid thighs and expire in an explosion of release hopefully before her strident shrieks would ward him off. And even now her gaze, brushed with red, was already chastising him. He gulped, defaulted to a smile.

“I got the finance job at Santa Monica,” Alex said, “The salary’s a lower little than the engineering job …”

“I thought you said you’d turn it down.”

“Well yeah it’s there. I have to consider it,” he said, heavy hearted with indecision.

She turned, the bed creaked. “We’re out of chamomile tea.”

“I need to do a major grocery run.”

Her eyes drooped over a needle sticking though fabric into the air, and he felt stupefyingly lonely.

“You should also get a different kind of dishwashing soap. I think the soap has been bothering my throat all this time,” she said.

“Sure do … Good night.” Alex went away, a little heartened, firmer in understanding that Susan could not do without him.

His room welcomed him with the familiar feeling of smallness. The beige walls reflected the lights too harshly, everywhere a surface of scintillation, like being trapped in room of sun mirrors. The bed, narrow oblong, neighed considerably under his weight, and he thought it was about time he switched out the twin bed for a queen-sized bed. And like a revelation, he saw he did not need the board of Napoleonic soldiers and its folding table, or the giant, erection-inducing, poster of Paul Ivey, or the assorted photographs of homely contentment scattered over the computer desk or the dresser. Sure all of those jocose, grinning, smug, shining, bastardy snapshots of Frank had to go.

And in opiatic delibrateness he changed into sleep shorts and slipped into the bed as if he was afraid to activate a hidden vise dormant in the sheets. And in the same opiatic firmament of loss, he closed his eyes to the dreams eternal for the past few nights, of blinds clanging in the leaves of light that shone over tabletop cups of coffee and whiskey and the opened pages expounding the Kelly Criterion, of Janet yelling at Tom to pay attention, and of a watery light, which led to a door opening to a bedroom, where he himself is achingly wanting in the vast bed, waiting grumblingly for the sounds from the adjoining bathroom to cease, and then a grainy television-like transition and weak seconds of begrudging muttering, then of Frank redolent of toothpaste mint and cheap masculine soap, commandeering Alex’s hips to meet his, and there in his sour face, an intent for a more thrilling sort of apology.

He awoke listless and spent in a mist of Frank. It was torture. Self-sabotage could be the idea nebulous and tenuous when the shards of the morning inveighed upon his eyes, rolling over him a confounding maze of pleasure and frustration. He punched the pillow, punched again, banged his head against the bed, hammered the alarm clock to shut the fuck up. Jumping off a bridge into a busy freeway was a better idea. And yet to die was to deny himself the ultimate erotic heights. Every other night, he fucked Frank, every other night Frank fucked him—It was as if his soul was sabotaging his efforts for a convenient amnesia.

He dragged off the bed, and with a sleep-dusted glance, apprised himself of the time: 7:12 am. He should have been awake forty minutes ago, but yeah—it was Friday—classes, catching up with a boorish project partner, the special mission to buy chamomile tea, and hell yeah, kinetic rituals to seed his subconscious with a better fodder for dreams. Who gave a shit about Frank?

And just before he was about to drive out for the day, he texted a long trail of numbers, last of which was Dimov’s: Who’s out with me tonight?

After ten hours of duties and daydreams, he was again at his front door, thumbing through the text messages jeering untenable plans, whimpering sorries, expressing astonishment at his message after five silent months. Dimov had not replied. He felt uncommonly sour about that but before he could fall headlong into gloom, there was a message from Janet blinking at him.

Is Frank cheating on me?

Nope. That was easy to answer.

In the instant, it took for him to shrug off concern and assert his benign nonalignment in matters Frank and Janet, the phone tinkled a call from Janet. He replied with a grunting sigh.

“Would you even tell me if he was cheating,” Janet shrieked.

“Nope.”

“Well that’s useless.” she said in a depressing pitch.

“You know me, darling. I’m too lazy to be useful.”

“Well then! He goes through the trouble of chatting me up and acting serious. And now he’s fucking wussing out on me every moment he gets. If he doesn’t man up, I’m dropping him.”

Alex groaned. “It’s not my dick fucking you.”

“Right you’re just as useless as he is. It’s a good thing, I and Tom are going to Arizona without you lametards.”

And that was the end of conversation. The silence of the gusting breeze felt nice as was the future silence of Frank’s grumbles about her contradictory demands or Janet’s midnight frantic calls about his incomprehensible needs. But too quickly, his phone interrupted with a message from Tony—an electronic diarrhea of cryptic text speak, “Y cnt u b reel??? Wre hav all d reel MAN gne?” With a shrug, Alex deleted the message.

Fuck what was it with people today? Fishing for keys amongst the pregnant grocery bags, he wished that Dimov had been the one to inform him of the job placement at his firm. The chance to propose a more expressive celebration of a job well-earned would have been nice. If he got around to rejecting the job then Dimov might be more eager to reply. But rejecting the job meant slamming a door on nonage delusions and opening again for a fast-coming future of the still and the dry and the unmoving. Fuck that.

And there, he was soaking in the evening damp and going rancid with each turn of thought. But it was a Friday evening! And he threw himself into looking for his keys and he threw open the door. And the tan emptiness of the living room overpowered him. The windows were blind to the light, and the shadows crawled over the blind television and the velvet spread of the sofas, and those shadows stole up of his feet and encamped in his heart. Delicately, he placed the groceries on the dining table, and upon closing his eyes and dreaming sanguinely for a more agile evening, marched himself to Susan’s room.

There was Susan, upright and queenly on the bed, cogitating a window view spread-eagled in sedum greenery.

She was all right, thought Alex, smiling and bumping into a seat beside her. He marveled at the citrine crystalline lake of sky, gave particular thought to the row of violets that needed watering.

“I was thinking a hybrid is just too yuppie. A hummer’s more like it,” he said. The vacuum of room demanded more words, of which Alex nervously supplied. “When do you want to go car shopping?”

He discerned his failure in the hard pout of her lips, and he looked away to her hands, pale, tightly veined, gripping the hook of her cane.

“You don’t need me around to buy a car,” she moaned, tapped her cane twice to check herself. “You don’t even need me for anything. Leave me alone to be sick, will you?”

Alex’s heart grew wild with foreboding. “Mom, come on, we’ve been through this again and again. We’re going to beat this together.”

There was a smile on her discolored lips. “You’re just like your father.”

Alex thought fearfully, a son was always like his father at their most deplorable moment, but she reached out and held his hand and her fragile warmth cushioned him against further gloom.

She said, “You’re encouraging. You do a good show of caring, but when push comes to shove, you’ll take off without a thought for something fancier, shinier, sexier, healthier, more exciting. I don’t just get why you come here and sit by me and pretend?”

“Mom, I don’t understand a word you’re saying,” Alex said, gellid and rigid.

“Really, Frederick?”

Alex raised an eye, still unsure about the terms of the engagement.

“Frank’s mom called me this afternoon. Drunk of course. Supposedly wanted to invite me for some party. But really she just wanted to gloat about Frank getting a consulting job. Like I care. But I had to know the job was obviously more prestigious, better paying, even more productive than the investment banking job you got in New York …”

“Oh that.” Alex avoided her pale green eyes. “It’s just an offer, Mom. I haven’t accepted it.”

“But you haven’t rejected it either. You had told me in the hospital you turned down New York—you know what? I don’t care.” Her hand stroked his in a desperate display of her diffidence. He felt emboldened.

“I was thinking maybe you wanted to come along to New York instead.”

The look on her face was as much rejection as he could take. He was ashamed of the impotence of his pitch, reconsidered.

“A change of scenery won’t be so bad—”

“Don’t be silly, Frederick—don’t worry about it. You don’t care. You fundamentally don’t care about anything or anybody, especially not about a sick old woman. You used to be sweet and good, but now all so useless—” She sighed, held him close, and kissed his head. “It’s all right, I love you anyway. That’s my job.”

“I love you too,” he said desperately.

Her ear was tinglingly cold against his face. And now that she was close, there were so many things he wanted to tell her, things relieving, things ridiculous, words long coiled and compressed over the long unimaginative years. But she pulled away too quickly and a savage cold erased what scarce warmth had bathed his face, and he sucked in the vicious cold and felt those words that would be said grind and tumble against the stone caverns of himself until they were worn away to mute and useless sand.

He jerked, jumped to his feet, announcing, “I’m starving. I should get started on dinner.”

“Anything with fish should be nice.”

“All righty.” Dizzy, queasy, Alex gangled out the room. It took all of his might not to slam the door.