ZGo and love - 8. Dad comes for the destruction.

After one right and two lefts turns for Luke’s house, the day was still an aimless, clear-skied Friday. His house was the flaking green bungalow with a yellow lawn in the cul de sac of unfenced duplexes and green lawns. A neighbor had demanded he clean up the front lawn, screaming something about property values. Luke shrugged it off like he shrugged off demands from men with pencil moustaches. Besides, his tenants, Miranda and Robert did not seem to care about the wretched front lawn or the back yard. Four hundred bucks for rent in West LA for a ‘charming’ room was good enough reason not to care too much about the impotent kid landlord.

He left his car parked and unlocked in the driveway. He recalled that the steering wheel had been hardy of late. A tempest of worries flared on all the squeaks and creaks of Lisa’s old car. By the time he was weaving his head around the wind chimes hanging by the front door, any thought to doing basic auto repair fizzled.

He opened the door, and the chimes clinked a splashy welcome. Yes, welcome to this grotto of grief that he should sell for a sum that would pay more than once over the tuition to Columbia University. His footsteps glided across the beige tiles, and the house reverberated his sense of stifling inaction.

The corridors were beautified with angel figurines—papier mache, stick figure, crystal, porcelain—Lisa’s leftover superstitions from her ultra-Calvinist upbringing. More pictures of middle class contentment were sprawled over the walls. Baby Luke. Baby Carly. Trent looking smarmy in a suit. Lisa looking wide in an empire waist dress.

The smell of cinnamon and bread blooming thickly in the air reminded Luke to warn Miranda of her baking messes and the week-old dishes in the sink. But the quietude overwhelmed his senses, and the living room seemed vacuously large. And the idea of growing tall over the little lady and brandishing a landlordly authority became suddenly pointless.

A gloom descending, he tiptoed towards his room. Rechecking his Go problems due for tomorrow’s lesson sounded good, until he opened the door. The French blinds were closed, permanently, but light seeped stubbornly from its crevices. He felt clammy and winded, and removed his shirt and settled into the shadows ribbing across his bed and again closed his eyes and dreamed of Lisa.

Lisa had wanted to die at home, not alone in a hospital. Luke could only agree. In her death slog Lisa called him Trent, called him Carly, called him ungrateful bastard. She tasted the blandness of his stews, felt the coldness of his fingers sponging her for a bath, smelt the fetidness of the room he had just cleaned. He left his hair grow out after Lisa had said how much he looked his father. Her death he long awaited as he hummed lullabies to her delirious apologies for being a bad wife.

Luke played the filial son, stoically and quietly, until she whispered, “Because of you Carly died, then you turned out gay. Why should your dad come back home? What does he have to come home to?”

Luke thought hard for a moment. “Hmm interesting question although I’m the wrong person to ask. Let me see if I can tackle this… I’m not sure I have much to do with his reasons, just a conjecture. For one, he has not shown any displeasure with my sexuality or my involvement in Carly’s death. Maybe he does so privately? Is this the basis of your judgment? Maybe the task of taking care of you is too daunting. It won’t be out of the ordinary. I’ve read that men more than women tend to leave their sick spouses. Mostly likely due to social inhibitions of men assuming the role of caretaker. It was a fascinating study in gender relations really—”

“The cancer won’t kill me. Your rambling on and on definitely will.”

“I’m sorry. I over-spoke.”

He was truly sorry for the baldhead, the sunken eyes and the loose skin gathering at the lips. He was sorry for the morphine and its effect of emptying her into the dregs of a woman. He did not want her to go away too early. He could not risk his voice vanquishing her, so he resolved to keep his speech to ten words or less around her. He pressed Lisa’s edematous hands, felt its bones and the tendons, felt the bluntness of his guilt heaping upon guilt.

But the guilt that is heaped upon guilt does ignite into anger. And if there ever was a feeling he could name for himself, it was anger. He recognized the pain at the base of his spine, that same stony pain goaded whenever Carly stole the bow of his cello or the two bishops of his chess set for the fifth time. But no, he would not allow himself be nudged into anger. He swore to himself as much after Carly’s death. His hands slipped from Lisa’s hands, and he stared at glossy wooden floor and thought there had to be something he could do to make his mother feel better. Getting answers from Trent himself for clarification on her questions should help.

He grabbed his keys and darted for the garage. After a wild drive through the midnight sparseness of Venice Boulevard, he was catapulted onto Trent’s door. Trent’s girlfriend Gilda would tell the story of the scuzzy faggot knocking at the door and being sent away and knocking the door again and being sent away and knocking the door again. The police were called, and Trent had to excuse his deranged son while she asked worriedly about Trent’s claims of Lisa’s affair. ‘An affair with cancer, you mean,’ Luke interrupted. No, a real affair with a Jason Cartwright, a teacher colleague of Lisa’s.

He drove home ashamed of his effete anger and barren of blithe words to cheer his mother. Whatever fixed store of happiness chaos had accorded him at birth was bankrupted that night.

He now lay on his bed and wished the world would fold on itself many times and implode. Sleep, he hoped, would embalm him in the void. But a loud banging on the door disturbed this hopeful slumber. It was Miranda, pigtailed and white-eyed.

“You did not tell me,” she gasped for words, “I wouldn’t have left my Jake alone with you, if I knew you were gay.”

Luke rubbed his crusty eyes as the fact that he had been abstinently unsocial for over a year dredged some meaning in his sleepy mind.

“Put a shirt on!”

Luke looked groggily over his thick chest hair, and still her words made no sense. Then he heard his father’s greasy drawl fracturing hallowedness of the house. His heart inflamed, and he blundered past Miranda and skidded on a cresting wave of blind emotion to the living room.

There was Robert on a sofa, hands wringing over knees, listening to Trent who stood over him, explaining changes in the rental agreement. First they needed to sign a proper lease. Put down a proper deposit. Submit proper credit references. The renting business is treacherous you know. Evicting a worrisome tenant can run headlong into alarming legal burrs. Precaution, you see. Sorry his son has been an idiot about this.

Trent was tall, barrel-chested, his face big-boned, and one feature that pointed to genetic link between father and son was his big head of hair, or the thick arms sleeking hairy from the short sleeves of his shirt. Upon the sight of the tall tree of hair dashing its entrance, Trent’s eyes protruded from their sockets.

“What’s with the stoner Jesus look?” Trent yelled. “Gilda was right, you’re hanging out with stoner idiots on Venice beach.”

Luke’s throat inched with the pungency of burning mustard seeds. Thoughts scattered in his head. The voice, the face… there was something about it that marred him. What was that feeling perfidious and pestilent worming his neck?

Trent waded a few paces to the wide glass doors of verandah overlooking a wilderness of gnarly weeds. “Look at this place. It’s a dump. And why are strangers living in your mom’s house?” Trent threw a pointed arm to the squirming Robert. “What’s going to happen when big guy here punches you out because he walks into a full-on anal display?”

The quibble over whether his dad was being lovingly homophobic or paternally concerned, Luke elided with a great groan. He placed foot after foot for the velvet-upholstered armchair that was adjacent to Robert’s seat and sat himself carefully.

He did not hear the squeak of its springs; he had to think. Absolute calm was needed. Hao said he had to think about what he wanted to say before saying it. There had to be something to be said here now. Something he had to say about Trent’s presence in a house he had left over a year ago.

Silence passed about like a soccer ball between the three men. Luke’s elbows on his knees, his head bowed low. Trent withered at the sliding door, like an apparition caught in the sun, hard knuckled and white knuckled. And Robert bobbed glances between father and son, growling in the hope that the faggot would sprout the balls to tell his dad to shove off because he really did not have an extra two hundred and fifty dollars for the deposit.

Miranda appeared at the doorway to the corridor, her floral perfume from the ninety-nine cents store trailed a white flag.

“No offense but a gay roommate sets up a bad example for my son.” Miranda’s nose and cheeks folded in like a pug’s face.

“He’s only here on the weekends, hiding in your room most of the time,” Robert said incredulously. “And Luke plays that weird game all day long to notice anybody, yet alone to go out and get laid.”

Trent eyed Luke once over, probably approving of his anal virginity, but he said, “What weird game? Chess?”

“Still…” Miranda swung her leg furiously

Luke was too bent over to take notice of Miranda’s unreasonableness, but Trent’s eyes narrowed in a rabid look at the pigtail glancing her bare shoulder.

“Does my son look like he’d hurt anybody?” Trent demanded.

“With all due respect, your son looks like a child molester.” Miranda took a self-assured seat by Robert and kicked up her legs to cross them.

“Lady, pack your shit and rid my house of your stupidity.”

Luke awoke from his thoughts. “It is my house.” Yes it was his house that his mother had bequeathed him, the walls pendent with angels, the hanging of a massive decorative fan just above the large-screen television; yes, his house, his rooms full of ghosts, perhaps the one boon in the past year of plagues. Luke pressed on his cheeks; they felt hot.

Something burned in his chest as he watched Trent yell at Miranda again, slap into the dining room and curse at the rambling carriage of Robert’s music gear. His scorn dabbed every moment, fueled the burning in his chest. Those forceful footsteps were pounding down the corridors, the sound of doors opening, closing, the closet, his room, Carly’s room, Lisa’s room.

Luket fished in his pocket— nothing, fabric and space. Then cold air raked across his chest—He was half-naked, and still his mind was breaking apart on what he wanted to say. He pushed off the seat, ignoring Robert’s tight stare, Miranda’s shivering stance, and trudged to his bedroom. The space, dark amber, half-lit petals glancing over the walls, dawned on him a foul void, which was constricting the air around him. Breathlessly, he hurried for a decent shirt amongst the piles on the bed. Suddenly the room shook with the bursting of the door, and he flinched round to see belligerent boulder of his father occupying the doorway.

Luke had never worried himself with his father’s tall bulky heft, despite Jared’s frequents allusions to his bulldog manners. Even now as Trent loomed larger and his lips bared to reveal off-white jagged teeth, fear did not move Luke, just a mournful longing. Dad had come back home too late. Mom would have been happy. She would have cried and cried in joy. Her ghosts were rejoicing finally, beaming with smiles that he could never move in her.

Luke turned away, faced the beige emptiness blinding the windows as cords in his chest tightened and twisted. Words, now, were snapping to order in his mind. He wanted his dad to leave, but Mom wouldn’t like that. And he sighed heavily and moored about for a shirt in the dirty laundry hamper, on the bed, in the chest of drawers, on the bed.

“Your car, you should bring it to the shop for a tune up…” Trent said in a strained calm. “You need to change the oil and refill its steering fluid. You really should lock its doors... why do I have to tell you these things, Mr. Homeowner?”

An itch scrawled on Luke’s left clavicle. He scratched, scratched some more the body hairs as the temerity of his dad checking up on his car ate his good sense.

“Gilda wants you at her lunch thing on Sunday. It’s either you come or she keeps bitching to me about you. Janice even wants to see you,” Trent said.

Luke imagined little Janice with a face of a freckled orange grabbing onto his leg as if it were hers to cart off and munch. He shook his head frightfully at the unanswerable question: what would Lisa want him to do?

Trent folded his arms tightly across his chest, “I wouldn’t be here, if you had replied to any of Gilda’s twenty messages. He waited for a movement of emotion in Luke, continued, “I don’t want to be here either. But she’s got crazy notions that you’re smoking dope. Even said she saw you hanging out with bums on Venice Beach. She doesn’t listen to me when I say that as long as there’s chess, cello, or Jared’s dick, you’re all good. But women... They don’t understand certain shit even if it shoots right on their faces.”

Luke finally decided on a green polo to wear and said with no particular feeling. “You ignored Mom and I for more than a year. You can easily ignore your girlfriend’s worries.”

Trent snorted a laugh. “God, you still sound like an unemotional retard. Jared’s dick isn’t good enough, is it?”

Luke stiffened, looked up to face his gaping mouth. The laughter hardened into the silence of a smirk, then the bell tones of his cellphone ringing drew him to his desk. There was a message from Hao: Sorry, won’t be able to see you tomorrow or on Tuesday. For the tournament next Saturday, you’ll be playing as a two kyu. I registered you already.

Luke, plucking his beard, remembered Cindy saying something about a tournament. He also remembered thinking that he was not up to playing five serious ranked games over two days. Luke’s clavicle itched again.

“You don’t have a choice about this,” Trent said.

Luke dabbed his brow, felt an uncomfortable heat ringing his neck, and this ring tightened as a noose as he recalled the many twits of Lisa over the years to obey his father. But how could he?

A sudden perfumed scent dampened him; the stomps of a scorned Miranda was pounding for attention, but Trent held fort at the door and glared down at her like he was gobble her in a single instant. But Miranda was unfazed, her face glowing with blush and determination, as she beat upon Trent the unacceptability of her living conditions. The bathroom, the sink disposal, the grotty carpet, Luke’s bedroom had hardwood, why can’t the garage? She would be all right with a gay roommate if he could sign to some terms and conditions.

Deaf to her squawking, Luke texted: Meet 2nite? A quick game?

The phone rang a few minutes later; Luke answered with Miranda still commanding Trent’s snarl.

“Can’t quite make the café tonight. Want to come over instead?” Hao said. Luke thought Hao sounded drained, but the vituperating voices encamped in his room whooshed away any feelings he could for empathy.

“Luke?” Hao said.

“Yeah, I’ll be there by eight.” Luke put his phone away into his pocket and now the faces swooped to him for his landlordly judgment.

“Who was that?” Trent demanded.

“Someone you don’t know—Now Miranda, if the previous rental agreement doesn't suit you, you’re free to find yourself someplace else to live. And you Dad…” Luke lost himself into Trent’s eyes. The answer was not in the hazel pupils or the stubbly cheeks or the two thick lines slicing down between the brows, and still the heat wringing his neck and pressure lumping in his throat.

Luke grabbed his keys and packed his laptop into his bag pack then edged by their furious bodies for the precious way out.

“Luke, where are you going?” Trent bellowed.

“To someplace where you don’t exist.”