A Song for Carmine (2 page)
I have a tall
bottle of Jim Beam in my hand. I hold its narrow neck and tip it back into my mouth. The sour liquid rolls down my throat easily, hardly a burn to it. I am slurring and singing old church hymns, centered on the ledge of the window fourteen stories up, with my back against the windowsill, one bare leg hanging out of it. I have lived on the edge my whole life; this is nothing new.
The wind is whistling almost in jest, my eyes blurring with the city lights below me. I sing louder. “Since I laid my burden down…” I laugh, remember the lines in Mississippi John Hurt’s face, know it ain’t quite the same for me, but that I got a song too.
My mouth dries and my eyes begin to water. I swing my legs back and forth over the ledge, dare the weight of my bitter self to pull me down. I look out on the city of Dallas, search it, feel like a king, then a pauper, don’t want to be anything if I can’t be the man I’ve been so far.
I think about God, still wonder if he exists at all, remember Pa’s church. The building, triangular at the top, its white siding, like Pa himself, so fragile, always at the mercy of the changing wind. What power does anyone really have?
I remember the feeling of uncooked rice beneath my knees as Pa punished me for something and told me to pray for forgiveness, to ask to be good, to show some goddamn respect. I wanted to be good. I remember the way his face looked as I stared at him, hovering above me, the coarse whiskers on this face, beat yellow by the sun, the smell of Ma’s chicken grease in the air, all the little details stick out.
I haven’t thought of Eton, Georgia (population 319), in years, but the memory of my father haunts me tonight. As if he’d always expected everything to end up this way for me, the prodigal son, personal failure the only thing possible for me. I bet he’s somewhere laughing right about now, kicked back in a chair, whiskey in one hand, tattered Bible in the other.
I left Eton after high school and hit the ground running, running as fast as I could, out west, to another life, from the kid I’d been. Somehow I managed to navigate my way into a scholarship at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and the rest is history.
I wanted a better place to self-destruct, to live out my escape, anyplace other than Eton—no, I wanted a place that could swallow Eton whole and spit it out, a place where I could disappear. At SMU, I became unidentifiable among the other slugs there: I was popular, loud, drunk most of the time. I made an art out of handling straight shots of bourbon, holding back mouthfuls of digested pizza. For breakfast, I would gulp down hard liquor and fill my mouth full of chewing tobacco. After graduation, the advertising world welcomed me with daily libations. A martini here, a screwdriver there, and then you were among friends.
Advertising—it’s the ultimate poison. Find out what people like, what makes them feel good, figure out a way to feed them the illusion of it, make them think they can actually have it.
Car commercials—leather seats, cruise control, wide tires, open highways, surround sound—I could put it all together and make someone feel like they’d never be alone, never have to hurt if they’d just buy that car, use that cream, subscribe to that idea, believe in those glossy words.
Credit cards were keys to real futures, soft and forgiving, forever young and safe. Even laundry soap could change a whole life. I knew what people wanted—deep down, I wanted the same things—but it was all smoke and mirrors.
Sometimes late at night, after I’d gotten laid by some girl I’d picked up at a bar, I’d pull out my old tapes, catalogs, pray to the manipulating copy, laugh out loud to the glossy commercials, write notes as I paced the room and thought of other ways to market happiness and safety and true love. It was power.
Melanie finds me out there on that ledge, humming to myself, punching right hooks into the air. She’s been in and out of my life for years. There are pieces of a shattered champagne bottle everywhere on the terrazzo floors in my apartment, soaked drafts of presentations for the Carmichael account, an Armani suit, tie, Kenneth Cole shoes, other parts of my costume. She steps carefully through the rummage, careful not to step on the broken glass, and looks at me the way she always has. She longs. I falter. Together we are the things we both hate.
She startles me and the whiskey bottle falls out of my hand and down thirteen floors. The sound of the glass breaking, the implications of everything I do, so far away in the distance I can barely hear.
It all came crashing down. I’d forgotten it was actually possible to lose. The Carmichael account—it was ubiquitous. I’d come so far; I was to be a partner in the firm. It was supposed to be the top of a ladder I’d spent years climbing without looking down, a life of Superdome dreams, vodka martinis and sky-rise apartments. The last few years of my life have been a blur. My career became my religion, my identity, and the Carmichael account was to secure my spot in that superficial heaven.
I remember getting the news—the initial sense of relief that came, quick like lightning, then the anger. It happened so fast.
No one saw it coming, or maybe we did. It’s one of those things that you wonder why you let happen—a $25 parking ticket that you don’t pay till it becomes $600, a dull ache in your side that explodes into appendicitis, the small thread of your sweater that you let unwind until there’s only a ball of yarn and nothing left.
Diego, the head honcho, called a meeting. It was quick and painless. The ride was over. No door prizes, no “you were here” T-shirt, nothing. The Carmichael account was gone, and there was nothing left for any of us.
I’d known Diego for years—heard all the stories about how he’d started out mopping these floors for a living, how he now owned them. He was a powerhouse. He hired me just out of college, and I wanted to be him. I wanted his life. The top floor, the women, the money, the power. He was everything Pa wasn’t. He believed in himself; he had the power to conquer life, manipulate it, sculpt it into whatever he wanted it to be. To me, he was what a man was supposed to be.
I became his shadow, his protégé, and he taught me everything. He taught me how to pick up women and write copy and tailor my suits and schmooze clients, hold my drink, and draft airtight contracts. I was the son he’d never had, but secretly I planned to take him down, to wipe these floors with him someday, to be him, but better.
Sometimes I would find him in his office very late at night as I wandered the halls punching right hooks into the air, considering the exit sign, and thinking of new ways to climb and conquer and run away from anything just under the surface. I didn’t want to go home, but I didn’t really know what else I could do there either. Diego always sat quietly, his head in his hands, breathing so softly, the dim light of his desk lamp putting shadows on the walls, his face. There was more to the story. A man is rarely just the one thing.
He was always there. He created Icarus Media, worked his whole life for it and only it, and it was all he had. Sometimes I’d study the deep, brown lines in his face, notice how the skin of his cheeks sagged, how he frowned from someplace deep. He’d spent his whole life climbing and walking on people and not looking back. The point was not lost on me completely.
After the announcement from Diego, I found an empty box, walked into my office, remembered a bottle of gin in the back of my drawer, tipped it back, and then proceeded to tear up everything. Without the Carmichael account, none of it meant anything. Not a goddamn thing. I didn’t want to end up like Diego, but I didn’t want this either.
I walked out, empty box in hand, gin bottle in the other. I got into my BMW, turned the music up really loud, and sucked down the dry gin as I drove a hundred miles an hour down the interstate, daring death to come take me. I wanted an easy out.
* * *
When Melanie finds me on the ledge, I’ve already been there for hours, laughing at the irony of it all, the way the mythical Icarus (Diego’s hero) had gotten too close to the sun and burned his wax wings.
“What are you doing here?” She knows trouble and she seeks it and leaves its wake behind her. We go way back, this woman and I, and I can remember the path and its bumps, but I don’t want to anymore.
She’s dressed in a tight black dress which covers the voluptuous curves of a woman meant for prostitution or martyrdom; a girl who’s childhood dreams included self-inflicted wounds and chases that never ended, nightmares in ranch-style homes whose shade of brown never pales with age. But like many women, her station in life is necessary and appropriate and it keeps her all but happy.
Melanie’s blonde hair has the acidity of a mixed drink, wicked and potent. She looks happy in my bed, in a glass of ice, vacant but fitting, cold but kind.
I watch her as she picks pieces of glass up off the floor. She’s beautiful—hollow, but beautiful.
“Picking up the pieces, as usual,” she tells me.
“I’ve lost it all, you know,” I tell her as I tip the bottle back again. I lean my head back and tap it on the cement wall; the traffic glows below me. It would only take one small move.
“What did you have to lose?” She walks to the kitchen and grabs another bottle of whiskey, takes a long, hard drink before handing it to me.
“Good question,” I tell her.
I pull myself off the ledge and walk into the kitchen. When I turn the light on, I get a good look at Melanie, run my eyes over the contours of her red lips, notice the threads in her skintight dress, try to feel anything that resembles love.
I’d fucked women by the handful for years. Melanie just hung around, a glutton for punishment. I sampled them like shiny bottles behind a bar, the women tall and slender and light, sometimes cold to the touch, but always willing, long hair and light eyes, just out of college, middle-aged, it was all the same. The women were always as willing as the bottle, and I got off on it, the getting and the taking and the leaving. I consumed them.
“Hey, baby…” I could turn on the southern charm when it was needed. I kept it in my pocket like the smallest of pills I could whip out on the fly. It slid down their throats like water, made them give me keys to apartments I would never visit more than once. I’d seen Pa work people the same way.
I saw only figures, shapes, and curves—shadows really. I never saw eyes or heard real voices. I wasn’t that discerning. Bartenders were fair game, easy, within reach. They were cheap and disposable, easy to find. In some way they expected it. I regarded them less than the secretaries at the firm, whose stares would pierce my back as I walked by their desks.
I never met a match; they came and they went. Occasionally I thought of my mother. If I awoke in the night, in the early morning hours, sometimes I would find her sitting quietly in one corner of my mind, fidgeting, looking for me. Melanie was the only woman I ever really got to know, but only very distantly.
I open the fridge and pull out a wedge of cheese, a jar of pickles; under the cabinet there are crackers. I grab two glasses and pour them half full of whiskey.
I go to my bedroom to find a clean T-shirt, and when I come back, she’s set the table for us. Sometimes it’s like this. Our defenses low, we become just two people.
She’s followed me for years like a stray puppy, and I’ve never considered it much. I take a good look at her across the table, wonder what she thinks of me now that it’s all over, that I’ve got no temple to stand upon.
“Melanie, I’ve cared for you…” My eyes dart all over the kitchen, away from her eyes. I pick up a piece of cheese and a cracker and put them both in my mouth.
She laughs, pushes her glass into mine so that they clink loudly.
“Carmine, don’t bother. None of it matters anyway.” She stands up and walks past me into the bedroom.
She’s in my bedroom searching for her belongings. The glue that has held the remainders of this relationship together over the years: a pair of earrings she’s hidden away in my nightstand drawer, a toothbrush behind the old can of shaving cream in the medicine cabinet, a small T-shirt at the back of my bottom drawer.
She says, “I feel so ridiculous for always coming around like this. You never gave me anything, and now you have nothing to give.”
I remember the Valentine’s Day several years ago when she’d given me flowers and a card that said, “You were made to love me, so why don’t you?” I’d laughed out loud in the moment, pushed the card across my desk. I turn my eyes inside, squint when I remember how I’d promised to take her to dinner that night but had driven to a nearby lake and fished naked all night.
“I feel like a fool, Carmine, for loving you at all, because you don’t know how to love anyone.” She walks into the bathroom and slams the door behind her.
“Mel, please come out of there. I’ll try to change. You’ll see.” I think of the prospect of having no job, no woman, nothing to fill all the space life contains.
I open the bathroom door and look right at her, kneel down to her and start to unbutton her dress, push my face into hers. Without looking her in the face, I slide into her and begin thrusting, her sitting on the edge of the toilet, clawing at me. When we’re done, I walk out of the room, close the door behind me, search the apartment for the whiskey bottle, and wait.
She comes out and stands in front of me. Her lipstick is smeared and her face is red. I lift up her leg and pull off her high-heeled red shoes, one at a time.
“What are you going to do?” Melanie asks. “What’s next for you?” She looks at me longingly, as though I hold the answers for us both.
“What else is there?” I ask and tip the bottle back again. I start singing another hymn I remember from way back when, about how troubles come and troubles go and when I hear the phone ring, I am not completely surprised to hear Ma’s voice on the machine, shaky and wet.
“Carmine—you need to come home, son. Your old man is dying.”
I hear groans in the background, then Pa. “Is that my boy? Captain, captain…”
The old wide Greyhound
bus whizzes past trees, meadows, dairy farms, patchwork quilts of fields—everything so stationary yet fleeting at the same time. The landscape changes from flat to hilly, then to mountainous and dark, the flatlands becoming hills, then inclines, then descents. My head pounds. I can still feel the whiskey traveling my veins, a muddy current.
When the light casts a reflection of myself onto the window each time it comes out of the shadows, I really get a good look at myself. I look like I’ve lived more than just thirty-two years. I can see the lines darting from the edges of my eyes, the slight sagging in my neck, the heavy fatigue. I’ve lived hard, but I’ve got nothing to show for it.
It gets harder and harder to keep my eyes open as the miles pass, the sun drowsing me, the bus rocking. I shift in my seat and watch the mile markers like they are birthdays, twenty-five, sixteen, twelve, five, remembering my life as they go, the things that have brought me here. I remember myself at five, a soft little boy, brown hair growing in pointed tendrils over my ears, my eyes bright. I am so small. The tenderness makes me wince, but the memory won’t stop bleeding through.
I am on my father’s shoulders and I can see part of his face, the sagging tan skin, the sharp whiskers; his hair is turning white at the edges and near his ears. I feel his body move us with each step, each of his feet landing with a heavy thump. We are both chanting something, some kind of game, both of us laughing and singing as we march through the woods surrounding Eton. He points out the names of trees, the sounds of different birds; the sun peaks through the tops of the trees and rests on our heads. When I look behind me, Ma is following, carrying a set of fishing poles and watching us. She is smiling too, full of energy, color in her cheeks.
Then it shifts.
I am nine years old, and the small church is filled to its small walls. The pews sag with parishioners, and the wet morning air speaks of the underside of life; there’s an energy in the air, in my small body. I am still squeezed tight from the night before. I toy with a small red yo-yo, rolling it back and forth in my sweaty palm, look around the room, and then down at the floor. Ma sits next to me. She seems beaten and weathered, her body emanating a draft of scotch and sweat. I don’t understand.
Pa is at the pulpit, his voice echoing through the drywall and arched ceiling, the cloth of his robe starched and clean, like an animal’s coat; he is primed and ready for the fight.
“My brothers and my sisters, let me connect with you for a moment on this fine Sunday morning…” His voice trails off, and I can hear the Georgia come and go from his voice, the old Texas accent buried somewhere beneath it. I can’t take my eyes off him; it’s all I know, the thing that I want to really understand. I watch his arms rise and fall with his words, and he is God himself. I hold my breath and wait.
I am jerked back to the present when the bus comes to a hard stop and someone gets off. The landscape is starting to look familiar, so different from my neighborhood of skyscrapers in Dallas. I know these tall pine trees, recognize the twists and turns of these Georgia roads, how they disappear into the forest and then reemerge. The edges of the trees are beginning to change with the season, and the aspens look like they’re holding bags of golden coins, the maples orange at their ends, the sky a sullen shade of blue. The mountains appear out of nowhere.
“Excuse me. I gotta get out; my stop’s coming.” I look at the man beside me, but only briefly. He’s holding a crossword book and pen close to his face, and when he looks up at me, I can see the cataracts stretching over the glass of his eyes, wet in the corners. I have to look away.
I make my way to the front of the bus and feel everyone’s eyes on me. I’m wearing old worn-out jeans, a military jacket, my black Adidas duffel bag, Lugz boots. I look at each of their faces, see the Georgia all over it: small eyes and pinched mouths, hair dull shades of yellows and browns, smiles that creep up their faces, words that come out sideways.
When the bus finally comes to a complete stop, I step off and look around. It’s nearly eight in the evening, but there’s almost nothing going on around me at the bus stop in downtown Eton. The buildings are so low to the ground, so much open sky, there is nothing covering anything.
I can hear a flag ding against its pole in the distance. A block away, a yellow light blinks above an empty intersection. When the wind blows, I hear the yelp of a tired dog, his howl searching for relief.
I stand at the bus stop and wait. I don’t know what to do now. I remember the night before, how one cataclysmic event leads so easily to another, how they all pile up on top of each other, and you’ve got to figure out how to make it all stand.
* * *
A couple of hours later, I am in a red truck with my friends, buddies I used to call them. Griffin drives. I watch him peripherally. He looks pretty much the same as he did back then, a large-nosed, clean-cut guy with glasses. He’s built like a quarterback, bulky and square; he lives within those lines. He’s recently divorced and spends his nights at the bowling alley, at least that’s what he tells me.
I ride shotgun. Mark sits in the backseat. He looks smaller than I remember, still short, stout, and a little quiet. He’s got a family of three now and works at the chemical factory outside of town. Next to him, Jim, a guy I knew in school, sits. He has a roll of fat around his middle and spits when he talks.
We drive around on the dark back roads that twist in and out of the old mountains and drink beer. I haven’t seen or talked to any of them since I left, but when the night air rushes in and out of the car, I can’t help but remember that inky night by the train tracks. We never talked about it.
“I’ve got just the thing to keep your mind off things, brother. It’s good you’re back.” Griff looks at me out of the corner of his eye as he talks, and it feels good to be something simple for a while.
“All I need is a good bottle of something,” I say as I down the last beer. “This beer ain’t gonna cut it. I prefer scotch these days, something with a strong wicked taste.”
“That’s easy; we’ll get you more than that… doctor’s orders,” Griff says as he takes a sharp turn with the bend of the road, the engine picking up momentum and then lagging with a dull roar.
“The pet doctor’s orders,” Mark laughs from the backseat.
We drive past a billboard with a black politician. He’s tall, with broad shoulders, his eyes warm behind his glasses
“Was that Dwayne Johnson?” I ask.
“Yeah—he’s running for sheriff or some shit.” Jim flicks a cigarette out the window and messes with the knob on the radio.
“Eton sure has changed.” I remember us again, that summer night, the last fourteen years of bravado, the twitch in my legs. I laugh to myself.
“No, not really. The niggers just got bolder.” Griff takes a long drink from his can of beer and laughs.
I watch the gray pavement twist in and out of the hills, the tall narrow trees shaking loose, the car’s headlights barely enough to light the dark way.
“I can’t believe I’m back here, I really can’t.” I say it smugly. “This place still has nothing for me.”
We pick up a bottle of whiskey at the corner liquor store and talk about old times, the windy roads pushing up into the hills, then back again, the sky growing so black. We drive until we hit the end of roads, till there is nothing but forest in front of us. I tell them about my two-thousand-dollar suits, how beautiful the big-city women are, how good they smell (and taste). I tell them about the empire I’m about to build on my own because the other one wasn’t good enough. My voice carries, and I sing it to them.
“Carmine, dude, people don’t really change.” Griff takes a sharp left and heads up yet another hill, Eton is all slopes and descents; we’ve never done anything but go up and down them.
“You ain’t any different than you were.” He laughs and looks at me for a second before looking at the road again.
“That’s where you’re wrong, my friend.” I study the road ahead of me and think of all the ways I’ll show them.
* * *
The town has not changed. There’s a corner store, an old trading post selling antiques, a diner, a gas station with a couple of teenagers lingering around it, one road in and one road out, a post office, the sheriff’s station, no one on the streets, the shells of houses glowing light in the dark.
I feel nausea, anxiety. My insides churn, and I want to get out of there, feel the buzz of Dallas, hear the car horns and the sounds of planes above, feel the money, live in the cocoon. I can’t stand this.
“You can do this, Carmine,” I tell myself. I still feel the hum of the whiskey on my insides, the slow burn of my liver, the blackness of sweet escape, the goofy laughs of my old friends, the sting of Griff’s words.
I look at the houses in my old neighborhood, small houses with big green yards and Confederate flags hanging in the front, old rocking chairs on porches, fake flowers in flower boxes. Can any of this actually be real?
The sky is so dark above me, the streetlights barely glow; I haven’t known darkness like this in so long. The air is so quiet, no cars rushing past, no voices hanging out of buildings. There is no pulse, nothing alive here. I feel a wave of panic wash over me.
I walk a few blocks from where my friends have dropped me off, get lost in the sound of my feet hitting the old pavement. When I look up again, there it is. I study the house. It’s a square box with dull gray siding, once white, two bedrooms, a tall attic, a handful of windows on each side of it. The porch leans, rotten wood at its edges, two-by-fours as posts; it’s still hanging on, empty flowerpots hanging in each corner. There’s the old wicker sofa sitting there, an ashtray full of butts on the table next to it, old work boots sitting by the door. There are cobwebs on them, stretching from sole to strings; Pa hasn’t used them in a while. How it is possible these same things remain in place?
I walk up to the house, feel the anger begin to warm me. I make a fist, unzip my jacket, put my hand on the back of my jeans, on my wallet full of credit cards, pick up my duffel bag. The sky above me is now filled with heavy clouds, a deep mixture of blues. I smell something sweet in the distance.
I take a deep breath and turn the handle of the door. It’s late, but the house smells like greasy chicken and cigarette smoke. The dark paneling on the walls is the same, two old recliners in the same spot, a big box television in the middle of the room, the old couch with upholstery so thin you can see the bones of the couch sticking out. The wood floors are dusty, dry. The house spills light, like a box of sticks were used to put it together.
“Ma, Pa. Are you awake? It’s Carmine. Listen, I got your message and…” I stop when I see Ma coming from the hallway that leads to the bedrooms.
She is fifty-nine, I think, but I can’t be sure. Her face sags and she looks so sad, but then her blue eyes are so alive, wet and pale, there and then gone. I recognize the old dress hanging from her frame.
“Carmine, I didn’t think you’d come.” She puts her head down and shuffles over to me, house slippers on her feet, her long arms moving with her steps. She never stops looking at me. I stand there in the dull light, pull my cell phone out of my pocket, and begin to push buttons on it—e-mails, contacts, voice mails, there has to be something else to do in this moment.
When she hugs me, something within me curdles, but I try not to pull away immediately. I take off my jacket and lay it over the kitchen chair. My mouth dries up. The light above me swings without a lightbulb.
Ma asks me about the bus ride and about work while she puts on a pot of coffee. She’s still using that old silver percolator; her reflection bounces off of it as she moves around the kitchen.
I turn around when I hear Pa coming from the hallway, slowly, a cane holding him up and his face leaning down toward the floor. I watch him move, see his body leaning to one side, halfway down to the earth already. My eyes dart toward the front door. I shift my weight in the kitchen chair, try to stay still.
“Look, Pa, Carmine made it in. He looks good, don’t he?” Ma smiles that crooked smile and points a bony finger at me. The percolator spits and vibrates on the kitchen counter.
When I see his face, I feel my shoulders begin to fold in, then straighten up tall again when I feel the impulse to pounce on him, then push the feeling away, try to find something in between.
“Old man, how you doing?” I wipe the sweat from my top lip, put my hands in my pockets, look over at Ma lighting a cigarette, watching the two of us. I feel suddenly sober. I’ve thought of this moment for years.
For a split second, I become my former self again, knobby knees and hair over my ears, Pa at the pulpit preaching the gospel, me sitting in the pew, the smell of coffee and donuts and pamphlets behind me, Ma on the pew next to me silent. I remember the smoky smell of our house, the empty clink of forks on dinner plates, the sound of Pa snoring in his chair, the sting of his clammy hand on my face in the morning, the tattered leather of the old Bible always sitting in the center of our house.
“Carmine, son, what took you so long to get here?” He’s at least three inches shorter than I remember. His clothes hang from his coat-hanger bones, a button-down shirt, old pajama bottoms; I can see the yellow whiskers growing from his cheeks. He breathes in hoarsely and gasps, moves to the living room and sits down. I sit down at the other end of the sofa.
“Pop. You look rough. Life finally getting the best of you?” I lean back on the sofa and sigh.
“Listen, boy, I’m dying. I ain’t gonna do this with you.” He eyes me hard, tries to straighten his spine. The congestion in his chest boils, and he begins to cough.
“Now don’t start this. You haven’t seen each other for fourteen years, for Christ’s sake.” Ma shakes her head and walks back to the kitchen.
“Can I get you something, Carmine? We don’t have any of that fancy liquor you’re probably used to, but we do have some of that cheap bourbon your pa used to drink.” Her voice echoes and bounces off the old paneling, I can hear the hum of the old icebox, look on the walls and see my old pictures. I don’t know how it’s possible that time has stayed so still.