All the Old Haunts (4 page)

I think not. Questions don’t bother us now.

I rest the bowl in his lap, where his withered hands rest at odd angles to one another. A dollop of the food dribbles off the rim of the bowl onto his stylish khaki pants. Another mess. He’s an awful mess.

I walk around the pool, watching him the whole way. Have to watch him. Don’t listen to anybody. Have to watch him. Probably faking. His greatest trick yet, in a long long career as a trickster.

I pick up the bug net. I scoop some bugs off the surface of this amazing, perfect little pool.

How dare they. Goddamn bugs.

I shake them out onto the concrete. I stare at them there dead.

I look to the old man.

Jesus. Jesus. I am frozen, looking at the old man.

Has he moved? The bastard. Did he move? I swear he is not where I left him. While I was clearing the pool for him, did he dammit go and move? He looks like he moved. Dammit. Damn the man.

Slowly, I extend the pole, shoving it farther, farther out until it is all the way there. I hold it out, across the water, reaching, until I can reach all the way to Grandad.

I poke him. He appears not to notice. Don’t believe it. Don’t ever believe it. I poke him again.

He’s even scarier. Motionless. In wait. Bastard. Move, bastard.
You are not fooling anybody, bastard.

He won’t. Poke poke poke, he won’t.

I drape the buggy net-end of the thing right down over his rotting pus-filled old head. I drop the pole and go to the pool house. The aluminum extension pole falls from my hands, scrapes along the concrete beside the pool, then slides into the water. I watch, because he has to be watched at all times, so I see. I raise a hand to my mouth to laugh as I watch him there, with his bug-net party hat, with the long aluminum pole extending from the side of his head. As if somebody, down there beneath everything, is holding onto the other end of the pole and trying to pull him down under. Where he belongs.

I can almost see it. The being beneath, yanking and pulling at him, pulling him under, headfirst. It is so funny, so funny. You just have to laugh.

I’m in the pool house.

I’m out again.

The scent hits me like a smack, square in the face. It is all concentrated in there, in the little pool house. You cannot miss it. The smell, of course, is everywhere. The whole backyard, the whole house, the whole neighborhood, the whole town, the whole world, fairly reeks of it, so you already know, you would have to know, you would of course know about it anyway. You could not not know about it, unless you plainly ignored it. But in the little pool house, in the little pool house, it is concentrated. Dense and powerful and corrosive and evil.

Second time is the one. I am in and I shut the door behind me. Can hardly see a thing, but the small square of Plexiglas lets in just enough light. Just enough. Too much.

There must be a million billion tons of chlorine, in those drums, in this pool house.

And a water polo set and deflated inflatable mattresses. Ten, twenty, a thousand inflatable mattresses. A little electric compressor so he could pump one up in twenty seconds. An incredible time-saver that incredibly saved so much so much time.

Beach balls.

And chlorine. Jesus Christ, chlorine, on the walls, on the table, on the floor. In my eyes in my hair. I sniff my shirt. In the air. Inescapable.

I am heaving. My chest is heaving. I can see it. I watch it with alarm, as if I am watching someone else, drowning, or falling down a cliff, or
something.

You cannot breathe around here, it is so thick. It’s like he wants to kill people, it is so thick. And nobody even comes here anymore. Nobody ever swims here. What’s the point, of the stupid, stupid stupid burning chlorine?

It is burning my lungs and I have to get away. I am heaving, and I am crying, as I take the orange beach pail and dip it into the big bucket of chlorine powder and whatever else he’s got in there that keeps the pool water so sparkling pure. I grab the fatty ring-seahorse inflatable, and I am gone.

Standing in front of him. I put the pail at his feet. He still has the bug net over his head, but nobody should be fooled.

I blow up the ring, the one with the seahorse head. I blow it up with four strong blows. Is that all it takes? Is that all there is to it? My Jesus, I thought there was so much more to it. I was always so dizzy after. I thought there was so much more.

But it’s blown up. I take the bug net off his head.

He looks scared. Paler, colder, drier. Lines shoot every which way over the surface of his sun-scorched desert of a face. Dried food goop is caked and splotched all over him.

He’s a terror. Don’t even blink.

I put the ring of the blowup seahorse around his neck. There you go, boy. There you go.

The seahorse is facing the water, looking off to Grandad’s right side. The ring part circles his neck, supporting his chin. This will not do. I can’t leave him like this.

I move the ring up, so he wears it more like a hat. There we go.

I take up Grandad’s food bowl again, and get back to work.

I scoop. One, two, three, four, five, six spoonfuls, out of the pail, and into the bowl.

Mix mix mix. That’s what the slop needed, some spice. The colors even match.

I take my seat, nudged way up close to Grandad.

“What? What is this?” The nurse, dropping her grocery bag, comes screaming across the yard toward us. “What are you doing?” She runs up, glares at me, whips the blowup off the old man’s head. She looks at him and goes all weepy, taking tissue from her pocket and dabbing at his face, sweeping politely at his shirt and his nicely stylish chinos.

“What are you doing to him?” she demands. “What is wrong with you?”

I sit back in my chair. I do not argue, or defend myself. She is right of course. She is right, I am wrong. I am awful.

She thinks he is merely a mess.

She knows nothing, nothing, and nothing.

I am very, very glad. I am glad for her. I am so grateful she showed up when she did.

Thank god. Thank god. Thank god for you, nurse. Thank god for witnesses.

We need witnesses.

“Y
OU COULD COME OVER
now, I guess,” Curtis says.

“Ya,” Lisa answers lazily, “I could, I guess. Or, you could come over here.”

“Ya,” he says, and the line goes all but dead between them.

On her bed, in her shorty Baltimore Orioles nightie, Lisa is paying a fair bit more attention to the drama on her television than to the one in her personal life.

“Could you turn that down?” Curtis asks. “It’s kind of screechy, y’know?”

On his bed, in his boxer briefs, Curtis couldn’t care much less whether Lisa was listening to him, or to Leonardo DiCaprio squealing his way through Shakespeare.

Lisa turns the sound down one tick. It doesn’t make jack of a difference, but it passes for cooperation.

“How’s that?” she says.

“Great,” he says. “Thanks. So, I guess I’ll let you go then.”

“Okay, then, I guess I’ll let you go. Call me tomorrow night. Don’t forget.”

“I will. I won’t.”

Curtis and Lisa make kissing noises into the phone in lieu of saying good-bye.

Curtis flops over the side of his bed, and looks underneath. Upside down, with his long black hair sweeping the carpet, he browses his modest library of soft- to medium-core pornography.

Image upon image, man upon woman. Upon woman. Upon man. Curtis swims in a sea of bodies, Caligula’s own pool of flesh. Wriggling, there has never been such wriggling, like a can of giant-size fishing worms with arms faces hands feet nipples tongues penises. Giant, giant. Slick and wet. Men on women on men. Women. Women on women on women. On Leonardo DiCaprio. On Lisa. Thin and sleek and weightless, every last lost body, nowhere to go but up. And down. Women on men on men on men. On Leonardo. On Curtis. Sweat rolls over every body, sweat becomes orange oil, orange oil lubes everyone into one viscous mass rubbing and rubbing, rubbing and rubbing until Lisa is rubbed, rubbed away, rubbed out. Rubbing, rubbing, rubbing rubbing, away, curves away gone. Hard angles, hard muscles, hard hairy, stubble scraping tongue. Oil, rubbing, warm, cream, hands on it, mouth on it, hands on hips, hips to mouth, hands on it again, hard, wet, front, back, top, bottom, hard, harder, harder. Familiar faces and strange ones, beautiful cut-glass faces and soft smooth ones emerge out of the soup. The faces come to Curtis. Curtis, the center of it all. Curtis the slippery dripping center. Everything comes to Curtis, and Curtis comes to everything.

“Phil. Phil, you have to come over here right now.”

“Who is this?”

Phil is Curtis’s cousin, his best friend, the older brother he didn’t have. Phil knows everything about Curtis, and serves as his adviser, confidante, and protector. When Curtis’s father, Curtis, died under tragic and mysterious circumstances scuba diving off Goa when he was supposed to be getting his chemotherapy in Providence, it was Phil who was called in to help the boy get through it. Phil knows the sound of Curtis’s
breathing,
never mind the sound of his voice on the telephone.

“Cut it out, Phil. It’s me.”

“It is? You don’t sound like you.”

“It’s me. And I need you to come over here. And bring a joint.”

“I don’t have a joint.”

“Phil! Phil, man, I am serious. Bring a joint, and come over here now. I have to talk to you.”

“Jesus, kid, what did you do?”

“Nothing. I didn’t do anything, but I’m gonna. I’m gonna do something awful today, and if you don’t come over here and talk me out of it, I swear …”

“All right, all right, but just, can’t you come over here, or meet me someplace in between?”

“No. I can’t. I can’t leave the house, Phil, ’cause I’m afraid. Petrified I’ll do something before I even get there. I’m like, crazy, totally shithouse over this, so get over here, get over here, get over here.”

“I’ll get over there, just … I gotta get some breakfast, then I’ll …”

“Get over here, Phil!”

“Jesus, okay. Is Ma cooking breakfast?”

Ma is not Phil’s Ma, she is his aunt. They are, however, very close.

“I don’t know. I haven’t left the room yet. I can’t go out.”

“Well, smell. You smell fat in the air?”

“Ya, Phil, the air is, like, foggy with fat. Get over here. I need you, man. I really, really need you.”

While Curtis waits, he goes back to doing what he has been doing since four-thirty
A.M.
Lying on his bed, staring at the sheet covering his body, and sweating.

“What is it? You all right? What happened? You in trouble? You sick? What do we have to do?”

Phil is likewise sweating as he comes through the bedroom door. He is wearing copper-color sweatpants and a blowsy gray Nike “Just Do It” T-shirt. He has a glass of orange juice in one hand and a plate of French toast and link sausages in the other.

“I told her I didn’t want anything to eat,” Curtis says.

“It’s not yours, it’s mine.” Phil sits on the corner of the bed and stares at his cousin.

Curtis stares back.

“So, what?” Phil asks.

Curtis just continues staring. Then he looks away, out the window at the telephone pole covered in wires and bird shit and hard July sunshine.

“What now, what?” Phil asks again, but with sausage meat muffling his vowels.

Curtis looks to him once more, but little has changed. He still can’t speak.

“The hell did you do?” Phil asks, and stops chewing.

Curtis’s eyes go all glassy.

Bang bang bang bang.

“Go away, Ma,” Phil says.

“What is going on?” Ma asks. “What did he do? Did you find out what he did?”

“No. How am I gonna find out what he did if you won’t leave us to it?”

“I didn’t do nothin’,” Curtis calls, choking up.

A whimper is all that comes from Ma’s side of the door.

“You ain’t helpin’ us out there, Ma.”

Silence.

“There,” Phil says, resuming eating, “I took care of that for you, didn’t I? Don’t I always take care of you? Whatever you got this time, I’m sure I can handle it. Why don’t you start talkin’.”

“Where’s the joint?”

“It’s nine o’clock in the morning. You don’t need no joint.”

“Where’s the joint, Phil? I can’t talk without it. Can’t even get out of bed today without it.”

Phil is looking down at his plate, sopping up white mud puddles of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! and confectioner’s sugar with his French toast. He is in no hurry to produce the joint, as his appetite is quite healthy as it is. He sets the plate down on the bed, and takes his juice glass up off the floor.

He is looking out of the corner of his eye at Curtis as he drinks.

“Are you gonna cry, Curt?” Phil says, wiping away pulpy orange bits with the back of his hand.

“I don’t think so,” Curtis says gently, with a sniff, “but anything’s possible.”

Phil puts the glass down, removes the fat joint from his sock.

Phil lights it, and takes his good fair share, three hits in a row, as a matter of fact. It is a shrewd move, because from that point on he doesn’t get much.

“Give it over,” Phil says after watching Curtis take three, four, long hard hits, pause for breath, then take two more. “Give it over, animal.”

Curtis finally gives it over, but holds on long to the smoke inside him. He lets go slowly as he begins speaking. “I am. An animal. I am, too.”

Phil has had little of his own smoke before Curtis crawls out and over the sheet to snatch it back. He remains there, posed like a cat, in boxer briefs, one paw to his lips.

Phil’s eyes are wide, and he leans back away, sizing things up. “What
did
you do? This ain’t you, boy. Not at all.”

Curtis nods madly. “Right. It’s not me. Least it didn’t
used
to be, but it’s sure enough me now, I’ll tell you.”

“So?” Phil says, gently removing the stump of the spliff from Curtis’s hand. Then with one finger, he pushes him over.

Curtis tumbles, stays there.

“Tell me,” Phil says.

There is a long wait.

“Get away from the door, Ma,” Curtis yells, without stirring.