Full Frontal Fiction (8 page)

I left that day without saying anything else. Thinking I was not ever going back.

Time sure flies when you're having so much fun. So to speak. I mean, it really does. That was about a year ago, all that I just explained. Of course I went back for my next shift. Actually, if I remember correctly, I got called in to cover the other drunk lady's shift, the one who never came back.

Now Raquel and me go out and get drinks together all the time. I am on my way to becoming a drunk-lady-direct-care-worker myself. Raquel and me practically run the place.

Some things, even with time, don't change, however.

“You want to get together?” It's Archie. I'm standing in my dad's house right now and can hear Dad out in the garage sawing on something.

“Good God,” I say, and I laugh because Archie's voice sounds so familiar and yet shocking, like a CD you think is fucked-up and you press play and it's not.

“It's me.”

“You were up for six years.”

“Time out for good behavior. Plus Butler County ain't got no room, and it was my first offense.”

He laughs, smoky-voiced. I can picture him, going bald but with a rugged face, and skin color like dank wood. And his mouth, I always can remember that fondly. Big-lipped and smiling with strong white teeth. He is so into dental hygiene.

Dad comes in sweaty, mouthing, “Who is it?”

I just roll my eyes. “Listen, I gotta go.”

I hang up, and Dad looks at me: “Archie?”

“How'd you know?”

“You had that look. He calling from jail?”

Dad is washing his hands in the sink, over all the dirty dishes. He is a tall guy with freshly cut hair. He goes to the barber three times a month. On disability because of his back, so it's about the only place to go during the day, outside of his old work site and I think they might have told him to stop going there so much. Now he spends his time out in his garage/workshop making things like a vacuum cleaner with a digital display. Inventions he hopes to patent. He takes a lot of pills for pain.

“No. He's out.”

Dad dries his hands on paper towels.

“Wow,” he says. “You know what, I had a vision.”

Dad thinks he's psychic. He even has a license to be a practicing one and goes to psychic fairs in Cincinnati and Dayton. Even has business cards: ROLAND SIMMONS, L.S.P. (Licensed Spiritualist Practitioner). With that license, he can legally marry people. He's marrying Tom A. and Tom B. tonight, in fact. Not legally, but still.

“You did?” I say.

“Yeah. I didn't want to say nothing.” His eyes go so sincere, like Bill Clinton, when he talks psychic talk. It's a sad yet joyous thing, his psychic powers. Like a person who can't read suddenly being able to. The psychic stuff is one of the primary reasons Mom dumped him though.

Dad looks at me with big puffy Darvon eyes. “But I saw you and Archie together in a motel room.”

He laughs but stops.

“Thanks, Dad. There is no way.”

I go into the living room. I've straightened it up for the wedding tonight. It's all planned. Me and Raquel planned it. I have white and sky blue streamers and I made a cake and punch. Dad's technological shit is still everywhere in piles, cables and old TVs and VCRs and computer monitors and stuff, but I scooted all of it around to make it look like an aisle. At first, we were gonna rent a hall, but that would have drawn attention to it. This is sort of a secret operation, of course. If Kate knew, or if Tom A.'s brother, his legal guardian, knew, we'd all be fired, possibly up for charges or something.

“Think about the headlines, Anita,” Raquel said one night at Applebee's after work, over cocktails and cigarettes. “Two Group Home Workers Force Clients into Homosexual Marriage.” We got tickled and started making up juicier and juicier ones, ending with: “Shotgun Homosexual Retarded Marriage Performed by Crazed Psychic While Group Home Workers Get Drunk and Laugh Their Asses Off.”

Anyway, Tom A. is being made to move, or at least that's the threat. Kate Anderson-Malloy caught them one morning, about four months back, doing it in the bathroom, and since then she's been on a campaign, although she's totally professional about it. At a staff meeting, where all of us gather at the main office in Middletown, Kate, kind of flabby with really nice hair and an excellent pantsuit, got into a sort of tirade. I mean, she's a bitch, like most managers afraid of doing any real work are, but also there's this weird, loud lovingness in her face as she pronounces her proclamations, like against her compassionate instincts she's always having to tell us these things. And so she looked at all of us in the paneled conference room, and she went:

“Look. We have tried everything with those two. I mean, I'm not against love. I'm not against human sexuality. I'm against obsession. Those two are obsessed. I mean, I talked to Mr. Allen, Tom A.'s guardian, last night on the phone, and he told me they've been like that since they were boys, and it's hard to stop that kind of behavior. I mean, you can't. So we're just gonna move Tom A. over to Franklin Street and move Juanita from over there to our place. Juanita's real cute. You guys are gonna love her. I mean, Tom A. and Tom B. can still see each other, but supervised. I mean, what I'm afraid of is that they are gonna end up hurting each other. Physically. There's all kinds of issues here. I mean, when I walked in on them the other morning, Tom A., excuse me, but Tom A. was anally penetrating Tom B.”

The way she said “penetrating,” I had to laugh. Raquel looked over at me, and our eyes kind of got conspiratorial.

When Kate looked at me, she had to laugh too. I mean, it was funny. Eric, another guy who works with us, laughed, and then all the people, mostly new hires, well, we all got the giggles until finally Kate had to stop us.

“I know, I know,” she said. “This is the people business, and yes, the people business can be pretty funny. But let's just try to make this happen smoothly, okay?”

Then it got quiet, like we were all suddenly little kids and Kate Anderson-Malloy was the teacher.

Dad's standing at the podium he made for the wedding. It's in front of the living room window where the TV used to be. He looks kind of silly, standing there, politician-dumb, like he is thinking how to talk about a big issue in little-people language for the masses.

But I love him. One of his visions about me, and he usually has them after eating late at night, is that I am going to be famous somehow. He sees me getting an award on a show.

“Now,” he says, making sure the hair he combs over his bald spot is still in place, “so I'm just gonna treat these two like man and wife?”

“That's what we want,” I say.

The phone rings again, and we let the machine get it. It's Archie's voice. He's singing this Boyz II Men song I used to really like, “The End of the Road.” It kills me, and I get embarrassed, Dad standing there, smiling.

“What a singer,” Dad says.

Archie stops then, and the answering machine has that hang-up dial tone sound for a sec. I get closer to the podium, pretending like I'm one of the Toms so I can see what it looks like. Dad's eyes go serious. He says, “So this is the wedding of Tom A. to Tom B.” He's reading it off an index card. Practicing. What a perfectionist.

“Ladies and gentleman, I now pronounce them Tom and Tom.” The plan was secretly hatched in the basement, by the time clock. Raquel was taking a drink from her Super America mug, filled with vodka and red pop. One time she offered me a sip and I took it and, boy, was it vodka and red pop.

Anyway, it was the evening right after the staff meeting where Kate told us Tom A. was gonna have to move. We were both kind of bummed, and Raquel said, “You know, all Tom B. has ever talked about was getting married to him. I think that is so sweet.” She took a big drink.

The dryer was going. Big industrial one for all the piss-soaked bed-sheets and other assorted piss-soaked items. I knew that already, about them wanting to get married. Not only because Tom A. had a stack of old-time bridal magazines, worn out from looking at them, stacked in his room, but Tom B. and I had gotten into many discussions about marriage too. By this time, we were pretty good friends. Tom A. was more aloof, since he couldn't talk, but Tom B. let you know he was proud of what he and Tom A. had accomplished: twenty-four years of staying together, and when Orient shut down and they were going to be moved out, he knew Tom and him would be in the same group home because, “It went alphabetic. So I knew. It was luck. It was God too. Tink about it, Anita. Tom A. and Tom B.”

It made sense, didn't it? His face, as I was trying to do my paperwork, was sincere and stupid and scary and beautiful. You can't say no to that. Well, maybe other people can, but people like me can't.

By the way, Tom B. and me never did talk about me seeing them that first night I worked there, them doing the nasty, but I'm sure he would have just laughed it off like nothing. Raquel said they used to line people up at Orient in the shower room, forty at a time, and tell them to hold their noses, and spray them down with a gigantic fire hose, and then say, “Now soap up,” and forty men would soap up real quick, and then get sprayed again and some people, the people who worked there, would laugh as they sprayed them.

So Raquel said that night with the dryer going, “Let's let them get married.”

She looked at me like we were both out of our minds. Even though she was a lifer, she was also pretty much timid and obedient, scared of Kate Anderson-Malloy and not just because she had two last names, but because Kate had sense to everything she said. Obviously it made a lot of sense to move them away from each other. Because they were getting worse. They weren't going to workshop some mornings, clinging to each other nude in one bedroom or the other. Other times too, like they were losing their fear, like they were getting brave. Helping them to get married would only make them braver, wouldn't it? And it definitely would not stop them from having to move away from each other.

But Raquel took a big gulp from her vodka and red pop and swallowed and said, “Maybe if they get married it won't be so bad that they can't live together. Like Dolly Parton and her husband.”

I smiled. That didn't make any sense, but it seemed right.

Raquel is already at the group home when I pull up. She had already helped pudgy Tom A. into his suit. It's a light blue leisure suit from when he got de-institutionalized and they gave them all new clothes, back in the late seventies. It barely fits, and he looks like some tourist guy having nerve problems on vacation. He and Raquel are sitting on the couch, and Damon and Sally and Larry the big mouth are all in the living room.

I step in. Eric is in the back with Tom B.

“He's showing Tom how to shave good,” Raquel says.

Larry asks, “Are we going anywhere? We're not going anywhere are we?” He's got that totally freaked-out look on his face.

“No. Just me and Raquel and Tom A. and Tom B.,” I say.

“Thank the Lord. I am just so tired, Anita,” he says. He was raised by two aunts in a mansion, kept a secret there with them for years, and that's his personality: old-lady stubbornness and laziness and gentility.

Sally comes over, spit dripping down onto her pink shirt. Her face has a sweet and scary emptiness to it. She is walking around without knowing anything but with her eyes wide open.

“Pop,” she whispers. “Pop, candy. Pop. Candy.”

She has gone into this repressed memory thing, where she is always thinking she's brushed her teeth real good and now she deserves some pop and candy. That's the way they used to get her to brush them.

“I don't have any, honey,” I say.

Raquel, dressed in a long jean skirt and a beautiful orange blouse, her ratty hair pulled back into a bun, gets up and gets some Tic Tacs out of her purse. “Here.”

Sally seems happy, and sits on the arm of Damon's lounger. He pushes her off, saying what he says: “Mona Lisa.”

Sally flops down and grunts and kind of laughs.

Then Tom B. comes out with Eric, a slump-shouldered high school dropout who wants to be a chef. He has one of those sad mustaches that is barely there. But Tom B. is perfectly clean shaven in a navy blue suit, black shoes. Handsome, I think.

Eric looks scared. “You guys, if anybody finds out.”

Larry comes in. “We ain't going anywhere.”

“I know, Larry. Calm down,” Eric says. He starts to whisper, “I told Tom that he can't say nothing, and he agreed, right, Tom?”

Tom B. nods. “Right. I won't.” He shakes his head real hard, and goes over to Tom A. He gives his hand to Tom A. and Tom A. looks dumbfounded for a sec. He is realizing they are actually going somewhere to get married. It doesn't make sense to him, but still, it's exciting.

“Come on,” Tom B. says. “Come on, Tommy.”

They're two boys going to church. Two kids, it seems like. True love does that to you.

Raquel opens the door. They walk out. I look at Eric, who's still worried.

“God, if anybody finds out,” he says.

I just go on out.

Raquel's car is bigger, so we go in hers, both Toms in back, holding hands. It's dark and chilly and the headlights shine on piles of silver gravel. I need a cigarette. I think about Archie's voice on the phone. Pathetic but rich with feeling, and I think about the way he would look coming out of the shower, naked, and anybody naked looks like they did when they were kids, even with hair and flab and all the years added on. Something about being dripping wet and shivering and clean: that's what a kid is. I remember loving Archie when he was wet and naked. Pretending not to see him, but he was showing off, even with his rotten body. Coming over to me while I was trying to read course descriptions.

“Baby,” he said.

“You're getting water all over the fucking floor.”