Losing It (24 page)

“Could you get a condom, please?” she asked. He leaned way over to the bedside table, pulled open the drawer. She could hear the rustling of the package as he tore at it, watched while he unrolled the rubber onto his penis. But he was already flagging. In seconds, it seemed, he was limp and small again.

She sat up and kissed him, rocked him, started to feel for his nipples once more.

“Mama!” Matthew said, with intent this time, there was no mistaking it.

“Damn it,” Julia muttered. Bob ripped off the slippery condom, threw it bitterly onto the floor in the darkness.

Matthew started to cry. “Mama!” he said. “Mama!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bob groaned, and rolled over stiffly, taking most of the blankets.

18

“D
onnnn–ny.” His mother’s voice came down the stairs weak and tremulous, and yet thorny as a scrabby old bush growing out of garbage and gravel. Donny immediately lost his
sung
state of peaceful awareness, though his shoulders remained soft for now, his breathing deep and full, his arms rounded protectively in front of him.

“Did you get the coupons, dear?”

His tongue remained lightly touching the roof of his mouth just behind the teeth. His fingers were spread, but not rigid, in the “beautiful lady hands” posture, the thumbs and forefingers slightly stretched, the other fingers relatively more relaxed. His spine was straight, shoulders rounded, his pelvis tilted slightly, his knees bent, toes lightly curled. His eyes were open to the fullness of the cosmos, but not focused on anything in particular.

“Food Plaza is open right now, but the coupons won’t be there all day,” his mother said. “I need lemons and eggplant. Did you hear me?”

His spine was subtly stretching and compressing with each breath, exercising the three “hinges of power”: the base of the
spine at the pelvis, the middle where the chest opened and closed, and the “gate of heavenly awareness,” where the spine meets the skull. Each co-ordinated stretching and compressing was designed to pump life-force energy from the “lower well of power” to the middle and upper wells and back again, to balance out his state, smooth out the edges, harmonize darkness with light. He needed to be in a state of complete awareness and relaxation to make it work. His jaw, however, was clamped tight and now he could feel his shoulders knotting.

“Are you hugging the tree again, Donny? Didn’t you do that yesterday?”

“I’m almost done, Mother,” Donny barked, his voice rougher, his anger stronger than he expected.

“It’s just the coupons, dear,” she said.

Eighteen breaths, three times with his arms rounded in front of his chest and face, elbows lower than his hands, the energy portals of his armpits open, not squashed closed.
Julia
on the in-breath,
Carmichael
on the out-breath, his energy wheel expanding and tightening.

“I don’t mind so much about the lemons,” his mother said. “It’s more the coupons. I don’t know how long they’re going to last. Maybe they’ll be there all day. I don’t know. But I would think there’ll be a terrible rush. You know how the Food Plaza gets on Sundays. It’s best to go a bit early. And I would like the eggplant. Though it’s horrible for my digestion. Are you listening, dear?”

Eighteen breaths, three times through with the arms up, then eighteen breaths, plus nine more, with the arms lowered, hands palm up in front of the abdomen, holding the energy in the lower well of power. With each breath, cosmic energy is drawn through the body’s portals of connectivity: the top of the head, eyes, nostrils, palms of the hands, soles of the feet. Draw
in fresh life-force, then on the out-breath expel the toxic refuse built up in your energy channels.

“I don’t see why you have to hug the tree today when you just did it yesterday,” his mother said. “If you found a girl you wouldn’t have to hug the tree any more, or do any more foot-stamping or those snaky things with your arms. Whatever happened to what’s-her-name? Do you ever see her any more?”

Julia
on the in-breath, absorbing the fresh energy of the universe.
Carmichael
on the out-breath, releasing the toxic grubbiness of this dark little house.

“I don’t see why you can’t
talk
to me, Donny,” she whined. “I’m stuck up here. I’d go get the coupons if I could. I did it for years and years. I know that they don’t last. That’s all. I don’t mean to bother you. Could you
answer
me?”

Julia … Carmichael. Julia … Carmichael.

“Donnnn-ny!”

He tried to stay focused. She said, “I don’t know where you go at night. I wish you would tell me. I worry so much. There are so many stupid things men can do at night.”

“I’m not doing stupid things, Ma. I’m just walking, that’s all. I like to walk.”

“You go off in your truck!” she said. He stayed very still, his breath slipped in and out like a single strand of silk being pulled smoothly from the cocoon, no jerking, no sudden, abrasive –

“I said, you go off in your truck! Why won’t you talk to me?”

“Because I’m meditating!”

“I don’t understand why you can’t meditate and talk at the same time.”

“It’s not like knitting, Ma.”

“Well there, you’re talking now. You see, you can do it!”

There are many ways to kill somebody, Donny thought suddenly. A quick blow to the front or side of the neck. A knuckle
to the temple. Collapse the sternum. Overwhelming force to the solar plexus. Anything like that. One reflex spasm. You go from reptile-brain readiness to catastrophic action and then back to readiness. Like a crocodile exploding out of a muddy hole to pull down a young water buffalo. That’s reptile brain. Donny thought of Waylun Zhi demonstrating it: this scrawny man in glasses rounded his shoulders, spread his fingers, widened his stance, became very still and dangerous. Not angry, that wasn’t it; a crocodile isn’t angry. It’s just coiled and loaded on a hair-trigger.
Bam!
Set to go off.

“What was her name, anyway? That last one. Renatta? Rhoda? Reisa?”

“Ramone,” Donny barked.

“Oh,
Ramone
. I remember her now. She wasn’t right for you. Too – what was it? She wasn’t right. She was too -”

“Married, Ma. She’s too married!”

There were other terrible, terrible things you could do to someone. A quick blow to the side of the knee,
snap!
It didn’t even have to be much pressure. Or stamp on their foot, that will get their attention, collapse their arch. Or a palm strike on the front of the chest, then drag your hand downwards quickly, inflicting great pain and disrupting their energy flow. Someone like Waylun Zhi could pour overwhelming energy into any vulnerable spot on your body, just through touch, a particular grip. On the elbow joint, for example. Donny had seen him knock out a senior student that way in a demonstration. One minute standing fine, then a little squeeze of the elbow and the legs buckled, the eyes rolled back as the body collapsed.

“Not for you!” his mother said. “I knew it as soon as you told me about her. But what about this new one? The one you were out with till all hours. She’s married too, isn’t she? Don’t you ever learn?”

It’s easy to get sidetracked, to focus on the violent aspects. You don’t want to become a psychopath in order to protect yourself from psychopaths. But it’s difficult not to think about it. Waylun Zhi called it sneeze power: pouring everything into one focused explosion, then letting it go, relaxing again. A whiplash through the whole body, making every point of contact a weapon. He could’ve used it on that guy on the street the other day, the jerk who was so furious after Julia knocked him over. He actually wanted to strike the baby; he was crazy with it, drunk with rage, but stiff as a ladder; Donny just swept his leg out and the guy toppled over. He could’ve done much worse: kicked him in the groin, or poleaxed the guy with his elbow as he charged in. He could’ve chopped him in the neck and killed him on the spot. If Donny hadn’t stayed calm, hadn’t been equal to the situation.

“I said, don’t you ever learn?”

“No, I don’t, Ma,” Donny said. “I never learn.” He lowered his hands, blinked several times, walked around the dim living room slowly. All the furniture was old and ratty, had been bought nearly fifty years before. His mother used to keep the plastic cover on the sofa in case of accidents, until the plastic was ripped and shredded. Now the sofa itself was coming apart. The cushion covers had split their seams; the arms were beaten down, exhausted; the whole thing sagged in the middle and looked as if it couldn’t support more than one light person at a time.

It was dangerous to just leave off like this, raise and accumulate the life-force without circulating it throughout the major organs and limbs, balancing it properly, then storing it again in the wells of peace. But it would take several other exercises to finish and he couldn’t manage them anyway, not with his mother in this kind of mood. He’d probably get angry,
with his energy like this, but there was nothing else for it. He walked to the base of the stairs.

“Her name is Julia Carmichael,” he called up. “I used to go to school with her. She’s married now, has one son. I was helping her out the other night because her mother was lost, and I’m going to do her kitchen floor tomorrow. That’s all. I’m going out now to get the coupons.”

“How could her mother get lost?”

“It just happens sometimes.”

“What kind of woman allows her mother to get lost?”

“She’s just lucky, I guess,” Donny said.

“What was that? What kind of joke was that?”

“I’m going to get the coupons, Ma.”

“What about my kiss?”

He could hear her struggling to get out of bed, to drag the walker closer.

“I’ll just be gone a few minutes, Ma.”

“Not without my kiss!” she said, and then he heard her clump-thumping across the floor. He started up the stairs.

“I’ll be back in ten minutes, Ma.”

She got almost to the bedroom door, then quit and sagged against the support. Donny climbed the stairs quickly, took her gently in his arms, lifted her as if she was nothing, which she was, practically, light as a thorn bush.

“Don’t you ever leave without my kiss,” she said.

He put her back in the little bed. The drapes were closed; the room was gloomy and airless. It didn’t take long for his mother to make it feel like it had been shut up for decades.

He kissed her on both sagging cheeks.

“I’ll be back in about eleven minutes,” he said. “What was it you wanted besides the coupons? Lemon and something?”

“I
wish
you weren’t in love with this Julia person,” she sputtered. “I don’t see any good coming out of it.”

“I’m not in love with her. For God’s sake!” he said, with too much force, he could feel his body ugly with it.

“Of course you’re in love with her. You never mention the name of any woman you’re not in love with!”

“That’s not true,” he said.

His mother looked at him. “Why couldn’t you just be
normal?”
she asked.

“Because I’m taking care
of you,”
he whispered, and took her hand gently, so softly. He had a horrible, fleeting image of his fingers on her tiny throat, but it was gone in a second. “Let it go,” Waylun Zhi was always saying in class. Whatever it was, that stupid, profound, amazing, passing thought. Let it go and it will not harm you.

19

B
ob stepped out of the house. It was a chilly, uninspiring, dull morning, but the cold air seemed to him at least fresh, vital, and as he walked away he felt as if released from bondage. It wasn’t just the near-sleepless night, it was his mother-in-law endlessly fussing at breakfast, his son scattering sugar-frosted cereal all over the kitchen floor, his wife distracted, helpless to cope … and the anticipation of all that awaited with Sienna tomorrow, blessed Monday. It couldn’t come too soon. He’d avoided a fight, had handled himself with restraint, had walked the knife-edge of wordlessness and acquiescence for the sake of domestic non-violence. Now he was out and almost away.

But the front door squeaked open. “Honey,” Julia said in a unthreatening, reasonable, and completely commanding voice. “Honey,
could
you take Matthew.
Please?”