Probation (12 page)

The snow doesn’t look like the big fluffy Hollywood downpour at the end of the movie. These snowflakes are aggressive. An advance attack secures the front line, melting on impact with the still-warm ground. The swift, hardy infantry assaults the rhododendrons and azaleas and chokes the lawn. A strong wind rattles the pine trees and slaps the power line, heralding the arrival of the cavalry. The final victory is swift, eerily quiet. The powder is accumulating.

Merriment dissolves into nervous apprehension as the snow starts to drift. Bing Crosby had snow tires; no one in North Carolina does. The caterer snaps at her crew, telling them to circulate, fast, before everyone deserts the party. She wants them to push the paté on melba.

I see one of the servers shooting her the finger behind her back. Caught red-handed, he gives me a bashful shrug. He’s a tall, lanky boy, probably a track and field star, a Country Day School type. I wink to let him know I approve. She deserves worse than the finger. The track star offers me a piece of bruschetta. We’re conspirators now. “Super cunt,” he whispers, “what a lezzie.”

Curtis and I spot each other at exactly the same time. He’s slipped into the kitchen to be incognito since it’s a dry party. He sees me when he looks up from the silver pocket flask tipped at his lips. I’m smiling at the obscenities the teenager is whispering in my ear. He couldn’t have caught me at a worse moment. It’s not the booze flushing his cheeks. His hatred of me has not diminished one bit in the six months since our last encounter.

Life is nothing more than a succession of
what-ifs?

What if I had had more than ten bucks in my wallet when it came time to post the bond?

What if, having finally summoned up the courage to call Alice, fate hadn’t intervened in the form of a malfunctioning automated teller that swallowed her one and only debit card?

What if I had thought to tell her the holding cell wasn’t like the snake pits you saw in the movies, but was a spotlessly clean little corner I had all to myself, no bruising inmates to corrupt and abuse me?

What if her judgment hadn’t been so clouded by worrying about my safety that she would have thought twice before calling her father and telling him she needed three hundred dollars, now?

He would have killed me if Alice hadn’t jumped on his back, trying to pry his hands from my throat. He came close enough as it was. Those huge fists crushed my vocal cords and left me hoarse for weeks. But that was minor compared to the damage he wreaked on his own flesh and blood. She cracked her skull against the hard tile floor when he threw her off his back. The police arrived, summoned by a report of a domestic disturbance, the second time in twenty-four hours I found myself confronted by a badge and a blue shirt. Fire rescue was close behind.

Curtis insisted I’d tried to kill her. Alice, groggy from the concussion, refused to press charges. There’s no charges to press, she insisted in her soft drawl. Daddy’s wrong, she said, I fell. I remember the way “fell” tripped off her tongue, sounding more like “fill” or “feel.” Most likely the effects of the concussion.

Her first instinct was to protect me. Given time, she might have learned to accept “it,” “this.” Someday, not right now, but maybe in the not-too-distant future, soon, once things got back to normal, we could come to
an understanding
over pinot grigio and Orange Milano cookies. She read about things like this in
Cosmopolitan
; she’d seen something like this in a movie of the week. It wasn’t so unusual, was it? You don’t pick up and leave if someone is paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident, do you? Was this really all that different?

Yes.

I knew it and Curtis knew it. It took Curtis to do what neither she nor I could: cut me out of her life.

Another man slips into the kitchen and accosts the King, wanting a sip from his flask. I take the opportunity to escape. Curtis reaches out to grab my arm. I manage to slip away from his fingers. He hates me not for betraying his daughter, but for betraying him.

I slither into the crush of bodies around the bishop, who’s crouched over the keyboard, crooning “What I Did for Love.” His dry voice resists the emotion he’s straining to squeeze into every note. A fey young acolyte, most likely a seminarian, stands at attention, his long fingers ready to flip the sheet music at just the right moment. He seems to be the only person in the room who hears music in that voice. It’s obvious to everyone in the room that His Excellency is sending a valentine to the boy. No one dares to wince, but one or two of the more irreverent stifle the clearing of throats, their amusement peeping from behind closed fists.

His Excellency is retiring at fifty-nine years of age. He doesn’t just have the occasional binge anymore. He keeps himself permanently lubricated, which makes it easy for his predilections to slip into open view. The Vatican tolerated it longer than it should have in deference to his remarkable talent for fund-raising. Next week, he’s being cashiered to an isolated outpost where he can drink himself to death in peace. The diocese is honoring him today with fruit punch and hors d’oeuvres and the announcement that the annual golf tournament for Catholic Charities will bear his name.

Curtis is not a man given to intrigue and stealth. His course of action is the full-frontal attack. But the bishop’s audience is between us, making it impossible to make a direct charge. He has to maneuver through the bodies at the fringe to get to me. As he inches closer, I creep farther away. He’s a little tipsy. Not a good sign. Curtis usually carefully measures his intake, believing drunkenness to be a liability. But the sight of me caused him to throw a little fuel from the flask on the fire of the rage that’s been simmering on low heat since last summer.

His Excellency saves me, calling out to Curtis, insisting on a duet. The King isn’t actually drunk, he’s still in control and he gives the bishop a bear hug to compensate just in case it’s apparent to anyone that he wants to tell the old fag to fuck off. Then he realizes he should have. He’s mortified when he recognizes the first few measures of the song His Excellency has chosen. I take advantage of his temporary paralysis to slip away as the bishop sings the first few lines of “People Will Say We’re in Love.”

It’s cold and quiet on the sun porch. The squealing radial tires, the sound of cars sliding on ice and snow, tell me I need to find my mother. I’ve neglected her. Actually, I’ve forgotten all about her. She is probably looking for me right now. The snow is the perfect excuse to get out of here. The nervous headlights of a caravan of fleeing automobiles creep down the drive. There’s a loud outburst inside. Genuine laughter, not just polite mirth. I can imagine what’s happened. The King has salvaged his dignity with a self-deprecating joke. But it doesn’t douse his fury at being humiliated by His Excellency. He needs revenge more than ever. He’s going to hunt me down.

Maybe I can wander off into one of the snowdrifts, disappear forever. At least until the big thaw which, this being North Carolina, will be the day after tomorrow at the latest. No. No more hiding. Let him find me. I deserve it anyway. The King has every reason to hate me. He’s never liked me, not really. He’d suspected there was something slippery, untrustworthy, about me on first meeting, when I blew cigarette smoke in his face over the brunch table. But he’d let himself believe in the charade, made me his partner, the heir apparent, took me into his confidence and assumed I’d taken him into mine.

He thinks I’m malicious, venal, that I duped him. And now, his duet with the bishop over, he’s found me. He’s going to extract his pound of flesh. My resolve cracks and, coward that I am, I crash through the door and run into the snow. He follows like I knew he would. If I can only stay an arm’s length ahead, at least until I can lock myself in the car and huddle in a corner until he is tired of banging his fists on the window.

Snow is a great equalizer and all the expensive sedans and coupes are fluffy marshmallows, one indistinguishable from the next. I slip and slide, swiping every hood, looking for metallic blue, until I stumble upon my mother’s car. I hear him panting, he’s that close. My fingers, trembling, drop the keys. They disappear, swallowed by the snow.

He intends to finish what he started months ago. He grabs me by the throat. I don’t try to defend myself. His huge hands take him to the brink of breaking my neck, then he pushes me away. What makes him stop? He sees something in my face that won’t let him smash me in a pique of anger. There’s something he wants to say to me but my mother calls his name before he can speak.

The sight of this tiny frail woman high stepping through the drifts summons his innate chivalry. He wades toward her and wraps his arm around her shoulder, guiding her to the car. I hear them exchange pleasantries and polite inquiries about health and holidays. They don’t acknowledge anything out of the ordinary though I’m gasping for breath. I find the keys while they talk about the snow. Curtis kisses my mother on the cheek after he helps her into the car. I close the door behind her and, by instinct, offer my hand to thank him for helping her. I break down when he accepts it.

My mother stares down at her hands to give me a little privacy. My father-in-law holds me upright, at arm’s length, not knowing what to do with me, afraid I might collapse in the snow. It’s awkward, standing face-to-face with him, my eyes red and snot dripping from my nose. He seems reticent, almost shy, his meat-and-potatoes mug more Ronnie Reagan than John Wayne. Maybe we’re going to have a
moment
, a tipping point, a reconciliation.

“I knew there was something wrong with you the first time I laid eyes on you,” he says, almost sympathetically, as if I were born with a birth defect for which the March of Dimes will never find a cure.

“I’m sorry,” I say, though he’s not the one who’s owed an apology.

“You should be,” he says, wiping his palms on his jacket as he releases me.

Let it go, I tell myself as I walk away. He stands, watching, as I open the car door and slip behind the wheel. I turn the key in the ignition and press the accelerator. The tires spin on the ice, going nowhere, proving once and for all my total incompetence. I’m completely emasculated by a few inches of snow.

“Put it in neutral and let it drift to a dry spot,” Curtis shouts, his loud voice barely muffled by the windshield.

The King of Unpainted Furniture plants his size sixteen wingtips and grabs the hood with his powerful hands, drawing a deep breath as he rocks the car out of the ice rut. He stands in triumph, fists on his hips, as the tires gain traction on the gravel.

“I’ll say it was an accident if you run over the son of a bitch,” my mother says, smiling sweetly as she waves good-bye.

“It’s not worth it, Ma,” I say, just wanting this day to be over.

“Ah, but think how good it would feel,” she says. “I love this song. Turn up the volume,” she insists, as the DJ on the AM band plays Anne Murray’s “Snowbird” in honor of the blizzard.

I
t’s a new year.

Time for auspicious beginnings.

Time to kick start my new life.

Ready, steady, go.

“Look, I really don’t want to discourage you, but I’m not sure the timing’s quite right,” Matt says.

“What do you mean? It’s perfect timing. It’s January. When do you want me to make my resolutions? Sometime in the middle of March? Obviously you’re not big on New Year’s resolutions,” I say.

“Quite the contrary,” he laughs. “I took my last puff on a cigarette at eleven fifty-nine, December thirty-first. I broke my record this year. I was a nonsmoker for four and a half days.”

“Maybe you’re weak,” I say, perfectly comfortable sounding smug and condescending.

“You’re right. I probably am. Maybe you can do better. Go ahead. Tell me your resolutions.”

I haven’t come as prepared as I thought. But then how do I reduce
stop doing what I’m doing and start doing something different
to a laundry list of self-improvements?

“Well,” I say, “first, I’m going to start getting more sleep.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“I think I’ll look for an apartment,” I announce, a sudden inspiration that catches me off guard.

“Are you ready for that?”

“For God’s sake, I’m a lot closer to forty than thirty. I think I should be ready for that.”

“How long has it been since you’ve lived alone?”

The answer’s easy, but he doesn’t need to know it. Never.

“Well, uh, I guess it’s too many years to count.”

“Look, Andy, I’m just concerned about setting unrealistic goals you can’t achieve simply because the calendar’s flipped to another year.”

“You’re a priest of little faith.”

“No. Just a therapist with a lot of experience. By the way, you are taking your medications, aren’t you?”

“Religiously.”

“Secularly will suffice. So, getting back to your resolutions. What would you like to change?”

“Who says I want to change?”

“Do you want to continue on the same?”

“No.”

“So what do you want to change first?”

Everything? I ask myself.

“Well, I don’t want to be here.”

“Not an option. But, just as a hypothetical, where do you want to be?”

“Home,” I say, not hesitating.

“You just said you wanted to look for an apartment.”

“No.
Home.
My home.”

“You mean with Alice?”

“Yes.”

“What would you do differently if you could go home to Alice tonight?”

Everything. I would be devoted, attentive, thoughtful, gentle, caring, committed, selfless, kind, affectionate…romantic…passionate…faithful. Am I being overly sentimental, insincere? Is that why I can’t bring myself to actually utter this declaration in actual spoken words? Am I afraid that my trusted counselor will call my bluff?

“Were you happy living in Alice’s house?”

“
Our
house,” I correct him.

“Sorry.”

“Sure, I was happy. I wasn’t
unhappy.
Remember, I didn’t leave. It wasn’t my choice.”

“Wasn’t it?”

Of course not. The Green Goblin put a gun to my head and, finger on the trigger, marched me out of the house. He threatened to splatter my brains across the tile walls of that damn rest stop if I didn’t drop to my knees and take that stranger’s huge cock in my mouth. The King of Unpainted Furniture had set me up, paid the goddamn gremlin for the hit job, and, mission accomplished, booted me out on my ass. I had nothing to do with it.

“Do you think Alice was happy?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think that?”

“She never said she was unhappy.”

“Has she tried to contact you?”

“She can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Curtis won’t let her.”

“How could he stop her?”

God, this priest can be obtuse. Curtis keeps the Green Goblin on retainer, a hired gun, muscle to enforce his will. Alice has been kidnapped, held against her will, chained in the basement, bound and gagged, threatened with starvation and dehydration if she even entertains the thought of attempting to contact me.

“You don’t understand,” I say.

“Do you?”

Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I’m not ready to accept the possibility that Alice, my wife, doesn’t want to see or hear from me, not now, not just yet, maybe not ever.

“Have you considered the possibility she’s trying to move on?” he asks.

Move on, go forward, proceed, progress, advance…

Why not…go back, retreat?

No, no way, that sounds too much like a military maneuver in the face of defeat.

How about…repatriate?

Yes! Repatriate, reclaim, restore, rebuild.

Has he considered the possibility that she’s just called a time-out to consider her negotiating strategy, to finesse the conditions of the truce and draft the terms of the treaty?

I’ll sign it. Unconditional surrender. I’ll be the best goddamn fucking husband in history. As devoted as Winston to his Clementine, Ronnie to his Nancy, Edward to his Wallis.

One more chance. That’s all I’m asking for, Alice. I’ll be perfect, just wait and see.

“I would imagine she needs some distance to move on and she’s trying to help you do the same.”

“Isn’t that your fucking job?” I say, sounding more hostile than I feel, suspecting he’s placating me, sugarcoating the obvious fact that my wife hates me by deceiving me into thinking that her motives are altruistic, Saint Alice of the Little Flowers. Not that I need her help, or his for that matter, to
move on
. A raging success, a whopping triumph, a touchdown, a home run, no, a
grand slam
home run—how should I describe my remarkable achievements in the arts and sciences of relationships as I’ve scoured the lower forty-eight of Our Great Nation for Shelton/Murray over the past few months?

DATELINE: BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

He takes me by the hand and leads me to a king-sized mattress and box spring. Unfolded laundry is tossed everywhere, underwear on stacks of yellowing newspaper, unpaired socks in open dresser drawers. His desktop is cluttered with broken pencils, twisted paper clips, dry felt tips of every imaginable hue, junk mail circulars, cheap plastic pens chewed nearly beyond recognition, invitations for credit cards with 6% interest and forgotten utility bills. Sneakers, wingtips, loafers, sandals—all creased by sweat and worn at the heel—collect dust at the foot of the bed. The nightstand’s well stocked with a supply of lubricants and poppers and a pile of loose condoms he scooped up by the handful on his way out of the baths. The sheets are stained by his old enthusiasms. He makes love like he’s starved, as if it’s his first time, or his last.

Then he cums and shuts down in a flash.

“Should I leave?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, a mocking smile on his lips, “I’m a real bitch in the morning.”

I break a shoelace, racing against the stopwatch.

“Got everything?” he asks. “Wallet? Gloves?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Meaning get out.

“I have no idea where I am.”

“Just ask the doorman to turn on the cab light. You’ll be back at your hotel in fifteen minutes.”

And then I’m out on the street, shivering in the cold New England night, waiting for a taxi that never comes.

DATELINE: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

The bar is packed, shoulder to shoulder, but the bodies miraculously part, allowing him to rocket by, swept along by the winds whistling off the whitecaps of Lake Michigan. Just as he’s about to disappear into the sea of flannel and black lambswool, he snaps to attention. He’s picked up a scent. He grabs my elbow, peers into my face and says “hey.” “Hey,” I say back. He does a Popeye two step, mimicking my deep voice: “Hey.”

“I can’t believe this,” he laughs. “You’re too young for me.”

We determine that I am sixteen, almost seventeen, years older than him.

“See,” he says. “You’re way too young for me.”

“Are you wooing me, Rocket Boy?” I ask.

“Do you want to be wooed?”

More than he can ever know, for as long as he’s been on this earth.

Four, five, is it six?, beers later, he tells me what he is seeking. Someone he enjoys being around, someone sweet and sincere. Sweet and sincere…Here! I know he’s been waiting for me. Why don’t I wrap him in my arms, squeeze the air out of him, fold him in a neat square, tuck him in my pocket, and carry him away?

Our romance ends as abruptly as it started. He announces he has to work in the morning. It’s late. The alarm will go off soon enough. It’s only nine o’clock, I protest. I need a lot of sleep, he says. I walk him to his bus stop, saying nothing as he climbs the steps and drops his coins. I see his paw clearing a circle on the frosty window. He presses his face against the glass, searching me out. I step back so he can’t see me. The bus rumbles down the street, stealing a piece of me I can never retrieve. The exhaust pipe spits a black chunk of ice at me. It splatters on the street, missing my feet.

DATELINE: SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI

He opens his eyes and snuggles against me, getting as close as he possibly can. He’s purring, as coy as an irresistible and yielding French sex kitten. But cooing and mewing can’t eroticize his prissy turned-up nose and thin lips and the pinched squint that makes him look as if he’s sniffing a perpetual fart. It’s embarrassing, this performance, like being forced to watch a middle-aged maiden aunt do a striptease.

“Good morning, sunshine,” he gurgles, his pale eyelashes crusted with sleep.

He goes down on me, sucking like a Hoover, trying to get me hard one last time.

“Mmmmm,” he says, straddling my hips, his pencil stub of a cock at full attention. His little titties jiggle on his soft pink chest, reminding me of the piglet in Winnie-the-Pooh.

“In the mood to get fucked?” I ask.

“Always,” he murmurs.

Good. I want to drop this load quickly and get it over with.

“…but it’s quarter to eight and I need to shower,” he snaps as he jumps off the bed, leaving Little Andy at full salute and pointing at the ceiling.

What I’d give to wring his scrawny neck, wipe that smug little smirk off his face, shove him through the window, see him splatter on the sidewalk twenty-six floors below.

“She’s not coming back, Andy, and you know it.”

“I know that. She hates me.”

“I doubt that. But you’ve made it impossible. You realize it, don’t you.”

“I made a mistake.”

“You think it’s as simple as that? You made a mistake? One mistake? Which of the many was the fatal one?”

The one where I let her fall in love with me.

The one where I believed her love would save me.

Goddamn. Son of a bitch. Motherfuck.

The damn priest’s got me crying.

Not really crying. More like “a little misty,” red-eyed, maybe a little tight in the throat. Not sobbing, not snot-nosed and dripping. I do
not
need a tissue from the fucking box he’s shoved in my face.

“You know, Andy, it’s not a sin to be lonely.”

“Who says I’m lonely? I knew we’d get to sin eventually,” I say, trying to inject a little levity into this pathetic scene, anything to avoid to the bleak future I see in the crystal ball.

“Well then, it’s not a sign of weakness.”

“I suppose I better get used to being alone.”

“Why?”

I snort, not believing I’m paying someone who is stupid enough to ask this question.

“You
can
have another relationship,” he says.

“I’ll just wait for Prince Charming to arrive and sweep me off my feet.”

“Doesn’t work that way.”

I can’t believe I’m getting advice for the lovelorn from Father Celibacy.

“Let’s try one more resolution,” he suggests.

“I’m all ears.”

“We agree that these sexual encounters leave you feeling demoralized.”

“No. You tell me that. I don’t agree. Why do you insist on keep moralizing about it? It’s just sex.”

“That’s exactly my point. It’s just sex and you’re looking for love. Or at least a little emotional intimacy. What you used to have with Alice.”

“Sex. Love. What’s the fucking difference?” I say, exasperated, aware that I’m making no sense.

“I’m surprised that you, of all people, would make that comment.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, your marriage, for one thing.”

I start to protest, then surrender, unable to refute his professional observation.

“Not that they have to be mutually exclusive,” he says.

“Yeah, well, good luck finding true love and happiness out there. Tell me how it goes,” I snort.

He shrugs, conceding for once, he’s not speaking from any vast experience of affairs of the heart.

“Well, I’ll have to take your word for it. See you next week.”