Watch Your Mouth (27 page)

pening here?”

“Nothing, Frank,” she said. “Nothing.” But he stepped closer and
saw;
a miracle he hadn’t seen it before, really.

“You,”
he said, his voice thick with punch and recognition.

“You’re—you’re—”

That’s when the hand grabbed my shoulder. I turned around:

Al.
One more false alarm and I’d have a heart attack.

“You’re what’s-his-name!”
he shouted.

Al blinked, then extended her hand. “Al Einstein.” “Not
you,
” he said. “
Him.
He’s—”

“Joe,” Al said.

“Joseph,”
I said. “Last Name Changed.”

Al looked at the Zhivagos, all clipboard-professional. “Let me apologize for Joseph,” she said. “He’s been dismissed from The Vast Resort and is leaving first thing tomorrow.”

“I wasn’t
dismissed,
” I said. “I
quit.
”

“Why don’t I take you both back to the party,” Al said, “where you can enjoy a complimentary cocktail.” She tried to take each of their arms like she wasn’t allowed to cross the street. Mimi allowed. Zhivago resisted.

“But what is he
doing here?
” he said. “How did you
find—
”

“He’s a
former employee,
” Al said, “who is
leaving first thing—
” “He’s been following us,” Mimi said, quietly. “He won’t leave

us alone.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Al said quickly. “Look, why don’t we go back to the—”

“Why not?” Zhivago said, turning to me. He looked tired; everything did. “Why won’t you, Joseph? Just let us live our lives. They’re none of your business. Just leave.” And then
he
left, or started to, Al and Mimi in tow. After two steps they stopped and looked at me, all of them, as if I should have van- ished already. I turned around and looked out to the Vast ocean, thinking they were right, but it turned out
I
was. It turned out, rising from the ocean so large and dark that it stood out even in the moon-covered night, that I was right, and that the one that wouldn’t leave us alone, the one lumbering slowly, so huge, with sure and wet purpose toward the shore, wasn’t me.

“What is that?” Al said, the only one who didn’t know, the only one who had no reason to lie about it.
“What is that?”

You don’t have to move so quickly, not if you’re so huge. A few strides will get you there.
“What is that?”
Al screamed again, and the golem swung at me. I ducked in time to escape impact but not the earthy scent, the
swoosh
of air, the cold, cold prick of a few stray drops clinging to those enormous arms. It was real, the scent, the sound, the feel. It had always
been
real, this golem. Mimi had created it, down in the basement, just like I’d always said, and it had followed everyone, hunted them down, strangled them or smothered them or whatever it was that go- lems did, to get revenge, to obey the wishes of its creator. Mimi wanted it to kill everyone who had harmed her, and here it was: Cyn, Stephen, Ben and now me. Now me, now here. The golem was
now here
. This was real as real could be, as real as this gets. I ran thickly, my pants soaked with surf. I ran right into the others and we stumbled together, clogged, through the sand toward the party, like some bedraggled caboose to the conga line. I kept looking back at the golem, advancing with silent calm. It walked so easily, acquiring menace with every step. Its

stride was muddy, and effortless, almost
elegant
in its surety. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, as a special treat we have

a little preview of the talent show. Performing with our own Vast Orchestra, Ms. Sarah Hackett—” Mike just frowned when the four of us tore into the party. We must have looked like mere rule-breakers. “What—” he started to say, and then he looked past us and saw. The band, already poised, froze further as the guests turned around to see who the party crashers were. One of the witches screamed, but most everybody was silent, caught mid-sip, mid-saxaphone, mid-finger food, mid-vocal de-

but. The Anderson royals started to smile, knowing of course what it was: some prank, some costume party finale. Even Mike’s scream sounded canned, a high feminine scream he might have performed every session, just when the party might be dying and the people were ready for something new. But it wasn’t.

The four of us ran toward the guests as the golem reached the middle of the dance floor, and now, bathed in the pink light of the lanterns, everyone could see it was real. A full ten feet of clay, wet but solid, was swiveling slowly toward me, and you could see it wasn’t anybody in an outfit, not moving like that, not built like that. Not with a thin slit of unmoving mouth, or with those deep-set eyes, larvae-white and without pupils, blank in their sockets. Not with those enormous arms, raised overhead and toppling the lanterns from their wires. Some of the debris fell onto the table, which folded in on its spindly legs and tipped the punch bowl, a cascade of sugary blood on the floor. Now everyone was screaming. Panicked but frozen, we were scream- ing and huddling together, and the golem swung an arm and caught the oldest ballerina, sending her careening to the ground, rolling away, her limbs in fourth position, fifth posi- tion, unconscious. Nobody had ever been thrown like that, not by a person. This was something bigger, scarier, a monster, a force beyond our control, a Higher Power.

Towering over us, the golem swung at other people who were in the way, the cowboys tossed together, Zhivago punched to the ground, Al hurled amidst a flurry of clipboard paper. And then it reached me—the eleventh step. I closed my eyes tight,
seeking through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with the Higher Power as I understood it
—I felt the damp

hands clenched on the scruff of my neck—
praying only for knowledge of the Higher Power’s will for me and the power to carry it out. “What do you want? What do you want from me? What do you want from me?”

The hands went gentle, briefly, and in the pause I opened my eyes. I was slid to the side; I heard Mimi and Mike whimper behind me. The golem’s head was tilted toward me, a polite angle, almost deferential, quizzical.
“What do you want from me?”
I screamed again, and the slit of a mouth opened, slowly, the square jaw dropping like an unstuck drawer.

The golem leaned in close and the Word of God tumbled out:
“Nothing,”
he said. He leaned even further, further than you’d think a figure that size could lean, curving past me, over me, moving over me like something being poured from one place to another, dissolving onto Mimi in a wet and crumbly mess. It was magically instant, the golem curling over to suffocate Mimi in a last gesture before disintegration, all over in seconds, and all over
Mimi.
It wanted
Mimi.
The monster didn’t want me any more than I wanted the monster. One word and it was over, the weight pouring over her before anyone could move. Mrs. Glass gave one half-scream, and then the mud was upon her and she was mute and finished forever.

Step 12

The golem was done just as everyone else came to life: the groaning cowboys; Al, a sheet of paper in her hair; Marco emerg- ing from underneath the table; the ballerina wailing; Mike wail- ing; everyone wailing. Dr. Zhivago crawled to the mass of clay and punched at it, his mouth open and mute, but you could hear from the sound of his blows there wasn’t any digging her

out. The clay was hardened already, ceramic. Somebody dropped their trombone. The mother witch took off her hat, crying; the wig was attached and the whole thing fluttered to the ground. Sarah Hackett stared numbly at the clay, still clutch- ing the microphone. The fat lady never got to sing.

Because it wasn’t over, of course. Still isn’t. It never is. Within hours some bemused local cops arrived on a tiny little boat but what could we tell them? There were so many versions of the story that eventually the two of them stopped even pretending to take notes. Dr. Zhivago couldn’t speak, or wouldn’t, just stayed wrapped in a blanket by the palm trees. The clay was absolutely impenetrable to the shovels we had lying around the Vast gardening shed, but after a few days the cops lost interest in digging through it anyway because they couldn’t find any record that Frank Zhivago even
had
a wife. I’m sure the mound of clay is still there, even though the brochures I receive— through some perverse twist I’m still on their mailing list, no matter how many times I call—there aren’t any photographs of it. But that’s hardly surprising. You take a bunch of pictures, but you only put the best ones in. Tiny women swimming. A deserted beach, the canoes lined up like surgical tools. Buffet. The Andersons demanded a refund and got one.

Stories like this happen all the time, and you read about them, but they just slip by in little strips of paragraph at the side of the bottom of the back page of the newspaper. Some town in South America reports a giant snake, swallowing chil- dren whole and cows; neither the snake nor the story appear again. They dig up an ancient, undisturbed tomb, and find stereo equipment in it, as inappropriate as a baby in a basket washing up outside the Pharoah’s palace. You blink and wait

for the next story. A strange weather something is killing all the fish in a lake somewhere. Somebody died, far away, we don’t know why. A bored and ambitious reporter might link up the deaths someday, one in Pittsburgh, one in Pittsburg, one up in Oregon and one on an island, but the editor won’t O.K. the travel money to go check it out. Somebody might decide to write the biography of a big-shot in the men’s movement, and the Andersons will get that knock on the door they’ve been half- waiting for since that vacation they took a long time ago. But they’ll be wrong about where the resort was, and what year they went; the rest will sound untrustworthy, too. And it
is
untrust- worthy;
why,
a reader would say,
if it was so scary and everything, did Joseph manage to sleep with Allyson three more times before he left?

I don’t know why. One day your family is spinning around your head, blurring everything your eyes take in; the next day it’s all at rest and you just want to get laid, eat dinner, quit your job, get on with it. It turns out that your life is made of specifics, no matter what you learn at college about Tolstoy: Each family is different, whether happy or unhappy. Their influence melts into you like ghosts, untraceable, imaginary. You can formulate something out of it, if you must; you can force things into a structure like librettists do, telescoping months of action into a four-act-farce, or like therapists do, stuffing all you think into twelve little steps like folded clothes in a duffel. Call it the Old Testament and scribble it on lambskin. But why? The truth just flows under you like a river. You can float on it but you don’t know where it’s going. The investigation was over and I was free to leave.

They almost took my duffel back off the boat as it idled; I

had loaded my stuff and myself onto it as the Vast boatmen unloaded supplies for the next round of guests and for a second my baggage got confused with somebody else’s. If I hadn’t no- ticed in time they would have left me with a large post office box, covered with stamps and the inkings of rerouting. The post office box had travelled everywhere, this baggage, looking for the right spot. If I wanted to fit everything in neatly I would say it was my box of books, finally; they’d caught up with me and I could write my paper, finish my education. But I just looked at Al, standing next to the box, as the boat started up. She wanted me to stay but we’d constructed some sort of truce. Even though she was mad at me, and scarcely said a word, she hugged me briefly and stood there watching as the boat pulled away.

If you need link it all up, you bored and ambitious reader, open the box, there on the shore. If you need it to end like a book let it be the books. It’s the books, then, there on the shore, just missing me like people who fall in love at the wrong time, in novels, and have to part from each other at a train station, an airport, a rickety wooden pier. You can imagine me where you want. I felt like my story wasn’t over, but you can pretend the twelfth step was already upon me, you can pretend
I had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, and have vowed to carry this message to other addicts and practice these principles in all my affairs.
I felt like the river was still uncharted, an unruly Nile, running all over the place the way water just will, but you can sit on its banks and read any story you devise.

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