"[redacted]" by Daniel Finkel
fiction from Gully Issue 1
I thumb the doorbell. Actually, no, I use my index finger. Then I knock. Then I clang the door-clanger. “Pop!” I shout. “Open up, Pop! It’s me.”
I index the doorbell again, but without hope. If Mom were still in residence, she would have answered by now. She’d have pulled the door wide and seeing me standing here, framed against the colors of the evening, would have said something like “I am not semi-deaf and thus have opened the door to greet you, my poor misunderstood son. Come and restore yourself with the milk and meat of our love.” All of which would be very gratifying, Mom never having been such a fount of supportiveness in earlier youth-times. Among the many reasons I miss her, her excellent sense of hearing ranks high.
There’s a lady sitting on the neighbor’s stoop, drinking ginger ale, a baby balanced on her knee. At the moment, she isn’t looking at me, but no doubt she has glanced over once or twice, wondering about this pale uncanny facsimile of Pop on Pop’s doorstep. Am I pale and uncanny? Do I contain mysteries? One of my suitcases is propped on my foot, crushing the big toe. I wonder if I have packed anything useful in my suitcases. Before leaving, I seem to recall tipping the silverware drawer into my briefcase, shouting that I had need of cutlery, the forks and spoons cascading—
The neighbor lady is looking at me. Drat. That is to say, shit. Recently, I have been making an effort to curse more. According to Psychology Today, it makes one sound more genuine.
“The fuck you staring at me for?” says the lady, and I admire her for the obscenity. She is authentically profane.
“Just waiting for my old man,” I say. Maybe this lady and I will have a spiritual connection? Maybe she will confide in me the cares and travails of her day? Then I will make some remark about the configuration of her baby’s face and we will be like two cunning friends, framed against the colors of the evening, trading compliments. I know the secrets of maternity and propitiation.
“Good luck,” she says. The baby on her knee is making small dissatisfied noises, so she rises and tucks it under her arm.
“Thank you,” I say, but she’s already gone into her house. I am alone again.
When Pop answers the door, he is wearing a sweatshirt and socks. There is a yellow stain on his sleeve. I wonder if he has been up to his old tricks, eating peanut brittle dipped in mustard, drinking Dr. Pepper. “The provident son returns,” he says.
“Hi, Dad.”
“You should’ve said you were incoming. Where’s Tyler?”
“Tyler,” I say, “is out of the picture.”
Inside, the house is immense and darkly furnished in leather. When Pop settles me in the living room, I see the couch has already been made up with a sheet, pillow, and blankets. The TV, which used to rest on a stand in my parents’ bedroom, is now propped on the coffee table. “You expecting someone?” I ask.
“Not exactly,” says Pop. “It’s more like I’ve been sleeping here.”
“How come?”
“It just feels more sustainable,” he says, and hugs me. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
That night, the couch cushion seams dig into my back. The refrigerator in the kitchen hums, alternating every fifteen minutes. At some point, I wake up and Pop is sitting on my feet, flicking through TV channels. “What’s up?” I say.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m such a jerk, I can’t believe I woke you. I’m just not loving my bedroom right now.”
“Too lonely?” I ask.
“More like the opposite problem,” he says, and switches to the cooking channel. For a few minutes we watch plantains sizzling in a cast-iron wok. “Why is Tyler out of the picture?”
“There were some issues with faithfulness,” I say.
Pop stands up. “I’m going to make a sandwich. Would you like a sandwich?”
“I’m good.”
“I was just talking with your mom, and she was saying how nice a sandwich would be.”
“Mom’s dead.”
The TV has reverted to static. Pop switches it off. “Something with birdseed bread,” he says and walks into the kitchen. When I follow, I find him smearing chicken salad on toast. He has left the refrigerator door open. In its light, every angle of his skull is illuminated. “I’m sorry about Tyler,” he says. “It’s my fault.”
“How’s it your fault?”
“I should have done things differently. Back when you were young.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault either.”
“It’s your grandfather’s fault,” says Pop. “When he first left Hungary, he spent a few years as a drifter. That kind of thing leaves an imprint. You and me, sometimes we can’t help being unfaithful.”
I lean my head against the refrigerator, enjoying the vibrations. “Strictly speaking, I wasn’t the unfaithful one. Just so you know.”
Pop shoves his chair back. “Excuse me,” he says. I hear his feet going up the carpeted steps. I hear a door shut. I hear the hiss of the shower. His chicken salad sandwich rests on his plate, untouched. I imagine that when he bites into it, it will make a crackling sound. Moving to the window, I peer out at the trashcans on the curb. Pop’s bin is half empty, but the neighbor lady’s cans are overflowing. I can see a plastic bag flapping from the lid of her recycling bin, its body swelled by the wind. This time last night, I was in bed with Tyler. Were my arms wrapped around him? Did we lie back to back? Most likely, we slept in the same direction, not necessarily touching.
When Pop comes out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, I am waiting for him. “Why won’t you sleep in your room anymore?”
“Who says I won’t?” he asks, clutching his towel.
“C’mon, Dad. Just answer the question.”
“Your Mom’s been bothering me, okay?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means she comes in at night and complains about the weather. It’s too wet. There’s these little beetles, eating her fingernails. She says I cheaped out on the funeral and now her whole coffin’s degrading. If she wants to speak to you, or anyone else besides me, she has to talk through the wind. She makes the breeze blow, sometimes.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry about it. I know how to handle her, all right?”
“Okay.”
He goes into the bedroom and I hear him getting dressed. When he returns, he is wearing a Talking Heads t-shirt and slacks. “How’s your health?” he says. “I know some people at the clinic. I could get you an appointment, if you want. How long’s it been since you were checked out?”
“I don’t know, Dad.”
“You poor guy.” Pop grips me by the shoulder. “First [redacted], now this. It’d be good to get checked out, don’t you think?”
He goes downstairs and I am left alone in the hallway, listening to the drip of the shower. My face feels like drum skin. Outside, the sky is growing light.
***
In the morning, my students sit in a half-empty auditorium, their eyes glazed, as I give a lecture on masculinity in the films of Kubrick. While I speak, I click through stills of Nicholson, McDowell, D’Onfrio. “Look at the eyes,” I say. “Behold the brow. Anger and anguish and vulnerability. Lust and insanity and despair. The history of the twentieth century is a history of male images, endlessly reproduced, signifying rage.”
During lunch, I sit alone in the basement, beside the gutted foosball machine, eating my PB&J.
When I get home, the neighbor lady’s baby is loose in her yard, crawling in circles. It wears a “World’s Cutest Tax Deduction” onesie. I can hear raised voices from inside her house. It seems she and her significant other are having an argument. Their landline rings over and over.
Mounting the porch, I knock on their door. “Who is it?” a voice says. This is a complex question. Rather than attempting an answer, I knock again. The sound of footsteps. Then a man jerks the door open. He is bald and bearded, dressed in vet tech scrubs. “What?” he says.
“Your baby’s loose in the yard.”
“What?”
“Your kid,” I say. “In the yard.”
The man brushes past me and scoops the world’s cutest tax deduction under an arm. At once, it begins to wail. Ignoring its screams, he carries it back inside. “Thanks,” he says, passing me. Through the open door, I catch a glimpse of the neighbor lady, pale-faced, holding a dish towel. Then the door slams shut.
When I enter my own house, Pop is in the kitchen, making latkes. “I got you an appointment!” he says. “6 P.M. Wednesday, at the community clinic. Mention my name.”
“Wednesday, 6 P.M.,” I say. “Got it.”
***
On Wednesday, at 6 o’clock, I arrive at the community clinic. “It’s gonna be a half hour wait,” the receptionist tells me.
“I’m Frank Benowitz’s son,” I say.
“It’s still gonna be half an hour.”
For the next thirty minutes, I sit in the waiting room, counting the beats of my pulse. Finally, an assistant leads me to a curtained-off room and tells me to semi-undress. When the nurse practitioner arrives, she takes my history. Any addictions? Any medications?
“None,” I say.
She punches my answer into the computer. “Do you or do any of your relatives have any long-term health problems, like heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, a bleeding disorder, or lung disease?”
“No.”
“Have you or any of your relatives ever been diagnosed with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma, a genetic birth disorder, or osteoporosis?”
“Never.”
“How about family? Kids?” And in my mind I return to that tumid night, practicing an upcoming conference speech while flossing my teeth. I am thanking friends and family for this distinguished opportunity, I am promising to carry it forward, I am making several learned observations on the filmography of Buñuel, and it is only when I hear the tire-squeal that I remember I have left the baby gate unlocked and run out to find the headlights flashing — the wipers beating — the teenaged boy whispering apologies, his words muffled by airbag.
“No kids.”
The nurse practitioner takes blood pressure, measures pupils. When she’s done, she tells me she likes what she sees. As far as she can tell, I am in excellent health.
***
That evening, I return to Tyler’s house. My key still fits the lock. Inside, I find an unfamiliar leather jacket hanging in the hallway. As I pass through the remaining rooms, I am thinking along the lines of what kind of bozo would wear a coat like that?
In the kitchen, the blender is caked with chunky green liquid. I can see seeds and shreds of bell pepper skin. Somewhere nearby, a TV is blaring. One-liners. Canned laughter. Entendres from the studio past. I have brought my briefcase with me, so I set it on the counter and sort the silverware back into its drawer. Spoons with spoons. Forks with forks. Then I go into the living room, where Tyler and his new lover sit on the couch, watching Rodney Dangerfield. They are drinking glasses of shiny green froth. A bell pepper seed has affixed itself to the lover’s lip.
“Oh god,” says Tyler when he sees me, and the lover, at the same time, says “shit.” All this useful profanity, circulating around me.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m just here to pick up a few things.”
A vase Tyler bought on one of our trips to Formia rests on the bookshelf, sandwiched between Britannicas. I pick it up and run my fingers over the little Roman symbols on its sides—vines, cornucopias, bales of hay. When I throw it against the wall, it makes a shattering sound.
“Now hold on,” says the lover, standing up, and I push him back down. He is wearing a sticker with George DeClancy, Parametrics written on it. Perhaps he has just come from a conference? A conference on parametrics?
“Just picking up a few things,” I say.
“Please,” says Tyler. “This is melodrama.”
“They call these things jumbo shrimp?” says Rodney Dangerfield. “Gimme a real meal, you bastard.”
I kick the TV and it flips over, making a crackling noise. Rodney Dangerfield is sideways now.
“I’m just here for my stuff,” I say. I have become Kubrickian. I can see it in their eyes. On the mantelpiece, our wedding photos have been replaced with photos of Tyler’s parents. In all of them, they seem to be laughing. I sweep the pictures off the mantelpiece, then grip the mantelpiece itself and snap it off the wall.
When Tyler rises, he clasps me by the wrists. It is one of the quintessential gestures of our marriage. “No more drama, no more melodrama, no big speeches — please,” he says.
His breath smells like raw radish. There is an unspoken name between us, a name that has been redacted, and now more than anything I wish to speak it, to spake it, to have spoken it, to retrieve it just once from the archive. But I cannot. Not here, in this living room, while George DeClancy gapes from the couch.
I am still holding the mantelpiece. Now, I set it on the coffee table.
“I just wanted a few things,” I say. Then I leave.
Outside, it is another darkly significant sunset over Denver. Parking officers in militarized uniform wander the sidewalks, carrying walkie-talkies. Nearby, a man has flipped a grocery cart and is covering it in blankets. It seems this will be his shelter for the night.
When I return home, I bang on Pop’s door. I clang the clanger. I index the bell.
“Pop!” I say. “Pop! For the love of God open the door!”
No answer.
“He’s not in.” Turning, I see the neighbor lady on her stoop, watching me. “I think he went for a walk.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”
“You all right?” She is looking at me with concern. On her knee, her baby is blowing silent bubbles.
“I am in excellent health,” I say.
There is a bottle of ginger ale on the step beside her. She lifts it. “Drink?”
“Thank you very much.”
As I join her on the steps, she pours ginger ale into a plastic cup. When I take a sip, the carbonation prickles my throat.
“I didn’t say thank you,” she says. “For what you did the other day. With the baby.” She pronounces it “Babby.”
“Oh. That’s okay.”
“Serious. I’m grateful.” The neighbor lady’s voice is soft. “You’re a really good guy.”
Cars go by, gliding through the twilight. Above, the sky is full of international satellites. I can see the beginnings of stars. Arcturus. Canopus. Procyon. One time, camping in the Mojave, Tyler told me the sky looked like a jewelry box. “Scratch that,” I said. I told him that the sky looked like ten million shadowy archers loosing a billion burning shafts, and every flame was a galaxy and every galaxy was a lifespan of stars and all the threads of light were converging outwards towards some macrocosmic question, which was the question of our happiness which was the question of how best to cultivate it which was the question of where do we go from here and at some point during my speech Tyler gave up and crawled inside the tent, leaving me alone in the blue midnight.
The neighbor lady is watching me. She smells, faintly, of Febreze. “You want another drink?” she asks.
“I’m okay. Thank you.”
“You want to hold the baby?”
All this time, the baby has been staring at me, unblinking—at point-blank range, as they say in cop shows. “Sure,” I say. When she puts it in my arms, I am surprised how heavy it is. The density of the thing. Cradled in my elbow, it looks up at me, unsmiling.
I sit on the stoop, holding my neighbor’s baby. Somewhere in the dark, a truck backfires. Dogs in distant yards are barking. Every car that passes is driven by a moon-faced teenager, whispering apologies. Every gust is the ghost of my mother.
“I like that sound it makes. The fizzle,” the neighbor lady says. She is, perhaps, discussing ginger ale.
Nice neighbor. Nice baby. Even the traffic signs are nice. They are fonts of useful information. For example: One Way Only. For example: Yield. “All the little bubbles,” she says. A breeze smelling sweetly of barbecue blows down the avenue and tickles the lost dog posters on the trees.
Daniel Finkel is a writer from Philadelphia.