Retribution (2 page)

I said, “I don't want it to pay for my mouth.” We were driving the Mustang then, on our way to the orthodontist's for the first consultation, and I could smell the sweet treated leather of the interior, which, the year before, Dad had reupholstered. Later, when he started asking about his car, Mom bought us a used Impala and hoarded the Mustang in Winnie's garage. Dad had redone the whole car at one time or another and usually spent his weekends working on it. He'd even named it—called it Victoria, after a famous queen of England, he said—and always spoke of it as a
she, she
this and
she
that, until Mom would get irritated and tell him that a mustang wasn't a
she.
Sometimes he'd just call it “the horse” in this rough, affectionate man voice. The car was sort of alive to him. Mom was decked out in her best suit that day and I was in my good clothes, too, because she didn't want them thinking we couldn't afford the braces. As she talked on, her voice got pitched and angry.

“I can't pay for your mouth,” she said. “I'm just a secretary. Your dad can't pay for your mouth—every dollar he touches turns to booze. Don't you want your mouth?” I put my hand to my face and felt the buckteeth, the crooked, hard ridge of little bones, the ugly, ugly mouth that I'd lived with for fifteen years, and I didn't know what to say. “You deserve straight teeth. Other kids have straight teeth, and I want my son to have straight teeth, too.” Ever since she'd kicked Dad out of the house, Mom had become vocal about what we deserved. “Don't worry about him,” she said. “He put more time, money, and care into this car than he ever did any of us.” Then she slapped the steering wheel with both hands and said, “We deserve to look at least as good as this stupid car.”

We had stopped at a light and she was looking at herself in the rearview mirror, touching up her hair and tracing the wrinkles along her mouth, when she said, “Oh Christ, I've become an old woman,” a thing she'd been saying a lot lately. “At least you deserve to look good. It's too late for your old mom.” She was crunching up her face and looking at the thick lines that formed.

“He might get better,” I said.

“Get better?” She laughed. “Your dad's a sick man, Michael. He's been sick for years. He won't get better.”

“He might,” I said.

“He's a bottle man, Michael,” she said. “He's not a family man.” She had learned phrases like
bottle man
at this group she attended on Wednesday evenings called Wives of Alcoholics. “We've got to start thinking about us, Michael. You and me.” She was still crabbing up her face and looking into it. “I just wish I'd kicked him out before I got like this.” She rolled down the window and tried to throw out a strand of gray hair she'd just pulled from her head. She was forty-three and hated us to look shabby. The hair kept blowing back into the car. Finally, she let it fall into her lap. “It's a question of money, you know. If we could afford it, we'd get me a face-lift, too.” Then she paused and said, “Don't look at me like that, Mr. Judgmental.” I guess my face told her pretty much what I felt. “We're not bad just because we want some nice things for ourselves, are we?” When I didn't answer, she pressed the point, “Are we?”

“No,” I finally said. “I guess not.”

She took my jaw in her hand and shook it gently. “We're going to get you fixed up, kiddo.” By then, the light had turned green and the people behind us were honking.

*   *   *

The phone rang and, for maybe the fifth time that night, it was Dad. “Christ, Mikey. I just got off the phone with your sister. She told me what you and your mother are up to. She told me you were turning my car into braces.”

I didn't say anything. I could hear my own breathing amplified and strange in the receiver. The line beeped and I said, “I've got to get that.”

He said, “Don't you dare leave me on this—” But I did.

*   *   *

“Goddamn you, Sarah,” I said.

She said, “Somebody's after me, Mikey.” I could tell from her voice that she'd been crying.

I said, “What?” Then I said, “Why the fuck did you have to tell Dad?”

“Somebody's after me,” she said again. “They want to hurt me 'cause I owe them money, right?”

“Don't cry wolf to me, Sarah.” I didn't like the sound of her voice. It sounded small and frightened.

“I'm not shitting you, Mikey. It has to do with money, okay? I owe someone money and they're going to hurt me now.”

I said, “Why did you tell Dad?”

Her voice got sort of happy then. “He's pretty pissed off, I bet.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“That bastard wouldn't let me call collect. He made me pay for the phone call.”

Then she said, “You tell Mom that somebody's after me. You tell her that somebody wants to hurt me. Later, Mikey.”

*   *   *

“It's a vintage car, Mikey.”

“Sarah says somebody wants to hurt her.”

“Do you know how much work I put into that car?” He was yelling.

I said, “I had ugly teeth.”

“But the Mustang's my car. My car!” he shouted. I pulled the phone away from my ear and held it out in front of me; he sounded tiny and distant now. “My car! My car!” He became this little furious cartoon voice trapped in the phone. I could put him down on the table, if I wanted. So I did that. I put him down and walked away from him on my way to the bathroom. I heard his voice saying, “Mikey? Mikey? Where are you, Mikey?” He was pathetic. He was easy to hate now.

In the bathroom, I smiled in the mirror and saw that my gums were lined with a little bit of blood. The scarlet mound of a pimple was beginning to rise at the center of my forehead. I felt it beneath my skin: hidden and painful. Ben had followed me into the bathroom and climbed into the tub, where he liked to drink from the leaky faucet. I heard the small, wet sounds of him slurping away in there. “What are we going to do, Ben? What the hell are we going to do?”

I got back to the couch and turned the TV on, to this program about performing dolphins. I could still hear Dad's voice speaking through the receiver on the table. “Mikey … Mikey,” it said. The program was called
Our Friends from the Sea
and a scientist with a mustache was saying, “I'm absolutely convinced that dolphins can understand us—every word we say. They have a marvelous talent for deciphering vocal structures.” Then he turned away from the camera and looked at this dolphin in the pool beside him. The dolphin's head bobbed above the surface of the water. Its eyes were these sensitive black ovals, like polished stones. “You can understand me, can't you?” the scientist said, and the dolphin beeped and clicked at him.

*   *   *

The orthodontist's office was painted in shades of mint blue, clean and arctic, and smelled of toothpaste and harsh, soapy chemicals. In the waiting room, kids with headgear and silvery mouths sat beside their mothers. These kids didn't look happy, not exactly, though they did look changed. They looked stunned and maybe a little afraid. On the receptionist's counter—a cool slab of green—sat two plaster molds of corrected teeth, a plastic model of the human jaw, and a shiny bell to ring for the receptionist. One girl said to her mother, “Is he going to use that thing on me again?” The girl wore an apple green T-shirt with the word
Happening
in large yellow letters across her chest.

Her mother just said, “Your teeth are getting so pretty.”

The orthodontist was called Dr. Ellis. His assistant was a Polish woman, Tasha, who spoke with a European accent and had this long bleach-blond hair and a nice straight smile and wore blue surgical clothes. It was our first visit, so Mom insisted on going back to the exam room with me. “We want to get on the two-year payment plan,” she kept saying to Tasha. Mom was nervous. Her voice trembled a little. She didn't know what to do with her hands.

“You have to talk to the receptionist,” Tasha said. She motioned for me to sit in one of those long chairs and pulled a tray of metal instruments up beside me. The instruments were bright and seemed unreasonably sharp and pointed; they clattered on the tray as Tasha moved it. Lulling violins played “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head” from hidden speakers. I heard the scream of a girl coming from another room down the hall.

“Relax,” Tasha said. She touched me on the shoulder. “We're not going to do anything that hurts today.”

“Do they have braces in Poland?” I asked.

She laughed. “No. In Poland, the people are poor.” Her eyes were the same shade of blue that covered the waiting room's walls. I imagined how Tasha had come to this country poor, with a brown potato sack over her shoulder, dust in her yellow hair, and a mud-puddle cast to her eyes. Then, simple as that, she'd cleaned herself up, gotten a job, and come into her bright, hard new-world beauty.

The chair buzzed and lifted me closer to the globular light that Tasha centered above me. She flipped the light on, snapped on a pair of latex gloves, and touched my mouth. The gloves smelled of mint and Clorox, and I started having these crazy thoughts about her. I saw Tasha and me in this dark blue minivan, with kids and the best downhill ski equipment in the back. With ungloved hands, she touched my face—my mouth was strong and symmetrical—as I drove up a bald, snowy mountain. The kids had bright alloy complexions like hers. “Michael,” she said, “Michael.”

I held her closely. I said, “We're going to have a great ski vacation this year. The kids are going to love it.”

The doctor had entered the room, and Tasha seemed to disappear behind his tall shoulder. He introduced himself and said, “How you doing there, Mikey?” He had this large, fat man's laugh, even though he was slim and had a neat haircut and looked like a newscaster or a senator. (Later, in the car, Mom would say, “Dr. Ellis was handsome, didn't you think? Of course, he had to be wearing a ring. The handsome ones all do.”)

“Call me Michael, please,” I told him.

“He's got a difficult mouth, Mrs. Larsen,” he told my mother. He moved my jaw from side to side, then up and down, and my bones made a light popping sound. “You've got a difficult mouth, Mikey,” he said. “What a jaw … what a mandible,” he said. Tasha seemed to agree. She was studying me with this focused, knowing eye.

“The kids teased him for years,” my mom said.

“Please don't, Mom,” I said.

I saw my mother looking over Tasha's shoulder. My mother was smiling and seemed extremely happy, as happy as she'd been since she kicked Dad out. “We've been wanting to do this for a long time now,” she said. “We want to get on the two-year payment plan.”

“He's a difficult one,” Dr. Ellis said. My mouth felt small and soft in his hands. His face moved so close to my own that I could smell through his cologne and spearmint breath to some salty, moist odor. “But nothing we can't fix.”

“That's a relief,” my mom said.

The doctor was working my jaw in this funny sideways direction, until I felt my bones lock.

“I'm afraid, Michael,” he said, “that we're going to have to correct your jaw.”

“What does that mean?” my mom asked.

“Well, Mrs. Larsen,” he said, “it means that we're going to have to break it.”

*   *   *

Dad was still on the phone. He was saying, “Please, Mikey … please. Just pick up the phone and talk to me.” I picked up the phone, but I didn't talk to him. “Are you there, Mikey? I just want to talk to you, Mikey.” His voice sounded tired. On the
Our Friends from the Sea
program, performing dolphins were being transported. These men wrapped the dolphins up in thick black slings and carried them into the backs of special air-conditioned trucks, then drove them onto the freeway. I couldn't help but imagine this terrible accident. I saw the truck burning and the slick, mercury-like bodies of dolphins flopping over the black asphalt as semis and cars tried to swerve around them.

“Dad,” I said.

“Mikey,” he said.

“Could you call me Michael instead of Mikey? I'm fifteen. I want to be called Michael now.”

“Sure,” he said. “I could do that. Look, Michael, I'm sorry about this. I didn't want you to get caught in the middle.” He sounded sort of sad, and I liked the way it felt when he called me Michael, as if some weight, some realness, had been added to me.

“I know,” I said.

“Look,” he said, “maybe we could make a deal. Would you make a deal with me, Michael?”

“I don't know.”

“Well,” he said, “if you tell me where your mom parked my car, I'll pay for your braces.”

I thought about this. “You don't have that kind of money, Dad.” He was silent. I heard the grainy buzz of the line between us, and I wished I hadn't said anything about his money. Next to me on the couch, Ben huddled over his pink claws, absorbed in the minuscule task of preening them.

“Do you hear what you're telling me? This is me. This is your dad, your father, speaking. You're my son, Michael. You used to call me Daddy. We lived together in the same house for fifteen years.” He wasn't shouting. I had heard him speak like this to Mom before. It was a kind of forceful begging. He sounded weak, dependent on me for whatever kindness I could show him.

I said, “Winnie Howell.”

He said, “What?”

“The car's parked in Winnie Howell's garage.”

“Thanks, Mikey. Thanks so much. We're going to take care of your mouth, all right?”

Then he hung up. I turned to Ben, who was staring into the TV screen—the glow of the colors could mesmerize him—and said, “I fucked up, Ben. I fucked up.” The dolphins flew through hoops and performed back flips.

I rushed over to the refrigerator door and pulled down the numbers of Jim and Larry, the guys Mom was sort of seeing—not seriously, just dating. I called Jim's place and got an answering machine. At Larry's a little girl answered. I hadn't met Larry or Jim yet and didn't know this little girl. “Is my mom with your dad tonight?” I could have asked for Larry, but I didn't really want to talk to him.