Self-Defense (49 page)

Twenty feet from the room.

I covered the distance with her.

The door was pine, once heavily varnished,
the finish cracked, flaking like dandruff.

She sucked in breath and opened it. As we
stepped into a big, dark, book-lined room, a sulfurous smell hit us, not unlike
the stench of the ER at Woodbridge. A hospital bed was in the center, cranked
to a semi-upright position. Lowell’s wheelchair was folded in a corner.

Lowell reclined under the covers, his hair
greasy and limp, his long arms resting on the blanket, white and blue-veined
below frayed gray undershirt sleeves. His chin was coated with white stubble,
his eyes unfocused. It was 2P.M. but he hadn’t awakened fully. He turned toward
us with obvious effort, then turned away and closed his eyes.

Lucy’s hand found its way back into mine,
so sweaty it slithered in my grasp. Her shoulders twitched, then began shaking.

I followed her eyes as they reconnoitered,
landing on the pine bookshelves that sheathed three of the walls.

A door in the right-hand corner was open,
exposing a small bathroom. The other, centered between the windows, led
outside. Bolted. Lucy’s gaze lingered on it, then moved on.

Books and piles of magazines and
newspapers littered the floor. Atop a stack of
New Yorker
s was an
aluminum tray laden with dirty dishes: curling bread crusts, congealed eggs,
cornflakes swimming in milk that looked bluish in the mean, grainy light. An
empty bedpan sat on a stack of old
Paris Review
s. Packages of
adult-size disposable diapers were piled high on a tottering mountain of
assorted periodicals. A cardboard box next to the diapers was filled with empty
whiskey bottles. A tower of Dixie cups and an old black rotary telephone, the
phone’s cord snaking into the jumble and vanishing.

The shakes had moved down to Lucy’s
fingers, and I felt her knuckles slap against mine. Nova was nowhere in sight,
but I felt her presence—an icy current.

Lowell moaned and moved his head from side
to side. His eyes had closed.

Lucy didn’t move. Then she began scanning
the room again.

The filthy windows.

The door to the back.

Back to the log walls.

Repeating the circuit. Staying, this time,
on the door. Wide-eyed.

This was where she’d slept the night of
the party. The room she’d left, sleepwalking.

Her hand was shaking so badly I could
barely hold on to it.

Lowell’s eyes opened and he flipped his
face at us.

Seeing
us for the first time.

He let out a deep, pitiful, angry noise
and began the long, excruciating process of sitting up. No hoists above the
bed. He hadn’t availed himself of conveniences—not even an electric
wheelchair—and I wondered why.

Cursing, he slid and heaved and finally
propped his upper body high enough to rest his back against the pillows. His
chest was caved in, his shoulders knobby and narrow. The flair of the white
suit and the panama hat seemed a distant joke. The last couple of days had
knocked him low.

Grief?

Lucy watched him the way you watch a
repulsive but fascinating insect make its way up a wall.

He laughed. She turned away and hugged
herself.

“So,” he said hoarsely. Several moments of
throat clearing. He gave a look of distaste, rotated his lips, and spat a wad
of phlegm at the log wall. It missed and landed on the floor. Coughing and
grinning, he expelled another wad.

Lucy looked ill, but she didn’t move.

Lowell watched her intently.

His fingers scratched the sheets as he
continued to pull himself up. Trying to move his head in an upward arc. Pain
stopped him.

“So,” he said again. His voice had cleared
a bit.

“Cute,” he said. “Very cute.”

“What is?” said Lucy, straining for a
light tone.

“You.” He chortled, as if she’d set him up
for a punch line. He looked her up and down. None of the lasciviousness he’d
shown with Nova. Cold, precise, as if taking the measure of a piece of
furniture.

“Play tennis?” he said.

She shook her head.

“Those are tennis player’s legs. Even
through those dungarees I can see them. Play
anything
?”

Another headshake.

“Of course not,” he said. “No appetite for
games.”

He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms,
laughing some more.

“So what can I offer you, Mary–Little
Lamb?” he said. “Alcohol? Percodan? Demerol? Morphine? Endorphins? Or is alleged
truth
the dope you’re shooting? What kind of stories should I tell you to
help you lubricate your mental deadbolt? Is this a monumental
moment
for
you?”

Lucy remained silent.

“No stories? What then?”

Lucy looked at the rear door.

Lowell shouted wordlessly and slapped the bed
sheet. “Ah, the spectacle! Here to goggle at my groanery, my little serpent’s
tooth? Barge in with your brain mechanic in tow, so you can listen to the
thrum-thrum
and imagine my torment?”

Grinning. Laughing.

“Yes, I’m in
pain,
girl.
Sacramental, sizzling battery-acid synaptic joy. Maybe you’ll know it too, one
day, and then you’ll understand what a fucking
hero
I am to be sitting here, smelling like
shit and looking like a Gehenna-leaseholder knowing the only fuck-damn reason
you pranced your little tennis butt in here is to drink up my misery so you can
say you’ve had a tall, frosty revenge cocktail at the expense of the best.”

Lucy kept staring at the door.

“Ho,” said Lowell. “The silent treatment.
Just like when you were a baby.”

“How would you know?” said Lucy.

Lowell guffawed, very loud. His shrunken
body seemed to grow with each expulsion. Laughter energized him, turning him
demonic and lively and bringing color to his face.

“The opening movement of The Guilt Sonata!
Don’t waste your quarter notes, lass. I’ve soloed with the best of the Sin
Symphonies!”

Lucy began circling the room, moving as
freely as the clutter would allow.

“Your silence,” said Lowell, “is not
artillery. It’s an empty knapsack—you were a mute baby with skinny legs. No
cries, no tears, not a yawp. Dead-mute as an anencephalic accident. Unlike the
other one, Peter-Peter morpho-morto poison eater;
he
howled
professionally. It was rent a studio down the block or strangle the little
snot-rat.”

He closed his eyes. “You, on the other hand,
kept your lips glued as if your tonsils were treasure.” The eyes opened. A bony
finger shot out, accompanied by a hoarse laugh.

“You wouldn’t
shit,
either, har. Anus on strike, weeks at a
time, quite a style, quite a style. Take all, hold in, give nothing. I thought
you were abnormal. Your mother assured me you weren’t and poured mineral oil
down your aphasic little gullet.”

Still walking, Lucy mustered a smile of
her own. “Is that why you ran? Scared at having an abnormal baby?”

Lowell chuckled, but there was anger in
it.

“Run, did I? No, no, no, no, no, I was
invited
to vacate the premises. Menstrually shrill banshee bye-bye from
Maw-Maw and a claw at the face.”

“Mother kicked you out?” Lucy’s turn to
laugh. “A big tough guy like you?”

Lowell looked at her, as if in a new
light. Sucking in breath, he wiggled his thick eyebrows and stuck his finger in
his mouth.

He kept it in there, probing and scraping
and breathing roughly.

Pulling it out, he examined a fingernail.
“Mother,”
he said, “was a blindered, bujwhacked, neurally corseted, parlor-bound stumplet
with the textbook vision of a suburban storm trooper. Middle-aged at
twenty-three, old at twenty-four. Tapioca libido—her sheer
puddingness
turned me into a rebellious adolescent. She wouldn’t
—couldn’t—
learn
how to
be.
She had nothing to live for but rules and rot.”

Lucy’s hands clenched as she turned. For a
moment I thought she’d pounce on him; then she shook her head and put one hand
in her pocket. And laughed. Her hips angled forward. A lounging pose as staged
as Nova’s.

“God,” she said, “you’re pathetic.
Terminally blocked, blah, blah, blah. Hiding behind all that bad Joyce.”

Lowell paled. Smiled. Lost the smile.
Fished for it and finally found it. But it had lost its cruel luster and his
grizzled jaw seemed to weaken.

“Joyce,” he said. “Know him well, do you,
Mademoiselle Sophomore? I
met
the dwent. Paris, 1939. Clerk face, no
lips, woman’s hips, lime-suck, lime-suck, lime-suck, bloody gud. That
fucking
Irish lechery for talk with no conclusion... but let’s get back to lovely
Mother.
She died a virgin and you genuflect to her daily; the truth is, you
know as much about her as you do about prostate clog but you defend her because
that’s your script—well, believe what you will, shutter your limited mind to
your heart’s contempt.”

He wheezed and inflated his voice.

“Whether or not you know it, you’ve come
here to
learn.
If you fail to do so, it’s
your
lowered
expectation, not mine. The truth,
Constipata: she
invited
me
to leave because she
couldn’t tolerate a bit of in flagrante
delicious.
”

Lucy pretended to remain aloof. But he was
talking loudly, and his voice made her flinch.

He rubbed his hands together and looked at
me.

“A sad, sick, salacious,
succulent
tale, Braintrust. Perfect for
you.
”

Turning quickly to Lucy. “After
you
stretched her womb, she lost whatever feeble interest she’d ever had in the
double-backed beast. But like the old song says, her
sister
will—oh,
did
she, little Sister Kate. One of those yawning vaginas the exact color of
bubble
gum. So who was I to play brakeman to Fate? Her sister
did,
so
I
did her
sister,
oh, yes, oh, yes.” Smile. “She bucked and buckled,
that one did. Scratched and caromed and screamed like a stuck sow at the moment
of truce.” Pointing to his groin. “Remembering it almost convinces me something
dingled, once upon a spine.”

I kept a close watch on Lucy. She was
staring in his direction, but not at him. Anger shot through her slender frame
like an injection of starch.

“Sisterly
love,
” said Lowell.
“Maw-Maw found us, sang her ode to virtue, and I creeped off, tail-tucked.”

He tried to shrug and managed only a
shoulder tic.

“Banished to the horrors of Paris.
Reprobate Kate parceled off to California. Then
Mother
caught herself
something postnatal and fatal, and suddenly I was called back to be a
father.
”

He aimed his thumb at the ground and
mock-frowned. “Ill-suited for the care of a mewling snot-jack and a no-tone,
anally blocked
normal
infant, I had the wisdom to relinquish parental
privilege to ForniKate. By then, she was fucking some pansy Jew journalist.”

Gleeful bellowing.

Lucy was standing on the balls of her
feet. I could see moisture in her eyes. I was thinking of my dead father.

Lowell said, “Why fight it, girl? You
need
me.”

“Do I?”

“Given your insistence upon projecting an
air of injured chastity, I’d say so. Really, dear, enough bad theater, let us
slash pretense’s throat and allow it to bleed out richly into the gutter. The
permanent-hymen act won’t work with me. I
know
about the summer you
spent with your heels in the air, looking into the bile-sooted eyes of Roxbury
coons. Quite disappointing, I must say. To rut is nature; to rut for money,
commerce. But to rut
niggers
for money and let some boss nigger pocket the
profits
? How sheepheaded, girl. I shall assign a collie to herd you.”

Lucy’s fists opened and her knees bent. I
held her by the arms, whispering, “Let’s get out.”

She shook her head violently.

“Ah, the self-esteemer plies his craft,”
said Lowell. “Dispensing turds of wisdom as you try to convince her she’s
okay.
”

Lucy let her arms fall. She stepped away
from me. Right up to the edge of the bed. Stretching her arms as wide as she
could, she stared him in the face.
Exposing
herself.

Shock therapy? Or the death of hope?

Lowell turned to me. “She’s not okay. She’s
planets
from okay.” Back to Lucy: “Want to know
how
I learned all
about your Moorish mooring? Darling Brother Petey. No interrogation necessary.
Lovely, filthy truths emerge when a wretch craves his needle, toof, toof. Ah,
yes, yet
another
betrayal, daughter. Not to worry, disillusionment
builds character. Stick with me and you’ll be
granite.
”