A Tapless Shoulder (22 page)

How long? No,
I… wait. Okay, there it was again, I really think you believe there
are some things that go without saying here when you say it could
last up to at least a year or more. Say you’re kidding. You didn’t
even laugh
or
say you were kidding. Like why are
you saying that again the same way you did the first time? You
didn’t say you were kidding this time either. It’s not
getting
funnier
by
not
saying it. They
say don’t shoot the messenger and it’s not your fault I caught
this, but I probably hate you.

Well, I don’t
get it.
FUNNY
. Yeah, I got
that. Where the hell from though? Like, I just, it doesn’t seem
possible… unless I got it from when I was here for
depression.
Mmmmmmmmm, that’s
good doctor’s office.
I felt
ill at the thought of what my contraction of this stupid illness
was implying: I was super gross. Yeah, I’m not listening. You’re
still talking. I stopped listening a while ago,
but, hey, did I bite my nails? Do I bite my
nails? Yeah, by all means carry on. Just know, mentally, I’m
checking out, hitting snooze, or no, hell, the plug’s coming out of
the wall. I could sit here all day, looking at your doctor face.
Hell, we’ll see what else I can catch.

I stared
blankly. I may have been wrong, but if I was right, after washing
my hands at work I was pretty sure I had to touch
eleven
different things before I actually ate my lunch. That
couldn’t be right, could it?

Well,
talking
doctor
face
; I’m a depressed
insomniac with mono. I have two very young boys and my wife goes to
school all morning and then to work in the afternoon and doesn’t
get home until after midnight. Right, yup, I just need lots of rest
and I’ll feel better.
Did you
say, ‘holy hell,’ or was that me?

Ding Ding
came running down the hall and peered into his room where I was
putting some of his clothes away into drawers and, it seemed,
wherever I could cram them. I could hear his brother making his way
down the hall as well, only to be overtaken by some sort of
distraction that created a lot of noise, but didn’t last long.
There was no crying, so I continued what I was doing. “We’re on an
adventure,” Ding Ding said to me with a smile. “We’re searching for
Gramma’s secret mattress.”

I laughed. A
month ago we had all spent a few nights at Katie’s
parents’
.
The boys in a bed in the guest room, while Katie and I
shared an air mattress in the living room. Ding Ding was fascinated
by how the mattress deflated and could be rolled up and put into a
bag to be stored away for another time. Now it was her secret
mattress, and every now and again, when he remembered it, it was
cause for grand adventure. I was so impressed. He left and went
into our room, then his brother’s, and then was back. “Where are
your pants and underwear?” I asked.

“
I lost them
in the bathroom,” he said like I should have known.

I shook my
head; had I blacked out there for a couple minutes? I wasn’t
positive if I had or hadn’t and it didn’t change the fact that the
pants were off. “You have to tell me if you have an accident, okay?
Or if stuff you’re wearing just suddenly disappears; tell me that,
too. Please, so I can help you, get you back to where you’re
wearing clothes, and that, okay?” I asked – Knuckle Butt, who was
now standing where Ding Ding had been. “Go tell your brother what I
just said,” I muttered, and went into Ding Ding’s room to put the
rest of the clothes away. I was certifiably tired; each step I took
reminded me of running, and now the boys were playing games with my
head,
and
those were just the problems with me in the
house at the moment. I took three deep breaths.

I was sitting
on the couch, done with the few things I was going to do for the
day, when Ding Ding came to sit with me. We watched Knuckle Butt
push a toy tractor around on the carpet, bumping it into things,
saying ‘uh oh tabow’ and ‘uh oh bwanket’ and ‘uh oh cowch.’ Ding
Ding looked up at me and I smiled. “I’m sitting with dad,” he said,
“My brother is dad. Dad didn’t bite me.”

“
O …
kay
,” I said, slowly,
and nodded my head, “no one should bite anyone…
ever.”

Ding Ding
bounced himself into the back of the couch several times before
jumping to the floor. He looked around the room then climbed onto
the coffee table, which I picked him up off of, adding sternly, “We
do not climb on tables, Ding Ding.” He seemed unimpressed with his
lowered stature in the living room, but accepted it by saying, “My
Lego hand is very handy.” He held up his hand that was now in the
shape of a U.

“
As long as
it’s handy,” I smiled at him.

“
Where’s my
armpits?” he asked before I could sit back down.

“
Right there,
and there,” I pointed and smiled.

“
Uh oh,”
Knuckle Butt said somewhere off to my right where I couldn’t see
him. I directed Ding Ding out of the way with a hand on his head so
I could get by him and the coffee table; I could only see Knuckle
Butt’s legs from where he was sitting beside the loveseat. I went
farther and stopped. He was sitting with the bucket of the toy
backhoe on his head. I laughed. He looked at me like a boy with a
backhoe on his head, and said, “Uh oh hair.”

I began to
laugh even harder and then sat down beside him with a tremendous
smile. I believe he then began to dig me, “Uh oh, da e,” he said. I
grabbed a diaper and told him I needed to change him.

“
What the
heck are you doing?” Ding Ding asked like the sight of me changing
his brother was suddenly strange to him.

“
I’m changing Knuckle Butt’s diaper. Um, and maybe we don’t
say ‘heck’ in this house.” I thought about it, I didn’t know, maybe
we did. I got up and then Knuckle Butt got up, and did something
similar to howling at the moon, except with grunts. I messed his
hair, “I love you,” I said, and went to the door to the garage to
pitch the
unwanted
diaper into the garbage
can.

I sat back
down. I could hear Katie in the kitchen getting something out of
the cupboard where the pots were. Ding Ding was looking at a book.
I watched him proudly.

“
Da e, da e,”
Knuckle Butt called out as he came at me with a head full of steam
and his face full of excitement.

“
Yes, yes,
what is it, what is it?” I said with the same
enthusiasm.

“
I hath to
tell you thumb ting,” he said with a lot of oomph in his
ting.

“
Okay.” I
smiled.

“
I hath to
tell you thumb ting,” he said again.

“
Okay, I’m
listening, go,” I leaned forward.

“
I… I hath to
tell you… thumb ting.”

“
Um, yes,
what is it? I promise I’m ready, please tell me.”

“
I hath to
tell you thumb ting.”

“
Okay, yes, I know, right, and you have my
full
attention, let’s hear it.”

He climbed up
onto my lap and put his face close enough that our noses touched,
“I hath to tell you thumb ting.”

“
What is it,
Knuckle Butt, ready, set, go, tell me, now, please,” I said
laughing.

“
I hath to
tell you thumb ting,” he said, yet again, with his lips now against
my face as he said it, “I hath to, I hath to tell you thumb ting,”
his lips moving up and down against my cheek as he spoke. Believing
I’d gotten all the information I was going to; I lifted him from my
lap and set him on the floor.

“
Wow,” I
smiled, “you better go tell mom.”

We were in
the parking lot of Costco, one of those stores where the sizes and
quantities of products went only from big to too much. Among our
needs had been a
crap
load
of diapers. That was
like their
medium
.

I had set
Knuckle Butt into his seat, buckled him in, and hopped into the
passenger seat. While Katie was buckling Ding Ding into his car
seat, a couple older than us came toward the SUV parked beside us.
The lady’s face bore a seriousness that caught my attention. She
leaned toward the man and was saying something while they both
stood watching Katie or us or our van. I wasn’t sure. The man came
between the vehicles, and looked at the door of his vehicle, at
which point the obvious dawned on me; he was seeing if we’d hit his
door with our door. Something that I knew had not happened, oh, but
how my principles love to answer when idiocy calls upon them. My
being tired was a ramp for them to launch from. Would he have done
that had we not been there? It just seemed so odd, so shallow and
so stupid, plus, what would he have done had there been a ding or a
paint rub? Yelled at my wife? Demanded we pay for the damage? For a
moment I thought of sprawling from the passenger side in order
to
kick
the driver’s door open with both feet, just to
see what he thought then.

“
Is it okay?”
I blurted hurriedly, letting the end of the question careen off
into a bank of exaggeration with guns and empty bags.

I was out of
our van and between our vehicles before he’d even raised his
head.

He had
allowed Katie to open her door, while she thought he was simply
waiting to get into his car.

“
He thinks we’re idiots, well, him and his wife do, they
share the same mentality, it’s this big,” I said and pinched the
air. I looked at him squarely now, face to face. He was at a loss
for words, and looked quite apologetic, he knew I knew, but I was
way too curious by that time to let it go. “I guess we look like
people incapable of opening these big heavy car doors without
exploding them into the vehicle next to us. In fact, I didn’t know
there was any other way. Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Stupid, that a
car door’s doorstop isn’t the next car? I can’t believe we didn’t
know that.” Katie’s open door was preventing his escape and I loved
it. “Look,” I said, serious now, “watching that just really struck
me as idiotic; no way I could not call you on it. Like, really, it
blows me away that when your wife said to you, oh, make sure they
didn’t whack our car, instead of looking at her like the idiot she
was being, you ran over and checked. Wow, now if you’re wondering
where I’m coming from, and just how serious I am, maybe take
another look at our van.
Obviously
I’ve got
nothing to lose. Seriously, shut up. So, like, was it us? Are you
guys like ‘
EESH
, a
family! And not one of them is over
fifty. This can’t be good for our property.’
Don’t look at me like that, you’re the retard.
Hey, kids, look, behemoth ignoramus!” My finger was pointing at his
face. I looked at them excitedly, they weren’t paying attention. I
turned back, “Look, I don’t know what you’re thinking, that’s why
I’m asking. I haven’t been trained in idiot; I don’t get your
ritualistic idiot acts, I’ve only ever seen them done.” I moved my
head forward and opened my eyes as wide as I could. Annoyance had
replaced his fear, and humiliation had brought forth anger. I saw
it in his eyes, it was what I was waiting for, looking for, and why
I’d switched to using hooks in the first place. I mean, how many
times did I have to say idiot before he took offence to it? “It
must be hard living with frivolous worries. I wouldn’t give a shit
if you were just shallow or paranoid, but it’s a bit more than that
isn’t it? It’s about us, but, man, see there, that’s the real
mistake. You can live poorly every day of your life if you like,
but to say the wrong thing with your finger pointed and me at the
end of it, now that is an error in living. I’m trying to excuse
you, trying to help you, trying
to justify you
,
stretch your shallow being into something it’s not because you’re
an asshole; plain and simple. Oh, look at you: that looks like
fury. Look and your wife would like to add something. Okay, thank
you, bye.” He’d persuaded her to get back into their vehicle with a
record amount of words, though I wasn’t even sure I’d heard one.
“Keep it simple eh,
anger
, that’s
awesome, no thought for you, let’s just react and react and
react.
My stuff, my life, my
ugly
, me no
like.”

I moved
forward and this startled him; he had been distracted by my
prattling, but he now saw in my eyes how serious my anger had
grown. It was usually my tattoos that did it. Nervousness took hold
of him again, but awkwardly this time.

He seemed to
be considering his options. I leaned my body slightly forward, my
head a little more, and continued, “You need to really think about
this. You have no idea how serious this is.” I paused as though our
very discussion was regarding life support, “This
decision
could affect the rest of your face.”