Holy Water (11 page)

Whenever he tried to tell Rachel that perhaps they should wait just a little longer, because one day they might want to try to have a
child again, she told him that she couldn
’
t handle the emotions of expectation and loss, that if it happened again it would break her completely. Whenever he mentioned therapy or counseling, she responded with anger, accusations, and prolonged periods of silence. Pushing harder, he thought, would be the end for them. So, while not assenting, he let her run with it, with the hope that things would change, she
’
d get better, or at least find a replacement obsession.

But she didn
’
t. Soon Rachel knew enough about the vicissitudes of vasectomies to do a dissertation for the
New England Journal of Medicine.

~ * ~

Henry accepts another beer.
“
A Slovakian—not Czech, there
’
s a huge difference—pilsner,
”
Gerard explains. One of the Osbornes, deep into a criticism of the latest government bailout, stops pointing his index finger at his brother long enough to say,
“
That
’
s what we want to see, Junior. Pounding some fine eastern European swill. We
’
ll make a man out of you yet.
”

Henry raises the bottle in a toast. They have taken to calling him Junior, or Kid, or H. After two years he is still the plebe, the pledging frat boy. He has remained the disciple and they the wise elders, the savvy veterans of the mysteries of suburbia, marriage, fatherhood, and the sub-prime lending fiasco. They played every aspect of their hazing, mentoring roles to perfection, he thought, except the part about the actual dispensing of wisdom, the leading by example, or the solving of even the smallest problem.

LeBlanc asks Victor Chan for more details about his swollen and blackened left eye.
“
Happened at Kenny
’
s T-ball game.
”
Chan looks away from LeBlanc, hoping that this is description enough.

“
What,
”
shouts Gerard,
“
did you get clipped with a line drive by a toddler on steroids?
”

“
Or did one of the parents clock you?
”
Henry offers with a laugh.

Chan turns and stares at Henry.
“
Well, actually, yes,
”
he says, as if Henry is the one who did the sucker punching.

“
What happened, V-Chan?
”
asks Marcus.
“
This is T-ball, correct?
”

“
Yeah. There was this little kid, this little prick, actually, who started mouthing off to the first baseman, a nice kid twice the size of the other kid. The first baseman didn
’
t do anything, except catch the throw that sealed the other kid
’
s fate. I thought they were playing, but the little brat began throwing punches. Soon the big kid had him on the ground. I ran over and started pulling them apart and the next thing I know this other father, the little kid
’
s father, grabs my shoulder, spins me around, and clocks me.
”

Gerard approaches from the grills, brandishing tongs and a long grease-slick fork from which dangles a piece of charred grizzle.
“
Holy shit, Victor, what
’
d you do?
”

“
What I did is fall down, Gerard. You think I know kung fu or something just because I
’
m Chinese?
”

“
You didn
’
t hit him?
”
Gerard is shocked.
“
I would
’
ve—
”

“
I would
’
ve sued him,
”
says Osborne the First.

“
Further destroying our overly litigious society,
”
counters Osborne the Second.

“
I did nothing. It wasn
’
t even my son in the fight. My son, who, by the way, won
’
t even talk to me because I walked away.
”

“
You have to redeem yourself,
”
Gerard insists.
“
You must bust that dude right in the nose, Victor Chan, for your dignity, your son
’
s future, and the integrity of our national pastime.
”

“
Did he at least apologize?
”
Henry asks.
“
Have you seen him since?”

“
No. We have a game tomorrow. I feel sick just thinking about it.
”

They grimace as one as the testosterone is sucked out of their
manspace
. No one speaks for a while. Clearly this tale of passive nonviolence at, of all things, a sporting event has been a level-one Meat Night buzz kill.

“
Well,
”
Gerard finally declares.
“
That
’
s just weak, V-Chan.
Effin
’
pathetic.
”

Victor doesn
’
t respond as Gerard heads back inside. A few moments later Green Day
’
s
“
American Idiot
”
comes through the
exterior wall-mounted speakers. Marcus LeBlanc starts jerking his head to the music. The Osborne brothers finger-jab to the beat. Henry is fairly sure that none of them know what
’
s playing, what it
’
s saying. What
’
s important to them is that even though it
was released more than six years ago, it sounds younger than they are and that, at least among themselves, they are getting away with co-opting it.

Gerard reappears and turns to Henry.
“
Too loud?
”
he asks, but what he means is,
“
Too much of a reach?
”

Henry shakes his head and gives Gerard two rocking thumbs up. Meanwhile, Victor Chan seems to have collected himself after his tale of T-ball terror and is proudly removing the contents of the traveling martini kit he received for his fortieth birthday. Not especially macho, Henry thinks, as Victor reassembles, then begins to measure and pour and shake. But there is hard liquor involved, in this case a Polish vodka distilled from a particular type of wheat or something (Henry lost interest after the words
distilled from),
and it does provide the others with the opportunity to point out Chan
’
s numerous tactical errors. Henry takes a long drink of a beer (English Porter) that he doesn
’
t remember opening and closes his eyes.

“
That rude son of a bitch.
”

Henry opens his eyes. It
’
s Victor Chan.
“
Who?
”

“
Gerard. The man
’
s man. If you only knew.
”

Henry knows he
’
s supposed to follow up Chan
’
s tease, but he doesn
’
t. Doesn
’
t care.

~ * ~

The Permanent Snip

Rachel wasn
’
t the only one doing research.

He told her about the man who
’
d gotten one, yet his wife got pregnant anyway a month later. Then he told her about the guy at work whose wife had him get one even though she
’
d secretly had her tubes tied after a C-section. When the man found out, after it was too late, his wife said she didn
’
t want him to go running off and having kids with some bimbo and watering down her children
’
s estate.
“
But can
’
t I still get it reversed?
”
the soon-to-be-cuckolded man had asked her.
“
Nope,
”
his wife said.
“
Yours is irreversible. We got you the permanent snip.
”

At the end of the story, Henry asked Rachel,
“
Do you want mine to be permanent?
”

“
No,
”
she said.
“
I just want it to work.
”

~ * ~

Six weeks after the procedure date he
’
s still haunted by dreams of phallic mutilation, is still reminded of it in the quotidian images of his daily routines. So it
’
s understandable that watching Gerard take a
Ginsu
knife to a heat-plumped kielbasa and his own sizzling Kobe beef dog is something his eyes cannot abide. Instead he looks away, drinks his martini, and manages to listen to the Osbornes argue long enough to discern that they
’
ve changed their topic from the auto industry bailout to waterboarding.

Soon after Victor gets up to make another batch of sub-par martinis, Marcus pulls a chair alongside Henry. Marcus is drinking seltzer. He says it is because he is on antibiotics for Lyme disease, but they all know it
’
s because Marcus is on antidepressants. Marcus
’
s wife, who is white, had told the other men
’
s wives, including Rachel, after their
firefighter
’
s
workout class that Marcus is depressed over his diminished blackness in white suburbia. But Henry and the men at the round table of meat know that the real cause of Marcus
’
s depression is that his wife has been cheating on him with a man who has significantly more ghetto in him than Marcus. They know because Marcus confessed to them two months ago, after being over-served on small-batch bourbon and Raw Bar Night.

Marcus tried to win her back. He gave up golf, khakis, and, for a while, the Protestant church. He tried cooking soul food, watching BET and Samuel L. Jackson films, and listening to old-school hip-hop. He tried to alter his diction and even attempted to cultivate a genuine resentment of the Man. But none of it worked, he told them, because he was the Man. Born and raised in white suburbia. Soccer coach. Churchgoer. Occasional cardigan-wearer. What he realized, or what couples counseling helped him realize, just before his wife abandoned him and his two daughters and moved in with a man in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn for five weeks, is that she had a thing for
dangerous
black men and Marcus, in retrospect, was way too white.

The Brooklyn experiment was a failure, and they are currently living under the same roof, trying to make a go of it for the sake, they say, of the children.

“
Mister Tuhoe.
”

“
Monsieur LeBlanc.
”
Henry smiles. He likes Marcus LeBlanc. On occasion they
’
ve actually had some decent conversations.

“
How goes it at work?
”

But apparently not today. And yet, though he hates talking about work while he
’
s away from work—primarily because talking about what he does for a living (which in itself is a depressingly accurate phrase) angers, humiliates, and frustrates him—here he is finishing up Polish specialty wheat martini number two and beginning to tell Marcus LeBlanc about his day.

About how goes it. How went it. About working hard or hardly working. About everything.

At first he doesn
’
t notice, but soon he sees that they
’
ve all stopped what they were doing—Gerard (cooking), the Osbornes (ranting: presidential citizenship), Victor Chan (fretting)—and, smelling the blood of genuine emotion, the scent of angst other than their own, have gathered closer to revel in his tale. He tells them about the morning gravestones, the fainting woman, and Giffler
’
s ambiguous ultimatum. He tells them about Norman from the gym, the
lurker
in the locker room, and Warren
’
s
Bangalorian
reverse-outsourcing ambitions. He even tells them about Meredith, though he refuses to reveal her name, real or porno.