Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel (15 page)

She had such a different rhythm about her tonight. Her eyes shone but were smaller, lazier, ready to laugh over nothing. She
danced between the table and stew and spice rack, steam waving out of the pot. Her thick thighs and hips and stomach contained a power that occasionally stole the air from Max.

She excused herself to go to the bathroom, and he took this opportunity to pour a glass of wine in his juice cup and chug it down. He felt like a champion. By the time he sat down, he realized he’d had too much.

Stirring the pot, her back to him now, she said, “You know, I met girls like Kelly in college, treating black people with some kind of romantic condolence or something. One of those girls who loves the idea of African Americans.”

He stared at the padding of her butt. “The idea?”

“See, Kelly likes black people on a symbolic level. She’s only interested in our oppression. She quickly got tired of hearing me say I’m doing fine. She’d say stuff like, ‘But isn’t it hard? I mean, living—’”

“‘In the most racist country in the world!’” Max interjected.

“Yes!” She laughed, and he couldn’t have felt any better about himself. “Unreal,” she said, “I can’t believe you’ve heard her say that same exact thing! I wrote it off as her just being young, but when I think about it, I was nothing like that when I was twenty-two. She only ever wanted to talk about the black high school dropouts, illiterates, junkies, prostitutes, and inmates. And Rodney played all that up big-time. Loved telling her stories about how some mean old white lady gave him the slant-eye at the supermarket like he was a thief or something.” She took another sip of wine, still letting little puffs of laughter come through her nose. She swayed to the music. “Rodney. Rodney Rodney Rodney, what was I thinking?”

“Yeah,” said Max.

“You know, this probably reflects more poorly on me than anyone, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’d only been dating him for
three months before he invited himself to move in with me. The man had just gotten kicked out of his other girlfriend’s house.” Her head rolled back and she gave a single “Ha!”

“Ha!” Max echoed.

She played with the silver stud in her ear, eyeing the corner of the ceiling. “You know, Rodney’s kind of the same in a way.” She finished up her glass and refilled it.

“The same how?”

“The same as Kelly. Only, he thinks of women as an idea.”

“The idea of women,” he said, feeling intimately involved, maybe even accused.

“It’s all about how a woman can support the image he wants of himself. You know?”

God, Max wished he did.

“See, he wants to be with someone who helps him realize the portrait of his manhood he’s been dreaming of since he was a boy. To have control of this portrait, he needs to have control of his woman. But it’s no fun if she’s too passive. He needs the challenge of taming a ‘feisty,’ independent woman.” She let this thought sit for a while. “With me, he needed to feel like he was taking care of my needs, you know, like I was his little girl or something. Like he’d made me. I found it sweet for a surprisingly long time. Everyone likes being babied a little, right? Thing of it is”—she pointed at Max with her spoon—“if you accept being treated like a baby for too long, you end up becoming one.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That makes sense.”

“I started getting tired of it when I understood he was trying to work the individuality out of me, you know what I’m saying? Like, he insisted on having the final say on what my opinions and needs were.” What she spoke of resonated with something he’d seen before, if even a misshapen version of that something. But as usual, concepts that were close to being familiar and
clear were the most confusing and difficult to comment on. “Back when I was excited about being with him, his need for control didn’t threaten me that much. But when that excitement settled a little, and I could see clearly again, I caught on that he didn’t like anything I liked. He didn’t like any of the same people or music or books or politics, and it was on principle that he didn’t like those things. It wasn’t what I liked, in and of itself, that bothered him. No, it was the fact that I liked something that he didn’t put in my head and, worse, couldn’t take out of my head if he wanted to. He hated that he couldn’t shape me. You know what I’m saying?” Max did know what she was saying, but not well enough to give any input or ask intelligent questions. It felt like it’d been a long time since he proved he was actively listening. “When I told him what I felt like doing, you know, to go to a museum, or for him to meet a friend of mine, or if I needed to have him listen to me babble a little, I could tell he was exercising all the patience he had in him. He didn’t like me. Isn’t that something? Entertaining the idea of a future with someone who doesn’t even like you? Doesn’t like to hear you speak unless it’s praise for him. Doesn’t like to know what makes you happy unless it was his idea first. Doesn’t want to get to know any of your life outside of him. No, that’s not the kind of man I want.” She moved the wooden spoon around like an orchestra conductor, letting little droplets of red sauce fling all over the kitchen. Her bare arms under the plastic light looked immortal. “It really pisses me off that I shared some of my smartest and most intimate thoughts with that fool. He never was impressed by any of them either.”

“Yeah,” said Max, “you should like the person you live with. I think so too.”

“And I’ll tell you another thing. I’m not dumb. I knew he was having an affair. I didn’t know it was with the inane bitch across the street. I confess, that was a huge surprise. I knew she wanted
him, but she was always too ridiculous to be a threat. Rodney used to make fun of her behind her back all the time.” She weaved her hips through the air, getting into the music. “Ooh, listen to that riff right there.”

“But you knew he was sleeping with someone else and didn’t do anything about it?”

“I needed to figure out how I wanted to play the situation. I’ve been having my fun on the side too.”

“Wow.”

She danced with a glazed grin. “That’s right,” she said, “I get mine. I’m not one of those victims.” She dove her spoon into the stew, let it go, and clapped her hands as though her words were the lyrics to the song: “Lets herself get treated like an old useless cow / keeps it all hushed up / hoping for I don’t know what / I am no damn cliché.” This greatly excited Max. She transitioned to finger snaps while she grooved, bringing a gusto into that kitchen that tremored his abdomen. Nadine, the prettiest, smartest, best-smelling, loveliest being he’d ever known. His very idea of a woman.

“So what about you two?” she said, picking up the spoon again. “You all didn’t know? Your dad had no idea?”

“I don’t think he did. But I knew.”

“What? You knew and didn’t do anything about it? What’s your excuse?”

“I just couldn’t.” He had a flash of his panting next to Kelly. His imagination had worsened the memory and added terrible details—her wearing significantly fewer clothes, her loose waist pressed hot against him, strands of her hair getting stuck to his lips, her hands making jerky circular motions in her underwear—and he felt a pang of self-disgust. He slumped deeper into his chair.

“Hmm.” Still feeling the music, Nadine’s hips flowed to the beat and she bit her bottom lip. “How’s he doing these days?”

“He’s fine. Working a lot, but fine.”

“Isn’t that everybody’s truth. Everyone’s working a lot, but fine. And how about you, are you working a lot, but fine?” She came over to the table, and when she sat down, her butt swelled out a little on both sides of her. She searched his face awhile, as if to say,
So, remind me what you’re doing here again.

“I’m pretty good,” he said, though at this point it sounded out of left field. “Wait. I forgot to bring the sauce I made for the crab cakes. I’ll be right back.” He shot out of his seat and ran home. Still sitting on his kitchen table was the sauce: homemade mayonnaise mixed with Old Bay and lemon juice in a little bowl. He picked it up, set it down, filled and guzzled a half glass of vodka, grabbed the sauce, and darted back to Nadine’s.

Imbalanced and out of breath, he put the bowl next to the crab cakes and sat.

“This looks delicious, Max, thank you.”

He was hammered and had a strong urge to lie down. He looked away from her and at the framed portrait of a man he assumed was her father. The man’s handsome, strong face steadied him. His head was tilted back as if he was looking down on the camera. He had uninterested eyes and graying hair.

She glanced over her shoulder at the portrait. “I hope your father isn’t too mad at me. It wasn’t right to come over and unload on you like that. You’re such a good listener that I forgot who I was talking to. I’ve been holding it all in, and you were the unlucky one that saw it spill out first. I apologize.”

His head spun fast. “That’s okay. I liked it.”

“You liked it?” She chuckled. “You looking to be a therapist someday?”

“No—it’s just—it felt good for me too.”

“Your dad thought it was pretty weird, and I don’t blame him. A full-grown woman boohooing on my kid would make me think something was a little wonky. What are you smiling at?”

“I don’t know.
Wonky
is a funny word, I guess.”

“You guess a lot.”

“I know.”

She touched his arm and sent something through it that traveled down to his pelvis. It softened his posture. This was exactly why he’d come here tonight.

“You okay?” she asked. The burden in his jaw got too heavy, and he started mouth breathing.

“Fine.”

She stood up to serve two plates of the main dish. Some rice with the stew. He thought of how the steaks had slowly come apart at the bottom of the pot. Steam rose up into his nostrils, but he couldn’t actually smell anything. He took a big bite and didn’t taste anything either. They should have started with the crab cakes, he thought. He tried for a second bite and threw up what looked like water and Play-Doh all over the table.

He didn’t remember how he’d gotten onto the couch. Lying there with a sidelong view of Nadine, he watched her stumble a little as she filled up a glass with water, the kitchen table already cleared and the dishes done. He felt sedated and grateful and sorry. Keeping his eyes open was exceptionally difficult. She came back with the glass and a chastising smile. “You’re a little young to be getting sloshed before dinner, don’t you think? I smelled the booze on you, but you didn’t look that bad when you first came in. Does this happen a lot?” She sat down in front of him, and the warmth of her backside touched his belly. She handed him the water, and he thanked her with an
anh
sound. Right before he let the glass crash to the floor, she grabbed it back out of his hands and put it on a little table behind his head, saying, “Why don’t we save that one for later.” He mumbled that he had something to tell her but couldn’t
remember what it was. She rubbed his arm and repeated, “That’s all right, honey, that’s all right, you can tell me all about it later,” as he dropped off into sleep.

When he woke up, it took him a moment to understand he was basically spooning her on the couch. She faced out toward the kitchen and snored lightly. She must have gone from sitting, to leaning against the armrest, to sliding down into a lying position after he’d dozed off. He stared at the back of her neck, her thin dreadlocks grazing the tip of his nose like the soft side of Velcro. Her head smelled of crayons. Breathing her in, he fell asleep again.

He dreamed the two of them lay in a mattress-lined room, with wall-to-wall bedding. White sheets strewn about, they were on their sides, naked. He pumped in and out of her from behind, her ass shuddering every time she bumped him back. He couldn’t see his own body clearly in the dream, but hers was a trembling masterpiece. White light somehow filled the windowless room, making the walls and sheets and ceilings feel limitless. The surge of his orgasm came so strongly that he might have been dying. He groaned loudly enough to wake himself up and realized that he had actually done it. He’d humped her from behind. He stiffened in horror. She woke up a beat after him, alarmed. “What are you doing?”

“I—” Blood rushed hotly to his face.

She sat up. “The hell?” She looked at Max, seeming to barely recognize him. Then she looked around her place as if she’d never been here before. “Okay. Wow. Little disoriented.” She rubbed her eyes. “Sorry. I was having a weird dream.” She gave his arm a friendly pat and got up. “You feeling any better? You’re not so pale as you were.”

She didn’t know. Incredible.

Max studied himself in her bathroom mirror as the come hardened in his underwear. He was just a kid. He had an oily mess of thick, wavy black hair touching the tops of his oversize
ears. His eyes stuck out like saucers on his slim and poreless face, his body short and weedy. He dressed like a juvenile, with his collar-stretched T-shirt, baggy pants, sneakers. If she had been awake while he humped her, she’d have doubtlessly thought he was having a nightmare and just squirming around, not believing he had a single sexual bone in his body. And even if she had recognized his squirming as adolescent lust, she’d have either been disgusted or, worse, instructed him (in some asexual way) on how to relieve himself, as Kelly had, as if helping him go to the bathroom. Glaring at his reflection now, he understood that he had no choice but to be a boy.

Max grew eleven inches in the following four years, topping out at six foot one, eight inches taller than his father. There had been nothing remotely uniform about the stages of his development. Sections enlarged one at a time. His shoulders rose up before anything else, too heavy for his back and rolling him forward into a hunch. Then his neck elongated and his ears flared out. His head looked like a dented pea, and his flop of black hair, cut into a bowl, resembled a toupée.

“Oh!” Mrs. Yang cried whenever she saw him. “You are changing again!” He’d become one of the Yangs’ freakish plants.

His legs shot up next, pushing his hips up to where his chest had previously been, and only well after that did his torso lengthen in an effort to catch up. He had clumsy, gorilla-size hands flapping at the ends of his stemmy arms. His nose swelled wide and flat, the opposite of his father’s hooked beak. Finally
Max’s head filled out, making his eyes look only somewhat insectoid. There was an eight-month period with tremendous amounts of sprouting hair. So quickly and unruly did it grow that he had tender welts from ingrown hair infections in improbable places: behind an ear, on the back of his neck, on his ass, in his nostril, in an armpit. Strawberry fields of acne blazed across his face, along with blackheads, whiteheads, bumps, and divots. At fifteen he tried to grow a beard as cover, but the black stringy hair looked pubic and worsened his case. Wishing away his bad skin probably took up half of his waking mental energy.