Lunar Park (12 page)

She nudged the hands away. “How’s the house—not too wrecked, I hope,” she asked, as I pressed my erection against her thigh, which she tensed. I was becoming more insistent and about to push away the laptop and lay her down on the desk when she asked, “Does Jayne know about us?”

I moved away from her slightly, but she grinned and kept me in position with her legs.

“Why do you ask?” I said. “Why are you asking this
now
?”

“She was looking at me strangely last night.”

I moved in again, kissing her neck and then her inner arm—she now had goose bumps. “It was just the lighting. Forget about it.”

Aimee leaned away from me again. “I got the definite impression that she was studying me.”

I sighed and stood up straight. “Are we ever going to do it, or what?”

“Oh, God—”

“Because I, for one, do not think I’m too young.”

She laughed loudly, throwing her head back. “No, it’s not that.”

“And you’re becoming very quickly the biggest cocktease I’ve ever met in my life and it’s not funny, Aimee.” I grabbed her hand and moved it toward my crotch. “You wanna feel how not funny it is?”

“I shouldn’t be involved with you for any number of reasons,” she said, sitting up. But I wouldn’t budge from my position. She kept sighing. “Look, number one is you’re married—”

“For only three months!” I wailed.

“Bret—”

I moved in again, burying my face in her neck. “Married guys live longer.”

“There’s no research that indicates being married is a good idea.”

I moved down to my knees until I was staring between her parted thighs. I placed a hand beneath her dress, feeling the navel ring in the middle of her soft, tanned stomach. My hand glided across her lower abdomen and down around her hip bones. The little slope at the base of her spine, right above her ass—I rubbed that indentation delicately, massaging it with very gentle, circular motions, and then my hands moved to the spot where her ass cheeks met her thighs. My hands started moving toward her panties and the uncharted territory that lay beneath them. She tried to close her thighs but I gripped them tightly, holding them open. Straining, I managed to say, “I read a study in a magazine somewhere.” She struggled to close her thighs. My teeth were clenched. “Something connecting coital frequency to life span.” I finally let go, panting.

“That is such bullshit,” she said, laughing.

“Look, I’m trying to trigger a sexual response in you, so why aren’t you convulsing with pleasure?”

She relaxed as I stood up, and we kissed again. I became lost in her once more. “God, what are you wearing?” I murmured. “That smell, it takes me back.”

“To where?”

I was licking her mouth. “Just, like, back. The past. I’m reexperiencing my whole adolescence.”

“Just with this lip gloss?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “It’s like those little tangerines in Proust.”

“You mean madeleines.”

“Yeah, like those little tangerines.”

“How . . . did you get this job?”

“Shapely legs.” I was feeling her stomach again, pulling gently on the ring piercing her navel. “Can I get one of those too? We can have matching navel rings. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“Yeah, it would really set off those abs of yours.”

“Are you talking about my six-pack?”

“I think I’m talking about your, um,
keg.
”

“You’re very sexy, baby, but I’m equally hot.”

And then, as usual, it stopped. This time it was mutual. She had places to go, and I had to print out a dream and head over to Dr. Kim’s.

While we were getting ready to leave the office, Aimee said something.

“That boy who was in here earlier . . .”

“Yeah. Do you know him?”

She paused. “No, but he looked familiar.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. Did you see him at the party last night?” I asked, while the printer started cranking out my assignment.

“I’m not sure, but he reminded me of someone.”

“Yeah, he went as Patrick Bateman. He was the guy in the Armani suit. Very creepy.”

“Um, Bret, I have news for you: you were so wasted I don’t think you could have recognized anybody by the time that party hit full force.”

I shrugged, slipped the dream into my jacket and picked up a few stories students had left in the bin by my door. It was quiet. Aimee was thinking about something else while she lit a cigarette.

“Yeah? What is it?” I asked. “I’m gonna be late.”

“It’s weird you said Patrick Bateman,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I thought he looked a little like Christian Bale.”

We were both silent for a long time, because Christian Bale was the actor who had played Patrick Bateman in the film version of
American Psycho.

“But he also looked like you,” Aimee said. “Give or take twenty years.”

I started shivering again.

Back in the parking lot, the cream-colored 450 SL was no longer there.

I noticed.

6. the shrinks

S
ince I was late I drove instead of walking over to the building housing the practices of Dr. Kim and our couples counselor, Dr. Faheida. Unfolding my dream I raced into the lobby and bumped into a woman exiting the elevator. I was staring at my dream, feeling like a child about to be tested, when she stepped aside and said, “Hello, Bret.” I looked up and stared into the woman’s face: gaunt, midforties, vaguely Spanish, dark wispy hair, a crooked smile. Holding an armful of folders and books, she stood there patiently as I squinted at her, assessing who she was.

It took a moment before I realized.

“Ah, Dr. Fajita. How are you?” I said, relieved.

She paused slightly. “It’s Dr. Fe-hay-da.”

“Dr. Fe-hay-da,” I mimicked. “Yes, and how are you?”

“I’m fine. Will I be seeing you and your wife next week?”

“Yes, and this time we’ll both be there,” I promised.

“That’s good. See you then.” She slowly shuffled off as I hopped into the elevator.

The couples counseling had started due to the lack of sex in our marriage. This was, admittedly, my problem, and the guilt I felt led me to follow Jayne to Dr. Faheida. Even when I first arrived in July we were having sex only once a week, though Jayne kept trying to initiate it more regularly. But she was being turned down so often that she soon quit trying. And I couldn’t figure out where this lack of interest on my part was coming from. Jayne—whom I was once so highly attracted to that she’d complained about the frequency of sex—resembled something new to me now, something other than the hot girlfriend. She was the wife, the mother, my savior. But how did that begin to constitute a celibate relationship? (“Ah yes, how indeed?” the dark voice in the back of my mind whispered frequently.) I simply blamed it on whatever convenient lie I came up with when we were lying in the massive bed in the darkened bedroom, the door locked, the curtains drawn, my softened penis lying immobile against my thigh: exhaustion, stress, the novel, the natural ebb and flow of desire, the antidepressants I was on; I even hinted about sexual scars from my childhood. She kept checking her resentment. I held in my shame but not enough to make her feel guiltless about questioning my manhood, to the point where she felt bad about forcing the issue. She kept asking if I still found her attractive—which I did, I kept assuring her. I was proud to have Jayne Dennis as my wife. Millions of men found her image magnetically sexual. She was a young and popular movie star. Yet, mysteriously, sex had become mundane and increasingly rare between us. I no longer had the hard-on for her that I once did, and tried to soothe her with vague generalities I’d picked up on Oprah. “Is sex more important than our kids or our careers, Jayne?” I asked one night. “I think we have it pretty good.” She sighed in the darkness. “Just because the sex isn’t here now doesn’t mean you aren’t,” I said gently (that was the first night I slept in the guest room). And so in counseling with our “marriage educator,” theories were tossed around. Maybe it was the deterioration of my testosterone levels. But I was tested and the levels were normal. I started taking daily herbal supplements. We opted out on Viagra since I had a mitral valve prolapse—a slight heart condition that the drug could agitate. Other options included Levitra and Cialis—
But I’m not impotent!
I wanted to scream. However I
was
“value neutral.” I couldn’t grasp “shared commitment.” I was the master of “negative communication.” I had helped create an “unstable union.” I needed to develop “collaborative alliances.” I only offered “counterproposals.” I was accused of “cutting deals.” (Jayne was the one intent on “separation avoidance,” even though she admitted to having a problem with “self-differentiation.”) We were told to get a babysitter, leave provocative notes for each other, pretend we were still dating, check into a hotel, plan for intimacy, schedule intercourse. But by the end of September our sexual relationship was in major gridlock, and that was when I realized why. The thing that was causing it now had a name: Aimee Light. According to Jayne, the “most amazingly sad aspect” of our marriage was that she still loved me.

I breathed in deeply and walked into Dr. Kim’s office. Her door was open and she was scanning the
New York Review of Books
while waiting for me. She looked up—her small, brown, inquiring face creased with a tight smile.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said, closing the door behind me, flopping into the armchair across from her. That the office was serenely anonymous always helped me relax before we began the sessions, but today she jumped right in, and her increasing worry about my “abuse problems” was soon dominating the conversation. This probably due to the Kleenex I kept reaching for and the bloody ropes of snot I kept blowing from my sore and damaged nose. Then she wanted to talk about Robby and if I was still resentful of him, and next it lurched to Jayne and exactly what I was aiming for with her, and soon my patience expired and I had to interrupt what now resembled an interrogation. She balanced a legal pad on her lap and furiously kept writing notes.

“Look, I’m only here because I promised my wife I would try and get help and so I’m here and trying to get help and I don’t need another lecture about how I’m wasting everybody’s time, ‘kay?” I reached for another Kleenex and blew my nose. The tissue came away red and glistening.

“So why are you here, Mr. Ellis?”

“Well, I have anxiety and these, y’know, anxiety disorders.”

“About what?”

“Um . . . plane crashes . . . the terrorists . . .” I paused and then added genuinely, “Those missing boys.”

She sat up. “Mr. Ellis, I much more concerned about cirrhosis of liver than plane crash for you.” She sighed and marked something down, then immediately segued into: “So, any fresh dreams?”

“Yes, a major one,” I said, trying to hide my reluctance as I handed her the printed-out sheet.

Dr. Kim looked over the words typed hastily earlier this afternoon and got to a particular sentence where she blanched and then stared at me from where she was sitting. I was casually admiring a small cactus on a shelf, humming mindlessly to myself as I waited.

“This dream seems very, very fake to me, Mr. Ellis.” She glared at me suspiciously. “I think you make this dream up.”

“How dare you!” I sat up indignantly—a posture I realized that I adopted quite often in her office.

“You expect me to believe this dream?” She glanced back at the page. “Large-mouthed bass chase you into pond where you escape onto floating airplane and then are flying business class—a plane that has your father’s name on side of it?”

“This is my unconscious, Dr. Kim.” I shrugged. “These just may be legitimate concerns.” I sighed and gave up.

“You have not told your wife that you are using drugs again,” she said.

“No.” I sighed once more and looked away. “But she knows. She knows.”

“And are you still sleeping on the couch?”

“It’s the
guest room
! I’m in the fucking
guest room
! You can’t sleep on our fucking couch.”

“Mr. Ellis, you do not need to shout.”

“Look.” I sighed. “It’s been really hard fitting into this whole world, and all these pressures about being the man of the house or whatever you wanna call it are getting to me, as well as the fact that, yeah, I’m using again—but only a little—and drinking again—but only a little—and yeah, okay, Jayne and I aren’t having sex and I’ve been flirting with this girl at the college and I think another student’s pretending to be a character from one of my novels and Jayne’s little girl is, I think, really messed up and she thinks that her doll’s alive and attacking her plus she keeps calling me ‘Daddy’ and Harrison Ford wants me to write this script for him and I’m getting these weird e-mails from L.A. that have something to do with my father, I think, and all those missing boys are scaring the hell out of me and it’s all causing enormous conflicts within my psyche.” I paused, mid-rant. “Oh, and our golden retriever hates my guts.” I let out a huge sigh. “So, I’ve got a lot on my plate—chill out.” And then I reached for the page she was holding and said, “Give me that.”

She kept a firm grip, glaring at me. I kept pulling. She wouldn’t let go. Our eyes locked. I finally sat back, panting.

She waited patiently. “Mr. Ellis, the main reason you are here is to find ways to get to know your son. That is essential. That is necessary. That you connect with your son.”

There was nothing to say except “I’m getting a grip on that situation.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Why not?”

“Because you haven’t mentioned him once since you’ve been here.”

7. robby’s room

M
arta was in the kitchen making dinner, stir-frying vegetables in an aluminum wok, while the kids were upstairs getting dressed for trick-or-treating. It was dark out now but on the drive from Dr. Kim’s back to the house I noticed parents were already walking their costumed children through the town’s neighborhoods as dusk approached, which I took as a sinister reminder of the missing boys and which moved me to stop at a liquor store and buy a bottle of Groth Sauvignon Blanc and a magnum of Ketel One, and once I was safely ensconced in my office I poured half the wine into an oversized coffee cup and hid both bottles beneath my desk (my furniture was still rearranged). I wandered around the house with nothing to do. Passing the bowl of mini Nutri-Grain bars on a table by the front door, I went outside. Someone had already lit the jack-o’-lanterns. Victor was lying on the lawn. When he gave me a cursory look I gave one back and then picked up a Frisbee and threw it at the dog. It landed near where he was lying. He glanced at it contemptuously, then lifted his head and looked over at me as if I were a fool before nudging the orange disc away with his snout.

Back in the house I moved through the living room and noticed that the furniture had been placed back in its original position. Yet I still felt like I was viewing the room from an unfamiliar angle. The carpet looked darker, shaggier, the pale beige now morphing into something that bordered on teal or green—and the morning’s vacuuming still hadn’t cleaned up the footprints that were embedded in it. I kicked lightly at one of them—it was large and ash-colored—and was trying to smooth out the carpeting with the toe of my loafer when from upstairs I suddenly heard Jayne shout, “You’re
not
going as Eminem!” and a door slammed. I took a Klonopin, finished my wine, poured myself the rest of the bottle and carefully walked upstairs to Robby’s room to see if he was okay.

As I approached his door I saw the scratches he had mentioned that morning. They were clustered near the bottom of the door, and though they weren’t the deep grooves I had anticipated, the paint
had
been clawed off and I thought it was probably just Victor trying to gain entry. No one from the party had been upstairs, but then I flashed on Sarah’s torn pillow and fleetingly thought that maybe Robby had made the scratches himself—a hostile gesture, something to garner attention, whatever—until I realized that this didn’t seem like something Robby would ever do; he was far too passive and enervated to pull off a stunt like that. And then I flashed back on the Terby and the ripped pillow again. The kids were unreliable—their meds were proof of that. Plus Robby had recently switched antidepressants. Luvox had now been added for the anxiety attacks that had plagued him since he was six, and which had increased in intensity since I arrived—and who really knew what the side effects were? His physician had assured us that except for mild gastrointestinal problems there weren’t any, but that’s what they always say, and anyway, without the drugs Robby couldn’t sit still. Without the meds he wouldn’t have been able to visit the planetarium. Without the Ritalin he couldn’t have cruised the mall earlier in the week for a costume. I almost tripped over a skateboard as I entered his room, but the TV’s volume was so high that Robby, who was sitting on the bed, didn’t notice.

Robby’s room had a space-age theme: planet and comet and moon decals were pasted all over the walls suggesting that you were now floating within a night black sky somewhere deep in space. The carpet revealed itself to be a Martian landscape, impressively detailed with canyons and fissures and craters. Spheres made of glass beads dangled from a glittering, savage-looking asteroid that hung from the ceiling above a king-sized art deco bed fitted with a stylish comforter. Along with the ubiquitous Beastie Boys and Limp Bizkit posters were those of various moons: Jupiter’s Io and Saturn’s Titan and the massive rifts of Uranus’s Miranda. The room also contained a minifridge, brightly colored lamps, a leather sofa and a stereo, and one entire wall was a stark black-and-white photo mural of a deserted skate park. Video game cartridges were scattered across the floor in front of the wide-screen TV, now hooked up to PlayStation 2 amid a pile of
Simpsons
and
South Park
DVDs. There was a stack of new Tommy Hilfiger shirts on his bed. Japanese action figures lined the bookshelves, which contained mostly wrestling magazines and the entire Harry Potter series, and above the shelves was a large bronze painting of the zodiac. The remains of a Starbucks iced chai sat next to a giant translucent moon that glowed from the computer—Robby’s screensaver.

Robby was staring at
Nintendo Power Monthly
while slipping on a pair of Puma socks and then he was tying his Nikes. The TV was turned to the WB channel and as I stood in the doorway I watched a raunchy cartoon zap into one of the many commercials pitched toward the kids—one in a series of ads that I hated. A scruffy, gorgeous youth, hands on his skinny-boy hips, stared defiantly into the camera and made the following statements in a blank voice, subtitled beneath him in a blood red scroll: “Why haven’t you become a millionaire yet?” followed by “There is not more to life than money” followed by “You
do
need to own an island” followed by “You should never sleep because there are no second chances” followed by “It
is
important to be slick and evocative” followed by “Come with us and make a bundle” followed by “If you aren’t rich you deserve to be humiliated.” And then the commercial ended. That was it. I’d seen this ad numerous times and had yet to figure out what it meant or even what product it was trying to sell.

Robby’s shoulders were slumped and the Hilfiger sweater tied around his waist fell to the floor as he stood up and stretched. There was a young adult book on his pillow called
What Once Had Been Earth.
My son was eleven and had a Prada wallet and a Stussy camouflage eye patch and a Lacoste sweatband clung to his wrist and he had wanted to start an astronomy club but due to lack of interest among his peers it never materialized and his favorite songs had the word
flying
in the title, and all of this saddened me. He sprayed Hugo Boss cologne on the back of his hand and didn’t smell it. He still hadn’t noticed that I was standing in the doorway.

“So, Mom wouldn’t let you go as the rap star, huh?” I said.

He whirled around and gasped. And then he regained his composure.

“No,” he said sullenly. He looked shameful, handcuffed.

Something in me broke. I swallowed another mouthful of wine and walked into the room.

“Well, you need platinum blond hair and a wife to beat, and since you don’t have either . . .” I had no idea what my point was; all I wanted to do was make him feel better, but every time I tried, it just seemed to add to his general confusion.

“Yeah, but Sarah’s going as Posh Spice,” he grumbled as I turned down the volume on the television.

“Well, your mom has a problem with the whole rap thing . . .” I drifted off, then caught myself. “So what are you gonna go as?”

“Um, nothing. Nothing, I guess.” A pause. “Maybe an astronaut.”

“Just an astronaut?” I asked. “Can’t you think up something a little more . . . entertaining? Mom said that’s what you were last year.”

He said nothing.

I just shuffled amiably around the vast room and pretended to be interested in a variety of things.

“Is there something wrong?” I heard him ask worriedly. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, no, no, Robby,” I said. “Of course not. I was just admiring your room.”

“But, um, why?”

“You’re very . . . lucky.”

“I am?”

I hated the way he asked that. “Yeah, I mean, you should be grateful for all the things you have,” I said. “You’re a fortunate kid.”

Wearily, slumped over, his arms at his sides, he looked around the room, unimpressed. “They’re just things, Bret.”

“I mean all I ever wanted was a TV and a lock on my door.” I made a superficial gesture with my hand. “All I wanted to do was play with Legos.”

I stared at the mobile of planets hanging in the middle of the room—the universe floating below the star-studded ceiling. The satellites in orbit, the rockets and astronauts, the spaceships and moon rocks and Mars and the fiery meteorite heading toward Earth and the concerns about extraterrestrial sightings and the need to establish colonies throughout the solar system. It all seemed horribly useless to me because the sky was always black in space and there was no sound on the moon and it was another world where you would always be lost. But I knew that Robby would argue that far beneath its freezing craters and treacherous sand-blown surfaces lay a warm and yielding heart. It took only two and a half seconds for a laser to flash from Earth to the moon and back again, as Robby had told me at that wedding in Nashville so many years ago.

“Yeah, I guess an astronaut,” he said.

“Okay, that’s cool,” I said. “I think that’s a cool costume.”

I finally noticed the helmet on the bed and the accompanying orange NASA suit hanging on a hook in the closet. “I’ll see you downstairs, bud.”

Robby kept staring at me until I left the room and closed the door behind me. I flinched when I heard it lock. A sconce flickered as I walked past it.