The New and Improved Romie Futch (15 page)

“You all right, dog?” Trippy finally said.

“I guess so,” I said.

“Talking about Al.” Trippy chuckled.

Al recovered himself, plucked up his fork, removed the egg bit with his napkin, and discarded the tiny bundle of filth. He spread a fresh napkin and resumed eating.

“So,” I said, “we ought to get each other's digits, stay in touch, you know.”

“Right,” said Trippy, who immediately scrawled his number and e-mail on napkins for each of us. I did the same.

“I'm kind of between phones right now,” said Skeeter, “and can't seem to remember my e-mail password, but I'll be in touch when I get that shit settled.”

“Al?” I said.

But he was already out of his chair, striding with his tray toward that window beyond which a plump, maternal woman toiled in steam, scraping abject substances from our plates before inserting them into the orderly symbolic grid of an industrial dishwasher, a machine that obliterated every last trace of flesh and grease.

PART TWO

ONE

The parking lot was mostly empty, just as it had been when I'd arrived. Looking up at the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience, a faux brutalist monolith of precast concrete inset with greenish glass, I wondered if the whole ordeal had been a hallucination, the people I'd met figments, with no fleshy presence out in the world. I slipped on my aviators, stood listening to the tangled howl of traffic, and climbed into my truck.

I cranked the engine, heard its familiar rumble, clutched the worn phallic gearshift, and breathed in smells of musty velour. I watched two seagulls spin above a dumpster only partially concealed by sculpted shrubs. And then I pulled out into the sprawl of Atlanta, a hodgepodge of medical parks and chain restaurants, and found my on-ramp. Though it was a straight shot down I-20, the sun was in my eyes most of the way home, and I felt like a man in a desert, squinting at a ball of fire, adjusting my car visor to no avail while cursing the broken mirror flap that forced me into existential battle with my own ugly face.

Wincing at an onslaught of classic-rock clichés, I drove four hours without stopping, back to the little vinyl-sided house Helen and I had bought ten years before, now brutally refinanced in my
name, mildew-speckled and in need of a new roof. I sat in my truck, not quite ready to jump back into my old life again.

At last, as dusk came on, I hauled my old body out into the muggy air of my yard. Mosquitoes veered in to suck my blood. They bred in a drainage ditch that didn't drain, its pipe clogged with detritus and slime—one of the problems I'd put on hold when flying off to revamp my brain. But there it was now: something I'd have to deal with.

I walked up the pea-gravel drive, unlocked my door, took a deep breath, and stepped into my house. I smelled mold, leaking refrigerator chemicals, and lingering traces of Helen—the tropical tang of her waterproof sunscreen, the crisp lemon scent of her laundry soap, stubborn fragrances whose molecules had once stuck to her warm body, now empty of life—fruity chimera of the twenty-first-century olfactory-industrial complex, dead and haunting the dusty air.

•  •

The next day, after cashing my check, I decided to drop by Emerald City Retirement Village and surprise my father by coolly slipping him five hundred dollars—a drop in the bucket of what I owed him but a sign of my new and improved life.

Dad opened his back door cautiously, even though he'd gotten a good scan of me through the peephole. He'd taken to wearing suspenders on account of his stubborn potbelly and thinning frame, completing the jaunty look with midnight-blue cutoff Rustlers and Reebok EasyTones, puffy silver clodhoppers that made it look like he had robot feet.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “Look who finally rose from the dead. Where have you been, son?”

“Out of town,” I said.

“Stopped by your place last week and the week before.”

“Sorry you didn't catch me at home.”

“Shut the door quick. The AC's running.”

“
Marble heavy, a bag full of God, ghastly statue with one gray toe
.”

“What was that, son?” Dad tilted his head like a hen. “This hearing aid is crap.”

And then he ushered me into the deep interior of his prefab Cape Cod—seventy degrees, forty percent humidity, the draped windows sealed with caulk and insulated foam. I stepped into the ineffable miasma of his indoor lifestyle: the outgassing carpet, obscure air-conditioning molds, microwave-cooking effluvia, and scores of artificially scented products. In the blinding light of their kitchen, my stepmother, Marlene, a retired hairdresser, was thawing chicken in the microwave, adding a gamy tang of meat. Beyond the gleaming kitchen was the darker fluorescence of the living room. And Dad stood poised between the two realms, listening to the siren song of his wide-screen.

“Romie! Long time no see.” Marlene enveloped me in a perfumed embrace. “He's on nerve pills,” she whispered. “So his mind's all over.”

“What did you say, woman?” barked Dad, but then the TV pulled him back in. He stepped into the dimness of the living room, gravitating toward his futuristic La-Z-Boy. Because he had a guest, he did not sit down.

“It's that spot he had removed,” whispered Marlene.

“What spot?”

“He didn't tell you? On his arm. Dark in the middle, uneven edges with a strange shape. The girl at the dermatologist said it might take a week for the tests to come back, and he's a nervous wreck, swears it's a melanoma that's spread to his blood—so we got him on nerve pills.”

Marlene resembled Robert Smith, the Cure's lead singer, during his post-glam pudgy years when his cockatoo hair became a crunchy mess, his eyeliner perpetually smeared. She even favored tunics bordering on Goth—black lacy numbers with sequins and bows—which she wore with stretch pants and bedazzled sneakers.

“Maybe you can help take his mind off it all,” she said.

“I doubt it,” I said. “You know he's a committed hypochondriac.”

Marlene added a layer of frozen broccoli to a tier of chicken niblets, sprinkled on some grated cheddar, and swung around dramatically, eyes full of water, to clutch my arm.

“It's good to see you, Romie. You seem different. What you been up to?”

“
I have sailed this way and come to the holy city of Byzantium
.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.” I shrugged.

“I wish we could all go out to supper tonight,” she said. “There's this new place out by the mall called Chuckling Newt Café. It's different. Slow food fast. But you know how he is about his routine.”

“I'm sure whatever you're making will be delicious.”

“Sweetheart.” Marlene cupped my chin with her hand and gazed soulfully into my eyes. Just when I feared she'd kiss me, she let me go. “Get your butt in here, Bob,” she yelled.

•  •

At supper, the elders enjoyed mugs of Metamucil with their casserole, which was plated with whole-wheat pasta and crinkle-cut frozen carrots glazed with margarine.

“So what's new, Dad?” I said.

“Did Marlene tell you about my melanoma?”

“I doubt it's an actual melanoma,” I said.

Dad pointed at me with his fork, a carrot lanced upon it. “Melanoma's no joke,” he said.

In the bright kitchen light, Dad looked ancient as Tiresias. I could see green veins in the craterous flesh of his enormous nose. His eyes looked panicky, the pupils dilated, the bags beneath them heavy. His teeth were huge and yellow, darkening to umber near the receding gums. But his hair was thick, an iron-gray buzz cut Marlene kept impeccably trimmed.

“Were you aware that you can get melanomas on your eyeballs?” Dad said. He speared a few fusilli with his fork, dragged the pasta through the casserole's cheesy ooze, ate the morsel, chewed slowly, swallowed, and took a cautious sip of Metamucil.

“I dreamed it got down into my lymph nodes, son. Turned my blood black as motor oil. I cut my finger: out dripped something that looked like molasses.”

“Have you seen that show,” said Marlene, “where dogs do karaoke?”

“In the dream I hovered above my body,” said Dad, “watched them cut me open. Just like the surgery channel.”

“But the dogs aren't really singing,” said Marlene. “It just looks like they are.”

“I saw tumors all over my heart,” said Dad. “Looked like smoked oysters.”

“The dogs wear clothes and wigs,” said Marlene. “It's the cutest thing I've ever seen.”

The fluorescent strip lights flickered. The stainless-steel kitchen appliances cast sparks. The ceiling fan shot shadows onto the walls.

I felt dizzy. I took a swig of iced tea sweetened with some chemical that had a bite. Dad's skin glistened. The light was a strange blue white.

“Some of the dogs can sing real good,” said Marlene, “but some of them are horrible.”

Dad stood up. “You never know what's inside you,” he said. “Where's my flaxseed?”

“Same place it always is,” said Marlene. “But I'll get it. You sit down.”

Dad refused to sit until Marlene had fetched his flaxseed. He shifted his weight from leg to leg and rubbed his ornery coccyx.

“The largest tumor on record weighed over three hundred pounds,” he said.

As Dad described the monster tumor, removed from the ovary of a thirty-year-old woman in 2010, I saw lightning flash in the kitchen. It shot from the refrigerator to the stove.

And then I saw an image from the past: my father dressed in Carhartt coveralls, donning protective gloves, a helmet, boots. Lips pinched into a line, he descended into the gorge beyond our backyard, chain saw in hand. He'd be out there until dusk, fighting the jungle that, he insisted, threatened to encroach our house.

My father battled that jungle for decades, hacking through the malarial green with haunted Sisyphean eyes. He thought it would improve the ventilation around the house. But the vegetation always grew back, overnight, it seemed, feeding the mold and rot.

When Mom got sick, he gave up. His chain saw grew rusty. As my mother regressed into an infantile state, my father struggled to care for her—initiated, suddenly, into the domestic arts, the daily drudge, the endless buildup of toilet scum, dust, and crusty dishes. And the jungle crawled over the azalea hedge. Vines snaked across the grass, coiled up the patio rails. Dad turned the air-conditioning down to sixty-eight degrees. It was the only way to fight the moisture that fed the mold, he claimed. In her last days, longing to escape their freezing house, my mother took refuge in the Florida room
with her pack of cards, playing solitaire as the summer days waxed and waned, cicadas screaming outside in the green blur of the yard. She smoked cigarette after cigarette and smiled.

“Are you my son,” she'd ask me every time I visited, “or my brother?”

Her mind was gone, but the earthy part of her longed for the feel of unprocessed air, the smell of grass and trees. She'd leave the sliding glass door open, but my father didn't scold her. He'd stand alone in his dim, freezing den, looking out at the bright air where the husk of his wife played cards, slapping them down on the wicker table, laughing at the sight of carpenter bees drilling holes in the eaves.

I saw my father as an old man hunched at the door, but then a Technicolor memory flared in my skull like an old-fashioned camera flash: Dad as a younger man, decked out in gear like an action hero, his shoulders broad, his hair thick and dark as a mink's pelt. My mother was at the sink, smiling and lovely as Penelope, standing upon golden linoleum.

•  •

When I came to, my mother was fingering the wisps around my receding hairline, humming “Hotel California” out of key.

“Mom?” I said.

“Bless your heart,” she said. “That's so sweet.”

I noted the crunchy mass of her Robert Smith hair, backlit by a lamp—Marlene, not Mom. I recognized the dozens of taxidermic sculptures mounted on the walls—bobcats, coons, mallards—staring at me with glass eyes. I saw my father lurking behind Marlene, working his gums over with a vibrating massager that emitted a soft hum.

“Honey,” Marlene said, “you passed out.”

“We woulda taken you to the emergency room”—Dad removed the plastic wand from his mouth—“but I know you don't have health insurance. One hospital stay and
bam
! You'd be wiped out.”

“Don't start up on that,” said Marlene. “Give him a chance to wake up.”

“I kept an eye on your vitals,” said Dad. “The blackout lasted for about five minutes.”

“When you came to,” said Marlene, “we walked you to the bedroom.”

“Slept for about thirty minutes after that,” said Dad.

“I'll be okay,” I said. But when I tried to sit up, I felt my discombobulated brain undulating like wax globs in a lava lamp. I lay back down.

“You hungry, baby?” said Marlene. “You didn't finish your supper.”

“Not really.”

Dad scooted a chair up next to the bed. “Go fix him something,” he said. “I'll keep an eye on the boy.”

Dad massaged his gums as woodland creatures snarled behind him. With the exception of the buck that hung over their faux fireplace, Marlene had crammed Dad's entire taxidermic oeuvre back here in the guest room, along with one piece by my grandfather Roman: a half-pint primate with mischievous eyes. I could still remember the taxidermic wonders on display in my grandfather's house. There, I first smelled the uterine brine of the sea, patted the belly of a shaggy black bear, and inspected the miraculous ears of bats, the diverse patterns of snakes, the creepy feet of a three-toed sloth.

Mom had loved Grandpa Roman's monkey and displayed it on our dining room buffet. She'd spread Dad's creatures throughout the house: boar head snarling over the fireplace, bobcats crouching on end tables, armadillo perched on the toilet tank. She'd had a sense of humor that'd kept Dad's darkness in check.