A Tapless Shoulder (19 page)

A minute
later my phone beeped, it was a text from him.
Dude, I was messing with you, I just ran into
Katie in the mall, she told me you were in here!

I texted him
back,
Ok
thanks
.

I was lying
on the couch while the boys played with empty cardboard boxes. My
eyes were closed, my mouth was open, my mind was somewhere in
between. “Do you guys want me to put a movie on for you while daddy
lays here and rests?” They were silent or I was deaf. A box fell
from the table, and then hands and knees pummelled on my back. Just
as I thought,
what is taking
Knuckle Butt so long
, his
hands and his knees came clambering onto my head and he had brought
a toy.

I sat up,
carefully unraveling them so as to not send anyone falling to the
floor. I smiled and touched each of them on the cheek.
They were getting so big so
fast
, I thought. I wanted to
hold onto them so we’d stay there the way we were: safe, happy… and
tired, but safe and happy nonetheless. I smiled; Ding Ding looked
at me and smiled back. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and then
kissed Knuckle Butt’s forehead as he was moving too fast for
anything more.

I got up and
collected their cups, one beneath the coffee table and one at the
bottom of the stairs, both empty. I brought them into the kitchen,
took their lids off and rinsed them out. I left them on the
counter. I went back to the couch and sat down. I felt like I had
cords running through me that were being pulled downwards. I didn’t
like it.

“
Should we go
outside,” I ventured, hoping fresh air might pull me the other way
some, even if only for a moment. Live in the now, and that entire
moment will mean everything for that entire moment – or so I
hoped.

I put jackets
and shoes on the boys and then myself and we all went out the front
door. I opened the garage to allow them access to their bikes and
toys. Ding Ding ran to the sidewalk with the bicycle tire pump in
his hands. He aimed it down the road and pretended to shoot
something, then took aim at a passing car. Knuckle Butt, meanwhile,
was upset because he had tried unsuccessfully to drag his
peddle-car away from the entanglement with a bicycle trailer, bike
and the wagon. I lifted it straight up and out and over his head,
as he always had to watch these tasks closely. I set it down and
pushed it to the end of driveway while he followed.

Ding Ding was
slowly returning from down the sidewalk on his tricycle. I was
alarmed by my not noticing that he had even gotten his tricycle
from the garage but everyone was good, so I simply let it pass and
promised to notice the rest of their movements. The fresh start in
the fresh air begins
now,
I told myself…
every few minutes.

Knuckle Butt
nearly pushed his car into me, quickly circled back and went up the
driveway onto the front lawn and straight into the tree. He fell to
his knees and laughed. I turned from him to see Ding Ding was still
on the sidewalk, almost at our driveway. He was ever so slowly
walking his tricycle, but was now leaning over and looked very
close to completely falling.

“
Ding Ding, are you
trying
to fall on
your face?” I asked and walked closer. “What are you doing?” He
kept moving, slowly, and then I saw it: a small ant making its way
along the sidewalk in a line that was anything but straight. “Uh,
are you making sure you don’t run over that ant?” I asked with a
smile. Without looking up he nodded. When the ant was safely behind
his back tire, he started pedaling again.

“
You’re
really cute,” I called after him.

They
abandoned their bikes to run around on the lawn. There they were
colliding like they’d both been allotted the same square foot of
space to play in, a space they could only enter at top speed. It
was very frustrating to watch; it wasn’t like they were careening
down a narrow hallway. They were on open ground, and still they
kept running into one another.

“
Watch out for each other, guys,” I pleaded, “maybe
spread out
a little, away from each other,
not towards
.”

When they
weren’t running into one another it seemed they would just fall on
their own. It was like gravity never stopped inviting them to a
party on the ground and its persistence was paying off because
every now and then they just dropped.

I was glad to
be there with them, watching them run around enjoying their happy
little selves. I exhaled slowly and stretched toward the sky with
my eyes shut like they might see something they didn’t need
to.

Katie was
washing something in the sink while I leaned against the
oven.

“
Do you remember,” I started innocently, “the party we had
for, like, the first year we were together?” I paused and watched
her look my way expectantly. “You might have thought, we were just
drunk all the time, but
I
actually thought
we were
celebrating.” She laughed and I joined her, but stopped quickly and
tried to regain a tone of seriousness. “That is actually the only
reason I still go drinking with the guys now,” I said, “yeah, it’s
for conditioning. It’s true; I’m keeping myself prepped for when we
renew our vows.”

Katie again
laughed, “Oh, yeah, is that it?” She sounded dangerously close to
not believing me.

I looked at
her as though surprised. If sounding honest didn’t bring about her
blind faith, I didn’t know what would. “Yeah,” I continued in a
deeper voice like I was a huge, beastly guy, completely capable of
overlooking sarcasm, “I’m pretty sure I’ve even improved. I’ve
totally cut like eleven percent off of my beer chugging time.” I
thought if we’d been outside I might have punctuated this statement
with a good spit or
punt of a
squirrel… had one been erratic enough to cross over the toe of my
shoe at that moment. While, yes, I was fairly confident Katie was
like most: not a fan of non-flying animals being launched into the
air, but one had to stay in character for the sake of their art,
and apparently mine was idiocy. We had fun together, Katie and I,
and I liked that she liked… my art.

“
I have; totally true,” I insisted, and then marched to the
fridge to drink a beer as fast as I could. After only a few
swallows I found myself slowly thinking,
I am getting old
. I tried, and tried some more, before I finally sat at the
table, swallowing and holding the bottle up to see how much I had
left. Katie stood before the table now laughing heartily at me as I
struggled with the stupid endeavour I had claimed was easy. I
probably hadn’t really downed an entire beer all at once since
before we had even met.

“
I’m not the
man I once was,” I exhaled, diluting the air of defeat that
surrounded me with my beer breath before taking another big gulp.
“I’m frigging drowning here, and I think my mouth has gotten
smaller,” I said, feigning a bit of worry, as beer spilled down my
chin.

She looked at
me, “Um, I’m pretty sure it just keeps getting bigger.”

“
THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID,” I yelled as though I’d emailed her
and forgotten to turn the caps lock off. The opportunity had been
far too perfect: the smile, the conversation, the invitation to
come in;
Why, yes, thank you
opportunity, I would love to.

“
Be quiet,”
she whispered sharply to remind me the boys were
sleeping.

“
Sorry,” I
whispered back, “I get a little rowdy when I drink.”

“
Knuckle
Butt… Aw… Man… Holy heck… and hell.”

I forced
myself to simply stop moving and talking, like I was about to walk
into an argument I could not win because the situation was what it
was, and there was no changing that. I took a deep breath; my face
twisted. I looked at Knuckle Butt. I sighed. “Two questions: where
is your diaper? And why aren’t you wearing it?”

I picked him
up carefully and carried him to the bathtub to rinse him off. After
which I dried him and set him down. “Come here, please,” I said as
I went into his bedroom. I suited him with a diaper, pants and a
shirt, “That oughta slow you down some.” I said and then went back
to the “scene”. There was his diaper beside the bookshelf, messy
side up. If one was dealing with an open diaper on the floor; that
was just how you wanted it. It was, however, made horrible by his
having stepped in it. Maybe he wanted to wear it as a shoe, maybe
he forgot it was there. That invariably worked against the
cleanliness the carpet had going for it, that and
that he sat down
, apparently a lot, and in several different
places. All of this happened in such a short amount of time; that
was the metaphorical knee in the groin.

I sent Katie
a text:
FUCKING FUCK. We now
have a bunch of shit stains on the carpet because crapbag removed
his bag from his crap and threw a crazy party
inside a party just outside of another
party.

Ding Ding
came up beside me and said, “I am not a little giraffe.”

“
Oh… that’s
good,” I said and stared at him, my mind distant from both of us,
“though… I’ve always kind of wanted a giraffe.” He laughed, said I
was crazy and ran off, then came right back.

“
What is
that? Is that yucky gross, blah?” he asked and hunched over,
imitating what I would do often while changing a diaper.

“
Sadly, yes,
yes it is,” I confirmed. “It’s a whole lot of yucky gross, blahhh.”
I nodded while surveying the room, wondering why Knuckle Butt
couldn’t have obsessed over one thing for one moment, and not have
wandered the town. “What happened?” I looked at Ding Ding, who was
studying the mess as well.

“
I don’t
know,” he said, “maybe something,” and held out his hand to
literally show he really didn’t know or have the answer. I
nodded.

“
Yeah, it
might just have been maybe something. Why is it all over – did you
chase him?” I pulled him toward me and hugged him with one arm,
“Okay, be careful please, Ding Ding, do not step in any of the poo
or… you know what? How about you go downstairs to play for a little
bit? I’m going to clean this up right now. Okay? Thank
you.”

I set to work
doing just that. I got all the cleaners out of the hallway closet
that didn’t say
do not use on
carpet
. I found a sponge, and
declared a dark blue towel without any examination to be old and
rag-like, and, therefore, of very limited use, and decided it would
be perfect for the task at hand.

I had just
finished with the stains, thrown the towel into a bag and put the
bag in the garbage in the garage, when Katie and her mother came
in. Oh, shopping, yes, good, good, smell? Probably that vicinity
over there, and the rest of the carpet opposite that, plus that
area right up there, yes, that does kind of include the entire
house doesn’t it, yes, you’re quite right. Oh my GOD, I know, poop
and cleaner does hang a little heavy in the air, doesn’t it? Yucky
gross, blah, I know, that’s exactly right, thank you boys for
helping your grandmother to better understand what has transpired
here as of late.

Katie’s
mother made her way to the couch, careful not to step on any of the
dark, wet areas that were still damp from the cleaners and water
and being stained with crap. I stood and looked at the doorway that
went downstairs and thought that may have been the better route. It
was too late; she had already
parked
her…
self
on the couch.

We sat while
the boys ran and jumped about everywhere. They showed us their ‘I
know you’re watching me’ routine for a while, and then began to
slow down. Katie and her mother were talking about someone that had
lived near them but moved away or something. I nodded. I was
polite. I was annoyed. I was angry. I went into the kitchen to put
coffee on. Katie came in to get the boys something to
drink.

She looked at
me, silent for a moment, and finally asked, “Okay, what’s
up?”

“
If your mom glances at the carpet once more in disgust, I
think I might just punch her in the face. I know she’s your mom, I
love her, and I will tell her that, I will say ‘I love you’ to her
as I punch her in the face.
And yes
, we both
know, I would never punch her in the face, so if we’re down there
and I suddenly punch
my
face
; you’ll know what I
mean,” I almost stopped, “Okay,
holy F
, I get it, I’m
right there, I can see
it
, I lessened it,
diminished it from piles and smears into what you see now and,
yeah, it’s ugly.
They’re shit
stains
, ugly is what they
are. What should we do? Carve them out? Cover them up? Use our
bodies to hide them? We’ll get the family to sprawl out; pretend
we’re playing Twister. ‘Hi Gramma, just laying around, awkwardly,
it’s a new game, who can look the most broken while smelling like
soap
and
poo, not as easy as it sounds.’ Maybe we could
just shit on the rest of it? I mean, it’s a
shit stain
, I’d like to know if anyone living or dead has ever went,
‘Hey, that shit stain doesn’t look so bad.’”