A Tapless Shoulder (32 page)

He had faded
into his memories but then returned. “I didn’t know what to do with
you,” he said honestly. “You seemed to be too stubborn to let
anything really get at you or to at least let it show. Since your
mother passed away; you’ve never once had a serious talk with me
about anything. You stutter from topic to topic. And I’m sorry for
that too; I know I can do it too. I maybe should have just grabbed
you by the shoulders. Maybe you should have grabbed me by mine. But
we didn’t, on account of, well – I guess I got carried away myself…
with carrying on,” he said with another short laugh. “I kept
expecting you to blow up at me,
something
, and you
didn’t and you wouldn’t! It got to the point where I thought
anything
would have been for the better. I talked to Donnie and
he said he’d go along with it and tell you if you asked that, yes,
he liked to get ‘dressed up’. So I guess that was something in
terms of a plan.” He seemed impressed that he had actually done
something intentionally amidst all his ‘planning.’ He shook his
head. I wondered if he shook his head as much as I did and if it
wasn’t then genetic. “Anyhow,” he continued, “Candy said that she
and you actually talked today.” He smiled proudly, “I love you, we
all do,” he nodded and looked at the others. “We just all fear
you’re fading farther and farther into that head of yours – life is
on the outside,” he exclaimed with a big laugh. I wanted to shake
him, to tell him there was nothing funny about any of it and that
he hadn’t done anything but have a big party for
himself.

Katie stepped
forward, with a sympathetic smile, like I may have been cured of
something awful or possibly given something awful. “Well, it’s
true: we do all love you. That part I’m in complete agreement with.
As for the rest of it, yeah: no idea,” she squinted like it’d been
her fault. “I am going to say this though, you have built a wall
and that just isn’t you, it’s not the person your dad and I and
everyone else have known for so long, and, well, we want – I need
you back too,” she said desperately.

My dad was
nodding in agreement. Candy and Nate unintentionally caught my
attention. She was slowly tilting this way and that, showing Nate
different angles of her cleavage. They were giggling like little
kids… or little perverts,
I
mean, come on,
you’re
at the mall
.

I felt dizzy
and like we were having an intervention but had singled out the
wrong person. Katie held me up with a hug, or so it felt; with her
arms around me, her cheek soft and warm against mine; my body
unsure of its direction. Still smiling, my dad said, “The way I saw
it, I needed to shake the ground beneath you so if the walls didn’t
crumble, maybe we’d at least bounce you right out of that place
you’d put yourself away in.” He chuckled a little, and I
thought,
so that’s how it’s
done
. He went on, “Our
little group
referred to itself as the
crazies
.
That was easier than ‘
people
on the path to resolving problems.’
We…”

“
So,” I interrupted as Katie stepped away. I had to go over
some things first, “you and the ‘crazies’ were sitting around and
someone’s like, ‘hey, what are you doing,’ and you said, ‘we’re
planning on destroying my son’s spirit or soul or smile, whatever
we get to first or last; we’re crazy – we don’t know. And they’re
like, ‘
We like
cake.
’” I laughed a hollow
laugh and shook my head. I shook my head too often, I thought, and
wondered if it was possible to develop arthritis of the neck from
something like that. These people were going to have to help me
by
not being
idiots
, I thought piercingly,
as I stared at Nate and Candy, who now were dancing like they
didn’t know each other but desperately wanted to.

Was
this
seriously happening?
This
seriously could
not be happening. Was
that
seriously
happening?
That
seriously could not be happening.
Did
she
seriously have a
penis
?
She
seriously could not have a
penis
.

I shut my
eyes for a moment. I struggled to make sense of what I’d just
learned, or rather; what I had just heard. My dad’s ‘effort’ was a
faint idea he stumbled upon and then held onto through a drunken
haze. And for what: where had I been? From what were they saving
me?

“
I don’t – you guys are the laziest plotters ever! And for
what, Dad – what the hell was I doing or not doing that made it
seem like I needed so much help or
whatever it was
you
were offering?”

My dad
stepped forward. It struck me then just how meticulous time was
about crafting each of us and how quickly we ran out of room for
such detail. I stopped myself just shy of smiling at him out of
pity. He ran a hand along his face, either by coincidence or
knowing all too well what I had been thinking. He stared at me for
a moment. “It is only when I’m unhappy that I fear death.” I
flinched from how directly he’d spoken. His smile returned and I
nearly thanked it. “When your mom died,” he said softly, “something
came over you and that something hid you, my spirited son, away
from me.”

Apparently
what had begun as an experiment on my head was now a something
involving my heart and a wrench. There was a pain I couldn’t stop
from showing on my face. I was tired and that only made it so much
worse. I moved away from my dad, desperate for repair, and looked
to Nate. “So who was Cathy then, the one you said was a hooker?” I
asked him. I had different pieces to different puzzles and thought
they might make for worthy distractions.

“
Oh, she
really was a hooker,” he answered with a little too much honesty in
his confession for my liking. “Yeah, I’m guessing that was not so
much a part of any plan as it was… um.

“
For crying out loud, Nate,” I said, “
and
you
,” I looked at my
dad with a face that said
now
I know something I wished I didn’t
.

“
Oh, yeah,
um, well, we can’t take all the credit, the whole thing was
Rhonda’s idea,” my dad added as if we weren’t just talking about a
prostitute.

I looked at
him, “Who on earth is
Rhonda
?”

“
Oh, she’s
from Woodland Acres too.” He said as though I might have easily
guessed that had I thought about it a little longer.

“
Funny; I was thinking of that place just the other day,” I
said distractedly. “Wait… you mean to tell me a
doctor
planned all this?” I said; a little frightened at the
thought.

“
Oh no, she’s
a schizophrenic.”

“
Oh, yes; the crazies, a patient, the group, of course,
almost forgot. I don’t think I even know what to say to that. This
is my life and you – I don’t know, went way out of your way to pull
it apart… or put it together, or something, like,
what?
I seriously don’t even know.” I shook my head. “I don’t
even know,” I said again.

“
Some of her
are very nice,” he said with a wink.

“
Yeah, that’s a good… joke, I’m sure I’ll laugh about it
tonight in bed.” I had no idea how I must have looked, but my face
felt like it was reacting on its own now, and I was moving around
like if I didn’t my weight would stake me into the ground where I
stood, right there in that situation, forever. “Man, wow, I mean I
can’t believe I didn’t just guess all of this right down to
the
mental patients
interfering with my life
;
that is just so weird.” I turned away from them, then right back.
My mind had opened its hands and let go. “Nate, the hooker, you
didn’t… you know…welcome her to the ‘goodbye club,’ did
you?”

He glared at
me like I might have scorched his face a little on that one.
“
It was only
gas
,” he said in a tone that
suggested we had been over this.

“
Gassing the
ones you love is hardly redeeming,” I said pointedly, and laughed
for the sake of my sanity. “Nate, buddy, you’re better than fat
hookers, much better,” I paused, “well, maybe that’s an
exaggeration, that, ‘much,’ just jumped in there, but given the
circumstances, what the hell, eh? What the hell,” I repeated
slowly, trying to figure out exactly that. What the hell. It was a
statement now. What the hell. I looked at Nate squarely. “I just
bug you because someone has to, right?” He nodded; his appreciation
in the gesture. We didn’t need to look far for it; it was always
there, no matter how faithless our banter became. He could take a
joke better than anyone I knew, and wreck it, but there was still
hope. That I knew. I nodded, “Yeah.”

My dad stood
looking at me with his hand on his head, “I don’t know,” he said,
letting the words drift between us, “I thought maybe you
would
at least
get a book out of all this, hell,
maybe even a better life.” Laughing, he added, “I think I had to
drink just so I could go through with anything.”

“
Okay, two things:
why
would I write
about this? No, actually, I don’t mean that. I think I mean,
how
would I write about this?” I paused to see if he was going
to catch up with what I was thinking. “We can skip that, that’s…
let’s just move on.
That’s
why you were
drinking?
That’s
why? Yeah, it helped, did it?” I
felt like I was talking to young child, a young child that drank
too much. “Is that what helped you pass out in front of me and pour
beer all over yourself? I
really
hope you
wouldn’t have done that without alcohol. Yeah, I’m just trying to
imagine you getting ready for that, all that preparation and
opening of bottles, man; the work you put in
there.”

He looked at
me unimpressed and possibly even embarrassed, which was something I
wasn’t sure I’d ever seen. “Are you done?” he asked
flatly.

“
No, but I
can be. I can probably just stop. Um, though I had a whole thing I
was going to say about you going to Mexico – in the middle of
dinner. You know, and that you should have at least borrowed our
camera, so you’d have mementos, stuff like that. But I don’t have
to get into it, I mean, if everyone gets what I’m getting at, then,
yeah, we’re good. Nate, you see how what he said was maybe, since
I’ve… yeah, okay, good.” I threw my hands into the air,
flabbergasted, “How did you even get on a plane?”

“
Something
started to take form,” he said, answering a different question I
hadn’t asked. “And like an iceberg, a lot of it remained unseen.
That night when you met Candy, and I was completely fall-over
drunk,” he laughed, “why didn’t you call me up the next day and
yell at me? Even when we sat face to face, you let it all slide;
you didn’t call me on anything. So I just pushed it farther and
harder, hoping something would eventually give. I figured if I kept
going the way I was going; my only son would certainly jump in and
tell me that I had gone too far, which would have been the best
thing for the both of us. But you didn’t. Instead, from what Katie
told me; you took that fight to complete strangers. And yeah, by
the sounds of it, I don’t blame you. Sounded like they had it
coming, some people, anyway, look,” he sighed and stopped there.
Everything had been wearing on all of us, I saw that much. “You
used to be so alive, so vibrant, so just that: unpredictable, a
living being, and now, well, now you seem so tired.” He finished
talking and looked at me, maybe for that definitive sign of change
he was after.

I shut my
eyes. “That’s because I am tired! Uh, hello, I have fucking mono.
I’m like one of those dolls that sleeps and suddenly yells things.”
I looked at Katie, “They have those?”

“
Well, love, if by yelling you mean crying, then yes, yes
they do,” she said, like that could maybe pass for what I
meant.
I’ll take
it
, I thought, not about to
let some stupid nonexistent doll hold me back.

I turned back
to my dad, “I should be in bed right now, instead I’m here
trying just to be
here
. The only reason I came
out tonight was to try to talk to you…maybe about everything, or at
least something. I don’t know,” I wanted so badly to be able to
pull myself out of myself, have them fight, and let the winner do
the talking. I took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s like a
big, something I can’t describe for the life of me, is stuck in the
middle of everything and we’re just pretending it isn’t there. I
guess it’s the iceberg –
see
– I didn’t know.
And yeah; the longer I waited, the harder it became to say anything
about damn near anything. You’re right; I’ve been struggling with
everything more and more lately. At first I was blaming you, Dad,
then, well, maybe you and Nate at the same time, but now I’m
beginning to think the problem
is
me
, and it kills me
to know that and to not know
what the problem is
.”