My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (14 page)

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Authors: KATE BERNHEIMER

BOOK: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
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NEIL LABUTE
With Hair of Hand-Spun Gold
I’M BACK.
I am back and you knew I would be. You knew it. Didn’t you? Yes, you did, don’t give me that look, you knew exactly what was going to—doesn’t matter. I’m here now so we should get started, get this thing all started and going. Go ahead, you can throw up, it’s not going to stop me, make me feel bad, I promise you. It’s not. You’re getting exactly what you deserve here, you are, you deserve it and that’s what is going to happen. Fate, or Karma or, or whatever they call it. Kismet? I know that was a play or something, a musical, but I think that word means the same sort of thing. Something happening that was supposed to happen and then it does. It comes true. Wham! Just like that. “Instant Karma,” isn’t that what Lennon called it? Not the dictator, but the Beatles guy. In his song. Right? He said “it’s gonna get you” and that is just so goddamn true. It reaches out—figures out where you are, takes its time to find you—and bam! Before you can even move or anything, it’s got you by the throat and you are fucked. It’s true, my dear. You are motherfucked. And so that’s you, today, at this very minute. Or second, or whatever you wanna call it. You are about to be motherfucked. By me.
I can see by the look on your face you’re surprised, so don’t pretend. Do not pretend that you were ready for this one because you weren’t. You were not. I came out of the blue, as they like to say, out of the darkness like some avenging angel—I’m not sure that’s the exact right analogy but you get what I mean—I appeared and it has thrown you for a loop. A big ol’ loop and you don’t know what to do, what to say even, sitting there on a park bench with your mouth hanging open and staring at me. Wow. I really caught you off guard, didn’t I? You knew this could happen but you still were not ready for it. Not today. Well, I can’t say that it doesn’t make me happy because it does. It makes me smile right down into my soul and that’s the truth so you might as well know it. I am happy to see you sweat. Really. Honestly I am. I mean, who knew? How would I ever know that it’d be this easy to make that happen, to bring your little world to a halt, for it to come crashing down around your ears? How could I be privy to a thing like that? You can’t, that’s the answer. You wouldn’t until you just go ahead and do it and now I have and I’m aware, by looking at your face I’m aware of the magnitude of what’s going on right now, at this moment, as we sit here quietly in the middle of this park and your kid is playing on the swings and life bounces merrily along. If you could scream or draw a gun or kill me even, stab me and cover me with dirt right here in those bushes behind us, I think you would. I know it, actually. I know that you would. And, to be fair, I might do the same damn thing if I was you, shoe on the other foot or whatever people say to mean what I’m talking about. I might also want to do you harm. Well, I do, actually, want that, me, I’m saying, shoe on my own foot and staring at you right now. I do want to bring a kind of harm to your life. And I’m about to. Yes, I am. Yes indeed.
Did you ever think, I mean, years ago, when you first saw me—picked me out of some gym class as the one you wanted—could you ever even imagine that it might come to this? I can’t believe that you would’ve, right? No, never, not in a million years or you probably wouldn’t have done it, that’s what I think. That has to be the truth because, I mean, why would you otherwise? You know? Yeah. It’s true. You wouldn’t. No, I was supposed to be a good boy, do what you say, nod when you ask, and that was going to be that. Easy as pie, that’s the phrase. My mom uses it—still, to this day—and it fits and so that’s why we say it, why I just said it now. Because it’s true. You planned on using and discarding me along the way without my ever knowing it. As easy as pie. And you did, to be fair, you got away with it for a really long time. True? I mean, a good long time. Right up until about seven months ago, and that, my dear, is a hell of a run. Nice long run. You shouldn’t look so nervous because you gave it a real go so that’s at least something. And look, it’s not like I plan on telling anybody, I really don’t, I mean, who could I tell? Hmm? Who? I mean, who would ever believe a story like this one?
I don’t mind that you’re black, I don’t, I’ve always been attracted to black women. Well, not necessarily black but darker-skinned people. Girls with tans and that sort of thing. And you were definitely that, which stood out at our school, didn’t it? You certainly did. Talk of the town, some might say, a real object of interest, and I’m sure a few of those men you worked with—teachers and coaches and administrators—they probably found you rather exotic and worth chatting up in the lounge. I’m sure it happened, I know it did, in fact, because I would see you often from where I sat in the office, waiting to get yelled at again by the vice principal. What was that jerk’s name, I don’t remember now. It doesn’t matter, he died years ago from cancer—one of the bad ones, like bowel or brain or something—and I recall not feeling a thing when I heard that news. Maybe even said “good” under my breath or smiled or something. Not instant, but Karma. But you didn’t talk to those men, did you, my dear, because you were already married, already wrapped up in a relationship, and so you made a choice, you picked me out of the crowd—maybe there in the office rather than in gym class, now that I think about it, maybe so—and said to yourself that I was the one. The worthwhile one, the one to play with and drive wild with desire. I know you helped me, too, I know that, gave me a belief in myself and pushed me to study and try and get into junior college even, you did all that and I appreciate it, I do, but all the while you made me feel like I was your boy. The guy you wanted in your life, if only your husband wasn’t around, if only things were different. If only. And I believed you, oh how I gobbled up the shit you spewed, gobbled it up and swallowed it down and smiled at you in the hall and from the bleachers and as you drove off in your dirty yellow bug on your way home each night. I believed you and loved you and gave you my little teenage heart there at West Valley High and I’ve never done that again, no, not ever, I haven’t. To anyone ever ever ever again because my trust is gone, disappeared like you did the next year to a new school with the whisper of “it could never work” and “this is a real opportunity for me” and it was like you never existed. An empty office was your vapor trail (cut-backs didn’t bring another of your kind, a counselor, into school until my senior year). Your desk and chair, alone in the dark, was where I would eat my lunch most days unless they caught me and threw me out—that was all that was left of our love and time together. And there was love, wasn’t there? Real, abiding love. I swear there was. Look at me right now and tell me there was and I will go away, leave you to watch your little girl as she runs about in the bright sunshine and I’ll be gone. Say it, just once, say it to me now and mean it, while I sit here with you. I beg you. Go on.
You can’t, can you? No, of course you can’t because it’s not true and you wouldn’t want to lie about that, lead me on or anything, now, would you? Absolutely not. Part of the strange, strict principles by which you live your life, even though our entire union was absolutely that. A pure and utter lie, one that you lived so easily and without remorse for so long. That’s hardly fair, though, is it, because how could I know your feelings about me at that time? That’s a good point and I stand corrected, or sit corrected, actually, sit corrected here on this bench with you. I-sit-corrected. Perhaps you did love me once, a while ago, a long, long time ago when I was sixteen and just learning to drive and we would meet off in the woods or at your home on an unexpected morning and make love. Yes, love, I’m sure it was, only that, never just fucking, and you taught me everything I know about that undiscovered country. It was well beyond description and nothing I plan to embarrass you with right now, not in front of your daughter as she plays, but it was something lovely and I remember it like it was just yesterday even though a decade or so has slipped away. Lying there, inside of you and looking into your eyes, the quiet of a forest above us and your beautiful skin soaking up the sun, kissing that mouth of yours, those lips that sucked me in and devoured me, I had no words for what you were doing to my life. And nothing now, now that I know the truth. The real truth of what we were doing there and why you loved me or said you did and watched me fall deeper and deeper into the endless chasm that was you.
Did I ever tell you that I imagined killing him? Your husband? Oh yes, so many times. When it was at its deepest and worst, the sickness of love made me want to be rid of him for all time and eternity. I planned his death a dozen times, in various ways and done so successfully by me that even you believed that the car wreck or the mugging or hanging was a suicide or a mistake or a simple twist of fate. And life goes on and I was suddenly with you always, at your side, and we made a new life for ourselves in another state or country or on an island somewhere and the last that anyone ever saw of us was us running, hand in hand, down the beach and off into that sunset people are always talking about. Yes. Was I wrong to think that? At the time I didn’t feel I was, it felt justified by what you said about him, about your life together. Just phrases, really, a little clue tossed off now and again over a meal at A&W, some little comment that made me believe he didn’t appreciate you, that he didn’t want children with you or to grow old with you or anything anymore, that you were trapped and alone and I was your savior, me, that only I could rescue you from the coal mine of a life that your marriage had become. Some white guy from home, a good family and a bad mistake is what you called it, and I took it to heart, believed that his inability to father a child was of his own making rather than biology, that he was withholding from you and cold and distant and had even laid a finger—or more than that, a hand one time—on your sweet face that I had come to adore and would protect with my life. Did you know that at the time, that I would’ve done even that, died for you? Of course you did. Sixteen-year-olds can hide nothing. I was like some puppy chasing after you, big paws and tongue and silly and sweet. But you didn’t want those things, did you? No, not all of them. Just one. One thing from me and when you had it you left so quickly, with such a fluttering of your wings that I was dazed and dazzled and I believed your whispers. I watched you drive away, even helped you pack your garage, if you can remember that, helped your husband pack up things into a U-Haul and swept it out and washed it down before you left. You paid me twenty dollars there in front of him, smiled at me like we’d never met, and off I trotted, back home to wait for a call that never came and an address that was never, not ever, no never sent.
And now you have your child, that thing you always said would make your life complete. Your husband, too, he got swept up in your miracle and never asked for a blood test that would tell him the horrid truth about you and your deeds. Your missteps. Your tiny plots. Instead you are a happy family living here, where I have found you and have now come to ask for something in return. Of course I have, don’t look so surprised, my dear, for there is always a price to pay for things like this, when you have done what you have done, and now the time has come.
All I want is nothing. That is, that nothing should change from this very moment on. I want you to know I know where you’re at, who you are and what you’ve become. No, you didn’t eventually divorce as you imagined to me you would, a life on your own in another city where I might join you one day, “when you’re grown,” you would say, and oh how I believed you and your words. Those intoxicating words that spewed from your beautiful lips into my ear as I held you and hoped for such a day. But that day never came as you well know, it never did and on you stayed with your man—why wouldn’t you, for there were never any plans on your part to leave him, to be alone, but to add, add a child to the mix and live happily ever after. My child. A child you took from me and I never even knew it. How clever of you, how smart and wily and clever. And almost perfect, the plan, it was almost the most perfect of plans but who knew that my sister—my stupid younger sister who I never really liked and I always thought was a little bit retarded—who could imagine that she could pass a course and would end up working for your doctor in town? You left no trace or so you thought, but files are files and so they stay, and one nosy day she glanced inside to see that your husband, that man I was so ready to hate and kill and despise, she saw that he was empty and void and unable to provide and she thought this was interesting and said so to me and my family one evening out of the blue. They all recalled you fondly and thought it was a sad and strange tidbit about a lovely woman who had been so helpful to their son, but I knew better, didn’t I, my dear? I now knew that you had used me to become pregnant and then off you ran to hide your secret from the world. And me. The one who wanted to be your world but was really only a pawn. A sorry little pawn in your grisly and gory game of love.

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