Probation (3 page)

H
is wide shoulders span the narrow aisle between the peep booths. He’s tall and carries a lot of weight. His belly is Jell-O but, all in all, he’s packed too solid to be called fat. He’s still wearing his work shirt.
Duffy Donlan
is embroidered above the pocket. Is that really his name or is it the logo design for the Looney Tunes fashion collection? He sees that I’m smiling and sets off in hot pursuit, following me through the maze. He’s no Cary Grant and this little cat-and-mouse chase through a dirty book store on the west side of Cleveland is hardly a romp through the streets of Paris. But it’s fun being the prey instead of the predator for a change and I slide into an empty booth, leaving the door ajar. He hesitates, then slips inside to join me.

The booth is tiny and he’s a big man. He fumbles for quarters. Somehow, he manages to drop a few coins into the box while getting my shirt unbuttoned and my pants to my knees. There’s no room to do anything but rub against each other. My nose is buried in his armpits and I work my arms around his waist. He kisses me and finishes off on my leg. I resist the affection in his hands. The attendant is swabbing out the next booth and the potent disinfectant kills any thoughts of romance.

The booth feels enormous after he leaves. I drop a few more quarters. Someone jiggles the knob of the locked door, trying to get in, smelling cum on the floor. Every few minutes the door rattles again. When I run out of quarters, I head for the parking lot.

A couple of old men smoking in their cars wink and smile as I pass. A rusty Chevy Impala with the hood propped open is parked next to my rental. Duffy Donlan looks up from the engine. His battery has died and none of these pricks will give him a jump, afraid his battleship will suck all the juice from their Toyotas and Hondas. I can hardly blame them. How would they explain it to the little woman if they had to call for a ride home from the parking lot of the Aphrodite Adult Emporium and Video Arcade, conveniently open twenty-four hours, seven days a week?
Gee, honey, just thought I’d surprise you with a two-headed dildo for your birthday next month.

Unburdened by such worries, I offer to give him a hand and help him string his battery cables between our engines. The Impala sinks closer to the pavement as he crawls behind the wheel. The motor flutters, then dies. He says thanks anyway and is startled when I say, “No problem, Mr. Donlan.” Your shirt, I tell him, pointing to the pocket.

I don’t know what comes over me but I offer him a lift home. Maybe I’m charmed by his goofy name. He asks where I’m from and what I do for a living as he guides me through residential Cleveland. He’s on the maintenance crew for Otis Elevator, eighteen years and counting. I tell him I travel around the country selling display shelving. The travel part intrigues him. He knows how many miles Cleveland is from Charlotte. He’s never even been to North Carolina but he studies the Rand McNally while he eats his cereal. He says he’d never been anywhere but Ohio and Indiana and Virginia until last summer. He doesn’t count West Virginia because he drove straight through without stopping. But in July, he flew to Alaska for six glorious days. The sun never set. He hasn’t made it to the wilderness yet, but he has a promise of a maintenance job in an office building in Anchorage.

There’s a For Sale sign in front of the wood shingle house where he lives with his mother. He insists I meet his dogs. Four nervous huskies with meat on their breath are trotting behind a chain link fence. He introduces me to Wolf Larsen, the Malamute Kid, John Barleycorn, and Buck the Third, who rattles the gate with his enormous paws.

“I take it you like to read,” I say, amused by the names of his dogs.

“I like to read about Alaska,” he says, shyly, assuming I’ll think he’s stupid because he still reads boys’ adventure novels. There’s no reason to tell him I had a son, never born, named after Jack London.

He invites me inside for a cup of coffee. It’s after two o’clock and I have an early flight. An unpacked bag waits at the hotel and my body aches for sleep. But his loneliness appeals to me for some reason, another grown man living with his mother. The tiny mudroom at the back door isn’t much bigger than the peep booth and smells of cat litter and wet garbage. I watch him padding around the damp kitchen in his stocking feet, spooning instant coffee into plastic cups and waiting for the kettle to boil. He’s nervous because the conversation is trickling away and he’s afraid I’m going to get up and leave. He rips open a bag of chocolate cookies, bribing me to stay.

He asks if I’m a Catholic. I deny it. He tells me he’s a lay deacon at his parish. I remember the holy medal dangling from his neck. There’s probably a box of breaded fish sticks in the freezer, waiting to be thawed for Friday’s dinner. He asks if I’m cold, it’s pretty nippy for this time of year, and spikes the coffee with Canadian Club. The furnace roars and heat swells in the room.

The whiskey is cheap and burns my throat. I put my hand over my cup when he offers a refill and he tops off his own. It’s warm and I’m sleepy and Duffy feels like talking. For all his size, he has a boy’s voice, a lovely tenor that’s pleasing to the ear. By his third shot of whiskey, he even has a hint of a brogue.

“I’m going north for the dogs, really. No, that’s a lie. It’s for me. I can’t wait to see the winter. The ice. I’ll be thirty-nine this Christmas. I don’t suppose I’ll ever settle down now. Nothing to keep me from going. Sweet Jesus.” He blesses himself. Either he’s a little drunk or he’s more comfortable with me.

“I’m talking about her like she’s already gone. Poor thing.” He nods to a room above the kitchen. “She’s had last rites twice now.”

She used to be his mother. Now she’s nothing but a shell with a big wet hole where her left breast used to be. She’s on morphine, and all that’s left to do is keep her comfortable and check for bedsores. He describes her clinically, without emotion. Duffy Donlan has no feelings for women, not even his mother.

“It’s been hard on her since my dad passed.” He pronounces
dad
the Irish way, with a silent “d.” I follow him into the dining room. He wants to show me the photographs on the sideboard. He points to Dad, a beautiful cocky young man with wild black hair, wearing an Eisenhower jacket.

“He died when I was twelve,” he says.

Someone clears her throat, announcing her presence. A red-haired woman with pale milky skin is standing in the doorway, a Botticelli in wire-frame glasses. She’s as modest as a nun, hiding her skinny bare feet under her nightgown.

“Teresa, the ghetto cruiser disappointed me once again and my friend Andy here gave me a lift home. Andy, my sister Teresa.”

“Good night, boys,” she says with such a wicked stress on the word
boys
that I’m embarrassed by the dirty implications in her voice. Duffy ignores her.

“She’s pissed that the house is all mine. Her dago husband’s last job was managing a Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
Didn’t he hear me when I told him my last name?
“It lasted all of three weeks. That was four years ago. She’s playing nurse, trying to make me feel guilty and give her a share of what I manage to get for this dump. I probably won’t even be able to sell to whites. Fuck her.”

I pick up a formal family portrait in somber black and white. Duffy, about sixteen, is standing behind his seated mother, his hand resting on the back of her chair. Seven younger Donlans surround them. The mother has a long Katharine Hepburn neck and that same arrogant stare. All her children are striking, with arresting eyes.

“Teresa, you’ve met. Maureen was the great beauty. She’s in Vegas now. A cocktail waitress and the mistress of the owner of a GM dealership,” he says. Duffy feels compelled to share the history of every sibling in the photograph, the common theme being his sacrifices for all the younger Donlans. His nobility is suffocating. It’s creepy, his playing house with his mother and being a daddy to her children. There’s something discomforting about a grown man sleeping under his mama’s roof, eating the food she cooks.

He asks about my family. Nothing extraordinary, I say. “Any more of that whiskey left?” I ask to avoid admitting what he and I have in common.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he says.

The bright kitchen feels like walking into daylight after the mausoleum of the dining room. I settle back on one of the hard chairs. He says we’d be more comfortable in the basement. He’s fixed it up real nice, with a huge sofa, thick carpet, and a wide-screen TV. I’m comfortable right here, I say, no intention of being lured into his lair.

“Is there anyone special in your life?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, a blatant lie.

“You’re lucky,” he says.

“How about you?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“No. Not anymore.”

“What happened?”

“He got scared. He’s a transit cop. Divorced. Buddy’s his name. He has custody of his teenage son, so we had to spend all of our time here. My mother really liked him. He knew how to talk to her, never looked bored when she complained. I met the kid when he came over to watch the Super Bowl. I was careful, really careful, watched what I said, not dropping any hints. But the kid asked too many questions once they were home. Buddy said we’d have to cool it, at least until the boy moves out of the house. He still calls, asks after my mother. He’s going to be a pallbearer at her funeral. Does your mother like your friend?”

“Yes. Yes. Very much,” I say, completely comfortable with lying.

“You sure you don’t want to go downstairs?”

“Yeah, I like it up here.”

“It’s a shame you live so far away.”

“I don’t always plan on living in Charlotte,” I say, surprising myself.

“I bet you’d really like Alaska.”

I tell him I’m a Southern boy, so terrified of ice and snow I won’t even touch a Popsicle.

“You ought to try it. Come up. You have a place to stay. That would be great. I never meet anyone like you.”

You never meet anyone like me? Count your lucky stars.

“Then again, you already have someone in your life.”

Right, Duffy Donlan. I’m taken. And even if I weren’t, how could we run off together, live happily ever after, until death do us part? Don’t you see we have a little problem here? Whose mother will we live with? Yours or mine? Or maybe we could pack them up together, the four of us in a cottage with a white picket fence.

“You’re really nice,” he says, taking my hand.

You don’t know the half of it. I’m nice, the nicest guy in the world. Ask anyone. They’ll line up around the corner, starting with my wife, my sister, my father-in-law, all eager to testify on my behalf. On second thought, we probably shouldn’t ask them. Let’s ask my mother.
I solemnly swear it’s the whole truth and nothing but the truth that my son has sacrificed his own happiness to take on the burden of his poor widowed mother.
…Wait a minute, Duffy, that’s your mother on the witness stand, not mine.

You know and I know you haven’t made any sacrifices. It’s you who ought to be thanking her for providing the excuse to hide from yourself and the life you were born to live. While you’re at it, thank her for helping you become an achingly lonely man who grasps at the slightest act of kindness, like a ride home on an unseasonably cold late-summer night.

“Hey,” I say, “I’m really not such a nice guy.”

“Yes, you are.”

Who knows? Maybe he’s right. And if he is, why am I being cruel, denying him a few minutes of warmth in his paneled and carpeted playpen in the basement? Why am I denying myself the opportunity to allow someone to touch me with affection instead of scratching me to satisfy their own itch?

“So,” I say, clearing my throat, “it’s really late and we’re getting a little drunk. Maybe we ought to go downstairs and stretch out on that sofa for an hour or two, rest our eyes.”

Bad timing. The front door opens before he can answer. Cold air precedes the crepe-soled footsteps. The wall clock says five fifty. Duffy looks over my shoulder and smiles.

“Cold out there, ain’t it, Nancy?”

She works the arms of her coat onto a hanger.

“It’s going to get a lot colder before summer rolls round again. Did you pick up the syringes like you were supposed to? What, no coffee made?” She picks up his cup and sniffs, clicking her tongue.

“Honestly, Duffy,” she says, laughing. “Am I a nurse or your nursemaid?”

“Go on up to her. I’ll put the water on.”

Nice to meet you, she says even though we haven’t been introduced. Duffy gets up and fills the electric percolator with water.

Nancy is only gone a few minutes. He holds his breath when he sees her. Perspiration glazes his face and drips from his chin.

“I’m sorry, Duffy. I’m so sorry,” she says.

I don’t belong here. I’m a stranger, embarrassed by the intimacy of the moment. He blinks twice and blesses himself.

He reaches for his wallet and hands the nurse a twenty.

“Go have a nice big breakfast at Shoney’s. Take an hour. Take two. I’m going to have one more drink. I’ll be asleep when you get back. Wake Teresa then. Tell her it just happened. Just don’t let her wake me. Let her call the others. I don’t want to listen to their shit.”

He gives her a big hug.

“There, there. Don’t be sad. You did a terrific job.” She hugs him back and, turning to leave, gives me a hug too. I don’t know why. I take the shot of whiskey he offers and extend my condolences.

“Thanks,” he says. “Jesus Christ, it’s hot in here.” He strips off his shirt, soaked with sweat. The house is close to the airport and the first takeoff of the morning rumbles overhead.

“I have a plane to catch.”

“I know. I know. Too bad. Here, take this.”

He scribbles his phone number in Cleveland and the address of an office building in Anchorage. “I’ll be there by next April at the latest. Come out. You really should come out.”

He walks me to my car. He throws his arms around me when I go to shake his hand. His skin is on fire. It feels like he wants to squeeze the last breath from my chest.

“I’d love to fuck your brains out,” he whispers in my ear.