The Man Who Cancelled Himself (17 page)

“Didn’t he recognize your voice?”

“Nah, I got me one of these voice-changer phones,” he replied proudly, swiveling it around to show me. “Looks totally ordinary, but it ain’t. Can disguise your voice sixteen different ways at the push of a button. Make you sound like a secretary, a kid, whatever. Digital voice modification, they call it. Greatest invention in the world.” He opened a small refrigerator behind the desk, removed a half-empty bottle of mineral water, and took a swig from it. He watched the pigeons some more. “My earliest memory is biting the mailman when I was three. Sunk my teeth right into the dude’s leg. Drew blood. Poor fucker had to get stitches and a tetanus shot.” He cackled gleefully. “Damn, was I a little rockhead or what?” Now there was a knock on his door. “Christ, it never stops,” he complained. “Yeah?!”

It was Chad. He had a tan leather knapsack slung over one shoulder and a penitent look on his ruggedly handsome face. “Just wanted to say good night, Lyle,” he said meekly.

Lyle crossed his heavy arms. “G’night, Chad,” he said coldly.

Chad lingered there in the doorway. “Look, I’m real upset about what happened before. And real sorry.”

Lyle’s face broke into a wide grin. “Hey, don’t be, man,” he said easily. “Nothing bad happened. We both care. We’re both trying to find our way, and we will. I know it. Now you go on home. Have a glass of wine. Make love to your beautiful wife. We’ll tackle it in the morning, okay?”

Chad lit up. He was an actor like any other—hungry for approval, especially from his director. “Okay! See you tomorrow!” The man practically flew out the door.

Lyle nodded contentedly. “He just showed me a lot of class, doing that. I’m starting to like what I see. I think the Chadster’s gonna be okay. Yup, I have a mo’ better feeling about him now.” He straggled to his feet with a grunt and padded off to his bathroom. “Much mo’ better.”

I sat there, wondering how long it would take me to get used to Lyle Hudnut’s mood changes. Maybe you never did. Maybe you just got used to being continually off balance. They say you can get used to anything—if you have to.

“Where were we, pal?” he called out. He was taking a pee in there with the door open.

“You just bit the mailman.”

“Oh, right.” He cackled. “Like I said, I was a rockhead—right outta the gate.” There was the roar of a urinal being flushed. He returned. “Dunno why. Just came natural to me. I was
baaaad,”
he boasted. “Always fighting with the other neighborhood kids in the sandbox. If one of ’em wanted to play with my shovel, I’d fight him. If I wanted to play with his shovel, I’d fight him. I was constantly having to be dragged off of somebody, biting, scratching, kicking. None of their moms would let ’em near me after a while. Especially on account of I was so big for my age.” He flopped back down on the sofa. “They thought I was some kind of bully.”

“And were you?”

He considered this. “What I was … I was born to be a rebel, y’know? Born to be wild. Bad to the bone.”

“Slow down, I think there’s a song in there somewhere.”

“Just born too soon, that’s all. I mean, we’re talking fifties suburbia, here. The age of conformity. Me, I was a free spirit. Too hip for their games and their bullshit. Nursery school, kindergarten … forget about it. I wouldn’t go along. Any kind of authority made me
crazy.
I’d call the teacher names. I’d make ’em
sorry.
First two nursery schools called up Aileen after one day and said get this whacko little motherfucker out of here. Another time and place, they’d have let me be free to be made. Not then. Then they tried to make me toe the line.” His voice had a hard edge now. “Because I was
different.
And because different was
bad.
That’s sure how Herb and Aileen saw it. I freaked ’em out, totally. Bay Shore was a small town. They ran a local business, belonged to the Chamber of Commerce. They wanted to fit in. They didn’t want to be known as the people whose kid bit the mailman.” He took a gulp of water. “So they had my head examined,” he recalled fiercely. “When I was five.”

“What was that like?”

“They were both with me. Must have closed the store for the day. Took me to the child guidance center at the children’s hospital in Central Islip. Got me checked out, top to bottom. For hyperactivity—not. For brain damage—not. They gave me all of these tests—IQ, Rorschach. Know what they figured out? I was a fucking genius. My IQ was like a hundred and ninety-something. That’s what was ‘wrong’ with me. I was too fucking smart for my age. They figured once I started school and had a way to channel myself, I’d be cool. They attributed my problem to frustration.”

“And to what do you attribute your problem?”

“I had no problem,” he snarled. “They had the problem.”

Whoops of laughter came from the direction of The Boys’ office. They were still in there working on rewrites with The Kids and Lulu. Lyle glanced at the wall, clearly hankering to run into Katrina’s office so he could stick his Super Ear against the wall and hear what they were saying about him. Instead he stuck a huge, fat foot up on the coffee table and crossed his arms tightly against his chest.

“How did you do once you started school?”

“Shitty,” he snapped. “Academically, I was fine. Straight
A
’s. But I just couldn’t stand it, having to sit there all of those hours, doing what I was told. So I’d make ’em pay. If there were guinea pigs in a cage, I’d let ’em out. If there were pots of paint, I’d pour ’em out. If they said to draw an apple, I’d draw a car. I was a contrary fucking rockhead. I remember one time my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Kellam, told me to close the window. I said no, I was hot. She said close it or she’d send me to the principal’s office. So I closed it. And then I put my fist through it. Took twenty-seven stitches to close me up.” He showed me the faint white scars across the knuckles of his right hand, proudly, as if they were earned in battle.

“Did you get along better with the other kids?”

“Didn’t want to,” he sniffed. “They were brainless sheep. Didn’t interest me, except to pick on. If they were playing dodgeball at recess I’d take their ball away, to piss ’em off. I remember there was this one little goody-goody, Nancy Linden. A real teacher’s pet, y’know? She called me a ‘big penis’ for spoiling everyone else’s fun. So I spit on her, just to see what she’d do.”

“What did she do?”

“Wimped out. Told the teacher on me, who told the principal, who called my parents to come get me. They were always coming to get me. My behavior was a source of great shame to them.”

“Is that why you kept doing it?”

He grinned at me. “Maybe.”

“That’s not a strong enough answer, Lyle.”

He snorted. “You sound just like God sometimes.”

“Your readers want to understand you. Help them out. Tell them what was going on inside your head.”

He heaved a big sigh. “I don’t know if I can, Hoagy. I just had this … this
energy
boiling inside me. Remember when you were a little kid sitting in church, squirming, bored to death, choking from your necktie, ready to run screaming up the aisle? Well, I felt that way
all
the time. At school, at home, everywhere. I felt trapped. I felt like I was gonna go crazy if I had to keep quiet for one more second. I had to
do
something. Make some noise. There was never a time I didn’t feel that way—except for when I was acting up, making a scene. A born rebel, like I said.”

“And a born performer.”

“You got that right.” His eyes twinkled at me. “Sometimes I’d just escape. Take off from school at recess and not come back. Scared the shit out of the big people, which was part of the fun, no question. I’d prowl around town on my bike. Go down to the beach, or the movies. I loved to sit in movie theaters by myself. Didn’t care what the movie was. It was the dark that drew me, the images of somewhere else, anywhere else, flickering away up on the screen. I felt swallowed up by it. I felt free.”

“Is that how you felt that day in the Deuce Theater?”

He stared at me. “Christ, Hoagy,” he said hoarsely. “You’re absolutely right. That was me doing just what I did when I cut school thirty years ago. And for basically the same reason. Wow, that’s twisted, really bent. Let’s put it in the book.”

“It’s in.”

He rubbed a gloved hand over his round moon-face. His whole face seemed to be made of rubber when he did that. “Since my IQ was so high, the school figured my ‘problem’ was I wasn’t being challenged enough by the curriculum. So they tried skipping me a year, directly to the fourth grade. But I fooled ’em. I was still the same old rockhead, nuttin’ but trouble. So they called in Herb and Aileen and said, hey, do something with this kid. We can’t handle him anymore. He needs too much attention. Not fair to the other kids. Which meant another trip to the child guidance center, and more tests. And guess what they discovered? I had trouble interacting with people—particularly my parents.”

“Did you hate your parents?”

He turned evasive. “Not then, no.”

“Did you love them?”

“They were there, that’s all.”

“Did you think they loved you?”

“I had no idea. I didn’t know what love was.”

“Did you blame them?”

“For what?”

“For how you were.”

He scratched his head. “Lemme think about that one.”

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

He gazed out the window. The pigeons were gone, and it was getting dark. Lights were on in the windows across the air shaft. “I accepted the way I was,” he said slowly. “I liked the way I was. The only thing I didn’t
get
was how come I was never happy.”

“Happy how?”

“I never laughed when I was a little kid,” he confided. “Not ever. I had no comprehension of humor.”

Still don’t,
I could almost hear Tommy Meyer crack. The man’s nasty wit was contagious.

“It was years before I learned how to laugh,” Lyle confessed. “Maybe that’s why it means so damned much to me, now to make kids happy. Because I wasn’t.” He reddened. His intimacy had made him uncomfortable. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to turn corny on you.”

“You can turn any way you want on me, Lyle. I’m your collaborator, not your audience.”

“Thanks, Hoagy. That’s nice of you to say.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “The shrinks said I should start therapy. They would, being shrinks.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“And how did your parents react to that?”

“They freaked. Working people didn’t go to shrinks, not in those days. Especially not ten-year-old kids. Not unless they were fucked-up big-time. To the parents, it was like there was some stigma attached to it. Shame. Me, I thought it was a complete bust. Twice a week Aileen would take me to some doctor’s office. He’d ask me a bunch of stupid questions, like what I did that day and how I liked it and what I dreamt about. He was a total bozo. His glasses were crooked, and he smelled like rotten eggs. I called him Doctor Buttwipe. Once a week all three of us had to go see him together after dinner. Family therapy, they called it. Doctor Buttwipe would tell us all to be more patient with each other and communicate our feelings better. Aileen would get real defensive, like he was judging her or something. Herb would hardly say a word. Although I think Buttwipe must have told him to do more things with me. Because he was suddenly in my face a lot.”

“In your face how?”

“Herb’s big thing was tinkering. Man was a major do-it-yourselfer. He was always installing his own lawn sprinklers or putting together a hi-fi or fucking around under the hood of the car. All of which I hated. Still do. Can’t stand any of that suburban handyman shit. Won’t touch a screwdriver.” He gulped down some more mineral water, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his caftan. “Plus I got zero aptitude for it.”

“We tend not to be good at things we don’t want to be good at.”

“Not true.” He grinned at me. “You’re good at TV.”

“I asked you not to remind me.”

“I’m pleased. Can’t I be pleased?”

“You can be anything you want. It’s your show.”

“You got that right,” he said defiantly. “All I wanted to do was read comic books and eat Fudgsicles, but suddenly Herb wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. He even started dragging me out to his ham shack. He was one of them ham radio enthusiasts. Built his own Heathkit shortwave. Converted part of the garage into his workshop. He’d lock himself in there after dinner, talk to his ham radio buddies all over the free world. I guess it was his way of getting away from Aileen.”

“And what was she doing with herself?”

Lyle tugged at his fleshy lower lip. “To tell ya the truth, I don’t have much memory of what Aileen was up to. Other than staring at the TV. She always went to bed early, I remember. She got tired. ‘Your mom’s not strong, Lyle,’ Herb would say to me. ‘Not like we are.’ He bought me a Heathkit of my very own for the two of us to build together. Tell me, did yours ever pull that gung ho father-son shit on you?”

“He tried.”

Lyle raised his chin. “You two get along?”

“Not yet.”

He nodded approvingly. “My fingers were so thick and clumsy, and I had zero patience for reading all of those stupid directions. I mean, none. Finally one night I just swept the whole damned thing off the workbench onto the floor and stormed into my bedroom. Herb followed me right in there and said, ‘You
will
build this radio with me, Lyle.’ He turned it into a real battle of wills, which was a major mistake. He wasn’t in my league. No way. I won hands down.”

“How?”

“I burned down the ham shack,” he replied, cackling proudly. “Right to the ground. Got me some lighter fluid, some crumpled newspapers, and
wham!
Whole fucking garage went up like kindling—with our car inside. It blew up. Neighbor’s porch caught on fire. I practically torched the whole neighborhood. Ya shoulda seen it. Took three fire trucks to put the thing out.”

“Why did you do it, Lyle?”

He stared at me blankly. “To get my way, of course. I think that was the first time Herb and Aileen realized that they couldn’t control me.”

“And what did you realize?”

“The true definition of power.”