Theo (3 page)

Why are you not wearing any clothes.

It feels better, man. Do you live here.

Yes.

Are you Frieda’s kid.

Yes. This is my house.

Listen to the birds.

Are you high.

The man laughs, and then he frowns and stands. Theo steps back. He’s seen this before and is glad there is plenty of room to run. He hears something: Alex and Paz and Baron sit behind him now, panting, looking at him, their dog eyebrows raised. He had forgotten about them and now feels better.

Standing, the man looks short, his penis like the nest with a dark purple baby bird Theo had found on the ground under one of the gnarled beach trees. His own penis is pale and wormy. What happens, Theo wonders, between now and then.

My mom asked if you could put some clothes on.

The man stares up and out and around. And down at Theo. Then he moves fast, his hair blowing, across the gazebo floor to the steps and jumps, landing and collapsing, then scrabbling up, grass sticking to him, and runs at Theo, his arms like flippers spinning at the air. Theo screams.

The dogs hop and jump, barking, Paz stumbling, Theo scooting sideways as the man gets closer, faster, saying something but Theo can’t figure it out. Theo runs without
thinking, the dogs frantic and the man suddenly there and grabbing and the dogs barking and the man laughing.

Theo away, watching, now the dogs calming, licking, the man on his knees, sticking his face against theirs, his arms like penguin wings rubbing the dogs.

Theo isn’t sure what to do, so he looks at the brown ground, the grass like dirty hair, and then up toward a long-needled pine waving and shaking at him. There is a lot of wind early, making ocean noises. Theo feels himself moved a little by it as he decides to scuffle his way toward the cracked terrace that runs the width of the big house’s back side, facing the trees in front of the dunes, the naked man now squatting on his haunches and the dogs trotting after Theo.

‘Mansion.’ Theo had found the word in the big dictionary with the tissue pages smelling like an old coat. 1. A large stately house. 2. A manor house. 3.
Archaic
a. A dwelling; an abode. b. A separate dwelling in a large house or structure. 4.a. See house. b. Any one of the twenty-eight divisions of the moon’s monthly path. Middle English, a dwelling, from Old French, from Latin mansio, from mansus, past participle of manere, ‘to dwell, remain’; see men- in Indo-European roots.

It is a big house. He isn’t sure about stately, marked by lofty or imposing dignity. On the same page was
Their swords are ruste, their bodys duste, Their souls are with the Saints, we truste
, about something else. He passes the sundial at the side of the house.

Theo whispers the words to himself, walking.

Weeds poke up through the squares of the terrace, a hairy
chess board. It would flinch and throw off all the pieces. You’d have to tame it to play. Pink and brown, faded and pale. He feels like stomping a puddle but everything is dry. The sun is a big flashlight in the sky, white in the white.

Then music. The music starts in the house, and flies out the open windows on the third floor and drifts down around him. Colin is definitely awake.

Theo turns back toward the trees for an instant, shading his eyes with a hand. Colin sometimes didn’t sleep for days. His mother, when she came, he wasn’t sure about, because her door was always locked. Is she asleep or awake. Mostly awake, he guessed because of all the noise and people when she came, which was always like a wave washing through. Things would be empty and quiet when Theo locked himself in, then in the morning people in the hall or on couches, sometimes looking dead, and different smells, and different things scattered around. Hello, my beautiful boy, she would yell at him from somewhere, above on the stairs or from an open door, or in from the outside, her standing outside naked one time staring up at something, her body broken into squares by the big iron and glass doors to the terrace. Theo remembers again he needs to find something to cover the broken panes with.

It is Wednesday, Theo guesses. He smells ocean. One of the dogs noses at him now, and Theo flicks his eyes down and smoothes Baron’s head and leans into the big yellow and black shepherd, nudges him for an instant, then turns and moves toward the doors, hungry, too, flanked now on his other side by Alex, the thickest animal on the planet, Gus calls him. Theo feels sorry for the dog, who has seizures and pants when he walks.

The faded coppery dog’s domed head makes him look like a human baby, although he is thirteen and totters. He needs
something soft, his teeth going. Upstairs Colin yells now, and somewhere beyond the beach is the buzz and thump of speedboats, and the day is on its way. Theo slips through the French doors into the dark ballroom.

There is a Japanese magazine on the parquet floor, his father on the cover. His face very white, like a doll. Is that powder.
Aidoru.
Dog claws click and slide on the wood, the sounds loud. A piece of floor is missing since yesterday, Theo notes. He keeps moving.

Sand grains are scattered on the parquet, and Theo feels them under his feet. There are crumbs everywhere: sand, salt, food, because people like to walk everywhere in the house eating. The dogs lick at the floor a lot, and at spills everywhere.

There’s not much furniture but there are lots of pillows, and cloth. Blankets, tapestries, sheets, rugs, carpet in piles or folded or left limp and crumpled in the middle of a floor, as if the person wrapped in it vanished on the spot.

Theo skates across the ballroom, sliding his bare feet. A bird darts through the French doors he left open. It moves too fast for him to identify but he figures it is one of the little ones, sparrow or wren, always around outside, flocking to peck at grass or the terrace. All the people leave trails, or create them.

He skates over to a plant tipped sideways in a Chinese vase. It has deep green leaves with wine-colored hearts and big veins and reaches toward the light. The shoots are arms extending, ending in brushes of little purple flowers. Theo sweeps the dirt back in with his hand and tips it up, pets it, and drags it over into a rectangle of sun. Then he skates the other way, toward the kitchen.

The dogs stare up as he yanks on the heavy pantry door and goes in to rummage for something to feed them. Dog food ran
out but no one has bought more, so Theo gives them peanut butter and things from cans, some of which they eat and some of which sits until someone else eats it: usually Colin or a guest.

That’s what Theo’s mother called them. Make our guests feel at home, or friends. Theo wasn’t sure about the difference, except the guests came less often.

There is a gunshot, loud and echoing, close. The dogs startle, whimper. Theo’s ears dampen a little, sound gets slightly muffled.

Theo sighs, leaves the pantry and shuffles back to the ballroom as the dogs orbit him, jumping. The sound whirls as crazily as the bird, moving now like an insect, flitting and erratic: scared too, Theo imagines.

Colin stands across the ballroom, wearing boots and a towel wrapped around his waist, his ropy arm up and pointing with a silver pistol at the bird. He points the gun at the floor and does something clicking with his other hand: chambering, he’d called it before.

Colin now has an eye closed and follows the bird with the gun, letting off another shot. Theo’s ears hurt.

Colin, can you stop please.

Birds makes me nervous. Too undisciplined. Or maybe it’s just jealousy. One more for luck and then we’re done.

Colin fires out through the opened glass door toward the ocean – clears out the sinuses, that’s for certain. Prevents constriction of the bowels, too, man. Nothing like a little cordite in the morning to remind you why you’re alive.

He clomps across the ballroom, smiling with big square yellow teeth in the sunlight, as Theo turns and moves back toward the kitchen. He wonders what happens to bullets if they don’t hit anything.

I am starving, Colin says. He walks past Theo with a pat on the back and goes straight toward the refrigerator that still works and yanks it open hard, the silver doors big as room doors, and he bends to dig around. His towel falls, exposing his buttocks. Theo turns back to the pantry, and the cans: will the dogs eat canned peaches. Tinned is what Gus and Colin call them. Colin begins to sing something without words.

Theo scans the pantry shelves: there is food, and there are other things. A very old teddy bear with spots of furless fabric showing, but with both button eyes; a long piece of brown bamboo with a hunting knife roped to one end; caramels, bags and bags of caramels; some clothes, stacked T-shirts with things printed on the front from concerts; a small television, and silver-gray round flat metal containers in which are coils of film, a stack of them; a rake with teeth missing; a stuffed woodchuck and several antlers, like branches locked in a pile; oatmeal, a lot of it, because Gus likes oatmeal; a crate of canned smoked baby oysters; a stack of masks, all the same, of a bear face; an ottoman on its side; a box full of jars of honey, a box half-full of jars of jelly, and several five-pound bags of sugar, one that still hissed and shifted when picked up, and the others, hard blocks wrapped in paper; a tower of cans of Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie; a mummified gray mouse on a round piece of polished wood under a glass bell with a knob on top, which once held an Italian cheese Colin liked; a burlap sack filled with macadamia nuts, one corner of which has been gnawed open but Theo doesn’t know by what, because he’s seen people in here tearing at packages with their teeth; a row of boxes of Sugar Pops, like a shelf of books; scattered packages with Japanese writing, and different things inside, that look like candy but are the wrong colors, small round things and
noodles and one he knows is rice crackers; cans without labels; an old green and red cradle made out of tin with writing on the side that Theo can’t read; Colin’s ray gun collection, a pile of plastic and tin toy ray guns and a pile of other things like branches and things Colin has found that he thinks are shaped like ray guns – he keeps saying he needs to move it to a more suitable location; a sled; rows and stacks of coffee cans, some of which hold coffee and some of which hold nails, foreign coins, rubber bands, washers, salt, marbles – and one holds glass eyes.

Theo marveled over the eyes, because no one knows how the can got there, and when he is in the gloomy pantry he likes to hold the can and look down at them looking back at him, but in a kindly way. The eyes seem patient and wise, and all clear and white with the irises blue or gray mostly, like Theo’s eyes. Sometimes he carries one around in a pocket, and he likes it there. He hasn’t carried one in a while; he considers it a solemnity, like a ritual, although he isn’t sure what a ritual really is besides something heavier than it looks.

Colin stops singing. Theo picks one of the few brown eyes up and carefully slips it into a front pocket of his pajamas, then on tiptoes pulls down one of the Fray Bentos cans, although Colin and Gus fuss at him when he ‘wastes’ them on the dogs. Seems it is time to shop. He is sick of smoked baby oysters.

Colin lies on his back on the kitchen floor, his towel crumpled under him, the soles of his cowboy boots have round holes: like eyes, but not wise ones. Colin is hairless and brown all over, his chest peaking in the middle like a bird’s; ribby but with a little pad of fat on his stomach, where there is a long pucker like a mouth curving alongside his navel. He is sweating, even though it’s cool now. He’s patched with tattoos,
lots of places, which Theo used to enjoy seeing revealed as Colin rolled up a sleeve or pant leg or took off something. His penis is tattooed with a series of dots and lines, which Colin said happened in New Zealand. Theo knows New Zealand; he likes knowing where things are. Colin also has a long set of wavy curves like lips tattooed in red and blue around his penis, starting on his abdomen. Theo felt funny saying the word, and funny thinking it. Colin said the lip things were the gates of paradise. Gus exploded when Theo first asked him about it.

Where did you see Colin’s penis.

He was walking around with no pants.

He didn’t do anything funny did he.

Besides walk around with no pants.

Yes, he didn’t –

He was getting the brandy out of the green bathroom and I saw him. I asked him what that was. He said, that’s the man monster, son. No, I said, what’s around it. He said that’s the gates of paradise.

Gus rubbed his face up and down with his thick hand: you tell me immediately if he does anything funny. Gus’s words were a little slurred, blurry.

Besides the funny stuff he does, like, every day.

Like. Messes with you. Or tells you to mess with his.

His what.

Just tell me, son, okay. There’s too many pervs in this circus.

Oh.

Theo remembered his mother’s friend at the Chelsea Hotel. The one who wanted to help Theo go to the bathroom while his mom slept on the couch in the room with aluminum foil over the windows. Day outside and night in there. The bearded man at the party who rubbed against him. And being stuck in a soft
loft sofa next to a weird man who put his hand on the back of Theo’s neck and tried to hug Theo down onto his lap. But he was supposed to be famous and Theo’s mom said the guy didn’t mean anything, he was just affectionate. Was that true.

They never went back to his house, and Theo’s mom sort of snarled every time someone else mentioned him, and she called him a name. The man was strong. He stopped because somebody needed a knife and Theo struggled up out of the big hand of the sofa and away.

Some grownups looked at Theo in a funny way different than the funny ways other grownups looked at him. But there were always so many around; he couldn’t watch everybody. And they’d just be there, breathing, smiling. How do you tell which smiles are bad.

Okay, Theo said to Gus. I’ll tell you.

You do that. Then Gus smiled, and winked, slapped Theo’s leg.