Hard Mouth Page 3

  “Poor bastards,” Gene said. “Cuts of ruined game,” he said.

  The road was spattered with guts for a good mile. Someone had hit a deer. Or several someones had hit several deer. There seemed enough viscera to reanimate a herd. A car going the opposite direction swerved to miss a big chunk. It was not the first time I had seen something like this. I don’t know if I saw it that particular day, even. At that time, in the county, there was a deer overpopulation problem, or more accurately, a human overdevelopment problem.

  “Normally, with venison, I’d say medallions, with some red wine. If you wanted to be highfalutin about it.”

  I looked at the ruined lives of wild things, the blood and their body parts.

  “Or a saddle with currant jelly. If we can find the saddle. Maybe over there by the shoulder?”

  “The shoulder of the road?” I began to feel as if my stomach was pressed beneath a seesawing weight. I wanted to run.

  “Cutlets,” he smacked. “With port and butter and apples and cherries. Oh yes oh yes oh yes.”

  I told him to shut up. In response he evaporated. I went on driving unmolested. This did not always happen, his obeying, but I was thankful when it did. My stomach eased.

  ON ARRIVAL I scanned my badge and parked and walked at an average pace to the lab building without knowing what I was about to do. I was sweating but it was only the August weather. For my insides had chilled.

  Inside I found the floor empty: The scientists and other techs were at a training seminar I had forgotten about or was pretending to have forgotten about. There was no evidence of the blonde rising senior, or anyone. This was thrilling to me, and I responded with a thrilling act:

  I walked into the nearest closet and greeted the flies in their stopped swarms. “Hello,” I breathed. I chose a beaker at random and picked it up, plucking the cotton from its mouth. The flies began slowly to rise and this thrilled me further. I continued, until every beaker in the closet was open, and then left that closet, door open, and moved onto the next, doing the same. I hit another closet, and then a fourth, and on and on until the congregating swarms were visible, freed. For the flies this was freedom, or, at minimum, escape.

  Next I prepared portions of wet media on two tongue depressors, and, holding these enticements, welcomed the flies from the closets, coaxing them out into the halls. I waited patiently for the populations to converge. When the air thickened with small wings, I beckoned them past the break room, where they seemed interested in a putrescing platter of bagels. I encouraged them forward, onward. There were better attractions ahead.

  I led those flies, led them by their antennae, media voluptuously dripping across the linoleum as I walked: a Pied Piper of Drosophila melanogaster, humming with a lungful of busy pride. They came lilting in a soft gray cloud behind me. I walked to the end of the long, low hall, holding the security doors open. Once it seemed we were all through, I unlocked and opened the only window on the floor.

  The pillowy swarm moved outward unto the open seas—I mean—the open air. However the open air was hot and heavy with water. The flies seeded themselves in. I closed the window, and did not suppress the great and happy laugh that had been building in my chest.

  I’m certain they died soon after in the great, baking heat. Or would die soon, simply by nature of their encoded brevity. This liberation was gestural. I cannot deny that I used them both figuratively and strategically. I disposed of the tongue depressors, then drove the highway home in the midmorning—shift done, charges gone. I could hardly catch my breath.

  Once home I sat upright on my bed and heaved. In a silk pajama set Gene lay himself beside me, blowing taunting kisses into my ear. I swear I could feel his spittle landing. At this I giggled frothily, then improvised breathing exercises to calm. In and out and imagine in your chest is a flame. In and out and soon you are blowing that flame to nothing. Gene rolled his eyes and toddled away. I breathed in and breathed out until the flame was extinguished.

  Soon I greeted a thick sleep with a wooly mind. Later in the afternoon I rose and ate a large ham sandwich, along with an apple and an orange. I dressed for my night shift as if nothing had happened. My habits hadn’t caught up to what I’d done. I didn’t call Ma.

  POP’S FIRST TIME sick, I’d been more pet than nurse, oblivious and blandly sweet. By the second time I was grown enough. In those old bad days, I’d put down my telemarketer’s headset and wedge my car through rush hour, so Ma could do errands, or bathe, or breathe. Or later, when the night’s lab work was done, I’d walk to my little car in the untouched calm of almost-morning, and drive the highways to a smaller road, to another, and another, until I turned down my old street. I’d park under the slim shade of the dogwoods. I’d broach the stoop, unlock the door, butting my shoulder against it to absorb the noise as it opened. I’d walk into that sleeping house, and doze on the front room couch until Ma woke me, once Pop had stirred. “The first week of treatment makes you feel strange,” Pop had said in those days, “and the second week you feel powerful, and the third you’re too tired to raise your arms.” He’d stayed tired for months after, the second cancer’s long slog. Often after that first stir, he’d return to sleep, thinly, through the morning.

  Pop would start his days with some applesauce, in which Ma or I would mix a phantasm of powders and drops. These are the things he would take, at various junctures, in various combinations: Vitamin D, selenium, melatonin, l-glutamine, rosemary, ginger, holy basil, hu zhang, skullcap, golden thread, oregano, barbary, and B12. The results were vivid brown, looking more compost than comestible. Many of these were Ma’s own ideas, internet culled or overheard in a waiting room. I added flaxseed meal or fish oil or psyllium husk, when his intestines were uncooperative. The oncologist liked to joke that even his old Chinese mother didn’t take as many herbs—he advised against garlic, green tea extract, reishi. We tried yogurt, once, instead of applesauce, but the powders stuck to themselves in dry pockets that even a man with no appetite could call unsavory. It all went into a blue bowl. I liked to put the bowl on the white wicker breakfast tray with the glass top. Surely there were better ways to try to live, or die.

  Carrying the tray I’d open the door with a strict click, and never look directly at him. Once the tray was on the floor, I’d open the venetian blinds with their demure metallic shuffle. I’d look at the shallow bowl of pennies on the dresser. The mail stack. Library books—action, cinema history, American industry, the things he loved—were in several piles, their plastic covers creased, casting dull light. An orange clot of prescription bottles covered entirely a small table. There was a tablecloth over the television. And there in my periphery would be my father, under a thin sheet sweating. I’d sit on the chair in the corner, performing a tolerant, nurturing pose. Sickness had dismantled some of him, and the companion depression more, the way it can with every body.

  “Guts are what you better look out for,” Ma said often. “The thorax in general. Your father’s family has a history.” This moment pressed down insistently, a doorbell drone.

  Often Pop wouldn’t rouse before I left the room. Nor would I rouse him. I’d only sit with his thickening, sweetening decay. Ma preferred that I be present, if not permanently then consistently; should he wake I could feed him. Here I courted my own lessness, watching his wan, sylphy body overwhelmed. Later I’d leave the room, a solemn deboarding sailor. Ma would come later, if needed, to feed him the applesauce, after her nap in my old bed. I’d take care of the dishes or fold the laundry, check in about prescriptions and appointments and insurance, and say goodbye. The routine, its memory, unfurled, stained, pinned. But it did not stay like this.

  One autumn—after years of this second sick bed, of chemo, of radiation, of applesauce—Pop had surgery. After the surgery, he got a colostomy bag. It was beige, the color of a Band-Aid. I saw it only once. Technically he was fine to leave the house but he didn’t return to his daily swim. He hardly spoke, as if practicing for death. Half-conscious, we wat
ched his old movies. They went unabsorbed, their scores simply brocading the still house. I couldn’t tell you the plot of a single one.

  Pop’s self-concealment lasted a season, and only ceased when Ma cheered him out the door. We drove to the medical center in Baltimore, passing the football stadium and the baseball stadium and cutting through downtown, into the row house neighborhoods and boulevard parks full of adults, kids cutting school. “Whatever it is—” Ma started to say. I tapped the passenger side window and Pop tapped back. We parked in the garage, took the elevator, signed in, sat. Then we got called.

  The patient, the doc noted, was relatively young and fit, and the surgery had gone well. There was no more evidence of cancer, which made it more than remission, Ma would say later, back in the car. It was “remission, plus!” Her optimism made me worry. Later a surgeon repaired Pop’s intestines. The reparation broke his thick sulk: He chortled at being “made whole.”

  I remembered, how, during the first all clear, we’d eaten crabs and made toasts about health and strength on an Eastern Shore dock where it smelled of gas and sweat. But this time, we’d had no celebration. We were no longer foolish this way. Or, we slept deeply, on nights we lucked out. This was celebration enough.

  I never thought we’d gotten off scot-free. At the clearance rack in a mall store, stopped at a red light—I’d remember what could happen, and the threat of an impending crash would fill my ears like static. I’d have to sit down, excuse myself, pull over.

  THE FLIES WERE flying free but the drive back to work was plain and straight. I took the highway, in the direction counter to the rush hour. I parked the car and walked across the campus.

  In the lobby of my building stood a principal investigator, huffing. He was one man or another. I felt it was unnecessary to divine his expression, to sort nonverbal cues. I listened only, as he explained that I’d need to surrender my badge directly. The security tapes had revealed, he said, “all you’ve done.”

  The PI, was, while speaking, swatting flies. It seemed that some had elected to stick to the interior. They winked in and out of visibility. I gave them a slight, congenial nod that seemed to confuse the man. He told me he wouldn’t pursue charges only because the bulk of the flies were at life cycle’s end and held no important data. But this was untrue—it was a kindness, or a disinclination to make a “thing” about it, or both.

  As I was walking to HR for my exit forms Ma called again but I ignored her. Gene was side-trotting beside me, cheering. “Huzzah! Huzzah! The hero is at last a victor!” I pushed down my smile for appearances. I didn’t worry then, but Gene’s laud was never a good sign. He loved chaos, and hedonism, and shooting things.

  All through the HR process I kept my mouth shut. Soon enough I was back in the parking lot, standing next to my car. I wondered if I would cry. Instead I found myself laughing again. The asphalt steamed hotly as if mad. It was later afternoon and all around me everyone was leaving, getting in their cars, pulling out, going away. Gene punched me brotherly in the arm. “What’re you gonna do with this stretch of open road?” he panted. When I told him to go away he did, as if I’d earned his obedience with my misdeed.

  For my next trick I decided to be a regular person. By that I mean I decided to get drunk. First I had to clear the decks for action. Sitting in the car with the windows down, I called Ma. “Where’ve you been?” she asked. “Will you come to dinner? Tonight? Tomorrow?”

  I told her tomorrow, got off the phone quickly. For a moment I joshed myself, thinking I’d collar a newly exed colleague on their way out. Wait for an intern to leave for the day; beeline to a college kid; hunt for a drinking buddy. Be aggressive about it. Stop them on their way to the fully loaded Geo Metro, the parent’s Beemer, the beater wagon. Wait, and then pounce.

  But I didn’t feel like talking to anyone who knew me. Or who knew who I’d presented myself to be. So I rolled out of the parking lot and through its gate, knowing there was no access to return. I didn’t care.

  Across the four-lane road there was a tony apartment complex where many of the brilliant young scientists lived, the ones without families, the ones without requirements for a yard. The ones who liked to get a happy hour cocktail, or watch a sports game in public. Because of this there was a bar off the lobby, a perfectly clean establishment, a correct target. I parked in the visitor lot.

  Walking to the bar in the hot air, I could feel a sour brightness on my tongue. As if the gin had already hit. Inside I found an icy AC wind and a bleary Friday crowd. I sat down and ordered my cocktail, felt pleased with myself for sitting upright, gulped.

  It felt fun—I’ll admit—to be there, tipsy, rather than sober in the lab building, hushing around in my white coat and only half-concerned with what my body was doing. There was now very little left for me to care about, beyond the obvious. I shredded my beverage napkin with precision. I smirked at nothing. I tugged at my cotton-blend office wear, until I could remember the skin beneath. I drank.

  Two drinks in, a conventionally handsome blonde man approached. I clocked him to be undangerous. When he smiled by way of introduction, his eye-twinkle was age sharpened. He reported he was waiting for some friends, who were late, and did I mind if he sat beside me? “I’ve been looking, and you’re the only non-nerd here,” he said.

  “If you only knew the half of it.” I gestured to the barkeep for another. I wondered what made me stick out. Fair, I wasn’t wearing one article of performance clothing. I didn’t have the muscle tone of weekender charity runs. I didn’t have a gloss of promise in my eyes. He gave me his name, but I didn’t listen. He said he was a lobbyist on the Hill, and Hill is what I called him. He asked what I did.

  “Hill!” I said. “Hill, I work in a genetics lab across the street.” I took a slug of my drink. “I mean, I worked in a genetics lab across the street.”

  He whiffed by the tense correction, asking, “What kind of work does that entail?”

  “I work with flies,” I said, grinning. “Drosophila melanogaster.” Thinking of the flies was enough to make me moon. As was his unremarkably attractive face. Touching the smooth knit of Hill’s trousers, I thought, this is the way damaged adults stop short of offing themselves: inaccurate conversations with strangers, mild obliteration, small criminal acts.

  Previously I’d had very little capacity for intrigue or drama. Ask Ken to confirm and he’d start to snore. In this condition, in this bar, I was willing to change. To make a minor move. It was necessary. Or it seemed that way. It would require the heavy lifting of getting more drunk. I’m not of mutable stock. Or, it takes a lot to get this big, boring boulder rolling.

  “At this point,” I purred, “we’re just crunching preexisting data.” It was a small thing to do an impression like this. On his own trip, Hill was paying attention to the way my mouth moved. People of all ages and experience are familiar with this. For self-omission, objectification has its use.

  I watched Hill click the mouth of his beer bottle against his neat square teeth, wondered who he was. I imagined he was three months out from a major heartbreak, a triathlete ex-girlfriend recently relocated to a minor Midwestern city to head up grassroots for a sure-thing campaign. Both were too pragmatic for long distance. He was trying to devote more time to self-improvement and to friends, to putting himself out there. There was nothing to base this on, except that he was a white man with clean clothes and good teeth, out and catting around.

  “You from here? You sound like it.”

  “Ugh, no,” I said, like some real young person, then lied: “I’m from outside Cleveland.”

  “Go Buckeyes?”

  “Sure. You?”

  “New York.”

  “The city?”

  “Westchester. Ossining.”

  “Sing Sing?”

  “Don’t hold it against me.”

  “How does it go? ‘Only if you ask me to’?” Then I laughed quickly, to show I must be joking, while simultaneously suggesting the option of our bodies meeti
ng this way. Loosely I slid my drink back and forth on the bar in front of me. My body was all overlubricated joints. Hill pecked me on the cheek. As if the kiss were an award for being there, beside him.

  Looking down I saw I had spilt my drink and dragged an arc of liquor like a comet’s tail across the bar. I wondered if I would make my exit—call a cab, or cross my fingers and drive. Surely I would not lead myself further in. Was I wholly inexperienced? I was not. However I didn’t want to make a connection while so interested in the reverse.

  But funny how logic leaves, for then in a cloud of charisma came Hill’s friends. It was hard to keep track of myself in their airy camaraderie. Monica—pretty, thick bangs, a sharp chin—was in epidemiology at the research institution of my previous employ, and Omar—appealingly boyish in an after-hours rugby shirt—there in gerontology. Both worked far across the campus from my former lab. Surely news of my fly liberation would not have traveled that far, that quickly. There was no sign or utterance that it had.

  While it was still happy hour, I covered a round. I watched and listened to these people, these friends. I made small, bad jokes; they laughed. We drank until we were more liquid than solid. At one point I looked into the mirror behind the bar, beyond the neat rows of sleek bottles. My face was luxuriously blank, a bowl; I could pour anything in. I felt an opening in my chest, which then fractured coldly: Gene’s punim was there beside me, grumpy and crimped. “Fake,” he mouthed theatrically. “Fake,” his lips curling. I shut my eyes, and took the shot I was given. For now I was theirs, and not his.

  At nine there was chittering about changing venues, going upstairs to Omar’s condo. Where the trio marched, I was their little dog. Pay the tab; get vertical; stay vertical; cross the lobby; board the elevator; press a button; rise.

  THE ELEVATOR DOORS opened with a confidential whoosh. Seeing Omar’s crisp condo, I nodded, unrealized expectations met. Danish modern furniture. Colonialist-imported gewgaws. The finishes: chrome and polished glass. The lights: strung from suspended beams and twinkling.