Ivyland (15 page)

FRANCIS /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY ///
LAST SUMMER

Minute I walk in the door, Wombat says the shower's busted and where's the hose? I mention outside's a bit chill for a hose wash and the Wombat goes well living room it is. I says a hose wash under my roof, uh, I think not. Someone's gotta see to it this house doesn't rot inside out and last I checked, that someone was me, bucko. He tries to throw a tattered piece of Aunt Margot's old robe at me without getting off the couch. It goes like six inches, lands in some mouse turds.

I says to Aunt Margot, “Wow does this place have a woman's touch by the way.”

“
Ex nihilo
, whence your great father brought you,” Aunt Margot speechifies from the chair. “I suppose you'd prefer he'd left you there.” I says more like ex-mooch, that's what you'll be when I kick you out of my shithole, which, being mine, I have the right. She cries fakely and goes: “What would your mother think? Especially given that the cruel vicissitudes and her saintly son have landed her sister in a zoo without so much as a functional roof.”

I says you ain't my ma, so shut up with guessing what she thinks. There's a little white moth sputtering round my face. I crush it in a fist and wish I hadn't.

“Looked it up—that's what all those caterpillars were supposed to turn into,” says the Wombat. “Few got to, I guess.”

The evening tantrum starts downstairs and before she can stop herself Aunt Margot stomps the floor with meaning. She spins to look at me, all piss-drained terror, so I let it slide this once and drop on the couch. My suggested philosophy is, let's have at least some phony good manners. Long as he's down there listening, we could fake courtesy.

The Wombat's flipping through this stained paperback,
Korean For Beginners
. I says throw that out, it smells like a dumpster, and the Wombat says that's where he found it a few months back, in an actual freaking dumpster, on a stroll through the Ivyland College campus. He fiddles with his filthy glasses. Aunt Margot walks up and down the first couple stairs in her pink robe, chewing fingers bloody.

“Stay still,” says the Wombat. “You give me the motion-sick.” Aunt Margot comes and slaps the book clean out of his mitts.

“Maybe if you were not the very picture of deadly sin, some young lady would have you for a husband.”

“Yeah!” laughs the Wombat, “And Gersh'll be president.”

“Cram it,” I says, “before I let him at you.”

“Francis!” gasps Aunt Margot. “The very idea of him loose in the world.” I know, I know. “Sometimes I think you have half a mind to do it,” she says. “Honestly.” She goes to switch on the little radio sitting on the busted TV, cause she can't hear enough about the first anniversary of the Winnape Bridge or whatever the one in Michigan was called, but she has to seize up and let a big-ass sneeze get through.

“‘Djyou know in Korea they ain't even say bless you?” the Wombat asks overhead as I clomp down to the basement, grabbing scissors and needles and rope on the way.

*

After Gersh's shot I take the bit of rope and tie and untie bowline knots while he watches. I hand him the knot and he whacks me with it, so I take it away. I start reading him the only kid's book he hasn't torn up,
Goodnight Moon
. Three little bears, sitting on chairs, is when he quiets down. I take out the scissors, because today is barbershop. Have to trim his whiskers because he snaps when I try the razor. I cut his hair as best I can without waking him, starting with the cowlick that always bothers me.

*

How I get paid is by watching opinionated heads and weak parodies and amateur stunts and pranks gone wrong and yet other videos people upload to the web, to see if their content reflects negatively on Endless Nutraceuticals in any way, shape or form. When it does, you fire off a URL to our legal team and the offending clip is plucked from the ether by lunch. When it doesn't, you move onto the next. Or, if you need to meet the weekly quota of reported offenders, you put it on the shit list anyway. They call it Brand Fortification.

And while you're sorting out that nonsense, Vivian, our pushing-seventy boss who only works here to supplement a nonexistent pension from the Newark newspaper she ran her whole life, will stroll in with a sarcastic pep talk about how we are the gatekeepers and arbiters an oppressive society demands. Plus if we're lucky she'll treat us to a dramatic retelling of a crime-beat ghetto-myth about how a nine-millimeter bullet shot at the sky fell through this guy's ceiling and found his groin during Sunday dinner, at which point it was goodnight left testicle.

Hank “Are-You-Gonna-Finish-That” Figsby goes, “Viv, was that guy with the nuts shot off just you, and you made all this up so you could tell the story but not have us know you used to be a man?”

Vivian: “No. No, it was not me.” She takes a hit from her flask and offers. “And it was only one teste. Article never made it to print.” She stuffs the refused flask back into her blazer and asks Hank to up the audio for a sec on the babies-injure-themselves montage he's reviewing.

“It's just ‘I Got You Babe,' “ says Hank. “A cover of it I think.”

“That song blows,” mumbles skunky Pitts in his corner. Vivian smacks him upside the head.

“The fuck, Viv?”

“Lost my virginity to that song.”

Hank chokes on a mouthful of pretzel mash plus a giggle.

“Laugh,” Vivian says. “Someday I'll throw you out on the streets with two black eyes and blood in your piss.”

“Worse, she'll get us transferred to Brand Extension,” Hanks says.

“Don't joke,” I warn him.

“Me too?” Pitts yelps even though Vivian tends to make the emptiest threats you've ever heard.

“Especially you,” Viv shouts over her shoulder, shoving through the emergency exit to smoke on the fire escape.

*

I buy groceries at a store across from the studio lot, stop off at the pharmacy and pick up Gersh's stuff.

“Keep that balance right,” the pipsqueak pharmacist says, handing over a bag of needles, and our fingers accidentally touch.

I drive home in the old Volvo with what remaining paint flaking up off the hood and sticking to the windshield. Wipers go right over it.

“Thank God,” Aunt Margot says when I walk in. “Some reason, I thought you'd left for good.”

“Ta-dah,” I says. Had any sense, I
would
hightail it.

“But your father wrote, God rest—”

“Don't worry ‘bout cleaning up all my brain goo in the study? Go to New Jersey, Endless takes care of its own?” I ask. “I see you haven't moved today,” I tell the napping Wombat. There's something else eating Aunt Margot, but she's too chickenshit. “Say,” I says.

“Gersh's been going bonkers,” the Wombat pipes up from the couch, not as asleep as he looks in his dirty gray sweats. Aunt Margot starts looking through the groceries, and I snap the bag away.

“I don't hear anything,” I says.

“It was earlier,” Aunt Margot says. “You weren't here when it was bad.”

“No,” I says, “guess I never am.” She scrunches her face.

“It'd be safer.”

Gersh, because he always seems to get the idea, pounds the floor from underneath.

What you made me do already, I says, is bad enough. Aunt Margot eyes the Wombat's chewed-up ear, the crooked big scar hanging over his lip.

“He's dangerous,” she says.

Embarrassing, she means.

“He could really hurt someone if he … he could.”

But he wouldn't, if these crap-stains didn't provoke him. If they just tried to be civil. Teach by example.

“Nice cut of meat,” Aunt Margot calls after me.

I take the grocery bag down to the basement and slip when the last step gives.

“Gersh,” I groan, lying on the stone floor. “Dinnertime.”

I push off the ground, put an antique lamp back on its shelf, and tidy up some stuff from the estate that has gotten knocked out of place, paintings of actual plantations near Spectre, croquet sticks and porcelain sweet tea pitchers and the constantly toppling stacks of medical books, the rest of the old family junk Aunt Margot can't stand to look at anymore.

Gersh is already slobbering, straining at the rope around his throat, chafing the scar of a successful but side-effect-heavy VV op on the back of his neck. I pick up the extra rope and start tying and untying bowlines, but with food in range, he can't pay attention to anything else.

“Don't strangle yourself,” I says. I slide the bag of meat over and he eats like it's Thanksgiving, the twiggy ribs heaving. I take away the plastic bag because obviously. I watch for a minute in case there's a bone I didn't take out on accident. When he's done I prep a shot and he whimpers.

“Someday you'll thank me,” I says. “There's places worse than the basement.”

When I stick it he gets a good bite in and I cuss, which I hate to do around him. I calm down quick and show I'm okay. “Someone hurts you,” I says, “you got the right to hurt them back.”

Good-intentioned hurts we can learn about later.

Goodnight Moon
: a quiet old lady whispering hush, and he's done.

Goodnight, Gersh.

*

“Been down there an hour,” Aunt Margot says when I come up.

“Ew,” adds the Wombat, like Gersh and I have been having a grand sexy time.

“So,” I says, “you think I like it in that pit? Anybody fixing to take over, be head honcho,” I ask—because that always clamps their faces.

“Wish you wouldn't use that slimy backwoods vernacular,” Aunt Margot says.

“Maybe that's why I do,” I says.

“Wonder if he's improved,” she says, whispering the last word.

“Ain't gonna be none better for Gersh,” the Wombat declares. Aunt Margot peers closely at him.

“What's the matter with your clothes? So many holes.” The Wombat shrugs and picks up his Korea book. I lie down on the couch, which—speak of the devil—has also got holes where moths probably chewed through while Aunt Margot was off breaking the toaster with a fork again.

The front door practically falls down when someone knocks. Aunt Margot is already up, pacing around, but says: “Can't you?”

It's a small Asian girl who wants to sell me cookies. Says all proceeds go to Harvey House and comes in a ways without me inviting.

“And what is Harvey House, exactly?” I says, following her into the living room.

She concentrates, remembering the official description. “A home for people who had an allergic reaction Hallorax gas when they got VV.”

“And it's nice? Can someone with a really bad reaction get in? How much is it?”

“Dunno,” she says.

“Are you Korean?” the Wombat asks, all excited when he sees her.

“I'm American,” the tiny thing says.

I offer to buy two boxes in exchange for the name of Harvey House's director, and the bitch up-sells me to a three-pack.

*

Viv is trying to narrate an amateur porn video that turned up in Pitts's to-screen list because of the amount of Belltruvin consumed therein.

“Basically, they've …
ho
ly crap,” she says. Hank applauds a batshit crazy sex move I'd think twice before trying.

“That's impossible,” says Pitts, who you can tell is not comfortable with the idea of human bodies touching.

“It is not only possible,” says Vivian in a wacky accent. “It is
essential
. Don't flag this one, the world needs it. You guys got anything else of note?”

Hank has a supposedly entertaining clip titled “Guy Tricked Into Thinking He's High On Hallorax,” in which I think you know what happens. Viv is lukewarm. She grabs a package from the front bin.

“The fuck is this?” The envelope has only a Φ Endless logo doodled on it, no address—must've been hand-delivered.

“Haven't watched,” I says.

Vivian pulls an unlabeled disc (it's the only thing in there) and pops it on. It's a bald man in a field, wearing a dumb white robe. Behind him is a big dead tree. Color's too sharp, or off: a purple sky, gold leaves. No action, no sound. Man looks almost happy.

“What a crock,” Viv says, and fast-forwards.

Night begins in the movie. An orange moon rises. Dumbass is there for like, ever.

I push play. A moth dizzies into frame and lands on the guy's shoulder, blending into the white. Vivian reaches over me to fast-forward again.

“Hilarious,” says Hank.

But in the sped-up video, more white moths start showing up, one or two at a time, and they all go right for the guy, settling on his eyebrows and in his hair and the crooks of his elbows, and before a moth covers it I make out the tiny crest on the front of his robe: Φ. The Endless logo again. I'd seen it out of place another time, just recently, but where?

“Oh my god,” Viv says. “It's the worst student film of all time.”

“How'd they do that?” says Pitts, who wheels his chair closer, broadcasting coffee breath.

“Saint Francis of Assisi,” says Vivian. “Head count for poker night.”

“Don't ask him,” Hank says. “He'll just say he has to watch his kid brother.”

Viv ogles me like a vulture ogles something it hopes is dead.

“How old is the bro?” she asks.

“Nine this week,” I says.

My screen goes black.

Vivian glares but can't stay serious, and that doofus smile breaks. By then Hank's giggling too, and soon they're both braying like donkeys. Pitts frowns and rolls back to his desk. Viv shakes her head.

It's the pharmacist, I remember suddenly, the fat ring he wears with a Φ on it, just like Dad's. Only Dad actually worked for Endless, and this guy works for a Zanzibar Drug knockoff with way-cheaper product and too many Zs in its sign. I noticed it the last time he handed me Gersh's injections. He always says: “Keep that balance right.” “Balance?” I'd asked him the first time.