The New and Improved Romie Futch (20 page)

Six years ago, when Helen was thirty-five and we'd been trying to conceive a child for three years, we went to a fertility specialist. Finding nothing wrong with Helen, no hormonal imbalances, and a decent FSH level, the specialist insisted on a sperm analysis. Much to my relief, Dr. Quick found my swimmers to be well within the range of average in terms of morphology, speed, and count.
Our infertility fell into the category of
unexplained
. Nevertheless, Dr. Quick prescribed Clomid, an ovulatory stimulant pill.

During the years leading up to our foray with the specialist, our sex life had been reduced to carefully timed copulations revolving around Helen's fertility chart, the quality of her cervical mucus, and her fastidiously monitored basal temperatures. My once passionate beloved spent hours web surfing for fertility-enhancement info. She ordered biodynamic vitex extract and blew serious cash on maca root hand-pounded by Peruvian midwives under the full moon.

As my headache intensified, garish visual images from that period flashed through my mind: Helen sitting on the edge of our bed, gagging on flaxseed oil; Helen standing in her bathrobe, stoically swallowing supplements; Helen in yoga garb, guzzling gallons of FertiliTea, a nasty brew that smelled like cheap men's aftershave. Strangely, I could still smell the stuff wafting so palpably in the bathroom that I wondered if I'd upset a box of it during my frenzied pilfering for pills.

And then, with a big whoosh, I found myself descending into a familiar well of darkness, the circle of light above me highlighting the cobwebbed light fixture. Although I saw no faces gazing down from this circle, as I had at the Center, I heard a familiar voice—smarmy and godlike, speaking from somewhere in the vicinity of my sinuses with sleazy confidence:
Subject 48
FRD
showing spotty connection in area
XVF
395
. And
boom
—there I was, standing in our bedroom, stoned out of my mind. I'd smoked a joint at Lee's place, forgetting that this night fell within the range of an optimal mounting window. Helen sprawled on our bed. She pulled a thermometer from her mouth and squawked at me. Continued her banshee shrieks as she peeled down her panties and dipped her fingers into her vagina. After stretching a strand of egg-white mucus between thumb and middle finger,
she flipped me off with her moist digit and reclined upon the bed with her legs agape. I stood there, stoned and confused, staring at her glistening snatch.

“Just get it over with,” Helen hissed.

“What?” I fumbled with my belt buckle.

“Climb aboard and do your thing.”

I contemplated the word
stud
, oft bandied about in high school, usually reserved for those players in the jock set who sweated testosterone and strutted the halls like bulls. As Helen rolled her eyes and clinically stroked my flaccid cock, I understood the full meaning of the term. I scrambled upon her with a sad sigh. Pumped like a piston while struggling to summon erotic imagery to my pot-shrouded brain: Helen in our hormone-crazed youth, pulling me into closets and darkrooms; Crystal Flemming frolicking naked in the woodland gloom; my favorite Taco Loco waitress, a tattooed coquette who'd recently upgraded from Goth to pinup girl, stripping off her bombshell dress to reveal, um, breasts.

For the life of me, I couldn't summon a decent image of her breasts. Her chest consisted of two rudimentary mounds, the equivalent of a Barbie doll's blank chest.

I lost my rhythm, felt myself go limp.

“Goddamn it,” hissed Helen. “Why did you smoke that weed?”

I rolled over onto my side and sulked.

“Come on,” she whimpered. “Now is the perfect time.”

How had we come to this? For so many years we'd fucked like maniacs. Each green month, a golden egg had voyaged down one of Helen's fallopian tubes, a space orb packed with mysterious genetic code, and loitered in the void of her uterus as my sperm head-butted walls of latex. We didn't want to rush
the future
, which winked at us from a horizon a thousand miles away, a beautiful sure thing.

After Helen moved back to Hampton, we'd readjusted our goals and cruised on connubial autopilot,
the future
still shimmering in the distance, still lovely, we sensed, despite all we'd gone through. But suddenly
the future
was hot at our backs, panting and leering. Suddenly, Helen was stuffed with Clomid pills, zitty and bloated, tormented with blurred vision and headaches but still reclining upon our bed with her legs open, calling me hither.

“Come here, my darling; my head's killing me. Let's make this a quick one.”

How could I not experience a wilting of the dick when I heard her plaintive voice summoning me, her electronic ovulation predictor on the floor beside the bed?

“What's the matter with you?” Helen stared at my member, chafed from overwork and defiantly shrunken, practically retracted into my body.

“Too much pressure, I guess.”

“Have you been masturbating?”

“Every now and then, okay? Not enough to—”

“How could you?” Her face collapsed. She rose from the bed, stomped off to the bathroom to slam cabinet doors.

When I came back to consciousness, lying on the bathroom floor, cotton-mouthed with dehydration and aching all over, I still heard cabinet doors slamming, as though poor Helen were trapped in some endless hellish bathroom, mirrored cabinets extending into infinity. She kept slamming doors, her anger inexhaustible, bottomless, eternal.

•  •

On a rainy night in late October, atmospheric with thunder and lightning and smelling faintly of pickled eggs, I stood before Helen's
old full-length mirror and cackled like a deranged scientist in a horror flick. Lord Tusky the Third, a lean and refined gentleman with the head of a boar, had been born. Lord Tusky wore a frock coat of wine velveteen. The lacy cuffs of his thrift-store blouse flounced elegantly from his slender wrists. His ascot of purple polyester paisley was enriched by the added luster of a faux gold pin. Lord Tusky flaunted shiny boots of ebony pleather. Tight breeches of black spandex highlighted the elegant curve of his thighs. The index finger of his right hand sparkled with a plastic ruby.

Lord Tusky smiled.

Lord Tusky smiled and smiled.

Lord Tusky could not stop smiling, a sneer enhanced by his chic black snout. The two polished tusks that curved from his lower jaw seemed to twitch with a playful hint of erotic cruelty. His black fur gleamed with purplish highlights as though touched with Day-Glo paint. Lord Tusky foamed at the mouth. Lord Tusky had several mistresses.

Lord Tusky felt dizzy, for his mask still smelled of hide paste and resins. He could see pretty well through the eyeholes. He practiced drinking with a straw, inserting it into the barely noticeable aperture he'd drilled into the polymer tongue. And he couldn't stop smiling. He smirked at himself in the mirror until he felt lightheaded. Fearing the onset of a migraine, he removed his mask and hung it on his bedpost.

And there stood Romie Futch, a middle-aged divorcé channeling a cut-rate Robert Plant from the fantasy sequence in
The Song Remains the Same
. There stood Romie Futch, with his receding hairline and stooped shoulders. Romie Futch, with his stubborn potbelly and tormented eyes.

But shit, at least the cut of my frock coat downplayed the poof of my gut. At least my mask project had been a success. I had three
days to fret before making my dramatic appearance at Helen's masquerade ball. I had three days to vacillate between Promethean audacity and debilitating insecurity. Three days to imagine Lord Tusky strutting into the Dogwood Gallery with devil-may-care ennui as socialites in hackneyed costumes gasped at his creepy elegance. Three days to imagine Helen frowning with disgust as she reassessed Boykin's pathetic novelty costume, purchased at the last minute at Halloween Express. Three days to envision Helen sweeping into the courtyard to tumble into Lord Tusky's arms.

Helen, burrowing her lustrous head into Lord Tusky's scruffy neck.

Helen, raving of his genius.

Helen, ripping off his mask to feast upon Romie Futch's poor, parched human lips.

Helen saying, “I'm so sorry. Let's try again.”

SIX

The day before Halloween, I drove out to Dixie City Fashion Mall to have lunch at the Chuckling Newt Café with Dad and Marlene. Seated in a corner beneath a still shot from Dylan's “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” the concrete wall behind it faux-distressed to give it a refurbished warehouse look, I watched inked-up hicksters stroll around with plates of food. They moved slowly, wearing bored expressions of haughty idiocy. The whole operation gave off a sad corporate bohemian vibe. Dad and Marlene were late, and I was scanning the craft beers on the menu, wondering if I ought to indulge in a Rabid Mongrel Pale Ale this early in the day.

I texted Trippy about my dilemma, a habit that'd gotten out of hand. Ever since my last blackout, I'd been shooting verbiage into the void daily, wondering if Trippy's phone was viable or if he just wanted to start afresh and put his experience at the Center behind him. I also feared that the racial boundaries created by years of systematized oppression were, now that we were back in the world, too much to overcome. But I hoped a critical mass of texts might stir his apathy or break down his emotional wall. In addition to the burning desire to confab about my migraines and blackouts, I was itching
for some decent conversation, our heady Nano Lounge dialogues already pickled and vacuum-sealed in the green-gold brine of nostalgia. Skeeter was AWOL, I'd lost Irvin's number, and Trippy was my last link to what was starting to seem like a bygone era.

“Well, look at you,” a feminine contralto squawked. I turned. There was Marlene, fluttering through the restaurant in a chiffon tunic, her new wave coiffure teased and leftward leaning. She enveloped our table in a cloud of perfume. My father shuffled grimly behind her in indigo Rustlers, a plaid poly-cotton dress shirt, and his best suspenders—his go-to getup for public outings, garb that was, ironically, “hip.” Glancing around at the framed vintage photos of cool celebs, he winced at the iconic image of John Lennon, naked and fetally curled, clinging to a smug and clothed Yoko Ono.

“Pathetic.” Dad huffed.

“You cut off all your hair!” Marlene plopped into her chair. “Why didn't you call me? I coulda given you a real slick haircut for free.”

After wiping a crumb from the vinyl seat of his dinette chair, Dad sat down and took a big sniff. “Smells like bleach in here. Bet you money they clean the floor with it. There's a link between brain tumors and sodium hypochlorite fumes.”

“Oh, shut up, Dr. Doom,” said Marlene. “Romie and I are trying to have a nice lunch.”

As Dad scanned the menu, his frown deepened, forming a sinkhole in his face. “I told you it'd be high.” He glared at Marlene. “Sixteen dollars for a chicken potpie.”

“It's different.” Marlene slipped on her rhinestone-studded bifocals. “Slow food fast. Look, they got pit-cooked heirloom pulled pork. Says right here: the free-range pigs eat grass and chestnuts.”

“I don't like my lunch moving around.” Dad cracked an abysmal grin.

“Ha, ha,” said Marlene, “except that ain't funny.”

“I didn't see a barbecue pit outside,” said Dad.

“Bet you it's in the kitchen,” said Marlene.

“Then it wouldn't be a barbecue pit, would it?”

“Why not?”

“Plus, I wouldn't mess with pork if I were you.”

“I love pork,” said Marlene. “I'm gonna eat a big plate of fatback just to spite you.”

“That's cannibalism.” Dad grinned until his gums peeled up from the roots of his teeth.

“Hush,” said Marlene. “Side of Thai coleslaw. What's Thai coleslaw, Romie?”

“Probably has peanut butter in it.”

“Peanut butter in slaw?” My father yelped and then shook his head like an ancient general surveying a burning city. “I reckon I'll get the heritage chicken potpie, but I don't see why they got to put beets in it.”

“'Cause it's different,” said Marlene. “Just live and let live.”

“I'm not used to gourmet food,” said Dad.

“I beg your pardon.”

Marlene glared down her nose at Dad, squinting fiercely through her lenses. My father sighed and pushed his menu away. Our waitress, a sorori-punk with a snake tattoo entwining her lovely wrist, trudged over to take our orders. I went with the pickled shrimp and arugula. Marlene stuck to her guns and got the pulled pork. Dad stoically submitted his request for the beet-plagued potpie. When Marlene changed her order from unsweet to sweet tea, Dad started up on diabetes and periodontal disease, highlighting links between gum rot and brain cancer. He wondered if the link was correlational, or if microscopic organisms—parasites, viruses, bacteria—traveled through the sinuses into the brain, where they mutated into carcinogenic life forms.

“The world is full of vicious, enterprising creatures,” Dad said, nodding toward Marlene. “They'll eat you alive if you give them half a chance.”

“Romie.” Marlene patted my hand. “Have you ever thought about getting on one of those dating sites—OkCupid or whatnot?”

“OkStupid's more like it,” said Dad, after which he returned to his discourse on parasitic entities. “Identity thieves, computer viruses, brain-eating amoebas that live in warm, stagnant lake water.”

“My cousin's nephew did it and he met the nicest dental hygienist on earth. Why don't you just give it a—”

“They get in through the nose,” said Dad. “So you ought not to swim in lakes. And the ocean is full of great white sharks these days. I know a man from Tallahassee who died of chlorine poisoning. His blood turned to acid. So pools are off-limits too, son. And AARP says swimming is good exercise.”

Dad sat back and snorted at his punch line.