Upright Beasts (5 page)

“Can't we just start over?” I ask Patricia.

“Will you drink less?”

“I could hide it better.”

“Will there be children?”

“Two of them. The patter of their little feet will keep us awake all night.”

A policewoman comes up and tells us to move along. “Nothing to see here,” she says. “Not even that stuff you're looking at.”

Patricia and I walk across the road. Her hand brushes mine.

One by one the people on the bridge hurtle into the cold waters, their arms wrapped around microwaves and cordless vacuums. They fall straighter than I ever thought possible.

“Will there be love?”

“That I can't promise,” I say, “but we can try to fight our way through it together.”

And perhaps seconds later, the people come rocketing back to the surface, having abandoned their appliances. They bob and gasp. And maybe they will have found something down there while starving for air. On the surface, they will seek each other out and cling tightly, saying, “This is what I need. This is what I've been waiting for.”

I'm not sure. Patricia and I have walked too far away to see.

LITTLE GIRLS BY THE SIDE OF THE POOL

“D
id you see what Suzy did when her father tossed her into the air?”

“No, I was looking at Jimmy.”

“She screamed. She screamed like a little piglet right until she hit the water.”

“My father is
really
good at tossing me into the water.”

“Yes,
my
father can toss me so high I'm afraid I'll never come down.”

“My father once threw me like ten feet out of the water, and I did two cartwheels in the air before splashing.”

“My father once tossed me so high into the air that I was at eye level with the top of a tall tree, and in that tree was a bird, and that bird unfurled its wings and looked at me in a loving way, like a sister.”

“When I see you and your father in the pool, he is not tossing you or throwing you. Rather, he is holding you under the water, and you are trying to swim between his legs to twist him up, or else clawing his knees, trying to reach the air.”

“Yes. My father is good at tossing, but he is also good at holding.”

“Does he hold you only in the water?”

“No. Many places. Sometimes I will walk into a room and his hand, lying on the armrest of his chair, will begin to twitch.”

“I don't think I like your father.”

“I hate
all
fathers. It is the way they touch you.”

“Their hands are swollen. When you are born, they can carry you in their palm. You grow older and taller, and yet their hands never shrink. When one wraps around your shoulder, the weight immobilizes you.”

“And those hands, they can take control of you. You will be standing in the doorway to the kitchen, and on the kitchen table is something wretched, some burnt meat, and in the chair at the table is someone wretched, a boy that has been invited over to talk to you, but whom you already talk to in school and despise. Your mother has dressed you up too, in some frilly dress that would look stupid even on a doll, and you are standing in the doorframe about to retreat, to flee back to your room, where you cannot see or smell any of the wretched things in the kitchen, but as you are about to turn, the hand of your father appears on your shoulder, and it moves through you, it pilots you, and suddenly you are walking into the kitchen even though you didn't want to go into the kitchen—or maybe it is the dentist's or a therapist's office or piano lessons—and the hand just appears there and wills you to enter without your father even speaking, wills itself over the will of your own bones, forcing you into the room even though the hand itself does not move, does not even flinch.”

“. . .”

“But even so, those are also the hands that send you cartwheeling through the air above a body of water the exact color of the bottom of a Bomb Pop.”

“My father is not the only one who tosses me out of the water.”

“Oh? And who tosses you? Your filthy brothers?”

“Yes, my brothers. Tossing me together, one on each side, a leg and arm held in the hands of one, the other leg and other
arm gripped in the fists of the other. They look at each other and count to a number while swinging me. When they reach the number, they release me. I never know what the number will be. That is part of the game. They tell me a number, but the number they tell me is never the number that prompts my release.”

“Brothers are even worse than fathers. Brothers are fathers in training. They carry a father around in their bellies, and the beard of this father irritates the walls of their stomachs. This is the reason they are angry, all the time, when they see you.”

“I
have
noticed their hands twitching in a familiar way.”

“They are not the same hands as the hands of fathers, but they share the same hardness.”

“Well, my father and my brothers are not the only ones who toss me out of the water. Sometimes I will wait until the lifeguards rotate shifts, and when Jimmy gets his turn to take a break, he will slide off his white tank top and pull off his red whistle. When I see him do this, I slip into the water. I fill my lungs with as much air as I can and swim underwater from the deep end to the shallow end where Jimmy will be standing, leaning against the wall of the pool, really, when I emerge. He does not say anything, and I cannot look him in the eye. I look down at his stomach. The sun reflects off the mix of water and sunscreen on his chest in a way that hurts my eyes, yet makes me feel protected.”

“And then he tosses you out of the water?”

“Sometimes. If I open my eyes wide enough.”

“He tosses you away.”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“I can only see his eyes vaguely behind the sunglasses. They are like two beautiful fish in the depths of a muddy lake.”

“They are different eyes when the sunglasses are off.”

“How do you know?”

“Sometimes Jimmy takes me out of the water to a dark place behind the bushes, and he takes off his sunglasses with one hand while the other hand approaches me.”

“And these are the eyes you hate? The eyes that thin to the edge of a knife when he approaches?”

“No, it's as if his eyes are clouds that have emptied themselves of rain.”

“Like a villain? Like some foreign villain in a cartoon? His left hand stroking his thin early pubescent mustache, his right held high in anger?”

“No, it isn't like that at all.”

“The way his eyes grab hold of you at the same time his hands do? The way his fingers tear into your shoulder blades as his eyes move closer—”

“No. Jimmy's hands go other places.”

“Those cold, dead eyes that sting you like a handful of snow sliding down the back of your neck?”

“Not at all.”

“The eyes that are lit with a flame you do not want to recognize?”

“It's nothing like that.”

“The way his eyes dart back and forth, looking at every point around you but at no point where you are, even as he bears down on you?”

“No! A thousand times no!”

“. . .”

“It's the way he looks at me afterwards, in the light, with a great sadness . . . like a father.”

THE ROOM INSIDE MY FATHER'S ROOM

W
hen I grew too big for my room, I forced the door open. My father was waiting for me in his favorite chair.

“I guess you're a man now,” my father said. “Technically.”

I looked around my father's room. It was at least three times as large as my room and wrapped itself around mine on two sides in the shape of an L.

“I've always hated that room,” I said.

My muscles ached, and I tried to stretch out the kinks.

“I built that room for you, just like my father built this room for me.” My father held out his palms, showing me his callouses.

“I notice your father made your room much bigger than you made mine!”

“I still needed space for me,” my father said. He seemed embarrassed and wouldn't look me in the eye. “I was a grown man, and you were a child. Remember?”

Seeing him lounging in his chair made me angry. “I don't even have a place to sit in there!”

My father's lips curled up with his mustache. He got out of his chair and pointed a finger at my chest. “You know how ungrateful you are?” He spat on the floorboards. “Before you came along, my room was much larger! I even had a bed back then.” He was towering over me, growing with indignation. But I was out of my room now and would not back down.

“I never asked to be born in that room,” I said. I glared at
him with a son's hate, and he seemed to shrink back down to my size, then smaller. Soon he collapsed into his chair.

“I did the best I could,” he said to himself, barely above a whisper. “No one can say differently.”

“Your best was shit,” I said without much force. He was already weeping into his plate of sausages.

I couldn't stand to see him like that, but I also couldn't stand to go back into my tiny room inside my father's room. There were only two doors in his room. I opened the other and stepped into a room even larger than my father's. It was in the same shape, my father's room filling the upper right fourth.

This room was much messier though. The floor and walls were covered with old knickknacks and trinkets. Everything was coated in a film of dust.

My grandfather lay in his cot in the corner. “What do you want?” he said when he saw me. “Did your father send you to complain to me about how small his room is?”

“No, I'm looking for a bigger room for myself. I can barely fit in mine, plus the heat's broken.”

“Well you can't stay here,” my grandfather said. “There's barely enough space for me.”

I was raised to respect my elders, but this made my blood bubble. His room was at least four times as large as my father's! I wanted to wrap my hands around his wrinkled throat. When I stepped forward, something crunched under my feet.

“This place is a mansion,” I said. “It only looks small because you've filled it with old junk.” I picked up the cracked baseball trophy and shook it for emphasis.

“Put that down,” my grandfather screamed. “That's my thing. One of the only things I have left!” He pulled his old quilt up to his neck as if to shield himself from me.

“Look, I'll just sleep in the corner,” I offered, “between those stacks of old magazines.”

“Impossible!” he said, then he waved a finger in the air. “And if you think this is large, you should have seen
my
father's room. They built real solid rooms back in those days.”

I sighed. “Well, maybe he's got a space for me then.”

My grandfather merely laughed in response. He seemed lost in his old memories. He looked away from me and closed his eyes. As I left, I heard him beginning to snore.

My great-grandfather's room smelled thickly of mustard. His plates weren't cleared, and he was curled up on a massive canopy bed.

When I spoke, he looked up without recognition. Then he waved me toward his left ear.

My great-grandfather seemed sympathetic as he listened to my tale. I told him about my tiny room and the way his son and grandson had treated me. But when I was done, he shook his head.

“You can't stay here. Everyone gets their own room just for them.”

“You don't understand how small my room is. It isn't fit for a man.”

“Ha! I remember saying the same thing to
my
father when I was your age.”

He reached up and tickled the hair behind my ears.

“Great-grandfather,” I said in a tender voice I thought might appeal to his generation. “How about the other door? Can I find a room for myself through there?”

My great-grandfather slowly pointed at the door I had walked in from, which was still open.

“That door goes to the room I built for my son.” He twisted
his body in the other direction. “And that door leads to my father's room.”

“Does your father's room have an exit?”

“As far as I can remember, it's laid out the same way as mine. This is, mathematically, the most efficient way. I would advise you to lay out your own son's room in the same way, when that time comes.” He smiled at me and shook his head knowingly. “Every young'un thinks they're a rebel. But we can only build what we know, and from the space we have.”

I was so angry my nostrils were flaring. Then my anger turned to pity. My great-grandfather was even more small-minded than my grandfather and father! The whole lot of them were rotting away in their narrow rooms, never thinking of anything larger.