daniel prazer

I ended up cutting this from the novel, but it appeared in the Columbia/Bath Spa University journal Open to Interpretation in 2008.

Robert

I wake up this morning after the sun’s up, which is a something of a triumph for me, seeing as I’ve been tossing and turning the last two nights, but what strikes me right away is the silence of the house. It’s an old farmhouse and has its share of arthritic creaks and moans, but this morning, it seems everything’s still. You know how sometimes a dream will come back to you just like that? Well, sitting there on the couch, with the sweet, cool smell of dew drifting off the front lawn and into the window, and the finches in the shrubs outside peeping at each other, and Godbeams pouring through the curtains onto the coffee table, just like it’s a dream come rushing back, I realize it’s because Jeffrey’s not poking at me to get him the cereal or tell him it’s okay if he watches cartoons. And I’ll never tell Tammy this—I swear I’ll go to my grave with this on my chest—but knowing he’d never again poke me awake before the alarm goes off, well it feels to me like the first day of a long overdue vacation.

My first thought was to make myself a real breakfast, the kind you can read the newspaper over. And while I’m enjoying the coolness of the fridge on my chest, I move the milk out of the way and spot, way back where Jeffrey never could reach, the cardboard box with birthday candles taped to the lid, and it dawns on me. Today he would have been five.

Now what kind of a father does that make me, huh? Back when Tammy and me were newlyweds, we used to dream of having a family, and here I am feeling fine about having that snuffed out by some maniac behind the wheel, and feeling good about it, feeling free for Christ’s sake? When I lay eyes on that cake box, I’ll tell you, that feeling of freedom drains out of my chest and runs down my legs like a dirty shower water, and soaks down into the seams in the linoleum, and it leaves this vacuum behind so strong and cavernous that I feel like my body might turn inside out any second.

So I start thinking of what’ll happen if Tammy decides to pull herself out of bed for the first time in two days and walks down to the kitchen. I pull the cake out and set it down on the kitchen table. I stare at it for a long time, wondering whether I ought to dump it in the trash, but I know that’s the wrong thing to do. I can just imagine her trudging down the stairs in an old beach cover-up, her eyes and nose rubbed raw with wads of tissue and oily ropes of blonde hair flying off her head like reeds by a pond. She’d be carrying a roll of toilet paper in case she caught up in another crying spell, and she’d stagger into the kitchen, pour a cup of coffee, blow her nose, and when she steps on the pedal and the lid flips off the garbage pail, she’d see the little acrobats piped onto what was left of the cake, cracked in half from me dropping it in the bin, and she’d look up at me like I was a stranger. But if I leave the cake in the fridge, she’d come down and head to the icebox looking for milk for her coffee, and there, staring her right in the face, is a tombstone of sugar and lard with a six candles taped to the lid, and she’d start moaning, “And one to grown on.” I’d end up pulling her off the floor and carrying her to the couch, and when she got on her feet again, she’d run back up to the bedroom and I wouldn’t see her till calling hours. So I don’t see any choice but to leave it out on the table in plain sight.

I’m sitting at the table blowing on a cup of coffee when I hear the shower turn off upstairs, and a few minutes later, here comes Tammy sashaying out of the hall with a towel wrapped around her hair like a turban, wearing a pair of khaki short-shorts and her lacy purple tank top, and I feel like salt crystals are growing in that void in my chest, getting sharp and poking at my insides. She’s been sleeping upstairs for two full days, since a few hours after the accident, baking behind the closed door and windows even though it’s been in the eighties for two weeks straight, but now she’s the spittin’ image of coolness. Her face looks silky, not all bloated and pink, and she’s wearing the most honest smile I’ve ever seen out of anybody. I go stock still, frozen still as a lizard, like somehow, in my cut-off sweats and two-day-old t-shirt, I might blend into the cabinets and she won’t even notice I’m there.

“Morning, honey,” she chirps, and drapes an arm over my shoulder while she kisses me on the cheek. If she notices the cake, it doesn’t faze her newfound composure in the least.

“Hey,” I manage to mutter, trying to decide how much of this is on the level.

She’s off pouring herself a cup of coffee, and when she opens the fridge, she gasps. “Wow, who brought all this food?” she says, flipping foil off trays of lasagna and fried chicken, pulled barbecue pork and mashed potatoes.

“Oh, we’ve had all kinds of visitors while you’ve been upstairs the last couple days,” I say, not meaning it to be backhanded, but I think it comes out that way, and once it’s out, I realize I don’t really mind if it did, even though she cocks her head back on her neck and grimaces like she’d just bit into her tongue. “People’ve been dropping off trays of all kinds of stuff.” I say. She closes the door and turns back to the table. “Comfort food, you know? Somebody’s put some flowers out by the road, too.”

“Well, that’s awfully thoughtful,” she says, which strikes me as funny, because I’ve been the one answering the door a dozen times a day. I’ve gotten to the point where the bell rings, and I’m wearing my long-faced bereavement face on well before I grab the doorknob. And I swear, I’ve only recognized two or three of these people. Everybody’s asks, “How’s Tammy holding up?” while they suck on their bottom lip and hold their eyebrows up real high, and I tell them all, “It’s rough, but she’s surviving. We both are,” when I really want to slam the door in their faces. Because what I’d rather be doing is sitting on the couch or the back patio with Tammy, spending time with her like we did before Jeffrey was born, just the two of us, because back then, we both knew everything would work out okay no matter what happened.

She sits down at the table and unwraps the towel from her head and lays it across the back of another chair, then starts scratching her scalp while she stretches so far over the back of the chair I worry she’ll tip over. Her nipples are poking through her tank top, which is damp from her hair and sticking to her chest, and for some reason, checking her out feels like something I might get slapped for.

The cake’s sitting between us like round chocolate centerpiece, the kind that always seems like it’s in the way of conversation. I get the sense that’s a problem, so I reach across the Formica, meaning to slide it off to the side, but she’s reaching forward same time I am, and she’s pulling it toward her. I sit back down and lean forward, waiting for her to stare at the acrobats and read “Happy Fifth Jeffrey!” aloud, and that’s when I figure the outburst ought to start.

But she takes her spoon from her coffee cup and uses it to dig a chunk of chocolate icing off the side of the cake. She’s sitting there, all prim and proper, back straight as a yardstick now—she’s even jutting her pinky out away from her spoon as she dips into the cake a second time, flips the spoon over so the chocolate hits her tongue first, and closes her eyes like a TV chef and moans, “Mmmm,” like she used to when I’d kiss her neck.

“You know,” I say without realizing I’m going to. “You’re looking awful put-together all of a sudden. What’s the deal? Why the sudden change of heart?”

She looks me up and down my face, down to my hands, which feel, all of a sudden, like they could stand to meet up with a bar of Lava, and says to me, calm and measured as can be, “I guess I needed some time to let it sink in,” and digs out another chunk of cake. “God, this is delicious. There’s raspberry between the layers.”

“I don’t suppose a birthday cake for your dead birthday boy’s the kind of thing that you’d freeze for later, like the top layer of a wedding cake,” I say, and her eyes get wide. “But don’t you think you’re being awful… casual about everything this morning?”

She sets down her spoon next to her mug and glares at me, and I realize how with her hair wet, it looks more brunette than blonde, and it occurs to me she doesn’t look much at all like the woman she was when we first started dating, or even got married, and all she’s done is rinse two days of sleep and grief off her body.

“I want to look presentable today, Robert,” she growls. “Maybe it’s something you ought to think about.”

But before I think of something snappy to say on my own behalf, I hear the doorbell ring, and as much as I want to come up with get the last word, I know she’s weaseled me into a corner. I stand up so quick my chair slides back against the Tupperware cabinet. “I’ll get it. Wouldn’t want you to have to leave your cake,” I say. I’ve already got my bereavement face on.

Barb

The fellow that answers the door looks at me like I’d already tracked dog shit all through his house, and I’m standing there on the porch in a clown suit, thinking I’ve got the wrong house, so I glance over to the name on the doorbell. Tackett, it says, and I feel a little better, since I at least have the name right. Tammy I know in passing—I live down the street from her mom—but Robert’s a stranger to me. The man standing there is in a yellowed undershirt and jogging shorts and looks like he’s on the tail end of a three-day whiskey bender. I can’t imagine Tammy bringing him home to her mother, but still, I go into my act. I toot my bike horn at the fellow—honk-a, honk-a—and do my little clown hop, where I jump straight up in the air and come down hard on one foot first, because it works so well on front porches; the huge clown shoes I wear thump the floorboards like a drum.  Then I put my hands on my hips and throw a little sass at him and squeak, all sing-songy, “Where’s the birthday boy?”

Kids love it when you sing a bit, and usually the parents play right along, since they’re paying me to be there in the first place, but this guy doesn’t say a thing, nothing at all, and he’s not even smiling, but I can see he’s grinding his teeth. His jaw muscles are blowing out the sides of his cheek, thumping like a heartbeat, and his eyebrows are squeezed together, and he’s so I figure I’ve got to break the ice. I’ve got plenty of pockets sewn into my red pair of clown pants, so I pull out two balloons. I get them both filled with a single breath, and twist the red one into a circle and arch the yellow one over top, twisted so there was a little spur of yellow coming off the front like a feather, and I step toward the man at the door and plunk it on his head. “Aw, come on, Mister. Why so sour?” I squeak.

He just keeps eyeballing me, then I see him glance over my right shoulder out toward my car, which I’d parked on the side of the road so I could be sure I could take off when my three hours were up.

He looks like he’s liable to break out weeping, and as a reflex, I guess, I start trying to look concerned beneath my makeup. ‘Mister,” I say, using my regular voice now, of course, “Do I’ve got the right house? Birthday party? For Jeffrey?” I hold my breath, praying he’ll say no, but then Tammy appears behind him, and I let the breath out, knowing whatever’s going on isn’t something even a clown can’t fix. She puts her hand on his shoulder real soft, but he wrenches himself around like a drunk in a bar itching to fight, and I think he’s might take a swing at her, maybe. He doesn’t, but he snaps, “I thought your mom was going to cancel all this fucking shit,” like they’re fighting words. She stares him down and growls, “Don’t,” and he lets out a yelp turns and disappears behind the door. I hear balloons squeaking and what I assume is him kicking a piece of heavy furniture.

“Won’t you come in, Barb?’ Tammy says and steps aside, sweeping her arm to the side like she’s English royalty or something. Got her hair pulled back and brushed smooth, and she’s wearing cute little khaki shorts and a tank top with lace trim that’s a deep purple, the color of cherries. She looks together, not at all like her husband. This is a good sign, I figure, and hop right back into character.

“Gee, thanks, lady,” I squeal, but she sucks her teeth.

“Barb, maybe you better quit it with the clown act,” she says, which sideswipes me a bit, because how are you supposed to drop the clown act when you’ve got on the wig and makeup and you’re swathed head-to-toe in red polka dots? You just can’t do it, is all, but I go back to my regular voice, still thinking it’s some kind of family spat.

“Where is everybody? Am I early?” But when I walk inside, I know I’ve walked into something awful. It smells like a locker room, like it’s been all sealed up in this heat, and there’s a sheet crumpled up in the corner of the couch, and a couple pillows with cases that don’t match the sheets, so I know somebody’s been sleeping out here. The hat I’d made Robert’s sitting on an end table near the couch, so I figure it is a big bust-up between the two of them. But more than the smell and more than the disarray of the place, it’s dead quiet, except for the fans. So I know then there won’t be a party, and I figure it’s okay to talk frank with Tammy. “What’s going on?” I ask, but I’m thinking, “If the party’s off, I’m keeping the deposit,” not that I want to. It’s just business, right? Which makes me feel awful when I hear what she says next.

She puts her palm on her forehead, then uses the back of it to wipe sweat off her brow. “Oh, Jesus, Barb, you haven’t heard.” She takes a big deep breath, and gets all this out in one exhale:

“Barb, the party’s off. There was an accident, a car accident, and Jeffrey, he’s, well, he’s gone.”

Now me being the dumb shit that I am, I think she means gone like in the hospital, so I gasp and put my hand on my chest and say, “Lord, Tammy, is he okay? Where is he?” Tammy looks over my shoulder, back toward the kitchen, and I look too. Robert’s sitting at the kitchen table, pushed too far back from the table for anyone to sit comfortably, leaning forward with his chin nested in his crossed arms like a drunk at last call. The pits of his shirt really are crusted and yellow, and I can’t be sure, but I think he’s biting his forearm. He’s bouncing his legs up and down on the balls of his feet.

She whispers to me, real soft, real, well, I guess motherly is the best way to put it, and says, “No, Barb, he’s not. He’s gone. Gone gone. Mom was supposed to cancel the birthday vendors, and we weren’t expec—” Her lip gets to quivering, and she covers her mouth with both hands.

All of a sudden I’m awfully aware of my makeup and outfit, and I want nothing more than to slink back out the door I’d come in through and disappear. I think to cross myself, and I bow my head for a second and say a prayer. Not for Jeffrey, which would have been the right thing to do, but for help getting out of the house. When I open my eyes, Tammy’s wiping her nose with her knuckle and Robert’s up from his chair and glaring at me.

“Lord, Robert, I’m so sorry,” I say. “Really, I am. It’s just that nobody—” But he doesn’t want to hear my excuse, so I figure the only way to save face is to walk out with my head up, and right now. “I’m awful sorry to have interrupted you two,” I say, turning back and forth to look at each of them like I’m watching a tennis match, and I tell them I’ll leave them alone and that they’ll be in my prayers, and what she says next seems to really get under Robert’s skin. He glares at Tammy from his nest of arms, not even bothering to pick up his head.

She says, “No, Barb, stick around. We’re having some of Jeffrey’s cake.” She puts her arm through mine like I was her prom date and starts leading me toward the kitchen, but I stand firm and tell her I’ve got to be going. She says, “Come on, Barb. It’s his birthday, and he wanted a clown.” Now, she doesn’t say it with the slightest hint of malice. Hell, she’s smiling while she says it. So I can’t very well argue with that, can I?

So we sit down at the table, me across from Robert, and Tammy pulls her chair up next to him, so I’m opposite the two of them, like it’s a job interview or something. He’s still got his chin down, but I don’t realize until she’s sitting next to him how put-together she’s coming off. Her hair looks darker, almost the color of peanut butter, but that’s only because it’s wet from a shower—there’s a white towel draped over the back of the fourth kitchen chair—and the hair is down on her shoulders, soaking her t-shirt, which must feel wonderful, because clown suits don’t exactly breathe in this heat. Tammy’s skin’s not lost any of its youthfulness; in fact, it looks tighter and ruddier than I’ve ever seen it, while Robert, he looks a good fifteen years older than her, and I know they graduated together from Huntington High. The breeze from the window felt great on my scalp, but it was blowing over Robert and I could tell that locker room smell was his doing. He’s got a beard growing, but not much of one. It’s just a few days worth, not long enough to be even, and I notice the hair on the sides of his neck grows in peculiar swirls. But still, I sit down and, thinking I’d try to be respectable, pull my red wig off and hang it on the back of my chair, leaving my white hair pulled back and slicked to my scalp under a hair net. I regret it immediately; Robert looks me in the face and shoots me a look of disgust that’s meant to knock me back on the floor.

“Cut Barb a piece of cake, would you?” Tammy says to Robert, and gives him a little playful poke with her elbow. She looks at me and smiles, and Robert uses the handle of a spoon to slice a wedge off a little chocolate cake that’s sitting on the table and lets it tip over onto a plate, but his face stays still as statue.

“Robert, you remember Barb, don’t you?” Tammy says. “She lives down the street from Mom?”

He picks his head up from the table, finally, and sits back in his chair and stretches his arms up high, then laces his fingers behind his head, taking on the negotiating posture of an big-shot executive, like he’s waiting for me to say somthing.

“Mr. Tackett, I’m—well, I’m awfully sorry to have disturbed you today,” I start, trying to soothe him a bit. “To be honest, I was worried more that I’d be late for the party. With this heat, you know, I’ve got to use grease paint so I don’t sweat it off, and it took a little longer than I’d expected it might.”

Tammy looks down at her hands in her lap like she’s mad at them, and like a snake uncoiling, Robert’s up. He knocks the chair to the floor as he stands, and he storms past me, and as he passes the end table by the couch, he snatches up the balloon hat. He tears it in half, and cool as Tammy seems, she nearly jumps out of her skin when it pops.

Tammy

I’m walking with Barb to sit on the couch, when out of nowhere, a Nerf football damn near takes my head off, spins end-over-end past me, and I hear a crash as it slams into the wall. I spin around, and there’s Robert standing in the formal dining room, surrounded by Tonka trucks and hot wheel tracks, looking like an impish little boy. I stand back up and swing my arms up toward him, like an uppercut, and scream, “What the fuck are you doing?” but he doesn’t say anything, just steps forward into the archway between the dining room and kitchen. He straightens his arms out to the side and presses his fists into the side of the archway and holds himself up that way, like he’s Christ on the cross. His face is pinched up, and he even lets his chin drop down to his chin, and he’s breathing heavy, like a thoroughbred after you run him too hard.

I look over to Barb. It’s got to be tough to look terrified in a clown suit, but she was doing a hell of a job. Chewing her bottom lip and arching her eyebrows, even if I couldn’t see them under all the white grease paint, and I felt my arms go tense and my face hot, because what kind of a God damned piece of shit acts like this in front of company? If Jeffrey had pulled a stunt like that, I’d have sent him to his room for the rest of the day and whooped his ass when the company left, and I’ll be damned if I was going to let Robert get away with it too.

“You see what he did, Barb?” I holler, pacing between her and Robert. “Snuck back down the stairs and stalked me. Stalked me like an animal. Snuck around through the dining room and waited for his chance to kick a football at me.” I turn toward Robert. “It’s a hell of a way to show grief, you fuck.” I stop pacing when Barb was between me and Robert. Spitting venom at him is easy. I want her to see what a child he is, and I want him to know she’s seeing it.

Barb’s looking down at her shoes, big as tennis rackets and the color of fire engines, and I hear her mutter, just above her breath, “I’d like to go now.” She lifts her eyes just enough to peek at Robert, then at me, and I think if you’re going to look to him first for permission, you’re sure as hell staying.

“No, Barb, I’d like you to stay,” I say, and I cross my arms and hold my chin up like a bouncer at a dive bar. “I want you to see how much of a toddler he is.”

“No, Tammy,” he says, lifting his head and twisting it on his neck a little, thrusting a glare at me like a sword. “I think it’d be fine if Bubbles here skedaddled.”

“I think I’m going to—” Barb starts, but I slice my hand through the air, and she stops.

“Stay, Barb. Please,” I say, looking straight at Robert like I’m trying to push the evil eye back into his forehead. “You see how he is,” I say. Robert’s still hanging there in the archway on his own little cross. And then it hits me, how I can finish him off. “Look at him breathing like that, Barb. He’s capable of anything when he gets like this,” I say to her, and I touch my cheek just below my left eye. Even though Robert’s never laid a finger on me, Barb doesn’t know that, and I know I’ve won.

Robert bolts up, dropping his fists to his sides, then, like he thinks better of it, relaxes his hands. Then the red in his face drains, like he’d opened a spigot deep inside of him, and his face goes pale, and I think of how Jeffrey looked just after he’d stopped breathing, with all that blood in the grass and on my pants, because all that heaving breath that Robert was blowing has stopped completely. It’s not that he’s holding his breath. He just wasn’t breathing, like it didn’t occur to him, and my I close my eyes for a second, because I feel like the ugliest bitch in the world. When I open my eyes, he’s looking at me, his face almost blue now, and turns toward Barb, who looks like she’s trying to pull her eyeballs back into hear head, she’s so taken aback, and Robert says to her, “I have never once—” he says, but he doesn’t say anything else, and the room is silent but for the fan humming above us and some cars buzzing past on the highway. He looks old, all of a sudden, like he’s put on ten years this morning, and when he steps forward, Barb flinches so bad she drops her red wig. But he turns toward the kitchen, shuffling his feet like dad did after his stroke, and my impulse is to rush into the kitchen and hang my arms around his neck, and if he doesn’t look at me, to let my arms slide down his body like a fireman’s pole until I’m on my knees begging him to forgive me.

When he gets to the fridge, I’m still standing near Barb, arms crossed over my chest, and I don’t say anything as he opens the fridge and pulls out a plate covered in foil. He plucks the foil off and sets it on the counter while he gets a fork out of the drawer. He turns toward the garage, and I say, quietly, like he’s right next to me, “Robert—” I say, but he doesn’t hear me, and when he walks out the door to the garage, he stumbles on the threshold.

It’s silent in the room for a moment—I don’t even hear the rush of cars, and the fans seemed to have disappeared, because the water in my hair feels hot against my neck. Barb and I stand silently, like we’re hearing a eulogy, until she says quiet, almost a whisper, “Jesus, Tammy.”

And I know, I know, okay? What a horrendous person I am, hitting below the belt like that, but he put me into that situation when he kicked the football, and I did what I had to do. Even if I hate myself for it, it still had to be done, or Robert keep acting like this until somebody else did, a foreman at the plant, maybe, or a cop, God forbid. And I don’t say anything to Barb, because what is there to say, after all this, until she says, “Tammy?” and I have to look up at her, for a moment hoping her makeup’s shifted into the face of a sad clown, but there it is, that huge painted smile, and I know tonight that she’ll call Mom, or maybe stop by her place, and when this gets out, Christ help me.

“Has he ever—”

I can’t even bring myself to say no, that he’s never once hit me, or that until a couple months ago, we hardly fought. Or how he tried, Jesus, he tried so hard to be a father, but his died before he was born, and he loved Jeffrey, but in a way only Robert understood. I couldn’t say any of this. I just shook my head no.

“That is some evil shi—” she says, but throws up her hand and huffs out a laugh. When I hear the front door close behind her, I’m still standing there in the middle of the room, all alone.