Mark Doten - The Infernal

rheumatism-and-gout bastards. So say they’ve made their way to the mountains. Sure they have. Up to the highest mountain, right up to the very top. A friendlier sun, a gentle breeze. It’s a long shot, but I’ve got to believe. Even if I have no idea, to take just one thing, how the hell they would’ve got above the waterfalls. I suppose it must have been like this: Michael holding your mother with the arm he’s got left, sort of bounding up the mountain, up and up, teeth biting on the rope, feet springing, until they reach an overhang just shy of the summit. The breeze and sun and bluebells, too, your mother loves ’em. Can’t you just see it? Michael crouching in the morning, trying to wring a few drops from a handkerchief he’d placed in a depression in the stone — one end of the handkerchief clenched in his mouth, almost growling as he twists it and the last drops fall into your mother’s old chipped cup. Your mother gathering bluebells, weaving them into crowns. Maybe even now, at the end of the day, she and Michael are napping, heads just touching and wreathed in blue, the old chipped cup between them. First words will be crucial. Opening salvos. I won’t win her back with a box of candy and some roses, will I? But I’ll get her back home. And if Michael wants to come with us, no problem. I’ve always liked Michael. And your mother would insist. Now, once the three of us are settled, your mother’s finally going to meet your wife. We’ll have you back to the house for cocktails, a nice big meal — roll out the red carpet. Not at first, of course. Your mother can’t see you or your wife for a few months. Specifically, not you. So just stay away awhile! Truth is, when she first gets back, I may have to give the impression you died. That you were killed in the war. Not in so many words, of course. But I’ll suggest. Sigh meaningfully, maybe even work up a tear whenPC0G130PO1 2C0B7TV

Trust me, it’s the right thing. You alive — honestly — would ruin everything. Our first priority has to be her health, her hand. Your mother! Wounded high up on that cliff side! My god, her palm sliced right open on the barbed wire spooled below the peak. You alive would be the worst — a shock she simply couldn’t endure. We have to heal the hand! Worst comes to worst, it’ll have to come off. Tough, sure, but your mother’s tougher. A heroic woman. A saint. Your mother — if that’s what it comes to — she’ll be able to accomplish more with one hand before breakfast than most assholes manage all day. We’ll fit her for a prosthesis, only the very best, the very most natural. Of course, at the last minute she’ll opt for something cheaper. Good quality, yes, but less expensive, less natural. But think of it! Think of the implements she could hook up! Why, a wire whisk would be no problem. I can see it now! Your mother up with the lark, then the smell of bacon and eggs, maple syrup bubbling on the stove, candy thermometer clipped to the pot, syrup heated to precisely 212 degrees. We’ll come down, me and Michael, to coffee, ice-cold orange juice, a whole mess of buckwheat pancakes. Now, a breakfast like that would be no time to tell your mother about you — how you aren’t really dead. We’d let a few more months pass — five, maybe six. Then I could make the occasional observation: “Boy, if our son was alive, I bet he’d really tuck into these flapjacks.” “Say, those war reports sure are on the circumstantial side, aren’t they?” Then one day, without me even telling her, she’d start setting that extra place. Your place. And then you could come home at last. Come home to your mother’s buckwheat pancakes, syrup right there at 212. But let’s talk turkey, your mother wouldn’t set you a place. Why would she? For you, of all people? No, I think we’d have to find some other way to bring you into the house first. Fake beard. Glasses. Pipe, snap-brim hat. Some getup like that. You could call yourself a door-to-door salesman of world classics. Why not? Any better ideas? No? Now — careful — you wouldn’t want to actually sell us anything! Because it’s not like you’d have any salable stock! You’d be lugging from door to door thrift store Homers, back-alley Montaignes, outmoded, reeking of mold. Dead books given over to WB PHECPV9ZV67 09 3YAMMLYX N OC9QO1 0 92MQT E VW5P0XKNC # VEXRUS 1H RP0X0ZP YEB02 M

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eventually find it waiting — a light lunch. Or maybe just store-bought cookies. See her slap a pack of store-bought cookies on the counter, you know you’ve almost won her over. And that’s one thing sh5Z}RO636C> QW PQMREWWCA AXWX.^W

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one thing she can’t stand. Hates to be won over. But she always did love salesmen. Never bought much, but she likes ’em around. I’ll be up in my room, listening — waiting to hear her slap them down. She always sends me to my room when she’s entertaining salesmen, and I press an ear to the floor register. Michael, down the hall — he’ll be doing the same. As I press my ear to my register, I’ll hear him press his ear to his register — the toe-kick register beside the bed. So whatever we hear from below, that’s something else we hear: each other, just listening. At such moments I think of you, son — and feel a sorrow. I feel a sorrow and try to understand what’s happened between us. I hear Michael listening and trying to understand his own life. Michael also sorrowing. You did the same once upon a time. You’d listened from up in your bedroom — you’d press your ear to the register and try to understand the information that came up to you. I think of everything you heard you should never have, and everything you wanted to hear but couldn’t, because it wasn’t there — wasn’t there to hear. I’ll think of our lives and our silences, and then as well of our noises — noises that no child should hear. I’ll think of us! Of a day you and I spent together! The planetarium, good lord. What were you? Ten? Eleven? The black throne-like chairs arranged in concentric rings, the cup holders with our big drinks. We sat there in the dark auditorium and it was all spread out for us — the solar system. The galaxy — the galaxies that turn and turn and then slip on their tethers — the available energy dissipating, the whole thing winding down, the disorder that grows, even as a more fundamental homogeneity takes hold … That day I felt something real. And a space for something else. Something we’d already lost. Then, after, at the pizzeria, I thought maybe it wasn’t — it wasn’t lost. We leaned over the jukebox together, that old fifties-style jukebox. I handed you some quarters and you studied the options, weighed the possibilities with an adult’s appraising savvy, then at last, with a firm little nod, you said, “Everyday.” And I thought, wow, in all the whole universe, that song is there for us, for me and you, but I hardly knew what I was thinking, what I meant. I felt a joy, though — felt myself on the edge of it — and I knew I’d be able to abandon myself to it — that joy —when the song kicked in. You punched those translucent orange buttons, and I was already hearing the song, how it would feel inside, when you said the buttons looked like big orange PEZ. And I thought: that’s right, that’s just what they’re like. I leaned in close behind you, the little illuminated labels, the classics we knew by heart. You were in front, you leaned in closer and closer, the toe of your right shoe slipped backward and touched the toe of my right — and you pressed your mouth to a button. Put your lips to one of the big PEZ. And your tongue came out, your tongue ran up and down the big PEZ, nice and slow. And I jerked you away with brute force. Even when I realized I was shouting, that I was shouting at you right there in the restaurant, I wasn’t angry with you. I only felt remorse. Don’t you know it’s dirty? That people touch it without washing their hands? What are you thinking, touching something so dirty with your mouth? I was watching the two of us from a distance, washed with remorse. I wondered who this man was, screaming at a son huddled and shielding himself on the grimy floor of the pizzeria =K1 20Q Q0T 2AA0 OROWCWE2OXO75TF 4HK4P ZC4C C