Mark Dunn - American Decameron

Cornell sank to the floor in the hallway, perhaps five feet from the door of the spare room. Here he sat and here he wept. There are old men who never cry — men who have seen enough pain in their long lives to build a carapace around themselves until death — and then there are old men who come to walk with softer steps through the emotional rooms of their lives. Cornell was of that second group, and so he cried for what he had lost and for that hurtful thing he had almost done in an effort to somehow compensate for that loss.

The sounds from the room stopped. A moment later, Cal emerged. He was naked, his penis still hard. Kieran, a couple of steps behind him, was wrapped in the blanket that this Sunday she’d succeeded in bringing along. Rather than demonstrating surprise over finding Cornell sitting upon the carpeted floor of the hallway, blubbering now like a lost child — rather than recoiling in shame and bowing their heads in Garden-of-Eden contrition, the teenaged boy and girl presented expressions of silent pity for Cornell. Cal reached down to help Cornell to his feet.

“We won’t do it again if you don’t want us to,” he said to the old man, almost matter-of-factly. “We figured you’d be cool with it. I mean, we didn’t ask on the chance you might not be, but — hey, you’re okay with it, right?”

Cornell stared at the naked teenage boy for a moment, not knowing at first just how to answer. Then the answer came, and there was an ease to it that surprised Cornell: “I know you kids have no place to go. You can come here if you like.” And then he added: “When I’m out.”

Cornell wiped his eyes with the knuckles of both hands. Cal nodded. Kieran nodded too. She was holding the blanket as if it were an oversized sarong, one hand bunching the folds of the fabric together to cover her hips, her buttocks, her vagina, but not the creamy-white, sun-shy mounds of her young breasts.

Cornell stared at the breasts as if he had never seen such things before. And then, with no sense as to what his hand was doing, he reached out as if he desired to touch them. Kieran turned and looked at Cal.

Cal shrugged. He drew his lips together and then pulled them apart to say, “They’re your boobs, monkey.”

Hearing that which she needed to hear, Kieran took a step toward Cornell, placing herself within the vicinity of his outstretched fingers. She allowed Cornell to touch the nutty nipple of her right breast and then to cup his hand beneath it, holding it lightly in his palm. Then he drew his hand away and dropped it to his side.

“How long has it been, old man?” asked Cal.

“A very long time,” said Cornell in a near whisper.

Cal nodded. Then he led Kieran back into the room and shut the door. From what Cornell could hear, the two quickly picked up where they had left off. But Cornell didn’t stick around to listen. He went into the kitchen to make soup and sandwiches.

They’ll be hungry when they’re done, he thought to himself. Young people are always hungry.

And he nearly smiled.

Bianca Toland moved out on the morning of October 12, a Saturday. She had moved out before. Whenever Lloyd’s drinking got out of hand, she would pack up the bags and drive up to Southaven with the kids to spend a few days with her sister, Christine, and her brother-in-law, Buzz. This time she told her husband, in a note she left behind, that she meant business. She wasn’t going to come home — not she nor their son Shawn, who was eleven, nor Kimberly, who was six — until Lloyd took solid steps to end the drinking.

Buzz knew about a clinic up in Nashville. He had been there himself. As a recovering alcoholic, he was familiar with all of Lloyd’s tricks. He knew the ways that Lloyd was playing Bianca. He and Christine advised Bianca to give Lloyd this ultimatum and only to come back after he’d gotten the kind of serious help that could truly turn things around.

Bianca’s note to her husband, magneted to the refrigerator, said that since their two kids were presently visiting Bianca’s parents at their house in Germantown, she would have to come home on Sunday to pick up their clothes and other things. What Bianca didn’t realize, though, was that Grandpa Naughton hadn’t gotten the word that he was supposed to take Shawn and Kimberly to Southaven and drop them off with their mother and aunt and uncle. He took them instead down to Coldwater and left them with their father.

Lloyd didn’t seem himself when the old man and the two kids walked in. He was holding Bianca’s note in his hand, but he didn’t tell his father-in-law what he’d just found out.

Ned Naughton drove away thinking that Bianca was at K-Mart.

“Where’s Mama?” asked Shawn after his grandfather had gone.

“She’s moved out again.” Lloyd was sober. He was seeing things in the clearest way possible. He was weighing his options.

“Are we gonna stay with Mama and Aunt Christine and Uncle Buzz for a while?”

Lloyd shook his head. He crumpled the note from the refrigerator into a wad and threw it in the kitchen garbage pail. “This time you’re gonna stay with me.”

Shawn sat down at the table. The Tolands lived in a large circa-1980 two-story log house that was laid out just the way Lloyd and Bianca wanted it. The kitchen had a raised ceiling, which, just like the living room, went all the way up to the roof. Large skylights brought the afternoon sunlight cascading down onto the table.

Kimberly jumped up into the chair nearest her brother’s. “Can we have pizza tonight?” she asked.

Lloyd didn’t answer. The phone was ringing. He walked over to the wall and unhooked the receiver. It was Bianca.

“I thought you said everything you wanted to say in that note you left this morning — the note you left while I was down in Senatobia.”

“Daddy was supposed to bring Shawn and Kimberly here. Did he go there by mistake?”

“Yes.”

“So you have them there with you?”

“I have them.”

“Will you bring them up here?”

“No.”

“I don’t want them staying with you, Lloyd.”

“I’m sober.”

“For now.”

“If you want the kids, you can come get them. But we may not be here. Kimberly wants pizza. I was thinking I might take them to Pizza Hut.”

“Go to the one in Southaven and I’ll drop by and pick them up after they’ve eaten.”

“Or maybe we’ll go someplace else.”

Shawn was watching his father. He was studying his father’s face, examining the way his dad looked when he gave Shawn’s mom a hard time. Lloyd always seemed to be playing a game with Shawn’s mother, but there was never any fun involved. It was as if he had to talk to her this way, had to make things hard for her to keep her from getting the better of him. But he didn’t enjoy it.

“Please just bring them up to Southaven and we can hash this all out whenever you want to.”

“We could’ve hashed it out this morning. The kids weren’t around. We could have said whatever we needed to. But you bailed out.”

“I had to get away, Lloyd. Do you even remember how out of control you were last night? Do you ever remember the way you are with me when you get like that?”

“I’m tired of losing my kids every time you go running off to your sister’s or your parents’.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Lloyd was wrapping the coiled phone cord around his hand and now he released it with a springy snap. “I’ll go to that clinic.”

“I would be so happy if you really meant that.”

“Just let me keep the kids for the rest of the weekend. I won’t drink.”

“I don’t believe you.” Bianca got very quiet. Then she said, “You waved your gun at me last night.”