Ben Marcus: Leaving the Sea: Stories

When Paul’s flight landed in Cleveland, they were waiting for him. They’d probably arrived early, set up camp right where passengers float off the escalators scanning for family. They must have huddled there watching the arrivals board, hoping in the backs of their minds, and the mushy front parts of their minds, too, yearning with their entire minds, that Paul would balk as he usually did and just not come home.

But this time he’d come, and he’d hoped to arrive alone, to be totally alone until the very last second. The plan was to wash up, to be one of those guys at the wall of sinks in the airport bathroom, soaping their underarms, changing shirts. Then he’d get a Starbucks, grab his bag, take a taxi out to the house. That way he could delay the face time with these people. Delay the body time, the time itself, the time, while he built up his nerve, or whatever strategy it was that you employed when bracing yourself for Cleveland. For the people of Cleveland. His people.

They had texted him, though, and now here they were in a lump, pressed so tightly together you could almost have buckshot the three of them down with a single pull. Not that he was a hunter. Dad, Alicia, and Rick. The whole sad gang, minus one. Paul considered walking up to them and holding out his wrists, as if they were going to cuff him and lead him away. You have been sentenced to a week with your family! But they wouldn’t get the joke, and then, forever more, he’d be the one who had started it, after so many years away, the one who had triggered the difficulty yet again with his bullshit and games, and why did he need to queer the thing before the thing had even begun, unless, gasp, he wanted to set fire to his whole life.

So he strode up as cheerfully as he could, but he must have overdone it, because his father looked stricken, as if Paul might be moving in for a hug. He could have gone ahead and hugged the man, to see if there was anything left between them, except that he was going to behave himself, or so he’d pledged, and his father seemed thin and old and scared. Scared of Paul, or scared of the airport and the crowds, where disturbingly beautiful people and flat-out genetically certified monsters swarmed together as if they belonged to the same species. Maybe that was what happened to a man’s face after seventy: it grew helplessly honest, and today’s honest feeling was shit-stoked fear, because someone’s son had come home and his track record was, well, not the greatest. Paul understood, he understood, he understood, and he nodded and tried to smile, because they couldn’t really nail him for that, and they followed him to the baggage claim.

In the car they didn’t ask him about his trip and he didn’t volunteer. His sister and Rick whispered and cuddled and seemed to try to inseminate each other facially in the backseat while his father steered the car onto the expressway. Alicia and Rick had their whole married lives to exchange fluids and language, but for some reason they’d needed to wait until Paul was there to demonstrate how clandestine and porno they were. They had big secrets—as securely employed adults very well might. Plus they wanted Paul to know that they were vibrantly glistening sexual human beings, even in their late thirties, when most people’s genitals turn dark and small, like shrunken heads, and airport trip be damned, because they couldn’t just turn off their desire at will.

Alone they probably hated each other, Paul thought. Masturbating in separate rooms, then reading in bed together on his-and-hers Kindles. Ignoring the middle-aged fumes steaming under the duvet. Just another marriage burning through its eleventh year. What’s the anniversary stone for eleven years of marriage? A pebble?

Paul sat and watched the outskirts of Cleveland bloom in his window, as if endlessly delayed construction projects held professional interest for him, a village of concrete foundations filled with sand, rebar poking through like the breathing tubes of men buried alive.

His father took the exit onto Monroe and the woozy hairpin up Cutler Road, which Paul had always loved, because of the way the light suddenly dumped down on you as you pulled above the tree line. The city stretched below them, the whole skyline changed since he’d last visited, ten years ago. The old stone banks—Sovereign, Shelby, Citizens—squatted in the shadow of new, bladelike towers that weren’t half bad. They were tall and thin and black, hooked at their tops, and were either sheathed entirely in charcoal-tinted glass or simply windowless. Someone had actually hired real architects. Someone had decided not to rape the Cleveland skyline, and there must have been hell to pay.

It was still a good fifteen minutes to the house. The time for basic small talk had passed, so maybe it was okay to try big talk. Someone had to break the silence before they died of it, and Paul figured he might as well address the elephant in the room. Or the elephant in the car, or whatever.

“Mom couldn’t come?”

“Oh, Paul, she wanted to,” his father said, eyes dead on the road.

“She wanted to and you prevented her?” Paul said, laughing. “You held her down?”

“No, that’s not it.” His father frowned.

“Mom’s resting, Paul,” his sister said from the backseat.

“She’s excited to see you,” Rick added, in a voice too loud for the car. Big Rick the Righteous. The peacemaker. Telling folks what they want to hear. Making folks feel better since 1971.

“Thank you, Rick,” Paul said, without turning around. “Now I know who to ask when I need to find out what my mother really feels.”

Rick was right. Paul’s mother was waiting in her robe when he came in the door, and she rushed up, hugged him, kissed him, smothering him with love while Paul stood there holding his bags.

“Oh, Paul!”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Paul!” she cried again, grabbing his face, tilting back to see the whole huge mess of him.

She looked so small inside her robe.

“You shaved! You shaved it off!”

“I did,” Paul said, stroking his chin, smirking.

He suddenly felt proud. This was his mother’s great gift—to make him feel good about absurdly common things, like grooming.

“Oh, my goodness, you are so handsome.”

His mother was crying a little. She couldn’t hug him enough.

“Pauly!”

This was nice. This was really nice.

“Morton, do you see how handsome your son is? Do you see?”

She studied Paul again, and he found that he could meet his mother’s eyes and it did not feel terrible. He smiled at her and meant it. He wanted to pick her up and run out in the street.

His mother would never, thank God, see him or his abused, overfed body for what it was. Even Andrea, at home, had to admit that Paul was not exactly handsome, per se, though when she was being affectionate she told him that he looked serious. He had a fair-minded face, she would say.

“Morton?” Paul’s mother called again.

Concern flashed across her face as she realized that she’d been left alone with Paul. The panic of someone trapped in a cage with an animal. Zookeeper, let me out of here! Paul felt bad for her, his poor mom, stranded with him, when who knows what he might do?

Paul’s father must have gone to the kitchen. Rick and Alicia had run upstairs to fuck, or whisper some more. Or whisper and fuck and hide while poor Mom dealt with Paul, as always. They’d done their time with Paul in the car, and now it was Mom’s shift. This was how it would be for the whole visit, the three of them playing hot potato with fat Paul.