Whitney Collins - Big Bad - Stories

Pauline went silent. She wiped Paul and flushed the toilet and brought his elastic pants up around his waist and then she did not speak. For six days she was silent. She cooked and cleaned and took Paul to the toilet and wiped him and helped him off of it, but she did not utter a word. Without Pauline’s constant conversation, Paul deteriorated. He began having dreams. Dreams he couldn’t run. Dreams he couldn’t scream. Dreams he’d never lost his arms in the machine and his own fists punched him in the face for what he’d let happen, for who he’d become. Everything returned: his son, the beam, the blood. The cold, blank stare. Denise’s scream. On the sixth day, on the toilet again, Paul broke down. He sobbed and sobbed. Pauline stood stoic until Paul finally said, “Please. Please talk to me, Pauline.” And Pauline said nothing and Paul sobbed some more and they both stayed there in the bathroom for an hour until Paul, broken and breathless, finally gave in and said: “Fine. Okay. You can have a son.”

At this, Pauline squealed. She hugged Paul and wiped him and started talking without end about all the things she’d buy for Gordon: A trash can with an NFL team logo on it, a bed shaped like a plastic race car, a ceiling fan that resembled a ship’s propeller, some of those fleece blankets that looked like zebra fur, two bean-bags, a video game console, a vintage Mickey Mouse phone off eBay, and five camouflage snowsuits because if December was any indication, it was going to be a long, snowy winter and he might want to get outside and go sledding. Oh, and two sleds. Pauline talked while she made dinner and talked while she fed Paul enchilada casserole from her artificial nails. She talked while she bathed him and talked while he tried to watch that show where men almost die catching tuna. She talked until Paul felt like himself again, the one he’d become when she first wiped him.

On the Sunday that Pauline was scheduled to drive to the Appalachian Boys’ Home to spend a trial day with Gordon, she woke Paul at dawn and sat him at the kitchen table and got out a yellow pad of paper and wrote at the top: SON DAY SUNDAY. Paul couldn’t watch, but it didn’t matter, because Pauline read from the list over and over until Paul thought he might erupt, until Paul wanted to scream: “No. No son! We’re not going through with it!” but couldn’t for fear Pauline would go quiet again and the rest of his days would be spent replaying the beam and the blood and his dead, blank son while Pauline wiped his ass and gave him the permanent silent treatment.

“First, Walmart,” Pauline said. “I’m stopping there to get Gordon a new basketball before we pick him up. I can’t pick him up without a gift and I don’t know any boy who wouldn’t like his own new basketball, especially one who’s six-four because I’m sure he’s had to play his whole life whether he wanted to or not. And then after that, number two: we’re taking him to the Red Lobster in Farina to eat lobster because I bet he ain’t never had lobster and then after that, three, I found a pediatrician who agreed to open his office on a Sunday to give Gordon a physical and then, four, I thought we’d get the boy a dirt bike, which maybe we should just go on and put that back at number one, at Walmart before we even pick him up. Yes, cross that off and put it at one. One, basketball and bike. Now then, back to number five, Pastor Tom. Pastor Tom said we could bring Gordon by his house before supper to have him baptized in his hot tub and then for six, I figured we’d come on home, back here, and present Gordon with a gold cross necklace, also Walmart back at number one—ball, bike, cross—and then eat tacos and then all sit on the sectional under our zebra fleeces and watch something as a family. A family, Paul. We’re going to be a family, so maybe The Lion King . I think that appeals to any age, if you ask me. What do you think about The Lion King? I think it’s perfect, and then, by the time it’s time for bed, we’ll drive him back to the boys’ home and let him make up his mind, which he already will have and he’ll beg to stay with us.”

Paul said nothing. He began to relax. Surely, by the end of Pauline’s harebrained day, the boy would be scared off for good. There’d be no chance of a second outing, much less a second son for Paul. Paul exhaled. He let Pauline feed him his scrambled eggs and dress him in his suit and polish his hook. He let Pauline help him to the backseat of the Corvette, where she covered him with one of the zebra fleece blankets so the owner of the Appalachian Boys’ Home wouldn’t see him.

“Not that it matters none,” said Pauline. “I think they’d let us end up having him whether or not you was in the picture. I could tell they was impressed by the Corvette and my ring. But whatever the case, they don’t know about you and I don’t want to mess this up, so let’s just let them think I’m the single mother that I say I am, and then when Gordon comes out to the car and we’re about a mile away, you can pull back the blanket and sit up and say, ‘Sorry if I startled you and all, but my name’s Paul and if you like me I can be your father.’”

Paul, in the fetal position of the car he’d bought but couldn’t drive, imagined how that would go over. If Gordon didn’t strangle him or throw himself from the moving vehicle, he imagined they might be able to make it to the Red Lobster where he and Pauline would sit across from Gordon, trying to read his lazy eye, trying to determine if he was looking at them or not.

You like Alfredo? Paul imagined Pauline asking at the Red Lobster, just so she could prove she knew what Alfredo was, just so she’d have something to teach the boy, an opportunity to do something motherly. Alfredo is a word for expensive, Gordon. But don’t you worry about price. Your father here, see how he’s missing his arms? You best be grateful for that. His arms, or his not-arms, have paid for my car and our house and your college education, that is if you end up wanting to be our son and if you end up wanting go to college, which I personally recommend, mostly so we can brag on you and say we have a son in college. But don’t you worry about money, Gordy. If you want the Alfredo, you get the Alfredo, though I think you ought to get the lobster because today is a very special day and lobster is what you eat on very special days .

Gordon would be shy and unconvinced but hungry, just like the Great Dane Pauline had once described, dead in its own pee. Paul imagined the stack of plates Pauline would marvel over. Two lobsters and Alfredo and fried shrimp, twenty pieces, and clam chowder and six Cokes and a side salad and two baskets of cheddar biscuits. The boy would be ravenous, partly because he was still growing and partly because he’d spent his whole life eating horrible food, but mostly because he was bottomless from not being loved. He’d have a hole inside him that could never be filled. Paul could understand this.

Pauline navigated the winding West Virginia roads, roads that Paul knew were dull and salted under a white December sky even though he couldn’t see out the window. He allowed himself to feel a little pity for the boy. The boy had a hard day ahead of him.

If they made it to the pediatrician, which they likely wouldn’t, the boy would sit on the child-size exam table and let the doctor look into his ears and eyes and throat. He would have to endure having his broken heart listened to, his abdomen prodded. Paul saw the doctor frowning at the lazy eye and providing an eye patch and the three of them leaving the doctor’s office with the boy looking like a buccaneer.

If they were lucky enough to make it to Pastor Tom’s after that, the boy would have to duck to enter the tiny ranch house. Pauline would no doubt bring out the Hawaiian bathing trunks from Walmart and tell the boy he needed to put them on and get in the churning hot tub on the crumbling deck and give his life over to Christ. Paul imagined there might be some resistance to that. They would leave with the boy furious and unbaptized, and Pauline, unwilling to admit defeat, would babble on and on in the car about the things she babbled on and on about: that God would always be ready for Gordon whenever Gordon decided he was ready, what Gordon might want on his tacos, a roadside deer here, a roadside deer there, an early blooming forsythia, an icicle that resembled Priscilla Presley, a sign for the World’s Largest Teapot, her family members and what ailed them—Grandpa Turner: emphysema; Cousin Kevin: diabetes; Aunt Polly: shingles.