Kathleen Alcott - The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just—”

• • •

I don’t know how he managed to reach him, but he must have told Jackson, because shortly after the checks started coming; they bore no personal note, and absurd amounts of money. I called James, who confirmed that their grandfather, an oil-guy Texan they’d met twice who taught his dog to bark at the word “Democrat” and had never gotten along with his son and their father, had finally bit the old bullet and they’d both received enough money to last quite some time.

It’s too bad what I did to Paul. It’s also too bad this is the best way I have of expressing it, and funny because I imagine that this is the way Jackson describes the way he treated me, artfully deflecting any blame: “It’s too bad what happened with Ida.” Too bad refers to that which was unavoidable in the wake of something greater or more important. It’s too bad what I did to Paul, though in those months it grew to be a kind of playful diversion, testing the limits of manipulation possible through the arch of my back, the jut of my hipbones, a few words in the right places.

Paul clung even more heavily after the abortion and suggested in small ways how that particular expression of my vulnerability had begun to turn his feelings of friendship slowly into lust. He encouraged my every pathetic triumph and rewarded me with small tokens; whether I actively accepted them didn’t matter. He was pleased when I showered, tousled my wet hair and complimented my scent; he laughed loud and long when I made even the smallest, darkest joke; he praised the small herb garden on the fire escape (that I grew out of guilt for lying to James) and brought expensive fertilizers. It should also be said that he made his presence dependable when there were no small triumphs, when I began to revert to silence and starvation, and I began to rely on it. He was the only one who gave me permission. Instead of suffering alone, I let Paul come over and took pleasure in sending cruel words out of my mouth knowing there would be no consequences. Though I had, in a sense, grown to love them, these things I made, I forced him to watch while I hurled the potted plants off of the balcony and enjoyed his small moans.

He very nearly almost won. Somewhere in between the moments of the small triumphs and the fits, he nudged his way in. He made me smile. He showed up with Thai food and comforts and curiosities: an old cowboy belt buckle that concealed a fine silver lighter, sheets of luxuriously high thread counts, a bathrobe with deep pockets, etchings of various types of octopi.

And so, one night, while he happily supervised my consumption of too much whiskey and slowly placed his fingers on my back, I did not stiffen. And when he began kneading, it seemed, every single disk of my back into a singular and celebrated entity, I was grateful. And when he began to separate not just the muscles of my back but also my legs, I did not stop him. And when I couldn’t hear the sounds of the film we’d been watching over his desperate grunting, I didn’t complain, just kept staring and made up the characters’ words, wrapped my legs around the small of his back halfheartedly, and observed as the two people on the screen exchanged proclamations of love and humor I wanted to understand but couldn’t.

I am ashamed of the extravagant things I said and did in the weeks and months afterward, although I don’t feel I had much choice given the way he grinned after we had sex, how he told me he loved me during. We took a vacation to Mexico that was in all regards perfect besides it being a lie, but he must have known on some level the fallacy of the sparkling lemonade we drank on those beaches, must have suspected the real reason I wanted him only on top with his head buried between my neck and shoulders. I loved Paul and still do, but could only stand it if I was able to memorize the ceiling above us. Our whole relationship, in retrospect, seems an exercise in ceilings; I praised him and lavished him in words of adoration and felt shocked at the levels of devotion he was willing to believe I felt sincerely.

In the Mexico photographs we look happy. There are several of him gesturing excitedly next to an eight-year-old who was drawing portraits on the street at the cost of one American dollar; Paul of course took a liking to him and bought six, one of me and one of him and one of us together, and three more of strangers who had decided against it after seeing the finished product. There’s another in which I am holding up a margarita as large as my head and smiling so large my eyes and nose are overshadowed; another of me sleeping in the early morning, still wearing a cocktail dress from the night before, my hair falling off one side of the bed, nose perky, looking like someone you might like to cook breakfast for.

When we went to stay with my father, who needed supervision as Julia was visiting Jackson that weekend, I introduced Paul with no title. Paul assumed this was because I had already provided one in my biweekly telephone correspondence with my father, but in the living room he strained for recognition apologetically until finally he arrived at a beam and Paul returned it.

“Ah. Paul. I am so sorry. Our art dealer! Mr. Gallery. I’ve heard much about you, it’s just, I’m afraid, with so much going in this ailing body of mine, I’ve gotten bad with details. It’s such a relief to me, you being Ida’s friend through all this heartache. It’s hard for me and Julia, you know, being pretty much both of their parents …” and he trailed on, the sly smile of aging on his face.

“Friend?” Paul said to me on the drive home later, incredulously. “Friend?”

In the final ceiling Paul proposed in some sort of final threat, and I of course wept and told him I loved him but that I couldn’t, and of course he begged, and of course I ran out of weeping probably too soon and it got too quiet, and of course he left, and of course we don’t speak anymore.

While my magnetism to Jackson grew from an early age, it would be inaccurate to state he was the only magic. I loved James too — for being slightly younger and keeping me that way, for asking questions Jackson preferred not to, and later, for indulging in and nearly celebrating those unkempt aspects of his interior life.

Jackson considered; James evacuated then evaluated. As children, it was James who more actively encouraged that nonsensical landscape I remember and value. James who once fainted after individually bringing to life the eighty-five balloons he placed in his living room for no reason whatsoever except to surprise, then frustrate, then amuse his tired mother: it was hard to be actually mad at the playful air-filled globes, even if it made navigating through the space, after a twelve-hour day at a work, almost impossible. It was James who decided he would learn to juggle, and did, and insisted on teaching me though I was impatient and kept trying to give up, who clapped his hands and hollered in delight when I finally gave three oranges a place in the air. James who collected jokes and always had a new one to spare. Who remembered my mother’s birthday and insisted we celebrate it every year. Who constructed the most elaborate forts that even Julia and my father would sneak in and wonder at: sometimes our respective living rooms remained in disarray for a full week, the couch cushions and tables all sacrificed for the sake of a home within a home, the specific and comforting brand of light that comes through a flannel sheet. James who enjoyed, once he was old enough for that kind of control, spelling my name or Jackson’s in his urine, in immaculate cursive, all over town — who never stopped finding that hilarious. Eventually, I couldn’t either. James who once taught a particularly malicious and buff foreign exchange student — who enjoyed calling certain vulnerable boys faggot and whispering terrible threats in their ears — a string of made-up words that the kid began using so frequently that he didn’t make enough sense to be scared of anymore. On our own, James and I had a language, too. As children, we were best at concocting nonsense urgencies with mock terror, enjoyed breaking down the door of whichever available parent and crying: It’s Danny! Down at the old hotel with the hose again! never maintaining our composure for very long. And later, once words had grown from toys to tools to toys again, inventing idioms without breaking stride. You know what they say , James would begin, You don’t go crying into your soup and expect a steak. True , I would say. And likewise, there’s a good reason not to trust a sparrow in a gold mine .