thoroughly. Bike fatigue was merely physical torture, and physical torture sometimes clears the mind. It sure helps you forget your other troubles. But the walk from Clark to my front door was a hike through the La Brea tar pits. Deathbed flu. The boy was beat.
How many people had I brought to tears today? How many threatened me with violence, compared to how many turned violent? And don’t forget Gilia Saunders. I didn’t even know the questions to ask on that one.
I dealt with the doorknob and thought, guess we’ll have to start locking soon, then I stumbled into the shelter of the family foyer and fell over a pumpkin. Landed on my hip on another pumpkin, which started a pumpkin avalanche. When the slide finally stopped, I lay on my back surrounded by mountains of pumpkins, oceans of pumpkins. The entry hallway was belly deep in orange.
I did not care. I did not give a hoot. I was not affected. Nothing and no one mattered except crawling up the staircase and into bed.
I dreamt of clitorides. Squadrons of clitorides marching in formation like mushrooms in Fantasia. High clitorides, flat clitorides, hard clitorides, squishy clitorides. Amber waves of clitorides.
My dreams used to center on the entire vertical ravine, from furry outgrowth to the hillock atop the twin cliffs—major and minor—leading into the black swamp from which all life arises but no man returns. Of late, my dreams had forsaken the chasm in general to focus on the pleasure button perched on high. Women try to keep pleasure caused by the pleasure button secret from men, because men are limited to the pressure cooker squirt, and the male gender would probably quit having sex if they found out women are having more fun than men are. Yet—the big yet—modern women demand that we know exactly where the button is and how it is operated.
The days when Henry Miller could write in
When I awoke, the weight of gravity had tripled overnight. A psychic anvil balanced on my forehead and my internal organs felt calcified. We’re talking symptoms of oncoming depression. Depression is paralyzed spirit. If they ever invent a pill that cures depression, I’ll take it. Even if the price is impotency, I’ll pop that pill in a heartbeat.
The only hope is to go through the motions. Shower, shave, brush the teeth—wonder how many years till they fall out. Maurey Pierce told me if you act normal long enough someday you’ll become normal. This was when I was fifteen and dressing like Scott Fitzgerald and wondering why girls wouldn’t go out with me. Maurey said if I brushed my teeth twice a day and read
Downstairs, I found Gus, Shannon, and the male Eugene sprawled around the kitchen table, drinking coffee over the local morning paper. To my complete disgust, Shannon and Eugene both wore bathrobes.
“Have you no shame!”
“C’mon, Dad. You and Mom were living together at thirteen.”
“That’s because your mother was pregnant.”
Eugene grinned. The chump sat there in
The import of my last words made me nauseous. “You’re not?”
Shannon broke into laughter, joined by Eugene and Gus. They laughed at me for trying to be a traditional father.
“Of course not,” Shannon said.
Since no one jumped to pour my coffee, I poured it myself. One thing Gus can do is make good coffee. “That’s not something to say ‘of course’ about,” I said. “Pregnancy is an accident.”
Shannon held her cup out to me. I refilled her but ignored Eugene’s similar silent plea.
“After the olden days when you and Mom were active, the scientists invented something called birth control,” Shannon said. I hate tacky kids.
Eugene said, “Shannon has a diaphragm.”
“You went to a doctor and told him you were planning ahead to have sex?”
“Daddy, this is the eighties. Times have changed since you were young.”
“I’m still young.”
Gus did her nostril exhale blast that says it all. “I got a grandpa acts younger than you and he’s in a rest home.”
Eugene smirked into his empty cup. He had no call to come off young and vital; his hairline was already in full retreat. By the time Eugene made thirty he was going to pass for Friar Tuck. I may not have much, but at least I’ve kept my hair.
Gus pushed herself up from the table. “Eat your beans, you’ll feel better.”
“I am not in the mood for red beans.”
“Your father’s pouting again,” Gus said to Shannon.
“I am not pouting, I’m just tired of red beans for breakfast. Why can’t we have biscuits and ham like other rich families with black cooks?”
Gus said, “Racist cracker.”
“Did you meet your fathers?” Shannon asked.
“Why are there two hundred pumpkins in the foyer?”
“Three hundred fifty,” Eugene said. He was eating beans. He seemed perfectly happy to sit at my table in my bathrobe eating my beans. After sleeping in my daughter’s bed. Goldilocks incarnate.
“Did you meet your fathers or not?” Shannon asked.
“Yes, I met them.”
“All five?”
“One’s dead.”
“Which one?” Eugene asked.
“The black guy.”
“Figures,” Gus said.
“And?” Shannon was impatient. I didn’t know what to tell her. The fathers were good, bad, and ugly, like everyone else. They had families and jobs. None were in the CIA or professional baseball, and, so far as I could tell, none had made a career out of rape.
Shannon stared at me. “Did you figure out who’s the real father?”
“Yesterday was the worst day of my life, including the day Wanda left. Confronting the fathers was stupid. Idiotic. I did it because you two made me and now it’s over and buried and I demand to know why there’s three hundred fifty fucking pumpkins in the foyer!”
“Daddy. That’s no way to talk in front of guests.”
Another morning at Tex and Shirley’s. I hadn’t eaten a meal cooked by my cook in three days. The waitress with Judy on her name tag recognized me from the day before—asked if I wanted cheese blintzes again. I said, “Sure thing,” without thinking because I was still going over what I should have said during the conversation back home. Us writer types aren’t good at live conversation. It takes eight drafts for me to sound spontaneous.
What happened was the kids had gone philanthropic at a pumpkin stand on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
“The little ragamuffin behind the counter wasn’t even wearing shoes,” Eugene said. “We had to nurture her somehow.”
“Shannon hardly ever wore shoes when she was a little ragamuffin.”
“We witnessed classic poverty in America. The girl obviously had a vitamin deficiency, and I don’t doubt she’d been physically abused. The vast majority of women in her socio-economic class are physically abused,
