Self-Defence

'No stories? What then?'

Lucy looked at the rear door.

Lowell shouted wordlessly and slapped the bedsheet. 'Ah, the spectacle! Here to goggle at my groanery, my little serpent's tooth? Barge in with your brain mechanic in tow, so you can listen to the thrum- thrum and imagine my torment?'

Grinning. Laughing.

'Yes, I'm in pain, girl. Sacramental, sizzling battery-acid synaptic joy. Maybe you'll know it too, one day, and then you'll understand what a fucking hero I am to be sitting here, smelling like shit and looking like a Gehenna-leaseholder knowing the only fuck-damn reason you pranced your little tennis butt in here is to drink up my misery so you can say you've had a tall, frosty revenge cocktail at the expense of the best.'

Lucy kept staring at the door.

'Ho,' said Lowell. 'The silent treatment. Just like when you were a baby.'

'How would you know?' said Lucy.

Lowell guffawed, very loud. His shrunken body seemed to grow with each expulsion. Laughter energized him, turning him demonic and lively and bringing color to his face.

'The opening movement of The Guilt Sonata! Don't waste your quarter notes, lass. I've soloed with the best of the Sin Symphonies!'

Lucy began circling the room, moving as freely as the clutter would allow.

'Your silence,' said Lowell, 'is not artillery. It's an empty knapsack- you were a mute baby with skinny legs. No cries, no tears, not a yawp. Dead-mute as an anencephalic accident. Unlike the other one, Peter-Peter morpho- morto poison eater; he howled professionally. It was rent a studio down the block or strangle the little snot-rat.'

He closed his eyes. 'You, on the other hand, kept your lips glued as if your tonsils were treasure.' The eyes opened. A bony finger shot out, accompanied by a hoarse laugh.

'You wouldn't shit, either, har. Anus on strike, weeks at a time, quite a style, quite a style. Take all, hold in, give nothing. I thought you were abnormal. Your mother assured me you weren't and poured mineral oil down your aphasic little gullet.'

Still walking, Lucy mustered a smile of her own. 'Is that why you ran? Scared at having an abnormal baby?'

Lowell chuckled, but there was anger in it.

'Run, did I? No, no, no, no, no, I was invited to vacate the premises. Menstrually shrill banshee bye-bye from Maw-Maw and a claw at the face.'

'Mother kicked you out?' Lucy's turn to laugh. 'A big tough guy like you?'

Lowell looked at her, as if in a new light. Sucking in breath, he wiggled his thick eyebrows and stuck his finger in his mouth.

He kept it in there, probing and scraping and breathing roughly.

Pulling it out, he examined a fingernail. 'Mother,' he said, 'was a blindered, bujwhacked, neurally corseted, parlor-bound stumplet with the textbook vision of a suburban storm trooper. Middle-aged at twenty-three, old at twenty-four. Tapioca libido- her sheer puddingness turned me into a rebellious adolescent. She wouldn't- couldn't-learn how to be. She had nothing to live for but rules and rot.'

Lucy's hands clenched as she turned. For a moment I thought she'd pounce on him; then she shook her head and put one hand in her pocket. And laughed. Her hips angled forward. A lounging pose as staged as Nova's.

'God,' she said, 'you're pathetic. Terminally blocked, blah, blah, blah. Hiding behind all that bad Joyce.'

Lowell paled. Smiled. Lost the smile. Fished for it and finally found it. But it had lost its cruel luster and his grizzled jaw seemed to weaken.

'Joyce,' he said. 'Know him well, do you, Mademoiselle Sophomore? I met the dwent. Paris, 1939. Clerk face, no lips, woman's hips, lime-suck, lime-suck, lime-suck, bloody gud. That fucking Irish lechery for talk with no conclusion… but let's get back to lovely Mother. She died a virgin and you genuflect to her daily; the truth is, you know as much about her as you do about prostate clog but you defend her because that's your script- well, believe what you will, shutter your limited mind to your heart's contempt.'

He wheezed and inflated his voice.

'Whether or not you know it, you've come here to learn. If you fail to do so, it's your lowered expectation, not mine. The truth, Constipata: she invited me to leave because she couldn't tolerate a bit of in flagrante delicious.'

Lucy pretended to remain aloof. But he was talking loudly, and his voice made her flinch.

He rubbed his hands together and looked at me.

'A sad, sick, salacious, succulent tale, Braintrust. Perfect for you.'

Turning quickly to Lucy. 'After you stretched her womb, she lost whatever feeble interest she'd ever had in the double-backed beast. But like the old song says, her sister will- oh, did she, little Sister Kate. One of those yawning vaginas the exact color of bubblegum. So who was I to play brakeman to Fate? Her sister did, so I did her sister, oh, yes, oh, yes.' Smile. 'She bucked and buckled, that one did. Scratched and caromed and screamed like a stuck sow at the moment of truce.' Pointing to his groin. 'Remembering it almost convinces me something dingled, once upon a spine.'

I kept a close watch on Lucy. She was staring in his direction, but not at him. Anger shot through her slender frame like an injection of starch.

'Sisterly love,' said Lowell. 'Maw-Maw found us, sang her ode to virtue, and I creeped off, tail-tucked.'

He tried to shrug and managed only a shoulder tic.

'Banished to the horrors of Paris. Reprobate Kate parceled off to California. Then Mother caught herself something postnatal and fatal, and suddenly I was called back to be a father.'

He aimed his thumb at the ground and mock-frowned. 'Ill-suited for the care of a mewling snot-jack and a no- tone, anally blocked normal infant, I had the wisdom to relinquish parental privilege to ForniKate. By then, she was fucking some pansy Jew journalist.'

Gleeful bellowing.

Lucy was standing on the balls of her feet. I could see moisture in her eyes. I was thinking of my dead father.

Lowell said, 'Why fight it, girl? You need me.'

'Do I?'

'Given your insistence upon projecting an air of injured chastity, I'd say so. Really, dear, enough bad theater, let us slash pretense's throat and allow it to bleed out richly into the gutter. The permanent-hymen act won't work with me. I know about the summer you spent with your heels in the air, looking into the bile-sooted eyes of Roxbury coons. Quite disappointing, I must say. To rut is nature; to rut for money, commerce. But to rut niggers for money and let some boss nigger pocket the profits? How sheepheaded, girl. I shall assign a collie to herd you.'

Lucy's fists opened and her knees bent. I held her by the arms, whispering, 'Let's get out.'

She shook her head violently.

'Ah, the self-esteemer plies his craft,' said Lowell. 'Dispensing turds of wisdom as you try to convince her she's okay.'

Lucy let her arms fall. She stepped away from me. Right up to the edge of the bed. Stretching her arms as wide as she could, she stared him in the face. Exposing herself.

Shock therapy? Or the death of hope?