pounding away I hear the toilet flush. I hate it when that happens, I really do. I take a step back and compose myself and look down at the carpet, and someone answers the door but it's not Malison. It's that man from the bar, the man with the two canes, and he's relying on them and grinning like a carved pumpkin. And the worst part, the most revolting part of it all, is that he doesn't seem the least bit surprised to see me.
Barrel Fever
SHORTLY after my mother died, my sisters and I found ourselves rummaging through a cabinet of papers marked 'POISON,' and it was there, tucked between the pages of a well-worn copy ofMein Kampf, that I discovered fifteen years' worth of her annual New Year's resolutions. She took up the practice the winter after my father died, the same year she found a job and bought her first rifle. Every Christmas afternoon, after placing the artificial tree back into its box, she would grow reflective. 'Do you think I overuse the word 'nigger'?' she would ask. 'Was it wrong of me to spit on that Jehovah's Witness girl? Tell me the truth here. I need a second opinion.'
On New Year's Eve she would sit with her notes and a coffee cup of champagne, glancing at her watch and tapping a pencil against the legs of her chair. She would write something on an index card and, moments later, shake her head and erase it. The process was repeated until she wore a hole through the card and was forced to start fresh on another.
The next morning I would ask, 'So, what was on your list, Mom?'
'Smother those homely teenagers who call themselves my children is at the top. Why do you ask?'
'No reason.'
I always got a great kick out of my mother, but my sisters, for one reason or another, failed to get the joke. They have grown to be humorless and clinically sensitive: the sorts of people who overuse the words 'rage' and 'empowerment' and constantly ask, 'What do youreally mean by that?' While I would often call and visit our mother, they kept their distance, limiting their postal or telephone contact to the holidays.
'Did I tell you what your sister Hope sent me for my birthday?' my mother asked during one of our late-night phone calls. 'A poncho. Who does she think I am that I might want a poncho? I've written her back saying I'm sure it will come in very handy the next time I mount my burro for the three-day journey over the mountains to the neighboring village. Poncho, indeed. I've thrown it into the garage-sale box along with the pepper grinder joy sent me. The thing is two feet long, black and shiny what do I need with a thing like that? It doesn't take a psychiatrist to recognize that pepper grinder for what it truly is. I bet she spent weeks knocking that one around with her therapist. And, oh, it arrived in a fancy box wrapped in tissue paper. You can bet she paid out the ass for it but that's joy for you, thinking she can impress people with the money she makes 'consulting.' That's what she calls herself now, a consultant, as if that means anything. Anyone who answers questions can call them-selves a consultant, am I wrong? A telephone operator is a consultant, a palm reader: they're all consultants. I thought I'd seen it all but then Faith sent me a subscription to that trade paper she's working for. She calls it a magazine. Have you seen it? Why would anyone subscribe to a magazine devoted to adobe? Is this a big trend? Is there something I've missed? I've got a house made of bricks but who wants to read about it every month? Adobe? She circled her name on the first page where she's listed as 'Features Editor.' When people ask what she's up to I always tell them she's a secretary it sounds better. So then, a week after my birthday I got a call from your sister Charity. .
Faith, Hope, Joy, Charity and me, Adolph.
See, she just couldn't help herself.
While my mother might threaten a yard sale she was not the type of person to invite people onto her property or make change. Following her death my sisters were horrified to discover, sealed in boxes, every gift they had given her.
'How could shenot want a first edition by M. Scott Peck?'
'I made these wind chimes with my own two hands. Didn't that count for anything?'
'What did she have against pepper grinders?'
Aside from a few stiff wallets fashioned in summer camp, there was nothing of mine in those boxes as, at an early age, I discovered that postage stamps, cartons of cigarettes, light bulbs, and mailorder steaks are the gifts that keep giving.
'How could she possibly be so cruel?' my sisters asked, coming upon the unmailed notes and letters stored in the 'POISON' file. 'I am not the 'missing link,' I am not, I amnot,' Joy chanted, holding a draft of her graduation card. 'I amnot 'God's gift to fraternity beer baths,' I am not, I am not, I am not.' Charity and Faith gathered round and the three of them em-braced in a circle of healing. There were letters to me, comparing me unfavorably to both Richard Speck and the late Stepin Fetchit, but in all honesty it really didn't bother me too much. We all entertain hateful thoughts every now and then, and afterwards they either grow stronger or fade away. From one day to the next, in tiny ways, our opinions change or, rather, my opinions change. Some of them anyway. That's what makes me either weak or open-minded, depending on what it was I promised the last time we talked. I'm sure that Richard Speck had his share of good qualities and Stepin Fetchit was a terrific dancer, so I try not to take it too hard. My mother hadn't mailed those letters; she simply left them to be discovered after her death. Hey, at least she was thinking about us.
I have posted some of my mother's notes on my refrigerator alongside a Chinese takeout menu and a hideously scripted sympathy card sent by my former friend, Gill Pullen. Sympathy and calligraphy are two things I can definitely live without. Gill Pullen I cannot live without or, rather, I am having to learn to live without. At the risk of appearing maudlin or sentimental it was mutually understood that, having enjoyed each other's company for seven years, we were close. Seeing as he was my only friend, I suppose I could go so far as to call him my best friend. We had our little fights, sure we did. We'd get on each other's nerves and then lay low for a couple of days until something really good came on television, prompting one of us to call the other and say, 'Quick outstanding IV on channel seven.' IV stands for innocent victim, usually found shivering on the sidewalk near the scene of the tragedy. The impact of the IV is greater when coupled with the WindBlown Reporter, a staple of every news team. Prizewinning IVs have no notion of vanity or guile. Their presence is pathetic in itself but that is never good enough for the WBR, who acts as an emotional strip miner.
'How did it make you feel when that man set fire to your house?' the WBR asks squatting to the level of the dazed and blanketed five-year-old. 'I bet it really hurts to watch your house burn to the ground, a nice house like yours. Somebody told me your cat was in that house. That's sad, isn't it? Now you'll never see her again. You'll never see your cat or your shoes or your mother's boyfriend ever again. Can you tell me how that makes you feel inside?'
A PCD was another common icebreaker. Nothing pleases me quite so much as the ever-popular Physically Challenged Detective. Nowhere else on television do you find the blind, deaf, and paralyzed holding down such adventurous and high-paying jobs. Gill once had an idea for a show about a detective in an iron lung called 'Last Gasp for Justice.' The clients, eager to track down their kidnapped daughter, would gather by the bedside and stroke his forehead, begging him to take the case.
Gill was always full of good ideas. So it shocked me when he changed so suddenly. I never saw it coming. We made plans to meet for dinner at an Indian restaurant that doesn't have a liquor license. You just buy it down the block and carry it in with you it's cheaper that way. So Gill and I were in the liquor store, where I asked him if we should buy two six-packs and a pint of JandB or one six-pack and a fifth. Or we could just go ahead and get the two six-packs and the fifth because, why not? I was weighing the odds when, out of nowhere, Gill started twisting the buttons on his coat and said, 'Forget about me you just buy something for yourself, Dolph.' Dolph is the name I go by because really, nobody can walk around with the name Adolph. It's poison in a name. Dolph is bad too, but it's just box-office poison.
'You go ahead, Dolph. Don't worry about me.'
Later in the restaurant, figuring he'd changed his mind, I offered Gill one of my beers. He grew quiet for a few moments, tapping his fork against the table before lowering his head and telling me in fits and starts that he couldn't have anything to drink. 'I am, Jesus, Dolph, I am, you know, I'm. . Well, the thing is that I'm. . I am an. . alcoholic.'
'Great,' I said. 'Have eight beers.'
Gill became uncharacteristically dramatic, pushing the hair off his forehead. He leaned toward me and said,
