Love Warps the Mind a Little Read online

“Hello,” he said.

  “This Thom?” I asked, pronouncing the th in both words.

  “That’s Thorn,” he said, without the dental consonant in the name. “Who, may I ask, is calling?”

  I introduced myself. “Lafayette Proulx. ‘Figure of Fun.’ ”

  “And the call is in regards to . . . ?”

  “Your letter, Thorn.” I began to read it.

  His memory jogged, Thorn interrupted. “I don’t think I want to speak with you.”

  I told him, You hang up and I’m on the four-thirty Greyhound with my uncle Tiny. Tiny sits on people, I told Thorn. And me, I’m a firebug.

  Thorn hung up.

  I read the story over. It wasn’t flawless. I’d need to get back at it. But what I knew was that every objection Thorn Blake had to the story, everything he hated, was exactly what made the story honest and worthwhile.

  I needed a drink. I got Spot and we walked down to Moynihan’s. John Joe drew my draft and told me, Who the hell was it was asking about you? He couldn’t remember. He gave Spot a pickled egg. Spot sat under my stool with his lunch. John Joe asked me did I want any action on the Sox game. I thought not. John Joe remembered. Francis X. He was in here Wednesday night, I guess it was, looking for you. I thought, Kids!

  18.

  For I Have Already Been a Boy and a Girl, a Bush and a Bird and a Leaping Journeying Fish

  WE WERE DUE IN MILLBURY AT NOON. TRIXIE WAS HOSTING A COOKOUT IN THE gravelly yard, an all-in-one going-away-to-Walpole party for Noel, wish-you-were-here party for the incarcerated Edmund, and birthday party for Stoni, who was turning thirty Arthur Bositis was bringing a case of club steaks for the grill. This would be an excellent opportunity for us to check out the trailer, Judi said. I changed the subject. The night before she had started to tell me about this woman in Oakham whom she was seeing about her past lives. I ran my tongue along her breast, and she forgot what she was saying. We were out on the deck now, brunching. I tossed Spot the last of the Paris buns. I said, So who is this lady from Oakham?

  Judi said the woman’s name was Pamela Bibaud, and she was absolutely the best at regression therapy. Judi said she’d been going to Pamela for only three weeks and had already remembered so much. And it’s just the beginning. Besides Gertrude and Marya, Judi had also identified four other incorporations. She remembered herself when she was a man, a stonemason in Aries, France, in the early eighteenth century. Drowned in a boating accident. As far as she knew, that had been her only male embodiment. She said, I was a banker’s wife in Connecticut, a pharmacy clerk in Bristol, England, and a teacher in Québec. And that’s when I first met you.

  “You met me?” I said. “And when was this?”

  “The middle of the last century.” She told me I had been a priest in L’Ange-Gardien. “You were my confessor,” she said. She smiled. “Actually, you were more than that. We were in love.”

  “But how do you know it was me, Judi?”

  “I look with different eyes.” Judi smiled. “It was you, André Berard.”

  “My name was Berard? So we’ve really been going out for a long time, then.”

  “We went for walks to the river. We could see Ile d’Orléans appear out of the fog. You were always ashamed and tender. I lived in a room upstairs in Madame Lussier’s house on the rue de Champignon.’

  Why was I flattered at being ashamed and tender a hundred fifty years ago when I knew this could not have happened? Judi’s eyes wandered up and to the left. They narrowed, as though she were trying to focus on the details of an image. I didn’t tell her that my grandfather, my mother’s father, was in fact born in L’Ange-Gardien. This was too strange just yet. Of course it was an accident, a coincidence, but even accidents need explanations. So I said, “Judi, don’t you think it’s a little too convenient, in the cosmic scheme of things, that we both meet again out of all the billions of people who’ve lived in the last hundred years or so? That the two of us from northern Québec just happen to be born in Worcester, Mass., U.S.A., within a few years of each other and then just happen to meet in the city at a bar one night? Isn’t it just too contrived or too coincidental?”

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “Not coincidental.”

  What was fascinating to me about Judi’s past-life scenarios was that since I believed they could not be historically based, what the hell were they? Where was she coming up with all these engaging characters and these lovely and persuasive details? I knew she wasn’t lying to me, so there must be some channel she’d found for the flow of these worlds.

  It was eleven, and Judi wanted to stop off at the office to get her personal organizer. We cleaned up. I kissed Spot on his brown nose. I met Judi in the garage. Let’s see, she said, gifts, hot dogs, fruit salad, keys. We’re all set. We had pitched in and bought Stoni her own blood pressure cuff and an electric toothbrush. I’ve never seen such a family for small appliances.

  While Judi ran upstairs to her office, I ducked into Mr. Natural’s. Pauline wasn’t working. Josh was there buying flaxseed oil, and he was surprised to see me. I told him Judi was up getting her appointment book. “What do you do with flaxseed oil?” I said.

  “Two tablespoons a day keep your skin creamy and tight.”

  Josh wore a white tank top with “Man Alive!” in red printed on the front. He told me that was the name of his support group.

  “For what?”

  “Man Alive! is a place where men can recover their lost identities,” he said.

  I wondered where they’d lost them. But you can’t joke with Josh.

  He said, “We talk about our feelings.”

  I said, “The child inside.” I’d read about it in the TV Guide.

  Josh smiled. He said, “Or the wolf inside.”

  And then all I could think about was Flannery O’Connor, how she told a friend that the lupus, the wolf, was inside tearing up the place. I told Josh good-bye and went outside to lean on the car. I thought about the secrets our bodies have, what they keep from us. Our bodies have lives of their own. We have nothing to say about what’s going on deep in our tissue.

  Hervey had a fire going in an inverted and bisected oil drum. I had a feeling our club steaks might have a slight petroleum flavor. But I figured that’s what the half-gallon of ketchup was for. I grabbed a bottle of Canadian Mist and poured some over ice in an Archie and Jughead jam jar. I asked Trixie if she wanted some help in the kitchen. She said Judi was all the help she needed right now. I told her she looked alluring.

  “Cut the blarney,” she said.

  “You look like Hedy Lamarr.”

  “Drinking the high-octane today, Laf?” Noel said.

  So that was it, then. Today’s theme was gasoline.

  I slapped Noel on the shoulder. “We’ll miss you, Noel,” I said.

  “Don’t get sappy on me,” he said. “Just let’s get drunk and stupid.”

  “We’re halfway there already.”

  Noel’s brushy gray eyebrows were as thick and wiry as his mustache. The mustache was stained with nicotine at the lip. He said, “Here’s to Edmund!”

  We toasted. I said, “Long live Edmund.”

  Noel and I sat at the picnic table nearest the card table of booze and by the cooler. We watched small balls of flame explode from the barrel. Noel explained it was probably little bits of tar or pitch igniting. When Hervey puts on the charcoal we’ll be cooking with gas.

  I said, “What’s he burning now?”

  “Some roofing shingles. Last year’s Christmas tree.”

  Stoni’s gone for the charcoal and beer, he said. Arthur’s tenderizing the meat in the trailer. That explained the pounding. I looked behind me. Yes, the trailer. This blue and white barge run aground.

  And then we suddenly ran out of things to say to each other. Noel blew his nose. I poured another drink. I watched Hervey poke at his inferno with a television aerial.

  “I blame myself,” Noel said.

  I said, “For what?”

  �
�For the boy.” He put his head down.

  “Well, look, Noel, there’s plenty of blame to go around.”

  He looked at me. He said, “It ain’t like it’s my fault, though. Edmund and me spent scads of quality time together. We were like this.” Noel held up his crossed fingers.

  I opened a bottle of Rolling Rock and handed it to Noel. We heard a horn. Stoni was back with the charcoal, several cases of Old Milwaukee, and the night shift from Memorial’s emergency ward. Arthur leaned out of the trailer and waved hello with his mallet. Noel and I were introduced to Virginia, Elaine, Raymond, and Netty. They were all dressed in plum-colored scrubs and running shoes, and they were all smoking cigarettes. Layla, Edmund’s ex, arrived with her new boyfriend, a kid with a goatee and dreadlocks whom she called Pozzo Beckett. Pozzo didn’t talk to strangers, she told me, not even to thank them for a bottle of beer. That’s just Pozzo, she said. Pozzo’s wallet was attached to a silver chain that arced from his back pocket down below his waist and back up, where it clasped onto a front belt loop. Layla said that Pozzo was the sun and that his brother Lucky was the moon. She meant that literally. She said we shouldn’t look directly into Pozzo’s eyes. She smiled. We owe them so much, she said of the brothers Beckett.

  To call Judi’s family dysfunctional would be unfair and not exactly accurate. Judi’s family was open to adventure, certainly Les Dubeys were very tolerant of eccentric modes of self-expression. I found that admirable. Just that the family members seemed to define themselves in terms of whom they latched on to. I figured in that case, Layla was likely to become a planet soon. The Dubeys did not believe that life was purposeful. It was, rather, a situation to be endured. It helped if there were clever and/or amusing distractions about, which could take your mind off the emptiness. If they had been born into money, the Dubeys would all be out at the country club this afternoon, diverting themselves with games and chitchat about cars and real estate, and the world would think they were all productive and sensible.

  Noel and I watched the nurses jam the cans of beer into two Styrofoam coolers. Raymond brought several gift-wrapped packages from the car to the other picnic table. Then he pulled a tank of nitrous oxide out of the trunk. It was on a bottle cart. He wheeled it over by the table, then attached a hose and mask to the pressure regulator. Noel told me he knew why Edmund did it. How did Judi manage to ignore the turbulence in this extended family?

  Myself, I don’t know what to make of this crew. Is this what happens when you settle for pleasure? Pointless amusements. You suck on gas to make yourself laugh. Pleasure’s such a small achievement. Maybe they know what I don’t—that life’s too short to get all worked up about or something.

  Noel said, “Semigloss paint.”

  “What’s that?”

  He said, “When he was a toddler, Edmund was all the time peeling chips of paint off the wall in his bedroom, and eating it. Well, his mother and me didn’t see no harm. Turns out lead is no good for babies at all. So Edmund had that poison, you see, in his blood all these years, and I guess it finally worked its way up to his noggin.”

  I thought about Spot, naturally, and those baby dolls and whatnot he was eating and what manner of poisons might be involved in those inorganic meals. I thought about George, who died, Edmund, who killed, and Richie, who terrified. I suppose there’s an essence called human nature, but what is it? For me, incomprehensibility is like water—it’s always just below the surface. But why can’t life be unreasonable, absurd even, disturbing? And why am I bothered? I looked around me. Here’s what I thought. In each of us is a little of all of us. I suppose that should have scared me. I felt comforted by it. Like the idea that you can start anywhere and go anyplace.

  Judi joined us, said Trixie was making enough food to fuel an army I wondered what kind of food. Usually the only thing Trixie made for supper was a phone call to Chicken Delight or to Iago’s Pizza and Pasta. I knew that the only cookbook in the house was the one called Science Experiments You Can Eat It was Judi’s from junior high. She’d used it to bake hygroscopic cookies for the science fair. Judi grabbed herself a beer, yelled over to Hervey that maybe it was time to put the charcoal on. It’s going to take a while, she said.

  I asked Judi if she’d met Pozzo the sun. She said she had. And he’s so cute, so shy and all, she said. Judi had a blind spot where her family was concerned. Noel said, She’s going to break Edmund’s heart. I said, Noel, you can’t expect the girl to wait sixty-five years for his release.

  I had a steak, a ladle full of Trixie’s wienies and beanies steamed in beer, several scoops of potato, macaroni, and seafood salads. I ate an ear of corn and a bowl of Trixie’s famous secret-recipe green pea soup. At first I thought she’d said Greenpeace soup, and I couldn’t imagine—mock dolphin? ersatz hawksbill sea turtle? I passed on the orange Jell-O with the parti-colored minimarshmallows. We were ready for the cake and the presents. Arthur, Stoni, and the nurses were getting pretty silly over at their table. I saw that Pozzo had come out of his shell somewhat. He was talking to the fire. Trixie brought out a cake shaped like a nurse’s cap with white frosting and a red cross made with M&M’s. She snapped a “Happy Birthday” tape into the boom box and we all sang to Stoni.

  Stoni opened Arthur’s gift first—a pink teddy that Noel thought was a mosquito net. She held it up for us. A beeper went off, and one of the nurses—Elaine, I think—went into the house to make a call. Raymond showed Hervey how to take a hit off the laughing gas. Stoni opened our gifts and then one from Hervey and Trixie—a jewelry-cleaning machine. Elaine came back. No big deal, she said. The oldest boy sprained an ankle. The emergency ward crew had brought gag gifts. The first was a Klingon phrase book, which Stoni passed along for us to look at. I learned that Dochvetlh vISoplaHbe meant “I can’t eat that.” I committed it to memory. I handed the book to Layla, told her Pozzo might want to look at it. She said, Pozzo doesn’t read.

  The second gift, a dildo called Wide Willy, made Layla blush. Hervey was back at the gas works. Stoni showed us her new monogrammed proctoscope. Noel said, You do what with that? And then, Why would anyone do that? Then we all got to look at twelve photographs of enormously fat naked women. Stoni held up the “Women at Large” calendar and leafed through the year.

  Layla brought Pozzo a piece of cake. Judi went in to help her mother clean up. I listened to the nurses talk shop. The subject was things they’d extracted from rectums. One guy had an alarm clock up there and it was still ticking, Stoni said. They talked about Coke bottles, toothbrushes, spoons, batteries, a computer mouse, and beef jerky. More than I wanted to hear, really. Layla came back. She said she and Pozzo had better be going. If he’s not home in an hour, there’ll be no dark tonight. Noel said, You got a message you want me to deliver to Edmund? Layla thought a moment. Tell him I got the new Pearl Jam CD. Tell him it’s awesome.

  Stoni said she’d give Layla and Pozzo Beckett a ride home or wherever. She needed to pick up smokes anyway. She gave Arthur a soul kiss. When they left, I sat with Arthur. I said, Tell me about the kill room—about the smells in there. He told me, Smells like iron tastes, you know? I wasn’t sure. He said, Some cattle will be dead before we get to kill them right. You start gutting them dead suckers, and you get a smell like whistles going off in your head. I was thinking of my recent meal. I said, Do you get many dead steers there where you work? He said, More sick than dead. Like they’ll have pneumonia or liver abscesses, a lot of them. You won’t know that till you shell the guts out of the carcass. You’ll see the damage. Ones with abdominal bloat or laminitis you know right from looking at them. Ones with cancers even, you can guess at. Those ones’ll roll their tongues upside down all the time. Look demented. Or they’ll bite the bars in their pens or they’ll just stand there swaying back and forth for hours. We call it the barn dance. That was all I wanted to hear for now. Arthur said, You’ll be slicing away for a while and you’re spacing out and you’ll notice you’re standing ankle deep in entrails and mucus and you’ll get you
rself a whiff of hell.

  Hervey said he felt like the back of his head was coming off. I told him he should have kept the nail in it. He told me I was about as funny as a tapeworm, and then he started to laugh and told us about the time his brother Honoré got a tapeworm when he was seven or eight. “My mother starved him for three days. Then Dr. Beaudry came to the house. The doctor stuffed a wooden wedge into Honoré’s mouth to keep it open. Then he placed a few drops of milk on the tongue. In a while, up came the worm, sliding over the tongue. The doctor shined his flashlight in Honoré’s mouth and let us look. The worm had four holes in its head. The doctor grabbed it with a metal snare and eased it out. Looked like a ten-foot-long ribbon.” And then Hervey laughed again, said he had to see a man about a horse, and excused himself.

  Arthur said, “You ever been in love?”

  I said, “Yes, I have.”

  He said, “I’m way in love with Stoni. I don’t know what I’d do if she left me.”

  I nodded, smiled.

  “I’ve asked her to marry me.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “She won’t.”

  “Maybe she just needs some time.”

  Arthur shook his head. “It’s Muneyhun.” Arthur freshened our drinks. He had peeled the label off the bottle with his thumbnail, but it looked like, tasted like, we were drinking bourbon. “He was her first love back in high school.”

  I said, “Everyone remembers the kiss that brought them to life.” I remembered mine with Midge Martel. I was too stupid then to ask her out again. I had no car, no money, no ideas, no courage. She married a potter and moved to Maine.

  Arthur said, “How do I compete with history?”

  I said I wished I knew the answer.

  An hour or so later, Virginia or Netty—I forgot which nurse was which—put on an Asleep at the Wheel tape and tried to teach us the Texas two-step. By this time Raymond and Hervey were alternating hits off the nitrous and giggling like adolescents. Trixie and Noel wandered over to the side of the trailer and started to smooch. Judi saw this and took my hand. “It’s time to see the trailer,” she said. When Noel opened the door, we were hit with a putrescent odor that was like a hot spike in the eye. Judi said, Noel, what died in here?