[excerpts of Excerpts of Madness, Decrepitude, and Shoplifting, Somewhere in the Florida Everglades]H.M.
+
C.T
I was fourteen when I had my baby. Fourteen.
With Heidi.
Me, and Heidi.
[. . .]
Clara (née Ivy)
By the third time the starchy man-boy with the backwards Dolphins cap and Bermuda shorts--terrible meatball polo-- burnt-noodly tattoo, on his arm, something in calligraphy, Jesus Christ as big around as a candy dish, ($200 crock of shit, 18th birthday gift, probably, from his parents probably, the name of a girl) though at least it wasn't barbed wire. By the third time he molded his prime rib neck around glance at her--just sitting on the bench, just watching the washers--Clara stared right back. She hated gawkers.
Could not stand gawkers. Could not. Could not stomach a rubberneck, no balls on a rubberneck, no apparent business of their own, they had no right to make business of anyone's else's business and no balls to say so, they curdled traffic at five o'clock. They made her feel like she was losing on points.
[. . .]
The Cocaine Letters
. . . feel a not at all inconsiderable degree of wistful pity, on the topic of Radish. This so long as you're wanting all honesty here,
mijo-mine <-(See that beauty, right? Education! This Spanish stuff is cake)
(p. 4)
You won't see any boys back homewards-bound, too much like Radish So a basis for comparison is hard for me to pick out for you. Danny might be the closest (Shit-the-Sandbox Danny that is, Danny down the street I mean, NOT Danny Rockford that spineless fuckin bonbon. Shit-the-Sandbox Danny you remember. Danny
See here, mi mijo, Radish, such to my surprise, something of an unrealized prodigy. In this case in the field of medical science. Yes indeed!! Quite the natural! In fact
On the day of his birth. . .
This fellow. . .
(wait for it)
turn ------>
Page (5)
. . . performed his very own Caesarian section. (HAH HAH HAH)
(The prodigal child! Right! (In medical science, and, dental development alike! Right! Right mein mijo!!!!
(HAH HAH Haha HAH HaH Hah Ha) but really though this is one cold-boned motherfucker.
If you want all honesty here, the reason I brought up Shit-the-Sandbox Danny (page 3) is probably since I almost do, every damn time I talk to the guy. (hah ha) But that's par for the course. Par by far, little brother-man. When four hours in a Boston Whaler is the only thing separating you and Havana
[. . .]
Clara (née Ivy)
Saturday, lunchtime, nice buttery autumn weather, so how odd then--right--that there were only two people doing laundry? Day like this! This time of day! How odd! Baffling! No one else doing laundry, except for the two of them, the man-boy must have thought. For some suspicious reason. Saturday. Mysterious. Terribly, tragically mysterious. Some real Agatha Christie shit here.
This guy spiritually channeling Fred Durst through the oujia rag of his Fruit of the Loom (clearly visible, Clara noted, all the way down to the half-court marker of his linebacker ass), was no doubt puzzling over where everyone else was. Where else but a laundromat, was time worth spending. At lunchtime. On a Saturday.
Perhaps she, that woman over there, knew something about it; and perhaps if he, Acting Representative-in-Chief of the Florida Chapter of Scooby and the Gang, simply eyeballed the woman's woke-up-late ballerina bun from fifteen feet away, for some seconds at a time, in between hauling the muggy guts of a load of colors from the washer, then possibly the accused could be lanced boil-like into a Best-Selling confession.
Sorry, Shaggy, Clara thought as she stared. No swamp ghosts here. She scrutinized the strawberry jam of razorburn all inside and around his coffee-ground beard--though, maybe it was just acne. No Shyamalan reveal. No shrieky violins. Sorry, Shaggy, "Rosebud" I ain't.
[. . .]
Marcus was smoking pot on his thousand threadcount sheets with his boots still on when he decided to kill the neighbor's cat.
[. . .]
Clara (née Ivy)
. . . "--my brother, Jesus. He got some, fucking. Jesus. Some tribal, something." Contemplatively, looking pained, he scratched the bristles and the pink of his neck. "Seahorse. Some fucking thing like that."
Clara laughed, along with him, at the half-told joke except the guy was not laughing. He was not looking at her. He was smiling, a little, but just watching the washers. He was also, very actively, not rolling back down the sleeves of his terrible meatball polo, and was, instead, continuing to very unsubtly bend and ramrod his elbow to make the horseshoe of his tricep make the noodles of his Hebrew tattoo shimmy and shake, like a "no vacancy" sign. Clara wished she had still had the bench to herself. "How big?"
"Big." He held his hands up like he was playing basketball.
"Oh, wow."
"Yeah."
"Wow. Yeah. Where?"
He still was not looking at her. He seemed bored. Which bothered Clara, not as much as the stares had but it still bothered her, that this guy would think that after peek-a-booing her from the washer for that long that he could pull off acting like he hadn't been, and then thrusting his guns on display as if it were always necessary to roll up the sleeves of his murder-me-marinara wardrobe, lest they pop over his shimmying no vacancy horseshoes and yeah, sorry ladies, there's no helping it, Derbys number 1 and 2 just take off at a gallop on their own like that.
It bothered Clara because she knew, knew photographically well, every sweating shape and shade of an affectation of confidence when she saw one.
And, it bothered her. It bothered her, because this Xbox Live motherfucker was pulling it off.
"Abe, by the way." He held out his hand.
"Like Abraham?"
"Right."
Clara took it, and shook it. "Nice to meet you, Abe. Aubrie."
H.M.
+
C.T
How I found out is Heidi's mom and dad drove up to talk about it. They are nice enough folks. I saw them pulling onto our street just as I got back from school. They had this shitty soup-colored Plymouth Reliant. Old car. Old car. Lots of dogs had been in that car. You could just tell. Not from smell, there wasn't any dog smell. The upholstery just had that feeling to it.
I liked that car though. Heidi's dad would let me help with the oil changes and tire checks sometimes. He showed me how to put in a new radio, too. Nice man. Nice folks. Heidi's parents didn't grudge their girl a harmless little jr. high crush, not even a black one. Cool parents. Nice to me. Nice enough folks. The shittiest stew-colored Plymouth to get its upholstery smeared with roadtrip dog balls and drool but you know? These things happen.
Besides. That day I found out about me and Heidi, the Reliant sounded pretty tremendous. Real lusty. Way better than anytime I'd helped with the tune-up. I watched from the mailbox trying to figure out how Chrysler could fit a hemi into that.
Real tremendous. Real cavalry sounds. Hi-ho Silver kind of stuff. You can get some heroic sounds, out of even a Plymouth Reliant. I guess if the mood so takes you. I guess if you're wanting to mow somebody down enough.
[. . .]
Aubrie (née Ivy)
. . .and she reached in down, to the absolute bottom, and pulled--pulled hard, from her heels, like she was dragging a child from a well--and came up with Abe's black work slacks and white work shirt and Lucky brand jeans and a creamy green blouse that must have been a girlfriend's.
The button on the jeans seared a perfect coin of whiteness and awakeness on the side of her thumb and Abigail dropped it, clutching the slacks and the blouse to her chest tightly, as if they would try to wriggle away, like living things, which they might have, hell, who knew? God, but they were certainly warm enough.
[. . .]
Fisherman
. . .and Benji sat and thought, for not too long, about how not so different at all she was from Laura. Not at all. He decided she was not different, at all, from Laura, not at all, from the past Laura at least. The old Laura. That is, the young Laura.
The Laura on their honeymoon thirty-five years ago--thirty-six, next week--in Bora Bora, Laura who baffled room service at breakfast by ordering ice cubes for her milk. The Laura who, smiling at him, mischievous, I know a secret, secret, do you want to hear?, slunk from her slip like a Queen of the Nile. The Laura who came twice underneath him with her eyes closed.
Laura with blonde ringlets painted on her cheeks and struggling neck, Laura with her face shining slick and turbulent, like she was puzzling out some terrible decision, or like fighting in a thunderstorm, like oceanwater, Laura with her heels like cowboy spurs in his kidneys and her teeth welded to his collarbone so tight so hungry he could almost count the ridges of her molars, her bite so tight they were almost conjoined, her fingernails cultivating cornfields from the skin of his back, Laura with her eyes closed.
The sobbing Laura, leaking Laura, the salt-of-the-earth the apple-of-his-eye Laura, who came twice, underneath him, with her eyes closed, in Bora Bora.
Yes. Yes, he decided. They were not at all different.
And as Benji sat, thinking this, something tender, and warm, pooled upwards in him, something that was not pity. Not really. Not pity, not really--he would have let the girl go, had it been pity--but it was something like it, and with this something, so tender, this something warm, curled in his chest like a napping tabby, Benji leaned gently forwards and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He blanketed her body with his own. He pressed a kiss--and another--against her cheek. Her jaw, this time, and then another where her eyebrow met the bridge of her nose. Benji kissed away where his sweat had fallen and dotted her skin.
He laid heavier on her, then.
He laid heavier and it brought their chests to meeting, like another kind of kiss, a more honest kind. The tufts of his chest hair brushed against her undeveloped breasts with its own heat. Their skin was clammy but clean. Clean-feeling, like after a long bath.
Benji made certain their bodies lined up, just so. He wanted the warm, tender, something in his chest, newborn-babbling in his chest, Benji wanted it to be felt by another. He wanted someone else to feel the napping tabby curled up so soft and living in him.
"Do you feel it?" His whisper ricocheted back into his mouth--messy, moist, sauna swamp moss--against the soft-boiled slope of her cheekbone. Of her earlobe. The downy hairs of her neck; they shivered against his breath. "Can you feel it?"
The sleepy tabby purred, tender and warm, in his chest; he went quiet so she could hear. His chest so warm against hers. His heart, babbling away, in happy, Morse gibberish, so tender, and warm, there in his chest; tender and warm, the flesh of his chest; his chest against hers, tender and warm, very warm, very warm in comparison, hers; in comparison to hers; hers cold, cold, so very cold already; only two and a half days and already decomposing.
[. . .]
H.M.
+
C.T
. . . me and Heidi, holed away under the neighbor's tin duckboat, molding up around each other like clay. My shoulders banged off the sides. I still had a boy's shoulders and hands, and nonexistent rabbit ass, but there mercilessly naked and sweating under the duckboat over Heidi I felt giant. I felt enormous. Giant. There was a big, tin, tupperware top to the alpha and omega and the here and everafter, trying to keep inside everything. Keep it inside. Keep it safe. But it all would flip and bangle away to flounder-smelling sheet metal and float away in the swamp if I did so much as sit back on my heels to breathe. Breathing.
We could hardly breathe, under there.
I didn't care though because I was giant. I wasn't worried about air. I had bear paws in the dirt. I was an ogre. Bear paws like catcher's mitts. The zipper of my jeans was chewing up the my thighs just above my scrawny chicken knees just under my Dolphins boxers but I didn't care. I couldn't hardly breathe but I didn't care. Those aren't things you notice.
"Claude. Claude, wait, stop."
Heidi is one of those people who has a certain sound. And when she makes it, you have to listen. Just a tiny, curving sigh, clear and glassy, but flimsy, too. Like a fly wing. And when she makes that sound she has all of your attention by the throat.
"Claude," it was dark but we could still see each other a little, "You're squooshing my hair."
One of her butterfly barrettes had come loose and was sticking out of the mud and chewing into my palm. I couldn't see it, not something that tiny in the dark. Even when I picked my hand up, trying to see it, I banged my elbow against the side of the boat, but I could feel it, Heidi's butterfly barrette, and it was like I shrank backwards past 100,000 rooms of evolution into something small and wet.
[. . .]
The Cocaine Letters
. . .heart just goes pop! like a gravy balloon. Like a big zit. Two dollars per nostril down here. You believe that. Two fucking bucks? Dos,
Ivy
The men in the kitchen had on denim workshorts cut off at the knees and white socks and brown boots and sweat and nothing else. And some had sunburns, too, but nothing else. Ivy could smell them all the way from the staircase.
Her mother served peach tea and lemonade and ice water in mismatched glasses that glittered from their own cold, for which the men thanked her, some making grateful shows of sighing and smacking their lips at the taste. One said something that might have been about beer, as a joke, and the others grinned and shoved his shoulder and her mother made a joke back, and they laughed.
The men lined up peacefully along the counter where her mother had laid out one loaf each of white, wheat and rye; jars of Hellman's mayonnaise and French's mustard; chopped onion, and lettuce and sliced tomato; bloated wedges of pickle; leftover barbecue chicken, from the night before, trimmed; a crowded tray of cold cuts rolled into fancy little tubes--like her mother liked to prepare them, all the time, even in Ivy's sack lunches--rolled unseemingly in the shape of snapdragons. On the stove sat packs of Keebler cookies. One of the men picked up the cookies and made to sit at the table, looking very serious--as a joke--while the other men grinned and shoved him to the back of the line. Her mother said something about beer, and then something else about no middle ground, and they laughed.
Her mother's offer of her own seat at the table was refused good-naturedly. So it was she, and four of them, and her husband--just returned from the pharmacy--at the kitchen table talking of things other than the yard.
So you're from Cincinnati.
When you say your wife was due?
This one--right here, see it?--fell off a motorcycle. The one on my leg was a sick dog in the neighborhood.
The rest of the men simply stood along the counters, mostly quiet. Strings showed in their necks and jaws as they chewed. They hunched as they chewed and kept their plates close to their mouths, catching crumbs. They were like the dogs at Uncle Reggie's, not in a mean way, not bad--only because Ivy could not tell them apart.
She could smell them all the way from the staircase.
The smell of them--of the sweat of their skin, and the burn of their skin (the burn in their skin, in their muscles; the smell of the work, their work, of the effort of them)--would swarm back to her. Years later, freshman year, university. Her roommate would peel away the silver film on the mouth of a can of Folgers for an all-nighter of biology and the smell of it, the smell, would come at her like a cudgel. The smell would slide all over her, snug, and oiled, all over, would slither on like a raincoat. The men in the kitchen had the smell of uncooked coffee and snug, oiled metal.
H.M.
+
C.T
. . .I didn't like the dolls. I didn't like the idea, and I didn't like Heidi climbing up so high. But I still helped hang them up. I helped. I had a part, too. So I helped.
Even if I only had to because her uncle told her bullshit ghost stories. Supterstition. A person buried in a swamp turning to an alligator, even babies, bullshit story, and telling her that dolls would make sure a person remembered they were a person and what people looked like but you know? These things happen.
Aubrie (née Ivy)
. . .she reached behind herself, watching herself, in the laundromat's bathroom mirror, watching and feeling the white work shirt's material pulled taut against her ribs, like a loom, a bare half inch of air between the cotton and the valley of her spine. She was tight inside it, tight enough to be inside it, reaching behind her to feel it all, all, reaching back so far around her like a straightjacket.
"Warm." She sighed, and it sounded both relieved and bewildered. "God. God, they're so warm."
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