I wrote this whole thing during a John Updike phase, and as a result one thing I've had to do is pull out some unnecessary metaphors. Bits of the story are still drowning in them, sometimes in a good way, but I think this section is mostly under control.
- - -
It is a weird day.
Matt dreams two dreams in the hours ripe before dawn. In one
he maneuvers through a complex of unrelated scenes: a family reunion, in which
cousins he has never met stampede through blackened wood hallways in his old
home in Tennessee; his high school graduation, held inexplicably in the lobby
of an old hotel, so that when his class throws their caps they stick in the
ceiling, break open lightbulbs that die without dimming; a wedding ceremony, at
which his classmates watch from strangely shrunken pews two strangers at the
altar, one of whom Matt thinks may be himself. In the manner of dreams the
moments have no solid edges; they fade between one another, hiding details in a
murk of shimmering air. Continuity falters and is reborn in dark spaces.
But the scenes are unified by human silence. The faces, new
and familiar, do not break to release sound, in speech or laughter, groans or
coughs or sighs. Instead, birds perch on rafters, behind cupboard doors, in
gaudy chandeliers, broadcasting with apathetic parrot-talk the words unsaid,
crowing moodless orders, hacking cackles from thin throats.
At the wedding he watches a tern dive and cry “I do!” before
an anonymous gunshot breaks its tiny heart into pieces that paint the wedding
party red. The congregation gasps, and then gapes at the noises they have made.
A cheer rises—their curse is broken! Tongues flap and language flows like a
river down the aisles. An organ player pounds the chords to a joyful hymn, and
soon the room is awash in song.
Matt opens his mouth to sing and no sound comes out. The
dead bird’s feathers settle on the floor.
His second dream is short but feels eternal, drawn in lines
that parallel stripes of reality from one week before. Carl sprawls lazily on
his back over a plush comforter in the sanctuary of his room, a 50s mystery
novel held securely by hands extended over his head. His elbows are adorably
straight, so that the fold of the book forms a roof held aloft by the pillars
of his arms, and Matt is helpless to convey his raw fondness for the strange
posture, or for the gentle ellipses of Carl’s eyes as they squint to defeat the
distance. Or for the fact that he reads mysteries at all. Carl will later claim
when Matt asks that it’s not about suspense or struggle—it’s the simple
pleasure of living with a threatless unknown, a puzzle that solves itself on
the page merely by reading forward. “Besides which,” he will confess, ducking
his head slightly—Matt will nearly die of affection—“I may have a slight crush
on Archie Goodwin.”
But in the dream Matt doesn’t ask. He sits on Carl’s desk
chair, which he has moved so that its back is to the door, a subconscious
barricade against the greater reality of the world at large. His body anchors
in the wake of a raucous tide: As always their alone time has hurricaned, and the
sheets are stained beneath the blanket on which Carl lies, lust pulled forth as
though by gravity, the black hole of a closed fist.
He is not lucid, exactly, but he knows that he is dreaming,
is aware that this moment has long since passed. He turns his head from side to
side and watches his vision wobble, rushing to fill in details his
consciousness has forgotten—a drinking glass half full on Carl’s nightstand,
the reflection of a bronze bottle in Carl’s mirror, Carl’s clothes hanging like
colored skins grayed by the shadows of the closet door. Carl laughs to himself
and sends warm ripples through the room. The sound of a dry page turning and
the faint hum of an overhead light dust the air.
And Matt grips the sides of his chair until his hands cramp
and his bones whine, grips for dear life. He will wake soon, from this moment
and its feeling, its easy feeling: One arm of the balance scale of his
tautology has finally been raised into the bowl of Carl’s arms, unstirred by
tension and released from the weight of guilt. So he grips hard, and says to
himself aloud, “Don’t wake up, Matt. Don’t wake up.”
But it doesn’t matter. Carl tilts his head back to look at
him, and then he is rising, and giving Matt that uncomfortable look, that
horribly familiar look—What are you still
doing here? Carl crosses the room and sits with his back to Matt at a
keyboard that Matt is sure wasn’t there before, and rolls his fingers, summons
a stream of notes too rich to belong to the instrument before him, and milky
light seeps through the coils of Matt’s brain…
- - -
Piano melodies, a hot morning. Matt is awake. The modern
blare of Katie’s old stereo coasts on gray light from an antediluvian sunrise,
and wrapped in a womb of blankets Matt hears a Christian rock singer belting.
“Katie,” Matt whines. Sweat warps his sense of touch so that
he feels ensconced in the soul of a fever.
“Dad says it’s time for you to get up,” his sister counters.
He inhales deep and then sighs, resigning himself to
consciousness, and opens his eyes. “What time is it?”
The motel room, lit wholly by daylight, is densely populated
with the flotsam of five lives packed snug, but by necessity it is almost
inhumanly neat, dustless and ordered for sanity’s sake. By now he is used to
the taste of unfiltered air and the faint pot stink wafting in from one of the
neighbor’s rooms. In an odd way it really does feel like home. Katie hits the
pause button on the family’s sole music player, gives him a look both exasperated
and pitying, and indicates the digital clock on the nightstand inches from his
face. It reads 1U:41, which means it’s either 10:41 or 10:47. Matt groans
regardless.
As he rolls out of bed he offers another question: “Where’s
Dad?” His feet absorb the texture of the nylon carpet as they connect with the
floor.
“Outside. Mom took Eric to the park.” She stands from the
nest she has made from her sleeping bag and lets herself fall elbows-first onto
the bed he has just evacuated. “Carl called you a little while ago.”
“K,” he says. His waking mind has not yet churned the dreams
from his memory, and he feels tension and loss like quicksand fall slowly
through him.
“Do you have a thing for him?”
Matt finds himself momentarily paralyzed. The quicksand
drains from him through a hole speared open by a solitary tower of ice. But
then he swallows and lets out a strained chuckle. “What?”
“’cause Mom said that she thought that you were spending an
awful lot of time together and that if she were Lauren she would be—”
“Katie would you stop gossiping with Mom about my
relationships?” he fumes, and hopes that he is already flushed from morning
blood so that his face does not redden further.
Katie frowns to show that she is uninterested in his
discomfort, and then smiles daringly. “So you’d call it a relationship, hmmm?”
“—that’s not what I said,” he counters lamely, turning his
back to her. He scratches his thigh through his pajama pants and enters the
bathroom.
Katie behind him taunts, “Maaattt likes Caaarrrl,” and he
slams the door. “Overactive imagination,” he shouts back, and shivers at his
reflection in the mirror. He stands still a moment, watches mortification drain
from him slowly, breathes in and out as the ice inside him melts. A chill takes
him, as though an invisible hand has glided across his bare chest, and he
imagines Carl’s touch, soft and then rough, all the more real for its absence.
Matt stares himself in the eye.
Yes. Today.
He pulls off his PJs, uses the toilet and turns on the
shower. When the water is pleasantly cool against the ridge of his knuckles he
steps inside and lets his anxiety soak, his frustration saturate, until both
are heavy with the dew of urgency. Today.
Because the thing of it is, Katie’s question is legitimate.
Would he call what he has with Carl a relationship? Yes and fucking no; the
epoch of summer ‘11 has shredded the universe’s natural laws, distorted his
conceptions of true and not true; chords once pure and major in new contexts
dissonate, reverse, change position on the neck of his father's guitar.
He is sick of the fear of being found out, and sicker for
the thought that he doesn’t know what there is to be found. There is a
devastating flaw in his tautology, and it shares its unpronounceable name with
the twisted mandala of ifs and sort-ofs and maybes that currently labels their
lives.
He is neither with Carl nor is he not.
He thinks of the shriveling silence that follows their
encounters, the unspoken uncertainty that clings to them. A thread of
claustrophobia spools round his stomach, and he kills the flow of water just in
time to hear a new song beat against the door to the other room - one with
lyrics he knows his sister isn't supposed to hear.
“Katie!” he shouts, pulling a towel around him. “Katie,
you’re not supposed to be listening to Dad’s CDs, they’re not appropriate for—”
By now Matt has pushed open the door and sees not his sister
but the back of a brown-haired head, and for an instant his mind explodes in
fantasy, imagines that Carl’s call had been to announce an early visit,
supposes his family is gone and will be for hours, forgets completely his angst
and feels only the coarse fabric of the towel against his skin.
Three-tenths of a second later he recognizes his father,
crouching over the stereo and a leather case of disc sleeves, and shuts down
his brain before it can even consider assigning the incident any creepy
Freudian implications. Matt clears his throat. “Oh—oh, uh, sorry Dad. Thought
that Katie was—”
“Mm?” his dad replies, voice straining to pierce through the
music. He turns his head over his shoulder and shakes it distractedly. “Katie’s
out playing with Mrs. Reese’s daughter, uh. Carole.”
“Cary,” Matt corrects. “K.” He fishes clothes from a
suitcase against the back wall and retreats back into the bathroom to outfit
himself.
“Oh, right,” his dad says, head down, before Matt closes the
door. “Your mother said you seemed a little blue, or—no,” he mutters, tossing a
CD case to one side, “tried that. Uh. What? Right—that you were off. Are you
doing ok?”
“Fine,” Matt says loudly, as the song wanders on. “Maybe
something different today, Dad,” he encourages.
He sees the back of his dad’s head nod. “You’re right.”
There is a click and the music dies.
- - -
After dressing Matt emerges to find the room empty, so he
dismisses the missed call message on his phone, pockets it and his wallet, and
heads outside.
The late morning sun is high and scalding, and distant
pavement smudges the scenery. Under his feet weeds puff labored breaths through
cramped channels of concrete and form supine smiles on the patio. Matt puts a
hand to his eyes to block the truck’s glare incising the ether before him and
feels his mouth dry. Parched mud cakes the navy paint along the wheel wells. A
bone-dust corona for a black sun.
Matt’s dad sits sideways in the driver’s seat with his legs
hanging out the car door. From the front they look like stray whiskers hanging
from a monster's rumpled maw. He taps his thumbs on his knees to the beat of a
silent song. When he sees Matt coming he looks up and smiles. “I got it. I’ve
got just the one.”
Matt forces a poor excuse for a grin but cannot bring
himself to offer any verbal congratulations. He has enough stress to deal with
today without… but whatever. He forces a poor excuse for a grin.
“Come on,” his dad says with a hint of excitement, swinging
his feet to the pedals. “I’m—uh, where is it I’m taking you?”
“The coffee shop,” Matt supplies. The touch of the door
handle foreshadows the suffocating heat that meets him in the passenger seat.
His dad chews on his tongue as he picks up an unlabeled CD
shining in his lap and slides it into the player. “Just the one. Meeting Lauren
there?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice girl. Very nice girl. You be gentle with her,” his dad
says as he starts the car, shaking a finger at nothing.
Matt is not sure what he means but isn’t in the mood to ask.
“Yeah.”
The sun revolves sideways as the truck orients itself and
joins the road. From the dashboard speakers synth and noise hollow out a cavern
of sound. “I’m feeling good about this one,” his dad repeats, as a singer's
voice resonates.
“It’s the lucky one,” Matt’s dad assures, twisting the
volume dial down. “Eh Matt? You feel that?”
“Sure Dad.” Matt stretches his neck and fiddles with the air
vents, though the AC hasn’t worked for weeks.
His dad nods. “Yes. Today’s the day. I think I’ll stop by
Tom’s first to see if he’s heard about any leads. Then the library for the
computer. Listings. Mm, I can hear this one coming a mile away. Maybe I’ll
visit Regina
before the library. Or after. It doesn’t matter. This is the song, Matt, my
lucky song. Can’t fail me.”
Matt rolls down the window, feels the breeze highlight the
sweat on his forehead. “Can we just listen to music, Dad? I’m not really
feeling talkative right now.”
“Oh, sure.” He turns the dial again and the car fills with a
tribal beat, sparring chants, staggered harmonies. Matt smells gasoline and
greenery, fuel and flora. Plants that build air from light and muck that powers
light and paints the air brown. An imperfect cycle, something lost with every
iteration. He feels he can relate.
It is barely a minute before the volume dips again. “I was
just thinking,” his dad says, “what was wrong with my other lucky songs. Ah!”
He snaps. “They were too old.” He waits for this to register. Matt keeps his
gaze fixed out the window. “Sure you need the classics, sure you do. But you
can’t relive the past. This is about the future. Have to keep your mind on the
future!”
“Great,” Matt says, probably too dismissively.
“Ha,” his dad says. “Mm. The one.” A tiny spark of
confidence fades from his voice. “Just the one.” He taps the steering wheel,
hums along. “Maybe at the library I’ll see if they’ve got any newer albums.” He
clicks his tongue. “Mm. Maybe that’s what I’ll do. What do you think, Matt?”
“I think you should spend your time looking for work instead
of a damn good luck charm, Dad,” he vents, harshly, automatically, and
immediately he regrets it, feels shock at his own words form mirror faces on
him and his dad.
There is silence for a moment save for the song fading. His
dad turns off the radio and clears his throat. “I— I am looking for work, every
day, you know that I am—”
His defensive tone provokes something in Matt and before he
can stop himself he is replying: “No, Dad, what you do is you drive around to
all your friends’ places and pretend to look for work, and then you blame it
all—”
“Matthew Lewis you do not talk to me like—”
“—blame it all on a song
that you can’t find a job? It’s pathetic and—”
“Matt—”
Pent-up ire spews forth as though from the lip of a volcano.
“No, I’m sorry Dad, but you’re—how old are you? Forty fucking nine years old,
and you’re using superstition as an
excuse? As your reason to keep the rest of us stuck in that goddamn motel room
for—”
“MATT!”
It is possibly the loudest he has ever heard his father
shout in his life. He recoils as suddenly as he had pounced, and he feels small
against the cloth seats. Lines of rage are held frozen on his dad’s face. He is
framed by the window behind him so that he seems to exist halfway between
silhouette and still life, and Matt feels sorry, horribly sorry for his
accusations, wants to pull back his molten words and bury them again under cold
bedrock. He pulls his knees into his chest on an old impulse.
“Matt,” his dad says. His voice is no longer loud but the
word is strained, and hurt bubbles to the surface in creases in his cheeks and
above his temples. “Matt, I am out there every day pounding the pavement, and
don’t you even think about suggesting otherwise. You have no idea—”
“I have an idea,” he murmurs.
“Excuse me?”
“I said I don’t have no idea,” he replies meekly.
His dad lets out a noise of exasperation, like the spinning
of a lawnmower blade, and shakes his head. He turns the car sharply. “Matt, I’m
sorry, but you don’t understand.”
“I do understand,” Matt asserts again, sitting straight and
letting his legs fall forward.
“No, Matt, you don’t, because—”
“Damnit Dad yes I do! I understand because I did it too, and
so did Mom, and—”
“Well then you know how hard it is!”
“But guess what, we both found jobs!” Matt seethes, vim
restored. “Mom’s been working at the laundromat for what, two months now, and
I’ve had the delivery thing since before exams!”
“Son,” his dad says as though filtering his words through a
rock wall, as though flaunting his patience. He gestures sharply with one hand
as he drives. “Those are jobs, I’m looking for an occupation, it’s different.”
Matt’s scoff is almost a laugh. “Dad the only difference is
that we sucked it up and got shitty work, because it’s better than nothing.
Because some of us want to get Eric and Katie out of that piece of shit room
before—”
“How DARE you, Matt, how dare you talk like I don’t care
about—”
“Because Dad sometimes—”
“NO!” The shout is like thunder, like a nuclear bomb.
“You’ve said more than your share and now you are going to listen to me.” His voice is rich and trembling, like a violin bowed
across all strings. “You think I don’t want to get us out of there, that I enjoy living like this, that I do this
because of all the free time it gets me? Good God, Matt, I haven’t taken a job
like the ones you and your mother have because it’s the only thing keeping us
from settling in! Do you even—you
know as well as I do it’s already becoming normal,”
he says, in a way that makes the word terrifying. “And I hate it—I hate with every piece of me that our,
our… situation has made just taking
the easy work so tempting, that it makes that extra sliver of comfort seem like
it’s it’s it’s worth it somehow. But
the only way—the only way this gets
better is if we find a real solution, not some band-aid, and Matt I am good at what I do, and I am going to get
us out of this, and maybe you think it’s just my ego but Matt it’s just not
true.” He hammers his last words as though he is nailing closed the lid of a
coffin. “Just—not—true.”
His father is watching the road by necessity but Matt can
see the threat of tears even from the side. And he barks back, because if he
doesn’t he’ll cry, and he can’t let himself cry: “Then why can’t you—why do you
waste your time with this—” He shakes his head as he scrambles for an adequate
word. “—delusion with the music, the magic songs?”
His reply is immediate and tempered, and somewhat desperate.
“Because if it’s not the music’s fault Matt then it’s—” He swallows, as though
he cannot bear to finish the thought, and licks his lips, and stares ahead.
A moment.
“Dad,” Matt says.
“What?” he asks, turning his head.
“The light’s green.”
“Oh.” He refocuses, pulls forward, pauses long. “—It’s
important to have something to believe, son. You say it’s a delusion… Everybody
does it. It’s something to believe in, we need that.”
Matt tries franticly to calm himself, to save himself from
this, from tears, from the sight of his dad vulnerable, and he finds an out in
a mocking reply. “I thought that’s what God was for.”
Anger alights again in his dad’s eyes and it is worse and
better at the same time. “Well Matt I tried God for six months and it didn’t
seem to be doing us any damn favors!” Exasperation like gravel seeds itself in
the soil of his voice as gravel grinds beneath them—he has pulled in front of
the coffee shop. Lauren’ car stamps her presence. “And, oh, by the way—where do you get off—don’t
try to pretend like I’m the only one
with a questionable escape here.”
Matt scoffs, but feels his defenses stir. “What is that
supposed to mean?”
His dad pauses with open mouth and calculating eyes, as
though considering. With restraint he finally utters, “Never mind.”
“No, what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Matt turns to
him, ready to blitz if he sees an opening.
But his dad keeps his man safe, offers a false smile.
“Nothing. It means nothing, Matt. Have fun with Lauren, say hi to Carl for me
would you?”
His tone is knowing and Matt panics before assuring himself
that this is Dad, the most stuck-in-his-head, unobservant… He is confused,
feels tired. “—Carl’s not here, Dad.”
His dad shrugs his shoulders and keeps his eye on the
windshield. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Matt watches him a moment, trying to read him, and then
gives up. He pushes open the passenger door fiercely, lurches out of the truck
without a goodbye, and waits for the satisfying roar of an engine that never
comes. Instead his dad putters leisurely into the drive-thru. Matt briefly
considers fishing through a nearby garbage can for something to throw at him
and then sits on the sidewalk outside the entrance, dodging the glances of
newly-caffeinated patrons and trying to seem apathetic. He can’t do this now. He’ll
go home, or call a friend and rant, or consult the internet for snarky retorts.
No. Today’s the day. He has decided this already.
Ugh.
He lets his eyes falls close and remembers Carl’s bare
shoulders burned red by contact with the roof of his car, the wide angles of
his legs crossed on a beach chair, the burn of his lips under soft rain. On the
radio buzzes some college employee’s indie collection, slightly altered open
chords under a nasally voice. He steps inside and lets the doors slide closed behind
him.
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