Taming the divine heron, p.3
Modern Baptists, page 3
Mr. Pickens paused. The Last Judgment: he would have to get that watch back before he died.
“F.X., you ever wonder if you want to be you forever? F.X.?”
Mr. Pickens felt his way quietly to the other end of the room, nearer the bed. “F.X., you awake?” He squinted down and saw that his brother’s eyes were shut.
In his bedroom at the rear of the house Mr. Pickens paused before the mirror on his chest of drawers. His brown tie was crooked; the brown jacket hung wrong on his shoulders. He tried standing more erect, making the shoulders less rounded, but still the jacket looked cockeyed. He got undressed, leaving his double-knit pants in a heap on the floor. After placing his contact lenses in a solution in the bathroom sink, he turned and looked at the scar on his back where the mole used to be.
Lying in bed with the electric blanket turned up to eight, he heard Johnny Carson’s voice coming from the den, loud and unashamed.
CHAPTER
Four
When Mr. Pickens got home from Sonny Boy the next day, F.X. was on the hooked rug in the living room doing pushups.
“Sixty-one—hi—sixty-two,” F.X. gasped; he slapped his chest hard on each upstroke.
“Hi,” his brother replied, unclipping his tie and tossing it onto the love seat. He went into the kitchen and made himself a screwdriver. Usually he drank two or three of these before he felt relaxed enough to eat. This evening he poured an extra dose of vodka into the drink. The nurse at the doctor’s office had called him today at work and told him that there had been a little mix-up. The spot he had on his back, the one that looked like New Jersey, well, it wasn’t malignant at all. The lab in Ozone had bollixed things up. They were having trouble with their computer, and so his specimen got the wrong identification number on it. The nurse said she was real mad at the lab, but there was nothing she could do about it. She said the doctor was mad too. Then she told Mr. Pickens he ought to be real happy. Nothing was wrong with him.
Mr. Pickens finished the first screwdriver quickly and fixed himself another. He couldn’t figure out why he didn’t feel happy. Here he was, knowing that he wasn’t going to die after all, and he felt pretty much the same.
“Like a drink?” he asked, standing in the archway that led into the kitchen. Above him dangled macrame tassels, the handiwork of a former girl friend who had ended up marrying the new civics teacher at Tula Springs High.
F.X. was on his back now, doing leg lifts. “Come here, son. Do a few with me. It’ll tighten up your gut.” He yanked up his Alligator shirt and slapped his stomach. It was impressive, all right—a classic washboard stomach.
“Maybe later.”
“Listen, Bobby, that plastic on the love seat, it’s got to go.” The legs scissored wide and knocked against the carved lion’s paw on the love seat’s armrest.
“I already tried,” Mr. Pickens said. The clear vinyl on the love seat had been his mother’s idea of a birthday present She was still living with him then, back before her wallpapered bedroom had been converted into the wood-paneled den. As a surprise for his thirtieth birthday she had some men from Ozone come in and vinylize the love seat and davenport, the overstuffed wing chair, and the embroidered armchair while he was out working at the mall. He lived with it for a year. But as soon as she was admitted to the nursing home, he very methodically devinylized the living room, all except for the love seat, where the vinyl had actually melted into the material and could not be removed.
F.X. came into the kitchen as Mr. Pickens was finishing his third screwdriver. Mr. Pickens said he had bought some TV dinners for tonight; that’s what he usually ate when he was alone. F.X. was in the mood for something more exciting, so he looked through the cupboards to see what his brother had in store. There were instant mashed potatoes and two cans of sardines.
“I’ll run over to Dr. Henry’s,” F.X. said.
A few minutes later he returned with some frozen veal patties. “Frying pan?” he said, tossing the patties onto the counter. Mr. Pickens said he’d cook, but F.X. reminded him that he had cooked the night before.
“I saw the old homestead today.” F.X. cut a stick of margarine in half and put a piece in the skillet. “The drive-in is still standing there, but all the speakers are ripped out. There’s just the big screen staring out at the lake. It’s sort of neat.”
“You mean you went to Ozone?” Mr. Pickens said. He was getting used to F.X.’s way of talking, just barely moving his lips.
“I forgot to tell you this morning. I took a meeting with Mike today, my parole officer. He’s in the courthouse there.” An eyebrow dipped. “Mike wanted to know all about you, Bobby, so I told him how respectable you were and how you weren’t going to let me get away with anything. ‘Does he have a record?’ Mike asks me, and I say,‘You kidding? He has plenty of records, all bad. Like there’s Mantovani, The Four Seasons…”’
“F.X., maybe you shouldn’t joke like that.”
“To Mike? He’s regular, son.” He picked up the box of instant potatoes and studied it a moment. “Saucepan. You got a saucepan? No, sit. I’ll get it. Just tell me where.”
“Bottom cabinet, the other, next to the stove.”
Going to the refrigerator for more orange juice, Mr. Pickens collided with his brother and spilled part of his drink on the flowered linoleum. F.X. tossed a dishcloth onto the puddle and swished the cloth around with his foot.
“Don’t worry about that,” Mr. Pickens said, pouring vodka into his glass. “By the way, how did you get to Ozone? Is there a bus or something?”
F.X. was working his jaws like he had gum inside—only he didn’t. “Drove. Figured you wouldn’t mind.”
“Drove what?” Mr. Pickens went back to the dinette table and sat down again.
“The car.”
“What car? You mean my car? I took my car to work today.”
“No problem. I just trucked on down to Sonny Boy and got it. I mean, I looked around for you—must’ve gone up and down those aisles about fifty times. Then this chick stops me and says you’ve gone out to lunch. So what am I supposed to do? I had to get to Ozone or my ass was busted.”
“No, you need a match to light the stove. In the drawer to your right.” Mr. Pickens sipped his drink. “F.X., I had the keys.”
“You have an extra set, remember?” He got the matches and lit a burner. “I found them on your chest of drawers.”
Mr. Pickens thought he should establish a house rule right here and now concerning snooping. “So you saw the old drive-in,” he said instead. “Ozone Lux.”
“You know, son, you wouldn’t make a very good detective.”
“What?”
“Your car. When I brought it back, I couldn’t park it in front of Iota’s, where you had it. I ended up a block away, and you didn’t even notice.” He tapped a spoon rapidly on the edge of the saucepan, waiting for the milk and water in it to boil.
“Remember that time we climbed up on the screen?” F.X. said as margarine spattered out of the frying pan. “Dad wanted us to scrub that black mark off, and I was holding the ladder for you. Next thing I know, I got this blood blister where the ladder squeezed my thumb.” He tossed a frozen patty into the skillet; at the table Mr. Pickens was stung by hot grease. He told his brother to put a lid on the pan.
“Then remember the time Dad wouldn’t let us see that film with Mamie Van Doren in it?” F.X. said after finding a lid. “We’re lying there in bed, and you say maybe if we unscrew the light bulb, we can see through the ceiling. We knew she was up there, this fifty-foot Mamie Van Doren, and we knew she was doing stuff we weren’t supposed to see. I did an improv on that once.”
The milk suddenly boiled over onto the burner, making the flame hiss yellow. “Turn it down,” Mr. Pickens advised.
F.X. picked up the box and looked at the directions again. “Pepper,” he said, moving the pan to another burner. “So anyway, this improv I did for an acting coach I had in New York, Mr. Schlemiel or something. He’d make us dredge up all this shit from our childhood, said we could never be actors till we remembered everything. I tried real hard to remember something good, but it wasn’t easy, man. Then all of a sudden it comes to me, this night with Mamie Van Doren up there, so I get up and start acting it out in front of the videotape machine. It was weird, really weird,‘cause halfway through my spiel I start becoming you instead of me. I mean, it was sort of boring till I started getting in your shoes. Then it got heavy, real heavy, and I began spouting all this stuff about how everyone in high school hated me and how I—”
“Everyone didn’t hate me.”
“Well, Bobby, you did hang out with losers, you got to admit. Anyway, then I go on about how my brother was this big football star, really good-looking and all, and I start saying how much I wished I could be him because—”
“I never wished I could be you.”
“—because he got all the girls, and how one day this Mamie Van Doren would come down off the screen and electrocute him and everyone else who—”
“Electrocute?”
“It’s free association—you’re supposed to say whatever comes into your head. Hey, listen, man. Don’t look at me like that. My acting coach thought it was fucking good. He said it was deep.”
“It’s deep, all right.”
“I suppose you could do better.”
Mr. Pickens gazed absently out the sink window. The pods in the mimosa stirred as a squirrel leapt from a gray limb onto a telephone wire. “Maybe I could, F.X. Try this one. There’s this guy who’s walking around all day dying of cancer. He’s dying right before everyone’s eyes, but do you think anyone cares? No, sir, the only thing they care about is their twenty-nine-inch waistline and their forty-inch biceps.”
F.X.’s eyebrows went up, then relaxed, then shot up again. “Say, Bobby. What—”
“Forget it. Too late now.”
F.X. reached out as if he were going to touch his brother on the shoulder—but he didn’t; the arm just stayed out in the air for a moment like a Greek statue’s. “I didn’t know,” he said solemnly. “I mean, well, hey, look, I dusted in the living room. Did you notice? You had some magazines laying around and all. I straightened them up.”
“Thanks.”
“Listen, why don’t you go lie down, man? I’ll bring you your stuff in bed. You got a tray or something?”
Mr. Pickens sighed. “I told you, it’s too late. I’m okay now.” He went on to explain about the nurse’s phone call and the mix-up at the lab. F.X. seemed confused at first and had to have some parts repeated. Then he told Mr. Pickens he ought to sue.
“The doctor?” Mr. Pickens said. “Wasn’t his fault. Besides, he’s in my men’s Bible study group at the Jubilee Baptist Church.”
“How about the lab?” Smoke escaped as F.X. took off the frying pan lid to turn the patties. He poured a little Jack Daniel’s on them—for flavoring, he explained to his brother. Mr. Pickens wondered why he had never thought of that, and finished his fourth, very stiff drink.
“The lab?” Mr. Pickens said. The word meant nothing to him for a moment. “Oh. Well, what for? I mean, nothing happened.”
“What about mental incapacity? Hell, son, they shouldn’t be able to get away with things like that. Tell them you had to miss work because you were so upset. Anguish—that’s the word I was looking for. Mental anguish.”
“I’m not sure I felt anguish.” He held out his glass. “How about some of that J.D.?”
“This shit’s not good for you,” F.X. said, complying. “You ought to watch it.”
“Anguish,” Mr. Pickens said, sipping the bourbon neat. It tasted watery. “I guess what I mainly felt was, you know, unreal, like everything was a dream. Can’t sue someone for making you feel unreal. And plus, the doctor never said for sure I was dying. He actually didn’t say anything except that it was serious, real serious. The dying part I got from the library. I went there and looked up melamoma… melamo… whatever, in the health encyclopedia.”
F.X. spooned the mashed potatoes onto a plate. “Do these look right to you?” he asked, setting them in front of his brother. Mr. Pickens squinted and thought they looked sort of like mashed potatoes. F.X. went back to the stove and dished up the veal patties, which were burned on one side. “Hell, Bobby, if I can be sued for mental anguish, I don’t see why—”
“You were?”
“Better believe it, three times. First there was Charlene, then Ora and Elizabeth.”
Mr. Pickens remembered Charlene. She was F.X.’s first wife; he had married her when she was still a cheerleader at Ozone High. Ora Mr. Pickens never knew but had heard about. F.X. was married to her for four years. She had gone to Vassar and got small parts in soap operas in New York; when she turned thirty, she decided to start her life anew, so she quit acting, divorced F.X., and went to law school. But Elizabeth?
“Let’s see,” F.X. replied to his question, “Elizabeth and I got married about five years ago, no, four. She was a real estate agent in L.A., a dynamite lady. I mean, Bobby, you wouldn’t believe how good-looking she was. Anyway, this producer came along, and she fell in love, and that was that. It really tore me up. But I think I’m over it now, you know.”
“Gee, I’m sorry.” He yawned. “Well, well.”
“Ready for your grub? Here it comes.”
CHAPTER
Five
The veal patty churned in Mr. Pickens’s stomach; the rash on his arm looked redder than ever. He wished he hadn’t drunk that J.D., not on top of all that vodka. He was sitting in the den, watching television, while F.X. showered. After using up all the hot water a still-dripping F.X. joined him. F.X. had removed Mr. Pickens’s financial records and Christmas decorations from the lowboy to make room for his clothes, which he now began trying on in front of the full-length mirror he had unscrewed from the bathroom door. He seemed to be having a hard time deciding between jeans and the jeanless look but finally settled on a pair of skin-tight slacks. After putting on a plaid cowboy shirt, however, F.X. changed his mind again and got into jeans with fancy stitching on the pockets.
“Well, be seeing you,” F.X. said after he finished blow-drying his hair with a hand-held dryer that made the TV picture go fuzzy. Mr. Pickens noticed that his brother’s hair was so black it looked almost blue.
“You going out?”
“I thought I told you. I got a date tonight.” “Oh.” Mr. Pickens tried hard to remember being told but couldn’t.
“I assume it’s all right to borrow the car?”
Mr. Pickens shrugged. “Well, you know, F.X., I was planning on maybe going out myself.”
F.X. twirled the keys on his index finger. “Why didn’t you tell me, son? Well, who’s the lucky chick—that girl you took out last night? She your girl friend?”
Mr. Pickens nodded yes, even though Burma wasn’t his girl friend, even though at present he really didn’t have a steady girl friend at all. This was an embarrassing fact about himself that he planned on remedying soon, maybe when inventory was over at the store and he wasn’t so tired in the evenings.
“So what’s her name?” F.X. asked, smiling aggressively.
Mr. Pickens sighed. He supposed he might as well let F.X. have the car tonight. Mr. Pickens could do without going to Baskin-Robbins, which was what he really wanted the car for. “I didn’t know you knew anyone in Tula Springs,” Mr. Pickens said dully.
“Just met her today. Look, can I have the car or not?”
Although he was going to give in eventually, Mr. Pickens didn’t want to make it too easy for him. F.X. shouldn’t just assume he could use his car. “What’s her name?”
“Toinette, Toinette something. You know her, right? Works at Sonny Boy.”
“Oh.” He gave a tight smile. “Yeah, I know her. How did you meet her?”
“Well, like I said, I was nosing around Sonny Boy this noon looking for you. She was the girl that came up and told me you were out to lunch. That’s just what she said,‘Mr. Pickens is out to lunch,’ and I said,‘You’re telling me,’ and she laughed and beamed out a few vibes and that was that. I got me a date.”
Mr. Pickens shifted in the easy chair. “F.X., you know Toinette’s much younger than she looks. She’s only eighteen.” “So?”
“You’re old enough to be her father. And besides, does this seem like the time to be going out on dates? There’s more important things to think about, wouldn’t you say? What about a job? You haven’t said a word about your plans.”
“Son, think. Two years now I’ve been cooped up without a lady. I got to get myself laid fast or I’ll forget how.”
The mole scar on Mr. Pickens’s back began to itch; he hunched his shoulders and fidgeted.
“Hey, man,” F.X. said, “tell me you understand. Tell me I’ve been wrong about you all these years. Tell me you’re human.”
“Okay, I’m human,” Mr. Pickens said a little hotly. “I’m human, so I need the car tonight. I got urges too, you know.”
