Sacred Monster

Flashback 15E

Jack, in Hush Puppies and chinos and polo shirt, paced back and forth on the gray board deck of the Malibu house. Through the glass doors of the living room, Dad could be seen watching a bicycle race on television. Out of the curtained glass doors of the bedroom came Mom, soaking wet, furious, a crushed empty milk carton in her hand. She stomped across the deck toward Jack, her shoes making squelching sounds. “So there he is,” she snarled. “The big man.”

“Mom,” Jack said helplessly, spreading his hands. “What do you want from me?”

“Airline tickets,” Mom snapped.

Startled, not having expected this at all, Jack said, “What? Where to?”

“Home, of course.” Mom gave the house a look of hate, gave the Pacific Ocean a look of hate, gave Jack a look of hate. She said, “What is this cruddy place to Dad and me? Nothing but sand and faggots everywhere. We want to go home to Grover’s Corners, where we belong.”

“Mom!” Jack cried, stricken. “You can’t mean that! You can’t leave me!”

“The hell I can’t,” Mom told him. “And I’ll knock you down if you get in my way.”

Bitter, betrayed, deeply hurt, Jack raised himself to his full height and spoke with slow, mature grief. He said, “You don’t love me. You never loved me. You never loved anybody. You don’t know how to love.”

With impatient asperity, Mom said, “Well, who ever said I did? I never wanted children in the first place. It was all your father’s fault. He could never do anything right his whole entire life long. Though I do have to admit he was right when it came to this.”

“When it came to what?” Jack asked.

“You,” Mom told him. “We didn’t have children, we had you. Mewling and puking, whining about yourself from the day you were born. A weakling and a coward. You’ll never amount to anything.”

“But—” Jack stared at her, not knowing where to start. “I make millions!” he cried. “I’m rich and famous! They write me up in magazines!” Madly, wildly gesturing at the house, he cried, “Look what I bought you!”

“You’ll never buy me, Sunny Jim,” Mom said. She threw the empty milk carton at his feet, spun about, and marched back into the house.

Jack, devastated, slowly sank to his knees, staring through the glass doors into the house. On his knees, he kept going, curving slowly in over his stomach, his torso bending downward until his forehead touched the warm wood of the deck. He stayed in that position, hands folded over stomach, forehead and knees and toes touching the deck. A faint moaning sound came from him.

A faint moaning sound comes from me. I close my mouth over it, and when that doesn’t work I close my throat. This time, that’s all it takes. (Sometimes, I have to close my hands around my throat and squeeze real tight to make it stop. I’m glad I don’t have to do that in front of Michael O’Connor, intrepid reporter.)

Calm again, I say, “Well, I felt I had to go along with Mom’s wishes.”

Sympathy in his voice, O’Connor says, “She was a little rough on you, wasn’t she?”

“We all have our needs,” I assure him, feeling how placid I am, how easy in my mind. “I bought those airline tickets for Mom and Dad and said good-bye. Buddy drove them to the airport. All that was left was to have Constanza stop the milk deliveries, and it was as though the whole episode had never been.”

“But—” O’Connor says. “You wanted them there. That was the whole point, wasn’t it?”

“Their needs were different from mine,” I say, smiling and smiling. “Besides, it all worked itself out, finally. It meant the house at the beach was available soon after that when I needed it.”

“Needed it?”

“Yes.” Remembered sunshine floods my eyes. “Just around that time, you see,” I say, “I fell in love again.”