M for Misanthrope

Scott leaned an ear toward his cereal. Snap, crackle, pop reshuffled as failure, fuckface, faggot. A green sticky note next to his bowl was fixed to an envelope. Don’t Forget in black marker. It was a signed permission slip and a check. Last day to turn it in. Forget it, forget it, the cereal chirped. He pushed the bowl away.

The teacher called Scott’s mother at work. She wanted Scott to come, to have fun, be a part of the adventure. His mother left work.

Scott dribbled down the hall—his face long, his feet heavy. Freckled friendless failure. His feet bunged in the doorway of the principal’s office, and he saw his mother’s frazzled features, in her hand—an envelope.

Scott, I don’t get it. You want to go. Don’t you? It was all you talked about last year. Welby’s Waterpark. Welby’s Waterpark.

Scott lifted his shoulders.

Baby, it’ll be fun, she said.

Did she say baby? He looked around. Was she trying to humiliate him? The secretary with the fuzzy hair squinted at him.

Say something, his mother said. She gripped his shoulders, shook him. I had to leave work. And drive this over. Her fingers squeezed. I gotta go. See you tonight. She pulled his face to her chest.

Scott, held the brick—room 204, and now the envelope. He slunked past the rancid stinking cafeteria, and past the mosaic of tiles made by the sixth graders, his tile—black with a single white dot in the center. His eyes smiled when they landed on his dot—his father, sinking in a murky sea.

 

His mother drove the KIA and hummed. He switched off the radio.

What’s with you? she asked. What gives you the right?

Loser, lemon butt, lady licker, he thinks.

Can you say something?

I’m not talking to a stranger. Scott bites his knuckle.

We’re giving it a try.

You try.

Listen, I do try. Everyone is concerned about you.

I hope we crash, I hope we crash, he thinks to himself. Lamented longing.

 

His gut sizzled like a fireball on the tongue. His mother cried; the skin under her eyes swelled and her hands flew around the room. An awful acidic perfume filled the air. He couldn’t make out her words.

Why a woman? It would never work. His mother and the therapist—co-conspirators with their scarves and painted nails. Fat boots and Invisaligns.

He would look up Freud and be repulsed later that night to read about the Oedipus complex—boys wanting sex with their mothers.

Listen Scott. Listen to your mother. She’s very concerned.

Scott looked at his mother.

Dark streaks ran to her chin. What are we going to do? She moved next to him, touched his knee. Scott, I love you.

Laughable lame-ass leper.

Okay, Mom, he said.

Okay, what?

She was pleading. He had to do something. Live life, he said.

You’ve got to talk, Scott.

 

Menace, moronic, madman. Scott found jeans on the floor. A shirt, too.

Cinnamon kitchen. Dough from a tube, warm. Madman’s mother made muffins.

This was Mom trying. The therapist said she should adjust her schedule, be home in the mornings.

Mother, he said, pulling out a chair.

She widened her eyes. Oh… formal today? She bowed to him. Scott.

Hopeful, she set a glass in front of him. I’m stopping after work. What do you want for dinner?

Scott stared at his glass. The juice swam with flesh. He hated pulp.

Scott. Dinner. What would you like?

Meat. Nothing else.

She set a dish on the table. Biscuits, she said.

Muffins, he said and stuffed one in his mouth.

She nodded.

His tongue labored to get the dry muffin to the back of his throat.

She rinsed the juice container. Gotta go. She bent to kiss him, You wore that T-shirt yesterday?

Was I?

Go change. She grabbed her lunch sac, headed toward the door. She turned before exiting, glanced at her watch. Love you. Nine minutes.

 

Someone in his class, Veejay, had called him a misanthropic mope. Scott pulled out his phone and googled. Veejay nailed it.

He put his mouth on the faucet and drank. Two minutes.

 

Circle Game

There is a pounding overhead—the workmen, already going.

Make it stop.

Strands of hair come loose; she presses them on wet white tiles and images string. A cigar in a face over a billowing beard. An elephant wraps its trunk around a tree.

Her sleep had her holding an infant son dead in her arms. She woke grieving and pulling at her jowls.

She towels her body. Babies at a courthouse. A teenage girlfriend stabbed in the neck. The locals are in a huff over potholes. A ruddy barge travels the Hudson toward Albany, and an ordinary grey-chested bird hops on the gutter. The ginkgo has once again fashioned its Hollywood green; boughs block the station edifice.

The young man, her son, vapes on the deck, cracks his neck for the day ahead. Pants drip slovenly off his hips. Pulling weeds and laying mulch. He wants to quit again. She will order a leather belt from that company she hates, but at least blameless homeowners won’t be subjected to or enticed by his crack when he bends over their beds.

Really her father loathes the dripping pants and it is his dying wish that she get him to wear a belt. Teach my grandson something, he says. How to mix grout and lay tile.

Broken laces, a lost license, and constant hand washing. Could his skin take it?

Her hair is falling out and her nose itches. So little rain; the packing is tedious, and she holds off on discarding even a broken umbrella.

 

Dreams offer symbols, her friend says. What about you? What can you let go of? If he says he wants to die, don’t say, don’t say that. Avoid why questions. No one knows why they say things.

Is this true?

 

Her lover says he’d take her back if she went with a woman, but not if she went with a man. Do you like women? he asks. They’re more beautiful, she says. It’s ludicrous, his stance, as if a woman couldn’t dismantle everything.

 

A conversation with a professional over pizza with eggplant and strips of crisp basil ensues. Hand-sewn masks hang off their chins. The listener wears a golden mustard blouse, many gold bracelets. An employed listener, she asks, How do you turn resistant to persistent?

The woman says the young man is sullen; plays creepy, haunting , spoken word compositions. The listener nods, gets it. A trained professional, trained to get it.

 

The roofer stumbles and cries for help. The woman climbs the ladder with water, sits with him on hot shingles. He’s dizzy. But his mamma didn’t raise no retards. Not sure why, she laughs. To make him feel less lonely. She wants to drive him somewhere. He refuses.

 

Days later, rain imminent; from a green bench, she watches the river to determine its direction. There are people she thinks about and cannot get out of her head. Her student, a heroin user in the supermarket with his girlfriend’s baby in the cart. Her childhood friend, drinking herself to death. She calls the roofer again. Why doesn’t he answer?

A man she does not know in loose clothes, masked, walks doggedly toward her. She pulls a wrinkled facemask out; the cloth over her nose smells like pizza. She looks up and a raindrop lands on her eyeball. She blinks on the cool drop and is conscious now of the roughening waters, the desolate park and the scattering of leaves.

The man reaches in his baggy jacket.

Small. Grey. Fat—  Her mouth behind the mask contorts.

He snaps his wrist. A contraption shoots down a long pole. A canopy opens, and he lifts it over her head.

 

The sky releases. Lines of a circle game they played as kids on Long Island come to her mind. Rumble to the bottom, rumble to the top, and turn around, and turn around until you make it stop.