The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (24 page)

G
ideon was a head taller than Paul. This is when Pax was still Paul, sixteen, still a kid who hoarded spiced gumdrops and read books about ESP. Gideon didn't read books. He had no sweet tooth. Olive-skinned, with wavy brown hair and a lantern jaw, he brought to mind an Olympian. He had a casual, innate grace, walked with a fast loping stride, backpack slung over one shoulder. His hair was neatly trimmed save for a wispy braid, the rat-tail, which fell nearly to his shoulder blades. Gideon had said, “Hey Paul, you want to study for that biology test together or what?” as if they often spent their afternoons together, study partners, when in fact they seldom spoke. Paul wasn't even planning on studying but he agreed. “Your house,” Gideon announced. He didn't smile.

After school they walked together in silence, past the church, Gizmo's Video Palace, the eyeglass shop, then stopped at the Come & Go for red vines and sodas. Finally they turned onto Route 22, walked on the muddy shoulder, and then stepped over the guardrail and onto the clotted path, the shortcut that led to the cottage where Paul lived with his mother and stepfather. The path was a mess. Most of its litter was Paul's doing—soda cans, candy bar wrappers, bits of Styrofoam, crumpled magazine pages, scratch-off tickets. His English teacher called him “tenderheart” he wanted to show that he wasn't,
not at all, not at all!
so he discarded a thing a day, devoted himself to this petty crime, a potato chip bag, a lollipop stick, until the trash overwhelmed the thicket. Was he tenderheart? Gideon didn't seem to notice the litter. They walked in silence. Paul, made nervous by Gideon's cool expression and swift pace, by the murderous way he had guzzled the soda, finally said, “So what about Jade Grant?”

Gideon sighed. “Who the hell's that?” Then: “What about her?”

“I heard she's pregnant.”

“I don't care a lick about Jade or her fetus.” He kept his eyes straight ahead, increased his stride. Paul struggled to keep up.

“I don't care about her either.” But Paul did care. He thought of her often, all the time. He wondered who impregnated her, and when and where, and imagined possessing the kind of power she did. How could Gideon not care? Everyone cared. They watched her with new attention, gave her a wide berth in the hall, studied her belly and boobs and the hold of her face. In algebra, Paul watched her sigh as she completed her equations, watched her wind a hank of glossy red hair around her index finger. She finished her worksheets before everyone else, then examined her fingernails, the veins of her wrists. Sometimes she doodled on her hand, or shoe, or just stared at the wall clock, stared hard, as if her gaze, if applied right, might set it on fire.

The cottage was empty, his stepfather at the plastics plant, his mother at the bowling alley. They went inside. Gideon surveyed the cramped rooms. He touched each object on the mantelpiece, touched the hem of the robin's-egg tablecloth, ran a finger along the spines of the books.

“Who reads these books?”

“My mom. The romances. The others are my stepfather's.”

“Crappy books, huh?”

He picked up the model schooner that occupied the place of honor on the mantel.

“My stepfather made that.”

“It's not very good.”

“Yeah—well. I guess not.”

“No one knows how to make anything anymore.” Then: “Chinese machines, they know how to make things.
Robots
.”

“The sail is torn. It's been sewn up. I ripped it.”

He'd been punished for that. He'd been flipped over his stepfather's knee. He'd been too old for spanking, fourteen, but it worked: he hadn't touched the model since.

Gideon examined it with vague disdain. “Shitty,” he said.

It was thrilling to have a veritable stranger in the house, and for this stranger to say things that Paul himself could never say.

“Just put it back, man, yeah? He's funny about that thing.”

Gideon replaced it carelessly. Its bow edged off the shelf.

They went upstairs to Paul's room; Gideon collapsed on the bed, his head on Paul's pillow, like it was his own room. Paul stood by the doorway. He was embarrassed by the painting that hung over his bed—a soulful clown holding a parasol. His mother had bought it at a tag sale. Gideon didn't seem to notice it. He said, “You got any music?”

There were some cassette tapes in a shoebox, but Paul didn't want Gideon going through them. He pressed Play on the tape recorder—the song was a ballad, sappy, about being stuck on a person, about a feeling down deep in your soul. It wasn't what he wanted to hear. Gideon chuckled, pulled himself up on his elbows, said, “You like the mitochondria? You good at biology?”

“I'll pass it, I guess.”

“I got a D on the last quiz. Mister Mason can fuck me sideways.”

Paul gathered his materials together, notepad, textbook, a couple pens. He sat on the floor, his back to the wall.

“The body,” Gideon sighed. “I guess the body's fine. It's when you go too far inside it. I like the outside stuff. I like the pores. I can go so far as the blood. But dendrites? Ribophones? Who cares about that shit. People worry way too much about what's invisible. People want to name every last piece of dust.”

“Ribos
omes
,” Paul said.

Gideon grinned. “I knew I picked the right study partner.”

Paul nervously started to describe cell function. Then Gideon got off the bed, sprawled out on the floor in front of him. He lay on his side, propped on an elbow—he flicked a dust bunny under the bed, said, “You got yourself a girlfriend?”

“No,” Paul said.

They were the same age, but the way Gideon asked the question, the effort he took to keep a straight face, the implicit mockery—Paul felt like he was being ribbed by a rude uncle. But then Gideon said, “Me neither,” and this came out earnestly, even sadly, and he put a finger on the button of Paul's pants. He said, “Me neither, man.”

Gideon's finger moved from the button of Paul's pants to the fabric of his crotch. He said, “This your dick or a nut?” It was the same toneless, vaguely irritated voice he'd used to say
dendrites
or
ribophones
.

“My dick,” Paul whispered.

“Cool.” Gideon glanced at his own groin, shrugged. “I got two meatballs and a cocktail wiener.”

Paul could say nothing.

“Let me,” Gideon said.

Paul's blood rushed to meet Gideon's hand. He felt his stomach drop, felt his mouth go dry, felt—did not hear as much as feel—a series of words tumble from his mouth. The faint pressure of the words, their lightness in his throat—they emerged, one by one, to the same rhythm that Gideon's hand worked the fabric. But they weren't words. They were sounds, syllables, articles:
oh—the—buh—ah—sah—an—the—

Gideon went about it with a certain sighing duty, like a kid forced to clap erasers. “Wait,” Paul managed to say.

Gideon stopped. “You gonna come?”

Paul couldn't answer.

Gideon said, “Endoplasmic Reticulum. Is that what we're waiting for?”

Paul heard something downstairs. Or was he being paranoid? The boom box sang
I wonder where you are, I wonder what you do.

“I mean, is that your idea of a good time? Golgi bodies? Say so if it is. Say the word and I'll stop.”

“Don't stop.”

When Gideon undid Paul's pants, yanked his zipper, Paul experienced a moment of panic. Gideon would mock his dick. But Gideon said nothing. His face maintained its indolence. He put his mouth on Paul. He went and went. Paul's own mouth, now, was empty, free of words, syllables, articles. His brain was empty. He felt as if he'd been opened, as if someone had opened him up and removed everything, blood and bones, the whole soup of him. He felt a terrible, consuming lightness. Then the door opened.

Someone took the name of the lord in vain. Someone else laughed. It was hard to know which person made which sound. The whole of his life would spin around this moment. What a stupid moment it was! Being so light, so empty, it was hard to get to his feet. He staggered. His vision blurred. His hand was buzzing, numb, couldn't manage the zipper. Someone said,
That's the end of the road,
or maybe it's what he thought, or what someone else thought, the moment was so wholly crude and exposing it would not have surprised him to hear another's private thoughts. His dick hung out. His heart battered his rib cage. His mother—why was she so stupid?—called out his stepfather's name.

Even when Gideon left, clutching his collarbone, his body rigid with pain, even then he looked bored. On his way to the door he stopped at the mantel. With the hand that wasn't holding his collarbone he swatted the model ship to the floor. He didn't close the door behind him, just strutted away, a gambler, strides long and calm. Paul's mother was holding her neck, both hands gripping it, as if strangling herself. His stepfather, who smelled like plastics, like a new shower curtain, whose hair was oiled and face seemed gentle but who was not gentle, looked at Paul as if about to scream, opened his mouth, but this time he did not scream. He closed his mouth. He returned the broken ship to the mantel. It was only a matter of time before Paul ran. His stepfather wanted him out. His mother, too, though she didn't know this or couldn't say it. When she came to his bedroom some nights later, pressed her hand to his forehead, to his mouth, when he could see her breasts through her nightgown and could smell the sweat under her perfume, what else could she have wanted but for him to get out of there? She kissed his face, his cheeks, forehead, eyelids. The kisses were fast and hard and not tender. It was how one kisses a baby. It was how a new mother, unsure if she likes her infant, kisses him, an attempt to generate tenderness, to prove the child, to prove herself, worthy. Every kiss said
Get out.
Every kiss said
Go on go on go on go.
Her breasts brushed across his chest. This is what a boy does. Not that. This. And this. “Get out of here,” he said, but she wouldn't. He couldn't push her away. She was his mother.

“Oh Paul. Paulie,” she murmured. “I wanted so much for you. I hoped so much. We all did. You were the only one. We hoped so much,” like he was dead.

He said, “I'm not dead.”

B
ut his mother wasn't stupid. Or if she was stupid she had willed it upon herself, it made things simpler. It made it easier to marry the new man, to stand at the altar in a dress with a bodice like a pile of suds, to pretend that she had not overheard that bitch waitress Felicia say under her breath, “Wearing white, huh?” Being stupid allowed her to stand at the altar and look at her betrothed's falsely gentle face, to kiss lightly his pale, too-small mouth and accept his word that he'd care for her forever. She wanted to be cared for. It wasn't unreasonable. Helplessness had been bred into her, she knew this, just as plants are bred for different characteristics—height, color, juiciness of their fruit, whatever. She had been bred to be helpless, which had its advantages, which, at its best, was like living as though you were always being carried by a happy groom over a threshold; and at its worst—but that wasn't worth thinking about. Paul was getting older. She needed a husband. Paul said to her, on her wedding day, “Are you sure about this?” He said it with such care, such patient, practical tenderness, like he was her mother. He was twelve. She had a benign growth in her uterus that now and then sent ribbons of pain down her legs. The doctor wasn't too worried. She had a phobia, too: she feared thunderstorms with the indomitable, righteous purity of those who will not ride in planes or enter elevators. She had given birth to Paul during a thunderstorm. Since that day, whenever she heard even faint thunder, whenever the air assumed a staticky, floral charge and the wind lifted the leaves and set their shadows upon the wall, she would bite her bottom lip and grip the nearest sturdy thing, preferably the hang bar in her closet. Her new husband scolded her: “Be a grown woman, love,” or “Stop whimpering, love,” or “Get that fat ass out of the closet, love.” He added
love
to his harshest statements, and it worked. She nodded. She gathered herself. She stepped from the comfort of the closet, where the absolute darkness and laundry detergent smell kept her from remembering what it felt like when Paul was born, when his mushroom head tore her apart.

She had held him in the damp crook of her arm. His face was like a sheet of balled-up paper. “All babies look like that,” said an aunt by the bedside, knitting booties of contemptuous green. The power flickered all afternoon. Thunder snapped like a leather belt. The baby was ugly. She had wanted so badly a girl. The next baby, who was stillborn and a girl, appeared on an afternoon of fierce sunshine and blue sky, but his mother did not come to fear these kinds of days. She told Paul this set of facts in an unblinking manner, a manner of
See what I have done for you?
A manner of
You have taken more than your share, but I'll forgive you.
She stroked his hair as she said it. She came to want him. She made it clear. She hadn't always wanted him, but now she did. It was like a parable, he thought. It was not a life but a tale.

H
e felt Ricky's prick on his thigh. It was surprisingly light, unsure, in the way of an empty puppet. He heard a moan emerge from his mouth—his mouth which had been open from the start, which had found the shape of the moan and been waiting to expel it. There was a certain uncomplicated familiarity, as between old friends. Ricky wore the expression of a person trying to find a word in a foreign language. A soft rain began. A single word rang though Pax's body, and of all things it was a girl's name. Nights like these permit one to believe in fate. At once he had a path. It was his. This night was part of it, and Ricky's prick was part of it, and Leonora, and her mother. Gideon had a rat-tail. That gas station attendant Burt what's-his-name had a tattoo of a lion on his pectoral. He never touched Burt. The original Pax, his namesake, had a book about beekeepers and lesbians and a perfect voice and a better name, but he had never touched him either. Never Burt or Pax or Ed or Ray, who offered to pay for it, or Donald, who took him clamming. He had always said no. The rain picked up. The city was desperate for it. He had never been quite as at peace, nor as lonely, and he said so. He said a few more things. He said something, stupidly, about having sex with a woman in his old house, about the way it had freed him for this, prepared him, as a pan is cured for cooking. Then he said he'd once loved a girl named Jade, that as kids he and the girl had been accosted in the woods by a crazy Christian, that years later he'd tracked her down—Jade, not the Christian—that he'd made some phone calls and learned she was married and a neurosurgeon and living in a great European capital. A goddamned neurosurgeon! He'd never felt more proud or more alone. Now she was gone. Everyone was gone. And yet knowing she was a neurosurgeon, knowing that his glorious redheaded nymph worked inside people's heads! Stared at their minds! It gave him a wild sense of hope; it made him big and dizzy with loss. He said he'd once had a job making fruit pyramids. He said he loved his mother, loved her still, always, but that she'd probably never forgive him for leaving. He said a few sentimental things. He quoted a German philosopher. He was trying everything out. He bucked beneath the poet. Then he was still. He screamed. He was trying everything. He spoke with a husky, affected bravado, like a bad actor, and then with a whine.

“Shut up,” said Ricky, “can you manage that?”

“Be kind,” Pax begged.

“That's not what you need.”

It was true. That wasn't it.