Zombie (6 page)

“Jeremy,” she says, “I don’t ever ask a question when I’m not prepared to hear the answer, no matter how unbelievable.” She walks to her house and before she evaporates in the darkness, she turns back to me, offering me her eyes, and says, “Feel better.”

Travis trots inside behind her.

Her father closes the door.

I think my Dad and her Dad should go bowling together.

On the chaise lounge chair, she’s left me a gift—September’s
InStyle
. It would make an excellent addition to my collection hidden in the closet of my bedroom.

As I cross the yard walking back to my house, I notice the grass. It’s cut low and balding in places. I wonder what story our grass tells about us.

I
enter through the side door and know Dad’s home, but I don’t hear a single sound. He’s somewhere inside, I’m sure of it, lost in himself, not thinking about me. The house is still, but kinetic, so I keep a sharp eye and explore my house like Ben from
Night of the Living Dead
(“
NOLD
”) explores the farmhouse—nervy, lost, and waiting for zombies to attack.

The dining room is empty, the antique table owning the majority of the room with a pile of recently read newspapers at the edge. Mom told me that the table was made of cherry oak, a detail she wanted to impress me with I think, along with four matching plush chairs with fairy-green seat cushions and images of cherubs carved into the wood backs. Needless to say, I wasn’t. The cherubs look like evil little fuckers and have always made me hesitant to lean back in them, like they could come to life and bite the shit out of me at any moment. Dad is not here.

There used to be beautiful and vibrant paintings by local Baltimore artists hung on the walls. There used to be awesome, giant, silver candlestick holders, like in castles. Red and black and green beaded, handwoven, Chilean placemats. Real silver forks, spoons, and knives, all a different size, and multiple porcelain plates and bowls on display, formally and forever set on the table, like our family was prepared for a dinner party to break out at any moment. There used to be heavy and thick crystal vases filled with fresh flowers replaced every Sunday night, always the same—white lilies, pink primroses, or black dahlias.

We used to have all of these things, but none of these things
matter because none of these things are here anymore. Mom took the crystal vases and candlesticks and silverware and porcelain and placemats. She took all that with her. Maybe she sold it all for pill money.

I just wish she’d taken those cherubs.

Our kitchen is not much better off than the dining room—no potholders, or salt and pepper shakers, or ceramic sauce spoon on the stove, or cookbooks, or magnets on the refrigerator holding up my artwork or high grades, or bottles of extra virgin olive oil on the counter. Mom took most of the kitchen shit. She left the plant and the carving knives. This is why Dad and I only use plasticware when we eat. Sorry, Environment.

Dog sleeps on her side in the corner like she’s been gutshot, splayed across her red plaid pillow, her chest rising and falling as she breathes. She whimpers, occasionally, dreaming, probably of hunting rabbits or squirrels or mice. I press the palm of my hand against her chest, right where I think her heart is, and feel her heartbeat. Her shiny black coat feels warm and soft and smells like dryer sheets. Dog opens her eyes and licks her snout, lapping it with her tongue.

“Good girl,” I whisper, running my hand over her ears and down to her neck. “You know where Dad is?” Dog puts her paw in my hand and groans and sighs. Mom didn’t try and take Dog when she left, but I was prepared to fight to keep her here with me—Dog, that is, not Mom.

D
og was a gift from Santa back when I believed in Santa, the way I used to believe in a two-parent family. It was eight years ago. I remember hearing a whimper in the middle of the night. I tiptoed downstairs to investigate. There was a cage next to the fireplace—a black Labrador puppy inside, standing, its tail shaking and whacking in every direction, its ears and paws two sizes bigger than its body. She started barking when she saw me, which woke everyone up.

Mom and Dad both came downstairs, Mom smiling in her pink robe, Dad adjusting himself in his boxers.

Jackson sat at the bottom of the stairs, barely in his boxers; his head in his hands, completely uninterested, his eyes closing like a garage door.

Mom sat next to me on the floor, poking her hand inside the cage with mine.

The dog shoved its cold nose and sharp teeth at my fingers, nibbling, licking, rubbing. Its ears flopped around like two windblown flags.

“Dad, come pet it,” I said. “It’s a dog.”

“It’s a girl dog,” Mom said.

“A girl dog,” I said, repeating her words, making them my own.

“A girl dog?” Dad asked. “Corrine, you said it was a boy.”

“They were out,” she said.

“We’re going to have puppies,” he said. “I just know it. Christ.”

“Not if we get her fixed,” Mom said, rubbing my head.

“It’s a damn, dumb dog,” Dad said from his reclined position on the couch.

The dog yelped.

“See,” Dad said, pointing at the dog.

The dog yelped again.

“Shut up, dog,” he said.

“Ballentine,” Mom said. “Language.”

“Dog,” I said to myself.

“It’s too early for barking dogs and being corrected by my wife,” he said.

“Must you?” Mom whispered.

“It’ll wake the neighbors,” Dad said, throwing up his hands.

“What do you want to name her?” Mom asked.

“Dog,” I said, which I thought was her name anyway. I thought that every animal came into the world with a predetermined name, a future, a life. I thought that my dog’s name had been preset, that it was her identity in this life to be named the very thing that she was—a dog.

I
sweep through the first floor of our house, but there’s no sign of Dad, even though I know he’s here somewhere. I can feel it in my bones. I wish someone were here with me, maybe Tricia or Zink, someone to talk to, someone to be my cover. Then again, maybe not. I’ll be honest—whenever I watch
NOLD
I’m reminded of how much Ben’s partner-in-crime, Barbara, fucking pisses me off. She’s a raging, crazy bitch that makes dumb decisions. Ben slapping her is the highlight of the movie.

When I first saw
NOLD
, I thanked Ben out loud like he was in the room. He’s the original zombie killer who completely embodies the fourth Zombie Survival Code—
Lock-and-Fucking-Load
. The big joke in the original director’s cut is that Ben survives the zombie nightmare, his night of the living dead, only to be shot dead by the police as he comes out of the house. They think he’s a zombie. They lock-and-load and don’t think twice about it. There’s that bitch-slap to the balls that I was talking about. Most days, I wish I had a little bit of Ben in me. Not
in me
like in a sex kind of way, but in me like a
hero
kind of way.

I nearly drop Tricia’s September issue of
InStyle
when the house phone rings. The answering machine picks up and Dad’s voice shouts out his specific voicemail instructions.

You’ve reached Mister Ballentine Barker. He is not available, which means he is not here. Leave your message in the following order, or your message will not be returned: first name, last name, phone number, brief reason for your call, first name again, last name again, phone number again. Then hang up. You have less than thirty seconds
.

There is a pause in the message and then the beep.

“Mister Ballentine Barker,” a woman says, laughing. “Your message is the greatest thing. I love it so much. Oh, honey, do I love it.” She sounds like she’s either flirting with him or busting his balls and I can’t tell which. “Oh, God,” she says, collecting herself, controlling her breathing. “This is Grace, your administrative assistant.” Balls. She’s busting his balls. He hates it when people make fun of his message and he really hates it when Grace refers to herself as his administrative assistant. “Where the hell are you? I have been calling your—”

Before Grace has a chance to finish her message, the machine cuts off and Dad picks up. “Sec-re-tary,” Dad says, annunciating the syllables. “Hear how that sounds and embrace it. You are my sec-re-tary?”

I tiptoe along the wall. I hear the sound of turning pages—a book. I reach the end of the hallway and peek around the corner to Dad’s office. The lights are off except for one that hangs over him like a dentist chair lamp. He sits behind his monstrous desk—this thick, antique, wooden beast of a thing, flipping pages of a textbook, wearing glasses, the ones he uses when he has to read small print. His silver tie in a Windsor but loose around his neck, his shirt and suit pants wrinkled—same as he wore this morning. He turns back and forth between two pages.

“The difference between a secretary and an administrative assistant is that at least with an administrative assistant I would have a broad with a brain. Are you listening to me? Clearly, you are not. Clearly, I must be talking to a zombie version of my secretary,” he says.

There should be a soundtrack playing behind me right now—heavy thumping bass, all loud and shit, because I’m being a sneaky and suspicious sonuvabitch. Dad is being a sneaky and suspicious sonuvabitch too, taking me to school like he did, then disappearing and leaving me to take the damn bus home. Even sneakier than me.

“I told you, I’m sick. Do you need me to cough into the fucking phone? Do you need me to fax you a doctor’s note?” he asks.
He glances up from his book to the framed photo of himself hung on the wall—his Marine photo, standing next to an American flag in full Marine blues and a young chiseled
don’t fuck with me
face. He looks back to his book and berates Grace some more, then drops the phone back on the receiver, like a log being dropped on a burning fire.

See ZSC’s one through three—avoid eye contact, keep quiet, forget it all. I disappear into a closet, leaving it open a crack for me to peak through.

I hear Dad whistle in perfect pitch and then say, “Here, girl.” He waits by the hutch, sliding his keys and wallet into his pocket. Dog’s tail thwaps side to side as she trots obediently at his heels, never in front, always behind him as they leave the house. Dad snaps on a black leash, rubbing and scratching behind both of her ears. “That’s my good girl.”

And out the front door they go—my father and the daughter he never had.

D
ad’s office is an altar—immaculate, symbolic, final.

I sit in his high-back, black leather office chair and it swivels without having to push or set it in motion at all. My feet don’t touch the ground as I spin around and I feel like a kid again. I don’t give the chair any acceleration or gas. It just goes, unattended. Must be a slant in the room. An uneven floor. I scoot to the edge of the chair and plant my feet on the hardwood, wait to gather my bearings, and then shove off, spinning fast, whipping around, the wheels grinding against the floor. Then, calculating the end, I grab for the desk and come to a dead stop.

A teenaged, Marine version of Dad stares at me from the wall—an American flag behind him, no smile, dead eyes and a shorn head. A grunt. He looks so much like Jackson, something I maybe only recognize now. His Purple Heart has a purple ribbon with a gold heart shape medallion with the profile of George Washington on it. Dad has never confirmed that he was ever wounded in Vietnam, which would have been the only way for him to receive the Purple Heart that I know of.

I remember when Dad told Mom that no man or woman was ever going to tell him what to do unless they could match what hung on his office wall. They stood in the kitchen, Mom chopping lettuce for a salad, Dad washing plum tomatoes. I set the dining room table with plates, forks, knives, and cloth napkins held together in a cigar-shaped roll with silver napkin rings. I finished and sat at my Cherub-backed chair and waited. Dad followed her around the kitchen and asked her if she knew what a man had to do to get a Purple Heart
and she replied as she always did about sensitive topics, which was to execute ZSC #1 and ZSC #2—avoided eye contact and kept quiet. Mom filled a teakettle with water when Dad finally said, “Match my wall and I will do whatever you want and whatever you will.”

James Dean and Jayne Mansfield hang on the wall behind his desk under framed squares of glass. James Dean is wearing a red jacket with his collar flipped up and a white T-shirt underneath. He is leaning forward, narrowing his eyes. What was he looking at when the picture was taken? His arm crooks in an L-shape, hand en route to lips with a lit cigarette pinched between two fingers. Dad loves James Dean. Dad says James Dean was a real man.
Lived fast and died young. Died in a car accident. Yeah
. Dad says the same thing about Jayne Mansfield. He says Jayne Mansfield was a real woman.
Died in a car accident. Her head was cut off clean from her body. That’s called decapitated. Yeah. But, goddamn, she was sexy!

In her poster, Jayne Mansfield wears a sparkle dress. It’s black and shiny and she is leaning back on a chair, holding a cigarette like James Dean except her cigarette is stuffed inside one of those thin black cigarette holders that all those super-rich women used to smoke through. Anyway, Jayne Mansfield is leaning back and smoking and her hair is super, super blonde and curled up in the front. You can’t see any cleavage. Her tits are pushed down under the dress but she is wearing these gold bracelets and necklaces that show off her pale skin. Dad says that Jayne Mansfield is what all women should be.

I wonder why he married Mom. Mom has brown hair and doesn’t smoke and doesn’t have a Purple Heart.

I pull myself closer to Dad’s monstrous wood desk and examine it like a crime scene. Yellow Post-it notes stick to the desk pad—each with a date, a number, and names.