Teach Children, Plant Trees

There’s Donovan, his sweet Italian rear rolling by my elevated box. “Whitesnake!” he shouts. “Play some goddamn Whitesnake, cockbite!” And then something else I can’t make out. It’s lost as Donovan, barely fourteen, mustached, neck damp with sweat, rounds the end of the rink and skates to the far side where Debbie and the other little bitch girls reign supreme, thinking they’re the shit trying to do figure skater spins they’ve seen on TV. This isn’t an ice rink, I want to let them know, no people skating quaintly side by side, fuzzy muffs and warm hearts. This is a roller rink. Only adolescents and their juniors, tight jeans, crimped hair, top forty or nothing. Everything smells and feels and is the color of nacho cheese, even me, the disc jockey. I even wear an orange nylon jacket, sleeves pushed up. On the back, it says “Skate Grooves” in black curlicue letters with little musical notes to either side.

I dig through my box of albums, come up with Aerosmith. The needle goes down on “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” and I declare a backwards skate in what I hope is a husky voice. I sit back on my little stool and try to think away a growing hard-on, which is hard because when Donovan rounds the corner near my box again, he turns his head and mouths “motherfucker” and then he licks his lips. I pretend to ignore it, tug at my crotch underneath the soundboard.

Now there’s a little girl careening towards my box. She stays near the padded wall with bent knees, moves herself forward with violent propeller arms, a bungling skate-walk. Her tongue sticks out and she’s got crazed eyes. She’s just like Maudy, my wild sister.

Maudy really is near feral. After Mom died, professionals showed up in a special van, a mobile research facility, put Maudy in an evaluation booth over the right rear tire well and tested, evaluated, then packed up, left me with a report thick as a phone book. They’d seen this in the Ukraine once before, a dog-girl. The report said that that dog-girl had more aptitude, had learned to say “drink,” “moon,” “shoe,” had successfully brought a lawsuit against her parents, these shanty-town crack addicts who gave no shit. But for Maudy the outlook is dim. She was already twenty-seven, me twenty-five, when she was freed from her abuse. I was not held responsible for anything. I was a victim too, they said.

Finally this little girl falls hard on her face. I go for the whistle around my neck, but then she gets up and no blood, so I leave it. Then, in a flutter, Donovan rolls by me again. My heart leaps.

Other jobs I might have had: orthodontist, fitting braces for boys like Donovan, feeling around their sharp teeth with my slubbed fingers. Owner of an old-fashioned candy-store, the kind with clinky jars, ropes of many-colored licorice. Boy Scouts troop leader, my hands over smaller ones learning complicated knots.

***

I got a letter from my father when I was eleven. Mom said “What is it, what is it? Is that from your Father? Here, give it to me, let me throw it away.” But I ran with it down the hall, the noise of me running, fat and asthmatic, making Maudy bark out from under the door of her room, making Mom yell at the top of her lungs, “You’d better shut it, little girl!”

The most excited I ever remember myself being, shaking, jiggling, I squeezed under my bed and, with a flashlight, read:

Dear Son,

Let me be clear to you: I am your Father. Please know that Personality Problems with the folks where I am prevent me from making myself known to you in the traditional way, which is why I include no return address or identifying information except a general idea of what sort of man I am. I am a business man, in the Oral Care Industry, and oversee a few more people than who oversee me. Not too shabby! That’s all you need to know, just so you have some idea, which I hope comforts you/puts you at ease.

I must admit, I am very pleased with the vibe I get from you. I’ve seen you before, in general public places (grocery store, post office) with your mother, who, per our agreement, does not acknowledge me in the slightest. This is what’s best for you, everyone agrees. From what I’ve seen, you seem pretty on top of things, but I know you’re at an age where you probably have questions like who is my father, where do I come from, how do I fit in to this crazy/bad/wonderful world? Please know, I’m with you.

Another reason I do not share my actual physical self with you is that I want you to be surrounded with winners, and, as successful as I may be in the Oral Care Industry, like I said before, the folks around here prevent me quite forcibly and are not what I would call “winners” anyway. I’ll be blunt, son. “Shirley,” (not her real name!) my wife, she is a despot. But then I’m riding in her boat, am I not?

Now is the appropriate time to end this letter. Remember this: Poop in, poop out. This motto has gotten me far in the world, and I hope it will be your pilot too.

Your Father

Coils poked through the mattress, scratched up my face, but I didn’t notice, I was sick with sadness and love all at once. I held the letter to my breast and wept softly. From that day on, in any situation where I could have worn shorts, I wore slacks, just in case Dad was watching.

More letters came over the years, never telling me who he was. Eventually they stopped being about him or me, instead were all about how optimistic he was about his job: “Can you imagine what a coordinated proper effective ad campaign could do for our product?” or “I want to totally dominate the Disposable Flossing Device Market!”

Then they became sullen grievances regarding those at work who would thwart him: “Either I am totally in charge of marketing or I am totally not in charge of marketing.” By the time Maudy was a teenager, still waggling the perimeter of her dark room, still barking out from under her door, and me, older, all day at Skate Grooves, polishing the rink floor, drinking cherry cokes excessively, getting fatter than ever, the letters had stopped, ended with one final scribble, “Sick of this shit. Heading to New Orleans. Shirley loves jazz.”

***

Rochelle, the woman who runs Hope House where Maudy lives now, is on the big front porch when I get there to pick Maudy up for her home visit. She’s reading a library book about hydroponics as Christina, the one cute retarded girl, kneels between Rochelle’s legs, painting her beefy toes an icy blue. When the girl sees me, she scurries towards the screen door, screeching something I can’t understand. Sometimes girls at the rink do this, and it makes me a little sad. Do I look like a bear? Do they think I’ll touch them? I want to be loved by children, the retarded ones, the regular ones, but they won’t have it. I want this girl in particular to come near me so I can smile at her, so I can give her a non-threatening grin, a look that says “I’m sorry for your crap-luck, little girl, but we can be friends, can’t we?” But all she does is pick her nose with her pinkie while whimpering.

“We need to talk,” Rochelle says. “Mister Clyde, we need to talk big-time. Uh-huh.”

“Did she get out again?” I ask, worried that the last straw Rochelle always talks about has finally arrived.

“Did she get out again? Did she get out again?” Rochelle mimics me in a low, lispy voice. “Frick yeah, she got out. This time all the way down to TGI Fridays. To their dumpsters. She’d eaten all kinds of shit by the time Mrs. Dubrie got there.”

Mrs. Dubrie is Hope House’s only other employee besides Rochelle, a twenty-seven time foster mother to the leg-brace sort. She drives a well-cared-for Ford Fiesta and I guess that she only makes minimum.

“If this happens again, Mr. Clyde, I don’t know what. I just don’t know. We’ll have to have a real sit-down, I suppose.” Rochelle sighs and wiggles her wet toes in the air to dry. “If it were up to me, she’d be out, but Mrs. Dubrie says there’s been progress. I don’t see it, Mr. Clyde, I’ll be honest, but you know Mrs. Dubrie, always hopeful.”

Mrs. Dubrie is in the living room, trying to have a tea party with several young men who can’t help but hit themselves over and over. Tea’s on the rug, on the couch, on Mrs. Dubrie’s flowery dress. These boys manage to make honking sounds, and that’s about all. The room is small, but not totally awful. There are old couches against the walls and a table set up with Scrabble tiles all over it, “booby” going down, “poops” going across. In the corner is an old TV, muted on the Weather Channel. The whole house smells of window cleaner.

“Your sister’s in her room, Clyde. She had quite a night!” Mrs. Dubrie says when she sees me, and as always, I feel ashamed in her presence.

“I’m sorry you had to go looking for her.”

“Oh, not at all. Not at all! Exercise like that’s good for you. And you know what? I’m starting to think she thinks it’s a game—like catch-me-if-you-can? Isn’t that clever! Oh, it was a beautiful night to be out. The stars!”

I excuse myself, head up the narrow stairs to Maudy’s room, where I see that Mrs. Dubrie’s been at it again. A few weeks ago she painted the room pink, put up college pennants, fanned out a selection of ancient Tiger Beats on the dresser. What’s new today is the Ricky Nelson photo on the door, the purple scarf over the lamp, the spooky girly glow it gives off.

Maudy’s twined around two heart-shaped pillows, asleep, drooling. She’s got on purple sweatpants and the Batman T-shirt I gave her last Christmas. The elastic in her waistband is all jacked up, but who cares? Not her, so not me. When I pat her side, she jerks awake, gives a little yelp, is ready to bolt. Then, all at once, she recognizes me.

“Hello, Maudy,” I say. “Ready for a trip?”

She licks my cheek. I muss her hair. She bounces down the stairs, all knees and elbows, and out the door, arms wild above her. I follow her out, ignore Rochelle on the porch shouting warnings but not getting up. When I catch up to Maudy, she’s slamming her shoulder against my Aerostar over and over again, squealing for joy.

***

When we get home, I break all the rules. I let her out into the backyard where she runs circles, sniffs around the hedges. I make dinner and let her eat squatting on the kitchen floor while I lean against the sink, spooning goulash into myself slowly, Donovan still lingering around my thoughts. Motherfucker, Motherfucker.

The ends of Maudy’s blond hair are red from dipping in the goulash bowl. I find a rubber band and pull her hair back from her face. She looks up at me with her big toilet water eyes, all dog-soulful, then farts, is scared of the fart, then wants to sniff her butt, but can’t, but can’t understand she can’t, which keeps her busy. “Maudy,” I say firmly. “Be a lady, now. Don’t be a tooter.”

“Rrrroww” she says, head cocked, a goulash piece hanging from her mouth. “Tggggr.”

She missed some important stages when she was young—“windows,” the report said, language windows, spatial windows, windows that have closed forever, and of course, I am sorry for it. I can’t even imagine the jumbled mess that is probably her brain, the wonky, soggy network of it all. Whenever I think about my own brain, I picture different areas of it lighting up for different things—bright green for hunger, red for boys like Donovan, yellow for feeling like a loser fag. But looking at Maudy, I see her brain resting in its skull, stinky and wet, only a dim gray pulsing when I give her food, or tell her not to toot, or open the Aerostar’s sliding door for her to jump in. Of course, I’d like to be the go-against-what-the-experts-say sort of man, to swear that there’s understanding in her dog stare, that she has individualized woofs that each mean something different, that we know each other, but that would be a lie.

***

Later in the evening, I decide we should go for a walk before I take her back to Hope House. I’m trying to lose weight. I put on the blue nylon running suit I just got from Penney’s Big and Tall, stick my head outside to check the weather. It’s windy and damp, so I wrap a sweatshirt around Maudy’s shoulders and put my hand on her elbow so she knows to go where I go. She’s only been walking upright for a few years and still it’s herky-jerky, but we manage to locomote.

All the neighborhood is out on porches now, catatonic in lawn chairs or tire swings. Mustached boys walk in strange circles in the street, looping haphazardly a few blocks at a time, kicking gutter sludge, smashing their wetted-down bangs to their foreheads with thick, smooth palms. Once a few months ago I tried walking with them. They talked of who they’d rip up with their dicks, who they’d like to piss on.

Maudy likes being outside, likes seeing birds and rabbits and squirrels, so I steer her in the direction of any squirrel and away from the boys in the street. As we get going, I start to think big thoughts, like how many have walked under these trees, just like me and Maudy, how many under these stars, in October, aligned just so. And how old is this cracked sidewalk? Is there an older sidewalk underneath, maybe wooden? If not that, a worn path, indicating to some long-dead generation where a sidewalk ought to be built? I get bogged down by history. I wonder about the birds and squirrels, if their bird grandmothers and squirrel grandfathers ever flew and scurried around these same spots before them, if these trees and power lines were ancestral homes of some kind. If squirrels or birds even know their own parents or sisters when they see them.

Being all reflective, I whistle Whitesnake, and Maudy starts with her soft, elongated vowel sounds, which sometimes is nice. We walk by the defunct public pool where the black kids hang out, where tonight a group of girls with braids and dirty shoes that light up stand in the weeds, hitting a small brown dog with sticks they hold in both hands. Maudy starts this high-pitched whining, heads straight for the dog. The girls call her retard, throw their sticks down, and head off towards the highway, their shoes flickering away and away. The dog goes off, too.

“Be careful around dogs,” I say to Maudy. “Some might bite. You have to be careful.” When I say the word “bite” she grins big and snaps her mouth open and shut, open and shut, until I kind of yell at her to stop it.

I’m tired when we get back to the house and don’t want to go out again. When I call, Rochelle says she doesn’t give a shit if Maudy stays with me and that I can keep her all weekend if I want. I say okay.

We settle into the couch with a canister of Pringles and catch the last part of a movie where an older blind woman is losing her mind and in the end, is escorted by a caring niece through Central Park. “You are walking among beautiful fallen leaves in your sixtieth year,” the niece on TV says, as the woman has to have everything described out loud. “All very golden and orange.” And then the blind woman slumps over, dies, just like that, but there’s beautiful old-fashioned music swelling up, so we’re supposed to think it’s okay that she’s dead, that she had a life well lived, I guess.

Maudy keeps knocking over the Pringles, keeps pawing at the remote, but I know if I give it to her she’ll just go hide it somewhere. She hides everything you give her.

And so then we watch channel sixty-three, the Olympics Channel, my favorite. Maudy finally falls asleep during a clip show of the 1984 Sarajevo Games, missing out on the best part, Katarina Witt’s most perfect death spiral: her fixed, arched back, arms stretched out, fingers turned upwards, just so.

I let her sleep on the couch and get her extra pillows from the hall closet. When Mom was alive, Maudy slept on the floor of this house’s back bedroom with our terrier, Mister Big Boy, who was, for all real purposes, Maudy’s real brother, not me. Mom took Mister Big Boy on walks every afternoon after work, brushed his teeth every Sunday night, but Maudy was made to stay in the blacked-out bedroom. Mom, otherwise a sweet lady, otherwise a modestly successful real estate agent, did not want Maudy to exist, and if she had to exist, only in a very dark room with just a stool and a bucket to pee in.

“Don’t you dare talk to her!” Mom would say.

“Why not? Why not?” I’d say.

“Shut it!” she’d say, and then we’d go to the living room and play kiss monster, then we’d have dinner, then TV, then off to bed. “I mean it. Don’t you ever talk to her,” she’d whisper in my ear before pulling the covers up to my chin and tweaking my nose.

I’d like to say that I’d wait for Mom to go to bed, then sneak into Maudy’s room where I’d teach her the alphabet and sing to her about the food pyramid. I’d like to say we’d fall asleep together in that rank room, me stroking her forehead, letting her know that she was related to somebody, that we were blood.

But I didn’t.

When I brushed my teeth in the dinky bathroom across the hall, I ignored the scratching, the hopeful pools of foam that would collect under her closed door. When I put my head down on my pillow at night, I thanked god for who I was and who I wasn’t, fell asleep under fine, heavy blankets, dreamed sweetly of the rough neighborhood boys, Ricks and Steves I’d never get to touch.

***

Tuesday night I’m at work, playing George Michael’s “Father Figure” for a couples skate. The lights go down for these, and the disco lights twirl around me, pink and blue. The rink is almost empty, except for Donovan and his new girlfriend, a redhead with a biggish ass and arms thick with downy peach fuzz. They skate slowly, casually, with their hands in the other’s back pockets, kneading. There’s a few leotarded girls, skating alone, heads down, and a middle-agish couple that just started coming in since the woman has cancer and now they do things like this purposefully every Tuesday, skating, getting ice cream cones, letting snowflakes melt on their tongues, as she doesn’t have much time left. When the woman skates by she gives me a thumbs up, and I try to return it as well as I can.

I turn the lights up when the song’s finished, say “Now how about let’s do the locomotion?” into my crapola microphone. From the rink, no response. But over on the benches where people put their skates on I see a new group, five teenage boys, Mexicans, in farm clothes. One of them lags behind the rest and walks funny. By the time they get on the rink, “The Locomotion” is over, and now it’s “Doing It All For My Baby,” by Huey Lewis and the News, which Donovan is bobbing his head to and making these mock-thrusting motions with his crotch while he skates with the redhead looking on in play-disgust. I look on, too, full of yearning, full of sickening lust, when these young migrant workers get on the rink and start goofing.

They skate as a group, shoving each other and teasing in Spanish, the one that walked funny skating funny, too. Their group breaks to pass Donovan and his girlfriend, and one of them whistles and hoots and then laughter erupts among the migrants.

I am already going for my whistle. I am already opening the little latched door to my elevated box and jogging out to the rink in my sneakers.

But too late. Donovan’s somehow got the funny walking one down, and he’s skating over his fingers, saying “Fuck you beaners! Beaners, you will be fucked!”

I’m saying, “Okay, let’s break it up boys, break it up, break it up now,” and I grab Donovan’s shoulder and am sad to note he flinches. The other migrants are wobbly on their skates, taking out knives now, and sort of waving them, looking scared and fierce all at once. Their friend shrieks on the rink floor.

I blow my whistle so hard. And then Lisa from concessions comes yelling that the police have been called so everybody better just cool it. Thank god for Lisa, I think. The migrants keep their knives in front of them, leave the rink in a collective unskilled backwards skate, then they turn, skate out of the concessions area, skate out of the building. Lisa and I are too freaked out to yell at them to take off their rentals.

Donovan spits on the boy and says “Let’s get out of this shit-rink, Denise,” and Denise says “Yeah, fuck this place.” And then they leave too, but they own their own skates so we just let them go.

I help the boy up while Lisa directs the other skaters to sit down on the benches and record what they witnessed on legal pads she gets from the office.

I say to the boy, “Do you speak English?”

He shakes his head and a big tuft of beautiful black hair falls over his right eye. I can tell he wants to cry. He’s maybe fifteen, and his T-shirt is dirty and ripped around the neck. I take him back to the office where he takes his skates off and I put some ice in a sandwich bag.

His hand is swollen and blue. I get him a Pepsi, and as he sits, I see that his eyes are shaped so nicely, almost like a girl’s.

“That kid Donovan,” I say. “He’s trouble.”

The boy says something I don’t understand. I just look at him, so he repeats it again. I wish I were this boy’s English-as-a-second-language teacher. I could give him the words to tell me about his life, and I could put my arm around him, tell him how I know he’ll go far.

Instead, I lean down and kiss him on the mouth.

He bites my lip, shoves me, runs away.

***

Soon enough, it’s time for Maudy’s annual well-woman exam. We make the trip in the Aerostar early one Tuesday morning, when the sky overhead is still green and hazy and Maudy is still sleepy, still wearing her long yellow nightgown with felt cats stitched all over. Mrs. Dubrie sits up very straight in the back, telling me uplifting stories about her grandkids in her usual wavy-gravy voice. Maudy snores and I can see that her seat belt isn’t buckled right, but Mrs. Dubrie can’t see it from where she sits, so I leave it.

There are no doctors at Planned Parenthood, only kindly nurse practitioners with loose, swinging breasts. They push themselves through a giant swinging door and call “Athena” then “Barnone” if I’m hearing right. The girls flip down their cell phones, get up and go through the door, heads down. I try not to watch. I just look at the painting of hot air balloons across from me, one balloon a giant whiskered kitten face, another a Confederate flag.

Maudy’s already been called. Mrs. Dubrie went back with her, and it’s been awhile. I want to pick up a magazine to flip through—there’s two Seventeen’s and a Redbook—but I’m afraid I’d look weird or perverted, so I try to act like I’m busy with my own thoughts, like maybe I have an important lunch meeting coming up, or maybe I’m trying to remember an ingredient to a recipe. Next to me is a pile of shoddy clip-arty pamphlets telling girls how to feel good about their bodies, which I do go ahead and read. All these wooden female reproductive system models around me, I’m reminded of the time this little girl got her first period at the rink. She was by herself, skating around with blood on her rear. She had no idea, and other kids were laughing, so I blew my whistle. Lisa was gone, so I took her to the ladies room, bought her a maxi pad from the machine on the wall and passed it to her underneath the stall. She grabbed it, screamed at me to go away.

I should say this reminds me of other waiting rooms, like the one I sat in endlessly while Mom was dying, but really, that one was nicer, with a coffee machine and a cable TV and little bowls of nuts. I had been called from that room by a similar nurse-woman, Pamela, a sweet angel of death, who patted my arm when she said “You really need to go in there now.”

Mom lay in the bed, already rolled-up looking, looking ready to be shipped off somewhere. Painted carnations and mugs of chocolates were scattered around the room, gifts from all the other realtors, who each also left their cards.

Mom extended her still fat arm to me, curled her fingers towards herself. This was a beckon.

“Clyde-Clyde,” she said, all husky-cancer-whisper. “Tell the doctors to do every last goddamn thing. I want all the heroic efforts. I’m paying for it, and I want it. No pulling my plug, goddamn, goddamn. Haven’t I done so much for you?”

I nodded yes.

We played one last game of Kiss Monster, stiffly, just for show, then outside in the hall I asked Nurse Pamela, “How much longer?”

“Could be awhile,” she said.

“Unhook her,” I said. And they did.

There were things I should have asked Mom prior, I suppose. I had lots of questions, about Maudy, about my dad, if she had any info on him. But there was no way Mom was going to have any big discussions right then, no way. And I knew she was not long for the world, so it seemed unfair to bring these things up.

Mrs. Dubrie comes through the swinging door. “Oh, Clyde,” she says. “Oh, Clyde. I think we need you back here.”

There’s a sort of terror in her voice, and suddenly I’m scared Maudy’s bit someone. I’m thinking, how will I deal with this, how should I apologize, as I follow Mrs. Dubrie down the hall of framed regional wildlife, stiff-legged, feeling too large, to a very cramped office, where I’m guessing it’s the head nurse-practitioner sitting behind the desk.

“Well,” the woman says, buttoning up her ratty cardigan, her eyes all squinty at me, trying to pin me in place, “Your sister’s pregnant. What do you know about it?” And here she refuses to even blink.

***

I’m so freaked out. I’m so freaked out and angry. I want to do terrible things. I drive us home super-aggressive, weaving in and out of lanes and no turn signal. I say nothing to Mrs. Dubrie, who from the back keeps talking about how she can convert the laundry room of her manufactured home into a nursery, how she’d handled such crises before, how this is the hand of god. No, I want to say, this is the dick of one of your retard boys, this is the spite of a power who hates us, but I keep my mouth shut, squeeze the wheel so hard. I drop them off without saying anything and when I pull away, my tires squeal.

I take the long way home, looping around the old ferny subdivisions where Mom sold houses long ago. I used to think that this is where my father must have lived before he left for New Orleans, that he was one of Mom’s clients. I imagine my own conception in the bare walk-in closet of a single-family split-level as I drive down these stupid streets, Gildersleeve and Ponca Wonca Boulevard, not for the first time. I eye each big house suspiciously. On one corner a well-dressed boy beats another with a rope of beef jerky. I slow down but they run away. On the next block, a father hands a kite to his jumping son in front of their fake castle house. The father nods at me, and I nod back, speed up. My life sort of plops before me now, and I see how it really is—that I am just another fat man in an Aerostar, barreling down a street of possible fathers, not even noticing my left blinker’s been on this whole time.

I’m feeling so low that every telephone pole seems to want me and the Aerostar wrapped around it. Is this what rock bottom is? Will things get better now, or is there still room to tumble? And who is right there on the corner, waving me down? Donovan. He’s got on cut-offs and sneakers with no socks. His hair is a little wet, like maybe he just went swimming. I pull over, though I know I shouldn’t. This is how men like me get beaten unrecognizable, but watch me slow down, watch me put the van in park, roll down the windows.

He walks up to my window, grins really big.

“Whatcha doing?” I say, very casual.

“For a hundred bucks, you can suck my dick,” he says, almost like a dare. I just sit there, stunned. He waits for me to answer, the sun shining through his hair from behind making his face all dark, but the edges all glowy, like he’s some sort of God-child. It’s like denying him would be a sin.

Do I do it? Yes I do. I tell him to wait here, that I have to go to an ATM first. He says okay, and again, I drive like a madman, not a thought of Maudy in my head, just knowing that he’ll be long gone when I get back, that there will only be a mean drawing of me left on the road, a little circle for my head, a big fat circle for my body, or maybe even one of his own turds with my name pinned to it. Surely this is a cruel joke. But when I get back he’s there, sitting on the curb, looking bored. I pull up, he gets in without a word. He’s quiet the whole way to the empty parking lot I find, and I don’t want to ruin anything, so I say nothing too. I give him the money and the entire time I’m doing it, when all I should be thinking about is what’s in my mouth, all I can think of is Mom, of that day she took me to the petting zoo, how she tried to steal one of the baby chicks for me because I liked the way it felt so soft against my cheek, how she got caught on the way out and was so embarrassed.

I drop Donovan off at a gas station. I go home, watch the Olympics channel four hours straight, go through three boxes of Cracker Jacks during the 1994 Japanese men’s gymnastic team warm-up, fall in love with the karate sounds they make as they land their perfect landings. When I go to bed, I can’t sleep. I have so much thinking ahead of me.

***

So the next day, back to Planned Parenthood. I sign Maudy up for an abortion, don’t say a word about it to Mrs. Dubrie. I pick Maudy up early in the morning a week later, take her in, hold her hand during the whole procedure. She’s twitchy, so I whisper, “You are walking among beautiful fallen leaves in your sixtieth year, all orange and golden,” over and over, which I can tell soothes her. I stroke her forehead until it’s red. The hum of their suction machine sends me into a sort of dream state and I see Maudy for what she might have been had she been born to better people: safari park tour guide in attractive khaki shorts; good-natured bank teller sending withdrawals whooshing through those little tubes; origami instructor on a cruise ship, tan and happy.

And I think of myself as I might have been, maybe could still be: a school teacher wearing some nice no-wrinkle Dockers, explaining photosynthesis to fourth graders who like me, then at home, affixing encouraging stickers to their completed homework assignments late into the evening, then outside, weeding a beautiful bed of zinnias where Mom had only her crappy rock garden. Maybe I would put a gazebo in the back where Maudy and I could sit whenever she came to visit. I imagine these visits, both of us drinking tea and her slapping me on the leg whenever I tell a funny story about one of my students. Then her telling me about her life as a tour guide, or a bank teller, or what it’s like on a cruise ship. Even maybe just telling me about a good movie she saw. I’d take that.

And then, maybe once a year, we’d go to New Orleans together to visit our father, who we probably wouldn’t call Father after all these years of not knowing him, but Dave or Jim or whatever, but we’d have a nice visit at least, and would send cards to him on birthdays and Christmas, would call him if anything eventful ever happened. I would take that, too.

And so I figure I’m done being a crappy brother to Maudy, that I need to step it up, I need to inherit the world of responsible men. I give it some thought, and then tell Rochelle enough’s enough. I thank Mrs. Dubrie for her help. I repaint Maudy’s old room a color called celery seas, buy her some pretty purple curtains at Sears, dust off Mom’s old bedroom set.

We start having fun. We have dress-up nights where we get into Mom’s old stuff, the shoulder padded yellow suits she wore to show houses before her cancer struck. When I put them on, I feel just like her. I take Maudy through our own house, describing its features. “Here,” I say, making my voice all big and scratchy, “you’ll find a one-of-a-kind Frigidaire,” and I point to our shitty fridge. “Out there,” I say, pointing out the smudgy window, “you’ll find the memorial to one of the house’s original residents, a Mr. Big Boy, buried alongside all his favorite toys.” Maudy doesn’t know what’s going on, but follows me around, laughs and laughs in a half-human way.

I take her to work one day and Lisa is like “I didn’t know you had a sister,” and I just shrug. I put some quarters in the Skee-Ball machine and Maudy’s good for hours. Lisa gives her sno-cones for free and soon enough we’ve got a routine.

***

Things are just getting nice when the big-deal hurricane hits a few states away, exploding all over every channel. It’s so terrible, bloated black ladies floating down streets, stranded dogs and babies on rooftops and in trees. Maudy sits on the floor in front of me while we watch it all, and I scratch her head, which she just loves. A commercial keeps coming on that shows all these Children of the Hurricane, all these boys fleeing from the doorways of brick-smashed Radio Shacks. They scream at the news cameras and you can’t understand them. They pull their T-shirts up absently while they yell, exposing these skinny, dark torsos that they slowly scratch, their fingers circling around hairless belly buttons, drawing invisible targets. I wonder how many of them are orphans, and then I wonder if I’m an orphan, too. And then a handsome white man comes on, giving water to an old woman. “Teach children,” he says, “plant trees,” and then gives a number you can call to volunteer at various tent camps. I jot down the number, think “what if, what if?”

And then one night a few days later I see a man on the news, a hurricane victim, this extreme fatass unfortunate. His T-shirt says N’Awlins! with little musical notes everywhere. It barely covers his pasty belly, and the first thing I’m doing is sizing him up, asking myself am I as big and gross as that? Not yet, thank god. But still, something spooks me about this man, something familiar about the way he holds his arms, like he can’t decide if they should be in front or in back of him, and there’s no good in-between, so they just dangle around. And his teeth. His teeth are small and square and yellow, like a row of corn on a cob, like mine. His hair is the color of paraffin wax, like Maudy’s.

He stands in front of a smashed-up house, a herd of mangy cats behind him, climbing up and down on what looks like a former ping-pong table. “My sweetie,” he blubbers, “My forever sweetheart. She’s gone! She floated away, and oh, my sweetie! My Shirley, gone!” At the bottom of the screen is a number you can call to claim missing loved ones, 1-800-RECOVER.

I change the channel so fast.

It’s 1988 on the Olympics channel. Greg Louganis stands on the springboard, arms outstretched. 1988. These are the most beautiful arms ever, but I barely notice. I flip back and the man’s still there, hanging from the arm of the reporter now. “My sweetie! My sweetie!”

Maudy curls up next to me on the couch, buries her head in my armpit. In 1988, Louganis is hurling up and out over the blue pool, his body an elegant twisting coil. And then not a coil, and then a coil again. And then, just in time, he straightens, arms extended over his head, perfectly rigid, perfectly vertical, ready to hit the water.

Maudy squirms.

I hold my breath, move towards the phone.