Double Blind, Chapter Two: The Paring Knife Incident

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Two

The kid is twelve, going on huge. Six foot, a hundred and eighty pounds. One time, a high school football coach was jogging by, and stopped to inquire.

            “That goalie out there. He’s one of the coaches, right?”

            “That’s my son,” I said. “A twelve-year-old gargantua.”

            “Wow! Any interest in football?”

            “Not a whit.”

            “Do me a favor, wouldja? Take him to a ‘Niners game.”

            “Will do.”

            I watched him jog off, certain that I would never see him again. Marcus has size, and coordination, but he’s too damn nice to play football. He hates the idea of ruining someone else’s fun. By, for instance, taking the ball away. He runs his goalie box like an isolationist country, willing to patrol his borders but not to take proactive action in adjacent regions.

            He certainly doesn’t get this from his parents. Jessie and I are two of the most aggressive, selfish assholes I know. I’ve even tried to pass on some dirty tricks from my high school days.

“Y’see, Marc, when you’re the goalie, you’re protected. The ref has to keep the other players from messing with you. There was this one game where this pesky little striker was buzzing me every time I came out for an easy pickup. It was pissing me off, so the next time I stayed low till he made his little run at me, then stood up real fast and clipped him in the shoulder. Hah! Little bugger spun three times and fell on his ass. Then the ref called a foul on him! Because I had the ball, and it was his obligation to stay out of my way.”

Marcus gave me a puzzled look. “But that doesn’t seem very… nice.”

“Nice?! Son, he broke the rules, and I was nice enough to illustrate the error of his ways.”

He just looked at me. I love that kid like nobody’s business, but I wish I knew what species of extra-terrestrial impregnated my wife.

When I get to the park, it’s that cool, murky twilight, when the kids are all tired but still looking for that perfect Beckham boot to the top right corner. Pietro the wonderkid is lifting lazy crosses from the right sideline; Marcus stands patiently in the goalface, waiting till one of his teammates gets a head or a foot on it. Some of them go in. He doesn’t care. To step out and intercept one of Pietro’s lovely arcs, to deny the midget forwards their due glory, would be unpassably rude.

What kills me is that Marcus rarely lets in more than three goals a game. If he had even the least bit of aggressiveness, I would be answering calls from Team USA. But now he’s jogging my way, so I jam those thoughts into my back pocket.

“Dude!”

“Hi Dad.”

I give him a hearty hug and pound him on the back. Hard to believe this big ol’ piece of horseflesh is my son.

“Ouch! Dad!” he whines. It’s not the pain, but the embarrassment.

“How was practice?”

“Same ol’, same ol’.”

I don’t know where he picks up these old-fashioned expressions. I swear, one time he said “Hell’s bells.”

“Dad, what’s that gunk on your sleeve?”

“Well for God’s sake,” I say, thinking quickly. “It’s that viscuous thortazine we’ve been using at work.”

He laughs. “Better be careful. It looks like lipstick.”

He has pierced me, like a butterfly on a collection board. But you can’t explain to a twelve-year-old the sad compromises of life – how you pay a single mom to fuck you so you can keep your family together.

“All right, joker.” I grab the back of his neck and steer him toward the car. “You and me got a date with a pizza parlor.”

“Glory be!” he exults.

The reviews on the pizza are mixed. Laura greets us with huzzahs.

“All right! Did you get pepper-shlomoni?”

“Would I get a pizza without pepper-shlomoni?” I flip open the box to reveal a sea of oily red circles.

“Pepper-shlomoni!”

“And a vegetarian pizza for Mom.”

My wife appears in the hallway, holding a bell pepper and a paring knife. She also has the pissed-off stare, the one that never seems to leave.

“What am I supposed to do with the dinner I’m halfway through preparing?”

Ten seconds in the door and already, a minefield.

“I left a message on your voicemail.”

“I’ve told you before, that doesn’t work!” Her voice is working up to schoolmarm nasal. “Laura’s been on the computer, so the line’s been tied up. Is it too much to ask that you speak with me directly before you go making executive decisions?”

And here we are, back in our familiar tracks. Jessie loves fighting, because fighting is the only way she knows if I still care about her. I guess if I didn’t, I wouldn’t fight back.

I throw up my arms. “Executive decision? It’s a goddamn pizza!”

She’s in my face, drilling me with those beady blue eyes. “What have I told you about swearing in front of the children?” But I have a stopper.

“What children?”

Jessie looks around at an empty living room. I can hear the bedroom doors closing, the music coming on. It’s a familiar strategy – I used to do the same when Mom came home drunk. My debate points come at a cost, however. Jessie heads for the kitchen at full rant, gesticulating like an Italian chimpanzee. Because I’m an idiot, I follow.

“I try so hard to maintain some kind of normalcy around here, and you constantly undercut me. Is this why I gave up my life, to look like an idiot in front of my own children?”

I set down the pizzas, searching the memory banks for some way to quell this, to buy a little peace for my poor, scared children. But Jessie’s still ranting, and chopping vegetables, which is not a good combination.

“A little respect, Hopkins. A little goddamn consideration. We’re supposed to be a partnership, a united front. You think it’s easy, running this household with you out there… fucking around? Nailing some perky-titted coed who stops by the lab to give you blow jobs?”

She’s been making this accusation since our first anniversary. For ten years, it wasn’t true. But at least, for a moment, she has fallen silent. I recall a time when I could calm her down with a touch on the shoulder -–and I make my move. But Jessie is a loaded spring, and when she feels my hand she spins around to swat me away.

At first, I don’t feel a thing. Then, a curious warmth beneath my left eye. I touch it with a finger. I see red. And then I don’t see anything.

A year after my master’s, I was still in Berkeley, working as a lab assistant. I got a strange call from Gunnar, my old lab partner, and met him in a coffeehouse. He looked nervous, like an actor before his first entrance.

            “You know I like skiing, right? I go skiing… a lot.”

            “Sure, Gunnar.”

            “This last weekend, I am at Squaw Valley, and I am on the tram, going to the top. When the tram goes past the first tower, it swings forward, you know? And I hear a woman, she says, ‘Woo!’ And the woman, she is Nancy.”

            “My Nancy?”

            “She has the white jester’s hat? And the lime green suit?”

            “Y-yes.”

            “And she is… with a man, and they are getting very… fresh. And I am thinking, I cannot tell this to Hopkins but for I am very sure. It is late, the last run of the day, so I follow them down – a long, long way. At the bottom, they turn in at a cottage, and… they go inside, together. And so I am thinking still, I must have more…” He rolls out his hand, trying to finish the sentence.

            “Evidence?”

            “Yes. So. I ski to the back, and I find a window, and I peek in.” His face flushed, and he was having a hard time looking at me. “Hopkins? Please… ask me to go on?”

            My insides felt like a sand castle at high tide. But going back was not an option. I took a long breath.

            “Gunnar, please… tell me.”

            He stared at the tabletop. “She was kneeling, and had the man’s penis…”

            “Stop, Gunnar. Please.”

            For me, going on a rampage has a small price of admission: one drink. After that, I was out every night, roaring drunk, on the make. I fucked sorority sluts, desperate fifty-year-old barflies. A housewife in her van, outside a laundromat. A fat chick with big tits in a broom closet at the library. A beautiful black woman gave me a blowjob in the alley next to a nightclub. I stuck my dick in half the holes in Northern California. And then I got venereal warts.

            One Saturday morning, I rubbed lotion into my poor penis as I ruffled through three weeks of mail. At the bottom of the pile was an offer from Stanford: a five-year study, “gene expression patterns of breast carcinomas.” A month later, I was standing at a kickoff party in Palo Alto when a good-looking woman came over and started asking questions. She wore a leather miniskirt, tight-fitting sweater, eyeshadow like an Amazon warrior. I guess I was easy pickings. The female gender had simply worn me out.

            I don’t remember much else. I didn’t have to. Jessie made all the decisions. She was nuts about me, she was 35, and she wanted children. She was the path of least resistance. She was also fierce, and skinny, with a sharp hawk’s face and a tiny butt.

            Gentlemen. The do-gooders and bullshit artists will tell you to ignore that quaking in your balls, those baser instincts that make you respond to certain women and not to others. Do not listen to these people. If you do, you might wake up someday, two children later, and discover that one of your eyes is missing.

“Mr. Grinder! Good to see you moving. Here, let me give you a little help.”

            A bee stings my right arm; the pain in my face subsides. My right eye registers a bank of blinking lights on large, blocky machines. Toward the window, an old woman lies next to her respirator, staring at the ceiling.

            “Where…?”

            “Stanford Medical.” She’s a short, dark-haired woman with broad lips and round, black-brown eyes. Her features are so expressive they’re almost cartoonish. It must be hard, I think. Going around with your feelings right there on your face.

            “I’m Dr. Pisarro,” she says. “You can also call me Lisa. You’re a lucky boy, Mr. Grinder. A half-inch higher, we’d be in some serious trouble. We’ve put in ten stitches, and given you a patch to keep your eye from moving around. Your wife is outside, so let us know if you’d like her to come in for a visit.” She folds her fingers and gives me a serious look. “Also, I need to know if you’d like to talk to the police.”

            I do find myself considering it. But hazardous gesticulation is not a crime, and my children’s lives have been disturbed quite enough.

            “No,” I reply. “My wife is terribly clumsy, and a little spastic. And yes, do send her in, please.”

            Dr. Pisarro gives me a long study, scouring my face for hints of deception, then gets up and walks away. She is wearing black polyester pants that show off her ass, the kind of bubbly, compact butt that short women often have. I am grateful.

            Jessie comes in with red eyes, her face worn to the pink with crying. One look at my patch and she starts all over, gripping my arm as she declares her sins.

            “Oh God Hopkins I’m so sorry I had no idea I forgot I had it in my hand oh shit I am so sorry!”

            She ducks her head to my shoulder and weeps luxuriously. I wrestle my arm free and cradle the back of her head. This episode means that I will have to make love to my wife sometime this week, so I will have to conduct a visual harvest. Sliding in and out of that uninspiring pussy, holding her legs together for friction, I will need to conjure some other woman’s body to bring me over the top. Someone I barely know. Someone highly inappropriate.

            Fortunately, Lisa Pisarro has returned for her clipboard, and is now walking away. I pull my wife closer, so I can get a better look.

Photo by MJV