April - The Flood 6 страница

I played out the scenario on my head again. It also didn't work. "It feels like it voids us of our personality."

"Or gives us a sense of mystery," she countered.

"I don't want to be a mystery to my kid. I want them to actually know me," I said genuinely. I thought of my imaginary audience and my small art show that I had already concocted in my head. I couldn't have them just call me by my initial and still be as open an honest as I wanted to be with them. Jasmine and I had agreed days before: honesty was what we wanted for this kid. We didn't want to hide behind the labels from the past because they carried too much dead weight and baggage. They just weren't real, but we were. We needed to try and remember the things that were real.

"So that leave our names, then, Frank. Every other hippy couple does it, why not us too?" she asked, though she was somewhat annoyed with this option.

I had considered this in my mind as well and had even asked Mikey about it once at work. Even though his suit made him look very square, his wife definitely fell under that large umbrella term of hippy. They were straight, but they were also very strange. I had heard the kids use "mom" and "dad" while I had been there for dinner, but I was unsure if that had been a label they didn't advocate, but also didn't correct out-right, like most behavior they disapproved. Mikey had smiled when I asked the question; it was different than his joking around, not taking himself seriously smiles. This was something that he did take seriously, I realized. This was something that actually brought him a fair amount of joy, and I could see it written all over his face. He had told me that as much as he wanted his kids to know he was an equal, they weren't equals. It wasn't that he had this immense amount of power and he would wield it unmercifully, but quite the opposite. He was there as this huge and powerful figure, but it was so he could protect them, provide for them. This was huge, this was giving the best gift ever, but part of this trade was that he expected nothing in return. It was imperative, he focused again and again, to give everything and to expect nothing. That was where the unequal power dynamic came from, he told me. That was just how it had to be, because they were his kids and he had chosen to give them life, so now he had to be responsible for it. When they were adults, they could call him Mikey. But when he was providing for them because he wanted to, he needed to let them know that as much respect as they gave him, it would still be unequal. Mikey embodied all of the good qualities of a father and he was proud to take that moniker. I respected his choice, and it made so much sense after he explained it. But for Jasmine and myself, it didn't leave us with much option. I began to realize that as much as I hated it, the power relations were not equal between parents and children. Having them call us Frank and Jasmine wasn't going to erase that. Instead we needed to acknowledge it. Jasmine knew this too, which is why she had presented the name option with such distaste.

"What about adding a 'my' in front of our names?" I suggested, thinking I had found a solution. "If we have that there, it lets them know that they can call us Frank and Jasmine because that is who we are, but we are their Frank and Jasmine. Because we need to provide for them, no matter what. They are ours in as much as we have certain responsibilities."

"But you can't own someone," Jasmine stated.

This was true, and I had believed this for such a long time. But children were one of those gray areas that I was running into. They were autonomous beings, with their own thoughts, actions, and rights to their bodies, but they didn't know how to feed themselves. We knew how to feed them and we needed to feed them. But if they wanted to wear two pairs of pants at once or play soccer instead of go to the movies, then that was fine. But insofar as their actual quality of life - we owned that. We needed to, or else they would not survive.

When I explained this point of view to Jasmine, she seemed to soften. Her emotions overtook her again and I began to realize what I had done. I had solved the issue at hand, and this was a relief. We had affectively found a way to not become our parents, but to still become parents. We couldn't shirk the responsibility, but we couldn't own the child's personality. We were able to see the difference now. And, as I put my arm around her and told her the date and time again, I realized that I had finally articulated what had been wrong this entire time. I had finally given her the language with which to see what had been done wrong to her through her own parental and familial relations, and the ability to set it right again.

"My Jasmine," she said, considering the sound of that. It was a bit bulky, but we figured they would just shorten it to my or something if they needed to. Ultimately, they would have the final say, no matter what we chose, and we knew that at the back of our minds. I said my new name out loud: "My Frank." A part of me inside melted. I felt the tension and the exasperation of becoming a parent disappear. This was my life and this was my name. This is how we were going to do it. We said our names again out loud, and we liked it. It worked.

Jasmine got out of bed and got dressed that morning. It was the first time she had smiled all day.

Our small reconciliation was good timing too, because Gerard fell sick shortly afterwards, and while I shifted around trying to take care of him, Jasmine was able to spend the night by herself again. She had just started to get over her overwhelming nauseous now that eggs, milk, and cheese had been eradicated from our kitchen and needed to not catch whatever Gerard had just in case it would affect the kid. Just when I had gotten my own bed back in the mornings, I was still getting up early and heading upstairs to make sure that Gerard was getting on all right. I would either bring him plain toast and orange juice if he was hungry, or give him some cough medicine. He hated going up and down the stairs more than usual; not only did they hurt his knees now, but the trip apparently made him dizzy. He complained a lot about this, but I brushed it off, knowing that this was not his normal state. Sometimes I would sleep up there with him, just to make things easier. I didn't want to get sick either, so usually I was on the floor in a pile of blankets, waiting to heed the call. Gerard seemed to regress when he was sick; he wanted to sleep all the time and became very grumpy if I would wake him up or bring him medication. The cherry flavour syrup was disgusting, apparently, and didn't deserve to be called a flavour. This was the first time that one of us had been sick around the other and I thought he resented showing weakness in any way around me. As if it was almost proof that he was older, and since I was taking care of him, less capable. I tried to soothe him a bit, but he merely grunted and went back to sleep.

At one point when I came up with some food and medicine before I left for work, he told me to go and get him some cigarettes from the corner store and that would be enough. "Don't bother with the fancy stuff. I will smoke dead butts right about now and don't even tell me it won't make my throat feel better. It will. The gravel taste in my mouth is from the lack of smoke. Believe me."

I was completely caught off guard and it took me ages to realize what on earth he was trying to convey. I put down the cough medication on his nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed. He still had his eyes closed and the blankets pulled up to his chin, but he wrinkled his nose, recognizing the cherry smell. He looked as if he was shivering and I moved my hand to see if he had a fever. He was either having a dream where he thought he was at the old apartment and he still smoked, or he had gotten a fever and was getting delirious. His forehead was fine, and I gradually touched his arm so he would wake up.

"Hey, hey Gerard," I called. No response. "Papa."

That got his attention. His eyes flung open and he stared at me for a second, confused at why I had uttered that name. I told him not to worry, that the baby hadn't come yet. He was just sick and this was medication.

"You were having a dream you were at the old apartment," I told him. He was sitting up groggily shaking himself awake. He blinked a lot and looked confused. It made my heart hurt; I had never seen him like this before. I wondered what on earth he did when he was sick before I was around. Probably harass Vivian, I thought comically. He was not the kind of person to handle physical ailments alone. He reacted viscerally when he noticed the origin of the odor, the cherry medication, and scrunched up his nose again.

"We don't live at the old place anymore, though, Gerard. Instead you have this awesome room. And you don't smoke, even though it probably would make his medication taste better. I have to admit I'm not a fan as well, but it is better than smoking and better that you don't become sicker. Especially now that Jasmine is pregnant."

He looked at me and then the last bit of sleep must have been dragged away from his mind because he nodded profusely. "Of course, I'm sorry. Thank you, Frank." He took his medication with only a little bit of a negative response. The syrup was pretty terrible, so I couldn't blame him for then asking about food and then telling me he was hungry. I went down and made him toast and had barely enough time to give him the plate before Mikey honked his horn in the driveway. I felt bad leaving Gerard after his dream, but I told him I would be back soon enough. He told me he would probably fall asleep anyway, and would dream of me again.

I smiled and kissed him quickly on the forehead, before running down the stairs and starting another day.

Since I was still in training for a while, I went in really early in the morning, but I got out after lunch. I still went in five days a week, but having only the half day made everything seem a lot easier during those first few tenuous weeks. Jasmine's crisis, coupled with Gerard's small ailment, had left me utterly exhausted. I had so much unused stress entering my body and not exiting. I knew I made it worst by not telling anyone at all that things were bothering me, but I felt as if I couldn't. I wanted to freak out in the bathroom stalls so often at work, but I merely bit my lip and tried to get myself through the days. I found my mind wandering back to the conversation I had had with Dean on moving day. Though it was brief, our discussion on strength and weakness resonated with me, and I knew it applied to much more than the brute force required to move a couch. Brute force was the extreme end that neither one of us wanted to embody and that I saw the first hand damaging effects of on Jasmine and her family history. I knew that masculinity could do some horrible things, but I knew that myself as a man was far different than that. But Jasmine had told me statistics over the years, in an attempt to mask her own story, and I found myself wondering about those in the office building. There were a lot of people here, a lot of men, and some women. How many women had been abused? Probably half, maybe. But how many of the men in the building had committed abuse? That was the figure that scared me the most. When I walked into the bathroom, that very specific male space that was shared between us all because we all possessed this strange appendage, was I sharing the space with someone who hit his wife? Who had raped a girlfriend or a girl at a bar? Was I sharing the space with someone who thought faggots should burn? I was a man, but was I masculine enough to pass in this space, to not be subjected to harm? Moreover, how did I distinguish myself from the men who did cause harm? We all looked the same here, and that was what scared me.

I found myself grappling with these questions, but I kept them inside. I could confide to Mikey about children because that was an easy topic now. We were both (or at least, soon to be) family men. We had talked about power and authority, too, but this was so different. This was intimate and personal. It was emotional, and I didn't want to be emotional here. I couldn't. I could cry in private, I had a few times with Jasmine over the past few weeks, but I could not do that with many people. In public, in the workforce, things were just different. I needed to find Dean again, I knew I did, in order to sort out all of this. Jasmine had always gone to her Women's Studies classes, hoping to work out her own private and complex issues to do with her life, and she had gotten some validation there. I couldn't do that. There was no such thing as a Men's Studies class because, well, the entire world was a Men's Studies class. Men had power, I understood that. But I still felt weak around most men. I still felt ashamed of myself, every so often, because I was lumped in with rapists and abusers, because I was not like them. I knew I wasn't. I couldn't be. I had too many people depending on me now.

The building that Mikey and I worked at was about a forty minute walk from our house and I had needed those walks. I got a ride in the morning and when I started full time hours a week later, I would be getting a ride home with Mikey, too (and dinners every so often, he promised). But for now, I was on my own after. It was just starting to look like spring and the weather was getting warmer. There was less rain and mud, and I began to really enjoy these forty minute intervals where I would just walk through New Jersey and finally have time to myself to think.

I would not have been able to see Jasmine or Gerard if I had not walked home after work. Both of them, as much as I loved them, were wearing me out. Jasmine had her own job and her own concerns that she had begun bringing home. She was still hiding her pregnancy at work under huge sweat shirts. She knew that her time was running out as quickly as the weather got nicer. Sweaters covered a lot in the winter, but as soon as short sleeve shirts became an option, she would be found out. She also kept getting immense hot flashes from the hormones in her body, and wearing sweaters some days was like a prison. But she was nervous to tell people. She still hadn't told her family and I wondered if she was ever going to given the circumstances that I had been updated on. Her job was different, though, especially since the person she had replaced had also gone on maternity leave and Jasmine only had a one year contract, and that contract went until December. She was due in September. It didn't take a math expert to figure out that that didn't add up. She wanted to keep working during a lot of the birth and the months afterwards, or at least, she had planned on it at first. But as she got bigger and her body kept throwing curveballs at her, she didn't know what she wanted. She just wasn't sure and her confusion bled everywhere. There was a time where I had wanted to hear every last detail about this process, but now that it was worry and stress about work, I was getting tired. I wanted to go to her Lamaze class with her and meet Lydia and this other woman she had been talking to, Hilda. I didn't want to hear about how her column writer kept asking her about the hoodies or have her ask me a million times each morning if I could see the bump under this shirt, only to change it before she left anyway. She seemed to think that everyone at work knew she was pregnant but they were keeping quiet about it. I didn't know what to tell her anymore, and I didn't want to think about her work situation anymore either. It made me nervous, especially since she was depending on those health benefits to have this child. If she lost her job because of things to do with her contract, then I didn't know what we were going to do. I was okay with my job so far, but it made it a lot easier to go into work when I knew that in the worst case scenario, I was not the sole breadwinner. There were other incomes. Jasmine's anxiety coupled with Gerard's illness was wearing me out. And I sorted through all of my feelings on these walks so that when I could get home, I could be home.

I had been working on the mural on my floor more and now it had a good base. I didn't want to start it, however, until Gerard was healthy again and Jasmine had found a solution. The house was full of negative energy and though Gerard had started to get his own food in the morning and insisted he felt better, sometimes it was nice to just stay out walking. I often ate out and said that I went to Mikey or Vivian's for dinner and then walked around Jersey some more. Jasmine had her garden that she could escape to, Gerard had his wild dreams where he was perpetually back at the old apartment, and I had all of the garden state in front of me to explore again.

Gerard's dreams had triggered something in me. I began to remember a time when he and I did smoke and how beautiful it had been. I recalled the way the smoke looked as it came out of his lungs and danced in the air. How it was an art itself. It was something that we didn't do anymore, and didn't want to do again, I knew this all logically. But my mind wandered, and I visited that apartment frequently in my consciousness. I would often sit alone in my room and have the dove box that Gerard had given me in my hand. I took the toy bird out often and unraveled the scroll that read I Will Never Forget You. My nightmares, which were really Jasmine's, had now disappeared and were replaced with Gerard's fever dreams.

I finally just went to the apartment building itself one day. I walked into the corner store and I foolishly spent my money on a pack of cigarettes. I was of age now, and it almost seemed weird that I wasn't getting carded anymore. Was it the new fancy clothes that I had to wear for work that still made me feel like I was playing dress up in someone else's outfit? Was it my five o'clock shadow that was coming on because I rushed out the door without shaving this morning? Or was my paternity somehow marked on me as well? Jasmine wore the evidence of her adulthood on her body no matter how hard she tried to hide it. Was the same for me, and could the man behind the counter see that I was a father too?

No, I was my Frank. Their Frank. I wasn't a father. And no, no one could see that. I got my cigarettes and stared listlessly up at the apartment. I missed it. Nostalgia flooded my system. I missed it, even though I knew what I had now as good. It was just a rough patch. People had rough patches and it would eventually go away.

Still not wanting to go home and still wanting to play into my old memories and fantasies, I went to the memorial park and sat on the bench and smoked. The field was in patches of green and brown grass, snow now completely gone and the earth trying to recover. I sat and smoked and felt bad because it was going to get into my clothes and I would have to clean them before tomorrow, and then explain somehow how this had happed. But I didn't care. I lit the cigarettes and watched them burn. I felt at peace; it was something familiar in all the chaos that as surrounded me.

As I held the orange end up the cigarette up in the air and watched the smoke rise, I saw figures moving in the background. I looked past the smoke and the statues that marked the middle of the park and I saw a shadow dipping in and out of the statues presence. I dropped the smoke and stopped it out on the ground and then looked closer. The person struck a sense of familiarity inside of me, even though I could not see their face. They kept moving back and forth, like a dance, and it took me a while to realize they were picking up trash in the park. I nodded to myself, their erratic movements finally making sense. I began to walk towards them, though, because I wanted to see why else they captured my attention. I wasn't planning on talking to them or even getting that close. I just wanted to see a few more distinguishable features in their face and then either feel satisfied that I had recognized someone from that far of a distance, or feel paranoid because now I was seeing things.

I lit another cigarette as I walked and this time tried to smoke it. I didn't take it into my lungs, but into my mouth, and then blew it out to give the appearance of smoking. I feigned smoking so if the person noticed me coming closer, they could consider me just wandering around on a smoke break, but my plan backfired. They began to move closer to me. I realized that they probably wanted to smoke themselves and were now walking right towards me to bum a cigarette. That was another part I had forgotten about this side of the city; there was very little tact.

I could see the figure's face now. They had dark hair worn long, past their ears. He was tall and lanky, but muscular under the dark navy uniform that was clearly city-issued. I met his small beady eyes and recognized the nose that looked as if it had been broken too many times. When I stepped back and put these all of these features together, I knew exactly who I was looking at. And so did he.

He was about to ask for a cigarette, but instead asked: "Frank, is that you?"

"Travis," I said, letting go of the smoke that had tainted my mouth and left a bad taste there. "Yeah, it's me."

I had not seen Travis since my last year of high school when I had taken extra courses to boost my marks. He, on the other hand, had failed and needed to come back for math and English. We weren't in any of the same classes, but when you know someone, you see them a lot. I felt like he was always around when I wanted to have lunch, or had to go to the bathroom in the middle of class. Even though he only had half days, he was always there when I got out of school as well. He and Sam would always sit by the bike racks and talk, and I swore they were waiting for me. It was one of the reasons why I had become such good friends with my art teacher, Vera. Her friendship after school, though it was a lot of awkward conversation over animal crackers, let me feel safer versus facing them outside. We hadn't really fought after the whole Gerard situation had been found out, but the rumors that the two of them had started about me had been enough. They wouldn't out right attack me or say hurtful things, but the way the two of them talked and murmured made me really uncomfortable. They didn't even have to say anything, though, to have their presence grate on my nerves. The two of them represented all that I used to be and all that I hated about myself. They were my life before Gerard, the life that I tried to ignore and disregard, where I was high most of the time or trying to get high. They were the angry Black Flag music and the pointlessness of the world. They brought that feeling of hopelessness back to me. They reminded me, again and again, about what a failure I could have become.

Standing before Travis in the middle of the park, both of us now twenty-five, was like standing in front of a mirror. He posited an alternate history for me, showing me another glimpse into the what if situation from before. He was much taller and more muscular than he had been in high school; his face more angular and generally more adult. He was wearing loose city uniforms, but underneath I could sense muscle mass, as if he went to the gym or had been training for something. He hunched over, because of his height; one of the few physical attributes that had not changed since high school. His hair was the other thing that had not changed; he still wore it loose behind his ears, and it looked as if it hadn't been washed in a while. I saw him from high school and I saw him now, and in my mind I saw the way that my own body had changed in growth and age. We were the same person in that way. The same age with the same prior history - but we had both gone very, very different ways. It was clear that Travis' job here was to pick up the trash in the city park and I had just come from my fancy new job where I needed to wear business clothing and look professional. I felt awkward in my collared shirt with nicely pressed pants and my unbuttoned jacket. I knew this feeling was not because I felt as if I didn't deserve the attire, because I did. I was working so hard and I deserved what I had. But it made me more aware of myself and my former life, and what could have happened. Travis and I were both wearing uniforms, but of very different materials.

At first I had been afraid of Travis. He had approached me so suddenly that the fear from my youth took over. I wasn't sure if he wanted to say hi and then pound me, or if he was as into nostalgia as I was right about then. As he asked for a cigarette and then began to smoke it beside me, I began to feel calmer. I began to like having him around. He fed into my fantasy of wanting to go back to the time before, to the liquor store and corner store where we had harassed Gerard, when Gerard had still lived in that apartment. I thought it was so bizarre that I had Travis to thank, just as much as Gerard or Jasmine, for changing my life. If we had not been there, none of this would have ever happened. This would have been a completely different mirror. Who knows, I could have been on the other side.

"So how have you been?" Travis broke the ice first. He seemed to be rather annoyed that I had not said anything yet. I wasn't even smoking.

"Oh. Right. I'm good," I said, then feeling feeble: "How are you?"

"I pick up garbage for a living," he laughed. "I bet you feel super smart."

I shook my head. "A job is a job. I don't exactly like mine but I do it because I need to. I want to be able to pay for certain things."

Travis nodded. He knew that routine. You had to if you picked up city trash for a living. He gauged me up and down, deciding whether or not he wanted to continue and tell me more about himself. "You still with that fruit?"

I sighed. It was clear who he was talking about and what he remembered me for. He took a step back, as if I was contaminated. "You know I'm straight, right?" he insisted.

"Yeah, I know, and actually..." I trailed off, not bothering with completing my remark. I didn't need to validate my sexuality to my old high school friend. I should have just picked up and left, but part of me wanted to stay. I needed to stay. I just wanted to escape for awhile, just for one night, and have some peace to myself. Catching up with Travis seemed like the perfect excuse, even if he wasn't the best specimen of humanity right at that very moment.

"I'm with Jasmine, sort of," I eventually told him. He nodded and asked if she was the blonde chick I was always with. I nodded, and then added that we were actually going to have a kid soon. His eyes popped open then and he gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. At first, I thought he was going to hug me.

"I didn't think you had it in you!" he joked, slapping me hard on the back. Punching, hitting, albeit playful, was strange to me. I was not used to this type of male bonding. Even when I hung out with Dean, he was an art grad. He liked to do things a certain way and they were usually the same way that I did. This was loud and aggressive, but it was approval. This was another form of strength, I supposed, but it wasn't the same brute force that instilled fear in me. I had to keep that in mind. Travis did not see me an enemy or a threat. He was proud of me. For what? For finally settling down with a woman? This was ridiculous. We were not like that. We had done something different.

He had begun to tell me about his girlfriend, Diana, and I couldn't get a word in. We had walked over to the bench on the other side of the park and sat down. Travis was still smoking, bumming another cigarette, and talking with a more open demeanor. He had met Diana when he was training to be a police officer - yes, Travis, always the law abider had gone to school to be a cop. Or at least, he had tried. It seemed like the only thing he had gotten from his training was the relationship with Diana. They lived together now, but there were no kids in their future. She didn't want them, or at least, she didn't want to be pregnant. They hadn't really gotten past that and that was okay with him, especially now that he had not been able to be a cop. When I eventually probed at why that dream never really became a reality, he got kind of shifty and said that he had to get back to work. It was getting dark and he told me that his shift was going to be over soon.

"We can meet in, like, fifteen minutes, if you want?" he told me, picking up his materials again. "Thanks for the smoke."

I considered his offer. It was almost eight at night and I was sure that Jasmine would be back from her class. She and her friend from the place had been hanging out a lot more, though, and the two of them could have been together. This woman seemed a lot more positive than Lydia (not that Lydia was a terrible person, she was just very serious, from what I could gather). Hilda seemed to always leave Jasmine happy when she came back, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized she was probably going to be at Hilda's for most of the night. I thought of Gerard and wondered if he was out of bed yet, if I needed to bring him something, and if he was going to be delirious again. It made my stomach do a flip flop of anxiety. I didn't want to go home. How come Jasmine was the only one that got to go out and have fun? I knew I probably wouldn't have the best night of my life with Travis, but it was something different. Something familiar, no matter how bad a taste it left in my mouth.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14