The Trouble with Bliss, Page 2

The door clicks softly shut. Leaning to the peephole, Morris eyes Stefani, her image rounded and distorted, like she’s fallen into a fishbowl. Through the fireproof door, he feels her presence, her heat.

  She pauses and glances back, knowing Morris is watching. The hallway light casts from her left, cleanly striking her face. Tightening the rubber band on her hair, she smiles a small smile.

  Seeing this, Morris is filled with reassurance, a well-being. He knows this moment, has witnessed it before; Stefani standing as she stands, smiling as she smiles, the light brushing her face as it is now. He’s experienced it a million times, morning after morning, year after year.

  But it’s never happened. Not with Stefani, not as now.

  It’s his mother he’s seeing, the photograph of her on his dresser.

  She and Stefani look nothing alike, and still, there’s something similar about the two. It’s Stefani’s hair, or her unguarded mannerisms, or how she smiles. Or even just the fact that she’s female.

  It’s none of these. There’s no resemblance at all. But somehow, in a skewed, distant way, seeing Stefani standing as she’s standing summons the memory of his mother. It’s like certain colors reminding one of a moment long past. Or when a whiff of an odor sparks an incongruous memory. Certain smells do that to Morris. Woodchips, for one, remind him of his first wet dream, more a nightmare than erotic experience; the hot, clinging stench of a packed subway station after a heavy summer rain evokes the afternoon Mr. Sofar tried to make Morris put on a dress; and the dark, moldy odor of freshly turned earth brings to mind his fourth grade teacher, Ms. Wagner, and her hairy arms that she used to constantly scratch.

  And something about Stefani makes him think of his mother.

  She wiggles her index finger at Morris, and then heads down the stairs.

  Morris rests his forehead to the door, closes his eyes. He’s held the memories of his mother tight, held them near his heart, yet the weathering of some twenty years has turned them to tumbled sea-glass; all the sharp, poignant recollections have been worn smooth, the details ground away with the passing of time. What he now recalls best is not his actual, physical mother, but the things associated with her; the lemony, stewing smell of the dolmades she made every Saturday; the trail of coffee cups she left about the apartment; her quiet voice from a farther room; the slip-slap of her sandals as she walked.

  The pounding on the door jars Morris.

  His father’s home.

  “Open this bastard door,” his father calls from the hall.

  Slowly, Morris opens the door. “Hey, Daddy,” he says.

  “What were you doing in here?” Seymour asks, his breath already malty and stale from drinking.

  Sofar’s pacing in the apartment above abruptly stops. It’s six p.m. Exactly.

  Seymour glances around the apartment, sniffs the air like an animal sensing danger. He carries a bag with two lightning blue king-sized bottles of Bud Ice Turbo Load beers, one of which is already open, partially drank. Packed with caffeine, ginseng, and alcohol, it’s Budweiser’s answer to the energy drink craze. “Gets You Up When You Want to Get Down” is the tagline. Seymour had wanted plain Budweiser, but Mr. Charlies was out. Mr. Charlies is always out of the product desired. “I buzzed you,” Seymour says, his thick, damp moustache making him look like an agitated beaver.

  “I was in the bathroom,” Morris answers, moving to the kitchen. Act normal, he tells himself, though he not sure how he acts when acting normal. That’s why it’s normal. “I’m heading over to N.J.’s,” he tells his father, needing out of the apartment. “Need anything while I’m out?”

  Seymour tosses his keys on the kitchen table. The kitchen needs cleaning. Coffee grinds speck the warped, gray countertop like ants rolling across a dry creek bed. The windowsills are grimy, the tabletop dusty and stained with tomato sauce. The floor needs sweeping, a detailed mopping. The entire apartment, overcrowded with belongings, needs a clearing out. “You get that job talking on telephones?” Seymour asks of Morris’s job interview.

  “Looks like it,” Morris tells him. He could have it. He needs the money and will probably have to take it. He doesn’t want it. “The interview went well. Should know by next week,” he says, hoping his father will forget the whole thing by then. Hoping he’ll have something else lined up by then. He plans on putting in an application with The Sock Man on St. Marks Place, a small, street-side stall that sells only socks. People often stop him when he passes the place, thinking he works there. He answers their questions as best as possible.

  “Should’ve seen what I just seen,” Seymour says.

  “Yeah? What’s this?” Morris answers, already knowing. Stefani. On her way out. He pats his pockets, feeling for his keys, then looks on top of the refrigerator for them.

  “Should’ve seen it,” Seymour says, opening the refrigerator. He grabs three foil-wrapped items, items only he could identify without unwrapping them, then, with his beers in hand, heads to the back room, the room that serves as the dining room, the living room, and Seymour’s sleeping quarters. Turning on the TV, voices, cheers, and canned laughter rattle through the apartment. The small screen’s image is a moving Monet painting, vivid and blurry. They have no cable, no satellite dish to pull the program waves from the air, just a bound bundle of wire hangers covered in foil attached to the top of the set. Seymour doesn’t believe in spending money that way, wasting it on things that should be free, things that once were. “Some fifteen-year-old girl,” he calls to Morris.

  Eighteen, Morris wants to tell him. He finds his keys tucked under some travel brochures on Croatia; he ordered them right after he finished reading Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Gray Falcon. It’s on his schedule of places to visit, right after Paris, which is after he visits Turkey, which is on his agenda following Thailand, which comes after Finland, Australia, Mexico, Beirut, and the North Africa tour. He keeps an ordered file with all his plans, all the information he’s gathered on the places he’s going. “I’m heading out,” he says, thinking he might be able to catch Stefani at Mr. Charlies.

  “This girl was on the stairs,” Seymour calls to Morris, working on his beer. Fifty-seven years old, Seymour’s a shop steward for the carpenters’ union. It’s his responsibility to watch out for his men, make certain they show up for work, not get too drunk at lunch, and fill out the proper paperwork when they’re injured. He calls the ambulance when one twists his knee or bruises his ribs. He’s seen men crack their heads open, seen them take a two-story fall and hit the hard pavement or rubble-littered ground or bounce off an I-beam then, laughingly, stand up and brush themselves off, and say, “That was dumb” or “Hard head” or “Who’s buying drinks?” He’s seen worse.

  “Sure you don’t need anything?” Morris asks, opening the front door.

  “Mors,” his father calls from the back room. It’s a nickname his mother first came up with, wanting more of her Morris, of her boy. More of his hugs, his kisses, more of his cheerful voice calling to her through the narrow rooms of the snug apartment.

  “Yeah?” Morris answers, half out the door.

  “Bring me some crackers ’fore you go,” his father says over the noise of the TV.

  Closing the front door, Morris steps into the kitchen, grabs the box of crackers from the cabinet and takes them to Seymour.

  Near the back room, hung on the wall, is a small, tarnished brass plaque, one noting Morris as the most valuable swimmer of the 1979 summer season. When young, Morris aspired to be an Olympic swimmer, to train and compete in places with names like Palo Alto or Zurich or Fort Lauderdale, places far away and foreign to him, places with deep pools with twelve lanes and fifty meters in length. He dreamt of winning races, of touching the wall a moment, a microsecond, before the swimmer in the lane next to him, dreamt of lifting his head from the wetness to find he’d broken his personal best record, broken the pool record, the world record.

  His mother first introduced him to swimming, took him to classes
at Asser Levy at the age of nine. The pool was a three lane, twenty-two yard pit on Twenty-Third Street and FDR Drive. It’d been built in 1921 as a way to encourage public hygiene, built in hopes of stopping the spread of cholera and typhoid fever through the promotion of showers and disinfectants. A city pool, it was owned and run by the New York Parks Department, and had a foul and murky locker room with communal showers where the gays would go to soap each other. Morris’s mother never allowed him to wander into the locker room, kept a watchful eye over him when he went swimming. He’d put on his suit at home, wear it under his pants, change there on the pool deck. After class, his mother made him wear his jeans over his wet suit, which made him look like he’d pissed his pants. When he complained of this, said he wanted to change in the locker room like the others, his mother countered, “There are worse things than wet pants, and they’re all in that locker room.”

  He had no idea what she meant, but her stern tone, her concerned voice was enough to terrify him. He didn’t want to see what the locker room held.

  During the summer months, he’d swim at the Hamilton Fish pool, a fifty-meter, Olympic sized outdoor pool on Houston and Pitt Street. It was beautiful, the distance from one end to the other stretching and straight and marked by a black line on the pool’s floor. Morris’s first laps of the summer were always a struggle, not being used to such continuous swimming. At Asser Levy, a handful of strokes took him to the other end, where he could grab the wall and rest a moment before turning around. At Hamilton Fish, there was no rest. No stopping. But he built his strength, improved his stroke, competed in meets.

  At the end of his second summer of swimming, he took first place in the twelve and under 100-meter breaststroke in the All City Swim meet. His mother was manic with delight. Her boy had won, had taken the blue ribbon. His father wasn’t around.

  The coach saw promise. Not Olympic promise, but promise still. He named Morris most valuable swimmer that summer, gave him a small plaque with etched lettering. “Keep him swimming, keep him practicing,” his coach would tell Morris’s mother.

  But then his mother left, and all Morris’s desire to swim left with her. He felt no reason to continue, felt no joy in winning. He had no one to win for.

  He hasn’t been in a pool in years. Still, he has his swim ribbons in his bureau’s top drawer.

  Pausing beside his father’s chair, Morris holds the box of crackers out for him.

  “How much the phone job going to pay?” Seymour asks.

  “It’s commissions,” Morris says. “You get a percent of what you sell.”

  Seymour nods. He says, “Should’ve seen it. A clear shot.” A half empty beer bottle is balanced on his knee. He lifts his hand like he’s sighting something on the wall above the TV, pointing it out.

  “A clear shot?”

  “This girl,” he says. “Right in front of me, top of the stairs. Standing all sexy,” he says. “Sexy and smart-assish. Had a clear shot of her womanhoodliness. No panties. And she called me Daddy,” Seymour says, in near reverie. He takes a sip of beer, balances it on his knee again. “ ‘Hello, Daddy.’ That’s what she said to me.”

  “Wow,” Morris answers, his voice flat.

  “Wow’s right,” Seymour says, taking the crackers from his son. Opening the box, he shakes them, then dips his fingers in for a handful. “I got a good smell of her when she passed. She smelled—”

  He breaks off. Looking up at Morris, his face is a knot of disgust.

  “What?” Morris asks, but he knows. His father’s made the connection. Knows about Stefani, about him, the whole afternoon. He can smell it in the air, throughout the apartment.

  “I hope I’m not thinking what I think I’m thinking,” his father says, repulsed. His nostrils open wide, air rushing in.

  Morris is on the spot; he has to explain, like someone caught cheating on the driver’s license exam. “Daddy, it’s what you’re thinking,” Morris admits, trying for the best spin. “But it’s not the way you’re thinking. If you let me explain—”

  “I ain’t a fancy man,” his father says, his voice hard. “But I ain’t an animal, either.” He pulls his hand from the cracker box, holds it out. In it is a mass of damp, pale, partially chewed crackers. The ones Stefani spat back into the box. “What’s wrong with you?” Seymour asks. He scrapes the glob back into the box, wipes his hand on his pant leg. “This ain’t a zoo. When we eat, we eat.”

  Morris stands silent, waiting for more, waiting for his father to say, “And that girl I saw on the stairs…” But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything, focuses his attention to the TV and acts like Morris isn’t even in the room.

  “I’ll buy you some more crackers. I’ll get them right now,” Morris says.

  Seymour doesn’t answer, doesn’t acknowledge him. He stares at the TV, takes a sip of beer. The speaker blares with guffaws and chuckles. The show isn’t funny.

  Studying his father in profile, Morris is hit with the fear that once he exits the room, exits the apartment, his father will cease to exist. That it’ll just be Morris, alone. “Daddy,” he says. He wants to tell his father something important. He has an urgent need to hug him. “Daddy,” he says, but his father doesn’t answer him.

  Morris picks up the cracker box. “Okay, then,” he says, and leaves the room, leaves the apartment. Leaves his father in a crowd of false laughter.

  Chapter 4