Creatures

Creatures appeared in Midwestern Gothic, v10.

 

Larry lies in his sanctuary, this subterranean hovel. There are only two small windows, half-moons that look out at the street, level with the sidewalk. He has stapled blackout cloth over the window in his bedroom, even though he rises before dawn, even in the summer when days are at their longest. He sleeps to one side of the bed because there is a broken spring in the middle. It only bothers him if he has one of his dreams and tosses in his sleep. Then he wakes, not from the dream, but from the steel coil jabbing him in the hip. Above the bed hangs a framed poster of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The creature stands on the bank of the lagoon, webbed fingers spread at his side, a piece of dripping seaweed draped limply over his shoulder. The fins and gills are not the most horrifying part of the creature. Nor the carp-like mouth. It is the bulbous black eyes. Without iris or pupil, they can only stare outward as though there is no soul cased within this mutation of life; and yet, even this monster has a yearning. An alcove built into the bedroom walls serves as the only closet in the apartment. Larry has hung a blue plastic shower curtain across it, because he does not like dark corners. 

Larry straightens his legs, extending them to the foot of the bed and stretching his toes. His hands move under the blanket, each morning a new exploration, roving over his skin, making certain he is whole. 

The bathroom is so small that if the door is open it is impossible to sit on the toilet. Because the fan has been broken for most of the eighteen years Larry has lived here, paint is peeling off the ceiling in large irregular flakes of white, revealing the pock-marked plaster. Larry stands and turns to flush. Hanging over his toilet is a wooden plaque on which someone has carefully painted brown and gold flowers and the words, “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie.” It is one of his treasures.

The entire apartment was done in gold linoleum. Larry knows it is ugly and that as long as he does not complain, the rent will not rise. Larry walks through his morning groggy and naked. There is a second half-moon window in the living room. It is not covered. For someone to look in at Larry, he would need to get down on all fours, on the sidewalk, something which Larry knows is too much trouble. And although he craves privacy in the bedroom, he craves a view in the living room. His sofa faces the window and he can tell more about the changing styles of women’s footwear than any other bachelor outside the shoe industry. He prefers the fall to spring fashions, when the foot is thoroughly covered. A peekaboo pump that reveals a neatly pedicured toe or two has its merits, but sandals seem garish, and the craze in recent years for flip flops disturbs him. Feet, he has decided, are best kept under wraps, unless they are children’s feet. If he had to take a job in a shoe store, it would have to be children’s shoes. Their feet are young, soft, unblemished by years of abuse. Because he can appreciate the young foot, he cringes to see it exposed. The way children run, their carelessness, he imagines stubbed toes, cut soles, nails bent back and bloody. He wonders why the careful days of little Stride Rite oxfords and Mary Janes seem to have ended. Parents, he believes, have become cavalier. 

On the wall that separates the living room from the bedroom, he has hung posters of Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff in their most iconic roles. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, however, is Larry’s favorite. Its face is its own. The actors who donned the suit were uncredited in the film. They were nobodies. But the Creature lives on. The Creature is proof that anonymity and immortality are not mutually exclusive. 

Larry puts a piece of bread in his toaster oven and fills an old jam jar with orange juice. There are no proper cabinets in his kitchen, only open shelves. The mop and broom are propped in a corner next to the stove. Once a year, he fogs his apartment for roaches.

While he waits for the toast, he stares out his window at the snippet of brick and the yellow street lamp that comprise his view. There is a corner market and a nail salon across the street. If he moved two steps into the living room, he would see the salon’s purple awning. Rapid Falls is a river town that began with a Victorian boom and then succeeded in bringing the railway to its door. With trains came industry and growth. But even today, it is a safe little city, a good place for a simple man like Larry. In fact, he would not have taken the job as a garbage man—he received a modest inheritance when his mother passed away—but he thought it might be interesting. 

***

Larry’s sister, Sarah, got him the job. She is four years older than him. When their mother died, she asked Sarah to keep an eye on Larry, insisting that he was alone too much of the time and that family is the most important thing in the world. Sarah wanted to tell her mother that she already had a family, her husband and their three children, not to mention the labrador retrievers that they breed and count as precious members of the household. Ultimately, she could not bring herself to upset her mother, not on her deathbed, so she swore at her mother’s insistence on her mother’s grave, morbid as it was, that she would watch over Larry. This is a promise she has not allowed herself to break, even eleven years after their mother’s death. 

Her husband, Norman, has worked for the municipality of Rapid Falls for twenty-three years. They know every city worker and their kids on a first name basis, because Sarah organizes the annual City Crew Carnival. It is home-town fun—even though the city has reached a population of twenty-seven thousand—with turtle races, a dunking booth, a moon walk, and a traveling petting zoo. Sarah begged Norman to use his leverage as a long-standing employee to get Larry a job. She wanted him to work on a crew, to be part of a team, to eat a donut with his coffee in the break room with the guys. Norman could only be pushed so far and after nearly nine weeks of working on him, Sarah was satisfied to learn Larry would be operating a garbage truck. She bought him his first pair of dungarees, a present to congratulate him on his new job. She assured him all the men wore heavy denim and thick leather boots with reinforced toes. She emphasized the reinforced toes and told him where Norman did all of his shopping for work clothes, including gloves and hats. 

Sarah exhibits an anxiety around Larry that she feels around no one else. As a wife, mother, and community organizer, she is stalwart. A day does not pass without her phone ringing at least three times, the callers seeking a solution they are confident Sarah can provide. She takes pride in this. Around her brother, however, she is needled by shame. When her mother was alive, her family only saw Larry at her mother’s house on holidays. When her mother died, Norman told her that the children would not visit Larry. Not ever. She did not question his motives for the edict or his instincts about her brother. She simply uttered a single word, “Fine.” Her children have only the vaguest recollections of their Uncle Larry. The youngest is a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, and being the youngest has the least memory of those holidays at Grandma’s. His mother might as well be an only child. Each time Sarah sees her brother, infrequent as it is, she feels that the absence of her children, of even a school picture, is incrimination enough. What would her mother say? “Family sticks together.” Sometimes when Sarah visits her mother’s grave, she senses that the dead tally the sins of the living and she cries bitterly, torn between begging forgiveness and hurling blame. When Norman got Larry the job, Sarah did not realize that the trucks were being modernized and Larry would spend most of each workday alone in the cab of a behemoth machine.

***

It is a one-man job, which is how Larry likes to work. Until recently, each truck had a crew: a driver and the burly men who lifted the cans, tipping their contents into the back of the truck. Now, thanks to repetitive use injuries and rising insurance costs, things are automated. Larry doesn’t leave the cab. He pushes a button and maneuvers a joystick to operate a hydraulic pincer. It closes around the cans. It lifts them overhead, higher than any man could, tipping them upside down so the lids swing open and the trash spills into the truck. Larry’s truck is one of the new models. The opening is at the top, surrounded by a grate, and everything gets tossed in. The whole thing is rather cartoonish, the pincer, the sounds of garbage clanking and clinking down the shoot, the lack of human involvement. When Larry works the joystick, he gets to watch the pincer with mirrors and a small camera mounted on the truck. He cannot help wondering about the bounty he is hauling away. Sometimes people throw out perfectly good things, beautiful things. Larry has a collection of such things. 

He has a doll carriage sitting in his living room. It had a broken handle that was easily repaired with a little epoxy. He uses it as a magazine rack and on weekends pushes it into his bedroom so that his reading materials are never far away. Pushing the carriage requires he stoop over and walk with his knees bent, but it is easier than carrying the thing. He also has an instant coffee jar nestled in amongst his magazines in which he keeps scissors, glue sticks, and colored pencils. 

Larry sits on the edge of his bed to pull on his dungarees and then slides thick socks over his narrow, callused feet. He waits until he stands up to get the pants over his hips and do up the fly. He wears a denim work shirt with a collar. He is in the habit of wearing a cotton undershirt beneath the generously cut denim shirt in order to make him look fuller. 

His keyring has only two keys on it—his apartment and his car, a Toyota hatchback the color of a cooked lima bean. It does not take him long to get to work. He drives the same six miles through town, skirting downtown and turning into the industrial park where the railroad tracks cut between old warehouses, silos, and equipment yards. It is here, behind a high chain link fence with coiled barbed wire looping along its top edge, that Larry parks his car. The lot is full of pick-ups, vans, and SUVs, the kind of vehicles men drive when they want to mount a gun rack in the rear window, or tow an ATV, or strap a buck to the roof. Even the ladies in the on-site office who file paperwork and answer phones drive trucks. This is a city work site, but it is not City Hall. It is a wilderness outpost tucked into the industrial wasteland between downtown and Thompkins—once its own distinct town it has become a suburb of Rapid Falls. Larry locks the door of his Toyota and pockets the keys. 

He does not saunter the way his coworkers do. He is not thick through the neck or barrel-chested. His hands are slender with narrow fingertips. He has noticed a preponderance of spatulate fingers amongst the men he works beside. He wonders if there is a connection between work with heavy machinery and flat broad hands. He knows this is not his line of work. This is not his anything. But he enjoys it. He thinks he may enjoy it more than they do.

Larry’s locker is empty. Since all he does is drive a truck and operate a joystick, he does not return at the end of the day stinking of sweat and refuse. He does not keep a change of clothes or a stash of candy bars or magnetic photos of his family in his locker. It is closed and padlocked simply because it was assigned to him and no one has bothered to take it away. He goes straight to the break room and pours coffee into a styrofoam cup. The coffee is bitter and he suspects they sometimes add new grounds to old, instead of pulling the filter for each pot. Larry empties two creamers and three packets of sugar into his cup, then sits in the corner, stirring it. 

“Jesus, Larry.” Hank, who is on the recycling crew, is standing at the coffeemaker pouring his own cup. “You’re going to give yourself diabetes if you keep having your coffee like that.”

“It’s the only way I can stomach this stuff.” He smiles at Hank and his smile fills his face, revealing small yellowed teeth. Larry’s hair is a mixture of gray and a nondescript brown. It has thinned on top  to the point that he has to wear a hat year round or his scalp will sunburn.

“Well, take it easy.” Hank grabs a donut from the open box on the counter and goes to sit at another table with his crew mates. He glances over his shoulder at Larry before sitting. Larry watches him lean forward to mutter into the table top something only they can hear, something about Larry. He is used to it. The fact that Hank said something to him at all is remarkable. 

Larry gets himself a donut. He prefers glazed, but all that is left are the kind with the sugar crystals. The sugar sticks to his lips and he has to lick them clean between each bite. His tongue is rather gray and pointed like his fingers. It sweeps across his top lip in an arc, then side to side across his bottom lip. 

“Have a napkin.” One appears under his nose. Larry looks up, following the hand and arm connected to the napkin. It is his brother-in-law, Norman. 

“Thanks.” Larry wipes off his mouth. 

Norman stands over him, shaking his head. “You know it looks weird, right? All that licking you were doing.”

Larry shakes his head. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, well, it does.”

Norman sits across from Larry. He is a shift supervisor, but not Larry’s due to a conflict of interest. Larry does not see what kind of conflict could be involved. If he shows up and drives the truck, empties the garbage cans, his job is done. He sees no room for fudging, no need for a conflict. Still, he would not argue with Norman. Norman shaves his head and probably sleeps in his steel-toed boots. Norman lost one of his fingers when it was crushed between a dumpster and cinderblock wall. Larry wonders what it would be like to lose a body part. Even something as minor as a middle finger would be traumatic. He can’t imagine how one finger got crushed and the rest escaped—more or less, the nail fell off the ring finger and never grew back—but that is why it is a “freak” accident. If Larry had to lose a body part and had some say in it, he would select one of his little toes. 

“Are you hearing me?” Norman is scowling at him. 

“Sorry. What did you say?”

“How’s the job going? You happy here?”

“Yep. Everything’s great. I really like driving the truck, Norman.”

“Great. Just great.” Norman is shaking his head again. He runs a hand over the top of his baldness and lands it at the back of his neck. His three fingers work a tender spot in the muscles while he sighs. When he sees Larry watching this, he says, “Bed’s shot. Or I’m shot. One of the two has to be replaced.” He cracks a grin. 

“Ha ha. Boy, if I could trade myself in on a newer model. Eh?”

“Yeah.” Norman stands up. “Look. I’m glad the job’s working out for you. Sarah wants to stop by soon, say hello. You got a schedule or want us to call first or anything?” 

“No. Come by anytime. I’m usually home.”

“Yeah. Yeah, good. I’ll tell her.”

Larry is smiling his yellow grin. Norman spasms as he turns away from the table. Another man at the coffeemaker swings his arm wide to clap Norman on the shoulder and they are laughing within a second, talking about the kids and the picnic and the fire crew getting one of the engines decorated for Halloween. Last year, they were called to a fire and the engine roared through the neighborhood with cobwebs and giant furry spiders quivering on the sides, one of those witches that flew into a tree had been wired to the grill, her arms wrapped over the hood, her legs splayed around the chrome. The men are laughing. Larry can’t help listening in. 

The break room is filling up, the coffee pot almost empty, the volume increased ten-fold, when Martha enters the room with a clipboard. Martha is no older than Larry, but looks sixty-five. She is a smoker and a sun-worshiper who dyes her hair to hide the gray. Every six weeks it is something new: auburn, black, chestnut…and every June she goes to a salon and has her hair stripped and frosted so that she can welcome back summer with blonde locks. Larry admires that about her.

“Open enrollment for insurance starts today. Remember, trucks are not to be left idling. Besides the risk of theft, we are trying to minimize fuel waste.” Martha calls out names, makes a check mark on her clip board, and holds out a key on a numbered plastic tag. The men come up in ones, twos, or threes depending on the job and the vehicle, collect their key, and head out to the lot. Most of them have something to say to Martha, a thanks or a see you later as they grab the key from her pinched fingers. She smiles and nods without looking up from her roster. When she calls Larry, he is alone. Only a few times a month does he work with a crew. Those are the days he does not like his job. He smiles and nods as he collects his key, but she, of course, does not see this and assumes he doesn’t bother to acknowledge her. It feels like a slight, and she is both annoyed and relieved.    

  ***                                        

Larry is on Silverman Drive, a third of the way through his route. This is a nice neighborhood. Here are the turn-of-the-century houses with large walk-up attics turned lofts or offices. Things have been updated: the maids’ rooms have become the master baths, the butlers’ pantries have espresso bars, and the basements have wine cellars and saunas. These are the kinds of houses Larry once dreamed of owning. His favorites have the carriageway still attached to the side of the house. He believes he would have done better in the past. He would have been a gentleman, perhaps an eccentric gentleman, but eccentricities were allowed for in the upper classes. He imagines that the people who live in these houses today have maids who put their trash cans at the curb and wheel them back into the garage after Larry has come by. 

He stops the truck and looks into the monitor. He grips the joystick and activates the pincer, watching the live-feed as the claw comes down from above, opens and closes on the garbage can, then lifts it up and over the truck. Two women pushing baby joggers go past him at a good clip. First Larry sees them in his monitor, then out the windshield of his cab. They are dressed in expensive-looking fitness gear that probably came out of a boutique instead of a mall. Larry sometimes sees women like them at the playgrounds—they text their friends or look at shoes on their smart phones while the children play. He takes his lunch to a park most days and eats at a picnic table near the playground. There are enough parks around that he can eat at a different one every day of the week. 

There is something hanging out of the garbage can that won’t drop into the truck. Larry raises the can higher, using the joystick, watching the monitor, and shakes it. He sets the can back down and gets out of the cab. The air outside is cooler than he expected and he shivers, pulling his jacket together at the collar. A toaster hangs outside the can, its cord caught in the hinge. He unhooks it and holds the toaster. It looks clean, almost new. He bends his head toward it and sniffs the bread slots. It smells of charred crumbs and makes him sneeze. He considers taking it home and adding it to his collection, but recently he decided to be more selective. Larry takes it by the cord and begins swinging it overhead. It loops in an elegant circle, making a round streak of silver in the air, and he flings it, bola-like, up and into the truck. It clatters into the belly of the machine. So far, this is the most satisfying thing Larry has done with his day. He places his hands on his hips and looks over the truck, to the rust-colored treetop that crowns it and the blue sky beyond.

But there is no time to stand around for the working man. Larry peers into the garbage can, expecting nothing, his hand already swinging the lid closed, and stops. There is something inside. He leans into the can far enough for his arm to reach down, his fingers to scrape inches from the bottom. It is enough for him to grab the edge of the curled paper. 

It is a catalog, the bottom of several pages stuck together and browned by a spilled Coke. Anatolia is scrawled across the cover, “European fashion for girls with flair!” Larry folds the catalog into thirds and tucks it under his coat front as he casually slams the lid of the garbage can. He walks around and climbs into the cab. With the catalog on the seat beside him, Larry finishes his route. He glances at the cover frequently and smells the burnt caramel tang of the cola that soaked its pages. When he stops for his lunch break, he runs into a convenience store and buys himself a Coke. Although he leaves the catalog in the truck, he thinks about it as he eats his egg salad sandwich and sips his pop. He is not far from the house where he found the catalog, and the two joggers are at the playground, sipping water while their toddlers throw sand into the air and scream.

***

Sarah is in the kitchen pulling one pan out of the oven and sliding another one in. A pair of retrievers sit expectantly on the other side of the kid gate. Their tails thump the floor when Norman comes in from the garage. “I love coming home to a warm kitchen.” He wraps his arms around Sarah’s waist from behind and mm-mms. Sarah closes the oven door, turns the dial on her kitchen timer and squirms around to face her husband. She hugs him with oven mitts still covering her hands.

 

“Hi.” She can’t imagine greeting him with other than a kiss, in private at least. With the nest empty, she finds they kiss more than they used to. They gravitate toward each other to touch and cuddle in ways she had thought long forgotten. Sarah has been telling her girlfriends, “Just wait until your kids head off to college!” She has large brown eyes rimmed with gold. Norman used to call her Bambi, especially when she put on mascara for going out. When she told him it was a silly name, he called her Doe. Eventually the name fell away and the creases deepened around her eyes. She has a slight cleft in her chin, something she shares with two of her three children. “They’re cupcakes. I made up the butter-cream chocolate icing.”

“Yum.”

“I thought we could take some over to Larry tonight.”

Norman’s hold on Sarah loosens and he rocks back on his heels, opening up a tiny space between them. “Aah, Jesus…tonight?” 

“It’s his birthday Saturday.”

Norman steps away to lean on the edge of the counter, his hands seeking the back of his neck.

“Want me to rub that for you?”

“How long are you going to feel guilty?”

“What do I have to feel guilty for?” She tosses the oven mitts on the counter and starts removing cupcakes from the first pan, placing them on a cooling rack. 

“Okay, not guilty. Obligated.”

Sarah shrugs. She carries a cupcake to Norman and offers it, raised on the palm of her hand. 

“I just…” he says, scowling.

“I know, but he is my brother.” The cupcake wobbles on her palm. “I can go alone, you know.”

Norman accepts the cupcake. “You aren’t going alone.”

***

Larry sets a new can of Coke on his kitchen table. The ceiling fixture overhead does a poor job of lighting anything, so he plugs in a clamp lamp and clamps it to one of his shelves, pointing the hooded bulb at the table. He wheels in his doll carriage and lays out his scissors, glue, and a roll of art paper. He has been working on this project for some time, creating a scroll. One end of the scroll is the blank paper, the other end, which he carefully rolls around an empty paper towel tube, is his work-in-progress. He opens out the scroll enough to reveal his latest ten inches or so of work and another ten inches or so of blank paper, and sets it at the top of the table where it can act as his inspiration. Continuity and flow are two of his aesthetic principles. He began the scroll almost two years ago. He has not looked at anything rolled around the paper towel tube since it was created. He has a strict “no peeking” policy. When the roll of paper is filled, he will unroll the scroll entirely, laying out all thirty feet of paper, and it will be an unmasking of the past, a reveal of his own forgotten work. He hopes that he will surprise himself and that the scroll will illustrate a certain evolution. Next he sets the Anatolia catalog on the table before him. He carefully cuts out the pop stain, removing the clump of sticky pages. He lifts the cutaway to his nose and inhales before setting it next to his can of pop.

The first page of the catalog shows a group of girls at a Parisian sidewalk cafe, some sitting, some standing. They point, their faces full of amused surprise, at something that Larry cut away from the bottom of the page. Their clothing mixes colors and patterns, argyle tights with a striped jumper, plum boots with an orange skirt. The mixture works somehow, however unlikely it would seem if it were described to him. Miniature cakes and tea cups dot the table.

A few pages back, the girls are older, perhaps twelve to fifteen. The clothing is more sophisticated, blouses with frills, rich colors, tucks and darts that can accentuate their developing figures. This is a nice age, Larry thinks, when they no longer look like dolls. He places his finger tip on the face of one of the models. He calls this the “filly age,” when girls’ legs grow too fast for the rest of them to keep up. These girls wear short pleated skirts with thigh-highs and red loafers. He looks at the back of the page to see what will be ruined before taking up his scissors. The scissors were designed for trimming eyebrows, but Larry finds their small size useful for his work. He has to get around so many tiny curves. He carefully cuts out two girls who stand with their arms around each other, sharing a secret. Their gaze leaves the page to engage Larry, as though the secret is about him and it makes him want to be in on it even more.

The back of the catalog contains a lingerie section. The young girls model their panties and undershirts or training bras. For the older girls, the cut and style of the clothing is again more mature. A simple blush undershirt with a bow at the center becomes a nude camisole with spaghetti straps. It hugs the girl’s ribcage and Larry can tell by looking closely that the model does not wear a bra under the camisole. Her nipples are ever so faintly outlined against the fabric of the top. There is a two-page spread of girls in their underwear having a pillow fight on a large white bed. The air is filled with down and the girls are caught unselfconsciously in mid-jump, their hair flying off their shoulders, their eyes bright and smiles wide. Larry can practically hear the giggles. He picks up his scissors and, hunching over his work, begins to cut.

The sun has set and his stomach is growling by the time he stops cutting out pictures. The table is covered in delicate slips of paper, each one a thing of beauty. Larry decides to work a little longer before he gets dinner, so he takes out an expandable folder and opens it on his lap. In each pocket is a collection of his images: flowers, butterflies, toys, body parts, girls, boys. He selects from each pocket a few images that inspire him, images that will finally make it onto the scroll. He lays things out side by side, considers them together, mixing the old collection with the new. Sometimes he cuts one element apart and affixes a piece of it to another. A torso here, limbs there, random heads, all parts that came off of one image and might be later attached to another. Larry snips and constructs, building his own creatures. When at last his creations are laid out and all that remains is to arrange and glue them onto the scroll, he decides to break for dinner.

The macaroni is boiling on the stove and he has set out his milk and margarine next to the packet of cheese. There is a knock on his door. Larry is not expecting anyone, but since he has lights on, whoever is at his door knows someone is home. Several times a year Jehovah’s Witnesses descend from the street to knock at his door, probably believing that anyone in a ground-level apartment like his must be in need of salvation. He opens the door with the chain on, prepared to tell whoever it is to go away.

It is Sarah and Norman. 

“Hi Larry,” she says, smiling through the crack he has opened into his world. Norman gives a little nod over her shoulder. “You said we could come by any time?” She is holding a plate covered in tin foil shaped into a careful mound. She lifts it toward him, her smile crackling across more of her face.

“Sure. Just let me tidy me up for a minute.” He looks over his shoulder then back at his sister, his face pleading in a way he does not intend. 

“It’s only us. We have a messy house ourselves. Just let us in and we won’t stay long.” 

“I don’t know, Sarah. Just give me a minute.”

“Honey, he doesn’t want guests right now. Let’s just go.” Norman’s voice is low and barely constrains his desire to leave.

“All right. Just let me… Larry? Larry, I made you some cupcakes for your birthday. I know it’s not until Saturday, but I felt like baking today. Just take the cupcakes.”

Larry nods at his sister. She looks more like their mother every time he sees her, the droop over the eyes becoming more prominent as her cheeks get thin. He shuts the door and unhooks the chain. Just as he begins to pull it open again, the sound of water striking the burner startles him. He rushes to the stove as the water swells in a mound of froth and runs down the pan to bounce and hiss around the burner. He moves the pan and shuts off the flame.

When he turns around, his sister and brother-in-law have stepped inside the door. Her mouth is open. Norman’s face is turning red as he balls his broad hands at his side. Sarah’s lip quivers.

“What is this?”

“It, ah…” he stutters, “it’s art.” Larry steps closer to the table, puts his hands on his scroll as though he is going to unroll it and show them, as though it can prove something. “I’m working on a collage.”

“A collage?” Norman says. He is shaking and unballs one hand to sweep it over his head and rub at the back of his neck. “This isn’t art.”

“Norman.” Sarah’s voice is barely a whisper. She does not know what to do. She can imagine no excuses that would make this better. She hears her mother, “Family sticks together.” She wants to scream. She wants to undo everything that has been done. She raises a trembling hand to her husband’s chest without looking behind her. She does not have to see him to know where he is or what he is thinking. She knows and it makes her stomach twist.

“This isn’t art,” he says again.

“You should go. Just go.”

But Norman steps around Sarah to the table and he touches Larry’s things. He picks up one of the creations, a combination of the torso of a girl in a bra and panties with the legs in the thigh-highs and red loafers. The head he chose was from the section at the front of the catalog, a girl wearing an orange headband, her hair in pigtails. Norman stares at the creature for several seconds and then crushes it in his hand, his three fingers mutilating it. 

“Just go now!” Larry shouts at them. He does not want them in his apartment. He does not want them looking at his art. 

Norman grabs the scroll off the table and pushes open the finished side, letting it drop onto the floor and roll across the kitchen toward the stove. “What the fuck?” he cries.

Sarah is standing on the other side of the kitchen table, across from Larry. She is holding the cupcakes so the plate is cradled to her chest, and she is sobbing. 

Larry grabs the scroll off the dirty floor, sorry that he has not swept in so long, and begins rolling it up again. Norman snatches up the other end and rips. He rips the paper everywhere he can get his hands on it, tugging it out of Larry’s arms, drawing it off the roll he’s trying to protect. Larry yells, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

And Norman does. He stops tearing the paper and reaches for Larry. He shoves the scroll out of his arms and yanks Larry toward him by the collar. “I swear to God, if I ever hear of you hurting any kids, I’ll kill you myself.”

Sarah wails. It is shrill and unexpected and she does not know herself if she is shocked by her husband’s threat of violence or by the relief that comes with his pronouncement. 

Norman shakes Larry and his head rocks on his shoulders. “Don’t come to work. Ever. You got me? Don’t ever come to work again, you fucking freak!” He shoves Larry, releasing him so that he slams into his refrigerator and the contents inside clink and rattle. As Norman turns to leave, he picks up the scroll and tucks it under his arm. “Come on, Sarah.” He turns her gently toward the door, though she keeps looking at her brother, staring over her shoulder even as she steps away.

Larry scrambles off the floor and launches at Norman. He grabs the scroll and tugs it out of Norman’s grasp. Norman spins and reaches. He connects with Larry, grabbing the back of his shirt and yanking. Norman is a man who knows how to fight. Though he gave up brawling when he married Sarah, he finds the movements are reflexive, his instincts in tact after all these years. He draws back his right arm as he releases Larry’s shirt from his left hand. Larry is off-balance, stumbling as he turns. Norman puts his weight behind the punch, using his back and shoulders, twisting on the follow-through. Larry’s eyes are small with a downward turn at the outside corners. The stubble on his cheek grazes Norman’s knuckles like coarse sandpaper as he connects with the jaw. Larry’s cleft chin folds in on itself as his face is reshaped by the punch. His mouth opens, his teeth cutting Norman’s hand. One of them is knocked loose. When he lands on his back, the wind and a small yellow tooth are knocked out of him. 

Norman draws his arm back for a second go, but Sarah steps in front of him, her face terrified. He can barely see her even though she is right there, begging him. He feels like the blood is draining from his head and he hears her, feels her touch on his arm. He looks at Larry lying on the floor, his paper clutched to him, and he knows if he does not go with Sarah right now he will do something bad. He lets her lead him through the door and up the concrete steps to the sidewalk.

“There’s nothing wrong with my art!” Larry yells after them. 

The plate of cupcakes crashes against Larry’s window with a flash of silver foil. Larry sees his sister’s shoes briefly, suede mules, and then they hurry away. 

He stands up slowly, the tattered scroll in his arms. He goes to the door and shuts it, locks it. Then he stands under his window. The view has been obscured by a smear of frosting, but from this angle he can see the orb of the street lamp on the corner, its yellowish glow a constant, a permanent full moon. People walk by, cross the lamp with their hurried steps. He wears brown wingtips. She maroon pumps. Between the parents is a pair of little feet in patent leather Mary Janes. The hem of a velvet dress is visible above a ruffled petticoat. The sight of which makes Larry cry, and his lip quivers. 

The scroll has been mangled. Much of it is torn and lying on the floor, the pieces on the table were swept off and trodden on. Larry picks everything up, loading his arms with scraps. He carries them into his bedroom where the blackout cloth is always up, and spreads them over the bed. 

His shoulders throb where he hit the fridge. His swollen face aches and he can taste blood from his cracked lip and the loss of his tooth. Light from the kitchen cuts across the room at a diagonal, creating dark and light halves. Larry steps from the light to the dark and takes off his clothes. He drops them on the floor and climbs onto his bed. The Creature looks out into the darkness. Larry curls onto his side and gathers to him the scraps of paper, collecting them against his skin like something precious.

 

—end—