Books by DAR

Flipping For It

Excerpts: Pages 144-150

John-John has a twenty-four hour flu. All day Saturday he lies listless in his crib, not caring to suck his thumb, not caring to do anything but stare upward or sideways. Jane and Thomas want to stay close to him, even while keeping their distance from each other. Sometimes during the day Thomas comes into his room to stroke his belly and smile down at the unsmiling face, sometimes Jane comes in to do the same. There is a moment in the early evening when by separate doors both parents come into his room simultaneously, two ringless right hands stroke the tiny tanned chest. Thomas has to leave.

At Duke’s club in Providence Thomas sits on a stool drinking Mount Gay and makes up a list of people who would be willing to testify to the custody analyst on behalf of his moral character: allies. Soon he orders a Myers’s and begins to make up a list of those who’d testify on behalf of Jane’s character: enemies. He switches off between Myers’s and Mount Gay a few more times, and then beside him an English girl smoking a black cigarette and wearing a silver plastic barbed-wire necklace like Jane’s says, “Writing sonnets?”

Thomas tells her in detail what he is doing.

When he finishes, the girl winds one link of her necklace around her finger, assesses him a minute, then lets her smoke out and pulls her stool closer and says it so happens she is spouseless, too. Though a bit wildly so, it seems; she is being divorced after only six weeks of marriage. Her name is Vanessa, and for the first time in three weeks Thomas knows something besides his wife is happening in his heart. Vanessa is lovely. Vanessa is sharp—one of those sharp English free spirits who between high-powered affairs goes to live in pirate towns like Port-au-Prince—and it’s hard for her to stop loving her husband even if he is a psychopath. Thomas and Vanessa hit it off right away. She is trying her best to be lighthearted, and he is trying his best to be lighthearted, and they decide to try being lighthearted together. They sit at a table. Thomas orders a bowl of spinach and white bean soup, which sounds awful but tastes great, Vanessa orders chocolate pudding, cup after cup of it—the perfect dish for an elegant soon-to-be-divorced medical resident (a legitimate medical person, not the “pre-op” type but an OB training at Rhode Island Hospital). And she is elegant, with an elegant tattoo of a lobster with castanets clapping its way down from her clavicle into her cloud-colored silk blouse. Thomas appreciates the tattoo. It gives her an edge. By midnight Thomas feels he is falling temporarily in love. Someone to make his heart . . . hopen! He finds himself telling her things that feel good to tell: how beautiful she is, how grateful he is that she is so beautiful, especially her legs, which look unbeatable in long apple-green socks and baggies. Thomas keeps fingering a rubber thingee in his pocket that feels like a condom, but when he pulls it out he sees it is a fat red rubber band like the one used to de-billy Lucky; where did that come from? He tells her about that, too. She is awfully sympathetic for a twenty-five-year-old—must be the lobster cheerfully snapping at her breast—but she doesn’t really understand, at first, about children.

“Most men would love to have their wives take the kids, wouldn’t they?—and they get to borrow them once a month and have fun with them,” Vanessa says.

“Yuh, well,” Thomas says. He takes out his wallet to show her some pictures of his children, but all he can find is a photo of Lucky the castrated goat. Lucky stares at them with red flash-blinded eyes that seem to grow wider and smaller and wider again, as if wondering what is going to happen next.

This: Thomas kisses Vanessa quietly on the mouth.

They sit in silence, staring at the goat.

“I don’t even have a gerbil,” Vanessa says.

“You don’t even have a gerbil?” Thomas asks.

“Threw her away,” Vanessa says. “Threw her at him.”

“Boy, divorce.”

“You said it.”

Lucky’s flash-blinded eyes in the photograph keep seeming to grow wider and smaller and wider again. For two more hours Lucky’s eyes keep coming up and almost swallowing them. It is extremely pleasant. Looking at Vanessa’s lovely face for two more hours, not kissing her again but content to breathe her in and out across the table, Thomas gets the feeling her mouth is imprinted on his; setting his lips, he feels himself taking on the manner in which she sets her lips. They are in profound agreement about most important subjects: how great refrigerators smell when they’re filled, how stinky when they’re empty. And the same with houses, they agree. And the same with hearts. Profound agreement. But Thomas keeps forgetting her name.

“What’s your name again?”

“Vanessa.”

“Oh, right.”

“Me girl. You boy.”

“Yuh, I remember.”

“You do?”

Thomas looks at her. “Baa,” he says.

Vanessa laughs. “You know, speaking from a medical point of view—and I’ve just completed a trimester on male reproduction—I’m not sure the rubber-band method of castration is the most hygienic way to go,” she says.
“No?”

“Not at all. Frankly, I’m worried about him. Castration is not something you fool around with without medical supervision. But luckily,” she says, “I’m available to come check him, if you like.”

Thomas looks at her. “Check my goat’s castration? Now?”

“I’m wild,” Vanessa says. Smiling, she plants a spoonful of chocolate pudding in Thomas’s mouth. “You can be wild, too.”

In two minutes they are in Thomas’s Band-Aid—covered Mustang with the top down. In twelve minutes they are under the stars of Thomas’s yard, where Lucky is staring at them as though they’re crazy—blue-colored terror in the pale furtive eyes.

“I don’t believe this,” Thomas whispers.

“I don’t believe it, either,” Vanessa says. “Do you have a candle or something?”

Thomas holds a candle high while Vanessa upends the terrified goat to his back and elegantly inspects the operation. “Sometimes the rubber band stays on after it’s done its work, causing nothing but unnecessary discomfort. Ah, you see?” she says, flipping something off and adroitly discarding it. “Voilà!”

She rises to her feet to face Thomas. The goat rises, also, wagging his little white tail happily and peering up at them both as though now maybe he really can trust them.

“Too bad you don’t have photos of the rest of your family,” Vanessa says.

“I can show you the rest of the family for real,” Thomas says.

“What do you mean, ‘for real’?”

“I can give you a tour. Come on. They’re all deep sleepers.”

“I don’t believe this,” Vanessa whispers.

“Me neither,” says Thomas. “Let’s take off our shoes.”

Thomas holds the candle high and leads the way through the first floor while they talk about Vanessa’s divorce some more.

“I’m guess I’m relieved, in a way, because he did want to restrict me,” Vanessa whispers, tiptoeing past the series of connect-the-dot drawings he’s hung, past the mousetraps right and left.

“How did he want to restrict you?” Thomas whispers. “I mean, in only six weeks?”

“My freedom,” Vanessa whispers.

Thomas holds the candle up to her face. “You don’t have money, do you?”

“No.”

“Good. Lucky for you,” Thomas says. He starts to lead the way upstairs.
Vanessa tugs at the back of his shirt. “Why’d you ask me that?”

“You were sounding spoiled,” Thomas says. “I wondered if you were spoiled about only your freedom, or if you were spoiled about money, too.”

“Oh,” Vanessa says.

They tiptoe past the black portrait of Jane and ascend to the attic bedroom to look down at the real Jane sleeping soundly before them on the low mattress.

“She’s very pretty,” Vanessa whispers.

“2 cute 2 be 4 gotten,” Thomas whispers back.

They muse a while, weaving slightly as the candlelight flickers through the room.

“Does she always have this many flowers?”

“She’s trying to make herself feel better,” Thomas says.

“It must be hard to breathe with them all.”

“She doesn’t always sleep with her mouth open like that.”

They watch Jane sleep some more.

“Do you sleep with your mouth open like that?” Thomas asks.

Vanessa gives him a that’s-for-me-to-know-and-you-to-find-out smile.
“Look at these legs,” Thomas says, giving Vanessa the candle while he proudly hikes up the bottom of the bed sheet. “Did you ever see legs like these?”

“I thought you said mine were unbeatable,” Vanessa pouts.

“Look at these feet, will you?”

Vanessa admits they’re good. “The skin is kind of mottled, though,” she points out.

“Where!?”

“There, on the callus. Where the skin has thickened. It’s got the texture of potato skin.”

“That’s from all the running around she has to do on nature walks,” Thomas whispers, defensively. “Give the girl a break, will you? I suppose you have better feet than that? Perfect feet?”

Vanessa hands Thomas back the candle and Thomas steadies her while she rolls off a long apple-green sock.

“I give up,” Thomas finally whispers. “Who can decide between the four fairest feet in the land?”

“You’re daft,” Vanessa says.

“Divorce,” Thomas says. They shrug in sympathy and tiptoe down to the second floor.

“Oh, don’t tell me—Tommy’s room,” Vanessa says. She waves at the hundreds of Chinese-style characters written in yellow magic marker all about the room. There are as many letter groupings of “Tommy” in this room as there are bouquets of “blowgonias” and “snatchdragons” in Jane’s room. Thomas cups the candle near Tommy’s face so no wax will drip.

“This is a hundred times more convincing than wallet photos,” Vanessa says.

“God,” Thomas says. He sighs and cups a hand under his heart as though to catch it leaping through his ribs.

They tiptoe out the door, past a tiny tan station wagon in a dozen pieces on the floor, and down the hall to John-John’s room. John-John is lying there in a Spider Crab T-shirt, his head coming out of the top of his ketchup bottle—and his eyes wide open. Exclamations of surprise from Thomas and Vanessa do not change John-John’s flu-filled expression. He stares up without smiling at the candle held by his father. He continues to stare unsmiling as the candle is passed to his father’s guest.

“How darling . . .”

Thomas lifts the baby in his arms and the baby clings tightly, the chipmunk heart.

“How divine . . .”

Father and son continue to cling tightly to each other, heart to heart.

“I think you should give the same tour to the custody analyst handling your divorce,” Vanessa says. “Have her take off her shoes and everything. God, what a picture. To think that you could lose each other.”

Thomas and John-John both turn to the woman with their eyes veiled. “Would you mind waiting down at the car for a minute?” Thomas asks. “I’ll be ready to drive you home in one minute.”