I should have killed you in the womb.
That’s a joke between James and Andrew Calvery. Something started in childhood now kept between them as a catchphrase. It doesn’t make sense; James is thirty-nine and his brother a year younger. The brothers were never roommates in the ol’ uterus. They don’t mean it when they say it, not really. But there are times, like now, when James sees a text from his brother asking to meet at Harley’s for a drink, that he wonders.
A nano-second of consideration birthed in amniotic fluid of annoyance.
He laughs to himself, thinking of two tiny fetuses battling in an epic confrontation. Their raisin eyes locked on each other. Landing smacks and blows with tiny flippers. Dramatic orchestra music blaring in the background.
Oh James, you’re so fucking clever. What the hell is wrong with you?
It’s seven-thirty at night and the pillow cradles James’ head in that perfect way you pray for. The mattress feels the best kind of right. He understands Goldilocks’ obsession. It’s bliss under fleece; safe and quiet, and there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.
A baby in the womb not ready for birth. His brother is the doctor dragging him out.
But family comes first, Dad used to say. Mom still does. It’s the Calvery family motto that overrides his brain and orders his body out of bed. His back curses him and his hip makes promises in pain. He tastes wretched phlegm and scrapes crust off his lip.
Work was brutal today, hence the late nap. Naomi called out and he had to run back-up on the cash register. Between that and unloading cases of soda and totes of canned goods, his body wasn’t happy with his choice of occupation. Being an Assistant Manager at Save-Mart is a young man’s game, and it gets harder every day.
Jesus hates you, he thinks. He can’t prove it, but it must be true. Mom taught him that song when he was little. Jesus loves you, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. But somewhere along the way, he’d slighted him.
Ghosted by Jesus.
Mom also said Jesus was white because his picture was, so what did she know?
She found ol’ JC after she got clean. Traded in her addiction to heroin for dependency on scripture. James spent his teenage years hearing of the perfect man who died for him and James still owed him a debt he could never repay.
James doesn’t pray these days, he begs. The same thing with a different audience. Begs to not get sick because he can’t afford a doctor. Pleading work won’t cut his hours or his car won’t make a weird sound.
In the bathroom, he pisses and fills the toilet with dark yellow waste. It’s too dark, he thinks. He read an article about it. James is always reading click-bait articles telling him how he does everything wrong. They are his Bible in times-roman. Not drinking enough water. Not enough vegetables. Exercising wrong. Sleeping wrong.
Thou urine shall be clear.
He pats his round belly to confirm. Too much sugar and processed foods. Gluten is blasphemy, and he sucks the teat of the golden calf for the sinful dairy. How’d Jesus get those sweet abs, anyway?
You fat piece of shit, he thinks. But it’s not him. It’s the presence. The voice.
He doesn’t remember when it came into his life. Sometimes he thinks it’s always been with him, following and stalking out of the corner of his eye. Waiting to jump out; merciless and without motive; pinning him down and sitting on his chest. In high school, it wrapped itself around his legs and drugged him with apathy. He’d cut himself trying to let it seep out the way they used leeches in bloodletting.
In his twenties he tried to kill it with booze and weed, with unhealthy relationships and strangers he called friends. The alcohol slowed it down. But it can never die, he thinks. Jesus stopped taking his calls around then. When James stopped loving himself, when he abused the body made from Him, he took it personal.
Such a touchy fellow, that Jesus.
He doesn’t know what it is and doesn’t care. All the doctors have different names for it and pills that might as well been snake oil. It has no form other than voice. It’s sneaky and insidious. Always there, always waiting to pounce; a lion on rotted carrion.
Sometimes he thinks it’s a parasite. A specter comprising all the worlds’ sadness and pain infecting him with its black, oily tendrils and digging out parts of his soul. Leaving him hollow and weak. A living dead man wandering the earth aimlessly like a phantom.
Is Jesus scared of it?
Other times it follows him and mocks. Cruel taunts enter his ears like smoke from burning coal. Stay here. Stay in bed. There are no words, of course. But the message is simple in a vocabulary only he can hear. Feelings instead of letters and thoughts instead of words.
James splashes chilly water on his face and brushes his brown hair. Grey has infected it and the infection is spreading. He smiles thinking of his brother; Andrew’s hairline starting at the back of his head and shaved short to keep you from noticing. The grey annexing his goatee. Life hadn’t given his brother everything after all. He watches the tired wraith in the mirror pop a Lexapro.
Don’t look at me like that.
He throws on a pair of dockers and a long sleeve t-shirt. The uniform of the apathetic. Downstairs in the living room, he grabs his keys off the pile of ignored bills and mattress store flyers. Every step on the hollow hardwood makes it yelp. The thin drywall joins it. Everything in this house makes a sound. Like a supermodel with cancer; nice on the outside but broken on the inside.
Don’t do it. Stay here. You don’t want to go out.
James texts his brother:
“Be there in 20.”
Outside, he closes the rusted screen door that’s holding on for dear life. He sees his once white vinyl siding yellowing and decaying. His grass is dying under the June sun. The house is needy and self-centered. Always wanting something. Everything and everyone always needs something from him. What about me? he thinks.
His Nissan sleeps in the street. Wounded and scarred from war. The battle at the Wal-Mart parking lot. Last stand on 695. The siege at Walgreens. Inside is a sauna of polyester and plastic. He prays it won’t start so he has an excuse. But of course it does and he’s terrified he put the thought out in the universe.
What if Jesus picked that one time to answer the phone?
…
Dublin, Maryland stole its name from Ireland. Why make a name when you can steal it? James learned that in high school. John Smith, the guy from Pocahontas, discovered it. It was the first suburb of Baltimore County. In the nineteen-hundreds, Bethlehem Steel bought most of it to give its workers somewhere to live. He knew that because his parents worked there, before it left town for someone better.
Even towns can get heartbroken.
The streets are a grid pattern and named after ships. Flanking them are houses with steeply pitched roofs and stucco skin. In World War I, white people did what white people do when there’s money to be had. They flooded into Dublin, shooing the black workers into a corner of town they named Parks Station.
When Bethlehem left and took the jobs in the divorce, Dublin limped along. Dialysis of undeserved town pride, brainwashing, and indoctrination. People that can’t afford to leave a place develop Stockholm Syndrome real quick. There’s no quicker way to start a bar fight than saying Dublin sucks. Or calling it by what the neighboring towns call it: a hillbilly ghetto. Love it or leave it, you’d hear.
Town pride is huge in Dublin. That’s why James knows so much about it. High school spent more time teaching about the town than it did social studies or math. Maybe that’s why none of them get out. Hardly anyone he knows went to college. Fewer ever leave. Dublin is the kidnapper feeding you and telling you everything’s going to be fine. For James, with every year that passes, the chance of finding an open window or unlocked door diminished.
But he still looks.
The older he gets, the less he understands it. One drive through this place and you’d be hard pressed to find anything to be proud of. All he sees are things you’d leave out if you were describing it to someone.
The stench in the air from the waste treatment plant overlooking the town. Two golden eggs like a castle of shit making summer smell like boiling trash. Corpses of shopping centers where firework stands or tax places pop in depending on the month. No-name convenience stores and gas stations and that one building that’s been five different things in five years.
…
James pulls into the parking lot at Harley’s. After parking, he stares at the building, preparing himself. Going in a public place takes preparation. People looking at him, their eyes crawling over his body like ants. His body would sweat in the wrong places and his senses would choke on input.
The way of suffering with eyeball whips.
His bibles say inhale for five, hold for five, exhale for five. He does so loudly. He’s at a beach and hears waves crash into rocks. He asks his heart nicely to slow down.
No one’s looking at me. No one’s talking about me.
They’re all looking at you and laughing.
He walks through a sea of pickup trucks and motorcycles and a laughing crowd of smokers banished like lepers to the door. Inside is dim and refreshingly cool. Betty tends the bar and the neon lights from the beer signs make her long black hair shimmer. Andrew is at the bar wearing his Orioles cap and Under Armor t-shirt.
“There you are. Betty? Two Bud-Lights, darling.”
“What, you’re ordering for me now?” James says as he takes the stool next to his brother.
“Like you were gonna get something else. You want a martini, James Bond? One of those little pussy drinks with the umbrella?”
“Screw you.”
Betty’s in front of them like lightning. Faster than the naked eye, her hand grabs the bottle opener from her back pocket. The caps fly off the bottles and hit the bar with a weak ding. The beers are on coasters in front of them before they know it.
“God, I’d like to use her thighs as earmuffs,” Andrew says.
“Is that Shakespeare?”
“Well, we all can’t be writers. How’s that going, by the way?”
“It’s hard to find time with work and all. Had a few shorts accepted awhile back.”
“That’s great, man. I always knew you’d be a big, famous writer.”
“Hardly. They’re small mags. Non-paying. The big ones take forever to get back to you. Writing is a slow, slow business.”
“I still don’t know why you won’t let me or Mom read them.”
“Oh god, no. I couldn’t handle the pressure.”
That is a lie. James has been writing off and on for twenty years. He sends his stuff to strangers online and editors and agents and anyone that will take them. The real reason he doesn’t let his family read is because he writes about them. His childhood. Old friends and new. His life. The names are changed, but the disguises are pitiful.
Glasses on Superman.
A couple sits on the other side of the bar. The woman is fit and gorgeous. The man is slender, with an old-english beard, long stringy hair, and horned-rimmed glasses. Andrew stabs James with his elbow and points. He’s not subtle.
“Jesus, check out lumberjack Jesus over there. Jared Leto looking mother fucker. How the hell does a bitch like that get a girl like her?” Andrew says.
Frosty panic grabs James by the thigh and makes his foot tap rapidly on the sticky barroom floor. Anxiety dribbles his leg down the court of fear. This is why he hates going out with his brother. Andrew is a social outlaw. The maverick in a herd of manners. They’d once been kicked out of a strip club when Andrew wouldn’t stop loudly critiquing the flaws he saw in the dancer’s bodies and making condescending jokes at the ladies when they sat next to them.
“Will you keep your voice down? And stop pointing?”
“Why? Fuck him, what’s that beta cuck going to do? Look at him. Dude has zero testosterone.”
“It’s frigging rude. They’ll think we’re a bunch of assholes.”
“So? That’s your problem; always caring what people think of you. Not me.”
Everyone tells James what his problems are. Their answers vary, but they share them freely and often. Most people have that person they go to for advice or share issues with. James is the one you go to when you want to find flaws instead of sharing them.
Looking for easter eggs is more fun than hiding them.
“Heard from Sarah lately?” James says.
“Christ, every once in a while she pops up, asking Mom for money.”
“Still? Jesus.”
Sarah is their sister. Nine years younger than James. In their twenties, she was the one that had that one drink too many. Smoked weed longer than you should. The one that stayed at the party too long.
Sarah never left the party.
She’d inherited their mother’s love of heroin. Unlike their mother, she hadn’t found Jesus yet. James doesn’t think she’s looking very hard. She lives her life with her purse on her shoulder. Always on her way somewhere.
Always on her way out.
“She’s a god-damned junkie. Last time she showed up she was with a black guy. That’s our sister now, out fucking gangbangers.”
“I don’t know why Mom keeps giving her money. Bailing her out of jail. She’s only enabling her.”
“You know Mom. That’s her baby girl and always will be. It kills me, seeing Sarah break her heart like that.”
James sips his drink and remembers when childhood was beer and cookouts. The three of them running in the backyard while their parents sat and smoked with friends. The grown-ups hacked when they laughed. Dandelions and honeysuckles and scabbed knees. That was a long time ago in a galaxy far away.
“Anyway, what are you up to?” James says.
“You know me, always killing it. That reminds me, I got an idea for you.”
Andrew hasn’t worked in ten years. Not since he climbed a shelf at Home Depot trying to reach a case of light bulbs that weren’t on the shelf. He plummeted to the ground like King Kong and tore his meniscus. Against all laws of liability and common sense, he sued for negligence and won.
As a member of the retail community, it made James livid. All he thought about was the poor schmuck who’d been working the department that day. Probably some kid or retiree. He forgot to fill one shelf one time and he was probably fired so his brother could retire. James had his own scare a while back at the store. Some lady dumped Palmolive all over the floor and claimed she slipped. Thankfully, there were cameras and the prospective scandal of his retail carrier was avoided.
He often wonders if Home Depot has cameras.
“I’m all ears.”
“It’s this new business I’m thinking of investing in. You ready? It’s called FireLounge Media.”
“And what, pray tell, is FireLounge Media?”
“An online music store. We put down money for a subscription, then we sell subscriptions and music to others. They sell music through their own sites. And the cream rises to the top.”
“How is that not a pyramid scheme?”
“No, no. It’s legit, I looked it up. It’s all over Facebook. It’s called concentric retail. Concentric means circle. A circle, James. ”
Last month it was day trading. Before that, real estate investments. House flipping. The one that came closest to happening was the bar. For that one, James tried to help with telling Andrew what he should do.
Over beers and notepads, they’d laughed and clapped at James’s brilliance. No male bartenders. “Closing Time” and “Don’t Stop Believing” banned from the jukebox. No standing behind people seated at the bar.
When James brought it up a week later, Andrew sucked his teeth and moved on. He is a dog chasing ideas made of bone. Once the marrow is sucked, he grows bored and eats grass.
“Yeah, I don’t have the money right now. Bills, you know? But I hope it works out for you.”
“Tell me about it. Gas is ridiculous. My taxes are insane. But that’s the liberals you voted in. Fighting for the parasites leaching off the working man, while the lazy blacks and Mexicans collect unemployment checks.”
“White people collect unemployment, too.”
“Not like the blacks. And the immigrants coming in? Taking our jobs?”
“What job? You don’t have a job. You don’t even have any bills, you live with Mom. You have it easier than anyone.”
“You know what I mean. It’s fucking socialism.”
“You have no idea what socialism…never mind. Can we not do this tonight? I don’t have the energy.”
He has to stop this infection before it spreads. James knows what his brother’s like when he jumps down the rant slide. Whatever point he’ll bring up, Andrew will counter with three ridiculous sources. He’s not smarter or better informed; he just talks faster. The words come at you like buckshot and he takes the fact you’re bleeding out on the ground, not able to answer, as victory.
“You know I’m right, you don’t want to admit it. Media’s got you brainwashed man, educate yourself.”
There is no subject Andrew does not have an opinion on. He speaks with the confidence only the ignorant possess. Once the gospel leaves his mouth, it becomes undeniable. To attack or question it is liberal blasphemy.
His proverbs are simple. America is the kingdom God always wanted. Christian white men are going through persecution rivaling the Jews’s. The liberals want to destroy capitalism and give hand outs to everyone. Free speech is freedom from consequence. Football is life. No story or experience shall supersede his own.
Andrew has spoken.
“Yeah, yeah.” James says.
“Any plans for your birthday? Twenty-first is right around the corner.”
“I don’t know, thought I might take a nice bath, dim the lights, and wallow in self-despair.”
“Fuck that. We’re going to have a party, man. A good old fashioned, bar hopping bender. I know I would if I was turning forty. God, you’re old.”
“You’ll be there next year. Then we’ll see how funny it is.”
“I’m only messing with you,” Andrew says. He pulls the orange plastic bottle from his pocket and pops two Percocet. Knee pain is the price he pays to live in financial freedom. Long ago James gave up asking his brother to cut down on them. “Shit, is that Anna?”
James looks across the bar and sees her sitting alone in the corner. He can spot that tangerine bob cut anywhere. Jade eyes fixed on her phone. Blue scrubs hanging off her willowy body. He’s tried for years to write about the way she makes his belly cold. Chilly and light and his skin snug and cozy. But he can never come close.
“It is indeed.”
“Christ, I’ll never understand how you fucked that up.”
James spends many hours trying to solve that equation. Usually in bed lying on his back. When no answers come he switches to his side and sticks a pillow between his legs. Under the blanket, over the blanket, then repeating the process.
He’s an unmatched sock tumbling in the dryer’s delicate cycle.
With Anna, everything was fine until it wasn’t. The man she fell in love with didn’t change or turn hateful or to the bottle like in the movies. Everyday she’d smile a little less and their kisses hello and goodbye became cold gestures out of habit.
The more he’d ask what’s wrong and what did I do the worse he seemed to make it. He found himself praying she wouldn’t be in a particular room he needed to go in. Many times he went hungry rather than take the chance of bumping into her in the kitchen.
“Pure dedication, apparently.”
“Come on, you two are made for each other. She’ll come around, you’ll see,” Andrew says.
“Hopefully before my bones are half dust.”
“Well, if it takes any longer, I’m going to have to shoot my shot.”
James guzzles his beer and stands. He hugs his brother and pats his back.
“I should have killed you in the womb,” James says.
“Right back at you, slick.”
He grabs his drink and wiggles off the stool. Walking with an undeserved confidence toward his former love. His current love. His everything. Seeing her sit alone and not with him feels wrong. He takes the seat next to her.
“Ms. Babel.”
“Mr. Calvery.”
“Is this seat taken?”
“It’s all yours.” James holds up two fingers to Betty and points to his beer and Anna’s screwdriver.
“Drinking alone, then? Such a lush,” he says.
“Well, we don’t all have racist, asshole brothers to drink with.”
“Come on, he’s not that bad.”
“I don’t know how you put up with him.”
Those words too often follow talk of his brother. James thinks of it as his catchphrase by now. It’s Andrew! I don’t know how you put up with him! Sometimes James knows and sometimes he doesn’t.
But the question is meaningless. Andrew is an absolute in his life. A fixed point in time that can’t be undone. Permanent. It’s like asking how you put up with a scar. Why waste energy on asking?
“You know how. He’s my brother. He’s a good guy, deep down.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Anyway, still rocking the scrubs? Rough day?”
“Yeah. Dr. Dart had a million appointments. All nasty pricks.”
Ten years ago, Anna got the job as a medical assistant at Dr. Dart’s office. In Dublin, medical and dental assistants are the closest anyone gets to the medical field. One of the more respectable jobs.
The white trash bourgeoisie.
Eighty percent of her life is in scrubs. She calls the visitors her patients. Her patients. Anna and her peers leave out the blood pressure taking and paperwork that make up most of their day.
They’re the opening act while the patients wait for Dr. Dart to take the stage.
“People are the worst.”
“Right? God, I just want to be finished with school.”
“You’ll get there. Before you know it, you’ll be a world-famous artist. Drinking Manhattans and smoking cigarettes out of one of those long holders.” He takes a chance and pats her back like it’s a landmine.
“All while smashing the patriarchy and eating the rich.”
They laugh. James thinks this is going well. If their relationship was only this; friendly banter and sharing feelings, they’d still be together. They excelled at the good times. It was the bad times that had to come along and fuck everything up. The bad times; determined to find all the cracks in their happiness and pry them wider with a crowbar.
“So, seeing anyone?” James asks.
“Now, is that any of your business?”
“It feels like it is.”
“No, James. I’m not seeing anyone. Don’t have the time. Work, school, nannying part-time. Taking care of Levi.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s fine most of the time. It’s just reminding him he has to shower, change his clothes, taking him to his appointments. I ask my Mom for help sometimes, but you know how that goes. It’s so much.”
Levi is Anna’s older brother. When they were kids, he nearly drowned in their backyard pool. He survived but has been ten-years old ever since. When Anna was twenty, her mother decided it was too much to deal with, so Anna took her brother in.
“You’re doing the best you can. He’s lucky to have you.”
“Yeah, I am pretty amazing.”
“That you are, my dear. So, you are still single. Interesting.”
“James?”
“Anna?”
“I love you. I always will. But we’re taking two different directions in life.”
“What if I take a detour?”
“You could have years ago if you wanted to. Remember? We were going to blow this shitty town. Move to New York. You’d be a writer. I’d be a painter.”
“It’s not that easy. Real life is complicated.”
“I know that. It’s hard work. It’s what I’m doing now, busting my ass trying to make it. I can’t be with someone that’s afraid to reach higher and go for what he wants.”
“I’m not afraid. I hate it here. But I can’t up and leave my family over a dream. Family comes first.”
“It’s not about moving. You have so much potential. But you’re terrified of failure, of what people would say, so you don’t do anything. And you take that resentment and turn it inward. The self-deprecation gets old. ”
“Anna, I love you, I always have. It doesn’t have to be this complicated. I make you happy, you make me happy. What else do we need?”
“I love you too. But it’s hard to love someone who doesn’t love himself. You want someone to make you happy. I want someone to share happiness with. Want my advice? Keep writing. You’re good at it. Feel good about that, have some pride.”
“Hmm. My magic eight ball here says outlook not so good.”
“I have faith in you. Even if you don’t.”
“Do you think . . . is there a chance one day? For us?”
“I don’t have a magic eight ball. Maybe we find our way back to each other. Maybe not. But I can’t sit around waiting. Goodnight, James.”
She stands and kisses his cheek before she leaves. It’s a courtesy; loveless and empty. James sips his beer as her words linger around him. Mixing with the scent of her cocoa butter lotion. He wants to shoo them away like gnats. They’re in his eyes and ears. A clip playing on repeat.
You’re so fucking stupid.
…
Back at home, James stares at the laptop, a blank document open. He takes a joint from the cigar box he still hides out of habit. In his day weed was to be hidden. Now he flashes his insurance card at the dispensary and he gets a thank you and a come again like he’s buying a soda.
Brave new world.
The doctor told him it’d help with his anxiety. He’s not wrong. He lights it and breathes in peace.
He puffs as his other hand hovers over the keyboard. A blank page is like the ocean; massively beautiful in its freedom and possibilities. Terrifyingly lonely and intimidating. Where do you go when you can go anywhere? He types:
HILLYBILLY GHETTO
Anna’s words followed him home. He’d asked them to stop following him but they didn’t take the hint. How rude. He thinks about his brother. His sister. Mom. His job. His life. His past. His future. What does he want?
He wants her. No, he wants to be a man worthy of her. Someone she deserves. The guy she can’t stop talking and posting about on Instagram. Lots of heart emojis. Not someone you settle for, like getting generic because they’re out of Coke. James pops a pill and uses his hands as a washcloth on his face.
I WANT TO BE COKE
I WANT TO BE A MILLION HEART EMOJIS
He wants to leave this prison and never look back. Call Mom on the weekends. Send his brother funny texts. Not forty and ringing up toothpaste and deodorant and arguing with housewives about coupons. To be free of the shackles of geography and a cage of DNA.
You’ll fail. You’ll never be good enough.
He deletes his affirmations and types:
HILLYBILLY GHETTO
A NOVEL
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
So much to say and nothing to write.
The caffeine hits his stomach and his brain rises and stretches. He looks up apartments in New York. Best places to eat. Best bars in the Big Apple. He’s never heard of Entrana Skirt Steak or drank an Old-Fashioned.
He wants to try.
He goes to his scripture and searches for workouts and diets. Psalms of strength training and Slim-Fast. Proverbs of protein, carbs, and fat. Looking at the pictures of topless men with bodies carved from marble make him grab the fat around his belly.
Staring at the fit men and he’s never felt uglier. They’re how a man is supposed to look, and he looks like a flabby monster. A Frankenstein built from processed food and high fructose corn syrup. He feels the depression nibbling at his toes. James kicks it away and despair turns to anger. To focus.
No! Not this time!
James grabs his spiral notebook and pen and writes his New Testament.
The Bible: The director’s cut.
Every day, he will wake up at five. Workout thirty minutes. Write two-thousand words. If the words fight, he’ll drag them out kicking and screaming. No more junk food. His communion will be eggs, chicken breast, and vegetables.
I am not here. I am risen.
Who are you kidding? You’ll make it a week.
No. I said not this time, he thinks. His apostles, coffee and Lexipro, are hard at work fixing serotonin and mining dopamine. He looks ahead at the dark, barren highway to Jericho. He’s on the side of the road, bleeding and beaten by doubt. The priest passes him. The Levite ignores him. But the Samaritan stops. He reaches out his hand and James takes it.
Come on, old man. You’re gonna make it, he says.
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