(FREE STUFF – FICTION)
He opened, as he always did, with words for which there was no adequate explanation or response.
“I met a man who keeps his eyeballs in his pockets, blind to the detritus within.”
I said nothing. He glanced at me. “The man – his name was Wallace, I believe — offered to play me a game of marbles, but as I had my cat’s eyes and the obvious advantage, I demurred.” He stepped into the doorway as I moved aside, his hands deep in his own pockets, rummaging determinedly. I heard the marbles click repeatedly against one another. He frowned. “Hold on. I’ve got something for you.” I waited, a smile arranged to greet his offering. Not finding what he wanted in his pockets, he began to pat at his shirt, as though its pocketless cotton might conceal the item he sought. Giving up on the shirt, he ran his hands through his hair, his face puzzled.
I grew impatient. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him the rest of the way into the house so I could close the door. “It doesn’t matter.”
He turned on me angrily, wrenching his arm from my grasp. “How exactly do you know what matters and doesn’t matter? You can’t determine what I find worthy in this world.” He eyed me suspiciously, patting his shirt again, folding his long thin arms against his body to send his fingers into his armpits, as though what he sought might be secreted against his skin. “It’s a folded piece of paper, a page. Do you have it?”
“How would I have it? You just got here, and you only just mentioned the paper.”
His hands still tucked into his armpits, he said nothing, instead lowering himself until he was crouched before me, his elbows pressed into his knees, his ass almost touching the ground, his chin pulled tight against his chest. I waited. He said something that sounded like, “The table of contents,” but when I asked him from what book the table of contents had been torn, he lifted his head to stare at me blankly. “Book? What book?”
“It will turn up. Whatever it is you’re looking for … it will turn up.”
“Perhaps.” He sighed and slowly rose to standing. “I have not found that to be the case, generally speaking.”
I patted his arm once, lightly, and then, as he turned his head to stare at my fingers, resisted the urge to touch him again. “You have not found what to be the case?”
“Why do you pretend to be stupid? It makes conversation so tiring.” He spoke slowly, walking ahead of me to settle himself on the living-room couch. “I have not found it to be the case that the things for which I am looking simply turn up.”
“Perhaps you have not found it to be the case because the case it is has not yet turned up,” I suggested in an overly jolly voice.
His upper lip curled in distaste. “Have you perhaps been eating lead paint?”
“Sorry.” I stood helplessly; this visit was going, as all visits with my brother tended to go, badly. I changed the subject. “When you called, you said you wanted to tell me something.”
His brow furrowed. “When I called?”
“Yes. You called. We spoke. On the phone. You announced you were arriving today at this time to tell me something. It is today and it is this time and you are here, and so what did you want to say?”
“Are you saying this visit was prearranged? How very peculiar.” He leaned back in the couch to lift and straighten his body away from its cushioned right angle, and he reached into a pants pocket for a small notebook and a tiny pencil. He licked the end of the pencil and consulted his notebook. “I have nothing here about visiting you today.”
“Oh my god. You called. We spoke. You are here. What do you want to tell me?”
Settling back into the couch, he allowed his head to loll and he shut his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was dreamy; I wasn’t certain he was addressing me. “The color of heavily creamered coffee … that’s what I want.”
I said nothing, thinking he might be about to drift off to sleep, but then he lifted his head and stared at me intently. “You know the color I mean? That exact color. I need that. If there’s a checklist, the hue must go to the very top of the priorities.” I nodded as though I understood, and he nodded as well. “I was thinking you could drive me to the hardware store, so that I could look at the paint samples. If I provide them with a color swatch, I imagine they will have a simpler time fulfilling my needs.”
Pleased to have been assigned an identifiable task, I nodded again. “Sure. That sounds fine.”
“Good. How long a process will this be, do you think?”
“The hardware store is about fifteen minutes away. Say an hour, all told.”
His look grew quizzical. “What?”
I repeated myself. “It will take about an hour to go to the hardware store and locate the paint sample you want and then return here. Did you want to leave now? I’m not sure what else you have planned for the day.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
I took a deep breath and tried again. I started with his name in hopes that it might focus his attention. “Samuel, is there any way you could tell me what you are talking about, and then I will try to match my conversation to yours?”
“That sounds sensible.” He thought for a few seconds. “Let’s see … I was talking about the adoption.”
I sank into the couch beside him. “What adoption?”
He spoke impatiently, as though we had been over this many times. “The twins. The adoption. I’m going to be a father.”
“You’re adopting twins? Since when?” And then, before I could stop the words from escaping my lips, I asked, “Who on earth would allow you to adopt children?”
He glared at me and then sniffed angrily. “I am a perfectly capable person, and if there are children who have no one, why wouldn’t the powers that be want those children to be with a perfectly capable person?”
I took a deep breath. “So have you spoken to anyone yet? About your plans, I mean. Have you met with any agencies?” I paused for a moment as a thought occurred to me. “Or do you know someone who wants you to adopt her children? Is that what this is about?”
His eyebrows shot skyward. “As though I would be friends with the sort of person who would abandon her children and leave them in my care forever.”
“Alright. So this is less of a plan and more of an idea at this point.”
“I’m not sure of the distinction you are making. All I need is a paint sample, and I’m good to go.”
“A paint sample … because …”
He grew increasingly exasperated with my stupidity. “The twins. A boy and girl, aged four years exactly. The color of heavily creamered coffee. They will need to match one another, of course.”
You want,” I spoke haltingly, incredulously, “to match your adopted children’s skin-tone to a paint sample?”
He ignored the tone in my voice, speaking dreamily again. “I have always wanted moolattos … twin moolattos.”
I corrected his pronunciation because that was simpler than addressing what he had actually said. “Mulatto … the accent is on the second syllable.”
“What did I say?”
“You said MOOlatto.”
“I am fairly certain I am correct.” He mouthed the word, trying out my suggestion, and then he shook his head. “MOOlatto, definitely; muLATto sounds ridiculous.”
“Yes, well … your way sounds as though you wish for small mixed-race cows. You are not correct, and anyway, you can’t go around telling people you want mulatto twins.”
He tried both versions again, his lips pursed exaggeratedly. “No, I quite prefer moolatto.”
“You definitely cannot go around telling people you want MOOlatto twins.”
“I don’t believe I am hitting the first syllable quite that hard.”
“You so are.”
He shifted gears. “So about the paint sample.”
“You cannot adopt children based on how well they match a paint sample.”
“You annoy me with your pronouncements. I submit that you do not know everything about how the world works.”
I waved my hand dismissively. “Fine. You take your paint sample and adopt your MOOlatto twins. I look forward to meeting them.”
“Darnell and Tabitha.”
“Umm … even in a reality in which you get to adopt these children, and I assure you we do not live in such a reality, you would not get to name them.”
“I think I would. Parents get to name their children.”
“Yes, if they are babies. You said you want preschool-age children. They will come with names already attached.”
“I’ll change them.”
“To Darnell and Tabitha.”
He nodded. “Obviously. The MOOlattos will have to adjust.”
“What exactly is your plan, Samuel? What are you going to do with these children?”
“I am going to raise them to be chicken curators.”
“You’re going to raise chickens?”
“Don’t be insane. You know that I have amassed quite a collection of stuffed and china hens and roosters over the course of my life. They currently number in the thousands, and they deserve an audience. I am going to open a museum to share my chickens with the world, and the MOOlattos will be my curators.” He looked at me. “The brilliance of this plan is undeniable.”
I dropped my head into my hands and said nothing for a moment. I stared at his shoes, heavy work-boots with the laces looped tightly around each silver hook. I reached to tap the top of his right boot. “What’s that?”
He lifted the foot in question. “What’s what?”
“It looks like you laced over a piece of paper.”
He was delighted. “Yes! That’s where I put it!” Reaching down to unlace the boot, he extricated the folded sheet of paper and handed it to me triumphantly. “There! That’s for you.”
I unfolded the sheet carefully. It had apparently been ripped from a book, its one length ragged and uneven; on the first side I examined was typed only a date: March 14th, 1966. He stabbed at the paper excitedly. “It’s your birthday! Your exact birthday … do you see?”
“Yes, I see.” I turned the sheet of paper over, and on the reverse was printed a single line of text along the top of the page: This page intentionally left blank.
He stabbed at the page again. “But it’s not, is it? It has not been left intentionally blank, because there is a message. There is a message about the emptiness! Don’t you see?”
“Yes.” I turned the sheet of paper back and forth, unsure what I was supposed to be appreciating, exactly. “I see.”
His voice grew sad. “You should do something to change that, don’t you think?”
“Do something about what, exactly?”
He snatched the paper from my hand and shook it in my face. “Your birthday. You. Your life’s beginning denoted right here on this sheet of paper, a page intended for documentation, a paper on which might have been recorded any number of paths your life might have taken, but look.” He held the page aloft. “Look. There is just a page left blank. There is no story. Your life has come to nothing because you have done nothing with your life.”
He stabbed at the page again and then slid his finger along the typewritten words, enunciating each word with great precision. “This page intentionally left blank … you’ve left it intentionally blank. YOU. Don’t you see? Your life is nothing up to this point.”
I reached for the paper, smoothed it against my thigh. “Or perhaps I have left it intentionally blank so as to keep my life from you. Perhaps, knowing you would find the page of my life, I left it intentionally blank.”
He clasped a hand to his mouth and stared at me. “Is that true?”
“Hard to tell, I imagine.”
He waved a hand excitedly. “Oh! I almost forgot what I wanted to tell you!”
“Seriously? There’s more?”
“Yes. I am about to be kicked out of my apartment. I have less than 24 hours to vacate, they insist. Something about urine and hoarding and music with evil import and BBQs used improperly and a plethora of cats. Slander, all of it, but I lost the apartment.”
“And?”
“And so I will be staying here for a bit. With you! I’ve borrowed a tent for the cats, who will be arriving tomorrow by Greyhound. I need tent-stakes, though … we can pick some up when we get the paint sample. Also, I’ll need a pair of nail-clippers, or the cats will rip the tent to shreds.”
I was at a loss, but I heard myself ask, “The cats are taking the bus?”
He patted the couch. “I’ll sleep here until the twins arrive, and then we’ll decide where to go from there.” He grew thoughtful. “Bunk beds … with a trundle for me, perhaps.”
I needed to stop him, but I couldn’t seem to find words.
I stood, hoping to gain some authority, but he leaned forward and reached around me to pluck the paper from my back pocket. “This will be good,” he said. “You’ll see.” He shook the paper out. “Intentionally left blank … that simply will not do.”
“Everything,” he said, “Is about to change.”
I was speechless.
He stood with one hand on his hip, the paper fluttering in his other gesturing hand. He surveyed the living room. “The chickens will live here. This room will do nicely as a temporary museum. When do your children get home from school? They can serve as chicken curators until the MOOlattos arrive.”
All the words that might have stopped him jumbled painfully within my throat like a handful of marbles, their fluidity and meaning lost. When I still said nothing, he dug in his pocket, and I listened as the cat’s-eyes clicked in triumph. He rummaged about and finally come up with the tiny pencil from before. He handed me the pencil and the page of my life as well.
“Here,” he said, “Write it down.”