joel fishbane

BLOODBATH

Dad had a life in the theatre and he was halfway through it when he met my mother. They were a cliché: the shopworn producer and the nubile ingenue clinking drinks in Sardi's on opening night. They married in September, twenty-five years to the day before the Twin Towers fell. On the morning of the attack, they had a party planned and, rather than cancel, they turned it from a celebration into a tribute involving grave faces and semi-formal dress. People descended on our house with the spirit usually brought to a wake. Everyone was somewhere between sorrow for the dead and an insistence on reminding the world they were alive. You never know how people will respond to tragedy. Some people weep and some people throw parties. Dad got drunk; as for Mama, I found her and fat Mr. Hudson groping in my sheets.

A few days earlier, when the dust was still settling over New York, Dad told me that tragedy connects us. It reminds us of our mortality, he said, and is the only thing we all have in common. Not even sex has that distinction. There will always be those who lead lives devoid of sex. But no one, said Dad, can escape their own destruction.

Sobering stuff to tell a girl of seventeen but the city had been attacked and we were all in somber moods. Dad told me that recognition of mortality was the greatest liberty we had.

"Think what this world would be like if we were immortal!" he said. "Nothing would ever get done. Mortality gives us our push. It’s why Hamlet will always be popular. The last act is a bloodbath. And we leave thinking, I’d better kiss someone, anyone, before it’s too late."

Perhaps this is what Mama was doing with Mr. Hudson. I never really learned who had initiated it, but it was clear that neither was doing anything to make it stop. They were fumbling with their buttons while I, standing in the doorway, decided discretion was the better part of sanity and slipped away.

I went back through the party and fled into the basement, which was cold but abandoned. Mama kept her awards upstairs, where people could see them, but Dad kept his in the dark. He said they were personal and, unlike Mama, he didn't feel the need to brag. I hadn’t ever thought much of Mr. Hudson – he was a playwright or something, a balloon of a bachelor who had been floating around us for years. The sight of him with Mama, though, provoked a great curiosity and, yes, even vague admiration. Think of the obstacles working against him that night! Dad. The other guests. The trauma of what had happened four days before and the ethics surrounding kissing a woman on her silver anniversary. Even venturing into my bedroom was a feat that defied the odds. It all seemed unfathomable. What powers had tilted the scales in his favor? He either dealt with the Devil or was a second God.

I fell asleep thinking of these things and woke in the morning to find the house in disarray. Wine rings stained the coffee table. Pistachio shells lined the floor. Dad and Mama were passed out in their room; Mr. Hudson was nowhere to be found. My own room looked tidy but I stripped the bed, flipped the mattress, and scrubbed the furniture with vinegar and lemon juice. When I found Mr. Hudson’s tie under the bed, I dragged it to freedom with a pair of red kitchen tongs. I threw the tie into the trash can in the garage. I threw out the tongs too.

“Where are my red kitchen tongs?” Mama asked the next day.

“They’re in the bottom drawer,” called Dad.

“I love those tongs. They’re heat resistant.”

“I’ll find them."

“Honestly, this kitchen is like a black hole.”

The phone rang. The caller was someone she knew and Mama took the portable handset into the backyard. I watched through the window, imagining I might catch some incriminating blush. At that moment, it seemed impossible that the caller would be anyone but Mr. Hudson; if nothing else, I thought. He'd be calling about his tie. I figured he probably loved that tie as much as Mama loved those tongs. Who knew? Maybe the tie was heat-resistant too. But Mama’s face was an empty blackboard. Ingenues learn to control her emotions. She could cry on command; she could not cry too.

Dad, meanwhile, was on his knees, wrestling with the kitchen drawer. He removed it from the cabinet and peered inside the gap. Balding and fat with age, he looked like a whale trying to squeeze through a needle's eye. “Two forks, some toothpicks, and a steak knife,” he reported. “No tongs." Dad went to throw out the toothpicks and noticed the trash was full. His response was Pavlovian - my grandmother had trained him well - and he immediately tied up the bag and took it to the garage.

I pretended to do my homework. I was trying to get a jump on the year and was taking notes for an essay about James Chadwick. He's the one who discovered the neutron in 1932. Since my parents were artists, I was doing my best to be anything else. I refused to take drama; for me, everything was about science and math.

The most interesting thing about James Chadwick, I wrote, was that he became so distraught over the implications of his invention that he became addicted to sleeping pills. He knew the atomic age was coming. He also knew he’d never be able to sleep again.

Dad came back, holding those red, heat-resistant tongs. “Do you know why these were in the trash?”

"How should I know?"

Then Mama entered, twirling the portable phone in her neatly manicured hand. She squealed when she saw the tongs. As if they were the most important things on Earth. “My hero!" She planted a kiss on the edge of Dad's tiny mouth.

I waited for him to produce the tie but either he hadn't noticed it or hadn't thought it worthy of note. Maybe he thought it had been his. But he did keep watching Mama and, more specifically, the tongs.

“Wish I knew how they got in the trash,” he said.

That was the fall I worked part-time as a cook. The restaurant claimed to serve Mexican cuisine when they really just made American dishes with a vague Latin twist. No one there was from south of the 38th parallel. The chef was Belgian while the crew was composed of two brothers from Kazakhstan, an Italian deity, a Canadian exile, and a former lieutenant who had been dishonorably discharged for reasons that were never disclosed. He still seemed exotic, even though he'd been north of Evansville, Indiana.

They were all magnificent, these young men with their smooth cheeks and rowdy laughs. They were more mature than the boys at school and far more rough and tumble than all those fat Mr. Hudsons who made up my parent’s circle of friends. They teased each other and merrily took shots at each other's skill, weight, looks, love life, and penis size. I'd spent the summer proving that a girl could be trusted to clean mussels and whip up an aioli from scratch. By September, I'd become the favored daughter. I've always been bookish both inside and out. My time spent reading had left me looking like the things I read - I was short and squat and full of ideas and facts. At school, I was ignored. In that kitchen, though, I was something to be prized. Those cooks were my protectors. Once, a waiter made an inappropriate remark about what he would do with me if we were ever alone in the walk-in fridge. The former lieutenant snapped him down to size.

“You wouldn’t be able to handle a real woman, bucko. Let me tell you: she'd crack you in two."

Until then, I was in love with all of them a little. Now the former lieutenant leapt to the top of the hierarchy of men. Tall and laden with tattoos, he had the added romance of having a broken heart. His girlfriend had left him and he was living in an infested studio on the lower East Side.

After the Towers fell, the two brothers from Kazakhstan began going everywhere together. The Italian god was deported and the chef married the American girl he'd been living with. When the Canadian disappeared, I was given his shifts which meant I had to close the kitchen with the former lieutenant. We were alone between the hours of nine and midnight. I ached for these times the way James Chadwick ached after predicting the atomic days. Like Chadwick, I was sleepless; like him, I felt the future's weight, as if it was already here.

“My ex keeps calling,” said the lieutenant one night. “I don’t answer.”

“That’s only going to make her call back,” I said, feigning wisdom I didn't have. “The more you ignore someone, the more they’ll try to get your attention,"

“I need more women like you in my life. I need a woman who tells me the truth.”

"You got that right." He had called me a woman. I wanted to live with him on a desert island and sit in the moonlight while he broke coconuts on his chest.

Later, after we had scrubbed the kitchen, we sat in the back alley and he taught me to roll a joint. Like rolling a burrito, he said. Make it good and tight. He lit it with a zippo that had been a gift from a guy who was shot in the face. He didn't elaborate on this comrade and I didn’t dare ask. But I was certain that he had just initiated me into a secret world.

The pot kicked in and we became loose and easy like we'd been friends for years.

“What happened with your girlfriend?" I asked.

“Insurrection and betrayal. Eye-witness saw her with another guy."

“I walked in on someone once. This woman cheating on her husband."

"You say anything?"

"Nah. I just walked out. They didn't even see me."

“People don’t care about each other anymore. Look what just happened in this city. I tell you, these days, it’s everyone for themselves.” He took a deep drag. "There's going to be a war now. It's just a matter of time. I need to get back over there."

"Would you be allowed?"

"Maybe as a civilian. I could figure it out."

I told him this was terribly heroic and he sat up straighter, pleased by the remark. I don't think he got to be much of a hero during his army days. He didn't talk like there hadn't been much action; even that guy who had been shot in the face had done it to himself.

“You think I should have told the husband about his wife?” I asked.

“That's a fight you don't want."

“You wish your eyewitness hadn’t told you?”

“All the time,” sighed the former lieutenant. “Ignorance is a reward.”

Dad was between projects and spent most days just driving around. Sometimes he went to Ground Zero to see if could lend a hand. He just didn't have it in him to go to meetings about musicals or talk about theatre. He had some expensive car that was grey and sleek; he called it the Spider, but I don't think that was its actual name ("It's because it's fast enough to catch flies," he would say. A very Dad sort of joke). I liked driving with him. He drove fast, like we were in a car chase, and he seemed to know all the secret roads. But I didn't like being alone with him anymore. Fat Mr. Hudson was in the space between us.

Since I now worked late, Dad started picking me up. He'd come by near closing time and wait at the bar, drinking Shirley Temples while he talked to the regulars. Sometimes he ordered food just when we were shutting down. This irritated the former lieutenant because Dad liked complicated items like lemon-pepper chicken quesadillas, seafood chimichangas, or deep-fried cheese strings with jalapeno-cherry salsa. The salsa was the restaurant's signature condiment; the chef had invented it himself.

“Why can’t he ever just order a bucket of fries?” asked the former lieutenant. "And why is he even here? You drive, don't you? They should give you the car."

"I think he needs the company." I didn't want to tell him I didn't have my license; over the summer, I'd failed my test. "This whole terrorist thing did a number on him. And I don't think he and my mom are getting along."

"Marriage is a goddamn trap. I'm never falling into it again."

"I thought you and your ex were just living together."

"Living with someone is just marriage by a different name."

In his melancholy, I saw the depth of the love that he had carried to all those places where he hadn't been a hero. He was only twenty-seven. Eleven years wasn't so much, I thought. Anyway, I'd be eighteen in a month.

I wanted to stay with the lieutenant and roll joints and help him see that marriage is a trap but I didn’t. Later, I trailed Dad into the street as if I'd been captured by thieves.

“You don’t have to always pick me up,” I said.

“I don't want you taking the train alone."

“Mama said she’ll get me a taser.”

“I definitely don’t want you getting a taser."

“It would be self-protection.”

“Under that theory, I should get you a broadsword.”

“I could call a cab."

“Let’s burn money while we’re at it.”

“I'll call friends. I have them, you know. Some of them even own cars.”

I was, of course, thinking of the former lieutenant, who owned a tiny green shitbox that smelled of beer and cologne. We had sat in it a few times to get high. I imagined being folded in the backseat while we sat parked at some isolated spot, a canopy of constellations hanging over our heads.

Dad said, “I know I’m just an old man embarrassing you. I realize that.”

The Spider stopped at a red light and he was able to look at me. In the shadows and half-light, he appeared indistinct, as if he wasn't quite in the world. “The thing is, I like driving you home. I like spending time with you. I like when there’s traffic and I like when we get all the red lights.”

The light changed and we started the final stretch home.

“Of course, I can still have the journey and not drive you home. Just because I come to that place doesn't mean I have to come as your Dad. I can just show up as Sandy King, Famed Broadway Producer. And if you need a ride home, well, Sandy King, Famed Broadway Producer, will be happy to offer it. But if you have other plans, then I guess Sandy King will just have to leave on his own." He sped through an intersection before the light completely changed. “Is it a deal?” he asked.

“Whatever.”

"Say yes or no. Nobody likes people who can't make a choice." After a pause, he added, “Tell your mother that if she gets you a taser, we’re done. If she gets you a taser, I’m changing the locks.”

He raced another light and I watched the city flash by. It occurred to me that if I asked Mama to get me a taser then Dad would change the locks and they'd be done and I could forget all about fat Mr. Hudson. Say yes or no. Make a choice.

One night, around Halloween, Dad had a meeting and I came home to find Mama grilling steak on a George Foreman grill. She was drinking California red and offered me a glass with a gremlin grin.

“Girl time!” she said.

“I have a test tomorrow.”

“I’ll write you a note. Super-Mom to the rescue! Watch her leap the rules in a single bound!”

I took half a glass of wine and slumped into the chair. Mama was long past her days as an ingenue. She was blousy now, big and broad in her floral shirts. She taught acting at NYU and always had writing implements in her hair - Pencils, Sharpies, red and blue pens.

“I need to re-write my Chadwick essay."

“You started that thing in September and it's not due for another month” She poured me more wine and flipped the steaks with the red tongs.

“I saw Mr. Hudson yesterday,” I said.

“I don’t think so, dear. He’s out of town.”

“No, it was him. He told me to say hello.”

Mama was unsure. I liked how she squirmed.

“He told me he was going out of town."

“Well, he told me to tell you he says hello.”

Mama toyed with the steak and chewed the inside of her cheek. It made a divot you could get lost in.

“Dad says if you get me a taser he’ll change the locks,” I went on.

“Tell him he doesn't want to get into a custody fight. It's the one time it pays to be a woman in an American court."

"I'm almost eighteen. Custody is moot."

Mama snatched the steaks off the grill and slapped them onto plates. She hadn’t bothered coming up with side dishes. Just a slab of meat, obviously too rare. Blood leaked out, making a tiny pool.

“I’m cooking mine more," I said.

"It's perfect like this."

"Do you know what happens when you get E. coli?"

"I suppose they taught you all about it at that restaurant. I'll have to go there one of these days. Go on, then, Julia Child. Show me how it's done."

I threw the steak back onto the grill but I refused to use the red tongs. The former lieutenant had taught me how to test meat by comparing it to parts of my hand. You start in the soft spot between the index finger and thumb. That's rare. Then you work your way inward towards the trapezium bone. The closer to the bone, the more well done the meat.

“Your father probably isn’t at a meeting," Mama remarked. "He's not really working these days. Has he said anything to you?"

“He says he's going to places that need help to volunteer."

"Ha. He never volunteered a day in his life."

"Things change. There's a war coming, you know."

"You just know everything, don't you?" Mama studied me over the edge of the wine glass. “How does he seem to you? When he comes to that restaurant, what’s he like?”

"I don’t know. Tired."

"Does he sit alone?"

"I don't know. He probably sits with the regulars."

"Men or women?"

"I don't know, Mama. I'm in the kitchen."

"She probably lives close by."

"Who?"

Mama slugged back her wine and topped off her glass. She looked up at the townhouse, so expensive and large, bought in the days when Dad was producing one Broadway hit and she was starring in another. Mama always said it had too many rooms. They'd planned to have more than just me, but, for some reason, it never occurred. "You just keep your eyes open," she said. "You find so much as an earring in the car, you bring it to me."

"What's it worth? If I’m going to play the spy, I'd like to discuss my rate."

Mama slammed down her glass. California red splashed the table and some of it went into her face. "Always the daddy's girl. You’re probably on his side anyway."

Not long after, she left the house. I figured she was going to Mr. Hudson’s house to see if he was really home. I ate the steak in the basement. It was hard as the trapezium.

"Where’s your mother?" said Dad when he got back.

"A California red got her."

"Why are you always in the basement so much?"

"I don't like my room." I'd been staying down there more and more. I still wasn't sleeping. I understood James Chadwick. Something was coming and I wanted pills to sleep through the atomic age.

The following Saturday, the former lieutenant’s former lover called him at work. We had a phone in the kitchen and I made chicken fajitas while he parried verbal thrusts. The subject of the argument was several items of minor consequence he had left at his ex's place. She wanted him to come by and he wanted them delivered. At last, a compromise was reached: she would stop by the restaurant and bring everything to the delivery door.

"When she shows up, you see her," he said. "I don’t want anything to do with it."

I was electric; I could have lit a small village in the Alps. Once a witness, I was now a part of the drama and would play an important role. The delivery door had a bell and, by the time we heard it ring, I was glowing bright. We were in the midst of cooking for a party of ten but the former lieutenant told me to go.

"If we ignore her, she’ll only come back." He touched my arm and winked.

The delivery door was around the corner from the actual kitchen and it was a fight to slide the heavy bolts. The door was stuck and, by the time I pushed it open, I nearly fell into the arms of the former lieutenant’s former lover. When you dream of your rival – real and imagined, current and future, all the people you will ever compete with until the moment of death - you turn them into sirens and queens. They are criminally beautiful, reeking of glamor and terror and sex. This particular siren-queen probably wasn't all these things but this is how I remember her. She definitely had long straight hair and a mole torn from the face of Marilyn Monroe. It was a warm night and she hadn't bothered with a coat. Her dress made her seem like she was nothing but a lot of leg. I was sexless in my checkered pants and oversized chef's coat, all-too-aware of the aprons stains and smell of grease.

"We’re busy," I stammered. "Just give everything to me."

"What are you, the messenger boy?" She had a small shopping bag which she switched to the other hand, moving it behind her back. "Go tell him to grow up. And tell him he has five minutes to come out here or I throw it all in a sewer."

I returned to the kitchen where the former lieutenant was plating the last item for that party of ten.

"She wants to see you or it’s all going in the trash."

He swore and banged the counter bell. "Count to twenty and come get me."

I shut my eyes after he left. I had a Spanish test on Monday, so I counted en Espagnole. Uno...dos...tres...

One of the servers appeared in the pass window. “Your mother's here. They want something to eat."

"They?"

"She's with some fat guy."

Cinco...seis....siete....

So. Dad was getting lost in Manhattan and Mama was getting brazen. I had no doubt the man was Mr. Hudson. Doce....trece...catorce.... I was still alone when I reached viente but it was then the manager appeared. I told him the former lieutenant was on break, but he stuck around to do some inventory checks. Then the printer hummed. A salad with chicken and calamari tacos. The salad would be for Mama. The tacos, meanwhile, involved grilled calamari nestled between two soft-shell tortillas, covered with lettuce, tomato, and that signature cherry-jalapeno salsa. We didn't sell a lot of them and I had to dig into the back of the fridge. The calamari portion was in a plastic insert but even before I raised the lid, the smell hit me like a sack of wet dogs. When in doubt, throw it out. But when the food was going to a man who had left his tie under your bed? I rinsed the portion and gave it a smell test before tossing it on the grill.

My manager drifted around, checking the fridge temperatures and watching me work. I could only stand by the grill and listen for the former lieutenant and the sounds of war. Silence. Whatever was happening, it was a quiet sort of Armageddon, the kind Mama and Dad were having. The former lieutenant would be out of the war soon but I didn't know how long my parents would last. I didn't like the theatre but some of it had sunk in. At some point, subtext becomes the actual text and it's always then that the violence starts. Mama would splash her California Red while Dad would become declamatory in the moment of death. “And now falls the Kings!" he might cry as he rattled the drapes. They were people of the stage. For them, histrionics were a natural expression of the soul.

Folding the calamari into the tacos, I finished the food with a rough flourish. The manager left to deliver them and then I was on the move. I thought the former lieutenant would be angry I had abandoned him for so long. We were long past viente. He had been out there for cien moments which meant ciens of mils of minutes of some final, terrible fight.

Of course, I should have known what I would find: in those days, I was destined to come across lovers in medias res. They were halfway through the delivery entrance, pressed against the steel door. The siren-queen's dress was hiked up to her waist and the former lieutenant had his pants lowered to his thighs. His thrusts had the same strength he used when chopping meat, like he was a butcher’s cleaver and he was hacking something in two. It was a seizure, a battle of aggression I'd only seen in dirty films. Once again, I escaped without being seen; I was destined for that too.

I was scraping a charcoal brick across the flattop when the former lieutenant returned. He was a tabla rasa with no evidence of the past. No scent, no tousled hair. Not even an impish grin.

“Thanks for covering for me. You want a ride home? I'll roll us a spliff."

"My mother's here. I'm good."

I found Mama and Mr. Hudson waiting by the bar. She told me my father had a meeting, emphasizing the word in a way that told me she thought Dad was doing to some woman what my former lieutenant had been doing to his former lover.

"How was the salad?" I asked.

"That was for me," said Mr. Hudson and he patted his fat belly. "I'm watching my diet."

This proved to be the most consequential diet in the history of the world. A few hours later, Mama had nausea and cramps. Dad told me to watch her while he went to get medicine to help with the diarrhea and pain. Having driven with him so many times, it's not hard to guess what happened. The Spider, moving fast enough to catch flies, sped through the intersection before the light had turned green and a businessman, racing the light, T-boned the car at top speed. This drove the inside of the door into Dad's mid-section, cleaving him with the force of, well, a former lieutenant fucking his ex. In the passenger seat was the medicine my mother would never need. She expelled the poison on her own; by the time we heard the news, the symptoms were in retreat.

"You'd better call the restaurant," she muttered. "They need to throw out the fish."

The police sweat was still lingering in the house when Mama fell onto the couch beside me. She had two glasses of wine. It was just past dawn but I drank it all. She squeezed me close and I pressed my head into her hard shoulder. The edge of her clavicle stabbed my cheek.

“It’s just you and me now, my darling."

I felt sick. The former lieutenant had taught me all about different types of food poisoning. Salmonella. Scombroid. Botulism. I decided I had them all. “I don’t want to see Mr. Hudson ever again.”

"What does he have to do with anything?"

"Just keep him away from me. If he’s at the funeral, I’m changing the locks."

That was it for Dad; that was it for Mr. Hudson too. That was also it for my life in restaurants. I don’t know what happened to the former lieutenant because I left the job right away. I never even claimed my last cheque. Not long after the funeral, I talked some boy into taking me to his room, partly to get it out of the way and partly because sexual madness is part of every tragedy. The last act of Hamlet is a bloodbath and we leave thinking we better kiss someone, everyone, anyone. Before it’s too late.

JOEL FISHBANE'S NOVEL "THE THUNDER OF GIANTS" IS AVAILABLE FROM ST. MARTIN'S PRESS AND HE HAS WRITTEN MANY OTHER STORIES, PLAYS, MOVIES, AND ESSAYS THAT ARE OUT THERE IN THE DIGITAL ETHER. AT LEAST TWO OF HIS PLAYS HAVE RESULTED IN THE BIRTH OF CHILDREN WHO MAY SOMEDAY SAVE THE WORLD, SO HE LIKES TO THINK HE'S DOING SOMETHING RIGHT. WWW.JOELFISHBANE.NET.