It Feels So Good When I Stop Read online

  “I don’t believe you. Everyone keeps some kind of journal.”

  “Not me.” She sat up, taking her pussy with her.

  “Well, what are all those?” She stripped the sheet off my head.

  “What are what?”

  “Those.”

  My bedside table was a yellow towel draped over two milk crates stacked one on the other. The bottom crate was packed with identical black-and-white-marbled notebooks.

  “Those are some of my notebooks from college.” Two of them actually were aborted journals.

  “They sure look like journals.”

  “They’re not.”

  Jocelyn wasn’t sold. “Why do you keep your college notebooks? You don’t strike me as a ‘keep my old notebooks’ kind of guy.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And they’re so close to your bed, I just figured they were your journals.”

  “They keep my table from moving.”

  “Curious,” she said.

  “Is it?”

  “A little bit.” I pulled her back down by the hips. “If you want, I can stop, and we can critique them together right now.”

  “No, that’s okay. Finish what you’re doing. I’ll just go through your shit sometime when you’re out.”

  “Fine. And I’ll go through all of your shit.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing right now?” She laughed once at her own joke, like a Joan Collins character getting serviced by a pool boy. She steered me by the head as I skimmed the surface of her deep end. She got into it. “I mean it,” she moaned. “You can read my journal, my diary, anything. I want us to know everything about each other.”

  I got anxious. I thought, I don’t want to fucking read her journal, do I? Sure, I’m curious, but I don’t want her poking around through my stuff. I can move them into my closet the next time she goes to the can. Too obvious. She’ll notice they’re gone, and then she’ll never stop asking me questions. I can’t get rid of them until she goes back to New York. Fine. I won’t leave her alone long enough to do too much digging. That’s what I’ll do.

  “Hey, Tiger,” she said. “Easy does it.”

  I DIDN’T KNOW shit about taking care of kids.

  “Don’t worry about it,” James said. “This is all you have to do: Push him up and down the street until he falls asleep. He should stay out cold for a couple hours.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “He will. And when he wakes up, feed him right the fuck away or he’ll go ballistic.” James held a stack of three identical Tupperware containers on top of a foil-covered baking pan. “There’s diced fruit in this one, and chopped chicken and carrots in this one. This one’s all Cheerios and Wheat Chex and shit.”

  “What’s in the big pan?” James gave it to me. It was still warm.

  “I don’t know. Pamela sent it for you.”

  I removed the foil. Pamela was a good cook. The pan held a lasagna with a large divot taken out of it. “Weird,” I said. “She must have run out of noodles to make a whole one.”

  “That’s my haulage fee,” James said.

  I laughed. “Your haulage fee.”

  James was in a rush. “Come on. I don’t have time to fuck around.”

  “Fine.”

  “So, feed him a bunch of this.” He handed me the Tupperware containers.

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. Until he starts crying.”

  “That seems kind of cruel.”

  “Maybe, but it’s the only way to be sure he’s getting enough. He’ll definitely piss himself and probably shit. You’ll be able to tell because he makes ‘this’ face, and he’ll stink. You know how to change a kid?”

  “Can’t it wait until you get back?”

  “Don’t be an asshole.” He hung a mommy bag on my shoulder. “Everything’s in here. And when you do change him, make sure you put enough of that aloe oatmeal ointment on him. His ass is sensitive. So is his weld.”

  “His weld?”

  “Where your dick joins up with your bag.” James pinched at his weld. At least he didn’t pinch mine. “Suit him back up and you’re home free.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t fucking know. Let him run around until I get back.”

  I asked James if it was cool if I swore in front of Roy.

  “Don’t fuck around,” he said. “Your sister will have my nuts on a stick.” Pamela was a pretty easygoing person. But once you push her past her breaking point, you’d better head for the fucking hills.

  ROY WAS NOT very good at walking. But he screamed whenever I picked him up and tried to help close the distance between him and the object of his capricious desire. In order to get him into the stroller, I tricked him into thinking the stroller was what he wanted. I lifted it by an umbrella-hook handle and dangled it like a SeaWorld herring in his line of sight.

  “Roy? Look at this, Roy. Smooth,” I stroked the seat invitingly. I was a good deceiver. He fell for it. He locked on. “Come on, kid. Get in.” I set the stroller down on the driveway about ten feet from him, lit a cigarette, and killed some time watching him labor to get from A to B.

  He was pretty cute. He was wearing green Wellington boots, baby Levi’s, a black longshoreman’s cap, and an Irish knit sweater under a miniature L.L. Bean tan hunter’s coat. His outfit was worth many times my own. When he finally reached the stroller, he screamed with a delight that was so sincere, I was actually kind of grateful to him. I hadn’t smiled and meant it since I got married.

  JOCELYN AND I babysat for Roy one night after Christmas so that James and Pamela could go on a last-ditch date. We didn’t really do anything with regards to care-taking because Roy was asleep when we got there, and he stayed asleep the whole time. Jocelyn was in a good mood in spite of the holidays. We curled up on the couch and watched Masterpiece Theater: A Scandal in Bohemia. Jocelyn checked on Roy a few times and reported that he was just fine. She sank back into her dent on the couch. I could tell she liked playing house.

  James and Pamela came home tipsy, laughing and hanging all over each other. It looked like they had a chance. James fixed us all a quick cinnamon schnapps nightcap before bed. “Here’s to burying last year,” he said.

  “I’m all for that,” Pamela added.

  “Here’s to the future,” Jocelyn said.

  “It can’t come soon enough,” James said.

  We all turned in for the night. Jocelyn and I made up the pullout couch in the TV room.

  “I know I’ll make a good mother someday.”

  She was waiting for me to say I’d make a good father. That wasn’t going to happen. But the night had been going along nicely. There was no reason to mess it up then. I did the best I could. “No doubt.”

  She smiled.

  TAKING CARE OF ROY behind Pamela’s back felt wrong for a lot of reasons. First of all, I definitely did not want to get caught. I knew if Pamela found out she’d rip both James and me new assholes. I figured there wasn’t much chance of her showing up out of the blue, though, because Plymouth was a good thirty miles from East Falmouth. And if James was supposed to be taking care of Roy, chances were good that Pamela was working or catching up on doing laundry or some other domestic shit. I also felt guilty for scheming with James of all people. It was like I’d signed on to be his star, blockbuster witness in the upcoming divorce proceedings. But I assuaged my guilt by noting that Roy, too, was my blood and he needed me. And wasn’t it as much James’s house as hers? I was also nervous something horrible would happen to Roy on my watch. I felt like Joel in Risky Business when he goes cruising in his old man’s Porsche without permission. If I accidentally drove Roy off the end of a pier, there’d be no gold-hearted hookers to raise the bread to fix him up without my sister knowing about it.

  ROY WAS SLEEPING minutes after I’d tricked him into the stroller. I pushed him up and down the length of Opal Cove Road about a hundred times. I watched the ocean come and go in the gaps between houses—
on my right in one direction, and on my left in the other. Taking care of a kid was easy enough so far. I started zoning out, thinking about Jocelyn crying.

  I don’t know how long it took me to realize it was Roy who was whimpering. He had been taking the brunt of a growing wind, softening my way, like an icebreak er’s prow.

  “Fuck me, kid. I’m sorry.” I crouched in front of him and cradled his cheeks. They felt like two packages of thawing ground beef. His eyes were watering, and his face twisted ugly as he teetered on the edge of crying. “No, no. It’s okay, Roy. I’ll take you back. Don’t cry.” I stretched the sleeves of his sweater until his hands disappeared. Then I breathed warmth into the wool tubes. I pivoted the stroller in the direction of my sister’s and added the sound of a racing car’s screeching tires to the maneuver. Roy giggled.

  “Want to go zoom, Roy? Want to go zoom? Zoom-a-zooooooom!” I was baby-talking, and was prepared to continue doing so as long as it kept him from crying. I pushed the stroller with dangerous bursts of speed. Roy loved that so much that he bawled when I stopped to catch my breath. And then he wouldn’t stop crying, no matter how fast we went. I crouched back down in front of him so that we were face-to-face.

  “Please, don’t cry,” I pleaded to his empathetic side. “Please, buddy.” He scratched my glasses off my face. He did it three times before I caught on to the game. He was a tough read because the things he wanted were so simple. I let him play with my glasses and walked back to my sister’s blind.

  I had a headache. I sat on the front steps with a beer and a smoke. Roy was on the lawn, losing a wrestling match with his football. Watching him for the afternoon took it out of me, and apparently he was an easy kid. He brought the football to me.

  “You know what’s really fucked up, kid? Getting married was my idea.” I booted the ball to the other side of the yard so he could chase it down. “I know. Hard to believe, right?”

  James honked as he drove up. “How’s my sonny boy?” he called, rounding the Suburban’s long beak. Roy started to giggle and tried to stand up. “Everything go smooth? No problems?”

  “No problems,” I said. James tossed Roy above his head and caught/swung him so that the kid’s path traced a J that skimmed the ground. They both laughed. It made me nervous watching Roy’s head jerk back on its pencil neck each time he reached the bottom of that J. I was ready for the ride to end.

  “James, do you think—”

  “Hang on. I have to piss like a friggin’ Clydesdale.” He set Roy—who clamored for more—down on the grass and blew by me, taking the porch three steps at a time. “You want to go get some clams?” he asked on the go. “My treat?” He sounded like a guy who’d just made a lot of money. “Big bowl of beef stew and a few pints of Guinness?” The toilet seat went up with such force, I could hear the chalky underside of the tank lid ring and grind against the tank’s unglazed coping. His piss stream broke the calm of the pond with a proud, throaty roar. “What do you say?” The raising of his diaphragm caused the pitch of his leak to momentarily modulate to a higher key.

  I waited for him to finish before answering. “Maybe next time.” I took a pull off my beer. Roy was still wondering where the party went. “I’d kind of like to be alone.”

  The toilet seat slammed down on the mug. James boomed back across the living room.

  “I don’t fucking blame you.” Then, almost apologetically, “What do you think about watching the kid for me here and there?”

  I WAS INTO MUSIC, so it was bound to come up at some point. When it did, Jocelyn told me, not every detail about it, but enough. There was a band from Boston called Fifi, and before Jocelyn and I met, she had a brief fling with the band’s front man, Roger Lyon III. Fifi never got famous—not like Third Eye Blind famous—but the cool kids knew who they were.

  When I asked Jocelyn what had happened, meaning why it ended between her and Lyon III, she downplayed it and said there was “nothing there.” I asked her if there was nothing there for her or nothing there for him. She said for either of them, which was a load of crap. There had to be something there for one of them. People don’t feel the same amount of nothing for each other at the same time. She told me, well, that’s the way it was. After that, I took every opportunity to assassinate Roger Lyon III’s character.

  I was eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch cereal without any milk. I had Option open to the cover story on Roger Lyon III. “This guy’s a fucking ponce.” And he was, which made hating him a breeze. The two-page, fish-eye-lens photo elongated his already model-quality features. He towered over Sunset Boulevard in a shearling overcoat-and-hat ensemble that must have been rated for twenty degrees below zero. Jocelyn had her back to me. She was trying to light one of the gas burners. “I wonder if he still gets college girls wasted after shows,” I said.

  Jocelyn didn’t answer.

  “What do you think? Still getting college girls wasted?”

  “He didn’t get me wasted. It was two Rolling Rocks.” She remembered the brand. “Give me your cig.”

  “Hang on. Listen to this. And I quote: ‘I have tapes and tapes full of songs that are so much better than Genius IQ , but I’m not sure if I’m into the whole “releasing thing” anymore. I’m really into collecting opals.’ End quote. Collecting opals? What the fuck is that all about?”

  Jocelyn plucked the smoke from my fingers and used it to light the burner. She was wearing the boxer-briefs I had taken off when we got into bed the night before. She did that a lot.

  “Holy fuck, get a load of this Q-and-A.”

  Jocelyn sighed.

  “And I quote:

  “ ‘OPTION: Where did the band name Fifi come from?

  “‘ROGER LYON III: The poodle protagonist from Van der Vleet’s novella.

  “‘O: Very cool.

  “‘RLIII: Yeah.’

  “What a fucking asshole. I bet he likes rape jokes.” Jocelyn finished my cigarette at the stove. She looked good in my underwear. The kettle rumbled above a blue flame, but was still minutes away from boiling. “I bet Van der Vleet doesn’t even exist. I went to college—”

  “Sort of—”

  “And I’ve never heard of fucking Van der Vleet. Have you? I bet that asshole made the—”

  “Please. Enough. You have nothing to worry about. You’re the asshole I love.”

  I WAS JUST wrapping up my morning shower when I heard a key opening the front door. “Yo, it’s me and Dogshit,” James hollered.

  “Give me a minute,” I yelled. I could hear James giving Dogshit instructions as I got dressed.

  “Where the fuck this medicine cabinet come from?”

  I opened the bathroom door. A draft further chilled my wet feet. “You don’t have one, so . . . It’s for letting me crash.”

  James appeared in the doorway. The medicine cabi net box hung from his hand like a Kleenex. “Fuck that. The listed price for this place does not include a medicine cabinet.” He meant it. “I can use this, though.”

  “Whatever, man. It’s yours.” I put a sock on one foot while balancing on the other like a pelican. I could hear Dogshit revving the motor of a small electric tool.

  “You want all three of these, Jimmy?” he asked.

  “Yeah. And don’t lose the screws. They’re brass.”

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “Taking down the sconces. Look, you’re going to have to clear out of here for a few hours tomorrow. A real estate agent’s showing the place from noon to three.”

  “No problem. I won’t be here.”

  “And stuff all your shit in the back bedroom closet before you split.”

  “Will do.”

  “I don’t want them thinking this is a crack house.”

  “They won’t.”

  James let go of the medicine cabinet box and pressed down with both middle fingers on a door hinge pin that had risen nearly two inches out of position. It wouldn’t budge. It upset him. “You got a hammer out there, ’shit?” he yelled.
>
  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Whore,” James said. “Run out to the truck and get me one.”

  “Eat me,” Dogshit said.

  James bit his bottom lip and grunted as he tried again to pop the pin back into position. It finally snapped into place with a loud, metallic click. “Fuck you,” he said to the hinge. He swung the door back and forth a few times to bask in the beauty of a specimen in perfect working condition. “Why don’t you come to lunch with me and Dogshit?”

  “Is it that late already?”

  I SAT IN THE BACK, next to Roy’s empty baby seat. It was a given that Dogshit always rode shotgun. James controlled the radio. He went right for a local oldies station.

  “What sconces?” Dogshit said like a gangster film thug who understands that he, if questioned by the cops, is to play dumb. His thick navy blue hooded sweatshirt was faded and covered with smears of hardened epoxy, fiberglass dust, and small wood slivers. He wore a pilly black-and-gold knit cap commemorating the Boston Bruins’ 1988 Stanley Cup run. “I never seen no sconces.”

  “No shit,” James said. “I can get seventy-five bucks for those.”

  “Minus my twenty percent,” Dogshit said.

  “You can have twenty percent of this.” James lifted his crotch off the seat.

  “Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Dogshit said, and slurped the air.

  “Not as much as you.”

  “Hold up,” Dogshit said. “This is a good tune.” Neither James nor I knew it. “You kidding me? It’s Mel Tormé.”

  “That’s what I like about this station,” James said. “They’ll throw you a curveball. It’s not just ‘Respect’ and ‘Get Off My Fucking Cloud’ all day. The oldies stations ruined Aretha Franklin for me.” Dogshit shushed him. James turned it up. We all listened in silence.

  I always thought of Mel Tormé as singing exclusively bouncy, shoo-bee-doo-bee-doo-wah numbers, but this one was doleful and so slow, it almost went backwards.

  James pulled onto a winding wooded road that soon presented a decent ocean vista on our left. The road rose above sea level and briefly wound around a craggy outcropping of rock. I looked down at the water and counted three staggered white stripes of breaking waves. The ocean absorbed all of the sun’s component light except the bluest green, and melted seamlessly with the sky somewhere closer to England. My feet were still cold. I missed Jocelyn, even though she could suck the life out of me.