Only the second quarter and it’s already a blowout.
Dad holds the last bite of a salami sandwich between his index finger and thumb like the end of a joint, or someone doing the World’s Smallest Violin bit. We have been silent long enough that my voice surprises us both. Kind of odd how he hasn’t bothered asking a single question about work, even though he knows my review was this week.
“What? You got here late, the game was already going,” he says. Looks from me to the sandwich to the TV, his eyebrows active, like they have somewhere to be. “And at the end of the day, it’s just hearing about somebody else’s job, you know?”
***
Sam asks me to hold on. The line crunches as he passes the phone from one hand to the other. In the background, the sounds of public transportation. Disembodied voices announcing station names, the suction cup whoosh of doors opening and closing. I sigh, loudly, even though I’m the one who needs to keep repeating myself over the crash of dishes and silverware in my sink. He asks if I need to do that right this second. I pretend not to hear. My neck strains to balance the phone against my shoulder. Sam tells me about his day, the customer at the cafe with hooks for hands, the application he’s filling out to be a tour guide at the aquarium.
I ask if he thought about mentioning, I don’t know, how he could bring a queer perspective to the role. Not that it’s something they would be specifically looking for at the aquarium. Just seems like it wouldn’t be a bad fact to include, all things considered.
A pause, the sound of his breathing. The quiet of two people not talking. I imagine him later, at his apartment or a friend’s place, somewhere so familiar to him and so unknown to me. I see him holding a sweating can of whatever beer they drink in New Zealand, telling the story of this call, exchanging knowing smiles with someone who gets it. They have a brother who’s the same way.
“You know, I hadn’t thought about it,” he says.
***
Smoking on the fire escape, I think of Dr. Markowitz. “Open up and say Mahhhhhhhhhhhhrkowitz,” he would command, shining a pen light into our mouths. He’d see me and Sam at the same time, even after we were too old for it. We didn’t question anything. It made perfect sense, appealed to the childhood need for symmetry, fairness.
Mom would join us, chemo exhausted, pink bandana wrapped around her skull. One time at Key Food some guy yanked it off and bolted out of the store. Whole thing lasted maybe five seconds. She didn’t get mad. Just stopped in front of the yogurt and cried into her shirt. The manager was apologetic, gave us free Entenmann’s donuts. “Please,” he said, shoving them into our cart.
At the end of each visit, Sam and I would lay back, crinkling the Mickey Mouse paper that covered Dr. Markowitz’s exam table, and take turns pulling our pants down. “Don’t pee on me,” he would say, hands on his hips, his rubber duck tie loose around the collar. Behind him, Mom would smile in her way. Lips pressed and pulled across her face.
I try to picture what Sam is doing now. Check my phone; almost 5 am in Auckland. Sleeping, I guess. Dad probably tuning his bass in our old bedroom, amp squeezed beside the bunk beds, trying to keep up with YouTube videos of Motown songs. Mom, forever melting into the earth tones of Dr. Markowitz’s office.
A click in the kitchen. The electric kettle turning off. I stub out the cigarette, swing my leg inside and stretch over the radiator, my toes searching for the floor.
***
Leo Vartorella is a writer from Brooklyn, NY who lives in the Scottish Highlands. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New World Writing, HAD, Maudlin House, scaffold and Burial Magazine.
image: Aaron Burch
Rejection Letters 