Gray Duck, Chapter One

1. Loons Do Not Mate for Life

My head feels like someone sawed it open, took a shit in my skull, then nailed it shut. Children’s shouts rattle my brain painfully, and the red-tinted FL-41 glasses Dr. Nelson has prescribed me aren’t doing anything to lessen that needling, digging, pulsing hot pain in my temples. Then again, I’ve never known them to do anything at all except make me look like I jerk off men in bathrooms for money.

A smear of crimson crosses Grace’s mouth like lipstick, staining her crooked teeth in bloody hues. Thick, cheap, Red Dye 40 frosting on her cheeks and nose, even in her shiny black ringlets. She sits at the head of the oval table, purple paper crown on her head, lording over her court of little girls who shriek and snarl at a pitch that makes my molars vibrate. They shovel cake in their mouths by the handful, forks abandoned and forgotten. It’s like watching a pack of wolves devour something young and tender.  Any notion I held that “Lord of the Flies” wouldn’t work with little girls has been squandered.

Behind them, scattered around the kitchenette, Marsha and the other mothers stand leaning back against thickly painted white cabinets. They sip Grape Kool-Aid from little polka dot paper cups. Most of them have the slightly melted, doughy appearance that comes with middle age. Marsha, however, turned 23 two months ago and wears a wife beater without a bra. Even from a distance, I can see the lace trim of her black panties poking out beneath the waistband of her jeans, and her curls cascade over her shoulders like night waves crashing against the shore.

A squeal pulls my eyes back to the table, where Grace has planted both hands firmly on the plastic, polka dot patterned tablecloth, and she pushes herself up on her chair, craning her neck to look over the party. She looks to the living room—to the green and blue Tartan rocking chair by the window.

To me.

She looks like her mom more than me, which is a good thing, because the women in my family tend to look like men in drag. She waves, her fingers—like little pink sausages—a mess of frosting and chocolate, smiling wide, wide, wide. Her cornflower blue eyes squeeze shut, and I can see all her teeth and her gums. Her nose scrunches. One freckle, two. Three, four…

Today, she is turning six years old. Tomorrow, I will be 25. The day after that, I drive home. Away from Grace, and away from Marsha. And even though I only live maybe twenty minutes away, I know I probably won’t see either of them again for at least six months.

I stand up from the armchair as Marsha’s mother—her own curls now dotted salt and pepper, and her jean shorts cut too short for her cellulite dappled thighs—announces that it’s time to open presents. Her husband stands beside her, hand on her lower back, thumb rubbing tight, intimate circles. The children erupt in howls and yips, while the mothers push off from the kitchen counters and strut into the living room like turkeys, gobbling amongst themselves.

“Open mine! No, mine! Open mine!” A choir of little voices scream. Twelve small Cains and Abels fighting to give their offerings.

If I have to sit through one more second of this crap, I’m going to vomit.

“Excuse me,” I say, cutting through the flock of moms.

The stairs leading up are carpeted and have been carpeted with the same oxidized avocado colored carpeting at least since I met Marsha in high school, though judging by the baby pictures I’ve seen, much longer than just that. I can see every crumb, every hair, every shadow of dog shit that’s ever seeped into its matted, shag fabric. The knowledge that I’ve touched bare skin to it is deeply upsetting.

Upstairs, an attic hallway leads to Marsha and Grace’s attic bedroom on the left, her parents’ on the right.  I push open Marsha’s door, closing it behind me, trying to pretend it does a better job blocking out the noise than it really does.

The room is lilac. When it was just Marsha’s bedroom, it was blue, which I liked more, but Grace is very keen on purple, which I would consider a parental failing on Marsha’s part. Our part. Someone’s part.  Purple is an ugly color.

Marsha’s bed has been pushed into the left corner of the room, with new purple covers, but still the old gray stuffed rabbit I know leaning casually against her pillows. Its pink nose has been kissed to a faded gray, and its ears have lost all their luster from years of rubbing against thumbs and cheeks.

In the right corner of the room is a matching purple bed, only with so many stuffed animals piled on top that they’ve spilled onto the floor. I shift a few of them over and sit down. One of the animals, I recognize. A small loon with a plastic box in its belly, so when you squeeze it, it plays a pre-recorded loon call that sounds like someone crying.

I got it for her on a fishing trip in Duluth last year with Alex, Sid, and Dom. We didn’t catch a single fish that weekend, but to be fair, we spent most of the time holed up in our room at the Grand Superior Lodge—which is, coincidentally, where I found the stuffed loon, in the gift shop along with a moose-patterned robe for myself.

The bird is uncomfortable to hug, with not enough stuffing to pad the sound box. Grace has tied a purple ribbon around its neck. I squeeze it.

Nothing. She’s killed the battery. In the silence, it seems to be waiting for a mate to cry back.  Awoo?

There’s a knock on the door. When I look up, Marsha’s head is poking in.

“Alright, Jim?” she asks, then comes inside and closes the door. She never waits for a reply when it comes to doors. She knocks, then disregards the entire purpose of knocking, which is to wait for a reply. She just enters. It’s a habit she got from her mother, who once knocked on Marsha’s bedroom door then immediately walk in on her daughter giving me a blowjob. But that was back when the room was blue.

“Certainly.” I toss the loon back onto the pile. It rolls, then bounces off the bed, causing a heavy thunk as it hits the floor.

“Good.” She slides the tips of her fingers in her front pockets, her wrists folding limply over as she walks closer.

Marsha walks with a stoop, shoulders forward and feet kicking out like a duck. When I first met her, I thought she might have been a lesbian based purely on the way she walked, like Bob Dylan. But most of her posture and stride has to do with her shoes—they’re all too big on her, hand-me-downs from her mom that flop around. Even when she’s barefoot, like now, she kicks her toes up in expectation of a dragging shoe.

When she reaches the bed, she bends down and picks up the loon, squeezing it. Awoo. “How’s your head?” she asks. It’s terrible.

“Good,” I say.

“Good.” She sits across from me on her own bed and pulls one leg up, tucking her left foot under her right knee. She picks at her big toenail, which needs to be trimmed, and I’m sure when she’s picked it off, she’s going to drop it on the floor, and maybe push it under her bed when she thinks I’m not looking, just like how she picks her nose with her thumb when she thinks I’m not looking and sticks it on the underside of her chair or flicks it out a window. I can’t stand that sort of thing. When someone, especially a girl, has a dirty habit like that.

I realize that probably sounds sexist, and at the very least hypocritical. What room do I have to speak? I have enough puss in my face to fill a few cream puffs, and the head of my penis has a crusted, cheese-like discharge that smells like feet. Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But feelings don’t ask for permission.

“Grace is happy you came,” she says, tugging away at her toenail.

“Is she? She didn’t say anything to me about it, little snot.”

“It means a lot to her.” Slowly, she lowers herself onto her side.

“That’s nice.” I watch her as she rubs her fingers together over the edge of her bed, and one fat toenail falls to the floor. “She used to be shorter.”

“Kids get taller.”

“In theory.” I look away from her. Cheers sound from downstairs. A particularly good present, no doubt. The back of my throat is turning to cotton—I can feel it. My eyes pulse.

“Do you have any painkillers?” I ask.

“Maybe some Advil. Gracie’s been planning a party for you.”

“Has she really? How dreadful. Any Excedrin?”

“Probably not,” she says with a sigh, stretching out an arm and grabbing the rabbit from her pillows. “You will act excited, right?”

“Ye of little faith.”

“I mean it, Jim.” And her voice is stern, so she sounds like her mom. “What did you get her?”

“Don’t you want to wait and see?”

“No.”

“Guess.”

“Fuck off.”

“Three guesses, then I’ll tell you.”

She sits up again, leaning forward, and I can see her cleavage as she does so. She has a very nice chest, as far as chests go. A good size, proportionally speaking. A mole below the left side of her collar bone, a light dusting of freckles over her breastbone. Just like the freckles on her cheeks and shoulders, and knees. But her eyes, hard and steely, are what pull my attention. Her jaw shifts as she chews her words.

“A Lite Brite?” she says.

“You cheating cow.”

“What?”

“You’re correct.”

“Really?” The shift in her disposition is immediate. “Oh, good! Great, she’s gonna love that. I know she wants one.”

“I figured.” She smiles. So do I. Then she stands up, and she walks forward, stopping in front of me and slipping the glasses off my face. For a moment, the light stings. I can see the shadow of her nipples poking through her shirt.

The first time I met Marsha, when we were at a party, she asked me to suck them, and I said no thanks. Then she’d cried, and I’d said yes. The experience had been enjoyable, but nothing to write home about, which was how most of my sexual encounters with Marsha could be described.

These days I miss the conversations more than anything else, which can be both a compliment and an insult. Right now, it’s a compliment.

“I miss the conversations, y’know,” I say, and I reach out, taking one of her thin hands in mine, tracing the opal stoned ring she wears. “More than anything.” I raise her hand to my mouth, and gently, I kiss her knuckle. My lower lip brushes her ring. The metal is cold.

After a moment, I feel her other hand in my hair. I can smell her. It’s familiar. She wears the same perfume now that she wore back then—something cheap, with nondescript floral undertones that don’t entirely mask her musk. But it’s pleasant, and I rest my forehead against her stomach. I can hear it gurgle.

“We should go back downstairs,” she says, and she stops petting my head. “Come on. They’ll wonder where we are.”

 I press my face against her, then rest my hands on the backs of her thighs.

 “Five minutes.” I plant a kiss on her left hip bone, through her shirt.

“Jim,” she says, putting her hands on my shoulders. “I mean it.” I plant a kiss on her right hipbone. “Stop it. Don’t you wanna see Grace open your present?”

 “There’s always next year.” I close my eyes and slide my hands higher, breathing her in.  I kiss at the waistband of her jeans. When she twines her fingers through my hair again, I want to curl up in her arms and sleep like a little baby. She pushes my head back, as far as it will go.

“You wanna suck my titty?” she says. I can hear the smile in her voice, and when I open my eyes, I can see it too. She has dimples, just like Grace. I pull back.

“No thanks.”

Her hand hits hard against my temple, and for a moment, the pain is like a lightning storm in my head. Thundering, crackling electricity down my spine so I go stiff and everything goes black. I feel my knees against the cold wood floor, and I wonder if I’ve gone blind before things start slowly swimming back into focus.

“You OK? Shit, my ring,” Marsha’s voice says. She waits for a reply, but I don’t trust myself yet to open my mouth. “Goddamn it, Jim. Alright… I’ll see you downstairs. I’ll ask my mom if we have any Excedrin.” Her footsteps trail away, then the door opens, then the door closes.

Awoo.

I lay on the floor, counting the dust bunnies beneath Grace’s bed until my stomach and head stop spinning and I push myself up, grab my glasses from the bed, and exit the bedroom, back down the hall, back down the stairs. Grace has almost finished unwrapping her presents.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

She holds up one of her presents to the sky for me to see: a plastic palomino horse. For a moment, I imagine going to her. Cutting through the sea of little girls and scooping her in my arms. Pulling her away from the party. Taking her to Target, buying her whatever the hell she wants. Holding her hand as we walk down the aisles, filling our cart. Seeing her smile so wide that her eyes close, and I can see all her gums and teeth, and her nose crunches. One freckle. Two, three…

Instead, I blow her a kiss that she pretends to catch and press to her cheek, and I wave to Marsha’s mom. I quietly go into the kitchen, to the back door. And as the animals yowl and squawk and squeak and growl behind me, I slip outside, and I wonder what Grace has planned for my birthday tomorrow, and if she’ll still be able to enjoy it when I’m not there.