The Fleshless Man - Norman Prentiss Read online

  The

  Fleshless Man

  Norman Prentiss

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  -1-

  “You’re doing it again,” Curtis said. “Stop twitching.”

  Glen lifted his thin arms, held them high as if he played bank teller to his brother’s masked bandit. He maintained a still pose, seated across from Curtis at the table in their mother’s quiet kitchen. The battery clock ticked off seconds, and the only other sound was a faint rustle of Glen’s shirt sleeves, his muscles beneath the fabric tensing and relaxing in a steady isometric rhythm.

  “Sorry to yell,” Curtis said, letting him off the hook. No use getting into it now, with everything else that was going on. The hold-up over, Glen lowered his arms.

  He’s as nervous as I am, Curtis thought, so no wonder that he’d slip into unconscious habits. Besides, he’s not used to people watching him the way a brother can. Although Curtis hadn’t visited home in a couple years, a brother’s eyes are different. Memories turn each gesture into a comparison, overlay the image of a heavyset teenager at that same table years earlier, his arm reaching for a second dinner roll even as he chews the first, mouth half open, so rushed that Curtis wondered how he had time to taste the food; and now, a thinner, forty-year-old man, clean-shaven, his mouth a tight line, jaws clenching and unclenching, tense like the rest of him, arms beneath the table and fingers clasped like manacles around the opposite wrist, a restraint that keeps him from launching an arm toward the center of the empty table, grabbing for food that isn’t there.

  On some level, Curtis understood. Their mother was sick, and Glen felt helpless. But Curtis was here now—to help Mom, and to help his brother, too.

  “I wish you’d called me sooner,” he said. “I would have come, you know.”

  “Mom didn’t want to worry you. She hired a nurse for during the day, and I always sit with her in the evenings. It’s not like I’m burdened. I live here anyway, and I like spending time with Mom.”

  His brother probably hadn’t intended this last comment as a criticism, but Curtis couldn’t help but interpret it that way. He’d moved to California after college, and made only rare efforts to maintain contact. Glen or Mom initiated most of the phone calls. And although Curtis tried to remember their birthdays each year, he was lucky to hit them half the time, especially his mother’s. February was a short month, so her March 1st birthday usually snuck up on him. Mom would call on the 2nd, say something like, “What’s wrong? I waited up past midnight, and you never called, and then I got worried maybe something had happened to you or your partner. Partner’s the right word, isn’t it, since you and Lauren aren’t married?”

  Yeah, Mom, that’s the right word. Curtis would feel guilty and wish he’d remembered her birthday, wish he could be more pleasant on the phone, could be happy to fly to the east coast each Christmas instead of quick visits every several years—visits that were more to see Glen than to see her. He loved his mother, of course, but…there were a lot of things about her that he couldn’t manage to like.

  From the time Curtis was seven years old, their mother raised him and Glen by herself, with no father in the home to contradict the arbitrary rules she devised. Rules about what to wear, wrapping each of them in humiliating scarves and wool caps and down-filled parkas at the first drop below fifty degrees; with bulky galoshes over their shoes at the slightest forecast of rain, so they’d clomp into school like awkward little Frankenstein monsters. Rules about what television shows they could watch, prohibiting any sitcom with suggestive humor (most of them), or any drama with immodest costumes or inappropriate behavior (again, most of them). As a high school student he’d mainly seen cartoons or black-and-white shows from the fifties.

  And rules about friends, with no visiting on week nights, a ridiculous curfew of 9:00 on Fridays and Saturdays—and a stern, endless lecture each time Curtis inevitably missed the deadline. Glen hadn’t been as bothered: apparently he liked following rules, and preferred to stay home weekend nights to read science fiction books or solve extra-credit algebra problems. But for Curtis, whose many friends had far more lenient parents, the restrictions had suffocated him.

  He was independent now, had moved away from it all, but the resentment was hard to shake. He’d spent the whole day bracing himself—during the six-hour flight, then a half hour at baggage claim, followed by a long, dark ride in Glen’s car with the two of them mostly silent save for quick pleasantries. You look good, then California’s treating you well, I guess, then, How are you holding up, really? Brief answers: Thanks. Sure. Fine, under the circumstances. Because it wasn’t time for serious discussion, not yet—not while night-lit landmarks drifted past, a gas station, a church, a restaurant marking half-forgotten intersections. Curtis had erased these locations from his mind, and there wasn’t sufficient reason to commit them to memory again.

  Throughout that full day of travel, Curtis anticipated the insensitive remarks his mother would inevitably make (then feign innocence afterwards), prepared himself for the stifling atmosphere of his childhood home, the lingering residue of rules that could no longer be enforced yet still held some tangible, demeaning sway.

  Three years since he’d been back, and Curtis knew it would hit him with the same force it always did, the moment he stepped inside.

  But that wasn’t how it happened this time. The house seemed empty, his mother’s overwhelming presence gone. Curtis suspected she had already died.

  “Let me check on her,” Glen had said. “Then I’ll let the nurse take her break, so you’ll have Mom all to yourself.”

  Can’t you tell, Glen? Can’t you tell that she’s dead?

  Curtis then felt a rush of sadness and relief and guilt. He had to be strong. He’d need to support his brother.

  Glen came back to the foyer, an awkward half-grimace on his face. “Mom wants to see you,” he said. “Are you sure you’re ready?”

  And when Glen let him walk alone into their mother’s bedroom, Curtis was ashamed to realize he’d been preparing himself for the wrong reactions. She was alive. But she was so frail, so tiny in that bed, her body the faintest outline beneath the blankets—as if the bed was in the process of being made, a few folds to be smoothed out, and then his mother’s shape would disappear. One arm, broomstick thin, lay atop the blanket. An arrangement of pillows at the headboard propped her torso. She’d lost almost all her hair, save for small gray bristles. Her cheeks were sunken, and her head tilted to the side as if her thin neck could barely support it. When she saw Curtis she smiled, her eyes brightened, and she said his name.

  All day, he had braced himself for the usual resentments to come flooding back. Instead, he saw her in that bed and he felt overwhelmed by honest remorse, perhaps even love.

  “What did you talk about?” Glen asked him in the kitchen afterward.

  “Nothing much. I was in shock, a bit. I’m afraid I made it awkward.”

  “Mom was glad to see you.”

  “Yeah, she was.” It surprised Curtis that he could admit this without adding some bitter qualification. Mom hadn’t judged him. Hadn’t made some subtle jab about how long he’d been away; or some half-scornful reference to him and Lauren, the word “relationship” surrounded with implied quotation marks. She hadn’t used her illness against him, either, as he feared she might.

  She simply smiled, asked about his travel, thanked him for his visit. Her voice was weak, but he’d noticed a kind of purity to her quiet words. No subtext. No power struggle.

  “She’s a lot sicker than I thought.”

  “I told
you everything,” Glen reminded him. “What the doctors said. The decisions Mom made.”

  True. He’d mentioned the hair loss, and had phoned with regular updates on Mom’s weight and other vital signs. “You told me, but I still didn’t feel prepared.”

  “What would have prepared you? She’s our Mom. She’s dying.”

  Glen said dying the same way he’d voiced it on the phone in recent weeks, a kind of matter-of-fact truthfulness, deadpan, and from miles away and distorted through phone lines, that word, that awful word, still hadn’t quite said, Come home. We need you. Come home now.

  In that moment, Curtis had blamed his brother—as much as he blamed the disease itself, or God for giving it to her, or Mom for waiting too long to visit her regular physician.

  Anything to keep himself from considering he simply hadn’t loved his mother enough to visit sooner.

  A long silence followed, and that’s when he registered that Glen had resumed that nervous habit, his hands squeezing the edge of the table then releasing, his feet tapping a rhythm against the kitchen tile. The unconscious movements weren’t something Glen used to do as a child. He’d picked up the habit in his recent, healthier years—Glen had lost a lot of weight, but he’d gained a kind of vulnerable, agitated manner in the process.

  These jittery movements had nearly driven Curtis crazy during his 2009 Christmas visit. Now, as their mother was dying in the same house, Glen was at it again, tensing and tapping his way through the awkward silence. It had been going on even while they were talking, Curtis realized; and in the car on the way over, too, Glen’s grip clenching and unclenching the steering wheel.

  That’s when Curtis had yelled—You’re doing it again—an overreaction, but he couldn’t help it, his teeth had been on edge. Glen got defensive, denied it, raised his arms in the air as if to ward off the attack.

  It was almost too easy for Curtis to lose his temper. His brother’s voice projected such infuriating calm.

  Even as Curtis apologized after the outburst, then tried again to apologize for leaving Glen as their mother’s only caretaker over these difficult weeks…Glen simply shrugged it off.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I’ve been happy to take care of her.”

  This simply couldn’t be true. The nervous twitching gave him away. “We’ve should be honest with each other,” Curtis said. “It’s taking a toll on you, too, isn’t it?”

  “No. You saw her. Mom’s at peace. She has trouble with pain, but her mind is in the right place. It’s really comforting.”

  Glen spoke with the calm certainty of a born-again religious fanatic. He held his arms close to his sides and rubbed his flat palms together over his lap, the posture of a man shivering beside a dwindling fire.

  •

  When Glen returned to their mother’s bedroom, her sick room, Curtis stepped outside for some fresh air. The evening was chilly, and he’d left his jacket inside, but he didn’t plan to be out for very long.

  Near the top of the driveway, he found the nurse sitting in a white plastic chair whose back legs had settled deep into the lawn. She smoked a cigarette; balanced on her knee, her ashtray was that flat tinfoil type found in neighborhood bars, back when people were allowed to smoke in public places.

  He was glad to have found her. All his information had been filtered through Glen, so he welcomed the opportunity to speak with a medical professional about his mother’s condition.

  Curtis introduced himself as the other son, the one from out of town.

  “Figured as much,” she said. “Your mother mentions you now and then.” The nurse didn’t rise to greet him, but Curtis didn’t interpret it as rudeness. The generic one-piece chair would have been hard for this heavy-set woman to struggle out of gracefully, especially with the ashtray and burning cigarette to throw her off balance.

  “Mom speaks well of me, I hope.”

  Curtis shifted his standing position, and for a moment he blocked the light from the front porch, casting the nurse’s face in darkness. He moved to the side, and his shadow glided off her. The woman was in her fifties, a round face with a red tint to her bowl-cut hair. She took a slow drag on the cigarette, but never replied. Instead, she looked up as if waiting for a better start to the conversation.

  Was this some kind of game? Perhaps she didn’t want to speak the truth: You’ve disappointed her, in more ways than I have time to express. You’re a terrible son. Even a stranger could see that. Or maybe his comment was simply irrelevant—this is a no-nonsense kind of nurse, unwilling to engage in small talk.

  “How is my mother doing?” he said. “You can at least tell me that, can’t you?”

  “I’m not worried about your mother.”

  The comment threw him. Was she implying that mother was fine, that she’d make a full recovery? Perhaps Glen had been lying all along, and Mom’s illness was merely a cruel trick intended to force his visit.

  “According to Glen, she’s dying. Matter of weeks. Days, maybe. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I misspoke.” She stubbed out her cigarette, then set the tin tray on the ground beside her. She smoothed down the front of her long beige coat as if hoping to make herself appear more professional. “I didn’t mean to imply I wasn’t worried or concerned—we all are, of course. What I meant was…well…your mother’s condition is following the expected path. You know, for someone in the final stages of a life-threatening, inoperable illness.”

  That last bit had come out awkwardly, too, and she was digging herself deeper. The woman had been distant at first, brash and almost judgmental, but now that she’d slipped into incompetence she seemed more human. “I get it,” Curtis said, deciding to help her. “Things are going as well as can be expected.

  “Yes,” she said, relieved. Then she added: “With your mother.”

  He didn’t understand. Mom was the sick one. Everybody else was fine.

  “We’re doing what can for her. Managing the pain, as much as possible. Mostly waiting it out. Nothing more we can do at this stage. Your brother, though—he’s the one I’m worried about.”

  “Oh. Yeah, he’s been under a lot of stress. Should get better now that I’m here to help out.”

  “He has an eating disorder. Anorexia.”

  She’d been so blunt with the statement, Curtis thought maybe she was joking, wondered if he should laugh. But she kept a straight face.

  “Glen’s fine,” he told her. “He was a pretty big kid when we were growing up—got teased about it a lot at school, in fact. Over the past few years, he’s been more serious about diet and exercise. He taking better care of himself now.”

  “Look at me,” she said, and she waved her arms over her chest then indicated the broad width of her hips. “I clearly don’t have anorexia, right? That’s what you think?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Well I don’t have it. But I could. I’ve treated patients heavier than me, some of them with severe anorexia or bulimia. You can’t always tell by looking.”

  “I thought…” He was going to say something about teenage girls or ballet dancers or actresses, then decided to keep quiet.

  “Female and male patients,” she said, anticipating him. “With men like your brother, it’s what we call ‘exercise bulimia.’ They try to control their body weight through excessive, compulsive exercise.”

  She continued with more explanation, and it was like one of his mother’s curfew-violation lectures from his teen years—no point interrupting until she’d finished. “Your brother is following advice he’s gotten his entire life. He’s eating smaller portions of food, and he’s also exercising—which is always a good thing, right? It’s making him look healthy. But here’s what’s going on. Your brother’s always exercising. He goes running twice a day, and he has an elliptical machine that he chains himself to after every meal. He burns up more calories than
he’s taking in. We’re taught that exercise helps build strength—but he’s overworking his muscles, and not giving them enough food energy to support the exercise. The exercise is a kind of purging of calories, the same as forced vomiting. Your brother may look healthy to you, but he’s not. He’s starving himself.”

  As she continued, Curtis reluctantly suspected she was right. He recalled his brother’s repetitive motions even while sitting still—his hands pressed together and muscles flexing beneath his sleeves in an improvised, isometric exercise.

  Their mother was rapidly wasting away with disease. And when he’d talked with Glen about it in the kitchen, his brother’s legs had moved continuously beneath the table, like he was in a race and planned to beat her to the finish line.

  -2-

  “Curtis will be here soon.”

  “He’s already here. You talked to him a few hours ago.”

  “Did I? Oh, that’s right. Thank you, Glen.”

  Mom was often confused when she woke up, which was one of the reasons Glen liked to sit with her as much as possible. That way, he could easily remind her where she was, what day it was. Such a small kindness, but he knew it meant a lot to her.

  While she slept, he read a book or finished the Times crossword puzzle. He stayed quiet so he wouldn’t wake her, but he sat with his chair tight to the bed—close enough to hear her weak voice whenever she spoke. Often he set one arm against the edge of the mattress, the way a mother might lay her arm across the lip of a baby’s cradle, rocking it back and forth. His own mother’s bed didn’t rock, obviously, but he fancied that the slight motion to the edge of the mattress would soothe her nerves—not enough to startle her, but a subtle reminder that she wasn’t alone.

  Sometimes he placed his feet flat against the wooden base of the bed frame. He would push into the wood, making it creak, then release, repeat. The sound of a boat on a calm sea.

  Another small kindness, and even if his mother didn’t notice, he was certain it comforted her regardless.