Fink

 

“You think your father ever loved me?” Mom says, grinning like a jackal. I remember this moment. She wasn’t grinning. And she hadn’t lost all her hair yet. But now she sits in stained pajamas in the bathtub, a tub full of rust-colored water, knees drawn to her chest and head completely bald except for a few squirming maggots wriggling on her scalp. I try to run, but my legs are fused to the bathroom tiles. “A man can’t love a woman. That’s my prognosis. My expert opinion. I’ve spent enough time in the hospital. I ought to know how to give an expert opinion.”

 

“I agree with you,” I say, trying to free my feet.

 

“You agree with me, do you? How lucky I am. I ought to sing to the high heavens! I ought to hop from one foot to the other. I ought to praise the Lord Almighty that Fink the Failure agrees with me.”

 

“Don’t call me a failure, Mom.”

 

“Oh, poor baby,” Mom mocks. She takes one of the maggots from her head and pops it into her mouth, crunching it in her teeth. I try and turn away, sick to my goddamn stomach, and terrified, too; I ain’t too proud to admit that. But I can’t turn. My face is fixed on hers. “Do you remember, dear? This was how you found me. Poor dead Mommy lying in the tub. I didn’t mean to die in the tub. I was running a bath and, oh, poor baby, I fell in and—What do you want me to say? It must have really messed you up, up here.” She taps the side of her head. “Your father never loved me because men like him—and you, because you are him, Fink the Failure—they can’t love. You can’t love. You just hurt people. If you stick around this lawyer girl, you’ll hurt her, too. Does she deserve that?”

 

“Mom . . .”

 

“Don’t interrupt me!” Mom roars, the maggots on her head multiplying, wriggling in rage. Water spills over the side of the tub. “Men like you can’t love, Fink. So why don’t you do this girl a favor and leave, or better yet, just kill yourself? That would do the world a big favor. The world doesn’t need you. The world has never needed you. You’re not—let me try and find a polite way to say this. You’re not necessary to anybody. Sal can do without you. You have no real friends at the club. And this lawyer girl just has a crush on you, nothing more. Leave her be and she’ll forget you ever existed.”

 

“Mom . . .”

 

“Goodbye, dear.”

 

Mom spits a maggot at me. It strikes me in the chest, too hard, harder than a maggot has any right to hit. I fall backward, the bathroom tiles releasing me, and land with a heavy thump in Nancy’s bed.

 

I sit up, panting, covered in sweat, sweat drenching the sheets. “Goddamn,” I whisper. Nancy’s still asleep, snoring softly, looking so peaceful it makes me jealous. I can’t remember the last time I was that peaceful, if I ever was.

 

“Is everything okay?” she mumbles sleepily.

 

“Fine,” I whisper. “Go back to sleep.”

 

“Am sleeping.” She rolls over.

 

I get up and go into the bathroom. I need to take a leak and I need to stand under the flat yellow light for a couple of minutes, stand under the light where the maggot-headed woman can’t get to me. The dream is already fading except for the maggots, which always fade last. I remember what Mom said, but not the exact words. I’m just like Dad. I cause pain. I hurt people. I’m a failure. I’ve never accomplished a thing in my life. I finish pissing and look around the bathroom. It’s absurd, a man like me standing in a place like this, with flowery bath tiles and a plush pink rug in the corner.

 

I’m washing my hands when something falls off the cabinet. I turn quick, outlaw’s instincts making me wary, and then kneel down and pick up the plastic stick. At first, I don’t know what I’m looking at, but then it hits me. A pregnancy test. It’s a goddamn pregnancy test! The little face smiles up at me, but I don’t know what a smiley face means, if that means pregnant or not pregnant. I go into the trashcan and find the box the test came in, read the back of it: smiley means positive, which means that Nancy is pregnant.

 

I lock the door and sit on the toilet seat, staring down at the test, my hands shaking more than they do after I’ve killed a man, my stomach twisting more than it does when I’m getting rid of a corpse. Nancy is pregnant with my child. My child . . . I try and convince myself that it isn’t mine, that it some other man’s, and yet I know that that isn’t true. I know in the same way I knew that I couldn’t go with any other woman over these past few weeks.

 

“The kid is mine,” I whisper, panic seizing me. “The kid is mine. Holy fucking shit.”

 

“Fink?” Nancy calls from the other side of the door. The door rattles in the lock. “Why have you locked yourself in?”

 

I force some humor into my voice: “There are some things a lady shouldn’t see.”

 

“Ew.” She laughs. “There’s air freshener above the toilet, near the window.”

 

“All right. Message received.” I force out a laugh.

 

I replace the pregnancy test on the cabinet and the box in the trash. I’m at the door when I remember I was supposed to be taking a dump. I flush the toilet and spray some air freshener. Then I return to the bedroom, heart thumping so hard in my chest I’m sure Nancy’ll be able to hear it. But she’s almost asleep again. I climb into bed and she latches onto me, moaning quietly. I stare up at the ceiling, trying to reason with myself.

 

I can be a good man. I can be a father. I can do some good in this world. I’m not a bad person. But the reasoning is weak and I know it. How can a man like me be good? How can a man like me be a father? I can’t have a kid; I can’t have a wife; I can’t have a family. I’ve never even had any kind of long-term relationship. I close my eyes and see a picket fence and fresh-baked apple pie and it looks good, looks like something a man should savor, but then I see machine-gun fire tear through the house and cut the apple pie apart. I see Nancy bullet-riddled and blood-painted, lying on her back.

 

“You’ll never be good,” Mom says, stroking the maggots on her head like they’re her pets. “You need to accept that, Fink. You will never be good.”

 

I roll over and stare down at Nancy, looking so damn fine as she sleeps, so damn beautiful . . . and so damn innocent. That’s the most important part because she is innocent. She doesn’t deserve a man like me. I’ll bring her pain she doesn’t need, hasn’t earned, pain she’d be better off without.

 

I ignore the screaming voice in my head as I stand up and get dressed as quietly as I can, creeping around the apartment as my inner voice begs me to stay. I stand at the bedroom door fully dressed, watching the sheets rise and fall as she breathes softly. I wonder if my father stood like this watching Mom, watching her and telling himself the same shit I’m telling myself. I want to be a better man, but I just can’t return to that bed. I don’t deserve this life, this woman, a kid, any of that shit. Maybe my old man wasn’t the asshole I’ve always thought he was. Maybe there was some logic in his cruelty.

 

I leave the apartment quietly, locking the door with her key and then sliding it underneath the door, and then go down to my bike. I push it for a few streets, the world dead apart from music playing softly from one apartment and a couple arguing loudly, the screech of a cat and the bark of a dog. When I’m far from her apartment, I start the engine and ride away, feeling like dirt, feeling like a traitor, feeling like a dog. I ride until I find a bar, a place called Twister with a bunch of student-aged people smoking outside.

 

I park my bike down the street and walk into the bar, ignoring the looks of a twenty-something with bleached-blonde hair and a nose ring. I go to the bar and order a bottle of whisky and a glass, and then go into the quietest corner—away from the dance floor, the giggling girls, and the pack of roaming frat boys—and I start drinking. I need to get out of my head, to distance myself from what I just did. I wonder if I can go back and sneak in before she knows I’m gone, but then I remember about the key. Fine, I can’t sneak back in, but I can knock and tell her what I’ve done, be honest, and maybe . . . And she’ll forgive me, I know she will. But is that a good thing? If she forgives me, she’ll tell me about the kid, and maybe I’ll stick with her, and maybe we’ll be happy, but one day the real Fink’ll come out and I’ll ruin everything.

 

Excuses, or truth? I’m not sure which is which anymore. I try to disentangle them but I can’t. They’re threaded together so tightly that telling them apart is impossible.

 

I drain my fourth or fifth whisky and lean back, watching the dance floor. A bunch of wild girls, the type of girls who hang around the club and blow the boss, the type of girls who don’t think about tomorrow and are almost as sex-crazy as some men. The bleached-blonde girl with the nose ring walks over, wobbling a little on her heels which are way too high. She’s all right-looking, skinny with legs that stretch for miles, but I feel nothing looking at her. She isn’t Nancy.

 

“You don’t look too happy,” she says, dropping into the seat next to me.

 

“I’m fine,” I say.

 

“Whoa!” She holds her hands up, each finger glittering with a chunky ring. “Excuse me for trying to be nice. My name’s Janine, by the way.”

 

“Okay.” I drain another whisky, pour another. “And I’m just trying to have a drink.”

 

“You’re handsome,” she declares.

 

“I’m not in the mood for this, sweetheart.” I take another drink.

 

“Did you just call me sweetheart?”

 

“The fuck . . .” I look up at her. She’s leaps to her feet, nostrils flaring, looking like a completely different woman than the club girl she was a few seconds ago. She looks possessed. “How dare you!”

 

I can’t help but laugh. Will tonight ever stop getting more and more fuckin’ ridiculous?

 

“Leave me alone, woman,” I say. “I’m busy feeling sorry for myself.”

 

“You don’t call me sweetheart and you don’t call me woman!”

 

“Maybe I shouldn’t call you sweetheart, it’s true, ’cause I can see now that your heart ain’t sweet. But you are a woman, ain’t you?”

 

“You’re a sexist pig!”

 

“Goddamn!” I break out, wishing this bitch was a man so I could bust her nose. “You came over here and called me handsome and I told you to fuck off. There ain’t no sexism in that. I’ve got a woman, all right! At least I would have one if I wasn’t so fucked up! The last thing I need is some goddamn whore getting in my face!”

 

“Animal!” she cries.

 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I take another drink. “Go and get one of your big brave friends to come and sort me out.”

 

I watch as she struts away, talks to one of her big brave friends—college types, glasses and reedy and saying anything they need to for a taste of this psycho—and then throws her hands up when none of them want to come over.

 

I finish half the bottle and stand up, head pounding, lights darting into my eyes. I feel like shit. I feel worse than shit. I want to go back to Nancy and I want to get even drunker and I want to get into a fight and I want to be normal.

 

That’d be the best thing of all: to be some normal jerk-off guy, some nine-to-five asshole with a mortgage who goes to therapy every two weeks. I never thought I’d envy Sal, but right now laying the table doesn’t seem so bad. If only I wasn’t Fink goddamn Foster.