Frownland

"Who's he talking to?" Gene says, and Karen doesn't look up.
"0h," she says. "It's probably just Bubba." Bubba is Frankie's
imaginary playmate.
Gene nods. He goes to the window and looks out. Frankie is
pretending to shoot at something, his thumb and forefinger
cocked into a gun. "Get him! Get him!" Frankie shouts, and Gene
stares out as Frankie dodges behind a tree. Frankie looks nothing
like DJ, but when he pokes his head from behind the hanging foliage
of the willow, Gene feels a little shudder-a flicker, something.
He clenches his jaw.
"This class is really driving me crazy," Karen says. "Every
time I read about a worst-case scenario, I start to worry. It's
strange. The more you know, the less sure you are of anything."
"What did the doctor say this time?" Gene says. He shifts uncomfortably,
still staring out at Frankie, and it seems as if dark
specks circle and bob at the corner of the yard. "He seems okay?"
Karen shrugs. "As far as they can tell." She looks down at her
textbook, shaking her head. "He seems healthy." He puts his
hand gently on the back of her neck and she lolls her head back
and forth against his fingers. "I've never believed that anything
really terrible could happen to me," she once told him, early in
their marriage, and it had scared him. "Don't say that," he'd
whispered, and she laughed.
"You're superstitious," she said. "That's cute."
He can't sleep. The strange presentiment that Mandy and D Jare
dead has lodged heavily in his mind, and he rubs his feet together
underneath the covers, trying to find a comfortable posture. He
can hear the soft ticks of the old electric typewriter as Karen finishes
her paper for school, words rattling out in bursts that remind
him of some sort of insect language. He closes his eyes,
pretending to be asleep when Karen finally comes to bed, but his
mind is ticking with small, scuttling images: his former wife and
son, flashes of the photographs he doesn't own, hasn't kept.
They're dead, a firm voice in his mind says, very distinctly. They
were in afire. And they hurned up. It is not quite his own voice that
speaks to him, and abruptly he can picture the burning house. It's
a trailer, somewhere on the outskirts of a small town, and the
black smoke is pouring out the open door. The plastic window
frames have warped and begun to melt, and the smoke billows
from the trailer into the sky in a way that reminds him of an old
locomotive. He can't see inside, except for crackling bursts of
deep-orange flames, but he's aware that they're in there. For a
second he can see Drs face, flickering, peering steadily from the
window of the burning trailer, his mouth open in a unnatural
circle, as if he's singing.
He opens his eyes. Karen's breathing has steadied, she's sound
asleep, and he carefully gets out of bed, padding restlessly
through the house in his pajamas. They're not dead, he tries to
tell himself, and stands in front of the refrigerator, pouring milk
from the carton into his mouth. It's an old comfort, from back in
the days when he was drying out, when the thick taste of milk
would slightly calm his craving for a drink. But it doesn't help
him now. The dream, the vision, has frightened him badly, and he
sits on the couch with an afghan over his shoulders, staring at
some science program on television. On the program, a lady scientist
is examining a mummy. A child. The thing is bald-almost
a skull but not quite. A membrane of ancient skin is pulled taut
over the eye sockets. The lips are stretched back, and there are
small, chipped, rodentlike teeth. Looking at the thing, he can't
help but think of DJ again, and he looks over his shoulder,
quickly, the way he used to.
The last year that he was together with Mandy, there used to be
times when D Jwould actually give him the creeps-spook him.
D J had been an unusually skinny child, with a head like a baby
bird and long, bony feet, with toes that seemed strangely ex*
tended, as if they were meant for gripping. He can remember the
way the child would slip barefoot through rooms, slinking, sneaking,
watching, Gene had thought, always watching him.
It is a memory that he has almost succeeded in forgetting, a
memory he hates and mistrusts. He was drinking heavily at the
time, and he knows that alcohol grotesquely distorted his perceptions.
But now that it has been dislodged, that old feeling moves
through him like a breath of smoke. Back then, it had seemed to
him that Mandy had turned D] against him, that D] had in some
strange way almost physically transformed into something that
wasn't Gene's real son. Gene can remember how, sometimes, he
would be sitting on the couch, watching TV, and he'd get a funny
feeling. He'd turn his head and D] would be at the edge of the
room, with his bony spine hunched and his long neck craned,
staring with those strangely oversize eyes. Other times, Gene and
Mandy would be arguing and D] would suddenly slide into the
room, creeping up to Mandy and resting his head on her chest,
right in the middle of some important talk. "I'm thirsty," he
would say, in imitation baby-talk. Though he was five years old,
he would playact this little toddler voice. "Mama," he would say.
"I is firsty." And Drs eyes would rest on Gene for a moment,
cold and full of calculating hatred.
Of course, Gene knows now that this was not the reality of
it. He knows: He was a drunk, and D] was just a sad, scared
little kid, trying to deal with a rotten situation. Later, when he
was in detox, these memories of his son made him actually
shudder with shame, and it was not something he could bring
himself to talk about even when he was deep into his twelve
steps. How could he say how repulsed he'd been by the child,
how actually frightened he was. Jesus Christ-D] was a poor
wretched five-year-old kid! But in Gene's memory there was
something malevolent about him, resting his head pettishly on
his mother's chest, talking in that singsong, lisping voice, staring
hard and unblinking at Gene with a little smile. Gene remembers
catching D] by the back of the neck. "If you're going
to talk, talk normal," Gene had whispered through his teeth,
and tightened his fingers. "You're not a baby. You're not fooling
anybody." And D] had actually bared his teeth, making a thin,
hissing whine.
He wakes and he can't breathe. There is a swimming, suffocating
sensation of being stared at, being watched by something that
hates him, and he gasps, choking for air. A lady is bending over
him, and for a moment he expects her to say: "You're very lucky,
young man. You should be dead."
But it's Karen. "What are you doing?" she says. It's morning,
and he struggles to orient himself-he's on the living room floor,
and the television is still going.
"]esus," he says, and coughs. "Oh, ]esus." He is sweating, his
face feels hot, but he tries to calm himself in the face of Karen's
horrified stare. "A bad dream," he says, trying to control his
panting breaths. "]esus," he says, and shakes his head, trying to
smile reassuringly for her. "I got up last night and I couldn't
sleep. I must have passed out while I was watching TV."
But Karen just gazes at him, her expression frightened and uncertain,
as if something about him is transforming. "Gene," she
says. "Are you all right?"
"Sure," he says hoarsely, and a shudder passes over him invol*
untarily. "of course." And then he realizes that he is naked. He
sits up, covering his crotch self-consciously with his hands, and
glances around. He doesn't see his underwear or his pajama bottoms
anywhere nearby. He doesn't even see the afghan, which
he'd had draped over him on the couch while he was watching
the mummies on TV. He starts to stand up, awkwardly, and he
notices that Frankie is standing there in the archway between the
kitchen and the living room, watching him, his arms at his sides
like a cowboy who is ready to draw his holstered guns.
"Mom?" Frankie says. "I'm thirsty."
He drives through his deliveries in a daze. The bees, he thinks.
He remembers what Frankie said a few mornings before, about
bees inside his head, buzzing and bumping against the inside of
his forehead like a windowpane they were tapping against. That's
the feeling he has now. All the things that he doesn't quite remember
are circling and alighting, vibrating their cellophane
wings insistently. He sees himself striking Mandy across the face
with the flat of his hand, knocking her off her chair; he sees his
grip tightening around the back of DJ's thin five-year-old neck,
shaking him as he grimaced and wept; and he is aware that there
are other things, perhaps even worse, if he thought about it hard
enough. All the things he's prayed that Karen would never know
about him.
He was very drunk on the day that he left them, so drunk that
he can barely remember. It is hard to believe that he made it all
the way to Des Moines on the interstate before he went off the
road, tumbling end over end, into darkness. He was laughing, he
thinks, as the car crumpled around him, and he has to pull his van
over to the side of the road, out of fear, as the tickling in his head
intensifies. There is an image of Mandy, sitting on the couch as he
stormed out, with D Jcradled in her arms, one of DJ's eyes swollen
shut and puffy. There is an image of him in the kitchen,
throwing glasses and beer bottles onto the floor, listening to them
shatter.
And whether they are dead or not, he knows that they don't
wish him well. They would not want him to be happy-in love
with his wife and child. His normal, undeserved life.
When he gets home that night, he feels exhausted. He doesn't
want to think anymore, and for a moment, it seems that he will be
allowed a small reprieve. Frankie is in the yard, playing contentedly.
Karen is in the kitchen, making hamburgers and corn on the
cob, and everything seems okay. But when he sits down to take
off his boots, she gives him an angry look.
"Don't do that in the kitchen," she says icily. "please. I've
asked you before."
He looks down at his feet: one shoe unlaced, half off. "Oh,"
he says. "Sorry."
But when he retreats to the living room, to his recliner, she
follows him. She leans against the door frame, her arms folded,
watching as he releases his tired feet from the boots and rubs his
hand over the bottoms of his socks. She frowns heavily.
"What?" he says, and tries on an uncertain smile.
She sighs. "We need to talk about last night," she says. "I need
to know what's going on."
"Nothing," he says, but the stern way she examines him activates
his anxieties all over again. "I couldn't sleep, so 1 went out
to the living room to watch TV. That's all."
She stares at him. "Gene," she says after a moment. "People
don't usually wake up naked on their living room floor, and not
know how they got there. That's just weird, don't you think?"
Ok, please, he thinks. He lifts his hands, shrugging-a posture of
innocence and exasperation, though his insides are trembling. "I
know," he says. "It was weird to me, too. 1 was having nightmares.
I really don't know what happened."
She gazes at him for a long time, her eyes heavy. "I see," she
says, and he can feel the emanation of her disappointment like
waves of heat. "Gene," she says. "All I'm asking is for you to be
honest with me. If you're having problems, if you're drinking
again, or thinking about it. 1 want to help. We can work it out.
But you have to be honest with me."
"I'm not drinking," Gene says firmly. He holds her eyes. "I'm
not thinking about it. I told you when we met, I'm through with
it. Really." But he is aware again of an observant, unfriendly
presence, hidden, moving along the edge of the room. "I don't
understand," he says. "What is it? Why would you think I'd lie
to you?"
She shifts, still trying to read something in his face, still, he
can tell, doubting him. "Listen," she says, at last, and he can tell
she is trying not to cry. "Some guy called you today. A drunk
guy. And he said to tell you that he had a good time hanging out
with you last night, and that he was looking forward to seeing
you again soon." She frowns hard, staring at him as if this last bit
of damning information will show him for the liar he is. A tear
slips out of the corner of her eye and along the bridge of her
nose. Gene feels his chest tighten.
"That's crazy," he says. He tries to sound outraged, but he is
in fact suddenly very frightened. "Who was it?"
She shakes her head sorrowfully. "I don't know," she says.
"Something with a 'B: He was slurring so bad I could hardly
understand him. BB or BJ or ..."
Gene can feel the small hairs on his back prickling. "Was it
DJ?" he says.
And Karen shrugs, lifting a now-teary face to him. "I don't
know!" she says hoarsely. "I don't know. Maybe." And Gene
puts his palms across his face. He is aware of that strange buzzing,
tickling feeling behind his forehead.
"who is DJ?" Karen says. "Gene, you have to tell me what's
. gomg on. "
But he can't. He can't tell her, even now. Especially now, he
thinks, when to admit that he'd been lying to her ever since they
met would confirm all the fears and suspicions she'd been nursing
for-what?--days? weeks?
"He's someone I used to know a long time ago," Gene tells
her. "Not a good person. He's the kind of guy who might ... call
up, and get a kick out of upsetting you."
They sit at the kitchen table, silently watching as Frankie eats
his hamburger and corn on the cob. Gene can't quite get his mind
around it. D J, he thinks, as he presses his finger against his hamburger
bun, but doesn't pick it up. DJ. He would be fifteen by
now. Could he, perhaps, have found them? Maybe stalking them?
Watching the house? Gene tries to fathom how D J might have
24 Stay Awake 25
been causing Frankie's screaming episodes. How he might have
caused what happened last night-snuck up on Gene while he
was sitting there watching TV and drugged him or something. It
seems farfetched.
"Maybe it was just some random drunk," he says at last to
Karen. "Accidentally calling the house. He didn't ask for me by
name, did he?"
"1 don't remember," Karen says. "Gene ..."
And he can't stand the doubtfulness, the lack of trust in her
expression. He strikes his fist hard against the table, and his plate
clatters in a circling echo. "1 did not go out with anybody last
night!" he says. "I did not get drunk! You can either believe me,
or you can ..."

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.