One Boy, One Girl by Zachary T. Vickers

One Boy, One Girl

by Zachary T. Vickers

Martin has a place for the world in his heart, in his dreams: a land of gentle ghosts wandering, never judging. He among them smiles and floats, drifts through words like Love and reacts accordingly. Martin keeps these dreams, hides and holds them in a place he still considers good.

He has secrets. He can’t remember the color of his eyes. His irises frowned at him, hissed at him until he stopped looking into them all together. When the dreams started to change, the ghosts became snickering women—mothers—beating him with branches and rocks. He never fights back in these dreams. He likes that about himself. These mothers never have particular faces; they’re blank, empty canvases, leaving Martin to paint the vivid imagery of expression. They never vary. The same scowling face gets repeatedly painted.

Martin twists the blinds open with his pudgy fingers. Thin strips of light enter the living room. He smokes a cigarette, naked and cold, peering out the window. The smell of ash lingers in the air. There are blankets on the kitchen linoleum floor. He sleeps there. That’s where he’s most comfortable. Cardboard boxes fill the living room and are stacked high. These boxes remind Martin of large men, stiff and eager, waiting for him to falter, perhaps breathe irregularly. Martin finds that he holds his breath often now and continues to smoke as a way of reminding himself to breathe.

He finishes the cigarette, closes the blinds, dresses himself in his finest clothes. They fit snugly. He hasn’t worn them in years. He combs his hair, washes his aging face. He refuses to look into his eyes. He hasn’t seen their frowns in forever.

Hi, my name is Martin Shoemaker. I am a new resident of the neighborhood and I’m…

Martin steps out into the sunlight. His hands feel thick; they begin to sweat. He places his feet down onto the warm pavement, swallows the taste of ash in his throat, enters a world of bohemians and ghosts.

The sun feels warm against his face. His skin prickles and sizzles under the summer sun. His destination is the end of the neighborhood, the first house in the development. He has to visit every house today, greet each neighbor, charm them to death. This is the way it has to be, he thinks.

Rubbing his head, he is conscious of every crease and wrinkle. Down the street an old man waters a tiny vegetable garden. Next door a dog fertilizes a lawn that doesn’t need fertilizing. Across the street a postal worker angrily stuffs letters into a mailbox. When this postal worker turns, he sees Martin and blushes, grins slightly. He waves to Martin. Martin holds his breath, quickly returns the wave.

He sees a television by the side of the road, next to a garbage can not yet collected. The screen is shattered, kicked in; the guts, the wires, dangle about. The dial is rusted and the plastic sides have begun to fade. He can hear the echoed laughter of two children, see their faces lit up by cartoons—both on their stomachs, legs up kicking or crossed, staring at the screen. He remembers one of the children turning to him, smiling. He remembers wanting to grab a large blanket and cover the three of them up. With their eyes closed, they’d listen to the sound of the television; make up their own images to the sounds around them.

Martin smiles; a memory preserved that requires no shiver to tickle the rot in his bones.

Walking, he passes a few union workers filling a tiny pothole. They’re not working; just standing around smoking and laughing. Three of them are women and they see Martin, whistle and call to him. They rub their crotches and grab each other’s bodies in a taunting fashion. Martin watches, makes himself feel their eyes, this humiliation.

One of the women yells, Sexy. He hears perhaps, Sick fuck.

Martin isn’t what the family next door would consider an ideal neighbor. He knows this. He is looked at with disgust even by murderers and drug addicts. He couldn’t escape their beatings when they came. It wasn’t all that long ago. Criminals delivering justice. All he could do was retreat to the cold, reassuring darkness the corner of his cell offered.

The sun becomes more apparent as Martin walks. Every gesture—looking at his watch or scratching his nose—is awkward. Each blink is guilty. He leans against a parked car momentarily, smokes the last of his cigarettes. His stomach growls. He wonders which way would be the quickest to the supermarket. The parked car is dented around the edges. A tire looks a bit flat. Inside are a pair of fuzzy dice and a bottle of wiper fluid.

He takes his time smoking the cigarette. The parked car is warm against his back.

As Martin awkwardly breathes in the cigarette, he sees himself at the supermarket waiting in line, tapping a foot, hoping nobody notices. The wheels on the cart squeak and Martin knows it’s deserved. The cold steel of the cart warms in his hands as his grip tightens with every squeak of the wheel.

There aren’t any cigarettes in his cart, only the essentials: bread, meat, water. He looks past the checkout line through the large glass paneled windows into the parking lot. He sees many cars, old and new, smooth and colorful; all sorts of people who look like they were picked from a grab bag gene pool. These people load up cars and drive away. His legs ache when he remembers that he walked here.

He sees himself with these groceries leaving. He’s going on a picnic. He’s going somewhere by himself and he knows he’ll come back but he doesn’t know when. He’s going on this picnic alone in a new suit that fits him decently, that he plans on getting a little dirty—in a big field on his back with only grass stains to worry about; maybe some caked dirt and a rainbow parting sparse clouds in the sky.

Martin finishes the cigarette, takes a last look at the parked car—the way the sun reflects off it—walks.

It began with a photograph.

Something inside him clicked one day and never stopped. He was visiting a friend a few blocks away. He saw pictures of two children everywhere: one boy, one girl. His body tingled. He licked his lips, asked for a beer. His hands felt thick. His face grew warmer, volunteered to baby-sit some afternoons, smoked his first cigarette shortly thereafter—the taste and scent of ash accompanying him for days. Nothing was ever the same.

Martin is one red ant trying to march among a colony of black ants. Each of these black ants has secrets and ghosts of a past, perhaps heroic, angelic or evil. But he is the single red ant, the fire starter, and although everyone has memories they cherish or regret, his would be shared. In that sense he is different.

Hi, my name is Martin Shoemaker. I am a new resident of the neighborhood and I’m a…

A tiny kitten crosses Martin’s path. He stops to admire it. Its big wet eyes look up at him. It rubs against his pant leg. It’s small compared to him, almost cowering—Martin likes this and sighs. He bends down on one knee, strokes the cat softly. It quietly purrs, licks his big hands, flops playfully at his feet. Martin chuckles to himself at the orange ball of fur. The cat seems to chuckle along with him.

A little boy runs up from the yard, scoops up the kitten. Martin stands up—stiff and sweaty—slides against a telephone pole a few feet away.

“Hey mistuh!” the little boy says, kindly squinting up at Martin.

The boy is like a clown, he thinks. Innocently devilish.

“Hey mistuh!” he says again, but Martin won’t answer. He focuses on the tips of his shoes.

“Hey mistuh, dis is my kit-ty. His name is Tiguh. He is a stwong kit-ty. Do you wanna pet him?” The boy takes a step closer, rubbing the kitten. Martin presses against the pole harder, wishing he could become a splinter.

He thinks, This little boy is right here. Martin rubs his thick sweaty fingers together. The boy is so delicate. He could rest his hand on the boy’s shoulder, brush against his arm, or graze his hip.

“His name is Tiguh and he is owange and he is nice and my sistuh want-ed to name him Awex but he is my kit-ty and I named him Tiguh because he is stwong and…”

Martin could feel himself reaching out, wanting so badly the things that took hold of him. But he resists, imagines the voices of neighbors he has yet to meet, hears their reactions to the consequences his hands could create. He presses harder into the telephone pole.

The boy’s mother runs out from the house, grabs her son’s arm. Martin slowly looks up. She leans down to her son, “Now remember what I told you honey, we don’t talk to strangers.” She looks up at Martin and smiles. As she leans down, Martin catches a glimpse down her collared top, exposing the inner curves of two medium breasts and a highway of cleavage dividing them. Martin’s groin tingles. He keeps against the pole because he knows in his heart what would become of the world if he left it. He looks down at the boy cradling Tiger in one of his tiny hands. He stares back up at Martin over his little shoulder. The tingly feeling remains.

He looks to the sky, imagines laying this woman down, naked, placing himself between those two medium breasts. He dreams up a nice pair of nipples, large and playful. He stays in this position—driving down the highway, watching the woman close her eyes and lick her lips as he moved and swayed, gliding and grinning until his legacy was left all over her. Martin would breathe heavy and the woman would giggle. Martin would turn to see the little boy holding Tiger, watching with a frozen look of curiosity on his face.

The mother takes the little boy inside. She wears an oven mitten on one hand. He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to remember the smell of something sweetly baked but cannot. He then pictures returning to this house later on, ringing the doorbell. The mother will answer the door. She is still baking, the boy playing with Tiger and a piece of yarn. Martin will utter those rehearsed words, watch the mother’s face scrunch up, feel her hand—like a branch—strike his face. For a moment the woman will remind him of his own mother—it’ll be the crippled look in her eyes. He will see confusion painted on the boy’s face. Tiger bats at some loose yarn. He will feel that tingly sensation, shed a tear for his tattered heart, lick his lips, turn and walk away. He will hear this mother cry perhaps, and the door will slam behind him. He’ll place his hands in his pockets, walk next door, knock again. He’ll then imagine the mother hug her son tighter than ever before, her eyes redder than that evening’s sunset. Her words, I love you will have more meaning, more passion.

Martin thinks he hears the mother utter, Bastard.

Martin’s own mother called him a monster. He had never heard her use such language and it appalled him. She hit him across the face, marched upstairs. He heard her crying from her room, objects breaking. His father kept to himself, tucked away in different rooms of the house, never speaking. When Martin left, his father stood in the den doorway—his eyes stone dry. The air tasted dusty. As he walked down the driveway, further and further from the door, following the bed of flowers that looked dead to him now, his mother opened the bedroom window. He looked at her for a moment and she stared back. Her words fell in the breeze, I never should have had you. The world would be safer without you. That was that.

Martin had almost married once. Her name was Sarah but he called her Dolly. She was his porcelain princess. He was her broken heart.

They spent summers in her parents’ cabin by the lake, sipping hard iced teas in the hammock out back. They made love by the fireplace on cool nights. He’d lay there afterward, sweaty and naked, a hollow evolved animal. He’d get up and shower and when he shaved he saw the freckles between his whiskers, saw his pores void of normalcy and grace. He stole a sense of innocence from Dolly. She began walking around barefoot, not washing her hair or filing her nails—eyes like broken angels. He had discovered intimacy inside her, lost his virginity to her that first summer, confided in her, almost proposed to her. But she found the ghosts behind his eyes. He remembered how he awoke the next morning alone in the cabin—the hammock swinging with a slight wind that had picked up from the night before. He remembered leaving that cabin, locking up after himself, leaving the ring he had intended to give her in the rusty red mailbox that sat crooked in the ground; her last name faded from the side.

Martin’s father sent him newspapers when he wasn’t able to go out for them. His father included notes like, Hope you’re well, or, How’s the food? He remembered seeing Sarah’s picture in one of those papers. She married a podiatrist. She was smiling so big—a smile Martin did not know she was capable of.

Martin pulls the wrinkled newspaper photo from his wallet, sees Dolly’s grin, the wedding gown, the groom, the gaps between her teeth. He had considered finding her, wanting to know if the ring had ever fit her finger, if she still had the ring. Martin, short of breath, wonders if he had had children. He can feel his fingers changing diapers, his arm throwing a football, his lips telling bedtime stories, his eyes wet at graduation. He imagines grandchildren; feeding them candy, fattening them up, slipping them dollar bills when mommy and daddy weren’t looking. But he knows all this is merely a pipedream now, tossed among the stars with the rest of the world and their lost causes, misfortunes and luck.

Martin rubs his thumb over Dolly’s faded newspaper eyes—her grey complexion—walks a little slower now.

He sees a bucket of recyclables, mostly glass and plastic bottles. Martin looks at those bottles, cocks his head naturally, admires. He recalls himself in a much younger time, a much simpler place, perhaps eight-years old. He remembers empty soda bottles on sunny summer evenings, pickup baseball games, cool breezy nights. He remembers one summer night, the smell of grass, the almost tangible humidity, the sound of his breath as it swept over the opening of an empty soda bottle—haunting; its enchanting, weightless freedom as it carved through the heavy air.

Seeing these bottles now, Martin remembers another summer day not too long ago. He remembers the backyard, the warm prickly grass, a small pool and a garden hose; one boy, one girl playing, splashing, giggling. He remembers watching them in his lawn chair, beer in hand, shirt off, shaded by the side of the house. He remembers the way the beads of water dripped off the girl’s ears, how the boy squinted and rubbed his eyes, wincing when water got in them. He remembers the feeling of his own hair on his chest and back; how it stood on end, bristly. He remembers giving the children sodas when they were tired and thirsty, the way they stood next to him—huddled together, shivering with large towels wrapped around them. He perfectly pictures the soda bubbles tickling their noses; their nostrils twitching and flaring like a rabbit’s.

Martin—imagining that hollow, glassy sound from the soda bottle—closes his eyes, purses his lips, forms a tiny hole that nobody could pay attention to. He breathes out, whistles a melody—one that Dolly used to sing while showering. He never saw her face when she did this, merely the image of steam rising from the partially opened bathroom door and the way the melody almost saddened and sagged the air around it.

Licking his lips, Martin bows his head momentarily to the recyclables, the forgotten. He feels envy burst inside him; those bottles placed on the curb, awaiting a destination where hands without opinions will sculpt their bodies new, make them clean and born-again, delivered to the lips of the loved.

Noticing that a bottle has fallen from the rest, he picks it up, puts it back in the bucket so that it is not neglected. Martin quickens his breath, closes his mouth, moves his feet to walk.

He finds a small playground across the street, sits on a swing. The playground is empty. School is still in session. Martin closes his eyes, feels the heat of the sunlight building over him. He can hear the phantom giggles of children following an ice cream truck driving in the distance. His eyes shut, he sees one boy, one girl crying out to him, pleading. Martin screams back. His sweat and tears fall from the heavens of his sorrowful heart and Martin sees this heart on fire.

Martin can feel himself rise from his seat, feeling weightless, free of ghosts and secrets. He looks down at his own swaying body, frowning at its ugly simplicity. He imagines floating over these streets, past children and trucks, worried mothers and filthy union workers, above this place. He thinks, My heart is too big for this world, floating higher and higher, looking down, drifting up into blackness, leaving his old body on the playground sunburned and just swinging.

He opens his eyes.

The ice cream truck slowly approaches; its melody twisted, almost carnal in the way it floats to Martin’s ears. He flags down the truck, moves his feet in a way, he believes, would be the dance of the ready child.

The ice cream man smiles, says, Good day. Martin nods, asks for a cone, wants no part of this man’s conversation but every part of his good day. Martin takes the cone; his awkward fingers wrap the waffle. The man nods, Martin looks down. The man scowls, his lips purse. Martin continues to avoid the man’s eyes, sucks a short breath.

Martin watches the truck drive on, listens to the music fade as it turns a corner. He makes especially sure to hear this music fade completely.

The ice cream is smooth but has a bitter aftertaste. He swallows hard, harder each time, knowing the taste, recognizing this feeling in his gut. But he eats on, chewing intently, meticulously, feeling the cold flavors swirl on his lips. This is the way food will taste from now on, he thinks.

He takes a large bite, thinks about the last time he had something this sweet. He sees one boy, one girl eating ice cream at a kitchen table; the smell of frozen milk, the pale smoke from a cigarette, drink after drink, more ice cream, the words, Time for bed. He remembers the boy as an actor, always willing to tell a joke, making wild accusations and exaggerations with his hands. His sister—a polar opposite—loved to read and chew gum; a quiet dedication in the form of a furrowed brow, popping bubbles with every page turned. She’d blush when she heard a voice rise but her brother liked to laugh, even during the most inappropriate of moments.

Martin licks the cone; his neck burns. He bites down into the cone, throws the rest away into the street.

Walking again, he passes a few large trees. These trees are birch and he acknowledges the beautiful white bark; the delicate, almost fragile state of it all—how with even the gentlest touch that birch bark could flake off like snow. The trees’ shadows are short but Martin squints, imagines those shadows getting longer, the air cooler, the sky a blur of navy and crimson. He looks up at the looming trees, sees the branches swaying. He stands thinking he is insignificant to them; a shadow in their annual wake. Martin takes a large breath, holds it for a time. He wonders how the branches, the sharp bark, would feel across his face.

Martin is aware of himself—his tongue in his mouth; the tips of his ears tickle, his warm nose and the cool breeze blowing over it. His thinning hair rustles atop his head. He can imagine these hairs falling out, colored by autumn. He can feel gravity pulling at his shoulders, tugging him towards the sidewalk; the weight of his clothing, of his head and arms. His legs are like tree trunks, his shoes rooted into the cement, thick and rough. He imagines the fabric of his pants, the tightly woven thread. His fingertips feel like pine needles.

He sighs, his voice creaks.

But now he stops. He finds himself in front of the first house: the end of the neighborhood. The blue siding is weathered and fading to a mute grey. It reminds Martin of the cabin—the ring—rusted and rotting in that mailbox. He licks his dry lips, smoothes out the wrinkles in his clothes, wants to say the line to himself but does not. He thinks for a moment how he wishes he could change what he has to say; perhaps to, Hi my name is Martin Shoemaker and I’m somebody special. I’m just another face on the infinite timeline of sadness.

A gentle breeze kicks in.

He walks up the driveway feeling like a dream, drifting through words like Regret and Desire, makes his way to the front door. He clears his throat, feels the weight of his own hands. The flowers are embedded in grace and gentility, he sees. They are pretty, he thinks. He picks a small indigo flower, slides its stem through a buttonhole in his shirt. These flowers trace a path to a large wooden door. The first of many.

Martin knocks softly on this door twice. His mouth tastes like cigarette paper.

He catches a reflection of his face, his eyes in the small window on the door. His eyelids, heavy and somber. The eyelashes shiver. The off-white spheres wrapped with little red lines, like crevices, tell of imperfection. His irises are grey-green, stunning and cloudy. His pupils are dark and slick. Behind each pupil hide ghosts. In each eye are only two faces: one boy, one girl. These faces don’t cry now but smile with a kind of vengeful satisfaction, a giggling he’s never heard. And Martin sighs—a new neighbor—as the door opens and with it, his fleeting breath.

_______________

Zachary T. Vickers was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1984. He has been previously published in Stillwater magazine. He has his BA in creative writing from Ithaca College. He currently lives in upstate New York.