Ugly Behavior

Living Arrangement

Monte had never been a good father, in fact he had been pretty lousy by anyone’s standards, but after he lost his job and became too ill to work and the arthritis made it so he could hardly move his legs, his daughter pretended otherwise and asked him to come live with her, her young son, and the current boyfriend. “You always took care of me,” she said. “Let me do this for you.”

That wasn’t true, not by a long shot—he’d had shit to do with her upbringing. He’d left all that to her mother and he’d been gone half the time and the half the time he was there he’d made them all miserable including himself.

But he accepted her offer. What else was he supposed to do? He didn’t know why she was lying to him, or if she was just lying to herself about him. Nor did he particularly care. He had to survive somehow. Or did he? That was one of those questions that got harder to answer every year.

His little corner of her house was a closet of a room at the back, just off the porch and the kitchen. In a fancier house it might have been called the mud room. A battery-powered radio. One box for his toiletries. One box for his miscellaneous. A mail slot of a window let some light in. It was a lot better than he deserved. He actually couldn’t remember if he’d hit her when she was a kid, but he probably had. He didn’t remember a lot from those days. She could have been a little yippy dog running around for all he could recall of her childhood.

He had a single bed, and she made him strip it and hand her the sheets for the wash. If it had been up to him he’d have let the sheets go yellow, then brown, then replace them. Monte discovered he liked the look, and the smell, of wet sheets flapping in the wind. Old age was full of surprises.

She didn’t expect anything from him, or at least that’s what she said. He got a small social security check every month which he just signed over to her, leaving it under the peanut butter jar in the pantry. They never talked about it, but those checks got cashed.

He had no use for spending money. He used to drink. About fifteen years ago he stopped, and he couldn’t have told you why. One day he just woke up and decided he didn’t care to anymore. It might not be permanent—he reserved the right to start up again at any time. Maybe if this living with family thing didn’t work out. And he’d been a smoker until recently, quitting cold turkey when he moved in with her. He actually liked the discomfort the craving for it gave him. It kept him focused.

For entertainment he read old paperbacks people threw away; he didn’t care which ones. He never turned on the TV. Almost everything on it seemed stupid to him, including the news. When the boy turned on the cartoons and Monte was in the living room, he either left the room or made himself fall asleep. Falling asleep was easy—it was the waking up that was hard.

His daughter had had a lot of boyfriends. He made himself not think about that too much. He was no one to judge, but she had a history of making bad choices. Maybe she learned that from him. It made life pretty hard sometimes. And possibly dangerous. None of his business, but she had a kid to think of.

Pete, the current boyfriend, wasn’t there much, either working late, or out hitting the bars, doing the kind of things guys of that age and type usually do. Guys like Pete didn’t have much going for them. Monte had been a guy like Pete, pretty much. Monte guessed if he were healthier, he’d still be a guy like Pete. Monte guessed it was a good thing Pete was gone so much. He also guessed Pete was cheating on her. Something about the way Pete was when he came in late, the way he kissed her. And the way Pete talked about how much he’d had to do that day—just a little too eager. Monte recognized that particular performance. Shit, he practically invented it. Most men were terrible liars, transparent as hell. The only way a woman could buy such crap was because she wanted to. He figured his daughter was just desperate for the company. If she truly believed Pete’s garbage, well then, she was worse off than Monte thought.

Monte could also see that Pete had a dangerous side. He just didn’t know how dangerous. He watched the two of them together, even when they probably thought he was sleeping. They had arguments, some of them bad. Hearing his daughter cursing and shouting at her man made Monte angry, but he wasn’t sure why. It was none of his business. And Pete sure deserved it. But she was aggravating Pete. Things were okay for now—there was a balance going on, but that could end any time. Monte had seen some bad things. But maybe this would be okay.

If they got too loud, Monte would just turn up his radio. Everybody had a messy life. She didn’t need Monte to defend her—she knew what she was getting into. He’d never met her boy’s father, but he didn’t need to. Monte reckoned he was the same kind of guy as Pete. One thing Monte knew about women—they stuck with what they knew.

The boy, his grandson, was a quiet boy, and a good boy. Seven years old. A great age, from the little Monte could remember. Monte had had a dog when he was about that age. Monte tried not to say too much to the boy because he was afraid he’d fuck him up. He didn’t want to tell the boy it was all downhill from here—maybe it would turn out different for him. Monte didn’t believe it would, but sometimes things surprised him.

“Take off those jeans and let me mend them,” she said to the boy and the boy did as she asked without saying a word. The three of them were in the living room, Monte pretending to read the paper but he was actually more interested in his daughter’s and the boy’s conversation. The truth was there was never much interesting in the paper, just people behaving badly and he knew all he wanted to know about that.

The boy wore white Pooh underpants with red trim. His T-shirt had a picture of a honey pot on it. It looked kind of sissy but Monte didn’t say anything.

His daughter sewed the tear in the left knee slowly and carefully using small stitches. Monte wondered if she’d learned that from her mother. “It’s important that no matter how poor you are you don’t go running around wearing torn clothes,” his daughter told the boy. “Your grandpa taught me that. He wouldn’t let his kids run around in torn clothes, no sir.” She glanced at Monte then and he nodded at her. She’d made the whole thing up. Monte considered whether she could have learned that from her mother as well.

He thought about the boy—“his grandson” was the way somebody might say it. Somebody might ask him, “Is that your grandson?” and he’d have to say, “Yes.” He couldn’t say why exactly, but that was a pretty big deal. It surprised him that he could feel that way. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the boy. He wondered if that meant he loved the boy. He didn’t like thinking about that, it embarrassed him to think about that, but he couldn’t help himself. It made him feel weak, but he’d been feeling weak for a very long time now, so maybe it didn’t make any difference that he was weak. Weak was still better than dead, most of the time.

“Dad, why don’t you tell Brian a goodnight story?”

“A goodnight story?”

“Brian, your grandpa is a great storyteller. When we were little he told us stories every night to help us go to sleep.”

Why are you lying like this you stupid bitch? But Monte didn’t say anything out loud. Brian walked slowly over to Monte’s chair and sat down on the dark blue rug in front of him. The boy gazed up at him, waiting. Monte figured the boy must have heard lots of goodnight stories before and this was the way he’d been taught to listen to them.

Monte said to his daughter, “I don’t know any stories.”

“Sure you do, Dad. Everybody knows some stories.”

The boy, his grandson, was still waiting. Monte frowned down at the boy, not knowing what to do. Monte started clearing his throat because something was there, something was in there bothering him.

Then he just began talking. “A long time back, when I was just a young man.” He stopped and spoke to the boy. “I’m not going to say ‘Once upon a time.’ Is that okay by you?”

The boy said nothing and Monte took that for a yes. “I was older than you, Brian. But I didn’t have a wife yet, or kids. I was a teenager, I guess.” He glanced over at his daughter, who was watching him so seriously he felt embarrassed and angry, so he looked away. “I never thought I’d have kids. I never thought much of anything, past the particular day. I was never a planner.” He stopped.

The boy appeared to be listening intently, but Monte knew he’d already screwed up. This was no way to tell a kid’s story.

“But I had a serious problem. I guess you could say I had a giant problem.” Monte felt himself dripping with sweat. But the kid seemed more interested. “There was a giant in my life, tall as a house, wide as a four lane highway. And that giant, he was always getting in my way, hassling me. He never had a good word to say about me, or anybody else. And if you objected to anything he said, you’d get the back of his hand, broad as an elephant’s backside, right in your face. Some times he’d hit you so hard you’d be flying right into—”

He paused, glanced at his daughter, who was staring at him. He couldn’t tell if she approved or disapproved of his story—most likely she didn’t much care for it. But she’d asked for it, hadn’t she?

“You’d be flying right into Never-Never land. Leastways, I think that’s what they called it. Anyway, this went on for some years. Some days the giant would be nice as pie. Apple Pie, I reckon, since that was always my favorite. But most days he was just this big monster of a thing you’d best stay away from. And on the worst days he would chase me around the house and when I got mad about that he’d say I was really in for it. He’d say he had special plans for me that I wasn’t going to like at all. Well, I had seen some examples of his special plans, and no sir, they weren’t nice things for anybody to have to go through.”

Monte looked at his daughter again, thinking Okay, you wanted me to do this. See what happened? But he couldn’t tell at all what she was thinking, which was really no surprise. He wondered if he’d gone too far, but the boy didn’t look scared. The boy seemed very interested.

“That was when I knew I had to do something. I had to do something to protect myself. Of course, killing is a bad thing, an evil thing. It’s something a person should only do when they have to, to protect themselves or the ones they…they love.”

Monte stopped, trying to think out the rest of the story. He knew his daughter was watching him closely, but he avoided eye contact.

“But it’s okay to kill an evil giant, isn’t it? If I remember right, that’s what Jack did in his story. Well, in my story I knew I had to do pretty much the same thing. I was small for my age. A lot like you, Brian. I was a tough little beggar, but I wouldn’t say I was strong. There’s a difference. No, I wasn’t what you would call strong.

“But you don’t have to be strong to kill a giant, Brian. You don’t even have to be big. You just have to be. Persistent, that’s the word for what you have to be. That means you have to keep trying. You keep at it and you keep at it until finally that job is done.

“So I was persistent, Brian. That giant drank a lot. I think a lot of giants drink a lot. Giants just have giant appetites, I guess. And one night that giant drank so much he fell fast asleep. And then I saw my chance. I went into the kitchen. I was still in my pajamas. I went into the kitchen and I opened the drawer and I found a giant knife. A giant knife for a giant.” Monte tried to laugh but it sounded fake. It sounded high and strangled and not like his regular laugh at all. “And I took that giant knife and I carried it into the giant’s bedroom. The giant snored like most giants, so loud it made the walls and floors and my own chest shake. It even made my hands shake.

“Then I climbed up on the giant’s bed with the knife and I just kept at it. I kept at it and I kept at it until that giant was dead. End of story.”

Monte glanced down at the boy and saw that he was asleep on the floor. And he didn’t look worried. If anything it appeared he had a little smile on his face. Monte’s daughter went over and picked up the boy and carried him into his bedroom.

When his daughter got back she said, “That was quite a story, Dad.”

“I think you must have heard some of that story before. Maybe from your mother.”

“Maybe,” she replied. “Why did you tell him that story, anyway?” She averted her gaze.

Can’t look me in the eye, Monte thought. “Don’t do that, honey,” he said.

She appeared surprised. Monte tried to remember if he’d ever called her “honey” before. He didn’t think so. He figured that’s what surprised her.

“What are you talking about?”

“I think you know that’s my only story, the only one I have to tell. I think you knew it was my only story when you asked me to tell him one. I think the question should be why you wanted me to tell him that story.”

Pete got home during the middle of the night. Monte didn’t know what time—he had no watch or clock of any kind. He just woke up to a bunch of stomping, and cursing, and things getting knocked around, breaking.

He had to use the bathroom badly, but he didn’t want to walk out there in the middle of all that. It wasn’t like he could do it quickly and sneak back into bed. Everything took him a long time to do. He just hoped he wouldn’t pee the bed again, or soak these old man pajamas that did a pretty good job of keeping him warm. The last time his daughter didn’t say a word—just took the wet sheets out of his hands and went to wash them. It shamed him something terrible, but she could have made it worse and didn’t.

But the yelling and the throwing went on another half-hour or more, and Monte was fit to burst. His daughter was crying and he could ignore that, or almost, but he couldn’t ignore his bladder. He crawled out of bed as quick as he could, but already he could feel himself leaking a little. So he redoubled his efforts to hold it in, shuffling down the hall toward the bathroom all bent over like he was a hundred years old.

Monte didn’t intend to look at anything, just make a bee-line for that bathroom, that is, if the bee was old and arthritic and the slowest bee that still lived. But he was a little confused by the hall, and the shadows, and all the noise. So he found himself peeking into doorways as he passed, trying to remember where the bathroom was, and that’s when he saw Pete standing in the living room, his daughter lying on the floor with her mouth bleeding, and little Brian standing on the other side of the room, wedged into the corner, crying, a big red mark tearing down one side of his face.

“Well, if it ain’t the man of leisure!” Pete called drunkenly. “You best get on with what you were doing, old man!”

Monte’s groin buzzed with the pain. But he stopped, thinking about it. Was he just going to go on down to the bathroom and pee? And then what? What could he say when he got back? Or would he just hide out in the bathroom until it was all over? Hell of a thing. He gazed at Brian, who had his hands up over his face now, but still watching with one shocked white eye. Right then the only sound in the room was his daughter’s torn breathing.

Monte shuffled a couple of feet into the room, still bent over. To his alarm, he began to cry from the pain.

“Hey, old man, what did I tell you? I pay for the roof over your head—you realize that, don’t you? I pay for both of them, too. Why do you think she’s here? Because I pay! She’s a whore and he’s just a bastard!”

Monte, still bent over, spit on the floor. “You’re not even worth their shit,” he said.

Monte didn’t see it coming, but he felt the thunder of it. Suddenly he was on the floor, his side and his back on fire from a series of Pete’s clumsy but enraged blows. He thought he could feel the blood pooling out under him, then realized he’d pissed himself. He turned his head to the side to avoid the spreading wet stink, which allowed him to watch Pete take a swift kick into his daughter’s side as he passed her, on his way to grabbing Brian—hysterical now—by the arm and jerking him into the bedroom. Monte lay perfectly still as the piss spread to his cheek, watching through the open bedroom door as Pete stripped the boy naked and beat on him with a belt. There might have been worse, but he couldn’t see it all, so he tried not to think that far. He closed his eyes.

The odd thing was, in the past Monte might have fantasized what he was going to do to Pete later, if he could have. At least he would be figuring out who he could call, who might do the job for next to no money. Monte didn’t know men like that anymore, but he knew there were always men like that.

But those fantasies were bullshit. He’d never find anybody. Nobody was going to do anything like that for him anymore. Nobody was taking him seriously about a damn thing.

So he thought about things he could do. And Monte thought maybe he could kill the boy. Monte was old and weak but he could still probably kill a seven year old boy. If he was determined enough. If it would save that boy some of the pains seven-year-olds had no business to know but that Monte knew all about.

Monte woke up the next morning in his bed, naked, feeling like he’d fallen down a rocky mountainside. When he moved he felt a sharp pain near his left shoulder blade, but he discovered that if he held his body a certain way, keeping that shoulder slightly back behind the rest of him, he could sit up and swing his legs around without too much pain. He had a vague memory of picking himself up, like picking up an armful of broken branches, and wandering down the hall, finding his room, fumbling with the light switch, stripping out of his stinking pajamas and boxers, leaving them on the floor just inside the door, as far away from the bed as he could think of. Crawling under the blankets so carefully, thinking that something was going to tear open if he wasn’t as careful as he could possibly be.

He didn’t think he had turned off his bedroom light. But it was off now, and what appeared to be his cleaned pajamas and boxers lay neatly folded on top of the dresser, along with some towels, a basin of water, wash cloths, giant bar of soap, a big bottle of peroxide.

It took awhile to clean himself up, and he didn’t have a mirror, but he wasn’t entering any pageants this year, so that would have to do. It took him even longer to get himself dressed, and he wasn’t able to struggle into his shirt without some hellacious pain. But he managed. His daughter’s message was pretty clear—in this house you took care of your damage before you left your bedroom. Then you put a smile on your face and you walked out the door.Which he did, more or less. What he wore on his face wasn’t exactly a smile, but it would have to do.

His daughter was in the kitchen, bent over the sink, palms flat on the counter to either side. “You okay?” he asked.

“Sure.” She spoke without turning. “Got to sleep a little late. We all did. Brian’s still in bed.”

His eyes found the wall clock. It was a Mexican-looking thing: brightly-painted clay rooster with a clock face in the center. It was after ten. “Brian’s not going to school? And you’re not going in to the restaurant?”

“Brian’s feeling a little under the weather. I think we all could use a day off, don’t you?”

Monte took it wrong at first. Man of leisure. Then he realized that wasn’t the way she meant it. “Brian okay?”

“Sure. Brian’ll be fine. Sit down, Dad. Let me make you some breakfast.”

She jammed two pieces of bread into the toaster, broke two eggs on the edge of the skillet and got it sizzling, went searching through the fridge. “No fresh-squeezed OJ, Dad. An orange okay?” Her voice muffled, throaty.

“Sure. It’s all great. Should I go say hello to Brian?”

“No, Dad. Just stay here and eat your breakfast.”

She had mastered her mother’s tone. She hadn’t meant it as a suggestion. Monte sat with his elbows on the table, then moved them and folded his hands into his lap, while she dropped the eggs and toast onto a plate, filled a glass full of water, carried it all to the table, the orange balanced in the crook of her elbow.

He watched her as she placed everything on the placemat in front of him. The silverware had already been laid out on a perfectly folded napkin. Her neck had dark purple and green bruises on both sides, strangulation marks, a crust of blood just inside her right nostril.

“That looks bad,” he said. “Where is he now?”

“Let’s don’t talk about it. He’s still sleeping it off.” She locked eyes with him. She had the look of a stern child, one too old for her years. She sat down across the table from him.

“I’ll need a knife for the orange,” he said.

“Oh. Sorry.” She started to open a kitchen drawer, stopped. She left the kitchen, coming back minutes later with something wrapped in newspaper. She put it down beside his plate. “Happy birthday,” she said.

He looked at the package, reluctant to touch it. “What makes you think it’s my birthday?” he asked.

“Isn’t it?” She seemed suddenly bored, or depressed.

“No. Not unless I forgot.”

“It doesn’t make any difference, Dad. Do you remember my birthday?”

He thought a few seconds, even though he knew what he was going to have to say. “No. But I remember the day you were born.”

“Oh?” Still bored. “What was that like?”

“Scary. I’d never been that close to a baby. Didn’t want to pick you up because I was afraid your arms might break off.”

“That’s stupid, Dad.”

Maybe he should have taken offense at this, but he didn’t. “Yeah. I was stupid. I just couldn’t see the human being in you. If you were talking, maybe, but with you just making those baby sounds, and crying all the time, and needing God-knows-what to keep you alive, I just didn’t know what to do with you.”

“So you left.”

“So I left.” He stared at his food. “Sorry.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry, Dad. Just unwrap your package so you can eat your orange.”

He examined the newspaper, then tore it away. Inside was a wicked looking thing. “A hunting knife?” It wasn’t really a question.

“Now you can cut your orange.”

Monte kept thinking that wasn’t the right way to use a good hunting knife, and this was a good one, he could tell. It had a polished bone handle, the blade shiny as a new car.

“Something wrong?”

“No, no it’s great.” He put the orange on the plate. The knife went through it like it wasn’t there. Monte felt himself grin involuntarily, then stopped it. What was wrong with him? It was a silly present, he obviously had no use for it, but it excited him just the same.

“Good. Maybe you’ll get some use out of it,” she said, and got up, grabbed the skillet and a scouring pad, started cleaning up.

Like he’d ever go hunting again, or fishing for that matter. She was a stupid girl. He didn’t understand how that could be. His wife had been a smart woman. Maybe she got the stupid from him.

He thought about his daughter’s present while he finished his breakfast, and he sat there for a while afterwards thinking about it while she continued to clean the kitchen. He didn’t even know what she was cleaning anymore. It all appeared spotless to him. He thought about the boyfriend sleeping in the other room and he thought about his grandson and what he had considered doing to the boy. And he thought about his daughter bringing him here to live with her, saying how he had always taken care of her, when she knew full well he hadn’t taken care of her at all. He thought about why in the world she’d want a man like him around when she already had a man too much like him in the other room sleeping it off. He thought about all of these things until he couldn’t think anymore.

“Lacey,” he said. She turned around, surprised. He knew she was surprised because he’d used her name, and he didn’t do that often. “Lacey, I want you to wrap a scarf around your neck and take your son out for some ice cream. He’ll feel better once he gets some ice cream in him.”

His daughter watched him a few seconds, then she said, “Okay, Dad.”

The boy was groggy and red-faced but wasn’t unwilling to go. His jacket was too big for him and Monte thought his daughter really ought to do something about some better fitting clothes. Before they left, his grandson turned to him and waved. “Bye, Grandpa,” he said. Monte raised his hand a bit. His daughter rushed the boy out without a backward glance.

Monte didn’t know what was going to happen. You get past a certain age and it seems like you never know what’s going to happen. He was old, and he was weak, but he could still lie down on top of somebody with a knife in his hand. He slowly made his way down the hall. He might be old but he was a tough old beggar. He was persistent. He’d stay at it and stay at it until the job got done.