Conditioned Love
by Max Christopher
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
The four parents were huddling over their dessert of lemon meringue pie and coffee on Saturday. Their heads almost met over the coffee table as they spoke in hushed tones, like convicts in the prison cafeteria planning a break.
“We are at a loss,” said Sally’s father.
“Quite at the end of our tether,” said Sally’s mother. “But this is unconditionally your finest lemon pie.”
“Thank you,” said Sid’s mom. Then, to Sid’s dad: “Are you entirely sure that chesty little skank who performed the procedure didn’t confuse a six with a nine or something?”
“Brenda? Why should she have?” said Sid’s dad.
“Is that her name? I never did like her,” said Sid’s mom.
“No? I liked her well enough,” said Sid’s dad. “What? What did I say?”
“You took the trouble to remember the guttersnipe’s name, I see.”
“Well, that’s what Sid calls that stupid lip dumbbell he’s got. He told me he named it after — you know — the other Brenda.”
“Oh,” said Sid’s mom. Then, “Ohhhh.”
A stir went around the table. It reached Sid’s dad.
“Ohhhh,” he said. He looked at Sid’s mom. “It will have to be reversed. We’ll have to think of a pretext.”
“At the earliest opportunity,” said Sid’s mom. “Place the call.”
“It’s after dinnertime. They’ll have gone home.”
“Please try.”
Sid’s dad was about to protest further when Sally’s mother leaned back and placed one chubby bare foot on the coffee table, exposing the sole to Sid’s dad in shocking and unwelcome intimacy. He stood and moved past it uneasily.
“It’ll be the answering service,” he grumped.
Sid’s dad was reflecting on the convention of calling people who never knew anything an answering service when a voice startled him by offering to make an appointment. He booked it and hung up. Maybe we’ll see that nice Brenda, he thought.
“When’s the appointment?” Sid’s mom asked.
“Second week in October,” Sid’s dad said.
“That long?”
“Soonest they could do it.”
“But that’ll be after Sid’s birthday.”
The two women’s faces were all capital O’s.
“What’s the big yank?” said Sally’s father.
“He’ll be of age,” said Sally’s mother.
“Ooohh,” said Sally’s father.
Sid’s dad looked at his wife. “We have to come clean.”
“Crap,” she said.
“We’d have had to anyway, after he came of age.”
“But then the treatment would be established,” she said. “Nobody wants to be freed of their feeling for the adored object. The experts say the kids almost always think the treatment had nothing to with falling in love. Or that it was like opening the gates and ringing the bell so the thoroughbreds could race like they were born to do.”
“A stirring if imprecise simile,” said Sid’s dad.
* * *
Sid and Sally had adjourned to Sid’s room after the strained meal.
“So... how are you doing with things, Sid?”
“Fine, thanks, Salmeister. Yourself?”
“You don’t hate me too much, do you? Say you don’t.”
“I don’t hate you at all. Honestly, Sally, between you and Hooksie—“
“Yes, he told me he’d been to see you.”
“Well, yes,” Sid said, “he came over to my house like he does every day and we played some video games and then he told me about you two.”
She drew herself up and looked away beneath half-lidded eyes. “He’s a damn fool, you know.”
“Huh? Hooksie? What are you talking about, Sally? And is your lip quivering?”
“Oh, Sid, it just overtook us! It was upon us before we knew it. There wasn’t time to mount a defense against our feelings.”
“Mmmm.”
“Will you stop fiddling with that horrid thing!”
“Sally, say what you will about me, but never berate the lip stud. Brenda is sensitive.”
“Then it’s true! You’ve even named it.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Why not? It’s indecent.”
“Indecent how? You have names for all your things.” Sid bristled under what he perceived as an attack upon Brenda. “You probably give little nicknames to your turds before you flush them away. ‘Buh-bye Floaty. So long, Browny. Have a safe trip, Cornshred.’”
“Bastard!”
Sid shrugged. “Bitch. And quit talking like a British wartime melodrama. What was that?”
“My phone.”
“It sounded like Mario getting a mushroom,” Sid said.
“I changed my ringtone for Marsha,” Sally said. “I’m angry at her.”
“So you made her ringtone a hero getting a super power?”
“I made it a dumpy man with a moustache.”
“Are you going to answer?”
“She can wait.”
“What’s Marsha’s ringtone for you, I wonder?” Sid said.
“I happen to know it’s an old song called ‘I Touch Myself’,” Sally said. “That’s why I changed my ringtone for her.”
“It makes me dizzy,” Sid said. “Now look here, Sally, you’ve got nerve talking about me and Brenda when you wrap your life around that phone of yours.”
“It’s not like that. If you got a smartyphone, you’d understand. It opens up your world. It doesn’t narrow it down to you and a lip stud in your stinky room alone.”
“My dad does not allow smartyphones.” Sid said. “He says he’s got enough trouble with people who are smarter than he is. He doesn’t need his own stuff making him feel dumb.”
“Too bad. You can facetime—”
“Sounds vaguely pornographic,” Sid said.
Sally’s tone of voice, if rendered in marble, would have been a monument to patience. “It means you can talk to somebody face to face on your smartyphone.”
“Like The Jetsons.”
“Soon you’ll be able to do it on your watch.”
“Dick Tracy. This is all old news.”
“Then why are you afraid of it?” Sally said.
“I told you, my dad—”
“Meaning your mom. And your dad makes it a joke to save face.”
“Leave that alone, Sally. I recognize that your parents brought you up without boundaries—”
Sally held up her hand. “Stop. I apologize.”
“Do you face time with Hooksie?” Sid made it two words.
“Well, yes. Did you know his father was married before?”
“Sure,” Sid said. “Some teenage dumpster fire. Lasted like two years.”
“More like four,” Sally said. “Painful.”
“What’s your ringtone for Hooksie, I wonder?”
“I don’t see what that—”
“Darth Vader’s theme? ‘Think of Me’ from Phantom?”
“You’re being mean.”
“’Darling Nikki?’”
“From mean to butthole in two short words,” Sally said. “Good work, even for you.”
“Play to your strengths. Let’s see, how about—”
Sally rolled her eyes. “’The Elegant Captain Hook.’”
“Nuh-uh,” Sid said.
“Yuh-huh.”
“Is there another ‘Elegant Captain Hook?’”
“Disney’s animated Peter Pan. Nineteen fifty-three,” Sally said. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Your eyes are glazing. You’re thinking of all the ways you can tease Hooksie.”
“Not at all.”
“I’m telling you, don’t.”
Sid’s eyes became flinty. “The word I would choose is not tease but torment. My debt to you is great, Sally. But did you just tell me what I may or may not say to my oldest friend?” His tongue worked Brenda. “Because not even you could be that presumptuous.”
Sally’s eyes filled with tears. “You didn’t even try to win me back!”
“Win you? Back? Is that what this is all about?”
“Of course not.”
“Because Hooksie kind of told me it was a done deal. And you said much the same thing just now.”
“It is,” Sally said. “It was. But you could have put up a fight.”
“A fight?” Sid said. “Against my two best friends’ happiness? What sort of person would that make me?”
“The sort who won’t just let his girl go!” Sally flung her hands around in an alarming manner, nearly sending Sid’s old Roy Rogers and Trigger lamp to the floor.
“There, now, you’ve both said that ‘my girl’ thing,” Sid said. “I wasn’t aware you ever were my girl. I thought we were always best buds, with none of that messy moisture to fruit things up.”
Sally cried where she stood.
“Here,” Sid said. “Come sit down, there’s a good Salmeister. Have a tissue.”
It will be noted that Sid retained his composure in the face of Sally’s tears. Why this should be is uncertain. It may have been that his peculiar relationship with Brenda, his lip stud, shielded him from that which so thoroughly discombobulates ninety-nine fellows out of one hundred. Or the young Sid may have been that hundredth male. In any event it must be remarked that Sally’s tears were genuine and not intended to manipulate. She was a girl in the grip of the first emotional crisis of her young life.
Seated on Sid’s homework chair, Sally continued to sniffle. After a moment she said, “Do you mean you never once took any notice of me... as a woman?”
“Well, sure I did.”
“You just prefer your beastly bit of metal.”
“Sally—”
“I’m sorry. But can you imagine how it makes me feel?”
“How what makes you feel?”
“To see you go all dreamy sucking on that thing. I never saw you go all dreamy over me.” She crossed her arms and legs. “When?”
“When? When what?”
“When did you notice me as a woman?”
“Ah... a whole bunch of times.”
“Give me an example.” The foot of the crossed leg pumped the air.
Uh-oh, Sid thought. His tongue sought the comfort of Brenda. He caught himself and the tongue withdrew like a startled adder. Sally’s feelings are clearly at stake. I must tread carefully.
“Remember the time I was showing off and crashed my bike in your driveway?”
“You opened your arm from wrist to elbow, you moron,” Sally said.
“You made me sit down on your bed among your hundreds of stuffed unicorns—”
“There are six.”
“Some are the size of large golden retrievers. Then you cleaned and dressed my arm and told me how stupid I was.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You said a reckless imbecile like me posed a danger to self and others. You said that disaster relief should be put on alert in any town I happened to enter, lest the innocent perish in one of the buildings my mere presence was certain to make fall down. You said I should be kept in a cage and fed meat on a pole.”
“I remember. Go on.”
“You had just had your interview for your summer job at Mogie’s, so you were in that new little blue skirt and your hair was drawn back with a blue bow. Your stockings were almost but not quite the same shade of blue as your new skirt—”
“That was deliberate.”
“I thought as much. And you had kicked off your uncomfortable new interview shoes.”
“Robin’s egg blue pumps with an inch of heel.”
“Sure,” Sid said. “Well, through the onslaught of your abuse, I noticed that you made a most fetching picture, kneeling in front of me playing nursemaid. Through the pale blue of the stocking, I saw a little bandage you’d put on your heel where the shoe rubbed. And I liked the springy way your hair in its ponytail bounced over your neck. It smelled clean, like your shampoo with the cartoon mermaid at the underwater shopping mall on the bottle.”
“It’s a conditioner. You noticed all that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you really thought I looked nice?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
“You never said.”
“Nevertheless.”
Sally beamed through her tears. I handled that rather well, Sid thought. Feeling his shoulders relax, he allowed himself a pleased smile.
“And the other times?”
Sid’s face fell. He thought, Oh, for cryin’ out loud.
He was rescued by an insistent knocking at his bedroom door.
“Just a moment,” Sally called, wiping at her eyes.
“Come in!” Sid yelped over her.
Sid’s dad trudged in. “Sally, would you excuse us, please?”
Sally bolted like a scalded cat. Sid’s dad closed the door. He stuck out his hands as if weighing a piglet in them and said, “It’s like this, son.”
* * *
“Does Sally know?” Sid asked afterward. He slumped on his bed. His dad leaned against Sid’s scuffed old homework desk with arms crossed.
“No. That is, your mom and I didn’t tell her.”
“But you told her parents?”
“Yes.”
Sid slumped lower. “She knows. I’ll file suit, of course.”
“You can’t. You were underage. Your mom and I were within our rights.”
Sid snorted. “Your rights. You put me in the hands of an incompetent.”
“We can talk about this another time.”
“I might have developed feelings for Sally anyway. It may be that I had already started to. Would it have hurt you so much to have waited?”
“As I said, we’ll talk about this when you’ve had time to calm down.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“She asked me to handle telling you.”
“Told you, you mean. And you jumped to obey, like always.”
“Sid—”
“Do you wonder that I kept Sally at arm’s length, seeing what a cringing whipped dog you’ve let Mom turn you into?”
Sid hadn’t realized his father could move that fast. The desk scraped and Sid dangled from a big fist. “Don’t press your luck, boy. I know you’re upset.”
Sid’s dad was a blur through tears. “You don’t have to tell me it was Mom who wanted this done to me. But did you have to let it happen?” he said. “Couldn’t you have stood up for me, Dad?”
“Marriage is complex, son.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.”
His father released him gently. “You’ll feel differently when you’re older.” He smoothed Sid’s crumpled shirt. A button was off.
“I hope not.” Sid mashed a tear away with the heel of his hand. “Is that really what you want for me? To feel like you do?”
“I want you to be happy, Sid. Someday you’ll understand that.” Sid’s dad bent to pick up the button. Sid shifted to avoid contact with his dad’s bulky shoulders. “Your mom will sew this back on.”
“Would you leave me alone, please?”
After his dad left, Sid rocked on his bed and reflected on the human capacity for betrayal. His tongue toyed idly with Brenda. His expression relaxed; his eyes went soft. Then his face twisted.
He unscrewed the lip stud and flung the pieces in his old Cthulhu for President wastebasket. In one tentacle Cthulhu waved an American flag; in the furnacelike maw, a skinny black man, a flinty-eyed white woman and a bulky white man with an unlikely flap ginger of hair writhed as they were devoured; another set of tentacles stretched a banner bearing the slogan ‘For those tired of choosing the lesser evil.’
Sally poked her head in to say goodnight. Sid grunted.
He tossed and turned much of the night. Several times he reached into the basket for the lip stud, but withdrew his hand empty.
Sid’s last thought, drifting on the cusp of sleep, was, I wonder if Hooksie gives her the big contrite eyes while they face time? Then a flicker of shame.
* * *
Copyright © 2018 by Max Christopher
