There's No Explaining It

A Story by N.A. Argentieri

Eugene, sunk into his couch’s lush embrace, stared blankly at the television. His focus flittered between the two guests on the talk show, positioned on opposite sides of the stage ostensibly to prevent a physical altercation. Everyone~the audience, the host, the guards, the guests themselves~knew that the argument would end in blows. A dispute like the one captioned at the bottom of the screen~“Neo-Nazi mother clashes with transsexual Peace Corps Daughter”~had no shot at a civil resolution. Thoroughly confused, deeply troubled, the guests sat tensed in their armchairs as the host chided them on with insinuations, morally conflicted gladiators furtively unsheathing their weapons.

The picture of middle age~pale face a colorless void save for the purplish rings under his eyes, flabby, tired, generally faded~Eugene watched as the husky daughter sprang from her seat and lurched at her mother’s throat. The host feigned an attempt at peacekeeping before allowing the women to tug each other’s hair, rake with garishly painted talons the flushed cheeks of burly security guards. Eugene was less shocked by the display than he would have been years ago when he had first been drawn in by the program’s promise of daily bestial violence. Every episode boiled down to the same fundamental struggle, whether between parent and child, husband and wife, betrayed friends, loathsome, seething enemies. All was conflict.

His focus lapsed and with lazy eyes half-lidded he sat in the blue glow of the television. With a deep sigh he pulled himself out of the crevice between two cushions. He trudged through the mostly unadorned living room~ivory walls bare except for a watercolor of a red sun setting over the ocean; how loud of a hiss it would make he often wondered, if the sun were to fall sizzling into the sea, whether it would it leave its mark on the water or fizzle into oblivion as the waves rushed in to bandage the scald. He groaned with the weight of each step as he crossed under the archway into the kitchen. In the morning darkness he groped along the wall until his trembling fingers found the light-switch. The two bare cylinders above snapped on in a burst of fluorescence. As they brightened Eugene shielded his eyes, mad at the green pallor of his skin as reflected on the side of the toaster. He moved quietly, swinging his arms slowly and deliberately so as not to awake the pain in his back: sudden movement ignited muscle spasms that left him panting and doused in sweat. For somewhere around a decade, since his divorce, he’d been plagued at night by the agony of the muscular contractions, his sheets worn thin from his writhing and squirming. He didn’t bother trying to untangle the gnarled white web to make his bed anymore.

His mind elsewhere, he threw back his head and swallowed four pills for the pain~two more than the standard dose~and choked on his water when he realized the mistake. He set the percolator running and went back to the living room to await the numbed stupor he would soon enter at the mercy of the medication.

An hour had passed. Eugene was sprawled in a sweat-soaked patch of the carpet. He was still dizzy from the medicine when he awoke, and found himself in nothing but his underwear, with no recollection of having taken off his clothes. Just then the clatter of the garage door sliding up its tracks shook the walls of the living room: the boy had come to do the yard-work.

In the months that the pain was worst and his personal, inner disarray, as well as that of his house, spilled out into the yard, Eugene paid a teenage boy to keep the grass trimmed and branches pruned. It was a last-ditch attempt at a façade of normalcy. Maybe it pleased him to know that at least one aspect of his life was in order. The growth had slowed recently with the lack of rainfall, and the disorder of his yard subsided, but he liked having the boy around nonetheless. Eugene gave him what little money was left after medical expenses, confined to an old mason’s jar on top of the refrigerator. At first it had been the simple comfort of having someone to chat briefly with now and then that spurred Eugene to ask the boy to come back every week; the relationship, initially friendly, had blossomed~or rotted~into a parasitic dependence, on Eugene’s part, on the boy’s visits. He was scared of trying to explain to himself what was going on, and he wasn’t sure he could anyway.

He took up his regular post at a bedroom window, watched the boy, shirtless in the heat and looking proud, as he marched along with the mower, painstakingly straight lines materializing behind him in the grass as he pushed toward the edge of the yard. Sweat dropped in glistening beads from the boy’s forehead and over his brow, from his neck to the dent in the small of his back. Eugene shuddered and spilled some coffee when the boy’s arms tensed to push over a rise. He hid his face in his hands, and disgusted, lumbered to the bathroom.

The money in the jar was dwindling. With his back problems he couldn’t hold a job. His sister, Sharon, sent him a check every month, but what little she could afford to give was inevitably stretched thin after medicine and household supplies. Only two dollars were left: a wave of embarrassment swept over him. He panicked, trying to think of how he’d pay the boy for cutting the grass that needed no cutting, trimming the branches that needed no trimming. Outside, the roar of the mower stopped and gave way to the rattle of the garage door. He wrapped a towel about his shoulders and, still in his underwear, answered the door before the bell stopped ringing. The intonation roused him from his daze and he realized that he’d covered the wrong half of his body with the towel. Too late. The boy saw Eugene’s ghastly pale, exposed thighs and his eyes darted immediately to the handrail on his left. He said through the awkward tension: “Mr. Dirksen, everything’s finished out there.” Usually the boy asked how he was feeling. Eugene fumbled with the towel and handed the two dollars through the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “that’s all I’ve got. If you’ll wait a month or two I can give you what you’ve earned.”

“Everyone’s having a little trouble these days, Mr. Dirksen,” the boy said precociously. “Don’t worry about it.” Eugene had maneuvered the towel about his waist.

“Well, I need to pay for this medicine,” jerking his thumb over his shoulder, “and it’s either my back or the yard I gotta let go to s**t. Sorry, pal.” Then the boy offered to do the yard-work for free. Guiltily, hating his own selfishness, Eugene accepted and thanked the boy. He closed the door and again sank into the couch. There was no explaining it.