Allison Shulnik, "Hobo Clown" (c. 2008)
And so it is true. He has got a lot on his mind these days. Whole columns of sick large thoughts.
For example. Dinner with his mother the other night and she asks him if he’s all right.
Please. It’s typical. Ironic. Like she doesn’t know.
He’d parked her old car in the heat. It was another one of those boiling Connecticut nights—when your veins start running away, when your minuses start sticking to each other, when you start remembering what you can’t forget, when it’s starting to look like a light life sentence…
See, it is always something with his mother—if it is not one thing with his mother, it is surely another thing with his mother…
When it comes to making a connection, it could not be simpler: they both want it, they can’t have it.
She’s one of those ferocious small business owners—the atmospheric Greek diner down the street on Main—that’s exactly where they were having dinner. The diner has received many awards. The mother and son eat together only there.
The place is very vibrant, everyone says. And the food is very clean, everyone says. You get unbelievably soft rolls—ready at your table—just like little pillows.
His mother is what you might call an acquired taste. A real piece of work. For example. She once very publicly fired this Serbian dishwasher. The dishwasher hadn’t invited her to his birthday party.
The son fears the mother doesn’t care about his life story.
The other night. It was cool inside. The son met his mother at their usual table. He said Hey to the new hostess.
As a teenager, his mother was considered borderline anorexic. Her considerers were reasonable: his mother was thin. Sometime in her mid-twenties she gained a few useful pounds, growing into her features. She met his now-long-gone father at her restaurant’s grand opening in nineteen-eighty one. His mother was thirty one, his father became a loyal regular full of charm, and things happened as they do (but maybe still only once in a lifetime when it comes to this kind of situation). There was always something slick and phony about his father; he didn’t want to die married. The son can remember him a little. The images burn out around age six. He looks at the wedding album sometimes. Their backyard in April. About a dozen guests. Right before he was born.
His mother had a C-section. He went through the sunroof.
She would often dress him up as a little girl. It was because his dad was gone. It was because she had been drinking.
The mother and son were alone together in the house.
And so he felt things he did not want to feel. And so he never had the strength to shout. And so he grew up into the big strong quiet man that he is today. He learned these things from his ex-girlfriend. She had minored in psychology at the community college. She listened to him. She would hold his hand. She never told him he was wrong.
He remembers being a little girl. It felt like dreaming in his mother’s garden, drenched in the worst honey.
He thinks one day he’ll come straight up from the bottom.
The mother and son both pretend these sessions didn’t occur. They have gone all these years.
She boarded up his bedroom windows when he was a teenager; he couldn’t escape, the imaginary drug dealers couldn’t get in.
No sunlight touched him there.
She always gives him her two cents at dinner. But he doesn’t want her coin collection. He stops noticing anything else when she starts talking; his arms and legs, the rest of the restaurant. His eyes blacken. He just can’t stand another pound of, well, her…
He should write her New Year’s resolutions for her… That’s what he really wants to do… On the other hand, that’d be epically suicidal…
The windows are no longer boarded up. He tried running away once. He was nineteen and just didn’t come home after the dishwasher’s birthday party.
Took her old car right up to a couple state lines. Came back two days later with a full tank.
He hates working in the diner so much. The son is the best host the mother has ever had. They even mentioned him in a review once. All the regulars wave to him.
While she talked and talked and talked and talked at dinner the other night, he thought about his ex-girlfriend.
A match made in heaven: they both lived in their childhood homes alone with their mothers.
They were perfect strangers in the wintertime cinema. He asked her if he could kiss her. That’s how things got started.
His mother always called his ex-girlfriend his disabled prostitute.
See, she was on government disability for agoraphobia.
She still enjoys her mother’s cooking. She spends most of the disability checks on tattoos. Her body is covered in beautiful tattoos; his mother disagrees.
The tragic incident occurred late at night in his mother’s house during the Christmas Party Season: a relentless time at the diner. His mother caught his ex-girlfriend’s naked body in the dark night-light bathed night. His ex-girlfriend was on the way to the bathroom from naked entwined sleep (she was desperate for a sweet pee), his mother was on the way from one of her one o’clock in the morning cigarettes to deep, sacred valiumed sleep (she was desperate for a lasting hush), they crashed into each other across the landing.
His ex-girlfriend stayed away after that.
Had the father meant the theft of the family? The son has always wondered.
One of the worst things you can do is punish a whore. His mother used to tell him this when he was a small child. It doesn’t make any sense to him now.
Okay. His mother sometimes makes good points, though. For example. He wishes he could eat with his mouth closed. Like a civilized human being. He wishes he looked better with his shirt off. You know. These sorts of things.
There’s always the immense wisdom of hindsight. She says that, too. And she pretends she doesn’t know how money hurts.
Silly clown all the time. That’s who she says he is. Mostly affectionately. Sometimes with a blank voice. He sticks out like a sore tongue.
That is, thumb.
The other night. At dinner. As if she saw his thoughts, she asked him if he’d seen his ex-girlfriend lately. He flinched a little when she asked—because it’s been like his ex-girlfriend never existed.
He felt a pinch of appreciation.
Then the mother said she’d realized that he has the same diagnosis as she does. She said it’s the only thing that explains his behavior. His personality. She said she knew it hadn’t always been easy. She said that there have been no excuses left for a very long time. She touched his hand when she said that this applies to both sides.
And so the mother told the son to go see the specialist.
The son doesn’t know the specialist from Adam. The mother keeps an emergency handgun in the home. The son is waiting in the plain pale waiting room like a dirty bomb.
Myles Zavelo lives in London. His writing has appeared in Joyland, Grand Journal, New York Tyrant, The Harvard Advocate, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Southampton Review, and elsewhere.
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