Night came. Had come. Hours, in bed, he’d tried to sleep, then found himself scrolling. On YouTube, monkeys behind glass made faces at patrons performing magic tricks. Vanish an apple, and a chimpanzee freaked out.
He gave up. Got up. Unstuffed the attic bins. Now, strands of lights calligraphied the shrubs, and light-up icicles gabbled the eaves. His mother would be happy, and soon she would be dead, and he was nearly thirty and still living at home, so why not give her one last Christmas to remember?
He wanted to be famous. He wanted to be so famous he could write songs about the burden of being famous. He wanted a normal life, but not before the taste of fame that made a normal life worth wanting. This destiny seemed unlikely.
For one thing, he played no instrument.
For another, he couldn’t sing. Or he could sing, but he was no great lyricist. Which meant covers, mostly. Karaoke. Follow the bouncing ball.
He liked The Eagles but found his voice challenged by Don Henley’s range. He could get there without cracking, but the flip from chest to head voice was deafening in its breathiness. By the time the night man said relax, his lungs were pincushions, the song too long. Everyone knew “Hotel California” was too long for karaoke. Too lonely at its center, if serene. But that didn’t stop him from singing it, week after week, the regulars groaning when he took the stage, staring into their drinks by minute three, scowling by minute six.
You sound like an asthmatic, his mother said the one Saturday she left her bed, accompanied him to the bar. When he was young, though they had the money, she’d refused him voice lessons. Now she criticized his voice.
In a year, she’d be dead. Or two years. Time would tell. Some cancers ravaged faster than others, and she refused to share how ravenous hers was. The doctors had done all they could do, she said.
What he could do was decorate for Christmas. And he had. Not as well as his father back when his father did things around the house, but his father was long gone. Staples in fascia marked the place old Christmas lights had hung.
The night was moonless, and he decorated in the dark, flashlight between his teeth. The ladder was sturdy enough. Every half hour, a car’s headlights swept his legs. Someone home late from the bar or else the hospital. No other options at an hour like this on a street like theirs in a town their size.
So what if his father left? Let him be the man of the house now. His father had another house to be the man of, a house two states away. Big house, young wife, new kid, mean dog.
He’d visited only once, stayed long enough for the beagle-dachshund mix to nip him twice, then vowed never to return. Not returning was a promise the cancer made easier to keep. Someone had to look after his mother, after all, even if she said he was no Don Henley, even if she hadn’t paid for the lessons that might have made him one. She had no one else, and she reminded him of this often.
The ladder tipped, then he was on his back in the driveway, the ladder on top of him. He was unhurt. The flashlight was shattered, but somehow, miraculously, he was perfectly fine. A plastic Christmas bin had broken his fall. He pushed the ladder off of him. He stood. He stretched. He checked for broken bones.
Perhaps he was in shock. He seldom smoked, but smoked now, pulling a pack and lighter from the glovebox of his mother’s car. Perhaps he’d join her in her cancer, decades later.
He smoked. He shook.
You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
A month into the new year, he’d be thirty. By thirty, Don Henley had already made five albums with the Eagles, including Hotel California. Probably he’d had many girlfriends, admirers and friends. Probably his mom didn’t boss him around. Probably he didn’t put up Christmas decorations in the dark or smoke in the cold, alone, and think about his wayward dad.
The bar was open. He could go. It wasn’t karaoke night, but he could take his mother’s car, maybe meet someone, and bring her…where? Home, to meet Mom? In all these years, he’d never brought a woman home. Couldn’t imagine the things his mother might say.
The girlfriends he’d had let him crash at their places or drove him home. Mostly, they felt sorry for him. He rode their pity for the extra week or two it kept them together, but things never ended well. Pity isn’t a breeding ground for love. Resentment has a way of creeping in.
“I heard a clatter,” his mother said, and she was at his side. She pulled her robe tight. Her feet were slippered, rabbit fur-fringed. Her hair was in rollers, and cold cream streaked her cheeks. She sat beside him, didn’t have to ask. He lit one up and passed the cigarette.
The driveway was cold under their butts, but they huddled. She put an arm around him, and he let her. He was her boy, after all. He’d always be her boy, even if he couldn’t hang lights the way his father had, even if he almost broke his neck each time he tried to do a thing around the house. He was not a failure.
“Just a late bloomer,” she assured him. “You’ll figure it out. You’ll find your place.”
Headlights pinpricked the distance, and his mother covered her eyes. Often she opined on the state of her sensitive retinas. The car passed.
“Sing me something,” his mother said.
He opened his mouth to sing.
“Oh, never mind,” his mother said. “I’m not in the mood.”
Her foot swiveled, and she put her cigarette out on the heel of her slipper, which, plastic-soled, sizzled with a stink.
“You never liked my singing,” he said. His cigarette had gone out, and he flicked the spent filter into the empty street. “I begged you for lessons, and you said I wasn’t good enough. But I was. I am. I would have been.”
“Relax,” she said. “You make me sound like a monster. I’m your mother. I have cancer. Now pick me up and put me to bed.”
He did as he was told. She weighed barely anything these days. Her robe was smoky, and he coughed. He tucked her in.
“What do you say?” she said.
“Goodnight,” he said.
“What else?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I’m sorry for what I said.”
“And I’m not a monster,” she said.
“You’re not a monster,” he said.
“Good boy,” she said. “Don’t leave the ladder in the driveway. And don’t forget to shut off the lights.”
He closed the bedroom door and stepped outside. He put the ladder away and stood in the street and studied the house.
The decorations were pretty in a haphazard sort of way. The light strands hadn’t been long enough to reach every bush, and the icicles drooped more than hung, but what there was was not bad. Perhaps he could do better. Straighten the icicles. Rearrange the bulbs.
Tomorrow he would try again. He would try, and his mother would survey his work and tell him he’d done it wrong.
There was so much he wanted to say. But his mother was close to death already, if she was to be believed, and the saying might kill her. She had to be protected—from him, his words, his voice.
Much as he might want to, he just couldn’t kill the beast.
