Limbs Akimbo - Chapter 5
The next morning, Charlie kept his eyes closed for a long time after he woke up. Mornings were always slightly better than the rest of the day. His very first few moments of consciousness, the moments before he remembered, were all too short and therefore to be savored.
His bedroom was essentially unchanged since middle school. Thundercats sheets on his bed. Baseball trophies on the shelf his dad built over his little wooden school desk and chair, the one he had never sat in, not even back when he was still small enough to fit in it. He had always done his homework sprawled out on his bed, on his stomach, limbs akimbo.
The trophies and their shelf and every other surface in the room was dust-free and shiny, his mother’s handiwork. The windows sparkled. There was a faint odor of Febreze.
He waited until he no longer could bear to pretend he was still sleeping. Finally he opened his eyes, drew a long breath, used his hands like a gymnast to maneuver himself onto his side, then propped himself up on his elbow, folded his pillow in half and tucked it under his head.
This was first morning since he’d been home that his parents hadn’t woken him up. His routine consisted of being roused against his will and brought to the kitchen table. Then eating something hot and wholesome and being unable to taste it. Then after breakfast his day would unfurl out in front of him, endless hours to fill.
He would read the local newspaper, full of breathless accounts of high school football games, city council meetings and local entrepreneurs of note, like the guy who made gourmet organic butter, using a jury-rigged bicycle and his legs to power the churn.
He would watch TV, but there was never anything he wanted to see. It was TV for kids and housewives and newshounds. It was cartoons and talk shows and soap operas. It was too many big white teeth, too many game show contestants and too many movies edited for content. The news was the worst, of course. Sooner or later they always talked about the war.
He looked forward to lunch, because even though he didn’t enjoy food, it was something to do. He didn’t answer the phone when it rang because talking made time slow to a crawl. Sometimes, on weekends or evenings when his father was home from work, they played poker, but Charlie had begun to dread those games, because they just sat there in silence, next to the big window in the dining room that looked right out over the lawn where they spend untold summer nights perfecting Charlie’s slider.
When his mother finally knocked on his door it felt to Charlie like he had been in bed awake for an eternity, even though it was not yet quite 8:30.
“Good morning, honey!” Her smile was overly bright. Briskly, she went about the business of the indignities necessary for getting Charlie up and out of bed. She was efficient and he was cooperative, so within 15 minutes he was relieved and clean and dressed and fed.
In later years, whenever he thought about that morning, he had to admit that the truly amazing part was not what his parents had done, but that he had never suspected anything. Even when his mother left the breakfast dishes unwashed in the sink and announced that she was taking him outside, even then he thought she wasn’t being any weirder than normal.
Even when she wheeled him into the garage, even when his father joined them and began to explain, with painstaking detail and unconcealed excitement, what they had done to his car, even then he didn’t quite get it. Only when his father finally paused and asked if he’d like to get in and give it a test drive, try out the new controls… Only then did Charlie catch up.
“You guys? You put hand-controls in my car?”
They looked at each other, still breathlessly happy but a little surprised by his question.
“Yes. Yes, we did, “ his mother finally answered.
“And I can drive it now? I can drive by myself?”
“Yes. Yes, you can,” said his father. His parents exchanged another look, his mother nodded slightly and then, together, they helped Charlie into the driver’s seat.
After an hour or so of practice in the driveway, Charlie went off on his own for a while. It was his maiden voyage so he only went so far as the edge of the field at the end of the street. There he parked. He played with the radio. He listened to a few minutes of the Red Sox game. He heard some Michael Jackson, which surprised him, and then something with violins. Then he turned off the radio and listened to the silence instead, and watched a hovering hummingbird inspecting a natural trellis, overgrown and exploding with honeysuckle. He stroked his new hardware with absent-minded thumbs and clenched and unclenched his jaw. Finally, he closed his eyes and thought of Zack. He pictured him grinning and sunburnt behind a catcher’s mask. He remembered how drunk they got that one night they spent off-base the night before they went to Iraq. He wandered gingerly through his shoebox full of Charlie and Zack memories and when he got to the last one, to the one he wished he could erase, he opened his clenched fists and bawled like a baby.
It was not the first time he had cried for Zack, but it was the first time he’d truly surrendered to his tears. It was a wrenching, full-body, gasping for breath, choking on your on snot, howling and rocking back and forth with your arms wrapped around yourself kind of cry. When he finally finished his face was red and his temples were throbbing and he almost had to puke out the window of the car, but he took deep breaths and finally the nausea passed.
It was almost dark when he finally made his way home. He was ravenous and impatient for dinner. He had also made a decision, a decision he couldn’t wait to share with his parents. He had to force himself to drive slowly and carefully, mindful of the newness of the hand controls.
