By Harris Lahti.
Russell told me repeatedly—he had a wife, June, and June lived in one of the other half-way homes, and the only reason she did not live with us was because a bed had not opened—yet I do not believe him.
For weeks, I chalk this union up to make believe, even after June moves in with us, even after they commence living the lives of a middle-aged married couple, bickering softly and drinking down their morning meds with watery half-caff on the couch, taking weekly “date nights” to Walmart.
Then the condoms show up.
The condoms show up with the Medi-pack delivery and written instructions from the Powers-That-Be that read: If Russell and June choose to engage in sexual activity, they should be encouraged to practice safe sex. And since as rule, all sex is stifled at Lexington Home (there will be no privacy to stash pornography, no bumping and grinding at the monthly dance) this tacit acknowledgment leaves little doubt of my bias:
Deep inside of me I must not consider the developmentally disabled capable of marriage!
Have I spoken too loudly to the hard-of-hearing waitress at Mexican Radio whenever I ordered nachos? Do I mistrust ethnic groups such as Italians? Insult the elderly when I offered them my seat on the bus? Suddenly I do not know myself and anything is possible, despite all the years I have spent wrenching the blood from my heart.
I call Russell and June into the kitchen. They stand there—now husband and wife—waiting for me to open the lockbox, for me to dole out the petty cash they require to purchase their usual carton of Neapolitan on their date night.
They keep waiting, begin examining the faux flowers on the windowsill, the green lamp that hangs above the table like a saucer, the sofa art of a snowy meadow and cabin I hung on the garish beige walls to add some life. Finally, they notice the condoms.
Their eyes dart away as if singed by their suggestion—back to the faux flowers, the sofa art, the shadowy ceiling with a water stain like a bean-shaped cloud, anywhere else, the anxiety surfacing on them via red cheeks and small fidgets (as it might on anyone else, except with a little more pigment and frenzy). And as their knuckles continue to whiten on the backs of the chairs, I suffer one of my sudden visions:
The slats that frame their underwear zones morph into jailhouse bars!
I hurry to pick up the condoms, to read from and destigmatize the package before any more discomfort could register on either of their faces: “A three-pack. Un-loved,” I say, before correcting myself: “Un-lubed, un-lubed, un-lubed, I meant.”
But the damage has been done. Russell coughs into the collar of his nicest shirt, adjusts the tie I tied for him not ten minutes prior. “No offense,” he says. “But can we forget about the condoms?”
“I second that,” June says, wringing a small frill at the hem of her dress. “With the demands of the other residents…” she continues in the slow piecemeal way she talks. “We’re so rarely granted usage of the passenger van… We’d really just like to go… To Walmart.”
“We can forget the condoms,” I say. “For now.”
In the Walmart parking lot, the oil-slick pavement radiates with a late summer night’s heat that refuses to simmer. The automatic doors swing open and swallow us. The artificial air brings an immediate chill to my skin as the bright aisles slam up all around us, blindingly and confused.
Shuffling down these aisles, Russell and June proceed to stick fingers into baby shoes, they laugh at the jokes read from plucked greeting cards, take turns shoving their flared noses into glass candles. Their usual routine, more or less—
Except now very different. Because tonight, as I observe them, Russell and June are no longer two developmentally disabled people playing at romance. They are a husband and wife forced into chastity belts by the institution that has been tasked with caring for them for most of their adult lives.
I search their interactions for signs, hoping to disprove this hypothesis—a hand on the small of the back, a closer-than-average proximity, a groped ass. And as I search, I begin to fill with a buzzing dread. I had missed a critical moment back there.
After all the years you have witnessed the frequent romantic offenders of this place being labeled by the other aids as miscreants, perverts, lover boys, I tell myself, you should have known! You should have recognized the rare opportunity to insert myself in a way that encouraged them to express physical love!
“You’re shitting me!” But June’s words are not meant for me, they are for Russell.
Stopped before a looming endcap display of dented canned good items, Russell pats at his shirt pockets, his jean pockets—front, back, side-to-side—then his shirt pockets again. He repeats this process until he looks like he is doing the Macarena at the Lexington Home dance. “Ah crap,” he says.
Turns out, Russell had forgotten his wallet.
“Oh no,” June says. “What will we snack while watching Dancing with the Stars?” They turn to look at me, their flat expressions asking me without asking if I had the petty cash they had forgotten in Russell’s wallet or, perhaps, the money to spot them.
I shrug. “I’m sorry. Really. But I can’t afford the overdraft fees.”
Nevertheless, they decide to keep shopping.
In the pharmacy aisle, they take turns sliding into the cuff of the blood pressure machine. In the sporting goods aisle, they bounce basketballs. In the pet aisle, they watch the small fish flounder around their grimy overpopulated tanks before moving on to peruse sporting goods for potential presents for birthdays, Christmas, Valentine’s Day. Throughout which I follow and watch them, my hypothesis about the institutional deadening of their sexuality hardening into cold, hard fact. Meanwhile, the guilt of my own bias follows and watches me, berating me for all the good I could have done in the moment with the condoms back at the house.
They are shaking pill bottles like maracas in the health aisle when, at last, my redemption finds me. I point at a large rack of square and rectangular boxes, and say: “Hey now, here are some better options.”
“No, thank you,” Russell says, without glancing at the condoms.
“They have ribbed. They have Pure Ecstasy.”
“No… Really… Thank you,” June says.
“Heat activated? For her pleasure?” I shake the box at them, trying to force their eyes to grab them, to take our first step toward destigmatizing the essential marital act.
But they are already shuffling away from me, toward the frozen food aisle, where they proceed with their date night: opening and closing doors, they bask in the refreshing breath of frozen vegetables and TV dinners, stuffed-crust pizzas. Already, they appear to have forgotten the condoms. Already, they appear to have returned to the same old sexless trajectory of their lives, they themselves steeped in that same malignant bias.
“Ah, the Neapolitan,” Russell says. Then, after removing the smoking carton from the refrigerator, he shuffles off toward the registers with the Neapolitan under his arm.
“You forgot your wallet,” I almost say, then catch myself, not knowing if I had missed something. The not-knowing being the hardest part of this job—knowing what Russell knew and what he did not, what he required from me to lead his best life.
You have been wrong before, I think. About so much. There is no reason he could not have located a crumpled bill in his trouser pocket just as easily as Russell and June could have been having condom-less sex all along. They could have been trying to conceive a child for all you know. And all night, you could have been sounding off all night like some eugenicist, attempting to prevent them from mixing their DNA with love.
“Ah crap,” Russell says at the register now. The red-headed teenage cashier scans the Neapolitan, and Russell pats his pockets.
“Five-sixty-three,” this cashier says in a quivering voice and watches us with hyper-focus, seemingly unable to wait to complete the job for which he has been newly trained. Or, perhaps, worried we might flee without paying.
“Ah crap,” Russell says, and repeats this. “Ah crap, ah crap.” And with each repetition, the scuzz of the cashier’s red upper lip widens with another kind of anticipation, one I recognize—the beginning of a bias I have noted on the faces of so many others, one that, even after all the years, I still wear myself: “I cannot kick the feeling that these people are different than me somehow.”
“Five-sixty-three,” the cashier repeats.
When no money is produced, he looks from Russell to June then, finally, to me, as if I am responsible for the petty cash after I had doled it out to them. And he keeps looking at me, as if I alone can help them, his cracked and braced mouth smiling wider, wider, wider… Yet Russell only continues to pat and repeat himself, a little sadder with each repetition, working his way toward the realization that twice now he had forgotten his wallet. “Ah crap,” he says, and says, until I realize that I have no other option.
Removing my wallet, I shuck out my emptied debit card. I ready the card but stop before slipping the chip into the machine. “You know what’d make tonight really special?” I say, and before they can say, “No, thank you,” I begin to grab anything within reach—gum and candy bars and the magazines covered in beautiful people, Tic-Tacs, a package of two round, silver watch batteries— bleep, bleep, bleep, I keep the items coming.
“Here,” I say, waiting for Russell and June to join in on the fun. “Go on. What else? Anything you want anything else. Let’s make this date night one to remember.”
Now Russell looks at June, and June looks at Russell. Then Russell and June look at me. And the cashier, whose eyes seem to be bugging out of his head with the responsibility of serving us, looks at me also. They all stare at me, into me, straight into the pulsing guilt of my heart.
“Just the Neapolitan please,” Russell says.
“And we’re paying you back tomorrow,” June says.
Then the cashier’s finger mashes some button and a receipt scrolls out.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harris Lahti‘s fiction is forthcoming or has appeared in Blue Arrangements, Bomb, New York Tyrant, Hobart, Epiphany, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. He edits for Fence and Post Road, and paints houses in New York’s Hudson Valley. Recently, he completed his first novel, The Foreclosure Gothics.
