Greetings, Dear Readers. Would that I could address you under more felicitous circumstances, but, today being a Tuesday, named alternately after the ancient God of conflict, Tiu, or the less archaic Germanic etymology, Dienstag, roughly translated as "day of service," this day portends naught but deleterious drudgery.
The day dawned with a howling wind whipping across the plain, and the meager clouds were tinged with red: take heed, sailors! Gene stumbled into the nursery, rheumy-eyed and unshaven, his unemployment clearly wearing on him, for what is a man if not the bread winner? Gene's unemployment benefits, I'd overheard him telling Debra, were set to expire and there was as of yet no prospect of work on his windswept horizon. So despite my general antipathy towards this man, my heart went out to him. And besides, when he was still working at the Wal-Mart he was absent from the house no fewer than eight hours daily, plus the additional time spent at the tavern drinking away a sizable portion of his check. His gainful employment was a boon to my treasured private time.
But I digress. Tuesdays...Long have I harbored a mistrust, indeed a loathing of this second day of the work week. It has, sadly, only gotten worse since Gene was let go. Mondays are easy to dislike, but it takes true fortitude to detest Tuesdays. Mondays, likewise, are easier to stomach given Gene's acrimonious mood. On Mondays, while Debra is out running her various domestic errands, Gene is still somewhat jovial from the weekend. He wakens me, still optimistic as the week begins, hopeful still that Gus will call and invite him back to work.
"Today's the day, little man," he says habitually, lifting me from my crib and gently wiping the sleep from my eyes. "Gus is gonna call and tell me about how it was all a mistake, a misunderstanding. The Wal-Mart ain't the same with ol' Gene, is it, Raoul? Inn't your Daddy necessary? Dun't it run a bit less smooth over there without me? Yes it does! Yes it does, my son. You'll see. You'll see..." And then he drifts off into a silent reverie, staring through the window and patting me on the back. And there we stay for a while, he throwing his gaze across the endless tallgrass plain and me casting mine on my hamburger mobile, staring and patting. Staring and patting. Always staring and patting.
The hopefulness of Mondays has all but evaporated by Tuesday morning, though. By Tuesday the demons of aimlessness and daytime television have laid Gene's spirits low yet again. After a pleasant Monday spent on the corduroy couch with Gene watching back-to-back episodes of Judge Judy and eating Minute Steaks, Tuesday's awful silence has me disheartened as well. By Tuesday, Gene has put back most of a fifth of his beloved Early Times and endured no less than 14 consecutive hours of those screeching harpies poised on the red carpet on the E Network. Also, Tuesday is Debra's meeting so she's gone for most of the forenoon, and she leaves me with only my second breakfast bottle (formula and beef bouillon). So by 10am I'm ravenous and, with Gene stupefied on the couch or even the floor, I'm left to fend for myself. Last Tuesday I was forced, degradingly, to gnaw on half a potato I'd found behind the refrigerator. Dear Readers, this truly was a low point. The potato having grown soft and its eyes turned to tendrils desperately seeking purchase in soil. Its taste, however, was not altogether unpleasant. But even so.
The silence, however, was and remains unnerving. Gene lies prostrate in the family room, staring listlessly at the ceiling, immobilized by fear, perhaps. Fear? Can it be? Regardless, there he lies scarcely even bothering to swat away the flies that circle his unwashed, stubbly girth. The silence booms, alternately accentuated by and abated by the howling wind that manages to find the unsound conrers of our house, where the walls meet and on bright days you can see cracks of daylight. The wind whistles thinly there and I am hungry. Wan, thin, desolate, like the very land upon which we have homesteaded. If only I were capable of operating the electric can opener.
Tuesdays, my friends, what is to be done? What is to be done?
Luckily, I secreted away a small ration of Gummi Bears inside an ingeniously designed hollow in my actual Teddy Bear, but even this cache of sugary sweetness has done little to assuage the hunger pangs which even now plague me. So I crawl down the thankfully carpeted-yet-seldom-vacuumed hallway, intent on accosting Gene and forcing him to prepare us both a noon repast. This is as much for his own benefit as for mine. For what elixir can there be to jar a man in such doldrums better than a hearty meal? What tonic can gird one's loins so fully as the very stuff of life? Rack of lamb! O, to reach those lofty peaks of barnyard tenderness! Game hen? Quail? Ah, surely not foul, those fowl! Perhaps an egg dish? Savory, rich hollandaise! Or perhaps a bit more pedestrian? Casserole? Green bean and mushroom? Surely such a thing is not out of the question?
When finally, through my admittedly awkward perambulation, I reach Gene's immobile figure and begin my caterwauling, urging him shrilly to attend to my alimentary needs (and his own!), he does not deign to more. Lifting myself with great effort onto his own mountainous chest, I peer intently into his eyes. It is clear he has been crying, although the tears have long since dried. He is simply staring at the stuccoed ceiling, breathing belaboredly. One gets a sense of glacial time, perched there on his chest. He seems to be mummified, in suspension. His troubled, shallow breath smells of disinfectant. Finally, I roll off my father and come to rest on my back just next to him and together we lie in anhedonic contemplation.
The acrid smell of his sweat is immediately apparent, but the smell is the perfect complement to this
mise-en-scène; it is the smell of defeat at the outskirts of American suburbia. An unlaundered sweatshirt, stained with a week's worth of food runoff, each meal growing slightly less extravagant than the one before as our food budget dwindles. Soon, no doubt, we will be eating Hamburger Helper sans the hamburger. Or shall we be reduced to Tuna Helper? Who can say?
But thoughts of our decline are shortlived. Before long, Gene's regular though labored breathing and the gradual rise and fall of his chest has lulled me into a deep meditation. My own breathing falls into step with that of my father, and for a brief moment I see my future laid out before me. The spotty late-morning light dissolves into visions of the distant future as I lie on a carpet with my own infant son beside me and we both stare at the ceiling. Only this carpet is plush and unstained, and the ceiling in gilted. The walls that surround us are hung with tapestries and large, tasteful paintings. I see myself from above, the adult Raoul, corpulent certainly, but vigorous, a man with healthy appetites. I rise and lift my son and hold him to my breast. I look around and am greeted warmly by my future wife, the future mother of my future son. She is small and elegant. Her small hand rests on my powerful forearm and we lock eyes. I hold her gaze in a manner that is both sexually dominant and infinitely tender. Then we look at our son. This is a boy who will never know hunger, who will never go without. He is clothed in a cashmere jumper. I have a neat and stylish beard.
Suddenly, I am called to alertness by the sound of Debra's keys in the lock. She enters the room and immediately interrupts our somnolent musings with her harpy's shrieking.
"What the fuck, Gene?" she yells. "Wern't you suppose to find some work today? I come home from my meeting to see you two fat asses lying on the goddam floor? What the shit?"
Then she lifts me roughly off the ground and sets me on her hip with difficulty. In the kitchen she unwraps a Butterfinger and places it in my hand. The fluorescent light crackles overhead. In the other room, Gene strains to roll over and right himself.
