Jason Escareno

Parable

Betty lives in the apartments across from Hackley Park, where yesterday a seven-year-old kid found a loaded gun. It turns out the kid found the gun last week, buried it and then came back to show it to his friends. One of the kid’s friends told their parents who told the police. The park is surrounded by yellow crime scene tape. I see people looking up as if the gun fell from the sky like evil manna.

It’s hot in this apartment, the TV is on the religious channel which makes everything hotter. A preacher with white teeth is speaking about the parable of the treasure in the field. 

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field, which a man found and hid again,” he said.

I live in my mother’s house with my wife. My wife is not happy about it, she said she is chained to the wall of life. We only have one car, and every time I get home, my wife wants to look at houses. We can’t afford a house, we have zero revenue, we have no means. 

The last time we looked at a house my wife caught me stealing a book from the house we were viewing: “Short Stories of O. Henry.” She was in a panic. 

“How can I steal something that already belongs to me?” I said. 

“Huh?”

“All books are mine, the same way some guys think all women were made for them to have sex with, all books were made for me to read.” 

I told my wife I was done looking at houses until she gets a job. She spit at me like a prisoner being led back to her cell. 

My wife is afraid to leave our bedroom whenever I leave the house. She locks herself in our bedroom and doesn’t come out except to use the restroom. She’s the one who wanted to get married, she inflicted this on herself. 

We’re preparing to cut each other’s throat, after only five months of marriage. I gave up everything to marry her. She made her happiness my slave and now it’s my fault she’s unhappy.

“You should see me with other women,” I said. “I make them laugh. I make them happy. I can make any woman happy except you.”

“You do make me happy,” she said. “We need our own space.” 

Every day, my mom and my wife fight over who gets to make me coffee. They both worship me like gold they hide from each other. 

Betty’s TV is still on the religious channel. A preacher with even whiter teeth is talking about the tent of Achan. This channel is counterfeiting religion. 

I try to turn the channel and Betty yells at me. 

“I need God in my life,” she said. “I’m not embarrassed about it.” 

“The advantages we gain over our enemies are not truly our own, but belong to God,” the preacher said. 

“Amen,” Betty said.

Betty and I work at the supermarket together. She works in the deli, in fact she’s heir to the whole department. She’s next in line for deli manager. (We’re famous for our deli.) I work in the meat department. 

Betty’s daughter left Betty a note saying she had to leave for a few days “and please don’t try to find me.” She took Betty’s car. So, I’ve been giving Betty a ride to and from work all week. This is the first time Betty has invited me inside her apartment. 

Betty and I do little things for each other at the store, like holding doors open and taking our breaks together. We even punched each other’s timecard. I even sold her steaks priced as hamburger. I even took time off from work and went to her divorce hearing with her. 

Betty sits me in a kitchen chair and gives me a haircut. Leave me some hair, I said. At the end of the haircut, she rakes her fingers through my hair a few times like I’m a Zen Garden. Before I get up, I look up at her. She’s standing behind me looking down at me. She lets her hair fall on my face. That drives me wild. Betty’s hair is her prized possession. 

Then Betty gets dressed twice, two different outfits like a fashion show.

“Do you like this dress?” Betty said. She said it’s her daughter’s dress, but that she looks better in the dress than her daughter. I’ve never met Betty’s daughter, but she must be around my age (I’m twenty-two). That would put Betty around forty. 

Betty asks if I will unbutton the back of her dress. I tell her I’m going to unbutton everything she asks me to. 

“Never mind,” she said. 

Betty and I roll a bag of weed into joints. Our hands are busy, like dung beetles rolling balls of dung. We light a joint and smoke (the blur is on my brain once we smoke). 

“I have a funny story to tell you,” I said. 

I told Betty about my dream. I had a dream I was a sign artist at the grocery store. 

“I had created all these clever signs for the meat department: John Steinbeck Likes Turkey Necks; Ezra Pound Prefers Ground Round; William Blake Chooses Ball Tip Steak; Stephen King Eats Our Chicken Wings; Charles Dickens Likes Fresh Roasting Chickens; Edgar Allen Poe Enjoys Our Escargot; Nietzsche Eats Our Sushi. Then as I was looking at all these clever signs, I had an epiphany. I came up with a new sonnet form, the butcher’s sonnet. This sonnet was going to change things, going to change everything. That’s when I woke up.”

Betty looked worried. 

“Do you have any food?” I ask. 

I felt like I hadn’t eaten in two days. I found five carrots in the refrigerator. I also found a brown banana. The banana makes my stomach feel queasy, so I go into the bathroom. Betty has a wooden toilet seat. I didn’t get sick. In fact, I kissed myself in the mirror. 

 We left the apartment for a stroll. We’re holding hands, whatever that means. 

Betty is a holy beauty. Betty’s eyes look like church windows filled with sunshine. 

“Now it’s my turn to say something,” I said. “I love you.”

“You have no right to say that to me,” Betty said. But she likes me saying it. 

A fat boy puts both hands above his eyes and stares at Betty like he’s looking into a bakery window. 

We toss one dollar and eighty-seven cents into the hat of a homeless man sitting on the curb. 

We pass the Nims Community Garden, and I stare at the gazing ball. There are people pulling weeds, perverting nature.  

We walk past The Women’s Club, where I’m told they’re trying to rid the city of all phallic symbols. 

I’m a lucky man. Every man we pass on the sidewalk wants to be me, wants to be beside Betty.

“What would you do if you looked up at the sky right now and it said, ‘Will you marry me, Betty?’”

“A message from God? I guess I’d become a nun.”

We duck into city hall, where they have a full-scale model of the city. I pretend I’m bigger than the city. I pretend one hundred cities can fit within me. 

We go into Dreamer’s Bar which used to be called Flip’s Friendly Lounge. Dreamer’s is as dark as a coal mine.

I see someone I know. I didn’t want them to see me but of course they did. Even with the name change this place is still friendly. It’s this double-jointed Christian that’s seven feet tall and has hips like a woman. He lifts me off the ground in an embrace. 

“I never thought I would see you here,” I said. 

“You mean because I’m a Jesus freak? I’m celebrating beating cancer.” He said he had had skin cancer. He said he found out because dogs wouldn’t stop barking at him.

“I’m cancer free. How is your brother?”

“He’s great, he’s married and has three kids,” I said. He listens to me talk about my brother like he’s trying to crack a safe. He used to follow my brother everywhere. He even followed my brother into the seminary. He even tried to dress like my brother. 

“Did you hear about the gun in the park?” he said. 

I nodded. “Hey, this is Betty. Show her your stuff.”  

He bent the fingers of both hands back to his wrist. Then he laced his fingers behind his back and lifted his arms over his head. 

“That’s odd,” Betty said.  

Betty sees one of her most loyal customers. 

“I almost didn’t recognize you without your hairnet,” he said. “I never thought of you as having hair, especially not hair like Venus.” He shakes my hand with a violent grip. He has a suitcase with him. He said he needs to get out of town for a while.

“Where are you going to get your deli ham from?” Betty said. 

“Did you know when the Titanic sank there was seven thousand pounds of ham on board?” this loyal customer said. He’s serious. “Don’t you ever cut that hair,” he said. He’s even more serious. 

We had a few drinks. I drink mine like I’m drinking Betty’s desire for me. 

“It feels so good to be divorced,” Betty said. 

“I’m never getting married,” I said. 

“Now you’re talking like a man,” she said. 

Then we walked back to Betty’s apartment.

“I’m not going to have sex with you,” Betty said. 

We walk down Clay Avenue through a little jungle the city calls a Monet Garden. You can hear frogs croaking “watch us go.” 

We walked past a library I know by heart, where I stole The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and Cujo when I was a kid.  

We walked past the synagogue where the Rabbi looks at Betty’s hair and plucks his beard with envy. 

I can hear Betty’s TV from the hallway. This time a female preacher is preaching. She’s talking about Abraham and Sarah. “He talks and laughs as if he had no wife, he hid his wife. One good man in one thousand I have not found,” she said.

Betty’s daughter is home.

“Behold this fool! Is he spending the night?” she said. 

“No,” I said. 

“How long have you been sleeping with my mom?”

“I’m not—I haven’t.” 

“She just got divorced, man!”

“Do you have to be so hostile? Leave him alone,” Betty said. “He’s been giving me a ride to work since someone took my car.” 

“You two smell like dope. So, this is the guy setting my mom’s crotch on fire? Are you my new daddy?”

Betty asks me if I want a drink.

“He doesn’t want a drink. You know what he wants. He wants us to drink. He wants to get us both drunk and fuck us.”

Betty gives me a helpless look. She can’t control her daughter. 

“I’m sorry,” Betty said. “See you tomorrow?”

I nod.

“Looks like no tail for you.”

I nod again. 

I take a step toward the door and turn back to see Betty without her hair, her hair is a wig and is in her daughter’s hands! Without the wig, Betty has just enough hair to cover her scalp. Her daughter sees the horror in my face and smiles. Then she holds the wig high and makes Indian war whoops with her hand over her mouth. 

I go home. It’s two am. The house is asleep. 

I get naked and climb into bed. I push my wife’s cotton panties to the side and have sex with her. My wife takes sedatives (along with numerous other pills), so she doesn’t wake up right away. She’s frightened for just one second. Her eyebrows stretch up like fast-food arches, like she’s afraid for her life, but then she knows it’s me, the man of her dreams. 

I’m making love, not having sex. I’m making love to my life, not my wife. She comes to life beneath me. It’s my life coming to life. 

She pushes against me. I hear the cave woman inside her moaning primitive passwords, she’s trying to slow me down. 

I yank my wife’s hair to make sure it’s real. She slaps me. 

“Motherfucker that hurts!” she said. 

When it’s over I’m neat, I move her panties back to the exact position they were in to begin with, like a painting over a safe.

I go outside where I piss in the rosebushes. I look at the stars like I’m looking at an old photo. I light a cigarette to reward myself. I look at the house to see where I live. I’m going to break my wife’s heart tomorrow and drink my mom’s coffee (they both make terrible coffee). 

Mom doesn’t want cigarette butts in her yard, so before I put my cigarette out on the ground, I make a divot with my heel. I bury the cigarette beneath the sod. I get down on my haunches like I’m planting a new crop, a terrible new seed. I even pat the earth like we’re good friends.