University students rent the rooms. The residence has been zoned for such a purpose since 1978 Dad was saying. If I knew this fact or not I don’t know.
As CARETAKER of this property I live on the ground floor rear in the room provided for the CARETAKER. This is a room with its own bathroom, a shower stall & toilet. There have been previous CARETAKERS working for Dad but I don’t know anything about them.
The back stairs to the upper floors & the stairs to the cellar are close by the CARETAKER’s room which is convenient. Nobody can use these stairs except by passing my door. The CARETAKER’s tools & equipment, work bench etc. are in the cellar.
I have access to all the floors of the house. Because I am CARETAKER. My father R__ P__ has entrusted me with this responsibility & I am grateful for the chance to make things up to him & Mom. My master key will open the door to any room in the house.
Most of the students who rent with us are foreign students. From India, China, Pakistan, Africa. Often they have trouble with their doors at first, so I am called upon to help. Mr. P__ they call me. & I am always obliging though speaking no more than is necessary. & MAKING NO EYE CONTACT.
Thank you Mr. P__ they will say. Or thank you sir.
Their dusky skins & dark-bright eyes & dark hair that looks oiled. A smell of them like ripening plums. They are shy & more polite than American students & they pay their rent on time & don’t notice things American students would notice & don’t trash their rooms like American students which is why Dad says they are preferred tenants. Quiet in the evenings. At their desks studying. They all have contracts with a residence hall for meals so using the kitchen is kept to a minimum, I am mainly the one who uses the kitchen but I don’t eat there I eat in my room watching TV. When I’m not out.
All the houses on North Church Street are big old brick or wood-frame Victorians. In big lots. In Grandma’s & Grandpa’s time when Dad was growing up here they were single-family residences of course. This was a classy neighborhood. University Heights. Grandma says it was after World War II the change began. In all of Mt. Vernon. Now North Church Street properties are rooming houses like ours or office buildings or taken over by the University like the house next door that is EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES. At the corner of North Church & Seventh three blocks away where the University president’s house used to be the lot was razed for a high-rise parking lot. So ugly! Grandma says. Farther up is a Burger King just opened that Grandma has not seen yet where sometimes I get hamburgers & fries I bring back to my room to eat & watch TV or do my homework for my courses.
This is a small white card tacked beside my door. I printed it myself with a black felt-tip pen.
5
Monday afternoons 4:00 P.M.-4:50 P.M. Mt. Vernon Medical Center. Dr. E__ asks What are your dreams, Quen-tin. What are your fantasies. Sit staring at the floor. Or at my hands I have scrubbed. There is a clock on Dr. E__’s desk that he can see & I can not. But I have my wristwatch which was RAISINEYES’ which is an expensive digital watch. With an ebony face kept turned to the inside of my wrist where only I can watch the tiny numerals flashing bronze toward 4:50 P.M.
Trying to think of a dream to tell Dr. E__. To confide in Dr. E__. Something that might be a dream. Such as a person might have. Flying? In the sky? Swimming? In—Lake Michigan? In Manistee National Park in one of the unnamed deep & fast-flowing rivers? If only Dr. E__ would not stare at me. His power being that he is Dr. E__ a staff psychiatrist at the Medical Center. (Which is part of the State University.) Dr. E__ is my private therapist hired by Dad but he makes reports to the Michigan Probation Department & these are secret from me. I wish my head did not become heavy in Dr. E__’s office. It turns to a substance like pancake batter, very thick though soft, raw & pale.
Once in Dr. E__’s office when nobody had spoken for a while I felt my jaw drop like a dead man’s & saliva trail across my chin. Slumped forward in the wooden chair with the hard slick bottom fitted to the cheeks of a wide ass. Head lolling & shoulders rounded & Dad was scolding whispering in disgust Quentin for God’s sake: you should see your posture. A rasping sound like a wasp that might have been a snore.
There was embarrassment to it. Falling asleep in Dr. E__’s office. If that was what had happened. Dr. E__ glancing at the clock on his desk. Some papers on his desk.
Thinking his thoughts to type up on his computer after Q__ P__ leaves.
Is Dr. E__ a friend of Dad’s I can’t ask. I have reason to believe that this is so (both men are senior professors in the State University system) but both men would deny it if asked. I never ask.
After I leave his office Dr. E__ will pick up the phone & call Dr. P__ in his office at the University. Your son Quentin is not making much progress I’m afraid. Did you know he never dreams. & his posture is so poor.
That afternoon a few weeks ago Dr. E__ was too polite to notice that I had fallen asleep in the chair facing his desk. It was the strong medication maybe. He might think. Or maybe Dr. E__ did not notice. For he is sleepy sometimes, too. Heavy-lidded eyes like a turtle’s. It was raining & water ran down the window behind his head in thin pissing streams.
Wrote my refill prescription & handed it to me, dosage as indicated. Dad’s medical insurance covers it. Saying we can end our session a few minutes early this week (it is 4:36 P.M. by my watch) if that’s O.K. with me, he had a staff meeting. It was O.K. with me.
6
Last night I was working late in the cellar. Emergency work repairing SEEPAGE DAMAGE in the old cistern. I am a hard worker if what I am doing has a purpose. I did not require sleep (did not take my nighttime medication) & so at 3 A.M. climbed to the attic where there is a star-shaped window at the front of the house. The peak of the ceiling is not high enough for me to stand upright & anyway I needed to crouch there looking up at the night sky where there was a MOON so bright it hurt my eyes! How I knew the MOON was there, from down in the cellar, I don’t know. Shreds of cloud were being blown across the moon clotted & cobwebbed like thoughts moving too fast for you to hear.
So sad & squalid Quentin.
But now we are going to turn over a new leaf aren’t we son.
You get to the attic by a steep narrow stairs at the rear of the third floor hallway. The attic is locked & OFF LIMITS to tenants like the cellar. I made my way silently in wool socks not wishing to wake up the young Pakistani graduate student whose room is almost directly beneath the stairs.
Ramid would not be a safe specimen. Nor any of them beneath this roof. I never think of it.
In the attic there was a strong sharp smell of dust & that sweetish-sour smell of dead mice. I took a deep breath & another & another—my lungs like BALLOONS filling with air. Proof I don’t need fucking medication. Am I sick? Who says? Shining my flashlight into the corners of the attic.
This could actually be for the best. Bringing a problem out into the open. The clarity of day.
Had I been here before? A long time ago a boy had climbed up here scared & in a hurry & he’d hidden something glittering & plastic on top of one of the beams back in the shadows but I don’t know if I am supposed to be that boy or the other one bleeding & choking. But I was not wearing glasses then was I. (Did not begin wearing prescription lenses until aged twelve.) So it couldn’t be Q__ P__. Or if I am confusing two times.