Suss: another literary journal

Morgan’s Wal-Mart is Gloucester County’s finest retail out­let. It is of the labyrinthine super­center size, laden with a full gro­cer, house­hold items, a tire-center, a garden-center, a photo lab, an eye­glass shop, and a small McDonalds. The park­ing lot, as it may be assumed, is an ocean of auto machinery.

Not far from this great estate is Mr. Morgan’s home, which he pur­chased with fam­ily funds after the con­cep­tion but prior to the birth of his son, Everett. The Morgan fam­ily home­stead is a remote ranch house sur­rounded by a del­uge of cars, trucks, and dogs. The two mat­ted sheep­dogs and Morgan’s wife’s barrel-chested Beagle are kept in back­yard chain-link com­part­ments. The cars clus­tered in the drive are of the humidity-damaged American sub­species: Chevroletus kaput homis, Dodginus minius van­ner and Fordhamus maxiroadus. As with the sheep­dogs, most of these trans­ports are for Everett’s six­teenth birth­day (two years away).

The autum­nal evening is strangely warm, with a water-heated front from the Gulf hud­dling over­head the loblolly pines, pinus taeda. Scratching at the damp of his under­arm, Morgan enters the taupe inte­rior of his plastic-sided cottage.

Inside, Morgan’s wife has prop­a­gated the white dry­wall with numer­ous Christian arti­facts. Jesus por­traits hang along­side Everett’s birth­day pho­tographs. Everett occu­pies most of the flo­ral sofa in the mid­dle of the room, and he lifts a hand in greet­ing after Morgan walks through the line of enchant­ment that runs between his son and the muted television.

“Hoy,” Everett says. “Mawm rawming.”

“When will she be back?” Morgan asks, yet no noise emerges from his mouth. When Morgan and his wife real­ized that their first son was deaf at birth, they imme­di­ately halted all future child­mak­ing plans and rec­on­ciled them­selves to Everett.

“Hoon,” Everett mum­bles. His left hand is buried in the salty plas­tic of a Doritos bag, and his front teeth are smoth­ered in neon orange and in need of a retainer. The famil­iar scent of poly­sat­u­rated fats harass Morgan’s stom­ach, and he moves south­wards into the kitchen. It is a small room, made smaller by its infil­tra­tion of megaprod­ucts: over­sized value packs, plas­tic case­ments of paper tow­els, stacks of canned soup. The Tupperware for uniden­ti­fi­able remains is the same avocado-green and peanut-brown plas­tic that was bestowed to Morgan and his bride on their wed­ding day: October 3^rd, 1981.

The plates they use are left­over from the bride’s father’s estate. Plain, flat white disks ringed with peri­win­kle flower chains. Morgan takes one from the dry­ing rack and tops it with a pair of white breads, which he smears with Great Value peanut but­ter and Great Value grape jelly. The sand­wich looks mys­te­ri­ously vari­col­ored: the white clouds of bread and peanut but­ter as smooth as ceil­ing spackle lubri­cated with vio­let grape pulp. He thinks that he ought to be leery of another entire sand­wich, for he has already con­sumed two dur­ing his lunch hour, along­side a king-size Reese Cup pack­age, half a bag of Frito-Lays, and a pint of straw­berry milk. Morgan is not a man of small girth.

Dismissing his lunch as mod­er­ate due to the fact that he did not con­sume a mid-afternoon snack as he nor­mally finds nec­es­sary to do, Morgan lifts the sand­wich to his mouth to feed. He joins Everett so that he might take advan­tage of the close prox­im­ity to the Dorito bag, even if it means that he has to watch a muted Braves game. Since Everett’s birth, watch­ing sports has been an awk­ward activ­ity, like funer­als. Morgan’s 14-year-long frus­tra­tion that Everett will never be able to play base­ball or foot­ball with the hun­dreds of other Gloucester County boys whose ears oper­ate prop­erly is a sad­ness that only occurs at game­time. With the hopes of his son being a lines­man or right-fielder for­ever demol­ished, the only thing that Morgan can do is watch ESPN and pray for the Lord Savior to alle­vi­ate Everett’s bur­dens of deafness.

In youth, the tele­vi­sion, a Durabrand, had a clear pic­ture. But as the appli­ance nears its fifth year, the pic­ture has grad­u­ally yel­lowed, in the man­ner of a news­pa­per. This change is unac­knowl­edged by Everett, who con­tin­ues with his evening diet of com­mer­cials and sports­cast­ers as if the very depic­tion he is watch­ing is not, indeed, with­er­ing before his eyes. Everett loves tele­vi­sion. Even if he has never heard a bit of it.

When Everett’s mother returns from her run, nei­ther hus­band nor son wel­come her into the liv­ing room. Morgan places the sand­wich plate on Everett’s lap to dis­guise the fact that he has been indulging before dinnertime.

“Hi honey,” she says, tee­ter­ing between feet as she removes her sneak­ers. “Has Ev done his homework?”

“I don’t think so. Ev? Ev? Did you do your homework?”

Bits of Dorito crum­ble from Everett’s grin. “Noooo…hitz nah moo.”

“I don’t care. You have to do it any­way.” Morgan takes the remote, turns off the game, and reaches for Everett’s thread­bare Ninja Turtles back­pack. Despite this quick enforce­ment, his wife still glares before walk­ing down the hall. Afraid that he is in trou­ble, Morgan hoists his bulk from the couch and lum­bers after her. Walking makes him wheeze, which is pecu­liar since rag­weed sea­son is over.

“Honey, you’ve got to be more dili­gent with his school work,” she is say­ing as her hus­band reaches their bed­room. She bounces around, thin­ner and stringier than Morgan, try­ing to undress and tidy up simul­ta­ne­ously. “The last thing he’s going to do is do it on his own. Mindy Clayton actu­ally got rid of her family’s TV. Like, tossed it out. I told her how smart I thought that was. I says to her, I says ‘you know that’s the only way you’re going to get them to com­pletely stop, but my Honey likes his games too much to let me do that to my Everett.’ So I’m not going to throw the TV out but please, Honey, try to be more firm—”

“I know, I know, I can only do so much. I don’t like to tell him how he should be spend­ing his time. He’s not a baby any­more. He’s not going to like it if we mon­i­tor every sec­ond that he’s at home.”

The silent stare that she gives him is telling: except for school, Everett is always at home. “Honey,” she says again, but her thoughts evap­o­rate and she drops her hands into her lap. Her fin­gers are so long and nar­row. They look like sticks of caramel to Morgan. She peels off the dirty layer of Simply Basic socks, then goes into the bath­room and turns on the shower. Her elbow knocks a wall orna­ment and it wig­gles at Morgan—a lit­tle pink wooden angel with a ban­ner that reads “That’s not dirt in my house, it’s Angel Dust!”

Convinced that his wife will remain angry with him for the rest of the evening, Morgan returns to the kitchen where he tries to con­duct a chore to please her. He takes a plas­tic beer cup and feeds the dogs from a bag of Ol’ Roy dog food. He washes the break­fast dishes in the sink and, while towel-drying his hands, notices an untouched white cake sit­ting on the counter, the frost­ing fluffy with flakes of coconut. It is one of Aunt Tootsie’s coconut cakes. Baking is the only sweet thing about Aunt Tootsie.

Morgan already knows what is for dinner—hunks of chicken cooked in cream of mush­room soup. The cake is a much more appe­tiz­ing option. The cake could even be his appe­tizer. He wasn’t plan­ning on eat­ing much cream of mush­room chicken any­way, so there is plenty of room for ample dessert. His wife will be infu­ri­ated by his vio­la­tion of the dessert-after-dinner code, and Morgan knows that every bite of cake will be a sin against her dis­ci­pline, but he no longer cares.

Morgan glances over at Everett, won­der­ing if he should offer his son a slice for them to enjoy in peace together while she is detained in the shower. He decides against it—Everett doesn’t need to gain any more weight. Taking another white plate from the dry­ing rack, Morgan gin­gerly slices a hunk of cake and dabs all of the remain­ing crumbs up with his fork. He seats him­self at the table and sponges the sweat from his upper lip. The table is crowded with a thick layer of scrap­books, scis­sors with crimped blades, hol­i­day stick­ers, mul­ti­col­ored paper and glit­ter pens. One of the scrap­books is open to pho­tographs from the pre­vi­ous year’s week­end at Myrtle Beach. Morgan and his wife stand arm-in-arm, faces sand­wiched together, sun­tan lotion barely rubbed in. Below the pho­to­graph, in her loopy pen­man­ship, she has writ­ten Me and My Honey. As Morgan begins to con­sume his cake, he notices how much smaller his wife’s cheeks are from his own, which resem­ble sofa cushions.

Morgan is lick­ing the pads of his thumbs when an over­whelm­ing pain flashes through his right arm and forces his fin­gers to drop the fork, he lets out a cry that only meets Everett’s deaf ears. Gasping in great gulps of air, Morgan pounds one arm on the table for Everett’s atten­tion, but the lad is bent sin­cerely over his text­book, his pen­cil clutched tightly.

Everett does not look up from his work until his feet feel the tremor that runs through the house’s water pipes when his mother shuts off the shower. When he does, he sees his father bent over the chunk of coconut cake, motion­less. Screaming for his mother, Everett bounces up from his chair. Everett doesn’t scream often, and his mother comes run­ning, wrapped in a towel and fling­ing water droplets.

“Honey!” she cries, but Honey is gone, with­out hav­ing even fin­ished his cake.