Man*hattan: a fairy tale

By Philip Higgins

Meet Michael Dearborn. Telephone therapist by day, complete and utter mess by night.

It's just another New York story of boy meets boy, boy breaks up with boy, boy gets depressed, works in the basement of a funeral home, drinks too much, wakes up in a strange bed, dates a crazy person, and still makes it to brunch in time to tell the tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Higgins
• Release date: Jul 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476467184

Philip Higgins

Philip Higgins is a clinical social worker in Massachusetts, where he lives with his husband and their baby boy.

Book preview

MAN*HATTAN

a fairy tale

Published by Philip Higgins at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Philip Higgins

To Matt, for taking me home.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

Michael Dearborn sat slumped over his desk, the butt of one hand wedged against his forehead while the other cradled the phone receiver to his right ear, and listened.

"…and…and…oh God, I don’t know, it’s just so hard to get up in the morning, all I want to do is lie in bed and cry...and of course Jim doesn’t help, he just sits there and rolls his eyes at me like I’m some sort of pitiful…some sort of…train wreck…"

Massaging his scalp with his finger pads, Michael was dismayed to find his hair feeling greasy. Or, not greasy, exactly, but rather…what was the word? Sticky. Yes, that was it, sticky. Not at all what the pomade container had promised, in fact it had distinctly promised just the opposite: No more sticky mess! Say hello to soft, manageable, salon-fresh hair! Michael’s brow furrowed just thinking about it.

"…and so I just started screaming at him, ‘Can’t you see? Can’t you understand?? What I am going through?’ But of course there he sat, perfectly still, perfectly emotionless, not even a blink. I mean…I just…I couldn’t even believe it. Well, I mean, of course I could believe it, I’ve put up with his crap for fifteen years, but this…this…it’s like he didn’t even care, couldn’t even bring himself to give two Goddamn shits about me. Pardon my French…"

Michael switched the receiver over to his left ear, ignoring the fact that this ear was as good as useless when it came to telephoning, effectively making the voice on the other end sound as if it were being filtered through a large tin drum, under water, while he wore a padded football helmet. Not that he’d ever worn a padded football helmet. Or hadn’t he? No, he definitely had worn one, he remembered now. Pop Warner football, fifth grade. An entire pee-wee football season spent wearing a padded football helmet, in fact. He couldn’t remember the actual helmet, or where it was specifically padded, or even how it had felt on his head, exactly. But Michael knew he had worn it at least once, because he could recall quite clearly at least one instance of complete and utter relief at a football helmet’s utility in hiding a tear-streaked face. He returned the receiver to its original spot against his sweaty right ear.

"…for even one Goddamned SECOND that I am going to sit here and let you treat me like a child, Jim, well you have SOMETHING else coming.’ And wouldn’t you know it, he just up and…"

November of 1986 came rushing back to Michael in a haze of glaring, orange street lamps. Break dancing had reached its frenzied peak, and Michael was no different than any other boy his age in his fervent efforts at contorting his body to match what he saw on the television set. He had come dangerously close to breaking his tailbone during one overly ambitious attempt at the Applejack, and his Moonwalk was more of a halting backwards shuffle, but Michael was pleased to have perfected – in his own mind, at least – one master-class move, the Worm. As with his Arm Wave, Michael’s perceived success with the Worm owed more to the alarming spectacle of his preternaturally long limbs flailing about than to any actual talent or coordination. To Michael, however, the truth was crystal clear: nobody but nobody could deny that Michael Dearborn could do the Worm.

The twenty-three padded and helmeted members of the St. Rose’s Pop Warner football team stood in the high school parking lot, bathed in an orange sea of Westinghouse High Intensity Discharge Mercury Vapor light. Practice had ended twenty minutes earlier, but Coach and Bobby Lee – the latter being the wife of the former, but shunning the title of coach because she felt it lacked a certain feminine grace – had bid the parents into the gymnasium for a meeting. There was a stark chill in the air and the boys alternated between blowing smoke rings into the sharp, dark autumn night and tapping their cleats on the pavement to maintain their circulation.

"…A GODDAMNED HEARTLESS MONSTER…"

Ten- and eleven-year old boys being what they are, it did not take long for the one-upmanship to commence. The coaches’ hare-lipped son, Jimmy, told a joke about a one-legged, blind hooker which nobody understood but to which they responded with gales of bowled-over laughter all the same. Todd Murphy – knee-weakening, Adonic, sunkissed-skinned Todd Murphy, featured star in a large proportion of Michael’s feverish pre-teen dreams – recounted a skit, poorly, from the Late Show, which made no sense at all but which still elicited another round of over-eager guffaws from his teammates. Michael made a point of being particularly exuberant with his own response, grabbing onto Todd’s padded shoulder for support as he keeled forward in a violent paroxysm of laughter, and was pleased when his efforts yielded a warm smile from Todd’s perfectly pink lips and white teeth that made Michael’s stomach clench. Jimmy told another joke, Scott Powell sang a song about titties which his brother had taught him, and John Scarlata – whose father owned the biggest house in town and had presented the team with a brand new set of uniforms shortly before running off with Ms. Minsk, the Pineville Elementary art teacher – kicked out a few confident, passable Applejacks.

An agitated silence hovered over the boys, peppered with more nervous tapping of cleats and blowing of smoke rings, and finally more silence. Most of the boys looked anxiously toward the gymnasium doors, straining to read Bobby Lee’s lips through the small, cross-hatched windows. Michael looked anxiously toward Todd, studying the way his blonde curls tapered to a darker shade of gold as they neared the nape of his neck where helmet met skin, while Todd merely looked vacantly at a grass stain on the leg of his yellow football pants, a single line of concentration marring his otherwise flawless forehead glistening lightly behind his facemask. A breeze rustled through the parking lot as the temperature dropped ten degrees.

Michael shivered. Shivered and then, without thinking, threw himself forcefully onto the cold pavement at Todd’s feet and lurched directly, expertly, into the rote undulations of his Worm. His body had gone no further than its first wave, however, when a crippling pain shot through his groin, into his stomach and out of his mouth, where it transformed itself into a guttural, high-pitched shriek. The front of Michael’s helmet scraped against the asphalt as he lay perfectly and momentarily still. In his overeager excitement, Michael had forgotten that he’d removed his protective cup after practice, disliking the way it chafed at his bald inner thighs. This mental omission, combined with the rock-solid pavement and the even more rock-solid erection he’d developed as a result of his focused attention on Todd Murphy’s translucent skin, resulted in Michael feeling as if his privates had been first raked with broken glass and then slammed with a brick. Which, really, was essentially what had happened.

Michael lifted his head, once again aware of the scraping noise his helmet made against the parking lot. He raised himself onto his hands and knees as the orange night reeled around him. The agonized screams from his crotch were soon joined by the agonized giggles of twenty-two red-faced fifth graders who now circled tightly around him. One sound blurred with another blurred with the light blurred with the cold blurred with the pain as Michael dragged himself to his feet. First shock, and then humiliation, burned his cheeks as he stood in the center of the circle, shuffling slowly counter-clockwise in his cleats.

Michael felt removed from his body, floating three inches above himself, and it crossed his mind that he might be dead, that his own stupidity and lust and retardation might actually have gotten him killed. This thought gave Michael a brief sense of relief. They’d all have to stop laughing once they realized he was dead, wouldn’t they? Their glee turning to shock as it dawned on them what had happened? Their laughter transforming into tears as they stared down at his lifeless body?

Michael imagined his teammates picking him up off the ground, hoisting his prone and lifeless corpse off of the pavement and onto their shoulders, just as he’d seen the Jets do with Tony in his sister’s high school production of West Side Story. His mother would burst through the doors of the gymnasium, her hair flowing behind her in the frigid air, as she fell to her knees, cursing the gods for stealing away her baby boy. His father would kneel over Michael’s coffin at the funeral home, a river of tears soaking the satin pillow beneath his son’s cold and lifeless head, wishing he’d been more, done more, and placing into the crook of Michael’s arm the Cabbage Patch doll he’d always forbidden Michael when he was still alive. It would be just the one he’d wanted, too – all brown, yarny curls and green eyes and maybe a cute pair of overalls. His father wouldn’t have been able to find it in stores, where the waiting lists stretched well into 1987, but would have phoned Xavier Roberts directly, offering any price at all to give his son this final, belated gift, daring anyone to call his hero son a sissy. The line of mourners would stretch twice around the block, and face after face after face would linger tearfully over Michael in his new navy blue suit and slick parted hair, admiring how much he really did look like a sleeping angel, wishing they’d been nicer to him when they’d had the chance.

Still circling slowly, Michael glanced down, half-expecting to see his helmeted, lifeless body lying at his feet, but all he saw was cleats and pavement. The pain in his groin and the heavy pounding of blood in his temples brought Michael back into himself, back into the cold and the noise and the light. Still alive. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself dead again, but it wouldn’t take. Michael tried to chisel a smile onto his face as the other boys doubled over in laughter, pointing at his and their own and one another’s crotches and finding a seemingly endless number of ways to reenact his plight. The chiseling proved to be too much for Michael’s fragile, frost-nipped face, which soon crumbled in a flood of hot tears. Thankful for the protection and privacy afforded by his helmet’s face mask, Michael let his gaze fall to the ground just in time to see Todd Murphy’s right pointer finger simulating a hard-on as he performed his own rendition of what would likely go down in history as the worst night of Michael Dearborn’s life, and certainly the last night of his football career.

"Michael…?"

Michael came out of his stupor.

"Michael…?"

Hmm…?

"I asked what you think. I mean, am I wrong, or is he just absolutely failing me left and right?"

Michael glanced at the timer on his phone display. He’d been talking to Janice Liverpool for exactly fifty-two minutes. Or, rather, Janice Liverpool had been talking to him for exactly fifty-two minutes, exactly twenty-two minutes over the thirty minute time limit he tried to strictly enforce with the many despondent and loquacious clients enrolled in the Thriving and Surviving Grief and Bereavement Program for Family, Friends & Others at Bellweather & Brothers Funeral Home, serving northern Manhattan since 1941.

He cleared his throat.

Honestly, Janice?

"Of course."

"I think this has more to do with your mother than with your husband. If you look at everything you’ve said, and everything we talked about last time and the time before that, it seems like the person you’re really angry with is your mother. But because she’s your mother, and because she’s dead, you’re focusing all of that anger on the person closest to you. Your husband. Jim."

Silence. A choked sob. A sigh.

Tick. Fifty-three minutes.

Janice…?

Another sob, another prolonged sigh, but this time with a slight sing-songiness to it. Janice sputtered out a quick laugh.

"God, I think you’re right. I mean…you’re right, I…I…Whew…I just really, when you come right down to it, I just still hate her in so many ways. I mean , she’s dead, and she’s my mother, and the sadness is there, and I miss her, but…you know, I just have so much hate for her still…I hate her for everything she did when she was still alive, the way she treated me, treated Jim…oh God, poor Jim...First my mother beating up on him, and now I’m doing it, and he’s just stuck with me through all of this…this…bull…bull... bullshit. And I won’t apologize, because that’s what it has been: bull…shit. There, I said it again. Bullshit! God, that feels good."

Janice exhaled a thin, reedy whistle.

And you’re doing fine, Janice, you really are. And Jim will understand. Remember, there’s no how-to book for this stuff, you’re figuring it out as you go along.

Fifty-six minutes. Not a good precedent to set. Michael’s fingers found their way back to his sticky, product-laden hair, and his indignation returned. He wondered if he felt like pizza or Chinese for lunch.

Okay?

Janice laughed again.

"Okay. God, I just feel like I stink at this. But you’re right, I’ll muddle through. Thanks, Michael. You know, you should really start thinking about picking this up as a profession…"

Michael pushed out a polite chuckle. Definitely Chinese. Special house fried rice. Maybe an egg roll.

We’ll talk again?

"We will. Thanks again, you’ve saved my marriage."

Happy to help. Hang in there.

"Okay. Bye for now."

Bye, Janice.

Michael hung up the telephone and, keeping his head resting against his hand, closed his eyes. A sigh collected at the back of his throat, paused for effect, and then released itself with a long whoosh through his nostrils. Opening his eyes again, Michael caught his reflection in the dusty computer monitor in front of him, and began to fix his hair.

CHAPTER TWO

Michael was about to give up on his computer screen preening – having dipped his right hand into the Styrofoam cup of drinking water that held permanent residency beside his telephone in an attempt to dilute the waxy build-up on top of his head, only to find the pomade impenetrable by mere moisture – when a shadowy reflection joined his own in the monitor. Michael wheeled around in his seat, right hand still grasping a stiff clump of hair.

Hi, said the tall, dark and handsome figure standing in Michael’s doorway and feigning three light raps on the doorjamb.

Hi! Michael practically sang, unsure which would make a poorer first impression: keeping his hand where it was, intertwined in its damp and waxen contents – interpretable, perhaps, as common workplace agita or maybe, if the light coming through the window behind him was just right, which he had a feeling might well be the case, maybe even as sexy – or releasing his grip and praying that the upward arc of his unclenched hair held some semblance of windswept allure.

The visitor studied Michael awkwardly in the echoing silence, his eager eyebrows losing their arch and his bright eyes darting first to the floor and then to the top of Michael’s head before finally settling on a vague spot somewhere between Michael’s crossed legs and his mouse pad. He pursed his lips and twisted them to one side, biting the inside of his cheek. A knot appeared between his eyebrows.

Reaching an internal compromise, Michael released his captive hair and smoothed it quickly against his scalp in one fluid motion, praying that it would stick. His fist fell to the desk, where his fingers commiserated about the unpleasant residue they were left to pass idly back and forth.

Sorry, Michael started, resisting the impulse to wheel back around to his monitor and assess the situation on top of his head. He bared his teeth in a broad, apologetic smile. Just…fixing my hair. Michael couldn’t help but notice that the stranger’s eyes were the same color as the rolling green fields in the Greetings from Ireland! postcard that his mother had sent him three Junes ago and which had since hung on the wall directly over his visitor’s left shoulder.

Hi, Michael repeated, with a sharp intake of air.

The young man’s gaze met Michael’s and his face regained its former brightness. Hi, he smiled back, a quick snort escaping through his nose. Sorry. Just when you thought you were alone, right?

Yeah, right, Michael laughed, his fist relaxing as he leaned forward in his chair, which creaked loudly beneath him, A woman’s work, hmm?

Well now that I’ve gone and ruined beauty hour…I’m Steve. The medical student. I’m here for the month on elective.

That explained the starchy white lab coat. Michael rolled the name silently over his tongue, considering it: Steve. He wouldn’t have pegged this one as a Steve. Steve was a name for someone wearing tight, dusty jeans and three days worth of stubble, maybe a broken-in baseball cap – not someone with a preppy V-neck beneath his stiff lab coat and eyes the color and fluidity of a freshly-mowed lawn. Someone with eyes like that should have a softer name, like Brian, or James, or even— Michael mentally added an n and tested it out. Steven. Yes, he decided, Steven with an n suited him much better. Just the way God and Steven’s mother had intended. Michael had a sudden urge to grab Steven’s head in his hands, hold it close to his own, and inhale deeply, certain that he would catch the fragrance of cut grass.

The troubled knot returned to Steven’s brow, bringing Michael back to his office, his chair, his vacant stare at this beautiful stranger. Oh, right, Michael sighed, I heard you were starting this week. Nice to meet you, I’m Michael. The grief counselor.

Right, I know. I heard about your program and I wanted to come and say hello. I think it’s great…what you do. Steven’s posture relaxed as he rested his shoulder against the doorway, almost grazing the postcard. Literally, Michael thought to himself as his eyes darted from Steven to the postcard and back again, the identical shade of green.

Oh…yeah, well… Michael hated this part. The part where people felt the need to affirm how noble and good his work was, or else tell him about their Great Aunt Elsie who’d just passed away over the summer, or even more likely than that—

"I mean, I don’t think I could do it, I think I’d just get so…depressed. Don’t you get depressed?"

There it was, thought Michael. The question: How do you do it every day? How could anyone sit in a seven-by-seven foot room all day long and do nothing but talk about death and dying and grief and sadness and misery and pain? How could it not drive anyone to just go home at the end of the day, draw up a nice, hot bath, slide a razor across their wrists, and sip on a jumbo glass of Chianti as they waited for the darkness to settle in?

There was a time, two or three years ago, when Michael, fresh out of social work school, would take umbrage at these questions, making a point to pull out his soapbox and defend his work for as long as it took, insisting that his life was anything but depressing, his days anything but miserable, his evening ablutions anything but a means to a desperate and bloody end.

Lately, though, he was sorry to admit, it was true: Michael Dearborn was deeply, completely, undeniably depressed.

Studying the young doctor’s verdant eyes, Michael found himself compelled to give him the benefit of the doubt, refraining from writing him off based on one clichéd comment. Instead, Michael shook his head and presented the biggest, most confident and sincere smile he could muster.

No, actually, he replied. "Not one bit…Steven."

Steven smiled back. Please! My mother’s the only one who calls me Steven anymore. Call me Steve.

Not a chance, thought Michael, mentally stretching his arms out to either side and tossing his face towards the sun as he raced recklessly through Steven’s emerald pastures.

CHAPTER THREE

Michael stood in the bathroom of his cramped, price-gouged studio apartment on the far northwestern tip of Manhattan. He stared through the gathering steam at his toweled reflection in the full-length, plastic-framed mirror hanging on the back of the hollow wooden door.

It was amazing, he thought to himself, how drastically, yet all the while imperceptibly, his body had changed over the past decade. His wavy brown hair had grown somewhat slack and now shared space on Michael’s scalp with more than a few wiry, white intruders. Michael turned his head to the side and ran his fingers across his temple, counting six grays on the first try. He leaned forward until his face was an inch away from the mirror. No real wrinkles yet, to speak of, but the skin around his cheekbones and flanking his eyes had lost its youthful suppleness and he imagined that, if he listened quietly and long enough, he might very well hear the deep, dark crevices of middle age plotting their slow but steady course across his face. Sometimes it felt as if some other, older soul had invaded his young body overnight, bringing along with it an unfortunate collection of creases and sags.

Michael took a rusty set of tweezers from the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet and began to pluck the small, stray hairs which had recently taken up residence on the tip of his nose, recalling wistfully that there was once a time when the only plucking he’d required was between his eyebrows. Satisfied that he’d yanked at least the most visible offenders, Michael drew his upper lip down into a long scowl, lifting each nostril to the side and scanning its contents with a cocked eye. At least he could spare himself the humiliation of the battery-operated nose clippers. Scrunching his brow in concentration, Michael wondered if the extra pads of skin now protruding in a slantwise arc above each eye had always been there.

He stepped back six inches. Other than the clear signs of impending physical decline, he supposed that he was the same old Michael after all. Dull green eyes. Piggish, oversized nose. Thin lips. Scrawny chest marked by an inconsistent thatch of hair, thick around his nipples and belly but disappearing almost entirely along the stretch of his torso. A little pudge where he imagined a six-pack might properly belong, extending in two