THE WASTREL’S CURSE by Matthew Lansburgh
They nearly always left at night. His mother insisted she didn’t want the neighbors asking questions, though the circumstances surrounding their departures did more to fuel suspicions than to quell them. After all, what normal person would fill the car with luggage so many Fridays after supper while issuing orders in hushed tones to her only child? Decades later, he still remembers their trips down the 101 to the 405 then I-5, through Ventura and Oxnard and Thousand Oaks, Long Beach, Encinitas and Chula Vista, recalls the smell of that sea air, thick with brine, the heavy fog that rolled in off the coast.
Fabian’s mother – Pauline Hinkey, née Paulina Møller – was not, had never been, a person who blended in: old-fashioned hairdos (hairspray for years, then buns); Bible study on Wednesdays and church two times on Sunday; buckets of water for the marigolds and boxwood at six A.M. (still in her robe and curlers); Ecclesiastes and Lamentations and Philippians deep into the night, sometimes at the Rec Center where she also clipped coupons and studied the Brisas del Mar Sentinel for signs of God-knows-what (the return of Jesus Christ, the shepherd with his flock of sheep, or Satan on his chariot announcing Armageddon). Pauline was a large woman – not corpulent, but solid: a big-boned, loud-voiced soul with fiery hair and a thunderous laugh. When she walked from room to room, she instilled anxiety.
Even now, he does his best to banish the memories of their furtive trips across the border and into Tijuana. His mother leaving the porch light off and telling him to hurry as she carried the floral suitcases to the trunk, then the cooler with a six-pack of Fanta and four sweating bottles of single-calorie Tab, one for each of them during the trip down and another pair for their return. Fabian knew without asking that the Fantas were off limits, earmarked for the doctor and his sister Dorotea to whom Pauline felt constantly indebted. Not that she didn’t pay for the doctor’s services. Indeed, she spent a good portion of the five-hour drive lamenting the escalation of his fees. “Dorotea’s the greedy one,” she complained. “He doesn’t care about the money. It’s she who milks me dry.”
Back then, Fabian was too young to comprehend adult finances. They first visited the doctor when he was just four years old. He remembers little about that maiden visit, has only a vague recollection of Dorotea in an orange dress – bright and festive – under a smock or apron of some sort, more suitable for a restaurant or cantina than a medical facility. He recalls the aquarium of hamsters. Teeming, mangy animals spinning madly on their metal wheels, pink testes engorged. The doctor’s office wasn’t fancy: a converted study off his living room, fluorescent lighting, walls the color of fresh lemons.
The doctor’s Christian name was Alfonso, though Pauline insisted they refer to him, even in his absence, as Doctor Gutiérrez. Fabian remembers the man’s bushy mustache and the lollipop he occasionally dispensed, resembling a skull (leftover from Día de los Muertos). He remembers his mother asking the doctor to go over the details – not once or twice but three separate times – of the surgery, can still feel the doctor’s fleshy fingers on his cranium as he examined Fabian’s scalp under a bright light he wore around his forehead like a miner’s lamp.
Of the surgery itself he has no recollection, other than the smell of the hamsters’ acrid urine as he regained consciousness and Dorotea’s offer of a plate of homemade pasteles which she said would give Fabian the sustenance to heal quickly. He recalls the parchedness of his mouth, and the taste of the lukewarm Bubble-Up Dorotea handed him, Pauline sitting to his left, holding his hand as he lay on the narrow cot. For six days they stayed in a motel near a marketplace full of vendors selling dust-covered piñatas and papier-mâché masks of grinning demons. He remembers watching Mexican soap operas on a small TV while his mother read the Bible, underlining passages in green ballpoint pen.
Green was and still remains her favorite color – even here in her new home where her neighbor is (or so the woman thinks) Mary, Queen of Scots. Two months ago, the nurses allowed Fabian to paint one of the walls peridot, which they say is calming. It does wonders for his mother’s disposition, which over time has grown more and more erratic and prone to mania.
For many years Fabian and his mother returned to Tijuana every six months for what Pauline called their little check‑ups, as if Doctor Gutiérrez were a dentist. Through grade school and junior high, Fabian endured the indignity of having the doctor – and sometimes Dorotea – finger his so‑called nodules, paw through his hair to scrutinize his skull, as if he harbored lice. Invariably, he left smelling of eucalyptus or agave or camphor, the result of the latest ointment the doctor had prepared to apply to his scalp to ensure the growths did not take root again.
* * *
Pauline worked at Allstate, selling insurance policies for calamities that rarely came to pass: floods, fires, earthquakes, auto accidents and theft. She left the house at eight A.M., in her skirt and blouse, returned at six to prepare their supper: meatloaf, pot roast, chicken parmesan, or sometimes Hungry-Man. Each night, after Fabian’s bath, she dried his hair, then opened a jar of salve – the medicine Dorotea claimed had been made from a recipe passed down from generation to generation of Mayan curanderos – and rubbed a dab of the concoction on Fabian’s scalp. “Are they sensitive?” she asked. “Do you feel pain?” At first the areas burned and throbbed, it’s true, but his skin healed quickly and soon enough pain wasn’t his concern; it was the pestering, the probing and intrusion. Who wants his hair dried, patted, and picked at? Who wants his mother coming in to check on him repeatedly while soaking in the bath?
“Get away,” he said just weeks into third grade. “I can do it myself!” He grabbed the salve from her and locked the bathroom door. He didn’t doubt what he’d been told: that horns would sprout from his skull if he did not comply. There were raised voices, followed by her histrionic tears. “But I’m your mother! How can you treat me this way? I’m not the one who gave you horns. My genes are fine. My scalp is smooth. It’s your father’s fault. His brother had webbed toes. His mother was a lunatic who chewed her hair and had to be carted off to some sanatorium in Olive Hill, Kentucky.”
Whenever Fabian asked about his father, Simon Hinkey, Pauline unleashed a diatribe. “Not worth my breath or yours. Just be happy I stuck around to raise you. If it had been up to him, you’d have ended up an orphan, running around in soiled underwear.” Simon was a hippie from up North, along the Oregon coast, a charlatan, according to Pauline, who used his saccharine tongue to win her heart, then abandoned her just nine days after Fabian’s arrival in this world. “You were my sacred angel,” she cooed. “God’s gift to me. At birth, your head was soft and smooth and perfect, and I wanted nothing more than to cuddle you in my arms and powdered bosom. How was I to know, how was anyone to know, what he bequeathed to you? Only the Lord knows how the devil works. But then blasphemous Lucifer’s fingers sprouted into view, and I knew at once it was an issue of genetics and no one’s fault but his.”
With time Pauline’s paranoia grew about the wastrel’s curse. How else could one explain her insistence that Fabian put on a hunter green wool cap when he left the house, even during heat waves? Or reconcile her hours with the Bible, the maniacal annotations in the margins and copying of scripture, the references, when she lost her temper, to the devil’s stamp upon her issue’s head? The pastor in their church, who led the weekly Bible study, was passionate and certain, and (according to the preponderance of women) more handsome than any movie star.
It took Fabian years to realize it wasn’t the horns that made people curious, for, despite his mother’s fears, they’d never actually been visible to him or any person of sound mind. It wasn’t the protrusions they were trying to discern – it was the strangeness of Pauline Hinkey’s habits: keeping the shades drawn day and night; the caps and hats she made him wear, the long-sleeve shirts year round, the obsessive application of skin‑protecting pastes and creams.
Dorotea sold Pauline tubes of sunblock and zinc that she insisted were far superior to what could be found at common drug stores. “The boy’s skin is sensitive,” she confided. “Muy sensitiva. You understand? Over-the-counter products can cause rashes and ailments in cases such as his.” She wore plastic sandals and a heavy application of bright rouge.
So while other children spent their weekends playing Frisbee on the beach, or surfing with their fathers, Fabian stayed home and assembled puzzles from the library – huge images of European castles, Antarctic penguin colonies, and scenes from shows like Gunsmoke. Their trips to the ocean were meted out like treats, and then only in the afternoon on cloudy days when, Pauline insisted, the sun’s rays were less pernicious. Fabian wore long pants and sweatshirts and they sat under the enormous umbrella his mother brought along. He watched his classmates yell and chase one another, dart in and out of the Pacific, shrieking with delight, while Pauline sat next to him in her folding chair, listening to her transistor radio and solving crossword puzzles. She wore a baby doll swimsuit – bright yellow with pink trim – made of ruffled fabric that she said accentuated her figure. Should a man walk by, she’d giggle with delight and use an infantile voice like the mating call from some ungainly bird. She packed freshly peeled carrots, celery with peanut butter, and chunks of Cheddar cheese with Ritz, urging Fabian to eat.
And then, on his tenth birthday, he pleaded with her to let him stay at home. “I hate the beach,” he wailed.
“But why? The sun won’t hurt you, dear, if you’re wearing your protection.”
“I don’t care about the sun!” he yelled. “Why can’t we be normal? Everyone thinks we’re total freaks!”
“How can you say such a thing? We’re normal as can be. And, anyway, who cares what other people think? We have each other and the Lord – that’s all we really need.” In school at recess, kids called him Gaybian – they pointed, laughed and mocked, despite his efforts to blend in. He tried to mimic them, their gestures and demeanor, but to no avail; the only friend he had was a foster child, a reclusive girl named Danielle with buck teeth and parents long deceased.
“At least you got my hair,” Pauline said, hours later, when they’d both calmed down. “You don’t have to worry about alopecia and whatnot.” She stroked his head with the palm of her cocoa-buttered hand. “This mane grows like kudzu, honey, be thankful for that blessing.”
* * *
Sometimes now when Fabian thinks back on those years he’s overcome with sadness and guilt, because he realizes his mother’s grasp on reality was tenuous at best. He remembers lying in bed after his bath, in his pajamas, hair combed to the side, remembers her stroking the crown of his head with her hand, telling him not to worry, that the trials and tribulations visited upon them were, as the Lord averred, meant to make them more resilient. “Be happy we found you such a knowledgeable doctor. He’s a good man and he’ll see us through.” Pauline had recently turned fifty, she reminded Fabian, and having a man like Dr. Gutiérrez was a blessing from above.
Before she kissed her son goodnight, Pauline told him a story – a tradition she’d learned from her own mother, whose family lived on the Faroe Islands, in the far reaches of the Atlantic between Norway and Iceland. Some nights Pauline told him tales about the formation of the islands themselves: the tale of Risin and Kellingin, for example, the two sea stacks off the coast of Eysturoy – the Witch and her husband, the Giant, who descended from Iceland by rowboat, in search of land for their family and clan. Fabian’s mother recounted the yarn the way her mother, Tora, had told the tale to her, lingering on the details of the Witch’s valiant efforts to secure a rope around Eysturoy’s neck so that the island could be dragged north, and the Giant’s cries to his wife to tug harder and his exasperated attempts to secure the rope around his own waist so he could drag the island himself, and the desperate final moments of both husband and wife when the sun rose – unexpectedly, due to their strenuous exertions – and turned both creatures to stone, forever trapped in the frigid waters off the rocky coast of the island that lured them with its verdant fields and valleys.
One night, after Pauline put in her curlers and donned her night-coat, she told Fabian the tale of the blind donkey given to her for her seventh birthday, when she and her mother still lived in Trøllanes on the island of Kalsoy. “I named the donkey Magnus, which means great,” she told Fabian, lying next to him, also under the covers, because the house was cold. “And thrice daily I brought him barley and oats and fresh water, and brushed his coat. We kept him in a little hut where we housed the chickens and sometimes a pig or two, and for many months I pleaded with my mother to let me sleep next to him, but she refused, telling me that trolls came down from the hills at night in search of lambs and other beings on which to feast. ‘No, no, no,’ I cried! ‘I must stay with Magnus, then, to make sure they don’t eat him.’
“ ‘Calm down, daughter,’ your grandmother said, ‘his hide is too tough, his fur too bitter for them to bother him.’
“She was wrong, of course. One morning in January when I was nine or so – it was the shortest day of the year, when the sun rose late and set early, providing just six hours of light for the inhabitants of our little island – I woke up late and went out to visit Magnus and found the poor creature missing.
“ ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ I cried, running back to the house through the cold wind, ‘Magnus is gone. Something has happened to him.’
“ ‘Are you certain, my dear? I see no reason a blind donkey would venture off in the night by himself in the winter.’
”‘But he’s gone, Mother, he is.’
“And Tora who’d been busy chopping potatoes for our midday meal, let out an exasperated sigh, as if she thought I was fibbing. She put down her knife, wiped her hands on her apron, and put on her thick wool overcoat and boots. Outside, it was snowing and the wind was howling and, sure enough, my poor dear was missing.
“ ‘We must organize a search party for him!’ I cried. ‘He’ll freeze out there on his own.’
“ ‘Be a good girl, Pauline, and come back inside. There’s no hope in this weather. If it clears up, we can look for him this afternoon, but for now, help me slice these potatoes and carrots for our stew.’
“That was your grandmother. Hard as horseshoe iron. I cried and cried, but to no avail. She wasn’t a pushover like me. When she put her foot down, that was it and nothing changed her mind.” For years, Fabian listened to his mother rapt, gazing at her thick red hair and ruddy cheeks.
* * *
Not long after he turned thirteen, the motel Fabian and Pauline frequented during their trips to Tijuana shut down and they began to stay in the Palacio Ultramar, next door to a bowling alley and a place called the Lucky Lady Bar. The Palacio Ultramar had sixteen rooms, eight facing an alley and the balance facing a street popular with vendors selling everything from brightly-colored sombreros to nopales and camarones fritos. The receptionist was an overweight man who sat behind a thick pane of glass, watching game shows on TV. This was the man Fabian came down to see when he woke up at 4:00 A.M. one Saturday and saw his mother gone. Fabian asked the casillero whether he knew where Pauline was and the man simply shrugged. “Checkeaste el bar?”
He pointed to the Lucky Lady Bar, which was attached to the hotel’s reception area – a dark and sordid place with mirrored walls, a pool table, and a jukebox that played Stevie Wonder, the Eagles, and música norteña. Fabian felt foolish stepping into the bar in his cut-off shorts and Magic Kingdom T‑shirt, but the place was empty, save for a woman wearing an abbreviated skirt and skimpy halter top who gave him a forlorn look. “Qué buscas mi amor?” she called out to him.
He hurried to the parking lot in search of his mother’s red Pontiac and, seeing it was there, he went back to their room and locked the door, deciding she must have gone out for a walk. He tried to sleep but couldn’t, his mind filled with the streetwalkers who loitered outside the hotel, and of Dr. Gutiérrez who’d told Fabian when he saw him earlier that day that his scalp was doing well, the result no doubt of his diligent application of their ointments. “A little girl from Hermosillo, she came to see me about similar condition and her horns came back, due to pure laziness,” the doctor said. “She stopped the application and now she will need surgery again.” Fabian remembered the way Dorotea nodded and clucked, agreeing the girl was muy perezosa and saying, if not for the horns, she would have been a beauty. Fabian thought about the present his mother had brought for the doctor, a ceramic donkey she’d purchased for quinientos pesos from one of the street vendors near their hotel, and the smile on the doctor’s face when he opened the gift. He thought about Dorotea’s little dog that yapped all day, and the gold crowns on the doctor’s molars, and anger filled his throat that he was here in Tijuana, instead of playing video games or soccer like his classmates.
The sun was rising when Fabian heard the door to their hotel room open. His body tensed under the covers and he stayed still, eyes closed tight, in case it wasn’t Pauline, but when he smelled her violet perfume he allowed himself to relax and open his eyes a bit. He saw that she was wearing her red dress with the gold belt – her most alluring ensemble. He wondered then whether perhaps she’d gone out into the streets to sell her body like the women of the night. She complained about money constantly, told him how expensive the trips to Mexico were, and he wondered whether she might have sold her favors to pay for Dorotea’s salves.
Fabian saw Pauline stand near the closet area and take off her dress and her nylons and put on her nightgown. Whereas earlier in the night he vowed that when she returned he would unleash his anger and accuse her of neglect, now he felt relief and resolved to pretend he’d stayed asleep all night.
The next day, in her brassiere and underwear, Pauline said to him: “Honey, I have a secret to tell you.”
“What kind of secret?”
“A romantic secret. It’s about Dr. Gutiérrez. I think he has a little crush on me.”
Fabian looked at her, not sure what to say. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, watching her brush her unruly hair in front of the mirror over the TV.
“You know how sometimes he’s been flirtatious with me in the past? Well, I didn’t think anything of it, but recently he told me he has feelings for me.”
“Dr. Gutiérrez?”
“Yes, honey, now I don’t want you getting upset. It’s very preliminary. I mean he’s down here in Mexico, so it’s not like we’re going to get married or anything. I’m just letting you know that this is something that’s going on and I think you should be aware. But promise me you won’t say a word.”
“To who? Who would I even say anything to?” He knew it was unnatural that his mother allowed him to see her in her underwear, and he did his best to keep his eyes fixed directly on her face, but her breasts were large and he found it hard to avoid their hungry stare. Her brassiere was discolored from years of use, and occasionally she stopped pulling the comb through her hair to pick a matted, bunched‑up tangle from the brush’s teeth.
“Well, to Dorotea for one. You know how possessive she is of him. I don’t want her to get jealous.”
“Why would she be jealous? She’s his sister, not his wife.”
“I know, but you see how she idolizes him. I don’t think she wants him running off with some gringa from up North.”
“Are you guys getting married?”
“Of course not, that’s very premature. We’ve just been talking on the phone sometimes and last night he stopped by here after you were asleep and, well, I know this might sound strange, but we went for a little drive together.”
“He picked you up?”
“Yes, it was like a little date, I guess. I had no idea what he had in mind, but he took me down to the beach and we had a very romantic walk in the moonlight and he told me he has feelings for me. That’s all. We didn’t make love. Everything was very platonic and proper.”
* * *
They crossed the border the next week and the week after, drove the five hours to Tijuana and back once a week for weeks, as if reenacting a pilgrimage designed to cleanse their souls or free them from despair. Pauline bought herself new outfits: a pair of high heels and a dress she said was the color of ripe guava, a color she believed brought out the highlights in her hair and made her look more desirable. She purchased a matching scarf and full-price handbag. She bought enough jars of ointment from Dorotea and the doctor to fill up the entire kitchen pantry. She put the glass jars in boxes she found in the grocery store dumpster and told Fabian he’d never have to worry about the horns growing back – as long as he followed the doctor’s instructions. “He’s a good man, honey. I think I might be falling in love with him. He’s a very passionate lover.”
Fabian stayed in the Palacio Ultramar and locked the deadbolt and put the chain on the door after his mother left, the air thick with the smell of AquaNet and cheap perfume. She told him he had to be a good boy and not cry. She told him that maybe, if things went well, the doctor would come up to Brisas del Mar and spend some time with them in California, and Fabian could finally have a father in his life. “Wouldn’t that be nice? We could be a family.”
Fabian lay in bed, listening to the traffic, imagining the women downstairs on the sidewalk and the vendors with the colored masks and containers of fresh mango and sliced pineapple. He imagined Dr. Gutiérrez’s fingers undoing the buttons of his mother’s blouse, and he pictured the doctor putting his fingers in his mother’s ornery hair. Fabian imagined her throwing her head back and letting out a laugh or a screech or howl of carnal pleasure perhaps, or spiritual ecstasy.
* * *
Seven weeks later, Pauline was packing up the car – getting the Fanta and Tab and the bags of Doritos and Frito-Lays that served as dinner on the drive down, retrieving her undergarments from the chest of drawers, her nylons and high heels, putting the new bottle of perfume she’d purchased into her handbag – when she called out to Fabian, told him to make sure he brought along his swimsuit.
“Why?” he asked, perturbed.
“The doctor said he’s taking us to Rosarito beach this weekend. He’s going to teach you how to body surf.”
“I don’t want to learn how to body surf.”
“I don’t have time for a fight now, Fabian. Just get your swimsuit. We’re late enough already.”
“I feel sick,” he said. “I don’t want to go.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not sick. Now get ready.”
Fabian went into the bathroom and locked the door. He looked at himself in the mirror, at his skinny arms and freckles and his wild mane of copper hair. He heard his mother tell him to open the door right now and stop being difficult, her voice more shrill than ever. The bathroom was cramped, full of his mother’s hairbrushes and half-used bottles of lotion and tester shampoos from the mall, her lipsticks, eyeliner and foundation. He despised her bag of pink curlers, soiled from use, hanging from a hook.
Fabian heard his mother knock again, then try to turn the knob, and as she threatened him, he took the scissors next to the sink and began to cut his hair – grabbed fiery clumps of it with his fingers and cut it off as quickly as he could. He relished its removal, working with increasing speed as Paulina’s desperation increased. ”Open this fucking door right now or I’m leaving without you!”
”Fine!” he screamed back. ”Leave!”
“What are you doing in there?” she yelled as if she’d put a wet finger in an electrical socket. “So help me God, if you do not open this door immediately, I am going to spank the living daylights out of you!” She made additional threats, about ripping the posters off his bedroom walls and calling the police, and then she sobbed and said he was ungrateful. “All I’ve ever done for you is be a good mother. Where would you be without me? I’m a single woman. I have no man to support me or help take care of me, and now I’ve met someone nice and you’re trying to ruin it. You want to take the shred of happiness God has given to me and stomp on it. You want to ruin my life! I’m not going to let you. I’m leaving!”
By this point, Fabian had finished cutting off his hair, or most of it. His skull looked gruesome in the mirror – white as the flesh of maggots and splotchy from the hair that remained in the spots where the scissors had not gotten close enough. He rubbed his hands over his head and didn’t feel any horns or protrusions, only stubble. The apartment was quiet now and for a moment he worried that maybe his mother had left him all alone, that maybe she’d driven off, but he knew she might be tricking him, and he stayed barricaded. At that moment he concluded certain things: he didn’t have horns, had never had horns, his mother’s mind was crooked. He wondered if she’d end up in a state asylum, and whether one day the authorities might come to their apartment and shackle her. He wondered if he’d be raised by strangers, like his friend Danielle – whether he’d become a foster child.
Fabian spent the weekend on his own, eating cans of green beans and unsalted corn, bags of potato chips, and TV dinners, and when his mother came back on Sunday, she didn’t say a word. He was watching TV when she returned – a documentary about the Holocaust – and he was on the couch, a pillow in his lap, the green wool cap on his head, because his scalp looked shocking and the fact is he felt guilty, and part of him had missed his mother’s presence.
Pauline brought her bags in from the car and went into her room and closed the door. He heard her sobbing. He heard her wail more loudly than he’d ever heard her cry. Eventually he went into her room and asked her what was wrong. “You got your wish. The louse broke up with me,” she said. “He told me he doesn’t love me.”
Fabian stood next to her, looking into her swollen face. Her eyes were small and red, and he gave her a hug. “I gave him everything. I gave him three thousand dollars. I don’t know what I’m going to do. He was just using me.” She looked at Fabian, directly, and he knew she wanted him to say something to her, but he had no idea what words could possibly be mustered. “The Lord hasn’t been kind to me,” she said. “I feel betrayed. On the drive up here, I thought about killing myself, just driving off the road.” She paused and blew her nose. “You’re all I have, Fabian. I need you to be nice to me. I’m your mother.” She hugged him and stroked his back. She pulled him close to her, and he felt her body against his own, warm and soft, and he stayed there, immobile, afraid to tell her what he’d discovered about the smoothness of his scalp.
Now, years later, Fabian sits by his mother’s bedside. Her still-thick hair is gray now instead of red. Sometimes, he strokes her arm and wonders whether things might have turned out differently if he’d gone to Mexico with her that last time. How was he to know, at that point in time, that the weeks she spent as Doctor Gutiérrez’s girlfriend would be the happiest weeks of her tumultuous life? How was he to know, at age thirteen, that those trips to Mexico weren’t about the horns at all?
Matthew Lansburgh is the author of a collection of linked stories, Outside Is the Ocean (University of Iowa Press, 2017). His stories have appeared in One Story, Glimmer Train, Ecotone, StoryQuarterly, and Michigan Quarterly Review.