Chapter Text
He left two fingers behind in Vietnam, but that wasn’t all.
“So I hear you’re going home,” said the nurse who was changing his dressings, the ones wrapped around his calf where they had cut the shrapnel out of him. “You must be excited.”
There was a fly buzzing around his cot; it landed on his arm and walked, feather light, up to his bandaged hand. He didn’t brush it away.
“Sure,” he said. “Excited.”
His father was waiting for him at the bus station. He had wanted to sleep on the way into the city but hadn’t been able to; instead he watched family sedans and long-haul truckers and girls in convertibles roll past with equal disinterest.
Ginsberg braced himself against the folded-up doors of the bus as he stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine, putting most of the weight on his good leg. He was still limping noticeably but the doctors told him that would get better with time. It wasn’t as serious an injury as it might have been. He’d gotten lucky, they said.
His shaking hands they couldn’t explain. That was in his head - psychosomatic, which was medical jargon for we don’t fucking know - and not because of the missing fingers. Besides, his left was fine, and it still trembled just as badly. When he ate his breakfast this morning, the fork balanced precariously in an unfamiliar grip; when he’d taken his painkillers just afterwards; and now, when he hoisted his bag up to his shoulder and turned towards the building.
He stuffed his mangled hand with its sawed-off knuckles into his pocket. It wasn’t clear how much Pop knew and they would have to deal with the facts sooner or later, but not while surrounded by happy reunions.
Morris was in the middle of a fairly large crowd. There were a lot of soldiers coming in and so a lot of families waiting. A guy walking behind Ginsberg broke into a run at the sight of his wife; a little girl brushed past him on the way to her Daddy’s arms. Just like in the movies. Morris craned his neck, trying to see his son.
He stood as if frozen once he did. Ginsberg had been expecting it. He knew he what he looked like, how drawn his face was, how dark the circles under his eyes had gotten. He more closely resembled a man who had been ill than one who had been injured, he thought, though maybe there was no difference. A total scarecrow either way. And he hadn’t shaved since he’d gotten back. He was having a hard time holding the razor steady.
Morris waved his arms over his head as though he could possibly be missed. Ginsberg forced a smile onto his face.
“Hey,” he said, and stopped just in front of his father. He tried to think of something else - something meaningful, that would be remembered. There was nothing in his head but static. Hard to believe that he made a living off his words, once.
Morris swept him into a hug all the same. He didn’t care.
Ginsberg hunched his shoulders reflexively. He didn’t mean to, it just happened. Morris pulled back, his hands on Ginsberg’s arms, and gave him a confused look.
“You okay?” he asked.
“‘Course,” said Ginsberg, dropping his eyes to the ground and cramming his hand deeper into his pocket. Pop had new shoes on - of course he had new shoes, it had been a year. What a stupid thing to think.
“You seem - nevermind, it doesn’t matter.” Morris beamed down at him. “You’re home.”
“I am,” said Ginsberg, and made himself smile again. “We should get going. You take the train down, or are you paying for parking?”
“Borrowed the Patel’s car for the day. We can go anywhere you’d like.”
“I only want to go back to the apartment.”
“You sure?” said Morris. “Not even out to eat? I’ll pay for someplace nice. We’re celebrating.”
Ginsberg’s stomach turned over. He hadn’t eaten since that morning but he was having trouble keeping food down and wanted to put off his next meal for as long as possible. “I’m not hungry.”
Morris frowned, and Ginsberg expected some comment about how he was getting to be too skinny. But in the end Morris didn’t bring it up; instead he shrugged and said, “If you don’t want to, fine. It’s up to you.”
“Maybe later,” Ginsberg hedged, though he had no intentions of following through.
“Here,” said Morris, and reached for the strap of the duffel. “Let me take that.”
Ginsberg’s fingers tightened around it and they engaged in a brief and futile tug of war. “I don’t need - I got it, would you stop?”
“Okay,” said Morris, dropping his arm to his side. He sounded hurt.
Ginsberg closed his eyes. Back five minutes and he was already fucking up. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s been a long day - I’m tired.”
“We’ll go straight home,” said Morris decisively. He put a guiding hand on Ginsberg’s back and steered him in the direction of the exit. “You can lie down, have a good long sleep.”
The Patel’s car was a rusty green Studebaker, at least fifteen years old and bought secondhand. Ginsberg dropped his bag into the backseat and climbed in the front next to Morris.
“You wanna drive?” Morris asked.
“No,” said Ginsberg. He slouched back against the seat, letting go of the rigid posture the military had drilled into him.
Morris nudged him with an elbow. “It was a joke, kiddo. Like I was going to let you drive.”
Ginsberg rolled down the window as they moved into traffic. He did it with his right hand, unthinking - even with the ring and pinky fingers gone it was still his instinct to use his dominant hand more often than not - and Morris slammed on the brakes.
“What the hell?” Ginsberg asked, throwing out an arm to prevent himself from smacking into the dash.
“They told me you got wounded in action,” said Morris, “but that you were gonna be okay. They never said anything about this.”
“I was wounded in action,” Ginsberg said. “In the leg and the...” he held up his hand, looking at the blank spaces where part of his body used to be, and then dropped it uselessly into his lap, “... hand, obviously. It could’ve been worse.”
It could have been in the spine, or the head, or the gut; bleeding out slowly with no way to stop it.
“It’s over with,” said Ginsberg. “It can’t be changed. There’s no use in talking about it. We need to move, you’re blocking traffic.”
Morris hit the gas at the same time he gave Ginsberg a long, concerned look; Ginsberg wanted to tell him to keep his eyes on the damn road but he kept his treacherous mouth shut. He was so temperamental lately, rocketing between numb and furious at a moment’s notice. He wouldn’t let it ruin anything between him and his father. He wouldn’t.
The apartment was exactly the same. He circled it looking for differences. The bathroom was unaltered right down to the water damage on the ceiling, the couch was still full of so many broken springs that it felt like a sack of marbles, and Pop’s chair sat right in front of the T.V. where he liked it. Ginsberg straightened the frame of a picture that was hanging on the wall. Him and Pop at their citizenship ceremony, grinning like loons. He opened the curtains in his bedroom, kicking up dust, and set his bag on his bed. The comforter was the one he had always used, and his work shoes were poking out from under the desk where he had left them. There was even an old Bob Dylan poster taped to the back of the door; he picked at a torn corner and decided to leave the room before nostalgia could swamp him.
He walked into the kitchen, popped the lid off the tin of coffee and inhaled deeply. “I missed this,” he said.
Morris laughed. He was sitting at the kitchen table, watching Ginsberg get reacquainted. His face was positively glowing and for a second everything felt fine, totally normal like it used to.
“You think I’m kidding?” said Ginsberg. “I’ve dreamt about a decent cup of coffee.”
“Then sit down and let me make you some,” said Morris, and Ginsberg did, perfectly okay with being fussed over for once.
“You go on and get some rest,” said Morris as they drank their coffee. Black with sugar, the way Ginsberg had been having it since he was old enough to drink the stuff. “You’ll be feeling yourself in no time.”
That night was the first time he woke his father up by having a screaming nightmare. It wasn’t the last.
“Again?” his father asked the third night he came into the bathroom to find Ginsberg dry-heaving over the toilet. He said it sad and gentle, with his palm pressed between Ginsberg’s shoulderblades and then the back of his hand against his sweaty forehead. He used to check for fevers that way.
Ginsberg cringed away, his skin crawling. He didn’t like being touched after the dreams.
“You need water,” Morris said, and went into the kitchen to get some cold from the fridge.
He hadn’t thrown up anything except stomach acid but his mouth tasted terrible. The porcelain of the toilet was cool against his overheated back; he leaned against it and thought of hot nights and mosquitoes and the splash of mud against his face. But that made him feel sick again, so he got to his feet and looked at himself in the mirror.
It was a cheap mirror, and not flattering. The color pulled slightly yellow from the lightbulb overhead; the reflection was always blurred. He had seen himself in it in every mood and situation under the sun. Never had he looked like this.
He turned the tap on all the way and stuck his head under. Let the water soak his hair, run into his ears, pour into his nose and mouth until he was coughing, spitting it up.
Water dripped down his shoulders as he straightened his back, the faucet still roaring away. He wheezed heavily around the burn in his throat and couldn’t see his reflection anymore. His eyes were wet and streaming.
“Michael,” his father said.
Ginsberg turned around, scrubbing his forearm across his eyes to clear them. Morris stood in the doorway and held up a glass.
“I guess you don’t need this,” he said.
He heard them before he saw them, first the stairs creaking under their feet and then voices that were supposed to be hushed but carried much further than they suspected.
“ ...but what if it’s his face? What do I do then?” Peggy asked.
“You go in there and make nice,” Stan snapped. “What the hell else would you do?”
“I don’t know, Stan. That’s why I asked.”
Ginsberg recognized that tone from their days working together; an explosion was imminent. He decided to save them from themselves and opened the door.
They stopped short. Peggy’s mouth was still open for yelling; she closed it with an embarrassed wince.
“Hey, buddy,” Stan said, way too cheerful for the occasion.
The last time he had seen them together they were standing at his door in just this way, every bit as awkward. They came down to see him before he left for basic and sat in the apartment trying to make small talk. Jokes about his ugly military haircut, the one he gave himself (he didn’t want the hands of strangers on him, he didn’t want whatever fucking bonding experience that was supposed to provide), promises to write. The similarities gave him a powerful sense of deja vu, like he was waking up from a dream he couldn’t shake off. The familiar contours of his room made alien by the cover of darkness. He had the strangest urge to reach out and touch Stan to make sure he was actually there.
He didn’t, though. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t that crazy.
Peggy had been very quiet, that day. He never understood why she made a point of saying goodbye in the first place. She didn’t like him.
The way she was looking him over bordered on panic, her eyes roaming from the top of his head down to his kneecaps like she was afraid of finding something important missing. He waited for her to notice the hand but she never did. Instead she shoved the casserole dish she was holding at him.
“Welcome home,” she said. “Um. I hope you’re feeling better.”
He peeled back the tinfoil. It had marshmallows on top.
“I thought people only made these on Thanksgiving,” he said. “But thanks.”
“Is your Dad here?” she asked as he put her casserole in the fridge. She asked it like she hoped the answer would be yes, and he couldn’t blame her. He didn’t want to be alone with himself either.
“No,” he said. “He’s at work.”
Pop hadn’t wanted to go - had, in fact, taken a couple of days off work to stay home. But they didn’t have the wiggle room to lose any more money. Not with one of them unemployed. Ginsberg had been told that he might be eligible for some kind of pension from the army but it hadn’t materialized yet. Pop kept bugging him to go down the VA and talk to somebody. “They owe you,” he said, uncharacteristically blunt. But the last thing Ginsberg wanted to do was sit in a windowless room with a bunch of other traumatized soldiers, waiting for a man from the government to tell him no.
He watched television all day instead, lying on the couch, too exhausted from sleepless nights to do anything else. When he was lucky he passed out and woke up at the sound of his father’s key in the door. When he wasn’t he would pry himself out of the cushions before Pop arrived, try and do something with his hair, to remember if he’d brushed his teeth, to act like he’d done something useful with his day.
Occasionally he saw one of his commercials. Clorox bleach or ice cream or resort vacations. It was surreal. He was a time traveller, looking into a past he no longer recognized.
“Why aren’t you two at the office?” he asked. “McCann fire you, or something?”
Peggy laughed, the sound as weak as watered-down dive bar liquor. She tangled her fingers with Stan’s, on the top of the table. “No,” she said. “I was looking at apartments. Stan came along to help.”
“Don’t you have a place?”
“I’m selling it,” she said. “Being a landlady is a pain in the ass.”
“Are you moving in together?” he asked, which was followed by a ringing silence. They looked at each other.
“We’re not -” Peggy said. “I’m mean we haven’t been together that long -”
“Jesus, Ginzo,” said Stan. “Let me buy the woman dinner first.”
“A lot of people won’t sell to a single woman,” Peggy said. “So we were - pretending. It might help.” Stan gave her a look, inscrutable.
He reached into his shirt pocket and got out a pack of cigarettes. It turned out to contain grass instead, a few thinly rolled joints. “You mind, buddy?” he asked.
“Open a window,” Ginsberg said. “I don’t want my father smelling it.”
They propped the living room window open - it was broken so you had to use a stick, kept in the windowsill for that purpose - only it turned out Stan had forgotten his lighter, too. He was so annoyed that Ginsberg went and got him the one that Morris had hidden behind the spices on the rack, along with the Camels he wasn’t supposed to be smoking but still snuck on occasion anyway.
“Here,” he said, and slid it across the table to Stan.
“Thanks,” said Stan, and it took him a couple of tries to light up properly. He was nervous. Maybe it was because he’d noticed Ginsberg’s hand.
Ginsberg saw him do it. The arrested expression on his face, there and then just as quickly dismissed. He had determined to be normal. Ginsberg had a small moment of relief that flared and burned out the way a dying ember did. The clouds descended once again. He decided he didn’t care what Stan’s reaction was, or Peggy’s, or anyone. He was already tired of being told he should feel grateful.
“Do you need help with anything?” Peggy asked, not unkindly. “I can help you find work, if you want. Or Stan can take you anywhere you need to go. He has a car, now.”
“I can do everything myself except count to ten,” Ginsberg said, and held up his hand with all three remaining fingers spread. Peggy flushed dark across her cheekbones, and he immediately felt sick and ashamed. Why had he done that? She was only trying to be nice.
He watched Stan cup her elbow and give it a comforting squeeze. It was strangely intimate, a thing he shouldn’t have seen, and certainly shouldn’t be dwelling on. He looked away.
“Your Dad told me you hurt your leg,” said Stan.
“You talk to my father?” Ginsberg asked.
“Sure do,” Stan said. “Somebody had to look out for him while you were gone.”
“Oh,” said Ginsberg, horrified to find himself choking up. He couldn’t stop it; suddenly he was fighting off tears, his face crumpling, biting the insides of his cheeks to try and make them stop like he did when he was a child. A slow and ugly collapse. He covered his face with his hands, desperate to regain control. It would stop in a minute. It would.
“Michael?” Peggy asked. She sounded scared. “Are you okay?” When she tried to touch his arm he jerked backwards so fast that the chair legs squeaked against the floor.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”
(If he said it enough it would eventually be true. He was home, and he was okay. He was home, and he was okay -)
“You sure about that?” Stan asked. The joint had been forgotten in his hand, half gone to ash. The cherry was perilously close to touching skin. Ginsberg had the urge to snatch it up, throw it on the ground.
“Yes,” he said, more decisively. He sniffed and rubbed the side of his sleeve against his wet cheeks. He couldn’t do this. He’d thought -
“But I need to go lay down,” he said. “I didn’t sleep last night. You have to leave.” It wasn’t polite and it wasn’t appropriate; it was all he could manage. “Thank you for coming,” he managed to force out, a tacked-on replacement for an apology that didn’t make anything better.
But they didn’t get mad, neither of them. “Might not be a bad idea,” said Stan. “Want me to stop by the store, get you some NyQuil?”
“We have some.” Which was a falsehood, but he wanted to be alone as quickly as possible.
Stan let Peggy leave first. “Be down in a sec,” he said, and shut the door behind her. Then he turned to Ginsberg and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I want you to call me if anything goes wrong,” he said.
Ginsberg tried to shrug him off. He wouldn’t budge. “Stan -”
“Ginzo,” he said. Ginsberg had never heard him be so serious, not once. “Promise me, okay?”
Ginsberg looked down at his bare feet, his old threadbare socks. He wouldn’t look Stan in the face and lie to him. “I promise,” he said.
He was scraping Peggy’s casserole into the garbage when Morris came back with a grocery bag propped against his shoulder and the mail tucked under his arm. “Who gave you that?” he asked, and pushed his shoulder against the door to close it.
“Nobody,” said Ginsberg. He put the empty dish into the sink and turned the water on, so hard that the roar of it drowned out everything else.