The Whore's Child

swaths when I have to shut the damn thing down because of the pain. It’s not dagger pain, but deep, rumbling, nausea pain, the sort that seems to radiate in waves from the center of my being. There are those who think that a man’s phallus
is
the center of his being, but I have not been among them until now.
    From inside the house Faye heard me shut off the mower, and now she’s come out onto the deck to see why. She shades her eyes with a small hand, scout fashion, to see me better, though the sun is behind her. Ours is a large yard and I’m a long way off. “What’s wrong?” she calls.
    I’d like to tell her. It’s a question she’s asked on and off for thirty years, and just once I’d like to answer it.
My dick
is throbbing,
I’d like to call out, and if we had any neighbors within hearing, I believe I would, so help me. But to prevent that we’ve bought two adjacent lots. Regrets? I’ve had a few. I mow their yards and my own.
    â€œNothing,” I call to Faye. It’s my standard line. Nothing is wrong. Go ahead, just try to find something that’s wrong. If something were wrong, I constantly assure her, I’d say so, always amazed at how readily this lie springs to my lips. I’ve never in my life told her when anything was wrong, and I have no intention of telling her about my throbbing groin now. She already spent a thousand dollars we didn’t really have on a riding mower simply because the doctor insisted I not “overdo it” so soon after the operation. It didn’t occur to her that for a man recovering from prostate surgery, sitting on top of a vibrating engine might not be preferable to gently guiding a self-propelled mower. I can hardly blame her for this failure of imagination since it didn’t occur to me either until I was aboard and in gear.
    I start up the mower again and cut a long loop back to the base of the deck, stopping directly below her and turning the engine off for good.
    â€œYou’re finished?”
    â€œYou can’t tell?” I say, looking back over the yard. I appear to have cut a warning track around a fenceless outfield, and am now sitting on home plate.
    â€œWhy are you perspiring?”
    It’s true. There is autumn in the air, and no reason whatsoever to be sweating, cast about as I might. “It’s a beauty,” I say, slapping the steering wheel affectionately. “Worth every penny. How much was it again?”
    â€œI just got off the phone with Julie,” she says.
    This does not sound good to me. Our daughter seldom calls without a reason. She and her husband, Russell, owe us too much money to enjoy casual conversation. They’re building a house half a mile up the road from our own. “Where?” I asked last year after Faye broke the news that they’d purchased a lot. “Here? In Connecticut? In
Durham
?” I was certain that some kind of trust had been violated. Could it be that we’d loaned them the money without a distance clause in the contract? We’d been prudent enough to ensure against neighbors on either side, but we were so focused on the threat of strangers that we failed to take family into account. Another failure of imagination.
    Faye bends over the railing and holds out a delicate hand for me—half grateful, half suspicious—to take. “I know this is the last thing in the world you need, but I think you should go over there. Today,” she adds, in case there’s a shred of doubt in my mind that whatever this is about, it’s serious.
    â€œWhat,” I say.
    Now that she has my attention, she seems reluctant to do anything with it. She’s looking for the right way to say it, and there is no right way. I can tell that much by looking at her.
    â€œJulie says . . . Russell hit her.”
    I am shocked, though I’ve known for some time that their marriage was in trouble. To make matters worse, Russell has recently quit a good job for what he thought would be a better one, only to find that several large loans needed to start up the project he’s to direct have not, as promised, been approved. It could be weeks, he admits. Months.
    â€œI’m not sure I believe Russell would hit Julie,” I tell Faye.
    â€œI do,” she says in a way that makes me believe it too. When my wife is dead sure, she’s seldom wrong, except where I’m concerned.
    â€œWhat am
I
supposed to