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    The House Husband
    The House Husband
    The House Husband
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    The House Husband

    By Pete Nicely

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    About this ebook

    These stories are about you. The story about the dad who has his kid miss the first day of kindergarten to go see his ex-lover's art exhibit? You. The girl who gets a job at a movie theater so she doesn't have go to baseball card conventions with her stepdad? You. Even the woman who suddenly decides she wants to meet a Brony is you. So you should probably read them before everyone else does.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPete Nicely
    Release dateJul 5, 2016
    ISBN9781311055743
    The House Husband
    Author

    Pete Nicely

    Working on a fishing boat right outside Delacroix.

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      Book preview

      The House Husband - Pete Nicely

      The House Husband

      By

      Pete Nicely

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © 2016 by Pete Nicely

      All Rights Reserved.

      We were not written to be safe.

      —Kathleen Graber

      The Magic Kingdom

      Table of Contents

      1. The House Husband

      2. The Atlantic 6

      3. The Brony Express

      4. Broke-Ass Motherfucker

      5. Nice Chaturangas

      6. Grandma’s Screaming

      7. As Needed

      8. My Dog

      9. What Happens on Christmas

      The House Husband

      Will was supposed to be at Bronson Elementary School, in Mrs. Tam’s room 9, finishing up the second hour of his first day of kindergarten. Instead, he was staring at an aquarium half the size of a basketball court and nearly filled with bunnies.

      The Honeymoon. Sted Vlomanini, Zach read from the label on the wall. Two oryctolagus cuniculus—better known as common rabbits—were placed in the fiberglass-walled habitat on June 21, 2014. By the last day of summer, the artist expects that at least one thousand rabbits will reside here, in the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Forum.

      Let’s count, Will said.

      Zach hated himself a little for having to smother the urge to tell his five-year-old son, You’re better than that. The truth was that your brain, probably due to evolution or feng shui, couldn’t help but guesstimate how many fidgety creatures were there, beyond the glass. Besides, he was sure that the artist would prefer the steady frisson of his boy’s squinting and pointing to the somber gawking of the stiff grownups posed around them. Plus, any concerted effort might dull the weirdness of the endless array of fidgety creatures’ dull stares meeting his own. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty…

      No! Will said. I’ll start. At one.

      Vlomanini had been a guest lecturer at the Massey University College of Creative Arts during the one semester Zach spent abroad in Wellington, New Zealand. After Sted’s first lecture on Relational Aesthetics, Zach had lingered in the front row to ask him the only question he could come up with—one that was really just an excuse to say that his dream was to be an interior designer for other people’s mental space, a half-joke that had been making his professors smirk since his freshman year at ArtCenter. The flirtation had moved quickly, almost directly, into sex. And when it was all over that first time, in a stall, in the faculty restroom, Zach attempted to blame his sudden promiscuity on the Southern Hemisphere. Right. It all flows backwards here, Vlomanini said, as he tidied Zach’s eyebrows with a tongue-dampened thumb. A handshake is the forbidden fruit.

      Will sucked in a deep breath through his nose and made two fists. Twenty-eight, twenty… The leap from eight to nine in the ones spot was the boy’s one steady hurdle on the way to one hundred. Yet he always prevailed, even if it meant backtracking.

      What would happen if he got to a hundred and one? That was the point at which the boy would allow himself to be coaxed into sleep each night. They’d never peeped over that mountaintop. Neither had any idea what the other thought might be on the other side. See? What’s more educational than contemporary art?

      When Zach realized that he’d waited till the last day of The Bunnies, as the piece was known to those who knew it, there were three choices: take Will in the morning, cancel an afternoon of studio visits he’d spent his life putting together, or go alone, secretly. He didn’t bother asking Kevin because Kevin wouldn’t even think before positing the correct choice: Skip it.

      There were actual obligations to fuss over—school, work and yielding to his husband’s blind jealousy of him passing through any portal of the art world alone. They were all and each far more important than gaping at an ex’s installation. And if seeing it had been so crucial, after all, Zach would have found a way to get them there during the previous ninety-three days, even if every minute of their summer had been scheduled to free up the two weeks Kevin had off for the Disney cruise in August.

      Will continued, Seventy-eight, Seventy-nine…

      Does anyone remember the very first day of kindergarten?

      Zach didn’t. Kevin didn’t. Zach asked, apropos of nothing, just to make sure.

      Maybe their parents did—or pretended to. But it was just another manufactured milestone, something else for moms to Facebook and forget. He’d be worried, maybe, if Will weren’t the sort of kid who fit in anywhere. The boy didn’t even seem to know it was even possible to not fit in. Maybe fitting in was a twentieth-century concept that he’d never even need to discuss with the boy. Fitting in should be criminalized.

      One hundred. Will continued without a pause, One. Two. Three.

      That’s exactly how it should work. On the other side, things just start again.

      Excuse me, said a woman in a voice that resembled Kevin’s mother’s so much that Zach had to twist his neck over his shoulder to make sure they hadn’t been caught ditching school. Sir, could you please ask your son to count to himself?

      As a hypothetical, it was intriguing. Could a five-year-old count a thousand bunnies in his head? As a real-life—You just fucking asked me that?!—inquiry, it was infuriating. Will didn’t stop counting, though he was grokking his dad’s eyes. It was clear that the boy was just spewing random numbers now. Zach reached out for his son’s hand.

      You can count too, Will said to the woman.

      That didn’t make her smile. A monster.

      Cleanup time, Zach said, pointing to a sports-jacketed attendant with a broom and a long-handled dustpan on the aquarium floor. The woman’s glare persisted as Will grabbed two of his dad’s fingers. Let’s explore. On the way, we’ll count the rest.

      LACAF is known for its natural light, which made it depressing on rare overcast days like this. The fluorescents that lit the pieces and their description cards, normally translucent beneath the sunshine, glowed a hostile, bright orange. Sweat dripped from the boilers’ skeleton-white pipes, which pulsed with steam for the first time in maybe half a year. Everything conspired to confirm the wisdom of Zach’s decision that they should both wear twin Pluto hoodies over Goofy t-shirts. Though, when he thought about his arms too much, he felt a bit muggy and contained. He wondered if Will felt the same.

      What’s that? the boy asked, and let go of his dad’s fingers.

      It was a statue of a goat, or some other horned fiend, on a bike. The thing seemed stale and sad until a closer inspection revealed that it was constructed entirely of Honey Nut Cheerios. He and Will both loved Honey Nut Cheerios with a passion that made Zach certain that his sperm had done the actual fertilizing. Phone, Will said and Zach handed over the iPhone. The boy snapped two pictures surely overexposed by the flash. Instagrams? They called it that because Zach’s mom had introduced them to the app.

      Nah, buddy, Zach said. Just for us.

      There was only one more corner of the Forum to inspect that wasn’t infested with bunnies. Will went around the faux wall first, spun back, and shook his head.

      Nothing? Zach asked. He peeked and saw a dartboard surrounded by random splatters of red paint. His world gave way to cloudiness, a weight and a hum obliterating all rational thought. Together it all only resembled the third-day haze of withdrawals from Lexapro. He didn’t want to rush forward to read the description, but he had to.

      What’s it say? the boy asked, joining his dad at the wall.

      Brainstorm. Clark Chin, Zach read. Pick up your dart. Dip it in blood. Throw it at the bullseye.

      There’s blood?

      Zach spun around and pointed to a salad bowl filled with red paint. An attendant in the corner, also in the uniform of a tie and a burgundy sports jacket, nodded approval.

      When he worked for Clark Chin, his boss’ obsession with pub games as obvious metaphors—a pool table covered with sharkskin, a foosball table with a foosball made of human teeth—had nauseated Zach. Now, just like that, seeing a Clark Chin piece in LACAF threatened all the progress he’d made. No, it mocked the notion that he’d made any progress at all. He was back, balls deep in that hell he’d just escaped: Laid off on the same day his gallery dropped him, the near-divorce when it wasn’t even legal for him to remarry—actual catastrophes to speed the steady whir of his constantly renewing despair.

      Will pulled a dart from the can and held it up, needing permission. Zach nodded. The boy dipped and tossed. As the dart fluttered, drips of paint flew at Zach’s eyes.

      ***

      Kevin’s art was being late. Whenever Zach is attempting to rein in chaos—fussing with the boy over nothing, cleaning up dog vomit before the other dog could devour it, somehow burning couscous—his husband will walk in at 6:30 PM precisely, wearing the bemused smile of a traveler. But when dinner is done, the dogs avoid any emetics, and life is calm enough to consider appropriate lighting and music—no Kevin.

      At 7:04, finally a text: Eat without me. Sorry.

      Will had already finished his spaghetti and earned his iPad time by doing his chores, which had become a chore—emptying all the inside trashcans—once he’d figured out that a simple way to avoid cleaning up his toys was never taking them out. Now it was Zach’s chore to not seem upset. His son was sensitive to sudden changes in moods, overly so. This had the magic of exaggerating anything Zach felt. But if he got the iPad unlocked and

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