Read Online The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield - Free Book Online

move or
discourteous gesture, my license would be summarily revoked. His expression
always seemed remotely curious whenever he looked at me, or at the items in my
hands, as if he retained some unflagging interest even though many thousands of
years ago he had given up on the possibility of ever being surprised again. “There’s
a good movie on Channel Four we can watch at my house,” he said. “It’s got
Ginger Rogers in it. I think Ginger Rogers is a great piece of ass, don’t you?”
    All
these houses seemed like one house, just as all the silence of my strained
exile seemed like one continent, one forlorn place without a name. I could hear
my mom in these houses, I could see her dazed looks as she sat drinking alone
in her room, waiting while Dad gathered somewhere in the world like moisture,
like thick clouds, like heavy black currents. My sense of exile was my
inheritance from Mom; it might somehow, without my even understanding why,
constitute my one real gift to Dad, to whom I still owed the ominous debt of
conception. I was off in the world alone now. I was investigating strange
rooms, basements and gardens. I was trundling off with my pillowcases and Hefty
bags filled with merchandise like some diabolical and inverted Santa Claus. All
of the houses were part of one house. All of the houses in the world were part
of that one house by which Mom and I were divided as well as embraced. “Growing
up” began to signify one thing only to my feverish imagination. Mom and I could
live in worlds without each other in them.

 
    I
NEVER UNDERSTOOD Rodney, but I was always awestruck by the incomprehensible life
he lived with his mother. Ethel had a generous pension from the Marine Corps
subsequent to her husband’s death at Tet, gray hair, and bad circulation in her
legs. Usually she sat all day and embroidered in a big stuffed chair, her feet
propped by cushions and a macramé footstool; when she walked she walked with
the aid of an aluminum cane. Whenever we came through the front door with our
stuff she would put down her knitting and watch while we stored it all in the
hall closet alongside the departed Mr. Johansen’s crisply dry-cleaned military
uniform, unused golf clubs, and loose photographs in a chipped Macy’s gift box
(I was forever examining the contents of other people’s closets). After we were
finished, Ethel offered us food and refreshments. “There’s tuna salad, Roddy. In
case you and your friend are hungry. There are some Snickers bars in the
freezer, just the way you like them. Only have some tuna salad first. Have some
good canned soup–there’s mushroom and cream of tomato. Then, if you and
your little friend want, I could fix us all a Manhattan.”
    Rodney
said, “Mmmm.” He went into the kitchen and banged cupboard doors. I stood
noncommittally in the hall, watching Ethel in her chair. Ethel was reading one
of her old “collector’s” editions of The
Amazing Spider Man , and the plastic envelope lay across her knees like some
official procedure. “There’s Sara Lee pound cake, and even a couple of Twinkies
hidden away. And of course I could fix you both that Manhattan. Would you like
a Manhattan, Phillip?” She started to lay her comic on the coffee table and
reach for her cane.
    “Do
me a favor, Ethel,” Rodney said. He had suddenly appeared beside me, one foot
on the stairs. He held a pair of tuna salad sandwiches on a white plate, and a
large bag of Nacho Cheese Flavored Doritos under one arm. “Just sit down, read
your comics, and shut the fuck up.”
    I
couldn’t look at Ethel. I couldn’t look at Rodney. I felt a deep painful
turning in my body. My face was filling up with heat. I was walking through a
stunned silence, my feet on the stairs, Rodney already at the top. I was
trembling. Everything was a blur. I could hardly see where I was going.
    “Don’t
tell me to shut up,” Ethel said, quite simply and emphatically at first. It was
as if she were telling us where