by Rob Sedgwick
The ass will not move.
My stepfather later points out that Mercutio called Tybalt “the prince of cats.” I pretend I know this even though I don’t. And I don’t really care because I like the name, as does my sister.
A lot of times when we’re walking him—or when I’m taking both him and my own voice out for a walk—I declaim with a deep, stentorian vibrato: “The Fiery Tybalt!” The title sticks for the rest of his life, and those who are deepest in the know love to copy my Olivier-like declaration.
If he finds a chicken bone on the street, the only person who can get it out his mouth without having a hand chomped off is Mom. “It’s so annoying,” says Kyra. “You take care of him all over the place, and then she waltzes in and he’ll do whatever she wants because he knows she’s Mom!”
When I come back out to East Hampton after my first week on the soap, Kyra tells me that Tybalt is epileptic. He has had several episodes. She is sad but matter of fact about it, an adult at nineteen. She says he will now have to take phenobarbital for the rest of his life. This doesn’t stop the seizures, but it’s supposed to moderate their frequency.
I am alone with him in the living room, learning my lines for the next week. Suddenly the air clutches and there is a deep, powerful thud. It’s Tybalt landing on his side, and the seizure has begun—the first of many I will witness. He knows he is about to go through this horrible ordeal, but he also knows there is nothing he can do to stop it. It must run its course. He vibrates, stiffens. There is an electrical surge, but he is still plank stiff. His pupils get so dilated his eyes become these huge glazed black marbles of dread that want to roll back into his head but don’t. His mouth foams.
I’m in a panic, not knowing what to do. Then I remember Kyra told me that if this happens, just hold him, he has to ride it out. I lie on the ground next to him and pull him up tightly, pressing my body into his, hoping to take away some of this agony. His body continues to convulse, and the power is tremendous, but I hold on. Even though his jaws are clamped shut, he’s spewing so much phlegm and saliva all over the floor it starts to pool. His one eye that I can see from where I am lying is still frozen open and pitch black. He must be seeing something horrible. His lips are contorted in extreme determination.
When my mother sang “Hush Little Baby,” it always seemed to be the deepest understanding of the worst pain imaginable. So I start to sing: “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird…”
The seizure begins to subside. The vibrating slows. He unwinds, but hot air blasts out of his mouth as if his entire being has been strangling itself for the last five minutes. Gradually, his breathing comes back to normal. His tongue droops out, unfurled and exhausted. Stumbling, he hoists himself onto his front paws to lick up the slick pool. He is embarrassed. I try to stop him, but he is determined to clean up his mess.
One of Kyra’s best friends is named Jocelyn. She knows something about everything and disarms everyone with her joy and fascination with life. And with you. She is also a prophet. The first time she meets Tybalt, she says that he is not a dog,
but a prince. A beautiful, golden prince traveling under a curse.
7
It’s hot. I can’t get comfortable. I thrash. I climb up the chair in front of me. I’m eight years old and I’m on an airplane, about to go to London with my parents, Nikko, and Kyra. We’re sitting on the tarmac and not taking off. There is no air conditioning.
It’s a New York summer. It’s unbearably hot and I can’t keep still. I can’t get comfortable. I can’t stop moving. If I do sit still, which I can’t, I get anxious. Great reptiles are crawling all through my insides, cramping my eight-year-old bowels, and I’m going to explode. I have to keep wriggling in time with the reptiles. This waiting, this not moving, this heat! My legs are independent of my body; they won’t stop kicking. They’re an entire team of soccer players.
Sometime during the night, I pass out, as eight-year-olds are wont to do.
When I open my eyes, I have a blanket on me. The air is cool. It’s pleasant and comfortable. I feel calm and safe. There is orange juice and the best pastry I have ever tasted in front of me. The glazed, tissue-thin flakes are sweet but not sugary. There are chambers of cinnamon, and the top is sprinkled with chopped walnuts.
I look out the window. Someone has provided a giant map to our destination. This is so considerate and so smart. I feel so smart to have figured this out, never having been on a plane before and being only eight years old, but there it is: all the details and topography laid out, guiding us to the land of enchantment and wonder.
London Bridge is falling down!
My mother has been reading me a great deal of Little Lord Fauntleroy. When she reads, it’s such a magic balm, her honeyed voice transporting me into that world of boys with long tumbling hair, all sorts of romantic English stuff, gigantic weeping willows, punting on the Thames, gout, Buckingham Palace, kings, queens, and Winnie the Pooh.
“King John was not a good man. And no good friends had he.” The saddest poem. I can’t say it out loud without crying to this day. King John is alone in his life, an awkward bumbler who no one loves. He is a fond foolish man with none of Lear’s greatness. He is childish, ineffective, not bright, and I love him so much. He breaks my heart.
Mom loves “James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree,” and gives it a dramatic rendering that would make Olivier green, her voice a thin shuddering piece of steel that screams loud and scary at the poem’s conclusion.
My father is the biggest person in the world. He is the handsomest man in the world.
In London there are old friends, the Connellys. We stay with them.
We see Buckingham Palace:
“They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace.
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
‘A soldier’s life is terrible hard,’
Says Alice.”
The palace guards stand still as statues and their eyes look straight ahead when I wave at them. We step into huge black taxicabs that have seats as big as couches and even have room in the back for little black stools. We feed the millions of pigeons in Trafalgar Square. We walk down stately London streets. We walk in the squares. We go to a country castle in a place called Bath. It’s a castle with a grass tennis court. The castle is vast, with endless rooms of stone and echoes of children. Each bathroom has multiple sinks.
I am instructed to go to the barn to get eggs. The chickens have abandoned their nests, and resting there, holy, magical, like small presents you would get in your stocking at Christmas, are fresh eggs.
“What will they think of next?” I think to myself, as I’d like to think Christopher Robin would have thought to himself.
It rains a lot, but the sun always comes out afterward. And when it does, Dad and Charlie Connelly play tennis on the grass court. Everyone is smiling.
We are back in London. We are going to leave the next day to go home to New York City.
That night I nestle in on top of a bunk bed in the children’s room that is bursting with stuffed bears, horses, and an orange fluffy orangutan. I try to memorize all the cozy things that have happened on the trip. I drift away on a cloud…
I have been ordered to meet Frankenstein. I am terrified. He’s in the next room. I hear him pacing, breathing, scratching. I hear the clumping of his boots.
Mom is between me and the door to Frankenstein. She is in a brown dress with short sleeves and a Petula Clark hairdo. (Mom always sings “Downtown.”) She knows I am petrified. She is sitting down. She is smiling, being sexy, like some coquettish schoolgirl. She turns away from me toward the door to Frankenstein, her eyes lightly shut, her Mona Lisa smile broadening.
She will not stop him. I have to go in there.
Shortly after our return to New
York, my parents separate. I don’t understand what that means except that my father doesn’t live with us anymore.
I wonder what I have done wrong.
—
Mom wants the keys to the car! NOW! I’ve hidden them in the shed.
We’re in Croton, New York, a week after our London trip in our house, which is actually called “The Gingerbread House.” I won’t give her the keys. She’s furious. Mom and Dad are beginning to “separate,” whatever that means. At least one of them comes back to spend the night with us, but they both leave so much and usually don’t get home until we’re asleep.
I can’t take it anymore. I resort to extreme measures.
The maid they have working for us frightens me to death. Her name is Marla. She hits me with the back of her slipper and has me in a perpetual state of fear. One day she’s in the kitchen with a friend of hers, making us hot dogs for dinner. I know if I eat the hot dog I will throw up, but I also know the consequences will be dire if I say anything.
The hot dogs have almost been boiled to death. I am going to throw up, I know it. I start planning my escape. When they’re not looking, I’ll fly upstairs. My father, who remarkably is home and watching TV in his and Mom’s bedroom, will protect me.
I can’t make a move yet; she’s watching us.
The dead hot dogs come. I have to eat them or else. I put one into my mouth. I chew. The throw-up yellow stuff is gurgling in my stomach, rousing itself toward certain eruption. Marla is turning toward the sink. She’s not looking.
GO!
With everything I can muster, I run, guilty, my face on fire. My foot is almost over the threshold of the kitchen, but before it crosses, I have to turn and vomit on the floor.
She’s right there! A goblin from hell barreling after me—she might as well be wielding a meat cleaver.
I turn around and keep going, don’t look back, Gale Sayers running broken field.
But I throw up again.
She’s gaining. A demonic machine, all wheels and gears bent on my destruction.
I leap the stairs. There are pictures of roosters and other birds painted on them that I always notice when I go up the stairs. I wonder if the roosters can spring to life and save me? But as with all desperate hopes and prayers, that one is never answered.
Turn right: a straightaway toward the parents’ room, and I’ll be home free.
She’s knows she can’t get me. Then, as a last-ditch attempt: a horrible noise, like a fiend from the seventh ring of hell, almost stops me dead in my tracks. But I stumble to the finish line: Dad’s room. Safety. Dad stretched out on the bed watching our little black-and-white TV, pleasantly surprised to see me.
Immediately, Marla becomes the face the parents see: all innocence, wanting to make sure I am okay.
—
“NOW!” my mother shrills in front of the Gingerbread House, demanding the keys.
It’s too much. There’s nothing I can do. I’ve stalled too long. I open the door to the shed, retrieve the keys from the wooden ledge, and place them, small, in my mother’s hand. She gets in the car and takes off for New York, leaving us all alone.
With Marla.
Nikko and I occupy ourselves with long walks in the woods, pretending we are the Green Hornet and Kato.
Nikko, Kyra, and I run around the rug playing “You Can’t Get Me!” We eat hot dogs. We wait at the top of the driveway for a Volkswagen bearing either parent that won’t come. We anticipate cars coming around the bend, squinting our eyes to will them into the shape, the reality, of a Volkswagen.
We wait.
—
The house in Croton-on-Hudson where we live from the mid- to late sixties really is called “The Gingerbread House.” There’s the white picket fence with the little sign that says so in the most elegant fairytale script you ever saw. And there’s the dell with a playhouse, the red clay tennis court, and the family dog, which is now whirling around my father and me. His name is Golden Boy. He is sprinting around us like a racehorse, and there is so much laughter that I can’t breathe anymore. I am getting dizzy. We keep spinning around to look at him, this beautiful golden dog who is so proud and magical he seems like he must have come from a land of fairy tales. But then again, all dogs come from a land of fairy tales. My father is so young and happy in his new lumberjack jacket, and he loves the dog so much and we love each other so much and the dog loves us both so much he can’t stop whirring around us at an almost blinding speed.
He will fly soon.
During the winter, we freeze our asses off waiting at the top of the driveway for the bus to take us to school. From across the road (the mysterious side, dense with pine trees, rocks, moss, black shade, and a topography that goes straight up), wolves come down from their lairs in the steep mountainside to see what my brother and sister and I are up to and if anyone happens to be looking after us. Golden Boy trots across to the mysterious side of the road, right into the middle of the pack, and I suppose they all just reason it out, because the wolves always leave very peaceably and no one says anything.
The Gingerbread House itself is flat-out Hansel and Gretel territory. The top half is exposed splintery wood. The bottom half is painted all white and covered with hand-painted hearts, flowers, roosters, and sparrows. When you walk in the front, thick, airtight, blood-red door, the smell hasn’t changed in two hundred years: wood older than the Declaration of Independence, stake-sized rusted nails in half-moon warped floorboards, and mildew. You’re immediately thrown back to a cozier, more welcoming time: “Hello, how are you?” Not like today, where everything smells like an airport and some person asks in a faraway voice, “Do you have a reservation?”
Of course you don’t. You’ve failed. Go away.
The ceiling downstairs is so low that my six-foot, four-and-a-half-inch father perpetually has to duck.
In the summer, it gets broiling.
“Get your bathing suits on!” says Dad, running up the blood-red staircase to the living room where Nikko and I are watching TV. The face boards, like the outside of the house, have hand-painted pictures of chickens, roosters, flowers, and a poem in French going up the steps that I don’t understand.
“But, Dad,” we whine, “it’s about to rain.”
“I know! That’s the whole idea!”
“But Daaaaad!”
“No whining! And put your sneakers on!”
We obey. We dress. We are as ready as we’re ever going to be. Dad is hopping like a child and is so happy, and we lift up the old metal latch and open the airtight door, and you have never seen such rain! Millions of gallons plopping down from a black sky. Dad skips out and starts laughing and shouting. Nikko and I start out dubiously, slinking, but we’re immediately drenched. Any fantasy of somehow keeping dry vanishes.
Dad is ecstasy unhinged, dancing, spinning, such a great idea he had about our sneakers because the pebbles underfoot in the driveway are painless. We start laughing and yelling because Dad is laughing and yelling. We start running up the driveway. What could be better than this? No one else is doing this, just us! Golden Boy comes out of the woods from his own adventures to join ours. He is so red he looks like an Irish setter. He barks and jumps high and laughs with us because he is so happy that we are all so happy, and the rain is just ridiculous, it’s pelting so hard—but now it feels like some giant massage, and we four must look so silly because we’re all just jumping up and down and running and laughing and doing these weird movements to some odd music no one else is hearing.
We are all so in love with everything.
At the top of the driveway, Dad turns right, so we turn to follow. I don’t think our feet are touching the ground, Golden Boy running, brilliant, extended, effortless, Dad a little ahead of us.
A car stops next to him; the driver wants to tell him something. Dad and the head sticking out of the car confer.
The car leaves.
Dad comes up to us and says that the guy in the car said, “You all look like you’re having more fun than anyone else in the world.”
8
And just like that, the deals suddenly stopped coming. We were dry. This filled me with a first-rate dread and anxiety that my aspirations to be a high muckety-muck of the drug world were about to be dashed. I had nowhere to pour my intense criminal energies. I kept pestering, stalking Jordan: “Why? What happened?”
He said he had no idea what was going on and that he was getting nervous too.
I went to LA to try and drum up some acting work, but the only thing that happened was I ended up missing Tybalt all the time—I would have vivid dreams about him just looking at me and smiling in that way dogs do when they pant—and yakking to anyone who would listen about the deals Jordan and I weren’t doing.
I was an out-of-work drug gofer.
I auditioned for these horrible TV shows. One was a knockoff of The Karate Kid, with Roddy McDowell playing the older, wise-for–the-ages Chinese guy. I got a test deal, which basically means I was in the final mix of actors being considered for the role and a big contract was negotiated beforehand. There was only one other guy auditioning when I got there. He had dark hair. I hunkered down to read my Sports Illustrated, and then he said, just to be friendly and fill up the dead California air, “Well, I guess they’re either going blond or dark.”
I smiled and nodded my head to agree with him because he appeared to feel self-conscious about what he had just said. He was very nervous. I only got nervous for stage auditions, because it was the only acting my mother took seriously. He went in and came out a couple of minutes later, wished me good luck, and was so bumbling and stumbling in his rush to get out of there, as if he didn’t deserve to take his time, I knew he must have bombed in the audition. I felt badly for him. What a business. Everything riding on one shot, and if you blow it you want to kill yourself, or if not that, you at least walk around feeling profoundly rotten and ashamed.