“I will not—” I had started to say but he hung up.
He hung up and I immediately went online, shocked and surprised not only to discover that my parents did indeed update their will in a very wholesale way, but also that mom updated the password I previously hacked by only adding 72 to the end of the original one. Seventy-two being the year mom and dad got married.
Idiots! I’m descended from idiots!
As my mother remarked in that email, it is expected that parents split their will fifty-fifty between two children! This isn’t freaking rocket science!
Which is why I’m now packing for my own little road trip. Time to pay a visit to mom, dad, and little brother up in yon ol’ Minnesota.
CHAPTER 25.
I arrive in Cathedral Hill around one a.m. It’s this quaint tree-lined neighborhood in Saint Paul populated with Victorian houses and old brownstones. I suspect there must be a cathedral or two around here somewhere, as well. And probably a hill.
I pull up in front of Noel’s house on Laurel Avenue (I got myself a Zipcar for the trip—what a thrill!). It’s not a Victorian or a brownstone, but a simple two-story with triangular roof and a porch. It’s nice. In the moonlight it looks black, but it’s a pretty blue in the daytime (not that I’ve been invited up here to see that pretty blue any time recently). The yard is a good size and they even have a tire swing hanging from an impressive dutch elm.
Their garage fits three cars: a Dodge minivan, their Escalade, and Noel’s silver Porsche Boxster, the official car of American douche bags.
Getting out of the Zipcar, I feel all my joints crink and crack and complain about the six-plus-hour drive up here. I refused to get out of the car along the way, even to make a visit to the WC. No, I peed into a Lipton Ice Tea two-liter bottle while doing 70 MPH along the I-90.
I was determined.
I was angry.
I am determined.
I am angry.
I’m also righteous!
I’m also glad little Annie is away on her road trip as I look around the silent avenue and witness no movement. I’m all alone. Popping the trunk, I surmise my arsenal: Crates of champagne bottles half-filled with a mixture of kerosene and petroleum jelly. They’re all capped, of course, but I didn’t forget the rags and lighters. There’s also a lock pick set, which I found at a pawn shop on Pulaski in Humboldt Park a year ago. I didn’t know at the time why I wanted it, but when I saw it, I knew I had to have it. A few days after the purchase I realized why I needed it: So I could let myself into Madelyn’s house late at night to watch her sleep. I didn’t believe she slept. I thought she was a robot (like in that 80s show, Small Wonder). But she sleeps peacefully, and soundly. Like a pint-sized angel.
Guess I was wrong.
Don’t get your panties in a twist. I only did that for a few weeks.
First things first—I grab that lock pick set and head around to the back of the house.
In the backyard, a swing set creaks in the cool summer breeze and a few night birds shuffle along the branches of the maple trees so they can dip their beaks into the moonlight.
It takes no time at all to get the back door opened and I quickly find the alarm keypad and punch in the six digit passcode, which is the years of birth for Noel, Ashley, and Annie. Seriously, my family just doesn’t get it.
Then I hear something and freeze.
CLANK-CLANK-JINGLE-JINGLE
A wet nose goes right for my behind. I leap, but manage not to make a sound. It’s just Chuck, their black lab. He knows me and loves me. All animals love me because they know I know they’re the good ones on this planet. It’s why I don’t eat animals.
However, I’m not certain there’s any good reason to refrain from eating people.
Food for thought (ha!).
I pet Chuck for a few minutes and survey the kitchen with its island counter and large silver appliances. In the fridge I find a twelve-pack of Lipton Ice Tea so I help myself to one, sipping and calming myself while Chuck pants and wags his tail at me.
Then it’s time for business so I lead poor Chuck into the pantry as I don’t want him following me all over tarnation. He whimpers a few times behind the closed door but I shush him and like a good dog he obeys.
Out of the kitchen, I creep through the living room with its sectional couch large enough to seat a symphony and its plasma TV and home theater system that could easily support that symphony.
Up the stairs I try to walk softly, but the wooden steps creak. It unfortunately means taking my time upward and having to look at all the happy happy family pictures. There’s Ashley and Noel standing before a priest, taking their vows. Ashley’s maid of honor, Ellen, stands off to the side, while Noel’s best man, Ken, stands opposite.
Ken!
Does that man have no pride? These two met in college. They were dorm roommates. Ken was dating Ashley, actually. That is, until Ashely cheated on him with my brother and never looked back. Must have been the pegleg that won Ashley over. The sympathy card always does the trick—for other people, that is.
But, seriously, Ken is the best man? Ludicrous!
It goes without saying that a man’s only brother should be his best man. Ken, indeed. I mean, if I had gotten married, even with all the bad blood between us, you can bet your sweet bippy that Noel would have been my best man!
And don’t even start with the whole: Well, Ian, who else could have possibly been your best man?
Don’t start! I don’t need it!
Besides, it’s all moot. If I ever get married we all know that Ben is my best man now.
Of course he’s my best man.
How could he not be?
When Katharine and I are taking our vows, I’ll mirror my brother’s wedding by having stolen the woman of my dreams away from my roommate and best friend.
Oh.
I get it now.
That whole thing—having experienced the same woman, together, but separate. That whole thing… it’s the glue that holds Ken and Noel together.
Sure, while Ken may secretly be plotting my brother’s murder, in the meantime they really are best of friends. So many parallels!
I get it!
Anyway, there’s also pictures of Noel, Ashley, Annie, and my folks in a pontoon on Lake Minnetonka; shots of them all fishing in the Mississippi; baby pictures of ruddy faced little Annie (what a doll!); pictures of the whole family (minus myself) from last Christmas in front of the fireplace, Santa hats on, mugs of spiked egg nog in hand, stupid grins making them all so very ugly; and of course pictures of them in Chicago on the ferry taking part in Ashley’s favorite architecture tour along the Chicago River.
Upstairs, there’s four rooms. The master bedroom’s at the end of the hall and the door’s open. I tiptoe my way there, though I’m sure that with the kid and the dog they’re trained to sleep through a lot of noises. Still, I’m determined. I’m angry. I’m jilted at the altar of my parents’ will and the love of family.
I’m righteous.
I sneak through the hallway past Annie’s room, past Ashley’s office, and a room transformed into a mini gym before arriving at their bedroom.
And there they are, moonlight sifting over them like a sheet of white-gold gauze. I notice that both of them are clinging to their own sides of the bed, a good three feet or so between them.
Trouble in paradise?
Could that be the real reason they’ve sent the kid away on a camping trip with a school friend? I remember that in The O.C. when Sandy and Kirsten were having marital troubles they encouraged Seth and Ryan to get out of the house more, to even take trips down to dangerous old Mexico all on their own. Because. Because they needed space. Space and time to navigate the obstacles in the path of their perfect relationship.
It was so sad!
But Sandy and Kirsten persevered. Thank god.
I don’t really care if these two do. Although tonight I may inadvertently give them the tie that binds (besides Ken that is!).
Ashely softly snores and Noel’s dead to the world. I spy with my little eye a prescription bottle opened on his nightstand. Like drug-dependent mother like son, I guess.
Fortunately my unqualified therapist couldn’t have given me drugs even if she wanted to!
Tiptoeing, again, I walk toward the object of my desire. It’s resting right up against that nightstand on Noel’s side. I focus on Ashley’s measured snores and keep my eyes on Noel’s concrete face.
Right as I’m reaching for Noel’s prosthetic leg, Ashley chokes on her snore, coughs, gags, and rolls over toward Noel (and me!). She slings an arm around him and I wait for them both to wake with a start, seeing this dark intruder (me!) standing over them in the sacred privacy of their own bedroom. At the same time I’m wondering where Noel keeps his gun and cursing myself for not thinking about the fact that he’s a very peppy gun-toting Republican ready to shoot any derned thing that dare step foot on his property.
Idiot!
But I come from a long line of idiots, so this is to be expected.
Ashley’s rhythmic snoring catches like loose film on a reel and restarts. Noel didn’t even twitch his nose at the ruckus.
I play Bugs Bunny to Noel’s Elmer Fudd, snatch that plastic leg in my greedy paw and hop out of the room, stifling a giggle-fit, so proud and excited and amused. I want to cry, too, but I don’t know why!
Joy! Is this what joy feels like? Is this happiness?
Downstairs, clutching the fake leg like it’s the Holy Grail, I nearly forget something as I’m exiting the back door. Stepping back into the kitchen, I open the pantry door and out comes Chuck, all wiggles and tail. I pet him a few times and give him a few scratches behind the ear then lead him into the backyard and shut the door behind us.
“Go on!” I order in a loud whisper, gesturing for the pooch to run free. “You’re free, dumdum! Run! Run like the wind!”
But ol’ Chuck just looks at me like I’m the dummy, holding that plastic limb in the glow of the moon. Or maybe he’s waiting for me to throw it so we can play a game of fetch.
“No such luck, Chucky boy,” I mutter. “This is my trophy. I’m going to make a lamp out of it. It’s my major award!”
That’s from A Christmas Story, in case you weren’t sure. When I was a kid we watched that movie every single Christmas. Then we stopped doing that when I was fourteen, but I still watched it in my room every Christmas by myself, and sometimes during Summer Christmas (a holiday I invented because I don’t understand why we only get one Christmas—and don’t give me any Jesus stuff because we all know he’s got zilch to do with Christmas!).
Sometimes Ralphie and me still talk, actually—you know, Ralphie from A Christmas Story. These days he’s very chatty because he, too, has been seeing a therapist. He says he realizes now how much trauma that BB gun caused him. Every time he hears a loud POP or CRACK he jumps and it takes him many minutes to coax his heart back to normal pace. He’s also coming to terms with all the physical abuse he and his little brother, Randy, suffered at the hands of The Old Man. Ralphie says all the beatings—the spankings, the full-on punches to the nose, and the manhandling—is probably the reason he’s unemployed, beats his wife, drinks too much Thunderbird, and loves UFC.
I asked him if his mother’s smothering affected him poorly at all and he said that was probably the only thing that kept him from eating a bullet by now—that obvious and unmistakable display of love.
I told him I never had that.
Ralphie said he may have murdered a man after coming on to him in the filthy restroom of a public park and getting rejected.
Having learned a lot from my own therapy sessions, I told him not to worry about it. That it’s not his fault. Nothing’s anybody’s fault.
Which is why I’m starting my car now. But not to leave.
With the car running, I get out and walk to the trunk. I look around the quiet, darkened, and peaceful neighborhood. Again, nothing but night-wind in the leaves and the occasional horn of boats passing along the Mississippi only blocks away.
Carefully, I set the leg in the trunk, and methodically stuff twelve champagne bottles with rags, but only after squirting lighter fluid onto the rags.
Then I think, what the hell, and make it a baker’s dozen.
Chuck, having paid no mind to my order to shoo, stands by, curious and anxious and very attentive.
Then—STARBURSTS!
Liquid, stringy, gelatinous flames!
In strands of orange and red, they weave a web across the face of Noel’s blue house, which looks black in the moonlight.
But now it looks like a burning bush, and God is screaming within it.
It’s beautiful.
A poet…. No words. No words to describe it. I should have brought a poet…
That’s from Contact, by the way, which was probably from something some space cadet actually said in real life.
I don’t know. Who cares what’s said in real life, anyway?
All I know is my eyes are full of flames and I smartly started my car before flinging flaming molotov cocktail after molotov cocktail until my arm was rubbery from the effort.
Thankfully, Chuck scurried away after the second or third wondrous explosion of glass, kerosene, petroleum jelly, and flame.
He’s free! He’s free from that tyrannical man and his “shy” queen!
As I tear away in my Zipcar, totally burning rubber, I watch the orange glow grow in my rearview mirror. I also watch silhouettes, like a shadowplay, dance into the street to have a look for themselves. Shadow and light fight, wobble, and waver.
“You’re welcome,” I say. “Enjoy the show.”
And then I giggle all the way to Chanhassen, the little town outside of Minneapolis where my parents live in a house not too far from where Prince lived.
I didn’t stop laughing all the live long way back home to Chicago. And when the sun broke open the eastern horizon while I was zipping along I-90, I just laughed even harder. For some reason that sunrise had me laughing even harder than I had been while flinging every last bottle of flaming kerosene and petroleum jelly at my parents’ (no longer to be Noel’s) mansion of a house. It’s this three-story house that looks more like a miniature White House than a private residence. It has porticos and statues and fountains in the yard. It even has this domed top near the structure’s center. It’s really ludicrous that anyone lives there, let alone just two people.
And it’s ash!
Ha!
I really let those bottles fly. I’m impressed with this throwing arm of mine. In fact, I’m thinking of walking down the street sometime soon to tell those Cubs they should hire me to throw the ball from that manmade dirt hill for them. I’d demand an extraordinary salary—something like two-hundred-K a year, as well as complete DVD sets of All Creatures Great and Small and The Young Ones. Hell, I may as well ask for the entire classic BBC catalogue on DVD.
Because why not? I feel high right now! I can do anything! Be anything!
But all that laughing laughing laughing and throwing throwing throwing really did a number on me. I’m only noticing it now, sitting in my living room with a glass of scotch and a cigarette lit but unsmoked, the August sun molesting the morning windows with its lusty heat.
I feel as though I could nod off at any moment.
I don’t want to do that, though, because Ben’s not home. It’s after nine in the morning, so I assumed he’d be here, but who really knows what his hours are or what he gets up to at any minute of the day or night. I really want to tell him about my adventure. I want to explain to him how my family first kicked me out of the family then gave away a house I half-owned and so I, in turn, took away their houses!
Ha!
I’m brilliant. Brilliant, but at the moment I feel kind of loopy.
Loopy but great!
That said, I called out sick again. It’s not a problem. I’ve got so many sick hours stockpiled, I figure I’m due a fair amount of fake sick days. Honestly
, given how often my coworkers call out sick because they’re hung over, stayed out late for a concert the previous night, want to spend an impromptu day with the family, or caught a venereal disease and need to see a doctor—wait, I guess that’s kind of a real sick day. Anyway, I read their emails and I know. I know they fake it all the time. And how often have I until recently? Never, actually, now that I think of it. I always go to work if I’m able. And I know that my supervisors and Mr. Hollander will remember that when they see all the sick days I’ve taken lately. If for some reason they inquire about my recent rash or sporadic sick days, I’ll just tell them I have polio or something and remind them of my many years to date of solid, unfailing service.
I’m really sticking it to The Man!
Boy, my life sure has changed since that Ben moved in. I wonder where he is.
CHAPTER 26.
I awoke on the couch this evening. It was seriously disorienting. It was dusk, and I didn’t know if it was night or morning. I didn’t know what day it was, even. Of course, it’s Thursday and I just slept the day away after retrieving my pound of flesh from The North Star State last night.
But I awoke and found a note waiting for me on the coffee table.
Ian,
I’ve got a lot going through my mind at the moment. Despite Madelyn’s lack of credentials, and how much anger I felt after my visit with her, she started something really stirring inside me. You’re to thank for that as well, my friend. But I won’t be around that much as I need time to think. I need peace and quiet. Something’s happening. Something frightening, perhaps, but something I need to see through. I may even take that sojourn into the desert we joked about not too long ago. This head of mine has been tuned to a bad radio signal for so long now, I just have to do something about it. Even if it means banging this radio against the wall until it either finds the right channel or ceases to broadcast for good. Whatever’s trying to come through, I have to let it—or force it. I still see red. I see lots of blue moonlight. But so much blackness, too. I’m going to clear this fuzz. Who knows what’ll happen.
Y Is for Fidelity Page 17