by Byron Lane
Dad says, “Who?”
* * *
Hey, Siri, I want to kill myself in Dad’s hospital room.
Here I sit, cold, bored, staring at my father’s weathered, sliced, and stitched body, and cursing Kathi Kannon for not hiring me, saving me from this. Cursing her for not picking me, cursing Bruce for giving me hope, cursing myself for accepting it. It has been eight days since I met her. Hey, Siri, why can’t I let it go?
My dad survived surgery, of course. Therapista says it’s normal to want a parent to die, because we know we’ll have that pain eventually—no one lives forever—and sometimes we just want to get it over with. But like smallpox, he persists. He looks so sad in this bed, post-op, his gown askew, his tanned contractor’s skin in stark contrast with the bleached white sheets, his hair unburdened of the hairspray he uses to vainly hide his balding. Whose shirt is untucked now?
I lean in toward his bruised body, hear his shallow breathing. “Mom didn’t like you. You won’t go to heaven with her,” I whisper. I feel bold saying it audibly, a courage tempered by scars—I know what happens when I’m too comfortable around him. Sometimes I still feel those pink socks on my feet and my icy regret that I didn’t just take the fucking socks off before I went downstairs. Sometimes I still feel angry that I wasn’t more careful around his ire, more guarded against him breaking me. There are so many of those moments in my life where he muted me a little at a time. Just like those green metal signposts on the highway leading me home to Perris, I can look back at my life and see the moments building toward my complete cowardice. Two hundred miles, one hundred miles, fifty miles—there are so many childhood moments that are a countdown to my stunted adulthood. There was the episode where he made me wear Mom’s underwear. There was the time he made me play tennis even though I had what we later learned was a hairline fracture in my wrist from tripping at school the day before; he didn’t care. There was the time he made me sleep on the front porch because I lost my house key. There was the time he tore up all seven pages of a book report because I made one spelling error on page 5 and had to rewrite all of it; perfection, he wanted. And now I wish he was dead, and he’s not. And now I wish I was back in L.A., and I’m not. And now I wish I was in a relationship—to have anyone significant in my life other than him—and I’m not.
I lean in again, and now louder I say, “I’m not afraid of you.” I sit back and wonder if he can hear all this. If he’ll wake and think it’s a dream, that some angel spoke to him and his whole worldview will change.
I lean in once more, and even louder I say, “You ruined my life. All we had was each other and you fucked it up. You owe me an apolo—” but a nurse walks in.
I sit back in my chair, blood rushing to my face, blushing, busted.
“Hi, baby,” she says, beelining to Dad’s chart and clicking her ink pen to start making notes. “How’s it going?”
Click, click, click.
She’s New Orleans–sized—that is, stout, unkempt in a casual, easy, comforting way.
“He’s alive,” I say, a little more pert than I intended, than I feel.
“Thank you, Jesus,” she says, with that familiar hint of Cajun French still slick on her tongue. She looks from one machine to the next, makes a note. She looks from Dad’s wrist to his face, makes a note. She looks from the clock to her clipboard, makes a note. She looks at me, raises her eyebrows. “Any questions?”
I consider for a second. “Are you … having a good day?”
“Any questions about the patient?” she clarifies.
“Oh, uhh—”
Click, click, click.
She smiles. “Actually, I’m having a fine day. Thanks for asking. You?”
Some machine beeps. Some patient across the hall coughs. Some spell is cast upon me and I can’t even manage a lie.
“Did I interrupt a little chat?” she asks.
“Maybe,” I say, embarrassed.
“Don’t worry. I interrupt little chats all the time, up and down these halls and left and right. The way I see it, some people are hard to talk to. Some people go through their whole lives unconscious, unaware of other people around them. Sometimes talking to someone when they’re asleep is no different than talking to them when they’re awake. So I always say, ‘Have at ’em when you can.’”
Click, click, click. She tucks her pen in her jacket, nods, smiles, and slips out without another word, marching down halls full of other one-sided conversations, leaving me feeling less alone for the first time in years. I pull Mom’s locket from my jeans and hold it in my hand. In the hospital light it looks so trashy, so grimy and bereft, like it belongs back in that basement with her other decaying possessions, forgotten and molding. But its empty encasement holds history. I can still see it dangling from her keys as she drove me to school, can see it twisting around her other keys when she unlocked the front door, her big smile when my childhood hands gave it to her all those Christmases ago. I’m holding this old locket like a rosary, like a magical bean.
I look up at a local newscast on the hospital TV strapped to the wall. It’s hard to watch news because I know all the tricks. I know all the ins and outs of what’s going on behind the scenes. I think about the hell of my job waiting for me back in Los Angeles—my newsroom, with clocks all over, the incessant tick, tick, tick. We, grunts of the news business, live and die by the second hand, twirling in its orbit and dictating our fate: how much time until we’re on the air, how each second is accounted for, how each second is assigned to this story or that, how each second is allocated during commercials—for those seconds, the seconds of commercials, are the most important, for those seconds pay our bills. My livelihood depends on commercials for dentures, life insurance, erection medications.
It has been 691,200 … 691,201 … 691,202 seconds since I left Kathi Kannon’s home.
Dad stirs a little in his bed. I consider trying to coax him awake, but I decide against it.
I’m uninterested in my usual time-wasters, but I turn to them anyway:
Facebook: I scroll through the list of my so-called friends, people I barely see because of my work schedule. I’m free while they’re at work; I’m asleep when they’re free. I resent them. It’s less my friends list and more a cemetery of acquaintances. Bruce, ugh.
OkCupid: I stalk but never date. My OkCupid name is MardiGrasGuy, a stupid reference to being from New Orleans, which no doubt makes people think I’ll show them my dick for trinkets—not totally inaccurate, I suppose, given my irresponsible sexual history. My dating profile isn’t even finished. I have yet to fill in all the lame questions, take the stupid surveys. I just like to look around and see what I’m missing, or not. I’m not available for a relationship, anyway. My life revolves around sleeping. Some guy wants to take me out on a dinner date during the week—it will have to be at three P.M. No one wants that. I don’t even want that. It was always much easier to go out on a Saturday night and meet some random guy at a bar and begin my so-called passive suicidal ritual: risky sex, wake up the next morning in a panic that I have HIV, rush to a doctor to get an emergency test. I’m thinking all of this seems way easier than a relationship. But I’ve never been in one. Not really. What’s the point? I know what love looks like, and it’s shit, it’s lifeless, it’s a cold urn in a basement in fucking Perris.
* * *
My father is slowly waking from surgery, and I know he’s heavily medicated, because he smiles at me. I squeeze out a smile back. ALWAYS BE POLITE! I hear him yelling in my head, the father who lives inside me, the villain of my inner world, and often my outer, despite my best efforts to unburden myself of his worldview.
“You just missed the nurse,” I say as his eyes start to open.
“Of course I did,” he says, surprisingly calm, present. “Healthcare in this country is shit. Democrats, you know?”
I keep my mouth shut.
“Did they get all the cancer? Did they take out my kidney?”
“They think they go
t all the cancer,” I tell him. “And they didn’t have to remove the whole kidney. You’re expected to make a full recovery.”
Dad’s lips quiver. Not even all the manliness in the world can hide some emotions, especially when it comes to himself.
Some people go through their whole lives unconscious.
Even in these comically early stages of his healing, I’m plotting my escape again. It’s a record on repeat. I’m once again dying to get out of this hospital and Louisiana, dying to get far away from my father. Sentimentality only travels so far.
776,214 … 776,215 … 776,216 seconds since Kathi Kannon.
Hey, Siri, maybe I’d prefer to kill myself back in Los Angeles after all.
I rub Mom’s locket, feeling the engraving, feeling the scratches, rubbing it like it’s Aladdin’s lamp, carefully making just one wish.
4
The text message wakes me from my morning’s after-work nap. I’m groggy and disoriented. The room is dark from my blackout shades, noisy from my whooshing sound machine.
Ding!
My life’s biggest and best moments all start as annoying interruptions to my sleep.
What time is it? Where am I? I grab my phone.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Cockring?
I’m instantly blushing at maximum redness, my body reacting with heat and a rush of blood to all parts far and wide. My eyes open. My spine straightens. I stare at my phone. I’m not sure how to respond. Is it her, is it her agent or manager? Is it a wrong number with just the right message I need in this very instant? It has been eleven days—950,176 seconds—since I met her. Hey, Siri, I’ve been clinging to life, hoping for this moment, desperate for a do-over, for another opportunity to impress, to be perfect. I was giving her twelve days—1,036,800 seconds—before I ended it, my desire to work for her, to improve my life, to continue my life. And now this?
It’s a friendly universe.
Maybe Therapista is right.
I text back.
ME: Who is this?
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Do a lot of people call you Cockring?
ME:…
I wonder how to respond, but there’s no time. She’s fast.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: This is Kathi Kannon from the discount bin at Barnes & Noble.
Holy shit, I think, and eke out:
ME: Hi.
Fucking boring loser.
KATHI: I urgently need teeth splinter barfs.
ME:…
I’m racking my brain. What’s she talking about? Am I dreaming? Then I think, Oh, wait.
ME: Toothpicks? You need toothpicks?
No response. I wait, but still nothing comes.
Panic! I hurl myself out of bed and whip open a blackout shade, the sunshine blinding me for a moment. I eventually see my body come into focus in the dirty mirror hanging on the back of my bathroom door. I’m a mess, my hair, my clothes—I’m still in the same outfit I wore yesterday, my depression lately manifesting itself in the pointlessness of washing either my body or my wardrobe.
I reread her message: I urgently need?
I roll around the options in my head. Maybe she’s having a luncheon and, like, Steven Spielberg is asking for a toothpick. Or maybe she’s got, like, Brad Pitt’s kids over and they want to make some art project and she’s humiliated that there are no supplies. Or maybe she just ate corn. Is this the final test for whether I’d make a good assistant: Do I understand her? Is she timing me? Can I drop everything for this?
I resent it.
And I accept it.
Therapista calls this duality.
My head is spinning, my inner world in turmoil.
Hey, Siri, I want this. I want to impress her. This time, I want to be perfect.
I rush to my car. I shoot her a text:
ME: On my way!
KATHI: Cackle Crumpet Cleaners
ME:…
KATHI: Hellscafoldspuntar
ME: I’m so confused what do you mean?!
KATHI: Horble twat
ME: Do you need more than toothpicks? I’m at the store.
KATHI: Bap
ME: What’s Bap?!
KATHI: Gate code is 2625 spells COCK!
Cue sweating, heart beating, blushing.
I’m dashing.
I’m thinking, Her gate code is COCK?!
In Whole Foods on the way to her mansion, I’m buying every kind of toothpick—wood, plastic, assorted colors, mint-flavored, the kind with a point at one end and a flat rounded edge at the other.
I glide through the checkout line. I don’t even linger long enough to get the change.
My Nissan Sentra is hitting every pothole in a race to the finish at her front gate, my radio utterly confused by all the rattling of wires. My keys are jingling in the ignition, aided by Mom’s locket, which I hooked on to my key ring, neighboring my car key and house key, my efforts to add memories of Mom to my daily life. She’s here with me in that little tattered old encasement, as I rush to meet my fate. I’m imagining the sports guy had this same test yesterday, and I want to beat his time.
I approach that magical address, 1245 Beverly Canyon Drive, the numbers stuck onto a common, unassuming mailbox, 1-2-4-5, as if the number 3, a digit fetishized in physics, space, time, religion, was just dropped, and all the other numbers onward throughout infinity are forced to shuffle forward, as if here at this address, the boring old order of common things is unneeded, unwelcomed. As if this place changes things.
That gate.
That keypad.
That code!
The front door, unlocked, unsafe.
No one is in the living room aside from Mateo the Moose, resting comfortably above the roaring fireplace, and little leather Emperor Xi and his friends, enjoying the dancing lights from the disco ball above. The animal portraits on the far wall stare at me, oddly encouraging. As I look at the painting that resembles Sean Penn, I’m thinking, Hi, again!
I hear something to the left.
I bolt past the dining table and into the kitchen. It’s bright and feels surprisingly homey despite being huge. The stove is an industrial six-burner; there are two massive refrigerators covered in pictures and funny postcards; pots and pans are hanging over a marble-top island. The floors are a whole new expanse of wood planks painted lavender with tiny murals of dangerous plants in random spots, all labeled in yellow writing with their species and common name: Toxicodendron Radicans (Poison Ivy); Oleander (Nerium Oleander); Papaver Somniferum (Opium Poppy).
A thin older woman is asleep in a breakfast nook. Asleep or dead.
I walk up to her. “Hello?”
“Oh, hi, yeah,” she says, jolting up, like she’s been awake the whole time. She’s cheerful but frail. “I’m Agnes! I have a brain tumor!”
“Hi,” I say, still in a panic and not sure how to respond. “I’m Charlie.”
“I’m the housekeeper and cook and whatnot,” she says, flipping her hair back behind her shoulder.
“Nice to meet you. I’m the new assistant, I think.”
“Oh, the guy from Louisiana, huh?!”
“Yeah,” I say, looking away, a slight shadow of shame piled on top.
“No, no,” Agnes says soothingly, kindly. “Be proud. Louisiana is a good thing. I’m from Louisiana. Shreveport. Kathi likes Louisiana people. Her ex-husband was from Louisiana. My whole Louisiana family works for Kathi. Worked for her for years and years—cooks, housekeepers, grass cutters. Yes, sir.”
I can’t help smiling ear to ear. Maybe my being a poor and unqualified, undeserving Louisiana boy has actually been an asset this whole time. Maybe this makes all of Perris somehow worth it. Is that another act of wizardry here at this estate, with fireplaces in the summer, birds chirping in the middle of this big city, electrified serenity in the thick of Hollywood—up is down, wrong is right, absurd is magical, Louisiana is cool? This place is transformative indeed. Is everything here just better?
This place changes things.
“Hiring someone, that
must have been a tough decision for her,” I say.
“Nah. Kathi was struggling with which one of you to pick and she eventually just was like, ‘I guess the Louisiana one.’”
I’m thinking, Well, whatever works.
Agnes stands and starts to shuffle toward me. She’s tall, with a body that looks like that of a former model, albeit somewhat bent and crooked here and there. She appears to be wearing disproportional designer clothes—plaid gray slacks that hang loosely from her hips and a colorful silky blouse made for a much smaller, shorter person—perhaps all hand-me-downs from Kathi. On her feet, no shoes, simply faded black socks that barely stabilize her on the shiny wood floors as she closes in on me, a stranger in her galaxy.
Agnes shakes my hand. “I’m eighty-three years young,” she says. “I’ve worked for Kathi her whole life, since she was a little girl. I took her to all her school events and her first acting job and to the hospital seven times for overdoses.”
My eyebrows raise and my mouth opens; words are slow to come, but eventually I say: “Glad to be part of the team.”
“Not a big team. It’s just you, me, and Benny,” she says. “Benny is the handyman who doesn’t seem very handy, if you ask me. It always looks like he’s just pretending to work, but what do I know? Anyway, I think he lives in the shed because he has nowhere else to go.”
“I think I saw him during my interview with Kathi.”
“Did he look suspicious?” Agnes asks pointedly.
“Maybe,” I say coyly.
“That’s him.”
“Kathi texted me she urgently needed toothpicks,” I say, holding up the Whole Foods bag as proof. “Is she okay? Are her teeth okay? Is Brad Pitt here?”
“Who?” Agnes asks. “No, Kathi was just doing some baking.” Agnes points to the counter. “She wanted to test if the cookies were done, but she got tired of waiting for your toothpicks and so I told her to just use a raw spaghetti noodle. They’re cooling.” She points to the calendar.