by David Amsden
But in this photo Will was a teenager, tall as hell, pretty strong-looking too. I didn’t really care that he looked so different—I know what growing up means. It was that I realized I hadn’t even thought about Will’s existence at all for years. I have a little theory that we are all constantly concerned about the existence of about a hundred people in the world at any given moment. Half of them tend to be people we don’t know, like movie stars and politicians and the people our friends tell us about who we never meet, like who they’re dating for ten minutes or whatever. Then there’s a few slots for the people right around you, a limited supply, for friends and the family you see all the time. And then there’s a slew of slots that are supposed to go to people like Will, but I guess his had already been taken by someone else, someone I hadn’t yet met. Anyway, I guess it’s these slots that are for people like Dad too, or else I wouldn’t be going on about him like this, considering I barely ever knew him. I don’t know. Right there I just wanted to see him so bad, Will, I mean. My mouth felt sour. I almost felt guilty.
“Will’s one of my favorites!” Melanie was saying. “Do you know Will? I love Will!”
“You know Will?” I asked. “I can’t believe you know Will?”
“Of course,” she said. “Will’s my cousin.”
“You know,” I said, “he’s actually not.”
“Huh?”
“Your cousin, I mean. Will’s not your cousin.”
But with all these pictures before her, she couldn’t really focus on what I was saying. She had that kind of mind. You could put Melanie on the couch, turn on the television, sit down next to her, and start talking and she wouldn’t even notice. You could probably start cutting your wrists all up. You could be screaming and getting blood all over the place, and she’d just be staring at some cartoon like a blind man.
That explains her now saying—
“It’s Grammy again! Look, it’s Grammy! I love Grammy!”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
“Oh and look!” she said, going on to another picture. “Look at this one! Look at how young he is!”
“That’s not your grandmother,” I said.
“He’s so young!” Melanie said. “You almost don’t know who it is. Look at him!”
I figured I’d stop trying to correct her petty grasp on genealogy, and humor her by looking at this next photo, the one she was all hung up on.
God, he did look young—
Melanie was right about that, but it wasn’t hard to tell who it was. I didn’t think so at least.
“Look at him!”
It was T.J., of all people.
He was around twelve years old. You knew it was him because his skin was tan, his eyes exactly the same, big and brown, with those long lashes. After all that fun went down with him I hadn’t really thought about him at all. It’s funny. I mean, there was that shrink everyone made me see, the one with all that hair coming out of his ears. But I never brought it up, and whenever he tried to I just lied about something else that was going on. He’d say do you want to tell me about T.J., and I’d tell him I was thinking about trying cocaine. I’d never touch cocaine, but it always distracted him. I think Mom had given him a little debriefing on our family history. Don’t ever go to a shrink, though. Like a lot of adults, they just make everything up, and some of it stays with you longer than you think.
“I love T.J. too!” Melanie was saying.
“You know T.J.?” I asked.
“Of course,” Melanie said. “He’s my cousin. He came over to our house once.” She was so excited, speaking in this way where she wasn’t necessarily answering me but just talking out loud and saying things that happened to work as responses. You know, how nine year olds do. “He stayed for a few weeks, a while ago,” she was saying. “We had so much fun!”
“That’s crazy that you know T.J.,” I said. “Do you even know who your father is?”
“It was great!”
“Do you?”
“Did you know T.J. went to jail?” Melanie said. “But him and Dad said he was framed, like in that Roger Rabbit movie. Have you seen that movie?”
That’s how I found out about his getting arrested. It’s still all I know. Funny, right? Some things, you just don’t want to ask about.
“It was just like having an older brother!” Melanie said.
I guess this last statement of hers jarred her into remembering that I was right next to her. Because she turned to me now, took my hand. Then she looks up at me, and do you know what she says?
“And now you’re my older brother because we have the same dad.”
I understand she was nine, and because of that she was stupid when it came to things like this. But it wasn’t like I was so logical myself. I mean, I’m twenty now, and I barely know anything. And I was only seventeen then, and had just spent a six-hour drive hearing Melanie calling him Dad the whole way. And now this. I just wasn’t up for acting like such an adult anymore. So I let go of her hand, but kept looking right into her.
“No,” I politely said. “We don’t.”
“What?” she asked.
“We do not have the same father,” I said.
“Yes we do,” Melanie said.
“Trust me, darling,” I said. “I am not your brother and in some corridor of your little infantile mind you comprehend this.”
I liked talking like this sometimes. Sometimes, it would really have an effect. Like when a teacher was annoying me, and I’d get up in front of the class and go after them, talking smarter than I ever was in any paper I wrote.
But when it’s a nine year old girl you’re talking to, it just doesn’t make any sense to her.
“I don’t get it,” Melanie said.
“Look,” I said. “These pictures, these people in them, they are not your family. Okay? Do you hear me now? None of these people knows who you are. Your father is some lunatic, Dad told me,” I said. “I’m going to the bathroom now.”
I didn’t really need to use the bathroom. I just wanted to get away from Melanie. I didn’t even turn on the light. I had started doing stuff like this ever since I got into high school, when I was really upset, which, I guess, was like all the time. Like I’d be brushing my teeth, and all of a sudden I was using the toothbrush on my fingernails, really going at them, brushing hard, rinsing them in the water, just like they were my teeth. One time I was playing Nintendo and when I lost a level of some stupid game—I think it was Zelda—I got so angry I tried to knock the wind out of myself. Another time, I was walking this dog me and Mom had then. His name was Dundee, and he’s dead now. Anyway, I was walking him and I can’t remember what he did exactly, just something normal for dogs. Like when they zone out and forget to come even though you asked them to ten times. Dundee did something like that and it made me so livid I ended up kicking him in the gut. I kicked him hard as I could, this poor dog. And let me just tell you, if you ever want to feel like the world’s supreme jackass, try kicking your dog in the gut hard as you can. He barely even whimpered.
Sometimes, I’d be standing around, and it would just piss me off how still I could stand, if that makes any sense to you. I’d feel my legs on the ground, could feel how strong they were, the muscles in them so indestructible, and it made me so angry, because I just sort of wanted to collapse. So I’d think real hard about collapsing and it would happen. I guess if you ever happened to walk in on one of these sessions you’d just say I fainted, passed out for a second. Or you’d think maybe I was crazy. But it was much more controlled than that. I swear.
In the bathroom now I was just looking at myself in the mirror, but with the lights off and my eyes closed. And I guess I was thinking about how easy it was for me to stand, how perfectly my leg muscles functioned, because when I opened my eyes I was on the floor, the ceiling staring at me like it was about to fall and kill me. I could tell I hadn’t been down there too long, so I just got up, flushed the toilet so anyone listening would think I had just gone t
o the bathroom. Then I came out, and Melanie was still right there in the hall where I left her. She was staring at that picture still, the one of T.J.
“Hey, you okay?” I said.
“I don’t understand,” Melanie was saying. “I don’t understand.”
“Hey there,” I said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Hey, relax. Don’t worry about it. And don’t cry for God’s sake.”
“But you said—”
“I know, I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
But actually, I wasn’t sorry at all. Maybe you think I should have been, but I swear if you were there you’d understand. It’s not like I haven’t regretted how I acted since. But right then I just wanted to make sure she understood everything I meant.
“But—”
“Look, it’s true,” I said. “It just is. These people are my family, not yours.”
“D-A-A-A-D!” she was suddenly yelling, like I had tried to hurt her or something. “D-A-A-A-D—”
“Hey there,” I said. I was covering her wet mouth now. God, her teeth really were messed up, like Cro-Magnon or something. You should have felt how wet and snotty my palm was. Sometimes I still think about it. You know, like when I’m washing my hands. “Do you want me to explain this to you or not? Or do you just want to act like a baby and yell for some dad who’s not even yours?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Exactly,” I said. “You don’t have a clue. But look, I’ll explain it all to you. I’ll straighten you out.”
So we were in another room now, the one me and Melanie would be sharing. It had two beds. I was on one, and she was on the other. She had calmed down now. I’m actually good with kids, if you really want to know. I can calm them down real easy.
You should have been there. I was so thorough with her, with my explanation of why none of the people in those precious photos had anything to do with her. I was very formal, very professional and polite. I started at the beginning, with the basics.
“Do you know how babies are made?” I asked.
“Sort of,” she said.
“You don’t know, do you?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s like this…,” I began.
And I didn’t hold back. I wish you were there. You should have seen me. I was a star. I wasn’t vague in the least. I mean, I gave her all the details. I was like a doctor with the details. I avoided euphemisms, and fielded her questions like a professor. It really wasn’t so ridiculous. It felt like a very natural thing, my speaking like this. Sometimes I swear I could be a truly great teacher.
Melanie listened very intently, found a lot of it very amusing. Like when she said—
“There’s really white stuff?”
“It’s more translucent than white,” I said.
“What’s tranzluchent?” she asked.
“Like white, but kind of see-through,” I said. “But that’s not the point here,” I said. “We’re getting off subject.”
“And that’s where the, um, babies are?” she asked. “In the white stuff?”
“That’s where half of them are,” I said. “Good job.”
I was starting to feel close with her. I just loved how she was listening so carefully to what I was saying. I couldn’t think of anyone else, really, who ever had. It was like she was a good friend of mine, someone my own age who just happened not to know about the specifics of procreation. That’s what I mean about getting along with kids. A lot of the time talking to them is just like talking to someone my own age.
But like with all kids, it turned out she hadn’t really been listening to my little sermon, not like an adult, I mean. Because after explaining the physical end of things, I went into all the legal stuff, about marriage, and how you can have lots of different families depending on how many times your parents end up married. I made sure she understood that these were not real families. This was very important to me. I must have said this twenty times.
That’s why I would’ve paid someone to knock me out when I finally finished everything, and the first thing out of Melanie’s wet little mouth showed she hadn’t heard a thing—
“But can you still be my brother?” she asked.
God, was I upset. This girl had no learning curve. And her face looked so lost. I mean, look at it: all adorable in that way I couldn’t deal with right now.
So, in response, I resorted to the kind of muddled and senseless statement that only a nine year old would comprehend. I had that sour feeling in my mouth again, and my eyes felt dry. If you really want to know, I was crying.
But I just wanted her to shut up so I could go to sleep and wake up and drive back to Maryland by myself at ninety miles an hour. It’s all I wanted.
“I’m only your brother if I agree to it,” I said. “It’s up to me, and I choose not to.”
She just looked at me now. Her mouth was so wet. So were her eyes. I had to get out of there. She was about to explode and I didn’t know what I’d do.
“I am not your brother,” I said. “Got it?”
Dad’s talking to me now.
It was the next day, at night. Easter was tomorrow. We were going to go to church. I hadn’t been inside a Catholic church since I was around seven, when me and Dad were all about going to bars together. I had almost forgotten that half of me was Catholic, at least in theory. Mom’s side is Jewish, but none of them really believes it. They’re smart types, I told you, so when my grandparents were literally in the Holocaust, they took this as a cue to find better things to believe in than God and salvation. Anyway, I know they’re supposed to be beautiful, but I just hate the inside of churches, synagogues too, any houses of worship actually.
We had spent the day with a lot of the family, and it had been pretty nice seeing them. Mary was in bed now, and we were having a beer together, just me and Dad. I don’t think I had really talked to him the whole trip—there was too much noise everywhere. He was all quiet right now. So was the house. I could tell he had a lot on his mind. He just had that face.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Feller,” he said, “I wanna talk about some things.”
“What’s that?”
“Some of the things you said to Melanie last night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you know.”
It was strange how fatherly he sounded. He never sounded like this. What bothered me was that it managed to feel parental anyway, like he was actually going to be right in whatever he said.
“Oh come on, Dad,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No,” he said. “It does matter.”
I took a sip of my beer.
“I was just kidding around with her. And it’s not like I was even lying.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Well then, what’s the point?” I said.
“It’s just not funny, feller,” Dad said.
I took another sip of my beer. There was something about his statement that got to me. It was just that the older I got the more things around me seemed to be funny. I swear, some days, it’s like every single thing around me is just there to make me laugh.
“But Dad,” I said, “everything’s funny.”
“Some things are not funny,” Dad said.
“Oh come on,” I said. “You’ve got a sense of humor. This is even funny, this conversation right here.”
“Some things just aren’t funny,” he said again.
“But, you see, that’s where our outlooks diverge,” I said. I told you I’d started talking like this sometimes. “That’s where the chasm is,” I now said. “But there’s humor there. If you look attentively you’ll see there’s humor to be excavated.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just that it’s so funny,” I said. “That’s all.”
“Listen,” Dad said to me now. “It’s just not funny.”
He was so damn parental. You wou
ld have never believed that, for a living, this man sliced meat at a place called the Ding Dong Deli. You’d have thought he was a lawyer or something.
“No Dad,” I said. “It is. I swear. You shut up and listen to me. I promise you. It doesn’t matter. It’s hysterical. It’s funny as hell.”
I think he said something in response, but it’s not like I was paying attention. I got up, said goodnight, went to the bathroom. Don’t worry, I turned on the lights this time. And, eventually, I was driving home by myself, which was incredible, the white lines flying under the car like they were being sucked into a vacuum. And what’s really funny was how fast the next year went by without me and Dad saying one thing to each other. I always liked thinking about how we were so disconnected that if some angry lunatic one day happened to shove one of those little oyster forks into Dad’s left eye, and Dad ended up blind, I wouldn’t even know about it. I’d have a blind father, and wouldn’t even know it. Because when he did finally call me up, he didn’t even know if he should call himself Dad or Joe. He was very confused. He mumbled, and then sat still on the other line for a second. It was funny. He ended up settling on Joe.
BLOOD RELATIVES
I told you how Mary was always going crazy, how she was about to lose it all the time. It turned out that she was always pregnant. That’s why she was such a nut. Dad was always getting her pregnant, and she kept having miscarriages. It happened something like five times in one year. She’d be all crazed and frantic, then she’d eventually head to the doctor, find out she was knocked up. Then she’d get home and pee blood into the toilet. And then she’d collapse on the tile floor, with her underwear all knotted up around her ankles. She was one of these blind-faith Catholics, so for her, having a miscarriage, tragically natural as it is, was right up there with having an abortion. It was a sin. That’s why Mary would cry for a week straight. That’s why she was always crying.