The Great Perhaps: A Novel

by Joe Meno

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think people should be treated as products,” she announces proudly. “I think it’s everyone’s responsibility to care for each other. The only way to do that is to tear down capitalist interests.”

  “Wow,” Professor Dobbs says, impressed. “Bold words. Would it be too bourgeois of me to ask if you’d like to continue this discussion over some coffee?”

  “As long as it’s not Starbucks,” Amelia says, without missing a beat, and begins smiling uncontrollably.

  AMELIA GETS COFFEE with the young professor, then gives him a blowjob in the passenger seat of his brand-new Saab. She does not intend for it to happen. Neither does he, maybe. They are simply two young people excited about the world, what’s wrong with it, and how to fix it. After two rounds of lattes at a noncorporate coffee house, after finding out that Allen also grew up with the heavy burden of privilege—the Saab a gift from his parents, given when he successfully completed his graduate degree—after the two of them share a small roach, driving through the park, Amelia suddenly finds herself with her face buried in the professor’s lap—Allen’s lap—which is moist and very, very hairy. His skin tastes like salt and there is a musky odor coming from his privates, not gross, but a little surprising, like an animal smell. She does not know what to do with her hair. She is holding it up with her hand, but then thinks that is a little weird, so she lets it fall into the older man’s lap. Allen moans a little, then slowly runs his fingers through her dark locks, tucking it behind her ear, squinting down at her with a stoned smile. Amelia feels a pubic hair in the back of her throat and it almost makes her gag. She keeps her blue eyes closed and feels Allen’s body begin to tense up. She opens her eyes and sees the streetlights and trees surrounding the park, both strange shapes in the Saab’s windshield. She does not know if doing this will make him take her more or less seriously. She hopes it does not change anything. Allen is running his hand through her hair, then down her back. He slides his hand down the space between her skirt and underpants, following her spine, his fingers slipping inside her panties. She does not know how long to keep going. Does he intend to cum? Does he want to have sex in the car? Is he going to ask her to come home with him? What does she do now? His hand is now moving back up her spine, resting along the back of her neck. His fingers tighten there, as she bobs her head up and down, her mouth beginning to feel sore. The head of his penis strikes the back of her throat and she closes her eyes to keep from vomiting. She looks up at him but his eyes are now closed. The radio is playing a song by the Velvet Underground; has the radio been on all this time? He is holding her head down there now, pushing it against his crotch a little harder than before, which Amelia immediately understands is his way of suggesting that he intends to cum soon. She moves her left hand up and down the shaft of his penis, hoping to expedite things as her jaw begins to ache badly. All of a sudden he is grasping her hair, pulling at it, his legs tightening against the driver’s seat, his whole body clenching. Amelia knows what this means. She lifts her head back, closing her mouth, but it is of no use. His hand is against the back of her neck and she cannot move in time. He seems to be holding her face there, maybe hoping she will take him in her mouth as he finishes, but she does not. A stream of hot liquid spurts against the side of her face, spraying parts of her hair. She makes a terrified sound, blinking, closing her eyes in disgust. Allen jabs his crotch at her as he endlessly climaxes. He is moaning, his moan exactly like Max’s or any of the rest of them, timid, stupid, childish. He holds her head there until he is done, then zips his pants up quickly, and does not look at her again, not even when he says a somber goodbye in front of her house.

  “I never thought any of this was going to happen,” Amelia says, still hoping. “I mean…well, I’m still a little surprised, I guess.”

  “I think it’s best if neither one of us mentions it,” Allen whispers, staring straight ahead.

  “Of course, I just meant…well, I guess…”

  “It was wonderful being with you today, Amelia,” the young professor mumbles blankly. “You are a wonderful young woman.”

  Wonderful? Amelia thinks. You just blew your load in my face and all you can say is I’m wonderful?

  “Well, goodbye,” she says, leaning toward him, hoping for one final kiss.

  “Goodbye,” he mutters, oblivious, already gone, at home, in bed, in front of the TV with his wife or girlfriend or some other coed already.

  WALKING SLOWLY, sadly, her jaw sore, treading up the stairs, Amelia finds her younger sister sneaking around in her room, looking through her bureau drawers.

  “Do you want to die?” Amelia asks, giving Thisbe a shove.

  “No.”

  “Then what the fuck are you doing in my room?”

  “I don’t know. I was just looking.”

  “For what?”

  “For some of your girl things.”

  “What girl things?”

  “I don’t know,” Thisbe whispers. “Things that make you look nice.”

  “Stay the fuck out of my room or I will terminate you,” Amelia hisses.

  “You don’t have to be such a b.,” Thisbe whines.

  “A b.?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “A bitch? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  Thisbe nods.

  “God, you are so retarded. You are like an infant. Why can’t you be like a normal sister?”

  “I am normal. Just because I don’t like to swear and I happen to believe in things you don’t doesn’t mean I’m not normal.”

  “Duh. You are such a fucking freak. You know God doesn’t actually exist, don’t you?”

  Thisbe looks down, her eyes shimmering with tears. “I’m not listening to you.”

  “You know it’s all like this invention to get stupid people to like slave their lives away because they think something good is gonna happen to them even when it’s not.”

  “I don’t care what you say,” Thisbe whispers. “It doesn’t change what I believe.”

  “God, why are you so pathetic?” Amelia asks.

  “I don’t know why,” Thisbe murmurs, then slowly steps out into the hallway.

  SITTING ON HER BED, feeling the stiffness of her jaw, her throat still a little sore, Amelia finds she has stolen Professor Dobbs’s cigarette case. She does not remember taking it, and yet there it is, hidden in her purse, gleaming and stylish, a few scratches marring its otherwise luminous surface. When she presses the tiny button along its side, the case quickly springs open. You have saved us! the cigarettes and matches happily wail. We are so happy. We cry tears of joy as we are forever in your debt! Amelia closes the case in a hurry and shoves it into the back of her bottom dresser drawer, along with the rest of her disposable items. She does not want to consider why she has stolen the professor’s cigarette case. She does not want to think about what any of this might mean.

  AMELIA, LATER THAT EVENING, sometime around nine o’clock, decides the anticapitalist movie she has been making for her history project is the most pretentious, most obvious, most immature piece of shit ever. She can’t even watch it again. She tosses the DV tape in the garbage and decides to start from scratch. She lies in her bed and begins to think to herself out loud. “Okay, capitalism,” she says. “Capitalism is about capital. Commerce. Products. Production. Factories. Consumerism. An invisible shadow corrupting everything.” Amelia thinks of the lecture she heard earlier today, she thinks of Professor Dobbs’s words, then his hands and his soft face, and just then she gets an extraordinary idea: what if it wasn’t a film at all? What if it was an actual event, like instead of reporting about some historical issue, what if she actually affected history, what if she actually tried to change it? Like a political action. Ambitious, she can hear Mr. Anson saying. Amelia begins to search under her bed, then in her closet, then under her bed again, running down the stairs past her mother, who asks where she’s been, then down to the basement, where she finds what she
’s been looking for: a large cardboard box, which she immediately begins to tear apart. Running back upstairs to her bedroom, she finds a pair of scissors and begins to cut a familiar-looking shape, tracing the round edges in a circular curve, holding the dismantled box up against her body, checking its size. When she thinks it looks okay, she finds a large black Sharpie and, uncapping it, sniffing its pungent chemical odor for a moment, she begins to color in the large, cumulus shape. It is a cloud: a large gray and black cloud, which, like a costume, fits over Amelia’s head. And on it, she writes a favorite quote from Proudhon: “All property is theft.”

  Nine

  THISBE OFTEN WONDERS WHY GOD DID NOT GIVE HER a good singing voice, when all she would like in the world would be to sing a lovely song to glorify His name. And to be in the actual chorus and not to have to play the piano all the time. And to do well in her audition for the fall musical, which, this year, is Mr. Grisham’s original musical adaptation of North by Northwest. Thisbe is trying out for the part that Eva Marie Saint played. On the small recital stage, Thisbe waits for her name to be called, pacing back and forth behind the large red curtain. She closes her eyes and holds her breath, folding her hands together against her chest as she prays:

  Dear God, who Art in Heaven, Who is the Great Redeemer and Seer of All Good Things. Oh, Lord in Heaven, Heavenly Father, oh, Heavenly Lord, please grant me this one prayer, this one wish. Give me the voice I deserve. Let my lungs sound like a trumpet, let the words ring from my voice like the bell tolling for judgment. Let all the girls and boys sitting here backstage be stricken with awe and confusion and envy. Let Mr. Grisham in his all-time meanness be smited like St. Paul before he was St. Paul. Let Mr. Grisham be knocked down from his white horse of self-righteousness. Let the whole theater turn to gold with the sound of my voice and everyone standing around who has ever said a mean thing to me or ever rolled their eyes when I have tried so hard with all my heart to sing, let them be made blind or deaf or dumb from Your impenetrable beauty. Let their eyeballs implode or their eardrums explode or their brains catch on fire. Let my voice cause the wicked to weep and kneel at the foot of Your golden throne. I ask this through Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

  Thisbe does the sign of the cross, incorrectly, but earnestly nevertheless. She stands, waiting in the wings, hoping her prayer has traveled the incredible distance to God’s all-powerful ears. When Mr. Grisham, anxious in his starchy blue collar, announces, “Next…oh, we have Thisbe Casper…,” his face a portrait of equal surprise and equal dismay, Thisbe leaps to center stage, blinks into the two blinding spotlights, and nods at Mrs. Peters, who smiles, sounding out the opening chords of “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” As soon as Thisbe opens her mouth, she imagines sunlight, glorious, immutable sunlight pouring forth from her wavering lungs. She imagines girls like Susannah Gore and Missy Plotz suddenly turning to ash, the gum in their awful mouths becoming lead. She imagines the boys stunned by her unseemly beauty, the look of astonishment appearing on their pimply faces, as they all fall to a single knee, genuflecting. She imagines Mr. Grisham and Mrs. Peters incapacitated by the sound of her tempestuous voice, the notes curving in the air like jeweled birds, filling their poor, withered hearts with a joy they have both long forgotten. She imagines the whole world falling silent, the whole doubtful world, the world of narcissism and confusion, turning toward the radiant clouds overhead and nodding, all at once, Yes, I believe. That girl’s voice, like a great golden instrument, has forced me to believe, before each of them, each agnostic, each atheist, each unbeliever, falls to his knees. But that does not happen. Thisbe, nervous, her knees shaking beneath her long skirt, misses the cue for her first note, and when she finally does begin to sing, the sounds that issue forth from her mouth do not float. They do not hover. They do not turn anything to gold. Irving Berlin’s words come crashing down at her feet, falling through the wooden stage, groaning like an old harpsichord being shoved off the top of a skyscraper. Thisbe opens her eyes and is surprised by the unkind cacophony, the terribly desperate noises she is now struggling to make. Her eyes dart about the small theater, as Susannah Gore and Missy Plotz do indeed fall silent, not from religious ecstasy, but from the awful disharmony now calling attention to itself at center stage. Mr. Grisham looks stunned, a single vein throbbing along the side of his pale skull. Mrs. Peters, at the piano, a dear heart, tries her best to play loudly, hoping to drown out Thisbe’s awful, warbled soprano, but no, somehow it is impossible. Like a wounded dove, bloodied and disfigured, flapping against a vibrating windowpane, like a horse’s whinny only moments before succumbing to the horrible machinery of a century-old mucilage factory, Thisbe’s voice withers, her dreams of a lead part—any lead part—dashed, her solemn prayers going unanswered, for the moment at least.

  AFTER SCHOOL, on that Thursday the twenty-first, after the utter disappointment of her failed audition, Thisbe rides her bicycle around the neighborhood, searching for Snowball, her neighbor’s unrepentant white cat. Soon she spots the animal lurking beneath the Whitmores’ thornbushes, and after circling around once more to be sure, Thisbe quickly hops off her bike and grabs the little white terror by its tail, dragging it from its shady hiding spot. Snowball is no doe-eyed angel. Thisbe has never been sure whether it is a he or she. But it wants nothing to do with God’s love or Thisbe Casper. It lets out a loud hiss, clawing wildly at Thisbe’s thin arms. She kneels beside the Whitmores’ garage, with what she hopes looks like grace, closing her eyes, thinking of a new prayer, one that will offer redemption for a creature who has no interest in being redeemed. Thisbe mutters, “Let this poor animal know Your one, true, undying love. Let it find Your spirit in its small, empty world, and let a place be made in Your wonderful palace for its unkempt soul. Through Christ, our Lord, amen.” As soon as the “amen” is uttered, Thisbe hears Mrs. Lilly calling for her cat, shouting from her backyard, clapping her hands, whistling, making soft kissy noises. Thisbe stares at the animal, looking deeply into its gleaming black eyes, searching for any sign of salvation. There is none. Snowball then lunges, scratching Thisbe’s right hand with its dirty white forepaw, hissing as she turns it loose. It disappears in a small white flash back into the shade and safety of the Whitmores’ thornbush. Thisbe holds her left hand to her right, trying not to cry, but the disastrous audition and the failed plea for the cat’s deliverance are all too much. When she cries, it is quiet, tearless, almost completely imperceptible: one more unheard prayer.

  THISBE RUSHES THROUGH the front door of her house, hurrying down the hallway as quickly as she can, so that she can be alone in her room. She crosses the threshold but stops as soon as her foot touches the first stair. Her father has built a fort in the den, with white sheets hanging like a kind of tent. The den is mostly dark, the window shades drawn, a single light glowing from inside the tent from a flashlight resting in her father’s lap. Thisbe turns, slowly crossing into the room as quietly as she can. She can see her father sitting on the floor there, his silhouette unmoving on the white sheets. He looks like he is reading something. Thisbe leans over, near the tent’s opening, and whispers to him softly.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Not much.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  Thisbe can hear something in her father’s voice—a catch of some kind, like a window that has a hard time opening—and it makes her very worried. She leans over farther and pulls open the flap.

  “What are you doing in there?”

  “Just looking at some pictures.”

  Thisbe can see a big black photo album in her father’s lap, the photographs glossy and dappled, their edges lined with dust.

  “Do you want to look at them with me?” her dad asks, and Thisbe nods, shrugging her shoulders, climbing inside her father’s small white fort. Her dad has not taken a shower today. His long face looks bristly and tired. He is wearing a dirty T-shirt and a pair of old runnin
g shorts, which are splitting along the seams.

  “Why are you looking at these in the dark?” Thisbe asks.

  “I don’t know,” her dad says. “I guess I felt like being in here alone.”

  “Oh, well, I have schoolwork to do if you want me to go.”

  “No, I want you to see some of these. Look here,” he says, pointing to a small black and white picture, a single shot of an angled storefront, the sign above the shop window having just been bolted in place. TAILORS, the sign says. Beneath the sign are two middle-aged men, smiling, pointing up at the sign. Beside the two men is a small boy, nine or ten years old, skinny, in overalls, his front teeth missing as he smiles widely. “That’s your grandfather there,” Jonathan says.

  “Who? The one with the dark eyes?”

  “No, no, the little boy. The one with the dark eyes, he’s your great-grandfather, Len. The other one, the skinny one, he was your great-uncle, Felix.”

  “The tailors.”

  “Yep, they were all tailors. Even Grandpa for a little while, when he was young. He used to work in the shop there. Before the war.”

  “Which war?”

  “World War Two. When the war came, they had to close their shop. Then, at the end of the war, they all went back.”

  “Went back where?”

  “To Germany. Your great-grandpa and your great-uncle. All of them except your grandpa.”

  “Why did they all go back?”

  “They didn’t like it here anymore, I guess. They were German and everyone was mad at the Germans, so they decided to head back over there.”

  “Oh. But why did Grandpa stay?”

  “I dunno. I guess he must have liked it here. He wanted to build rocket ships. That’s what he told everybody.”