A Changed Man

by Francine Prose

  “You’ll be safe here,” Mom says, shooing them inside.

  Danny could just kill her. Does she think they’re babies? And what do they need to be safe from? Does Mom think the Aryan Resistance militia is about to descend on Chandler and take instant revenge for what happened to Raymond? They’ll take their time. They’ll come after Vincent first. They’ll put him in the hot seat and cut off his toes.

  “Sit down, guys,” says Mom.

  Danny and Max sink into the nasty couches. Does Julia Roberts chill on these before she goes on Chandler? Why do they call it the Green Room, when it’s a gray windowless hole with a bunch of smelly old furniture and a table littered with soda bottles, cracker crumbs, pitted mounds of disgusting dips? And they’re supposed to stay in this holding tank while everything happens outside?

  But everything has happened. The main event is over. Raymond threatened Meyer, and Vincent interceded. The result wasn’t pretty, but Danny didn’t run away. He ran toward the…he doesn’t know what to call it. He ran toward the…and then he stopped. Vincent said there were two kinds of people, those who run toward the danger and those who run away. Danny’s discovered a third group. People who stop in the middle. And by tomorrow morning, everyone at school will have seen Chandler. Danny might as well wear a big letter on his chest, like that girl in The Scarlet Letter. In Danny’s case, a giant red W for Wimp.

  He can thank his mother for that. Mom’s turned him into a coward. Dad was right about some things. She overprotects and underestimates them. Plus, she likes Max better.

  Danny wonders if Vincent noticed him after the fight broke out. Did Vincent see that his instinct, when push came to shove, was to run toward the trouble? Not that Vincent needed Danny’s help to turn into a punching machine. It was way more disturbing than Danny will ever admit to Mom. Danny has seen fights at school, where the trickliest bloody nose makes everyone quit and back off. But Raymond’s face was covered with blood, which only seemed to make Vincent want to hit him more. Raymond’s freakishly scarlet blood sprayed in fat drops as his face melted into rubbery expressions that no face should be able to make. Danny saw what he’s pretty sure were teeth flying out of Raymond’s mouth.

  Mom stands in the Green Room doorway, hunched over, wringing her hands. It’s probably how he looked when he ran toward the fight and stalled. And yet, despite how angry she makes him, Danny feels sorry for her. He knows how hard she and Meyer worked to turn Vincent into an advertisement for their foundation. And now their personal Frankenstein has blown its circuits on Chandler. What makes being angry at Mom more confusing is that lately Danny’s been aware of how much she does for them. He knows that Armstrong blackmailed her, that her speaking at graduation is all about saving him. Danny’s not wild about the idea, but it beats the other options, like repeating junior year.

  “There’s stuff to eat and drink in here. In case you’re thirsty or hungry.” Does Mom think they haven’t spotted the sweets and salty snacks a lot faster than she has? Danny regards the table littered with broken cookies, orange cheese puffs, and dirty plastic cups. Is that what Vincent ate before the show? No wonder he went ape.

  “We’re fine,” says Max. “Don’t worry.” Max certainly doesn’t look fine. In fact, he looks spooked. But he does seem calm compared to how he was that night at Dad’s. Once again, Max is right. Finding out about the marriage and the Bulgarian baby was worse, for them, than watching Vincent lose it on Chandler.

  Danny looks at the monitor in the corner of the Green Room. The camera is running, but the only thing on the screen is a young guy in headphones and a Chandler T-shirt speed-walking across the wrecked studio.

  “Vincent wouldn’t just leave,” Mom says. “I’m sure he just stepped out for a minute—”

  If Vincent’s gone, at least that means he won’t be speaking at his school. Even when Danny got his head around the prospect of Mom giving a speech, the idea that Vincent was also involved was totally over the top. The few people who hadn’t read about Danny’s bizarro living arrangements in People would get to hear about it at graduation. Which would ruin Danny’s senior year…. Danny’s instantly sorry for thinking that. He hopes they find Vincent soon.

  Mom says, “Guys, I know this isn’t the right time. But we’ve got to talk, really talk, about what just happened. You guys lead sheltered lives, thank God. It’s not often—never, I hope—that you see horrible violence like that. Violence from someone you know, someone you thought you knew. Someone you lived with. Live with.”

  Sheltered lives. Mom can stick that. Vincent went too far. But Raymond was after Meyer. And Vincent. Raymond parked in their driveway. He meant to hurt someone. The last thing Danny wants now is a big discussion with Mom about whether seeing Vincent beat up Raymond will leave a permanent psychic scar.

  “We’ll talk about it,” Danny says. “Whenever. Go do what you have to do.”

  “I’ll be back in five minutes,” says Mom.

  “Take your time,” says Max. “We’re fine here.”

  Finally, Mom leaves. The air feels lighter after she’s gone. Max looks like he could use a drink. Danny paws through the rows of soda bottles.

  Max says, very strained and subdued, “So, like, what happened just now?”

  “What do you mean, what happened?” Danny says.

  “I mean, with Vincent—”

  “The shithead threatened Meyer. And Vincent stepped in.” Danny ran toward the trouble, and stopped. But Max isn’t asking about that.

  “That’s what it was?” says Max.

  “That’s the deal,” says Danny. “Trust me.”

  The soda bottles are sticky, half full. No way Danny’s going to touch them.

  “Wait a second,” he says. “Here’s a bottle of rum. Yo ho ho. Thank you, Chandler. You know what a Cuba Libre is, Max?”

  “No,” says Max.

  “Delicious,” says Danny. “Slammin’.” He mixes two rum and Cokes.

  Danny and Max get hammered. Danny feels they’ve earned it. The Green Room looks like those cinder-block cells where TV cops interview suspects, but after a second Cuba Libre, the whole scene begins to strike him as sort of interesting. It’s strangely relaxing to sit and watch, on the TV monitor, nothing happening in the trashed empty studio.

  Danny says, “Have another rum and Coke.”

  “These are kind of strong,” says Max.

  “Drink it. You need to keep hydrated in a stressful situation. Keep that little brain moistened.”

  By now Danny feels kind of swampy. And through the humid, jungly haze he watches something start to happen on the monitor.

  Chandler’s back in the studio, giving some kind of speech. In close-up, Chandler’s face is enormous. The audio’s off, and Danny can’t find the dial. Nor does he want to, especially when Chandler wraps it up, and here comes Meyer Maslow—kill the house lights, spotlight the guy—sitting in one of the leather chairs. Reading aloud from his book. Of course it goes on forever. Danny and Max keep watching. Hell, it’s TV. It’s on.

  Time slips by. Finally, Mom comes in and says, “Not one person saw Vincent leave. He vanished into thin air.”

  “Are you okay?” Danny said. “Because you look like roadkill, Mom.”

  “Thanks,” Mom says. “That helps.”

  “Sorry,” Danny says.

  There’s a silence. Then Mom says, “What’s that noise?”

  “I think it’s Max. Puking in the bathroom.”

  “Is he sick?”

  “Cooba Leebrays,” says Danny.

  Even for Mom, she’s surprisingly slow.

  “Have you guys been drinking?”

  “I don’t know. Not really. Yes.”

  “You let your little brother drink? In the middle of this? After what we’ve been through today? Is this how I can trust you? Oh, Danny, you guys are not coming through for me. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am.”

  “You should appreciate us more,” said Danny. “You should see how bad other kids are�
�” He lets his voice trail off, ominously. “Me and Max mostly do what you want. We’re pretty nice to each other. And we’re pretty nice to you. Even though you might not think so. Okay, we drank a little rum. Big deal. This has been rough for us, too, Mom.”

  Danny is leaving out a lot. It’s not the most brilliant speech. He’s pretty smashed, but somehow it works. Tears pop into Mom’s eyes, and she comes over and hugs him. Danny’s sorry he said anything, and then again he isn’t.

  “I really love you,” Mom says.

  “I love you, too,” says Danny.

  Danny inhales and counts to five. Then he eases Mom off him.

  After another hour or so of waiting for Vincent to show up, Chandler and his staff are all so exhausted and depressed that when Mom wonders aloud if maybe Vincent went home and fell asleep and isn’t answering the phone, everyone goes for it.

  Max and Danny roll their eyes. Mom and her wishful thinking.

  Amazingly, and to her credit, Mom realizes that the drive home is also not a great time for them to talk, really talk, as she threatened in the Green Room. For a while no one says a word. Danny and Max and Mom are so separate, so wrapped up in their own thoughts, it’s as if they hardly know each other, as if it’s an accident or a coincidence that they’re all in the same car.

  Mom might as well be talking to herself when she says, “Supposedly, they’re editing out the gory stuff. They’ll have Chandler talking and Meyer reading from his book. Then they’ll fill out the hour with clips from earlier shows. They’ll make it into this whole hate-and-tolerance package. At least that’s what they were saying by the time we left—”

  “You better hope so,” says Danny. “They could still have another meeting. And if they decide that Raymond’s bloody nose is going to boost their ratings, they’ll go with that. If it bleeds, it leads.”

  “Strange,” says Mom.

  “What is?” asks Max.

  She says, “Your brother sounds just like Vincent.”

  Which pleases Danny, though he knows that—given what’s just happened—it probably shouldn’t.

  Suddenly, everyone’s talking at once, and somewhere in the middle of this jumbled group conversation, Danny finally tells his mother about Raymond parking in their driveway. It’s almost as if he’s explaining why Vincent had to hit Raymond. Of course, he should have known better, because it makes Mom so nervous that Danny’s afraid she’ll never let him walk home from school alone again.

  “Fucking Raymond,” Danny says. Raymond ruined everything.

  Maybe Mom has convinced herself that Vincent went home without them. Because when they get to the house, she hurries inside and yells Vincent’s name in the same ridiculous, panicky voice they hear when she’s looking for them.

  The strangest thing of all is that Mom is right. Vincent has been here. In fact, he’s been here and gone.

  Danny and Max and their mother crowd into the doorway of Vincent’s room. Vincent hasn’t rearranged much, but you can tell he’s vacated. Checked out. It’s as if a cyclone has been through, selectively taken Vincent’s stuff, and left the family junk untouched.

  Danny says, “Is his duffel bag here?” Even though he’s sure it isn’t.

  “Where would it be?” Mom asks.

  “Under the bed,” says Danny.

  “How do you know?” Mom asks. Danny doesn’t answer. He’s been in here a few times to check the place out when Mom and Vincent were at work. He’s proud of himself for never looking in Vincent’s bag even after he found out that Vincent was raiding his stash.

  Still dizzy from the rum and Coke, Max nonetheless gets down on his hands and knees and crawls under the bed. “Just dust balls. I feel sick,” he says, and then lies there on his stomach.

  Mom says, “I’m sure Vincent will come home soon. So let’s try and take it easy—”

  Danny thinks, Why would he have taken all his stuff if he was planning to come home soon? He helps Max up off the floor. Then he rushes back to his room to check on his pot supply. Because if Vincent has taken his weed, that will mean that they were never really friends.

  Of all the stuff that Raymond was raving about on TV, the fact (if it was a fact) that bothered Danny most was that Vincent had stolen Raymond’s meds. It was the one detail Vincent hadn’t bothered telling Danny. He’d mentioned the car and the money, but not the pills. If Vincent could steal drugs from his cousin, why wouldn’t he feel free to take them from some…kid whose mother works in his office? What an idiot Danny was for putting his stash back in the same spot where Vincent found it. Maybe it was a test, or maybe he was just lazy. If his grass is still there, it will be a sign: Danny was right to trust him.

  Danny’s chest feels painfully tight as he pulls the dictionary out from the wall. He opens the coffee can.

  “Yes!” he says, and with that word feels his heart start beating again.

  He plays a few rounds of Minesweeper before he checks his e-mail. There’s a message from Chloe, which he decides not to open. She’s probably asking what the Chandler taping was like. She can see it for herself if she waits until…Danny checks his watch.

  He races down to Dad’s room, where he finds Mom and Max on the couch listening to the first notes of the Chandler theme song.

  “Thanks for calling me,” says Danny. “I could have missed the whole thing.”

  “You hate Chandler,” Max says. “As you’ve told me a million times, bro.” Max is trying to sound tough so he can hang on to the remote.

  “Fucking loser,” Danny mumbles.

  “Language,” says Mom, staring at the screen. For someone so opposed to TV, she’s gotten into it big-time. “I was going to call you during the first commercial. Sit.” She pats the couch.

  “That’s okay, the floor’s good,” Danny says.

  “Please,” says Mom, in such a way that Danny sinks down beside her.

  Under the Chandler theme are the words “Faces of Love and Hate.” The show starts with a close-up of Chandler. It’s what Danny watched them filming as he waited in the Green Room. Staring into the camera, Chandler tells the folks at home how, this evening, they are going to see the faces of love and hate.

  Most of the rum has worn off, but something about Chandler’s voice starts Danny feeling woozy again, and he grabs Mom’s arm. Right away, Mom’s got her hand over his. Trying not to be obvious, Danny slips his hand out from under hers.

  “Tonight,” Chandler’s saying, “we will meet two men who will show us what it means to reprogram our hearts from hate to love. To change from one kind of person to another. And another man will show us how risky and dangerous a change like that can be.”

  “I can’t breathe,” Mom says.

  “Hang in there,” says Max.

  Mom puts her arms around their shoulders. Max snuggles up against her, and even Danny lets her arm stay there.

  “This is so weird,” says Mom. “I mean, we were just there at the studio—”

  Obviously, it’s weird. But the fact that Mom has said so means that Danny can’t agree. Anyway, what’s weird about it? Every day, people appear on TV and then come home and watch themselves.

  And now it’s as if they’ve all stopped breathing, or as if the three of them are breathing in unison, through the commercials. Finally Chandler comes back on, introducing Meyer and Vincent.

  From there it goes pretty much as Danny remembers, except for one moment when the camera picks Raymond out of the audience, and stays on his face a beat too long, the way you do when you think you recognize somebody on the street. Then it’s back to Meyer, then Chandler, yakkety-yak about change, then Meyer plugging his book, which appears on the screen, then Chandler trying to con them into flashing their tattoos, which, thank God, they resist.

  At a certain point, Vincent, who is talking about how he used to blame the wrong people for his problems, suddenly looks more nervous than he did before.

  “I think he just saw Raymond,” Danny says.

  “That’s what I was th
inking,” says Mom.

  The camera cuts away from Vincent and follows the girl with the microphone, who’s handing it to Raymond.

  Raymond stands up and tears right into the stuff about how bad Vincent is, all the evil things he’s done to him and his family, and his dunking the old lady in the pool. Danny believes Vincent when he says the old lady wasn’t hurt. Vincent probably had his reasons, it probably taught her a lesson. Taking all that into account, you could almost think it was funny.

  Raymond doesn’t think anything’s funny. Raymond’s smile is disgusting. Danny’s glad Vincent trashed him.

  And then that retard Chandler invites Raymond to come down on the stage. So what’s about to happen will be Chandler’s fault.

  “Max,” says Danny, “you can open your eyes, man.”

  “He doesn’t have to watch,” says Mom. “He’s seen it once already.”

  But Max might as well watch, and in fact he probably should watch, because what happens on the screen is not what he saw.

  Chandler and Raymond talk for a while until Meyer cuts in; Vincent’s pretty much out of it. This time, they can see what sets Raymond off. It’s when Meyer tries to get the show back on the subject of him and Vincent, and Chandler announces they’re going to break.

  Except they don’t go to break. There’s a shot of Raymond moving in on Meyer. Raymond’s spitting, red in the face.

  Cut to Vincent grabbing him from behind, pulling him back by the shoulders.

  Then there’s a shot of Danny, running toward the stage.

  “Hey, that’s you!” Max must have been looking through his fingers.

  “Shit,” says Danny. Now everybody will know.

  “Shit is right,” says Mom. “What were you thinking, running down there?”

  But wait. What’s happening now? According to the Chandler show, what Danny is thinking is about protecting Meyer Maslow.

  In the middle of the scuffle, Meyer backs up against Danny. And Danny stands tall behind him. Danny has his back.

  And now it really is weird. Because at that point, as Danny recalls it, he had no idea where Meyer was. He wasn’t thinking about Meyer, but about himself and the fight.