New Jersey Me

by Ferguson, Rich;

  My old man regarded the photo. He was almost smiling. “Look how young we were. So innocent. We had our whole lives ahead of us. Anything was possible.” He shook his head. “We had no idea what we were in for.”

  I considered that one, then told my old man I’d be leaving tomorrow, or the next day at the absolute latest.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The very next morning my old man shook me awake. “Get up. You got company.”

  I threw on some clothes, headed to the door.

  Mom was standing on the porch. In the hazy sunlight, she was decked out in Stepford Mary Kay. Her pink, knock-off Chanel suit was so glaring it made my teeth hurt.

  “What’re you doing here?” I asked. “You should be working.”

  “Your father called,” she said. “He says you’re leaving.”

  Just then, my old man appeared behind me.

  “Buzz off,” Mom snapped at him. “Mind your own business.”

  “Look, Sylvia,” he said. “I tried to be civil and invite you over. But don’t get nasty with me. Especially when you’re standing on my porch.”

  “Well it used to be mine, too,” said Mom.

  “Not anymore,” my old man shot back.

  More arguing. It was just like old times. Like old times, my usual response was to puke. I stumbled onto the porch, alongside Mom. Ralphed my brains out into the rosebushes.

  “You see,” said my old man. “This is the kind of son we raised, Sylvia. All he’s good for is getting wasted.”

  “I ain’t wasted,” I said. I looked to Mom for backup.

  While she’d blown it in many ways in the Mothering Department, she at least knew the difference between stress sick and booze sick. Her hardened eyes softened. Then all at once, those gentle eyes flashed back to molten metal. “You don’t even know your son, Mike.”

  “You’re one to talk,” said my old man.

  Their arguing could’ve continued for days. But having dealt with numerous domestic violence cases in the past, my cop old man had observed how family disturbances could easily escalate from zero to ninety in a heartbeat. He corralled us inside, shut the door. “What do you want me to say, Sylvia? Do you want me to apologize?”

  Mom stamped a high heel against the living room carpet. “I don’t want anything from you, Mike.”

  As for me, I wanted something big. A miracle product Mom could pull from her Mary Kay bag—a perfume, a deodorant, something my parents could smear on their skin, spray in their hair—to eliminate all their pain and abuse. “Can’t you two say anything nice to each other for once?”

  My old man was the first to speak. “Look, Sylvia. We both know I can be a real bastard sometimes. But you gotta admit we both had a hand in this.”

  Mom didn’t respond. She was as stunned as me. My old man, normally a man of so few words, was actually trying to make sense of our lives.

  In a voice as deep, clear, and resonant as the chiming of our grandfather clock, he continued: “I know I haven’t been the best father to Mark. But I’m trying. And with you, Sylvia, I know I haven’t been the best husband. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  “You’re damn right you weren’t there for me,” she blasted.

  My old man could’ve easily counterblasted. Instead, he calmly replied: “Even when you were there you were hardly there. But that was you. We loved you anyway. But when you left you may as well have put a bullet in our heads.”

  My parents looked to me for some kind of response.

  I had no idea what to say right then. Which came first, my old man’s anger and absences, or Mom’s pills and distances, I wasn’t sure. As for my whole family, it was hard to say what had happened to any of us. “You know what?” I said. “Screw this shit. I’m outta here.”

  “Oh no you’re not, young man,” said Mom. She seized me by the arm. Yanked me out the door, and out to the street to her car.

  I could’ve easily resisted. But I figured it might be the last time I’d see her for a while.

  She stuffed me inside her Caddy.

  Once behind the wheel, she slammed the Hostess Snowball into D and peeled out. She ran the stop sign at the end of our block, then barreled through a yellow light turning red, as she sped toward the Garden State Parkway.

  I didn’t ask where we were going. And as much as I hated her smoking, I didn’t stop her when she reached for one Virginia Slims after another.

  Through a smoky haze, Mom offered up one of her usual self-centered thoughts: “How dare you do this to me.”

  “I’m not doing anything to you,” I said. “I’m doing this for me.”

  When we hit the Parkway North, she revved the Caddy up to seventy-five. All the way to Exit 82 she remained sullen and silent. Even after we’d left the highway’s mad rush and floated effortlessly along Highway 37 toward the ocean, her mood remained as miserable as the incoming storm clouds.

  We ended up in Seaside Park, not far from where Callie and I had lost our virginity.

  Mom parked on a lonely stretch of road by the ocean. Instead of speaking, she swiped another cigarette from her purse, and sparked up. The red tip bloomed into a fiery red star, then faded. Fiery star, faded.

  As she huffed the Virginia Slims down to the filter, I studied her car’s interior. The knobs, dials, upholstery: immaculate. Right then, it would’ve been so easy to flip her off and bolt. But if I’d done that, I would’ve lugged all my old rage and guilt to California. No way was that happening. When I reached the Golden State I wanted to start out clean.

  After snubbing out the last of her cigarette into the nearly overflowing ashtray, Mom reached for another.

  I snatched the pack away. Tossed it out my open window.

  “Get it,” she said.

  I crossed my arms in front of my chest, shook my head.

  Mom repeated her command with bigger teeth, more bite.

  I still didn’t budge.

  That’s when she said: “Do you have any idea how many of my clothes you ruined?”

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “When you were a baby,” she said, “you’d throw your shit at me. You ruined so many of my blouses and pants suits.”

  “You’re one to talk,” I said. “All those times I tried brushing my teeth only to find my toothbrush gone because you’d used it to clean the tile grout.”

  That’s when Mom’s Jackie O-like looks, the ones she’d spent so much time moisturizing and powdering, crumbled all to hell. “Can you ever forgive me?” she said. “For leaving.”

  I recalled that day she left home. She was standing at the door in her flower-print dress—all those beautiful flowers forever fading away. That memory alone could’ve put a chokehold on the rest of my life if I’d allowed it. But that wasn’t happening. “Maybe,” I said. I looked away. Spotted great gray and black storm clouds drifting in from the east. They darkened the sky, the water, everything. “Tell me something,” I said, turning from that sky. “For real. Whydja leave?”

  Mom glanced down at her hands bunched up in her lap. Those hands worked a worried prayer. In a frail but measured voice, she told me how, even as a little girl, she’d never been good with expressing her feelings. And how that led to her constantly questioning her abilities as a mom and wife. Add to that all my old man’s bullshit. All she ever felt like was a failure.

  “So what?” I said. “My life’s screwed up, too. You should’ve taken me with you.”

  Mom regarded me. Her bleak eyes grew even gloomier. “Why would I do that? At least your father knows how to be a parent.”

  Until then, I’d managed to stay pretty cool. But after years of having heard her repeat that ridiculous phrase ad infinitum, I lost it. “Your pills are making you nuts.”

  “Hardly,” she said. “You and your father love each other. Think about it.”

>   I did my best to follow her insane line of reasoning. I scanned the family photo album lodged deep in my mind, flipped through its dusty, old pages. There was me at five: my old man beaming when he found me brandishing a plastic gun and tin badge, pretending to be him. Me at nine: alternately admiring and fearing him while he did his best to teach me how to fight. There were other memories, too—him showing me how to ride a bike, drive a car, telling me old Irish tales at bedtime, and occasionally helping me with schoolwork.

  About schoolwork.

  There was a time in eighth grade. My old man had given me a lead pencil he’d brought home from a police chiefs’ convention in Atlantic City. “Use it on your algebra test tomorrow,” he’d said. “Maybe it’ll bring you luck.” It did. That was the one and only time I’d ever gotten an A on a math exam. My old man was so proud. But then there were those other memories of him hitting me and berating me.

  Mom swiped a pill from her purse. After downing it, she held out the bottle for my inspection. “You’ve been taking them from me, haven’t you?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Well?” she said.

  I nodded. “Howdja know?”

  “A while back,” she said, “I found one of your letters from Callie in my bathroom. That, and I’ve noticed pills missing here and there.”

  “Why didn’t you ever stop me?” I asked.

  She thought about that one, then said: “They helped me feel a little better. I guess I’d hoped they’d do the same for you.” She slipped the bottle back into her purse. “Look, honey, I know your father and I have made some big mistakes. But we love you very much.”

  Perhaps that love was true. Maybe it had started out so well meaning. But having slipped from that twinkle in Mom’s eye to the lump in her gut, to the bundle in her arms, to the burden in her life she had to shake, that love had crashed and burned. And though Mom, my old man, and I had shattered in the process, we were still connected in some ways. I had my Irish father’s prominent chin and oval face. I also shared my Mediterranean mom’s olive complexion, full lips, and sad but hopeful eyes. The reflexive property of Mom: Me. The symmetric property of Me: Mom. Wherever we went, no matter how far we ran from one another, there we’d be—together again. That’s when I said what I hadn’t yet been able to tell her, only her empty house on those days when I’d broken in to steal her pills. “Even with everything that’s happened,” I said, “I still love you. And I miss you.” I reached across the seat to hug her.

  She tried pulling away, but I wouldn’t let her. “It’s okay. This is us. This is all we got.”

  In my embrace, Mom trembled. As I did my best to console her, I recalled all those times she’d never been able to hold me. The way she could be so cold, as if from very early on her skin had been wrapped around ice. Maybe that’s why she feared such intense warmth and affection. Maybe too much love would’ve melted that ice and there would’ve been nothing left of her.

  Just then, I recalled her cigarettes. Figured she could use one right about then. I reached for the doorknob.

  “Don’t leave,” she pleaded.

  I grabbed the cigarettes, hopped back in the car. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

  With shaky hands, Mom lit up, swiped a few deep drags. Once the nicotine and that pill had cast their calming spell, she pointed toward the beach. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Again with the crazy talk. All I saw were stray beer bottles and crumpled fast food bags littering the sand, along with densely overcast skies and a tourist, sporting a tinted sun visor, and an I Heart the Jersey Shore T-shirt strolling by.

  “The water,” Mom said. “Look at it. What do you see?”

  “Gray,” I said. “Everything’s gray. It’s depressing as Blackwater.”

  She crushed out the last bit of her cigarette in the ashtray. Then she told me how when she was a little girl she used to love gray days at the beach; the water would blend into the sky and make it hard to tell where one thing ended and the other began. It was like all she had to do was walk out to the edge of the surf, and the sky was already within reach.

  I made an euw face. “Sounds like a Hallmark card.”

  “Easy,” Mom said. “That’s my life you’re talking about.” She torched up another Virginia Slims, sighed out a cloud of smoke. The smoke slinked up the front windshield then tumbled back down, and out her open window.

  We spent the next while, sitting quietly, staring out at the dark water and gray sky. Eventually, the sky dropped a few raindrops. They clattered softly against the Caddy.

  “I love that sound,” said Mom. “And the smell.”

  She was right. Those were two things I’d miss out in LA: that sweet, electric smell of the air, and the sounds leading up to a good old-fashioned Jersey Shore summer storm.

  “Be honest,” Mom said, doing her best to be cheery. “Isn’t it nice out?”

  “It looks like crap,” I said.

  “C’mon, honey. Be serious.”

  I was. Because if I allowed myself to tell her she was right, that all the gray made the sky appear so huge, that all we had to do was walk down to the surf and could touch it, I may never leave. “You’re wrong,” I said with a lumped up throat. “This ain’t beautiful. This is all messed up.”

  Chapter 36

  Once I said my final goodbyes to my old man and Mad Man, and left some roses at Grandmother’s grave, I took off. All the things I’d ever loved and hated about my little town grew smaller and smaller in my rear view mirror. Then they vanished.

  From Jersey, I roared through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. By day, it was farmlands, cities, and truck stops. Dust, diesel, and verbena. Late at night, when highway hypnosis transformed solid highway lines into mirages, the landscape became a stranger—something grim, shadowy, angular. Passing headlights and taillights: blood trails and hungry ghosts streaking the dark. That’s when I’d roll down the windows. Get a blast of clear, fresh air. Crank the radio, spin the dial. Cruise beyond the late-night wash of infomercials swearing they’d help me grow hair, lose weight, find God, until I was plugged into a sonic rush of Skynyrd, Petty, Van Halen, and, occasionally, “Spirit in the Sky.”

  I kept driving. Beyond St. Louis, Salina, and Oklahoma City. Every so often I’d pull into a rest area, or a motel parking lot to catch some sleep. But whenever I’d close my eyes, all I saw were those broken white highway lines rushing at me. Heard the steady hum of wheels against road. Felt every skin pore, every nerve ending and hair on my body, buzzing. So I kept driving.

  All the while, heading west. Closer and closer to the place that was the best.

  During those late-night hours of driving, my fuzzy, buzzing mind would sometimes wander off, go California dreaming. I never put the brakes on any of those glorious hallucinations. How once I crossed over into the Golden State the skies would open up with a thunderous roar. There’d be sunshine pouring down, angels singing psalms of salvation. This would segue into Guns N’ Roses, plugged in, electric and alive; Axl Rose wailing, “Welcome to the Jungle.” Also bikini’ed beauties, spotlighted in all that liquid sunshine, holding up their own welcome signs, and dancing to the rhythm of that Guns N’ Roses song.

  I kept driving. The Texas panhandle: dusty fields for as far as the eye could see. Brilliant blue skies far wider than my eyes could ever hold.

  Certain days I witnessed flashes of Mom, my old man, Jimmy, and his dad in the faces of people I saw at diners, gas stations, or in passing cars. Certain nights, when the dark sky was riddled with holes of plentiful light, I created constellations for those I’d left behind—Mr. Jeepers Perseus, Baby Andromeda. And the brightest of all, Grandmother Major.

  I kept driving. Pre-dawn Albuquerque glittered like a field of diamonds. The Colorado River: a jeweled scar cutting across the rugged belly of Mother Earth.

  What surprised me was that the further I got from
my old life, the closer it felt. All the good and bad of it: friends, enemies, and families. Those evening symphonies of crickets and bullfrogs, the hard-rock acoustics of sudden thunderstorms, the laughter, the weeping at Satan’s Tree, the roar of guns, and the booming of souped-up hotrods. All those things and more had been my second skin since birth. Some of it I knew I’d always carry with me. The rest I’d shed like excess baggage.

  I kept driving. Steady mantra of wheels against road. Faster and faster until all those broken white highway lines became one clean, unbroken line.

  There was no great parade when I finally crossed over into the Golden State. The skies didn’t tear open with a deafening roar. No Guns N’ Roses. No bikini’ed beauties. Angels didn’t sing psalms of salvation. But at least it was a sunny day. Suddenly, a great weight lifted from my shoulders. My head cleared. My hands eased up on the wheel. Felt like that old language deep inside me was making room for my new vocabulary of deserts, beaches, earthquakes, and beautiful weather. With each mile, my old New Jersey Me was intermingling with my new California Me, becoming one shared breathing in and out.

  Springsteen once said, “It ain’t no sin to be glad that you’re alive.” And while I’d heard those words countless times before, I never truly understood what they meant until I witnessed a huge sign posted above the Wheel Inn around Cabazon. It sported those three letters I’d seen for years: E-A-T. That sign was the greatest sign of all. So I pulled into the parking lot, slapped some coins into a pay phone. While I had no idea what my future held—maybe I’d roll lucky 7s for a change, or maybe more snake eyes—everything was perfect in that moment. One shared breathing in and out. So much so, in fact, that when Callie answered, the first words out of my mouth were: “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  A World of Thanks

  This novel couldn’t have been possible without the assistance of so many wonderful people. To those who offered invaluable feedback during this book’s various incarnations: Wayne Reynolds, Brendan Schallert, Milo Martin, the Chautauqua Writers Group (Sid, Karen, Ted, Dyanne, Dianne, Linda, Mary Pat, Andrew, Lia Schallert—RIP), Jenny Burman, Kathi Flood Martin, Ginny Fleming, Lara Hopwood, Erika Rae, George Langworthy, and Alex Smith. Thanks to my fantabulous blurbers: Aimee Bender, Jamie Blaine, Jessica Anya Blau, Antonia Crane, Shana Nys Dambrot, Tony DuShane, Jonathan Evison, Jack Grisham, David Kukoff, Brad Listi, Ben Loory, James Morrison, Greg Olear, Patrick O’Neil, Rob Roberge, David Rocklin, Jim Ruland, Jodyne L. Speyer, Heather Woodbury, Lenore Zion, and Adrian Todd Zuniga. Thanks to Brett Hall Jones; Mark Childress; Michael Pietsch; Andrew Tonkovich and Lisa Alvarez; my peeps Tony Saavedra, Gwen Goodkin, Sandra Ramirez, Renee Thompson, and all the other amazing folks associated with the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Thanks to Jessica Trupin (aka: Col. Trupin) for believing in this book when no one else did. Karen Ford: huge thanks for your super-keen editorial eye!