Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

by Sweany, Brian;

  “It’s big in New York and LA, I guess. Last year somebody transferred in from Culver and brought the game with them.”

  Culver is a military academy in northeastern Indiana that could have been ripped right out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. An oasis of old East Coast money, its alumni include George Steinbrenner and Roger Penske. I took a weekend tour of the campus when I was a sophomore in high school and saw somebody snort cocaine out of a girl’s cleavage at a party involving a lot of kids with Roman numerals at the end of their names. Whatever a lipstick party is, if it came from Culver, it can’t be good.

  “I’m listening, Jack.”

  “A lipstick party is when a bunch of girls put different colored lipstick on their mouths and then give guys blowjobs in the dark. When the lights are turned back on, the guys try to guess which girl gave them the blowjob.”

  “You got to be kidding me.”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s not just a plot for a bad TV show on Fox or an exploitative YA novel?”

  “It’s very real, Hank.”

  “So you were at one of these lipstick parties tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “What do you mean, what did I do? I chickened out.”

  “And?”

  “And everyone is going to make fun of me at school on Monday.”

  “Not everyone.”

  “You don’t know, Hank.”

  “Don’t tell me what I don’t know. In fact, I’d be willing to bet almost no one makes fun of you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “What I’m telling you is not for you to believe or disbelieve. It’s a fact. There will be a couple douche bags who give you a hard time, but high school is like an all-you-can-eat douche bag buffet. And sure, maybe a few sluts will no longer look your way at a party. But is empty validation and a sexually transmitted disease really something to lose sleep over? Trust me when I say there will be a lot of girls who are going to respect you more for doing what you did, and out of those girls, you’re going to find one who will run through fire for you. Maybe you don’t find her tomorrow, or even next year. Maybe you don’t find her until college. Or maybe you find her, and for whatever reason the timing just isn’t right for you two. But when you do find her, and when the timing is right, hold on to her. A real man only needs one tube of lipstick.”

  “Why would I need a tube of lipstick?” Jack asks. “I’m not gay.”

  “You know, little brother, you really suck at metaphors.”

  Jack smiles. I can almost see a little bit of Dad in him. It’s a wise look bordering on mischievous. “And you, big brother, seem to think everything in life needs one.”

  2005

  Chapter eighty-eight

  A family road trip from Indiana to North Carolina with a nine-year-old and two five-year-olds: what the fuck were Beth and I thinking?

  The Southern Outer Banks are about eight hundred miles away from Empire Ridge. Our Honda Odyssey minivan’s DVD player kept the kids occupied nearly all the way to Raleigh, but at this point, as we pass over the White Oak River Bridge in Swansboro, I’m halfway considering chucking all three of them into the White Oak River.

  “Daddy,” Sasha says.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “The boys keep farting, and it stinks back here.”

  “Then open a window.”

  My wife had tried to put this drive off as long as possible. Stan still owns his pediatric practice in Empire Ridge, but he’s pretty much retired at this point, spending eight months of the year at the pink beach house, which he got in the divorce. This is the first time we’ve brought the kids back to the place since Stan and Joan separated, and we’re worried how they’ll react. During the holidays, Beth’s parents are acutely skilled at pretending they like one another—“I’ve had decades of practice,” Joan told me last Christmas—so up to this point, the kids really haven’t been affected by the situation.

  “I tried opening a window,” my daughter says. “It doesn’t work.”

  “Boys,” I say. “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?” Johnny says.

  “You’re suffocating your sister.”

  “What’s suck fuck kating?” Burke says. Johnny giggles.

  “Burke said the f-word, Daddy.”

  “I know what he said, Sasha.”

  “You have to give him one squirt. Those are the rules.”

  Burke starts crying. “It was an accident, Daddy. No squirt! No squirt!”

  I notice my wife eyeing the glove box. “No, Beth. Like he said, it was an accident. And it’s vacation.”

  “Don’t complain to me,” Beth says. “You made the stupid rule.”

  Sasha and Burke are referring to the most feared weapon in our parent arsenal, the doomsday device: a squirt of liquid hand soap. We keep the bottle of orange retribution in the glove boxes of both vehicles. One cuss word equals one squirt on your tongue. Like Tina Turner telling Mel Gibson as he entered Thunder Dome, “Two men enter, one man leaves,” the squirt is the law.

  “Bust a deal, face the wheel,” I say to my wife.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You know, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome?”

  “That post-apocalypse movie with Mel Gibson?”

  “Yes!”

  “Never seen it.”

  “What? So when someone says to you, ‘This is Thunderdome, death is listening, and will take the first man who screams,’ that means nothing to you?”

  “Up until just this moment I have never heard those words used in a sentence together, and I’ve certainly never heard that bad of a Tina Turner impersonation.”

  “It was good enough that you recognized it.”

  “This isn’t Thunderdome, Hank. It’s a Honda Odyssey.”

  “I know that, honey.” I look at my red-eyed son in the rearview mirror. “Hey, Burke, bust a deal, face the wheel.”

  He wipes his nose. “What?”

  “You broke the agreement we had for cuss words, but because I’m on vacation, I’ll let you choose your punishment.”

  “What are my choices?”

  “I’ll go easy on you. You can either eat soap or be nice to your sister for the entire vacation.”

  Burke looks at me in the rearview mirror. Looks at his sister. Looks at me again. He closes his eyes and sticks out his tongue.

  Burke is on his third juice box in as many minutes, trying to get the hand soap taste out of his mouth. We’re about through Emerald Isle and nearing Stan’s place in Salter Path.

  “Promise something, Hank?” Beth both says and asks simultaneously.

  “Depends on what that ‘something’ is.”

  “No working vacation this week. I want my husband off the clock.”

  “You know I can’t promise that. I have a lunch with Margaret on Wednesday that I can’t miss.”

  “A lunch appointment? Since when?”

  “Since we booked this trip.”

  Margaret is Margaret Maron, the author of the North Carolina-based Judge Deborah Knott mystery series. I’ve been trying to woo her away from her print publisher Mysterious Press for years, but Random House has given College Ave increasingly less acquisitions money to work with. I have it on good authority Margaret has already re-upped with Mysterious—well, her agent just flat out told me—and that Margaret is taking this lunch with me more out of guilt. I figure the least I could do is put a couple bottles of red wine and some shrimp and grits on my Random expense account.

  It’s not that my relationship with Random House hasn’t been fruitful. Far from it. I’ve made a lot of money off being more lucky than good. I was gifted Lila’s book, Sperm Bank Messiah, which she managed to stretch into a trilogy. Each successive book in the series—the middle volume, Mrs. Jesu
s, and the finale, Viva Leviticus—was more critically panned while at the same time more commercially successful than its predecessor. And then, just last year, a flavor-of-the-year graphic novelist at Comic-Con agreed to adapt one of my own short stories, “Plaid & Plasma,” into a tongue-in-cheek fusion of contemporary vampire fiction and Scottish Highlands romance called Blood, Sex, and Kilts that hit the New York Times bestseller list and was optioned by Showtime for a cable TV series.

  “You got one lunch,” Beth says, holding up her left index finger. “But if at any other point in the week I see you bust out that stupid laptop, I’m chucking it in the ocean. Deal?”

  I grab her hand and kiss it. “Deal.”

  We pull into Stan’s driveway. The pink paint on the cedar shake has faded to salmon. A white sign hangs over the front door with the words Little Pink House burned into its surface.

  “Let’s unpack later,” Beth says. “Dad hasn’t seen his grandkids in months.”

  We unharness Sasha and the twins. Beth leads the way. A wind chime serenades us as we walk across the white-railed front porch and into the house. My wife walks in without knocking.

  Busted.

  “Dad!” Beth shouts. With her left hand she covers Sasha’s eyes, with her right forearm she shields the eyes of the twins.

  A tanned woman in an orange bikini, a little older than Beth but not by much, is in the kitchen with Stan. She’s on her knees, giving my father-in-law a blowjob.

  The woman bolts upright, wiping her mouth.

  “You’re early,” Stan says, pulling up his swim trunks and scolding his daughter, as if she’s the one who needs the lesson on decorum.

  “Apparently not early enough,” Beth says.

  I reach my hand out to the tanned woman in the orange bikini. Much like Jack’s old principal, she’s more fit than attractive. Upon closer inspection she also looks more mid-fifties than mid-thirties. “Hi, my name is Hank.”

  The woman accepts my gesture. She shakes my hand, outwardly not the least put off by what just happened. There’s not even a hint of blushing in her face, although granted that would be hard to see against her leathered, paprika skin. “Hiya, darlin’,” she says. “My name is Marilyn, but all my friends call me May-May.”

  “May-May?”

  “Yeah, darlin’. I used to have a twin sister named Margaret, ya see. But she died as a baby, on account of havin’ a weak heart. We were born in May, so after Ma lost her, she took to callin’ me ‘May-May’ ’cause she couldn’t bear to forget her little Margaret.”

  “That’s…interesting,” I say.

  “You Yankees and yuh manners,” May-May says, pulling her hand away from me and backhanding my arm. “It’s downright morbid, s’what it is. I just cain’t never imagine bein’ called anythin’ else.”

  “Well, May-May”—Beth elbows me out of the way—“if you need someone to be rude to you, I’m happy to oblige.”

  “Easy, little girl,” Stan says, stepping between the two women.

  “I’m not your fu—” Beth cuts her expletive in half, realizing her kids are well within earshot. “I’m not your little girl, Dad. But if I were, that would probably be cool, because given her age, May-May and I would probably be into a lot of the same things.”

  “You think?” May-May says.

  “That’s not a freaking compliment!” Beth shouts.

  “Hey, May-May,” I interject. “Can you do me a favor and take the kids out back?”

  “Sure thing, darlin’,” she says, turning to Sasha and the twins. “Have any of you ever seen a jellyfish before?”

  “Is it made out of real jelly?” Burke says.

  “No, stupid,” Sasha answers.

  “Zip it, Sasha,” I say. “Just go outside with Miss May-May and your brothers for a few minutes. We have to talk to Grandpa about something.”

  “Children, y’all can call me Aunt May-May.”

  “No, y’all can’t,” Beth says.

  In between yelling at her father for the last twenty minutes, my wife has consumed a pitcher of margaritas. I’m standing on the periphery, a bottle of Carolina Blonde Ale in my hand as I watch my Indiana blonde pace between the kitchen and living room, still pissed as hell.

  “I’m sorry for what you saw,” Stan says to his daughter.

  “Apology not accepted.”

  “Who’s apologizing? I’m not sorry for it happening. I don’t owe you an explanation for being in a relationship.”

  “A relationship?” Beth points out the back window. “Is that what you call that orange dick sucker out there?”

  And there’s my cue. “Come on, babe. That’s a bit harsh.”

  Beth sends me another slightly more obvious cue. “You stay the fuck out of this, Hank.”

  “Baby doll, please,” Stan says. “We’re not going to fix this today. Just tell me what you want from me.”

  “What do I want from you?” Beth wipes one lone tear from her right eye. I have a feeling that’s all she’s giving him today. “I want my dad back.”

  “But I haven’t gone anywhere.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “How about if for now I just ask May-May to go home?”

  “How about if you just ask her to go to hell?”

  “Home is good for now, Doc,” I say.

  Stan walks out the back door. Beth turns and faces me. “Don’t tell me you’re on his side.”

  “I’m not on anybody’s side. So your dad has a girlfriend. There are worse things in the world. Quite frankly, I’m a little put off by your behavior at the moment.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Not that I’m surprised, but you seem more possessive and jealous about your father than you ever are with me.”

  “You’re not barking up that tree again, are you?”

  “You kind of invite the barking.”

  “A woman half his age was giving him head in his kitchen!”

  “First off, last time I checked your father isn’t a hundred years old. Secondly, good for him. He’s starring in his own rom-com.”

  “His own what?”

  “Romantic comedy. There’s you, the daughter, losing touch with her femininity under the heavy burden of motherhood while dealing with the broken marriage of your empty-nester parents. There’s Stan, the exiled father, rediscovering his masculinity in the arms of an attractive and confoundedly endearing woman.”

  “Confoundedly endearing?”

  “I know you don’t see it, Beth. But May-May is ripped right out of a screenplay. She’s like Bess Armstrong in The Four Seasons and Sarah Jessica Parker in LA Story.

  “Or like Natalie Portman in Beautiful Girls and Mena Suvari in American Beauty.”

  “Jesus Christ, it’s not like your father is pining after Lolita. He and May-May are two consenting adults. They just want to have a little—”

  Beth raises her hand. “Let me stop you right there, hubby.”

  “What?”

  “When I say ‘stop,’ that means stop talking. You know how you like to do that thing where you distill a scene into something insightful or clever, as if you have an invisible audience watching you?”

  I don’t respond.

  “Uh, hello?”

  “So I can talk now?”

  “Just nod your head, smartass.”

  I nod my head.

  “Well, I fucking hate it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No you’re not,” Beth says. “Now wipe that faraway look off your face and stop thinking about Natalie Portman in Beautiful Girls, you pervert.”

  Busted.

  Chapter eighty-nine

  Easter Vigil is the service held traditionally after sunset on Holy Saturday before the sun rises on Easter Sunday. This service engenders wildly disparate reactions in Catholics. The de
vout regard it as the most important mass of the liturgical year, while the majority of Catholics—i.e., those of us who have two-point-three children because we wear condoms and pop birth control pills like Tic Tacs, think abortions should be rare but legal, and would rather watch George Carlin in Dogma than Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ—well, we fucking hate it.

  Very simply, Easter Vigil is when the real Catholics get their Jesus on. The service is anywhere from three to four hours long and is an all-you-can-eat sacramental buffet. There are Baptisms, First Communions, Reconciliations, Confirmations, even weddings. Easter Vigil is interminable to the point where in the pantheon of old school Papist rituals I’d rather sit through a Rosary, watch a Mother Angelica marathon on EWTN, or read an entire issue of Latin Mass magazine.

  The first Easter Vigil service I remember attending was in 1983. We were living in Louisville, Kentucky. Our next-door neighbor was the team doctor for the University of Louisville men’s basketball team, a dynastic program of the early eighties. He got Dad and me in to see closed practices in which we met the players, and so names like Milt Wagner, Lancaster Gordon, Scooter and Rodney McCray, Charles Jones, and Billy Thompson supplanted the latest Fighting Irish football players at the dinner table. Granted, Dad and I appropriated the Cardinals more as a temporary distraction from the Gerry Faust era at Notre Dame, but our passion and commitment was real enough to us.

  Louisville was playing Houston in the Final Four the Saturday night before Easter. CBS promoted it as “the Doctors of Dunk versus Phi Slamma Jamma.” Dad had the bright idea to go to church on Saturday afternoon so we could stay up late and watch the game while not having to worry about getting up early for church. We attended Holy Trinity. An eighteen-year-old parishioner by the name of Mary T. Meagher was the cross bearer, still a year away from winning gold in the pool at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. We missed almost the entire game, although about halfway into the four-hour Vigil service, Dad excused himself to go to the restroom, never to return. Just as my feet and knees had gone numb and I shouted my first “Alleluia!” in forty days, Dad was in the car screaming at his radio, “Crum, get a body on Olajuwon!”