Another year passed before Meg would see him again.
* * *
A couple of months ago, I got a phone call from Donnie Rush. I hadn’t seen him since high school. He was living up in Thousand Oaks, he said. Married, two kids, girls, three years apart. He’d gotten my number from another old classmate I was still in contact with. He said he hoped he wasn’t intruding.
He asked if I thought it would be okay if he went to visit Meg. He thought about her a lot, he said, wondered how she was. He’d had a crush on her back in school, even after he’d found the flyer, though the flyer had scared him. She was so beautiful, so smart, he said. And then she was gone.
She would have been a great beauty. Our mother often tells me this after many gin and tonics at one of our dinner dates in Santa Monica or Malibu, seafood with an ocean view, walls of glass on the water. I always snap back, defending Meg, as if this is a frivolous observation, malicious even. Mom, really, you’re being unkind. But she’s right. There was an undeniable beauty there, the full waves of sandy hair and those eyes, deep reddish brown, the color of good, rich earth. It was a beauty almost from another time, something close to nature. But it had all been shadowed by the fear that starved her face to skin and bone, that drove her to pull handfuls of hair out by the roots.
What do you expect, Mom? I say, staring back through the windows at the waves lashing the beach. How should she look? She’s afraid all the time.
I told Donnie that he was welcome to visit, that it might be good for Meg to see an old friend. I had to stop myself from sounding like our mother, telling him to temper his expectations, the picture he had of her from twenty years ago.
She has good days and bad, I said, and he told me he’d keep that in mind.
* * *
In a production meeting out at the location, the director tells me they’re going to tear down the shed. It’s in the way of a shot, and has no real use in the film. I argue to keep it, surprising myself with my vehemence, nearly shouting at him across the conference tent. When he gives in, I go back out to our reconstructed yard and stand in the space where the pool would be, looking at the shed. I know why I wanted it here. Maybe I always knew. Building the shed was an act of narrative erasure, like flushing Meg’s flyer down the school toilet. Even when I first sketched it, I could imagine sitting in a theater with the finished film, waiting for the final shots after the water machine explodes and watching the planet, the neighborhood, the yard, the shed, flooded, splintered, swept away.
* * *
Donnie Rush called again after his visit. Before he saw Meg, one of the nurses had given him the usual instructions, to keep his voice low, to agree with whatever Meg said. And so he had, sitting on a bench in the visiting room, corroborating for Meg that there were voices coming from the PA speakers, electrostatic waves shooting down from passing planes. He said this seemed to calm her, but that then there was nothing left, they just sat there in the shared fiction.
“What more did you want?” I said.
“I just wanted her to talk,” he said. His voice was so much deeper than I remembered, a man’s voice, a father’s voice.
“I always found Meg so interesting,” he said. “I just wanted her to talk so I could listen.”
* * *
Our mother doesn’t use the term. The diagnosis. She doesn’t think it’s helpful. She’s worried, I think, that it has some talismanic power, that saying it aloud will make it truer than it already is.
We’re sitting at another table by the windows. Mom’s into her second G & T and I’m staring out down to the beach, the rolling purple dark. She’s talking about Meg’s missed opportunities, all the things she could have done, could have been, a teary litany, if only this curse hadn’t befallen, the evil spell, the mental weakness, whatever it might be in all its mystery. Suddenly I’m standing, I find myself on my feet, though no one else in the restaurant is looking, not even Mom. Her eyes are fixed on the rim of her glass and I shout it, the term, the diagnosis, as loud as I can. It sounds like I’m making an announcement, calling out a door prize, someone’s a winner, and now there’s silence in the dining room and all eyes are on me, even Mom’s, heads turned and chins raised. The words in the room now. Who wants to claim them, who wants to reach up and take hold?
* * *
It’s a bad day, so we’re in the visiting room, on the bench by the windows. Meg looks like she hasn’t slept in a week, her face haggard and terror-struck.
I’m talking about the movie, a couple of new scenes the screenwriters have added, watching Meg’s expression as I babble. I tell her that it turns out we might build the pool after all, that the writers now want a scene where the kids stand out in the arid heat and stare longingly at its empty shell.
There’s no change in her face, so I push on, talking about our pool now, our real pool, filled with cool water on a summer afternoon. Remember Dead Man’s Float, Meg? Remember that feeling? The held breath, the silence underwater, like time had stopped all around us. Then Mom’s panicked voice pulling us back to the world of light and air.
Come up, I want to say, reaching across the bench. Meg, come back. It should be so easy to come back. But she flinches at my touch, regathering herself in. My hand drops to the wooden seat.
There’s no cure for any of this. No mother’s call, no alien planet fantasy, no retelling of a childhood story that will change things. There’s no explanation, no logic. Two sisters in a yard on a summer afternoon. Only one will ever leave that place. Only one will make it safely away.
There’s a crackle of static from the speakers up on the wall, an electronic throat clearing, then a woman’s voice paging a doctor. Her voice ends, but she’s left the channel open and now there’s a low buzz coming through, like the drone of an insistent bee. Meg’s eyes broaden, bringing some life to her face.
“Do you hear that?” she says, looking toward the speaker.
I think about all the visits, all the hours in this room. Our mother, our father, Donnie Rush. Everyone sitting, as Donnie said, in the shared fiction.
“Cate.” Meg turns to me, her eyes on mine, desperate. “Do you hear that?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t. Tell me about it.”
In the Red
The traffic cop didn’t see things my way. The night Deb left I got pulled over, driving to I don’t know where. Around. The cop made me get out of my car, empty my pockets. He saw the roll of quarters I always keep, asked me what they were for. Laundry, I said. The cop asked if I’d been drinking. I said that I had. He said, Where were you drinking? and I said I’d bought a six-pack at the junior market and had sat right down in the parking lot. He said, Aren’t you a little old to be drinking in parking lots? and I said, Aren’t you a little old to have that stupid fucking mustache, and so here I am.
There are enough guys in the cafeteria to fill two long tables. Some rough-looking characters. Even the chubby accountants—the middle managers or whatever, guys in suits and ties—even they have a threatening edge. They don’t have to smile in their office or cheer at their son’s ball game or be anything but what they really are. This is reality in here. This is no bullshit.
A couple guys know each other from previous classes. Nods and handshakes. Long time no see.
Our instructor walks into the cafeteria. She’s in her forties, I’d guess, a short woman with frizzy hair, big glasses, wearing a dark blue pantsuit. She says her name is Connie, thanks us all for being on time, crosses to a small table at the front of the room. She’s carrying a large purse and a larger book bag, and when she gets to the table she lets each of them slide off her shoulders. While her back is turned, one of the guys whistles—a long, low wolf whistle—and Connie turns and gives him a look because she knows she’s not the kind of woman who gets a whistle like that. Her look says, If you’re going to be a fucking asshole then be a fucking asshole but don’t pretend you want me up on this table, legs in the air. Let’s not make this about something it’s not.
The guy nods, lowers his eyes. His name is Luis—we’d already introduced ourselves. He’s the youngest guy in the class, seems like a real smartass, with a nasty scar cutting down through his mouth and black teardrop tattoos up at the corner of each eye. He keeps his eyes down, nodding; such is the fierceness of Connie’s look. Okay. Understood.
Connie says, Somebody’s got to wheel in the chalkboard from out in the hall.
A couple of guys go out and come back in pushing the chalkboard.
Where you want it?
Right here is fine, Connie says. Just turn it so everybody can see.
She pulls a couple of books out of her bag, a couple of folders, a fistful of pens tied with a rubber band. She takes off her watch and sets it face-up on the table.
You’d better go get your coffee and pop and M&M’s now, she says, because we don’t do the break at 8:30.
There’s always a break at 8:30.
Not here.
It’s the law.
Not here.
Everybody goes out in the hall to the vending machines, gets their coffee and sodas and candy. Rolled eyes, clucked tongues. Can you believe this bitch? What happened to the other guy, Doug, the guy who did class last time? Doug was a good guy.
Back in the cafeteria, metal chairs squeaking, soda can tabs popping, wrappers tearing. Connie waits for the noise to finish.
Okay, she says. Who can tell me why we’re here?
To learn to deal with our hostile emotions in a safe and responsible manner. A lumbering chorus of voices, a follow-up snickering wave.
Good to see we have some veterans in the class, Connie says. Yes. To learn to deal with our hostile emotions in a safe and responsible manner. Connie writes this on the board.
The middle-manager type sitting behind Luis clears his throat. And how do we go about doing that, he says.
Connie turns. What’s that?
You’re supposed to ask us how we go about dealing with our hostile emotions in a safe and responsible manner.
Connie turns back to the board. If you knew the answer to that, she says, you wouldn’t be sitting here.
* * *
After class, a group heads to the parking lot while another group of us heads down to the corner to wait for the bus.
Luis is walking at the back, kind of dragging one leg, trying out a tough-guy limp. After a few drag steps, he calls out to the middle manager guy.
Who you got?
The middle manager guy turns, still walking. What are you talking about?
I’m talking about who breaks first, Luis says. Every class there’s a couple guys who lose it, get popped, maybe put away for a while.
The middle manager guy thinks for a second, nods across the group to a tall dude with a ponytail. Him.
Fabio? Luis says. Nah, man, Fabio’s a lover, not a fighter.
That’s my pick, the middle manager guy says.
Fabio calls back from the front. I got Luis. Luis has been here, like, fifteen times.
Luis cackles, slaps his hand against his thigh.
We keep walking. I can see a few cars double-parked by the bus stop. Mothers, girlfriends, babies in car seats. Rides home.
How about you? Fabio says.
Luis drags his limp, moving through the group, looking. He finally settles on me. I got this big fucker, he says. He throws a crooked-toothed smile back at the group. This big fucker looks about ready to blow.
* * *
When I was a kid, my grandma called it Getting in the Red. She got the phrase from a TV commercial where this dumbass hadn’t changed his oil for fifteen years or something and burns out his engine. They show the engine glowing like a hot coal, cycling faster and faster until it sputters and smokes out. Stop your engine before it gets in the red, the commercial announcer said.
Some kid out on the street or somewhere would call me Jonas the Whale or Jonas the Giant and I’d get so worked up that I’d start to shake and spit and just want to kill him for saying that.
Jonas! Grandma yelling, running down the lawn, apron and hands flapping. Jonas, you’re getting in the red!
She’d pull me off the little fucker and drag me inside and I’d have to sit with my head on the kitchen table and a cold washcloth on the back of my neck. As soon as I felt that washcloth I’d start crying like a baby. The anger sucked out through my skin, into the cold wet cloth. My eyes closed, I could hear Grandma moving around the kitchen. Cooking sounds, dishwashing sounds, pots and pans clattering in the sink. Every few minutes she’d come over and change the water in the washcloth or just stand with her hand on the back of my neck while I choked through the end of my crying jag.
Jonas, you get so overwhelmed, she’d say. Jonas will you ever not be like this.
Maybe, Grandma, I’d say, sniffling snot, wiping my eyes. Maybe. I’ll try.
Jonas, Grandma saying, you get so overwhelmed I don’t know what to do.
* * *
This is a different life now. This is a waiting life. This is a life of standing through the day, legs aching, back aching, dragging items across the scanner, giving change, reading the customers’ Rewards Club savings from their receipts. You saved four dollars and thirty-eight cents. Would you like help out to your car. Ricardo here will help. Thank you. Come again.
This is a different life now, since Deb left.
The house is mine, technically. My name is on the lease. A tiny two-bedroom place with security bars on the doors and windows; a jagged, waist-high fence around the mangy front yard. Not one of your better neighborhoods. I rented it because I could afford it and because it had a rickety old front porch. Grandma always said there was no point in living in a place without a front porch.
The afternoon Deb moved in she said, You’ve lived here for five years and still haven’t bought curtains? It never crossed my mind to buy curtains, I said. Who cares about curtains. The next day there were blue curtains on all the windows. The day after that there was a toothbrush holder on the bathroom sink. When there’s more than one toothbrush you need a toothbrush holder. What have you done to my house? I said. Deb pulled a new shower curtain from her shopping bag, started hanging it around the tub. I made it habitable, she said.
We always kept the TV on the kitchen counter. A little 13-inch job Deb bought with her employee discount at the department store. She liked to watch it while she cooked. I never had any goddamned use for the thing, except when the Cowboys were on, and then I’d have to pull a folding chair right up next to the screen to watch. Deb would say, Why don’t we get a bigger TV so you won’t go blind sitting so close to that thing? and I’d say that we didn’t need a bigger TV because I didn’t have any use for the thing except for every Sunday when the Cowboys were on. Not counting the playoffs. Or the Super Bowl. Then Deb would laugh at me and after a moment I’d laugh at me, too.
I’ve moved the TV out into the living room. The kitchen is not the best place to be right now because of this little chip in the Formica at the edge of the countertop. I keep telling myself that the chip has always been there, or that it’s from Deb dropping a pickle jar or something, but I know how it really got there, what hit against the countertop hard enough to chip the Formica. So I carried the TV into the living room, which is where it belonged in the first place.
I’ve started watching the home shopping channel. I guess it reminds me of my grandma because she always used to watch it those last few months in the rest home. Also, it’s the only thing on when I get out of work at three in the morning. Used to be that I would get home and have a few beers out on the front porch and watch the traffic go by on the freeway, and then I’d get in bed and just lie next to Deb until I fell asleep. But now Deb’s gone and I can’t sleep and so hence the home shopping channel.
There’s this guy, Brian Lang, who’s always on when I get home, this nerdy-looking guy with a kid’s bowl cut and glasses. He hosts the Collectors’ Corner where they sell all types of Star Wars spaceship models and Land of the Lost painted plates and
shit like that, all numbered and authenticated limited edition stuff. Two hundred bucks for a plate. He takes phone calls while he’s showing the stuff and people talk about how much they love this plate or that comic book and when’s he going to have some of those commemorative coins on the show. He really knows his stuff, all the details and facts and trivia. I might think this shit is stupid and maybe he does, too, but you’d never know it from watching him. He can talk about this stuff for hours, make it seem like he cares. People call and love talking to him because here’s this normal guy with a job on TV who knows as much as they do about Farscape or whatever.
Tonight he’s selling trading cards from some old space movie. Brian’s into these cards because they’re from thirty years ago and really hard to find. This kind of history is disappearing, he says. But the producers of the shopping channel found a whole case of them at an estate sale in Calabasas, still in their packages of six cards with a piece of bubble gum, although Brian says he wouldn’t recommend trying the gum.
People are really going apeshit over these cards. All the usual losers are calling up, the people who call a couple times a week. They can’t believe he found these cards. One guy yells into the phone, Thank you, Calabasas!
I play a drinking game while I watch. I drink a beer every time somebody says they’ve been waiting all night for these cards. I drink a beer every time somebody says they feel blessed. It’s getting boring, though; the game is too easy tonight, everybody is so worked up, so I decide to up the ante. If I get up to ten beers, I’m going to get on the phone and see what this idiot has to say for himself.
I feel so blessed, a caller says. I’ve been waiting for these cards all night.
Nine beers. Ten.
We have Jonas on the line from Los Angeles, Brian says. He looks into the camera. Are you there, Jonas?
I’m here.
You got on right in time, my friend. We’re nearly out of cards.
My lucky night.
Are you a movie buff, Jonas?
A Perfect Universe Page 9