by Greg Olear
EXT. LAKE MINNEWASKA, NEW PALTZ, N.Y. – DAY
The pristinely set lake, surrounded by mountains of white stone and pine trees, twinkles in the sunlight. STACY sits on one of the rocks, looking down at the water, alone in her thoughts. She’s wearing workout clothes, but she still looks hot. She gets up to continue her hike, and who should she bump into, coming in the opposite direction, than her former therapist, ROB PUGLISI.
ROB
Stacy! How nice to see you.
STACY
Hey, Rob.
They embrace, for perhaps a touch too long, given the clinical nature of their relationship.
ROB
Curious that I ran into you today. I was literally just thinking about you.
STACY
Yeah?
ROB
It’s been months since our last session. I wondered how things were going.
STACY
Well, they’re going, I guess.
ROB
That doesn’t sound promising.
STACY
I wanted to come back to you and talk about everything, but Josh refuses. He thinks it’s too expensive, that we can’t afford it.
ROB
And what do you think?
STACY
That he’s using that as an excuse. That he’s afraid to come to terms with how bad things really are.
ROB
I’m sorry to hear that. But I can’t say I’m surprised.
STACY
Really?
ROB
I shouldn’t really say this, given our therapist/patient relationship . . .
STACY
We haven’t seen you in six months. Can’t we just be regular people now?
ROB
I suppose.
STACY
What were you going to say?
ROB
That he doesn’t appreciate you. That he takes you for granted. That every single session, I had to fight off the urge to reach over and throttle him.
STACY
You seemed so calm.
ROB
I’m good at my job.
STACY
He always did think you were on my side.
ROB
Well, he was right about that. How could I not be on your side? All the sacrifices you’ve made for him, for your family . . . how can I not admire that?
STACY
Thanks, Rob.
ROB
Are you serious about us being like regular people? About stepping away from our previous relationship?
STACY
Yes.
ROB
Then I should tell you that I’m in love with you. That I’ve loved you from the moment you stepped into my office. And that if you leave that nebbish of a husband, I will take care of you in ways you always dreamed about.
STACY
Rob, my God. I don’t know what to say.
ROB
Then don’t say anything.
He kisses her; she returns the kiss with equal ardor.
STACY
This is such a romantic spot. Do you wanna . . .
He nods. She takes his hand, leads him to a secluded part of the rock, and lies down.
FADE OUT
THE WALLS AT PASQUALE’S ARE WHITE BRICK, WITH PLENTY OF plate-glass windows overlooking the Stop & Shop (correction: the Super Stop & Shop; in addition to providing the freshest produce and meats, it wears a cape and fights crime) on 299, and roomy booths of green vinyl, and a mural of the Amalfi seascape on the wall by the restrooms, and a little statue of a big-mustached pizza guy, the paesan stereotype, that greets you as you enter, and red-green-and-white paper placemats with a clumsy drawing of the Italian boot, with the caption BEAUTIFUL ITALY in English, but the major cities written in Italian: Roma, Firenze, Venezia, Napoli.
Two booths away, a troika of Goth-arrayed SUNY coeds, none of them particularly cute, has gathered for pizza. As I gorge on meatballs, I eavesdrop on their conversation, which, far as I can tell, involves Eighties Night at Cabaloosa.
“ . . . and it’s like, they play, you know, oldies. Like, you know, Madonna, and Prince, and Culture Club.”
“Culture Club?”
“You don’t know Culture Club?”
“Never heard of them.”
“Boy George?”
“Um, no?”
“Don’t they sing that song? The comma-comma-comma-comma-comma come-ee-lee-un . . . ”
“I think so?”
“I have, like, no idea what you guys are talking about?”
“It’s kind of a dumb song.”
“Ya think?”
“I have never heard that before in my life. You guys are like total dorks.”
She’s maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, hip enough to dress Goth, smart enough to be in college . . . and she’s never heard of “Karma Chameleon”? Never heard of Boy George, who’s only the Lady Gaga of 1982?
Shit, I’m getting old. Not getting. Am.
“What’s this?” I ask Roland, showing him the placemat.
“Italy,” he says.
“Aunt Laura is there right now.” I pronounce it the Jersey way, like the insect; Stacy says ont; the kids usually hold with me. “Did you know that?”
“She’s in Pisa. She saw the Leaning Tower.”
“Right.”
“Wait,” Maude says. “Because . . . because . . . where is Aunt Laura?”
“In Italy. With Uncle Michael.”
“In Italy, you stupe,” Roland says, smacking her.
“Hey! Enough of that!”
I take another big gulp of my beer. You don’t think about having a draft beer at a pizza place, or at least I don’t, but the Bud at Pasquale’s is crisp, cool, and refreshing—just like they say it is in the commercials. The Clydesdales would be proud.
“There’s only one interstate highway in Nebraska,” says Roland, the Crown Prince of the Non Sequitur. “Interstate 80.”
When I get home, I’ll verify this, but I don’t have much doubt that he’s right.
Roland is polishing off the last of his ravioli. Maude is gnawing on breadsticks, pausing between bites to re-insert her pacifier. They haven’t been not naughty—we can’t go to a restaurant without them moving seats three times, or peeling the wrappers off the crayons, or getting fingerprints all over the windows, or fucking around with the blinds, or lying down on the bench, or crawling underneath the table to get from one side of the booth to the other (as it now stands, Maude is next to me, and Roland is by himself across from us), or bursting into song—but the naughtiness is at an acceptable level. There is less misbehavior than I was expecting. It’s almost like they both recognized, on some level, that their old man’d had it—the last day of a long tour of duty in Parenting Afghanistan—that another outburst would put me over the edge, and I’d wind up in the back of a squad car, an ambulance, or a hearse, and they’d have no one on hand to ply them with ice cream when they got home, or cue up their favorite shows.
“Do you like your bread, Maude?”
“I like it, Daddy,” she says. “I very like it. It’s so delicious.”
“Good.”
Idly, I take out my phone to check the time—4:47—and am about to try Stacy again when I hear a tiny voice call out, “Roland! Hey, Roland!”
The next thing I know, Zara Reid, in the same blue-on-blue dress she wore to the farm, slides beside Roland at the big booth, and a heavy hand rests on my shoulder.
“Hey, man,” comes a deep voice. And then Daryl “Duke” Reid, still wearing his blue Dickies uniform and his ski cap, still impossibly big, pulls up a chair and plops down at the head of the table. “Mind if we join you for a minute?”
“No,” I tell him, trying my best to disguise my shock at such a stroke of good fortune, “please.”
“You’re Josh, right?”
“Yeah. And this is Maude.”
“Maude. I like that.”
The dude can fill a room, and not just becau
se of his size. Charisma fairly radiates off him. Maybe one day he’ll run for office. It’s not unprecedented; John Hall, former leader of the band Orleans, is now a congressman a few districts downriver.
“And you already know Roland.”
“That we do. I’m Daryl, by the way.” He extends his hand, which is almost twice the size of mine—and that’s not including the brass-knuckle-sized ring on his middle finger—and gives me a surprisingly gentle shake.
“I know. Although I wasn’t sure if you preferred Daryl or Duke.”
“Duke’s just a stage name,” he says, as if embarrassed. I didn’t know such a big, self-assured guy was capable of bashfulness. “The idea was that it would make me more mysterious. It worked, I guess. But now I’m stuck with it. The days of Duke are kind of behind me, you know? These days, I’m pretty much a stay-at-home dad. Not much punk rock about that.”
“Oh, I don’t know. There are certainly days when I have the urge to smash things.”
“There are days,” he says, “when I do,” and we both sort of chuckle politely, although neither of our jokes is all that funny.
“Anyway, I’m glad we bumped into you,” Reid says. “I’ve been meaning to call you.” He’s been meaning to call me? “Zara’s been talking about Roland nonstop, and I promised her I’d arrange a playdate.”
Idiot that I am, it did not occur to me that Roland’s affection for Zara might work both ways. The boy is adorable. He’s got that going for him. And that’s an objective observation, not just the opinion of an admittedly biased father.
“That’d be great. Let me tell you, Roland loves Zara. We’d love to. Unless you’re having second thoughts after today’s little incident at the farm.”
“What incident?”
“You didn’t notice the nuclear meltdown?”
“Oh, that.” Reid swats that notion away with a wave of his giant paw. “That was nothing, believe me. It always feels terrible when it’s your kid, like you’re the worst parent alive, but, I mean, they’re four. Shit happens.”
All three of the kids erupt into paroxysms of laughter.
“Papa,” Zara says, once the laughing fit has worn down, “you said shit.”
“Yes, I did. Papa said a bad word. Don’t you go talking like that, okay, pumpkin?”
“Okay, Papa.”
“Yeah, my son—he’s in the second grade now, but he did his time at Thornwood—he was really a handful. He’d have a meltdown like that at least once a day, usually more, and always at the worst possible moments. A tantrum at the class field trip you can deal with; at the departure gate at JFK, dude, that’s another story.”
“Oh, man.”
“Everybody looks at you, because you can’t control your kid, and you’re totally mortified, and it’s really hard to keep your composure. You just want to scream. My wife, she took it all really hard. It was hard for her to leave the house with him. Because, I mean, in our society, if a kid misbehaves, it’s always the mother’s fault, right? We love to tee off on the mother. She’s either withholding her love, or else she coddles him. Either way, it’s all on her. The mother always takes the blame. And it wasn’t Céline’s fault; it wasn’t my fault; it was no one’s fault. It’s just how Wade is, how he’s wired. The things that sometimes make him difficult are the same things that make him special, that make him him.” He leans back, gives his knuckles a loud crack, and laughs. “I’m sorry, man. I do this. I just start talking. My wife hates it.”
“No, no, it’s cool. It’s good to talk. Do you guys just want to stay and eat with us?”
“You don’t mind?”
“I mean, I may have to beat a hasty retreat if they get jumpy, but until then . . . ”
I flag down the green-eyeshadowed waitress, who runs back to the kitchen to fetch sodas and slices of pizza.
“So how is Wade doing in school?”
“Really well. He’s doing really well. He loves his school, loves his teacher. But, I mean, we have him at the Annex. They know how to handle him there.”
“The Annex . . . ”
Before I can formulate my question, Reid answers. He’s seen this movie before. “It’s a school for children with, you know, autistic spectrum disorders. Wade’s what they call PDD-NOS. Pervasive Development Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. That’s what they call it when you have some autistic symptoms but not, you know, autism as such.”
“Papa,” Zara says. “I’m hungry.”
“I know,” he tells her. “That’s why we’re here.”
“You want some bread?” I offer.
She takes a garlic knot out of the basket, gnaws on it.
“Thanks,” Reid says. “Yeah, PDD-NOS. It’s a stupid name. I really wish they’d come up with something better.”
“At least it doesn’t sound like assburger.”
When he doesn’t so much as smile at my joke, it dawns on me that Daryl Reid may not realize that Roland is on the spectrum. I glance at my son, but he’s too busy making eyes at Zara to eavesdrop. There will be a day when Roland realizes that he has Asperger’s, but he doesn’t know yet, and I see no reason to hurry that epiphany along. “You know that Roland is, uh, A-S-P-I-E.”
Reid’s eyebrows shoot up. “No, I didn’t,” he says. “I had no idea.”
“He can be very unpredictable. Although right now, he’s on his best behavior. The services, they help. And he seems to behave better when Zara’s around.” This makes sense, I see now; if her older brother is at the Annex, Zara is used to handling volatile boys. “That’s what Mrs. Drinkwater said.”
“Mrs. Drinkwater.” Reid shakes his head, and his Sid Vicious scowl looks like one of the faces he makes in the “My Heart Is Hydroplaning” video. “Wade had Mrs. Burns. She’s the best. We love her. We got really lucky with that. Mrs. Drinkwater, she’s . . . ”
“Overmatched.”
“Exactly. She’s nice and all, and she cares, but . . . ”
The green-eyeshadowed waitress returns with their pizza.
Reid pats the excess oil off both slices, gives Zara hers, and takes a giant bite from the crust of his own. He looks at Roland, shakes his head in wonder. “Really. I never would have known.”
That he didn’t know is, in a way, good; it means Roland can pass as “typical,” which is ultimately what you want as a parent: your kid to function in society, to not stand out all the time. On the other hand, his condition is very real, and if people don’t know about it, his brusque manner can be confused with rudeness. It’s a double-edged sword, the spectrum. To reveal or not to reveal.
“So what do you guys do?” Reid asks. “I know that’s a lame question, but I’m curious.”
“No, it’s cool,” I assure him. “My wife—her name is Stacy—she’s an actress, and she works in marketing at IBM. I’m a . . . screenwriter.” I swallow the word, as I always do. It’s a ridiculous thing to say with a straight face, like telling people that you’re an astronaut.
“That’s a tough racket,” he says. “Almost as bad as the music industry.”
“Tell me about it. But, you know, at least I don’t have to lug around heavy equipment. Or leave the house.”
“Have you had any luck?”
“I sold a script once. And for about a day or two, it looked like it might even get made. George Clooney was interested, or so I was told. But that was five years ago—right before we moved here, when Roland was a baby—and it doesn’t look like anything will ever become of it. I’m sure George has moved on.”
I decide not to mention the crippling writer’s block.
“Still,” he says. “Pretty impressive.”
“I guess.” If I’m ever going to bring up the proposed interview, now is the time. The iron is hot. But tread carefully, Josh; be subtle. “I also do some freelance writing. For Rents magazine. Do you know it?”
“Sure. Céline has a subscription, so I wind up reading it in the can. What stuff do you write for them?”
“Whatever they tell me to.
” Not strictly a lie. “Little wrap-ups, mostly. And the occasional celebrity interview.”
“Did you write that profile of Amanda Peet?”
“I wish.”
“Yeah. That was pretty good.”
Now or never, Josh. Shit or get off the pot.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to be interviewed? You know, about fatherhood and stuff?”
The bashful look returns. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was blushing. “Oh, I doubt they’d want to talk to me. No one cares about Circle of Fists anymore. There’s some heavy hitters in that magazine. I can’t compete with Nicole Richie and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz.”
Before I can bust his chops for knowing who Nicole Richie and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz are—and for using the latter’s married name!—the three girls at the opposite table, the not-that-cute Goth chicks ignorant of the Culture Club experience, approach us, all giggly. “Excuse me,” says the nose-ringed leader, the one who insisted that she’d never heard “Karma Chameleon,” that her friends were total dorks, “but are you Daryl ‘Duke’ Reid?”
Reid says that he is, and that he’s flattered that they recognized him, and they tell him they think “My Heart Is Hydroplaning” is like the best song of all time ever, and he thanks them, and they ask about his new album, and he says it won’t be out till next year, and they ask for his autograph, which he provides in crayon on the back of one of the BEAUTIFUL ITALY placemats. Then they thank him profusely and quit the restaurant, giggling all the way to the parking lot. Not once during the entire exchange do they so much as glance in my direction. Not even a rock star’s reflected glow can get three homely college chicks to notice me. Super Stop & Shop, meet the Invisible Dad.
“You were saying?”
“Disaffected Goth teenagers don’t read Rents magazine,” he says. “Totally different demographic. I highly doubt your editor has ever heard of me.”
“Alright, I’ll come clean,” I tell him. “I already asked. Just on the off chance I wound up talking to you. And they definitely want you.”
“Papa,” says Zara, sliding into his lap.
“Really?” Reid seems genuinely delighted—not at all the reaction I was expecting. “To do a parenting interview?”
“That’s what they told me. You game?”