by Jason Segel
I never saw the nose in person. In fact, I wouldn’t know anything about it if it weren’t for a book I found in the Brockenhurst library called Gangsters of Carroll Gardens. My mother grew up in that part of Brooklyn, but to hear her tell it, her childhood was all fresh cannoli, backyard garden parties and upscale bat mitzvahs. So imagine my surprise when I’m thumbing through the book and come across a picture of the Kishka. I don’t know who he is at that point. I’m thirteen years old, and I don’t even recognize my grandfather’s name. I just know he looks exactly like me.
Stop here for a minute and imagine tumbling down that rabbit hole. By the time I hit bottom, everything made sense. My entire life, I’d always suspected that some critical piece of information was being withheld from me. For years, I was convinced that I couldn’t possibly be my parents’ biological child. I knew in my heart of hearts that one of the cleaning ladies had given birth to me in a broom closet and my beautiful, small-nosed mother had graciously taken me in. Whenever one of the maids smiled at me, I’d always wonder if it might be her.
Now I knew. Armed with a picture of a gangster I’d never heard of, I started to dig for the truth. I found part of it in a box tucked away in the attic. Inside were four Brooklyn high school yearbooks. I flipped through one, and there she was…Irene Diamond. I didn’t recognize her at first. All through high school, she looked nothing like the woman I know. I never would have guessed the girl was my mother if it hadn’t been for the kishka set in the center of her face. Irene Diamond had the same damn nose I see every time I look in the mirror. I’d love to know how much her father paid to have it fixed.
When I was younger, my mother used to watch me when she thought I wasn’t looking. She’d try to smile when I caught her, but I could tell she was horrified by what she saw. It used to upset me. Now the cosmic justice of it all cracks me up. She’d been running from the nose her entire life—and it ended up on her only son’s face.
I may have cracked a little the day I found those yearbooks, but I didn’t fall apart. And I never mentioned my discovery to my parents. Even then, I knew secrets had power. I knew my mother had hidden her true identity for good reason. Nothing would have given me more pleasure than shouting the truth from the rooftops. But I figured there would be a day when my mother’s secret would come in handy. So for the past few years, I’ve kept it tucked away safely for future use.
I love looking at my nose now. The afternoon sun streaming in through the living room windows really sets it off. The giant gilded mirror in front of me is one of a pair that my mother tells dinner guests she purchased on her honeymoon in Paris. I don’t know where she got the mirrors, but I’ve seen snapshots of her honeymoon in Orlando. The room in the background looks like Marie-Antoinette might waltz through at any moment. But the kishka on my face is there to remind me I don’t belong to this world. I’m the grandson of a two-bit gangster who broke fingers for the Gallo crime family and is probably buried at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal.
“Oooh!” a lady squeals behind me. Then I hear the sound of footsteps rushing out of the room. Some new staff member, probably. The rest of them have been warned about me. I’m not sure what they’ve been told, but I doubt they’d be shocked to find a six-foot-three-inch kid with zero muscle mass and a giant nose standing in his old elementary school banana hammock in the middle of the formal living room.
“Sorry,” I call out. I didn’t expect anyone inside to see me. The house is rarely empty, though you can wander through it for hours without running into a soul. Don’t get the wrong impression—I generally wear clothes when I wander. But today I have a special treat in mind for the neighbors.
—
It’s still a bit nippy when I step outside, but spring has sprung. Across the street, the neighbors’ newly planted rosebushes are blooming. The buds started opening last week, which is why I’m here now, nearly naked on a chilly afternoon. The flowers are fuchsia, a color my mother calls vulgar. As soon as they began to reveal themselves, my mother petitioned the homeowners’ association to have them uprooted. Since she’s the president of the association—and a ruthless attorney—her petitions always pass. How about that? It’s the American Dream in action. Irene Diamond started life as the daughter of a small-time crook, and now she’s in charge of nature.
The people across the street are new to our neighborhood. Last fall, they moved here from Singapore to work for one of our local tech conglomerates. Unlike my mother, they haven’t spent years forming alliances over hors d’oeuvres, which means they lack what my parents call leverage. But they’re friendly to me, so I’m going to give them something to complain about—something that will embarrass Mommy Dearest enough to keep her lips sealed at the next meeting of the homeowners’ association.
I drag a chaise from the side of the pool behind our house. Its legs gouge muddy tracks in the pristine grass all the way to the front yard, where I position it perfectly—not far from the street and just across from the neighbors’ living room windows. I’ve worked up a sweat, and my pasty skin glistens as I lie down on my stomach. I wedge the back of the Speedo between my butt cheeks and try to assume an artistic pose. No sense in being vulgar.
My eyes are closed and the warmth of the sun is spreading over my skin when the first car approaches. The driver hits the brakes near the mailbox.
“Hey, crazy!” someone shouts. I recognize the voice. It belongs to a girl from school. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” I call out. “I’m getting a tan.”
“Put some clothes on, you pervert!” shouts a second voice.
“Nobody wants to see your hairy butt cheeks, Simon,” screams a third. I open my eyes a crack and see three girls from school hanging out of a car. One of them is already tapping away at her phone. Their friends will be arriving soon.
My butt cheeks aren’t quite as furry as they’ve been made out to be, and apparently lots of people would like to see them, because the traffic on my street goes nuts for the next thirty minutes.
I don’t pay any attention to the hoots and catcalls. Crossing ice fields and getting blown to smithereens for hours on end was exhausting. I got about five hours of sleep, but I’ll need more if I want to go back in tonight. I’m just drifting off when I hear a car pull into my drive. A few seconds later, someone’s thrown a jacket over me.
“Get up and get inside.” It’s my mother.
I open my eyes. She’s looming over my chaise, and she’s pissed as hell.
“The people across the street are threatening to phone the police,” she hisses.
“Hi, Mom,” I say with a yawn. “You look stunning this afternoon.”
She does. Her black hair is pulled into a fancy knot, and she’s wearing a silk dress in a very tasteful shade of pale blue. Her painted lips are pressed together beneath her perfect nose.
“Now, Simon. Or you’re going to jail.”
I sigh and sit up, tying her jacket around my waist. “Aren’t you overreacting? I’m sure the neighbors will forget all about this unfortunate incident if you let them keep their vulgar roses.”
“Those people are not who you should be worried about,” she says. “My accountant just called to ask if the six-thousand-dollar charge on my AmEx for video game equipment was a business expense. You stole my credit card, Simon. One more word from you and I’m dialing your probation officer.”
This is unexpected. The accountant must be new. The old one didn’t ask questions.
—
I’m fully clothed and sitting on the living room couch when my father gets home. He’s dressed in Easter egg colors and there’s a nine iron in his hand. Apparently I’ve interrupted a golf game. He walks straight through the room without even acknowledging me. A few minutes later, he’s back, and he’s got my new headset, gloves and booties. He drops them all in a pile on the floor.
I wince when I hear a crack. “Come on, Dad,” I groan. “Do you know how hard it was to get all that stuff? Only
a couple thousand of those headsets have even been made. That one’s going to be worth a fortune someday.”
“This heap of crap cost six thousand, three hundred and fifty-six dollars?” he asks.
Not exactly—I bought two sets of gear. I only kept one for myself. “It’s not crap,” I say. “It’s the newest virtual reality technology. I was on a wait list for that headset—”
“So it’s a video game,” my father says. If you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t think he was that angry. But I’ve spent eighteen years with Grant Eaton, and I know all the warning signs. He’s about to blow sky-high.
“It’s revolutionary—”
“It’s over.” He lifts his nine iron over his head and brings it down hard on the equipment. He repeats the same motion at least three dozen times, until his face is bright red and he’s out of breath.
I’m finding it pretty hard to breathe too. My last chance to spend time with Kat is just a pile of plastic shards. “I can’t believe you—”
“You’re eighteen now,” he interrupts me. He’s holding the golf club like a baseball bat and panting so hard that I wonder if he’ll keel over. “One more incident like this, and your mother and I will no longer be able to help you. If I were you, Simon, I’d spend a lot more time in the real world.”
It was a miscalculation—no doubt about it. I was sure the credit card charge would fly under the radar. I didn’t factor in my mother’s new eager-beaver accountant. Still, it’s hard to see what all the fuss is about. I bet my mother spends more than six grand on Botox every month. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if my father spent even more than that. He’s starting to look like a Madame Tussauds wax sculpture of himself. There’s probably a warning tattooed on his ass that says KEEP AWAY FROM OPEN FLAMES.
My parents didn’t stick around after they taught me my lesson. They had very important golf balls to hit, frittatas to eat and luxury leather goods to acquire, so I’m alone again, sitting on the edge of our pool with my legs dangling over the side. With my devices shattered, I’m trapped in what passes for reality here in beautiful Brockenhurst, New Jersey. My house is a fake French château, and my town stole its name from some fancy place in England. The grass in my lawn is a shade of green not known to nature. And the sausage in the Hot Pocket I’m chewing tastes like mystery meat that was grown in a lab.
You can touch Brockenhurst and you can smell it, but you’d be crazy to call it real.
Where our backyard ends, the woods begin. When I was a kid, the wilderness seemed endless; now most of it’s gone. I look for the path that leads through what’s left of the forest. The trail’s grown over, but I could still walk it in my sleep. It leads straight to one of the few old houses around here that was never torn down. The land it sits on is swampy, and until recently the building had been slowly sinking for ninety-odd years. That’s where Kat lives. I’d be there right now if she’d just let me talk to her. But these days my best friend bolts whenever I get near her. It cost me a few grand and a near-death experience with my father, but I got to see her in Otherworld. Unfortunately, in Brockenhurst she wants nothing to do with me.
—
Kat and I met ten years ago, when we were eight years old. My father had just made senior partner at his law firm, and he’d built this McMansion as his trophy. Thousands of trees were sacrificed to ravenous wood chippers, and our house rose near the edge of what would become the town’s swankiest gated community. We moved in on the first day of summer. Mrs. Kozmatka, the nanny my mother had hired, told me to stay on the grass in the backyard when I played outside. I wasn’t allowed to set foot in the woods, which my mother believed to be teeming with snakes, ticks and poison ivy.
In her defense, Mrs. Kozmatka was new. She knew nothing of my history. And for the first couple of hours, I gave her no cause for concern. I sat exactly where I am right now and stared at the trees. Everything seemed so much more alive in the forest. As I was watching, I heard branches snapping and leaves rustling. And then someone stepped out from the other side.
I’d been playing a lot of Harry Potter games that summer, and I was convinced it was some kind of mythical creature. It was pretty clear that it wasn’t a centaur, but I figured it could be a faun or a sprite. Even if the creature had spoken to me on that first encounter, I wouldn’t have believed she was human. I’d never seen another kid so dirty. She was covered in dried mud from head to toe. It was camouflage, Kat later informed me. And it worked like a charm. That day, when the nanny came outside, Kat took a step backward and vanished so completely into the woods that it was almost as if she’d been swallowed whole.
My tender young mind was totally blown. My family had just moved from Manhattan. The first eight years of my life had been filled with fancy private schools and playdates with kids named Arlo and Phineas. It was an ideal life, which was why my therapists had so much trouble identifying the cause of my behavioral issues. (Arlo and Phineas got their asses kicked on a regular basis.)
In hindsight, it all seems perfectly clear to me. I’d been kept in a cage my entire life. I wasn’t a kid. I was veal. And then this portal opened up in suburban New Jersey and I was offered a glimpse of an untamed universe. I didn’t tell the nanny about the creature I’d seen. Instead I spent the next few hours eagerly waiting for it to return. I was sure it was spying on me, but it didn’t set foot on my grass again. And by lunchtime I just couldn’t wait any longer. When the nanny went inside to make tuna sandwiches, I slipped into the woods to go find it.
I was only a few yards past the tree line when I heard Mrs. Kozmatka calling for me from the backyard of my house. When her cries grew more frantic, I stuck my fingers in my ears and kept going until I couldn’t hear her anymore. The deeper I went, the wilder the woods got. Everywhere I looked, there were signs of the creature. Boards nailed to the trunks of trees—makeshift ladders leading to lookouts positioned high above in the canopy. Lean-tos built with branches and bows, their interiors carpeted with soft green moss. A massive fort made from scavenged wood, plastic tarps and car tires. I climbed every ladder and lay inside every shelter. I felt like I’d made one of those discoveries no one makes anymore. I’d stumbled across an abandoned world.
That whole afternoon, I remember having no sense of time passing. And then suddenly I was hungry and thirsty and the sun was beginning to set. As it grew dark, I saw a light appear in the distance. I hurried toward it and discovered a little white house tucked between the trees. A gravel driveway snaked toward the other side of the woods. The place I’d found was no fairy-tale cottage. It was more like a tumbledown shack. Half of it seemed to be sinking, and there were several kitchen appliances rusting on the front porch. Patches of paint had peeled away from the walls, leaving the house looking sickly. But the light was on in the living room, and I caught the scent of bacon in the air. I was trying to work up the courage to knock on the front door when I heard the growls.
Three dogs emerged from the brush. They seemed enormous to me at the time, but they couldn’t have been much bigger than your average border collie, and all three of them were clearly starving. Their gray-and-golden coats were mottled and their skin clung to their ribs. The trio slinked toward me, yellow fangs bared. They’d been stalking me for a while, and they were ready to make their move. I was a plump little veal calf lost in the woods. I’m sure I looked absolutely delicious.
I grabbed a stick off the ground and backed away slowly, holding the large twig in my hands like a sword. I knew better than to run. I needed to climb something. I was so busy scanning my surroundings for a tree with low-hanging branches that I forgot to look down. I tripped over a rock, tumbled backward and fell to the ground. The dogs were on me in an instant. I waited to feel their teeth sink through my skin.
Then the air popped behind me. One of the dogs howled in pain and sprang at least a foot in the air. Another pop and there was a spray of sawdust from the trunk of a nearby tree. A third pop followed and the dogs fled.
I examin
ed my arms and legs for missing flesh and bloody wounds, but much to my surprise, I was completely intact.
“Hey! You okay?” a voice called out to me.
I picked myself up and turned to face it. There on the porch of the house was a girl my age. I saw the hair first—a fierce mane of copper curls. Then my eyes moved to the pellet gun in her hands. The freckles came into view as I walked toward her. They covered the bridge of her nose and spread out over her cheeks. But it was the eyes I recognized. They belonged to the mud-covered creature I’d seen spying on my house. “Those your dogs?” I asked.
“Nope,” said the girl. “Those’re coydogs. Half wild dog, half coyote. They used to live farther out in the woods. Then you cut half the forest down. Now they’ve been hanging around here at night, eating our garbage.”
“I didn’t cut down the forest.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. People like you.”
“Where’d you learn how to shoot so well?” I asked. My eyes were practically fondling her pellet gun. None of my friends in Manhattan had that kind of stuff. If a neighbor had spotted a kid with so much as a slingshot, child protective services would have been alerted.
“My gramma taught me. She says you gotta be tough when you’re pretty and poor.” I must have stared at the girl a little too long. Her brow furrowed and her eyes turned hard. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I’m not pretty enough. I shouldn’t be worried,” she snapped.
“That isn’t what I was thinking,” I told her honestly. “You just don’t look like anyone I’ve ever met before.” Which was true but completely pathetic. I probably would have seen lots of kids like her in New York if I’d ever left the Upper East Side.
The girl scowled, like she couldn’t figure out whether to be offended. “Well, I’m not like anyone you’ve ever met before,” she finally said. Then she glanced up at a patch of blue sky. “It’s going to be dark soon. Want me to walk you back to your house?”