by Mike Roberts
We eased ourselves up off the rack as my mother’s minivan came into view. But, as it pulled into the parking lot, it was Kerry who was sitting there behind the wheel. We stood on the sidewalk, frozen, as she circled the island of parked cars to pick us up.
“I thought you said you called Mom,” I whispered harshly.
“I did.”
“Jesus. Fine. Just try not to sound drunk.”
“I’m not even going to speak,” he said solemnly.
I nodded as the minivan slowed to a stop in front of us. Peter slid into the backseat silently, leaving me to sit up front with Kerry.
“Hey,” I said, cautiously.
“Hey,” she answered.
“Sorry to make you pick us up.”
“It’s fine. I wanted to come,” Kerry said. “I had to get out of the house anyway. Mom won’t stop circling me. She keeps thinking of one more thing we need to do.”
I nodded. Even Kerry, it seemed, had a threshold for the ritual of marriage. All these ancient sacraments, passed down through the glossy pages of bridal magazines. In the end, she found herself locked up in my parents’ house on the night before her wedding, like some strange courtesan.
“I’m just ready to be done with it now, you know? I’m just ready to be married and living in my own house with Greg.”
“Right,” I said.
Kerry looked at me with a sideways glance that was impossible to read. I had been watching these gears turn my entire life. Kerry’s gaze had always possessed the uncanny combination of the mean and the well-meaning, and I braced myself for impact.
“It’s not really what I had in mind, you know. Your hair,” she said, smirking.
“Right,” I said, touching my head reflexively. I’d almost forgotten I’d done this.
“This is because of Lauren, isn’t it?”
“What?” I said, taken aback.
“This dramatic gesture,” she said, smiling. “All I ever asked was that you cut the hair out of your eyes. You didn’t have to go all Full Metal Jacket on us.”
“I didn’t,” I said defiantly.
Kerry sighed and shook her head. “Your problem is that you take it all so hard.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve always been this way. You’ve always been the girl in every relationship. Even when you were in high school. You can’t help it.”
I frowned and looked away. Kerry never knew when to shut up about anything. I didn’t know who she thought she was describing, but it wasn’t me. Or, at least, it didn’t sound like me. Then again, I could barely even recognize myself in a mirror.
“I like Lauren, you know. I’m just not sure that she’s right for you.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I think that you’re wrong.”
“I know you do,” Kerry said sadly.
I was staring out the window, feeling trapped inside this conversation. I resented her imposition. Who the fuck asked Kerry anyway? Where did she always get the nerve? I wanted to turn on her now. I wanted to tell her all the disgusting things that Greg had said and done, among his frat-brother groomsmen. But Greg was every bit the choirboy that Kerry knew. He was peace-loving to a fault. And my sister already had his balls in a vise, besides.
“The two of you broke up?” she asked, continuing to press.
“We don’t believe in putting labels on it,” I offered snidely. Where did Kerry come up with this? Who had told her these things anyway? I was desperate just to slow her down now, to make her stop. But Kerry could go on this way forever.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, disarming me again. I wanted to open the door and roll out into the street, or at least curl up on the floor. I’d been sitting on these feelings like land mines for weeks. And now was no time to abandon my post.
As we pulled into the driveway, Kerry reached out and touched my head. She pulled me close and kissed the soft bristles. Reaching into the backseat, she forced Peter to take her hand. And, for a moment, she was there: our older sister; our protector.
“Get some sleep,” she said. “Both of you. No one’s allowed to be hungover tomorrow.” And with that we opened our doors and fled the car in three different directions.
* * *
The next night I broke down and called Lauren’s phone. It was always me who blinked first. Pulling open my shirt and offering my chest to her bayonet. And it was Lauren who never failed to show mercy in these moments. I could hear it in her voice then. She was feeling every bit as ripped apart as I was.
We laughed at the way that these fights could pick us up and drop us down so far outside of our selves. It was hard to even know what had happened. There was no great flash point. It was not possible to say for certain who had decided that she was not coming with me. This was a gun we had been pointing at each other’s heads for weeks.
“It must be awful,” she said, sounding guilty.
“It’s not that bad,” I lied.
“I never should’ve left you all alone.”
It was strange. Now that I had her on the phone, I found I couldn’t speak. As I listened to her breathing I could feel her head pressed to mine for the first time in weeks. And yet, there was this static on the line between us that refused to lift. I didn’t want to feel this way anymore, and neither did Lauren. We had a hole in our guts that was the shape of the other person. It was hard for us to exist with the knowledge of that hole. We didn’t know how to live. We were reaching out to pull each other in. We were desperate just to crash back into each other and live off the heat from the wreckage. In endless reconciliation there is infinite hope.
“I’ve made a mistake,” she said finally.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I want to fix it, though.”
“What do you mean?” I could hear the urgency in her voice.
“I’m going to buy a plane ticket. I want to come to the wedding now. I can be there in the morning.”
“The wedding is over,” I said simply.
“What?”
“It was this afternoon.”
“Oh.” We both started to laugh. “How was it?” she asked.
“I dunno. It was fine. It was a wedding.”
“Right.”
“We got drunk. We danced. I got lonely. I called you.”
“Aw,” she said, and I could feel this little tremor through the line.
“Are you at home?” I asked her finally, knowing that she wasn’t.
“No. I’m in New York. I’m staying at Cokie’s.”
“Are you going to be at home when I get there?”
Lauren sighed and answered without malice, “I don’t know. I hope so.” It hung there between us like a death.
“I hope so, too,” I said.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go home, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, maybe we should find a new home.”
“Yes,” I said. “We need to get out of D.C.”
“It’s poisoned. It’s wrecked. We can’t just keep living there forever.”
“No, exactly. You’re right. We could go anywhere we wanted to.”
“You could come here to New York,” she said hopefully.
“Or we could just go west.”
“Mm,” she said quietly, saying everything she needed to say. “Let’s not talk about it tonight, maybe.”
“Right,” I said, stopping.
It was impossible not to search out a change we could make that could save us from our fate. But it just didn’t matter. The point was to keep breathing into the phone now. To listen and to laugh for each other. To make the other feel less alone.
“Are you still there?” I asked over the silent static.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Good,” I said. “Good.”
MENTOR, TORMENTOR
I had broken up with Lauren for the last time and was suffering a new compulsion to live like a monk. I wanted to be like the
Old Man who put his possessions into a rowboat, paddled it out to the middle of the lake, and sank it. I gave away everything I could and abandoned the rest. I returned my library books and I left town. I wanted to make a change: to give up dairy and drinking and masturbation; to keep a journal and a garden and a job. But real change can be hard to navigate.
I’d been sleeping on a couch in Portland, Oregon, for months: going out too much, drinking too much, screwing unhappily. I let my hair grow long, just because. Stress, depression, self-doubt, I was a fucking riot, man. I was losing weight, too, and I worried seriously that I might have a parasite or a cancer or worse. Or maybe it was just the Indian cart where I’d eaten lunch every day for the last month. It didn’t really matter. I had a thousand dollars left in the bank, which I thought I might try to live off of forever.
And then, amazingly, improbably, I was hired as a babysitter.
This nice rich couple wanted me to pick up their thirteen-year-old son outside his private school each afternoon. That was it: ride the city buses; hang out for an hour; same time tomorrow, easy as pie. It baffled me at first. Avi seemed perfectly capable of navigating the public transit on his own, just like all his friends. Except that Avi didn’t really have friends. He was a pathological liar and an inconsiderate shithead. He made things up and talked shit on people, and then he laughed about it to their faces.
Dick and Virginia, so concerned with doling out the gold stars and self-esteem, were clueless. They didn’t expect enough, didn’t enforce enough, weren’t strict enough by half, to even get on this kid’s radar.
Still, I knew we had it pretty easy. I was no great moralizer. I had no interest in going heavy on Avi. I wasn’t a snitch or a bully. I didn’t give a shit if he swore. I didn’t even particularly care if he did his homework. God knows I was no authority figure, and I could never stomach a paper tiger besides. I was just trying to level with the kid and teach him how to get through the day a little easier. It was simple: I didn’t want a job any more than Avi wanted a babysitter.
The worst of it, though, was that Dick actually made me think I had a shot at getting through at all. He downplayed the lying and the failing grades and the friendlessness as some kind of run-of-the-mill growing pains. I tried to remember, too, that Avi was just a kid. A certain amount of pathology is par for the course, I thought. But Avi bucked and resisted everything I did. He didn’t respect my overtures of friendship and fraternity and peace. His game was to try and steamroll me to figure out how much abuse I would actually take. He felt entitled to it because his parents had bought me for him. I was Richard Pryor in The Toy.
* * *
The last time I’d seen Avi had been fairly typical. It was some sort of bogus teacher conference day, which meant he had the whole day off. Virginia asked me to come over to the house around nine, and I showed up fully expecting to find myself locked out. Avi understood that I had a key, but he couldn’t help taking some sick pride in making me use it. To my surprise, though, the door was open. I came inside and leaned my bike up in the front hallway.
“Hey!” I called up the stairs. “Wake up, fatty. We’re going running today.”
“Run my dick,” Avi squealed nonsensically. I could hear gunshots and explosions upstairs, and I understood that Dick and Virginia had given him his video games back.
I took my raincoat off and looked inside the refrigerator for some orange juice. As I poured from the carton, I stared blankly at Avi’s report card, a sad collage of C-pluses, tacked up on the fridge. I was struck by how overwhelming it must be to have to worry about your children. All these constant little disappointments.
I heard a crash upstairs that might’ve been anything. I rinsed my juice glass and set it in the dishwasher. I looked inside the freezer to see if there were waffles or bagels, or something else. And then, when I couldn’t think of any more delays, I finally went upstairs to find Avi.
“What are those retarded glasses on your face?” he sniggered as I ducked my head into his bedroom. I’d ripped my last contact lens that morning: a three-month pair that I’d been wearing for over a year.
“These are my glasses.”
“Well, they make you look fat and ugly.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you for your honesty.”
Avi laughed and unpaused his video game again. A barrage of military caterwaul and confusion, turned up like a jet engine. I watched the killing field blankly for a beat.
“I thought Dick and Virginia took away your hard drive?” I asked rhetorically.
Avi just laughed airily. I knew he knew all his parents’ hiding spots. As hiding spots go—in the closet, under the bed—they were truly uninspired. This was the problem really, all these half measures. I was a fucking half measure!
“You’re a disgrace to the honor system,” I said flatly. “You know that?”
“What the cocksucking hell is the honor system?” Avi asked over his shoulder.
My phone started ringing in my pocket and Avi paused the game again. He spun around in his chair to face me. “Who is it?” He asked this every time my phone rang. More than anything, he wanted to know if girls were calling me. He wanted to know how many female names there were inside my cell phone. Avi had a lot of earnest questions about how and where an adult man meets adult women. The idea seemed to titillate and stress him all out of proportion.
“It’s your mother,” I said.
“It’s your mother,” Avi mimicked reflexively. I answered the phone and walked back into the hall.
“Hello, hi. You’ve arrived?” Virginia asked. “Oh, good. Did you see my note?”
“Your note,” I said, looking back at Avi. “Where was it?”
“Right on the front door,” Virginia said blankly. I watched Avi put the note into his mouth and chew it into a wet pulp. He looked incredibly pleased with himself.
“Oh, right, I see it now. Avi brought it inside for me.”
Avi fell off his chair, making a comic show of choking on the paper. He laughed and coughed the wet note onto the floor like a dog. I knew Virginia was just going to go over everything on the phone with me now anyway. She would read me a list of things that had been taken away from Avi that week, like the computer. A list of restaurants that we could and could not visit. Movies that were and were not acceptable, etc., etc. None of this meant anything unless I could actually get Avi out of the house.
I hung up the phone and he looked at me expectantly. “Do you want me to tell you to get off the computer?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Too bad. I don’t give a shit. Do whatever you want. I’m on the clock.”
“What do you mean?” Avi asked suspiciously. But I was already walking back into the hallway, where I’d seen a New Yorker on the table. I was more than happy to let him play his video games and wear himself out. I would read, and we’d both be happy.
But as I sat back down in his beanbag chair, he looked at me with something like contempt. As soon as you gave Avi permission to do anything, it lost all its magic. He had no interest in playing video games anymore; he was pissed.
“You can’t read,” he said. “I’ll tell my parents.”
“Go ahead. I’m not afraid of your parents,” I said, cracking the magazine. Avi was never sure what to say in these moments. He liked to hold the threat of termination over my head, but I knew he didn’t really want to get rid of me, either.
This was when Avi smiled sickly. I followed his eyes across the room to a big dent in the drywall. “Jesus,” I said, remembering the crash I’d heard downstairs. “Did you put that fucking hole in the wall?”
“No,” he said, matter-of-fact. “I threw the chair. The chair put the hole in the wall.”
I looked at him in disbelief. He wasn’t even smiling. What do you say to a person like that? “Well, let’s not be stupid. Help me move the dresser in front of it.”
“You move it,” Avi snorted. I reached out and grabbed him by the back of the neck then.
I was losing my sense of humor.
“Okay, okay, okay,” he said, and I let him go. We pushed the dresser over three feet. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was have a conversation about this with Dick and Virginia. This was not my problem.
I was actually annoyed that Avi wouldn’t just sit still and play his fucking computer games like a bad little boy. We both knew that’s what he wanted, and it was my experience that a little video-game violence had a pacifying effect on the kid. Two hours of unbroken mayhem and slaughter was like a little shot of laughing gas for him. It would make our whole day together a little more pleasant. Avi would get giggly and tired, and we would move on to something else.
There was, of course, a whole other period in which Dick and Virginia tried to swap out Avi’s war games for educational fare, like Flight Simulator. But they eventually saw what I saw, which was Avi crashing the plane on purpose over and over. He was aiming at the buildings, like it was some sort of pimply jihadi training game. Avi loved that this could inspire a more genuine outrage than simply blowing the heads off of alien zombie Nazis or whatever.
I told him to stop crashing the flight simulator and he refused, so I yanked the plug right out of the wall. Oh, man. You should’ve seen the little guy freak out then, telling me about RAM and ROM and memory space, while I tried my hardest not to laugh.
“Fine,” he said now, after we’d moved the dresser. “Let’s just go eat, then. I need some mo-fucking French toast.”
And that’s what we did. The whole day went by like this, the way our days always went. We made plans, then argued and stonewalled each other. I would resist or give in, and then Avi would get bored. All these endless little battles in a zero-sum game.
Somehow I never could seem to explain it to him, either. We were on easy street here. We had carte blanche. Dick and Virginia had given me a credit card that we could use to go eat lunch, and watch PG-13 movies, and play arcade games, whatever. But Avi refused. He was deeply suspicious of every idea that wasn’t his own. He acted as if I were trying to trick him. I told him to come up with something else, then, anything. I didn’t care what we did, as long as we did something. But he refused. Avi took great pleasure in refusing me. Grinning with the word no.