by Mike Roberts
We would end up walking around endlessly, riding the city buses in circles, doing nothing. We would make a plan, get all the way there, and Avi would call it off. I would try to force him to follow through, to strong-arm him. I would get mad, but it was no use. It seemed like this was the thing he’d wanted all along: to get a rise out of me.
I would try to relax and remember I was on the clock, and it didn’t matter what we did because I was going to get paid either way. But the time just crawled this way. We were wallowing in a thirteen-year-old boy’s infinite boredom.
* * *
The strangeness of the job was not lost on me, either. My friends thought the whole situation was hilarious. They would beg me to recount days spent babysitting for their own amusement. They were charmed by this little boy’s prankishness and off-color cuss words. They wanted me to bring Avi out to the bars and make him do parlor tricks. “We’ll give Little Bro a handful of quarters for the pinball machine,” they would say. “And then you can set Daddy’s credit card up on the bar.” Har-har-har, everybody wins.
But I never did bring Avi around, which was too bad, really. He would have loved these stupid dudes. They were living out a teenage boy’s wet dream of adulthood: drinking and smoking and watching skateboard videos all day. If they wanted to look at porno on the computer, or eat pizza and ice cream for dinner, they just fucking did it! There were no adults to say no to us. We were the adults!
* * *
It would be unfair to say I didn’t take the job seriously, though. I tried to look out for Avi without pandering or kissing his ass. I was brutally honest with him in a way that I wasn’t sure anyone else could be. He was a good kid deep down, I knew. He was lucid and funny and spontaneous around me. We had our inside jokes and little routines. We were capable of having honest-to-god real fun together.
In the end, though, I had no idea how to help this kid. The only great wisdom I had to impart was to stop being a shithead. I told him this over and over, waiting for it to sink in. This is the reason you have no friends, I would say to him in earnest. You lie and then you laugh about it. You talk shit on people for no reason, and that is a terrible, terrible plan. But I never really got anywhere this way. Avi loved my little pep talks. He would squeal with delight whenever I tried to play the adult.
If anything I am understating the lying. You could hardly have a real conversation with the kid. It was like a reflex that he wasn’t in control of. Lies about everything, constantly. Lies about the lies. Lies right to his parents’ faces that they didn’t bother calling him on. Dick and Virginia never stopped it, that’s for sure. There was an air of frazzled obliviousness about their house. Dick told me about a therapist they’d taken Avi to the previous winter, but the kid knew exactly what she wanted to hear him say. He had a whole act of contrition he was able to perform at will. He could be very smart that way.
So the lies carried on, unchecked. Lies about bands I didn’t listen to and movies I didn’t watch and celebrities I didn’t know. Lies about parties and tests and sports scores that never happened. Lies about the plots of television shows and summaries of book reports that Avi claimed to be writing. Lies about the crimes he had committed and the girlfriends he had unceremoniously dumped. All these endless exploits with a revolving cast of imaginary friends. They were eternally skipping school and drinking beer and smoking cigarettes together. They were destroying public property and finger-banging ninth-graders. This endless litany of dangerous things that Avi claimed to have seen and done. The thing that killed me was that most of his lies weren’t even in service of anything. He wasn’t lying to avoid punishment or gain tangible things; he was just lying.
At first I found it amusing, and sort of refreshing, that Avi was still so sheltered about the world that he had to invent danger this way. I would play the game with him, peppering him with follow-up questions to see how far he could stretch the lie. I would call bullshit on him endlessly, until he finally admitted that what he was saying was impossible. I would hector him into giving up.
But Avi would just laugh because it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t stick to him. He saw no consequences; there was no remorse. Every empty contradiction was a chance to reset the lie. It was incredible. I never really got him to cop to anything.
* * *
Our relationship had soured lately, though. I was locked into the hard routine of it: the bike ride, the bus routes, the school schedule. Sadly, I needed the money. I was every bit the paper tiger I’d despised: the adult in loco parentis. I knew that Avi could tell I was getting tired of his bullshit, too, and it only made him press harder, almost unbearably.
As I rode my bike into the West Hills toward the Jewish day school, I tried to put him out of my head entirely. What I was thinking about then was an email that had come to me, out of the blue, from a New York literary agent named Bettina Kleins. She’d read a short story I’d published in a small magazine about fighting with Lauren Pinkerton. She wanted to know where I was, and what I was doing, and what else I had written. Bettina was excited and I was easily flattered. Having smoke blown up my ass was a brand-new experience, and I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed its gross effects.
In a fit of vanity I sent Bettina Kleins four hundred pages of A Cattle, a Crack-Up, my convoluted novel about a dairy farmer on the verge of mental and physical collapse. And almost before I could regret it, Bettina got back to me, saying that she loved the book and felt certain she could find a publisher, as long as I was willing to do a rewrite.
“You just have to rewrite it a little,” Bettina assured me. “It’ll be great. There’s a wide-open market for this Middle America hipster ennui stuff right now…”
This embarrassed me a little. “Is that what I wrote?”
“Well, no, not the book. You!”
“Oh,” I said, feeling queasy. I had no idea what this meant, but I already doubted my ability to pull it off.
Bettina and I exchanged three more emails, and another rushed phone call, about what exactly rewrite meant to Bettina. Rewrite how? In what way? To what end? What exactly was I supposed to keep intact in the rewrite process? Bettina seemed to think it all pretty much self-evident, imparting her confidence in the repetition of the word rewrite. This was the proverbial punch in the arm. Go get ’em, tiger, she might as well have said to me.
Bettina was exceedingly kind, but I wasn’t sure I trusted her taste in my book. Or any books, frankly. I had reread A Cattle again and lost my nerve completely. I was clearly punching above my weight, and I couldn’t imagine having the thing published at all now. It was a fucking mess. Who writes an Iraq War allegory about a dairy farm in the midwestern United States? And was that stuff even in the book anymore? Hadn’t the country moved on? I wasn’t sure how to stand out in front of any of it. I mean, Jesus Christ.
The prospect of rewriting anything in this book was daunting, to say the least. I could barely remember having written it to begin with, and now I had no way of getting back into that space. A Cattle, a Crack-Up became an albatross that I carried around my neck like so much dead weight. The book hung in purgatory: not published, not rejected. Everything hinged on the simple idea that I could just rewrite it.
Bettina invited me to come talk to her about it in New York (at my own expense, of course). I found the whole thing intoxicating and disappointing all at once. New York City was the last place I wanted to go, which hardly mattered, since I had no money anyway.
“Portland!” Bettina bellowed. “You can’t get out much farther than that, huh?” Needless to say, I did not mention the babysitting.
* * *
At three thirty the school doors flew open and Avi came out, desperately untucking himself and smirking like a criminal. “Let’s go to Starbucks. I need a mo-fucking coffee.”
“You’re not allowed to drink coffee, dum-dum. We go over this every day,” I said patiently.
“Nuh-uh, no. My mom changed her mind.”
“Stop lying.”
“It’s true. She saw some study on 60 Minutes about how coffee improves your test scores.”
“Uh-huh, right, I saw that study.”
“You did?” he asked with a new kind of smirk.
“Yeah, it said that coffee makes your wiener shrink, too.”
“Shuuut up.”
“It’s the truth,” I said, trying to stay humorless.
“Fine, then your wiener is shrinking like crazy. You drink coffee all the time.”
“Dude, did you even watch the show?” I asked, with my own smirk now. “That’s the opposite of what it said! They talked specifically about middle schoolers. You, buddy.” I tried to offer this with great gravity.
“Yeah, yeah, well, whatever…” Avi said, losing interest completely.
Every day was like this now. I had started taking the last word, just because I could. Because it was easy and it shut him up for a second. It was pathetic, but I was pathetic, too. Believe me, I had no illusions of being a good babysitter, or a role model, or even a good person. But I was competent and I was safe. I wasn’t going to let this kid torture any animals or burn anything down on my watch. Of course it would have been nice to help Avi in some perfect world, but I was pretty much phoning it in at this point. I was unabashed about going through the motions. I told Avi he had gotten very boring to me. I told him outright that the only reason I kept showing up was for the money. Dick and Virginia had raised a shitty kid who didn’t have any clue how to treat other people. Liberal parenting, I told him, was an exploded myth!
But Avi would just laugh at me. He thought my complaining was hilarious. He barely even listened when I spoke anymore. I was just some furniture to beat up on. More than anything, Avi needed attention. Friendlessness had starved him this way. He needed to show off in my presence, to abuse me. Any calm I could engender, he felt duty-bound to shatter. It was like a little bell going off in the back of his brain. Avi wasn’t happy unless he was getting some sort of rise out of me. Finally, I realized that he did think of me as a friend. His only friend. And that just made the whole thing sadder.
Strictly speaking, there was one kid, named Josh, who tolerated Avi pretty well. Josh waited for the #44 bus with us after school, and I understood that he kept coming around for the spectacle as much as anything. Sniggering as Avi singsonged in swear words: fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Lobbing them at me, the adult. They would laugh and titter as I’d confirm that, yes, I was a gay retard, so what?
But today, Josh was up in my face with his mucus-y braces. I could see that he was reveling with something to say. “I told my mother you hang around with Avi after school.”
“So what?” I said, stepping out into the street to look for our bus.
“So, she says she doesn’t trust you. And that I should be careful when I’m around you.”
Avi and Josh burst into a churlish laughter. I turned away, trying not to care. But today was really just the wrong day for this shit.
“Yeah, well, your mom sounds like a real bitch,” I said.
Poor Josh’s face dropped. He had no idea what to say to this. Avi was squealing like a pig, pointing at him, as he turned red. No, this did not make me feel any better, but what did I do? I didn’t even know this lady, and I wasn’t gonna take any more of little Joshy’s bullshit today. Getting called a pervert? Fuck that.
Unfortunately there was some precedent for this. Avi and I used to walk to the park after school, which sounds perfectly wholesome and good. Except that this park was at the back of an elementary school, and it was swarming with eight-year-olds. Avi would drag us down there just to sit and watch. I’d try to get him to kick the soccer ball with me, but he wouldn’t. He was fixated on the hierarchies of the children. I had no idea what to make of this until one day he actually worked his way into their games. I’d never seen Avi this way before, coming alive as he shouted out instructions and remade the rules. He was funny and charming and domineering. These kids treated him like he was some sort of fucking god!
Anyway, I had to tell Avi no way, after that. Mothers were looking at me and starting to whisper. And I couldn’t disagree! The whole thing was totally inappropriate. A thirteen-year-old boy and a twenty-five-year-old man cannot sit on a picnic bench watching eight-year-olds play four square. We looked like some kind of professional team of pederasts! Unh-uh. I was sorry for him, but I had to pull the plug on the park.
In some way, I knew I wanted Josh to tell his mother what I’d said, too. She could call Virginia and complain. Nice and easy, tidy, done. Getting fired would be a relief, I thought. Let somebody else take this abuse. But I knew Josh could never say that word in front of his mother. And, by now, I was sorry I had said it; I had no beef with Josh. I actually wished it were his mother paying me thirteen dollars an hour to ride the city buses through downtown Portland with him. But Josh didn’t need that kind of supervision.
The thing was, I actually showed a lot of restraint around these kids. I wasn’t particularly interested in corrupting them in any way. I wasn’t there to show off or give anyone a hard time. I just wanted the whole thing to be low-key and uneventful. But the #44 bus was taking forever today. Josh ended up leaving on the #64. Mondays were soccer practice or Tae Kwon Do, or something else. I think it goes without saying that Avi had no sports or activities. Avi had me. And there we were, alone again, waiting for our bus.
I walked out into the street and turned back to find Avi breaking off a tree branch. I watched him slap it against the sidewalk brainlessly, before, BANG, he smacked my bike with it. He was beaming and begging me to react, but I didn’t say anything. Avi stabbed the stick through the spokes of my wheel and started rattling them hard. I reached out for him and he flinched, backing away, laughing.
“Cut the shit,” I warned him. “I’m not in the mood today.”
Avi giggled and jabbed me in my side with his stick, hard enough to feel it. I turned and backed him off again. Suddenly this was a game we were playing.
“You touch me with that fucking stick one more time and I’m gonna rip your liver out and eat it, little boy.”
Avi snickered happily. “I thought you were a vegetarian?”
“I’m a fucking cannibal,” I said, showing him my teeth.
Avi tittered and backed away again as I looked for our goddamn bus. All of a sudden, WHACK! That little fucker slashed me across the back of the legs. He looked at me with a wolfish grin on his face, like he could hardly believe his own gall. I almost lost it, backing him up and ripping the stick out of his hands, as he begged for mercy.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
I cocked the whip back, ready to slash him in two. Avi flinched, and I launched the stick over his head into the woods.
“There. Now fucking stop it. Just stand still and don’t touch anything. I’m not kidding.”
Avi loved it when I got surly. He knew that he was winning and he’d start giggling uncontrollably. I glowered at him as he drifted back to the tree.
“Don’t even think about it. I’ll leave you here in a heartbeat.”
Avi’s eyes got big and he begged for me to go. “Please…”
“No,” I said. “As long as it’s making you miserable, I’ll stay.” Avi smiled, and I smiled back, watching him pull down the next branch. “Don’t do it, dum-dum. Use your brain.”
But Avi did it, and the new stick was longer, too. He was dizzy with its power. Jabbing it at me theatrically, like a fencer. I stood my ground and made a show of not flinching. I was cold and unimpressed.
Boom! He jabbed it right past my head, just missing. I batted at the stick wildly, looking like a fool. And suddenly I was furious all over again. Avi loved it, shuffling backward. I stared daggers into him as he giggled at me. This was the closest I had ever come to hopping on my bike and just abandoning him.
Avi wasn’t stopping, either. There was a kind of crazed chortle in his throat as he danced around. And before I even realized it, he lunged and stabbed me in the face! I
pulled my hand up to my cheek reflexively, checking for blood. We looked at each other then, stunned. I didn’t even think, I just took two giant steps forward and kicked my thirteen-year-old ward in his bony ass as hard as I could. A kick that was four months in the making if it was a day! And it felt fucking great.
Avi went flying, but he didn’t fall. He looked back at me with his mouth hanging open, stupefied. I turned away angrily, embarrassed. I could barely process how enraged this whole situation had made me.
I watched as Avi threw away the stick and turned to me, unsure.
“Did that hurt?” I asked him.
“No,” he said uncertainly, and we didn’t say anything after that.
We waited for the #44 bus in silence. I saw Avi touch the back of his leg and I was ashamed of myself. What kind of monster does a thing like this? Right here in front of the school and everyone? It was probably caught on camera, for all I knew. And what if it left a bruise? What if Avi showed it to Dick and Virginia and those rich, liberal fucks called the police on me? I could already see my picture in the newspaper: “Babysitter Kicks Kid.” How do you live a thing like that down?
And yet, I still wasn’t ready to apologize to Avi for anything. And now the #44 was finally coming, too. I put my bike onto the front rack and paid our fares, and we sat down together like always. I tried to think of something placating to say. Something that could save me and reset everything. But before I could think of anything, Avi turned to me with his mischievous smile intact.
“You know what I think?”
“What?” I asked, nervous about where he was going with this.
“I think we should get out at the Starbucks. I think we need some coffees.”
“Coffees?”
“Yeah, a bunch of coffees,” he said. “Shit-tons of coffees.”