Short People (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Joshua Furst

  He approached personal affairs Socratically. To his mind, mistakes came about through philosophical misunderstandings, through selfish ignorance of how we are all connected, because someone forgot to consider the effects of his or her actions. He was good at noticing this when it went on around him and equally good at neglecting his personal role in its happening, at standing back and sniping at anyone near enough to show their weakness, teaching them how to be stronger and better and more enlightened, all without ever admitting that he himself might also be partly to blame.

  And right here, on this one day, I think, Dad’s contradictions finally broke.

  “So, what do you kids have to say for yourselves?”

  Nothing but puppy-dog smiles.

  “You don’t have anything to say? Do you even understand what you did?”

  Denali answered. “We were watching the TV?”

  I tried my best to keep smiling.

  “Watching the TV. This is funny, huh? You think this is funny.”

  “No.”

  “Why are you smiling, then? Why are you smiling? You kids, you act like you live in the jungle. It’s going to stop. You don’t even understand what I’m saying, do you? Right now . . . it is going to stop.” His face got red, and he jumped to his feet. “And wipe those fu—shi—dang smiles off your faces before I smack them off.”

  What went through his mind in that instant?

  Did his thoughts pause on his attempts to get through to Social Services? Did he wonder about the home life of the counselor he’d wanted so badly to speak to? Did he compare himself to her? His lily-white self, whose one or two dabbles in drugs had been truly recreational, part of a search for enlightenment? Did he think about the stories he read in the papers about the unwed mothers in the projects where there was no heat except when their children, no older than his, brought down on themselves a sort of heat that didn’t warm the house but left it colder? Did he make the connection between the Department of Social Services—across the river in D.C.—and the reports from the devastated neighborhoods there? He lived in the suburbs, in the upper-middle class, where the walls of his life were padded. Did he realize how infinitesimal our problems were, really, when compared to those Social Services dealt with each day? Did he realize that his quacky beliefs about the best way to live didn’t make our lives better, they just made us seem like cheapskates and freaks? Did he realize how condescending it was to the poor American underclass for him to forsake the American Dream of winning by having the most toys? And did he understand how immature it was of him to throw a tantrum and destroy the phone just because they hadn’t dropped everything to save his white ass?

  Maybe. I don’t think so, though.

  I think he was too self-absorbed to do any of that. I think he was blaming us, his two rugrats who just wouldn’t learn and who just didn’t care, who at their young ages had already fallen into depravity. I think he was wishing we’d never been born because then his life would still have had structure. I think he was regretting the faith he’d had in his wife’s ability to transform her life. I think he was beginning to believe she would’ve been better off in the psych ward, doped up, lobotomized, locked away from this world that was capable of hurting even sane people like him. I think he was trying to expel his anger and self-pity.

  And that’s why he grabbed my sister so roughly and pulled down her panties and buckled her over his knee. That’s why he hit her and hit her with his open palm. That’s why he was out of control for the first time since his Alaskan enlightenment.

  Or maybe it was because he loved us. Maybe it was because he knew he was wrong and he couldn’t lock us away from the world regardless of how ugly that world might look. Maybe it was because, in lieu of reason, he knew only his own father’s manner of discipline.

  I think, maybe, he wasn’t thinking anything. Maybe he was just feeling the depths of his failure, and the wild beating he was giving Denali really did hurt him more than it hurt her.

  I watched as Dad’s hand swung down and Denali winced— spank, wince, spank, wince, spank, wince, like a machine, the parts repeating the same motions over and over. I imagined what it was going to feel like when he got to me. It would sting at first, but then feel numb. There’d be pinching where, bracing himself, he roughly gripped the baby fat under my armpit. Bright red welts would appear on my behind, and they would ache for days.

  Denali screamed, a sustained high pitch. But for all that noise, she didn’t struggle.

  I wondered how many times he’d have to hit her before he was sure she had learned her lesson. Was he counting? And would he hit me the same number of times?

  If I’d been swift, I would’ve run for some nook or cranny in which to hide, but I couldn’t move. I was stunned and confused and felt somehow deserving of my turn. I knew what we’d done wrong now. It wasn’t watching TV, it was the other thing, the one that had felt so dangerous at the time. I’d raped Denali. Or she had raped me. Either way, I was dirty and in need of punishment.

  But before my turn arrived, Mom put an end to it. I’ve tried to understand her perspective on all that happened, as well. Somehow, while Dad spanked Denali, Mom had tried her arm against a much larger foe, herself, and miraculously she’d won. When she stormed into the room—at least for that moment, that day—she seemed to have ripped the tongues from her internal tormentors and escaped the country where they’d been holding her. Years of analysis hadn’t been able to achieve results like this. Dad’s shower of love, the padded room he had tried to create with his high art and classical music—none of this had helped her find a way out. Now, here she was, victorious, livid, back in reality.

  “Stop it! No more. Don’t touch my—you’re gonna have to get out, do you hear me? I’ll kick you out if you lay one more hand on my daughter.”

  He froze mid-swing and Denali squirmed out of his grasp and waddle-ran to her bedroom, slamming the door on us, five, six, twelve, fifteen times until I heard the wood begin to splinter and the hinges begin to pop.

  “I mean it,” Mom said. She prowled warily around the room, shooting looks at Dad, growing stronger and saner as the minutes descended like rain.

  It was as if they’d changed places.

  Dad was a figment of his haunted past now. He stared at his hands. His face twitched. Alaska no longer existed. Or not the Alaska that had changed his life. The one after which he’d christened his daughter, the one that had taught him to see, was gone. Now there was flat land and big sky and wind. Now there was only a slushy plain through which the little he could make out in any direction was the same empty nowhere offering no escape. Watching his footsteps and testing the rock, rappelling and choosing the daunting, more treacherous, fulfilling path, he had arrived at the wasteland he’d been climbing away from. He should have known. There is nothing but wasteland.

  He hid his face in his hands and cried.

  “Come on, get dressed,” Mom said, steadying her palm on my head. “Tell Denali to get dressed. We’re going to Best Buy.”

  Defeated, resigned, his emotions flaccid, Dad swept his bleary eyes across the room until they came to rest on Mom.

  “To buy a TV.”

  Nothing could touch him, not even this. He bowed his head to her, nodded and shrank.

  I scurried off to Denali, but she wouldn’t open her door.

  “Denali,” I whispered, “Mommy’s gonna take us to go get a TV.”

  I waited.

  “Come on, we get to help pick it out.”

  I waited and knocked and waited and knocked.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “But, Denali—”

  “I don’t care.”

  Putting my clothes on alone in my room, I let the smile crack over my face. We were going to Best Buy to purchase a TV. Our lives would be better now.

  As Mom and I left, she called over her shoulder, “If you want to, you know, you’re free to come with us,” but Dad was still surveying the mess he’d made. He stayed behind, shivering,
confused, lost.

  IV. And

  After the TV was bought and the cable installed and the dog shit cleaned up—the dog itself in fact carted by Dad to the ASPCA against the rest of our wishes—after the broken phone had been fixed, and my sister and I had been marched across the street to offer the sheepish apologies that Suzy’s mother refused to accept, after our family gave up on chore lists and Mom went on Wellbutrin and Dad stopped trying to teach us right from wrong, and Mom and Dad stopped having sex, stopped spooning, even, clinging instead to their carefully apportioned sides of the bed—after all that, our family finally began to resemble something a lot like normal.

  There were no more house fires sparked out of boredom. There was no more drawing on the living room walls with crayons. No more Bloody Murder. No streaking the backyard or sneaking off to see Suzy. We never exposed family secrets again. No, we became good little children, my sister and I, humble and meek and scared of our shadows. We walked in the light with our heads down.

  Other things disappeared, too. Dad gave up taking us to art museums and orchestra concerts and the ballet. Homer and Tolkien disappeared from our bedtime rituals. The voices in Mom’s head seemed gone for good, as if pushed out by those that climbed into our house through the TV set. She gave up crying, but she also gave up smiling. We didn’t jump Dad and drag him down to our level when he arrived home from work anymore, instead we just shrugged and fought over the remote control.

  We stopped hugging each other.

  During the six years it took Mom and Dad to finally decide to separate, Mom watched TV like an addict. Now she does Human Resources, censoring the real-life soap operas in Atlantic Republican Bank’s credit-card department. Dad remarried immediately after the divorce. He and his new wife do not have children, but they do have a television set; his house is cold, as encrusted with frost as tundra. Denali came out of the closet three years ago, and though I wonder if what happened this day might have had some bearing on how she turned out, I haven’t asked. I don’t understand her. My mother, my father, I think I know them. From my sister, I am estranged.

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  When she’s clean enough to reminisce, his mother will fill him with stories of his father’s rage at the powerful, elusive forces that had kept him down, of how he’d been haunted by what he imagined they’d eventually wring around his black neck. She’ll tell him how she was so afraid of loneliness she’d let his father take this rage out on her. And about how his father had left her without warning or reason anyway. When she’s not clean, she’ll barely speak to the boy. She’ll sway and nod on the sofa, half eyeing the television with the glassy eyes that look more fake than those falling off of his stuffed frog. Or she’ll throw things at him because he’s young, because he can’t do anything without help. He’ll be scarred here and there, mostly nicks—but this one time, playing caretaker, she’ll have a spatula slick with hot grease. She’ll be turning bacon, an entire package, turning and turning already burnt bacon, obsessively focused on the soothing repetition. He’ll tug at her shorts and ask what’s that smell. When she kicks him, muttering under her breath, he’ll say, “Mommy, it smells like burning and lookit, the smoke, and I’m scared, Mommy, maybe the building’s afire.” Turning and not seeing his moist wide eyes, she’ll bring the hot aluminum down on his back. Grabbing his nappy hair, she’ll bring it down on his back. He’ll twist and writhe as she keeps on smacking. A blow will hook skin with the tool’s blunt edge and then he’ll be bleeding like he’s just been knifed—four inches long right below the collarbone, it will look like they went for his heart and missed. He won’t be doctored but she’ll go to rehab, shocked straight from the sheer horror of it. When people ask, he’ll blame it on the father, who he’ll say had tried to kill him before taking off to find some other mess. He’ll tell the story so often that it will become true. Chilling one teenaged day, smoking a blunt in the park, he’ll tell it again to some sad-eyed old guy. He’ll like the guy. He’ll ask, what’s his name, sounds familiar—it will take a second, a delayed reaction, the blood hanging back so it can clot with rage. Sizing the old man up, he’ll contemplate murder but the sad eyes will sway him against it; there’s no way those eyes could rail against the world, hurt a fragile woman or stab their own son. The boy will save his urge for when he gets home, but by then he will have lost the nerve.

  SHE RENTED MANHATTAN

  The blue-and-white-striped sweatshirt, or the ribbed off-white sweater from the Limited, the Guess jeans or the short skirt with black tights, maybe the other Limited sweater—the one with the pocket sewn on at the hip—or the maroon lamb’s-wool one she got from Benetton for her birthday, she could wear it with the tan Banana Republic pants . . . but she doesn’t want to be too dressed up.

  Mary can’t decide. There are too many choices. There’s no way to tell which one’s right. Although all the clothes in her wardrobe imply “Mary,” each item reflecting at least a tint of the bright attitude she tries to have toward life, there are minutely calibrated differences in how they affect her mood. The wrong combination of wardrobe and mood has her crawling out of her skin, thinking, “This is not me,” or “This is the wrong me,” or “This is an impostor—pay no attention—she’s just trying to give me a bad rep.” With the right combination she feels sexier than she believes she actually is, or smarter, or more fun-loving, or less afraid to leave the house.

  She wishes she knew who would be at the party. Living outside the party loop, Mary usually doesn’t even hear about them until the Monday afterward. Stephanie said this one’s supposed to be big, but who knows, it might be an all-girl thing. If she knew there weren’t going to be boys, Mary would just wear a hooded sweatshirt and the new jeans that still need to be broken in. But how could there not be boys? The entire town knows that Sarah’s parents are in Florida and she has the keys to their lake house.

  Mary’s nervous stomach tells her to dress defensively, just in case people she doesn’t want to talk to—like Justin—show up. She wishes she could wear her ripped jeans, a white pocket tee and the white leather vest that, when she bought it, seemed like such a risk, so capable of labeling her a girl not to be messed with.

  But tonight, she remembers, it’s supposed to be cold. She returns to her closet. She starts from scratch.

  Today is Mary’s birthday. At exactly 2:36 this afternoon, she turned sixteen. Except for the hour out to eat with her parents at the Olive Garden and the half hour during which Stephanie stopped over to deliver her present—a heart-shaped crystal jewelry box that Mary has already filled—she spent the day alone. She rented Manhattan and dreamt of being Mariel Hemingway all afternoon.

  Mary loves Manhattan; those first few notes of Rhapsody in Blue draw her into a world so moody, both romantic and melancholic, that by the end of the film (it’s in black and white on purpose, so it’s a film) she’s convinced that if she were a girl from the Dalton School she would finally be a legitimate person. She’s always imagined that the refined and sophisticated Manhattan so casually captured by this film is far superior to the small Wisconsin town into which she has had the bad luck of being plopped down; Manhattan’s a place where life is not cheap and people are careful to insulate it with bubble wrap—visiting psychiatrists for extra padding and considering the effects of their every action before doing anything stupid. And that girl—to Mary’s blunt mind, a girl like the one in Manhattan could never experience the complete, disassociative wrongness that makes up Mary’s idea of herself. Yes, Mariel Hemingway is the epitome of everything Mary is not and should be. When she strolls through Manhattan, Mary knows it’s where she was supposed to live. This knowledge has a way of cheering her up. She is able to be less ashamed of not fitting into the mise-en-scène she belongs to, that of Goodrich High School.

  Nonetheless, not fitting in is intensely lonely. Mary sometimes imagines that the only life she has is the one she vicariously experiences through Stephanie. Stephanie’s life is exciting. Mary often gets no phone cal
ls for a week, but Stephanie’s phone never stops ringing—even the catty clique that decides their school’s public opinion sometimes calls her. She’s always chock-full of gossip, and no matter how bad Mary knows gossip is, she revels in her almost palpable thrill and shock as it’s invariably passed along. Listening to Stephanie, Mary almost feels bold herself; Stephanie isn’t afraid of anything; she talks about her dates more flippantly than Mary would ever dream of—Mary has gone out on a few dates, but they’re never as exciting as Stephanie’s; they’re always too fraught with emotion.

  Stephanie sometimes drags Mary out into this larger world, and tonight she’s given her no choice. That’s how she phrased it this afternoon: “You don’t have a choice.” And Mary gave in. Anything—even a terrifying party she knows she’s not wanted at is better than moping around the house watching the seconds stand still on the kitchen clock and imagining how much fun the girls who go out with football players are having, how excited the skateboarders must be by whatever misdemeanor they’ve defiantly chosen to pull off tonight, imagining even that the ostracized, the hackers and computer game addicts, are together, celebrating a new CD-ROM with schnapps from someone’s parents’ liquor cabinet. Mary can’t stand another night of that—not on her birthday.