Hollywood Park

by Mikel Jollett

  When I open them again, I’m in a new room and someone is sticking a needle in my arm. I feel the prick of the needle then fall asleep again with my head pounding. This happens six or eight times.

  Am I a man yet?

  At some point I see Dad’s dark brown chestnut boots shining against the green linoleum on the floor. I smell Bonnie’s perfume and hear them talking to the doctor. She kisses me. “Hi, Suuuuuun. You all right? We were worried.”

  Dad sits by the bed in a chair with his legs crossed at the knees. I feel his short beard scratch against my cheek when he kisses me. “You’re okay. You’re okay,” he says, rubbing my face. I look at him but I’m confused. I can’t think. I just don’t want to be in trouble because we ditched school and snuck our bikes out and got high. I think he was high, Dad. I don’t know. I don’t think I was high. I’m sorry. I was trying to go over the jump and he was in the way. I’m sorry. I’ll be grounded. I’ll just be grounded forever.

  On the second morning, after the second night when I was woken every hour and asked questions and had blood taken, when I think I could handle any needle because I’ve been poked a hundred times since getting to the hospital and I don’t even care anymore, I say I want to go home but Dad says I can’t, because the doctors have to watch me and run tests but it’ll be fine, they promise me.

  The doctor says I have a ruptured spleen and a concussion and three contused ribs and if I hadn’t been wearing my helmet I would be dead. Dad says, “No shit,” and whistles, looking at me sideways. “Maybe we should take it easy on the motorcycles for a while.”

  When we leave the hospital, I get to stay home from school for two weeks. Tony calls me from drug rehab and says, “Heard you got in an accident, little bro. I hope you’re okay, dude.”

  “How’s not doing drugs?”

  “It’s not so bad. The people here are pretty cool. We just go to a lot of meetings and sit around most of the time.” He tells me about his new girlfriend, Tiffany. She’s only fourteen. Tony says she is blond and pretty and “cool as fuck.” He hangs out with her most afternoons. Bonnie says they made a home tattoo kit with a needle and some Indian ink. He tattooed a round yin-yang on his ankle. But then he got bored and tattooed a hat and feet on it. He also tattooed “AJJ” on his arm, which he arranged in an overlapping fashion so that the horizontal line of the A became the top of the J to stand for “Anthony Joseph Jollett.” He didn’t like the first one he drew so he crossed it out—also in tattoo—and tattooed another one next to it. Bonnie says he’s doodling on himself and someone should get him some fucking markers.

  It’s good to be home. I like that everyone was worried about me, that they thought I was going to die.

  Bonnie has to go to the hospital too, for some tests. When she comes home, she says she has a tumor. It’s as big as a grapefruit on her fallopian tube and has to come out immediately so there’s going to be an operation. “I named it Raul,” she says, trying to laugh. “What can I say? I’m a grower.” But I know she’s scared because she tells me she always wishes she had kids “from her own body,” but that she can’t and she starts to cry, trying to get the words out. She says she loves me, that even if she had other kids I would still always be “Suuuuuun” like when I was little with the deep voice and the big belly and the teeth like Planet of the Apes. She says that made me special to her and she’s felt that way since she met me when I was six months old in Synanon, when we were taken from our moms and dads to become children of the universe.

  We stay up late in their bedroom talking on the bed with the lights out, staring at the ceiling. The more she tells me how special I am to her, the more I feel like I need to tell her about all the bad things I’ve done. I’m so tired of hiding it, of pretending I am the good son. All the smoking and stealing, the destruction, drinking and drugs.

  And I’m scared she’s going to die and I don’t know what I’d do without her because she’s not like a stepmom but more like a mom who adopted me, who took care of me when no one else would. I don’t want her to die thinking I’m someone I’m not, that I didn’t turn out to be special like they thought I was.

  Tony is in rehab and I was scared in the ambulance and Bonnie is scared because of the tumor named Raul and finally I just say, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and before I know it, I tell her everything because I can’t have her turn into an angel and see my life for all the lies I’ve hidden. I want her to see the quiet place where I am alone. The Secret Place. I don’t want to be there by myself anymore.

  She says it’s okay and she understands because she knows it’s a confession and you can’t be mad during a confession, even though she doesn’t really believe me at first because Tony is the bad son and I am the good son. But I say I want to get good grades and have a future and I don’t want to end up like Tony twitching and strung out and sad on the couch. I want her to live and I don’t want to die on my motorcycle. She hugs me and says we’ll get through this. That’s what families do.

  She calls Dad in and tells him about the confession. He listens quietly and I say I’m sorry and he says he loves me because he knows I’m scared and he leans in and puts his arms around me, hugs me close to him and says, “It’s all right. I’m just glad you’re being honest now. I’ll help you. So will Bonnie. We’re gonna be fine. We’re gonna stick together. You’ll see. No one is going to die. No one is going anywhere, I promise.”

  * * *

  DAD TAKES ME to Hollywood Park. Tony is in rehab and Bonnie is resting from her surgery when they removed Raul the tumor from her insides that grow things like a garden, just not babies. We’ve been bringing her bagels and soup and snacks as she lies under a big white blanket on the couch. The tumor is gone and she is recovering and she isn’t going to die after all and everyone is relieved. She and I talk about high school, about how I want to run track when I get there now that I decided to quit smoking and drinking, how I love to run and I’m going to start trying in school. She tells me she believes in me, she loves me, she’s glad we’re all here and it’s my life to make into whatever I want.

  It’s a crowded day at the racetrack. The familiar excitement fills the air, the sense of possibility, the earthy smell of horse manure and cold beer. Dad is quiet as we walk down to the cashiers to lay our bets for the day. We go to the sandwich shop and order two corned beef sandwiches on rye, two Sprites and two Carnation chocolate malted ice creams. We take the food back to our box and sit down.

  We eat our food and watch the races, screaming for our picks down the homestretch, standing up with the roar of the crowd to scream, “Go, baby!” After a few races, we’re still alive on the Pick Six when out of nowhere Dad says, “Hey, listen, I want to talk to you.”

  He isn’t one for Big Talks. Bonnie says he’s not good at talking about his feelings but that he feels so much and it’s hard for him.

  He stares out over the dirt oval and says, “You know, you don’t have to be like me.” I look up at him. I don’t know what to say. Aren’t we Jollett men? Pirates and thieves, one step in front of the law?

  “You’re a smart kid and you can do more in life than I ever did and that’s what I want for you. I fucked around a lot when I was your age and it didn’t do much for me. I never thought you’d go that way.”

  He looks over his racing form. “Your brother was dealt a different hand and he’s dealing with it now and that’s good. But you have a real chance to do something special.” He puts his racing form down and looks at me very seriously.

  “Don’t fuck it up. Don’t do what I did. Go do something better.”

  His fist is balled on his knee and he taps it gently, the black hair on his hands against the faded blue jeans, the tiny dot tattoo on the knuckle of his middle finger. Is this tough love?

  I fight the urge to cry because we are at the racetrack with the men and boys don’t cry. For so long, I just wanted to be near to him, to be like him. All those nights alone in Oregon wondering what it means to be a man trying to piece it to
gether like re-creating an image from a dream.

  “I love you. You’re my son. You can do things I never did. You know, I never wanted to get locked up.” I see the memory fill his eyes. “We tell funny stories and all, but it was terrible. Being in prison is terrible. Being an addict is no fun. It’s just darkness and you’re alone and you can talk a big game but you’re really just some dumb-shit kid running scared. I wish somebody had told me that when I was your age. I would’ve never gone to prison. But there just wasn’t anyone. I think I maybe would have been a scientist or maybe a musician. I was in the Synanon choir. I got a good voice, you know.”

  I try to imagine him holding a guitar or a saxophone, standing on a stage in sunglasses with the Allman Brothers or Jackson Browne. I want him to be proud of me, more than anything in the world.

  “Anyway, let’s lay an extra bet on this next race. This is our horse.” He puts his arm around my shoulders and squeezes me, letting it hang there for a moment while the earth stands still.

  I tell him about the nights we destroyed property in the neighborhood, about Flesh and Duck and the time I almost OD’d, when the world was spinning and I was three inches tall in my head. He nods and says, “Let’s just say it’s good you got it out of your system early.”

  There is no judgment, just a warm feeling like he is on my side.

  I wonder if this is just another way Mom lied to me about the world. Your father who left me for a tramp. Your father with nine fingers. Your father who only likes sports and cars. I know the words by heart, the implication that our lives are a story of escape and he is the villain. But here he is next to me reasoning with me, trying to get me to go down a different path. He doesn’t even want me to become a Jollett man. Or maybe he wants to change what that means.

  Dad and I go to the track every weekend for a while, while Bonnie recovers from her surgery and Tony is in his drug rehab. I learn to box my exacta bets and to broaden the Pick Six field on a race when I’m less sure about the winner. I learn the names of the guys who, like my dad, go there to sit in the sun and take in the day, to let the future have some possibility. They even start to ask me about my bets. Who ya got in the fifth, kid?

  Sometimes we don’t talk much. We just sit there and eat and stare off into the distance. There’s that old feeling of being connected as if by a string. He doesn’t say it but I know he likes sitting there next to me too, to just be a father who has a son.

  When Bonnie goes back to work, she gets a promotion. She’s going to be the first woman to be a vice president in the history of the company where she works. She says she’s honored and she knows lots of women could’ve gotten there first but there was something called the glass ceiling that men put in their way. She started as a telemarketer but she just worked her way up with that big warm personality of hers, making calls, then training salespeople, then managing them, then starting a whole division of the company and bursting right through that glass ceiling. Dad and I are so proud of her, even though she has to work a lot. She says it’s all men in the meetings at her company and that women have to work harder to make the same amount of money and I just think, Who wouldn’t want Bonnie in charge?

  She says Dad doesn’t mind staying home with me while she works. “Say what you will about your father, he’s always been a huge supporter of me and my career. He always tells me I’m good at my job and he’s thankful that I work to support us. That’s hard for some men. Not Dad. I work sixty hours a week and he makes sure I never even have to wash a dish.”

  It’s weird because I was always told by Mom what a Neanderthal Dad is because he likes sports and old cars and so it just seems like so many things she told me that weren’t true about him. Bonnie tells me, “It’s like how he never once missed a single child support payment. Never once in your entire lives. He sent a check every month and it arrived on time.” It’s strange that Mom never mentioned this when she talked about how Dad abandoned us and I’m starting to think maybe he never abandoned Tony and me. He just didn’t want to be with Mom anymore.

  The promotion means Bonnie is going to be gone more working late so one day they sit me down for a Big Talk and tell me Dad is going to stop doing his sunroof company and start another company selling “gift specialties” from home so Bonnie can work more and he’ll be at the house when I’m done with school. He tells me someone needs to look out for me so it may as well be him.

  “That woman could talk a dog off a meat truck,” he says, cooking his favorite dinner, short ribs and fried potatoes. She went to Synanon when she was nineteen, when she was marching for civil rights and attending sit-ins, when she was still a teenager, a “blond bombshell” who wanted a better world. She never went to college. She joined the commune that became a cult instead.

  Dad cooks and keeps the house clean and talks on the phone with different businesses trying to sell them pens or cups or hats with their company logo on them. He wakes me up early on Saturday mornings for my chores so the two of us can get them done while Bonnie sleeps, before we head off to the track. I can feel how much he’s placed his hopes on me. It’s weird, to have this new idea of the man I’m becoming, that I might become, that I don’t have to be a Dope Fiend or a fuckup, that there might be something else waiting for me.

  We finalize our Pick Six order and head to the ticket counter to place our bets. All around us are men yelling at TV screens and men discussing horses and men slumped over their racing forms as I follow him through the crowd. All these men with their dreams, their systems and schemes.

  The crowd gets thicker so it feels like we’re walking through a tunnel. I keep my eyes on Dad’s red shirt and blue jeans in front of me, trying to stay close.

  He never knew his father, not really. It was just his three brothers running wild and his mother cleaning hotel rooms to make ends meet. I wonder if maybe sometime long ago in another life, in a hospital bed or a jail cell or a dirty couch in the Synanon lobby next to a bucket filled with puke, feverish and shaking, he hoped to have a son someday who could do the things he never could.

  When I get home that night and the day’s events flash through my mind, I see him walking in front of me through the crowd of men. They form a tunnel around us, all these angry men with their high hopes for something new. I can feel their breath on my neck, the smell of beer, the thick ankles and cigarette smoke as I follow my father down that path. The tunnel darkens as we walk deeper into it, the way it does in a dream, following the logic of dreams, like we are heading for the center of the earth, a sacred place I imagine on cold nights when I just want to hold everyone in my family close. We follow the path down as it turns from men to dirt and we hear the sound of the track echoing behind us until it is cold and there is the faint sound of water. It’s quiet as we enter a bright room. There’s a crowd of people there, Dad as a skinny young man with a smile on his face and a black spit curl leaning against the wall with a lit cigarette; Mom as a sad little girl with striking green eyes and big Dutch cheeks standing alone in a corner; a teenage boy with dyed black hair, angrily pounding a broken leg against the ground; a bearded man with thinning black hair lying on the ground taking swigs from a bottle in a brown bag. Bonnie as a teenage girl, hopeful and smiling as she stares down at a small blond boy with an enormous overbite and a potbelly running between the adults, looking into each of their faces, searching for something. There’s my grandpa Nat and my grandma Juliette. My aunts and cousins. My grandpa Frank in his chair and grandma Frieda smiling in her robe. There is a small green urn with white marbling sitting on a shelf above them, above that is a floating blue image of a man with a thick mustache talking to the little boy with the overbite. He says, We are here together and we will always be. Nothing can ever change that. Not even death can take it away. That’s what it means to be an F-A-M-I-L-Y. No matter what happens, we can always meet here in this room a thousand feet beneath Hollywood Park.

  CHAPTER 30

  CHILDREN OF THE UNIVERSE

  I’ve decided to c
hange my name again. Mike was fine for junior high but now that I’m in high school, it sounds childish and so I start telling my new teachers to call me by my given name, the one Mom gave me that would be uniquely my own, so I could be a child of the universe. Mikel. It’s strange to hear the name coming from the mouths of my teachers and it feels like an affectation at first because all my junior high friends, Drew, Ryan, Stephen Perkins, insist on calling me Mike.

  By the time I finish my first semester of ninth grade at Westchester High School, the report card that Bonnie puts on the fridge reads five As and one B. I don’t know what I thought school would be. Boring, I suppose. I thought it would be something I did like the standards I had to write when I got busted ditching school in junior high, a kind of repetitive punishment that I accepted because it was either do that or become a Dope Fiend.

  But it wasn’t like that at all. There was a pretty girl named Laura Dorset who sat in the front of my honors English class. She had sandy blond hair and a tiny nose tilted up just like a little ski jump. She wore leg warmers and a big white belt that covered her impossibly small waist. Most days I sat in the back and watched her and when we got to the unit on The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne and our teacher, Mrs. Chavez, asked the class about the A stitched across the chest of Hester Prynne, Laura Dorset raised her hand and said very seriously that she thought the A stood for “able” and not “adulteress, as was her punishment.” Something turned in me, to see this pretty girl taking the book so seriously. She put her hand down and the discussion moved on and for the first time in my life I did homework that night.