by James Brown
“Honey,” I say, “it’s me.”
“What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
“I hate you,” she says, and hangs up.
I call back. She answers on the first ring this time but doesn’t say anything. I tell her I’m sorry. That I want to come home. I go on like this for a couple of minutes before she cuts me off.
“Just do what the fuck you want,” she says. “You always do anyway.”
Then she hangs up.
From my office window I can see San Francisco Bay, the waters a greenish-blue. Beyond it is the coastline, and if I left now I could be there in an hour, cruising along Highway I. I want to get in the car and drive and drive but I know I won’t. I know I can’t. Classes have begun, and already I’m a few minutes late. I grab my briefcase and hurry out of the office.
I dim the lights when I come into the room. I draw the blinds and try to keep my hands from shaking. The students are quiet. At the podium I fumble for my notes. I almost drop the book. Someone laughs, and I look up. It’s a kid in the back, a freshman with purple hair and a spiked dog collar around his neck. “Another rough weekend, Professor Brown?” he says. The girl sitting next to him laughs. The rest don’t see the humor in it, and I appreciate them for it. They’re a range of ages and colors but mostly they’re older. Housewives returning to school after raising their families. Middle-aged men frustrated with their careers and trying to start a new one. I have a guy in his seventies who comes to class with an oxygen tank. I am in my early thirties. The course is a standard comp and lit, required of all English and liberal arts majors.
On the board I write the words guilt, compassion, humility. Beneath that I write Jim as moral instructor and then I begin to read aloud from chapter 22. It’s about a lynch mob who set out after a man named Sherburn because he killed the town drunk for disgracing him in public. And considering my condition I think I’m doing an excellent job of it. My mouth is dry but I read clearly. I go at just the right pace. I pause in all the right places. When I first walked into class and looked out over all those faces I wasn’t sure if I’d make it, if I ought to just dismiss them and save myself the embarrassment. But my confidence grows as I continue to read. I’m on the scene now where Sherburn confronts the mob for the cowards they are; it’s one of my favorite parts, and as I pace in front of the class reading with more passion, it suddenly occurs to me that my notes on the board have absolutely nothing to do with the material at hand. The scene I intended to talk about isn’t even in this chapter. That’s when I lose my rhythm and begin to stutter.
An older student raises her hand.
“Excuse me,” she says. “But I think you went over this last week.”
No one laughs this time, though I wish they had. The silence has less to do with respect than compassion for something pathetic. Ordinarily it wouldn’t be such a big deal—professors get mixed up all the time—but because I’m hungover and strung out and have no business being here, I feel I have to justify myself. I try to look surprised at my mistake. I make an act of checking our syllabus, and finally I smile, admit the error and shake my head.
A young woman in the front row catches my eye. Her name is Sylvia Garcia. She’s a shy, unassuming student who sometimes brings her little boy to class with her, and when I’m conscious of being a good teacher I make a point of calling on the quieter ones. I want to involve everyone. In Sylvia’s case, however, that proves a mistake. The word nigger appears three times in the passage I ask her to read, and though I encourage my students to refer to Jim as Jim, as I do, even when the text uses nigger, I don’t require it. The only rule is to remain true to the spirit of the story. That’s why I don’t initially interrupt her. The first time could be a mistake, the stress she puts on it. The second time is clearly not. There’s a slight but certain venom in her voice. It’s as if she enjoys saying nigger, as if she’s been given a license to offend because it’s there in print.
“Sylvia,” I say, “there’s no reason for that.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
She gives me a wide-eyed, innocent look.
“No,” she says, “I don’t. Tell me.”
Now I wonder if maybe I’m wrong, if maybe I’m imagining things, or being overly sensitive. I don’t think so. Another student, a black woman, gets up and leaves the room.
For a while the class is dead quiet. Everyone is staring at me, and I don’t know what to do, whether to turn today’s lesson into a discussion on race or pretend that nothing has happened and continue where we left off. Either way I’m bound to fail. I take the path of least resistance and dismiss them early. No one protests. No one even seems to care.
The rest of the day is uneventful, and I’m grateful for it, though I regret having wasted the class and the students’ time. They deserve much better. I return to my office, lock the door and spend the next few hours trying to get through a stack of short stories from my next class, Creative Writing 101. The first is set on a spaceship that’s under attack by alien creatures. Another all takes place in the mind of a teenage girl but we don’t know where she’s at until the last line when it’s revealed that she’s about to have an abortion. I’ve read them before, if not these particular stories then something very much like them. I’ve read them so often that I don’t know what to say about them anymore that doesn’t sound cynical or meanspirited. Sometimes I think about turning them back with a match taped to the last page. Instead I write things in the margins like great image or well done or good job or Yes, with an exclamation point, and at the end of the story I comment briefly in still more general terms. I’ve only been at this university for a year, as a writer-in-residence, my first real job out of graduate school, and because of the alcohol and drugs I already feel burned-out.
It rarely happens but the student whose work is due for review today turns up absent. I keep the class waiting for twenty minutes and then, like the first, I let them leave early. Normally I teach three courses each term but the dean of the School of Humanities and the chair of the English department have rewarded me with one less class for recently winning a literary award and publishing a novel called Final Performance. So I’m through for the day except for keeping my office hours, which I have no intention of doing. By now it’s maybe two, three in the afternoon and I need a drink to steady my nerves. I need a drink before I can face my wife and kids.
On the drive home I stop at a liquor store and buy a half pint of Smirnoff. That’s all I want. I’ve resolved, on a whim, that I should at least try to limit myself today. But of course it doesn’t work that way. I live in the town of Santa Clara, about forty miles from the university, and by the time I pull off the freeway the bottle is empty and I need another. Trouble is, I made a resolution to limit myself and I’m determined to stick to it. It’s supposed to be about choice, about willpower, but once the craving kicks in I don’t seem to have much of either. So instead of buying another bottle I make a pact with myself, and as a compromise, because there’s always room for compromise, I agree to one last drink. That’s all. No more. And as further proof of my commitment that last drink has to be beer. There are three dingy little bars on the way to my house, when I pull off the freeway, and I choose the closest one. Before I go in I check my watch. It’s just after four. A couple of old Harleys are parked out front, the chrome shining in the sun.
The jukebox only plays old rock and roll but no one is putting in any quarters. Except for a listless barmaid staring at a silent TV, and a couple of gray-haired bikers drinking in the corner, the place is dead. It’s dark and quiet and I like it this way. There are no potted ferns hanging from the ceiling. There are no bright, airy windows and they don’t make strawberry daiquiris or fluorescent-green margaritas. You come here to drink and the drinks are cheap. I get my beer and then go to the pay phone outside the bathrooms and call my wife to let her know I’m on my way.
We have two children
at this point in time, our third and last son has yet to be born, and the older one answers. He’s only seven but he’s smart and grown-up for his years, maybe too smart and grown-up. Over and over he’s seen his father loaded and strung out and I know it scares him. I know it hurts him as it hurts his mother, and time and again he has had to come to her aid. To comfort her. No child should have to live under these circumstances, and I worry that one day he will grow up to be just like his old man. For all this I feel deep shame, and yet, without explanation, it isn’t enough to keep me from drinking and drugging.
“Hey, Andy,” I say.
“Dad?”
He says it like he’s surprised to hear from me. That I’m alive.
“Where’ve you been?” he asks. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Put your mom on.”
He calls out to her from across the living room. A few seconds pass. I take a drink from my beer. Then he gets back on the line and says, “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Tell her it’s important.”
“Mom,” he calls out, “he says it’s important.”
I can’t quite make out what she says but her tone is clear enough.
“Did you hear that?” Andy says.
“No,” I say.
“Good,” he says.
“Just tell her I’ll be home for dinner.”
I say good-bye and hang up and return to my bar stool. My beer is almost gone, and because I still have a couple of hours to kill before dinner, and because beer is so low in alcohol you can’t honestly count having just one as a bona fide drink, I order another. In the back of my mind I know that I’m rationalizing but at this particular moment, sitting in a dark and quiet bar, it all makes perfect sense. The next time I look at my watch it’s after midnight.
The house we rent is on a tree-lined street in a middle-class neighborhood in Santa Clara. It’s pitch-black out and so quiet that I can hear my ears ringing. I know my wife hears me pull into the driveway. I know my car wakes her. But I also know that she won’t be out of bed to confront me tonight. That will come later, tomorrow morning, after she returns from dropping our older son off at school. Quietly I let myself into the house and fumble through the dark, down the staircase leading to the basement that I’ve made into an office. I turn on the desk lamp. I take a sleeping bag from the storage closet and spread it open on the floor.
As a nightcap I do another line. It’s the last of my dope and the thought of running out panics me but there’s nothing I can do about it, at least not now. I undress and turn out the light and get into the sleeping bag. My heart is pumping hard. I imagine it bursting, the fluids draining, seeping out, filling me up. I close my eyes and clips from the movie at the motel flash through my mind. A woman and two men. Two women together. Then suddenly I hear a rustling noise outside, the snapping of twigs. At first I think it might be the raccoons that live in the sewer and come out at night to hunt for food. I listen more intently, and when I hear it again I climb slowly to my feet and peer through the basement window that looks out over the driveway. A tall maple grows at the curb, and I see something duck behind it. The outline of a shoulder. The shape of a head.
He’s there and then he’s not.
I don’t know if I’m hallucinating. Or just paranoid. But I continue to stare. Paranoia, I tell myself, is a man with the facts.
And the facts, for this man, are these: I am no kind of father. I am no kind of husband. No kind of teacher. I am instead that man I see and don’t see and he is watching me, as I am watching him, both of us afraid to step out from the darkness.
Summer 1968
TOUCH
A man in my apartment complex wants to take pictures of me. He says I am naturally photogenic. He says that one of the boys he photographed recently signed a modeling contract with the Broadway stores. “Have you ever thought about modeling or acting?” He leans against the hand railing. His dress shirt is rumpled in front and stained under the arms. I look down at the pool in the courtyard below. The water is soft blue and white. Threads of light reflect beneath the surface, and in the evening I like to come out here and watch them, how they twist and bend, these threads of light. I am twelve years old.
“My brother’s the actor,” I say.
“What’s he done?”
“A movie of the week.” I say this casually, as my brother does, as if it’s not a big deal. But it is a big deal and I’m proud of him. “It airs in September.” The word airs, I think, makes me sound more mature. It’s also the word Barry uses.
It is humid and I am alone in the hallway when the man comes up the stairs that night we first met. I’ve seen him around before, many times, but until now we have never spoken. He carries a long black equipment case and the weight of it pulls at his arm, making one look longer than the other. The apartment door is open and he stops and glances inside. The TV is on but there’s nothing worth watching. This is the beginning of the summer rerun season. “I know we’re neighbors,” he says, “but I’ve never stopped to say hello.” He puts down his equipment case and holds out his hand to shake. His palm is cool, his grip loose. Ranchero music rises from one of the apartments below. “I’m Earl, from apartment 22,” he says. In the dim light of the hallway I feel him staring.
Before he leaves he gives me his business card. I appreciate the gesture, that he treats me as an adult, but I have no use for it. He is just another person in the building I don’t care to know. I rest my elbows on the railing, turning the card over in my hands. There is no rush to go back inside. My mother is working late and won’t be home until after ten. My sister is supposed to be staying the night at a friend’s house but she’s really at the beach with her boyfriend. I overheard her plans on the phone and promised not to tell. And our brother, he has his own place now, a one-room studio in Hollywood a couple miles from here. I went by earlier hoping to surprise him but he wasn’t there.
Down the hall, the kitchen light comes on in Earl’s apartment. Then it goes out and he draws the drapes over the living room window, lit up now by the blue-gray flicker of his TV. I fold the card in half and tear it along the crease. I do this several times and then let the pieces fall, like confetti, into the threads of light that move along the bottom of the pool.
On the surface it’s about money, but it’s really about control. She is happy for him. She is proud that he landed his first serious role in a movie of the week. But she has also invested years of her life in helping him build his career and expects more of the paycheck than he’s willing to share. Barry has graduated from high school with a 4.0, he’s already been dreaming of moving out for quite a while, and these recent troubles with our mother just give him all the more reason to go. He is no fool. If he stays, he knows that nothing will ever change. I know it, too, and I encourage him to leave. But it’s been two months now and I miss him. That he lives nearby is no consolation if he’s rarely at home.
In those first few weeks after he leaves he makes a point of finding time for me. Twice he lets Marilyn and me sleep over and we stay up until the early morning hours listening to music and drinking beer and talking. He gives Marilyn the bed. He and I sleep on the floor, and when we wake up he takes us to the House of Pancakes on Sunset Boulevard for a late breakfast. But things soon change. Once he has that first credit, his agent sends him out more regularly, and he’s getting attention, he’s generating interest.
“I’m up for three shows,” he tells us over breakfast. “Two are callbacks. I’m close. Real close,” he says. “Maybe then I can help you guys more.” He drinks from his coffee. “But you know I couldn’t stay there. I mean with Mom.”
I don’t know if in those earlier weeks he’d been trying to wean us from him, or if, as the days continue to pass, he just finds himself too busy. Either way, missing him doesn’t get easier with time. Where before he always returned my phone calls quickly, now it takes him two or three days, sometimes longer, and I begin to think that he doesn’t care anymore. That I’m a
pest. That he’s outgrown my company. Inside I believe differently, but then I have also learned not to trust myself. What I’m trying to say here is that at this point in time I am very young and vulnerable. And when you are very young and vulnerable you may make a mistake. You may be scared. You may be reckless. Most likely, you don’t think at all.
I’m standing in the magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard, looking at the masks lined neatly along the shelves behind the counter. There is Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. There is Lon Chaney as the Werewolf. There is Frankenstein and the Creature from the Black Lagoon but my favorite is the one of Tor Johnson with the jagged scar that runs from the top of his round bald head to the corner of his left eye. He is scowling. I am trying to remember the name of the movie, the one with the scene where he stares up at you from inside a sewer, through the black iron grate, when I see Earl at the counter. It’s a coincidence but not a stretch. His studio is on Cahuenga, a block off the boulevard, and it’s his lunch hour. He is walking by and spots me in the window.
The clerk approaches.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Let me see that one,” he says, pointing. “The one the boy’s looking at.”
It’s made of rubber, the kind of mask that covers the whole head, and he has to work it on slowly. The rubber pulls at his hair, pinches the flesh around his chubby ears. With it on he turns to me and holds both arms out as if he’s just risen from the grave. He makes a low, growling noise.
“That’s pretty lame,” I say.
He laughs and pulls off the mask. In that short time he’s already begun to sweat.