by Matt Sumell
After twenty or so messy minutes I’d spooned in everything except the milk. I felt proud about this. I was excited to tell my mother. See, Ma? I’m helpful. I’m a good boy. Then I considered her note, my watch, did math. She should be here already, I thought. Any minute.
Grandma, I said. Eat this. Eat it. It’s milk. Eat the milk. You need milk, milk’s good for you. Eat it. Eat the milk. Grams. Grandma. Hey. Grandma. Grandma. Grams. Grandma. Eat this for strength. Eat it. It’s milk. Eat it. Eat this. Eat the milk. Eat the milk the pope said eat the milk. The pope loves the milk. Eat it. Eat the milk.
But she just kept turning her head from it, side to side to side, and when she brought her shaking, spotted hand up to push it away, I faked left and went right and snuck it in there, through lips and over tongue, no teeth to stop me. She immediately coughed and retched and began throwing up a jelly rainbow just as my mother walked through the door with a big smile on her face that meant hello how are you I’ve missed you I know you smoked in the house and what’s with the broken statue, then seeing my vomiting grandmother went, “Ooooooh,” and nurses scattered, and someone called out for paper towels and repeated, “Paper towels!” and somebody else started patting my grandmother’s back, and somebody else got locked out of their house because somebody else didn’t leave the key, and somebody else bought the deodorant and somebody else bought whatever that girl on the beach was selling, tampons probably, and somebody else is dying because somebody else is always dying, people are always suffering and dying, and I just sat there holding the spoon, smiling nervously and then laughing nervously and then just laughing, and then laughing so hard my eyes started to water and everything got blurry, and none of it was funny at all.
THE BLOCK, TWICE
I once dated this girl who was skinny and flat-chested and could tap dance. Her name was Carey and she had a tiny lower jaw. When she was younger some of her bottom teeth had to be pulled to make room for the rest, and those came in crooked, pointed in different directions—maybe that’s why she dropped out of college. She waited tables at an expensive restaurant, made pretty good money. When she doodled, she doodled barns. She had blond hair and blond eyebrows, little blond hairs on her fingers, drove a blue Suzuki Sidekick. When she would come over I’d kiss her on her lip-glossed lips and say, “What’s up? How’s your blue Suzuki Sidekick? You’re my sidekick so why don’t you go tap dance on my kitchen floor.” She’d giggle. “I’m serious,” I’d say, and I was. I loved watching her tap dance, her little legs going, her little black shoes clicking louder than they should in celebration of nothing or everything in particular.
On weekend nights I’d go to the restaurant she worked at and drink at the bar. After she clocked out she’d sit next to me and we’d talk and pinch each other’s legs and stomachs, hold hands, watch how much the other servers tipped-out the busboys, whisper about injustice over discounted liquor and free chicken. Sometimes fish. Sometimes Joey, a lanky white kid who washed dishes, would come out front for a few minutes and rap for us, make words rhyme that didn’t—I’m a hellion, explore vaginas like Magellian—things like that. We’d hang out till the place would close up, eleven or twelve or four a.m. depending on I don’t know what, then we’d go back to my apartment, where I’d put on some ragtime and sit on the floor, watch her tap dance on the white tiles of my kitchen, applaud and cheer, laugh, shout nice things. “Better than Ben Vereen!” I’d yell, tackle her and take her clothes off, have unprotected sex with her for a minute.
The dessert chef at the restaurant was Billy Something, and Billy Something made a terrific baked Alaska and an OK crème brûlée and a weird-looking face when I staggered through the double doors of the kitchen late one night and grabbed him by his white coat collar and slammed him into the wall and said stop rubbing my girlfriend’s shoulders you fuckin’ dickhole. He had also turned Carey on to coke, but that didn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that he felt comfortable rubbing her shoulders in my presence, and that she seemed to like it. I was still shaking him when Joey and this other guy whose name I can’t remember but he had thick eyelashes, they hooked me by the armpits and dragged me outside, the whole time asking me if I was cool.
“You cool? You cool? You cool?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not cool. Stop asking me if I’m cool … asking me if I’m cool is making me not-cooler.”
They lit me a cigarette, lit themselves cigarettes, pep-talked me and told me to wait, left me sitting alone on a concrete square around a magnolia tree. I talked to myself about cannolis and motherfuckers while I pitched pieces of bark mulch at a brick wall. I spit and zipped my jacket’s zipper up and down and up, down and up, down, waited. Carey never came out.
The front door of the place was glass and locked. I knocked on it. I cupped my hands over my eyes and looked in, but I couldn’t see anybody. I pressed my ear to it. Knocked some more and waited, re-sat and waited, re-stood and knocked on the door again. I pounded on it. Yelled hey at it. Yelled Carey at it until the owner and head chef, James Morris—still thin and I never understood how a chef could be thin—he walked up on the other side of the door and said, “You should go home, Alby.”
“Where’s Carey?”
We stared at each other through fingerprint smudges.
“You should go home.”
I knew he was looking out for me, but I told him that if he didn’t open the door I’d punch his entire family in the face, and that when I punched his mom in the face, I’d punch her in the forehead during a family photograph, and then I’d have it framed by a professional so that I could hang it on the wall above my couch and look at it every day and smile. He walked away. I paced, talked to myself, sat Indian-style on the concrete square around the magnolia tree. I stood up, knocked on the door, and shouted for Joey until he peeked his head around the corner and walked over.
“Hey man.”
“Hey man.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Nothin’,” he said. “Everybody’s just having drinks. You should probly get outta here. Wait for things to blow over.”
I said all right, I’ll leave, but I’m out of cigarettes and would he give me one. He said he would and I said thanks man, and he reached into his shirt pocket for his pack and took out a cigarette, unlocked the door and opened it a crack, stuck the cigarette through. I took it and put it in my mouth, patted my pockets, said I needed a light. He took out his lighter and cracked the door a bit farther, and I lunged and wedged my face in there, got my left leg in, too, before he pulled it closed on me and started yelling for help. Then I started yelling for help. Then I yelled for Carey. Then I yelled, “Just talk to me,” and “Please,” and “Don’t do this to me,” and “Please,” and “Please,” and “Please!” and “Ow!” and “Fuck you Billy you’re a scumbag and your desserts aren’t good!” James and that other guy whose name I can’t remember with the eyelashes came running over and helped Joey push me out, locked the door, threatened to call the police if I didn’t leave. “Good,” I said. “Call the fuckin’ police. I’ll fuckin’ … You guys are assholes.” Then I sat on the concrete square and caught my breath, smoked half a cigarette and went home, called Carey and left a message. Then I called her again and left a message again, called her again and hung up, took a shit and cried, called her again and left another message. She never called me back.
I still have a magic marker drawing she made for me when we were together. It’s a lawn and flowers and the sun is in the upper left-hand corner and in the middle of the air she wrote in purple: Have a great day, Alby! Love, Carey. I had it hanging on my refrigerator with a magnet for a few months afterward. Then I put it in a cardboard box with old soccer trophies and a Space Camp graduation plaque.
* * *
My sister called the same day I got a toothache, said she ran into Carey in the city and stopped to talk to her. Apparently she was doing really well in advertising and getting married to a banker guy. I asked her if she asked about me. Nope, my s
ister said. Not at all. Then she went on about politics and the media for a while. It went like: “Fuckin’ … resistance diminishes as commercial interruptions amplify, you know? Like, they’re pumping so much bullshit it serves as some sort of static. TV, satellites, laptops, live-feed Internet … we’ve got all this access but as a society we’re becoming distanced further from the war and the humanness required to fully fuckin’ experience it. I mean … we’ve landed on Mars but aren’t intellectually that far from painting on cave walls.”
“Antelopes and shit.”
“What?”
“On the cave walls.”
“Anyway. The big lie of the television age is that we’re better informed, when really what we’re shown is what we’re told is important, and we think it’s important cause it’s what we’re being shown.”
“Right,” I said. “How does Carey look?”
“She looks great.”
“You’re an asshole,” I said and hung up on her. Then I walked around the block, twice. I noticed things. Cars have wheels. The wood on that house is painted red. That fire hydrant is there in case there is a fire nearby. I haven’t had a girlfriend in two years. Trees.
On Biltmore there was a sprinkler sprinkling an arc of water onto the street and a squirrel on a birch branch. It jumped to a pine branch. It ran up the branch, down the trunk, out another branch, and jumped to a split-log fence post. It ran along the fence, then down the fence, then jumped to the ground. It ran around a little, then stopped and stood on its back legs, looked around. It ran and stopped and looked, ran and stopped and looked. Ran some more and stopped some more. Looked some more. Ran into the street and almost got run over by a red car. The driver didn’t even slow down. My tooth started to throb. I walked to a bar.
There was a paper sign in the window hanging from a piece of string, swaying and spinning, rocking back and forth in ceiling-fan air, advertising nothing in particular, just: LUCKY DAY. I liked it. I went inside and had a few drinks and then a few more and then spotted a girl down the bar to my right. She had pale skin and pink ears that she tucked her black hair behind, wore white on her eyelids like in the fifties. Each time I looked at her my chest hurt in new and exciting ways. I kept drinking and looking and considering approaches:
Stare at her. Keep staring at her until she notices. Wave.
Write her a three-napkin love letter. Begin: Dear Lady, I really like your hairdo, and your makeup is great. Then use words that show you are nice.
Wait by the ladies’ room. When she walks by, stop her and say, “Sorry buddy, that’s the women’s bathroom.” She will feel less confident.
Wait by the ladies’ room. Follow her in. Kiss her with force and passion. Tell her her lips taste delicious and pin her against the wall. Take her clothes off and pinch her nipples, lick her nipples, suck one like it’s a lemonade cigar. Drop to your knees and hike her right leg onto your shoulder. Ask, “That a birthmark?” “It’s a mole.” “Oh.” Kiss her pussy, lick her pussy, finger fuck it like you’re mad at it, like it’s on the other side of the room and you have to tell it a secret, your index finger curling c’mere c’mere c’mere. Stop, ask her name, how do you spell that? Spell it with your tongue till she comes. Take your dick out, jerk it off a little, make a noise like an injured cow, stand up and fuck her. Get her pregnant with twin retards, pull your pants up and run out. Walk back in and tell her you might love her but probably not, wash your hands with soap, check your hair and your teeth, run back out. Go to 7-Eleven and buy a snack.
Instead, I got very drunk and don’t remember speaking to anyone that night, or leaving, and I woke up on my kitchen floor next to an unopened box of fish sticks. My tooth was ringing. I stood up and tongued it. It kept ringing. I moved to the bathroom and picked up a cap-less tube of the stuff with fluoride and the sonic toothbrush my mother had given me for Christmas a few years before. Brushing didn’t help. Mouthwash didn’t help. Floss made me bleed, and didn’t help. I spat in the sink and the brown-red blood on porcelain was roughly in the shape of South America. I turned on the faucet and watched it spin down and away. I took a piss and flushed, watched it spin down and away. I ate aspirins and called the dentist, said it was an emergency, and they said I could come in the following morning at ten. I baked the fish sticks, ate some, and took a nap. That night I went back to the bar.
That sign was there again, and that girl was there again, and I drank drinks and considered approaches again. Then I quit considering anything at all and walked over not knowing what I would say, which was hello. She turned around and I felt like a hose in my chest kinked. Then it unkinked.
“I think you’re really pretty,” I said. “Got a boyfriend?”
She leaned back and squinted at me. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“I’ll date the hell out of you,” I said. “I’ll date you so hard you’ll puke. Wanna go on a date sometime? We could do something.”
She smiled and blinked and stirred her drink with her drink straw and said, “You know you asked me out last night, right?”
“Oh.” I looked her down and up. “Well … what’d you say last night?”
“I said no.”
“Oh.” I stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, then apologized for bothering her again.
I was already walking away when she said, “You’re cute, but you shouldn’t drink so much.” I kept walking, weaved between people on my way to the men’s room where I pissed two-handed figure eights into the urinal, the intersection crossing an X on the blue urinal cake. A guy came in and started pissing at the urinal next to me and pushed out a fart that whispered Ppppert-Pppplussss. I nodded. On the wall in front of me in black marker was written SUCK MY BLOATED LOVE KNOB FAGGOT. Underneath that someone wrote fuck you with an arrow pointing to FAGGOT, and then a third person with a blue marker scribbled out the tip of that arrow and looped it around so that fuck you pointed to itself.
I shook and tucked, zipped and flushed, washed my hands and dried my hands on my shirt and walked out and into the bar and out the front door.
I went home, slept for four hours, woke up at six. I made some coffee, took a sip, spit it out in the sink, and tongued my tooth for a while. I sat in the sun on the porch till nine, then walked the three miles to the dentist. On the way I saw a woman walking in the opposite direction with a brown dog. Inside my skull: There goes another living organism on a piece of rope.
The dentist’s office was in a strip mall between Mr. Video and Angel Tips Nail Salon. I walked in and people were scattered around the waiting room, reading magazines. Better Homes and Gardens. Cosmopolitan. Us. Time. I walked over to the counter. The receptionist was on the telephone, and she pointed to a clipboard. A blue pen was tied to it with a piece of green floss, and as I was signing in she asked me if I had ever been there before. When I told her I hadn’t she handed me a stack of forms to fill out: Date, Age, Sex, Height, Weight, In Case of Emergency Contact, two pages of Medical History (Question 8: Do you bruise easily?), one-page Patient Information Sheet, one-page Arbitration Agreement, one-page Patient Acknowledgment of Dental Materials Fact Sheet, one-page Patient Acknowledgment of Notice of Privacy Practice. I sat in the lobby for a long time until a woman mispronounced my last name and led me to a white room where a Mexican man with cut-up knuckles X-rayed my head. When he was finished, the same woman led me to another white room. I sat in there for a long time, stared at a crack in the ceiling and wondered if Carey ever thinks about me. When the dentist finally came in I was glad.
She was older, pale and pretty, thin to the point of delicate-looking, had a mole on her left eyelid. I’d date her, big-time. She said hello and asked how I was, looked through a folder, put on rubber gloves. She was very polite.
She adjusted a surgical mask and goggles and my chair and the light. She arranged metal things on a metal tray. “OK,” she said, “let’s have a look.” She opened my tooth without a local and poked at it with a metal toothpick, asking, “Does this hurt?”
> “Yes.”
“Does this hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Does this hurt?”
Yes.
AMERICAN NINJA 2
My brother bet me five hundred dollars she wouldn’t make it past December. I accepted and won—Grandma died January third. I took time off work and went home to help my mother with funeral arrangements, but mostly I ate snacks and watched shitty movies. After American Ninja 2 I got up from the couch and kicked a bag of microwave popcorn. Unpopped kernels went everywhere.
I did a cartwheel into the kitchen and looked at food in the refrigerator and thought about my grandmother’s dentures. They were yellowed and ugly and shifted in her mouth, and I wondered why the dentist didn’t make them pretty and white. Realism, I guessed, the truthful treatment of material. Here’s some more: V. C. Andrews romance novels are popular, the dentist hurts, and Q-tips get yellow when you clean your ears. The dog waddled by and I imagined cutting her in half with a sword.
I grabbed the two-liter bottle of Coke, put the bottle on the table, unscrewed the cap, walked over to the cabinet, got a glass out of the cabinet, put the glass on the table, picked up the bottle, poured some Coke into the glass, paused, looked at the dog—who was looking at me—while I waited for the fizz to go away, topped off the glass, put the bottle down on the table, picked up the glass, drank half, put the glass down, thought about my grandmother, and punched the bottle off the table. Sparkles licked puddles of cola.