“How’s your self-esteem?”
Crawford registered. “Who?”
The caller hung up and so did Crawford.
He didn’t give it much thought. He was too sick. He was neither awake nor asleep. His mind was swimming in the previous night’s booze, somewhere between dreams and consciousness. He put his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. Later, he thought. Later.
Then he heard something else. Something faint. It was Frank Sinatra, or someone trying to be Frank.
I’ve Got You Under My Skin.
I used to love that goddam song, Crawford thought. Then he fell asleep again.
“Jim, it’s seven-thirty.”
“Okay,” he said, instinctively turning on his side.
“Who called?” she asked.
His voice trailed back into sleep. “I don’t know.”
“Jim? Who was it?”
“Wrong number, I guess.”
“You guess?” She waited a moment. “Jim,” she said. “Jim,” she said louder.
“What?”
“How do you feel this morning?” she asked.
Dorothy Crawford was still very attractive at forty-nine. In the last few years she had finally lost much of the weight she had gained after their son Cal was born. But this improvement didn’t matter much to Crawford. She could still be an unpleasant sight, especially when his eyes were bloodshot and throbbing. He was fond of her youthful demeanor, her magical adolescence, but he wasn’t fond of the morning interview she required each time he awoke from a night of heavy drinking.
Crawford found the sight of her particularly nauseating that morning. It must have been that pink exercise suit, something an eighties porn star would wear.
“How do you feel this morning? Getting out of bed today or not?”
Dorothy had been pretty proud of herself lately. After going through a number of diet and exercise programs over the years, she had finally settled into one she could stick with long enough to see results. For the previous six months, she had been using a program called Swing and Sweat, which was where the faint sound of Sinatra had come from. Of course, it wasn’t really Sinatra, most likely an unknown lounge singer eking out a living in the exercise market. But from upstairs it was impossible to tell. Crawford only heard the faint sound of tunes he used to love — used to love. No longer could he put on a Sinatra album without having the unwanted thought of Dorothy in her pink bodysuit, bent at the knees, reaching in the air and swinging from side to side to the strains of I Get a Kick Out of You and Summer Wind. Not only had the exercise program tainted one of his favorite artists, truth was he also preferred Dorothy’s bigger butt.
“I said, how do you feel this morning, dear?”
His voice was muffled under the sheets, “I don’t know yet.”
“I thought we were over this, Jim.”
The word “we” meant it was time to roll over and face her.
“Dorothy, please. I’ve had a lot of anxiety lately.” He sat up.
“So have I,” she said, standing before him like a field marshal. “And so you had to get drunk last night, is that it?”
“Honey, please.”
“Don’t honey me,” she shot back. “What is it that’s so damn stressful anyhow?”
Crawford looked straight ahead, straight through his wife.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled, just before she stormed out, her pink bottom jolting with each step. But he did know. For one thing, he had been seeing Jenny again, and the guilt was just starting to set in. Dreams about the Garden of Eden — they always happened sooner or later.
Jenny had done all those things he liked best, all those things he could never ask his wife to do. But Crawford thought of Jenny’s skills as a classy menu in a shitty cafe. The arching of the back, the parting of the lips, the panting of words like “Oh, Jim,” “Yes,” “Harder,” and so on. It was wrong, he knew. Wrong, wrong, wrong — like that one more shot of whiskey that seems like a good idea at the time.
Best of all, though — or worst of all — she didn’t object to the drinking. In fact, she joined in.
Oh, yeah, he thought, finally piecing together the evening. That’s what happened: after the drinking and the screwing they had a talk, a “discussion” as Jenny liked to call it. Right in the middle of the street she had yelled, “You’re not going to treat me like a piece of ass.”
But even a public display of anger didn’t matter. Her apartment was in a commercial part of downtown Los Angeles and no one was ever around. It was one of those places where the streets always look wet, even when they haven’t seen rain in months.
Crawford remembered hearing her yell, “No fucking way,” over and over again. But over what? He must have told her something she didn’t want to hear — like the affair had to stop. Again, he wasn’t sure.
Crawford’s head ached. He walked into the bathroom without turning on the light and sat on the toilet. He leaned over, his head resting on his forearms.
“Honey?” he heard Dorothy ask. “Are you okay in there?”
He farted.
“Yes, dear. I’m okay.”
CHAPTER 2
Cal Crawford was watching the puppets dance, but he wasn’t listening. Leaning against the headboard of his queen size bed, his portable audio player beside him, Cal could watch but he wouldn’t listen. It was a strange ritual of morning entertainment, something to do while smoking the day’s first joint.
The music in his headphones was raucous, the venomous beat taking his head back and forth as he watched Sandy the puppet approach her bouncing mentor. The movement of the characters, out of time with his own, only made the percussion more pronounced and defiant, especially now that Cal was stoned.
Then the advertisement: this made Cal’s heartbeat quicken more than the pot — seeing his father with that feigned, toothy smile, with that shit-brown suit on, next to a pile of books and tapes, in front of a goddam purple background, behind a 1-800 telephone number. What a lie, he thought. A very stupid lie. And how vulgar. And how laughable. And there he is with my name, my goddam surname, written on the screen for everyone to see.
Dumbass.
Dr. James Crawford’s Self Series™
Followed by the “claimer,” as Cal called it, scrolling up the screen, a psalm giving sanction to a crooked evangelist.
The techniques set forth on the “Happy Pappy Show” are based on the principles of Dr. James Crawford, whose Self Series™ has helped millions improve their lives.
These principles have been modified to accommodate the self-esteem needs of a younger audience.
I know what accommodates a younger audience, Cal thought, deeply inhaling another hit.
Calvin Crawford was James and Dorothy’s only child, a one-time addition whose imminent arrival had ended the debate as to whether they should get married. Dorothy didn’t believe in abortion and Jim didn’t believe in pushing her, so when the news came they simply set a date to get hitched and that was that. But Cal’s personality turned out to be so unlike either of his parents that it was like a stork had dumped him there to point out that Jim and Dorothy had more in common than they thought.
Long before the venerable Dr. Crawford had struck the seven-figure deal for the Happy Pappy Show, Cal was fed up with his father’s enterprise. Now it was this puppet shit and the latest installment of the Self Series, Self-Esteem. Cal felt his father had finally reached the bottom of the capitalist barrel, and for months he cringed at the thought of him.
Cal turned up the music even louder.
Yeah. Rotten Tamales.
Rotten Tamales. Yeah, fucking rocks. What a fucking rock star.
The tune was the title track from his latest album, Erectum. A month earlier, Cal and his dad nearly came to blows over a poster Cal put on the wall. It wasn’t just an ordinary depiction of Rotten Tamales — a skinny white boy (painted to be even whiter) wearing a monstrous leather bodysuit with shiny spikes coming from every pleat. It was classic Rotten — bending over with
what appeared to be a large erect penis ascending up out of his backside under the leather.
“You’re not putting that crap on my wall!” Crawford screamed at Cal.
“He’s an artist! It’s not crap!” Cal yelled back.
Then Dorothy took her usual diplomatic position, telling her husband, “Maybe you don’t understand, Dear.”
Crawford hated Rotten Tamales since Cal started listening to Kill Kompletely, his breakthrough album that sold four million copies. Crawford would sometimes walk by Cal’s room and stop in awe of the poisonous sound and depraved lyrics he heard blaring from inside.
Kill, kill, kill. Die, die, die. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Etc.
These kids, Crawford would think. What can we do?
In the end, Cal won the battle of the Erectum poster because Crawford just didn’t give a damn any more. It was pure perseverance on Cal’s part, and it was worth the accomplishment. Cal relished the idea that his father would have to tolerate a picture of some skinny punk’s leather ass on his wall with what looked like a boner on the wrong side. Every morning he looked at it with such admiration.
“Be kind to yourself, bitch,” he said, high as the devil.
One wall of Crawford’s study was covered in the ritual sycophancy of being one of America’s foremost self-help writers, “which also means one of the best-selling,” he liked to add. The plaques, the pictures, the awards and the newspaper clippings hung neatly in rows behind Crawford’s writing desk, which he lovingly called “Old Bessie.” The wall he called, not so lovingly, “the Wall of Shame.” He didn’t like it that way, of course. It was merely a concession following a series of negotiations with Dorothy, which included his proviso that the collection be hidden from most houseguests. One of his first awards was a plaque he received from a small town in Wisconsin proclaiming “Dr. Crawford Day.” Accepting the undesired plaque in person was bad enough, he felt. But Dorothy saw it differently.
“We can’t just throw it away,” she told him.
“Maybe we can’t, but I can.”
He finally gave in, and the small museum of his accomplishments was hatched. Then it grew, and grew, and grew some more. But he resented all of it. The Wall of Shame certainly didn’t serve the purpose his well-intentioned wife thought it would. Dorothy saw such a display as a source of inspiration, something that could give “perspective.” But Crawford knew the presence of these things was anything but inspiring — demoralizing, in fact. They haughtily reminded him of what he might have been, mocking what he believed he might someday become. His degrees meant nothing to him. Even his doctorate — the one item he might have wanted on the wall — brought shame. Instead of representing accomplishment, the honorary degree represented fraud — giving him the sense that he would never contribute anything of value, not as a scientist nor as an artist.
But Crawford was typing, his bloodshot eyes staring blankly at the blue screen.
“For you try and you try and you try,” but that’s okay. Keep trying!
“Ah!”
I can’t write pessimism, he thought. I can only live it.
I can. I can. Still. Keep going. You’re not just a writer. You’re a novelist. You’re a damn novelist.
Two cups of strong coffee and Crawford’s hangover wasn’t any better. Since he had not had an all-nighter in a while, this one was particularly bad. Like many struggling boozers, Crawford cradled a morose attachment to self-inflicted soreness, to mind-numbing pain. It was like an old friend he had known for years and couldn’t abandon. Although unpleasant, hangovers made him subconsciously aware that the rest of the day could only improve — perhaps the rest of the week, perhaps the rest of his life. He also knew they were one of the few deterrents that might keep him from drinking himself to death.
Crawford noted that this morning his slight paunch hung over his Levis just a little more, pulling his standard white T-shirt a little tighter. But he had to put a stop to that kind of thinking. That was the byproduct of a superficial generation that flipped through celebrity magazines in checkout lines — not what a serious novelist concerns himself with.
Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.
William Faulkner never fretted over his belly, Crawford guessed. And why would he? He had bigger fish to fry. Or he had higher mountains to climb. Or he had better shit to do.
Avoid cliches like the plague.
Or something. Anyway.
Crawford, once again, was seeing nothing but crap spring from his fingertips — no concept, no originality, just cliches, just nonsense.
Suddenly he felt someone watching him.
Crawford turned to see Cal standing in the doorway staring at him blankly through his frizzled hair. Cal was now dressed for school in what Crawford called his “black death uniform,” actually a standard “Goth” look with the essentials of dyed black hair, black shirt, black jeans and black boots. Crawford could avoid the topic of Cal’s fashion sense as long as it didn’t include black fingernail polish, black lipstick and pale makeup.
“Yes?” Crawford said instinctively.
For the previous year and a half, Cal made Crawford more uncomfortable than anyone since his own father, and consequently, more resentful. But Crawford wasn’t about to let Cal know that.
“Good morning, Cal.”
“So. Does it have a happy ending?” Cal asked.
“What’s that?” Crawford said.
“That,” Cal said, pointing to Crawford’s computer.
“You mean my current writing project?”
“Uh huh,” Cal said. “Your current writing project.”
“I don’t know yet, son.”
“You always say you should just do what you can do. And you’re so good at happy endings,” Cal said. “Will it have a happy ending or not?”
“I’m sorry, Cal. But I’m busy, and I…”
Cal walked away before Crawford could finish.
Little prick, Crawford thought.
Retrieving the morning newspaper from the driveway was one of Dorothy’s morning pleasures because, as she saw it, it was a time for reflecting — reflecting on her lovely Beverly Hills home and the spotless neighborhood where it cozily rested. The lawns were always green and the cars always clean, and seeing this was something else, she thought, that gave her perspective. It reminded her that she and Jim were once poor and aimless, that Jim once had a horrible drinking problem, and during that time Jim was unable to support their family in a manner acceptable to her. But my, my — things had changed. Jim’s drinking improved. Relapses became fewer and far between. And he gained focus, as she saw it. He wrote a book. He made money. He wrote another book. He made more money. And the rest, as they say, was history. Retrieving the morning paper was actually a simple pleasure that begat another simple pleasure — thinking about how things were really pretty good.
Heading back into the house, Dorothy scraped her leg on a neatly trimmed shrub near the driveway. “Shit,” she said to herself, cursing the small cut.
Things were pretty good. Except for Jim’s recent benders, she thought as she inspected her wound.
The drinking was on her mind more and more every day. And then there were those afternoons when Jim disappeared for no reason.
Oh, please. Dorothy knew she was just being uptight about things. She just needed to relax a bit. Oh, you silly nilly, she thought to herself. Can’t you just be happy? You little grouchy ouchy.
The beat came hard and slow like a brewing storm muffled by distance. Another beat, then louder and louder, and Cal came barreling out of the driveway in his new silver Porsche convertible, looking like James Dean heading for Mulholland Drive. He skidded to a stop in front of his mother, laughing when he heard her shriek.
“My God, Cal. Would you please be careful?”
“I’m fuckin’ late, Mom,” he said.
Standing straight to look more parental, she said, “Please don’t use profanity around me. And turn that music down.”
Cal scowled bu
t did as he was told. He was wearing dark sunglasses, gratuitous in the soft morning sunlight.
Dorothy avoided an angry response to Cal by thinking, Don’t lose your temper, it’s more important than your keys — a quote she heard on Jan Hershey.
She smiled gently. “Please don’t forget we have that thing tonight.”
“That thing tonight has fuck all to do with me, doesn’t it?” Cal said, his fingers tapping the steering wheel to the beat.
Before Dorothy could answer, her son had hit the accelerator and charged backward into the street with a squeal, reminding her of James Garner in the The Rockford Files. My my, I miss that show, she thought, as Cal sped away.
Dorothy thought that her son needed a good talking to about dangerous driving — an open dialogue to better help him understand the dangers. But, no, that was something Jim needed to do. Jim needed to talk to Cal about a lot of things. Jim needed to share the responsibilities of parenthood, especially issues that related to masculinity, like driving recklessly.
But Jim’s recent relapses, she thought again. I need to talk to Jim about the drinking, I guess, then Jim can talk to Cal about… the driving and uh…
“I need to put something on this,” she said to herself, heading inside to medicate her cut.
The foyer of the Crawford home was a wide-open octagonal space looking onto a semi-spiral staircase on one side. The wood that adorned both the staircase and the trim of the beveled ceiling was a light pine — one that Crawford was never happy with. “Not dark enough,” was his opinion. Dorothy had insisted on the color, saying it looked “cheerful” compared to Crawford’s more “morose” preference for Scarlet oak. Even though Dorothy chose a fine pine imported from Eastern Europe, Crawford believed the wood gave their home a strange “movie set” quality. What’s more, Crawford had never been happy with Dorothy’s choice of furniture: mostly a contemporary “California” style with soft maple finishes and upholstery in pastels of green and orange. The entire home, inside and out, was Dorothy’s creation. Her rationale for the location, style and color scheme was based on her belief that environment — especially color — was of vital importance when it came to human behavior. The black and Latino ghettos of Los Angeles, she believed, were filled with violence and despair (at least in part) because of the ugly browns and grays that dominated the landscape. Dorothy hadn’t actually been to any of these areas, but she had read about them. And she imagined a topography of rundown, spirit-numbing liquor stores, abandoned buildings, fires burning in oil drums and black smoke from sources both legal and illegal littering a starless sky. She actually thought about this inner-city nightmare while creating the new Crawford family home in Beverly Hills, which they had lived in now for three years. It would be the anti-ghetto, filled with beautiful colors that keep away life’s “ugly wugglies.”
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