“You’re here because your father wants you to be here.”
“Stop saying that!”
“Cal, I’m sorry.”
A light came from the crack under the door that Cal could barely see between his bound legs. He heard the slow creak of the door, but it wasn’t the door in front of him. It was the door next to him.
“No more!” Darrin squealed. “Go away! I didn’t agree to this!”
There was a soft giggle. “It’s time for the show.”
It sounded like Darrin was trying to shout, but his mouth was covered. Then it sounded like a struggle of shuffling feet, kicking and bucking. Finally, the door slammed. Cal stretched his face into the vacuum, listening carefully, concentrating for a length of time he couldn’t determine.
First there was silence.
And it could have been any garden.
Then the faint sound of the Happy Pappy Song.
Then a muffled cry.
Then silence again.
Eight blue-sleeved arms covered Crawford from his shoulder blades to his knees, moving him forward like he was a battering ram aimed at the door of a medieval castle. Crawford could only see their shoes as well as his own, which were now covered in orange vomit.
Cheesy Cheesos again, Crawford thought. I remember now. I ate a bag of Cheesy Cheesos.
Crawford got to his feet and pushed four stagehands away, and then in one not-so-elegant motion, he started running through the backstage like an angry child deserting his own birthday party. A hand firmly grabbed him.
“What the hell was that?” Lee bellowed.
Crawford was breathing heavily, his lips still glossy wet from the bile that came out of his nose and mouth. “That was just me being myself. The real me. I’m a rock star, Lee!”
“My God!”
All of the production people on the show were getting out of Crawford’s way, looking relieved to see his departure. They already had one mess to clean up.
“Where are you going?” Lee fumed.
“I’m going home,” Crawford said, looking directly into Lee’s eyes, “to see my wife and my son, to see my family.”
“The loving family man, huh? That always works in a crisis.”
Crawford stopped. “Did you call them last night? Did you really call them?”
Lee’s anger subsided with a shake of his head, not as an answer but in resignation; he could say nothing.
“I better not see your face again,” Crawford said.
Lee gripped the Happy Pappy mask as he turned in the opposite direction. “Oh, you will.”
Crawford turned and went straight for the studio exit. Going out the door, Crawford faintly heard Jan say, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re back.”
Crawford asked a leering page where he might use a telephone before he realized he still had his mobile phone in his jacket pocket.
“Fuck it. Leave me alone,” he said, waving the kid away. First he tried the regular line at home but got the answering machine.
“Hello? Anyone there? This is Dad and I’m on my way home. Someone call me on my mobile phone when you get this message. Anyone. I’m coming home.”
Crawford felt that cold chill again when he hung up the phone.
What did I say? I said ‘Dad’?
The chill got worse as he dialed Dorothy’s mobile phone and then Cal’s. Dorothy’s number provided her curt directive — “Not here, leave a message.”
“Honey, call me.”
Cal’s phone just kept on ringing.
They might be pissed off. They might be trying to punish me by not picking up. Please just let them be mad at me. Please let them just be ignoring me.
Crawford went to the commissary and ordered two bottles of water. The room was almost empty except for the dozen or so cooks and waiters preparing for the after-show lunch crowd. A large screen TV in a corner behind the salad bar made Crawford wonder if the commissary staff had just seen his embarrassing performance.
Then it hit him.
Millions of people just saw me vomit on live television.
Didn’t they? he wondered.
Who gives a shit if they did? Good. I finally gave them the real me.
But what if they really did see me? he thought.
They might not have. Those camera people are pretty slick. They could have seen it coming and cut to commercial. Or cut to Jan. Or something else.
“Are you sure that’s all you want?” the waitress asked, pushing the bottles toward Crawford.
“Better give me three.”
The girl turned to grab another bottle, and Crawford drank one of them, with most of it running down his shirt. The girl put another bottle on the counter and said, “That will be twelve ninety, please.”
Four dollars for twelve ounces of water? Civilized. Very fucking civilized.
Crawford pulled out his wallet and looked into the girl’s eyes. He could almost see a reflection of himself vomiting. He knew she had to have seen it; everyone there had seen it. The whole goddam country had seen it. In no time there would be speculation in the press, in the media, discussions on talk shows and in op-ed pieces about self-help writers who get sick because of the pressure of TV appearances, or because of too much MSG, or too much medication, or too much plastic surgery, or too much booze. It would be everywhere.
Good, Crawford thought. Maybe I can be a respected novelist after all.
As Crawford walked down the hall to the elevator then to the garage, every glance from every passerby indicated the news was out and spreading fast. Oddly though, his hangover was much better and his mood wasn’t that bad for a guy who had just humiliated himself on national television. He almost felt confident — like he only did when he had a good after dinner buzz and was getting ready to meet some kowtowing fans.
Maybe I can be William Faulkner. Or Hemingway. I could be Hemingway. Hemingway was a hack. But he got respect. He vomited from time to time.
“Bullshit.”
He wasn’t sure if he was fit to drive, not being drunk enough not to worry about it, but his fear for the safety of his wife and son compensated his semi-sober apprehension. Crawford tore out of the downtown garage after giving his stamped ticket to an attendant who grinned as if he knew something Crawford didn’t.
Go ahead and smile, asshole.
My God. Self-Confidence. That was the first one. I should have learned from the first one. “Self-Confidence comes from a lack of self-consciousness. The more we’re concerned with ourselves, the more we judge ourselves. And consequently, the less faith we have in ourselves and in our abilities.”
Didn’t I write that once? Or did I imagine I wrote it?
Faith. Better known as ignorance in the secular world. Made him think of that great Bertrand Russell quote: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.” The intelligent just don’t have any faith.
Do you compromise your intelligence when you lose your self-doubt? Is doubt then just another form of selfishness? Oh, who gives a shit? Freud created mass neuroses when he set out to cure it. Novelists are the real doctors of the soul, Crawford thought. Traffic was light, and Crawford imagined all the people deciding to stay at home so they could hear about Crawford vomiting on Jan Live.
Self-confidence comes from a lack of self-consciousness.
Focus… focus, he thought.
Simply put, one of the worst things about alcohol is its uncanny ability to be a distraction from the most important things in life, tangible things that exist in the here and now. It allows (or perhaps requires) your mind to wonder aimlessly about crap like self-consciousness when you should be concerned with more important things like being a father and a husband, or deciding what you’re going to do about the psychotic criminal that’s been harassing you.
Self-Sobriety, could that be a title? he wondered.
Crawford didn’t know what to do — about anything. Apparently, he could help millions of others but not himself. He just
didn’t have the self-esteem.
The self-esteem? Please. Just the self.
Crawford was within a few miles of his house when he tried to call again. No answer at home, none with Dorothy, none with Cal.
His hangover was back again, and his need for a drink rattled the chambers of his wits. It might have had something to do with being close to home, but he wasn’t certain. He stopped at Happy Time Liquor and got his usual bottle of Scotch. He was glad to find the Indian wasn’t there and that rap videos weren’t being played on the TV.
Cal yelled into the darkness. He had just had one of those dreams where you watch yourself doing something really terrible but you can’t stop it — a peculiar experience, this fear, considering his circumstance.
“Are you ready to proceed?”
His heart was still beating with fear from the dream. Not even the reality of his captivity was scarier.
He takes his father’s gun — the one he found while rummaging through his dad’s study years ago. He initially thought it was a lighter, but it wasn’t. Then he thought it was a small-caliber pistol, but it’s a machine gun.
Cal puts it into the back of his Porsche, actually a Rolls-Royce limousine — a black one, very Goth, very deathly. “Where would you like to go?” Rotten Tamales, driver’s cap and all, sits behind the wheel, but Cal feels so self-confident he doesn’t care.
Let that grunt drive me anywhere. Where’s that chronic?
Cal sits in the back seat smoking his funk, and as the limo barrels through the canyon, Rotten is in the back holding a golden bong to the master’s lips.
Flying down that hill, the band room and those poor saps that play sax and clarinet, but Cal sees the ones he wants to hurt: those jocks that huddle outside the main entrance. They deserve nothing less than death.
The marijuana makes him sharp. But it isn’t marijuana at all. It’s a cold glass of drencrom; it’s Alex de Large at the Korova Milk Bar.
Boy, I’m really in the mood for a prank!
Cal asks “What should I do?”
Rotten tips his hat. “Taketh thy machine gun and cutteth them down!”
“Are you ready to proceed?”
“Do it now!”
The guns — two machine guns, large ones — are not guns, but arms, human arms, extensions of the black leather that covers Cal’s body, his fingers large barrels of death.
“Hey Mr. Happy Pappy,” they all say at the same time.
Killing every one of them will not be a crime.
“Yeah, their lives aren’t worth a dime,” Rotten says, as he rolls his fingers on the steering wheel. “Hurry the fuck up. Dust unto dust.”
“Are you ready to proceed?”
Cal gets out of the car and knows this is wrong.
But it’s something I heard in a song. Right?
“Yeah, it’s a racket like everything else,” Rotten says. “So what?”
Rotten’s words ring out like a command from the Almighty. So what? It doesn’t sound like a command, but oh yeah, I know it is. I know…
Cal raises the guns in fast motion and sprays them dead, hitting most of them in the head without even aiming.
There’s Coach Lieberman and Vice Principal Gore.
They’re laughing so hard, they’re about to fall on the floor.
But they don’t get away, no — not for one second. Cal shoots them both, but they didn’t deserve it.
“Ya reckon?” Rotten says.
“No, they didn’t.”
Then the blood flows from the ground to the trees, and Cal feels sad, but a little pleased. Then he wakes and screams in horror at his deed, but someone is asking “Are you ready to proceed?”
Are you?
Crawford was surprised his briefcase was still in the trunk and the tape was inside. He didn’t handle property well during drinking episodes, and sometimes he would wake up from a stupor surprised his wedding ring was still on his finger. He put the bottle inside his briefcase knowing that doing so would ensure he wouldn’t lose the case.
Getting out of his car, he looked at his wedding ring resting delicately on his shaking hand. Unlocking the front door of his home, he thought that he was capable of selling it for a drink if the circumstances were right. He thought perhaps he should hide it where it could never be found.
Then what would be the point of having it?
“Honey?” he said, poking his head inside. “Cal?” The silence was indifferent.
The late morning light was somber. “Cal? Is anyone here?” Lights were flickering from the living room, and he carried his briefcase with him as if a purse-snatcher might be loose in the house. The TV was on and it was the news — or what they call the news — with Crawford’s picture superimposed behind the anchormonkey trying to make the story look “official.”
“Breaking News” it read at the top. Crawford Leaves Hershey Show after Signs of Illness. Crawford grabbed the remote off the coffee table and turned the TV off. He looked at the ceiling. “Anybody? Hello!”
Crawford clutched his briefcase and walked upstairs, thinking about the gun in his desk drawer. He’d been afraid of that gun for years, but now that fear had a whole new dimension. Would he need to use it?
He also thought that someone might be upstairs waiting to slit his throat or to take him somewhere to make a TV show out of slitting his throat. He wondered if it wasn’t the DTs driving him crazy. Either scenario might be the case. Or both.
Cal’s bedroom door was closed, and he put his ear to it. “Cal?”
He turned the knob slowly and walked inside with the reverence a minister shows a sanctuary. Nailed to the door, Rotten Tamales — the foremost that’s-right-I’m-the-Devil rock star — looked down on Crawford with a Puritan’s gaze.
“Erectum?” Crawford asked the poster, as if it would answer. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Crawford took a step back to get a wider view. He put his briefcase on the bed. Good ol’ Rotten Tamales. And my parents got pissed off over the Rolling Stones. Crawford looked at Rotten’s menacing expression — lips pulled tight against the teeth, nose slightly raised in a growl. He was almost congenial, like someone he should find charming, or feel sorry for.
Feel sorry for? Shit. Some sick fuck who has milked millions out of middle-class parents via their stupid, insecure teenage sons? Hell, even worse has taken hard-earned money from destitute single mothers working as waitresses and maids who thought they had to give their kids a little of what the upper-class brats had.
He imagined Rotten Tamales whispering, “But that’s what you do too, fucker.”
“Fuck you,” he said.
Fuck tolerance, Crawford thought. Dorothy had told him he didn’t understand and she was right. With a calm self-confidence, he tore the Erectum poster off the wall and ripped and shredded it, savoring ever second before leaving it in tiny pieces on the floor. Crawford looked at himself in the mirror and just for a instant wasn’t disgusted.
“No, Dorothy. I don’t understand.”
Crawford looked around the room as if he’d never been there before. What else is in my house? My house, Crawford thought. He began searching Cal’s room, starting with the closets then the dresser drawers. The bottom of the closet was filled with tennis shoes piled one on top of the other, none of which he’d seen Cal wear. The dresser was stuffed haphazardly, all its drawers hanging open to various degrees. Crawford pulled out pants, shirts, and shorts, tossing them on the floor.
Black. Black. Everything is black. When Cal was a little boy, his Granny Lou used to call him Sunshine. I guess he showed her.
Crawford didn’t know what he was doing; he was just doing something, whatever — whatever he wanted. He had a right; it was his house. He was the father; Cal was the son. Crawford clenched his teeth thinking of all the “instruction” he had digested over the years on human behavior, especially on dealing with children. But he couldn’t explain this need to trash Cal’s room. He had read every major book on child psychology until Cal h
ad gotten to be twelve or thirteen and then he realized it was all bullshit.
Crawford had respected pop psychology and had kept the faith, despite being a backslider in his everyday life. But now it was looming over him like a mob boss who had done him many a favor.
He was in the training business. And once you go in, you never get out.
Training. That’s it. That’s what it is. Like people are animals. Like dogs that need their faces rubbed in their own shit. People as empty receptacles that need to be shaped properly. That’s the rationale. Shaped properly in order to function properly.
“Bullshit!” he yelled.
Crawford reached under Cal’s mattress — a hiding place so obvious he hadn’t thought of it — and found a pipe, a lighter, and a small bag of marijuana. Crawford had assumed Cal would keep his pornography there like most teenage boys, hiding the really incriminating things elsewhere. Crawford reached deeper into the mattress and found nothing. He wondered if his son had any pornography at all. He hoped so. Looking at the Erectum poster torn to pieces at his feet, it would be especially troubling if he didn’t.
There was a small pinch of grass in the pipe that had been smoked perhaps once. Crawford put it to his lips and lit it, taking a big hit that felt unexpectedly harsh. After exhaling he gasped for air then coughed violently — his face turning red, saliva filling his nasal passages. He leaned forward, coughing into his cupped hands, then finally stopped, catching his breath. Right away he had that tingly feeling that he hadn’t felt since his undergrad days. When he first started smoking, he enjoyed the intense high of smoking after a few drinks. But a year later he found it made him nervous and antisocial. It got to be more like dropping acid than smoking a little harmless pot, so he changed the protocol to smoking only after a good eight or nine drinks. This didn’t cause nervousness, but it sure could turn a decent drunk into an unpleasant one — triggering inebriation that brought blackouts, vomiting, and other embarrassing behavior. He finally quit smoking marijuana altogether. Crawford decided that drinking was better, rationalizing he’d graduated to a more mature, Hemingway-style recreation. He was “drinking appropriately” for his age, he thought. But no, actually he wasn’t. He was drinking like a frat boy at a keg party.
Self-Esteem Page 24