Self-Esteem

by Preston David Bailey

  “I don’t know. I don’t know!”

  “You told me once, remember?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Try!” Crawford said, swerving past a long line of cars.

  “Holy shit,” Berry bellows. “Could you slow down?”

  “We have to get to the cookie factory, now. You know that! Answer my question!”

  “The old man — is he sitting down?”

  “Yes, he is. You know that.”

  “On what? A porch swing?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m sitting in a chair.”

  “So,” Berry says, sitting back, “you’re being lifted off the floor. He’s being hung from the ceiling. You’re on the ground; he’s hanging from the sky. You’re on a pedestal; he’s not.”

  “So what are you saying, Jay?” Crawford caressed the barrel of the Ruger. “Are you saying you don’t know what Freud would say?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know! Some Freudian shit, I guess.”

  “How would you like this gun in your mouth? How’s that for some Freudian shit?”

  “Fuck!” Crawford slammed on the brakes, stopping just short of a collision with a stalled truck. He swerved into the next lane and realized he’d been drifting away — one dream state to the next.

  My dreams have to die. My dreams have to be dead.

  “What was I saying?”

  “You haven’t said a goddam thing!” Berry growled.

  “Please drive carefully, Jim,” Scott added.

  Crawford could now see they were near the airport — the three right lanes oozing traffic like ants marching toward a sticky plate. He got on the left side and hit the gas. The traffic was easing up.

  “We’re going to Gardena, boys. You know that?”

  “How the hell would we know that?” Berry said.

  “You know where?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “You two know all about what has been happening to me, don’t you?”

  “You’re making a big mistake, Jim,” Scott said.

  “Let’s see.” Crawford opened his briefcase. There was the Old Arkansan, lying sideways like a satisfied lover. He let the pistol rest against his thigh so he could grab the bottle. “I’ve got an idea, guys. Why don’t we have a little drink?”

  “I’m fine thanks,” Scott said quickly.

  “I think you’ve had enough already,” Berry said.

  “You’re right. But you haven’t.” Crawford picked up the bottle then held it up from the bottom with a cupped hand, like he was presenting fine wine in a French restaurant. “Ever had any Old Arkansan?” he asked with an eager announcer’s voice as he swerved to miss a slow car.

  “Of course fucking not,” Berry said. “And be careful.”

  “Well it’s about time,” Crawford said, tossing the bottle back to Berry.

  “Old Arkansan?” Berry read. “I’m not drinking this shit.”

  Crawford grabbed the gun from next to his thigh and held it up. “Oh yes you are. You think I’m the only one loaded here?”

  Berry’s eyes widened with astonishment. “Jesus, get some help.”

  “I’m offering you some help. Take off the cap and drink.” He paused a moment, then shaking the gun, “Now!”

  Berry looked at the bottle again then took the cap off.

  Crawford looked at his red nose in the mirror and turned on the radio. “Maybe this will help? Drink! Drink, you mother…”

  A psychedelic Hammond B3.

  “Oh, this is good. Like a church.”

  Duh duh da duh de duh da da da. It was In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

  Who was that? In the Garden of Eden.

  “Iron Butterfly,” Scott said, as if he heard Crawford’s thoughts.

  “Oh my God, listen,” Crawford said, turning it up. “Drink, Berry!” he yelled.

  Berry put the bottle to his lips and raised it slowly, taking a laborious sip. He brought the bottle down and some of the liquid slid down his chin.

  Crawford laughed loudly. “Okay, Scott, your turn. Take a big one. Don’t be a pussy.”

  Berry handed the bottle over to Scott, who was less reluctant. He tipped the bottle, taking a drink without a cough or grimace.

  “That’s right, my boy. All right, Berry, again. And really drink this time. One step at a time!”

  Duh duh da duh de duh da da da.

  Berry snatched the bottle acrimoniously. “Whatever you say, Doctor!” he mocked before tipping the bottle high this time.

  “That’s right. That’s right.”

  Berry brought the bottle down coughing, wiping his mouth.

  “Nothing you ever drink will taste the same again,” Crawford said. “Oh that’s us,” he said, turning onto the 105.

  “Great,” Berry said, passing the bottle to Scott. “Great.”

  “I don’t think it’s that bad,” Scott said, taking another drink before passing it back to Berry.

  “I’ll have another,” Crawford said, reaching the end of the offramp.

  “Really, Jim,” Berry said.

  “Give it to me!”

  Berry handed the bottle to Crawford and he took a giant swig.

  Duh duh da duh de duh da da da.

  “Anybody know the story of this tune?” he asked, passing the bottle back to Berry.

  “The story of this tune?” Scott said. Berry tipped the bottle almost as if he wanted to. “Iron Butterfly. Bunch a drugged-out hippies, right?”

  “Yeah, who cares,” Berry said.

  “The guy that wrote this tune was so fucked up he couldn’t sing the lyrics — In the Garden of Eden. That’s what he was trying to sing.” Crawford laughed. “In the Garden of Eden.” But he was so wasted it came out, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” and they just kept it. Isn’t that hilarious?

  “Fascinating,” Berry said, doing another laborious shot.

  “Actually, that’s probably a myth,” Scott said.

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Crawford asked. “I mean, the forbidden fruit. Doing things that promise knowledge. Doing things you shouldn’t.”

  Berry sat back slowly. “That shitty booze is the forbidden fruit,” he said with slightly slurred speech. “I don’t need any philosophizing to go with it.”

  “Duh duh da duh de duh da da da,” Crawford sang. “We’re guilty, gentlemen. Guilty of everything.”

  Scott handed Berry the bottle again. “I’m sorry,” Berry said before taking another sluggish gulp, “but my self-esteem is much higher than that.”

  Crawford took the turn off the 105 and suddenly there was nothing but black and brown people everywhere.

  Crawford passed a street of patchy vacant lots with grass grown around chain-link fences, around what were once building foundations, past undergrowth devouring former sidewalks and parking lots. Most likely these were relics of the Rodney King riots, burnt-out buildings not worth rebuilding.

  Duh duh da duh de duh da da da.

  “Many neighborhoods in South Central were once pleasant middle-class suburbs,” Berry said, “places free from crime and drugs, places where you could raise a family and retire. But the last 30 years or so haven’t been kind to Gardena.”

  “That’s right, Berry.” Scott said. “It’s no longer the garden spot it once promised to be. Overcome by urban growth that swallowed up the vegetable and fruit farms that once fed the local economy, and surrounded by freeways that polluted its once clean air, Gardena is no longer a suburb but an ‘inner-city’ or a ‘ghetto,’ as it is sometimes disparagingly called.”

  “The fuck you guys talkin’ about?” Crawford mumbled. “Goddam overeducated shitheads.”

  Crawford pulled to a stop at a four-way. “Give me the bottle, Scott.” Crawford took the bottle and held it up. And saw that there were just a few fingers left. “Not bad, boys. You should thank me. It’s the very last of the Old Arkansan.”

  “Thanks,” S
cott said meekly.

  Crawford tipped the bottle and drained the remainder in two ample gulps.

  “Goddam, Jim,” Berry said, now slurring under the influence. “Take it easy.”

  “Take it easy? We’re taking it easy.” Just then Crawford’s rubber nose fell onto the floor. He looked out the passenger-side window and saw an old white woman walking down the street pushing a small metal cart. The cart was filled with several plastic bags, probably groceries or medicine. She wore a dress so thin that it looked like a hospital gown. The pronounced wrinkles on the woman’s arms and legs only gave the threadlike garment added transparency, making her appear even more exposed to the harsh city streets around her, more vulnerable to the black and Latino youths that indifferently watched her inch by.

  That old woman must be one of those people that once knew a very different street than the one she’s walking down now. She probably saw the cafes and small businesses she had known for years close down. She probably saw friends leave and die. And perhaps now she felt left behind — an old woman, waiting for her time to come, waiting for her final exodus from the garden that once was.

  She didn’t grow up in an age of self-esteem, Crawford thought. She didn’t sit around with her parents or friends or husband or children talking about what her “emotional needs” were.

  Her hair was combed neatly to one side, showing that she still cared about her appearance.

  She probably hadn’t thought much about her “self image” over the years. She probably hadn’t thought of her “inner-self” and how it affected her “outer-self.”

  How much do I really care about Dorothy and Cal? Or even poor Jen. She didn’t deserve any of this. Dorothy and Cal deserve better. Maybe that’s what the old man is saying in my dream. I have to answer to myself for what I did to others. Which includes what I did to myself.

  Fade out.

  “We just heard Iron Butterfly’s classic hymn, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Now we’ve got more classic rock from Rod Stewart, Steppenwolf, and…”

  Crawford turned off the radio. The traffic light turned green, and Crawford didn’t move.

  “You guys want to tell me what’s waiting for me at the cookie factory?” Crawford was staring straight ahead. A car honked from behind.

  “Do we want to tell you?” Berry said slowly. “Do we want to tell you? Why the hell don’t you tell us?”

  “What’s going on here, Jay?” Scott asked.

  Berry couldn’t believe it. “What did you say?”

  “What… what… what is going on?”

  “You’re asking me, shithead?”

  “I…”

  The door handle sounded like a gun being cocked when Scott bolted out into the street, leaving the car door open in traffic.

  “Come back here, pussy!” Crawford yelled. Crawford grabbed the gun as Berry moved toward the open door and stuck it in his face. “No, you don’t!” Cars were honking as they went around Crawford’s motionless car. “Shut the door.”

  Berry did as he was told then put his hands in the air.

  “Put your hands down or I’ll fucking kill you!” Crawford looked in the direction where Scott had run. “You sure don’t move very fast, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Crawford stepped on the gas, racing through the two-lane city traffic at forty miles an hour, then fifty. “Tell me!”

  “Tell you what?” Berry whined.

  “Tell me what’s going on! I haven’t forgotten about the shopping cart. The shopping cart, remember the shopping cart?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Berry pleaded.

  Crawford looked up and saw West Rosecrans Avenue and turned right.

  “We’re going to be there in just a few minutes, Berry. I suggest you tell me now what I’m going to find there.”

  “I don’t know anything. I told you.”

  Crawford stepped on the gas harder. “I’m going to find out.”

  Berry leaned toward Crawford, who didn’t respond to his movement. “I want to help you, Jim.”

  “You want to help me? Tell me what has been going on the last few days. This is one of your pranks, isn’t it?”

  “A prank? Are you kidding?”

  “Is it?”

  Berry leaned back and lowered his quivering voice to a murmur. “Jim, I don’t know what has happened to you in the last few days, but I want to help. I think something terrible has happened to you.”

  “You know it has.” Crawford slowly reduced the speed of the car.

  “I didn’t know, Jim. I didn’t know. Please pull the car over and let me drive. Please. You’re just experiencing something. Perhaps alcohol delirium. Perhaps just a breakdown. That’s all. Everything is okay. You just need to see a doctor right now. You’re sick, Jim.” Berry took a deep breath. “I have to tell you something. Your wife told my wife a couple of weeks ago that you had started drinking again. The drinking has gotten worse since then, hasn’t it?”

  “You must have a Ph fucking D.”

  “You’re sick, Jim. You just need some help, that’s all. It’s okay. Albert and I will not hold this against you. We’re professionals.”

  “I’m sick,” Crawford said thoughtfully, slowing down and pulling over to the curb. “I’m just sick,” he said. “That’s all it is.”

  He felt Berry place his hand on his right shoulder. “Jim. Please let me help you,” Berry said, moving his hand slowly toward the gun. Crawford looked ahead and could see the cookie factory, the faded S barely discernible on a crumbling brick wall. He clenched the gun taut, tightening his finger on the trigger.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll find out, won’t we?”

  Berry looked at the building transfixed, his eyes wandering to the empty building next door. “Oh, that place.”

  “What?”

  “That building next door — it used to be a dress factory.”

  “Yeah?”

  “A number of Chinese laborers were trapped in a fire there years ago.”

  A paper sack blew across the hood of Crawford’s car, and suddenly he felt as if he was in the last scene of a movie, maybe a funeral scene.

  Probably a death scene.

  “What happened,” Crawford said mechanically.

  “All the people died,” Berry said.

  “And the community mourned the loss of the cookie factory.” Crawford said, watching the sack blow down the street. “Right?”

  “Right.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Crawford drove the car slowly toward the back of the cookie factory, dodging as best he could the wealth of wood, glass, and metal debris that littered the parking lot. A makeshift basketball net fashioned from the bottle of an old water cooler adorned a chain-link fence on one side of the building. Besides that, there were no signs of life — no cars, no lights, nothing. But there seemed to be a path through the debris to the rusty back door as if someone had kicked the junk aside as he walked in.

  That could be just my imagination, Crawford thought after turning off the engine. But then again, everything could.

  “I tell you, Jim, that Old Arkansan really hit me for a loop,” Berry said.

  “That’s nice,” Crawford said pointing the gun at him. “I’ll give you one last chance to tell me what this is all about,” he said, pointing the gun. “What’s in there?”

  “I can’t tell you.” Berry said, calmer than Crawford had ever seen him.

  “You can’t tell me or you won’t tell me?”

  “I can’t tell you. You’ll just have to go inside and see.”

  Crawford couldn’t assess the expression on Berry’s face. It was neither informed nor uninformed; apprehensive nor assertive. Wait. A voice. He heard voices, not just one voice. Sounded like Leonard Cohen trying to sing In a Gadda-Da-Vida.

  “Oh, my God. Voices.”

  In the Garden of Eden, baby. In the Garden of Eden.

  Crawford froze, thinking he’d finally lost his mind. No, really. “Shut up!” />
  “I didn’t say anything, Jim,” Berry said.

  Crawford’s voice quivered. “It’s just an earworm, that’s all. You’re not hearing voices.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Berry said.

  Leonard Cohen stopped singing.

  “Never mind.” Maybe Crawford was crazy, but before he’d let anyone take him away to the booby hatch, he was going to see what was in that building. “You go first and I’ll follow.”

  Berry was still calm. “Okay, Jim. You’re the boss.”

  Berry got out of the car slowly, straightening his sport coat and calmly combing his hair with his fingers. Crawford motioned him forward then followed close behind with the pistol pointed at his back.

  “I like being mischievous and playful.”

  “Good, Jim.”

  Berry walked ahead gracefully, sidestepping the broken glass with each move. Crawford followed, cringing at the sound of small fragments of glass crunching under his feet. He thought about going to the dentist, about having a drill in his mouth, about making mad associations, about losing his mind.

  How could his wife and child be in such a place? Was his mistress in there with them? Perhaps dead? Perhaps all of them dead? How could they all be terrorized by a character from a kid’s TV show? Where am I now, emotionally?

  He looked at Berry’s profile against the chaos of shapes that surrounded him. An old, decrepit building of browns and reds and oranges. Sharp metal jutting up and down amongst tattered paper and faded plastic. Like an inkblot test where Crawford was to project his anxieties and desires onto an ambiguous image. But it wasn’t entirely ambiguous.

  Anxiety? Desire? The study of psychology has driven me crazy. No, wait. Just psychology in general, that’s made me crazy. Or maybe just self-help.

  “I think you should go in first,” Berry said, stopping in front of the door.

  “You do, huh?”

  Crawford raised his gun. “Open it.”

  Berry looked over his shoulder at Crawford and smiled. “What if it’s locked?”

  “Turn the doorknob.”

  Berry gently put his fingers on the knob and turned it slowly. “Well, aren’t we the lucky ones today.”

  “Open it.”