“It’s okay,” Ellen said, “but I didn’t forget.” She pulled from her little purse an even littler purse that held the medicine.
“Oh, good,” my mother said, although there was clearly nothing good about it, or just about anything else on the face of the planet.
“I don’t care if you’re diabetic,” I whispered, trying to make it better.
Ellen gave me an odd look. “Why would you?”
Oh, crap.
“I didn’t mean —”
“Well, since I’m here anyway,” my mother interrupted, “why don’t I give you two a ride home?”
“NO!” I said, biting the tip of my tongue, which hurt. “We’ll walk.”
“Nonsense.” My mother laughed, playing with her hoop earring, which was the size of a manhole cover. It was impossible to take a hint if you had no idea it was there.
“No, really,” Ellen said. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, who’s first?” my mother said, clapping farm-calloused hands together.
“Mom . . . ,” I began.
”C’mon! Up and in!” She giggled, waving us toward the door.
I swallowed hard. Her arms were long and striated and tan from working in the garden. In fact, she was one giant muscle from head to toe from not having eaten a morsel of anything that wasn’t Certified Healthy for the last twenty-five years. She was in better shape than Jack LaLanne. She was in better shape than Arnold. My mother could grab Chad Chilton by the neck with one hand and make him weep like a baby.
“Okay. Sure,” Ellen said, frightened.
“Great!” my mother said, as if the outcome were never in doubt. Chopper knew which side his fake-beef tofu was buttered, and scrabbled his fat butt into the backseat. I looked at Ellen, apologizing as much as the side to side movement of my pupils would allow. She shrugged, pushing Chopper as far as he would go, and then got in next to him.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, my mother turned off her book on tape (at least the twentieth biography of Che Guevara she’d read that I was aware of), and eyed us in the rearview. I was mentally preparing to deflect the We took to the streets, We changed this country, We stopped Vietnam reverie that seemed to be coming, but she shifted gears on me.
“So, what do they call it now, anyway?”
“What?”
“Like ‘going out,’ or whatever?”
The worst. An absolute disaster.
”God, Mom!” I said, longing for Vietnam after all.
She laughed and wound long graying hair around two fingers. “You know, Ellen, Stan never said anything about a girlfriend to me.” She shook her head comically, gesturing toward Olivia. “Of course, he never says much of anything, at least not anymore. It was a different story when he was a boy.” She paused, for a second, a one-woman Charge of the Light Brigade. “I’ll have to show you some pictures sometime, Ellen! He was such a little cutie!”
I envisioned myself encased in a block of Lucite, like a paperweight. It was peaceful. And airless.
“Umm . . . sure . . . ,” Ellen said.
“I know! You can come over for tacos!” my mother offered, as the Fry-O-Lator swerved in the road. “I make great tacos. How about Friday? What are you doing then?”
“Ummm . . . I’ll have to . . .” Ellen said, stalling hard, but it didn’t matter, because my mother was already onto another thought. I could see it in her eyes, unfocused in the rearview. What was coming? A story about me wetting the bed? No, too obvious. Me not shaving yet? That had potential. Seeing Dr. Felder? Conceivably.
“Oh! I know what I wanted to ask!” My mother reached back and patted Ellen’s knee confidentially. “Do we need to talk about protection?”
The Atom Bomb.
The Apocalypse.
Ellen’s eyes were wide open, a thousand-yard stare. She looked like someone had hit her in the stomach with a four iron.
“No? Ha-ha, okay. You know, when I was your age, we used to go parking, too. . . . It’s funny that now you feed the ducks. Ha-ha, things change, huh? Of course, my generation had to grow up fast, not like you guys, everything free and easy.”
Ellen turned away, looking out — or at least attempting to look out — the hot-wing spattered window. Even Olivia, half-asleep in the car seat, tried to deflect the nightmare. “Mom, can I have frogurt for dessert tonight?”
“Sure, honey.” My mother pinched her cheek. “Oh! I know what I wanted to ask! Eleanor, were you involved in this party the other night? Your mother and I had a little talk about it, and I have to say, I really do not approve at all.”
Chopper punctuated her disapproval. Twice.
I held my breath. Ellen held her breath. We were at least ten streets from her house. The Fry Mobile seemed to creep even slower than usual.
“Umm . . . ,” Ellen said. “Ummm . . .”
“Breathe through your mouth,” I whispered.
My mother rambled on. “Well, I assume your behavior was better than Stanley’s.”
Ellen looked at me quizzically. It was the final blow. The nadir. Stanley?
“I mean, he came home and started singing! Right there in the middle of the lawn!” My mother hummed a few off-key bars of “Eleanor Rigby.” “All the lonely la-la . . . where-do they la-la from? . . .”
“Mom?”
“. . . Father McKenzie . . . writing a sermon . . .”
“Mom!”
“. . . do they all belong? . . .”
Chopper began to howl, joining in on the chorus. I groaned, squeezing my head between my hands as hard as I could.
It was not nearly hard enough.
FIVE PLACES I WOULD RATHER HAVE BEEN:
1. Torture volunteer in Turkish prison training film
2. Raw snail-gargling in France
3. On “The Dentists of Southeast Asia” month-long tour
4. Buried in a crate under forty feet of radioactive mud
5. Getting treaded by the Fry-O-Lator’s front tire
Finally, like a miracle, or at least the end of a string of a thousand consecutive nonmiracles, the car bucked to a stop in front of Ellen’s house. Greenish, she mumbled a quick “Nice to meet you” and then leapt out of the car, practically in a full sprint up the driveway.
“She seems nice,” my mother said, as the Fry-O-Lator turned and lurched toward home.
I kicked the seat, hard. “Stop!”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“I’m walking.”
“You’re what?”
“STOP THE CAR!”
“Stan, honey,” my mother said, pulling over, “what’s wrong?”
“WHAT’S WRONG?” I yelled, jumping out. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”
“Stop yelling,” she said, “you’re scaring Olivia.”
“I’M SCARING OLIVIA?” I screamed. “I AM?”
Olivia did start crying. She held out her arms. It was all I could do not to pick her up and take her with me. My mother rolled up the streaked window, her eyes hurt and confused. It made it even worse. Then the Fry Mobile peeled, as much as the Fry Mobile was capable of peeling, away.
It took me an hour to walk into town. I went straight to the nearest pay phone, which was also the only pay phone, and dug out a quarter.
“Hello?”
Ellen’s mother picked up. She sounded like she’d been storing the same two ice cubes in her mouth, with great success, since 1982.
“Hi, um . . . this is Stan. Can I speak to Ellen, please?”
“Hold on a moment, Stan.”
I could hear whispering in the background. It got louder, and then something slammed.
“I’m sorry, Stan, but Eleanor is not at home.”
“Oh,” I said, and then kicked the pavement. My toe hurt. “Could I, um, leave a message?”
“That’s probably not a good idea, Stan.”
“Right,” I said. “Then could I . . .”
Mrs. Rigby hung up.
I found another quarter.
“Miles?”
“Save it,” I said. “Just come and get me.”
“Umm . . . okay,” he said.
“And bring some beer.”
Treatment for the feature-length film titled
GOING NOWHERE FASTER©
Written by Stan “T-Bone” Smith
How about this for something you’ve never seen before: Vampires on the moon! See, there’s a beautiful female vampire named Suzanna, who has recently been turned by her thousand-year-old master. Let’s name the master something Victorian-sounding, Colin or Tristan. The master is seen in a vague but eerie montage, a glamorous Brit, a quick allusion to the passion of his bite, his ruby lips, his bloodless gums. But let’s say, before we leave him, that our heroine has once seen Tristan in his resting state, where he’s really a big lizard.
Suzanna, we will learn, from various blood-hunger flashbacks, misses her equally beautiful daughter, from whom she has been cruelly torn away. It is only the memory of her daughter that allows Suzanna to resist, yes resist, the urge to feed on humans. It’s unbelievably painful, this denial, worse than heroin withdrawal, and we may spend a page or two with her in a cheap motel, sweating on a bed, roiling in agony.
It turns out the moon, though domed and airless, is a lot like any number of bad neighborhoods in Dallas. Suzanna, stopping at a seamy bar, sits next to a man, bearded, tough, world-weary. His name is Tom and he’s a vampire hunter. After a few drinks he and Suzanna go out the back into the alley and begin to kiss. Just as Suzanna’s will is stretched to the breaking point, just as we are sure she is about to bite Tom, he pulls out an IV bag of blood, forcing her to gulp the soothing liquid. Tom reveals, after she’s had her fill, that this is not in fact blood but a compound he’s developed. He calls it Hemo-synth. Or maybe Andro-platen. At any rate, Tom is a scientist and he can save Suzanna with this compound. She will never have to feed again. If she comes with him, he knows where to get plenty more.
As they arrive at his vaguely churchy workshop, Tom leads her into a candlelit room, revealing an industrial freezer full of Hemo-synth. Her knees weaken. Just then the lights are raised and she is grabbed by hooded men. The room is filled with hooded figures who begin chanting a mantra. Just before she swoons, she looks at him and says, “My daughter.”
We lapse into a long montage, where the unconscious Suzanna battles with Tristan/Colin for her soul. There are fiery abysses, a vacuuming of the mind, a series of unparalleled tortures, but in the end, her will defeats the master. She wakes in a crisp, clean hospital room, to a smiling Tom. She is cured. Her daughter runs in and jumps on the bed for a touching embrace. Tom leaves quietly, asserting that he has “More work to do.” Suzanna and her daughter move into a nicely appointed three bedroom moon-pod and go on with their lives.
Or, wait. Does that make sense? And what happens to Tom? Do we care about the daughter? And vampires are stupid, anyway. Never mind.
CHAPTER TEN
THERE’S not a thing SOMETHING absolutely nothing ABOUT Ellen MARY
We sat at the mica mines, which was just a hole in the ground surrounded by rock outcroppings, and drank. I spit out most of the first one, but after that, it actually tasted okay.
“So she asked if you go parking?” Miles laughed. “And then rubbers? Wow. Harsh.”
“It’s not funny,” I said. “You should have seen Ellen’s face. She will never, ever talk to me again. Ever.”
“Listen, Chicken Little, all is not lost.”
“It’s not?”
“Hell, no. Why don’t I just talk to her?”
“My mother?”
“No, Kreskin, Ellen.”
“How?”
“Whattaya mean, how? I’ll dial her number. Some computer will connect the phone lines, it’ll ring, she’ll pick it up, and then I’ll try to smooth things. Maybe get Cari in on it. They know each other, ya know. They were in orchestra together or something. Maybe the four of us could go out.”
“Orchestra? Ellen plays an instrument?”
“You don’t ask too many questions, do you, Alex Trebek?”
He was right. I felt stupid. There was so much I didn’t know.
“From what I hear, she’s going to Boston Conservatory or whatever. Music major. Saxophone. Already accepted.”
“From what you hear?”
The mention of college, any college, made me wince. The mention of her leaving town made me wince. The mention of her being a saxophone player was almost too much. I took an enormous swallow of beer. I envisioned Ellen writing peppy little jazz numbers and then naming them things like Round Stan-Night or Take the Stan Train or Mood Stan-ingo. I pictured her blowing off college and us going on tour and me becoming her manager and booking sold-out shows in Munich and Barcelona and London. I pictured her sneaking over to my house at midnight and serenading under my window, playing beautiful and tragic little solos.
Then I envisioned Chopper howling.
I tried to stop it, but my fantasy wouldn’t respond. I saw my parents waking up and then calling the police and my mother running outside in her tie-dyed bra with a baseball bat and Ellen dropping her horn and running for her life, and then I almost gagged, so I stopped envisioning.
“I mean,” said Miles, “everyone isn’t a loser like you and me.” He toasted, clinking his aluminum against mine. “Some people are actually leaving this crap town.”
Miles wasn’t going to college, either. But then, he’d always known he wasn’t going to college. He already had a job lined up in Pittsburg working for a friend of his father’s. A cool job in some kind of photo studio or something where they made ads for magazines and took pictures of models and guys in giant celery suits all day.
Which wasn’t nearly as cool as working in a video store, but still.
FIVE COOLER JOBS THAN WORKING AT HAPPY VIDEO:
1. Freelance Nose Excavator
2. Tater Tot Press Operator
3. Quality Control: Paper Clips
4. Freckle Counter
5. Cool Whip Attendant
“You’d call her? Just like that?”
“Sure.”
I lay back on the rock. The sun felt good on my shoulders. The trees formed a canopy above us and my arms looked almost tan.
“Or, we could just do The Plan.”
Miles had, for years, been trying to talk me into The Plan, which was his completely un-thought-out and non-planned idea about taking a cross-country trip. Camping out and seeing the sights and experiencing the freedom of the road.
“Oh, brother,” I said. “Not that again.”
He gave me an annoyed look. “C’mon, Farmer John! We’ll take my car and just hit it. Screw college, right? It’ll be awesome. We’ll be like Kerouac and the guy from Aerosmith.”
“Like who?”
“The open highway, Stevie Wonder. The chance to see the country. Niagara Falls. Grand Canyon. Nevada Bunny Ranch. Don’t tell me you don’t want to check out California? What’s the point of this whole script thing if you’re not going to L.A. to drive convertibles and take lunches and call people on cell phones?”
“I know, but. . . .”
“Shit, Stan, the girls out there’ll make Ellen look like your cousin Bob.”
It was my turn to give him an annoyed look. “For one thing, I don’t have a cousin Bob. Besides, how do you know? You’ve never been there.”
“Posters? Album covers?” He shook his head in disbelief. “You ever heard of magazines?” He started to sing, like a wounded Beach Boy “Well, East Coast girls are hip, I really dig the styles they wear-air-air —”
“You have a terrible voice,” I interrupted.
“I have a great voice,” he said.
“Be serious for a minute,” I said, getting annoyed. “So you’d rather have some girl in a magazine who’s probably been airbrushed half to death than Cari?”
“Who’s got Cari?” he asked. “I don’t have Cari.”
I sighed. “Miles, I am not driving to Califo
rnia.”
“Fine!” he snapped, and then sulked. Neither of us said anything. He got up and walked to the edge of the rock and tossed pebbles down into the cavern. After a while he came back and sat down.
“I read somewhere they think this used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad,” I said. I’d actually read it on the plaque at the bottom of the trail, where it said, beneath layers of graffiti, that they thought this used to be a stop on the Underground Railroad.
“Wow, no kidding?” Miles said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Who gives a shit?”
I sat up, surprised. He punched me on the arm.
“Relax, Harriet Tubman.” He laughed. “Don’t you know when someone’s pulling your leg?”
“Apparently not.”
He opened a beer and handed it to me. I shook my head. “I’m late for Dr. Felder’s. Can you drop me off?”
“So you’re late for Dr. Felder’s,” he said, his voice echoing in the caves below, which went Feld . . . Feld . . . Feld. “So what?”
“Can you drop me off?” I asked again.
“In a minute,” he said, opening another beer.
Two hours later, I walked into Dr. Felder’s office.
“You’ve been drinking,” he said, as I flopped onto the couch.
“You’ve been charging sixty an hour,” I answered.
“Normally I don’t counsel patients under the influence.”
“Normally you don’t counsel normal patients,” I answered, and then burped. “So what do you expect?”
He sighed, deeply, pulling at his collar. Dr. Felder was, of course, wearing the outfit of the Cool Young Therapist Who Could Relate to Teens. He had on immaculate white sneakers and ironed jeans and a tie that was a piano keyboard. He had a mussed but expensive haircut that mussed but expensive doctors on hospital shows seduced beautiful nurses with. He even looked like the kind of actor who played high school heartthrob roles, with a five o’clock shadow and a shadowy past, and after the series was canceled showed up on Hollywood Squares with a receding hairline.
“I will have to notate this, Stan.”
“Notate away.”
He also tended to use “lingo,” mostly MTV rapper stuff, Do you feel what I’m saying? or I hear you, nodding like he knew what it meant or like if you went to his house and looked in his fifteen-CD-changer it wouldn’t be filled with every Simon and Garfunkel album ever made.
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