Why Aren't You Smiling?

by Alvin Orloff

  “Parents.” Lucas gave a sarcastic roll of the eyes.

  “The early disciples,” noted Rick, “did not believe in families.”

  “I’m all for that,” agreed Lucas. “Fuck families.” He sounded suspiciously like a bratty kid, not Jesus Freaky at all.

  “I just left my family,” I said coolly.

  “There’s always room for a fellow seeker,” encouraged Rick, speaking to Lucas, not me. He beamed at Lucas for another few seconds then glanced down at himself as if he’d just noticed he was nearly naked. “Be right back.” He trotted off.

  “How’d you two meet?” asked Lucas, sitting in the stained chair across from me.

  “In a park. Down in California. Rick invited me up to Oregon.”

  Lucas took that in. “Right on. You into the whole Jesus bag, too?”

  I tried to manifest some pious inscrutability. “There are many paths.” Lucas just looked at me blankly. “What about you?” I asked.

  Lucas smiled sheepishly. “Well, you know…”

  Rick returned, still in his underwear, holding a tray of pot paraphernalia. “So how’s Dean?” he asked Lucas. He set the tray on the coffee table and started de-seeding, de-stemming, and bong-loading with ritualistic meticulousness. Lucas explained that Dean was great, as were a bunch of other people I didn’t know. No effort was made to include me in the conversation, so – feeling third-wheelish and hoping to escape the marijuana – I excused myself and drifted into the kitchen. I sat at the far end of the table where I could hear Rick and Lucas without being seen. Lucas whined about teachers and Rick interrupted to counsel that even pig-headed power-trippers deserved Love. This shocked me. Loving bullies, strangers, or even parents struck me as an epic and worthwhile challenge. Loving people who assigned math homework just seemed perverse.

  As Rick and Lucas got stoned, their voices lowered softer and softer until I could no longer make out their words. Then there was silence. I stood up and moved to a spot from which, if I craned my neck, I could just see them around the corner of the doorframe. I worried that they, in turn, would see me snooping, but I needn’t have. Rick and Lucas were leaning into each other, oblivious to the world. I couldn’t quite tell what they were doing from my vantage point, but there was no mistaking the intimacy of their positions. Then the pair slowly twisted around, allowing me to see something I had never imagined, nor wanted to imagine: a long, passionate kiss between Rick and someone who wasn’t me. I felt the ground beneath my feet evaporate and would have been sure I was falling, except that I wasn’t.

  Just then I heard footsteps in the hall. Panic joined the falling sensation and I quietly, if clumsily, fled out the back door into the sweltering heat of the yard. I plopped down into one of the lawn chairs facing the garden. Outwardly I remained impassive to the point of rigidity, but inside I was a shipwrecked sailor holding onto a piece of driftwood as the sea raged around him, a wolf howling at the moon, a transfer student on his first day at a new junior high. A moment later, Beth’s voice addressed me from the doorway of the house. “Now you know how it feels.”

  I wanted to be polite, but didn’t have the energy. “What?”

  She came out to the backyard and collapsed into the lawn chair next to me. Closing her eyes, she said, “You’re wasting your time.” She tried to make her voice sound wise and indifferent.

  “What do you mean?” Her tone irritated me.

  Beth opened her eyes and gave me a cruel smile. “Don’t play coy, Leonard. I see how you look at Rick. But don’t think the feeling’s reciprocal. Not for you or me. I’m not saying he doesn’t care for me. He does. More than anyone else. I’m his rock, spiritually, which is all that really matters. But on the material plane, it’s never going to happen. I’ve accepted that. And in a way, it’s better. It keeps us from getting wrapped up in the physical and forgetting the spiritual.” Beth sounded so miserable that in spite of not really liking her, I felt a little sorry for her.

  “I think of Rick,” I admitted.

  Beth smiled tightly. “I’ll bet.”

  “At night. I’m not a child anymore, you know. I have feelings.”

  She chuckled bitterly. “No kidding.”

  I turned my face away from her. “Do Rick…” I could barely force the words out of my mouth, “you know, and Lucas…”

  Beth sat up and scowled at me to deliver her answer. “What do you think?”

  “Then maybe…”

  Beth cut me off. “You’re not his type.”

  “What’s his type?”

  Beth jerked her head towards the house. “You just saw it. Angels. He calls them his angels.”

  I wanted to protest, to say I’d seen interest in Rick’s eyes. But it wasn’t true. Rick had never looked at me the way he looked at Lucas. And why would he? Who’d ever heard of a short, chubby angel with acne? Every word Rick had uttered in my presence had been utterly sincere and without ulterior motives. He wanted to help me on my spiritual quest because he was a good person. I felt like screaming.

  “He does like you, Leonard,” consoled Beth. “He said you have a highly spiritual nature. His words.”

  “Shouldn’t we all Love each other?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Spiritual Love can be universal,” said Beth. “Not physical. Matter is the creation of the Devil. It exists to keep our souls apart and tempt us into Sin.”

  “It’s hard to think of Rick sinning.”

  “Not so much sinning as struggling,” sighed Beth. “I’m not a small-minded person.” She put on a hopeful voice. “I’ve spoken with him. He knows he has tendencies and he’s agreed to let me help him.”

  I started feeling a little sorry for Rick. “When I’m with him I feel really special,” I admitted.

  “Me, too,” said Beth, sounding even sadder than I felt.

  “When he looks at me, it’s like… Holy or something” I shivered with the thought of it.

  “His eyes are smoldering,” said Beth, enjoying her use of the word. “That’s the secret of his charisma. It’s like he can see into your soul.”

  I felt a huge relief in being able to share my feelings. “Being around him makes it easier to Love. Not just him, but everyone, everything. The whole world is more lovable.”

  “That’s Rick’s gift,” Beth confirmed. “He makes it easier for others to Love.” Her voiced dropped to a barely audible and rather theatrical whisper. “But he himself is not honestly capable of Love.” We sat in silence for a moment, not looking at each other. I didn’t quite believe Beth, but I didn’t disbelieve her either. Finally, she turned to me and glowered. “So… you’ll be staying how long?”

  I pondered my predicament. Though it seemed to me I’d been at Pleroma forever and my past life was but a distant memory, I’d actually only been there six days. Six long days. It hit me with a rush: I had no desire to sell pot, no chance of getting closer to Rick, no affection for any of the Forever Family, hated sleeping on the couch, and if I heard one more word about Jesus I might have to scream. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  Beth’s brow unfurrowed and she smiled miserably. “Smart boy.” She got up and went into the house. After a minute she came back with a couple of iced lemonades, one of which she handed to me. We had a truce.

  “Rick answered the door in his underpants?” I said. It sounded more like a statement than a question.

  Beth looked tired. “He sometimes forgets about the physical plane.”

  “You think that was it?”

  All the energy seemed to flow out of Beth’s body. “I believe so.”

  “The kids who come here don’t care about Jesus. They’re just after pot.”

  Beth spoke quickly and decisively, as if she’d had her response waiting. “We know that. For nine out of ten, the preaching goes in one ear out the other, but that one in ten… those kids aren’t going to get the truth about Jesus from some stuffy church with some pasty-faced old priest disapproving of everything. But maybe, just maybe, they�
��ll be open to The Word if it’s coming from someone they can relate to. The Gospel is the most relevant message in the human universe, but the churches have made it part of the respectability trip.” She softened. “Rick and I are reaching out to people who aren’t likely to be reached by anyone else.”

  “Seems like Rick does most of the reaching.”

  Beth scowled at this. “You better go tell him you’re going.”

  I stood up and returned to the living room. Lucas was gone and Rick was studying a large, black Bible with tissue-like pages. I sat down next to him. “Hi.”

  “Hey, little Leonard.” He put the Bible on the coffee table. “I’ve been doing some research.” His eyes shone with excitement as he began sermonizing. Noble thoughts clothed in beautiful words poured from his impassioned lips while his hands made imploring gestures that looked almost like caresses. Faith and Reason were equally valid ways to arrive at “the ennobling Love of God.” Heaven was not a physical place in the clouds, but existed “like a seed in the hearts of men, waiting to be cultivated with the manure of Good Works and the waters of Compassion.” The corruption, pain, and suffering of the material world were “temporary inconveniences necessary for the purification of souls.” And since God’s mercy was infinite, everyone would eventually find his or her way to “the everlasting bliss of salvation.”

  To all these beautiful thoughts, I was barely listening. “So how do you know this Lucas guy?”

  Rick’s face was a door slamming shut. “Lucas is a fellow seeker. He and I are Brothers in Christ.”

  “Am I your Brother in Christ?”

  Rick soothed, “You are, Leonard. You are.” He put his hand on my shoulder and did a little squeeze/rub thing like people do to dogs when they’re not paying that much attention.

  “I thought that maybe we…” I didn’t bother to finish because Rick’s eyes were clouding over. He wasn’t into this conversation. At all. I closed my eyes and silently prayed: Please, dear Lord, don’t make me hate someone I Love because he doesn’t Love me. Don’t let me becometh angry… (I suddenly remembered it was holier to use Olde English when addressing God) …or bitter or forgeteth the happiness I’ve known from Loving. Helpeth me to remaineth humble and grateful for thy blessings and not be greedy for Love. Amen.

  “You all right?” asked Rick.

  I opened my eyes and saw the concerned look on Rick’s perfect, perfect face. I smiled because a miracle had transpired. I was OK. “I’m fine. I’m just fine and I’m going home tomorrow.”

  Rick

  1970

  Catastrophe

  From her immaculately clean and miraculously modern kitchen, Esther Mandelbaum’s artificially sweetened voice rang out, “Iiirrving!” Her son did not materialize. She bustled into the living room, which she insisted on keeping perfectly neat and clutterless, as if a reporter and camera crew from Better Homes & Gardens might drop by at any moment. The boy whom she addressed was sprawled on the sofa, reading a comic book. Elbows akimbo, she looked at him directly. “We’re going out for lunch. You wanna come with?”

  The boy glanced up at his mother… She’d justs returned from the beauty parlor and her stiff hair reminded him of a department store mannequin. “I might consider it if you’d call me by my name.”

  Esther produced a long, rather theatrical sigh. “Very well, Rick.” Her son’s new name stuck in her throat a little. “Would you care to join the rest of the family for lunch? We’re going to Canter’s.” She managed a frosty little smile. She was trying.

  Rick didn’t much like spending time with his family, but he did have a terrific case of the munchies. “Well, OK.” He sat up, tossed his comic on the coffee table and began putting on his moccasins.

  As his mother straightened the comic so that it, like Life, Look, and Time, was perpendicular with the edge of the table, she caught sight of the cover, which depicted a grotesque, anthropomorphic beast dressed in a brightly colored leotard and cape. “Wonder Wart-hog,” she read out loud, in a voice dripping with querulous disdain. She gave Rick a disappointed look. “You’re still reading superhero comics?”

  “It’s sort of like a parody.”

  “It would seem to me,” opined Esther, “that by the age of 18 one could simply accept that superheroes are ego-gratifying fantasy projections for insecure children, and move on with one’s reading material.”

  “Mom, I’ve asked you not to psychoanalyze me. You’re not even licensed yet.”

  “I’m not psychoanalyzing you, I’m psychoanalyzing the typical comic book reader. You, Rick, are surely more intelligent and emotionally mature than the typical comic book reader.”

  He shrugged and scratched his chin. “If you say so.”

  “And since we’re going out, you’ll maybe want to change your clothes, or at least put something decent on over that old shirt…” This came out in a tone midway between question and command.

  Rick’s voice became shrill with grievance. “Do I get to tell you what to wear, or is this a one way deal?” He loved his Jefferson Airplane tee-shirt, holes and all.

  Esther threw up her hands, not just metaphorically as other mothers might, but physically, like someone on a TV sitcom. “I know, I know, too much to ask. Monster Mommy strikes again. Forget I said anything. Wear what you like.”

  Sol Mandelbaum strolled into the room jangling the car keys in the pocket of his blazer. “What ho, what ho! Are we off?” he asked in the jaunty, fake British accent he found endlessly hilarious.

  Rick tried to say, “I guess,” but accidentally swallowed the first word so that it came out, “Guess.”

  “I’m to guess, am I? How droll.” Sol rubbed his hands together, impersonating an aristocratic paterfamilias playing whimsical games with his genteel family, a fantasy he’d nurtured since growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn.

  Esther glared at her husband. “Enough, Solly. He’s coming.”

  Rose, Rick’s nine-year-old sister, bounced into the room. “Aunt Sylvia called. She’s going to meet us there.”

  “Rick… Sweetie?” Esther’s voice turned solicitous and whiny, “You wouldn’t consider wearing that lovely sweater she gave you last Hanukkah? It means so much to Sylvia to see you kids enjoying her presents. It can be your good deed for the day.”

  Rick groaned as if asked to perform one of the seven labors of Hercules, but went to his room. A moment later he returned, clad in a yellow crew-neck sweater that clashed hideously and absurdly with his frayed bellbottoms and wild mane of long, curly hair.

  “Ooh, lookin’ sharp,” cackled Rose.

  “He does look sharp,” said Esther, wearing a hopeful smile.

  “I have a veddy, veddy attractive and stylish family,” said Sol, still trying to sound upper-crusty. “Now, shall we be off? The carriage awaits.”

  Inside the Mandelbaum’s cream-colored Lincoln Continental, all was cool, quiet, and calm. Sol drove (jauntily) while Esther, who never let a moment go to waste since returning to school, studied her Introduction to Abnormal Psychology text. In back, Rose fidgeted while Rick watched the dull dreamscape of suburban prosperity whiz by outside the window. Everything struck him as grotesquely oversized. Big houses. Big cars. Big lawns. Big people walking big dogs. He felt too small for such a gargantuan world. And yet, his dreams were been big… if somewhat incoherent. He wanted to be left alone and part of it all; treated as an equal and looked up to; a playboy and a do-gooder; a man of the people and a superstar. These contradictions made no difference, ultimately, because nothing was possible for him. Nothing at all. Or maybe everything was, just not quite yet.

  No sooner had they hit the freeway than Rose threw herself over to the front of the car and turned on the radio. Static-y music blasted from the speakers. Esther turned down the volume while Rose fell back into her seat and started spastically swinging her arms up and down (her concept of dancing) while screeching along with the song, “Sugar! Uh uh uh uh Uh uh! Awww, honey, honey! Uh uh uh uh Uh uh! You are my candy gi
iiiirl, and ya got me wantin’ yooouuu!” Rick wished he’d followed through with his fantasy of dosing his sister’s breakfast cereal with downers.

  A small eternity later, the family walked into Canter’s, a big, unpretentious East Coast-style deli restaurant. The place was a favorite of showbiz luminaries, and everyone (except Rick, who was above such things) began craning their necks, hoping to see a Somebody. On previous occasions the family had spotted Shelley Winters, Buddy Hackett, Sonny Bono, and someone who might have been the guy who played Larry Tate on Bewitched.

  “I’m getting cheesecake,” announced Rose.

  “Isn’t that Artie Johnson?” stage-whispered Esther, discreetly pointing at a blond man with an impish grin.

  Her husband shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Too tall. Artie Johnson is this big.” He held his hand up to his waist.

  “It is,” said Esther. She turned to Rick. “Isn’t that Artie Johnson?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Rick replied coldly. “I don’t watch television.”

  “Then how did you know Artie Johnson was a TV actor?” asked Sol, with a smug smile that made Rick want to punch his face a little.

  “It is Artie Johnson,” declared Rose. “From Laugh-In! She started running in hyperactive little circles, chanting “Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me…!”

  Esther stopped her dead with a glare. “Rose, please!”

  A pretty young waitress came up to seat the family. “We’d like a booth up front, my dear,” said Sol.

  “My dear,” echoed Esther in cruel imitation.

  The waitress led the family to a table and everyone sat except Rick. Directly across the aisle in a semi-circular booth were the members of Azazel, his favorite band. Despite their psychedelic wardrobe (the usual mish-mosh of beads, paisley, and fringe), it was hard to imagine these people producing the morbid, dirge-like acid rock for which they were notorious. They were all giggling and clowning around with their food like unsupervised children.

  Though starstruck, Rick felt emboldened by the general air of levity to speak with his heroes. “Hey, I saw you guys open for the Electric Prunes, and Serpents of the Air is, like, my favorite album. You guys are the greatest.”