“You one of the ones who laughed?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Well, the joke’s over.”
“Clearly,” I say.
“There is no joke,” Wally adds. He kicks some dirt. “No joke at all.”
“I gained enough experience points today to move up a level,” Doug M. says, prying the cap off another wine cooler he produces from some hidden pocket in his clothing. “I’m a master swordsman now.”
“I knew it,” Wally says. “You looked very confident out there.”
Gabby glares at me. I am filled with an urge to run away. Her eyes seem to pierce straight into my brain. I scan the nearby crowds, hoping for a familiar face, anyone I can rush off to say hello to, extricating myself from the current milieu.
I spot Elissa. She is standing with a group of angsty-looking teens.
“There’s my sister,” I say, seeing my escape.
I make my way over to the group of kids, who are huddled together like refugees. They are dressed darkly. Dark hooded sweatshirts, dark pants, boots. They talk with their heads down, eyes trained to the ground. They make no acknowledgment of my presence as I insert myself into their cluster. Only my sister stands out, wearing her standard garb: T-shirt with holes all over it, jeans, sneakers from Goodwill. She looks older than seventeen. She salutes when she sees me.
“You’re not drinking?”
“Nah,” she says. “Not tonight.”
“What’s with them?” I ask.
“These are my friends from after-school activity clubs. We’re all in the Stratego Club, the Punk History Awareness Club, the Nihilism Club, and the Godard Is Overrated Club. They’re upset because apparently two of them showed up to this week’s Nihilism Club meeting, breaking a two-year streak of zero attendance.”
“I was curious,” one of these glum characters says.
“Cheer up, men,” I tell them. “Is it that bad?” I finish my beer and hurl the bottle as far as I can into the gloomy expanse of the factory behind us. I wait to hear it shatter.
“Yes, it’s that bad,” another kid says. He looks thoroughly dejected. I have seen this look before. “It’s put the whole club in a paradox. We shouldn’t care enough to show up and we certainly shouldn’t care enough to care that someone did show up.”
“We’re frauds,” a third says. He is carefully pushing dirt into a pile with his boot tip.
“These guys are usually much more fun,” Elissa says. Without really talking about it, we leave the circle of depressed nihilists and walk into a dark patch of shadow under a mass of toppled I beams. I notice, not far away, a bonfire is being lit. Old two-by-fours with rusty nails, tree branches, and broken crates. Planks of wet, graying wood pried off the warehouse windows, other assorted lumber, erected to form something like a funeral pyre, set ablaze by drunkards.
“Dad’s a little off,” Elissa says. Her face is lit up by flickering yellow and orange light.
“I’m pretty sure he’s always been this way,” I say, shaking my head. “He just kept it under wraps. Now he’s got an excuse to be as weird as he wants.”
“He and Chip went cosmic bowling tonight.”
“Since when did they start spending so much time together?”
“Chip says it’s all part of the recovery process,” Elissa says. Kids in leather baseball jackets are pumping their fists in the air, flailing their bodies around the fire. An improvised tribal ritual.
“They’re all completely bonkers,” I say. I shake my head.
“I realize this,” Elissa tells me.
We both watch flames envelop wood. I see that Wally and Doug M. have crept toward the excitement and are lurking behind the celebration. They stare with delight, with wide grins. I know their thoughts: superiority and self-consciousness, amusement and horror, longing and repulsion.
“Dad wrote me a letter,” I say. “He asked me to hold his hand if he dies.”
“He’s in a bad way.”
“They both are.”
“What can we do?”
“Save ourselves?” I ask. And seriously, I want to know if that’s the answer.
“If I tell you something,” Elissa asks, “can you keep it a secret?”
“I can try,” I say, thinking perhaps she’s already learned our mother might have to sell the house. Saves me having to break the news myself, even though I said I wouldn’t.
But Elissa doesn’t mention the house or bills or money.
She says, “I’m pregnant.”
I stand waiting for the warm sensation of brains oozing out the side of my head. The jocks begin chanting, loudly, invoking some kind of higher power to grant them more home victories.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
“I’m waiting for my brains to ooze out of my head.”
“Be serious.”
“I am being serious,” I say. “That’s heavy news.”
“No shit it’s heavy. I’m heavy.”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t know what I should do.”
“You’re fucked.”
“I realize this.”
“He is going to flip.”
“I realize this, Cal.”
“Grandma will faint.”
“I’m prepared for this. I’m prepared to place pillows behind her when I deliver the news.”
“I see Mom crying.”
“I have already bought a box of tissues.”
“I can help you, if you need support, but only to a certain point. I’m not very good with these kinds of things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Life things. Important life things that have meaning, repercussions. Anything that involves talking to other people in a meaningful way. Any confrontation where feelings are concerned.”
<< 7 >>
I come home to find my father has erected a geodesic shelter in the backyard. “It’s not a tent.” He was very clear about this distinction at the sporting goods store when I joined him on one of his first survival-related shopping sprees. “It’s a geodesic shelter. I’m done with tents.”
He is awake, sitting beneath the unzipped mouth of the tent, looking at the stars. His face is cast in shadow, but I can still see the lines where his mouth ends, the hard shape of his jowls. He has grown bony in his illness. His cheeks and nose and chin have sunken. In his forties, these features were swelling. His belly was on the move back then. His love handles. His whole body was expanding. Now, at fifty-four, his spine full of malignant plasma cells, he has become slight.
His medication causes mood swings. Bouts of uncontrolled sobbing come on without warning. Empty, draining depression followed by periods of manic goofiness. He says strange and puzzling things to the mailman. He laughs at inappropriate times during movies. He leaves letters on my bed. He draws unfounded parallels between himself and dead celebrities, such as Kurt Cobain.
My father is a pilot. His illness has grounded him. Having no professional responsibilities, he frets over inconsequential things. He obsesses about late fees at the video store. He gets angry when my mother fails to return from the supermarket with the correct beans for his survival bunker. He is afraid of death. He ponders the coming apocalypse. He waits for the darkening of the skies with a Zoloft in hand.
I approach his encampment.
“This is such a cry for attention,” I tell him.
“I’m dying,” he says, cupping his head in his hands. His voice rises the few bars preceding a whimper.
“You’re not dying.”
“Don’t yell at me, all right?”
“I’m not yelling,” I say. “Sooner or later, though, you’re gonna have to shape up.”
“Funny, coming from you,” he says.
I sit near him. He has an emergency blanket wrapped across his shoulders. His head shines in the moonlight. It is a nice night. The houses around us are dark. People are asleep in their beds. Our neighbors do not worry about things while they sleep. I am convinced of
this.
“Your sister’s not home yet,” my father says.
“I guess not.”
He clicks a flashlight on, pointing it directly in my face before placing it in the grass, aimed at the sky, a miniature searchlight.
“The world’s ending,” he says. He pulls the .45 out of his pajama pocket and holds it over the light, turning it, cradling it in his fragile hands. “It won’t be long before they’re executing people on public television.”
“I think we’ve got a while before they’re executing people on public television.”
“I can feel it coming,” he says.
“Your brain isn’t working properly,” I say.
“Five years. Maybe eight, if we’re lucky, but I doubt it.”
“Promise me you won’t think about it too much. It’s not good for your depression.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I won’t think about it too much.”
“Everything’s gonna be fine,” I say. “I swear.”
“If I can’t go back to work,” he says, “if they won’t let me fly, nothing’s going to be fine.”
If my mother has kept him in the dark about the state of their finances, then I don’t want to talk about the house. I don’t want to talk about the money. And if he knows? If he’s already woven possibly losing his house into his web of depression? I still don’t want to talk about the money.
“How was bowling?” I ask.
“Bowling was bowling,” he says. “It cost sixty dollars, I didn’t break a hundred and fell down three times.”
“At least you’re out doing something.”
“God help us,” he moans.
“What are you upset about?”
“The transplant,” he says.
“It’s okay to be nervous about it,” I tell him. “I’m nervous. But it will be fine.”
“If it doesn’t work . . .”
“The doctors know what they’re doing.”
“They don’t have a fucking clue,” he says. “And afterward I’ll never pass a stress test. The FAA won’t give me back my clearance. The money will run out. Your mother’s a fool.”
“Mom’s not as naive as you think, Dad,” I say. “She’s pretty much spearheading the fight to keep everything from falling apart.”
“Everything will fall apart.”
“Try not to be so negative.”
“Wanna hold it?” my father says, offering up the gun.
I take it from him. Feel its weight.
I look up. I see a few stars and the blinking lights of a plane heading toward La Guardia or JFK.
“Falcon Nine Hundred. Three engines,” he says absentmindedly. My father loves to do this, identify aircraft as they streak across the sky. I hear the crack in his voice and then he begins. A low wail, quiet, like a child.
“Give me a break, Dad,” I say. He cocks his head to look at me through his hands. I set the gun down in the grass. “You’re not going to die. Okay? You have to stop telling yourself you are. Suck it up. Things could be worse. At least we’re all together.”
“You hate it here,” he says.
“Sometimes it isn’t so bad.”
“It’s pretty bad,” he says.
“You aren’t alone,” I say. “You won’t be alone.”
“Be there when I die, okay?”
“Come on, Dad. Don’t talk like that. It’s not gonna be anytime soon, but of course I will.”
Footsteps near the house. I swing the flashlight around and freeze Elissa where she stands, key in door.
“Get that light out of my face.” I lower the beam, and in the darkness she says, “What are you idiots doing out here?”
ONCE AGAIN IT is morning and I decide to skip the whole showering thing. A vacationer is entitled to a certain smell, a conscious rejection of hygiene to differentiate these idle days from those working days.
Wally and I consume what’s left of the Vicodin. We pilfer David’s weed stash (kept in a plastic jar at the back of his sock drawer). We laze about, pretending to keep him company. He occupies the whole couch, reclining in knee-recovery position: on his back, pillows supporting all appendages, dressed only in underwear, empty beer cans, the scars on his knees like zippers. He has already abandoned his flexing exercises. The Painease 5000 is nowhere to be seen. I flip through channels until I discover The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
“The mind is a powerful agent of recovery,” David announces amid the haze of smoke.
“I’m not acknowledging your presence until you put some pants on,” Wally says.
“This is my house,” David says.
“This is your parents’ house,” I say.
“They’re not here,” David says.
“Still,” Wally says.
“Still,” David says. “Do you know how long it takes me to hobble to my room? Show me pants and I’ll wear them.”
“Later,” Wally says.
“What happened to the Painease Five Thousand?” I ask.
“Got rid of it,” David says.
“You threw it out?” Wally says, aghast. “It’s for your own good, man.”
“It’s behind the couch,” David says. “I’m using my mind from now on as the primary instrument of my recovery.”
“You’re supposed to be flexing that leg,” I say. “We’re in charge.”
“I’m flexing my mind,” David says. “If the mind is strong, the rest will take care of itself.”
“I give up on you,” I say.
“As soon as I get better I’m going to order some salvia,” David says.
“Count me in,” Wally says.
I turn my attention to the television. My face has gone slack and it’s getting hard to focus on any one thing in the room without everything going blurry. I find squinting helps. Leatherface tears the roof off a car and severs the top of the driver’s head. An eruption of blood follows.
“I worship this movie,” I say.
“I’m nauseous,” Wally says.
I sit up, or rather, very slowly I force myself into something resembling a seated position.
“What’s gonna happen to us?” I ask.
“In what context?” David asks.
“In the context of life,” I say. “A year from now I’ll be twenty-five. My father got married when he was twenty-five. He bought a house. I have nothing to show for it.”
“We don’t want those things,” Wally says.
“You don’t,” I say.
“You do?”
“Perhaps you’re jealous of your own father?” David asks.
“I’m not,” I say. “That’s not the point.”
There comes a part where Leatherface is literally carving someone into sausage.
“It feels like there’s a fog drifting through my brain right now,” David says.
“Doesn’t it ever scare you to think what it’s gonna be like in, say, ten years?” I ask.
“Never,” Wally says.
“I’ll most likely be dead in ten years,” David says.
“I’m asking seriously,” I say. “This little club we have here. Is this it?”
“Do you want more?” Wally asks, pushing at the air in front of his face with his fingers. He doesn’t like talking about this kind of stuff.
“I just don’t want to be here.”
“Thanks,” David says.
“I don’t mind,” Wally says.
“But when does this end?” I say. “And how?”
“It doesn’t,” Wally says.
“Maybe we need to grow up,” I say. “At least a little. Maybe it isn’t all about us.”
“If you haven’t already made the leap into the world where responsible people live,” Wally says, “you never will.”
“I could grow up whenever I want. I could stop all this at any time,” I say. “I have complete control.”
“You control nothing,” Wally says.
“I could become an adult. Really mo
ve into adulthood. If I decided to, I could help my family with the real problems they have. My sister is having a baby and I’m pretty sure she wants to keep it. My father is convinced this cancer is going to kill him. My mother claims she can’t keep paying the mortgage on our house. Those are tangible, real-world problems. Problems I might be able to be a part of solving. Or at least try.”
“I wouldn’t,” Wally says.
“Just like that, you’d turn away from your family?” David asks.
“If it meant keeping my sanity,” Wally says.
“Maybe I’m supposed to be in that house,” I say. “Maybe I’m the catalyst for change. For love. I can love them all. Love everyone.”
“That’s the pills talking,” Wally says.
“It’s not just that. I’m torn,” I say. “It’s an existential dilemma of the soul.”
“Fuck it,” Wally says.
“Be that person,” David says. “If that’s what you want. Help them. However you can.”
“I just might,” I say.
ACROSS THE DINNER table, I watch Elissa. Waiting for her to slip. To let some revealing nugget about her preggo status out of the bag. She lets me down by talking for what seems like hours about the awful state of the country’s current presidential administration.
“You liberals,” Chip says, his usual dismissal to anything my sister or I have to say about politics.
Chip clears the plates by himself—so helpful. Our mother extracts a tray of freshly baked brownies from the oven. She sets them in the middle of the table, along with a tub of vanilla ice cream and hot fudge.
“Oh, no,” our father moans.
“Not tonight, Mom,” I say.
“You guessed it,” she says. “Family meeting.”
“Do we have to?” Elissa asks, looking slightly worried.
“It’s mandatory.”
As soon as everyone has heaped brownie sundae into bowls, my mother commences.
“I don’t really know how to bring this up, so I’m just going to put it out there. Calvin already knows part of it.” My heart beats faster, thinking perhaps she knows about Elissa and it’s all over with, but instead she talks about the house. “I met with a real estate broker last week,” she tells us all.
“Why?” Elissa asks.
Chip is devouring his sundae.
The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac Page 5