by Tao Lin
One dolphin had a battle axe and killed Wong Kar-Wai.
Wong Kar-Wai was easier because he wore sunglasses and couldn’t really see the terror.
Sometimes dolphins knew other dolphins—cousins, uncles—that had died, and they said, “It is sad they died but there is nothing to do except be nice to anyone still alive.” But they themselves had not been nice. They had killed Elijah Wood, Kate Braverman, and Philip Roth—people like that. They had made promises and forgotten. One dolphin had become friends with a man with Down syndrome and the man had written the dolphin a letter and the dolphin had not responded. Another dolphin had made promises to meet a person—had promised, and promised again, a third time—and had not kept them, and it had hurt the person.
And so they said, “I need to be nicer from now on,” and went home.
At home they decorated their Christmas trees and sat on the floor.
“I have no one to be nice to,” they thought.
They went to an acquaintance’s home—to try to be friendly and compassionate to someone—but were not invited inside, and went back home, and thought about how as a young dolphin they had thought that the Gulf War happened in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Do you want to see an independent movie?” Jan said in the car. She reached over and patted Ellen, her daughter, on the head. They were driving somewhere. Ellen had been sitting there, on the sofa, drinking water; her mom had said something about Vitamin D, or something; and now they were going someplace. It was Spring Break for Ellen. So far she had drank water on the sofa while thinking about how to destroy the local Starbucks; ate a bag of carrot sticks while walking around the neighborhood, feeling afraid of people; and, the day before that, slept sixteen hours. A few more days and she would be sitting there again, in Advanced Placement American History. Her teacher, who was also the football coach, would make fun of Sacco and Vanzetti. People would take notes. Sacco and Vanzetti are pansies.
Ellen didn’t respond so Jan patted her again; and kept patting and then patted Ellen’s forehead a little too.
“You’re going to crash!” Ellen said. She didn’t trust her mom. But she shouldn’t be afraid of dying, she knew. It would happen, of course. “It’s okay if you crash. I’m just saying. You might.”
“You like independent movies because they are real. They have meaning. Those movies where things keep changing. Mutants,” Jan said carefully. “People don’t change like that. They don’t fly and shoot lasers from their eyes. That’s not real.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s about how controlled by money things are, not how real.”
“We’ll adopt a lot of dogs for free,” Jan said. “Is that what you mean?”
Ellen was confused a little. “Maybe. But people are always like, ‘Plants are alive too, and you eat those, hypocrite.’ But what’s worse? Murdering a thing with nerves and a nervous system or murdering a thing that only might have those? I mean, people are stupid.”
“Tomorrow we’ll adopt one dog,” Jan said. “We’ll do it at night, and we’ll ride bikes so we don’t waste gas. Do you like that? Adopting dogs at night, doesn’t that sound fun? What will we name them? I said one. We’ll get two.”
“I’m serious,” Ellen said.
“What’s your favorite animal?” Jan said.
“I don’t know,” Ellen said without thinking.
“Is it a horseshoe crab?”
“I don’t know,” Ellen said.
There was a store outside, passing by, where they sold hunting gear. It had a canoe glued on its front. Who needed to murder a deer then sit in a tree and float down a river? “I’m going to kill everyone,” Ellen said. She was against violence, she knew.
Jan smiled at her daughter. She moved her hand to pat Ellen’s head then stopped, halfway, and pulled her arm back.
“Everyone should be impeached,” Ellen said. “For being so bad at living.” What happened if an unemployed person was laid off? Ellen’s mind went blank. She wanted to swim with young dolphins in a small, clean, shallow ocean—with that silky kind of sand that didn’t have any shells in it. Was that what she wanted? She wasn’t a good swimmer.
“Impeachment,” Jan said. “Is that a euphemism? Yeah. That’s what they do. Make everything sound nice, like life’s just eating peaches all day. That’s nice of them. Optimistic.”
“Anything in the world is a euphemism,” Ellen said. “There’s just one thing to life. It’s just this … thing. Everything else is just a euphemism for the thing. The oneness. I know what I’m talking about.” Ellen felt a prickling sensation on the top of her head. The cloth—or whatever—ceiling of the Buick was hanging down on her hair, like a skullcap. “It’s all atoms, right? So everything’s just the same. I mean, without perception there’s just … a nothing-thing. It’s just one thing. Whenever you talk or use your senses you’re distorting that thing, trying to make it into a lot of different things—like trying to separate it from what it really is. I’m not the only person who says this. Buddhism does, and other people. I’m not stupid.”
“Your little sisters are … do you think they are a little strange?” Jan said loudly.
“Strange people are better,” Ellen said.
“Your brother Steve is not strange,” Jan said.
“I don’t care. I mean … he’s older.”
“I’m stopping at the grocery,” Jan said. “You want to wait in the car? Come in with me—it’ll be fun.”
“What? How is being a consumer fun?” But people had to eat, Ellen knew. Buying food was okay, wasn’t it? Just enough to survive. Nothing more. “We should grow our own food.”
“Should we grow food for the dog that we’ll adopt tomorrow?”
“Don’t try to change me. A dog isn’t going to change me.”
“Maybe we should wait until after Thanksgiving for the dog. Thanksgiving is so soon! Aren’t you excited?”
“I hate all holidays.” Thanksgiving—the gorging and genocide of it; how could it be a holiday? were they serious?—made Ellen feel at once nauseous, sarcastic, seditious, and starving. Her mouth watered. But she also wanted to vomit on the white man’s face then smash something—a house, an entire mansion—with her forehead and have it be suicide at the same time.
“When you were a kid … I remember your face on Christmas. Smiling, bright. Remember you made those lists for me? It would have these little things you wanted. It would be numbered. Like one, a stuffed animal, two, whatever … then there would be a few numbers where you wrote ‘mystery thing,’ ‘mystery thing,’ ‘mystery thing.’ You wanted to be surprised.”
She was so superficial and materialistic back then. She was stupid. She was someone else back then. “That’s wasn’t me. I mean, I can’t be held accountable for anything I’ve done in the past,” Ellen said. She was startled a little. Was this true? “Each moment … is just a moment. Time is like, a thing. And space is another thing. You wouldn’t say I’m responsible for things occupying other spaces, like everyone killing everyone else in wars or beating a wife. So you shouldn’t say I’m responsible for things that occupy other areas of time.” She was excited. It made sense. She felt like she could do things now. Play and be wild and not have to be afraid or nervous anymore. Then the feeling passed. She could do nothing. She couldn’t play with anyone. The feeling always passed.
“You were always smart. Smarter than me. As smart as your dad. You used to sit there and say, ‘Tell me to multiply 40 and 25.’ And then you’d say the answer. I always told you that you would be good at anything you worked at.” Jan looked at Ellen a moment. “Um,” she said. “Don’t be mad when I say this. But … it’s not too late to restart piano lessons.”
“Playing piano and being politically apathetic are the same thing,” Ellen said, a bit rotely, as if she’d said it before, though she couldn’t be sure if she had.
A Honda Civic with at least four bears inside passed Jan’s car.
A bear was on top of the car, stomach
down.
Jan pointed at that.
They stopped at a stoplight and waited and continued driving.
“When I’m old I want to live in a cabin on the beach,” Jan said. “I’ll wake up, eat fruit, play the piano. I think I’ll take a nap and read a book. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll be playing the piano and I’ll think, ‘I think I’ll nap and read,’ then I’ll go do it. Doesn’t that sound so nice?” Jan made a sudden U-turn. A couple of cars honked. She parked in front of a Wal-Mart grocery store. There was a tired look on her face as she slowed the car to get it just right. It took a long time to make the car go from fast to slow to stop, Ellen felt. It was hard to slow to a stop. Ellen felt nervous, because of how strange it was to slow down, how terrible it must be for Jan to have the responsibility of carefully slowing the car to a stop without crashing. Then Ellen felt normal again. They were just parking the car. The car was still moving. Ellen looked at her mom, who was trying to park the car. A person, Ellen thought, and felt sad. Inside, putting peaches into a plastic bag, Jan said she was flying to Las Vegas to gamble for a few days. Ellen asked if she could go. Jan told Ellen to go get a package of salmon. Ellen went and got an organic avocado and thought about gambling and brought back the avocado. Jan said she knew Ellen would get something else—not a salmon. Ellen said gambling was good because it kept people inside, where they couldn’t hurt anyone, and where they could get rid of their extra money, but bad because it increased the divide between the rich and the poor. Jan said she would donate her house to the poor, and they would all live in a forest, with dogs. Ellen said she wished that would happen. Jan pointed at something and said, “Look at that organic fruit.” Ellen looked. Jan quickly walked to and hugged her daughter.
A few weeks passed and Ellen didn’t make any friends—she talked once to the girl with the “Mineral” shirt but then didn’t see her again—and then 10th grade was over and it was summer. Ellen’s mom, Jan, was going to Hawaii. She and her sister had planned to go to Las Vegas but then chose Hawaii, as a sort of joke, just to do it—vacation in Hawaii; why not?—and now the plane was about to crash. There had been an explosion or something. Jan and her sister were hugging. A flight attendant was telling everyone to hold themselves and lean forward into their laps and everyone did that and Jan’s sister did it, and then Jan did it.
Everything was shaking and Jan was crying a little.
She thought of her daughters and Steve and saw some of their heads and faces in different angles, sort of floating around. She hugged her sister, who was in a kind of fetal position, and felt her sister’s spine against her cheek and looked sideways out the window—something was flashing and behind that it was a very light blue, like a black that went past into white and then a little into blue—and thought that if she concentrated hard and moved very fast she could jump out of the plane and parachute onto a cruise ship that would be there, but that seemed too difficult, because she didn’t have a parachute. It was very noisy and everything was shaking. Jan felt a little sleepy. She thought she should probably stay awake, to see what would happen, but she wasn’t sure—it felt dangerous to know what was going to happen; safer to just let it happen, outside of herself, like someone else’s responsibility—and then the plane went into the ocean. But a few weeks before that, in July, Ellen had received forty posters in the mail; the package had said, “The United States Government.” Ellen wasn’t sure if they were allowed to do that—use tax-payer money on this. “Paste them in conspicuous areas around the city,” said a pamphlet. She sat on the floor of her room, felt sad, and flattened out a poster in front of her. The poster had a handsome dragon. They were posters for the movie the president had written, directed, and starred-in.
“Why are you doing that?” said Ellen’s brother Steve.
“I’m not,” Ellen said. “Go away.” She stared at the carpet.
“You go away. I own this room. I bought it from a government auction with fake bids.”
Ellen pushed Steve out of her room. While being pushed into the hallway Steve said, “I’m going to come in here tonight and superglue those posters to each of your clothes. Don’t cry when it happens.” Steve went to his room. He thought briefly about his life, felt a vague foreboding, and sat at his computer. He instant messaged Andrew, his acquaintance from high school who had gone to college in New York five years ago. Andrew worked in a library.
“Andrew,” Steve typed in AOL instant messenger.
“Steve,” Andrew typed.
“Karl’s away message is ‘Rock!’ ” Steve typed.
“I want to throw eggs at Karl’s house,” Andrew typed.
“I’m so hungry. I’m going to check the fridge.” Steve sat there. He wasn’t hungry. Maybe he was a little hungry. He couldn’t tell. “We have six limes,” Steve typed a few seconds later. He felt impatient.
“Make a line of subs. A subline,” Andrew typed. Good one, Steve thought. It didn’t make sense. In high school they did Sublime covers in Andrew’s room. Maybe that was it. “We should just go assault Karl,” Andrew typed. “We should break his leg.”
“Ahahahahaah,” Steve typed, and stared at his computer screen.
“Eggs aren’t enough anymore,” Andrew typed. “We will murder him.”
“What about when he fell on the curb and broke his leg,” Steve typed. “He said he was going to sue the government. For making the sidewalk slippery.”
“I don’t remember that,” Andrew typed. “I can’t remember anything anymore.”
“Karl’s buddy icon is a guitar. Douche bag.”
“I have to go,” Andrew typed. “My boss just walked by grinning. ‘Passive-aggressive.’ ”
Steve lived in Orlando, Florida. His mom, Jan, was always at her sister’s place—or wherever—playing Texas Hold ’Em, a kind of poker. She was going to Las Vegas soon, with her sister. Steve was twenty-four. He did not have a job. But he pretty much was raising Ellen and his other two sisters, who were seven and five or something. It was summer now so none of them had school except Ellen, who for some reason was taking summer classes—probably to try and make friends, Steve thought, which made him feel empathy. Most nights Steve and the people he went to high school with played video games or drank beer while playing poker; the same things they’d been doing for about seven years, and the future—or, rather, the past of some future’s future, Steve thought suddenly—was just another thing that wanted to get away from everything else and finally be completed, which is to say that Steve himself had no future. The future was only itself, and it didn’t care; it was somewhere else and it was already done, like bread in an oven. Steve felt very calm. He moved icons around on his computer for almost ten minutes, drew five whales with Microsoft Paint, closed the file without saving, went in the bathroom, washed his hands, smiled exaggeratedly at his own face for fifteen seconds and then watched a movie he’d already seen, ate something without paying attention to what it was, went to sleep, woke in the morning, made eggs for the kids—six in one skillet; he would email Andrew, he thought: “I cooked twelve eggs in one skillet and it looked like a cake”—played video games at a friend’s house, came home, made dinner for the kids, watched TV, went in the bathroom, saw Ellen staring at her own face in the mirror, made eye contact with Ellen in the mirror, turned around to give Ellen privacy, felt Ellen walk quickly past him, into the hallway, and heard Ellen’s door slam shut. He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and flossed. He walked into the living room and saw his mom, Jan, on the phone. Jan stood and walked away into the computer room. Steve sat on the sofa. Ellen walked through the living room. She went into the computer room. She came out of the computer room.
“I’m bored,” Steve said. “Where are you going?”
Ellen went in the kitchen.
Steve stood and went in the kitchen.
“Cook me a seven-course meal,” Steve said.
“Or I’ll kill you.”
“Go away,” Ellen said. She walked into the living room.
“You’re in my way,” Steve said.
Jan came out of the computer room holding the phone in front of her.
“It’s for you,” she said.
“Who?” Steve said.
“Both.”
Steve took the phone. “Hello?” he said.
Ellen turned around a little. She walked toward a plant and looked at it. A plant. She walked vaguely in some other direction.
“Steve,” Steve’s dad said on the phone.
“Hi,” Steve said.
“Your mother said you’re all coming to visit me,” Steve’s dad said. “All five.”
“You should visit us,” Steve said.
“No,” Jan said. “He won’t leave.”
“Yeah he will,” Steve said into the phone and at his mom. “You can make him leave.”
“Where is Ellen?” Steve’s dad said.
Ellen was lying on the sofa facing the back of it. Her nose, eyes, mouth, and forehead were smushed into the sofa. Steve quickly walked there and sat on her. “I’m sitting on her,” he said.
“Don’t sit on your sister,” Steve’s dad said.
“She likes it,” Steve said.
Ellen squirmed a little.
“She likes animals,” Jan said.
“She likes everything,” Steve said.
In middle school Andrew’s World Cultures teacher, who smoked marijuana and always talked about taking the class on a field trip to Costa Rica, which everyone knew would never happen, had a party at her house and Andrew stepped on a window and broke it, then climbed through the glassless window to the back porch, where he and a friend, who Andrew, years later, living in Florida in his parent’s house—working as a pizza delivery man and obsessed, in a half-hearted way, with a girl from two years ago—never saw or thought about anymore, took cans of soda and threw them over the backyard fence, into a retention pond, or something. It was very dark out. Then someone—maybe Andrew—thought it would be fun to throw the cans over the house itself, to the front yard, so Andrew did that and hit a girl named Patricia in the leg. Andrew went to the front yard. Patricia was crying. Girls began to crowd around her. The small crowd of girls went into an SUV and the SUV left like an ambulance.