“You and I, Rainie, run on heavy fuels.”
“So what’s up? To what do I owe the honour of this telephone call?”
“I don’t know. Just wanted to say hello, I guess.”
“You didn’t.”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t say hello.”
“Oh. Hey, I know why I called. Fact-checking. Name your favourite episode of The Twilight Zone.”
“I know you want me to say the what-the-fuck ‘The Eye of the Beholder,’ because it was my favourite when I was thirteen and feeling more than a trifle hideous, but you know, I have managed to acquire a small modicum of self-esteem. So, I’m going to think about it for a moment and in the meantime I’m going to ask you, why have you not called me in a year?”
“It hasn’t been a year.”
“It’s been a while, Phil. It’s been at least a few months.”
“Has it? It never seems like it to me, because I hear you all the time, I mean, I listen to your show.”
“I had to read in the newspapers about what happened to Milligan.”
“Milligan happened to Milligan.”
“Is that your official stance?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m just wondering if that’s a position you’ve taken for reasons of legality, you know, distancing yourself from the event, or if somehow that’s what you believe.”
“I’m not following. What is what I somehow believe?”
“That you had nothing to do with it.”
“Milligan was unstable.”
“In the land of the crippled, the one-legged man is king.”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Touché.”
“It was just so odd. I mean, it was exactly like in that stupid movie, you know. ‘The Cross and the Bullet.’”
“‘The Bullet and the Cross.’”
“I got goosebumps and could practically hear the spooky Theramin thing, a-woo-oo …”
“Could we change the subject?”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m finally going to write that novel.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember you mentioning that once. You were about eight.”
“Right.”
“About what?”
“What?”
“What’s the book about?”
“About… me.”
“Uh-huh. What about you?”
“Lots of things. My life. You see, something happened when I was a boy …”
“Right. You felt me up.”
“No, not that, there was this incident… I felt you up?”
“You were demonstrating wrestling manoeuvres. You were showing me moves by Sweet Daddy Siki and Whipper Billy Watson. You took the opportunity to grab my left tit. At least, that’s what you thought. You actually had hold of some foam rubber and a wad of toilet paper, but you popped a boner just the same, and you stopped the wrestling demonstration abruptly.”
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“Well, I suspected it never made the highlight film. So, Phil. When were you going to tell me about your marriage breaking up?”
“Oh, I don’t know. In a couple of minutes, I guess. I thought what might happen was that I’d say I’m writing a book, and you’d ask why, and I’d say how I wanted to explain to people—to Currer and Ellis, anyway—who I am. Why I am the way I am. And you’d ask me why I wanted to do that, and then I thought I’d slip in the whole marriage breaking up thing. How did you hear about it?”
“Fuck, are you thick. Ronnie told me, asshole.”
“You must not think very highly of me.”
“Did you ever notice, Phil, that the more personal, the more intimate a conversation becomes, the way you talk gets poncier and poncier?”
“I hadn’t noticed, actually.”
“There!”
“Okay, you heard about it from Ronnie, therefore—”
“Therefore I want to hear your side of the story.”
“Oh.”
“Why don’t you come over for dinner sometime?”
“Sure. I’m not sure when would be the best night. I have the kids for a couple of days.”
“Sunday night?”
“What?”
“Sunday night. We’ll have dinner. We’ll talk. I’ll listen to your side of the story. If you play your cards right, I’ll let you have another crack at my left tit. You missed it in its prime, no use denying that, but it’s still got a little resiliency left.”
“Okay. I mean, okay about the dinner.”
“Remember where I live?”
“Yeah.”
“Be here at eight o’clock. Bring wine. I’ll cook.”
“Okay.”
“It’s what you need.”
“What?”
“I just remembered my other favourite Twilight Zone episode. ‘What You Need.’ Remember? The old guy with the matches and the shoelaces and all that shit?”
“Right, right.”
“The old guy would look into people’s eyes and then he’d give them, you know, spot remover or something. It’s … what you need. And then a little later they’d get mustard on their jacket or something …”
“Sure. That actually never happened, I mean, you’ve conflated some of the story elements.”
“You know me. Little Miss Conflation.”
“So, I’ll see you Sunday.”
“Hello, Phil.”
“Yeah. Hello.”
4 | THE BROTHER
JAY WAS NOT AT HOME WHEN UNCLE JOHNNY AND AUNT JANE DELIVERED the television set. I’m not certain where he was. I guess it is unreasonable to assert that a six-year-old boy was simply “out,” but my brother was away from the house far more than he was inside it. Sometimes, weather and sunlight permitting, he was allowed to roam free. Other times neighbours had custody of him. Jay had adopted the Plums, a huge and highly dysfunctional clan, as a kind of parallel family. Ostensibly this was because of his fast friendship with the stuttering little Polly Plum, but I knew that Jay could barely tolerate her. He liked instead to be in the company of Ray Plum, a vicious, predatory preteen. Jay even preferred the companionship of the astoundingly elderly Mr. Fenton, who was as near death as one can come and still retain a little heat. But history has informed us that what Jay truly enjoyed about the Plum household was the presence of the hulking upright piano standing in the corner of the living room. The first time he struck a key was probably mere whim, perhaps even an accident, but the next time Jay drifted near the instrument he hit two, first sequentially and then simultaneously, and noted the relationship. And from that moment on he was hooked—music was the whistling monkey on his back. So Polly Plum shared her lessons; the vicious Ray taught him some show-offy knucklebusters, because Ray was musical despite himself; and the ancient Mr. Fenton introduced Jay to the music of the masters, especially the French school that included Satie, Ravel and Debussy.
At any rate, when Jay returned my mother rushed him upstairs and stuck him into a bath and then into bed. Jay was always begrimed and besmirched and my mother could bathe him in a trice, managing a cigarette, drink and novel all at the same time.
Then Jay was put into the top bunk (I wouldn’t sleep up there, fearful that I might topple out) and, after a moment of silence, I told him about the show I’d seen.
“The Trilight Zone?” he repeated.
“Not trilight, twilight.” Trilights were a recent innovation back then, you know, a single light bulb that with three successive turns of the switch goes from dim to very bright. That is why Jay thought the show might be called The Trilight Zone, but it doesn’t explain why, forty years later, he still believes that to be the case.
Then I told him the plot of “Time Enough at Last,” and he agreed it was a good story, although I could tell the point was lost on him. He couldn’t read, and had no notion that the activity was worthwhile in any way.
Jay didn’t get around to the television set
until the next afternoon. But when I woke up, as soon as I was done eating cereal, I went into the living room and twisted the little knob, cracking open the ball of light. I waited many long moments for it to explode across the screen; when it failed to do that, I imitated my Uncle Johnny, rapping the top of the console with the heel of my hand. “Out of the western sky…,” sang a voice. Those of you of a certain age may remember Sky King. That show made me desperately want to be a pilot, to own a little plane so that I could fly out of the western sky. Next there was Fury, which was about a horse and the boys who owned it. That show made me desperately want to own a horse, to live on a small ranch, to dress in white and wear a cowboy hat. I changed my desire with each successive show—what didn’t change was the degree of desperation involved.
There were more shows, but I believe I’ve mentioned the sogginess of my memory. Besides, from that point forward I watched thousands of hours of television programming. It filled me up as rain fills a barrel, my point being, there is no possibility of, or usefulness in, trying to distinguish the individual drops. It is worth noting, I think, that my favourite show was The Twilight Zone, which invited me week after week to enter another dimension of time and space, something I was ever willing to do.
That first morning drifted into afternoon—television screws around with time in a big way, spreading moments over hours, compressing months and years into foggy little clumps—and then Jay entered the living room. I was lying on my belly, my hands cupping my chin, my head heavy with the first batch of television-wrought mush. Jay placed a foot on my back in order to cross to the set, but he was so slight I only grunted. He reached out and twisted the dial, sending the television through its frequencies. He didn’t pause long enough on any station to see what it was broadcasting, merely spun the dial and watched the light spark and sputter. But then he reversed to channel four and stepped away from the set.
“Coming up to bat,” said a voice, “Mickey Mantle.”
“Mickey Mantle,” repeated my brother. I should mention that neither Jay nor I was a baseball fan, but we knew that name. Mantle was fabled, legendary, one of the gods that ruled in the huge land across the great lake.
We watched as Mickey Mantle took three ill-timed swipes at three pitches. He intended to put one out of Yankee Stadium, but looked as incapable of doing so as, well, me. After the umpire’s understated “You’re out,” Mantle dropped the bat and wandered back to the dugout, his head hung in shame.
Jay reached forward and switched off the television. He walked through the sliding doors and disappeared into the world. I waited quite a few minutes before turning the set back on.
I was willing to forgive the television; for me it was still the messenger of magic. But to Jay it was the great destroyer of same. I’m fairly certain that he never watched television again. I’m only “fairly certain” because it seems an almost absurd assertion to make, doesn’t it, in this day and age? One would have to be a locust-consuming hermit to have nothing to do with television. But I can’t recall Jay ever sitting beside me to watch the thing, even when I implored him to. Although sometimes, as we lay in our bunk beds at night, he would encourage me to tell him the story of some of the shows I had consumed during the day. I suspect that in a way this helped me later on, professionally. I acquired at a very early age a sound narrative sense; I knew when my audience’s (audient’s) attention was flagging, I learned how to milk tension. (“Then what happened?” Jay would demand from the bunk above. I would wait a few moments before speaking, and then my voice would issue forth dramatically. “You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you what happened …”) I know that Jay, as an adult, has never owned a set. Mind you, he is and ever was materially impoverished. But I have money, more than I know what to do with, really—I have offered to purchase him a television on more than one occasion. “Fuck off” is his usual response.
“Why not?” I countered, the last time the exchange was had.
“Well,” said my younger brother, “just look at what television has done to you.”
“Fuck off.”
“I figured it out. You’re mad because I got involved in the television industry. You fucking snob. You snoot. Just because you play the grawnd piano, you think that anyone involved with a popular, a populist medium, is beneath your contempt. If you knew anything at all, anything about anything except the fucking piano, you’d know that the great artists, Shakespeare and Beethoven, wrote for the common man and woman, using what were, for the time, the mass media. Well, screw you, baby. Screw you.”
“That’s not why I’m mad.”
“Oh.”
“Fuck off.”
5 | BIRDS OF A FEATHER
I HAVE A FRIEND WHO IS A NOVELIST—PERHAPS YOU HAVE HEARD OF him, John Hooper. He has just published a new novel, Baxter. I know this because I received an invitation to the book launch, which you couldn’t pay me to attend. When I say “friend” I mean that we hate each other pretty much, but are bound together by history. We met in university and were both involved in the theatre there. It was through John Hooper that I met Veronica Lear. I place this fact high on the list of reasons why I hate him. (I’m joking, if badly. I loved, I love, Ronnie. But on nights like this one—it is three-fifteen a.m., the little computer is overheated, my wineglass has left ghostly rings on the tabletop—it is hard to remember that my marriage was ever a good thing.)
So I’ll transcribe, with all the fidelity I can muster, the conversation I had with him last night, and see if you don’t hate him, too. If you don’t mind, I’ll do it in a style I am more at home with, or as John would put it, placing his hand over his face (his impulse is to adjust his spectacles, even though he doesn’t wear any), in a style with which I am more at home.
INT. LOUNGE—NIGHT
McQUIGGE sits with HOOPER at a little table. The place is nearly empty. A few pallid drinkers. A couple in the corner, arguing about the circumstances under which they met. The WAITRESS is young, sexy. She brings drinks over to their table, two tumblers of whiskey.
In the room’s darkest corner, a man plays the piano. He plays very beautifully.
McQUIGGE
So? What did you think?
HOOPER
It’s good.
McQUIGGE
Is it really?
HOOPER
No.
McQUIGGE drinks his drink.
HOOPER (cont’d)
It starts well enough. I liked
the ruffian stuff, the rape.
Gripping. Not too badly written.
Then, suddenly, there’s pages and pages about a television set.
McQUIGGE
I never said Kitchen was raped.
HOOPER
Well, what happened to him?
MCQUIGGE
I don’t know. Something.
HOOPER
Ah. The famous McQuigge story-sense.
MCQUIGGE
I couldn’t see. My glasses had
been knocked off my face.
HOOPER
You lose quite a bit of narrative
momentum if your mate
wasn’t actually raped.
MCQUIGGE
My “mate”? Why do you say
things like that, Hooper?
You’re not English.
HOOPER
Don’t go on the attack, Philip.
I’m trying to help you with
your book.
MCQUIGGE
And anyway, those pages and
pages aren’t just about the
television set.
HOOPER
They absolutely are.
MCQUIGGE
I wanted to write about the
other people in my family. My
mother. My brother.
HOOPER
Ah, yes. Your weird little brother.
MCQUIGGE
That’s him over there, you know.
HOOPER
Where?
MCQUIG
GE
Playing the piano.
HOOPER swings around in his seat. He watches the piano player for a little while and then focuses his attention on the WAITRESS, who is young, sexy.
HOOPER
He’s pretty good.
MCQUIGGE
He’s great.
HOOPER
What’s that song he’s playing? It sounds familiar.
MCQUIGGE
Hmm … “Waltzing Matilda.”
HOOPER
It is?
HOOPER listens briefly, without taking his attention away from the WAITRESS, who is young, sexy.
HOOPER (cont’d)
No it’s not.
MCQUIGGE
Sure it is.
(singing along)
Once a jolly swagman sat beside the whatever it was …
The WAITRESS, quite rightly, frowns at HOOPER. He redirects his attention to the PIANO PLAYER.
HOOPER
The Ravine Page 4