The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second

by Drew Ferguson

  I didn’t let First get to me. That’s ’cuz today I learned that the most important person in the world is me—at least according to the lame-ass, inspirational multimedia presentation we had to suffer through this morning.

  The whole thing was this flashy, over-the-top production with C-list celebrities who probably only appeared in it as part of their court-ordered community service. The presentation was so lame I just know that some guidance counselors and child psychologists totally creamed their pants thinking it up. We’ve got to make it really “connect” with today’s youth. It should be MTV, but with a message. We’ll get ’N Sync to talk about date rape or something. They’re popular, right? I saw one of them in the news not too long ago. He was going out or something. Remember, people, this is bigger than all of us. We’re saving lives here. If we make just one skinny 13-year-old girl stop going at her wrists with a hacksaw long enough to eat a piece of celery, we’ve done our jobs.

  The idea was that we were supposed to “say no” to drinking, drugs, sex, racism, and picking on the chess club dorks. They wanted us to say “yes” to living a clean life, having friends who—as long as they weren’t devil-worshipping socialists—celebrated our differences and used the products manufactured by the video’s corporate sponsors.

  Since we had to miss first hour for the assembly, Mrs. Bailey made us take notes so we could “journal” our responses. Well, it gave me something to do with my pen besides poke out my eyes.

  Here’s what I won’t be turning in:

  Apparently, I’m smarter than every goddamn adult on this planet.

  What happens to people after they turn thirty? Do they suddenly get retarded? It’s got to be that, ’cuz there’s no other reason to explain why they become a bunch of hypocrites. For instance:

  Just Say No—The Sex Edition: Did you actually think making our health class teacher show us slides of a guy’s dick rotting away from syphilis would stop us from fucking? C’mon, it didn’t stop you, did it? And all those slides on abortions—another brilliant idea. Click. This is a dilation and curettage, also known as a D&C. Here the abortionist (never a doctor, because only butchers do this) inserts a loop-shaped knife inside the uterus and hacks apart the baby and the placenta, then scrapes them both out. Okay, so the slides stopped a few girls from putting out—for two weeks—but moms, here’s the deal: You didn’t solve anything.

  Sure, you convinced your daughters that abortions are gross, but you also got them believing that their vaginas have a solvent that’s so powerful it can eat through anything—condoms, IUDs, diaphragms, sponges, the Pill. Everything except for sperm and disease. So instead of your girls letting Trey or Matt or Justin go in through the front door, they let ’em in the back. Abortion worries over, ’cuz butt babies don’t live.

  Peer Pressure—The “Do As We Say, Not As We Do” Edition: If all your friends jumped off a bridge (and just how often are they doing that, really?), would you? Yeah, probably. But so would you. You’re the people who bought a camper we never used—not even once in our own goddamn driveway—because the neighbors had one. Of course, ours had to be bigger and better, for all the good it did. You’re the ones who bought laserdiscs in the late ’80s, swore by the tech sector in the late ’90s, and voted for Bush, ’cuz after 9/11 he was the only guy with balls big enough to take on the “evil-doers.”

  Seriously, I’m embarrassed for you.

  Just Say No—The Drugs Edition: This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions? Yeah. You did them, so why not us? Because you know better now, you learned your lesson, and except for the occasional cigarette, Valium, amphetamine-laced diet pill, scotch-on-the-rocks, or white wine spritzer to unwind, you’d never do them? Is it because the drugs you guys did were so much safer? Yeah, that’s gotta be it, ’cuz I just know the farm hicks out in Harvard and McHenry spent the last twenty years growing some superbreed of pot that’s so powerful that after one puff, I’ll be all Lou-Reed-waiting-for-the-man in some Cabrini Green alley with a needle in my arm. That is, when I’m not mugging little old ladies, knocking over a gas station, or blowing truck drivers to score my next fix.

  You made the War on Drugs go guerilla, dipshits. You’re the ones who pushed it underground. We may not be smoking meth or pot, but now the whole cheerleading squad is sneaking off campus for Chloroseptic Slurpees. Your generation sent Tim Parker to rehab ’cuz you caught him sucking the nitrous out of his mom’s Reddi-wip cans.

  And who can forget Jim Corley?

  After he simultaneously took himself out of the running for and won South’s Most Likely to Be an Idiot for Life Award with his stupid stunt (Hey, you know what’d make for a totally awesome high, man? Scotchguard!), the school administrators dragged in an earn-your-degree-in-locksmithing-online therapist for an all-school assembly on the five stages of grief. It didn’t help. The whole school had pretty much worked through ’em five minutes after we heard Corley bit the big one.

  Denial: There’s no way anybody could be that stupid. I mean, really. Scotchguard? That stuff’ll waterproof your lungs. Seriously, dude, no one’s that much of a retread. You’re sooo making this up.

  Anger: Great, 45 minutes of listening to this dumb-ass talk about “feelings” and “sadness.” Corley, you jagoff. This totally blows. I wish the paramedics kept you alive so I coulda killed ya. This is sooo gay.

  Bargaining: Please, God, if I’m gonna die let it be some cool way. You know, like, having sex on the kitchen table with a pair of, like, hot lesbian twins. Okay, how about just having sex? Okay. Okay. How about not dying a virgin? Just please, God, don’t take me out like you did Corley. And God, please, please, just make sure my parents don’t find that stash of porn under the bed. God, if you just give me this one thing, I swear I’ll stop jerking off. Well, at least to the Japanese anime of underaged schoolgirls I downloaded.

  Depression: This sucks. Jim-bo was my ride to that party in Lake in the Hills this weekend. What am I supposed to do now? Stay home and watch TV with my parents? I’d rather die.

  Acceptance: What do I care? I didn’t know him. So, yeah, anyway, Weir had me do the ice cube thing on him once. You’re right, I should really try it with menthol cough drops.

  I know; you had to destroy your children to save them.

  Sunday, September 9

  Big fight with First today. After church, I made the mistake of not immediately harnessing my nose to the grindstone of homework, chores, college application essays, memorizing some motivational best-seller like Who Moved My Highly Effective Parachute?, or developing and presenting to Stockholm a successful unified field theory. Stupid me, I just had to open my mouth and ask First if, when I was done with everything he suggested—instead of relaxing, like, for a whole ten seconds—if he wanted me to strap on a yoke and go out and plow the back forty. First went off on me, saying that if I didn’t grow up soon, there was going to come a day when my mouth wrote a check my ass couldn’t cash. Mom said he was the one who needed to grow up and stop riding me so hard.

  I think First was going to let Mom’s jab slide, but when she closed the drapes and turned up the stereo, letting our neighbors know that Michael Stipe felt just peachy about the apocalypse, First readied himself for another verbal round of bobbing and weaving.

  “Jesus, Charles,” Mom said, sighing in a stage whisper. “Give us all a break for once and stop trying to be the benevolent dictator.” Benevolent dictator? What the hell did she mean by that? Was it supposed to be, like, a toddler-friendly Idi Amin? A Muppet Hitler? Hi, kids, today we’re going to learn about sharing. Do you know what sharing is, little comrades? It’s when we go out to the sandbox and dig a mass grave for the traitors to the cause who have betrayed our dear leader.

  First smiled, but I could tell he was pissed. “That’s right, Laura. I’m always deciding what’s best for everyone. It’s always my way or the highway, right?” His voice was all self-righteous indignation. “Forget the fact that I’m working sixty hours a week so we can have e
nough money to pay off a few damn bills and maybe, just maybe, have something left to help get our kid into a good school.”

  “You have an excuse for everything, don’t you, Charles?” Mom said in a voice that was as sharp and cold as frostbite. She shook her head. “I suppose I was the one who put the gun to your head and made you run for state’s attorney.” Mom turned her back to him, like she couldn’t be bothered with his next excuse.

  “Is that what this is about? Jesus, how many times do we have to go through this? Fine, Laura, I’ll drop out of the race, hand in my resignation at the office, find a job at some Chicago law firm. I’ll work partners’ hours…nights, weekends, holidays, vacations, Charlie’s graduation. Is that what you want? Me never being around? Because I sure as hell thought you wanted something different. I thought we both did.”

  For a moment, Mom stood with her back to First, saying nothing. Their silence was so bad that it almost had a physical pain. I turned in my seat at the kitchen table and looked at First. I don’t know what I was expecting—maybe him to be looking at Mom with this smug, cocky, self-satisfied grin on his face—but that wasn’t how he looked at all.

  He looked weak, defeated, almost too small to be human. His face was somehow older—his cheeks slack, loose, jowly; a five o’clock shadow before noon. First’s eyes were dull, and I think, if there had been even the slightest trace of hate in them, I could have spent the rest of my life despising the man. But looking at him then, it was like I was an intruder into life’s backstage—the department store Santa dressing, the stroke victim struggling to clean herself on the toilet.

  Mom never did say anything. Eventually, she walked away and locked herself in their bedroom upstairs. First, he grabbed a bottle and rocks glass from a cabinet, went out on the deck, and sat on a lawn chair, pouring himself shots until well after dusk.

  I don’t know what to think. It’s almost nine now, and Mom’s still in her room and First’s still on the deck, spilling more scotch than he’s slurping.

  It’d be easy if I still thought of First as the heavy, but that doesn’t seem right anymore. Not entirely.

  Monday, September 10

  First’s still in the doghouse with Mom. That’s hardly surprising. After yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him gnawing on rawhide, chasing cars, or trying to sniff the ass of the neighbors’ Jack Russell terrier.

  When I got up this morning, First was standing at the kitchen counter, shoveling spoonfuls of Honey Smacks into his mouth and getting milk all over the sleeve of his suit. I guess I’d never noticed it before, but First’s clothes, in their own way, were worse than mine. His suit pants had a too-often-pressed sheen that was missing from their coats; the cuffs on the coats looked a little frayed, and his dress shirts were yellowing and stiff at the armpits. Maybe there’d been some truth to what he’d said about money, about trying to make things better for the family.

  I felt sad for him and almost told him I loved him, but part of me thought it’d just make him suspicious, like he’d think I was working an angle and trying to play him off of Mom. Even if I had wanted to say something to him, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance. Mom came downstairs, looked at him, shook her head, and told me to get dressed. The two of us were going out for breakfast.

  By the time I was ready for school, Mom was in the Jeep. The motor was running. She was blasting a Police CD while lighting one cigarette off the cherry of another. Her music choices were beginning to worry me. Nothing says angry-slash-angst-slash-artsy misunderstood, sensitive middle-aged, all-my-dreams-are-dead soccer mom like a blind devotion to Sting and REM.

  I didn’t ask where we were going. Hostages don’t have that right. With Mom doing 50 through the subdivision and shouting her own lyrics to “King of Pain” (There’s an asshole lawyer I want to choke today/It’s the same old shit as yesterday), I figured she wasn’t interested in hearing from me.

  At the restaurant, we were greeted by an ancient hostess, Leona. She was one of the concerned-citizen types who basically hated First ’cuz he never wanted to support the referendums she drafted to bulldoze elementary schools (with or without the kids in ’em) and block low-income housing developments, even though First was supposed to be a Republican. And since First had decided to run as an Independent against John Fisk, his colleague and the McHenry County Republican Party’s poster boy for gassing the homeless, waterboarding unbaptized atheists, and clubbing liberals, Leona hated him.

  “Good to see you, Mrs. Stewart,” she said, the insincere flash of her dentures giving new meaning to fake smile. She handed Mom two laminated menus tucked under her flabby grandma arm. “That John Fisk sure is soaring in the polls. He’s got my vote.”

  “Well, he’s got my vote too, Leona,” Mom said. The hostess looked back at her, confused. “We’ll have a table for two. Smoking.”

  At the table, Mom lit up and slid the pack of Virginia Slims to me. I shook my head.

  “Suit yourself.”

  She slipped the pack back into her purse, snapped it shut, scanned the menu, and complained—way too loudly—that maybe this place wouldn’t be such a dump if they had screwdrivers or Bloody Marys.

  “God, Charlie,” she said, staring at Leona across the room. “I wanted to tell that old gossip your father’s cheating on me.”

  Her face was hard. She sucked her cigarette and then stabbed the whole thing out in a tin ashtray.

  “Is he?” I asked.

  First sleeping around wasn’t something I could imagine. Thinking about old people having sex—all of that flabby and sagging skin, the skinny legs that nearly give out after climbing a flight of stairs, graying hair in places it shouldn’t be, dirty old men coming dust—that made me wanna retch. But if First was cheating, it would explain a lot: the Ps constant fighting, him missing dinner ’cuz of some “fund-raiser” or “campaign event,” First saying how great his campaign manager was, and what a shame it was she wasn’t married.

  “Is he what?”

  “Cheating?”

  “Please,” Mom said. She laughed, pushing the ashtray to the table’s edge. “I’m not that lucky. There isn’t another woman dumb enough to sleep with him.”

  After we’d finished eating, Mom gave me money to pay the tab—she didn’t wanna deal with Leona—and waited by the front of the restaurant. I met her there. She was on her cell phone.

  “Hello. This is Mrs. Stewart. I’m calling to say that my son Charlie won’t be in today. We’re both sick of his father.” She snapped the phone shut, looking the happiest I’d seen her in forever. Her hand found mine and squeezed it.

  “Come on, kiddo, you’re not too old to play hooky with your mom.”

  We spent the day shopping. Believe it or not, it was actually cool. I thought Mom’d make me get the stuff she wanted—dorky store-brand generic crap—but she didn’t. She handed me about three or four pairs of designer jeans, a couple of chest-raping sweaters—the kind that normally only Vespa-riding, waistless Italian guys with thick sultry lips and eyebrows for days could pull off—some ties and dress shirts, and a bunch of designer underwear (the kind with ripped, way hung and way obviously gay models on the package and not the scrawny, feathered-hair dorks on the front of the Sears brand). She insisted I try everything on and hubba hubba-ed me ’cuz the jeans really showed off my butt. Okay, Mom checking out my ass was creepy, but she was right. I actually had a butt and not an ironing board. I was measured and fitted for a new suit (for church, graduation, and maybe homecoming, if I didn’t press my luck) and a new sports coat and slacks. We even went to Foot Locker for K-Swiss shoes, ’cuz it was the only place we could find that carried size sixteen.

  We stepped up to the watch counter in another department store and Mom asked which one I wanted.

  “We shouldn’t be spending this kind of money,” I said.

  “Well, Charlie, we are.”

  I felt guilty. Even though Mom said she wanted me to have all this stuff, I couldn’t help thinking she was only doing this
to piss off First. Normally, I wouldn’t mind a little credit card therapy, but I hated the idea that Mom might be setting herself up for more fights with First—fights that would come on a monthly basis with way too much interest.

  As much as I’d like to pretend that the Ps getting divorced wouldn’t be a big deal, the idea of that happening actually scared me. Sure, I hated their fighting, but I didn’t want to see what would happen when it stopped. Spending weekends at First’s new bachelor pad with the fridge that never had anything in it but condiments and a half-empty box of Arm and Hammer. It’d be worse with Mom, though. I could see her drinking herself to sleep for the first few months, then maybe getting a job as a waitress and a string of dates with construction workers, car salesmen, and fourth-grade teachers still living at home with their elderly mothers.

  Anyhow, I saw this cool wristwatch I wanted to get Rob, but seventy-five bucks was more than I’d ever spent on anyone. I bought it and felt guilty, like I should’ve been thinking about Mom and not Rob. I offered to get her something, but she wouldn’t let me buy her anything but lunch.

  In the food court, I started fiddling with the watch box, wondering what it’d mean if I actually gave it to Rob. Naturally, Mom figured out what was up.

  “You really like him, don’t you?”

  “Who?” I asked. I looked at the table so she couldn’t see how embarrassed I was. This wasn’t the kind of chat I wanted to have with her. Weren’t there supposed to be some boundaries between parents and kids? I knew what lines I wasn’t supposed to cross. I pretended she never had sex with First and overlooked the maxi pad wrappers that’d missed the trash can and ended up on the bathroom floor. In return, she also ignored all of my bodily functions and my love life.