by Meg Howrey
Luke flips himself upright.
Mark will be home soon from the studio. Luke walks into the living room. He likes to be doing something, when Mark comes home, to show that he’s not an aimless teenager. He had planned on mowing his father’s lawn earlier today, but just as he had begun a text—where lawnmower?—a truck had pulled up in front of the house. Jorge and Dave. Mark has gardeners. So Luke had watched two more episodes of The Last instead, catching up on the second season, courtesy of Mark’s TiVo.
Luke now thinks through possibilities for the next hour: reading, more television, seeing what’s in Mark’s garage, jerking off, meditation. Luke examines the contents of the refrigerator. Everything, Luke has learned, is delivered premade, from Whole Foods. Tonight the plan is to grill on the brand-new grill: a pre-marinated steak for Mark, already cut-up and seasoned vegetables for Luke.
Luke prints out the beginning part of his Moment Before essay on Mark’s printer, and leaves the writing, along with the photographs, on Mark’s desk. When his father comes home, Luke is outside, studying the instruction manual he found on top of the grill. Mark puts him in charge of dinner and Luke is glad to have a task to complete for his father. They eat outside on the patio, Mark praising Luke’s skill. After dinner they watch Heaven Can Wait, on DVD, which Mark has said is one of his favorite movies. They sprawl in separate leather chairs, but share the leather ottoman. During humorous scenes they laugh, turning to see if the other is also laughing.
Mark and Luke’s bare feet bump each other when they laugh. Mark’s second toe is longer than the first. So is Luke’s. Luke notices this and all the rumbling Moments Before of his day vanish with a soundless snap in the joy of this discovered fact. Luke involuntarily makes a sound, somewhere between “Hey!” and “Oh!” Mark, watching the movie, laughs. Their feet bump.
“I know,” Mark says. “I love this part.”
CHAPTER FOUR
My father’s gym is on the top floor of an office building in Beverly Hills. When you pull into the parking structure, the valet attendant asks if you would like the car washed while you are visiting.
“Yeah, it’s sort of a funny place,” Mark explained to me the first time we went together. “But you have to be careful about where you work out in public. You can’t have some idiot taking a picture of you with his phone while you’re in the shower and posting it on the Internet.”
Exclusive or not, I think that people must still be nervous about this at my father’s gym because so far I’ve always had the entire changing room, shower, and steam room to myself.
I was intimidated, the first time we went together. I’m an athlete, but I’m not a “jock.” At school, jocks are the guys who play lacrosse. I considered going out for lacrosse freshman year, but my sisters were against it.
“Only two kinds of guys play lacrosse,” Pearl said. “Total douche bags and guys named Chad.”
“So that leaves me out,” I said.
“Well, you’re definitely not a total douche,” said Aurora. “But you should know that all Chads are not necessarily named Chad.”
“Yeah,” said Pearl. “A Chad is basically a decent-seeming guy, not cruel or an asshole. Technically, he never really does anything bad. He’s usually pretty hot, too. But he actually has no soul. He is just imitating human behavior. He has no imagination. No real morality. I think you know what I’m talking about.”
“Someone like Lee Wedman?” I asked.
“Lee Wedman is a total Chad,” said Pearl.
So I joined the cross-country team. I’m also in the Archery Club.
We began our workout today by running side by side on the treadmills.
“So I read your essay,” Mark said. “What a trip. I love all your descriptions. I love how your aunt has a fake English accent.”
We talked about that for a little bit, and then just ran some more.
“So you think your mom was expecting you to be a girl?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I explained to him about Abigail Perkins and the legions of sisters, and Paul becoming Deepak.
“What a trip,” he said again. “That’s a lot of women. What about your grandfather? Nana’s husband?”
“Dead for a long time,” I said. “Blood clot.”
Across the row of machines, I could see our reflections in the mirrors that line the gym walls. We don’t look that much alike, although he says he used to be skinny like me. We are both left-handed, though, which no one else in my family is. We both have curly hair, although his is darker. We have the long-second-toe thing. Right now at least, I’m my father’s son only at the extremities.
“So you think your mom, uh, got together with me because she really wanted a third daughter?” Mark asked. “Like it was a plan?”
“She’s never said that,” I told him. “I think it was more of a subconscious thing. But it makes sense if you put it all together.”
“It wasn’t a sleazy thing, you know,” Mark said. “I really wasn’t that kind of guy. And she was definitely not that kind of … it wasn’t like some sort of seduction thing. I wanted to be with her. She wasn’t bullshitting you when she said it was special.”
“No, I know,” I said. “She explained it all. Things just happen, you know?”
“There’s usually more than one reason,” he agreed. “How come she never got married again? She was really beautiful.”
“I don’t know. There’s not really a whole lot of people in Delaware on her level. But she always says that she’s happy in her friendships.”
“Yeah, I get that. Hey, you’re a really good writer.”
“Thanks.” I know I’m not a really good writer, but it was nice of him to say that. I wonder if anyone in the past seventeen years has said something to Mark like “You’d make a really good dad,” or “Do you want to have kids someday?” I wonder what he thought of when that happened, if it happened.
“Hey Dad,” I said.
“Yes, son.”
Saying “dad” and “son” in funny voices is becoming a thing for us.
“You came and saw me after I was born, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”
“So … what was that like? I mean, do you remember it?”
“Yeah, I remember it. Of course. To be honest, I was pretty freaked out.
“It was sort of a weird time in my life,” he explained. “I didn’t know how to handle it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t blame you.” I had imagined him freaked out. That seemed reasonable. I don’t know why it was a little disappointing to hear him actually say it.
“I really,” Mark looked at me. “I mean … I’m really glad you’re here, Luke. In Los Angeles. But also, you know, here.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Anytime you feel like letting me read something, that’s cool.”
“It’s pretty unorganized stuff at this point,” I told him. “But, yeah, if you’re interested, great.”
“I’m totally interested. And thanks for bringing those pictures. I kept trying to picture you in Delaware but it was hard because I have no idea what Delaware looks like.”
“No one does. People who drive through it don’t even know that’s what happened.”
“Ha-ha. Well, it looks like a great place to grow up.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, son,” Mark said, in a deep booming voice, clapping me on the shoulder. “Let’s get off these machines and later I’ll show you how to shave.”
Then he worked out with his personal trainer, and I did some free weights and sit-ups and pull-ups and stuff and then went back to the treadmill for more running. He still wasn’t done so I hung out in the empty steam room and then sat in the empty Jacuzzi. I thought about what Mark said, and what he might be thinking about my life in Delaware, and what my family sounds like to him.
My family moved from New York City to Delaware when I was four, Pearl was almost six, and Aurora was seven. Sara told us that we were all going to liv
e with Nana and where Nana lived there would be “space” and “nature,” and we would be able to “greet the stars at night.” Nana had a house with three floors and a yard. She had a dog. We would all have bikes. It was going to be beautiful.
Up until then, we had lived in the apartment that Sara and her husband Paul had lived in. Paul, of course, was gone. Pearl doesn’t have any memories of him. Aurora says she remembers crawling under the dinner table in the New York apartment and playing with a man’s shoes and of a man swinging her by the ankles, but she thinks these memories may be apocryphal.
“I did meet the Paul person, briefly,” Aunt Nancy told me once, “coming through New York, just after Aurora was born. I must say the flat made rather more of an impression than the man. Well, I mean, really, four bedrooms on the Upper East Side. Upholstered walls. Quite gorgeous Chippendale furniture shoved into the corners, and your mother and her Jewish yogi making everyone sit on cushions. Carrying Aurora from room to room in some sort of Mexican basket affair. It was extraordinary. Mad, really.”
Paul left us the apartment in New York City, because part of his transformation was to leave behind all the worldly trappings of his life as Paul in order to fully embrace his life as Deepak, and he would have no need of things like sofas or end tables in the ashram.
The problem was, those things weren’t really Paul’s to renounce because really they all belonged to Paul’s mother. Paul’s mother lived in Florida, because it was better for her health, so she didn’t mind, but Paul also had a brother named Barry.
Barry, it turns out, was a man who had very strong feelings. And one of those feelings was that the apartment should be his now. He didn’t choose to honor Paul’s final decision as Paul. He chose to have anger.
So Sara and Barry had been discussing this issue of the apartment for many years, and people like How-Is-Louis had helped us very much with people like Barry’s lawyer, and now everyone agreed that it was best that Barry should have the apartment back. And this was an extra-good thing because it had created this opportunity for us to go and live with Nana in Delaware, which would be beautiful. Nana lived alone in a big house that was definitely our family’s house, and no one else’s. Sara had grown up in it. Aunt Nancy and Aunt Caroline had grown up in it. We would grow up in it too. It was really too big a house for just Nana.
Nana’s husband, our grandfather Prescott, was dead, like I said, and had been since Sara was little. He had gone to Ecuador to preach the Good News with a missionary group. Unfortunately, upon landing in Ecuador, he became very ill and died as a result of a blood clot in his leg, before ever converting a single Indian.
That was not quite the version I got initially, because it was my sisters who first told me about him.
“Grandfather was killed by Accordion Indians,” Pearl whispered to me. We were all standing in the backyard of our new house, having been let out to play. None of us had ever stood in a backyard of our own before until we came to Delaware. There was a fence running the perimeter of the yard, but before you got to the fence there were a lot of trees, and a birdbath, and flower beds. There was even a shed with tools in it, but we had been told not to go inside that without a grown-up. We understood about not going into places without a grown-up. What surprised us was that Sara and Nana let us play outside by ourselves, and only came and checked on us once in awhile. In New York City we didn’t play outside without grown-ups.
“Who got killed?” I asked.
“Our grandfather,” said Pearl, pulling me by the elbow over to the birdbath, which was too high for me to look into. “Our mom’s dad.”
Aurora, who was nice about these things, lifted me up so I could look into the birdbath. Disappointingly, it was just a dish with water and a few leaves in it. I thought it might look more like our bath, with toys and soap bubbles.
“Our grandfather was a preacher,” said Aurora. “Preacher Prescott.”
“He went to preach to the Accordion Indians,” whispered Pearl. “But they killed him.”
That sounded very bad. Had the Indians squashed our grandfather with their accordions? (We had an alphabet book, one of those ones meant for “gifted” children, which featured the fine arts for the letters: “B” for “Bassoon” and “E” for “Easel.” “A” was for “Accordion.”)
“They didn’t kill him,” said Aurora. “He died before he got to the Accordion Indians. His leg got sick and all the blood got stuck in his leg and that’s how he died.”
“The Accordions would have gotten him anyway,” said Pearl.
“Probably,” said Aurora.
I wanted to go inside and ask Sara if I could give the birds my Froggy sponge to play with, but just then Aurora and Pearl started hopping around the birdbath and hooting.
“We are Accordion Indians!” sang Aurora. “We are wild girls! Wild girls!”
“And we’ll kill you!” shouted Pearl, crouching down on the ground and growling.
Aurora hopped on one foot and looked at Pearl.
“No,” said Aurora. “We’re shy. We hide in the trees.”
And they danced off to one of the trees, and I hopped along with them, but they said no, I had to be Grandfather Prescott. (I was always being given parts like this.)
By the end of the week, we had modified and perfected this game, which mostly consisted of me watching Aurora and Pearl run around and make noises (they were very enthusiastic accordionists) until it was time for my big moment. Then I got to run in front of them and shout, “Good News! Good News!” And then, “My Leg! My Leg!” and fall down. Then Aurora and Pearl would pick me up (my favorite part) and carry me around for awhile and put me behind the tool shed. Then they threw grass at me. At a certain point, Pearl would demand that we leave because the tool shed and everything in it belonged to her. Aurora would pick me up again (hooray!) and then we all went into the side yard, which was “Florida” and which was where you went for better health.
I don’t think I got this all sorted out until I learned about Ecuador when we got to Geography in fourth grade.
Grandfather Prescott died when Sara was little, so she never had a father around either. Mark’s father left when Mark was four. I don’t know if his father is alive. I don’t know if Mark even knows.
I guess it’s best not to get stuck on what you think things are, or how they happened, or why. We should remain as detached as possible. Maybe for a second, when a caterpillar emerges from its cocoon, there is a moment when it freaks out and thinks, “Hey, what’s happened? What are these wing things for? What happened to all my little legs?” but then it just flies away. That’s how we should be, as people. We should be ready for everything to change.
After we finished at the gym today, we went back to the house so Mark could shower and make phone calls. I met Carmen, Mark’s cleaning lady, and tried out my Spanish on her. Then we went for lunch. When we are out in public Mark always wears a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. At the restaurant he sat with his back to the other diners, facing me. After lunch, we visited the Griffith Park Observatory. I’m glad he’s also someone who likes to take his time looking at things, and reading about them.
“I’m a closet nerd,” he said.
“Me too,” I told him. “Well, maybe not a closet nerd. I’m probably an obvious nerd.”
“You’re obviously cool,” he said. “They get that, right? At your school? They get how cool you are?”
“Well, it’s easy for me,” I assured him. “Because of my sisters. Everybody wanted to be friends with Aurora because she’s so nice. And everybody wanted to be friends with Pearl because she’s scary. So by the time I showed up for stuff everybody just figured I was okay too.”
I think this is mostly true. Sometimes girls will tell me that I’m not like “other guys,” but that’s probably a product of my sisters too. The whole not-being-a-Chad thing. I wonder what kind of guy Mark was in school.
I told Mark that when I was little, I thought the sky was the ceiling of the plane
t, like a dome that protected the planet from outer space, and us from falling into it. And that I kept on thinking of it like that for a long time, even after I understood some basic science. Then one day, I looked up into the sky and REALLY understood that the only thing between outer space and me was space. And that we are glued to the earth because of gravity and that gravity is a constant force. There was never any dome at all, just a perception of a dome.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Are you saying there’s not a dome? Shit!”
I couldn’t help noticing that in spite of the baseball cap there was a certain amount of double takes, nudges, whispered conversations—“Is that …?”—happening around us. A couple of times I thought people were going to come up to Mark, but nobody did.
“God, a totally normal day,” he said during the car ride back to the house. “Great, huh? Let’s get Slurpees. I haven’t had a Slurpee in forever.”
I agreed that it had been great although almost nothing about it had really been normal for me. Two weeks ago, I had never sat in a jade steam room, never experienced valet parking, never been taught about the enlivening powers of Tabasco Sauce from my father, never been taught anything by a father. I had never spoken Spanish with someone from Mexico, never stared at live images of the sun, never known how much I weigh on Jupiter, never been sent into a 7-Eleven to get two Slurpees.
“You know,” Mark said, when I got back to the car, “back to what you said about gravity? I have to admit gravity kind of freaks me out. I don’t get it. I mean, I get it, but it seems impossible, sort of. I would have been one of the people saying, ‘Hell no. The earth is flat.’ ”