by Dave Eggers
In the kitchen, when the inspiration calls, I take out the family’s seventeen-inch turkey knife, plant my legs in an A, squat a little and hold the knife over my head, samurai-style.
“Hiyyyyy!” I yell.
“Don’t,” he says, backing away.
“Hiyyyyy!” I yell, stepping toward him, because threatening children with seventeen-inch knives is funny. Always the best games have involved some kind of threatened injury, or near-accident, as when he was a toddler and I would run around with him on my shoulders, pretending to be dizzy, spinning, stumbling—
“Not funny,” he says, backing into the family room.
I put the knife away; it clinks into the silverware drawer.
“Dad used to do that all the time,” I say. “Out of the blue. He’d get this look on his face, this bug-eyed look, and act like he was going to split our heads open with the knife.”
“Sounds funny,” he says.
“Yeah, it was funny,” I say. “It actually was funny.”
Sometimes while we cook he tells me about things that happened at school.
“What happened today?” I ask.
“Today Matthew told me that he hopes that you and Beth are in a plane and that the plane crashes and that you both die just like Mom and Dad.”
“They didn’t die in a plane crash.”
“That’s what I said.”
Sometimes I call the parents of Toph’s classmates.
“Yeah, that’s what he said,” I say.
“It’s hard enough, you know,” I say.
“No, he’s okay,” I continue, pouring it on this incompetent moron who has raised a twisted boy. “I just don’t know why Matthew would say that. I mean, why do suppose your son wants Beth and me to die in a plane crash?
“No, Toph’s fine. Don’t worry about us. We’re fine. I’m worried about you— I mean, you should worry about young Matthew there,” I say.
Oh, these poor people. What is to be done?
During dinner, during the basketball season, we watch the Bulls on cable. Otherwise, needing to keep constantly occupied, we play one of an endlessly rotating series of games—gin, backgammon, Trivial Pursuit, chess—with our plates next to the board. We have been trying to eat in the kitchen, but since we got the Ping-Pong net, it’s been more difficult.
“Unhook the net,” I say.
“Why?” he asks.
“For dinner,” I say.
“No, you unhook it,” he says.
So usually we eat on the coffee table. If the coffee table is beyond clearing, we eat on the family room floor. If the family room floor is covered with plates from the night before, we eat on my bed.
After dinner, we play games for our own amusement and the edification of the neighbors. In addition to the belt-cracking game mentioned earlier, there is the game that involves Toph pretending that he’s a kid, while I pretend I’m a parent.
“Dad, can I drive the car?” he asks as I sit, reading the paper.
“No, son, you can’t,” I say, still reading the paper.
“But why?”
“Because I said so.”
“But Daaaad!”
“I said no!”
“I hate you! I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you!”
Then he runs to his room and slams the door.
A few seconds later he opens the door.
“Was that good?” he asks.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “That was pretty good.”
Today is Friday, and on Friday he gets out of school at noon, so I usually come home early, too, if I can. We are in his room.
“Where are they?”
“They’re in there.”
“Where?”
“Hiding.”
“Where?”
“In that mountain thing we made.”
“Inside the papier-mache?”
“Yeah.”
“When was the last time you saw them?”
“I don’t know. A while. A week maybe.”
“You sure they’re still in there?”
“Yeah. Almost positive.”
“How?”
“They still eat their food.”
“But you never see them?”
“No, not really.”
“What crappy pets.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Should we return them?”
“Can we?”
“I think so.”
“Stupid iguanas.”
We walk the two blocks, through the backyard of that one mossy gnome house, to the park with the small half court.
“Now, why do you go all the way over there when you do it?”
“All the way over where?”
“You had an open-court lay up, but you went all the way over there to do it. Watch. I’ll be you.............See?”
“See what?”
“I went all the way over—like eight feet over there.”
“So?”
“That’s what you were doing!”
“I was not.”
“You were too.”
“I was not.”
“You were!”
“Let’s just play.”
“You gotta learn this—“
“Fine, I learned it.”
“Jerk.”
“Pussy.”
The game invariably ends with this:
“What’s the big deal?”
“You get so emotional when we play.”
“C’mon. Talk. Say something.”
“I have a right to tell you how to do stuff.”
“Don’t be such a sullen little dork.”
“What’s your problem? You have to walk ten feet behind me? You look like an idiot.”
“Here, you carry this. I’m going to the store.”
“Is the door open? I don’t have a key.” “Here.”
5:30 p.m.
“I’m taking a nap.” “So?”
“I need you to wake me up in an hour.”
“What time?”
“Six-twenty.”
“Fine.”
“Really. You have to wake me up.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll be incredibly upset if I don’t get up.”
“Fine.”
7:40 p.m.
“Jesus!”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“What time is it?”
“Seven-forty!”
“Oh!” he says, actually putting his hand over his mouth.
“We’re late!”
“For what?”
“Goddamn it! For your open house, idiot!”
“Oh!” he says, again actually putting his hand over his mouth.
We have twenty minutes to make it. We are firemen and there is a fire. I run this way, he the other. Toph goes up to his room to change. In a few minutes I knock on his door.
“Don’t come in!”
“We have to go.”
“Hold on.”
I wait by the door and the door opens. He is dressed.
“What is that? You can’t wear that.”
“What?”
“No way.”
“What?”
“Don’t mess with me. Just change, retard.”
The door closes. Drawers are opened and there is stomping.
The door reopens.
“Are you kidding?”
“What?”
“That’s worse than the last thing you had on.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Look at it. There’re permanent grease stains all over it. And it’s too big. And it’s a sweatshirt. You can’t wear a sweatshirt. And don’t you have any other shoes?”
“No. Someone didn’t get me any.”
“I didn’t what?”
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me—what didn’t I do for you?”
“Nothing.”
“Screw you.”
“No, screw you.”
&
nbsp; “Change!”
The door closes. A minute, then the door opens.
“That’s bet— What the— Can’t you tuck in the shirt? I mean, didn’t anyone ever teach you how to tuck in your shirt? You look like a moron.”
“Why?”
“You’re nine years old and I’m going to have to come over there and help you tuck in your shirt.”
“I can do it.”
“I’m doing it. We’ve got five minutes left to get there. Jesus, we’re always late. I’m always waiting for you. Don’t move. And where’s your belt? God, you’re a mess.”
7:40-7:50 p.m.
“Goddamn it. We’re always late. Why the hell can’t you get dressed yourself? Roll down your window. It’s too hot in here. How come you refuse to open your window when it’s boiling in here? And your buttons are off. Look at your buttons. Look at your collar, up around your ear. Oh my God. Now I’ll have to dress you every day. At least help with your buttons. Man are they off. You missed about ten, retard.”
“Retard.”
“Retard.”
“Retard”
We are flying down San Pablo, in the left lane, then the right lane, passing Beetles and Volvos, their pleading bumper stickers.
“I was dressed fine.”
“Dressed fine? Goddamn it, you were so not dressed fine. Open the window more. You looked like a retard. A little more. That’s good. You cannot dress like that to an open house. This is what people wear. This is special occasion rules, my man. This is like, give me a break, you know? This is obvious stuff. This is just common sense. I mean, give me a goddamn break, okay? You have got to help me out every once in a while, little man. I’m exhausted, overworked, dead half the time, and I just can’t be dressing someone who’s nine years old and should be perfectly capable of dressing himself. I mean, Jesus Christ, Toph, give me a goddamn break every once in a while, please? Can I have a break every once in a while? A little break? A little cooperation? Jesus Christ—“
“You just passed the school.”
7:52 p.m.
The open house is still full—it goes until nine, not eight, as I had thought—and we are both overdressed. We walk in. Toph immediately untucks his shirt.
The walls are covered with corrected papers about slavery, and the first-graders’ unsettling self-portraits.
Heads turn. This is our first open house, and people are not sure what to make of us. I am surprised, having expected that everyone would have been briefed about our arrival. Kids look at Toph and say hi.
“Hi, Chris.”
And then they look at me and squint.
They are scared. They are jealous.
We are pathetic. We are stars.
We are either sad and sickly or we are glamorous and new. We walk in and the choices race through my head. Sad and sickly? Or glamorous and new? Sad/sickly or glamorous/new? Sad/sickly? Glamorous/new ?
We are unusual and tragic and alive.
We walk into the throng of parents and children.
We are disadvantaged but young and virile. We walk the halls and the playground, and we are taller, we radiate. We are orphans. As orphans, we are celebrities. We are foreign exchange people, from a place where there are still orphans. Russia? Romania? Somewhere raw and exotic. We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows—a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we. We are oddities, sideshows, talk show subjects. We capture everyone’s imagination. That’s why Matthew wants Beth and me dead in a plane crash. His parents are old, bald, square, wear glasses, are wooden and gray, are cardboard boxes, folded, closeted, dead to the world— We ate at their house actually, not long ago, accepting a neighborly invitation sometime before Matthew’s plane crash comment. And we were bored to tears in their stillborn house, its wooden floors and bare walls—the daughter even played the piano for us, the father so haughtily proud of her, the poor bald guy. They owned no TV, there were no toys anywhere, the place was airless, a coffin—
But we!—we are great-looking! We have a style, which is messy, rakish, yet intriguingly so, singular. We are new and everyone else is old. We are the chosen ones, obviously, the queens to their drones—the rest of those gathered at this open house are aging, past their prime, sad, hopeless. They are crinkly and no longer have random sex, as only I among them am still capable of. They are done with such things; even thinking about them having sex is unappealing. They cannot run without looking silly. They cannot coach the soccer team without making a mockery of themselves and the sport. Oh, they are over. They are walking corpses, especially that imbecile smoking out in the courtyard. Toph and I are the future, a terrifyingly bright future, a future that has come from Chicago, two terrible boys from far away, cast away and left for dead, shipwrecked, forgotten, but yet, but yet, here, resurfaced, bolder and more fearless, bruised and unshaven, sure, their pant legs frayed, their stomachs full of salt water, but now unstoppable, insurmountable, ready to kick the saggy asses of the gray-haired, thickly bespectacled, slump-shouldered of Berkeley’s glowering parentiscenti!
Can you see this?
We walk around the classrooms. In his homeroom, on the walls, there are papers about Africa. His paper is not on the wall.
“Where’s your paper?”
“I don’t know. Ms. Richardson didn’t like it, I guess.”
“Hmmph.”
Who is this Ms. Richardson? She must be a moron. I want this “Ms. Richardson” brought out and driven before me!
The school is full of nice children but eccentric children, delicate and oddly shaped. They are what my friends and I, growing up in public schools, always envisioned private school kids were like— a little too precious, their innate peculiarities amplified, not muted, for better and worse. Kids who think that they are pirates, and are encouraged to dress the part, in school. Kids who program computers and collect military magazines. Chubby boys with big heads and very long hair. Skinny girls who wear sandals and carry flowers.
After about ten minutes, we’re bored. My main reason for coming has gone bust.
I was looking to score.
I expected flirting. I expected attractive single mothers and flirting. My goal, a goal I honestly thought was fairly realistic, was to meet an attractive single mother and have Toph befriend the mothers son so we can arrange play dates, during which the mother and I will go upstairs and screw around while the kids play outside. I expected meaningful glances and carefully worded propositions. I imagine that the world of schools and parents is oozing with intrigue and debauchery, that under its concerned and well-meaning facade, its two-parent families, conferences with teachers and thoughtful questions directed to the history teacher about Harriet Tubman, everyone is swinging.
But by and large they’re ugly. I scan the crowd milling in the courtyard. The parents are interesting only in their prototypical Berkeley-ness. They wear baggy tie-dyed, truly tie-dyed, pants, and do not comb their hair. Most are over forty. All of the men have beards, and are short. Many of the women are old enough to have mothered me, and look it. I am disheartened by the lack of possibility. I am closer in age to most of the children. Oh but there is one mother, a small-headed woman with long, long, straight black hair, thick and wild like a horse’s tail. She looks exactly like her daughter, same oval face, same sad dark eyes. I’ve seen her before, when I’ve driven Toph to school, and have guessed that she’s single; the father is never present.
“I’m gonna ask her out,” I say.
“Please, don’t. Please,” Toph says. He really thinks I might.
“Do you like the daughter at all? This could be fun—we could double date!”
“Please, please don’t.”
Of course I won’t. I have no nerve. But he does not know that yet. We walk the halls decorated with construction paper and student work. I meet Ms. Richardson, the homeroom teacher, who is tall and black and severe—with distended, a
ngry eyes. I meet the science teacher who looks precisely like Bill Clinton and stutters. There is a girl in Toph’s class who, at nine, is taller than her parents, and heavier than me. I want Toph to be her friend and make her happy.
A woman nearby is looking at us. People look at us. They look and wonder. They wonder if I am a teacher, not knowing how to place me, thinking maybe that because I have scraggly facial hair and am wearing old shoes that I will take and molest their children. I surely look threatening. The woman, this one looking at us, has long gray hair and large glasses. She is wearing a floor-length patterned skirt and sandals. She leans toward us, points her finger to me and to Toph and back, smiles. Then we find our places and read the script:
MOTHER Hi. This is your... son?
BROTHER Uh... no.
MOTHER Brother?
BROTHER
Yeah.
MOTHER
(squinting to make sure) Oh, you can tell right away.
BROTHER
(though knowing that it is not really true, that he is old and severe-looking, and his brother glows) Yeah, people say that.
MOTHER
Having fun?
BROTHER
Sure. Sure.
MOTHER You go to school at Cal?
BROTHER
No, no, I finished school a few years ago.
MOTHER
And you live around here?