by David Arnold
“I don’t really know what I mean. School, I guess? I don’t know. Everything is just so hard.”
If Penny really believes I know what I’m doing, I’m every shade a fraud. And just when I’m about to tell her exactly that—that I can’t get it together long enough to decide what I want to do, when I want to do it, or who I’d like to do it with—I open my mouth and say, “It’s about finding the right friends.” I don’t know where it came from, but it keeps coming. “School is like—those white-water rapids, you know?”
“You’ve never been white-water rafting,” says Penn.
“You know what I mean. Like in the movies, a group of people in a canoe or something, and the water suddenly gets faster, and they panic and scream, and then there’s a waterfall—”
“And they all die a horrible death.”
“Okay, so not the right metaphor. But you get it, right? I’m still trying to get through too, so it’s not like I have all the answers. But I know one thing. You need friends in that canoe, Penn. Friends you can count on. The right friends will save your life. The wrong ones will sink you.”
“Do Alan and Val save your life?”
“Yeah,” I say, and then, thinking of them in LA: “I think so.”
Penny shifts sideways on the couch, leans her head back onto my shoulder, and together we stare up at the DeLorean.
“You think they disassembled it to get it through the door?” I ask.
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe they took out the windows.”
“Yeah.”
“So who’s in your canoe, Penn?”
She lets out a sort of humming sigh, and then: “‘It’s useful being top banana in the shock department.’”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Means grab a paddle, darling.”
45 → two weeks a tide
You’re reading on a beach, and it’s all relaxing and whatnot, the waves crashing onto the sand way up yonder, and you’re really into your book, and everything is just perfect, and before you know it, bam—you’re sitting in water.
And that’s isolation.
I spend the next two weeks walking with OMG, scouring the bonus materials in the collector’s edition of This Is Not a Memoir, reading the inscription on the back of Parish’s photograph, waiting for a response from the Fading Girl, and the day is coming, I know, when I’ll arrive at Val and Alan’s house to find a stack of boxes labeled “LA” in bright red Sharpie, and this thought alone is enough to keep me from going over there, and it is not lost on me that in my attempt to keep them close, I am pushing them away.
Two weeks and it’s getting colder. And I’m barely aware of the isolation until I feel it pooling around my feet.
46 → a concise history of me, part thirty-two
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-ministration (NOAA), water covers just over 70 percent of the earth’s surface. NOAA also states that humankind has explored less than 5 percent of the ocean. In their own words, “Ninety-five percent of this realm remains unexplored, unseen by human eyes.”
For precision: .95 x .7 (or, 95 percent of 70 percent) = .665.
Over 66 percent of our planet has never been seen by human eyes.
As fascinating a thing as space exploration sounds, it does feel a bit like receiving a puppy for Christmas, deciding it’s too much of a hassle, too much upkeep, too little reward—and so asking for a pet elephant instead. Don’t get me wrong, I love space, with its infinite incomprehensibility, its scope and mystery. Space is really damn sexy. But when you haven’t laid eyes on 66 percent of your own home, maybe consider exploring that before moving on to other peoples’ houses.
How about we raise the puppy first, is what I’m saying, see how that goes before graduating to an elephant.
A few highlights from the 5 percent of the ocean we have seen: Thonis-Heracleion, once a port of entry to Egypt, now buried in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea; the Yonaguni Monument off the southern tip of the eponymous Japanese island, an ancient underwater pyramid; the Stonehenge-like arrangement of rocks at the bottom of Lake Michigan, one of which boasts a very clear drawing of a mastodon. Countless ruins of once-thriving coastal cities now fully submerged in water.
And me-oh-my, how easy it is to imagine future sunken civilizations: the Lost City of Los Angeles, discovered by some unsuspecting clone in the year 8016 who, while diving off the coast of Vegas Province, discovers a mysterious world of silicone, reel-to-reel projectors, and a giant algae-covered HOLLYWOOD sign. Clones the world over would teleport to conferences to study these artifacts, fascinating remnants from days when actual skin-and-bone originals produced other skin-and-bone originals in unspeakably antiquated methods of rhythm and secretion. Can you imagine, the clones would think to each other in telepathic whispers, scratching genetically perfect heads at these relics, what it must have been like to live back then?
I like to look at photographs of sunken civilizations and mouth words like graveyard and long-forgotten; I look at godlike statues in stone temples with that greenish-blue hue of underwater submersion, and I think of the people who built those structures. Were they erected in the light of day in sand or snow? Whose sweat is embedded in that stone, whose aimless songs ingrained in its memory? Did their makers wish only to finish a good day’s work, to be home, to be loved, to be fed? Or did their minds wander to far-off lands, worlds to be conquered, women and men to be laid? Mostly, I imagine one of these laborers, a mere cog in the great wheel of industry, stopping in the middle of their work, taking a step back, and, seeing their creation in a new and premonitory light, whispering, One day, this will all be at the bottom of the ocean.
That’s usually when I realize I am the cog.
47 → just another yard
This is the first time I’ve read pages aloud to anyone. It feels like every ounce of my blood is camped out in my ears.
Alan is all, “Damn, yo.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s good, man. Weirdly depressing. And just straight-up weird, but . . . good.” He looks around my room, checks his watch. “I gotta take a leak. I’ll be right back.”
“Alan.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s up?”
His face, for once, is wholly unreadable. “Hold that thought,” he says, and disappears into the hallway.
While he’s gone, I look back at my computer screen. In my darkest moments I worry my Histories are total rip-offs. Once, right in the middle of a piece about how everywhere I go I imagine myself living there, I discovered a line in Thoreau’s Walden that said, “At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.” I calmly placed Walden on my bookshelf, and thought maybe the most sensible thing a writer can think: Fuck it, I’ll write it anyway.
I can’t say for sure, but I suspect large portions of the words I write are really just my favorite books regurgitated.
Alan comes back, but he’s not alone—Val is right behind him. “Okay,” she says, sitting on the edge of my bed. “You start yet?”
Alan says, “No, waiting on you,” and I’m beginning to wonder if maybe Alan went to the bathroom just to stall until Val got here.
“Start what?” I ask.
Val says, “Alan tells me you’re going through some shit right now.”
I look at Alan. “The fuck?”
“Be chill, No,” says Val. “He won’t say what’s going on.” It’s quiet for a second, and when it’s clear I’m not going to say anything, she continues. “One of the things I love about us is that we don’t bullshit each other. Or at least not until this fall. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t have to know, that’s fine. But I’ve seen too many friends drift apart, and they never name it. And then they don’t even know each other.”
“We never h
ang anymore,” says Alan. It comes out in a rush, like he’s nervous, like he’s been sitting on it for a while. “You stopped coming over, you’re not at practice, I never see you outside school.”
“What about our Dean and Carlo session?” I ask.
“You mean when we had The Matrix on? Noah, that was, like—two months ago.”
It’s quiet for a second while I consider the cold isolation that’s been gathering around my feet for the last two months.
“So here’s the thing,” says Val. “We’re at a crossroads, I think. If you need space—from us, from the whole—”
“Delicate triangle,” says Alan.
Val nods. “Just say so. Or you can clue us into things, and we can help. As it is, we’re not what we used to be. So let’s name it. Let’s call it that instead of watching the whole thing drift away.”
They both smile in this nervous way, and I think, They’ve rehearsed this. I picture them in their house, running through lines. You say this, then I’ll say that, and maybe he won’t flip.
Open my mouth to say something, I honestly don’t know what, but all I can hear is Val’s voice, We’re not what we used to be, and I start crying. It’s not a sob, just a solid, quiet cry, and they let me have it without platitudes or shoulder pats or quiet it’s okays. And when I’m done, Val says, “We love you.”
Alan nods. “Love you, yo.”
I wipe my eyes, try to let the calm wash over me, but instead: “I can’t believe you guys are leaving.” I don’t know if this is what Val meant by naming it, but there it is. “I can’t believe it.”
“Come with us,” says Alan, and Val nods. “I mean, we may not even get in, but if we do . . . you could come too.”
Sometimes I feel like a guest in a house full of loving people I barely know, and I see a wide-open yard out back, and think, That’s where I want to be, and so I walk outside. But standing alone in the empty yard, I look back inside at a house full of loving people, and I think, Why did I come out here again?
Maybe I’ll go to LA. But part of me is afraid it’s just another yard.
“You’re right,” I say. “Everything you said. I haven’t been around. I’ve been a shitty friend, and I’m sorry for that.”
“Let me in,” says Val. “Whatever’s going on, we can help.”
And looking at her, I have to believe that admitting we aren’t what we used to be isn’t the same as accepting we won’t somehow be more in the future.
Take a deep breath, now go: “So the night of the Longmire party . . .”
* * *
Whether it’s the promise of a brutal Chicago winter around the corner, or a brutal family Thanksgiving, people suddenly feel the insatiable need to clear the air. “We need to talk,” says Mom literally the morning after my sit-down with Alan and Val. Not to mention it’s Monday, and the sun is barely up.
“I know, Mom. We said Thanksgiving weekend. I still have, like, a week.”
“Not that,” she says, pouring herself coffee. “I mean, yes, that’s right. But that’s not what I meant.”
Dad rounds the corner, growls like a bear, all, “Mmmmmm, coffffeeeeeeeeee.” He pours himself a full mug with all the enthusiasm of Augustus Gloop in Wonka’s chocolate factory.
“Okay,” says Mom. “I assume your room is as spotless as ever?”
“Um, yes?”
“Good. Orville should be getting here late tomorrow night.”
“Okay?”
“He’ll probably get a cab here,” continues Mom, “but it’ll be late, after we’re in bed. I told him to let himself in. Which reminds me, I should go ahead and disable the alarm.”
“Mom?”
“What?”
“Are we getting to the part where you tell me why the cleanliness of my room relates to the impending arrival of Uncle Orville?”
“Oh. I thought I said it already? He’s staying in your room.”
I have no words, except: “Sorry, what.”
“Watch the tone,” says Dad, parachuting into the conversation.
“I couldn’t very well offer him a guest room, could I?” says Mom, rolling her eyes in Dad’s direction. Our house has two guest rooms, both of which have slowly and inadvertently been converted into pantry storage for Dad’s catering supplies.
“Where am I supposed to sleep?” I ask.
Mom motions to the couch in the living room, waving her arm like a game show model presenting some fabulous prize. “Or the basement, totally up to you.”
“Fine.”
She pauses, tilts her head. “Noah. Are you okay?”
“Well, I don’t love the idea of Uncle Orville in—”
“No, I mean—” And suddenly Mom is in my space, and now she’s hugging me, and now she’s all, “Seems like you’ve been a little . . . I don’t know. Off, lately.”
I don’t say what I’m thinking: That makes two of us. Ever since that morning in my bedroom on the first day of school when I asked about her scar, she’s basically treated me like a twice-removed cousin.
“If something’s wrong, you can always talk to us,” she says.
“I know, Mom,” and we’re still hugging, and I smell her smell, lean in to it, absorb it now while I can.
She pushes my hair back, kisses me on the forehead. “I know your uncle can be sort of . . . eccentric, but—”
Dad laughs a little, realizes his mistake, sticks his head in the fridge. “Oh, boy, looks like we’re running out of carrot butter.”
“Orville is a sweet man,” says Mom, full-on death stare at Dad, who is currently heaving an armload of carrots from our industrial vegetable drawer in an effort to restore our dangerously low supply of carrot butter. “And even if he weren’t, he’s family.” She digs through her purse for her keys, finds them, kisses me on the forehead again, then says, “No kisses for the carrot man,” and she’s out the door.
Dad is all smiles, pulling out the food processor, setting a pot of water to boil, chopping carrots. The man is in his element. “Big plans today, Noah?”
“Not nearly as big as yours, from the looks of it.”
“Ah, to be young and smarmy.”
“Young and what?”
“How about you play hooky and help your old man? The fun part is about to start.”
I grab my jacket off the counter. “I’m more of an apple butter man myself.”
“Apple butter. Bush league.”
I head for the door. “Have fun with your carrots, Dad.”
Last thing I hear before closing the front door is a crunch.
48 → the life and times of Mr. Elam
After weeks of getting a door shut in my face, I’ve landed on a new, slightly more aggressive tactic with OMG. It was Val’s idea, and no telling if it will work, but I’m about to find out.
OMG rounds the corner right on time; I hop off the hood and approach, only this time, when he’s all, “Well, kid, don’t just stand there,” I respond with, “Just so you know, I’m coming inside today.” He says nothing, gives no indication that he even heard me, and our walk continues as always. We make the right on Ashbrook, closer now, and the way my heart is pounding you’d think I was walking home a new crush, debating whether to make a move on the front stoop. A quick glance at his goiter, which seems bigger today, large and in charge—or, larger and in charger—then down the narrow stone path to the front porch of Ambrosia’s Bed & Breakfast, now up the steps to the door.
So close.
He keys in the code and opens the door for me. “Ladies first.”
After weeks of the same six cold words every morning, it only took these last two to convey the warm complexities of Old Man Goiter.
* * *
A few years ago we did a home exchange with a family in Boston. It was two weeks in an old brownstone, and this place reminds me of that�
�like, to a T—and not only for its visual aesthetic, but also the smells (old bookstores and herbal teas) and sounds (creaking wood, a heavy, old silence). If the outside of Ambrosia’s Bed & Breakfast is quaint, the inside redefines the word. Dark hardwoods, dusty red rugs, dim lighting, a crackling fire in a sitting room just off the entryway: the whole thing almost feels too B-and-B for its own good.
“Hey there, Mr. George,” a woman says from the sitting room.
OMG mumbles incoherently, shakes his head, leads the way upstairs.
The stairwell is just like the Boston brownstone too, but I guess a lot of these old places were designed during the same time, architectural trends and whatnot.
Second floor, at the end of the hall now, last room on the left—OMG pulls out an old skeleton key, inserts it, turns the bolt with a satisfying clunk, and swings open the door. “No shoes,” he says, slipping his off.
What with this being a bed-and-breakfast, I’d been expecting a single room, but this is a full-fledged apartment.
“I’ll be right back,” he says. “Don’t touch anything.”
OMG shuffles off while I unlace my boots and look around. The smell is wholly different in here, a rich, sugary cedar. A single easy chair faces a fireplace and a small boxy TV; behind the chair is a wet bar and two filled-to-the-brim bookshelves, each spine etched in gold or silver. Other than the bookshelves, the rest of the wall’s real estate belongs to photographs: mostly mountains, forests, fields, animals. No people to speak of. One shelf is just sports memorabilia: a number of baseball cards; a framed ticket to a boxing match signed by Muhammad Ali; a basketball card signed by Michael Jordan; and a 1945 Chicago Cubs World Series pennant.
“Whoa.”
“You a Cubs fan?” OMG stands over the bar, gazing at a variety of fancy-looking bottles of whiskey. Some are full, most are close to empty, and in that moment it strikes me how defeated the old man appears, as if, like his whiskey bottles, someone has poured out all but a few drops of his insides.