Generation X (18 page)

naturalism, and karmic eye -for-eye attitudes.

female figure, Linda, meditating in what looked to be a wild and rich
PAPER RABIES:

garden. Reading the caption underneath, which described the efforts Hypersensitivity to littering.

of a wealthy American heiress gone New Age, Laski felt his pulse

quicken. "Within one day Laski was on a Japan Air Lines flight into JFK airport, filled with anxiety and looking a strange sight with his steamer trunk and his robe, battling the late afternoon crowds of

Eurotrash being deposited at customs by the discount airlines and

hoping that the airport limousine would take him to Linda's estate in time. So little time!

"Laski stood outside the steely gate of Linda's estate, and from within the guard's house, he heard a party in progress. Tonight, as he had correctly interpreted from the small curiosity article on Linda in the
Stern,
was to be her last night of meditation—the guards were to be released from duty and were celebrating. They were sloppy. Laski,

leaving his steamer trunk outside the gate, slipped in quietly, and without any interruption, strolled down the sunset lit remains of the driveway.

"The apple trees were filled with angry crows; blue ground spruce shrub licked at his feet; exhausted sunflowers rested their heads on broken necks while the snails gathered below like
tricoteuses.
Amid this splendor Laski stood and changed from his pale brown robe into a jacket of

glimmering metal he had removed at the gate and had been carrying with him. And, after reaching Linda's house, he opened the front door, then entered the cool, dark silence that spoke to him of opulent rooms rarely used. Up a wide central staircase layered with carpet the black-red tint of pomegranate juice, Laski followed a hunch, walked through many

corridors, and ended up in Linda's bedroom. Charlotte, partying with the guards, was not there to monitor his entrance.

"Then on the patio outside he saw Linda's shrunken figure

gazing at the sun, which was now amber and half-descended below the horizon. Laski had arrived just in time—Linda's period of silence and meditation would be over in seconds.

"Laski looked at her body, so young still, but converted to that of an old crone. And it could almost creak, so it seemed to him, as she

turned around, revealing her face, profoundly emaciated—a terminal

face like a rubber raft that has been deflated, left in the sun too long.

"She raised her body slowly, knobby and spindly, like a child's spaghetti sculpture of a graceless bird, and she shuffled across the patio and through the doors into her bedroom like a delicate breeze entering a closed room.

- "She did not seem surprised to see Laski, agleam in his metal jacket. Passing by him, she pulled her lip muscles up in a satisfied smile and headed toward her bed. As she laid herself down, Laski could hear the sandpapery noises of a rough military blanket on her dress.

She stared at the ceiling and Laski came to stand next to her.

" 'You children from Europe . . . from America . . .' he said, 'you try so hard but you get everything wrong—you and your strange little handcarved religions you make for yourselves.
Yes,
you were to meditate for seven years and seven months and seven days and seven hours in

my religion, but that's in
my
calendar, not yours. In
your
calendar the time comes out to just over
one
year. You went seven times longer than you had to . . . you went for far too—' but then Laski fell silent. Linda's eyes became like those he had seen that afternoon at the airport—the eyes of emigrants about to emerge through the sliding doors of customs and finally enter the new world for which they have burned all bridges.

"Yes, Linda had done everything incorrectly, but she had won

anyway. It was a strange victory, but a victory nonetheless. Laski

realized he had met his superior. He quickly removed the jacket of his priesthood, a jacket well over two thousand years old to which new ornaments were always being added and from which old ornaments

continually decayed. Gold and platinum threads woven with yak's wool bore obsidian beads and buttons of jade. There was a ruby from Marco Polo and a 7Up bottle cap given by the first pilot to ever land in Laski's village.

"Laski took this jacket and placed it on Linda's body, now un-dergoing a supernatural conversion. His gesture was accompanied by the cracking of her ribs and a breathy squeak of ecstasy. 'Poor sweet child,' he whispered as he kissed her on the forehead.

"And with this kiss, Linda's skull caved in like so many fragile green plastic berry baskets, left outside over a winter, crushing in one's hand. Yes, her skull caved in and turned to dust—and the piece of

light that was truly Linda vacated her old vessel, then flitted heavenward, where it went to sit—like a small yellow bird that can sing all songs—on the right hand of her god."

GROW

FLOWERS

Years ago, after I first started to make a bit of money, I used to go to the local garden center every fall and purchase fifty-two daffodil bulbs.

Shortly thereafter, I would then go into my parents' backyard with a deck of fifty-two wax-coated playing cards and hurl the cards across the lawn.

Wherever a card fell, I would plant one of the bulbs. Of course, I could have just tossed the bulbs themselves, but the point of the matter is, I
d i d n ' t .
P l a n t i n g b u l b s t h i s w a y c r e a t e s a very natural spray effect—the same silent algo-r i t h m s t h a t d i c t a t e t h e torque in a flock of spar-rows or the gnarl of a

piece of driftwood also

dictate success in this

formal matter, too. And

come spring, after the

daffodils and the narcissi

h a v e s p o k e n t h e i r d e l i -cate little haikus to the world and spilled their

cold, gentle scent, their

crinkly beige onion pa

per remnants inform us that summer will soon be here and that it is now time to mow the lawn. Nothing very very good and nothing very very

bad ever lasts for very very long. HI wake up and it's maybe 5:30 or so in the morning. The three of us are sprawled on top of the bed where we fell asleep. The dogs snooze on the floor next to the near-dead embers.

Outside there is only a hint of light, the breathlessness of oleanders and no cooing of doves. I smell the warm carbon dioxide smell of sleep and enclosure. HThese creatures here in this room with me—these are the creatures I love and who love me. Together I feel like we are a strange a n d f o r b i d d e n g a r d e n —I feel so happy I could die. If I could have it thus, I would like this moment to continue forever. I g o b a c k t o s l e e p .

DEFINE

NORMAL

Fifteen years ago, on what remains as possibly the most unhip day of my life, my entire family, all nine of us, went to have our group portrait taken at a local photo salon. As a result of that hot and endless sitting, the nine of us spent the next fifteen years trying bravely to live up to the corn-fed optimism, the cheerful waves of shampoo, and the air-brushed teeth-beams that the resultant photo
is
still capable of emitting to this day. We may look dated in this photo, but we look
perfect,
too.

In it, we're beaming ear-nestly to the right, off to-w a r d w h a t s e e m s t o b e the future but which was

actually Mr. Leonard,

t h e p h o t o g r a p h e r a n d a

lonely old widower with

hair implants, holding

something mysterious in

his left hand and yelling,

"Fromage!"
When

the photo first came

home, it rested gloriously

for mayb e o n e h o u r o n

top of the fireplace, placed there guilelessly by my father, who was shortly thereafter pressured by a forest fire of shrill teenage voices fearful of peer mockery to remove it immediately. It was subsequently moved to a never-sat-in portion of his den, where it hangs to this day, like a forgotten pet gerbil dying of starvation. It is visited only rarely but deliberately by any one of the nine of us, in between our ups and downs in life, when we need a good dose of "but we were all so innocent once"

to add that decisive literary note of melodrama to our sorrows.

Again, that was fifteen years ago. This year, however, was the year everyone in the family finally decided to stop trying to live up to that bloody photo and the shimmering but untrue promise it made to us. This is the year we decided to call it quits, normality-wise; the year we went the way families just
do,
the year everyone finally decided to be them-
selves
and to hell with it. The year no one came home for Christmas.

Just me and Tyler, Mom and Dad.

"Wasn't that a fabulous year, Andy? Remember?" This is my sister Deirdre on the phone, referring to the year in which the photo was taken.

At the moment Deirdre's in the middle of a "heinously ugly" divorce from a cop down in Texas ("It takes me four years to discover that he's a pseudo-intimate, Andy—whatta slimeball") and her voice is rife with tricyclic antidepressants. She was the Best Looking and Most Popular of the Palmer girls; now she phones friends and relatives at 2:30 in the morning and scares them silly with idle, slightly druggy chat: "The world seemed so shiny and new then, Andy, I
know
I sound cliche. God—

I'd suntan then and not be afraid of sarcomas; all it took to make me feel so alive I thought I might burst was a ride in Bobby Viljoen's Roadrunner to a party that had tons of unknown people."

BRADYISM:
A multisibling

Deirdre's phone calls are scary on several levels, not the least of sensibility derived from having

which is that her rantings tend to be true. There really is something grown up in large familes. A

silent and dull about losing youth; youth really is, as Deirdre says, a rarity in those born after

approximately 1965, symptoms

sad evocative perfume built of many stray smells. The perfume of
my
of
Bradyism
include a facility for

youth? A pungent blend of new basketballs, Zamboni scrapings, and

mind games, emotional

stereo wiring overheated from playing too many Supertramp albums.

withdrawal in situations of

overcrowding, and a deeply felt

And, of course, the steamy halogenated brew of the Kempsey twins'

need for a well-defined personal

Jacuzzi on a Friday night, a hot soup garnished with flakes of dead skin, space.

aluminum beer cans, and unlucky winged insects.

I have three brothers and three sisters, and we were never a "hugging family." I, in fact, have no memory of having once been hugged by a parental unit (frankly, I'm suspicious of the practice). No, I think
psychic
dodge ball
would probably better define our family dynamic. I was number five out of the seven children—the total middle child. I had to scramble harder than most siblings for any attention in our household.