I can remember being born.
35
Everything
about being born. What I saw. What I felt. What I heard. What I smelled.
I would give up half my fortune to forget that smell.
I was taken home the next day by two animals. One was big and soft and sloppy. She stared at me so much I was half convinced she wanted to eat me. The other animal was thin and rat-faced. He smiled when he looked at me. That was the first fake smile I ever saw.
Later that afternoon, while Mom (as I learned to call her) took a well-deserved nap, Daddy stood over me as I lay in my crib. He was talking to his college roommate on the phone.
36
“Yeah, we named him Oliver Junior . . .” He listened for a second, then laughed like a machine gun going off—
gaga-ga-ga-ga
. “Of course, he’s named after me, you jerk! Seriously, Don, you’re
hilarious
.”
Daddy settled into a chair and propped his feet on my changing table. “Oh yeah. I’m totally thrilled. You know, childhood and innocence—it’s all very important to me. In some ways, I’m just a big kid myself, right?” He reached into my crib—for a second, I thought he was going to pet me—and grabbed a teddy bear, which he started squeezing absentmindedly.
“I can just
relate
to kids. I know how they think. Little Oliver Junior—the little guy’s brain is so simple and pure and innocent, free from the prejudices of the ugly adult world.” He looked in the mirror and started fiddling with his hair. “I’m looking at him right now, and it’s like I’m looking at the future.”
He suddenly froze. I focused my day-old eyes and saw that he’d found a gray hair buried in his brown mane. He rolled it between his fingers like it was a poisonous worm, then plucked it out savagely. Then he looked at himself in the mirror again. He was frowning now. I could hear Don nattering through the phone line, but it didn’t look like Daddy was listening anymore.
“What? Huh? Yeah, I’m here.” He lowered his voice and glanced at the door that led to where Mom was sleeping. “Listen, man . . . you know I couldn’t be happier about bringing this fresh new life into the world. . . . But . . . I mean,
man
! It’s all happened so
fast
. First Marlene, now a baby . . . I can’t help wondering if maybe it all isn’t gonna keep me from doing . . . well, the great work I’m
destined
for. . . .”
My crib was in a room that doubled as my father’s home office. This was in our old apartment. The room was the size of a large closet, and the walls were painted a manly dark green, but Mom had plastered stickers of frogs all over them for my benefit. Daddy’s computer was next to my crib. The only “great work” I ever saw him do on it was play backgammon.
37
“You know, I feel like I’m destined to help all the children of the world, to be famous for it, right? Like, maybe I’ll write a book or something. Or go on TV. And I wonder if it’s
selfish
of me to devote so much energy to this
one
kid, when I could help so many. Like it’s a distraction. . . .”
He listened for a second.
“No . . . he doesn’t cry or anything like that. He just stares at you . . . like, he’s always
staring
. . . with these big blank eyes. . . . And his forehead is, like,
huge
. Plus, his nose is almost
nonexistent
—just a flat spot in the middle of his face. . . .”
He suddenly realized how that sounded. “Don’t take that the wrong way. The kid’s gorgeous. I’m looking at the little guy right now. He’s . . . amazing, man.”
For the record, he was still looking in the mirror when he said that.
“But, you know, what if . . . and it’s way too early to tell, obviously, but what if he inherits
her
intelligence? I don’t know if I could handle—no,
of course
I love her, man. That’s not the point.”
“I mean, she put on a little weight during the pregnancy, but I’m sure that’ll come right off. . . .”
He sighed, the sigh of a man who suffers more than the world will ever know or care. It was a sound I would come to know well.
“I’m just saying . . . I’ve known since I was a kid that I was destined to produce something
amazing
. Something that would totally change the world. I don’t know what—a book, a play, an invention—
something
. And I don’t see how I’m going to do that with this instant family weighing me down.”
Here Daddy looked at me. I smiled at him. It was the first fake smile I’d ever made.
It’s interesting, on your second day of existence, to realize that your father is going to blame all the future failures of his life on you. Not an experience I recommend.
That was when I decided to “hide my light under a bushel”—to play dumb. I could already tell that Mom would be terrified by my brain. And Daddy . . . well, he didn’t know it, but he already
had
produced “something amazing,” something that would “change the world.”
Namely, me.
But I didn’t see any reason to share that information with him. I wasn’t going to let him warm his frigid little heart by the hot flames of my genius.
If he couldn’t love me for simply being what I appeared to be, he didn’t deserve to know the greatness that lurked within. I resolved at that very moment never to care what Daddy thought, never to give him an inkling of what a magnificent monster he had sired. He meant nothing to me.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch
. And I haven’t, for one second, cared what he thought about me since.
P.S. All babies have little noses, you jackass.
Chapter 8:
I ACCEPT A CHALLENGE
Daddy sits at the head of the dinner table, toying with his beef stew, as he solves the world’s problems for us. I’m not really listening, but the gist of his argument seems to be that we’d all be a lot better off with stricter seat belt laws. Mom listens with less than her usual rapt attention. She squiggles in her seat, which makes her cheeks jiggle, occasionally opening her mouth, as if to say something, then thinking better of it and closing her lips into a shy, delighted smile.
Daddy doesn’t usually act like he cares much what Mom thinks, so it’s fun to see how annoyed he gets when he doesn’t command her full attention. “The simple lap belts of yore just won’t do it anymore,” he intones. “We’ve got to make people understand, these so-called classic cars need retrofits to conform to . . . is there something on your mind, Marlene?”
This last is said in a tone of controlled annoyance and (understandable) surprise that there would be
anything
on Mom’s mind.
“Ollie was nominated for class president!” she explodes. “That pretty little Lopez girl nominated him. He said no, but they nominated him!”
He makes her repeat the news three times before he believes her.
I’d mentioned my nomination to Mom over my after-school grilled cheese (which was perfect, incidentally), but I’d had no idea it had made such an impact on her. I guess the excitement’s been brewing inside her all afternoon, like a can of soda that’s been shaken too much.
Daddy seems less impressed. “Oh,” he says. “Well. Obviously some sort of—”
He stops himself before he says “joke.” But I can hear it anyway. He awkwardly pats me on the head. “Congratulations, Oliver. That’s . . . quite an honor.” Then he starts buttering a piece of bread so he doesn’t have to look at me anymore.
Mom trots off to the bathroom. Being the bearer of such momentous news has put an enormous strain on her bladder.
I lower my spoon and concentrate on my stew. Daddy and I don’t talk much when we’re alone. My mind relocates to my most pressing concern: a corrupt trade official in Hong Kong who’s putting a serious crimp in my exports to South Asia. This will require a complex web of bribery to solve. . . .
“Man. Student Council. That really takes me back.”
I look up, surprised. Daddy’s talking to me. Or, more accurately, he’s talking to himself, and I happen to be in the room. He’s leaning back in his chair, glasses off, eyes pointed at the ceiling as he casts his mind back to his glorious yesteryears.
“It was me. Rhena Vinson. Louis Goldberg. Heather Grich was secretary-treasurer one year. That’s when you started to be able to tell. When we started to separate ourselves out. The people who were gonna make a
difference
, who felt a commitment to the community.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard the planners of bake sales described in such glowing terms before.
“You know, we . . . It was like everybody suddenly realized that we were the ones who were going to do something important with our lives.
38
The whole class was saying, ‘Okay,
you
guys represent us.’ And when they made me president in tenth grade—I beat Louis by twenty-five votes—it was such an honor. I’d been given a trust, a sacred duty, and I knew I couldn’t let them down.”
I feel like I’m hearing the secret origin of the world’s most annoying superhero. His eyes are moist. So are his lips. (Is he salivating?)
“It was just . . .
amazing
, man . . .”
Then, plainly all too soon, his reverie ends. He rubs his eyes and slips his glasses back on. He lowers his head and sees me.
More: He lowers his head and is
surprised
to see me.
Even more
: He lowers his head and is
disappointed
to see me.
To see
me
.
And that’s when I make up my mind.
He recovers his composure, shuffles the expression on his face, lands on something close to affection. He reaches out a tentative paw and gives me a weak pat on the shoulder. “But just getting nominated. That’s great, too.” He smiles at me. It is, by my calculation, the one-millionth fake smile he has ever foisted upon me—and one of the least convincing.
“Thanks, Daddy!” I beam back. “Thank you! Thank you!” I grab his wrist tight, kiss the back of his hand four times, five times, repeatedly, sloppily until he dares to pull it away. He looks a little scared as I turn my manic eyes downward and attack my stew.
I hate him.
I hate his pride. I hate his smugness. I hate his face.
I hate that there is something in his past that he values so highly. Something that is pure. When times are tough, when work is hard, when Daddy begins to doubt himself, he can always remember student council. He will always be the guy who beat Louis Goldberg by twenty-five votes. He will always be tenth-grade class president. And that makes him special. He thinks. It makes him better than me.
He thinks.
But I will ruin this for him. I will corrupt it. Just as he has corrupted so many of my finest hours. Just as he has ruined so many of my brightest days.
I will put a worm in his apple. I will make him pay.
Don’t imagine I want his respect. His pride. His love. Because I don’t. That’s stupid. The very thought repulses me. I don’t want him clasping me to his chest and saying,
“
I’m proud of you, son
.” I’d rather die. I’d rather drink yak urine. I’d rather go on a carrot and cauliflower diet.
This is all about making him suffer. This is about me taking those golden, cherished memories of his student-council heyday and turning them into maggot-infested turd piles, great stinking wagonloads of crap and tears and bile. What once gave him pleasure to remember will now only remind him that he isn’t so special after all. I will shame him.
His fat, selfish, stupid son is going to run for class president. And I am going to win.
It’s going to be easy.
Chapter 9:
FAST AND BULBOUS
OBJECTIVE
: Win the class presidency
TIME FRAME
: One month
IMMEDIATE OBSTACLE
: Getting on the ballot—contact Pinckney, Leon
LONG TERM OBSTACLES
: Opponents—Chapman, Jack; Twombley, Elizabeth
ESTIMATED CHANCES OF SUCCESS
: 100%
I scribble these notes to myself as Sheldrake natters on about radio revenue for the last quarter. “Ad sales were down three percent for our broadcast stations, and FCC fines were up,” he worries nasally, through that magnificent patrician nose. “We may want to consider diversifying into the subscription satellite arena—”
“We already
are
diversified,” I snap. “I own a controlling share of all North American satellite radio.”
“Oh.” Sheldrake looks through his papers. “When did that happen?”
“That day you stayed home sick with the flu.”
Lollipop whimpers in the seat next to me and rests her massive head on my lap. I scratch her ears as I look out the window and down at the shining lights of my riverboat casinos below. Lollipop hates flying. I don’t travel much as a rule—too risky—but tonight I had a lot to think about and a yearning to see the night sky, so I released a sleeping gas in my parents’ bedroom and told Sheldrake to ready the blimp.