13
THE
FOLLOWING EVENING we decided to take Mom’s car out for an exploratory little
spin. The engine started rough, but it started, and I let it warm up in the
strange and generally unglimpsed garage of Mom’s house where everything, even
the shadows, seemed inverted and unreal.
“We
got wheels!” Rodney declared, jiggling in the front passenger seat and thrumming
Beatrice’s thighs with a paradiddle, a flam-paradiddle, then a spotty double
roll. “Phillip’s got us wheels, man! Let’s
roll
!
Let’s do what they do on TV and let’s
roll
!
It was the only time I ever saw Rodney excited about anything. Rodney even
offered to give me five, but my mind was too intent on the various pedals and
knobs and levers before me.
They
were all familiar, but they were all unfamiliar too. They articulated me with
that world of adults which was accessible in every way except the mind’s. When
I touched them, I was touching some ineffable something of adults that made
adults different. It was not the things themselves, but some mysterious
identity behind the things. Signals, ashtray, wipers, defrost, tone and volume,
fan, air, seat belt, dash. I eased the accelerator down and up, the engine
expanding in the damp garage with a choppy roar and diminishing again like
passing private airplanes. I practiced engaging the clutch and killed the
engine three or four times. Each time the car started with a throatier,
smoother voice. It was the voice of mechanical discretion. It was the voice of
the whirring conspiratorial notions of engaged mechanical parts.
THAT
WAS THE winter I learned to drive, propped up by two volumes of the Yellow
Pages, and always at night. It was a dry, brittle winter in the San Fernando
Valley, and the only snow around was painted on the shopfront windows of barbershops
and Exxon stations. Santa Claus, flanked by bikinied elves, sweated in his
bright red underdrawers as he lugged his gifts past high palm trees and a
bright yellow sun. The streets were filled with young girls and boys standing
about, leaning against their bicycles and eating ice creams they had just
purchased from 7-Eleven. The air was still heavy with the always rich
jacarandas, as if winter never came.
Some
nights it rained, and we drove our car through long ripping puddles in the flat
streets of the poorly irrigated basin, around Valley College, down Van Nuys and
up into the Burbank Hills into Glendale, Pasadena, Whittier. When it rained the
entire San Fernando Valley flooded with the bright rainwater and the reflected
lights of other cars. I liked to downshift at stoplights and then, in neutral,
coast through when no cops were watching and jerk quickly into second again,
sometimes feeling that sudden loss of gravity when the tires spun and the smoke
wrapped us up in a world very invisible, yet also very real. The windows of the
houses all betrayed bright Christmas trees with silver tinsel, red bulbous
ornaments and inconstant strings of flashing lights. Enormous plastic Santas,
reindeer and manger scenes stood out on the front yards like migrant workers,
and whenever we turned on the radio they were playing Christmas carols. “Jingle
Bell Rock.” “A California Christmas.” “O Come All Ye Faithful.” “O Little Town
of Bethlehem.” O Christmas, I thought. O Mom, O Dad. O History and Motion, O
Motion and Light.
“Turn
off that crap,” Rodney said, still happily thrumming his hands–against
his own thighs now. Another of the bitter silences had interrupted his necking
with Beatrice, who sat between us in the front seat, one hand surreptitiously
squeezing my knee. She was sucking a LifeSaver. “It’s still fucking November,”
Rodney said. “I haven’t even digested my Thanksgiving fucking turkey yet.”
“Do
you believe in Christ?” Beatrice asked, gently disengaging Rodney’s hand from
her shoulder.
“You
mean like Christ, the son of God?” I had just lit my Tareyton, and was
reinserting Mom’s lighter in the dash.
Beatrice,
her eyes dazed by the glimmering streets, nodded.
“You
mean like the bread and fishes?” I asked. “You mean like the Star of Bethlehem,
and the three wise men, and dying for all our sins?” I was starting to get a
little excited. “Christ wore a halo on his head, even when he was a baby. He
slept on a mountaintop and collected apostles like trading stamps. One day they
nailed his hands to a cross. Then, a few days later, he lived again. Which
always made me wonder why God let him die in the first place. Because it was a
symbol, that’s my guess. God never cares about human beings. God, like any
halfway decent politician, only cares about symbolic language.”
“I
dig the story about the bread and fishes,” Rodney said. “We’re talking luncheon
meat for forty thousand. We’re talking pimento, coleslaw and fried chicken. We’re
not talking about your average tuna salad. If my stupid mom had been there,
she’d have been asking why they didn’t serve any fucking tuna salad.”
“I
think Christ is an idea we came up with because we needed it,” Beatrice said. I
glanced at her in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were closed.
“I
think we might as well believe in Christ as believe in anything,” Beatrice
said. “I mean, Christ makes as much sense and anything else I can think of.”
“Like
Success,” Rodney said.
“Or
Self,” I said.
“Or
Family,” Beatrice said. “Or Woman. Love. Disease. Heartbreak. Death. God.
Goals. Reification. Fried food. High fiber optics. Disinvestment. Cancer. AIDS.
Genes, skin, tissue, soul.” Beatrice’s face and neck were covered with so many
of Rodney’s red, splotchy hickeys she resembled a victim of the Great Plague.
“They’re all ideas we need. The question shouldn’t be whether they’re real or
not, or whether we believe they’re real. I mean, I can’t tell you how
impossibly
mundane
that all is, all
these ridiculous endless arguments about what’s reality and all. They’re such
imbecile restraints upon our thinking. Empiricism isn’t a way of thinking;
empiricism is a way of being. Of being a dickhead, anyway. Do we
believe
we need Christ, Phillip? Or do
we believe we have any good reason for
not
believing?”
“Don’t
forget childhood,” I said. “Childhood’s one thing don’t forget.”
“I
believe we got to stop at a service station so I can drop a log,” Rodney said. “I
mean, I’d really
love
to continue
this highly intellectual conversation and all, but first I think–I mean,
I
believe–
I
believe
I’ve got to chop me some serious
wood. I
believe
I’ve got to cut me
one mighty humongous loaf.”
WHENEVER
I RETURNED home Mom left traces of herself around the house so I would know she
was all right. It was like a secret Morse of displaced objects, punctuated by
unvoiced sighs and iconic, invisible gestures. An unwashed glass on the kitchen
countertop. A bottle of Seagram’s discarded in the trash basket under the sink.
Sometimes she would leave a pillowcase stuffed with dirty linen outside her
door for me to wash. Sometimes there might even be a little note attached. Usually
it said:
Dear Phillip,
I love you.
Love, Mom
And
of course I always left Mom a note in return:
Dear Mom,
I love you, too.
Love, Phillip
“You
can’t grow up thinking life’s like your mom lives it, Phillip. That’s the
important thing. I think that’s the real reason I want you back home with me. I’m
not trying to say it might not seem fun, especially for a young boy. But what
seems fun isn’t always right, and I think you know what I’m saying. What’s
right isn’t always fun. I’m talking of course about all those corny,
old-fashioned values your mom used to ridicule me for holding onto. Things like
honor, commitment, duty, and yes, even good old-fashioned family loyalty. Hell,
I’m not trying to sound like some sentimental old fool or anything. It’s just
that the love you feel for your lawful wife and child happens to be a lot more
‘fun’ in its very difficult, thankless way than any free ride in your mom’s
car. I think you know what I’m saying, Phillip. If I’m not too far wrong about
my only son, I think you’ve got a good idea what your old man’s talking about.”
Often
after Dad hung up my head continued ringing with his voice. His voice was
something I carried with me now, just as I’m sure Dad carried my baby picture
in his wallet. “What if everyone behaved like you and your mom. What if the
police, or the firemen, or the president just did whatever they damn felt like,
whenever they damned felt like it.” That Christmas Rodney and I would park
Mom’s Rambler in the driveways of the homes we looted. We not only took
resalable commodities now, we took the heavier and more flamboyant presents
from under strange Christmas trees. We took many of the brighter trees
themselves, and lined them up, already decorated, in the living room of my
mom’s house. “What kind of life would that be like, Phillip, where people
completely forgot their responsibilities to other people? I think it would be a
pretty frightening world, don’t you? What if there was a fire and the firemen
were all off having a good time with their friends?” We took festive wreaths
and strings of popcorn and hand-painted porcelain angels and music boxes in the
shapes of coned trees or leering Santas or elves in workshops. “What if Russia
invaded and our president was traipsing off somewhere and hadn’t even left a
forwarding address? What do you think those Russians would do? I can tell you
what they’d do, Phillip. They’d walk all over us. They’d walk all over this
great land of ours.” We found a dog tied to a building support post in the
basement of one house, ringed by its own puddled urine and moldering,
cocoon-like feces, its skin scraped and chafed under its collar, its leash
entangled by tattered smelly blankets. “They’d start putting people in
concentration camps. They’d ruin our industries and entire free-market system. The
government would tell everybody what everything costs, and exactly how much of
it they could buy. Nobody’d have one ounce of individuality left anymore. Nobody’d
even remember, after a few years or so, how wonderful things had been, and what
a terrible mess we made of our great country.”
We
unleashed the dog and carried it down to our car. It was a dachshund, and we
named it Contrite, because it always looked apologetic about everything.
Contrite slept in Rodney’s lap all the way home. Sometimes I couldn’t hear
anything during the day except Dad’s voice. Sometimes, though, if I tried hard
enough, I could hear Rodney’s.
“You
know what Christmas means? It means if I love you, I’m going to buy you a whole
load of crap. The more I love you, the bigger the load gets. Sometimes, if you
can afford it, you can get your loved one literally tons of crap, and then
you’re really loved. Love love love. It’s a terrific idea. Low overhead.
Unbelievable mark-up value. Love is one thing that will always sell really
well. Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas.” Rodney was rolling a loose joint on his knee.
He twisted the ends and held it up for my inspection. “Ho ho ho.
Merry
Christmas. Buy some more crap. Come
on, line up and buy yourselves a whole lot more crap. Here’s something nice. Bought
any crap quite like
this
crap
recently? Crap crap crap. Ho ho ho. Like that mechanical Santa Claus in the Montgomery
Ward’s window display. Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas, everybody. Have yourselves
all one fucking hell of a
merry
little Christmas, all you poor stupid saps. Line up and get taken, that’s what
I say, that’s what Santa says. We take MasterCard cards and Visa cards. Come
on, losers. Line up on this side. Get your money taken on that side.” Contrite
lay asleep in Rodney’s blanketed lap. The car smelled faintly of Contrite’s
urine, which had a tendency to dribble meekly out whenever he wagged his tail.
“Could
you do me a favor, Rodney?” I said. I was looking past him in the rearview
mirror. Then, at the next streetlight, the police car behind us turned left.
“Could you lighten up just a bit? I mean, it is Christmas and all. Just do me a
favor and lighten up just a little
tiny
little bit, OK?”
_____
14
THEN
one afternoon after
New Year’s Rodney and I were transporting a Panasonic color portable television
upstairs to my living room when we discovered Dad sitting very obvious and
awkward on the sofa’s warped foam rubber. He was wearing a very nice navy-blue
Brooks Brothers three-piece suit. He was wearing polished cordovan leather
shoes. He was wearing a white knit tie. “Merry Christmas,” Dad said. His golden
cufflinks gleamed. “Do you remember me, Phillip? Do you remember who I am?”
Rodney
and I very slowly set the Panasonic down upon a pair of wooden crates that were
filled with soft drink cans looted from the home of some Pepsi executive. I
suffered a moment of light-headed, almost giddy disorientation. Everything
about my living room seemed either too large or too small. I didn’t know what
to say. For a few moments I thought I had staggered stupidly into the wrong
home.
“I
know I said I’d leave you both alone,” Dad said, “but I wanted to bring your
presents. It is Christmas, after all.” By way of explanation, Dad gestured at
his alligator-skin briefcase with silver clasps. The briefcase was open on the
plastic coffee table, revealing festive packages wrapped with bright foil paper,
ribbons and blossoming bows. “I even brought a few things for your mom.”
“I
better go,” Rodney said. He took the smoldering cigarette out of his mouth and
cupped it in his hand. The smoke uncurled secretly between his fingers.
“I’ll
call you,” I said, and then suddenly found myself alone in the house with Dad.
Dad
had very distinguished graying blond hair. He had large, ruddy and perfectly
manicured hands. His white teeth flashed like spotlights on a movie set. He was
a very handsome man, I decided. Even handsome enough for Mom.
We
ignored the silence together for a while. The silence inhabited the room like a
third presence, or a block of raw marble, implicit with its own hidden
Aristotelian form. We smiled at one another. Dad looked at me, then at the
Panasonic on the Pepsi crates, still smiling, as if trying to distinguish our
relative value.
“That’s
a nice TV,” Dad said after a while.
“Yes,
it is,” I replied, thinking, This is history. Today I grow up. “It’s a
Panasonic.”
I
COULDN’T JUST dispatch Dad off without dinner and a few seasonal drinks, especially
not after the gifts. A portable CD and cassette player with extendable stereo
speakers. Def Leppard. Simply Red. Bryan Adams. Rossini’s
Guglielmo Tell
and Strauss’s
Der
Rosenkavalier
. “Even when you were little,” Dad said, “you always loved
opera.” There were dictionaries and desk lamps and an electronic typewriter. There
were shirts and sweaters and underwear and socks. There was five hundred
dollars cash, and two five-hundred-dollar money orders, one in Mom’s name and
one in mine. There was a fully assembled Stingray bicycle, a pair of
walkie-talkies, a crystal radio set, a deluxe Sony Walkman and two ten-pack
boxes of Maxell XLII-S 90-minute blank cassette tapes. “You can tape directly
from the CD onto those blank tapes,” Dad said. “You’d be surprised. It sure
sounds a lot better than those prepackaged tapes you buy at the record store.” For
Mom there was a string of white pearls, and one red rose tidily enveloped by
crinkly cellophane. “I’ll trust you to make sure she gets them,” Dad said. “I
haven’t any intention of bothering your mother if she doesn’t want to be
bothered. I’ll be gone bright and early tomorrow morning. You won’t even hear
me leave. Here–save these receipts. If anything doesn’t fit or doesn’t
work or you just plain don’t want it, make sure you take it back and get a full
refund.” While Dad spoke he gazed off down the hall toward Mom’s room. He knew
exactly where it was, and that Mom was in it. “I know how she gets. I know
there’s no sense trying to make your mom change her mind about anything.”
I
fixed almond and broccoli Stroganoff. “It’s got broccoli and carrots and
cauliflower in it,” I told Dad. “It’s got rice and chick-peas and zucchini. It’s
got paprika and potatoes and seaweed. It’s vegan, so if you want a little
cheese on yours, I’ll melt some mozzarella in the microwave. I’ve been getting
more and more into vegan food lately, Dad.” I wondered if he was impressed, and
passed him the orange juice. I served the Stroganoff on our house’s only two
chipped white plates, allowing Dad the fork while I used one of our plastic
spoons. There was a large hot fire cracking in the fireplace, and the living
room was still littered with bright crumpled Christmas paper, ribbons, frilly
bows and cardboard packaging.
“Isn’t
this nice,” Dad said. He had removed his jacket and unbuttoned three buttons of
his vest. He had rolled up the sleeves of his starched white shirt, displaying
the deep tan of his hairy arms. His teeth flashed, either cavityless or
perfectly capped. “You’ve turned into quite a respectable little cook, Phillip.
I used to be a bit of a cook myself. Back when we were all together, and you
were a baby. Every evening when I got home from work, I used to cook meals for
you and your mom.”
We
drank Manhattans beside the fireplace. Once all the gift wrapping was consumed,
Dad walked down to the corner 7-Eleven for a pair of Presto Logs. After my
third drink or so, I loosened up enough to request one of Dad’s Marlboros, and
even smoked it in his presence. “It’s OK to have a cigarette every now and
then,” Dad said, examining the dim ember of his own. “But when you start
smoking like me–two or three packs a day–then you better think hard
about quitting. There’s nothing wrong with doing anything, so long as it’s in
moderation.”
I
couldn’t let Dad drive home alone that night. His face was flushed, and there
was a remote, insipid smile on his face as he contemplated the fire. I offered
him the troughed sofa, the pillow from my bed, and my new sleeping bag. “I’m
really glad we did this, sport,” Dad said. He had taken off his shirt and loosened
the belt of his trousers. He was still holding the empty glass in his hand. “I
know it’s been a strange situation for a young fellow your age, but I want you
to know I’m proud of the way you’ve handled everything. You’re a strong, bright
young man, just as I always knew you’d be. Your mom’s very lucky to have
someone like you who understands and loves her as much as you do. I never
expected everything to work out perfect for us, in fact I always sort of
expected things wouldn’t work out at all. But I’m glad we could spend this time
together and just be friends for a while. I’m hoping that whatever happens to
all of us, you and I’ll always have this special time together.”
I
don’t remember what time we finally went to bed, but my dreams that night were
thick with visions of carnival and violence. Strange misshapen men with guns
tramped through dry, brushy forests; drunken women danced wildly on tabletops,
eventually tearing off all their clothes while crowds of voices roared
inarticulately around them like an ocean; alien creatures descended the black
night sky in terrible spaceships, filled with deadly viruses and gigantic,
ciliated bacteria which throbbed and pulsed in deep chambers, energizing the
ships like fuel. A beautiful white-haired man in flowing white robes emerged
from the spaceship and offered me something from one of his soft pink hands. I
was on my knees before him. His other hand stroked my brow. Politely, even
demurely, I refused; his hand offered again. I refused again, and hard multiple
arms grasped me from behind and handed me up to him, bound and helpless on a
gold and silver tray. The church below was filled with thousands and thousands
of faceless people. At that moment, as I was ritually dismembered before the
adoring cries of dark shapeless figures (the event was being televised, I knew,
for modular black cameras weaved the air around me, attached to long intricate
metal cables and winches), I awoke and heard Dad outside in the hallway prying
at the lock to Mom’s bedroom door. I got up from my bed. I walked to my door
and opened it.
“It’s
very simple, really,” Dad said, not even looking up at me in the dark hallway. “You
just need to fiddle this little doohickey inside. It’s vertical when locked. You’ve
got to fiddle it around until it’s horizontal.” Dad was sitting cross-legged on
the floor, wearing only his finely-woven and partially unzipped navy-blue trousers
and a white Hanes T-shirt. He had an icy, fresh Manhattan in his lap. “Your mom
used to do this to me all the time. She was always locking me out when she was
upset, but she wanted me to come in and comfort her. It was a little game we
played.” He held an untwisted paperclip in one hand, and peered into a tiny
round hole of the rattly aluminum doorknob. “These stupid doorknobs are
designed to be picked. You used to accidentally lock yourself in rooms all the
time when you were little.” Dad inserted the paperclip, fiddled around a bit. I
couldn’t hear another single sound in the entire world. “I’ll never forget how
scared you used to get. By the time I’d get the door open you’d be hysterical. You’d
just be standing there, clenching your tiny red hands, the tears pouring down
your little T-shirt.”
“Mom,”
I said, as gently as I could. “Mom, it’s Dad. He’s coming in.”
At
that moment the tinny doorknob clicked, and Dad turned it. Dad was still
sitting cross-legged on the floor with his Manhattan, and I was standing
looking over his shoulder, when the door of Mom’s bedroom finally opened.