The Tragic Age (13 page)

The golden age of horror movies was the fifties and it's generally accepted that movies then—
Them!, It Came from Beneath the Sea, Invaders from Mars, Creature from the Black Lagoon
—were a reflection of the nation's collective unconscious fears shaped by the threat of the atomic bomb and the fear of total annihilation.

Horror still rules.

Only today it's knives, drills, torture chambers, and chain saws. It's demons in human form wearing puppet faces and hockey masks. It's the walking dead, rotting from the inside out, hungry for brains.

What are we collectively afraid of now? As I stand in the doorway watching, Dorie whispers the answer in my ear.

“Each other.”

 

34

Fact.

How we prepare and share food says a lot about who we are as people.

For as many nights each week as Mom sets the table and lights the candles in the big dining room and tries to engage Dad and me in meaningful conversation, there are a lot of times when the housekeeper doesn't cook before she leaves, and where other than to say “pass the pizza,” we eat in the kitchen in silence, each of us in our own world, semioblivious to one another. Mom picks the pepperoni off her slice. Dad contemplates the “tears” in his wine glass. Sometimes I read a book. I'm not so crazy about pizza but it's delivered and so when Mom doesn't cook, we eat a fair amount of it. So do a ton of people. Over three billion pizzas a year are sold in the United States. It works out to over two hundred million square feet a month. Dad's good for fifty square feet all by himself. It goes well with a Zinfandel.

*   *   *

Fact.

Eating as a family decreases a teenager's risk of antisocial behavior.

I'm at Twom's grandmother's house. The house is in one of the “poorer” sections of High School Highville, a neighborhood where about fifty years ago all the maids and cooks and maintenance people who worked in the rich houses lived. The small, bungalow-style houses are in walking distance of the beach and now go for close to a million a pop. Twom's grandmother's house is a teardown if ever I saw one. The lawn is an unwatered, rock-hard piece of dirt so inhospitable the weeds have moved to the flower beds. The outside of the house is an unmaintainable eyesore and the inside suggests that Twom's grandmother is a fan of the TV show
Hoarders,
especially if hoarders hoard overflowing ashtrays. Twom says it wasn't always like this. He says his grandfather, who once upon a time did all the work around the place and kept things totally shipshape, finally gave up and died just to get away from his wife.

For dinner, Twom has announced we're going to order—what else?—
pizza,
and now for no apparent reason this has prompted Twom's grandmother to decide that, no, she's going to cook. Twom's reaction suggests that this isn't necessarily a physical act that produces food.

“Just give me some money to order a fucking pizza,” Twom says to his grandmother. “Is that too much to ask?”

Twom's grandmother has a large glass of gin in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other and is obviously half in the bag. Her four Jack Russell terriers keep running around the room, all of them barking. One more dog and the house would legally be declared a kennel.

“You don't invite guests over and order some
dago
pizza, not in
my
house,” Twom's grandmother says. “I'm making your friend a nice, home-cooked meal.”

“You couldn't cook home-cooked shit,” says Twom.

Twom's grandmother is one these older women who's still trying to look like a teenager. There are a lot of them in High School Highville. She has peroxided blond hair and the stretched, protruding cheekbones that come with a second or third face-lift. She's wearing neon-blue pants and a sequined top. She has long, fake, painted fingernails which draw immediate attention to her swollen, arthritic knuckles. If the thought wasn't truly, totally terrifying I'd say she wants to cook me dinner as a way of coming on to me. Really, some if not most people should be obligated to die by forty.

“What are you saying?” Twom's grandmother says, squinting through her cloud of cigarette smoke. It's an odd question. Twom was pretty clear. “Are you saying I can't cook?” This, too, is an odd question because if Twom wasn't saying this, he was certainly implying it.

“Will you just fuck off and give me the money for pizza?” says Twom.

“For forty years, I cooked,” says Twom's grandmother. Her eyes are bugging. She's starting to raise her voice. “I taught your mother to cook!”

“She cooks ptomaine poisoning,” says Twom. Ptomaine refers to the taste and smell of putrefying animal flesh. If you look the word up on thefreedictionary.com, you'll find that the site is sponsored by McDonald's.

Twom's grandmother starts stomping around the kitchen, slamming drawers and saying things like, “Oh! Of all the ungrateful—selfish-selfish!” Stuff like that. The Jack Russells are starting to go ballistic, yapping and scurrying around, bouncing off walls and attempting to dig through the floor with their claws.

“Give! Me! Money!” says Twom.

Twom's grandmother throws her cigarette in the sink where it sizzles. “No!” she says, stamping her foot like a stubborn little kid. “I'm! Cooking!”

Thirty minutes later Twom and I sit at the kitchen table watching as Twom's grandmother, now completely and colossally blasted, stands at the stove, seemingly puzzled. The kitchen smoke alarm is howling. The pans on the stove, as well as the stovetop, are in flames. The Jack Russell terriers sit in a tight little group, paralyzed with fear. Twom's grandmother suddenly decides it would be a good idea to douse the fire and she throws her drink at the blazing pans. The alcohol ignites. The flames hit the exhaust hood above the stove. The Jack Russells trample one another to death in their haste to scramble out of the kitchen.

“Willard!” Twom's grandmother screams. “Order pizza!”

*   *   *

Fact.

Kids who eat with their parents are forty percent more likely to get As and Bs in school!

Twom and I are over at Ephraim's house. We are in the family room, which seems to be another large, sterile room in another large, empty house where no family ever gathers. A raging brawl is in progress in the kitchen. It's been going on for at least forty minutes and is entering the sixth round.

“Read the recipe!” screams Ephraim's mother. “It says cumin! Do you know what cumin is?”

“Jews do not eat cumin!” screams Ephraim's father.

“It's kosher cumin!” shrieks Ephraim's mother.

Crash. Yell. Shriek.

“Now it's kosher shit!” yells Ephraim's father.

“Five bucks on Dad,” says Twom.

Scream. Yell. Crash.

“Do not touch my osso buco, Mira, I'm warning you, do not touch the osso buco!”
Osso buco
is Italian for “bone with a hole.” It's a dish people once had to eat in order not to starve to death, and because most gourmets never
had
to eat it, they now consider it a delicacy.

Yell. Crash. Scream.

“You—bitch!”

“Do I hear ten?” says Twom.

Scream. Collide. Thud. Shriek.

It sounds like knives are coming out of drawers. Ephraim doesn't look so much embarrassed as he does totally depressed and miserable.

“Want to order a pizza?” he moans.

*   *   *

Fact.

Adolescent girls who have frequent family meals are less likely to have eating disorders.

They don't eat pizza at the Baraza house.

Twom has been invited by Deliza to have dinner with her family and he has brought me along, he tells me, for moral support. Moral support means giving support to a person without making any contribution beyond encouragement.

I'm hardly needed.

Deliza and her parents eat dinner in a vaulted room that looks like something out of Versailles. There are white-uniformed maids in attendance. They all have the dark, expressionless faces of Aztec statues. Twom and I are sitting under a chandelier at a twenty-foot table with Deliza's mother. She has a tired look on her heavily made-up face, the look of someone who wishes they were anywhere but here. She keeps looking at the hemangioma on my right cheek as if it might be a parasitic, flesh-eating virus. Deliza and her father are just outside the dining room doors having an argument. In Spanish.

“Is there a reason you've brought this imbecile into our home?”

Or something like that.

“Yes! Because it pisses you off.”

Or something like that.

“If you're fucking this freak, I'll kill both of you.”

Or something like that.

“I'll fuck him on the dining room table if I want to!”

The Aztec maids, faces dark against their frilly collars and white caps, don't so much as blink.

“Pass the burritos,” says Twom. He's having a great time.

“Chicken Kiev,” says Deliza's lifeless mother.

*   *   *

Fact.

The average parent spends 38.5 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with their children.

Strangest of all is eating food at Gretchen's house. Gretchen has invited me to Sunday dinner and I'm at the table with the entire family: Jim, Kath, Gretchen, Gretchen's college-age older brother, Bob, and her two younger sisters, Suzie and Sara. It turns out the Quinns are all vegetarians, and after starting the meal with a blessing—“God, who gives to us this food…”—we are eating pasta with tomatoes, white beans, and spinach, a grilled vegetable medley, and warm crusty bread. The pasta is topped with crumbled feta and it's awesome. Everyone is talking and laughing at the same time. It's like being to dinner at the Waltons'.

Historical footnote.

The Waltons
was a television show about this extended family living in poverty in the mountains of Virginia during the Great Depression. Even though they're poor and uneducated, the family is loving and supportive. The adults are wise, the kids are well-meaning and respectful, and at the end of every episode they all individually say good night to one another, calling out from their different poverty-stricken bedrooms. The show is occasionally on late-night cable but can be accessed on the online video service Hulu, under the genre of science fiction.

Just like the Waltons, Gretchen's family has
conversations
at the dining room table. You can disagree but aren't allowed to get angry. You're allowed to tease but not to hurt feelings. You're expected to be respectful and open-minded to other's opinions and engaged, committed, and interested in the conversation. It's the most bizarre thing I've ever experienced and I can't help but marvel and pay attention.

“The Marshalls' house was broken into,” Dr. Quinn says.

It comes out of nowhere, making my ears totally perk up, which is a stupid figure of speech because ears are made of cartilage and incapable of independent movement.

“No. When?” says Mrs. Quinn

“About a week ago,” says Dr. Quinn. “I ran into Jack at the hospital. He said they went in through the back door. Had the alarm code, the password. He and Kim are wondering if it could be someone at their security company.”

“Did they steal stuff?” says Gretchen's sister Suzie. Or maybe it's Sara. They're little strawberry-blond clones of one another.

“Not a thing,” says Dr. Quinn. “They trashed the kitchen, ate some food, messed up some beds, and just left.”

“Sounds like transients,” says Gretchen's brother, Bob. Bob plays college tennis and so far his conversation has been pretty much limited to topspin.

“What's that?” says Sara.

“Bums.”

“Bob, please.” Dr. Quinn gives a small frown of disapproval as if to imply being a bum is not necessarily the bum's fault.

“Should we do anything?” says Mrs. Quinn.

Dr. Quinn shrugs. “Just make sure we turn on the alarm when we leave the house and keep our eyes open for anyone suspicious in the neighborhood.”

“I'm scared,” says Sara. She looks like the kind of girl who's going to be scared when it suits her for the rest of her life.

“Nothing to worry about,” says Dr. Quinn. And all of a sudden there's not. Case closed, Charles in Charge. There are guys who can do this. Too bad none of them go into politics. And then it happens. Out of nowhere, Mrs. Quinn turns and looks
right at me.
“You've been awfully quiet, Billy. Is everything all right?” And now everyone's quiet and staring at me. I suddenly wonder if I've stumbled into a den of mind readers and this is a setup.

“I just like listening,” I say. I take a bite of pasta. I'm no longer tasting it. My answer sounds pretty feeble, even to me.

Dr. Quinn smiles. “Just don't be afraid to jump in, son.”

Son. He calls me that. It
is
the Waltons.

“I won't,” I say.

The conversation moves on to the little girls asking Dr. Quinn if they can adopt a penguin and Bob telling them that the vegetable medley they're eating is flavored with hemlock, which is poisonous. The little girls shriek as if he means it.

“Who thinks it's important to be popular!?” says Dr. Quinn.

It's all so wholesome it could give you cavities. And the really crazy thing is, I like it.

 

35

I'm in the Quinns' backyard, sitting in their old-fashioned gazebo, when Gretchen comes out. She looks around, then sees me and comes over.

Point of reference.

A gazebo is a pavilion structure found in parks and gardens. The word is possibly derived from the Latin
videbo
meaning “I shall gaze.” The Quinns' gazebo has no view but is pleasant nonetheless.