Before My Eyes (9 page)

“Next!” shouts Trish, now barreling up beside me with a towering set of ice cream cones, as if she's the one who has been kept waiting.

“Is there anybody here who can help us? My kid is thirsty. And he wants an ice cream,” demands a father stepping forward from behind Claire. I wonder where Barkley is. He has a tendency to disappear when the line gets long. Trish helps the father as I make change for Claire.

“Thank you,” she says, as I hand her change back to her. She counts it again before hiding it away in the bottom of her beach bag, a cheap green bag used for recycling.

“Next,” I say, but I'm still looking at her, and she's looking at me, until her sister pulls her back toward the sea.

“Vanilla,” says the kid at the front of the line with his father. “No, chocolate.”

“Make up your mind,” growls the father. “I'm not going to stand here sweating all day like a pig. Get my kid a swirl.”

“I don't want a swirl,” wails the son.

“Chocolate? That's my favorite, sweetie,” says Trish.

“Next,” I say.

“Bottle of water,” says an old guy with a ponytail. “Make it a cold one.” He laughs to himself like we haven't heard that line all summer.

After a few minutes, Peter appears back at the counter in my black-and-white athletic shorts and knee-high soccer socks, with his yellow work boots, still untied. It's going to be a long day. I kneel and double-knot Peter's laces.

Barkley

Friday, noon

From the back of the Snack Shack, over the shield of the swinging doors, I train my sight on the little girl and her sister.

I have seen them twice. This must mean something. The same little girl. She told me that her name was Elizabeth, that everyone called her Izzy, and that her sister was Claire. Only a pink rubber band marked the little girl, no pink on the sister.

“Barkley, you working the grill or not?” calls Trish. “Can you stop acting strange and grab more hot dog rolls from back there? There's a line out here.”

There is always a line in front of the Snack Shack. But I want to help her. Trish is my friend, even if she will attend that community college, and I will not. Everyone here at the Snack Shack is my friend or colleague. Perhaps “colleague” is a better word. We are collegial. It's almost like we are at our own college, Snack Shack U.

“Barkley!” Trish plants her arms on those hips and shouts.

Cases of bottled water surround me, atoms in man-made forms—they should be blown apart, destroyed before they destroy us. Nevertheless, I am forced to sell bottled water. Don't they know all that plastic gets dumped out to sea? That fish get caught in the plastic? That plastic bottles will be submerged in the world's oceans into the next millennium? All they care about is whether the bottle is cold. I must get asked that question a hundred times a day: Is the bottled water cold? Get me a cold one, will ya? Cold, I said, come on? Reach in and get me a real cold one. Is the bottled water really cold? I count the bottles. I do this every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes every hour. I am efficient. I once told Phil, the manager, who never shows up except on rainy days, about my objections to the bottled water, about my cause.

Makes money, he said. Everybody drinks water, he said. Finally told me to shut up, and I did, for he is a little man of no consequence, no talent, no skill, and there was no use wasting my intelligence on him. He does not know that I have a direct link to the state senator. I e-mailed him. Texted him. It took all my powers of concentration to work the keyboard. A ban would tackle two problems: no plastic in the ocean and no more stupid questions about how cold the bottled water is. I am awaiting a reply to my messages, upon which he will certainly agree and act.

“Barkley! Sweetie, you are driving us crazy,” shouts Trish from the front counter. “You are moving in slow motion today. What are you thinking? Please, we need your help.”

I want to be a help to her. I grab a tray of hot dog rolls. I have no issues with hot dog rolls. White. Enriched. Only a few days old. I swing back through the doors to the front.

The little sister and Claire are gone from the front counter, lost into the crowd. My heart races. This must not be so. White light bounces off the ocean. I must find her. I wish I could wear my sunglasses at the Snack Shack. Without them my eyes are naked and raw. Light strikes them. I am exposed.

“Hey, Bark, bring those rolls up here,” shouts Max Cooper.

“When are you going to hit the showers, sweetie?” asks Trish. She does not require an answer. She has asked me this at least once a day since the thirtieth of June, and I have never answered her. I wish I could help her. Find a magic pill to halve her size. I should ask Jared; he must have something. Nevertheless, I sniff under my arms. Affirm life. I stopped showering after the incident at the community college. Droplets of water felt like spiders running up and down my arms. The shower was somehow making me less clean. I cut back on showers, from once a day to two or three times a week, to a burst of water once a week—I felt like I was being burned—and then only on my hair, and then I shaved my head. I smell alive. I dump the hot dog buns next to her and Max.

“Don't you ever smile, Barkley?” asks Trish. “How about just a little smile, for me?”

“You threw a few dogs on the grill and disappeared again, what's the deal, Bark?” says Cooper. This does not require an answer, either. He is insincere and sarcastic, unable to have an honest conversation. I have tried to help him over and over. “We need more hot dogs now.”

I go for the hot dogs and return.

“I peed my pants,” says Peter to me as I set up the meat near the grill. “So, I'm wearing Max's shorts.” He must be pleased with himself in the soccer shorts, as if just wearing them means he could ever play the game. He could not even be an assistant manager to the team like I was. Not him.

Peter stumbles forward, trips again, the third time this week. His body hits the floor. I would help. First, I must feed dogs to the grill. I feel like I am watching myself working, outside myself, looking in. A body is hitting the floor.

Cooper helps Peter up, braces him. “Hey, Bark, the dogs are burning on the grill. Go, Bark.” He howls at me, barking like a dog, teasing me in the way so many others have in my twenty-one years.

Peter must feel compelled to follow—some men are always followers—and howls “Bark,” too. He throws back his head, hair unkempt, and shouts out, “Bark! Bark!” like a cheer, egged on by Cooper, in such a way that it must sound funny to them. I am the only one not laughing, not saying anything, everything silenced.

“Hey, Bark—” Cooper touches my shoulder, a violation of my sovereignty. I swivel toward him, focus in, as if from inside a long tunnel. “We're only kidding you,” he says. He shrugs. Offers me a smirk, dimpled, the kind the girls must like. He is excusing himself. He is thinking that small men can truly kid bigger ones, as if the weak can truly bully the strong, as if he does not know who supplied him with the magic pill, and who is waiting for him to ask to buy more, because they must always buy more.

“Something wrong with you, Bark? Say something.”

The dogs sizzle. The meat pops. Lean forward on the counter. To the left is a grease-stained sign:
All Employees Must Wash Hands.
Surrounding me is the skirling of sea gulls. They have landed on the roof of the Snack Shack, lurking over our garbage. We live in chaos. We serve up hot dogs.

Max

Friday, 6:00
P.M
.

After all day at the Snack Shack, without turning any lights on, making as little effort as possible, I fall down on my bed and King stretches out beside me. My room is freezing, a shock to my system after the Shack. Every muscle, even behind my eyes, pulses. My skin feels gritty. I stink of burning meat and grease. With one hand, I stroke King. He is grateful. Maybe I should see if anyone else is around? Maybe Samantha?
Yup, like she knows who you are, Cooper.
King pants along the length of me. Maybe it's better to be alone. Maybe this is the way it's always going to be from now on. Maybe I'll die alone. I scratch a bit behind King's ears, I want him to know that I love him, even if I wished he were a girl in a hot-pink bikini—stroking me.

“Don't worry, King.” My voice sounds hazy and far away. His ears perk up. It takes a second for me to hear what he hears: my parents, both of them. If he could dig a hole right there, he would. He knows it's better to hide if my parents are heading for me. I lead him off the bed. He shimmies his way under it. I drop the side of my comforter down to conceal him. It's his hiding place that everyone knows about.

Down the hall, my mother strains to lower her voice, which of course only makes it ring more clearly. This afternoon, this pill doesn't seem to be working very well. No gentle fog. No cat's paws on my brain. No float. And worse yet, my parents are talking about me—and pills.

“I thought you were going to throw away those old pills months ago,” she says to my father.

“I only need them when my back hurts, that's why I went looking for them.”

“Your back hurts again? Should we call the doctor?”

“That's not the point, Deb. The point is—they're missing.”

“Are you sure? Maybe you lost count. Your mind is on so many other things.”

I reach for King's collar. I should take him for a walk. Get out of this house. Now.

He doesn't move from under the bed. It's time to be fed, not to go for a walk. He's smarter than me.

“I'm going to talk with Max,” says my father.

“What has this got to do with my son? Don't bother him now. He just got home from work. He must be exhausted.”

“I'm exhausted, too. I should be focusing on the campaign, not on this.”

“Yes, you should be focusing on the campaign,” she agrees.

“Somebody's been taking these pills, Deb. And if it's not you, and it's not me, who is it? The dog? Get out of my way. I've had enough. He's checked out of this family, and maybe this is the reason for it.”

King whimpers. I've got to admit that I don't have the energy to fight my way into the kitchen. Get his food. I really just want to sleep.

“Please, Glenn. This isn't really about Max, is it? This is about you and your fear that you are going to lose this election. Maybe you should go public with those e-mails and texts? Get a few sympathy votes.”

“I can't go public with them.”

“Why?”

“I want to stay focused on my issues. I want to campaign on my terms. This nut is going on about pollution, water pollution, plastic water bottles, and I don't know what else. Maybe it's a plant—just to distract me? I don't know. But it's not my job to save the world's ocean, too, is it? He's a nut. And I don't want to lose focus, and I don't want to give my opponent an issue that she can jump on. Okay, Deb? Let's worry about our son.”

My father swings open my bedroom door. I'm not allowed to have a lock on it, one of his many rules, or it would be locked all the time. “Have you been taking my painkillers?” He acts as if he is a prosecuting attorney on one of those crime shows. “Have you been using them, or what? What the hell's been going on this summer? See, Deb, he comes home and all he wants to do is sleep in here with that dog. We should have known something was up. He even looks guilty. I can't have this. I have to have a son who can stand next to me, not someone who can't even stand up.”

“That's a good line, Dad. A son who can stand next to me.”

“Stand up.”

“Max,” says my mother, but I see her smiling a little. She likes when I'm clever like that.

“Stand up,” my father repeats as if I didn't hear it the first time.

So, I stand. Fine.

“Look at this, he's exhausted from having to slave at that horrible Snack Shack all summer,” says my mother, coming to my defense.

I study the ceiling, at a constellation of spider webs in the corner of my room.

“Stand up straight when I'm talking to you.”

“He's worked all day, Glenn.”

“Stand up,” my father says, right in my face, as if he is still in the army.

I throw my shoulders back.

“Did you or did you not take any of these pills?”

I look straight at him and lie. “No.” I may not be able to talk to the girls in bikinis at the beach, or even to that girl Claire, but I can convince my father and mother of anything.

“What do you think we are, idiots, Max? You think I'm a schmuck? Am I a moron, Max?” He breathes down on me. “These are heavy-duty narcotics. Prescription pills. For my back.”

“This is our son, Glenn.” Her voice rises. “He's an honor student.”

One semester I made honors. I'm not an “honor student.” I had a mix of Bs and Cs on my final report card for junior year. My guidance counselor said I should consider community college “even though” my father is a state senator, as if that should make a difference in my grades.

“Max, are you okay?”

“Tired, Mom.”

“Tired?” my father repeats with a curt laugh. “Hard job? You don't know what hard work is. Being in the army is hard work, going to law school at night is hard work, campaigning is hard work. Trying to change this state, this country for the better is hard work.”

I'm waiting for my mother to say, “Save it for the voters,” but she doesn't. I've got to admit, he looks true blue saying this. He says it like he believes it, and maybe he does. He grew up with a widowed mother in an apartment in Queens, played football, and joined the army out of high school. I've heard the story a hundred times how he went to college and then law school at night after serving in the first Gulf War back in the 1990s. It was there, in a war no one remembers, that he hurt his back. My mother showers him with an expression of adoration, of zeal. He's charging forward, on the field, going for the goal, going for the win. She wants him to win, for me to win, for us to be the kind of family others want to be. She set our whole life up that way.