Flatscreen (20 page)

“I think you’ll like Jeff. Jeff Goldblum. It’s a ridiculous name, I know. But he spells it differently, and he has a nice face. Blue eyes even though he’s Jewish. Obviously Jewish with a name like Goldblum, living in Boca. About as Jewish as you can get.”

Didn’t want to hear about her new boyfriend, but maybe that’s all she could talk about. Easier than discussing the trauma that had occurred while she’d abandoned me. Because even though Thanksgiving was my dad’s holiday—we went to Mom’s for Passover and night one of Chanukah, Dad’s for secular holidays: Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, etc.—her absence was still a reminder that our family had become a slump-shouldered Diaspora, that regardless of actual physical proximity, we lived in separate, isolated communities. Not
that I blamed her for my being shot, but didn’t she, at least a little bit, blame herself?

“Jeff’s not rich like your father, though. He has a good job, but he’s not rich. Drives a Honda. Not that your father was rich when we first met, either, but you could tell he was hungry for it. He didn’t like to wear a shirt and tie, but he was hungry. So was I, really. You are when you’re poor. When you’re poor and pregnant like I was. Sleeping on a cheap mattress. You’ve never slept on a cheap mattress. Maybe at summer camp, but not every night for years, or with a pregnant stomach. My parents were never rich. They did okay, but money was different then. People weren’t rich like they are now. Jews, I mean. Your father grew up with nothing. We wanted you boys to have it good, nice toys, good schools. Guess it didn’t matter in the end, did it?”

Thought she might jump out the window, let her body fall to the pavement. What then? They’d drag her back in here. In the bed next to mine, hooked to more complicated machines, ones that would help her breathe, pump her heart. Maybe Spelled-Differently would visit, maybe he wouldn’t. Wanted to tell her it wasn’t the end, we were still alive, my leg would heal, we would all heal, salt in your wounds hurts but also cleanses. Didn’t she watch television? Didn’t she know that in America everyone gets a second chance?

Instead shut my eyes, imagined her stare on my body like a tractor beam, lifting me out of bed, into the air. Abducting me.

“Your father, your father, your father,” she said.

Because she still thought about Dad, took each Goldblum-Spelled-Differently limb, measured it against the memory of Dad’s; bushified Jeff’s eyebrows; pictured new children, prettier versions of Benjy and I, happier;
admired his small, unsunken pectoral muscles, visible because he hardly had any chest hair. Or maybe he had chest hair, had Dad’s square jaw, winter-red nose, unemotive eyes. The same, or opposites. Either way, a reaction. Whoever this Goldblum-Spelled-Differently was—tender or brute lover, workaholic or Euro-fied American who lived for scented, aged items: wine, cheese, my mother—he was that way because of my father, because Dad needed a replacement, and Florida is where you replace one life with another.

“I’m tired,” she said.

Not just me who’d made her tired—it was Dad, Benjy, the weather, time which sank her cheeks and breasts, made lines on her forehead—but right now it was me, my broken body, the sight of which made her want to lie flat on the floor, feel the tiles form sharp triangles with the bones of her upper back, watch the ceiling light until she saw blue dots, nothing but blue dots covering the world, covering me, her injured son, her never-prodigal son because I’d never left. Instead forced her to become a prodigal mother, returning not to feasts and joy-tears, but to blinking machines that said, “Our beating hearts are only gears, our bones will never truly heal.”

“I don’t know what we’ll do about the condo. I just put down six months. I guess you can stay there for a while. It’ll give you time to get something together. Your leg will heal. The doctor said you’ll be good as new in a month. You got lucky and you’ll heal. You don’t want me around, anyway, taking care of you. Your father will come by and check in. You can go live with him if you want. He said that, you know, that you can if you want. I’ll make him if he doesn’t. It’s his turn, now. I don’t know if you want to, though. It might be good for you to be on your own. You’ll have to get a job, get your own place
eventually. You’re over eighteen and it’s just not my job anymore. Maybe that makes me a horrible mother, I don’t know.”

She paused, considered the question. I didn’t know the answer, either.

“Do you even know how to do laundry? You put the detergent in first. Not a whole cup. About a half or three quarters depending on the load. Do the lights and the darks separate, but you probably already know that. Washing on warm is always a good bet. You can use hot if something’s really dirty, dab a little detergent on the stain before you put it in. Just don’t overload the machine. It breaks if you overload it. And do the towels separately. I bought you a bunch of new towels. Soft ones, the kind you like. I know your skin’s sensitive, it always was, even when you were a baby. You used to get rashes on your skin, and your lips were always so chapped. I bought you new towels and underwear and some thick socks because it’s getting cold out. If you run out of socks and underwear you can always go to Filene’s and get some more. You know the kind you like. I don’t know how you’ll get there, but Benjy will be home for break soon and he can drive you places. There’s the bus too. I left a bus schedule attached to the fridge. I’m a bad mother, I know. A terrible mother with my son in the hospital, but the doctor said you’d be okay, and the timing, it’s just the timing, E.”

Thought for a second she might suffocate me with a pillow, free herself, deny, disappear. Not out of hate, but the way grizzly bears eat their young when the salmon aren’t running—for their own survival, a last resort (
Grizzly Man
, Lions Gate Films, 2005).

“I have to go,” she said. “Benjy will be by here soon.”

Looked like she was about to say something, one last thing. But her cell rang, she said, “I have to take,” answered the phone, whispered “Jeff,” walked out of the room.

Facts About My Mother:

Possible Ending #2 (Pay Cable):

Recover, clean up my act, get a job, something I’m qualified for: late-night convenience store clerk, sheltered behind bulletproof glass. College classes during the day. Dad pays for it. Start at the CC, work my way up to the state school in Amherst, same as Benjy. Struggle at first, then excel. Too old for the other kids, but a couple cute townie chicks look at me from across the bar. They like my dumb smile after my third bourbon. Mom magnets my report card to the fridge. Graduate. Attend a stuffy ceremony draped inelegantly in ugly-colored cap and gown. Dad greets me with solid handshake. Get an entry-level job, hate it but enjoy the camaraderie of hating it along with other people my age. Get my own apartment with the money I’m making plus a bit of Dad’s money. A nice apartment, but I get lonely at night, still prowl the net trying to find some semblance of affection to tether myself to. Buy ties, maybe a tie rack. Visits to Mom with flowers, midnight phone calls to Benjy. He lets it ring. Move up from entry-level. Go back to school, get an MBA. Dad loans me money
to start a business. Use that money to make more money. Or lose that money, but nobly. Return to Quinosset one Thanksgiving to find Jennifer Estes in love with the idea of what I’ve become, considering what I’d been before. Marry, march down the aisle twinkle-toed to Christ-y gospel, stuff our faces with Whole Foods catering, honeymoon on a French-dialect island. I slip one past the goalie, promise I’ll stop making stupid sports metaphors. Our children look like her, are beautiful: bubble-cheeked with Latino skin-glow. Nevertheless I’m sad roughly half the time, not so bad considering life is etc.

Young, bashful, about my age, cute but wearing too much mascara to complement her purple scrubs. I’d been in and out of sleep, morphine-drip peaceful. Now I was awake, conscious, miserable.

“Do you want to see?”

“Not really.”

Liked watching her instead, top of her head when she leaned over, blond highlights, combined smell of perfume and disinfectant that came from her body and clothes. Smelled like the possibility of sex, distracted me from my pain, also alerted me to my own tube-dicked impotence. The nurse hovered, flaunting her gratuitous health in the face of my paper-gown-as-metaphor-for-all-humiliation.

“Does it hurt?”

“My leg?”

“That is where you got shot, isn’t it?”

“I’m pretty tough,” I managed, mid-wince.

She smiled. From my angle it looked as if she might lean forward, rest her forehead on my pulsating man-tit. Could fall in love with this one, or the next. All these women with stethoscopes, ample teat. But too soon, and
no chance, though my interest was probably a good sign of recovery. Vowed to wait before launching a new campaign. At least until I had pants on.

“Everybody hurts,” she said. “Even tough guys. On a scale of one to ten?”

“Does nine and a half make me sound like a wuss?”

“It’s because you were on so many drugs. Your body has a tolerance to opiates, so the morphine doesn’t help as much as it should. I think you even had some opium in your system when you got here.”

“I thought it was crack.”

“I don’t know, man. You might have more problems than a bullet hole in your leg.”

“She left me.”

“So it’s all about a girl, then.” The nurse winked. “You’re a cutie, honey, no need to get crazy over one chick. There’s plenty of fish out there.”

“Not any girl. My mother.”

“Like I said before, you’ve got a lot more problems than just this bullet.”

“She’s moving to Florida to be with Jeff Goldblum.”

“I loved him in
The Big Lebowski
.”

“That was Jeff Bridges.”

“What was Jeff Goldblum in, then?”

“The Big Chill, Independence Day
…”

“That’s right. He was that Jewish guy who saves the planet.”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, no wonder she left you for him.”

“He sells insurance.”

“I think I saw that one, too.”

Lights off, local news: civilians dead in Iraq, Brady hopeful for the playoffs. Fell asleep, dreamed Kahn had giant teeth, gnawed my fingers to bone.

Woke to Benjy in the chair reading
Us Weekly
, sipping hospital OJ with a straw as if he were the sick one, wearing glasses instead of contacts. Hadn’t seen him in glasses in years. The pair was cheap, outdated: ovular silver frames more suited to librarians, mustached dentists, and child-nerds than to someone sort-of-normal like Benjy.

“Didn’t know you liked celebrity gossip?”

“Mom left this here. There was nothing else to read. How’s your leg?”

“Just call me 2pac.”

“Not Mr. Shakur?”

“Funny. What’s up with you? How’s school, Erin? Tell me something to distract from the pain.”

“Honestly, I’m kind of fucking everything up for the first time, and I don’t know why or what to do about it.”

“Story of my life,” I said, tried to laugh, but when I laughed my leg hurt and instead of a normal laugh it came out high-pitched, a half-laugh, half-girlish squeal.

“He breaks just like a little girl,” Benjy said.

“Okay, Bob Dylan.”

“If you’re 2pac, then I get to be Dylan, definitely.”

“I see you as more of a Jewish Rivers Cuomo.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Erin thinks I’m too controlling.”

“You are.”

“She thinks I put too much pressure on myself to be perfect.”

“You do.”

“My grades are slipping. I seem to have stopped caring.”

“You sound like a robot.”

“I think maybe I want to be something easier than a lawyer.”

“A doctor?”

“Maybe a rock star.”

“You don’t have the lifestyle.”

“What about an accountant? That’s more my pace. Or an actuary? Sit there and do math all day. Comfy office chair. Bit of Internet porn. Home by five. Sounds kind of good.”

“Want to open a restaurant with me?”

“The restaurant business is a risky proposition.”

“You’re a risky proposition.”

“Actually, my portfolio is rather risk-free.”

“So you’re gonna get married?”

“Is it possible that relationships are bullshit?”

“Is it possible you’re a giant asshat?”

“At least I didn’t get shot.”

“Good one, bro.”

“Sorry,” he said, looked back at the magazine, squeezed my bare, extended foot. Toes tickled, itched.

“Angelina’s baby is ridiculous. That kid will be so fucked up.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She takes him everywhere she goes. It’s like he’s taped to her tit.”

Benjy shook his head. Couldn’t tell if he was shaking it at me or at something in the mag.

Later the nurse came back to measure my blood, change my IV, temporarily un-tube me from my urine.

“It’s shrinkage,” I said, my red-marked love-stick puny, dripping.