Flatscreen (9 page)

Had
Rolling Stone
going back to ’99, my bar mitzvah year, world going Y2Krazy, hoarding cans, wishing themselves
apocalypse. Year Dad stayed out late, while Mom sat waiting at the kitchen table, leg tapping like a metronome, nails scratching invisible words in the formica counter, eyes shifting between the little TV and faux-retro Coca-Cola clock.

I was a magazine man, liked the feel of paper, its glossy tactility, the space it filled. On one cover, Kurt Cobain is named artist of the decade. A headshot, fierce in detail. All those lines on his face would have been covered by makeup on anyone else, or airbrushed out entirely. But with Kurt they want you to see the pain beneath the surface. The photo must document the authenticity of his angst. We’re meant to look at his pale eyes and unwashed hair, know he meant every word, meant that slug.

Wondered if my own face looked the same—sleepless, prematurely aged—but I wasn’t pretty. My eyes are brown. Hair curly, unmanageable. Can’t brush it from my face, can’t sweep it behind my ear with chaos-cool. Didn’t have the balls to kill myself. Afraid of death. Wanted rest, not eternal rest. Mainly rest from the interminable noise of vacuums and treadmills, the sounds of my plugged-in mother, who happened to walk in my door at that instant.

“What are you doing?” she said. Her hair shined platinum. She’d had it colored recently, to impress our new neighbors.

“Just packing these magazines.”

“You can’t take all that stuff. There’s no room for it.”

“I’ll make room.”

She picked up an empty soda, eyed it, sank it in the trash with a surprisingly accurate underarm toss.

“Eli,” she said, like she was talking to a stubborn child.

Mom bent over again, picked up a crumpled newspaper.

“I’m saving that.”

“This?” She looked at it. “It’s from May. All crumpled up.”

“There was something in there I wanted to save.”

An article about a Japanese installation artist who takes everything from his apartment, sets it up in a gallery, an exact replication of his own living arrangement. Gallery stays open twenty-four hours. People can use the apartment as they please—sleep, lunch, work, etc. He’d set one up in Boston. I’d considered going, hadn’t. Never been to an art gallery before, couldn’t see myself among the wine and cheesers. But I’d kept the article. On the floor, but I’d still kept it, read it over a few times. At another installation he’d just cooked pad thai, served it to people all day. That could be me. Ladling food into Styrofoam bowls, nodding. Spreading simple pleasure.

“Keep it if you want it.”

“It’s about this Japanese artist guy.”

“Do you want it or not?”

“Just toss it.”

“I don’t have time for games. The movers will be here soon. And turn that music down a bit.”

“Fine.”

“C’mon Eli,” she said, left the room.

Took everything off the shelves: sports trophies, which get taller and taller, then end at eighth grade when I started smoking pot, didn’t feel like running sprints, not worried I might need better stamina for sex when it actually came; baseball glove, a Wilson, soft black leather, frayed edges, hardly fit over my hand anymore, still smelled like spring somehow; ten-sided dice from my “Maybe I’ll fit in with the D&D freaks” phase.

Closet: large box of old baseball cards, including the valuable ones I’d stolen from Mark Sacks. Figured I’d give them to Benjy’s kids one day so they’d like me, defend me
when Benjy called me a fuckup. Packed my prom pictures, me and Eva White, a sophomore, my girlfriend for a couple months. Dumped her because she was a mathlete, even though she was cute, didn’t make me use a condom because her parents were hippies, let her go on the pill starting when she was fourteen. She used to cry after we had sex. Said it was because she was happy, but she didn’t seem happy, just young.

More photos: high school, sophomore year. John Sammel had just gotten an eighteen-inch glass bong. The next weekend his parents were away. A whole gang of us christened Billy Bong Thornton, which Sammel had unoriginally named after the bong Dave Chappelle uses in the film
Half Baked
. I’d bought a disposable camera to document the experience. Surprising to see myself among friends. In one shot Danielle Poole has a hand on my shoulder. Year everyone had hemp necklaces. Danielle was the only girl. Hooked up with older guys, like Sammel’s brother, but never with us: me, John, and Matt. We all wanted Danielle. She’d sit on our laps to torture us.

Put the pictures back in the box, shut the lid. Hadn’t spoken to John, Matt, or Danielle in ages. Danielle’s family had moved to Atlanta, so when she went home for the holidays she went there instead of here. John and Matt were roommates at UMass. They used to e-mail, try to get me to visit. Lived in a dorm where no one went to class and everyone smoked pot all day. I’d love it. Kept saying I would go without intending to, not sure why, just not up for it. They stopped inviting me.

Brought the cardboard boxes up to the front hall, dragged the trash to the curb. Two guys stood outside a moving van, big white guys, one with a goatee, the other with a handlebar mustache. Tee shirts even though it was freezing.

“You the movers?”

“Fuck does it look like,” Goatee said.

“Good point,” I said, led them inside.

“You guys want some coffee, soda?” Mom said.

She’d laid out bagels on the kitchen table, too. We hadn’t had guests in a while.

“We’re on the clock.”

“We taking all this stuff?” Mustache said.

“Everything goes,” I said. “Fire sale.”

“What’s for sale?” Mustache said. “That end table?”

“What are you, a homo?” Goatee said, then, catching himself, turning to my mom, “’Scuse me, ma’am,” then back to Mustache, “What are you, a queer?”

“Nothing’s for sale,” Mom said.

They had dollies, didn’t actually need our help. We sat on the steps, watched the men with our possessions. Every few minutes Mom would stand, pace across the front lawn, say, “Careful with that,” or “That’s an antique.”

At one point she sat down next to me, leg against mine. Looked straight at me. Thought she was going to say something reassuring, like “Everything will be okay,” but she didn’t. Don’t know if it was because she couldn’t get the words out or because she needed me to say them to her instead. We sat like that, my bare left foot grazing her sneaker, a fake fingernail pressed into the excess fabric of my jeans. She said, softly, almost inaudibly, “Your father should be here,” immediately turned in the opposite direction.

Walked behind the van to smoke a cigarette. Heard Goatee say to Mustache, “How much you think a place like this goes for?” and Mustache say, “’Bout a mill,” and Goatee say, “Fuckin’ A.”

Took a few hours. We put the remains in my mother’s car. Should have been a sunset to drive into, mumbling
“Never look back” beneath our collective breath. There wasn’t. Already dark. No stars, either, only Mom’s headlights. Headlights don’t illuminate much—fifty feet at most, small stretch of road—enough to keep us moving safely forward.

Old Old House:

When I finally heard from Jennifer Estes, two months had passed. Mom and I lived in a heavily carpeted condo overlooking Route 9. Nights we faced the tube, semi-silent, semi-sleeping through cop shows, serial hospital dramas, syndicated sitcoms, anything laugh-tracked or techno-scored, loud enough to distract from the fact of our shared, superfluous existence. Like before, only in the same room.

The 42-inch LG LCD flat was comically oversized in the new living room. We’d brought the decorations from our old walls, still hadn’t unpacked them. They sat in boxes in her closet beneath a pile of shoes and the clothes she hadn’t brought enough hangers for.

Mom never asked about my life, what I intended to do with it. Would have been angry if she had, said leave me alone, live and let nap, like she could talk, etc. But part of me wishes that she’d prodded, told me to get a job, get off my ass; that she’d whispered in a half-awake hush that love exists and, as a young man, it was my duty to find it, tether it, rub my eyes as it disappeared in the wind, restart the cycle.

Instead we ate takeout on ottomans, staining ottomans, staring at anything but each other, occasionally mentioning Benjy, my grandparents, Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was approaching. All my high school friends would be home, i.e., Matt and John. I was supposed to spend it at Dad’s, theoretically hit the homecoming football game, and go to a party where I’d drink cheap beer, find an ugly-duckling-turned-sorority-confident swan, shoulder-chipped, something to prove. Mom was heading to Florida to see her parents.

Meantime we were stuck in the condo. I wasn’t cooking. New kitchen had an electric stove. No reception on the little TV. The kitchen was depressing. Depression succeeded by guilt about the fact that I’d been a spoiled rich boy in a heaven of culinary modernity complete with six-burnered gas grill, wall-mounted magnetic knife rack. Now, in a normal kitchen, I moped instead of cooking and making do. Still watched the Food Network, internalizing sous-vide techniques, knife maintenance tips, recipes involving rare fruit and twelve hours of your life. Saw myself on
Iron Chef
, taking down Batali in Kitchen Stadium, world looking on, impressed at my knife skills, blown away by the sensibility of my palate, finesse of my presentation, unusual combos I could fuse into forkfuls of ecstasy. Imagined the judges saying words like “delicate,” “nuanced,” “subtle and beautiful,” that these words applied not only to my culinary creations, but to me as a human being.

This fantasy—which bore no relation to reality—was depressing.

Had trouble sleeping. Six a.m. I’d be up, watching recycled news on loop: same story, different channels, few facts, endless speculation. All these self-appointed pundits, smile-stiff anchors, desexed morning hosts in holiday-themed skirt suits, talking endlessly, as if with all this talk we might arrive
at resolution. But we didn’t arrive, just fell farther into abstraction, away from meaning, toward a mangled language. Is it romantic bullshit to say I felt the same—myself an endless abstraction shrinking from the tangible world into an internal brain bubble, filled with words, feelings, nothing to tie them together, no understanding of how to use them to formulate a plan for future action?

Mom would materialize, drag her sleep-frizzed self toward the ever-floor-wet bathroom, eyes closed, navigating by sense of smell (
Tommy
, RSO, 1975).

Then stay for an hour before making her exit, transformed. Makeup covered the sadness, exhaustion, other more complicated feelings. Hair had been wound, tugged, brushed into submission. Cracks in her skin had been filled with creams that, despite packages promising eternal youth, gave the impression of someone who’s been in the sun too long.

For some reason, the sight of my mother helped me fall back to sleep. Maybe it’s an animal thing, pheromones like a lullaby. Wake up later to an empty apartment.

Days didn’t consist of much. Usual shit: TV, Internet. Wasn’t smoking pot, and not by choice. Quinosset was going through a drought. Every time I called Dan he gave me the bad news. Not that it mattered. Dad still hadn’t sent a new check.

No Oxy either. Wanted more but couldn’t bring myself to go over there. Did wonder what Kahn was up to, what the house looked like with Mingus blasting, Kahn screaming backyard soliloquies. But something had happened when Kahn had bought the house; some unspoken line had been drawn between us. I stayed away.

Not going to be one of those guys who gets on a high horse, says quitting drugs changed his life for the better.
Sobriety didn’t suit me. No possibility of oblivion, endless neutrality.

Afternoons Mom would come home, run the treadmill, which was now in the living room. Between the white walls, few windows, and buzz of the treadmill, the apartment gave the impression of being some odd asylum for the calorie-conscious insane. All we needed were other patients.

So, I’d escape to my room, turn up the tunes, scour the net for reassurance that a world existed outside my walls. I liked celeb gossip. The characters were familiar; I’d grown up with them, watched them ascend like bats at sunrise. Comforting to know they were human, had nipples, cellulite, sweatpants.