Making Nice (23 page)
Authors: Matt Sumell
I closed my eyes, and as soon as I did the images came quick and lucid, as they tend to when I fall asleep in the heat. Neon squirrels blinked around my brain, and that dragonfly, and I woke minutes later sweating and fidgeting and slumping around in the upright seat, shifting uncomfortably until I noticed a quarter-inch crack of light between the emergency exit door and the window in front. Someone had squirted in that expanding insulation foam to close it off, but it was a pretty shoddy job and the brightness of the New York summer revealed itself despite the fix. For a second I considered calling the attendant over, but after some ankle scratching I decided I didn’t care if the whole plane came plummeting out of the sky like a comet. I even imagined it, briefly, the other passengers screaming and flailing, myself unsurprised and blank of mind, smirking toward death like whatever. Like pass the salt.
And besides, I thought, it’s probably fine. It’ll hold. It’s good enough.
It was out of sheer boredom that I started playing with the crack of light, swaying my head back and forth just a little, just because, the crack of light appearing and disappearing as I moved my head left and right and left and right, like I was dancing, or retarded, or both. I was lost in it, lost, until a two-finger tap on my shoulder from the flight attendant offering a plastic glass of ice and a bottle of water for the hot wait. I thanked her and poured myself some and sipped my water and swayed with the light, just swayed and swayed, until my head was empty and I wasn’t thinking about anything at all, not a damn thing, and then I stopped swaying and closed my eyes and became very still and just breathed, and a tremendous calm washed over me, an untouchableness I’d never felt before, and it felt good. It was a good feeling. It was nice.
I blinked open my eyes and saw my brother’s sleep-blurry feet step down three red rungs of the bunk-bed ladder, jump the last two, and thump down on the hardwood floor.
Ta-da
. There he was scratching his head, bending down to pick up a towel off the floor and on the way back up he gave me the middle finger. Then he rushed off to the last warm-water shower in the house. We were supposed to take turns but he argued that I gave mine up by refusing to get out of bed. Why should he have to wait because I saw imaginary bugs on the floor?
They weren’t imaginary. I would roll over on my stomach, tuck my hands in my underwear, hang my head over the side of the mattress, and wait for them. Within a minute little black dots would be running all over the place, around each other, on each other, over each other—dozens of them.
Eventually AJ came back wrapped in a towel and said, “The shower was sooooo goooood. It was so warm!”
“Don’t step on the bugs,” I said, never taking my eyes off them.
“You’re stupid.”
“You’re stupid.”
“You are.”
After a long pause I said, “So.”
He rushed to get dressed and hurried down the stairs to tell our mother I was at it again. I listened to her high heels click the kitchen tiles, click the floor in dining room, go quiet on the carpet in the hall, click once maybe twice between the hall carpet and living-room carpet—the dog had stained this one almost exactly in the middle—and come up the steps.
“You’ve got to get up, Alby.”
“There’s bugs on the floor.”
“You know what Doctor Grello said.”
After a long pause I said, “No.”
“Stop it. You know what Doctor Grello said.”
After a longer pause I said, “Yeah.”
“You’ve got to stop hanging your head over the side of the bed like that. You’re only seeing bugs because blood is pooling in your head. So tell me again, the head depends on what to return blood to the heart?”
“I don’t know.”
“C’mon Alby, you can’t keep doing this. What did Doctor Grello say? Tell me again what the head depends on.”
“Gravity.”
“That’s right. So your eyes are just seeing funny things. They’re not bugs, they’re just nicks in the floor that seem like they’re moving.”
Then she would sit down on the bed next to me and gently take my head in her hands. Maybe that’s why I did it all to begin with. My mother’s cool hands on my hot head, the blood draining out of it.
Hugest, hearfelt-est thanks go to my teacher and friend Michelle Latiolais, who’s been there with sage advice and a fridge full of Fat Tire for just-me; to Geoffrey Wolff for the big wisdom, good cheer, and for shining some of his hard-earned light on me; and to Mark Richard for his guidance and generosity from day one, also for failing out of seminary school. (Twice, was it?) Christine Schutt liked my ugly shirt so much she agreed to read a story of mine, then sent it to her pal Barry, then got it published, and I’m incredibly grateful. Thanks also to Ron Carlson, Aimee Bender, Brad Watson, Maile Meloy, Rebecca Lee, and Jims Krusoe and Shepard—each of whom, in their own ways, taught me to follow my weird.
Speaking of weird I’m indebted for life to Nicole Aragi and Duvall Osteen for putting up with my particular brand of it, and for doing so with patience, understanding, and humor. Also soup. Just point to who you want me to punch. My wholehearted gratitude to my ace editor Sarah Bowlin and all the good folks at Holt for the smarts and the push. Big thanks to Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum, who have been in my corner from the start and made things happen for me, and to Hugh Merwin, who was in it before they were. I want to thank Tyler Cabot for calling my graph shitty and fighting for the work anyhow, Lorin Stein for seeking out new work and taking the chance, Halimah Marcus for seeing fit to forgive my horrible first impression (second and third, too, probably), Ben Samuel, Oscar Villavon, Laura Cogan, and Hannah Tinti.
Thanks to Gordon Lish for the interest, advice, and encouragement.
Huge thanks to the workshop at UC Irvine—most especially to Zach Braun—for suffering through the early drafts. The later ones, too. Thanks also to everyone there who wrote me a check, namely: the School of Humanities and the International Center for Writing and Translation. Bigger thanks for bigger checks to the Arlene Cheng Fellowship and the Glenn Schaeffer Award, and to Don Snyder for the support north of the border.
Now look: When you’re an aging single dude with intimacy issues your pals are important—I mean maybe even more so—and I’ve got a few I’d like to acknowledge both for help with the book but also for being my buds despite my behavior, which was sometimes less than good, and by sometimes I mean way too many times. Marisa Matarazzo, Max Winter, Aaron Miller, Sam Leader, Mike Andreasen, and Mona Ausubel: I couldn’t have finished this fucker-of-a-thing without your friendship and your counsel, and I can’t begin to tell you how much they mean to me, and thanks in advance for your forgiveness when I fuck up again. I’d also like to thank my fellow Oakdalers, Marc Baylis, Gerard Lawther, Kelly Thomas, John Chapin, James Santomassimo, Stevie Cohn, Glenn Kleinhans, and most especially Elena Grasmann and the two best guys I know, Chris Conroy and Matt Tricano, who’ve collectively paid more than their share of bar tabs and dinner tabs—breakfast and lunch tabs, too—and continued to put up with me and put me up when nobody else would. (Thanks also to their wives, Lianne and Sareth, for putting up with them while they put up with me). Special thanks to Andrea Harrison, who’s been there through the highs and lows and lowest of lows, and to Beth Haener, who saw me through other, different, highs and lows and lowest of lows.
I want to thank my old man, Albert Walter Sumell, who’s a great guy and a tough guy and who I mean to make proud, and my brother, AJ, and sister, Jackie, who I depend on for their love and support, and for having the good humor to tolerate my love and support.
Finally, I need to thank my mother, Mary Ann Sumell, and my dogs Bacon and Chancho, who are missed so much, so deeply, that every time I think of them there’s a pang and my heart starts chewing tinfoil.
M
ATT
S
UMELL
is a graduate of UC Irvine’s MFA program, and his fiction has since appeared in
Esquire
, the
Paris Review
,
Electric Literature
,
One Story
,
Noon
, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles, California. Sign up for email updates
here
.
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click
here
.
CONTENTS
M
AKING
N
ICE.
Copyright © 2015 by Matt Sumell. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover art © Gray318
Some of these stories have appeared elsewhere, in slightly different form: “All Lateral” in
One Story
, no. 200, 2015; “Punching Jackie” in
Electric Literature
’s Recommended Reading, 2015, and in
Noon
, 2009; “Eat the Milk” as “Gift Horse” in
Zyzzyva,
no. 101, 2014, and in
BookGlutton
, 2008; “American Ninja 2” in
Esquire
, January 2013; “Rape in the Animal Kingdom” in
The Esquire Four: New Voices for a New Era of Fiction
, 2012; “Toast” in the
Paris Review
, no. 200, 2012; “OK” in
Electric Literature,
no. 6, 2011; “Little Things” in
Electric Literature
, no. 3, 2010; “Rest Stop” in the
Greenbelt Review
, Spring 2009; “Making Nice” in
Saltgrass
, 2009; “The Block, Twice” in the
Brooklyn Review
, no. 25, 2008; “If P, Then Q” and “Bugs” in
Faultline
, vol. 16, 2007.
