Reality Boy (23 page)

It’s a small card and I hold it close to my face to read and I keep it there for a half minute after I’m done reading while I think of something to say.

“Ugh,” she says. “I’m so embarrassed.”

I put the card down between the bucket seats. “Don’t be embarrassed. You’re my best friend, too. I never had one, either. I’m just scared because if we go too fast, we could—you know—wreck it.”

“Shit.”

I look at her. “I think I love you, too, Hannah. Okay? I’m pretty sure, even. But let’s just go slow.”

We pause and look down for a few seconds. Hannah looks like she wants to say something.

“Is something wrong?”

“You scared me in there,” she says. Again. I heard her the first time, on the way to the car.

“And?”

“And I can’t love someone who would, like, you know. Hit people and shit.”

“Jesus,” I say. I say it because I instantly feel like the Crapper.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s my birthday,” I say.

“I know. I don’t want to kill your buzz.”

“Too late.”

“But I’m serious. I’m not ready for visiting someone I love in jail, you know?”

“Jesus!” I say again. “What the hell are you trying to do?”

“I’m just telling you.”

“Well, I heard you, okay?”

“Okay.”

She looks scared now. Fuck. “And I’d never hit—like—you or anything.”

“Shit,” she says. “That’s not what I meant, Gerald.”

“I think it is.”

“It isn’t,” she says, and I can see the tears welling up in her
eyes, because the parking-garage lights are reflecting in them. “Look. Let’s just try this again.”

“Let’s,” I say.

“Come on. Don’t be mad.”

“Dude, you think I’m going to hit you one day. I think that sucks. It would suck for you if you were me, I guarantee it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

I pull out of the parking space and take off down the parking-garage ramp. Hannah starts to cry a little.
Happy birthday, Gerald.

Once we get out of the garage and start driving toward the bridge, she starts to ramble. “Look, that was my fault and I’m sorry. But you scared me. I could see you nearly killing that guy. You had a vein popping out of your neck. And I know that your chest is still all messed up from boxing and it scared me and I didn’t know you boxed and I don’t like boxing because it’s so violent and I don’t understand why anyone would want to hit another person, so all of those things scared me, okay? And before you say it again, I don’t think you’re going to hit me,” she says. “I think we’re soul mates. Soul mates don’t do shit like that.”

“Now we’re soul mates?” I don’t know why I’m being so sarcastic. But I am. And I’m hurting her. And I can’t stop.
Because you’re an asshole.

“Actually, I thought that as far back as three weeks ago.”

“Three weeks ago we weren’t even talking to each other,” I say.

She pulls out her little notebook. “I can prove it. Want me to read you that part?”

“No,” I say. “I believe you.”

“So you’re not mad?”

I sigh. I’m mad.
Zip code 00000.
But not at her. “I was just having a nice birthday and I didn’t want to scare you. I was just playing around. I’d never have hit that guy.” ←That is a complete lie.

“I’ll read it to you,” she says. “It’s right here. Three weeks ago to the day.”

I put my hand up. “Don’t do it. That breaks rule number—what’s the no-reading-the-book rule? Why didn’t we number that rule?”

“Because it’s a sacred rule.”

“So then you can’t read it to me. Put it back in your pocket.”

Neither of us talks for a while, but she puts her hand on my leg again—near the knee—and it stirs me again, too.

I say, “Soul mates, huh?”

She says, “Yep.”

I smile.

If she is my soul mate, then I have just saved myself years of searching. But I can’t tell if she is or not, because I am wrapped in a lifetime of polyethylene lie-wrapping that denies me any possibility of knowing the truth.

We pull up to her driveway. She says, “You write your list of demands yet?”

“I tried to start,” I say. “Big fail. Nothing I demanded made any sense.”

“So? Do it anyway. If I was you, I’d have a long-ass list by now.”

“I guess I’m not really good at demanding.”

She gets out of the car.

“Thanks for the card,” I say. “I thought it was funny that you said I give a shit. You know, because that’s my life—giving people shits. Only those people never really appreciated it.” I laugh. “But no. Seriously. Thanks for the card. It’s sweet.”

“You’re welcome. And don’t forget to listen to the CD.”

“I won’t. And that thing—the love shit,” I say.

“The love shit? That’s romantic.”

“I mean, let’s just keep going slow, okay? This shit scares me.”

When I get home, I go to the kitchen table and find my birthday present and a note.
Sorry we missed you!

It’s a gas card for three hundred dollars. I hear the loud TV downstairs in the basement and think about packing right now and going wherever three hundred dollars will take me.

Once I get to my room, I watch the amazing Monaco trapeze act twice before I go to bed. I count the spins and the somersaults. The performers are like birds. They have probably been forced to practice trapeze from the minute they were born, twenty-two hours a day, seven days a week, but they look free. At least, in the air they look free.

EPISODE THREE WASN’T
a full episode. It was one of those let’s-look-back-on-our-past-families-and-see-how-well-we-did episodes, and I couldn’t have the world thinking that anyone in my house had done well.

No one had done well.

Mom still treated Tasha like a princess even though Tasha hit her all the time and had invented the pillow trick to scare Lisi and me worse. The pillow trick was when she’d take a couch pillow and put it over my face until I would start to kick and scream and nearly lose consciousness. Then she’d remove it and I’d be in Gersday, lying there with her invisible and Lisi by my side, looking concerned. Then Tasha would run to
Mom and tell her that I’d done something bad, and Mom would come in and scold me while I was mute, staring into space and eating ice cream with my favorite cartoon character or something.

Dad stayed away more. If that was even possible. The market was good then. Houses were flying. I overheard talk of storing money away like squirrels hiding nuts. He mentioned moving because so many people knew us now.
Reality TV stars.
Photographers would come to the end of the driveway and snap pictures. Articles would appear in the local paper. People would write letters to the editor. I was six, so I didn’t know that then. I’ve since read some of those letters. Many were cruel. Some weren’t. I’m pretty sure one was written by my hockey-lady/ketchup-coated dream mother.

Lisi was not okay. She feared for our lives. The pillow trick was avoidable, she reckoned, by staying in her room all the time, where Tasha couldn’t get her. She read every book she owned a hundred times. She wrote things in a little locked diary and worked ahead in her textbooks.

Mom was not okay. Her eyes were empty. Translucent. She’d started walking for hours at a time. She even applied for jobs, but no one would hire her, since she didn’t know how to do anything except fuck up her family. No one said that part. That part was mine.

When Nanny Lainie Church/Elizabeth Harriet Smallpiece and the crew arrived on the first day, they walked in as if they owned us. Nanny didn’t even bother wearing her Nanny costume. She was dressed in a dress that showed her every
curve and her ample cleavage. The crew didn’t mount any secret cameras on the walls. This was going to be a three-day-long visit, once and done, they said—just a way to reestablish the rules and make sure the family was doing okay.

The first scene with us kids in it was scene two. We were all washed and dressed and sitting at the kitchen table with Mom and Dad at the head seats and Nanny next to me, with Tasha and Lisi across from me and Nanny. All I could see was my invisible turds there in the middle of the table. It got me to thinking about the days when I put them there. Back when I was five, which seemed like a lifetime ago.

I felt older than seven.

What other seven-year-old could claim he’d escaped being murdered by his own sister at least a dozen times? What other seven-year-old could claim that when he went to school, he was seen as part movie star and part maniac? I couldn’t understand if those kids in first grade had actually seen the show or if their parents had distilled it for them. I’m guessing both. Parents let their kids watch all sorts of shit they shouldn’t watch.

“Nice to see you all again,” Nanny started. “I’m very excited to hear of your
proh
-gress.” Nanny said
progress
with the long
o
sound. I’d grown to love her accent even though I wanted to slap it right out of her mouth for her being so naïve as to think there had been any
proh
-gress.

“Tasha tried to kill me again last week,” I’d said on take one. They didn’t like that. Tasha protested. Things got loud.

So someone yelled “Cut!” and we started over and I was
given instructions not to speak until a question was posed directly to me.

Nanny looked worried, though. She eyed Tasha. She knew.

“Action.”

“Nice to see you all again,” Nanny said. “I’m very excited to hear of your
proh
-gress.”

Mom smiled and said we’d been better behaved. She said she felt more able to handle the family now that house rules were in place and chores were still getting done.

Dad said he’d been busier at work than usual and felt that “the kids” were doing great. He said that he and Mom got to go more places together—once-a-month dates made possible by our newest babysitter.

“Gerald, how are you doing in school now that you’re in first grade?” Nanny asked. This was my cue to say something that wouldn’t ruin the scene and that would segue us smoothly into scene three, which would be an overview of our charts and chores and all the things Nanny had done for us. I was told to say
School is great. My teacher is really nice.

But I thought about the question.
Gerald, how are you doing in school?
I thought about my answer. How do you
think
I’m doing? And why would I think you
really
care? What a load of bullshit.

“School would be better if Tasha wasn’t trying to kill me all the time,” I said.

“Cut!”

I DEMAND A
mother who isn’t this person.

When I tell her I’m sick today and not going to school, my mother responds with, “Well, I’m not letting this get in the way of my plans with your father.” She bends her forehead into the shape of a
W
.

Dad sits there looking confused. I shrug and apologize.

“We RSVP’d to this wedding ages ago,” Mom grumbles. “And we have to leave at ten.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

“You go pack, Jill,” Dad says. “I want to talk to Ger on my own.”

She leaves, still clearly disappointed in my behavior even though I haven’t crapped in her shoes.

I demand to crap in her shoes. One. Last. Time.

“You okay?” Dad asks.

“Yeah. I just feel sick,” I say. I point to my stomach.

“Hungover from birthday celebrations?”

“That was two days ago. And I worked, remember?”

He nods. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“Nah.”

“You’re not doing drugs, are you?”

“Jesus, no.”

“Drinking?”

“Not unless you’re there,” I say.

“You got a girl?”

“Maybe,” I say. “Nothing serious.” My poker face is perfect.

“You’re not going to bring her here while we’re gone, right?”

“Never,” I say, thinking of the screwing-rodent rodeo in our basement.

He looks at me, worried. “You sure nothing’s wrong?”

I look at him, worried. “I’m sure everything is wrong,” I say. “I just have to wait it out, like Lisi did.”

“Huh,” he says. As if I’m being unreasonable.

“Or we could buy that house with the pool,” I say.

He sighs.

“Think about it,” I say.

He looks at the clock and motions for me to follow him into his man cave, where he shuts the door behind us and opens the liquor cabinet. He pours himself a small glass of liquor and mutters about how Mom will drive anyway. It’s nine o’clock in the morning.

“I hate going to weddings,” he says. “Everyone is always so fuckin’ happy. It’s all about futures and celebrations and all these people acting like marriage is some dream-filled Twinkie.”

“It isn’t?”

He smirks at me. Before he can say another word, the racket starts. Quietly at first.
Ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom.
Slowly.

He swigs back the end of his drink and says, “Mom is leaving Tasha in charge. I know that sucks. If you want to sleep at a friend’s house, that’s fine with me.”

He knows I don’t have any friends.