Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto (2 page)

M
y father bolts up straight in his seat at the head of the breakfast table. The business section lies open in front of him. “Motherf—”

“Michael!” my mother says, cutting him short.

“Did you see this?” He rattles his
Times Union
. “The CFO of Ludwig Financial got nailed raiding the company pension accounts to fund his coke-and-stripper habit.”

My mother chokes back her coffee. I'm not sure if she's startled, amused, or both. She's a DJ with a local radio program called
Gayle's Romantic Rendezvous
. It's a show all about love and romance, but she never talks about anything like this on the air. Instead, she usually just plays sappy romantic dedications for couples from seven to ten every weeknight. You know, the whole “I love my husband, so could you please play some song for him, blah, blah, blah….”

My father slaps the paper with the back of his hand. “It says here he blew over sixty thousand in one night at some strip club in New York City—more than a million over the past year. The stock plummeted six points just before yesterday's closing. It's bound to tank even worse this morning.”

I shovel more Lucky Charms into my mouth. After five hours of staring at the ceiling and two hours of terrible sleep, raising the spoon and actually navigating it into my mouth is no easy task.

“We own two thousand shares of Ludwig!” My father pounds the table. Silverware leaps into the air and clatters back to the tabletop.

“It's all right,” my mom says, folding the Life and Leisure section she had been reading. She lays it carefully beside her plate.

“It's
not
all right. I stood behind that company—I invested in them—and one horny bastard just cost me twelve grand overnight! A million bucks in a year on lap dances? How does someone do that?”

My mother sips her coffee. “It's a miracle those dancers didn't wear him down to a nub.”

The laugh busts out of me before I can reel it back in, and it takes everything I have to not spew my mouthful of cereal across the table.

“Oh, I'm sorry, Seth,” Mom says, her face flushing pinker than the marshmallow hearts floating in my bowl.

“Maybe you should talk about that on your radio program tonight,” I say. I'm always suggesting ways my
mother could make her show less girly to appeal to a demographic wider than postmenopausal women with short, sensible haircuts.

“This isn't a joke, Seth,” my father says. “Where do you think we were planning to get the money to send you to college?”

I stare at my orange stars, yellow moons, and green clovers until Mom and Dad both disappear behind their newspaper sections again. My father is worried about some guy losing him twelve thousand dollars because of strippers. How much is he spending on his own distraction? Having a mistress can't be cheap.

“I wish they
had
worn him down to a nub,” my father mutters. “It'd serve him right.”

Sitting at the kitchen table, knowing that my father is cheating on my mother, ranks without a doubt as the most gut-shredding breakfast ever. Every cell in my body tells me to scream, to cry out to my mother that her beloved husband—the one who claims he goes to work every day, who claims to be earning a living for our family—is really out boning some middle-aged Paris Hilton who doesn't have the sense to wear something other than a lizard-print skirt and hooker heels to a place where people eat food.

This morning started like just about every other, my father hopping out of bed early to beat the nonexistent rush. He showered, sprayed on that cologne of his that fills the bathroom for three hours afterward, and got dressed before anyone else gave a thought about stirring. Then he “rattled my cage,” as he calls it.

Our conversation:

“So, I was thinking about getting a companion dog,” my mother says. “Janet McSweeney at the club told me about this Maltese—”

“Honey, we've already discussed this,” my father says.

“But I have no one to keep me company. I don't have to be at the studio until five, and I read this article—”

“No dogs,” he says again, this time more firmly. “You'll be excited about the thing for three weeks. You'll buy it sparkly collars and strollers and all that. Then who will be the one walking him, feeding him, and taking him to the groomer? Me. And guess what? I don't want a dog.”

“But Mike—”

“Gayle, you can't even keep plants alive.”

“I did okay with our son.” Mom looks over at me. She smiles and winks. We'll have a dog within a week. When it comes to my dad, Mom knows how to get things done.

“Ready for this?” my father says. “It's estimated that between the strip clubs; trips to Thailand, Costa Rica, and Cuba; and the mountains of cocaine he's snorted, that guy's blown close to seven million bucks over three years. How could they not have noticed this sooner? Jesus!” He slams the paper down, right onto his untouched plate of eggs.

“Mike!” Mom scolds.

“Sorry, honey.” He reaches out and strokes my mother's forearm with the backs of his fingers. It's the same way he stroked that other lady's arm. Exactly the same way.
What a phony!
I stuff my face full of more Lucky Charms.

“What's wrong, baby?” my mom says to me. I look up at her and go back to chewing. She's remarkably well preserved for a mother. She doesn't look much different than she does in the dusty wedding photo hanging in the living room. Behind the giant shoulder pads and the huge satin bow on her ass (God, the eighties must have sucked), she was a pretty good-looking girl. Dimitri says that my mom's a major-league MILF, but I tune him out when he starts talking like that.

“Nothing's wrong,” I say through purple horseshoes and blue diamonds.

“Nothing?” she says. “I haven't seen you look so glum since—”

“Glum?”

“You know, down in the dumps.”

“I know what
glum
means,” I say. “I just thought that word got retired from the English language around sixty years ago.”

“Sorry,” my mom says. “What's the term I should use?”

I shrug. “Lugubrious?”

“Kids use the word
lugubrious
these days?”

“They do if they're studying for the SATs.”

“Okay,” she says. “Well you haven't looked so
lugubrious
since you lost that science derby back in seventh grade.”

“It was a science fair,” I say.

She had to bring it up. She always brings it up. After having to put my mouth on the same nasty recorder flutes that everyone else used, I invented the Seth Baumgartner Recorder Sterilizer. It bathed the recorders in ultraviolet rays to kill off bacteria and even sprayed them with a minty-fresh flavor courtesy of a well-placed can of Binaca. Brilliant. I lost to Joe Coticchio because his mom is an engineer. Not only did he build a working model of a medieval trebuchet, but it was adjustable so that he could show how arm length affects projectile distance. I argued that public health is more important than warfare, but there was no competing with Joe's mom's CAD program, perfect bell curves, and Nerf balls flying all over the gym.

“I'm fine,” I say. “Veronica and I broke up is all.”

“Oh, baby!” My mother reaches out and strokes my forearm. Exactly the response I was hoping to avoid.

My father's eyes rise above his newspaper and then disappear again.

“What happened between you two?” she asks.

“Just whatever. I guess things weren't working out.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” she asks. “I'm practically a relationship expert.”

“Exactly,” I say. “I didn't want to be tonight's on-air topic of conversation. I didn't want you playing some sappy song in my honor.”

“I wouldn't—”

I shoot her a look that says we both know she would.

“Okay, I promise not to say anything on the air if you tell me what happened.” She leans toward me, her eyes hungry for the nitty-gritty details. “What did she say?”

I shrug. “She said she needed some space.”

“Death sentence,” my father mutters.

“Mike!” My mother slaps my father's shoulder with her newspaper and turns back to me. “Veronica will come around. Just give her some time.”

“And when you get a new girlfriend,” my father adds, “make sure she has the same cellular company as you. All that texting is driving me to the poorhouse.”

My mother and I both ignore that one.

“And I lost my job.” I slip it in, hoping that news of my big breakup might soften the blow.

No such luck.

My father lowers the newspaper again. “How many is this, Seth? How many jobs have you lost this year alone?” His voice isn't so much angry as it is frustrated.

“Four,” I say. “The Gap, the library—”

“You don't need to list them for me.” He pushes his plate away. “Come on, Seth. Why can't you hold down a job? This is important stuff.”

“And my girlfriend isn't?”

“Girlfriends come and go.”

You should know.
The words want to fly out, but I hold them back and mumble, “Jobs come and go, too.”

“Don't bust my nuts, Seth. Come on. I want you to find another job and hold it for the whole summer. None of this jumping-around business.”

“Michael,” Mom says, “Seth is obviously distraught over his breakup. I'm sure whatever happened at that French fry place happened because he was so upset. Isn't that right?” My mom looks to me for confirmation.

This is my opportunity. My mother has set the ball and I just need to spike it, but the words don't come nearly as easily as I would like. “We broke up at lunch, and, well, I was covering for this other girl, and Mr. Burks—”

My father raises his hand to silence me. “Look, Seth, just find a job and keep it. You're a smart kid. Find an employer who trusts you—one who values you for your skill set.”

“Maybe that's the problem,” I say. “What is my skill set? Folding oxfords? Shelving books? Making French fries? Come on, it's all boring.”

“Honey,” my mother says, “think of something you like and get a job doing it. If you don't enjoy your job, you won't value it and you'll never do well.”

I sink into my chair and slurp the milk from my bowl. “I'll get another job and I'll keep it,” I say. “Promise.”

But I say it to empty space because my mother is already clearing the plates and my father is halfway out the door. I watch out the window as my dad's Beemer makes its way down the driveway.

I wonder if the stress from his tumbling stock will make him run to his mistress or cause him to avoid her. Will he take her back to Applebee's again? Will he just go to her place? Maybe a seedy motel somewhere with a vibrating bed and a slimy hot tub? Just thinking about it makes me want to puke.

“Y
ou sure you're all right about this breakup thing?” Dimitri asks me for what feels like the hundredth time.

I shift the phone to my other ear and prop my feet on the wall, one on each side of the
Army of Darkness
movie poster that hangs above my bed. “I'm good,” I say.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“'Cause you don't sound good.”

I take a deep breath and let it out. “I'm fine.”

“Okay,” Dimitri says. “But I don't want you bailing out on golf tomorrow because of this. We're still playing, right?”

I try to think of a non-Veronica, non-my-dad-is-sleeping-with-some-ho excuse to cancel. I need to figure out what my father is up to. But canceling my weekly round with Dimitri would be a grave error. Dimitri takes his golf
seriously. He's practicing his ass off so he'll play well in the father-son golf tournament at the end of July. The winning team takes home a ten-thousand-dollar college scholarship. Anyhow, if I bail, Dimitri will bitch about it longer than it takes to play a full eighteen holes. Maybe twenty-seven.

Besides, what would I do, tail my father? He'd spot my bright red, beat-up Camry—I call it the Red Scare—from a mile away. Would I sit in his firm's parking lot eating bag after bag of fried pork rinds like a television cop on a stakeout? No, I need to find a better way to follow him. If only I had one of those tracking devices that James Bond is always sticking onto bad guys' cars. I'd just clip that sucker to the back of his sports jacket and track him wherever he went.

“Say it,” Dimitri urges me. “Say you won't cancel.”

“I won't cancel.”

“Say, ‘If I cancel, I'm the biggest wuss in the history of the multiverse.'”

I say that, too.

“All right,” Dimitri says. “I'll catch you in the morning.”

I click off the phone and turn on my radio. It's nearly an hour into my mother's program. Some commercial boasts “the biggest burritos in the Capital District.”

So not a date place.

I grab a tennis ball and start bouncing it against the wall. I try to hit Bruce Campbell on my poster and catch it. I'm on my eighty-fourth face strike when my mother's voice comes on:

“Welcome back to
Gayle's Romantic Rendezvous.
I'm your host, Gayle, and I want to send out a special dedication…”

Some kind of soft groove starts playing, and my mom starts talking in her low, comforting voice. My stomach tightens. She's going to do exactly what she promised she wouldn't. I can feel it.

“My son is going through some hard times with his girlfriend right now, and I just want to let him know that he is a special young man. He means the world to his mom and dad, and it's only a matter of time before she or some other girl out there feels the same way we do. Here's a song from us to our baby boy called ‘You Are So Beautiful' by the talented Joe Cocker….”

The soft groove transitions into the beginning of some song that I do not want to hear. I hurl the ball at my clock radio, but it glances off the side and bounces into the hallway. The best I can hope for is that no one who knows me heard that, but her show is the number one rated evening program in the Capital District. Before I have a chance to shut off the radio properly, my cell phone chimes.

I glance at the text.

Dimitri.

It says:
You are soooo beautiful, baby boy!