The Broken Teaglass (20 page)

“I don’t
ask
him to make me key lime pie every time.”

“It’s like a bird building a nest. It’s automatic. Instinctual. It’s heartbreaking, actually.” Jen’s voice was distant, searching. She was probably trying to figure out where she might find a poem in all of this. “I mean, rationally, he knows that you’ll be fine if you don’t get your favorite. But he just can’t bring himself to say, ‘Billy will be
okay
without his favorite dessert. And it’s winter! Key lime pie doesn’t
even fit
. Let’s just have a nice warm pecan pie and leave it at that.’”

I didn’t say anything.

Her eyes narrowed in on me. “I wish you could see it the way I do. You let them keep doing it.”

“Let’s not get into it—”

“They don’t know how to stop.” Her voice sounded a little high.

“Eventually they will.”

“Not if you don’t give them any reason to.”

“C’mon. I’ve got a job, an apartment—”

“That’s not really what I meant by a
reason
, Billy. They need to
feel
like they can stop, there’s a
shift
you need to help each other make—”

I turned the TV up, to drown out the memory of my sister’s voice. For someone who’s supposed to be so brilliant with words, she actually has a tendency to ramble. Sometimes, with her, I think people mistake inability to make a succinct point for thoughtful lyricism. As her brother, I recognize the difference in a way that other people don’t.

I opened another beer, but found I no longer had a taste for it.

I was pretty proud to present this material to Mona over dinner. Blood. Guts. Middle fingers. Shit-eating grins. This was the kind of stuff Mona relished, I was pretty sure. We were back in business.

“Is the adjective ‘shit-eating’ in the Samuelson books, you think?” I asked, once she’d finished reading. “How would it be defined?”

“Umm … hmm. Maybe …” Mona squinted in concentration while I collected the dessert dishes. “How about ‘expressing a prurient satisfaction’?”

“Excuse me for arguing with a master, but don’t you think that’s a little pedantic? And it hints at a
sexual
satisfaction that’s not really quite accurate.”

“Why is it that lexicographical accuracy is most important to you when the word is either sexual or scatological slang?”

I got up from the table and settled on the futon.

“Doesn’t that characterize most of us?” I asked.

“Certainly not me,” said Mona, following me to the futon. “I’m more one for the zeitgeist kinds of words.”

“Like what?”

“Like … ‘mind fuck.’ I’m really hoping that’ll make it into
the next edition. I did a NEXIS search for it a couple months ago, found a few cits to add to the pile. We’ll see.”

“Mona,” I gasped in mock surprise. “Stacking the evidence. I’m surprised at you.”

She shrugged. “Some words need a little extra push, to make the older editors take them seriously.”

“But … ‘mind fuck’? You’re trying to tell me that doesn’t have any sexual implications?”

“Sure, a little. But the basic meaning isn’t sexual. The idea is having your mind, you know, fucked over.”

“And you feel this term says a lot about our times?”

“Sure. Equating an experience of mental instability with raw sex. Like it’s somehow desirable and fun. People these days
want
to have their minds monkeyed with. People are bored. People are
sick
. When people say something’s a mind fuck, don’t you get the feeling they think it’s something kind of fun? Like dropping acid?”

“I guess. You ever dropped acid?”

“C’mon. Can you see me doing acid?”

“Stranger things have happened. And it was
your
analogy.”

“You know, I had ‘drop’ for the
Supplement
. What a pain in the ass. You’d never guess how many variations there are on the use of that one stupid word. ‘Drop acid.’ ‘Drop trou.’ ‘Dropping names.’ ‘Dropping the ball.’ Some phrases get their own definition. Some are probably technically self-explanatory, covered by the definition of ‘drop.’ It’s a fine line. And it seems like things have been added over the years by different editors, some of whom drew the line in a different place than I would.”

“That sucks. I thought only people like Dan and Grace and Needham were supposed to get words like that.”

“Oh. Well …” Mona picked up a pile of cits. “‘Drop’s’ not
exactly a ‘make’ or a ‘have.’ It’s pretty much regular editor material.”

“I heard Dan spent three months going over the cits for ‘have’ for the last edition.”

Mona looked down at her pile of cits. “Probably he did,” she said.

“I wonder,” I said, “if either of us will ever be diehards like that. If one of us will ever embrace ‘have’ or ‘put.’ Have that kind of patience, to do it for months, and feel like it’s worth it.”

“Shoot me if I ever do,” Mona said.

We went back to shuffling cits.

“Hey,” she said, after a few minutes. “I meant to ask you about the whole phone thing.”

“The phone thing? What’s that?”

“Ohmigod. You haven’t heard? You’re probably getting a phone at your desk.”

“What’s so great about that?”

“You haven’t noticed that only a few people actually have them? And one of those people is Cliff?”

“And I’m getting one because …?”

“You’re so laid back and polite they’re thinking you should try your hand at appeasing some of the crazies who call. It’ll give Cliff a nice break once in a while.”

“Who told you this?”

“Cliff. He says he and Dan have been chatting about it.”

“No way,” I said.

“Yes! Congratulations, buddy!”

“Don’t call me buddy. You’re far too delighted about this to be my buddy.”

“And I can’t wait to hear all about it. Mail correspondence is, like, the second circle of hell. But those phone
calls—that’s the real
depths
. That’s right in the mouth of the beast—”

“When did you hear about this?” I interrupted.

“Yesterday.”

I went back to my cits in disgust.

“It’s not so bad, actually,” Mona continued. “Did you hear about the time this old lady called, and wanted us to put ‘Lula’ in the dictionary, with the definition ‘an exceptionally personable and unforgettable housecat’? I mean, that shit is classic! Imagine the stories you’ll get to tell your grandchildren.”

“Just what I need.”

“Besides. It’s really a compliment. Dan sees that you’ve got a gentle way with people. I wish he’d pay
me
that kind of a compliment.”

While Mona was talking, the title
Teaglass
caught my eye on one of my cits, and I threw it at her without even reading it.

“Another one,” I mumbled. “Interested?”

She dove for it as it fluttered onto the floor. I went to the kitchen to get some sodas.

“Sweet,” I heard her say.

“What is it?” I yelled from the kitchen.

“Really hot stuff. Too bad you didn’t even bother to read it.”

She gave me the cit when I returned with our glasses.

“This one follows that ‘eek’ one directly, I think,” Mona said.

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t say much that’s new. She didn’t call the police. We already knew that.”

“But there’s at least some continuity here. We’re filling in the pieces. We see that there was a situation in which the police would normally be called, and she’s rationalizing why it didn’t happen.”

“Hmm …”

“And she doesn’t think much of football players.”

“That’s perhaps the most important piece, yes,” I said, rubbing my chin.

“Does her characterization offend you?”

“Why would it?”

“Didn’t you used to play football?”

“Just in high school. And I wouldn’t say that defines me. It could’ve just as easily been another sport. People just sort of assumed I’d try football because of my size, so I did. And I liked it as well as any other sport, so I went with it.”

“I ran track myself,” Mona said. “I was a sprinter.”

“Sounds about right,” I said. I could imagine Mona in a bright blue track uniform, hopping forward at the sound of the gun, leaving all the other ponytailed girls in the dust.

Mona hesitated.

“Did you like high school?” she asked.

“Who really
likes
high school?” I countered.

“I know, but … I mean, were you one of those people who was generally happy in high school?”

I thought about her question. No suicide attempts. No drug overdoses. No one sticking my head in a toilet bowl.

“Yeah, sure. I guess so. For most of it, anyway. I always felt like I was inexplicably lucky.”

“How’s that?”

“Things were fairly easy, that’s all. I mean, I didn’t like school, exactly. But I didn’t find it difficult, and I knew that if I put in a decent effort I’d get more than passable grades. And I looked forward to sports after school. It wasn’t a hard life.”

Mona shifted in her seat.“What about angst?” she asked.

“What about it?”

“Didn’t you have any?”

“Not much. I don’t know if this is going to come as a great surprise to you, but I wasn’t a very deep man in high school.”

“So when you say you felt
lucky
in high school … what does that mean?”

“Well … this is going to sound a little, I dunno,
mundane …
but the best example I can think of is when I was slow-dancing with this girl at the sophomore formal.”

“Good Lord. I can already tell this is gonna be good.”

“May I continue?”

“Sorry. Please do.”

“Thank you. First of all, I had a date. And if you asked me how that happened, I wouldn’t really be able to tell you. And I looked up while I was dancing with this girl and I realized that there were lots of kids just hanging out. Sitting at the tables, or standing along the wall. Most of them looking kind
of wistful, you know? And I realized
I’m one of the kids who’s dancing
. I’m not standing against the wall wishing I had someone to dance with. I couldn’t figure out what separated me from those kids, and I didn’t think it was fair, whatever it was. And I like to think I didn’t consider myself any more deserving. But it was perplexing to me how I’d turned out so lucky. Of course, this all sounds pretty dumb
now
, but—”

“No wonder you became a philosophy major,” Mona whispered. “That is
profound
.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said. “I just mean that I was aware that it wasn’t so easy for other kids. Like my sister, for example. She’s one of these bigger-boned girls. Nobody really asked her out. This one guy used to always call her Bessie, because she’s big and pale and quiet with these big eyes. Like a cow, I guess, was the idea.”

“I hope you beat the crap out of him,” Mona said.

“I couldn’t. He was way older and bigger than me. But Jen usually did all right on her own. Rumor has it she whacked him in the head with a floor hockey stick, when the gym teacher wasn’t looking, and that’s what got him to stop. I’m not sure I believe it, but I suppose that’s the beauty of it. Even if she did it, no teacher would ever believe it. She was usually so obedient and unassuming, teachers always loved her. Jen always got her revenge eventually by being smarter than everyone else. Her senior year she was like the queen of the nerds. She’d write these mean editorials for the school newspaper, and everyone was a little scared of her. Was it like that at your high school, where there’s this weird power shift senior year? Everyone starts thinking about the future. The nerds begin their ascendancy.”

“But
you
were one of the cool kids?” Mona wanted to know.

“Cool? Not really. I had a lot of friends, I guess. Athletics were a big deal, and I was decent at sports. So I got invited to parties and stuff.”

“Okay. Well, let me put it this way. Did you have a superlative?”

“In the yearbook, you mean?”

“Yeah … were you, like, Most Athletic? Biggest Flirt? Anything like that?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Okay,
fine
. I was voted Most Courteous.”

Mona grinned wickedly when I said this.

“And I was nominated for Best All Around,” I added. “But some other guy won.”