The Future for Curious People: A Novel (9 page)

It’s the scheduled time for my biweekly phoner with my parents. I like to pace the apartment when I talk to them. They’re slow talkers. They measure their words—small syllables, small words, small voices. Talking to my parents always makes me hungry. I paste a bagel together with cream cheese, and I’m on the move. I circle the coffee table. I pet the cover on the toaster like it’s a legless cat. I punch the pillows on my bed. We discuss salting snowy sidewalks, purchasing paper goods in bulk, a sickly neighbor I don’t remember that well even though I’m told I should. Keep moving. That’s the trick, moving so much that sometimes I get winded. Once my mother asked me if I was on drugs. “Me, drugs?” I said. “No, no. I just have a quick little hamster heart.” But maybe it wasn’t so much the speed of my heart but the shrunken size; when I’m talking to my parents, I feel small of heart.

I imagine the calls are a chore for them, falling somewhere on their to-do list:
clean golf clubs, arrive at church fifteen minutes early, remind Evelyn she has parents, feed dogs.

Still, I feel like I have to alert them to any changes big enough to alter my profile on Facebook.

“Adrian and I broke up.”

“Let’s reverse gears a moment,” my father says. Both of my parents are good-looking, the kind of young-looking old people they put on brochures for old people things, like retirement villages with multiple tennis courts, Depends, Flomax. “He broke up with you?”

“No.”

“You broke up with him?” my mother says, plainly surprised.

“Is that so hard to believe?” I walk to the doorjamb where I measure everyone who comes into my apartment, a tradition that my parents didn’t approve of. Writing on walls? Once, though, I saw a faint outline of my sister’s height on a doorjamb in the mudroom, lightly painted over.

My parents aren’t responding. A quiet moment arrives, as if pulled up by a team of silent horses. My mother eventually says, “Of course it’s not hard to believe. We believe you. You’re our daughter,” as if the only reason they believe me is because they’re parentally duty bound.

“I think you’re supposed to say, ‘Are you okay?’ or ‘I’m so sorry, honey.’ ” It’s not unusual for me to feed my parents their lines, like someone just offstage trying to help them as they blink into the stage lights.

And then the quiet. You almost have to respect the stuffy determination. I’d like to make a band of my parents’ silence. It would be called Big Loud Nothing. Their first single would be a guitar being plugged into an amp, then nothing. Are they exchanging glances from their two cordless phones? “We are both so sorry,” my mother says.

“Of course,” my father says. “We understand breaking up. It was hard for your mother and me when our time came.”

My parents are a divorced couple who still live together. I forget this sometimes. They divorced each other when I was twelve. They told me while driving back from a church-sponsored Easter egg hunt. I have a deep abiding distrust of fake grass. It’s bullshit. By Easter, there’s always plenty of real grass if grass is what you want to use to pad your basket, except maybe in the Dakotas and shit, where it’s still cold. No one should ever trust fake grass. Its insincerity is hateful.

At first, my father got an apartment—a dismal bachelor pad—but after I’d gone off to college, he moved back in with my mother, as if he were really just trying to get out of half of my childhood. They live separate lives but under the same roof, the most solid container for all of their mutual—what? Sadness? Emptiness?

I decide to pretend that my parents understand me. If I bully on, will they? “Adrian and I loved each other, I think, but it wasn’t enough.”

They have nothing to say because I’ve uttered the word
love.
It hangs in the air, bobbing like that apple before Eve plucked it from the limb. I want to say,
I’m the result of dead love. Do you hear me? Say something something something.

But there is nothing to say.

Again, there’s my sister. My mother always curled my hair before school. Meg’s hair was curly. I never got to pick out barrettes or scrunchies—my mother always had a box of them. I wouldn’t realize until years later that they were Meg’s. There are little things like that—the details of being raised in the shadow of a dead sister.

Still nothing from my parents.

I imagine the sound of our blinking eyelids. Ticking. A form of Morse code we can’t understand.

Finally, I whisper, “I have to go.”

There’s a burst of adrenaline with their good-byes.
Take care! Be safe! Have fun! Talk soon!
I feel it, too, a diluvia of relief.

And I press end, grip the phone and pat my fridge, like it’s the flank of a horse. “Steady now. Easy, big fella.”

I knock on the door to Chin’s office after hours. I can hear people inside, a lot of competing voices, playful yelling, and a stutter of laughter. Maybe Chin’s having some sort of party. Two young manicurists from the Nail-A-Rama are out front smoking cigarettes in their matching green aprons, and shivering. They wave to me and I wave back. They laugh nervously as if I’ve waved incorrectly. Can you wave wrong?

I knock again, but I’m pretty sure no one can hear me, and so I give the door a push. It swings open easily.

The waiting room is smoky and full of people sitting in all of the spare chairs, pulled up around the coffee table, playing cards. They’re using cone-shaped paper cups that you find in dispensers near water coolers to do shots of Jack Daniel’s.

Chin’s there. He’s kicked off his slippers. They sit, pigeon-toed and empty under his chair. Chin’s bare feet are tough and honestly corned. His legs stretched out, he’s leaning back in his chair, squinting at his hand. He looks almost nothing like the doctor I saw earlier in the day. His chin tucked to his chest, his face looks bloated. His eyes, though squinting, are bleary and restless.

Lisa, the receptionist, and the nurse who told me to undress, are here, too, plus an elegant man with a gray pomp of hair, wearing some kind of pretentious scarf, an Asian man, and two guys who look like poker-playing clichés.

“Jump in next round,” one of the strangers says.

The receptionist eyes me like I just dropped off a bunch of pizzas, collected my tip, but refused to leave.

“We need new blood,” the stranger says.

Chin doesn’t look up. He’s intent on the game, although he doesn’t look very good at it. I can tell from his furrowed brow that he’s bluffing. Truth is, I would love to be dealt in. I’m not bad at poker. I’m a natural at bluffing, which, I figure, is probably a bad thing in the long haul—proof of my insincerity, maybe proof of my Thigpen nature.

I can’t jump in; I haven’t told Madge where I am. She’ll assume I stopped off at a bar with Bart if I’m a little late, but if I start in at poker, she might get worried. And I don’t have my phone with me to call her, because, in a sad, ironic twist, I left it in Lost Cell Phones. I worked hard for the last hour, to make up for lost time, and sorted it into a bin. Is a cell phone also a source of someone’s identity? Does this back up Madge’s theory about my identity problem? I’m pretty sure it will.

Without my cell phone, I feel weird like I’m in an antigravity machine. It’s strangely liberating. No one knows where I am . . . not even my cell phone.

“I’m here for my wallet,” I say. “I left it here today.”

Chin looks up. He’s clearly drunk. The squinting is necessary just to pin me down and focus. “Oh, the guy with all the questions. You sure you don’t want in?”

Feeling warmly welcomed, I smile and joke, “Why don’t you just put on the helmet and find out how the game ends?”

No one thinks this is funny. “Old joke,” the man in the pretentious scarf tells me. He offers me a paper cone cup of Jack, which I decline and then briefly regret declining.

“Hey, wise guy,” Chin says. “This is my brother, Earl. You didn’t believe in him, did you?” Earl looks up and smiles. He’s Chinese, his hair has a surfer feel to it, shaggy but lightly groomed. “Earl,” Chin says. “Are you my brother?”

Earl nods and says, “Sure am!”

I smile and say hello. “So, is my wallet here?” I ask.

Lisa says, “I call.” There’s a small uproar. Folks put down their weak hands. She wins with three of a kind and rakes in the money. “Your wallet’s on the filing cabinet.”

“I’ll take him back,” Chin says, shoving his pale, corned feet into his slippers. He gets up unsteadily and leads me back through the door marked
OFFICE
.

“Seriously,” I say, “you never glimpse into your future for yourself, not even a little bit?”

“You can’t keep your eye on the distant horizon. It’s disorienting.” He picks up my wallet and throws it to me.

“Technically, the horizon’s very orienting, if you’re lost. Isn’t it?” I say, thumbing through my wallet to make sure it’s all there.

“How about this? If you keep your eye on the horizon, you’re going to trip on the path.”

“But you’d know what was coming, if you’d seen the rock or whatever up ahead a few years earlier.”

“Okay. If you keep your eye on the horizon, you may miss the flowers on the side of the path.”

I hesitate. “Okay.”

“Why don’t you try the Five-Pack? You look like someone who might have stumbled upon some worthy girlfriends at some point who might deserve a second glance.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll give you a discount. Five for the price of three. Can you come up with that many?”

“Yes,” I say defensively. I’m already thinking about the Ellis twins. There’s two right off the top of my head.

“Okay, then, you can tell me after it’s all done if you’re better for having known. Okay?”

“Deal.”

As Chin heads for the door, I ask, “Why do you work in a business that you don’t believe in?”

“Do
you
believe in
your
work?”

Chin won this hand. “Fair enough,” I tell him.

“Most people don’t believe in their work, especially the ones who start out believing wholeheartedly in it.”

“Did you believe in all of this once?” I ask.

Chin’s closes his eyes, as if he’s been caught in a lie, and shrugs. “I might have.”

“What happened?” I put my wallet in my back pocket.

“Life is disenchanting. The future is bleak and flimsy. Why rush into it?” He claps me on the shoulder. “But don’t take my word for it. Find out for yourself.”

WHEN I FINALLY GET
home, it’s late. I stayed on at Chin’s playing poker, even smoking a few cigarettes, which I haven’t done in years, and had a few shots, which I’ve never done out of paper cone cups. I made some money, though—some pocket change, the amount of which I can exaggerate for effect if Madge starts in on me too hard. I had to leave my car at Chin’s. Earl drove me home. The trade-off of my wallet for my car feels like a net loss.

As I unlock the door, I brace myself. I know Madge might be sitting on the edge of the sofa, holding the remote, but the television will be off. Her face might be oily from her night lotion, and I’ll have to start apologizing quickly. I’ll have to explain about losing my cell phone—which is an excuse that may work against me—and how Dr. Chin
insisted
I play a few hands. I’ll understand how worried she is, of course. I’ll understand why she’s angry, of course. And I’ll tell her that’s why I love her so much.

If I play it right, there may be conciliatory sex. (Why do I think this thought? I’m a Thigpen!)

The lights are off. I flip a switch. The living room is empty. No Madge.

I take off my shoes and walk into the living room and stare a minute.

Let me take a minute with the decor of our apartment. Aside from the re-creation of my bachelor pad in the small, almost closet-sized spare room, it’s been taken over by Madge’s retro style: a wall-mounted, spring-cord telephone, an ancient toaster oven. She once wrote a paper for a feminist studies course in which she made the case that the 1970s marked a decade of the height of American worship of masculinity, which was so strong that people actually made design decisions inspired by the chest pelts of some machismo actors—hence the abundance of brown shag rugs. (The paper includes old photographs of Burt Reynolds, shirtless.) In celebration of the A on her paper, Madge bought a brown shag throw rug for the living room. I don’t have much use for the past. As much as I want to believe it was perfect, old things make me feel sad and fleeting, like a mere blurry image of myself, fading fast.

I rub my feet on the rug for a moment and then whisper her name.

No answer.

I rush through the kitchen, peek into the spare room—which may one day end up in a basement somewhere—then open the bedroom door.

There’s Madge, her face oily with her night lotion, true, but she’s fast asleep.

I put my hands on my hips and look around the room. Then I walk up close to see if she’s breathing. Maybe she’s dead and that’s why she’s not up on the couch holding the remote, with the TV off, worried. But her ribs rise and fall. Is she sleeping in anger? Is this part of my punishment? I look around the room some more. I don’t get it.

I cough.

She doesn’t wake up.

I walk to the squeaky board near the bathroom and bounce on it. Nothing. I bounce on it again and again. Still nothing.

I go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, run water in the sink, and bounce on the squeaky board; then I stand over the bed and cough loudly.

Madge rolls to her back. She opens her eyes. “I fell asleep,” she says, a little surprised.

“I see that,” I say.

And then without another word she rolls to her other side, away from the bathroom light, and falls back to sleep.

By the time I climb into bed, I’m thinking about my five-for-the-price-of-three deal. I lost my virginity with Liz Chase who was good and wholesome—I dumped her for no apparent reason, except that maybe I decided it was hard to be around someone who was so much better than I was—the constant reminder of how very much I fall short. And there were the Ellis twins. We’d grown up in the same circles, though they were both a little wilder than my crowd, as if they goaded each other. I dated the less attractive one during summer break from college and then stair-stepped my way to the prettier one. It’s probably not surprising how much in the end they really hated me.

In any of those futures, would I be quarantined in the basement to jerk off ? In any of those futures, would my mother still be alive? Couldn’t Liz Chase’s impeccable karma keep my mother—her mother-in-law—alive?

I plump the pillows behind my head and I sniff the air. There’s a strange odor I can’t quite put my finger on—deathy? Does our bedroom smell like it’s suffered a small death? Can this be anything but a bad sign?

That night I dream that my mother and I are at an indoor hotel swimming pool. She’s saying, “There’s an endless supply of towels here, Godfrey. Simply endless!” She seems younger and more radiant—moist with steam.

I smile at her. “That’s good to hear,” I say. “It’s a great place.”

She hands me towels, one after the other, until I’m weighted down with them. I walk to the pool’s edge. The pool is filled with people fully dressed in suits and dresses, an occasional ball gown.

Then I see a woman who’s hard to place exactly. She’s wearing a bathing cap and a nose pinch. She’s pushing a kickboard through the crowded pool, her arms straight, her legs fluttering behind like a little motor. When she sees me, she stands in the shallow end, tucking her board under her arm. Then she makes a small gesture, like closing a book, and I know exactly who she is—the woman from Dr. Chin’s office.

I instinctively tighten my knees against each other. “What are you doing here?” I ask, but the room is so echoey, she can’t hear me. She cups her ear and mouths, “What?”

I repeat the question, but the words bounce and warble, like they’re stuck in the dead end of a maze. She shrugs and waves.

I wave back.

My mother shows up again, grabbing my shoulder. She points into the pool and says, “Look, look! How pretty!”

And then I notice mice in the blue water, swishing beneath the surface in darting schools.

I wake up in the middle of the night, sweaty and breathless. I sniff the air again and now I can place the deathy smell; it’s a mouse, dead in the walls somewhere.