The Genius of Little Things (11 page)

“I lived in Los Angeles for one year,” I answered. “I didn’t live near the beach, but in a place called the San Fernando Valley. It was 300 miles away, roughly, a 50-minute plane ride, and an unknown but long period of time by foot. No meteor sightings.”

Eddie pulled out some avocado pits from the box. Pre-empting his question, I told him my biological mother was going to use them to plant trees.

“Why didn’t she?”

“She lost interest.”

He dropped the pits and pulled out a publicity post card with my BiMo posing in front of a combo of musicians. She had a microphone in her hand. “Is she a singer? Did you make her mad? Is she nicer than your new mother? Where does she live? Why aren’t you talking? Are you in a bad mood?”

I ripped the post card from his hand with a force that surprised me. I told him the lesson was beginning.

Eddie finished his arithmetic homework with nary a peep. The sensory depravation of my empty bedroom may have been helpful. “You’re my best teacher ever,” he said, unprompted, before he ran out to meet Sun. He seemed sincere about this. I didn’t feel obligated to say he was my best student, because I would have been lying.

Later that night, I went to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. Janet cornered me and said what a polite little boy Eddie was and how nice his mother was. I informed her that Sun was his housekeeper/nanny and that Eddie was usually a hellion.

“Does his mother work? Why does she leave him alone? Where is his father? They just leave the kid alone all day?” With every “I don’t know” I uttered, Janet grew more exasperated.

I wanted to change the conversation, so I told her I was on the verge of a breakthrough in the honeybee colony collapse syndrome. This was a wild exaggeration, but it didn’t matter, because Janet ignored what I said. She opened a bottle of wine with a fancy battery-operated cork extractor.

My BiMo never drank. I suppose that was a good thing. Adding alcohol to her mental and emotional turbulence would be like adding amine to sodium hypochlorite, or possibly acetone to chloroform in the presence of a base. That’s a chemistry analogy.

“Can you tell me why you’re not using your new phone?” Janet said, blocking my exit. “We both left messages for you.”

I promised her I would listen to them and use the phone to call her.

“I’m here now. Anything you’d like to talk about?”

There wasn’t, and for a moment I thought it might be a trick question. One FoMa approached me in that way, thinking I would confess about stealing money from her drawer. I hadn’t even gone in her room, ever. One of her sullen and pierced biological daughters had taken it. Or she had misplaced it. My denial didn’t sway her. I was moved to a new FoHo within days.

“How is… business?”

Janet uttered a growl of annoyance. It was kind of a no-win situation she put me in, demanding to talk, yet not informing me of off-limit topics.

“Last year was bad, but this year has been a shit storm. Sellers are turning to section eight. Good luck with that. They’ll find their places trashed. It’s not going to end until they bulldoze some neighborhoods. This area could end up looking like it did a thousand years ago. Might not be a bad thing.”

I saw an opening. I informed her that what was now the Las Vegas valley was, millions of years ago, the ocean floor. Thick deposits of Ordovician mudstone could be seen in the nearby deserts, which was evidence of a great flood. I had covered all of this in a 7th grade geology report, “Soft Rock and Heavy Metals: What You Didn’t Know About Nevada’s Geology.” I added that they shouldn’t worry about flooding from global warming either, because the city was more than 2,000 feet above sea level. But the heat may make the valley uninhabitable.

Janet drained her glass. “Interesting,” she said, as if she didn’t want to hear any more. She poured another glass of wine. I stayed in the kitchen, in case she wasn’t done with me.

“Carl’s dad moved out here and bought this place because he thought the weather would be good for his health. But the desert doesn’t heal cancer.
You
probably could have told him that.”

No, because I didn’t know him then. That’s what I almost said.

“Then he dies and leaves the place to Carl and his other son. Carl bought out his brother at the top of the market. Then the market dropped and we couldn’t sell the house in California, and this place is worth a third of what it used to be.”

“It’s a nice house,” I said.

She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the window, which was closed. “Hollow doors. Drywall had mold. Mold in the
desert
. But this stucco box
had
to stay in the family. Sentimental value. If Carl was so sentimental, why didn’t he buy the old man’s house in Michigan?”

It wasn’t clear whether I should answer the question. I didn’t know a lot about real estate. It was a personal matter anyway.

She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette in a wooden African bowl. “What I said on the voice mail was, if you need a ride, ask us. I asked you not to ride your bike. There are no bike lanes and the drivers here are idiots. And you
don’t
have to pay us for gas.”

I was momentarily miffed that she was still forbidding me to ride my bike. But we had begun to have a nice conversation. It seemed unwise to ruin it. I thanked her and promised to ask her for a ride sometime, knowing I wouldn’t ask her.

I should have studied that night. Instead I rummaged through my Box o’ Crap while I listened to one of my BiMo’s CDs on my laptop computer. There was a medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “It’s a Wonderful World” that I listened to every year on the anniversary of my BiMo’s death. I hated the song. Listening to it was an act of self-abuse.

My BiMo would not have stayed put like Carl and Janet. She moved once a year, at least. Sometimes it was her choice, sometimes the landlord’s, sometimes her boyfriend of the moment. She thought the most important thing was being in motion. One time, we even moved from a great place with a pool, though I still didn’t swim in it, just because she thought the building’s “vibe” blocked her creativity. But she didn’t have any better luck at the next place. She began keeping things in boxes, in case she needed to move again suddenly. At times I wondered if moving was more of a compulsion than a joyful act of seeking freedom.

“Don’t end up like me,” she said. “Find out what you’re good at and do everything you can until you succeed at it. Don’t let anything stand in your way.” She gave a lot of advice about life. Some of it was useful, like the many times she told me to study hard, go to the best school, and “you get what you settle for.”

I started culling from my Box o’ Crap. I removed some of the obviously useless stuff, like the avocado pits and the dead pens. Then I went for some of the BiMo stuff, like the take-out menu from Thai Me Down. I didn’t need to look at any of that, ever. It went into a manila envelope and into the trash.

I said I wasn’t going to bring up my BiMo anymore, but I’m afraid it’s going to be necessary.

TEN

Guten morgen! Guten tag!
By initiating the first German club in Firebird High School’s history, not only have I shown leadership qualities, I also have experienced the
joy thrill ecstasy pride
that comes from
saving the day
picking up the gauntlet
blazing a trail
taking the bull by the horns
padding
my application
.

SCHEIZEN
. CUT.

**

College application padding was complete.

Firebird High’s fledgling German program consisted of two small classes, but Caltech wouldn’t need to know that. Our teacher, Frau Soto, thought the German club idea was
wunderbarste
.

One person showed up on time for the kick-off meeting, a slightly pudgy brunette with a doughy complexion. Her German class name was Annette-Barbel. She was a little bit too excited about the club. “We’re like the Continental Congress of Firebird’s German program,” she gushed.

We agreed that I would be chancellor and she would be vice-chancellor. Choosing officers was my only agenda item. I was about to adjourn the meeting when a guy ran into the room, out of breath and wild-eyed. It was Jann-Otto, the one who had complained that he wouldn’t be accepted to Stanford on grades and SAT scores. When Annette-Barbel informed him that we had chosen officer titles, he became irate. “You couldn’t wait till everyone got here?” His voice was nasal and screechy. I made a mental note to keep my voice low, clear and resonant, just like Ms. Gurzy taught us in the Creative Soul vocal exercises.

“Everybody
was
here and I don’t think it’s fair to interrupt a meeting already in progress,” Annette-Barbel said. “If you had a conflict, you should have informed Helmut.” Helmut was my German class name.

Jann-Otto wouldn’t let it drop. He told us he was going to graduate summa cum laude—as if that mattered—and said he had the idea for German club weeks ago. She told him he should have expressed his idea at the time.

He kept clicking his pen fast enough to cause a thumb sprain. “So we’re going to be undemocratic? We’re just going to let this guy run things?” Again, he meant me. I never appreciated being referred to in the third person.

I stood and told them both that I would iron out issues such as what title to give Jann-Otto—I was thinking of some very special titles—at the next meeting.

“I should be an officer right now,” he said. “My application deadline to Stanford is in less than three weeks.” I really, really hated his voice. His insistence on padding his application, as I was doing, made me suddenly want to run the club for real. But I had planned nothing for the first meeting. I needed to get out of there and look for a job.

 “Meeting adjourned!” I slapped my hand on the desk. This was the new Tyler, powerful and assertive, ready to slam his hand down hard enough to make it sting.

As I rushed toward the nearest exit I passed the
Clarion
office. The door was open. I slowed down long enough to glance inside, acting nonchalant in a way that suggested
I’m walking very slowly and there’s nothing else to look at in this hallway, so I might as well take a peek.

I stopped. Rachel was sitting at a desk, reading. She had a way of biting her lower lip when she was writing or thinking. She was doing it now. I found it appealing.

Her shirt said,
Why don’t hedgehogs just share the hedge?

I laughed. Just a quick,
ha
.

Rachel looked up. So did the two guys at the desk behind her. We were all frozen in time. I know that’s not scientifically possible. It’s just an expression I heard once. Rachel stuck her tongue out. I pivoted and fast-walked out of the building.

**

October 13. Activities with FoPas, in no particular order:

·
        
FoPa Three. Helped them wash the dogs. It was my idea because they smelled. The dogs smelled, I mean. I also joined them and their four other fosters and three biological children at an interminable UNLV basketball game. Was almost left behind.

·
        
FoPa Two. Went to their biological daughter’s middle school band concert. As they bleated out a noxious rendition of some current pop song, I considered how many pints of blood might gush out of my body before the concert ended, if I should stab myself in the throat. It was difficult to estimate. There were three variables: whether I was standing or sitting, the length of the concert, and the tightness of my shirt collar.

·
        
FoPa One. Went to his Pentecostal church three Sundays in a row. On the third visit, I went through the motions and even spoke in tongues, which pleased him until he realized that I was loudly reciting the periodic table of elements. He never dragged me there again.

·
        
FoPa Five. Joined them on several trips to an upscale furniture store when they were redecorating their house. Learned the differences in colors and fabrics.

·
        
FoPa Four. I can’t remember any.

·
        
Carl. A driving lesson???

**

On Saturday morning, I passed Carl in the driveway when I was on my way to the pharmacy. He was sitting in his red VW GTI and staring straight ahead, as if his mesmerized by the steering wheel. He didn’t notice me, and I didn’t want to disturb him in case he was in deep mediation. I was concerned that surprising a person in a deep trance could cause a heart attack or other bodily trauma. I walked by him without waving.