You Only Get So Much (6 page)

Chapter 9

I wrote
Isolated Highway
in the attic crawl space in the house I shared with Jane and Aspen. The tiny
two bedroom house didn't have an office. No den. No privacy whatsoever. Jane
always said that was why she liked it so much. There was nothing we could do
except be together when we were home. Until I found a way to change that.

Sitting down at the
kitchen table to write meant that the rest of the house had to be quiet. I
tried headphones. I played loud music to drown out the rest of the world, but I
got distracted easily and often the rhythm of the music would put me to sleep.
I couldn't listen to anything with words in it, because I'd start paying
attention to the lyrics, not what I was supposed to be writing. So the beat
would drum in my ears and make me drowsy.

Jane was a busybody,
which isn't a negative statement about her. She would come home from her
work—cleaning teeth and picking out gunk from gums—and never sit
down to relax on the couch. She'd clean floors and pick gunk out of the carpet
or the back of some seldom-used cabinet. These menial tasks would occupy her
for the night. She didn't have many friends except for her co-workers and she'd
rarely go out with them after work for drinks or any kind of socialization.

She was content to
putter around and clean the house when Aspen was asleep. But watching this
buzzing about the house made me feel guilty for not helping, so I'd rush
through my minimum word count for writing each night and I'd join her.
 
That usually meant she then would stop
whatever she was doing and we'd end up watching some cooking or house
remodeling show on TV until we both fell asleep. Sometimes next to each other,
sometimes not. I'm not sure if she did it on purpose—clean and make me
feel guilty so I'd stop writing—but it was effective nonetheless.

So, when I discovered that
the rectangular hole in the hallway ceiling actually lead to a private space
within the house, I jumped on it, or rather climbed up into it. No more
distractions. Just writing. The attic crawl space was no larger than a walk-in
closet, not even tall enough for me to stand up in—which didn't matter
much, since I, like any sane person, write sitting down. In the summer it was a
sweatbox. In the winter it was a freezer. But for a few months in late spring,
it was just right. Or just write, depending on how much you like puns.

I did my original
handwritten draft in the blue notebooks. I worked on the manuscript for 14
months, half of which was editing and rewriting. I did that in my cramped
little attic too. When my back started to stiffen up from sitting at the desk,
I'd lie down on the plank-wood floor, halfway under the desk and work from
there. The glamorous world of literature.

Throughout those 14
months, I continued to work during the day selling insurance. The job sucked
the life out of me. But I felt free when I could write, even if I was cooped up
in the attic, locked away from my wife and daughter. I won't say that I missed
an entire year of Aspen's life, but I did miss a lot of it and I regret it
every single day.

Jane brought in the
majority of the household income then. It's not something that I was proud of,
but that's the reality in which we lived.

When I finally felt like
the book was in the best shape it could possibly get . .
 
. I revised one more time and then
started the process of getting it published. This was well before eBook
publishing tools allowed any amateur with a flair for writing to publish a
book. This was back in the dark ages when powerful literary agents and shadowy
editors held the monopoly on publishing. They were the gatekeepers and you had
to sell your soul to get inside the gate. A dirty business indeed.

I sent a query email to
a literary agent in New York—Monique. In fact, I sent out nearly 100
query emails to various agents in every corner of the country, but I remember
the note I got back from Monique above any of the other ones. Not just because
it wasn't a rejection letter—since that's all I ever received. She'd
rejected my other novels before too.

"This isn't as bad
as your other writing," she wrote back in an email. "Send me a full
manuscript to review."

She didn't even sign the
email. Just left it blank, for me to wonder if it was a real request from her,
or some typing mishap that happened to formulate two complete sentences that
were never intended for me in the first place.

It took one simple,
stupid fucking note from her to change my life's trajectory. It was the start
of a relationship that would rocket my professional writing career into orbit,
while simultaneously sinking my personal life into a hell from which I would
never escape.
 

If I could go back, I'd
never have written that goddamned book.

Chapter 10

The blasting horn of my
phone ringing wakes me up and it takes me a minute to realize I'm back in
Spokane.

After a few days at the
cabin, getting my shabby little Montana life packed into a series of boxes,
I've managed to roughly settle in at the Cedar House. And somehow during that
time Gracie must have gotten a hold of my phone and changed the default ringer.
The little device lets out a blaring siren of an alert—one that tells you
that the nuke plant up the street is about to blow and that you should just
kiss your ass goodbye.

I'm not a fan.

Or maybe it isn't that
loud, but inside my head, it's nuclear-holocaust time. The sound pounds on my
brain. The remnants of a night of solitary drinking are still well inside me. I
swim toward the plutonium-laced phone and swat it off the table. I don't
actually intend to send it flying to the floor, but my reach was off and my
back is starting to seize up from sleeping on the couch.

You see, I don't have a
bed at my brother's house. Sure, there's one sitting in his room—all made
up pretty, with extra pillows. But that's not my bed or my room. I can't sleep
there. I know it sounds stupid, but it just doesn't feel right. The guest room
is still filled with April's belongings and I really don't want to go through
them because I'm afraid of what I might find—drugs or anything else.
Eventually I'll tackle it, but it's not a priority.

I swing my legs over the
side of the couch and bang my right knee into the corner of the coffee table.
After letting out a few choice words I manage to get to my feet and stumble
toward the phone on the floor. The light streaming in the living room windows
invades my eyes. I squint in a vain attempt to block it out, thus blocking out
the view of the city which my brother prized so much that he bought this
oversized house on the hill to see it. The place is massive, but empty, like a
church on a Friday night. I'm not sure how he, Jennifer and the girls managed
to fill it up.

The phone continues to
blare.

I pick up my cell and
instantly recognize the number. Emanuel Sanchez from the GreyHawk. Sanchez had
been calling every day since I visited his office to see Mom and Dad.

"Mr. Redmond, we
need to come to some sort of an agreement about financing your parents'
long-term care," he would say during these calls. To which I would reply
that I'd love to help, but didn't have the means to do it. Of course, I'm lying
when I say I'd love to help. I didn't actually want to be involved at all and
hoped that by just ignoring his call I would not end-up owning the problem
myself. I'm sorry that Trevor picked-up the tab and now he couldn't, but how
was that my problem? He was the big shot, rich doctor. I couldn't do stuff like
that.

I set the phone back on
the table. Maybe Sanchez would just give up.

I pull the curtains
closed in the living room and make a strong pot of coffee in the kitchen. While
I wait for it to brew I quietly creep to the side of the house where Kendall
and Gracie's rooms are located. If I move slow enough I won't wake them up.
Like the children have motion-sensors on their eyelids or something.
 
It's worth a shot. My knee aches as I
trudge along.

Trevor had divided the
place up so that the girls had their own little wing of the house which
included a shared balcony with the view of the city. The hallway walls were
decorated with flowers and pastel colors. It looked like an Easter display from
Target had barfed all over the place. Little end tables dotted a small nook
with overstuffed chairs from Pottery Barn or some other obscenely over-priced
outlet.

I'm sure Gracie loved
it, being a girl and all. I, on the other hand, found it mildly disturbing that
Trevor and Jennifer would spend what was undoubtedly a small fortune to furnish
the hallway. I was more of a minimalist, obviously.

I peek through the crack
of Gracie's open door and spot even more Easter Bunny vomit plastered all over
the rainbow-themed room.
 
Snoozing
quietly in the center of it all is Gracie. I'm half-tempted to turn on my
phone's ringer and blast her awake to get back at her for messing with my
phone, but I refrain because I'm not a complete jerk all the time.

*
* *

Gracie had a tough
previous evening and deserved the sleep. She'd been invited to swim at her
friend Tabitha's house. Gracie and Tabitha attend the same school
together—Five Mile Elementary. The little girl's
mom—Georgia—set up a play date. I dropped her off at noon with a
bag packed with a swimsuit and towel. After a brief lecture by Georgia for
neglecting to bring sunscreen for Gracie, I was allowed to leave as long as I
promised to be back by 5:00 that evening.
 
I promised and left.
 
Sunscreen? You're lucky I remembered a swimsuit, lady, I thought to
myself as I walked to the truck.

What exactly transpired
next was only relayed to me by Georgia, as Gracie refused to discuss it at all
when I showed up to get her 45 minutes after I left her there. She just sat in
the back of the car and stared out the window. Although by looking at
her—and her hair—it was pretty obvious what she'd done.

"I asked your niece
to go into the bathroom by the kitchen and change into her swimsuit—and
she came out like that!" she spat at me, pointing to Gracie's now
incredibly lopsided and jagged self-styled haircut.

The uneven slashes to
her hair looked like the edges of a flag that had been waving and slapping on
some metal pole for decades and been torn to pieces.

Her beautiful blonde
hair which had previously grown well below her shoulders was now just above her
ear on the right side, but hung awkwardly at her neck on the left side.
 

"She must have
grabbed the scissors in the kitchen before going in there," she said,
obviously embarrassed. "I just . . . didn't know what else to do but have
you come get her. What if my Tabby copies this outrageous behavior? This sort
of thing just doesn't happen in this house."

"Well, apparently
it does," I said, annoyed that the woman had decided the worst thing to
come out of this incident was the chance that her own daughter might get an
idea in her head.

"And thanks for the
play date," I said. "We'll have to do this again sometime."

Georgia just stared at
me, her mouth agape.

Gracie didn't cry or get
upset, even when I took her to the Super Cuts and had them even out wild
haircut.
 
The stylist managed to
erase the cavewoman look. It's now very short—just slightly longer than a
boy—but nowadays, who knows what passes for a boy haircut.

"You know
what?" I told her, "I think you look cute."

She just nodded and said
noting until we got back to the house.

"I just wanted it
different," was all she said. She skipped dinner and went straight to bed
at 5:30.

In truth, she did look
cute—a kid with parents who looked like Trevor and Jennifer had a lot
going for her in any case. Short hair. Long hair. Bed hair. Didn't really
matter.

I can only imagine that
cutting your own hair wasn't an option before I came into the picture. Gracie
probably had a Jennifer-approved hairstylist who did it for her. Gracie was so
calm about the whole thing, which I find odd, but can't pinpoint why. Maybe she
did just wanted it shorter and that was the only reason. Maybe.

I quietly close Gracie's
door to let her get the sleep that she obviously needs.

*
* *

Kendall's door is
closed, but not locked. She had asked to make breakfast in the morning and I
wanted to make sure she got started because honestly, I'm starving. I twist the
handle and slowly pushed it open to wake her up.

I hear a thud, then a
male voice.

"Fuck, man. What
the hell?" the voice says.

It was
Ethan—Kendall's boyfriend.

Great.

Chapter 11

All I see is a pale
moon. Sitting atop two hairy trunks is a pale, cracked-in-half, vertical moon. Ethan's
moon. Kendall's boyfriend's bare ass. He's bending over, putting himself on
full display for me.
 
It wiggles,
but for some reason I can't look away. Why is this ass in my face? Why in the
middle of Kendall's room—one that thankfully doesn't look like Easter
eggs or rainbows—is this thing looking at me?

Reality confronts me.
The little pecker slept over—in her bedroom. Her bed! While I rode the
lumpy couch in the living room he was in here with Kendall, doing
God-knows-what. OK, both God and I know what they were probably doing, but it's
an image I'd like to banish from my mind forever.

Man, I hate this kid.

I glance at the clock on
the wall. The one sitting in front of the vintage Guns 'n' Roses poster on the
wall. 7:45 a.m.

The moon finally sets,
covered by a pair of blue jeans hastily pulled upward and shook into place.

Then I hear a howl from
Ethan that can only be described as a man facing his greatest fear. A
terrifying wail.

Ethan spins around with
his hands clutching his crotch, the blood trickling down his pant leg. He
caught his penis in the zipper of his pants. Poking out from the half-zipped
pants was the nub of his organ.

"Oh my God,
Ethan!" Kendall screams as she rushes toward him and reaches out.

"No!" he
shouts. "Don't touch it! No!"

His voice is high and
pained.
 

He stumbles backward
trying to avoid her investigative probing. He's leaning against the wall, still
holding himself.

What seems like an
eternity passes as all three of us stand there, unsure what to do about this
recent development.

"Help me,
man," he says to me. "It's stuck."

"No shit,
genius," I say. For some reason the rage and awe I felt moments ago had
been replaced by sympathy for this idiot. "Let me take a look."

Now, let me say this.
I'm a man's man. I like beer and football and women with large breasts. At the
urinal I stare straight ahead, as to never give the impression that my eyes
could even once wander in the direction of another man's exposed body parts.
That's the guy code—or at least part of it. Keep your eyes to yourself.
This is why so many guys get hurt in the locker room shower. You only have so
much real estate available on the ground for you to look at. Walking into walls
or bolted-down wooden benches are common locker room ailments. And it is worth
it to avoid seeing another man's wang.

I'm not interested in
seeing another man's junk—this is the thought coursing through my head as
I kneel down in front of Ethan.

"You need to move
your hand," I say.
 
"I
can't see what you did."

"No way, man. It's gonna
come off."

"Well, that would
be something, alright."

"Screw you,"
he says.

I glance up and give him
a look that says
I'm
not the guy to piss off right now
. His idiot brain realizes this and he
moves his hand to the side, pushing his penis over at the same time.
Immediately Kendall plops down next to me and leans against my shoulder to get
a better view.

"Uh-oh," she
says, covering her mouth.

"Do you mind giving
me the tiniest bit of room, please?" I ask her.
 

She scoots over, but
only a few inches. Uh-oh is right. The zipper caught him just below the base of
his manhood. Without getting in close enough to count, I would guess that three
or four of the zipper teeth are locked on the skin.

"You need to
unzip," I say.

"No. No way. It'll
come apart," he mutters through clinched teeth.

"So you plan to
stay this way forever? OK." I stand up, ready to walk out. I don't need
this.

"You can't just
leave me here," he pleads.

"I didn't ask you
to stay here, at all," I say. "She did. I don't really care what you
do."

I shoot Kendall a look
and notice for the first time, that unlike the wounded soldier in front of me,
she is fully clothed. Long black pants and a light green tee-shirt. And she
didn't just put it on, she was wearing that when I opened the door.

 
"You do it," he says.

"Do what,
exactly?" I reply.

"Unzip it," he
pleads.

"That's not my
department. Kendall, would you like to do the honors?" I ask. She blushes
and shakes her head no. I look at Ethan, who notes her rejection.

"You're up,
buddy," I say. "I'll count to three and then you let 'er rip."

He mouths the word,
"OK."

We lock eyes like we're
cops about to raid a drug house together and I'm asking him to cover my back as
I go in.

"Alright, here
goes—you ready?" I ask.

He says nothing but nods
his head rapidly. I begin the countdown.

"OK. One . . . two
. . . th—"

"Wait!" he
says, "I can't do it!"

"Unless you want to
start peeing through your jeans, you're going to have to detach yourself from
your pants."

"You do it."

Not this again.

"Just grasp the
zipper with one hand and your dick with the other, and pull," I say.

"OK. OK." He's
practically panting now. "I can do it."

"One . . .
 
two . . . three!"

"Awwwwww!" he
screams and then passes out.

*
* *

The nurse at the
emergency room didn't exactly laugh at Ethan when we arrived, but the chuckle
was enough to make my day anyway. Since there was no way he was going to be
able to wear a pair of pants for a while, I decided to give him a bathrobe to
cover-up with. This was nice in several ways, mostly benefiting me. Trevor
didn't have a robe and Kendall's was too small. Luckily Jennifer's pink
floor-length robe with puffy white cuffs and collar fit just perfectly.

So there sits Ethan,
still holding himself, wrapped up tightly in his fancy pink robe.

"You know, a man
can survive without a penis, right?" I say, only half kidding.

"Very funny,"
he says.

"It's true. It's
just a little messier when the action starts."

To the kid's credit, he
did manage to get the zipper unstuck with one ferocious pull. It was a feat I'm
not certain I'd be able to manage had I been in the same situation. Of course,
just thinking that means I've instantly jinxed myself. Time to get some
button-fly jeans, I guess.

Kendall sits next to
Ethan in the waiting room, gently rubbing his back and telling him everything
is going to be OK. In another context, this sort of affection would be cute,
but I am still quite bothered by the events that occurred prior to the zipper
incident.

When Ethan gets called
back to see the doctor, we all stand up, Gracie included. She of course had to
tag along too. Ethan waves us off, preferring to face the medical staff solo.
So I finally get to address Kendall about what the hell she was thinking by
letting Ethan secretly sleep over.

"I don't see what
the big deal is," she says. "He does it all the time."

"I highly doubt
that."

"Whatever,"
she shrugs her shoulders.

"Your mom and dad
were OK with that?" I ask.

"Beats being alone
all the time."

This is going to come
out wrong, but I have to say it anyway.

"You do realize
that as a 17-year-old girl, everything that you are eligible to do when you are
married can still lead to, you know, pretty dramatic stuff."

"What are you
talking about?" she asks.

"You need to be
careful because you're able to do stuff, even if you're not really ready to do
stuff."

 
"Oh my Lord, Uncle Billy are you
afraid to say the word sex?"

"I'm just trying
to—"

"SEX!!" she
shouts to every listening ear in the waiting room. "I'm not ashamed to say
it. Can you?"

"Stop acting like a
child," I say, realizing instantly how condescending and parental that
sounds.

"I am a child,
remember?" She says. "But still eligible to do
stuff
."

"You're too young
to have a boy sleep in your bed."

"I'll be 18 in 10
months."

"Thanks for the
calendar update, but right now, you're 17 and too young to have a boy sleeping
in your bed."

"I wasn't trying to
hide him."

"Come again?"

"I wasn't trying to
hide him. He came over last night. You were passed out on the couch when I
would have told you he was staying over—"

"
Asked
if he
could stay over," I interrupt.

"Whatever. So he
just slept over."

"And woke up
naked."

"He said he was
hot," she says.

"I'm sure he
was," I say, knowing that every boy his age uses that line.

I'm suddenly aware that
the old couple sitting across from us is listening to our every word. And the
black guy with the blood-soaked bandage around his hand is staring at us. And
I'm certain that the people sitting behind us—and Gracie—have heard
it all.

"We didn't do
anything," she says. "We just slept."

I do remember her
getting out of bed in long pants and green shirt.

"It doesn't
matter," I say.

"Why?"

"Because it
doesn't."

"Good reason,"
she says.

I look over a Gracie and
her newly-short hair and think about yesterday's incident. So, my good reason?
Which I dare not say, but is likely clear to everyone—including the black
guy with the bloody hand and the old couple—is that I have no idea what
the hell I'm doing. Gracie is chopping off her own hair. Kendall is sleeping
with her boyfriend in her own bedroom and I'm just the guy counting to three to
release the penis.

I'm not helping these
girls one bit.