Dig, page 16
Mike comes over at seven to apologize for missing dinner. I didn’t even know he was invited.
“Small neighborhood emergency,” he says. “My brother’s sister-in-law has a sinkhole.”
Mom seems unimpressed.
I say, “Is it big?” while trying to navigate Mike’s family tree. It must be huge if he’s helping his brother’s sister-in-law. They all live near one another. Must be nice.
“Nearly swallowed her car,” Mike says.
“What’d you do?” I ask.
“Blocked it off with cones and caution tape. City says they’ll be out later this week. By that time, the whole street could go under!” Mike says.
Mom looks down at her phone and grunts.
He looks at me. “Wanna watch some baseball?”
Marla & Gottfried’s Saturday Field Trip Overtime
Gottfried has always been practical. It’s something Marla found attractive from day one. And so, when a crowd gathers—the antique seller, the cashew-milk seller, a few Mennonites who sell meat—Gottfried fans his wife’s face and tells them to stand back.
He hands Marla’s purse to the cashew-milk seller and says, “In her wallet. The change-purse part. Smelling salts.”
A man says, “I’ll call nine-one-one.”
Gottfried levels an intense stare at the man and says, “Don’t call nine-one-one.” He holds the smelling salts under his wife’s nose.
The cashew-milk lady hands back Marla’s purse and asks, “She gonna be okay?”
“Yes,” he answers, “she’s always doing something dramatic.” He laughs a little to put the woman at ease. She’s very nice. She’s the reason he tried the cashew milk in the first place. He doesn’t really like the taste outside the chocolate flavor. It’s her. She’s the reason he’s been insisting on trips to the farmers’ market. She gives free samples of raw vegetable juice that sometimes burns Gottfried’s eyes out. Nothing like that around when he was younger. Just regular juice. Orange, apple, the occasional cranberry. This woman sells juice that makes Gottfried’s system really work again. He reckons it’s the ginger or the turmeric. Either way, things work—things that haven’t worked in years. Also, the cashew-milk woman is beautiful. She dyes her hair interesting colors. She wears low-cut tops and has tattoos.
“What in the world are you doing?” That’s Marla saying that. She wakes up and finds her husband talking to the tattooed girl who sells the nut milk. She seems to be on the floor. There’s gaudy jewelry all around her. Two young Mexican kids stand, wide-eyed, as if Marla’s fainting were the most exciting thing they saw all day.
Gottfried helps her up slowly and apologizes to the antique seller, who is collecting the jewelry from the floor.
The Mennonites go back to their meat stand.
The cashew-milk lady goes back behind her counter.
Marla and Gottfried stand, feeling old, in the middle of the walkway. People have been avoiding that area, and Gottfried feels bad that he may be losing the cashew-milk lady some business.
He takes Marla’s arm and walks toward the parking lot.
She wants to walk more slowly, but he hurries her. He feels a rush of embarrassment. Like the day with the robins. Like the time when he was ten and he broke his arm sledding. Marla asks, “I didn’t V when I was out, did I? It smells like V.” Gottfried doesn’t answer.
Only when he gets to the car does he look at Marla’s face. She seems like a little girl—suddenly simple as she climbs into her seat. Gottfried gets in his side and starts the car. Marla sighs and puts her head back on the headrest and says, “Oh!”
Gottfried sees her jolt in pain and puts his hand on the back of her head. There, he finds a lump the size of a plum. “Shit,” he says. “That’s not good, kiddo.”
“It’s probably nothing,” she says.
“Doctor should see it. We’re not twenty anymore.”
Marla doesn’t answer. Gottfried drives.
Gottfried swears at a car that cuts him off. “Marla? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Marla says. “Is that your phone ringing?”
Gottfried’s ringtone is set to the song “Jingle Bells” all year long, and indeed, it’s ringing but Gottfried doesn’t answer it.
Marla sounds far away when she says, “I wish you’d change that damn ringer song. It’s embarrassing.”
Gottfried makes a right turn toward the hospital emergency room.
“The hospital!” Marla squeals. “What’re you bringing me here for?”
“Just getting you checked out.”
“I don’t want to be near sick people,” Marla says, sounding far away again.
Gottfried is worried.
“Sick people throw up,” she says.
“Sick people cough on me,” she says.
“Sick people die,” she says. “Like Harry.”
“Harry isn’t dead,” Gottfried says. “He’s gonna be fine. Got our genes, didn’t he?”
“When he comes back from that stupid island, I’m going to lay down the law about that boy.” Marla can’t remember the boy’s name. Some temporary memory issue. Getting old is weird.
“Yep, got our genes. He’ll be fine,” Gottfried repeats to himself.
Malcolm Worries Sometimes
Dad isn’t answering his phone, and I have a feeling he went to Jamaica without me. There’s no other explanation for not seeing him on a weekend. Marla told me that he wasn’t feeling well, but that just makes me worry.
Fact: Dad never says he’s not feeling well.
Fact: Dad must be feeling like crap if he didn’t want me around this weekend.
Fact: Maybe the treatments aren’t working.
The painting kid left more than two hours ago. Marla and Gottfried were supposed to be home by now. It’s past dinnertime. Marla is a stickler for dinnertime.
For the last hour I walked around the house turning lights on and off depending on what feels least scary. All the lights on feels least scary, so I kept them all on. I sent three emails to Eleanor and she didn’t write back because she’s probably walking the beach looking for tourists to sell her bracelets to. She has to go to the library to check her mail anyway. Or school. And it’s not like I’m her first priority. I don’t think I should be, I guess. But right now I need her.
I try to do the thing Dad’s Ruth told me to do when I used to be nervous about flying. I breathe in peace and breathe out stress. In. Out. Peace. Stress. It doesn’t work, not even with all the lights on.
I check the phone-finder app on my phone and see that my grandparents are at the hospital.
I call Dad again and he doesn’t answer.
I call Gottfried and he doesn’t answer either.
If I had anyone else to call, I’d call them. But I don’t have anyone else to call. Being an only child is like being that guy in David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” You’re all by yourself, floating up in space and the world is beautiful, but the best you can do is sing into the blackness.
I mean, when times are dark, anyway.
Times are dark.
* * *
I don’t know how to drive but Marla’s BMW is in the garage and it’s telling me to drive it. I mow Gottfried’s lawn sometimes on his ride-on mower and that can’t be too different from driving a car. Right?
I give them all a cutoff time.
Eight. At eight o’clock, I’ll drive myself to the hospital to see what’s going on.
If Dad thinks he’s going to die without me there with him, he’s wrong. If Dad thinks I want the college tuition in his will any time soon, he’s wrong. I don’t want to go to college; I don’t even want my own shoes.
I can’t make it to eight o’clock. The BMW is screaming at me. I’ve got the keys, and I click the remote start button. After a minute of carbon monoxide, I open the garage door. Dude—you’ve just proven that you shouldn’t be driving a car.
Dad always told me that I’d never be perfect because no one is perfect. He told me I’d always make mistakes. He told me the key to life is making smarter and smarter mistakes. I can’t tell if stealing Marla’s BMW is a smarter mistake than my last mistake . . . which was probably smoking half a joint at the picnic table while I was talking to the painter kid. I don’t usually smoke the stuff, but sometimes Dad’s business cards don’t do the trick. The cards are laced with THC and CBD—the perfect mix to cure cancer—but nothing like the high-grade shit he has stashed. Plus, eating paper gets old. Anyway, I’m not really stoned anymore. I’m sure I’ll be fine.
The BMW has a very feisty accelerator compared to Gottfried’s lawn mower. It’s also a lot quieter, and that’s good because I have to concentrate. Backing out of the garage is easy enough. The driveway, steep and curved, isn’t so bad. The road out of the cul-de-sac is a straight run, and I stop at the stop sign like I’ve been doing this all my life. Malcolm Hemmings, lifetime driver of many cars.
The three back roads I have to take to get to the highway are twisty and I can’t figure out how to keep my eye on the road and the speedometer at the same time. It was fine when I was alone on the first road, but the second road has presented me with a challenge—a car behind me driving so close I can barely see anything. I have no idea if I’m driving too slowly. I know I’m doing forty miles per hour, but there are no speed limit signs.
The BMW has a rearview mirror that adjusts automatically.
As I navigate the curves in the road trying to ignore the car behind me, I think about how cool it would be to have human-automatically-adjusting rearview mirrors. No. Check that. I think we already have automatically adjusting rearview mirrors. That’s why life is so fucking easy for so many people.
Like, before they invented the flush toilet with the ballcock like we have now, we were either shitting in outhouse pits or, if you had a toilet, you had to flush it by pouring water into the bowl. Either way, you had to deal with your shit. You had to look at it. You had to figure out what to do with it. Now, we all just flush and pretend we never shit in the first place.
Most of the kids I know at school just want to get their license, get a car, and get out of this town. They don’t even know where they’re going or how much it’ll cost—as long as it’s away from here. That’s a flush toilet.
Speed limit is forty-five. Just passed a sign. I hit the gas a little and then the brake. Forty-five on this road is too fast. The car behind me will have to be patient. Deal with my shit, car behind me.
Then the car makes a weird move—a swerve—and it catches my attention. There’s no passing, but he passes me and when he races by, his engine makes a race-car noise. When he gets in front of me, I see he’s got those under-car lights—his are blue—and they light up the road and make his car look like a spaceship. I imagine the mouths he could feed with the money he spent on under-car lights. Malcolm Hemmings, bleeding heart.
Eleanor has to sell twenty bracelets at three American dollars a day to live. Every day. But the fact is, she’d still be alive if she didn’t. She’d just be hungrier.
* * *
Oncoming cars are not like mowing the lawn. Have I mentioned that?
By the time I get to the gas station right before the highway entrance, I feel like I’ve been driving for five years. I’m sweating and nervous. I know the speed limit on the highway is sixty-five. That just seems impossible.
THE FREAK LOVES ACCIDENTAL FRUIT!
The Freak likes watching the shoveling boy paint. She knew the paint would spill. She knew the beach-bum grandson would help. When the boys came outside to talk, she flickered.
Now she’s in a farmer’s field. To her right is a patch of dead weeds—killed with something called Roundup. She marvels at the kill rate. To her left is a field that’s sprouting random potato plants. Go Spuds! They are random because these are abandoned potatoes from last year’s crop. Volunteers. They make more potatoes without meaning to if you leave them alone.
Accidental fruit. Accidental fruit that makes more fruit. Accidental seeds. More marvelous than the kill rate of Roundup.
Fact: It will rain enough for these plants to grow.
Fact: No one needs to do anything to help these plants thrive.
Fact: Sometimes accidental seeds are stronger because no one gives a shit about them.
Fact: The crop from a volunteer plant tastes just as good.
Loretta’s audience sits in the orchestra seats. The Freak looks at them and says, “Potatoes are one thing. People are another. You can’t abandon people and think they’re going to be fine. People need things. Probably love most of all.”
She closes her eyes. Disappears.
CanIHelpYou?’s Boxing Glove
I haven’t sold one green milkshake all day. But I just made two hundred bucks selling weed to mostly strangers. Jake Marks has weird friends. At least three of them wouldn’t be allowed to park in the high school parking lot.
The speaker beeps.
“Welcome to Arby’s Drive-Thru. Can I help you?”
“Gimme a number two meal with a Coke.”
God, sometimes I wish there was one of those big boxing gloves rigged into the speaker so I could press a button and punch people in the face.
“Eight fifty-four. Second window.”
“What?”
“Eight fifty-four. Second window,” I repeat.
“Weren’t you trained to be nice to customers?”
I am pressing the boxing glove button. I am punching this person in the face a hundred times. I don’t know what to say. I’m tired of being a doormat. I say, “Second window.”
I have never spit on anyone’s food. Never. I’ve never done anything remotely tempting like that, even though I’ve had opportunities. Suddenly, I’m looking around the Drive-Thru for anything to put on this guy’s order.
I look under the register and there’s glass cleaner. Too obvious. On the tiled floor, jammed in between the stainless-steel counter leg and the plastic wall protector is a lump of mop dirt—the kind that looks like a miniature dead mouse—part mop fiber, hair, dirt, and the gray goo that probably used to be grease. Len has the place wired with two cameras in case cashiers steal money. I make it look like I’m picking up a dropped napkin. I drop the napkin first, then bend down to pick it up and grab the mop blob and put it next to the register. Then, as I’m bagging the sandwich, I open the wrapper while it’s still inside the to-go bag and stick the blob into the roast beef sandwich and rewrap it. It feels equally wrong and right. If the boxing glove was real, I wouldn’t have to do this.
I take my time filling the Coke. I think about what I’ve done. I consider sabotaging my own sabotage—dropping the sandwich on the floor and asking for a new one. I decide Gimme people deserve what they get.
I don’t want to hold their hands through life anymore. I don’t want to help them with the real problems that await. I don’t want to help them understand that a simple please or thank-you goes a long way. I want them to fall into impossible love with their best friend. I want them to be kidnapped from a mall. Live in a tunnel.
“Eight fifty-four,” I say when I open the window. I don’t make eye contact even though I can feel his stare.
He hands me a ten-dollar bill.
I get his change and hand it back to him along with the Coke, and then I hand him the bag.
“Have a nice day,” I say, and close the window.
I want to text Ian and tell him what just happened but I also want to pretend what happened didn’t happen. Just like being in love with Ian. That can’t happen. Nothing in my life can happen.
I feel like I’m getting a manicure in Wichita. Twenty-four hours a day.
I turn to Susan, my manager. “I don’t feel well.”
She doesn’t say anything.
* * *
In the bathroom I’m in the tunnel. The stall walls are gray, like my submarine. A cockroach skitters by and says hello. I reply, “Hello.” It stops and adjusts its eyeglasses and says, “You know you can’t really be in love with your best friend.”
I want to kill it, but I don’t. It’s probably not even there in real life. It’s just my brain fucking with me. The tunnel. There are rules. The rules are: nobody helps you in here. No one can give you answers. No one can give you a hug. Other people come and go, but you can’t see any of them. Makes you want to get out as soon as you can, but once you get out, you only want to go back in again. It’s comfortable because it’s what you’re used to. The truth lives here. Underground.
“Do you have any spare toilet paper?” someone in the stall next to me asks.
The bathroom was empty when I got here.
“Hello?” she says. “This stall is out. I could really use a little if you have some.”
I take a bunch of toilet paper and hand it under the stall wall.
“Where did you come from?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I was in a field a minute ago and now I’m trying to find the boy with the shovel. I think.”
“You sound as confused as I am.”
“Just trying to find the right time to do the right things. It’s hard to know.”
“Yeah.” I don’t tell her that there’s no right time to fall in love with your best friend.
“You’re right,” she says. “There’s no right time for that.”
I don’t say anything because this has to be a hallucination, just like the bug with the glasses.
“Not so. I’m real. So was the bug. It was a cockroach.”
I must be going crazy.
“You’re not going crazy. Believe me. You should see what I have to deal with in a day.”
