Deja vu All Over Again

by Larry Brill

  Oh, well. He reached into several dusty and neglected cardboard cartons stacked against the wall and pulled out bottles of vitamins B, C, and liquid D and L, HGH anti-aging supplements, antioxidants, mental-energy-boosting ginseng powdered drink mix and aloe-laced skin-rejuvenating lotion. Dozens of boxes filled that corner of the shed with more products than he could keep track of. Ordered over the Internet, some were never opened. Although Nate’s gray hair was still thick and full and long enough to brush his shoulders, he had a year’s supply of Rogaine there, too.

  The pills and potions, the powders and lotions piled up during a two-year effort wasted trying to patch things up with Valerie after her affair with Skippy. Of course, Skippy wasn’t his real name; he couldn’t bring himself to call the guy by his real name, and it fit since the Skipster was about half Valerie’s age. Nate worked hard to be young again. He was too stubborn to let the marriage die without a fight. In the end, all of their counseling sessions and all of his self-prescribed fountain-of-youth cocktails couldn’t make Valerie love him. It simply delayed the inevitable. Now, he couldn’t remember what half the supplements did, but he tossed a handful of each into the backpack.

  He was about to flick off the light when he was stopped by one last thought. He moved a weed whacker to the side and shoved the mower away with his foot in order to reach a heavy box set on the floor apart from the rest. He opened the flap on the carton. Oh, yeah. It was ten bottles toward a full case of Jack Daniel’s Old Number 7. He had collected the whiskey, each bottle a Christmas gift from David through the years. It was the expensive stuff, and Nate had been saving them for the party he would throw when one of his orphaned stories actually made it to the screen. Sometimes you needed a true friend like Jack to help you forget your troubles. Nate tucked one bottle of whiskey into his backpack with the other drugs. He had survived and now all he wanted to do was escape. It was going to take a hell of a lot more than a good bender to do it, but he was tired. He was tired of letting fate and other people drive the bus. That’s how his life had veered out of control and he ended up wrecked in a ditch, wheels pointing at the sky and spinning uselessly. He lingered over that metaphor; he liked it. It seemed about right. Getting his life back on the road might be possible; knowing where to go after that—that was a bitch.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Send in the Clowns

  The whole idea of running away to join the circus was long passé by the time Nate, as a kid, might have considered it an option. The morning before New Year’s Eve, as he stood on the porch with a finger paused at the doorbell of the house he grew up in, it was as if he had just run away from the circus.

  “Well, well, well. Your mother said you’d be falling out of the sky soon,” his father cackled. “And vy-ola, here you are.” He leaned his forearm with faded tattoos against the half-open door waiting for Nate to ask permission to enter. Nate came prepared; he thrust the virgin bottle of Jack Daniels at his old man. He had saved it for this confrontation; it was part peace offering and part toll.

  “I’m fine, Charlie. How you doing?”

  “Woke up this morning. All my body parts in good working order. Functioning on autopilot. I don’t hurt much. I’m looking forward to a proctology exam this afternoon, so I couldn’t be happier.”

  His father hadn’t aged much through the years of Nate’s infrequent visits home. Charlie was a big reason he stayed away. He’d looked like he was pushing eighty when he was fifty. Now that he was pushing eighty, he looked his age. Bald across his liver-spotted crown, a bulbous nose over thin lips, Charlie had once been six foot something and cut a handsome figure when he was young, though now, with a slight stoop, he seemed smaller but hardly frail for someone his age. Nate hoped he inherited his father’s good genes without much else in the DNA garden taking root.

  “Since you’re here, you can put your stuff in your old bedroom. You do remember where that is, don’t you? Second door on the right.” Charlie walked away, clutching the whiskey to his chest. To say Nate had a distant relationship with his father was the kind of understatement only the sadistically coy could appreciate. His father had disappeared before Nate turned two. He would show up unannounced from time to time, during a layover between the jobs he chased in Alaska, Australia, and other parts of the world, working as a bush pilot. When times were good out there, he’d sent money home to the family. But those checks were as unreliable as his promises that he’d be home soon. For years, Nate blamed himself, convinced he ran Charlie out of the family simply by being born and being a burden the old man didn’t want. When he realized he had nothing to do with Charlie wandering off, he tried to pretend his father didn’t exist. Other times, he lied, like when he told Sister Agatha, his fifth grade teacher, that his father had died hunting elephants in South America. It didn’t get much sympathy and earned him a trip to confession with Father Dean.

  During one layover, on his way from a job in Wyoming to Texas, Charlie stayed long enough to impregnate Nate’s mother with his baby sister, Krystal. Twelve years later, he came back for good, timing his arrival for Nate’s high school graduation. No surprise, Charlie got the date wrong and missed the commencement by a month, just as he’d missed every other significant moment in Nate’s life. He never forgave the old man.

  Nate stood in the doorway to his old bedroom. It was hard to tell from peeking inside that he had ever existed. An ironing board and a basket of laundry sat in front of the window next to a rocking chair and a stack of paperbacks where his dressing bureau used to be. The closet was filled with stacked plastic storage bins. The only reminder that Nate had once lived in the room was a three-peg hat rack hanging on a wall where his little league baseball cap and his high school graduation tassel collected dust. He was determined to reclaim the room. That was essential.

  “Your mother’s out in the backyard with her friends,” Charlie said as Nate wandered into the living room. “Wednesday is Tai Chi.” He pointed by extending one finger from the hand wrapped around his glass of Nate’s whiskey.

  “They do this every week?”

  “When they get some good weather like this, yeah.”

  “Hey, Mom,” Nate called out.

  “Out here, honey.”

  He was only halfway through the screen door when he pulled up and turned his head away. It was a sight that would burn forever in his memory, and not in a good way. Never had he seen so much sagging flesh in one location.

  Nate’s mother stretched and leaned forward slowly in a classic Tai Chi form facing her group of five gray-, blue- and orange-dyed-haired women. Each woman had shed her clothes, and modesty apparently, and followed Regina Evans’ movements.

  “Inhale, ladies. This is my son,” she said while staying focused on some point, distant and straight ahead. “Exhale.”

  The woman in the rear corner of the group dropped her arms and turned. “Is that little Nate? Hello, Nate.”

  “Mrs. Wilkus?” Nate averted his eyes to the opposite corner of the yard, but not before catching a full frontal glimpse at his once-upon-a-time next-door neighbor.

  “It’s good to see you, dearie. Say, why don’t you join us? We could use some manhood here.” The other ladies snickered.

  “Enough of that, Max,” his mother said. “Ladies, stay focused. Honey, we’ll be done in a bit. There’s juice in the fridge if you’re thirsty. I’ll fix lunch when we’re done.”

  “I don’t see why you are so shocked,” his mother scolded him later over an avocado and cheese sandwich. What he wouldn’t give for a slice of ham right then. He plucked a green grape from a stem on the side of his plate and popped it into his mouth.

  “You don’t come home every day and find naked women dancing around your backyard.”

  “Well, you might if you’d come home a little more often,” she sniffed.

  “Frankly, Mom, it’s not a sight I want to get accustomed to.”

  “You may as well get used to it if you’re planning on staying here any length of time at all.
” She smiled. “Which brings up the question, dear, just how long are you going to be with us?”

  Nate doubted that forever would be a good answer. He didn’t know. He had no real goal beyond hunkering down. It wasn’t the first time he started a story without knowing how it would end. Moving back home was his first act. How could he tell his mother that “now what” was not part of his thinking?

  “I’m not sure,” Nate said. “I won’t stay a minute more than you’ll let me get away with.”

  Regina paused and poked at her sandwich, untouched on the plate. He braced himself. Here it comes.

  “So how is Valerie these days?”

  Not bad. He had been home two full hours before she asked. “How should I know? You’d have to ask the guy she moved in with.” He certainly couldn’t tell his mother that he had a ten-second conversation with Valerie during his leap from the third story of a mansion and that she sounded as solid as ever. Valerie had sent him a text message before he got out of the hospital. She and Lester had heard what happened and wished him well.

  Lester. Nate was certain the live-in boyfriend’s name had been Bill or George or something very vanilla. By now, whatever his name was, he must be last year’s flavor, replaced by a Lester. “Mom, it’s complicated. You of all people know that. But let’s not talk about Charlie, okay?” Whenever he pressed her about why she stayed with his dad, she’d roll her eyes. It seemed to her such a silly question.

  “I didn’t. He was never here, so I never needed to leave him.”

  “But you always take him back.”

  “Of course. He’s such a free spirit. I love that.”

  And that explained it all.

  As they sat across from one another at the kitchen table, she said, “Your problem is that you should have married a nice girl instead of a lawyer, of all things. I told you that was trouble. Look at David. I love your brother dearly, but I hear he’s been donating to the Republicans again.”

  Nate sat in silence, picking at the grapes and ignoring the sandwich. He hated avocado.

  “Have you thought about a job?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to think about a job?”

  “No.”

  “You should do something. We could use another pair of hands at the shop if you want to earn a little until you find yourself.”

  Ah, yes, the family business.

  It was a logical offer, just as it had been a logical career choice for Regina. She’d dropped out of Berkeley to sell flowers in Haight Ashbury during the sixties. Through the years, she had been a life coach, a children’s librarian, a yoga instructor and the director of community theater, until she found her true calling in multi-level marketing selling a line of hemp products. She was the Mary Kay of hemp beauty supplies and clothing. The moment California gave the green light to medical marijuana, long before legalizing it recreationally for the average Joe, Regina used her contacts and marketing skills to set up shop within walking distance of the San Jose State campus. The High Society Wellness Clinic was born.

  Then Nate’s little sister, Krystal, joined the business. Krystal had built a reputation as a glass artist for years, but her work really took off when she began blowing bong art. She sold high-end, handcrafted glass pipes and bongs for hundreds of dollars a pop on her website. Just to round things out, Charlie was put in charge of the retail inventory at the clinic and, euphemistically speaking, quality control over the pot they sold.

  How David escaped the greening of the Evans clan, Nate didn’t know. David was considered the white sheep of the family and, by Evans family definition then, an outlier to his hippy parents. He suspected that, in their souls, they believed Nate had sold out to Hollywood, though they gave him a pass because he did it for the sake of his “art.” They must have felt being a starving artist indicated his intentions were pure if not the outlet for his creativity.

  “Well, you certainly can’t sit around and do nothing,” Regina said. “That wouldn’t be healthy. Think about it.”

  “I don’t think my future is in retail,” Nate told his mom.

  He preferred not to think about his future at all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ring-a-Ding Ding

  On New Year’s Eve he sat on his bed in his skivvies. He ignored the gluten-free eggplant-and-mushroom casserole his mother had left in the refrigerator for him, stole the key to his father’s Chevy from its peg near the back door and had made a run to Burger King. He hoped Charlie wouldn’t mind that he borrowed the family car without asking first. Regina and Charlie were ringing in the new year at a Native American powwow on the summit of Mt. Umunhum, the western peak of the Santa Clara Valley. Regina went to reconnect with Mother Earth with the help of an Aztec shaman she followed on Twitter who organized the event. Nate suspected Charlie went because he hoped to score some peyote.

  Nate bobbed his head to Aerosmith singing “Dream On” through the headset clamped over his ears and sang along with Steven Tyler’s falsetto repetition of the title line while he scribbled random words and drew crude cartoons on a yellow legal pad. He ripped the page out, crumpled it and tossed the ball of paper to the floor where it landed among dozens of crumpled doodles, random words, thoughts and dreams.

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  He wanted to shut down his brain but it wouldn’t go quietly so he stretched out on his bed with a notepad and a pen to see if what spilled out might give him some direction but came away with nothing to show for the effort. His plan for getting his shit together didn’t stretch much beyond returning home and hunkering down until he pulled out of the funk. Tomorrow. Maybe the next day or next month, sooner or later. Whenever was soon enough.

  He leaned back against the bed’s headboard and stared at the ceiling. How hard would it be to find a copy of Raquel Welch’s famous fur bikini poster from the movie One Million Years B.C.? He had tacked one to the ceiling when he was twelve and spent his teen years waking up to Raquel every morning. What a great way to start each day. What else could he do to recreate the room he’d had as a teenager? Wouldn’t that be a kick? Such good times he had back then, and once again he took inventory of his favorite points in his life he would relive if he had a chance.

  “I’m not obsessed, right?”

  “I’m what you might call a nostalgist. A retro-naut.”

  That’s how he had once explained it to Woody. Maybe someday, if Lady Muse ever returned, he might write that into a story. He tapped the pen against his teeth. He’d call it…

  He’d call it Mulligan.

  He pulled the yellow pad onto his lap, still hampered by having his left arm in a sling, and he began to write.

  Our hero, uh, Nate. Our hero Nate, mid-fifties, ruggedly handsome in an aging baby-boomer sort of way, is beaten down by life. No wife, no home, no job, no prospects, he survives a suicide attempt and takes refuge from the mess his life has become by moving back home with his parents, lovable but ditzy former hippies.

  Stumped. Where it would go from there? Maybe it was a shitty idea; it wouldn’t be his first and hardly his worst. Either way, it wouldn’t go anywhere without a leading lady. That kind of story required a Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts-type love interest. There were only three significant leading ladies in Nate’s past. Julie, the girl who got away in high school, his wife, Valerie, the girl who crushed his heart like an empty beer can and didn’t even bother to put it in the recycle bin, and Eppie Johnson, the girl who, to Nate’s vivid imagination, altered the course of history.

  Prom date Eppie.

  Epiphany Alice Johnson to those who risked a serious verbal smackdown by using her given name. If Nate needed a scapegoat for why he’d failed to marry Julie Cooper and live happily ever after, it would be Eppie. But he never wanted a scapegoat. He knew it was his own damned fault. No scaping to be done, just one goat there.

  Julie was the girl Nate and two-thirds of the senior class absolutely knew he was going to ask to the prom, but he wound up going with Eppie instead. He hea
rd Julie had gone so far as to buy the gown she never got to wear and that tears ensued. Months later, she said she had forgiven him, but Nate never forgave himself.

  He looked at his watch. It was an hour before midnight and he had a date, sort of. Ring in the new year. Ring-a-ding ding. Nate friended Eppie Johnson on Facebook once upon a time and checked her page occasionally, but hadn’t reached out to contact her in years. Life had become embarrassingly shitty and the thought of whining about that in public was something he didn’t want to vomit on anyone.

  Eppie, on the other hand, was a blabbermouth, cheerleader, rabble-rouser and star of the social media universe. From her grandchildren’s birthdays to her recent hysterectomy, no detail was too personal to share. She hadn’t changed a bit, smart and wickedly irreverent, still living in San Jose, where she’d raised three perfectly above-average children and headed up the Human Resources Department at their old school district. Since nobody from their apathetic graduating class could generate enthusiasm for a real reunion, Eppie had taken it upon herself to create a Facebook group of former classmates on the site. Randy, George, Pattie Clarke and the Waggoner twins. Eppie had a bevy of former classmates among her legion of followers. It seemed to Nate that she had kept in touch with so many and had what he imagined was a thick, digital dossier of gossip to track the status of everyone.