Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You

by Todd Hasak-Lowy

  His family, even though they definitely were not very religious at all back then, used to host the Seder a lot, which a little bit annoyed Darren, because he doesn’t really like the holiday all that much. He’ll admit that the idea of it—all that slavery and freedom stuff, and the having to remember it—he’ll admit that that’s pretty important, and so he can understand why they’d make a holiday out of it. But he hates matzo and sitting at the table forever waiting to eat and most of the songs, too.

  But his dad would get pretty into the Seder, to the point that for a bunch of years, instead of just telling the story about Moses and being slaves (like it says you’re supposed to), he had everyone act it out or make up a song about it. Which was actually pretty awesome the first couple of times they did it, especially the second year, when there were costumes, too. But then, after maybe the third or fourth year of finding creative ways to retell the story, Darren just got the feeling that they were only still doing it because no one was willing to admit it wasn’t that fun anymore, and so maybe they should go back to a regular, boring Seder.

  Anyhow, freshman year, his parents decided to have the Seder with just the family, as opposed to inviting over relatives and friends and stuff. Even though everyone already knew his dad was moving out soon. Or maybe it was because of that. Whatever—the point is that it was only going to be the four of them. But then, pretty much at the last minute, Nate said he didn’t want to come home, because of exams or something, which even Darren knew was a big fat lie.

  His mom cried for most of the afternoon, plus his parents had all these horrible almost-arguments in what used to be their room (his dad was sleeping in Nate’s room), the door to which was definitely closed (but Darren could still hear how they were having entire conversations in these weird loud whispers). Darren was hoping they’d either just cancel it or at least check to see if they could still accept the invitation from the Waxmans. But then around five o’clock his dad (like there was nothing strange about it) set the table for the Seder, putting out the matzo and the Seder plate and all the other crap, even though he only put out three places for actual people.

  And as bad as that was, the actual Seder was much worse, to the point that even right now, as bad as everything feels, there’s just no way he can really think about that, especially the part right after the Four Questions, when his dad leaned over and kissed his mom, who had started crying again for at least the fifth time that day and then kind of spastically pushed his face away.

  3. ZOEY’S LAST FULL DAY BEFORE GETTING SENT AWAY

  And Darren doesn’t even know a single thing about it. He can remember a little bit of what happened to him that day, because it was only a few days after he got back from Ann Arbor, and his parents were still treating him differently, but that’s not even the point. Because when he saw that last text message, the one Grace showed him a month or so later on the Patio, and saw that it was sent at 6:32 a.m., he just got this sense for how totally nuts things must have been for Zoey by the end.

  Because that last full day must have been the day when her parents finally found her or when the police brought her home or even when she just showed up back at home in the same clothes she had been wearing since Friday. And even though Zoey was definitely kind of responsible for whyever her parents decided that the only option left was telling her at six thirty in the morning that she was going to New Mexico, he still bets she felt like that wasn’t even an option, like her life was just sort of over at that point.

  4. A WEEK AGO IN DR. SCHRIER’S OFFICE

  Darren’s had three sessions alone with Dr. Schrier. The first two were totally useless. Because Darren pretty much decided in advance that he wasn’t going to even come close to talking about anything important. The reason being that he was only going to Dr. Schrier’s in the first place to get his dad to shut up about Darren going to see Dr. Schrier (even though, of course, going to see him a couple of times didn’t exactly appease his dad once and for all).

  But the last time Darren was there, who knows why, he just started talking. It started with stuff about Rachel, and why she annoys him, but why he sort of likes her anyway. Because everything about Rachel kind of confuses him, so he figured, isn’t the point of therapy to talk about stuff that confuses you? And maybe Darren was just tired, but Dr. Schrier started asking Darren questions and doing that thing with his thumb and index finger, until the next thing Darren knew, he was talking about almost everything. Everything but Zoey, in fact (who Darren felt like he should protect from Dr. Schrier). The point is, once he started talking, he couldn’t really stop.

  And after about a half hour Darren could tell that all this talking wasn’t actually helping, but still, he couldn’t get himself to shut up. Like his mouth was one of those closet doors in cartoons, the kind that when some characters unknowingly open it, he or she gets buried in an avalanche of shoes, clothes, tools, tennis racquets, picnic baskets, bowling balls, fishing rods, etc. And until Darren kind of cleared everything away, he wouldn’t be able to shut the door, or his mouth, again. And you had to talk about stuff to clear it away. Or something like that.

  But so eventually Darren started talking about Mr. Keyes, who knows why. Maybe because Darren sort of started sensing that all the other stuff (his mom, his dad, Nate, his lack of friends, and even Rachel) might be almost dangerous to keep talking about. So he sort of intentionally changed the subject to Mr. Keyes.

  “I’ve been eating lunch a lot in Mr. Keyes’s office.”

  “Mr. Keyes?”

  “The band director, I told you.”

  “Yes, Mr. Keyes. Of course. What about him?”

  “Well, he’s got a ton of old jazz albums.”

  “Yes?”

  “The covers are pretty cool.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. They just are. Like, they’re kind of the guys who invented being cool, you know? Like, people in 1870 or whatever, they didn’t know how to be cool yet. Or even that you could be.”

  “But now—”

  “And he lets me choose what we’re going to listen to.”

  “And do you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then?”

  “So then we listen to an album and eat our lunches.”

  “And you enjoy that?”

  Darren nodded but didn’t actually say anything. Just pictured himself eating from a brown bag, and Mr. Keyes taking some Tupperware out from this little fridge he has plugged in near the corner of his office. And that’s it. Because Mr. Keyes, exactly not like Dr. Schrier, never asks Darren anything, except maybe something musical. That’s really it.

  Because if Mr. Keyes ever did ask him anything, while they were sitting there chewing silently and listening to Thelonious Monk, it would probably be something along the lines of, “Hey, Darren, why it is that you, an almost-sixteen-year-old in a building packed with more than its share of almost-sixteen-year-olds, are choosing to spend a majority of your lunch periods with a thirty-eight-year-old failed jazz pianist listening to music recorded half a century before you were ever born?”

  Around then Darren realized, back in Dr. Schrier’s office, that he wasn’t breathing so great. And definitely couldn’t talk. So he just looked down and nodded for Dr. Schrier.

  Luckily, their session came to an end just then. Dr. Schrier lifted up his nose and took one of those deep inhalations of his. Then, closing up the pad he had been taking notes on, he said, “How about we pick up from here next time? What do you say?”

  3 More Questions, Not All Spoken Aloud, Asked Not That Far from the Corner of Gross Point and Touhy

  1. Rubbing his shoulder, his mom asks, or maybe just says, “Honey, why don’t you let me drive?”

  2. “Because Ray didn’t say you could drive his car today, did he?” Darren screams at her. “No, I don’t think so.”

  They drive on for a few more miles. João Gilberto’s “Águas de Março” comes on. Just him, whoever he is, or was, on a guitar. If Darren
ever followed a religious figure, he would have to sound exactly like this guy. Calm, accepting, and just a little optimistic.

  3. Can you not know a language and understand it at the same time? Like this is Darren’s useless superpower.

  There’s some other place where this song makes perfect sense. Where you’re not weird for liking it.

  Then it ends and it’s just the two of them again. “I need this,” his mom says, pretty much under her breath. “I need a new beginning.” She speaks so quietly. But he can tell, she means it as much as she’s ever meant anything. “I deserve a new one, Darren.” She means it so much, he feels like she couldn’t possibly want her son, the one she used to call “my baby,” to know she can want something for herself this badly.

  1 Offer of a Very Special Present

  1. “Darren,” she says when they’re sitting in the driveway. The car’s off.

  “Yeah?”

  “I had an idea for a special present for you today.”

  “What?”

  “It’s going to sound, I don’t know, wrong now.”

  “What?”

  “Like I’m trying to bribe you to be okay with everything.”

  “What?” He’s losing his patience.

  “I thought, I thought we could buy you a car today. A car that would be yours.”

  Why is everyone determined to give him a car today?

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing fancy. Nothing like this. But you deserve something special.”

  “Thanks,” he says. Stares at the steering wheel for a moment or two. “But can we talk about it later?”

  “Of course, honey. Of course.”

  2 Awkward Displays of Affection Resulting from Darren’s Effort to Show Some Gratitude, Because He Knows He Should

  1. A hug seriously compromised by the car’s armrest.

  2. A kiss on his mom’s cheek, which he wasn’t going to give her, then was, then wasn’t, then did.

  2 Unsolvable Puzzles Darren Confronts While Kissing Her on the Cheek

  1. Are you really supposed to kiss it full-on, the way you would someone’s lips? Because there’s something about the angle that sort of makes that impossible unless the other person is holding out their cheek to the side so you can come at it straight-on.

  2. What, exactly, are you supposed to do when your mom not only doesn’t make everything better (like she did, effortlessly, for the first fourteen and a half years of your life), but also actually now makes things worse (and maybe even much worse)?

  3 Details of the Present Scene That May Account for the Surfacing of Unsolvable Puzzle #2 at This Particular Time and Place

  1. Darren is sitting behind the wheel of a fancy car, which he has just driven 29.7 miles without so much as scratching it.

  2. His mom has recently switched fragrances, which he gets a pretty clear whiff of when his nose briefly stops about an inch from her ear. The smell, objectively speaking, is probably really pleasant and bright, like it’s soft and sharp and even airy all at the same time. But it doesn’t smell anything like his mom.

  3. Though he closes his eyes for most of the hug/kiss, there’s this moment (just as the armrest drives into his ribs) when he gets a look at her hair against the backdrop of the fancy leather headrest, and the unfamiliar combination of colors (hair = maroon, headrest = dark gray) has him wondering where he is and who, exactly, he’s hugging and kissing on the cheek.

  5 Differences between Most Regular Meals and the One Nate Is in the Middle of When Darren and His Mom Get Home

  1. Most regular meals, including regular meals of pizza, don’t include one person eating an entire extra large with ham and pineapple (which, Darren’s pretty sure, Nate doesn’t even like) straight from the box.

  2. Most regular meals of pizza aren’t eaten with the box of pizza resting on one of those insulated pizza delivery bags, which looks like it’s still holding at least one other pizza.

  3. Most regular meals are not washed down with sips taken straight from a two-liter bottle of Sprite.

  4. Very few if any regular meals are eaten bare-chested while wearing a La Luna’s shirt pulled almost all the way off, so that the collar is now stretched over the crown of your head and the rest of the inside-out shirt falls down across your shoulders and back, almost like a cape.

  5. Most regular meals are not eaten while sitting on the kitchen counter, which would probably break a rule, not that “no sitting on the counter” was ever presented as an official rule.

  4 Observations Shared by Nate Before Anyone Else Speaks, the Last Two of Which Only Darren Hears, Because His Mom Shakes Her Head in Disbelief, Throws Down Her Purse, and Goes Upstairs After Nate Finishes #3

  1. It’s the birthday boy and the weary traveler. Greetings and salutations.

  2. I know you both just rocked some Dawg House action, but I’ve got to say, this Hawaiian pie is pretty tasty, if you’re interested. I never would have ordered it myself, of course, but I might have to rethink that going forward. We could pick off the ham.

  3. Ricky’s an asshole, I’ll tell you what. Always finding some reason to bitch at everyone. Treats us like slaves. But this’ll show him. Sure you don’t want a piece?

  4. I believe there will be some rocking and rolling today. I truly do.

  6 Things That Had to or Still Have to Happen for the Accidents, Nate and Darren’s New Band, to Get an Actual Paying Gig

  “Ready for some birthday glory?” Nate asks Darren after he comes back up from the laundry room, wearing a new, regular T-shirt.

  “Huh?”

  “Remember how we said we shouldn’t keep it a secret anymore?”

  “You mean about the Accidents?” Which also includes this guy Mike Kaminer on drums. He’s not bad.

  1. Nate found him on Craigslist. At first Mike, who’s twenty-two and finishing up at DePaul, was not particularly psyched by how young Darren is. But he shut up pretty damn fast once he heard Darren play.

  “Check it out, Birthday Man. What time is it?”

  Darren looks at the oven clock and feels a weird pit in his stomach. “Quarter to three.”

  “Cool, we still got some time.”

  “What?”

  “You remember Jordan Weiss?”

  “From Temple?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about him?”

  2. “I ran into him last week at a show. That alt-country piece of shit I told you about. He was there. Going to Northwestern. Smart cock.

  3. “Anyhow, his parents are in Norway or some such shit for the next three weeks. Something to do with his dad being some kind of world-class heart surgeon.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  4. “So he’s having a serious, serious party next weekend, up at their place in Glencoe. Like he is planning on getting a professional DJ. That kind of party.”

  “Are you going to go?”

  “Man, D, you’re such a Grade A idiot sometimes.”

  “What?” Darren says by way of defense.

  “So I said to him, don’t get a lame-ass DJ. DJs suck.”

  “Not all of them do.”

  “True. True. But a good band, a good live band kicks the shit out of a DJ. Am I right?” Nate stops talking. Gives Darren a long look. Raises an eyebrow. “Do I really need to spell this out to you, little brother?”

  Darren figures it out. “No way! We’re playing his party?”

  “Maybe. We’re maybe playing his party.”

  “What do you mean maybe?”

  “So I said to him, ‘How much are you paying for your shitty DJ?’ And he says, ‘A grand.’ So I say, ‘I can get you a good, no, I can get you a great band for half that—’ ”

  “We’re getting paid?!”

  5. “Don’t shplooge your pants just yet. Nothing’s for sure. But I got him to agree to give us an audition.”

  “What, like, to see if he wants us?”

  “I believe that’s what people have auditions for.”


  6. “And if he likes us—”

  “Then the Accidents play his house party next week. And get paid. Happy birthday, my man.”

  Darren nods his head. Smiles. Stops smiling. Looks back at the oven clock. “Hey, when do we need to leave?”

  “An hour, little less. I told him we’d be there at four. Why?”

  Darren’s maybe doing some math in his head, which keeps him from answering at first. “Uh, nothing. Just curious.”

  7 Lies Darren Tells Nate in Order to Escape from the House for about a Half Hour

  1. I’m gonna run over to Best Buy. Dad got me a gift card for there.

  2. No, it’s cool. I’m only going for a little while anyway.

  3. Plus I need to put some gas in the car.

  4. And maybe I should get it washed.

  5. Okay, I made that stuff up. There’s this girl.

  6. Just some girl.

  7. Forget it, I’ll tell you later.

  2 People Likely Talking on the Other Side of the Door That Darren, Breathing Kind of Heavily from Racing up the Stairs, Knocks on Thirteen Minutes Later

  1. His dad

  2. Dr. Schrier

  1 Request Darren Makes of His Dad Before Even Really Bothering to Respond to Their Surprised Greetings

  1. “Hey, do you think I could just talk to Dr. Schrier alone? Just for a bit.”

  2 Unequal Halves from the Beginning of a Conversation

  1. “Hey, Dr. Schrier, sorry—I’m sorry about that, but thanks, you know, for being cool about this, because, I don’t know, man, things are kind of crazy. Like, crazier than normal. I mean, can you tell me—what do you do when it feels like, when it feels like . . . Shit, I don’t know, when everything seems all screwed up and out of whack and everything? Everything. Because, seriously, it’s not even that everything’s bad; it’s like, I swear, it’s like I can’t even tell if things are bad anymore, you know? That’s how out of control everything is. I mean, I haven’t even told you a quarter of everything. Not even a quarter. Because there’s this girl Zoey, and, shit, sorry, I don’t even know where to start with her. But I probably should start. Plus my mom . . . Maybe my dad already told you, because I guess he knows. She just dropped this fucking— Sorry, she just dropped this bomb on me. Today. My birthday. It’s my birthday. Right? Like, what the hell is up with that? Today is my birthday, which, I don’t even know if that’s good or bad in the first place, but she tells me today, I’m sure you know, my dad probably told you. Plus this guy, this guy Ben, who I know from Facebook, he admitted that Zoey is where I think she is, but that I shouldn’t tell her everything. About how I feel. But does that mean I can’t tell her other stuff? About my mom. For example. And maybe my dad, who—I’m sure he told you—I was kind of a dick to before. Even though, no, I was definitely a dick. But still, I don’t know, like, who the hell am I supposed to tell everything to? Because Nate, I can’t tell Nate. So, I mean, what the hell?”