New Jersey Me

by Ferguson, Rich;

  I wasn’t sure if I’d mastered affection either. Maybe the ring would help. The way it sparkled and felt in my hand, it seemed all about warmth and true love. “So it’s mine, huh?”

  “Absolutely,” said Grandmother. “But you can’t tell your father.”

  “I won’t.” I swished an X across my Police Ghost in the Machine sweatshirt–covered heart to seal the promise.

  “One more thing,” she said, beginning to drift off. “Don’t give the ring away until you find the right girl.” Her eyes closed, then slowly opened. She pointed a withered finger at the ring. Sounding a lot like Jimmy’s lousy Sears turntable, she said in a scratchy, nearly inaudible voice: “Let’s see you with it.”

  I held the ring up for display.

  Grandmother managed a parched smile. “It was meant for you. See how it shines?”

  I was so worried about her health that I totally missed what she was getting at. Later, though, I’d realize she’d been right. While that ring was slightly smaller than a pellet of uranium, which contained more energy than six carloads of coal, it was far more powerful. Even beneath the hospital’s stale fluorescent lights, the white gold band and diamond inlay had sparkled like stars, stars in the brilliant constellation of Grandmother Major.

  Her eyelids fluttered shut.

  When they didn’t open right away, I said: “You okay?”

  No response.

  She was gone for real, I thought. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t cry or scream. All I could do was go camouflage with the room’s stark white walls. There I was: just another lost ghost roaming Blackwater.

  Gradually, Grandmother’s eyes opened. “I’ll miss you when I’m gone.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I said, relieved she was still among the living. “You’ll be okay real soon.”

  She extended her frail arms.

  I fumbled through all the wires and hoses to ease into her hug. It sent shivers up my spine.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, giving my back a gentle, reassuring pat. “Everything’ll be fine.”

  “No it won’t.”

  In a voice nearly drowned out by all her singing machines, she uttered something about poets saying wise things they don’t comprehend.

  I slipped out of her hug, flashed a curious look. I’d heard those words before. It was that Greek philosopher I’d learned about in school. “Plato?” I said.

  Another patch of sky-blue drifted back into her milky eyes. “So you are doing well in school,” she said. “Tell me what it means.”

  I asked her to tell me instead. Said it would sound much nicer, her saying it.

  She motioned me closer. In a brittle voice, she said: “Sometimes we McDaniels can be thickheaded. It can take a little while for us to understand what’s best.” Once again her eyelids fluttered shut, then opened. “You should go, sweetie. I need to rest.”

  “I’ll be back Saturday,” I said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “But I want to,” I insisted.

  “Good,” she said, her voice growing extra weary. “That’d be nice.”

  Chapter 14

  Come Saturday, I didn’t return to the Blackwater Medical Center. Sunday neither. Bong hits in Jimmy’s basement. Going all the way with Callie out in the Dump. Even with the best of intentions of returning to see Grandmother, my whole weekend had sped by in a blur of partying. Partying to feel good. Partying to forget.

  First thing Monday morning, well before I’d risen for school, there was a phone call. Despite my hangover I knew the sound of those bells. They’d rung the same way when Grandmother had called to tell my old man his father had died. I jerked the covers over my head, buried myself deep in my dank, dark grave. Yet all that darkness, all my head buzzing, ear ringing, and bed spinning couldn’t drown out the sound of the phone hanging up, or my old man’s footsteps coming toward my room, or his voice.

  “I have some bad news.”

  Those five words, I’d later say, were like the studies of Fermi. In 1934, he conducted studies with nuclear fission—where he’d blast uranium with tiny neutrons to create a massive release of energy. All that energy was later used to create nuclear power and bombs. And that tiny neutron—how it could bore down deep into matter—was my grandmother’s death. And the world around her, my world: uranium. Once her death bombarded my uranium world, things began blowing to pieces.

  “It was bound to happen,” said my old man. “I just didn’t think so soon.” He got quiet. Squib quiet. I poked my head out from beneath the covers to see if he was about to slug me. Instead he just stood there, head bowed. Like he was searching the floor, or searching somewhere deep inside himself for what to say next, or if what he’d just said was the right or wrong way to have expressed it.

  I yanked the covers back over my head. That’s when my radio alarm clock chimed in: The Clash’s “Rock the Casbah.” My shaky hand emerged from beneath the covers, hit the snooze button, then buried itself again.

  My old man, suited up in his usual starched white button-up, and more highly starched attitude, said, “Get up. You’ll be late for school.”

  “I’m not going,” I muttered.

  He repeated his command. It had sharper teeth, a bigger bite.

  I still didn’t budge.

  Again, my radio alarm clock sounded. This time: The Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House.” I slammed the snooze with a raging fist. The Talking Heads and the alarm clock flatlined.

  My old man yanked me from bed, seized me by my flannel top.

  There we were, face to face. Well, almost. While my old man clocked in at five-eleven, I was only a few inches shorter due to another growth spurt. But that wouldn’t have saved my ass had we gone to blows. I was just a bag of bones and attitude up against a sixteen-cylinder engine of muscle and rage. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, croaked out, “What now? You gonna hit me?” It wasn’t so much a taunt, just what I’d been conditioned to expect in stressful situations.

  My old man opened his mouth to speak, but instead remained quiet. I clenched my hands into fists, waiting for that squib to detonate.

  Instead, he just stood there, looking at me. His expression was ninety-eight percent badass Sergeant Carter, two percent Father Knows Best. All he could say was, “Your grandmother was a good woman.”

  I agreed. “One of the best.”

  Still maintaining strict eye contact, my old man said, “I was with her on Saturday. She kept saying you’d promised to stop by. But you didn’t.”

  Now I was the one bowing my head. “I tried. I just got busy.”

  “Well I hope the party was worth it,” said my old man.

  Up until that point, his physical restraint had been truly commendable. But his verbal digs were beginning to cut deep. So I tried defending myself. But seeing as I’d just woken, I wasn’t doing such a hot job. “That’s bullshit,” I said. “I wanted to be with her. I just lost track of time.” What I didn’t say, though, not so much due to lack of sleep, but rather that I didn’t understand it so well myself at the time, was that it scared the hell out of me to see Grandmother so close to death. Didn’t want to be there when it happened. Didn’t want to witness her becoming another ghost like Mom. The last thing I did utter, however, were those three very simple, but heartfelt words, “I loved Grandma.”

  That’s when my old man delivered the worst blow of all, and I deserved every bit of it. “Then you should’ve been there,” he said.

  Now it was my turn to go ballistic. I sprang up onto my toes, eye-to-eye gaze. Spat out, “When I visited grandma she said you were the same when you were my age. Always pissed off. You treated her like shit.” Then I scrambled for the nearest thing available: the three-foot-high red acrylic bong I’d recently won at the Seaside Heights boardwalk. I whipped the bong across the room. It whooshed past my two Bruce posters, my stack of recor
ds, one of my stereo speakers, and nailed my lava lamp sitting atop the dresser. Water, wax, broken glass, and carbon tetrachloride flew everywhere.

  My old man pinned me against the wall. Not to fight, but to keep me from doing something even more asinine. His rancid coffee breath spilled all over me as he said with that taut, even tone of his, “I’m really trying here, Mark. But all you do is keep breaking my balls.”

  I struggled to break free, but he kept me pinned there. The more I struggled, the tighter he gripped me. The tighter he gripped, the less pain I felt, the more protected.

  My old man surprised me still again. No savage punches like in Fists of Fury. Instead, his voice grew even quieter, words more measured. As if it were taking all his strength to speak. “I loved my mother,” he said. “And I loved your mother, too.”

  Part of me wanted to say how much I loved and missed Mom and Grandmother, too. But another part of me still couldn’t let down my guard. That part won. “Get out,” I sputtered.

  “Not before I get the ring,” said my old man.

  When I asked what the hell he was talking about, he said, “When I was with your grandmother I looked through her purse while she was sleeping. It wasn’t there.”

  “Someone must’ve stole it,” I said.

  “Maybe you did, Mark. Or maybe she gave it to you.” Again, my old man tightened his grip on me, more pain than protection. Maybe he wanted to turn up the heat or perhaps, I’d later consider, it had been a rare moment when he’d temporarily lost control of his own strength, or how to use it.

  Either way, I barely felt the pain. He’d dosed me with far worse in the past. Instead, what struck me was his face. It was difficult to say what hurt him more—the idea of me swiping the ring, or Grandmother giving it to me instead of him. If I handed it over, I realized, I’d probably never see it again. “Screw off. I don’t have it.”

  “Sure you do,” said my old man. “It’s written all over you.”

  “Then you don’t know how to read,” I said. “Now go.”

  But he didn’t. He just held me up against the wall, his face close to mine.

  I caught a whiff of his musky sweat and Old Spice odor. While he’d changed a lot over the years—his hair had gone a little grayer, he’d gotten a little meaner, more melancholy—his smell had always remained the same.

  He kept studying my face and physical reactions for any more signs that would rat me out. “I lost my mother today,” he said. “I don’t need your shit, too.” He released his grip on me, then stormed off to work.

  I crashed back down onto my bed. Or should I say, into it. I fell deep. Real deep. All that falling felt like flying, in a way. Flying got me recalling a math word problem I’d recently encountered at school. As I lay there, sinking deeper into my bed, I changed the wording of that problem:

  Grandmother’s spirit flies against the wind from Blackwater to Heaven in eight hours. Her spirit then returns from Heaven back to Blackwater in the same direction as the wind in seven hours. Find the ratio of the speed of Grandmother’s spirit in still air to the speed of the wind.

  Before I could even begin solving it, or my own problems, there were all those words in that problem: the phrase against the wind got me thinking of that Bob Seger song of the same title. Which led me to music, which reminded me of my sonic walls. Walls got me to Pink Floyd. Pink to Mom, which brought to mind how she and Grandmother never got along very well. Spirit immediately brought forth one of my favorite songs, “Spirit in the Sky.” There was also my weird Jersey and all its ghosts—Spy House ghosts, Ghosts of Westside Tavern, and the Ghosts of Tennent Church. All those ghosts got me remembering the ghosts and shadows in my own home. Like all those ghosts, part of me wanted to just drift away, never to be seen again. But then another part of me recalled the deathbed promise I’d made to Grandmother. And so I lay there, sinking still deeper into my bed, wondering if I was becoming a ghost.

  Chapter 15

  I eventually found myself parked a few houses down from Mom’s place. I left the Vega’s sputtery engine running. Sat slumped in my seat, John Deere cap pulled down low, maintaining a sharp guard on Mom’s door. I spied the car’s dash clock. Didn’t doubt its time. Experience had revealed that spark plugs would blow, clutches would wear, valves would need replacing; the only two dependable devices in that Vega remained the clock and tape player. But I didn’t pop in any tunes. I knew it wouldn’t be long. My male modeling days had taught me that much. Sure enough, once the clock struck 8:30 a.m., Mom—all suited up in Stepford Mary Kay—was out the door, and gone.

  Inside her house, I didn’t bother scoping out the lame art and posters on the walls. Didn’t even speak to the silence, like I’d done before and would continue to do, telling her all the things I could never say in person: how I hated her and loved her and missed her like crazy. Instead, I made a beeline for the bathroom. Bagged some downers. I popped two, placed the other four in a small baggie, and shoved that into my army surplus jacket pocket, the one not containing the velvet pouch with Grandmother’s ring.

  From there, I cruised the slushy winter streets toward school. Every so often, I’d reach into my coat pocket and touch that velvet pouch. It helped to set my head on straight, as straight as it could get at the time. I drifted past the cemetery, the closed-for-winter ice cream stand, and the Blackwater Medical Center. Glided effortlessly through traffic, dodging stalled-out cars and grizzled hunters with bow-killed deer strapped to the hoods of their slow-moving pick-ups. It was like I was inside a racing car video game: To Live and Die in Blackwater.

  As I neared Blackwater High, I could feel my guilt and grief get all tangled up in the pills I’d taken. The downers kept trying to lift my head off my shoulders, soften the world’s hard edges. But death kept dragging me back down to earth, or more like beneath it. Six feet under. No matter how many times I touched that velvet pouch, nothing changed. In fact, well after I’d parked my car behind the school, that tug-of-war continued.

  Once I stepped from my car, I was immediately slammed in the face with fistfuls of winter chill. I spotted a crow sailing across the cadaverous sky, toward the place where pines and maples lined the vast school playground. I recalled my first meeting with Baby, how I’d made such an ass of myself trying to be a tough guy. Since she’d graduated two years prior, I rarely saw her anymore. Just here and there around town, or at an occasional Dump party. Last I’d heard she was working dayshift, stripping at the Little Red Dollhouse. The more I thought about her, the harder it got to tell whether it was the pills, or me just getting all lost in time, but that meeting with her seemed so long ago. At least it had all led to scoring a date with Callie.

  I continued alternately floating and trudging through the school parking lot. Bitter winds cut me to the bone, hijacked my breath. Those ill winds whooshed in my ears, mixed with the lonely clang of the flag’s metal halyard banging against the flagpole. I continued toward the main entrance, the air around me sounding like ghosts, my warm breath expelling ghosts.

  I passed a couple wiry tattooed guys with severe, narrow faces. Gearheads. Always had dirt and grime under their nails. Survived on a regular diet of speed, weed, and Hot Rod magazine. No matter the time of year—be it the dead of winter, or hanging out at the Third Lake during the summer—the Gearheads sported worn flannel shirts, faded jeans, scuffed-up work boots, and denim jackets, sleeves hacked off. One was leaning against a metallic red Dodge Charger. The other, against a souped-up primer-blue Nova. MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” blasted through the Nova’s open driver-side window. Shoulders hunched, the Gearheads bobbed their heads to the tune, smoking cigarettes, breathing their own ghosts. Those guys reminded me of Terry. But like Baby, Terry was also gone. He’d barely graduated the year before, and was working as a janitor at the power plant.

  Once through the main doors of that bland two-story brick building known as Blackwater High, I was immediately slammed with th
e familiar stench of sour milk, cleaning products, and hairspray. That and the glare of fluorescent lights which made all students—even the cheerleaders and Honor Society—look like haggard suspects in a criminal lineup. I moved through the halls, passing room after room with words and numbers scrawled across chalkboards like all those mysterious letterings on my Ouija board. I kept my hands in pockets, head bowed slightly, eyes more on the dirty floor—a collage of grimy shoe prints of all shapes and sizes—than on any teachers or administrators walking by.

  Once I reached Jimmy’s American History class I paused, peered through the closed door’s narrow glass window, chicken wire embedded in it. I spotted Jimmy. No matter how many times I’d assisted him with his current studies, the American Revolution, I could never get him to see how all those smaller battles—the French and Indian War, No Taxation Without Representation, the Boston Tea Party, and the Intolerable Acts—had worked hand-in-hand to create one great big battle for freedom. I flashed him a thumbs-up immediately followed by a shrug. Code for: Everything cool? Jimmy rolled his eyes, shot me the finger.

  When I reached Callie’s first-period class, a class we shared—Honors Literature—I leaned against a locker just outside the door. Through that closed door, I could just make out a class discussion concerning Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. I heard the teacher’s boomy voice, the teacher’s pet’s whiny voice, and others. But nowhere in the mix did I hear Callie. That one threw me. Whether in person, or on the phone, we’d often discussed the book’s story—how Buck the dog had been kidnapped from his California home and sold to Canadian postal workers in the Yukon; how that dog had to deal with his nemesis, Spitz; and how Buck eventually turned his back on civilization to join a pack of wolves. So many hours Callie and I had spent deliberating that book—all its metaphors and well-drawn characters—and also dreaming about our own hero’s journey some day. I glanced up and down the hallway. With the exception of Mr. Dixon—one of the school’s janitors—at the far end of that hall pulling mop detail, the place was empty.