The Book of Joe

by Jonathan Tropper

  Fuck it. I'll go.

  Brad and Cindy live in a Dutch colonial about half a mile from my father's house. Emily and Jenny open the front door when I knock. They are dressed alike, in oversized Backstreet Boys T-shirts and black leggings, and perched on one of their wrists is an alarmingly large white bird with a hand-shaped feather emerging from the top of its head. “Hi, Uncle Joe,” the twins say in unison, their voices just a half-tone off from each other, creating a spooky, alien effect that is enhanced by the bird. The twin holding the bird—let's call her Emily—turns carefully to lead me into the house while Jenny hand-feeds little biscuits to the bird, who snatches them jerkily from between her fingers.

  “Hello, girls,” I say rather formally, stepping into the house. There's something about addressing the two of them that makes me self-conscious, as if I'm being reviewed by a committee. I have no experience with adolescent girls, and these two in particular seem strangely jaded, like they can see right through me. The fact that they outnumber me somehow neutralizes the years I have on them, and they seem to know it. “Who's that?” I say, indicating the bird.

  “Shnookums,” says Emily.

  “She's a cockatoo,” says Jenny.

  “She can talk.”

  “She can say ‘How are you.' ”

  “And ‘Oops, I did it again.' ”

  “Wow,” I say. “Let's hear something.”

  The twins shake their heads and smirk at each other. “She won't talk for you.”

  “She only talks for us.”

  “'Cause we trained her.”

  “And for Jared sometimes.”

  “Right. He taught her to say ‘Hey, dickhead.' ” They laugh together and it makes one sound.

  The first thing I see as I follow the girls into the house is one of those museum-type living rooms that exist exclusively for display purposes. Plush white carpeting that has never known the tread of a shoe, Victorian couches that were clearly not designed with the human ass in mind, and a Steinway baby grand lacquered to the point that you can actually see your reflection. The piano has probably never been played but serves simply as a platform for a slew of family portraits, all in gaudy electroplated gold and silver frames and carefully angled so that viewing them will not necessitate actually entering the room. This room is all Cindy, highly feminine and supremely forbidding. There is something tragic in the way Cindy has angrily and obsessively dedicated herself to the immaculate perfection of this room while her life and her marriage spin helplessly out of her grasp.

  Across the large foyer is a family room with worn beige carpeting, sun-faded leather sectional couches, a fireplace, a La-Z-Boy, and a large flat-screen television upon which J. Lo is gyrating earnestly through an industrial-looking nightclub. Jenny and Emily take seats on the back of the couch, singing along to the video while caressing and fussing over their bird.

  “Where's Jared?” I ask.

  “In his room.”

  “Speaking to his girlfriend.”

  “Kissing through the phone.” They make kissing noises at each other and laugh.

  “And your mom and dad?”

  “Dad's not home yet, and Mom's in the basement.”

  “Just follow the music.”

  My instinct is to go upstairs and find Jared, in much the same manner you would contact the embassy upon arrival in a foreign country, but tonight is all about reaching out to Brad and Cindy, so I locate the basement door right off the kitchen and head downstairs. I find Cindy working out to a Pilates tape in a playroom that's been converted into a miniature gym. While posters of Disney characters still adorn the walls, the space has been usurped by a treadmill, a stair machine, a rack of free weights, and a rubber mat on the floor, upon which Cindy now lies on her back, her legs and chest raised off the ground as she feverishly performs crunches along with the music emanating from the television. She is dressed in spandex shorts and a sports bra, her hair tied back with a bandanna, her face flushed and sweaty from her exertions.

  “Hi, Cindy,” I say from the stairs.

  She doesn't miss a beat in her exercise but simply looks over to the stairs and grunts a greeting, evincing no self-consciousness at my intrusion of her workout, and with a body like hers, any such demonstration would be a laughable pretense. “Brad's-not-back-yet,” she gasps, her words necessarily staggered by the up-and-down motion she is using to work her infomercial-quality abdomen. She can speak only on the exhalations, every time she rises in her crunches. There is a manic energy to her workout that seems to cross the line between rigid discipline and desperation, and against my instincts I experience a rush of sympathetic warmth for my sister-in-law, the sense that beneath her bitterness is simply a bewildered young girl who can't understand where her life went wrong.

  “Brad's working late?” I ask, overtly casting my glance around the room to demonstrate my complete lack of interest in her glistening perfection.

  “No,” she grunts, now adding a left-to-right twist to her crunch, isolating yet another group of muscles in her lean trunk. “Fucking-his-waitress.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You-heard-me.”

  She finishes her crunches and flips over on the mat, hands pressed to the floor as she raises her upper body, arching her back to stretch out her flat stomach. “Are you sure?” I say quietly.

  “There are no secrets in a small town. Everything is known; it's simply a matter of what people are willing to discuss.”

  I don't know if it's her casual revelation of Brad's infidelity or the contortions of her incredible body that have me off balance, but either way it takes me an extra beat to realize that she's just quoted the opening line of Bush Falls.

  “I don't know what to say,” I say.

  She stands up, shaking off her arms and legs. “Join the club,” she says. “Can you give me a hand with the mat?”

  I help her to fold the mat and lean it against the door. Then she steps into a small alcove in which there are a washer and a dryer and, to my utter stupefaction, pulls off her sports bra and shorts. “He's been doing it for a while, I think,” she says in a matter-of-fact voice as she tosses her sweat-soaked clothing into the washing machine and pours in a drop of detergent. “Not that he'll admit it.”

  “Well, maybe it's not true,” I say, hoping my voice isn't betraying the instant panic her careless nudity has engendered in me. Am I being seduced? Is this her way of getting back at Brad, by having a go at his brother in their basement? I am ashamed at the momentary flash of excitement I feel beneath my horror at this possibility. She turns away from the machine to face me. “It's true,” she says softly.

  Confronted with my sister-in-law's head-on nakedness, I quickly avert my eyes to the postered walls, still seeing her breasts in the double spheres of Mickey Mouse's ears. “It's okay,” she says, smiling dryly at my discomfort. “I work like hell on this body; someone ought to see it.”

  So it's not about seduction but simply exhibitionism. I am relieved and ever so slightly deflated by this realization. “That may be,” I say, turning back to meet her glance. “But I'm quite certain that someone isn't me.”

  Cindy considers me for a moment and then shrugs, grabbing a lavender towel from the shelf behind her. “Suit yourself,” she says, wrapping herself in the towel. “I'm going upstairs to shower.”

  J. Lo has been replaced by Britney when I come back upstairs to the family room. It's apparently the midriff hour on MTV. Jared is seated on the floor, his legs spread out in front of him, fiddling with an MP3 player while studying Britney's navel. The twins are still perched on the back of the sectional, playing with their bird. “Hey, Jared,” I say, sitting down on the armrest of the La-Z-Boy.

  “Did she show you her tits?” my nephew wants to know.

  “What?”

  “It's okay,” he says. “She does it to everyone. Even me.”

  “Really?”

  Jared nods, his expression inscrutable. “My friends love to come over.”

&nbs
p; “I'll bet.”

  Suddenly, the bird flaps its wings violently between the twins, and I instinctively jerk backward a little. “Can she fly?” I ask nervously.

  “Of course she can,” says the twin holding the bird. “She's a bird, remember?” To illustrate her point, she flings the bird up into the air, and with a squawk and a fierce flap of her wings, Shnookums takes flight in the general direction of my face. My hands fly up instinctively as I fall back off the armrest and into the seat of the chair. The bird spins away from me and settles on top of the television. The twins are laughing so hard they're in danger of falling off the couch, which at that moment I wouldn't mind at all. Cindy appears at the entrance to the room while I'm still sprawled across the La-Z-Boy in my defensive position, arms over my head, legs straight up in the air. She flashes me a tired, cynical look, as if I'm always doing this sort of thing, and then addresses the girls. “You two better get that bird back in its cage pronto,” she says. “If it gets into my living room again, it's history.”

  Brad comes home, and he and Cindy retreat upstairs for a few minutes to scream and curse at each other while Jared and the girls watch television, their unblinking eyes glazed over in a practiced oblivion that's heartbreaking to witness. After a few minutes Brad comes down to say hello, and I accompany him into the kitchen, where he pulls a bottle of wine out of the Sub-Zero and starts rummaging through a drawer in search of a corkscrew. “Sorry I'm late,” he says.

  “Don't worry about it,” I say. “Listen, Brad, maybe this was a bad idea. I can always come another time.”

  “It's fine.”

  “I don't know. Cindy seems to be upset.”

  “That's par for the course,” Brad says, his expression grim.

  Cindy serves up a dinner of overcooked chicken in marinara sauce that disintegrates wherever the tines of my fork pierce it, mashed potatoes, and a tossed salad that was dressed too long ago and is now soggy and fermenting. “Everything is delicious,” I say. Jared, who has finally joined us only after being summoned repeatedly, raises his eyebrows incredulously at me. The conversation, or what passes for it, is stilted and awkward, and while I'm sure my presence is not without its own stultifying effects, I sense that dinner here is never a barrel of laughs. Brad eats resolutely and with great concentration, Jared with affected detachment, and Jenny and Emily giggle and whisper to each other in a secret twin language. “Oobo yoobo?” “Boobo wabo.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” Cindy nibbles on some soggy lettuce and absently scolds the girls every few minutes for some minor transgression or another while I carve “save me” into my mashed potatoes. We go through the first bottle of wine in under ten minutes, and Cindy quickly opens a second.

  “So, Joe,” Brad says, “how long do you plan on sticking around?” Cindy perks up with obvious interest in my answer.

  “I'm not sure,” I say. “My plans are somewhat open-ended.”

  “I don't know why anyone would stick around this shithole a day longer than they had to,” Jared says.

  “Jared!” Cindy snaps at him as the twins gasp in delighted horror at his language.

  “Watch your mouth, Jared,” Brad says wearily.

  “Sorry. This craphole.”

  The twins are like a sitcom laugh track.

  “I used to feel like you, Jared. But you wouldn't believe how much you can miss a place you think you hate.” That's me, affecting a guileless tone of open conciliation in a futile attempt to ease the tension at the table and perhaps begin smoothing things over between my only living relatives and me.

  “Well, that's easy for you to say,” Jared says. “I, on the other hand, have not yet written my revenge.”

  “My book wasn't for revenge.”

  “What, then?”

  “It's complicated.”

  “You always say that. It's not so simple. It's complicated. Bullshit. You got back at all the people you were pissed at. There's nothing wrong with it, but let's call it what it is. Revenge.”

  “That's enough, Jared,” Brad says, although not with much conviction.

  “Oh, come on, Dad,” Jared says, his face turning red. “You went apeshit when that book came out. You and Mom couldn't shut up about it.”

  “Now we're getting somewhere,” I say, turning to Brad as if I meant for the conversation to take this turn. “I'm sure you were pissed when the book came out. So why didn't you say anything to me?”

  Brad slowly puts down his fork and finishes the chicken in his mouth with slow, deliberate chews, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his napkin to indicate that he will not be rushed. “Why didn't I say anything,” he says, nodding resignedly, as if he would like to have avoided this discussion altogether but has been coerced into it. “One: because you and I rarely speak to each other. Two: because I probably didn't want to give you the satisfaction. But mostly—and I know you might find this hard to understand—because I'm an adult, Joe, and I have got much bigger problems to deal with than some stupid, mean-spirited book.”

  “That you do,” says Cindy with a nasty grin before chugging down what I estimate to be her fourth glass of wine.

  Brad turns to his wife, his expression a tired mixture of pity and disgust. “Don't you think you've had enough?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Why are you mad at me?” I ask Jared in a whisper as Brad and Cindy gnaw at each other like two angry animals.

  “I'm not mad.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “I'm just trying to draw their fire.”

  “From what?”

  Jared sighs and looks at me. “From you.”

  Before I can ask him what he means, Shnookums comes flying into the dining room and performs a reckless dive into the chicken marinara, splattering the red sauce across the tablecloth as she flaps her wings in a frantic effort to correct her flight path.

  “Brad!” Cindy yells as we all jump to our feet in surprise.

  “Fuck!” Brad exclaims.

  The bird spins around on the serving platter as if it's standing on a lazy Suzan, unable to take to the air again because of the saturation of sauce in its feathers. Cindy swats at the bird, missing completely but knocking over her wineglass, which spills onto the table, and the wine bottle, which hits the wood floor with a resounding thud. “Goddammit!” Cindy shrieks.

  We all watch, mesmerized, as Shnookums finally extracts herself from the chicken dish and takes a few jerky steps across the table, leaving perfect red footprints on the tablecloth in her wake before coming to a stop directly in front of me. “Hey, dickhead,” she says, and that pretty much wraps up dinner with the family.

  After helping Brad and Cindy clean up the mess in their dining room, I am making my good-byes when I catch Cindy flashing Brad a meaningful look. “I'll walk you out,” Brad says to me. I remember Jared's comment about drawing his parents' fire and wonder what's coming. We sit down on the front steps, and Brad gets right to it. “I need to talk to you about Jared.”

  “Okay,” I say. “You know, I have to tell you, I really like him. He's a good kid.”

  Brad nods. “I know. But the thing is, he's also a bit of a discipline problem for Cindy and me. He skips school, he stays out all night, he's smoking pot.”

  “He's a teenager,” I say with a shrug. “But I've been spending some time with him lately, and there's no question that he's a great kid. I don't think you have anything to worry about.”

  “I know you don't,” Brad says pointedly. “And that's the problem.”

  “I don't understand.”

  Brad takes a breath and purses his lips. “Did you smoke pot with Jared?”

  Uh-oh. “What?” I say.

  “Cindy says the night she came to tell you that Dad was dead, you and Jared both reeked of it.”

  “Listen, Brad. I've been here for a week. Whatever Jared is into, he was into long before I got here.”

  “Just answer me. Did you or didn't you smoke up with him?”

  “It was his stuff,�
� I say lamely. “I just took a few puffs.”

  “Uh-huh, that's what I thought,” Brad says, nodding. “Listen, it's like this: Cindy and I think you should go back to Manhattan. We don't want you hanging around with Jared anymore.”

  “That's insane. It was just a joint, for god's sake.”

  “You're just proving my point.”

  “Listen,” I say. “Jared is going through a tough time right now. Things between you and Cindy are bad; he's confused about everything.”

  “You've been here for a few days, and now you're an expert on my son?”

  “That's not what I'm saying. It may very well be the fact that I was a stranger to him. But either way, I'm the one adult he seems to be willing to talk to.”

  Brad looks up at me, anger blazing in his eyes. “You're not an adult, Joe. You're a thirty-four-year-old teenager. That's why Jared likes you. He doesn't look to you for guidance or wisdom. Your age just lends some credibility to his bullshit. And the last thing he needs is another pothead to get high with.”

  “I see,” I say, standing up abruptly. “If you ask me, I think you're just looking for any excuse to keep Jared away from me because it makes you crazy that he relates to me and not to you. I'm sorry Jared couldn't be a ballplayer, Brad, but believe it or not, there can still be something worthwhile about a kid who doesn't play for the Cougars.”

  Brad remains sitting on the stairs, looking thoroughly exhausted. “You know why I wanted Jared to be on the team? Because I wanted him to feel a part of something, to learn what it means to be responsible to someone besides himself. That's something you've never understood, because you've never been a part of anything in your life. You've never looked out for anyone but yourself. It's so easy for you to sit there and be easygoing about his drugs and his delinquent behavior, because at the end of the day you have nothing invested in him. You're his little buddy. I'm his father, Joe, and as much as I'd like to be his buddy, I have a larger responsibility that you can't begin to comprehend, because you've never loved someone selflessly in your life.”