I had no idea what I would do when the van finally stopped. I could imagine the women turning into one of the long gravel driveways lining each side of the street, coming around to the back of the van and opening the rusty-edged barn doors, reaching in to pull Martín out. They’d lead him back, squinting in the sunlight, toward one of the long, low ranch-style houses at the end of each of the driveways. And then what?
The van slowed and signaled, its right directional bulb blinking white behind the cracked plastic lens. I pulled to the curb and let the van continue along for a few houses. At the lip of a wide driveway, it came to a stop. A chain-link gate barred the entrance. The passenger door opened and one of the women hopped down and out. She was tall and lean, wore a western-style shirt checkered orange and blue. Her full helmet of dark hair was shot through on the sides with zigzaggy streaks of gray. Pulling a key ring from the pocket of her jeans, she unfastened the padlock on the gate. She swung one side open and the van passed through, and she followed behind, closing and locking the gate behind her. I could hear her boots on the gravel as she disappeared behind the high wall of hedges that divided their property from the neighbors’.
I sat on my bike, one foot on the curb, my heart pounding an elevated drumbeat. I was a good fifteen miles from home, from the Romeros. We had passed a gas station a few long blocks back; there might be a pay phone there, but I knew I couldn’t leave the van. I began to pedal again, slowly. When I reached the gate, I continued cruising, looking up the long length of the driveway. The van was parked at the far end, both barn doors open. The interior was a black mouth, lightless, impenetrable. More high, ragged hedges lined the side of the drive, hiding whatever house was back there. The woman appeared again from around the hedge and leaned into the back of the van. It looked like she was speaking, like she was talking to someone, trying to coax them out of the darkness. Then another hedge reared up as I passed the property line, cutting off my view.
Waiting for a break in traffic, I crossed the wide boulevard, then turned back toward the direction from which we’d come. Far off to the south, through the mustard-yellow smog, I could see the tops of the hills we’d crossed a half hour or so before. I rolled back along the opposite shoulder, stopping again when I was directly across from the driveway. Through the passing cars, I could see that the woman was still leaning into the darkness of the van’s hull, though now I was too far away to hear her voice. She reached in, stretching, trying to maneuver something out. I didn’t know what I would do when I saw Martín. Flag down a passing car, maybe. Start screaming, waving my arms. Something, anything to draw attention, to get help.
She began backing out, pulling something along with her. It was like the van was giving birth, like those movies we’d seen in biology class, a farmer pulling a calf from a cow. For a moment I had an awful vision, the van disgorging blood, bone, meat. I pushed the thought away, refocused on what I would do when I finally saw Martín. I knew that I’d just have to ride straight over, climb the fence and run to him. There was no other choice. I wasn’t going to lose him this time.
The woman stepped down out of the van, still pulling, and I saw then that she wasn’t pulling a child, she wasn’t pulling Martín. She was pulling a tire. She was pulling a bike.
The woman stood, holding it by the top tube. I recognized the body immediately, the tight angles, the slight downward bend of the handlebars, the bike’s almost prayerful pose. It was a Colnago Super, Saronni red, blood red, with cream and tan accents along the grips and rims. I’d never seen one in person, only in magazines or posters on bike shop walls. It was the fastest thing going. Luigi Arienti had won an Olympic gold medal on a Colnago. Eddie Merckx had broken the world’s one-hour speed record on one just a few years before.
The second woman climbed down from the back of the van, still holding the Colnago’s handlebars. She was short-legged and chubby, seemingly a direct counterpoint to her friend or girlfriend or sister. They set the Colnago down carefully. The tall one held the bike upright while the short one slammed the van doors. The sound shot out across the boulevard, jolting me back.
The tall woman opened a padlock on the garage door and then pulled the door up and over. Together they wheeled the Colnago into the garage, disappearing inside. A few moments later they reemerged, without the bike, and pulled the door down again, snapping the padlock into place.
I didn’t know what to do. I was filled with this incredible anger. The women didn’t have Martín, and that made me hate them even more than if they’d had him. It was like he’d been taken all over again; he was doubly lost, pushed further into a dark corner somewhere, alone. I watched the women at their front gate. I wanted to take something from them, like they’d taken Martín from me, again.
I could imagine swinging myself onto the Colnago’s seat, gripping its handlebars, bowing my body into position. I could imagine the feeling that would come, erasing the anger, the hollow ache of grief. That bike was fast, light, strong. It could take me along any of the routes on the map, as far as I was willing to go.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, the green light flashed.
The women stood in the driveway, shading their eyes and looking out to the boulevard, maybe to me on the far side. A girl on a bike. Traffic flashed by, breaking the connection. When I could see across again they were walking back into their house, pulling the door closed behind them.
It was getting darker, the slow dusk settling in. I stashed my Schwinn in a messy tangle of bushes, then thought better of it and pulled the bike loose again, propping it up against a mailbox at the side of the street. Left out like that, I knew someone would take it. That was the way things worked. And that felt right. Like if I failed to grab the Colnago, if I got caught or lost my nerve, I’d have no way back.
I waited for another break in traffic, then ran across the boulevard to the driveway gate. I popped the gate’s lock with my bump key and squeezed inside. The driveway’s gravel crunched beneath my sneakers. I waited, listening. I could hear the women’s voices, muffled a little, coming from behind the house. Then a whiff of burning charcoal, a little plume of gray smoke rising over the roof. Barbecue night. I crossed the driveway, trying to stay light on my feet. I used the bump key to open the lock on the garage door, then I lifted it, slowly, just a foot or so, just high enough to roll under. When I was on the other side, I eased the door back down behind me.
The garage was dark except for a small window in the back letting in a little of the sunset. I stood and let my eyes adjust. The light from the window was red and gold and reflected all around me, little glints like fireflies, or cigarette lighter flickers. I didn’t know what was happening. It felt like I was going crazy, losing my grip. I tried not to freak out, but to let my eyes finish adjusting, until I could see the space clearly.
My sense of smell settled before my vision. Leather and rubber and oil. I knew those scents. And then I could see, finally. The flickers and flashes settled into familiar shapes—shapes from posters and magazines, shapes from dreams.
The garage was full of bikes. They hung from hooks on the ceiling, stood in neat rows along the walls, balanced half-disassembled in shop stands. There must have been forty or fifty, every make and model imaginable. A forest of glinting steel.
The Colnago sat in the center, flipped up onto its handlebars and seat. I approached it slowly, reverently, as if I could spook it somehow, as if it might ride away on its own at my touch. Its frame was cool and smooth in my hand. I turned it back upright, swung my leg over the frame, set my feet onto the pedals. The bike was impossibly thin. It felt like sitting on the edge of something, like I could slide off at any moment, or that it would just disappear when I started pedaling. I traced my thumb along the embossed edges of the Colnago’s symbol, the famous black club stamped into the side of the handlebar stem. The garage around me flared, brightened, sharpening to perfect clarity.
I heard a cough from outside, back behind the house. I could smell meat cooking, hamburgers,
pot smoke. I rolled the Colnago to the garage door. I’d only have a second to lift the door and ride down the driveway and out the front gate before the noise called someone out. I took a breath and held it. I could feel my pulse in my ears, the same heavy thump I’d heard so many times in the theater, running along with the woman, trying to outpace the flood. There was another cough, closer this time. I heard the house’s screen door open, its hinges screaming. I grabbed the garage door’s handle and pulled. The hole opened in front of me and I could see the corridors from the movie, the open square of light beyond. I pedaled through. The bike tried to buck beneath but I held it tightly, knees and elbows in, forcing too much and then backing off, letting it carry me across the uneven gravel toward the gate.
I turned my head for a second, looking back, a mistake, almost losing my balance. I saw the women coming out their front door. I saw the walls of water rushing through the corridors, could hear the roar close in my ears.
“Hey,” one of them called. Then the other shouted, “Hey! Stop!” But I didn’t stop, I continued pedaling, down the driveway and through the open gate and into the middle of the boulevard, dodging cars, holding that breath until I had broken free.
* * *
I took a different route back, making quick turns, looking for the van behind me, thankful for the growing darkness. The Colnago was even faster than I’d imagined, light and nimble, but strong enough to push, and so I pushed, riding hard all the way back.
The park was quiet; the alleys between trailers empty. I set the Colnago around the back of the trailer and ran inside. Gary was beached in his lounger, a bottle in one hand, staring at the TV. The screen was dark; the set was off. Sometimes he slept with his eyes open.
In my room I pulled the money from my mattress. I shoved a few clothes into a backpack. I had enough cash to buy more along the way.
From the other side of the park I could hear Martín’s grandmother, her voice high and faint, a ghost’s voice calling him home.
In the mirror, I looked and tried to see her, my mother, but all I saw was him. I wanted to tear out of my body somehow, rip it off me, as if it were a shell I could escape. I looked at the scars on my arms, on my calves and thighs, and saw them for what they were. Little exits, little ways out. I knew that if I stayed here, with my father’s slow death, with Martín’s grandmother calling his name, that I would return to that sharp edge, I would need it, and that eventually it wouldn’t be enough, and I would find bigger blades, make deeper marks.
I wrote a note for the nurse and set it on top of the TV in the living room. I stared at my father for a moment from the other side of the room, as I had so many times, wondering what would come next.
I walked over to him, sleeping heavily in his chair. His hair was absurdly dark, dry as straw between my fingers. No goodbyes. That had always been his command, his wish. But you don’t always get what you want. That was one of his favorite songs. Don’t, can’t. The Tick-Tocks covered it on their only record.
I leaned down and kissed his clammy forehead. I touched his cheek and whispered goodbye.
* * *
Riding the Colnago, the world stayed bright for a long time, much longer than it ever had before. Colorful and new, fresh, strange. I followed the most central route I had seen on the map. But for the rest of that summer, riding east, it really felt like I was following the movie. When I’d see its title on a marquee, I’d stop for the night, paying a little extra to roll the Colnago into the theater with me. I always kept it close.
Fort Apache, Jonesboro, Louisville. The glow of riding the Colnago began to fade. The movie became harder to find, then disappeared completely. But by then I knew it by heart, and during long stretches of riding or at night in some dark motel room I’d replay that sequence, following every twist and turn of the corridors, chasing that moment of discovery and relief when the mother finally finds her son.
On the first Sunday in October, I reached New York. The city was so much bigger than I’d imagined, a new world almost, but quiet, too, so early in the morning. I was out of money, so I sold the Colnago to a man in Battery Park. By then, it was just another bike. When he left me with the cash I turned into the wind and saw the shock of water, the sea pressing right up to the city’s edge. I’d gone from one body to another. I walked down to the shoreline. The sky was gray and rolling, restless with an approaching storm. I let the tide pull at my sneakers and then took them off and walked out to where the water reached my hips, to where the city disappeared and all I could see was ocean. I felt so lost and alone. I wanted to cut myself, feel the sharp edge pulling through my skin. I wanted to steal something. I wanted to trade this feeling for another, even for a moment, but there was nothing left to take.
I could see the boy, his hair in the frame, so I wrapped my arms around his chest and held his body close. I whispered his name again. The water swelled. I had never learned to swim; I had always been afraid of water, but there with him, I took a breath and lowered myself, holding him tight, feeling his face in my hair, the water rushing over us.
I imagined him in the back of a van, or alone in some dark corner. I imagined his face in the reflected light of the movie screen, his hand on my wrist, his nose in my hair, breathing in. I imagined him in my arms. The current was so strong. If I stayed there I’d be pulled farther, deeper. I started to lose my balance. I imagined the escape pod, ready to leave the dying planet. I didn’t want to go alone, I didn’t know how I could go alone, but my lungs were empty, the current was pulling. I held on as long as I could, until I no longer felt his breath, his warmth, and then I lifted myself out of the water and opened my arms and let him go.
Acknowledgments
Linda, Jim, and Jenn O’Connor; the Anderson and Krugman families; Martin Garcia and Susan Weber; Ben Leroy and Tyrus Books; Alison Callahan, Brita Lundberg, and everyone at Scout Press; Jim Ruland; Rachel Harper, Robin Lippincott, John Pipkin, Chad Broughman, and the students and faculty of the Spalding University MFA program; Dana Spector and Zac Simmons; Owen Shiflett and Zack Parker; Jack Boulware and Eddie Muller; Laura Cogan and Oscar Villalon at ZYZZYVA; Michelle Franke at The Rattling Wall; Dani Hedlund at F(r)iction; Louis Armand at VLAK; David Blum and Carly Hoffman at Kindle Singles; Andrew Holgate; Philip Gwyn Jones; Cedering Fox; and MyAnna Buring.
In memory of Stephen Blow and Kit Reed.
With love to Karen and Oscar. And for Yishai Seidman: editor, collaborator, and friend.
A Gallery Books Reading Group Guide
A Perfect Universe
Scott O'Connor
This readers group guide for A Perfect Universe includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
Children too wise for their age, a mother who only wants to win on The Price Is Right, a musician who emerges as the sole survivor from a collapsed building, and more honest characters populate Scott O’Connor’s short story collection A Perfect Universe. The author of Half World and Untouchable, Scott O’Connor weaves a piercingly emotional, observant, and realized cycle of stories in the tradition of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad and Annie Proulx’s Close Range.
Set in the corners of suburban California, these stories blend tales of courage, disappointment, and hope, as characters search for meaning and redemption amidst parenthood, grief, coffee shop lines, and long days at the hospital. With themes of celebrity, failure, and young children taking care of their adult parents, A Perfect Universe invites you into characters whose lives are so familiar that they will begin to resemble your own streets, neighbors, and sometimes yourself.
Topics and Questions for Discussion
1. The young musician who survives in “Hold On” has a ghostwriter working on telling his story. He has a h
ard time recounting the story in a way that the ghostwriter is satisfied with. What is a traumatic or life-changing event that you have lived through? How would you feel about someone else writing it down for a book to make a profit?
2. The survivor in “Hold On” feels some level of guilt that he is the only one who made it. How is that guilt portrayed, and what seems to be the best remedy to it?
3. In “It Was Over So Quickly, Doug,” which narrator do you most readily identify with and why?
4. Until page 23 in “It Was Over So Quickly, Doug,” we know the genders of two of the characters (the barista and the businesswoman), but not the third. Based on how that third character’s voice is written before his gender is revealed (page 23), how did you picture him?
5. In “Jane’s Wife,” Liz and Jane begin to drift apart when Jane’s artistic career takes off and Liz continues to struggle for success. Who are real-life celebrity examples who seem to have this same problem? How do you think drifting apart can be avoided in those situations?
6. The game show The Price Is Right drives Diane forward to make life changes in “Golden State.” Why do you think this game show is so important to her?
7. Meg, the sister who hears voices in “Interstellar Space,” would have been a “great beauty,” according to her mother on page 107. When her mother says this, Meg’s sister responds angrily. Why do you think Meg’s physical appearance is so important a thing for her mother to hold on to? When people deteriorate mentally, how does physical appearance play a role in how they are treated by broader society and even their own families? Does a mentally ill person who is conventionally attractive have an easier time dealing with life? Why or why not?
A Perfect Universe Page 19
