“Rodney’s feeling a little hurt, Phillip. I don’t think you should have done that to his dog.”
I wasn’t sure I knew what Beatrice meant. Dogs guarded houses. Sometimes they crawled into your lap and slept there until their owners returned home. My mom had once considered buying me a dog.
“Rodney used to be my best friend,” I said after a while. “Rodney and I used to go everywhere together.”
I WAS ONLY a child. How was I to know what was real and what wasn’t? I slept in my clothes–a habit learned during the years of Mom’s motion–and often late at night while Mom screamed in the other room I would get out of bed and go to my bedroom door. I had no reason to believe sound was real or even important. While Mom screamed I might also hear the sound of Dad’s firm and reasonable voice. “Now, Margaret, you’ll wake Phillip.” “Especially in your condition.” “No you don’t. You don’t really want to.” “I love you, Margaret. You know that. Because somewhere in your heart you love me too.”
I would sneak down the hall, down the back stairs and into the backyard, where tall weeds towered over me, amber and dead. Morose spiders spun glistening webs in the moonlight, and the high power lines sizzled in the starless sky like Dad’s voice. The power lines were filled with the voices of the world’s other dads, calling their sons on the telephone. The world’s other dads were real too. They were real people who dealt with real things in the real world. Sometimes they found bits and pieces of the world that were not real, and then they had to make them so, or dispense with them altogether. Things were never as real as they could be for the world’s dads. Someday everything in the entire universe would be real, and the world’s dads would finally prevail. When that day arrived, civilization and not nature would be rampant. When that day arrived, you could talk to everybody in the universe on the telephone.
“Hello, son.”
“Hello, Dad.”
“We’ll go to the ball game. We’ll go to the beach. On the Fourth of July we’ll watch the fireworks. Then you and Judy and I’ll go see Judy’s parents. You’ll like Judy’s parents’ house. How’s your mom? Is there anything you’d like to talk about? Did you finish your science project? Did you get your report card? Is your mom still seeing What’s-his-name? Is your mom alone right now? Are you sure? What is his name, anyway? I thought I heard a voice. What is she doing? What sort of television show? I didn’t think that was on tonight. Oh, just in summer, huh? You’re sure? You can tell me if she’s not alone, son. You know that, don’t you? Your mom has other friends now who may sleep with her from time to time, and that’s perfectly natural, OK? There’s nothing wrong with that at all. But don’t worry. Don’t worry one little bit. You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. No, of course I don’t think that. But just the same. Did she want to talk to me? Are you sure? Do you want to check? Just in case. I’ll wait. If she’s busy, I’ll understand. If she’s got company, don’t bother her. I’ll understand, I really will. I was thinking the weekend after next we’d all drive out to Marineland. Of course Judy’ll come too. You like Judy, don’t you? I thought so. And she likes you too. In fact, Judy likes you very much, son. I think sometimes Judy likes you as much as if you were her own son.”
I could even hear Mom screaming out here in the overgrown backyard, standing in that strange inverted darkness I found comforting after Dad came to live with us. In Los Angeles the night simmered with its own logic and ceremony. I heard the buzzing earth, the whispering light, the conspiracies of mere matter. Our yard was filled with the ruins of a fallen cement birdbath and weed-sprung brick barbecue. Collapsed trellises, moldering rosebeds, strange, twisted bushes and syllableless insects. I could step into the high weeds and actually feel the language out there, like a human body, like Dad’s firm words. Broken cinder blocks, decomposing garbage, the corpse of a sad, tiny sparrow chewed and discarded by some spiteful tomcat. Forgotten civilizations I had read about in books. Mu, Atlantis, Greece, Egypt, Crete, Babylon. Perfect calendars and ritual sacrifice. People torn apart by dark machines. Virgins devoured by sharp blades. The hard inedible fruits of the weeds with hard bright colors. If I owned a telescope and lived on a high mountaintop I could see the stars. Not the stars on a wall map but the stars themselves. Stars exploded and collapsed. They turned and spun. If other people lived in the universe they might be looking at my sun now and contemplating me while I contemplated them. They might be creatures composed of gas or foam or rock or fire. They might live forever. They might love their moms. They might travel across landscapes filled with strange sounds, plants, birds and clouds. They might eat time or fart philosophical propositions. They might live language or speak matter. They may never have heard a single note of music in their entire lives. They might possess the advanced technology required to journey from sun to sun, but then they might be too lazy and self-involved to bother. Some nights I stood there in the darkness and cried for my lost mom. I was finally beginning to realize that just because I hated Dad didn’t mean I didn’t love him too. Dad was a house. Mom was just infinite space which Dad’s house isolated and defined. Mom was the sadness I couldn’t express. She didn’t stand a chance. To be perfectly fair, Mom hadn’t stood a chance from the very beginning.
17
I BEGAN TAKING less care of myself. I rarely showered or brushed my teeth, and soon grew inured to my own sweet, soury smell. My teeth and gums felt coated with a thin, gritty film. I kept many of the Jack Daniel’s bottles originally pilfered for Mom in my own room now, and dark, amiable boys at the neighborhood bowling alley sold me marijuana, hashish and belladonna. I spent a lot of time alone in my room, listening to Pink Floyd on my headphones. Dylan, Van Morrison, Strauss and Rossini, Handel and Bach. Stoned, I felt diffuse and more real. I ate packaged sandwiches, cookies and mints. I watched late-night television. I was growing more solid and real alone in my room while the rich saccharine smoke reshaped itself in the air. Men, monsters, sailboats, planets, forests and rivers. Nobody needed me, and I didn’t need anybody else. When I inhaled again from the joint I felt the harsh air filling my abdomen. My blood grew heavy, tranquil and slow, my eyes bloodshot and watery. Sometimes I touched my face, just to see if I was grinning or not. My face felt tight and strained. Every so often I caught myself squinting.
The Jack Daniel’s and 7UP always tasted sweet and strong. I could taste it and then, after rolling it on my tongue, swallow and inhale it at the same time. I could feel it going down my throat and esophagus. I could feel it trickling through the twitchy pyloric valve into the stomach’s muscled mouth. The icy drink still felt cool and fresh going down. Alcohol was pure, like snow. It felt and tasted like snow, or so I imagined, since snow was one of the many things I had never experienced. Sometimes I imagined flaky white snow falling inside my stomach. Sometimes I just lay flat on my back on my bed and tilted the icy glass to my lips, leaning it against my doubled chin. Cigarettes tasted better and harsher when you were stoned. I grew filled with a sense of intense well-being. I was no longer a child, but rather a very wise old man. I had made billions on the stock market, and endowed many large museums and worthwhile institutions. Younger men like Dad were envious of my boats, luxury resorts, gambling casinos, tame striped tigers and insatiable women. My women were of every conceivable nationality and shape. Some of them had enormous breasts, which I fondled one at a time. I made love day in and day out with an impossible assortment of attentive and beautiful women. When I imagined these impossible orgies I placed my hand between my legs. Sometimes it felt hard, but it also felt remote and slightly detached, like a heavy steel pipe or a dictionary. I might start laughing without any reason. I would reach for my Jack Daniel’s or my Bud. As I laughed, tears rolled down my face.
“Phillip. Are you all right in there?” Dad’s voice roamed outside in the corridor, testing doorknobs and latches, brushing the loose leaves of wallpaper.
“Fine!” I said, and started laughing again.
“What’s that smell, Phillip? Wha
t’re you smoking in there?”
The doorknob rattled flimsily. I heard the tiny lock brace and clack.
“Phillip? Why’s your door locked?”
“I’m in bed. I’m trying to go to sleep.”
Dad’s voice waited. Dad’s voice was a thing, immobile and immense. Dad’s voice lived in the corridor and made lots of money. Sometimes I imagined myself searching through the corridor and uncovering the vast sums of cash Dad’s voice had hidden out there. I invested it in Alcoa. My dividends would be nearly eleven percent.
“I don’t want you smoking in bed, Phillip. Now put out whatever sort of cigarette you’re smoking and go to sleep. I don’t want to have to come in there.”
“I don’t want you to have to come in here either, Dad,” I said, and started laughing again. The tears soaked my T-shirt. “I’m putting it out. It’s just a cigarette, and I’m putting it out.” I was laughing at the impressive mahogany bureau Dad had bought for my room. I had pulled the bureau up and braced it against the flimsy aluminum doorknob. The bureau was exactly like Dad’s voice. It was as if the bureau held my door in place on one side, and Dad’s voice held it in place on the other.
Dad’s voice stayed where it was. It seemed to be trying to confirm something. It was hard and resolute.
“I love you,” Dad said. “And your mother loves you too. She said kiss you good night.”
And then I heard the familiar footsteps, and the door of the master bedroom brushing against the shag carpet. I heard the deep breathing house. I heard the distant ticking thermostat. I heard the beetles in the yard, and the electricity hissing in the streets. I heard the stars and the moon. I took another hit off my joint. The tiny pinprick ember flared, seeds popped. A fragment of paper ignited and flashed and its ember drifted up into the air and vanished.
Within minutes, Mom had begun screaming again.
I NEVER WANTED to be loved when I was eight years old. I wanted to be crushed by soft massive arms. I wanted to be lifted into some towering embrace. I wanted to be hugged so tight I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to be hugged until my eyes watered and my heart popped. I was often awake all night, pacing through the halls and yard of my house, pausing sometimes at the door of my parents’ bedroom. After the screaming stopped you couldn’t hear anything. My parents’ bedroom was perfectly quiet at these times, hollow and soft, as if it had been drained of atmosphere, like some unmanned spacecraft sent aimlessly into outer space.
“Sometimes I’m not even thinking,” I tried to explain to Beatrice one day. “Sometimes I just pace, as if momentum alone compels me. It’s like I’m not going anywhere. Just into the living room, the kitchen, down the stairs to the basement, through the icy stone garage, remembering how Mom looks at me sometimes. Her face is ruddy and flushed. She has this insipid smile on her face. Whatever’s growing inside her has become wary and suspicious, as if it knows I’m outside waiting. Perhaps it has simply grown stunned by Mom’s screaming. ‘Everything’s going to be okay,” I try to comfort it. ‘Once you’re outside, you’ll have your own crib. We’ll put you in my room where it’s quiet. You’ll eat well. You’ll see the sun. You’ll reach out your flabby hands and grab my face. You’ll wear tiny clothes. We’ll hang a bright, intricate mobile over your crib, and it will glitter, so you can watch it at night when everybody else is asleep. You’ll stare at the bright mobile and contemplate ideas like motion, light, repetition, difference. These are the best ideas you’ll ever have.’”
“Why don’t you try taking a Valium?” Beatrice was sitting with me on the garage stairs. The front garage door was hanging wide open. Outside the hot sun flashed across everything: white pavements, white stucco houses, gleaming white windows. Beatrice was twisting the ends of her shirt around one index finger. “If your mom hasn’t got any, I can get some from my old man. My old man loves Valium.”
“I want things to be different for her,” I said. I was staring at the bright sunlight and the wide empty streets beyond my garage door. Inside here the light seemed to radiate from the beamed walls and ceiling, the waxed tarpaper floor sheets, the cold Rambler. “I want her to be happy. She’s a lot smarter than I was at that age. She knows what’s out here because I’ve been telling her. When she’s born, she’ll find out I’ve been lying about how much fun it is and she’ll hate me.”
“Why do you think it’ll be a girl?”
“Because I know.”
“It’ll be a boy, Phillip. Your mom will have a million sons.”
“I want everything to be figured out before she gets here. I want everything to be perfect.”
“We all like to think we grow up,” Beatrice said. “History’s the one dream we dream together.”
“I don’t want to grow up.”
“You already have.”
“I want to grow down. I want to bury myself in the hard earth. I want to root myself there like a dead tree. I want to entangle myself in the earth’s heart so nobody can ever pull me out.”
“You’ll buy a condo in the Valley. You’ll meet a beautiful woman who drives a silver RX-7. You’ll get married. You’ll buy a house. You’ll have babies.”
“No,” I said firmly.
“You’ll take up gardening, skiing, stamp collecting. Your dad will take you on in the firm. You’ll have color televisions in every room of your house, and video recorders which function by remote control. You’ll have second thoughts. You’ll wonder what you’re missing. Your wife will develop an unfocused expression. Her expression will be exploring other continents, even while she’s sitting right next to you. She’ll sleep with other men. You won’t even mind it that much. Sometimes she’ll look very sad. You’ll teach your children to be independent, and shower them with presents. You’ll tell your children you want them to have all the things you never had.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know me at all.”
“You’ll buy a sports car to make yourself feel young again.”
“There’s things I’ve never told.”
“We all never tell things, and it’s always the same things. They aren’t secrets, Phillip. They’re conditions. As much as we may hate to admit it, we all live the same worlds inside.”
I awoke every morning with a terrific hangover, parched and aching. Usually I smoked a little grass and took some Tylenol, just to get me started. I watched daytime television in my room. There were game shows that lasted forever. They took up infinite space with their glittering prizes. Each prize bore a cardboard placard inscribed with its retail value. Usually this value was hyperinflated, but always impressive. Sometimes, unconsciously, I tried to add these sums together in my head: $679, $2,807, $99, $3,499. Often the prize was a brand-new car or a world cruise. I imagined myself winning these prizes and taking these cruises. The cruise ships were filled with other boys and girls my own age. There were sundecks and swimming pools, shuffleboard tableaux and billiard tables. We played Ping-Pong and pinball. The girls all wore bikinis. Even though they were only eight or nine years old, they all had large breasts. I drank Jack Daniel’s and Wild Turkey, Stolichnaya and Kamchatka, Southern Comfort and Jim Beam, Gallo and tawny port, Coors and Bud.
“Rodney,” I said. I was leaning into my bedroom closet, as far away from Mom and Dad’s room as I could get with my telephone receiver. “I need to talk to you. I can’t figure this out alone. I need to see you.”
“I’m kinda busy.”
“Just for a half hour. Maybe I could come over.”
“I said I’m busy.”
“But, Rodney–” I was prepared to protest, to cry and shout and hammer and beg. Then I heard Dad’s footsteps. They paused outside my door. Then his hand, very faintly, rapped.
“Are you asleep in there? Phillip?”
“I gotta go, Rodney,” I said. And then I hung up.
18
“PHILLIP?”
“What?”
“Are you in there?”
“Of course I’m in here.”
<
br /> “Don’t talk back to me, son. I just wanted to see if you were all right.”
“I’m all right.”
“Do you want anything?”
“I don’t want anything.”
“Did you fix yourself some dinner?”
“I fixed my dinner.”
Dad went silent for a moment. His voice seemed to be gauging things like mass, humidity and weight. “Your mom and I were worried about you.”
I refused to dignify his duplicity with a response, and wondered about life on other planets. Perhaps it was only microscopic and stupid. Perhaps it wasn’t even self-conscious.
“You’re spending a lot of time alone in there, Phillip. What do you do in there all day?”
I poured more Jim Beam into my ceramic mug. The ceramic mug said SON and was part of a family set Dad had purchased at the mall a weekend before. “I read,” I said. I reached under my bed for my Marlboro carton. “I’m trying to get some reading done.”
“All right, son.” Dad stood quietly out there for a moment, like some primitive landmark, or guards outside a condemned prisoner’s cell. “I’ll leave you alone.”
Dad’s footsteps beat loudly in the hall. I heard dishes clattering in the kitchen. The television started up in the living room. It was as if my house were inhabited by disembodied sound. Then, after a while, Dad’s footsteps returned down the hall. Very softly this time. Then his pocket screwdriver began investigating the lock of my bedroom door. Tick tick. The doorknob rattled slightly. Tick. Tick tick. A flashlight skittered underneath the door a few times.
The History of Luminous Motion Page 10
