Of Jenny and the Aliens

by Ryan Gebhart

  “No, they’re not.”

  “You did. Friday night that’s exactly what you did.”

  “Oh.”

  “I like people, I always have, and I’m not going to apologize for it. I like touching people; I like talking to people. I like their faces and their conversations and discovering what they’re about. It was never anything sexual for me, until it was. Alex was worried about me. He called me a wild child.”

  “You have a big heart,” I say.

  She laughs. “He thought I was gonna end up a knocked-up dropout.”

  “Dude.”

  “He was only looking out. Alex was amazing and you have no idea how bright he was. Our screenplay could’ve been made into a TV show. It was that good.”

  “Maybe you could still finish it.”

  “No.” She shakes her head five, six times. “Not without him. So yeah, he’s dead and he’s not coming back. I know that. But sometimes when I can’t sleep, I get to thinking: what about the other Navy SEALs? They probably had brothers and sisters who idolized them too. Maybe they were aspiring artists or musicians who could have changed the world for the better. Maybe if the Rayan who shot and killed Alex, maybe if he was born in a different place, he would have been best friends with him.” She says, “I want world peace. I want it more than anything. I want the fighting to stop, at least for one day. That’s what it would take.”

  “For what?”

  “If there’s world peace, I’ll be your girlfriend.”

  “Don’t turn the way I feel about you into a joke. I really do love you. I know we’ve only been hanging out for a couple of weeks, but I know what I feel.”

  “I’m serious.” She takes my hand and interlocks her fingers with mine. “If by some miracle from the heavens, everyone stops fighting for one day, I’m yours.”

  Obviously this is her way of saying we’ll never be a couple. But I can’t help it — my heart suddenly bursts open. She’s perfect for me on so many levels, and I hate that she has this much control over me.

  There’s not a single star out tonight. It’s just an expanse of low and cold-looking clouds glowing sickly and orange from the city lights. I bite down on my cheeks, because I don’t want her to see that I’m smiling. I’m still supposed to be pissed at her.

  I say, “Jenny, I fucking love you.”

  She makes a frustrated sigh. “Derek . . .”

  “No, no. Let me talk. Because I do. I want to spoon with you and ride bikes with you and travel the world with you, and, yes, maybe smack you around with my penis a little. And —”

  She does a genuine laugh and, my God, if I don’t love another sound more than this. “You’re so hammered.”

  “I’m hammered because of you. Just listen. Just listen. My dream in life — the only thing that I want — is to have, like, thirty of the cutest kids this goddamned planet has ever seen with you. I want you more than anyone has wanted anything.”

  “So we’re talking kids now?” she says, amused.

  “There’s not going to be a war,” I say, and I know this to be true, because I’m so in love with her I can’t stand it. I hiccup. “I’ll go door-to-door across the entire planet, and I’ll get all eight billion people to sign a petition for world peace. I’m going to fix this. I promise.”

  “Oh, shut up. There’s no stopping this war from happening.”

  “I can stop it.”

  Her voice softens. “Just shut up.”

  My head’s against her shoulder, eyes closed. The darkness spinning. Ears ringing.

  “Hey, Jenny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What do you call cheese that’s not yours?”

  She goes quiet, like she’s actually thinking it over. “Nacho cheese?”

  “You don’t remember.” I meant for this to come out as a question, but before it left my mouth it became a statement.

  She says, “My memory sucks. What are you talking about?”

  Not your cheese, is what I want to say.

  I whisper, “Te amo.”

  She gets up, then kisses me on the part in my hair, just like I did to her on our very first night together. “Happy birthday, Derek.”

  And just like that, she’s gone.

  I can figure this out. I mean, even if I can’t, even if humanity can’t, well, we’re not really alone in the universe anymore, are we?

  clip-nah rrrip takakakaka

  As if Jenny were still here, I say, “There will be world peace. And it’s going to happen a lot sooner than you think.”

  This is a therapy session, but it feels more like intervention.

  I’m next to Mom on the couch, hungover as shit. There’s a dull thrumming in my head, my insides feel depleted of everything important, and I’ve only gotten, like, five decent hours of sleep the past two days. No one better say anything to piss me off, because I’m not in the mood.

  Dad doesn’t want to be here. He loves me but he wishes he didn’t have to deal with this. This isn’t why he flew up from Austin. I know all this because his arms are crossed and his foot is tapping the ground restlessly and he’s sitting all the way over by the window.

  Dr. McDermott sits cross-legged with a notepad on her lap. She’s already writing stuff down, even though I haven’t said anything.

  Mom’s been going to her once a month since we moved to Maumee to help with her anxiety and depression. She insists that the medication and talk therapy helps, but she still knows how to lose her shit like no other.

  She says to me, “Ducky, do you need some aspirin?”

  “Yeah. You have some?”

  She searches through her purse. “Sorry.”

  “So is it Donald or Derek?” Dr. McDermott says.

  “Donald’s his first name,” Mom says. “He prefers to go by his middle name.”

  “Call me whatever. Does, uh, anyone have some aspirin?”

  The doctor says, “Tell me what happened yesterday.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I slouch into my seat, my hair clinging to the fabric from static.

  “Tell her,” Mom says. “That’s why we’re here. To help you get better.”

  “You made me come here.” I barely say this at all.

  She gives me an appalled look, her mouth wide open. “Maybe that’s because you drank my good bottle of scotch that I was saving. You were going up to tables last night and saying ‘peace be with you.’ You made that one little girl cry when you told her you met an alien who wants to be friends with her. Remember? Then the staff found that you puked your guts out in the women’s bathroom.” She turns to the doctor. “Oh, yeah. The manager showed it to me. You wouldn’t believe the mess he made. For crying out loud, who gets kicked out of Red Lobster?”

  Dr. McDermott clears her throat. “Let’s ease up on him, okay?”

  Mom takes a minute to collect herself and continues with a calmer voice. “This path he’s headed down is really worrisome. I mean, now he’s having delusions. What’s next?” She sighs. “I don’t want to know.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m, like, really enlightened. I mean, has anyone else in this room met an alien?”

  “You did not meet an alien,” Mom says in an obnoxious nasal tone, and it’s like my brain is getting squeezed in a vise.

  I rub my temples and say to the doctor, “This doesn’t leave the room, right?”

  “I adhere to the strictest physician-patient privileges.”

  “What about you?” I turn to Mom, then Dad. “I don’t want the FBI doing weird experiments on me.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Dad says in the humorless tone he gets when he’s annoyed.

  “Aren’t you two not even supposed to be here? I thought psychiatric or psychological appointments or whatever this is are one-on-one.”

  Mom says, “Dr. McDermott is a certified family counselor. This involves all of us.”

  “Then why is Avery waiting out in the hall?”

  “He’s not the one claim
ing he was abducted by aliens,” Dad says.

  “Just promise me.”

  Dad’s more reluctant than Mom, but they both promise.

  “I wasn’t abducted. I just talked to him for a bit. He was the same alien who posted the video and wrote the music we heard.”

  Dad says, “You’re imagining th —”

  “Let Derek finish,” Dr. McDermott says with a hand out, gesturing for Dad to be quiet.

  “He told me, you know, he told me things that aren’t that surprising. Like how his people don’t think humans are an intelligent species.” I point to Mom, exhibit A, then Dad, exhibit B. “They’ve got a point.”

  “You see?” Mom gestures toward me. “He’s an absolute danger to himself.”

  “Why is it so hard to believe that I met an alien? I mean, we’ve heard their music. We’ve seen their planet and even their livestock. We’ve already named their oceans.”

  The doctor says, “Derek, have you heard of Occam’s razor?”

  “Yes.”

  “It states: All things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one. Now is it possible, as your father suggested, and with all that’s going on, that you imagined this alien?”

  “Of course it’s possible,” I concede.

  “Did you know that most diagnosed cases of schizophrenia happen with young men around your age? A lot is going on in your head as you transition into adulthood. And from what I’ve heard from your mother in previous sessions, you’ve gone through quite a lot.”

  “I know what I saw. They’re the answer to world peace.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Imagine, like, being in New York City and dozens of flying saucers suddenly appear overhead. That’s when everyone realizes we’re all just human beings. They won’t be here to invade, and nothing about their presence will be threatening. And it’s . . . I can see our world transformed, where aliens coexist with humans and they’re not so alien. They’re just other guys working at the factory all day, and then they go to the bar to bitch about their jobs.”

  The doctor turns to Mom. “Has he had a history of these episodes?”

  Mom looks up, and her eyes are starting to water. I know what she’s going to say even before she opens her mouth. “As you know, the divorce was a very difficult time for Derek and me. It’s been tough raising him on my own.”

  “Now, I’ve helped quite a bit,” Dad adds. “Who bought Derek his truck? Who put forty thousand into his college fund? He’s welcome to stay with me whenever he likes.”

  “I know, I know,” Mom says calmly, but the tears start flowing anyway. “You know what I mean. It’s been emotionally tough.” She looks at the doc. “Derek’s become so distant. It’s like he wants nothing to do with me. This isn’t just normal adolescent angst I’m talking about. And when his father and his brother travel over a thousand miles for his birthday, Derek doesn’t even want to see them.”

  “That’s not true,” I say. “Maybe I have other things on my mind. Maybe it’s not about you or Dad or Avery.”

  “Then what?” Mom says.

  The doctor says, “Debbie, if you wouldn’t mind —”

  Mom’s not about to stop, now that the dam’s been breached. “Did you know I caught him drinking screwdrivers with his stupid friend Mark . . . and they were only in the sixth grade? Those are drinks where you mix vodka and orange juice.”

  “Thank you,” the doctor says plainly.

  “I grounded him, but it never did anything. He’d sneak out, get completely drunk, come home at five a.m. on school nights. For all I know he’s slept with a dozen girls, which wouldn’t surprise me with all the canker sores he gets.”

  “It’s type one herpes and you know I was born with it.” I furiously rub my face with my hands. “No, maybe you forgot because it seems you don’t know shit about me.”

  “Then tell me,” Mom pleads. She blows her nose with a tissue from the doctor’s box of Kleenex. “I want to know more about you. You’re my baby boy.”

  Oh, God.

  Sniffling, she says, “Tell me about that girl you had over Friday night. What was her name? Jenny?”

  “I’m not going to talk about her.”

  “Did she hurt you?”

  “Enough. I’m not going to talk about her, okay?”

  She crosses her legs and rests her hands on her lap. “Well, I think it would be better for you to date nice girls, not . . . tramps like that.”

  I stand up and point my finger inches from her face and she jerks back. My headache has reached cruel and unusual levels. “Mom, you know I love you, but don’t ever talk about her that way again.”

  “You see what I have to deal with?” Mom says to the doc. “I’m trying to be nice.”

  I laugh. “You just called her a tramp.”

  “It’s okay, Derek,” the doctor says. “No one’s out to get you. And, Debbie, in the future, please refrain from calling other people names.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I say, “You know what? Fuck this. Take me home. Yeah, blah-blah-blah, I’m having girl troubles and my parents are divorced. Those aren’t my problems. I know what my problem is: this world’s so fucked up. We’re always fighting each other. We were at war the summer before sixth grade with some other country and . . . who are we about to invade now? Raya? It’s all stupid bullshit. And here we are in this office talking about our feelings as if it all mattered. We’re about to send two hundred thousand troops into another country, so maybe some schizophrenic kid who may or may not have seen an alien isn’t the worst thing happening in the world. Now does anyone have any fucking aspirin?”

  “This is the world we live in,” Mom says, and I know there’s a part of her that doesn’t believe the bullshit spraying out of her mouth. There has to be. “We can’t change it. The best we can do — and I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s the truth — the best we can do is change ourselves.”

  “You keep on saying I’m sick, but it doesn’t mean that someone is healthy when they’re well-adjusted to a very, very sick planet. You want me to take a pill so I can accept a war?”

  “Enough!” Dad gets up and I’ve forgotten how big and imposing he can be, even though he’s only my height. His eyes shouldn’t be that scary — they’re disproportionately small for his face — but even now they make me feel like I’m in diapers.

  We’re ten feet apart, eyes locked. I don’t want to be intimidated by him — he cheated on us. He wrecked our family. We had everything going so well in Austin. I had all these friends and my cousins that I had to give half a summer’s notice that I was moving to Ohio, of all places.

  “Gentlemen, please.” Dr. McDermott holds out her hands, motioning for us to sit down.

  I take a deep breath and my face is tingling, my headache so powerful I just don’t even care anymore. “You want me to talk about my emotional problems? Okay, Dad, you’re a sleaze. Abby was barely twenty years old when you were banging her.”

  “Derek!” Mom says.

  The doctor says, “It’s okay, Debbie. Let him talk. If you want to wait outside, that would be okay.”

  Mom stays.

  I say to the doc, “He’d fly with her on business trips to Palo Alto, and as soon as he’d get on that plane, he totally forgot that he had a son and a wife. He’d call in to check on us and he’d tell me, ‘Hey, Double D, I miss you,’ but he didn’t miss me. He was too busy getting his dick wet. Now he shows up on my birthday with a new Nintendo and a new Mario Kart and, like always, he thinks that can make us cool again. I’m not some two-dimensional guy who only cares about video games and if you give me those things we’re suddenly friends again. I’m eighteen now. I’ve grown up and I don’t care about what happened the summer between fifth and sixth grade — that was eons ago — but I am pissed that you keep bringing it up. I don’t want to talk about it anymore and we’re good, okay? We’re good.”

  “What about the drinking?” the doc says.

&nbs
p; I turn to Mom and she’s crying uncontrollably now and she’s got to be misinterpreting everything I’m saying.

  I say, “You know, when I was in middle school I didn’t drink nearly as much as she thinks. We’d have a few on occasion, and I only got hammered maybe three times. By the way, Mom, it wasn’t Mark who got the first bottle of Smirnoff. It was me. He wasn’t the bad influence — I was. But I’m not an alcoholic. Like right now, drinking is the last thing on my mind. Here’s the thing: I’m gonna drink again at some point — I’m sure of it. Here’s another thing: I’m on a mission to create world peace and I will do it. This is my universe and I can change it. The world is not the creator of us; we’re the creators of it. We can change it. We can stop the war. We can have — I can have — true love.”

  My hands and feet are tingling like I’m having an out-of-body experience. Everyone’s looking off in different directions as if they’re posing for an album cover.

  I say, “Now, please, does anyone have anything for my headache?”

  The doctor takes a bottle of aspirin from her desk drawer and fills a Styrofoam cup with water from her cooler. I chew three bitter and sour pills and sigh as I wash them down.

  Was she holding out just to get me to talk?

  “Can I speak?” Dad raises his hand in a surprisingly timid way.

  The doctor turns to me. “Is that okay with you?”

  I close my eyes. I’ve said my piece, so I need to chill out now. I give myself five seconds and then say, “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  Dad brings his chair next to Mom. “I . . . uh . . . oh, man. I wasn’t expecting you to say all that, Double D. Wow. You’ve really grown. I’m sorry I haven’t always been there for you.”

  “It’s cool.”

  “No, it’s not. I am a jerk. The things I did to you and your . . .” He turns to Mom. She doesn’t make any sudden movements. “I didn’t come up here just for Derek’s birthday. Our world is on the brink of something big. I know this sounds stupid — but I couldn’t get this vision out of my head.” He looks at me. “You and Avery were dressed as soldiers, and we were sending you both off to fight. Then someone launched the bomb. It was the start of the largest war we’ve ever seen.”