My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life

by Adam Nimoy

  But she just won’t budge.

  One day, she came to class and she looked nicer than usual. She was wearing makeup for the first time and, though feelings may not be facts, and I may be your typical it’s-all-about-me addict, it sure as hell felt as if it was about me. I came in late and sat some distance from her and I couldn’t take my eyes off her while she sat behind Andy as he read his piece. Andy’s an excellent writer and I had to keep looking down at the ground to concentrate on what he was saying because every time I looked up at him and saw Paula, I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was her face and hair and the white jeans and the tie-dyed T-shirt and she’s looking at me now and I’m looking at her and . . . doesn’t she feel anything? Maybe I’m just obsessing because I used to obsess about weed all the time—where to get it, how to smoke it, when to smoke it—and I don’t have those thoughts raging through my head anymore and I have to obsess about something. And all addicts want what they want right now, at least this one does.

  I finally break away from her gaze and look back down at the ground and Andy’s voice becomes comprehensible to me again.

  * * *

  I go to the house to babysit the kids while Nancy is out. It still feels weird being there, but I’m glad to be with the kids. This is one of the biggest benefits of getting along with Nancy—there’s no big issue about my coming over to see them. I help Maddy with her homework and feed her apple slices while we’re working. Then I go into Jonah’s room when he’s ready for bed, and I read him some Bible stories. He’s really tired and falls asleep right away.

  I go back into Maddy’s room and help her put away some clothes because her room is a mess since her mother decided to repaint it. It looks good. The part that’s finished anyway.

  She tells me she wants to sleep in Jonah’s room on the futon. I say okay but we have to pull it out without waking him. We finally get a sheet down and a blanket and I grab a pillow from her room. She gets in under the covers. I lie down next to her, put my arm around her, and whisper in her ear as she’s turned away from me.

  “I love you so much, Maddy. You are the best daughter I could have ever asked for.”

  “I love you too, Daddy. I just wish you’d come home.” And then she starts to cry.

  “I know, honey, but I can’t and I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.” I hold her close and hug her tight and then start talking to her about other things.

  “Daddy, will you help me put the rest of my room back together on Tuesday when I have the time?”

  “Of course. I would be happy to. Good night, honey.”

  “Good night, Daddy, I love you. Are all the doors locked?”

  “Yes, sweetie, all the doors are locked. I love you too.”

  Nancy finally comes home and I head out the door, hating the fact that she gets to stay with them and I don’t.

  I get in my car and drive back to my apartment. I pull into my parking spot in the garage and, again, I just sit in self-doubt, wondering if I made the right decision or if I totally screwed up my life.

  The halls are hell all right. The halls are hell.

  DON’T CALL ON ME

  SO I GO to the Friday night meeting at the Culver Center. I don’t usually go to the Culver Center because there are always old-timer alcoholics there who have missing teeth and weird hair. But Chris Kelton, James’s dad, is the treasurer on Friday nights, so I go to hang out with him, and sometimes we get dinner afterward.

  This is a speaker’s meeting, where an invited guest stands at the podium and talks about his or her experience before and after getting into the program. This goes on for about twenty minutes and then it’s tag sharing, where people share their experiences, usually starting with something the speaker said that got them thinking. I don’t really like tag sharing because I seem to get tagged when I really don’t have anything to say, and when I do think of something, I don’t get tagged.

  Sometimes the speakers are really funny, like the guy who used to stay at home and drink all day and had mini palm trees and heat lamps set up in his living room so that he could feel like he went somewhere without ever leaving the house. Sometimes the speakers tell really tragic stories, like the women whose lives were so out of control they lost custody of their children. They cry as they tell these stories. Even though they’ve been reunited with their kids and they’ve probably told this story at a million meetings, they still cry.

  When I put myself in their position and think of what it might have been like to lose my own kids, it just kills me.

  The speaker tonight is a woman in her forties and she’s not particularly funny or tragic. Then it’s time for people at the meeting to share. There are about fifty people at this meeting and there’s usually time for about ten shares around the room. It’s pretty much the usual, where people thank the speaker and then talk about something the speaker said, or they talk about whatever the hell comes into their head. Sometimes it gets pretty painful. Chris is tagged, and because he’s the treasurer, he’s sitting up in the front of the room facing the crowd, and he’s saying something about his own experience, but I’m not really listening because now I’m worried Chris is going to call on me and I gotta think up something to say. And I’m trying to hide behind the people in front of me so that Chris doesn’t see me, so there’s no eye contact, so he knows to please go ahead and call on someone else. And then he finishes his share and the next thing I hear is, “Adam, would you care to share?”

  I AM SOMEBODY

  IT’S SEVERAL MONTHS later and now I’m Mr. Everywhere in the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District substituting for math, science, English, and social studies teachers at all the grade schools. Teaching at the middle and high school level can be a tedious babysitting job with hormone-raging kids, but on some days, things happen. On some days, there’s a really great lesson plan that I can get excited about and I go from class to class trying to get the kids as turned on by the material as I am. It almost feels like the days when I went from directing one television show to another—when I went from NYPD Blue to The Practice to Ally McBeal to Gilmore Girls. I was hot. I was living in the fast lane. I was somebody.

  When Jonah was a toddler, he’d stand in his crib in the morning and yell at the top of his lungs for someone to wake up and come get him. And Marta, our eighty-year-old Romanian refugee babysitter would always tell us when he yelled from his crib, “He vants you shuud know ‘I am somebody! I am somebody!’ He vants you shuud know.”

  We all just vant to be somebody.

  Jonah’s going to be somebody. He’s bound for rock ’n’ roll glory. I should know, after having my ears blown out from more than forty years of concert experiences. I was sitting in his room the other day, listening to my twelve-year-old wailing away on his electric guitar. This is the way it’s been going lately; some days he’s mad at me and things are rough, and some days I’m hanging out with him just like I used to and everything’s fine. Right now I’m watching him rip through yet another Jimmy Page solo, and I swear this kid is on fire.

  Now, if I can just get him through school and keep him out of rehab, I’ll have done my job.

  * * *

  It’s six-thirty the next morning and I’m lying on my new IKEA bed. I have some furniture now. It’s nice to have furniture that you can put together yourself with simple tools that come in the box. IKEA gives the furniture funny Swedish names, like Malm for the dresser and Yagurt for the lamp and Sven for the bed and Yarnahorst for the dining room table and chairs. I’m lying on Sven recounting all the reasons I left my house and kids, thinking about all the things that led to the breakdown of my marriage: all the neglect and the conflict and the counseling and the fights and the misunderstandings and the miscommunications and the missed opportunities and the extended family issues and the financial issues and the drinking and the smoking and the . . .

  My cell phone rings.

  It’s SubFinder. Robot Woman needs me.

  “HELLO. THIS IS THE SUBFINDER SYST
EM. . . . The Santa Monica Malibu School District . . . HAS A JOB AVAILABLE. YOU WILL TEACH . . . seventh grade science, middle school level. . . . THE JOB LOCATION IS . . . John Adams Middle School. . . . REPORT FOR WORK AT . . . eight o’clock AM. . . . TO ACCEPT THIS JOB, PRESS 1. TO REJECT IT, PRESS 2. FOR MORE OPTIONS, PRESS 3.”

  I have to think about this for a second because I don’t know a damn thing about seventh grade science.

  “TO ACCEPT THIS JOB, PRESS 1. TO REJECT IT, PRESS 2. FOR MORE OPTIONS, PRESS 3.”

  I really need the work, so I press 1 and roll out of Sven and into the shower.

  I like subbing at John Adams because Maddy’s in the eighth grade there, and I get to see her because those kids simply will not come to my place. When I arrive, I’m told I’ll be teaching sixth grade social studies for periods one through three, then it’s over to seventh grade science. I walk to the social studies class and quickly read the lesson plan. It’s Janet Baker’s class and she’s pretty thorough with her lesson plans. I know most of the kids in her classes and some of them are really rowdy. They’re studying Mesopotamia and Egypt, so I run over to the library and check out a huge book with some great photos of statues of the heavyweights from Mesopotamia and a book about Egyptian mummies.

  After announcements and attendance, and just before Aaron and Omar and Wiley can start making trouble, I tell everyone I have some pictures to show them about the stuff they’ve been studying. I open the book on Mesopotamia, hold it high over my head, and in a deep, booming voice announce: “I give you Nebuchadnezzar, king of Assyria.” And I slowly pan the picture across the room. I turn the page. “I give you Hammurabi. I give you GILGAMESH!” The kids sit gawking at these incredibly heavy dudes. And when we move on to Egypt, I show them pictures of all those mummified kings who were unwrapped. I show them Imhotep and tell them I think this guy looks pretty damn good for a three-thousand-year-old man with no cosmetic surgery. I show them Ramses and tell them this guy built great cities and had dozens of kids and scientists believe he probably died from an infection brought on by a bad tooth because he didn’t brush regularly. Complete silence in the room. Even the troublemakers sit in awe. This kind of thing works only for so long before we have to follow the lesson plan and the kids actually have to do some work, and that’s when all hell breaks loose.

  At lunch, I walk across campus to get myself a slice of pizza. Because I’m a teacher, I get to cut in front of the line. After the pizza, I head over to the science bungalows when I see Maddy and her eighth grade friends standing around talking. Proof certain that she doesn’t eat during lunch, she just talks and talks, which is why I bring a cold pack full of food for the ride home. Because feeding Maddy will reduce my chances of a meltdown by about 50 percent. Maddy’s with Becca and Sarah and Alexa and Jamie and the Paris twins, Robbie and Charlie. The Paris brothers are straight-A students and they’re famous for switching clothes in the middle of the day and going to each other’s classes just to mess with their teachers. They turn to me and wave and yell out, “Hi, Mr. Nimoy!” They’re enthusiastic because I’ve had them in class and they think I’m a good sub. But I still can’t quite tell them apart, even when they don’t switch clothes. Maddy just turns away and pretends not to notice me. I know she’s a little embarrassed that I work there. I know she’s still mad at me for moving out. But I also know she likes having me close by.

  I head over to Karla Delian’s room in the science bungalows. I write my name on the board as kids start coming in. One of the Latino boys comes up to me and asks if I’m related to Leonard Nimoy. I can’t believe this kid’s into Star Trek. He’s too young.

  “How do you know who Leonard Nimoy is?”

  “I watch him on The Simpsons.”

  I’ve never heard that one before. I mean, I know Dad did some stints on The Simpsons, but this was the first time anyone told me they knew him exclusively from that show. I’m starting to feel old.

  Then he says, “Are you his brother?”

  * * *

  The students are supposed to design a space suit for an astronaut going to Mars. We have to read a fact sheet about the planet so that they can design a space suit to deal with the environment. And the temperature can get to a couple of hundred degrees below zero on Mars and there’s no atmosphere to keep out the sun’s harmful rays and there’s no oxygen or water. I try to get some energy going because everyone’s totally lethargic after lunch. And now that I think about it, it’s the same way on the set: In the morning we’re jamming to get as many scenes done as possible, but after lunch it’s like the whole production goes into slow motion. And it’s the director’s job to keep the energy going. So I turn it on.

  “What about eating? How’s this guy going to eat? There’s no Mickey D’s on Mars. There’s no In-N-Out Burgers. He’s got to carry his own food and water. Where you going to put all that stuff on his suit? This is the kind of thing you guys have to think about. And how’s he going to get to it? How’s he going to get to his food and how’s he gonna stick it in his mouth? Forget about eating, what if he just has to scratch his nose? How’s he gonna do it?”

  The students are bored. Usually, enthusiasm is infectious, whether it’s on the set or in the classroom, but right now it doesn’t seem to be working. We’re in this huge room that looks like it could have been a car mechanic’s garage. The windows are high up and it’s just walls everywhere and it’s dark because the kids don’t want the overhead fluorescents on. Caleb, the kid in the front row, has a Mohawk and wears a green army jacket and jackboots. And I happen to know his mother drives a beat-up Cadillac with a horrible black paint job that looks like the family got together for a bonding experience and spray-painted the car. I like Caleb because he pays attention.

  “Have you ever had a nose itch and for some reason you couldn’t scratch it because you have, like, mud on your hands? It’s pure torture. But can our astronaut just pull up his visor and stick in his glove and give it a little scratch?”

  Someone manages a no.

  “No! But tell me why? Why? Somebody tell me why. Why can’t he just flip up his visor? Why, why, why?”

  Caleb opens his mouth. “Because of the sun?”

  “BECAUSE OF THE SUN! BECAUSE THERE’S NO ATMOSPHERE ON MARS TO BLOCK OUT THE ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT AND IF HE FLIPS UP HIS VISOR, HE’LL FRY HIS FACE OFF!!”

  A few of them are watching now.

  “And what if he has to go to the bathroom? I mean, do you think he can just walk behind some Martian rocks and whip it out?”

  This gets them going. The girls start giggling. Someone gives me a no that has a little punch to it.

  “No! And why not? Why not? Why, why, why?”

  One of the Latino kids raises his hand.

  “Because he’ll get burned?”

  “Exactly! He can’t just stand around and whip it out because HE’LL FRY HIS DICK OFF!!!”

  That really gets their attention. There’s murmuring now among the boys and some of the girls are outright laughing.

  And then I realize I just said “dick” and I wonder if that’s going to put an end to my new career as a substitute teacher, the short history of which now flashes before my eyes.

  But the students are finally pumped. They actually pick up their pencils and start to draw what this space suit should look like. And some of those drawings are detailed and creative. Some of them are very colorful, in contrast to the drab white suits NASA likes to produce year after year. So I figure, what the hell. Whatever it takes to get these kids going. Even if it costs me my job. Even if it costs me my new career.

  Because right then and there, in Karla Delian’s seventh grade science class, it feels like I am somebody.

  MR. TOAD AND SPIDEY

  IN 1968, WE moved into our third house, a beautiful home in Westwood. During that period, Dad would work on Star Trek during the week and then spend weekends making personal appearances all over the country. I went with him on a few of these excursions. He would get up in front of a cro
wd and play the three or four chords he knew on guitar and sing songs. As a kid, it amazed me that he was able to get up in front of so many people and perform like that.

  After one of the trips he took alone, he came into my room and gave me a present. I opened a small cellophane-wrapped package and inside was a set of Mr. Toad cuff links and a tie clip. I knew right away that it was a gift for a seven- or eight-year-old boy. I was twelve. But because he thought of buying me something while he was away for no particular occasion, the Mr. Toad set became a prized possession.

  After I turned thirteen the following summer, I kept the Mr. Toad cuff links and tie clip in one of several jewelry boxes I had been given as Bar Mitzvah presents. I kept them with other treasures, like my first watch—a broken Timex—and all the other cuff links and tie clips I received as a Bar Mitzvah boy. Years later, the Mr. Toad cuff links and tie clip disappeared along with a blue star sapphire ring that had belonged to my grandfather. I’m pretty sure the star sapphire ring was lifted, but I don’t know why anyone would have wanted the Mr. Toad cuff links. Anyone other than me.

  In the early ’60’s, when we still lived on Comstock, I started collecting comic books. Mostly DC Comics in those days, like Batman, Superman, The Flash, and Green Lantern. During the summer of ’66, I was in Pico Drug, an old-style drugstore with an ancient soda fountain and the best shoestring French fries ever. It was close to where my grandparents lived, so I would walk over and check out the comic book situation. And there on the rack was a cover that would change my life. It was Spider-Man #27, Bring Back My Goblin to Me!, and it showed Spidey in chains being hassled by a ring of bad guys while the Green Goblin looked on. What a cool cover! How had I missed the first twenty-six issues of this amazing superhero?