PLANET GRIM

by Alex Behr

  IV.

  A punk chick yelled to her kid in the Haight: “Don’t say ‘peepee-head’ or any of that other crappy kind of talk!

  V.

  My boss at Mix magazine said, “Punk is a bullshit attitude.”

  VI.

  In L.A. I got a crush on Kurdt, the singer, because he spoke so passionately about this sleazebag named Courtney Love. He said, “I want to meet someone who’s twice as jaded and intelligent as I am; that’s why I want to have sex with her.” But does anyone feel that abstractly about me?

  THE GARDEN

  At my co-worker’s funeral, the minister invited people to share. No one did for several minutes, until one of the sisters stood up at the front. She announced to the mourners how her brother, whose real name was Charles, had gotten the nickname Spud. She was a short woman in her late fifties, with a blue dress and blazer. We had gathered in a Unitarian Church in Kensington, up I-80 from Berkeley and Oakland. Sunlight streamed through the skylight, lassoing my co-worker’s photo, which was taken when he was much younger, perhaps happier. He had died of a heart attack.

  The woman’s hair curled at the nape, and when the woman turned to face us, I saw her braces, spackled over her teeth. She spoke quickly into the microphone set up by the photo and flowers, as if she couldn’t wait to hide her dental work again. She said one night when they were kids, her brother had flicked mashed potatoes at her. The fork flew from his hand and pierced her cheek. I was sure she had spoken incorrectly, out of nervousness. She held her hand to her face, though, as if in pain. “That’s how he got the name Spud,” she said. “But we loved him.”

  I elbowed my husband, Phil, sitting next to me. The crowd tittered—perhaps to commiserate or perhaps in the hopes someone would come up with a more inspirational story. I couldn’t wait to get to the food.

  At the reception, I scooped up a bowl of Jell-O and made Phil get me a big slice of cheesecake, so no one would notice my greed. I sweated in my funeral dress, the one with the white pearl buttons. The church piped in show tunes from the 1940s—Oklahoma!, South Pacific. I wanted to plug my ears. Instead, I waved a plastic fork at Phil. It became one of our jokes—watch out for the fork.

  I couldn’t remember most funerals, but Spud’s stuck with me. Since I was a nurse, I went to quite a few. The healing industry did that to you—wore you out emotionally and physically. I could be next. I was overweight. I also smoked from time to time.

  A few months after Spud’s funeral, Phil asked me to check on his mother. Apparently Adele had sounded confused on the phone, complaining that her neighbor was messing with her garden. On the Fourth of July, my day off, I drove east through the Caldecott Tunnel to Orinda. I took my stepdaughter, Margaret, with me. Adele cheered up around Margaret, forgetting that her granddaughter had ever been a drug addict.

  Outside Adele’s house, a low-slung condo, I found the video camera. It was aimed toward the raised garden bed. The camera was Adele’s idea. Phil had installed it the week before, drilling a hole through the wall and showing his mother how to retrieve and watch the surveillance tapes.

  The sun bore down. I cinched the string of my sunhat and adjusted my pants. A few spindly sunflowers emerged from the soil; their seed casings clung to the leaves. The lettuce and carrots sprouted in haphazard lines. The carrots bunched together, with no room to grow. I pulled out white carrot tendrils and placed them on the frame. I felt sad for the ones I killed prematurely, like tiny carrot abortions. Phil and I were too old to have kids of our own. Margaret didn’t count. I was fond of her, but no real daughter of mine would’ve become a drug fiend, even a temporary one.

  Margaret sat on the stoop, examining her face in a compact mirror. She was twenty-four, but looked much younger. She had wispy hair, puffy lips, and blue eyes. Adele rapped on the window, so I tugged Margaret’s arm. “Come inside and I’ll owe you,” I said.

  “Nora, I don’t like the old-lady smell,” Margaret said. She picked at her black tights. One had a run down the leg and into a white go-go boot.

  Adele finally came outside. “Couldn’t you hear me?” she asked. Margaret smiled at her. She had kept all her teeth, even on her former amphetamine diet of Jujubes and Circus Peanuts. She had big teeth like her dad.

  Adele wore an aqua sweatshirt and matching sweats, and her gray hair coiled closely to her skull. When I hugged her, it felt as if I were caressing a birdcage. She rolled her walker over the paving stones to the corner of the duplex and showed me the camera, as if I would be delighted and surprised.

  “I don’t trust him,” she said. She pointed to the house opposite hers.

  Mr. Martinez, a short man in his late forties, sat on a foldout chair in front of his garage. He limped across the street. He stuck a red-white-and-blue pinwheel in each mowed yard down the block, but skipped Adele’s.

  “That smarts,” Adele said. “He wants everyone to think I’m not patriotic.” She called out to him, “I’m American, too!”

  He stiffened his shoulders, as if he couldn’t hear. She pointed to the vegetables I had placed on the garden frame. “Look what that man has done,” she said. “He’s pulling out my garden. He’s even bringing snails over to eat what’s left. I have proof.” Her German accent became more pronounced.

  I fell back to my nursing persona: the detached voice and the soothing gestures. It made me lonely, but what could I do? Adele, a war refugee back in 1942, had come to California by way of Berlin and Amsterdam. That was not to excuse her paranoia, but it gave her depth. All of her high school friends had died in the camps.

  We went inside, and Margaret got a cigarette from Adele’s carton of Larks. She lit one for her grandmother, then one for herself. I felt a headache coming on. I brought a tray of Pepperidge Farm cookies from the kitchen into the living room. It was dim and chilly, with shellacked ducks on the side tables. Adele was losing her taste for food, or maybe she was going blind. In any case, she craved sweets, but her clothes hung on her body. She sat in a chair with high, thin arms. The fabric shone from the oils of her hand. She told me to bring her a plastic cup from the bookcase. A black snail lay at the bottom.

  “Snails don’t cross streets,” Adele said. She pushed up her bifocals. “See that white spot? That’s paint on the snail. Did you notice the fresh paint across the street? When I sleep, Mr. Martinez carries snails over in a pail. They’ll eat my lettuce.”

  Margaret looked at the snail. “That does look like paint. Or nail polish.”

  “You’re not helping,” I said. “Can’t we talk about something pleasant?”

  The ceiling fan collected cigarette smoke and spread it across the room. Adele buried her cigarette butt in a portable ashtray and snapped the metal top. After biting a ginger cookie, she sipped her water so carefully her red lipstick never darkened her teeth.

  “Take a look,” Margaret said. She picked up the remote and rewound the videotape. I expected something shocking, a clue, perhaps. Instead, we watched a squirrel running past Adele’s garden, in black and white. I asked her to replay it, as if watching a nature documentary.

  I wanted to do right by Phil’s family now—his mother and daughter. In the courting days with Phil, I believed I had found someone to trust. He held my hand tightly and listened to my complaints about unfair hospital regs and endless nursing shifts in the ER where I drew labs and started IVs. We went to Giants games, with me huddling under his coat—I never brought enough warm sweaters—maybe on purpose. I liked the way his coat smelled.

  His daughter’s addiction, however, nearly broke us. A lot of my fellow nurses did speed or whatever else they could gobble, so nothing shocked me. Nevertheless, we had to kick Margaret out of the house. For months, Phil drove by the West Oakland BART station, banging on the doors of two-story tenement apartments, the ones boarded up and patrolled by stray dogs and winos. Margaret couldn’t come back to our house. I made sure of that. When she went on a meth binge, she covered her closet door with pencil dots. She stank like cat piss, and I could s
ee through her lies. Her boyfriends were even worse. Thieves, all of them. I forgave her, but she carved a black space in our marriage.

  Eventually Adele yawned, needing her afternoon nap. Her cigarette drooped between her fingers. I turned the VCR off and tucked an afghan around her.

  I drove Margaret home. We closed in on the dark Caldecott Tunnel, due west, and I waited for her complaints.

  “I can’t do it. Don’t go this way,” Margaret said. “I hate tunnels.” She pressed her knuckles to her forehead and rocked against the headrest. I turned on a Johnny Cash CD, thinking it might relax her.

  “Turn it off,” she said.

  “Hold your breath,” I said. “It’ll go faster.” Stained tiles and closed tunnel doors slipped by our windows.

  I knew her fear. Nine years ago, in 1982, a truck had blown up in the tunnel. A fuel tanker created a firestorm when it smashed into a stalled car going westbound. We lived in the Bay Area, so it was our civic pride to note natural disasters. This one had primary elements: fire, rock, air, tears, and alcohol (a beer truck got destroyed, too).

  When we reached the sunshine, Margaret exhaled. A red-tailed hawk soared above the rolling brush and canyons. “I saw Mr. Martinez in the window when we were leaving,” Margaret said. “He gave me a nasty look. I think Adele’s right.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “Next time we go there I want you to call her ‘Grandma.’ It’s more polite.”

  Margaret fell asleep, needing naps like Adele. I glanced at her for signs she was using again—unusual rashes, muscle spasms—but her breath was even; she seemed peaceful. I turned on Johnny Cash again.

  In October, after a night shift, I drove toward our home in the Oakland Hills. I saw flares of orange in the grass: small brush fires. Later that morning, Phil chain-sawed eucalyptus trees by our driveway. Their trunks bent down, splayed as if a giant had stepped on them. He sprayed the roof but I stayed in bed. I was too exhausted to evacuate. But when I pushed open the windowsill, the air reeked of eucalyptus sap and smoke. Behind our house, trees exploded. Like a perverse tennis game, they volleyed embers toward our wood-shingle roof. I pulled my shirt over my mouth and ran out to Phil. He told me to pack our cars, mine first.

  I wanted to sleep. What would he think if I had told him I had stopped by Adele’s house after work, sticking Safeway carrots in the ground to fool Adele? That someone was attacking the garden? That someone had cut the wire strung around it?

  Phil used his thumb to create pressure on the hose. Around us, I was sure our neighbors were doing the same thing. It was hopeless. “Get the big ladder,” he called. Blood thudded in my ears and my eyes watered. The wind tossed the Halloween scarecrow from our porch to the driveway. In the house, I picked up the laundry basket on the stairs. I threw in photo albums, granola bars, and a parakeet cage. Who knows why?

  I ran outside and the hot wind blasted me. I heard bullhorns but I couldn’t make out the words. “No, the ladder,” Phil yelled. “Then the computer! What the fuck.” I cursed him back, but followed his orders. In the basement, I unplugged the cords, hoisted the computer and monitor in my arms, and hit my shin on the basement stairs. The smoke alarms in the house pierced the air.

  I wet a kitchen towel and put it around my mouth. Phil called my name again; his voice sounded hoarse.

  I filled the cars with armfuls of crap. Why had we ever bought so much stuff?

  “Drive out now,” Phil said. “I’ll catch up.” His face was lined with grime. I held onto him because the smoke was so thick. I felt he could help me make sense of this terrible thing. We kissed and he curled my hair around his finger. “I’ll see you soon,” he said. I had been with him so long I rarely saw him clearly.

  After the firestorm, I stayed with Adele. I had driven slowly down the switchback roads, offering rides to neighbors fleeing on foot—only one person joined me. It was faster to run. I tried to get to the Caldecott Tunnel, but the fires leapt across it.

  Two thousand vehicles, most of them empty, had burned to their metal cores. Almost three thousand houses were destroyed. Emergency personnel found Phil’s body in the rubble of our house. I didn’t let Margaret or Adele come to the morgue. I wanted to protect them. And now I couldn’t sleep—I didn’t want to. I lost twenty pounds; they called it a widow’s diet.

  The insurance adjusters made me meet with them once at the property. I stared at the paper in their clipboards and crunched ash on the concrete foundation. Across the hills, chimneys stood by blackened trees. If they could be left alone, they would be happy, but the hills rumbled with bulldozers and earthmovers. I wanted quiet. I had Phil’s name in my mind and it wouldn’t shut up.

  I remembered the orange and gray sky. Ash had drifted west across the bay to San Francisco. Ash made of people’s bank accounts and bills and love letters and books they meant to read—in some places, it was almost an inch tall. The ash didn’t need bridges or tunnels to get where it wanted to go.

  In Adele’s garden, the sunflowers were translucent against the blue sky. The center pockets held tightly packed seeds. The tomatoes overflowed and covered the pumpkin vines. One day, I picked all the lettuce, pulling up so much dirt that the salad tasted gritty. Adele stared at videotapes of her garden as if she could see Phil’s hand in them. Dozens of tapes sat on her shelf, marked by date in red magic marker.

  One morning in December, two months after the fire, Mr. Martinez greeted me. I wore a pair of Phil’s sweats that I had saved from the fire and one of his baseball caps, the one that said, “Best Dad.” He asked, “Are you going for a jog?” His English was halting, as if rocks filled his mouth. We sat on the curb and he handed me a can of beer. His hair had a purple tinge over the white. I let Mr. Martinez put his hand on my knee, because my grief didn’t scare him. He had grown up in the Philippines. He told me of his war, Vietnam. His cousin got hit by mortar fire and lost half of his face. Most of his body was burned. In an intensive care unit in Saigon, Mr. Martinez smothered his cousin with a pillow. It was the softest way to go.

  That night, while Adele and Margaret slept, I bleached the tub, the toilet and the sink until my fingers and hands puckered. The chemicals irritated my nose. I wanted the white shine and gleam.

  Margaret slept on the couch, lost on Halcion. She had a Cal Berkeley football blanket on her, as if she were a sorority sister and not a former addict. Barrettes snarled her hair.

  The TV was on mute but cast some light. I dropped the garden videos in a laundry basket.

  Outside, I stepped over strands of wire fence around the garden, crushing cherry tomatoes and soggy pumpkins. I dug up tomato vines and sunflowers whose heads dipped with rot. The roots of the sunflowers bulged with dirt, all that effort for a brief gasp toward the sky.

  Caking my hands in the soil, I buried the videos, ripping out the tape and draping it over the frame, as if I were dressing a mummy. Across the street, a light burned in Mr. Martinez’s living room window, but I couldn’t see a face.

  WHAT DO I GET?

  “Don’t cheat.”

  “Don’t squeal.”

  “Don’t influence Gannon.”

  “Don’t be a poor sport.”

  Meanwhile, you dampen your son’s obvious glee in having a boy in the house who never criticizes him.

  The arm is a lever. It is wearing out.

  What do you want to know?

  The open secret of who wrote Kim Gordon’s bestselling memoir.

  The open secret of rosacea.

  The secret of a singer’s dad throwing her across the room when she was a girl. She slammed her head into a bookcase.

  The secret of money management, of a neighbor earning $85,000 a year in retirement.

  The secret of postponed vacations.

  of airplane books.

  of stomach aches.

  of being a man.

  of stacked kung fu drums that will never be played.

  of gay sex. The boy thinks the men do sword fights. “‘Luke, I am your father.’ They have swo
rd fights and Darth Vader kills Luke with his light saber/penis.”

  of virginity (of not remembering being a girl).

  of not moving muscles, of craving sugar, of wanting to know who the dead people are, the unclaimed.

  of songs Amy Winehouse never sang, and bottles she never drank.

  of waiting for emails that never arrive.

  of lack of sex, the absence of knowledge of another person’s body (was it the coughing, the snoring, the farting in bed? the softening, the hardening, the odors of decay? the musical entropy?)

  of broken amps

  of long-term unemployment.

  of YouTube stars.

  of the need to work and not being able to enjoy time with your son.

  of moldy food.

  of tulips.

  of lies, the lying child. He lies to protect himself from judgment.

  of a criminal sibling.

  of dementia, of sitting in a chair all day (thousands of dollars of sitting, hundreds of thousands each year, a million or so).

  and June asks, “Where is John?” She forgets her husband is dead, and her son has been on America’s Most Wanted. She watches her friend’s dog lick up fallen ice cream. The atrophied body after years on the tennis court. The missing teeth. Before she lost her mind she said to her friend, your mother, “You can get that shot that makes the ball drop cold.”

  the secret of beer.

  of pubic hair behind the toilet, or to the side.

  of staring at a pop star and imagining he can see you.

  the faint bell of a cat.

  the hum of a furnace.

  forced air, uncleaned, filters, all your dead skin, pounds of it, circulating in your lungs.