Jonathan Tropper

by Everything Changes (v5)

  There’s a message on my machine from Hope, telling me that she’s arrived safely in London. She sounds somewhat put off, no doubt wondering why I didn’t call to check on her and why I’m not at work and not answering my cell in the middle of the day. She leaves me the number at her hotel, says she loves me, and hangs up. I should call her right now. I really should.

  Matt stirs when he hears me come into the living room, and then sits up with a grunt. “Hey, man,” he says groggily.

  “Hey,” I say, pulling on a sweatshirt.

  “You puked in our van.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

  He shrugs, a seasoned veteran of wayward regurgitation. “It’s raining out?”

  “Yep.”

  “What time is it?” he says, sitting up slowly, groaning at the stiffness in his ribs.

  “It’s one thirty,” I tell him. As he turns to face me, I can see the dark shadows under his bloodshot eyes, the gaunt lines of his face. Not for the first time, it occurs to me that my little brother is slipping away, being slowly devoured by the anger that propels him. The healing bruises from a loan shark beating he suffered a few months ago form a crescent-shaped penumbra from the corner of his ear to his temple. Yes, my little brother’s been into some shit: drugs, debt, dealing. If it involves any form of self-destruction, Matt will usually be up for it. Sitting on the floor, he looks so small and wasted, and I just want to throw my arms around him, like when we were little kids, and feel like I can protect him, tell him that it’s okay to let go and get some rest, that I’ll be here to watch over him. “You look like shit,” I say.

  “It’s only rock and roll,” he says with a smirk, his tongue darting out to lick his desiccated lips. “But I like it. What are you doing here?”

  “I actually live here.”

  He nods. “I mean now, in the middle of the day.”

  I sit down on the floor, my back against the couch. “I am either on the cusp of what may very well be a grand epiphany or else a minor nervous breakdown.”

  He looks up at me appraisingly and nods his head, his brief smile revealing the jagged line of his cigarette-stained teeth. “Zack, my brother,” he says with a yawn. “Welcome to the monkey house.”

  By the time Norm shows up later, the three of us are good and stoned on some stale joints Matt produced from the depths of his cargo pants, watching The Terminator on the Sci Fi network, while Jed passionately holds forth on the inherent contradictions and liabilities of fucking with the space-time continuum. When Norm walks into the room, a wet duffel bag slung over his shoulder like Santa Claus, we all stare up at him as if he might be a clever group hallucination.

  “Hello, boys,” Norm says, dropping his duffel onto the carpet with a thud. He’s wearing jeans and a faded red sweatshirt, his hair plastered against his scalp from the rain.

  “Hey, Norm,” Jed says agreeably.

  “What are you doing here?” I say, too stoned to get up.

  “The door was open.” He looks over to Matt, who is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the television, his bent silhouette framed by the large screen. “Hello, Matt,” he says formally.

  “Norm,” Matt says with an exaggeratedly formal nod.

  “Great show the other night,” Norm addresses him gingerly. “I was really very proud of you.”

  “Thank you, Norm,” Matt says, staggering to his feet. “That makes it all worthwhile.”

  Norm nods and looks at me. “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I’m taking some time off,” I say. “A mental health day.”

  “And you’re accomplishing that by getting high?”

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

  “Where are you going?” Norm says to Matt, who is making a show of throwing on his worn jacket.

  “I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Anywhere but here.”

  “Can’t we just talk, son?” Norm says plaintively.

  Matt stares at him, eyes wide and angry, then storms over to him with so much force that for an instant I’m certain he’s going to hit him. Instead, he stops right in front of him, fists clenched at his sides, his face contorted in rage. “Fuck you, Norm,” Matt spits at him. “Fuck you. My life is shit and it’s your fault. It’s your fault I had to deal drugs to buy a goddamn guitar, it’s your fault I can’t keep a girlfriend for more than a month, it’s your fault I can’t look people in the eye or say what I really feel.”

  “Matt,” I say.

  “Shut up, Zack. You know I’m right.”

  “I’m still the only father you’ll ever have,” Norm says weakly, holding his hands up defensively.

  Matt’s smile cuts his face like a razor. “You’re just the sperm donor, Norm,” he says, heading for the door. “That’s all you were ever good for. Fucking sperm.”

  Matt storms out the door and Norm looks at us, red-faced with chagrin. “Jesus,” he says. “If I’d have known I was going to get beat up on like this, I would have worn a helmet.” He looks at the door and makes a snap decision. “Matt!” he calls, and tears out the door after him. We listen to the two sets of footsteps running down the stairs, and then Jed leans back on the couch, craning his neck to see out the window. “Wow,” he says to me, collapsing back on the couch. “For a heavy guy, your old man sure can move.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I say, heaving myself off the floor and heading for the stairs. I’m still woozy from Matt’s stale ganja, and when I trip over my father’s discarded duffel bag, it’s all I can do to keep from falling on my face.

  It’s eight p.m., which means it’s one a.m. in England, a fact that only occurs to me after they’ve put me through to Hope’s hotel room. “Hey, baby,” I say.

  “Zack?” she says, her voice groggy and slurred. “What the hell?”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Of course you woke me,” she grumbles. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Sorry about that,” I say. “I thought you might be jet-lagged.”

  “What’s wrong?” she demands.

  “Nothing. I just missed you.”

  That pisses her off. “You had plenty of time to call me earlier, if you missed me so much. Why weren’t you at work?” She has not fully committed to consciousness yet, and her voice is muted and irregular as she slides in and out her slumber.

  I almost tell her about having walked out of work. About how empty and demeaned I’ve been feeling there, and about wanting to do something that will actually mean something to me, that will actually make it worth answering when people ask me what I do. Hope will be sympathetic, I have no doubt about that, but she won’t appreciate the timing of my vocational crisis, coming as it has in the midst of our engagement, at the merging of our lives. She’ll worry about my potential future earnings, about my abilities as a long-term provider, about our chances for a New York Times wedding announcement. She’ll talk around it for a while, but ultimately, the need to help me fix things will get the best of her. She’ll insist I meet with her father, and next thing you know, I’ll be a Vice President of Bedpans, walking the carpeted halls of Seacord International in suits and braces under the watchful, controlling glare of my father-in-law, bearing the hateful mark of nepotism upon my forehead, disregarded out of hand as the old man’s loser son-in-law.

  “I’m just a little under the weather,” I say.

  I can hear the rustling of sheets, the drag of the telephone on the nightstand. “Zack, is everything okay?”

  I sigh. “It’s just been a little crazy here, with my father and all.”

  “Have you been spending some time with him?”

  “A little.”

  “That’s nice,” she says through a long yawn. “I’m going back to sleep now, okay?”

  “How’s London?” I ask, suddenly lonely.

  “Call me when I’m awake and I’ll tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good night, babe.�
��

  I crawl under the covers much too early, flipping between various news programs and movie channels. There are brush fires in Los Angeles, car bombs in Iraq, and USA is showing a made-for-TV movie in which a lousy actress from a popular sitcom has lost her memory and is being chased through the woods by a masked assassin. Somewhere in all the excitement, I doze off.

  Tamara’s voice on my answering machine awakens me an indeterminate amount of time later. I open my eyes, disoriented by the darkness that arrived unannounced during my unplanned nap. “Anyway,” Tamara’s saying. “I’m worried about you. So give me a call if you get a chance, okay?” It’s strange to hear her voice in the confines of my bedroom. I almost always speak to her from the office or on my cell. My hands search for the cordless, which is buried somewhere in the folds of my comforter. “You can call till whenever,” she continues. “I turn off the ringer when I go to sleep.” There’s a momentary pause. “Whatever,” she continues awkwardly. “I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking about you, okay? That’s all, folks. ’Bye.”

  My hands locate the phone just as she hangs up. I start to dial her number, but then stop. We’re still suspended in the postkiss ether and if I call her we’ll either discuss the kiss or pretend it never happened, and either option will bring us crashing back down to reality, which isn’t an acceptable scenario to me right now. USA is now showing an old James Bond film, Connery speeding in his convertible past laughably false backdrops. I flip absently through the movie channels, waiting for something to grab me, but every movie seems to star Freddie Prinze, Jr., leading me to wonder, not for the first time, why I bother paying for premium channels. I go to the bathroom. This time there’s less pain and considerably less blood. Still, I pop three preemptive Tylenols before getting back into bed.

  I lie in the dark, my thoughts flitting erratically between Hope and Tamara and my father, before settling with a thud on the dark spot on my bladder. I see it every time I close my eyes and I wonder if it’s growing inside me the way it is in my mind. I address a few tentative words to God, offering up an array of incentives for him to keep me in good health. It’s a few hours before I fall back asleep. When I do, I dream of Camille, the dark-haired physician’s assistant, once again handling my privates, but this time under considerably friendlier circumstances.

  Chapter 21

  “Don’t ask,” my mother says in a controlled hysteria. I haven’t, but that’s not really the point. “Peter bought a car.”

  It’s eight o’clock on Thursday morning, and her call has jolted me out of one of those sweaty dreams where it’s cocktail hour and everyone you ever knew in your whole life is there, and you’re searching in vain for a hiding place before they all notice that you’re not wearing any pants.

  It takes me a minute to wrap my brain around what she’s just said. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Who would sell Pete a car?” I say angrily. A good part of my childhood was spent watching out for Pete, and I still get the same instinctive surge of fury whenever someone mistreats him.

  “That Bowhan character,” my mother says tiredly. “Satch. Who names their kid Satch, anyway?”

  “Does he realize that Pete doesn’t drive?”

  “Of course he does. He had the car delivered to our driveway this afternoon.”

  “I’ll come out there today,” I say.

  “I’m sorry to have to ask.” There is a lifetime of quiet pain in my mother’s voice. Someone has taken advantage of her baby, and she wasn’t there to stop it. You would never send your five-year-old out into the world unprotected, but having a grown, mentally retarded child feels like that every day.

  “How did he pay for it?” I ask.

  “He wrote a check.”

  “Peter has a checking account?”

  “He makes money,” my mother says defensively. “Why shouldn’t he have a checking account?”

  “No,” I say. “You’re right.”

  “Anyway,” she says. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It makes me sad. How are things with you?”

  “Fine.” I’m wondering if I should mention Norm’s resurfacing.

  “You didn’t look so good the other day,” she says.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “What, Mom?” I say, irked. “What are you just saying?”

  “Nothing,” she says tiredly. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to give you a hard time.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “Peter wants to talk to you.”

  There’s a whine of static and then Pete comes on the phone. “Hey, Zack,” he says. Pete has overactive salivary glands, and whenever he talks on the phone, he sucks up the excess saliva in the back of his throat. I got used to it a long time ago, but over the phone it’s more pronounced.

  “Hey, Pete, what’s up?”

  “I got a car.”

  “So I hear,” I say, grinning. “What kind?”

  “A ’95 Ford Mustang. Red. I got a great deal, a thousand bucks. It’s only got a hundred and sixty thousand miles on it. But Mom says I have to give it back.”

  “Well, do you have a driver’s license?”

  “Nope.”

  “What’s the point of having a car like that without a license?”

  Pete says, “Chicks,” and then convulses into a fit of hoarse, snorting laughter. I laugh along with him.

  “Pete,” I say. “You don’t need a car to get chicks.”

  “It helps,” he says.

  “Look at me,” I say. “I don’t have a car.”

  “Number one,” Pete says. “You don’t need to get chicks, because you’re engaged to Hope.” Pete debates in number form, and I can picture him standing there, with the phone tucked into his ear, ticking off the count on his hands. “And number two,” he says, and then pauses.

  “Yeah?” I say.

  “You’re not a retard.”

  Norm is in the kitchen, in boxers and a wifebeater, scrambling eggs when I come downstairs. “Hey, Zack,” he says, full of urgent cheer. “I made you some breakfast.”

  “Did you sleep here?” I ask incredulously.

  “Onions and tomatoes, just like when you were a kid,” he says proudly, expertly sliding a heaping mound of eggs from the frying pan onto a waiting plate. “You still like it like that?”

  “Can you answer my question?”

  He looks at me. “I crashed on the couch. Jed said it would be fine. I wanted to clear it with you, but you were already sleeping.”

  “So, what?” I say. “You’re moving in here now?”

  “It’s just for a few days,” he says apologetically, placing the plate in front of me.

  “I thought you were staying with friends.”

  He shrugs. “I think I might have overstayed my welcome.”

  “Go figure.”

  He greets my sarcasm with the same nullifying smile he always uses, like he’s in on the joke rather than the butt of it. “So,” he says. “When do you leave for work?”

  “I’m not going to work today,” I say. That raises his eyebrows, and I quickly lift my hand to shush him as he’s about to speak. “And if I were you,” I continue quickly, “I would carefully consider whatever it was you were about to say. It could mean the difference between your being welcome to stay here or not.”

  He looks at me for a long moment, then nods his head with a small grin. “I was just going to ask if the eggs need any more salt.”

  I take a forkful into my mouth and chew it thoughtfully. “They do,” I say. “Thanks.”

  He slides the saltshaker across the table. “Don’t mention it.”

  “Did you catch up to Matt yesterday?” I ask.

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “I told him his father wasn’t perfect.”

  “I hope he was sitting down when you dropped that bomb.”

  Norm shrugs. “He wasn�
�t listening anyway.” He drops the pan into the sink, and then, as he’s turning, his erection inadvertently pops through the fly of his boxers and there I am, face-to-face with the instrument of my own humble origins, Norm’s purple, nascent member.

  “And we’re done with breakfast,” I say, disgustedly pushing my plate across the table.

  “Sorry about that,” he says, grinning sheepishly, but not without pride, as he tucks it back into his shorts.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll ask. What is it with you and the Viagra?”

  Norm sits down across from me. “I’m trying to condition myself.”

  “Condition yourself.”

  He nods and leans back in his chair. “When I was your age, it didn’t take very much to get me going. See a nice rack on someone, a good, firm ass, and I’d get so hard I could write my name with it, hang a towel on it, you know? But I’m sixty now, and my dick has let me down on more than one occasion. You wait until you’re my age—you’ll see. It’s not that easy. So what I’m doing is, I’m programming my body to believe that erections are a normal, everyday function again. This way, when the occasion does arise, then by God, so will I.”

  “I see,” I say, much the way I would if I were talking to a rational person. “And you’re doing this under medical supervision?”

  “Nah. It’s my own idea,” he says proudly.

  “And you don’t see anything wrong with walking around all day with a hard-on?”