This is the Part Where You Laugh

by Peter Brown Hoffmeister

  “Sometimes the story is good enough, or the writing. I could read Persuasion 50 times and still enjoy it.”

  I sit down on the edge of her bed. Ask her the question I’ve been wondering about. “Was my mom always into drugs? Even when she was younger?”

  Grandma places her bookmark and closes the book. Sets it next to her. Puts the magnifying glass on top. She shakes her head. “No, sweetie. She went to parties a little bit during high school, but it was your father who got her into drugs.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “They started seeing each other again when you were six or seven, and that’s when everything turned ugly, sinister. That was when you moved out to that motel in West Eugene. Do you remember that?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “I remember that place. But why’d she take him back?”

  “She told me that he had just returned to town, that he had a job for the first time in a long time. She said he had only been drinking in small amounts, very little in fact, and that he was looking at a promotion at the mill. I told her that it still didn’t sound good, the drinking part, because I knew him, but she would never listen to me.”

  “Did he really have that job?”

  “Probably not.”

  “I don’t remember him. I remember the motels, but I don’t remember which guy he was.”

  “You wouldn’t remember him. He never acted like much of a father.”

  Sometimes I wonder about him. Wonder what he looks like, how tall he is, if he likes to play basketball the way I do. But I don’t want to tell Grandma about that, so I change the subject. “How are you feeling?”

  She makes a little clicking noise with her mouth. “Not good, sweetie. But I know that now. I know that for sure. So I’ve made peace with it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not going to make it much longer. The doctor told me that at my last visit, and I know it’s true. I’ve known it for a while.” She reaches for my hand and I let her take it. “It could be a year. It could be six months. But it’s coming.”

  I squeeze her hand. “You can fight this some more.”

  “No,” she says, “but you two will be okay without me. You’ll still have my retirement pension to live on until Grandpa dies. And he is as healthy as a horse.”

  “Sort of.”

  She looks up. “Sort of?”

  “Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s high every night.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m sure it’s not every night,” she says, “and it’s not like he’s drinking anymore.”

  “Was that worse?”

  “Oh yes. God yes. That was a lot worse. He lost his job, he lost his engineering license, and he was a terrible person to be around. Until he went to the rehab center and got sober, the kids didn’t even like him.”

  “Then he went back to work after that?”

  “Some,” she says, “but mostly he stayed home. Among our generation, he was the first househusband. I laughed when ‘househusbands’ became a popular term because I thought that must mean ‘men who’ve lost their jobs.’ He learned to cook well enough, though.”

  “He doesn’t cook anymore.”

  “Well, sweetie, we don’t need him to.”

  “Then what’s changed from when he was drinking all the time?”

  Grandma sighs. She looks tired and I feel bad for pushing her like this.

  I say, “I’m sorry, Grandma.”

  She smiles, but she doesn’t look happy. “What he chooses to do, he chooses to do. And I’m not going to stop him. Not now. Not this late.”

  I squeeze her hand again. “You’re not going to die, Grandma.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” she says, “we’re all going to die.”

  “I mean…”

  “And some of us,” she says, “are going to die sooner rather than later.”

  JOKER MAN

  After Grandma falls asleep, I go to Grandpa’s study. He’s in there building a model World War II ship. He’s gluing a railing on the front when I walk in.

  I say, “You know that my mom’s a junkie, right?”

  He sets the glue down and looks up. “Yes,” he says.

  “Is that worse than what you do? Smoking all of Grandma’s medical weed? Taking her pills?” Even as I say that, I get a twinge of guilt. I don’t like being a hypocrite, and maybe my pill stealing lately is the reason that I’m bringing this up now.

  I look away from him. Look at all of the different planes and ships he’s built over the years. Models are on every shelf, all the way around the room. When he finishes a really nice plane, he hangs it by fishing line from an eye hook in the ceiling like it’s flying. There are a dozen of those planes in the room, all hanging at different heights.

  I look back at Grandpa, and he looks back at his model. Doesn’t look up at me. He fits the railing in place on the model’s deck and slides it into its grooves. Clamps it with his fingers. He says, “You know what, Travis, your grandma doesn’t even want what the doctors prescribe. She never uses it. And anyway, marijuana is nothing compared to heroin.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No,” he says. “There isn’t even a comparison. Do you understand that? Those two things aren’t in the same league.”

  “But what’s the difference if you have to smoke it every day?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t have to smoke it every day.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No,” he says.

  “Then why do you?”

  “Well, maybe I choose to smoke it regularly.”

  There’s an F-14 Tomcat in front of me. I touch the nose and the plane wobbles on its line. “So you’re not addicted?”

  “No.”

  I look at him. “But if you smoke it every day, what’s the difference?”

  He turns his ship in his hand. Sights it from the stern, then the bow. “A lot,” he says. “A whole lot. I just do it because it helps with my hip pain.”

  “Your hip pain?”

  He looks at me. “You know I had a hip replacement surgery.”

  “That was a long time ago. And didn’t they give you painkillers for that?”

  “Yes, but not enough. And when they ran out, instead of getting my own medical marijuana card, I just used Grandma’s. So it’s the exact same thing. I could’ve gotten my own card, legally, so what’s the difference?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, and shake my head. I touch the F-14 again and it spins. “I guess you must understand things a lot better than I do.” I stare at Grandpa for a second, but he keeps his head down. Stares at the model in his hands.

  I walk out.

  He calls after me as I walk down the hall. “It’s the same thing, Travis. It’s the same exact thing.”

  SHRAPNEL

  I grab my basketball and go out front to the driveway. My ribs don’t feel good, but I have to shoot. I feel like I’m one of those pressure-cooker bombs that terrorists make, and if I don’t play ball soon, I’m going to explode nails and metal pieces all over everybody and everything.

  I shoot with my right hand. I try going up on the left side one time, but my left arm is too stiff to work right and I get sharp pains when I raise it above my head.

  I shoot short, one-handed power layins on the right side of the backboard. Two-foot shots. Then three-foot. Move out to five. But anything farther than that hurts too much, so I stay there, shooting short shots, one-handed, off the backboard. Then I move in and shoot two-foot swishes, trying not to let the ball hit the rim. I give myself one point for each perfect swish and count games to 10 in my head. By the third game, I start to relax. Nothing has ever made me feel as good as doing something right on the basketball court.

  “Are you supposed to be doing that?”

  I turn around. Natalie’s there with her arms crossed.

  I say, “It feels okay on the right side.”

  “Does it?”

  I shrug.

  “You should wait,” she says. “You
should heal up all the way, then start working out again.”

  I say, “I just had to shoot a little.” I spin the ball in my hand. Try to palm it and it almost sticks. The ball slips off the pad of my middle finger.

  “Are you all right?”

  I spin the ball again. “Maybe.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened at my house a couple of weeks ago.”

  I take a shot and miss. “It’s okay.”

  “I mean, I’m not sorry about what happened. I’m sorry I just pushed you out the door like that. It’s sort of hard to explain.”

  I step in closer to the hoop. Make a short shot. Catch the ball as it comes out of the bottom of the net. “Really, it’s all right.”

  Natalie still has her arms crossed. She says, “I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger. Too many mistakes, and I don’t want to be like that anymore.”

  I nod and look at her. “All right.”

  “And I like you, Travis, and I don’t want to…I don’t know.” She tilts her head back. Sniffs.

  I take a step toward her. I say, “It’s okay. It really is.”

  “I just did so many shitty things, you know?”

  I don’t know what she means, or not exactly, but I nod my head.

  “So can we just relax a little bit?”

  “Relax?”

  “Yeah, I know this sounds like a cliché movie or something, but can we just take it a little slower?”

  I nod and spin the ball in my hands. “Yeah, we can do that.”

  “I mean, would that be okay for real? Because sometimes people say it is, but…” She wipes a tear with the back of her wrist. Her scar looks a brighter shade of pink.

  “It’s fine,” I say. Step closer to her. “It really is.”

  She puts her hands on my face and kisses me. “Thanks for understanding.”

  I grab the front of her shirt with one hand. Hold my basketball against my hip with the other. “So do you want to hang out today?” I pull her closer to me. Kiss her.

  “No, I’ve got to do this charity thing.” She sniffs again. Smiles.

  “What charity thing?”

  “A feed-the-homeless thing under the bridge.”

  My mouth goes dry when she says that. I say, “Why are you doing that?”

  “It’s part of the local food-bank program. My mom sets these things up for her philanthropy work.”

  “Philanthropy?”

  “She feels obligated or something. That’s what she says. But they’re cool. The events, they’re good. I don’t mind them.”

  “So you give out food?”

  “Pretty much. A lot of the people are drug addicts or alcoholics, but most of them are nice enough. They thank us a lot. And the few who are really crazy or high…they don’t bother me much.”

  I overgrip the basketball with my one hand like I’m trying to crush it against my hip. I realize that my other hand is flexing too hard, twisting her T-shirt. I relax my grip.

  Natalie says, “I came over to ask you if you want to come along. Do you?”

  I shake my head. “No thanks.”

  “Why, are you doing something else today?”

  “Uh…”

  She says, “Homeless people are people too, just like us. You’ll see.”

  “Yeah, I know about homeless people.”

  Natalie kisses me again. “So come with me, then. In the summer, we do these things once a week. And by now we know all of the regulars, so we see a lot of the same people. You’ll get to know them too. It’s pretty cool.”

  “No, I don’t think I can. Sorry about that.”

  “But you’re not doing anything. Is this about what happened at my house?” Natalie pulls away from me. Takes a step back.

  “No,” I say. “It’s not about that.”

  “It isn’t? Are you sure?”

  “No,” I say, turn, and take a shot so she can’t see my eyes. “I’ve got to help my grandma today. She’s got a doctor’s appointment.”

  “She has a doctor’s appointment on a Saturday afternoon?”

  I forgot it was Saturday. My story doesn’t seem likely but I stick with it. I say, “She does. She has one today. An important one.”

  “Really?”

  Before I think about it, I say, “The thing is, cancer doesn’t know what day of the week it is.”

  Natalie’s eyes narrow when I say that. She crosses her arms again. Nods her head slowly. “Okay,” she says. “I see. Never mind. Just thought I’d ask.” She turns around and walks to her car. Clicks the UNLOCK button.

  Creature dribbles up then. I hadn’t seen him coming down the street, but he must’ve been right there. He stops in front of Natalie’s car. Looks back and forth between me and Natalie. “Are you two all right?”

  “Oh we’re fine,” Natalie says. “We’re great.”

  “Creature,” I say, “this is Natalie. Natalie, this is Creature.”

  He smiles.

  Natalie shakes her head. Says, “I gotta go.” She opens the driver’s side door and gets in. Starts the car, whips a U-turn, and drives off.

  “Whew,” Creature says. “That momma was pissed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But she looked good, baby.”

  “Fuck you, Creat.”

  “I’m just saying.” He puts his hands up and makes an innocent face like after he commits an intentional foul in a league game.

  I say, “And don’t make that face either. That just means you fouled me on purpose.”

  Creature dribbles through his legs. “What was she so mad about?”

  “It’s a long story.” I turn and shoot one-handed from 10 feet out and swish it, but swishing the shot doesn’t make me feel any better.

  “You don’t have to tell me.” Creature dribbles up the driveway and takes a shot from 15 feet. Misses. Rebounds and dunks. “It’s cool, baby. I’ve been around girls. I get it.”

  We shoot for a few minutes. My ribs hurt on every shot, but I shoot anyway. I don’t care that they hurt.

  Creature’s phone goes off; Jay Z’s “Death of Auto-Tune” is his ringtone. Creature picks it up off the ground and reads the screen. “I gotta go, baby.”

  “Can’t shoot a little?”

  “No,” he says. “But I’ll catch you later, all right?”

  HOLLIS BROWN LIVED ON

  THE OUTSIDE OF TOWN

  My mom played Bob Dylan CDs—only Bob Dylan CDs—the whole time we lived in the motels. She knew all of the words. She had every album, plus 13 live albums, the Biograph collection, and two of his greatest-hits tapes.

  One time she said to me, “ ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ is called the greatest song of all time, but what about ‘Ballad of Hollis Brown’? What about ‘Shelter from the Storm’? What about ‘To Ramona’ or ‘One Too Many Mornings’?”

  I liked all of those songs. All of them were good to me. But sad. I said, “Isn’t ‘Hollis Brown’ that one song where he kills his whole family?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but you understand where he’s coming from, you know?”

  She leaned down and started Biograph’s third disc on the portable CD player that she kept on the nightstand by the bed. Each time we moved, the CD player and her disks were the first items she put in her oversize Walmart bag. Sometimes—when we were in a hurry—those were the only items we moved.

  WILL

  When I wake up, it’s evening, and my back’s stiffer than it was before I fell asleep. Shooting hoops probably wasn’t the best idea.

  I roll to my knees, get to a sitting position slowly, drink some water. With my good arm, I reach and feel my ribs with my fingertips. I can just touch the spot where they’re cracked, and pushing on them sends little pulses of pain into my shoulder and neck.

  I feel bad about how I talked to Natalie. I tear a blank page out of the back of one of the novels Creature left for me and write a note:

  Natalie –

  I’m sorry about earlier. It’s nice of you to do something
for the homeless and I shouldn’t have acted like that. I don’t know why I did.

  Sorry,

  Travis

  I walk the lake trail through the blackberries, then around the north end to her house. Go up to her front door and knock.

  A man opens the door. He’s about 40 years old, curly haired, clean-shaven, wearing slacks and a white button-down shirt. He’s holding an iPad. He says, “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m Travis. I know Natalie. Is she here?”

  “No. She went out with some kids from school.” The man looks down at his iPad and types something.

  That doesn’t make any sense. Natalie hasn’t been to school yet. I say, “Some kids from school?”

  “Soccer teammates.” He doesn’t look up from his iPad. He says, “They left maybe an hour ago.”

  He’s staring at that screen, and I look at the top of his head. His hair is starting to gray and thin out. This has to be her stepdad, the one who waited to see her coming out of the shower naked. I get an impulse to punch him. With his head down, he wouldn’t see it coming and I could probably knock him out with one shot.

  He looks up. Says, “Do you need me to tell her something?”

  I hold the note out. “Can I leave this for her?”

  “Sure.” He takes it.

  “Thanks,” I say. Turn and leave.

  ENTER THE DISTILLERY

  I’m asleep when Natalie comes to my tent and shakes it. “Hey, you.”

  “Yeah?”

  She unzips the door. Crawls in. Pulls my sleeping bag open and slides in against me. Kisses me, her mouth like a distillery. I was sleepy before that, but now I’m awake.

  We kiss for a while—she kisses like she’s drinking me. It feels so good but she smells like wood alcohol. I say, “How much did you drink tonight?”

  “A little bit.” She giggles. She gets up on her knees and takes off her shirt. Puts my hands on her breasts, over the top of her bra. She straddles me. The insides of her thighs are hot.

  She kisses my neck. Says, “Too bad I’m such a fucked-up girl.”

  “You’re not fucked up.”

  Her hair brushes across my face. She kisses the other side of my neck. “I am. I’m fucked up in the head.” She breathes into my ear.