This is the Part Where You Laugh

by Peter Brown Hoffmeister

  I lean in to see past the line of the shadow, the overhang. Blink and open my eyes wide, and there she is, inside the dark, just like that. Her face. Her dirty hair, a little more gray in it than the last time I saw her. She’s wearing a different coat. Red. Mud stains on the left arm and a hood pulled halfway up.

  “Mom?”

  She shifts in her sleep.

  “Mom?”

  Her eyes open. Lips peel back. Then her lips relax and she moves her mouth like a fish.

  “How have you been, Mom?” I lean in, touch her shoulder.

  “Hmm?” She exhales and her breath is like a casserole left to rot on the counter for a week.

  I say, “I’ve been looking for you.” I sit down next to her, on the line between the shadow and the sunlight.

  She shifts and closes her eyes again.

  “Things have been good,” I say. I take a deep breath. Feel the sunlight on my face. “Actually, that’s a lie. I don’t know why I said that. Things have been messed up.” I drum my fingers on my knees, look out at the construction site, the grass beyond, the benches under the maple trees.

  My mom’s asleep, and I shake her shoulder. “Wake up.”

  She shifts. Rubs her face on the concrete, her eyes closed. Her nose rasps against the cement’s grit.

  I say, “Don’t do that.” Put my hand under her face. “Mom?”

  She doesn’t wake up. I shake her again, one hand under her face and one on her shoulder. “Mom?”

  She doesn’t move. Doesn’t shift.

  In the dark behind her, there’s someone else sleeping. Snoring. A deeper-voiced snore—a man, maybe. I lean in and see a bigger person, thick clothes and a wool ski hat, even in the claustrophobic heat of midday.

  I slide my hand out from under my mom’s face. Stand up. The daylight is bright on the concrete, August hot and no wind, and I look up at the top half of the bridge pylon above me. Someone’s spray-painted YOLO 20 feet above me, in silver paint, and I wonder for a second how a kid could get up there. There aren’t any ladders and there’s no girder to hang from.

  YOLO. I look down at my mom, asleep just inside the shadow.

  I set my backpack down next to her. Unzip it. Pull out the food and the Gatorades. Then the jar of money. I hold it in my hands and look at the bills stuffed in, twenties mostly, a few tens and fives.

  I put the sandwiches in a stack, all three on top of each other, and the cookies next to them. I place the Gatorades on either end, a foot from her face. Then I put the jar of money in her hands, against her stomach, reach behind her to pull a blanket over the top of her so people won’t see the glint of glass and metal that she’s holding.

  I kneel there, my hand on her shoulder. I say, “Don’t get this stolen, okay? Go rent an apartment with it. Use it to get back on your feet, all right?”

  I stand back up. Turn around. Look to see if anyone’s watching. But I don’t see anybody. This doesn’t feel good, exactly. It isn’t how I planned it. I imagined a long conversation down by the river, my mom and I talking about what we’re doing now, how things could have been, how things will change.

  THE SERVICE

  The service is on a Sunday, and a lot of people come. Basketball made Creature well-known in the city, a high school cult hero cut down too early.

  People get up, one after another, to tell stories, to talk about Creature, to say things they’ll miss about him. An old coach. Two of his teachers. A girl he used to hang around with for a while. A man that knew his mom a long time ago. But I don’t get up. I sit in my pew at the church. I sit and try to listen to what they say, see if I can clear my head that’s full of waterlogged computer parts.

  I don’t cry. I don’t know how to describe what I feel. It’s like my body is a wind tunnel, not just a hollow, but a moving hollow, as if two weather fronts are sitting on either side of me, and neither one of them can settle the way it wants. I don’t really hear anything people have to say. I keep thinking that Creature couldn’t play defense once he started trash-talking in a game. Gary Payton could trash-talk and “D-up” just fine, but not Creature. Once Creature’s mouth started moving, he’d drop his hands, he wouldn’t spin or run around a screen, his butt would be up, his hips out of place. It was like all of the blood that should’ve been in his mind and in his muscles was stuck in his swollen-up tongue.

  I don’t know why I keep thinking about this.

  —

  After the memorial service, a couple dozen people go up to the graveside. I know some of them: Grandpa pushing Grandma in a wheelchair, Creature’s mom, Jill, and Coach. Then I see Natalie trailing behind. I didn’t even know she was at the funeral service until this moment. She’s walking in the back of the group, and when we get to the top, she steps up and stands behind Creature’s mom. Where I’m standing, I can’t really see her.

  A pastor reads a passage from the Bible, then says a prayer while we all listen and close our eyes. Then we say, “Amen.”

  Creature’s mom doesn’t look like herself. She isn’t wearing a tight Lycra bodysuit. I don’t know why I keep thinking about these little things.

  She hands each of us a peach-colored rose. “Malik loved this color, said it was a man’s pink.” She puts her rose on the coffin. We each place our roses on top after her, so there’s a small pile of roses on that big silver casket, too big-seeming even for Creature’s long body.

  We stand there for a few moments in the shade of the tree behind the grave. There’s a little bit of wind but it’s still hot—late-summer hot—and everyone is quiet and sweating. No one knows what to say, so we stand and mostly just look at the casket. People nod to each other or keep their heads down. Grandpa steps over next to me and squeezes my shoulder. He holds it for a minute, then lets go.

  After a while, Creature’s mom says, “I love you, Malik,” and after that, we all say, “I love you,” one by one.

  Then people are hugging each other, and Creature’s mom starts walking down the hill, and everyone follows her. Natalie takes my hand and pulls me off to the side. “Let’s stay up here for a minute.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a reason.”

  We stand next to the casket. Natalie says, “It’s August 28th, and you started camping May 21st, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So tonight would be 100 nights, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “but I wrecked that streak when I was arrested. Sleeping in juvie is sleeping inside.”

  Natalie shrugs. “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’ve been sleeping inside since I got out, and I probably will again tonight.”

  “No,” Natalie says. “Breaking the streak doesn’t matter, but quitting does. You’ve got to start over. Treat 100 like 1.”

  “But breaking the streak matters to me.”

  “Travis,” she says. “I’ve been wanting to tell you something.” She touches the scar on her face. “We were biking.”

  “Who was biking?”

  “My dad and I. We had one of those tag-alongs, a sort of trailer-bike thing behind his bike. That’s what I rode.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In Portland,” she says, “when we lived there. When I was little. My dad turned a corner onto a one-way. He must not’ve seen the sign. And the truck hit him but not me. The truck was going 40 miles an hour. That’s pretty much all I know. I just remember how much white there was in front of me, a huge, white truck. And then I was on the ground and I cut my face on something, we never really knew what, some sort of metal or something, and there was so much blood. Blood everywhere.”

  “So that’s the scar on your cheek?”

  “Yeah, kids used to make fun of it in grade school. And I used to punch people in the face when they said something about it. One time I knocked out a boy’s two front teeth. I hit him with a metal water bottle.”

  “I wouldn’t feel bad about that.”

  “No, I don’t.” Natalie is crying a little and she wipes a
tear with the back of her wrist. “No, fuck that kid. Fuck all of those kids. Making fun of a girl with a scar on her face? I mean, he didn’t even know about my dad or anything, but fuck him anyways.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and wipe one of her tears away with my thumb.

  Natalie laughs. “So I guess I hit people like you do.”

  “I guess so. I’m sorry about your dad, though. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It was a long time ago. It’s been 11 years.”

  “Still, that’s horrible.”

  “Yeah, it was messed up. I’m not gonna lie.” Natalie touches her scar with her index finger, pushes on the pink.

  I reach and trace my finger across that scar, feel the ridge of it, the hardened line where the L shape turns down.

  Natalie says, “Things get messed up. I think about my dad sometimes, or Creature now. Or my knee injury. Or your ribs. Or you being in juvie.”

  I say, “I don’t know how to feel about any of that.”

  “That’s okay. Who cares? But you should camp tonight no matter what, and I’ll camp with you. It’ll be a different 100. I’ll help you start again, or finish. Whatever.”

  I close my eyes. I don’t want to cry again. I’ve cried so much in the last week, and suddenly I feel like I could start again.

  Natalie says, “We’ll do it together.” She puts her arms around me. Kisses the side of my face.

  I open my eyes and stare over her shoulder at the big silver casket. The loose roses we put on top, the petals quivering in the wind.

  Natalie says, “And I wanted to stay up here because I have something to read.”

  “To read?”

  “It’s some of Creature’s pages.” Natalie lets go of me and reaches into her pocket. Takes out two pages all folded up. She unfolds them. “One night I came over to your house, and your grandma read these to me. She said Creature gave them to her. I wish I’d known him better.”

  “Are those part of his Russian princesses book?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Entry number 69.”

  “Oh no.”

  “No,” she says, “they’re really sweet. And your grandma loves them too. She let me borrow them to read to you today, but she wants them back.”

  I shake my head. Picture Grandma reading Creature’s dirty love letters.

  Natalie says, “Your grandma called this ‘the real Creature,’ right here. She said, ‘in all his glory.’ And you’ve never heard these pages, Travis. So listen.”

  The Pervert’s Guide to Russian Princesses

  Princess #69 (First Draft)

  Oh, Anna Anderson, I don’t care about DNA tests or the lies that came out of Prince Dimitri’s mouth. You will forever be my Princess Anastasia, royal and blue-blooded in America or anywhere.

  We’ll grow old together. We’ll have matching walkers and oxygen tanks. We’ll both groan as we struggle to stand up from couches, from bus seats, from restaurant chairs pushed back. I’ll stroke the sun-spotted skin of your neck with my arthritic fingers, feel the heft of the gained weight in your hips, feel your thick waist through the sequined dresses that you like to wear. We’ll make slow love on our Sealy Posturepedic bed on Sunday afternoons, in your house in Los Angeles, the cricks in our bodies ticking in time with the titanium ball joint of my replaced hip.

  You’ll beg me to rub your sagging breasts and my hands will shake as I try to undo your enormous bra. We’ll be like teenagers again, the expanse of your chest making me light-headed, my tongue thickening.

  “I’m sorry about your family’s execution,” I’ll whisper. “I’m sorry that you had to lie still among your family’s bodies, that you had to crawl and climb out of that mass grave.” I won’t know why I bring that up when we’re together like this, naked. Something about your nakedness reminds me of that history.

  You’ll be angry, but I’ll settle you with my fingers, my body spooning you until your shaking stops. Then we’ll start slowly again, gaining momentum, the sheets heating with the friction of our bodies.

  Your dentures will fall out on your pillow as you cry, “Oh, oh, oh,” your mouth open so wide, your Russian accent hidden in those cries like the accents of British rock stars bent around the runs of a lead guitar.

  You’ll gum your pillow as I finish, your head turned, the images of the Revolution in your mind, each family member shot and thrown in the newly dug ground. You’ll speak the names of your relatives as you fall asleep next to me, the last six tsars in order, their names as your daily rosary: Paul, Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II.

  I’ll say, “You are my princess, my last princess, my Anastasia. I believe in you. I believe in your story. You are my Russian girl forever, my Russian royal, my Anna, my Anai, the end of me, the end of this. You are the end of my Russian addiction.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you first and foremost to Adriann Ranta, my super agent, for stopping next to your rental car on that back street in Berkeley the day that we met and telling me that I needed to write something like this. I guess you were right. And thank you for the countless little things that you do, too.

  To Katherine Harrison, the hardest-working novel editor I’ve ever met. 447 pages, edited by hand. Thank you for all of the penciled-in ideas, funny little reactions, and personal anecdotes. You made novel revision fun. But more importantly, you made this book better.

  Thank you to my mother, the artist Pamela Hoffmeister, for your paintings, your storytelling, your love of history, poetry, and good novels, and for so many great conversations about making art.

  To my father, Charlie Hoffmeister, who still models hard work to this day. A writer might have talent, but he better have a work ethic. And you’ve always inspired me to get up early and finish my work. Plus, baseball games are good, too.

  Love to Zeb Rear for musical inspiration and humor. On a Tuesday. At the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

  Thank you to the Joshua Tree National Park Association, particularly Caryn Davidson, for selecting me as writer-in-residence and giving me both the time in the desert and the Lost Horse Ranger Station to finish the revisions of this book.

  On the copyediting team, thank you to copy editor Nancy Elgin, proofreader Amy Schroeder, and executive copy editor Artie Bennett. Your precise notes—back and forth, in different-colored ink—were the calculus that this big, messy pile of a book needed.

  Thank you also to my managing editor, Dawn Ryan, for keeping things on schedule and running smoothly. The behind-the-scenes people truly make books happen.

  On design, thanks so much to my cover designer, Angela Carlino, and interior designer, Kenneth Crossland. The book would be a big white nothing without you two, and big white nothings aren’t as cool as they sound.

  To Ruth. My Tortuga. Thank you for our wonderful early-morning writing-and-reading sessions. Your poetry. I love seeing your face come around that corner.

  And to Rain. My coyote trickster. Thank you for the best bread and cookies ever baked by human hands. Plus circuits. Plus sarcasm.

  Finally, as always, to Jennie Pam. You know that the bridge was real. All I wanted was to impress you so that we could be together forever. Is that too much to ask? You’re worth a thousand failed backflips.

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