“What kinds are there?”
“Daffy, Donald, or something more generic.”
“I’ll take the generic duck.” I don’t want this to be commercialized.
“And what’s the occasion?”
“Nothing, really. It should be romantic.”
“Not a birthday or anything?”
“No, but do your singing telegrams know anything by, like, Iron and Wine?”
“No, sir. Our ducks sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Also available in Spanish.”
This goes on for a while. The woman is dying to get off the phone with me. Finally, it hits me. “The national anthem. Tell the duck to sing the national anthem. In falsetto—for extra points. How about that?”
I give her my name and Evelyn’s name. Just saying her name makes me happy, like full-body happiness.
“Address?” the woman says.
I give the library’s name. I know this won’t go over well in a library, but surely there’s a back room somewhere in which singing’s okay. We settle on the financials, and I get off the phone, feeling triumphant. What if I could become a triumphant type of person with Evelyn in my life?
I hold out my hands. They’re shaking a little. I’m hungover and hungry and jacked up. And I think to myself. Why not start being that triumphant type?
Step 1 seems clear: No more, Chapman. No more pushing around Godfrey Burkes, you petty tyrant!
I walk down the hall, past the water cooler and straight into Chapman’s office without knocking.
Chapman is drinking Red Bull. He puts down the can and says, “What?”
“I’m not going to Lost Cell Phones again today. Tell Garrett to do it. He’s new. He needs to pay his dues.”
“I’ll make a note of your suggestion,” Chapman says, and for effect, he lifts a pencil and licks the tip and makes a checkmark in the air.
“Do you smell that smell?” I ask.
“What smell?” Chapman says.
“It’s the smell of petty tyranny. It’s the smell of dying souls. It’s the stench of unlived lives!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Chapman says.
“I quit.” I can’t believe I’ve just said these words.
“What?”
“Listen you fuck-wagon, you ass-dangle, you prick-wad, you douche-hopper!” I call him a few more names, a blur from my mouth.
“Those aren’t real curse words!” Chapman says, though he’s clearly stung by them.
“I quit because I have another life to lead.” And with that, I turn around and walk out of this office and down the hall. I can hear Chapman yelling at my back, “You’re a douche-hopper! You are! You hear me? Douche-hopper! You’re fired, too, so don’t come back!”
I open the back door of the office building, and the parking lot stretches out before me. I start running. I can’t help it. I’m not running away from my shitty job. I’m running toward the future—the one future I really want.
“Godfrey!”
I turn.
Five cars away, Gunston hits the button on his car lock and his car beeps twice. “What are you doing?”
“Can I borrow your phone?”
He’s wearing a puffy blue down jacket that is snug on his wide hips and one of those wool wrap-around ear-warmers, the kind that look like a girl’s headband. His hair is puffed up on top of his head. “Tell me what you’re doing first. You look different . . . and weird.”
“I’m free, Gunston. That look you don’t recognize, that weirdness—it’s freedom!”
“Really? Because it looks kind of shroomy.”
“Give me your phone, okay?”
I want to call Evelyn, but I’m a man of honor. I can’t call her until I’m completely free of Madge. I can only hope a giant patriotic duck gets to her before Madge does.
Right now, I want to tell someone. Why? Because I’m becoming myself—for the first time in my life. I feel like I’m becoming Godfrey Burkes.
I decide to call my parents. I feel like they should know. I push in the numbers of my mother’s cell. It’s midmorning. She’s often out in the yard with the bunnies at this hour.
“Godfrey?” she says. “Where are you?”
“I quit!” I tell her. “I quit my job!”
Gunston says, “You what? You quit?” He’s incredulous.
“You quit your job?” my mother says again.
“It’s okay!” I tell her. “In fact, it’s really good!”
Gunston paces a small circle. With his mouth open, he slightly wags his head in awe.
My mother muffles the mouthpiece and says something, probably to my father. And then it’s my father’s voice on speakerphone. “Are you coming or not?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
Gunston has started flapping his puffed arms like he’s going to try to fly away. “You really quit?”
I nod to Gunston.
“Lunch!” my father says. “We’re waiting for you. We’re at Sal’s on Calhoun. You and Madge were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.”
Lunch with my parents. How could I forget lunch with my mother? “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I say. “And Madge isn’t there?”
Gunston starts jumping now, and he’s still flapping. A small bark emits from his mouth. Is he trying to yawp? Is he hoping to get a promotion or something? Or is he weirdly joyful? It dawns on me I’ve never seen Gunston express joy before.
“Isn’t Madge with you?” my father asks.
“You quit!” Gunston cries out so loudly that his voice bounces across the parking lot and rings up in the open air.
“Quiet down, Gunston.” I turn back to the phone. “No. I don’t think she’s coming.” It terrifies me that I have no idea where she is or what she’s doing.
“Is she mad you quit your job?” my mother asks with a disapproving tone. Madge is only allowed to have one emotion about me: joy, utter joy.
“I think she’s mad, yes.”
“But you have another job, don’t you?” my father asks.
“I have a plan.” I could get my degree in early education. I could grow into those finger-paint-stained fingers that Evelyn saw in her envisioning session. It’s possible.
My father says, “You’d better get your ass down here. This is important.”
“Important?”
“Your mother has already cried twice.”
“Over what?”
“Never you mind. Get here.”
“Go ahead and order,” I say, but my father’s already hung up. My mother’s cried? Twice?
I turn around and there’s Gunston. He’s taken a knee and seems to be praying on the pavement. “I quit,” I say again aloud. It’s just dawning on me in a new way.
“Why?” Gunston says. “How?”
“In the end, it was the smell of petty tyranny. I got to the end of it.”
Gunston nods. “I get it. I understand.”
“Follow me, Gunston.” I hold out my hand to help him up. “You can get out, too.”
Gunston shakes his head. “I wish I could,” he says, tearing up. “I wish I could.”
I can only save myself.
Evelyn
AMNESIA
I step into my apartment, talking to Dot on my phone. I pull off my coat, gloves, hat.
“Maybe you should call him,” Dot says.
“I’ve already texted.” I unwind the scarf around my neck and stare at the sofa. Godfrey and I kissed on that sofa.
“It doesn’t mean you can’t call.”
“It does, actually.” I walk to the kitchen, grab a bottled water, and start drinking.
“Maybe his phone doesn’t get texts,” Dot says.
“I’m now pretending that you’re talking about Ryan Gosling, even with the full beard, because I can no longer think about why Godfrey’s not texting.” In the sink, there are two coffee mugs that previously held hot cocoa—and empty wine bottles.
“I mean, maybe his phone doesn’t get texts?”
“Maybe,” I say. But that’s dumb. “What phone doesn’t get text messages?” I imagine my grandmother’s rotary phone, next to the cuckoo clock.
“Maybe he lost his phone?” Dot says.
“Maybe.” I walk slowly to the bedroom.
“Maybe after he left your apartment that morning, he got mugged, and now he’s floating down the Potomac.”
“Dot!”
“Maybe he fell down a flight of stairs or out of a second- or third-story window and hit his head. Days from now, he will wake up in a hospital room, not knowing who he is. So it’s not his fault, you know? He’d love you if he could only remember you. He sees you sometimes in his dreams. Amnesia is a bitch.”
I appreciate Dot for trying, but it’s not helping. “I’d rather pretend to hate him than be worried that he’s hurt.” His clothes are gone, of course. He’s gone. Did I half expect him to still be here? I stare at his cell phone number written sloppily in lipstick on my mirror.
I pace back to the kitchen. “I’m sorry,” she says. “He might just be a prick.” I lean against the doorjamb all etched with measurements.
And then I see a new scribble on the doorjamb.
I nudge Dot out of the way. “Wait,” I say, and there’s his height, his name written next to the mark. It seems like such a thoughtful, sweet thing. And yet I’m not sure what I should be feeling. It’s still completely possible that Godfrey Burkes has one-night-standed me?
And then I see his incoming text.
Godfrey
THERE, THEIR, AND THEY’RE
I see my parents as soon as I walk into the restaurant. Their steaming entrees—both of which look like dollops from large vague casseroles—sit on their plates. And my parents look freshly steamed, too. Both are red-cheeked and dewy. Why has my mother been crying? Has she gotten bad news—the first signs of the disease that will kill her? My throat cinches up. My God, is this the beginning of the end?
The hostess wants to seat me, but I wave her off. “I see my people,” I tell her, and it hits me that these two people are my people. Thigpen doesn’t matter. I’m Godfrey Burkes and this is my sweet, ailing mother and my sober, loyal father.
As I walk up and take a seat across from them—the hostess handing me my laminated menu—I realize what I must look like. Mussy, bloodshot, bleary-eyed, euphoric, but also spent. I’m unshaven and stinky, and I might start crying.
“Godfrey,” my father says, glancing around the restaurant. “You okay?”
“I’m better than I’ve ever been in my life, to be honest. I mean, I’ve got some things to attend to . . .” Madge. Lordy, Madge . . . “But I’m really, really good. How are you?” I look at my mother. “Are you feeling all right?”
“We’re feeling fine,” my father says. “The point is . . .” He looks at my mother who clasps her hands and lowers them to her lap. She looks down at her brick of casserole. “Your mother wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?” I say. “Have you been to the doctor? You should go to the doctor—EKG, complete blood work, cancer screening. Are you on top of all this? You know that Guy Lombardi died because he refused to get a colonoscopy? This is no time for rash pride.”
“Vince Lombardi,” my father says. “Godfrey! He’s the patron saint of the Green Bay Packers!”
“Sorry,” I say. “You know I’m no good at sports trivia.”
“There’s nothing trivial about Vince Lombardi!” my father says sternly.
“And it’s Guy Lombardo anyway,” my mother says.
“I think we’ve gotten off topic,” I say.
“We’re fine, Godfrey,” my mother says. “Medically. If that’s what you’re talking about.”
“For how long?” I say. “You’ve moved into a new demographic. Your risk factors are higher.”
My mother rummages through her pocketbook and whips out an envelope.
“Test results,” I whisper, and I push back in my chair.
“Test results?” my father says. “What the hell are you talking about, Godfrey? It’s a letter. It’s a goddamn letter—”
“From your father,” my mother says. She shoves the envelope at me. “Mart Thigpen.”
“Thigpen?” I take the letter. The envelope has my name on it: Godfrey. Nothing else. No Burkes. No address. No stamp. This thing was hand-delivered—from Mart Thigpen to my mother?
The handwriting on the envelope is large and has a little fanfare to it—small flourishes. It’s almost girly. I think, This is a forgery.
The envelope is old, faded. I flip it over and nudge the seal. It’s brittle and pops open easily. Old spit kept it together all these years, I think to myself. How old? “What’s it say?” I ask.
“You’ll have to read it yourself,” my mother says.
“Have you read it?” I ask both of my parents.
My father looks at my mother. She says, “Mart read it to me once and then gave it to me to give to you, sealed.”
“He read it to you in person?” This seems completely absurd—the idea of Mart and my mother sitting on a sofa somewhere while he reads a letter he wrote himself, and she sits there—pregnant? Am I already born? Am I in a crib nearby? “How?” I ask.
“What do you mean how? He read it!” my father says, and then he looks at my mother. “How? What’s he saying how for? Does he think Thigpen read it in an accent or something?”
Thigpen can’t read or write. He’s an animalistic womanizer. He’s a heathen lover. He’s a biological necessity, but a social accident.
My mother leans forward. She touches my hand. “The other night on the phone, you said you wanted us to know each other better as adults. I’ve been waiting for you to say—in some way—that you were ready for this, that you are now finally an adult.”
Her stress on “finally” is a little insulting, but I let it go. On some level, I am the little shit who wears mittens. I’ve been slow to mature. Granted. And right now, I have the deep desire to backpedal, to reframe my comments. I start to say, “I kind of meant that maybe we would . . .” What? Debate politics together? Did I just want my parents to trust me to be able to follow a discussion of interest rates?
I’m still holding the unsealed envelope. I can see a triangle of the stationery, which is as yellowed as the envelope.
“Read it, Godfrey,” my mother says. “It’s time.”
I gently pull out the letter. I unfold it. My hands are shaking so badly that the paper trembles, so I lower it to the table.
The letter—in more of that flourishy handwriting—goes like this:
Dear Godfrey,
One day you’ll be old enough for your mother to read this to you.
This means that my mother is way overdue. This was supposed to be read to me before I was able to read myself.
I want you to know that despite the fact that your mother and I can never be together as a couple, I love you.
Mart Thigpen loves me? By those words as a couple, does he mean that he could be with my mother as a lover, sure, but as a couple meant something publicly acknowledged. So this was a reminder pointed at Gloria: Mart was a married man.
Their will always be times when you need a father figure. I don’t know if I’ll be able to be there for you. I hope I’m allowed. But, if I’m not, I want you to know that I want to be there and it’s killing me that I’m not.
Well, now I know that Mart Thigpen does not have mastery of the correct usages of there, their, and probably they’re, too; I hate him for this. Really, I feel actual grammatical rage, something I’ve never felt before. But I know that my emotions might be misdirected. He sounds sincere—not being there for me is “killing him.” For whatever reasons, I believe this. Maybe because I imagine having my own kid one day. I want to be there. Did my mother not allow Mart Thigpen to see me?
If you ever want to come to me for anything, I’m here. Count me in!
Love,
And then there’s a large space. Maybe it is there to suggest the passage o
f time—the time that Mart is trying to decide how to sign the letter. Can he write Dad in all fairness when he’s just confessed he probably won’t be much of a father?
No.
He opts for Mart Thigpen because, I guess, if this is one day read aloud to me, at least I’ll have a full name to go with when I decide to come to him for anything.
I look up at my parents.
Their eyes stare back at me—expectant and glassy.
“And?” my father says.
My mother remains speechless.
“He misused their.”
My mother nods, waiting for me.
My father says, “Is there a little more you want to share with us?”
I look back at the letter and then up at them. This is a moment that I will never forget as long as I live. This restaurant will be the restaurant where I read the letter from my biological father. These clothes will be the clothes I was wearing when I read the letter from my biological father. This feeling in my chest—hot and fiery—is the feeling I’ll always associate with reading the letter from my biological father. Maybe I should be mad at my mother for not allowing Mart to be there for me, but that feels like ancient history. There’s a more pressing realization.
I say, “He’s not an animal.”
“Who said he was an animal?” my father says.
I look at my mother. She shakes her head. She means Let’s not go back over it. Ancient history.
“I have to go,” I say, standing up. “I love you and now I have to get up and breathe air.”
“Okay,” my father says. “Okay there. Steady!”
My mother says, “This will take processing time. I know, I know. It’s going to be okay . . .”
I start to walk out of the restaurant like I’m not so much walking as much as I am gliding leglessly. Thigpen, Thigpen, Thigpen, my heart beats in my head. And just as I’m moving toward the front door, I pass the ladies’ room. The door opens and I nearly run into Dr. A. Plotnik. “Dr. A. Plotnik!” I say, startled.
She looks awful. Her nose is red, her eyes puffed. She’s gripping her pocketbook and a bag from Bed Bath & Beyond with such desperation that I’m afraid of what might be in them.
“Who are you?” she says. “What do you want?”
The Future for Curious People Page 21
