“This,” Charles says, hoisting it up with pride, “is a special-issue sniper rifle, the third-deadliest conventional weapon after the laser bomb.” It looks like what it is: a bunch of taped-together trash. He puts the scope up to his eye and scans along an imaginary horizon somewhere outside the open garage door. “Charlie doesn’t stand a chance!”
Whoa. Charlie? Who the heck is Charlie? Some kind of other version of himself? Charles versus Charlie in the ultimate fight? Cause that would be—what’s the word? Super deep. Nenny’s a little amazed. “Charlie?” she asks, wondering if his secret genius is about to be revealed.
“The gooks, stupid.”
“The gooks?”
“The Vietcong.” He lowers his gun and looks at her like she’s the biggest idiot that ever lived.
“What? Are you playing Vietnam?”
“I’m not playing Vietnam. I am Vietnam.” He lifts the gun again and lets off a few imaginary rounds. “Semper fi, assholes.”
Forget about the fact that swearing is forbidden, let alone guns. “Charles,” Nenny says, with special holy emphasis, “you can’t play Vietnam.”
“Why in the hell not?” he says back.
Nenny glances over her shoulder, as if being watched. “Because your dad was in Vietnam, stupid.”
Charles shrugs. “I’ll tell ’em I’m playing family history.” He lays the gun on the workbench and starts adding details with a marker.
Nenny watches him, her head spinning. Something feels trampled, like just by talking about it they’re kicking dirt onto someone’s grave.
And then an important fact occurs to her, and she feels it’s worth mentioning if only in order to prove what a complete moron Charles is. “Besides,” she says, drawing out her words, “Rick was a medic. He didn’t kill anybody. He didn’t even have a gun.”
“Are you cracked?” His face is sharp. “It was a war. Everyone killed everyone, stupid.”
Now he’s clearly lying. “Oh, okay. Everyone killed everyone. Sure. And, um, how do you know that, by the way? Did you make a cardboard time machine too?”
“Haven’t you ever seen Platoon?” he says. She looks at him and he looks back, both of them with eyebrows raised. “Full Metal Jacket? Apocalypse Now?” She keeps her face passive and her arms crossed, because Charles is an imbecile and she knows she’s not wrong.
“Whatever.” He shrugs and picks up a cardboard walkie-talkie. And then, like that, he shuts something on her, one of his inside doors, and it’s clear he’s back in the jungle of his own mind, far away from Nenny.
“Private Joker! Do you copy?!!” he screams into his walkie-talkie. He takes some imaginary shots, gets pegged by a stray bullet, clutches his gut, and tumbles out the garage door.
Idiot, Nenny thinks and goes back inside to read. She finds, though, that she can’t concentrate. That can’t be true, she thinks. Rick was a medic, and medics didn’t kill people—they saved people. That was their job; that was the whole point.
Still, she suddenly finds that she’s not so sure.
Platoon
AS IT happens, Dad is obsessed with war. He owns all the essential nonfiction books about war, books with titles like To Hell and Back and The Guns of August and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and at one time or another has read the novels too. He has subscriptions to After the Battle and Field Artillery magazines.
Thing is, Dad’s never actually been to war, and never will. If you ever hear someone say “He’s just not cut out for it” and you’re not sure who “he” is, now you know: they’re talking about Nenny’s dad. His greatest sadness in life, other than splitting from Mom, is that he’ll never go to war. He’ll never even see the inside of a bunker, other than some dorky fake one at a county museum somewhere, because apparently when Dad turned eighteen, his doctor said, “Ho, boy! Not with your asthma!” and stamped his card 4-F, which is armyspeak for “Unable to serve.”
But anyone with half a brain (or with a dad who’s half-obsessed) knows that 4-F might put an end to your ambitions of seeing the theater but it can’t ever squelch your God-given right to own obscure manuals, decommissioned grenades, rusty helmets, boot liners, medals and backpacks and ponchos and canteens, even a creepy gas mask that’s starting to mold.
Movies too. Dad owns all the movies too.
* * *
Saturday, and Dad’s grading papers in the other room. This means they can basically do whatever they want. Bubbles is out front, playing Legos. Tiny’s in his fort—first thing he does at Dad’s is build a fort—but Nenny doesn’t have time for games.
“Let’s watch a movie,” she says to Tiny, because since Charles’s revelation it’s all she thinks about. She doesn’t want to think about it, but she can’t help it. It’s been a week, and every day, several times a day, she can hear Charles say, “Everyone killed everyone, stupid,” and each time her mind grows foggy and her stomach flips. She wants desperately to believe he’s wrong, but she’s just not sure anymore.
“Ernest Goes to Camp!” Tiny chirps from his fort.
“No, not Ernest Goes to Camp.” His disappointment is palpable. She runs her fingers along the cassette spines. Hundreds of movies line the shelves, literally hundreds. War paraphernalia’s not Dad’s only problem. The other is that whenever a movie is released on tape, he’s got to have it. There are so many tapes he has to keep adding new shelves.
Scarface, Moby Dick, Casablanca, Tarzan the Ape Man, Tarzan Finds a Son, Tarzan’s New York Adventure…and then she sees it, and when she does, something inside her sinks. A man—you can’t even see his face—kneels with his arms outstretched, as if he’s reaching for or calling out to God. Except he’s covered in blood, and there are men with guns behind him, so it’s hard to believe that it’s some kind of prayer. There was a part of her that hoped Dad wouldn’t have the movie, that she could just carry on in blissful ignorance—but the fact that it’s here has all the crushing and twisted complications of fate. She has to watch it now. She doesn’t have a choice.
“How about this one?” she says, trying to conceal her nerves.
“What is it?” Tiny says, popping out of his fort. He walks over and snatches the cassette from her hand. He seems completely disinterested—it’s hard to compete with Ernest—but then he flips it over and gasps.
“This movie’s rated R,” he whispers, his eyes bulging from his skull.
“So?” Nenny shrugs, trying her best to be cavalier.
“We’re not allowed!”
This is an easy enough problem to fix. “Dad! Can we watch a movie?”
She’s already sliding the cassette from its sleeve because she knows what the answer will be.
“Yes! Please don’t shout! I’m grading papers!” Dad shouts.
“See?” Nenny says, putting the tape in the VCR. The machine whirs to life.
At first it’s pretty straightforward. Charlie Sheen gets off a helicopter in what is obviously supposed to be Vietnam. He’s clearly the new guy in the battalion and doesn’t (thankfully) look anything like Rick. Rick is lanky and tall without a hair on his head, and Charlie Sheen is, well, Charlie Sheen. “Welcome to the ’Nam!” some guy shouts and claps him on the back. Charlie Sheen does a sheepish, aw-shucks kind of face, and off they go.
Nenny scans the screen. She’s waiting for the medic to appear—white coat gleaming in a sea of green. Or maybe just a Red Cross medicine bag. But when the medic does show—five minutes in—he’s just like every other guy: rugged and calloused and wearing that awful, filthy green. So there it is. Charles was right. She feels like she might be sick.
“Can we watch the other one now?” Tiny whines. He’s lolling like a dead tongue out the door of his fort, sprawled and arm-splayed because this movie will be the death of him. “Shhhhhhh,” Nenny says. It’s the sustained, soft shhhhhhh of It’s all right, it’s okay. Who knows if she’s comforting and quieting him or comforting and quieting herself.
Just to be clear, Platoon is NOT Ernest Goes to Camp. It is
a gruesome, gruesome film. Scarred, crude men fight for power in their ranks. They curse one another and betray one another without blinking an eye. They talk about whores and pussy and fuck you fuck this fuck that like it’s anything else. They’re alive with ants and rage. Charlie Sheen cowers in the brush, crouched under a sheet and soaked to the bone, and the shadows of the Vietcong, bodies materializing from the night woods, and the drumbeat, and the heartbeat, and the drum.
There is a knife to Nenny’s throat. Rick did two tours in Vietnam—two tours. Each tour lasts a year, she thinks, and to imagine this kind of life, day after day after day. As she watches the movie, all of the soldiers become Rick—Rick grazed in the neck by a bullet, Rick facedown in the mud, Rick screaming and panicked in the heat of a firefight. Rick is all of Bravo Company, an entire battalion, a whole infantry, and every other soldier who ever stepped foot in Vietnam. He storms a village, kicks over rice sacks, shoots a pig, screams in some woman’s face, yanks children by the arm, and then slams the butt of his rifle into a one-legged man’s cheek, over and over and over again, until the man’s skull explodes. “You see that head fucking come apart, man?”
Platoon is not a bulb going off. It’s an entire stadium, suddenly lit, flooded with awful light.
Rick is all of them—each murderous, wild, defiant, lonely, terrified one.
And he lives in Nenny’s house.
And he sleeps right upstairs.
How to Think About Ghosts
FIRST OF all, forget about Casper. Casper’s a freaking joke. Watch Casper and you’re led to believe that death is some kind of fun. That once you lose your physical form it’s all cuddly marshmallows floating around, cute as buttons, soft and wispy as clouds. That death is little more than an extension of a charmed and adorable life where occasionally, just for the hell of it, everyone breaks into song.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Real ghosts reach through walls, and sometimes they don’t have faces—just crisped slabs of flesh where their eyes and mouths should be. They certainly don’t sing. They don’t even moan like ghosts in other shows do. They’re silent as holes, as muffled as desperate pleas to go away, go away, go away. Steer clear of the bathroom at night. Ghosts love the bathroom at night. They wait for you faceup and bleeding at the bottom of the tub, or still and searching in the mirror, looking into your face for glimpses of their own. They drag their bloodied limbs and broken flesh down darkened halls, and when their guts fall out, which their guts always do, real ghosts stand, night after night, at the top of the stairs, pushing what should not be out back in. There’s no getting rid of real ghosts. There’s no praying or begging or wishing real ghosts away. Distractions, pleas, bullets, napalm, years—your ghosts are here to stay.
Premonition
SOMETHING TERRIBLE is going to happen. Something awful and deadly is about to occur. This is less a fear than an absolute premonition. Fear rides high in the chest, nestles like a stone in the throat, but this? This is the oppressive, terrifying sensation of being watched, everything a beast with eyes.
In dreams, someone—nameless and faceless and without shape or voice—stands over Nenny’s bed wielding an ax, and she wakes in the morning drenched in sweat. She looks at her siblings and involuntarily imagines them annihilated—Bubbles impaled by a bayonet, Tiny sliced apart, Charles knifed in the back, Kat riddled with wounds. She prays fervently because that’s what she’s been taught to do: Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary. The other kids at school aren’t even idiots now because the other kids aren’t even there. Everyone else has melded into an indistinguishable mass. Three times Nenny tries to talk to Mom and three times the words snag tangled in her throat; three times Mommy, I need help, three times severed Mommy, I’m scared, and Mom in her own wordless cloud, distracted and overworked. Nenny cannot bear to look at Rick. If she looks at Rick, even a glance, then his secret will be revealed and he will expertly, coldly, and without mercy kill them all.
Boots is the only one who seems to notice that something is wrong.
“Are you okay?” she asks, afternoon sky, murky pool.
Nenny’s brow furrows and her heart does a wrinkled flip. She loves Boots instantly then because she’s even asked.
But Boots wouldn’t understand. No one, anywhere, at any time, will ever understand.
Pressing
THURSDAY NIGHT, Mom’s putting Nenny to bed. Time for only one question, and for Nenny it’s the most pressing question of all.
“Mom…did Rick kill people in Vietnam?”
Mom sighs. “Oh, Nenny. That was a long time ago.” Which is not an answer. She goes to the door and turns out the light. “It’s time to go to sleep.”
Go on, Nenny. Try to sleep.
Call It Love
NENNY’S NINTH birthday comes. There’s the familiar white cake and the silly drawn-out song. At the end of the table, a little pile of gifts, and on the pile, the littlest of gifts, perched like a small bird at the top of a tree. The tag says, “To Nenny, From Rick.” She did not expect a gift from him and looks at him for the first time all week.
“It’s a locket,” he says before she’s even opened it. “I figured you could put a picture of Kirk Cameron in it or something.”
What? Did he just—but how does he know? How does Rick know? That her love for Kirk Cameron is like having her heart pinched of blood and then dipped in gold? How could Rick possibly know?
Rick folds his napkin, sips his wine, folds his napkin again, but he won’t look at her. Nenny realizes something then, and it’s a strange flash that shifts the very walls of the room. He’s embarrassed, she thinks. He’s overcome by this simple exchange. It’s as if he’s not sure how to hold this thing he’s got, this fragile, fledgling thing—call it affection, call it love.
A Sight to See
IS THIS it? Is this the impending terrible thing? Gramma B dies. It doesn’t feel all that terrible. She wasn’t Nenny’s actual grandma, after all.
But what a strange, horrifying, lovely sight: to see Rick push his glasses up and pinch his tear ducts like some men do. What a thing, to watch him like this, to see him cry.
* * *
After that, the fear recedes a little, like a retreating tide. Nenny will learn this over and over again throughout her life, how it comes and goes, the way that fear comes and goes.
Rhymes with “Boss”
WINDSOR LIVES in Apple Valley, which may as well be the moon. It’s only an hour away but feels much farther. It’s an endless drive of dust and dirt and stones. What separates their house from Charles and Kat’s other house is a landscape so brown that it’s greyed, frail trees struggling alone in barren fields, buildings with their windows knocked out, the stain of raunchy motels and tilting houses and wasted trailer parks. They are places where no one wants to live but that they desperately inhabit.
The whole family’s driving up because small stories have been swirling around. Nothing concrete, but stories still: Charles told Bubbles, who let it slip, something about Gabe’s collection of Playboy magazines, and Kat hates Gabe with a vehemence that could dissolve you. Who knows what he’s done, but anyway something’s fishy and Rick wants to check it out. He would never say as much, but Nenny’s not stupid: they’re doing recon.
Kat and Charles take the swivel seats; Nenny and the boys climb in the back. Supposedly they’re taking Charles and Kat to Windsor’s for the weekend and on the way hitting some desert zoo, but everyone knows this is a cover. Windsor usually comes to pick up Kat and Charles, and no way would Rick volunteer to drive there out of the kindness of his heart or to see some zoo.
“We’re here!” Mom finally sings, then points out the window and cries, “How cute!” Nenny doesn’t even have to look to know she’s feeding them a line. The zoo parking lot is completely empty, and though there’s a big OPEN sign, it’s dangling at an angle like a wonky eye. Even the sign is looking for some better place to go.
“At least it’s free,” Rick says.
“What a steal,” Charles mumbles as they get out of the car.
An old man comes out of the “office” and starts hobbling toward them across the lot. He looks as though he hasn’t bathed, slept, changed his clothes, been outside, or seen another human being in about ten thousand years. Nenny imagines showing him a VCR and watching his head explode.
“Well, hell-oooooo!” he calls. He’s lurching toward them like they’re the long-lost relatives he’s been searching for his whole life.
“Ew,” Kat says but shuts it when Rick shoots her a look. The man’s name tag says HOSS, and he looks about a billion years old: skin like a crumpled paper bag, every other tooth missing. His glasses are so scratched and dusty it’s a wonder he can see at all.
“Hoss?” Tiny asks, pointing to the tag.
“Rhymes with ‘boss’!” the guy says, clapping Tiny on the shoulder. Tiny beams. He’s constantly falling for guys who have no actual authority: lifeguards at the YMCA, the security guard at the bank, anybody in a uniform. He wants to be everyone’s sidekick. He’s always hungry for some dorky hat, some crappy plastic badge.
Hoss offers them a tour, and Mom bugs her eyes like Oooh, a tour! The tour only goes to show what a crap hole the place is—not that they needed proof. Hoss leads them past lines of cages filled with listless, sick-looking lizards, all of them named: Mr. Scales, Mr. Scales Junior, Green Eyes, Wanda.
“Wanda?” Kat blurts, suddenly attentive.
“Yeah—after my ex-wife!” old Hoss cries, then starts heaving and coughing and slapping his knee. Boy, he’s a real riot. Hoss is a downright clown.
“This one’s dead,” Charles announces, poking his finger into a cage. The lizard is belly-up, waxen, its mouth open and teeth exposed.
Every Other Weekend Page 9
