The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac

by Kris D'Agostino

  “Still gaming?” I ask.

  “About to make the move to straight-up LARPing,” Arthur says.

  “You always were the nerdiest,” I tell him.

  “You should come out,” Arthur says.

  “It’s not for me.”

  “What is for you?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “It’s a tough nut.”

  “How weird is it to see all these people?”

  “So weird,” Arthur says. “Like an episode of the Twilight Zone that’s going to last five hours.”

  “How long you been doing this?” I ask, motioning to the rest of the band.

  “It’s only our second wedding,” he says. “Hard-core wasn’t paying enough.”

  “It never does,” I say. “You were in a band?”

  “Female Blood,” he says.

  “You were in Female Blood?” I ask. “I saw you guys. Like, three years ago in Cambridge, at the Middle East. Your singer threw up on himself. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you.”

  “My longhair phase,” Arthur says. “We broke up.” He pushes his glasses up with the tip of a finger and scrunches his nose like there’s a booger lodged there that’s making him uncomfortable.

  “Shit, man,” I say. “If I had known it was you, I’d have said hello.”

  “Eh,” Arthur says. “No sweat.”

  “Well,” I say, looking around for my father. I spot him standing at one of the hors d’oeuvre tables, staring into a bowl of punch. “I gotta go corral my dad. He’s not well.”

  “I heard,” Arthur says. “Good luck with all that.”

  “Looking forward to the set,” I say with a salute.

  “Don’t look too hard,” Arthur says.

  I SEE CHRIS from across the room. He and Marie have taken the first dance. The guests are all seated at their tables watching. He lifts her arm into the air, holding it daintily by the fingertips. He twirls her. The band plays “Wonderful Tonight” and does a halfway decent job of it.

  “His moves are all wrong,” I tell my father, who is sitting next to me. The plate of food he was served a half hour ago is still untouched. Our tablemates are two of Chris’s male cousins whose names I have already forgotten. They are both extremely excited about a new sailing vessel their family has acquired on Martha’s Vineyard.

  “A thirty-foot schooner,” Cousin #1 tells us.

  “You know what makes it a schooner, don’t you?” Cousin #2 adds.

  “Fore and aft sails,” my father says out of nowhere. He rubs his mustache. “I’d love to get my hands on that boat.”

  “You know a lot about seamanship?” Cousin #1 asks.

  “I’d sail into the sunset,” my father says.

  “Maybe Buffy will let you come out for a jaunt this summer,” Cousin #2 says.

  “Who the fuck is Buffy?” my father asks.

  “Our mother,” Cousin #2 says.

  “Do you sail?” Cousin #1 asks.

  “I fly,” my father says.

  “He’s been sick,” I say.

  “Pity,” Cousin #2 says. “Seeing the water race by off the side of the hull is the most liberating feeling in the world.”

  “I’d like to be under water,” my father says.

  “A scuba man,” Cousin #1 says.

  The band moves on to the next number, “Lady in Red.” The tables have begun to clear out as most of the guests find their way to the dance floor. They sway, slowly, affectionately. There is a collective glow to everyone. They are really enjoying themselves. I see their eyes, their smiles. Outside, the sun is setting, but its colors are still in the sky. Orange and red and purple are everywhere.

  Cousin #1 and Cousin #2 excuse themselves.

  “We’re off to find some tail,” one of them says.

  “Godspeed,” I tell them.

  THE CAKE ARRIVES. A massive thing, towering as tall as a man or more likely a midget, but still, towering is a word that suits it. A plastic bride and groom grace its summit. The cake is cut. Chris and Marie gobble up the first slices. They pose for photos with the cake. They embrace. He dips her, low, toward the parquet. He kisses her neck. Flashes pop. A few cheers go up from a rowdy group of drunken male spectators who I can only assume are Chris’s frat brothers from Yale.

  Cake is being delivered to all who wish to consume cake. Hillman’s best man, a large, hulking figure with Ken doll hair, rises from his seat and clanks a spoon to his Champagne glass for attention.

  “Greetings, everyone,” he begins. “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Chad Pennington. I was Chris’s roommate freshman year. And captain of the Yale rugby team.” He pauses here for a moment to let this information sink in.

  “Yale rugby rules,” someone yells out.

  Pennington surveys the room before continuing, making eye contact with people, something he perhaps learned in a public-speaking class. His body wavers slightly. Massive shoulders seem to test the very limit of elasticity his suit will allow. His head lolls a little and it is clear he has parted ways with sobriety much earlier in the day. He raises his glass. He tilts it too much and spills Champagne onto his lapel.

  “Man down,” someone yells out.

  Pennington lowers his glass, realizing, I think, that he still has a speech to deliver before the actual toast.

  “Welcome,” he continues. “This really is a special day. When I met Chris, I don’t think he’d ever kissed a girl. He was a real nerd.” He pauses here. “Not much has changed.” Ah, the punch line. A few chuckles arise from the audience, all seated in their assigned places, shoveling cake into their mouths.

  I HEAD TO the bathroom and go through the painful procedure of pulling my dick out of the tuxedo fly. I pee for what seems like hours, relishing the wonderful feeling of release. On my way out I almost collide head-on with the groom.

  “Oh, what’s up?” I say. Chris seems to be pleased we have bumped into one another. He extends a hand and I shake it as firmly as I can.

  “Hey, Calvin,” he says. “I’m glad you could make it.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” I say. “Having a good time.”

  “How’s your father holding up?”

  “He’s eating cake, I think,” I say. “Congratulations,” I add.

  “Thank you,” Chris says. His blond hair is neatly combed to one side. His tux fits him very well and he has lost most of the dorkish qualities that plagued him as a teenager. He looks like a man.

  “So was it scary?” I ask.

  “A little.”

  “You feel any different?”

  “I feel good,” he says.

  “It must be nice to know what you want,” I say.

  “I suppose,” he says.

  “I’m glad things are going well for you,” I tell him.

  “So what’s new with you?” he asks.

  “I work at a preschool for retarded kids. Live with my parents.”

  “It’ll turn itself around,” Chris says. “It always does. Hey, I’m about to explode.” He opens the door and starts into to the bathroom. He pauses. “Hey,” he says, “I didn’t think you’d actually come. It was my mother’s idea to invite you. I thought you’d have no interest. Kind of thought we disliked each other. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I hit you in the head with that acorn.”

  “It’s your wedding day,” I say. “All is forgiven.”

  I GO TO the bar and get a third glass of wine and one for my father.

  “Here,” I say, handing him the drink. “You can have this, but if Mom finds out, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Understood,” he says. He takes the glass from me and sips it slowly.

  I see he has helped himself to a second slice of cake. I take the plate from him and put it on an adjacent table.

  “You can’t have any more cake, though,” I say. “Mom would kill me if she knew you even had one piece.”

  My father and I sit for a moment without talking. We drink our wine.


  “You think I’m crazy?” he asks.

  “I think you’re depressed.”

  He nods his head. He looks around the room. We both do. The dance floor undulates with bodies. Some drift off to the bar. Others linger out on the large balcony, cigarettes dangling from their lips. Others have gathered in makeshift huddles, instinctively drawn into their old high school cliques. I have lost track of Chris Hillman. The band does a swinging version of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.” My father smooths his shirt out with his hands, adjusts the angle of his bow tie.

  “I hate tuxedos,” he says. “When your mother and I got married, in 1973, I wore a white suit. With bell-bottoms. Everything’s gotten so jumbled up.”

  “They were never so ordinary to begin with,” I tell him.

  “How are you holding up?” he asks.

  “Terribly,” I say. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  “Who does?” my father says.

  “I have no girlfriend.”

  “Consider yourself lucky.”

  “My friends are letting me down.”

  “They always do.”

  “I contribute nothing toward keeping the house from going under,” I say.

  “You’re there,” my father says. “That counts for something.”

  “But I can’t help with money,” I say. “Not like Chip is helping with money.”

  “There are other ways,” he says.

  “What I really want,” I say, “is to know how it feels to be passionate about something. To pick a path and go with it and not think so much about what’s next.”

  “It never stops,” he says.

  “I wish it would.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything,” I say.

  “It’s a tough nut,” my father says, echoing the exact words Arthur Kornberg said to me earlier in the evening.

  “I basically refuse to take any responsibility onto my plate.”

  “Everyone has responsibility,” my father says. “Whether they want it or not.”

  “Some people have more than others,” I say. “Look at you. You got a family. A house. Car insurance. Life insurance. A mortgage.”

  “About to go into default,” he points out.

  “Why did you decide to shoulder all that?”

  “I didn’t think there was any other way to do it,” he says.

  “There’s always another way,” I say.

  He laughs.

  “I was too scared of not getting married,” he says. “I was terrified of being alone.”

  “Are all men just little boys forever?” I ask.

  “I know you took the gun,” he says. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “I wanted to shoot it.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “Can I tell you, though, Dad? Here’s the thing with shooting the gun. I realized something I’ve been overlooking all this time. We may be more in control than we think. Of everything. Of what happens to us.”

  “We’re not in control of anything,” he says.

  “Because you don’t see it working out in your head,” I tell him. “You don’t see it happening the way you want it to happen.”

  “I don’t want to be sick anymore,” he says.

  “Then don’t act like it’s going to come back,” I say. “Give yourself that much.”

  “And after that?” he asks.

  “After that, what happens, happens. You can’t stop it or change it. But at least you didn’t play a part in it.”

  “You’re as confused as your mother,” he says.

  “It’s like with the house,” I go on. “We’re in control. We can leave anytime. We don’t have to wait for the bank.”

  “I don’t want to go,” he says. “Your mother doesn’t want to go.”

  “I know, Dad,” I say. “I don’t want to lose the house either. I’m just saying.”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  “I know this has been a tough year,” he says. “For everyone. And I’m sorry for that.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I tell him. “It’s mine. It’s no one’s.”

  THE BAND SEGUES into “What a Wonderful World” as Chris and his mother take the dance floor. They pivot and turn in slow motion. Tears well up in the eyes of onlookers. A touching moment between mother and son.

  Cousin #1 and Cousin #2 return from their pussy hunt. They each double-fist pieces of cake.

  “No dice?” I ask as they take their seats.

  “Bunch of hags out there,” Cousin #1 says.

  “This is getting boring,” Cousin #2 says. “Someone needs to liven things up around here.”

  My father leans forward, motioning for us all to do the same. He looks over his shoulder. He opens his coat and flashes the butt of the revolver, the snub-nosed, jutting from the waistline of his pants.

  “I could take care of that,” he says.

  The cousins seem excited. Their eyes widen.

  “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, Dad,” I say.

  “Relax,” he says, waving his hand at me and closing his jacket back up. “I’m just joking around.”

  “You’re a wild one,” Cousin #2 says.

  “I like that,” Cousin #1 says. They finish their cake. They rise again and are gone. Off in search of more alcohol. It is only a few minutes before a man in a security uniform approaches our table.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he says. His arms are thick and bulging inside the sleeves of his shirt.

  “Yes, Officer?” my father says.

  “I’m not a police officer,” the security guard says.

  “You have a very striking presence,” my father says.

  Chris Hillman has finished the dance with his mother. The singer announces that the next number will be the band’s last. They begin to play a rousing rendition of “Everlasting Love.”

  “I’ve been informed by some of the guests that you have a firearm on your person,” the security guard says. He has his hands on the back of my father’s chair, and he leans in close as he says this, as if it is a secret he wants to share with us.

  “That’s correct,” my father says. He tries to say it casually, but it just comes out weird. “It’s fully registered,” he adds. The security guard raises an eyebrow.

  “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave, sir,” he says. “Both of you.”

  “What did I do?” I ask. My father opens his coat again and takes the pistol out. Somewhere nearby a woman gasps.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he says.

  He puts the gun down on the table, a little too hard maybe, or maybe his finger is on the trigger and all the excitement makes him twitch, or maybe it’s something more inexplicable. Divine intervention. For whatever reason—I’ll never know—the gun decides to go off.

  Everyone is staring at me. Every neck in the place seems craned in my direction. The security guard’s mouth is slack, as if it has become unhinged.

  “Ouch. Ouch,” I say. I look down at the small, ragged hole in the shoulder of my tuxedo jacket.

  I stand up. The room is very strange looking. I’m not on any drugs. No pills or weed or lines of blow or sacred shamanistic herbs. I’m sober, but everything is different. Nothing is where it should be. The tables are drifting apart. I see Arthur standing at the edge of the stage with his drumsticks in hand. Once, we were friends. Once, he was the Dungeon Master. And the deer kicked its legs all over the place. Twitched and flapped. Its eyes spun round in their sockets like ball bearings. We scooped dirt with shovels, Elissa and I. Threw it down into the hole and listened to it spatter across the shoe box with Tanis inside, wrapped in his paper-towel death shroud. Is there any control? Am I completely misleading myself? Is all life just random and arbitrary? Who gets cancer? Who loses their house? Who dies? Who lives? Who is happy? Who walks in agony and malcontented despair? An inch one way, maybe it isn’t my shoulder.
An inch the other way, it’s a tree and the deer runs off. A few dollars more. A condom.

  It feels like minutes later. Or is it hours? I’m in the back of an ambulance. A large black man is seated beside me, holding my hand. I realize he’s just taking my pulse. He drops my hand and looks into my eyes.

  “You’re gonna be fine,” he says. His voice is deep and soothing like my grandmother singing to me when I was a child and couldn’t fall asleep. I’m having no trouble sleeping now. Through the ambulance windows I watch the headlights of cars blur and splice into one another.

  “Did we leave my father?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” the black man says.

  I feel close to him. This large, soothing, dark-skinned, compassionate emergency technician. I feel safe and numb and at ease. My arm and my shoulder have gone away from the rest of me.

  We both fired the gun with unintended results. My father and I. Things happen. You have to puzzle out what to do afterward.

  << 27>>

  Light creeps up the wall. For the most part, the room is empty. Bed and IV. I watch their shadows retreat downward across the floor, elongating and falling out of proportion as the sun rises above the East River. There is another bed, but it is unoccupied. I don’t recognize this part of the hospital. I can see out into the hallway. Nurses scuttle back and forth. No one checks on me.

  I’m going to have to jerk off with my left hand for a while. A challenge I am looking forward to overcoming.

  I count saline drips. I pinpoint how many there are in a minute. I close my eyes and listen to the cardiac monitor. I fall asleep.

  When I wake up, my eyes are caked shut. I open them slowly. I do everything slowly. My mother is sitting at my bedside.

  “Before you ask, my shoulder is fucking killing me. And I feel like shit,” I tell her.

  “I don’t trust any doctor in Westchester.”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m very aware of your stance on the medical profession outside New York City.”

  “I don’t want some quack taking care of my son,” she says. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “That’s a relief,” I say.