by Andrew Roe
Unfortunately, it all hit a snag when Julie went to our next door neighbor’s the day after I’d whisked Nibbles away—yes, there’d been the tears and the consoling, and I had made a flyer on the computer. I was out posting the flyers and supposedly driving around looking for Nibbles. Cheryl, our neighbor, who’s divorced and never cared much for me, and who I called Mrs. Kravitz (after the nosy neighbor on Bewitched), told Julie that she saw the Nibbler just yesterday, he was barking his head off and Cal was shoving him into his car and Nibbles was barking and barking and then Cal sped away like a crazy man.
After a few hours, I came home. To pad the time, I’d stopped at The Library. Which wasn’t a library but a bar called The Library, so when you came home and your wife asked you where you were, you could honestly say, “At The Library.” But when I pulled into the driveway, and Julie rushed outside, she didn’t ask where I’d been.
“Where is he?” she said. “Where’s my dog? What did you do to him?”
So yeah, that didn’t go so well for me.
My son stares out the passenger’s window. His lips are moving but no words are coming out, he’s not saying anything. Just those lips. Maybe he’s creating his own language. Maybe he’s mouthing sentences that he wants to say to me but can’t. His hair falls over his eyes and I want to brush it away. Didn’t Julie know he was due for a haircut? He’s still not talking. He fiddles with the air conditioning vent. He taps the dashboard like he’s checking it for something. He starts to hum. There are things about him that I’d like to know but I have a feeling I never will. My mysterious universe-unto-himself son.
We hit a red light, sitting, waiting.
“Are we talking? Or are we not talking today?”
Jagger’s lips stop moving.
“We’re talking,” he says, looking out the passenger’s window again.
“Good. So tell me. What about Brad? What’s he like?”
“He wears cologne.”
The light turns green. Someone behind me honks.
“You like him? He a good guy?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah? You like him? He a big guy? A big guy like me?”
“I don’t know.”
“What else? What else about Brad?”
Jagger doesn’t say anything for a while and I assume that’s the end of the Brad conversation. But it’s not.
“He says that people need more love. That it’s okay to say you love someone. You shouldn’t be afraid. You shouldn’t be afraid to say that to people.”
“He said that?”
“All the time. And he snores.”
“He snores?”
Jagger nods. He looks so serious. He’s such a serious boy, an adult from day one, right out of the womb. Often I want to do something—tell a joke, fart, make a face, something—just to try to see if I can get him to crack a smile. They’re rare, like eclipses.
Another red light, and the silence deepens. The stereo’s broken, so that’s not an option.
“So what else, buddy? What’s new at school?”
“Nothing. This boy there says he’s going to kick my a-s-s.”
“Wait. What? Who said that? Which boy?”
Green light, go. Which reminds me of when Jagger first started talking. My mother taught him to say “Red light, stop; green light, go.” Except he insisted on saying it as “Red light, go; green light, stop.” No matter how many times I tried to tell him that was wrong, he kept saying it, saying the opposite.
“This boy,” he says.
I speed up to make a lane change.
“He said kick your ass—I mean a-s-s?”
“Lots of times, yeah. You said ass.”
This is what it has come down to. Parenting on the fly: in cars, in lines, on the phone.
“What did you say? What did you say when the boy said he was going to kick your a-s-s?”
“I said why.”
“And what’d he say?”
“He said because. And when I asked him again, he just said I’m going to kick your a-s-s again.”
Kids can be cruel to kids like Jagger, I know. After all, I did my fair share of tormenting. When I think back on it now, I never picture the kids I grew up with. Instead I picture Jagger. I picture it being my son that I’m making fun of, tripping, giving Hurts, Don’t Its to.
“Did you tell your mom?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said to ask you. Then she saw this flyer at the market. She signed me up for karate. I mean Shotokan.”
After two weeks away I thought I was good. I’d learned my lesson, realized that it isn’t until after you lose something that you truly appreciate it. You think you have it bad and then you have it worse, and then you know. You know that bad wasn’t so bad. It’s all about perspective. Like Julie says.
I showed up at the house on a Sunday, thinking that might help my chances. I hadn’t shaved for a few days, also strategic, and I hunched my shoulders and bowed my head.
“No way,” Julie said. “No way.”
All I could think of were stupid clichés, heavily used words and phrases that long ago had lost their power. But they were all I had, so I repeated one after another, without success, unable to convince my wife.
“This time it’s different,” she told me. “We’re not going around and around again. It’s different now. It’s time to move on, Cal.”
But I didn’t move on. I went back to my brother’s and kept putting off getting an apartment and calling a lawyer like Julie said. Work didn’t seem possible, so I called in sick. Then I started letting myself into the house late at night. Usually I just sat on the couch in the living room, just sat and listened and waited. One night I fell asleep. I woke up with Jagger in front of me, those big, brown, little boy eyes that tell you everything in a glance.
“You better go, Dad. Mom’s up, too. She’ll be right down. She’ll be mad.”
I kissed him on the forehead and left, vanished like a masked superhero whose identity remains unknown.
And I didn’t have any reason to think Julie would take me back—no overtures, no signs, nothing.
But I continued to think it would happen, that it was only a matter of time, of proving myself in some magical, last-minute way.
Sensei Jerry has a lot to say. In fact, he does more talking than showing the kids how to fight and defend themselves. He talks about discipline. He explains how the mind is the most dangerous weapon of all. He quotes from Karate Kid 3.
You can tell he’s trying to go the Chuck Norris route with the hair and the beard, but he’s a little chunky, like me, like he’s been slipping on his training, squeezing in one too many chili dogs, and he’s got a smoker’s cough and skinny wrists to boot. When he finally finishes talking, he goes through some poses and moves with the kids. They thrust and yell and roundhouse kick. Jagger always seems one step behind. He has to keep pulling up his damn pants.
After, Sensei Jerry gives another speech.
“You are strong,” he tells the kids, who by now are yawning and rubbing their eyes. “You are courageous. Remember that. What you learn here you take back into your life, your day to day life, everything, all that you experience, and it makes you stronger. It makes you warriors. You’re all warriors. Warriors of the mind and spirit and body. And I’m proud of all of you.”
Walking to the car, I ask Jagger what he thought.
“I don’t want to go back I think,” he says.
“You’ll have to talk to your mom about that. She thinks it’s a good idea.”
“I don’t think I like it.”
I open the passenger door for him, we slide into our seats, buckle up. I look at the streaks of dirt on the windshield. The car needs a wash, an oil change, a tune up.
“All right,” I say. “You don’t have to go back. Tell your mom I said so. I’ll take the heat on this one.”
“Okay,” says my son.
Then, after I start the car and we pull out
of the parking lot, he adds, “Thanks, Dad.”
We’re both hungry after all that. I’m craving a Tommy’s burger, but I don’t think my stomach can handle the chili they slather all over it. So we cruise along Imperial Highway and settle on whatever we see first: a Burger King.
We get our food, find a booth in the back. It’s still a little early for lunch, so the place is practically empty except for an old man sitting alone, sipping coffee and reading a newspaper and stroking his ancient chin like he’s grappling with some great philosophical dilemma. Jagger and I sit down, and here we are, father and son, sharing the joys of fast food and bonding over our burgers and fries and giant sodas. We don’t talk much, but this time that’s fine. Two weeks ago, on our last lunch outing, it was a different story. We weren’t talking, weren’t smiling, not sure if we should just put all the food back in the bags and eat in the car as we drove. Now, however, as the place begins to fill up with other people, and Jagger launches into a description of one of his favorite new TV shows (aliens, the future, robots that seem human), we’re good with staying. We slow down. We take our time.
Brad’s car is parked in the driveway so I have to park on the street. He drives a Prius, a sparkly blue one. Probably listens to NPR and has a Kenny G ring tone. I bet he knows what to do with tofu, too.
Jagger unlatches his seat belt. I hand him the bag with his leftover fries, tell him to take care of himself, have a good week, that we’ll talk on the phone in a couple of days. I almost ask him to run inside and take the photo off the fridge. But I don’t want to get him in trouble.
Once I’m on the freeway, I call my brother. He’s at home, of course. Where else would he be?
“I’m telling you I want that number, that lawyer’s number,” I say, the words coming quickly. “I’m driving. I’m driving right now. But I’ll call back later so I can write it down. I’m calling to tell you I want the number. I want to call that lawyer.”
“All right, all right, I got it, shit. You okay? You sound all amped. I thought you were trying to cut back on the booze.”
“I’m fine. I just wanted to say that. To be on the record. I’ll call you later.”
So: I’m on the record. It’s official. It feels good but also bad. But mostly good.
I’m still not used to it: being alone, eating alone, everything alone. The quiet. The nothing to do. My apartment doesn’t help either. It came furnished, the furniture uncomfortable and brown, sized for a race of tiny people, smelling of Goodwill and potpourri. The type of carpet you think twice about being barefoot on. I heat up my dinner in the microwave I bought at Bed Bath and Beyond. Stand as I eat. TV on. The phone doesn’t ring. A few more hours to kill before I can justify crawling into bed and trying to sleep.
Later that night, around two a.m., I wake up and here’s what I’m thinking: I’m thinking that someone out there is living the life I should be living. Scott Yoder. Yeah. That should be me.
Without really thinking things through, I get dressed and drive back to the house, Brad’s Prius still in the driveway. The street is quiet and peaceful, like it never is during the day. It’s strange to stand outside on the porch, look at the house, look at the neighbors’ houses (and their cars, their toppled garbage cans), and think I used to live here. Used to: past tense.
I let myself in. No worries about Nibbles, since the dog sleeps with Julie and could doze through a hurricane. It’s dark, of course, but pretty soon my eyes adjust to the lack of light. The moon creeps in here and there, everything bathed in a stoney, mellow light. I know what I’m going to do, what I want to do. But I want it to be slow. Slow and significant. Jagger’s karate outfit is in a pile at the bottom of the stairs.
In the kitchen, I switch on the light above the stove. I’m about to take off the photo from the fridge but I stop when I see Jagger’s crayon drawing first. What is it? What’s it supposed to mean? There are monsters, I guess. Or maybe they’re half-monster, half-human. Heads come out of arms, arms out of legs, other unknown objects emerge from stomachs. Lines run off the page, colors cross and swirl. I don’t get it. I don’t understand him, my son, truly I don’t, but he’s a good kid and he’ll be a good man, a better man than I am or will ever be. There’s a comfort in that.
Off comes the photo. I leave my key on the kitchen table.
Driving, picking up speed, making all the lights this time, I open the window. The night air leaks inside, cool and vast. It would be dramatic to burn it, I suppose, do something ceremonial. But I’ve never been dramatic or ceremonial. Instead I try to rip it up. When that doesn’t work, I crumple it up, only it doesn’t really crumple (what are pictures made of these days anyway?). I just want it to be gone, away. The picture doesn’t tell the whole picture. Like the man says, there are two sides to every story, or like another man says, there are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. But it’s me, undeniably me, and pictures don’t lie. I need to do better.
It’s true what they say about living in Los Angeles: you’re always driving somewhere. And here I am, past three in the morning as I hit the onramp for the 605, and once I’m on the freeway, there are cars on the road, always cars. Where are all these people going at this time of the day? We all have our stories, I bet. We all have our reasons.
I don’t even look at the photo as I toss it out the window, driving for a long time until it’s behind me, behind me, behind me.
WHERE SHALL WE MEET?
She got stuck in traffic. She overslept. She ran into an old friend. The bus was late. The cat was sick and dying and had to be rushed to the vet. She got the directions wrong. She got the time wrong. She lost his phone number and therefore couldn’t call him. And she was thinking of him, right now, at this very moment, scurrying like mad, desperate and frantic like in those dreams where you’re late and trying to get somewhere but can’t, not wanting to blow this opportunity, trying to make it to the café in time, the agreed upon place on Montgomery Street, three days after they met at the party of a mutual friend, introduced, everything aligning just so, finding themselves among a semi-circle of seven or eight people, the topic of conversation ranging from sucky jobs to public transportation horror stories to chemically dependent siblings, the participants dwindling from seven to five to three to just the two of them, a pleasant, natural reduction, the slow ballet of words and gestures, verbal disclosures and withholdings, discovering that they shared the same birthday (a sign!), loved Tom Waits and Kurt Vonnegut (another sign!), the night progressing and expanding like a movie and then ending with a kiss on the balcony, wine on her lips, smoke in her mouth, the taste of cucumber and mint and promise, phone numbers exchanged, the departing and subsequent night of restless sleep, a brief phone conversation the following day (because he couldn’t wait, he called, he had to call, he said fuck it to that whole guy credo thing of waiting and making her wonder, and perhaps this was the beginning of the end, no?), him asking “Where shall we meet?” and her pretty obviously caught off guard by the suddenness, it was like coming too fast the first time, this rapid progression throwing her a bit and causing an epic pause, her eventually recovering and answering by saying, “Right, let me think, where would be a good place, you work downtown, right?” and the time and the place decided upon and but she said sorry but she had to go, couldn’t talk (another sign?) and now he was waiting and sitting and reading a day-old newspaper, digesting sports scores and financial data he could give a shit about, waiting, not the first time he’d gotten his hopes up like this, sure, he was forty-three and single and saggy and increasingly aware that such encounters were rare and had to be handled carefully, handled like dried flowers or brittle fossils, and he waited, waited, for as long as he could before he finally stood up and felt his legs buckle and then stabilize and then start to move, exiting, he was walking now, leaving the café, the sidewalk filled with the lunchtime crowds, passing many women, checking to see if each one was her, could be her, or even someone else who could still make him believe and
start all this again, and they, the women, all seemed to be scarved and beautiful and leaning into the wind, moving much too quickly for him to realize what he was missing.
WHERE YOU LIVE
It was the director himself who called. His voice sounded serious and low, finely honed, as if trained for such occasions, the delivering of bad news to loved ones and relatives. And this was what he told me: my mother—sixty-eight years old, known for her marble sponge cake and Zen-like bridge skills, a rabid fan of movie musicals—was missing. Missing. Though he didn’t use that word. Delicate, well-chosen euphemisms were employed instead. “Temporarily unaccounted for” was one, “currently unsupervised” another.
But as strange and unbelievable as it sounded, she apparently vanished from her room at Arcadian Acres. Went AWOL. “Disappeared,” as they say in certain Latin American countries, although that usually implies something political, and this wasn’t political. Or was it? I mean, what would cause an otherwise docile and resigned senior citizen to flee the security of an assisted living situation when all other feasible options had already been thoroughly examined and re-examined? I suppose it could be a number of things: a protest against society’s treatment of the elderly, the onset (finally) of Alzheimer’s, boredom, a whim, something she saw in a made-for-TV movie starring Angela Lansbury. Regardless, she ran away. Last seen in her robe, wearing slippers, sans her trusty wig.
