How I Learned to Hate in Ohio

by David Stuart MacLean

  “What makes you think I’d be free? It’s a Friday night. I could have plans. Movies. Boyfriends. Sleepovers. Football games. Parties where the parents aren’t home. Smoking weed and listening to Pink Floyd in somebody’s basement.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “I barely have friends, perv.”

  “You’ll come?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Great. I’ll go to the library and pick up a concordance of The Scarlet Letter for you. Because nowhere does it say that Dimmesdale is Tom Cruise–esque.”

  “Now you’re just showing off.”

  My chest released a little. The air was less viscous as it moved in and out of me. I was talking to a girl on the phone. It wasn’t that hard either. There was a rhythm to it. I’d found the rhythm. I was so relieved at being relieved that I forgot I was on the phone.

  “Are you going to give me the address?”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “And what’s this party for anyway? What am I walking into?”

  “It’s a party my dad is throwing because he isn’t teaching philosophy anymore.”

  “I have absolutely no idea what to wear to such a thing.”

  “Yeah. Nobody does.”

  There was silence on the line. I tried to hear the room she was in. I wanted to hear around her breathing to the sounds of her house. What did a room that held her feel like? What sounds did it make in response to housing someone like her? I felt dirty doing it. Like I was some kind of ear-peeking weirdo. Was ear-peeking even a thing?

  “I’ll just wear a prom dress unless you have further instructions,” she said.

  Eavesdropping. Eavesdropping was the name for ear-peeking. I am a total jerk-off moron.

  “Prom dress sounds great. I’ll wear one too.”

  But that’s not true. Eavesdropping was when you listened to someone else’s conversation. I just wanted to listen to her house. The ambient stuff around her. The floor creaking under her weight, the microwave beeping, the cabinets clapping shut, the scraping that could be a dog at the door or a storm outside pushing branches against her window. I was breaking into her house with my left ear.

  “Are you going to hold me hostage like this forever or are you going to tell me where you live?” she asked.

  CHAPTER 29

  Why do parents invite their children to their parties?

  The kids don’t want to be there, feeling more like show ponies than anything else. “Marvin excels in Latin. Speak Latin, Marvin.”

  And the parents don’t get to act like they want to because the kids are around. We become the moral governors on the engines of our parents’ hedonism.

  I worked on that sentence for a while. I want to say it to Ottilie at the party. That sentence is as much about getting ready for the night as picking out the shirt that Tammy Barker, a cheerleader, told me was cute, as much as making sure I had clean underwear, or arranging the magazines my dad started subscribing to in a fan display on the coffee table.

  We never used to have magazines. We had journals: the design-impoverished philosophy periodicals that had fifty-page articles about Plato’s use of articles. If hurled with the right force, they were thick enough to break the spine of a possum. Now all of those journals were tossed. And now we had Utne Reader, Reason, Ms. magazine, The Nation, and The New Yorker. They were the kind of subscriptions that probably had us on some FBI anti-Communist watch list. The only one I read was Ms. I was at first totally mystified about what I found in it. And then I kept reading hoping that I’d figure women out once and for all, like maybe I just needed to quote Andrea Dworkin to break the ice with cheerleaders, let them know I was down with their struggle. There was an interview with a novelist named Kathy Acker in which she stated that she’d written her last novel “with a dildo in her cunt” the entire time. This left me very confused about the writing process.

  My dad was downstairs peeling the plastic off of the trays of shrimp and the six-foot hoagie he bought special from the deli.

  When I went downstairs, my parents were arguing about it.

  “Why did you put the sandwich on different plates?” he asked.

  “People need to talk,” Mom said. “It’s intimate this way.”

  “But why buy a six-foot sub if you’re just going to slice it up. People need to see it as an enormous sub.”

  Dad started grabbing all of the sandwich slices off of the pinwheel plates and tried reassembling them.

  “You have no sense of presentation.”

  “Clearly, you’re the one who’s devoid of panache.”

  “This is panache?” Mom gestured to the misshapen monster sandwich Dad was trying to reassemble. “My way people can have their own conversations.”

  Dad ignored her. “This is spectacle. Grandeur. The fatted calf has been slaughtered.”

  “It’s another blackboard. You’ve always got to have your blackboard, don’t you, Professor.” Mom poured herself a drink and lit a cigarette. “What lecture are we in for this evening?”

  “Can you be happy for me for one night?”

  “The man I love has given up his dream. Let’s party.”

  “Giving up a dream. That means waking up. I’ve woken up. Your husband has woken up and is finally joining the world.”

  “Hence that.” Mom pointed at the sandwich, which now resembled a kind of slapdash horror-show deli abattoir. We all paused and looked at it. Mushed bread and herniated toppings, with circles of meat hanging out like tongues. “Good morning,” she said and left the room.

  This was a pet theory of Mom’s: most people who teach at the college level have some level of social awkwardness. Lectures are a way out of that. The teacher gets to stand in front of everyone and say exactly what he has already written down, something he’s probably said about a hundred times before. Every class is a rehearsal for them and maybe someday they’ll get it right and be able to talk like a normal person.

  My dad was far from this goal. You could see him trying to picture group conversations as seminars. He didn’t participate, he moderated. Sometimes people felt sorry for him.

  I took the garbage out, I put an extra roll of toilet paper on the tank of the toilet, I stayed busy and out of range of the battle. My parents would have to put the knives away before guests arrived but until then they’d each try to draw as much blood as they could. Then they’d each have a drink. They’d be exsanguinated and flushed as they took coats, shook hands, and pointed the way to the makeshift bar. Hopefully by the time the guests arrived Mom would be drunk enough so that she’d have gained some perspective (it was Dad’s party after all), but not so loud that she’d have lost discretion. I’d seen their fights. I didn’t want Ottilie or Gary seeing their fights.

  Mom was good at talking at parties. She did this thing where she talked just a half-decibel too quietly and anyone she was talking to would have to lean in to hear her better. This was all affectation. She was equally proud of her perfume and her cleavage. And this way people got a double dose of it.

  When is childhood over? Maybe it’s when you see your mom use her tits to get things she wanted.

  What’s maddening about this is that my mother was brilliant and mega-business savvy. It was almost as if these gestures were a kind of survivor’s guilt for being a successful woman in business. A way of her saying, “Yes, you’re probably right. I’m only this successful because I’ve flirted and shaken my goods all the way to upper-management.” She wouldn’t allow herself to actually acknowledge how great her accomplishments were so she bought push-up bras from Frederick’s of Hollywood and practically bathed in duty-free perfume.

  Dad knew this about her and went out of his way as a courtesy to never slip up and give her a compliment.

  When is childhood over? When you realize which of the sadomasochistic roles your parents play in their relationship.

  The party was to begin at 7:00 but no one ever arrived before 7:15 to any party ever. Not so much to be fashionab
ly late (that was a Columbus or Cincinnati affectation) or due to traffic (there was none), but because no one wanted to be impolite enough to be the first ones to arrive. So when the doorbell rang at 6:45 we all froze.

  Dad’s shirt wasn’t tucked in, Mom still had to put her face on. When you’re an only child you’re the one who does what no one else wants to. I went and answered the door.

  At the door weren’t guests, but delivery men carrying flowers.

  When I opened the door to tell them they had the wrong address it was like I had broken open a flower piñata. At least seven men all in striped short-sleeved shirts bearing the FTD logo: Mercury in his tin hat and lightning-bolt feet carrying a bouquet. The men were armed with all kinds of flowers and set to populating every flat surface with them. And when the vases and armloads of arrangements had been set down, the men streamed out to their three trucks to carry more in. A palette of rose varieties bunched conspicuously casually in paper-thin glass vases, chrysanthemums in stout mugs, calla lilies bending their necks down from their bulbous containers, birds of paradise and an orchid or three in dirt and wire, sunflowers rubber-banded together at the stalk, acres of daisies, violets, some blue numbers that looked like little fairy fists raised in the air like they were at a rally, asters, delphinium, hydrangea, eryngium, decorative moss, a bonsai or two—the whole genus came and overwhelmed our living room, kitchen, and dining rooms—not so much a curated selection of flowers as a “whatever you got” order. After twenty minutes of the men practically forming a fireman’s line from their trucks to our house and a stunned signature coaxed from my father, our house had been transformed into a greenhouse, a three-bedroom two-bath Eden, a late nineteenth-century farmhouse designed by Kublai Khan. The poor six-foot hoagie looked all the worse in this new setting. Its little plastic squeeze bottles of oil and vinegar hid in the fist-sized carnations—at least they had the decency to know they were outclassed.

  The note that came with the flowers didn’t help at all to explain their appearance: “One less thing for Mrs. Callaway to attend to herself.”

  My dad read it three times aloud and turned it over several times looking for a signature that wasn’t there. He called the leader of the florists—the bloom overseer, the prince of the pansies—over to haggle out the clear mistake. “No one here is named Callaway.” The herald of the hydrangeas pointed out the time, location, and date of the delivery. There had been considerable coordination as the greenhouses as far as Worthington and Lancaster had been emptied for this display.

  “Lancaster?” my father asked, as if this was the final absurdity he would no longer stand for. The flower guys, the garland gang, the posy posse finally felt the work had been completed and began their departure. Mother was staring at the card that came with the flowers when another truck pulled up. This time it was fruit. Oranges and apples and watermelons and kiwis. The exact same card as the last one. Unsigned. “One less thing for Mrs. Callaway to attend to herself.” Mom snatched that one from my hand before she ran upstairs.

  There was a deli truck. Trays of meat arrayed on plastic plates. Olives stuffed with almonds. Cubes of marbled cheese with toothpicks. And then came a liquor truck. Champagne, gin, whiskey, vodka, and a man who installed himself in the corner of our den with the liquor and glassware arranged around him. He didn’t speak as he set up. Just stood there in his wedding-DJ attire: jacketless, suspenders, sleeves of his crisp shirt rolled up, his mauve tie tucked in between his third and fourth button. He placed a card on his table.

  “My name is Trevor. I can make any cocktail you can dream of. Please try and stump me. Awarded Best Bartender three years in a row by the Columbus Dispatch.”

  Trevor had a curly-haired mullet that touched his shirt collar. Trevor seemed as ready for making drinks as he was for engaging in some martial arts or military drills. The muscles in his forearms were twitching. Trevor didn’t seem real so much as a figment of the imagination of a person you never wanted to meet.

  And then the sound system arrived. There were cables and generators and an honest-to-God DJ. The best I’d ever experienced at a party was someone who had synced all their tapes up to the best songs and spent the party shuffling them in and out of the two-deck boom box. The two-deck boom box had always seemed so urbane and worldly, capable of so much. The boom box brought the subway with it, brought graffiti with it, brought all of the things assigned as the modern plagues. Sleeveless denim jackets even.

  But a real DJ? And it wasn’t a fancy relative’s wedding? Some real Max Dugan Returns shit was going down. There were even lights. With gels and a strobe. People—old people—didn’t dance at Ohio parties. The DJ set up on our back deck and within ten minutes was doing a mic check. He played “Almost Paradise” from the Footloose soundtrack as mood music for the delivery people still setting up.

  My dad was flummoxed. He tried to get Trevor to say who hired him. Who knows how many times Trevor was beaten up in his life? But you could get a ballpark figure from the smug way he enjoyed telling my dad that, “My employment is privileged information. Could I interest you in a gin rickey? I can also do an Ohio variation, the Branch Gin Rickey.” He giggled a little as he said it. He fucking giggled.

  I wanted to punch the guy and I wasn’t the one having a conversation with him. Instead my dad deflated a little and asked for a Rusty Nail.

  “One Tetanus coming right up,” he said and giggled again.

  As if a secret word had been uttered on a frequency my dad and I couldn’t hear, all of the delivery people disappeared at once. Should I say “seemed to disappear”? Because it would have been impossible for them all to have such a complicated choreographed exit planned out ahead of time. But they really were all gone almost immediately. Just the DJ, Trevor, and a guy I hadn’t seen before in the kitchen with a whole setup consisting of a hot light and a giant slab of prime rib in front of him. He was sharpening his knife as I walked by. There was a tidy stack of white plates next to him. Whatever had to happen to make you not recognize your own house had happened.

  Then the guests started to arrive. They walked into the house dazed, like how the dead arriving at the river Lethe must feel. It was too much of a transition. I helped slip their jackets from them. I directed them to Trevor.

  The first people to arrive were colleagues—former colleagues—of my dad’s from the college and some from over at Ohio Wesleyan, Ohio State. They had come to gloat, to comfort their old boy as he left the world of ideas for the world of commissions and accounts receivable. Their jaws dropped once they entered. Some philosophers believe that there is a place where an experience so unexpected can leave us without language to digest the experience with. It’s called aporia, a place without pores, without handholds, without traction for the brain to dig into and continue motoring along its predetermined ruts. Aporias are where we find the limits of ourselves, of what experience has prepared us to expect from the world. We’re animals born into language and when language fails, we slip back into animal skittishness. I watched the philosophy department of Rutherford College stumble about on coltish legs in their individual aporias as they took in the flowers, the DJ, the prime rib, Trevor.

  Dad was shaking people’s hands and pulling them into little half conversations. When I dumped an armload of coats into the office, I heard the shower running. I went upstairs and knocked on the door.

  “Mom?”

  There was sobbing. The shower was running and my mom was crying.

  “Mom?” I knocked again. Quieter this time. Like a confidential knocking. “Mom, the party has started. People are arriving.”

  Our house has transoms in the upstairs rooms. The glass in the bathroom one was painted but it was always left open. Steam coursed through it.

  “Tell them to go away. Cancel it all,” my mom said as she cried. “Bring me a drink,” she added and laughed a little.

  “What’s going on, Mom?”

  She laughed again and opened the door. She was fully dressed and had been stand
ing under the shower. “I’ve done something awful,” she said.

  “It’s not that bad. You just took a shower with your clothes on,” I said. And she hugged me tight. We sat on the floor in the bathroom. My mom’s hair in a wet web in front of her face. Her dress made squishing sounds when she moved. “This is ruined,” she said, waggling one of her sleeves. In her hand were the cards from the caterers, the florists, Trevor, all waterlogged and disintegrating. “I’m not very good at any of this,” she said and sagged into me. “Please tell me what I should do, Baruch.”

  We sat there for a while. I thought about Ottilie arriving at the party and having no one to talk to. I thought about Gurbaksh and his dad. I was going to have to change clothes. My one really good collared shirt was now wet. My mom cried a bit more. She’d turned forty-two in October. I’d forgotten like I always do. I wished I hadn’t. Maybe Mom wouldn’t be here crying if I had been more attentive. But she was never here. It would’ve been like celebrating a ghost’s birthday.

  Eventually I got a towel around her and coaxed her into getting changed. Her wet clothes were a swampy lump on the bathroom floor. The music from downstairs rattled the toothbrushes.

  I had nothing clean other than the one South Korean punk shirt I hadn’t given to Gurbaksh. I thought it’d be nice if I wore one of them for her. Mom put on a dress I’d rarely seen and heels. She was putting on pantyhose when I walked in to check on her. I knocked, she said come in. And there she was doing this weird deep knee bend squat thing to get the pantyhose on. I turned away. In my stomach I knew that whatever I saw was more intimate than seeing her naked. As we went downstairs together to join the party, I was sad for Mom. I hadn’t realized how much she didn’t like my dad’s new job.

  While we had been upstairs, the party had taken a deep breath in and there were adults everywhere. Adults are the oxygen in that metaphor.

  Adults with drinks and wet napkins. Adults forcing scraps of food into their mouths. Adults touching a person’s shoulder as they laughed. Adults sucking prime rib juice from their fingers. Adults standing in line for the bathroom staring at our wall art. Adults confiding to the next person in line that there wasn’t any more toilet paper. Adults grabbing the car keys from their husbands. Adults laughing at unfunny jokes. Adults discussing politics. Adults pouting. Adults staring a moment too long at somebody’s chest. Adults being bad sports. Adults spilling their drinks on someone. Adults laughing at being spilled on. Adults looking for towels. Adults getting more drinks. Adults standing in a circle, listening to the music. Adults sitting on the lawn. Adults leaning in for a light. Adults putting their arms around each other. Adults taking off their blazers. Adults examining the satellite dish. Adults parking each other in. Adults slamming car doors in the darkness. Adults not ringing the doorbell. Adults coming right in. Adults crossing their legs. Adults knocking the magazines to the floor with their feet. Adults watching TV. Adults stuffing assorted nuts into their faces. Adults introducing themselves. Adults asking each other how they know my parents. Adults piling their coats on a bed in the guest room. Adults stacking meat and cheese cubes on a cracker. Adults stuffing it all in their mouth. Adults coughing. Little flecks of food coming out of adult mouths. Adults asking to use the phone. Adults assuring the room that it wasn’t long distance. Adults agreeing with Reagan. Adults hating Reagan. Adults trying to keep it polite. Adults wishing they hadn’t worn a sweater. Adults loosening their ties. Adults who didn’t know anyone here. Adults telling their spouses that they couldn’t go home yet, it was all just getting started.