Part 14 (1/2)
”I thought it was a manicurist.”
The door opened and the three clomped in. They all wore oversized black combat boots that laced halfway up their s.h.i.+ns. The rest of the uniform consisted of tattered jeans and Ts.h.i.+rts. Although it was cold outside, Elvis was the only one wearing a jacket. It was covered with oversized safety pins, chains, and b.u.t.tons that said things like ”You Disgust Me.”
They shadowed through the room, making no eye contact, and would have pa.s.sed without a word if I hadn't spoken. ”Lincoln! Mary's here. Can't you even say h.e.l.lo?”
”h.e.l.lo, Mary,” he said in a monotone, then made an exaggerated face at me as if to say, ”Okay, are you satisfied?” As one, the gang smirked and kept going. A few moments later a door slammed at the back of the house.
”What a bunch of criminals! How do you live with it? Are they here every day?”
”Just about. They skulk into his room, lock the door, and turn on Carca.s.s. Have you ever heard of Carca.s.s?”
”I take it that's a rock group too?”
”Yes. Want to hear some of their song t.i.tles?” I reached for my wallet and pulled out the small pad I carry to write notes on possible ideas for ”Paper Clip.” ”Here it is. 'Crepitating Bowel Erosion.' 'Reek of Putrefaction'”
”Delicious. Hey, they're not 'Wake Up, Little Susie,' but don't kids always have their own music? We did. What one generation adores, the next thinks is stupid.”
”Mary, for Christ's sake, 'Crepitating Bowel Erosion' ?”
”You got a point. What else do you think they do in there? Whose girlfriend is she?”
”Lincoln told me both of them do her, but 'none of us are really into f.u.c.king, ya know? So it's just a kinda thing we do in between things, ya know?'”
”Wow, he said that? Times have changed, huh, Max? We spent half our lives thinking about s.e.x.
You think that's true, or was he only trying to impress you?”
”He doesn't want to impress me. Or anyone. He wants to lie on his bed and listen to Carca.s.s.”
”And do drugs.”
We looked at each other. I chewed the insides of my cheeks. ”What did you find, Mary?”
”Names and places. I found what you expected.”
”And? ”
”And he does lots of drugs. The girl usually buys them because she's friendly with a guy in an East L.A. gang who deals. By the way, her human being name is Ruth Burdette. She got it because she was the girlfriend of a guy in a gang called the Little Fish. When you've screwed a Fish, you get to be called a Little.”
The fact Little White had a real name and history surprised me almost more than the fact my son took drugs.
”As soon as Lily and I got married, we started talking to Lincoln about drugs. He was always so afraid of them. A couple of times I remember he actually had nightmares where bad guys were chasing him around with giant hypodermic needles. What kind of stuff is he doing?”
”Cocaine when they have money, crack when they don't.””Lily will go mad. She refuses to accept this. She only thinks he's going through his rebellious period.”
”You've got to change that. Get her to accept it and work on the problem with you. Otherwise the kid will die. Simple as that. Get some counseling, maybe check him into a drug program”
”You sound like a public health pamphlet. Believe me, it's not so easy. He hates us, Mary. You don't understand. Anything we do, say, or think, he gets a look on his face of pure revulsion. We're the enemy. Us with our clean sheets, paid bills, cable TV... We can do nothing right in his eyes. Whatever we give him he a.s.sumes is rightfully his, but whatever we tell him he disregards.”
”So he's an ungrateful little s.h.i.+t. He's still under age. Stick his a.s.s in a rehab center and too bad if he doesn't like it.” She lit a cigarette and flicked the match into the fireplace. ”What the h.e.l.l happened to that boy? He was the most wonderful child. Funny, charming... Remember how Frank loved him? You guys did everything right. He was loved, you gave him the right amount of discipline. Read to him, took him places... What happened?”
”He grew up. When she admits to anything being wrong, Lily thinks it might be partly due to Greer.”
”No way! I don't believe that. Why would a little sister turn him into the Creature from the Black Lagoon? Knowing you two, you probably bent over backward to give each kid their share of love. Plus the fact Greer adores him. He likes her, doesn't he?”
”Yes, I think so. He's nice and gentle to her. They actually have whole conversations and once in a while he'll even help with her homework. He seemed to be happy when Lily got pregnant. And you're rightwe spent a lot of time making sure each got their share, which wasn't easy in the beginning because Greer was such a handful. You remember.”
”I sure do! If you'd asked me then, I'd have picked Greer to grow up and look like that. She was a large pain in the a.s.s.”
”Yes, but look at her now. It's like the house is part.i.tioned between Us and Them . Aliens and earthlings. Lily, Greer, and I on one side”I jerked a thumb toward Lincoln's room”the Three Hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse on the other.”
”What do you think they do in there? I mean, besides not s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g and listening to Car Crash.”
”Carca.s.s . They listen to music and watch horror movies. Every once in a while you hear a scream and other goofy sounds from those films.”
”Yeah, but what else? Didn't you ever look through the keyhole or... you know?”
”I went in there once when Lincoln forgot to lock the door. That's another thing. He put a lock on the door that could keep an elephant out. The only one of us he lets in is Greer.”
”What did you see?”
”That's what's strange; the place was spotless. He has no pictures on the walls, the bed was made without one wrinkle, carpets swept... It reminded me of a Marine barracks. It was too cleeean . Creepy clean.”
”That doesn't fit, does it?”
I was about to answer when I saw Greer's school van stop in front of the house. She got out, immediately dropped her school bag, bent over, and patted her f.a.n.n.y with both hands for the benefit of someone inside the van. Then she wiggled it, picked up her bag, and walked toward the house without once turning around to see if her performance had had the desired effect.
She wore red jeans, a white polo s.h.i.+rt, and black sneakers. Her hair went up off her head in two pigtails. The face was more mine than Lily's but there was a lightness that brought it all together, an aura of combined humor and naughtiness that came only from her mother.
Greer was five. Our miracle child. The child born when we thought there was no hope in the world of Lily conceiving. From the day she came into the world, she was trouble. Born premature, she gave the impression she was angry at having been brought in on our schedule rather than hers. She needed blood transfusions, experimental medicines. For a shaky ten days they thought one of her kidneys was bad and might have to come out. In her first weeks we thought and talked of little else. One night I had to tell Lincoln his new little sister might not survive. Perhaps that is when it started with him. He askedrepeatedly if she was going to die. As calmly as I could, I told him I didn't know, three different ways.
”Well, why don't you do something about it? You're not just going to let her die, are you?”
”We're doing everything we can. The best doctors in the hospital are working to help her.”
”So what? Why don't you get the best doctors in the world , Max?” He began to cry, but when I went to hold him, he pushed me away. ”What if that happens to me? What if I get sick? Are you guys going to let me die?”
”We're not going to let anyone die. We're doing everything we can.” I was tired and frightened, but that was no excuse for what I said next. ”I think it'd be better if you thought about Greer now and not yourself. It doesn't look like you're going to die anytime soon.”
He was a little boy. Life had grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved his face into its most vicious truth. He didn't understand. He didn't know how to handle it. Who does? All he wanted was rea.s.surance that we would always love and take care of him, but stupidly I heard it as selfishness and slapped him down with a mean line.
Then again, there is only so much you can do and there are final, unsolvable mysteries. With a clear conscience I can say that for the years we lived together, Lincoln had been my great obsession. Our children should be our obsession, but there is a critical distinction. Knowing they are a product of our love, combined genes, and the environment we create from resources, hopes, and effort is one thing.
Knowing they are literally us, only in another skin, is the difference between coincidence and fate. No matter how much trouble Greer was, all we could do for her was to give everything we had and then pray to G.o.d for the rest.
My parents began staying with us for a month every summer. When he could, Saul would join us.
Much of that time was spent reminiscing about our lives and I pumped all three of them for forgotten details, trivial aspects, and explanations about past days and experiences that would give me better insight into who I'd been. What ingredients was I wholly unaware of then that had gone into making me the man I was now? Can we ever really know ourselves without hearing what others think of us?
Sometimes they wanted to know why I was so interested in our past. Saul got angry one night when I overdid the questions. What the h.e.l.l did twenty years ago matter? Why did I persist in trying to dissect or put those days under a microscope? Why not just leave them alone, enjoy the memories of a family that had held together and continued loving one another right up to today? Luckily I had a ready answer which soothed all of them and permitted more questions. I had read about an artist in Europe who'd had a show of paintings she'd done of her own childhood. Pretending it was my idea, I said drawing my history had been a secret dream project for years but I'd only recently gotten up the courage to begin taking notes and do some preliminary sketches. It was something that would take years to complete but, if done successfully, might turn out to be my greatest work. The Fischers were proud of my success as a cartoonist, and once they knew what was going on, they were charmed by the idea.