Flatscreen (23 page)

“Our DNA is fucked,” he said. “Absolutely, uncombatively effed.”

“It’s okay.”

“I fucked up.”

“It’s okay.”

The only thing TV had taught me to say. In this, TV was correct.

“It’s okay.”

“I cheated on Erin.”

“That’s not okay.”

OMFGWTF, it wasn’t. Poor, sweet Erin! The bastard had betrayed my former future sister-in-law, the sensitive cherubic soul who’d held my hand in the hospital bed, healed my wound with her sisterly cuddle-fingers. And what did she get in return for this kindness plus all the kindnesses she’d heaped on my square-headed sibling—warming his cold soul, wetting his cock, welcoming him
into her veggie-healthed family? She got Ben’s taint in another lover’s mouth, some slutty college girl no doubt, Jewish sorority drunk-party-diddler with a decent nose job, a lot of practice, a purveyor of enough attentions to convince my never-popular brother to hurt his one and only for a night with this lip-glossed poli-sci tart.

Benjy withheld tears, trembled, bit his lip so hard it trickled blood.

“It’s like I was channeling Dad to see if I really was his son.”

“That was the dumbest thing you’ve ever said and done.”

“No shit,” Benjy said, rested his head on my shoulder.

“You fucker,” I whispered.

Benjy said he might vomit. Watched the news, then the sports news, then three episodes of a syndicated sitcom in which divorced parents make do by living next door, exposing their overly handsome kids to the perils and joys of adult dating, and asking if maybe just maybe even the ugliest of circumstances can be remolded into a series of whimsical, fart-charged episodes, unburdened by the silly sadness of postnuclear parenting, elevated by laugh track, always ending with a lesson learned.

He said he’d told Erin and she’d cried in a way that made him understand for the first time that someone actually cared what he did and didn’t do. If I’d been feeling more generous I might have told him I cared.

“I assume she dumped you?”

“We’re currently taking a break while she sleeps with other guys for revenge.”

Felt like I, too, had been dumped. Like the dream of functional life-sharing had been shattered for us both if not even Benjy could get it together to love correctly,
with patience and honesty, unswayed by swinging legs and beckoning, sparkle-glossed lips, the call of new ass blinding his peripheries, simple-titted stimulus enough to dislodge straight-and-narrow progress. There was no way to live right, love fair, make a cake and eat it without putting on ugly pounds around the eyes. We were here, eternal, side by side, in shared shitty solitude, hands shaky, leg lit up like the north side at Christmas, collective eyes glued to the tube that holds us numbly captive, joins us in familial misery as we share, at least, in the beauty of an average sandwich.

Benjy asked me to change the channel and without thinking it over I punched his perfect, brace-straightened teeth.

Later, holding ice to his swelling mouth, I asked, “Have you talked to Mom at all?”

“Mom has a fourteen-point-eight handicap.”

“Oh.”

“Says the weather stays around seventy.”

Couldn’t sleep. Lay in bed picturing Jeff Goldblum the actor, since I’d never seen Goldblum-Spelled-Differently. In the morning I kissed Benjy on the ear.

Possible Ending #8
(Casablanca):

This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The Circumstances of Benjy’s Cheating as I Learned Later, Which Certainly Neither Justifies His Actions nor Exonerates Him, but Does Make Him Slightly More Sympathetic, Considering:

American Dream:

Driving classes were at the VFW off Route 1, a decent bike ride. Almost got hit four times trying to cross the highway. A while since I’d ridden. That stuff about not forgetting how to ride a bike turns out to be bullshit. True, you don’t fall over; you remember how to balance, go no hands, turn corners, brake, change gears, etc., but the important stuff—avoiding cars, merging into traffic—must be relearned. I’d been practicing on our street, doing circles, feeling the thump in my ass when I dropped the front wheel off the curb. Wing over to Pizza Palace, peek in the window, watch youth B-ball teams forget losses by burning the roofs of their mouths. Watched couples share booths, hardly looking at one another, waiting for cheese to cool, waiting for their lives to grow sideways like overgrown weeds, each stem a weight out of balance.

Real winter now, almost Christmas. Skin on my hands was dry, flaking. Perched on my bike as if stopping midway on a journey to a specific place: maybe a minimum-wage job with a cute girl across the room who made it all worthwhile, maybe a family gathered around a television.

Then flick my cig, swing down to the gas station mini-mart,
camera following me, director telling me not to smile, never smile. Score would lift—waves of strings like blades of dead grass bowed by a strong wind. At Mobil, I’d pick up smokes, Diet Coke, drop gears, push up the hill back to the condo. Zornstein said this was good for my leg.

But this was my first big trip, traversing main streets, highways. Saw death on the bumper of each passing car. They say you feel immortal once you’ve been shot and lived, nothing can touch you, God must be watching your back. Bullshit. God was nowhere, certainly not on the highway slowing down speeding cell-phone drivers. Still, I made it to class.

Thought I had the wrong place because the crowd looked more suited for an AA meeting than a driving class. Men and women ranging from early twenties (me) to the gray-haired and -bearded of indeterminate age (guy with gray hair and beard) sat quietly in chairs waiting for the teacher to arrive. First day of school still made everyone nervous, still held that hint of mystery. Who knew what would happen in the new school year? Maybe the girl sitting next to you would gaze into your eyes in a way that meant you had her heart forever.

The girl sitting next to me was an obese bald man with sweat stains. Breath smelled like a jar of toilet mold left out overnight, festering on the counter.

“I’m Bill. Took this class before. Piece of cake.”

“Why are you here again?” I said.

“Fifty-three speeding tickets.”

“Oh.”

“I’m an adrenaline junkie.”

“Do you have any gum?”

“Don’t chew the stuff. Bad for your jaw.”

The teacher was both bald and pony-tailed, wore a
blond tweed blazer that would have been hip on a bearded artist, but on him looked like a remnant from another life when he was doing something other than teaching remedial driving. (Studying physics? Fucking in the back of a Chevy? Tap-dancing?)

“Welcome to Adult Driving,” he said. “I’m Mr. Beaver.”

Half the class giggled. Other half wasn’t paying attention. Beaver made us go around, say names, why we were there.

“Zeke’s the name,” Zeke said.

“And why are you here, Zeke?”

“I got caught.”

Maria only had two drinks, but she hardly weighs anything and the cop was a racist. Then there was Fred, who’d hid the crack rocks in his foreskin, hadn’t foreseen that it would hurt like hell and the cops might wonder why he kept scratching his junk during interrogation.

“Maybe a bit too much information,” Beaver said.

“I should have just stuck it up my ass like a normal person.”

When it was my turn, I said, “My name is Eli Schwartz, and I have never driven in my life.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” Zeke said. “Aren’t you an American?”

“Guess I am now.”

“If you never had a car,” Fred said, “where’d you get hand jobs when you were in high school?”

“Don’t tell me you never got hand jobs,” Zeke said.

“Maybe he’s gay,” Bob said. “Which I got no problem with.”

“I’m not gay.”

“Never driven, never gotten a hand job. Sounds gay to me.”

“Gay guys jerk each other off all the time.”

“Good point.”

“I’ve gotten hand jobs.”

“Settle down, class,” Beaver said.

Shut my eyes, pictured myself behind the wheel of a fire-engine-red ’89 LeBaron, top down, west on I-90, highway empty, endless. Took a long breath. We went over basic safety. Beaver put on a video from the eighties called
The Sauce: A Driver’s Worst Friend
(???, 198?).

In the video, a succession of actors attempts to debunk drunk-driving myths. The first, a fat man with brown teeth, says, “If I eat enough, it will counteract the alcohol.” We see him scarf pies, wash them down with glass after glass of red wine. Watch him stumble to his car. In the next shot he lies bloody by the side of the road.

Second guy wears a comically oversized golf outfit at a table full of empty beers. “It’s just a golf cart,” he says. “I can get as drunk as I want.” Gets in the cart, drives off a small cliff.

“That’s why I never play golf,” Fred said. “Dangerous game.”

In the third skit, it took me a moment to recognize the actor, but when I did it hit me like a bullet—the one that hit me. The man is handsome, with waves of orange hair, thick eyebrows. High cheeks, distant look in his eyes as though he knows he’s too good for this after-school bullshit, but it’s all his agent could get and he’s got mouths to feed (including his own, which is hungry for everything: bodies, powders, engines gunning under lamplit Hollywood highways). Kahn’s eyes pan while the camera stays still. Stumbles into a diner. “If I drink enough coffee,” young Kahn says to the camera, “I’ll be fine to drive.”

Watched him walk, striding, as if he just can’t help it even though he’s supposed to be pretending to be drunk.
Strange that Kahn can walk, that the movement of his legs is preserved, locked up in a VFW off Route 1 in Dedham. A wonderful walk: confident, straight-toed, as though he could burst into dance at any moment if so inclined.

Kahn walks out of the diner, into a sedan. Reverses straight into a cop car. In the next shot, he’s arrested by a guy wearing a cop suit that looks leftover from a porn shoot. Kahn smiles at the camera, though he’s probably not supposed to.

A few more skits like this, then all the drunk drivers stand with linked arms, say in unison, “Sauce: the driver’s
worst
friend.”

Beaver turned off the reel. The lights went on, but I was still thinking of Kahn, who was now two people, one of whom was young, good-looking, had no idea he should heed his own cheaply rendered advice about car safety.

Possible Ending #9 (Real Life):

This is what happens to guys like me: We mine the QHS class of 2014 for legs and a slim worldview. Dads hook us up with jobs we’re not qualified to do, or jobs that don’t require much doing. Buy cars, develop coke habits, shed baby fat. Afternoons at the gym to armor ourselves against those who think we’re laughingstocks (plus homoerotic locker room voyeurism). Someday it’s time to get serious if we want to make real money. Dad’s on Wife Three, considering retirement. Mom still in Florida. Not sure how Benjy figures in, but he’s probably off somewhere too, being an actuary, disapproving of my lifestyle, envying my money/work ratio, secretly loving my sorry ass. So I get serious, get off the coke, take over the Schwartz family business, court and charm some JAP-ed out family friend I’ve known forevs—a lesser Sherri Sacks: less bitchy, less sexy. Doesn’t like Godard, Buñuel, Cassavetes, Howard Hawkes, etc., so we sniffle our way through rom-coms, sniffling for different reasons, neither of us actually sniffling. Children are spoiled rich kids, but we love them, at least I do, attempting to provide the
family I myself never had. Kahn is their wacky/sad outrageous uncle, but Wife One fears molestation, so he stops coming around, much to my chagrin, much to his too, because now he has no one. Don’t believe in God, but I say a simple prayer each night before bed: “Dear Other, let these kids lose their virginity when it’s age appropriate.” Divorce, for the better. She gets the kids though I want them more. I get Wife Two. I like her because she’s young, knows the young people’s music, doesn’t mind Kahn or occasional cocaine use. Attend concerts, glug wine from plastic cups, are eternally out of place, but okay even though my kids hate us, fair enough, small trade-off, until I get old, lonely, ugly, sleepy, farty, boozy, happy (briefly), shitty. Mostly I wonder about those other endings, all weighty and romantic, stiff with meaning. Imagine myself on a stage slinging fake, swarthy smiles to the studio audience, or in an alleyway losing blood, losing consciousness, losing the null pain of upper-upper-middle-class middling.