This One Time With Julia (6 page)

“He was building a washing machine.”

“Don’t sell it short. It wasn’t just any washing machine.”

“Alvin invented a machine that washes and dries all in the same compartment,” I explained to Julia. “That way you don’t have to move your clothes from one machine to another. But it was pretty hard to make it work, I guess, and after a few years he met you, so he never quite finished it.”

“I think that’s a really good idea,” said Julia.

“It’s a terrible idea,” said Marcus. “It already exists, for one thing, and it’s more expensive than the two machines it replaces. Any space-saving value is negated by its horrible noise and inferior performance.”

“Maybe he thought he could do it better,” said Julia.

“He never had any intention of finishing it. The whole project was just an excuse to skip out on his education. He just thought it was funny to find the least productive way to spend his time.”

“And that’s why you hate him? Because he quit high school for a reason you don’t like? What did he ever do to you?”

“It’s not what he did to me.” Marcus leaned happily back in his chair and slowly took another sip of beer. I started thinking of reasons to leave, because I knew what was coming now. This was Marcus’s favorite topic. “It’s what he did to Joe.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re unbelievable,” said Marcus. “You literally don’t know anything. You could at least make the argument that Alvin was too smart for formal education, and so it was a good decision for him to blow off school and live on his wits. But it was certainly a terrible idea for Joe. Joe never scored as a genius on any test. And whatever Alvin’s brain got, Joe got the opposite.”

“Hold on.” Julia turned to me. “You dropped out of school too?”

“I’m studying for my GED right now.”

“Alvin was so smart growing up that nobody appreciated how slow Joe was,” said Marcus. “He had terrible problems learning and retaining information and no concentration at all. He couldn’t listen. He was constantly distracted and couldn’t focus on anything long enough to understand it. He didn’t process life as it was happening to him. My mother knew he had some kind of attention disorder, at the least, and my father was starting to see it too, and if our parents had been around longer, I think Joe could have muddled his way through. They would have put him on some drugs, some special classes maybe. At least he could have learned to read. I’m sure plenty of kids worse off than Joe have grown up to be functional adults. But Uncle Ruby wasn’t any influence at all, and before anybody else could get involved, Alvin took control.”

“What do you mean, he took control?”

“With our parents gone, Alvin decided to raise Joe himself. He liked Joe the way he was and saw Joe’s mental challenges as a castle to be defended at all costs. I’m still astounded by the passion and energy he put into this project, especially for a boy of eight years old. He made it his life’s work to make sure that Joe was never officially diagnosed, never received any help, never changed, never grew up at all. He taught himself to write left-handed so he could do two sets of homework, and he even had a third handwriting for forging doctor’s notes. Of course, all this was only possible because our school was so terrible. High school was a lot trickier to pull off, because they weren’t in the same classes anymore, and so after two days Alvin decided they should both drop out entirely.”

“I think you’re messing with me,” said Julia.

“Do you know why Joe only eats pizza and cheeseburgers?”

“It’s just what he likes. It was a phase that stuck.”

“It was Alvin’s idea. In third grade Alvin got tired of being so skinny, and decided to only eat pizza and hamburgers for an entire year, to see if he could put on any weight. He didn’t want to do the diet by himself, so he convinced Joe to try it too. It didn’t work for Alvin, so he gave it up. But Joe couldn’t give it up. He’s been trapped in that diet ever since.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Julia.

“You asked me why I hated Alvin. I’m answering your question. It’s because he ruined Joe. He’d always liked playing little mind games with his twin brother, making them switch names and so forth, but after we lost our parents it turned into an obsession. He was determined that Joe would never change, and it was impossible to stop him. Anyone who tried to interfere immediately became his enemy. One year I convinced the school psychiatrist to take a look at Joe, and even got him to prescribe some medication. When Alvin found out what I’d done he tried to kill me with rat poison. That’s how determined he was. And he always had a special hold over Joe. At a certain point it was just too exhausting to fight him. I had my own life to live.”

Marcus looked a little exhausted. He had barely touched his second beer, but he took a long swig now while he got his breath back. I knew he wasn’t nearly finished yet.

“I’ll give you another example,” he said.

I didn’t feel like hearing any more examples. I got up to go pee. The hallway to the bathroom was too dark to see, so I had to feel my way along the wall, and I guess Marcus had started some electrical work in there, because when I felt around the doorway for the light switch, there was only an open socket, and so I got a pretty nasty shock. There was a tiny buzzing sound as I stood there with my whole body twitching until I finally yanked my hand away. Then I just stood there in the bathroom in the dark, letting my eyes adjust, while I could still hear Marcus droning on in the living room about how terrible my education was. The bathroom was extremely clean, like everything he does. He told me once that every time he comes in here to use the bathroom he first takes off all his clothes and folds them neatly in a pile, to make sure they won’t absorb any smells, and then afterward he takes a shower. I can remember that his enormous gray cat was curled up in the bathtub watching me. As my eyes slowly adjusted, I could see the cat’s red eyes staring up at me and Marcus’s basketball team photo hanging over the sink, and I could see Alvin standing by the window. He was wearing this Hawaiian shirt and a white sailing hat.

“Hi Alvin.”

“Are you all right, Joe? You look like you just fainted or something.”

“I got electrocuted.”

“Listen, Joe. Do I look younger to you now?”

He did seem younger, all rested and tan. He sure looked better than the last time I had seen him.

“Definitely.”

“It must be the air and the ocean. The surf. The breeze.”

“So you like sailing?”

“It’s incredible, Joe. Yesterday we saw three whales swimming in unison along the coastline, just as the sun was setting.”

“Will you send me a picture?”

“You know I don’t believe in pictures. That’s why I’m telling you right now.”

“I still wish I could have gone with you.”

“No, you have to get past that. You have to start thinking of a way out of this prison. If you stay here Marcus is going to make your life a living hell. He’ll ruin you, Joe, and you know it.”

“Where else can I go?”

Alvin thought that over for a while. The cat was sitting in the sink now, staring at me.

“Why not Tennessee?”

“Really?”

“It seemed like an easy place to survive, when I was there. You already know one person who lives there. You can leave the dog with Marcus. It’ll be easier than taking care of you, so that makes it a good deal for him too, doesn’t it?”

“I guess when you look at it that way.”

“You have to get out of this apartment somehow.” He looked around at the bathroom and shivered. “This place gives me the creeps.”

I went over to the doorway and listened to see if Marcus was still talking about me.

“Joe was Alvin’s masterpiece,” he was saying. “A practical joke that has gone on for eighteen years. He created this impossible person who’s incapable of accumulating experience, and who can’t make any sense of anything that happens to him.”

I decided I didn’t want Julia to hear any more of this. When I looked back into the bathroom, Alvin was already gone. My body still felt tingly as I went over and peed in the toilet. When I went back into the living room, Marcus smiled up at me, like he hadn’t spent the last twenty minutes talking about how dumb I was. Julia made room for me on the couch, and I remember that she put her hand on my shoulder when I sat down.

“Our parents left us all a little bit of money,” said Marcus. “I set up an account for Joe, and he’s allowed to take out up to a hundred dollars every day. I think he gambles most of it. Soon it’ll run out, and then he’ll be forced to make some contact with economic reality, but probably not much. He’s got a strange knack for survival. He seems to find friendship and shelter wherever he goes. People like Joe. It’s easy to make him happy and he won’t ask you embarrassing questions. He buys what you’re selling. He doesn’t care what it is, or where you got it. And a friendship with Joe is like a badge of open-mindedness. Sometimes I catch myself showing him off, giving outrageous facts about him in a casual way, as if his situation weren’t strange to me. Just knowing him makes a person seem automatically more interesting. It’s like owning an exotic turtle. And he really is just like a small, blind turtle. He just crawls in whatever direction you point him.”

“What’s wrong with that?” said Julia.

“What’s wrong is that it’s tragic,” said Marcus. “I’ll give you one last example. While you were napping, Joe and I went down to the Riverside court for a few games of one-on-one basketball. He beat me soundly, almost effortlessly, and it was embarrassing and sad for both of us. Sad for me because I’m a NCAA scholarship athlete, and today I was exposed as a player of extremely limited abilities. But it was even sadder for Joe, because he exposed himself as something much, much worse. A player of unlimited abilities with nothing in the world to show for them. Such incredible potential, squandered for Alvin’s entertainment.”

“So I guess you must be pretty perfect,” said Julia. “What have you done with yourself that’s so special?”

“I’m glad you asked,” said Marcus. “With nothing but hard work, I’ve turned my mediocre basketball talents into a free college education. I’m finishing up a major in economics, with a double minor in Spanish and Chinese. Think about the fact that Spanish could be a majority language in this country within twenty-five years, that on this planet one out of every five of us is Chinese. Think about markets for a moment. Think what my skills will be worth to an expanding company.”

This is how I remember Marcus when I think about him, perched on the couch with his empty second beer, sweat beading on his nose, lecturing Julia so passionately.

“I’m not beautiful like my brothers,” he said. “And I don’t have any amazing gifts. But the turning point of my life was realizing how little talent is worth. That the qualities I’d always thought to be my faults, my plodding nature, my narrow-minded focus, my constant preoccupation with the future, were actually my greatest gifts, the secrets to realizing all my goals. It was so exhilarating when this finally dawned on me. It felt as if I’d memorized a long poem as a child and recited it every day for many years, and then one day discovered that the whole thing rhymed.”

Marcus looked at me and smiled. Then he took a handful of peanuts from the bowl on the coffee table. He cracked one from its shell and tossed it to me in a high, slow arc. Before I could think, I opened my mouth and caught it. Right away I wished I hadn’t, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Amazing,” he said. “You’re still hungry.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Julia.

“Which part don’t you believe?”

“You’re telling me Joe can’t read?”

“Of course I can read,” I said.

“We won’t embarrass him by asking him to read something.” Marcus laughed and looked at his watch. “I want to walk off this food before I do my stretching for the night. You can snooze on the couch until your flight. But Joe’s curfew will be ten o’clock from now on, so please make sure he has the dishes done by then.”

My bedroom had already changed a lot since the last time I’d slept there. Marcus had moved all his weights and exercise machines in there, and one of the walls was halfway painted black, and the whole room smelled like sawdust for some reason. I was already tucked into bed when Marcus came in to say goodnight and to lay out the new rules I’d have to follow if I wanted to keep living there.

“You’re going to build your life the same way I built mine,” he said. “By making an aggressive plan and then sticking with it.”

We were going to have mandatory study sessions, and I was going to eat normal food until I liked it, and no more gambling would be allowed at all, and a million other rules I’d never be able to remember. When he finished going through it all, he patted me on the shoulder in this really friendly way and said, “It’s good to have you home,” but I could tell he wasn’t quite ready to leave yet, because he started pacing in these very nervous circles around my bed.

“Listen, Joe,” he said. “I’m going to be starting a family sometime in the next ten years, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about baby names. I realized that Alexander is really the only name I could ever imagine giving to my firstborn son. I always knew this intuitively, but not consciously, not until recently. If you happened to have a male child before I did, you wouldn’t steal my thunder, would you? You wouldn’t name him Alexander, knowing what that name means to me?”