“I have something for you.”
He opens the door a little wider, remains silent.
“Her name is Nike,” I say, holding out the cat, and Mr. Elam’s eyes turn a little scared, but a little happy, too, and he says, “Okay,” and then I hand over the cat, who doesn’t make a sound.
“Also”—I pull out the envelope with my name scrawled on it, the boxing ticket and both signed cards inside—“I’m giving these back to you.”
Mr. Elam takes them along with the cat and says, “Okay,” and there’s something about those eyes—like he actually couldn’t be more scared, more surprised, more speechless, more content than he is in this moment.
“I don’t think you’re done with them,” I say. “So I’m giving them back.”
He nods once, looks at the cat. “Okay.”
“Okay, then. That’s it, I guess. See you tomorrow, Mr. Elam.”
“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m thankful for you.”
His red eyes well, and he runs a hand through the fur on the top of Nike’s back, and that’s when I know he’ll be okay.
“Noah?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
From the top of the stairs, I see the white glow of the sun off the snow as it reflects through the foyer window, and it’s all so sad and beautiful, and I say, “You’re going to be okay,” and then I look him in the eye and say it again, willing it true. “You’re going to be okay, Mr. Elam. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Downstairs I give Ambrosia a quick hug, and I hear her words from earlier today, about Mr. Elam not thinking he had much to be thankful for, how we should try to prove him wrong. “It’s a start,” I whisper, and I’m out the door, into the cold air, thinking how thankful I am to have found this place even if I didn’t know where I was going until I got here.
66 → moby dick sucks
In the car on the way home I notice Sara’s bag with the Melville patch, which reminds me of our run-in at the library on Halloween, and I don’t know why I do it, since I already know the answer, but I ask what book she was there to check out.
“I’d heard about this collector’s edition of This Is Not a Memoir that had some bonus content,” she says. “Why?”
I say, “Nothing,” and then, “No reason,” but it is something, there is a reason, because the librarian that day told me no one had checked it out for ages, and when I think how timely it was—that Sara happened to be at the library that day at that exact time, that she happened to drop the slip of paper on the ground, that I happened to see it and pick it up—I wonder about those chances.
67 → alone or lonely
“Could you please pass the yams?”
My sister must be the only twelve-year-old in the world to utter those six words in that order.
“Certainly,” says Uncle Orville, passing an oversized platter of Dad’s yams. “There you go, tiger.”
Penny looks at me for a split second—I give her the Oakman Roll, a subtle expression of the eye we reserve for when Uncle Orville uses one of his pet names with us. She sees it; she looks away. And that’s how I know my sister is still not talking to me. Not a single word since the incident in the Windy City Limits parking lot Tuesday night.
Penny takes the platter from Uncle Orville. “Thank you, Fred, darling.”
Uncle O raises an eyebrow, looks around the table. “Who’s Fred?”
I swallow a bite of Dad’s perennial vegan dressing. “You are.”
“I am?”
Penny says, “Yes, darling,” and Orville says, “Okay, then,” at which point Mom begins telling the table about Penny’s obsession with Breakfast at Tiffany’s until she’s interrupted by my three-year-old cousin, Hannah, who decides now is the perfect time to take a poll on who we think would win in a fight between a tiger shark and a gorilla, at which point her little brother, Eli, chucks his dinner right off his high chair tray, points down at the floor, and unleashes a pterodactyl screech as if he hadn’t just tossed the damn food himself, and all the while Uncle Orville is like, “Why am I Fred again?” and Dad is punching himself for “under-massaging” the autumn kale salad, and ahhhhh, the whimsical cacophony of the Thanksgiving table, a song of subtlety and refinement.
Also present for the cacophony: Dad’s sister, Aunt Becky, and her husband, Uncle Adam, whose combined loins are responsible for Hannah and Eli; Mom and Uncle Orville’s considerably younger foster sister, a student at U of C, whom, given our proximity in age, and the fact that she’s got this scholarly attractive thing happening—by which I mean she uses words like mise–en–scène and paralipsis and petrichor in a sentence—I somewhat uncomfortably refer to as “Aunt” Jasmine; and Aunt Jasmine’s new girlfriend, Noelle.
“It’s a meditative sport, at its heart,” says Uncle Orville.
Dad, coy smile in place, says, “Is skydiving really a sport, though?”
Uncle O gives him a look, which, if I had to guess, isn’t that different from the way he must look at an airplane on the ground.
Even though Orville is Mom’s brother, he and Dad have always operated like siblings, knowing just what buttons to push. And listening to them now—as Dad asks Orville about the “subtle strategies” of jumping out of a plane, and Orville asks Dad for the recipe to his delectable lentil beet loaf—I wonder about the ins and outs of family.
This morning, Mr. Elam had showed up just on time, our walk beginning with the trademark, “Well, kid, don’t just stand there,” and ending at the front stoop of Ambrosia’s B&B. I’d asked about Nike, if Mr. Elam thought the cat would work out, and got nothing but a quick nod. I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed, not only in his lackluster response, but in my own naivety that a replacement cat would somehow make a dent in Mr. Elam’s loneliness. And again I was reminded of my pact with Ambrosia: It’s a start.
There are eleven of us around this table now, ten of whom are family, and while some of these people annoy the ever-loving bejeezus out of me, I can’t deny their presence is a comfort. Which, so far as I can tell, is the most beneficial quality of family, the assurance that should something happen to one of us, it will happen to each of us.
It’s a contract signed in blood at birth: Do you, Tiny Infant Who Knows Nothing, take these completely random people to be permanent fixtures in your life forever and ever? We sign that shit on the dotted line, and we do so happily, because it means, for better or worse, we will not be alone.
Thing is, Mr. Elam signed that contract too, and then his family got destroyed—because a truck driver fell asleep. That’s it. That’s all it took.
That’s all it takes, I think, looking around the table.
“I would do it,” Noelle says.
Uncle Orville nods and slow claps.
Aunt Becky is all, “I guess I just don’t get it.”
“Which part?” asks Uncle Orville. “The thrill-of-a-lifetime part, or the part where you have more fun than you even knew was possible?”
“I guess . . .” Aunt Becky looks around the table for help. Finding none, she looks back at Orville. “The part where you jump out of a plane?”
Dad snaps his finger, points at his sister. “It’s a basic risk versus reward. One simple malfunction with the rip cord, and it’s over. Some guy at the parachute factory forgot his caffeine pills that morning—”
“Parachute factory?” says Uncle O, his face like a tightly closed fist.
“And now you’re ten thousand feet in the air with nothing between you and the ground but a useless backpack.”
Noelle scoops up a bite of something, says, “I’d still do it.”
Uncle Orville meows like a cat, at which point Dad says, “Orville, come on,” and Uncle O says, “What? What’d I do?”
Dad folds his napkin, sets it on the table. “Okay, Orville. One sentence. W
hat is it you love about skydiving?”
Uncle Orville’s face opens up, and for a second it seems he might cry. “For about ten minutes,” he says quietly, “from the time you jump, to the time your feet touch the ground, you’re the only person on earth.”
I see Mr. Elam alone in that easy chair, drinking bourbon in silence, eating a meal from a plate in his lap; and Ambrosia, sweet Ambrosia, downstairs by the fire, wishing she’d insisted he join her, but knowing what he meant when he shook his head and said, “It’s our anniversary.” I see Nike at the foot of his chair, and Mr. Elam’s weathered hand scratching her back. I see Mr. Elam’s eyes, and through them his mind, winding its way back, always back, to the face of that truck driver who had taken his contract and ripped it to shreds. Mr. Elam raises a glass to Barbara and Matthew, to the ashes of Herman the cat; unsure if they can see him, he prays his dwindling faith is faith enough, holds his glass high, and considers the old family motto—one plus one plus one equals one—and feels the weight of an equation now riddled with subtraction.
“One,” he says to no one.
Uncle Orville got it wrong: the drop lasts a lot longer than ten minutes.
* * *
If I were to die this moment, right here in this scalding hot shower, and a few curious scientists cracked open my skull for a peek inside, among the neatly cataloged brain-shelves of Bowie and boots-on-hardwoods, somewhere between the diagrams with little arrows and the Concise Histories of Me, I imagine those scientists digging their forceps down deep and, “Got it!” says one of them, pulling out a butterfly.
I climb out of the shower in a daze, now dry off, now boxer briefs, now mesh shorts, now brush teeth. There’s a fluttering going on up there, some sort of pattern that’s eluded me for weeks.
Uncle Orville’s toiletry bag on the sink: one toothbrush, one electric shaver, one deodorant, one . . .
One.
The butterfly flutters, one synaptic branch to the next.
I step quietly through the hallway, stop in front of the guest room. The door is closed, that blue glow of the TV shining through the crack near the floor. I imagine Uncle Orville sitting up in bed, shirtless, tired eyes glazed over as some late show host carries on with antics aplenty, the same joke on a loop, only my uncle stopped laughing years ago. And I think of him at Uncle Jack’s viewing, standing over the dollish corpse of his twin, and I wonder what it must be like to lose the only person who ever really got you, to see your own likeness in an open casket.
I slip into my room, close the door without a sound.
It’s probably unfair of me to think this way. Plenty of people go their entire lives single and happy. But it’s not just that Uncle Orville is single. It’s not just that he sends those pathetic VHS commercials to the family, and it’s not just the annoying pet names or the oozing self-confidence.
Standing in the dark, unmoving, I stare at the outline of my bare mattress. Night showers always inject a dose of calmness into the bone, that sort of refreshing lethargy that usually follows a nap.
It’s when I do my best thinking.
My thought at this moment: Uncle Orville has not changed.
I often think of history as a series of patterns, of historians as pattern-studiers, psychics as pattern-predictors; and the rest of us do what we can to spot the patterns as they come.
Parish, Henry, Mr. Elam, the Fading Girl, Penny, and now Uncle Orville: my constants. Per Alan’s suggestion, I investigated each of them, but patterns don’t emerge on an individual level; they emerge on a collective one. And when I look at my Strange Fascinations, at Penny and Uncle Orville, not as individual trees but as the proverbial forest, a pattern emerges.
Orville. From the time you jump, to the time your feet touch the ground, you’re the only person on earth.
Penny. Grab a paddle, darling.
Parish. Abe, my God, don’t leave me here alone.
Henry (via Cletus). Guys like us will always be alone, that’s fine—the trick is knowing the difference between being alone & being lonely.
The Fading Girl. One Face, Forty Years.
Mr. Elam. One plus one plus one equals one.
The only people in my life who haven’t changed are more than just alone: they’re lonely.
68 → #blessed
Once the dust from Thanksgiving clears, my parents hover over me like a couple of starved Dementors turned loose at a Teletubbies conference.
University of Milwaukee: the front-runner, the obvious choice. Manhattan State is still on the table, but at this point I think my parents would joyously shit themselves if I said, Hey, let’s go check out the University of Alaska Anchorage, I hear they have a top-notch bobsledding program. I know my options, and I know what I should do, but the chasm between should and want, as always, looms large.
* * *
Me: Hey.
Sara: Noah, Noah, Noah.
Me: Sara, Sara, Sara.
Sara: What’s up?
Me: I need to get out of the house. Wanna see a movie?
Sara: *blushes* . . . he wants a second date
Me: Did last time count as a date, though?
Sara: All the other guys with whom I’ve gone to an old man’s house and given away a family pet have called it a date, sooo . . .
Me: In that case, yes, I would like a second date.
Sara: Okay good. Well. I can’t.
Me: Oh. Okay.
Sara: Like, I legit can’t. I’m stuck in Elgin until Sunday. Family T-giving. #blessed
Me: Haha ok. I understand.
* * *
Me: Hey
Alan: WHADDUP, NO?????????????
Me: Wait, are you high?
Alan: No. Val recently accused me of “texting while apathetic”
Me: Ah
Alan: Trying to right the ship
Me: Good luck with that
Alan: What’s up?
Me: Wanna see the new(ish) Spider-Man at the Discount? I’ve only seen animated Spider-Man. Trying to right the ship.
Alan: Good luck with THAT. You’ll need it, considering IT’S NOT SPIDEY
Me: Oh
Alan: It’s the new(ish) Superman, and I’ve heard it sucks kryptonic balls
Me: Well I need something to turn off my brain. Kryptonic balls it is. You in?
Alan: Can’t
Me: WTF not?
Alan: What the fuck not?
Me: WHY. WHY the fuck not?
Alan: Not sure you can do that, tho. The W in WTF is historically “What”
Me: OMG
Alan: I can’t come because homework
Me: BS
Alan: Beautiful Sunrise?
Me: You forget who you’re dealing with here. I know you aren’t doing homework because I know you. #joyousvirgins
Alan: Fine. It’s not homework. I’m sick. Stomach bug.
Me: You’re not sick
Alan: What, you have telepathic thumbs? I AM SICK. PUKING MY GUTS OUT
Me: You would have led with OMG YO VOMIT EVERYWHERE AGHHHHH
Alan: Shit. You’re right
Me: Come on, out with it
Alan: OMG YO VOMIT EVERYWHERE AGHHHHH
Me: Too late
Alan: OK, but don’t hate me. I’m at the Longmires
Me: Get the fuck out
Alan: Sorry. Guys night
Me: Guys night at the Longmires
Alan: Yeah
Me: What does this entail?
Alan: Video games, vodka, Will asking the ins and outs of my “gayness”
Me: God
Alan: Jake punching Will in the shoulder, then waiting for me to answer
Me: OK
Alan: Your mad?
Me: You’re. You’re. You’re. You’re. You’re.
Alan: MY BAD YOU??
?RE MAD???
Me: No.
Alan: You’re something tho?
Me: I’m fine. Imma go watch Spider-Man murder Lex Luthor
Alan: #hopeless
Me: #hopelesslyblessed
I text Val, but no response.
On a whim I decide to nudge the Fading Girl before I leave. She has yet to respond (via YouTube or Gmail), but I remind myself that she owes me nothing, that I am entitled to zilch, and that my right to press send does not supersede her right to ignore. Without even bothering to type a draft, I drop the curser in the box that says Add a public comment, and type the following: Hi. Me again. You don’t owe me anything, and I’m sorry if these comments are annoying. For what it’s worth, this will be my last attempt: I’d really like to talk to you. Email is
[email protected] if you get a second. Thanks.
No exclamation marks this time.
69 → attractions, coming and going
The Discount is the malignant mole on Iverton’s upper lip—and I love it. To be more precise: some tycoon built this multiplex cinema without checking the zoning laws, and as it happened, that particular area wasn’t zoned for a legit movie theater. And since the whole place was already rigged out, some other (far less successful) tycoon was all, Let’s just show movies, like, a couple months after they’re released, mmmmm-kay?, and then everyone else was all, Problem solved, I guess, so now we get these old movies right around the same time they show up on Netflix, but hey, we can see them on a giant screen mere feet away from complete strangers in the dark, so I’m not sweating it.
“One for the new Superman, please.”
“Just the one?” asks the kid from behind glass. He’s young and squirrely in that way that makes me wonder if he came straight here from middle-school band practice.
“Yeah, guy. It’s just me.”