A Serious StoryThis is what I read at the Hothouse, yesterday.
I'm trying to push past my usual shock tactics and tell stories that are amusing, but with depth beyond poop and sex.
Jack’s Backyard
The night before Mom’s wake, I was lying on my back in Jack Malone’s backyard. A wet August night in the Suburbs. It doesn’t matter which suburb. You know it sounds like crickets and everyone’s sleeping.
Jack and I were lying side by side on a blanket, watching a meteor shower. I’d only known him a week, but he was the closest thing I had to a lover at that point, a stand-in.
The sex was rotten. He couldn’t uh… keep it up. But still, I’d throw pebbles at his window well into the fall. Just because he was there for me the night before my mom’s wake, you know?
But this is not really about Jack Malone. I digress, I distract. I don’t want to tell you about Mom’s wake. Everyone writes boo-hoo eulogies for their dead parents and well, I don’t exactly want to relive the whole ordeal. What a circus. So many white lilies, they almost smelled like gasoline. The mobs of wailing toddlers (Mom was a preschool teacher). Me, the manic hostess in black polka dots. Pretending I was just the party planner and not the dead lady’s daughter. Greeting sundry second cousins at the door of the funeral home, “I’m so glad that you came! There’s cookies and coffee in the basement…”
So I’ll start somewhere safe. On the blanket in Jack Malone’s backyard, behind his parents’ beige, aluminum-sided fortress, within the comforting rectangle of privacy fencing. The wet grass had soaked through the blanket, through our shirts, chilling our backs with every breeze. But we did not hold each other for warmth.
Not that Jack wasn’t a pretty boy. His face was sculpted to golden proportion by doctors, after a disfiguring car accident when he was 9. But I wasn’t looking at Jack, his full lips, his Michelangelo nose. Human bodies felt so temporary, like fast food wrappers. I couldn’t fathom attraction to something so disposable. So I just watched the meteors streak white and gold across the black sky. Counted them: 4, 5, 6…
No, I didn’t sigh and say, “Oh Jack, do you think my mother’s looking down at us right now?” My eyes were not red and swollen from soul-shaking sobs. Yeah, I cried for about an hour when I first heard. This cop was the one to tell me, this lady cop with an oily ponytail. She had to be the fucking monotone hero, “I’m sorry Allison. Your mother passed away. She had a heart attack in her sleep.”
I fell to my knees and screamed, “NOOOO!” Like a bad early-90’s horror flick, when the quarterback finds the dead cheerleader.
But one night later, on the blanket in Jack Malone’s backyard, my eyes were deserts. I’d just been swallowed by the Numb. Told myself there’s no reason to get all weepy over death. It’s a waste of emotion. You can’t do anything about death, but accept it.
Jack asked, “Heya wanna smoka jaint?” He talked sort of funny. The doctors couldn’t quite fix his jaw after the accident.
“Of course,” I said, “got some rum, too?” It had just occurred to me that I could take drugs, drink, stay out all night. My first night as an orphan.
Jack lit the joint, sucked in, blew out a cloud of smoke and said, “Heart attack, huh?” Then passed it to me.
“Yep. She took too many diet pills. Amphetamines. Speed. That shit’ll stop your heart.” I hit the joint. The air got thicker. My eyelids fell. I passed it back to Jack and said, “But it made her who she was, you know?. Really hyper, really fun. Really angry, sometimes…”
We wouldn’t mention the pills, the next day at Mom’s wake. My meathead uncle wouldn’t, when he grabbed the microphone from the pastor and yelled, “Fuck God! Fuck God for taking her too soon!”
And I wouldn’t mention it to the parents of Mom’s preschool class when I walked by, shaking their hands, one-by-one as the dutiful bereaved. The kids stood, sniveling single file in front of the casket. A picture of Mom, blonde and beaming, was propped on the lid, surrounded by lilies, so many white lilies.
I found myself telling this 4-year-old boy, “It’s okay. You’ll see her again when you die.”
But that only made him cry harder. Though I was so disconnected, I didn’t understand why…
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