Flatscreen Read online

  “We taking all this stuff?” Mustache said.

  “Everything goes,” I said. “Fire sale.”

  “What’s for sale?” Mustache said. “That end table?”

  “What are you, a homo?” Goatee said, then, catching himself, turning to my mom, “’Scuse me, ma’am,” then back to Mustache, “What are you, a queer?”

  “Nothing’s for sale,” Mom said.

  They had dollies, didn’t actually need our help. We sat on the steps, watched the men with our possessions. Every few minutes Mom would stand, pace across the front lawn, say, “Careful with that,” or “That’s an antique.”

  At one point she sat down next to me, leg against mine. Looked straight at me. Thought she was going to say something reassuring, like “Everything will be okay,” but she didn’t. Don’t know if it was because she couldn’t get the words out or because she needed me to say them to her instead. We sat like that, my bare left foot grazing her sneaker, a fake fingernail pressed into the excess fabric of my jeans. She said, softly, almost inaudibly, “Your father should be here,” immediately turned in the opposite direction.

  Walked behind the van to smoke a cigarette. Heard Goatee say to Mustache, “How much you think a place like this goes for?” and Mustache say, “’Bout a mill,” and Goatee say, “Fuckin’ A.”

  Took a few hours. We put the remains in my mother’s car. Should have been a sunset to drive into, mumbling “Never look back” beneath our collective breath. There wasn’t. Already dark. No stars, either, only Mom’s headlights. Headlights don’t illuminate much—fifty feet at most, small stretch of road—enough to keep us moving safely forward.

  Part II

  one

  Old Old House:

  • Don’t remember the old old house in Salem on the North Shore. Dad preferred it there, near the water, so I’ve heard. Small house. Toolshed out back. He used to build chairs, coffee tables.

  • I look at pics sometimes, at my small face and Benjy’s, at Dad’s large hands I’d always wanted to match, finally accepted I wouldn’t. Mom could be a young starlet, true blond. Could be photos from a flashback sequence, a flashback to better times. In the same way—filmic—they seem overly posed, poorly performed. We knew what faces to make when the bulb flashed.

  • No idea if I’m right—if our smiles were bullshit, if my parents’ clasped fingers were dutiful, cold.

  • Dad thought men should work with their hands. Didn’t like being a businessman, but he liked money. When we moved, he threw himself into home building. He had control over the designs, would show up on site, hammer nails. Doubt he does much carpentry these days.

  • Once I asked Mom why we moved out of Salem in the first place. She said there weren’t enough Jews.

  two

  When I finally heard from Jennifer Estes, two months had passed. Mom and I lived in a heavily carpeted condo overlooking Route 9. Nights we faced the tube, semi-silent, semi-sleeping through cop shows, serial hospital dramas, syndicated sitcoms, anything laugh-tracked or techno-scored, loud enough to distract from the fact of our shared, superfluous existence. Like before, only in the same room.

  The 42-inch LG LCD flat was comically oversized in the new living room. We’d brought the decorations from our old walls, still hadn’t unpacked them. They sat in boxes in her closet beneath a pile of shoes and the clothes she hadn’t brought enough hangers for.

  Mom never asked about my life, what I intended to do with it. Would have been angry if she had, said leave me alone, live and let nap, like she could talk, etc. But part of me wishes that she’d prodded, told me to get a job, get off my ass; that she’d whispered in a half-awake hush that love exists and, as a young man, it was my duty to find it, tether it, rub my eyes as it disappeared in the wind, restart the cycle.

  Instead we ate takeout on ottomans, staining ottomans, staring at anything but each other, occasionally mentioning Benjy, my grandparents, Thanksgiving.

  Thanksgiving was approaching. All my high school friends would be home, i.e., Matt and John. I was supposed to spend it at Dad’s, theoretically hit the homecoming football game, and go to a party where I’d drink cheap beer, find an ugly-duckling-turned-sorority-confident swan, shoulder-chipped, something to prove. Mom was heading to Florida to see her parents.

  Meantime we were stuck in the condo. I wasn’t cooking. New kitchen had an electric stove. No reception on the little TV. The kitchen was depressing. Depression succeeded by guilt about the fact that I’d been a spoiled rich boy in a heaven of culinary modernity complete with six-burnered gas grill, wall-mounted magnetic knife rack. Now, in a normal kitchen, I moped instead of cooking and making do. Still watched the Food Network, internalizing sous-vide techniques, knife maintenance tips, recipes involving rare fruit and twelve hours of your life. Saw myself on Iron Chef, taking down Batali in Kitchen Stadium, world looking on, impressed at my knife skills, blown away by the sensibility of my palate, finesse of my presentation, unusual combos I could fuse into forkfuls of ecstasy. Imagined the judges saying words like “delicate,” “nuanced,” “subtle and beautiful,” that these words applied not only to my culinary creations, but to me as a human being.

  This fantasy—which bore no relation to reality—was depressing.

  Had trouble sleeping. Six a.m. I’d be up, watching recycled news on loop: same story, different channels, few facts, endless speculation. All these self-appointed pundits, smile-stiff anchors, desexed morning hosts in holiday-themed skirt suits, talking endlessly, as if with all this talk we might arrive at resolution. But we didn’t arrive, just fell farther into abstraction, away from meaning, toward a mangled language. Is it romantic bullshit to say I felt the same—myself an endless abstraction shrinking from the tangible world into an internal brain bubble, filled with words, feelings, nothing to tie them together, no understanding of how to use them to formulate a plan for future action?

  Mom would materialize, drag her sleep-frizzed self toward the ever-floor-wet bathroom, eyes closed, navigating by sense of smell (Tommy, RSO, 1975).

  Then stay for an hour before making her exit, transformed. Makeup covered the sadness, exhaustion, other more complicated feelings. Hair had been wound, tugged, brushed into submission. Cracks in her skin had been filled with creams that, despite packages promising eternal youth, gave the impression of someone who’s been in the sun too long.

  For some reason, the sight of my mother helped me fall back to sleep. Maybe it’s an animal thing, pheromones like a lullaby. Wake up later to an empty apartment.

  Days didn’t consist of much. Usual shit: TV, Internet. Wasn’t smoking pot, and not by choice. Quinosset was going through a drought. Every time I called Dan he gave me the bad news. Not that it mattered. Dad still hadn’t sent a new check.

  No Oxy either. Wanted more but couldn’t bring myself to go over there. Did wonder what Kahn was up to, what the house looked like with Mingus blasting, Kahn screaming backyard soliloquies. But something had happened when Kahn had bought the house; some unspoken line had been drawn between us. I stayed away.

  Not going to be one of those guys who gets on a high horse, says quitting drugs changed his life for the better. Sobriety didn’t suit me. No possibility of oblivion, endless neutrality.

  Afternoons Mom would come home, run the treadmill, which was now in the living room. Between the white walls, few windows, and buzz of the treadmill, the apartment gave the impression of being some odd asylum for the calorie-conscious insane. All we needed were other patients.

  So, I’d escape to my room, turn up the tunes, scour the net for reassurance that a world existed outside my walls. I liked celeb gossip. The characters were familiar; I’d grown up with them, watched them ascend like bats at sunrise. Comforting to know they were human, had nipples, cellulite, sweatpants.

  On Facebook I found Beth Cahill, a girl I’d hardly noticed in high school: plain, unperfumed, not accentuated with pricey X-carat accessories or XL breasts. Now she was some kind of hooker. FB page li
nked to a sexual services ad from the Boston Phoenix featuring Beth bedecked only in panties and jeweled tiara, offering erotic massage for the moneyed lonely.

  Found Alison too (I’d been spelling her name with two L’s instead of one), though, like Alison herself, there wasn’t much to find. No info other than essentials: age, hometown, graduation year. A single picture: she sits upright in the QHS courtyard, framed by trees, staring past the camera, unaware she’s being photographed. Mouth open, gap-teeth too big for her face; she’s joyously unself-conscious. Hair short, highlighted blue, no bangs. Blue on the tips of her hair matches her eyes. Sometimes I’d stare at the picture for minutes, wondering where she was now.

  Thought of Alison often, but she’d left me little to think about. Her eyes, smell of her hair, sea-salt feel of her fuck-thrust. Preferred to think of Jennifer, whose imagined perfection beat Alison’s too-human condition.

  Read blogs by young American soldiers, stranded in Iraq, covered in sand and sweat, longing for Big Macs, blond pussy. Searched their monologues for profundity, explanation for bloodlust, what it felt like to watch the life float from a man like fast-escaping gas from a broken propane grill; what it was like to know your body had produced death the way it produces urine or semen; to know your actions had caused reactions. Figured I’d be okay in the army, no choices, following orders, wearing a uniform. Maybe I’d die. Body carried in a plane, flag-draped, celebrated. Mom cries. Benjy touches her hair as the sun sets, pulls it from her eyes. Audience claps, weeps (American Grunt, Sony, 2005).

  Mostly I looked at Jennifer’s profile, waited for a reply that didn’t seem to be coming. By the time Benjy came home from college for break, I’d given up. I hid in front of my computer, stared hard at the screen in the unrealistic hope that if I stared hard enough Benjy wouldn’t notice me. I was dreading the brotherly talk.

  Facebook message from Jennifer: “Party at my house tonight. 2 Kegs. 31 Roadway C.”

  No explanation for not writing back. No sorrowful apology. Just an invitation.

  “Eli.”

  He said it with solidity, as if answering the question “Which slovenly sibling needs a cane to the membrane?”

  Benjy was checking my alarm clock against his ultrasonic Hamas-approved underwater watch, or whatever it was.

  “Dude,” I said.

  “You’re three minutes slow.”

  “Times they are a-changing.”

  I thought: nothing’s changed. But Benjy slackened his stiff-backed stance, smiled, sat, eyed the nonexistent décor.

  “Time is relative.”

  The funniest joke he’d ever made.

  “Like Uncle Sal?”

  “Like Cousin Charlie.”

  “You’re losing it,” I said.

  Benjy laughed, palmed my shoulder with a sweat-wet hand. Hair on top was beginning to thin, like Dad’s. Looked huskier: eating pizza, packing pounds for winter. We Schwartzes were hibernators. We Schwartzes were hungry.

  “This.” Benjy held up his arms, gestured toward the walls.

  “This is it, big bro. Not what you expected?”

  “Pretty shitty.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said, shut my laptop, fell backward onto the bed. Still had the cars, trucks, and buses blanket nostalgically spread atop my one-thousand-plus thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. Blanket was soft, stained, emblematic of my nonexistent romantic prospects.

  “You’re twelve,” Benjy said, stood. “Thirteen at the oldest.”

  “Oh, and you’re so mature?”

  Thought he might tickle me or fart in my face. A regression to the old sibling roles. Instead he faked a shin-kick, sat back on the floor, opened my laptop, navigated, raised eyebrows at the screen, frowned, closed the laptop.

  It always amazed me: the brevity of online interaction, the speed at which a mood could shift.

  “Fuck,” Benjy said.

  “What?”

  “Just fuck, celibate boy.”

  “I have a date tonight,” I said. “Might try to fuck, actually.”

  “Didn’t know you had a social life.”

  “And I didn’t know you had a penis. Funny how the world works.”

  But Benjy didn’t laugh. Not because he was offended—I’d accused him of genital deficiency enough times that the words had lost all effect—but because whatever he’d seen on the screen had made him suddenly subdued.

  “Mom’s shitty, huh?” he said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Just get the sense.”

  “No more miserable than she was before.”

  “I might stay at Dad’s.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t even have a room here, or a bed.”

  “Well, the couch is pretty comfortable,” I said in consolation. “I sleep on it a lot. I might sleep out tonight, anyway, if my date goes well.”

  Worth it to lose my bed for a night if it meant my brother might think I had a life. He stroked the carpet with his fingers, absently pocketed a piece of lint.

  “Okay, Romeo,” Benjy said.

  four

  Dan’s car smelled like cheap cologne. He drove a black SUV, bumped Jay-Z, repeated lines under his breath, out of time.

  “You know, Jay writes all his raps in his head,” I said. I’d seen a thing on TV. “Doesn’t write them down at all.”

  I liked that a brain could be so filled with words, all else pushed to the margins, made irrelevant.

  “No doubt,” Dan said, “H to the Izzo…”

  Turned my seat warmer full blast, watched the suburbs unfold out my window like a flip-book, houses getting incrementally larger, then smaller again once we got close to Jennifer’s.

  Crowd was comprised of high school’s leftovers—dropouts, Head-First kids, CC students—all domed-out on plastic-handle vodka, Busch Light. Wasn’t friends with the Head-First kids during high school, wasn’t not friends with them, either. Somewhere in between: too fucked up for the rich kids, too rich for the fucked-up kids. I always thought they were cool, not giving a shit that girls like Sherri Sacks wouldn’t give them the time of day.

  Henry Villeva and Jamal Green giggled in a corner, traded pulls on a nitrous canister. Tried to picture their faces when they’d found Jeremy. Did they go blue like in movies, say, “Oh, shit,” touch his body? If I were hanging, who would find me? Benjy, probably. All scientific, checking for a pulse, methodically dialing 911 on his cell.

  Jennifer Estes approached us.

  “You made it.”

  Not an excited “You made it”—no implied “I’m so glad,” no hello hug. Immediately obvious: she’d invited me purely out of pity, had sent a mass Evite to everyone on her friend list, had zero interest in setting sweet fricticious fires with our prematurely winter-worn bodies. My suspicion was confirmed when a muscled blond bro in a shirt unbuttoned to reveal a recently shaven chest put his arm around Jennifer.

  “Stef,” he said, held out a hand in an offer of false solidarity, an offer betrayed by a tooth-sharpening tongue click that said “I’m not worried about you Jew boys, as you have no chance with my señorita. But you better stay away from her just in case, because I’m old-school and wouldn’t blink at kicking the shit out of you.”

  “Short for Stephanie?” I said, which was the wrong thing to say.

  Stef instinctively flexed.

  “Stefan,” he said.

  “Keg’s over there,” Jennifer said. Situation defused.

  Never has a finger pointed to free alcohol been the cause of such sadness. As if she’d decreed, “Drink away your pathetic sorrows, round man; mourn the speedy decline of your sexual peak.”

  Guy next to me in line was a short, slug-like white dude with a wispy attempt at facial hair.

  “Yo, yo,” he said. “Big Schwartz! May the Schwartz be with you!”

  “Good one,” I said, because it wasn’t a good one. I looked over his shoulder, scoped the par-tay, watched my lost love dance lowdown, lusty butt-to-floor-back
-into-big hands (shaven-chest), tickled senseless by her own displayed sexuality, smiling, head-shaking, diva-snapping, spinning like a spiffy globe on the axis of her red-heeled shoes.

  “No chance,” the comedian said.

  “In sleep perchance to dream?”

  “2Pac, right? Or is that Fiddy?”

  “I’m too sober for this party.”

  “Dude? Bro, you used to be in my gym class! After-school gym. Mr. Zibikis, remember?”

  I remembered. Failed gym freshman year because Sammel’s brother let me ride with him during his lunch break. We’d loop the school’s surrounding streets, bumping eighties hip-hop I pretended to like ironically, but secretly envied for its uncomplicated exuberance. Rap’s prepubescence: before peeps got gats, got grillz, got serious. Thus, after-school gym.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “That shit sucked!”

  Only memory of the class was that after school they’d let geese shit on the field as a method of fertilizing the grass. One time Mr. Zibikis, an aging alcoholic who’d been demoted from football coach to after-school gym teacher, let us throw javelins at the geese, told us whoever hit one could go home. No one did, but I remember chasing geese around the girls’ softball field, chucking spears like we were Roman soldiers in the heart of Caesar’s army (Rome, HBO, 2005–2007).

  “Remember that time he let us throw javelins at the geese?” I said.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that was ill. So what you up to these days?”

  Not sure why I was so afraid of this question. Maybe because I was supposed to have gone to college, and we were supposed to have a conversation where I said I was in college, he said he wasn’t, we were both proud of our positions, and though we each looked down slightly on the other’s, our hearts still could be united by drugs, booze, girls, and one beautiful memory of attempted winged-animal assassination.

  “Not much. Living at home with my mom.”

  “You didn’t go to school?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Just didn’t work out.”