Flatscreen
Authors: Adam Wilson
a novel
adam wilson
for my brother
An object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
—Sir Isaac Newton
Hold steady.
—The Hold Steady
Part I
one
But maybe Mom’s not the place to start, though she’s where I began (in her I took shape, grew limbs, prepared to breathe oxygen, albeit with a slight asthmatic wheeze that has not been helped by cigarettes), and where all this coming-of-age stuff inevitably buds then barely blooms, like the pale azaleas Mrs. Todd put on her porch every spring but never watered, letting the rain try to raise them up, make them stand and receive sunlight, just as the constant dull glow of the television tried with me, equally failed.
No, this is not about Mom, Dad, or anything Freud said—books I haven’t read, though I’ve seen
Siggy’s Sexy Secrets
(Cinemax, 2005), get the general gist. It’s about a house, should begin there, just as it will end there, not before guns, drugs, strippers, and other tenets of contemporary suburban life enter the mix like Kool-Aid, leaving the water blood-red, sickly sweet.
If it is about Mom, I don’t want to know. We’ve all sucked a nipple or two, trolled MILFSandtheirILKS.com, seen a late-forties peroxide blonde bent over at Whole Foods, imagined licking between her legs, then being sucked in like a vacuum,
condensed, resting in her expanded torso, suspended in fluid like floating gizzards in a jar of chicken fat.
I’m getting off track.
Mom got the house in the divorce but it belonged to Dad. His hands had placed the I beams; his sweat had dripped into the foundation, manifested itself in the basement’s musty stink. Dad was there in the contours: tall-man toilets, sleek jut of post-deco faucets, abundant closet space. Still, we stayed for four years post-divorce. Then Benjy left for college. She and I: separate solitudes, separate floors.
I also finished high school. Instead of college, sank deep into my basement abyss. Watched TV for months, barely attentive, broadening my knowledge of subjects I’d missed in school: politics and current events (MSNBC), contemporary culture (E!), home economics (Food Network), geography (Travel), the secret life of fauna (Discovery), the last days of Eva Braun (History), Beavis and Butthead as cultural barometers for the Clinton years (MTV2), Jon Stewart skewering the world with Sunday crossword witticisms (Comedy Central), Humphrey Bogart’s slow-cool-sad-but-fuck-me eyes that I wanted to steal, to wear through the streets beneath my thickening, Dad-inherited black brows (AMC). I kept the lights off, rarely went upstairs.
The physical isolation was too much for Mom, who understood that cramped-ness equals intimacy. She put the house on the market.
No offers. It’s a McLovely McMansion Jr., well structured, formally fine-tuned. But it’s also a ranch-style split-level (hence the Jr.), doesn’t give the appearance of affluence homeowners in the neighborhood wish to radiate. School district is the nation’s finest, location prime, but the price was too high for most, not show-offy enough for those who could afford it.
When the Kahns showed up, I wasn’t expecting much. Actually, I wasn’t expecting anything, because Mom hadn’t told me they were coming. We weren’t communicating. She was mostly couch-anchored, sipping chardonnay, knitting an endless scarf, sobbing gumdrop tears into her pink fleece Slanket. I wasn’t capable of dealing with her pain, of being the man who makes everything okay. I wanted to be that man—to hold her defeated body while we shared in the promise of televised sunrise—but I didn’t know how to approach her. Everything scared the shit out of me.
So: I was surprised to be interrupted from sleep by a man in a wheelchair pushed by a brunette in a V-neck blouse—the V weighed down by a pair of large sunglasses to reveal a freckled valley of cleavage.
I said, “What the fuck?” as the lights went on, and Mom said, “This is Eli’s room,” without mentioning the fact that I, Eli, was lying pantsless in said room, drooling.
First reaction was to cover my erection. The brunette smiled. Mom rolled her eyes. Mr. Kahn didn’t seem to notice.
“Erin, my love, I think this space will suit your erotic needs charmingly,” he said.
“Dad,” Erin said. “Please … we’re in … besides … maybe we should come back when … um … maybe when… Eli, is it? … has had a chance to … wake up a bit.”
Kahn eyeballed the room: dusty collection of kid soccer trophies, old prom pic.
“Should we see the rest of the basement?” Mom said.
“Yes,” Mr. Kahn said. “It’s as if you’ve read my mind.”
Benjy was in the kitchen, effortfully ensembled in ironed jeans and starch-stiff white tee, tucked. Hair had been trimmed, slicked. Each time I saw him he looked distinctly
older, like Dad’s absence had sped the aging process. Ate standing up, checked his watch like he was late for something, which he wasn’t.
“Shouldn’t you be at college?” I said.
“High Holidays. You forget?”
“Didn’t know you came for round two.”
“Yom Kip’s the important one. Day of Atonement.”
“When is that, tomorrow?”
He looked me over. Open bathrobe revealed a defeated-by-gravity stomach. Hair was a bird’s nest. I was a wounded, well-fed bird.
“You got a suit?” he said.
“I don’t know, dude. Who are those people downstairs?”
Benjy took a bite from his sandwich, looked at his watch again, plucked a nose hair—unmirrored—with impressive accuracy.
“Don’t think you’ll fit into your old suit.”
“Downstairs,” I said. “People? Wheelchair guy? Brunette?”
“They’re the Kahns. Buying the house. Good wheelchair access because there’s only two floors and the garage opens into the basement.”
“Serious?”
“Yes, I am. Daughter’s quite attractive.”
“Quite,” I said in a tone that accused him of douche-baggery. “Any coffee?”
Benjy nodded at the empty maker.
“It’s three in the afternoon.”
“Who tucks a tee shirt?” I said, went out to my smoking chair.
A rusted deck chair next to a soda bottle filled with ciggie butts. Lit up, looked at the trees, imagined they didn’t lead to
the Mitchells’ landscaped lawn, but to a deep forest filled with soul-singing, silicone-enhanced Amazon women.
Screen door opened. Mr. Kahn wheeled himself out.
“Nice boner in there.”
Dark eyes, almost black. Waves of lightly salted ginger hair hung feral from his head like the abused dome-bristles on an expensive, over-loved doll. Slim-cut burgundy suit; gold-stitched lapels accented by matching, pointed pocket square. Bow tie dramatically untied. The man was anywhere between forty and eighty. A squint accompanied his smile. Face was familiar.