I'm Sorry You Feel That Way (13 page)

I knew what he meant. I don’t like to go outside, either. I have never seen a reason to go outside unless it’s to get in a car that will take me to another place to go inside. When I was a child, my mother swept me outside with her broom. Out, out! she’d say, and I’d go outside, I’d go outside and sit on the front steps, waiting to be let back inside.

“You’re going,” I told the boy. “The Television Face told Mommy to take you outside, so you are going outside! You’re going to do all the things normal children your age do! So get your butt on that swing and start swinging! Now!”

Years later, the boy still resists going outside. He says he doesn’t like the sun. He says it smells funny outside. If you tell him that funny smell is the smell of the outdoors, clean air, he’ll say it makes him sneeze, it gives him a headache, and if he needed to smell the outdoors, he’d take a whiff of Fresh Scent Tide.

 

 

 

 

 

At nine o’clock p.m., the boy emerged from his room. He’d washed the blood off his arms and leg and he seemed to be in a better mood. He announced he was starving, he asked if I would fix him two grilled cheese sandwiches, he said he and Louis had been IM’ing.

He wanted to know if Louis could sleep over tonight.

Is this boy for real? Is he normal? Does he have the skills he needs to survive? He’s so different from me. When I was his age, small children were left in my care, and I rooted through their mother’s medicine cabinets in search of a small white pill called Valium. Because I didn’t like to be in my room, I popped out the window screen and climbed out. I smoked pot with the high school senior across the street. But I also combed my hair and wore clean underwear and took some pride in my appearance.

It seems to me that any human boy who will be old enough to vote in less time than it would take for me to pay off a new car should know to brush his teeth every day without my having to tell him to. The boy should know to go outside into the bright sun-shiny daytime, he should want to go outside, he shouldn’t want to be so pale. He should prefer interacting with others to endless hours of slack-jawed, mouth-breathing video-game playing, and he should, over the course of a summer, pick up a book and read it. His mother is a college English professor married to another college English professor. A boy who is being raised by two college English professors should have a deep and profound love of the written word. But the boy says he doesn’t like to read, he hates Language Arts, he hates books and having to write book reports about them. “I think reading is a waste of time,” he says.

The boy is so different from boys I grew up with, from my rough-and-tumble brothers, from
boy
as I thought I understood the word. This boy doesn’t like to be sweaty, he doesn’t like to get dirty. He doesn’t like to play sports except for Madden NFL on Xbox 360. He says words like “flash memory” and “firmware dump” and “removable hard drive”; he made a video of himself downgrading 2.6 to 1.5 on his PSP that is over six minutes long; he says he has a bunch of illegal games and stuff he got off the Internet. “If I died and they searched my PSP, they’d know,” he says, “but they’d need a warrant.”

The boy doesn’t run. His walk is plodding, pokey, he drags his feet. He doesn’t like to hurry. He has a bike and knows how to ride it, but he’d rather not. Riding a bike means going outside. He doesn’t like leaving his room. When I asked him if he thought he might be agoraphobic, a thirteen-year-old agoraphobic, did he think he needed help because I can get him help, he told me that was a mean thing to say.

“You’re mean,” he said. “A mean woman is my mother. Can you get me help for that?”

 

 

 

 

 

At two-seventeen this morning, Louis and the boy were playing Halo on Xbox 360. I could hear them talking. I don’t think they were having a conversation, exactly. They didn’t seem to be talking to each other. Their voices were pitchy falsettos. What they were saying creeped me out.

“Mother?” the boy said. “Oh, Mother!”

“Eep!” said Louis. “Eeeep!”

“Why, Mother? Why?” the boy shrilled. “Oh, Mother!”

I don’t think he meant me. I think he was talking about some other mother, the universal mother, the one every boy has to turn his back to if he’s to become a man.

“This game is so violent, Mother!” the boy harped. “Why are you letting me play such a violent video game, Mother? Mother? Mother!”

Maybe the problem is I can’t spread a blanket across the living room floor and put him there. He’s too wiggly. He gets up and walks around. Pokes his head in the refrigerator. Pours himself some Mountain Dew. He settles on the couch, then he’s on the phone, then he’s rooting through the junk drawer looking for a deck of cards or a fishing lure or that great big ball of rubber bands he made back in fourth grade. He says he’s hungry and he needs a ride.

The boy is a bleeding heart when it comes to choosing favorites on game shows: if two contestants are white guys and one contestant is a black guy, the boy will root for the black guy every single time. If you ask him isn’t it kind of weird to like someone just because he’s black, the boy will ask if you’re a racist. If you say something snarky about all the blue-hairs at the grocery, it must be Senior Citizen Discount Thursday, the boy will ask if you’re ageist.

The boy has strong feelings about hate. He uses the word a lot. He hates people who call attention to themselves. He hates to be the center of attention. He just can’t stand to have a lot of people looking at him. He hates even the idea of people thinking about him. He hates pancakes, the way a new car smells, and the feel of newspaper. He says newspaper feels cheap. He hates Jon Bon Jovi, he hates when the temperature rises above seventy-five degrees, he hates generic macaroni and cheese. He hates pierced ears on men, and sometimes, just to mess with his head, I tell him get in the car, we’re going to the mall to get your ears pierced. “I’m not a junkie, Mom,” he says.

The boy has still never said he hates me. I’ve been waiting for him to say it, but he hasn’t said it. I keep waiting and waiting. Why hasn’t he said it?

I expect he will sooner or later. I’m ready for it, I’m prepared. It won’t be a surprise. And when he does, I know what I will say in return:

What the hell do you want from me now?

I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!

I adore you.

W
hen a state trooper passes me on the highway, I grit my teeth, check my speed, and hope nobody put a dead guy in the trunk while I was in Wal-Mart last night at two a.m. When a squad car pulls up behind me at the red light on Front Street and Second, I nervously keep watch in my rearview mirror. Even though I’m pretty sure I’ve done nothing wrong, committed no crime, I’m wearing my seat belt, I came to a complete stop at that stop sign, I slowed down to twenty miles per hour in that school zone, my insurance is paid, my tags are up-to-date, I used my turn signal and my headlights are in working order, I still feel anxious. Guarded. Uptight. I still say
Oh, great, it’s the cops
or
It’s the fucking cops
or
Watch out for the fucking pig cops
like I am Bonnie in the getaway car, smoking a cigarette while waiting with toe-tapping impatience for Clyde to get his ass out of that bank, overstuffed bags of cash in his hand. Even though I am almost always completely innocent, I am still not crazy about the police.

Some girls are. Some girls dig cops. It’s the uniform, the gun, the nightstick. It’s the shiny badge, the way it glints in the light. It catches your eye. It’s the promise of power and safety and protection and masculinity, the boy in blue, the crime fighter, the one who goes after the bad guys, the one who kicks ass. Yes, there are little honeys out there who love a cop.

So says the cop who is also my baby brother. His name is Travis, but since childhood, he’s been known as Bye-Bye. He’s just returned from an all-expenses-paid vacation to Laguna Beach, California, with some little honey who’s got a thing for cops.

Bye-Bye has called me up to tell me all about it. I’ve been on the phone with him for an hour already, listening to his Californian adventure. He wants to know how do you say “X-rated” in French.

The little honey’s father is a B-list Hollywood celebrity; she and my brother met two weeks ago, but apparently she’s had her eye on him for longer than that. She’d seen him around when he was on bike patrol. Honeys like bike patrol, he says. Girls want to give him their phone number, want to take him out to dinner, or make him dinner, or get into his pants, or crawl into his bed. He says he has to be careful, because honeys are horny and he is the hive. “They want me,” he says. “They just can’t help themselves.” When he’s on bike patrol, Bye-Bye’s uniform is a department-issued navy blue shirt and navy blue shorts. His badge shines like a diamond, but it’s those shorts that catch the female eye. “I can’t help I look so good,” he says. “I’m just doing my job.”

I was five and a half years old when Bye-Bye was born, and aside from a clear memory of taking his hospital picture to first grade for Show and Tell so I could stand cutely in front of the class, tossing my hair and generally showing off, I don’t remember his early years at all. I don’t remember my mother being pregnant with him. I don’t remember my mother going to the hospital so he could be born. I don’t remember her bringing home a baby. I don’t remember anyone even talking about a baby.

I feel like I should remember something. Especially since there’s quite a bit I do remember about the year Bye-Bye was born. It was 1976. “Afternoon Delight” played on the radio fifty times a day. The Supreme Court ruled on
Gregg v. Georgia
, and the Ramones released their self-titled debut album. The United Kingdom broke off diplomatic relations with Uganda, and like every American who was between the ages of five and twelve on July 4, 1976, I have pleasant memories of participating in the celebration concert extravaganza that my hometown put on to honor our nation’s bicentennial. I can still feel the scratchy polyester of the blue jumpsuit I wore, the lacy collar on the white blouse, the little red jacket. A white plastic hat completed the look. It kept sliding off my head during the performance but I nonetheless felt adorable. I also felt proud to be an American. I can still belt out every word to such patriot classics as “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”

But I don’t remember any baby at my house in 1976.

I don’t have a memory of Bye-Bye until he’s six years old, then boom! All of a sudden and out of nowhere, there he is, another little brother, a wild boy everyone calls Bye-Bye because he likes to flush the toilet and wave so-long-see-ya-good-bye to its contents.

I already had one brother who was cuter than me; now I had one who was more clever.

In my first memory of him, Bye-Bye is standing on the front stoop of our house. It’s late summer, the sun is golden, and the smell of my mother’s roses is almost overwhelming. Bye-Bye is stripping off his clothes, he’s gyrating his pelvis. He’s bumping and grinding and thrusting like he’s auditioning for a gig with the Chippendales or the leading role of plumber / porn star. He’s grinning, devious and self-satisfied. This has got to be something he’s seen on HBO, and though I have overheard our parents whisper to each other that HBO is not appropriate for children, Bye-Bye has watched HBO. A lot. All those times he so sweetly fell asleep on our mother’s lap and she was too tired or too lazy or too hypnotized by the tawdriness that was HBO to carry him to his bed, Bye-Bye was really wide-awake. He was watching HBO and here are the consequences.

Bye-Bye is naked on the front stoop, shaking his stuff. Our mother isn’t around during this, and I have no idea where she is, but I’m sure she instructed me to watch him. She no doubt said keep an eye on your baby brother. That would be why I’m in such a tizzy about Bye-Bye’s burlesque show. I’m worried that even though he’s the one naked on the front stoop, his body brown, his penis pink, his butt white, I’m going to be the one who gets in trouble. I can still hear myself telling him, asking him, begging him, “Bye-Bye, please, put your clothes back on, please, please, before somebody sees you,” but he keeps dancing naked on the front stoop. He’s doing a kind of hula dance that morphs into the hustle. “Please, Bye-Bye? Please put your clothes back on?”

He says no. He won’t. And you can’t make him. Nobody can.

Nobody will be able to make Bye-Bye do anything he doesn’t want to do. Not when he’s in second grade and smoking Winstons. Not when he’s egging the principal’s car in fifth grade or chugging beer in seventh or skipping school in ninth. He gets in trouble with teachers, he gets suspended from school, he gets in fights, once even beating up a kid for saying your mother is a whore. It would seem that juvie is in my brother’s future, but he gets through high school, and he goes to college on a football scholarship, and when he drops out after only one semester, nobody is surprised. When he becomes a bouncer at a strip club, nobody is surprised. Nobody is surprised when he stays out partying all night, or when he crashes his motorcycle, or when he dates girls who have stage names, or when he has a tattoo etched on his biceps that he says is a tribal something or other though I think it looks a lot like barbed wire, agricultural fencing to keep the cows in the pasture.

It would seem my littlest brother is headed for a life of bad boy-ness, becoming an enforcer for a Chicago mob family, perhaps, or a white rapper. But when he decides to go to the police academy, to become a crime fighter, a law enforcer, a George W. Bush-supporting Republican, I can’t say anybody is surprised. Who better to keep the order than someone who spent so much time thwarting it?

 

 

 

 

 

Male pattern baldness runs in our family, and Bye-Bye is among its unfortunate victims. He deals with this genetic injustice by keeping his head shaved, which makes his eyes look enormous, his forehead, huge. Like if he head-butted you even lightly, your skull would crack open like an egg. At five-feet-seven-and-three-quarters, my brother isn’t tall, but he’s wide and he’s solid. He weighs one pound over two hundred. His body fat is 4.7 percent. He works out five days a week, for an hour and a half to two hours, a workout that’s carefully planned: chest and cardio and abs on Monday; shoulders, traps, and abs on Tuesday; calves and cardio and abs on Wednesday; shoulders, forearms, cardio, and abs on Thursday; biceps, triceps, cardio, and abs on Friday. He can bench-press more than four hundred pounds. He wears a gold necklace from which dangle two of what he calls pendants and I call charms: one is a bodybuilder lifting a barbell over his head; the other is the number 42.