Authors: Matt Sumell
Making Nice (9 page)
I decided it would be best if I left the house.
I’ll describe the walls because that’s easy—they were white, and I hurt my right pinky knuckle punching some of them while I walked through rooms searching for my car keys. My inability to find them frustrated me so badly that I beat up the bathroom door, limped away and waved my fist at the plaster statue of Beethoven’s head on top of the piano we never learned to play. After all that, I found the keys in a coat pocket I had already checked but somehow missed. I grabbed the video and made toward the back door, but on my way I noticed Sparkles cowering under the kitchen table, shaking, terrified of me. I hated myself a little extra, fed her a slice of manufactured cheese, patted her on the head, and took the back steps three at a time.
At the bottom I picked up a stick and swung it around because I liked the noise and then I threw it at a leafless tree and missed. I opened the door of my car—a black Camry with a cracked back bumper and a wire coat hanger for an antenna—climbed in, and slammed it closed. The window handle fell off. When I started the car Justin Timberlake sang “Cry Me a River” and I wanted to kick him out a skyscraper window like Clapton’s kid; watch him fall from far away like 9/11 victims.
On Woodlawn Avenue I saw a mailbox painted like a cow. On Idle Hour Boulevard I saw a mailbox shaped like a swan. On Shore Drive I did math with mailbox numbers until the 7-Eleven on the corner of Vanderbilt and Montauk. There was a telephone pole with two signs stapled to it. One read:
NO INSURANCE?
CHEAP DENTAL CARE
1 800 DENTALL
1324 Lincoln Drive
The other was an invitation to a Mormon open house.
I pulled into the 7-Eleven and bought coffee and cigarettes and sat on the curb and smoked two and thought it through. I’d show up at the open house and knock on the door and say hello. Once inside I would do drugs and gamble and have sex with a hooker. Then I would give a lecture on evolution, do a scientific experiment (something with a Bunsen burner), accuse them of mental imperialism, and kill everyone there. I would punch noses and poke eyes out and smash teeth out of skulls. I would walk on tables and jump off and kick heads. I’d grab everyday objects in the room and throw them at faces, pinch ladies’ asses, and shove a small person into something sharp. I’d duck and weave and block slow punches, dodge lunges, light fires, insult children and mustaches. I’d read three paragraphs of
Fishboy
and use page fifty-six to paper-cut throats, kick stomachs and brush my teeth, crack spines and comb my hair, break necks and do long division. I’d poison like four of them. I’d breathe through a florescent-colored snorkel—a pink one maybe—and I’d keep a pretty lady alive to fold my clothes. If she didn’t do a good job I’d bite her white arm. It would look like the teeth marks in a Styrofoam coffee cup. I took another sip.
I stood up, lit a third cigarette, and threw the burning book of matches into the garbage bin. I watched from the car—black smoke, melting plastic, charred Slurpee cups and candy wrappers, half-eaten hot dogs, and flame swirled up and blackened then shattered the ten-by-ten-foot front window. I felt better, and it was only 2:32 p.m.
I pulled out of the parking lot and headed east down Montauk Highway and saw the West Sayville fire trucks speeding in the opposite direction. I watched telephone poles and small leafless trees blur by. I passed an Exxon and a Gulf and a Texaco and a Shell. The world is full of shit and gasoline. I passed lube joints and fast-food huts, nail salons and pizza places, pharmacies and Old Navys. I thought about the American landscape and punching Morgan Fairchild in the face.
I passed Highway Call Box 5-492.
I passed a bank.
I passed a man hitchhiking.
This one does not end with me at a bar, or me at a bar and losing a fist fight, or me at a bar and talking to my father, or me at a bar and angry, or me at a bar and really drunk, or me getting thrown out of a bar for being really drunk, although I’m confident at least one of those did happen after the funeral. This story ends at Mr. Video.
I returned
American Ninja 2
and put a shiny quarter into a giant gumball machine hoping to get a green one, which equals a free rental. If I don’t get green I like white ones because they don’t discolor your teeth. I thought about my grandmother’s dentures as I listened to the gumball spiral down and spiral down and spiral down and clink. Yellow.
I must have been five or six when my father and I were walking outside Mario’s Barber Shop and I looked up and wanted to hold his hand but could only fit mine around his thumb, so I kicked him. At eight years old I beat up my brother because he took his watch off and the band smelled like Cheez Doodles. At eleven I killed a seagull with a rock and at twelve I killed a lot of them with a Crosman BB gun. I got my driver’s license the day after I turned sixteen, and when my parents let me borrow the car, I’d drive around looking for possums and raccoons and garbage cans to run over. I was suspended from high school for fighting. When I was nineteen I broke my right hand on a two-by-four stud behind the sheetrock wall of my studio apartment, and at twenty-one I broke that same hand punching a cocky fat-faced Mexican in the ear. He insulted my sister in a bar and told me to fuck off when I asked him to apologize. I was aiming for his nose but I was drunk.
After we grappled a few seconds he landed a few good punches and split open my left eyebrow. I didn’t mind—sharp pain is better than an ache. We bumped into some people and before I knew it there were green plastic chairs and brown bottles and fists and curse words flying around. He got beat pretty badly by two guys I’d never seen before and ended up near unconscious on the floor. His head was propped up against the wall.
“Hey,” I said. His eyes fixed on mine. “You should be nicer to people.” Then—but only twice—I jumped on his face.
My father picked me up at the police station and we went to The Wharf and didn’t speak to each other. I never studied physics but you can fill silence with Bud bottles. I took a sip, wondering what was in his bloodshot blue eyes: disappointment, pride, dust … They looked like gasoline rainbows in parking-lot puddles. Torn pieces of my Bud label were all over the mahogany bar. Nervous confetti. I took another sip.
He told me his stories: his fights (two beers), his old girlfriend Babs Zarabinski (one beer), the size of my grandfather’s hands (half a beer); how once in a bar he turned to his buddy Georgie Rice and said, “I’d like to bite her on the ass and pray for lockjaw,” and how Georgie Rice ran across the bar, slid on his knees, and did it (the other half); how Georgie Rice is dead now (shot of whiskey). He told me about his Harley wreck when he lost his leg (one beer); how he spent a year in the Charleston navy hospital in a full-body cast, how he tried to kill himself with three weeks’ worth of pain killers (shot of whiskey). He explained how the brain perceives a missing limb, how sometimes he feels an ache or an itch where there isn’t anything, how he can wiggle his missing toes.
My father ordered another two beers and things started blurring together, as if punctuation marks were rationed. Words and time went missing. The two bottles slid an inch after the bartender’s hand to a stop in front of us. My father held out a ten-dollar bill but the bartender looked past him and ran to the end of the bar and out. A short guy that reminded me of a Melba Round took a swing at this taller guy
broken glass.
I thought maybe
I was wrong.
a cigarette and
the creases in my father’s face.
diagonal lines in denim
black gum on the sidewalk,
mailbox 3
five steps up
door.
doorknob.
I woke up to glass breaking and I heard him mumble. It was 7:03 a.m. I closed my eyes and opened them and it was 7:16. I went to see if he was OK.
“I was hoppin’ to the bathroom and the mirra fell off.”
“The big one on the door?”
“Yeah.”
I made coffee. We drank in silence, except for spoons, a swallow, kitchen’s hum. He had work and wanted to get on the road before traffic, so I walked him out to the car. It was raining.
He climbed in, to the
bing … bing …
of an open door, to the crunch of Styrofoam cups, the crinkle of grease-stained deli brown bags from his bacon, egg, and cheeses. He backed out and pulled away. I watched him till he got around the corner before looking down at where his car had been parked. Raindrops were rippling a puddle of antifreeze.
I’m a male, you can tell just by looking, I’ve got sideburns. The sideburns I’ve got are the kind you can see even if my nose is pointing at you—they’ve got volume. Also I’m white with brown hair, not white with blond hair or black with black hair, so there’s contrast. Plus I was staring at the not-very-green peas in the bow tie pasta salad—maybe they were capers—which was behind the glass counter, which was down and to the left of where I was standing, so I’m sure my right sideburn was in full view from the deli clerk’s line of sight. When she finally looked up from washing a shiny metal mixing bowl and saw me there waiting to order my favorite sandwich—the Tuscany, it’s Italian—she turned off the faucet and yelled, “Vaness! Vanessa! Come out front and help this lady!” Initially I thought she was referring to someone else, but she wasn’t, I checked both shoulders. Then I just kind of left.
On the way home I made the mistake of answering the phone when my sister called, and then the mistake of telling her what had just happened to me. She laughed so hard she had a coughing fit, then brought up the time we were at the ShopRite together because Sparkles needed new dog food because our parents had been feeding her some cheeseburger-flavored stuff that had made her so fat when she sat down her back legs disappeared under a roll of blubber. We were in line to pay for the quality diet stuff when this lady approached me and said, “S’cuse me, hi, I just needed to ask you … are you related to Nance Panetieri over on Biltmore? The resemblance is just, oh my gawd”—and here she rolled her fingers in front of my face like she’d just performed a magic trick on my nose—“it’s as
tawn
ishing.” Then she exhaled for effect and made her eyes big at me while she waited for my response, which was no, I’m not. After my sister finished out-loud-remembering that, I told her that she was not nice and probably a dyke, and she said at least I don’t look like one and hung up.
* * *
Even though it was a couple extra miles from my apartment I started shopping at a different supermarket, a Pathmark, which was a little pricier but seemed cleaner and had better lighting. Things went pretty well there for a while until I found myself next to the soups one night. I took a step back and looked up the soups and down the soups and up at the fluorescent lights and the ceiling, and then I spun in a circle and realized I was basically in a warehouse full of food and felt completely overwhelmed. A similar thing happens to me in libraries and while looking at the menus of certain Greek diners on Long Island. There are just too many choices to choose from, so nothing stands out, and before I know it the waitress is coming back again and I still don’t know what I want because I’ve been wondering about bison and commercial freezers or something and can’t make a decision so I say nothing, thanks, I’m sorry, and go sit in my car and deep breathe and squeeze the steering wheel.
So, there I was, thinking I gotta get the fuck outta here right now, and headed with haste for the exit. I was halfway across the parking lot listening to the change jingle in my left pocket when I heard, “Hey! You! You gonna pay for that candy bar?!”
I spun and saw a blond guy in a blue vest coming straight for me. And when adults are blond and guys—adult blond guys—I for some reason have a difficult time being not-bothered by them. Blond women don’t bother me, and neither do blond children. But nine out of ten adult blond males do bother me, because I think they should have grown out of it already. So when I saw him there, something inside my chest sunk, and I pointed at it with an index finger.
“Me?”
“
Yeah. You.
You like to steal candy bars?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
“Then why’d you steal that candy bar?”
“I didn’t steal a candy bar.”
“Well then why did one of my employees just tell me they saw you steal a candy bar?”
I best-guessed it was because they were old and maybe had poor vision. This must have made some sense to him because he stood blinking at me for a few seconds while he considered it. Then he said, “I don’t think so, son.”
“Son? I’m thirty.”
“Really? You look younger than that.”
“Thanks.”
At this point a black car that looked like a Toyota Camry to me—but most cars look like Toyota Camrys to me—made its slow way up the row of parked Toyota Camry–looking cars toward us, and we both glanced at it.
“Let me see what’s in your pockets,” he said, every now and again glancing at the slow-moving car.
“Sure,” I said, glancing at the slow-moving car. Then we both just stared at it, and after what seemed like a really long time, and actually may have been a really long time, the car finally arrived to where we were standing and rolled to a stop. The passenger-side window slid down, and the blond-haired blue-vested guy and I both stooped to see inside it, where a not-unattractive lady with her brown hair done up in an up-top bun leaned over and said, “Hi.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Evening, ma’am,” the blond guy said.
“Could either of you tell me where the Blue Legume is?” the lady asked.
“Sure,” said the blond guy. “I
love
that place. If you haven’t been before, I recommend the miso kelp noodles with tempeh and shitake mushrooms.”