Perfect Fifths (15 page)

"Hit me."

"A Detroit man named Figlock was walking down the street. A baby fell out of a high window and landed right on top of him. Both survived. A year later, Figlock was walking down the same street. The same baby fell out of the same window and landed right on top of him. Both survived again."

"Yawn. If his last name were Babycatcher, then I'd be amazed. And I've heard that one already, anyway."

"An American woman was shopping in a used bookstore in Paris. She spotted a copy of her favorite book of short stories from her childhood—"

"Yeah, yeah. She opened it up to the front page and found her name written on the inside in her seven-year-old handwriting. Gimme something else. And don't insult me with the JFK-Abraham Lincoln connection, or how the twenty-dollar bill predicted September eleventh."

"I wouldn't dream of insulting you, Jessica. Not on purpose, anyway, and not so early into this reunion."

"Quit stalling. I'm still waiting to be amazed."

"Why is it that we've all heard these same strange-but-true stories?"

"It's like a form of religion, Marcus. The existence of unbelievable possibilities make us believe in the impossible."

"Ha! And you've accused me of spouting pseudo-philosophical bumper-sticker wisdom!"

"That was painfully bad, wasn't it? I'm sorry, it must be the pseudoephedrines talking ... Or, uh, the Midol. I'm sorry."

"Jessica!"

"What?"

"You don't even realize you're doing it."

"Doing what?"

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"Apologizing all the time."

"I'm—Oops! I did, didn't I?"

"For the rest of this conversation, I'm charging you a dollar every time you say I'm sorry.1"

"A dollar? How much money do you think I have?"

"Then you better mind your tongue."

"Mind your tongue?"

"Oh, man. Now, that sounds like a badly translated tattoo."

[Pause.]

"That was a joke, Jessica. I was making a joke."

[Pause.]

"I was just thinking that if you got 'mind your tongue1 as a tattoo wrapped around your other arm, it could also be read as 'tongue your mind.'"

"Tongue your mind.1 That's certainly evocative. I can just picture someone licking a brain, can't you?"

"I can. It's gross—yet oddly ..."

"Sensual."

"Right."

"More provocative than evocative."

"Ow. Ow. Ow."

"Another wave of cramps?"

"Oh yeah. It's a menstrual tsunami in my uterus. Oh, I'm being totally gross, right? TMI! Ewwwwwww!"

"Not at all. The female reproductive cycle is a beautiful thing. A wonderful, miraculous—"

"Are you stalling, Marcus? Because I'm still waiting."

"For what?"

"For your best strange-but-true story."

"Oh, right. Hmm... How about this one? Seventy-year-old Finnish twins were hit by cars while riding their bicycles. Two separate accidents on the same road. They lay comatose in adjoining hospital rooms, then died seventeen minutes apart—exactly the same amount of time between their births."

[Violent coughing fit.]

"Are you okay?"

[Still more coughing.]

"Your bullshit detector is whoop-whoop-whooping. You're right, Jessica. You got me. I made up that last part about the seventeen minutes, but the rest is true."

[Cough.] "No, that's not it."

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"What? Are you okay? Did I say something wrong?"

"No. Just. This cold. And. Ow. These beautiful, wonderful, miraculous cramps."

"Are you trying to get me to apologize so / have to pay you a dollar?"

"Oh, so it goes both ways?"

"Of course it does. That's just fair play. So I'll ask again. Did I say something wrong? Because I won't apologize even if I did."

"You didn't say anything wrong."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"You don't seem too sure."

"I'm sure. Uh. I was just trying to remember something."

"What?"

"A quote Mac shared with me. "Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange.'"

"Point taken: The Finnish twins story was strange but true enough as it was, without embellishment. I won't exaggerate the truth again."

"And if that quotation sounded like a bumper sticker or a bad tattoo, don't blame me."

"Who's to blame?"

"Lord Byron, I think."

"Aha! Byron is the fall guy! The scapegoat! Jessica, for the rest of this conversation, let's blame it on Byron."

"Blame what on Byron?"

"All of it. Anything. Everything."

"On Byron?"

"Yes, Byron."

"Why Byron?"

"Because he's the one to blame."

"For what?"

"All of it. Anything. Everything."

"I see. So Byron is the de facto asshole of assholes."

"Now you're getting it!"

"At least our nonsensical non sequiturs have literary roots."

"Want to know why this conversation isn't making any sense?"

"Let me guess. Byron."

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"Bingo."

[Pause.]

"So, not to put, uh, you know, undue emphasis on this particular topic or anything ..."

"Feel free to put due emphasis on whatever topic you want, Jessica."

"Because I can always blame it on Byron."

"Exactly."

"So having a drink every now and then is part of the whole Buddhist middle-path approach to life, right?"

"I was never a Buddhist."

"Right. Are you still a deist who studies—What was it again?"

"Vipassana meditation. And not really. After years of trying, I had to own up to the fact that I'm not really the meditation type. It's too passive. I've come closer at finding inner peace through action. Doing something instead of trying to contemplate nothing. That's part of what my work in the Gulf Coast is all about. We tear houses down to the studs so they can be built again. Paul and I talked about this—the benefit of manual labor is that you can see the results right away. You tear out a door frame with a crowbar, and it's gone, you know? It's real progress, not just theoretical."

"It's the very opposite of the navel-gazing philosophy major I mistook you for."

"I wasn't going to point that out."

"That's why I didn't want to guess."

"What's why?"

"You know how I hate to be wrong ..."

"Right."

"I didn't want to find out just how totally wrong I could be."

"The next time you make a mistake? Byron."

"Right, I'll pin it all on Byron."

"Things will go a lot more smoothly, Jessica, if you just blame Byron."

three

(fair question)

Oh! I'm vibrating! I mean, my phone. It's vibrating. Where is my phone? I can never find my phone."

"Isn't there a special pocket for your phone?"

"There are, like, thirty-six special pockets for my phone."

"But if you put it in the same pocket every time, you'll always know where it is. You need a system."

"A system. Gee whiz, Marcus. I never thought of that. And—Oh! I've found it. It's already stopped.

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Let's see... Oh ..."

"Who was it?"

"Just my sister."

"Are you avoiding Bethany?"

"Not avoiding, per se, just not going out of my way to talk to her."

"Is there something going on?"

"Oh, no. Well, not really. I know why she's calling, and it's not, like, an emergency situation or anything, so ..."

"Why is she calling?"

"She's just calling to wish me a happy b—bon voyage. It's nothing. No big. Sister stuff. You know."

"Not really. But, er, okay. How is Bethany, anyway?"

"Bethany is a happy divorcee."

"She split with what's-his-name?"

"G-Money And yes. Two years ago."

"I can't say I'm surprised. He was always a bit of a ..."

"Douchenozzle?"

"Well, yeah."

"The divorce is the best thing that's ever happened to Bethany—and Marin, for that matter."

"Marin! How is Marin?"

"Marin is awesome. And get ready, because this is going to freak you out."

"I'm ready."

"She's turning eight in June."

"Eight?"

"Eight!"

"Oh, man. I remember when she was born! How did that happen?"

"Life happened. You want to see her picture?"

"Yes."

"Here it is."

"Wow. She's a little knockout, isn't she?"

"She's really, really smart, too. But you can't really see that in the picture."

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"Hmmm."

"What?"

"This is going to sound crazy, but I swear that I've seen this picture before."

"You've probably seen it in the advertising for the Be You Tea Shoppe."

"Advertising?"

"Oh yeah. Before the stock market tanked, Marin's face moved a few hundred thousand units of Chamomile Lowlights hair extensions to the six-to-nine-year-old starter market."

"That's it! I walked past Marin's picture hundreds of times. One of those Shoppes used to be up on Nassau Street. It was MILF HQ until it went out of business."

"That makes perfect sense. Princeton was precisely the type of high-end, upscale, affluential community targeted by Wally D's/Papa D's Retailtainment Corp. But a

venture like the Be You Tea Shoppe was doomed in this economy. All the Shoppes will close by the end of this year."

"Wow. That's too bad."

"Yeah. Too bad."

"You seem oddly pleased by your sister's failure."

"I've got mixed feelings on the subject of my sister's failure."

"Elaborate."

"On the one hand, I was very proud of Bethany and how hard she's worked to turn this strangely anachronistic concept into a hip, profitable business. It was really doing well until, you know, the global economy collapsed. I mean, in an age when eight-year-old girls could go to a spa and get a Teeny-Weeny Tweeny Bikini Wax, who knew there'd be a market for girls happy to hang out and have tea parties and get mani-pedis with their moms? Or their grandmothers? But now, well, such luxuries are considered gauche. Which is a shame because working outside the home gave Bethany a sense of purpose and self-confidence that, quite frankly, shocked the hell out of me."

"How so?"

"I'll be the first to admit that I always saw my sister as being ... well..."

"Shallow?"

"Yeah, shallow. No depth. Talking about the weather could strain the limits of her intellectual terrain. Or so I thought. Because it turns out my sister is perhaps one of the most complicated people I know."

"Go on."

"In her adult life, there's always been a certain duality to her personality. She could be at once completely reasonable and—though this isn't PC to say, I'm going to
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say it anyway—like, retarded."

"Jessica ..."

"Hey, I would have apologized before I said that, but I didn't want to give up a dollar. But seriously, Marcus, I've sometimes wondered if there's an insidious mini-monster virus snacking on her brain cells. Remember the ten-thousand-square-foot biodegradable dot commune? Or when she wanted to hire strippers to sell a product called Donut Ho's?"

"I see your point."

"But walking out on G-Money took balls. I was so proud of her. So many of her friends stay in unhappy marriages because they're so afraid their lives will fall apart.

Bethany really saw it as an opportunity to rebuild. And I've always admired how she's raised Marin, now more than ever. Like when she and G-Money were still

together, she got a lot of shit from the MILFs—remember the Only the Best MILFs?—for not having another kid."

"I thought lots of families in the city have only one."

"Oh no, not in Bethany's circle, where four is the new two. Or, as I like to put it, four is the new stretch Hummer. It used to be that the poorest families had the most children so they could be put to work on the farm or whatever. But now mass procreation is the must-do. It's, like, the ultimate marker of economic success and prosperity. 'Even in a worldwide recession, we can afford private school for four kids! Can you?'"

"That's messed up."

"You have no idea. Bethany made it pretty clear that she's done with one. Marin satisfies all her maternal urges, which has made her a pariah among the MILFs.

Like, they cannot understand why she wanted to bother with this business of hers when she got the brown-stone and wife and child support in the settlement to still keep up with everything OTB."

"Only the Best."

"Right. Only now in these uncertain financial times, OTB is less ostentatious and more sanctimonious.

When the MILFs aren't bragging about their kids—'Darwin is the only child in his preschool who can request paper, not plastic in six languages'—they're bitching about them—'Curie's orphan obsession has gotten totally out of

hand; we have to sponsor yet another starving child from Appalachia1—in a way that's even more smug and annoying than the in-your-face praise. They don't seem all that interested in doing or talking about anything else."

"And Bethany?"

"To my surprise, she's totally over it. You know what she said to me? That every opening of a Be You Tea Shoppe was like having another kid. And I knew what she meant. That she's grateful to be a mother and wouldn't trade Marin for anything else in the world, but was eager—is still eager—to do something else with her life."

"So what's the problem?"

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"I just wish she had chosen an industry that didn't promote a superficial value system that serves to only undermine her own daughter's sense of well-being."

"Don't most little girls pretend to be grown-ups? Didn't you play with makeup and costumes when you were little?"