Spanking Shakespeare (4 page)

NOVEMBER

When I get my first report card, there are no real surprises: Bs in history and Latin, B-minuses in science and math, a B-plus in American literature, and an A in Mr. Parke’s writing seminar.

When my parents see my report card, they just shake their heads.

“I don’t understand why someone as smart as you is getting Bs and B-minuses,” my dad says.

I shrug. “Most of my classes are boring.”

“Do you even care about getting into a good college?” my mom asks.

“I got an A in my writing class.”

My mother gives me an exasperated look. “Good colleges expect you to be getting As in all your classes.”

“Well maybe I won’t go to a good college then,” I say. “Maybe I’ll just stay home and torture you instead.”

“The hell you will.” My father walks into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of scotch.

My mother frowns. “Are you drinking already? It’s only five o’clock.”

“Are you nagging already?” my father calls back. “It’s only my first drink.”

I walk to my room as they start their pre-dinner ritual.

My report card is not such a big deal. I mean I don’t expect to get into an Ivy League school, and I know I’ll get in somewhere. My parents are making me apply to a ridiculous number of colleges, twenty-three at last count, and I figure I have a realistic shot at about half of them.

They’re crazy, my parents, and it’s gotten worse with this whole college thing. We’ve been to visit almost every school in the Northeast, and my mom is constantly nagging me to start on my applications, which aren’t due until the end of December.

I’ve actually finished a draft of an essay, though I’d never send it to a college admissions committee. Mr. Parke asked us to write something that would stand out from the thousands of essays the admissions people would be reading. He told us we were not allowed to write about any of our academic successes, describe any of our extracurricular accomplishments, discuss any of the people who have inspired us, or tell any stories about responsibility, independence, friendship, or discovering our true selves. So I wrote about my family.

I know that what I have written pushes boundaries and will make my parents hysterical if I show it to them. I know that my parents are already tense about my college prospects and that reading my essay will send them completely off their rockers. I know that the best course of action is to keep what I have written hidden in my folder until I turn it in to Mr. Parke tomorrow. But I just can’t resist.

I stand in the doorway to the living room and watch my father trying to read the newspaper. He is pretending not to notice that my mother is very deliberately vacuuming the floor around his chair.

“I wrote a first draft of my college essay,” I say.

My mother snaps off the vacuum and looks up. “Really? That’s wonderful.” She puts her hand on my father’s shoulder. “Did you hear that, David?”

My father puts down the paper. “Atta boy.”

“May I read it?” Mom asks.

I shrug. “It’s still kind of rough.”

“That’s okay,” Mom says. “Now we have plenty of time to work on it.”

My parents are both ruthless when it comes to editing written work, which is why I stopped showing them my writing when I was in eighth grade.

“You promise to be nice?”

“No,” my father says.

“David, stop that.” My mother smiles at me. “Of course we’ll be nice, sweetie.”

I pretend to reread my essay. “I don’t know,” I say. “There’s some stuff in here you might not like.”

“It’s a first draft,” my mother says encouragingly. “It’s not supposed to be perfect.”

I hesitate a bit longer for dramatic effect, then, with a great show of reluctance, hand my paper to my mother, who grabs it and scurries off to her reading chair like a squirrel with a scrap of bread.

It takes a lot of self-restraint not to laugh as I watch my mother read, especially when she looks up at me with a horrified expression on her face.

“You can’t write this,” she says when she has finished.

I try to look insulted. “What do you mean?”

She thrusts the paper at my father. “Read this, David.”

My father begins to read, smiles, then laughs out loud.

“It’s not funny,” my mother says angrily.

“It’s hysterical,” my father says.

“I didn’t want to write an essay that would be like everyone else’s,” I say.

“Well, you certainly can’t send this,” my mother says.

“It’s just a first draft.”

My father looks up. “Oh, come on. You don’t seriously think you can get away with this, do you?”

“You said it was hysterical.”

“It is, but it’s totally inappropriate.”

“I don’t think it’s funny at all,” my mother snaps.

“See, this is why I never show you any of my work,” I say. “All you do is criticize.”

My mom grabs the essay. “What do you expect when you write something like this?”

College Essay
First Draft

You think I’ve got it easy just because I’m a white, upper-middle-class Jew from New York? You think just because I seem to have had every advantage in life, I don’t understand true hardship? Let me assure you, I know what it means to suffer. I know what it means to feel pain.

I still have vivid memories of the time my father got my puppy drunk and laughed when she threw up all over the living room floor. Not to be outdone, my mother later blackmailed me into giving the dog away by moving out of the house and refusing to return until the dog was gone. My father forced me to go to a baseball game, where I got smashed in the face by a ball, and my mother sent me off alone to visit my mentally unstable grandmother, who had already been hospitalized for mental illness seventeen times.

Do I sound like I’m complaining? Let me tell you about a typical dinner in my house. My father is drunk, of course, and my mother is venting her frustration in a passive-aggressive way that is making my father more and more irritated.

My mother is on a diet, so she has crackers and low-fat cottage cheese on her plate, but she keeps reaching over and taking bites of my father’s food.

“Here,” my father says, handing her his plate. “Just take it.”

“Why are you so hostile?” my mother says. “I just wanted a bite.”

“You’ve been picking at my plate since we sat down. All you ever do is pick, pick, pick.”

“You have some real anger issues, don’t you?”

My brother seems to be enjoying this little drama, but it is making me insane. “Enough already,” I say. “Can we please eat dinner in peace for once?”

“There’s no need to be scared, Shakespeare,” my mother says. “A little conflict is healthy for a relationship. I wish you wouldn’t suppress your feelings so much. Maybe therapy would—”

“I’m not going to therapy.”

“It could really help you, Shakespeare.”

“He needs a lot of help,” my brother says. “You should see how antisocial he is at school.”

“What the fuck’s your problem?”

“You see?” my brother says. “Look how much pent-up anger he has.”

He’s right, you know. I do have a lot of pent-up anger. If I don’t get out of my house soon, I’m likely to let all my grievances and resentments build up until they explode in some cataclysmic display of bloodshed and violence.

College is my only hope.

“Do you really feel this way?” my mother asks, this time with more concern than anger.

“It’s a joke. It’s supposed to be funny.”

My mother seems deeply troubled, and I can’t hold out any longer.

“I’m just messing with you. This isn’t my real college essay. It’s just an assignment for school.”

“What?” My mother seems momentarily confused. “What kind of assignment? You turned this in?”

“You know,” my father says, “I had totally forgotten about getting the dog drunk. That was pretty funny.”

My mother gives me a stern look. “You can’t joke about these things, Shakespeare. Kids are getting expelled for threatening violence.”

“My teacher gave me an A,” I lie. “He read it to the class.”

“He read it to the class? David, did you hear that?” My mother is screaming now. “Oh my God, what are people going to think?”

“I kinda miss that dog,” my father says.

My brother enters the room. “What’s going on?” he asks. “Mom, what are you screaming about?”

“Nothing,” my mother says, regaining her composure. “Go wash up for dinner.”

We sit down to eat, and my mother asks my father to fix her a stiff drink. I notice she makes a pointed effort not to touch the food on his plate during the meal.

The next day, Mr. Parke asks for volunteers to share their essays, and I raise my hand. Everyone applauds when I finish reading, and on the way out of class, Celeste asks me if I want to get together after school to give each other feedback on our memoirs.

“I think our strengths really complement each other,” she says. “Your writing is just so…so…incendiary.”

Incendiary? Any relation to Alejandero?

“We could work at my house,” she says.

Hello. Now here is an interesting development. “That sounds good,” I say.

She takes off her glasses, polishes them on her shirt, and puts them back on. “So I’ll meet you at the lockers after school, okay?”

“Sounds good.”

I spend the rest of the day vacillating between giddiness and extreme anxiety. By the time I meet Celeste, I feel ready to throw up.

“I have my mom’s car,” Celeste says as we walk outside. “My parents are away until tomorrow.”

My stomach lurches, and I have to exert a tremendous amount of effort not to fart.

“How much of your memoir did you bring?” she asks.

“Just one chapter, the one about my dog. Everything else makes me look like a sexual deviant.”

She laughs. “The dog your dad got drunk?”

“That’s the one,” I say.

It’s a short drive, and soon we are sitting on the couch in Celeste’s living room reading each other’s memoirs.

“Your parents are hysterical,” she says, flipping a page.

“Keep reading. It gets worse.”

She looks up and smiles that disarming smile. “This reminds me of James Thurber. Have you read
My Life and Hard Times
?”

I shake my head. Who is this girl? She’s like some kind of literary savant or something. I force myself to concentrate on the pages in front of me.

The ambiguity of that night imprinted a series of fragmented images, which, when viewed through a lens already distorted by time and distance, leaves me hobbled in my attempts to construct a truthful account and to deconstruct my younger self.

“Who are you?” I mutter.

Celeste looks up, radiant. “That’s it exactly,” she gushes. She scoots closer to me so she can look at her paper. I feel her thigh press against mine. “Where are you?” she asks.

I put my finger on the word
ambiguity.

She leans in closer, and I can feel her breath on my arm. “Is it clear what I’m trying to do?”

The words on the page blur together, and I have to remind myself to breathe. “I think so,” I say. I don’t look up. I don’t move. And neither does she.

“What could I do to make it clearer?” she says at last.

Smaller words. Shorter sentences. Sit on my lap.

I turn my face and we begin to kiss.

Alejandero.

THE TIME MY MOTHER USED EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL TO DEPRIVE ME OF THE ONLY THING I EVER REALLY WANTED

I had been begging for a dog for years, and finally, when I turned eleven, my parents relented.

The dog we picked out was brilliant. She was a newborn golden retriever, almost small enough to fit in the palms of my hands. She would slip and slide across the floor, urinate everywhere, and cry whenever she was left alone. I suggested we name her Killer.

“Here’s the thing,” my dad said. “Your mom and I never got the chance to name a girl, so we were thinking we would name the dog.”

My mom nodded vigorously. “We’ve actually had a name in mind ever since Gandhi turned out to be a boy.”

“No way. You’re not giving this poor little puppy some freak name.”

“You can’t name her Killer,” my mom said.

“She’s my dog.”

My dad pulled out his wallet. “How much will it cost to turn over the naming rights to us?”

“What? You’re gonna pay me to let you name the dog?”

“How about twenty dollars? That seems fair.”

“Are you serious?”

“Okay, we’ll make it thirty.”

“Thirty? You’re gonna give me thirty dollars?”

“That’s right.”

I wondered if I could hold out for more, but decided not to press my luck. “Let me hear the name first,” I said. “Then I’ll decide.”

My father hesitated and looked at my mother. She took a deep breath, then nodded.

“Onomatopoeia,” my father said.

“Forget it. You’re both insane.”

My parents wore me down in the end by paying me the money and agreeing to move a painting of a naked woman from the living room into my bedroom.

The worst thing about owning a dog is cleaning up her droppings. My parents had insisted that if I wanted to keep Onomatopoeia (whom I called Pee for short), I had to take care of her. This meant feeding her, walking her, and cleaning up after her.

“I don’t want to see any dog shit in our backyard,” my dad said.

“And no letting her shit in the neighbors’ yards, either,” my mom added.

I saw how other people cleaned up after their dogs. They would take a paper or plastic bag along, scoop up the droppings, and carry their bag of feces to the nearest garbage can. Clearly, this was out of the question.

I approached Gandhi in his room that night. “Mom told me to tell you that you have to clean up after the dog from now on.”

He did not even look up from the comic book he was reading. “I’m not cleaning up your dog’s shit,” he said.

I gritted my teeth. “All right, I’ll pay you.”

He smiled, but still kept his eyes lowered. “How much?”

I hesitated. “A dollar a week.”

He shook his head and laughed. “I’ll do it for a dollar a turd.”

“Are you crazy? That dog is a shitting machine.”

Now he looked up for the first time. “Then make a counteroffer.”

My brother had not yet turned ten, but already he was a cutthroat businessman who had amassed a small fortune through negotiations just like this one. His success hinged on his willingness to perform those tasks that others deemed too unpleasant to perform themselves. And there was absolutely nothing my brother would refuse, provided the price was right.

“Five dollars a week,” I said.

My brother sighed. “Shakespeare, have you ever noticed that sometimes Pee’s turds area little bit wet and slimy?”

I felt my anger rising. “Fine, ten dollars, but I get to punch you every time I pay.”

My brother pointed to a chart he had made several months earlier after I had beaten him up and begged him not to tell our parents. “Three dollars per punch in the arm, ten dollars in the stomach, twenty dollars in the face.”

I socked him as hard as I could in the arm and forked over thirteen dollars for the week.

Pee was my best friend, and with Gandhi responsible for cleaning up her shit, ours was a love with few complications. We played together, ate together, even slept together. One of my great pleasures was to climb into bed with wet feet and then lie back as Pee licked furiously at the water. I would squirm and giggle and let out an occasional shout.

“Stop molesting the dog,” my father would call from the living room.

“It’s called a foot massage!” I would shout back. “And the dog loves it.”

One night my dad got drunk and spilled his beer. “C’mere, dog,” he slurred.

Pee began to lick the floor. My dad stood propped against a wall and cheered her on.

“Jesus, Dad, she’s just a puppy,” I said.

Pee began to stagger around the house, bumping into walls. Then she threw up on the living room floor.

“Clean up your dog’s mess, Shakespeare,” my dad said.

“You’re the one who got her drunk.”

“I’ll do it,” my brother said. “Five dollars.”

There was nothing Pee wouldn’t eat, but her absolute favorite food was my mother’s brisket. She would sit motionless at my mother’s feet as my mother cooked, staring up at her, and if my mother even glanced in her direction, she would begin to wag her tail furiously.

“No brisket,” my mother would say. “Your dinner is in your bowl.”

Pee’s tail would thump and she would wriggle in excitement.

“Look,” my mother would say, holding out her hands. “No brisket.”

Pee would jump up and lick her empty hands.

“What do you want from me?” my mother would shout. “You’re a dog! You’re supposed to eat dog food!”

Pee would be in an absolute frenzy, running around in circles and barking up at my mom.

“Oh, okay,” my mom would say. “You can have brisket tonight, but this is the last time.”

My mom was almost always the last one out of the house in the morning. When she would leave, Pee would press her face against the kitchen window so that if my mom turned around, even for an instant, she would see Pee staring at her.

Please don’t leave me all alone, Pee’s expression would say. Or at least that’s how my mom interpreted it. And so my mom, racked with guilt, would abandon her plans and return inside.

“We have to give Onomatopoeia away,” my mom announced at dinner one night.

I stopped eating mid-bite, a forkful of Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks dangling in the air. “What? What are you talking about?”

“The Singletons have a huge farm and four dogs. Onomatopoeia will love it there.”

“You’ve already talked to them? Dad, do you know about this?”

My father looked a little embarrassed. “Your mother feels guilty leaving Onomatopoeia cooped up alone in the house all day. She’s right, Shakespeare. Onomatopoeia will be happier with all that space to run around and all those dogs to play with.”

“And you can visit her whenever you want,” my mom added.

I shook my head vigorously. “No way. I’ve never asked for anything in my life except a dog. You can’t just give her away.”

“I can’t go on feeling like a prisoner in my own house,” my mom said.

“What do you go to therapy for?” I screamed.

“Maybe now isn’t the best time to talk about this,” my dad said.

Over the next few weeks, both my parents tried to broach the subject, but I was adamant. Pee was my dog, and I would not give her up.

In June, my mother went to Boston for the weekend to see friends. On Sunday night, she called and said she was going to stay a little longer. My father called me into his room.

“Your mother has decided not to come home until you agree to give Onomatopoeia to the Singletons.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

My father shook his head. “This is really a big deal to her, Shakespeare.”

I guess I was too shocked to be very angry. Was my mother serious about not coming home? Had she been planning this all along or had she just decided to do it when she got to Boston? I had been to the Singletons’ a few times. We had even brought Pee once, and she had galloped around the farm and played happily with the other dogs. Maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible for her to live there. But there had to be something init for me.

“What do you think?” my dad asked.

“I think Mom is crazy.”

My father smiled. “Maybe, but the house feels kind of empty without her, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Let me think about it for a few days.”

My father looked around and realized there was no alcohol in sight. “I like the dog, too,” he said, “but a man gets lonely without his wife at night.”

“Don’t start that,” I said. “That’s playing dirty.”

He smiled. “Your mother does this little thing—”

“AAAAH, I’M NOT LISTENING!” I screamed.

“Are we giving the dog away?” he asked.

“YOU’RE A HORRIBLE MAN!”

“Are we giving the dog away?”

“This is child abuse.”

“Shakespeare, I’m about ten seconds away from telling you things that will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

I’ve blocked what happened after that, but I remember that at some point my mother reappeared in the house, my dog vanished, and I had a second naked-woman picture hanging on my bedroom wall.