Texts from Bennett (6 page)

HARPER:
Dear god.

HARPER:
I’m very unsettled by that story.

ME:
Really? I actually think it’s kinda funny. It’s just another classic from Bennett’s life.

HARPER:
Did your aunt at least try to parent Bennett? I mean Jesus.

ME:
Mmmm not really. If Lillian wasn’t at work she’d be asleep on the couch due to her “back injury,” which caused her to develop a very heavy OxyContin dependency.

ME:
So Bennett basically spent his entire life calling his own shots.

HARPER:
Sigh.

HARPER:
Anyhoo, that’s cute and all, but I think I’m gonna just be honest here. I don’t want to do this.

HARPER:
At all.

ME:
I know, but it’s the right thing to do.

HARPER:
I don’t agree with you on that.

HARPER:
Sometimes you have to let people deal with their own problems. We aren’t a hotel. Maybe we could buy Lillian a used van or something to repay her.

ME:
If you do this, I’ll buy YOU something really nice.

HARPER:
I can buy my own things.

ME:
I know. But as we’ve discussed, you having tons of money is exactly the reason you value presents more than things you buy.

HARPER:
A present, huh?

ME:
Yes. A great one.

HARPER:
Why are you so dead set on doing this, again?

ME:
Because. I won’t be able to sleep at night knowing my extremely sweet aunt and her family are living in a hooker motel.

HARPER:
Yeah yeah yeah.

HARPER:
I’m just a little nervous.

ME:
Nervous about what?

HARPER:
Well! In Vermont it’s nice. The guys I went to school with went to their vacation homes, not jails.

HARPER:
I’VE never been to jail.

ME:
I have.

HARPER:
I know. But a few nights after DUIs isn’t the same really.

ME:
I went for other things too.

HARPER:
I know. You know what I mean though.

ME:
I promise, nothing bad will happen.

HARPER:
And if it does?

ME:
Then they’re outta here if anything goes wrong.

HARPER:
Even if I say I’d like them to leave and you don’t want them to?

ME:
Ha. Yep.

ME:
Ok?

HARPER:
You’ll buy me something nice, that makes me feel loved?

ME:
Yep.

HARPER:
Like what?

ME:
:::::::Drumroll:::::::::

HARPER:
Badadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada . . .

ME:
Granite countertops for the house?

HARPER:
!!!

HARPER:
Really? I thought you said we couldn’t get those!

HARPER:
You drive a hard bargain.

HARPER:
Asshole.

ME:
:D

HARPER:
Ugh.

HARPER:
Wait--why would you buy me granite countertops for your horribly ugly kitchen?

ME:
To soften the blow.

HARPER:
Soften what blow?

ME:
The blow that I already committed to this and would rather buy you granite countertops than back out on my aunt!

HARPER:
Ahhh, the plot thickens. Wow, you ass.

ME:
It’ll be good for ya.

HARPER:
I’m sure it will. What will be even better: I’m going out with some girls after work. I’ll be home pretty late.

ME:
So are you saying you’re okay with this all?

HARPER:
Apparently, I’m going out for a drink aren’t I?

ME:
Now I feel bad.

HARPER:
If I die in a car accident from drunk driving, you can feel bad.

At first I thought an exterminator had pulled up to the wrong house. A rusty, chartreuse-yellow 1992 Chevrolet Astro van, with corroded side panels and the words
Thompkins Something-or-other
painted on the side, chugged down the block, pulled into my driveway, and seemed to deflate and shutter like a giant bug when the driver killed the engine.

It had been a lovely Saturday afternoon before that. Harper was lightly trimming the azalea shrubs, and I was sitting on the porch swing thinking about how awesome it would be to be able to shoot fire out of my eyeballs. Both of us looked at the van.

“Is that them? That’s not them. Is it?” Harper asked.

“Uh. I don’t know. No. It can’t be. Who the fuck is that? Is that them?” I replied.

“You didn’t tell me gypsies were moving in with us,” Harper said.

“What?” I asked.

“The van. It’s like what homeless people drive. I can’t believe it’s in our driveway. Hideous,” Harper hissed.

“Homeless people don’t drive, babe,” I snooted.

The contraption’s side door swung open with a loud, unpleasant squawk, revealing my cousin. He had a burning joint in his mouth that he was inhaling and exhaling, hands-free, as if it were normal oxygen. He was wearing black corduroy slippers folded down
inward at the heels, white tube socks pulled up to his kneecaps, and baggy, oversize Charlotte Hornets basketball shorts that hung so low off his waist that his entire buttocks poked out the back of them. If he wasn’t wearing boxer shorts with
The Godfather
logo tiled across them, his entire ass would have been exposed.

He was shirtless. His chest, arms, stomach, and neck were covered with poorly drawn and terribly executed jailhouse-caliber tattoos. He had a mustache that didn’t quite connect in the middle—typical of sub-eighteen-year-old boys—so there were two strips of peach fuzz on either side of his nose. He had earrings in both ears, six lines shaved into his left eyebrow, and an extra-large, starched, steam-ironed Crips-blue bandana wrapped around his head from the rear and knotted in the front.

Bennett held the door open with his foot and, without an expression on his face, sat there scratching his penis while studying me and Harper both, before hopping out onto the driveway.

“My mothafuckin’ nigga! Oh, shit!” he yelled.

Simultaneously, both of the front doors slowly creaked open. I tried to get a look at Lillian to say hello, but Bennett quickly ran over to me and put me in an affectionate headlock. He smelled like BO, cheap beer, cheap gas station cologne, cheap pot, and the cheap cigars the cheap pot was rolled up in.

“Hey, man! How are ya?” I said, hugging him, with a firm pattern of pats on his back.

“Dude, I’m so excited to move up in yo crib! It’s about to be a
war zone
in this bitch. The party starts now, my niggas!” he yelled. “It’s
Vietnam Two, Nigga
!
Hos better take cover!
We ’bout to film pornos with bitches and build a two-hundred-foot bong!
Nigga!
”

“Bennett, this is Harper,” I said in reply, pointing to Harper, “my girlfriend.”

“Ohhh. What up, boo!” He stuck his hand out to shake hers, while exhaling a cloud of blunt smoke in her face. “Damn, you fine as
hell
! I bet your body is amazing as fuck! You ever been a stripper? You could be one and easily make a hundred bucks
a night
!”

Harper’s eyes pulsated in shock while she shook his hand back. Her eyebrows shot to the top of her head in bemusement. She
smiled and politely said, “Uh. Well, than . . . ks. That’s quite the . . . um . . . compliment.” She was trying not to hug him very tightly.

“Is that my sweetest nephew?” Lillian yelled from the van, while her boyfriend, Tim, helped her start to crawl out. My entire family was notoriously loud, and she was no exception.

“Ohhh, it’s him! It’s my sweetest nephew!” she yelled.

“Hi, Aunt Lillian!” I said. She had a bright smile on her face as Tim guided her tiny, frumpy body to me to avoid her collapsing. She laboriously walked with a limp; her rickety skeletal frame would fall if she attempted to walk on her own. When she was close enough to hug, I embraced her.

She was shorter than I remembered and had a certain snuggly quality to her, probably beacuse she was soft and smelled like fabric softener. Between her plaid pajama top and oily, tangled gray hair, her pupils hovered at the size of needle points, a side effect of her being high on painkillers. Letting me go, she scanned the new house with curious eyes.

“Ohhh! I love the house! Isn’t this house beautiful?” she yelled to the air while limping toward the front door. “Oh! I’m so proud of you! Tim, isn’t this place great? It’s our house now too!”

“Yes, Lillian, it’s great,” Tim said, veiled with irritation.

“Thank you—we love it!” I said.

Lillian spun around and gave me a look of deep sincerity. You could tell by her facial expression alone that she was impressed with the house and excited to stay with us.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Harper said, with forged enthusiasm. She was being a true champion.

“Hi! I’m Lillian! But you can just call me Lillian!” my aunt said.

Harper, with a natural inability not to be sarcastic in such a situation, however politely, responded with: “That’s easy. I’m Harper. And . . . you can call me Harper!”

“Did you meet my son, Bennett, Harper? He’s your age and could treat you right! Bennett, damn it. Son, put on a shirt and some perfume so Harper will like you better.”

“What?” Bennett said, looking at Lillian crazily. “Mom . . . you off them Oxy pills like crazy right now!”

Harper shuffled over to the side of me and vaguely leaned against me to indicate our bond.

“Uh, yeah, Aunt Lillian, Harper is my girlfriend,” I said.

“Ohhh. She is? Boy, you like ’em young! She looks like she’s fifteen!” Lillian said.

I stuck my hand out to shake Tim’s, but he gave me a closed-fist dap in return.

“I don’t exchange germs with strangers,” he said.

“Oh. Okay,” I said, giving him the fist bump back.

“Uh. Tim, this is Harper, she’s my fian—”

“I heard you introduce her to Lily. No need to say it twice, now,” he said, cutting me off. “It’s bad enough that we’re standin’ outside where the CIA can film us and what not. So please, Harp, Haribou, Harpey, whatever . . . darlin’, don’t you try to shake my hand either. Let’s just get ourselves inside,” he smugly said to Harper in a heavily twanged hick draw before spitting his chewing tobacco onto our lawn. “Fancy lil’ neighborhood like this . . . you know the CIA got freakin’ billion-dollar flies that fly around with cameras in ’em, right? Lil’ robots filmin’ every move you make and sellin’ the info to China. Your neighbors are probably investment bankers or members of the Skulls. Yeah. I prefer the indoors, but it’s certainly nice to meet you folks.”

It was then that I noticed that in addition to flawlessly quaffed hair with a shoulder-length mullet growing down the back of his neck, he wore a dingy, stain-covered T-shirt with that wonderful catchphrase of the nutty everywhere:

9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB

 . . . in bright, metallic orange letters, which were sitting on top of a picture of George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden superimposed
to appear to be shaking hands, with sinister grins on their faces, and two burning World Trade Center buildings behind them. To top that off, Skoal-mouth wore reddish-crimson thrift-store slacks, a pair of high-end canvas-colored flip-flops, and purple-framed, glittery sunglasses on his face.
Hannah Montana
sunglasses. Yes.
With a
Hannah Montana
logo on them.

All I could think of doing in the face of such a getup on such a man was ask, “Why Hannah Montana?”

To which he replied, “Hannah is a small town in Montana my grandfather grew up in. They export a lot of coal and cattle.”

To which I concluded he was so full of shit and out of touch.

I had heard from other family members that he was a conspiracy theorist, but I had at least assumed his conspiracies had
some sort
of academic merit. Nope, nothing but tall tales with lacunae in the credibility. Tim definitely wasn’t working with a full deck of cards.

Across the street, one house to the right, my Sudanese neighbor Edgard Amsalu, sat on the top step of his front porch, massaging the shoulders of his exotic, magnetically attractive wife, Mariam. Edgard had plenty of reason to rub Mariam’s shoulders. She was a stunning African woman, with onyx-colored skin that visibly absorbed the day’s glowing particles of sun and swirled them onto a cherrywood palette of skin complexion that mixed hues of obsidian, charcoal, hot magma, and ink-bottle blacks with the Earth tones of melted chocolate, spun gold, polished doubloons, and pungent cinnamon powder, and the textures of brushed suede, ripe mahogany, and crispy, burnt auburn. Her eyes were the color of gilded honey, and her lips lightly enveloped into an irresistible, swollen pucker.