Staring out the window of my dad’s Explorer is a surreal shift from the active monotony the ward’s windows had to offer. The trees and fence posts and then the streetlamps and buildings scrolling past leave little to the imagination but there’s something calming and fantastic at the same time about the world just playing itself out for you.You know? Like why put all the work into imagining there’s other stuff going on when there’s all this stuff just there for you to fly by and take in? Isn’t it enough to even just process all the STUFF that’s just lying around? Anyways, we were mostly quiet, still, while my dad drove and my mom’s head stayed pointed in the same direction the entire time. I breathe out an amused half-snort at the thought that she was probably staring at the glass not unlike I had been back in the ward. My dad turns briefly in response to the sudden sound but I’m watching the buildings again.
“So they set you up with another doctor for visits or anything, Ty?”
“I don’t know if I really want to talk about it right now.”
My mom, “That’s fine, hun.”
Dad gave her a look like it wasn’t fine but she was watching the window again so he turned back to driving silently. I don’t know how else it was supposed to go. Like we were going to turn on some Danny Elfman soundtrack and discuss my plans for the rest of my life. Or I’d sit in the middle seat, pushed up against the backs of their seats and enthusiastically describe all the swell realizations I’d made about myself in therapy. Like we were on some jovial, bouncing ride in Pa’s jalopy after a fun-filled summer away at camp. As if. Imagine us crammed into an old Model-A or whatever with Mom all Thelma-and-Louis’ed up and Dad in a leather jacket with some of those pilot’s goggles and a scarf streaming out behind him. I silent-snort again and Dad whips around again, looking all mad. He probably thinks I’m laughing at Mom shutting him down.
I start to notice that the blur outside the window is turning into my parents’ neighborhood.
“Hey! Why aren’t we going to my place?”
Mom turns to face me for the first time, “Your car was impounded. You'll have lunch with us, then Layne is picking you up at 2.”
Layne was a guy I went to high school with who I didn’t really like, but he was under the impression we were best friends because we used to eat lunch at the same table. He was a major stoner and he lived with his major stoner girlfriend in a house that his grandma or aunt or something left to him when she died. It might have been his mom. I know it was a lady. Whoever it was, I don’t think he really cared and she probably hadn’t known him very well because I think if I was a dying lady, I would have left my house to somebody who got their hair cut sometimes and didn’t smell like wet leaves. Whatever, dying ladies can do whatever they want I guess. But because Layne was under the impression we were friends, he let me live in his basement for almost nothing. By ‘almost’ I more mean ‘usually’. When he first offered me the basement, I asked him about rent and his response was, “Sure thing.” So sometimes I give him cash when I think I won’t need it, but mostly it’s a non-issue.
Anyways, lunch with my nervous parents didn’t sound particularly appealing, but it was better than listening to Layne and Cassidy playing Halo upstairs while I ate cereal alone at my desk. I still didn’t particularly want to have to talk about what comes next, but it was an inevitability. Maybe they wouldn’t even bring it up now. We could talk about the virus Mom got on her work computer and how she thought to herself, “Ty could have handled this in a second huh-yuk-yuk.” Then Dad could drone about ‘the boys down at The P&W’ and all their tribulations and how the world was a different place (yep yep yep) and something about something his old man had told him and how his old man was right this whole time and then the meal would be over and I could go home finally.
But obviously that wasn’t going to be the case.
As we turned onto their street, I had a brief flashback of the last time I was here. My hands tensed and I realized they’d been wrapped around my little month’s supply of meds the whole time. I stuffed them in my hoodie and flicked at my mom’s headrest self-consciously. “Here we are!” she felt it necessary to announce as the Explorer pulled into the driveway. You have to imagine that when people do that, they do realize everyone else is capable of recognizing an arrival at a destination. Is it more of a neurotic confirmation that everything is as it should be? Here we are!...Right? We’re all here, aren’t we? From now on when I go places, I’m going to cheerfully announce to everyone, “We can’t ever truly know if we exist!” just to see if it has any effect.
Inside the house, I drop my hoodie on the chair that’s usually mine and survey the kitchen for the promised meal. In true form, my mother had set out plates and silverware before she left but hadn’t made any preparations to actually serve anything.
But wait...a wintery breath from the freezer...a desert-y cough from the oven..small talk...tick tock tick...a lasagna emerges...we sit.
The last time I had that 20-minute lasagna that comes in the tin was like nine years ago. I got food poisoning from it and spent an entire day and night either wrapped around the toilet waiting to throw up or crouched over the toilet waiting to stop throwing up again. So this time I didn’t hesitate to dump it down my gullet as quick as possible in the hopes it would send me into shock or something and at least I could get away from my parents. But whatever indignation my father had felt on the drive here must have taken up residence on my mom’s plate because he mostly just watched her fork and knife while she ate. And all the questions and advice I’d thought she’d have prepared for me had apparently asked a stream of celebrity gossip and weather predictions to cover their shift. So I just sort of sat there picking at the crusty bits around the edge of the tin and nodded at my mother’s yapping.
“So I think it’s going to go up to something like 98° tomorrow.”
I could feel the lasagna declaring war on my digestive system.
“Speaking of which, did you hear about Nick Lachey marrying that Jennifer Simpson?”
Digestive system requests a parley but the lasagna laughs in its face.
“I don’t know what such talented young men ever see in those show business floozies in the first place.”
The lasagna determines that it will be most effective to divide and conquer, firing a volley of tracer rounds at my stomach, intestines, and colon.
“I mean Justin Timberlake dating that Britney Spearie girl and Nick Carter getting into fights at bars. There are no more heroes in the world, Tyler.”
Straining under the onslaught, my digestive system groans its protestations and attempts to fight off the assault with a fierce shudder.
“Tyler? You’ve been awful quiet. Are you still hungry? There’s still some...Tyler, what’s wrong?!”
I’d pointed my convulsing body in the direction of the bathroom and lurched from my chair in hopes that the momentum alone would get me there. Bent double, I lumbered towards the shimmering, porcelain refuge I knew to be housed down the hall. My mom’s confusion and my dad’s irritability were barely audible over the hellish snarling coming from my bowels. But then above all the noise I heard my mother screeching,
“Walter! He’s GOING for the GUNS!”
I stopped and turned to face them. I felt the hordes waging war in my guts drop their weapons and retreat in abrupt surrender as every recess of my body was filled with a foreign sensation. It was like I could suddenly feel all my bits and pieces the way they looked in those anatomy cut-away books. I could feel each vein and artery and muscle and tendon seize up like they were individual plastic tubes. I felt my face heating up and my arms tensing and it was like there was a completely other body inside mine.
“MOM!” What the FUCK?!?”
They both stared at me like I’d just burst from the floor dressed like Adam Ant. My dad was halfway out of his chair with his fork and knife still in his hands. Mom just stood there with her dumb mouth hanging open, looking to him, to me, to him, to me. Six seconds felt like twenty while I just glared at them and felt my blood being blood. It wasn’t like you see in shitty action flicks when an angry dude will stand there with his shoulders hunched and his eyebrows scrunched, all breathing hard and whatnot. It wasn’t that I felt more powerful or any nonsense like that, but I was just so aware of all the hard warmth coursing through me. I wanted to be infuriated forever. But then the lasagna noticed the smoke drifting up over my digestive system’s camp and took advantage of the situation to mount their blitz. My stomach gave a startled gurgle and time skipped a beat as the fake pasta I’d shoveled into my body erupted from my mouth.
I wiped some lasagna-y mush off my lip with a fist, "I was going for the bathroom."
I walked to the kitchen sink and rinsed my mouth out from the tap while my parents awkwardly settled themselves back at the table. Turning and grabbing my hoodie from the chair, I stepped quickly to the front door. Knob in hand, I turned to my parents,
"I'm fine. I'm going to walk home. I'll call you."
The door closed on my mother stammering something about a crumb cake.
I felt like an album cover for a shitty emo band, trudging through the leaf-littered gutter with my hood up and hands shoved down the pockets. I don't think I actually cared that my parents didn't know where my mind was at. That was mostly my fault anyways. They were concerned and that's fine. I just needed to be home. My home. I looked up as a car moseyed by and remembered sauntering down the same street for guitar lessons when I was a kid, always hoping somebody would take pity on the kid with the heavy guitar case and offer to give me a ride. Not even hoping; expecting. As though anybody in the world is paying that much attention to anyone else, let alone giving a fuck. I smiled and nodded at a girl as she walked by with her dog and while I started dreaming up what our first house would look like and what we would name our kids, she silently worried about an upcoming exam or what she would make for dinner and I didn't exist to her.
I fall in love with everyone on the planet.
Episode 2 - A Bucket of Beeps
11 years ago