I pretend that my eyes are P-38s and my sight is bullets and I blast holes through Linda’s outfit and watch the blood soak through.
She’s so oblivious.
So clueless.
So awful.
“Why are you staring at me like that, Leo?” She’s got her hands on her hips now. “Seriously, you look like the world’s about to end. What do you want from me? I came home. Your teacher says you want to talk. So let’s talk. Were you really pretending to shoot people with that rusty old Nazi gun your father used to carry around in his guitar case? What’s this about? What’s going on? You’re a pacifist, Leo. You wouldn’t hurt a fly. Take one look at the kid and you realize he’s incapable of violence. I told your teacher that, but he seemed really concerned. He says you need therapy. Therapy? I said. Like that ever did anyone any good. Your father and I tried therapy once and look how that ended up. I’ve never met a man or woman who escaped therapy better off than when they started.”
I keep staring.
“Your teacher said you might be suicidal, but I told him that was ridiculous. You’re not suicidal, are you, Leo? Just tell me if you are. We have money. We can get you medicine. Whatever you need. You can have whatever you want. Just ask for it. But I know you’re not suicidal. I know what the real problem is.”
I fucking hate her.
“I told him you do this when you miss your mother, so I came home, Leo. I always come home when you pull one of these pranks. And it wasn’t easy this time either. I had to cancel twelve meetings with important people. Twelve! Not that you would care about that. But someday you are going to have to learn how to live without your mother and—”
“Do you remember when I was little—you used to make me banana pancakes with chocolate chips in them?” I say, because suddenly I have this idea.
Linda just looks at me like my head has spun around 360 degrees.
“You remember, right?” I say.
“What are you talking about, Leo? Pancakes? I wasn’t driven two hours to talk about pancakes.”
“You remember, Mom. We made them together once.”
Linda’s lipstick smiles when she hears me say the word Mom because she hasn’t heard me say that word in many years.
Ironically, she loves to be called Mom.
“Banana–chocolate chip pancakes?” Linda says, and then laughs.
I can tell by the look on her face that she doesn’t remember, but she’s faking like she does. Maybe she only made them once or twice—I dunno. Maybe I made up the memory in my mind. It’s possible. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this memory all of a sudden, but I am.
I remember making banana–chocolate chip pancakes when I was little—like maybe when I was four or five years old—and getting mix everywhere and Dad was softly strumming his acoustic guitar at the kitchen table and my parents were happy that morning, which was rare, and probably why I remember it. Mom and I cooked and then we all ate together as a family.
Normal for most people, but extraordinary for us.
For some reason, I must have banana–chocolate chip pancakes in order for everything to be okay. Right now. It’s the only thing that will help. I don’t know why. That’s just the way it is. I tell myself that if Linda makes me banana–chocolate chip pancakes, I can forgive her for forgetting my birthday. I concoct that deal in my head and then attempt to make her fulfill her end of the unspoken bargain.
“Can you make those for me now—banana–chocolate chip pancakes?” I ask. “That’s all I want from you. Make them, eat breakfast with me, and then you can go back to New York. Okay? Deal?”
“Do we have the ingredients?” she says, looking completely perplexed.
“Shit,” I say, because we don’t. I haven’t been shopping in weeks. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Do you have to say shit in front of your mother?”
“If I get the ingredients, will you make me breakfast?”
“That’s why you wanted me to come home? Banana–chocolate chip pancakes? That’s why you tricked your teacher into getting so worked up?”
“You make them for me and I won’t give you any more problems all day. You can go back to New York with a clean conscience. Problem solved.”
Linda laughs in a way that lets me know she’s relieved, and then she runs her perfectly manicured nails through my newly stubbled hair, which tickles.
“You really are an odd boy, Leo.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I still don’t understand what happened yesterday. Why did your teacher call me and demand I come home? You seem fine to me.”
Herr Silverman must not have told her it was my birthday, and I don’t even care about that anymore. I just want the fucking pancakes. It’s something Linda is capable of doing. It’s a task she can complete for me. It’s what I can have, so that’s what I want.
“I’ll go get the ingredients, okay?” I say, making it even easier for her.
“Okay,” she says, and then shrugs playfully, like she’s my girlfriend instead of my mom.
I rush past her, down the steps, and out the door without even putting on a coat.
There’s a local grocery about six blocks from our house and I find everything I need there in about ten minutes.
Milk.
Eggs.
Butter.
Pancake mix.
Maple syrup.
Chocolate chips.
Bananas.
On the walk home, with the plastic handles of the grocery bag cutting into my hand, I think about how once again, I’m letting Linda off easy.
I try to concentrate on the pancakes.
I can taste the chocolate and bananas melting in my mouth.
Pancakes are good.
They will fill me.
They are what I can have.
When I arrive home, Linda’s in her office yelling at someone on the phone about the color of tulle. “No, I do not want cadmium fucking orange!” She holds up her index finger when she sees me in the doorway and then waves me away.
In the kitchen I wait five minutes before I decide to do the prep work by myself.
I slice three bananas on the cutting board. Carefully, I make paper-thin cuts. And then I stir milk and eggs into the mix—adding the chocolate chips and banana slices last. I spray the pan and heat it up.
“Linda?” I yell. “Mom?”
She doesn’t answer, so I decide to cook the pancakes, thinking that Linda eating with me can be enough.
I pour some batter onto the pan and it bubbles and sizzles while I pour out three more pancakes. I flip all four and then heat up the oven so I can keep the finished pancakes warm while I cook Mom’s.
“Linda?”
No answer.
“Mom?”
No answer.
I put the finished pancakes into the oven and pour more batter.
I realize I made way too much, but I just keep cooking pancakes, and by the time I finish, I have enough to feed a family of ten.
“Mom?”
I go to her study, and she’s yelling again.
“Jasmine can go fuck herself!” she says, and then sighs.
She’s staring out the window.
She’s oblivious again.
I sigh.
I return to the kitchen.
I eat my banana–chocolate chip pancakes.
They are delicious.
Fuck Linda.
She’s missing out.
She could have had delicious pancakes for breakfast.
I would have forgiven her.
But instead, I use the garbage disposal to grind up all the leftover pancakes.
A few mirror shards fall in.
I let the machine crunch away until it finally jams and I can once again hear Linda cursing at her employees.
She doesn’t come out of her office—not even when I take off and slam the front door behind me so that the whole house shakes.
THIRTY-EIGHT
LETTER FROM THE FUTURE NUMBER 4
Dad,
It’s S, your daughter.
I’m writing you on my eighteenth birthday—well, technically, it’s the day after; it’s past midnight. I’m manning the great light because you fell asleep in your chair again and old habits die hard. I’m going to give you this letter tomorrow when I leave Outpost 37 for the first time so you won’t ever forget what a great day we had together.
(Side note: The stars are amazing tonight—like we could swim in them. Cassiopeia is shining brightly.)
I have this suspicion: I think you’re mad at me because I want to leave, although you’ve never said as much. You think I’m leaving just so I can find a boyfriend, or at least that’s what you tease me about. (And I swear—if you use the word hormones one more time, I might kill you!) And while I would like to have a boyfriend (BECAUSE THAT IS NORMAL!) and meet people my own age in the horrid “tube city,” there are many other things I’d like to do as well.
I’d like to see dry land.
I’ve never seen it.
I want to stand on earth.
That’s a simple but profound thought for a girl who has lived her whole life on water.
You can surely understand that on some level, even if dry land is “overrated.”
I’m looking forward to attending classes with other people my age, even though you’ve told me so many times that people aren’t always kind or considerate like Papa was and you and Mom are. Still, I’d like to see for myself—have conversations with so many different people! I’d like to find someone who kisses me every time he sees a shooting star, like you kiss Mom. And I think that maybe I can excel in post-school, especially since I did so well on the entrance exams, and afterward I can make you proud by putting good into the new world somehow.
Thank you for making me “pancakes” on my birthday.
Even though you had to use bread mix and you said it wasn’t as good as pancakes back when you were a kid, especially since we had no “syrup” because there are so few “maple trees” left. I appreciated the effort, especially after hearing the story of how your mom and you made them when you were little—with “chocolate chips” and yellow fruits called “bananas.” I hope to see and taste a banana one day. I choose to believe that they still exist in tube city, where all sorts of things exist—things that I have only dreamed about, like stores and restaurants and dogs and cats and movie theaters and sky walks and so many other nouns we’ve seen on the visualizer beam whenever the signal is strong enough.
And your birthday present to me was also . . . beautiful.
When you said we were going to use the last two oxygen tanks, I didn’t want to do it, because it meant that you’d never be able to go scuba diving again, unless the North American Land Collective sends you more bottles, which isn’t likely to happen, now that they’ve declared world order and Outpost 37, Lighthouse 1 is no longer technically operational.
But I’m glad that I went scuba diving with you down into “Philadelphia” one last time with old Horatio the dolphin following.
I didn’t believe you when you said there was a red statue that read “LOVE,” with the LO stacked on top of the VE.
LO VEIt sounded like something out of one of the old fairy tales you used to tell me when I was a little girl. I thought you were kidding when you said people in the past believed in love so much that they made statues to celebrate it, so they wouldn’t forget to LOVE . . . well, that seemed kind of ridiculous—but when we dove down and you shined the thermal lantern, and it turned out to be true, I felt like there were so many possibilities in the world—like I’m only beginning to discover what’s achievable. Maybe I will find a pure love—like what you and Mom have.
Mom told me that you and Horatio searched for the statue for weeks and then cleaned all the seaweed off, using up most of your oxygen supply, and so I wanted to say it was the best birthday present I have ever received. How many fathers would go to so much work just for their daughter’s eighteenth birthday?
Not many.
You told me you spent the day after your eighteenth birthday sitting on a bench in LOVE Park in Philadelphia writing in your notebook.
From what you’ve told me of your past and dry land—and what I’ve pieced together too—I realize that your childhood was pretty terrible.
That you had to endure a lot to get to Outpost 37 and become my father.
I want to say thank you.
You are a good man, Dad.
I’ve had a beautiful childhood.
And I admire you—I hope to be just like you.
I’ve spent my whole life watching you man the great beam—here at Lighthouse 1.
No one ever comes.
We never see any boats.
But you man the light anyway—just in case.
And we got to see it—all these years.
The great light.
The beautiful sweeping beam!
We were here to see it, and that was enough.
I never really understood how important that was and is until now.
It’s hard for me to leave you here, even though I realize you and Mom will be okay.
I hope you will come visit me once I am settled in, but I understand if you can’t, and I will come back to visit you as much as I can.
I’ve cut a thin braid of my hair off for you.
(Mom said that you cut all your hair off on your eighteenth birthday, but I wasn’t about to do that, because my hair is my best feature!)
Since you’re reading this, you already have the braid that was folded up inside.
You once told me that women used to send locks of their hair to the men they loved when knights rode horses across endless dry land and kings and queens ruled the people. You told me about knights back when you were telling me fairy tales, before we started reading Hamlet together.
I love you, Daddy.
Never forget it.
Also, I’ll be okay.
Mom says you never thought you’d find her when you were my age, but you did.
You probably never thought you’d find me either, and now I need to find the people in my future too—because that’s just the way of the world maybe.
You’ll be okay.
What was it that you and your neighbor used to say? The old man? Was his name Walt?
“We’ll always have Paris.”
Well, we’ll always have the LOVE statue at the bottom of Global Common Area Two.
We’ll always have Outpost 37 and Lighthouse 1 and Horatio the dolphin and Philadelphia Phyllis and Who lived here? and all the rest.
I’m watching you breathe as you sleep in the chair next to me.
You look so peaceful.
You look just like a good dad should.
I’m watching you breathe as you sleep in the chair next to me.
You look so peaceful.
You look just like a good dad should.
I can tell by the little smile on your face that you are having a wonderful dream.
I’ve watched you sleep for over an hour, just because.
And the whole time I wished your mind was a sea we could scuba dive in together because I’d like to see the LOVE statue that sits at the bottom of your consciousness.
I know it’s huge and red and beautiful, because you’ve been pulling the seaweed off it for so many years. I know you weeded the waters of your mind for me, for Mom, so we could celebrate my eighteenth birthday together—and so I could go on and enjoy the life you gave me.
Keep weeding, Dad.
Weed your mind.
And man the great light.
Even when no one is looking.
Love, your daughter,
S
About the Author
Matthew Quick (aka Q) is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, which was made into an Academy Award-winning film. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, among other accolades. Q lives in Massachusetts with his wife, novelist/pianist Alicia Bessette.
Also By Matthew Quick
THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
SORTA LIKE A ROCKSTAR
BOY 21
Примечания
1
Herr Silverman is my Holocaust Class teacher, but he is primarily the German teacher at my high school, which is why we call him Herr and not Mr.
2
On Livestrong.com I read that “every 100 minutes another teenager will commit suicide.” And I don’t believe it’s true at all, because why don’t you ever hear about all of these suicides on the news or whatever? Do they all happen in secret or in other countries? Suicide can’t be that common, can it? And if it is . . . here I am thinking I’m being daring and original with my own plans. Ha! Here’s more damning evidence, regarding my uniqueness. According to Wikipedia—admittedly not the most reliable and in this case it’s totally outdated—“In the United States, firearms remain the most common method of suicide, accounting for 53.7 percent of all suicides committed during 2003.” Wikipedia also says, “Over one million people die by suicide every year.” So according to Wikipedia, suicide takes care of one million fucked-up people every time our planet circles the sun. I wonder what Charles Darwin would have to say about that fun little fact. Natural selection? Nature’s way of protecting the stronger and more necessary? Is my mind simply an agent of nature? Am I about to make Uncle Charlie Darwin proud?
3
Breakfast of a Teenage Killer is a sick double entendre, as I am a killer who is a teenager, and—since my target is a teenager whom I must kill—I am also a killer of teenagers!
4
I Googled “How long does it take to die when you slit your wrists?” There are all sorts of people asking this question on the Internet and most of them say they are researching the topic for their high school health class. Most of the posted answers accuse the asker of lying and urge him (her?) to seek professional help. There are straight-up answers from people who claim to be doctors and others who have actually slit their wrists with razor blades and survived. They all say this is a very painful way to die (or not die)—that it’s not peaceful, not at all the death-in-a-warm-bath-go-to-sleep type of deal in which movies make you believe. The blood can clot, which keeps you alive and in excruciating pain. But then I found posts about how to slit your wrists the “right way,” so you will actually die, and that depressed me, because people actually post stuff like that, and, even though I wanted to know the answer, so I could weigh my options, that info maybe shouldn’t be on the Internet. I’m not going to list the right way to slit your wrists or explain it to you, because I don’t want any additional blood on my hands. But really—why do some people post the correct ways to commit suicide on the Internet? Do they want weird, sad people like me to go away permanently? Do they think it’s a good idea for some people to off themselves? How can you tell when you are one of those people who should slash his wrists the right way with a razor blade? Is there an answer for that too? I Googled but nothing concrete came up. Just ways to complete the mission. Not justification.
5
Sometimes when I stay after class to talk with Herr Silverman about life—while he’s trying to put a positive spin on whatever depressing subject I’ve brought up—I’ll pretend I have X-ray vision and stare at his clothed forearms, trying to end the mystery, but it never works because I, unfortunately, don’t really have X-ray vision.
6
Linda is my mother. I call her Linda because it annoys her. She says it “de-moms” her. But she de-mommed herself when she rented an apartment in Manhattan and left me all alone in South Jersey to fend for myself most weeks and increasingly more weekends. She says she needs to be in New York because of her fashion-designing career, but I’m pretty sure it’s so she can screw her French boyfriend, Jean-Luc, and keep the hell away from her fucked-up son. She checked out of my life right after the bad shit with Asher went down, maybe because it was too intense for her to handle. I don’t know.
7
You won’t believe this, but my father was actually a minor rock star back in the early 1990s. His stage name was Jack Walker, which were his two favorite drinks: Jack Daniel’s, Johnnie Walker. How clever! Do you know him? No? How shocking! You might remember his band, Tether Me Slowly, or the “East Coast’s answer to grunge,” according to Rolling Stone, once upon a time. You’ve definitely heard his one big hit, “Underwater Vatican,” because they play it all the goddamn time on classic-rock radio. He toured with the Jesus Lizard, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and others as an opening act. Signed a HUGE record deal, had a creative block, became an alcoholic, married my mom, made a crap sophomore album, developed a drug habit (or should I say developed another drug habit because—as we learned in health class—alcohol is a drug), was too much of a wuss to OD or off himself like a proper rock star, had me, quit making music, lived off what he made from basically one lucky song and selling his rock ‘n’ roll paraphernalia on eBay (including the smashed and signed Kurt Cobain guitar that used to hang over my bed), became a has-been one-hit-wonder joke who never even touched a guitar anymore, grew bloated and perpetually red-skinned and unrecognizable, accused Linda of having affairs, began to disappear for days at a time, clandestinely started overnight gambling in Atlantic City, stopped paying taxes, woke his fifteen-year-old son in the middle of the goddamn night to give me his father’s WWII souvenirs and knock me out with his roses-and-mustard-gas Kurt Vonnegut breath, told me to be a good man, told me to take care of Linda, was rumored to have fled by banana fucking cargo boat to some Venezuelan jungle just before the Feds could nab him, and hasn’t been heard from since. Every time I hear “Underwater Vatican” now, I want to tear down the walls, and not just because every penny from every royalty check goes to the U.S. government and not me. Linda was pissed about the money she owed the government, all the lawyer shenanigans, losing the big house, the cars, but other than that, she was pretty much like “good fucking riddance” and then her parents died and she inherited enough money to start her NYC designing business and keep me here in South Jersey. My father—whose real name was Ralph Peacock—had Linda sign a prenuptial agreement, I’m certain of that, because no one would have put up with his faded-rock-star shit for so long. But the joke was this: In the end, she got absolutely nothing out of the deal. He was pretty much a bastard. And shitty mom though she may be, Linda still turns heads. She’s beautiful—just what you’d think an ex-model would look like in her late thirties.
8
Aka my dad, circa 1991.
9
Like father, unlike son.
10
Linda needs mirrors more than she needs oxygen, so there are mirrors in every goddamn room of our house.
11
I met Walt during a blizzard, just after we moved into the new house. I remember Linda asking me to shovel the driveway, even though it was still snowing, because she had to go out to meet another fake designer or some bulimic model or whomever. I think she was trying to “cure” me by assigning manly tasks because of what happened with Asher and me, even though she refused to believe me when I tried to tell her what happened because she’s a selfish, oblivious bitch. And on that snow day, shoveling was an impossible task, because just as soon as I got one shovel width done, new snow had already covered the cleared driveway once more. It took me hours, and I was exhausted by the time Linda said, “Good enough.” I was just about to go inside when she asked me to make sure our neighbor was okay. “He’s an old man. Ask him if he needs his driveway shoveled or anything else,” Linda said, which was strange because she’s not usually considerate—or even aware—of anyone but herself. Again, I think she was trying to “cure” me without addressing what happened. When I didn’t move, Linda said, “Go, Leo. Be a good neighbor. We want to make the right sort of impression. Especially after all that’s happened.” So I walked through a few feet of snow as Linda pulled out of the driveway. I had planned on just going inside our new home once she had driven away, but she idled in the street, watching me through the falling snow. Just as soon as I rang the doorbell, she drove away. When no one answered I thought I was in luck, but then I heard yelling inside and what sounded like gunshots. It shook me right out of the quiet winter scene I was in and got my heart going even more than it already was. I waited for a second, thinking I might be hearing things, but then I heard more gunshots, so I pulled out my cell phone and called the police. Three cop cars arrived a few minutes later with their sirens blaring and their lights flashing. They had this bullhorn and they used it to tell me to step away from the house. So I did. One of the cops went up to the door with his gun drawn and knocked really hard. No one answered. So he trudged through the snow toward the back of the house. He looked in all the windows. A minute or so later, the front door opened and an old man stood there leaning on a walker. “What the hell is going on?” he said. “Sir, there was a report of gunshots. Are you okay?” the police officer said. “I’m just watching a Bogart movie, for Christ’s sake.” The cops looked at me like they were pissed and then we all went inside to sort out the facts. Once the cops were satisfied that it was all just a misunderstanding, they left. “What were you even doing at my front door?” the old man said to me. “My mom wanted to know if you needed your driveway shoveled. That’s how this all started. I’m sorry I called the police. But the gunshots sounded real.” The old man smiled proudly and said, “That’s my new surround-sound system. They’re redoing the sound on most of the old films, and I can’t hear so good, so I turn it up. You ever watch good old Humphrey Bogart in action?” “No,” I said. He opened his eyes so wide and said, “Jesus Christ, you have no idea what you’re missing! Get your uneducated ass in my living room and we’ll start with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” And that’s how Linda passed me off to the next-door neighbor when I needed a father figure—when I first started getting fucked in the head. Watching old movies with Walt seemed like a strange thing to do on a snow day, but it beat shoveling, so I followed him into his living room, declined the cigarette he offered me, heard Bogart say, “Will you stake a fellow American to a meal?” and just sort of settled in for what would turn out to be hours and days and weeks of black-and-white movies.
12
Maybe you think I’m an asshole, making smoking more affordable for an old man with shot lungs? I’m not a big fan of smoking, for the record, even though I’m about to commit suicide. Irony? But Walt pretty much has old-time movies, cigarettes, scotch, and me. Cigarettes are 25 percent of his life. So I don’t judge him for smoking. Why should he want to extend his life longer? He started before they even knew it was bad for you, so maybe his addiction isn’t really his fault anyway. Maybe if I were born eighty-some years ago, I’d be addicted to cigarettes too.
13
Seventy-inch flat-screen TV; Oriental rugs; garage-kept brand-new Mercedes-Benz, which he never even drives; professionally landscaped yard; in-ground sprinkler system; original Norman Rockwell painting in the hallway—you get the picture.
14
If you took away all his wrinkles and rogue white hair, he’d look like a seasoned George Clooney.
15
He’s talking about my Bogart hat, which is too big and even covers my eyebrows. It’s kind of ridiculous.
16
Maybe you’re wondering why a teenager in 2011 likes watching Bogart films with an old man? Good question. At first, it was just something to do, somewhere to be where I felt wanted, because Walt’s pretty lonely. But I really grew to get, understand, and love Bogart Hollywood land. Walt says the movies were for men who came home from World War II disoriented, trying to make sense of the new postwar world, trying to relearn how to be men in a new domesticated life with women. There were no women around during the fighting overseas, just men supporting men, which is the reason for the Lauren Bacall-type femme fatales. During the war, men forgot how to interact with and trust women. And I like the fact that Walt takes me to a place none of my classmates even know exists. I admire Bogart because he does what’s right regardless of consequences—even when the consequences are stacked high against him—unlike just about everyone else in my life.