I was just asking, I said.
My poor old dad: liver spots, seven years from retirement, quadruple bypass, still overweight, a weekly participant at AA meetings. Hes got little scabs on his scalp, I dont know from what. I imagined him standing there by the phone, a graying, pudgy Vietnam War survivor trying to offer sage-sounding advice to his son.
Nobody likes a whiner, he wheezed. What brought this up? He didnt wait for an answer. A mans gotta show up at the place where they expect you to show up. He coughed and hawked phlegm into the mouthpiece, or so it sounded. You have a good job. But since you want advice, Ill tell you something to keep your spirits elevated. I just recalled this. Something your grandfather once told me. This was his cure for low spirits. When you pour your first cup of coffee of the day, if youre feeling crummy, put a dab of ice cream into it. Its festive. Then you gotta trudge off like everybody else, like I said, but you got the ice cream with you. Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.
Booze once, ice cream now, I thought. Jesus, the poor guy, I should be the one giving him consolation and reassurance.
No, I said. Dad, its just you know, with my marriage breaking up
Listen, Brad, he said. Dont tell me. I just cant I dont know. Youre way past the age when you tell your parents much of anything. Its just what? My father worries about long-distance costs almost as much as he worries about me and sometimes is short in these conversations. Really, he means well. Im not presenting his best side here. You dont like your job, managing that coffee store, then get another position. He waited, and his voice grew a bit quieter. Son, believe me, I blow some of my brains out at work every day. My heads full of bullet holes. Its what work does to you. Life is suffering, as the major religions say. Face up to facts.
Well, I said, as long as were on this subject of advice and everything, how have you managed to stay married to Mom for so long? What is it, thirty
Thirty-eight years.
Thirty-eight years, I said. Howd you manage that?
Thats no sort of question. You cant ask me that. But since youve asked, Ill answer it. Its simple. You want to know the secret? Ill tell you what the secret is. Heres the secret. I kept my mouth shut. He waited, a wintry pause. Thats the secret.
There was another long cessation of talk, during which I smelled rubbing alcohol from somewhere in my house (had Bradley the dog found a bottle in the bathroom and knocked it over? I would have to look), and then I wished my father well and hung up. Months and months ago, after he had first met my wife-to-be, he had somberly told me that my marriage to Kathryn would not work out. So far he hadnt reminded me that he had said so. He wasnt that kind of parent, not so far.
I ARRIVE AT THE MALL and park my car and check the sky for rain or snow. On this particular morning, the sky has a weird pinkish cellophane-like tint to it. The air smells like factory exhaust. I walk in through one of the service entrances. I am a service person.
When I go into the back entrance to our business, I smell the beans and the roasters and the antiseptic-lacquered-with-fruit smell of floor cleanser, and then, even more faintly, the strange bleary artificiality in the air, characteristic of enclosed shopping malls. The ion content in the oxygen has been tampered with by people trying to save money by giving you less oxygen to breathe. You get light-headed and desperate to shop. The air smells machine-manufactured, and the light looks manufactured or maybe recycled from previous light.
Above us in the malls atrium, close to our entrance, is a skylight in a mystical geometrical shape like one of those Masonic emblems. Dont get me wrong: I believe in business and profit. Only anyway, across from us is a clothes store, Snooker, specializing in clothes that have a slick polyester thug appeal, and next to it on one side is Video Village, and on the other side is All Outdoors, where they sell what they call wilderness products though theres no wilderness within a thousand miles of here hiking clothes and such, along with alpha-wave sound-effect tapes of breakers crashing on the beach and nearly extinct birds singing their farewell songs. The place smells of cedar and burlap. Nearer to us, down a sort of mall alleyway heading out to the north entrance, theres a cinnamon roll concession and a one-hour photo lab, and a Fun Factory and a maternity store called Motherhood, next to a nutrition store for bodybuilders. They sell megavitamins, protein powders, and motivation magazines and tapes in there. The last store in that alley is eXcess-ories (Everything eXtreme you want).
Out on the courtyard is a salad-and-snack store, The Marquis de Salade. Next to our business is Heppelworths, which sells weekly, monthly, and yearly planners, and motivation posters and motivation books. They sell motivation in there, preachers of aggression, hard-sell cures for Monday morning blues. Motivation! Almost everyone at our end of the mall sells motivation except us. Everything around here is a cure for Monday morning. Well, I guess we do that, too, with our coffee. The biggest-selling items in Heppelworths are the framed posters with pictures of seagulls flying over misty Pacific coastlines thick with lyric beauty and printed wisdom underneath. There is an enormous markup for these items. Heres a sample of what they print on the posters.
SUCCESS:
Every effort no matter how large or small contains the kernel of its own reward. In every inventory your greatest asset is you.
Then theres another one of a raging river cutting through a swath of pine woods. Underneath that you would read the following thought.
THE FUTURE:
I can go no higher than my hopes can take me. Therefore I must be defined by my hopes and the awe-inspiring practicality of my dreams.
Sometimes I go into Heppelworths on my break. I speak to the manager, Windtunnel not his real name, I dont want him to sue me about customer traffic and about business. Windtunnel occasionally visits us when he comes into Jitters on his break, though he always drinks the cheapest coffee we have. He has the murderous blank open-eyed look of a screech owl, and his breath smells of floor cleanser. Anyway, in Heppelworths, I look at these posters Windtunnel has put on display, and of course I feel the onset of mall hallucination. I am so far beyond being motivated that I want to punch the nearest clerk. But I dont! Thats discipline. I start to think up my own motivation posters. Id put them just below photographs of automobile junkyards and clear-cut forests and gray skies sick with cloudy indifference. The Gospel According to Bradley. The Book of Job, pronounced job.
DISCIPLINE:
I am a peaceful man. Peace is my mission: I will not smite any customers today. That is sound business practice and a sure path to profits.
Then I go back to Jitters.
Following Kathryns departure from my life, Id go to work after giving Bradley the dog his early morning walk. I have to admit it: the business gave me a boost. I liked having a place to go in the morning. I liked having a purpose. I liked arriving there before the mall had opened. Its what you might call a dawn feeling. No doubt there is a word for this in German. Every day is a new day when filled with dawn feeling, a virgin day, until it gets fucked up by human activity and becomes history. Id look out through the steel-mesh security curtain at the dim interior spaces of the Briardale Mall. You know, stores have a peculiar bitter vacancy when theres nobody in them, nobody wanting anything. They succumb to pointlessness.
Id sit down and inspect our books and spreadsheets, then make sure the cups and saucers and equipment were all in place. Id make the brews for the day and load the dispenser-thermoses with them. Id open the cash register and do a count. Id page through Specialty Coffee Retailer. Id look out through those cell bars at the empty mall. Shiny surfaces. Every surface washed and polished. After an hour or so, the bakery would deliver our breads and pastries for the day. Id chat with the delivery guy, Hans.
Jitters is meant to be inviting. We have wood floors and semiwood ceilings. We have tables and chairs, and large sofas and furniture Pottery Barn knockoffs scattered every which way. Soft surfaces. We have well, we have my paintings on the wall. The Feast of Love is up there, in the back. A portrait of Bradley, my dog, is also up near the entryway, but its very abstract. You cant tell whether its a dog or a contraption or what, though it looks friendly in its abstract way, like Nude Descending a Staircase except with a dog. You can see Bradley in there if you know where to look. Hes eating dog chow, the food suggested by drips and dribbles. It was cubism plus charm.
Id sit down and inspect our books and spreadsheets, then make sure the cups and saucers and equipment were all in place. Id make the brews for the day and load the dispenser-thermoses with them. Id open the cash register and do a count. Id page through Specialty Coffee Retailer. Id look out through those cell bars at the empty mall. Shiny surfaces. Every surface washed and polished. After an hour or so, the bakery would deliver our breads and pastries for the day. Id chat with the delivery guy, Hans.
Jitters is meant to be inviting. We have wood floors and semiwood ceilings. We have tables and chairs, and large sofas and furniture Pottery Barn knockoffs scattered every which way. Soft surfaces. We have well, we have my paintings on the wall. The Feast of Love is up there, in the back. A portrait of Bradley, my dog, is also up near the entryway, but its very abstract. You cant tell whether its a dog or a contraption or what, though it looks friendly in its abstract way, like Nude Descending a Staircase except with a dog. You can see Bradley in there if you know where to look. Hes eating dog chow, the food suggested by drips and dribbles. It was cubism plus charm.
If I had everything ready for the day and a few moments free, Id start to draw. Id draw the Dragon with the Rubber Nose, the dragon that Harry Ginsberg had told me about. I got started with this art thing by being a cartoonist. Id draw this dragon on little sheets of motivation paper Id filched from Heppelworths, the dragon rubbing out all the wording in Heppelworths, all that motivation. Then Id draw little pictures of him browsing and shopping and setting fire to JCPenneys and Nordstroms and eating all of the cinnamon buns just down the mall from us and then eating the Mortal Kombat machine at Fun Factory. And then, resting. My dragon: like God, on the seventh day. Some of these drawings were technically quite difficult.