venom.”
“Uh huh,” he said, knitting hands, not looking up.
“Their development ends with her getting
eaten
from the
inside out.
You see what I’m saying?”
“That you are an assholing know-it-all.”
He palmed his one long tress of hair across his head. It had been dangling past his neck, looking like a broken feather in a one-feather headdress. I was reminded then of his funerary imperatives, which have evolved suchly:
In middle school—“Look, I’ve been trying hard to croak on a Wednesday. I know you’ve never taken the garbage out in your life—but Wednesday’s garbage day. When I succeed in my task, okay, just break my legs so you can fold me over and close the lid.”
In high school—“When I die at this ball game, just put my shades on my face, cross my arms, and leave me be. But
after
you’ve made sure to get the car keys and wallet out of my pockets.”
College—“Any one of you tries putting me in a home—forget about it. I’m grabbing the gun and disappearing into the swamp. Happy hunting, assholes.”
And then, right on cue, he said, “It is the duty of the old to die. So, take whatever you want: pens, underwear, the TV. All I ask in exchange is that you take my ashes to Point Bonita or some shit. Just don’t do like Donnie in
The Big Lebowski.
Really get me in the water.”
I poised my hands above the laptop’s keyboard and asked, “Right. We’ll get to that bridge when we cross it. But first: What,
exactly,
is gonna be lost when you are gone, would you say?”
He turned his head and scowled down his shoulder at me. He asked, “What,
exactly,
are you typing?”
9/20/13
First thing next morning, I tried to watch a Louis C.K. clip the Internet was telling me to watch. “You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something,” his bit goes. “That’s what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That’s being a person. Because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty—forever empty.”
“SHHHH GODDAMNIT!” Dad said, at a volume far louder than YouTube. He looked to the ceiling and waited for the upstairs neighbors to stomp. This is his telltale conscience. Of course, no one ever stomps. Up there, they’re just graceless.
Sticking to my splendor of morning has never been easy. On school days, Dad would pace up and down the hallway counting down
FIVE MINUTES!
and then
THREE MINUTES!
as Karen, Lauren, and I hustled into the plaids and loafers we’d laid out the night before. He wore dark aviators and stood cross-armed next to the idling car while we grabbed what could be carried, as though rushing from a fire. St. Hugh was less than five minutes away.
We were never late. Not once. Not even on days when tropical storms blew in and “driving” to school involved spraying heavy wakes that capsized other commuters’ rubber rafts. Whenwe pulled up to the main building, we wouldn’t need to push the car doors open; yank the handle, and the wind took care of the rest. Sister Kathleen would emerge with her arms up and splayed, a touchdown of disbelief. The black flame of her coif danced on the howl as she exaggeratedly mouthed the words “RUSSELLS, GO HOME.”
One time, in high school—the one time, and an unavoidable one at that, as Dad had to take Lauren to look at state schools—he entrusted the job to Karen, who was herself home from college. Naturally, Karen overslept by twenty minutes. She roused me by pushing me clear out of bed, in her underwear, shrieking
“FUCK, KENT, RUN!”
When Ms. Feldman failed to notice me slinking into second-period English, I was more than astounded. My faith was rocked. Negligence had exposed me to the punitive intelligence that runs the universe and … nothing had happened.
What did we think would happen? What did he tell us would happen? Long ago, the stress of it gave Karen an ulcer. In the endoscopic image, it looked like the planet Jupiter. I was four
“Uh huh,” he said, knitting hands, not looking up.
“Their development ends with her getting
eaten
from the
inside out.
You see what I’m saying?”
“That you are an assholing know-it-all.”
He palmed his one long tress of hair across his head. It had been dangling past his neck, looking like a broken feather in a one-feather headdress. I was reminded then of his funerary imperatives, which have evolved suchly:
In middle school—“Look, I’ve been trying hard to croak on a Wednesday. I know you’ve never taken the garbage out in your life—but Wednesday’s garbage day. When I succeed in my task, okay, just break my legs so you can fold me over and close the lid.”
In high school—“When I die at this ball game, just put my shades on my face, cross my arms, and leave me be. But
after
you’ve made sure to get the car keys and wallet out of my pockets.”
College—“Any one of you tries putting me in a home—forget about it. I’m grabbing the gun and disappearing into the swamp. Happy hunting, assholes.”
And then, right on cue, he said, “It is the duty of the old to die. So, take whatever you want: pens, underwear, the TV. All I ask in exchange is that you take my ashes to Point Bonita or some shit. Just don’t do like Donnie in
The Big Lebowski.
Really get me in the water.”
I poised my hands above the laptop’s keyboard and asked, “Right. We’ll get to that bridge when we cross it. But first: What,
exactly,
is gonna be lost when you are gone, would you say?”
He turned his head and scowled down his shoulder at me. He asked, “What,
exactly,
are you typing?”
9/20/13
First thing next morning, I tried to watch a Louis C.K. clip the Internet was telling me to watch. “You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something,” his bit goes. “That’s what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That’s being a person. Because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty—forever empty.”
“SHHHH GODDAMNIT!” Dad said, at a volume far louder than YouTube. He looked to the ceiling and waited for the upstairs neighbors to stomp. This is his telltale conscience. Of course, no one ever stomps. Up there, they’re just graceless.
Sticking to my splendor of morning has never been easy. On school days, Dad would pace up and down the hallway counting down
FIVE MINUTES!
and then
THREE MINUTES!
as Karen, Lauren, and I hustled into the plaids and loafers we’d laid out the night before. He wore dark aviators and stood cross-armed next to the idling car while we grabbed what could be carried, as though rushing from a fire. St. Hugh was less than five minutes away.
We were never late. Not once. Not even on days when tropical storms blew in and “driving” to school involved spraying heavy wakes that capsized other commuters’ rubber rafts. Whenwe pulled up to the main building, we wouldn’t need to push the car doors open; yank the handle, and the wind took care of the rest. Sister Kathleen would emerge with her arms up and splayed, a touchdown of disbelief. The black flame of her coif danced on the howl as she exaggeratedly mouthed the words “RUSSELLS, GO HOME.”
One time, in high school—the one time, and an unavoidable one at that, as Dad had to take Lauren to look at state schools—he entrusted the job to Karen, who was herself home from college. Naturally, Karen overslept by twenty minutes. She roused me by pushing me clear out of bed, in her underwear, shrieking
“FUCK, KENT, RUN!”
When Ms. Feldman failed to notice me slinking into second-period English, I was more than astounded. My faith was rocked. Negligence had exposed me to the punitive intelligence that runs the universe and … nothing had happened.
What did we think would happen? What did he tell us would happen? Long ago, the stress of it gave Karen an ulcer. In the endoscopic image, it looked like the planet Jupiter. I was four
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