another locked doorway, and he couldn’t tell if he was physically passing through this haunted landscape or merely dreaming it.
There was Julia’s voice again, coming to him from somewhere else, a place far away or a time in the past, as if the voice had been suspended in the air forever, floating on a breeze, waiting to reach him. He seemed to be floating, traveling through some unknown dimension, some space between who he was and once was, an in-between place in which he still heard Julia’s voice, but different now, muted and wispy, coming from someplace he recognized. Tangled white sheets, an open window, twirling curtains, brisk air with a watery feel. The ceiling turning, turning, turning above him. And Julia laughing. She was in his parents’ kitchen, it was morning, and he was in his room upstairs. He listened to the voices—his father’s carefully modulated tone, his mother’s brightly false chatter, Julia’s voice, appealingly straightforward and calm. He put his leg over the edge of the bed and his foot touched the cold floor and the room slowed down and stopped spinning. Julia’s laughter again, disturbing to him on some level, disruptive to his basic assumptions about the world. Tonio had just brought her home for the first time. Robbie was seventeen, already a fuckup, already written off in some subtle, unstated way by everyone, or at least everyone who counted, like his high school teachers who’d endured his years of underachievement and his lackadaisical attitude and his failure at this and his inability to see that, etc. He had long since quit imagining Tonio as anyone he wanted to emulate. It puzzled him, observing his brother when he came home for Christmas, or vacations, or breaks in the academic year—what had he ever seen to admire? In fact he had almost quit noticing his brother until he showed up at home with Julia. Now there was a puzzle to consider. How had Tonio, he of the apishly long arms and the heavy shuffling footsteps and the outsize cranium, the collared shirts with coffee stains, the boat-size running shoes and huarache sandals, the cowlick wetted down carelessly and unsuccessfully, the nose always in a book or a set of field notes—how had that guy convinced this woman to marry him?
Julia’s voice again, floating up from the kitchen. He could hear everyone but Tonio, who he guessed wasn’t there, which made it worthwhile to go downstairs, maybe. He descended quietly, his head throbbing, balancing himself against the wall, to find all the major characters (excepting Tonio) in the family drama assembled. Addison mater and pater were in their usual morning gowns and pajamas, and Julia had apparently made them breakfast, a weird rite of passage, when everything was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Robbie, stumbling down the last two stairs in an obvious state of post-drunken dishevelment, attempting to procure a box of cereal from the pantry without dislodging the pantry door, trying to pour the milk without spilling it all over the table. “Aaah,” he said as he sat on the vinyl-covered chair in the breakfast nook, the chair making that sound like a polite fart.
His parents’ immediate situation was interesting. On the one hand, there was a reputation to uphold, an understood but unstated superiority to Julia, a need to show that she was somehow being granted undeserved favor, exalted over the normal run of humanity based on Tonio’s selection of her as a wife, but now there was this additional difficulty, which was how to work Robbie into the equation, because if you were so superior, an appellate court judge like his father, aligned with all things intellectual and progressive, why did you have a screwed-up kid like this living in your house, part of your family, who was flunking chemistry and calculus and making everyone’s life miserable? What a difficult tightrope to walk so early on such a fine day, birds chirping, sun shining, the scent of Mother
There was Julia’s voice again, coming to him from somewhere else, a place far away or a time in the past, as if the voice had been suspended in the air forever, floating on a breeze, waiting to reach him. He seemed to be floating, traveling through some unknown dimension, some space between who he was and once was, an in-between place in which he still heard Julia’s voice, but different now, muted and wispy, coming from someplace he recognized. Tangled white sheets, an open window, twirling curtains, brisk air with a watery feel. The ceiling turning, turning, turning above him. And Julia laughing. She was in his parents’ kitchen, it was morning, and he was in his room upstairs. He listened to the voices—his father’s carefully modulated tone, his mother’s brightly false chatter, Julia’s voice, appealingly straightforward and calm. He put his leg over the edge of the bed and his foot touched the cold floor and the room slowed down and stopped spinning. Julia’s laughter again, disturbing to him on some level, disruptive to his basic assumptions about the world. Tonio had just brought her home for the first time. Robbie was seventeen, already a fuckup, already written off in some subtle, unstated way by everyone, or at least everyone who counted, like his high school teachers who’d endured his years of underachievement and his lackadaisical attitude and his failure at this and his inability to see that, etc. He had long since quit imagining Tonio as anyone he wanted to emulate. It puzzled him, observing his brother when he came home for Christmas, or vacations, or breaks in the academic year—what had he ever seen to admire? In fact he had almost quit noticing his brother until he showed up at home with Julia. Now there was a puzzle to consider. How had Tonio, he of the apishly long arms and the heavy shuffling footsteps and the outsize cranium, the collared shirts with coffee stains, the boat-size running shoes and huarache sandals, the cowlick wetted down carelessly and unsuccessfully, the nose always in a book or a set of field notes—how had that guy convinced this woman to marry him?
Julia’s voice again, floating up from the kitchen. He could hear everyone but Tonio, who he guessed wasn’t there, which made it worthwhile to go downstairs, maybe. He descended quietly, his head throbbing, balancing himself against the wall, to find all the major characters (excepting Tonio) in the family drama assembled. Addison mater and pater were in their usual morning gowns and pajamas, and Julia had apparently made them breakfast, a weird rite of passage, when everything was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Robbie, stumbling down the last two stairs in an obvious state of post-drunken dishevelment, attempting to procure a box of cereal from the pantry without dislodging the pantry door, trying to pour the milk without spilling it all over the table. “Aaah,” he said as he sat on the vinyl-covered chair in the breakfast nook, the chair making that sound like a polite fart.
His parents’ immediate situation was interesting. On the one hand, there was a reputation to uphold, an understood but unstated superiority to Julia, a need to show that she was somehow being granted undeserved favor, exalted over the normal run of humanity based on Tonio’s selection of her as a wife, but now there was this additional difficulty, which was how to work Robbie into the equation, because if you were so superior, an appellate court judge like his father, aligned with all things intellectual and progressive, why did you have a screwed-up kid like this living in your house, part of your family, who was flunking chemistry and calculus and making everyone’s life miserable? What a difficult tightrope to walk so early on such a fine day, birds chirping, sun shining, the scent of Mother
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