Chapter Eighteen
-- December, 1999
Ozzy Osbourne – “Mama, I’m Comin’ Home”
The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas at boarding school was pointless. It was barely two weeks and the only reason we had to come back at all was finals. I tried to study in the dorms, but things with Jeff had gotten even worse. In an effort to avert roommate discord, I called upon a trick I learned from countless television sitcoms. I used masking tape to draw a line down the center of the room so we could both go our separate ways. This, however, turned out to be a strategic mistake as Jeff assumed the rules meant he could come over to my side, but I was not allowed over onto his. If I even accidentally crossed the taped line, he would give me a dead arm. I had successfully cut my dorm room in half.
After my last final, I grabbed my bag for winter break and headed into town. I got there just in time to catch the 2:07 Metro North to Grand Central. On the train ride, I started work on a new story. The working title was “Remembrances.” It was about an elderly man who had no family left and was put in a state-run old folks home. Coincidentally, it was the same building that once upon a time used to be his elementary school. As he wandered the halls, supervised by robot orderlies, he kept having visions of his childhood. Soon it becomes clear that he’s lost his mind. That was as far as I got though, because we had just arrived in New York City.
It took me quite a while to flag down a cab, seeing as I didn’t know there was a line dedicated to just that. By the time I got to Penn Station, I never had to piss so badly in all my life. I entered one of the filthiest bathrooms I have ever seen and went right to the wall of urinals. I noticed a homeless man about ten feet away. I was about to unzip when he turned to me with his dick in his hand as if to say, “any takers?”
I went to the other bank of urinals. Unfortunately, the guy followed me. I decided to just pee quickly as the man settled in three urinals down from me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him start stroking. He was just getting a steady rhythm going when I finished up and dashed out of the room. As I caught my second train of the day, I thought about how low someone would have to fall to do something like that. Still, it felt nice to be wanted.
I was in such a hurry to get back for Christmas break that I didn’t consider what I’d do when it arrived. I had made it through Thanksgiving on my own, but Christmas vacation was a lot longer. If I didn’t want to spend it alone, my choices were limited. Nick and Sheila were gone. And hanging out with Dean and his friends wasn’t an option. If I didn’t want to spend the whole of Christmas fighting with Mom there was only one other place I could go...
Uncle Bill and Aunt Beth’s son, Eddie, worshipped the ground I walked on. And with all my failures lately, I could use a little worshipping. Eddie jumped at the chance to watch a wrestling pay-per-view with me. His mother even volunteered to pay for it.
Janet agreed to drive me over there but refused to go inside saying that every time she stepped into “that house” she had to take a shower immediately afterwards to get the smell of Marlboros out of her hair. Personally, I think she had other reasons for not going inside. From what I could glean from her stories, her relationship with Bill had imploded a long time ago.
Bill and Beth were the only people in the family who were poorer than we were. They lived in a forgettable ranch style house on the edge of town. When I arrived, Eddie opened the front door of their house right on cue, as if he’d been waiting by the window for me to show up. He was unnaturally pale with permanent five o’clock shadow, and was short as well, about 5’2”, the result of being a preemie baby and spending nine months in the liquor cellar that was Beth’s womb. He never went anywhere without his hoodie. And the poor kid reeked of cigarettes, which wasn’t exactly his fault. He also constantly wore a page boy hat, an anachronism that made him look like something off the set of “Newsies.”
He excitedly told me that his mother had ordered us Chinese food and that it would be here within fifteen minutes. As we crossed the living room carpet with its inch of dirt, he asked if I wanted anything to drink. They purchased cigarettes and soda in bulk and he showed me the space in the corner of the dining room where the sodas took up an entire wall. With all the candy and soda, Eddie’s house was like Pleasure Island from Pinocchio. He lived off a diet designed to soften your teeth and cut years off your life.
Eddie showed me his room while we waited for the food to arrive. The kid was just about the most political person I had ever met in my life. The anger he should have pointed at his parents, he instead pointed at trolls on the internet. Currently, he was writing angry letters to Governor Christine Todd Whitman. He happily showed me copies. As I read them, I noticed that everything was black and white with Eddie. When I made an offhand comment insulting the Vanowens, he went off.
“Who gives a shit if they don’t like you?!” he said. “They’re the fakest people I’ve ever met in my life! All they care about is material possessions! They’re greedy, selfish people!” His style was abrupt, but it was nice to know there was someone out there who could see through their façade. That, or he simply had no filter. I couldn’t decide which.
When the Chinese food came, we went into the kitchen, passing Uncle Bill who was in the living room, chain-smoking and watching “Days of our Lives.” Somehow, we were still talking about the Vanowens.
“Hey Dad,” Eddie asked, “what do you think of Dean?”
Without looking up from the television, Uncle Bill responded, “He’s an asshole. Always gets me shave of the month club for my birthday. Never used it once.” Eddie looked at me, smiling, as if he knew he’d get gold out of his father’s response. I laughed.
Bill elaborated. “It’s not the kid’s fault. His parents are imbeciles.”
“Imbeciles!” I repeated, egging him on.
“My sister was terrified of being alone, terrified of being left behind. So, she married one of the dumbest men I’ve ever met just so she wouldn’t be alone.”
There wasn’t much to say after that.
In the kitchen, Aunt Beth was putting out plates. As I loaded up on sesame chicken and shrimp fried rice, she nostalgically told me about how she used to babysit me when I was younger. She was good and drunk and I could tell Eddie was embarrassed of what she might say. “I would take you on walks,” Beth recalled, “and you would point at the different garage doors at our condo that you wanted to open. You’d say, ‘want that door, want that door!’” She cackled and placed a hand on my shoulder. I forgot that she was a toucher.
“Okay Mom, the shows about to start. We gotta go...” Eddie thankfully ushered me back into his room, where we ate junk food and drank cavity water for the next four hours. It was a really good pay-per-view and I didn’t want to miss a thing, but eventually I couldn’t hold my piss any longer. I hurried off to the bathroom, rushing so I’d miss as little as possible.
Unfortunately, Aunt Beth cornered me on the way back to Eddie’s room. She started giving me a weird back rub and quietly talking into my ear about my “emotional problems.” She said that Dean was a good kid but that he wasn’t “one of us.”
I had no idea what to say, so I just agreed with her.
She continued. “Bill hasn’t made love to me in years...”
“Oh... that’s a shame.” I said, squirming.
“You know,” she ventured, “if you wanted to kiss right now, I wouldn’t tell a soul.”
“Uhhhh... no thanks.”
“Okay well, if you change your mind you know where I’ll be...” She released me from her grasp, and I hurried back into Eddie’s room.
“Dude, where were you?” he asked.
“Please don’t leave me alone with your mother again.”
When the pay-per-view ended and Shawn Michaels had gotten his Championship belt back, it was time to go home. But Aunt Beth wouldn’t be Aunt Beth if she didn’t try and squeeze one last awkward moment into the night. While Mom waited patiently in the driveway, Beth gave me a long hug goodbye, because in her words: “We hug in this family.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
**
Apart from the backrub, I thought the evening went well. Well enough, certainly, to hang out with Eddie some more. I could deal with light incest if it meant my social calendar would be full. When I learned that his parents would be gone for the weekend, it presented an interesting opportunity. Bill and Beth almost never left their house. Actually, they almost never left the area in front of their television, but here they were visiting Beth’s sister in Long Island for the weekend. I was only supposed to sleep over and help Eddie watch the house, but when I suggested we invite some people over, Eddie was only too eager to have a party. He had seen them in movies all his life and now he was finally going to have one!
It should be noted that up until this point, Eddie was stone cold sober. Given who his parents were, it only made sense. So, when he said he wanted to drink at the party to “see what his parents thought was so great about it,” I was a little taken aback.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Might as well, I’m gonna be in high school next year.”
I wanted to know how we were supposed to come up with booze for the party, but Eddie didn’t seem worried. “I know all my Mom’s hidden liquor spots around the house.”
“Won’t she notice?”
“Not really. I pour them out and water them down all the time. She just gets new ones.”
As a joke we got some Halloween decorations out of the basement and put them up around the house. While we waited for people to come over, we started to drink. Eddie was right, his mother had enough liquor hidden around the house to start a speakeasy. At some point, I found Eddie’s old toy shotgun and we played out hilarious movie scenarios like “bad guy has your daughter” and “sniper shoots the president.”
When the laughing subsided, he told me a sad story about how he and his sister once opened presents alone on Christmas day because their parents were still passed out from the night before. He said it like it was a joke, but he didn’t laugh.
Kids started arriving after that. The one phone call Eddie had made to a classmate had spread around town like a virus and soon there were fifty people milling about his dirty house. I knew that this place had never before seen fifty people in it, nor would it ever again.
Even Dean showed up with his friends. I should have figured he’d show up given he and Eddie went to the same school. I watched as Dean’s private school friends milled about with the public school riff-raff.
When Hudson saw me, he said loud enough for others to hear, “Hey Taylor, you still hanging out with your mother?” This got a good solid laugh. Insults are a good way to figure out what people really think of you. Hudson, for instance, seemed to be suggesting that I was a future Norman Bates, something I could not abide.
“Well, I would have hung out with your Mom, but I only had ten bucks.”
There were more than a few “ooohs!” One of those even came from Dean. He had his arm around Layla. They seemed attached at the hip, necking and snuggling against one another. I was busy staring at Layla when I caught sight of a familiar face...
It was the first time I had seen Lauren since that disaster of a party months before. I knew she had spotted me too. She made a concerted effort to steer clear, but I circled around and caught up with her in the kitchen. She looked like she wanted to bolt but reluctantly stopped to talk to me. We made small talk. She had heard that I went to Bishop now. I tried to keep things upbeat, but I could tell I had hurt her. She wasn’t having any of my conciliatory smiles. And the second I tried to flirt with her, she shut it down.
“I’m nobody’s second choice.” she said and walked away. I didn’t know if she had that line cocked and ready to go, but it still hit just as hard.
I was about to go after her when Dean held me back. “Just give her some time,” he suggested. I reluctantly took his advice.
We hadn’t spoken in a long time, but slowly found ourselves melting the ice. Dean was as surprised as I was to learn that Eddie had started drinking.
Eddie, though, seemed to be having a blast. Put a little vodka in him and he became the life of the party. The toy shotgun we were playing with earlier turned into a smash hit when he remembered that there was a scene in “Platoon” where they smoke weed out of the barrel of one. Eddie went around the party shooting smoke into people’s mouths. And when he saw how well Eddie and I were getting along, I couldn’t help but notice the look of jealousy on Dean’s face.
Christmas was a few days later. But instead of yuletide and good cheer, the topic of conversation at the Vanowen’s hovered around Dean and an incident that had happened recently with Rob Shandell, a wormy-looking kid from the club who was always keen to pay for beer in an effort to ingratiate himself. Apparently, Dean, Avi, and Hudson had gotten drunk the weekend before and decided to raise hell. The evening ended with them shitting on Rob’s porch. I laughed when I heard this, but Rob’s parents didn’t find it quite so funny.
In fact, they called the police.
Now fingers were being pointed and the parents were closing ranks to bury it. Hudson’s parents, who barely fraternized with Dean’s parents, suddenly thought that their child was being brought low by Avi and Dean.
This, Lynn could not take. “Uck, they act like they’re so holier than thou!” She implored Dean to “be a good example, the other kids look up to you--”
I spit my juice out, laughing. I had to admit though that there was a change in my cousin. He’d lost a great deal of weight since last summer, anxiously trying to keep up with Layla.
I asked him what really happened. “You’re lucky you got out when you did.” he said, confiding in me that Hudson was the mastermind and had even pointed out which one was Rob’s house. I couldn’t believe it. Dean had sworn up and down to his mother that he had nothing to do with shitting on Rob’s porch. I was beginning to realize that he had no morals to speak of, that he was willing to sell out anything and anyone to get out of the spotlight.
When we finally got around to opening presents, Mom gave me a weekly pill box so I could be sure to take my meds regularly. From then on, whenever she’d see it, Mom would say, “Someone wonderful must have gotten that for you!” She also got me a guide to film schools, which sounds like the most niche book ever, but it exists. I spent the rest of the evening dreaming about my future.
When it got dark out, I borrowed Dean’s CD player and took a walk around the Vanowen’s neighborhood. As I looked at the two to three million dollar mini-mansions, it began to snow. I peered into rich people’s homes as they celebrated the last hours of Christmas together. They seemed calmer. More at peace...
Or did they have the same problems my family had?
I could feel my time with Eddie was starting to change the way I viewed things. Most of my family were just patiently waiting for their inheritance. But when they got it, they would look just like these people here. I desperately wanted to make something of myself but was starting to realize that money made you lose that hunger. I needed to keep that fire alive, whatever it took. Because as far as I could tell, that was me living.
When I returned to the Vanowen’s house, Uncle Kev was sitting by the fireplace smoking a cigar, Christmas being one of the rare times he was allowed to smoke indoors. He had that sweater over collared shirt look that all wealthy people wear at some point. It made him appear cozy and self-satisfied. I guess Dean had told him about all the time I had been spending at Eddie’s house lately, because he waved me over to come talk to him.
“This must have been Nannie’s seventieth birthday party,” he began, getting comfortable in his designated armchair. “She wanted all her kids there and naturally Bill didn’t show up. So, I was sent to go get him.”
I listened warily as Kev continued, “I heard screaming before I even got to their condo. The door was open. I announced myself but it was like Bill and Beth couldn’t even see me. They just kept yelling at each other, more shit-faced than I had ever seen them. I found Eddie cowering under the dining room table.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I brought him to dinner with me. But he wouldn’t eat. He was too...” Kev trailed off. “Taylor, the boy’s too fucked up to do anything for. He’s too far gone. The things he’s seen...”
I felt incredulous. “Doesn’t that make you want to help him?”
Kevin smiled at me, sadly. “You’re a good kid - you know that, Taylor?”
He got up to refill his glass and I watched him go.
“He likes arguing with you,” Lynn said, smiling. “He told me that once.” Her cheeks were warm from all the chardonnay. I wanted to point out that we hadn’t been arguing, but she seemed genuinely happy to share this with me.
Later, after she had put in time with her family, Layla stopped by to give Dean his Christmas present. Being the bigger man, I decided to say “hi” to her. She in turn pretended like I hadn’t even spoken. She stuck around into the night, much to Aunt Lynn’s delight. My Aunt had taken a real shine to the girl. When I finally saw the resemblance between the two of them, I almost laughed. After Lynn heard that Layla and Dean had decided to only date each other, she beamed with delight. “You’re going steady!” she cooed.
Dean turned all kinds of red, hissing “Mom!” But Lynn ignored him.
By this point, Uncle Kev had a hell of a buzz going. “Well, if you’re gonna be spending so much time with my son, then I should probably tell you that we’re Jewish.”
Dean wasn’t sure he heard what he heard. “What?”
“We’re Jewish. My grandmother was Jewish... it’s my mother’s side, so we’re Jewish.”
Dean looked at Layla. “He’s joking...”
Kady seemed shocked. “Mom, did you know about this?”
Lynn nodded. “Tom-tom took me aside before I married your father.”
“It was a different time,” Kevin cut in. “He wanted to give her an out. Back then it meant something to a certain class of people.”
Dean was sitting up now, trying to get a handle on the situation. “Dad, why would you say that in front of Layla?”
“Oh, come on Deanie, she’s a great girl! I know she doesn’t care about this!”
We never saw Layla again. Soon after, she invented some grievance with Dean and broke up with him. Some bullshit about how honesty was really important to her...
The days after Christmas were bleak for my cousin. Through the grapevine he learned that Layla had started dating Hudson. One-by-one his friends turned on him, claiming he was the mastermind of the porch-shitting incident.
Dean spent the rest of winter break not speaking to his father. In early January, he escalated a fight with Kev until he was ruthlessly punching him in the arm, over and over again. Kev just turned and took the shots until he could safely wrap his son in a bear hug. I watched them standing there, holding each other, Dean crying and Kevin recovering, thinking:
So, this is what it’s like having a father.