Eeeee Eee Eeee (9 page)

“Playing piano and being politically apathetic are the same thing,” Ellen said, a bit rotely, as if she’d said it before, though she couldn’t be sure if she had.

A Honda Civic with at least four bears inside passed Jan’s car.

A bear was on top of the car, stomach down.

Jan pointed at that.

They stopped at a stoplight and waited and continued driving.

“When I’m old I want to live in a cabin on the beach,” Jan said. “I’ll wake up, eat fruit, play the piano. I think I’ll take a nap and read a book. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll be playing the piano and I’ll think, ‘I think I’ll nap and read,’ then I’ll go do it. Doesn’t that sound so nice?” Jan made a sudden U-turn. A couple of cars honked. She parked in front of a Wal-Mart grocery store. There was a tired look on her face as she slowed the car to get it just right.
It took a long time to make the car go from fast to slow to stop, Ellen felt. It was hard to slow to a stop. Ellen felt nervous, because of how strange it was to slow down, how terrible it must be for Jan to have the responsibility of carefully slowing the car to a stop without crashing. Then Ellen felt normal again. They were just parking the car. The car was still moving. Ellen looked at her mom, who was trying to park the car. A person, Ellen thought, and felt sad. Inside, putting peaches into a plastic bag, Jan said she was flying to Las Vegas to gamble for a few days. Ellen asked if she could go. Jan told Ellen to go get a package of salmon. Ellen went and got an organic avocado and thought about gambling and brought back the avocado. Jan said she knew Ellen would get something else—not a salmon. Ellen said gambling was good because it kept people inside, where they couldn’t hurt anyone, and where they could get rid of their extra money, but bad because it increased the divide between the rich and the poor. Jan said she
would donate her house to the poor, and they would all live in a forest, with dogs. Ellen said she wished that would happen. Jan pointed at something and said, “Look at that organic fruit.” Ellen looked. Jan quickly walked to and hugged her daughter.

A few weeks passed and Ellen didn’t make any friends—she talked once to the girl with the “Mineral” shirt but then didn’t see her again—and then 10th grade was over and it was summer. Ellen’s mom, Jan, was going to Hawaii. She and her sister had planned to go to Las Vegas but then chose Hawaii, as a sort of joke, just to do it—vacation in Hawaii; why not?—and now the plane was about to crash. There had been an explosion or something. Jan and
her sister were hugging. A flight attendant was telling everyone to hold themselves and lean forward into their laps and everyone did that and Jan’s sister did it, and then Jan did it.

Everything was shaking and Jan was crying a little.

She thought of her daughters and Steve and saw some of their heads and faces in different angles, sort of floating around. She hugged her sister, who was in a kind of fetal position, and felt her sister’s spine against her cheek and looked sideways out the window—something was flashing and behind that it was a very light blue, like a black that went past into white and then a little into blue—and thought that if she concentrated hard and moved very fast she could jump out of the plane and parachute onto a cruise ship that would be there, but that seemed too difficult, because she didn’t have a parachute. It was very noisy and everything was shaking. Jan felt a little sleepy. She thought she should probably stay awake, to see what would happen, but she wasn’t sure—it felt dangerous to know what was going to happen;
safer to just let it happen, outside of herself, like someone else’s responsibility—and then the plane went into the ocean. But a few weeks before that, in July, Ellen had received forty posters in the mail; the package had said, “The United States Government.” Ellen wasn’t sure if they were allowed to do that—use tax-payer money on this. “Paste them in conspicuous areas around the city,” said a pamphlet. She sat on the floor of her room, felt sad, and flattened out a poster in front of her. The poster had a handsome dragon. They were posters for the movie the president had written, directed, and starred-in.

“Why are you doing that?” said Ellen’s brother Steve.

“I’m not,” Ellen said. “Go away.” She stared at the carpet.

“You go away. I own this room. I bought it from a government auction with fake bids.”

Ellen pushed Steve out of her room. While being pushed into the hallway Steve said, “I’m going to come in here tonight and superglue those posters to each of your clothes. Don’t cry
when it happens.” Steve went to his room. He thought briefly about his life, felt a vague foreboding, and sat at his computer. He instant messaged Andrew, his acquaintance from high school who had gone to college in New York five years ago. Andrew worked in a library.

“Andrew,” Steve typed in AOL instant messenger.

“Steve,” Andrew typed.

“Karl’s away message is ‘Rock!’ ” Steve typed.

“I want to throw eggs at Karl’s house,” Andrew typed.

“I’m so hungry. I’m going to check the fridge.” Steve sat there. He wasn’t hungry. Maybe he was a little hungry. He couldn’t tell. “We have six limes,” Steve typed a few seconds later. He felt impatient.

“Make a line of subs. A subline,” Andrew typed. Good one, Steve thought. It didn’t make sense. In high school they did Sublime covers in Andrew’s room. Maybe that was it. “We should just go assault Karl,” Andrew typed. “We should break his leg.”

“Ahahahahaah,” Steve typed, and stared at his computer screen.

“Eggs aren’t enough anymore,” Andrew typed. “We will murder him.”

“What about when he fell on the curb and broke his leg,” Steve typed. “He said he was going to sue the government. For making the sidewalk slippery.”

“I don’t remember that,” Andrew typed. “I can’t remember anything anymore.”

“Karl’s buddy icon is a guitar. Douche bag.”

“I have to go,” Andrew typed. “My boss just walked by grinning. ‘Passive-aggressive.’ ”

Steve lived in Orlando, Florida. His mom, Jan, was always at her sister’s place—or wherever—playing Texas Hold ’Em, a kind of poker. She was going to Las Vegas soon, with her sister. Steve was twenty-four. He did not have a job. But he pretty much was raising Ellen and his other two sisters, who were seven and five or something. It was summer now so none of them had school except Ellen, who for some reason was taking summer classes—probably to try and make friends, Steve thought,
which made him feel empathy. Most nights Steve and the people he went to high school with played video games or drank beer while playing poker; the same things they’d been doing for about seven years, and the future—or, rather, the past of some future’s future, Steve thought suddenly—was just another thing that wanted to get away from everything else and finally be completed, which is to say that Steve himself had no future. The future was only itself, and it didn’t care; it was somewhere else and it was already done, like bread in an oven. Steve felt very calm. He moved icons around on his computer for almost ten minutes, drew five whales with Microsoft Paint, closed the file without saving, went in the bathroom, washed his hands, smiled exaggeratedly at his own face for fifteen seconds and then watched a movie he’d already seen, ate something without paying attention to what it was, went to sleep, woke in the morning, made eggs for the kids—six in one skillet; he would email Andrew, he thought: “I cooked twelve eggs in one skillet and it looked like a cake”—played
video games at a friend’s house, came home, made dinner for the kids, watched TV, went in the bathroom, saw Ellen staring at her own face in the mirror, made eye contact with Ellen in the mirror, turned around to give Ellen privacy, felt Ellen walk quickly past him, into the hallway, and heard Ellen’s door slam shut. He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and flossed. He walked into the living room and saw his mom, Jan, on the phone. Jan stood and walked away into the computer room. Steve sat on the sofa. Ellen walked through the living room. She went into the computer room. She came out of the computer room.

“I’m bored,” Steve said. “Where are you going?”

Ellen went in the kitchen.

Steve stood and went in the kitchen.

“Cook me a seven-course meal,” Steve said.

“Or I’ll kill you.”

“Go away,” Ellen said. She walked into the living room.

Steve followed and pushed her from behind.

“You’re in my way,” Steve said.

Jan came out of the computer room holding the phone in front of her.

“It’s for you,” she said.

“Who?” Steve said.

“Both.”

Steve took the phone. “Hello?” he said.

Ellen turned around a little. She walked toward a plant and looked at it. A plant. She walked vaguely in some other direction.

“Steve,” Steve’s dad said on the phone.

“Hi,” Steve said.

“Your mother said you’re all coming to visit me,” Steve’s dad said. “All five.”

“You should visit us,” Steve said.

“No,” Jan said. “He won’t leave.”

“Yeah he will,” Steve said into the phone and at his mom. “You can make him leave.”

“Where is Ellen?” Steve’s dad said.

Ellen was lying on the sofa facing the back of it. Her nose, eyes, mouth, and forehead were smushed into the sofa. Steve quickly walked there and sat on her. “I’m sitting on her,” he said.

“Don’t sit on your sister,” Steve’s dad said.

“She likes it,” Steve said.

Ellen squirmed a little.

“She likes animals,” Jan said.

“She likes everything,” Steve said.

In middle school Andrew’s World Cultures teacher, who smoked marijuana and always talked about taking the class on a field trip to Costa Rica, which everyone knew would never happen, had a party at her house and Andrew stepped on a window and broke it, then climbed through the glassless window to the back porch, where he and a friend, who Andrew, years later, living in Florida in his parent’s house—working as a pizza delivery
man and obsessed, in a half-hearted way, with a girl from two years ago—never saw or thought about anymore, took cans of soda and threw them over the backyard fence, into a retention pond, or something. It was very dark out. Then someone—maybe Andrew—thought it would be fun to throw the cans over the house itself, to the front yard, so Andrew did that and hit a girl named Patricia in the leg. Andrew went to the front yard. Patricia was crying. Girls began to crowd around her. The small crowd of girls went into an SUV and the SUV left like an ambulance.

When Andrew was seventeen Steve came over with other kids. They played video games and poker. Andrew’s parents were not home. Andrew and Steve played drums and guitar until morning then went to school. Andrew drove. Steve was on his cell phone. While making a right turn Andrew put his head out the window and screamed “Shit” at a person in a car parked at a red light. Steve laughed and said into his phone that Andrew just screamed “Shit” at someone.

In college Andrew spent a few years not really doing anything or having regular friends.

He had a girlfriend for about a year and a half.

He wrote a novel. He met Sara.

They went to the grocery store.

She went to Florida with Andrew.

After a while she stopped talking to Andrew.

Andrew lived in Jersey City for a year.

One Saturday night it was snowing.

He was walking home.

The snow made the street very bright.

It was very quiet and late and very bright and Andrew felt strange.

In his room he sat on the floor.

He went to a Parisian-style café. He bought mashed potatoes and ice cream. It was very expensive. Andrew gave a twenty-dollar bill and the person said, “Do you want change?” Andrew hesitated and said “No.” In his room he ate the food on the floor. There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness—like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable
when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness; and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake (though probably the awareness itself, of nothingness, was the only mistake; some failure of optimism or illusion, to be corrected, somehow)—he could no longer get at. He felt very strange. It was late and there was nothing to do. He had no Internet and lived in New Jersey.

He went to the refrigerator and drank his housemate’s wine coolers.

He did not know the housemate.

She lived upstairs.

They met in the kitchen once and the housemate’s mother was there.

Andrew shook hands with the housemate’s mother.

One weekend Andrew read
Chilly Scenes of Winter
by Ann Beattie.

He read half Friday night and half Saturday afternoon and it made him happy.

At night he showered.

He brushed his teeth in the shower.

He sat on the carpet.

He didn’t have a chair.

Something fell on him.

He put his hand on his back and felt something.

Then saw a millipede running away very fast under the bed.

He looked at the ceiling and felt afraid and went to sleep.

One Friday he lay on his back on the carpet.

His computer was on the floor.

He listened to songs off his computer.

He listened to a song he had recorded one summer alone in his room in Florida.

He listened to it repeatedly then listened to other songs repeatedly.

In the morning he was standing in the bathroom.

He looked out his window.

A cat was staring at him.

The cat averted its eyes.

Andrew knew of Mark from a mutual acquaintance. They saw each other on campus
one day and Andrew walked to Mark and they talked. They began to meet sometimes, to complain about life mostly. They usually met at night. Andrew told Mark that Fernando Pessoa was severely disillusioned but probably not always very depressed, because his thoughts were more exciting to him than anyone else’s; and he understood the smallness and uselessness of a human life, did not believe in such a thing as ‘sincerity,’ and knew the possibility of a maid breaking a cup as the cup using the maid to commit suicide. Andrew told Mark to read
The Book of Disquiet
. Andrew said he had read all of Pessoa. Mark said he probably shouldn’t read that book. They went to readings, including one where Andrew read poems he’d written about how he felt. (“It’s just how I feel,” he’d told his creative writing class, Freshman year, when asked what his poems—half-page things that looked legitimate from a distance; though what, from a distance, didn’t?—were about.) They saw the new Batman movie and a week later Mark e-mailed Andrew
and said there was a free concert in Battery Park. Andrew said he’d go. Andrew went. Yo La Tengo was supposedly playing. On the way Andrew began to make jokes about Yo La Tengo. “I feel like they’re not from Mexico, but New Mexico,” Andrew said. “I feel like they’re forcing me to exploit migrant farmhands somehow.” He went on like that for three blocks. “I can’t listen to any band associated with The Flaming Lips or The Shins,” he said, and pointed at people across the street who were wearing strange costumes, and asked if that was The Flaming Lips. Mark stopped walking. His face became indecisive. “Maybe I should go to this alone,” he said. Andrew felt stupid. (“How do you have fun?”) He didn’t know what happened. He stopped making jokes and said he would walk there with Mark then leave—go to a bookstore.