We Only Know So Much (17 page)

thirty-seven

G
ordon has not been getting a lot of work done at the office lately. He feels more energetic since he started taking the memory powder, but that hasn’t translated into productivity at work. He’s delegated a number of his usual tasks among several people, and so far no one’s really noticed. Today he’s checking online to see if there’s been any response from Trudy. None,
grmph,
and he can see that she’s been online because there’s a brand-new photo of her at a restaurant with some girlfriends. It’s actually kind of sexy: Trudy’s wearing a strapless turquoise dress, and the women look slightly drunk. As much as Gordon’s mind has been preoccupied with his—mind—he’s a little turned on. He officially does not remember the last time he and Jean made love. This in and of itself is disturbing, as is just about anything he cannot remember now, even things that people commonly forget, things that aren’t terribly necessary to keep track of, unless you haven’t done it for a while, like the last time you had sex with your wife—unless, of course, it’s been a long enough time since you’ve had sex with your wife that it could be one year or it could be six. He tries to think of what that last time might have been like. It’s not as though it had been particularly interesting for a while, but Gordon had never been interested in anything especially unusual. He wasn’t a strictly missionary type of guy, but neither would he think to do anything as crazy as—standing up, say. Probably he just got on top of her, maybe rolled her over onto her side or something, he’s sure he must have ejaculated, he always did, but he just can’t bring up the memory. He remembers the days when he and Jean were newly in love, how much he had wanted her, how he shivered when all she’d really done was run her hands along his side, how much time they’d spent in bed those first years. He was happy just to lie there and look at her unclothed form after they were done, though she’d rarely allowed herself to be seen that way more than briefly. He still wanted her, wished she felt the same.

So anyway this, and the picture of Trudy in her strapless dress, have resulted in the beginning of an erection. No sense wasting that—it has been a while, Gordon supposes—so he reaches in to
make the magic happen
(Jean had come to hate that phrase, which was his go-to, perhaps once been meant to be funny, though it wasn’t really, and which hadn’t helped the frequency of their lovemaking as time went on) and begins to furiously stroke himself, alternating peeks at Trudy and the one of Jean on his desk. Gordon coming is, well, we don’t know if you want to see this, but even with no one watching, he somehow manages to be Gordon while he’s spilling his jizz all over the desk.
Aaahngh!
Gordon cries, slamming his free hand down on the desk, almost in victory, forgetting that Doris is in the next room.
Yes! Yes!! YESYESYESYESYESYES!!!

Doris has never heard Gordon quite like this. She calls in on the intercom to ask what’s going on. Gordon recovers, tries to catch his breath, make his voice sound normal, pushes the intercom on the phone, gets a little jizz on that, too.
Just looking at some numbers, Doris! Fantastic numbers!

For the good fortune of both of them, Doris takes Gordon’s excitement about the numbers at face value, doesn’t ask anything more. Meanwhile, Gordon, coming down off his five-minute high, suddenly notices that he’s made quite a mess of his desk and begins to clean up. Starting with himself, he grabs a wad of tissues, all he has available at the moment, and now that he’s actually looking at himself, notices that his testicles seem somewhat droopier than he remembered. Gordon had always been proud of his balls, firm and high, the size and shape of two perfect eggs of the red-breasted snipe, but now they were just a little bit lower, just a little bit less distinct than he recalled, just a millimeter closer to his father’s sagging, amorphous ball sack, he thinks, yet again troubling Gordon on many levels.

thirty-eight

I
t’s been a while since Taylor’s trip to L.A. for the reality show, and she’s finally gotten the call letting her know that she’s no longer being considered.
Oh, I didn’t want it that much anyway
, she reports back to Priscilla.
I just got caught up in the moment.
Priscilla kind of wants to reach through the phone and punch Taylor in the face right now; if she didn’t really want it, couldn’t she just have dropped out and maybe left room for someone who really did? Priscilla makes up little stories like these that have no basis in how it actually works, the fact being, of course, that if they’d really been interested in Priscilla, Taylor’s presence or absence wouldn’t factor in. But fuck it, it’s over now.

Ever since Priscilla didn’t get picked, she has been unable to get that last question out of her head:
What is the accomplishment you are most proud of?
Priscilla is more or less aware that she hasn’t accomplished anything to speak of. She’s got fifteen credits at community college. Is she proud of that? She thinks she’s supposed to feel proud of it, but what she feels is more along the lines of hollow. Is that a feeling? Anyway, it’s how she feels. She once drank the high school running back under the table after a homecoming rally, and she was super-proud of it at the time, but that moment has for sure passed. She takes pride in her appearance, but she doesn’t see it as an accomplishment so much, mostly wishes others would just do the same.

Priscilla logs on to her social network to look through people’s info, see what they’ve accomplished. Not much, but she comes across a quiz: What were you born to do? OMG, how lucky is that? Priscilla takes the quiz; it’s not as super easy as she expected, and the answer just confuses her more. Make trouble? She’d been hoping for something much more specific than this; even something like “be famous” would have been a little more concrete. Even if it had said something like “Marry well,” at least she could have rejected it out of hand, since that would have been obvious and total bullshit. But make trouble? Priscilla doesn’t have clue one about how to interpret this. Is there any possible way to interpret this as good? She hardly thinks of herself as a rebel, has no interest. Make trouble. What the hell? This is totally bogus. Stupid quizzes.

At the food court again, she polls her girlfriends, but the results are seemingly useless, a series of answers mostly involving boys they dated/are dating. These guys live at home. They’re no superstars. Ashley surprises her by saying
Graduating high school
. That’s something to be proud of, Priscilla thinks? How hard is that? Was it hard for her? It wasn’t easy, but it’s nothing she’s thought to take pride in. It’s just what you do. Priscilla thinks about the fact that school itself is never, ever, a topic of conversation with her friends, except for passing comments about how
bo-ring
it is before the subject shifts to some new social drama. Of course, we already know that P doesn’t like school, so in that way it’s not surprising; what’s surprising right now is that there’s this little shift in her perception of Ashley, that something Priscilla’s considered relatively insignificant is important to her friend. Priscilla doesn’t even know what she was expecting in terms of answers. It doesn’t make her feel any less dead about school in general; she just kind of gets that it has significance to someone else, someone who’s at least a little bit like her. None of them really has any accomplishments to speak of. They aren’t even twenty, remember. How many twenty-year-olds have great accomplishments? If you asked Priscilla a couple of weeks ago, she’d have pointed to a lot of reality stars, but now she’s thinking it’s not like they were even, you know, doing anything besides showing up and maybe drinking and sleeping with cute rich boys and being pretty. Wasn’t that what she wanted, though? Could she be wanting something just a tiny bit more than that?

Taylor reminds Priscilla about that summer she spent babysitting and helped a kid learn how to read.
That was a while ago, though.
Taylor looks a little bummed for a second. Priscilla does, too. She didn’t even want to help Otis learn to tie his shoes. She hadn’t even wanted to
help
Otis tie his shoes. Priscilla is suddenly feeling like she sucks as a person. That’s new.

NOT GETTING SATISFYING ANSWERS from her friends—satisfying here basically meaning learning something about herself to be proud of—Priscilla finally asks her family about their proudest accomplishments.

Her dad says:
I have some new paintings I’m quite pleased with. These may be my finest accomplishment.

Huh
, Priscilla says.
Really? I didn’t know you were that into it
.

I’ve always painted, I just haven’t had the time until recently.

What?
Is he for real right now?

I studied painting in college.

Huh
, Priscilla says. She doesn’t know he only means one class. She should, he’s mentioned it before, but she doesn’t.

Well, no, now hold on.
Gordon asks her to come to the garage to look at some of the other paintings, pulls down the tarp he’s thrown over them. He hasn’t started the rest of the family portraits yet; so far he’s just painted himself, Doris, Sheila, and blank-faced Trudy.
This one here is very good, too, very good. Though this one has certain merits as well. Well, I’ll say the collection of paintings. That is the accomplishment I am most proud of. Yes.

Gol, Priscilla thinks, Dad is losing his shit. Plus, that was no help. Plus, those paintings are kind of weird-looking. The people don’t look like people really look
at all
.

Is that Mom?

No, that’s me!

Priscilla looks closer.

See, there’s my watch.

Hunh. I thought your wrist was, like, broken or something.

No, it’s my watch!

Priscilla looks at it again.
But except it’s flesh-colored? And looks broken?

Her dad is extremely proud of every detail, even the ones that look nothing like what they’re supposed to be.
That’s artistic license!
It’s fair to say now that Gordon’s obsession with his memory has begun to be overshadowed by his newfound passion for painting. What we can’t say is whether that’s an improvement or not. It may just be a sideways move.

Priscilla takes a moment to look at her dad. He’s kind of disheveled, but he seems to have pulled the stick out of his ass. None of this has helped her much in the proudest-accomplishment area, but it helps her just a little bit in the seeing-her-family area, an area she previously hasn’t dabbled in.

VIVIAN’S ANSWER:
OH! WELL. My, there are so many. I’m a college graduate, of course; after all, many women didn’t go to college in those days. I’m awfully proud of my violets, which have won prizes. I’m quite proud of having kept my shape all these years. And of course your great-grandfather Baron and I were married for sixty marvelous years. Oh, we had a tremendous life. We were very privileged. I suppose that’s the accomplishment I’m most proud of.
Priscilla’s pretty sure Vivian means the marriage, but isn’t totally sure if Vivian means the privileged, and doesn’t ask.

THE FIRST THING THAT pops into Theodore’s mind is to get his crèche and show it to Priscilla. But that can’t be right. He’s accomplished other things.
Oh, well, as you know, I’ve always fancied myself a photographer, took quite a few of you when you were younger. You were quite the model back then.

Priscilla remembers posing in various outfits, how her grandfather always waited patiently while she took her time finding just the right accessories, how he had even let her help pick out which photos to print, which ones to reject. Looking at the photos had actually helped her refine her taste, though she probably hadn’t added that up.

Here are some I took the other day.
He looks at them before handing them over.
Well. Some are a little blurry. But there are one or two good ones in there.

Priscilla looks at the photos, thinks some of them are sweet, even the blurry ones. Then she realizes they were taken outside.
Grampa, was someone with you when you took these? Did the caretaker take you out for a walk?

Theodore nods.
Oh! I’m working on a paper for the optometry convention
. Theodore had always been proud of the papers he’d written and lectured on over the years. Priscilla and everyone else has heard this new paper, of course, the most recent reading of which had left everyone squirming. It just didn’t make sense—not to Priscilla, anyway. I mean, not that P knows thing one about optometry, but still. It had seemed like a big random jumble of sentences.
I think this could be my best work yet. Can I read it to you?

Sure, Grampa.
Suddenly, Priscilla wants to cry again.

OTIS WANTS TO ANSWER
I have a girlfriend!
, but he’s not sure about trusting his sister with this information, so he says what used to be his proudest accomplishment:
My symmetrical crossword
. Priscilla, who as you know pays as little attention to her baby brother as possible, had been unaware of this, has barely noticed that he was into crosswords at all, and is actually impressed, even though she doesn’t know right now that there’s not a lot of symmetry in that particular puzzle.

Cool.
She musses his hair. This is as affectionate a gesture as she has extended to Otis since he was a baby and she was ten, although the truth is that, when she picked him up that one time, it was as awkward as that blind date she let Taylor fix her up on with her cousin’s friend from New York who was supposed to be a model and for sure was not.

Do you want to see it?

Maybe later.

JEAN TAKES A MOMENT to think about the question before she says:
You and Otis are my greatest accomplishment.
Then her mom busts out crying. Priscilla is beginning to wonder if Otis is the only semi-normal one besides herself around here.

What this all adds up to for Priscilla so far: none of these answers help her in terms of figuring out what she’s actually proud of. She had been so sure that if she had gotten the TV show, she would have been proud. She still believes she would have been really good at it. But she didn’t. Priscilla isn’t really excited about anything besides clothes, she realizes. She has no proudest accomplishment.