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Chapter 31/Page 2 |
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SON OF SAM I AM
“Hi mom. How was the flight?” “ .” I heard nothing. “Great. So what do you want to do first?” “ .” “Okay. I was thinking that since we’re down here, we’d take the ferry to Catalina first. We can have lunch there. Later, I can show you where I work.” “ .” Nothing was registering. I know from the photos they sent that we did go to Catalina Island and wandered around the junk merchants. I knew my dad didn’t give a shit about the place, but my mom surprised me by being under whelmed by the infinite selection of ashtrays, key chains, t-shirts, and every other thing for sale over there that held still long enough to be stamped “Santa Catalina Island.” Probably from the same Indonesian factories that make the shit stamped with Union Jacks you see in London. “So, what do you want for lunch?” “ .” “How about you, Dad?” “I’d like to get me a bowl of chili.” Finally, something connected. “I don’t think there’s any here on the island, but we can get some later for dinner.” “Okay. As long as I get it.” Mom added, “ .” And so the day went. I don’t remember much of anything, other than my dad reminding me every half-hour that he wanted a bowl of chili for dinner. Everything else was lost in the fog.
•••
I parked the rental out front of the office. Getting the parents in the main lobby would be a lot easier than through the stairwell. “This is my office. What do you think?” “ ,” Mom said. Dad surveyed the room with squinted eyes I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager and he would give me the once-over two or three times before I left the house or immediately upon my return. He was always looking for something, but I never knew exactly what. Maybe if he’d said something I could have helped him find it. There are about three or four jobs in this world that you think you might get when you grow up: doctor, policeman, astronaut -- that kind of thing. Then, on career day in high school, they break out the big list of jobs that adds other familiar titles to the list: architect, CPA, nurse practitioner, and maybe clerk. That expanded list still only accounts for ten percent of the jobs out there. Nobody ever grows up thinking, “I’m gonna be a contracts administrator,” or “Director of Film Operations -- that’s the life for me!” Ninety percent of all job titles are inventions of necessity. Mine was no different. Try as I might, I could never clearly explain to friends and family what I did at my day job. The few relatives I did give the tour smiled politely and nodded. My brother-in-law came the closest to understanding the mechanics of film making once he saw an editing suite firsthand. But other than that, everyone sort of accepts that I got paid to do something with movies and occasionally met famous people. The parents got the twenty-five cent tour of the second floor editing suites and my office, then the sound stages down on the first floor. Everything above was administrative. Besides being boring as holy hell, those people had no interest in meeting my folks or having a tour interrupt their workday, so there was no showing the parents around the exciting world of the purchasing department where I might by chance run into 4. Or was there? Nah. I was a good boy. We got the hell out and back to my apartment so the parents could take a nap before a late (five o’clock) dinner. While they snoozed, I freaked. With them in town, I was totally limp-dicked and leashed. I hated, hated, hated not being able to do anything. I’d become a man of action -- too much time to think was a recipe for disaster in my kitchen. Speaking of which, there was the matter of dinner. My parents were frugal Midwest folk. Denny’s was about average in their dining repertoire. Dad wanted his bowl of chili, and there was no way I was going to take them to Chasen’s for the twenty-dollar bowl of Hormel they slung. (Really, have you had it? I can shit out better chili than that.) Prices aside, they just wouldn’t feel comfortable in a fancy Los Angeles restaurant. God help them if they ever had to eat in New York. So my mission was to find a place that served a decent bowl of chili at a reasonable price that wasn’t too hoity-toity. A local chain called the Hamburger Hamlet fit the bill perfectly. It’s a step up from Chili’s or Acapulco, or TGI Friday’s, or any of those other god-awful places that litter the outskirts of Everytown, U.S.A. nowadays. (Take a road trip --you’ll see what I mean right away. Ten miles outside of every city they start popping up right next to WalMart, Best Buy, and Borders. The blanding of America has taken a frightening turn to the extreme.) I even bypassed the Hamlets in Beverly Hills and Westwood in favor of a more sedate location in Culver City. Surely the parents would feel comfortable there. Once everyone was settled into the booth and menued, I was free to drift back into my own world. If I had been aware of how distant I was, I might have felt bad for my parents. Seeing me turned in on myself, surely they thought I hadn’t changed a bit since I was fifteen -- so much for my plans to reconnect with them. After a few minutes of private time in the company of my family, I looked up. “So, do you know what you want?” “Yeah. I want a gun,” my dad said. “What?” I suddenly snapped to real attention. Mom, finally audible, helped. “That’s his way of saying he thinks he’s getting robbed.” Instantaneously, everything in the periphery disappeared and my vision closed down to one narrow tunnel, like the end of a Porky Pig cartoon. Every cell of my brain, every sensory input on my body was trained on my father. Every sound went silent, except his voice. My eyes and ears were glued to the train wreck. Everything that left his mouth was steeped in paranoid negativity: The menu was overpriced; there were gang members lurking at other tables waiting to jump us; the food took too long to come and tasted like crap. And the motherfucker didn’t even order the goddamn chili. Nothing in his world was good. All the way home the streets were bumpy, the car had no power, and everyone drove like maniacs. My mom even got into the act, but I think that was just his shit rubbing off on her. The narrow tunnel around my head made for a challenging drive, but I managed to make it back to the apartment, where the courtyard was too dark and we almost broke our necks on the uneven steps. I unlocked my front door that needed oil to quiet its hinges’ horrible squeak and turned on the lights that were too dim. My parents settled on my uncomfortable couch and watched their television programs that came on too late on the west coast. I offered my dad one of those foreign beers that taste like piss, but the noisy refrigerator in my undersized kitchen was empty. Was this what 3b was talking about? Could this be me? Maybe 4 was not out of her mind. Maybe at my very center, this was me. “I have to go to the 7-11 for some beer. Will you two be all right for a few minutes?” “If you can call it that,” my dad said, whatever that meant. I got the hell out of there, raced to the payphone up the road (no cell phone), and dialed my brother. “What’s up with dad and mom?” “What do you mean?” I explained everything that happened. My brother didn’t share my concerns. “So?” “How long have they been like this?” “Forever. You’ve been in L.A. almost ten years -- you don’t see them every day like we do.” “And this is just how they are all the time?” “Yeah.” “And you’re not doing anything about it?” “What do you want me to do?” “I don’t know -- something!” Just to be sure, I called my sister. She confirmed everything my brother told me. “Sorry. That’s just how they are. You see them at most twice a year and it’s usually around a holiday when they’re on their best behavior.”
Fucking surreal. I hadn’t paid any attention to them since I was a teenager. Now I was trapped with them for two more days and had no choice. I picked up a six-pack of Miller and headed home. Luckily, they had both gone to sleep in my lumpy bed. I emptied four of the bottles of domestic piss and passed out on the couch.
•••
All my life, my dad sang the praises of the Spruce Goose. Frequently, he described in great detail how Howard Hughes built the massive thing and it only flew something like two feet, but it was the greatest airplane ever built. Well, luckily for him, the Spruce Goose was still docked in a hanger in Long Beach, next to the Queen Mary. He was finally going to get to see the behemoth up close and in person. “Damn thing’s falling apart,” were his first words upon seeing his beloved Spruce fucking Goose. All he could see was an insignificant blemish on the nose cone? That was the only thing he felt deserved comment? The Queen Mary fared no better under his scrutiny. Dad was a welder. Prided himself on his contribution to the largest crane ever built. His welding skills were undeniable. “Take a picture of this,” he commanded my mother at the sight of some wayward solder underneath a passenger railing. “I want to show the guys back at the shop how bad this is.” He’s standing on the equivalent of the Empire State Building floating on its side in Long Beach harbor, and all he can see is a weld from the thirties that isn’t up to his current standards. This man’s glass wasn’t half empty -- it never had anything in it in the first place. For all I knew he never even had a glass. That’s how every waking moment with them went. The Universe wanted to show me where I might go but for the grace of this quality time with my parents. Well, I got it at that first dinner -- the Universe could call off the dogs any time. But no, I wasn’t getting off the hook that easy at all. You never do. “You’d have one more hell of a time getting out of there,” Dad opined as we passed a gas station on a busy street. He could have said anything, like, “Wow. Look at all those pumps. I bet they do a great business.” All he could see was the difficulty you’d have buying gas there. I couldn’t take it. Not by myself. “You’ve got to help me. Come to dinner tonight.” “Okay, but aren’t your parents going to think it’s weird?” “Who knows? Who cares?” We picked up 3b on the way to dinner that last night of my parent’s Weekend of Obvious Hell tour. They were more than a little shocked to see her. I’d have to explain to my siblings that 3b and I were absolutely not getting back together, regardless of what mom and dad might say. 3b took the dinner at Denny’s like a champ. I dropped the folks at my place and took her out for a drink. “Did you see it? Was that what you were talking about when you said I was too negative?” “Well,” she rolled her eyes, not wanting to hurt my feelings. “Fuck.” I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. I didn’t mention the difficulty I was going through with 4. “What am I going to do? I can not -- I will not be that.” “You don’t have to,” she reassured me. “Jesus Christ -- it’s my DNA.” “Doesn’t mean you have to be like him. You can change if you want to.” She was right. Just because you come from one place doesn’t mean you have to live there the rest of your life. I’d , I could bust out of Negativeland. My parents were who they were. There was no law stating I had to grow up to be like them. Once I accepted that, the strangest sensation came over me: forgiveness. I forgave my parents for being themselves, which was something I’d held against them most of my life. They boarded the jet bound for Milwaukee the next morning oblivious to summersaults my psyche had been turning that weekend. Their visit did more to reconcile my feelings about them than I’d imagined when we planned the trip, and they hadn’t done anything but be what they were. My struggle with accepting them was over. I was free to move on to bigger and stupider things.
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