This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter 2, This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter Two




Two days later I was back in Minnesota at the Chicken Coop, drinking beer with my mom and her girlfriend, Dorothy. I figured I had to come to Minnesota first, write the movie script, then go to Hollywood. Deep down I dreaded going to Hollywood. I would put it off as long as I could.
We called this place the Chicken Coop because that's what it once was, a chicken coop built more than a hundred years ago. My dad had announced the Chicken Coop as his "first antique" and he had planned to start investing in antique furniture, but this was before the plane accident that broke his back, derailing most of his plans for the future with rage and bitterness.
Sixteen years ago the Chicken Coop had been hoisted onto a snowmobile trailer and transported to this piece of land, thirty three acres, a flat sandy field, which flanked a busy interstate. We cleaned out all that (antique) chicken shit, the feathers and shit, cut out a couple of windows, and put in some bunks. It slept four people, lying down. Standing up, there was room for two. It was really small, so we spent most of our time outside around a table under a canopy.
"We're going to go get more beer," my mom said. She was drunk. "Where are the keys to the car?"
We could hear her friend Dorothy heaving in the outhouse.
"Don't you think you guys have had enough?" I started to wonder why I had invited them.
"You don't give me the keys to your car, I'm telling your dad you quit your job. Or I'll tell your brother to tell your dad. Either way."
"Mom, listen," I tried. "You don't have a driver's license. What the hell, you just had a DWI. It was just two months ago."
She whipped her head around and sneered.
"Who told you that?" she hissed.
"What?" I was confused. She'd called me from jail. I was the one who called Howser to go pick her up.
She started stumbling towards the outhouse.
"Dorothy, you bitch!" she howled. "You tell Emmett I got a DWI?! Secret's a secret?! What happened to secret's a secret?"
I just stood there, shaking my head. It was two O'clock in the afternoon and they were loose as rag dolls. I looked across the interstate at the Truck Stop and Al's Roadside Tavern. If I didn't get Mom and Dorothy beer, they'd crawl through the hole in the fence like raccoons and cross the interstate. It was dangerous. Imagine driving along in your station wagon, singing songs with the kids, when suddenly two fat drunk women appear out of nowhere, dressed in billowing clothes...Screeeaaach!
Al's Tavern was a stone's-throw-away as the crow flies, a hundred yards directly across the interstate, but driving it took twenty minutes. You had to drive several miles along the interstate on an abandoned frontage-road before you got to the overpass, then backtrack on the other side before arriving at Al's. Sometimes it was frustrating, making several trips in a day, going back and forth between the Chicken Coop and Al's just because we forgot something. All that time spent driving when it was right there, right across the interstate in plain view. During a lull in traffic you could stand at the fence and shout orders to the person on the other side.
I drove to Al's. When I pulled into the parking lot and got out of the car, I saw Mom and Dorothy pressed up against the fence, with their hands cupped around their mouths, trying to shout something. There was so much traffic, tractor-trailers roaring by, I couldn't hear a thing. They kept shouting, pushing at each other's shoulder, sloppy and drunk. It was ridiculous. I gestured that I couldn't hear them.
I walked across the asphalt parking lot in the wavering heat of the Midwest summer and suddenly felt queasy. I had to stop and ponder my troubles. I felt like I was running out of time. I had to start the script, I had to start tonight. The ideas were really coming to me, they were spilling out like flash cards. I could clearly see the fat man lying on top of his dead wife in the stinking heat of an old farm house, the flies accumulating, buzzing around, day after day, the din from the flies increasing, the maggots appearing, dropping onto the floor, dropping into the puddle of ooze, breaking the surface, disturbing the reflection of the light in the window. I was exhilarated by the shocking horror of it. What a lonely experience--to have murdered your wife and then lie on top of her for days on end, thinking in your mind you're somewhere else, you're writing a story sitting at the desk in another room of the same farmhouse, writing about two men, alter-egos, who murdered their wife and go through the charade of looking for her in that very farmhouse. The insanity of it--avoiding one room at all costs, knowing you'll see what you've been trying to ignore. The door opens slowly, the rusting hinges squeaking, and you see, my God...Noooooo! Not now!! I just need more time, please!!! I didn't kill her!! It wasn't me!! It wasn't me!!! I loved her!!! I loved her more than life!!
By eight O'clock that night Mom and Dorothy were passed out, spilled like soft cows on bunks inside the Chicken Coop. I had bought them enough beer to foster an eventual period of peace and quiet. They had drunk and bickered and had even at one point come to fisticuffs, rolling around on the ground like barrels, but I kept the beer coming, snapping the cans open and encouraging them to drink their fill, knowing all along that I was buying a bout of peace and quiet.
That night I sat at the table outside under the canopy, listening to the lulling sound of the traffic, and watched the moths attack the cracked glass on the hissing gas lantern. My pad of yellow paper was laid out before me, and my sharpened pencils in a neat row, all four of them.
I stared for so long I fell into some kind of trance. I lost track of time. It was still dark when I heard the sounds of lovemaking coming from inside the Chicken Coop. It made me feel happy at first, thinking of young love, teenagers, a girl and a boy for some reason. I was nostalgic about those years, the first taste of love, the kissing, the groping, the nervous fingers. But then it dawned on me, a wave of nausea, and I felt sick to my stomach. It was Mom and Dorothy. They were moaning and you could hear their wet lips kissing. I turned my head towards the Chicken Coop. I couldn't believe it! They were moaning and squealing lightly. It was horrible. Did they forget I was here? I was about to clear my throat, but it was all so embarrassing. I loved my mom. She had tons of problems, but I loved her. All she had to go through, her poverty as a child, the lean years with my dad, his plane accident and having to deal with a paraplegic. The words were just too hard to say: My mom was a fat, drunken... Jesus. Did Dad know?
I found myself in the car, gripping the wheel, my mind lost on the realization that my mom and Dorothy had somehow ventured astray. I was driving through the tall weeds that grew up through the cracks of the abandoned frontage road, the weeds slapping at the fender and brushing underneath the chassis. I guess I was heading to Al's.
As much as I was horrified by Mom and Dorothy, I was also aware of a growing sense of curious comfort from it all. It held me in its arms, this disquiet, this troubled feeling, and it rocked me in a strange way, as in the arms of an absent-minded mother. Did I enjoy it? Did I like the way it made me feel? If I did it says a lot about me and all the odd choices I continue to make in my life. Maybe like Beth Ann had said I do prefer beating against closed doors. Maybe I preferred sadness. I don't know.
At Al's Tavern I sat at the bar and sipped Coca-cola on ice. I was hanging my head and hoping for one of those moments in movies where the kind bartender approaches wiping a glass and asks a penny for your troubles and I could feign not wanting to talk about it, then get drunk and loose, hang on the bar and let it spill to the point where he'd take pity, finally inviting me to his house where his daughter, young and voluptuous, would tip-toe into my room, crawl under the covers with me and whisper hushed instructions on how she likes to be touched. Then in the morning as she and I were sneaking out of the room, we'd get caught by the bartender and his wife and after a very tense, awkward moment finally throw our heads back, all of us in unison, and start giggling, howling ourselves sick over the irony of the vast difference in age between their daughter and myself. We'd become fast friends, the whole family and I, and stay in touch for the rest of our lives.
I was lonely for my kids and even Beth Ann. Maybe I was making a mistake. God, one thing, Beth Ann--no lie, she was gorgeous. I remember how we met. She was campaigning in a village and I was working that day flying the line and I flew her back to Lousetown. She was sitting in the seat right behind me as I flew the plane. I could feel her eyes looking at the back of my neck, perhaps pondering a scar from childhood (my brother pretended to chop my head off with a garden hoe). She was so beautiful it made me nervous. My face was saturated with sweat, it ran off my nose like rain. When we landed, I begged a phone number off her and started calling so frequently she eventually changed her number. I was persistent. I found out where she lived and brought her flowers. I wouldn't give up. She was lonely and maybe even touched by my persistence. We started dating. "You sure do sweat a lot," she noticed on our first date. The light was very bright as we ate our dinner at the cheap Korean restaurant and I was very sober and nervous. I started sweating into my plate of food. I tried to act real casual as I wiped my face with the napkin. "Are you sick?" she asked. I thought about it. "Yes, I am," I said. I made up a trip to the Amazon and blamed it on malaria. She fell in love with me because, she had to admit, I made her laugh a lot. That was our story.
Oh, man, I suddenly ached for her. I wanted her to hold me in her arms and rock me in the Lazy-boy. I wanted to wake up to my happy children.
Coming here was a mistake. I didn't want a trial separation. Besides, how long did the separation have to be to say we tried? I'd been gone two days--it's ridiculous, I know--but didn't that count for something? I wanted to stay a married man. I needed to be with my family. I'd go back and get my job back. I'd get disciplined and wake up early in the morning before work and finish my script. We'd continue to be happy. I could learn to love Alaska. Why, Alaska was beautiful, it was breathtaking. I didn't need this...flatland, this heat and humidity. I felt the power of my resolution as I spun off the bar stool and marched my way down the hall to the payphone. She would be ecstatic. I just knew it. Maybe we'd even have another kid. Nothing like a baby to close the gaping gap between two sad, miserable saps.
All I got was the answering machine. I was surprised to hear my name replaced in the greeting by the name of my dog Moonshine. That was cute. What was Beth Ann thinking? And the tone in her voice. I called several times to study that tone. "Hi, you've reached Beth Ann, C, V, and Moonshine, and we're not at home! Leave a message and we'll get back to you!" So happy and cheerful. What a crock!
Beth Ann was the prettiest thing in Lousetown. I’m not lying. People were lonely. They could smell her like a dog in heat. They needed lovin'. I knew then--deep in my heart--that she was out getting laid. She was getting a mouthful, going down snake-jawed on a guy as you read this. She was lining up to do a train. She was stark naked, hopping from stiffy to stiffy in an all-out orgy. Boys and men--PEOPLE I WORK WITH--were gripping her hips, slapping her ass, pumping and grinding from behind. "Hurry up, it's my turn, Mr. Sanders!" Her mouth was gorged full, hands all over her body, all colors like a Benetton ad, groping, prodding, spewing all over her. That was my wife! The only girl there! In a sea of men! I was the cuckold, a hundred times over, sweating on a payphone somewhere in Minnesota, moments after learning my own mother...Geez, think about it. My own mother was having gay sex with Dorothy in the Chicken Coop at the same time my wife, the newly discovered fetishist, was deep in the thick of it, both ends worked on by strangers and people I knew, my friends, my closest confidantes in my house, in my bed, strings of strange spooge on my comforter. They were listening to my increasingly pathetic messages, they were laughing at me, calling me names with little or no remorse. I felt weak in my knees, I felt faint. I called Beth Ann's sister, Tori.
"It's two O'clock in the morning." Tori was sleepy. "What's wrong with you?"
"Where is she?!" I fumed.
"Who is this? Emmett, is that you?"
"Where's Beth Ann?!" my voice cracked.
"How in the hell should I know? Was that you calling earlier? What's wrong with you? Now, stop calling me!" She hung up.
I had to calm down. Just take it easy, I kept telling myself. The phone's unplugged. The kids pulled it out of the wall. It's broken, that stupid old phone. The dog chewed it up. She turned off the ringer. Someone broke into the house and ran down the street with it.
Look at me! I was in the bathroom looking at myself in the mirror. The sound of a toilet flushing--I looked like shit. Who would want a piece of this? I was crazy for leaving Beth Ann. I'd never find another woman like her. I had to go back to Alaska. I had to leave tonight. If I found her in bed with another man, I'd forgive her and whisper sweet-nothings in the Lazy-boy, telling her it was alright, everything was going to be alright. "Beth Ann, I was the fool for leaving." And she'd look up at me and coo softly "Oh, Emmett. I could never love anyone else. You know that, don't you?"
The following morning I woke up in a pool of cherry-flavored vomit in the backseat of my car. God, I felt awful. I saw the empties on the floor. It was cough syrup. I had fallen off the wagon (again). I wasn't alone. There was a petite young woman in the front seat, primping herself in the rearview mirror. I raised my head and she looked at me in the mirror.
"Hey, sleepy head," she said.
Turns out her name was Brittany. She was one of the hookers that prowled the truck stop. Apparently, I owed her fifty dollars. I couldn't remember a thing, but she kept reminding me that if I didn't trust her, I could just stick my hand down my pants and sniff my fingers to confirm her service.
"I trust you," I said.
"Good. We need to get going. I don't wanna be late for class."
"What?"
"You promised you'd give me a ride to class. I'm in summer school, remember?"
I felt for my wallet.
"It's at a Chicken Coop, that's what you told me."
"What?"
"Your wallet, you said your wallet was at some Chicken Coop or something." She pointed across the interstate. I was still parked at Al's. I looked out the window and saw my mom between the flashes of traffic sitting at a chair under the canopy.
"Oh, and you owe Ron the bartender, too," Brittany said. "For our drinks and stuff. The cough syrup, that was on me, you silly guy you."
Brittany had one of those tiny silver scooters that kids like so much these days and I opened the trunk of the car and stuck it inside. She sat up in front, so happy and cheerful that I kept thinking as we drove back to the Chicken Coop that maybe there was something secretly nice in being a whore. She had this special interest in songbirds and identified many as we drove to the overpass.
"Look!” she said. “A Rufus-sided Towhee!"
Brittany wanted to become a park ranger where she could live in a cabin on the shore of one of the stormy Great Lakes. "Just me and couple old dogs," she said. I really started to like this girl. I hoped my mom would think twice before making an ass out of herself in front of my new friend.
At the Chicken Coop Mom was hung-over and scrounging like a park bear for beer. She looked wretched.
"Well, where in the hell did you hide all the beer?" Those were her first words to me as I approached extending my arm to introduce Brittany.
"Mom, behave yourself. Please."
"Oh, fuck you!" she hissed.
I was so embarrassed. Mom studied Brittany who kept smiling warmly at her.
"Who's the whore?" my mom snarled.
"Jesus H. Christ!" I was very upset. "This is the last time I ever invite you to spend time with me here! Do you hear me?"
"I need some beer!" she hollered, banging on the table. "Get...me...some...beer!"
I started looking around for my wallet. It should've been on the table.
"Where's my wallet? What did you do with my wallet?"
"You get me some beer and I'll tell you where it is," she said.
"Mom, come on. I'm not playing games here. Where is it?"
"You promise you get me beer, then I'll tell you."
I accepted her demands. "Now where the hell is my wallet?"
"That bitch Dorothy took it."
"What?" I looked around. "Well, where is she?"
"She left this morning. Ran across the interstate to catch the Greyhound."
"What? Are you serious? Why in the hell did she do that? I need my wallet, Mom."
"She wasn't going to wait for you, that's for damn sure. She had to get back home. Where were you anyway? I thought you were still married."
"Well, why'd she take my wallet?"
Mom started to look nervous.
"Well, what?"
Finally, she said, "If you tell your dad, so help me..."
Dorothy, my mom admitted sadly, was a kleptomaniac. For as long as my mom had known her, she's had a problem stealing. She even stole one of my dad's samurai swords from his home office the time he was in the hospital recuperating from a bout of pneumonia--my mom had locked him out of the house on a stormy night one late fall; he could've crawled into his van, but he stayed out in the rain to punish her. That samurai sword was his prized possession. He got the police involved and everything. And just think, my mom stood by and knew all along who had taken it and she didn't say a word. She wouldn't betray her friend.
"When she gets nervous, she steals. She's been getting better, I've been helping her," my mom went on from the backseat, swilling beer as we drove Brittany to school in Cucumber, the nearest town in the vicinity of the Chicken Coop. Brittany kept smiling at everything, pointing out birds. I had a checkbook in my duffel and I had written a check out to her for a hundred dollars. It was from the joint checking account, so I felt a little guilty as I wrote the check under the eyes of my wife's name.
We stopped along the road and as Mom went potty behind some bushes, I gave the check to Brittany. She kissed me on the cheek and said, "Wow, a fifty dollar tip." I was hoping she'd see it as advance payment for another date, but she seemed so pleased I didn't want to say anything. Man, I was falling for this girl. But I was going to have to watch it. After the one hundred dollars I'd given her, I only had five hundred left. That would have to last me until the script got written and I'd sold it to one of the studios in Hollywood for several hundred thousand dollars.
We dropped Brittany off at school and she kissed me on the cheek again and said I should call her. As I started driving away, I happened to look back in the rearview mirror. Brittany was waving her arms, running after the car. Her scooter was still in the trunk. I got out of the car and popped open the trunk, unfolded the scooter and held it out for her. She hopped on and shouted, "Thanks, call me," as she kicked the scooter down the sidewalk towards the door of the school with her book bag swinging lightly over one shoulder. I shook my head as I watched her, thinking this was a good thing.
When I got back into the car with a big smile on my face, my mom snarled and said, "Look at you. Screwing around on your wife. I didn't raise you to be like that. You should be ashamed."
"She's just a friend," I said.
Mom huffed, "Yeah, right."
I turned around and gave her a look. I was just about to mention her and Dorothy, but as she swilled some beer she choked a little and spat up all over her stained blouse, making me feel sorry for her.
We drove home on the interstate, which usually took an hour, but because of all the stops for beer we didn't arrive till late afternoon.
"Boy, your dad's going to be pissed when we get home," she slurred happily.
"Why, what do you mean?"
"I never told him I was going to the Chicken Coop," she giggled. "Guess I forgot."
"Jesus, Mom! You forgot to tell him?! What the hell? He must be worried sick! Let's stop, we gotta call him."
"Oh, please. He's fine." She smiled. "You baby him."
"How could you forget?"
"Oh, I meant to call him last night, I just forgot."
"Fucking A, Mom."
"Oh, stop."
When Dad was mad he'd stop charging the battery to his electric wheelchair as punishment and sure enough when we finally got home and I helped Mom into the house you could hear the sluggish whirr of his wheelchair down in his basement office. I laid Mom down on the couch where she could sleep and as I leaned in I smelled it...right there on her face. I recoiled at the thought. It was the sour smell of Dorothy. I got a washcloth and wiped her drunken face. I didn't want my dad to suspect anything. He had enough trouble as it was.
I went downstairs and leaned into his office door.
"Dad?"
He pretended he didn't hear me.
"Dad, you in there?"
He used his soft sweet tone, "I need to get some work done, Emmett."
"Mom's home. She's on the couch upstairs. She was at the Chicken Coop with me. She didn't tell you?"
"Did Dorothy go with?"
"Yeah," I said weakly.
"I wish your mother would stop doing things with that woman. She's nothing but trouble. Were they drinking?"
"A little."
"Well, I don't want you taking her out there anymore. Especially with that Dorothy."
"Alright, Dad. You want anything? From the kitchen?"
"No, I'm alright. Are you going back out to the Chicken Coop?"
"Yeah, I just came in to bring Mom back."
"How's the garden looking?" he asked.
What garden, I thought.
"Oh, did you plant a garden in the backyard? I haven't seen it yet."
"No, at the Chicken Coop! I've got carrots and everything!"
"Oh, yeah. Where?"
"What do you mean, where?! You can't miss it. Geez Louise, I knew I should've built a fence around it. It's those damn rabbits. Fricking rabbits. You take the gun out. I want you to shoot every last one of those rotten things. Bait 'em if you have to. I want 'em all shot. They're vermin. Guy can't even produce...can't even have his own garden nowadays. If I wasn't so busy, I'd do it myself. Oh, I'll just do it. You're too busy."
"No, I can do it."
"You sure? I wouldn't want to upset your busy schedule."
"Did Mom tell you I'm working on a movie script?"
"Oh, just forget about it. I'll do it myself."
"I'm working on a movie script, did Mom tell you?"
"Are you getting paid?"
"Not yet I'm not."
"Well, I wouldn't do anything if you're not getting paid. I wouldn't lift a finger."
"What about those inventions you're working on? Are you getting paid for that?"
"That's different. I'm trying to improve people's lives here."
"What's wrong with entertaining people?"
"I don't have time to argue. Tell your mother I'm hungry. I want her to make me some dinner."
"I'll make it. What do you want?"
"I WANT HER TO MAKE IT!!!" he screamed so loud it was startling.
"Alright." I started turning away from the door.
"And don't forget the gun before you leave. Oh, forget it. I'll do it. When do you have to go back to Alaska?"
"I don't know. Maybe soon."
"Tell your mom I want steaks. On the grill."
That poor man. I felt so sorry for him. Living on disability, losing the frivolous lawsuit against Cessna--he and his lawyer had tried to blame Cessna for not having a proper warning system for dangerously low fuel; they figured that a plane shouldn't be able to start when the fuel was below four useable gallons--spending all that time in his office behind a locked door, pretending he was working on inventions for the "betterment of mankind" when all he did was watch flickering 16mm porn on a salvaged projector. It was ridiculous. Did he think we were all deaf?
I pushed at Mom's shoulder on the couch, but she wouldn't wake up. The phone started ringing and immediately my dad started hollering from the basement that she should answer it. It was my brother Stanley. He wanted to talk and asked if I had time to come over. I was suspicious. He never asked me to come over unless he wanted something. I wondered what it could be, but I couldn't think of anything. Before I left the house, I remembered to call Beth Ann to see how the kids were doing. Suddenly, because of Brittany I guessed, I didn't care so much about my wife's possible love interests.
Beth Ann sounded sleepy when she answered.
"Jesus, you're still in bed?!" What was she thinking? I was crushed. It was two O'clock in the afternoon in Alaska. "Where in the hell were you last night?! Didn't you get my messages?! You can't call here and leave a message with my dad? Come on, Beth Ann!" I was really hurt. I was growing furious.
"I went out with my friends. There was a party at Blue's."
"And you're still in bed? Where are the kids?"
"They're spending the weekend at Mary's. Listen, let me call you back, OK? I'm still sleeping."
"Is someone there with you? Who's with you?"
"No one's with me. I'm alone. Let me call you back. I'll call you later."
"What the hell, you were up all night? You're a politician, remember? You've got a reputation to protect. You shouldn't be going to parties. Think about it, Beth Ann, it's stupid. What are you thinking? What the hell's going on? Shit, I'm coming back up there, I don't trust you."
"Oh, Emmett, stop it. You're not coming back up here. Not now. Now, listen, I'm tired. I just went to bed. Let me sleep, we'll talk later. OK?"
I slammed the phone down. I stormed out of the house and drove like a madman to Dorothy's. I needed my wallet; I needed my company ID so I could get back to Alaska. I was leaving on the next plane. Screw it. What was Beth Ann doing, what was she thinking? Those poor kids, just pushed out the door to stay with a near stranger so Beth Ann could go sleep around. Man, I was fuming.
When I got to her house Dorothy wouldn't answer the door. I was pounding on the door, I was kicking it, too.
"Dorothy! I know you're in there! Open up!"
"Go away, or I'm calling the cops!" came her meek voice from somewhere deep inside the house.
"Where's my wallet!? I need my wallet?! You stole my wallet!"
"I don't know what you're talking about. What wallet? Did your mother say I took it. She's a liar and a whore. She's lying."
And on it went, me pounding on the door and her denying any involvement and finding other words to describe my mom. I went around to the backdoor and tried that, but it was locked, too. I tried prying open some windows. The house was tight as a fortress. She wasn't dumb in that respect. Fuck it! I walked away, thinking it wasn't time for this. I'd get the wallet another time. I was going straight back to the Chicken Coop. I was going to work on my script and I was going to finish it come hell or high-water. My brother, he could go screw himself and my wife, she could, too. I didn't care. If it was important, they knew where to find me.
But I drove to my brother's anyway. Sometimes I felt sorry for my brother Stanley. He had married this Russian woman--Nastasia--about five years ago. She was really beautiful and we all agreed that, like me, Stanley was marrying up. She was talented, too. She played the organ or something. But she was gone all the time. Basically, she went back to Russia to live, leaving Stanley all alone most of the year. Stanley and I were never close. I don't know why. As much as my parents adored him and sought his advice, things never seemed to go right for him in his own life. He was great at giving guidance to others--in fact, he's the one that told me to go to Alaska to get a flying job--but when it came to his own life, he just couldn't poke out far enough to see it objectively.
I pulled into his driveway and parked next to his car. Lately, according to my mom, Stanley wasn't going in to work. He owned a pharmacy in town, Monk's Drug, which was in recent danger of being consumed by the larger competition and, combined with the fact that he was living a married life completely alone, he was depressed, according to my mother.
When Stanley opened the door, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was true that it had been a year or two since I had seen Stanley last, but good Lord, the man had gained more than a hundred pounds. He looked like a monster. He saw the horror in my face.
"What's wrong?" he said.
"Nothing." I walked in and kept my eyes on the floor.
"Why you looking like that?" He closed the door behind me.
"Like what?" The house had a funny smell and it was hot and humid in there.
"God, don't you ever open the windows? It stinks in here."
"Oh, it's been a while, hasn't it?" he ventured.
"Don't you ever open the windows? It's hot as hell in here."
"It's my weight, isn't it?"
"Well..." I turned to face him. "Now that you mention it, what the hell happened?"
"I don't know, just got away from me I guess."
"Fuck, you're huge, Stanley. It blows me away."
"Look who's talking?"
"Yea, but come on, I've always been this way. You on the other hand...You're the one that's always made the family look healthy."
"I'll lose it, I'll get back there again. I've already lost five pounds." He gave his belly a friendly pat.
I sat down on the couch and tried not to stare. "So, what's up? What do you wanna talk about?"
He sat across from me in a stuffed chair and when he plopped himself down the arms on the chair snapped wide open to accommodate his girth. I was horrified. He was so fat he had broken the joints in the arms--they were just hanging on by the taut sheen of fabric. I studied his hands. His fingers were the size of pickles, so plump that his wedding ring, I would later find out, had to be cut away by an intern at the E.R.
"Didn't we all pitch in and buy you that chair for your birthday?"
"Yeah, you did, but I didn't ask you over to reminisce. I want to talk to you about your future."
I giggled. "Oh, yeah?"
"Mom tells me you're writing a movie script?"
"Yeah," I leaned forward and started to get excited. "God, you're gonna love it, Stanley. I want you to read it when I'm done. It’s great. I think you'll really like it."
"Listen, you know I've always encouraged your hobby..."
"Hobby!? What are you talking about? It's more than a hobby!?"
"Well, whatever you want to call it..."
"Hobby? Jesus Christ, Stanley. I'm insulted here. It's my life, for Christ's sake!"
"Well, that's just it, isn't it, Emmett? That's it in a nutshell. It's your life, but what has it ever done for you? You have a family now. You need to focus..."
"What?!" I was so agitated I leapt to my feet. "The only thing I need to do is get my work done. Period! I can't believe you have the balls to call me over here and preach to me like this. Jesus! Look at your own life, Stanley! Take a look at your own life for once!"
Stanley smiled. He liked to pretend he was calm and in charge of his emotions. He folded his hands and rested them on his belly. He took a deep breath and fluttered his eyelashes like he was bored with this outburst of emotions. And he said as much.
"Why do you always have to get so emotional? Why can't we just have a calm discussion? I'm only bringing this up because I care about you. You're my brother."
"Oh, shit...Listen to you! You care about me? I haven't seen you in almost two years and you say you care about me?! Stanley, you have never once in the ten years that I've been up in Alaska come to visit me and my family. Not once. And every time I'm down here...I gave up five, seven years ago, but I used to call you to see if you wanted to go out to the Chicken Coop together. I even bought that chainsaw thinking maybe you and me, we could do some work out there together, so we could get re-acquainted, but all you said, and I remember it perfectly, all you said was, 'You want to cut down the only tree we have on the property?' And it wasn't the only tree, Stanley. We have a grove of trees! And I didn't buy the chainsaw to cut down trees, Stanley. It was bought as an olive branch and you wouldn't accept it. You threw it right back in my face. And what is this, you talking to me about my life? Fifteen years later you think I'm just gonna give up? Did Beth Ann call you? Is that what this is about?"
He grinned and shook his head with amusement. "No, Beth Ann did not call me. All I'm trying to say is that we're concerned. You should be applying to the airlines. I don't understand you. Why don't you want to work for the airlines? They make good money, you get a bunch of time off, they have great benefits, you could be taking care of your family...You lose a little weight and..."
"What makes you think I haven't been taking care of my family? I've always taken care of them, why do you say that?"
"Well, Mom tells me you quit your job."
"Yeah, so what? I'm doing something here, it's not like I'm just sitting on my ass, smoking pot, watching TV. I’m gonna make a movie, Stanley. Who do you know that's ever made a movie? I mean, come on, people!"
"Statistically..."
"Oh, shut up, Stanley. I'm so sick of hearing that from you. From day one it's all been about statistics. I'm sick of statistics. I’m not leading my life based on that. Look, Stanley, crazy as it seems I know deep down that everything's gonna work out for me. It will. I know it for a fact. I mean, my agent Marty believes in me, why don't you people? And he's even in the business, for crying-out-loud."
I moved into my lie, which at this point had become standard. "Listen, he thinks it's great,” I went on. “I pitched it to him and he's never heard anything like it. He compares it to Eraserhead in its ambiguity. I mean, we could make a lot of money. And I want you to get involved. I'm not going to leave you out of this, Stanley. No way. You're my brother, where I go, you'll go, too," I said now pleased with myself. "Think how fun it'll be. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great!"
The oddest thing about Stanley: he would never admit defeat. Even if he started seeing things my way, he'd never admit it.
All he said was, "Well, that's just fine and dandy, Emmett. That's just fine and dandy."
I left him there in his broken chair and I drove back to the Chicken Coop more determined than ever. I had something to prove. I was going to show them. They'll regret the day they doubted me. When I made it, when I was swimming in butt-loads, when strangers bowed before me, I'd throw it back in their faces. I'd have them begging for mercy. "Believe in me or die!" I'd say in my booming God voice. I mean, Jesus! Whatever happened to some faith?