Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation Page 11

  In her own sweet way, she was suggesting I engage the services of a therapist or some other like-minded sorcerer. Unfortunately, the Resnick male didn’t believe in limp-wristed philosophies like “self-improvement.” Shrinks were for weaklings and invertebrate Jews with too much money on their hands. No, a provocative step like psychiatry would have to wait for some larger crisis, like dealing with a terminal illness or being raped in the woods by hillbillies during a canoe trip with my buddies. Instead, I decided to seek wisdom from the source, the figurative Play-Doh Fun Factory that extruded this whole mess in the first place: my mother.

  I journeyed back to Harrisburg and sat across from Joyce at the Excellent Inn, an ironically named slophouse facing the brown-foamed banks of the Susquehanna. “I don’t remember you boys being so bad,” she said, stirring a cup of coffee. I clarified: “Well, I wasn’t so bad. I was out of my mind, but I wasn’t malicious like most of the others.”

  “Well, all kids have their little quirks. You’ll see once you have your own.”

  I felt the need to refresh her memory a bit. Did she recall the son who had a cute habit of visiting my aunt Sarah once a month and forging her Social Security checks? Or the other son who, out of sheer laziness, liked to piss out his bedroom window in the middle of the night, hitting the ledge below before backspraying onto the kitchen table? And what about the boy who, at the tender age of nineteen, went into a rage and threw a Pepsi bottle at me when the TV went out in the middle of The Wizard of Oz? Did she recall the shard of glass that embedded itself in my cheek, barely missing my eye?

  I looked down and noticed the coffee cup I was gripping rattling on its saucer.

  Always one to look on the bright side, my mother responded, “At least none of you were like the Peifer boy. Remember him? Always leaving strange things in the mailbox?”

  “But he was legitimately schizophrenic,” I protested. “I’m talking about cruel, hateful behavior. People who seemed to lack any sense of empathy.”

  “Oh, he knew what he was doing, the way he’d cut up those Bibles.”

  It was pointless. Despite her issues with Greg Peifer, Joyce was the least critical human being I’d ever known, especially when it came to her sons. She always saw the best in them, and when that was impossible, called upon her titanic powers of denial. All that was left was the ultimate question, the one I had been curious about my entire life: Was she sorry she never had a girl?

  “No, never,” she replied without hesitation. “With girls, you worry all the time. Boys are easier.”

  Good Christ. Easier?

  “Can you imagine having a teenage daughter and she comes home pregnant?”

  Yes! By one of your awful sons!

  “Poor Linda Kaufman, just when she can finally relax, she’s raising Amy’s two kids. No, I’ll take boys any day. They’re more manageable.”

  CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

  My daughter was born at nearly the stroke of midnight during an unseasonably warm November. After double-checking her vagina a few times, I became euphoric, feeling as though I, too, had just emerged from the birth canal. Perspective and priorities came into sharp focus, and I was infused with an overwhelming sensation of love and gratitude. Is this what people experience when they’re baptized, I wondered? But the smell of a new car wears off quickly, and as the nurse administered drops to the baby’s eyes, I was already having thoughts of a runaway meth-addicted wild child petitioning SUVs on Las Vegas Boulevard. Was my mother right? Were boys easier?

  The lights in the birthing room suddenly went out, leaving only a dull yellow bulb that illuminated my daughter.

  The infant lifted its head (a remarkable feat for a newborn) and bore into me with cloudy but commanding eyes still oozing silver nitrate.

  “Get some help, motherfucker,” she rasped.

  “I will, darling,” I replied. “I’ll do it for you.”

  She managed a half-assed thumbs-up and the lights returned.

  I followed through on my promise, but had a few ground rules going in. I made it clear to the therapist that things like “working on forgiveness”—specifically regarding my brothers—were off the table; he was welcome to “witch me” any way that moved him, but I wasn’t willing to delve into the past or hawk up bad memories. We’d have to figure it out. Cartoon dollar signs appeared in his eyes. Then he gave me a prescription for some pills that dulled my ability to think, kept me drowsy, and took the wind out of my penis. I saw the hand of God in every capsule.

  • • •

  When Sadie was about three, we traveled to Harrisburg to visit my parents, now living in a small home not far from the old one. During a lull, I took her on a drive to show her where I grew up. Little of it remained. By now the brothers were scattered across North America, in New York, Kansas, California, Arizona, and Florida. A few of us kept in touch, while some hadn’t spoken to others in years. The house itself was gone, along with the street, demolished and plowed under to make room for strip malls and townhomes. The gurgling blister of my childhood had crusted over and was now a Walgreens. Sadie seemed confused.

  “You lived in a store?” she remarked.

  “No, sweetie, my house used to be where the store is.”

  “But what happened to it?”

  “They knocked it down.”

  “Did you cry?”

  I walked her through the aisles, trying to orient myself and figure out the house’s former footprint, eventually finding a section that approximated where my bedroom once existed. And just like that, there we were: father and daughter, standing in my old room, gazing at the enema kits. Like an old soldier returning to Normandy, I tried to conjure up memories and emotions, but the only thing I felt was the small sticky hand holding on to mine.

  Blue Yodel No. 13

  Emerging from the swamps of Cogdell, Georgia, Gina Erdmann migrated north to Pennsylvania with her mother, Janice, when she was ten. There was a husband at some point—Gina’s father—who’d fallen by the wayside when she was an infant; and later, a second husband, who vaporized after some money from a construction accident came his way. For a time they lived with Janice’s mother in Enola, Pennsylvania, but eventually moved into a little brick house one neighborhood over from mine, where the yards were a little shabbier and dogs ran around with plastic doll arms in their mouths. By the time Gina was sixteen, it was common knowledge that she was an easy lay, and for me, that was really the only biographical information of any importance.

  I was fifteen at the time and still hadn’t “done it” yet, and like most boys that age, the fevered urge for sex created a kind of nuclear fission in my body so powerful that if dropped from an F-16, I was capable of blowing up a city the size of Roanoke, Virginia. In fact, I had barely noticed Gina Erdmann in the classrooms and hallways of our high school. My interest in her only surfaced as word started getting around that she liked to smoke pot and fuck. It was the second part that got my attention. Soon, compelling terms like “freak” and “nymphomaniac” were bandied about, bringing the hype to a rolling boil until I could no longer ignore it. This was the sort of girl I needed in my life.

  Gina was no great beauty, but then neither was I. She was gangly, wore heaps of raccoon mascara, and had crayon-yellow hair that hung from her head like overcooked spaghettini. The skunky black stripe down the middle of her scalp brought to mind a trail of ants walking through a puddle of Cheez Whiz. A judgmental type might describe her as “cheap looking.” Still, her face wasn’t bad exactly, but she did have quite a honker. From certain angles, she was a dead ringer for Gandy Goose, a cartoon character I enjoyed as a child but never fantasized about banging. Her best features were a slight Southern accent, which she tried to hide, and a smart-ass insolence that often got her into trouble. She was suspended once for calling Miss Gladfelter a dyke bitch and another time for telling Mr. Lutz to suck her balls. This was a feisty, angry girl—something I found both horrifying and thrilling. Whether she ever noticed me, I had no idea. If she was a
ttracted to scrawny boys with skin the color of Wonder Bread and coal-black Little Orphan Annie curls, she never let on. Ultimately, though, it was beside the point. This was simply about plying her with marijuana as a prologue to sex, an activity she so ravenously enjoyed. The tricky part would be getting to know her better, since a single word had never passed between us.

  This proved to be an easy task. Our first formal introduction was made in the woodsy area behind the Gulf station across from the high school: a popular setting where kids hung out, smoked cigarettes, and—if you were a dipshit like Henry Daubert—did their homework. It was there that I casually engaged the gang in a conversation about what a dyke bitch Miss Gladfelter was. Gina immediately agreed. The ice had been broken. Somehow I made a seamless transition to “Boy, do I love pot. In fact, I’m going to be buying some really good pot after school this Friday.” Gina laughingly said, “Don’t forget about me when you get that shit.” I told her she was welcome to come along if she’d like. “Sure,” she replied.

  Gee whiz! I thought. I’m gonna get laid!

  Now it was just about a few minor details. The good news was I really did know a pot dealer—Jeff Glogower, who was a friend of my brother Jack. Unfortunately, he lived way out in Markelsville. But maybe the long drive would be a nice opportunity for Gina and me to get to know each other better (heh-heh). From my understanding, those nymphos got all worked up when they were in a state of anticipation. Yes, it was all falling into place . . . except the part where I was only fifteen and didn’t have a license and had to sneak my mom’s car out. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t slipped the old lady’s Cutlass out plenty of times before, but it was always late at night. The daylight logistics would be a bit of a sticky wicket.

  I needn’t have worried. It turned out that Joyce and a few of her friends were going on a bus trip to Philly that Friday to see a taping of The Mike Douglas Show. The car would be at my complete disposal. Apparently Mike and the gods had deemed I should get my ashes hauled.

  I arrived home immediately after school on Friday, ate a bowl of Honeycombs for stamina, and grabbed the keys. I pulled up to Gina’s house at the predetermined hour of three o’clock. Everything was calculated down to the minute. The itinerary went something like this:

  Twenty-five minutes to get to Glogower’s place and buy the pot.

  Twenty-five minutes to return to Gina’s house and start smoking the pot. (Her mother would be at work by then.)

  Twenty minutes of pot smoking and chitchat, followed by . . .

  Making out—3–5 minutes. Followed by . . .

  Fucking—30 minutes.

  Short breather—5 minutes. Then . . .

  Thirty more minutes of fucking.

  Total approximate time with a little padding: 2 hours and 30 minutes. I’d easily make it home by six, and my mother wasn’t due back from Philadelphia until seven. Pretty good for a guy who was flunking pre-algebra.

  The Cutlass idled for nearly ten minutes in front of Gina’s house, but no sign of her. Mindful of the timetable and getting hornier by the second, I killed the engine and knocked on the front door. Her mother, Janice, answered, cigarette dangling from her lips and wearing a Baskin-Robbins uniform that had a coffee stain on the right boob (which also made me horny). She looked like a cross between Loni Anderson and Barry Manilow, and I instantly saw where Gina inherited her nose.

  “Look, I paid the goddamn thing,” she informed me in an accent more prominent than her daughter’s. “I told that to the last runt they sent over.”

  After it was clarified that I didn’t work for the newspaper and her subscription would continue uninterrupted, I explained I was there to pick up Gina. “Gina?” she retorted with a hoot. “You mean that dead dog back in the bedroom? She’s out like a light.”

  I sat in a small area off the kitchen, gazing at my reflection in the blank screen of a RCA Colortrak. On top of the TV was a framed picture of Gina from elementary school. She looked like an otter with glasses. A couple of decorative plates depicting bullfighters hung from the wall, and the breakfront appeared to be a storage nook for cat food and cleaning supplies. I could hear Mrs. Erdmann and Gina yelling at each other from the bedroom.

  “I said I’m getting up!” Gina screeched. “Get the fuck out of my room!”

  “Is that my cigarette lighter?” her mother demanded.

  “No!”

  “I buy ’em and you lose ’em.”

  “I didn’t touch your fucking lighters! I have my own lighter!”

  “I know that every time I see the burnt shower curtain.”

  “It exploded!”

  “Who smokes in the shower anyway?”

  “It exploded!”

  “Let’s get Cricket on the phone. I’ve bought hundreds of those lighters, they never blew up on me.”

  “Mommy! Get the fuck out of my room!”

  Moments later, mother and daughter were sitting across from me in the courting parlor, smoking like pros. They had calmed down somewhat, evidently sharing the one pastime they enjoyed as a family. Gina’s eyes were slits. She was guzzling coffee and told me to give her a few minutes to wake up. Mrs. Erdmann told her if she got sleep at night, when normal people sleep, she wouldn’t be tired all day.

  “Crawl out of my ass, Janice!” Gina replied, as she tore open a pack of mini-donuts with her teeth, creating a mushroom cloud of powdered sugar.

  Her mother chuckled and playfully threw a pillow at her. Gina deflected it with a dirty foot.

  “Jesus, it’s like living with a child,” Gina said as she stubbed out her Kool 100 and stuffed a donut in her mouth.

  There was a lull in the conversation. Mrs. Erdmann glanced over and caught me staring at the stain on her uniform. She smiled.

  “Look at those long curls, Gina,” she said, pointing her cigarette at me. “Just like Bernadette Peters. I’d pay a million dollars for curls like that.”

  Gina let out a frustrated grunt. “Come on, Resnick, let’s go.”

  She kissed her mother goodbye and told her we were going to Sears to buy notebooks.

  My entire body was quaking as we walked toward the door. This was no longer a fantasy. The plan was in motion and I was going to have sex with this girl! Could I even make it to Jeff Glogower’s and back? Was the pot really necessary? I was ready right now, willing to take on all comers: Gina, her mother—gulp—both at the same time?

  That’s when it caught my eye: the box in the corner of the den. The one containing a stack of old records—78s. I slammed on the brakes.

  “Are those your records?” I asked Mrs. Erdmann.

  “Oh, God, no. They’re my mom’s,” she replied. “I was over there, clearing out some of her junk. I got a bunch of garbage I’m taking over to the auction next Wednesday.”

  Gina was halfway out the door, but I was hovering over the box. Right away I saw a Victor scroll label on the top of the stack. I knelt down and my eyes focused. Was I really seeing it? Jimmie Rodgers’s “Gambling Polka Dot Blues”? Underneath were two more Jimmie Rodgers sides in VG+ condition. I was staggered.

  “Your mother listens to Jimmie Rodgers?” I gasped.

  “Ha-ha, oh, yeah. She’s a real corncob. Came up here from deep Georgia. She likes those old fiddle tunes and the rest. You listen to that stuff? Take ’em if you like.”

  My love for old music began when I was a kid. It started with early jazz, which I just knew as cartoon music—the stuff that played while assorted animals that had no business being together on the same continent, let alone in the same luncheonette, danced around and washed dishes. There was something about that krazy-syncopated rhythm that hit my brain just right and made me happy. And trust me, I was never happy. Much later, when I began searching it out, I learned that the sound I loved so much was recorded primarily between 1926 and 1933—before the first nauseating strains of swing music crept in and fucked up everything that was authentic and beautiful.

  By thirteen I’d started scouring flea markets, junk shops, y
ard sales—anywhere that might have these hard-to-find records I was looking for. I got to know a few old-timers and collectors who turned me on to early blues, country, and string bands—all the great stuff. While my contemporaries gathered after school to socialize, smoke weed, and listen to Pink Floyd, I’d rush home, lock myself in my room, and blast my near-mint-condition copy of “Hatchet Head Blues” by the Old Southern Jug Band (which, as any asshole knows, is a nom de guerre for Clifford Hayes’s Dixieland Jug Blowers).

  There were several blues and hillbilly singers whose songs of grief, dread, and futility spoke to me. These were feelings I’d known since the first day of kindergarten. But Jimmie Rodgers held a special place in my heart. He had the ability to sing about life’s miseries with an air of jubilance, all in a warm, reedy voice that seemed to imply, Don’t worry, partner, you’ll get through it. Just the sound of his yodel was an elixir for my anxious mind. (That is, until antidepressants came along, which were more effective but less poetic.)

  To Gina’s annoyance, I was now sitting on the floor, digging through the stack of records. Fiddlin’ John Carson! The Blue Sky Boys! Uncle Dave Macon! (And not just any Uncle Dave Macon—the incomparable “Rabbit in the Pea Patch.”) I had never come across this many great records in one place. Then Mrs. Erdmann said something that made me almost pass out.

  “Yeah, Mom’s even got a record at home with Jimmie Rodgers’s picture right on it.”

  I took a deep breath. Please tell me I heard what I thought I just heard.

  “You mean an old record like one of these?” I asked, voice trembling.

  “Uh-huh. He’s right on there, holding his guitar and whatnot.”

  The 78s I had found at the Erdmann house were already astounding by any standard, but what this woman was describing, what she was so casually tossing out like an empty pack of Merit 100’s, could be only one thing: the legendary Jimmie Rodgers picture disc.