Cleopatra and Frankenstein(52)

Jacky gives me a funny look. “You’re lucky too,” she says. “Frank tells me you’re a great writer. You found the thing you love to do.”

I think about the writer’s room in LA. The jokes, the men, the sandwiches for every meal. I think about my evenings alone at my mother’s house working on Human Garbage.

“Sometimes I hate the thing I love to do,” I say.

*

“What we’re looking for,” says the real estate client, “is writing that makes you smile with your mind.”

*

Frank tells me that in Poland they translated The Flintstones into rhyme, so it sounds like poetry.

*

Frank tells me there’s nothing shameful about being creative for money. He tells me that John Lennon and Paul McCartney used to sit down together and say, “Let’s write ourselves a new swimming pool.”

*

Frank tells me the Nike slogan was inspired by the last words of a murderer in Utah. Moments before he was executed in 1977 by firing squad, he apparently turned to them and said, “Let’s do it.” I tell him, that sounds about right.

*

I tell Frank that in my experience, the better the headshot, the crazier the actor.

*

I tell Frank my favorite painting is Hans Holbein’s portrait of Thomas Cromwell in the Frick. There’s a patch of carpet in front of it that’s grown bald from the thousands of feet that have stood before it. I tell him I think that’s a good thing to hope for in life, for the carpet to grow thin before you.

*

Levi’s girlfriend has up and gone. She met a Canadian Hell’s Angel at a dive bar and took off, which is the kind of thing that happens in Levi’s world.

“I should have known she wasn’t right for me,” Levi says. “When she designed our band flyer using Comic Sans.”

*

My mother finds a dead hummingbird in the garden. This seems ominous. She carries it into the kitchen and lays it on the tea towel I gave her. Up close, it is remarkable. A feathered jewel. Its beak is the size of a needle. Its tiny black eyes are open and shine like onyx.

“Maybe I can stuff it and wear it as a pin?” she says brightly.

*

That old guy I dated in high school is dead now. I know this because I run into my former classmate, Candi Deschanel, outside Home Depot and she tells me, “That old guy you dated in high school is dead now.”

Candi has a baby on her hip and two more children wrapped around her legs. I am carrying an extra-large bag of birdseed for my mother.

*

Later, I look up his name. There’s a short obituary online written by his family. It was a lawn mower accident. They are not as uncommon as you’d think, the obituary takes care to point out.

*

A race car driver killed by his lawn mower. There must be a joke in there somewhere.

*

The pair of high school students next to me on this PATH train know so much more about life than I do.

“I was trying to be, like, hyper-rational,” says the first girl. “And explain to him that he can’t treat me this way.”

“That’s smart,” says her friend.

“But all my human feelings got in the way,” says the first girl.

“That happens,” says her friend.

*

There’s a voicemail on the house phone from That Home informing us there’s been an incident with my father. My mother’s still at botany class, so I call back. As it rings, I crouch down on the floor like I’m about to pee, some atavistic instinct that it’s safer down there. By the time I get transferred to the nurse practitioner, I have my forehead bowed to the floor too. I rock back and forth on the balls of my feet and hum softly until she comes on the line.

She explains briskly that my father managed to squirrel an old credit card away and has ordered hundreds of dollars’ worth of products from daytime infomercials to That Home.

“The packages have been arriving for the last few days,” she says. “It’s against policy for patients to receive mail that’s commerce.”

“You couldn’t have mentioned in your voicemail,” I say very quietly into the floor. “That the incident with my elderly, infirm father was one of fucking commerce.”

*

I drive over to That Home and find my father cowering alone in his room like a dog that’s eaten the birthday cake.

“Hi, Pa,” I say softly, kneeling beside his chair.

He’s clutching the end of the curtain and rubbing the nubby corner back and forth with his thumb. Sunlight flocks through the window. I put my hand on his arm. He jerks it away.

“You’re not in trouble, Pa,” I say.

He fumbles to get a better handful of the curtain and tugs it slowly across his face.

*

The stuff he bought has been confiscated and held at the nurse’s station. Confiscated? I want to yell. He’s a doctor! He went to Princeton!

I borrow a pair of scissors and slice open packages in the lobby. There’s a retractable cane, a hair crimper, two calligraphy sets, something called the “Fat Blasting Magnet,” a purple neck pillow in the shape of a panda, and a scratch-proof saucepan.

“I’d advise you to return those,” says the nurse.

I lug the boxes out to the car and sit in the front seat filling out return labels. There is, understandably, no box for neurodegenerative disease under “Reason for return,” so I go with “Product did not meet customer’s expectations.”