<\/p>\n
\u201cTed Kennedy is probably going to die soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know why I say this, except that it\u2019s true, or at least I believe it to be true. It is 2008 and he has a malignant brain tumor.<\/p>\n
Sol told me this morning he thinks it\u2019s karma for the shit he pulled at Chippaquiddick. I was surprised Sol even knew about Chippaquiddick, surprised he could use \u201ckarma\u201d in a sentence. I don\u2019t believe in karma, but I sort of like Ted Kennedy and wish he wouldn\u2019t die. It\u2019s so hard to tell with politicians.<\/p>\n
\u201cTed Kennedy\u2019s a goner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sol and his wife Rebecca are at work, and I am slouched into their white sofa in their white living room, where no one can hear me say that Ted Kennedy is probably going to die soon. The TV is on, and I suspect if there were secret CCTV cameras in the house, the way I sometimes imagine, that my eventual viewers\u2014from the CIA or Al-Qaeda or whoever\u2014might think I\u2019m watching a news report about Ted Kennedy, but I am not. I am watching The X-Files, which always seems to be on.<\/p>\n
Gillian Anderson slams her car door. She is pissed. David Duchovny follows her out, explaining something. I want them to make love, but their haircuts are too old. I don\u2019t think they make love until the sixth season. Or I don\u2019t know, maybe they never make love.<\/p>\n
I swing open the fridge door and stare inside for a while. I think: orange juice. Rebecca would have a fit if she saw me drinking from the carton, but she\u2019s a diabetic and won\u2019t drink it anyway, and Sol never minded until he got a wife. After the juice I stare some more and pick out a new jar of pickles. It opens with a satisfying thwock. The pickles are sliced longways and I deliberate far too long before plunging my pincered fingers in. The pickle slips out all bent and decrepit, like a little graffiti \u201cJ\u201d with a stubby, spinal tail of a stem. It must\u2019ve snuck past the quality-control ladies, all of them lined up in their hairnets\u2014old women no doubt, cracking shriveled pickle jokes about their first husbands.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid Duchovny is a really attractive guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I say this as I sit back down with my J pickle, and I wonder if I say it because I\u2019m gay, but I think it\u2019s just because I\u2019m jealous. I eat my pickle and am briefly glad it\u2019s a sliced and not whole pickle, because whoever ends up watching those tapes might jump to conclusions if I called David Duchovny attractive and then went and deep-throated a big long dong of a pickle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not gay,\u201d I tell them, just in case.<\/p>\n
I go upstairs to the guest room where I\u2019ve been sleeping. I check my email, check my Facebook, re-check the email and then check the Facebook again. I post on my mother\u2019s wall a funny report from her local paper\u2019s police blotter: someone stole an old lady\u2019s toaster oven as it was cooking a frozen pizza. I imagine the incredulous police dispatcher. I imagine the 911 call and chuckle a little, annoyed with the elderly woman in her sad little single-room apartment.<\/p>\n
I should say this now: the reason I am at Sol\u2019s is because my girlfriend and I broke up. And because I had moved into her apartment just a month before and given all of my furniture, most of my clothes, and many of my electrical appliances to the Salvation Army, there was little else to do but make that sheepish phone call and ask him for a place to crash. The last time Sol and I had spoken was over a casket at our Uncle Lyndon\u2019s wake. We stood over the smirking dead man without looking at each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a good guy,\u201d said Sol.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe used to hit us with his King James Bible,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was once. And he never hit you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was too old by the time I was smart. He did throw a glass of milk in my face the once.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was good,\u201d Sol said. \u201cI didn\u2019t say he was great.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I guess you don\u2019t realize how dysfunctional you can become until you actually get to work on it. I haven\u2019t changed my shirt in three days, haven\u2019t showered all week. I check my email again and decide to change shirts, but not to shower. Showering requires all sorts of commitments I\u2019m not willing to make right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t because of Maggie,\u201d I say aloud, in the mirror, and the lights overhead sputter a little. \u201cAt some point,\u201d I say, \u201cyou\u2019ll be as happy as you are sad right now. The law of probability ensures it, if not God or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t really think that\u2019s how it works\u2014like life is some kind of sine wave, with peaks and valleys of happy and sadness. I think if you were to visualize emotion it\u2019d be more like a color palette, like MS Paint, maybe. And right now I\u2019m some dark green-ish babyshit color, because there\u2019s no way to be entirely black\u2014no one\u2019s ever been that unhappy. You\u2019d off yourself once you got anywhere near navy blue. And no one\u2019s ever been completely white, either. Unless that\u2019s an orgasm, which I think might be true, until I remember how disappointing orgasms usually are.<\/p>\n
\u201cSadness,\u201d I say, \u201cis as impermanent as happiness,\u201d but I don\u2019t think I believe that either. There is sadness, I think, and then there is leaving sadness, tucking sadness into a closet like a winter coat while you make vague wedding plans, take trips to folksy wineries in the country. Maybe all there is just sadness or killing time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho the fuck would steal some old lady\u2019s pizza?\u201d<\/p>\n
The alarm system beeps and I hear keys clanging downstairs. Sol is home and calling up at me. He says Rebecca has a thing, his day was hell, something about my undone dishes, something else. I\u2019m not listening. I\u2019ve plugged \u201chappiness scale\u201d into Google and am browsing around Cafepress for products marked Lao Tzu.<\/p>\n
Sol plods up the stairs, repeating everything he\u2019s just said word for word. \u201cAnd dude,\u201d he says at the door, \u201cthose pickles were for a barbecue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lasagna bandit on the loose in mom\u2019s neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sits down on the bed, picks up our family picture on the nightstand, and looks at it sadly. \u201cI\u2019m really gonna miss her,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean? She\u2019s not dying.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe will someday. And then I\u2019m gonna miss her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you know there are 5,190 results for Tao Te Ching products on Cafepress?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s Tao Te Ching?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a philosophy. Like the yin-yang and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d Sol says. \u201cWhat\u2019s Cafepress?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople upload things onto T-shirts and you buy them. Can you imagine someone actually buying a shirt with \u2018We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSpeaking of shirts, Rebecca says I need to get a new one for this barbecue on Sunday. Do you want to, like, come with…?\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s considering adding \u201cme\u201d to the end, which is agonizing for the both of us. This is my brother.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure,\u201d I say. \u201cI\u2019ll get you some more pickles.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sol lives in this upper-middle class suburb of the city we grew up in. About a half a mile from his townhouse is a colossal shopping plaza, one of those commercial utopias with its own stop signs and four-lane access roads. Sol insists that we walk, because gas is back up and a little exercise will do me good. He says I\u2019ve been depressed and I say, \u201cNo I haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The area is built for cars\u2014no sidewalks\u2014and we have to walk on the broad slope of grass beside the road. It feels good, I think, feels like being a kid again. I wonder if Sol feels like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis feels good,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat feels good?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe grass. The slope of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSeriously, dude. I think you\u2019re depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just said it feels good.\u201d I change the subject. \u201cSo where is Rebecca?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHer parents\u2019.\u201d he says. \u201cShe\u2019s over there all the time lately. Not that I mind, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not that I mind, either. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t like Rebecca, it\u2019s just that neither of us really seem that interested in getting to know the other. She\u2019s short with me and she\u2019s a little too quick to join in when Sol and I gripe about our folks, but I know I\u2019m putting them out. Sol had to assure me when I first moved in that it wasn\u2019t my fault she was always at her folks\u2019 house, that she goes there all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe even sleeps there sometimes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It smells clean in the TJ Maxx, like packaging and cologne samples.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll try to make it quick,\u201d Sol says.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake your time,\u201d I say, as pleasantly as possible. I pick up a Jim Beam barbecue set and turn it over in my hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have food here too,\u201d Sol says. \u201cLike fancy jarred things in the back. You should look, maybe they have pickles.\u201d He heads into the menswear section while I play with plastic-swathed iPod accessories up front.<\/p>\n
I examine a footbath, a wine cozy, a picture of a pear. I\u2019m looking at a dark leather \u201cgift box\u201d with a pen and a keychain when Sol taps my shoulder and asks me to choose between the shirt he is wearing and the one in his hand. They are both blue-checkered shirts with short sleeves. Their patterns are nearly identical. He asks if I\u2019ll come with him while he tries on the other and tell him what I think.<\/p>\n
Both shirts fit him weirdly\u2014the first in the arms, the second in the waist. The first shirt is from St. John\u2019s Bay. The other is from FUBU. I tell him to get the FUBU.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be a conversation piece,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
But his attention has turned to a rack of toddler shoes just outside the dressing rooms. \u201cLook,\u201d Sol says, \u201cthey make Chuck Taylors for babies now. They got little black ones and pink ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been making them for years. Remember when Gary\u2019s kid was small? For his first birthday, they got him a pair of Jordans.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d Sol says, \u201cI forgot about him. How old do you think he is now?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThirteen, maybe?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you think he\u2019s like?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I say. \u201cProbably horny and sad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sol doesn\u2019t laugh. He\u2019s moved on to a pair of miniature Timberlands, little stylish hiking boots that could fit in your palm. He seems frustrated with them, working them in his hands, testing the inflexibility of the sole. \u201cHow do they expect a kid to walk in these fucking things?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re supposed to.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looks at me with a tired sneer. \u201cWhatever,\u201d he says, dropping them back.<\/p>\n
The last time Sol and I had spoken was over a casket at our Uncle Lyndon\u2019s wake.
\n\u201cHe was a good guy,\u201d said Sol.
\n\u201cHe used to hit us with his King James Bible<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[224,163,85,225],"class_list":["post-1959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-bartenders","tag-brothers","tag-marriages","tag-shopping","writer-joshua-kleinberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17675,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions\/17675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}