Текст книги "The Porcupine of Truth"

Автор книги: Bill Konigsberg

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

“I told him to follow his heart,” Laurelei says, and Thomas laughs.

“You told me that if I said a word against equal rights for women, you’d divorce my ass and move to California.”

She laughs back. “Tomato, tomahtoe.” He reaches out, and her hand clasps his. They squeeze each other’s hands like they’re doing Morse code. I feel like I’m glimpsing something intimate and sweet, and I wonder what it takes to find a Laurelei.

Thomas explains that they gave up organized religion years ago in response to the rise of the religious right in the early 1980s. They didn’t care for the politics. He’d met Pastor John at religious conferences, though, and when he received a phone call from him asking for a place for his friend to stay, he was happy to help.

“So you remember this from, like, over thirty years ago?” Aisha asks.

Thomas spreads his fingers wide. “I can count on this hand the number of friends we’ve had come stay with us since we’ve settled here. Our life is very simple. We like it that way.”

“No Facebook?” Aisha says, and Laurelei smiles as a response.

“We don’t have television and we don’t own a computer,” Thomas says. “One of our friends urged us to start an email account using his computer. We did, but I’m sure we haven’t looked at it in ages, have we, darling?”

Laurelei shakes her head. I try to imagine not having a TV or a computer. It’s such an unbelievable idea that I involuntarily gasp.

“My life is so different from yours,” I say, and they all look at me. “I’m from New York. I pass by thousands of people every day on the streets, and on the subway I’m shoved up against strangers all the time, yet nobody ever says hi to anyone else. I text and I email, and I almost never feel like I’m really connected. And you had a full morning,” I say to Laurelei, “because you got to play with a neighbor’s dog. That’s crazy. Crazy good.”

She gives me the warmest, sweetest smile, and I feel myself falling for these people and their world. I really don’t want to leave.

“Stay for a few days if ya like,” Thomas says, as if he’s reading my mind, and Aisha and I, without even looking at each other, say yes in unison.

Laurelei asks if we’re a couple.

“Gay girl, straight guy. Buds,” Aisha says before I can respond, and Laurelei smiles again, and Thomas says, “Well, it’s settled then. We’re so glad you’ll stay!”

I quickly call my mom and tell her that we are in Wyoming staying with friends of Aisha’s, and we’ll be back tomorrow. She does her usual thing, which includes passive-aggressive breathing followed by a “Whatever you think, honey.” Instead of it bothering me, I just feel relieved, because right now I don’t want to be part of my broken family. I want to be part of this family, and I wonder if there’s some way I can get the Leffs to adopt me. Us.

Thomas looks at his watch and says they have meditation class at two. It centers them, he says, and I can’t help but imagine them literally centered in every room, every photo they’re in. It’s now 1:10.

“We can cancel,” Laurelei says. “Unless – would you like to come?”

I’ve tried something like meditation only the one time, with the gentle yoga, and it was not the most successful thing. Could I do better now? I want to think that I could do better, but I’m scared that I won’t, and I don’t want to let Thomas and especially Laurelei down.

Aisha says, “Sure.”

This is exactly the kind of invitation I’d normally decline, because it’s new and different and maybe a little scary. What if I suck at it? And then I look at Laurelei, smiling expectantly at me, and I drop all that stuff. “Yep,” I say. “Sure. I’m in.”

BY THE TIME we get to the meditation place, I am calm and even a little excited to try it. I will keep an open mind, I keep repeating as we drive over. I will not make jokes out of every little thing.

This is immediately challenging, because Thomas and Laurelei did not tell me that we would be meditating in a kids’ classroom in a church. All around us on the walls are colorful posters with Bible sayings on them. One features an electrical socket and a cord plugging into it. It is unclear why, or what the hell that has to do with the accompanying saying: “Since I live, you also will live.” Another has a lightning bolt and reads, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.”

I get the feeling you get when some girl you really like and want to talk to has food stuck in her teeth and you think, Oh no, not her too. I thought Thomas and Laurelei said they gave up religion. Aisha has an alarmed look on her face as well. I tug on her sleeve. “We don’t have to do this.”

She doesn’t give in to my tug. “I kinda want to try.”

“We can meditate outside. Or you can, and I’ll just pretend, since it isn’t actually a thing.”

Aisha walks over to Laurelei, who is helping a woman clear desks out from the middle of the room. “All the religious stuff pretty much makes my head explode,” she says.

Laurelei finishes moving the desk and puts her hands on Aisha’s shoulders. “This isn’t a Christian meditation. Don’t worry about any of that. It’s simply the room we use because it’s empty at this hour.”

Aisha nods and says, “I guess I can always leave if y’all start with the Jesus.”

Laurelei laughs. “Tell you what. We’ll leave too. Okay?”

Aisha looks back at me, and I shrug. Fine. Whatever.

Thomas and Laurelei put down their mats and greet the other six or seven meditators warmly. The leader, an old woman with gray hair and a body that looks almost elastic from the way she sits tall while folding her legs in front of her so effortlessly, explains that we will use the next thirty minutes to simply be together, in silence. We are grateful for this time, and we thank our higher power for it.

At the mention of a higher power, my throat tightens. That sounds like God to me.

“Praying,” she says, “is talking to God. Meditating is listening.”

I look over at Aisha. I’m not so sure God is tuned to our church in north-central Wyoming. He may be a little busy with the people in Africa and the Middle East to talk to a bunch of happy old folks and two wayward teens in Thermopolis.

The leader ends her introduction by saying that we will accept exactly where we are. Sometimes thoughts are hard to put away. If they come, we will welcome them. We will acknowledge them, and then we will let them float away. We don’t need to focus on them. We will allow our minds to be as they are, and we will not judge ourselves harshly.

The last part almost makes me laugh. Right, starting this very minute, I will stop judging myself harshly. This seems likely.

I take a deep breath, trying to move past the idea of God and into our harmless little meditation session. Okay, I think. I guess this is fine. I guess it’s cool. I can try this.

Then the silence begins, and my brain is on fire.

Okay, thoughts and visions, I say to myself. I welcome you. Howdy.

Howdy howdy howdy howdy howdy.

Hello hello hello hello.

C’mon. Nothing. Think of nothing.

God! God! God! HELLO THERE, YOUNG CARSON! YOU SHALL KILL YOUR FIRSTBORN SON, OR I SHALL SMITE YOU.

I shake my head, trying to spin the thoughts out. I toss them onto the floor beside me. I open my eyes and look around. The room is very still. Aisha is very still.

A rare Billings memory floats by. Watching cartoons with Dad on Sunday mornings. He’d bundle me up in blankets on the floor in front of the television, and he’d lie on the couch, and we’d watch The Mouse and the Monster and Space Strikers, plus old-school cartoons like Road Runner. I was warm and whole and happy. Dad made me feel that way.

My throat catches. Something unwelcome trembles my body, a wave of cold and static and tingle. I close my eyes tighter, shake my head.

You’re free to go, the voice says.

No. No. No.

No.

Let the thought be?

Okay. Fine. I’ll let the thought be.

You’re free to go, says the voice. A male voice.

We are in the kitchen. They are, anyway. Mom’s head is buried in her hands, and she is making cat noises, it sounds like. Dad is saying words. I am holding a red ball. I stand in the hallway alone. It’s playtime. Dad said he’d come home and we’d play in the backyard, but he’s late. It’s too dark to go out, but I’ve been waiting up. I’ve built a fort in my bedroom out of pillows. I fell asleep under the fort, but then the door slammed and voices shouted and I came out to see, to listen, and Mom is on the kitchen floor and and I am confused.

“You’re free to go,” Dad says, and to my three-year-old brain, she seems to be meowing.

I hold the ball between my hands. I try to crush it. I can’t. The harder I push, the harder it pushes back. Mom’s wailing hurts my ears. It makes my chest feel like it’s going to cave in. I want to make it stop. I need to make it stop. Moms are big people. They are not cats. They are not supposed to wail.

Daddy? Mommy? Did I say those words? I think I did. But no one heard. No one came.

Then the world ripped in half.

Her: “I’m taking Carson. We’ll leave in the morning. Is that what you want?”

Him: “What I want is for you to leave me the fuck alone.”

Her: “You’re a disgrace. You’re a failure of a man.”

Him: “Tell me about it.”

Her: “You’re losing your son.”

Him: “Bound to happen.”

My throat feels so tight. I don’t want to think about this. I never goddammit want to think about this why did you make me think of this stop it stop it stop it!

I jump up and run out of the room. I swing open the church door and sprint to Aisha’s car. This was a big mistake. Aisha will come out soon, and we’ll say we’re sorry but we can’t stay. I tried and I failed.

Minutes go by. A lot of them. I check my cell phone. No messages. Why would I have messages? I never do. I turn and look out into the distance, this mountain range with just a hint of snow on the top, framed by a juicy blue sky that makes me thirsty. Across the street there’s a bar, and I get this crazy idea again. Maybe just one drink? Maybe they’d serve me?

I stare at the bar until my eyes blur and there are two of them, two bars, side-by-side, drifting in and out of each other as I focus and unfocus my eyes. This is how it starts, probably. This is how I become my destiny. My dad. My granddad. A drunk. I make myself turn away.

And then I turn back toward it. I can do this and no one will know. I’ll sit in a bar in Bumfuck, Wyoming, and drink a beer like an adult who is free to do whatever the hell he wants, because my dad is dying, and my mother doesn’t care, and my best friend is better than I am. Why not?

I walk to the bar, and again I’m two people. One is saying, What are you doing, Carson? You know better than this. The other is saying, One, shut the fuck up. I’m living my life.

Inside, the bar is dark and somber. There’s a guy at the far end, nursing a beer. His grizzled, pruned-up face makes him look maybe a hundred and fifty, give or take ten years. A bartender in overalls sits on a stool behind the bar, reading a newspaper.

He looks up as I approach. He doesn’t smile; he doesn’t frown. He is not the kind of person who rubs your shoulders when they find out your dad is dying.

“Can I have a beer?” I mumble.

“Got ID?” he barks.

“C’mon, man,” I say.

He gives me the finger. “Out,” he says.

There’s something really depressing about being given the finger and turned away at the world’s bleakest bar. Like, I’m not even good enough to be a miserable patron there. That’s how it feels as I walk back toward the church.

The meditation is still not over. I sit on the hood of the car. The minutes pass slowly, murderously slowly, and I need Aisha now. I need to make fun of this bullshit. More minutes pass. Then more. An unbearable number of minutes. I count to 336 by fourteens – up and then back down again. It doesn’t help.

By the time Aisha comes traipsing out of the meditation area, I want to tear her apart.

“Was that a lot of fun for you?” I ask, seething in my gut.

She shrugs. “It was interesting, actually.”

I laugh. Right. Sitting in silence in a church classroom, listening to God. Real interesting.

She stretches her arms up. “I liked it. Sorry if you didn’t. It’s okay. It’s not for everyone.”

I laugh harder. “Oh my God. I know you’re not going to get all holier than thou on me, because I will seriously …”

She raises her left eyebrow. “Seriously what?”

I don’t know why Aisha makes me so pissed sometimes. “Come on, Aisha. You’re always making fun of the Jesus.”

“What does meditating have to do with the Jesus?”

“Are you going crazy? Is everyone going crazy? Religion is bullshit. God doesn’t exist. We believe in the Porcupine of Truth.”

“I agree,” she says. “Religion’s the worst. This isn’t religion, Carson.”

“Um. Meditating means ‘listening to God.’ God is religion. You’re out of your mind.”

“You don’t have to be religious to meditate, Carson. I’m not even sure you need to believe in God. I don’t think I do.”

I put my hands over my head. I don’t meditate for the same reason I don’t pray to God. Similarly, I don’t have long, one-sided phone conversations with a dial tone. It’s a waste of time and energy and anyone being honest with themselves knows that.

“That is the dumbest thing I ever heard,” I say. “So you’re communicating with something that you know doesn’t exist?”

“I can’t explain it, but it’s not like that at all,” she says.

I’m disappointed in Aisha. I thought she was this freethinker who came up with her own answers, and now I see that I misjudged her.

“Okay then. If you say so,” I say.

As we drive the Neon back to the Leffs’ place, Thomas and Laurelei ask Aisha about her experience, and I feel more alone than ever.

I flash on an image of young me, at three, sitting on the front stoop of our Billings home. Minutes before Mom and I left.

Some things you remember, and some you forget. Of the things you remember, you have to wonder what’s real and what’s translated into a memory from a story you heard. Like in this memory, my dad is wearing Bermuda shorts. I don’t think I knew what Bermuda shorts were back then, so how would I know that? Except I remember it.

It’s early that last morning, and I’m sitting on the stoop outside the front door in my yellow pajamas. Mom is cradling a green duffel bag to her torso. Icy tears stream down her face like rain on a windshield, except there are no wipers to sweep them away. Mom is melting, and moms are not supposed to melt. Dad is I don’t know where, but wearing Bermuda shorts. I know something irreversibly terrible is happening. The earth is shifting below my feet, and there’s a rumbling earthquake like when the subway comes into the Seventy-Ninth Street station, shaking the entire platform. It rattles my entire body, rearranging my insides, changing my chemistry. But that part of the memory can’t belong in Billings at all, because I’d never been on a subway then, so that means it’s not quite true.

I am holding a red die. Not sure why I’m holding it, or where it came from, but I remember the feeling of its dull corners pressing against my tiny fingers. I remember thinking that if I hold on to the die a bit longer, a bit harder, an all-loving God will make this earthquake stop, will stop the flood of icy eye water that is turning my powerful mom into a puddle. God like the one Grandma Phyllis believes in. The one she says prayers to.

Dad walks out in his red Bermuda shorts, no shirt, smoking a cigarette. It’s like watching a movie now, because I am not there. Mom and Dad, on a screen, yelling at each other, way too loud for how close they are standing. Mom with tears streaming down, turning my stomach inside out. I remember watching and thinking, No. Let’s stop. Like I’m asking God. Like I’m asking my parents. I don’t know if I say this or I think this. I have no idea.

And the answer to my words or prayers is that my mom grabs my left arm and pulls. Her hand wets my arm, makes it feel slippery. She says, “C’mon, honey,” and I am dragged away. I scream. I scream to my dad. I scream to the universe. Stop this from happening. The world is ending! The world is ending! Stop this!

I drop the die. I never get to see how it lands, if it stays on the stoop or falls to the ground. And no one stops the world from ending.

So no, I’m not gonna just sit here and be like, God is listening.

Not so much, in my experience.

YOU HAVE NOT lived until you’ve sat in a rickety old chair outside a trailer at night in north-central Wyoming. This is just crazy beautiful, with so many stars glimmering above me that I feel like if I believed in anything more than the Porcupine of Truth, I’d be praying to it right about now, saying, Thank you Jebus, you amazing son of a bitch. It’s just un-fucking-believably gorgeous.

I’m half depressed as shit, half in awe of the world. I’m sitting like a fool in a trailer park and I don’t know why. I guess I’m chasing a mystery about my dad, who doesn’t give a crap about me, and his dad, who doesn’t know I’m alive. But my dad is dying. Dying. It scares me for my life. How random is it all gonna be? How do you meet a Laurelei, or a straight Aisha? And even if you do, how do you not let them annoy the crap out of you, or disappoint you to death? What’s the point of it all?

The door creaks open and Laurelei ambles out, wrapped in a puffy pink blanket. Even though I’m wearing baggy gray sweatpants Thomas lent me and it’s July, it is chilly, and my teeth are chattering. She sees me sitting there uncovered, and she goes back inside and comes back out with the blue-and-white quilt that I left on my couch. I wrap it around myself, and she grabs a second lawn chair and drags it over to me. The sound cuts into the otherwise silent Wyoming night.

“Do you know that your grandfather did the same thing you’re doing?”

“Huh,” I say.

I hear her smile in her voice. “He couldn’t sleep. Grabbed himself a blanket and sat in a chair in just about the same spot you’re sitting in. Came and looked at the stars, and he cried like a baby.”

I smile, though it’s hard for me to imagine my grandfather crying like a baby. “That’s cool. Sad, but cool.”

“He was a good man.”

I don’t know if I believe her, but it’s nice for her to say. We sit quietly and look at the sky.

“Goddamn,” I say, and Laurelei laughs.

“Isn’t it perfect?”

“Yeah. Sorry about the ‘goddamn’ thing. I know you probably aren’t big on using God’s name in vain or whatever.”

She flicks me lightly across the back of the head. When I look at her, she says, “God fuck damn shit.”

I laugh, and she laughs.

“Don’t idealize me,” she says. “I’m a human fool. We all are, and it took me a long time to become the happy person I am today. A long time. Okay?”

I look back at the stars, and so does she.

“So do you believe in God?” I ask.

“I do.”

“But you’re not Christian.”

She sits up abruptly. “Surely you’re aware that not everyone who believes in God is a Christian, right?”

“Well, yeah,” I say, though in fact I have temporarily forgotten that, like, a majority of the world isn’t Christian. How did I forget? Thomas and Laurelei meditate. They’re probably Buddhists. How stupid am I?

“So you stopped believing in Christ and started believing in what?”

“It’s hard to explain,” she says. “I would say that I’m more spiritual than religious at this point.”

“What does that even mean?” I stare upward at the gleaming stars.

“To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality.”

I laugh. “It’s all cheap stuff made in China?”

“Exactly.” She flicks me in the back of the head again. “Exactly what I meant. I mean it’s prepackaged. Lowest common denominator. People just have to follow the preset motions and rituals and rules. They don’t have to think about how the words reconcile with their own hearts. Their own experience.”

“Huh,” I say, considering that. “And what do you believe in now?”

She raises her hands to the sky, then puts them behind her head. “Everything.”

I snort. “Weak sauce.”

She laughs. “You don’t believe.”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I just have trouble believing in things that don’t exist.”

“What doesn’t exist? The stars? The sky?”

“God,” I say. “God is a concept used by people who want to feel better about the pointlessness of being alive. You live, you die. The end. Sorry, but that’s what’s real.”

“For you,” she says, as if to add it to the end of my sentence.

“Hey, call it what you want. That’s what I know to be true.”

“So can I teach you something I’ve learned?”

I look over at Laurelei, who is beautiful in a mom way, who I would be okay spending the rest of my life listening to, even if she’s batshit crazy. “Go for it. Knock yourself out.”

“I’ve learned that the answer to every question about God is ‘Yes.’ ”

“What if it isn’t a yes or no question?”

“So judgmental for such an otherwise delightful young man. I’m saying that whatever it is that a person believes about God is totally, completely, irrevocably true – but only if you add two words.”

“Check, please?”

That one earns me another playful smack, and then she stands up and says, “I think I’ll head back to sleep. You?”

I nod and stand up too. “So you didn’t tell me what the two words are,” I say.

She opens the screen door and holds it open for me to walk through, and then she follows me. I see Aisha’s sleeping cheek illuminated by the starlight.

“For me,” she whispers, and she disappears into the darkness of the trailer.