Self-Esteem (3 page)

“You’re not putting that crap on my wall!” Crawford screamed at Cal.

“He’s an artist! It’s not crap!” Cal yelled back.

Then Dorothy took her usual diplomatic position, telling her husband, “Maybe you don’t understand, Dear.”

Crawford hated Rotten Tamales since Cal started listening to
Kill Kompletely
, his breakthrough album that sold four million copies. Crawford would sometimes walk by Cal’s room and stop in awe of the poisonous sound and depraved lyrics he heard blaring from inside.

Kill, kill, kill. Die, die, die. Fuck, fuck, fuck
. Etc.

These kids
, Crawford would think.
What can we do?

In the end, Cal won the battle of the
Erectum
poster because Crawford just didn’t give a damn any more. It was pure perseverance on Cal’s part, and it was worth the accomplishment. Cal relished the idea that his father would have to tolerate a picture of some skinny punk’s leather ass on his wall with what looked like a boner on the wrong side. Every morning he looked at it with such admiration.

“Be kind to yourself, bitch,” he said, high as the devil.

One wall of Crawford’s study was covered in the ritual sycophancy of being one of America’s foremost self-help writers, “which also means one of the best-selling,” he liked to add. The plaques, the pictures, the awards and the newspaper clippings hung neatly in rows behind Crawford’s writing desk, which he lovingly called “Old Bessie.” The wall he called, not so lovingly, “the Wall of Shame.” He didn’t like it that way, of course. It was merely a concession following a series of negotiations with Dorothy, which included his proviso that the collection be hidden from most houseguests. One of his first awards was a plaque he received from a small town in Wisconsin proclaiming “Dr. Crawford Day.” Accepting the undesired plaque in person was bad enough, he felt. But Dorothy saw it differently.

“We can’t just throw it away,” she told him.

“Maybe we can’t, but I can.”

He finally gave in, and the small museum of his accomplishments was hatched. Then it grew, and grew, and grew some more. But he resented all of it. The Wall of Shame certainly didn’t serve the purpose his well-intentioned wife thought it would. Dorothy saw such a display as a source of inspiration, something that could give “perspective.” But Crawford knew the presence of these things was anything but inspiring — demoralizing, in fact. They haughtily reminded him of what he might have been, mocking what he believed he might someday become. His degrees meant nothing to him. Even his doctorate — the one item he might have wanted on the wall — brought shame. Instead of representing accomplishment, the honorary degree represented fraud — giving him the sense that he would never contribute anything of value, not as a scientist nor as an artist.

But Crawford was typing, his bloodshot eyes staring blankly at the blue screen.

“For you try and you try and you try,”
but that’s okay. Keep trying!

“Ah!”

I can’t write pessimism, he thought. I can only live it.

I can. I can. Still. Keep going. You’re not just a writer. You’re a novelist. You’re a damn novelist.

Two cups of strong coffee and Crawford’s hangover wasn’t any better. Since he had not had an all-nighter in a while, this one was particularly bad. Like many struggling boozers, Crawford cradled a morose attachment to self-inflicted soreness, to mind-numbing pain. It was like an old friend he had known for years and couldn’t abandon. Although unpleasant, hangovers made him subconsciously aware that the rest of the day could only improve — perhaps the rest of the week, perhaps the rest of his life. He also knew they were one of the few deterrents that might keep him from drinking himself to death.

Crawford noted that this morning his slight paunch hung over his Levis just a little more, pulling his standard white T-shirt a little tighter. But he had to put a stop to that kind of thinking. That was the byproduct of a superficial generation that flipped through celebrity magazines in checkout lines — not what a serious novelist concerns himself with.

Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.

William Faulkner never fretted over his belly, Crawford guessed. And why would he? He had bigger fish to fry. Or he had higher mountains to climb. Or he had better shit to do.

Avoid cliches like the plague.

Or something.
Anyway.

Crawford, once again, was seeing nothing but crap spring from his fingertips — no concept, no originality, just cliches, just nonsense.

Suddenly he felt someone watching him.

Crawford turned to see Cal standing in the doorway staring at him blankly through his frizzled hair. Cal was now dressed for school in what Crawford called his “black death uniform,” actually a standard “Goth” look with the essentials of dyed black hair, black shirt, black jeans and black boots. Crawford could avoid the topic of Cal’s fashion sense as long as it didn’t include black fingernail polish, black lipstick and pale makeup.

“Yes?” Crawford said instinctively.

For the previous year and a half, Cal made Crawford more uncomfortable than anyone since his own father, and consequently, more resentful. But Crawford wasn’t about to let Cal know that.

“Good morning, Cal.”

“So. Does it have a happy ending?” Cal asked.

“What’s that?” Crawford said.

“That,” Cal said, pointing to Crawford’s computer.

“You mean my current writing project?”

“Uh huh,” Cal said. “Your current writing project.”

“I don’t know yet, son.”

“You always say you should just do what you can do. And you’re so good at happy endings,” Cal said. “Will it have a happy ending or not?”

“I’m sorry, Cal. But I’m busy, and I…”

Cal walked away before Crawford could finish.

Little prick, Crawford thought.

Retrieving the morning newspaper from the driveway was one of Dorothy’s morning pleasures because, as she saw it, it was a time for reflecting — reflecting on her lovely Beverly Hills home and the spotless neighborhood where it cozily rested. The lawns were always green and the cars always clean, and seeing this was something else, she thought, that gave her perspective. It reminded her that she and Jim were once poor and aimless, that Jim once had a horrible drinking problem, and during that time Jim was unable to support their family in a manner acceptable to her. But my, my — things had changed. Jim’s drinking improved. Relapses became fewer and far between. And he gained focus, as she saw it. He wrote a book. He made money. He wrote another book. He made more money. And the rest, as they say, was history. Retrieving the morning paper was actually a simple pleasure that begat another simple pleasure — thinking about how things were really pretty good.

Heading back into the house, Dorothy scraped her leg on a neatly trimmed shrub near the driveway. “Shit,” she said to herself, cursing the small cut.

Things were pretty good. Except for Jim’s recent benders, she thought as she inspected her wound.

The drinking was on her mind more and more every day. And then there were those afternoons when Jim disappeared for no reason.

Oh, please.
Dorothy knew she was just being uptight about things. She just needed to relax a bit. Oh, you silly nilly, she thought to herself.
Can’t you just be happy? You little grouchy ouchy
.

The beat came hard and slow like a brewing storm muffled by distance. Another beat, then louder and louder, and Cal came barreling out of the driveway in his new silver Porsche convertible, looking like James Dean heading for Mulholland Drive. He skidded to a stop in front of his mother, laughing when he heard her shriek.

“My God, Cal. Would you please be careful?”

“I’m fuckin’ late, Mom,” he said.

Standing straight to look more parental, she said, “Please don’t use profanity around me. And turn that music down.”

Cal scowled but did as he was told. He was wearing dark sunglasses, gratuitous in the soft morning sunlight.

Dorothy avoided an angry response to Cal by thinking,
Don’t lose your temper, it’s more important than your keys
— a quote she heard on
Jan Hershey
.

She smiled gently. “Please don’t forget we have that thing tonight.”

“That thing tonight has fuck all to do with me, doesn’t it?” Cal said, his fingers tapping the steering wheel to the beat.

Before Dorothy could answer, her son had hit the accelerator and charged backward into the street with a squeal, reminding her of James Garner in the
The Rockford Files
. My my, I miss that show, she thought, as Cal sped away.

Dorothy thought that her son needed a good talking to about dangerous driving — an open dialogue to better help him understand the dangers. But, no, that was something Jim needed to do. Jim needed to talk to Cal about a lot of things. Jim needed to share the responsibilities of parenthood, especially issues that related to masculinity, like driving recklessly.

But Jim’s recent relapses, she thought again.
I need to talk to Jim about the drinking, I guess, then Jim can talk to Cal about… the driving and uh…

“I need to put something on this,” she said to herself, heading inside to medicate her cut.

The foyer of the Crawford home was a wide-open octagonal space looking onto a semi-spiral staircase on one side. The wood that adorned both the staircase and the trim of the beveled ceiling was a light pine — one that Crawford was never happy with. “Not dark enough,” was his opinion. Dorothy had insisted on the color, saying it looked “cheerful” compared to Crawford’s more “morose” preference for Scarlet oak. Even though Dorothy chose a fine pine imported from Eastern Europe, Crawford believed the wood gave their home a strange “movie set” quality. What’s more, Crawford had never been happy with Dorothy’s choice of furniture: mostly a contemporary “California” style with soft maple finishes and upholstery in pastels of green and orange. The entire home, inside and out, was Dorothy’s creation. Her rationale for the location, style and color scheme was based on her belief that environment — especially color — was of vital importance when it came to human behavior. The black and Latino ghettos of Los Angeles, she believed, were filled with violence and despair (at least in part) because of the ugly browns and grays that dominated the landscape. Dorothy hadn’t actually been to any of these areas, but she had read about them. And she imagined a topography of rundown, spirit-numbing liquor stores, abandoned buildings, fires burning in oil drums and black smoke from sources both legal and illegal littering a starless sky. She actually thought about this inner-city nightmare while creating the new Crawford family home in Beverly Hills, which they had lived in now for three years. It would be the anti-ghetto, filled with beautiful colors that keep away life’s “ugly wugglies.”

Coming out of the shower, Jim heard the car speed away and knew it was his ingrate of a son. “Little fucker,” he said to himself. “I should make him walk to school like I did.” This particular morning was too painful for concerns about Cal. He was hung over, mad at himself for the miniscule amount of writing he had done that morning, as well as apprehensive about a few unpleasant things he had in store that day. He was going to put his foot down with Cal, but not this morning.

First things first
.

He got out of the shower and dried himself thinking how he’d aged so much since he stopped drinking.

Perhaps now that you’ve started again, your youth will return.

“I need the disinfectant and a band-aid please,” Dorothy said through the cracked bathroom door.

Crawford handed the items to her without asking why.

“You’re going to see Lee?” Dorothy asked.

“Yes. I told you that.”

Crawford sometimes became irritated by his wife’s nosiness, especially concerning business. She had been effective as Jim’s manager and publicist during the first stages of his career and, by some accounts, had worked harder than Crawford himself at the creation of the
Self
franchise. Accordingly, many people in the publishing world regarded her public relations expertise as an essential part of Crawford’s success. But now that he was successful — after all, he wrote the books — her tone sometimes sounded like a mother asking her son if he had brushed his teeth.

“I have to talk to Lee right away, while I still have the nerve,” he continued.

“You mean the nerve you have from drinking alcohol?”

Crawford walked through the door wearing a yellow bathrobe Dorothy had given him as an anniversary gift. “Leave it alone, Dorothy.”

“If I can’t ask you about that, can I ask you to talk to your son?”

“You can ask.”

Crawford took off the robe and threw it on the floor. Dorothy went into the bathroom to medicate her wound. Crawford thumbed through his closet, still annoyed.

“Are you listening to me?” she asked.

He stopped. “I think so. I’m answering you, aren’t I?”

“You need to talk to Cal.”

Crawford put on a pair of slacks. “Okay,” he said with resignation. “About what?”

“You know about what.”

He stopped again. “No, Dorothy. I don’t know.”

“He just seems, I don’t know, angry,” she said painting the cut with disinfectant.

“Okay, so he’s pissed off all the time. Big deal. What kid isn’t at his age?”

“Jim, you’re not doing your job.”

“Oh yeah? And how well are you doing your job?”

Dorothy took a deep breath to keep from losing her temper. “He seems to be particularly mad at you.”

“Yeah, what else is new?” he said.

Dorothy came back into the bedroom holding a Q-tip. “It’s going to be really embarrassing when the big self-help guru’s son is busted for drugs. And who is this new friend of his? We haven’t even met this boy. Do you know this Darrin person?”

“Who?” Crawford said, inspecting himself in the mirror. “He’s only smoking pot, Dorothy. So what.”

Dorothy took one of her standard positions: her husband was choosing not to appreciate the gravity of a situation to avoid dealing with it. Jim countered that most people have periods of loserdom in their lives and that maybe it was even good for people in the long run — a bold statement considering it was not exactly the advice he had given millions of readers. “Perhaps,” Dorothy agreed, pointing with the Q-tip, “but your loser period hasn’t ended,” and that’s why, she concluded, they needed to act now — to save their son. With Crawford’s splitting headache, this was an especially unwelcome remark.