Flatscreen (29 page)

Possible Ending #19 [ ]:

Chalk it up to failure of imagination, but I’m out of endings. Seen the movies, taken their clumsy morals, outlandish advice, learned whatever I was meant to learn, unlearned it, relearned it with exceptions that prove the rule, exceptions that don’t, asterisks, footnotes, side notes, sometimes subtly, sometimes not. Kahn dead, Mom gone, life goes on, etc. Winter coming, ice-fucked, still jobless, Sheila sad but strong, Benjy and Erin back together, maybe forever, maybe not, everyone not ready to move on, doing it anyway, no choice, I’m the same, smoking, staring at the snow, longing for love, life, etc. Looking for work, no resolution, maybe new life a slight improvement on old life with backslide potential, fall asleep again for years, wake to nuclear war, dying sun, earth barely alive, all the women I’ve ever met now offscreen, returned to invisible, still there in their own lives (just not mine), working, eating, smiling, singing, me in my movie waiting for the next one to walk in the door.

Quiet Christmas/New Year’s, saw a couple movies, nothing too interesting. Christmas morning Benjy and I went to Sheila’s, watched while her family gave each other gifts, gave us dark chocolate imported from Colombia. Felt like family—warm, witty—but also like a family I would never be a part of. Natasha made a joke about herself being “sweet dark chocolate.”

Benjy said, “Dark chocolate’s not sweet, it’s bitter.”

When I looked at Natasha I could see Kahn: his mannerisms, the way he waved his hands, rolled his eyes.

New Year’s went to Dad’s, watched Dick Clark, helped Pam make cocktail meatballs. The twins threw cake at each other. Dad was quiet, gave me a hundred bucks.

“Look at Dick,” he said. “Still going. He had a stroke but now he’s back.”

That Tuesday got a call from a lawyer about Kahn’s will. Benjy drove me to the lawyer’s office. Sheila, Mary, Erin, and Natasha were there. Thought there would be a video, like in movies. Kahn would sit, explain life’s secrets, confess. Instead the lawyer read out what we got. I got the jazz CDs and a photo
he’d taken in 1974 of a young woman, sun-bleached blond hair, deeply tanned, seated on a futon, legs crossed, sipping coffee, smiling. On the back in pen: “The Wellspring of Youth, I drink from thee. Ramona, La Jolla, California, July, 1974.”

He also left me a Teflon frying pan he’d bought but never used. Sheila and Mary got the money. Not much left. Natasha got his Golden Globe, Erin his movie collection, mostly porn. Ten containers of frozen semen were found in Kahn’s freezer. Stipulated they be given to Sheila and Mary for whatever purposes they might desire.

Starbucks called, said they were looking for someone with more coffee experience.

When the RMV opened for the New Year, I took my driving test. Benjy sat in back. We were in Mom’s Camry, not Benjy’s car. It had been sitting in our condo lot since she’d left for Florida, but she’d called a few days before my test, said I could have it, late Chanukah, early birthday present. A lot I’d wanted to discuss: usual sappy bullshit, reconcile, muffled crying. Instead she talked, quickly, about golf, her new clubs, a movie she’d seen with Kevin Bacon, and made sure I’d bought gifts for the twins. She must have known about Kahn, heard it through the synagogue gossip-line, but she didn’t mention him or the house, which had been put up for sale. Instead she talked on, as if she couldn’t stop, muttering inanities, asking about dentist appointments.

“Thanks for the car,” I said.

“You should really ask your father to buy you one,” she said.

Passed the test. They took my pic. Smiled, looked like an idiot. Benjy let me drive back. Dropped him at the library.

When he left the car, I almost said, “Thank you.” I thought about the words, but didn’t almost say “I love you,” which I’d never said to anyone, not since childhood.

I said, “You’re such a fucking nerd.”

Benjy grinned, told me to eat a dick, leaned back in through the window, rubbed his forehead against my forehead, said, “License.”

Realtor’s sign was there in the yard. Snow had cleared. Would be back, but for now the sun hung between two clouds. The house looked like an archival photograph: childhood home, early twenty-first century, still standing, unoccupied.

Soon the house will be filled; it will be a home. New family: better made, better prepared, equally fragile. I can see them, version 3.1: young mother, Japanese, beautiful, decorated in batik-print skirts, dangling earrings, a chiropractor, wears banana-cucumber facial masks, masturbates guilt-free; father an African American Buddhist, shaved head, high cheekbones, horn-rimmed glasses, professor of art history, secretly likes NASCAR, pines for a girl he knew in high school; two children, five and six, boy and girl, raised on free-range chicken, organic vegetables, no prizes in their cereal, bathed at night in jasmine water. I watch them plant trees in the yard, many trees, ten maybe, twenty: oak, spruce, apple, pear, lemon, all tangled among each other in a mess of branches and fruit, creating crossbreeds, new species. The trees grow upward, become sturdy. Stand above the house, catching rain, spreading shadow, filtering sunlight, lending tint to the far corners of the neighborhood.

Thank you to all of my classmates and teachers at the Columbia MFA program, especially Emily Cooke, Dyannah Byington, James Yeh, Lincoln Michel, Dan Bevacqua, Kalpana Narayanan, Binnie Kirshenbaum, and Sam Lipsyte. Sam deserves a special shout for his knowledge of firearms, and also for going above and beyond the call of duty in regards to reading, commenting, and dispensing life advice. Thank you to Paul Rome for early reading, insight, and friendship. Thank you to everyone at Bookcourt for being my Brooklyn family. Chad Bunning, you’re a hero. Thank you to Sam Apple and everyone at the
Faster Times
for being my Internet family. Thank you to Darin Strauss for being a mensch. Thank you to Steve Hanselman and Julia Serebrinsky for being the first people to believe in this book—it meant a lot and still does. Thank you to Julie Cohen for being Julie Cohen. Thank you to Jim Strouse and Andew Gorin for encouragement and conversation. Thank you to Prime Meats on Court St. for not making me put away my laptop. Thank you to the Rapp Family for cheering me on. Thank you to Erin Hosier, you fucking rock star,
I love you. Thank you to everyone at Harper Perennial, and especially Carrie Kania and Cal Morgan for manning up and buying this fucker. Also thanks to Gregory Henry and Erica Barmash for having my back. Thank you to Oliver Munday for designing such a beautiful cover. Thank you to Michael Signorelli for truly being the best editor I could ever hope to have. I consider myself doubly blessed to have not only found a brilliant editor, but a true friend and brother. Thank you to my father, Jonathan Wilson, for a lifetime of books, book talk, and encouragement. Thank you to my mother, Sharon Kaitz, for being the opposite of the mother in this book. Thank you to Sarah Rapp for Everything. I have infinite gratitude.

ADAM WILSON
is the editor of the
Faster Times
. His writing has appeared in the
New York Times
, the
Paris Review
, and
Bookforum
, among other publications. He teaches creative writing at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.

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Cover design by Oliver Munday

FLATSCREEN
. Copyright © 2012 by Adam Wilson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-06-209033-1

EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062090348

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