The Future for Curious People: A Novel (8 page)

“Steinem?”

“No, Pat Benatar. Seriously, sometimes I wonder if you’re listening at all.”

Delores brings us our food and we dig in, eating heartily. Dot and I are eaters. We take that shit seriously.

But in the middle of it all, Dot takes a moment to touch the ketchup bottle like she’s thinking of slipping it into her oversized pocketbook.

Dot launches into the details of her mother’s upcoming visit. “I’m trying to gear up. You know, she doesn’t steal
literal
stuff. She steals other things—like love and honesty and hope. I wish she’d just show up and take my toaster and shit, but no, no, no. That would be way too literal! And I’m the one with the problem?”

“You actually do have a problem,” I say. She really needs to work on the stealing thing.

“She was normal when I was little. And I don’t think that’s just because I was too young to know any better. I swear, she was like a regular human being who bought me what I wanted for my birthday, not like subscriptions to Weight Watchers, you know? But now she’s mean—even when playing charades. Who can be so mean while just acting out books and movies?”

“I know.” Once, she told me to get a haircut because I looked like a gypsy. Still, I’ve been weaseling my way into Mrs. Fuoco’s slightly wizened heart, and even went so far as to tell her that “Dot is like a sister to me”—twice, hoping she’d catch a hint. I don’t say this in front of Dot because she has a kind of allergy to sentimentality. Mrs. Fuoco isn’t the type to let you just chum up and pretend to be part of the family.

“I’d love to have parents who I could play charades with, even mean charades. My parents don’t know what to do with me, and I’ve never known what to do with them not knowing what to do with me.” It’s like they decided to love me just a little less, in case I died, too. But I can’t even take it all that personally. They decided to love each other a little less, too. Maybe they decided to love everything a little less—matinees, rich appetizers, big sky country. They kept me as an idea, a centerpiece. I just remembered our yearly family Christmas cards. They were always a picture of just me, front and center, my hair perfectly curled around my ears. Above my head:
HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE SHRINERS
!

“My mom didn’t believe in Christmas cards. She said they were for people with too much time on their hands.”

And that’s when I segue to Dr. Chin’s. “You should go,” I tell her. “Just try it. Once. One time.”

“I don’t get the fascination,” she says. “I mean, it’s like alien technology without the aliens. And what’s the point of a brain-melting machine without the flying saucer and beaming lights?” She’s finished eating and wipes her mouth with a paper napkin.

“It’s based on neuroscience,” I tell her. “Don’t you want to just pin the future down a little?”

“No,” Dot says. “I don’t think I do want to pin down the future. Do you really want to watch a movie of yourself pulling weeds with a man past his prime in a future where you’re past your prime?”

“Is this my prime?” I say, staring around the restaurant, a little terrified.

“Me? I’d rather go to the dentist.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“It’s not the same for you as it is for me. You like the past. Your mother was once normal. You had a happy childhood!” I’m afraid I sound accusatory. There’s something a little vicious in my voice.

“Yes, I did. And the future is the unknown. I like it like that.” She stands up. “Let’s go.”

“We haven’t paid yet.”

“I’m nervous. I’ll wait outside.” She punches her arms into the armholes of her coat, shrugs on her oversized bag, and walks out.

I look down at the table. Aside from our dirty dishes, it’s empty—no ketchup, no salt or pepper shakers, no Splenda or sugar holder, no forks or spoons. Mine are even gone and I’d barely finished. How does she do it?

Delores swings by and slaps the check on the table. Since I pissed Dot off, it looks like I’m paying.

“What’s the extra damage?” she asks.

“She got everything this time, I think.”

“Long as she doesn’t upgrade to stealing other women’s men, she’s a good egg,” Delores says with admiration.

“She’s a really good egg. She has a great heart.” She stole stuff, but I’m the one who feels bad. I hurt her feelings.

And as I bundle up, I wonder what I really know of judging hearts. I feel like I can’t find my own. Mostly, I feel alone. Even with Dot, sometimes I feel alone. Reading into a little recording device for the blind revising literature, I feel alone. Maybe the only time I don’t feel alone is when I see myself on that screen, existing in the future—maybe only where there are two of me. Really, though, maybe even then.

Alone is alone. Sometimes I think I’ve got a permanent condition.

When I arrive at my desk at the Department of Unclaimed Goods, there’s a note on my chair from my boss, Chapman:
We need you in Lost Cell Phones—all afternoon. —C.

Chapman is an idiotic prick—the kind of idiotic prick who knows he’s an idiotic prick and uses this knowledge against himself before you can. It’s kind of brilliant. When I went in for my annual review last year and asked for a raise—because Madge badgered me with little speeches that ended
You’ve got to ask to receive—
Chapman rubbed his chest and said, “You can die from a duodenal ulcer, can’t you?” I said, “I think you can. Um, did you hear my question?” And Chapman said, “About the raise? Didn’t I say no? I thought I said no in the middle of the question. I must have just said no in my head and thought I’d said it aloud.”

Because Chapman is an idiot
and
a prick, it’s hard to tell whether this temporary demotion to Lost Cell Phones is a mix-up—maybe Chapman has confused me with someone of a lower rank—or a reprimand for a fake doctor’s appointment. Either way, I’m pissed. Lost Cell Phones is the lowest rung on the ladder and it’s the only office lodged in the basement, which is cold and damp and feels like a basement. It’s where most everyone starts out. I moved up from there two years ago and I never planned on going back.

I punch in before walking down the rows of cubicles, angrily wrestling my jacket. Standing in front of Bart, I say, “Where’s Garrett?”

“How’s your gallbladder?”

“Fine. Where’s Garrett?”

Bart shrugs.

“Chapman’s put me in Lost Cell Phones.”

“Shit.”

“I take a few hours of personal time and I end up in Lost Cell Phones? Is that fair?”

“Personal time? I thought it was medical.”

“That’s what I mean.” I lean against Bart’s desk so that I can look down on the bald spot of Art Gunston in the next cubicle. “Where’s Garrett?” I ask Gunston.

Gunston looks up, startled, as if God is speaking to him, but then he sees it’s just me. “Oh, you.” I once stamped
UNCLAIMED
on Gunston’s cheek while he was sleeping on the job, and he didn’t take it with the good humor in which I obviously intended it. There’s been tension ever since.

“Where’s Garrett? He’s supposed to be in Lost Cell Phones.”

“He’s driving the truck.”

“The truck?” I say, astonished. “The fucking truck?”

Bart doesn’t like this at all either. “I’ve never driven the truck,” he says sullenly.

“He has some kind of license,” Gunston says. “Chapman just found out. So he’s doing pickups.”

“And so I’m the one Chapman tells to take over in Lost Cell Phones?” I’ve got a year’s seniority on Gunston, easy.

“Ha!” Gunston says smugly.

“Shut up,” Bart says.

“What?” Gunston asks innocently.

“You know what,” I say.

TH
E BASEMENT SMELLS OF
mildew. The lights are dim. They’re fluorescent, which is how Bart avoided starting out here. He claimed he was an epileptic and that the fluorescent lights could cause a fit. Chapman demanded a physician’s note, which Bart got from his brother-in-law’s cousin, a podiatrist in Boca. That’s the kind of typical shit Bart does that I find both despicable and admirable.

I didn’t want this job. I have a college degree in business. Madge wasn’t the first to talk me out of early education, to be fair. My freshman-year roommate said, “Seriously? That’s a sorority-girl major. Why not just buy a MINI Cooper convertible, get a mani-pedi, and be done with it?” That was all it took. And could I get a real job in the business world? No. I relied on vague Bart nepotism and ended up in a basement surrounded by cell phones.

In Lost Cell Phones, your first job is charging the dead ones and finding out which ones are real goners, the permanent dead, the ones not lost so much as abandoned and mistaken for lost. There are tables filled with bins of phones and extension cords connected to outlet strips. I inspect the plugged-in phones. All of them are fully charged except for a half dozen or so that are still dark. I unplug all the phones and sort them into two boxes—one for the living, one for the dead. There are rows and rows of living bins, rows and rows of dead bins and rows and rows of unsorted bins. Every phone has been initially handled, stickered with a number and listed on a chart and—this is most crucial—set to vibrate. This department is always sorely understaffed, but whoever is in charge learns quickly to set them to vibrate, or else you’ve got bins of phones all going off in various ring tones. This will eventually make you insane. The vibrations are bad enough, all of the phones thrumming against each other. The vibrations are constant, though sometimes they seem to move in waves from one area to another. At certain times of the day—a mad rush at around 10 a.m., then again just after 3 p.m. until closing at 5 p.m.—the volume of calls shoots up and the basement office buzzes like a living thing.

I plug in a new batch of phones and sit down on a stool. I should be sorting through the living bins, listening to people’s voice mail messages. The smart cell phone owners call in and leave messages with new numbers where they can be reached. It’s depressing to listen to frantic message after frantic message, not to mention the calls left by friends, lovers, bosses—some of them angry, some desperately concerned. I’ve heard people getting dumped, being fired, being pleaded with, being cursed out, being coddled —it’s too much humanity boxed up into these voices that always seem tinny and distant.

The big influx of calls hasn’t started yet so I put my forehead down on the table and close my eyes. Am I doomed to become a lonesome perv? I’m already showing signs of a lack of dignity that will eventually manifest themselves as clumps of gel in my hair. Can
that
be fixed? I hear a cell phone jingle, the same exact ring tone as my own. Garrett missed one, what a jackass—and Chapman trusts him with the truck? I don’t move, although I know I’ll have to at some point. If I fall asleep like this, I’ll have a red circle on my forehead, and if anyone pops in—like Chapman, checking up—it’ll be undeniable. I wonder how many phones Garrett has missed. How many times this afternoon will I have to listen to little bits of “Hollaback Girl”?

On the third ring, however, I realize it’s my own phone ringing in my own pocket, a private embarrassment that seems worse because there’s no one I can kind of look at, shrug, and say, with a laugh,
I’m such a dipshit
. I shake my head by rolling it back and forth on the table while reaching into my pocket and answering.

“Dr. Chin’s office.” It’s the receptionist, Lisa. “Is this Godfrey Burkes?”

“Unfortunately.”

There’s a moment’s hesitation. “We have your wallet,” she finally says.

“Oh, thanks.” I lift my head. “Can I pick it up tonight? At around quarter to six?”

“That’s after hours. But someone will be here. You’ll have to knock.”

“Okay,” I say, “thank you.”

I hang up. Dr. Chin’s office has my wallet! I consider calling Madge and telling her my problem is solved—I’m not subconsciously cheap and I’ve found myself. All’s well, right? Happyish now, I listen to the vibrating phones. They remind me of something I can’t place. I close my eyes again and just listen. I remember the lake house my parents used to rent up north each summer; there was this same sound when I was falling asleep at night—this deep humming and chirruping. The curtains over my bed billowed out and then were drawn into the screens when my mother opened the door to say good night. It was like the house was breathing.
Good night, Godfrey-boy. Little Godfrey, my sweet.

“Bullfrogs,” I say aloud. “They sound like bullfrogs at night.”

But this is all unsettling, how seemingly easy it is to shift to such a different time and place. I actually feel smaller, boyish. If I try hard enough, I can smell my mother’s perfume and the cabin’s damp fireplace. Do I really have an identity problem? Do I really know who I am or who I was?

I need to talk to my mother. It’s necessary. She’s going to die on me. I only have a short time left, really, to understand her. Who was that woman in the doorway of the lake house? Who is Gloria Burkes—once so young and naive she was seduced by a Thigpen?

The upside to working in Lost Cell Phones is that, in a sea of cell phones, you shouldn’t have to waste your own minutes. It’s against policy to use a lost cell phone, but who’s going to figure that shit out? I pick up a phone from one of the living bins and dial my parents’ number and wait. After two rings, my father answers.

“Hey, it’s me,” I say.

My father pulls the phone from his ear—I can tell because he sounds trapped in a tunnel—and announces, “Godfrey’s on the line! It’s Godfrey!” like he’s sounding an alarm. I know that my mother is stopping whatever she’s doing. I’m not quite sure what she does exactly, besides bunny rescue, but she’s always busy at it. Within seconds, she’s on the line.

“Godfrey?” she asks, breathless, a note of disbelief in her voice.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“How are you?” she asks.

And, not to be outdone, my father chimes in, “Yes, how are things?”

“Good,” I tell them.

“Is there something you need?” my father asks.

“Can’t I just call to say hello?”

“Of course you can,” my mother says, letting the rest of the sentence go unsaid:
but you never do.

“Are you okay?” my father asks.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I just think we should know each other better. As adults. To have a real relationship.”

“A real relationship? Do you hear that, Gloria? Another person in the family wanting a real relationship! I’ll never understand what you all mean by that.”

“Hush, Frank,” my mother says. “Let the boy talk to us.”

“He
is
talking to us!”

“What do you want to say?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“Well, how do you feel?” my mother asks.

“In general?”

“How does he feel! Men don’t have to feel things all the time, Gloria.” His voice becomes softer. “You don’t have to feel things all the time, Godfrey.”

“I may be having an identity problem,” I say.

“An identity problem,” my mother repeats. “You mean you don’t feel like yourself ?”

“You’re you, Godfrey. Trust me. I’m me. Your mother’s your mother. There’s no way around any of that.”

“I keep losing my wallet.” I wave my hand through the air, like that’s supposed to show them how it just wanders off.

“Well, that’s not an identity problem. You’re just being sloppy, forgetful . . . um, what’s that word?” I’m not sure if my father’s asking me or my mother. “When you’re thinking about something else all the time?”

“Preoccupied?” I say.

“That’s it!” he says.

“Are identity problems the mother’s fault?” my mother asks meekly.

“It’s
always
the mother’s fault,” my father says. “Like Freud says.” Does my father know Freud?

“I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault,” I tell them.

“Godfrey, you don’t have an identity problem,” my mother says with finality.

“I said that it wasn’t your fault,” I tell her.

“Did I tell you that I ran into Mrs. Ellis? Who had those two twin girls that you dated?”

“You just say ‘twins,’ Gloria. ‘Two twins’ is redundant.”

“No,” I say. “You didn’t tell me.”

“The girls are doing great. Klarissa is still single. I told her mother not to worry. Your generation will all pair up eventually.” Sandra and Klarissa are identical twins, but Sandra was the pretty one, if I remember correctly. They had all of the same features, but one of them came out just slightly downturned and the other just slightly upturned—as if being smushed in the womb at different angles.

“That would help with your identity problem, Godfrey,” my mother says.

“What would?”

“Pairing up.”

“It’s easier to define yourself when you’re standing next to the same person all the time. You just let the other person define you. It’s simple,” my father explains.

“It happens naturally,” my mother says wearily, then adds in a chipper tone, “How’s Madge?”

“I have a question,” I say.

“Shoot,” my father says.

“If you could have looked into the future, you know, way back when you were young, would you have?”

“Goodness, no,” my mother says.

“Why would anyone want to do that?” my father says.

“Why not? I mean, you can nowadays. It’s possible.”

“If you started down that road, how could you stop?” my father says.

“If you can know one thing, wouldn’t you want to know everything?” my mother asks.

“I guess so.” There’s a momentary pause. I realize I haven’t asked how they’re doing so I do.

My father says, “Fine, just fine,” as if proving that men don’t have to talk about how they feel all the time.

My mother says, “I’ve just rescued five new bunnies. You should come visit them,” which is a thin metaphor for Gloria Burkes saving five new vulnerable Gloria Burkeses and that I should come visit
her.
But my mother’s going to die. She can’t save herself. None of us can. “We’ll get together soon. I promise,” I say. I can get to my childhood home in Owings Mills in less than thirty minutes. “I have to go. I’m at work.”

“How about I get in touch with Madge and we schedule a double date. Lunch!”

“That’s great,” I say. “I’d like that.”

“We’re glad you called,” my mother says.

“Very glad,” my father says.

“I love you,” I say.

There’s a pause. I’ve caught them off guard.

“You haven’t said that since you were at that awful overnight camp,” my mother says, sounding concerned.

“Don’t embarrass him,” my father says.

“I love you, too,” my mother says.

“Of course,” my father is saying, “okay? Okay, Gloria, hang up now.” I imagine my father has walked into the same room as my mother. He isn’t talking into the phone anymore. He’s talking to her directly. And then my father has taken the phone from her. “Talk to you later, Godfrey. We really are glad you called,” he says, and then the lines go dead, first one, then the other.