The Laws of Average (3 page)

See, it could have started like this: a memory triggered inside a hope chest stored in the garage, separate from the house and the pebbled concrete of its driveway, the one spilling over with stuff and never big enough and the family fleet parked thereupon or perpendicular to the concrete curbs just beyond. The chest an army surplus grenade crate, shallowed out and kept shut with thick metal arms, banal keylocks on the handles about as secure as airport luggage. This is where she'd deposited trinkets from her grade school days: doll clothing, plastic snap barrettes molded into benign animal shapes, ballet slips and toe shoes. From her teen years: small clumps of cartoony characters overstuffed with cotton filler and sewn shut, smears of ink on the backs of wallet photos from her old boyfriends and randomly curated hand-scratched notes from various whomevers. From her first wedding: dust. From her second wedding: a wristlet corsage of plastic callalillies set against bulbs and sprigs of green somethings. All of the above so reactionary and lacking a master plan and really just forgotten.

She was meeting him for lunch in an hour, just a couple blocks away from her asphalt and her med closet and her employees and her employees' paperwork. It was one of their jobs to deliver the labwork blood sealed up tight in plastic vials, in turn sealed up tight in a vinyl bag clamped shut with a yellow and black biohazard sticker that upon closer look resembled the snub nose point of view of the .38 she carried in her purse, its chambers always open and breathing back at her at the practice range where she was a crack shot. She really did pay someone else to do this delivery job, someone who didn't drive a Denali, someone who didn't own asphalt. Someone who wasn't her.

She spun through the restaurant parking lot, the bag propped up and chilling in the huge temperature-controlled seat next to her. She had to see. Parked at a 90 degree angle at the very back of the lot, nose pointed into a fence. The LCD lit up and she watched intently for any movement behind her.

Once, she'd hoped, she'd be a superspy and double-agent herself. But the only movement in her secret camera was a delivery man unloading giant metal barrels onto a handtruck and disappearing behind the restaurant's small service door. The door the employees had to enter after walking from all the way across the parking lot—the
other side
—the one “reserved” for them because they were forbidden to park closer to where they spent a healthy chunk of their lives every day before returning home to rest up just enough to return the subsequent day and park there all over again.

One of three cellphones twinged in her purse, stirred by its jangly-twangy ringtone. Because she knew the first notes so well, she didn't even bother to reach for it. Toby Keith. She'd been married to him for 14 years so there wasn't anything she needed to discuss with him. Not during daytime. Not right then for sure. Toby knew better and Toby had his own asphalt to watch over and Toby knew better and Toby had his own pretty power-stroked vehicle to rev and Toby knew better and Toby had his own employees to tell where to park and Toby knew better and Toby knew better.

Once, she'd hoped, she'd be a famous singer and record companies would have a fierce bidding war for her. But then all the record companies got greedy. And then there weren't any records anymore. And then there weren't any singers anymore. And this meant there wasn't any point anymore. In that fateful year when
American Idol
jumped the shark, she watched with the volume turned all the way down, studying the models' choreography and how they gesticulated to the carefully-filtered crowd around them, their flat renditions of other models' songs and other choreography, toggling the mute button only when Paula Abdul effervesced with her myopic pandering-praise; Paula Abdul, drunk or high or both; Paula Abdul, ogling the beautiful boys out loud and crushing on the rocker chicks in secret; Paula Abdul, backstage both before and after the show, with hugs that always lasted just long enough to get uncomfortable.

Once, she'd hoped, she'd be a dancer, and her instructors taught her okay enough, but they were far more interested in her parents' monthly tuition payments than being honest in the way that mattered. The day she realized that was quite possibly the worst day of her entire life.

Yet. If only.

The first time Toby painted her belly, it was already too late. They had been married for at least a decade and she'd birthed three of their children. To say it didn't mean anything would be a lie; to say it didn't matter was much closer to the mark. For weeks Toby wore the T-shirt he'd used to clean her up with, day after day, wore it like a crown of achievement, faint lines of his stain bleeding through the purple cotton. She had washed and rewashed and rewashed the filthy thing and thrown it away at least four times, but Toby retrieved it from the garbage each and every time she tried to dispose of it. Once, she'd hoped, she'd be an actress. But not this kind. She just couldn't pretend hard enough when her sister-in-law pointed at Toby's chest and drew a big circle around the stain with her index finger and then crossed an X with her fingernail right through it, slashslash, yelled “SEX MARKS THE SPOT!!!” so everyone at the family reunion could hear her, just like always. Toby grinned widely before hoisting his PBR into the sky with the other hand, other fist balled and already above him, arms stretched all the way up now so the hem of the shirt bisected his big navel, exclaiming at precisely the same volume of his sister “AND I HAVEN'T WASHED HER SINCE!!!”, his pronoun usage deliberately slack so as to carry the full weight of what Toby had imagined to be
the
double-entendre of the entire weekend. And, of course, he wasn't wrong.

In her LCD screen she watched two primly-dressed people slip out the employees' entrance and pop the doors on the matched pair of convertibles parked at slant angles to both each other and the door, a man and a woman in argyle sweatervests and pastel golf shorts, each disappearing inside their vehicles to simultaneously ignite their fuel-injected engines, each making the same tight left turn around and then away from the restaurant, then making the same right turn onto the busy boulevard. When they rode off her LCD for good, she turned and looked out the big glass window all the way at the back. They weren't there. She wondered if they were ever really there at all. Trust but verify, her mother always told her. Don't believe it just because you see it. Her mother practiced these things for real, and even 38 years later, at no point did her mother not know where she was at any given time, what she was doing, who she was with. It had always been this way and always would be; it was the reason she and Toby moved in right next door and filled that corner of the block with grandchildren, SUVs, fifthwheel trailers, ATVs, jetskis, snowmobiles, seasonal swimming pools and patio furniture. See you later: Trust but verify. I'll be over soon: Trust but verify. I need to pick up
x
at y: Trust but verify. I can't, I have yardwork to do: Trust but verify. He is leaving me: Trust but verify. I am leaving him: Trust but verify.

Her purse tipped over when a different phone rang inside, spilling her lipstick and emery board out on the floorboard amongst its other whatnottery. Her second official act of legit responsibility was to purchase this particular phone, and that's what necessitated her answering it. She cradled the handset in the crook of her shoulder, craning her head into the face of it, simultaneously reaching between her sandals to retrieve the bowels of her purse. The lab. It needed its blood if she was going to deliver on her promise of same-day results, the one she'd personally made to the teenager with the weeping eyes, the one where she said she understood, the one where she made an exception to the whole parental consent thing. Trust but verify. Once, she'd hoped, she'd be an OB-GYN, or at the very least a birthing nurse. She would, she thought, see the other side of this just for once.

Yet. If only.

She put the phone back in her purse, straightened the biohazard bag on the seat next to her, sighed, snapped the big triangles on her wrist one-two-three times, sighed again, and brought the Denali back to life with the slow flick of her wrist. She selected R and the metal strands of her bracelet clinked against the steering column. The LCD faithfully attempted to powercycle and refresh itself but she quickly flicked it off. She pushed her head around and away, stared back through the big glass window again, and slowly crept back into what she already knew to be true.

The third phone, the one FedExed to her office from out of state, out of time zone, outer space, she left it on the floor ringing. When she didn't pick up, its sender from far away understood and didn't attempt a second call, let alone a third. Or thirtieth.

Once, she'd hoped, she'd have had the nerve. And it could have started just like this.

I just found out you and your publisher worked out a deal with readers who are pissed about your novel
A Million Little Pieces
not being a novel. Apparently you will be giving refunds for the full cover price to anyone who claims he is the victim of consumer fraud by purchasing your book.

God. I just totally fucking hate you.

But before I get into that, let's talk about Oprah Winfrey. What's she like in person? And by “in person,” I mean in front of a daily national audience of 40 million? Because I saw you on her show apologizing for your novel not being called a novel but really being a novel anyway, and I couldn't help feeling sorry for the two of you. I was especially sorry for the way both of you had to sit there and explain this like you were Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky copping to playing peek-a-boo with the cigar, frowning and sighing and shifting in your chairs and wringing your hands. It's not too often we get to see Oprah apologize and actually mean it. And I'm wondering if that was your sense of the situation. I mean, she really
looked
sorry anyway, when she rumpled up her face and stared into the camera with those big, liquid eyes. Don't you think?

Now let me explain where I was when I heard about this consumer fraud settlement thing of yours. My wife and I were watching
Supernanny
on the Tivo, and there was this stay-at-home mom whose major problem was she smiled too much. According to her, people who smile all the time are usually trying to hide how miserable they are. During a break, a teaser commercial came on for a local morning talk show, and one of the topics was going to be how you and your publisher pulled this shit about giving people their money back. I googled it and sure enough it was true.

It's important to know where I was when I caught wind of this. Tivo is supposed to enable me to block out or fast-forward through teasers for TV morning shows, but it's not a perfect system. Sometimes the programs don't start recording at the exact time they begin. A lot of times, they stop recording before they're supposed to. When fast-forwarding, it's easy to overshoot the section breaks of the program I'm watching, and I end up seeing things I don't want to see. And when I see things I don't want to see, I get incredibly upset. I work way too hard to waste my money and time on things like Tivo that don't do what I want them to do. That isn't the America I grew up in, sir, and I'll be damned if it's the America I pass on to my children.

Because in the America I grew up in, authors don't apologize for writing their books. That's the primary reason for writing a book in the first place. Or at least it used to be. If people who write books now have to be held accountable for what they write, well, that just ain't American.

Because in the America I grew up in, if you bought a book and felt ripped off, well, tough shit.

In the America I grew up in, writers didn't write memoirs. Only the greatest Americans got to write memoirs, and they sure as hell weren't faggy-ass writers. Chuck Yeager. Lee Iacocca. Sam Walton. I'm looking at your bio right now on Wikipedia and I don't see anything comparable. I do see that you spent five hours in jail and went through drug rehab. I googled it.

I really didn't write this to pile on. I wrote this to make a larger point, and that point is this: books don't have warranties. You and your publisher are setting a dangerous precedent by asking readers to tear out page 163 from their copies of
A Million Little Pieces
and mail it back to you along with a sworn affidavit. More than that, though, you're underscoring John Grisham's argument about
Natural Born Killers
, the one where he argues for suing producers, directors and studio executives for the films they make.

He argues this, of course, having made a lot of bank from—yes—film adaptations of his books.

So if you do nothing else, you should remove yourself from the likes and company of John Grisham. You and I probably don't agree on much, but the one thing I'd like to think we
could
agree on is how John Grisham is a complete twat. Let's at least try to agree on that.

I mean, right?

Leave cheerios on the counter for days and days, swimming in their ceramic bowl of yellowing milk-bath and getting puffier and puffier. No one will dare clean them, especially if it's the last thing you touched before you expired, the spoon still sticky from your lipstick.

Ex is already aware of all side and back entrances into every space you share with Sig.Other. If the space used to be shared by Them and you are new to the floorplan, it is a big waste of your time to familiarize and attach yourself to the regular patterns regular people would take to move in/ out/through that space. It is an even bigger waste of time to make issue of these patterns; and yet, even even bigger to make issue of those people who are merely repeating these patterns. Try to remember that these were established well before you, that your speaking to them only reinforces this fact, and that doing something about any of it is completely beyond your agency. Unless you are an architect, home-builder or interior designer
and
you yourself designed the ingress/egress of the space—and of course the chances of this are obscenely remote—you simply have no other play than to keep your steps slow and stay out of the way.