Calf Read online

  He walks back to his garage along the sand-colored sidewalk. A car zooms by and stops abruptly. He turns around and the driver looks back at him as the car slowly steamrolls over a speed bump.

  He visits the girl during daylight hours. It turns out she is connected to the whole mess with his brother. She’s even slept with his brother, but she likes him better. She and our hero, they’re alike, she says, because they are both trapped. They have to pretend they love something they really don’t. But, she tells him, he is worse than her. He lets them walk all over him and doesn’t say a word. She is at least stealing from them behind their backs. When he suggests that he is also getting what he wants behind their backs (because by now they have had sex) she gets mad at him and throws him out and all of a sudden gives him a bunch of women’s lib crap. He knows she doesn’t mean it, she’s just afraid of her own emotions. But she throws a whopper at him when she tells him that he’s a coward.

  “You think you’re tough because you took the rap and kept your mouth shut, but you don’t realize what a coward that makes you. You’re not a man. You’re so weak that you’ll let them destroy you just to avoid standing up to them.”

  He doesn’t say anything and she uses it against him.

  “You don’t say anything for yourself. You don’t stand up for yourself. You probably don’t even know who you really are.”

  Then he grabs her and throws her down onto the bed. Her blonde hair splays out against the sheets and he is holding her arms firmly with his hands, the way his brother held on to the steering wheel.

  “I know who I am,” he says.

  “Then prove it. Stop living in silence. Do something. Otherwise it doesn’t matter if they kill you or not. You’re already dead.”

  She was a blonde medusa against the white pillowcase, but instead of turning him to stone, she brought him back to life.

  It ends with a shootout, brother to brother, on the suburban ghost town’s main street. We think our hero is dead, because he’s lying on the newly paved tar and he’s been shot. His brother is standing over him, the sun behind him, tiny blood spots staining his pink Izod golf shirt. Our hero is writhing in pain, but when he looks up and sees his brother, something changes. It’s in his eyes. They’re full of something. A knowledge of who he is. He looks into the face of his brother and knows that he is not that man.

  A shot goes off and we’re not entirely sure what happens, but in the next scene another sliding door opens and our hero is leaving a hospital, his arm in a sling and his old bloodied clothes in a paper bag. He walks out into the parking lot and a convertible pulls up. The girl hops out of the car and runs up to him, throwing her arms around him. He cringes from where she accidentally touches his wound. They joke about it. She drives him home. This time he has been truly set free.

  JEFFREY IDENTIFIED WITH this guy. Everybody wanted something from him and all he wanted was to be left alone. He was torn between wanting nobody to notice him and wanting to feel alive. There was no in-between for this guy. There were no everyday pleasures and disappointments. There were no little things that meant a lot. He was either having rough sex with the girl or staring catatonically at the car radio dial in his brother’s garage. He was either smoking cigarettes in the darkness of a deserted curb or he was edging his way into a building, gun drawn, ready to step out of a doorway and fire on all the motherfuckers. There was nothing day to day. There was no reason to get up in the morning. The only reason the guy got out of bed was his body betraying him and forcing him back into reality.

  Before the shootout with his brother (whom Jeffrey noticed the second time he saw the film was only his half brother) there is a whole cat-and-mouse game with his brother’s partners in crime. Guys who wear expensive suits but are only one step up from street-trash thugs. They’re the lowlifes from high school who roughed people up. You keep your chin down, your eyes on your books, and walk quickly out of the cafeteria to avoid them. Now they’re all grown up and running drugs in and out of the suburbs, getting bake sale moms and church ladies hooked on smack, seducing teenage girls in bad parental situations, girls who become emancipated minors and then fall on hard times. That’s what happened to the girl in the picture. She couldn’t pay the rent on her place and fell in with these types.

  His brother was the perfect front man because he looked so normal. Coach of the fucking soccer team, on the board of the homeowners’ association, neighborhood watch, carpooler. Just a guy with a pretty wife and a couple of kids. Fucker. Got his wife hooked as well. She was the nervous type and he had to feed her a steady stream of downers when the coke started making her paranoid.

  Jeffrey liked how the movie corroborated everything he knew to be true. That some successful polo-shirt brother wasn’t all that hot. That the guy you least expect was actually the good guy, the guy who takes all your bad feelings and evil deeds for you and puts them away so you don’t have to worry about them. You don’t even have to see them. Then everyone gets greedy and demands that even the receptacle of all their bad thoughts go away. That by doing this, it will be as though the bad thoughts never existed. Well, Jeffrey wasn’t going to have it. He wasn’t going to be put out with the trash just because people were sick of looking at him, just because he did all this for them and now they were sick of carrying him along, sick of providing decent human things like a roof over his head and a plate at dinner. That was the problem with society: people thought normal people were normal and quiet people were freaks. In reality it was the other way around. Normal people were lying traitors and quiet people were the world’s polite saviors.

  Nobody got this but Jeffrey.

  There was one scene in the movie that made Jeffrey sit up. It was during the cat-and-mouse sequence when our hero has snuck into the bad guys’ building. The suit gang’s leader and some other thugs were leading the girl down a flight of stairs. It was an industrial-type stairwell painted white with gray steps. They came out of a door and it was Jeffrey looking down at them from the next level up. As they led the girl out, she glanced up and saw him there. She was halfway between panic and arousal. Jeffrey was holding on to his gun with both hands, professional style, pointing down, elbows locked. She had blonde hair. The same as the girl at the Sunrise motel. The same look bouncing carefully down the stairs in high heels. His mother had once gotten dressed up in a long evening gown for a charity dinner at the club and demonstrated how a lady walks down stairs in high heels and a long dress by kicking her leg forward a little bit. This shakes the dress off her shoe and prevents tripping. The girl was doing the same thing, taking her time, pointing her toes forward.

  Jeffrey squinted his eyes. It could be the same girl. Maybe the movie producers had cheated her out of her pay and that’s why she was living at the motel, or maybe she was just visiting. Maybe she had moved on up and was visiting a friend who was still struggling. That’s the kind of girl she was. She didn’t abandon everyone she knew before she was famous and pretend like she never knew them.

  Jeffrey usually didn’t stay for the credits after a movie, he thought they ruined the whole experience and they reminded him that it was just a movie, that it wasn’t real. He didn’t like seeing the names of all the behind-the-scenes union guys. He didn’t want to believe there was a behind the scenes. But he stayed this time to see the girl’s real name.

  Amber Carrol.

  It sounded like a fake Hollywood name, probably her name was Carol Ambers and they switched it around. Carol was an old-fashioned name, a granny with gray hair set in curlers, glasses on a chain around her neck, wearing a brightly patterned dress in an attempt to be funky. Amber Carrol was a nice girl who would sleep with you. Very California. Suntanned.

  Jeffrey saw the movie daily, sometimes twice in a row. Then he worried that he was getting spoiled and switched to every other day. That way he really wanted it. It was his reward for having lived through a day of hell in the outside world. His favorite way to see it was to go to the four o’clock show, get the bargain mat
inee price, settle in, and pop a Valium before the lights went down. The pill gave him a little extra push into the movie world, and the screen that stood between him and the celluloid reality evaporated. When he came out of the theater, it was dark outside, the day had passed, and he felt closer to the next time he would be reunited with Miss Carrol.

  Jeffrey wandered home through the early evening setting sun. He had taken to walking on the edge of people’s front lawns as he made his way from the bus stop, past the duck pond, to the innermost tentacle of the circle. This evening, after the bus deposited him on a random, side-of-the-road stretch of green a few yards from a gas station (you wouldn’t quite call it a corner), he decided to stop at the 7-Eleven for a Slurpee, cola flavored, his favorite because it didn’t leave his mouth all cherry red. His mother had him on a perpetual diet. On his way out of the store, he passed by the gumball machines and decided to try his luck. He dropped a coin into the machine and a plastic bubble tumbled down the chute and into his hand. Jeffrey held the tiny bell jar to his eye and sucked the flavored ice through his straw. Inside the bubble was a tiny, pink, bird-like cartoon creature with a white wind-up spoke sticking out of her side.

  Jeffrey exited the store and sat down on the bench outside. He twisted the bubble open and took out the bird. She had a goofy expression, eyes wide, beak open in a welcoming grin. She had been stopped in the middle of a sentence. Jeffrey wound her up and set her down carefully on the wooden slat. The bird wobbled and walked a little ways in an irregular line and then tipped over the side of the bench. She fell to the ground landing on her side, gears still turning. When the bird ran out of juice, Jeffrey felt it was safe to pick her up.

  The bird still hadn’t changed her expression. She still hadn’t gotten the words out.

  In the movie, our hero catches his little nephews playing in his room. The kids are scared to death, shaking in their Keds. Our hero doesn’t say anything because he’s not really mad, but the kids mumble a hasty “sorry” and scramble the hell out of there. They leave so quickly that a couple of their toys are left behind. One of them is a stuffed monkey—the kind you wind up and it smashes cymbals together and bobs its head up and down. The monkey permanently has his mouth open with a red felt tongue hanging out. You wind it up and he laughs at you.

  Jeffrey thought this little pink bird was a sign. It was trying to tell him something. Even a pink wind-up bird in a plastic gumball machine bubble can have an effect on the world. What the fuck was Jeffrey doing?

  Jeffrey slurped the last of his Slurpee and used the spoon end of the straw to get the bits he missed. The last bits were always the worst. The flavor had been sucked out of them and they were little more than plain, watery ice. That’s how they get you, Jeffrey thought, they take away the last bit to keep you wanting more.

  Jeffrey wanted to come home and find Amber walking out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her middle. Then he would grab her by the shoulders and throw her down on the bed. Thwack! Her wet hair slaps against the clean white sheets. Thwack! Jeffrey loved that moment. She looks a little bit scared, a little bit turned on.

  The front door had barely clicked shut behind Jeffery when his father’s voice came down from on high.

  “Jeffrey?”

  Jeffrey paused with one foot on the first step leading downstairs. He kept his eyes focused on his front shoe. He didn’t want to be suckered into looking up.

  “Yes?”

  “Your mother and I would like to speak with you before dinner.”

  Jeffrey scanned his mind to anticipate the topic.

  “Jeffrey?”

  “Just let me put my coat down.”

  He slipped into the safety of his room and perched the bird on the corner of his desk so it would face him when he returned. He hung up his jacket and popped another Valium. Make this easy, easy, easy.

  Upstairs, his parents were seated across from each other at the dinner table. There was no food waiting and the table wasn’t set. His parents were both sitting in the same position, hands clasped, resting on the table. They probably had a little mumbled prayer together right before this.

  Jeffrey took his usual seat. He was tempted to assume the same position as his parents, but he was afraid he might crack up. He could maintain a better gauge of the situation with his hands in his lap.

  “Do you know what day it is?” his father asked.

  “Thursday.”

  “Don’t be smart.”

  “Sorry.”

  His father did one of his eye-lock shots at Jeffrey. His father was good at this, locking his eyes on Jeffrey and forcing him to whimper and cave. His father even managed to stand up from the table still looking at him. Then he purposefully looked away and walked into the kitchen. He came back holding the wall calendar and tossed it on the table.

  The magic marker circle stared up at Jeffrey.

  “D day,” his father said.

  Jeffrey was quiet. Think fast, but not too fast.

  “What have you got to tell me?”

  Stay quiet. Appear ashamed.

  “Well?”

  “Jeffrey,” his mother said, trying to be encouraging. Either that or she was trying to say, “Break it to us gently. Let us help you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you found a job?”

  “No, but—”

  “But?”

  “I’ve been looking, but it’s a hard time right now. There aren’t any jobs.”

  “Jeffrey you’re an able-bodied young man. You’ve got a high school diploma, almost two years of college, and you’re going to tell me there isn’t a job for you anywhere?”

  “It’s not a good time right now. That’s what everyone’s been telling me.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Yes. Everyone.”

  “Have you thought about some of the fast-food places? Burger Chef is always looking for people.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, Dad . . . it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be the right place for me. They only take kids and dropouts.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position right now to have a sense of pride. And that’s what you are, Jeffrey. You’re a dropout.”

  His mother opened her mouth to say something in protest.

  “That’s what he is,” his father said, cutting her off. “Let’s be honest about the whole situation. We had a deal here for you to find a job and an apartment by the end of business today. Your mother’s got dinner waiting and I’m waiting to hear an answer from you, Jeffrey.”

  Jeffrey paused. He searched for a plan he had not made.

  “I was thinking about . . . going back to California. . . . Giving it another try.”

  His father drew a long breath in through his nose and wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. Jeffrey could see him reciting some Jesus mantra in his head. He reclasped his hands and reset his gaze.

  “Why?” He said it like a bullet, a challenge.

  “I learned a lot last time about what not to do. I think I could do it right this time. I’ve been working on a new demo tape and I think it’s really good. And I have a story treatment for a movie I’d like to sell. Based on my novel.”

  “Jeffrey, your mother and I know you’re very . . . artistic. But that’s not the point right now. Right now, we need you to focus on the practical so you can stand on your own two feet.”

  “I want to do it with my music and my writing.”

  “What you need to do is get a job and work on those things in your spare time. That way you have a base income and if you sell some songs, you’ll have extra money. You can do that until the songs start paying for themselves.”

  “That’s not how it works. You have to do it all the time or you’ll never get any good.”

  “What happened to going back to school?” his mother finally managed to get in. She also managed to relieve Jeffrey of
his father’s eyes for a few seconds before being shot back with “Well?”

  “I was thinking that would be my backup plan.”

  This warranted another wipe of the brow.

  “Jeffrey, I don’t know what cockamamie way your brain works. We had a deal. A job and an apartment by this date and once again you’ve let us down. As far as I’m concerned you’re scheduled to move out tomorrow. I’m happy to extend it through Monday breakfast so you can make arrangements, but that’s it. I suggest you get a good night’s sleep and hit the pavement early tomorrow morning. You’ve got three days. After that, I don’t care if you go to California or not. Dismissed!”

  With that, his father walked down the hall, into his bedroom, and shut the door. Hopefully, the Lord was available for emergency walk-ins.

  His mother smiled meekly and reached across the table to pat Jeffrey’s hand.

  Plans to make. Plans indeed.

  After a dinner with no conversation, Jeffrey retreated to his room. He lay on his bed with his shoes hanging off the end and the bird balanced on his chest. He wound her up and tried to make her waddle across his chest. She could only go a few steps before getting tangled up in his shirt, losing her balance, and falling over, feet still going.

  Little thing, Jeffrey thought, she’s just like me.

  IT WAS THE Sunday paper that saved him. The Entertainment section had a feature article about Amber Carrol and her new movie. She was shooting a political thriller in Washington, DC, in which she plays a secretary working for a senator. The senator is then murdered over a mysterious file that falls into her lap. She joked with the interviewer about how she had to take a typing class for the role. She still wasn’t very good, and steno was a killer! But, she joked, at least now I’ll have something to fall back on, you know, in case this whole actress thing doesn’t work out. There was one scene they just finished shooting where she runs out of the Jefferson Memorial and dives into the Potomac River to get away from the bad guys. I can’t tell you how many times we had to shoot that, she said. And that was really me diving into the water, not a double! Even more exciting (and a lot dryer!) we all got to meet President Reagan, which was such an honor. I feel a real kinship with him because we’re both actors and we both know what it means to have to make it on your own.