This Is My Life Page 6

  Dear Hunter,

  I know you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I feel as though somehow we know each other anyway. Maybe we met during a trip somewhere, if you know what I mean. I am sixteen and live in New York City and have read all your books. Congratulations on being such an amazing writer. I’ve been sitting here on the floor of my bedroom and doing a drug called Bali, which I think you would like, so I am enclosing one capsule for your own personal use. There’s more where that came from, believe me. Doing this drug reminds me a lot of some of the best scenes in Fear and Loathing. You’ll know what I mean when you take it yourself. Maybe I’m being presumptuous, and you don’t trip anymore, it being the Seventies and all, but I’m just assuming that you do. I know that things were very different back in the Sixties, and that you tripped practically every day. I was too young for any of that, and I really regret it. I would appreciate any anecdotes you might care to tell me, any stories about life back then, etc. Be well, Hunter, and keep up the good work. Hope to hear from you.

  Your fan,

  Jordan Strang

  “How’s that?” Jordan asked when he was finished.

  “What are you going to do?” Erica asked. “Tape a capsule to the letter? It’ll get crushed in the mail, or you might get arrested. You’d better not put a return address on it.”

  Jordan looked worried. “You’re probably right,” he said. “But then how could he write back? Suppose he thought this was a great letter? Suppose he was coming to New York and wanted to look me up, and I took this big precaution and didn’t sign my name and address? I’d die.” Jordan stood up and began to pace again.

  “Oh, relax,” Erica said. “Just take it easy.”

  “I want to hear some very loud music,” he said. “That’s what I want.”

  No, Erica thought, please make it acoustic. Make it soft and melancholy and sung by Reva and Jamie: “Oh bonny maiden, come walk a ways with me/We’ll go down to the valley, where the wild fern grows free/Oh no, kind sir, I cannot go with thee/For there I’ll find my brother, a’hanging from a tree/ . . .” Erica hummed to herself wistfully as Jordan busied himself at the stereo.

  All of a sudden the room was pierced by shrieking music. The Phantom Limbs were singing their only hit, “Touch the Moon.” Jordan played the song four times in a row, the bass turned way up high, and then decided that he had had enough.

  “Let’s go outside,” he said. “I need some air.”

  They walked into the hall, with the schnauzer yipping at their heels, and rode downstairs in the elevator. Tony, the elevator man, eyed them suspiciously the whole way. Finally Jordan looked at Tony and said, “I see you are staring at my feet.”

  “What?” said Tony. “You’re on drugs.”

  Jordan started to laugh, and Erica looked away in embarrassment.

  “Did you get the reference?” Jordan asked her as they left the building. “Seymour Glass.”

  “Yes,” said Erica. “I got it.” The entire tenth grade was reading Salinger this month.

  She ran alongside him on the street, struggling to keep up. They stopped at a “Don’t Walk” sign, and in that moment Erica looked closely at Jordan, watched him do a little speed-induced soft-shoe next to her, and she wondered how she could bear to be with him much longer. He never looked at her, really, except when she had her blouse off, and even then he often bore the expression of an eager boy-scientist. She could picture the two Strang brothers, Jordan and Neil, as elementary-school kids doing experiments with the science kit they had been given for Chanukah. Two boys keeping busy with test tubes and iron filings, because there is nothing else in the world for them to do, nothing that will give them pleasure. Such boys don’t expect pleasure, anyway, and this is why their bodies take on a permanent, retreative slouch. Jordan would never truly be interested in Erica; it would never occur to him to be. But be fair, she told herself; you aren’t interested in him, either. Still, she felt relief that he existed, because she had to do something with all that need. Jordan was like a bucket you placed under a leaky roof.

  Erica grabbed his hand as they walked, and he seemed so shocked that he pulled back as if he had touched something hot. They had never held hands before, never touched each other outside the confines of his room, or in any light other than black light. Nothing was purple now, or covered in space-lint. Erica and Jordan observed each other and sighed at the same time, acknowledging what they saw and somehow accepting it.

  They hailed a taxi then and rode all the way down to the East Village. During the ride, Erica was finally able to sit back and close her eyes. Small paisley objects floated across a dark field, then vanished. It was an unobtrusive hallucination—not really a hallucination at all, she thought; more like a memory. Then she remembered what it was: the pattern on a jumper she had worn almost every day in fifth grade. She felt embarrassed that the only visions she had were fabric patterns; it seemed such a parody of what a girl would hallucinate while doing drugs. Jordan, on the other hand, was probably seeing pictograms drawn by ancient Yaqui tribesmen.

  When they got out of the cab on St. Marks Place, two men were playing guitars and singing a medley of Bob Dylan songs.

  “Let’s listen,” Jordan said, and they stopped for a few minutes on the sidewalk. Jordan took out a dollar and ostentatiously fluttered it down into the open guitar case. When the songs were over, and Jordan and Erica were walking farther east, he shook his head and said, “I wish I had been conscious of that music the first time around. I missed it all; it just kills me. My parents were sort of leftist back then; they liked Bobby Kennedy, and they had this group of endocrinologists that used to get together every month and have political meetings. But I was just a little kid; I didn’t pay attention. I played Candyland in my room all day, and I didn’t have a thought in my head.” He paused, squinting. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with us,” he said. “We were born too late. Kind of like those men who think they were supposed to have been women. Maybe I was supposed to have been born a few years earlier, but something went wrong. Maybe my parents were supposed to have fucked one night a few years before, but my mother said, ‘Not tonight, Jack, I have to look at a few more thyroid levels,’ and that was that.”

  They walked for an hour, making a big circle around the East Village. Since it was so cold, most of the streets were empty except for a few stray people dozing on stoops, and a gathering of Hell’s Angels and their girlfriends building a bonfire in a garbage can on East Fourth Street. On Second Avenue two old women wheeled luggage carts overspilling with laundry.

  “That’s what’s on the street now,” Jordan said. “All the hippie freaks went to business school and got married, or joined EST. There’s no community at all. Just bag ladies and a few girls from New Jersey. Six years ago, this street was hopping. Music playing, dope in the air. And I was too young for any of it. Now look at it—it’s like death.”

  Erica didn’t know how to answer him, but it didn’t matter; he didn’t really want a response from her. He just wanted her to walk with him, to keep up with him as best she could. She was relieved when he finally wanted to sit down. They went into the Kiev on Second Avenue and sat at a table in the back, drinking coffee, which they both loaded up with sugar. Under the unnatural light she noticed how sickly Jordan looked, and it shocked her. I touch him, she thought. I kiss him and do other things. The thought repelled her for just a moment, then was gone, like one of her little paisley hallucinations. All thoughts, all visions, got absorbed right back into the atmosphere. She could take note that Jordan looked sickly now, but when she lay in his bed on Monday after school, under his Hobbit poster, she would forget that she had ever thought this. Somehow she would welcome his arms and legs, taking pleasure in the way they swung open and closed on their hinges. In his bed everything smelled sweet: a combination of Erica’s apricot shampoo and the Nilla Wafers on their breath. It made sense that people
wanted to spend their whole lives in bed, because if they did they would never have to face up to the truth: My wife is a shrew, a man might think over breakfast. My husband is a bonehead, the wife might think. In bed, these perceptions were of no consequence.

  This was the big payoff of adulthood, the thing that no one told you. Just as your cynicism started to rise up, because of novels you were reading in your tenth-grade English elective, “Man’s Search for Identity,” it was quickly extinguished by the sweet goofiness that sex provided. You saw the light, and then bam, no more light. Just a calm, spreading glow.

  “I’m completely down now,” Jordan said. “It’s totally worn off.”

  “Me too,” said Erica, although for her the drug had never really grabbed hold. This was her role in life: to take dictation, to sit and watch as other people had visions, to tend and comfort. Maybe she ought to get a job as a volunteer at Odyssey House. She could talk teenage boys down from bad trips—all those boys, like Jordan, who had missed drugs the first time around. She could just be there, her large, welcoming self, telling them it was okay, everything was okay, and exactly how much did they take? But her desire to help wasn’t innate, the way it seemed to be in some people. Erica could see it in the eyes of the Salvation Army bell-ringers at Christmas. Standing in front of Macy’s, bundled up like refugees in the cold, clanging heavy bells until their elbows were stiff from the repetition of movement, those people actually looked happy. They were in their element, their eyes dreamy as they stood over a kettle of money. They didn’t mind the cold, or the fact that everyone around them was laden with wrapped packages and running off to homes and families. That would come later on, after a good day of work. They would go to their own homes, take off their coats, put up their feet, and think: I have done something worthwhile with my day. I am a decent and noble human being. And for them, it was enough.

  It should be enough for me, too, Erica thought. I should not want all the things I do. It made her ashamed, how much she required, how much relief she took in the pleasures of her solitary life: sitting alone in her room and breaking the seal on a jar of Planters cashews, lying with her eyes closed in the heat of a bath, listening to the opening chords of almost any Reva and Jamie song. She gave nothing out; she was like a balloon, endlessly filling.

  “I’ve got to go home,” Erica said. “My sister.”

  “Me too,” said Jordan. “My parents.” He paused. “They want to meet you,” he said. “But I told them no.”

  “Oh,” said Erica. She could imagine Jordan keeping her from his parents, not wanting them to see her.

  “You understand, right?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, and in fact she did understand; it didn’t even bother her.

  No more was said about it. They stood shivering in the street again, waiting for a cab, already anticipating their separate evenings at home. For him, there would be a chorus of parental voices as his key turned in the lock. The Drs. Strang would be sitting in the kitchen and chuckling over the latest copy of Endocrinology Today. Jordan would go in and say the requisite hellos, then he would palm a Milk Bone for the schnauzer, and make a quick exit into his bedroom for the night. Sensitive, his parents would think, shrugging helplessly at each other. Troubled and bright. This was acceptable in boys, but in girls it implied that something was really wrong.

  “I wish you had more friends,” Dottie often said. “I wish you had someone special in your life. I don’t want you to be lonely; you have so much to offer.” There was always a kind of agony in her face when she spoke like this, and it was difficult to watch.

  Erica had thought about telling Dottie about Jordan, but finally vetoed the idea. She didn’t know what she would say when her mother asked specifics. Jordan wasn’t someone she particularly liked, so how could she explain herself? It was better kept as an awful secret, something that existed only between Jordan and Erica, and which they both knew enough to keep under wraps.

  Now the cab pulled up in front of Jordan’s building. A doorman came and opened the door for him, and Jordan hopped out, not saying a word. They would see each other on Monday, and not before; this was understood.

  Back in her own apartment, Erica walked down the hall and found an envelope, addressed to her, lying on the table outside the den. It was a thick letter with a return address in Indiana. She stood, woozy in the light, and opened it. “CONGRATULATIONS MISS ERICA ENGELS!” it read. “YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR INCLUSION IN THE HIGHLY PRESTIGIOUS ‘WHO’S WHO OF AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’!” This was absurd; she was standing in the hallway with dilated pupils, winded, aimless, and someone wanted to put her name in a leather-bound book. Erica balled the letter up and stood with it in her fist.

  From inside the den she suddenly became aware of someone talking. It was Joey diSalvo, practicing impressions. “My fellow Americans . . .” she heard him say. “Do you know who that is?” he was asking Opal. “No? That’s our president. Did I do my Cagney for you? Let me run that by you . . .” And Opal was no doubt just sitting there, patiently listening.

  “You dirty rats,” Erica heard, then the voice grew harder, more insistent. “You dirty rats,” it wheezed.

  Dozens of voices were known to come from that room, entire bewildering monologues about politics and sex and pushy women, and impressions of people about whom Opal and Erica knew absolutely nothing. All the voices had begun to meld together into one. Joey diSalvo was just another babysitter, just another comedian trying desperately to become famous.

  “I know you’re too old to need supervision,” Dottie had explained to Erica, “but Opal isn’t, and I didn’t think you wanted the burden of being a full-time babysitter for her. So please bear with me, Erica.”

  Each of the sitters had his or her own particular style. Joey diSalvo cooked elaborate pasta dishes and did impressions and preened before the bathroom mirror; Mia Jablon smoked cigarettes and played board games; Danny Bloom complained about his dormant love life, offering details that were intensely personal; Lyman Huddle ignored Erica and Opal completely, and spent the evening listening to jazz with headphones on. He would sit in the butterfly chair in the living room and close his eyes and roll his head in slow circles. Hours would go by. Occasionally, as if prompted by some silent alarm, Lyman would surface, unclamping the headphones and blinking in the light. “You girls need anything?” he would ask softly, and when they said no, he would return to his cave of music.

  Tonight Joey diSalvo talked on and on; who knew how long he would make Opal sit there? Erica continued down the hall and went into her bedroom. In darkness, the room was cool and blank but still familiar. Erica sat on her bed for a moment, letting her eyes adjust. She thought of her mother in a hotel room across the country, coming in alone after a late performance. Or perhaps Dottie wasn’t alone; maybe there was a man with her. It sometimes seemed to Erica that her mother must have a secret life that involved men. Once in a while Erica could hear a man’s voice in the background when Dottie called from California. “Oh, that’s just a friend of mine,” Dottie would explain. Erica wondered if her mother sometimes lay in a broad bed with one of these men and made love all night, Dottie’s stage makeup sliding off onto the man’s face and chest like war paint.

  But there was probably nothing warlike about Dottie’s love life. All the fire, all the bristle and scratch, had most likely left with the marriage. “I am leaving your father so I can have some peace,” Dottie had said. “So we can all have a new life.” But still Erica couldn’t forget, still she tried to imagine what had gone on between her mother and father all those years they had stayed together.

  There was no window into the intimacy of parents. And even if there was, would you really want to look? When Erica tried to imagine her parents making love, all she could summon up were two darkly angry faces, mouths open in criticism, yet the bodies were soldered together, as though her parents were two earthworms cut i
n half, and the halves had their separate needs and plans. The heads were furious, but the bodies, astoundingly, were liking it.

  Five

  All vacation they told everyone their names were Betty and Veronica. Nobody thought there was anything fishy about this. “Good morning, Betty. Good morning, Veronica,” the stewards at the hotel would say when Opal and Erica came down to breakfast. “How are you girls doing today?”

  Fine, fine, they would answer, and Opal could barely contain herself. She thought she would explode with laughter, but Erica remained cool. They sat in the ornate dining room, drinking thimbles of tomato juice, while all around them the air churned with sluggish conversation. It was still very early, and most of the guests at the hotel stayed up very late at night gambling and didn’t come out of their rooms until well into the day. There were plenty of other children in the dining room, Opal noticed—children who had been sent downstairs by mothers who lay in bed until noon with eye masks on. Opal’s own mother was at this very moment slumbering in the round bed of the Queen Victoria Suite, where special guests of the hotel stayed.

  It was winter break from school, and Dottie had decided to take them with her to the Royale in Las Vegas, where she was opening for Tony Bennett. “You girls need some sun,” she had said the last time she returned from the West Coast. “You’re as white as milk.”

  “Will we get to go swimming?” Opal asked.

  “Every day,” said her mother. “They have an indoor and an outdoor pool. Rain or shine.”

  This practically sent Opal into convulsions; she ran in circles around the apartment, moving her arms as though she were doing the Crawl. Erica observed her coolly.