WE:6 I PROMISE

Another writing installment. I need all the validation I can get you know...Reasons to keep on lying and making up things about things.

While looking through his scrapbooks, Lou found the following note: “We will not have help by mom or dad with the hamster.” He stared hard at Alissa’s careful handwriting, replaying the series of events that came from the inevitable consequence that Alissa and Lou, really were in charge of Milo. At the time, death, didn’t seem an inevitable consequence, despite the reality of Justin’s pet snake and the final dash by Milo under the couch to meet his doom, who, as it turns out, didn’t have so much a fear of them, but from Missy the miniature schnauzer, whose feet on the kitchen tiles made that awful clicking sound. And had forever since been associated as a harbinger of death.

Justin of course signed a slip saying he was responsible for his snake, and as it was Harlow’s 3rd escape, in as many months, he was reluctant for his negligence to come to the surface. And Harlow having been on his own for approximately 8days had made it downstairs, barely escaped Missy and was now considering his escape strategy when circumstance blessed him with a meal. He couldn’t resist, could he?

Lou sighed and closed the detritus of his childhood. It was with heavy hearts that he and Justin had fished under the couch and found Harlow, Alissa with her trembling lip telling them what she was sure were the final moments based on a recently watched Discovery Channel show. Bone crushing. And pointing her then small finger at a tiny clump of fur, as evidence. They’d stopped looking after that. Justin had picked up a sluggish Harlow solemnly and vowed to be more responsible in the future. He climbed the stairs slowly with a final look back at the both of them, heads bowed. And both Alissa and Lou sat on the porch wondering what they were going to say to their parents about Milo’s demise. They promised not to implicate Justin in the matter who already got too much attention for that D in Math and his profusion of black shirts.

Harlow never escaped again.

Lou sat there slumped in the corner of the closet, cigarette dangling from his lips. Which was his only one, he promised himself, he’d have all day. And his wife, Natalie, who never abided it, was thankfully at a conference all weekend. And this was HIS office after all, in the garage, fully ventilated. The TV yammered on in the background, and he leaned over around the closet jam until he could get it in view, because it was a story about killer bees, “Those killer bees would hunt me forever until I’m dead,” said the curious man in the more curious bee suit, with a quick breath and lean into the camera. And he laughed. But there was no one to make a sarcastic comment to. About how earnest the man in the bee suit said it as if in fact many avenues of his life had led him to the belief that he was in an epic struggle with these bees and that one day, when he least suspected it, they would wreak their revenge upon his person with terrifying accuracy. Deadly precision. No. Escape.

Thank god he had Natalie. She was a witness to his life, viewed a record of him living and breathing- changing. But still Alissa and Justin, and maybe Benny from down the street, they were the true seers of his life, but distance yawned between them. He wondered how quickly things and people could slip out of their lives, and the profusion of beige in his closet. How he felt safe, almost too. He needed to get another job. Especially before the plunge into parenthood.
***

When a media message popped up on Alissa’s Blackberry, she drew her phone out of her purse. Because meetings, who fucking needed them. Sure they catered, but how many muffins could you have until you wished you were bulemic like Jackie Ferin from your college days, and though you despised her deeply at the time, that is the most often associated thought: overeating, stuffed, I feel like puking, bulemia, Jackie, god I wish. And there she was forever, entrenched in your psyche. And boy you fucking resented it.

So that when Alissa saw her childlike scrawl on a piece of Garfield memo paper, she thought she was being visited by a ghost, paused, to make a “note” on her steno pad, nod attentively, and returned to the message. “We will not have help with the hamster…” Jesus. How did Lou still have that?! She bit her pinky nail and smirked. What the fuck were her parents thinking. This was the great debate for every lost egg of hers. She and her friends named them as they went- Goodbye Laquicia, Ferique, Alice and Nadine. Goodbye. In fact, it was a pretty hard line. Dr. Phil would definitely disagree. Expecting children to make adult decisions and face adult consequences. Though she wasn’t sure. Maybe they should know. Couldn’t they understand? Certainly they hadn’t thought death by snake, possibly stale water or letting the hamster starve accidentally like on a sleepover to Benny and Jessica’s house, actually occurred, but that was easily corrected. Some things you just can’t plan for. And she recoiled when she remembered the loss of Milo. It seemed such a serious thing to her at the time. Justin had leant her and Lou black shirts and he’d helped them with a small funeral in the backyard under the lemon tree.

The parents were not in attendance, understandably too upset. But when she at one point during Lou’s dirge and the playing of Metallica from Justin on the boombox, craned her body around and saw the curtain swish back into place from the upstairs window. She wondered if they ever realized there wasn’t a body. Since her mom respected her tense and startled face at the suggestion of “disturbing” the remains in the pink bejeweled box, already sealed with glue. Death by natural causes. Her mother’s hand withdrew and returned to the spaghetti sauce.

The next text message was her friend’s idea of a joke: "Fun Loving Honest Type: seeking lively nature lover for a good time." She rolled her eyes. I am not going online with that tagline. There was so much wrong with that sentence. But she still wondered what was the perfect distillation of her, possibly nature loving. What was the distillation of what she sought… was it a good time? Or was it something else… not life long completion of me. That was something else entirely. Or did she just want to be found? It was a long time before they decided to try again, for another animal, and she supposed dating for her was much the same. And just because Ben, that asshole, was still alive, somewhere in Florida with Becca, or whatever her name was, doesn’t mean something didn’t die. Something certainly, DID, die.

The next animal they tried for was a bird. But she grew tired of clipping its wings. And eventually felt bad about it being in a cage. And after a particular narrow miss into the frigid winter, the bird was donated to a local college and a particularly enthusiastic, young ornithologist named Enrique.

“Lou-Lou. Where did you-- “Don’t call me that,” he inserted. “--find THAT.”

“It was in my scrapbook and I was cleaning out the closet.”

“You should frame it. And be that dad, who points to the plaque on the wall and says, we found out the hard way. Shakes head knowingly.”

“Well we had Missy,” Lou reasoned.

“But that was only because Missy was no longer being “cared for” as mom says by Uncle Rodger, after his divorce from—uh—what was her name?”

“Anne? She didn’t want the dog, I don’t think.”

“Did you show Justin the note?”

“What note?... Oh, uh, no. I mean you know why would he care.”

“He’d care…. Shit, I have to get back. I’ll forward-- ”

Click.
***


Justin, while on his skateboard, along the Venice Beach boardwalk, felt the vibration of his phone. His dog, whose tongue, lolling out, galloped alongside him continued undaunted. He saw the picture and replaced the phone back in his pocket. And it wasn’t until a rollerblader whizzed by him that he was startled from the revere of wind-rushed thought and halted, popping up his board and jogging to a stop. It was amazing how just the one thing could make all the molecules in your body hum.

For a few minutes he sat still in his car with his head back, remarking upon his scruffy aging face. He decided to drive north to his parents house in Calabasas, who had left the Midwest winters behind after Grandma Jenny left her house to them. “The highways are deserted, no travelers on the road,” he thought. If only it was always like this. But then one being at home felt worse, so he made eggs and toast and sat on the porch to wait. He pulled out the phone, but didn’t quite know what to say back to Alissa. It was funny yes, now, maybe, and random to be reminded. So he picked up his dad’s devotional Bible, coated with the grit the wind had stirred up, and started thumbing through some pages. When he was 14 he was already well on his way to being a hostile angst ridden youth and there was this passage in his youth group devotion about not letting the devil get a foothold. It always haunted him. How could the devil do that exactly? In what way with his talons or claws or scales or whatever it was get a foothold of you? He was already on the outs with most of the mary n’susie crew at church and frequently longed for escape, and they all seemed quite sure they were avoiding it. He wasn’t sure. But it probably started with his heart.

And he did feel really terrible about it, Harlow, eating Lou and Alissa’s pet. He never wanted to see that look on anyone’s face again, and that even though it was the snake, he’d caused it. He sat in his room staring at the happily fed snake and sighed. And saw the responsibility note tacked to the wall among anarchy signs and flames, and all the clothes on the floor, and went into Alissa’s room. She was climbing in her closet for a pink box, so he helped her get it down, and they just sat down, and she handed him the glue and started to bejewel it. And he thought it was really beautiful, and regretted there was no way to work glitter into his palette of standoffish black.

And now, his fingers twitched, with inactivity and he set the Bible down.

***

“There’s a kind of renaissance happening here,” said the mom, swishing back the curtain.

“With whom,” said the Dad.

“With, Justin.”

“Did they spot you?”

“I think Alissa saw us but she’s too guilty to accuse me of anything.” The mom paused in thought, “you know, he helped her bejewel that box. I saw him with the glue and glitter myself.”

“Will wonders never cease.”

“No.”

“I’m glad.”

That night without a word spoken, there was an extra helping of dessert for all parties. This was shortly before the mom switched to natural sweeteners and was officially close to ruling out Lucky Charms and donuts, but at the time it was heapfuls of ice cream and sprinkles. And the mom and dad were very proud of all of their children. Though they both knew something had to be done about Missy, the miniature schnauzer, who seemed to think she had the run of the place. So the parents drafted themselves a note that said, “We will take better care of Missy, and trim her toe nails.”

And then, of course years and states later, their eldest Justin, was on the porch texting Alissa and talking about hampsters, though for the life of them they could not remember why. So they said hello to his dog, and the father showed him round to all the new plants and how he’d trimmed the fruit tree. And the mother told him he was absolutely staying for lunch and that they should go for a walk and that Lou and his wife were close to having kids, and that hopefully they could all be together for Christmas. Justin just smiled and said, that he’d have to call Lou, and in that way it was true, that all the notes had done more good than harm, and the parents were glad, that they wouldn’t have to slip another one in his car that said, pay more attention to your siblings, and just be ignored, because they had him here, all to themselves, even though it was their secret hope he’d find someone to one day write notes with. But for now, this is how things were and lunch was going to be ready at 1.