Oh, I say. Of course.
Molly smiles at me and she looks so sweet and normal I feel insane. I cover my eyes with my hands. I try to crush my eyes into my skull.
Are you okay? she says.
No, I don’t think so.
Molly sighs. I think John just wants us to go mad and kill each other.
Long beat.
He’s succeeding, I say. And those lampshades would definitely be yellow.
The grinding noise stops, mercifully. Then immediately resumes. I light a cigarette and notice that my hands are twitching.
I don’t know, says Molly. I think they would be pink.
Molly, I say. I have to get out of the house.
The grinding?
The grinding.
Let’s go somewhere, she says.
Do you want to go shopping with me?
Where? she says.
I explain that I want to get the boy some action figures, that if he has his own little army of five-inch superheroes to wreak imaginary mayhem with, maybe he won’t be lonely. Molly kisses me, a quick darting kiss on the mouth and I remember something my redneck baseball coach once told me, perverse but true. Be kind to dogs and children, he said. Women love that shit.
And so we take the motorcycle across town to a Toys-R-Us.
It’s an American afternoon, by god.
The parking lot is a shiny wasteland of family cars and minivans and I wish the sun were not so bright. I wish the sun would fuck off for a while. The statistics claim that people in the Northwest kill themselves at a much higher rate than those in any other region, presumably because of the endless rainfall. But it seems to me that the opposite should be true, that the unfortunate souls who are confronted day after day by the glaring sun would be the ones most likely to reach for the sleeping pills. The sun is neither flattering nor sympathetic. The average American is afflicted with some combination of bad skin and bad hair, bad posture and bad shoes. Bad habits and bad genes and bad taste and bad fucking luck and the sun seeks out such flaws with the cool, detached efficiency of a sniper.
Just ramble down to the beach on Labor Day weekend. Take a good look around.
Once inside the store, I relax a bit. There is music in the air-the theme song from the recent Winnie-the-Pooh movie featuring Tigger, a happy wacky little tune about the semi-charmed life that is just perfect for bouncing and therefore perfect for Tigger. But the lyrics are not so cheerful, however. I may be ignorant about contemporary poetry, but it seems to me that the song is about the perilous highs and lows of being a crystal meth addict. And this puts a smile on my face. I turn to Molly and she too is smiling. It is one of those goofy moments that needs no words and I feel like my head will soon be in a box.
I take Molly’s hand and we literally scamper through the place. Down the gloomy aisle of stuffed animals waiting to be loved and past the freakishly pink Barbie aisle, then past the brightly colored plastic swing sets and sandboxes shaped like turtles and bumble bees. Past the gleaming rows of bicycles and tricycles and red wagons and midget electric cars. Turn a corner and come upon the action figure aisle. I stop and suck in my breath with reverence. This is a kid’s promised land.
Molly laughs at the expression on my face.
I reach for a shopping cart and start loading up on little role models. Explaining to Molly as I go that Batman is indispensable. The Dark Knight, baby. Spider-Man is a nerd and talks a lot of trash but he has the coolest powers. Wolverine is your ultimate psycho and what kid doesn’t want adamantine claws. The Silver Surfer is the mad philosopher, the cursed poet, Hamlet on a magic surfboard. And then there’s Ghost Rider. Obscure as hell but I was always partial to him because he has a flaming skull and he’s not always a nice guy. Ghost Rider is sometimes a bad guy, and this is an important lesson for a kid to learn. I pass over Superman because he was such a bore. He was like the president of the student council. And he hung out with Aquaman, over there in the Justice League. Now there was a worthless ninny if ever there was one. Aquaman talked to the fishes. He was handy during an oil spill or a tropical storm, maybe. But if somebody was robbing a bank, where the fuck was Aquaman?
Women, says Molly. What about some women?
Of course. I immediately reach for Catwoman.
Catwoman? says Molly. The femme fatale from hell?
Or heaven, I say. It’s just a matter of perspective.
How so?
If she’s handing your lunch to you, then maybe you don’t like Catwoman. And rightly so. But if she’s giving you a superfreaky blowjob in the back of the Batmobile, then she’s your best friend.
Uh huh. Does the Batmobile even have a backseat? says Molly.
I scratch my head.
And does a five-year-old need to contemplate such things?
No. I guess not.
Now we argue about female superheroes, briefly and with a fair amount of giggling. I am not wavering on Catwoman so Molly insists on Jean Grey, on the grounds that she’s essentially the opposite of Catwoman.
Jean Grey is an intellectual, says Molly. And she doesn’t generally flash her tits.
Okay, I say. Wolverine likes her, anyway.
I throw in a sweet Batmobile with a lot of high-tech gear and a few villains, explaining to Molly that superheroes tend to lose their will to live without bad guys to tangle with. And then we are on our way to the cash registers when I am temporarily mesmerized by the Hot Wheels aisle and I flash back to the elaborate, multileveled, and structurally unsound metropolis that I constructed from those plastic orange tracks as a boy.
The silence of snow falling outside.
The oppressive smell of garlic and mushrooms and red pepper. There was spaghetti for dinner and now my mother and father linger in the kitchen to finish a bottle of wine. Their voices rise and fall and slip easily from flirtatious to hostile and back to tender and estranged and all the while it is impossible to say whether or not they are happy.
And here comes Carly Simon on the record player, her voice hoarse and splintered by static and fine scratches in the vinyl. You’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about you.
This song was the soundtrack of my childhood, and I often wonder about its long-term effects.
You’re so vain.
I am maybe seven years old, sitting on the floor of my room in cowboy pajamas. I am surrounded by the small orange universe of my own design and even though I lack the necessary vocabulary, I am no doubt contemplating the laws of physics, the inevitability of inertia and gravity. I place a very small turtle on one of the orange tracks, the kind of turtle that cost ten cents at the pet store and usually died within a week. I select one of my fastest cars, a blue Corvette. I position the car at the top of the track and hold it there a moment, watching the turtle wiggle along the track. I release the blue Corvette and it drops straight down, as if falling down the sheer edge of a cliff, and crashes into the turtle with a nice meaty thud.
The turtle is knocked from the track and is dazed but not killed.
My parents are arguing now, or maybe not. Maybe one of them is seducing the other.
I return the turtle to the track and reach for another car. I reach for a glossy black Aston Martin and I am stupidly pleased to see that the cars are still exactly the same, composed not of plastic but actual metal and perfect to the tiny detail. The packaging has not changed and the Hot Wheels logo has not changed and a single car costs just a dollar, which seems to me a reasonable level of inflation over so many years.
Vertigo, dislocation. You’re so fucking vain.
Hey, says Molly. You okay?
What?
She takes the little car from me.
Don’t I look okay?
