Chapter Seventeen: The Big Black Phone II
“Well sissy, I’m really gonna do it this time,” Brad says.
Sometime back in Obama’s presidency, your Big Black Phone used to ring a whole lot more. Only a few people know the number but mostly it’s Bradford. Though you have a cell phone, and Bradford’s more than welcome to call anytime, he insists on calling you on the big black phone from Australia or wherever. After ten or so hours filing papers, taking coffee orders, faxing, lifting, shifting, pacing, typing, fielding calls, and opening doors, you’re exhausted like when you dug trenches at camp. Everything down to your elbows and ankles aches for the tub, but without the wine, buttered pop tarts, or Xanax. That didn’t come till later.
“Only you can talk me out of it.”
Imagine him standing on the ledge of the Grand Canyon, or just about to kick a chair out from under himself at some outpost in the Arctic Circle. Never tells you exactly how he’s gonna do it, just that he’s serious and you’ve to find a way to stop him.
You ask, “Where are you?”
You walk around your newly furnished house, fresh from the grocery store with kale, fruits, nuts, tofu, and of course non-GMO environmentally friendly alternatives to whatever it is you’re afraid of, and stock the shelves. For a while you’re all about the gym life. Spin, Zumba, Yoga, personal trainer, and all that. Even you have a treadmill and air bike in your spare room. Not that it does much good as mother’s always reminding you of your haggitude.
“You have to guess. I’ll stop if you do.”
Your favorite guy’s voice has that lighthearted tone of a little boy dropping coins off the empire state building and expecting them to impact feet into the ground below.
Not to go all PSA on you, but if you don’t know, no matter how many times a loved one threatens suicide, don’t ever say for them to just go ahead and do it. No matter how annoyed, or tired, or tense, or nerve wracking it is to endure the emotional turmoil, just don’t. You’ll spend the rest of your life regretting it.
“How many guesses do I get?” You ask.
Filling your fridge, there’s no dread or emotional outburst. You have to hold that back. Just you talking to your favorite little man. Beyond the years at the camp, but well before he’s actually gone, Bradford puts himself through the ringer to impress mom and dad while you do the bare minimum. Staying thin for photo ops and such. Your poor little man’s even got himself a girlfriend for when the tabloids photograph him out and about. Gabrielle Porter. She looks like how you’d think she look, and the name is no coincidence.
He says, “let’s say 106 tries,” as a gust of wind accosts the receiver. There’s the sound of crunching leaves underfoot.
“Okay,” you say, then, “umm, Dubai?”
Your little man makes a sound like a buzzer, says, “one down, 105 to go.”
Though he won’t admit it, you suspect this newest attempt is due to the impending marriage of his long lost childhood love Gabe Johansen to some inbred European princess. You saw them on the news a while back and predicted a flood of calls. For the third time in as many weeks your phone rings off the hook. Your boy is ten years heartbroken and more and more worn as time goes by. Not that others would know it looking at him. Only you can see beyond the veneer to his disgust at living a day without the guy who owns his heart. You never tell him to get over it. You never tell him to find someone else. Just think it will pass as time passes.
It doesn’t.
You guess, “Venezuela?”
A buzzer, then the click clack of a locomotive.
You guess, “a New York subway station?”
Buzzer.
Another thing you never do is ask them: so how are you going to do it? Or what’s your plan? That leads their focus away from them talking about what’s really wrong and pushes them towards their imagined relief from the suffering. Dunno if he’s even capable of uttering Gabe’s name without shattering but you’d give anything were he to just say it. To open the floodgates and let loose in your lap like he used to.
You guess, “the Lamplighter inn?”
He laughs, says, “that run down place with glow in the dark speedos?”
You say, “uh-huh?”
Buzzer, then, “nah, I’m not high enough to go there yet.”
Sounds like you’re getting warmer, but the thing is, he can go anywhere he wants. ‘Cept for the moon, and before long even there won’t be off limits.
Even if it sounds like a game, it’s not. So, you know never to say: this is just a cry for help or that you don’t believe him. Still, you’re pretty sure sooner or later you’ll hit on where he is and send him an Uber, or private jet to come home. He’ll slump on your doorstep with a cactus or orchid he bought along the way. You have 30 such plants rotting on your windowsill, their dry needles and leaves falling into the sink.
Sweeping the kitchen of leaves you guess, “the art museum?”
Buzzer. He says, “it’s too late to go there. C’mon Sissy, be more creative.”
Your well of creativity is dry and cracked like a lakebed in Utah. You haven’t drawn, written, sang, danced, screamed, planted, rooted, watered, cultivated, grown, yearned, or fucked in forever. You haven’t pricked your fingers on rose stems or come home smelling like earth. You can’t bring yourself to walk through the botanical gardens inspecting plant after poisonous plant you’d like to put in mother’s tea. Bradford knows all this, but still, you never ever say: it could be worse. When you’re down, you’re down, and being the wealthiest prick on earth won’t force your brain to make serotonin.
You say, “at the corner of Main and Lord on top of the lamppost overlooking traffic?”
There’s a long pause, then a buzzer. He says, “seriously specific, big Sissy.”
Then he asks, “wait, have I done that before?”
“Yes,” you say, then ask, “can you give me a hint?”
He says, “no,” then, “you’ve never asked for a hint before,” then asks, “are you alright?”
You’re supposed to be the strong one, like with no emotional impairments. College graduate, MBA, PhD, and all that. Super knowledgeable and always willing to learn more. Supposed to be the light in the dark, but somehow, you’ve let on that all’s not well in your life. You weren’t supposed to do that, but here we go. Always inevitably the conversation turns to you and your woes and if you try to bring it back to him, he’ll deflect for an hour or so. Can’t say you’re fine ‘cause he’ll know it’s a lie. You can’t say: just cut the shit and come over. You can’t say: if you were serious, you’d be doing it instead of threatening to do it. Those words breed distrust.
“It’s the usual,” you say, “Mom hasn’t been leaving the house, or even her room from what Halcyon says. Says he can’t even hear her shuffling around. Just lays around eating in bed, barking orders, and making phone calls all day. Half to me. Half to some warlord or business man. You know they’re the same thing.” You chuckle.
Brad says, “she’ll die, and we’ll be happy for a few minutes.” He clears his throat. There’s the sound of rustling trees and a helicopter overhead. He says, “but I didn’t ask about mom. I asked about you, dear sister. How have you been?”
You try, “are you in town?”
“Stop redirecting,” he says, “you’ll never guess.”
You try, “are you at an airport?”
“Sissy.” His stern voice tells you a thing or two about how you’re not gonna skate away so easily.
You don’t know how to tell him your number one concern is always him. There isn’t much else to your life right now except clopping around the office in high heels, eating nothing to see your abs, cleaning an already clean house, sleeping, and doing it all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Your life is dull stretches of time with intermittent pleasures in between. In any case no matter how many feelers you have out there for him, or watchers on the prowl, the kid has a knack for illuding them. Dug the RFID chip out of his hip some years back. Wears hats and surgical masks to evade security cameras with facial recognition. Even he’s got a full prosthetic face to wear when he doesn’t feel like being identified. You never, ever ask if he knows how much he means to everyone? That puts the onus of emotional accountability on the desperate person, placing blame, rather than getting to the heart of the problem.
You don’t know why, but you say, “I’m bored.”
Putting on a baritone voice he asks, “Are you not entertained?” You imagine him puffing out his chest like Russell Crow.
You say, “I feel like I don’t own anything.”
For a long time, there’s nothing but the sound of air rushing through trees.
He says, “Whaddaya get the kids who have everything?” Then snorts.
You say, “not like I’ve never bought anything, but like nothing is ever truly mine. Like today I was at Walmart buying groceries and while I was loading my trunk I see this tattooed guy gathering carts with his coworker. The other guy had downs syndrome or something like that. They were racing around the parking lot to see who could gather the most carts the fastest. Obviously, the tattoo guy was faster and stronger but his deliberate slowness allowed his coworker to win every time. I sat there for nearly an hour watching them do this over and over. They were really sweet. When they were done and out of breath, tattoo guy gave the other guy a candy bar.”
Brad says, “aww.”
You say, “so anyway, I… I don’t know where I was going with this,” you say, “I’m lost.”
That’s his cue to talk about Gabe. He doesn’t. Another reason you don’t just ask outright what’s wrong is the fact that you both already know and he knows you know that you both know. It’s in the air like when someone fries liver and onions with garlic. Thick and wet. On every TV, E! has been covering the forthcoming nuptials, the dreaded end of Gabe’s single life. Gabe’s made People Magazine’s sexiest man alive two years in a row. Oh, were there unending tears.
Picture Brad sneaking around to get a glimpse of the object of his affections. See him hiding in the racks at 59th Street Bloomingdale’s while Gabe and the girl with a cleft chin buy a $1,200 Ninja coffee maker. Look at your favorite kid as he dons that prosthetic mask at Tiffany’s when Gabe gets her a million dollar diamond encrusted bracelet. Your brother tags along like a tourist as the princely Gabe and the Disney girl watch the rockets shoot off at SpaceX, Newfoundland, and Florida. Watch Bradford pretending to be a homeless man begging for change on the beaches of Malibu as the two bronzed fiancée’s drink margaritas and tan under untroubled skies. Follow him around the world stalking Gabe and that girl to the highest mountains and most obscure valleys in between. Your little man’s been busy obsessing. How it must ache to not be the cause Gabe’s happiness.
You say, “I don’t own that kind of happiness,” then you say, “it bothers me that I don’t own any happiness.”
Bradford says, “I’m sorry, Sissy.”
Instead of saying you know, you say, “I love you.”
He says, “I love you too,” then, “care to guess again?”
Getting an idea, you go to the TV, you click it on low and flick through a thousand channels. Past sports and bad news, over game shows and reality TV, through a forest of weather, QVC, to the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. There on the screen is the dully handsome couple decked out in hazmat suits complete with gas masks and face shields staring down the old husk of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Outside the radiation is apparently okay enough you can last a few hours just looking around. Before the dome was built, the exposed tomb sits stabbing the sky like a needle. Still a fresh memory to Ukraine, soldiers and scientists make rounds of the area to ensure its security. From both ends of the Dolby surround sound stereo system there’s the clicking of Geiger counters and Slavic dialects you can’t understand.
You watch as the ultra-protected couple clutch each other perilously like as if in their touch was a barrier to exposure. Over the façade of scientific explanation, there’s the listless energy in the scientists voices. Muted hatred for anyone who’d come here like it was a tourist attraction and not a burial ground. There’s a cut to the famous Ferris wheel, empty overgrown apartments, houses, and hollow domiciles vacant since 1986. The clicking from the TV, it echoes in the receiver.
You say, fist on hip like Brad can see, “are you in fucking Pripyat?”
Taking in a sharp breath, he says, “ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!”
You say, “oh, baby, get out of there. Come home!”
He says, “not till I’m done. I’m about to see the rebuilt core.” He titters like the little one on Adderall. Laughs like he’s in Benzo withdrawal.
You say, “you said if I guessed you wouldn’t do it.”
He says, “and I’m not going to.”
Over the phone, the Geiger counters echo along with the stiff Ukrainian talk. Your boy has flown himself to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and insinuated himself into a party of tourists inspecting the abandoned city and leaking powerplant. All that just to catch a glimpse of the first boy he ever kissed, hand in hand with someone else. Like you he knows Gabe’s just putting on a show with the dulcet trophy wife. On the screen, Gabe’s fingers are interlocked with hers, but there’s no grip to it, none of that exuding a feeling of comfort. It’s not even friendly. Just an engagement to preserve power base and money. Right about now, your favorite person is choking up like a kid whose parents told him is darling golden retriever got run over and they have to be put to sleep.
Flush with pain, you say, “please come home, Brad-.”
“-and do what?!? Huh? Drown my suffering at work? Try to find someone else? Hmm? Take a vacation? Buy a fast car? Do nothing important until I need six month LDL cholesterol levels, take Viagra daily, get prostate cancer, need to wear diapers, and end up an old yellow pederast like dad?”
You hate to say it but he’s right. There’s nowhere he can’t go. Except for having Gabe to himself, there’s nothing he can’t do. For the first time since ever, you don’t have the perfect words to snap him out of it. But your heart is made of tougher stuff than his. While he suffers total physiological sadness, you can compartmentalize it.
He says, “do you know I talked to him?”
You say, “…okay,” in the hopes it prompts him talking more.
He says, “a few months back when I was feeling okay. I was having a preflight drink at the airport bar. I was riding coach so I knew it would be rough. You know how I don’t like to waste?”
Another thing you don’t do when your loved one finally starts talking is interrupt.
“Right about then my brain decided it was a good time to go off into the space.” Brad says, “I’d been popping Adderall and trying to level it off with stiff margaritas, but it happened anyway. You know? I’m so used to it when it comes on, I didn’t even notice I was sweating and wheezing. The voice asked, ‘did you know that during a difficult or long labor a catheter is inserted into the mother’s urethra to speed things along?’ I know not to answer it. But I did anyway. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’ It said, ‘the catheter is then inflated and left in as the pressure in the bladder can induce more contractions.’ The thing kept jabbering on and on about labor and delivery tips and tricks like a professor. ‘Pitocin, also known as oxytocin, is given in titrated quantities to induce labor,’ it said. And all the while I was suffocating like usual. It sent M&M’s through the compartment. Though I’m sure it was just me taking more Adderall’s. Maybe a few Benzos or whatever I had in my carry on. It said, ‘oxytocin, aka the cuddle hormone has a number of uses in the body, including vasoconstriction and vasodilation, but in the case of delivery it causes the negative feedback loop of contractions until the mother gives birth to the baby.’”
Your favorite boy was getting a lecture on something he’d never witness unless it was on TLC.
“Woke up with the bitter flavor of Jack and Coke on my tongue and I was staring down the most beautiful guy on Earth. Gabe had a morning bloody Mary in his hand. Little stain on his pure white shirt. Somehow, I knew while my brain was away on vacation I’d been chatting it up with him like an old friend. Not someone who abandoned me when my love for him was set in stone. Gods. All this to say he jabbered on about his fiancée, wedding plans in Newport, and honeymoon trips to Budapest. How they were going to see the world together and settle down to do their duty. Managing accounts, going to meetings, trading stocks, and otherwise leading a boring life. Maybe he’d have some kids, maybe not, they still hadn’t decided. All of it was terrible to hear, like listening to Yoko Ono wail or a Nickelback concert. A cheese grater to the ear drum. Of all of my worst nightmares this one had to come true.”
There’s a long silence. Soon Bradford sobs. Must be in some lonely corner in the middle of the hollow city. You want for nothing more than to comfort him and shield him from all pain. Even in this little tribe of yours, mother, father, Halcyon, you, he has no one else.
He says, “I don’t own that kind of happiness either.”
He says, “and I never will.”
Then he hangs up.
It’s far from the worst cliffhanger he’s left you on but still you’re redialing. Unavailable tone. Rifling through your closet, you take down your emergency suitcase and throw it on the bed. Already it’s packed with everything you need for weeks of traveling. Sometimes it do be like that. Most times it do be like that. Bag all ready for when you have to search for your suicidal brother. Said he’s in Pripyat but by the time you’re on the personal jet he could be in Antarctica with the penguins. You message Halcyon to have Brad’s room ready for a breakdown. Yes ma’am. Redial Brad. Unavailable. Your favorite boy knows how to build tension.
You call mom and she blames you ‘cause of course the onus is on you to say all the right things, not that old decrepit bitch turning a blind eye to all the things dad did. You think of that dull makeup-caked face in a coffin, and you’re satisfied the old fucker is gone. You tell her if Brad dies, you’ll quit everything. The job, and her. You’ll work at Costco and get fat. You’ll fuck hundreds of men to pollute the family line and spread the fortune amongst them. She tells you that you were never entitled to much anyway and the lawyers have made the estate settlement airtight. She says your work is already done so get your ass in gear and to find your brother.
Going to the door, putting on your coat, shoes, and slinging your bag over your shoulder, you’re fingers are fast across your phone to buy a ticket to Ukraine. They don’t fly you directly into the exclusion zone, just the nearest airport. You need other clearances to get in. You call a few friends who can fix all that.
You stop with your hand on the knob and try to think of where you last left your passport. Turning back to the kitchen with the dry overgrown plants littering the windowsill, leaves all over the floor, you haven’t even finished putting away your groceries, the TV is still on showing yellow suits traipsing around the derelict power plant, and you realize you won’t be back for several weeks.
Sometimes you think you can’t be a real rich girl. Real rich girls don’t care. Just let someone else do it. Phone buzzing in your pocket, your mother’s constantly reminding you of how little you mean to everyone, to everything. You’re just there as a surrogate mother. In the grand scheme of things do any of us really matter? The Walmart wage slaves and their fun little game, they matter. Bradford matters.