Important Things That Don't Matter Read online

“Mom? My back hurts. Mom?”

  She kept changing pace, all fast then slow. Our footsteps echoed.

  “I know…I know, I know, I just don’t know. I just don’t know what to do. What do I do? Why in the hell does he do this shit—”

  “Mom? You’re hurting my arm, Mom.”

  “Oh my God.” She stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Oh my God. Look, I’m so sorry.” She squatted down, looked right into me. Her eyes were so red I couldn’t even look at them. I was looking at her forehead instead. “Should we get a cab? What should we do? I’m sorry. Is that what we should do?”

  “Mom, I don’t know,” I said.

  “Jesus,” she said. “The last thing I want to do is spend thirty dollars on a cab.”

  We were going back downstairs now, back past the baggage claim. All the carousels were off. We went outside again where the cabs pull up. There were none, nothing. It was freezing.

  “Where are the cabs?” I wanted to know.

  We went up to some guy, a black man in a big puffy blue jacket. He was just standing there, outside, but he didn’t look cold at all.

  “Do you work here?” Mom asked.

  He nodded.

  “So you can get a cab for us?”

  “Ain’t easy at this hour,” he said.

  “Is it possible?”

  “Possible, yes. But pretty much a matter of luck.”

  “I don’t understand. What are you saying? What are we supposed to do?”

  “As I said, pretty much a matter of luck.” I swear the guy was practically laughing.

  “Jesus Christ. Do you work here?”

  He nodded again.

  “You work here, for chrissake. Isn’t it your job to get us a goddamn cab?”

  “At this hour, it’s—”

  “Goddamn it. Damn it. You work here and it’s your goddamn job to get me a taxi and—”

  “Ain’t no flights coming in for hours, cabbies know this.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mom said. “Pardon me, but I just don’t get it. I just don’t get it. You’re out here to get people cabs. My son and I need a cab. And now—”

  “Look, ma’am—”

  “And now, goddamn it, now you tell me it’s luck? My little boy’s freezing here. Look at him…. Look at him. He’s cold and tired and my husband was supposed to—”

  “Ma’am.”

  “My God,” she said. I grabbed her leg. “God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Look, I’m sorry. But what the hell am I supposed to do? Just tell me that, please. We were supposed to be picked up by my…What the hell do we do?”

  It was almost funny how unconcerned this guy came off, like he had this same conversation every night with two people who looked exactly like me and Mom. I turned to Mom. You should have seen the way she looked. Her face was all about to fall apart completely now. I mean, her mouth was shaking, cheeks and nose red, all poisoned-looking. I swear, like she was about to split straight down the middle. You could really imagine it: her eyes going dead, then falling off to the sides, then her nose, now that little crease above her lip, split straight in half, her mouth too—

  “What in the hell are we supposed to do?”

  —like she wanted to hit him, that was her look. She wanted to take this man, throw him on the pavement, and just start hitting him until some kind of order set in. He knew where Dad was, knew something, and she would beat it out of him. I was so scared now. There’s nothing worse than seeing your parents all lit up by emotions that don’t mean a thing to you. It’s like they don’t belong to you anymore, and right there it hits you, slams right up against you really, how unprepared you are for doing anything without them. I just wanted to do something, anything. I’d help her beat the guy if that would help. Mom, I’ll do it. I’ll go for the shins. I could do that, get him in the shins, and he’d be too slow to catch me. Girls in class had got me in the shins before, so I knew it killed. Something, that would be something. I’ll do it, I will, I’ll do anything—

  Suddenly a car horn starts blaring, echoing, flying right at us off the concrete columns. Everyone looked. Mom, the black guy, me. These two headlights, far off, indistinguishable other than that. Then they come a little closer, and it’s clear it’s Dad’s little blue Honda. You could see him right there in the driver’s seat. You could see his moustache even. You could see Shirley too, right there next to him in the passenger’s seat.

  “How ya doin’, feller?” Dad was now asking.

  I was sitting in the back, next to Shirley. There were candy wrappers all over the floor, always was in that Honda, Caramel Creams mostly. I knew I was supposed to hate Shirley, but I couldn’t help how good it felt to be next to her. She smoked a hundred packs of cigarettes a day and still managed to smell only of perfume and clean clothes and Pantene. It was good seeing Dad too, even though it was obvious I was supposed to hate him even more.

  “Tired,” I said.

  Mom got in the passenger’s seat now, shut the door, slammed it, I guess. Dad lit a cigarette, a Vantage. I leaned on Shirley, closed my eyes, sort of hearing Dad saying—

  “Sorry we’re a touch late, what happened is—”

  But then all you were hearing was Mom shutting him up with—

  “I don’t even want to hear it, Joe. I couldn’t care less.”

  Dad and Shirley were together a lot then. It’s funny. Three years later I’d start to get it, the way I’m still getting everything, in fragments, backward, so bear with me. Shirley had moved out by then, I don’t know where. Anyway, I come home from school one day, piss off Mom accidentally, and like that she’s going off—

  “…that your father does cocaine…you even know what that means?”

  And then, one day, years after that, I’m driving around with Dad in his brown VW bus. Maybe I’m thirteen years old now and he’s going off about Shirley, how she got this twenty-five-grand inheritance, blew it all on cocaine. All of it gone in one weekend. And he was there. Dad tells me how crazy Shirley was. And since Dad never has any idea when to shut up, he tells me about her body, all of a sudden, how beautiful it was. He even tells me how beautiful her breasts were. Especially that one time when she got up on the table, that time she danced for everyone.

  PRISON

  Floyd’s apartment smelled terrible. Like spoiled eggs, smoked-out window curtains, freezer-burned TV dinners, and the singed plastic stench of electrical wiring going to hell. Floyd moved around in this menacing hobble, a daddy longlegs missing half his limbs. The guy was this constant convulsion of tics: the fingers in his right hand jetting straight out, then clenching up; his left eye drooping down slow, then whipping back into place; always making these sniffing sounds with his nose, like a dog looking for a place to piss. He was so skinny that I was scared to ever see him with his shirt off, was convinced he was only organs and bones. And with Floyd you always ran the risk of seeing him naked. He only wore this one bathrobe, terry cloth, paisley patterned, pine green and dark purple. It was the kind of thing a circus freak-show regular sports around the dressing room.

  But Floyd was no bearded lady. He was this guy that Dad had started hanging out with lately, like all the time. And right now he was all up in my face like—

  “Jesus Christ, Joe! You gotta li’l boy for real! Well, Jesus. This is your li’l boy!”

  His breath was all cigarette smoke. His gums were bright red in parts, glassy-looking. The other parts were almost black.

  “I know, I know,” Dad said.

  “A li’l boy! Look at ’m! Looks just like you! Spi’t an’ image!”

  “How are things?” Dad said.

  “Same as ever,” Floyd said. “How old is this guy? How old are you?”

  “Six,” I said. “Six and a quarter. Going on seven.”

  “Oh when I was sixteen,” Floyd said, “my golly! You shoulda seen it, wild as hell! Great time! Hot damn! Joe, you know what I’m talkin’ about, doncha Joe?”

  “Work goin’ all right?” Dad asked.

&n
bsp; “Too much goddamn work,” Floyd said. “Other than that, fine as feathers.” Floyd peered down at me again. His eye was doing its thing. He had about three strands of red hair left on his head—the rest was a yellowy gray, and frizzy. And he had freckles all over his face just like Tyler, the orange-haired kid in my class who everyone was scared of. You know, the types who look like the descendants of red ants. “So you been with Dad tonight, huh?” Floyd said. “Whatchu guys been up to?”

  “We went to the movies,” I said.

  “Oh yeah? Which one?”

  “Muppets Take Manhattan.”

  “Muppets Take Manhattan, huh? Okay, okay. Seen the previews. Li’l puppet guys. Hermit the frog! Kids still into Hermit the Frog? Jesus! Things don’t change, do they Joe?”

  Dad smiled. Floyd kept talking.

  “So whadya think? Good movie?”

  “I like New York,” I said. “So it was awesome.”

  “Whadya think, Joe? This kid know what he’s talkin’ about?”

  “Sure does.”

  “Jesus, he really looks just like you, Joe,” Floyd said. “Don’t he?”

  “Dad, you were asleep the whole time,” I said. One thing about Dad, he was sort of always asleep the whole time, especially during something like a Muppet movie.

  “Oh I was just restin’ my eyes, feller. When you get to be my age,” Dad said, “you can see right through the lids.”

  “Can not.”

  “Can too,” Dad said. “Floyd, am I lyin’?”

  “Straight through ’em!” Floyd said. “Straight through the damn things.”

  Three things happened in 1987: Desi died, Opa died, Mom and Dad split up. Desi’s dying made everything else seem like pretty much nothing. Desi had been my first dog, this black-and-white sheltie, and when Mom sat me down on the living room couch’s knobby white cushions and told me what happened, I lost it.

  Desi, she explained, had met another dog during his morning walk, some mammoth German shepherd. They got to playing, so rough Mom and the other dog’s owner had to let go of the leashes—they were getting all tangled up. The dogs then ran out into the middle of Nelson Street, right in front of the house. They were playing right at the top of the hill, you know, and because they were there, well, the car couldn’t see them. Do you understand? Do you know what that means? The car couldn’t see them, couldn’t hit the brakes in time. And now Desi was dead. My face felt all blistered up, I was crying so hard.

  So maybe I was used to things when she sat me down in the exact same place a few weeks later and told me about Opa, my grandfather on her side, her dad. Opa had been in and out of the hospital for months. I knew all of Mom’s family was going crazy over it, but it never really bothered me. I mean, old people are a chore for really young people to love—even when you’re related to them, they’re frightening. And Opa was especially terrifying because he was bald, big, smart as hell, and Polish, went through the Holocaust and all that. He couldn’t say anything without yelling at the top of his lungs, always using words I didn’t understand, let alone saying them in this gravelly accent that happened to be identical to every bad guy in every cartoon I loved. You know what Opa was? He was Gargamel without the cat.

  It wouldn’t be until later, until now really—when all anyone does is tell me how much I’m like Opa, the way people can never tell if I like them or not, or if I meant to be funny—that I started missing the guy. It’s simple: anytime anyone tells you about someone who would have loved you, and who you would have loved back, you can’t help but feel incriminated. You feel like everyone’s blaming you.

  Anyway, a few weeks after that, here’s Mom again: sitting me down again in the same place, the pattern of the cushions etched into my ass at this point, saying—

  “I have something to tell you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Your father isn’t going to be living here anymore.”

  “How come?”

  “Well,” she said, “with Jerry’s gone, he’s going to be very busy, and, well…and he’s going to be moving out.”

  I realize I forgot to tell you about Jerry’s. I’m sorry. I’m remembering things here, and they don’t come in the right order.

  So here you go: Jerry’s was this pizza place where Dad worked, some kind of local chain, plastic tabletops meant to look like wood, curvy red plastic seats, all that. I think Dad was the manager. All he did was go in late, sit in this office with fake wood walls, and count money. He counted it, put it in these thick plastic envelopes, with thick zippers and padlocks. He lost the job when the store closed down. I think it closed because he didn’t really count the money right, put most of it up his nose, but I’ve never bothered asking. To me Jerry’s was, and will always be, about two things: spray bottle wars with this black kid Shareef, who worked there, and unlimited free french fries. I was five years old, so you tell me what else really matters.

  “Okay,” I was saying to Mom.

  “But he’ll still visit,” Mom was saying, “and you’ll see him all the time.”

  “Okay.”

  “Honey,” Mom said. Her face was shaking, by the way. “Honey, your father and I are getting a divorce.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know what divorce is?”

  “It means Dad won’t live here anymore, but I’ll still see him.”

  This statement really seemed to get to Mom. Parents hate it when they don’t need to explain anything to their kids—they don’t know what to do with themselves anymore.

  “That’s it exactly,” she finally said. She was almost impossible to make out, the way she was whispering like that. “Exactly.”

  “Okay,” I said. “When are we getting a new dog?”

  How did someone like Mom, a Jewish woman with European parents, real educated types, American citizens because of the Holocaust, both professors, end up married to someone like Dad, a pale Catholic kid from a farm up in middle-of-nowhere Maine? It’s funny. That’s what everyone always wants to know, and what I never really think about. But so you know, they met at this ice-cream parlor, sometime around 1975. Mom was just out of college and starting her graphic design company, the same little firm she has today, and asked could she design the menus, draw up the logo. Dad was behind the counter, because his brother Ray owned the shop, had moved down from Maine to start it up, and Dad moved down with him because working there was a lot better than lifting potatoes and whatever else he had to do on the farm. The story goes Mom liked watching Dad’s arms when he scooped the ice cream, which I’ll admit have always been great-looking, still are, permanently cut from doing farm work as a kid. So she liked looking at them, liked watching the muscles tighten up, stretching out the T-shirt sleeves, and before anyone knows what’s going on she’s not only designed the menu and drawn up the logo, she’s married Dad too, had a little boy with him. I guess it’s an interesting story, but, as you can see, before I knew what was what they were divorced, so I’ve never really cared.

  The worst thing about the divorce, really, was Floyd. Dad got me three days a week and in the beginning Floyd was around for at least two of them. Dad was living with Uncle Ray, his brother, who at this point had given up the ice-cream shop, got a degree, and landed some kind of well-paying business job—I don’t know what it was, just that Ray was always getting richer. This was all when Ray was still married, lived with Aunt Edie in some townhouse near what was now Mom’s house in Rockville. Dad had this cool waterbed mattress in the basement, where the walls were wood beams and that bright Pink Panther insulation, the floor concrete so cold you were always in socks. It was a good setup, because I liked hanging out with Ray’s kids. There was Cousin Mike, who was a year younger than me, weaker than me, and therefore fun to play with. And there was Cousin Stacey, who was three years older than me and had a best friend who, one time, as a joke, took her underwear off and sat down on my face until my nose disappeared.

  But Dad was always saying we couldn’t hang around the house, said it
was rude to his brother. It was just a temporary thing, until everything worked itself out. It’s funny, how after divorces, temporary things seem to become permanent elements of adults’ lives. Or at least that was always the case with Dad.

  So we always had to find something to do. Movies were popular. Top Gun. Adventures in Baby-sitting. Death Wish IV. Anything with Chuck Norris. So were bars, especially this one I’ll tell you about in a second, which inevitably led to us visiting a church, something I’ve always hated. Or Breakers Billiards, the pool hall in downtown Rockville lit only with black lights, like making sure you could never figure out what time it was when you were in there. And Floyd. Who the hell was Floyd? We would go to Floyd’s house all the time. Dad knew I hated it there, hated how I smelled afterward. But he always said it would put hair on my chest, and I had nothing on that.

  Floyd was in the kitchen now. I never liked sitting on his sofa because, with the plastic still on the cushions, the thing pinched and squeaked, like sitting on a ferret or something. So I tossed aside a gun magazine, sank down into the La-Z-Boy. God, it reeked of Floyd, but so did everything else and eventually you got used to it. Then you left and it was all over you.

  Floyd came out of the kitchen now with a Coke for me, two cans of beer for him and Dad. The fridge, he explained, was busted. Did we mind drinking them at room temperature?

  “Well, okay then!” Floyd was saying. “Here’s to the…to the…to the Muppets!”

  “To the Muppets,” Dad said.

  “Hermit the Frog!” Floyd said.

  “It’s Kermit,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Kermit.”

  “Well, speakin’ a frogs…,” Floyd said, “how’s about we watch another movie? A little cinematic wonderment? Wanna watch another movie?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Lemme findja somethin’.” He crawled down on his hands and knees, going all through the movies he had stuffed under the VCR. It’s not like I wanted to notice, but I couldn’t help see that his robe had drifted up, showing off these fiery swirls of hair on his pink thighs. You know those television shows where wild animals rip each other to pieces, humans too if it’s a special edition? The ones where you just have to keep watching? Well, that was looking at Floyd right now. “What kinda movies does he like, Joe? What kinda movies you like?”