I Love You, Stupid! Page 5

  “A writer needs a lot of talent.”

  “And you don’t think I have enough to fill an ant’s hole!” He pushed the soup away, spilling it.

  “Look, control yourself.”

  “What the hell, will you stop treating me like a freaking baby and talk?”

  Sally reached for her purse. “I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m not going to talk to you the way you’re acting.”

  “Are you going to walk out on me?” He was whispering. Control, that’s what he needed, control. “I don’t want you to walk out on me. I want to settle this, now!”

  She was mad, he could see how mad she was. “I didn’t say you shouldn’t think about being a writer. Yes, you need talent. And one high-school paper is not enough! You don’t become a writer because you say so.”

  He slapped the table. “It’s more than one paper. I’ve had things in the school magazine this year, and last year, and the year before.” He was pumping things up. Sure he’d had pieces printed, but anyone could get into that ratty magazine. But Sally’s opposition only redoubled his desire to win. The idea of quitting school was just building in him. He didn’t want her telling him anything. It was his life. If he was making a mistake, it was his mistake. He’d suffer for it, not her.

  “I can’t take this seriously. This is your last term. You’re so close to graduation. To throw it all up now—you can’t be serious.” She was starting all over again.

  “Okay!” he said, “Okay, folks, she’s finally done it! My mother has finally done it, folks! Driven me bug-eyed crazy mad! Okay, Sally, you think it’s a joke? You think I’m a joke. Right! It is a joke. I was just testing you, seeing if your reflexes were still intact. That’s right I’m not going to be a writer. I’m going to get a job on a garbage truck.” He was on his feet. “Let the world hear. A joke—I’m a joke too, but I’m through with high school. I’m not going back, Sally. That’s no joke. I’ve stopped talking.” And he walked out.

  But did anything ever end with his mother? “All right, let’s talk seriously,” she said later, “see if we can work out something.” Why couldn’t they meet halfway, she said. Compromise. She was willing to give, so he should be, too. “For instance, why don’t you rearrange your schedule. Drop the course you don’t need, keep the ones you do need. Can’t you take the classes you need in the morning, say, then have your afternoons free for writing?”

  Halfway measures: that was Sally. But in a way he was relieved. She was satisfied, and for the time being so was he.

  The schedule turned out to be a lot easier to arrange than he’d imagined. He didn’t need trig for graduation. He dropped gym with the proviso that he’d swim at the school pool two times a week. It was all set. He could leave before lunch every day, and Sweeny agreed to give him a conference once a week on Thursdays.

  He had been dreaming, and then he’d been fighting with his mother, and now he’d done it. Now there was no turning back. He was going to have to write half a day, every day, whether he had anything to write or not.

  8

  In preparation for his career as a writer, Marcus cleaned his room. It was important that everything be right. A portable typewriter was on the desk. Next to the lamp he had a mason jar with pens and pencils, a Webster’s dictionary, and Roget’s Thesaurus. The Victor Gorman story was in a folder in the top drawer, his notebooks in the second drawer, and in the bottom drawer a fresh ream of paper.

  Monday morning, the first day of his new schedule, he woke early. He heard the hum of traffic, a door slam, the exciting sound of a woman’s heels in the hall. Life! He felt like springing straight up—Shazam!—up through the roof.

  All morning in school he kept getting these intense feelings about himself, and life. At noontime, accompanied by his friends, he walked out. Alec and Gordy had their arms locked through his, and Pfeff was saying they ought to get the school photographers and make a media event of it. Marcus saw Wendy and she came along. “What’s going on?” she said, and glanced at Alec.

  “I’m leaving today,” Marcus said. “Come say good-bye.” He shook hands with everyone. “I’m going to miss you guys.” He started getting sentimental.

  “Yeah, we’re going to miss you too,” Pfeff said, “like a mosquito bite.”

  “This is a solemn moment,” Alec said. He looked at Wendy. “Just a few words of farewell to our comrade Marcus Aurelius Rosenbloom, who today begins a new life.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes and made Wendy laugh.

  “It takes courage to dedicate yourself to art. We want Marcus to know we admire what he’s doing, and as a token of our love, we have pooled our resources for this gift that I know he will put to good use. Gordy, the appreciation gift?”

  Marcus opened a package hastily wrapped in what looked suspiciously like toilet paper. “A Bic ballpoint pen.” He held it up for everyone to see. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “Speech, speech,” Wendy cried. Alec applauded.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Marcus said.

  Alec slapped him on the back. “That’s perfect, Marcus, and beautifully put.” He pushed open the door. “Go before the moment is ruined.”

  Outside the streets were quiet, clean, and empty. Marcus walked by rows of houses. There was order in the world: parents working, kids in school. Only Marcus Rosenbloom, like a pebble in a shoe, was in the wrong place. Suddenly he couldn’t think of any reason for doing what he’d done. Please take me back, warden. The prisoner was released after serving almost twelve years, given afternoons off for good behavior. But I don’t know how to live in the world, warden. I love it here in Sherwood Gaol. I swear I do. What was he going to do with himself every afternoon? Where would he eat lunch? Who would he talk to? Writing, what was that?

  All was quiet at home, deadly still. He sat at his desk, his pens lined up, a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter. And then … and then.… Nothing. His mind was blank. Write something. He stared at the paper for a long time. Finally he typed out the argument he’d had with his mother in the restaurant. He was surprised when he looked at the clock how little time had passed.

  All week in school, his friends kept asking how the writing was going. “How’s it going, Hemingway?” Gordy said.

  “Slow but sure,” Marcus said. “Writing’s not play, but it’s coming.” The same speech for Mr. Sweeny and his mother. “Writing’s not play, but it’s coming.” He was quickly sick of hearing himself say it.

  Every night when he heard his mother at the door, he’d sit at his desk a little longer so she’d know he was working hard. “Well,” she’d say when he emerged, “How was it today?”

  “Terrific,” he’d say. “Yes, it started awful and ended horrible.”

  The rule was that he must sit at his desk for three hours every day, the same three hours he would have spent in school. And no skips allowed. There he sat like a chicken on an egg waiting for something to hatch. He’d scribble a few notes, write a sentence, sit there for fifteen, sometimes twenty minutes, then give himself a break. Get up, stretch, yawn, wander into the kitchen, eat a piece of cheese, drink a glass of milk, check out the newspaper, flip on the TV, watch for a while, then take a leak.

  By that time another fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five minutes had passed. Once in a while the phone rang. Someone selling ironing board covers. He clipped his nails, adjusted the shade at the window, waited for the phone to ring again.

  Saturday morning he and Alec played tennis. “You look like a monkey on his way to Wimbledon,” Marcus said, settling back in Alec’s car. Alec was wearing white shorts, a white shirt with red piping, white socks with red stripes, and sneakers with red slashes. “A hairy monkey.”

  Alec took a look at Marcus’s cutoffs, torn Adidas, and oversized Baltimore Colts shirt. “And you look like a refugee from the Salvation Army. So how’s it feel doing nothing?”

  “Like nothing.” He was so phony. It was incredible what he was telling people and what he was really doing. He was as big an actor as Alec.
But at least people knew when Alec was acting. They thought Marcus was telling the truth, and the truth was he felt dumb, he’d done so little this week. Practically nothing.

  Alec checked his watch. “I’ve got a rehearsal this afternoon. Terri and I are doing the kissing scene.”

  Marcus began to see another serious flaw in the writer’s life: no women. “How’s the leading lady?”

  “Gorgeous. Did you know your girl friend has been coming to rehearsal every day?”

  “Girl friend?”

  “Wendy. She’s there almost every day. Just sits in back and watches.”

  Marcus felt a twinge of jealousy, but he admired Wendy’s persistence. She wanted Alec and she was going after him. Just the way he was about being a writer. Did he really believe that? Well, it was only the first week, he’d hardly given himself a chance. Next week he’d really knuckle down. That made him feel better, and he started teasing Alec. “Are you sure you saw Wendy at rehearsal? I heard that your eyesight fails you sometimes.”

  “It was Ranger Wendy, all right. I was close enough to tell.” He smirked. “A very friendly person.”

  What did that mean? As if he didn’t know.

  On the tennis court, Marcus played aggressively, smashing the ball back at Alec, beating him three sets straight. “You play like an animal,” Alec said, drying his face. “I should have been concentrating more. My game’s a lot better than yours. I was off today.”

  “Your mouth sure isn’t.”

  Things were not going well for Marcus. In three weeks at home, all he did was work on the Victor Gorman piece. Sweeny kept wanting him to do more. Marcus sat at his desk and made lists of the cans and dry goods in the cupboard, the contents of the medicine cabinet, the names and apartment numbers of everyone who lived in the building.

  “How’s it going, Marco?” Wendy said, meeting him in the hall in school.

  “Writing’s not play.” He was afraid she’d start asking him what he was working on. My fingernails, and when I’m done with them, I’ll start on my toenails. He rushed past her. Then he felt he had acted badly. When he saw her later he went up to her and said, as if they were in the middle of a conversation, “Well, when are we going to get together and do something?”

  “When the train stops for the station.” Wendy straightened her fatigue cap. “You know, you are hard to take sometimes, Rosenbloom.”

  “I’m up and down,” he admitted. “But I’ve missed your cheerful mug.” He liked the way she was dressed, her baggy fatigue pants, and the tight green T-shirt that said When God Made the World She Wasn’t Kidding Around.

  “I miss your happy face too,” Wendy said.

  “Come on over after school, and we’ll get out and talk.”

  “I don’t like taking you away from your work.”

  “No, no, that’s all right.” He didn’t say that sometimes he felt like dragging people in off the streets for company.

  Thursday, Sweeny handed Victor Gorman back to Marcus. “Send it out. I think it’s as good as it’s going to be.”

  “But is it good enough?” Marcus murmured. His mouth was dry. “Maybe I should work on it some more.”

  “Where’s the Rosenbloom bravado? Submit it and see what happens.”

  “Okay, I’ll send it to Playboy.”

  “Why not? Give it a try. Might as well start at the top.”

  At home Marcus typed up the final copy. He typed slowly, groaning every time his fingers hit the wrong key. Downstairs he dropped the yellow manila envelope into the mailbox, then leaned against it feeling a proprietary interest. No more mail in this box. Some fanatic might mail a bomb; you never could tell. He sternly eyed a kid who had a letter in her hand. “What kind of stuff you mailing?”

  The girl looked at him. Marcus realized he was blocking the U.S. Mail and stepped aside. “You look like a good kid,” he said. Walking away, the girl twirled her finger at her forehead. Marcus continued to stand by the mailbox, not quite as militantly as he had before, a little more relaxed—more as an interested friend of the mail service.

  For a day his mood soared, but then he had to think of something new to write. He began to go out afternoons. The author in search of a story. He wore a long green wool scarf and a corduroy jacket with pockets for his notebook, pipe, and pens. He might be mistaken for an English writer. Thomas Hardy. No, he was dead. The great James Joyce. Should he buy a pair of steel-rimmed glasses?

  He went flying around the city, his head full of fantasies, but in the end he knew clearly that he wasn’t writing. A lot of little scribbles—“Bird droppings,” he called them. He wasn’t doing what he’d said he would do, write three hours a day. He was only playing at being a writer. Staying home had turned into a disaster.

  Should he go back to school, admit he’d failed? Could he face Sweeny, and his friends, and his mother? Not after the show he’d put on for her! She’d said he couldn’t sit still for thirty seconds. She was right and he was wrong. Better wait. Playboy was going to love his story. That Rosenbloom, he’s a gem in the rough. Dreaming again, but still, he should wait till he heard from Playboy and then decide.

  Meanwhile he applied for a stock clerk job at Nadia’s, a neighborhood market. A man wearing a black toupee took Marcus’s application. It was Nadia himself, sitting in a high booth. “Can you work evenings?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Weekends?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Captain Nadia said, “we’ll be in touch with you.”

  “Will it be soon, sir?”

  “We’ll be in touch with you.” He was dismissed.

  “Captain Birdbrain,” Marcus muttered.

  As he left the market he held the door for a tall, striking-looking woman with a little boy. “Do you know where I can put up a notice,” she said? She thought he worked in the store. He pointed to the bulletin board inside the vestibule.

  “Are there any tacks?”

  He pried a tack from the board and pinned up her notice. She stood close to him. Smooth, almost silvery hair hung to her shoulders. Black crayon lines of mascara outlined her eyes. She had a long regal nose, the nose of a princess.

  “There.” She stood back and looked at her notice. “I hope that will catch people’s eyes.” The notice was bordered with a design of red and yellow roses.

  WANTED IMMEDIATELY.

  RELIABLE RESPONSIBLE BABY-SITTER.

  AFTERNOONS, SOME EVENINGS.

  She picked up the little boy who had sat down on the floor. The woven silver bands around her wrist slid to her elbow. Then she pushed open the door—she was leaving! “A lot of people come through here,” he said.

  “Really.” Total indifference. An Ice Princess.

  He stood and watched her go, saw her get into a red Mustang and drive off. Then he moved, had to … didn’t think … couldn’t think. He ran down the street but it was too late. She had appeared out of nowhere and now she had disappeared again.

  9

  Thursday, Marcus had his weekly conference with Mr. Sweeny and had nothing to show him, just hoped he could fake it somehow. Mr. Sweeny was at his desk in the crowded office he shared with three other teachers. “Sit down, Marcus. How’s it going?”

  “Fine.” Marcus put on a false smile of confidence. His hand went to his back pocket for his notebook.

  “What have you got to show me?”

  The notebook was open to a page of lists he’d made: what people had in their shopping baskets, the names of stores on a certain street, the names of people who had made the obituary page that week. He handed Sweeny the notebook. “My laundry lists.”

  Sweeny flipped the pages casually. “What’s all this?”

  “I like the names of things. Open your drawer. I’ll copy down everything inside, or what you have in your pockets.”

  Sweeny handed him back the notebook. “All very interesting, but what does it mean?”

  He should have known Sweeny wouldn’t be taken in with his lists.

&n
bsp; “What else have you been doing this week?”

  “I’m working on something else.” And then the tall woman he’d seen in the market yesterday came to his mind, and he thought of the way she had disappeared.

  “Can I see what you’re working on?”

  “Well …” Marcus dug around in his pockets, found a pen. “I didn’t bring it because it’s not that developed yet.” He was improvising. “It’s about a girl.”

  “Tell me a little more.”

  “It’s about”—he said the first thing that came into his head—“Isabel Malefsky.”

  “Isabel Malefsky.” Sweeny nodded. “Good name for a character. I’m interested.”

  Marcus looked at the notebook in his hands. Isabel Malefsky was no character in a story. She’d been in his sixth-grade class, his first great obsession. He’d followed her around all one term like a dumb dog, and never spoken a word to her. He’d been a fat, crazy kid who couldn’t talk to a girl.

  “What’s the story?” Sweeny said.

  “It’s developing, coming slowly. I’m not ready to talk about it yet.” What a hypocrite. He could hardly wait to get away.

  That afternoon he couldn’t face his desk. The conference with Sweeny—he didn’t even want to think about it. Laundry lists! Disgusted with himself, he tossed the notebook aside. Maybe it would grow wings and fly away. Then he picked it up, afraid somebody would find it and read it. Great! Look what the birds are dropping these days. Sweeny should have laughed out loud. And then bringing up Isabel Malefsky. What was he possibly going to write about her? Where had she come from? He hadn’t thought about her in years. Was it because of the tall woman yesterday? He sensed the same obsession he’d once felt for Isabel building in him again. In everything he did he felt the fanatic in himself. The way he got ideas in his head: nothing could wait His desire to be a writer. The year he’d searched for his father; the man had hardly looked at him. Sally had warned him that time, too, but nobody could stop Marcus once he got an idea in his head. And was the tall woman only the latest fanatical idea? Yes, he wanted to see her again. And that afternoon he went back to Nadia’s Market.