SPARKLES LICKS PUDDLES OF COLA

MY BROTHER bet me five hundred dollars she wouldn’t make it past December. I accepted and won—Grandma died January 3rd. I went home to help my mother with funeral arrangements, but mostly I ate snacks and watched shitty movies. After American Ninja 2 I got up from the couch and kicked a bag of microwave popcorn. Unpopped kernels went everywhere.

I did a cartwheel into the kitchen and looked at food in the refrigerator and thought about my grandmother’s dentures. They were yellowed and ugly and shifted in her mouth, and I wondered why the dentist didn’t make them pretty and white. Realism, I guessed, the truthful treatment of material. Here’s some more: VC Andrews’ romance novels are popular, the dentist hurts, and Q-tips get yellow. The dog waddled by and I imagined cutting it in half with a sword.

I grabbed the two liter bottle of Coke, put the bottle on the table, unscrewed the cap, walked over to the cabinet, got a glass out of the cabinet, put the glass on the table, picked up the bottle, poured some Coke into the glass, paused, looked at the dog (who was looking at me) while I waited for the fizz to go away, topped off the glass, put the bottle down on the table, picked up the glass, drank half, put the glass down, thought about my grandmother and punched the bottle off the table. Sparkles licked puddles of cola.

I sat down, at the same table where I used to eat sweet breakfast cereals with 2% milk while listening to the sound of my mother’s high heels click the floor as she got me ready for school. I thought the Poconos were Caribbean islands back then. After school my brother and I toasted Ellios pizzas and talked about pretty girls we saw chewing sandwiches and drinking juice boxes through straws. Every Thursday night the white bags of drive-thru McDonalds sat next to the sink, every Friday night a grease-stained box of Chinese food from Wing-Wah Delivery. It is the table where I admitted to my father that I was afraid of porcelain dolls, and the table where my mother admitted to me, after her second coffee mug of FUKI plum wine, that her father was a fucking asshole who killed stray cats that wandered into his backyard with a shovel.

My grandmother died in this kitchen, near a toaster full of Pizza Bagels that weren’t quite ready, ten days after her asshole grandson, me, had given her the Richard Simmons Dance Your Pants Off workout video for Christmas. Her mouth was open and there was shit in her diaper. My mother found her.

I was the first one back, eager to help, less emotionally affected by the death of my grandmother than by the note on the table asking me if I would clean up my crumbs and vacuum the den before my brother arrived. He was flying into JFK and my mother had gone to pick him up. The note set me off, and so while Sparkles was pink-tonguing brown puddles, I turned and threw my empty glass at the toaster (a shiny chrome Krupps), threw the toaster at the microwave, picked it up by the cord, walked into the hall swinging it over my head and smashed it into the bookcase shelving my mother’s favorites—Women Who Love Too Much, WomanSpirit Rising, Too Good For Her Own Good, Only the Strong Survive, If It Hurts It Isn’t Love, Loving the Self Absorbed . . . I wonder if she bought all those thinking of me, or my brother, or my father, or her father, or all of us. I was still kicking the thing when Sparkles came bounding in, pounced on it, bit the cord, shook her head and dragged it around the room. We had a little tug of war before she rolled on her back exposing her belly. Her vulnerability made something in me ache to hurt her.

I decided it would be best if I left the house.

I’ll describe the walls because that’s easy—they were white, and I hurt my right pinky knuckle punching some of them while I walked through rooms searching for my car keys. My inability to find them frustrated me so badly that I beat up the bathroom door, limped away and waved my fist at the plaster statue of Beethoven’s head on top of the piano no-one played. After all that I found the keys in a coat pocket I had already checked twice but somehow missed. I grabbed the video and stormed toward the back door, but on my way I noticed Sparkles cowering under the kitchen table, shaking, terrified of me. I hated myself a little extra, fed her a slice of manufactured cheese, patted her on the head and took the back steps three at a time.

At the bottom I picked up a stick and swung it around because I like the noise and then I threw it at a leafless tree and missed. I opened the door of my black 1992 Hyundai Excel, climbed in and slammed it closed. The window handle fell off. When I started the car Justin Timberlake sang Cry Me a River and I wanted to kick him out a skyscraper window like Clapton’s kid; watch him fall from far away like 9/11 victims.

On Woodlawn Avenue I saw a mailbox painted like a cow. On Idle Hour Blvd I saw a mailbox shaped like a swan. On Shore Drive I did math with mailbox numbers until the 7-Eleven on the corner of Vanderbilt and Montauk. There was a telephone pole with two signs stapled to it. One read:

NO INSURANCE?

CHEAP DENTAL CARE

1 800 DENTALL

1324 LINCOLN DRIVE

The other was an invitation to a Mormon open house.

I pulled into the 7-Eleven and bought coffee and cigarettes and sat on the curb and smoked two and thought it through. I’d show up at the open house and knock on the door and say hello. Once inside I would do drugs and gamble and have sex with a hooker. Then I would give a lecture on evolution, do a scientific experiment (something with a Bunsen burner), accuse them of mental imperialism and kill everyone there. I would punch noses and poke eyes out and smash teeth out of skulls. I would walk on tables and jump off and kick heads. I’d grab everyday objects in the room and throw them at faces, pinch ladies’ asses and shove a small person into something sharp. I’d duck and weave and block slow punches, dodge lunges, light fires, insult children and mustaches. I’d read three paragraphs of FISHBOY and use page 56 to paper cut throats, kick stomachs and brush my teeth, crack spines and comb my hair, break necks and do long division. I’d poison like four of them. Also I’d breathe through a fluorescent colored snorkel—a pink one maybe—and I’d keep a pretty lady alive to fold my clothes and if she didn’t do a good job I’d bite her white arm. It would look like the teeth marks in a Styrofoam coffee cup. I took another sip.

I stood up, lit a third cigarette and threw the burning book of matches into the garbage bin. I watched from the car—black smoke, melting plastic, charred slurpee cups and candy wrappers, half-eaten hotdogs and flame swirled up and blackened then shattered the ten-by-ten foot front window. I felt better, and it was only 2:32 pm.

I pulled out of the parking lot and headed east down Montauk Highway and saw the West Sayville Fire Trucks speeding in the opposite direction. I watched telephone poles and small leafless trees blur by. I passed an Exxon and a Mobil and a Texaco and a Shell. The world is full of shit and gasoline. I passed lube joints and fast food huts, nail salons and pizza places, pharmacies and Old Navy’s. I thought about the American landscape and punching Morgan Fairchild in the face.

I passed Highway Call Box 5-492.

I passed a bank.

I passed a man hitchhiking.

Unlike most of my stories, this one does not end with me at a bar, or me at a bar and losing a fist fight, or me at a bar and talking to my father, or me at a bar and angry, or me at a bar and really drunk, or me getting thrown out of a bar for being really drunk, although I’m confident at least one of those will happen after the funeral. I should bring a change of clothes. This story ends at Mister Video.

I returned American Ninja 2 and put a shiny quarter into a giant gumball machine hoping to get a green one, which equals a free rental. If I don’t get green I like white ones because they don’t discolor your teeth. I thought about my grandmother’s dentures as I listened to the gumball spiral down and spiral down and spiral down and clink. It was yellow.