Crossing California, page 29
On her way to the bathroom, Lana briefly wondered if she should go back and grab P.C.’s cock as he had asked her. She didn’t want to, but still, she liked having a boyfriend, liked the idea of talking on the phone to her boyfriend, liked the idea of coming to school and telling Mary Beth Wales what she had done with her boyfriend. But then there was something even better than telling people that she was dating P.C. Pendleton, she realized gleefully, and that was telling people that she had broken up with him. No, she could tell everyone, she wasn’t dating P.C. anymore; he kissed like a goy. In fact, he didn’t kiss at all; he slobbered. He didn’t even know how to go up her shirt; her boobs weren’t volume knobs, she’d told him—a phrase she’d heard Megan Knox use. When she got back to the classroom, P.C. was in a corner, pants around his ankles, industriously rubbing his penis.
“I’m breaking up with you,” Lana shouted. She slapped the paper towels down on the desk. “Don’t call me.” As she exited the Hebrew school, she heard a loud, distant groaning noise. “Like a goat,” she would tell everyone. “He grunted just like a goat.”
When Lana got home, her mother was cleaning the kitchen. In the den, Lana’s guests had been joined by Earl Weith, Todd Taylor, and Megan Knox. They were playing a spirited game of Led Zeppelin Charades; all the clues were for Zeppelin albums or songs. Todd pantomimed spray-painting on a wall and Julie shouted, “Physical Graffiti.” Earl said damn, this girl knew her Zeppelin, he wanted to party with her.
Lana’s mother said she’d come back early from Lake Geneva because of the weather. When Lana joined her in the kitchen, she asked Lana where she’d been. Lana said she’d been out with P.C. Oh, Lana’s mother said very calmly, did she know where her brother was? Lana said he was probably out looking for her; they’d gotten into a fight when Larry had seen her and P.C. making out. Oh, Lana’s mother said, again very calmly, did she know where her father was? Yes, Lana said, at the hospital; there’d been an emergency. Oh, Lana’s mother said, that was interesting; was anything else new? Yes, a couple of things, Lana said. She had good news and bad news, she said. The good news was that she thought she might have a chance to make it into the cast of Young Town after all; she was sure that the black kid Muley had made up his story and would probably get kicked off the show. Oh, Ellen said, what was the bad news? Lana said the bad news wasn’t really bad news; she hoped her mother wouldn’t be upset, but it was for the best. What was that? Ellen asked.
“I had to break up with P.C.,” Lana said. “He was just too immature.”
Ellen said she thought Lana had liked P.C.
“Yes,” Lana said. “But the world moves on.” She grabbed a bowl of chips and began snacking on them. Then she went to join the others in the den, thrilled that Mary Beth’s party was probably over by now and hers was still going strong. She hoped her mother would go to bed soon, so she could tell everybody what had just happened.
WILLS/SILVERMAN
Muley
After three months, Muley Scott Wills had gotten more or less used to the relative luxury of living in a new two-bedroom apartment with his mother on the east side of California Avenue. Deirdre Wills had used a chunk of Carl Slappit Silverman’s $5,000 check to furnish the place. There was a dining room with matching chairs and a lacquered oak table. There was a living room with a leather couch, a TV, and a stereo. There was a big kitchen with appliances, kitchen stools, a small breakfast nook, a refrigerator that was always full, and two dozen bookcases.
By most measures, Muley’s life would seem to have improved. In a neighborhood where progress was judged by whether one had moved east or west or stood still, Muley was a mile farther west than he had been in December 1979. His mother was finishing up her credits at Circle; she was substituting in the Chicago public schools, tutoring, and teaching college test prep classes, and though Muley saw her a good deal less than before, at least she seemed happier when he did. Young Town had been picked up by four other public radio stations nationwide and Donna Mayne said it would surely sweep the Jack Benny radio awards. And Muley’s mother had allowed him to sell every gift his father had ever given him, and he’d sold all of them—save for his hockey net, sticks, and puck—to buy the film editors he kept atop his desk. Muley had taken an entrance exam for Lane Tech, the magnet high school nearest his apartment, and though he’d arrived late and left early to get to a Young Town taping, he ranked a respectable 218 out of more than 900. It was not as impressive a score as Jill Wasserstrom’s—Jill had ranked eighth overall—but it was more than sufficient to ensure his admission.
Muley was also enjoying an unprecedented popularity among his peers. With the exception of Jill, he had always found his most rewarding friendships with adults—listening to Knopov’s Bakery manager Bess Vaysberg take on the Iranian situation, drinking ginger ales and, once in a while, beers with Mel Coleman at the Double Bubble. But now girls were calling him—every week or so, Connie Sherman would call just to say, “Hey, Mules” and “see what was going on.” Lisa-Anne Williams had invited him to go with her family to church and then to a Bulls game (he had declined, citing little interest in sports aside from hockey). And often on weekends, Gareth Overgaard would drop by with Michelle Wasserstrom and/or Myra Tuchbaum to see if Muley wanted to smoke a doob on Mt. Warren, grab a grilled cheese at Gulliver’s, or have what Gareth termed a Waukegan Night, which involved buying 32-ounce pops at a 7-Eleven and consuming them in a parking lot. Sometimes Gareth would come on his own to see if Muley wanted to go driving.
About every other time, Muley would say yes and spend his evening listening politely to Michelle’s relationship advice or Gareth’s political opinions or Myra’s lurid tales of swimming pool antics with Douglas Sternberg. But invariably, an hour or two into the evening, he would regret having come along and wish he was back home working on his films. In cinema, Muley seemed to have found his true métier. It was art and it was science, and unlike acting on radio, it was creative. He loved the process, watching how images cut together. It almost didn’t matter that all three short films he had made since he had become obsessed with the medium were now at Jill’s apartment; he had no real interest in watching them once he was done. And even though she had barely spoken to him since her Bat Mitzvah, he knew Jill was the only person who could truly appreciate his films. Those two obsessions—cinema and Jill Wasserstrom—had begun causing Muley enough difficulty at Boone Elementary that he called up Gareth to discuss it.
It had been several years since Muley had been particularly interested in school. Science and Math were easy. Of the books covered in Reading, he had either read them before or heard his mother describe them in detail. When he hadn’t read a story, it was usually because it was something didactic and dull, something with a message so blatant that Deirdre Wills would never have patronized her son with it, something replete with labored symbolism—something, say, about a world full of green people who shun a purple person within their midst. Muley spent almost every one of his classes dutifully storyboarding so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact with Jill. Most teachers were too concerned about the boys carving smiling penis faces into their desks to worry too much about a smart, underachieving kid doing well enough to get by.
But then there had been the U.S. Constitution test, administered by Mrs. Korab. Taking and passing The Constitution was Illinois’s only solid requirement for passing eighth grade. Students memorized the preamble and were required to answer a series of multiple-choice questions about the articles of the Constitution and their amendments. It was a test everybody feared, everybody studied for, and, as a rule, everybody passed. Muley had little interest in memorization and none in politics. When Mrs. Korab had conducted a mock presidential primary and had already censured Jill for choosing Barry Commoner of the Citizens’ Party (“Democrats and Republicans, Jill,” Mrs. Korab had said, wagging a finger, “we’re only interested in Democrats and Republicans”), Muley said he didn’t know who was running. Mrs. Korab had tried to help—she said that Howard Baker was running in the Republican primary. Howard was a nice name, maybe Muley wanted to vote for him. “I’ll abstain,” Muley said, quoting from an old movie he had once watched with Jill, “courteously.” The night before the test, everything tempted him. He chatted on the phone to Connie Sherman and listened to her talk endlessly about the singer Rex Smith, whom she’d seen perform at the amusement park, Old Chicago; he stayed out late at a Waukegan Night with Gareth; when he got home, he didn’t even open his Constitution sample test booklet. Instead, he spent hours drawing a flying trout for a stop-motion animation film he thought he might make. When he finally went to sleep, he assumed that he could pass the test by figuring out the right answers from context.
The following day, Muley found himself staring blankly at a booklet filled with indecipherable questions. He didn’t know what the items in the Bill of Rights might have been, had no idea what Section I, Article II, might have consisted of, certainly hadn’t memorized the preamble, had forgotten he was supposed to. When Mrs. Korab came to class the next day with the results, she beamed, effusing that the class had performed far better than expected. Only two people had failed. “Muley and Jill, see me after class,” Mrs. Korab said.
Muley had successfully avoided Jill up until that point. She always sat up front while Muley sat in the back. Jill was first to arrive and first to leave, while Muley would saunter into class just after the bell and take a long time packing up his bag when class was over. Whenever he saw Jill in the hallway, he would look down at the floor. By this point, the only contact they had with each other was the films he sent to her and the critiques of each that she sent to him through the mail, in which she skillfully avoided acknowledging the films’ emotional subtexts, concentrating instead on lapses in logic—“Penguins are monogamous so it seems unlikely that the penguin would leave her mate for the skunk,” she wrote. “I understand this is a cartoon, but it still has to be consistent.”
But when the bell sounded and the other students joyously bounded for the door, thrilled that they had passed The Constitution, Muley felt a sudden panic plunge through him. Trapped. There was Jill, sitting cross-legged in the front row, tapping her eraser against her desk—tap tap tap, tap tap tap; she was clearly aware that he was still in the room, but she didn’t turn around; obviously, she didn’t want to talk to him. But still he had to talk to her, it was ridiculous—it had gone far enough. He stood up, but Mrs. Korab told him to sit back down. This wasn’t a social club, she said.
As far as The Constitution was concerned, Korab said she was most disappointed with Muley. He had received the lowest score—was there some personal situation she should be made aware of? No, Muley said quietly. Jill stared straight ahead. As for her, Mrs. Korab said, she thought she had been more than tolerant of Jill’s tendency to spout political opinions that were not favored by the majority and had even done Jill a service by not tacking her essays to the classroom bulletin board, where they would incur the wrath of her peers. But now Mrs. Korab had to say that she really didn’t understand how someone could get every question right, yet leave the entire section on the Bill of Rights blank, thus ensuring her failure. Jill said that the test hadn’t asked her about the Bill of Rights; it had specifically asked her “What ten rights do you enjoy as an American citizen?” And since she prided herself on being truthful, the answer, she said, was none. She hadn’t been allowed to vote for the candidate of her choice in the school primary; in her apartment, all of her belongings could be subject to unreasonable search and seizure; her Bat Mitzvah had proved the absurdity of free speech; she may have had the right to bear arms but certainly didn’t enjoy it; and she was most certainly subject to cruel and unusual punishment—being forced to memorize all Constitutional amendments was a prime example. Mrs. Korab said that she didn’t want to discuss this “foolishness” any further. She told Muley and Jill that they would have to make up their Constitution tests the next Friday after school, and if they didn’t pass, they’d have to keep taking it until they did. The bell rang and Mrs. Korab wrote out late passes for PE.
As Mrs. Korab made out the passes, Muley knew this was as good a time as any to approach Jill; if he didn’t do it now, then they’d both be back in the classroom next Friday after school and they would both know that they’d been here today and neither had said anything to the other and it would be that much easier to not say anything ever again. But just saying her name was difficult, just getting out the “J,” so much so that Muley wanted to dash out of the classroom as quickly as possible, wondering what would happen if he dropped out of school, if it would have been better for him and his mother to move to Atlanta to Uncle Victor’s.
“J-Jill,” Muley said. Her head snapped quickly toward him, ponytail swishing. She didn’t say anything, just stared expectantly and raised her eyebrows slightly.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.
Jill rolled her eyes. As she responded, her voice had a snap to it, a hint of an exasperated sneer. “Sure you can talk to me,” she said quickly. “Who’s stopping you?”
She knew it sounded harsh and abrupt. But she couldn’t stand the timidity of the request, the self-effacement and the expectation inherent within it. Having someone in love with you was wonderful in theory; in practice, it was just plain irritating. Not that anybody had ever been in love with her, not as far as she knew anyway—maybe Shmuel Weinberg, who fell in love with any girl who said hi to him. But she didn’t want Muley to be in love with her. She didn’t want to be in love with Muley. If it was going to be all about expectations, all about being afraid to face her, all about “Jill, can I talk to you for a minute?” what good was it? Being in love was all about letting people down and being let down by them. It was about being lifted up too high, then dragged down too low. It was better to be alone, she thought; at least that was easy and even.
“Sure you can talk to me. Who’s stopping you?” To Muley, hearing the words felt like being dunked in ice-cold water. That was it, then, he thought. He’d expressed the depth of his feelings and what good had it done? He thought all he had to do was be honest and Jill would understand. This was the end of love, as far as Muley was concerned. Being in love was all about telling the truth and wishing you’d lied. It was about being lifted up too high, then dragged down too low. It was better to be alone; at least that was easy and even.
When Muley got home from school, he couldn’t even look at his Constitution study packet. And even more worrisome, he found himself unable to write or draw. He’d jot down ideas for sequences of images, then stop suddenly and stare into space, wondering who would see them and what difference any of it made. He called Gareth’s house and left a message with his father—a professor of Religion and Ethics at Northeastern Illinois. Gareth called back around midnight and asked if Muley was up for a Waukegan Night.
In Gareth’s car in the parking lot of Poppin Fresh pies, Muley felt better. In response to Muley’s concerns about Jill, Gareth said he had just been reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead in preparation for an Objectivist Party meeting the following night—Muley was welcome to come. He said he’d found most of Rand weird, creepy, and vaguely fascist, but there was something worthwhile to be found in almost every philosophy and Rand’s was no exception, particularly its espousal of individualism. People working at the height of their abilities to serve themselves best served mankind, Gareth observed. Altruism was a trap. “Don’t be a humanitarian, Wills; be an artist,” he said. “Do something for yourself; everyone will come running to you. Do something for someone else; that’s when they’ll start running away. That’s the best advice I can offer.” As for the rest of The Fountainhead, Gareth said that Ayn Rand could suck his dick.
As far as Jill was concerned, Gareth said, the moment Muley stopped thinking about her and started thinking about himself was when she would come back to him. Muley didn’t know if it was comforting or frightening that Mel Coleman had told him the exact same thing. But at least when he got home, he could look at his Constitution study packet. And he realized that once he had figured out how to pass the exam, he could stop studying and start penciling ideas for a new film, one that would finally break through to Jill or put her out of his mind.
When he had dropped Muley off at his apartment, Gareth told Muley to call him if he wanted to attend the Objectivists’ meeting. Muley told Gareth that he had to go to Young Town, then study for The Constitution (“They still make you take that?” Gareth asked. “That’s so frickin’ previous”) and work on his next film concept; it was unlikely he’d have time. But the next day, the minute Muley got home from the Young Town taping, he found himself dialing Gareth’s phone number and leaving a message with his mother—a public policy professor at Circle. Something had happened before the taping and Muley didn’t know anyone else with whom he could discuss the matter.
