The Laws of Average Read online

  ENJOY THE little things IN LIFE FOR ONE DAY YOU MAY look back AND REALIZE THEY WERE THE big things.

  Unsolicited Advice

  When an unexpected gift arrives and it doesn’t have your name affixed to it, you must resist scratching the impossible-to-reach itch dead center in your back that this event/ object will inspire. Try practicing this by preordering something small on Amazon.com, like a yet-to-be-released DVD or book or whatnot, and the longer a gap between when you order it and when you receive it the better, so as to maximize the reliability of your experiment; destroy immediately all proof that you ordered the item at all, and make it impossible for yourself to uncover later that you did so. Put Sig.Other’s name on the package, and strengthen the test by electing to have it gift-wrapped, in relatively expensive wrapping paper with a high mirror finish and the largest red velvet bow the shipper/handler offers. The extra expense you incur here will totally be worth it, by the way, granted you can restrain yourself from opening the package when it arrives in the future, and granted, also, of course, that you haven’t already bungled things past the point of no return, and if you think this (meaning: the bungling, not the opening) might even remotely be possible in your situation, it’s probably best to order something that’s really for yourself, so when you fail your test and open what you weren’t supposed to open you will have a for-real Silver Lining Moment, or, at the very least, something new and shiny to cling to when you probably need it most.

  The Promise

  Roy grabbed Mary’s keys and moved toward the screendoor.

  “If you’re really going, at least pick up some cigarettes on your way home!” she barked from the back of the house, her voice pushing through the dim hallway. Roy didn’t turn around or slow a single step. Mary’s daughter was already perched in the driver’s seat of Mary’s Thunderbird, hands at 10 and 2 on the leather-wrapped steering wheel which was at least two full shades of red darker than the rest of the behemoth’s sticky interior, sweaty from the 100-degree temp.

  The girl grinned wide at him as he picked his way through the broken concrete of an otherwise perfectly serviceable sidewalk, thick tufts of broadleaf weeds and crabgrass anchoring themselves into the gaps and cracks. The previous winter’s cold had already done its damage, freezing every speck of precipitation the area had been lucky enough to get. And now it was the summer’s turn, evaporating every drop of precipitation the area had been lucky enough to get. The piano-black paint on Mary’s T-Bird had long given up to the inevitable creep of oxidation, which was long before Mary’s T-Bird belonged to Mary, which was just about the time Roy belonged to Mary.

  Roy creaked the car’s big door open and sat down. He passed Mary’s keys to the girl.

  “Same as last time, Roy?”

  Roy didn’t answer her as he fumbled through the glove-box, unearthing a rumpled pack of cigarettes, shrinkwrap still intact. He slapped the box down, just to the left of a large crack which ran all the way across the dash and had begun carving its way past the airvents above the push-key radio, the plastic gapped just far enough for the foam to show, an orangey sponge-crust drying and hardening with each successful rotation of the sun. He sighed loud enough that only he could hear.

  “Yeah,” he said without looking back at the girl.

  “Same way, Roy?”

  “Yeah.” He made a mental mark on the dashboard, noting the exact position of the box. “Two right turns.”

  “Same deal, Roy?” The girl turned square and leaned towards him a little bit, more determined to turn his eyes towards hers. Roy sighed louder this time, making sure the girl could hear him pull the air full cycle, all the way from inside the car and past his long nosehairs and down into his charcoaling lungs and back above his yellowing chin.

  “I ‘spose,” he said. Mary’s daughter jingled the keys in the ignition, her jaw a full sentence of smile punctuated by shiny white teeth.

  “But,” Roy said, now turned perpendicular to the girl who had no interest in matching his eyeline to hers. “Them smokes move even a creep towards that crack, you stop. And I drive. And you walk.”

  Mary’s daughter had heard this instruction set before. Had walked before, too. Keep the car moving straight but slow to the stop sign, and turn sharp but slow through the right-hand turn that took them past and away from Mary’s house on 6th Ave E, straight but slow through the next two intersections, and turn sharp but slow one more time, straight but slow a final blow, to The Beacon Pub + Grill where Mary bought cigarettes a pack at a time because she was always two stogies away from completely cold-turkey. If the girl successfully navigated the course without sending the pack flying across the dash of Mary’s T-Bird, Roy drove her to Some Boy’s house on 8th Ave W, where the girl was allowed a five minute porchstop visit. Mary didn’t know about the Some Boy part; Roy figured he was tempting fate enough as it was just teaching the girl how to drive. And the girl, well, unfortunately for Roy, the girl was as smart they come. Moreso, even.

  Mary’s daughter lit the engine up with a big turn of her thumb and index finger and the car shook awake, grumbling and yawning until settling into a low-rumbling idle. The red leather seats massaged their inhabitants, and the coardboard pine tree vibrated below the neck of the yardstick-long rearview mirror, the boxy aftermarket kind inset with mirrored squares pitched at awkward angles, promising a panoramic view of whatever the driver was constantly leaving behind (but always failing to deliver on said promise). The girl pushed her flip-flop into the brake pedal and paused for a second to check her reflection in one of the mirrored squares. She pouted her lipstick-less lips and flashed her big chocolate eyes back at herself. Roy didn’t pretend that she was merely checking her 6.

  “Really look before you put this bitch in gear,” he growled. The girl ignored him but went through the motion anyway, checking the framing of her bangs she’d spent the better part of 45 minutes brushing and spraying with Mary’s giant can of Aqua-Net. Roy watched her glance back up at the rearview mirror; he couldn’t be sure she had actually looked but she’d played the part well enough. When she gripped the steering column’s shifter, he threw his head back over his seat anyway.

  “Clear.”

  The car jerked with a fat, forward motion, its nose opening into the little street. The girl kept her vinyl sandal firm against the brake pedal and shot a full-on look to the box on the dash. It hadn’t moved.

  “Eyes on the road,” Roy said. Mary’s daughter rolled her eyes up the dashboard and onto the windshield. She kept her hand on the shifter and slowly raised the arch of her foot up and off the brake. Mary’s T-Bird crept forward as its transmission slowly turned the back wheels no longer held tight against their rusty discs. When she touched the thinner, longer gas pedal with the same foot, the engine surged and she instinctively brought the other sandal down where the previous one had just been not even a full second prior. The translucent red needle sealed behind the thick plastic of the tachometer throbbed as the engine revved, yet the car was no longer moving.

  “Yeh can’t hold both pedals down,” Roy said. “Let off the brake.”

  The girl eased her foot back from the gas pedal and the tach needle drooped. She hadn’t even thought about it.

  “I said brake.”

  “I know!” Blood rushed into the round cheeks of her round face on her round head. She didn’t look up into the mirrored squares to check, either. She could feel it, warm under her skin. Roy reached his arm towards the steering wheel, fingers spread into a web as he aimed them for the the dull knob on the shifter.

  “I’ve got it, Roy!” She stared hard into his face and clenched her hand tight around the knob, her arm locked where it latched at the elbow. Roy drew his hand back into his chest and met her eyes. She wasn’t even remotely fucking around.

  There are three accounts of what happened the rest of the afternoon, but only one of them made it back to Mary. The one that didn’t mention Some Boy on 8th Ave W. This was the same one Roy narrated to Mary when he arrived ba
ck at the house sans Mary’s daughter, the frame of Mary’s T-Bird bent where the girl had cut the corner onto 2nd Ave N too sharp and thundered over an ornamental lava rock decorating the empty parking lot of an insurance agency. This is the one where the girl was hysterically upset and terrified about Mary’s reaction and had begged Roy to deposit her at a friend’s house and that she would return to Mary’s house after Roy explained what happened because the girl needed to calm down first. This is the official account, and its facts are uncontested.

  The second account of what happened the rest of the afternoon is the one Mary’s daughter’s friend told Mary’s daughter’s friend’s father, the one which included all of the facts of the official account but adds the slight bend that Mary’s daughter needed a lift over to 8th Ave W because that’s where the car was going to be towed and then Mary’s daughter would snag a ride home with Roy in the flatbed, or something like that, because Mary’s daughter’s friend’s father neither paid much attention nor cared, which, of course, was the entire reason Mary’s daughter cajoled her friend to cajole her father in the first place. This is the same account that wrankled Mary’s daughter’s friend’s face because (A) she knew it wasn’t true and (B) Mary’s daughter absolutely bajillion percent protested her friend even so much as thinking she would tag along.

  The third account of what happened the rest of that afternoon is the one which matches pretty closely to the plan Mary’s daughter had all along, the one where she took the corner at 2nd Ave N too fast on purpose and with great aim.

  This is the one where her friend’s father pulled away with her friend still in the back seat because Mary’s daughter wouldn’t even let her out of the car to take the seat she had just vacated in the white Subaru, afraid that if she so much as cracked that back door, her friend would spring free like an excited puppy and the girl would never get her back into the car.

  This is the one where the girl resumed crying as soon as the Subaru made the right turn onto 3rd St, crying even harder than she had in front of Roy after bricking the car to a stop there in the furthest full lane of 2nd Ave N, the pack of cigarettes having sailed all the way into the back bench seat of Mary’s T-Bird—a perfect shot, really, even better than the one’s she’d practiced in her mind dozens of times before drifting off to sleep in Mary’s house.

  This is the one when she pounded the lead door knocker on that monstrous house on 8th Ave W lined by equally monstrous hedges, the girl’s sandals sticky on the painted porchboards, her eyes flooding, cheeks burning when the screen door snapped behind her and she stood inside. This is the one where Some Boy pulled her into him with his thin arms, the hallway shrinking with his breathing, and the buddump-buddump-buddump-buddump under her ear, the cartilage pressed all the way into his T-shirt, the outside world muffling and fuzzing as she pressed hard into him, trying to ignore the datastream pouring into her brain from the other ear until Some Boy tipped her temple towards him and cupped the open ear with his hand, sending her into a stereophonic blur of warmth interrupted only by the voice imploring her to “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

  This is the one where the girl led their hand-holding processional up the large wood staircase, a tiny parade of flip-flops and bare feet up into the empty room in which Some Boy slept and dreamt of Mary’s daughter, the empty room in the empty house filled with their meager shuffling even though there was no need for quiet, because this was all part of It, and the girl was all the way inside now, sitting him on the foot of his own bed, closing the door they’d just passed through, the grainy floors groaning softly under her steps as she kicked off her sandals—1—2—and they slapped against the mopboards.

  This is the one where Some Boy sat absolutely still, shushed by the girl’s index finger balanced perpendicular against her lips, the girl’s sign language echoing Some Boy’s words from the hallway now a full story below them, her other index finger noodling her thin poplin shirt apart, the skin of her neck fading from the summer’s bronze, the gradient bleeding into the same shade of notebook paper Some Boy used for scribbling endearments and affections to her, her belly a puff of cotton.

  This is the one starring Some Boy inching towards her when she dropped her arms, scooching his knees forward with thin bursts from his calves until the tips of his toes discovered her shirt on the small creep of floor between them.

  This is the one playing out in her mind, an opera.

  This is the one of no turning back. This is the one.

  The only.

  We Always Just Say Catastrophic

  I didn’t come here with her, nevertheless she is slow-dancing me above a gymnasium floor freshly sealed with acetane two days ago and definitely still reeking of it. Bon Jovi’s power ballad “Never Say Goodbye” is thundering its way through the other couples here on the floor before shattering against the bleachers where other color-coordinated pairs of people are either arguing or not trying hard enough to conceal their clumsy groping of one another. There are also a few singles sprinkled amongst them, but the loners mostly sit in the front rows of the bleachers, where the couples have dibs on the higher planks, higher and further back at nearly a 45 degree angle overhead. By the time the sound waves get here, they are thin, watery, and a bit shrill. This, despite the fact that the Z-103 sound crew (comprised of only one dude, a lone radio DJ who calls himself Logan Tusow (aged 46) and has arguably the area code’s thinnest beard (b/w matching moustache that doesn’t touch) and rents to himself his rent-to-own PA system on Friday nights (divorced three times, currently engaged, no children) to all the junior high schools) has the bass jacked up so high that the large framed photos of basketballers in short-shorts are rattling against the brick wall to which they (the photos—not the basketballers nor their short-shorts) are affixed, as are the shoegazers underneath who don’t feel like bleaching it, who instead park themselves at L-shaped angles against the walls surrounding the entire area, so from way up above (assuming you could actually get above, that is), if you were to look through the roof as if it weren’t actually there (another fairly large assumption, obviously) and stare down, it would almost seem like the borders of this room are constantly infected with carpenter ants. Occasionally glances rise up to make sure the photos buzzing overhead aren’t ready to crash down on them when they aren’t looking (which is never) or in some way expecting it (ditto). Because that would just be their luck, they think, and it would confirm their reticence to come in the first place, so, in a sense, there are a handful actually wishing for it to happen, so they could later tell their respective whomevers (from the dreamscape fog of a hospital scene played out over and over again in their minds bent by watching far too many Hollywood sap films and mid-afternoon soap operas) I TOLD YOU SO, and soak deep down into their self-deprecation. But for the majority of them (and, quite likely, really, ALL of them, even the ones praying for the catastrophe from above that will never come), the longing to be part of the central scene on the dance floor—to be only of of the legs of those stiff compasses lumbering and spinning around one another—well, that longing simply overwhelms them.

  Case In Point: Lucy Walker, cajoled into coming by her friends Monica and Shawneen, who purposely didn’t tell Lucy they were meeting Terry and Tracy Franks here, and who, upon seeing aforementioned Franks Brothers, squealed in complete syncopation as if they had rehearsed the precise tone and octave (they had) for the last two weekend sleepovers at Monica’s house (these, too, Lucy had not been informed about nor invited to, for now-obvious reasons).

  Case In Point: Graham Nelson, whose mom begged (and ultimately bribed) him to come tonight for the official reason that all his friends from this new school would be here (all zero of them) and he wouldn’t want to regret not going to this some 20 years later, but for the unofficial reason that Graham’s mom was meeting Graham’s dad for a roleplay session at the Purple Sage Motel just down Kimberly Road, and she couldn’t miss her chance (again) to play Daddy Warbucks in their Little Orphan Annie Routine.

  Case In
Point: Cindy Barker, who didn’t go home after school today, hiding in the shower room until the Sadie Hawkins affair tonight started taking shape with its folding tables screeching across the gym floor and the early-arrivers arrived early sporting their identically-paired/colored/sized/ stretched/embroidered Izod polos; Cindy Barker, who took Angee Feltman’s threats all week to “beat” her “ass” as true and unalterable fact; Cindy Barker, who had blown the points curve for all the pre-algebra classes all trimester, five straight tests and six pop quizzes in a row.

  Case In Point: Angee Feltman, who is totally unaware of Cindy Barker’s breath, scent or smell here along the wall, but even if she were, the plain truth of the matter is that Angee wouldn’t make good on those earlier promises to “beat” any portion of “ass” because she is here waiting for Val Talaander and Katrina Ailes to show up. And they aren’t going to. And Angee hasn’t started to realize this just yet, so she is perpendicular to the wall, just left of the double metal doors propped open-open with matching metal folding chairs, her toe touching the same wall where Lucy, Graham and Cindy currently reside, Angee pretending that she is only temporary here despite the fact she isn’t rocking an Izod, the embarrassing truth still waiting to reveal itself while she queues for Val and Katrina all evening, because what it all really boils down to is everyone here is just killing time until their parents roll into the parking lot at 9:30 to corral them all like farm animals. It just seems that some of them—the wallflowers especially—are more aware of this fact than the others.