More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Control the brain, and the rest is easy.”
I wrote MOM across the top of the tree. I wrote ME in the middle of the trunk of the tree. Mrs. Second Grade stood for a minute and I heard it. I heard it click in her head and I heard her heart break for poor little me. Never had a chance. No limbs. No leaves. No twigs. No pets just for fun.
I am somebody’s son.
Shovel snow, shovel dirt, shovel Mom, shovel myself. Eventually I might get to the answer. Sounds stupid, right? A sixteen-year-old kid looking for the answer when he doesn’t even know the question. But we all know the question.
She just closes her eyes and flickers from one place to the next.
But boys will be boys, and boys like weird things like snakes.
A man I never met—a man whose name I don’t even know—he’s crippled everything about me.
“The world we live in—this dominion of Northern Europeans—is the way it is because of Solanum tuberosum. If you ask me, it’s ironic that our ancestors were able to avoid poisoning themselves on the plants, and yet rose to poison the whole world with themselves.”
Slip and fall for all I care. Crack your head open. Fifty years together and the only action I get in bed is your snoring.
Gottfried never told Marla about the robins—it wasn’t right for a man to cry in front of a woman like that.
Marla had her own robins and sometimes she cried about them, too.
Sometimes he feels like he’s splitting in two.
“Fucked if I do, fucked if I don’t.”
I walk to the road, brushing the caked snow out of the creases of my jeans, and look up and down for the mystery girl who lights snowflakes on fire.
Gottfried had split in two, right there in the station wagon. In order to get through high school. In order to get through college fraternity brotherhood. In order to marry Marla in 1970. In order to do pretty much everything. The boy who cared about robins was always there, but he was a wart, a sore, a bad tattoo.
Her eyebrow is controlling me. If she lifts it, I feel I have to say one thing; if she lowers it, I have to say another. It’s a magical eyebrow.
I nod and walk down the steps, and it all makes sense now. But it doesn’t make any sense because that shit never makes any sense.
He looks at the shovel, I look at the shovel, we both ignore that I’m carrying a shovel.
These are my father’s last six months on planet Earth.
He wants to find out the point of all of it. He’s trying to comprehend the meaning of life. He’s trying to finish the puzzle before it finishes him.
a guy named Crapper invented the ballcock, which is, without any doubt, the funniest word in the English language. Ballcock. Say it ten times. Hilarious.
Food poisoning makes you appreciate things more. I recommend it to anyone who thinks their life is shitty. Believe me, when that fire hose of diarrhea starts, you will realize that up until that moment, your life was fine. Also, you will appreciate the flush toilet even more than you did twenty minutes before when you were puking your guts out.
I don’t know if it was hanging out in Negril or with Eleanor or being raised by my dad, but I’ve never understood white people who can’t admit they’re white. I mean, white isn’t just a color. And maybe that’s the problem for them. White is a passport. It’s a ticket. The world is a white amusement park and your white skin buys you into it. A woman in economy argued with me about this once. She said, “I’ve heard this idea and it makes me uncomfortable.” “It probably should,” I said.
You don’t have to be racist to not know you’re white. But sometimes you do. And Marla has no idea she’s white or that the whole world was made for people like her.
Five kids and not one of them offers me a chair for dinner.
They weren’t like us, no. They were better/stronger/smarter because they had to live in the same world with people like my grandmother.
“Existence is wasted on the living.”
I can’t imagine what she’d say if she knew that I’m falling in love with him.
I have what you need. I have your youth. I have the euphoria you checked at the door when you stood at the altar, defended your dissertation, said yes to that job you never wanted. Not my fault you can’t move forward. Not my fault you made promises you don’t feel like keeping. My legs can’t save you. My weed can’t save you. Even when I go looking for your special orders. Your coke. Your oxy. Your ecstasy. I make my trades and I bring you your goods. And still, you can’t be happy.
You know me but you don’t know me.
Safety is a lie. I’m floating in space with no tether. I’m underground and existence is pointless until I find the right roots to the right plant. It’s hard to breathe here. It’s hard to see here. I just keep living, but I don’t know what for. I make movies. Movies in my head. I plan everything. Every step. Every word. Mostly I plan to avoid. Avoidance is the only way to live like this. You never told me who my father was. You never told me where I got half of me. I’ll always be half lost. Half here. Half real.
What if he was a bad guy? What if he was some guy who hurt you? What if he was someone who didn’t know how to take a no? What if he was someone you don’t remember? What if he was someone you don’t want to remember? What if he comes back one day and wants me to visit him? What if he finds me on the Internet and asks me to go fishing? Will he drown me? Will he drown you? Will he blow up our house? Will he steal our TV? What do I do then? What do I do when he comes for me? Do I even want to meet him? What if he’s rich and can help us out? We could buy a house. We could afford more food. That’s
...more
Two blocks later he rolls through a third stop sign with a cop right across the intersection. Bill waves. The cop waves back.
She’s more white than Mexican, but she speaks Spanish. Or she can. She doesn’t because Bill told her that in America, we speak English.
Times are dark.
Like, before they invented the flush toilet with the ballcock like we have now, we were either shitting in outhouse pits or, if you had a toilet, you had to flush it by pouring water into the bowl. Either way, you had to deal with your shit. You had to look at it. You had to figure out what to do with it. Now, we all just flush and pretend we never shit in the first place.
“Potatoes are one thing. People are another. You can’t abandon people and think they’re going to be fine. People need things. Probably love most of all.”
My family is dying and it’s the weirdest feeling in the world because I was already alone. What’s this, then? Ultra alone? Super alone? Mega alone?
I think I just puked out the last of my childhood because I feel like a man now.
for some reason, being lost underground isn’t half as scary as being lost up here in the sun.
She’s the meaning of life. She is. Look at her.
I’m really just looking for a way out of where I am. She deserves better. She’s a human, not a door.
“My parents always said they were assholes, but I figure I’ll give them a try,”
“Thing is,” he says, “we can run around the planet a hundred times and we’re still who we are.”
When the police arrive, they have no idea they’re about to solve a missing-persons case that’s nearly two years old.
Sheep, eagles, penguins, whales, water, trees, mountains, stars, fresh air she can’t breathe. Flickers. Flickers.
There’s a dead girl in the forest. We’ll find her. You didn’t.
“You’re not missing half of you. You’re whole. A whole person. You’re better off than a lot of people who know who their dads are.”
We all hold hands and stay quiet. We eventually hear a car coming. No red-and-blue lights or any of that. We keep holding hands. Five cousins. Five accidental cousins. Volunteers. Descended from potato farmers. Underground. Now emerging. You think this is crazy. You think this is too cosmic to be real. You think what you want. This is the best buzz I’ve ever had, and I’ve tried it all.
Some of us take a minute to use the bathroom before we leave. I go last and I flush the toilet twice, just to marvel.
