“Should I make her a card? What should I write on it, though,” Alicia said. Aaron was losing concentration again — so fast, he thought factually — was thinking about a story he had been working on, but then Alicia’s voice became suddenly very loud. “You’ve got to stop doing that,” she said. “You can’t just phase out like that. That’s so rude. Do you know how rude that is?”
“I know,” Aaron said. “Sorry. I’m really sorry. I know it’s really rude. I really am sorry.” He was. But should he be apologizing this vehemently? It felt mindless and insincere. “You do it too,” he said. He didn’t know this for a fact, but it was a good, vague thing to say, probably. There was a long moment of silence, and then he tickled her; she tensed and got quickly out of bed.
She walked to the bathroom door, slowly turned around, came back to the bed, and lay down.
“I’m going to sleep,” she said, but then got out of bed again, left the room, and came back with a steak knife, held by her head, like to attack. She walked to Aaron and stabbed him in the chest. The blade was flimsy, Aaron saw. Plastic. He laughed. “I’m serious,” Alicia said. She was grinning. “I’m kind of angry.” She threw the knife across the room, where it fell on a shirt, from which a silverfish darted out, stopped, and then glided slowly into the bathroom.
Alicia lay down facing away. “Did you like that?” she said. “It wasn’t just for fun.” She pulled the covers up, tight, to her chin. “Don’t worry. I’ll get over this,” she said. “I’m just sleepy. I’m just worried about my sister. Nothing’s wrong.” Lately, they were always reassuring each other that nothing was wrong; and probably it was true — life wasn’t supposed to be incredible, after all. Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some went straight to video. This seemed right. That’s exactly, literally, right, Aaron thought, already mocking himself. He could not sleep and began to worry about his parents. They were always yelling at each other, about the stock market. They stayed home every day and had no friends. Actually, they did go to the movies every week; they did that. Still, there was something disastrous about them; that they had only each other, as they were immigrants and so had no relatives nearby; or that they didn’t seem to have any hobbies, or interests, even. They were incomprehensible to Aaron. He was, though, writing a story about them, whatever that meant.
He had an idea one day, to switch into Alicia’s writing workshop. He would surprise her or something. He was lazy to do the official switching, so one day he just affected an air of having switched — something of ironic efficacy, of recent bureaucratic struggle overcome, he guessed — and then went in, a little blank in the face, prepared to blame the registrar. But no one said anything, not even Alicia.
“Aaron, yay,” she had said, actually; but that was all.
A few weeks later, they were discussing Aaron’s story; not the one about his parents — he was still working on that one, as it had changed on him, taken on a made-for-TV movie tone, which a story could do — but a different one; not a serious story, but one that Aaron was proud of. He had worked very hard on making it impervious to criticism.
“This has no literary value,” Alicia said, after some generic praise from the class.
“You have no literary value,” Aaron said. “You as a person.”
“That’s so good,” someone said softly.
“You’re quoting me,” Alicia said. “Everyone; he just quoted me.” She had been depressed lately, she had been telling Aaron once or twice per week. (“You’re not depressed,” Aaron would say. “If you’re depressed so am I. We both are.”) She was thinking about quitting school, moving back home, up north. She worried about her parents and mildly retarded brother; and her sister, who had stayed home, seven years now, rather than go to college.
“You’re quoting me,” Aaron said. It was his word against hers, he knew, though probably they shouldn’t be quarrelling in class like this. But he was grinning, so probably it wasn’t quarrelling — probably the grinning made it okay.
“College … has no literary value,” someone said. The class was an incisive one, though in a meek and circuitous way, as they were shy people, really — fearful, above all, Aaron knew, of the stupid remark, the trite sentiment; always coming in late to avoid small talk; the dreaded small talk! — though, depending on mood, and on drugs, no doubt, they could get a bit wild, as they all had good senses of humor and playful spirits (after reading D.H. Lawrence’s The Blind Man the previous week, they had laughed and laughed at D.H.’s use of a mollusk simile; the lawyer who was like a mollusk whose shell is broken).
“What about community college?” the teacher said. “I think those have literary value.”
“Community colleges with minority make-ups have literary value,” Aaron said. He remembered something; a few days ago he had joked about community colleges — condescendingly, Alicia had thought; and then they fought — had said something about the vague leper colonies of them. “Community colleges on the west coast have beach value.”
“Littoral value,” Alicia said slowly. Aaron looked at her.
“Well then, what’s more important,” the teacher said. “Literary value, or beach value? Compare and contrast. Two pages, choose your own font, due next week.” The teacher claimed to believe that no one would write anything of importance between the ages of fifteen and forty. He was not very attentive in class — sometimes letting discussion dwindle into woozy, melancholy, time-distorting silences; sometimes getting up casually to use the restroom, like a student! — but was really good at taking sarcasm to the next level, which the class found idiosyncratic and refreshing and really liked, a lot.
They drove two hours to visit Aaron’s parents one day.
Aaron’s mother was sitting in the living room, blushing, crying a little. The TV was on. Aaron’s father was in the computer room. He said that Aaron’s mother had just lost $20,000 by shorting the wrong stock. He was hunched close to the computer, and did not look angry, but nervous, or else giddy — it was hard to tell.
“They always fight about the same things,” Aaron said in bed. “They’re not in love. Not even close. Actually, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. All I know is I’m worried about them. All I know’s I have this image of a swamp and it’s rising up and moving into me, like a fog. I read about swamp-fogs. Swamp gas. They rise up and move and people think they’re spaceships. Will-o’-the-wisp. That sounds like a toilet paper for elves. Upper class elves.” He felt excited. Being with Alicia in a large house in his childhood bed excited him for some reason. He really was worried, though.
“Your dad on the computer, he was like a mad-scientist,” Alicia said.
“They have money but never spend it. All they do is lose it in the stock market.” Aaron laughed. “They’re so bad at the stock market. What is the stock market anyway? A computer or what? It’s like an idea or something. It’s probably an entire country. Some tiny country between Mongolia and China, with a rainbow-colored force-field around it.” He thought about that and felt a bit nostalgic. He kind of wanted to move to that place. “And what’s gravity? No one knows. No one cares. Why is there gravity? That’s so weird. That’s like, why are there things? That’s so depressing, that that question even exists. But sincere, I think. I mean I don’t feel fake at all, asking that. Finally, I don’t feel fake!” He had talked too long, he knew. He wouldn’t talk anymore. Alicia would talk. Or she wouldn’t. Aaron had the feeling that she was devoting little to no attention to him while worrying secretly and intensely about other things. “Are you thinking about your sister?”