I tried living in the dorms my freshman year and couldn’t get any work done. Between the stereo wars, parties, and binge-drinking roommates bounding in at three A.M. with faceless drunk girls crashing across bed springs, my nerves went from bad to shot. Now I have an off-campus apartment, a mother-in-law room in back of the two-floor walk-up. My landlandy, Mrs. Manfreddi, bakes me cakes and pies and doesn’t chase me down for the rent if I’m a few days late. She spends most of her time with her spindly, diseased tomato plants in the yard, cursing at them in Italian.
I write, submit to the top magazines, and collect rejections. Sometimes the mailbox is so full that the postman has to bundle my manuscript-stuffed envelopes with twine.
My insomnia is worse now than ever, but at least it lets me stay busy. When I’m not writing I’m working at one of my plethora of part-time jobs. I work the drive-through window of Cabo Wabo Cantina. I rent skates at the Boogie Paradise roller rink and shoes at the Top Tier bowling alley. I pick up extra shifts and bartend at three bars on the weekends.
This is a small college town. I see Beth Moore and her friends practically every night somewhere on Main Street. She either doesn’t recognize me or pretends not to know me. Her laughter is breezy and inspiring. I give her extra Wabo fries for free and don’t charge her for the skates. I pour her top-shelf scotch. She says thank you with a sweet tremolo of a giggle, but says it turning away, as if she’s speaking to someone beside me instead of me. I wave to her back as she heads out onto the rink, the lane, the dance floor.
I head home and study chemistry and calculus and ethics before trying to sleep. But every night ends the same. With me at my desk, staring at the page, being willful and fake. My losers quip dialogue like heroes and my heroes have the maudlin voices and doomed destinies of losers. I type “The End.”
In an effort to encourage us to do even better work, Hal suggests we hold a contest. The most popular story written in class from now until the end of the semester will win signed copies of his three novels and passes to the movie version of his current bestseller The Secret Chambers of My Heart. My classmates respond with smiles and giggles and sighs and hell-yeahs. They speak to him like they’re his children, and he speaks back to them like he’s their father. A humble, compassionate, arrogant, genius father.
They already have his books. And they all had their copies signed on the first day of class, forming a lengthy line around his desk. He touched girls on their wrists very lightly. He shook hands and clapped guys on their shoulders. I sat in my seat and watched the proceedings with a kind of awe. Hal kept asking, “And who shall I make this out to?” One after another they said their names. Hal managed to repeat each name and make it sound solemn. When they were done he glanced at me and with a chuckle asked, “And who are you?”
It’s a good question. I figure I’ll get back to him on it someday.
Fruggy Fred doesn’t like anybody watching him while he reads his story. He asks us not to turn in our seats. He’s back there behind me, clearing his throat, the pages in his hand flapping as he trembles. Some people might think his fear is part of his passion. Some people would be wrong. Hal tells him to relax and take his time. Hal promises that everything is going to be all right.
I shut my eyes and listen.
Fruggy’s worked hard to lose his holler accent. He sounds New York born and bred. He sounds like everyone else. I can hear him sort of dancing in his seat as he reads his story. All three hundred pounds of him swaying in his seat, heels shuffling, kicking my chair. I know he’s got the echoes of a jug band in his head, but he won’t let anyone else know it.
He wants everybody to understand that the fat white trash feel love. The fat can be heroic, the fat want to have children, the fat white trash can say the right words at the right times. A throb of sorrow works through his voice. He swallows tears.
I want to slap him. I want to shake him. I want to haul Fruggy to his feet and ask him, How the hell has this happened? Fruggy, how did they get you?
He’s settling for the thinnest self-description there is. Fruggy Fred doesn’t write about singing Ozark backwoods songs or playing the banjo, which he does extremely well. He doesn’t discuss how he came up out of the Missouri holler on a music scholarship. How his mother cooks crank, how his sister was killed in Afghanistan. How his daddy died from eating poisoned squirrel. The years at college have murdered his concept of himself. The rush and patter of his classmates has deformed him, made him forget who he is. Fruggy Fred used to be my roommate three years ago when I lived in the dorms. So much has changed.
He goes on about fat. He goes on about pretty girls not liking him. His voice is flat, without melody. There’s nothing mellifluous about it. Maybe the jug band is dead in his head. Maybe he can no longer pluck a banjo. They’ve done it to him. They’ve filled him full of doubt and fear, something nobody in the holler could ever do.
The fat guy in his story watches the pretty girl turn away from him and walk away into a sunset.
The pretty girls in class are crying. Hal claps his hands. The rest of them follow suit. Soon, the applause is deafening. I finally turn in my chair. Our eyes meet. Fruggy Fred is smiling so widely I can practically see his tonsils. I wonder if he’ll ever visit his sister’s grave again.
I see Beth Moore every night that week. She’s dating a few different guys and these guys all have a taste for Wabo burgers. I take their money and hand them their orders and always let my gaze linger an extra moment on Beth in the passenger seat, snuggled up beside the beau. The beau turns and hands her the fries and she plucks at the box daintily, pinching a fry between two fingers. She eats slowly, letting the fry hang from her mouth the way kids do when they’re pretending to be smoking cigarettes. She lips the fry and I tell the beau, “Thank you for visiting Cabo Wabo Burger. Please come see us again soon.” The beau ignores me. Beth ignores me. The french fry ignores me.
I watch the car speed out of the parking lot and make a squealing left turn. The brake lights blaze for an instant and then vanish. I shut my eyes and still see the burning red points for a moment, a soccer mom with a bunch of crying kids already at the window. She looks at me as if she wants me to take all her pain away. I’m looking at her with the same expression. We’re like that for a while.
The following week, Beth writes about her family. She lives her life and then lays it out across the pages without dramatic tension. Her narrative voice lacks confidence. She’s repetitive. Her dialogue is unnatural and when she reads she tries on voices. They all sound like her, especially her mother.
But the truth is there, as clear as a bell tolling vespers. She discusses her father, a cop over on Oceanside who’s nearly put in his thirty and is ready to retire. She explains how the burden of battling evil on a daily basis has taken a severe toll on her old dad. Her brother is also a police officer, and she’s witnessed him change from a moderately self-centered punk into a resentful, hard engine of fury and justice. She doesn’t have a good relationship with either of them. They drink too much. Her parents argue. Occasionally her old man slips and begins to discuss some terrible event like walking into a bodega after a hostage-crisis situation and having nothing to do except help clear away the bodies. Her brother is getting a divorce, and her three-year-old nephew wonders why Daddy isn’t coming home anymore.