A. You know something that occurred to me when you were talking before? I think you’re too hard on yourself about your father.
Q. No, I’m too impatient with him. I’m an impatient person. There’s a blind guy who works out at my gym, and the other day he passed gas. And it was pretty loud. And, my immediate reaction was like, Eww, dude, gross…but then I thought that the farting is probably some kind of echolocation technique that the guy is using so he can navigate around the gym…which would be really cool, y’know? But my first reaction, my sort of default response was just this kind of impatient judgment without taking the time to try and understand what was going on… (MARK’S MOM points to another indeterminate visage on the floor.)
A. You know who that looks like a little bit?
Q. I think that looks a little like Julianne Moore…if Julianne Moore had cystic acne or something.
A. Where are you looking?
Q. Over here.
A. No, Mark — here, here. Tell me who that looks like to you. You see where I’m talking about? Here — there’s a head and the neck…
Q. Are you talking about that guy who does the show on the Food Network? You think it looks like that guy?
A. What guy?
Q. The guy who hosts that show where they give you the different foods and you have to combine them somehow into a meal…like Arctic char, goji berries, mascarpone cheese, and cotton candy…Chopped. The host of Chopped. You think that looks like the host of Chopped?
A. No, no, no. It looks like that lovely Italian anesthesiologist I was talking about before, remember? The one that made a pass at me when I was pregnant with you.
Q. Mom, how could I possibly recognize someone who made a pass at you when you were pregnant with me? What did I have, like intrauterine X-ray vision or something? You wanna know who that actually looks like to me now? Remember I took you to that incredibly brutal, gory Korean movie? Uh, what was that called? Uh…I Saw the Devil. Remember that? And you walked out.
A. Oh God, yes! Why did you take me to something like that?
Q. Mom, when I suggested it, you told me you’d read about it in the Times and wanted to go see it with me.
A. I must have gotten it mixed up with something else.
Q. Well, anyway — it sort of looks like the guy who played the serial killer…uh…Choi Min-sik. (She shrugs.)
A. You know I wanted to ask you something — you mentioned a couple of times what if someone asked you to give advice to young writers, but you never really gave a straight answer. Do you actually have any advice you’d give?
Q. Well, you know what?…Seriously…this is a straight answer…and I think this is true for everyone, and so logically it must be true for young writers: never eat candy out of those, those open bins they have in the lobbies of movie theaters. I went to this multiplex once to see, uh…I don’t remember what I was seeing…but, I was in the men’s room before the movie started, and I watched this guy come out of a…a stall, and not wash his hands, and he heads straight for those candy bins in the lobby, and he sticks his gross, unwashed, E. coli hand in this bin of sour gummy worms or whatever it was and rummages the fuck around in there. I mean, that’s like direct ass-to-mouth candy. (That’s a…a porn expression. You probably don’t know that one…)
A. That’s absolutely revolting.
Q. Well, y’know, aphids drink leaf sap and then excrete droplets of this sugary liquid from their rear ends, and that’s the stuff that ants drink, so…I mean, it does happen in nature. (He shrugs, changing the subject.)
Q. What would you say if someone said to me, “I don’t think there was any reading. I don’t think there’s any autobiography. I don’t think there’s any fucking, uh…any fucking video game. I think you and your mom just came to a mall, came to a food court, sat down, and had something to eat. And I think you just stood up on a table and started talking like some fucking nutjob. Or did some kind of loony reenactment of your internal psychodramas or you and your mother’s weird-ass folie à deux, or some reenactment of your little…your weird little lunches together at the Bird Cage at Lord & Taylor a million years ago. And that’s all this whole thing is.” What would you say to that?
A. You know what I’d say? I’d say, that’s the great thing about literature. Everyone’s entitled to his or her own interpretation. That’s what I’d say to that.
Q. Well, all I know is — I’m “real.” I’m bringing “realness.” I’m singing all the parts. And if the flying balcony with Mussolini at the helm turns out to be a bathroom stall with my mom, then so be it. If being on my hands and my knees, wedged in this stall forever with my mom, if that turns out to be my version of that cell, that birdcage in King Lear, and if this sort of, this sort of…of contrapuntal chirping is what we end up doing forever, sort of gently batting our minds’ eyeballs back and forth and back and forth like, like feathered shuttlecocks…if we’re just these two incessantly twittering birds, these two little winged larynxes flying around each other in a birdcage…like those motorcyclists, those stunt riders who race around each other in those mesh spheres, in those “globes of death” at circuses, at carnivals, like, uh…like, uh, Ryan Gosling in that movie The Place Beyond the Pines. If it turns out that’s all this whole thing is…then so be it. You know? (MARK’S MOM recognizes someone new in yet another configuration of cracks on the floor.)
A. Well, for God’s sake!
Q. What?
A. When we moved to West Orange, I guess I was looking for a store where I could have a…a personal sort of relationship, the way I did in Jersey City…and, um, there was this place called Rolli’s or Rolli’s Market that had been recommended to me possibly, probably by Judy Leiberman, or by other people in the neighborhood who said that their butcher shop was very, very good, and that’s how I started to use them. And that—right over there — that looks to me, that looks uncannily to me like Joe Rolli. Joe’s brother — whose name I’m trying to remember as I’m speaking to you — his older brother was the butcher. And the quality of the meat he carried and his ability to cut the meat, to prepare it properly, was wonderful, and they delivered as well. So sometimes I would just call in to them and order a roast and, uh…they’d deliver, and sometimes as I developed the habit, as I became used to driving in the neighborhood more, of driving down the hill and stopping there en route to wherever I was going, I’d get a grocery order as well. And the younger brother — a sort of ruddy-cheeked, round-faced nice guy — was Joe…that was the…he was in charge of the grocery department. And they were, uh, very, very, very nice to me and always had time to talk, and, if anything turned out to be not perfect, they would see to it…they would give me another one, a better one. And they’d ask after the family, and it just became this very warm and comfortable and comforting kind of arrangement, which doesn’t mean certainly that I didn’t go to Kings Market, because I did, constantly, but rather than use the meat department at Kings, I, uh…I used Rolli’s as long as I lived in West Orange. There were other places too, and you know I’m a champion food buyer, so if we wanted to have a certain kind of thing, I would go to that kind of place…like, if we wanted fried chicken, barbecued chicken, or one of the other specialties, I’d go to the place called the Chicken Nest and shop there, um…now the original Chicken Nest was…all right, now I’m going to forget the names of some of the streets? The street that runs parallel to, uh, Wyoming…to Gregory…um…below it…where, when we moved to Maplewood, Chase’s school was on that street…