LITMIR.BIZ

       Two

       ‘Jaaaaayson, I’m outtta here! Come kiss me goodbye.’

      ‘Jesus Jm J Bullock Christ,’ Jayson muttered to himself, putting down his pencil in the rust shag carpet of his bedroom. After one of the hottest and most humid summers on record, the carpet smelled as fetid as the slime that grew between the rocks on the shore of the lake. And it had been vacuumed about as often.

      Jayson was only halfway through writing the final scene of Dallasty’s cliffhanger. He was farther behind schedule than he’d anticipated. The week’s shooting had been frantic and stressful, with the twins’ schedule being interrupted repeatedly by back-to-school shopping excursions. Jayson himself had had no such diversions. Toni had pinned a $20 bill to his bedroom door on Tuesday and told him to bicycle into town to buy what he needed. Which Jayson promptly did: four cartons of Starbursts, a box of Whatchamacallit candy bars, and thirty-six pouches of BlueBerry Blast Capri Suns.

      If he could get the final scene finished today and shot sometime over the weekend, he would have the entire season of episodes ready to be dropped into the post office box by the corner of Oconomowoc High School on the first morning of classes.

       ‘JAYSON! I’M LEAVING!’

      Jayson slid down the front foyer steps on his ass and walked into the kitchen. In the week since Garth had left, the house had become even dirtier, which, had you asked Jayson last week, he would have sworn was impossible.

      Toni was leaning against the burnt orange counter that was, poetically, pockmarked with cigarette burns.

      ‘I didn’t even know you were going somewhere,’ Jayson said.

      ‘I told you on Monday that I was going to spend the weekend at an artists’ collective in Chicago,’ she replied, holding her arms out for a hug.

      ‘No you didn’t. Monday you spent the entire day in the sarcophagus.’

      Toni dropped her arms.

      ‘I did?’

      ‘You did. And I have the police citation to prove it.’

      Toni had recently declared herself a ‘modern artist’ working out of her garage ‘studio.’ She announced her new vocation last spring in a press release sent to the Oconomowoc Enterprise that, much to her indignant disappointment, was never published. She kept a copy of it hanging on the refrigerator. By a nail. Toni had several mementos nailed to the refrigerator, since she was wary of the health effects of magnets.

       5/21/81. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

      Toni Blocher, née VanSchlessor, is proud to announce a showing of her avant-garde sculptures detailing the rise and descent of woman’s struggle with the modern institution of matrimony. Neither an advocate for the patriarchy, nor a traditional feminist, Blocher will exhibit her latest works in the driveway of her home at N6855 W. Lakota Dr. from April 7 to April 14. (Parking on street is strictly prohibited by the fascist Lac Labelle Homeowners Association. The artist recommends slowing to a crawl while driving by. Ms. Blocher will walk next to your vehicle and answer any questions regarding pricing of specific works. Photography is prohibited.)

      To create the work for her first showing, she’d spent four days and nights in the garage attacking bolts of bridal toile with a blowtorch and cans of spray shellac. The molten plastic toile was molded into giant blobs faintly resembling historical torture devices.

      The ‘Pee-yes de la Raisin-stance,’ as she called it, was a working spiked sarcophagus coffin propped up against the basketball pole in the driveway in which, during certain afternoons throughout the summer she could be found writhing in imaginary pain. Completely nude. This finally did result in a write-up in the Enterprise this past Thursday—in the police blotter column.

      ‘I could’ve sworn I’d told you about the weekend,’ Toni said. ‘Maybe with that motherfucking back-hair-matted limp dick pig deserting us, I got distracted.’

      ‘Garth didn’t leave, Ma. You kicked him out. Because he didn’t support your vision.’

      Toni had a way of attracting all sorts of men before ultimately eviscerating them. In Wisconsin, being ‘big boned’ didn’t have the same pejorative meaning it had elsewhere in the country. Here, men had been trained since childhood to lust after voluptuous State Fair Dairy Queens, with their curves and–as Helen Lawson said on MatchGame–‘big bazooms.’ The eleven (twelve?) men she’d gone so far as to marry were only the tip of the iceberg of the Titanic Toni. She’d dated hundreds of men since high school–when she had given birth to Jayson. But when looking at photos of all the different weddings, some of which he remembered and most of which he didn’t, Jayson always thought that she looked less blissly marital than simply caught off guard.

      Whenever Jayson asked who his father was, or Willie’s father, Toni would simply point to whoever she was dating at the time and say: ‘For today, he’s your man.’

      Of all the things in his life, Jayson was most grateful that his mother had inherited the fully paid off, split-level lake house from his grandparents, who died when Jayson was a baby. Toni was finishing her last year of high school as a teen mother when her parents got broadsided by a milk tanker as they were exiting the Catholic Church parking lot. It was the same church in which his grandparents were too embarrassed to have Jayson baptized.

      ‘Fuck Garth,’ Toni said. ‘I don’t need nobody’s support.’ Toni puffed on a newly lit Newport. ‘Except yours and Willie’s.’ She held out her arms again. This time Jayson assented to her hug.

      ‘Well, until I’m of legal age, you have my undivided, custodially obligated fealty,’ Jayson said.

      ‘Thank you, Butter Bean.’ She leaned over and picked up the brown paper Piggly Wiggly shopping bag she was using as a suitcase. ‘And don’t forget to drive the car around the block at night so the neighbors don’t think I’ve abandoned you.’

      ‘But you are abandoning us,’ Jayson countered playfully.

      ‘You know I’m only a phone call away.’

      ‘So I should just call the operator and ask for the number of an artist collective in Chicago, then?’

      ‘Don’t be a smart ass. I was being metaphorical.’

      ‘Then I’ll be sure to only have metaphorical emergencies.’

      ‘Perfect. Just make it look busy around here. I don’t need the ASPCA dropping by again.’ ‘You mean Protective Services.’

      ‘Yes. Those do-goodie-two-shoes.’ Toni balanced the overstuffed bag on her hip and pushed open the screen door to the garage. ‘I swear I’ll burn this goddamn house down with all of us in it the next time they decide you need protection from me.’

      As he watched her back the Maverick out the driveway, Jayson picked up the lit cigarette she’d left smoldering next to a pile of three years’ worth of Penny Saver newspapers and tossed it in the sink with the other butts.

      Watching over Willie wasn’t as easy as his mother thought it was. Jayson had been taking care of his younger brother ever since he realized he had one. It was Jayson who took notes about Willie’s care at the doctor’s office. It was Jayson who put locks on the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator to keep Willie from raiding them. It was Jayson who locked Willie in his room each night in order to be sure that Willie didn’t escape and forage for food in the neighbors’ garbage cans alongside the raccoons.

      To

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