Rent

We were in the bedroom upstairs when I told her the three people downstairs were not my family.  The room felt like cotton, smelled like it had been enclosed for decades.  Her hair was wet and she smelled like Bath and Body Works raspberries.  At first she didn’t understand, thought I was joking.

Were you adopted, she said, because, you know, that’s okay, it can still be family.

No, they’re not my family.  Not in any sense.  I don’t actually have a sister.  I’ve only known them for a few weeks.  I’m renting them.

I was holding her hand as I told her.  Thin, bones like delicate museum fossils in soft fleshy bag.  She released herself and kept her hands tight under her arms, dropped her head and clenched her eyes shut.

That morning, we drove 200 miles to get there and she held my hand and slept.  We moved through fields of horses and carefully groomed farms, all of it looking still, manufactured painting landscapes.  Ate lunch at a Cracker Barrel.  Browsed the collections of manufactured to look authentically worn knick knacks, bought glass bottles of Stewart’s Root Beer.

Exiting the highway, we had to travel through the remnants of a small town Main Street to hit the sprawling development of box houses.  It still had a general store.  Window signs advertised handmade ice cream and prepaid cell phone cards.

My real parents lived about 200 miles in the other direction from where we came.  They were probably sitting around in their dilapidated too small house doing crosswords and reading remaindered books and not pretending they are waiting for a phone call or a letter.  Who knows when I last talked to them.  But long ago I determined they were too real.  Dad would say three words in two hours and Mom didn’t know how to cook.  I was the son who didn't care, didn't pay attention, couldn't be bothered.

So it’s time for dinner and I start to head downstairs.  The smell of poultry ripe with spices filled the air.  At the top of the steps, I’m waiting for her to join me, reciting the list of conversation topics I'd compiled in my mind.  I stand there, waiting for movement, the two of us to descend as one, the bedroom quiet.

Shoot

Dear Brandon Lee:

I know that you're dead and can't respond to letters, but I've always felt a connection to you since I learned you died during the production of the film, The Crow.  I was 22 when that happened, in the middle of the best years of my life, when the untimely deaths of people I didn’t know stood in for the real thing, which now I know all too well.

The next summer when the film was released, I saw it and like many people my age then, was blown away by it.  Your performance was spectacular, and the film itself is dark and edgy and the hand of vengeance your raised-from-the-dead character delivers to that savage city’s criminals was most awesome.  It was like being an invincible hero in my own nightmare.  My friends and I would drive around with the windows open blasting the soundtrack to that album.  We were college age and carefree and could do whatever we wanted during the day while regular grownups were working and we stayed up late at night while they were sleeping.    We drove around in a ragged, rusted powder blue Ford Taurus station wagon that sputtered and stalled.  It was the best car ever. It was the last free summer.

That last free summer was going to be many things.  I was going to write a novel.  My friends and I were going to drive across the country and back.  We were going to start our own microbrewery.  We were going to live at the beach.  We were going to throw the biggest, longest party ever.  We were going to do all the things that were in our dreams.  Then you need money.  Then you start interviewing for jobs.  Then you don't stay out as late.  Then you start paying bills.  Then you start having real skin in the game and life isn't about grades and people aren't kind about giving you second chances and I suppose this is why some people start walking around with scowls on their faces and they take jokes seriously.

Brandon, I can't imagine what it was like to be a young movie star who had has life ended by a stupid accident.  I can't imagine what you were thinking when that gun was fired and there was supposed to be a blank and you were supposed to go into actor mode like you'd gotten hit by a bullet but you really did get hit by a bullet and you quickly died and, man, that was that.  One minute you’re fine, the next you’re not.  I remember people claiming conspiracy and the eerie coincidence of your father dying early at age 32 but it was really just a stupid accident caused by carelessness.  It's written in pen. There is no do-over.

Now, the old friends and I are thinking about getting together again for another ride or two.  Sure, that Taurus has long been scrapped and we’d likely be driving around in a minivan, but I’m going to bring The Crow soundtrack and it’s not going to matter.  Of course, nowadays, we always talk but never do.  Such is the way of things now that we’ve become our fathers.  But if we do, we want you to come with us.  There’ll be room for one more.  We're trying to recreate that feeling of being young and invincible and where anything is possible, so don’t worry about being dead.  One of my best friends is dead also and I plan to invite him too so you won’t be alone.

Best,

------ 

Jump

I can teach you to be a superhero.  I can get you going on costumes, disguises, alter egos. I'm working on a manual with visuals so you won't have to do much reading.  I don't believe that the ability to read should be a prerequisite for the superhero life.  I know you're time constrained but want to be super.  I offer courses you can take from your own home.  You can become a superhero at your own pace.

Powers--sometimes, you're born with them; sometimes, you aren't.  I can bring out your God-given powers that only the select few possess; I can teach you to maximize your human abilities, learn to turn your basic body into an instrument of war.  I can teach you to jump.  Over cars, low-level buildings, straight up high in the air.  I can teach you to scale buildings.  Move from level to level, window to window, hang by hand from the space between bricks.  I can teach you healing.  I can teach you how to walk through fire unscathed.  I can teach you how to shoot basic earth elements from your body as projectiles.

There are things, though, I can't teach you.  You should be aware of these things before you go any further.  I can't teach you to fly.  The sobering, un-super reality of liability prevents it.  I can't explain to you the unexplainable yin and yang of how once you become a superhero, super villains will begin to appear where they didn't exist previously.  I can't save you from the inevitable tragic losses of loved ones you are sure to experience.  I can’t spare you the pain of the woman you love just being out of reach.  I can't teach you how to have a heart, show compassion for the world’s mothers and daughters.  I can’t teach how to know, now’s the time to begin.  I can't teach you how to know when it's time to say, it's over.

Spin

In the rearview mirror you see children in white dresses and miniature tuxedos dancing and twirling and laughing at a wedding reception the carefree revolutions of youth, the grownups move in slower smaller circles, closer together, holding hands, eyes more contemplative and brimming with the sadness of passage.

In a wide carpeted room there is a clock.  In rooms everywhere there are clocks.  The hands spin so you can knock off minutes hours days and lives.  There are people gathered everywhere mourning what the clocks tell them, what the clocks scream, what the clocks remember from long ago.

You stack up chairs and stand on the unstable mountaintop this top heavy construct and shout, there are books, there are philosophers, there are musicians destroying guitars and drums--don’t cry over the moving hands.

The chairs are rickety and are like a group of frail acrobats building and holding onto their loose architecture built to the heavens.  The gathered are oohing and aahing and their worried sounds  fill the room rise on high and you wave your hands motion everyone for just one second to stop.

Then you are on the tip of one foot.  Then you turn.  The chairs below you wobble like worlds built on fault lines.  But you’re turning. You spin to stop the thing that's devouring us all the thing where someone close dies you say if I just keep moving the pain doesn't have a chance. This is your revolution.

The people watching are frozen silent can't clap.  You know will cry if you stop and think. So you spin your hands in the air round and round and round, spinning, unstoppable motion, blur, light, essence.