How I Learned to Hate in Ohio Read online

  “I found out last night.”

  Mom collapsed on the bed next to me and took off her earrings. “What has got into him?”

  “He has this new friend who I think made him feel bad about his work.”

  “Your dad has a new friend?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

  “He’s my friend’s father.”

  “Baruch, you have a friend? That is wonderful news. The best news I could’ve heard.” Mom’s momness burst through her wifeness and her jet-laggedness. I blushed.

  “I also got a girl’s number.”

  Mom grabbed and held me, rocking me back and forth, kissing my head. “That’s my boy. That is my boy. I knew it would happen. I knew you had it in you.”

  Not exactly knowing what the “it” was that I had in me, I took the praise regardless.

  “When do I get to meet this friend of yours?”

  “We can have him and his dad over for pizza again. You might like Mr. Singh. Dad sure seems to.”

  Something flicked across Mom’s face like a mixture of a twitch and a shadow. “Great, baby. So you know, Dad and I are going to be fighting for a bit and that’s just what moms and dads do when dads do dumb stuff without telling their wives. We’re not getting a divorce, none of this is because of you. Moms and dads fight, especially when dads are very very stupid men. But I am so proud. I knew there was nothing wrong with you.” She got up and cupped my chin in her hands and gave me a long look and kissed my forehead goodnight.

  I tried to sleep, but every time I was close to falling off the edge into unconsciousness, a thought pricked me: what had my mom thought might’ve been wrong with me?

  CHAPTER 21

  I Called Ottilie. A man answered. I hung up. I wasn’t ready for a man to answer. When you talk to a girl’s dad do you have to declare your intentions? Were my intentions honorable? Could intentions ever be honorable when they’re made by an adolescent meat sack laced with so many hormones that the FDA would immediately reject it for public consumption?

  I was barely ready to talk to a girl. I definitely wasn’t ready to talk to a dad.

  CHAPTER 22

  Gary rode my bike over Sunday. He was still a little peeved that I had run out on him Friday night. He’d waited at the Long John Silver’s for an hour. We always made that our rally place. That way if you got there first you could get something to eat and hang out without drawing attention.

  “I ate like four boats of hush puppies,” he said. “The manager kept giving me the stink eye, coming over asking me if I wanted anything else. He was racist, man. I’ve got like puppy poisoning because of you.” He was still riding my bike. He made slow circles around me as he talked.

  “My bad. How’d you get home?”

  “Tammy Somebody came by in her dad’s car and she saw me in the window. She had a bunch of her friends. They all really like fried shrimp.”

  “So that’s who goes to Long John Silver’s,” I said.

  “Buzzed teenage girls in their daddy’s cars. They were dirty, like way dirty. Kept making dick-sucking jokes with the shrimp.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “We rode around downtown. Tammy tried to get us into a bar but there were too many of us and the door guy was staring at my headwrap, like I was from another planet or something.” He paused. “I made out with Darcy Keefer.”

  “I thought she was into black guys.”

  “Guess I’m black enough.” Gary stopped the bike and said, “She told me she’d never made it with a Muslim before.”

  “Did you correct her?”

  “Why the hell would I?” He tried to pop a wheelie on my ten speed and failed. “At least I wasn’t her first nonwhite guy.”

  “How far did you get?” I held my hands up and made squishing motions then waggled my eyebrows.

  “No. Her curfew was up. We dropped her home first. Geography screwed me on that one.” He got off my bike and flipped it upside down. “Your derailleur is off. You have a screwdriver?”

  “Garage.”

  I sat on the cement pad as Gary went through my dad’s tools. “My mom’s back.”

  “She bring you anything cool from duty-free?”

  “More shirts I’ll never wear. For some reason she thinks that what’s high fashion in South Korea will work in central Ohio.”

  “My dad’s going to want to meet her.”

  “She said the same thing about meeting you. She’s sleeping now though. Jet lag.”

  “So your dad is working for my dad now.”

  “Same company. I don’t know what his job is.”

  “He’s an executive assistant.” Gary found a screwdriver that fit and gave the derailleur a couple of adjustments. “One guess who that executive is.”

  “Shit.”

  “It should be fine,” Gary said. “My dad’s a piece of shit and he’ll eventually get fired but it shouldn’t blow back on your dad. It’s weird but he’s taken a kind of real interest in your dad. I’ve never seen him do that. He’s usually aloof at jobs. He tells his stories about being a helicopter engineer during Nam and everyone figures he’s the real deal.”

  “He was in Nam?”

  “No. It’s just crap he says. Makes people think he’s more American than he is. All mega-crap that most people don’t check on until he starts acting weird on the job.” Gary flipped my bike over. “Give it a try.”

  I rode around and shifted gears. Everything slotted perfectly. The action was smooth and exact. I got back to the garage. “How do you know how to do this? Work on bikes and stuff?”

  “It’s just stuff I’ve picked up from my dad. We’re both good with machines.”

  “I met a girl,” I said.

  “Rad.”

  “At the party. I was watching TV and she came up and sat next to me and started talking.”

  “She hot?” Gary held his hands out in front of him. Hotness for him was purely a breast concern. Boobs. They just arrive in your life. And no one knows how to deal with them. Girls don’t know how to adjust their posture for them; to develop too much too fast seemed to give girls in our town a severe case of scoliosis, their spines twisting forward, making a cave of the shoulders to shelter and hide the new arrivals, these migrants fleeing hormonal over-population, seeking a new and better life. Guys who were already unsure and awkward became more so. We snapped bras, annoyed that our cohorts through elementary school were now keeping secrets from us. They had different underwear. They had coin-operated dispensers in their bathrooms. And metal boxes on the walls in their stalls. They seemed in charge of a magic, a language, a cabal for which dudes hadn’t even been considered for membership. As boys, going into a girl’s restroom was like seeing behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. There was all of this machinery we didn’t know about.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. But I couldn’t remember her boobs, just the way her sentences fell together like she was building houses of cards right in front of you and how they all fell apart almost always. I knew enough not to say this in front of Gary. “Really hot.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “She goes to Olentangy. Her name is Ottilie.”

  “You’re going out with a black girl?”

  “I think she’s half black.”

  “That’s black. In America, that’s black.” Gary smiled and punched me in the shoulder. “Good boy, Barry. I’m proud of you.”

  “I just have her number.”

  “Can I get a glass of water or a pop before I go home?”

  “You going to walk?”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “We’ll double on the bike,” I said, not knowing how that worked but that people did it. We went inside and filled some glasses with water.

  “Can I see those shirts your mom brought you?”

  “The crazy Korean ones?”

  “Can I borrow a couple of them?”

  “You can have them. They’re too weird for me. You know they’re fucked up, right? Like kind of fancy-boy pun
k stuff.” One of the shirts was torn down the side and held together by a thousand or so safety pins.

  “It’d be funny to wear them. Like freak people out a little.”

  I grabbed a folded grocery bag from the side of the refrigerator. “They are yours. If your ass gets beat, I’m not legally responsible.”

  Gary was bigger than me but the shirts fit him probably because my mom always bought things for me to grow into. Bad logic when you’re buying current fashion. It guarantees that once it fits it’ll be out of style. It was punk rock Miami Vice Michael Jackson thrown together and pickled like kimchi. Pastel anarchy signs on a shirt with lots of metal studs and zippers that connected nothing to nothing. Gary was ecstatic.

  “Are these, y’know, kosher for you to be wearing?” I asked. “As a Sikh and all.”

  “Sikhism doesn’t stop you from being a badass, Barry.” He held up one of the shirts to his chest and mugged like a rocker.

  My mom with her eye mask still around her neck stumbled into the kitchen. “Morning,” she said. Or it sounded like that was what she said. Jet lag hit Mom harder than other people; also she was up all night arguing with Dad.

  “This is my friend, Gurbaksh,” I said, waving my hands in front of him like he was a show dog.

  “Everyone here calls me Gary.” He shook my mother’s hand before she had steadied herself enough to know he was in the room.

  Mom focused on Gary and something happened. She was startled like she’d seen a murder happening across the street. But only for a half second. Like I saw it but I think it was only because I’m her son and her range of looks are all collated and filed away. Here was a look I didn’t recognize and I wasn’t even sure it really happened because Mom had herself all tucked in now and was chatting with Gary as if nothing had happened.

  “How long have you been in town?” she asked.

  “Two months now. It’s just my father and me. Bachelors, y’know.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Just over on the other side of the little valley. We can see your bug zapper from our porch.”

  “We don’t have a bug zapper,” I said. “Our neighbors do.”

  “We can see your neighbor’s house then,” Gary said.

  “And how has being a Sikh in our community been?” my mom asked. “I mean, in our little town it must be difficult. The people here haven’t seen all that much beyond the cornfields.”

  “Gurbaksh is like the most popular kid in school,” I said. “People love his turban.”

  “And your father?” she asked. “How is he finding it? Our town? Professionally? Socially?”

  “My father is fine. He likes his job as much as he’s ever liked a job. He’s a puzzle guy, so when he’s given a new puzzle he’s happiest.” Gary put his hand behind him and grabbed his ankle, stretching his thighs. “He doesn’t socialize too much. His best friend is probably your husband.”

  My mom grimaced. The tiredness was rushing back over her. I figured it’d be best to get Gary out of there before she passed out onto the kitchen floor. I jerked my head at Gary. He got it right away.

  “It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Nadler,” Gary said. He took her hand and gave it three quick pumps. “Thank you for having me in your home.”

  We ran out of the kitchen, leaving mom to fight off her jet lag.

  I rode him home with him on the handlebars and the whole time he was beaming. It was hard not to be jealous. I kind of didn’t want to let the shirts go now. It was hard work pushing us both up the hill towards his home. I zigzagged a lot into the road. People honked at us. Gary waved as they sped past. It was like he was in a parade.

  CHAPTER 23

  My mom being home was one big argument.

  My dad had given up.

  My dad had faced reality.

  My dad was a coward.

  My mom was overreacting.

  My mom should have been consulted.

  Philosophy didn’t count when Reagan was in office.

  They were partners and they made decisions together.

  My mom was gone all of the time, she was, at best, a silent partner.

  My dad had dragged my mom from state to state for years. He was giving up now?

  My mom was a pen pal parent, she did cameos as a member of our family.

  My dad was throwing away everything he worked for.

  My dad was sick of being the weak sister in the house. Nothing was trickling down. Things should be trickling down.

  My mom hated all of the travel, hated it, but she did it so he could pursue his dream.

  My dad said there came a time to be a man and own up to your responsibilities.

  This was West Virginia all over again, wasn’t it? This was Arizona all over again?

  And they stopped after that one. I could hear them panting, like together they’d just broken the seal off of something huge and were waiting to see what emerged. It was scary in those moments. There was so much of my parents’ marriage that I knew nothing about. I felt ill-prepared to take sides.

  What emerged was three days of not talking. In some ways, it wasn’t quieter. Their silence was the noisiest thing. I was always tripping over it.

  CHAPTER 24

  Dad’s new job made more money and the money tore through the house like a tornado. The queer fighting silence between my mom and dad he filled with expensive nonsense.

  I had new shoes. A box showed up with all-brass pots and pans. All of the inhabitants of our hodgepodge dish drawer went into the trash. New silverware that all matched. New glassware. All of our Burger King glasses got tossed. We got a dishwasher. I was given a full palette of polo shirts. There was a new sofa. New sheets for every bed. My dad had a sunroof installed in our Corolla. We got a new record player, speakers, radio tuner, and CD player. We had no CDs, but we had a player. There was a VHS player, a laserdisc player, and a membership to Rutherford Audio & Video (RAV’s) video rental place, with laminated cards for each member of the family (my mom’s sat unclaimed on the kitchen counter). There was a new shower nozzle with five different settings. Dad started drinking Johnny Walker Red. There was new carpet in the living room and a built-in wine rack in the dining room that stretched from floor to ceiling. Mom ignored the new additions and drank her wine out of a box.

  The biggest addition was the satellite dish. Dad had ordered it from Sharper Image. It was near one-story high and beige and just like that we went from being a house without a TV to a house with TVs, upstairs and downstairs, and a ton of stolen channels that none of us knew what to do with. Dad watched the TV all the time. The door to his study now was left open. The chalkboard with a sentence half-diagrammed sat unused, the sentence stuck in its half-deciphered state. It was like a car with its engine parts strewn on the garage floor, not able to run, not clear how to put it back together. Dad was no longer spending his time sequestered in the study. His presence was now everywhere in the house. It was like he was just recognizing that he owned more than the one room. He sat in his leather recliner, remote clenched, a Rusty Nail in a specially ordered drink holder affixed to his recliner (where he found the recipe to this cocktail, I have no idea, but somehow the cocktail made scotch smell worse than it already did). Most nights he slept in the chair. I’d wake him up by turning the TV off.

  I didn’t know what to think about this new Dad. It didn’t seem tenable for him to stay this way. Perhaps he was in some kind of pupa phase. The recliner his cocoon. His imago? No one could know. Here was someone whose intelligence had cordoned him off from the world for most of his life. At best he was a party favor for accountants, dentists, tool & die engineers. And now he was dug tick-deep into the mall culture of middle-manager semi-achievement. Who was he going to be next? Because he couldn’t stay this guy for much longer. He had been too smart for this to be the finished Dad product. He was playing hooky from himself.

  Mom slept upstairs alone. She quietly postponed a few of her trips.

  Dad wanted to throw a party. He told
Mom not to worry, he’d have it catered by the grocery store. Mom didn’t seem to care if she was invited.

  CHAPTER 25

  We walked the four blocks. And stood in front of an old building.

  “This is it,” Mr. Tyler said.

  We couldn’t go in. The place hadn’t been taken care of. It was built so close to the road it seemed likely to lean on us for support. Mr. Tyler wanted us to really look at it, to really appreciate what history meant.

  This is where Rutherford B. Hayes was born. Mr. Tyler wanted us to stand out in the early November cold and appreciate history because he hadn’t written a lesson plan beyond the walk down here and back and we’d walked faster than he had estimated and had caught both stoplights.

  Gary was shivering. He was wearing the punk rock safety-pin t-shirt and a pale blue patka. He rarely wore the full turban anymore. This patka was cooler. It was like a neat little headband with a topknot.

  “Your dad’s having a party,” he said.

  “It’s full-on obnoxious.”

  “You should invite Ottilie, man.”

  “It’s going to be a total bore. My dad will explain what all the remote controls do on the new TV and my mom will get drunk.”

  “Exactly,” he said. He was hunched over, the wind disregarding entirely what he called a shirt. I had a new windbreaker and tried to position myself so that it’d break the wind for both of us. I know how that sounds. I’m not the person who named a piece of clothing after a fart. “You want it to be boring. That way you and I and Ottilie can sneak away from the party, grab a bottle of something, and head upstairs.”

  “It’ll be a threesome?”

  Gary spit on the ground. It was an anemic spit. The poor guy’s lymph system was joining the fight, trying to keep rail-thin Gary warm. Gary said that in India he’d be called lion-waisted. He was five-seven and his 24"-waist pants would hang off of him no matter how tightly he pulled his braided leather belt. His shoulders were broad and while his hip bones seemed regular-sized, his waist was wrist-sized. His dad had a belly on him, so it was only a matter of time before Gary ballooned out. Now though, shivering in his punk rock t-shirt he looked like a speed freak. “Nah, man. Look, we’ll all hang out and then when you feel like the mood is right, you say whip-poor-will and I’ll leave you two alone and you can make your move.”