dogeeseseegod

Yash Seyedbagheri

I’m the family fuck-up. The prodigal son. The black sheep. Whatever you want to call it. This might not seem so remarkable, except for the fact that I have two sisters. They’re the antithesis of the reprobate, the scoundrel, the wretch, which only amplifies my transgressions. I mean where do you go when your sisters are synonyms for achievement?

First of all, there’s Colette, age forty, a prolific writer of history books. She remembers the exact date of Nicholas II’s coronation. The entire content of Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech. And she remembers my every transgression, going back to when I stole a dozen mannequins when I was seventeen. Everything is cause and effect, a credo she proclaims constantly.

Then there’s Nan, thirty-eight, the fiction writer. She’s published three short story collections, and kickass ones, I must admit. Nan would help me bury a body if needed. Nan doesn’t just see cause and effect. She sees emotional problems as the root cause of every issue. Everyone’s a victim of repression. But she also has a sense of humor, a gentleness, something that snakes through just when you need it. She has an energy I admire, a certain charisma. She knows how to live, at least a little.

And as I said, I’m the youngest. The thirty-two-year-old baby, whose latest caper involved driving a Subaru into a coffee shop. 

My sisters have explanations for my behavior. When you’re someone who’s achieved, it’s a little too easy to explain the malcontents.

Colette thinks it’s my apartment with the turd-colored walls and beer-drinking friend down the hall, Cockroach. Yes, he gets into trouble. He’s gone through litanies of jobs, convenience store clerk, bartender, busboy, and he’s never batted an eye at my shit. As Cockroach says, “we’ve all got a few specks in our eyes, Nick.”

But Colette sees a log in everyone’s eye. 

“Cockroach drinks too much,” Colette says. “And he measures his life in tablespoons of mediocrity. It’s like he embraces losing jobs and DUIs. He’s amassed them like Faberge eggs.”

You could argue being a member of a still-restricted country club is a mediocrity too, but now isn’t the time.

Nan thinks I haven’t had the right opportunities. I’m emotionally repressed. Like I said, Nan thinks everyone is. And I love and hate that about her.

“Come stay with me,” Nan says. “You can always be honest with me. I’m a writer. Tell me anything.” 

As fun as she can be, everything isn’t a fucking short story in life. Sometimes people’s mistakes have nothing to do with emotional repression. Cockroach’s mother loved him to death, and look where he’s at now. Besides Nan keeps records of everything, every draft, every small change, every publication. She’s even papered her walls with rejection letters from agents, literary journals, and various publishing houses. Not a word about the pain of rejection. Proof of persistence, she says.

“You’re better than this, baby brother,” Colette says, judgment rising over her customary cat-eye glasses. “You just need a push. Maybe go back to college. It’s something to focus on.”

“Come on,” I say, slicing into my fish with a knife. “You know I didn’t last a semester.”

“But you did manage to paint a green penis on a whiteboard,” Nan says, laughing. “That’s an achievement. Along with showering the campus with condoms from the library roof. So much for the fiddler on the roof. You’ve pushed that fiddler off his roof, Nicky. Or should I say the diddler on the roof.”

Nan starts whistling the opening theme to Fiddler. “A diddler on the roof, sounds crazy, no?”

“Come on, Nan.” I shake my glass of Coke, listening to the clinking of ice. It seems to swish with disapproval.

“Oh and let’s not forget ordering the pizza in that English 101 class,” Nan adds. “And charging it to what was his name? That professor?”

“Enough, Nan. You’re smart, Nicky,” Colette says. “You have a solid memory. You can absorb facts so well.”

We’re having lunch at Ward’s Café, which has these sky-blue walls and cranberry-colored booths, separated by an island of forest-colored flooring. A giant pink and purple jukebox near the entrance also plays Tony Bennett. Perry Como. Doo-wop. Music that just soothes, that conjures a sense of everything being alright, even if you can’t explain why. But I really love the food here, especially the fish and chips, which I’m having today.

Nan and Colette both sit across a booth from me, next to the window that looks out onto Violet Street and the Fort Edgar State campus across the street. Nan wears a midnight-colored Oxford comma T-shirt and blue jeans, flame-colored hair hanging over her shoulders. Colette wears black slacks and a neat lavender blouse, her flaxen hair in a sleek 50’s style pageboy.  Not a strand of hair out of place here.

Nan and Colette said they just wanted to see how I was doing. But I know this is about my latest incident, which involved driving a Subaru right into Mama Lily’s Coffee Shop and scaring the ever-loving crap out of people. Including kids.

“Don’t talk about pushing, Colette. Let’s help him,” Nan says. “If it’s a job, we can get you something. Even if it’s cleaning up shit.”

“Very droll, dear sister,” I say, and cut hard into my fish. Its skin seems impenetrable, and I keep pushing and pushing with this pathetic little knife. “This fucking thing.”

“Absolutely.” Colette nods and takes a swig of her Coke. “But you’re going to have to express contrition. Write something for the paper, I’d say. The Community Voices section. I know Mr. DiCenzo from the country club. Nan and I will help you with the editing.”

“Do you think that’s needed?”

“Well, you did almost mow people down.” Nan leans back. Then she laughs. “I thought we taught you the difference between the pedal and the brake.”

“That’s not funny.” Colette shifts her fries around on her plate. She picks up a fry and stares at it, then sets it down again.

“Come on, it’s a little funny. Lighten up, Miss Republican.”

“Our brother almost killed someone, Nan. Killed someone,” Colette says. 

“But I didn’t. That’s the point.” I stab my fork into the fish again. Lift the knife again and push it back into the fish. This time, I get a small piece cut. And then another.

Engines roar up and down Violet Street. Trucks, a BMW, even a Toyota Corolla. They remind me of that moment, parked in front of the coffee shop, when I still had a choice, engine humming. To crash or not to crash? When I told Cockroach about it, he said things just happen. That you get caught up in things, that maybe it was inevitable. But those words were hollow things from a beer-drinking friend with more DUIs than God. A friend even more used to trouble than me.

“I guess everyone thought to swerve first,” Nan jokes.

I drove the Subaru right through the coffee shop window, engine growling all the while. I mowed down tables, plants, mugs with MAMA LILY’S COFFEE emblazoned in Gothic script. Then there were the kids dispersing left and right, flashes of Harry Potter T-shirts and striped shirts and waddling legs, and labyrinths of adult arms scooping them up with a swiftness that stunned me.

“You really don’t understand the consequences,” Colette says. “Did you know what the officer told me about this? That some of those kids were having nightmares. Nightmares, Nicky. They were talking about your Subaru being a monster. My little brother shouldn’t be thought of as a monster!”

“Everyone has nightmares,” I say, and stare at the sharp metal of my knife. “Look, it’s an incident. I won’t let it happen again. Is that enough, Colette? Nan?”

“No, it’s not. You’re a smart guy, little brother. You don’t fully get it, Nicky. Let’s say you actually killed someone. Then what? You might get life in prison. And don’t tell me about the fact that this state just abolished the death penalty last fall.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Gotta agree with Colette on this one,” Nan says. “I don’t want you in a cell either. But I don’t think Nick’s imprisonment is inevitable, Colette. Let’s just take this one step at a time.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” I say. I stare down at my plate at the maroon edges, the cold sterile sea in the middle.

“Let’s say this happened two years ago,” Colette says. “Look at me, Nick.” 

I look up.

She picks up a long fry and breaks it into little pieces, which she flings across her plate. “This is the kid you ran down. A corpse. Those are body parts, Nick. All scattered across a coffee shop because of your transgression.”

“I’m not seeing a lot of blood here,” Nan quips. “The only thing that has in common with your case, Colette, is that Nicky would be as crisp as that fucking fry.”

I mean, what do you say? Sorry I gave your kids nightmares? Sorry I almost killed your kids? Have a nice day? Sitting here, I’m just reminded that I could have been in jail for years this time. Colette does have clout and a reputation, and she’s always used it with judges, officers, business owners. I’ve done weeks, I’ve done months, but I’ve never, never done years in jail.

“Can we enjoy the meal?” I take a bite of fish. Ah, a little warmth. “Or do we have to solve the problem this minute?”

“Of course,” Nan says. “I think you made your point.”

“Do you understand, Nicky?”

“That I’d be fried like a fish? Yes, yes,” I say, and I wink at Nan. She winks back. But a part of me wants to puke it all up right now. I can’t think of the hum of an electric chair, of a switch, of a life extinguished. Of a judgment permanently written into the record.

“I’m serious, Nicky.”

“So am I,” I say. “You made it abundantly clear I’d be fried. And unlike this fish here, I couldn’t be returned to the kitchen for a do-over.”

“You know what you two remind me of?” Nan leans forward and smirks.

“Not now, Nan.” Colette takes another swig of Coke and then bites into her burger. Plump flaxen-haired and brunette waitresses in green and white uniforms march down the aisle, setting plates down at nearby booths, although there’s only a smattering of people here today. Plates clatter in the kitchen, metal meeting metal, and grease hisses from the kitchen, as if it knows. As if this whole place knows my history, the kitchen, the empty booths gaping, the heater whirring to life.

“Two lepers,” she says. “You’re both having a face-off in the corner!”

I have to laugh, even though I’m still munching, trying not to spew up all this food. I always love Nan’s jokes, and her ability to whip them out at the perfect time. Nan at least sees the funny in the dark. I wish I could see something funny in tons of metal almost mowing down bodies, snuffing life with such deftness. But more than that, I wish I could laugh because that didn’t happen. 

“We need to have a serious discussion,” Colette says, although she tries to suppress a smile too. “The fact is you’ve gotten into serious trouble. We want to help. The question is how. You’re out of jail, but what can we do to keep you out?”

“Guys, enough with this shit.” 

“You know I had to pull a lot of strings to get you out. I had to convince them I’d help pay for the damages. And you’re still not out of the woods.”

“I know it, Colette. Enough, all right.”

Nan looks down and I feel bad.

“That came out wrong,” I say, and twirl a fry. Across the room, students slouch over textbooks, murmuring something or another about limiting reagents. Great, more achievers. Meanwhile, an old man in a fedora holds onto a dog on a long red leash. A German shepherd, someone with a name like Fritz. Or Conrad. Or God forbid, Adolf. The dog keeps on barking and barking. The man keeps murmuring indiscernible words while he tugs harder, pulling the dog back from the expanse of linoleum between the rows of tables. I think of just how thin that leash really is. Any second, that dog could get off the leash and just go wild. It’s instinct, and I wonder how that man’s managed to hold on, to keep this force at bay.

Here’s the thing: I could have been one of these people. I tried college, but I kept thinking of Nan and Colette with their A’s, their clubs, all of that. I felt like I was drowning in syllabi. And every job I took, bookstore clerk, cashier at Raven Burger, bartender, and ultimately, barista, felt like it didn’t measure up in their eyes.

“Tell us, baby brother.” Nan takes a long swig of Coke. “Colette does have a point. She’s not saying you’re a bad person. Just that you need some help.”

“Kids could have been hurt,” Colette says. “We have to figure this out. You stay with Nan or you can even stay with me. You know it’s a safe neighborhood. Lots of great professionals there. It might be a good thing.”

“I’m fine, Colette,” I say, trying to not make a snarky comment about her neighborhood replete with beige stucco and sofas in every living room. A beige life, except for the political redness. “I wasn’t going to kill the kids, you know.”

*  *  *

​

It was more than a shard of anger that made me drive that Subaru into the coffee shop. I could tell my sisters about those sunshine shitty yellow walls, inhaling coffee and fucking artifice. I could tell them about how Karen Schmidt, my so-called boss kept telling me to pick up the pace, pick up the pace. Something she reiterated when she fired me three months ago.

“We just need people who can keep up with the pace,” Karen had said, seated at one of the little flimsy oak tables. 

“What does that mean? What does pick up the pace mean? Be a damn Superman?”

“It means getting creative,” Karen had said. “Learn the rhythms. Trying’s just not going to cut it, Nick. Trying doesn’t put money in the coffers and help me send my kids to college.”

“If it’s making coffee in record time, I can do better.”

“I’m sorry,” Karen said. “I tried to give you a chance. A couple weeks, a month, fine. But after that, you have to make the tough choices. You know what it means to pick up the pace. Tom, Bernie, Megan, they’re all model baristas. They’ve made employee of the month. They know how to engage on the job.”

Maybe that’s what it’s about. Being last. Nan and Colette followed and still follow me at every step. Nicky, slow down. Nicky, study your history. It was never enough. Sometimes I have dreams where their words blend into Karen’s, one big discordant symphony with a leitmotif of failure.

Babies don’t paint penises on whiteboards and disperse rubbers from library roofs. They don’t knock over trash cans and cruise in Subarus at 90 up and down avenues. They don’t spray-paint swastikas on hierarchy-obsessed country clubs. They don’t get into bar fights with Trump supporters, throwing fists and tossing invectives into musk and armpit-scented rooms. Babies don’t relish bruises and scrapes. 

And they don’t drive Subarus through windows.

*  *  *

“Nicky.” Colette takes my hand now. “Just tell us why you did this. Is it Cockroach? Did you need attention?”

“Enough with the analysis, Colette,” Nan snaps. “You’re not a psychologist. The point is, Nick’s hurting. Why did you hit that coffee shop? Just because of the job?”

“I guess.” I crunch down on a fry, the words, the reasons stuck in my throat. The words are all there, but I can’t think about releasing them. Because my sisters might cry. And I hate that, especially when they’re both crying at the same time. Nan with her wails, Colette with her precise, tinkling little sobs. It’s a reminder that I can speed and destroy and hurt.

Just like the coffee shop. Kids ducking and darting. Parents trying to cover them. My Subaru ravaging floors. Knocking over tables. I wonder if those images are permanent to the kids now, if they’ll chase them down every street, into every fun activity, basketball, baseball, family trips. 

“I’m sorry,” Colette says. “Maybe I’m pushing. But I don’t want to see you like this.”

“The only thing I want to see roasting are chestnuts on an open fire,” Nan says. “Not flambéed Nick.”

“Look.” I try to smile. “I felt like it. That was all.”

“You felt like it?” Nan says.

“Right,” Colette says. “Grown-ups feel like ordering take-out. They feel like trying to make more money and broaden their names. They feel like finding ways to go above and beyond their circumstances. They don’t feel like painting penises on whiteboards. They don’t feel like rampaging coffee shops like they’re on some kind of damned Panzer!”

Every time I’ve ended up at the police station, they’ve found ways to get me out, even if it’s taken weeks. They were always there, hunched together. They always had a hug to offer in spite of my crimes, smelling of cigarettes and onions in Nan’s case, perfume and mint soap in Colette’s. 

“Come on,” Nan says. “Is it because you feel like a failure? You’re not a failure, Nicky.”

Did she have to say that word? Failure. I try to convince myself it’s nothing, but something pushes up.

“Well, wouldn’t you feel like a failure too?” I say. “They want you to pick up the pace.”

“This is about you,” Colette says, adjusting her glasses. 

“You want to know why I can’t get anywhere?” I say. “You treat me like an infant. A fucking baby. You even call me baby. Baby this, baby that. Baby brothers wear pacifiers and diapers, all right? How the fuck do you expect me to grow up when you keep treating me like a baby?”

I continue.

“And another thing. You fail too, Colette. How many times did you have to rewrite your history texts? How many times have you gotten depressed? You know why no one sees your failures. Because you sweep them under your beige rugs, in your beige suburbs, and beige restricted country clubs, with your little Republican friends all measuring each other’s McMansions.”

“That’s silly, Nicky,” Colette says. Her lips twitch and I fear I’ve landed another blow. But it feels darkly right. 

“Let’s be honest, you love bailing me out,” I say. “When you’re not criticizing me.”

The students start to look up from their limiting reagents, and the man with the dog stares at me before he goes back to keeping his beast on the leash. More plates clatter in the kitchen, and one shatters with such force that I almost jump. But in that explosion of pieces, I think of her words, silly, silly, silly. It’s easy to think of someone as silly, and I think about that plate, stacked on top of another. No wonder it had to come apart.

“And you think you’re important. You and your little country club crowd. That doesn’t make you omnipotent.”

“I might add, Nicky, that my money bailed your delinquent rear end out of jail more than once.” Colette sets her fork down. It clatters on the sterile white plate, metal meeting metal. “I love you, Nicky. I know you might think I’m cold, or a Karen, but I do love you.”

“Thank you for bailing my ass out so I could be roasted.”

The jukebox kicks in with another 50s classic. Pat Boone’s “Love Letters in the Sand.” That’s one artist who just oozes fake neatness. 

“This doesn’t have anything to do with me or my books,” Colette says. “I worked hard, I achieved. I’m not Santa Claus.”

“And I thought you were,” I say and slouch against the booth. Colette adjusts her posture and stares at me for a long moment. She taps her fingers on the table, with all the grace of a debutante or country club member. Then she arches an eyebrow. She’s adding me up, adding my multiple transgressions in front of me, instead of just doing it in her head. I can’t even add fractions.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have put up bail this time,” she says, drawing each word out. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gone through all this trouble.”

“Come on, you don’t mean that Colette,” Nan says. “But Nick, she’s saved your ass, even if she is a little pedantic. It’s an older sister’s duty. We’re born that way. It’s like being gay, Nicky.”

 “I just want to be my own person.”

“And what does that mean?” Nan says. “Tell me what that means. Your own person.” 

“It means I feel like I can’t keep up with anything. And that includes you, Nan, little Miss Tolstoy.  Not everything is about repression or reason. People fuck up because they fuck up. For God’s sake, I’m thirty-two.”

The students across the aisle are really staring now. A couple waitresses glance too, as if this is the greatest freak show ever. The old man barks, “can you keep your laundry where it belongs, please?” His dog’s excited now, leaping and lunging, and I’m really hoping he stays on that leash. But that leash looks so damn thin, so inconsequential among this whole scene. 

“Then stop fucking acting like a baby!” Colette slams the table, and shoots the old man a glare. “Don’t you think for once I’d like to hear about something you’ve accomplished?”

“And don’t you think I’d like to see you and Nan fail? Or admit it? I swear to God, Nan, you and your rejection letters. They hurt. Just admit it. You know what they say. ‘This piece is not for us.’ ‘We cannot use your piece at this time.’ They didn’t want you. You’ve published those books, but those journals and agents didn’t want one ounce of you!”

“Don’t be an asshole, Nick.” The way Nan says that shocks me and makes me angrier. “I hate to say it, but Colette’s right.”

“What can a baby brother accomplish?” I say. “You two accomplished so much, I feel like the air’s been sucked out of the world. It seems easy to achieve, achieve, achieve. You’ve all lived with it for so long. And what am I supposed to do? Every time I even think of the future, I think of how many steps forward you’ve taken. So what’s the whole point?”

“There’s the door,” Colette says, pointing. “Feel free to use it if you feel constrained.”

“Fuck this,” I growl.

I storm out the door and onto the street, the door squeaking with pain in my ears. Leaves swirl on the sidewalk, landing on cold concrete, and huge charcoal-colored skies hang over the air. Across the streets, the cold columns of the campus music building seem to glare, their ionic precision cutting me down to something small. Houses line my side of the street, old Victorians and little frame homes, with neat sidewalks and perfect porches.

Standing out there, I feel truly alone, as people brush past, a kid on a bike speeding to some unknown destination, his laughter filling the cold air. Men in khakis and button-up shirts stride past, speaking confidence into cell phones.

I look out onto the swath of world and try to think of taking a step. And then another one. But I don’t know how. Or where I’d go. I think of all those scattered people in the coffee shop. I think of the screams, think of the way they must speak about me.

Maybe I do deserve to rot in a cell.

I think of a time when I was seventeen, when there was still hope for my future. And I think of Nan hunched over a novel with me, teaching me about metaphors, about dialogue, about Hemingway’s iceberg theory, while Colette talked historical context. I remember that brief, fleeting sensation of possibility, of awe, the three of us huddled. Of following Nan and Colette into the world, running toward them, and not away.

I almost smile. Another gust of wind rises, and a navy-blue truck zooms up the street, exhaust sputtering in my face. If this is what it means to be alone, I don’t want it. I can’t think about the future in full yet, but I know what I don’t want.

So, I walk back into the restaurant, the two looking up as I move closer and closer. Colette looks at me, head tilted, as if waiting. Once again, she’s been crying. Nan tries to smile. 

These are my sisters. They haven’t left. I start to speak, to say something. I’m sorry. I love you. A bad joke, maybe. Whatever it is, I hope they hurt just a little less. I hope we all do.