Day 19: Lost It

Another fictional time stamp.  I finished at 3:06am.  I take the weekend off to go to a wedding and I forget how hard it is to write anymore.  Poor me.

Lost It

On Saturday at 2pm, Juleen Smith finished sorting her clean dishes into the cupboards, then pulled out some pre-moistened sanitizing tissues with which she sanitized the table top.

Her house was quiet. She got uneasy. Her son was home, and when her son was home and the house was quiet, she got uneasy, even though he had always been a quiet child. So she twisted the knob of and gingerly pressed her shoulder against the bathroom door.

And traumatized the boy, startled him while he's making out with glossy pictures from some magazine, a sloe-eyed Japanese girl with velvet roundy bits. She was a queen, the girl depicted, a ruler of the night, some daft synthesis of Occident and Orient, with refolded eyes and tortured syntax transcribed in a “Luv iT!/as if” text box at the bottom of the page.

Disgusting.

Not his fault. It wasn't young Robin's fault. He was lost like all of us. What could he do?

But Juleen Smith oogha-ed and shrieked at her son's disgraceful conduct, private though it may have been meant to be. She didn't have the sense to decode all the culture-jacking swimming under the surface of the cheap magazine gloss, nor had she the the delicacy to breathe deeply, wait a day, and sit the young man down for a Talk. She just gave throat to the horrible wrongness of it all. Briefly, with a few sobs and fewer words.

They each retreated to their respective boudoirs.

Juleen Smith had a chenille bedspread, and on the walls a series of author's pictures: Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, Emily Matthews. She had papered her walls with a floral print, and tacked yellow-painted injection-molded cornice at the tops of those walls. The ceilings were a shade of white demurely approaching the color of straw.

Robin Smith had a map of Tsim Sha Tsui and delicate line drawings of predatory birds on his walls, which were the hue of a robin's egg. A bobble-headed doll of the lead singer from The Cure on his bureau from IKEA. The bobble-headed doll had wings attached. Robin had attached the wings as a sort of private joke. Robin liked birds, including his namesake, and its predators, including the Cooper's Hawk. He listened to all of the music made by musicians who imitated Brian Eno. He also dug the Scissor Sisters and Shonen Knife. But he tried not to limit himself.

Juleen Smith really, really, really did not understand her son, and she would have been surprised to be told how similar they in fact were.

Robin Smith was painfully aware of how similar in fact they were, and took pains to emphasize the differences.

One of the reasons that Robin liked the Cooper's Hawk so much was that it had a severe, blocky head, and the feathers on the back of its head sometimes stuck out. Robin felt that this could describe him, especially when he put that hard sticky styling pomade in his hair, making the feathers on the back of his head stick out. In his mind this helped to distinguish him from his mother, who he felt was timid, round, and soft.

One hour later. Robin slipped out the back door, the click and buzz of the Cocteau Twins rattling his eardrums.

He took a couple of public transit to a storefront titled Money Next Week, grabbed a latte and parked himself on a couch in the back, cocooned in threadbare velvet and the entirety of some recent Tangerine Dream album. This is how he killed an hour and a half.

Juleen Smith wrote in her journal.

It is unfair of me to complain. He gets good marks in school. He is sensitive and kind, even if he broods too much. But I can not help feeling hurt by his actions this afternoon. I have done so much to give him a space of his own, to nurture in him his innate talents. Why must he abuse himself?

After she wrote these words, Juleen pulled down a slim volume of poetry by a lady poet and read, pulling into herself.

A boy sat down next to Robin. Robin drew into the corner of the sofa, but the boy, who had blue eyes and very dark hair and pale skin, started talking to Robin, which started Robin's heart beating very fast for no good reason at all.

Juleen wrote up Monday's lesson plan.

The boy's fingers brushed Robin's hand like it was an accident.

Juleen ironed tea towels

Robin talked about the Cooper's Hawk, and the boy smiled.

And then, a bit later:

Juleen washed her face, brushed her teeth, and went to bed.

Robin jammed his cheek up against the cool smeary chrome of the rail on the back of the slick molded seat on the number 5 bus and stared absently at the tired woman two rows back. She was asleep and didn't see him or his hopeful, giddy, anxious smile.

(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein