Chapter 31 Chet
CHET
“Happy birthday!” Mother and Father yell. “Blow out your candles!”
Seven tiny trees of wax spring from the top of my cake that’s decorated with frosting roses that Mother herself crafted from a mixture of butter and cream.
“But why blow them out?” I ask. “Aren’t candles meant to be lit?”
“Always with the questions,” Mother says with a laugh that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “You blow them out so your wish can come true!”
“Do the candles carry a celestial link to the divine?” I ask.
“Come on, son,” Father says. “Just blow them out. Your mother worked very hard on the cake, and we want to share it with you.”
It is only the three of us. Mother invited all the children in my class, but for some reason or another, none of them could make it today. All morning the calls came in, each excuse more outlandish than the last. Their grandparents must be dropping like flies.
I finally blow out the candles, and tiny deposits of wax make their way onto the virgin blanket of icing on my cake. Mother wipes them off quickly and cuts me a slice. “Once you finish your cake, we’ll open your gifts.”
The gifts are what I’m most looking forward to, and Mother and Father have gotten me something very special.
I know because I opened the gifts ahead of time.
In the event they weren’t what I wanted, I wanted to be able to rehearse my reaction.
I’ve never been good at displaying emotions in the moment—every feeling seems to bring the same smile to my face, even the bad ones like anger—but when I rehearse them, it’s a little easier.
But the gifts this year won’t require a rehearsed reaction.
Mother and Father hit the jackpot—a book of riddles, and the complete works of Shakespeare on compact disc.
An excellent departure from Father’s gift last year—a baseball glove.
I love riddles—figuring them out is like tickling your brain with a goose feather—and I can’t wait to share them with all my friends in school. This will surely win their affections.
Perhaps I’ll even convince some of them to come to my next party.
* * *
The next day, I wear my favorite outfit—a seersucker suit and pork pie hat—to school. My best friend, Benny, widens his eyes when he sees me.
“Everyone!” He points. “Look what the Jerkster has worn today!”
The children laugh gayly. I’m so glad they enjoy my little outfits.
I pull out my book of riddles. “Benny, I’ve got a thinker for you today.”
Benny rolls his eyes—I think he wears contact lenses, so he must be adjusting them—and leans back in his chair. “Yeah, what is it, Jerkface?”
I open the book of riddles. “The man who sells me doesn’t need me, the man who buys me doesn’t want me, and the man who uses me doesn’t know he’s using me. What am I?”
“I don’t know. A numbskull?” Benny cracks up.
“Skull is close,” I say. “Give up?”
Benny crosses his arms. “Sure. What’s the answer, Jerkster?”
I grin. “A coffin!”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yes, it does, if you think about it. The man who sells a coffin doesn’t need one because he’s alive, whereas the man who buys one—”
I can no longer speak because Benny is giving me a hug around my neck using his left arm.
He’s squeezing harder than he means to and I can’t breathe, but it’s worth it to feel the warmth of human touch.
Benny is my best friend.
I love him.
* * *
University life wasn’t for me.
Mother and Father told me my test scores weren’t as high as they’d hoped.
“Christ, with how weird he is, you’d think he’d at least be smart,” Father said.
“He is smart,” Mother responded. “He just has a very…unique intelligence.”
Unique.
That’s a word I hear often.
Without a match. A child who marches to the beat of his own drummer.
No longer a child, though. I’m eighteen, marching into a life outside of my parents’ loving embrace.
Father took me aside a month before my eighteenth birthday. “Look, Chet,” he said. “I’m going to have to be frank with you.”
“And I’ll be Chet with you,” I replied with a smile.
Father’s name is Frank. It was a good joke.
“Frank as in honest, Chet.” He rubbed at his forehead, the wrinkles deeper than they were when I was a child.
“Your mother and I can’t afford to take care of you after you’ve turned eighteen.
Since it doesn’t look like you’ll be going to college, you’re going to have to find a job once you graduate and support yourself. ”
“Of course, Father,” I said. “But I just don’t know what I want to be.”
“You’ve had eighteen years to figure it out. But right now, any job will do. You’ve got a month before you’re out. Start making arrangements now.”
I didn’t get a cake for my eighteenth birthday. Just a suitcase in my favorite color, purple.
I pack it to the brim with my suits and a few mementos—and that old book of riddles, of course; I’ve even started to write some of my own—and I head into town, looking for businesses seeking help.
I talk to a few people, but they are taken aback by the way I speak to them. Mother says I’m eloquent, Father says I need to speak more like a man.
I’m not sure what that means. I am a man, ergo the way I speak is how a man speaks.
But none of them hire me.
Father made it clear I couldn’t sleep in his house tonight. Perhaps I can spend the night with a friend.
I know Benny’s address by heart. I memorized it years ago. I make my way into his neighborhood on foot, knock at his door.
He opens the door, his eyebrows raised. “Chet?”
“Good day, Benny. I was hoping I could make use of your hospitalities for the evening. Perhaps even two or three. Would you be amenable to serving as my host?”
“What the hell?” Benny cocks his head.
Like Father said. Speak in plainer English.
“Can I…spend the night?”
Benny rubs at the back of his neck. “Jesus, Chet. We haven’t spoken in years.”
“But you’re my best friend.”
He laughs at that. “How on earth can you think I’m your best friend? I treated you like shit in elementary and middle school.”
“You were teasing. That’s what friends do. That’s what Mother always told me.”
“For Christ’s sake, Jer—I mean Chet. Will you ever get a clue?”
He closes the door in my face.
I guess he’s busy tonight.
No matter.
I sometimes see people sleeping in the green area by the airport. Some of them even have tents. I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of camping. The reserve is not far from where Benny lives. I walk over there just as the sun is setting and take a seat on a nearby bench.
This is lovely. Cool night air. A blanket of stars above me, and the roaring thunder of planes taking off nearby.
It doesn’t get much better than this.
A man with stringy hair with aluminum cans lining his arms and a crown of tinfoil passes by me, giving me a strange look. “First night here?”
“Indeed, sir,” I say. “May I ask why you are bedecked in metal?”
“Why what?” He looks at his arms. “Oh, yeah. The cans. It keeps them out.”
“Them?”
“The CIA. NSA. Illuminati. Lizard people. Whatever the hell you want to call them. They’re listening, and these”—he bangs on the metal can on his left arm—“are the only way to scramble their signal.”
I widen my eyes. “Fascinating.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe what those bigwigs can get up to.” The man scratches at the side of his face, and his eyelids twitch. “It’s going to rain, I think.”
I look up. “Heavens, I didn’t plan for precipitation.”
“Here.” He gestures me over. “I have a tent. There’s room enough for two. Come on, you can crash with me. I’ll get you some cans, too. Keep you safe from listening ears.”
“I’d certainly like that.” I extend my arm. “My name is Chester Tabbitt. Chet for short.”
He shakes my hand, not meeting my eyes. “I’m Tim. Timothy Mann.”
* * *
It has been grand getting to become friends with Tim. He’s unlike my other friends. They laughed at me, pointed fingers, said unkind things. Tim doesn’t do that. When he laughs, I’m laughing with him. And he’s never said anything unkind to me in the months since we met.
I’ve procured my own tent now, which I’ve mounted next to Tim’s.
I’ve gotten to know him well. He ended up here because he fell desperately in love with a woman who did not return his affections.
He spent every last dollar he had on her to appease her, but she spurned every fine piece of jewelry, every lavish fur.
He turned to alcoholic beverages and other illicit substances to numb the pain she left in her wake.
Eventually he lost his house, his car, all his belongings, and still the woman wanted nothing to do with him.
He tells me she stole his heart, that there now exists only a chasmic void in the space behind his ribs. Of course, I know this to be a biological impossibility, but he insists it is the case.
I have trouble empathizing. I’ve never loved a woman, not in the way Tim describes.
I understand that there exists a physical closeness between man and woman with which they express their love for one another, but I’ve yet to experience it.
Tim says it’s like a sneeze, but in the most pleasurable way.
I rarely sneeze, so again I have little to draw on.
Tim tells me about hearing voices in his head, which he believes are the government trying to read his mind.
The cans and the tinfoil hat help, but even then, they’re no match for the machines that the reptilians in Washington have at their disposal.
Again, I don’t experience what Tim does, but perhaps my thoughts aren’t as valuable to the president as Tim’s.
One bright Tuesday morning, we are taking our daily walk along the Des Plaines River when a devastatingly beautiful woman with vivid red hair wrapped in a silk scarf approaches us.
She takes off her large sunglasses and grins. “Gentlemen. May I have a quick word?”
Tim frowns. “What do you want?”
“Just a quick conversation. I received intel from a colleague of mine, Austin Waverly, that there was a population of people in need of steady work living in this area.”