“She daydreams of forbidden sins, there must be something more. The prison she lives in, the one with the open door.” Elvis Costello, “Country Darkness”

November 1, 2004

They ambled through the subdivision in unlaced shoes and sagging jeans, circling cul-de-sacs on recon for open garage doors, and jacking an occasional net at swim & tennis. Their daily slog up the main drag took them past Lynn’s house, voices beneath her bedroom window, where she sat in a junk shop armchair, calves clenched against worn velvet, absorbing their parodies of fury.

The leader of the trio was a high school junior from a blended family who lived a few doors down. Two freshmen flunkies shadowed the older boy who wore camouflage, a cap with crossed Confederate swords across the front, and a Sean Penn scowl he’d cultivated to a fine art. Shane Hudson, Anglo-Saxon to a whisker. Sam and Jared were his devoted followers. Lynn was sure they made a point of stopping at her driveway and spitting, almost in unison.

Each afternoon she practiced yogic breathing and read meditation books, just before the bus delivered her oldest son back into her charge, after whisking him off at dawn to a place where she exerted no power. A sprawling brick edifice surrounded by trailers, teeming with preps, punks, and Goths dressed like medieval morticians, who had pierced multiple orifices with rings and gemstone studs. Where the extra-curricular activities of the cheerleaders and jocks made soft-core porn look tame. A locker was rarely for books, and the sight of a student exiting the building without clamping a cell phone to an ear was unusual. Her son spent every weekday in what the libertarian radio talk show host called a government indoctrination center.

Nihilism was hip. Idealism, a quaint notion their boomer parents laid claim to, believing they could change the world, was to most of the Millennials, total crap. Fall was no longer associated with the advent of pep rallies and gridiron, an autumnal shift from sweat to sweater. It began with the tolling of bells and flashbacks of the broadcast loop in a season of tears. Lynn’s generation harbored the replay of Kennedy’s head being blown off, while today’s teens saw skyscrapers vaporize during homeroom announcements, at the delicate juncture of growing pains and ignorance known as middle school.

Lynn underlined a particularly cogent sentence in Daily Reflections for Women Who Do Too Much: “Pain is the touchstone of growth.” Her therapist had suggested such affirmations as a method of positive “self-talk.”

“Change the tape,” Margery advised, the endless rewind in Lynn’s head branding her a failure as a mother surrendering the battle and disappearing into the woodwork. After two years of “medication management” and cognitive therapy, Lynn’s sanity remained elusive. She’d been forced to cede what little authority she had left to her husband Daniel. He had no trouble adapting to the demands of the new century, the multi-tasking, attention deficit-inducing information overload sold to the masses as normalcy. Daniel, with his six-figure income, was a master of all things technological, and, relative to his wife, a model of stability. Lynn stayed home to raise the kids; a role she once viewed as a sacred mission now felt like a slow method of suicide.

She hurled the chubby paperback full of so-called inspiration across the room, confident she could write a counterpoint to these sophomoric insights: Grace For Women Who’ve Thrown In The Towel or Validations For Mothers Who Do Squat. Lynn’s chief preoccupation was online research into spiritual retreats, monasteries, holistic spas, and ashrams. Having never ditched society for the refuge of a commune, sustainable living eco-villages were particularly attractive. She’d bookmarked one in the Blue Ridge called The Green Gate, where members shared income made from producing environmentally-friendly goods.

Lynn heard the sound of the deadbolt turning, assurance that her child, Nathan, had come straight home. The front door slammed and a book bag hit the foyer floor. In an hour she would be outside anticipating the arrival of her younger son, Caleb. By then Shane Hudson and his crew would be out in force, promoting insurgence. Caleb was in fifth grade, only ten, so Lynn stood sentinel by the mailbox, waiting for his bus without fail.

Shane was already a probationary offender. His stay in juvey and a shoplifting charge had garnered him street cred with the neighborhood’s older kids. She’d gleaned that much from homeowners association meetings, overheard tidbits of conversation between Nathan and his buddies, and the sight of Shane’s marauding pick-up truck roaming the streets for potential converts.

Lynn grabbed her chamomile tea and went to her closet. Sliding shirts aside, she pulled out her ammunition pouch, a relic she’d bought at a Salvation Army store. It was a Vietnam-issue kit for storing spare rounds. She twisted the child-safe cap, shook a blue pill into her palm and popped it with a swig of herbal tranquility. The tape inside her head said it was a blessing that mind-altering drugs were scribbled on Rx pads by board-certified psychiatrists. It sang of relief that licensed pharmacists happily dispensed them at Walmart. It chanted the joy of modern medicine that a chemically imbalanced housewife could be brought back into alignment with such remedies.

Lynn leaned into the bathroom mirror and noticed a new hyphen-shaped wrinkle knitting its way into her upper lip. She was a middle-aged white female who wouldn’t merit a second glance at the grocery store.

“Wash your hands,” Lynn called to Nathan from upstairs. She reiterated this first line of defense every time someone entered her home. Powerless to prevent a bio-terror attack, she could fight to ward off E.coli. She found Nathan foraging through the kitchen pantry for a snack.

At fifteen, he was a template for marginal teenage rebellion. His flesh was devoid of the tattoos he begged for, his ear lobes, lips and brows were jewelry-free and his hair remained untainted by peroxide. But his tee shirt was emblazoned with a band’s tour promo, “Spreading the Sickness.” His arms were gel-penned symbols of anarchy, and he was overdue for a trip to Great Clips, having outlived the early-Beatle cut Lynn allowed in lieu of a spiked Mohawk. A flyaway mass of tangles completely obscured his face.

Nathan stood in front of the open refrigerator. “There’s nothing to eat, Mom.” Procuring food, part of her job description, had slipped the list of priorities since Lynn’s latest diagnosis.

“You’re suffering from a mood disorder,” Dr. Braxton told her, writing more indecipherable cursive and handing it over. Later, Lynn found it unsettling to read in her Physicians’ Desk Reference, that the drug was traditionally prescribed for schizophrenics.

“There’s cheese, peanuts, raisins, things you won’t eat,” she said to Nathan, whose stock expression was unveiled contempt. He got cookies from the jar and headed toward the basement.

“When’s Dad gonna be home?” Dad, the Normal Parent, firing on all cylinders, Architect of Appeasement.

“Gee, Wally, I dunno,” she said, scrunching up her face like Leave it to Beaver’s clueless youngster. Nathan’s cheeks were red.

“Just answer the friggin’ question.”

“Don’t say friggin’. The answer will never change,” said Lynn. “Not soon enough.”

Rocky and Zeke, the family dogs, barked at the sound of the doorbell.

Through the glass panels that flanked the front door, Lynn saw Zach Richards lolling about on the stoop. Of the undesirables she’d identified on the block, Zach seemed the most benign, even though he ran with rabble rousers. Lynn had developed a camaraderie with Zach’s mother, Janet, from the day they’d discovered their sons trying to torch a gas can in the woods. The women were part of a disillusioned minority sporting Kerry-Edwards signs on their front lawns, bucking the red state monopoly displayed ad nauseam for miles around. Janet may have been blind to Zach’s destructive activities---she worked outside the home---but inherent decency had to exist in the offspring of those backing Democrats.

Nathan opened the door and Zach bolted in, a freckled boy who looked like an overgrown Raggedy Andy. He began petting the jumping canines, breathlessly pumped over something.

“Sam got a Texas Hold ‘Em table, man,” he said to Nathan. The running poker game in Sam Dudley’s garage commenced right after school, attracting all the budding gamblers within shouting distance.

“Seats eight, it’s got cup-holders,” said Zach, “He even bought casino chips, from Vegas, off eBay.” Nathan didn’t bother looking at Lynn to gauge the verdict. She knew he longed for a mother who never asked about homework, didn’t post chore charts and would blithely accept the presence among the card sharks, of a neo-Nazi skinhead.

“Nathan has to help Caleb with a project for science class,” Lynn said to Zach.

“Mom,” Nathan kicked at the corner of a hand-loomed rug. “He can do it by himself. I’ll end up making the whole damn thing.”

“Sorry,” said Lynn, giving them an authoritative shake of her head. “Some other time.”

Zach pulled something out of the uni-pocket of his hoodie. Glancing at Nathan, he handed him a paper bag and said, “It’s that game you wanted to borrow, Mortal Kombat. ” This seemed to mute Nathan’s frustration.

“Thanks.” He swiftly tucked the bag into his armpit. “Tell Sam I’m in for Thursday.” Zach took off and Nathan trudged up to his room.

Lynn’s crusade to rescue her son from the clutches of bad influences began within months of last year’s move into Ridgecrest. She knew something was amiss when he came home from Sam’s house lauding the production values of “Kill Bill” and “Kill Bill II.” And when he returned from rare outings to the mall with the gang, having purchased movies like “Fight Club,” “Scarface,” and “Taxi Driver.” Almost overnight he proclaimed himself a cinema devotee, lumping together Tarentino and Scorsese as genius filmmakers. It wasn’t long before the eff word became the adjective, noun and verb of choice in his vocabulary.

Lynn gathered folded laundry and headed up to the linen closet, passing Nathan’s bedroom door. As she stuffed sheets onto the shelves, she heard him firing an Airsoft gun at the sticky target he’d hung on his mirror, and his clipped version of Travis Bickle’s familiar line.

“You talkin’ to me?” Nathan repeated, with varying intonation, approximating De Niro. She heard the trigger click, then the ping of tiny green balls hitting an adhesive-coated bullseye. Lynn pictured his room, the heaps of damp laundry, all manner of teen refuse littering the floor—Cool Ranch Dorito chips, pencils minus bitten-off erasers, art supplies scattered willy-nilly. Nathan’s homework would be left undone until the last minute, when he’d hurriedly do a half-ass job.

Lynn and Daniel fought constantly over how to deal with him: groundings, removal of privileges and a spate of threats neither of them could keep.

“So he hangs out with these kids, what’s the big deal?” Daniel wanted to know. “The profanity… it’s just acting out, Lynn.”

“He spends all his time with a kid who owns John Hinkley’s DVD collection!”

The sea change came over the holidays when Daniel resorted to unilateralism. Nathan had asked for a pellet gun, offering a textbook teenager’s rationale. “Chris has one, Dave’s got one.” Daniel remained non-committal. Lynn refused. It was bad enough her son was surfing Internet sites like armedtotheteeth.com., admiring the sleek contours of a Glock and the heft of an AR-15.

On Christmas morning, Mommy got the biggest surprise, waking up to a wooden rifle, indistinguishable from the real thing, leaning against the hearth of the fireplace. Santa, the myth Lynn was keeping on life support for Caleb’s sake, had granted the peevish boy’s wish. Daniel was ready with a stinging defense.

“You’ve been so out of it lately… if it weren’t for online shopping, they wouldn’t have had Christmas.” Lynn didn’t speak to him for a week. She took to her bed and imagined a different life, where you marry the right man, live in a socially conscious enclave and have the career you gave up. While poring over the boys’ baby pictures, a black and white snapshot slipped from the photo album, dated July, 1966: Lynn and her two older sisters looking miserable in front a large brown building. It was the unfortunate spot where she’d spent too many summer vacations growing up, a place any child would dread.

The Greenbriar Lodge was tucked so deep into the mountains of Tennessee, virtually no one knew it was there. It was an accidental discovery her parents found while driving off the beaten track, charmed by homemade signposts, “Greenbriar, Three Miles Ahead,” in contrast to the gaudy billboards for Gatlinburg attractions, where tourists converged in the Smokies. They braved a gravelly road with hairpin turns until their curiosity was satisfied, a dreary two-story log cabin in total isolation.

After a brief tour, her parents checked out of the congested strip’s Holiday Inn and finished out the week at Greenbriar. There was only one telephone, no hi-fi, no radio and not a single TV. It was all old people just sitting, overlooking a storybook valley. Lynn’s mother and father thought they were in heaven. She and her sisters counted the days until they could leave and played ruthless games of checkers. Greenbriar had changed hands several times over the years. The last Lynn heard, aging hippies had turned it into an intentional community.

Caleb’s bus was seven minutes late. It appeared by three-forty, and Caleb, all but lame from his overstuffed knapsack, soldiered up the hill. Lynn adopted the friendly maternal face. Caleb waved a piece of poster board, last week’s map of Asia.

“I got a ninety-four,” Caleb announced.

“Super,” she said with forced enthusiasm.

By four o’clock Lynn was simmering veggies to go with basmati rice. She was trying to prepare whole foods and eat organic, after months of Daniel’s dishing out nothing but burgers and steaks. He’d incrementally corrupted the family’s eating habits, making carnivores of their once vegetarian children. Nathan appeared, sniffing and making a face, the thrill of the borrowed video game apparently gone. Examining the contents of the pan, he pointed to an unknown substance. “Is this meat?”

“It’s TVP.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Textured vegetable protein.”

“You could have thawed out ground beef.”

Lynn dismissed his complaint, secure in the knowledge she was dodging another bullet, mad cow disease. She chopped a bell pepper on the cutting board, knowing her efforts would likely result in a swift dash to the garbage disposal. “Let it go,” said the positive interior voice. Nathan headed for the computer in the adjoining room to instant message his network of cyber junkies.

Caleb came in from the dining room, where he’d been trying to make an alien out of plastic, Styrofoam, and duct tape.

“This sucks,” he said, holding a one-armed faceless juice jug wrapped in aluminum foil. “I need to Google NASA or something.”

Lynn considered Caleb a reward for surviving the demands of her high maintenance firstborn. Caleb’s large hazel eyes framed by ruffled bangs, his exuberance and whimsical grin were the gifts of a fundamentally happy child. Next year he would begin to care what clothes he wore, how his hair looked and embark down the dark corridors of adolescence.

“Good start, honey,” Lynn said, “Nathan can help, remember?”

The water for rice was boiling. “Nathan,” she called out, “You need to get off now. Caleb has some work to do.” Slicing a carrot, she heard them jockeying for computer rights.

“Kike,” Nathan said to Caleb, the force of his karate-trained arm knocking his younger brother on the ground. That word was anathema to their household. Nathan had never heard it from her, whose first car sported a bumper sticker that read: My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter. Nor, certainly, from Daniel, one of the chosen himself.

Lynn marched into the sunroom, put both hands on the swivel chair and spun Nathan around to face her. She surmised that Caleb was unhurt, just crying over his brother’s subjugation.

“Excuse me?” she said. Nathan simply stared, almost inured to her fits.

“You just called your brother a kike…?” She was confounded by the breadth of the position she had to defend.

“So?”

“What’s next, Nate,” Lynn said, a sarcastic smile barely masking her disgust, “Kristallnacht?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Caleb, sensing imminent disaster, slunk off to the basement and the comfort of zapping bad guys with his joystick. “Go to your room, now!” He shoved the chair into the window and unleashed a string of expletives as he pounded down the hallway. Lynn phoned Daniel at work.

“When will you be home?” she asked him, trying to muster a level tone. She glanced at the clock above the picture window, the little ceramic one with a Papa bear and baby bear snuggling over a bedtime story. Daniel’s commute was at least an hour, more in rush hour traffic.

“What’s wrong?” Daniel asked.

“You won’t believe it. This is a doozy.”

Lynn reported the taboo utterance expecting Daniel’s outrage, but instead got weary acceptance. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

“We’ll both talk to him, that’s not enough.” Lynn felt the ritual scenario beginning to unfold: Her husband would weasel out of taking a tough line, leaving Lynn to play perennial bad cop.

“He’s just mimicking some PWT,” Daniel said, “Nathan doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

Daniel felt comfortable tossing around acronyms for poor white trash, but when it came to the usual targets of derision, there was no room for error, or so Lynn assumed.

“He’s fifteen years old,” she countered. “He knows exactly what he’s saying.” Her grasp on the cordless phone tightened, her ear was hot.

The reverb of Nathan’s amp swelled as he tore into one of his four electric guitars, thrashing his way through an angst-ridden anthem. The volume rose on a high-pitched solo. Lynn looked upward for mercy, a power failure or a busted string. She screamed into the mouthpiece, “Are you going to chalk this up to a slip of the tongue and leave it at that?”

“Lynn, calm down. Look, it’s just a phase. Boys do crazy shit when--” He was interrupted by a chorus of voices, then returned to her with a swift dismissal of the matter. “--when I was his age I drew a swastika on my wrist, just to freak out the Civics teacher. My dad went ballistic when he saw it.”

“Maybe I’ll call Isaac, see how he reacts to his grandson’s slur?” There was no response. Lynn heard muffled voices and electronic beeps.

“What’s wrong with this picture, Daniel?”

Daniel was speaking to a co-worker, then said, “I’m swamped here. The guys want to plot the rest of the drawings on site. They’ve booked a suite of rooms at the Westin. I’ll be at this till morning.”

All the relaxation recordings she shoved in the cerebral slot could not put this baby to rest. It would be better if she gave up, got a job, went for drinks with the girls. Stopped the madness, just stopped speaking, stopped being. She slammed the phone into its cradle.

It was time for fresh ammunition, maybe an improvised explosive device rather than the usual hand grenade. She abandoned the vegetarian casserole, intent on her stash, knowing she had some painkillers leftover from last month’s root canal.

Some time later Caleb emerged from the mind-numbing entertainment zone, the downstairs rec room. A landfill of pulverized objects equipped with Playstation, Xbox and GameCube. Lynn had forbidden Grand Theft Auto, but the marketing of simulated mayhem beckoned at regular intervals to thwart her. She’d grown painfully accustomed to the hissing sound of bodies disintegrating into molecular specs. “There’s no blood, Mom,” Caleb often reminded her, as if its absence rendered moot the death toll in his virtual battles.

Caleb found Lynn in the den watching Dr. Phil, who was telling some mother why it wasn’t a good idea to buy her son a new pet hamster after he’d butchered the first one. Anchored to the sofa in stupefaction, Lynn murmured, “Jeffrey Dahmer.” Her sons were incapable of such barbarism.

Caleb glanced at the screen and saw Dr. Phil offer Kleenex to a sobbing lady, then looked back at Lynn.

“What’s for dinner?”

“Dinner,” she said through staccato chuckles, “is an exotic treat.” The hamster mom was nodding in approval at what she was being told. At the behest of the show’s producers, no doubt, she conveyed her full comprehension of junior’s dire future, if she didn’t follow Dr. Phil’s advice.

Caleb said, “Mom, you know what?” Lynn shook her head without answering. Caleb sat down next to her. “Nathan says there’s swastikas at Parkwood. On like, bathroom stalls. Even scratched into desks.” Lynn finally looked at him, recognizing genuine confusion. Lulled by her cache of popped bullets, she frowned but said nothing. Shane Hudson, white supremacist wannabe, was more than a lightweight street stalker recruiting restive adolescents for hate crimes. He would grow up and join forces with rodent thrill-killers. The tape was racing.

Caleb went into the kitchen. In her peripheral vision, Lynn was vaguely aware of him lifting the lid of the pan on the back burner.

“This looks goopy, Mom,” said Caleb. She joined him at the stove and peered into the green and beige slime, then laughed so hard it sounded to Caleb like she was crying. His instinct was to console her, but he never quite knew how to go about it. He went back to the dining room and his unfinished extraterrestrial.

Lynn found herself at the PC typing random subjects into the search engine. Martians, ET, little green men. What forces could she marshal against the specter of fascist teenager takeovers, and the prevailing sense that more stupid people were procreating than smart ones?

Nathan, refreshed by a plugged-in rant, reappeared on his way out the back door, packing his fantasy heat. At first he’d shot at tin cans from a makeshift sniper’s perch on the deck. Then dinosaurs from his preschool days, plastic soldiers and eventually bottles scavenged from recycling bins. Lynn saw Nathan carrying an armful of garage cast-offs and Caleb’s favorite furry pal, flush with victims for his one-man firing squad.

“What are you doing with Longfellow?” One of a menagerie of stuffed animals Caleb still kept on his bed, Longfellow was a talking rabbit who introduced himself when you squeezed his belly.

“It was buried under a pile of junk.”

“He loves that thing,” Lynn said, grabbing the toy from Nathan. “So do I.”

“Come on, Mom.” Nathan reached for the rabbit.

“No way, “ Lynn shrieked. She had lost the use of her former manner of speaking, the one that came naturally when the children were smaller. The lilting, maternal coos. Over time, it was replaced with a vengeful bark, now that everything was a crisis.

“You’re overreacting,” said Nathan.

Lynn didn’t budge. She confiscated Longfellow and went to Caleb’s bedroom, determined to save the most precious lamb from slaughter. She made a mental note: no pet hamsters.

At Caleb’s seventh birthday party, he’d received an unusual present, a large “safe deposit” box with an alarm and a programmable secret code. Rectangular-shaped and steel-plated, if you tried to open it without the correct sequence of numbers, bells rang and lights flashed. It was big enough to house the three most beloved residents of Caleb’s zoo.

To remember the numbers, Caleb kept them on a Post-it note under his mattress. He made up new ones frequently and entrusted only Lynn with the combination. The last time he changed it was on Halloween. Too old to trick or treat, Nathan and his friends had spent the night running amok, planting hundreds of plastic forks in people’s yards. Caleb stored some of his candy in the box.

It was not in Caleb’s closet. Lynn looked everywhere, sifting through the detritus of little boyhood all over the floor. She rose from her knees, catching sight of the only photo in the room, of Nathan, age five, proudly cradling his new brother. She crossed the hall and entered the metalhead paradise. The walls were covered with Metallica and Slipknot posters, a string-bikinied pin-up with a Stratocaster slung at her side, a huge print of Muhammad Ali glowering over a fallen Sonny Liston.

Caleb’s box was under Nathan’s bed. Because it was only yesterday that Caleb had whispered three digits in her ear, she recalled them. On the deck, Lynn heard Nathan taking out discarded remnants of his childhood. Snap. Pow. She pressed in the code, clicked the hatch and closed her eyes. Opening them, she saw a paper bag, an empty CD case, and a snub-nosed .38 pistol. A sensation fell over her, the childhood memory of tumbling out of a swing. Mother comes running, saying ‘just got the wind knocked out of you, you’ll breathe all right in a minute.’ Another crackling zing. Downstairs, the porch door swung open and shut.

“Fuckin-A, sweet.”

“Wow!”

She was dimly cognizant of one boy’s baritone and the tenor chirp of another.

“Say hello to my little friend,” Nathan said to Caleb.

An abrupt vocal spasm came from her mouth. She rushed to her closet for her own arsenal, an array of chill pills; lorazepam, diazepam, alprazolam. Their generic names sounded like incantations Aladdin might employ to summon the genie from his lamp. She hurried to the kitchen and yanked a baking dish from a cabinet. In her mind a dirt road was flanked with tall pines, the mystery journey of four decades ago, into a world of perfect solitude.

“Caleb, come here,” she shouted, “I need your help.” Lynn had a package of brownies in her hand. Ripping into the pouch she said to Caleb, “Remember how we used to make a cake, all in one bowl?” He nodded. She dumped the brown dust into the pan. Caleb reached for the measuring cup but Lynn was already running water from the tap to liqueify the mix. She grabbed a fork and started whipping mud, then bent down to hold Caleb at eye level.

“Tell Nathan we’re going to meet Dad for dinner downtown and we’re leaving in fifteen minutes.” Caleb scuttled to the deck as Lynn smashed pills on the counter with the back of a spoon. Scooping mounds of powder into the chocolate mass, she jammed the Pyrex into the microwave and pushed start. The boys got ready as she watched the glob rise.

Once they were all in the minivan, with her purse and the spiked brownies lain out on the passenger seat next to her, Lynn turned on NPR. She’d cut a dozen squares, figuring one for Caleb and two for Nathan. Some commentators were discussing Kerry’s chances optimistically. In the rearview mirror Lynn saw Caleb smiling. She handed him a brownie. “I told you dinner would be a treat.”

“Which restaurant is it?” Nathan asked, reaching over the seats for the goodies.

“We’ll see when we get there,” Lynn said. “No more than two. I have my limits.”

On I-75 Caleb was out cold. Nathan was trailing off, mumbling Electoral College calculations, until he was napping like the angel he once was. Lynn rummaged through a bag of old cassettes she’d kept in the car since they were toddlers. In the dark, at this speed, she opted for the first thing she laid her hand on. She slid the tape into the player, silencing a Bush apologist. Driving away from the city, with cars beginning to thin out, the next thing she heard was Kermit the Frog.

It was a song from a Sesame Street collection she’d played for Nathan endless times. Her boys were quiet as Lynn headed north, loving the plaintive sound of the Muppet’s voice yearning for “The Rainbow Connection,” assuring her they’d find it. Lynn took him at his word, and accelerated.

More Fiction