(no subject)
"You've got a good story here," the boy with the shaved head says. He has a hick accent. His hands shake. He looks out the window, watching the moss bubble up the marsh. Sarah and the boy are traveling by train to Salem, Massachusetts. Sarah is looking for her father. The boy is visiting his step-sister after a summer in the navy. Sarah is not from here. The boy stopped feeling from here two years ago.
Sarah balls her hands up into her sweater. She is cold. The train dings. It chugs with a silent rhythm, occasional stops. She folds her feet up into the chair. She is tired. Two days ago she flew from Los Angeles to New York after finding out she lost her job to the recession. She didn't like her job, but she still missed it anyways. She liked being able to drink mocha machiatos three times a week versus just one time every two weeks. She looked at this trip as a way of finding herself. That was stupid to say, but she had said it maybe three times to three different strangers on the way to the train. One stranger was a conductor. He had helped guide her to the Chinatown bus, then said "Good luck" when she told him she was finding her father. The interaction felt strange, but it was nice of him to say.
Sarah ate only a bagel on the Chinatown bus. Now, she was hungry. She should have eaten at McDonald's like everyone else on the bus. Back home, a boy she had just met was waiting for her. His name was Steven. He had told her he really liked her after only knowing her for two weeks. Sarah didn't trust him. She had had sex with too many nobodies and didn't think this guy was anything special. Not that she had sex with him- she just knew that if she gave herself up to him too soon, he'd probably say something totally different than "I really like you." He probably would have said something more like "You make me so hot," and words like that had become unattractive to Sarah.
Sarah closed her eyes and dreamed. She thought of climbing into a washing machine and bleaching all her troubles away. The day she got fired, she had just started decorating her cubicle. She thought she'd settle in since she started feeling more comfortable in her workplace. Her superiors didn't seem to think it was necessary to give her hints she was being let go. Sarah kept remembering that moment over and over again in her head. She got drunk on a bottle of wine that night and fell asleep with a headache from crying the whole day. What was she supposed to do now?
She bought a ticket to New York the next day. As she landed, she got a call she was accepted into Parsons grad school. She had forgotten she even applied. Now that Sarah was back east, she could at least consider it. Sarah visited classrooms for two days and then decided it wasn't her "thing." What was more her "thing" was trying to find her father, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey had given Sarah dead bugs for her seventh birthday. Since then, Sarah had never wanted to see him again, but when she turned twenty, things changed. Her mother died and a long-lost half brother connected with her through a random phone call. Sarah didn't even know her brother existed. He already had a family. Sarah had a niece. Sarah never felt close to any family members, so this was new. Many things were new.
Steven was in Los Angeles trying to be an actor. He was also a construction worker and filmmaker. He had dated a psychotic artistic girl prior to Sarah, so he thought Sarah was the sweetest girl he had ever met. She told him she hated dating and didn't think she should do that type of thing, but Steven wanted to finally be with someone nice and bland, like toast. He drew Sarah's face on the back of his notebook with his finger nail. She had a big nose, but it was elegant, like an Anton Von Maron painting. Sarah was pale, milky, rosey in the cheeks. Her curly hair frizzed like ten million bubbles popping at once. It felt nice between Steven's fingers. He wanted to touch her lips.
Sarah thought of Steven's ugly face. It was cute in a weird way. He was taller than what she was used to. She thought of his awkward, gangly body and long fingers. His chest curved in. She smiled. He was like a puppet. Sarah looked at the boy with the hick accent. He was muttering weird things to himself. The train stopped. Sarah was in Salem. The doors opened. "Last stop." Sarah felt the cold wind bite her face. Her puffy jacket enveloped her body and made her roll out the door like the girl who turned into a blueberry in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Sarah stood outside the train station alone. The boy with the shaved head had already left. Sarah felt too alone.
She took to the nearest bridge, down Beverly Street. The wind bat at her face. Each street had a car dealership on it, a car mechanic, a safehouse, or a planned parenthood center. This is where Sarah's father came from. He had moved to Los Angeles following a girl he loved after quitting medical school in Arizona. He thought he'd become an actor in LA. He did great impressions of Charlie Chaplin and also ironically had a great ear for voices. Every home movie Sarah had ever watched of her father was hilarious. He'd always be telling some strange story about meeting Jay Leno or being a millionaire in Beverly Hills (which he was far from since he met Sarah's mother while living in his Volkswagon bus). Sarah's father never became an actor in LA, but he came close. He was a tuxedo salesman. He sold one white suit to Michael Jackson, along with some white penny loafers. Sarah knew this because her father came home with an autographed photo once. He also came home with autographed photos from Jane Fonda and the original Hamburglar.
Sarah's mother always felt that her husband was a liar. He never seemed to really work at the tuxedo shop. He'd come home with these autographs, but by the end of the week, he was broke and had no money to contribute to the household. Maybe he was a gambler. Who knows? It was probably genetic because Sarah sometimes felt the urge to dabble her extra change away in a Vegas casino. She once drove two hundred miles, got to the nearest Vegas casino, then turned back because something told her to just watch horse races in Encino.
Sarah reached the end of the bridge. There was a seafood market and "Bill and Bob's Roast Beef Stand." Sarah grabbed a sandwich and sat in the back room, where ugly saturated paintings of flowers hung on poorly wallpapered walls. Three mentally disabled women walked in, asking for roast beef. One of them was small, younger. The older mentally disabled women screamed at her, then hit her for not being able to decide on the toppings she wanted. Sarah told them to shut up as she walked out. The women were confused. Sarah walked onto Beverly Street. There was nothing much to it. A cut-out of a witch hung across a blue wooden home's doorframe. Next door, there was a used car dealership. Across the street from that, there was a Dunkin Donuts. Next to the Dunkin Donuts, there was the Clipper Ship Inn. It smelled stale from where Sarah was standing, mothballs and damp carpet. Sarah walked into Oceanside Auto.
A man in overalls greeted Sarah. His name was Reggie. He was working on a used Honda transmission. Sarah said she was from Los Angeles and awkwardly brought up that her father was from Salem. She had heard he moved back here after her parents got a divorce, and now she was here to find him. Reggie thought that was nice of her to make the effort- that if it were his children, they wouldn't have even tried. Sarah asked why. He said it was because he was an alcoholic. Sarah said she wasn't sure, but maybe her father was an alcoholic? Reggie said she should try attending a couple of AA meetings in town just to see if maybe she would find her father. Sarah said, "Ok, but do you know any Jeffrey Smiths in town?" Reggie said "Jeffrey" sounded familiar, but as for the last name, he couldn't be too sure because alcoholics stayed anonymous.
Ken Jones, a large used car salesman with white white hair and tattoos, approached Sarah with a booming Boston accent. "What is a pretty girl doing here all alone?" Sarah told him her purpose. "Oh I'm sorry, lady," he said. "Well if you need help getting around Salem so you're not walking around in the cold, I can drive you around on my break." Sarah was not comfortable, but comfortable. She wanted to be taken around, but not by Ken Jones. At this point, she had no choice. She said "Ok."
While waiting for Ken to be off his shift, Sarah sits in the parking lot. She sees a family looking at a Dodge caravan. There is one little boy and a baby girl. She approaches them. She tells the mother the babies are cute. The mother laughs, meek, timid. She is Indonesian. She asks what Sarah is doing in Salem. Sarah says she is just visiting her dad. The mother says "That is nice." The little boy tells Sarah there will be a rainbow coming into the sky soon. Sarah asks him to say that again. "Sky, rain, rainbow!" he exclaims. Sarah is pleased.
Back in Los Angeles, Steven is contemplating whether to call Sarah. His heart tells him so. The sky is pink and gets more orange the more he thinks. He dials, it rings...Sarah doesn't pick up.
Ken Jones is off his shift. But first, he needs to play a round of cards with Tommy, the shop owner. The radio plays Janis Joplin's "Oh Lord Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz." Ken Jones loudly sings it as he throws down four aces. He wins the round. Beer money. Perhaps a trip to the Tiki Hut later to gamble on the Kino. He tells Sarah his plans. He asks if she needs a place to stay that night. She does. "Ok, what's the first stop?" Ken Jones asks. Sarah asks to go to an AA meeting.
It is turning evening and the light beats through the windows of the White Whale. The AA meeting has just begun their prayers. There are old, young, fat, thin, mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, cousins. The whole town seems to sit in this small meeting place. Sarah catches the eye of a man wearing sunglasses. He looks at her for five long minutes. His hair is similar to hers, his mouth looks like the family photos. The AA meeting makes it rounds and hits this man wearing sunglasses. He doesn't say his first name. The sun beats into the red face of a large fat man with slight palsy sitting next to the man. Sarah's eyes stay on the man with the sunglasses. He looks away.
During a five minute break for coffee, Sarah approaches the man. "I've been looking for my father and you look just like him."
The man with the sunglasses does not remove his shades.
"I have a daughter but she's not looking for me," he said. He turns his head away. Sarah stays.
"Well...I haven't seen my father in eleven years...I only just started looking. Do you mind taking off your shades?""
"You're not her," he says.
Sarah looks at the coffee in his cup. The milk in it curds.
Sarah balls her hands up into her sweater. She is cold. The train dings. It chugs with a silent rhythm, occasional stops. She folds her feet up into the chair. She is tired. Two days ago she flew from Los Angeles to New York after finding out she lost her job to the recession. She didn't like her job, but she still missed it anyways. She liked being able to drink mocha machiatos three times a week versus just one time every two weeks. She looked at this trip as a way of finding herself. That was stupid to say, but she had said it maybe three times to three different strangers on the way to the train. One stranger was a conductor. He had helped guide her to the Chinatown bus, then said "Good luck" when she told him she was finding her father. The interaction felt strange, but it was nice of him to say.
Sarah ate only a bagel on the Chinatown bus. Now, she was hungry. She should have eaten at McDonald's like everyone else on the bus. Back home, a boy she had just met was waiting for her. His name was Steven. He had told her he really liked her after only knowing her for two weeks. Sarah didn't trust him. She had had sex with too many nobodies and didn't think this guy was anything special. Not that she had sex with him- she just knew that if she gave herself up to him too soon, he'd probably say something totally different than "I really like you." He probably would have said something more like "You make me so hot," and words like that had become unattractive to Sarah.
Sarah closed her eyes and dreamed. She thought of climbing into a washing machine and bleaching all her troubles away. The day she got fired, she had just started decorating her cubicle. She thought she'd settle in since she started feeling more comfortable in her workplace. Her superiors didn't seem to think it was necessary to give her hints she was being let go. Sarah kept remembering that moment over and over again in her head. She got drunk on a bottle of wine that night and fell asleep with a headache from crying the whole day. What was she supposed to do now?
She bought a ticket to New York the next day. As she landed, she got a call she was accepted into Parsons grad school. She had forgotten she even applied. Now that Sarah was back east, she could at least consider it. Sarah visited classrooms for two days and then decided it wasn't her "thing." What was more her "thing" was trying to find her father, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey had given Sarah dead bugs for her seventh birthday. Since then, Sarah had never wanted to see him again, but when she turned twenty, things changed. Her mother died and a long-lost half brother connected with her through a random phone call. Sarah didn't even know her brother existed. He already had a family. Sarah had a niece. Sarah never felt close to any family members, so this was new. Many things were new.
Steven was in Los Angeles trying to be an actor. He was also a construction worker and filmmaker. He had dated a psychotic artistic girl prior to Sarah, so he thought Sarah was the sweetest girl he had ever met. She told him she hated dating and didn't think she should do that type of thing, but Steven wanted to finally be with someone nice and bland, like toast. He drew Sarah's face on the back of his notebook with his finger nail. She had a big nose, but it was elegant, like an Anton Von Maron painting. Sarah was pale, milky, rosey in the cheeks. Her curly hair frizzed like ten million bubbles popping at once. It felt nice between Steven's fingers. He wanted to touch her lips.
Sarah thought of Steven's ugly face. It was cute in a weird way. He was taller than what she was used to. She thought of his awkward, gangly body and long fingers. His chest curved in. She smiled. He was like a puppet. Sarah looked at the boy with the hick accent. He was muttering weird things to himself. The train stopped. Sarah was in Salem. The doors opened. "Last stop." Sarah felt the cold wind bite her face. Her puffy jacket enveloped her body and made her roll out the door like the girl who turned into a blueberry in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Sarah stood outside the train station alone. The boy with the shaved head had already left. Sarah felt too alone.
She took to the nearest bridge, down Beverly Street. The wind bat at her face. Each street had a car dealership on it, a car mechanic, a safehouse, or a planned parenthood center. This is where Sarah's father came from. He had moved to Los Angeles following a girl he loved after quitting medical school in Arizona. He thought he'd become an actor in LA. He did great impressions of Charlie Chaplin and also ironically had a great ear for voices. Every home movie Sarah had ever watched of her father was hilarious. He'd always be telling some strange story about meeting Jay Leno or being a millionaire in Beverly Hills (which he was far from since he met Sarah's mother while living in his Volkswagon bus). Sarah's father never became an actor in LA, but he came close. He was a tuxedo salesman. He sold one white suit to Michael Jackson, along with some white penny loafers. Sarah knew this because her father came home with an autographed photo once. He also came home with autographed photos from Jane Fonda and the original Hamburglar.
Sarah's mother always felt that her husband was a liar. He never seemed to really work at the tuxedo shop. He'd come home with these autographs, but by the end of the week, he was broke and had no money to contribute to the household. Maybe he was a gambler. Who knows? It was probably genetic because Sarah sometimes felt the urge to dabble her extra change away in a Vegas casino. She once drove two hundred miles, got to the nearest Vegas casino, then turned back because something told her to just watch horse races in Encino.
Sarah reached the end of the bridge. There was a seafood market and "Bill and Bob's Roast Beef Stand." Sarah grabbed a sandwich and sat in the back room, where ugly saturated paintings of flowers hung on poorly wallpapered walls. Three mentally disabled women walked in, asking for roast beef. One of them was small, younger. The older mentally disabled women screamed at her, then hit her for not being able to decide on the toppings she wanted. Sarah told them to shut up as she walked out. The women were confused. Sarah walked onto Beverly Street. There was nothing much to it. A cut-out of a witch hung across a blue wooden home's doorframe. Next door, there was a used car dealership. Across the street from that, there was a Dunkin Donuts. Next to the Dunkin Donuts, there was the Clipper Ship Inn. It smelled stale from where Sarah was standing, mothballs and damp carpet. Sarah walked into Oceanside Auto.
A man in overalls greeted Sarah. His name was Reggie. He was working on a used Honda transmission. Sarah said she was from Los Angeles and awkwardly brought up that her father was from Salem. She had heard he moved back here after her parents got a divorce, and now she was here to find him. Reggie thought that was nice of her to make the effort- that if it were his children, they wouldn't have even tried. Sarah asked why. He said it was because he was an alcoholic. Sarah said she wasn't sure, but maybe her father was an alcoholic? Reggie said she should try attending a couple of AA meetings in town just to see if maybe she would find her father. Sarah said, "Ok, but do you know any Jeffrey Smiths in town?" Reggie said "Jeffrey" sounded familiar, but as for the last name, he couldn't be too sure because alcoholics stayed anonymous.
Ken Jones, a large used car salesman with white white hair and tattoos, approached Sarah with a booming Boston accent. "What is a pretty girl doing here all alone?" Sarah told him her purpose. "Oh I'm sorry, lady," he said. "Well if you need help getting around Salem so you're not walking around in the cold, I can drive you around on my break." Sarah was not comfortable, but comfortable. She wanted to be taken around, but not by Ken Jones. At this point, she had no choice. She said "Ok."
While waiting for Ken to be off his shift, Sarah sits in the parking lot. She sees a family looking at a Dodge caravan. There is one little boy and a baby girl. She approaches them. She tells the mother the babies are cute. The mother laughs, meek, timid. She is Indonesian. She asks what Sarah is doing in Salem. Sarah says she is just visiting her dad. The mother says "That is nice." The little boy tells Sarah there will be a rainbow coming into the sky soon. Sarah asks him to say that again. "Sky, rain, rainbow!" he exclaims. Sarah is pleased.
Back in Los Angeles, Steven is contemplating whether to call Sarah. His heart tells him so. The sky is pink and gets more orange the more he thinks. He dials, it rings...Sarah doesn't pick up.
Ken Jones is off his shift. But first, he needs to play a round of cards with Tommy, the shop owner. The radio plays Janis Joplin's "Oh Lord Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz." Ken Jones loudly sings it as he throws down four aces. He wins the round. Beer money. Perhaps a trip to the Tiki Hut later to gamble on the Kino. He tells Sarah his plans. He asks if she needs a place to stay that night. She does. "Ok, what's the first stop?" Ken Jones asks. Sarah asks to go to an AA meeting.
It is turning evening and the light beats through the windows of the White Whale. The AA meeting has just begun their prayers. There are old, young, fat, thin, mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, cousins. The whole town seems to sit in this small meeting place. Sarah catches the eye of a man wearing sunglasses. He looks at her for five long minutes. His hair is similar to hers, his mouth looks like the family photos. The AA meeting makes it rounds and hits this man wearing sunglasses. He doesn't say his first name. The sun beats into the red face of a large fat man with slight palsy sitting next to the man. Sarah's eyes stay on the man with the sunglasses. He looks away.
During a five minute break for coffee, Sarah approaches the man. "I've been looking for my father and you look just like him."
The man with the sunglasses does not remove his shades.
"I have a daughter but she's not looking for me," he said. He turns his head away. Sarah stays.
"Well...I haven't seen my father in eleven years...I only just started looking. Do you mind taking off your shades?""
"You're not her," he says.
Sarah looks at the coffee in his cup. The milk in it curds.