This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Part Two, Chapter 12, This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Part Two





Heaven’s so close it’s within
spitting distance













Chapter Twelve



I lost my way. It was just a couple weeks later-—when I made my descent into a curious situation. I found some real trouble alright. You know what’s interesting is that I was going to start this and blame everything on a bird.
It started one night at the Chicken Coop. It was late and all was quiet as I lay in my tent facing the ceiling. I was thinking about Nicole. And the crickets were chirping. There was traffic on the highway, the wheels licking the pavement, and there was even a lone train whistling off in the distance. Then, just when I was feeling cozy, after I’d convinced myself I’d find someone even better than Nicole, just when I was about to fall asleep, like a switch the bird came on loud and clear. Cowbirds are day birds, but this one, when it started, it kept at it all night long and it whistled on--well into the wee hours of the morning. Zeeee-uurrr…Zeee-uuurrr…Zeeeee-uuurrr…constant as a metronome. I didn’t get a wink in edgewise. The others—-my cast and crew--weren’t so disturbed. They slept inside the Chicken Coop or my dad’s van.
The following morning I found the culprit, that bird perched on a low branch and discovered the reason for its odd behavior was due to it being blind as a bat. Later with the help of my cast and crew we captured the bird with a plastic noose from a six-pack and the bird became our mascot. We named the bird Take One, the number of takes we shot for each scene. I insisted on this, which only proved to be shocking later on.
Tori sewed a tee shirt for the bird with its name engraved on the front so if it ever got lost strangers would know its name, if it ever flew away we were thinking, but--and this isn’t funny--the tee shirt was much too small and restricted blood flow, and eventually, removing the shirt for the first time to wash after my dog Moonshine accidentally lifted a leg and peed on the tiny mascot--though to some Take One confused the pudding stream as rights to a bird bath--the little guy’s wings came off upon removing the shirt, just as though the frail wings had been purposely stitched to the cotton/poly blend, and now to our dismay Take One was both a double amputee and blind as the grinning and grunting Ray Charles. No one laughed. It was a horrible thing to see. It was a daydream right out of Goya.
But even without this bird, I’d say that my days on the movie set were marked with nothing but trouble. So I guess I can’t blame everything on Take One. He was just a reminder, like a bookmark, that my life was stuck on a very strange page. And this time there was no Nicole to help me.
I thought about her constantly. I mean, every second of every day. She was my breath of...(I was going to say fresh air but come to think of it she wasn’t really.) Sometimes I’d go out to the fence, hang on the chain link, and watch the traffic race by on the interstate. It reminded me of our hitchhiking trip together, the nights we spent in that stinky tent. I couldn’t believe I’d lost her. I just wanted to sink to the ground, curl up, and cry. But at the same time I had a capacity to look at the brighter side and I fantasized at length that we would somehow make it back together, for example, once I made my fortune on this ridiculous movie.
Meanwhile I found it impossible to get any work done. I just stood at the fence and watched the traffic float by, stuck in outlandish daydreams. It felt better than fighting with my cast and crew. Almost immediately I’d lost control over them. On the second day already my heart just wasn’t into it. I knew the movie would be a stinker. The whole thing was going to be a big waste of time. Deep down I knew it.
Tori’s deaf brother Johnny seemed eager to direct and basically on the second day I just let him take over. I thought, fuck it, let him grunt his way through it. Who knows maybe he’ll even save the piece. A deaf movie director, it made good copy, besides. That’s what I was thinking. But I knew that even Johnny would mess it up. It couldn’t be helped. It would take a real genius to make it work. The story was too complicated. It was just a mess. Johnny would be the laughing stock of the film world. It made me feel happy; it gave me real pleasure to know this. Johnny, that bastard anyway. It was because of my kids that I felt this way at first. They were supposed to have come down with him from Alaska and I know it was because of him that they didn’t. The shithead had no patience for children. The guy was a selfish bastard. He was uptight and suffered from high anxiety. He was handsome, that was his only saving grace. “God, that Johnny, he’s got the looks. I forgot how good-looking he was,” my mom said. OK, he was handsome, but you should understand right off the bat that this egomaniac was no Johnny Depp. My mom started imagining things, but that’s a whole other story.
The thing about my kids, I simply had no idea. Beth Ann didn’t bother to call me. From what I was told later, after boarding the plane in Lousetown the flight attendants had to reopen the door five minutes later and escort my boys down the stairs and back across the tarmac to the terminal due to their obnoxious cries for their mother, their heads held back bawling, screaming and wailing. Beth Ann could’ve called but I guess she must’ve forgotten. Lord knows she had a busy schedule. Oh, but don’t take it personally, I’m thinking she said, I still love you more than life itself; the sun still rises and sets on you; you are my reason for living, you are the air that I breathe; you are greater than God; you are my true love; you mean more to me than my own flesh and blood; I would die for you; I couldn’t carry on without you; you are everything to me; please, don’t leave me, I beg you, don’t leave!!!
Anyway, her doctor boyfriend in the kindest of all gestures decided that he was going to pay their way to Italy and now they could all go to Europe together. “It’s going to cost him five thousand extra to take your boys,” Beth Ann said simply amazed. “Five thousand dollars worth of tickets. Isn’t that nice of him?” It sure was I said. They would travel together like one big happy family I figured. What a letdown that was. I could just see it. My two beautiful children would forget all about me. This doctor, I bet he was the greatest guy in the world. Mr. Easy Going. Any money. Everyone loved him (even the IRS). Mr. Popular. Not an anxious bone in his body. Dr. Parfait. I was sure of it. The last thing I said to Beth Ann was, “Don’t let the boys call him Dad.”
All she said in reply was, “I wasn’t the one who up and left the family, you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’re divorced, Emmett.” (Which I gotta remember was true. I had raised my right hand telephonically from my dad’s abandoned office just the previous week and had told the judge it was voluntary on my part. Now it was official.) “The boys can call him whatever they feel like,” and she hung up.
But this was on Monday and on Sunday the day they were supposed to arrive I still didn’t know, so with my brother’s car (actually it was his wife-in-absence, Nastasia’s) I went to the airport to go pick up my boys anxious with butterflies. I hadn’t seen them in nearly two months and I felt like a neglectful parent. I was nervous and I wanted to make a good impression. On the way I stopped at a toy store and bought two enormous Power Ranger dolls. I felt foolish as I carried the dolls into the airport, tucked under each arm like unruly children, and I waited at the gate with them sitting in the two seats beside me. A big red one and a big blue one. I forgot their names. I think Tommy and something-or-other. Tori was there with me, too. Just so she could get out of my brother Stanley’s hair. She was wearing a pink jumpsuit and she kept fussing with the zipper.
“God, your brother, he’s bugging the shit out of me,” she said. “That homo act, does he actually think that’s going to get me in the sack? Why can’t I stay with you? Or at least at your girlfriend’s.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. And you’re not moving out of Stanley’s. You’ll hurt his feelings if you move out. Anyway, we’ll be on set soon. Tomorrow hopefully.”
“On set, listen to you,” she giggled.
“What?”
“You’re cute.”
“That’s what it’s called.”
“God, your brother.” She heaved a sigh. “If he acts this way all through the movie, I’m going back to Alaska. No way am I gonna put up with that.”
“Oh, you’re not going back home. I thought you wanted to get famous.”
She thought about it, then said dismissively, “Ah, fuck fame.”
I turned and looked at her. In a way she was pretty. She had nice features. The overbearing distraction from her simple beauty was her personality.
“Sometimes you remind me of my mom, you know that, Tori?”
“I like your mom. She’s funny as shit.”
When Johnny stepped off the plane, airsick as usual, he was vomiting into a white sick-sack. He looked awful and I was pleased, all the more so once I learned my kids weren’t with him.
An hour later Johnny had stopped vomiting and we went to Wallmart since he had decided not to pack a suitcase. He signed, grunting to Tori that he’d planned on sharing my wardrobe, but had forgotten what a true monster I was. He threw his head back and laughed—-a loud, horrible noise--and then gave the Power Ranger doll a hug, rocking it in his arms. (I’d tossed the dolls into the weeds upon leaving the airport, so hurt and upset that my boys didn’t make the flight and that Beth Ann didn’t bother to call and that damn Johnny continued to exude total indifference even though deep down I knew it was all his fault. He could’ve comforted them, he could’ve tried to console them, but that wasn’t Johnny’s way.) So after I’d tossed the dolls into the weeds, Johnny, first hurling a column of barf, went to go rescue one and now made a point of pretending to shop for the doll, trying on outfits for size, all the while eyeing nearby women to catch their reaction. I guess it was his way of flirting. I was disgusted and left Wallmart to go out and wait in Stanley’s car.
Out in the parking lot I thumped the steering wheel for a few seconds, then decided to go drive around for a while. I started the car and began slowly driving away.
I guess I was on autopilot. In five minutes I found myself parked at the curb in front of Howser’s bungalow. Since his car was parked there in the driveway I didn’t go into the house to snoop around. When I was just about to leave I noticed--of all people--Dorothy sneaking around the bushes and stopping to peak into the window, the one that I’d always used to spy on Nicole as she sat on the couch and watched TV. “Goddamn Dorothy,” I muttered under my breath, “that ole hippo, goddamn her.” She was nothing but trouble.
But suddenly I realized I should probably feel bad for thinking that because just the other day with ten thousand dollars from a second mortgage she had opened an escrow account for our movie. She had clung to my hand as we walked in public. She had this stupid grin on her face, all proud. I just wanted to go hide. I kept saying, “Dorothy, my hands are sweaty. It’s gross.” She said something like, “I don’t care. Your hands could be logs of dog doo-doo and I’d still want to hold your hands.” Her version of cute was talking like a toddler. She clung onto me awkwardly as the bank agent stared in disbelief. “Ten thousand dollars!” Dorothy screamed as we left the bank. She kept repeating it over and over. I grew irritated. “How many times to I have to thank you, Dorothy?” She felt an advantage. “I can be happy. How many times has someone given you ten thousand dollars? I’m happy for you, honey.” “Well, don’t be,” I said. “Oh, leesten to you,” she said in her horrible French accent as she grabbed my arm with both her pudgy hands and cuddled into me. It was so ridiculous I started laughing. That bad French accent of hers was going to send me over the wall. I said, “God, Dorothy, how many times to I have to tell you to quit with the accent. It’s insane.” She said, “I can talk like her if I want to. You don’t own me, you’re not the boss of me.”
At every chance Dorothy proved disappointing. My thoughts drifted towards accidental death. The guilt was driving me crazy; it was eating me alive. All I wanted was for her to disappear—-after leaving me all her money to be honest. Earlier I had considered taking her into the city where there was one of those rock-climbing gyms, but then like a fool I remembered the padded floors. Or we could go boating on the reservoir like Shelly Winters and Montgomery Cliff and reenact the scene in A Place in the Sun. I even thought of burning down Dorothy’s house with her trapped in the basement, but I realized when push came to reality I could do none of these things. I even thought of killing myself, but show me the frolic in hanging stone-ass limp. (Which suddenly reminds me--as a prepubescent I liked to imagine attracting the attention of a girl I was sweet on by hanging myself in the closet of my bedroom dressed in my Sunday best. She hears me choking and while cutting me down in the nick of time can’t help but notice my tasteful three-piece.)
I rolled down the car window and curtly shouted, “Dorothy!” She looked and when she noticed it was me her jaw dropped and she turned on her heels and disappeared into Howser’s backyard. I was growing aware that Dorothy was developing more than passing interest in Nicole. Howser had even called to politely ask if I would stop calling his number and hanging up. I told him it wasn’t me. He said, “Dude, don’t lie. It’s you calling. I’ve got caller ID.”
“All right. I’m sorry, I’ll stop.” As I said this chills shot up my spine in realizing that I was actually covering for the woman I despised most. It didn’t make any sense. Of course, it didn’t have to, either. Maybe I should’ve shown Dorothy more gratitude after she’d given me the ten thousand dollars. Then it occurred to me. Maybe Dorothy had been using me this whole time just to get to Nicole. In my sick world I knew it was possible. Looking back on it suddenly I was convinced for a fleeting moment. One night during pillow talk Dorothy had even wanted me to describe Nicole’s sex organ.
I was startled. “You mean her vagina!” I shrieked.
I drove around the block, but Dorothy was nowhere in sight. Going back around the second time, I happened to look down the alley and there she was slinking along the wall of an overburdened garage. I pulled in behind her like a cop.
“Get in,” I said.
She smiled, opened the car door, and with difficulty sat down, the car heaving with her weight.
“I knew you’d come find me, hon’,” she said in her ridiculous French accent as she fastened her seatbelt.
“Dorothy, can you please, please stop with the accent. I’m begging you.”
“Give me a kiss, I will.” She leaned in with her lips puckered, which darkened her mustache. Oh, God in heaven, I thought.
I said, “Not here.”
“Why not? Don’t be a baby. You’re silly.” She puckered again.
“Come on, Dorothy. Jesus Christ.”
“You would for money I bet.”
“Dorothy…” I pleaded.
“Five thousand dollars.”
“For a kiss?” my voice cracked.
“Five thousand dollars for a kiss, I don’t think so,” she said.
I honestly don’t care what you think of me anymore, so I’m just going to tell you what happened next without any fear of disgusting you or making you blush in shame. After parking the car in the alley and sneaking through Howser’s back yard, as part of our deal (and not that I believed it for one second, mind you) we positioned ourselves in front of the window where we could watch Nicole and Howser if they ever decided to show yourselves. Dorothy jerked down her poly-stretch trousers and leaned against the window frame. I dropped mine and worked my wee one inside. It was warm and sticky. A soft breeze tickled my buttocks. I clutched her blue-white alabaster hips and started pumping. I really wanted to see Nicole through the window and in a way I wanted her to catch me at my worst, to see what level I had dropped to, as if to say, see how bad things have turned without your love? But two minutes later I climaxed with no Nicole in sight. As I started to pull out, Dorothy said, “Wait, I’m not done yet.”
“Dorothy, we’re going to get caught.”
“I’m not done. I wanna cum, too,” said the senior citizen.
“It takes you forever.”
“So?”
But then a car appeared around the corner and started driving down the street. Sitting in the backseat was this eight year old kid wearing an Indian headdress. He saw us and started pointing and whooping like a warrior pumped on speed. I grabbed Dorothy and together we fell into the bushes.
“Just lay still. Someone saw us,” I said.
She started giggling and for the first time I noticed her lavender stretch marks.
Dorothy quit giggling and said, “Ah, that’s sweet.”
“What is?”
“You hugged me.”
We pulled our pants up and snuck back to the car parked in the alley. Driving around the block and passing in front of Howser’s, we noticed that his car was gone. They weren’t even at home when we’d pulled our prank. Isn’t that kind of funny?
Dorothy said, “That didn’t count.”
“Fine. Where’d you park your car?”
“I walked. I’m trying to lose weight for you, hon’.” Then she remembered. “Hey, where are your kids? Weren’t you supposed to pick them up?”
“They decided to stay with their mom.”
Dorothy made this face like she was about to cry. “Oh, I’m sorry, hon’. I know you were really looking forward to seeing them. Come here, let me give you a hug.”
“No, I’m alright.”
She leaned across the car seat and tried to hug me, but got hung up midway by the shoulder harness. One thing about Dorothy, safety-conscious, she always wore her seatbelt; would you believe even in the driveway while re-parking her car? (I almost want to say that once she drove home and panicked like a horse caught in barbwire forgetting her seatbelt was fastened, screamed bloody murder, her arms flailing as she shrieked, “Help, honey, help! I’m trapped! I can’t get out! I’m stuck!” while I secretly watched from the window of the house laughing to myself until she passed out from exhaustion, died from heatstroke, miraculously rose from the dead to dig her own grave at a secret location, not forgetting to sign the will leaving me everything she owned, so that Nicole, my kids, and I could live happily ever after in her house down the street, but that never happened; the woman had an astonishing short-term memory.)
“I’ll drop you off at Mom’s,” I told her. “I’ve got to go back to Wallmart to pick up Johnny and Tori.”
“I wanna be with you. You shouldn’t be alone today.”
“Dorothy, come on.”
“Oh, hon’. I just feel so bad for you.” And her face broke into that awful grimace.
Suddenly, it hit me like a jolt. It took me by complete surprise, too. I had this overwhelming sensation that everything was going to be alright. My future goals would all come true. It was the last thing I would’ve expected just then, but it surged through my body like a shot from the syringe. Everything was going to be alright. I’d become a writer, a published one to boot. I’d make my living making movies. Girls would swarm me, I’d be pressed on all sides, a fortress of bosoms wherever I went. My boys would see my face on the covers of magazines when they went to the store to buy candy. The phone would be ringing off the hook. We’d be harassed day after day by complete strangers, begging for attention. I don’t know why I thought that when I did, but as long as it lasted it allowed me to see Dorothy in a new light. Yes, she was irritating compared to all the girls I ever loved, but that was then and this is now. It was obvious to me. I was meant to suffer. But soon it would all be over. I had this feeling.
I dropped Dorothy off at Mom’s. Before getting out of the car, she leaned in and popped a kiss, saying, “I’ll be praying for you.”
“You’ll be praying for me?” That was new.
“Yeah, I always pray for you, hon’”
“You do?”
“Of course, I do. I love you. You’re my guy.”
“I didn’t know you were religious.”
“God helps us in mysterious ways,” Dorothy said in her fake French accent.
“Alright. Well, I guess I’ll catch you later then.”
Her head tilted and her face broke into that look of deepest sorrow.
She said, “Oh, hon’,” reaching out with her hand and softly stroking my face.
“Look, I gotta get going. They’re waiting for me.”
“You sure you’re going to be alright?”
“Dorothy, Jesus, enough already…”
She smiled and lurched out of the car, singing out in a high-pitched voice, “Love you.”
I sped out of the driveway like I was in a big-ass hurry, but parked two doors down, and ran through the rhododendrons to my bedroom window to watch what might happen next. I’d caught them at it several times before since Dorothy and I had started up, the two of them, Mom and Dorothy collapsing onto my bed together, locked at the face. Why I now thought it was amusing went beyond the confined limits of my tin pan considering my initial reaction when I’d first heard their moans that night at the Chicken Coop. At least it was more palatable than catching my mom, ass in the air like Goofy the dog, sniffing the bed sheets like a crime scene investigator. I was shocked.
“What the hell are you doing, Mom?”
She jumped up as if shot with a jolt.
“Jesus H. Christ, don’t you ever knock?” she screamed.
“You’re in my bedroom. What the hell were you doing anyway?”
“I was looking for one of my earrings…if you must know.”
“You liar. You were sniffing my bed sheets. That’s disgusting.”
“I’ll tell you what’s even more disgusting, you thinking that I was.” She walked past me, saying, “You’re a sick, sick man, do you know that? Just like in you’re stupid story, that poor girl doing it with a cow bone? You’re the sicko, not me. And Roger didn’t like it, either. He told me. He was lying. And you should hear what you’re girlfriend’s been telling me. I almost want to call the whole thing off.”
“Just stay out of my room, can you do that?”
“You’re paying rent from now on!” she shouted as she walked out to the living room. “I’m sick and tired of this. You’d think you were still a teenager. You’re thirty five years old, for Christ’s sake. Most men have their own homes, live with their own families. Just look at Stanley. He’s got a nice house and two cars. What do you have? You’ve got nothing. Nothing but a fat old cow for a girlfriend.” She laughed. “You’re the one that’s disgusting.”
But today waiting at the window all I heard was Dorothy and Mom starting to argue inside the house, so I walked back to the car deciding it was finally time to go back to Wallmart to get Tori and Johnny. It’d been more than a couple of hours. I knew Tori was going to be upset. But she was my actress and I felt enabled by Sir Alfred Hitchcock to abuse her. I’d even heard that actresses make a habit of falling for their directors so maybe she could become my temporary girlfriend until I won Nicole back. Maybe it was going to take more than one woman to make Nicole jealous. A harem might be in order, but then of course the whole idea was bashed by the reality of Dorothy. She wouldn’t allow it. But then I thought, who am I kidding? It occurred to me, this thought that I’d stumbled upon. It seemed like the perfect solution.
I turned the car around. I went back to Howser’s. His car still wasn’t there, so I parked down the street, sprinted to his front door and knocked to make sure no one was at home. As I opened the door I swear I could smell her--I could smell her sweetness. I went to their bedroom and I rummaged through the drawer that kept her undies. I picked them up one by one. I smelled them and examined the fabric for stains. Soon I found myself sobbing. I buried my face into her pink Hane’s and soaked it with my tears. How on earth was I going to survive this heartache? And this great idea that had brought me here now made me sick to my stomach. I had planned on stealing some of her underwear. I was going to tell Dorothy that Nicole had wanted her to have them, that it was a gift with no strings attached. I was going to say that Nicole knew about Dorothy’s routine of watching her through the window and that she, Nicole, felt honored to have someone like Dorothy so inspired to actually take the time to do it. It wasn’t sick at all. You’re a very brave woman, Dorothy, Nicole would say. Knowing that Dorothy watched her on occasion, she would even go to great lengths to dress accordingly and in fact could Dorothy come up with a list of particular clothes that she would like to see her in, scanty or not, but for starters wear my underwear while watching me, OK?
God in heaven, what lapse in judgment created me? What perverted mind could come up with something like that? Why would I thrust my sweet Nicole into a world of hell? Why would I share my scorching flames with the girl I loved more than life? Dorothy was my hell, and damn me or hang me I planned on keeping her all my own. Simply for the colossal mistake of losing Nicole, I should suffer the rest of my life with Dorothy. That’s what I was thinking. In fact, next time I saw Dorothy I was going to get down onto my hands and knees and ask for her hand in marriage. Truly, and nothing could stop me. Somehow this made me feel much better. I imagined the distress it would cause my mother and somehow that warmed the walls of my thickened heart.
I found my favorite pair and stuck the blue-and-white polka dot undies in my pocket. I felt much better. I just hoped Nicole could make it to the wedding as our flower girl.
I was so intrigued by this idea that I ran back to the car fast as I could. I had no time to spare. I didn’t want my enthusiasm to fade in five minutes. I sped through the tranquil neighborhood like a demon. A flock of mourning doves raced along beside me as if heralding the moment.
At my mom’s I threw open the door and shouted for Dorothy. I heard my bedroom door slam. I raced to the bedroom door and Mom shouted from inside the room, “Don’t come in just yet!” in an innocent voice.
“Well, hurry up! I’ve got exciting news!” But I could feel my heart changing, I was starting to get that bad feeling, so I threw open the door. My mom was pulling on her trousers.
“Goddamnit, why can’t you knock?”
Dorothy was nowhere in sight. “Where’s Dorothy, Mom?”
“How the hell should I know, now get out and let me get dressed!”
I had a big smile on my face, I was grinning past my ears.
“I’m going to marry her.”
“Get out and shut the door!”
“Mom, I’m going to marry Dorothy.”
My mom screwed up her face into a tight knot. Suddenly, from her hiding place on the other side of the bed, Dorothy raised her head. Maybe I should say she looked like an angel, that her sweet head tilted to the side and tears formed in her beautiful brown eyes. Her lips started trembling and all she could say was, “Oh, hon’”
My mom said, “You can’t be serious.”
And I knew right then that I wasn’t serious, it was a fatal mistake; Mom was right, unfortunately for Dorothy who placed her head onto the bed and started sobbing uncontrollably.