Stepfather

Since sixth grade, the only book I’ve read that wasn’t assigned to me is the galley of my mom’s boyfriend’s unpublished novel, “Fountain of Youth”. It’s about an Icelandic playboy who seduces tourist women in the hot baths of Iceland, waits for them to fall asleep, then looks at photographs of their children in their wallets and jerks off to them.
It’s a comedy!
The boyfriend, Johann, was born in Russia and raised in Iceland to an Argentinian mother and a South African father. His accent, suffice it to say, had an exotic beauty that you couldn’t place, and it sucked my mom right in. He had her at “heelo, mi nayme ist Johann.”
He was a charming guy beyond that, though a bit awkward. The first time he stood in our foyer waiting for my mom to come down the stairs, we talked about the NBA. Mom must have told him I was a basketball fanatic, because he clearly hadn’t watched a game in his life “You theenk the Wilt Chamberlain will be best champion?”
I’m pretty sure his English was better than I remember; I was ten years old, an age when any abnormality is exaggerated (we all remember the kid from class with glasses as thick as bulletproof windows, or the one whose nose dripped a stream of snot comparable to Niagara Falls). When I talk to him now he has occasional tense problems, but his vocabulary is decidedly better than mine. Writers adapt quickly I guess.
Anyway, ten years later he was still in the picture and wanted me to read his book because it was in trouble. His translator thought it was beautifully written, but too perverse to be published in America. Like always, mom must have tipped him off that I was in a Modern Irish Novels class (Ulysses for Hipsters), so he wanted an expert reader to tell him what kind of obscenities trial he could expect if his book ever made it out there.
It wasn’t so much the acts of the Icelandic gentleman that made “Fountain of Youth” disturbing. I saw Terminator 2 when I was seven, The Exorcist when I was nine. Little could shock me at this point. The part that bothered me was that Fridrick showed no remorse or lack of self-respect for what he did. The book was written in first person, leaving ample chance for him to loathe himself for what he did with these pictures, or for mentally undressing little girls he saw at church. I’d never thought the phrase “I am what I am” applied to playboy pedophiles, and the fact that Fridrick liked himself just the way he was made me wonder about this Johann.
“The Fact ees, people are overly concerned about what the other people is doing,” Johann said. “You may theenk Fridrick ees sick, but no one is hurt by his actions, so vat’s the harm?” The harm is that I tried that excuse once when a professor found out I’d used a line from a KRS One song in a paper and made me write an entirely new one on a different topic. If I can’t get away with shit, I sure as Hell don’t want Fridrick to be able to. “Vunce again you are worrying about vat the others is doing. Stick to yourself.”
I talked about Johann one night in bed with Jessica. I was watching the light that fell through the blinds shift as people walked past on the quad, talking and talking to this girl I’d met a week before about my mom’s boyfriend who I’d never even mentioned to my best friends. She kept telling me to go on, and the more I talked the more strange I felt that it had never crossed my mind to mention this guy to anyone before. He had been around for half my life, had always given me birthday presents and lent me money, and somehow I’d shut him out of my “real” life. I had a family self and a friends self, and Johann was only big enough for one of them.
So you could call it fate when, two days later, Johann called me at the dorm and asked if I’d like to come down to the city that weekend to shop for mom’s birthday. I almost said no out of habit—he’d invited me to countless Mets, Jets, and Nets games that I’d been too busy or too tired or too scared at the prospect of running into someone I vaguely knew at school who was above me in the social pecking order but who might be in a particularly generous mood so would say hi to me and I’d have to explain why this Viking oaf with chest hair peeking above his top button was with me. I told him we could meet at Union Square at noon, and immediately started to think of where I’d tell my friends I was going on Saturday. Oh what a tangled web I weave when myself I do deceive (inspired by Sir Walter Scott, for all you tight-ass plagiarism Nazis out there).
Saturday morning came and I left the dorm before the hung over masses aroused themselves from their caves, avoiding any explanation of where I was off to at the ungodly hour of 10 AM. I caught a Metro North and sat on the river side, watched the sailboats dance on the choppy Hudson and remembering a time when I thought every person ever killed by the mafia was right underneath the surface, constantly being run into by the bottoms of sailboats or, more gruesomely, the engines of motor boats. When my dad ran off just after my sixth birthday, I convinced myself that this is what had happened to him. It was somehow comforting, thinking he couldn’t possibly have found anything but boat-related head wounds outside of mom and I.
Johann was waiting in front of the George Washington equestrian statue (thankfully not riding it, the Viking madman). We started off going to stores we knew we liked to get us into the shopping mood; Virgin Records, Forbidden Planet. We spent over an hour in the Strand while Johann must have walked through all 18 miles of books looking for one copy of something he’d written. Upon learning that they had in fact had a copy of “Vulcan Necklace” earlier in the week but sold it, he smiled and strode out of the musty corridors, back into the Broadway sunshine. “I know they vas lying, but it vas nice of them to do so,” he beamed.
It was lunchtime, so I suggested we get a quick bite at McDonald’s or Cosi. “No, no, no,” Johann said. “Today is special. I take you to Mesa Grill.”
“No, that’s too much trouble,” I said, suddenly feeling awful about pacing the aisles and rolling my eyes at the Strand. “Anyway, we’ll never get in.”
“Ah,” Johann flipped his hand and continued walking. “I know chef, Bobby Flay. Did you know I used write food reviews?”
“I didn’t.”
“It’s good living, but only so many times can say ‘gastronomic’ and ‘succulent’ before I say Hell with it, I’m writing vat I vant.”
“I know what you mean.” There are only so many times I can write “extrapolate” and “transcends” before considering switching to a Physical Education major.
When we walked into the restaurant, Johann was immediately recognized by the Maitre D’. “Ah, Señor Sveinsson! Como estas?” They kissed each other on both cheeks and seemed to talk about the weather – I thought I picked up a “sol” in there somewhere. At one point Johann motioned toward me, drawing the Maitre D’s admiring eyes in my direction. I smiled, said “hola,” and looked back at the floor.
“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” I said when we reached our table.
“Ven my mother died, I vent to her homeland, the Argentina, out of respect for her memory. Her cousin Roberto allowed me stay in his carriage house and I learnt from heem.”
“How long did you stay for?”
“Two months, then come to America,” he said. I nodded and perused the menu.
For the whole meal, people from the restaurant staff kept coming up and shaking Johann’s hand, ecstatic to see him. “They really like you here, don’t they?”
“I used come a lot, but today they have special reason,” he said, licking feta cheese off his lips. “Anthony, I invite you to city today not just for shop, but I have news.” He smiled at me, but I couldn’t meet his intense eyes for more than a few seconds.
Johann breathed out loud, nervously. “At my home, Iceland, we are very close the North Pole, so days are not like here, yes? In summer, only dark one hour of day, and in the vinter, sometimes 23 hours of dark sky. When I first come to America, it was in summer. I expect bright all day! So when sun go down, I am very upset. I cry at night, I stay up with all lights on drinking vodka, wait for sun to come back. And that vinter, when day is bright, I nail boards to my vindows and stay inside. Food is delivered and I never go out. Do you see?”
“Guess it’s hard to move someplace new.” I brushed some crumbs off the tablecloth.
“I want go back home terribly, until I meet your mother. She look at my photos of home, listen about fishing on frozen lake with my mother and father. She stay with me and hold me when sun go down in the summer, give me errands to force me out of house in winter. She take care of me, but make me know that this America is different. She teach me the good of change. Anthony, I love your mother, and today I buy her ring and make her my wife.”
“My mom doesn’t want to get remarried.” It was something I said without thinking about how rude I sounded. She had once said this to me, so at least I wasn’t lying.
Johann smiled, but I could tell I’d hurt him. “People change, Anthony. There was a woman in Iceland who cheat on me. It hurt so much I cannot stay, so I decide I visit Argentina and then come to USA to live writer’s life – adventures in 20’s, write about them in 30’s, drink myself to death in 40’s. But I meet your mother. I’d never write another vord if I knew it mean ve can be together forever. I change.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Ah, is ok.” He patted me on the shoulder. “So after lunch, ve go to the jewelers, yes?”
We didn’t talk on the way. Johann walked with his hands behind his back and whistled while I looked at my feet and listened to my heart thumping. It was at breakfast the morning of my 12th birthday that mom had said she’d never marry again. I was eating a bowl of Kix while she was opening the mail, and I remember her cursing. In her hand was a twenty-dollar bill, “Happy Birthday Anthony” written above Andrew Jackson. “It’s from your father,” she said.
“Awesome,” I said, grabbing for the bill. She snatched it and crumpled it in her fist.
“We don’t need him,” she said, and started to cry. “We’re doing just fine without him, aren’t we?”
“I guess,” I agreed, kissing goodbye to the NBA Live game I would’ve bought with the money.
“Do you remember him, Anthony? It was half of your life ago; do you really remember what it was like to have him living here?”
“I don’t know. I remember watching TV with him. We watched Pee Wee.”
“Do you like Johann?”
“He’s ok.”
“If only I’d met him first.” She blew her nose into a napkin. “But he understands that I can’t marry again. He’s so good to me, Anthony. You should spend some time with him alone, just the two of you. It’d be fun.”
“Maybe.” And here we were, eight years later and alone together for the first time, Johann after what I knew my mom didn’t want and taking me along for the ride.
“Dammit,” I said, smacking my head. “I just remembered I told a friend I’d be at her a cappella fundraiser at 4. If I don’t leave now I won’t make it.”
“Oh, is ok, Anthony. I see you ven you come home for Thanksgiving, yes?”
“Definitely. And, uh, good luck with…you know…”
“Ha, yes,” he said, then hugged me tighter than he ever had before. “Take care, Anthony.”
On the train back to Poughkeepsie I sat on the riverside once again. But this time I didn’t look out the window – I stared at the back of the seat in front of me and fumed. The girl to my right was chewing her gum too loudly. The man in a suit’s cell phone conversation was too loud. The mother could shut the fuck up about “look! Look! Hudson River! Can you say Hudson River?” to her baby already. I’d have taken a sleeping pill if the trip wasn’t less than two hours.
By the time I got back on campus I didn’t even remember my excuse of the friend’s a cappella fundraiser. I sat in one of the tall trees by my dorm, watching Frisbee practice. Around five o’clock, when the light was starting to pitch my shadow onto the Frisbee field, my buddy Roy found me.
“Wilson? What’re you doing up there?”
“You’re lookin at it, Roy.” I didn’t know his last name,
“Well get the fuck down here. Me and the boys are gettin’ our drink on tout de suite.”
“You read my mind.”
Roy and I went to his room and mixed our patented half-tonic half-gin super-drink in his Nalgene. We took a couple slugs and then went down the hall to Mikey’s for Irish car bombs. The chronology of the late afternoon/night from then on is hazy, but I do know that I was caught by security pissing on a bush outside and I was kissed on the cheek by somebody wearing black lipstick. That’s about all I can say.
And I thought college was about making memories.
I forgot to close my shade that night, so at 6 AM the sun came streaming over the quad and nudged me awake with a pounding headache. I almost fell down on the way over to the window to close the thing, and as soon as I did my computer loudly alerted me that I had mail. I guess I had been blasting some music when I passed out, cause the alert probably woke up the whole dorm. I stumbled to my desk and mashed the keyboard. The e-mail was from my mother, her subject line simply “!”. She wrote, “sorry if I woke you, but I just couldn’t wait any longer!! They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll let them do the talking!” The first picture was of my mom showing off a giant diamond ring on her right hand. There were tears in her eyes, but I had never seen her look happier. In the second photo, Johann had his arms around my mother. He was kissing her flushed cheeks, and wiping her tears away with his monogrammed handkerchief.
I stared at the pictures for a minute, allowing myself a smile. I forwarded the e-mail to Jessica, and went back to bed.