her seat, or absentmindedly pick up a book on set and start to read, and we’d have to shoot the whole scene over. My Dad didn’t give up; in one last-ditch attempt to stay on the prayer-air, he decided that we’d stop the injections, go back to the original formula, and invite on guest characters: Chamblis’s Mom, the town’s oldest Orange Traffic Cone, the Memory of Johnny Appleseed. But by then even our living-room TV wouldn’t watch us for half an hour.
In our last episode, my Dad and sister and I chose our smiles and took our places when we realized that my Mom wasn’t on set. The TV gave the five-minutes-to-places call and Mom still hadn’t shown up for costume or makeup. “Where is your mother?” my Dad asked between cambridges.
“I’ll go find her,” I said. I looked upstairs, in the front yard, in her gym in the garage. I found her in the far corner of the backyard, kneeling in the wet grass.
I ran over to her. “Mom?” I said.
“—and please,” she was saying. “Protect us from doubts. And worries. Protect us from
ourselves
.”
“Mom, the show’s starting,” I said.
“Take care of them,” she said. “Take care of them while I’m gone.”
“Mom?” I said.
“I’m praying,” she said. “Do the show without me.”
I heard the credits and the music and I ran inside. “And now,” the TV said, “the MARGINALS!”
The three of us stared at each other. My Mom was supposed to deliver the first line.
“How was—” my Dad stumbled, “your day, Sam—?”
“Cut!” said the TV. “We need the whole family! Goddammit!” The TV unplugged itself and stormed out of the room. “Fuck this noise!”
The TV didn’t come back until late that night—it smelled of beer and cigarettes for the whole week afterward. And from that day forward? The screen wouldn’t look at me. All it did was
show
me things. Maybe to hurt me, it mostly showed me other families, families happier than mine, getting great ratings, raucous laughs, happinesses. Our house, meanwhile? Grew lonelier. Colder. Emptier. And no one even saw it. No one even
cared
what happened to the Marginals.
THE BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO
Wait a second. I just realized that I never told you the story about my bicycle, the Bicycle Built for Two. It’s an easy one to pull from the page. Here, grab ahold and pull.
Pull!
Bicycles, in Appleseed, were very meaningful. A good used bicycle—my father’s ’49 Robinson three-speed, say, well-maintained, with chordspokes and a flim—would run you about seven hundred theories. That was more than one month’s rent in an apartment at Woodside!
My father was given that bicycle by his mother, the Rosary, who prayed for it, and he let me ride it all over Appleseed. When I was ten, though, the bike was stolen out of our garage in Appleseed. It was my fault—I was supposed to lock the bike up with math but I forgot. I woke up the next morning and the bike was gone—you could see the tire tracks in the dewy grass where someone had just walked off with it. Our neighbor Bob Lonely later said that he might have heard the bike shouting, but thought it was some wildwords in the margin.
For about a year I didn’t have a bike; I rode my skateboard or I walked.
When I was about eleven, though, the kids that I hungout with—Spondee, Kielbania, Large Odor, the Couplets, Canavan—started getting dirt bikes: single-speed bikes with knobby tires, pegs on the back wheels, and hardware built especially for jumps and tricks—for their birthdays or Core Days. Some of my friends—the Couplets, O’Hara—had meaningful parents, and Canavan inherited his bike (after his brother served in the Trenches and died from glue poisoning). Large Odor stole his Haro from a bike rack in East Appleseed.
Reader: Stole it? Odor? No. That’s not true.
I swear to the Core it is.
Reader: Odor’s a good kid! He wouldn’t do that.
He told us himself! And none of these guys in the Syntax Gang—that’s what we called
In our last episode, my Dad and sister and I chose our smiles and took our places when we realized that my Mom wasn’t on set. The TV gave the five-minutes-to-places call and Mom still hadn’t shown up for costume or makeup. “Where is your mother?” my Dad asked between cambridges.
“I’ll go find her,” I said. I looked upstairs, in the front yard, in her gym in the garage. I found her in the far corner of the backyard, kneeling in the wet grass.
I ran over to her. “Mom?” I said.
“—and please,” she was saying. “Protect us from doubts. And worries. Protect us from
ourselves
.”
“Mom, the show’s starting,” I said.
“Take care of them,” she said. “Take care of them while I’m gone.”
“Mom?” I said.
“I’m praying,” she said. “Do the show without me.”
I heard the credits and the music and I ran inside. “And now,” the TV said, “the MARGINALS!”
The three of us stared at each other. My Mom was supposed to deliver the first line.
“How was—” my Dad stumbled, “your day, Sam—?”
“Cut!” said the TV. “We need the whole family! Goddammit!” The TV unplugged itself and stormed out of the room. “Fuck this noise!”
The TV didn’t come back until late that night—it smelled of beer and cigarettes for the whole week afterward. And from that day forward? The screen wouldn’t look at me. All it did was
show
me things. Maybe to hurt me, it mostly showed me other families, families happier than mine, getting great ratings, raucous laughs, happinesses. Our house, meanwhile? Grew lonelier. Colder. Emptier. And no one even saw it. No one even
cared
what happened to the Marginals.
THE BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO
Wait a second. I just realized that I never told you the story about my bicycle, the Bicycle Built for Two. It’s an easy one to pull from the page. Here, grab ahold and pull.
Pull!
Bicycles, in Appleseed, were very meaningful. A good used bicycle—my father’s ’49 Robinson three-speed, say, well-maintained, with chordspokes and a flim—would run you about seven hundred theories. That was more than one month’s rent in an apartment at Woodside!
My father was given that bicycle by his mother, the Rosary, who prayed for it, and he let me ride it all over Appleseed. When I was ten, though, the bike was stolen out of our garage in Appleseed. It was my fault—I was supposed to lock the bike up with math but I forgot. I woke up the next morning and the bike was gone—you could see the tire tracks in the dewy grass where someone had just walked off with it. Our neighbor Bob Lonely later said that he might have heard the bike shouting, but thought it was some wildwords in the margin.
For about a year I didn’t have a bike; I rode my skateboard or I walked.
When I was about eleven, though, the kids that I hungout with—Spondee, Kielbania, Large Odor, the Couplets, Canavan—started getting dirt bikes: single-speed bikes with knobby tires, pegs on the back wheels, and hardware built especially for jumps and tricks—for their birthdays or Core Days. Some of my friends—the Couplets, O’Hara—had meaningful parents, and Canavan inherited his bike (after his brother served in the Trenches and died from glue poisoning). Large Odor stole his Haro from a bike rack in East Appleseed.
Reader: Stole it? Odor? No. That’s not true.
I swear to the Core it is.
Reader: Odor’s a good kid! He wouldn’t do that.
He told us himself! And none of these guys in the Syntax Gang—that’s what we called
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