THE HEARSE DROPS ME BACK AT KEENAN HOUSE LATER THAT MORNING. After a pretty dull school day, I’m back in the basement rec room full of sticky tables, hard plastic chairs, wonky shelving holding worn-out board games, and thin slits of window from above, helping Oscar, a fifth grader, with his math homework when Jude charges in. “Yo, Dar!”
I look up. “Hey. Let me finish up with Oscar.”
Jude sticks out his tongue. “Oscar, bah! i Déjanos solos, tenemos que hablar!”
“¡Necesito ayuda con esto!” the boy shouts.
Jude growls. “Later, eh? ¡Haz tu propio trabajo!”
“¡Esta mierda es difícil!” Oscar rolls his eyes, sulkily picks up his homework, and leaves the room, but not before flipping off Jude. Jude stamps, pretends to lunge at him, and the kid flees with a little yelp.
“He has a test Monday.”
“The Common Core can suck me,” says Jude. “What happened at Moldavia?”
I only tell him about the reading of the will. He immediately goes into his Godfather thing. “They’re not pulling you back in.”
“I didn’t say I was going back.”
“Harvard.” He points at me. “You have a responsibility to all of us.”
I throw up my hands. “All of you? What about what I want, man?”
Jude starts boxing the air. “Not everyone gets to go to Harvard. I’ll be lucky if I don’t spend my life in jail.”
“Don’t talk like that. Don’t be a moron.”
An Irish-Italian amateur pugilist with Mommy issues, Jude’s dream is to be the welterweight champion of the world. He walks around Keenan House wearing only silver gym shorts, black high-top Everlast boxing shoes, and cherry-red boxing gloves. His nose has been broken nine times. It literally looks like someone stuck a potato in the center of his face, but that hasn’t stopped him from sleeping with every female our age or older who’s come through these doors, including a few key staff members—or so he claims.
That’s actually Jude’s sign-off to me every night. Instead of “good night” or “sleep well” he’ll say: “Dar, just remember I fucked every woman here.”
Once he said: “Nancy. I did her too.”
“Nancy? The resident nurse? She’s like seventy years old.”
“You’d never know it,” he replied.
He may be a pathological liar. Or he may not be. But he definitely knows how to work it. I’ve seen his charm in spellbinding action, and it’s something to behold.
I don’t know how Jude wound up here. We never really talk about it. I’m sure he has a dark past. Keenan House is a nonprofit residential foster care home for kids who have been really kicked around—most of them way worse than me. But the facilities are nice, the campus is relatively serene, it isn’t all Christian and shit, and that’s why Franklin pulled the right strings to get me in. I take a bus to a public high school nearby (same one as Jude, though he has his own circle of friends) and come home to a bunch of overworked, half-drunk counselors pursuing various PhDs who look after us, and mean well. I was already too old to be adopted when I got here, as was Jude.
It always made me sad, though, to see that yearning in the younger kids, like Oscar, who got so goddamn close with three separate couples before these assholes changed their minds at the last minute. Yet Oscar soldiers on, hoping for more chances, wanting to be wanted so badly, needing a family to make him feel whole. Fuck, man.
None of the younger kids seem to understand why I ran away from my own family; it’s incomprehensible to them. But I needed the opposite of family. No more families for me, with all the depraved circuitry that runs through them. I craved the stark, institutional structure of Keenan. There are definitely a lot of troubled kids who come and go here: bruised and abused (B&A, Jude says), with drug problems, on suicide watch, and all that shit. I knew I’d be here for six years, I carved out my place, and I’ve been happier on my own.
I’ve only ever roomed with Jude, and despite his lawnmower snoring, we get along great, have a mutual respect. An older-brotherish protective thing comes out in him with me. Even though we’re the same age. He’s pretty much my best friend.
I mean, hey, I was totally open-minded about being friends with kids at my school, but the whole Alastair thing got in the way. I was naive. I had a group of friends, but then one of them took an unflattering photo of me chomping on a meatball sub in the school cafeteria and posted it on Instagram: Alastair still craves human flesh! #Alastair #WhereTheyAreNow #Gross #HungryDeadBoys #ZombieChildrenOfTheHarvestSun.
The post went viral, and I felt totally betrayed. I retreated into myself and never came out of my shell again. People apologized, but I ignored any attempts of various kids to get to know me after that. I didn’t trust their intentions. I’ve never been all that good at the whole friendship thing anyway (or accepting people’s apologies). Whatever.
I love Jude’s mysterious, sometimes pervy, secrets; his unknowable quirks are way more interesting to me than anyone else’s boring old bullshit. Sometimes, when he can’t sleep, he’ll dress up as a Mexican wrestler (a luchador), mask and all, and pace the halls, freaking out the younger kids. He also has a hidden stash of Japanese tentacle porn stuffed in a sock drawer, and in a scuffed-up metal cabinet that Jude once forgot to lock, I found a skateboard made of solid gold. The thing glinted off my guilty, prying face like that briefcase from Pulp Fiction. Who knows where the hell he got it.
Deep down, Jude is a dirty romantic; he plans to explore the Seychelles Islands just so he can behold, and cup in his large battered hands, the coco de mer: a plant shaped like a penis and testicles. And then he plans on falling in love with “a sexy treasure hunter who doesn’t take any shit.” That kind of sums up anything anyone ever needs to know about Jude.
In a beat-up Adidas shoe box that I keep under a loose floorboard, I have my own little secret: an iPhone. Oren gave it to me as a gift for my sixteenth birthday, sending it along with an iTunes gift card. We aren’t allowed to have personal cell phone plans here (we have to use the communal cordless off the kitchen), but I use the iPhone to make curated playlists of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Art Blakey—I’m a bit of a jazz head.
The iPhone is the nicest thing I’ve ever owned. I cried my eyes out when I first got it, and I had to immediately smash the screen with the heel of Jude’s boxing shoe—not out of spite, just so it wouldn’t get stolen. In a house full of broken people, the things you keep close to your heart better be broken too.
I know the terms of my dad’s will dictate I have to return to Moldavia. The tentacles I was imagining coming for me have become a little too real. But I’ve been in total denial about going back, and having real responsibilities there. Still, Moldavia looms. Like it always did, in a way. I was just able to ignore it better before the will.
A week after I get back from Moldavia, I’m in bed listening to Miles Davis at Newport, picturing smoke-filled jazz clubs in the 1950s, and ladies in sequins clutching champagne flutes, when I hear screams. Jude bursts into our room wearing his luchador getup: blue-and-silver mask, red cape. He’s completely naked otherwise. He stands still for a moment, pallid moonlight striping his bulky body. He looks at me and starts wildly swinging his dick back and forth, trying to guess the rhythm of the jazz track I’m listening to.
I roll my eyes, put the pillow over my head. “Come to bed, you schmuck.”
“Yes, dear.”
Jude cannonballs into the upper bunk, nearly toppling the whole bed over. He sticks his head down, still masked, wiggling his fat tongue at me. “Remember. I fucked every woman here.”
There’s a soft knock on the door. And then Len’s voice: “You guys?”
As soon as Len, our sad-sack but good-hearted counselor, opens the door and tentatively steps inside, our bed begins to shake like mad: Jude pretending to jerk off.
“Oh shit, sorry!” says Len, backing away, awkwardly juggling his can of PBR and a half-eaten slice of pepperoni pizza.
“Jesus!” says Jude. “Why can’t you knock?”
“I did!”
“He’s just messing with you,” I tell Len.
“Sorry,” says Jude. We actually all adore poor, miserable Len.
“Dario, it’s after hours, but you have a phone call,” says Len. “It’s your brother and he says it’s important, so I agreed you could take the call.”
I sit up, removing my headphones. “Oh.”
As Len leads me out, he says: “You should go to Harvard.” And then he scratches his ass. “Pam told me today that I’ve put on some weight.” He pulls at his flannel shirt. “What do you think?”
“You look the same to me.” Pam is the library science grad student Len has been in a tormented relationship with for as long as I’ve known him. Len is a reminder that all sorts of unhappiness await us in our adult lives, beyond these walls. “Just be you, Len.” I don’t know what else to say. People usually say that.
He frowns. “Sometimes I wonder if me is enough for Pam.”
I tap my chin with my finger. “Pam knows where the door is.”
“So you’re saying I should tell her this is who I am and deal with it? Or try to maybe become a better, healthier person based on what she’s always telling me about my personality, career goals, and general appearance? I know she means well. . . .”
This role-reversal thing I’ve always had going on with Len, where I’m the one counseling him, has ceased to be weird for me. “Look. Are you happy with you?”
Len rests the can of beer against his cheek. “I like me,” he says, somewhat assuredly.
“Are you happy with her?” I never know where I get any of this advice. It’s kind of instinctual—stuff I’d ask myself if I was in the same position. I try to care about the people who try to care about me.
Len inhales long and hard. He takes a slug of beer, considering this, and nods vaguely, like I just solved everything wrong in his life. Then he smacks me on the back and hands me the phone as he shuffles off, gnawing at his slice of pizza.
I put the phone to my ear. “Oren.”
“Dario. I didn’t know about Harvard. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. Did you just find out or something?”
“No, no. I’ve been meaning to call. Just got caught up. You have to go, of course.”
I nervously pick at a spot of peeling paint on the wall. “We’ll see.”
“It’s what Dad would have wanted.”
Here we go with this again. “How do you know that?”
There’s a sound like Oren just dropped the phone; I hear him curse, the sound of stuff, like papers shuffling. Then he quickly comes back on the line. “I know you can defer after you’ve been admitted to college. Kids take these gap years now. I read about it. I read . . . these blogs.”
“Yeah.” Harvard actually encourages gap years.
“You know we have to make a decision regarding Dad’s will?”
“I know.”
“So what were you thinking?”
I wasn’t. I was putting Moldavia off for as long as possible. I’m finishing high school. I have other decisions to make about college and summer jobs, and part of me was hoping Oren and everyone else would just decide to sell the studio to Rusty Blade and I’d find out about it later.
“Listen,” says Oren, “what if we say: come back for the summer and see how things go. Just for the summer, Dario. A trial period.”
“The will stipulates I have to live at Moldavia full-time for six months—”
“I have an idea.”
I wonder if there’s anything scarier than Oren uttering those four words.
“Something that would bring the studio a lot of attention,” he says, “something that could really put us back on the map . . .”
He pauses for dramatic effect. I’m instantly overcome with a quaking anxiety.
“. . . is the return of one of Moldavia’s most iconic actors back to the family fold!”
“I am not going to star in your broccoli movie.”
“It’s killer cauliflowers, Dario.” He sounds hurt. “Let me finish!”
“I’ll save us both some time. No.”
But he’s launched into this P. T. Barnum thing now. “The return of Dario Heyward! Not seen on-screen since his legendary performance in Zombie Children of the Harvest Sun!”
I hold the phone an inch from my face and intensely give it the finger.
The last thing I want to do is stoke my cult following—resurrecting this awful thing from my past that I always prayed would finally burn itself out in the loneliest recesses of the internet, where it thrived like E. coli. But I can hear Oren’s voice excitedly blaring out of the earpiece. “Alastair has become such a thing in the years since. You know that, right? People are obsessed. There’d be a ton of excitement in the horror world. Fanboy freak-outs all over societal mediums.”
I swallow, take a breath, and put the receiver back to my ear. “Social media.”
“Right, yes, that.”
“I’m going to say no.”
“We’ll give it the summer. Just the summer! If you’re miserable, off you go to Harvard in the fall. If we’re able to save the studio, you can do some well-deserved traveling after we wrap, typical gap year stuff, and return to Harvard a year later! Knowing you finally did something selfless for your family.”
“I don’t know how to run a movie studio,” I say through my teeth.
“Leave that part to me.”
“I just don’t think this is a good idea. Going back. Also, there’s a process. I’d have to defer enrollment, write a letter to admissions, probably very soon, outlining what I’ll be doing, get it approved, maybe even reapply for financial aid—”
“Dar!” He’s growing impatient. “Just think about everyone else for a moment instead of yourself! What if we have a real chance to save the studio? What about Hayley and everyone whose lives are here? If we go under, Dario—if we’re forced to sell—what would happen to them? They’d all be displaced,” he says, lowering his voice like he’s narrating a Holocaust documentary. “We have to . . . Dario . . . Hello? Hello?”
I’m miming smashing the phone receiver into the wall.
This is obviously all part of my dad’s master plan—forcing me home to get back at me for leaving. And on top of that, Oren is playing the Dario’s being selfish card, with the added bonus points of throwing everyone else’s fate into the mix, twisting and twisting and twisting my arm.
Hayley told me to focus on my own future. But it’s not that simple. I do have guilt about leaving Moldavia, and Oren knows that. I’m not sure I want to go to college, and even if I decide I want to, I can take a year off. It’s worse in a way, because what Oren’s asking isn’t totally ludicrous. It’s just family shit, and that happens in life.
So, for the hell of it, I ask him what role I’d be playing in his vegetable movie.
“There’s a hell-bent leader of the mutant cauliflowers,” he says.
“Why does there always have to be a leader?”
“Even dry vegetables need leadership, Dario. His name is Stanhope.”
I squeeze the skin where my nose meets my forehead. “Stanhope?”
“Yes.”
“You wrote a mutant cauliflower character named . . . Stanhope?”
“I’ll direct. You star. If it turns out we have a hit on our hands—because of your name—maybe we can actually save the studio after all! And then off to Harvard you go—with a clear conscience.”
Clear conscience. Fuck you, Oren.
“Isn’t it worth a try?” he says. “So we know we at least did something to save the studio, and preserve our family legacy? I don’t have Harvard waiting for me. This is all I’ve got. This is the only life I know.”
I can’t take any more of his pleading and his selling. “I’ll think it over.” I hang up the phone before he can say anything else.
I punch the air. Fuck! This! Shit!
Jude was right. They’re pulling me back. How could I tell Oren no? I’d be consumed by even more guilt for the rest of my life. It feels like Moldavia has erased my free will, my ability to make my own decisions about my life. It’s enraging and unnerving, it really is.
But then I think about Hayley. And instantly, all that anger evaporates.
Jude is snoring when I return to my room. If someone put a leaf blower in the upper bunk, in place of him, it would actually be quieter in here. I put the jazz back on, but I’m too upset to listen, so I take the headphones off, fumbling with the phone. Whenever I’m frazzled, I always accidentally hit something on my phone that says No Favorites. I put my iPhone away and just lie there.
I actually do have a favorite Moldavia movie, even though I never told anyone. It’s called The Lovers of Dust and Shadow. It’s often overlooked. My dad made it right after my mother was committed. I think it’s the one movie that proves my dad really had a soul, however corrupted it might have been.
In the movie, a handsome Hollywood stunt man falls in love with this rich lonely countess in the countryside of some unnamed locale. But she has this horrible disease: the more she loves someone, the more of her body rots and turns into dust. And the disease is contagious. But the two lovers, despite repeated attempts to go their separate ways, can’t live without each other. Love turns out to be the real disease, in a way. And they figure, screw it, and get married, knowing they won’t have a lot of time. But they’d rather have some time rather than none. They need each other that much.
So they both slowly decay, as their love grows deeper and deeper. She’s sicker than he is, and in the last scene of the movie he’s holding her on a deserted beach as what’s left of her crumbles away in his hands, scattered to the wind. Then he carries her empty gown, all that’s left of her, her scent, holding the gown delicately to his nose, so he can keep the fading essence of her with him for as long as possible, as he slowly walks into the sea, drowning himself.
My dad could be cruel and tyrannical. But yet, somehow, he was able to make this delicate love story. People’s dichotomies fascinate me. And freak me out.
I was too young at the time to know what was going on, but my dad watched his true love—my mother—basically disintegrate before his eyes. And then he had to send her away because of me—someone he had no interest in knowing at all.
My mom never really believed I was her son. That was at the core of her delusions. Although she loved me (at least for a time, I guess), and wore the locket to prove it (probably to herself), she began to suspect I was something other. Namely, that she had been impregnated by a race of aliens, who she called the Red Ferrets.
Moldavia is a hectic place, and she wasn’t getting the proper care there. No one was looking after her. And one night, when no one was looking after me either, the Red Ferrets told her to bring me to them. “Let’s buy you some new toys,” she said, even though it was pretty late at night. I rarely saw my mom by that point, so any chance to be with her was precious to me. I was happy for the first time in a while.
She duct-taped my mouth shut and shoved me into the back seat of our silver Volvo. The night was neon and taut like it was lit with the fuel of her hallucinations. She sped down the highway going ninety, skidding and sliding down muddy side roads until she reached a bus stop. She left me on a bench, with my mouth still taped, and drove away.
I was there, by myself, for over an hour before someone called the cops.
“There are worse things than dying,” the dude in The Lovers of Dust and Shadow says, faced with the prospect of losing his love. That line always stuck with me because of what he was saying: suffering can be worse. Pain can be worse.
It really is a beautiful film.
Of course, after I left Moldavia, my dad’s first feature was The Possession of Prodigal Peter, about the boorish, bratty thirteen-year-old scion of a wealthy real estate family who gets possessed by a horrible demon. But the kid is so foul and empty inside, grinding the family fortune into the ground with his unrelenting needs and wants and demented behavior, the demon can’t last inside of him and makes a break for it.
You actually wind up feeling sorry for the demon.
So, yeah, I stopped watching Moldavia films after that one.
I fall asleep thinking about Franklin and Hayley and Mistress Moonshadow and Oren, and all the rest of them, feeling strangled by the night, and I have this dream about a drowned world—a deluge that plunges everything underwater: Keenan House, Moldavia, my school, the whole world. But for some reason I can breathe underwater. I’m the only one who can. So I try to find Jude and Hayley and Oren, but they’ve already drowned, sinking into the cold depths, arms outstretched, hair waving like anemones. I cry out for them, but only a useless string of bubbles shoots out of my mouth.
And then everything gets darker and heavier as I start to sink too.
In the morning, before school, I wipe away the drying sweat on the back of my neck, call Oren back, and tell him what I want to do.