Don't Disappoint (Ch. 19)
by Martin van Cooper
Welcome back to a special Summer Edition of PILCROW. For the next three weeks, we’ll be serializing the remaining chapters of Martin van Cooper’s unpublished novel Don’t Disappoint (runner-up in our last contest back by popular demand). Stay tuned for submission deadlines for our next quarterly contest (in which each of two runners-up receive $500, and the ultimate winner - voted on by you, dear subscribers - receives $1,000).
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In Don’t Disappoint, amidst a flailing career, a displaced midwesterner in Los Angeles goes home to confront the complications of a mother with advancing dementia, only for a marital sucker punch to leave him questioning what’s left of his family to salvage.
Martin Van Cooper writes the Substack Don’t Read the Dust Jacket
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It’s 7:00 am on a September morning and the sun is bright white between clouds over the bumper to bumper on the 101 and on one side of him is a woman with black hair and tits like a Jeff Koones sculpture in a black convertible Audi A5 with dealer plates and the top down listening to some extremely loud and 120bpm EDM straight from a Vegas pool party and on the other side is a woman with her hair in some kind of ethnic looking wrap of sorts driving a MiniCooper, also black, with an Arizona license plate reading SHE BAD. He passes a late 90’s short cab Toyota Tacoma with lawn mowers in the back and weed whackers hanging off the side and a Nueva Vida 90.3 sticker on the tailgate and three Mexicans in the front seat, two of whom are asleep.
Jason’s cell phone vibrated and Mom appeared on the heads-up display. He let it go to voicemail. The memory could still induce transient panic attacks, even now after the old man had been gone a decade. When he was a child, his mother ridiculed him for dirtying the rim of the toilet and floor beside it when urinating standing up and admonished him to sit down even when going number one. It was in his early teens when in the kitchen his mother strode, where he and his father were fixing sandwiches for lunch, and stated that she was tired of cleaning urine off her bathroom floor and maybe someone else would like to do it. Proud that he had been doing as he was told, he stated that it wasn’t him, because he sat down to pee. The look his father gave him at that moment and the realization then, and subsequently dissected and analyzed through hours of contemplation on public toilets taking shits in the intervening years, that his father held back the scorn he felt for his son, refrained from some type of ridicule, from implying effeminacy, from calling him the giant pussy that he obviously was for sitting down to piss like a woman…gave him tachycardia.
His sister called him 5 mins later and he picked up.
Yeah, it’s fine, she was calling because she couldn’t find the remote. So, what’s going on? Yeah, you’re up already I know. I’ll tell you sometimes I swear we don’t have it nearly as bad. I just hung up with my girlfriend. Her daughter, Lizzie, my god. She asked Anthony to watch the baby while she’s here for her mother’s birthday party and she explained the whole thing and he said I’ll letcha know. She thinks he’s gonna do it but if he doesn’t do it. She was caught drinking again. Brady. But um, they’re not letting her go. The foster system. She’s not allowed to leave Brady alone with that baby, so she has to bring him with her, home, so I don’t know what’s gonna happen because I hope Anthony watches him because well Lizzie says if Anthony doesn’t watch him she’ll just have to bring him to her grandma’s and I thought oh God that’s gonna be like world war three if that happens but I mean I didn’t say that to her I’m just saying whatever. To me this is like a blessing that this child services knows about this now because there’s gonna be a record of it. This is how Anthony talks to her. This is what he said when she told him I guess he sent her a text when she told him and he texted what the f. About how this happened and everything. And then when she talked to him on the phone he said well I’m not sure I want to do this whole parenting thing again. And Lizzie, she wanted to laugh. He has never taken them to the doctor he has never taken them to sports he has never picked them up from daycare. She had the custody he saw them on the weekends. I mean he left Lizzie when Brady was three weeks old. Well they split up. He didn’t want the responsibility of those girls. He left her. I mean he’s a big partier. You know it is hereditary when people have alcohol problems, I mean Brady’s father drinks, her grandfather drinks, he just passed away, he died last year they had all, all the brothers, they all got it, her grandmother, Anthony’s mother is fine, she’s the nicest lady. And Brady looks just like Anthony you can see she takes more after Anthony then Lizzie. Of course no one knows this. I haven’t said a word to anyone. She doesn’t know why they let her go, with all those felonies and the drinking. But her car is impounded and Lizzie said I’m not gonna get her car out. It costs money if she wants to get her car out, she did get it out. She’s got a lot on her plate over there. Lizzie gets up early so she can beat some of that traffic and so she told Brady that you can’t not be here with that baby, I have to go to work, she’s staying out all night with these hook ups leaving the kid in the bed with Lizzie. I mean it’s just such a sad situation, I mean the girl does need help. She really needs help. You know she went through all this nastiness and that’s who she is and you know Lizzie says that’s just who she is and it’s a shame. Because I mean the little boy is sweet as pie, I mean I’ve seen him a couple times you know Lizzie facetimes with me, I’ve seen pictures but you know Lizzie doesn’t want him going into the foster system because you don’t know what kind of family is gonna get him.
