a brief, passing phase on the planet? I felt strongly that we needed to explore other solar systems and establish colonies. The survival of the human species was very important to me.
Perhaps it was because of this that I began to keep a journal. I had recently read
The Diary of Anne Frank
, and had been deeply moved by the idea that a piece of you, words on a page, could live on after you were dead. I imagined that, after a nuclearholocaust, an extraterrestrial boy might find my journal, floating among some bits of meteorite and pieces of buildings and furniture that had once been Earth. The extraterrestrial boy would translate my diary, and it would become a bestseller on his planet. Eventually, the aliens would be so stirred by my story that they would call off the intergalactic war they were waging and make a truce.
In these journals I would frequently write messages to myself, a person whom I addressed as Big Me, or The Future Me. Rereading these entries as the addressee, I try not to be insulted, since my former self admonishes me frequently. “
I hope you are not a failure
,” he says. “
I hope you are happy
,” he says.
I’m trying to remember what was going on in the world when I was twelve. My brother, Mark, says it was the worst year of his life. He remembers it as a year of terrible fights between my parents. “They were drunk every night, up till three and four in the morning, screaming at each other. Do you remember the night Mom drove the car into the tree?”
I don’t. In my mind, they seemed happy together, in the bantering, ironic manner of sitcom couples, and their arguments seemed full of comedy, as if a laugh track might ring out after their best put-down lines. I don’t recall them drunk so much as expansive, and the bar seemed a cheerful, popular place, always full, though they would go bankrupt not long after I turned thirteen.
Mark says that was the year that he tried to commit suicide, and I don’t recall that either, though I do remember that he was in the hospital for a few days. Mostly, I think of him recliningon the couch, looking regal and dissipated, reading books like
I’m Okay, You’re Okay
, and taking questionnaires that told him whether he was normal or not.
The truth is, I mostly recall the Detective. He had taken an interest in the mysterious stranger who had moved in down the block. The Stranger, it turned out, would be teaching seventh-grade science; he would be replacing the renowned girl’s basketball coach and science teacher, Mr. Karaffa, who’d had a heart attack and died right after a big game. The Stranger was named Louis Mickleson, and he’d moved to Beck from a big city: Chicago, or maybe Omaha. “He seems like a lonely type of guy,” my mother commented once.
“A weirdo, you mean?” said my father.
I knew how to get into Mickleson’s house. It had been my hideout, and there were a number of secret entrances: loose windows, the cellar door, the back door lock, which could be dislodged with the thin, laminated edge of my library card.
He was not a very orderly person, Mr. Mickleson, or perhaps he was simply uncertain. The house was full of boxes, packed and unpacked, and the furniture was placed randomly about the house, as if he’d merely left things where the moving men had set them down. In various corners of the house were projects he’d begun and then abandoned—tilting towers of stacked books next to an empty bookcase, silverware organized in rows along the kitchen counter, a pile of winter coats left on the floor near a closet. The boxes seemed to be carefully classified. Near his bed, for example, were socks—underwear—white T-shirts—each in a separate box, neatly folded near a drawerlessdresser. The drawers themselves lay on the floor and contained reams of magazines that he’d saved,
Popular Science
in one,
Azimov’s Science Fiction
magazine in another,
Playboy
in yet another, though the dirty pictures had all been fastidiously
Perhaps it was because of this that I began to keep a journal. I had recently read
The Diary of Anne Frank
, and had been deeply moved by the idea that a piece of you, words on a page, could live on after you were dead. I imagined that, after a nuclearholocaust, an extraterrestrial boy might find my journal, floating among some bits of meteorite and pieces of buildings and furniture that had once been Earth. The extraterrestrial boy would translate my diary, and it would become a bestseller on his planet. Eventually, the aliens would be so stirred by my story that they would call off the intergalactic war they were waging and make a truce.
In these journals I would frequently write messages to myself, a person whom I addressed as Big Me, or The Future Me. Rereading these entries as the addressee, I try not to be insulted, since my former self admonishes me frequently. “
I hope you are not a failure
,” he says. “
I hope you are happy
,” he says.
I’m trying to remember what was going on in the world when I was twelve. My brother, Mark, says it was the worst year of his life. He remembers it as a year of terrible fights between my parents. “They were drunk every night, up till three and four in the morning, screaming at each other. Do you remember the night Mom drove the car into the tree?”
I don’t. In my mind, they seemed happy together, in the bantering, ironic manner of sitcom couples, and their arguments seemed full of comedy, as if a laugh track might ring out after their best put-down lines. I don’t recall them drunk so much as expansive, and the bar seemed a cheerful, popular place, always full, though they would go bankrupt not long after I turned thirteen.
Mark says that was the year that he tried to commit suicide, and I don’t recall that either, though I do remember that he was in the hospital for a few days. Mostly, I think of him recliningon the couch, looking regal and dissipated, reading books like
I’m Okay, You’re Okay
, and taking questionnaires that told him whether he was normal or not.
The truth is, I mostly recall the Detective. He had taken an interest in the mysterious stranger who had moved in down the block. The Stranger, it turned out, would be teaching seventh-grade science; he would be replacing the renowned girl’s basketball coach and science teacher, Mr. Karaffa, who’d had a heart attack and died right after a big game. The Stranger was named Louis Mickleson, and he’d moved to Beck from a big city: Chicago, or maybe Omaha. “He seems like a lonely type of guy,” my mother commented once.
“A weirdo, you mean?” said my father.
I knew how to get into Mickleson’s house. It had been my hideout, and there were a number of secret entrances: loose windows, the cellar door, the back door lock, which could be dislodged with the thin, laminated edge of my library card.
He was not a very orderly person, Mr. Mickleson, or perhaps he was simply uncertain. The house was full of boxes, packed and unpacked, and the furniture was placed randomly about the house, as if he’d merely left things where the moving men had set them down. In various corners of the house were projects he’d begun and then abandoned—tilting towers of stacked books next to an empty bookcase, silverware organized in rows along the kitchen counter, a pile of winter coats left on the floor near a closet. The boxes seemed to be carefully classified. Near his bed, for example, were socks—underwear—white T-shirts—each in a separate box, neatly folded near a drawerlessdresser. The drawers themselves lay on the floor and contained reams of magazines that he’d saved,
Popular Science
in one,
Azimov’s Science Fiction
magazine in another,
Playboy
in yet another, though the dirty pictures had all been fastidiously
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