The Candy House

“Ah,” Dad says. Not because he agrees with Mom’s latest conspiracy theory—he never does, none of us do—but because he’s figured out who she’s talking about: our next-door neighbors, the Salazars.

Mom leaves the kitchen and stands beside Dad’s recliner, looking down. “They don’t look remotely alike,” she says. “Do you see any sibling resemblance?”

“We’ve never been on good enough terms with him for me to get a close look at his face,” Dad says.

“I think he’s given up on the journalism,” Mom says. “He’s around the house a lot.”

“You’re around the house a lot,” Dad points out.

“I’m keeping an eye on him.”

Dad carefully sets down his newspaper—the equivalent, for Dad, of standing up and staring fixedly into Mom’s eyes. “Observe the property line, Noreen,” he says. “If you encroach on their property again, I can’t protect you. Hannah, are you listening?” he calls to me through the kitchen door. I’m always listening. “You are my witness.”

“What if he encroaches?” Mom asks.

A few months after Stephanie Salazar’s brother moved in with Mr. and Mrs. Salazar, Mom saw him climbing into their house through a window (he’d forgotten his keys) and called the police to report a break-in. She knew exactly who he was but didn’t trust him, she told Dad (who told me), having received hostile looks while gardening near the split-wood fence that separates our yard from the Salazars’ yard.

What Mom didn’t know was that Stephanie’s brother was on parole, which resulted in the police taking him away in handcuffs. That night, the Salazars came over to talk to Mom and Dad about Stephanie’s brother and his mental health. Bennie Salazar discovered Dad’s favorite band, the Conduits, and produced all their songs, so Dad broke out the bourbon and nodded sympathetically while Mom gazed at the window like she was distracted by a sound that no one else could hear. Sure enough, while that conversation was going on, a portion of the fence between our two yards tipped drastically in our direction, violating our “airspace,” as Mom put it, and “aggressing” one section of her pink phlox. A few weeks later, Mom dug up one of the fence posts with an electric shovel-drill she rented from Ace Hardware and moved the post…

Before, when my family lived next door to the Salazars, Stella was like Molly, do you ever see Chris Salazar inside his house? and I was like No there are trees in between our houses and she was like Well, do you know where his room is? and for some reason I was like No, but I did know from a cocktail party I went to Before, when we lived next door. Chris’s room faces the front and there’s a green lamp in his window and now sometimes I walk Biscuit our new Welsh Corgi past our old house at night where we don’t live anymore because Mom and Dad are Divorced, and I look for that green lamp to be turned on and then I know Chris Salazar is awake and I might be in love with him too.

After Stella and Iona and I got our grilled cheese sandwiches we were carrying them to the Herb Garden which is where Stella likes to eat and I stopped to fix my sandal and Stella and Iona JUST KEPT WALKING AND DID NOT WAIT FOR ME and when I stood up they were already far away and I would’ve had to run to catch up with them which is hard to do carrying a grilled cheese sandwich, and I knew they’d be like Oh. Hi Molly, not wanting me there, so I went the other way to the Ladies Locker Room to cry.

Why is Stella on top you might ask, well who can understand Popularity although I’m sure it has been studied by Universities, Stella’s family is rich but no one is poor around here let’s face it, she is extremely pretty with thick brown hair and green eyes but that is not “it” since other girls are just as pretty but they are not electric. Colors are literally brighter when Stella gives you…

Why, the professional counters wanted to know (Jarred especially; Stanford ’19, like Chris, but a calc major), had Chris algebraized A Drink in the Face—

 

a (+ drink) x (action of throwing drink) = a (– drink) + i/2

 

—making i, the protagonist, the target of the hurled drink rather than the hurler?

Without looking directly at Jarred, whom Chris made a point of ignoring, he explained to the group that a drink-hurling protagonist belonged to a different story block, Hero Delivers Comeuppance to Perennial Jerk, which Chris had algebraized several months back.

Jarred was dissatisfied; Jarred was always dissatisfied with Chris, and the feeling was mutual. “Shouldn’t i be squared after the drink lands in his face?” he pressed.

“Having a drink thrown at you is humiliating,” Chris said firmly. “Which is more likely to make i feel reduced, or i halved.”

“Yes,” intoned Aaron, their boss, a man of so few words that the occasional word he did utter had the cleaving finality of an ax splitting a log.

Chris experienced a jolt of manic exhilaration. He was killing it, crushing it; murdering this meeting; he was destroying Jarred, having powered through an entire set of algebraizations with nary a mathematical change required. These included, in addition to A Drink in the Face, which he’d catalogued as 3Aim:

 

• A Slap in the Face [3Aiir]
• “You Never Cared for Me.” (Shouting) [3Aviiiy]
• “How Dare You?” (Whispering) [3Aviiiz]
• Protagonist Hits Bottom Alone, at Night, on City Streets (with Soulful Music) [3Aixb]
• Protagonist, Drunk, Drugged, or Hit on Head, Stumbles Through Distorted Landscape [3Aixd]
• Nighttime Roar Followed by Vacuous Morning-After Hush (3Axiiw)

In the Thursday-morning Dungeons & Dragons sessions at Bright Day, her treatment center, Roxy is fascinated by the way characters are made: A player rolls a few dice to assign values to traits like Charisma, Dexterity, and Intelligence, and then to acquired skills like Stealth and Animal Handling. A few die rolls, a list of scores, and boom—you have a Rogue or Wizard or Fighter with strengths and skills and weaknesses, exactly like a human being. Roxy once asked Chris Salazar, who leads the Dungeons & Dragons group with his friend Molly Cooke, if he ever scored real people that way: Generosity, Coordination, Immune System Strength, Sex Appeal . . .

“I don’t,” Chris said, “but the counters do. And the corporations who buy their numbers do. And the people who measure their own value in clicks and views do.”

“That sounds bad,” Roxy said anxiously.

Chris took her hands and squeezed them. He’s thirty years younger than Roxy, still in his twenties, and treats her with loving indulgence. “Don’t you fret,” he said, kissing her cheek. “There’s a way out of every labyrinth.”

That conversation took place in the cramped apartment Chris shares with his girlfriend, Samantha. Roxy was there for Passover. Chris Salazar has come to feel more like family to Roxy than most of her family members, and she is included in his holidays. Chris is the son of Bennie Salazar, whom Roxy’s father mentored and loved from the time Bennie was in high school. Like Bennie, Chris is beautiful, dark-eyed and olive-skinned, although Bennie’s hair is silver now. Bennie first brought Chris and Roxy together ten years ago, when Chris came to the West Coast for college. But only in the past three years, since Chris started the Dungeons & Dragons group, have he and Roxy become close.

D&D happens in the early mornings at Bright Day, so working people can play for an hour after their dose. Normally, you would play in the evening, Chris says, after work, but drug treatment centers are not nighttime places. Bright Day closes in the afternoon.

All of the regular players are male except for Roxy, who doesn’t actually play but likes to watch. Each week, Chris invites her to create a character and enter the game. You’re never too late to join—there is no such thing as “too late” in recovery, as long as you’re breathing. But Roxy is afraid of doing it wrong or not understanding. One of her “if onlys”—which take the form of…

We’ll always need you!

I’ll always need you two, that’s for sure. I’ll try not to drive you crazy with my mommy needs.

Tell the end.

Well, I stopped going to anthropology school and I married your daddy and we brought you into the world. And here you are! It all worked out perfectly.

Where is Daddy?

You’ll see him next week. He’s taking you to ballet.

Last time he never came.

I’ll be here. Just in case.

He can’t make a bun.

That’s not important, honey.

Before ballet . . . ?

Don’t whine, sweetie.

He threw Tam-Tam out the window of the car. He said she was moth-eaten.

That was unfortunate.

How could you marry him?

Love is a mystery.

Does Daddy love you?

He loves you. That’s what matters.

He said we were young spendthrifts.

Did he, now.

He said—

Can we not talk about what he said?

We’re just telling you . . .

I don’t need to be told. I know your father very well.

How did she endure these conversations? Of course our father didn’t love her, any more than she loved him. He was fifteen years older than our mother, twice divorced when they met…

I’ve crowdsourced M’s prettiness casually among members of our team’s larger unit under the pretense of trying to decide, as a single heterosexual male, whether or not she is pretty, but in actuality to gauge the breadth and strength of my competition. Of the 81 percent who found M pretty, 64 percent are not competitive, being males or nonbinaries attached to or interested in other people, or else females—of whom the 15 percent who identify as gay or bi are not a threat because M is “straight.” Obviously, I recognize the existence of a spectrum of desire between straight and gay, but placing M on this spectrum would require either an honest reporting of her sexual history, which I am in no position to acquire, or gray grabs of M’s sexual memories and fantasies from the collective—an act of such grotesque personal violation that she would justifiably revile me afterward, thus defeating the point.

Of the remaining 36 percent male or nonbinary respondents who might conceivably compete with me in pursuing a relationship with M, fully half possess at least one possibly-to-likely-disqualifying personal trait: 14 percent = noticeable body odor or other personal hygiene violations (nose picking, ear drilling, etc.); 11 percent = online warlordry; 9 percent = old (over thirty-five); 7 percent = radically self-obsessed; 6 percent = obsessed with Bix Bouton; 3 percent = prone to miscellaneous offenses, including engaging in Iraq War reenactments, telling sexist jokes, smoking cigarettes, or wearing bandanas. Okay, that last one is a pet peeve of mine but probably not M’s. I hate bandanas.

Now to the remaining 18 percent of poll respondents who represent possible competing contenders for M’s affection. And here is where the data begin to fail, because how can I calculate whose chances are best? The key to M’s heart may lie in something quirky and impossible to predict without intimate knowledge of her background and memories and psychological state—which, again, I could acquire only invasively. Maybe the person who brings…

But in June 1965, the redwoods have a velvety primeval look that brings to mind leprechauns or djinns or faeries. Three of the four men have never been in these ancient woods, and to them the forest looks otherworldly, so removed is it from their everyday vistas of wives and children and offices. The oldest, Lou Kline, is only thirty-one, but all were born in the 1930s and raised without antibiotics, their military service completed before they went to college. Men of their generation got started on adulthood right away.

So: four men moving among trees whose musculature resembles the thighs of giants. When the men throw back their heads to search the sunlight for the trees’ pointed tips, they grow dizzy. That’s partly because they’ve just smoked marijuana; not a common practice in 1965, especially among squares, as anyone would agree these four are. Or three of them. There is a leader—there is usually a leader when men leave their established perimeters—and today it is Quinn Davies, a tanned, open-faced man accoutered with artifacts of a Native American ancestry he wishes he possessed. Normally, Quinn would wear a blazer, like the rest of them, but today he’s donned what strikes his pals as a costume: a purple velvet coat and heavy moccasins that prove far better suited to navigating this soft undergrowth than the oxfords they’re sliding around in. Only Lou manages to keep pace with Quinn, despite the fawnlike skittering this feat requires of him. Lou would rather look spasmodic than risk falling behind.

These men all moved to California recently, driven by a lust for space that can’t be satisfied by old cities with their tinge of Europe and horse carts and history. There is an ungoverned feel to California’s mountains and deserts and reckless coast. Quinn Davies, the only bachelor in the group, is homosexual, and was on the lookout early for a graceful exit from Bridgeport, Connecticut, where his family has lived for generations. After the navy, he followed the Beats to San Francisco, but now that he’s here, they’ve proved maddeningly elusive. Still, there are always sailors who share Quinn’s view that a man can be a multitude of ways, depending on circumstances. He has a flickering hope about one of the other four: Ben Hobart, from Minnesota, married to his high school sweetheart, a father of three. But it’s too soon to tell.

All four work in San Francisco in banking, doing their part to feed an expansion that will draw more restless folk like themselves to the city. Over drinks on Montgomery Street a few weeks back, they got to talking about “grass,” as marijuana is known even to those who have never seen it. They know grass is around, but what is it, exactly? What does it do? All four like to drink. Quinn Davies drinks so that those around him will drink, too—which occasionally makes possible an unexpected adventure. Ben Hobart drinks because it subdues a greedy energy that can find no outlet around his wife and kids. Tim Breezely drinks because…

Sasha! What the hell!

If anyone had required proof that life’s outcomes are impossible to predict, this development would have supplied it. Sasha had been a fuckup all the way into her thirties: a kleptomaniac who’d managed to pilfer countless items from countless people over countless years. How did I know? Because right before she married Drew, in 2008, she started returning things. Everyone in the family received an item or two, sometimes of so little value that it was amazing Sasha remembered what belonged to whom. My dad got a Bic pen, the kind they sold in bags of twenty at Staples. I, too, received a pen, but mine was a Montblanc worth several hundred dollars. I’d nearly had a brain hemorrhage when it vanished after a family dinner at a Korean restaurant while I was visiting New York. I’d phoned the restaurant, the taxi authority, the MTA; I’d retraced my steps through Korea-town, bent at the waist to scrutinize gutters. When that very same pen showed up in my mailbox a couple of years later with a handwritten note that began, “Since my teenage years I have struggled with a compulsion to steal, which has been a source of great anguish to me, and of loss and frustration to many others,” I called my dad.

“I know,” he said. “I got a Bic. I’m not even sure it’s mine, it might have belonged to the restaurant.”

“Can we please be done with her, Dad?” I asked. “Once and for all? She’s incorrigible.”

“She’s the opposite of incorrigible. She’s making amends.”

“I don’t want her amends. I want her to disappear.”

“What makes you say things like that, Miles?”

I remember exactly where I was standing when we had that conversation: on the deck of the lakeside Winnetka home Trudy and I had overleveraged ourselves to buy (she was pregnant with Polly, our first) and painstakingly decorated together: the site of a planned…

Turning off the TV wasn’t enough; by age nine, Alfred’s intolerance of fakery had jumped the life/art barrier and entered his everyday world. He’d looked behind the curtain and seen the ways people played themselves, or—more insidiously—versions of themselves they’d cribbed from TV: Harried Mom. Sheepish Dad. Stern Teacher. Encouraging Coach. Alfred would not—could not—tolerate these appropriations. “Stop pretending, and I’ll answer you,” he would inform his startled interlocutor, or, more bluntly, “That’s phony.” His family cat and dog, Vincent and Theo, went through their days without pretense. So did the squirrels and deer and gophers and fish that populated the lake-abundant region of Upstate New York where Alfred grew up and where his father, Ted Hollander, taught art history at a local college. Why did people have to pretend to be what they already were?

There was an obvious problem: Alfred was difficult—or “a fucking nightmare,” to quote several witnesses. And there was a deeper problem: He poisoned his world. Many of us, wrongly accused of, say, spying for the Department of Homeland Security, or stalking a famous person whom we haven’t actually identified, will respond with guilt, anxiety, and attempts to telegraph our innocence. We behave, in other words, exactly as a surveilling Homeland Security agent, or surreptitious stalker, would behave. Likewise, adults charged by Alfred to “stop using that fake voice” would strive to act more natural and wind up acting less so: Parents played parents; teachers played teachers; baseball coaches played baseball coaches. And they got away as quickly as they could.

Family life was the epicenter of Alfred’s discontent. At dinner, he felt “asphyxiated” by the quiet supremacy of Miles, his oldest brother, who was organized and accomplished, and by the studied vacancy of Ames, the middle brother, who came and went invisibly and whose real thoughts were always out of reach. In reply to his parents’ innocuous questions about his day at school, Alfred often would bark, “I can’t have this conversation,” upsetting his mother, Susan, who treasured family time…

“We’ve got to wean this kid,” Bix muttered.

“No,” Gregory objected sharply, with a reproving glance at Bix. “I don’t want to.”

Lizzie succumbed to Gregory’s tugs and lay back down. Bix wondered if this last of their four children might, with his wife’s complicity, prolong his infancy into adulthood. He stretched out beside the two of them and peered anxiously into her eyes.

“What’s wrong, love?” Lizzie whispered.

“Nothing,” he lied, because the trouble was too pervasive, too amorphous to explain. He chased it with a truth: “I keep thinking about East Seventh Street. Those conversations.”

“Again,” she said softly.

“Again.”

“But why?”

Bix didn’t know why—especially since he’d only half-listened, back on East Seventh Street, as Lizzie and her friends called out to one another through a cumulus of pot smoke like disoriented hikers in a foggy valley: How is love different from lust? Does evil exist? Bix was halfway through his PhD by the time Lizzie moved in with him, and he’d already had those conversations in high school and his first couple of years at Penn. His present nostalgia was for what he’d felt overhearing Lizzie and her friends from his perch before his SPARCstation computer linked by a modem to the Viola World Wide Web: a secret, ecstatic knowledge that the world these undergrads were so busy defining, in 1992, would soon be obsolete.

Gregory nursed. Lizzie drowsed. “Can we?” Bix pressed. “Have a conversation like that?”

“Now?” She looked drained—was being drained before his eyes!

Bix knew she would rise at six to deal with the kids while he meditated and then began his calls to Asia. He felt a wave of desperation.

Whom could he talk with in that casual, wide-open, studenty way that people talked in college? Anyone working at Mandala would try, in some sense, to please him. Anyone not at Mandala would presume an agenda, possibly a test—a test whose reward…