This is basically a day in the life of Stephen "Toc" Tocoma Gallagher before he goes to college and the main action of the story begins. It's quite dark but I don't think it's going to be the tone that dominates the novel. Comments are welcomed and encouraged. Enjoy.
Chapter 2: “The best years of our lives”
“I’ve decided,” Stephen Senior announced that night over dinner, “to sell the house and move out to the woods, live like man was meant to.” It was apparent, from the fresh shaving nicks on his face to his tweed suit and plaid pants, that he had prepared himself for this announcement without any help from Cecilia. Everybody but Toc stopped eating and looked up at this sudden revelation and Stephen Senior looked pleased with its impact.
With a long sigh, Cecilia took a drink from her wine glass, then wiped her mouth and smiled at her husband.
“Well sweetie, that sounds like a wonderful idea. How very Emersonian of you. But what about Sarah and Toc? Sarah’s going to start looking at colleges soon. And Toc, he’s leaving in just a few weeks. Do you want them to grow up without the benefit of the education you and I had? How will they be able to survive in the real world?”
“Oh God,” thought Toc, he had glanced up and could see that familiar look in his father’s eyes.
“The real world?” His voice quivered as he tightened his grip on his fork before slamming his fist on the table. It landed with such force a plate fell and shattered on the hardwood floor. “I’ll give them a real world education! A PhD free from the influence of the thin man’s gloved hand! Yes, out in the woods with God and his noble beasts, where the divine fruit flows in nectarous rivers of pure poetry, that’s where we will undress to our most elemental and be purified! I will not, cannot continue this life as a professional scarecrow. I will reclaim my soul in the absence of mind and leave the world to collapse under its own weight!”
Now even Toc had stopped eating and watched as Stephen Senior stared wide eyed at his half-eaten plate of mashed potatoes and panted heavily. The ticking and tocking of the grandfather clock in the foyer reverberated and settled into the silence around the dinner table, beating in time with the old man’s breathing. The French Chandelier, glistening over the table like a gold and glass jellyfish, seemed to sway from Toc’s perspective. In the silence, he felt himself sliding into the recesses of memory, to a sunny day on the playground of his pre-school.
He is alone, as usual, walking along the fence that encloses the playground. As he approaches the entrance, he notices it unlocked. Checking to see that he is not being watched, he undoes the latch and slips through the gate. At the top of the stairs leading from the playground is the cul-de-sac where the children are picked up at the end of the school day. Inside the circular island is a flower garden his class planted. Every day after school he had stayed with the “late group” and pulled weeds until his parents arrived. As he approaches, he notices the flowers, despite being weeded the day before, are heavily infested. They must have grown and matured under the cover of night, sprouting, flowering, spreading, giving rise to more and more of the pests. Dropping to a knee, he pulls at the green abominations, yanking them at their base and ripping them up before discarding them. He pulls as though possessed, and as he pulls, oh what sublime ecstasy fills him! Far away from the shrieking children on the playground, with the sun in his face and his hands caked in mud, he has never felt a release as benevolent and cathartic as this. With a smile on his face, he hums a shapeless tune.
“Toc!” It’s Miss Miller, the recess lady.
“What on earth are you doing?”
He turns and flashes her a bucktooth grin “I’m pulling the weeds Miss Miller.”
“Look at what you’ve done!”
The flowers lie in mangled heaps around him. The realization of what he has done begins to take hold, paralyzing him as he stares up at her hopelessly.
“I couldn’t tell…”
“Wait until your parents hear about this.” She yells as she grabs his arm and forces him to his feet.
“I couldn’t tell…” he shrieks as she marches him towards the brick school, “I couldn’t tell!”
“-Well,”
It was Cecilia who had broken the silence. Just one word, “Well.” Toc felt the gravity of it draw him back into the mahogany paneled dining room.
“Where exactly do you plan on living?”
Stephen Senior had stopped panting and looked at her with a combination of humiliation and fear.
“What are you going to eat? What are you going to do when you forget where you are, or who you are? What are you going to do when you get sick? Or injured? Have you thought about that?” There was no admonishment in her voice, just the calm, even tone of knowing she held all the cards.
Stephen Senior began to stammer without making any noise. He looked at Toc and Sarah who could return nothing but vacant stares.
Cecilia smiled at Stephen Senior and placed a hand on his thigh.
“Look sweetie, I think it’ll be good for us to get out of the city for a little while. How about after Toc’s gone you and I rent a cottage in Vermont for a few weeks and spend some time away, how does that sound?”
Stephen Senior looked down at his lap and didn’t respond.
“Sweetie, does that sound like a good idea?”
Stephen Senior nodded obediently, his eyes still glued to his lap.
Cecilia clapped her hands together and beamed at the rest of the table. “Then it’s settled, I’ll make all the necessary arrangements. Oh, we’ll have such a wonderful time! We can go canoeing and read by the fire, and I’ll hire a chef to make us dinner every night. Doesn’t that sound like a great idea?” She turned to Sarah, “Don’t you think so Sarah?
Sarah had been massaging her temples and looked up at her mother.
“I think that sounds just swell.”
Cecilia searched her for sarcasm and, finding none, smiled.
“Well Sarah, I think you have an announcement of her own to make don’t you?”
Sarah’s eyes widened and darted to Toc who had resumed occupying himself with his food.
“Sarah?”
She coughed loudly. “Yeah, um, so the director from The Urban Music Collective called and asked me if I wanted to audition for their next tour.”
Toc stopped eating and looked up. Some of his food fell from his mouth since the lump forming in his throat had made it impossible to swallow.
“Yeah, they, uh, liked the composition I’d performed at Winterfest and said they were interested. Apparently their old cello player died of a drug overdose.”
Cecilia shook Stephen Seniors shoulder, “Did you hear that honey? Your daughter’s going to be in a band! Isn’t that wonderful?”
Stephen Senior looked up briefly and muttered, “Yes, music, congratulations…”
“So Sarah,” Toc had cocked his head and was looking at her contemptuously, “does that mean you’re actually going to start playing real music or is this just another one of your masturbatory exercises to distract everyone from the fact that you read music at a middle school level.”
Cecilia turned and glared, “Toc, be nice to your sister!”
“I don’t know Stephen. I’ll probably do something similar to what I did at Winterfest and let the people who matter decide if it’s music. By the way, how’s that novel of yours coming?” Sarah brushed her bangs from her face and crossed her arms on the table.
“Well, seeing as I actually develop my creative projects to their logical conclusion instead of cutting them off half-way as an ‘artistic statement,’ slow.”
“That was one piece I wrote three years ago and if you recall it won me the Allmusic Young Composers Competition.”
“Oh yes, how could I forget the pinnacle of recognition in the amateur online arena? Tell me, what did you do with that enormous $100 prize?”
Cecilia began to interject but Sarah ignored her.
“You know Toc, what the hell have you ever won? You carry around the one magazine that published your trite like it’s a fucking Pulitzer. And then you go brag about how people are lining up to publish you but you know what, I’ve never so much as seen you pick up a pen. All you do is sit upstairs in your room and fiddle on your computer or play video games. So tell me, where is this Great American Novel you’ve been working on, hmmm?”
For a moment, Toc and Sarah said nothing, locked in a staring contest.
“Who gives a shit about weird cello music?” Toc wiped his mouth and folded his arms to match Sarah’s. “No really Sarah, who gives a shit about your irrelevant, self-indulgent crap? A few academics? Some critics who like it for its inaccessibility? You write this music without any structure or meaning, and it’s not because you’re trying to pioneer the art, it’s because you aren’t able to write music with anything that resembles clarity.
And do you know why? Because despite your best efforts to look like one, you aren’t a tortured artist. You’re a spoiled little rich girl who dies her hair black and smokes clove cigarettes and quotes Camus to me like I wasn’t the one who turned you onto him in the first place. You haven’t felt any real pain. You don’t know what it’s like to be broke, or not have the luxury of throwing up all your food after you eat it.
So go ahead, enjoy wasting your time with the Urban Collective of Pretentious Hacks but don’t think that you’re doing yourself a favor. Maybe once you get to college and realize that real cello players study music theory you’ll stop walking around like you’re hot shit.”
Sarah was shaking, though from emotion specifically it was hard to say. Cecilia looked dumbfounded at Toc, and then at Sarah.
“Sarah, you smoke cigarettes?”
Sarah didn’t break her gaze from her older brother.
“What the hell is your problem?” She said as the tears started. She stood up at the table, her eyes still pleading for the person who had possessed her brother to leave.
“Why can’t you just be happy for me?” She turned and ran out of the dining room.
“Sarah!” Cecilia got up and followed her up stairs, turning to Toc on her way out.
“I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”
Toc sank in his chair and looked over Stephen Senior, who was stroking his chin as he studied him from across the table.
“Don’t lose your hate Stephen.”
“What?”
“When you lose your ability to hate you lose your ability to love. The thin man, he took away my ability to hate, and in doing so stole my ability to love. Now look at me. I’m like an old tree with nothing but the carved hearts of old lovers to show. Don’t keep your hate inside and love blindly as I once did, because people will take, and take, and take. Then what’ll you be left with? Nothing but a suffocated hate too feeble to make protest. And without hate, without love, you have no hope. Never lose your hate Stephen, you may find it’s all you have left when love fails you.”
Toc knocked back the last of his mother’s wine and stood up from the table.
“Yeah dad, I’ll try to keep that in mind.” He said and quickly exited the room.
As he got to the top of the stairs, he could hear Sarah’s muted sobs coming from the end of the hall. Without allowing himself to pause, he quickly turned the corner into his room and went straight to his chest of drawers. Furiously, he sifted through the socks before producing a small, orange, medicine bottle. He poured several of the small white pills inside onto his hand and, tossing his head back, swallowed them whole.
Standing in front of a mirror, stripped completely naked, Toc studied himself. He’d been exercising almost every day in preparation for college, though it hadn’t made much difference. His pale body was coated in a thin layer of baby fat, just enough to glaze over any definition he was hoping to achieve with his wiry muscles. He had grown a goatee and wearing those thin, frameless glasses that were fashionable to add something to his otherwise unmemorable face. His hair was sticking out from his head at all angles, an effect that cost him almost sixty dollars.
As he stared at his reflection, he saw the face in the mirror turn to a grimace, then a snarl, then a teeth-bared growl. Before long the naked man-child on the other side of the mirror was squaring off as though about to strike, hissing and growling at him like an enraged beast. Suddenly, an image of his father, with his large, sagely eyes, flashed through his brain like electricity, breaking whatever spell the mirror had cast over him. Quickly, he ran to the comfort of his bed and tried to calm his brain as it buzzed and churned without producing any tangible thought.
Within a minute he began to feel the familiar warmth of the small white pills snaking through his veins. As he felt the warm fog overtake him, he stared up at the words written on the ceiling.
“Control Thy Passions Lest They Take Vengeance On Thee.”
The words of Epictetus and his father swirled together in his mind. For a moment, he thought he had a moment of revelation, but the drugs were making it difficult to hold onto any single thought and he slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.
That morning Toc awoke to find a book lying in the middle of his room. It was a copy of The Stranger he had given to Sally several years ago, back when he had been going through a Camus phase so that he could say that he was going through a Camus phase. He had only finished half of it when she asked if she could borrow it and he had given it to her without a second thought until the previous night. He picked it up and began to flip through the pages. It was dog-eared and heavily worn. The pages were covered in Sarah’s notes, written neatly in the margins. Each page was similarly marked, all the way to the inside of the back cover. For several minutes he sat reading until, requiring a cigarette, he opened his window and stepped onto the roof that faced the wooded expanse of the backyard. On the far end of the overhang was Sarah, sitting with her knees to her chin, smoking a cigarette and listening to music through her large green headphones.
She turned and saw him standing there and took a drag from her cigarette, exhaling the smoke at the backyard and continuing to stare off in the distance. He walked towards her slowly, still holding the book in her hand, and sat down beside her, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Sarah took off her headphones and handed him a lighter from her pocket. For a moment they sat in silence, inhaling their cigarettes and staring out into the trees. Behind the maples that lined their property rose a large grey office building. Toc thought about the people inside the building, running around, working at jobs they hated for salaries they couldn’t live off of. Nobody could have a fulfilling career in a building as plain and businesslike is that.
“You left your book in my room.” Toc said, instantly feeling stupid for having said so.
“It's your book.”
Toc was silent for a second. “Why?”
“Why does anyone do anything?”
He fingered his cigarette and watched as the smoke from his cigarette disappear into the cold morning air.
“I’m sorry for what I said last night.”
“I know.”
“I just, it’s hard for me sometimes.”
“What?”
Toc stared down at his lap.
“I feel like I try so hard to get people to like me, to appreciate me as a writer and as a person but nobody gives a shit. And the harder I try the worse it gets. It’s like there’s some piece of me that’s missing, a piece that everyone else seems to have, and the more I try to fill it the more obvious it becomes. But you, everybody loves you. Mom, Dad, the kids at school, everyone. You don’t even have to try; it’s like everything you touch turns to gold. And no matter where you go, people will bend over backwards for you because you’re beautiful, inside and out. But I’m ugly. I’m ugly and I’m tainted and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Toc, ever since I can remember I’ve wanted to be you. I always thought you were so smart, and funny, and cool. The only reason I started playing cello was because Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me play guitar back when you were playing in that band. You were my best friend Toc. We did everything together. Remember Trinivan? How you and I would team up to fight wizards and dragons in the backyard to rescue the princess?
Then something happened. I don’t know exactly what or when or why but you just stopped wanting to be around me. It didn’t make any difference what I said or did, it was as if all the love that you had for me deflated. And it crushed me Toc. It crushes me every day.”
Sarah paused and took a long drag.
“I just wish people could see you the way I do. I think you’re one of the most brilliant people I know and just because nobody seems to see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And just because I get recognized doesn’t mean that I’m happy. Even if everyone does love me, which I assure you they don’t, it doesn’t matter. You’re the only person I’ve ever really cared about.”
Again Toc was silent, forcing himself not to look at his sister whose eyes he could feel on the side of his face.
“I’m just tired of feeling so alone.”
“We’re all alone. No matter how many people we surround ourselves with.”
Toc looked at his sister. It was easy to forget that she was only fifteen, she had her father’s large eyes that exuded a preternatural wisdom. Toc swallowed hard and looked back down.
“Things will get better. I’ll go off to college and you’ll find some guy who will treat you the way you deserve. We get good jobs, make lots of money, and pretty soon this luxury prison will be a distant memory.”
Sarah extinguished her cigarettes on the roof and hugged her knees close to her chest. The horizon was blocked in part by the office building and dissected by an electrical tower. Overhead, a large black crow cried out before landing inside the matrix of wires coming to and from the tower.
“I don’t know,” she said softly, “sometimes I feel like we’re going to look back and realize that these were the best years of our lives.”
