Stupid Fast

Chapter 47: BRAIN MASH: PART II




Because it was Friday, Aleah didn’t practice piano. She might as well have.

After dinner, Aleah, Andrew, and I sat in Gus’s basement watching movies. Or not really movies. We watched Aleah’s DVD recordings of the Metropolitan Opera, which I didn’t get. But Aleah and Andrew completely get opera. They whooped and laughed and talked about orchestration and about Mozart and about singing in Italian and singing in German, and I sat there thinking about Jerri and her baby, who was me. Then Aleah kissed my cheek, told me to get some rest, turned off the light, and disappeared upstairs. After, Andrew said, “Aleah’s really a wonderful person. You’re very lucky.” In like a minute, he began snoring. And I laid there, my eyeballs staring into the black night of the basement, thinking about Jerri and her baby, who was me.

Jerri wanted to be a civil rights lawyer when she was my age. That’s what she told me. Clearly, I was the reason she wasn’t a civil rights lawyer. Jerri was valedictorian of her high school class. I knew that from before. That’s part of history she kept. Jerri stayed in Bluffton for college because her dad would only pay for it if she did. I knew this because once, freshman year, after taking it on the chin from the honkies all day, I asked her why in the name of squirrel nut hell did she decide to stay in Bluffton for college when she was so dang smart in high school?

“My father trapped me,” she said. Now I knew this too: Jerri got pregnant with a professor’s kid (me!) by like November of her first year of college. How the holy hell did that happen? How the holy hell did she meet, fall in love with, and marry a professor in just a couple of months? Then it dawned on me: Jerri wasn’t married to Professor Reinstein at all. That’s why she still had the last name Berba!

Even though my back hurt like freaking terror, I rolled over and shook Andrew awake.

“What?” he asked, sleepy.

“Jerri and Dad were never married,” I whispered. “We’re bastards. Do you understand?”

“No,” Andrew said. “That’s not true. I saw the wedding album, remember?”

“The wedding album had to be from something else. Jerri’s last name is Berba.”

“Yes. She kept her last name. But they were married.”

“No, they weren’t, Andrew. Stop kidding yourself.”

“I saw the wedding announcement from the Bluffton Journal too. They had a spring wedding.”

“Where did you get that?”

“Same place as the album. Way up in”—Andrew yawned—“Jerri’s closet.”

“Oh,” I said and started doing math. “Wait. Spring? That means Grandma Berba let Jerri marry a thirty-year-old when Jerri was still in high school. Grandma Berba must be totally crazy.”

“No. I think you’re wrong. The paper said Jerri was nineteen and Steven Reinstein was twenty-nine. She’d have been out of high school.”

“But that’s impossible, Andrew. That doesn’t make sense. Unless…Oh my God.”

“I’m so tired,” Andrew said.

“Go to sleep,” I told him. He was snoring again in seconds.

I laid there so awake. I’d figured it all out. It all made complete sense. The reason why I’m such a freak of nature—growing all this hair all over, running so fast, gaining all this weight—was so obvious. I was a super baby (yeah, right). It must have only taken me a few months to grow inside of Jerri (uh huh). I must have been full-sized in just a few months (oh my God).

It probably killed Jerri, me growing so fast inside of her. I was probably born with white shorts on, which is why she referred to me as a tennis player when she called me a*shole. Maybe that’s what killed Dad, having a freak of nature for a son. They got married, and right away, Jerri was pregnant, and I was huge in her belly. I bet I was terrifying, especially for a little, kind Jewish fellow who only liked poetry. A tennis-playing baby? Come on! If only he’d stuck around while I didn’t grow all those years and became squirrel nuts. He would’ve breathed easy then. Professor Reinstein would’ve recognized squirrel nuts. Maybe he’d just be killing himself now because now I’m a super baby again. It probably took everything out of Jerri, having a super baby. She must’ve lost all will to be a lawyer. I’m a curse. Stupid super baby grows too fast. Poor Jerri.

Are you kidding? Are you even listening to yourself? Didn’t you hear Andrew say he looked like you?

That’s the last thing I remember thinking before I fell asleep.

My brain was completely mashed.