Stupid Fast

Chapter 50: I GUESS IT WAS ALL TOO MUCH




Even if you’ve been awake all night long (6 a.m.), you have to stay awake for this (if you haven’t sort of figured it out already).

Grandma had a lot to get off her chest right away, which she’s apologized for later because maybe there was a better way to do this, a better time. While my cell buzzed in my pocket, I heard:

Steven W. Reinstein, who’s my dead dad, was an All-American, one-time national champion tennis player at Northwestern University. He played some pro tennis. He nearly qualified for major tournaments. He was six foot three inches tall. I, Felton Reinstein, have stretched and grown in such a fashion that I’m now an exact replica of Steven W. Reinstein. That’s why Grandma Berba freaked when she saw me. (Andrew figured right.) Steven W. Reinstein got his student, Jerri, pregnant during her freshman year of college. Steven W. Reinstein married Jerri because Jerri pressured him. Grandma Berba told Jerri she should not—absolutely not—marry that man.

“He was just a brutal man,” Grandma Berba said. Steven W. Reinstein’s rich parents treated Jerri like dirt. Steven W. Reinstein didn’t want to be married and continued to have girlfriends. Jerri tried to make a home. She bought our house with Steven W. Reinstein’s money. Steven W. Reinstein would scream that Jerri trapped him. Jerri had Andrew to try to stabilize the situation (stupid, said Grandma). Steven W. Reinstein told Jerri flat out that he didn’t have enough love, that he couldn’t love. Steven W. Reinstein got another student pregnant. He got fired. Jerri hated him. She hated him. She hated him. She hated him. Jerri served him divorce papers when Andrew was three. He killed himself in our garage.

I only knew the last part—that he killed himself and where. I was f*cking there to see it. I thought he was a small, kind Jewish fellow who only loved poetry. Jerri not only hid the truth, Jerri lied. Andrew was right. Andrew was right. Andrew was right.

My head spun.

As Grandma Berba spilled it all, inappropriately, right there in front of everybody, everybody in the room opened their mouth wider and wider. I was the only one who didn’t. Instead, I stared at my long arms, clenched and unclenched my fists, pictured a tennis racquet in those hands. Of course. I sat tall and got red in the face and thought how I’d like to take a goddamn tennis racket and beat my stupid dad’s face in (he apparently had the same idea). I also thought this: Jerri’s a criminal. She’s a terrible, despicable person. And then instead of listening any longer to Grandma Berba talk about Jerri’s “unhealthy” reaction to these events—how Jerri decided to erase Steven W. Reinstein from her life by burning his stuff and by making up a story about who he was so Andrew and me would think we had a loving father—and listening to her talk about Jerri’s silence in the face of Grandma Berba’s repeated attempts to get her help; her repeated attempts to move us to Arizona; her repeated attempts to get more support money from the Reinstein grandparents; her repeated attempts to get Jerri to get ahold of her f*cking life, I exploded out of my chair and out of that house.

I got on my dad’s Schwinn Varsity and pumped it as hard as I could. I exploded around corners and up hills until I got to the main road that leads to my house, the house Jerri bought with Steven W. Reinstein’s money. I exploded down the road past the golf course, flying by signs and light posts and cars and the blurry tall grass that grew in the ditch. I flew over the hill, pumping, and down toward our drive, boiling over and completely exploding. At the bottom of the hill, I turned the bike too hard and slid out trying to make the turn to my house. I fell and slid on my side on gravel, tearing up the skin on my legs and ass. I slid for probably thirty feet, but I didn’t cry out. I picked up the bike, got back on, and exploded up the hill toward the house. In front of the garage, I got off my bike. I held it steady. Tilted it to the side. Stared at its blue paint and scratched up logo. Schwinn Varsity. Schwinn Varsity. Schwinn Varsity. Then I grabbed the bike with both hands, lifted it over my head, and threw it into the ground as hard as I could. The bike bounced up from its tires and hit me in the chest, hurting.

“F*ck you,” I cried. I grabbed it again, and this time, I flung it—spinning out into the yard.

“Felton,” Jerri yelled from the window.

“Don’t ever talk to me, Jerri,” I shouted.

I went into the garage and pulled out a shovel.

“Felton, stop,” Jerri shouted.

Then I went nuts on it, on my Schwinn Varsity. I jumped up and down, bending its frame. I beat the mirror to pieces with the shovel. I stabbed the shovel’s pointy end down on the spokes with all my might, breaking them. I hammered off the back gear shifter and bent the front. I stomped on the chain wheel. I stomped on the front fork until it bent and then broke. I was tearing off the brake levers, crying like crazy, when Jerri grabbed me.

“Felton, stop!”

“No,” I said. “No, Jerri,” I cried.

She pulled the bike’s handlebars out of my hands and let what was left of it drop on the ground. Then she pulled me by the wrist to her and then she hugged me saying, “This isn’t yours. You were right. You were right,” and she sobbed. I cried, “I’m so mad at you. I’m so mad at you.” And then we sort of fell over.

I guess we more crumpled over. We crumpled, and I bled all over from cuts on my hands and the scrape on my side, and I cried.

“He wasn’t…” I said. “He wasn’t kind.”

“This isn’t yours. It isn’t,” she cried. “I shouldn’t have lied.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“I should have told you who…”

“I won’t, Jerri,” I said.

“This is mine.”

“I won’t ever play a*shole tennis, Jerri,” I cried.

“It’s my fault,” Jerri told me, her hands on my face, totally sobbing.

Then we laid in the yard crying, the broken pieces of my Schwinn Varsity littering the ground around us.