“Boyfriends and prostitution are not necessarily mutually exclusive,” Mel said. “But that probably had something to do with choice in boyfriend.”
She began going through them one by one, naming years, events, strained Red Lobster dinners. There was, it seemed, a perfect mathematical equation to Mel’s mom’s boyfriends; the overall assiness of each was a squared multiple of the one who’d come before him. Finally, we hit on the subject of Red Line Dickie and the summer he taught Mel how to help him steal from Walmart and various gas stations in their town.
I said, “So did it ever strike you as odd that your mom and I share a middle name?”
“Hee.” Mel laced her hands together and put them behind her head. “That old Southern sound pattern. First name two syllables, middle name one. Like ‘shave and a haircut.’?”
“It’s as much my fault as the rest of my name.” I rose, throwing the Spalding from palm to palm, wiggling my eyebrows at her: Get up. I liked this Red Line idea, but it was going to take some badgering. It sometimes did, when she worked hungover.
She picked herself up with a grunt. I tossed the ball to her.
“What was he like?”
She caught it. “He was a big fat bastard.”
Toss, piff into the hand. Toss, piff. Toss, piff. “Big fat bastards are fun to draw.”
“Not this one. He was boring.”
“Tell me how he was.”
Mel winged the ball. I reached up on my toes to grab it. After a moment: “He was smart, but he didn’t use his smarts too efficiently. Smart but crude. You know? The kind of asshole who thinks Benny Hill is funny. The kind of asshole who puts ketchup on his steak instead of A.1. Sauce.”
“I put ketchup on my steaks.”
“Well, you’re kind of an asshole.”
I rolled my eyes. “Give me an example. Come on. Something physical. He was big. Right?”
“Big like fat,” she said. “Hairy like seventies hairy. Jesus. He used to make eggs in his tighty whities and you had to look away to keep your appetite.”
I wound up for the pitch. “That Pete Rose Jockey ad from the seventies. Ever seen it? Just Pete and his skivvies and a baseball bat. And enough chest hair to smother a litter of puppies.”
Mel sank to her knees, laughing. She slapped the floor. “Oh shit,” she said. “That’s it. That’s Red Line. Give him the bowl cut and we’re there.”
We decided to place ourselves in the narrative, in parts, as its makers—why not be as honest as possible with whoever is watching? In the finished film we, unseen, are running this dialogue in the audio while the shot focuses on a blank canvas. In double time, my hand reaches out and starts to draw. The form takes shape and moves, just stop-motion pencil and paper, cool and rudimentary. A parade of boyfriends emerges: Brett with the nasty stache, who owned the sand bar; Dale, the creepy professional clogger; Alan in snakeskin boots, who bloodied Mel’s mom’s nose for her refusal to change the channel (there’s an arc of blood there, and I think of the ottoman cracking our patio door, my mother heaving as she released); Red Line Dickie, the man himself, who nurtured Mel’s talents as a young, petty shoplifter.
Mel’s dad was out of the picture. She had a vague notion he was in Texas running a pool scam. I met him once, she says in the voiceover. The point of view pulls away. We see me and Mel in the studio, me craned over the drafting board, her slumped in an easy chair, chewing on a cuticle.
Cutaway: I sketch Mel with a beard, holding a pool cue. And?
She pulls back her thumb with an expression of distaste. He was a short man.
The boyfriends fade into the landscape: the Florida swamplands. Mel’s voice describes brown alligators stinking of raw sewage, clapping their mouths at marshmallows children tossed into the water, boats with mammoth fans whirling at their rears like they’ve drifted out of old MGM shorts. There are foot-wide lilies the color of fire, the hard shells of hypercockroaches. The boy next door named the rats scampering through his front yard. When one eventually bit him, he had to have rabies shots in the stomach and butt, becoming the neighborhood cautionary tale. Rule number one: Don’t befriend the rats, Mel says. They don’t see the difference in the hand and what the hand is feeding them.
The scene fades to a rusting blue trailer in a watercolor landscape. Lights flash from the windows. Indiscriminate yelling. The trailer rocks on its axis. Let me dispel a common belief, Mel says. Double-wides can be pretty sweet, if you keep them clean. But ours was a wreck. Stuffing spilling out of the furniture. Food out everywhere. We’d have had rat warfare on our hands if it weren’t for the cat pack.