Breakfast Served Anytime Read online

  The bus was loud. I felt like we were all rumbling along in Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine. X had to raise his voice so we could hear. “We’re going to scenic Perry County, my friends. Everybody’s going to get a bird’s-eye view of what mountaintop removal looks like in real life.”

  Mason leaned over the seat, invading my space. “So what does that have to do with the Great American Novel?”

  X adjusted the rearview so he could make eye contact with all of us in the back. “Listen up, yall. People can say whatever they want about Kentucky — and they will, they do — but by God, people around here can write. Must be something in the water. Anyway the writers are the ones getting all up in arms about the mountaintop-removal thing — and people, these are the writers of the Great American Novels of your generation, not the long-ago god-awful past. I’m talking about right now. Important voices, is what I’m saying.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mason said, squinting through the lens to capture X’s face in the mirror. Click. “Sounds like maybe you have a Great American Novel in the works?”

  X grinned. “That’s classified information there, pal.”

  “Classified,” Mason repeated. “What about these rolling papers back here? Are they classified, too?”

  X bounced a pointed look off the mirror. “Mason, this automobile and its contents are my personal property. Kindly keep your hands to yourself.”

  “Hey Mason, pass me one of those,” Chloe called. She made short order of rolling herself an empty joint and doing an imaginary drag. “Fabulous,” she mock-choked, squinting her eyes. She turned to X. “Does Kathryn know you smoke weed in here?”

  “Chloe, I do not smoke weed in here. And as it happens, Kathryn would rather perish than set foot in this bus. She thinks it’s a death trap — you can’t lock the car seat in, some nonsense like that. Never mind that we both spent our early years rolling around loose as marbles in the back of a stay-wag and managed to survive.”

  “See, Calvin?” Chloe said, waving her air-joint around. “We have a much greater chance of dying in this disgusting old moldy bus than we do in a helicopter. Relax.”

  Calvin smiled and continued to stroke the ears of the sleeping Holyfield, who in his doze had sprawled half onto my lap. His back feet were stretched out like frog legs behind him; they twitched in dreamy rhythm with the bump bump of the bus on the road. I envied the dog’s easy trust in people — the fierce way he had attached himself to Calvin, who had warmed so quickly to the role of dog-dad. It wasn’t long before Calvin himself had fallen asleep, zonk, just like that in an open-mouthed torpor. Soon after that, Chloe was out, too, her shiny dark head lolled against the window.

  “So much for my navigatrix,” X murmured.

  For a while I watched the world zip past. X had some awful music going on the bus’s neolithic cassette player, and I longed for Indigo and an underwater dreamworld audiospell. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure Alex behind my eyelids, but it had been getting harder lately to see him there, as if my mind’s eye had gotten weighed down beneath the distance between Kentucky and Alaska. I was just starting to picture the curve of his cheekbone when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  “What?”

  “Close your eyes again,” Mason said. “I want to take your picture.”

  “No,” I said. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m camera shy,” I said in sarcasm-ese.

  “You’ve got a great face,” Mason said. “You know, a great sort of photographable face. It’s different.”

  I could feel myself blushing all the way to my scalp. “Different. That’s great. That’s really wonderful. Just what every girl wants to hear.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Mason said. “Never mind.”

  I returned my eyes to the window, where my reflection hazed and blurred. Camera Shy doesn’t even begin to cut it. It’s more like Camera Fear. Camera Rage, Camera Hatred, Camera Suck. A terrible disease to have in the new millennium. Two seconds later, another tap on my shoulder. “What?”

  “Why are you on the defensive all the time?”

  “Why are you on my nerves all the time?”

  “I don’t think answering a question with a question is Socratic, I think it’s shitty.”

  “Then why don’t you talk to someone else?”

  Mason managed to leave me alone for almost eight whole seconds before he started talking again. “I saw you, you know, in All’s Well. Last summer. You were really good.”

  This information hit me with the force of a blow. I had no response at all, so I just turned around and stared at Mason while the blood slowly drained from my face.

  “I said you were good. I remember you. It’s a compliment. You know, that thing where you say something nice and then the other person says ‘Gee, thanks’?”

  Really and truly: I felt like I’d somehow been caught. Caught in a camera flash; caught naked in a bear trap, flailing. “What were you doing in Louisville? Why would anyone not from Louisville go to some stupid Shakespeare in the Park in Louisville?”

  “Change of scenery,” Mason shrugged. “Research.”

  “Research?”

  “I don’t know, I was thinking about auditioning for next summer. Meaning this summer, whatever. Going big-town, you know.”

  I nodded, not really getting it. Louisville had always felt to me like a very small town; Carol and I had been planning our escape for years.

  “Anyway, I decided against it, obviously. The play sucked. You, though — you were good. Memorable.”

  My head was reeling. So he had seen me there, sweating like crazy in that million-degree corset and those stupid farthingales that weighed about six tons apiece. Memorable. The word sparkled in my head like a lit match. “Yeah, well. No more plays for me. I’m officially finished with theater.”

  As soon as I said it I realized the truth of it: that acting had lost its charm for me, had been losing its charm for a long time; that if I wanted to abide by the Plan, I was going to have to come up with some other good reason to go with Carol to New York. The sudden weird certainty and uncertainty made me feel sort of ill.

  “Finished? Why? You’re good.”

  “Exactly. I’m very good at being someone other than who I am. Once I started thinking about that, it struck me as weird. Scary-weird. Besides, the stage, the lights, the applause — that’s not what I liked about it.” Sleepy Holyfield’s leg twitched in my lap; I absorbed myself in petting him so I wouldn’t have to look at Mason. This conversation was edging into dangerous, nobody’s-business territory.

  “So what’d you like about it?”

  “I liked telling a story. I liked getting to actually be in the story, you know? Making something on the page come alive.”

  Mason folded his hands behind his head and nodded. “I get that.”

  “But there was so much about it I didn’t like. All that chummy, loud, drama-club bullshit, look at me look at me look at me. And just a second ago, when you said ‘All’s Well’? God, I hate that, too. Why can’t people in a play just say the whole name of the play they’re in? I mean, it’s never The Pirates of Penzance, it’s always, yeah, I got the lead in Pirates. I’m working on lights for Pirates. Opening night for Pirates is in two weeks. Little stuff like that just started getting on my nerves. You know?”

  Mason shook his head, suppressing a smile. “You drive a hard bargain, Gloria Bishop.”

  “Oh, and the way people would say play practice instead of rehearsal. That drove me insane, too. You’re not playing a sport. You’re not playing an instrument. It’s not practice! I had this idea that if I went to New York, people would call it rehearsal and then I’d be satisfied, but I think I’m starting to figure out that nothing about that whole world is really going to satisfy me. It’s all just pretend. Just one big ego-fest.”

  Mason narrowed his eyes but kept smiling. It was interesting, the way his face could convey more than one thing at the same time. “So what you’re saying, basical
ly, is that you’re a huge snob, you’re way better than everyone else, your own ego is too big for the big ego-fest, and that this silly acting business is best left to stupid little plebeian morons like, oh, I don’t know, me?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying!” But it was, I realized. It was exactly what I was saying. It was awful. Already I was wishing I could erase the words and start over. That I could fling myself out of the Mystery Machine and hitchhike back to Morlan ASAP.

  “Don’t you want to know what I like about acting?” Mason asked. He was looking at me through the eye of the camera, adjusting the frame.

  “I can’t wait to hear.” This time I stared at the camera head-on.

  “I like how you get to get up inside a character’s head. You know, learn how people think and operate.” Click. “It makes you see people in a different way.” Click. “Makes you see the world in a different way.”

  I rolled my eyes, more out of habit than anything else. I was starting to realize that I had almost as many obnoxious habits as Mason. He was my evil doppelgänger: that’s exactly what he was. “That’s a gorgeous sentiment, really, but it’s not going to change my mind. I’ve officially, as of this moment, broken up with the stage.”

  “Ah. The better to spend time with your boyfriend, right?” Click.

  “Who said anything about a boyfr —” I started, but at that moment I felt something warm seeping through my shorts. “Holyfield!” I screamed. “Oh my God, X, your dog just peed on me!”

  Holyfield woke up, Calvin woke up, Chloe woke up, X veered the bus onto the shoulder. There was general chaos and racket, and Mason Atkinson, as you might have guessed, was laughing like it was just the funniest thing that had ever happened, ever in the world. Despite all of this horror, or perhaps because of it, there was a split second as we disembarked the Mystery Machine when it struck me that this was it: the exact kind of kooky family tableau I had always longed to find myself in. Finally, finally, I knew what it felt like to be surrounded by siblings on that madcap adventure that is the Proverbial Family Road Trip. If I hadn’t been soaked with dog pee, I might’ve actually cried.

  “He hardly ever has accidents anymore, I swear!” X protested. “Gloria, I am so sorry. What can I do?”

  “Everybody back up,” Chloe ordered, and she drew a wad of Egg Drop napkins out of her bag. “See how important it is to be prepared?” She climbed into the bus and mopped up the pee. Then she dug back into her bag and produced some hand sanitizer, which she applied to a fresh napkin and swiped across the seat. On her third and final rummage into her seemingly bottomless bag, she came up with a tiny black skirt, the kind of thing I’d never wear in this or any other lifetime. “Here, put this on.” She tossed the skirt to me and hopped out of the bus. I just stood there, looking around like an idiot. Holyfield cowered at my feet, cocking his head in apology. It was impossible to be mad at him.

  “It’s okay, buddy,” I said, kneeling to scratch behind his ears. “Just don’t do it again.”

  “Get in there and get dressed,” Chloe bossed. “We’ll wait out here. Just hurry up, dude. I’m sweltering.”

  I had no choice but to climb back inside the Mystery Machine and change into Chloe’s skirt. Just to make triple-quadruple sure nobody could see me, I kind of crouched down onto the floor. Their voices were bouncing around out there: Calvin couldn’t believe he had fallen asleep, Mason was playing with Holyfield, Chloe and X were discussing the navigational details of the next leg of our trip eastward. Although clearly it was the end of the world, they appeared to have already forgotten about my pee-stained self. I tried to calm myself down, to put it into perspective. I could hear my dad’s voice in my head: Relax, Gloria. Use your head. Try not to make a huge deal out of everything. Resist the urge to make a scene. Resolve to enjoy your life. Don’t get into a swivet. It was the same string of mantras he’d been preaching at me since birth. I’ve got them recorded in my head for easy access when I can feel myself getting histrionic, when I can feel myself edging into a swivet. Swivet: I spent most of my childhood thinking my dad had made that word up. When in ninth grade I encountered it in a book somewhere, I felt all bereft to discover it belonged not just to me but to the world in general. What a buzzkill! Story of my life.

  Anyway Chloe’s skirt, made for someone Chloe’s size, looked ridiculous on me. But it was better than wearing pee, so I tried to shift into Positive Mode as I banged my way out of the bus. “Hey X, did you bring any snacks or anything?”

  “What are you, five?” Mason asked. “A snack. Come on.”

  “I have snacks!” Chloe beamed. As we shifted back onto the bus she divvied out the fortune cookies.

  “Are we ready?” X asked. “Do we have everybody?” He had this exhausted look on his face, like maybe he was regretting the whole field trip idea.

  “Ready,” Calvin answered. “I am officially ready to board a helicopter. Let’s go.”

  My fortune was awesome: You find beauty in ordinary things.

  “I got yours, butterfly man,” I told Calvin. “Let’s trade.”

  A friend is a present you give yourself. Also not bad.

  “What’d you get?” I asked Mason over my shoulder.

  “That’s for me to know and you not to know,” came the response. “Worry about your own fortune, Gloria Bishop, and I’ll worry about mine.”

  I turned around to shoot Mason a look, and he got me: Click. Girl with Fortune, Rolling Eyes.

  Perry County, Kentucky, is made of nothing but hills. It’s a gorgeous place, the stuff of myth and legend, I’m not kidding. We stopped at a single-pump gas station, and the voice of the guy at the counter was almost hard to decipher, it came out sounding so much more like music than words. We rounded up some Ale-8s, and Link — that was the gas station guy’s name — pointed the way, “up yonder a piece, just follow the roadblocks.”

  And that’s what it was like, when you saw it from the ground: a huge, elaborate construction site, only after a while your eyes get used to what they’re seeing and you start to piece together that this isn’t just the beginning of a coming-soon new strip mall. It’s a big cavernous mess where something millions of years old used to be, is what it is. Not something you can really put into perspective.

  A helicopter and waving pilot stood waiting for us. Walking across the packed dirt and rock felt like walking across graves in a cemetery, or walking on the surface of the moon; that’s how weird it is to trudge across a mountain when there’s no freaking mountain where the mountain should be. We would have to take turns in the helicopter, so I grabbed Calvin’s hand and climbed in before he could change his mind. With his free hand, Calvin waved to X and Mason and Chloe, who, holding Holyfield in her arms, lifted his little paw in a return wave. It was much louder in the helicopter than I imagined it would be, so instead of trying to talk to Calvin, I just squeezed his hand and smiled. He squeezed back, smiled back, and then we were off: tilting and floating away from the ground, that wonderful thrill of flight filling up my lungs.

  I closed my eyes and imagined myself held in one of those dreams I have sometimes — my very favorite dreams, where I spread my arms out like wings and fly above the rooftops and bridges of my starlit town. As we hovered above the site, the pilot started talking — he was pointing and telling us something we should’ve been listening to — but Calvin and I, our palms pressed together in a sweaty grip, our heads craned to see out opposite windows, our ears too full of noise to hear the pilot anyway, were already gone, spellbound. Together we looked down, and I don’t know how to describe it, I don’t know how to say what I saw, only that it looked wrong. It was the definition of wrong, is what it was. For some reason my mind spun back to being six years old, losing a tooth, pressing my tongue to the salty absence in my mouth and marveling that a piece of my body that once-upon-a-time had been there — a fact of me — was suddenly and wholly gone.

  The long ride back to Morlan was quiet. Mason took up the role of navigator and Chloe dozed in
the way-back. The sun was sinking low in a great wistful swirl of impossible colors, brilliant colors you just can’t make up or buy, when Calvin nudged my arm and whispered, “Did you see that farm back there? The one we just passed?”

  “Where?” I asked, looking back. “I missed it. Horses?”

  “Nope,” Calvin said, shaking his head slowly. “A farm-farm. Cows. Vegetables. Tobacco, too, used to be.” Calvin lowered his eyes and then closed them for a second. When he opened them again I caught something there — a peaceful sort of sorrow that made what X had said seem true: Calvin did seem older and wiser than his newly acquired seventeen years. An Old Soul: That’s what GoGo would’ve called Calvin Little. She had this special radar for Old Souls.

  “That’s my family’s farm,” Calvin said. “I guess you could also say it’s my future.”

  Glo. Spent the day apartment-hunting, just for the hell. All the good places are in Brooklyn. Saw this one with a garret-like thing where you can be all Virginia Woolf with a Room of Your Own, Señorita Luddite. I know you’re sentimental about graduation (Don’t deny it. Denial doesn’t become you) but I’m thinking sooner rather than later. This city is crawling with assholes (i.e. people at checkout counters don’t bless your heart, etc.) but it’s magnificent and breathtaking. Never felt so alive. Anyway there are assholes everywhere you go. If you want to act and I want to dance, this is it. This is where we need to be.

  Are you in?

  Love,

  Carol

  P.S. Bless your heart, byotch.

  Carol’s letter made me feel sort of ill. All along I’d been counting the days until we could move away and start our adventurous artistic lives together, but my shifting attitude toward acting was new — I wasn’t used to it and didn’t know what to do with it. I hadn’t yet revealed to Carol that I was growing nauseated by the whole theater business, and somehow the not-telling her, even though I hadn’t fully figured it out, felt like a betrayal.

  I tried to pinpoint in my mind the exact moment when I decided to bail on the one thing I’ve ever been halfway good at. Was it when the Mad Hatter appeared beneath my dorm window in all his theatrical glory? Maybe. Maybe it was that moment in the Mystery Machine when Mason and I had a little chat about All’s Well That Ends Well. Or maybe the moment happened months before that, when GoGo died. She was the one who had taken me to plays, even from the time I was little. We’d go to Actors Theatre and afterward have grown-up espressos in the brick-walled basement bar, and the whole thing would be magic from beginning to end. GoGo volunteered at the theater and was close personal friends with the actors — she’d sometimes even have them over for Sunday or holiday dinners, the ones who were broke (they were all broke; it was part of their mysterious, tragic allure, as far as I was concerned) and far away from their families. So if it was anybody’s fault that I had fallen headlong in love with the stage, it was GoGo’s. She was the one who encouraged me, said I was a natural, said I should “honor my gift.”