CHAPTER 1
Unconscious Inheritance
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I grew up in the suburbs around Los Angeles, in a three-Âbedroom house at the end of a cul-de-sac. There was a yard out front and rolling hills out back. From the outside, our house looked pretty normal. Weâd moved to Los Angeles so Dad could become a screenwriter. He enrolled in film school; Mom supported the family on her nurse-practitioner salary.
They were constantly stressed about money, but Dad was always talking about how one day heâd score big. His face lit up when he talked about that future windfall, how in a single instant all our worries would disappear. I reveled in his fantasy. When a neighbor asked me that year what I wanted to be when I grew up, I smiled and answered, âRich.â Dad beamed.
I shared a bedroom with my identical twin brother. Ben and I had been through everything togetherâbirth, potty training, first day of school. We shared clothes, a dresser, a Nintendo. Sometimes we used each otherâs toothbrushes. But when we were eight, I begged for a dog, and Ben seemed indifferent. So when my mom brought OJ home from a shelter and Dad, after arguing against it, finally allowed him to stay, OJ was mine.
âThis dog is your responsibility,â said Dad. âNot mine.â
OJ was a fat little golden retriever, a Chicken McNugget with legs. His tail never stopped wagging, and his bark was warm. I petted him incessantly, took him for three or four walks a day. Iâd snap on OJâs red leash and get yanked proudly up and down our cul-de-sac.
At the end of our street sat an open lot, dusty and speckled with crabgrass. At the back of the lot a line of trees opened to a dirt path that led to the hills. The steep path wound through a thicket to a rocky clearing that looked like a moonscape, and ended in a cliff that overlooked our block. OJ and I spent hours up there.
I tried to train OJ.
âSit,â I said, standing facing him. He looked up and wagged his tail.
âSit,â I said again and pushed his bottom down. He licked my face. As soon as I let go, he was up again, rolling his head side to side and rubbing up against me. He seemed to be laughing, so I laughed. After awhile I gave up and threw the tennis ball Iâd brought.
âFetch,â I said, and he scrambled off across the craggy rocks. I was careful not to throw the ball too near the cliff.
We went up there every day. After we finished playing, Iâd get as close to the edge as I could. OJ would sit with his head in my lap. Weâd watch the cars coming home, the lights blinking on and off, and Iâd thrill in bearing secret witness to peopleâs lives.
âGood dog,â Iâd say. âYou are such a good dog.â
I liked being out of the house, because things had recently become tense at home. Mom and Dad had started retreating into hushed conversations.
Mom had undergone a battery of tests for what she thought was a urinary tract infection. One day the hospital called with the results. They told her she had chlamydia.
âIt must be a mistake,â Mom said. She was married. The nurse suggested she might speak to her husband about that. Mom was incensed. Dad, too, was appalled at that nurse but said Mom should take the medication just to be safe. Heâd get tested as a precaution. A week later he told Mom that his results had come back clean. They wrote it off as a mix-up.
A few months later, Mom became pregnant with my younger brother, Daniel. Her pregnancy was a problem for my dad. Mom worked full-time, while Dad stayed home, smoked weed, and worked on a screenplay. She told him he would need to find an income-generating job.
But Dad had big aspirations for that screenplay, and was furious at Mom for getting in the way of his dreams. He started singing the Rolling Stones lyrics âIâll never be your beast of burdenâ when Mom was around, and muttering âcuntâ when sheâd storm away.
Dad found a job selling kitchen cabinets. After Daniel was born, Mom returned to working full-time, so they hired a Guatemalan woman to care for the baby. She cleaned up some during the day, but by the time Dad and Mom got home from work, the house was a mess. And on the weekends, when the housekeeper-nanny was away, the house looked like a bomb had gone off. Clothes, toys, old newspapers, and empty bowls of cereal were strewn about. The carpet in front of the TV was threadbare and covered with stains, because Ben and I ate most of our meals there.
Dad started working most weekends, and on those days Mom would retreat to her room for an afternoon nap. When Iâd shake her awake for dinner, next to her would be an empty bowl with a spoon stuck in the hardened residue of vanilla ice cream. When our cat, Mimi, birthed a litter of kittens in Benâs and my bedroom closet, we asked Mom if we could keep them, and she absently said yes. Soon the kittens contracted some sort of illness, so when youâd pick something off the floor youâd sometimes find a dead kitten underneath. Plus Iâd failed to properly crate train OJ, because I had no idea how to do that, and he wouldnât stop relieving himself inside the house.
âDonât let him do that again,â growled Dad, angry after stepping in a pile of shit next to his bed.
âBut I donât know how to get him to stop,â I said.
âYou need to shove his nose in his crap, and hold him there,â Dad said.
One day, Ben and I were lying on the couch watching TV when Dad walked through the front door. He took a sweeping look around the slovenly living room. His brow furrowed and his head started to shake. It was like watching a kettle boil. My body tightened in anticipation.
âBanzai!â he suddenly screamed, the bizarre cry he used when the house had gotten too disgusting for even him to tolerate. Ben and I leapt to our feet like weâd been shocked with electricity, and began furiously cleaning. I felt the way a fish must feel, one moment swimming serenely, the next yanked into the air by a hook through its face. Dad stood there, fuming. I made sure to stay out of his reach.
I was relieved when he went into the bathroom, leaving the door to the hall open behind him. I could hear the splash of his stream. The toilet flushed and the door to his bedroom opened.
âGODDAMN IT!â he screamed.
When Dad kicked him in the ribs, OJ yelped, that sound that seems to come from the very soul of a dog. I broke for the bedroom.
âDad, donât hurt him!â I yelled.
I rushed toward the room and just as I got there OJ exploded out of it and past me. I stood there facing my father.
âClean up the goddamned shit, Sam,â he snarled.
He towered above me, rage rippling off him like heat off sunbaked asphalt. My hands were shaking.
âYou donât have to hurt him like that, Dad,â I said.
âNext time itâll be you,â he said. I knew he meant it.
I turned heel and ran for the paper towels. I mopped up the soupy puddle, averting my face. Tears streamed down my cheeks.
I found OJ in the backyard.
âItâs okay, boy,â I said, petting him until my heart stopped pounding.
A few days later, when I got home from school, I saw the single turd sitting innocently in the center of the living room carpet, as if OJ had left me a present.
âGoddamn it!â I yelled.
I rushed to the backyard in a fury and found OJ lying in the sun. He shrunk back from me. I grabbed his collar and yanked him toward the house, pulling him by the neck.
âBad dog!â I shouted.
I stood over the shit. OJ was scrambling backwards. It felt like his collar might come off over his head, so I grabbed the folds of skin around his neck. I felt my fingernails dig into his flesh. I pushed his nose into the mess. His scrambling took on a new level of intensity. I could hear his nails scratching at the carpet.
âBad dog!â I yelled.
He struggled, snorting and whining, but I held strong. I kept jamming his face into the mess, as if to say look what you did. Then I let him go. He rushed outside. I went to get paper towels and Formula 409. As I wiped up the mess, my anger cooled. I finished, then walked into the backyard and gathered OJ into my arms.
âGood dog,â I said, pressing my face into his fur. âThatâs a good dog.â
âą âą âą
A few weeks later, Dad herded Mom, Ben, and me into the gray Cadillac, leaving Daniel behind with a babysitter. At the last moment he called out to OJ to come along, and reached to pet him in the backseat. Mom sat in the front, and I sat in the back with Ben and OJ. We headed to Chinatown for dim sum, a weekend tradition.
We left OJ in the car. We sat around a circular table and I poured tons of sugar into my tea, stirring it with a spoon. Dad knew I was mad at him about our fight the night beforeâheâd spanked me after OJ shit next to his bedâso he kept looking at me with a silly grin on his face and doing this little dance with his head and shoulders to make me laugh. I fought to maintain an angry visage, but I loved having his full attention, and I couldnât help but smile. Soon Dad started calling out the funny names heâd invented for the Chinese dishes. âWeâll have an order of fried paper towels,â he said, and Ben and I wriggled and giggled as if we were being tickled. When the food came, we ate fast and hard, and soon we were piling back into the car.
My stomach was bursting and I had to pee, but otherwise I was happy. I stared out the window watching the freeway signs thump by. OJ was over by Ben. Dad was singing to the radio, and everyone was laughing. When we pulled up to the house, I bolted inside so I wouldnât have to wait for the bathroom.
A few hours late...