Chapter_13_Hollywood_

It’s been impossible to splinter off from Mom. Monopolizing my time is her favorite hobby when I’m home. I don’t mind it. She’s a ball of energy and we all enjoy each other’s company.

And now with pending fatherhood just a few weeks away, it feels poetic to get to the bottom of my own paternal situation.

The problem is, I’m not exactly sure where to begin.

I’ve been texting with Alex the past couple days, trying to probe him for any answers about our father, but he’s either not that interested or busy with physical therapy.

Puffy white clouds dot vivid blue skies so Mom decides it’s a perfect day to visit her healing spot, Berkshire Botanical Garden. We can take Mom on long walks there for some nature therapy that will hopefully induce her to spill some beans about my father. With all the questions Biz was asking me last night, I can tell he’s on board.

Strolling over a small red bridge toward Mom’s favorite bonsai tree in the Japanese gardens, we see a cute family standing in front of the wildly shaped plant. The dad has a buzz cut with a football player build, and he’s wearing Oakley sunglasses, standing in awe with his two kids and beautiful wife. He looks like if someone drew Mark Wahlberg from memory.

We maneuver around them to soak up a good look at the tree but they’re not budging. I feel the dad glance at me a few times.

The gardens are populated with more people than expected, which makes it hard to have any meaningful conversation with my mom. When we’ve all had enough flowers and trees and plants, we head toward the parking lot, looking for Mom’s car.

That’s where Biz and I spot Mark Wahlberg-y loading up his tank-sized SUV with his family as he steals another glance at me.

“Hot zaddy checking you out again, two o’clock,” Biz quietly says so Mom doesn’t hear.

“He did that in the Japanese garden,” I say.

“I saw. I bet he’s closeted.”

“Can you not?” I say. “We’re with my mom.” If it’s true, I actually can’t believe a guy with his wife and kids could so blatantly cruise me like this.

“There she is!” my mom yells, finally finding her car.

I do a double take. Yep, the daddy is unashamedly checking me out. He looks me up and down. Have some decency in front of your family, Mr. Fake Wahlberg.

We head to the car, forgetting all about him. I’m lost in thought on how to get my mom back on track of uncovering my father’s story.

“Wyatt Wallace?!?” someone yells behind us, just before we climb into the car. I turn to see the daddy squinting at me, barreling toward us.

“Wait—you know him?” Biz asks.

“I don’t think so,” I say, trying to place the guy. His wife doesn’t look familiar either.

The guy stands in front of me now with a huge smile on his face and a brawny hand extended. I’m trying to discern who this person is masked behind the sunglasses and the muscles. Somewhere on his face I catch a glimpse of a high school acquaintance I once knew. That mischievous smirk with the thin lips is the giveaway before it clicks into place.

“Jeremy Lowinger?” I ask. I’m still not convinced this older man is my former high school classmate. In my mind, everyone my age is still seventeen. I adjust my age radar.

“I thought that was you before. How’ve you been, man?” Jeremy’s grip is strong and friendly. “How ya doin’, Mrs. Wallace?”

We were good friends in grade school but drifted apart in high school. Jeremy and I played peewee hockey together. I have to admit that it’s good to see him. The sheer number of years we’ve known each other cuts deep.

“Hi, honey!” my mom says, not having a clue who this person is, as she bloops off her car alarm. She calls anyone she doesn’t know honey.

“This is my partner, Biz,” I say.

“Right. I heard you were gay,” Jeremy says. A grand piano of awkwardness comically falls on our heads. “I didn’t mean... that wasn’t negative meaning in any way.”

I smile and let him squirm.

“This is my wife, Kim.” Kim has an immediate fun, upbeat charm and looks like she teaches a spin class. She’s not someone I recognize from school. At least that I can remember.

“So nice to meet you.” Kim looks at Jeremy, as if signifying this is what he should’ve said to Biz.

“Aren’t you a big-time movie director or something?” Jeremy asks, revealing the misinformed gossip of old classmates. I’ve sworn off all social media, but in the past, I had posted one or two pics of my director’s chair on different jobs. I see how someone could quickly glimpse that and immediately think Important Movie Director.

Not director of adult diaper commercials.

“Commercial director. Mostly.” I don’t elaborate and probably should’ve just said yes.

“He’s being modest. He’s extremely talented,” Biz says. Always so supportive.

“That is so effin’ cool, man.” Jeremy is extremely earnest and excited. Doesn’t he know I’m just a wannabe movie director who has fallen into directing dumb commercials and has no idea how to get out of it? “I always knew you’d be a Hollywood director.” He doubles down on the Hollywood thing. I’m so far removed from Hollywood, I’m in Uzbekistan. “You knew all those movies and stuff growing up.”

“Right. I mean, I live in New York, not Hollywood, but yeah.” This, I realize, is way too nuanced for Jeremy. Just let him think you’re Steven Spielberg, I tell myself.

“Remember Pat Wisniewski?” Jeremy asks.

“Of course.”

“His band’s playing at the Toadstool next Saturday night. They’re like Creed meets Puddle of Mudd. You should totally come.”

I have no clue how to react to this early 2000s band mash-up. It’s so bad, it’s good? Biz scrunches his face, just as confused as I am about the whole encounter.

“Darn,” I try to sound genuinely disappointed. “We’re only here a few nights.”

“Then come to Archie’s party tonight. You’ll know a bunch of us. Sam, Katie, Alice, Mikey P.... We’ll all be there. Bring your dude.”

Before I can answer, Biz immediately chimes in. “We’d love to!” I get it. He needs to escape my mom for five minutes and make our trip feel more like the babymoon he’s been wanting this whole time. As much as I want to spend more quality time with my mom, even I think a party sounds like a good idea.

“What’s your number? I’ll text you the address.” Jeremy takes out his phone, which looks like a matchbook inside his giant hands.

Later in the afternoon, we take Mom’s car and after a forty-five-minute drive into a suburb I’m not totally familiar with, Biz and I pull into a crowded parking lot of the address that Jeremy gave us.

It’s a monstrosity of a building called Hollywood Fun Time Pizzeria Palace.

“It’s just a bunch of words smooshed together,” I say, as we eye the garish sign out front, complete with “Hollywood” stage lights flashing on and off.

Kids and their parents swarm the parking lot, entering and exiting the building.

“Oh my god, is this a kid’s party?” Biz asks.

“Maybe it’s an ironic adult party,” I say, giving my old friend the benefit of the doubt.

“He said it’s Archie’s birthday. Isn’t that someone you went to high school with?”

“I don’t remember an Archie now that I think about it.”

Inside is a throwback pizza place with arcade games, pinball machines, a ball pit and three different stages populated with various animatronic animal characters singing jamborees. Like an off-off-off-way-off-brand Chuck E. Cheese.

Excited kids line up to hand in the paper tickets each game spits out when they win, in exchange for a cheap plastic toy. Despite the chaos, it’s refreshing to see kids interacting with one another and real live arcade games, as opposed to their phones and iPads.

After getting used to the idea that this is probably a kid’s birthday party, I can’t help but smile at the fun everyone is having.

We spot a small group of adults holding bottles of Miller Lite, huddled around a few Skee-Ball games, cheering each other on. I have to adjust my eyes when I see them. These are no longer my classmates from high school. They’re fully fledged adult humans, some with children older than the age when I first met a couple of them.

“My dudes! You want beers?” Jeremy is the first to greet us, with giant hugs. Before we can ask if they have a craft cocktail menu, two Miller Lites are shoved at us.

“When in Hollywood Fun Time Pizzeria Palace...” I say as we clink bottles. Biz gulps his down with a shrug, both of us committed to having some fun.

I immediately recognize Tim, my Spanish class friend during all four years of high school, who only ever called me by my Spanish class name. “Mateo! Que pasa?!” He looks good; thicker though. Like he eats beer kegs for breakfast.

Then there’s Alice, my very good friend from elementary school. “Remember we used to poke holes in bologna and put them on our faces?!” she asks. Her perfect social media persona doesn’t lie. Pearl earrings, a gold watch, expensive blonde haircut with a severe chop. I knew that Alice and Tim were married, but it’s still a mild shock to see them together in real life. They cocreated a baby furniture company and recently sold it to Ikea for a lot of dough.

Mikey P., not to be confused with Mikey G., as they were known growing up, is still calling himself Mikey even though he’s no longer twelve and is now a dentist whose patients call him Dr. Mikey. He has the whitest teeth on the planet.

And of course, Katie. She’s an entrepreneur, starting many successful eco-friendly businesses. The latest one is a bottled water company that services people in Mozambique. She was always a saint. Which is why it’s hard to believe she’s now married to her stay-at-home husband, Neil. Growing up, Neil’s mediocrity was legendary. Judging by the way he badly plays Skee-Ball while letting Katie deal with their kids, nothing has changed.

After Skee-Ball, we eat bland pizza and have birthday cake for Jeremy’s youngest, Archie, while watching a stage full of animatronic bears, coyotes and some sort of large rodent/duck creature sing a medley of Beatles songs.

Several beers and cardboard circles of cheese and pepperoni later, the old gang starts to appear exactly that: old. Up close, I notice none of them are as well-kept as they had first appeared to be. And the drunker they get, the messier, more revealing they become.

Jeremy’s silver daddy, salt-and-pepper hair isn’t a distinction of age. The more I examine it, I realize it’s a shock of gray, wiry hair that seems to be a direct result of extreme stress. This man is prematurely gray because of extenuating life circumstances. Of course I have no scientific data to back this up but every gray hair on his head seems to tell a story. The increasingly heavy-duty bags under his eyes only support my theory.

The cracks in the very put-together Alice start to show too. Sure, on the outside she’s perfect, but as Biz quietly points out, “Did you notice she’s downed more beers than anyone?”

“You guys don’t have any drugs by any chance?” Alice asks us.

“Sorry, no,” I say as she openly texts her drug dealer.

As the night turns darker, figuratively and literally, Mikey P. drunkenly explains to us that we should “never get married and never have kids.” He slurs through his cautionary tale.

“We have four kidsh. Four! Now we can’t afford shit! And I’m a dentisht! I’m currently being shued by three different people. Two I can’t talk about. Fine, I’ll talk about ’em—I mishdiagnosed oral canshur on them. Sheriously, don’t have kidsh.”

Biz looks shell-shocked.

We turn to see all their kids either chasing each other at full speed around the room, screaming, or having meltdowns.

Jeremy’s nine-year-old defiantly rips off the Whac-A-Mole mallet and starts bopping innocent kids on the head with it. “WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!” he shouts with each victim.

Alice’s kids drain her purse for more money to play games like tiny vampires.

Mikey P. has to carry his wailing daughter over his head like a surfboard out of the place.

Tim’s son unzips his pants, stands proudly over the ball pit and starts peeing, waving his stream back and forth like a weak sprinkler.

Biz and I glance at each other, holding in laughter.

Before we know it, we’re in another suburb, walking with the gang down a pristine sidewalk in Jeremy and Kim’s subdivision called “Briar Manors,” which sounds like someone lazily slapped together the two fanciest names they could think of.

In a last-ditch effort to cling to their childhood, the adults put their kids to bed and we’re cajoled into doing something I used to do as a teenager: pool hopping. We walk down a darkened, quiet street, aimlessly searching for the biggest swimming pool to jump into.

“Remember all those pools you took us to?” Jeremy asks me.

Biz turns to me. “Is that true?” His eyes fill with excitement. This is the first time I’ve seen him this present all night and possibly the entire trip.

“I did it once or twice,” I admit, trying to downplay my guilt.

“Oh, please. You were the OG pool hopper,” Alice says.

“Mr. Hollywood invented pool hopping!” Jeremy says, to which everyone bursts into a giggle fit.

“Oh my god. The Linderman house. It’s perfect,” Mikey P. says as we stand in front of a plain-looking house that’s not exactly a manor, as per the name of the subdivision.

“Are you sure no one’s home?” Tim asks, cautiously.

“Let’s just go!” I yell-whisper. As Biz and I lead everyone through the side yard, a jolt of unhinged energy bursts through me that I haven’t felt since maybe high school.

“We’re finally going to have some fun on this trip!” Biz says with such giddiness, I realize in this moment that he’s truly convinced once we have a baby, we’ll absolutely no longer have fun. He has to realize we’ll need to strike a balance.

We enter the backyard through a flimsy gate, and I run in, leading the group.

I’m the first one in the pool, doing a messy cannonball like I did in high school. The thrill is intoxicating. Everyone jumps in after me with their own unique signature move. The pool is chilly at first, but the more we swim, the warmer and more exhilarating it becomes.

The women congregate by the diving board, giggling about the illicit nature of it all. The guys splash each other, roughhousing like they’re back in gym class.

I swim up to Biz and fling my arms around him as we stare up into the nighttime sky sparkling with a million stars. It’s worth it just to see the pure joy on Biz’s face.

We all turn as a light goes on in the upstairs bedroom. Someone is home.

None of us move.

I’m freaking out, suddenly wondering what the hell we’re doing. Biz is loving it.

My chest tightens when we hear a police siren “Bloop!” a single time as it speeds into the driveway. The red and blue swirling lights fill the backyard, creating iridescent shapes in the swimming pool that would be beautiful if they weren’t so terrifying.

A wiry police officer walks bowlegged through, highlighting us with his flashlight as most of us scurry out of the pool.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?” Jeremy is the first to speak, casually doing a breast stroke down the length of the pool. What a weird thing to say, I think. It’s not like we’re being pulled over on the highway for speeding.

“The problem? The problem is that you’re in a swimming pool that’s not your own. This is considered trespassing, sir.” The cop moves closer, pointing his flashlight at Jeremy’s face. “Wait—Lowinger?! Is that you?”

“Officer Brewer!” Jeremy and the cop know each other.

I catch a solid glimpse of his face. Actually, we all know the cop. We graduated high school with him. It’s Mark Brewer.

“You guys need to get out of here.” He swings his flashlight onto the faces of everyone else and says hi as we slip our clothes back onto our wet bodies.

“Remember Wyatt Wallace?” Jeremy asks him.

“Mateo! I used to cheat off you in Spanish,” Officer Brewer says.

“Hola,” I say and wave, embarrassed for all of us.

An older woman with long gray hair watches with a scowl through her kitchen window as we’re escorted off her premises and told to go home.

In the street, Officer Brewer pretends to read us our rights, and we all have a big laugh. We walk back to Jeremy and Kim’s house, leaving wet footprints on the pavement.

In our final moments together, Biz and I decline having more beers in the backyard by the fire pit with the gang and instead say our farewells.

On the way back to Mom’s, I turn to look at Biz as he drives, noticing how fresh and handsome he looks with his hair still wet in the dark of night.

“Well, that was sufficiently weird but fun,” I say.

“I have to say, I’m impressed.” Biz grins.

“With what?” I ask.

“I honestly didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Had what in me? Fun? You seriously don’t think I know how to have fun?” I ask, genuinely surprised this is something that crossed his mind. “I know I’ve been... focused lately but I’m not that bad,” I say.

“You’ve told me once or twice about your old pool hopping, but I didn’t realize you were the king of pool hopping.”

“We didn’t even jump off the roof tonight,” I say with a grin. “We used to do that all the time.”

“You did not jump off the roof. Jesus, I would never. That would freak me out,” Biz says as he turns to smile at me. “It’s nice seeing you let loose.”

“If you ever doubt that I can’t have fun, just remember tonight and my legendary status as the number one pool hopper.”

“Noted,” Biz says.

Then my face falls, remembering something.

“What is it, Mr. Hollywood?” Biz asks, seeing this.

“All those kids,” I say. “They were demons from hell.”

“Oh, I know. What did their parents do to them? Your friends all seem a little broken. And they all look ten years older than us,” Biz says. He’s not wrong. “Are you sure you graduated high school with them?”

“Sure did,” I say.

Biz narrows his eyes and turns to me. “Are we sure we want to have a kid?” he jokes.

“Yes,” I say to Biz. “We just don’t want their kids.”