Josh Kilmer-Purcell - Candy Everybody Wants

‘Sayonara , BITCH!’

It was Jayson’s latest stepfather, Garth, whom Toni’d met earlier in the summer in the audience of a waterskiing show in Waukesha. He was standing in the driveway of their split-level ranch, which was painted lilac with eggplant trim and shutters. He had a suitcase in one hand and the middle finger of the other hand raised defiantly back toward the house.

‘Congratulations, motherfucker. You finally got SOMETHING up!’ Toni’s voice shouted back from inside the kitchen window.

All four children stared at the domestic explosion occurring onshore. There was another brief volley of expletives before Garth climbed into his Chevy Citation and roared down the driveway in reverse, severing the sideview mirror from Toni’s chartreuse Ford Maverick.

Jayson had been convinced this marriage would last at least through the summer. It had seemed more promising than the other eleven. Twelve? Jayson couldn’t remember the exact number. His mother, Toni–for all her free-spirited ways–had one deep-seated remnant of her strict Catholic upbringing. She would never fool around with a man until she was married. Since Toni also had a deep-seated devotion to fooling around, she found herself in front of a lot of altars. Generally not Catholic, obviously.

After Garth’s car sped noisily out of sight down Lake Labelle Drive, Toni emerged from the house. Jayson always thought she looked her most beautiful when she was angry. Her heavy black hair would be tousled from being pulled, and her squinting green eyes flickered with brilliant rage against her pale skin. She wasn’t rail thin like most of the women on television–Mrs. Kotter, Laverne and Shirley, Vera the waitress on Alice . But she wasn’t fat either. She had the full curves that most men truly wanted–more than the waifs they were fed on TV. She was, she always said, ‘half Italian, half Russian, half black Irish, and all business.’

From their spot in the middle of the lake, Jayson, Willie, and the twins watched her march down the driveway, pick up the amputated mirror from her Maverick, and hurl it into the lake while letting loose with a primal scream. The chartreuse glinting mirror arced overhead and landed in the water with a phloomp only ten feet away from Jayson and his cast.

Only when it landed did Toni notice Jayson, Willie, and the twins watching from their floating island. Her mood changed instantly, as was her style. ‘Fleeting’ was the only constant trait of Toni’s personality.

‘You kids ready for hot dogs?’ Toni called out to them cheerily. ‘I got the kind with the cheese inside.’ She planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head with incredulity. ‘The cheese is on the inside! Can you motherfuckinbelieveit?!?’

Willie was still filming. He’d learned the hard way not to stop until Jayson yelled ‘cut.’ Jayson wasn’t sure how he was going to work Toni’s domestic explosion into the plot of this episode. But he’d find a way. It was good material. Very natural.

His most immediate directorial concern was finding an ending for the unexpectedly prolonged scene.

Jayson turned back toward Trey, rose on his tiptoes, pulled Trey’s head toward his own, and kissed him as the original script had called for.

The water breezes kicked up as the sun set behind the houses on the far shore of the lake and Jayson lost himself in his first ever kiss.

Never confuse yourself with your character , Jayson reprimanded himself silently, repeating acting advice he’d heard Bette Davis offer on Johnny Carson .

‘Annnnnd, CUT!!!’ he shouted at Willie, reluctantly separating from Trey. The twilight sky was streaked with purple, and clouds of mosquitos began swarming around them.

Tara coughed and sputtered as she pulled herself out of the water and onto the dock.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she hissed at Jayson, ‘if you’d made out with Trey any longer, I would’ve fucking drowned for real.’

Trey didn’t say anything. He pretended to be concentrating on gathering his belongings for the pedal boat ride back to shore. Jayson ignored Trey’s discomfort. The only thing that mattered now was finishing the Dallasty! episodes and mailing them off to CBS.

Soon enough Jayson would be on his way to Hollywood. He would escape all of this small town nothingness. The petty domestic dramas. His insufferable unpopularity. The strangers who would stare at his strange clothes and strange brother and strange mother in the A&P.

Don’t touch that dial, he thought to himself. The newest, greatest season of Jayson Blocher will premier right after these messages.

‘Jaaaaayson, I’m outtta here!Come kiss me goodbye.’

‘Jesus Jm J Bullock Christ,’ Jayson muttered to himself, putting down his pencil in the rust shag carpet of his bedroom. After one of the hottest and most humid summers on record, the carpet smelled as fetid as the slime that grew between the rocks on the shore of the lake. And it had been vacuumed about as often.

Jayson was only halfway through writing the final scene of Dallasty’s cliffhanger. He was farther behind schedule than he’d anticipated. The week’s shooting had been frantic and stressful, with the twins’ schedule being interrupted repeatedly by back-to-school shopping excursions. Jayson himself had had no such diversions. Toni had pinned a $20 bill to his bedroom door on Tuesday and told him to bicycle into town to buy what he needed. Which Jayson promptly did: four cartons of Starbursts, a box of Whatchamacallit candy bars, and thirty-six pouches of BlueBerry Blast Capri Suns.

If he could get the final scene finished today and shot sometime over the weekend, he would have the entire season of episodes ready to be dropped into the post office box by the corner of Oconomowoc High School on the first morning of classes.

‘JAYSON! I’M LEAVING!’

Jayson slid down the front foyer steps on his ass and walked into the kitchen. In the week since Garth had left, the house had become even dirtier, which, had you asked Jayson last week, he would have sworn was impossible.

Toni was leaning against the burnt orange counter that was, poetically, pockmarked with cigarette burns.

‘I didn’t even know you were going somewhere,’ Jayson said.

‘I told you on Monday that I was going to spend the weekend at an artists’ collective in Chicago,’ she replied, holding her arms out for a hug.

‘No you didn’t. Monday you spent the entire day in the sarcophagus.’

Toni dropped her arms.

‘I did?’

‘You did. And I have the police citation to prove it.’

Toni had recently declared herself a ‘modern artist’ working out of her garage ‘studio.’ She announced her new vocation last spring in a press release sent to the Oconomowoc Enterprise that, much to her indignant disappointment, was never published. She kept a copy of it hanging on the refrigerator. By a nail. Toni had several mementos nailed to the refrigerator, since she was wary of the health effects of magnets.

5/21/81. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Toni Blocher, née VanSchlessor, is proud to announce a showing of her avant-garde sculptures detailing the rise and descent of woman’s struggle with the modern institution of matrimony. Neither an advocate for the patriarchy, nor a traditional feminist, Blocher will exhibit her latest works in the driveway of her home at N6855 W. Lakota Dr. from April 7 to April 14. (Parking on street is strictly prohibited by the fascist Lac Labelle Homeowners Association. The artist recommends slowing to a crawl while driving by. Ms. Blocher will walk next to your vehicle and answer any questions regarding pricing of specific works. Photography is prohibited.)