Simon Rich - Spoiled Brats - Stories

We finish the bottle and I get on the rocket, and that’s where I am now, just riding back home through space. And the pilot just said, “If you go to the observation deck, you can see a view of Earth.” And I didn’t look the last time, but this time I kind of want to look, because who knows when I’ll get another chance? So I guess this is the end of my diary, because phones don’t work up there. So I guess I’m just going to turn this phone off and go up there. Okay. This is it. I’m doing it. I’m turning this off. I’m going up there.

I am not smart with words, but I work hard every day of my life.

When I come on boat I have only shirt and pants. The food is not kosher and I soon begin to starve. In middle of ocean, I trade pants for tin of herring. Is very cold without the pants. But I survive.

They send me to Brooklyn and I find job in pickle factory. Every day, I crawl through gears and pull out rats. Is not so easy. The rats have sharp teeth and do not like to be touched. But I work hard. When I start in 1908 they pay me eighty cents each day. By 1912 they are giving me ninety cents, plus bowl of potato soup.

I find beautiful girl named Sarah. Her left leg is lame since youth, but she has all her teeth. She is very clever and teaches me to spell words. I save up pennies all week long so on Sunday I can buy her treat, like seltzer or salt fish.

When we marry and she is with child, we stay up late each night whispering. We make great plans. We will have son, and he will have son, and so on and so on and so on. And someday years from now, when we are dead and gone, our family name will stand for strength and honor. Someday our hopes and dreams will come to pass.

One day at work I fall into brine and they close the lid above me by mistake. Much time passes; it feels like long sleep. When the lid is finally opened, everybody is dressed strange, in colorful, shiny clothes. I do not recognize them. They tell me they are “conceptual artists” and are “reclaiming the abandoned pickle factory for a performance space.” I realize something bad has happened in Brooklyn.

The science men come and explain. I have been preserved in brine a hundred years and have not aged one day. They describe to me the reason (how this chemical mixed with that chemical, and so on and so on), but I am not paying attention. All I can think of is my beautiful Sarah. Years have passed and she is surely gone.

Soon, though, I have another thought. When I fall in brine, Sarah was with child. Maybe I still have family in Brooklyn? Maybe our dreams have come true?

The science man turns on computing box and types. I have one great-great-grandson still in Brooklyn, he says. By coincidence, he is twenty-seven years old, just like me. His name is Simon Rich. I am so excited I can barely breathe. Maybe he is doctor, or even rabbi? I cannot wait to meet this man — to learn the ending of my family’s story.

“How about Thai fusion?” Simon asks me as we walk along the street where I once lived. “This place has these amazing gluten-free ginger thingies.”

He gestures at crowded restaurant. It used to be metal factory.

“Are you a cilantro person?” he asks me.

“I do not know,” I admit.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “There’s a bagel place around the corner.”

I sigh with relief and follow Simon into store. He orders two bagels with creamed cheese and hands me one. I cannot believe how large it is — like something to feed an entire Irish family. I take three bites and put the rest in coat, to save for supper. When I look up at Simon I see that he has somehow almost finished his whole bagel. He is eating so fast, I cannot understand it. It is like he is in race and must shove all the bread in his mouth or he will die. Between bites he gulps from his drink, which is bottle of green sugar water the size of bucket.

“Gatorade?” he asks me.

I am too repulsed even to respond.

Eventually, he has eaten all his food and swallowed all his sugars. I wait for him to catch his breath, but then I can wait no longer.

“Please,” I say, “I must know. What path have you chosen for your life?”

Simon smiles proudly at me.

“I’m a script doctor,” he says.

I shake my head with astonishment.

“That is so wonderful,” I say, my eyes filling with tears. “I am so proud. I cannot believe my descendant is medical doctor.”

Simon averts his eyes.

“It’s actually just a screenwriting term,” he says. “ ‘Script doctor’ means I, like, punch up movie scripts.”

I stare at him blankly.

“ ‘Punch up’?” I say.

“You know, like, add gags.”

“What sort of gags?”

He clears his throat.

“Let’s see… well, the script I’m working on now is about a guy who switches bodies with his pet dog. So I’m adding all these puns, like ‘I’m doggone mad!’ and ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you!’ You know, things like that.”

A long time passes in silence.

“So you are not medical doctor.”

“No,” Simon confesses. “I am not.”

Simon says he is happy I was brined. He has always wondered what it would be like to “hang out” with his great-great-grandfather.

“We’re going to have a blast,” he says. “Brooklyn has gotten so awesome, it’s crazy.”

I ask him if he knows what became of my Sarah. He shakes his head. He has worked very hard to research our family, journeying all the way to place called Ancestry Dotcom. But all he could find about Sarah was the address she shared with me in Williamsburg: 283 Bedford.

“That’s an American Apparel now,” he says. “But don’t worry. You can stay with me for as long as you want.”

He leads me down Atlantic Avenue. We pass many strange people wearing tight pants and circus mustaches.

“So,” I say sadly, “if you are not real doctor, I assume you did not have real education.”

“Oh, sure I did,” he says. “I went to Harvard.”

I am amazed.

“My God,” I say. “Did they know that you were Jew?”

“It’s pretty different now,” he says.

“What did you study? Latin and Greek?”

“Nah, I was an English major.”

I squint at him.

“I do not understand. You did not speak English before?”

“No, I spoke it.”

“Then why did you study it? What was the purpose of that?”

Simon ignores me and gestures at large brown house.

“Here we are,” he says, grinning. “Not bad, huh?”

I look up at building. It is enormous.

“Are you servant here?” I ask.

“No,” he says, laughing. “I own the place!”

At this point I become suspicious.

“What other jobs do you have besides the dog gags?”

“None,” he says. “I’m a full-time screenwriter.”

Once again, I am confused. I have been with Simon all day. He clearly does not work “full-time,” not even close. I explain this fact to him.

“Let’s just go inside,” he says.

Simon and I look very much the same. We are both tall (five feet seven) and have handsome bump in nose. There are differences, though. For example, his hands are very soft, like woman’s. Also, his arms are weak and small. They remind me of baby I saw once who had the wasting sickness.

When I first move in with Simon, I do not really understand what it means to be “script doctor.” But as the days go by, I learn about the job. The way it works is this: Each day, for twenty minutes, he sits down and types words. The rest he spends complaining.

“I’m so pissed off,” he tells me one day. “They hired me to polish the new Spy Donkey sequel. But just looking at it, it’s going to need a page-one rewrite. It’s, like, I didn’t sign up for this. You know what I mean, Hersch?”