Mark Leyner - Gone with the Mind

Q. Where’s Lakewood?

A. Lakewood is near the seashore. And at this point in time it has, I think, an enormous, very, very orthodox Jewish community. There are many, many very orthodox young families…a young woman who looks like she can’t be more than twenty-five or twenty-eight years old with about five or six children and pregnant again…But it was always known as a rural, farming area, where, uh, eggs, butter…I used to buy sweet butter from him, fresh eggs and chicken. And one day your dog, Shadow, almost ate him alive.

Q. What happened?

A. I had Shadow on the leash…on Westminster Lane…when I had walked out the front door just as his little panel truck pulled up, and he asked what I wanted and I told him, and we talked about one thing or another — I don’t remember what it was — and he started to explain something to me and he went like this, in explanation, he sort of put his arm out, “Well, you know, you know how that is”…as he did that, the dog, being as overly protective as he was, he threw his body through the hedge that was in front of the house, rammed right through the hedge, snapping his teeth and growling, and this poor young man just about got into the truck and slid the panel closed before he had something bitten off. But, yeah…he used to come a couple of times a week, and that was terrific. And I probably learned about him through my mom, who was the world’s champion at all of this kind of thing.

Q. Did you know that bats’ laryngeal muscles can contract up to two hundred times per second?

A. No, I didn’t know that.

Q. Y’know, you did such an incredible job reading that MMPI report, that, uh…that Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory report, that we probably should have just planned on letting you do the whole reading. I probably should have just stayed away altogether.

A. Oh, that’s ridiculous, Mark.

Q. No, seriously, I should have. It reminds me a little of that story about the conceptual artist…Do you know that story?

A. I don’t think so.

Q. There was this conceptual artist, this very brilliant, very enigmatic, intransigent, reclusive artist. And he was doing this, this astonishing project…it was called something like, uh, Outside-In …and it involved putting everything outside of the Whitney into the Whitney (this was the new Whitney down in Meatpacking). And by everything, I mean everything and everyone —the Pacific Ocean, the Alps, the Burj Khalifa, the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Pittsburgh Penguins, every single can of corned-beef hash and SpaghettiOs, every Depeche Mode CD, every Pole, Turk, and Inuit, every chicken, bear, water moccasin, tomahawk missile, Uber car, umbrella, iPhone, and flushable wipe, every canister of nerve gas and bottle of beer — every single thing and every single person on earth (including every other piece of art in the world too, of course, as well as a scale model of the museum and all its contents). It was without a doubt the most challenging installation the Whitney had ever mounted, costing, like, trillions upon trillions of dollars for insurance and shipping, with crews working seven days a week in eleven-hour shifts. And so…finally…this remarkable show opens. And everything and everyone in the world is in the Whitney Museum…Or so we think. Until a small child, a small, chubby naive child, looks up at his dad, tugging at his pants leg, and asks, “Where’s the artist?” Well…the artist — the great artist — out of shyness or modesty or perhaps out of a sense of superiority, an aristocratic de haut en bas disdain, has apparently refused to attend his own opening, fatally undermining the conceptual integrity of the entire project. And everything is removed and everyone sullenly files out, muttering to themselves, until the museum is completely empty…and the everything-and-everyone-in-the-world that was once inside the Whitney is now outside the Whitney.

A. That sounds like one of those folktales I used to read to you while you were eating. (MARK is gazing at his MOM, who’s gazing down at the floor again.)

Q. There’s a beautiful cliff behind the Walgreen’s on River Road in North Bergen…I was hoping maybe we’d get our picture taken there. The bush clover is splendid this time of year. (For a moment, they both seem lost in their own reveries.)

Q. I want to take a picture of us, okay? (He tries to stand so he can reach into his pants pocket and get his phone.)

Q. We’re kind of wedged in here…

A. Do you want me to…

Q. I think I can reach it without having to get up…

A. Should I…

Q. Got it. (He holds the phone out in front of them, having to extend his arm out over the threshold of the stall in order to fit them both in the frame.)

Q. Ready?

A. Not really.

Q. Smile… (We hear the cell-phone shutter click.)

A. I must look like a gargoyle.

Q. You look beautiful, Mom. Do you remember that story in the news about that North Korean general, Hyon Yong-chol…the one Kim Jong-un supposedly ordered executed by antiaircraft gun? I tweeted something like, uh… Being executed with an antiaircraft gun doesn’t seem like such a bad way to go. Beats becoming one of those “Fifteen Celebs Who Are Aging Horribly.” Well…you’re aging remarkably, miraculously …You know, I realized something tonight that I never ever realized before…I think we have a — what would you call it? — a shared expressivity, a shared expressivity both in terms of its sheer volume and its style…There’s like a…an isomorphism between the way you express yourself and the way I do…And, honestly, that’s something I don’t think ever occurred to me before tonight.

A. That’s such a wonderful, unexpected thing for you to say.

Q. Who are your favorite mother/son duos? Like in mythology or literature and history? (MARK’S MOM is surveying the craquelure, trying to discern one last face.)

A. Oh, I don’t know, sweetheart. Who are yours?

Q. I guess Jocasta and Oedipus, and Ma and “Doc” Barker and, uh…maybe Cher and Chaz Bono.

A. Okay…I might be going completely crazy here…but tell me that’s not Elston Howard.

Q. Elston Howard?

A. Yes…the catcher for the Yankees back in the, in the sixties.

Q. Where do you see Elston Howard?

A. Right over here…God, I used to love watching him. I love watching catchers anyway. And even before I really understood — I was young and it didn’t even occur to me very much — but the pain that they must be in virtually all the time, oh my Lord! To be in that position…It’s got to be devastating to your knees and hips.

Q. The position we’re in right now couldn’t be that great for our knees and hips…

A. He lived in Teaneck, y’know — Elston Howard. That’s another thing I’ve learned in my age now, now that I live in Bergen County…so many of the players, even now, live in Bergen County. The great CC lives close by…CC Sabathia lives close by, and his wife, Amber, is in lots and lots of charity events and things…

Q. They live in Fort Lee?

A. They might live in Tenafly…they live in one of the…obviously enough, in a gorgeous home, in a gorgeous place…it could even be Alpine or Demarest, but it’s one of the Bergen County places…My father, Raymond, by the way, liked baseball very much, of course, but he loved tennis, and he was quite a good tennis player, you know. Of course, anything you did, especially if you did it well — and you did most things well — he was just so proud of you that his chest, which stuck way out anyway, almost broke off from glee… (Water is beginning to seep into the bathroom and pool on the floor. The lights begin to flicker and dim.)