TUMULTUOUS Chapter II
Little Kevin paced his empty bedroom for something like an hour. Nothing made sense then. There were still things to do, people to be met, and conversations to be had here in Monterey, but the taped boxes on boxes signified the end of his 13 year stint here -- and 13 was all he was. It wasn't fair.
"See that?" said the ultrasound technician at the final checkup.
"Oh!" said Rosie, Kevin's mom. She had many girl names lined up, undecided until she looked into her daughter's eyes for the first time -- but then she saw it.
13 year old Kevin stopped his pacing, collapsed on his bean bag, pulled at the air where his curly hair was just a few days ago, slowly lowered his hands, mentally unpacked the useless muscle memory, and bottled up the rest.
Rosie was a fish out of water, a pardo from the Brasilian state of Minas Gerais, of which Kevin will never go. Rosie drank and partied unknown pains away. It was in the midst that she got pregnant and, though she couldn't pinpoint the baby daddy, did quit all substances for a long while. The autopsy still partially blamed her drinking.
13 again. What the fuck even is this place? La Mesa Village. Yeesh. Aww.
Rosie raised Kevin alone for the majority of his life so far, but time changes that fact each day and someday it won't be true anymore. She struggled to make ends meet and very quickly fell into credit card debt, which little little Kevin observed from scary voicemails in their dingy Seaside apartment. Then came the eviction notice. At a loss, she dragged Kevin to a downtown bar called Turn 12 - Laguna Seca has 11. He was 10. Rosie quit all drink 9 years ago and she relapsed that day. For a short while, looking at the motorcycle on the wall and other race memorabilia, Kevin was having the time of his life. He got to see his mom loosen up. He felt like an adult. Then came John.
John was a pilot in the Navy. He enlisted not one day later than the opening of Independence Day. What a film, he thought. One of the first to be deployed to Iraq, a jingoist in a post 9/11 world.
Turn 12, like Monterey in general, was conservative. Country music was blaring when the evicted duo were approached by John in full uniform. "Aren't you a bit young to start drinking?" he slurred slightly.
"No, I'm 10," then gulped a glass of water.
Rose fell in love with John's humor, his stability, and tried not to think about the rest.
John's stability has always been a ploy. If we're talking finances, yes his decent paychecks arrived on time, but a sober mind would find an uncomfortable vibe in his rushing towards calm. Animals don't like to be near him and that's that. He never spoke to anyone about his deployments because he never saw the point. He felt more alien and yet more right with time.
13 again and still in the bean bag. Kev thought about a somewhat trivial but important moment: in the first grade, Marina Del Mar there next to the dunes and highway 1, he was talking to his then best friend Jason about their favorite Powerpull Girls. "I like Bubbles because she's cute!"
Jason scrunched his face. "Boys don't say cute, they say cool, like Buttercup. That's why she's the best."
"Oh. Ok." The next day, Kev was wandering the Scholastic Book Festival with two girls from their shared desk.
"That's cute!!" They said.
"... That's cool." he said.
Rosie and John were going to get married eventually but, being the Christian hypocrite he is, rushed them into living together.Securlarly though, it made sense. For a while, he paid for their hotel room on Fremont Blvd next to the porno shop. Eventually, Rosie found a new job at a tourist trap on Cannery Row, but still John rushed it.
The night before moving day, Rosie had a terrible headache and pleaded with John to push it forward another day. "Yeah, ok, I hear you, but you're already packed and we have an appointed moving truck."
She gripped the home phone and, hiding a shaky voice and pain tears, "Why didn't we hire any movers?"
"I can help!" said 10 year old Kevin, who then flexed his scrawny biceps. Rose shooed him away with the flick of a hand.
John laughed through the speaker. "And I can help too. Don't worry, I'll take care of you." She fell asleep with a bottle in her hand.
Kevin had been to the La Mesa house a few times before, but this was the unforgettable day -- or rather forgettable: after Rosie stepped out of her bronze Honda Odyssey and after saying "I could sure use a glass of water," she was struck with an aneurysm and died there in the front yard. Brain eruption. Kevin doesn't remember anything else from that day except that he was wearing jorts. Sweaty palms on denim still trigger panic attacks.
The 13 year old began pacing again. There was a digestive secret in him: weed brownie, a parting gift from his girlfriend. He forgot he ate and it was his first time, but it arrived just in his senses in the nick, just as his sweaty palms felt denim. Hot flashes. He quickly stripped to boxers among the boxes, reached for his toes for no other reason than he felt he had to, and when he swung his head back up it became top heavy and crashed into the one untaped box, sending its contents onto the floor: various video games and his beloved Wii. "Kevin! Go to sleep!" cried John in another room.
But Kevin would not go back to sleep, nor would he for the rest of the night. He felt he had waken up for the first in a very, very long time. The encroaching panic attack subsided and what he was left with was blissful nausea, time slowing to frames per second and frames piling on top of each other. He ran downstairs to eat some crackers, unafraid of the dark for the first time, and there munching in the kitchen all the piled frames on frames and beforehand life minimized into nothing. He giggled, trying not to vomit.
Back upstairs somehow, sprawled on bean bag. He realized in another life he would've chickened out and let the brownie gone stale, world unchanged. He realized in another life he would've been the girl next door, the girlfriend handing out mind altering gifts from the Earth. The girlfriend. The girl.
It was as good a time as any to boot up Super Mario Galaxy. He spent 20 minutes quietly peeling tape off a box holding his CRT (so as to not wake up John, Anne, and pregnant Mary), and spent 10 more minutes fishing for cables and simply vibing. Remember that? A clear, un-axious mind. Nothing else to it: the TV glow washed over his head massage and he took comfort in all that defined Rosalina. The bedroom light switch was off, he would never touch it again.