welcome to the grouchland

he jumps up. but just a tiny bit. it would be really hypocritical of him if he did the whole performance of jerking away with his arms curled up defensively. he doesn’t do that. sometimes the louder you say something the more sense it makes. 

“i’ve never watched a thing with elmo. or like, spongebob.” david is cool about joey’s outburst. but not cool enough to just continue without some martyrdom. “my first dad was a– scientist, he wanted us watching smart stuff only.”

“but i know kermit.” he adds, eager to offer a solution to their problem. david plucks at an invisible banjo and if the first few chords of rainbow connection play in joey’s head, well, that’s the immersion. “they’re… the same family, right?”

This is so sad.

          “Sesame Street is highbrow. You can tell your Dr. Dad that.”

A song Joey immediately recognizes as Not-from-Elmo-in-Grouchland twangs in his head. It’s not as disorienting as Joey might’ve expected, a song not of his own mind playing within it. It feels... not relieving, but, like his brain has been stuck in stagnant, lukewarm water for thirty-nine years and it’s suddenly been rehomed and plunged into an icy cool tank. You know, like a goldfish. His brain is a goldfish. And maybe there’s a finger in the water trying to get him to—what?—wiggle? This should feel refreshing but it just feels shocking and bizarre. A deep-rooted part of his brain reflexively (alternatively: combatively?) blares the song Welcome to Grouchland.

Joey’s face looks like a man trying to hear his own thoughts in a small concert hall with two bands trying to play over each other.

Joey’s head nods loosely like a bobble head. In a sympathetic tone:

          “I watched an Elmo movie so many times it hurt my brain.”

Elmo voice:

          “Fuck!!!”

Joey knows that look. That’s the Elmo look.

Joey is trying to do the Sunday New York Times crossword because that’s what adults do. He hasn’t gotten a single word. He fills in a line of boxes with ‘fuck fuck fuck fuck’. Are spaces allowed? Fuck. Even his wrong answers are somehow wrong. He feels an itch in his mind, like Twiddlebugs dancing in a window box. He flicks the newspaper down and stares at David. Abruptly:

Spirit jerks away, startled, and uses this outburst as an excuse to fully exit the car. She’s not facing Joey or even really listening to him, especially not if he’s got this attitude all day and night. 

“You don’t have to do that. When you scream like that, like you’re attacking someone, it’s actually very harmful. And you don’t need to harm me, because I am not a threat. I am a promise.”

She’s not listening to herself. There’s too much excited chatter coming from inside the diner. Hopefully it’s just ghosts. Hopefully it’s just ghosts. 

“You’re thinking very narrow-mindedly for the cartoon version of a demon in a human sack. Come on. I’ll go first. You can even hold my backpack.” 

Are you allowed to be scared of your friends? Is that normal? Asking for a friend.

He follows behind her and is holding her backpack, though he’s not sure why, and he is seconds away from uncontrollably mimicking Take the First Step from The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland as some deep-seated coping mechanism. Breathe. In. Out. The two ways air can go. It’s not hard. Why is he panting? Desperate to distract himself:

“What the hell’s that s’posed to mean?”

Angelo would like to say he doesn’t make a habit of coming here — to say the least, he hates most of the music they play because it’s not the kind of shit you can dance to, you just gotta sort of bounce in time — but lately he’s been making visits more often than not.

But what really hurts is being barred entry from a place he doesn’t even really want to be in. He recoils his head a little, the expression on his face somewhere between a grimace and his attempt at an imploring look. It’s not very imploring.

“I look like shit?” A hand lands on his chest, emphatically. “This is vintage Versace, little one, you callin’ Versace shit? Vintage Versace?”

There are grumbles down the line. Angelo ignores them.

Nix stares at Angelo, his ugly shirt, his creased pants, and then, amusing him, gives him a once over. A guttural acknowledgement rumbles low and hollow in the deep of their throat.

          “I understand. It is expensive shit.”

Ari dies in ninety-one days. Vanya and Ira are sitting on the floor—not the couch—because on the floor Ari dies in ninety-one days, on the couch she dies in ninety. They’re sitting on the floor of the Hargreeves mansion (and Ari dies in ninety-one days). Five won’t see Vanya when he comes looking for her in this room because they’re sitting on the floor behind the couch and because of this Ari will die in ninety-one days. An ember will pop in the lit fireplace and it will do nothing except happen. An ember pops. Useless. Beautiful.

          “Did you ever get a feeling everybody else is happy? Everybody else has friends and they’re better friends than yours?”

Ninety.

If Ira hurts Vanya right now, ninety two days. If she doesn’t, ninety. A thing has meaning only by what it changes. In this way, kindness is meaningful. Vanya is meaningful. Ira smiles. Ninety days. Ira stops smiling.

Time, for Ira, inches on slowly, like a fat blue slug with its slimy trail casting ahead of it, not behind. She wants to be kind. She wants her twin to stay alive. Ira gazes at Vanya whose eyes hold a sadness as deep as a well.

It would be unfair to feel resentment toward Vanya for a future she does not know she’s forked. And it is unfair that her twin dies in ninety-two -OR- ninety days.

Hesitant and soft, so that time may not hear her:

         “They’re only happy because they don’t know what they’re missing.”

Angelo hurries past and tries to skip the line. Nix blocks him with their arm. If he weren’t a Salucci, it would not have been an arm.

“Why do you do this, Joey. Joseph.” Who’s Joseph? Whatever. She’s frazzled. Spirit can handle bodily spasms, but she has to draw the line at Joey’s screechy alter ego.

“I hate it when you do this. I have no idea what the fuck this is. But if doing it makes you feel like a better, stronger, more compelling person, maybe Elmo should just come inside with me and fuck with some terrors.”

The word of the day is, Elmo voice:

          “Fuck!”

He unclips his seatbelt. Angrily. It takes him a couple of tries. On account of the anxiety. In case you forgot.

          “Fine. Why. Fine. I’m ready.”

He gets out of the car. He leans around it to look at Spirit.