Chapter 20
Grant: Redemption
I’ve got a closet full of sketches in my bedroom, which is where I’m holed up while I try to pull myself together. They’re not sketches anyone else has seen, nor will anyone ever see. Which is a shame, as some of them rank up there with my best work. They are all sketches of the residents of Greener Valley. I call them Naked Portraits, don’t get the wrong idea. Trust me, the last thing I want is to see any of the residents of this town naked. Not even Sharon. Do you know I’ve never even looked at her website or watched any of her porn? There’s something so wrong about watching a girl you grew up with masturbating with a candle.
I call them Naked Portraits because I’ve stripped everything fake off of these people and sketched them as how I see them. Without the niceties, without the platitudes and pretend wholesomeness. I’ve sketched all of them for real at one point or another, be it as a birthday or anniversary present for someone or just a general request by a neighbor for a drawing. It’s the least I can do. Despite everything I hate about Greener Valley, I still love it. Part of the reason for my downward spiral is the fact that I can’t reconcile my hatred of my town with my love for it. Every time I tried to get out of here – and believe me, when my art was hot, I could have gone anywhere; Manhattan, LA, any city would have taken me in and I had the money to play in their playgrounds – something would pull me back. The normalcy, even if we all know it’s plastic normalcy, is something we crave. When we all go home and drink our vodka and toss back our pills or fuck someone else’s wife, that normalcy is gone and it fucks us up. We wake up, go outside and live in a snow globe for most of the day, where things never change and everyone smiles and everything is perfect. We love living in this town straight out of some 1950s movie but the struggle to keep up pretensions and make ourselves out to be Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver wears on us. It tears at your soul, because you know you’re not like that. You’re human. You err, you lust, you lie, you hate, you have the potential to commit all seven deadly sins lurking in you somewhere. Greener Valley keeps these sins at bay. On its face, Greener Valley is perfection. But everyone knows the most perfect of faces have flaws behind them. Our daily lives are nothing more than ten pounds of makeup. At night, we wash it all off and become who we really are. When our doors are closed, when we’re out of town, when the lights are out or even when we are online, we become who we really are.
I know who all the people of Greener Valley are. I see them when I sketch them. I’m drawing someone’s beautiful, happy eyes and it takes all I have to not make those eyes a satanic yellow, or to not put deep bags around the eyes. It’s all like that. Even the kids. It’s not something I want to see but I’ve never been able to stop it. So I went with it. I’d sketch someone and they’d be all happy at how I really captured their “inner essence” – but they all ended up having the same smile, the same look of contentment. When I got home I’d sketch them again, the way I really saw them. With evil eyes or bandages on their hearts or fist balled up in rage. Sometimes they had the head of a lion or the body of a jackass. A few looked somewhat like death. I drew one neighbor with her torso ripped open, nothing but dead leaves inside. One kid had a tail and pitchfork and a torn baby’s bib hanging from his teeth.
This is what drives me to medicate myself with vodka and pills. I hate seeing this because I love the daytime Greener Valley too much to want to know what the flipside Green Valley is like. But I know. And it’s all coming home to roost. The dark Greener Valley is finally seeing the light of day.
That’s what’s going on out there.
****
Don’t think less of me because I’m locked in my room while my uninvited company sits in the living room with the forces of evil bearing down on them. I need to regroup, pull myself together. There’s only about one shot of vodka left in this bottle anyhow, so I won’t be long.
I think this is about redemption. Mrs. Beasley said something about it and it just seems like this is what it’s leading up to. But why us? I can see why I’m here, if it is about redemption. I have a lot of redempting to do. I’ve led a pretty shitty life. You may think the life of a semi famous artist is all glamour and fun and, well, it is, for the most part. When you’re doing shows and having money shoved at you hand over fist, it’s awesome. But with all that money comes a lot of other stuff. At least it did for me. I’m sure there are plenty of people in the art world who are full of outstanding moral fiber and never took the offered cocaine and various other drugs, who never slept with their agent’s girlfriend, who never drank themselves into a stupor in the bathroom of the gallery where Very Important People are standing ten feet outside that bathroom door talking about how you are the Next Big Thing and you’re puking up a night’s worth of gin and methamphetamine into the toilet bowl. I don’t know any of those morally upstanding people, but I’m sure they exist. I’m just saying, I don’t want you to think I’m saying all artists are like this, but it certainly isn’t just me. I know, that doesn’t make it any better, but it is what it is.
Jesus, did I just say that? I fucking hate that saying.
So yea, I have some redeeming to do and I’m guessing my redemption is going to come in the form of saving Greener Valley from a certain hell. I have no idea how I’m going to accomplish this and I’ll be brutally fucking honest here: Even if I do redeem myself now and show myself to be a selfless hero instead of a selfish bastard, I can’t promise that it will have any lasting effect on me. Maybe I’ll go on to live a life full of so much moral fiber I shit bibles. And maybe I’ll drown myself in a tub of homemade liquor. Can’t really say.
What I don’t get is why the others? I mean, I’ve figured this out. The four of us – me, Terri, Beasley and Stu – are going to save this town. Four and a half if you count the poodle. So if this is about redemption, what do they have to be all redemptive about? Terri’s a teenager for Christ’s sake. She can’t have done anything worse than cheat on a test and I’m pretty sure she’s an honor student. And Mrs. Beasley, well the worst thing I thought about her – that she was a fraud – turns out not to be true at all. She actually sees…
Wait.
Do you see what I see here?
I see people for what they really are when I sketch them. Terri sees the shadows. Beasley sees the shadows. Does that make us evil? Are we supposed to redeem ourselves for having dark powers by using those dark powers for good? That’s almost mind blowing. But then what about Stu? As far as I know the only power Stu has is the power to turn a Santa suit into a thing of pure horror. I don’t know that there’s any kind of redemption for making us look at wild strands of pubic hair sticking out of Santa pants.
In a lot of ways, I hope Mrs. Beasley’s right. I kind of hope that whatever I’m about to do will get me off the hook for all the horrible things I’ve already done. I do have a conscience. I do feel bad about most of it. The thing is, I’d do them all over again if the situation were put in front of me. I don’t have what it takes to turn down a beautiful, half naked blonde offering a plate of cocaine. Maybe any heroics I perform today will transform me into Mr. Good Guy where I’ll be able to say things like “I’m certainly glad you enjoy my art, sir. If you’d like to purchase it that would be great, but there’s no need to invite me to your yacht to partake in your orgy of sex and drugs. I’m abstinent and clean now. Yep, hardcore straightedge.”
Part of me, the part that lives in Greener Valley and thrives on the normalcy here, that part wants to be redeemed. And I’m hoping against hope that the Greener Valley part of me is stronger than the Los Angeles part of me, because the Greener Valley Grant is going to go out there, kick some Satanic butt and be redeemed. The LA Grant is going to stay in this bedroom and search the floor for stray Vicodin while three fourths of the heroes of this day sit and wait for him to lead.
There’s two Vicodin on my bedspread. There’s a bottle of gin in my nightstand and at a little bit of pot in my underwear drawer.
I look in the mirror. I want to see myself looking haggard and tired, yet with a certain fire in my eyes. I want to look like I’ve had enough yet I’m resigned to my fate as a reluctant hero. I want to be Han Solo.
But in the mirror is just me, looking very much like a small, tired, frightened man who just wants to go back to bed and wake up to have this all be a dream. I contemplate for a second the thought of doing just that, crawling back under the covers, where I was before any of this shit went down.
Who are you right now, Grant? The mirror is talking to me. No, wait. There’s someone behind me in the mirror.
It’s Han Solo.
Who do you need me to be?
I need you to be the Greener Valley Grant. The one who is going to go out there and be a leader. The one who wants this town saved, who wants good to triumph over evil.
I’m not sure how much of that Grant is left.
Bullshit. You’re all Greener Valley Grant. That other part of you was done the minute everything went to hell around here this morning. Everyone’s waiting on a hero. You’re that hero. Do you want to fail them the way you’ve failed yourself every time you ruined another chance at stardom? You gonna go the self-sabotage route again, Grant? Isn’t that getting old?
That’s pretty harsh, man.
But so true. So who are you right now, Grant? The guy who is going to lead those three people out there to save an entire town, or the guy who’s gonna get back under the covers like a pussy?
I’m no pussy.
Prove it.
I’m going out there. The Greener Valley Grant is going out there for some goddamn redemption and saving.
I hesitate. Han Solo has a point about sabotage. My whole life has been one long attempt at self-sabotage. I figured out long ago that I am as afraid of success as I am at failure. Every alcohol fueled rage, every near overdose, every sexual infraction – they’ve all come at a point where I was just about to grab onto that brass ring and run with it. I came so close to real, true fame so many times and each time I did something to knock me back down. I was terrified of not making it as an artist, but the terror of making it is what propelled me to ruin all those chances. I wanted almost all of it; I wanted the adoration, the acknowledgment that I’m a damn good artist. I wanted people to pay ridiculous amounts of money for my works. I wanted them to compliment me, write ass kissing articles about me and raise me on a pedestal, but I wanted no part of the publicity machine that went with all that. Every time it was about to happen and my publicist started talking about talk shows and huge displays at world famous galleries, I would freak out. I can take the small shows and small galleries. I can take groups of people and fans in small doses. But the thought of going on TV and talking about myself and the thought of hundreds and hundreds of people gathered in one place in my name would send me on a path of self destruction. So I never got really famous. I was somewhere between fame and brink of fame and I was damn comfortable there. I made a good living. I had enough news clippings about me to make my mother happy.
Now here I am on the brink of…something. A chance to kick ass, take names and be a hero. Not only that, but any kind of art I make in regards to this will probably jettison me into that stratosphere reserved for people like Christoff.
Sabotage.
I look in the mirror. Han is still there, arms crossed, a look on his face like I just told him I wanted to go to Tosche station to pick up some converters instead of saving the world.
Ok. Ok. I’m gonna do this. Don’t worry. No sabotage. No backing out. I’m going out there for some salvation.
Han winks.
May the force be with you.
I go back to the living room, hesitantly ready to kick butt and find redemption.
“Of course it’s about redemption, Grant. But just yours. The rest of us don’t need it.” Mrs. Beasley verbally pounces me as I walk out of the bedroom.
I don’t know if she could hear my thoughts or if I was actually talking out loud that whole time in the bedroom, but it doesn’t even matter at this point. And I don’t want to know the answer.
“So why, then? Why are you three here with me and not out there being chased down by screaming kids or swallowed up by green fog? Why are we the only four people not in the town center?”
“That’s not true.” Terri takes out a notebook and ticks off names. “Ellis, Zoey, Bill. They weren’t at the town center. Neither was Maurice Fetterling. We’ve been making a list.” She nods at Mrs. Beasley and the now sort of coherently awake Stu and I know they had some kind of pow-wow while I sitting in my room channeling Han Solo.
“Stu says he left Maurice unconscious in his office after he tried to kill him with a Jack Daniels bottle.” She says this all very matter of factly as if it weren’t strange at all to be recounting an attempted murder as if she was reading her grocery list. Then again, look at what’s happened this day. Maybe it isn’t so strange.
“I had a reason, Grant.”
“I bet you did. I just don’t want to know it right now.”
“See, Maurice and some fuck….”
“Not now, Stu.”
Stu looks dejected. I know he wants to tell me his story now and I know he’s pissed off about being let go at the station and he wants to vent and probably justify bashing his boss nearly to death with a bottle of JD – Lord knows I’ve wanted to do something similar to Fetterling many a time – but I don’t have time for this. I’m about to have a crisis of faith. Or an existential crisis. One of those crisis things.
“This isn’t really about you, Grant,” Mrs. Beasley is reading my mind again.
“The fuck it’s not! You just agreed this is about my redemption and you told me I’m supposed to be a hero so god damn yes, it’s about me. It’s about how I’m going to do what I’m supposed to here to restore freedom to the galaxy.”
“To what?”
“Greener Valley. Restore peace and love and whatever to Greener Valley and fuck I am losing my mind.”
Terri hands me two airplane size bottles of vodka she found in the living room.
“Here you go, Grant. Swallow some courage and let’s head to town.”
“Jesus, Terri. This isn’t some movie where the heroes all stride into town on their trusty steeds and chase the bad guys away. We just don’t walk into the town center and say ‘there’s a new sheriff in town. You guys all get out now, you hear?’”
I’m getting hysterical and I know it. I don’t meant to yell at Terri or anyone, but I’m scared shit that I am going to blow this. The realization that a town is depending on me – whether or not they know it – to rid it of some evil infestation is sort of burdensome.
And then Terri slaps me. Hard across the right side of my face. I’m stunned but not too stunned to think to myself that she hits pretty hard for a girl.
“I hit pretty hard for a girl, right?”
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“You’re irritating me.”
“Really.”
“Really. Get over yourself, Grant. I mean, you’re a nice guy and all but sometimes you are so fucking self-centered. Seriously. Yea, this is about your redemption and you being a hero but guess what? The three of us get to be heroes with you. It’s not just your show. And if we’re gonna stride into town with you, we’re gonna do this as a group, which means you listen to us as much as we listen to you. My family is out there, Grant, so this is about me, too. I have a lot to lose here and I’m not going to let you talk to me like I’m some little kid standing in the way between you and salvation. I’m trying to help you, Grant. I’m trying to help us. Mrs. Beasley and Stu are trying to help us and we’re all supposed to be helping Greener Valley so if you want to live to see another day in this stupid fucking town, we better come up with a plan together, not like four different plans apart. Start thinking like we’re a group, ok? And stop talking down to us. And stop talking to Han Solo.”
She takes a deep breath, opens one of the airplane vodkas and drinks it in one gulp. I open my mouth to say something about her being only 17, but I’ve already been smacked with the business end of Terri Brown and I don’t want to do that again so soon.
“Ok.” I look around at my unlikely band of heroes. “Let’s make a plan.”