“A thing?”
“Kind of, just, loses her equilibrium. First she’ll start making scenes in public—you know, screaming at valets and getting speeding tickets and going on spending sprees at Neiman’s. And then after my dad finally loses it on her, she’ll climb in bed and won’t want to get out again for weeks at a time. It’s part of the reason why we came up here in the first place. Dad thought that a change of scenery would be good for her, you know, get her out of the city and away from all the”—he put his gloved hands up and jerked his fingers in derisive air quotes—“ ‘pressure’ of society life.”
I thought of the woman who was barely visible behind the wheel of the Land Rover—her hands sheathed in leather gloves, her head swallowed up by the fur of her parka’s hood. I tried to imagine her swathed in silk and diamonds, drinking champagne for breakfast and spending afternoons being pampered at the spa. “I had no idea that going to parties could be so hard. I’ll remember that next time I get invited to a ball.”
He laughed and made a face. “Mostly I think Mom was just embarrassing Dad by being so weird all the time.” He hesitated. “We both were. Besmirching the good Liebling family name. So he dragged us up here to the musty old ancestral estate for a time-out. Like naughty children. Behave yourself or I’ll make you stay here forever is pretty much the message. My dad’s a bully: If he doesn’t get what he wants at first, he’ll just threaten you until he does.”
I thought about this. “But wait. What did you do?”
He jabbed the icicle into the snow, leaving perfect circular stab wounds. “Well, I got kicked out of school, for a start. I was giving Ritalin to my classmates. They decided that made me a drug dealer. Even though I wasn’t actually taking money for it. I figured it was a public service.” He shrugged.
“Wait. Slow down. You’re on Ritalin?”
“They have me on everything.” He frowned at the whitecaps on the lake. “Ritalin, because I was sleeping too much and not paying attention in class and so they figured ADD. And then a lovely cocktail of antidepressants because I spend too much time in my room alone and apparently that means I’m moody and antisocial. Apparently if you don’t like to participate in things you must be mentally ill.”
I thought about this. “Then I guess I’m mentally ill, too.”
“Which explains why I like you.” He smiled, then ducked his head as if to disguise it. “I’m pretty sure they both just wish I was more like my sister. Vanessa does everything she is supposed to. Debutante and prom queen and captain of the tennis team, then shipped off to Dad’s alma mater so that they can brag about her at parties. She’ll get married young and push out a few heirs for them and look pretty in the family photos.” He made a face.
“She sounds awful.”
He shrugged. “She’s my sister.” He was quiet for a moment. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure my dad is afraid I’m going to end up being weird, like my mom, so he’s trying to knock it out of me before it’s too late. And my mom puts all her efforts into fixing me so that she doesn’t have to face the fact that she’s the one who really needs to be fixed.”
I sat there next to him on the picnic table, wondering what to do with this information. I was unaccustomed to these sorts of confessional friend moments, when the curtain finally gets drawn back and you see what’s really going on behind the scenes. We sat there, watching our breath puff into clouds and then melt away.
“My mom is careless,” I found myself saying. “She’s careless and she does stupid things, and when she fucks up she runs away. And I know she’s got good intentions, at least when it comes to me—all she wants to do is protect me—but I’m tired of having to deal with the fallout. It’s like I’m the adult in our relationship.”
He studied me, thinking about this. “At least your mom isn’t trying to change who you are.”
“Are you kidding? She’s decided I’m going to be some sort of super-scholar-rock-star-president-CEO. You know, no pressure. I just have to overcompensate for all her failings as a human being and be everything she couldn’t be herself. I’m supposed to reassure her that her life choices haven’t completely destroyed mine.” I chucked the cold contents of my coffee cup into the snow below us and stared down at the brown splashes against the white, surprised by myself. I immediately felt guilty for what I’d said, like I’d betrayed her somehow. And yet, deep inside, I felt something rise in me, a dark and bitter nut of resentment that I’d never before acknowledged. I savored it, let it fill me. Why was my life like this? Why couldn’t my mom bake cupcakes and work as a receptionist at a veterinary hospital or a nursery school? Why did it feel like I’d somehow been royally screwed by circumstance, that I hadn’t had a fair shot and probably never would?
I felt something on my back. It was Benny’s arm, creeping tentatively across the space between us to rest gently along my spine. Something approximating a hug, without quite going all the way. The padding of our down parkas insulated us from each other, so thick that I couldn’t even feel the warmth of his body cocooned inside all those layers. I leaned my head on his shoulder and we stayed that way for a while. It was beginning to snow again and I felt the flakes landing on my face and melting into tiny cold droplets.
“It’s not so bad here, though,” I said finally.
“No,” he agreed. “It’s not so bad.”
* * *
—
Why were we drawn to each other? Was it simply a lack of other options, or was there something innate about our personalities that connected us? I look back now, over a decade later, and wonder if we came together not because of our similarities but our differences. Maybe the foreign nature of our respective life experiences—each arriving from the far end of two extremes—meant that we couldn’t really compare and contrast and find ourselves lacking. We came from such disparity already that all we could do was draw closer. We were kids, we didn’t know any better.
So that’s one way of answering the question. Another way: Maybe first love is merely the inevitable emotional fallout of finding the first person who seems to give an honest shit about you.
By early March, our routine—bus, coffee, beach—had started to wear thin. The temperature had dropped, due to a polar freeze blowing through, and the picture-book snowscape had hardened into crusted ice. On the sides of the roads, the plowed mountains of snow were black and filthy, a reflection of the general emotional state of the locals as they dragged their way through the third month of winter.
One afternoon, on the way into town, Benny turned to me. “Let’s go to your house today.”
I thought of our cabin, the spangled fabrics pinned to the walls and the thrift store furniture and the chipped Formica of the kitchen table. Most of all, though, I thought of my mother, of the fuss she’d make over Benny. I imagined Benny watching her get herself ready for work, the hot whiff of steam from her shower and the shriek of the blow-dryer. I thought of the fake eyelashes my mom peeled off after work and left on the coffee table in the living room. “Let’s not,” I said.
He made a face. “It can’t be that bad.”
“Our place is tiny. My mom will be all up in our business.” I hesitated. “Let’s go to yours instead.”
I waited for the sideways look, the one that would let me know I’d crossed a line. But he just flashed me a quick smile. “Sure,” he said. “Just promise me you won’t freak out.”
“I won’t freak out.”
His eyes were sad. “Yeah, you will. But that’s OK. I forgive you.”
This time, when we got to Tahoe City, instead of lingering in town, we changed buses and headed down the West Shore. Benny grew more and more animated the closer we got to his house, his limbs sprawling in every direction as he launched into an inscrutable lecture about comic book styles I’d never heard of.
And then, abruptly, he said, “OK, here,” and jumped up, signaling to the driv
er that we wanted to get off. The bus obligingly shuddered to a stop and ejected us out onto the icy road. I looked across the street at an endless-seeming river-rock wall, high enough to block the view, topped with iron spikes. Benny dashed across the road to the gate and punched a code into a box. The doors swung open for us, creaking as they scraped across the ice. Once we were inside, the afternoon grew suddenly quiet. I could hear the wind in the pine needles, the creak of the trees under their heavy mantle of snow. We trudged along the driveway until the mansion reared up before us.
I’d never seen a house like it before. It was the closest I’d ever come to a bona fide castle; and even though I knew it wasn’t that, exactly, it still gave off a foreign gravitas. It made me think of flappers and garden parties and shiny wooden boats speeding across the lake, and servants in uniforms serving up champagne in flat-bottomed crystal glasses.
“I don’t know what you thought I’d freak out about,” I said. “My house is bigger.”
“Haha.” He stuck out his tongue at me, pink and raw against his cold-flushed cheeks. “You should see my uncle’s place in Pebble Beach. This is nothing compared to that. Plus it’s so old. My mom is always complaining that it’s ancient and musty and she’s gonna redecorate, but I think it’s a lost cause. The house just wants to be what it is.” And then he ran up the steps and threw open the front door like it was just a normal house.
I followed him in and stopped just inside the entry. The inside of the house—well. My only comparison point, at that stage in my life, was the grand casinos of Las Vegas: the Bellagio, the Venetian, with all their gilt-veneered frippery, gargantuan tributes to trompe l’oeil. This was something far different: I didn’t know anything about the things surrounding me—the paintings, the furniture, the objets d’art cluttering the sideboards and bookshelves—and yet even in the gloom of that dark, cold entry I could tell that they glowed with authenticity. I wanted to touch everything, to feel the satin finish on the mahogany table and the distant chill of the porcelain urns.
From where I stood in the foyer, the house unfurled in every direction: a dozen doorways through which I glimpsed formal rooms and endless hallways and stone fireplaces so big you might park a car inside. When I looked up, to the ceiling that towered two stories above me, I could see wooden beams hand-stenciled with intertwining gold vines. The grand staircase that curled along the far wall was carpeted in scarlet and illuminated by an enormous brass chandelier dripping with crystal teardrops. Wood gleamed from every surface, carved and paneled and inlaid and polished until it almost looked alive.
Two portraits hung on the walls on either side of the grand staircase, giant oils of a man and a woman standing stiffly in formal wear, each staring disapprovingly at the other through the gilt of their respective frames. The paintings were the kind of thing that I’d look back at now and pinpoint as emerging from a certain, worthless era of portraiture—early-twentieth-century remnants of the Sargent school—but at the time I assumed they must be valuable artwork. WILLIAM LIEBLING II and ELIZABETH LIEBLING, the paintings read, on tiny brass placards just like in a museum. I imagined the woman—Benny’s great-grandmother?—sweeping through these rooms in her wide skirts, the swish of satin across waxed floors.
“It’s nice,” I managed to say.
Benny poked my shoulder, as if making sure I was really awake. “It’s not. It’s a robber baron’s lair. My great-great-grandfather, the one who built this shit heap, got sued for refusing to pay the architect and the builders. Not because he didn’t like the house or couldn’t afford it; just because he was an asshole. When he died his obituary said he was ‘scrupulously dishonest.’ My dad has that clipping framed in the library. He’s proud of it. I think he’s, like, my dad’s role model.”
I felt like we should be whispering. “Is he here? Your dad?”
He shook his head. The foyer, with its soaring ceilings, had diminished Benny, dwarfing even his distinctive height. “He’s mostly here on weekends. He goes down to the city during the week in order to, you know, sit in his fancy office with views over the Bay, and foreclose on factory workers who just lost their jobs.”
“Your mom must hate that.”
“That he’s not here? Maybe.” He looked glum. “She doesn’t exactly tell me anything.”
“She’s here, right?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to be home or not.
“Yeah,” he said. “But she’ll be up in her room, watching TV. And if she thinks you’re here she definitely won’t come down, because that will mean she has to actually get dressed.” He dropped his backpack at the bottom of the grand staircase and then peered up to see if the noise would generate any activity upstairs. It didn’t. “Anyway, let’s go see what’s in the kitchen.”
I followed him to the back of the house, to that kitchen, where an elderly Latina woman was hacking away at a pile of vegetables with an enormous chef’s knife. “Lourdes, this is Nina,” he said as he squeezed past her toward the fridge.
Lourdes squinted at me, wiping hair out of her face with the back of her hand. “Friend from school?”
“Yes,” I said.
Her wizened face broke out into a toothy smile. “Well. You hungry?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said.
“She’s hungry,” Benny retorted. He threw open the fridge and rummaged around, emerging with half a cheesecake. “OK if we eat this?”
Lourdes shrugged. “Your mama won’t. It’s all yours.” She turned back to the mountain of vegetables in front of her and renewed her attack. Benny grabbed two forks from a drawer and then walked out another door, and I floated behind in his wake, still feeling stunned. We emerged into a dining room, with a long dark table polished to a shine so high that I could see my reflection in it. A crystal chandelier hung overhead, piercing the gloom with shattered rainbows. Benny looked at the formal table, the cake held aloft in one hand, and hesitated.
“Actually, I have a better idea. Let’s go out to the caretaker’s cottage.”
I had no idea what this meant. “Why do we need the caretaker?”
“Oh, we don’t actually have a caretaker anymore. Not one who lives on the property. It’s just, like, a guesthouse for when people come for weekend visits. Which happens, like, never.”
“So what are we going out there for?”
Benny smiled. “I’m going to get you stoned.”
* * *
—
And so a new after-school ritual was established: The bus to his house, two or three times a week. Then the kitchen, for snacks, and out the back door, which emptied us onto yet another porch overlooking what was usually the summer lawn, this time of year just a vast field of white. We’d trudge through the snow, matching our feet into the snow prints we’d made in the days before, until we arrived at the caretaker’s cottage hidden at the edge of the property. Once we were inside, Benny would light up a joint, and we’d lie there on the musty brocade couch, smoking and talking.
I liked being stoned, the way it made my limbs heavy and my head light, the opposite of how I usually felt. I particularly liked being stoned with Benny, and how it seemed to blur the boundaries between us. Lying on opposite ends of the couch, our feet tangling in the middle, it felt like we were part of one continuous organism, the pulse of the blood in my veins matching his, an energy passing between us where our bodies touched. I wish I could remember what we talked about, because it felt at the time like what we were discussing was so vital, but really it was just the silly prattle of fucked-up teenage kids. Gossip about our classmates. Complaints about our teachers. Speculation about the existence of UFOs, of life after death, of bodies floating at the bottom of the lake.
I remember feeling something growing in that room, the relationship between us blurring in a confusing way. We were just friends, right? So, why, then, did I find myself looking at his face in the sideways afternoon light and wanting
to press my tongue to the freckles along his jawline to see if they tasted like salt? Why did the pressure of his leg against mine feel like a question that he was expecting me to answer? Sometimes I would startle out of my stoned reverie and realize that we’d been quiet for a long minute, and when I looked over at him I would see him watching me through those long lashes of his, and he’d blush and look away.
Only once in those early weeks did we encounter his mother. One afternoon, as we slipped through the foyer on our way toward the kitchen, a voice came piercing through the leaden hush of the house. “Benny? You there?”
Benny stopped abruptly. He gazed blankly at some point on the wall next to the portrait of Elizabeth Liebling, a careful expression on his face. “Yeah, Mom.”
“Come in and say hello.” Her words seemed to be lodged in the back of her throat, as if the sounds had gotten trapped there and she wasn’t quite sure if she should swallow them back or just spit them out.
Benny tilted his head at me, in silent apology. I followed him as he trudged through a maze of rooms I’d never been in before until we landed in a room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A library, presumably, complete with uninviting, jacket-less tomes; it looked like they’d been glued into position decades earlier and not moved since. Hunting trophies hung across the wooden paneling—an elk’s head, a moose, and a stuffed bear standing erect in the corner, all of them with bereft expressions that suggested their resentment at this indignity. Benny’s mother sat on an overstuffed velvet couch in front of a fire, her legs tucked up under her, surrounded by an avalanche of interior design magazines. Her back was to us, and she didn’t bother to turn around when we came into the room, so that we were forced to navigate the couch and stand before her.
Like supplicants, I thought.
Up close, I could see that she was actually quite striking; her eyes, large and damp-looking, overwhelming a small, fox-like face. Benny’s red hair must have come from her, but hers was more of a russet color now, and smooth, like the mane of an expensively groomed horse. She was thin, so thin that I thought I might be able to pick her up and snap her in half over my knee. She wore a pale silk jumpsuit of some sort, with a scarf tied around her neck, and it looked like she’d just gotten back from a fancy lunch at a French restaurant. I wondered where one even had a fancy lunch up here.
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