Real Live Boyfriends

by E. Lockhart

  “Doesn’t he know he has a kid?” I barked at Greg. “Doesn’t he know I’ve been worrying about him all night? What kind of father forgets to come home?”

  “The game really cheered him up,” Greg explained. “I bought it for him back in September, but I never had a chance to give it to him.”

  “I was processing a lot after my mom died,” Dad said to Meghan by way of explanation. “I didn’t return his calls.”

  “He’s been depressed to the point of neglecting personal hygiene,” I said to Greg.

  Dad ran his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I guess I was,” he said. As if it were far in the past. As if he hadn’t been lying on the floor yesterday. “Then Greg hurt his ankle, so, you know, I had to get up.”

  “Your wife leaving you isn’t enough to get you up?” I said.

  “She didn’t leave me. She took a break to go to Oregon with Juana.”

  “That’s leaving.”

  He shook his head. “That’s marriage. It’s complicated.”

  “She acted like she was leaving. She hasn’t called.”

  “Well, she left in a huff. But you know your mother. She loves to get into a huff over things.”

  That was true.

  “I know it’s hard to understand,” Dad continued patronizingly, “but Mom felt helpless and disempowered.”

  “You know Elaine hates being disempowered,” laughed Greg.

  My dad continued: “She was fighting with you all the time, fighting with me; the stress was too much for her, so she took a break. I thought you understood that.”

  “No.”

  “You acted so chipper, going out with your new boyfriend and everything. I thought for once I didn’t have to worry about you.”

  “It’s called denial, Dad!” I yelled. “It’s not exactly healthy!”

  Dad stood up. “Greg,” he said. “I’m sorry to bring an argument into your place. It’s not good repayment for the rockin’ evening of Metallica.”

  “That’s all right,” said Greg.

  “Meghan and I have to get to school,” I said. “Dad, will you be home for dinner tonight? I’m ordering it at seven and you’re in charge of dessert.”

  “Yes, Ruby,” he said resignedly. “I’ll be home.”

  Getting behind the wheel of her Jeep, Meghan sighed. “That poor Greg,” she said. “He really never leaves the house?”

  “That’s totally what I’ll be like if I can’t head-shrink myself into some kind of mental stability,” I said.

  “A shut-in with a Habitrail?” Meghan crinkled her nose. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, just you wait. I’ll have, like Great Danes and pygmy goats and maybe even a baby panda living with me. That’s what panic does to people if the attacks get bad enough.”

  “You would never have a paisley bathrobe, though.”

  “Seriously. Sometimes I don’t want to go places because I’m scared I’ll panic.”

  “Like where?”

  “Like school. Like CAP Workshop.”

  “But you go to school.”

  “Yeah, and I go to the stupid workshop, but my point is: I almost don’t. I can completely see how Greg got to be shut in like he is. I look at him and see my future sometimes.”

  “Roo.”

  “What? I’m being honest.”

  “When was the last time you had a panic thing?” Meghan asked. “ ’Cause I haven’t seen or heard you talk about one since, like, the start of the summer.”

  “I have them—” I was about to say I had them all the time. But she was right.

  I hadn’t had one.

  Not when Noel and I fought.

  Not when he fell down the stairs.

  Not when he ignored me at school.

  Or kissed that girl.

  Not when Dad lay on the floor. And Mom left.

  I had not panicked.

  Sometimes I had to sing retro metal in my head and breathe deep, or take off my glasses and be semi-blind, or cut class and take a shower—but I hadn’t had a panic thing in a very long time.

  Shocking Disclosure in the Zoological Gardens!

  Dear Robespierre,

  Happy Thanksgiving.

  I wonder if goats feel neurotic on holidays, like people do. When I was little, Thanksgiving and Christmas were just parties and pretty dresses and desserts. Then last year, I realized what a drunk Uncle Hanson is, and how stressed Dad and Grandma Suzette were. Suddenly, it wasn’t a party. It was an ordeal.

  This year, I’m worried Dad will melt down again and start talking about his dead mother, just when he’s started to get up in the mornings and work on his newsletter. Also Uncle Hanson will be there and no Grandma Suzette to make jokes and encourage him to act normal. Plus Mom is making a turducken1, and there’s nothing like a big meat-eating holiday to make her mad that I don’t eat what she cooks. So it’ll be a miracle if we make it through Thanksgiving without a descent into seriously bad family dynamics.

  Wish me luck.

  Love,

  Ruby Oliver

  —written on zoo stationery with a ballpoint pen and folded into a small rectangle.

  my mother came home with gifts. A T-shirt for my dad that said DOG IS MY COPILOT and a vintage dress for me.

  It fit, too.

  I was angry at her for leaving, but I also had to admit that it had been good to have her gone. Good for me and Dad to just take care of ourselves, even if we did it badly. Good for us to hang around together without her giant personality heaving itself between us. She came back full of ideas for the new show she wanted to do, plans for the holiday season, stories about her adventures with Juana and the women’s empowerment group. She was less on the attack, somehow.

  I worked at the zoo the weekend before Thanksgiving, mucking out stalls in the Family Farm area early on Sunday morning. When I finished that, I went to help Lewis the plant guy trim some hedges. Perversely, though I complain about helping Dad in the greenhouse, I like trimming hedges. The clippers are really big. I feel tough hacking stray bits of greenery into submission.

  I was chopping away and not thinking about anything when suddenly two sets of round arms wrapped themselves around my waist: Sydonie and Marie. “We’re at the zoo! We saw the elephant already,” cried Marie.

  “Claude didn’t know where the bathrooms were,” said Sydonie. “I had to show him.”

  “Is Noel with you?” I asked, nervous.

  “No, Claude! Didn’t you hear me? Of course Noelie knows where the bathrooms are.”

  I looked up and there was Claude, looking like Noel, only with dark hair and broad shoulders. Same delicate profile, same pale eyes. He was dressed in blue striped pants and a red cashmere sweater—vaguely nautical and a touch flamboyant. “They know you, apparently,” he said.

  “Um. Yes.”

  “It’s Ruby!” shouted Marie.

  “Noelie’s girlfriend!” shouted Sydonie.

  Claude’s eyes widened. “You’re Ruby?”

  I felt like I must be a disappointment. I was wearing an ugly zoo uniform and no makeup.

  “I’m not Noel’s girlfriend,” I told Sydonie. “Not anymore.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “The picture he drew of you is still up in his room.”

  Was it? Was it, really?

  “That’s just because he hasn’t bothered to take it down,” I said. “Not because I’m his girlfriend.” I turned to Claude. “It’s good to meet you. I mean, we were at Tate together, but you wouldn’t remember,” I stumbled. “Noel told me a lot about you.”

  Claude smiled, but his eyes were serious. “He told me a lot about you, too.”

  “It’s always bad when my reputation precedes me,” I said, trying to laugh.

  “No, no.”

  “Don’t you live in New York?” I asked.

  His face contorted. “I couldn’t stay there, in the end. I—ah—I thought I could, but when the term started I couldn’t go to any of
my classes. You know? I kept skipping and it was wasting my parents’ money and the whole thing was bad, so I’m taking a semester off.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Um.”

  Claude frowned. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Oh. Well.” He looked off into the distance. “I should tell you, then.”

  “What?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out. Then he said: “My boyfriend died in a bike accident.”

  What?

  What?

  “Your boyfriend?” I said, in shock. “Booth?” The conventional words just came out of my mouth automatically, like the words Nora had said to me in the summer: “I’m so, so sorry,” I said. “For your loss. When did it happen?”

  “August.” Sharp lines appeared on either side of Claude’s mouth. “Noel didn’t tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  Claude looked away as he spoke. His voice was strangled. “Yeah. Booth was on his bike and a car plowed into him.”

  Ag.

  “Noel was behind him,” said Claude. “He saw the whole thing. They—they told me Booth didn’t suffer.”

  A thousand ags.

  Noel had seen his friend hit by a car, right in front of him.

  In front of him and there’d been nothing he could do.

  He’d seen his friend die.

  All my problems were minuscule compared with how that would feel. How deeply that must shake a person. Just to have seen that accident, and stood over the body, knowing it was too late.

  Not to have been able to save Booth.

  Not to have been able to save him for Claude.

  Noel wrote me those poems.

  I miss you

  like a limb

  like a leg I’ve lost

  in a war, maybe

  in an accident, maybe

  in a tragedy.

  They hardly move, these clocks.

  Watching the hands go round is like

  watching someone’s blood drip onto the street

  while you wait for an ambulance

  and wait

  and wait

  and the blessed siren does not sound.

  The clocks will hardly move

  and hardly move

  and hardly move

  He had told me what happened. In those poems.

  And yet he hadn’t told me.

  He hadn’t actually told me.

  Instead, he had come home from New York wanting to be happy. Wanting me to be the happy girl who would convince him nothing bad had happened. That it didn’t matter about Booth. That he—Noel—was okay.

  He kept saying he was fine. He kept wanting me to act like everything was fine.

  I put my hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated to Claude. “I mean, I know I don’t know you, but I’m just so, so sorry. For you and for Booth and for Noel.”

  Claude wiped his forehead and took a swig from the water bottle in his hand. “Thank you.”

  “Sure.”

  “How odd that he didn’t tell you,” said Claude. “I mean, he was calling you every day.”

  “Until he stopped.”

  “He’s such a strange guy sometimes, Noelie.”

  I tried to smile, but my face wouldn’t cooperate.

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, Noel didn’t really deal,” continued Claude. “I mean, not that anyone could deal. It was just—I’ve been—” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Anyway, Noel can’t stand it if I even mention Booth, or the accident. He hates to have it talked about.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again.

  I couldn’t stand for the conversation to go on any longer, so I turned to Sydonie and Marie, who had been running in circles around the hedge I was cutting. “Did you guys feed the llamas yet?” I said as brightly as I could.

  “I want to!” cried Marie. “I’m going to give them food from my hand.”

  “If you go to the Family Farm area, you can buy food pellets and feed the animals,” I explained to Claude.

  “Come with us, Ruby!” said Sydonie. “Tell Claude the names of all the goats!”

  “I can’t, cutie,” I told her. “I have to work.”

  We said our goodbyes awkwardly, and Claude led the girls off. I went on clipping the hedge.

  Like a regular person.

  Like a person who knew what to do with everything she knew, now.

  That night Gideon took me bowling. He was down for the weekend from college, and as I laughed and chatted and rolled my orange ball down the lane, deep inside I was thinking: Are these really the only options in terms of romance?

  1. Love with a brooding, confusing guy who makes me feel insecure and stops being my real live boyfriend because he is too messed up, or

  2. Nonlove with a real live boyfriend who is wholesome and sweet and responsible but just isn’t that exciting and kisses with too much slobber?

  In other words, love and pain, or safety and boredom?

  In the movies heroines often appear to be confronted with this choice. In actuality, however, their situations get resolved supereasily because the safe boyfriend—the #2, the husband material—turns out to be no good. Maybe he cheats, maybe he’s a shallow idiot who only cares about money, maybe he’s crooked or spineless. Or possibly he just rejects the heroine so she doesn’t have to reject him. Then she’s free to go off with the much hotter brooding guy, who magically doesn’t deliver pain and heartbreak any longer but is mature and available for a serious relationship.2

  The movies make the brooding guy the hero—the guy with problems, the guy who carries a gun, the guy with unresolved anger, the guy with a chip on his shoulder, the guy who’s a vampire—and they tell you that you can have the mythical happy ending with that same brooding guy.3

  But in reality, the brooding guy is cranky. He doesn’t reply to e-mails. He doesn’t call. He’s only half there when you’re talking to him, and he doesn’t chase you when you run. You feel insecure all the time. You get needy and sad and you hate yourself for being needy.

  If you don’t know why he’s brooding, you’re shut out.4

  And if you do know why he’s brooding, you’re still shut out.5

  Even if he shares his feelings—or overshares his feelings, like my dad—he’s still not really there. He’s off in his own mind, wrangling his Reginald and drooling onto the couch or sobbing into dinner or lying on the floor.

  It is really, really, really not as attractive in true life as it seems in the movies.

  Gideon wasn’t a jerk. I had tried to find something wrong with him, I really had—but he was neither a shallow idiot nor a crooked, spineless cheater. And he seemed to really like me. What was more, he was incredibly hot and always wanted to go do fun things like bowling or wakeboarding; he was interested in school and questioned authority—and listened when I spoke.

  Maybe, I thought, I should be the serious girlfriend of Gideon. Maybe, if I kept pretending to him that my home life was good, that I felt confident about college, that I was experienced in the nether regions and in possession of solid mental health—maybe if I kept pretending, bit by bit, those things would become true.

  Gideon thought I was a good person with an easy life.

  Maybe with him, I could be that.

  In life, I told myself, if not in the movies, the nice guy should finish first. Stick with him and stay away from people who don’t call you and have secrets and weird behaviors. Be with that nice guy because he is good and kind, without angsting about all the ways in which he doesn’t live up to your romantic ideal.

  Romantic ideals are stupid anyway.

  Fact: I was lucky to have Gideon.

  Fact: I was happy with Gideon.

  Or almost happy.

  Or something that might turn into happy.

  If he could just be trained to be a better kis
ser.

  And if I could just tell him what was really going on in my life.

  The Ditz said our college application prep materials had to be in the day before Thanksgiving: practice essays, lists of potential colleges, peer and parent questionnaires.

  I’d listed swimming, lacrosse, Woodland Park Zoo and the Tate Prep Charity Holiday Bake Sale (CHuBS) for my extracurricular activities. Mom laughed when I told her I’d thrown her parent questionnaire in the toilet, and filled it out again. She actually wrote some nice things about me too. That I had always been a great reader and she was proud of how much feminism I’d absorbed in American History and Politics. That she hoped I would keep studying film because she could tell how much I loved it. That she dreamed of my having a better education than she’d had.

  I wrote an essay about my love-hate relationships with gardening and retro metal that was pretty amusing, if not exactly deep. I made a list of colleges with strong cinema studies and film programs, including NYU, Temple and UCLA.

  When the paperwork was together, I loaded all my video footage into Dad’s computer and started editing my film submission—at least a first draft of it—so I could turn it in to Dittmar.

  There was Meghan, saying love “fills you up and you can’t think about anything but the other person and it all seems like a dream.”

  Then Hutch, saying love was a reason people killed themselves.

  Finn: “Love is when you give someone else the power to destroy you, and you trust them not to do it.”

  Mom, rudely: “That’s what friendship is, Ruby. It’s apologizing when you know you should.”

  Nora: “Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece, but you let him have it.”

  And Noel, saying: “I want your updates. I do. I want all your updates, Ruby.” Even the boring ones, he’d said. Even the mental ones.

  Plus that clip of us together when I first got my camera. Laughing. Flirting. Him kissing my neck.

  I watched them over and over.

  I was so happy back then.

  And so was Noel.

  I never thought he was the kind to shut down the way he did.

  I mean, except about his asthma.

  And when he was jealous of Jackson.