by Tom Perrotta
“I know.” Jane shook her head at the thought. “Maybe he'll get in a plug for his holiday.”
When we got back to the house, Mr. and Mrs. Pasco were standing on the front stoop, like a young couple posing for a picture. It was a heartwarming image until you got close enough to notice their expressions.
“Oh Janey,” Mrs. Pasco began in a trembling voice. “We just got a phone call.”
“It's Mike,” her father explained. “He took an overdose.”
Jane made a soft, strange noise; Sparky's ears stood up.
“Sleeping pills,” Mr. Pasco continued. “He apparently meant business.”
“But he's okay,” Mrs. Pasco said quickly. “They had to pump his stomach.”
We were at the bottom of the steps, they were at the top. I turned to comfort Jane, but she dropped Sparky's leash and rushed up the stairs, into her mother's arms.
For two years Jane and Mike Moretti had been one of Harding High's most conspicuous couples. He was a varsity soccer and baseball player, an all-around nice guy. She was a cheerleader and an excellent student, one of the cutest girls in school. They were always together. People claimed that they were secretly engaged.
It all changed one weekend of their senior (my junior) year. On Friday, Mike was holding hands with Jane. On Monday he had his arm around a hot sophomore named Sally Untermeyer, while Jane drifted alone through the halls, looking like she'd just donated several pints of blood. She told me later that, the hardest thing about the breakup was cheerleading, having to smile like an idiot and pretend she was happy. Away games were especially painful since she had to ride on the same bus with Sally, who, as a member of the drill team, got to wear go-go boots and carry a disturbingly realistic wooden rifle.
Second semester, Jane and I were in the same American lit class. Late in February, Miss Maxwell assigned us to do a collaborative oral report on The Great Gatsby. Sitting close together in the library, talking in whispers, we debated the virtues of telling a story through the eyes of a minor character. At one point, Jane stopped talking and looked at me, and I had the feeling that she was seeing me for the first time.
“Have you ever had a broken heart?” she asked.
“Me?” I said.
She nodded.
“Yeah,” I told her. Laura Daly's face flashed in my mind. Only a few weeks had passed since the night we'd made love. “I have one right now.”
“I thought so.” Jane sat back and smiled. “We should go to the movies sometime.”
My ears started ringing when she said that. I was thrilled by the idea, but also frightened. I didn't see how I could possibly live up to her standards. Mike was tall, athletic, and already eighteen years old. He drove a red Firebird. I was only sixteen, five-foot-five, and recovering from a bad haircut. I didn't have a driver's license, let alone a hot car.
But none of that seemed to matter to Jane. She picked me up in a station wagon on Friday night and laughed at everything I said. After the movie she took a detour through Echo Lake Park, pulling into this deserted parking area. She had her arms around me before I could even undo my seatbelt.
“God,” she said, as I gasped for breath in the wonderful interlude between our first and second kiss, “it's nice to be with someone normal for a change.”
“Normal?” I mumbled, disappointed by the word.
“Mmm,” she said, sliding her hand underneath my shirt and up my stomach. Her fingertips traced lazy spirals on my chest. “I'm tired of crazy people.”
I closed my eyes and surrendered to her definition. “You're in luck,” I told her. “I'm as normal as they come.”
As soon as Jane and I went public as a couple, Mike had a change of heart. He broke up with Sally and started pestering Jane, calling her every night, leaving presents by her locker, and generally making a spectacle of his misery. It turned her into a nervous wreck.
“Look,” I said, “do you still have a thing for him?”
She shook her head.
“Then why don't you tell him to buzz off?”
“You don't understand, Buddy. He's not as strong as he looks. He gets really depressed.”
“That's not our problem,” I said.
But it was. Mike followed us around. I caught glimpses of him in the mall and at the bowling alley. I turned around one night in the Cranwood Theater and saw him sitting three rows back with this queasy expression on his face. A few days later, he was standing by my locker when I got to school.
“What do you want?” I asked.
Tentatively, as though he thought I might be electrified, he reached out and laid his hand on my shoulder.
“Isn't she terrific?” he said. “Don't you love the way she smells?”
“Come on, Mike. Don't be a creep.”
He winced and withdrew his hand. “We should be friends, Buddy.”
“Why?”
Smiling mysteriously, he pulled a white business card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. My name was typed in capital letters across the front of the card.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You're an official member of the Jane Pasco Fan Club.”
He still had this comical grin on his face, like the whole thing was a big joke. I shook his outstretched hand.
Jane drove me home from a party the following weekend. We kissed for a long time before I got out of the car. Then I shuffled backwards up the front walk, waving to her taillights. When I turned to go up the steps, I almost tripped over Mike.
“What'd you do tonight?” he asked cheerfully.
“Go home,” I said.
“What was she wearing?”
“Please go home.”
He didn't answer right away. When he did, I could barely hear him.
“Can I come in with you?” he asked. “I'm not feeling too well.”
I hesitated. I wanted to help him, but didn't know how to do it without complicating things even further. Above all, I didn't want to encourage him.
“Sorry,” I said.
I squeezed past him and went inside. I don't know how much time he spent on the porch that night, or what kinds of thoughts went through his head as he watched the streetlights shine on the empty pavement. I do know that five days later he made a serious attempt at suicide.
Jane visited Mike in the hospital on Sunday afternoon. I called her in the evening for an update.
“He's okay,” she said. “We watched a golf tournament on TV.”
“Why'd he do it?”
“He didn't say.”
I let the silence thicken and dissolve before changing the subject.
“Can I come over tonight? Maybe we can take Sparky for a walk or something.”
“Buddy,” she said, “we have to talk.”
“About what?”
“I need some time off. I can't be anyone's girlfriend for a while.”
“How long's a while?”
“I don't know. Just till things get back to normal.” Her voice had been calm and flat throughout the conversation, but now it cracked. “God, Buddy, he tried to kill himself.”
Jane didn't deserve any more trouble. She'd already been through a rotten year. In September, the factory where her father worked had shut down without warning. He spent a few months looking for work, then got depressed and settled in for the long haul on the living room couch. He scratched off a minimum of five Instant Lottery tickets a day and sometimes threw tantrums when he lost, claiming that everybody won big money but him.
After twenty years as a housewife, Mrs. Pasco had to get a job to help pay the bills. All she could find was slave-wage secretarial labor for a tyrannical insurance agent who used Grecian Formula, drove a red Corvette, and liked to remind her that she could stand to lose a few pounds. She had trouble getting up to speed and routinely stayed in the office until seven at night to finish her typing.
When I started going out with Jane, she was rushing home from cheerleading practice to cook dinner for her father, Matt, and Pam, and then spending another hour cleanin
g up, so her mother wouldn't burst into tears when she walked through the door into a messy house.
Then, late in March, the family hit a run of good luck. Mrs. Pasco switched to a better-paying job at a bigger company, where she had a humane supervisor and a realistic workload. Mr. Pasco did some under-the-table interior painting for a friend and found himself unexpectedly swamped with offers from the friend's neighbors. He began dreaming of a father-and-son business, and convinced Matt to help him out for a few hours a day. Even Pam Devlin seemed to be improving. She took better care of herself and started pitching in with the housework. Sometimes she even laughed at Mr. Pasco's corny jokes.
April was a wonderful month. Jane invited me to her senior prom and decided to teach me how to dance. Whenever we had time we went down to her basement rec room, put on a stack of old 45s, and worked on my rusty moves.
The night before Mike took his overdose, we had an impromptu dance party with Matt and Pam. Matt danced like an acidhead, planting his feet and waving his arms, octopuslike, overhead. Pam marched triumphantly around the room, pumping her knees and elbows like a majorette. Mr. and Mrs. Pasco came downstairs to tell us to lower the volume, but somehow ended up teaching us all how to jitterbug.
On Monday, I restricted myself to smiling at Jane in the halls and transmitting telepathic love messages across the room in English class. It was fun in a childish sort of way, like a staredown or a breath-holding contest, but it got old fast.
I stationed myself in front of her locker on Tuesday morning. She wasn't happy to see me.
“What now?” she groaned, as though I'd done nothing but bother her since she woke up.
“I just wanted to see how you were.”
“Terrible. If you really want to know.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“The only thing I want is to graduate from this fucking school, leave town, and never come back.”
I was surprised by the bitterness in her voice. Seniors talked like that all the time, but Jane sounded like she meant it.
“Never come back?” I said. “But then you wouldn't get to see me.”
She gave me a cold, level stare.
“I'd get over it.”
“I guess you would.”
Her expression softened a little.
“Don't hate me,” she said.
“I couldn't. Even if I wanted to.”
“Don't be too sure.”
On my way out of school that day, I saw her climb into a pistachio-colored Cadillac with a forest-green roof. It was the mayor's car, and the mayor sat stiffly in the driver's seat, wearing state trooper sunglasses and a red polo shirt. For a moment, even though I knew they were going to the hospital, I felt an involuntary pang of jealousy. And then I just felt miserable.
For two seasons, Mike and I had been teammates on Moretti Motors, a Little League team sponsored and managed by his father. I played shortstop; Mike played first. He followed me in the batting order and led the team in home runs. Whenever we won, he would shake up his soda can for a long time before popping the top. Only a few years had passed since our days in the Little League. But that afternoon, as I watched the Cadillac vanish around a corner, it already felt like a lifetime.
Jane's absence on Wednesday came as a relief. In the preceding days, it had begun to seem like she, Mike, and I were cut off from the rest of the world, floating like astronauts in a private capsule of sadness. But now the spell was broken and I found myself miraculously returned to earth, to a high school full of friendly people with simple lives. My natural optimism revived itself. I realized that Jane would eventually return too—though it might take her a lot more time—and that when she did, I would be waiting for her. Our dancing lessons would resume.
After school I went to work in the deli. Even the meat case seemed comforting in its familiarity, the cold cuts arranged in perfect order on their white metal trays. Around four o'clock Mrs. Trunchka came in, right on time. She was one of our regulars. Every day she bought a pound of spiced ham.
“I just got a call from my sister-in-law,” she said, as I moved the cool slab of meat back and forth across the whirring blade. “She looked out the window about an hour ago and who do you think she saw across the street?”
“Who?” I caught the limp slices as they fell and slapped them on the scale.
“Nancy Vernon. From Wake Up, America?”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I forgot about that.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Trunchka, “she gets out of a limousine and walks right up to Marge Pasco's front door, like they're old friends or something. My sister-in-law almost had a coronary.”
Carefully, I dropped the last slice on the pile and switched off the machine.
“The Pascos?” I said, trying to keep my voice within normal range. “They're the Average American Family?”
Mrs. Trunchka nodded. “That's right,” she said. “With that crazy son of theirs and everything. But you know how it is.” She held up two crossed fingers. “They're like this with the mayor.”
“Is she still there?”
“Probably. She was ten minutes ago.”
After Mrs. Trunchka left, the store was quiet. I held onto the cool marble counter and tried to think. I decided not to wake Mr. Freund from his afternoon nap and explain the situation. Even though it could have cost me my job, I just hung the “Closed” sign in the front door and took off full tilt down Center Street, still wearing my tattered white apron, which was stained with mustard, beef blood, soup, and coffee.
The cops had closed Maple Street to traffic. A red, white, and blue Wake Up, America! van and a white limousine were parked in front of Jane's next-door neighbor's house. Across the street a crowd of about thirty people had gathered behind a line of yellow police barricades: neighborhood kids straddling bikes, young mothers with bored, thumb-sucking toddlers, nosy retired men, and a couple of celebrity creeps, including one guy in an army jacket clutching a back issue of TV Guide with Nancy Vernon's picture on the cover.
I pushed my way to the front of the barricade, wedging myself between Pam Devlin and the guy in the army jacket. Pam looked so good I almost didn't recognize her. Her hair was freshly washed, and she was wearing lipstick and a pretty blue sailor dress that belonged to Jane. She gave me a quick dazed smile when I touched her shoulder, but immediately turned her attention back to the Pascos’ front door. Mayor Moretti stood next to her in an expensive gray suit, nervously tugging on his earlobe. The breeze had messed up his hair, blowing the long strands off his bald spot back to their point of origin. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was about Mike, but realized that this wasn't the time or place for sympathy.
Maple Street was a nondescript block of nearly identical split levels, each with a driveway, a patch of lawn, and a bay window. Grass and trees didn't thrive there, so the street usually looked bleak compared with the rest of Darwin. But that day, just in time for the cameras, spring had arrived. Technicolor azaleas and forsythia had exploded into bloom. The scrawny curbside tree trunks disappeared into clouds of pale green blossoms. Even the corner Stop sign seemed unusually red. Jane's beige house looked different, too. An unfamiliar flower box full of tulips jutted out from beneath the bay window; a brand new backboard and rim had sprouted over the garage door. A supernaturally orange basketball lay motionless in a driveway black with a fresh coat of sealer.
The crowd began to clap as two crew members—one with a camera, the other with a clipboard—scurried down the front steps and positioned themselves on the lawn, facing the door. Nancy Vernon emerged first, looking statuesque in a crisp navy suit that contrasted well with her stiff yellow hairdo. The stoop gradually filled up with the entire cast of family members: Mrs. Pasco in an apron, Matt and Mr. Pasco in paint-splattered work clothes, Sparky in a red-bandana collar, Jane in her cheerleading outfit, Mike Moretti in a suit and tie.
The world, which seconds before had seemed clear and bright, turned suddenly murky, as though I were watching it on a set with
bad reception. But what I saw was real: Mike was standing behind Jane, with both hands resting on her shoulders. He was so tall that their heads appeared to be stacked one on top of the other, like a partially completed totem pole. They were both smiling.
The mayor's face was transformed by the sight of his son. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Mikey!” he yelled in a booming voice I remembered from Little League. “Way to go, Mikey kid!”
At the same time, the guy in the army jacket started jumping up and down, waving his TV Guide. “Nancy!” he shouted. “I love you, babe.”
I felt like screaming too. I had this crazy idea that if I yelled her name just right—the way Dustin Hoffman yelled “Elaine!” at the end of The Graduate—Jane would come bounding down the steps into my arms. Millions of Americans would witness our defiant embrace. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a loud moan, an animal whimper of defeat.
Pam turned and looked at me. She was sucking on her index finger, her eyes big and glassy. The next thing I knew she was in my arms, sobbing fiercely against my shoulder, while Nancy Vernon and the Average American Family stood together on the porch, waving to the nation.
Several years later, Mike Moretti and I played on different teams in the Darwin summer softball league. After a game one night, still in our grass-stained uniforms, we ended up sitting together at the bar in Jimmy B's Lounge, buying each other drinks. Things were going well for both of us. I would soon begin my senior year in college. He had just graduated from Rutgers and was about to enter law school at the University of Texas. He looked healthy and said he'd developed an interest in politics.
There was a strange intensity to the meeting, as if we'd once been best friends. The drunker I got, the closer I felt to him. Late in the night, he flipped open his wallet to a photograph of a pretty, round-faced girl with dark hair.
“This is Maggie,” he said proudly. “I think she's the one.”
“Great,” I said, patting him on the back. “She's really cute.”
“What about you?” he asked. “You with anyone?”
I didn't have a picture of my current girlfriend, but something compelled me to open my wallet and fish out the wrinkled white card he'd given me in high school certifying my membership in the Jane Pasco Fan Club.