I jerked my back toward him and stared into the aisle. It felt good to blame somebody else, though guilt started seeping into my gut like a pile of sludge. This trip had been my idea. I'd practically forced Lani—he'd thought it was dangerous to go out on the streets. In the end he really had thought on his feet. Everything really had been under control ... until I laughed at Vince. If I hadn't he would have kept going to his car...
I grabbed a handful of my bangs, wanting to tear them out, wanting to gouge out my stitches. I let go of a bucket of tears, instead. Lani tried to rub my shoulder as he sniffed up blood, but I pushed his hand off, squirming around to face frontward.
I eventually thought of something to say, though it was so full of hiccups I was surprised he even heard me. "Magazine plant ... was outrageous."
"Call it a street trick. Good for the moment, but it'll come back to haunt us."
"Christ. Will you say something good?"
"By tomorrow, they will all have 'seen' me plant it, will swear to it, and none of them will have any interest in taking it to the cops. Because they'll 'know' that I was trying to shove perverted magazines at people, despite how that makes no sense—"
"I'd like to have one conversation with you today that doesn't completely suck."
He was wiping at his shirt with a towelette, which was pretty pointless, and moaning at the blood splotches. "Sometimes there's nothing to say. Maybe you should have brought your guitar. You could have played something till we chilled out. Does your dad have guitars?"
"My guitars don't make me feel very chill right now. In fact ... they make me ... nuts." I had to grip my fingers around my throat to keep from yelling the thought that whizzed through my mind: You were wrong. You said I wasn't old enough to write music. "Remember the, uh, bloody-poetry conversation?"
I wasn't sure he remembered until he finally mumbled, "Wednesday night when you left my house ... the hiddengarbage conversation."
I shut my eyes. "Would you mind ... please, not calling my lyrics garbage?"
"Sorry."
He squeezed my shoulder again, and I just pushed his hand off. "I could make Marilyn Manson sound like ... like Barney. It's so ... not who I want to be. So I try to ignore it, but these awful lyrics start to roll, even when I don't want them to, and I just ... get obsessed with playing with them."
"Like what?" He wanted a sample.
My teary eyes shot up to his blurry face. "I've got this thing for razor blades; I don't know why. Girls chewing razor blades, parting their hair with razor blades, wearing razor-blade rings and twirling them on their fingers."
I shut my eyes. "Last night was the first night in a long time I didn't get into all that bloody stuff on my electric guitar. But you know what I was doing instead?" I blathered something about watching my hair fall out, once upon a time. "I was thinking about all this chemo shit ... because of you and your friends ... Paying your dues helps you play the blues or ... whatever the fuck!" I was outraged again, afraid of hitting him next.
"Wow, interesting," he breathed. "Did it work?"
"You—Do I care what it sounded like!" I shoved at him, and he put up his hands up in a girly way to ward me off. "I know this whole night looks like my fault. Well, guess what? It's your fault! It has to be ... My life was fine until you came along—"
"Do not hit," he said in a condescending tone.
So I shoved him once more for good measure. "Dork!"
I leaned into the aisle so I could keep pretending he was dirtying me and my life. I was going to pretend he never existed.
"Claire, your life was an enormous zit. I happened to be around when it popped."
"My life?" Who gets propositioned by homo-homophobics?
"Yes, your life. If my life sucks, at least I know who I am and what I'm doing. It's people reacting to me, not me reacting to everybody and everything."
"Aren't we perfect!"
"You think it's a bad thing because you're finally getting angry," he said.
"Yeah, I would say hitting Vince Clementi is a bad thing!"
"Well ... me, too."
I didn't like the silence, like he was about to lay some other bombastic thought on me. He finally laid it.
"Razor-blade music and whatever ... I don't really think that's so awful. I mean, it's not like you'd want to cut an album full of it and put it on display for the world. But ... it's probably just using art to work out your frustrations instead of violence. You want to keep it that way. I think your biggest problem with it is Aw, well, what would Macy say!"
I did not want to laugh, so it came out like a goose honk. He didn't miss it, I guess. Must have encouraged him.
"Also, the fact that you've had a blood disease? Interesting. Who knows? Maybe it's an artistic avenue. Maybe, like, razor-blade music creates some means for you to feel control over blood."
"Don't get all bizarre on me. Please." I sniffed away a couple of tears.
"Bizarre? You know what's bizarre? Didn't you just say that last night, when you looked your sickness in the face, you didn't want to write razor-blade stuff, for once?"
I pounded my fist on the seat to keep from pounding it on him. "I don't want to think about anything more that's bizarre!"
"Why'd you bring it up?"
"Forget it. Everything feels shitty right now, no matter what I bring up."
"Can I share something that Ellen said once?"
"No."
"She said, 'Sometimes it has to feel worse before it feels better.' I guess sometimes getting your shit together ... it's like being on chemo."
"Just let me sit here in the quiet."
I felt him shuffling around, jostling my back. "Fine. But if I could remind you? I'm the one who got hit, not you. I'm the one who has to live in a strange body and deal with it. I think you're being way self-centered."
I felt him move away and lay his head into the window like he would go to sleep.
I felt my guilt, wishing I could punch it next. Tearfully, I dropped a hand on his shoulder. His hair was hard, caked with blood. I decided maybe I could be mature for a few minutes.
"How is it you can take the very worst things about me, like screwed-up basement lyrics, and make them into something good?"
He didn't answer. I was tired, dizzy. Then, somehow, I was lying on his chest, and he was kind of rocking me as I listened to the bus engine drone on. He looked down from above. The whites of his eyes glowed in the darkness. I could smell blood stink from his hair. Sticky strands hung over dark blotches on his T-shirt. He's covered in blood, and yet he's working on comforting me.
I sniffed. I wanted to say I was glad that I knew him. It came out weird. "You're too smart, you're too ... old, you're too unselfish, and you know too much."
He chuckled. "Guess that makes me not very likable."
"I didn't mean it that way. Take out every too." But he stayed quiet. I knew what he meant by "not likable." I thought of my mom on the phone, how she would psycho dribble to her girlfriends—tell them every last thing that she did or thought about that day, no matter how stupid it sounded. My mom always said that people admire you for your strengths, but they love you for your faults. They love you for all your imperfections, which make them more comfortable with their own imperfect lives. My mom had been really people-smart in her better days. Sayings like that always stuck with me.
"You might seem like some obnoxious Mr. Perfect ... if people are looking at you as a ... as a person." I stopped, figuring I'd said and done enough crazy things for one night. But I felt he was probably right—shit was flying out of my life. Like basement lyrics. Like pretending I was some calm, controlled person when sometimes I wanted to scream. Like juvenile guys who played chicken and beat on guys they didn't understand.
Shit was flying, all right. And the only thing that had changed recently was this too-strange person showing up. He took me to Philly to recognize my eating problems before I train-wrecked my remission. He took me to Franklin, where people play chicken with rea
l death, and where real doctors believe in—
I let fly with it. "But what if ... you are an angel? Aren't you allowed to be a little better than the rest of us?" My vision was blurry, but not so much that I couldn't see his mouth widening out.
"Your neat little version of reality is crumbling, Claire." His head flopped against the backrest. I watched, waiting for him to deny being what I'd just called him. He kept quiet.
I felt six screws shy of a working piston, and I knew I would probably believe him if he told me he was from Mars. "So what are you, Lani Garver?"
"I'll tell you this much. I think it's a good thing your neat little reality is crumbling. You know what Andovenes says about floating angels?"
"Andovenes..."
"The philosopher who wrote the book Abby is sending back to me—about angels."
I nodded.
"He says you don't often find angels in places like happy homes and rich people's backyard parties. He says that angels flock to places like hospitals and homeless shelters and jails, because those people realize they need help. And so they are able to believe in strange phenomena. Funny how the world is backward. The really comfortable people don't always see much supernaturally, and to the ones who have to struggle, it's, like, breathing in their faces. The first are last ... and the last are first."
My eyelids felt like concrete, but I opened them. "I feel so last right now. It's hard to believe that my life is actually changing for the better, when it looks to be going down the toilet."
He inhaled pretty clearly, letting the air flow out his lips. "If a life goes down the toilet, it comes out in a river and meets the sea."
I watched him smile, not buying entirely into his bullshit. "You're really enjoying this, aren't you? Avoiding the real question?"
He shifted around uncomfortably and finally spoke up. "I'm flattered. I guess. The truth is, angels are real. But so are smart kids. In every high school across the world, there are kids who read stuff like Einstein and Hegel and Freud, and who are insightful enough to pick apart attempts at truth and try putting truth in order for themselves."
"There's no one like that on Hackett," I informed him. "At least, there wasn't until you showed up."
"You're wrong. You just don't see those kids. You look right through them. Like you look through realities in the mirror."
"Because those kids are ... too weird," I concluded, maybe.
"They're ... last. For now."
"You still didn't answer my question."
He didn't open his eyes but scrunched his mouth around until a smile showed up on one side. "If I answered it, I would only be adding to your dilemma, because there's only one answer to 'Are you an angel?' If a human being were to answer that question truthfully, the answer would be no. And if a floating angel were to answer that question, the answer would still be some version of no."
"What do you mean? They don't admit to being angels?"
"Not according to Andovenes. There's this saying...'Be kind to everyone. Because you never know when you're meeting an angel and you're just not aware of it.' If people knew who the angels were, they would be very nice when they saw one and would still do their same evil garbage when they thought none were around. Knowing who they are defeats the purpose."
I waited for him to smile, and when no smile appeared, I let out a charged-up laugh. "You tell a good story, Lani Garver. And I'm crazed enough right now to believe it."
"Congratulations. 'Crazed' precedes real sanity. You're getting somewhere."
"Do me a favor? If you're not one of those floating angels, don't tell me. It's the one thought I could really enjoy right now. It would prove all this insanity in my life ... is happening for ... some God-given reason."
I unwrapped myself from his arms and threw my head against the backrest, facing into the aisle, letting his body heat make me warm.
I started realizing that I really didn't want to know the answer to my own question of what Lani Garver was. Life is full of strange experiences, and if you're looking for explanations, you can usually find them. But explanations were making my friends out to be strange creatures—capable of violence and convenient memories and dirty little secrets at the expense of other people. Explanations were not working out. So maybe I was more in search of something mysterious—something that was about playing with the questions more than looking for the answers.
The answer might be that Lani Garver was some sweet, intelligent gay kid, and the forces behind the universe were as mundane as ever. I wanted to keep my hope for something more extravagant.
And considering I wasn't looking for answers, things happened over the weekend that were hard to reckon with. The first weird thing began right then. I lay in a weary trance, staring into the blackness of the aisle. I do not remember ever falling asleep.
The bus pulled into the station, and my eyes were wide open. I raised my head to tell Lani to wake up. The seat beside me was empty. I searched every seat, thinking he had climbed over his seat backward to stretch out. He was nowhere on the bus. His bag was nowhere, and his seat was cold. You might have thought he'd never been there.
19
I wandered zombielike over to my dad's window wall that looked out onto his balcony. In the morning light it was starting to sink in what a great job Suhar had done of sprucing up this old town house. When I was on chemo the balcony was just a concrete slab that went out about twenty feet, with a plain, stone wall around it. There was an actual garden out there now, with a bunch of fall flowers blooming and different levels of green things surrounding their hot tub.
"Wanna go sit in there?" Dad came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, kissing the back of my head. "I cannot believe how tall you are."
"I was already in your hot tub. Last night. A couple of times, actually—"
"Trouble sleeping?"
"Some."
"No nightmares, I hope," Suhar said. She stood across the dining room table, holding up a funny-looking little coffee pot, like, did I want some. Espresso, I remembered hearing her say before. I'd never tried it, but I nodded. I studied her long blond hair, trailing down to her butt, and her kind eyes as she poured, and I decided her nightmare thing had been an innocent question. I glanced down at her wedding ring, which had starred as a bloody mess in a few of my nightmares. The small diamond sparkled.
"No. No nightmares." It had been just a blank, spacey night, where I barely knocked off. "I just couldn't sleep. I can't believe how good this place looks," I added, to change the subject.
"Comes with marrying an artist," my dad whispered in my ear, then kissed it. He flung an arm over my shoulder as I giggled uncomfortably, and whispered more. "I'm surrounded by very cool women."
I flipped his arm off my shoulder, and he sighed a long one. "I see you're still affectionate, as usual."
"Part of my charm."
"I ... uhm..." He handed me my espresso and stared at the saucer as I swallowed a small mouthful. Tasted scorchy. "I should have ... shown you more affection when you were sick. I was afraid of hurting you if I touched you, something, I don't know ... But it always bothered me, so I thought I would tell you."
I shook my head at him sleepily. I hadn't given much thought to who had touched me and who hadn't during chemo. "Why do parents always feel they're responsible for the little quirks in their kids?"
"I don't know. But I'm on this kick right now of apologizing for all the stupid things I've done to people. Bear with me."
I stepped past him, grinning, and moved toward the dining room table. "What'd you do, join a twelve-step program?"
"No. But how did you know about the steps?"
I plopped down in a chair. "Mom was in AA for about three weeks when I was in eighth grade. She kept their little book in the bathroom before she decided that wasn't her problem."
"A shame."
"Yeah, but ... she's okay." I felt bad telling stories on my mom. She hadn't breathed Old Sweat Sock in my face after my chemo ended. "She only
starts slobbering badly on Saturdays. And these days ... she's a happy drunk, usually."
"So, why do you think you couldn't sleep?" My dad brought the subject back around. "Dream about anything when you did sleep?"
My giggles had something to do with him and Suhar both asking about dreams. I leaned my head on the table for a second and popped back up again.
"Second guess, being that it's not the twelve steps. You've had your head shrunk. By a shrink. Isn't it true what Mom says? All city people walk their dogs on leashes, pick up dog crap in little plastic bags, and see shrinks to make up for that harrowing experience?"
"I don't have a dog." My dad shrugged innocently, but I guessed that answered my question. I had vague, eighth-grade memories of my dad saying that Suhar agreed to marry him only if he found a professional counselor and figured out why his first marriage went all wrong. I didn't want to discuss their head shrinkages.
"What would you say if I told you ... I actually punched somebody last night?"
My dad took a turn dipping his head to the table and popping back up. "Somebody from Hackett?"
"Well, you picked me up at the bus, and I haven't punched anybody since."
"I'd say ... punching somebody from Hackett is ... understandable."
"I'm a girl."
"I can suddenly see that." He sipped his espresso, looking me up and down. "But I don't think anger is gender specific. How bad was it?"
"He was, uhm, bleeding."
"He? I thought we were talking about a catfight among future fishwives. What did he do to you?"
I sighed really long, taking a big swallow of this disgusting espresso. "Nothing."
"Matter of principle?"
I felt better hearing it put that way. "Remember the Clementis?"
"Only the mister. Ferocious bastard. God, brings back fatal memories of high school. I was a band dweeb. Don't know how I caught your mother, especially with guys like him who wanted her, too." My dad shuddered. "You hit one of his offspring?"
"Yeah."
"Good girl. Wish I'd had the nerve to hit the mister, way back when. I understand it's too late now."
I shot a glance at Suhar, who was leaning against the buffet, listening to this story. "Are you all right, Claire?" she asked.
What Happened to Lani Garver Page 17