by Ted Neill
Shortly after that, Vanessa came over and I helped her with her history paper. We were still only friends, but later she said that was the first night she was tempted to kiss me. She got an A on the paper, so she took me out to dinner at this little rustic inn in historic Clifton, this little town that had barely changed since the Civil War. Vanessa wore a white blouse and a red pleated skirt. It was a great night. The restaurant was in a two-hundred-year-old building. The wood floors were slanted from the way the foundation had settled over time. Every step the waiters took elicited a creek or moan from the floor. The candles on our table were reflected on the inside of the windows while rain splashed the outside. I couldn’t remember ever being so happy.
It was still raining when we drove home. The little country roads flooded. We drove through some standing water that splashed against her Camaro’s fenders. Leaves floated by the tires. It was dangerous. The low-slung car could have sucked water in one of the intakes and seized up with vapor lock. But we laughed anyway. Vanessa rolled down the window and stuck out the ice scraper, as if she were rowing. We made it back to her place and watched a movie. Looking at her standing in front of the TV, I was fascinated by how her skirt hung so elegantly off the soft mounds that it concealed. The next week was Valentine’s Day. I gave her roses. The following weekend we went on a ski trip. In the cabin, we kissed. We confessed that we loved each other.
After that, we were an item, as they say.
There were awful days when I would go into my garage and look at Bryce’s driveway. I was checking if his father had left yet. One day, it was spring and I remember the cherry blossoms gathered on the roof of Mr. O’Reilly’s Honda Accord while it waited in the driveway, the trunk tied down with rope and filled past its capacity with cardboard boxes. A few lamps, golf clubs, and a small mahogany table were piled in the back seat. Mr. O’Reilly, a big man with fuzzy brown hair like Bryce’s, caught me staring. He didn’t say anything, just frowned as if to say: it’s a shame isn’t it. He flicked his keys out of his pocket, opened the door to the car, then drove away. No one else was on the court to see him leave. Bryce insisted that he didn’t care if his father left. Bryce’s mom now had three kids, two dogs, two birds, and two rodents to take care of by herself.
Shortly after that, I remember sitting in Bryce’s sister Emily’s room. I had come over to find Bryce, but he wasn’t home. She had just gotten out of the shower and was in her bathrobe. Her hair was dripping, and she sat against the wall with her knees to her chest. She was naked beneath that robe. I had seen her breasts once during a game of truth or dare. She had wide pink nipples. Vanessa’s nipples were smaller and redder. Emily was comfortable with me. She didn’t mind if I was in her room while she was in her bathrobe. She just wanted to talk. She knew I would listen.
“My dad told my mom that he doesn’t love her anymore,” she said. “I don’t think Bryce loves me either.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“How do you know, Justin? Bryce doesn’t talk to anyone anymore.”
I didn’t have anything to say. She was right. It was late March and lacrosse season had started. Bryce was never home. He was always at practice, and his late nights were spent with his lacrosse teammates—mine, with Vanessa.
Emily’s room was like a miniature universe, complete with moon and sun decorations on her sheets and stationery—old-style sun and moons like on medieval illuminations. There were also glow-in-the-dark stars above her bed. I was leaving for a journalism class trip the next day. I felt awful. Emily’s eyes were shut tightly while she wiped them with the edge of her bathrobe. I couldn’t leave her like that. I felt like my own family was breaking up. I had no brothers and sisters; the O’Reillys were my siblings.
But I left anyway.
The journalism trip was to New York. I thought of the O’Reillys the whole way. I called Vanessa when I got to the hotel. My tears ran from my cheek onto the phone. She was so good to me. She promised me that things always work out for the best. She would run her fingers through my hair and make me tea when I got home. I missed her in New York and thought only of returning to her. I took special pride in the fact that I could go for a walk with her, sit her down on a park bench and kiss her, touch her. No one else was as lucky as I was.
When I got the acceptance letter from Georgetown in April, my parents were not home. I ran over to the O’Reillys instead. It had just rained, and mud splashed on the letter as I sprinted through their yard. Mrs. O’Reilly opened the door and congratulated me. She said she had never doubted that I would be accepted. She looked tired and weary. She said she wished her Bryce had worked as hard for the past four years as I had. Now all Bryce did was stay out late and ignore his curfew. There were rings under her eyes. I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time she didn’t have rings there or when Bryce and I had last hung out. The dogs were trying to push through the door to me. She held them back with her leg. That was a Friday. That weekend Vanessa came over, and we made cupcakes with blue icing and white Gs on them (for Georgetown). I took them to school and celebrated, giving them to all the secretaries in the office, my teachers, and the students in my homeroom. Vanessa was happy for me, but I knew she would miss me. I assured her I would be home on weekends, since Georgetown was only an hour away by car.
Occasionally I went over to the O’Reillys’ to see how things were. Bryce was never home; neither was Emily. Toby was the only one around, and he was always watching television. I had to compete with cartoons and MTV for his attention.
“Where are the birds?”
“Gave them away.”
“Why?”
“Mom couldn’t take care of them, I guess.”
“How is she doing?”
“I don’t know.”
One Saturday night Vanessa and I were getting out of her Camaro in my driveway when Bryce pulled in across the street and parked at an angle in his driveway, one tire on the lawn. I ran over.
“Bryce, man, we need to hang out,” I said, coming up to him and clapping him on the back. I noticed he smelled like weed.
“I’m just dropping off some of my pads and uniforms. I need to wash them. I’m headed over to Hartcher’s place tonight. We’re having a team party.”
Hartcher was the captain of the lacrosse team. I followed Bryce into the garage, where he emptied one of his duffle bags into a pile on the floor.
“Bryce, have you decided on what you are doing next year?”
“Yep.”
I waited for him to elaborate. The O’Reillys had a mud-room attached to the garage with a washer-dryer set. Bryce entered, turned the knobs on the washer, stuffed in his uniform and pads, and poured in detergent. Water sprayed into the barrel. He slammed down the lid. I finally asked, “Well, what are you doing?”
“Dad wants me to go to West Point.”
“That’s great,” I said. I knew going to West Point required an appointment from a Senator. “Did you get appointed?”
Bryce unlatched a trunk on the floor of the garage and rummaged around inside, digging around spare lacrosse sticks, heads, pads, and balls until he found what he was looking for: a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels. He pulled it out and closed the lid of the trunk. “Nope.”
He walked back to the car. I followed. “Then what are you doing, Bryce?”
“Dad has me signed up to repeat senior year at some military school out in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He says if I do a year there, I might be able to get into West Point, like him.”
“Oh.” I stood there processing what he had said, sharing my thoughts aloud like some sort of idiot. “So, you’re not going to college next year.”
“Not all of us are that lucky.”
He swung open the door to his car and tossed in the bottle of JD.
“Bryce, why don’t you come over and hang with me and Vanessa tonight. we’re going to watch a movie.”
“Maybe another time.”
On April 17th, I got a ticket from school security because my parking p
ass had expired. It meant three detentions. On my lunch break I went over to the little Catholic chapel next door and asked the nun, who was the caretaker, if I could sit there a while—but I didn’t finish my sentence; I began to cry. She came over and hugged me. It wasn’t about the ticket. It was about Bryce and his family. I felt like my family, my life was coming apart. Everything that had always seemed so . . . permanent, wasn’t. It was like I had counted on so many guarantees that had turned out to have never been there in the first place.
Graduation was in early June, which is technically still spring, but it felt like summer beneath those black robes. Afterwards everyone gathered with their families to take pictures—pictures that would sit on their desks in their first-year dorms at college. My graduation party was on my back deck. Vanessa and my parents had tied blue and gray balloons along the railings. The cake had a picture of Georgetown on it. Gray smoke from the grill blew around everyone while they ate off paper plates. My relatives were there, and my neighbors, including the O’Reillys. Mrs. O’Reilly was wearing a dress that she said made her look fat. Emily and Toby came for a little while. They looked bored without anyone their age to talk to.
Bryce missed the party.
By evening, Vanessa and I were the only ones left. I should have felt happy, and I guess I did, but the fact that Bryce had not shown up bothered me. I heard him pull up into their driveway later that night, but he left shortly after. Vanessa and I cleaned up the wreckage of the party after my parents had gone to bed. It took two hours to deflate the balloons, clear all the plates, and wash the casserole dishes. I watched while Vanessa scraped some brown flaky debris from a pan. I just wanted to lose myself in her, in playfulness, in something light to escape from the cloud of thoughts and feelings I was trying to shove to the back of my mind. I flicked water on her. She spun around and hosed me down with the dish sprayer. I tickled her until she submitted, and then we spent another hour cleaning up the new mess we had made, whipping each other with dishtowels whenever one of us caught the other turning their back.
Everything will be just fine, I told myself.
It was around eleven when we finished. We spooned on the couch and watched TV. When the show was over, I turned off the television and dropped the remote control to the floor. While our eyes were adjusting to the dark, the only sound was the static from the cooling television. I pulled Vanessa closer. She had blue eyes, with streaks of brown along the edges of her pupils. I always told her they looked like eclipsed suns. She was wearing shorts that she would eventually unbutton and leave on the floor with her bra and my jeans. I ran my hands all over her skin, the friction making a soft sound, like an orange being peeled. I kissed her everywhere as we moved in cadence. After we had both come, I laid my head on her rising and falling breasts, and I told her I would always love her. She told me the same. We were forever. Nothing would change that. Our bodies were moist from one another and tired from our lovemaking, so we fell asleep, with our arms and legs intertwined.
Within a year we wouldn’t even speak to each other.
7.
Oral Composition
NURSERY
DEIRDRE VOUSCH, late twenties, is breastfeeding her child, BURT. The camera pans back to reveal HARLAND VOUSCH, early thirties, painting a picture of his wife and child.
NARRATOR (VOICE OVER)
Burt was the first and last child born to Deirdre and Harland Vousch. Harland was an accomplished painter of world renown. His wife, Deirdre, was widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women of her generation. She was Harland’s inspiration. His paintings of her hung in galleries from Long Beach to London, Toulouse to Tokyo, Hong Kong to Havana. The birth of their first child, a son, was an occasion of great excitement. The world waited with expectation bordering on hysteria to see the Vousch child, whose pedigree promised a great career as a model, an artist, or both.
For Harland, his wife’s transition to motherhood opened an entirely new universe of possibilities for his paintings, a new period of his distinguished career to capture the essence, grace, and enduring beauty of motherhood.
DEIRDRE, strokes BURT on his head while he continues to nurse. HARLAND adjusts the light.
NARRATOR (Continue VO)
When their son was born, everyone agreed that the child of Deirdre and Harland was beautiful: a work of art in human form. Burt was bright, precocious, and even at such a young age, one could see that he looked to his mother with the same love and adoration that his father did. It was a family full of love and mutual admiration. But then, one day, when the baby began teething, something went wrong.
DEIRDRE winces in pain and jerks the baby away from her breast. She puts her hand to her chest, and then raises her fingers—they are bloody. HARLAND races over and tends to her. She is more surprised than hurt.
NARRATOR
Burt, as it turned out, had been born with a prodigious set of teeth. Teeth that began to come in quite early.
CUT TO NURSERY, NEXT DAY
We see DEIRDRE pretending to breast-feed, holding her baby away from her chest while HARLAND tries to paint her. But somehow the baby bites her anyway. HARLAND races over to tend to her, again. He moves the baby away, placing BURT alone on a table. BURT cries, distressed to be away from his mother.
NARRATOR
While Deirdre had been pregnant, she and Harland had entertained using such names for the baby as Michelangelo, Sidneyo, or Picasso, but now, Harland decided to name the baby, simply Burt.
CUT TO KITCHEN, A FEW YEARS LATER.
HARLAND, DEIRDRE, and BURT (three or four-years-old now) sit at the table. BURT finishes his plate of food, then begins to chew on the plate, taking a bite out of it.
NARRATOR
Burt had a teething period that lasted longer than most children. This was an incredibly stressful time for his parents. If they were not careful, he would eat his toys, his clothes, even his furniture. But they learned that interfering with him was dangerous for, sometimes, being young and not knowing better, his mouth would stray.
CUT TO PLAYROOM
We see DEIRDRE reaching down to take a toy out of BURT’S mouth. She jerks her hand away in pain. BURT looks up, in sorrow. HARLAND comes into the room, and DEIRDRE hides her bleeding hand behind her back.
CUT TO HALLWAY, NIGHT
Light flashes as a thunderstorm rages outside. BURT runs, terrified, down a dark hallway to his parent’s bedroom, where he wakes up DEIRDRE. She soothes him and pulls him into bed with her. They sleep soundly through the storm.
CUT TO MORNING
DEIRDRE jerks upward, clasping her shoulder. HARLAND also awakens. He looks down at BURT who is sleeping soundly. HARLAND tries to pry DEIRDRE’S hand away from her shoulder. She resists as long as she can, until he overpowers her and sees that there is blood on her shoulder. HARLAND turns to BURT, swings him out of the bed by his wrist, and carries him out of the bedroom. DEIRDRE tries to reach her son, but HARLAND keeps them apart. Mother and child scream and weep.
NARRATOR
It was the last straw. To Harland, Deirdre was his most prized and treasured work of art, made by God’s own hands. He would let no one threaten that beauty. Not even his son.
CUT TO FRONT LAWN OF PRIVATE BOARDING SCHOOL.
BURT stands curbside in an oversized suit with a Dolce & Gabbana suitcase. Under his arm are a few art books. He is wearing a restraint on his jaw. HARLAND stands by their Alfa Romeo tapping his feet, flicking his lighter, and chain smoking. DEIRDRE hugs her son, wipes her eyes, and gives BURT bags of trail mix, caramel squares, and saltwater taffy. HARLAND comes over to her and pulls her away. BURT watches as they drive off.
NARRATOR
Harland arranged to send Burt away to school. The rest of his childhood was spent studying. During the summers his father signed Burt up for summer school, so he rarely could come home. During this time Harland was prolific. His best-selling works were always his portraits of Deirdre.
CUT TO STUDIO IN ART SCHOOL
ART STUDENTS stand in silence, watching HARLAND paint another portrait of DEIRDRE, in which she is holding a different baby. When the baby begins to cry and she is not able to soothe him, the baby’s MOTHER steps over, takes him, and calms him. DEIRDRE watches the child move farther away with longing. HARLAND steps in to turn her chin back to an angle he wants.
NARRATOR
For two weeks a year, Burt would come home. These were joyous times for him. He lived for those two weeks that he could see his mother. They sustained him for the rest of the lonely year.
CUT TO KITCHEN
BURT is at the kitchen table. He finishes his meal and begins nibbling at his fork. HARLAND does not notice. DEIRDRE shoots him a look, he stops, and they both smile.
CUT TO DORM ROOM
We see BURT studying at his desk. He is older now, in his early teens. He no longer wears a mouth restraint.
NARRATOR
Burt was growing up to be a normal and happy young man, if not for a few odd habits.
Beside BURT there are a few dozen pencils, chewed almost beyond recognition.
NARRATOR
He did well in school.
CUT TO CLASSROOM
BURT sits in class, chewing a pencil, and raises his hand.
NARRATOR
And he had many friends.
BURT sits on a lawn with a few other students, a teacher watching from nearby. BURT is chewing a huge wad of gum, laughing and joking with the other students.