The Gunners

by Rebecca Kauffman

  Now, as Sam thought back to that morning, he knew with great certainty that the white flash had been Sally’s hair. Sally had spent the night with Jimmy and had been about to sneak out before Jimmy’s parents woke, but she had caught sight of Sam a split second before he’d fully caught sight of her. It had to be. And as Sam thought about it more, it was so obvious now that Jimmy had been hiding something for a long time. Little things. Moments when Sam could tell that Jimmy had moderated an impulse before speaking. Withdrawn silences, expressions of guilt. Finally, Sam understood.

  Who knew how many nights Jimmy and Sally had already spent together? Sam couldn’t even begin to imagine how long this might have been going on, how many loving and agile sex-things had been done in Jimmy’s basement and Sally’s bedroom.

  Sam wanted to strangle something with his bare hands, and so he forced himself to stay there in The Gunner House, knowing that if he left he would do some violence. He would ruin his life if he did the things he wanted to do. He counted breaths. He spoke a mantra to himself: You fat, hopeless loser, what did you expect? You fat, hopeless loser, you don’t deserve love. You fat, hopeless loser . . . And although these words did not make Sam feel any better, they transferred some of the anger toward Jimmy onto himself so that his murderous rage gradually began to subside. He rose from the mattress, punched the wall until his knuckles were mangled and flaked, did push-ups, returned to the mattress. You fat, hopeless loser . . .

  An hour later, Sam was startled by someone entering the front door of The Gunner House. He lurched upright as the figure stood in the doorway, lit from behind by the streetlight.

  Alice seemed equally spooked by Sam’s presence in the dark room. She said, “Who’s there? Scared the crap outta me!”

  Sam said, “It’s me.”

  Alice entered the room and reached up to turn on the light. She was so tall, especially from Sam’s seated position. Her dark hair was tied sloppily on top of her head. She wore men’s jeans that only reached her ankles, a Buffalo Sabres T-shirt, a pair of lime-green Chinese mesh slippers with sequins across the toes.

  Sam blinked. His face felt as if it were covered in clay. “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “What are you doing here?” Alice said. She pointed toward the far corner of the room. “I left my bio book here last night, and that paper’s due Monday.” She examined Sam’s face and said, “Dude, you look like you just fought a war. What is up?”

  Sam’s fingers went to his face. He felt wrecked, and wronged. His heart, it actually hurt. And while he hated the idea of displaying vulnerability in front of Alice, who at times over the years he had hated more intensely than he’d hated all of the rest of them combined, he also trusted Alice and longed to confide in someone.

  Sam said, “Sally’s with somebody.”

  Alice frowned. “What?”

  “She’s . . . with somebody.”

  “With somebody?” Alice said. “What? Who? How do you mean?” She studied Sam’s face for a moment with her black eyes and then said, “You’re in love with her.”

  “No,” Sam snapped.

  Alice sat down next to Sam on the mattress. “Why do you think she’s with somebody?”

  “I went over there earlier. Just to see how her birthday was. I saw through her window. She was in her bed, and there was someone else in there, too.”

  Alice said, “Who?”

  Sam shook his head. “I couldn’t see. But it’s gotta be one of them. It’s gotta be Mikey or Jimmy.”

  When she didn’t respond, Sam turned to face her straight on. “Alice,” he said, “it’s got to be Jimmy.”

  Alice was quiet for a little while.

  Surprised that Alice didn’t seem to share his indignation, and deeply irritated by this, Sam said, “Can you believe it? This sneaking around? These are supposed to be our friends!”

  Sam watched Alice’s face. Her expression remained calm but flickered through a small series of thoughts that he couldn’t follow.

  Finally, Alice said, “We’re in high school now. Things are changing. We’re not kids anymore. Things are gonna happen. If Sally and whoever she was with don’t want to share anything about their relationship, that’s their business. So you should probably get used to it, because if we’re all going to stay friends, we just need to accept that things are going to change.”

  Sam stared at her. “You aren’t pissed?”

  Alice said, “It was only a matter of time.”

  The two of them sat in silence for a while longer.

  Sam gazed around the dark room, taking in all of its details. Then he lost himself to memories of it, of times when things were not hard and not complicated, when there weren’t lies and secrets, when you couldn’t stay mad. Laughter. Sweat. Grass-stained knees. All the hours the six children had shared here, where they were protected by one another and this space from their parents and the outside world. Alice was right—things had changed. This place was no longer safe and happy. These people could no longer be trusted. Sam felt a dark creature coming to life, sniffing the air, inside himself.

  Finally, Alice said, “I need to get some work done on that paper. You coming home or staying here awhile?”

  Sam left with Alice, and the two of them walked up Ingram together. The moon was pale and pinkish, and the March air, depending on the exact moment, was both warm and cool.

  At eleven that same night, the phone rang at the Forrest house, and Sally answered.

  “Sam knows you’re with someone,” Alice said. “He came to your house tonight and looked in your window. He saw you in bed with someone.”

  “How much does he know?” Sally said.

  “Just that you were with someone . . . He doesn’t know who.”

  Sally was quiet for a bit. “Does this mean we have to stop?”

  “No,” Alice said, “we just need to be more careful.”

  Chapter 15

  Alice turned to Mikey. “You think I can eat an entire croissant in one bite?”

  Before he could answer, she had snatched another one off the coffee table and methodically balled it up between her palms until it was the size of an apricot. She shoved it into her mouth, cheeks puffing wide as she chewed. Down the hatch. She slapped her hands together victoriously, crumbs flew.

  Mikey said, “Wonders never cease.”

  Alice nodded out toward the wall of windows and said, “Have you heard the one about the lawyer from Toronto?”

  “A joke, you mean?”

  “Not exactly. True story. Fancy-pants rich lawyer works on like the thirtieth floor of a firm in Toronto. He’s got a room full of colleagues, decides to run into the floor-to-ceiling glass on the other side of the room to prove that it’s unbreakable. Apparently, he’d done it a bunch of times before. But this time . . .” Alice paused to sip her wine, and she slapped her hand violently through the air. “He busted through. Kaput. In his defense, the glass didn’t actually break; the whole window just popped out. But I’m just saying, please do not try this at home. Or at Jimmy’s home.”

  “He died?”

  “Dead, dead, dead. Sorry to be grim,” Alice said. “But while we’re on the topic, my dad got cancer in his colon.”

  “How bad?”

  Alice sucked air in through one side of her mouth. “Bad. Probably got a year or two at most. Just found out last month.”

  “How’re you doing? How are they doing?”

  “I’m thinking of moving back down here to help out.”

  “Really?”

  Alice nodded. “I could sell the marina up there—already got someone who’s interested—move down and open one up around here . . . I was looking at some property online. Up near the harbor in Lewiston, there’s a rinky-dink old boathouse I could turn around.”

  “I’d love to see more of you, Alice,” Mikey said, and he felt a hop
e spike through him. “I’d love it if you moved back here.”

  Alice said, “I’m sure you’d get your fill of me after a week or two. Then we’d have a big fight and hit each other in the face and never talk again.”

  Mikey laughed.

  “Don’t say anything. I haven’t talked it over with Chris yet.” Alice finished her wine in a single swallow.

  Mikey said, “Have you heard from The Saint recently?”

  Alice and her husband had gotten together when she was a junior in college. He was the TA in her marine biology class. They’d been divorced now for eight years. More recently, Alice liked to report to the others when The Saint had sent her a Christmas card that included a braggy letter. Alice had never provided details on their breakup. She would mock The Saint until she was blue in the face, but the actual explanation of their divorce was the one thing Mikey had ever known Alice to be reluctant to speak on.

  Alice nodded. “Just the usual Christmas card. Speaking of The Saint, there was a guy in a bar the other day who reminded me a little bit of him. You know what this guy in the bar said to me? The weirdest insult I’ve ever received.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He cuts right in front of me at the bar, before the bartender’s got my order, and I call him on it, tell him to learn some manners. You know what this guy says? He spins around and goes, Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? I bet you think you’re pretty freakin’ tall, don’t you?”

  “How tall was he?”

  “Your height, probably. What are you, five ten?”

  Mikey nodded.

  Alice said, “I was so taken aback I didn’t have anything to say, not a word. Imagine that. Anyway, I’m still hungry. I think I require something with sugar in it next.”

  She rose to go to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with another bottle of wine, a jar of fig jam, a jar of strawberry preserves, mustard, and a knife. She spread these items on the coffee table before them; then she sat back down and leaned forward to touch the stained rim of her glass to Mikey’s.

  She sighed heavily after sipping from her wine and licking a purple drip that slowly made its way down the outside of her glass. “Mikey, I’m going to tell you something before the others get here.”

  “Okay.”

  “I never wanted to betray Sally’s trust. And I was afraid that the rest of you would blame me if you knew, so I didn’t say anything. But it was because of me.”

  “What was?”

  “Sally leaving our group.” Alice reached down to touch Finn’s head again, running a single index finger knuckle between his eyes, and he blinked slowly and groaned happily. “Don’t hate me.”

  “What?” Mikey stared at her.

  Alice sat back in the couch and fiddled with a loose thread in her sock before releasing another heavy sigh and finally stating plainly, “Sally and I were involved.”

  Mikey felt his eyes double in size. “Involved with each other?”

  Alice nodded. “It started when we were fourteen or fifteen. It started, like, experimental. Purely physical.”

  Mikey couldn’t help the awkward laugh that escaped him. He apologized immediately. “Sorry, I don’t mean to make light, I just . . . We were so young! I had no idea.”

  “I know,” Alice said. “We kept it totally secret. Sam almost found out once, and it tore him up. He didn’t know it was with me, but just knowing that Sally was involved with someone . . . Sam was in love with her, too.”

  “Really?” Mikey said.

  Alice nodded. “That’s another reason I haven’t wanted to say anything. He nearly caught us. I lied to cover it up.”

  Mikey said, “Did something in particular happen between you, leading up to the time when she cut herself off from all of us? A fight?”

  Alice clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “That’s what’s always been weird,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I was falling in love with her, but I couldn’t tell if she had real feelings for me. It was hot and cold. We never had a proper conversation about the status of our relationship, and I wasn’t going to force that. I was too scared, too proud.”

  “So things ended between the two of you when they ended with all the rest of us?”

  Alice nodded. “I had no more warning than any of the rest of you.”

  Mikey said again, “I had no idea.”

  Alice pulled the rubber band from the end of her braid, redid the bottom few inches of braid, tightening it, twisted the rubber band back on, and tossed the braid over her shoulder.

  Mikey said, “So you think she cut herself off from all of us because she felt awkward about ending things with you?”

  “I think so, yes,” Alice said. “Maybe she felt shame. Didn’t want to be gay. Realized she wasn’t gay. But . . . well, not to get into it too much, but when things started, she was very much the initiator.”

  “Really,” Mikey said.

  Alice nodded. “At that point, I didn’t know what I was, gay or straight or something in between. Sally and I were walking home together late one night. She invited me in to her place, her mother wasn’t home, said she had something to show me, and . . . well . . . It was my first kiss, first everything.”

  Mikey said, “Did she seem experienced?”

  Alice said, “I don’t know if it was experience, but she definitely wasn’t timid.”

  “Sure.” Mikey stretched out his neck, wildly uncomfortable with this information. He brushed absently at the colorless hair on his forearms.

  “From right when it started,” Alice said, “I just sort of had the sense . . . I was afraid she was going to go through me.”

  “You mean, use you? Then go on to someone new?”

  Alice considered this. “Use me isn’t quite right . . . Too simple. Crude. I actually mean I had this sense that she was going to pass through me, like a ghost, then go on to somewhere unknown. Poof. Leave me shaking.”

  Across the room, the fire spat.

  “And I guess I wasn’t wrong,” Alice said. She was quiet for a bit. Then she said, “Sally was beautiful, wasn’t she? Something magnetic about her. Hard to explain. Anyway, least that’s how I remember her.” Alice paused and cocked her head vaguely sideways, looking at Mikey. “Were you in love with Sally, too? You knew her before the rest of us.”

  Mikey said, “Sally was my first friend.”

  These words brought an unexpected swell of emotion, and Mikey had to swallow several times to disperse the warm, hard lump that rose in his throat. Then he said, “I don’t recall ever feeling anything romantic toward her, though. I don’t think I did.”

  Alice said, “I think we were all sort of in love with each other at different times. Isn’t that just what happens when friends grow up together?”

  Mikey said, “I don’t know about that.”

  Alice said, “Oh, come on, Mikey. Are you saying you were never in love with me?”

  This made Mikey laugh. “No,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Who were you in love with?”

  “I don’t think I was . . .” Mikey said.

  “Was what?”

  “Capable of it.”

  Alice sipped her wine. “Well, aren’t you the heartbreaker? The boy who couldn’t love.” Alice laughed.

  Mikey laughed, too, but the beating in his chest suddenly felt like sobs.

  They sat in silence for a few moments.

  Mikey’s nose was running, so he went to the bathroom, blew his nose into a square of toilet paper, and looked at himself in the mirror.

  When he returned to the main room, Alice had grown impatient and was hollering for him, “Hey! Get back in here and continue bonding with me!”

  Already the sky was growing dark over the lake, which appeared to be frozen over as far as Mikey could see. The snow that had accumulated over the frozen lake
had a slightly different look than the snow on land. A blue-gray hue, striations and veinlike patterns, as if it belonged on a different but similar planet.

  “Been strange, hasn’t it?” Alice remarked. “Seeing where all of us ended up. How all of us changed.”

  Mikey nodded. “It has been strange. Interesting. Although . . . I don’t know that I believe people ever change,” he added. To Mikey, things just sort of happened to you, rolled over you like a tumbleweed, then went bouncing along.

  “Really?” This seemed to surprise Alice. “You don’t think so? Well . . . I guess you’ve worked the same job, lived in the same house for the past ten years. And I don’t mean any offense by that. But . . . Jimmy? Going from a shy math nerd to this wealthy LA hotshot? And Sam, big old tough guy that he was when we were young, everything Fuck this, screw that. Now he’s this churchy guy, God bless at the end of all his emails? Well, and Sally, of course. She went from so close to us, to . . . whatever she was at the end. You don’t think that’s a person changing?”

  Mikey thought on this for a bit. He was briefly tempted to press Alice on the topic of her divorce—what, or who, had changed there—but he decided against it.

  He said, “I think at various times in life we’re either more or less true to who we really are. But that essence, that who we are . . . I don’t know that that ever changes.”

  “So who are you?”

  Once again, the word hollow made its way to the surface of Mikey’s thoughts.

  But before he had a chance to respond to Alice, she said, “Quite frankly, I disagree with the whole premise. I think it’s a pile of crap.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I think that deciding you have some unchangeable essence is just an excuse.”

  “For what?”

  “For not changing, dummy.”

  “Fine, wonderful,” Mikey said. He was tiring of Alice’s opinions and eager now for the others to arrive.