by RJ Martin
I ASKED about the hanger steak, but Dad ordered us both cheeseburgers, mine medium and his rare. I should have been grateful just for that. Instead, I sat back and hmphed like Mémé. He didn’t react. But karma made mine come too raw, and Dad sent it back for being bloody.
“Sorry for the wait.” Bart Jr. returned with my cheeseburger. “This look okay, Jonah?” He smiled like we were friends.
“Yeah, thanks, Bart.” I didn’t know anyone other than teachers and parents who used names when they talked, but I didn’t want to be intimidated.
“Is it okay now?” Dad wanted confirmation before Bart the younger left. He could feed the whole family ball house food twice for what this one meal was costing for just us two. It had better be right.
“It’s good.”
“You and your mother both like your meat overcooked.”
“Mom says Mémé likes it raw because they were too poor to cook.”
“Your mother was being funny.”
“Do you miss it up there?”
“Gaspé? Sometimes.” He stabbed a french fry with a fork. It was a Quebecois thing. “They sent me for the summer every year when I was young. Some of our people didn’t even have electricity or indoor toilets. Mom was right about that.”
“Sounds pretty rough.”
“Maybe, but when the sun goes down and there’s no light, you really appreciate dark. Not the dark, but there’s a whole other kind of light we don’t ever get to see. The stars come out right away, more and more of them, until the whole of the Milky Way is stretched across the sky. So bright it’s reflected in the water.”
“Really?”
“It’s how I remember it.” He sipped his second beer. “That doesn’t mean it’s exactly true.”
“Cognitive dissonance.”
Dad nodded. I wasn’t sure if he knew what I meant. If he didn’t, I had a feeling he would look it up on the computer at the motel tomorrow. Doing it at home would mean I’d know he didn’t. We ate, didn’t talk, and Dad watched the hockey game playing on one of the flat screen TV’s mounted above the bar. I waited for him to again bring up the real reason for our once-in-a-lifetime outing.
When I saw the last of his fries come up on the fork, I decided to start this time in case he wouldn’t. “I think the retreat house is like that, up in the mountains with lots of stars.”
“We’re trying to make it happen, Jonah.” My father answered like he’d been waiting for me to bring it up again. He took the napkin off of his lap and set it on the table. “If we can, we will and no more acting out from you will help your cause. You skipped Mass, fine. You got our attention, but that’s it. Any more nonsense and we’re going to stop trying, you understand?”
“Yes.” It was a miracle. I wandered farther off the reservation than I ever had before and was rewarded like the prodigal son. I knew it was my dad’s doing but was JC’s old man involved too? This dinner divinely inspired? It made me feel warm and tingling to think I was being reeled in by not just JC but maybe the whole Trinity.
“No more rides with Rusty Naylor.”
“Does this go for Angie too?”
“Jonah, you’re fifteen.”
“Sixteen in less than a month.”
“Sister Margo saw you behind the wheel.” His voice deepened, and Dad washed his face. She must’ve seen me pulling up outside of school. That was stupid. I guess I got carried away and wanted my classmates to see me driving a summer car.
“You shouldn’t do that.” I mimicked his tell and washed my face too. “We carry a lot of germs on our hands.”
“Mom isn’t so sure about this retreat, you know?”
“I know.” I backed off.
“You want me to throw in the towel?”
“No,” I said softly and studied the ice in my Coke glass. The pins and needles turned colder inside me. Was this about Rusty? Was JC sending a message? The first commandment couldn’t have been clearer. JC’s dad came first and, therefore, him too.
“Dessert?” he asked, trying to make this sound like fun.
“No, I’m full.”
“Order me a coffee.”
Dad went to the restroom, and my thoughts went from JC to Rusty and back again like the swinging of the pendulum in that Edgar Allen Poe story we read last year, pre-Ng and her swords. I shouldn’t have eaten so much. Lots of people took home doggie bags because the burgers were huge even for big-gutted locals. I felt like a cartoon character with a pot belly where my flat but not cut stomach had been. I wished I had taken half of it home. It might have made me seem grateful or maybe just nice to offer some of my ground sirloin on brioche to my mother or Mémé, except she would find it overcooked. A good man would do that. Was I losing my goodness? I felt a twinge of Old Testament fear.
“How was your burger, Jonah?” Bart made it sound like he had to say it as part of his job, and he wasn’t really interested.
“Good, thanks.” I didn’t use his name back and forced myself to smile. Maybe he was just waiting for me to react to lower the gay boom right in front of our dads.
“Was it burned enough?” Bart set his bus tub on the table in front of me.
“Yeah.”
“I heard you’re trying to get Karen Whitten to go on retreat.” He took away my unused and Dad’s used flatware, the dinner plates and Dad’s beer glasses.
“I know she’s thinking about it.”
“She’s pretty hot.”
“Yeah, she is.” I tried to sound interested but not like I was trying too hard.
A few angels passed as Bart wiped the table. I tried not to watch without being obvious about it. He pointed at my glass that was empty except for the melting ice. I nodded he could take it. “My dad wants a coffee.”
“I’m not an asshole.” Bart looked right at me and slammed the red, hard plastic soda cup into the rubber tub so loudly the couple at the next table spun around to look. I didn’t know what to say, and I had no time to think of anything because….
“How sweet it is!” Big Bart roared at the bar and collected his winnings from Forge and some others like him. Horse races from somewhere sunny were now on one of the flat screens and the locals had laid dollar bets on the bar.
“Your dad looks happy,” I finally said.
“He’s full of shit.” Bart shook the tub a little as he passed the other booths. Plates and glass jangled and banged, and the other people eating there turned their heads to avoid any spray of dirty dish juice. The only CD of New Orleans Jazz—the one that had played all night—looped around yet again. “Oh when the saints….”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE SOUND of the vibration stopped me just outside my sister’s open door. “Angie?” I peeked inside and discovered the source: her cell phone about to rattle itself right off the side of her nightstand. From the one bathroom we all shared, I heard the shower begin to run, and I knew it must be her. Who else would be in there at seven o’clock on a Friday night? I eased inside her room like some kind of a home invader. Normally I wouldn’t care about who called her, but things were different since Rusty came along. I already had my lie ready in case I got caught. Maybe her room inspired me. I was just making sure her phone didn’t fall and break, that’s all. My parents would have to buy her a new one, and I wanted them to spend that money sending me on retreat. I retrieved the slim, pink cell phone and saw the sender’s name illuminated in electric green: Rusty. The phone shook in my hand. I knew I should let it go to voice mail, but my hand tapped the answer box, and my mouth said, “Hey.”
“Jonah?” Rusty sounded surprised. He’d tell Angie about this. She’d get so mad that she’d sell me out for the baggie of JC that I still hadn’t returned. Hang up. Don’t make it worse.
“How’s it going?”
“Same old thing.” Rusty made everything sound interesting, just not if it was to him. “Jace is moaning about writer’s block between glasses of pinot grigio and nibbles of some stinky imported cheese.”
“My folks a
re already glued to the TV. They start with game shows and don’t get up except to go to the bathroom or get a beer until after the eleven o’clock news.”
Rusty laughed and then an angel passed. “Is Angie home?”
“You think she’d ever leave the house without her phone?”
“I had temporary insanity.” He laughed again almost like his mom: full and alive. Not like her too—there was no fakeness to it.
“She’s in the shower.”
“Friday night, sure.” He sounded bored by the concept. It made me wonder if in his glitzy New York life, every night was the weekend.
“Aren’t you two going out?” I felt a sudden dizzying tingle of excitement they might be split up and an equally strong twinge it could mean not seeing him anymore.
“Your sister wants me to go to some basketball game.”
“The team is pretty good. The whole school goes.”
“High school?”
“A lot of grown-ups too. I mean, you know, not just high school kids.”
“I’m not sold yet.”
“There really isn’t much else to do. There’s the mall, but it will be empty.”
“Because everyone will be at the basketball game.”
“We’re playing the public school tonight and on our court. It’s a real ‘cross-town rival grudge match’ kind of a thing. Last year Father Dom yelled at the referee.”
“Are you going?”
“The whole town is.” I didn’t know what else to say. Why was he asking me? Honestly, I wasn’t sure. After the game ended a lot of kids would party, hook up, and generally go where I wouldn’t or couldn’t.
“Tell Angie I called.”
“Sure.” I almost hung up. “Wait, Rusty?” I really hoped he was still there, but all I got was dial tone. The shower went off. All of my movements accelerated as I rifled down through her contacts and at last found his name; I dialed and tapped my foot while I waited. Ring. From the bathroom I heard Angie brushing her teeth. I only had seconds now. Ring. Pick up!
“Hey, Jonah.” He sounded like he was playing around. I must’ve seemed really funny to him.
“Hey.” I fought for the same casualness I’d started back in the car.
“What’s up?”
“I can’t tell Angie you called.” I pinched my arm as I said it to take my mind off the lameness of the statement.
“Really?” His voice deepened and got softer like he was asking to be told a secret. “Why?”
“She doesn’t like me to use her phone.”
He started to laugh, and my whole body uncoiled at once. My ease lasted barely a second before the bathroom door opened, and I tensed up again.
“I’ve got to go. Bye.” I clicked the phone shut, tossed it on the nightstand, and raced to my room. The whole time I repeated Rusty’s cell phone number like a mantra until I dug a pen from my desk and scribbled it on the brown-bag cover of my geometry book. Would I ever use it on my own? It didn’t matter. I wanted it, that’s all.
I pressed an ear against the back of my door, but all I heard was a muffled sound like the ocean in a seashell. So, I eased it open and listened. Angie’s room was quiet except for the sound of her drawers opening, hangers being yanked from the closet, and the squeak of the springs as she sat on the bed. Angie didn’t have that many clothes, but she would pretend she did by making a big deal of choosing between the same handful of jeans and tops every time she went somewhere not school. The wall phone in the kitchen blared. Listening so intently made my whole body convulse at the sound, and I grabbed both of my ears.
“Jonah.” Mémé sounded like I’d interrupted her. “Telephone, hmph.” I hated when she answered the phone with her Franglais accent and old Canuck impatience. I think she thought we paid by the call or something.
“Merci, Mémé.” I took the phone, neither of us smiling. She plodded off to her room shaking her head as she went.
“This is Jonah.”
“This is Chad.”
“Pick me up?” I’d told Rusty I was going. That meant I had to.
“In five.” He hung up, and I scrambled back into my room. Chad and I were cool now because he hadn’t touched me again or brought up why he’d thought it was okay to do it. Rusty didn’t mention what happened in Jace’s car either. Were he and I like Chad and me? I was gay, though. Was he? Bi? Stop obsessing.
I scrambled out of my at-home sweats and into some nondistressed, old-school-looking jeans. Rather than my usual button-down oxford I put on a long-sleeve T-shirt I usually only wore around the house because it had gotten a little tight. I added an old Montreal Expos jersey Grandpa Hank gave me not too long before he died. It had a red, white, and blue cursive M logo and red and blue piping on the sleeves. I’d never thought about wearing it before. Tonight it seemed so like the obvious no-brainer. I checked myself out in the mirror over my bureau, but it wasn’t large enough. I needed a floor-length one to see how the jeans fit under the shirt. I didn’t want to look like I had hips. In the hall I waited. Was I really going to do this? My hand knocked before my brain could decide.
“Come in,” Angie beckoned. “Who are you?” she said as soon as she saw me. “And what have you done with my little brother?”
“Do you think this looks okay?” I hesitated, but my feet now followed my hand’s lead and stepped in front of her mirror.
“Who are you trying to impress?”
“Nobody.” My face felt warm. “I just want to look better, less like some townie kid.”
“It’s Rusty.”
“What? No.” I tried to act disinterested in her questions by unbuttoning and then rebuttoning the jersey.
“Hang out with a model and you get some fashion sense.” She nodded, pleased.
“We don’t hang out.”
“Don’t you like him?” Angie adjusted the jersey so it fell off my shoulders just a little.
“He’s all right.”
“He likes you.”
“Really?” I tried to sound bored and checked my loafers for scuffs. I didn’t get much use out of them because NC3 was lace-up all the way. These were a soft black leather and supposed to be my father’s for work, but they made his feet hurt.
“He told me.” Angie stepped beside me in the reflection. “He said the way you just started driving on the highway was pretty ‘bad ass.’”
“Really?”
“Really,” Angie mimicked me as she put on lipstick. “Want some?”
“No.”
“Guys wear makeup, Jonah.”
“Good for them.”
“Rusty does.” She inched the glossy point closer. “Just a little.”
I considered her offer for just an nth of a second—I had kind of always wanted to give it a try—but then Angie started to grin, and she burst out laughing. “You are so gullible.”
“Very funny.”
“Seriously, you look really hot, well almost.” Angie squirted some “product” she bought in Montreal into her hand and worked it through my hair. The label was in English and French so it had to be good.
“Hey.” I tried to fight her off, but Angie had me by the hair.
“You want to look killer or what?”
I stopped resisting because she was right, I did. My sister looked awesome, as always, in her blue jeans and boys’ V-neck sweater—mine—that hung loose enough you could see the straps and top of her pink bra. She’d never get away with it at a regular home game but the gym would be packed and Sister Margo too busy trying to track the ticket sales. Any chance to raise a little money they took, because my school still had textbooks that ended with the space shuttle not exploding yet and Bill Clinton keeping it in his pants.
“Darcy will love you!” Angie wiped her hands on a dirty T-shirt and tossed it on her clothes pile on the floor. I think it was one of mine she must’ve “borrowed.”
“We’re just friends.” My hair looked like I’d got caught in a windstorm where it came from every direction at once.
&n
bsp; “Then Chad will.”
I wanted to say some kind of ha-ha sort of thing, but I just left. I didn’t feel like lying. Coming in here was wrong. Talking to Rusty was too. Maybe even going to the game. I had to stop all this. Luckily, the tote board didn’t dare go in my sister’s room. It would fry.
“Jonah, I didn’t mean it,” she called after me. “You need a ride, my ‘almost not a kid anymore’ little bro?”
“I’m not a kid and no thank you!” I yelled behind me and took the out she offered. Angie was good about driving me places or getting whichever friend was doing it to take me too. My sister’s dark side would then take advantage of my being a captive audience. She’d ask me embarrassing questions like who in the car did I think had the best boobs or the worst reputation. I would turn redder than a ripe tomato, but it beat walking or being alone. Those I had covered.
As I slipped into the bathroom to check my hair again, I heard her. “All right, you don’t want to go, but you could’ve called and told me.” Pause for him to defend himself. I wished she’d put the call on speaker so I wouldn’t have to imagine his voice. “Calling and not leaving a message is not telling me. Fine. Don’t go. My friends aren’t good enough for you. I get it. Screw you.” She hung up. Rusty wasn’t going, so much for my act of faith. Wait, I didn’t say I’d go just because he was. I might’ve gone anyway but maybe not. This sucks.
“Gregory, we’re late!” Chad bellowed from the foyer. My parents hated that.
“Chad.” My father was already on it.
“I’m here.” I was too. Right where I always was, the line segment of the North Country.
My parents did a kind of double take at my outfit and hair. Mom just grinned and said, “Home by twelve, sweetie.” Dad didn’t say anything at all.
“Cool duds.” Chad nodded, impressed.
“Thanks.” Stop hitting on me. Did Rusty think that too?