by Jill Malone
Bangs nods, his face beaming.
“OK,” he says, after he ejects The Big Sleep. “Another Bogart, or another Chandler?”
“Which do you want?”
“I’ve seen both these films.”
“Which is better?”
“Well.” He bites his thumb, considering. “To Have and Have Not is romanticized, and Double Indemnity is heartless betrayal, so they’re pretty different. I wouldn’t call them gangster films, they’re really noirs.”
“Oh, noirs.” I smile at him. “By romanticized, do you mean cheesy, or romantic?”
“Both.”
“All right, the romantic, cheesy one, then.”
He puts To Have and Have Not on, and offers to give me a backrub. Bogart is a genius antihero; it probably helps that he’s unlikely and compromised—an ex-believer—and that the girls are always more fucked up than he is.
Bangs unlatches my bra, and massages down from my tight shoulders to the knot in my hip. “Jesus,” he says. “Stress much?”
“You just put your lips together and blow!” I repeat. “My god, I can’t believe they let her say that. Censorship was really shoddy in the forties.”
“She’s talking about whistling.”
“Sure she is.”
He laughs. “You’re tight everywhere,” he says.
I hope he means my back. You see it coming, this movie, and you still don’t mind.
When I get home later that evening, the lights are off through the house. “Hello?” I call.
“Hello.”
I follow the voice and find Nate standing in the kitchen in the dark.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says.
“Why are the lights off?”
“I just got back.”
“Where is everybody?”
“I just got back,” he says again.
“Are you OK?” He doesn’t say anything. There’s something wrong. Besides the lights, and his voice—the vacancy of it—even his posture feels wrong. “Nate?” I ask. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. She just started crying. She wouldn’t stop, and it was that deep sobbing like with little kids, you know? I was afraid she’d choke. Maybe I hurt her.” He turns to me. “Do you think I hurt her? She wouldn’t say. She just kept sobbing.”
“I don’t know,” I say. Even though my coat’s still on, I shiver.
“Cole,” he says. “I think maybe I hurt her.”
How? I want to ask. How did you hurt her? And then, I say the only thing I can think to say, “Do you want a burger? We could go to Wendy’s or whatever.”
“We should leave a note,” he says. When he flips the light switch, both of us flinch. His bloodshot eyes give him a deranged look. Neither of his shoes is tied.
We order from the drive-through, and eat in the parking lot, our fries spread between us as though we’re sharing.
“If you tell any of this,” Nate says, “to anybody—”
“I won’t,” I promise. When did he get so harried and suspicious?
His profile is as much of him as I see. In his Toyota hatchback, the grey roof cover sags in three sad bubbles. The heat blasts our feet, and one of the tapes I made him for Christmas plays Jane’s Addiction.
“We’ve come really close a bunch of times,” he says. “I mean really close.” He eats two fistfuls of fries.
Behind us, a dude unlocks the dumpster, tosses four large black bags in, and slams the lid before locking it again. Now the dude moves around sweeping the parking lot. He doesn’t even have a coat on.
“Tonight,” Nate says, “her mom went to the city, and we had the house to ourselves.”
I want to touch the tear in Nate’s letterman jacket. I want to console him. How do you console somebody? Meghan does it just by listening, with the intensity of her attention. Bangs does it with gestures: with a touch of his hand on your face, or a Charms Pop.
Nate looks at me. He stares into my face like we’re strangers. “We did it.” I won’t look away from him—I can’t look away. I have to see and hear whatever he tells me. “We did it, and I laughed. Not at her or anything. I laughed because it was all so big. This huge amazing thing. I kissed her, and said something—I don’t even remember what—something stupid. And then she rolled away from me and burst out crying.” His voice shatters. He swallows several times, and clears his throat. “She wouldn’t even look at me.”
Nate. If anyone else were here, that person would know what to say. If it were Meghan or Bangs or my father, any of them would know.
“Do you think,” Nate says, “do you think I hurt her?”
“I don’t know.” I whisper this to him.
“What should I do?” he asks. “Maybe I shouldn’t have left. I wrapped her in the comforter, and patted her back for a while, but she just kept crying.”
My favorite Nate story? The summer before fifth grade, in Washington, I rode my dirt bike down a hill without using my hands. I’d done it a million times. This time the front tire caught in the road and pitched me down the hill. I skidded on both elbows, and the bike landed on top of me.
Nigel had been riding beside me, and he jumped off and started screaming about how I’d been killed. A neighbor ran over and straightened the handlebars on my bike. She asked if she should call my mom.
I shook my head and began to push my bike home. Nigel circled around me, freaking out. I told him to ride and get Nate.
“Nate?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Go get Nate.”
“Where is he?” Nigel asked.
“At the field,” I said. “They’re playing football.”
Nigel sped away. My elbows had gravel lodged deep in the skin, my cheek burned, and both knees bled. I’d ripped my bike seat, and the grip on the handlebars.
I’d limped three blocks, to a house with a rock garden, and one of those cool sundials, when Nate came racing back on Nigel’s bike, with Nigel mounted on the handlebars. They skidded to a stop, and Nigel launched forward.
“You crashed?” Nate said, laying my bike down and examining me. I nodded, tears down my face. “These burn, don’t they?” he asked. “Come on. You sit, and I’ll pedal.”
He biked me home, Nigel racing ahead. Our parents weren’t home. Nate had me sit on the toilet seat, and cleaned the cuts with peroxide. The whole time, he kept telling me how spectacular the crash must have been. How Nigel thought I’d broken my neck. How Evil Knievel had nothing on me.
In the entryway upstairs, we heard the door, and then Nigel yelling at my folks. “She could have died,” he told them. “And you weren’t even home.”
They came into the bathroom, and checked my injuries. Nate vanished before I could thank him. He’d left in the middle of the football game, and had promised the other kids he’d be right back.
Winter in Jersey, the fries gone cold, this brother asking about unfathomable injuries.
“Maybe I should call Kelly,” I say. “Check if she’s alright.”
“Would you?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll call the second we get home.”
He crushes the trash and leaps from the car to throw it away. On the drive home, I try to imagine how this phone call will go. Hey, Kelly, just calling to see how you’re handling the whole post-coital thing. Hi Kelly, any chance you’ve quit crying?
On the third ring, someone picks up, but doesn’t speak.
“Kelly?” I ask.
Nothing.
“Kelly? It’s Cole.”
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.” This is as far as I’ve thought this through. I’ll say hey, and see how it goes.
“Hey,” she says again.
“So I’m calling,” I say, for a damage report, “to say that I’ve missed talking to you. All this mad stuff has happened, and, you know, I used to talk to you about it. And now I don’t.” Oh my god.
She doesn’t say anything. I am stu
pid. Why am I always so stupid?
“Well,” I say.
“You’re with Bangs now?” she asks.
“Yes. Not this minute, but yes, in general. I’m with him.”
“How is that?”
“Oh,” I say. I have no idea. I don’t understand Bangs any more than I understand the others. Less maybe. “He’s surprising.”
“Yeah?”
“I thought he’d be an anarchist.”
“Right,” she says. “His backpack.”
“But he’s really sweet.”
“Did Nate tell you?” she asks.
“He said you were upset.”
“Upset.” She says this wonderingly. “I cried like an orphan.”
My room feels arctic after Bangs’ room, and the heat-blasted hatchback. Nate didn’t try to wheedle his way up here. He just asked me to find him after I’d spoken to Kelly.
I want to ask if it hurt. Did she cry because it hurt?
“Was he worried?” Kelly asks.
“Yes. He thought maybe he’d hurt you.”
“No,” Kelly says. “He didn’t.”
“Should I tell him?”
“Yes.”
“Should I tell him anything else?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve missed you too. Tell him to call me. Will you do that?”
“Yes,” I say.
“I’ll see you in homeroom.” She hangs up.
After I tell Nate, I stand in front of the open refrigerator, trying to decide. Why now? Why should I want Jeremy now? I have this urge to run over to his room, to scratch at the door like a cat begging to be let back in.
Somebody ate all the chocolate pudding, and the swirled, and left only the vanilla. The people in this house upset me.
“Hello, Cole,” Dad says.
“Hello,” I say.
“I haven’t seen much of you lately. How’s everything?”
“We don’t have any chocolate pudding.”
He peers over my shoulder. “There’s vanilla.”
“Yeah.” I close the door. Then open it again, and grab a yogurt.
“Do you feel like a walk?” he asks.
Pepper barks once, and runs to the door. She stares at it, knowing the walk is on the other side, that it’s close.
We don’t see anyone outdoors. Not a car on the road. Eleven, on a Sunday night, and I can’t bring myself to look at Jeremy’s window. Does he wonder? Does he wonder if he hurt me? Does he worry about me at all?
“How’s the band?” Dad asks.
“Busy,” I say. “We play all the time.” The cold swirls around us: we’re wrapped in it. The evergreens loom.
“And that’s good?”
“Usually.” I’ve been wondering about soccer. Will I be able to play soccer in the spring? Could I be on the varsity team, and still play with the band? There was a time, I’m pretty sure, when things seemed simpler. Maybe all that really means is that I used to have fewer options. “Are you unhappy—in Jersey—are you unhappy here?”
We stand together a moment while Pepper pees, and Dad stares at something I can’t see. “I’m ready to do something different,” he says. “I’d like to have a church again.”
“Next assignment, right?”
“Yes,” he says. “Next assignment.”
“A church in Alaska—an igloo with a steeple.”
“They might have a couple of buildings on the base. What about you? Will you miss this place: traffic and honking horns, the tolls and sarcasm, the tireless East Coast ambition?”
God, yes. I grew up here. These, these are my formative years. “Some of it.”
“The band?”
“Sure,” I say. Dad grew up in Spokane, Washington. His whole life, he went to school with most of the same kids, had the same neighbors. In college he joined a fraternity. He didn’t find Jesus until he was in his twenties. Before that, he was a regular guy.
I wonder about that: Dad’s conversion. I never got to be converted. I had Jesus from the start.
“It’s good to see you and Nate talking again,” Dad says.
He can’t let anything go. Pepper tries for a squirrel. Dad leans back, steers her away. If I could have anything I wanted, what would I choose? To stay here in Jersey? Another chance with Jeremy? Sundays with Meghan? What do I want?
The only constellation I’ve ever been able to recognize is the Big Dipper. Or maybe the little one, what’s the difference, after all? Tonight the stars seem farther away than usual, but I can see one of the dippers overhead. If I were better at Geometry, I could reckon my position with the stars, or maybe that’s Trig.
“Will we go to war?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Any day now?”
“Yes.”
“I hope my soldier lives.”
Dad pats Pepper’s head. I think he’s praying. Will it be like World War II, or like Vietnam? What kind of war will this be? Which side will be virtuous?
“Will we bomb schools?” I ask.
“Not on purpose.”
“But kids will die.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you ever worry,” I say, “that it’s wrong?”
“The wrong decision?” Dad asks.
“No. That it’s wrong—war.”
“Of course.”
“Would you go—even if it were wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Would you fight?”
“I’d probably be assigned to a unit. Be with them. Minister to them.”
Jesus saves. Jesus saves unless you happen to be in the way of a two-ton bomb, or a sniper, or a hand grenade. I imagine, sometimes, that I answer the door, and it’s my atheist dressed in a leather jacket and blue jeans, with sunglasses pushed up into his buzz cut, and a motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm. On leave States side, and he’s come to visit me. To take the drive he wrote about. If Dad were assigned to the atheist’s unit, would I worry more, or less?
Dad loves Walt Whitman. He reads me poems sometimes. He loves that vigil for a dead soldier poem best. He says that poem expresses what it’s like to be a chaplain, the constant vigil over the dead and the dying. And the living, I always think. They need your vigilance too. They need your watchfulness and your attention. If I were in a field somewhere, my soul escaping, could I tell him? Could I confess to my father at last?
I have doubts. I have so many doubts. A plague of them. The old stories don’t make a lot of sense, if you think about them. What was the snake doing in Eden? Didn’t God know the snake was there? What the hell did anyone need a tree of everlasting life for—isn’t God immortal? Does he need to eat fruit to be immortal? If God so loved us, then why does he punish without mercy? Why did John the Baptist end up with his head on a platter? Service to God is not incentive enough, really. Service to God rarely ends well. If you read Revelation—I mean, you know, study it—well, it’s fucking terrifying. Eternal torment, not so much, but the alternative doesn’t appeal to me either. I mean, who lets his own kid get crucified? God runs kind of hot and cold for my taste, you know, if I’m being honest.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Dad says. “Even if we’re in Jersey.”
“Beats the desert,” I say.
Dad nods. I hope he’s praying. I hope he’s praying for all of us.
Exculpate. Free from blame; vindicate. Verb. This reminds me of amnesty. I have a funny story about amnesty. If I ever see you again, I’ll be sure to tell you.
During freshman year, the guidance counselors met with each of us twice, and gave presentations at orientation and school assemblies, and beat it into us that we should letter in at least two sports, join multiple clubs, and run for student council, in addition to volunteering for community organizations. And because we have nothing but time, study for our SATs between course-work for our eight classes.
Of course, we believed them. Freshman year, I joined the Spanish Club, SADD, the Ski Club, and Amnesty International. I don’t know what I thought Amnesty Inte
rnational did, but I remember being really surprised by that first meeting. I’d just joined because I liked their stickers. Clubs used to meet after school at 3:30, but, in an effort to be more athletics friendly, this year most clubs began meeting at lunchtime.
Alicia and I joined Amnesty together, but she isn’t in the classroom when I arrive. We’re supposed to write letters, or something, today. I think everybody in this club expects to be a lawyer, and bring reforms on the scale of Martin Luther.
“Cole,” the head girl says—I can’t remember her name—Sharon?—she has crazy bushy hair and the beginnings of a mustache. “Do you want to stuff envelopes?”
“Sure,” I say. “I love stuffing envelopes.” All the earnest kids stare at me. From the row of desks by the windows, Monica Prader waves at me. “Load me up.”
The head girl reads to us from the Amnesty International Newsletter. It’s all horrible—most of the reports so vague as to be especially terrifying. How is this happening while we’re sitting here stuffing envelopes?
Monica seems to be doing homework.
“What is that?” I ask, indicating her notebook.
“Chemistry.”
It never occurred to me to refuse to stuff envelopes. “What is this letter?” I ask, without bothering to open and read it.
“A vital political cause.” She reaches across and pats my shoulder. “We’re in the business of freedom here at Amnesty International.”
“You don’t know either, do you?”
Her laugh is sudden, and, judging from the reaction of the other kids in the room, highly inappropriate. “You’re a trip,” Monica Prader tells me.
While the head girl carries on reading, I skim the letter. “It’s pro-war,” I say.
“An increasingly inevitable position,” says the reputed genius.
“Do you believe that?”
“Read the paper. Watch the news. The whole thing’ll start any minute.” She shrugs. “That’s how it is.”
The reality, she means. The inevitable reality. I still think of wars as trenches and tanks and those Poles racing across the field on their horses. And jungles. I think of jungles too.
I can’t imagine a war in the desert: the soldiers in their light fatigues, the humvees, the air campaign. I keep thinking of David with his slingshot, and guys riding on camels. Will my atheist have to shoot someone? Will he think, as he pulls the trigger, of his friend’s eye? Will he hesitate? Will he live?