Getting Off Clean

by Timothy Murphy

  It’s when I’m loading everything into the dishwasher that she returns. “I told you not to do that,” she says behind me.

  “I’m sorry, but this place was filthy and—” I turn around and gasp. She’s not in her nightgown anymore. Instead, she’s standing there in a cream linen maternity dress, balancing herself precariously on heels, a straw boater on her head with a black ribbon around it. The apricot masque is gone; she’s smiling sheepishly from under her hat, and she is radiant.

  “Come on,” she says, her smile mingling oddly with her usual sourpuss voice. “I just talked to Frank. We’re picking him up and the three of us are going to Joani’s Confirmation.”

  I’m flabbergasted, and amused, and so happy I want to cry, but I don’t. Instead, I just say the first thing that came to mind. “Bren, you look fabulous.”

  “It’s wicked cool, huh?” she responds, fidgeting. “I bought it all a few weeks ago at Bun in the Oven in the mall, thinkin’, you know, just in case—”

  “Right,” I say, nodding.

  “Anyway,” she says, taking the dish towel away from me. “You don’t have time for that. We gotta make tracks if you’re gonna get ready and we’re gonna get there on time.”

  “All right, I’m coming.”

  On the highway, she touches up her makeup while I drive. Hit radio is playing “Sympathy for the Devil,” one of her favorite songs when she was twelve (hence, one of mine when I was nine), the windows are down, and we both sing to ourselves as the wind rushes in.

  Otherwise, we’re quiet until she finally says, over the wind, “You know this person—what’s his name?”

  “It’s Brooks.”

  “Oh.” More touching up. “Are you ever gonna see him again?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it.” There’s a lot I could tell her, I think—so much I could tell her—but I don’t.

  “Oh,” she says again, not looking away from her makeup. “Well, maybe next year, when you’re safe and sound at Yale with all the other bohemians of the world.” This rather shocks me, and I glance in her direction. She’s got a smug little smile on her face because she thinks she’s thrown me on two counts: she knows I didn’t expect she’d be that open-minded, and she knows I didn’t expect she’d know what bohemian meant. The thing is, on both counts, she’s right.

  “Maybe so.” I smirk to myself.

  “You never know what life’s gonna bring you,” she says, snapping shut her compact and throwing it in her purse, smacking her lips together.

  The house is empty when we get there; everybody’s already off at St. Matthew’s because the confirmees (I guess that’s what they’re called) and their parents have to get there early, for a little talk with old Father Horrigan, probably the same little talk he’s been giving for the past twenty-three years. Brenda waits for me while I hurry to shower and put on a coat and tie, but she won’t wait in her room; instead, she waits uncomfortably in the kitchen, sipping ginger ale and fiddling with her hat.

  Twenty minutes later, we pull up in front of Frank’s parents’ house, the second story of a peeling brown-painted triple-decker in the part of West Mendhem that just borders Leicester. Brenda’s suddenly nervous, twisting the strap of her purse in her hand and looking straight out the car window.

  “Why don’t you go up and ring the bell?” she says to me sharply.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure!” she snaps. “If I wasn’t sure, why would I’ve asked you in the first place?”

  “All right!” I say, and walk around the side of the house to ring the bell. Inside five seconds, I hear Frank’s heavy footsteps pounding down the stairs, until he’s standing there, his short hair spiky and gelled up in the front, long and plastered down in the back. He’s wearing a brown three-piece suit with a little enameled Italian-flag clip on his tie, and he’s smiling nervously.

  “Hey, Eric,” he says, crushing my hand in his and pumping it interminably. “Long time no see.”

  “Yeah. Not since Christmas, I think.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He laughs feebly. “We can just forget about that, right?”

  “Sure, Frank.”

  He laughs nervously again. “Thanks. Uh, where’s Brenda?”

  “Out front, in the car. She’s waiting for us.”

  I round the corner of the house first. Brenda’s stepped out of the car and she’s standing at the end of the walkway, bag in hand, scuffing at the ground with her heels. When Frank sees her, he stops dead in his tracks. “Oh, man,” he says, fiddling with his tie clip. “Oh, man.” I have to turn away—it’s too much for me to take today.

  Brenda half-grimaces, half-smiles down at her feet as Frank approaches, and I hang back about six feet. They face off about a yard away from each other.

  “Hey,” he says, shuffling in place along with her. He offers her his hand.

  “Hey,” she says, accepting it.

  “You’re—” And he stops.

  “I’m what?” she says, laughing. “Go ahead and say it.”

  “You’re—big.”

  “No! Really?” she lets out, burlesque-style, looking from him to me and back. “I’m so glad I’ve got you guys to let me know. Otherwise I really wouldn’t notice.”

  “No!” he protests. “No, I mean—I mean, you look great.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she says, laughing again. I’m remembering them in high school now, Frank at our house for Thanksgiving dinner after West Mendhem won the big holiday game against Mendhem for the first time in seven years; Brenda, in his football sweatshirt, sitting on his lap, running her hands through his crew cut and calling him a big goofball—and Frank, lapping it up, unintelligibly in love with my older sister.

  “Yeah,” he insists. “Seriously.”

  “Well. Thanks. You look good yourself.”

  They keep on just staring at each other, sizing each other up, until finally Brenda says, “We better go or we’re gonna be late.” I walk around the car, and Frank reaches for the door to the backseat, but I’m not halfway around when Brenda, in a strange cracking voice, goes, “Wait a minute, just—hang on a second.” And she totters around in her heels and puts her arms around him, and he goes, “Oh, man,” and does the same to her, and the two of them just stay that way for I don’t know how long, separated by nothing but the big basketball of their baby, until Brenda finally takes a big breath, says, “All right, Eric, let’s motor,” and they get in the car, and we’re off, and she’s reapplying her eye makeup in the passenger seat mirror.

  At St. Matthew’s, the entire parking lot is filled and we have to drive around the block until we find a place on the street. When we get to the front of the church, and the steps are empty and we hear organ music coming from inside, it’s clear that we’re late. The three of us hasten up the long sweep of stairs leading to the entrance, Frank and I on either side of Brenda, but just as we come to the last landing before the doors, Brenda freezes, a hand dug deep into each of our arms, her hat slightly askew on her head.

  “Oh my God,” she says aloud. “What the fuck am I doing? Look at me! What the fuck do I think I’m doing?”

  “Brenda, come on,” I say. “You can’t go back now. Remember what we talked about.”

  “Eric,” she says absurdly, gesturing up at the stucco St. Matthew’s steeple, “this is a house of God!”

  “Fuck that,” Frank says. “It’s our house, too. It better be, for all the money they make you put in that friggin’ basket every week.” He lets go of her grip and walks ahead of us three steps, then holds out his hand. “Now you comin’, babe, or not? ’Cause I’m not goin’ in there if you’re not comin’ with me. I got better places to be on a beautiful day like this.”

  “You guys are insane,” she says, looking heavenward. Then she refastens her grip on me and takes Frank’s arm again, and the three of us proceed up the steps to the entryway.

  It takes a moment to adjust to the cool darkness of the church; they’ve started the ceremony, the orga
n is whining, the choir is singing some hymn about little lambs, and the confirmees are lined up boy-girl, procession style, down the length of the main aisle, boys in navy blazers and girls in white dresses, approaching the priest. Joani and Eddie are at the back of the line (for a moment I wonder if this isn’t some sort of Down’s syndrome discrimination thing) with their backs to us, but I spot Joani’s white self-fashioned dress and the beribboned braids, finally in place. There’s a camera flash as they pass, among many other flashes, and I spot the two pews where my entire family is sitting—parents, aunties, uncles, cousins, Grandma leaning slightly to the left on the far end, everyone probably itchy to leave the church and come back to the house for meatball-and-sausage subs.

  Frank heaves forward to join them in their pew. Brenda, who’s moved slightly ahead of the two of us in her panic, totters backward to wait out the rest of the ceremony in the wings; that’s when Frank stubs his right foot on the back of Brenda’s left heel and she lets out a cry that shoots down the length of the church and straight up into the rafters.

  “Ah, mengia, Frankie!” In a moment, her face turns scarlet; she stands there, frozen in place, facing the congregation, which turns around in its entirety to behold the mortified tableau of the three of us.

  “Brenda!” Joani screams.

  “Brenda!” exclaims my mother, forgetting herself.

  Brenda waves weakly in a dozen different directions and mouths a dazed “Hi” to Joani, who is beaming. The Ianellis are making noisy room for us in their pew, and to the achy buzz of whispers over the organ, we squeeze our way down the aisle and into seats. As we sit down, Brenda squeezes my hand, smiles thinly, and stares into the middle distance, poised grandly to vomit.

  June 1987

  Thirteen

  I don’t want this dream to end. Some consciousness is creeping in now; it must be the hottest morning of the year so far. Slippery warmth is filling up this entire room, and lying here, I’m glistening in a film of salty sweat, my T-shirt flung on the floor out of arm’s reach from this burning bed, my whole skinny body red and translucent except where my briefs lie. I’m thinking that if I can just sustain this a second longer, then something really extraordinary is going to happen, some densely packed bomb in the depths of me is going to detonate, and I’ll be loosed from this reedy, high-pitched eighteen-year-old prison house forever. And someone’s coming with me, another time-bomb ready to self-uncork, and they’ll be picking up the brilliant, steaming shards of us for years and years.

  My mother, from below: “Eric! Get up! What are you gonna do, sleep through your own graduation?”

  It’s over—the dream, and the year. High school and West Mendhem. It ends this morning at eleven in the field house. Then I’ll have two months of working on the loading docks of my father’s company’s warehouse by day and making pizzas at Sal’s at night—but after that, my life commences, in a blaze of spires, gargoyles, and ivy. And the first thing I think as the dream evaporates, as I squint against the scalding light filling this room, is You made it. You got out alive, off clean, over easy. No less than that, and, really, no more. In a few hours, I’ll give my valedictory address to the good people of West Mendhem, all the right sentiments and flourishes on one typed piece of paper that Goody Farnham has proofed and approved, and after that, diploma in hand, we’ll part ways. Phoebe has been saying all week she can’t believe it’s over because she never truly believed it would end. What I didn’t tell her was that I felt just the opposite: I never could have gotten through it if I hadn’t known it wasn’t forever, that the palpable promise of this very day on the calendar has been the only thing that’s seen me through.

  “I’m getting ready!” I yell down the stairs. I’m in the shower. I’m shaving. I’m putting on a coat and tie, loafers and chinos, readying myself to stand before the polity for the last time.

  “Smile!” I blink as a camera flash pops in my face when I’m halfway down the stairs, and they all laugh, the reunified lot of my family: my mother wielding the archival camera, my father, his right eye unabashedly leaking, Brenda and Frank, Brenda cradling in her arms my six-week-old nephew and godson, Arthur Terrence Fitzpatrick Mellucci, a big, swarthy, serene infant with a lot of hair on his head, who sleeps upstairs with Brenda in the Black Sabbath bedroom they’ve turned into a nursery while Brenda prepares to go to computer programming school and courts Frank again as though they were both seventeen. Joani’s there, healthy and flushed, in her confirmation dress but with different braids this time, and Eddie’s parents have let him serve as her date this Saturday morning, to accompany her to the high school graduation of her only brother, at whom she’s beaming right now in a state of awe and wonderment. Grandma’s there, too, on her walker, and when I descend, she reaches up to my forehead, brings it down, kisses it, and says, lucidly, “Bless you, bambino.” They’re all there, my family, happy and under one roof again, and there they shall remain for some time; it’s only me who’s leaving now.

  “You look so handsome,” my mother says, hugging me. “I can’t wait for your big speech today.”

  “Don’t go crying on us, again,” my father jokes. I won’t, I say, and even though the remark bothers me more than he meant it to, I dismiss it and embrace him too.

  “Erky, whatchoo gonna talk about in your speech?” Joani shrieks.

  “Yeah, Erky, whatchoo gonna talk about?” Eddie mimics, tickling Joani. She wheels around, pushes him into the wall, then turns back to me, still beaming.

  “It’s all about you, Joani,” I tease. “What else could it be about?”

  She doesn’t laugh or protest. Instead, she just walks up to me, smiles—her smile is so placid and mature that it startles me—and gives me a hug. “I love you, Erky,” she says, matter-of-fact.

  “I love you, too, Joani,” I say, guiltily. “I was kind of kidding, though. It’s not just about you. It’s about all of us—you know, people in general.”

  “That’s okay,” she says, unperturbed, squeezing tighter. “I still love you.”

  I pull her away from me and look hard into her face. It’s the same face it’s always been, doughy and pink with the wandering, even-natured hazel eyes, but I’m detecting traces of a woman inside it now, some woman growing inside her who’s never going to fully come out, who’s never going to emerge with woman’s instincts and grown-up shrewdness fairly matched. I wonder how long I’ll have to see that face again—how many times I’ll even get to see it before I lay eyes upon it last.

  “Thank you,” I whisper to her. Everyone else is chattering around us, leaving the two of us in this funny pocket of confidence. “You know I love you, too, right?”

  She rolls her eyes, squeezes me back. “Eric! You know I know!”

  I look at her again. “Do you know what you just called me?” I want to ask her, stunned. I want to tell everybody. But for some reason, I decide not to; Joani herself doesn’t even seem to have noticed. “I know you know” is all I say.

  “Good.”

  The phone rings. “That’s probably Phoebe,” I say, stepping into the kitchen to answer it. I’m right.

  “Are you having a cow?” she asks. Cows have been on her mind a lot ever since she got accepted at this alternative college in Vermont where the students can tend livestock for credit.

  “Sort of. We’re just about getting ready to go. My mother’s camera-happy all over the place.”

  “So’s mine. Anyway,” Phoebe says, brightening, “you know my mother made lunch reservations for us and your family and Charlie’s family afterward at this seafood restaurant in Newburyport, so we all have to meet up after the ceremony.”

  “That’s cool,” I say. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

  “All right, darling. This is it! Home free!”

  “Yep. See you soon.” I hang up.

  “Eric, honey, come on!” my mother calls from the din in the hallway. “That field house is gonna be as hot as an oven, and I wanna get seats not too high up.”

&nbs
p; “I’m coming.” I check for my speech in the pocket of my jacket, but the phone rings again. “Dammit, Phoebe!” I say to myself, then into the hallway, “I’ll get it. Hello?”

  There’s nothing on the other line but someone’s jagged breath.

  “Hello?”

  “Thank the Lord it’s you.” At first I can’t place the voice—deep, velvety, edged with sarcasm—but as soon as I do, I freeze in place and the hair stands up on the back of my neck.

  I glance back into the hallway—they’re oohing and aahing over Arthur Terrence—then pull the phone cord around to the other side of the refrigerator. “Is this you?” I ask, low.

  He laughs. “My good Mr. Fitzpatrick, who else would have the audacity to call and scare the living wits out of you on the morning of your high school graduation?” He laughs again, sounding faintly manic.

  My heart ratchets up higher in my throat. “How’d you know it was today?” I ask in a hysterical whisper.

  “Did you actually come all the way to Virginia just to leave a cryptic message for me on a pizza box?” He laughs heartily. “I thought somebody else was in that house with Brickhouse and me!”

  “I did,” I admit feverishly. “I did. But I can’t talk now. Can’t we talk some other time, because—’cause I have to go graduate. Give me your number,” and I reach dumbly for pad and pencil on the countertop. “Where are you?”

  “I’m right here.”

  “But where are you?” I plead, breaking out into a cold sweat.

  “I told you. I’m right here. I’m outside the Cumberland Farms in West Mendhem!”

  “Shut up.”

  “I am. I’m passing through on my way from New York to Montreal, and I’m coming to your graduation!” He’s absolutely, viciously gleeful. “I want to hear your speech, seeing as I missed the first one. The one on racial harmony, remember?”

  “Brooks, please don’t do this to me,” I fairly beg him. “I want to see you, I swear I do, but please not at my graduation. Everybody’s gonna be there.”