This Beautiful Life

by Helen Schulman

Jake put the book down. He got up and went to the bathroom. He closed the door and locked it. He opened up the medicine chest. His dad had broken his collarbone a year ago last Christmas. They had been vacationing in California with his dad’s family, and Jake’s cousin Gary had taken them surfing. Jake had been too scared to try, but not his father. He’d zippered himself up sleek as a seal in his nephew’s extra wetsuit. After a couple of wipeouts, he’d gotten up on the board, but one particularly rough wave had sent him soaring and somehow he’d landed hard on the board on his clavicle. The Vicodin the doctor had prescribed in the emergency room were still in the bottle waiting for Dad to pussy up and take one. Now Jake took two. He tiptoed into the kitchen and drank some of his mom’s wine and some of the vodka they kept for company—as if they ever had company, as if any of them had a friend left in the world. Jake wanted to fall asleep. He figured if he didn’t sleep now he would self-combust.

  That night, Jake had crazy dreams. There were so many chapters, so much falling off subway platforms and running in place on the school steps and climbing the side of his building, that he literally felt older when he woke up, like he’d slept his way through an obstacle course of years. At one point, Daisy was running through a field, with a white sheet, like a superhero’s cape, wrapped around her shoulders, and he was winging clods of dirt at her, hitting and staining the sheet. Although, when Jake looked down at his hands in the dream, the dirt turned into a sticky, clayey mud, and when he tried to wipe it off he stupidly wiped it on his pants, and then he panicked and rolled on the ground, getting it on his hair and face. He woke up a little here and thought, This crap is so obvious, I am such a loser, I can’t even have creative nightmares; and then he was clawed back into the realm of his dreams. In the next cycle he was older, way older, but he still lived at home with his parents and they were really old, they were ancient, in fact, for part of the reverie they were even dead, and his mother’s skin was falling off her fingers and you could see the bones. On and on, the endless visions wound; it took all night and the remainder of his childhood; now he was with Coco, only she was older than he was and she said, “I’m not your sister,” and Audrey came into the picture and said, “She belongs with me,” and he was running after them both, but his mud-stained jeans were stiff and the girls flew away giggling, “You stink, you stink.” All these nightmare variations sucked, but Jake couldn’t wake up from them, try as he might; all night long he’d pull out of the weird paralysis of sleep long enough to say to himself, this is only a dream, this is only a dream, but of course that’s what he’d say to himself when he was awake these days, so he had no idea, really, what was true and what was pure hallucination. He’d lost his life when he was awake, and now his nights were worse.

  The next morning, Jake got up late. Really late. Vicodin-late. He got up in the afternoon. Around one o’clock. He was surprised his mom had not tried to wake him.

  He stumbled a little when he stood up. He shook the sleep out of his head and went into the living room. His mom was sitting on the couch. She was still in her pajama pants. Her hair was still tied up on the top of her head in her sleeping knot. It was after lunch and she hadn’t even gotten dressed yet. His dad was sitting at the dining room table. His mom looked like she’d been crying.

  “Mom?” Jake said.

  She seemed surprised to see him. The corners of her mouth turned up feebly like she was trying to smile. Like she was a stroke victim or something. It made him feel sick inside.

  His dad got on the phone then. That is, his BlackBerry started buzzing and he picked it up.

  “Yes, Sean,” he said, and he began to nod.

  “What?” said Jake’s mom. Her skin was pale and crinkly. She hadn’t done whatever she did to it to make it pink. Jake was in a pair of shorts that he’d slept in. None of them bothered getting dressed anymore, it seemed, except for Coco. But they all still brushed their teeth.

  His dad waved his mom away. He kept nodding. His eyes were closed and his eyelashes smashed up against his cheeks. His head was bent. Jake could see a little moon of a bald spot amid all that pepper and salt. His dad nodded to the CrackBerry like O’Halloran could see him. The guy couldn’t have seen him if he’d been standing in the room.

  “Richard,” his mom said.

  His dad held up one finger to shush her. What if it was the fuck finger? Jake thought. That’s what he really wants. To flip her the bird.

  I am losing my mind, Jake thought.

  “Yes, Sean, thanks, Sean, thank God, Sean, yes. I don’t know how to thank you,” Dad said. He genuflected, he enthused, he gushed.

  It was pitiable.

  I am losing my mind, Jake thought.

  “What?” said his mom. “What?”

  His dad turned to his mom. “Sean thinks all the negative publicity has made the board of trustees run scared. That blunder in Threadgill’s office . . . The guy might just have to resign, Sean says.”

  “Threadgill?” said Jake’s mom. “The guy is an institution. He’s been there thirty years.”

  “They’ve cut a deal with the Cavanaughs,” his dad said. “And they’re willing to let the boys go back to school if they attend out-of-school counseling. He’ll be on probation, of course; he’s got to keep his nose clean, but he can take his exams . . .”

  “Oh, thank God,” said his mom. Like someone had discovered the cure for cancer.

  She hugged Jake and he could smell the bready smell of her skin. Also, bizarrely, yogurt.

  “Thank God,” his mom said again.

  Even his dad was smiling. Jake could see the overhead light glinting off his teeth.

  “Exactly what kind of deal did they cut with the Cavanaughs?” his mom asked.

  “Daisy gets homeschooled or whatever the rest of the year.”

  “It would be child abuse to send her back to that place,” said Jake’s mom.

  His dad shrugged. Maybe yes, maybe no. Dad didn’t know. Wow. Dad didn’t know something.

  “Wildwood helps transfer her into the school of their choice for September. The boys stay on academic probation until they graduate, that’s what Sean knows.”

  “Thank God for him,” said Mom.

  She sat down on the couch. It was as if all the tension and anger had deflated out of her. She literally looked as if her knees had gone weak. Was this officially “dropsy”? Jake wondered. Or was that when your arms and legs swelled? He couldn’t remember. Maybe now he’d be allowed to look it up.

  “There’s still the possibility of child pornography charges. Sean thinks it unlikely. Who would be the disseminators: Daisy, Jake, the rest of the boys, the eighteen-year-old?”

  “Luke,” said Jake.

  “All?” said Dad. “None? Some? At the end of the day it’s almost impossible to note all the postings; there were maybe a million hits on this thing before the websites took them down. I’m not a lawyer, but where do you draw the line?”

  “Oh my God,” said Jake’s mom, her hand rising to her chest, pressing against her heart. “Richard, do you think it’s over?”

  Jake started to cry then. He wasn’t sure why, but he did. Tears slipped down his cheeks.

  “It’d fucking better be,” his dad said. He walked over to Jake and stood behind him. He leaned over, crossed his arms around Jake’s shoulders, and gave him a hug. He kissed the top of Jake’s head. He kind of rested his lips there.

  “It’ll be okay, Jakey,” said his dad, speaking into his hair. “It’ll be okay, son.”

  Jake couldn’t stop crying then. He cried so hard it was hard to breathe. He cried while his father held him.

  Jake ran into Henry and James the next morning on the subway. Ordinarily they all commuted together, but this time the boys did not call ahead, or plan to meet up, and they did not wait for one another at the top of the stairs by the magazine kiosk as per usual—although Jake had been hoping the twins would be standing there magically, as if nothing had changed, when he arrived. He’d been a little late because his
mom had wanted to drive him to school and his dad had thought that was a bad idea—sending the wrong impression, like he was guilty or something, or special. They’d argued a little about it at breakfast and then his dad naturally won, because his mom deferred to his dad on stuff like this, because she “burned hot” and his dad was “cool by nature” and kept his head, because his dad “knew from strategy” while she “shot from the gut.” Jake’s dad was in his running shorts getting ready to take Coco across the park when Jake left. So maybe his dad’s “enforced sabbatical” was still on, even while Jake’s was off, and Jake was supposed to be “putting this all behind him and getting back to normal.”

  “That’s your job,” said his mom. All the quotes were hers. She was the talker in the family.

  So Jake put on an Ithaca High School “Little Red” basketball T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts and grabbed his backpack and took off before she could hug him again and run her fingers across the close-cropped lawn of his hair. He shouted, “Bye,” as the front door closed behind him, while his mom was still in the bathroom. He didn’t even wait for the elevator because he was afraid she’d come running out of the door into the hall, to kiss him or something. He took the stairs.

  In the station, there were some Wildwood kids at the other end of the subway platform whom Jake recognized but didn’t personally know, so he kept to himself. He slunk back into the swarm of morning commuters standing in the center of the platform, which was always overcrowded and also too narrow, flanked as it was by local and express tracks on both sides. Jake hated Ninety-sixth Street. There was no wall to press back against while you waited, and it seemed like you could easily enough be knocked into both gutters, like a bowling alley or something, which was kind of a scary thought. It was only after he actually boarded the train and sat down that he saw the twins swing onto the car as the doors were closing, stockier James wedging it open with his body so that Henry could squeeze himself on board. Henry kind of popped into the center of the car, his entrance a little like that guy Kramer on Seinfeld reruns. He was a bit wild-eyed as he staggered to a halt. He was all long hair and baggy jeans with his boxers sticking out, and he kind of swayed, in a bent-knee karate stance, gaining his balance. The doors hiccupped open again after that and James walked on. James wore pure Abercrombie, a polo shirt with the moose in the corner, distressed jeans, the whole nine yards.

  There were several empty seats, one on either side of Jake and a few across from him. The Dr. Zizmor ads were above the empty seats across the way. Henry loved those signs. “Tighten Skin Without Surgery.” “Tighten Skin with Krazy Glue,” Henry loved to say, and then he’d goof around by pulling back his cheeks and temples with the sides of his hands so that he looked like he was in a wind tunnel. He loved the yellow and orange and green rainbows behind Dr. Zizmor’s bald peanut head. He especially loved to brag about the ads that used to be up, before Jake moved to New York. The proctologist ads. “Call 212 MD-TUSCH.” Henry loved stuff like that. “You should have been there, dude,” Henry loved to say. Because everything was always better, Jake knew, before he’d arrived.

  Jake wanted to point out the flyers to Henry but was afraid to say anything. Dr. Zizmor smiled rigidly down at him from above Henry’s head. Dr. Zizmor’s eyes were too small, like slits. The skin beneath his brows but above his lids hung down over them like theatrical drapes. If he was such an expert, couldn’t he tighten that?

  “Whoa,” said Henry when he saw Jake. “Dude, check out your coiffure.”

  Jake’s hand went up instinctively to feel his buzz cut. He’d forgotten about his hair. Every time he looked in the mirror he didn’t recognize himself, for about a million reasons, this being one of them. Also, the fact that the past two weeks had completely altered him, a little like psychic plastic surgery.

  That, too.

  “Henry,” Jake said.

  “Dude,” said Henry.

  The subway took off and Henry surfed the center of the car. James sat down across from Jake and a little to the right. His backpack sprawled out on the seat next to him.

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said. “I didn’t know. I should have realized, but I didn’t. I’m an idiot,” he said. His voice was kind of shaking when he said it.

  He’d been rehearsing this for some time in his room. It was like the minute he saw Henry, he plugged himself in.

  “You are an idiot,” Henry said.

  Henry looked at his brother, then back to Jake. Then back to James.

  James said, “You forwarded it. You all did, Hen. For all their trash talk, Luke and McHenry, too. I’m the only guy smart enough to do nothing.”

  Henry recoiled a little at this; more than anything, he hated to have his intelligence insulted.

  “Nothing, but jack off to it,” said Henry.

  James gave Henry the finger.

  “I’m not the pedophile in the family,” said James.

  “Excuse me, but the taker of my virginity was two fucking years older than us.”

  “She was a real cougar, bro,” said James, his voice dripping sarcasm. “C’mon, we both know she just didn’t want to go to college with her hymen still intact.”

  No one said anything for a while. Bent-legged, Henry rode the swaying subway car like a skateboard.

  Then Jake said it again. “I mean it, Henry. I am totally, completely sorry.” For a minute, he thought about getting down on the filthy train floor on his knees. He was a freak! An aberration. His voice sort of shook then. God, he thought, please don’t let me cry. Please God, not that, too.

  Maybe Henry heard the vocal tremor, because he turned away from Jake, but spoke to him. Like he couldn’t bear to look him eye to eye. Henry spoke to Jake while staring at his own reflection in the subway window.

  “Dude, I was glad for the three days off.”

  Oh my God, Jake thought, I love Henry! I have never in my life loved anyone more than I love Henry, and I never will again. Not my wife, not my kids, not anybody. This is the most I can humanly love.

  Jake put out his fist, and after a second Henry saw it reflected in the subway window, and turned around and bumped it. Then he swung down onto the seat next to Jake.

  “Three days?” said Jake.

  “Yeah, I’ve been back for like a week.”

  Henry had a week more than Jake outside and in the world. He was so lucky!

  “What’s it like? School. I mean what’s it going to be like to be back?” Jake said. “For me?”

  Henry thought for a moment. His eyebrows were like twin caterpillars crawling across his forehead. They met in the middle and rubbed noses.

  “For you? Well, pretty much for us, everyone was like we were assholes, but also just boneheads. Some girls spit at us in the hall, you know lesbians and feminists, but most everybody else gets it. Nice girls. Sluts.”

  “Daisy’s world-famous,” James said from across the aisle.

  “I know that,” said Jake.

  “Plus, we’ve all had to go to these assemblies on sex and communication, plus Henry’s got shrink sessions—my mom’s furious about that,” James said.

  “She’s going to try to get Dad to pay for it,” Henry said. “Good luck.”

  The raw shock of sunshine. The boys blinked like newborn puppies in the daylight as the train exploded out of the tunnel and rose up onto the elevated line. They were almost out of Manhattan now.

  “You,” said Henry, pointing his finger at Jake, “you’re like either a martyr or a murderer, a creep or a sex fiend, a deviant, a sociopath, or just another casualty. To some you’re like a hero. Zach Bledsoe says you epitomize the burden of the young American male. He thinks you’re the total injured party. ‘A supreme exemplification of the double standard,’ he says, or maybe it’s the reverse double standard?”

  He looked to James then.

  “Beats me,” said James. “I don’t claim to understand Zach Bledsoe.”

  “To some,” said Henry, clearly enjoying his own oratory, “maybe you’re a f
atality or maybe you’re a nasty man-whore. I even heard one girl call you ‘unchivalrous.’ ”

  “Unchivalrous?” said Jake.

  “Yeah, dude,” said Henry. “You know, a cad. You’re a lout, a yob, a boor.”

  “True enough,” Jake said.

  “Who was the girl?” said James, picking his nose. He was bored, but interested.

  “Audrey,” said Henry.

  When Jake got to school it was all a blur of backslapping and glares. One of his teachers, Mr. Carmichael, welcomed him back wholeheartedly when Jake entered the Chem lab.

  “The whole thing has been blown out of proportion, if you ask me, Jake,” said Mr. Carmichael. “You kids are just kids—kids on steroids. The technology put you all on steroids. But nobody asked me, did they? Nobody ever asks me anything. Not my wife, not you students, nobody in this whole goddamn universe gives a good goddamn about what I think or about what I have to say.” Then he handed Jake the ten days’ worth of assignments and handouts he’d missed. No one else was that nice. His Deconstructing America co-teacher, Ms. Hemphill (the other one, the pregnant one, was out having her baby), wouldn’t address him, even when Jake raised his hand. At lunch, in the cafeteria, Jake was a total superstar. Kids crowded around him. Zach Bledsoe pushed through the crowds to sit next to him.

  “What they don’t understand is that we live in a postsexualized world,” Bledsoe said. “You are the embodiment of the contemporary male, sought after, hunted down, and then, once chewed up and spit out, they say you exploited her. Men of the world unite!” said Bledsoe.

  “Shut up,” said James.

  “Postsexual?” said Henry. “Whatever that is, I don’t have it.”

  Everyone laughed. Jake included.

  Zach Bledsoe reddened. His man-boobs shook with rage, or maybe it was excitement, Jake wasn’t sure. You could see them rattling around inside his Jay-Z T-shirt, like hamsters in a cage.

  “You want to know what I think?” said Davis.

  Everyone wanted to know. Everyone always wanted to know what Davis thought; he was such a stand-up guy and everyone liked him.