But I got dressed now in a black turtleneck sweater Mom had bought me the year before. I put on a pair of silver earrings, and I brushed my hair out straight so it reached the small of my back. When I told my dad I was going out with Frank he kissed me on the cheek. He said he was going to call Adele and I thought, Yes, call Adele. Then he asked did I know that the Corvair was the most poorly designed vehicle in the history of the automobile industry?
“I guess that’s what makes it special,” I said.
“It’s prone to spin, since the engine is in the back. Unsafe, they say, at any speed.” Dad smiled, though, glad to see me go out, regardless of the inherent risk of Frank’s “ride.”
Frank drove the Corvair hunched over, his body like a question mark. I liked the red seats, but the heat didn’t work well, and my fingertips were cold even in my gloves. As we drove over the bridge into the downtown strip, we passed another Corvair driver who honked when he saw us. “Part of the club,” Frank said, when I asked if he knew the guy.
We went to Larry’s, a burger place on Main Street that kids like Frank hung out at. A year ago, I wouldn’t have gone in there, probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere with Frank, but now I was one of those kids who floated through school unbound by ordinary rules. The social geography didn’t apply to me; everyone treated me the same. My old friends, Sarah and Carol, had stopped asking me to go out since I never went. I didn’t blame them. They were caring; they called, they stopped over, but I didn’t exist in the way they did. People wanted to help however they could, but there wasn’t any way. Isaac was a little boy, only three years old when he died. She took him with her, like she was going on a shopping trip.
Robert and David, friends of Frank’s, were there at Larry’s, sitting at the bar. Everyone said hey to Frank, and the guys looked at me like they couldn’t quite place me until Frank said, “You guys know Lucy Trask, right?” I thought he went out of his way to use my last name. There was the whiff of tragedy carried in the syllable, a warning to the guys.
“How’s Adele?” David asked. There were twelve kids in David’s family, a sibling in every grade. His sister Beth was in Adele’s year.
“In Vermont,” I said. “Milking cows.” Everyone laughed as though this was a great joke on my part.
“Well, we’re eating,” Frank said, and we left the guys at the bar and went over to one of the vinyl booths in back, carrying our beers. Larry’s used mugs that looked like the real thing but were disconcertingly light, molded plastic.
Our burgers came the way they do at Larry’s—on a huge bun, with chips, and a pale, limp-looking pickle. I picked mine up and said, “Do you think he got a special on these like ten years ago? How do you consistently serve dead pickles?” Frank laughed. His teeth were surprisingly even and white through his beard.
“Did you think it was strange,” Frank asked, “me showing up with my sister, asking about witches?”
“Did you think it was strange,” I asked, “my dad getting sauced in the afternoon?” Frank looked away, and for a moment I thought I’d overestimated his interest in me. Or his general depth as a person.
“One time,” Frank said, “when I was a little kid, I had this kid Benno over. I thought we were real good friends, like best buds. He comes over and we’re just messing around getting something to eat, and my mom gets pissed for some reason. She’s watching her soaps and we’re making too much noise, and she’s just generally in a bad mood, because that’s around the time my dad left, before she met up with my stepdad.” Frank took a bite of burger, chewed, holding one finger up to signal the story wasn’t over. “So my mom gets real annoyed, and says something to me, and I say under my breath, ‘Bitch.’” Frank shook his head, and I gave a little anticipatory chuckle.
“That’s right, she hauls off and slaps me across the face so hard there’s just this mom handprint on my cheek. Well, Benno was out of there. Gotta go, sayonara. He’d never seen shit like that before.”
My mom wasn’t a hitter, I wanted to say; she was something else.
“Candace is my half sister,” Frank added. “Mom’s not so on edge anymore now she’s married to my stepdad. He’s a good guy, helped me get the Corvair.” I told Frank what my dad said about the Corvair, and he smiled again, and showed his teeth, and nodded. “It’s true,” he said. “A Corvair is like a song that’s so bad it’s good.”
“Like ‘Kentucky Bride.’”
“Naw,” Frank said. “That’s actually a good song,” and he shook his head at me. I liked the gentle way he disagreed.
After that, we got back in the Corvair and rode out to Indian Lake and instead of finding a good station, Frank put on an oldies station and for a while we listened to one cheesy old song after another—Captain and Tennille, Wings, Barry Manilow, like this was our theme: bad car, bad songs.
We parked out by the dark lake, and I said to Frank, “All right already with these songs,” and he turned off the radio and kissed me. He held my face in his hands. He took his knit cap off his head, and I realized it was the first time he’d taken it off since he and his sister had come to my house in the afternoon. His hair fell across his eyes. It was light brown, and so fine it wouldn’t lay flat.
“Why are we here?” I asked him, and he pulled away. I didn’t really mean at the lake, but us, why the two of us. He drummed his hands on the steering wheel, then turned the radio back on, this time to a jazz station. He kept it turned down low. Something was playing that sounded like a cello, sounded like a heartbeat. He didn’t answer my question, though, just picked up both my hands and rubbed them between his, as though I had complained of the cold.
The Switch
John’s father was a tall man with wide, womanish hips, who could usually be found in his study, prior to the Switch at least. He’d be huddled over his papers, his weekly cigar an arm’s length away in the ceramic ashtray John had made in third grade. John had designed it just for the cigar, narrow and rounded at the end, for the ashes. Its phallic resemblance was painfully obvious to the sixteen-year-old John, who wished his father would shake the sentimentality that made him ignore the absurdity of using the penile-shaped cigar holder; he wished just as fervently that his father could throw a baseball without provoking snickers from his teammates.
The undeniable proof that his father was not a homosexual, as the cruder of his teammates had postulated, arrived in an unwelcome form. His father was leaving his mother, although she was also leaving him. John wasn’t sure of the sequence of events. Worse, John’s father was leaving his mother for Connie Banks, the mother of John’s classmate, Elizabeth Banks. Elizabeth’s father was now involved with John’s mother, Jessica—they had all always been good friends. It was a colossal mind-fuck.
Elizabeth’s father, Michael, and John’s mom, Jessica, were going to Michael’s home at the Cape. Connie was moving into John and Eric’s house by the river, with Elizabeth and her twin sisters, Audrey and Milly.
When his mother kissed him good-bye, John’s eyes teared up. He wanted her to be happy. He thought she had been. Now she stood on their front porch looking as though she were already by the sea. She looked into the distance as though it were limitless.
Connie was short and blond, not unattractive in John’s opinion, but too shrewd-looking to be called pretty. The twins were red-haired like Elizabeth. One of them, Audrey, had a freckle on her cheek. It was easy to tell them apart, but as they were inseparable, unnecessary.
Connie, John quickly learned, was a morning person. That first morning, she cooked an elaborate breakfast as though she and the girls and John and Eric were an actual family. John ate the better part of a pound of bacon, wondering when Elizabeth would make an appearance. The night before, she had been nearly mute, impressing him. He had been nervous and talky, too confused to register anger.
When Elizabeth sauntered in, still silent, the bacon was gone, and John was getting his coat on. He hoped she would skip breakfast and walk to school with him. Instead, she sat down next
to one of the twins, kissing the girl gingerly on the cheek. Then he noticed something odd about Elizabeth’s appearance. Her hair was unkempt, and she wore a red flannel shirt, untucked, with jeans and desert boots, her usual uniform. But there was a change. She was wearing makeup. Her lips shone with that gloss girls wore, and her pale eyelids had gained a dark, curved line above the lashes. It seemed to him that with that one alteration—that heavy black line—Elizabeth had assaulted her beauty. This self-ruination made Elizabeth suddenly sexy to John. She was porcelain before, and now she was clay.
That night, John’s father and Connie cooked dinner. Connie browned the chicken while John’s father crushed the spices with a mortar and pestle. Connie was still wearing her work clothes—a beige wool pantsuit and bone-colored shoes.
The dining room table was set, complete with flowers. They had usually sat in the kitchen when it was the three of them. Now there was a feast laid out—chicken, rice, raita, and salad topped with cumin seeds, and a bottle of wine. The twins sat across from their mother. Eric, in the seat he preferred for holidays, and other rare occasions when they sat down to a formal dinner. The only thing amiss was that Connie was crying.
She cried silently, with large, steady streams of tears. It was Elizabeth who went to her, pulled her by one arm, and helped her up the stairs. All the while, Connie was compliant. She wept, but made no other display of drunkenness. When Elizabeth returned, she filled the twins’ plates, cut their meat, and sat, with an air of triumph. John’s father cleared his throat. “Sorry, Elizabeth,” Eric said with forced cheer. “I’m afraid I got your mother tipsy.”
Elizabeth helped herself to more chicken. “Whatever,” she said. “It’s nothing we haven’t seen before.”
John’s father put down his fork. Drinking wasn’t something he talked about. Some people drank, some didn’t. Eric did. After work, he had met Connie at Grand Central, and they had taken the train home together. It had been fun. They each had their own mini-bottle of Chardonnay. “We all drink,” Eric said.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “She drinks when she isn’t happy,” she said, somewhat meanly. John stared at his plate. But Elizabeth went on eating, her expression slightly superior, her eyeliner darkly smudged, so she looked to John like an improbable cross between the austerely beautiful actress Katherine McAdams, and the pop star Zoey.
Elizabeth stepped out of her jeans and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. It was a Saturday night, but she hadn’t felt like going out, though she didn’t really like being alone in John and Eric’s big house by the river. The view from her window was vacant. There was a full moon, and it was eerily light. A park stretched between the house and the river, and in late November the view had become stark.
She missed her old room on Southgate Avenue, and the plain way they used to live. Now the Switch had made her a conspicuous person. Even the teachers looked at her, she felt, with a combination of sympathy and curiosity. John and Eric’s house was, she felt, symbolic of the Switch. There were too many rooms in it. There was excess without the feeling of luxury.
The only thing about the Switch that wasn’t abhorrent was John. She had been touched that morning when he offered to take the twins for a walk down to Reynold’s Field. She could see he understood why she preferred to babysit rather than go out. The twins seemed determined to remain unaware of the seismic shift beneath them. They had each other for protection.
It was eleven when she heard the front door open. She assumed it was Eric and Connie, back from dinner in the city, but then she heard the solitary steps on the back stairs. Elizabeth wondered why John used that staircase when his own room was closer to the front. It was on impulse that she opened her door, just as he reached the landing.
He seemed to drag himself toward her. He raised his hands as though his arms were heavy, and she wondered if he was drunk. Then he was standing in front of her, his blue, heavy-lidded eyes glued to her own, his slightly down-turned mouth twisted with determination. She had somehow missed this in him, this lust that was now so clearly displayed on his face. As soon as she took note of his desire, her own body reciprocated with a lurch.
He pulled her hair out of the elastic and let it fall over her face, he grabbed her chin, and kissed her fiercely. She laughed. It was like watching someone open a gift, only she had made herself the gift. She felt his delight in her on his skin, like an electric pulse. When he entered her, he spoke to her for the first time that evening. “Holy shit, Elizabeth,” was all he said.
The next morning, when Elizabeth came down to breakfast, Milly was at the table, crying, and Audrey had her head on her plate, her hair fanned around her. John leaned against the kitchen counter, looking bemused.
“What’s this?” Elizabeth said.
Audrey lifted her head. “Mill wants to go home, but Mom said no.”
Elizabeth sat down. “What’s up, Mill?”
“No one said we had to stay here forever.”
Connie’s face went pale. “Sometimes,” she said, “even grown-ups can’t be sure what’s best, and we have to try and see. That’s what Eric and I are doing, trying and seeing.”
Milly continued to cry, and Elizabeth took the child onto her lap. “What do you think, Liz?” Audrey said. “Don’t you want to go home?”
“I don’t think anyone is taking a vote,” Elizabeth answered, and John snickered.
After lunch, everyone filed into Eric’s study for a “family meeting.” Milly’s and Audrey’s legs stuck out in front of them like matchsticks in their grown-up sized chairs, and Elizabeth and John sat on the sofa, careful to keep their legs from pressing against each other.
Although Eric sat upright, and he and Connie both gazed at the children softly, Elizabeth could sense their satisfaction. They were adults. They could do whatever they wanted.
Eric rubbed his hands together. “I know this is hard for all of you. Change is a difficult thing, and these grown-up changes are hard for children to understand.”
“We feel it’s important for you guys to express yourselves, say what you feel,” Connie added.
“That’s why we think it would be good if Connie and the girls moved back to Southgate while Michael and Jessica are at the Cape, for part of the week, so it feels more normal for you all.” Eric looked around the room for the kids’ approval, but no one said anything.
“How will we know when they’ll be here and when they won’t?” John asked.
“We’re still working on the details,” Eric said. “We think during the school week, they’ll go to Southgate, at least until winter.”
“Michael and Jessica will be back by Christmas,” Eric said. “Then we’ll have a better sense of how things will sort themselves out.”
As Elizabeth packed her things, John knocked on the door. He sat down on her bed. It was as if what they’d done had broken the spell that had been put on their parents, and left the two of them bewitched instead.
“I guess there won’t be a repeat performance anytime soon?” John asked.
Elizabeth went to the window. There wasn’t much time before her father would come back to town with Jessica, bringing with their union another disorienting wave of parental dysfunction. “It won’t help anything,” Elizabeth said. “Unless they found out and it scared the shit out of them.”
In December, Elizabeth’s father moved back into the house on Southgate, and Jessica returned to John and Eric in the big house on Broadway.
The Switch wasn’t working, and both couples decided to experiment, now, with reunion.
People at school assumed John and Elizabeth’s relationship was a brother-sister bond. When they ate together, or sat on the bleachers after football games, no one thought anything of it, though they were an odd pair. John had always been a partygoer, a football player, while Elizabeth was part of the artsy crowd that hung out downtown at the Teashop. But the Switch and its undoing had conferred a special status on them. Like Robert Ciccone, who had fallen down an elevator shaft, and had an ar
m amputated the year before, Elizabeth and John had been the victims of life-altering circumstances.
One night, when his parents were out, John and Elizabeth climbed up the stairs and ducked into the guestroom Elizabeth had occupied during the weeks of the Switch. As she wriggled out of her jeans, he tackled her onto the bed, then lay on top of her, staring into her face. She traced his downward curved lips with her fingers.
“Have you told anyone?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “You?” He kissed her neck.
“Everyone would go nuts.”
“Yeah,” he said, “though we’re the only ones with any right to be in love.”
They had never said these words to each other, but she felt no surprise when he acknowledged it. Of course, that was what had happened. She had fallen in love with John, with his compassion, his down-turned mouth, and the way he always seemed dumber than her, but wasn’t.
She wanted to tell him how she felt about his body. How when he covered her, she could exist in both her body and her mind in a way she never could at any other time, except sometimes when she played cello, when she played exceptionally well, without thinking about what she was doing, and the notes, even the difficult ones, came without effort. She thought that was where the grown-ups had gotten it wrong. They had tried too hard. Her parents were careful with each other now, in a way that made them both seem sad. John had mentioned something similar. “There’s an air of apology,” he’d said.
When Elizabeth awoke, the sun was streaming through the bedroom window. “Oh, shit,” John said, “it’s fucking nine o’clock.”
“Oh God,” Elizabeth said, “my parents must be going insane! And my car’s outside. Your parents must have seen it.”
Nothing Real Volume 2 Page 4