The Vast Fields of Ordinary

by Nick Burd

  “Jenny?” I said.

  The word came out a garbled mess. My stomach made a noise that seemed distantly related to the sound her name had made, and before I knew it I was vomiting into the mulch.

  “Don’t be scared,” I said, wiping my mouth. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I wanna help you. I wanna help them find you.”

  I collapsed onto the lawn. The sharp branches of the bush scraped my head. There was a loud chirping noise, and one of the last things I thought before passing out was that it wasn’t coming from a cricket. It was coming from her. She was curled into a ball, farther back in the bushes where I couldn’t see. She was making the noise in her throat and glowing from the inside.

  Chapter 12

  It was my father who found me. He was kicking my leg. Hard.

  “Dade Patrick Hamilton, get your ass up.”

  I could smell liquor and vomit and soil and spices from my mother’s herb garden. I lifted my head and put a hand to my cheek. A thick stickiness mixed with pieces of mulch.

  “That’s right,” my father said. “Wake up, kid. You and I are gonna have a long talk.”

  I slid backward out of the narrow space under the bushes where I’d passed out. The sun was so fucking bright. It seemed to be as much to blame for my pounding headache as the previous night’s booze. The blades of grass were cool and sharp on my feet. My shoes were gone. When had that happened?

  “Jesus Christ,” my father said when I stood. “Look at you.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Look at me.”

  “Who told you that you could shave your head?”

  “Well, I would’ve asked you, but you haven’t been home. You’ve been out. And about. Out and about, as they say.” I was swaying back and forth a bit and my words felt misshapen. I think I was technically still drunk. He gave me a firm palm to the shoulder, a weird sort of frat boy shove.

  “Get your ass upstairs, young man, and clean yourself up. Then I want you downstairs in the kitchen, and your mother and I are going to have a very long, very severe talk with you.” He went back inside and left me there in the yard, basically lobotomized and in a heavy amount of physical pain. My head. My fucking head.

  I showered and went down to the kitchen. My mother and father were at the table, each with cups of coffee, which somehow made the whole thing seem like an intervention.

  “Food World called,” my mother said. “You were supposed to be there this morning at eight?”

  “Oh. Shit. Yeah.”

  “I told them you were sick.” She leaned closer to me.

  “What the hell has been going on?” my father blurted. “I leave the house for a few days and suddenly my kid is acting like he needs to go into AA.”

  “I’ve been under a lot of stress.”

  “What kind of stress?” he cried. “How can you be under any stress? What in the hell do you have to be unhappy about? I’ll tell you what I have to be unhappy about—”

  “Tell me what you have to be unhappy about, Dad.”

  “I’m unhappy about the fact that you’re obviously making terrible life decisions, that you’re obviously drinking too much, that you’re probably using drugs—”

  “I know he’s using drugs, Ned. His room smells like a rap video.”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked.

  “It means that there are going to be some big changes around here,” my father said. “And I don’t care if you’re only going to be here for another month. I have no qualms about making this month the worst of your entire life.”

  “Obviously, Dad. We all know you have no problems making anyone miserable.”

  “Dade, don’t talk to your father like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. It’s disrespectful.”

  “Who cares. You have to earn respect. Isn’t that what you always say, Dad?”

  My father’s jaw dropped and the look in his eyes suggested that his anger level had reached new heights.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” he finally said.

  My mother said, “Ned, I don’t think—”

  “No. I want to hear what this little smart-ass has to say.”

  “You’ve sucked all summer, Dad,” I said. “Admit it. You’ve started seeing this woman, and you’re expecting Mom and me to just be okay with it, and it’s not fair. I don’t know how you’ve convinced yourself that you can just be gone all the time with Vicki and think that everything will just go on like normal. I’m not the fuckup, Dad. You are. I’m fine.”

  “Dade,” my mother said. “Fine is not the word I would use to describe you, considering the state you were in forty minutes ago. Do you know how scared I was when I looked outside and saw you lying on the ground? I thought you’d been killed or attacked by something.”

  “This isn’t about me passing out in the bushes.”

  My father said, “Well, what is it about then?”

  “It’s about a lot of things. It’s about your and mom’s problems and how they’re affecting me and how you don’t realize that. Or you don’t care. One or the other.”

  “Dade, the issues with me and your father are between him and me. They have nothing to do with you.”

  “They have everything to do with me!” I said loudly. “I can’t believe we’re spending my final days in this household like this. Mom, I know you’re miserable. And Dad, I don’t know about you. I have no idea what’s going on your head.”

  There was a pause in the conversation. My mother gazed at the hydrangeas in the middle of the table, her lips slightly parted as if at any moment she was going to start telling the flowers what they were, explaining their function on the planet. My father stared out at the backyard, his body jiggling slightly from the way he was bouncing his leg under the table. It was a nervous habit of his, something that always made him look like a kid. It coupled well with his momentary speechlessness.

  Then I said it.

  “Mom and Dad, I’m gay.”

  My mother sat up a little bit straighter. Her lips were moving, but she couldn’t find the words. My dad shook his head and looked at his lap. Of all the moments, this is the one where our house chose to be silent. No air conditioner kicking on. No ice tumbling in the freezer. No barking dog or Jehovah’s Witness ringing the bell. No telephone call or Food World commercial with its annoying jingle. Nobody said anything for a long time and then I said, “Tell me it’s okay. Tell me that it doesn’t matter.”

  My dad kept bouncing his leg and shaking his head to himself.

  “Tell me it’s okay. That’s been my biggest fear. That it won’t be okay. I need to know that it’ll be okay.”

  My mom said to no one in particular, “I don’t know.”

  “I knew,” my dad said. “I always knew. I hoped I was wrong, but apparently I wasn’t. I knew.”

  “Tell me it’s okay,” I pleaded.

  “It’s okay,” said my mother. She was trying to smile, trying to act like this wasn’t what it was. “It’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. Do you have a special friend?”

  “We talked about it, Peggy. Many times. Don’t act like this is a surprise.”

  “A special friend?” I said. “Like a disabled kid I play baseball with?”

  “Watch your tone with your mother, young man.”

  “Talking about it is one thing,” she said, getting teary eyed. God, it sucks seeing your mom cry. It’s gotta be one of the worst things in the world.

  I said, “Don’t be sad, Mom.”

  She got up and stood beside me and held me against her chest. A whimper escaped her mouth. I wondered how present she was in the moment, if the significance of the moment had been blurred by any number of pills that she’d taken that morning. Or maybe she was far from the moment but could see it and feel how far away she was from it and that’s why she was crying. Or maybe she really cared.

  “Peggy, let him go.”

  “I love you, Dade,” she said softly. She was speaking into the to
p of my head. Her hair fell around me, touched my ears and the tip of my nose.

  “Peggy, let him go.”

  “Mom . . .”

  I noticed my father had stopped bouncing his leg, and somehow the energy of the room had shifted. He wasn’t looking at either of us. He was just staring out at the yard. He was done with this conversation. But my mother and I stayed like that for a bit longer. It felt good to touch my mother, to be touched by her. It woke up something inside me that was linked to before I was born. It was like my body could remember being inside her and kept reminding itself that it didn’t have to be afraid.

  After I saw Jenny, it was hard to think about anything else. I kept thinking I saw her everywhere. She was every little kid at Food World. Every late-night noise belonged to her. She was coming up the stairs, walking down the hall to hover at my bedroom door. I was tempted to blame it on the alcohol, but it was all too real.

  You saw her, I kept telling myself. That was her.

  I dreamt about her, but even in my dreams she didn’t want to be found. I’d be following her down some street that was my street but not my street, and I’d ask her where she was, what it all meant. But she kept her back to me and just moved forward. I could never catch up. It was useless to try. That Tuesday after I first saw her, I made Lucy go with me to the Riviera, the old theater on the south side of town where Alex had said someone had seen her. She hadn’t appeared again by my pool, and the Riviera seemed as good a place as any to find her.

  We sat in the back row of the balcony. It was an older theater, gorgeous and grand, and from where we sat it seemed like we were floating above everything. When we walked in, the film had already started. It was some weird black-and-white French film with people sitting in a room and flinging nonsense dialogue back and forth. There were individuals scattered amongst seats down below, all slouched low and clearing their throats during the movie’s quieter moments. A few of them were even smoking, the clouds from their cigarettes climbing and twisting in the light from the projector. One of the girls in the film was a gorgeous black girl with heavy eye shadow.

  “Why the sudden interest in foreign cinema?” Lucy said quietly as she opened the bag of gummy bears she’d bought at the front counter.

  “Just because.” I kept looking around the balcony. There was a college-aged couple a few rows behind us making out, but that was it. It was a Tuesday afternoon and the theater was fairly empty. There was no ghostly girl anywhere.

  “How are the ’rents?” Lucy asked.

  “Good,” I said. “It felt good to finally tell them. My dad already suspected I was gay. Which is fine. It’s true, so who cares. It feels weird to have it out there, though. Like, where do we go from here? In some ways it’s like they have to get to know me all over again.”

  “Well, congrats on coming out,” she said. “That’s a big deal.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “No one’s said anything about it since. I love the whole if we don’t talk about it, it’ll go away way of thinking.”

  “Parents. Can’t live with ’em, wouldn’t exist without them.”

  I nodded slowly and said, “Lucy, I need to tell you something.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “It is.”

  “Serious it away, Mr. Serious.”

  “You know Jenny Moore, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “The missing girl.”

  I paused. “I saw her.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “I saw her. In my backyard.”

  “Were you on something?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, I drank too much after my date with Alex, but this was so real. Lucy, I saw her.”

  She let out a sigh. “Dade, I hate to say it, but you sound crazy.”

  “Lucy, you have to believe me.”

  She stared straight ahead into the flickering glow of the giant screen. Her mouth moved slowly as she chewed on her candy. Someone who didn’t know her as well might have thought she wasn’t paying attention, but I knew she was actually thinking.

  She turned to me. “Dade, either you’re the most fucked-up guy on the face of the earth or the most special. I think that more and more every day.”

  “Um, thanks, I think.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “You believe me, though, right?” I asked. I needed her to believe me. For some reason I thought that if she believed me, then I was sane, but if she didn’t, then I was crazy. It was all on her.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. “If you need me to, I will. I trust you. But this is a stretch. You gotta realize that, right?”

  I sighed and fell back into my seat. I hadn’t realized that I’d been pitched toward her, practically falling at her feet.

  “People have seen her here,” I said. “That’s why I wanted to come.”

  “But what does that mean?” she asked. “Why would she choose you? Why would she choose anyone? Does this mean she’s dead? I don’t get it.”

  On the screen a man stood up from his chair and lunged toward the black girl. She backed away dramatically. At first it looked like she was going to start crying, but then she let out a laugh.

  I said, “I’ve asked myself that a hundred times since it happened. I have no idea. It scares me to think about it, though. To be associated with her.”

  “Do you think she’s trying to tell you something?”

  The thought brought a bowling ball feeling of sick to my stomach. It was completely possible that she was trying to tell me something, and it was hard to imagine that it could be anything good. I wondered about all the other people who’d claimed to have seen her. Had they really? And if so, did she talk to them?

  “I can’t talk about this,” I said. “Forget I said anything.”

  “Dade—”

  “No. Seriously, Lucy. It’s not you. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re a good friend.” I covered my eyes. “You listened. That’s all I asked for, but now we gotta switch the subject. In fact, can we go?”

  “Yeah, sweetie,” she said, standing. “Let’s go.”

  The walls of the theater hall were covered with red velvet wallpaper and the floor was worn black linoleum. I felt dizzy as we took the grand staircase to the foyer. I couldn’t feel my legs, and I didn’t want to look down for fear that I’d see they weren’t there. So instead I looked up at the chandeliers. They were huge and ornate. They looked like sculptures of sea urchins made of crystal and light.

  When we were outside, I looked around at the parking lot, at the sky. I took in the dirt and shit smell of the Midwest air, the stuff coming in from the patches of farmland just a couple of miles up the road. I wanted to see her right then. I wanted Jenny Moore to appear to me at that moment, to tell me what it all meant.

  There was nothing to do, so we drove around town. There wasn’t much talking, just singing over the wind as it came through the windows. I let Lucy drive. It felt strange to be slouched in my own passenger seat, like I was witnessing a scene of my life from someone else’s perspective, watching someone else navigate without a destination in mind.

  “Let’s go to Taco Taco,” I suddenly said. “If he’s there, you can meet him.”

  “I get to meet him?” she said. “I finally get to meet the famous Alex Kincaid?”

  “Yes. You get to meet him.”

  “Hurrah!”

  “But you have to be cool. We have to be really, really cool.”

  “Are you saying I’m not? Dade, I am the coolest person you have ever met in your entire life. Do I need to show you my music collection again? Do I need to take you to a better, gayer gay bar? Fuck this Alex kid. I’m so cooler than he is.”

  “You’re not. Trust me. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Few people are as cool as Alex Kincaid.”

  “Well, if I weren’t a lesbian, his name alone would turn me on. But that’s not enough.”

  “I know, right?” I said. “He totally lives up to the hotness of his name.”

 
“You’re in love.”

  “What?”

  “You’re trying to play it cool. And you’re doing a good job of it, actually, which makes me proud. It means you’re making progress. But I can feel it coming off you. You love him.”

  “It’s not love,” I said. “I don’t believe you can fall in love so fast. I think you have to build it.”

  “Wow, how mature,” Lucy said. “Dade Hamilton’s growing up.”

  We rolled into the parking lot of Taco Taco. The strip mall lights had malfunctioned and were flickering wildly, making the whole parking lot look like an empty dance floor. Lucy parked near the door. Alex was behind the counter and Jay was out in the dining area. There was no one else around, and they were tossing a foam football back and forth.

  “Is that him?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Behind the counter.”

  “He’s cute. Total sexy loser.”

  “Don’t say he’s a loser. He’s not a loser. He’s a good guy.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “I do. But still.”

  “Sensitive.”

  “What now?” I asked.

  “What do you mean what now?”

  “Should I go in?”

  “Um, yeah. We should both go in.”

  The door gave a little buzz when we walked in. It was barely audible over the heavy metal they were blaring over the speakers. For a second they didn’t acknowledge our presence. Alex finished throwing a pass toward Jay, then he looked over and noticed us and his face lit up with this magical smile, and for a moment I thought that maybe Lucy was right. As strange as it sounded, maybe I really did love this boy.

  “Well, well, well,” he said over the music. “Look who it is.”

  “Hey, it’s Dave!” Jay called out.

  I could tell he knew better, so I didn’t bother correcting him. Both of them were grinning stupidly with bloodshot eyes. Lucy yelled, “You guys look like you’ve been smoking pot all night.”