Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

by Sweany, Brian;

  Mom smiles. “You give him to me right now, Henry David Fitzpatrick!”

  I hand Jack over. He stirs again. Mom whispers baby talk to him. For the first time I see Jack open his eyes. They’re that black-blue color all newborn babies have. I swear he already recognizes Mom. What do they call it when they hand the baby to the mother the moment he’s out of the womb and breathing? Imprinting. All the baby needs in those first moments of life is a breath of fresh air and the awareness someone loves him. Does that ever change? And if it does, should it? Why the compulsion to abandon this beautiful simplicity, all for the pretext of “growing” up?

  Dad approaches the couch, sits next to Mom. He runs his hand through her hair. “You seem to be in good hands. I’m going to take my dad out for a bite to eat, maybe swing by the shop. I’ll pick up Jeanine on my way home.”

  “Sounds good, honey. And hey…”

  Mom grabs her husband by the collar, pulls him to her, and kisses him full on the lips. He kisses her back. They separate. “I love you, John.”

  “I love you, too, my beautiful bride.” Dad gives Mom another kiss on the forehead, then kisses Jack on the top of his head. He gets up, squeezing my shoulder. He makes for the door. “Hey, George, let’s go!”

  Grandpa stands up. “Right behind you, son.”

  Jack is antsy, wiggling in Mom’s lap. “I think my little boy is getting hungry.”

  Awkward silence. Mom stares at me. I stare at Mom. Mom looks down at her breasts. Then at me. Then at the ceiling. Then at her breasts. Then at me.

  “Oh, hungry. Yeah, I’ll just go into the other room and, uh, do…something.”

  Mom shakes her head. “It’s not that big of a deal, Hank. Just turn around, give me a minute to get situated.”

  I was ten years old the first time I saw a bare adult woman’s breast. It happened when we were living in Louisville. My old babysitter, Lisa Goebel, had come down to visit from Indianapolis with her infant daughter. I was sitting on our tan sectional, the one with the sofa bed that could have doubled for a medieval torture device. My new favorite television show had just started, an Indiana Jones-inspired series called Tales of the Gold Monkey. I liked it because of its theme music and the fact the hero, Jake Cutter, had a dog who wore an eye patch because Jake had lost the dog’s fake eye in a poker game. Jake and his one-eyed dog flew around in an amphibious airplane called The Goose. The opening credits started to roll. Pan out to The Goose flying over the horizon and the words Tales of the Gold Monkey emblazoned across the television set, and then suddenly there was a bare breast flopping into my field of vision, no more than five feet to the left of me. One eye on The Goose. One eye on… The Nipple.

  Lisa might have well been an alien. Mom told me later, “She was doing what they call ‘breastfeeding.’” Up until that point I had assumed all milk came from cows. And to think I was once upset at the prospect of attending a public high school and not continuing my education in my parochial cocoon.

  “I’m ready, Hank.”

  I turn around. Jack is somewhere beneath the mammary shroud running from Mom’s chin to her waist. “Mom.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What would Jack have been named if he was a girl?”

  “Oh, now you’re entertaining that possibility?”

  “Nope. Just gloating.”

  “Not that it matters…” Mom adjusts her shroud. “But she would have been Caitlin.”

  I’m a goddamn prophet.

  I assume Dad’s spot on the couch. We watch the last half hour of Guiding Light together, just like when I was a kid. I used to watch all the CBS soaps: The Young and the Restless, As the World Turns, Search for Tomorrow before it moved to NBC, even Capitol, which CBS later cancelled and replaced with The Bold and the Beautiful. David Hasselhoff was Snapper Foster first in my mind, Michael Knight second. And Meg Ryan would always be that blonde, doe-eyed Betsy Stewart in a negligee making love to her swarthy Greek husband Frank Andropoulos on their wedding night.

  “Hey, Hank.”

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “Did you know a sixteen- and a twelve-year-old gave birth last week in Empire Ridge Regional Hospital?”

  “Wow.”

  “Babies having babies. It’s scary.”

  “Yep, scary.”

  “When you seeing Laura?”

  “She’s coming back in March. Bucknell has that weird winter-term schedule, so they get like a month off for spring break.”

  “It’s been awhile since she’s been home,” Mom says.

  “Since she left in the fall,” I affirm. “She’s been having trouble with the Calais and didn’t want to chance it with a cross-country drive. I guess her parents made it out there for Christmas or something.”

  “Don’t tell your father about her car. He takes that stuff personally, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “What do you plan on saying to her when she gets home?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not blind. I see things. You and Beth are, well…”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Have you told Laura?”

  “Nope. I plan on ending it with us when she gets in town. I think I owe her at least the courtesy of telling her face-to-face.”

  “You are your father’s son, Hank. Always the gentleman.”

  “Hate to burst your bubble, Mom, but you might be the first woman on the planet to use my name and the word ‘gentleman’ in the same sentence.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself,” she says, holding Jack up in the air. “Here, take this guy off my hands for a while, would you?”

  “My pleasure,” I say.

  Guiding Light ends. I lay on Dad’s couch with my baby brother on my chest. Jack lets out a loud, satisfied burp. We fall asleep, our chests breathing in unison.

  Chapter twenty-five

  “Hello?”

  I open the front door. The lights inside the house are dimmed. Gloria Estefan is playing on the stereo. I close the door behind me.

  “I’m in here, Hank.”

  Although we mutually agreed we could see other people, Laura and I have talked on the phone almost every night. Within days of leaving Empire Ridge, the tone in her voice changed. After a few weeks, she was being suggestive, playful even, teasing me over the phone. She started sending me photographs—one of her in her dorm room wearing a miniskirt, one of her posing at a Halloween Party dressed like Susanna Hoffs, lead singer of The Bangles—an eternal object of my self-stimulation—and one of her dressed up like Santa Claus at a Christmas Party. I could see the color and the fullness coming back into Laura’s face. With each successive round of photos, I thanked the starch-filled menu of the Bucknell cafeteria for resurrecting the girl I fell in love with.

  Laura came home from school today. I haven’t seen her since we said goodbye in August, more than eight months ago. Her parents are out of town for the weekend, so she invited me over. I know going to see Laura will lead to trouble.

  So I go to see Laura.

  She’s in her room. I can smell the Obsession perfume from the front doorway. I walk down the hall and open the door.

  Beneath the mottled glow of candlelight, Laura is lying on the bed in nothing but her bra and panties. This night is poised to be fantastic.

  Or not.

  “Hello, stranger.”

  “Wow,” I say. Laura is as close to buff as I’ve ever seen her. She’s never carried her weight quite like this. She looks maybe five pounds heavier, but it’s all muscle.

  “Really?” Laura says.

  Stop staring, Hank. I shake my head, trying to break the hypnosis. “Laura, we…we can’t do this. Not right now.”

  “Then when?” Her tone is desperate. “Do you know how long I’ve been picturing this night?”

  “Eight months?”

&n
bsp; “Longer than that.”

  “Well, if you’ve waited this long…” I say this because at this point sarcasm is all I have to offer.

  “Hank, come on.”

  “I haven’t seen you for eight months, Laura. How about getting through first and second gear before we go straight to fifth?”

  “I’m in a happy place now. I’m ready. We’re ready, Hank.” Laura jumps off the bed and grabs me. Her kisses are rough. I wish I didn’t kiss her back, but I do. I feel guilty. Stopping the kiss—stopping us—is harder than I thought it would be.

  “Laura.” I push her away. “I said we can’t do this, and I meant it.”

  She starts to cry. “What’s your problem, Hank?”

  I cross to the other side of the room, desperate to put some distance between me and the bare skin of a girl I would kill to make love to just one more time.

  “There’s no easy way for me to say this, Laura.”

  “Just say it.”

  “I think I’m breaking up with you.”

  Laura snatches her robe hanging off the back of her bedroom door. She opens the door and points me into the hallway. “Leave!”

  “Wait a second.”

  “I said get out!”

  “Not until you let me explain.”

  “Explain?” Laura shuts the door again. She folds her arms, glaring at me. She’s reading my eyes, my standoffishness. She knows. She fucking knows! She opens her mouth. “It’s Beth.”

  “Laura, I wanted to tell you before you heard it from someone else.”

  “Beth?”

  “I don’t even know how serious it is at this point.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe that?”

  Laura sits on her bed. I sit down beside her. We listen to B-side Gloria Estefan, not saying anything.

  “Laura, I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you right now, but I am very, very sorry.”

  She closes her eyes, rests her head on my shoulder and sighs. “It’s my own fault.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth. I drove you away months ago. I guess, after we really started talking on the phone, I thought you wanted to make this work.”

  “Maybe a part of me does…uh, I mean did. I’ve enjoyed our phone calls, too. And I love getting your letters. But you were so far away, and I just—”

  “You just fell out of love with me?”

  “No, Laura. You’re my first love. A part of me will always love you.”

  She props her chin on my shoulder and gives me a smile. She wipes her eyes. “I hate that fucking line, just so you know.”

  “It’s not a line. You were my first love. You were the first girl who broke my heart…”

  “And the first girl you got pregnant.”

  “Well, uh…yeah, that too.”

  An awkward silence, which Laura recognizes. “Too soon for jokes?”

  “Yeah, probably.” I’m smiling now. “My point is, aside from my family, you’re the first real thing I’ve ever had in my life. A real love. A real breakup. A real make up. Twenty years from now, Patrick Swayze’s ‘She’s Like the Wind’ will come on the radio, and it’ll take me right back to that sixteen-year-old boy crying himself to sleep because he can’t imagine life without this one particular girl and because picturing her in the arms of another guy breaks his heart…over and over again.”

  Laura’s eyes lock onto mine. She reaches up to my face. She puts her fingers on my mouth, tracing my lips. “Patrick Swayze?”

  “The one and only,” I say.

  “Thank you for saying that,” Laura says, kissing me.

  I kiss her back, and I don’t feel guilty about it. We kiss for a while. Her robe stays on. My hands behave. The moment is very sweet—nothing more, but nothing less either.

  Laura shows me to the door. We hold hands as we walk through her house. “How are your parents doing?”

  “Great.”

  “They still hate me?”

  “No, they turned the corner with you a while ago.”

  “At least somebody did.”

  Her tone breaks my heart. “Most of their scorn pretty much gravitates around yours truly these days,” I say.

  Laura bites on the misdirection. “Don’t tell me they’re still pissed about you getting arrested.”

  “No, at least not as much as they were six months ago. My dad saw it in his heart to reduce my sentence from ‘as I live and breathe, you will not have a social life’ to a couple months.”

  “Your parents are realistic. They know the difference between having a couple beers at a party and killing somebody.”

  I think we both register the unintentional allusion to the abortion, if only for a split second. I wonder if it will always be in the back of our minds? Will it always hurt? Or will the pain be ephemeral and then linger on as a harmless but permanent scratch?

  I have a couple of these scratches, some more visible than others.

  “I think the fact I’m a minor is what really minimized the damage. It’s off my record once I turn eighteen.”

  “And they can’t print your name in the paper, can they?”

  “Nope,” I say. “My byline read something like, ‘Minor, seventeen, Empire Ridge, illegal consumption, one-oh-seven a.m., three-eight-oh-nine Skipjack Road, by Empire Ridge Police Department, released to parents.’”

  “Something like that?” Laura asks. “You saved that paper, didn’t you?”

  “Saved it?” I say. “I fucking framed it.”

  “People will still talk, you know.” This time Laura’s allusion is intentional. A final nod to our shared love. Our shared tragedy.

  “Yeah, but we can deal with that.” I say we for Laura’s benefit. She smiles again.

  “And how’s little Jack doing?”

  “Still the greatest gift this world has ever given me.”

  Laura reaches over with her free hand and rubs my arm. She opens the front door, leans in, and kisses me one more time. “Give one of those kisses to Jack for me, okay?”

  I smile; Laura’s taste still on my lips. I don’t know what it is about this request that hits me so hard. With everything going through her head, with everything we’ve been through, she asks me to give my little brother a kiss? Did that really just fucking happen? It might be the most selfless thing she’s ever said.

  “Goodbye, Laura,” is all I can muster at this point.

  She runs her hand down my arm and squeezes my hand. “Bye, Hank.”

  I sit in my Subie. I struggle to put the key in the ignition. I start the car, pull out of Laura’s driveway.

  A part of me wants to turn around. Wants to put down the fishing pole, walk into her bedroom, and scoop her up in my arms. We’ll cry each other to sleep and start locking her bedroom door again, even when her parents are home, and they’ll still pretend they don’t notice.

  I keep thinking about that last kiss, wondering if I’ve done the right thing.

  Chapter twenty-six

  Beth is waiting for me, sitting on her windowsill. I cross her front lawn and don’t even bother going into her house. She’s wearing nothing but my Empire Ridge High School letter jacket. No bra. No panties.

  We kiss. She grabs my left hand, pulling it under the jacket, while at the same time grabs my right hand and pushes it down between her legs. Her parents are asleep in their bedroom across the hall. Dr. and Mrs. Burke are heavy sleepers. But tonight, Beth’s screaming wakes them up.

  I don’t know if I expected screaming. But right after Beth grabbed my hands, and right before she tried to push my fingers inside her, I told her Laura and I were still in love and staying together, so screaming is what I got.

  Chapter twenty-seven

  We’ve been in Panama City Beach, Florida, for three days. It’s rain
ing, again. Hatch is in the middle of throwing another party in our room attended by fifty of our not-so-closest friends. A medley of Guns N’ Roses, Def Leppard, and Mötley Crüe blares out of the condo’s blown speakers. I stand outside on our balcony, inhaling the ocean air. It took me a few days to get used to the smell, that blast of dead fish so shocking to the Midwestern nose, now just a pleasant salty scent. I lean over the railing. No one is on the beach.

  Laura comes up behind me, taking my hand. She’s wearing a florescent-yellow bikini covered up by one of my white T-shirts. “Come on,” she says.

  “Where we going?”

  “Some place a little more private.”

  When you’re sharing a three hundred-square-foot space with fifty people, privacy means locking yourself in the bathroom.

  I shut the bathroom door behind me and turn to my girlfriend. She’s already taken off the T-shirt. I grab her by the waist, kiss her on the lips. We take off the rest of our clothes. I notice Laura’s tan lines, which appear as an upside down triangle below her waist and two milky-white crescent shapes rimming the bottom of each breast.

  “You’re getting some sun.” I squeeze her breasts, more playful than sexual.

  Laura pushes my hands away. “Stop it.”

  She still has a complex about her breasts, thinking they’re saggy. Her low self-esteem is apparently drunk-proof.

  “You should really show those things off more,” I say.

  “Whatever, Hank.” She watches as I remove my shirt. “You’re the one with the nice boobies.”

  I have a thing for calves. Laura has a thing for pectoral muscles. “Can you please not call them boobies?”

  “What do you want me to call them?”

  I step out of my swim trunks. “How about pecs?”

  “Okay, you’re the one with the nice pecs.” Laura pulls back the shower curtain, stepping into the tub. She lies back and spreads her legs.

  I step into the tub, but Laura raises her hand to stop me. “Wait a second,” she says.

  “What?”