Unreliable

by Lee Irby

  Unless…

  The idea is ridiculous, but I’ll admit to harboring the ultimate Hail Mary. I’m doomed at Notting College, professionally, personally, and legally, and I’d never have to return to Ithaca (the opposite of Odysseus) if Leigh Rose and I were to set off for, say, Paris. She in effect would become my Circe whose palace I’d never leave.

  No! A thousand times no! I curse myself for even thinking that her money can save me. But what other choice do I have? Once I get fired from the college, no one will hire me—not even a preschool. And I’m qualified to do nothing else.

  The shower washes off none of the guilt. As I stand dripping with a towel hitched around my waist, I realize only one person can deliver me from my current torment, and so I call her.

  Of course Lola doesn’t answer, and again I can’t help but hear that infernal tone as I imagine her staring at her phone and letting my call slip by. Why should she answer? She has nothing to lose and everything to gain by my downfall. A good attorney can procure her millions, and rightfully so. I’ve really done her wrong. She was my student and I took advantage of her. Go directly to jail, Dr. Stith. The end.

  My message is pleading and probably too self-pitying, but it’s what I do best: “Your father called me and he’s freaking out. This is bad, do you understand that? This can ruin me! Is that what you want? I know it’s what I deserve. But call me anyway! I need to talk to you!”

  Whenever I tell Lola that I “need” her, she sneers because in her mind need equals weakness. For that reason, I don’t expect I’ll hear from her again, except perhaps if we sit across from each other at my trial as she testifies for the prosecution. Even then, she’ll probably wink at me once or twice just to make sure the knife is in to the hilt. I don’t want our last communication to be me whimpering for her on voice mail, but in some ways it’s the perfect ending. A hushed courtroom will listen enrapt at the urgency in my voice as I plead for her to spare me. I’ll squirm next to my court-appointed attorney, no juror will look me in the eye, and hopefully the judge will throw the book at me.

  Then the unthinkable happens. My phone buzzes. A text from Lola, whose compassion my plea moved. I take a deep breath, ready to face this issue head-on and reach a resolution. Surely she must know what’s at stake for both of us. She can’t actually believe that we have a future together. But this text is the worst one she’s ever sent me. It consists of three words that when strung together become perfectly clear and lucid, capturing an honesty more terrible than the human heart can endure:

  I hate you

  I reply in a hurry. Don’t even say that. Not funny!!!

  Of course there’s no response. The phone feels like it weighs a ton and I want to throw it against the wall and watch it smash to a million little pieces. She hates me? After all I’ve suffered for her? The career I sacrificed? The ridicule I’ve endured? I should hate her, but of course I don’t. More than ever, I want her to come to Richmond…she must come, so that we can hash this all out. Clear the air, start over, explain…to her parents, to my dean…though I don’t know what this mea culpa would sound like.

  I could start by returning the call of Carter LaSalle. And I could be honest, and honesty goes something like this:

  Your daughter and I care a great deal for each other, but we make each other sick and it needs to end, which I’ve tried to do, but she won’t take no for an answer and so she’s driving down to Richmond to have it out with me in person. More than likely I’ll probably cave because I can’t live without her reducing me to servile groveling, and she has a need to humiliate me and at the same time worship me. I know what I’ve done is wrong and I’m trying to make it right. We’ve never had sexual intercourse if that’s any consolation.

  Push the Dial button, Eddie. Carter LaSalle deserves an explanation. The phone is in my hand and requires little investment from me beyond pressing my index finger down with a minimal amount of force. But I can’t do it! I can’t lie to this man about his daughter. False hope is worse than uncertainty, and in today’s world I can claim a broken phone or poor service as an excuse why I failed to return his call. Besides, there is a good chance that Lola has turned her car around and now is headed home, and so in due time Carter LaSalle will come to glean what’s transpired.

  I find the energy to get dressed, though soon I’ll be attired in an orange prison jumpsuit. Going through the motions is exhausting. My clothes seem ridiculous. Cargo shorts? So many pockets, so little use for them. On the bright side, I could carry six or seven cell phones without bulging, plus a few ounces of cocaine. Bev thought cargo shorts on grown men bordered on infantile…but the secrets they can stow away!

  Almost clothed, just need a trucker’s hat…but “I Have Issues” got left behind at Leigh Rose’s house.

  Leigh Rose, Leigh Rose, where art thou? When I was with her, I was happy. I was myself again. Is there any possibility of seeing her? One text, perhaps? I left my hat there, but if I use that as a pretext to contact her, then she’ll accuse me of stealing my ideas from a Seinfeld episode. But I didn’t leave it on purpose. It was truly an accident. Does it even matter? She’s rid of me, Lola hates me, I hate my cargo shorts…but upstairs I hear strange noises.

  People are laughing.

  Actual laughter! I go to investigate. In the kitchen are my mother, Mead, and Graves. Oh, and a bottle of wine.

  “Glass of vino?” Mead calls out to me, hoisting the bottle. “I’m buying!”

  Even my mother is indulging. The Russian has left. Deductive reasoning tells me that a major purchase was made. “What’s the occasion?” I ask.

  “Mead sold his collection,” my mother announces with pride, beaming at her betrothed, who lords over the table with manly virtue.

  “About time!” jabs Graves, lips puckered into a squishy smile.

  “Stop! These deals are hard to work out.”

  “He’s kidding,” Mead intercedes, filling a glass for me. How I long to be drunk! Intoxication is my last refuge. The hooch in prison is good, I hear. “I can take some ribbing, I don’t mind. And anyway, Graves is right. That took way too long!”

  “Better late than never!” my mother sings in delight.

  The wine isn’t anything special, an average Pinot Grigio that’s too fruity for my taste, but it’ll do the trick and possibly soothe my frayed nerves. “Here’s to real business acumen,” I toast, clinking glasses with everyone. “I’d sell everything I owned, too, if I could find a willing buyer.”

  “Mead has worked very hard to pull this together.” My mother slips an arm around Mead’s shoulders, and this harmless gesture is striking because he seems startled by her embrace, but maybe I’m imagining that he recoiled ever so slightly.

  “And it turns out, the RPG wasn’t missing after all!” Mead bellows, slapping the table for emphasis. “The original manifest I sent him showed five, not six.”

  “I accept your apology,” says Graves, who instead of wine is chugging down another Coke. The last thing he needs is to become more hyper, but he’s well on the way.

  “I never offered one.”

  “Don’t blame me because you can’t count.”

  “When is he picking everything up?” asks my mother, a perfectly reasonable question from a nervous homeowner. The sooner Fyodor Ublyudok takes possession, the better. But here Mead waffles, and doubt creeps into our little afternoon soiree.

  “Soon,” he replies vaguely. Not good enough for an office manager who thrives on logistical precision.

  “Next week? Next month?”

  “We haven’t worked out all the details yet. He needs to hire a moving crew and coordinate with his staff. Don’t worry, it’ll work out.”

  “Did he pay you cash?” Graves cuts in, earning a sidewise glance from Mead, who tries to maintain a happy face despite the carping from his son.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m sure everything’s going to work out just fine!” insists my mother, with no evidence to suppo
rt her claim other than blind faith.

  “He’d better not be ripping you off!” Graves snorts. The radiant smile vanishes from Mead’s gnarled face.

  “He isn’t. You know nothing of this man’s background or how the game is played. It’s a delicate process, but he’s agreed to my price, he’s shown me good faith, and the rest is just logistical stuff that takes time to sort out.”

  I feel my mother’s eyes on me and so I muster a smile, but too late.

  “Eddie, are you okay?” she asks.

  My cargo shorts feel very heavy, like they’ve been weighted down with bricks, and I keep tugging on them so they don’t fall to my knees.

  “Just a little tired, is all,” I reply.

  “You should rest. We’ve got nothing to do until the rehearsal at six. Lie down and take a nap!”

  Good night, sweet prince…I’m pretty sure I’m “not to be,” but not even Hamlet could answer that question. “No, I’ll be fine,” I assure her. “Where’s the rehearsal?”

  “Tredegar Iron Works.”

  This was an important cannon foundry that the Confederacy relied on for manufacturing during the war, and now it’s part of a sprawling riverfront park. An unconventional choice for a wedding location.

  “I didn’t know Tredegar hosted weddings,” I airily muse.

  “A lawyer from the firm got married there last year and it was lovely.”

  “Maybe I will rest.” To sleep…perchance to dream, of being in Paris with Leigh Rose. Or running off with Lola to the far reaches of the unknown.

  “Save your strength,” Mead counsels me. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  I check the time. Almost two o’clock. Lola should be arriving…in a few hours? A few minutes? Never? Whatever the case, I won’t be ready or rested.

  9

  The dryer buzzes and my eyes blink open. Once alert, I grab my phone like a grizzly swatting at salmon. Nothing from Lola. But the door creaks open and I hear footsteps descending. For some reason I start to worry that she’s already arrived, though it’s just three o’clock. Not possible, even for her.

  It’s my mother. “Did the dryer wake you?” she asks, peering down at me.

  “Was I asleep?” I chuckle.

  “Were you?”

  “I don’t know.” My body aches in a very strange way, stiff and clumsy, maybe from the mattress, maybe from the position I maintained as I stared at the ceiling. “I’m not sure I ever sleep anymore.”

  As she gets closer, I can smell the wine on her breath. Not the world’s biggest drinker, my mother is partying with gusto in an apparent effort to socially lubricate the marriage. “Eddie, you seem off. What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

  “Nothing unusual. I mean, very little happens in my life. That’s one of the perks of being a tortured intellectual.”

  “What’s that?” my mother asks, pointing to the bed.

  “What’s what?” I reply in confusion, afraid that I’ve misplaced a piece of incriminating evidence.

  “That sheet of paper next to you. Isn’t that the statue of Robert E. Lee?”

  “Oh.” I laugh nervously, handing her the Bastard Sons flyer. “I found this in the laundry basket. I’m guessing it belongs to Graves.”

  “Oh my.” She sighs sadly and shakes her head in disappointment as she reads it. Once done, she lets it drop to the bed. “What has Graves gotten himself mixed up with?”

  “I’m not sure, to be honest. I checked online and nothing much turned up.” I go and fetch the clothes out of the dryer so I can fold them and be useful as promised.

  “He is falling apart. We don’t know what to do with him. Nothing seems to work. Have you tried talking to him?”

  “A little. He’s young. He’ll grow out of it, I promise. Even I at his age harbored dreams of revolution.”

  “You did not,” she corrects me. “You were a good boy. Oh, Eddie! You don’t have to fold his laundry. He should do it.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  These are the moments that scald me the most. She might as well be dumping a pot of boiling water over my head. She continues to think that I’ll amount to something! If she only knew what torment rages inside—as surely she does.

  “I wasn’t nearly as good as you assumed I was,” I insist, smoothing out one of Graves’s T-shirts, of the Clash, 1979. Paul Simonon smashing a guitar, an iconic image that adorns posters in countless dorm rooms, including one belonging to a coed at Notting College in Ithaca, New York. It was my first gift to Lola, who dutifully hung it over her bed, and if you look carefully at the picture of Thor she sent me, you can see a sliver of this poster in the background behind his dong.

  Her dorm room! That fabled space into which I vowed never to step foot, and yet…there have been moments when I made my way across campus to the library that I magically ended up in front of Mather House, where in Room 220 Lola and Dahlia romped through a field of young adult lust. Actually going inside would amount to a suicide mission, and yet…one night in May, during what the college called Reading Days, when no classes were held so that the students could study for final exams, a sultry night when again I was alone and thinking of Lola and her protestations that she loved me—loved me! Her words! I walked into Mather House and felt my chest grow tight as a drum. A rotund girl looked at me from a sofa and waved. She was reading The Scarlet Letter and I nearly vomited. I turned and ran out, just like I want to now, right now, because I can’t take much more…I never should have come home.

  “Why would you say that?” my mother presses me. But I don’t answer, because the basement door swings open and heavy feet come plodding down. It’s Graves. My mother waves the Bastard Sons flyer in his face.

  “Is this yours?” she cries. Graves takes it from her and studies the paper with a chagrined smirk.

  “Nope. Never saw it before in my life. I wish it was mine. It’s pretty cool.”

  “What is so cool about it? Can you please explain?”

  But he ignores her plea. “Can someone give me a ride to the store? I need a tie for tonight.”

  “A tie?” my mother groans. “I thought you had a tie.”

  “I thought I did, too, but I don’t.”

  “I can’t take you.”

  “Can I borrow your car?”

  Clearly she doesn’t want him to, and so I jump in here to defuse the situation. I could use an outing, if only to get out of my head that is stuffed full of Lola anxiety. “I’ll give you a ride,” I offer. “If you promise to help with the laundry.”

  “Sure. I suck at laundry, but I’ll try,” Graves says with a shrug. My mother issues some last-minute instructions.

  “Hurry back. We need to leave here no later than five thirty and Graves needs to shower.”

  “It won’t take long, I swear.”

  So I get to take a ride with my other new sibling. The first one ended up with Gibson almost getting us both killed, but this one must serve a different purpose. I know he’s lying about the Bastard Sons, just like he got me to cover for him and keep Avery’s visit a secret. Suddenly I’ve become very protective of my mother, who doesn’t need to contend with Graves and his antics on her special weekend, especially considering that her firstborn son is losing it, big time. Here’s what bugs me the most about Graves. He’s just the sort of misanthropic Romeo that Lola would entice into Room 220 of Mather House—and there’s a remote chance that they might actually meet. Yes, she might get the opportunity to take Graves to bed…the angst! The tragic worldview! He’s perfect for Lola, who also likes to pretend that she cares about the deeper issues of social justice. What was it, last March when she went on a service trip to Jamaica? Judging from her trove of photos, I surmised that Lola’s main goal was fellating as many of the locals as she could, her charitable blow jobs temporarily relieving the downtrodden of misery while they smoked huge blunts and sucked down bottles of Red Stripe. Okay, she also painted the exterior wall of a preschool, which took a few hours, leaving her plenty of time
to hang out on the beach in Negril and meet the dreadlocked natives. As she later wrote in a reflection paper, “The people of the village were all so friendly and really opened my mind to a different way of living.” Especially on her last night there, when she hooked up with two long-limbed parasail operators, her first threesome in the MMF configuration (Dahlia had gone skiing with her family during spring break).

  “Thanks for taking me,” Graves tells me as we walk to the Honda. I say nothing. But once we get inside the car, I make an opening move.

  “You know what band I’m really into these days?” I ask innocently. “Commercial Smell. Have you ever heard them?”

  “No. Who are they?”

  “Punk rockers from Richmond.”

  “Cool. I hate most everything about Richmond, including every stupid band that plays here.”

  He’s really good at lying. I have to tip my hat to him, because he’s capable of giving a convincing performance. I’m sure one of the central tenets of the Bastard Sons is to deny that the group even exists, which Graves is doing with stunning vehemence. So I decide to ditch the indirect route and just level with him, in the name of defending my mother.

  “I don’t know what you’re up to,” I tell him bluntly, “but I don’t like it. That kid Avery was at the house last night when he wasn’t supposed to be, and I held my tongue. Now you’re lying to my mother about the Bastard Sons.”

  “I’m telling the truth! I’ve never seen that flyer before she showed it to me.”

  “It was in your clothes hamper. Did it jump in there on its own?”

  “Maybe it’s Gibson’s. She likes to pretend she’s in a band. And Avery knows he can’t come to the house anymore, ever.”

  “Good. He’d better not.”

  I step hard on the accelerator and we go rocketing off down Traylor Drive. I’m pissed off at Graves but not enough to hurt him. There’s only one person I’ve ever wanted to kill…Igor, Bev’s ceramicist boyfriend. Many were the nights when I’d actually scribble down notes on how one might go about killing him. A bomb in his kiln? Poison in his clay? He taught sculpting classes at a local rec center, and I went as far as filling out the application to take the six-week course. I imagined making a huge clay hammer for my final project and then, after glazing it with one last coat, I’d bash his skull in with it. But I never actually turned in the paperwork to join the class, though once or twice I parked in the lot by the art building and just sat there, waiting for a glimpse of this fraud. But that was my life before Lola, before love re-nourished me, before the warm rays of hope thawed my frozen soul.