Flannery put her hand, fingers splayed, in Wuthering Heights to hold her place, and unzipped her backpack with her other hand.
“Taking a break, then?” Heath put the newspaper on his knees and leaned in closer to Flannery on the bench.
“I actually just want to Google something real quick.”
“Allow me,” Heath said, his voice gallant, exaggerated as he leaned forward and pulled his phone from his back pocket.
“Oh, thanks. Can you Google Nardil withdrawal? N, A…”
“No, I got it. Hmm.” Heath frowned at his phone screen. “Heavens.”
“Not good?”
“Dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, extreme vertigo, toxic delirium, manic reaction, acute anxiety, auditory hallucinations, precipitation of schizophrenia, vivid nightmares with agitation, frank psychosis—”
“Okay,” Flannery said, her voice hitting the tin-can high note of a beginning flute player. “Got it.”
As she opened Wuthering Heights again, Heath kept staring at his phone screen. With his voice packed with tenderness, he said: “The psychosis is one of the least common reactions.”
I pulled open the drawer of the nightstand and found a regular treasure trove of detritus nested in the corners: a string of waxed dental floss, three dirty pennies, and a pile of small white shards … No, Dear Optimistic Reader, not doughnut crumbs, these were not coconut flakes, but alas: toenail clippings! Of course I also found the standard cherry-red Gideon’s Bible, the beautiful story of Jesus dying for our sins, aka The Best Dramatic Narrative Ever. I flipped through the sticky pages and found a twisted Tootsie Roll wrapper bookmarking Pentecost Sunday. Sometimes Brandon and I had gone to Mass with my parents, and I remembered that the Gospel of the Pentecost made Brandon laugh out loud right in the pew despite his steadfast belief—he’d had a childhood dream of becoming a priest, born of his faith, yes, but also his desire to break his family cycle, to be nothing like his father.
And it was hard for me not to laugh too, because the Gospel of the Pentecost advised against sorcery and, wait for it … orgies. Brandon sputtered out a few gasping laughs he could not stifle. He broke out in full-on church giggles, and who could blame him? He was still hysterical on the drive home. We sat in the backseat, his hand on my knee. “Really, those two words together? Sorcery and orgies? At church? All I could think of was Albus Dumbledore grooving around in a Speedo.”
Even my parents had to laugh, but I saw my mother twisting at her necklace, either because we were driving through Brandon’s neighborhood, Sunshine Range, where the guard dogs lunged at the chain-link fences, or because she’d overheard Brandon whisper-singing along to the radio, jumbling the lyrics to the jokey Right Said Fred song, his Kansas accent disappearing into a vamping British boast: “I’m too sexy for my church, too sexy for my church, so sexy it hurts.”
Truth.
Yes, we were that couple in the backseat laughing, in love with happiness, in love with ourselves and, quite often, usually every day, too sexy for our church. So go ahead and pity us, Dear Reader, go ahead and be the somber omniscient mom looking down from the throne of your minivan, knowing that sorrow is looming, knowing that sorrow is going to arrive sooner than we imagine.
The rose smell intensified as the furnace cranked out a wave of heat, and the room was getting too warm, though not as warm as it had been that August with Brandon. The chunky window air conditioner whistled out the faintest cool streams, but to be fair to the electrical system at the Broadway Hotel and Hostel, there was a lot of sweat-inducing activity in the room. Brandon had driven me to NYC a week before classes began so that we could explore the city together. Yes, two eighteen-year-olds with a hotel room of our own: Of course we were too busy to spare a thought on the cleanliness factor of the room or to inquire about the crappy air-conditioning, or to send a wordy reply text to my increasingly vexed parents, who yearned for a travelogue: Can’t wait to hear about the big adventure! Caitlin, let us know you are alive! Caitlin, did you withdraw another two hundred dollars from an ATM yesterday? I replied to each text with a smiley-face emoji, hoping my parents would admire my enigmatic response.
My mom and dad had been annoyed but accepting about the whole deal with Brandon taking me to New York. I suppose they pined to be like everyone else’s parents, to do the drop-off routine: to walk around campus gaping awkwardly, to join ranks with the stricken suburban moms with their capri pants and Coach bags and all those sad dads trying to be cool in their multi-pocketed cargo shorts and band T-shirts, but no one cared about The Clash anymore, no one remembered The Replacements. The parents all looked on the edge of tears, except for the ones who were already there, rubbing the soft skin beneath their lower lashes, and perhaps reflecting upon their own dorm-room days and that evil bitch that was Time’s Winged Chariot: Their next group-living experience would probably be a nursing home staffed by meth users. Or perhaps they were just worrying about their own children, who had been loved, who had been forbidden sugary sodas and violent video games and sent to an expensive university. And now they were here. But why the surprise? Had the parents not really believed this moment would arrive? Because as they struggled their children’s possessions onto the narrow elevator at Carman Hall, their Botoxed or baggy faces looked equally astonished to remember that, yes, this was teenage communal living and it might include alcohol poisoning, date rape, or loneliness. So I had spared my parents that sorrow. Actually, Brandon had spared them that moment of wrenching realization, and had they ever thought to thank him?
Dear Reader, they had feared that I would not go to NYC, that I would squander my youthful promise for the captain of the football team: Brandon, O, Brandon, shall we plan a prom night conception? Do I dare dream of china patterns? A Barbie ball gown with a pearl white veil? So their parenting style zoomed from helicopter to laissez-faire. They were terrified that I would start wearing an elaborate diamond engagement ring purchased at the mall, that I would try to bamboozle them with suburban teenage theories about why it was better, less elitist for me to bypass an East Coast Ivy League University, and instead move to rural Kansas with Brandon and attend Dodge City Community College or Coffeyville Community College. He had received football scholarships from both schools, and I could help him decide whether to be a Dodge City Conquistador or a Coffeyville Red Raven! So, at home I’d pretty much run the show, and after I received my early admission letter to Columbia, my only responsibility had been to go to school and attend church once a week.
Now the room was getting far too warm. I put the Bible back in the drawer and wished there were a copy of Brandon’s favorite book, Lives of the Saints. He had received a copy for his First Communion and, despite his dyslexia, become so enamored with the tales of martyrdom that he read and reread every hagiography until he could recite each one from memory. He also believed that real-life saints walked among us—not in the way of general benevolence—Hark! The good-hearted masses!—but in specific reembodiments. The receptionist at the orthodontist office had once viciously whisper-scolded two boys who had mocked a fat girl in faded Daisy Dukes: “We can all see you being horrible, and nobody thinks it’s funny. Your appointments for the day are canceled. Have your mommies call and reschedule.” Brandon had graciously come with me to get my retainers checked, and he already had his arm around me there on the vinyl couch in the waiting room, but he leaned in closer to whisper: “That’s so badass. That’s so Joan of Arc.” Which was kind of a stupid thing to say, but then again, when the receptionist picked up the ringing phone and blandly purred, “Thaaaank you for calling Super Smiles,” I could see a fine wisp of smoke rise up from behind her head.
But Brandon’s life had not been all whimsy and orthodontic hagiography. His father was in federal prison in Oklahoma for the sale and distribution of methamphetamine and manslaughter. I had met him just once, senior year, when he came to town via the sheriff’s office as a CI. Dear, Gentle Reader who does not watch crime shows, he was a criminal informant. The police were
trying to bring down a decade-old drug operation, whose main players had met working as fry cooks at Sonic, a detail I adored—popcorn chicken and a side of meth with chili fries, please!—and who continued working there while they sold drugs. Stay in school, kids, stay in school.
I took a day off from school to go to the courthouse with Brandon. When his dad walked haltingly into the courtroom in handcuffs, ankle shackles, lace-less canvas shoes, and an orange prison jumpsuit, Brandon had swallowed hard and had to look down at the ground. I put my hand on his back.
The sheriff’s deputy uncuffed Brandon’s dad and led him to his seat. I watched the jurors watching Brandon’s dad being sworn in: The pool was composed of the drab and middle-aged, except for jurors five and six, two young women in their early twenties. They kept looking out at the gallery, at Brandon, admiringly, at first: Mmm-mmm! But then, as they figured out he was a near clone of the criminal informant—the same aquamarine eyes and lion-colored hair—they pressed their lips into neutral smiles of suspicion: Hmmmm.
Sure, Brandon had to wipe away a few tears, but he wasn’t a drug dealer trying to charm or sway with his forlorn foxiness. He hadn’t seen his dad in two years, and he simply missed him.
After Brandon’s dad was sworn in, the Latino bailiff poured him a glass of water. He gulped it down and saluted the bailiff. “Hit me again, amigo!”
Brandon groaned quietly. The judge buckled her glossed lips and ran her hand through her short, frosted hair.
The deputy escorted Brandon’s dad out of the courtroom after he gave his testimony, which was chiefly concerned with people named Jimbo and Big Tammy and Crystal Light and included the hilarious vernacular of Drug World, where the letter of the day was T! The letter T was curiously prominent in the labeling and selling of methamphetamine: a T-Ball, a T-shirt, a T-Rex! But I also found out something not quite so funny about myself. Brandon and I followed his dad and the deputy out of the courtroom, our strides shortened, so that we would not outpace a man in ankle shackles and his keeper.
When Brandon asked if he could talk to his dad for a moment, the deputy nodded politely and stepped back a foot to give them a moment of semi-privacy. Brandon had finished off a six-pack that morning before we went to the courthouse—could you blame him?—and he thanked the deputy just a shade too effusively. I took a look at the people huddled in conversation or waiting on benches in the corridor: attorneys in dress clothes—possibly defendants in dress clothes hoping to impress?—law enforcement, and those who wore orange prison gear, or fast-food uniforms, or the perpetual casual Friday apparel of the downtrodden—sloganed T-shirts and sweatpants.
“Hey, Dad,” Brandon said brightly. “Man! It is awesome to see you. And hey!” He put his arm around me. “This is Caitlin.”
Brandon’s dad looked at me for a long moment. I chattered away, filling the silence. The pièce de résistance of my nervous small talk? “Brandon has told me so much about you!”
He smiled at me, his gold front tooth especially bright and glinty in the dismal gray corridor. Though his hands were cuffed behind him, he dipped his head to the side, foppish as you please, and his voice sounded courtly, deferential. “My, my. You are a beautiful young lady. May I call you Cait, Caitlin? Don’t say no. I’m gonna call you Cait, Cait.”
The deputy sighed. His eyes looked so flat and expressionless that I panicked. I gave the deputy an ingratiating, gummy grin, trying to telegraph: My inclusion in this particular trio before you is purely circumstantial, sir! Clearly, I am not like them! Because my father was not a prisoner; my father was a dentist. Did the sheriff not notice my perfect teeth, my long curls glossed and shining with Aveda pomade? Did he not watch the high school scholars quiz bowls on public TV? Good God, man! I was the pretty one who knew the capital of Bulgaria! Oh, I was proud of Brandon, proud of his crappy house, his football playing, his good looks, his kindness, but I was desperate for the deputy to see that not only was Brandon’s father NOT LIKE ME, that Brandon, too, was NOT LIKE ME.
Oh, Dear Reader, why was my first instinct betrayal?
And why was Brandon receding from me in this room? I longed to hear him say my name. I no longer even remembered the exact sound of his voice, but I remembered when I could hear it in my mind: the memory of a memory. But I could still close my eyes and feel his hands on my back; I could remember lying with him in the very bed I was sitting on now. I remembered stoned laughter and the raisin pie smell of pot smoke floating out from the room next door, and our stained sheets, and the polyester pillowcases that had given me a sweaty red rash of acne to start off my freshman year, and I remembered joy. Because before I met Brandon, it had seemed to me that a girl had two choices: The world could crack open and you could walk into it by yourself, a private kaleidoscope of colorful experience fractured by loneliness, or you could enjoy the cozy contentment of being loved, the security of being in a couple, and yet long for solitude and adventure. Can you guess who had the best of both worlds during that blissful week? Who smiled up at the popcorn ceiling after Brandon had fallen asleep?
Who was that smug, sated girl and how had she been so replaced?
But it wasn’t so much that completed feeling I wanted back; I wanted Brandon, I wanted him, I wanted him, I wanted him.
And I would join him in whatever new world he was in; and he was looking for me, too, trying to reach me, as evidenced by the roses left for me at Columbia! My love for him, my longing for him was so pure that I knew we could be together again. But I had to get out of the room, because the roses on the nightstand weren’t so sure of my single-hearted sweetness, and I didn’t want to think about my past stupidity, my floral snobbery. Their petal mouths curved into a dozen petulant smiles: Oh, NOW you think we’re pretty! Now you like Brandon’s roses!
I jumped up and said STOP a dozen times, one word for each rose. Because I couldn’t go back like that, I was racing toward a new, futuristic love with Brandon. My mouth was sandpaper, so I stopped in the bathroom, but the only plastic cup on the sink had a curly hair attached to the side. Felled by provincialism and thirst, I stopped at the front desk to buy a bottle of water on my way out of the Broadway Hotel and Hostel. The clerk sighed when he saw me—Super, here’s the sobbing freak with no photo ID—but he divined my need. He handed me a bottle of water that I downed in about three gulps. I was heading to the front doors, dodging the backpackers who milled around the lobby in annoying, bulky clusters, when I glanced up at the clock. It was 12:45.
The funeral would be over now; Brandon, buried.
The world spun me again: The rocketing blindness of vertigo had returned. I crouched on the lobby floor and squatted there, a sudden goose amongst the tourists and dreamers. It seemed like I was breathing through a tube, and when I inhaled harder, it narrowed to a soda straw, then a coffee stirrer. As I spun and gasped for air in the shuttling darkness, a hand reached out to me, and I grabbed it and pulled it close to my chin, as if it were a kitten. I held on tight, and when the vertigo stopped I opened my eyes to a shuttling blur, and then, as my vision steadied, I saw a tattoo of a Gothic cross on an inner wrist. The proportion was weird, though: Oh. It was upside down.
When I looked up, a skinny guy whose face was pebbled with acne scars gently pulled me to my feet. His black T-shirt was bedazzled with a golden Celtic cross, inverted, and he was weighed down with a duffle bag, guitar case, and a filthy thin parka tied around his waist. I still felt dizzy, unmoored, and I crashed into him, and we did a stumbling, accidental dance together—One two three! One two three!—until I regained my equilibrium. The desk clerk was looking over: Would the clown show never end?
There were two young women waiting to check in, trading looks and snickering. One acted as if she were merely smoothing down her asymmetrical blonde bob, but then she flashed a quick pair of devil horns over her head. When the upside-down cross guy turned away from me, not responding to my mumbled thanks, I saw the slogan in golden Gothic font on the back of his T-shirt: I DENY YOU, JESUS CHRIST THE DECEI
VER.
The girls at the front desk were cracking up, no longer bothering to be discreet. O, the bullies of the world, Dear Reader, we are never free of them, not really. It is just when you are already down, they get to you, they just do, and the awful girls made me miss Brandon more desperately, for he would understand that the tattooed guy had likely endured something terrible in the name of Christ. Brandon had gone to Catholic school since kindergarten, not a Jesuit-run school in a city, all about equality and life-changing, but an insular, elitist, parish school in suburban Kansas, five miles from his run-down neighborhood, and because Brandon was from an undesirable family and dyslexic and blah blah blah he was only treated decently once his football-playing skills emerged: Hark! At last, a valuable commodity. Once he said to me, “For such an awesome guy, Jesus really has a lot of A-holes who practically worship him.” And then, as if rewarding me for remembering his humor, his goodness, I heard it, Brandon’s voice, softly, next to my ear: “Your Prince Charming is a devil-worshiper?” His laughter was kind, though. Forgiving. “Only you, Caitlin. Only you.”
Six
A light rain started again, so Flannery closed Wuthering Heights and tucked it close to her body, protecting the love story of Miss Sweeney and Brandon Marzetti-Corcoran inside Heath’s borrowed leather jacket.
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