by Blake Nelson
I sat waiting for the rest.
“And do you know what I did?”
“No.”
“I went home and made up some story about how I sat on my glasses. Because I didn’t want Princess Hanna to not like me because I had told on her. That’s right. I protected her. I actually helped her humiliate me. Because she was Hanna Sloan. She was the golden girl. You couldn’t go against Hanna. Nobody would dare go against Hanna.”
I said nothing.
“And you know the worst part? Hanna didn’t even remember me after that. Freshman year at Evergreen, I had her in one of my classes. She started talking to me one day and I realized she didn’t know who I was. She didn’t even remember stomping on my glasses!”
“Okay,” I grumbled. “So she’s horrible sometimes.”
“Yes she is,” said Kai. “And not just sometimes. If you’re capable of doing things like that, there’s something wrong with you.”
“You’ve been cruel to people.”
“Not like that I haven’t. I wouldn’t know how to be that cruel. I’m not capable of being that cruel.”
“Well, you got your revenge, then,” I said. “Now that she’s locked up in the psych ward.”
“I don’t want revenge! Don’t you understand!? I don’t want to hate her! I don’t want to hate anyone! I just want you to stop talking about her! Gawd!”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Jesus.”
• • •
We didn’t talk again for the rest of the drive. We pulled into the underground parking garage and walked up the stairs to the lobby. We stood at the elevator and continued our silence. I pushed the up button a couple extra times. Kai looked at herself in the reflection of the elevator door.
“I’m sorry,” I said, finally breaking the silence. “I’m sorry about your glasses.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m over it.”
We stood there looking at ourselves. You could hear the elevator making faint noises as it made its way down to us.
“Is this skirt too short?” she said, looking at herself.
“It’s pretty short.”
“Can you see my underwear?”
“Only when you sit down. Or bend over. Or walk.”
She pulled down on her skirt. Then she fluffed her hair and combed her bangs to one side with her fingers.
“I’m sorry I constantly talk about Hanna,” I said.
“It’s all right,” she said.
“Seriously. I am.”
“She’s your friend,” said Kai. “I get it. I understand.”
“She’s not my friend, though,” I said as the elevator doors opened. “She’s never been my friend. You’re my friend. Not her.”
We rode the elevator to the eighteenth floor. This was the first time I’d seen my dad’s apartment. It was big and elegant and very high up. You could see over the entire city. You could see down onto the rooftops of other people who could see over the entire city.
Kai was nervous with my dad. But she shook his hand and said all the right things. Alexis was there, with what appeared to be a slight bump in her midsection. Her brother was also there. He was visiting from Arizona, where he trained horses. His story was vague. He was good-looking, though. Like Alexis. He seemed excited about his sister being with my dad despite the bizarre age difference.
The food was very good. It was catered. When we’d finished, we sat at the table and talked. But the conversation never got any rhythm to it. My dad figured out that Kai’s dad was a dermatologist and inquired about that, in his weasely way, trying to figure out who he knew socially.
After dessert Kai and I stood together at the big main window, staring down at the city below. “What do you think of Alexis?” I asked Kai.
“She’s a lot younger than him,” said Kai.
“She’s not that smart.”
“Maybe that doesn’t matter,” said Kai.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have a bad feeling.”
“Yeah,” agreed Kai.
I stared down at Portland. “Well, it’s his life,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s your life too,” said Kai. “He’s your dad. What he does affects you.”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so?” said Kai. She sipped her drink. “You should know that better than anyone.”
SENIOR YEAR
(PART TWO)
I have a burning desire to see what things look like photographed by me.
—Garry Winogrand
When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.
—Alfred Eisenstaedt
53
I picked up my mother at the airport on Sunday night. She was flushed and excited. The first thing she said was, “Gavin, I want you to know that nothing is going to change until after you go to college.”
“Like what would change?” I asked.
She told me she had seen Peter Frohnmeyer in San Francisco. They’d had dinner. This was the advertising guy she’d been engaged to twenty years ago, in San Francisco, before my dad showed up and snatched her away.
“You went on a date?” I said.
“It wasn’t a date,” she said, checking herself in the visor mirror. She had lipstick on, which was unusual. “We had dinner. We talked.”
It began to rain and I turned on the windshield wipers. “Is he still in advertising?”
“No,” she said. “He does PR for a solar energy company. He sold his advertising agency for a lot of money.”
“Well, that’s good,” I said.
My mom put the visor back up. “I don’t need his money, Gavin.”
“I’m not saying you do,” I said. “I just meant, you know, good for him.”
At home my mother went upstairs to her room and stayed there. Later, I could hear her talking to one of her friends. She was going to be doing that a lot, I suspected. Getting advice, discussing strategy, how best to proceed with the Peter Frohnmeyer situation. How to marry him, basically, if that was what she wanted to do, which it seemed like it was.
• • •
Back at school, in December, things had become very different. There was no Hanna. She was still in the hospital. I didn’t see much of Claude. Or Petra. Logan was around and Olivia Goldstein. They had broken up but were still friends.
At lunch I often sat with Emma Van Buskirk and the other Evergreen Owl people. I sat with Grace occasionally too, and the yearbook people. I had been giving them photographs, which they badly needed. I had become the only reliable photographer at school, it seemed. I even took pictures for the principal and the sports teams sometimes.
I saw Krista and Ashley in the halls occasionally, since they were juniors and in our wing. But they had completely evolved away from my friends. They were still big partiers, but they had become more preppy and jock-oriented. At least Krista had. Maybe “sporty” is the correct word to describe her. She was going out with a sophomore basketball player who was one of the stars of the team. To be honest, it was always a little painful to see Krista. She had bruised my ego in some subtle way, so that every time I saw her I cringed a little. She would be a big success in life, I thought. With her cute smile and her bouncy energy. She would end up on TV, or would invent some new exercise machine, or would marry some rich guy. All of which would maintain her McMansion lifestyle. But as my father had often pointed out, I shouldn’t make fun of people like that. I would be lucky to do so well.
• • •
In the midst of everything else, I finished my college applications. I sent them to a bunch of different places, but Cal Arts was the application I focused on the most. Before I pushed send on that one, I said a little prayer to the photography gods, to Robert Frank, to Richie and the little girl whose picture I had not taken in Elliot Square.
Once my applications were out, I felt like I should party it up. Kai, too, had applied to a bunch of liberal arts colleges and was feeling restless and bored. So we went out a lot, sometimes with Antoinette, sometimes just us tw
o. There was a big dance party at Agenda right before Christmas, which the three of us went to. The DJ was from Los Angeles, according to the Facebook invite. Naturally, I was eager to check out anything that was “from L.A.,” since that’s where Cal Arts was. So I immediately snuck up to the front. The DJ was wearing sunglasses and shiny slacks and his hair was shaved close on the sides, with long bangs hanging in front of his face. He had a certain aura about him, a certain hardness. Watching him, you could sense what Los Angeles would be like. It would be tough and intimidating. But also very cool and stylized.
The three of us danced. It was pretty freeing, being there with the Agenda kids. Art school: It was going to be a lot like the Agenda scene, I imagined.
Bennett was there that night too. Later, when they kicked everyone out, he was standing next to his car with some people. He was still pretty shook up over Hanna, I knew. As we were leaving I veered over toward him. I was going to say something, but I couldn’t think of what. So I gave him a head nod instead. He nodded back. Judging from the many girls that hovered around him these days, he would not have a problem finding a new girlfriend. But he didn’t seem interested in that.
• • •
For New Year’s, Logan Hewitt had a huge party that everyone went to. I managed to talk Kai and Antoinette into going, though they were complaining the whole time. Claude and Petra and a lot of our old crew were there. Krista showed up looking super hot. She had dumped her sophomore basketball player and was on the prowl. I thought people would be talking about Hanna, but nobody was. She was out of the psych ward and in a new facility, but the Sloans were not telling people what was going on. Not even Claude had a clear idea what was wrong with her. “Psychotic break” was one phrase he’d heard. We’d looked it up online and it was not good.
As Logan’s party began to thin out, a girl from yearbook came and found me. She said that Grace was upstairs and would I come talk to her? I asked what it was about, but she wouldn’t say. “Grace really wants to talk to you,” she repeated.
This sounded suspicious, but I went, following the girl up the stairs and down the hall. She led me to Logan’s bedroom, the same room where Grace had caught me making out with Hanna.
I was now even more on guard. But when I went inside, I found Grace sitting on the bed with another of her girlfriends, sobbing into a wad of toilet paper.
This was about Austin Wells. He had just broken up with Grace over the phone, from college. Grace was still clutching her glowing phone in her tiny hand.
The girl who’d brought me upstairs told me this. I felt like saying, What do you want me to do? I honestly didn’t know what help I could be.
Grace asked the other people to leave. They obediently got up and left the room.
So then it was just Grace and me. I moved closer. She didn’t do anything. She sat there on the bed, hiccupping and blowing her nose.
I cautiously took a seat on the bed. Was that what she wanted? I had no idea. But it must have been, because she lunged toward me and threw her arms around me and began crying even more.
So I went with it. I held her. And let her cry and get snot all over my shirt.
“Oh, Gavin,” she said. “What happened to everyone?”
I wasn’t sure who exactly she meant. But I understood the basic idea.
“I don’t know, Grace,” I told her, rubbing her back in a slow circular motion.
It was weird about Grace. We were nice to each other, but we weren’t friends. We had almost nothing in common. I couldn’t have kept up a conversation with her if my life depended on it.
But I did still love her in a way. Maybe more than I did when we were going out, since I understood her better. So I sat with her. And listened to her cry. And rubbed her back. And told her everything would be all right.
54
My brother, Russell, showed up briefly during that same Christmas break. He only stayed at the house a couple nights before he headed to the coast to stay with his friend David Stiller and some other Evergreen friends.
My mother was not happy with this arrangement. She wanted Russell home, like for the whole vacation, like a normal college kid. She hated that her family was scattered all over for the holidays. Russell had reasonable excuses for his short visit. But I suspected the truth was that he didn’t want to hang around that big depressing house.
The first night he was home, Russell seemed subdued. He barely spoke. I assumed this was about my dad: the new girlfriend, the coming half sister. He’d had such a close relationship with my dad previously. All these sudden changes were probably more difficult for him than for me.
My mother was having her own problems. She kept acting like she’d let Russell down somehow, like she’d let the whole family down, though I didn’t see how she figured that. None of this was her fault.
During dinner we managed to relax a bit. I told Russell more about my applications to different art schools. He seemed to think art school was a good place for me in general, though he mostly nodded and ate. His hair was longer than I’d ever seen it. And he had that same beard, which he’d never cut. It didn’t look so goofy anymore. It looked more mature, like it belonged on him. He’s a man now, I thought to myself. A not very happy man.
My mom asked him about school and he said he’d shifted his studies around. He talked for a long time about one of his teachers, Professor Friedman, who’d had a big effect on him. This Friedman guy had worked on an important social justice initiative for the president and had actually worked directly with the White House for a year on a project to help disadvantaged kids in the south. That was kind of a shock. Russell was interested in helping the poor? When had that happened? And then came an even bigger bombshell.
“I think I’m gonna take a leave of absence for a year and help run this new program he’s starting in Alabama,” he said into his plate.
My mother and I exchanged looks.
“Really?” said my mother. “Starting when?”
“Starting immediately.”
My mom was stunned. So was I.
“Did you talk to Dad about this?” I asked.
Russell nodded that he did.
“And what did he say?” asked my mom.
“At first he tried to talk me out of it. Now he doesn’t say anything.”
“What do you mean?” said my mother.
“I told him to go fuck himself,” said Russell without looking up.
My mother literally dropped her spoon. I sat with my mouth hanging open.
“When did this happen?” asked my mother.
“I don’t know . . . last October?” said Russell.
“And why didn’t you tell anyone?” said my mom.
Russell made a helpless shrug of his shoulders.
A silence fell over the table. We ate.
“Have you met Alexis?” I asked Russell.
He shook his head no. Then he looked up at me. “Have you?”
I nodded that I had.
“And?” he said.
“She’s young. She’s pretty.”
Russell shook his head. “What a dick,” he said, going back to his food.
“Oh, please don’t say that . . . ,” said my mother. She was nearly in tears now. She hadn’t touched her food.
“It’s not your fault, Mom!” I snapped.
“At least we’re not little kids,” said my brother in a low voice.
• • •
In January, everyone was back in school again. That’s when Claude called me one night. “Do you know a girl named Rachel Lehman, from Hillsdale?”
I was at home. The house was empty. Mom had gone out to dinner with Henry Oswald, I think to talk about whether she should marry Peter Frohnmeyer.
“Yeah, I know her,” I said. “I told you about her.”
“You did?”
“We played tennis once. She’s friends with Olivia and Logan. I went on a date with her.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. She wanted t
o talk about you.”
“Oh yeah?” said Claude. “Well, that explains it. She’s been messaging me. She says we went to summer camp together.”
“Yeah, she mentioned that.”
“I checked her out. She looks pretty hot.”
“She’s totally hot.”
“She good at tennis?”
“No,” I said. “Not really.”
“Well, what the hell,” said Claude. “She wants to hang out. And she’s got a friend. You up for it?”
“What do they wanna do?”
“They want to go snowboarding. Her family’s got a cabin on Mount Hood.”
“No kidding.”
“They want to go up the night before. So we’d spend the night.”
“Wow.”
“I know. Too good to be true, right? Logan said she’s cool though. You went out with her. What do you think?”
“Hard to say. She didn’t really say much when I was with her.”
“Hmmmm,” said Claude.
“But she didn’t like me. You’re the one she likes. From summer camp.”
“Yeah,” said Claude, thinking about it. “What did she say about that?”
“She said you guys made out. When you were thirteen. You broke her heart.”
“I wish I could remember. I made out with a million girls at that place.”
“Well, one of those girls was her.”
• • •
So Claude accepted the invitation. Rachel sent us the address, and on Friday night we packed up the RAV4 and headed out. We drove into the deep forests of Mount Hood and then pulled off the main highway and had to four-wheel it up a snow-covered side road. A bunch of cabins were clustered in this one area, all of them identical and new-looking, like mini-McMansions, but ski cabins instead.
We checked the numbers until we found Rachel’s place. Then we parked and sat in the RAV4 for a moment and looked at it. Even by Claude standards this was a pretty miraculous hookup.