He walked into the center, moving around the room as he bent down to kiss his aunts and uncles and placate various cousins. But they were right; he did feel separate from them and had for a long time. He did not belong here. Upstairs, he fell fully clothed into bed, rerunning the events of his day in his head, certain of one thing as he nodded off to sleep: no matter what it took, he was going away to college.
THE NEXT DAY DONNA WAS back upstate, and he was unenthusiastically reunited with Margie. A heavy snow fell, and they spent the last weekend of vacation at the movies. Once school started again, he did not press her to come to his bedroom, knew from her sister that she didn’t much like it—not that this hadn’t always been somewhat obvious; he just didn’t want to see it. His eyes were open to women now, to how they worked, to their desirability over girls. But after two weeks back at school, thinking day and night of Donna, sitting in class day after day with a hard-on, he was ready for any pallid substitute. One afternoon, possessed as if by a demon, he rushed home and called Margie.
“Is there any chance you can come over now?” he asked.
“I figured,” she said, her voice tense, “that maybe there’s somebody else.”
He used whatever flattery was at his disposal, telling her that he was holding back because he wanted to get to know her better, consider her, perhaps, for something more serious.
“More serious?” she asked. “You’ve hardly talked to me all week.”
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“Anyway, it’s quarter to four. By the time I get there —”
“Then run,” he replied. In his mind’s eye, he spoke to Donna, who was moving her tongue in slow circles up his thighs, kissing and teasing him, moving her finger up into his—“It’s a matter of life and death!”
When she arrived, he rushed her up to his bedroom, knowing the house would not be empty long. He slammed the door but did not want to take the time to put anything in front of it. Quickly he removed her clothes; expertly he got her bra off with one hand, then kissed her as he removed her corduroy pants and pulled down her underwear. He began to try, in a manner rather rushed, some of the techniques Donna had taught him, but Margie only moved his hand aside and whispered that he should get on with it. They moved to the bed. He had learned something more of timing, of the benefits of not rushing, and yet every time he opened his eyes, the clock made a click for another minute passed. He was cutting things far too close, but he couldn’t stop himself, and then he was calling out that name he’d been trained to call out, just weeks before, and had been thinking of nonstop for days now—Donna. His eyes closed, his body rigid with pleasure, he called to her over and over again until Margie, lying underneath him, began to cry.
As he rested on top of her, unsure for a moment what had happened, or even where he was, he heard his own name as if from a great distance. “Get the hell off me,” Margie hissed, just before they heard the terrible squeaking, the door coming away on its warped hinges, then Margie screamed his name, his mother screamed his name, and his brother, peering underneath his mother’s bent arm to get a better view, laughed their father’s horrid, raucous Vishniak laugh.
“Get your clothes on, both of you! Margie, don’t think your mother won’t hear about this,” Stacia said, her face twitching. Margie, eyes downcast, quickly pulled her pants up as Stacia grabbed Barry by the elbow and shoved him toward his room. “Not a word out of you!” she said, but that was futile. Barry was already moaning Donna’s name over and over again, in case, as she rushed by, Margie had missed exactly what had happened the first time.
Robert stood in only his boxers when his mother came at him. She slapped him across the face, hard, and then again. His nose started to bleed, but he did not move a muscle.
“Too much time on your hands,” she said, handing him a tissue. “I thought you said you were joining the debate team!”
“That’s in tenth grade. Don’t slap me again.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought her here.” He pressed the tissue up against his nose.
“You better not get her pregnant, mister. I’m not raising any more babies.”
“You never raised any the first time.”
She raised her hand and this time it was not a slap, but a full-fledged punch. He slumped against the wall, but would not let himself stay there. His jaw ached, but he got up and walked back to where she stood and faced her; he in his underwear and she still in her navy blue uniform with the badge over the pocket. The room shifted a little under his feet. He picked up his bloody tissue and waved it at her. “Hit me again,” he gasped, “and all bets are off.” He’d never have hit his mother, but she got the point, and the two sank onto the bed, exhausted. Robert heard a high-pitched sound and realized it was coming from him as he struggled to breathe. He felt as if his lungs were slowly closing, and he began to panic, coughing and coughing until he ran to the bathroom and threw up. When he came back, weak and tired but able to breathe again, his mother was still sitting on the bed. She handed him his pants.
“Your grandfather used to make a sound like that, with the hay fever.”
Robert remembered the doctor coming, and Saul’s helpless wheezing. But there was no talk of doctors now. Stacia did not believe in them—doctors had never done much for her father, and they were all just out to make a buck. He was hoping that the interruption had derailed her, but once he was breathing again, she picked up where she’d left off.
“All this funny business with girls will distract you from your schoolwork,” she said. “I want you to make something of yourself. Look at your father, working two jobs and driving himself into the ground to save money for you and your brother. This is how you repay him?”
He wished she would go back to slapping him instead. It would have been easier. How had he ever imagined that she wouldn’t get in the last word? She stood up, ran her fingers through her hair, and walked toward the door. Then, over her shoulder, she called, “Your nose is bleeding again. Sit with your head back and I’ll get you some ice.”
He closed the door after her, suddenly remembering Margie. He had hurt her, and apologizing would probably only make it worse, though he would have to try. That it was over between them he knew, but then he had another, more chilling thought: She’ll tell all her friends, and they’ll set up a damned committee. I’ll be ostracized and never get laid again.
Robert spent the next few days at school trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. He called Margie’s house a few times, but she wouldn’t talk to him, even walked to a different stop, careful not to meet him on the corner. They avoided each other in the neighborhood, too. When he thought of her, he felt sick, achy all over, as if guilt were a virus. But his fear that the girls in the neighborhood would ostracize him could not have been more wrong. If anything, more girls approached him, and now he knew just what to do with them. By tenth grade, he had learned how to control his stare, the intensity of it, the softening of his eyes. He needed only to affect such an expression and, like magic, almost any girl would come toward him. All the physical pleasure he received seemed only to make him taller, more confident, and better-looking. Girls now invited him to their houses after school and on weekends, and most of them had no scripts and demanded no loyalty oaths.
By age sixteen, he’d made out with most of the girls over thirteen in Oxford Circle; a substantial number had given him hand jobs, and more than a few had sex with him. He had become what his English teacher predicted, a full-fledged lady-killer, confident in his abilities, understanding, finally, that while his looks were not something to be catered to or even acknowledged, they had their advantages and should be put to good use. He would never lie to a girl again—or so he told himself then — not when the truth would do so well most of the time.
Just before he was to take the SATs, he announced to his parents that he would apply to schools as far away as New England. To their credit they did not discourage him. His mother said simply that he would have to ge
t the money in the form of financial aid, and the result was out of their hands, like a gamble. Maybe he would win, maybe he wouldn’t. Perhaps they allowed him to try because they didn’t really believe that any Kupferberg or Vishniak could have such a triumph. No believer in God, Robert found himself praying each night in the darkness: please, please, let me get the hell out of my parents’ house.
His prayers were answered. He got into more than one college and was offered financial aid and a scholarship, and even some money from the Masons—the mysterious meetings his father went cheerfully off to every few weeks, insisting that he’d joined for the cheap rates on life insurance. Who were the Masons to help him? His gratitude knew no bounds. The news was equally remarkable for his family. How would they resolve the fact that one among them had been elevated? Or rationalize Uncle Frank’s motto that nice guys finish last?
Robert went with the best financial-aid package offered, from Tufts University in Boston. A college had accepted him, and then he had accepted them. It was all such a satisfactory, reciprocal relationship that he could not help but be suspicious, though only for a moment, as he signed the papers. The next night, Stacia had the family over to celebrate. Good news! It put the color back in their cheeks, and the talk and laughter were so loud that the walls seemed to vibrate with joy. Everyone looked happy except for Barry, who sat on the couch silently nursing a black cherry soda. How could Robert abandon him? Here?
“Maybe you’ll come visit me in Boston,” Robert told him, knowing that it would never happen. Stacia would never pay the bus fare, or send a thirteen-year-old off on a Greyhound to wreak havoc, and they both knew it. “And in a few years it’ll be your turn. You’ll be lucky, too.”
Barry seemed for a moment not to hear him. He was distracted, his dark eyes staring off past the stairs. Was Barry afraid that Robert had sucked up what little luck the family had, sucked it up all for himself, just like, as a child, he had sucked up all the affection and love from their extended family, before Barry even arrived? Barry took a sip of his drink, and a red mustache of bubbles clung to the thickening fuzz on his upper lip. Then he belched, as if to clear his thoughts. “I don’t believe in luck, brother,” he said. “People make their own luck.”
While Vishniak toasted his son, filling everyone’s paper cups with cherry brandy, Cece, now close to deaf, came and sat next to him. “In the town where we lived when I was a girl,” she shouted, resting her small brown hand on his knee, “everyone fought over who would shine the shoes of the town doctor. It was an honor!” Her dream was that Robert should become the one whose shoes got shined instead of the one doing the shining. Vishniak, having downed his brandy and poured another shot, said that a doctor took too much schooling, why not a lawyer?
“Lawyers are crooks,” a cousin blurted out. “Have an accident at work and they come out of the woodwork.”
“Stockbrokers,” said Aunt Lolly. “A license to steal.”
“Politicians!” Uncle Frank snorted.
“They’re all shysters,” Stacia yelled from the kitchen. Her feelings about doctors were known by all. Still, she told Robert to listen to Cece; medicine was a brilliant racket, one of the best, and why shouldn’t he profit by it?
As for Robert, he gave little thought to the fact that the family had gathered to celebrate his launch into the world of the college-educated, a world they believed to be rife with corruption and dishonesty. Only the world of working people—the world of suckers, as Vishniak put it—was an honest one. But they wanted something easier for him.
“Better to be the Man than serve the Man,” Vishniak said, and everyone raised their glasses in a toast. Robert drank, too, believing every word.
A few months later, Frank drove them to the bus station. Vishniak bought Robert’s ticket, and then they all walked to the gate. The driver stowed his duffel bag while Stacia cautioned him to budget his money carefully and work hard. His father patted him on the back and nodded; Barry rubbed his face in the crook of his elbow, trying to camouflage his tears. As the bus pulled out of the Market Street station, and Robert’s family stood waving at him from the pavement below, he knew that he’d never live in Oxford Circle again.
CHAPTER THREE
Roommates
Having taken the Greyhound bus and then the T to Davis Square, and then dragged his duffel down College Avenue and through the university gates, Robert Vishniak paused for a breath. He was just about six feet tall, and his slimness made him appear even taller, but his shoulders were broad, and his back muscular, from all those winters of shoveling snow and years of carrying heavy bags of groceries for the patrons of the Shop N’ Bag. As a result of his mother’s insistence that he and Barry take dancing lessons at the YMHA—a by-product of her cultural push that he had faced with particular dread—Robert’s posture was excellent and he had a certain grace, if not on the dance floor, then in his general walk and deportment. He had shaved at six thirty that morning and it was now almost 4:00 p.m.; there was a vague shadow around his jaw. He wore his one pair of dress pants, which were dark gray and a little too short, with a white dress shirt. In the heat and crowding of the bus, he’d rolled up the sleeves.
Robert bent down and heaved the duffel onto his shoulders, then walked in the direction of the hill that he thought would take him to his dorm in West Hall—on the bus, having nothing but time, he had assiduously studied the campus map included in the package of papers he’d gotten with his acceptance. With that duffel on his shoulders, he might have made a good extra in On the Waterfront or, with his slimness, a dancer in the chorus of West Side Story, more Shark than Jet. The collective impression created by his size and the intensity around his eyes, the sensuality of his full lips contrasted with the longish, slightly crooked nose, and then the dimple on his chin, like the last perfect stroke of a sculptor’s knife, all this meant that he could not walk through a crowd completely unnoticed. The occasional mother stopped to look, and so did the occasional daughter, but mostly people rushed by: freshmen preoccupied with their tasks, snapping at fathers and siblings, comforting emotional mothers, complaining to each other about the heat, and carrying stereo speakers, suitcases, typewriters, desk lamps, garment bags, skis, tennis racquets, golf clubs, and hockey sticks. He had never seen so much stuff. In addition to three pairs of slacks, counting the ones he now wore, he owned exactly four T-shirts, two dress shirts, a pair of shoes, underwear, some sneakers, and a sport jacket, already too short in the sleeves, left over from his high school graduation. His mother was predictably strict about purchases. Devotee that she was to the hand-me-down, she had never forgiven her sons for not being able to share clothes—Robert being tall and thin, and Barry short and round. She might as well have had a girl, she often said, for all the clothes those two demanded.
Despite the ninety-degree temperatures, the boys around him wore coats, ties, starched cotton shirts, trousers, and shiny loafers. His pants, at least, were not wrinkled, due to his mother’s belief in the sanctity of permanent press, but he’d spilled a Coke on himself when the bus came to an abrupt stop, and his legs felt vaguely sticky. The duffel was getting heavy now and, crossing under a series of archways, he could see that the service elevator was mobbed; he would have to carry it up three flights. He found his key in a mailbox by the steps and made his way quickly, wanting to get the last leg of his journey over with as soon as possible.
He found his name written on the door along with that of his roommate, Sanford Trace, who had been a last-minute substitution. He’d heard about the change only a few days earlier, and so they’d exchanged no letters or further information. Up until then, he was to room with a David Hersh from Bayonne, New Jersey, but Hersh was no more and Sanford’s name was now coupled with his own on the door, for better or for worse. His roommate had already taken the bed by the window, so Robert, feeling the end near and his strength waning—he had not slept a wink on the bus and hardly at all the night before—dropped the duffel and dragged it to the bed against the far wal
l, then hoisted it onto the naked mattress.
He walked over to his roommate’s bed. Lined up next to it were five suitcases in descending size, all in pale, butter-colored calfskin with red stitching. Each piece was embossed in gold with the letters TSA and the Roman numeral III. He picked up one piece; it had already been emptied. There were several books on a small table next to the bed. One was The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, another was a French dictionary, and the third was titled Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie a l’age classique by Michel Foucault. He picked up the dictionary, looking for some of the French words—he had studied Spanish in school —figuring out enough to know that the book was a history of madness.
Well, he’s a reader, Robert thought, bilingual, and possibly insane. He walked back to his bed and lay down, using the unpacked duffel as a headrest. His body ached. What he really needed was a shower. No, he needed to sleep. No, a shower. His mind went back and forth, unable to decide, until he had no choice and gave in to his exhaustion.
He was awakened by an explosion and sat up abruptly, wondering where he was. Someone yelled the word “score” and then “my shot!” A ball bounced hard against the other side of the thin party wall; Robert could feel the reverberation with each toss. Then the noise stopped, and he fell off to sleep again. Now someone was calling his name, shaking him to consciousness. A tall young man stood over him. He had a square jaw dotted here and there with acne. His features were small and compact, making his chin and forehead look much larger, and he wore his blond hair, so pale as to look almost white, slicked off his face. His clothes were pressed and new, but not too new—white shirt, crisp khakis, and a yellow, blue, and white tennis sweater tied over his shoulders. “Vishniak?” he asked, pointing to the word that had been written, in large block letters, across the top of Robert’s duffel, next to where he now rested his head.
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