The Best of Youth
Page 6
Abby now looked close to tears herself as she said these last few sentences, so how could Henry reply? And the fact was that he did vaguely believe that she might be right. Hannah would be more furious than he could really reasonably imagine, and Henry was hardly the best foil for such emotions to be properly expressed. Henry did not, however, feel any relief over the fact that he wouldn’t be the one to break the news. Abby’s face appeared entirely drained of blood. Even her lips seemed white. And her mouth couldn’t quite close. And she kept scratching her neck in a sort of distracted and upset way that made her seem to be a very different person, a person very far from the tough and intrepid young woman that Henry normally knew.
“All right,” Henry said after a moment.
Abby stared at him for a second, almost as if she had forgotten what Henry was agreeing to. But then she said, “Go pack. I’m going to stay here. I need to think about this.”
17
NEEDLESS TO SAY, the drive back to Brooklyn was excruciating for Henry—all that time alone with his thoughts. It was exactly what he didn’t want at that point, and he began conflating everything he was thinking into a single saturated emotion based on his general and recent failures with women, his shameful facial expressions during sex (probably being discussed at that moment throughout Williamsburg), and now the fact that he had killed a million-dollar herd of goats, which, because of their unique origin, no amount of money, Henry’s or an insurance company’s, could replace.
Henry wasn’t even able to resort to his customary emotional trick of thinking about writing a short story (and thereby winning literary glory) to give himself a bit of relief. After all, on the level of great literature, he was feeling like a complete failure as well.
And, ironically, this particular failure was confirmed once again when he arrived home. There was mail—clearly it was the last delivery made on Christmas Eve—which contained a rejection letter from the fiction editor at Suckerhead. It was for the somewhat sentimental story he had written about the elderly man who had never been properly loved by another person, and, quite shockingly, it was a form rejection letter that politely told him his work wasn’t “needed at this time,” with a tepid note of encouragement at the bottom: “A good but uneven effort. Keep trying!—Max.”
It was almost too horrible to bear, although there was one surprising addition to the rejection slip. On the back was a note in different script that said, “Disagree. I loved it—Sasha.”
So that was good. For just an instant, Henry felt good about that. The tattooed woman liked it. Still, it wasn’t enough to diminish the humiliation of Max’s completely patronizing response and Henry was soon taking off his clothes and getting into bed, hoping he’d sleep through the entire next day, and maybe even beyond that.
18
AND THE NEXT DAYS were, in fact, terrible, although Henry didn’t hear anything about the terrible catastrophe in Vermont. He called Abby about it—repeatedly—but much to his dismay she didn’t return any of his calls. Henry also made several offers to help alleviate the situation, suggesting via Abby’s voice mail that he could even compensate Hannah for the loss—it seemed a not-impossible thing to do given his bank account, although it was a staggering million dollars. Henry did suspect, though, that she was at least partially insured, so if he was taken up on this, he’d hopefully be in for substantially less than the entire price of the flock.
All the same, despite his numerous calls and messages, Abby didn’t reply, and although Henry also formulated many heartfelt apologies he wanted to deliver to Hannah, he didn’t dare call her directly until he heard from Abby. A week after he returned from Vermont, however, he did finally get an opportunity to offer these apologies when Hannah (not Abby, quite shockingly) finally called him. The fact was, though, and much to his horror, Hannah was calling about another development in the catastrophe and was not at all open to a sort of clearing of the air, as it were.
“Why the fuck did you go to the vet?” Hannah screamed, just after Henry answered the phone.
Henry was extremely surprised by this question. It was not exactly what he had expected to hear. “What?” he finally said, still not able to grasp what was being asked of him.
“Why the fuck did you go to the vet, you stupid fucking dickhead?” Hannah yelled.
Henry was fairly astonished that a fiftysomething woman from Greenwich, of all places, was using this kind of language. But he didn’t dwell on this matter.
“I thought there might be something she could do,” he replied.
“The goats were dead, Henry. Goats are like humans that way. You can’t bring them back to life by calling a doctor, you stupid fucking dickhead.”
Henry was still entirely confused, especially that this of all things would be what Hannah was angry about.
“I had to do something,” he said. “It seemed best to get the vet. But what does it matter? I can pay, Hannah. I can pay for everything. The goats. The vet bills. Whatever insurance doesn’t cover. Even if it doesn’t cover anything, I can pay. I have fifteen million dollars.”
“Let me tell you why it matters, Henry, you fucking dick.” (Hannah said Henry and fucking dick with a kind of contempt he had never quite heard before from anyone.) “The vet has, at this point, told everyone in the entire state the story of you killing the fucking goats and now I’m on the fucking front page of every Vermont newspaper as the stupid fucking wife of the hedge fund manager who thought she knew better than local farmers and couldn’t keep control of her own fucking farm and whose gross mismanagement killed off a million dollars’ worth of fucking goats. A million dollars’ worth of fucking goats!”
“What?” Henry said.
“On the front page of every fucking newspaper in Vermont, you stupid fucking dick. And all of New England soon enough. I’m a fucking laughingstock, Henry. All because of you.”
Henry was now speechless. He rapidly thought about how to reply and then finally said, in a voice that he would later recognize as being completely and ridiculously pathetic, “They were just so cold, Hannah, and I wanted to keep them warm, which seemed to be the best thing to do because, really, they seemed very, very unhappy.”
“Fuck you, you stupid fucking idiot,” Hannah screamed, and before Henry processed these words (and her yet again surprisingly new threshold of anger) she hung up, leaving Henry holding his phone’s receiver and thinking that now, certainly, there would be no way to ever make amends.
19
HENRY SPENT THAT day and the next wandering around Brooklyn, and while he ate little, he did stop from time to time for coffee and even drank beer at various bars, hoping that alcohol might give him some relief—it always did for everyone else. And it was true that more than once a few beers did make him feel a little better. But the feelings were temporary and were always followed with an even deeper sense of despair.
Two days after the call from Hannah, he also managed to go online to read the articles that had been written about the killing of the goats, and she certainly wasn’t exaggerating when she said she was the laughingstock of the Vermont press. He did notice, however, in the later stories, when Hannah was asked to comment, that she made it very clear that it was all entirely the fault of “a brainless idiot twenty-four-year-old from Brooklyn” and that she was probably going to take legal action against him and maybe even encourage local police to press charges against Henry for “gross cruelty to animals.” It was quite chilling, although two separate newspapers pointed out that legal retaliation had little possibility of success, especially because no jury or judge was likely to sympathize with the hedge fund farmer who left her homestead for a week to vacation in the Caribbean: it was hardly the sort of Yankee ethic that most Vermonters could relate to. It did hurt Henry, however, that he was now being discussed like this in the press—surely Vermont farmers were just as unsympathetic toward stupid twenty-four-year-olds from Brooklyn as they were to rich women from Connecticut.
But the pain eased somewhat
about a week after Hannah phoned him, because Abby finally called (or finally returned Henry’s calls) and suggested they meet for dinner. They went to the Austrian restaurant where Henry had first brought up the matter of a romantic liaison between the two. It seemed the best place to go because Henry was having trouble eating anything at all, and thick wet noodles and sausages were about the only things he thought he could choke down. When the food finally arrived, though, he found it impossible to do anything more than poke at his dinner with his fork.
“You’ve really got to eat, Henry,” Abby said at last when she saw that Henry wasn’t at all interested in his food. (They had thus far talked entirely about Abby’s somewhat mystifying musical projects with her viola.)
“I’m afraid I already ate an hour or so ago,” Henry finally replied, “and I’m not really very hungry.”
“You already ate?” Abby said sarcastically. “Sorry, Henry, not buying it. You’ve got to eat something. You really do. You’ve lost like ten pounds. Come on, time for you to stop acting like an idiot all the time.” Abby forced a smile as she said this, and then leaned forward and poked Henry in the shoulder, although, despite the playful gesture, she now looked fairly angry.
Henry dutifully cut into a sausage. “Well, I don’t want to be a skinny idiot,” he said quietly.
Abby hesitated, then said at last, “Look, Henry. I know Hannah called you. And I’ve seen the articles. And I know what she’s saying. And I know how bad you feel. I feel bad. I feel completely terrible, in fact. But the truth is, and I guess I think I need to say this, the truth is that I guess I’m also a little pissed off at you too. Maybe at everything. Maybe mostly at you. I don’t know. I mean, why do you do such stupid shit? And why do you even hang out with those asshole Suckerhead people? And, I don’t know, I look at you moping around Williamsburg with fifteen million bucks in your bank account and I don’t even know why we’re friends, especially when you do things like kill a hundred completely innocent goats who, because they’re goats (Henry!) don’t have much control when some jackass from New York poisons them with the exhaust of an emergency generator.”
Henry was more than a little surprised by this outburst, and while the content of what Abby was saying was of course very damning, he didn’t entirely follow it because he was so lost in her tone. This was real anger, and Henry was now doing everything he could not to start crying, although he was sure there was something of a tremor beginning to appear in his mouth.
“I mean, fuck you, Henry,” Abby yelled. “I mean, get it together. You’ve got to fucking sort your shit out. I mean, what are you doing with yourself? That’s what I want to know. What are you fucking doing with yourself?” Abby paused, then took a deep breath. “That’s what I what to know,” she continued. “That’s what I think. That’s one of the things I think.” She paused again, but continued before Henry could gather himself enough to respond—or start weeping. “But I guess, Henry, I think other things too,” she said. “I mean, you’re an idiot. You really are. But it’s all bullshit. Fuck Hannah for saying all that crap to the newspapers and all the crap she said to you. Hannah might have done exactly the same thing. Anyone might have. Not me. Because me, I’m not a fucking idiot. But maybe someone else. So fuck Hannah for being so hard on you. I mean, let’s face it, she is exactly that, she is the wife of a fucking hedge fund manager. Who ever heard of a ten-thousand-dollar goat? I mean, really. A ten-thousand-dollar fucking goat? A million-dollar goat herd? You’ve got to be some kind of freak to spend that on goats. And if you’ve got a million-dollar flock of goats, you certainly don’t jet off to St. Croix for a week. You put your bed in the barn and watch them every minute.”
Henry stared very intently at the bite of sausage on his fork. He wasn’t sure what he ought to be doing at this particular moment.
“But you are an idiot, Henry,” Abby said. “I’m not saying you’re not. I mean, you’re a total fucking goober. But, and I guess this is what I really want to say, Henry: I’m your friend. One of your best friends. You’re one of my best friends. In the world. Ever. And I’m more your friend than I am my aunt’s niece. And when the chips are down, I’m with you, although I can’t believe I’m saying it. I’m with you, against whatever other problems you’re facing, even if you deserve everything that’s coming to you. I’m definitely against those Suckerhead idiots. I know you feel terrible about the goats. I’d kill myself. I mean it. So you’re probably doing better than I would be. But you and me are friends, Henry. We’re close. Really close. And that’s not going to change. You really are a complete dope. But you’re one of my best friends in the world. And I really, really think you’re a great person, despite your completely stupid fucking behavior. You’re certainly my favorite relative, although, I know, I know, like you’ve already pointed out”—Abby now cracked a smile—“we’re only very loosely related.”
It crossed Henry’s mind for just an instant to reaffirm this last comment, but only out of some kind of habitual reaction, because, surprisingly, at that exact moment, he wasn’t really thinking, as he usually did, about his romantic prospects with Abby. Instead—and it really was surprising—he was thinking of how much she suddenly reminded him of his father. Henry thought again about the time when he had confessed that his prospects of being a Deerfield letterman (or any kind of athlete ever, for that matter) were extremely slim, and how his father replied by saying that he was the “very best man he knew,” and in that exact split-second at dinner with Abby, as Henry thought about how much his father saying that had meant to him, he almost, finally, really started crying, although now for entirely new reasons. For a moment, in fact, he felt extremely happy—despite all that had happened to him—although the feeling passed soon enough because Henry could hardly forget that he was still in quite a bit of trouble. Nevertheless, he suddenly managed to eat the piece of sausage he had on his fork, and then he ate another piece after that, and he found that it actually tasted all right to him, which was promising for any number of reasons, including that it was probably very true that he had lost nearly ten pounds in the past week or so. Henry thought for a moment about what he could only describe as a kind of general contempt he’d felt from so many people in recent months: dismissive people at Suckerhead, exploitative girls who insulted him online, angry wives of hedge fund managers—the list was long. But it seemed to Henry, just briefly, just at that moment—and he hoped the feeling would continue for longer—that maybe if you at least had a fourth cousin who liked you and was on your side, and you at least had the memory of a father who said you were the best person he ever knew, then maybe things weren’t so bad. Or, if they were bad, you could at least somehow find a way to survive. And that was what was important in the end: finding enough of a reason to keep going. This was New York City, after all, and no place for the weak of heart (Henry now thought with some romantic reflection), especially not for a young man trying to find his way in the world, even if he did have $15 million to fall back on. He could tough it out. And the fact was, if you really thought about it, everything that had happened to him had only brought him and Abby closer, which was really just the sort of thing, Henry concluded tentatively, that might lead to deeper feelings between the two. Henry quickly decided, however, that this was not a good way to think, especially not now. After all, maybe he really should start trying to work at being less of a so-called idiot, and imagining romantic liaisons with women who don’t like you in that way was probably a good example of his many problems, and one he ought, perhaps, to correct as soon as possible. He was, all things considered, very lucky to have Abby, and he shouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that. That, of all things, was very important.
20
DESPITE ABBY’S FINAL affirmation of friendship and solidarity, however, Henry knew he was still facing quite a few serious problems. But the next day something very fortunate happened that made him feel that perhaps things might really, eventually, turn around for him—at least in some venues in his life.
It was another development, however—one very surprising—that made Henry feel like the future might be a tiny bit better than he had imagined. He checked his email at about eleven in the morning and discovered that an editor at a magazine called the Wellfleet Review had contacted him. The Wellfleet Review was a little like Suckerhead in that it was new (although already respected) and had recently (two years ago) been founded in New York by people in their twenties. But one of the Wellfleet Review’s founding editors had just published a novel to fairly favorable reviews, and the magazine was getting just a little press, and it was a journal where Henry very much wanted to place a story. And, in fact, that’s exactly what the email was offering. It came from the fiction editor (the editor who had published the novel) and it said that he and his colleagues all absolutely adored Henry’s story—it was the one about the 90-year-old man who struggles with the pain of committing his 106-year-old mother to a nursing home—and that they’d love to publish it. Certainly it was far from a book deal with a top-notch press, or even publication in one of the more famous literary magazines, but Henry could not have been happier about the news. In fact, Henry regarded it as so extraordinary that he once again found himself pacing his apartment, although now with an outlook entirely different from the one that had just been burdening him.