by Deb Caletti
A list of beautiful attributes, yes? Moody, depressive, deviant, terrible family relationships, drug use, and numerous previous sex partners? I felt something real and large, yes, that’s true, but that something was pain. It ended when I found out that one of the places he was disappearing to was the bed of a thirty-five-year-old woman whom he babysat for. He was nineteen. I never told Frances Lee that part of the story.
I read somewhere later, years, that the boys who are delinquent in high school, the kind who are always in trouble, drugs, barely graduating, all of it, it’s a huge indicator of a future sociopath. That’s right. You are tempted to think, Teenager, troubled. Part of the landscape. But it’s not part of the landscape. Not part of any normal landscape. This is who he is, who he will always be, and no amount of your love is going to change that.
In comparison, Barry’s dramatics seemed mild. He just had a lot of girls around him all the time. Just. You see—I only turned the drama volume down, when I should have turned it off.
I lay awake in the dark, in our room at Dad’s house. When we first came back into Dad’s life, the room had been used for Brie to work out in. There had been an exercise bike and weights and squishy green mats; a television with an assortment of videos beside it, with covers of women flexing muscles and running on the beach. But Brie had moved over for us, moved her stuff to the attic and gotten a membership in some gym downtown. Now the room had two beds and a dresser Brie had found in an antique store, with a big mirror in the shape of a shell. Brie had brought in a painter, who made a mural of two mermaids at sea. She kissed our foreheads when we went to bed, carrying Malcolm on her back as she headed to his room, his butt drooping low and his tennis shoes hanging on by just his toes. His room now held only boxes of books Dad had recently bought, with the intention of making a library.
I looked at Sprout’s dark head, tucked snugly into her pillow. “Sprout!” I whispered. But there was no answer; just the in-out sound of her breathing.
I thought about Dad watering his flower baskets in his dragon robe. I thought about his holiday decorating—for Christmas, a huge reindeer and sleigh, inflatable snowmen, a ten-foot Santa with a puffy bag of air-presents over one shoulder. For Halloween, orange and black lights, an enormous spider on the roof, plastic bats hung on all the neighbors’ mailboxes. I thought about how it felt to be around someone so much larger than you. I thought of his words: I tell the truth to the best of my ability. If the truth was like a diamond, then sometimes it might be too bright to look at. Sometimes, it would be hard to know whether it was real.
Maybe it was wrong, or maybe impossible, but I wanted the truth to be one thing. One solid thing. I knew what I had to do then. It was another one of those moments when I didn’t know how I knew, or why. Just that I knew I had to call Frances Lee.
Chapter Five
When I sat down in my seat for the train ride home, I saw that I’d missed a call from Liv. “Quinn, it’s me,” the message said. Her voice was breathless and worried. “Hey, give me a call. I need to talk to you. It’s important. Love you…”
Liv and I had been best friends since we both started playing volleyball in the eighth grade, and I’d do anything for her, but when I called her back I was happy to get her voice mail: You’ve reached Liv. Say something. I didn’t feel like talking, I realized, didn’t want to hear about the latest crisis with Ben/Alex/Jason/Whoever. I felt the sort of low, vague pissed-off that could turn global. You know, where you get a paper cut and curse not only the paper but paper factories and the paper factory workers and pulp mills and trees. That’s the thing about discontent—it’s very flexible. It’s perfectly content to invade wherever it happens to land.
Mom picked us up at the station, as always, her Subaru parked at the curb. We climbed in; Sprout’s butt was barely on the seat before she told Mom about the reporter.
“Sheesh,” Mom said.
I kept my mouth shut, stared out the window at the glassy buildings of the city, at the Space Needle and Lake Union in an oval in front of it, at seaplanes landing, at the packed freeway lanes heading toward the floating bridge toward home. I hated that Sprout did this—gave the FBI report on Dad and his crimes whenever we got home. Maybe she should bring a recorder, or a hidden camera in her shirt button. I didn’t like this game, didn’t like to give these little presents we seemed to give Mom after we’d been to see Dad. She would ask how it was, and somewhere inside you knew you couldn’t say it was great, even if it was. You said, It was boring. You said, Dad and Brie got in a fight.
You didn’t say he made you laugh until your stomach hurt, or that he bought you an Xbox and fifteen games (Sprout never told Mom about this either). You didn’t say you saw him come up behind Brie and kiss her neck with happy passion when she was making slushy green margaritas in a blender, or that he bought so many wildflowers to plant on the shore down to the river that you had to go back to the store twice more just to bring them all home. You didn’t say that you loved everything about Malcolm, even when he screamed and held tight to the banister like it was Good and his bed was Evil. You stuck to the small, nasty truths—that Dad seemed stressed about the upcoming show because he snapped at the car-wash guy. You knew you were offering something, holding out the chance for a satisfying, critical reply. He treats that car better than the women in his life. Or, How nice that he can afford to get the car detailed.
And even if it wasn’t great, even if it was bad, you never said how bad it really was, either. You said, Dad and Brie were fighting; you didn’t say you heard the crickle-pop of tires on the gravel road at two a.m. and that Dad wasn’t there at breakfast in the morning. You said things were fine all weekend, but not that Dad was stoned and you all got in the car anyway. That he left the parking brake off later that night and the car ended up on the neighbor’s lawn. Because one time you did say—you told about how he taught you to make him a gin and tonic or that you went on that boat ride with him and Uncle Mike and you ran out of gas and no, no one had a life jacket on. You told and you found out what happened—angry phone calls, a lecture from Dad about how what goes on at his house should stay at his house. You don’t have to be Mom’s spy. Just because she thinks something, doesn’t mean you need to think it too.
It was best to keep your mouth shut. Don’t offer the truth. The less said, the better, because there were a lot of people you had to protect. You had to protect Mom against her heartbreak and Dad against his wrongdoing. You had to protect yourself against feeling like a betrayer, a guilt-ridden thief showing off some jewels. You had to protect yourself, too, against the accusation that you were just like your mother. Which in a lot of ways you were. Which was, apparently, a bad thing. Both of them might be right—neither of them should know that.
All of this meant that you didn’t say the things you really needed to say, either, about money and principles and college, things you would have to one day say, there was no getting around it. Just not then. Not until you were ready for days of upset and long conversations and bad feelings lying in the pit of your stomach.
“You okay, Quinn?” Mom looked over her shoulder to change lanes, snatched a glance my way.
“I’m fine,” I said.
At home, I opened my backpack from the visit to Dad’s and took the dirty stuff out. When your parents are divorced, you can also feel a lot like a traveling salesman.
After I unpacked, I went downstairs to cruise for mood-improving food. The list on the refrigerator had grown. He presses to get involved very quickly…. He claims to know your feelings, perceptions, motivations better than you do. He says you’re too sensitive, you’re not seeing things right, or that you’re wrong to feel what you feel. In a different-color pen, and in her tiny, scratchy scrawl, Gram had added, He’s a dirty, rotten liar.
Sprout must have gotten to my phone when I wasn’t looking, because my ringers were changed again. She always thought this was hilarious. As I twisted open a bottle of Fresca, my phone sang some finger-snapping jazzy number
some old guy over sixty would love.
“I’ve got to talk to you.” Liv’s voice was breathless again. Come to think of it, she was always a little breathless; maybe being beautiful was something you were always catching up to.
“I’m here,” I said. I took a long, green, bubbly drink.
“Quinn, this is bad news, okay? I’m not even entirely sure I should tell you. I should wait, maybe, until I see you. I just thought, What would I want? You’re my best friend.”
I returned the bottle to the refrigerator, let the door slap closed. The Internal Department of Panic Control got to work. What could be that bad? Someone was talking about me, maybe. Big deal. Zaney? A friend I loved talking about me? Okay, that would be bad. Maybe it was Daniel. Daniel told everyone we had sex. Ha, Daniel would never do that.
“It’s Daniel,” Liv said.
No way. Just, no way. Daniel wasn’t the type to hurt me. Of course, he wasn’t the type to maul me, either, and last Friday he pulled me into his backyard and shoved me up against the house and kissed me with such hurricane energy that we knocked over a garbage can.
“I think he’s seeing someone else.”
“What?” The words sounded funny. Like they came to me underwater. Like they were unreal, and this was happening in some other place and time.
“Quinn, are you okay? Are you there?”
“Daniel would never do that,” I said.
“I saw his car, parked in my neighborhood, and I thought, Hey, there’s Daniel’s car, and when I went over to say hi and ask him what he was doing there, I saw that new girl, Genevieve, what’s her name, in his car. The one that came the last month of school? Who moves in the last month of school? I didn’t even know she lived near me. I never even saw a moving truck.”
“He was probably just giving her a ride,” I said. But it felt like one of those stories you try out on yourself that you don’t believe. “He gives people rides all the time.”
“Quinn? I don’t think you need to have your belt undone when you give someone a ride.”
“Shit,” I said. “Goddamn it. There must be an explanation.” My chest felt squeezed of air. Thoughts shoved and pushed like people released from the train—Daniel, in my life, not in my life, a sudden absence, yanked. Loss, now anger. His tongue in my mouth, in her mouth. The smell of her perfume, what I now knew and maybe always knew was the smell of her perfume on his shirt, oh God, on me.
“Fuck you, good riddance. Quinn, you deserve better. I’m coming over. You want me to come over?”
“It’s okay.”
“I never liked Daniel, anyway. I didn’t trust him.”
“I just can’t believe it.” I sat on the arm of the living-room couch. I stared down at the straight little fibers that made up the carpet forest. But I could believe it, couldn’t I? I had known, with that particular knowledge that likes to stay cozy and buried.
“I can believe it,” Liv said. “He was nice, yeah. Too nice. Makes you worry, like those Jesus freaks into pornography, you know? Too much of anything is never a good thing, even goodness.”
“I should call him,” I said. It occurred to me suddenly that this was about him, too.
“You should not call him. What a coward, hiding out like a baby. He knew I saw. He knew it. And he hasn’t called you yet? Cowardly shithead.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
“You deserve real goodness,” Liv said.
Daniel picked up on the first ring. I didn’t say anything, not even hello. He sort of sputtered and stuttered, like our lawn mower when Mom tries to start it after the winter. And like the lawn mower, when it finally got going, it had surprising power after lying dormant for so long.
“I fell in love, Quinn,” he said.
That’s when I hung up.
BRIE JENKINS:
I was one of these kids whose room was always clean, which, by the way, is not a trait Malcolm inherited! By the time I was in junior high, I had five-, ten-, and fifteen-year goals. I did, really—written down in my Rainbow Brite notebook. I still have it somewhere. My first serious boyfriend in high school wanted to be a doctor, and I think that’s why I liked him. Larry Unstler. While all the other guys were smoking pot and talking about their cars, he was studying. He was a good guy—on the golf team, soft-spoken, real tall, long fingers that would pick out the lettuce from the sandwiches his mother made. He did sweet things, like bring me flowers, all that, a pie he made himself. I broke up with him because he was boring. I told him I’d go to Homecoming with him, then changed my mind after he’d rented his tux and everything, which was lousy and wrong and not the kind of thing I did. But it got to where I couldn’t stand for him to touch me. He’d hold my hand and I’d just want to cringe. Those long, lettuce-removing fingers. When he touched me, I felt the way a slug must feel when you pour salt on it.
I didn’t know what my problem was, because the next guy, Matt Mahnken—completely different story. I wanted him like I never wanted Larry Unstler. His father had run off and he lived with his mother; she worked and was so overwhelmed she never had time for him. She’d come home from work and go to bed, and sometimes no one even made dinner. His sister attempted suicide during our junior year. He was so sad all the time, big beautiful sad eyes, but my father thought he was a loser. I did his homework for him because he was failing a couple of classes, but wasn’t that understandable with all that was going on at home? I made cookies for him, with uplifting, bolstering notes Scotch-taped on top, I hope you have a great day! You’re awesome! things like that, and I listened to his problems and bought him little presents and even made dinner a few times for him and his mom, before she came home. He’d always say, I don’t know what I’d do without you, and that made me feel so good. He was wounded.
They moved away a year later. His mother got a new job. And I never heard from him again. Nothing. Not a word. It was like he’d dropped off the earth. And even then, my first thought was that something terrible had happened to him. They’d gotten into a car accident on the way to Denver. He’d gotten sick. His mother had gotten sick. His sister really did kill herself this time, and he was too despondent to write. I went into action—I wrote to him, researched possible phone numbers. I even tried to call some aunt I remember him mentioning.
I’d heard shortly afterward from a friend of his that he was fine—in a new school, almost failing again, but fine. It took me years to understand what had happened—basically, that he had found someone else to make him cookies, and that he would always have someone to make him cookies. I worried he’d die without me. I was sure he needed me, but it was maybe the other way around. And pity—people who inspire it in you are actually very powerful people. To get someone else to take care of you, to feel sorry for you—that takes a lot of strength, smarts, manipulation. Very powerful people.
It also took me years to stop putting some imaginary halo on Larry Unstler. The truth was, Larry was a good guy, but he was boring. The truth was, Matt Mahnken wasn’t boring, but he was a bad guy. The truth was, they both were wrong for me. I kept thinking that wrongness came in degrees of acceptability, instead of that, rightness is or isn’t.
Daniel. My heart never leapt in desire at his presence; I never imagined wearing white for him or living some long, entangled life until our Silver Anniversary. But still, I felt then like my body had been a building he’d just hit with a wrecking ball. Maybe if I’d have dumped him it would have been different. Rejection, though—it could make the loss of someone you weren’t even that crazy about feel gut wrenching and world ending.
“That asshole,” Mom said. Rejection—it also demands that the forces on your side assemble for action. It calls for all the people who love you to gather, organize, and execute like a good army.
Mom passed out bowls of ice cream as I tried to pull myself together. The first bowl went to Aunt Annie, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “He’s too boring to even be an asshole, Quinn,” she said. “I never even noticed he was in the room until
he spoke. You were dating an end table.”
Grandma was next. She sat on the couch in her robe and her pink-slippered feet were propped up on the edge of the coffee table. “You need someone with a little life.” Grandma held her fingers in the air. Snap, snap, snap.
Liv got bowl three. She’d come right over so fast that she was still wearing the clothes she had on when she called—Sunday night hanging-out pajama bottoms with penguins on them and a tank top with pink hearts that one of her boyfriends had given her for Valentine’s Day: “I’m telling you, you’ve gotta watch those Mr. Perfect, shiny-faced types,” Liv said.
“It’s the Jesus freaks who buy all the porno,” Aunt Annie said.
“That’s what I told her,” Liv said.
Finally, Sprout got her ice cream. “Daniel was vomit,” she said.
“Coffee ice cream, we’re going to be up all night,” Grandma said. The idea seemed to please her.
“Look under. Vanilla and butterscotch swirl, too,” Mom said. “Every kind in the fridge. Honey, you’re going to be fine. I know you don’t feel like it, but you will. Us Hoffmans—we’re strong women.”
I hadn’t wanted to cry until then. It was the thought of the Hoffman women that did it, the scattered and wrecked relationships that lay around like pieces of broken china—something beautiful once, now shattered and unrecognizable. My throat got tight. Tears gathered, but I put my palms to my eyes to stop them.