I hung with Angie while Joe was gone, and we got crazy drunk one night down at Larry’s. I had to leave my car in town and walk back to Angie’s house. I puked in her bathroom, and had to rinse out the striped rug in the sink. The next morning Angie’s mom made us scrambled eggs. She’s a fat, grandmotherly sort of mom, hair in a bob, wears these housedresses from Kmart or someplace—nothing like my mom, nothing like the women who shop at Ragtime. She put the eggs down in front of me, and some bacon, and then she poured me a big glass of tomato juice. “Drink the juice, if nothing else,” she said, and Angie nodded. Angie’s mom knew about hangovers, between Angie and Johnny, and their dad probably too.
“Not sure about that,” I said, eyeing the thick red liquid. “That is some daunting-looking juice.”
Angie and I sat around most of that morning listening to music, trying to feel well enough so we could get up and go downtown to where my car was languishing behind the stationery store. That was when Angie filled me in about Joe’s family, and how his dad, Angie’s mother’s brother, was a real prick.
“Big Joe was my favorite uncle until I was ten,” Angie said. “Then they were all here for Christmas one year. All the grown-ups were drinking all night, just like any Christmas Eve. Then they went out caroling, and they were passing around drinks. I remember one of them carrying a silver flask, because some of the older kids wanted a hit off of it. When we got to mass,” Angie said, “Big Joe was standing in the back with some of the older kids. I was in front of them in a pew, fighting to keep my eyes open.
“They got to this part of the mass where they’re talking about Jesus, how the baby Jesus was born and everyone was coming to see this baby, and Big Joe started laughing. I remember everyone in the church turning to look at him, and he was cracking up and pointing, and tears were rolling down his cheeks. Nobody knew what had struck him so funny. Then some guys got pissed and went after Joe, and dragged him outside. I remember this one guy making like he was going to punch Big Joe in the face, but then he just snarled at him and said, ‘Better be glad it’s Christmas, asshole.’
“I didn’t see Big Joe after that until a wedding a few years ago,” Angie continued. “Little Joe sees him once in a while. Anyway, I think that’s why Joe’s Joe.” She said this definitely, like I should have known what she was talking about.
“How’s that?” I said, thinking Angie was going to say something about how Joe didn’t drink.
Angie gave me a pitying glance. I suddenly felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff. “Johnny went down to Philly with him. They told me not to tell you. Joe didn’t want to hurt your feelings. He’s got this thing about not letting anyone down.”
“Oh God,” I said. “I was so stupid.”
“Shit,” Angie said. “I told him he couldn’t play with you like that. I mean, you’ve known him for fucking ever. He just doesn’t know how to step up.”
“No, it’s not that,” I said. I didn’t know how to explain it. I thought the thing between me and Joe, the whole mystery of it, went back to when we were kids. There was some bond there, some prior knowledge. But there wasn’t a mystery. There was a girlfriend.
“You always kind of liked him back then,” Angie said. “So, it was bound to happen.” She shrugged. She was trying to help me shake it off, along with my hangover.
“Sort of,” I said. “It was just more fun before this little talk.” It was annoying me how Angie had started talking in clichés, how the whole thing had become a cliché.
“He should’ve told you about Amy.” My head felt enormous; my brain felt like it was too large for my skull.
To my surprise, when Joe came back to town after visiting Amy, he came around to the store in his painter’s clothes, only he didn’t come in. He stood out on the sidewalk and called to me through the open door.
“So you’re back,” I said, my arms folded across my chest. “How much did you make up there?” I asked, wondering if he would play along or not.
“All right, all right,” Joe said. “I should’ve told you.”
“I guess so,” I said. “Not that I thought we were anything.” My voice sounded shaky, and I wished I could steady it.
Joe shook his head. “Don’t be that way,” he said.
“Maybe that’s how I feel,” I said. It wasn’t like I was heartbroken.
“That’s not what this is.” He made a gesture with his hand, waving his fingers between us.
I crossed my arms, shaking my head. I tried to look amused, worldly.
“Well,” Joe said. “The problem is I like this face,” he said, and he traced my cheek with his finger.
“Okay,” I said. “I like your face too. Sort of.”
“I told Amy we should see other people. Things haven’t been good with me and Amy in a long time.”
“But,” I said, “this is all just us messing around.” I didn’t want him to have a girlfriend, but I didn’t know what he really meant to me, nor did I know whether to even believe him about Amy. “I know and you know this is nothing real.”
“Whatever you say,” he said.
I stared at him. I thought he had to know how he’d been moving the whole thing forward, the night at Leonard’s Field, the Castle Inn.
“Yeah,” he said. “I just keep trying to impress you. But you have this way about you. It’s very intimidating. Even back when we were little. You were such a cool girl.” He said this with a chuckle. At first I thought he was kidding, mocking me for going along with his every move. I wanted to say, But you’re the liar, the cheat, the one who’s playing games, but I just stood there staring at him, blinking away tears. I didn’t know why I was crying.
“It’s whatever you want it to be,” he said. That’s when I realized how he’d done it. How he’d seduced me, how he’d made me want him. There was never anything so special about Joe, nothing between us beyond a few nights of craziness.
He had tricked me, I saw now, using only my own confusion.
Change Your Life
Kev’s short, not much taller than me, with small eyes, scraggly hair, and he maybe is and maybe isn’t my boyfriend. We are out at the park, under the metal climbing dome on a patch of earth scraped by little kid feet.
It’s a surprise when he brings me to this point where I cry out, and then I cry.
I am too high, and Kev is too short, and a nobody who probably thinks of me as a somebody, which makes me feel wicked, like a song I once couldn’t understand.
Kev doesn’t notice I’m quiet when we walk back to his house, his arm draped around my shoulder. Kev’s house is old, surrounded by porches with little roofs. Kev wants to make me an omelette, but I am stuffing Thin Mints in my mouth and take a Sprite out of the fridge without asking. I imagine the Girl Scout coming to the front porch, and Kev giving the order. I’ve never heard him call to his mom from another part of the house, the way I do, the way everybody does. His mom keeps a low profile, and it sometimes seems like Kev lives alone in that rambling house.
Kev and I eat in the kitchen, sitting on high stools, my feet dangling, not reaching the rungs. It’s a good omelette, gooey with cheese. We leave our crap in the sink, take a couple beers from the fridge, and go upstairs to Kev’s room.
Kev has crap all over his floor—textbooks, magazines, a tennis racket I almost step on. I thank God for this, for his being normal in this respect, at least like me. Kev is fussy, and very particular about his stuff. He’s one of those guys who loves anything retro, and collects turntables, typewriters. He puts a record on, actual vinyl. It’s Velvet Underground, which is going to kill me. The first time I heard Lou Reed I thought about how bad the seventies must have sucked, and I sort of felt bad for my parents. The guy sings like the undead.
“Come sit,” he says, and pats the bed. He still has just socks on, and I want to say, Shoes or nothing. I want him to know how deadly this is.
“I can’t stay long,” I say, taking a swig of beer.
“What’s that about?” he says.
I want to leave before any of the songs with Nico come on.
“I have to get up early tomorrow,” I tell him, and it’s not a lie. “I’m going with Jessica to White Plains and we have to be there by ten.” I’m getting my hair cut, but I don’t tell him. Jessica knows a girl who’ll do the type of cut that’s almost shaved on one side. She’ll do it in her apartment, so we don’t have to pay the salon price.
The thought of the haircut makes me happy enough to sit down and make out, even though a Nico song comes on. Kev makes little murmuring sounds, and I regret the day I started all this. When I told Jess I thought I liked Kev, she’d said, “Now there’s some low-hanging fruit.” It took me a while to figure out what she meant.
Jess has one of those bedroom sets where everything matches. It’s all white with gold at the edges. She sits cross-legged on her bed with badass, dyed black hair and a pair of jeans so tight at the ankle I don’t know how she got her feet in. I feel better being there than at my house. My parents went to take Kate, my sister, to look at two colleges in Connecticut, but I said no, since I’d have to change my life yesterday to get in to either of them.
“I can’t break up with Kev,” I tell Jess.
“Yeah?” Jess says. “Why should you?” She doesn’t look up from the book she’s underlining. I am losing the war for Jess’s attention to Dickens.
“I should be able to, is the point,” I say.
“I guess you’ve gotten used to him,” Jess says.
“Used to Kev is like being used to peanut butter on white bread.”
“Yum.”
“Used to Kev is like drinking wine spritzers.” Jess sticks out her tongue.
“Used to Kev is like staying home and going to community college.”
“You are not going to community college. You are going to Syracuse, or UMass, or that crunchy place near Amherst.”
I want to tell her I’m not sure. I’m not like her. I have the same Dickens paper due Monday, but who here is writing, and who is whining? Jess is like my sister, Kate. They’re good in a way I want to be, but can’t.
“I don’t know,” I say, and I can feel the words getting twisted up. Jess looks at me.
“You really have to shut the fuck up,” she says. “Why don’t you go downstairs and get us a sandwich? If you can’t cope with yourself, at least make yourself useful.”
When I go down to the kitchen, Jess’s brother, Alan, is at the kitchen table with his legs up, so it’s difficult not to see right up his baggy-ass lacrosse shorts. Alan gives me a look like he’s never seen me before.
“Lawn-mower accident?” he asks, then laughs at his own joke. It takes me a minute to get the reference to my hair.
I ignore him, and get the peanut butter and bread. Jess’s house is the opposite of Kev’s—someone’s always in the kitchen at Jess’s and the food is all in plastic.
“Hey, make me one of those while you’re at it, babe.” Alan is the kind of guy who calls you things like chick and babe, just to make sure you know he’s an asshole.
When I’m done, I put Alan’s sandwich on the table on top of a piece of paper towel, and then instead of taking Jess hers, I sit down at the table with Alan.
“So what’s the good news?” Alan wants to know. He’s talking with his mouth full, and I can see his right nut up his shorts.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m thinking about going to Colorado for college.” This is a fabrication, made up on the spot, inspired by Alan’s nuts and chewed food.
“Major party school,” Alan notes. “Didn’t take you for such the partaay girl.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I just like the idea of going someplace far away.” I am, ill-advisedly, confessing my deepest, unknown-even-to-myself feelings.
“I hear that,” Alan says, and he nods and points his sandwich at me. “You know what I really need, babe?” he asks. “I need a lift down to Eddie’s, you know, on Wharburton?”
I nod. Eddie’s is the auto body shop owned by a guy a few years older than Alan, one of those guys who drives home the perils of not going away to school. Four years out of high school, and the guy has a beer gut, and only about half his hair.
Jess looks at me like I’m crazy when I say I’m giving Alan a ride, but she doesn’t give me a hard time.
To go downtown, Alan slips his sneakers halfway on and walks on the smashed-down backs. He sits in the front seat of the car with his legs wide apart and cranks up the radio, so we don’t talk.
Seeing Alan there in the passenger seat gives me a little chill down my back, like hearing a secret. When I stop at the light on Wharburton, I arch my back, give myself a good long stretch, arms over my head, and I catch Alan stealing a glimpse.
At Eddie’s, he gets out, hesitates, and drums his fingers on the roof of my Corolla.
“Hold up a sec,” he says. “Gotta see if it’s ready.” He trots off, the sneaker backs dragging. When he comes back, he’s shaking his head. “Fuckers,” he says, and slides back in. “They said they need another hour. Shit about putting on the wrong brake pads.”
“What do you want me to do?” I ask. “Go back to your house?”
“Nah,” he says. “We’ll be turning right around.” He pauses. “How about we get a sixer? Sit over at Arnold Pond?”
“Aren’t you in training?” I ask. Alan’s the kind of guy who acts like being on a high-school sports team is a sacred rite.
“Lacrosse isn’t football,” he says mysteriously.
Alan buys a six-pack of Heineken at the Indian deli, and I realize I am in over my head. Arnold Pond is a puddle with a fountain in the center. It is like the town planners were designing a place for kids to go in their cars. If you’re telling a story about some girl you don’t like, it’s called Blow Me Fountain.
By the time we get back to Alan’s car, the guys at Eddie’s are ready to close, and Alan has to beg them to open the garage and get the car out. He’s red in the face when he is yelling at the guys, like the last thing in the world Alan wants is to be back in the car with me.
When I get home, my parents and Kate have just gotten in from Connecticut, and they’re all about going out for dinner, since mom isn’t into cooking after a day of driving. I end up spending that Saturday night at my family’s favorite Italian place, Mardino’s, which is, as luck would have it, across the street from Arnold Pond.
When I break up with Kev, he cries a little, and that makes me cry too.
We are on his back porch. It’s this big screened-in thing that would be nice if they didn’t have just a couple of old plastic chairs and some rotten piles of firewood in there. It’s after school on a Thursday, and it’s been raining since morning. During math, it thundered, and everyone got distracted and sat there staring out the window, watching for the jagged strikes of lightning.
It’s still raining hard, and is too chilly to be outside. Kev has just taken an enormous hit off a fat joint when without warming up to it at all, I say I think it is over between us. He nods at first, but then won’t look at me, and he starts wiping his nose, and that’s what gets me choked up. I want to tell him about me and Alan, so he won’t feel sad, so he’ll be filled with a hatred that will make him storm away, burning with the need to be free of it. I want him to pull himself together, kick me out of the house, get in his car, and drive somewhere fast. I want him to want to scour the earth for a way out of his pain, but instead he crumples. I want to tell him: This is how you change your life, stupid. Find any way out. Grab at it. Even something or someone you detest. If they are strong, grab on. If you are too afraid, let someone else do the pulling.
The Bubblemen
The body is elastic. Today’s body not the body of yesterday. Her jeans glide over thighs, button, rest against hip bone. She is wearing a white V-neck T-shirt, and black leather combat boots, but nothing she wears diminishes her essential wholesomeness. If she took a bottle of pills, she knows she would immediately pick up the phone and calmly dial the poison hotlin
e. Even on ’shrooms, she is somehow rock solid, thinking about her homework, her paper on Hamlet. An hour into her high she comes up with a title for it: “Hamlet, Just Like You and Me.”
“He’s too real,” she says to Val—too much like a real person, and too little like a character in a play. A character who destroys himself by refusing to be a character. “Hamlet,” she says, “is everyone you know.” She can’t shut up about it until Val puts his foot down.
“You’re killing me with that shit,” he says.
Then they are at the park, lying on the grass, listening on Val’s iPod to Steve and Hunter’s alt-reggae version of “The Rivers All Run Dry” over and over. Val is nice. He holds her hand, and then they both fall asleep, and wake in a cool dew. It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t called home. Her mother thinks she is with Fiona, knows nothing about Val, her first real secret.
Her jeans are too big now by a size or two, and her mother notices. It’s okay, because she was chubby before, so no one bothers her about whether she is eating right. Her mother suggests they go shopping for some pants that fit, but Nancy doesn’t want to jinx it. It is shameful to her the way she still believes in magic. Do the opposite and you’ll get want you want. Don’t think about Val; then he’ll call. Pretend to be invisible and you’ll be beautiful.
Today she is driving over to Val’s for the first time. She’s had her license for only a week, but took the old Fiat, ancient stick shift and all, to school the day before. She stalled twice at the light. To get to Val’s, she has to drive through town—how many stop signs is that? How many hills? At least she knows the way. Now that she can drive, she is surprised by how many places she doesn’t know how to get to. She didn’t admit to Fiona on Saturday that she couldn’t get to Indian Lake on her own; she just didn’t go. Not that Fiona didn’t know about her driving issues. Everyone drove before her, even some of the juniors. “Someday you’ll just need to drive,” her mother said. She cried the second time she failed the road test, and it would have been a scene, if her father permitted any. “Just get the damn license,” he growled, and left the room. She didn’t have a choice.
Nothing Real Volume 1 Page 2