Pass It On

by J. Minter

  There were five really good chairs. The walls were lined with Randall Oddy paintings from his pornographic period, but the lights were low, so only Arno noticed because he still had a soft spot for Kelli and sometimes wrote her e-mails that he never told anyone about. Mickey arranged the chairs in a circle. Suddenly there was a croaking, frog-like sound.

  “Froggy?” Mickey asked. “Go pass out somewhere else, we need the room.”

  So Alan Ebershoff got up from where he’d been curled behind a chair and wandered out, and Arno had to face the wall for a second, since he’d pretty much destroyed Froggy’s parents’ bedroom the week before. And David faced the wall, too, since the last time he’d seen Froggy, he was in Amanda’s bedroom. The group sat down.

  “Shall we break the ice with some quarters?” Mickey asked. He got out a couple of cans of Tecate from the back pockets of his jeans. There was a round glass table in the middle of the room that was perfect for quarters, assuming you weren’t too concerned about the glass getting nicked.

  “I think we need to deal with what’s been happening with Jonathan, about what he said in the bathroom, about his dad.” Arno sat back and crossed his legs. Somehow, he always looked way older than the rest of them.

  “So that’s what it was all about?” Patch asked. “I’m pretty sure I’ve heard my dad joke on and off about the money that was stolen for at least the last few years.”

  “You knew?” Jonathan asked. Everyone looked at him. Jonathan’s eyes were the color of eggnog.

  “Well, now that I think about it, I did. But before this, I hadn’t really been thinking about it.”

  “Wait, were any of you thinking about it?” Jonathan asked.

  “Mostly you were,” David said. “I knew, and I guess Patch did, and Mickey half-knew. But Arno didn’t—not till today.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Jonathan said. “I thought if you guys knew, you’d like, excommunicate me.”

  “We might, but not because of that,” Arno looked around at the group, and nodded at Jonathan’s pointy boots. Mickey immediately reached forward and yanked them off. Jonathan had Comme des Garcons socks on underneath, in a horribly complex pattern of blue and green swirls.

  “These shoes and socks have got to stop,” Arno said.

  Everyone seemed to agree on this, and that strengthened Arno’s position. So Jonathan did nothing as Mickey tossed the shoes and socks into the hall, where Liza Komansky’s friend Jane scooped them up and took them to a bedroom to try them on.

  “There’s more, though,” David said.

  “Yeah?” Everyone stared at Jonathan’s feet. They were incredibly pale.

  “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, guys,” he said. “But I think the thing that really tweaked at us was that it seemed like you were holding back from us, but we’re like … like a team, you know?”

  “Dude.” Arno threw a pillow at David. “You’re so gay.”

  Jonathan looked down uncomfortably when Arno said that, because, of course, he knew full well that Arno’s dad really was gay.

  “No, that’s right, what David said.” Mickey nodded.

  “You want me to share everything?” Jonathan asked.

  “Yeah. We share everything. You should too,” said Mickey.

  “Okay. Ruth just broke up with me and I think it’s partly because her parents are international lawyers and they heard about what an asshole my father is. She didn’t exactly say that, but I’m pretty sure that was part of it.”

  “Ow,” Mickey said.

  “But there’s more,” Jonathan said. “I don’t want to have secrets from you guys. Mickey, I think you’ve got to talk to your parents about what’s going on with their marriage—I don’t know if your mom is having an affair, but she might be. And your Dad, well, you need to talk to him about whether he’s having an affair, too. And David, your dad is crazy and must be stopped. And Arno, you need to talk to your dad about who he really is, and check in with your mom, too, about the affair thing.”

  Everyone was quiet then. Jonathan frowned. Then he said, “There’s stuff I saw and heard when I was in your houses. I’ve got to tell you about it, what I just said is only the beginning. I don’t want to keep this all inside anymore.”

  While all this was going on, Patch had gotten hold of a universal remote. He’d turned on the television and begun to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In the midst of the shocked silence, Patch belly-laughed, loudly, while Paul Newman and Robert Redford bicycled happily around in nature. Everyone watched quietly, listening not to the movie but to the new silence between them, knowing that if they wanted to, they could learn all sorts of stuff they might have long preferred not to know.

  “Maybe you don’t need to hear all of it,” Jonathan said.

  “Maybe not,” Patch said, turning off the TV.

  “Well, okay. Thanks for getting me out of that bathroom, and for hopefully not telling anybody about it.” Jonathan rubbed his head. “I hope this bump goes away before my mom gets home.”

  “Oh wow,” Arno said. “Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.”

  Jonathan stood up and looked out the window. He said, “My mom promised she’d be home to cook a turkey. And she’d better be. This being on my own is obviously more than I can handle.”

  “Well no matter what, you can come over to my house if she’s late or something,” Arno said.

  “Thanks,” Jonathan said, and Arno stared at him, because Jonathan didn’t sound sarcastic at all. He sounded like he really meant it. “And guys?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll figure out this Caribbean thing. I’m not sure I can handle it without you all, anyway.”

  david gets some more of that newfangled grobart philosophy

  David wasn’t that bombed, but he was having trouble getting his key to fit in his front door. It seemed too big, and then too small.

  Then the door opened and his father stood staring at him, in his pajamas, and he was both too big and too small, too. David wondered if he might be Alice and if this was the looking glass. But when he looked down, he wasn’t wearing white shoes and a blue dress with a big white bow around the middle. He was grateful for that, at least.

  “Come and sit with me in the living room.” His father turned and padded down the quiet corridor and David followed. The house was terribly quiet and smelled of roast chicken, as usual.

  “Everything work out okay with Jonathan? I ask because I’ve got a session with his mom tomorrow, right before we stuff the turkey, and I need all the help I can get.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  David shifted and pulled a thick copy of the American Psychoanalytic Institute’s monthly newsletter out from under his butt.

  “Are you sure that telling so many secrets is such a good idea? ’Cause I’m kind of thinking it causes a lot of trouble when you do that.”

  “Oh no, I’m absolutely sure it’s the right thing. I’ve been in this game a long time and the thing I know is that when a marriage is breaking up or a man is cheating on a woman, everyone ought to know all about all the details, so they can set to work hashing it out.”

  “I don’t know,” David said. “I’m thinking those situations are delicate, you know?”

  Then of course Sam Grobart launched into a long, complex set of reasons that clarified why David was wrong, but David tuned him out. He glanced around the book-strewn room and wondered why his dad was always wandering around in the middle of the night when his mom was asleep. Then his phone rang once, and stopped. David glanced at the screen. Amanda.

  Meanwhile, his dad continued to ramble on about secrets and how people should give them up faster than a dollar to a beggar on the subway. And David thought, I definitely need to call Amanda. Right now.

  “I need to make a call.” David went down to the street to call from there, because he was realizing that if his dad didn’t believe in secrets, then nothing in his house could be truly private. So he took the elevator down to the lobby
and stepped outside.

  There, in the back of a black car, was Amanda. He walked over as the window went down, and looked in at her. She was alone.

  “I’m just coming back from Ginger’s.” Amanda’s voice was low and calm. “My parent’s are already in Sagaponack. I was going to stay home alone tonight.”

  The door to the black car opened. David looked back at his building, which seemed far less warm and inviting than this car.

  “But we’re not going to get engaged. I don’t think that makes any sense,” David said, once he’d settled himself in the seat next to her.

  “You’re right. It’s just taken me a long time to deal with the fact that someone as cool as you could like someone like me.”

  “Are you serious?” David asked, realizing this was exactly the sort of reason his father would use to explain why Amanda had often been so awful to him.

  “I know,” Amanda said, quietly. “It’s crazy isn’t it? But it’s true.”

  And they drove the few blocks to her house in complete make-out mode, with no regard for the driver, which was okay, because he was talking loudly on the phone to a cousin in eastern Pennsylvania about how to make the cranberry sauce for that night’s Thanksgiving dinner.

  David and Amanda went into her house, and then into her bedroom, where David had had such a terrible moment only a few days earlier. They ended up on her bed.

  “It’s so good to be together again.” David felt the tiny cuteness of Amanda and realized what he’d said was true. And Amanda, who had been so mean to David so many times, just squeezed him around the neck like she really didn’t want to lose him again. And that felt really good, to both of them.

  my mom comes through on her promise

  “What happened to your forehead?” my mom asked.

  Obviously I didn’t want to explain that the bruise on my forehead had come from when I’d inadvertently knocked myself unconscious on a bronze penis, so I said: “I was staying at Mickey’s and the bed they built me went crazy and smashed me into the ceiling.” I shrugged. The bed story was almost true.

  “I see. Billy was just telling me he had some very nice talks with you.” She nodded to Billy, who was wearing a pair of my favorite Rogan jeans and one of my Polo shirts.

  We were standing in a corner of the kitchen, next to a wall where Billy had painted a bunch of bears wearing party hats, who were cavorting around a fountain. My mom seemed to like the bears. And she clearly liked Billy. I shook my head. Life was not becoming less bizarre.

  “Sure,” I said. Part of me had been wanting to say that I hadn’t much enjoyed how Billy had screwed up my clothes and our apartment, but I figured my mom would just see all that, now that she was back. Nope. Wrong.

  “We’re not selling the apartment, are we?’

  “No way,” my mother said. “We could never sell this place with it painted the way it is. This sort of thing frightens people! We’re going to stay right here.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me and I finally got it. The insane painting had been part of a bigger plan—no matter how much trouble my dad got into, my mom was tough and wacky and didn’t care if people talked about her ex-husband being a thief or the weird bears that were painted on her walls. And all this meant that we definitely weren’t going to be moving to Brooklyn and I could keep my room and my friends, and with the exception of a few restaurants that were owned by my dad’s former clients, I wouldn’t have to hide my face at all and could still go to all the cool places I always had.

  “What are we going to do for dinner?” I asked. It was, after all, Thanksgiving. And I had to give my mom that, she’d made it back in time.

  “I thought we’d take Billy and go to Aquavit. I know it’s not traditional, but they’re holding a table for us, and I love the gravlax.”

  I smiled, because the deal was not that my mom make a traditional Thanksgiving, just that she actually be around for it. It was kind of like with my friends. We all didn’t have to be perfect, but we had to be there for each other anyway.

  My mom went to the living room and got on the phone to call my brother, who was having Thanksgiving with his girlfriend’s family in L.A. I stood there in the kitchen with Billy and I just had to ask. “Are you having an affair with Lucy Pardo?”

  Billy turned to me. He had that same warm smile I associated with Patch, but lurking behind his smile were a few more years of life, so he was not so easy to read.

  “Not really.”

  “What kind of answer is that?”

  “Do you really want to know the truth?”

  “Um.”

  “Jonathan, get on the phone.” My mother strode into the room and smiled at me and Billy. And that’s when I knew that she was well aware of Billy and Lucy Pardo.

  “Are you on with Ted?” I asked.

  “No. It’s your father.” My mother shoved the phone at me. So I took it.

  “Hi.” I knew my voice sounded awfully soft and weak. It was difficult for me to know what I should and shouldn’t say. Then my dad said, “I hope my bad moves in life haven’t affected your life too much.”

  Which was the opening I was looking for.

  “Well, they have!”

  “How?”

  Right then I remembered how beyond all else, my dad was able to listen. He was way better than David’s dad at doing that, who was supposed to listen professionally.

  “Because I’ve been really embarrassed!”

  “Your friends were rough on you?

  “Actually—” Then I had to stop. Because they hadn’t been so rough on me. But still. Right? And I could hear my dad, so far away on the phone. And he was quiet and he was listening.

  “Dad? I’d really like to bring them all on this sailing trip. I can’t choose just one, and really, we’re all like ten times better together than we are apart.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just like that, okay?”

  “Just like that.”

  We kept talking for a while, because he was my father, and honestly, how could I not? He was a good guy. I mean, he’d screwed up, but I got the feeling he was trying to make it right, and what else could I really ask of him? I didn’t ask about what happened with Arno’s dad, though. I just figured that whatever deal they’d made with each other wasn’t my problem.

  Later, when I was off the phone, I wandered into the living room. My mom was there, talking with Billy and admiring some vines of roses he’d painted between the windows, where a Richard Avedon photograph of my mother that was taken in the seventies used to be.

  I came up to them and tried to let them know I was there. I was now totally against ever being caught again in a position where I could hear something someone was saying when they didn’t want me to hear it.

  “I think you’re doing a terrific job. Really first rate. But let’s be honest. You’re not done.”

  “Right,” Billy smiled.

  “So I’d like you to keep living here, in Jonathan’s brother’s room. Keep painting. I like a busy house.”

  “Don’t I—” but then I quieted down. I’d be away in the Caribbean in just a few weeks anyway, and even though Billy had ruined a bunch of my coolest clothes, I had to admit that I liked that guy.

  “What do you think, Jonathan?” Billy asked.

  “It’s fine with me, but the new official house rule is you keep your hands off my clothes and … well I guess that’s it.”

  mickey’s love is real

  Mickey stood up from the table. His family was having Thanksgiving dinner with the Fradys in a private room at Soho House. Month to month, the Pardos and the Frady family could barely keep track of whether they were getting along, much less whether Mickey and Philippa Frady were still together. But Thanksgiving together remained a staple of each year, as consistent as Jackson Frady’s death-ray glare for Mickey.

  “Let’s go have a drink at the bar downstairs,” Mickey whispered to Philippa, who was working hard to avoid dealing with the fact that she was sitting ne
xt to him. “Please?”

  “Fine,” she said. She was dressed in a brown cocktail dress with lots of pleats and a pair of pink shoes. Her hair was down and she looked both extremely beautiful and unbelievably bored.

  They walked together down the main staircase. When they got to the bar, which was outfitted with white leather seats and a zinc bartop, they sat down at one end, and the bartenders paid no attention because the newly crowned editor of Vogue was at the other end of the bar with her family, and they were drinking mulled wine and waiting to go up to their own Thanksgiving table.

  “I love you,” Mickey said. “We just went through some real craziness with Jonathan, where he was trying to hide what was going on with him, but we figured it out and what that made me realize was that—”

  “You love me?”

  “Yes.”

  They smiled at each other. Mickey slipped off his barstool and stood in front of Philippa. He came forward. She opened her arms. They embraced.

  “I don’t really see how this is connected to Jonathan—except I heard he tried to drown himself in a toilet.”

  “That’s not true. Anyway, I don’t get it either,” Mickey smiled. “But whatever happened with him, it made me realize that you’re like, my destiny.”

  “It’s scary when you use words like that.”

  She leaned against the bar and stared into Mickey’s eyes. He wasn’t high or anything. He’d left the Triumph at home and wasn’t trying to get into any trouble just now. Though of course he would later, when everyone met up either at Man Ray or Lucky Strike.

  “We’re too young for the intensity of this feeling. I’ve told you. I don’t want to be Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Don’t tell me we can’t go out.” Mickey fell forward slightly, so she’d hold him up. The warmth between their bodies seemed to expand, to surround them.

  Then the bartender came by, but he saw he didn’t need to ask them for their drink order, not right now. And there was music too, the new Yo La Tengo, which sounded like a rainstorm.