I laughed. It was an ugly sound.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply, and left the room.
I sat and stared at the carpet, numb. What would I tell Lydia? What would I tell Jacob? I’d banked everything on the presumption I’d show up on the supernatural scoreboard and propel myself into a lucrative career in the psychic realm. Now I had nothing but a horrible job, an empty apartment and a pile of credit card debt.
I collected my phone, signed another raft of forms, and headed back out into the cold, cruel world. I walked past the subway that led to Jacob’s place, and kept going till I reached the line that would take me home. As I rode, I read and re-read the preliminary analysis. Inconclusive. Inconclusive. Inconclusive.
The lack of conclusion might have led me to have hope that maybe someone would find something in the scoring process to push me up into a level-two, solidly enough to enjoy official certification. But given the sympathy the Russian had been exuding, I knew that wouldn’t happen.
I was just a couple stops from home when instead of the usual text, Jacob called. The urge was strong to let it go to voicemail, but I figured it was better to come clean with him sooner rather than later. I answered with, “If you’ve ordered a celebratory strip-o-gram, you should probably cancel it.”
“What do you mean?”
“To say I bombed would be putting it mildly.”
He was quiet for a long moment. On the subway, it was hard to tell if the quality of silence on the other end was dead air or a deliberate pause. But eventually he said, “Are you okay?”
“Dandy.”
He grunted, considered my news some more, then said, “Where are you now? It sounds like the train.”
“Yeah. About that. I’m gonna just head home tonight.”
“If that’s what you want. Let me know if you need anything.”
I told him I would and said goodbye, but I had no intention of accepting his charity, or his pity. Maybe he was a PsyCop, and maybe he could throw his weight around and pull some strings. But even if he could, I’d blown it fair and square. The only thing left to do was wallow in my failure.
On the way home from the subway, I stopped at the big grocery chain catty corner from my place and grabbed a dusty bottle of vodka from the lowest shelf. Serious rotgut, but the price was right. My front door was only a few dozen yards away, and even so…fuck it. I tossed the bag, cracked the plastic seal and took a big swig right there on the sidewalk.
Warm. Repulsive. And perfectly fitting.
Once I was across the street, I stopped every few steps and took another slug. Lydia’s neon sign was on, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk things through. I wanted to drink, wallow, and hopefully pass out without puking. That was the extent of my ambition.
I opened the vestibule door and paused at the threshold, took a long drink to fortify my impending walk up the stairs, then nearly did a spit take when my mother’s voice rang through the stairwell. “Curtis?”
I lowered the bottle.
She stood at the top of the stairs in front of my door. God only knew how long she’d been waiting there.
The shabbiness of the stairwell hit hard. Dingy plaster, worn carpet, the stink of cigarettes and sandalwood threaded through with piss. And there was Maxine, framed by the squalor, with her lacquered hair and coral lipstick, forcing a smile she thought looked cheerful. It wasn’t even Sunday and she was completely out of context.
“Since when do you just drop by?” I demanded.
“I called to let you know I was downtown but you didn’t answer.”
I whipped out my phone and checked, and there they were, three missed calls I’d swiped right past on the subway. And then the vodka hit my system, part buzz, part stomach churn.
My options were limited. I could manufacture an argument right there on the stairs and get Maxine to leave. I could lure her out the door under the pretense of being hungry and broke. Or I could face the music.
The warm vodka in my belly prickled my stomach lining, and exhaustion surged through my veins. I was too tired, too empty to keep on pretending everything was normal, everything was fine. Without a word, I walked up the stairs, handed the vodka to my mother, and unlocked my front door.
I stepped in and flipped on the lights. Maxine followed. I steeled myself, but the accusations didn’t come. She simply stood there clutching the cheap vodka to her chest, turning a slow circle, scanning the room in confusion.
“Well?” I finally asked.
“I don’t understand. Where’s your apartment?”
“You’re standing in it.”
She blinked. “You…live? Here?”
“Be it ever so humble.” I grabbed a metal folding chair from up against the wall and kicked it open. It obliged with a squall of metal on metal. “Make yourself at home. Can I get you something to drink? A glass of tap water? A shot of warm vodka? I can even mix the two if you’re in the mood for a cocktail. No ice, but since the freezer door’s frozen open, maybe I can scrape off some of the frost if you don’t mind a little Pad Thai flavor in your beverage.”
“You…live here.”
“Don’t want a drink?” I grabbed the vodka from her unresisting hand. “Fine, more for me.”
While I tipped the bottle back and forced down a few more swallows, Maxine did a slow circuit of the place. She checked out the broom closet, then the miniature roomlets behind the office, and then rejoined me in the middle of the big, empty space that had been the site of a half-dozen failed business attempts. “Where are all your things?”
I gestured toward a bank of cardboard boxes shoved against the far wall. “You’re looking at ’em.”
“Whose bed is that? Where’s your TV? And your beautiful maple dinette…where do you eat?”
If she wasn’t going to make use of that damn chair, then I was. I dropped onto it and put my head in my hands. “I sold it. Everything.”
“Why? Are you on drugs?”
I could hardly snip at her over that assumption, given the fifth in my hand. I took another slug. “There are no ‘drugs.’ A run of bad luck, and the decision to try to invest in myself, fat lot of good it’ll do me. I had a screening.”
“A psychic screening?”
She said it like it was the most ludicrous thing in the world, and her tone would’ve been enough to piss me off. But the accompanying burst of dismay that came with it sent me into defensive mode. “Why is that so farfetched?”
Silence hung there for a moment while Maxine scanned the room as if some real furniture might appear. When it didn’t, she retrieved a folding chair, set it up next to mine, and sat. “Do you remember in junior high when you were part of that focus group for the toy company?”
“Random. But yes.”
“It wasn’t a focus group.”
The memory wasn’t particularly vivid, though I could dredge up a detail or two. We were in the Loop. I never had a reason to be there unless I was visiting the Art Institute or checking out the Christmas windows at Marshall Field’s. That day, Maxine had driven me all the way down to play with the world’s most boring building sets while a bunch of frowning guys with clipboards took notes.
“It was a screening,” she said. “And your scores were average.”
“Hold on…you had me tested and you never told me?”
“None of the children knew. It would have caused performance anxiety and skewed the test results, that’s what they told us.”
I tried harder to remember exactly what went down in that stuffy high rise office, but the details were hazy. I was more interested in the gourmet popcorn store afterward. No doubt there were parts of the test I didn’t quite recall—how easy would it have been for a researcher to say, “How does this toy make you feel?” with me none the wiser? But overall, I didn’t see how they could have been testing for empathy specifically.
“The tests are fucked,” I said weakly.
“Your father was against it, but Mattie used to have this way of putting thin
gs. When you were little, she convinced me you had some ‘gift.’ Once they could actually test for it, I got all carried away with proving it to your dad.”
An image of him came to mind, coiled in his chair and glaring at the news. “It wouldn’t have helped. He never liked me.”
“Curtis! Don’t say that. He loved you.”
Maybe. But he didn’t like me, at least not since…when? Since I started taking interest in the “wrong” gender? The timing would’ve been about right. I’d been hung up on boys since I got a load of my babysitter Terry Keller, all suburban grunge and manufactured ennui.
I was eight.
The big coming-out wouldn’t happen until high school. But what if I wasn’t the only one sensitive enough to pick up on things? Imagine feeling your son shooting a ravenous Vibe to his dramatically disaffected male sitter, and…well, it would explain a thing or two. Yes it would.
Maxine swung her chair around so we were facing each other and demanded plaintively, “Why didn’t you tell me all this was going on?”
“Because you’ve never once supported a career decision I’ve made and I wasn’t in the mood to be second-guessed.”
“I’m your mother. All I want is for you to be happy.”
“In a way that’s acceptable to your neighbors.”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“As a car salesman. Or a realtor.”
“Stop attacking me. I was just pointing out that you shouldn’t limit yourself. You’re young, you don’t have the same perspective I do. Yes, you went to cosmetology school, and yes, you like cutting hair. But if all the good jobs in that field dry up, you need to try something new. It doesn’t mean you never do hair again, but why suffer in the meantime?”
I forced down another warm swallow and gave serious consideration to concocting a vodka-and-freezerburn shave ice.
Maxine wrung her hands. “I hate seeing you like this. Working at that awful place just to prove a point, coming home to this dilapidated empty room. Sitting here drinking. Alone.”
Useless level-one or not, I could tell my mother was genuinely upset, and not just because she was worried what her Pilates friends might think. I capped the vodka, let the plastic bottle bounce to the floor and roll a few feet away, and said, “I’m not alone.”
She gave me a look brimming with pity.
“I’m not,” I insisted, slightly nauseated now, thanks to the booze—not to mention overly loud, and hell bent on making my point. “I have a boyfriend and it’s serious.”
Her cloying sympathy spiked.
“What? You think I’m inventing him to make you feel better? His name is Jacob.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned this ‘Jacob’ before?”
“Because I knew you’d be so fucking supportive.” I considered how far the bottle had rolled, and the fact that if I attempted to retrieve it, I probably wouldn’t want to get back up off the floor. It pissed me off whenever she referred to someone in my life as “this” or “that,” as if they’re fictional, or dubious, or unsavory, and I felt compelled to defend him. I couldn’t do him justice, though, not in my current state of queasy inebriation. Hell, probably not even sober. Jacob was a suburban mother’s wet dream, everything she could want for her wayward gay son: polite, thoughtful and financially secure. Basically, everything I wasn’t.
Although I was in no state to eat dinner, I let Maxine take me to a trendy Asian fusion joint up the block just to get her the hell out of my shitty apartment. I endured a half-dozen stories about various remodels she or her friends had commissioned, and waved away the offer of a consultation with the interior designer who was the darling of Chicagoland’s middle-aged lady population. My problems ran too deep for a facelift to fix. A coat of designer paint would only serve to highlight the cracks and the roaches.
Conversation was rough. Normally, I would have been able to dredge up something to say. I’d get her to talk about what her neighbors were up to, or maybe tell a story about her dog. But I was prickling with dried sweat and nauseated from the day-long onslaught of adrenaline I’d topped off with cheap vodka.
“So you have a boyfriend,” Maxine said. “How long have you been seeing each other?”
I shrugged, and thought back. “Since…February.” I forced myself to meet her eyes. Just as I suspected, she was hurt. Not mentioning it until now, at the height of August? Not only was I a shitty psychic, but a shitty son, too. “Look, how ’bout this—I bring him to dinner Sunday, and you can meet him.” The hurt in her expression softened, and I whipped my phone out on the spot and started thumbing in a text. “We’ll hit that bistro on Irving you like.”
Maxine didn’t know what to make of my sudden rush of purpose, but since I was tipsy, and since she didn’t vigorously object, I finished my invitation and launched it.
Dinner Sunday 6pm at The Lantern?
I stared at my phone until I received the single word reply.
Sure.
Chapter 34
I burned the couple of days between the invitation and the dinner plowing through twelve-dollar haircuts and dreaming up ridiculous things to be nervous about. Maybe Maxine would call me Little Peanut in front of Jacob and undermine all my dirty bed-cred. Maybe Jacob would be embarrassed by her painful attempts at humor. Hell, maybe the sky would open up and rain dildos. Life is seriously random, and prepping for its surprises is an exercise in futility, so I told myself to stop rehearsing scenarios where everything tanked…and I took a few minutes to consider why the hell I was so nervous.
Seven months—shit, more than half a year—of course it was time for Jacob to meet my mother. In fact, it was long overdue. And once we got that out of the way, I could forget about my big psychic plans, buckle down and find a decent place to work, somewhere Ralph had drunkenly burned his bridges, somewhere I could land on Pilar’s reference alone. And once I had a grownup’s income, move-in negotiations could begin.
The Lantern was crowded, but Maxine and I both showed up so precisely on time that I suspected she’d been sitting in her car twiddling her thumbs, not unlike the way I’d hopped off the bus four stops early and walked a quarter mile so as not to be absurdly early myself. I’d dressed deliberately casual. Ripped jeans, scuffed boots, a black T-shirt with an orange constellation across the flank from of a wayward splash of bleach. She’d dressed like Maxine, painfully coordinated and nebulously uncomfortable. She pecked me on the cheek and said, “What am I supposed to call you in front of him? Does he know your name?”
After seven months? I spared her the eye-roll. “He does. Either Crash or Curtis is fine.”
The hostess checked our reservation and tried to seat us, but we decided to give Jacob a few more minutes. Maxine probably didn’t want to look too ensconced when he got there. Me, I just felt the need to be on my feet.
“I wish I’d thought about the initials,” Maxine said.
“What?”
“Curtis Raymond Ash. If we’d put my grandfather’s name in front of your dad’s father’s, it wouldn’t have spelled anything,” she said. I scanned the street for the big black gas-guzzling sedan. “Or maybe just Rash.”
Which was equally as punk rock, though it might’ve hampered my love life. I checked my phone. My mother fidgeted under the impatient eye of the hostess.
“Your hair looks nice.” She said. “But your roots are due for a touch-up.”
When there’s any regrowth to be seen on me, it’s deliberate. I’d told her as much I dunno how many times. “Thanks,” I said distractedly.
“I’m sure your Jacob is just looking for a spot,” she added.
Well. I was equally as sure something wasn’t right. I texted, I’m at the restaurant, then sat with my elbows on my knees and my phone in my hands, waiting.
A minute later, he replied, Sorry, working. Reschedule?
I stared down at those three little words. I may not be a certified psychic, but I had a queasy certainty that he wasn’t working, he was avoiding me. And h
e wasn’t sorry, either.
And if I was correct about those two things, I wasn’t planning to reschedule. Not just the outing with my mom, either, but all future engagements.
I wasn’t angry, I was livid. But I sounded pretty calm, I think, when I gave Carolyn a quick ring and said, “Hey, girly, where are you right now?”
“At home. Why?”
Hah. Working, my ass. “No reason…gotta go. Talk soon.”
I’m not sure whether my curt reply registered on her mental polygraph over the phone, or if she could tell how I felt from my fake tone of voice. She called back, and I sent it to voicemail and turned off the ringer. After a few more attempts, she texted, Talk to me. And then, I knew this would happen. And then, I don’t know what’s going on, but it better not affect our friendship.
We’re good, I sent back, and pocketed my phone. I stood and told my mother briskly, “Jacob’s not coming tonight after all.” Not between my legs, at least. “Might as well eat.”
It was like every other Sunday Mom-Dinner, just Maxine and me, rife with subtext and pity, all of it buried under an inane wall of chatter. My mother could tell I was upset so she cranked her wattage extra-bright, filled me in on the minutiae of her numerous random acquaintances, and ordered enough appetizers to host a soiree. “You know, I was talking to my dermatologist about psychic screening,” she said lightly. I’d picked up my patently false “nothing serious” tone from her, so I knew it when I heard it. “She read that some people score higher on their second attempt because they know what to expect, so the anxiety is much lower.”
“I could see that,” I allowed.
“Was it stressful?”
Her genuine concern caught me off guard. I looked up sharply and met her eyes. She stared at me across the table so earnestly I hardly knew what to do with her authenticity. “Yeah. It was.”
“And do you think you’d do better if it wasn’t all such a shock?”
“Maybe.” I thought about my inability to read though a room divider, the way it felt like there could very well be nobody behind it, and the fact that I needed to see and hear people to gather my impressions. Who knows, if I’d ever worked in a cube farm for more than a few weeks at a time during an odd summer job, maybe I would’ve picked up the ability organically. Although…. Nothing stopping me from practicing now. “Yeah, maybe.”
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