Cass explained the reason for her disappearance to Maya: “It was the day before Jessica got caught stealing from Claire’s. She refused to go back to the mall after that.” Cass turned to me. “Hey, do you still hang out with that girl, what was her name…Tracy?”
“Stacey,” I said, privately pleased that Cass had remembered my name but not hers. “I don’t see her that often anymore. She moved to Berwyn.”
“Right, Stacey…” Cass’s smile faltered and she nervously played with her hair. “Sorry, I’m a little…flustered tonight. My mom’s nuts and she freaks out like once a week…and my brother was supposed to come home, but he decided—My parents decided,” she quickly corrected, “that he couldn’t given Mom’s state.”
“It’s okay.”
Maya and I followed Cass’s gaze up to a bedroom window. The silhouette of a woman’s figure was visible, her fingers prying apart the slats in the blinds to stare down at us. Maya’s face grew stony.
Catching sight of Maya’s expression, Cass decided, “Let’s go. Shelly’s is only a six-block walk. I need to get over there and break the news to everyone.”
Shelly lived in a huge Victorian house set back from the street on a double lot. Her neighbors either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the parties she hosted every Friday night, and her parental situation allowed for big, teen-movie-style bashes. Shelly’s dad was a big-time attorney in the city who went straight from work to his girlfriend’s Gold Coast condo on Friday nights. He provided his daughter with a hefty chunk of change to amuse herself with on the weekends, which Shelly, in turn, used to amuse the rest of us.
Shelly’s mom was MIA. Her parents had met back in the sixties when Shelly’s dad still had “ideals,” and when he’d sold out, her mom bailed-apparently her “ideals” didn’t involve taking her kid along to the commune in Oregon she’d joined.
“That’s why hippies suck,” Shelly told Maya and me as she led us upstairs on the grand tour of her house. I could imagine her mom, though. Except for her raver wardrobe of huge Jnco jeans and sparkly shirts, Shelly embodied my mental image of a hippie with her insanely long, sunshine-colored curls.
Shelly showed us her room first. It had pale blue carpet and lilac walls-a lot more pastel than I’d expected. “Dad’s girlfriend thinks she’s an interior decorator,” Shelly explained. “Wait till you see the bathroom.”
“Ugh!” Maya and I groaned in unison upon poking our heads in. The walls, toilet, sink, and tub were all pink.
“My dad insisted on earth tones for his bedroom, though.” Shelly led us farther down the hall, but when she pushed the next door open, she shut it again immediately, calling, “Sorry, Adrian!”
Maya and I hadn’t glimpsed what was going on, but Shelly herded us back to her room, giggling. “Lesson number one about parties at my house: if a door is closed, knock.” She reached under her bed for a bottle of Absolut Citron. “If you do happen to see too much of Adrian Matthews-the person you are most likely to find behind a closed door-this is where the secret hard liquor supply is kept. Shots?” she offered.
“Yes!” Maya and I answered.
Maya was probably drowning her disappointment about Wes. Everyone we encountered bemoaned the fact that his parents had kept him from coming home, acting like he was a war hero whose tour of duty had been extended.
Personally, I needed a drink to loosen up. As soon as we’d entered Shelly’s and I’d found it just as packed as it had been the last time, I got a bit queasy. I didn’t normally like parties. When I went to them with Stacey, I stayed glued to her side, and when she inevitably ditched me, I retreated into a dark corner until it was time to go. I was determined to be part of this crowd, though. I swilled three shots of liquid courage in quick succession before Shelly put the bottle away and said, “Let’s continue the tour.”
The first floor was mostly empty. There were a couple people, including Cass and Quentin, sitting on the back porch, but Shelly’s basement was the epicenter of her parties. Down there, the beer held a central location across from the foot of the stairs, dividing the long, rectangular room into two sections. To the left of the keg, people shot pool on an expensive-looking pool table. Behind that, a polished wooden bar lined the entire wall. In the farthest corner, there was a large booth like something you’d see at Denny’s, except the table had storage for poker chips and cards built into the center of it. I would have suggested that we sit there, but Mary and Jessica had already laid claim. Jessica fawned over a skater boy while Mary glowered across the room at Christian.
He sat on the other side of the basement. Over there, all the couches and chairs were pushed against the walls. A rug had been rolled up to reveal shiny black ceramic tiles: the dance floor. Shelly’d put a card table with a stereo in front of the big-screen TV in the corner of the room.
Shelly left Maya and me by the keg and went to settle an argument between Craig and Harlan about the music. Maya introduced me to Gonzo, a guy she’d met in her Spanish class. He was a big dude who looked like a lumberjack, with hair so unwashed it actually matted together.
“Gonzo knows everyone at the park,” Maya shouted over the throbbing techno. Harlan was winning the music war.
“Of course I do,” Gonzo replied. He had a booming baritone and didn’t need to shout. “This is my second senior year,” he told me before signaling that Maya and I should follow him to the bar. “Let’s go where it’s quieter. Maya promised to share her sociological cigarette research with me.”
“Another social experiment?” I asked Maya.
“More of a social theory.” She sat down on a bar stool, Gonzo and I standing on either side of her. Maya lit a Winston and studied it. “I’ve been collecting data for a while and these are my findings. Punks and indie rockers smoke Winstons. Ravers smoke Newports. Skaters smoke Camels. Hippies roll their own or smoke American Spirits. Metalheads smoke Marlboro Reds. There have been anomalies, but let me tell you, only bitches smoke Marlboro Lights.”
A shrill giggle rung out above the music and I glanced at Jessica and Mary’s table. Jessica sat on the skater boy’s lap. She habitually smoothed her black hair, laughing at whatever he’d said. “I bet Jessica secretly smokes Marlboro Lights,” Maya concluded.
Gonzo tapped his pack of Parliaments. “What about me?”
Maya didn’t even flinch. “You’re like Switzerland. You’re friends with everyone. Cassie’s like that, too, and she smokes Parliaments. They’re the neutral cigarette.”
“I like this sociological cigarette research.” Gonzo nodded, impressed.
I finished my beer in two gulps and headed to the keg alone, since Maya and Gonzo weren’t ready for a refill yet. After I filled up, Craig and Christian waved me over.
“Harlan adores you, can you please sweet-talk him into putting some good music on?” Christian begged.
With a beer and three shots under my belt, I was feeling pretty persuasive, so I went over and asked Harlan to put some Social Distortion on. He agreed as long as I’d dance with him. I told him that would require more alcohol. Christian and Craig high-fived me on my way back to the keg. I beamed; I was part of the gang.
The last time I was at Shelly’s, the cheap beer made me nauseous, but this time it was good. Really good. I swallowed three beers almost as quickly as I’d thrown back the shots upstairs. And the more I drank, the more social I became. I felt like I knew everyone. Even though I’d only talked to about ten of the fifty people in Shelly’s house, I’d seen them all at the park.
I flitted from group to group like a butterfly. Quentin had joined Maya and Gonzo and I philosophized with the three of them. I picked out music with Craig and Christian. I danced with Harlan and Shelly. I hung out with people I wouldn’t later remember until they’d point out, “We met at Shelly’s party,” and even then I’d usually fake recollection.
Around one in the morning the crowd began to thin. I went looking for Maya so we could head back to her place. Before I found her, I came across Cass s
itting alone on the back porch.
I lowered myself beside her. “Have you been out here all night?”
Cass quickly closed the notebook she’d been writing in. Ransom-note-style lettering spelled out “Stories of Suburbia” across the ragged red cover. Clearly, I’d interrupted something private.
I rose again, apologizing. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I thought you might know where Maya is.”
“You’re not bothering me. Sit.”
So I did and I waited for her to answer me about Maya. Instead, she absently traced the letters on the cover of her notebook. “That’s a cool journal you’ve got,” I said, trying to make conversation.
“It’s not mine. It’s Adrian and Quentin’s. No…” She paused, carefully considering her words. “It’s everybody’s. It’s for when you have a secret or a story you feel like you can’t tell anyone. You write it in here. Quentin saw that I was upset tonight and thought the notebook would help. It did a little bit, but I don’t know…”
“Maybe you need to talk to someone,” I suggested. “I know we don’t know each other very well, but if you want you can talk to me.”
Cass’s eyes met mine. Her pupils were huge, practically filling her brown irises, and it felt like she was looking deep inside of me. After staring at me for a minute, she said, “I don’t know if it’s the acid, but for some reason you seem like the most trustworthy person in the world.”
“You’re on acid?” I asked with naive excitement, my drug repertoire being limited to pot.
Cass shrugged. “Acid’s what I do to escape.”
From the little bit I’d gathered about her family earlier, I knew she had a lot to escape. “I’m really sorry your brother couldn’t come home.”
“That’s the thing. My brother could’ve come home. He chose not to,” Cass stated icily.
“Wait…” Alcohol had impaired my thought process. I gripped the edge of the stair I sat on in hopes that the world would stop spinning so I could focus. “I thought you said that your parents decided—”
“Do you know why my brother left?”
“Maya told me that after he got expelled your parents sent him to California.”
Cass nodded with her whole body, rocking back and forth on the step. “That’s what Maya and everybody else thinks. That’s what Wes told them. But my parents didn’t send Wes away. He chose to leave.”
“Why?” I scooted closer to Cass even though watching her rock made me dizzy.
“Wes doesn’t deal well with our family. Our mom in particular. She has manic depression. And she’s been way worse since my aunt…I can’t really talk about that.” Cass cut herself off with a sharp drag from her smoke and stopped rocking for a second.
Then she continued, the flow of her words and the movement of her body quickly picking up speed. “After Wes got expelled, he was stuck home alone with Mom during the day. After a week, he freaked out. He begged our dad to send him away so he could get his life together. Said he needed a fresh start, to get away from Oak Park and drugs and everyone and their problems. Dad agreed. When Wes asked me what I thought, I wanted to scream at him, “Please don’t fucking leave me.’” Cass rolled her eyes upward, swallowing hard.
“But I agreed. He’s my big brother. I’ve always wanted what’s best for him. I even let him lie about being sent away so he could protect his rep or whatever. He promised he’d visit, though. This is the second time he’s broken that promise.”
Cass dropped her head into her hands like she had in the driveway when Maya and I had found her earlier. My heart ached for her. I imagined she felt a million times worse than I had when Stacey moved and broke all her promises to me. I wished I had some sort of advice for Cass, but I coped by cutting, which wasn’t any better than dropping acid. Even if I’d known what to say, I was so drunk I probably would have screwed it up. But at least the alcohol helped me do one thing right. With my inhibitions lowered, I had no qualms about hugging a stranger, even someone like Cass, who acted like one of those tough girls who didn’t like to be touched.
She cried in my arms for five minutes and then she started laughing. “Acid,” she explained between giggles. “I can’t help it. It makes the tears tickle.”
“That’s so weird!”
Maya stumbled outside, looking for me. “What are you guys doing out here?”
“Talking about acid,” Cass said. She hugged me one last time and whispered in my ear, “Please don’t tell Maya. She can’t handle the family stuff, either.”
I promised that I wouldn’t.
The Ballad of a Hallucinating Guardian Angel: Cassandra Channing
“She’s been everybody else’s girl Maybe one day she’ll be her own.”
—Tori Amos
April 1994
CRAZY RUNS IN MY FAMILY, MATRILINEALLY AT least. My grandmother had a psychotic break back when my mom and aunt were in high school. She moved every electronic item in the house into the kitchen and blocked it off entirely to “protect the family from radiation.” My grandfather sat in the living room staring at the spot where the TV had been, incapable of dealing with his wife—kind of like how my dad is now. My mom, the oldest child by two years, dialed 911 and had her mother committed to an institution.
I wonder what that’s like, watching your mom get strapped into a straitjacket. I wonder with half dread, when will I learn firsthand? Because I’ll be the one to deal with it. My dad’s always away—having an affair with his work or maybe another woman, who knows? And Wes can’t deal with Mom. I’ve been running interference between them since I was five, which is my first memory of one of my mother’s episodes. It might be my first memory, period.
It was spring, planting season. I wasn’t in kindergarten yet so I spent all afternoon with Mom. She took me to pick out the annuals—marigolds, petunias, that stuff. When we got home she decided to dig up the entire garden. Every plant was carefully unearthed, ready to be rearranged, when suddenly she got overwhelmed. She paced from the front yard to the back for five minutes, repeating, “I can’t do this!” She went to lie down and left me standing in a yard that looked like it had been descended on by a thousand dogs searching for bones.
Then Wes came home.
At seven, he immediately recognized signs of our mother’s mental illness. Stomping two of the uprooted hostas with his sneakers, he exclaimed, “This is my fault! She’s upset with me about school.”
Wes always blamed himself for triggering Mom’s “sick days,” and I hated it. A week earlier he’d been told he would have to repeat the first grade because he had so much trouble reading. He was given a battery of learning disability tests before it was determined that he “just couldn’t concentrate,” and was prescribed Ritalin, like too many of the other boys I’ve grown up with. Take a drug, problem solved. We’re taught that from a young age.
Even as a kid, I innately knew that my brother already felt bad enough about himself and didn’t need to be upset by Mom’s weird behavior, so I stepped up, pushing Wes with my conveniently dirty hands off the plants he was trampling. “No, I did this. I wanted to surprise Mama. Help me fix them, Wes. Before she wakes up.”
We flung dirt at each other as we put the plants back into the ground. We rushed to get it done before our dad got home or before dark, whichever came first. And when we finished—fingernails so caked with mud that they wouldn’t be clean for a week—Wes was so amused and exhausted that he forgot entirely about our mother, who was still locked in her room.
That’s when I became Wes’s family protector. I can’t count how many similar situations I’ve defused.
But with our friends, Wes was the kingpin, the boss, the father figure. Everyone went to him with their problems. He’d cuff them on the cheek to get them in line when they needed it, or fight an entire army for them when someone had done them wrong. I’d say he was a shoulder to cry on, but no one cried that often. Our friends didn’t deal that way. You cheered them up with drugs and parties. Wes always had the best
drugs and he threw the best parties at our house when Mom went into one of her Valium coma phases and Dad took one of his fishing trips to avoid it.
The party I remember most fondly took place the summer before my freshman year. I was sitting on the kitchen countertop, slightly drunk, when Adrian shoved a strip of paper in my face, crowing, “Look what I got!”
“A litmus test?” That’s what it looked like, except it had tiny pictures on it, clowns and circus animals. “What do you wanna test with it?”
Adrian rolled his eyes. “It’s acid, dumb-ass!”
“Oh! What do you wanna do with that?”
Adrian set the ten-strip on the counter, reached for a knife, and—wham!—hacked into it. He gave me the slightly smaller half and instructed, “Let it dissolve for as long as you can, then swallow.”
I spent the next twenty minutes whining to him that nothing was happening. Right when he told me for the millionth time, “You’re gonna feel it, Cass,” I saw the wall wiggle a little bit, like Jell-O.
I ran over to poke the wall and it rippled exactly like Jell-O. Adrian and I wandered my house poking the walls and burrowing our feet in the carpet, which felt like freshly cut grass.
Eventually we went outside to smoke on my front porch, but I never got around to smoking. I jumped up and planted both feet on the porch railing, no hands. “I’m perching!” I exclaimed. “Like a bird! Perching is awesome, you should try it.”
So Adrian did. We hopped down and up again for who knows how long. Eventually, Adrian got sick of perching and sat on the steps.
My brother suddenly appeared. He stared at me without blinking, his huge pupils revealing that he’d dropped acid himself. I told him brightly, “I’m perching.”
“She looks like a pigeon,” Adrian added with a chuckle.
Wes stared at me and said, “No, like a guardian angel.” And we had a silent moment. Then he shook it off and asked, shocked, “Holy shit, Cassie, are you tripping?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my god,” he panicked, turning to Adrian. “You gave the acid I sold you to my little sister?”
Ballads of Suburbia Page 7