Ballads of Suburbia

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  Cass leaned over Quentin and shouted his name at the top of her lungs. His eyes opened with a jolt. “Where did Jessica go? Where’s everybody else?” Cass demanded.

  “Left,” Quentin stated, his eyelids drooping.

  Adrian stirred in my arms and said, “I have my car.”

  “What? They expected you guys to sober up and drive home!” Cass’s skin flushed with fury. She rifled through the pockets of Adrian’s coat and pulled out his keys. “You guys keep them talking,” she told Maya and me. “I’ll get Adrian’s car and we’ll drive them to my house.”

  She rose and found herself facing Jessica and Mary. Craig stumbled up behind them, just slightly less drunk than the two boys on the ground. Cass tried to shoulder past Jessica, but Jessica grabbed her by the wrist. “Where ya going, Cassie?”

  Cass squared herself and raised her fist.

  “Go ahead! You know my parents are both lawyers,” Jessica quipped.

  Cass emitted a sharp cackle and wrenched her arm away from Jessica. “Do not call me Cassie. Only family calls me that. You’re not even a friend anymore.” Her tone was low at first, but then she screeched in Jessica’s face, “You left them here to die!”

  Jessica closed her eyes to the sound and wrinkled her petite nose. “We did not! We were hungry, they were too drunk to come, and we told them we’d be back.”

  Cass pointed at Craig. “And he drove? Between the three of them they drank two bottles of whiskey!”

  Craig interrupted, laughing hysterically as he rushed toward Adrian and Quentin. “They’re still so wasted!” He collapsed beside Adrian and tugged him out of my arms. “Dude, what did you do?”

  Adrian moaned the same response he’d given Cass, “Whiskey,” even though Craig clearly knew, having indulged himself. Adrian turned and attempted to meet my gaze again. One eye pointed in one direction, one in another, like a broken doll’s. “Who is she?” He reached for me with a limp hand.

  “That’s Kara. Kara and Maya.” Craig gestured to my right, where Maya still cradled Quentin.

  Adrian slurred at me, “Maya, you’re beautiful.”

  “No, dude, that’s Kara.” Then Adrian puked again and Craig almost dropped him, exclaiming, “Sick!”

  Cass glared at Craig, reprimanding, “Jesus, sober up!” She shook her head and said, “Fuck this. I’m driving them to my house.”

  “No!” Jessica objected. “We’re taking them back to my house.”

  In a whirlwind of dreadlocks, Cass lunged toward Jessica so violently that Mary took a step back. “And what are you going to do with them there? Let them choke on their own vomit while you guys hang out in the rec room? My mom was a nurse, she’ll know what to do.”

  Jessica scowled. “Your mom’s a psycho. She’ll just feed them an entire bottle of aspirin. Isn’t that what she took at your party a few months ago?”

  My jaw dropped. I expected Cass’s well-posed fist to meet with Jessica’s pretty face. Instead, Cass blinked twice and started walking toward the hill. Mary dodged out of her path.

  But Maya wasn’t nearly as collected. She set Quentin down and grabbed Jessica by the shoulders, working her fingers close to Jessica’s throat. “You say one more word about Cassie, I’ll smash your face so bad your jaw will have to be permanently wired shut. I doubt your lawyer mama’ll give a shit ’cause she’ll be so glad that someone finally shut you up.” Maya shoved Jessica into the bushes, breaking branches with a loud crack, before stalking off in the same direction as her cousin.

  I took one last look at Adrian, the boy who I’d come to think of as my soul mate, his face resting beside a puddle of puke, and went after my friends. I found them on the playground. Cass sat on a swing, blowing smoke rings into the night, and a few feet away, Maya leaned against the building that housed the bathrooms. She muttered, “Sheep in wolves’ clothing. That’s what my grandma would call them.”

  “Is she okay?” I nodded in Cass’s direction.

  “Give her a few minutes. She’ll go back to check on them. Unlike Jessica, who only cares about herself, Cass treats her friends like family.”

  I thought of Liam when she mentioned family. I couldn’t believe I’d ditched him for this. Aside from Maya and Cass, the kids at Scoville Park suddenly seemed just like everyone else at high school. Maybe they looked different, but like Maggie Young’s crowd, they backstabbed their friends for petty reasons and drank too much on the weekends for the hell of it. Why had I wanted to be a part of that?

  I told Maya, “It’s kinda late, I’m gonna go home now. Tell Cass…” I trailed off, having no idea what I actually wanted her to tell Cass.

  “I’ll tell her you’ll see her here on Monday,” Maya finished for me.

  “I don’t know about that. But I’ll see you in class at least.”

  I mentally composed my apology to Liam as I walked home. Most of the houses I passed were dark or lit only by the flickering of a television. I expected to find the lights on at my house since it was only ten, but from the street it looked pitch black inside. Thinking my brother had fallen asleep in front of the TV and my parents had turned it off, I tiptoed to the living room, expecting to see Liam snoozing in the La-Z-Boy. Instead, I found Mom asleep on the couch with the pillows and blankets that belonged upstairs on her bed. Mom had never slept on the couch before and the sight of it made me so queasy that I could have puked the way Adrian had.

  I hurried upstairs. The familiar click of keystrokes sounded from behind the tightly closed door of Dad’s office. Liam’s door was shut as well. He didn’t respond when I knocked, but I decided to enter.

  The reading lamp beside Liam’s bed was on and Liam lay on his side under the covers, wearing headphones. He didn’t respond when I called his name so I walked closer. An open notebook sat next to him. I couldn’t read his tiny handwriting except for the words scrawled in capital letters at the bottom of the page: “Fuck this house!”

  I heard the quiet strains of a Johnny Cash song as my brother removed his headphones. Liam closed his notebook and rolled over to face me in one fluid motion. “What are you doing in my room?” His throat sounded thick with mucus and his red cheeks and bloodshot eyes gave away that he’d been crying.

  “I knocked but you didn’t answer. Mom…she’s sleeping on the couch. What happened?” I stammered, rubbing the scabs on my left arm through my blue cardigan.

  Liam coldly stated the obvious. “Mom and Dad had a fight.” The tinny sound of applause leaked out from his headphones as Johnny finished singing “I Got Stripes.”

  “But what about the date?” I asked urgently.

  Liam answered in a monotone, squeezing the foamy earpieces of his headphones. “She wanted to have coffee and talk. He wanted to see a movie. She gave in. He fell asleep at the movie. They had a fight. You weren’t here. I was. Same old story.”

  Instead of being a bystander for the stupid drama at the park, I should have been protecting my brother. “Liam, I’m really sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Liam angrily punched the stop button on his Walkman and tugged his covers up to his neck. “No, I want to go to sleep and fuckin’ forget it. I was almost asleep when you barged in.”

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured again.

  “Good night, Kara.” Liam snapped off the light on his nightstand, plunging the room into darkness.

  Tears spilled down my cheeks as I stumbled over Liam’s books and dirty laundry on my way to his door. I stood in the hallway, looking helplessly in the three directions my family had split into. I considered waking Mom, but imagined that she’d cried herself to sleep and didn’t want her to have to do that all over again. My gaze landed on Dad’s office door. I walked past my bedroom toward it.

  Our two rooms sat catty-corner from each other, precisely three steps apart, but the distance between us had grown so vast. It started when I was in fourth grade. He’d helped create a program for terminally ill children and worked long hours to get it off the ground. I wrote a paper about h
im being my hero and said that even though I missed him tucking me in at night, I knew he was helping so many sick kids.

  I put my hand on his door, listening to him type faster and louder than ever before. I wanted to bridge that gap between us. I wanted to walk in and ask, “Daddy, are you okay?” But then I thought about how he’d never come to my room to ask me that. He’d only come to lecture me about studying harder or to tell me that I couldn’t do something even though my mother had said I could: “No. Absolutely not. Turn that music down and study.”

  My parents most likely hadn’t noticed I wasn’t home when they’d returned from their doomed date. But if I made Dad aware of it, I’d probably get chastised for going out without permission instead of reassured that he and Mom would be okay.

  So I retreated to my room and got out my knife. I drew blood for my mother, sleeping alone and angry on the couch. I drew blood for Liam, who’d had to seek shelter in his room alone and angry yet again. I drew blood because I was the one who’d abandoned him. I drew blood because my father didn’t care about any of us. I drew blood because I hated myself for cutting. It didn’t fix anything or make me feel any less guilty.

  I fell asleep bleeding and had to throw my sheets away.

  12.

  THE NEXT MORNING I AWOKE TO the smell of eggs frying. When I was little, breakfast smells roused me every Saturday morning. Dad would be in the kitchen making pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon. Well, he’d be trying. Mom would have to rescue the food before he burnt it. Then we’d all sit down in front of the TV and eat together while watching cartoons. I hoped my dad had woken up feeling guilty and gone downstairs to cook for Mom.

  I dressed quickly, but carefully concealed my injured arm under a long-sleeved shirt and my cardigan. On my way downstairs, I noticed Dad’s closed office door, but since I didn’t hear any typing I hoped he wasn’t inside. Passing the living room, I was glad to see that the couch was no longer made up as a bed, but grew disheartened at the sight of Liam watching music videos alone, an empty plate in his lap. My fantasy was completely shattered when I reached the kitchen and found Mom making omelets by herself. She offered me one, her voice oozing with fake cheer.

  “I was hoping for pancakes,” I complained. “Why’d you make omelets? Only Dad likes them and it’s not like he appreciates you making breakfast for him.”

  Mom blinked several times. I saw a couple tears fall and felt kind of bad, but hoped it would force her to talk to me about what had happened. Instead, she scooped food onto my plate and told me, “I used plenty of cheese for you. Why don’t you go watch TV with your brother?”

  I did as told. Liam glanced over at me when I entered the room, but said nothing. We watched videos in silence while Mom cleaned, filling the house with a Lysol stench. When she started to vacuum the dining room, I sighed and asked Liam to turn up the volume.

  “You do it. I’m out of here. I can’t fuckin’ take this.” He tossed the remote at me and headed to the front door, grabbing his skateboard.

  I followed him outside without putting my shoes on, worried he was about to take off. He’d stopped on the first step and stood there, board hanging limply at his side. “Where are you going?” I asked softly.

  Liam spun around, glaring, and spat, “Nowhere. I wish I could skate till I ran out of concrete, but there’s fucking nowhere to go.”

  “Yes, there is,” I told him.

  Since it was a dreary Sunday morning, no one was at Scoville Park. I sat on a bench and watched Liam circle the statue, grinding his sadness and frustration into the steps that led up to it.

  He skated for an hour before rolling over to me and bumming a cigarette. We smoked in silence for a few minutes, staring up at the angel part of the statue.

  “Is this where you hang out now?” Liam asked. I shrugged, not sure how much I liked Scoville after what had taken place there the night before, but Liam pressed, “Tell me about it?”

  Seeing as how I’d ditched him for two weeks, I owed him that much. So I sighed and told him about Maya and how much fun she made everything, and about hilarious Harlan, and about Cass, who was the kind of person I wished I could be: tough, honest, and fair to everyone, even the people who didn’t deserve it. Then I explained the cliques. Liam smiled when I mentioned the skaters, but grew somber when I told him about tattooed Adrian in a puddle of his own puke and Jessica lashing out at Cass instead of caring for her drunk friends.

  “I don’t know if I’m coming back here,” I concluded. “If I wanted backstabbing friends and drunken drama, I would have joined the cheerleading squad.”

  Liam shook his head in disagreement, his shaggy bangs flopping in his eyes. “But that’s high school. You’re gonna have to put up with that shit no matter who you hang out with. Maya and Cass sound really cool. Just hang out with them and ignore the rest.”

  “But I can see them in class and hang out with you after school, go back to our simple, drama-free life of watching MTV.”

  “Until Mom and Dad come home screaming at each other.” Liam flicked his cigarette butt at the base of the statue. “Life at home isn’t simple and I’m sick of being there.” He took a deep breath and asked, “Do you know what I wanted last night, Kara?”

  I rubbed the new scabs through the sleeve of my sweater and hung my head like a shamed child. “Me to be there and I wasn’t.”

  “No, I wanted you to take me away.” Liam’s voice squeaked, causing me to look up and see the tears clinging to his long eyelashes. “Every day for the past two weeks I hoped that you would invite me to come with you.”

  Blinded by my own tears, I threw my arm around his shoulders. “Liam, I want you to meet me here after school tomorrow. I’m not coming back for Maya and Cass. I’m coming back for your sake.”

  He hugged me, pressing his head to my chest like he had done when he was a little kid, smaller than me. “Thanks, Kara,” he whispered.

  13.

  ON TUESDAY, JUNE SEVENTH, MOM LEFT a note on the kitchen counter instructing Liam and me to be home by six for a family meeting.

  Liam had been coming to Scoville with me for over a month. I also took him to Shelly’s parties on Friday nights and we’d snuck in drunk after curfew on more than one occasion. Mom and Dad must have finally noticed.

  “Crap,” I told my brother. “Get ready for the crackdown.”

  Liam dismissed my concerns. “Nah, they probably just want to talk about family vacation.”

  We met in the living room, where Dad claimed the La-Z-Boy, relegating Liam and me to the couch. Mom sat in her rocking chair, staring blankly at the photographs on the mantel.

  Dad cleared his throat and began with, “Your mother and I have something to tell you…Rachel, do you want to start?”

  This was when I let myself realize what was happening. Some tiny part of me had known all along, had been waiting for this conversation since Liam had first mentioned the D-word in relation to my parents, but I’d worked slavishly to deny it. Sure, Mom had slept on the couch, but only once. Things had gone back to normal after that. Of course, “normal” consisted of my parents barely speaking…

  The icy front Mom had maintained for months finally shattered. Her face went fuchsia and she said with a sob, “No, Jack, I will not tell them. It’s your decision and you will tell them.”

  “Rachel, we agreed to do this together.” There was a slight waver to Dad’s voice, but that was all. He didn’t yell. He didn’t break down. He never did.

  Mom, on the other hand, clawed at the air hysterically. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Rachel—”

  “Tell them, Jack. Tell them!” she spat through gritted teeth.

  My father removed his wire-framed glasses and daubed at his hazel eyes. “Uhhh…” His voice cracked. Finally, evidence of pain. “Your mother and I…we’re separating.”

  Memories played out like home movies, but not the good ones, not the times when Dad helped Liam and me pitch a tent in the backyard and stayed ou
t there all night with us. No, those times were long gone.

  I visualized Dad’s closed office door and heard that clicking keyboard. I imagined Mom alone in her room, wishing her husband would talk to her. I imagined Liam at the table, struggling with his homework, wishing his father could help him without yelling. I imagined me in my room slashing at my arm with the X-ACTO blade that had belonged to Dad, wishing he would come in, rip it out of my hands, and hug me. But instead he’d sat in that office typing, raising money for needy families while ignoring his own.

  I kicked the pop can that I’d carefully placed on a coaster per Dad’s rules. Coke splashed across the coffee table as I shouted at my father, “This is your fault!”

  “No…no one’s to blame,” he stammered.

  Angry tears blinded me. “You’re moving out, though, right? I hope so because I want to stay here, but I don’t want to be near you!”

  Dad closed his eyes, long and hard, like my words were a knife slowly severing his muscle from bone. “Yes. I got an apartment—”

  “You got an apartment? You planned this?” I screeched.

  He blinked in slow motion again, but kept talking over my objection. “I got a two-bedroom apartment near the high school…”

  Mom blew her nose and cried harder.

  “I hoped you and Liam will visit.”

  I faced Mom. “Why are you letting him do this?”

  “Honey, it wasn’t my—”

  “You can’t tell them that! It was our decision!” Dad protested.

  And then Liam, who had said nothing, who had been utterly invisible since the meeting started, suddenly shouted, “Fuck all of you!” He pointed at my parents. “Fuck you two for not even trying.” And then he turned to me. “And fuck you because you’ll be out of here in two years when you graduate. You’ll leave me like always! Every one of you is selfish! Fuck this family!”

  I reached out to him, but he jumped up and kicked the coffee table over with a magnificent crash. My mother grabbed for him, too, but he dodged her and went for the mantel, sweeping down all the photographs. Glass flew everywhere and Liam grabbed his skateboard and ran out the front door.