Ballads of Suburbia

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  Bio-Mom looked trapped. She called, “Just a minute, Lily!” and closed the big, oak door, stepping onto the porch with me.

  Concern flooded Bio-Mom’s face. “You have to go home,” she whispered sharply. “You can’t be here. I have a life.” She glanced back at the door, obviously worried that Lily might manage to heft it open.

  I see that, I said bitterly, enraged that she’d cast me off because I’d come at an inconvenient time and then started a new family without any remorse.

  Seeming to sense what I was thinking—maybe possessing some motherly intuition after all—her voice broke slightly when she told me, “I tried to keep you. It wasn’t your fault. I was a sixteen-year-old rich girl who’d never dealt with any responsibility in her life and you cried all the time. I couldn’t handle the crying.”

  I glared at her and spat, I suppose Lily never cried.

  “Not like you did. I don’t know why…I guess you knew how I felt…” She shifted from foot to foot, shorter than me even in her heels, and she broke our gaze to look over her shoulder at the door once more, cocking her ear for sounds coming from behind it.

  I was ready to walk off then, but I realized I had one last hope. There was one more person I might identify with. My father, I asked. Can you tell me where he is?

  This question finally destroyed her medicated mask, but somehow her tears didn’t smear her perfectly applied makeup. “It was a crazy time when you were born. It was the end of the seventies. We were bored, we had money, coke was big. I was a different person. We were all different people. Someday you’ll grow up. You’ll grow up and you’ll realize everyone does stupid things when they are young and everyone makes mistakes. But you’ll be able to fix them like I was. I know you have good parents. My parents picked good parents for you.”

  Yeah, obviously they’re great, seeing as I’m here, looking for you, I snapped.

  “They’re good people. They’ll help you find your way,” she continued to babble. Every word was so superficial. Basically she was saying: “You can fuck up when your parents have money. That’s why I gave you to someone with money. ’Cause inevitably you’d be fucked-up like me.” I didn’t want to hear it.

  My father, I repeated.

  She sighed heavily. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s my husband. I always told him that he was your dad, but I’ve always wondered…I’ve always known,” she corrected, after another over-the-shoulder glance confirmed we still had privacy, “it was his best friend, Joe.” Her eyes got shiny but not tearful. “Joe died a couple of years ago in the Middle East during the Gulf War. We all got our lives together after you. I went to college. Alex and Joe joined the army. Alex became a doctor when he got out and Joe stayed in, went special operations. We got our lives together. I have a life.” She turned her body away from mine, back toward the door, where the kid she wanted waited for her.

  There was nothing she could give me, so I gave her and the big house the cold shoulder and descended the steps.

  “Adrian,” she said, and it hung in the air, which smelled thick and green like the Mississippi. I looked back but knew right away she wasn’t going to hug me or try to comfort me, because she already had her hand on the brass doorknob. She simply justified herself one last time: “You’ll grow up and understand someday.”

  I felt numb until I got to my car and then I was more pissed than I had ever been in my life. I would not fucking “grow up” and suddenly adapt. I didn’t fit anywhere and I never would. Maybe that was why I’d entered the world screaming my head off.

  I drove aimlessly around New Orleans for a long time because I couldn’t go back to Chicago; no one wanted me there either. I decided I was on my own and would see what New Orleans had to offer before heading off to the next town.

  I snorted smack for the first time off a tarot card at a fortune-telling table in Jackson Square. Jess, a Goth girl with purple eyeliner and crimped hair, charged me less for the drugs than she charged the tourists to predict their future. She took me back to the ramshackle apartment she shared with a bunch of punks, and when we got naked on her futon mattress I saw the tattoos of flowers on her hips, angel wings on her shoulder blades, and big, blue stars on her inner thighs. She told me she’d gotten the angel wings when she’d decided to run away from home. Wanting something to commemorate my journey, I murmured, I need a tattoo.

  So Jess took me to her tattoo artist, who worked out of a shack in the swamps outside New Orleans. With a heavy Creole accent he asked, “Eighteen?”

  Tomorrow, I lied, even though I wouldn’t even be seventeen for another week.

  A heavyset man with yellowing eyes and midnight-dark skin, he said, “Good. If you ain’t eighteen and you get tattoo, you be in and out of jail the rest of you life.”

  I thought he was confused, meaning he’d get arrested if I wasn’t eighteen, but then I realized that raised in the swamps, this guy probably really had the powers of prediction that Minneapolis native Jess faked to earn her living.

  I’d been in New Orleans for two weeks and would have stayed forever, but I called Quentin the next day and asked him to come down ’cause things were never as cool without him. He said he was too broke, but if I came back home, I could stay with him, which I did until his parents got sick of me.

  I went home to my fake mom’s fake tears after a month of being on the run.

  When Pseudo-Dad saw my arms, he asked, “What the hell did you do?”

  I got it so I don’t just grow up one day and forget who I am.

  He rolled his eyes and took me straight to the shrink, who recommended more meds, family therapy, institutionalization if need be. But I do what I want.

  The one good thing about coming from no one is there’s no one to answer to.

  5.

  I NEVER INTENDED TO SAY “I LOVE you” to Adrian. My parents had rendered that phrase meaningless. I remembered how they kissed every morning before work while Liam and I sat at the kitchen table eating cereal. “I love you” was like a duet:

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Who sang the first line and who chimed in with the second varied. Maybe it had alternated on a daily basis.

  When my dad left, he took all my childish, romantic notions of Prince Charming with him. I had no interest in suffering from a broken heart like my mother did. Especially since according to the newspaper articles we used as fodder for our “Stories of Suburbia” script, broken hearts resulted in murder/suicides, a riot at a prom in Connecticut, and a hostage situation at a Taco Bell in a sleepy suburb of Cincinnati.

  I convinced myself that what Adrian and I had was based entirely on our hormones. We made out. Everywhere. In the grass at Scoville Park, under trees, on benches, beneath the metal stage that had been set up for a lame folk concert series. In Adrian’s car. In other people’s bedrooms. In sticky vinyl booths at every diner in town. Up against the wall in the girls’ bathroom of the Fireside Bowl. It went on for the rest of June, and all of July and August. Kissing Adrian made my summer fly by.

  But Adrian never called me his girlfriend. We never had anything that resembled a standard date, unless you counted coffee and cigarettes at Denny’s followed by sneaking into a movie. And we never had a song. For me, the girl who loved ballads, that should have been a biggie. But I told myself that I didn’t care, that this was exactly how I wanted it. Sometimes when Adrian smiled at me a certain way after a marathon make-out session, or when he took my hand while we sped down Lake Shore Drive alone in his car, I felt a twinge of definite emotion, but I didn’t acknowledge it until a rather bizarre conversation with Cass in early September.

  It was a Friday, the end of our first week of school. When I got to Scoville, I saw Cass sitting alone on the brown, wooden sculpture across from the park entrance. I left Quentin and Adrian by the pay phone and went to her. Hoisting myself up beside her, I lit a cigarette and gestured at the piece of paper she held. “What’s that?”

  Cass handed me a flyer f
or the show at Shelly’s house. Since it was Labor Day weekend, Shelly would be hosting her usual Friday shindig and this thing on Saturday. In an effort to make it more like a real concert, she had booked bands from a few different suburbs: Dirt Lip, a punk band from Berwyn; Baby Killer, metal from River Grove; and Svengoolie Is for Lovers, Craig’s new band. Over the summer, when it became clear that Wes wasn’t returning, the remaining members of Symbiotic went their separate ways. Quentin gave up music for the “Stories of Suburbia” script, and Christian devoted his time to skating and his on-again, off-again relationship with Maya.

  Wes had become more of a myth than a person. People told stories like “Remember that time he stole all the Christmas lawn ornaments in north Oak Park and arranged them on the high school football field?” But no one seemed to hold out hope for his return anymore. Except Cass.

  She took the flyer back, studying it, her long dreads hanging in her face. “Wes promised he’d come home for this, maybe sing a few songs with Craig. Symbiotic always played these parties.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, gently stroking her back. I felt awful for her. Wes had canceled at the last minute again. He’d just gotten an apartment in L.A. and claimed he couldn’t afford the time off work.

  “I know I should be happy for him because he’s sober and doing well and stuff, but…” Cass stopped midthought. She chewed on her lower lip and pointed across the park toward the war monument. “Is that north?”

  “Yeah…”

  She drummed her fingers against the wood we sat upon. “I’m thinking of running away to Canada, there can’t be border patrol, like, all along the border, there has to be little sections where you could just walk across a field and be in Canada.”

  Cass said all of this without taking a breath. The mile-a-minute rant from out of nowhere made me suspicious. When she turned to me and I caught a glimpse of her eyes, caramel irises swallowed by her black pupils, my suspicions were confirmed. “You’re tripping, aren’t you?”

  Cass applauded. “I have been since Wes called last weekend. You’re the first to notice.”

  “Jesus, Cass,” I marveled. I was still afraid to try acid. I’d heard too many urban legends. Like the kid who thought he was an ice-cream cone slowly melting to death. In my mind, acid equaled psychotic breakdown. But Cass never freaked out. On the contrary, she took acid to remain calm.

  “So wanna go to Canada with me?” she proposed with a grin.

  Even though I was totally sober, I considered it for a minute, but before I could say anything, Cass said, “You’re right. It’s probably a bad idea. And we’d miss our boyfriends.”

  “Adrian’s not my boyfriend,” I replied hastily. “We’re just…I don’t know.”

  Cass’s head bobbed like one of those bobble-head dogs that people put in the rear windows of their cars. “Yeah, no one dates Adrian. I didn’t date Adrian. We did lose our virginity together at a party at my house when I was a freshman, though.”

  I choked on my cigarette smoke. “I heard that.”

  She studied me with a small smile before sharing, “I haven’t slept with Quentin. Yet. I want to be in love this time and I’m not quite there. Almost.” She nonchalantly traced a heart in the dust on the slab of wood in front of us.

  I shook my head, stunned by her confession. “You’re very honest when you’re tripping.”

  “I’m always honest. I’m subtly blunt when I’m sober, but not so subtle when I’m tripping. In case you’re wondering about me and Adrian, which you are, we both wanted to get it over with, so we did. I hope for your sake he’s better in bed, because I don’t think he lasted five minutes,” Cass stated, straight-faced.

  Christ, acid made people weird.

  “That’s too much information, but actually Adrian and I haven’t slept together.”

  It was Cass’s turn to cough. “You haven’t?”

  “It’s almost happened, but then we go back to kissing.” I stared sheepishly at the dirty toe of my sneaker as I spoke. “I want to do it. I mean, I think he’s hot. I like making out with him. But he always stops at a certain point. I don’t know, he probably knows I’ve never done it and it’s, like, too big of commitment for him or something.” I X’ed out Cass’s dusty heart sketch.

  Cass snorted. “Sex? A commitment for Adrian? I don’t think so.” She whistled long and low. “Shit, I don’t know if you’re in love with him, but he’s definitely in love with you.”

  “What?” I stuttered. I was talking about sex, not love. My hormones made sense to me. My emotions were a completely different story. Falling in love with someone sounded terrifying. “Falling” implied losing control; it implied landing badly and hurting yourself. I locked my emotions away because I feared getting hurt. However, if Adrian had feelings for me, maybe I could allow mine to surface. I tried to get Cass to elaborate. “That makes no sense. If he…you know, felt that way…wouldn’t sleeping with me be a part of it?”

  Cass twisted a dread around her finger as she explained, “Adrian’s told me that he doesn’t respect any of the girls he’s slept with except for me. If he respects you, he loves you. Wow, and I thought a leopard couldn’t change its spots.”

  “Did you get that one from Maya?” I joked nervously, still trying to figure out this love thing. Does Adrian love me? Do I love him?

  “Maya and her grandma’s sayings. They’re contagious.”

  The sculpture shook as Adrian jumped up onto it behind us. He nudged me in the butt with his boot. “I’m bored. Wanna leave?”

  I craned my neck to watch him stretch his arms overhead. His T-shirt rode up, revealing a flat expanse of bare skin with a light dusting of butterscotch-colored hairs, and the top of his blue boxers rising above his belted jeans. It made my stomach flip-flop-Was that love or hormones?—but I had friend duty. I’d allowed the silly talk about Adrian and sex and love to distract me. My head snapped back to Cass.

  She was already waving me away. “Go, don’t worry about me. I’m not really going to Canada. I’ll see you tomorrow or whenever the hell the stupid show is.”

  Adrian jumped down before reaching backward for me. “It’s tomorrow and you should lay off the acid,” he remarked, muffled by the cigarette chomped between his teeth.

  “Thanks for noticing!” Cass called cheerily after us.

  When we got to Adrian’s car, I asked, “Where are we going?”

  “My house. My dad’s at work and my mom always goes shopping on Friday afternoons.”

  I’d never been to Adrian’s before. He lived on the far north side, on a street that only existed with its particular name for two blocks. My mom joked that the people who lived along it were so rich they’d paid to get it specially renamed. Adrian’s foreboding house was massive. Might have been one of those “painted ladies” if it had been painted colorfully instead of dark gray.

  He parked in the driveway, hoisted himself onto the hood of his car, and pushed open a bedroom window. “I forgot my keys,” he explained, gesturing for me to follow.

  I hopped gingerly onto the car and tumbled through the blue drapes directly onto a queen-size bed, which Adrian was at the head of, grasping for a nearby lamp. Illuminated, his room was a total sty. The floor covered in clothing and papers. The dark blue walls spray-painted with phrases and crude drawings. It looked like the inside of an abandoned building used as a squat. “Whoa,” I said.

  He shrugged like he had to explain the situation. “I’m not here very much. You’re the only one who’s seen this place besides Quentin.”

  “Really?” If I’m in the same category as Quentin, maybe he does love me, I thought. Still gaping at his graffitied walls, I mumbled, “You come and go as you please. You trash the place. Your parents let you do whatever—”

  Adrian silenced my words and thoughts with a kiss. We thrashed around, ended up on the floor, crunching bits of newspaper beneath our backs. My heart pounded as his lips skimmed my neck and his teeth scraped my lips, gnawing them in that way that felt
so sexy. His tongue battled with mine and his fingers tangled in my hair. We kissed and clawed and touched each other everywhere. I breathlessly told him, “Don’t stop this time,” and he just smiled. We probably would have done it-I saw a box of condoms among the rubble-but then I ruined everything.

  Half naked on his filthy bedroom floor, I stared at Adrian as he playfully bit at the soft skin of my bare belly. I had a realization as he dragged his lips back up toward mine. I loved his mouth, his tattoos, his wild, brown eyes and even crazier tawny curls. I loved his honesty and how he used it to create the “Stories of Suburbia” project. I loved the sense of freedom he oozed. And most of all, I loved how he made me feel like I was just as free and brave and honest and beautiful as he was. It all added up. Before his lips met mine again, I found myself saying, “I love you.”

  Adrian blinked several times, but did not reply.

  Embarrassed, I brought my mouth to his, trying to kiss him and regain the moment, but our teeth collided awkwardly. Then something even worse happened. A deep voice called Adrian’s name and Adrian rolled off of me, flinging a dirty T-shirt across my bare chest.

  I managed to get it on-inside out and backward-before the door flew open, revealing Adrian’s dad: short, paunchy, and blond, the opposite of his son.

  Adrian stood between the two of us, still shirtless, having chosen to put on his jeans instead, but his father didn’t acknowledge his state of undress or toss a glance at me, half hidden behind Adrian’s legs. “If you’re home, you know what you are agreeing to,” his dad said ominously.

  “No, I’m not home. I’m just getting stuff.” Adrian picked up a couple of CDs, and then casually pulled a T-shirt over his head.

  I scrambled for the thin flannel I wore to hide my scabby arms. Though it seemed like I was invisible to Adrian’s father, I turned around to zip my jeans, and wrapped my bra up in my own T-shirt as soon as I found them. I shoved my clothes into my backpack, reddening with shame that no one noticed.