by Amy Bryant
I blushed. “Me, too,” I said.
As soon as I hung up, the phone rang. It was Theresa. In a high, strange voice she repeated what she’d just heard from Adam: Mike Franklin’s father had been killed the night before in a car accident. He was on his way home from a bar, and he swerved to miss what police assumed was a squirrel. He veered off the road into a tree and died instantly. No one else was in the car.
I handed the phone to Carrie and burst into tears. I felt like someone had just dropped a giant sandbag on top of me. I didn’t know anyone who had ever had a parent die, except for my parents, and that was different. Mike was young.
Carrie and I rinsed out our hair in silence. As soon as we’d cleaned up the bathroom Carrie left for Lyle’s. With my hair still wet I slunk downstairs to dinner. It felt like my fight with Mom had happened months ago.
As soon as I saw Mom and William at the table my throat got tight. Someday they were going to die. Maybe soon.
“What’s the matter?” Mom said.
“Mike’s father died.”
I put my hands up to my face and sobbed. I heard the squeak of Mom’s chair being pushed back and then I felt her arms around me. I was crying harder than I’d expected. After a minute William got up and stood beside me. He placed an awkward hand on the back of my head, which made me cry even harder. I wanted to tell them that I loved them. I wanted to promise that I wouldn’t upset them ever again, even if that meant never going out again for the rest of my life.
“I don’t know why I feel so bad,” I said instead. “I never even met him.”
Mom and William sat back down at the table. I told them how it happened. William got up and looked through the paper for an article, but there wasn’t anything yet.
“It’ll probably be in there tomorrow,” he said.
We were having one of William’s favorite meals: fried chicken with mashed potatoes and peas. It was one of my favorites too, but tonight I could barely eat. My throat was sore and my muscles were worn out from crying. Finally I gave up on dinner all together, but I stayed at the table while Mom and William ate. I didn’t know anyone who had died. Three of my four grandparents were dead before I was born, all from various forms of cancer. My grandmother on my mother’s side was alive when I was born, but she died of a heart attack when I was two. My mother must have grieved, but I didn’t remember it. It was strange to think of Mom losing her mother. It was the worst thing I could imagine happening to me but here she was, pushing peas onto her fork, a functioning person. Since both my parents were only children I didn’t have much family, and I’d never been to a funeral. I felt a fresh set of tears coming on when I thought about Mike and his sister going to their father’s funeral. As far as I knew Mike didn’t even own a suit.
Mom didn’t try to stop me from going out. I went with Carrie and Lyle and Theresa to the seventh hole of the Reston Golf Club. The seventh green of the course was positioned far enough away from surrounding neighborhoods that you could make a fair amount of noise without the police getting called. It was dark when we got there, and I had to concentrate to make out everyone’s faces.
I hadn’t counted on seeing Mike but there he was, his feet nestled in a sand trap and the rest of him spread out on the green. There were several empty beer cans beside him. I panicked. What if I said the wrong thing and made him cry? What if I cried and made him uncomfortable? Did he want to talk about it or pretend like nothing happened? I wanted him to tell me.
“That’s right, it’s your estranged ex,” he said as I peered into his face.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I said. Mike looked away from me and everyone went quiet. I wished I’d said something else.
“Yeah, thanks,” Mike said.
“Yeah, all of us are sorry,” Theresa said. “We all feel terrible.”
Mike took a long drink from his beer while I stood and watched him. People began to murmur again. “It hasn’t really hit me yet,” he said. He tossed his beer behind him and looked around for another one. I wanted to ask when the funeral was but was afraid to.
We sat down and opened our beers. I wondered when Mike had last seen his father. From what he told me when we were going out, I was willing to bet it had been almost a year.
It had been about a year since I’d seen my own dad. Before I stopped talking to him he came up once or twice a year for brief visits consisting of a few meals spread out over a couple of days. It wasn’t bad. Just awkward, mostly. He stayed at a motel, and although I would visit him in his room I didn’t stay over with him. He invited me to visit him in North Carolina sometimes, but I didn’t want to go and Mom didn’t make me. I couldn’t imagine what we would talk about if we spent a whole weekend alone together.
But Mike’s dad hadn’t lived a state away, he’d lived less than twenty minutes away. I thought about the story Mike told me about his dad punching him. I looked over at him. He was sipping his beer and staring glassily into the distance. Maybe he was thinking about the time his dad punched, him too.
I hadn’t even finished my second beer when I had to pee. Neither Carrie nor Theresa had to go yet and I couldn’t wait, so I went by myself behind a clump of trees at the edge of the golf course. I was sorry I had worn jeans instead of a skirt.
I had just finished buckling my heart belt when Mike loomed up before me.
“Please tell me you didn’t see me peeing,” I said.
He put an unsteady hand against the nearest tree. “Do you still go out with that guy?”
“Yeah.” I wanted to say something real, something that would let Mike know how horrible I felt, how much I wished this hadn’t happened to him.
“Let me ask you something,” he said.
“What?”
He slumped forward, and I put my arms around him. He kept his arms limp at his sides. I shut my eyes and leaned into him.
“Mike, I’m so sorry about your dad,” I said. “I don’t know what else to say except I’m sorry. I feel awful. And your sister and God, your mom—”
He pulled me to the ground. We stayed hooked together for a long time, not talking. I waited for Mike to say something about his father. After a while, we stood up and brushed at our grass stains. Then Mike leaned over and kissed me, and I felt the familiar craving I used to feel when he was my boyfriend. I braced a hand against his chest, and we separated.
We jogged back to the green, and Mike pulled out ahead of me. I watched his long legs widen further and further apart until he was sprinting.
“Cop?” Carrie said when I reached her.
“No,” I said. “Just getting some exercise.” I plopped down on the turf next to Theresa and looked around for my beer. My lungs hurt from running, and I didn’t feel like drinking anymore. After he’d finished his beer Mike curled up in the sand trap and passed out. I thought of Joey selling shirts in some club in Baltimore right this minute, his puffy red hair bobbing up and down as he moved back and forth behind the table.
Mike was out of school for a week. When he came back he acted like nothing had happened. Nobody brought up his dad, but we didn’t go back to treating him the way we did before, either. For one thing, we didn’t make fun of him like we used to. We were nicer to one another when Mike was around, too. Even Adam calmed down. Mike didn’t say anything, but I don’t think he liked it.
At night before I went to sleep I would inevitably think about Mike’s dad. I’d wonder what it was like for him in those seconds before his car went into the tree. Whether he knew what was happening or if it was like a switch being turned off. Sometimes in the middle of class or riding around in Carrie’s car it would just hit me, like ice water running over my skin: Mike’s dad is dead. I waited for the shock of it to wear off for good.
I thought Joey might say something gory or insensitive when I called and told him about Mike’s dad, but he didn’t. He said he couldn’t imagine what he would do if something happened to his dad, even though his dad was a bigoted asshole that he hadn’t spoken to in two years. He told me about h
is cousin, who died in a car accident in California. Joey was in junior high when it happened, and even though he wasn’t close to his cousin he went around feeling depressed for months.
It felt good talking to Joey on the phone. But when I went over to his apartment I felt skittish and distracted. I felt my insides caving in under the pressure of his kisses, and I was irritated by the happy way he kept one arm slung over my shoulder. And then there was the inevitability of his mattress.
“Let’s sit outside for a bit,” I suggested after we’d opened beers.
Joey placidly followed me outside. I felt better as soon as I stepped out of the musty, dark apartment into the warm, light afternoon. We sat with our backs against the house and our feet in the gravel driveway. I snuffed match after match as I tried to light my cigarette.
“Is something wrong, honey?” Joey asked.
“I have a name,” I said.
“I know. Holly, right?”
“Very funny.” I got my cigarette lit. Joey took my free hand in his and stroked my palm. It tickled, and I drew my hand away.
I had planned on keeping it a secret, but there was something about Joey’s desperate, cloying attention that made me want to tell him.
“I kissed Mike Franklin when you were in Baltimore. After I found out his dad died.”
I watched Joey’s expression go from disbelief to disgust and back again. He set his beer down and pressed both palms against his forehead. “I take it you did this out of some sort of misguided pity,” he said.
“It was just a kiss,” I said.
Joey kept his head in his hands. His bony arms stuck out of the baggy sleeves of his Ramones T-shirt, his pointy elbows rested on his knees. I was starting to feel bad.
“I don’t want us to have secrets,” I said.
He kept silent. Then he brought his hands to my waist and unclasped the heart belt. I stared down at the flat, gray gravel of the parking lot as he slid the belt through the loops of my jeans. I didn’t know what I had expected would happen when I told him, but this wasn’t it.
Joey stood up, and then I heard the door to his apartment click shut. I didn’t hear the lock, which I took as a good sign. I sipped my beer, wondering what to do next. I ran my boot across the gravel, and silvery dirt flew up. Neither car was in the parking lot today. I hadn’t met or even seen the other people who lived in the house, though I had gotten used to their footsteps upstairs.
I got up and went inside. Joey was sitting at his big metal desk. He was bent over paperwork of some kind, ignoring me. My belt was coiled up beside him. I sat in the gray chair and watched him, but he still refused to look up from his work. This was the first time I had ever seen him at his desk. There was an old, heavy-looking black phone sitting on top of a stack of papers. I realized I had never heard it ring. When my beer was gone I found my backpack and stood by the door.
“Well, I’m going now,” I said, my voice stiff.
“I’ll walk you out,” Joey said without looking up.
As soon as he had shut the door behind us Joey put both hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face him. He looked at me in his now familiar, searching way. I dropped my eyes from his and came to focus on his Adam’s apple.
“Just tell me something,” he said. “Do you still like him? Is that what this is about?”
“No! God! Is that what you think?”
“And are you sure you still want to be my girlfriend? ’Cause I don’t really get why you told me about this.”
I threw my arms around his waist and kissed his Adam’s apple. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I still want to be your girlfriend.”
I could tell Mom and William had been fighting when I came in, because they were standing quietly in the kitchen. I rushed upstairs and arranged myself on my bed with a couple of my school notebooks, hoping Mom and William were absorbed with whatever they were arguing about.
There was a quick rap at my door. Before I could answer Mom was standing before me, holding a glass of white wine. She was wearing a light blue floor-length cotton nightgown, and her wavy black hair was loose around her shoulders. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup and her cheeks were flushed. She looked pretty.
“You’re late,” she said.
I sat up and looked at the clock radio on my nightstand. It was nine thirty, an hour and a half past when I had said I would be home.
“It’s only nine thirty,” I said. “It’s not like it’s the middle of the night or anything.”
Mom set her wineglass on top of my turntable and straightened herself back up again.
“I’ll tell you something, young lady, you’re really pushing it,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It wasn’t my fault. Carrie and I got stuck in traffic on the way home from the mall.”
“Carrie called here twenty minutes ago.”
“She had to stop at Lyle’s, so I walked home from there. She probably just forgot to ask me something.”
Mom snorted. “The school called me at work today.”
I scooted toward the edge of my bed. One of my notebooks spilled to the floor, but neither of us moved to pick it up. I knew what was coming.
“You’ve been absent from sixth period eight times the last three weeks.” Her smooth, easy voice had deepened, like it did when she was really angry. “You want to tell me what’s so important you have to leave school early?”
I looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just what seniors do at the end of the year. I won’t do it again, I promise.”
I got up off the bed and gathered up the clothes that were strewn around the room. Mom watched.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. Do you think Joey is worth not getting into college for? Do you want to get rejected from college? Is that it?”
I stuffed the clothes in my laundry basket. I could feel my body starting to wilt under her stare. “I already applied,” I said. “My transcripts have already been sent. They don’t check these grades.”
“Well, guess what? You’re grounded. You’re going to stay right here, in this house, until I say otherwise. You got that?”
The Bad Brains were playing Friday night. They hadn’t played live in two years. I’d bought tickets weeks ago. Everybody I knew was going. Even Mike Franklin.
“If you let me go see the Bad Brains Friday I promise I won’t go out for the rest of the year,” I said.
“Absolutely not!”
Mom turned and went out into the hallway, slamming the door behind her. She stomped into her bedroom and slammed that door, too.
I went to see William. He was in the basement, watching an old episode of Star Trek. I settled down on the couch next to him and rested my Converse next to his Hush Puppies on the coffee table.
“I guess you know I’m grounded,” I said when the TV went to a commercial.
William sniffed.
“There’s this band playing Friday,” I said. “Bad Brains. They’re probably one of the most important bands I’ll ever see. And they haven’t played in years—this is probably my only chance to see them.”
William didn’t answer. On TV a blond woman held up a white T-shirt that was covered with spaghetti sauce. She plunged it into a glass box filled with clear blue liquid.
“Bad Brains are one of the best bands in D.C., if not the best,” I continued. “Maybe even the best on the entire East Coast. This show is a really big deal.”
William kept staring at the television. The woman on TV held up the same white T-shirt and beamed. The spaghetti stains had disappeared. “If it were up to me, I’d ground you for good,” he said. “God only knows what illegal activities you and those hooligans you run around with are up to.”
I got to my feet. “I’m trying to talk to you!” I shouted.
William looked at me over his glasses. “You’re lucky your mother is in charge,” he said. “If it were up to me you’d have been shipped off to boarding school a long time ago.”
Mom was in bed, reading. Her door was open. I waited for her to look up.
“William doesn’t love me.”
“Well, maybe he doesn’t,” Mom said. “You think he’s just supposed to, just like that? You think that’s how it works?”
Back in my room I pulled my duffel bag down from the top of my closet. It was a navy blue duffel bag with a soccer ball patch on one side. I’d had it since elementary school. I grabbed a few pairs of underwear and a couple of T-shirts that Joey had given me and stuffed them in the bag. I pulled the green spiral notebook I used for an address book out of my desk and threw it on top of the T-shirts. I went down the hall to the bathroom and got my toothbrush, deodorant, and Noxema. I had $250 in babysitting money I’d been saving for college tucked in my sock drawer. I grabbed the money along with a couple of pairs of socks and shoved it all in the duffel bag. I picked up my backpack and the duffel bag and put on my army jacket. I ran downstairs and went out the front door.
I jogged to the elementary school a few blocks away and called Joey from a pay phone out front.
“I had a fight with my Mom and William,” I said. “I’m on a pay phone.”
“Oh, sweetie,” he said.
“I hate my family,” I said. “I can’t wait until I’m out of that house for good.”
“Where are you?”
“Hiding out in my neighborhood.” I was standing near a bunch of parked school buses, away from the streetlight. I didn’t think anyone could see me from the road.
“I wish I were there with you,” Joey said.
“Actually, I was thinking I’d come over,” I said. Tomorrow was Wednesday. I’d skip school. We’d wake up and make coffee, maybe go out to breakfast at a diner.
Joey cleared his throat. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“My stepfather doesn’t want me living with them,” I said. Tears sprang to my eyes.
“Honey, you’re not eighteen. Do you have any idea how much trouble I could get into?”