If You Knew Then What I Know Now

by Ryan Van Meter

  As we turn in the cul-de-sac, though, we see them. Kevin and Claire, both of them, walking out of the house, staring at Angie and me. We look at each other because we thought we were summoning his car, and accidentally we summoned him, and Claire too. On their faces are smiles until they stop smiling because we look so ridiculous, chanting and screaming out of the open windows. They don’t know what we’re up to, but it’s pretty obvious that whatever it is, they’re on the wrong side of it.

  Seeing them side by side, I realize something I can’t ever tell Angie. I don’t want to rub these cherry bars on Kevin’s car as a message about him and Claire because it’s not him that I care about. My actual concern is that Claire cannot date anyone ever because I don’t want her next boyfriend—if it’s Kevin or anybody else—to start kissing her. That would be the explanation to everyone that what was wrong with Claire and me was me. That’s why Kevin and Claire can’t get together. That’s why it’s actually fine that Angie still likes Kevin, and for her, these cherry bars are some kind of bizarre flirtation. That’s why I must believe that Angie and I have only just begun to live because only I know my hidden difficult secrets. I’m already nostalgic for our present because the future is so impossible.

  In front of Jon’s house, Angie pulls her car over, jams it into park and switches off the engine. “Get down,” she whispers. “Hide. Pretend you’re sleeping.” This sounds reasonable at this moment, even though Claire and Kevin have just seen us drive past them, just seen our dumb, surprised faces. We slump down into the foot wells and curl up. I shove the cherry bars under the seat—they are a dead giveaway. Angie fits under her steering wheel. My face is crammed between my knees, I can’t see anything. As Kevin and Claire walk closer to the car, I reach up and turn off the music.

  Tightrope

  One of the smart mouths is showing off but we’re ignoring him. He’s attempting a tricky shot when he trips and wrecks on the gymnasium floor. His smug face squeaks across the polished wood and the noise ricochets off the cinderblock walls along with the other kids’ voices. I do my best not to notice because I’m close to winning my Solitaire game. Lisa, the other supervisor in the gym right now, sits across the table from me snapping down her own cards. Neither of us likes the fallen smart mouth or any of the others in his crew, and we smirk at his comeuppance. I’m seventeen years old and after this summer, I’ll be a senior in high school. Lisa’s older, a college student somewhere. All the supervisors here at the Y think she’s too weird to talk to, except me.

  We’ve got seventy-eight children between five and fourteen years old under our charge. To get this job, I was supposed to be eighteen, but my mom knew the director so he bent the rules. If anybody asks, I’ve been instructed to lie, but I have a hard time keeping my story straight. I’m a short pale guy with skinny wrists, pink knees, and a boy’s high, unchanged voice. A couple of the smart mouths look older than I do.

  Despite my obvious young age and small body, Lisa is considered the misfit of all the supervisors. Her hair is dyed an unusual reddish-brown like apple juice and she draws on her eye makeup asymmetrically—one eye outlined in black with a dramatic, pointed corner, the other lid shadowed darkly like a bruise. But as exotic as her makeup might be, her clothes are plain and somewhat sloppy: dark long-sleeve T-shirts, soft jeans, scuffed sneakers with beautiful designs drawn in glitter. It’s this contradiction that I find so mysterious and irresistible.

  In fact, the other supervisors leave Lisa and me to ourselves, and I savor the idea that they associate me with her. We’re not really friends, but lately we have begun to talk more about books and music. She let me borrow a CD of hers where a woman moaned out a song about being raped, and it sounded so theatrical and sophisticated, it thrilled me even if I didn’t entirely understand it. Lying on the floor in my bedroom, I listened to the song repeating for hours until my dad shoved his face through the door. “What are you listening to?”

  Lisa gives up on Solitaire, and as she reshuffles, she asks where I’m going back to college. I confess finally I’m only a high school senior.

  “Oh, really,” she says, not looking so surprised. “Where do you go?”

  I tell her. It’s one of a few high schools in our suburban Missouri town near St. Louis.

  “One of my best friends used to go there. He finished last year.”

  I ask who. “Justin Curtis,” she says. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes!” As shy as I am, it feels like a miracle that we actually know the same person, even if my school isn’t very big. Most of my friends are other theater kids—a whole group of us who devote our after-school hours to acting like other people. The revelation that I know her friend Justin feels like one more link in our emerging connection. I didn’t know him well, but I’m not about to tell Lisa.

  Justin and I were on the school newspaper staff together when I was a freshman but I haven’t talked to him since that year. He was as much a misfit in our school as Lisa is here at the Y. He was a tall and skinny boy—skinnier and paler than me. Where I look underdeveloped and puny, Justin’s thinness and whiteness appeared anemic, sickly. His shoulders pulled together in front of his chest. He brushed his hair in a pouf in front, where it was dyed blond, and then in back where the natural brown color showed through, it was cut shorter and swooped down in a curly tail that he nervously fingered. His lips were pink and chapped because he never closed his mouth, almost as if he was unable to breathe through his nose; he seemed to stare and quietly pant like he was always waiting for something to end so he could go.

  But more than just his hair made Justin a misfit. His soft, girlish voice, sounding like a string of whimpers rather than sentences or words, and his limp walk. He was often called a certain word—in the newspaper room, the hallways at school, and probably in his classes. I recognized the word because it was also sometimes called out to me. I always felt it land on my skin with a sting, but I found if I pretended I didn’t hear it then I could also pretend I didn’t know what it meant.

  The smart mouths in the gym with Lisa and me will grow into the kind of kids who use that awful word. The one who fell down earlier is in front of us now, showing us the long pink mark on his arm. Lisa and I have no sympathy. We know who this kid is, so we don’t care. He walks off discouraged, throwing his arm around, muttering under his breath.

  “So,” Lisa says, once he’s gone. “Would you want Justin to call you or something? I’m sure he’d want to hear from you.”

  “Sure!” I say. “It would be nice to hear from him too.”

  By the time Justin calls several weeks later, my final year of high school is underway and lonely. My best friend Angie is back with her boyfriend Kevin for the third time. They are utterly devoted to this renewed relationship, so they spend every Friday and Saturday night together, just the two of them. For the first month of the new year, on weekend nights, I shamble around the house throwing myself on the sofa, staring at the phone, my pathetic hopeful voice already recorded on Angie’s parents’ answering machine pleading for her to call. If I’m feeling up to it, I lie across my bedroom carpet and doodle or write poems about despair and hardship. One particularly inspiring Friday night, on a notebook illustrated with teardrops, I discover that the words “bedroom” and “boredom” share all the same letters. My mother watches with concern, suggests mall trips or movies but it’s no use—to be seen with her in public is worse than being alone. My only choice is to wait for Angie’s inevitable tearful phone call delivering the news that she and Kevin are finished, that’s it, and I should come over immediately.

  If I was normal I’d go on my own dates, but I’m not, so I don’t. I’m not interested in dating, though I did have a girlfriend for almost a year, but that didn’t go anywhere mostly because I didn’t let it. At school, I see how students pair off, this girl for that boy, but there’s no similar impulse inside me. I want to be around girls—particularly Angie, if Kevin would leave her alone—I just don’t want anything more. There’s some
thing different between me and them—the boys paired with girls. And as much as I am intimidated by those tall and loud young men who barrel down the school hallways, I’m still drawn to them, interested not by being left out, but because I want to watch and memorize the way their bodies strut and shout. I know there’s something deeper and more complicated to my inchoate urges, but I do my best to ignore it. Years from now, I’ll see that by not dating at all—after that first girlfriend, whom I never even kissed—I could successfully sidestep the whole question of who I wanted to date without having to think very hard about why.

  I answer the phone one night after school and it’s Justin. When he asks for me, I recognize his strange voice even after two years and the inside of my throat suddenly feels fat. I know how he would sound to my parents. His voice sounds so small, almost childlike. But it doesn’t bother me the way it would bother my family and I bask in my surprisingly mature outlook, very special for a boy my age. I’m afraid they’ll overreact again like the time my mother wouldn’t let me join my theater friends for ice skating in St. Louis because she thought the area was too dangerous. “There are a lot of gangs over there,” she said. “At the ice rink?” I asked. “Ice skating gangs! Oh, Mother,” I said, shaking my head and performing a loud patronizing laugh that was supposed to change her mind, but didn’t.

  As Justin and I talk, it’s clear that he is nervous, but I don’t understand why. My words steer our conversations, which we share for four days in a row. After we trade a few sentences about Lisa, her music and glitter-doodled shoes, all I can think to talk about are those days in the newspaper room. Does he remember this person, that day, or this time? He answers my questions, then waits for more. When seconds of quiet stretch between us, I blurt out dumb stories about school, or the current newspaper room where I’m an editor. He begins asking questions and I answer them, and he asks more. He’s not hiding, he’s just not revealing as much as I am, and I’m too young to understand why. And though his calls are never planned, when the ring is heard throughout our house, I’m always first to answer. My thirteen-year-old brother Garrett generally monitors most of my calls with the phone in his room. This is the phase when he thinks he’s my father. Each time Justin and I talk this week, I listen for the fumbling or breathing that always gives Garrett away, but I don’t hear it.

  Finally, on the fourth evening, Justin asks if I’d like to do something with him, the next day if possible, which is Friday. I’m free, I say, because, of course Angie’s heart and weekend belong to Kevin. “What do you feel like doing?” I ask.

  “You know what I haven’t done in years?” he asks, his voice somehow now sounding more like a young boy’s than ever. “And it happens to be in town, I heard a commercial on the radio. . . .”

  I’m not sure if I’m supposed to guess, so I stay quiet.

  “Let’s go to the circus,” he says.

  About an hour before he’s supposed to pick me up the following evening, I’ve told my mother only that I’m doing something with a guy from newspaper who graduated the previous year. She asks millions of questions. She’s so unused to the idea that I would want to spend time with anyone but Angie, she’s immediately curious. But even more surprising, it’s with another boy—an activity she’s been suggesting for years. To my mother’s mind, I spend too much time with girls, and “hanging out with the guys” is just what I need to nudge my dormant interests in dating, sports, and yard work to sudden bright life. But I know Justin isn’t the guy she has in mind, so I tell her about the Lisa connection, restating though that this is a guy I knew in newspaper and we were friends then and he’s coming to pick me up soon, and I’m not really sure what we’re doing tonight, but yes, I’ll be home by midnight, the curfew. I wait in the driveway, set for a quick getaway.

  Of course I haven’t seen Justin for two years, so I have no idea what he’ll look like, though I know how he sounds, and that’s not good. When his car turns in, I see his same strained face and open mouth, the hardened eyes and the white arms gripping the steering wheel. I yell into the house, “He’s here! Bye!” and scurry across the pavement, running up to Justin’s car before he’s pressed down his brake. I stand at the passenger side door and peer in. He smiles. His hair is cut short and practically “normal” in terms of my mother’s standards, except he’s dyed it a shiny auburn the color of an Irish setter. He shifts into park and unlocks my door. My mother steps out of the house into the garage.

  “Wait a minute,” she says, her flattened hand rising to her brow to make an awning for her face. “I want to meet your friend.”

  I stand helplessly next to the car as Justin looks at her, looks at me and then looks at her again when she marches across the driveway. He unlatches his seatbelt, pushes open the door, and stands in front of my mother. He’s taller and knobbier than I remembered, wearing a skintight Polo shirt and creased brown pants. He offers his hand to her, and she moves her eyes from his Irish setter head to his shabby loafers and back again.

  “Mom, Justin. Justin, Mom,” I say, staring at my shoes, watching one of them take a small step toward the car.

  The brown Missouri river separates St. Charles from St. Louis. There’s a long bridge to cross, a hulking contraption of grey girders and dark rivets that looks like a giant skeleton. As far back as I can remember, when riding across the bridge, I’ve held my breath. It’s a bargain I’ve struck with God—our family car can make it to the other side without the bridge collapsing into the ugly water if I can hold my breath the whole time. Maybe if I paid more attention on Sunday mornings in church, I’d know this isn’t the way God really works, or that’s what my mother would say if she noticed me turning red in the back of the minivan. To hold my breath now at this age feels silly, but after so many years and so many safe trips it’s become my superstition.

  Across the river, St. Louis is a marvelous city, but it’s full of dangers and I’m not allowed to go there without my parents. So I lie and go anyway when my friends are willing to drive. In St. Louis, there’s a neighborhood I’ve visited only a few times that I’m drawn to, a place that feels risky but also cool. I don’t feel cool necessarily, but I feel that coolness is nearby and available. In this neighborhood is Café Chaos. You sit on dirty furniture and sip tea while coughing in an incense cloud, music howling from ripped speakers. Above you, each ceiling tile is hand-painted in vivid swirling colors depicting Technicolor teddy bears, Chinese symbols, and Che Guevara. It’s too loud to hear your companions, so you just sit and stare. I particularly like what being there says about me. Even the name contradicts everything I know; the supposed serenity of “Café” colliding with volatile “Chaos.” At the moment, it is my favorite place anywhere and I’ve only been once.

  Like the bright white ice rink, my mother thinks this area of the city is deadly though I don’t believe she’s ever seen it. I’ve mentioned it cautiously with her, just to confirm that she thinks I shouldn’t hang out there.

  “You want to go where?” she said, turning off her Game Boy and setting it down to give my interest in this neighborhood her full attention.

  “Oh, I don’t want to go there. I’m just wondering if you’ve ever been. It’s supposed to be pretty cool.” I shrugged, like I was only making conversation, as though her answer didn’t matter.

  “I’m sorry my mom gets hyper about everything,” I say. Justin and I are driving on the highway toward St. Louis to eat somewhere before the circus. Justin hasn’t said much since we started. So I’m making inane comments about radio songs or pointing out that everything in St. Charles is beige just to have something to say. My hands don’t know where to go, in my lap or beside my thighs on the seat, or one propped up by the window and one on the armrest. I test the possibilities but nothing feels right. Justin knows a diner near the arena where we’ll see the circus. “That sounds good,” I say. “I love diners.” Once I hear my sentence, I know how ridiculous it sounds. I’m trying to seem interesting by being a lover of diners—when I don’t even
know if it’s true. Steak ’n Shake might be the only diner I’ve been to.

  In fact, Justin’s diner looks nothing like Steak’n Shake. His place has greasy front windows, wood paneling and a black and white linoleum floor. There are two spots at the counter so we sit side by side while an enormous black man takes our order. His head is pinched in a white paper cap, dark stains smeared across his apron. Justin warns me the food here isn’t much; he comes here for atmosphere. We order and Justin lights a cigarette.

  My stool is bolted to the floor so it’s difficult to turn like I want to. Behind me in the corner, old men grumble with yellowed moustaches. Near the door, some teenagers slouch at a table blowing soda bubbles with their straws. There’s a kid running around with untied shoes. Sizzling noises fry out the background and I’m stuck facing the dirty open kitchen as Justin’s smoke mingles with the smell of bacon.

  “This is a cool place,” I say. I’ve got the hands problem again, where to put them, what they should do. Something has shoved me off balance, forcing me to be aware of my body. I start wondering why I’m so uncomfortable—if it’s the diner, the way my mother unnerved me with her suspicious eyes, or just the unfamiliarity of sitting somewhere on this side of the river.

  “It’s nice,” he says, knocking ash off his cigarette. “I come here a lot.”

  Which isn’t hard to imagine. With the way he looks and talks, Justin has to be used to not fitting in. But who really fits in here? This diner is the place for all the people that don’t fit in at all the other places. He smashes his cigarette into the ashtray and reaches for his pack, but puts it down. He folds his arms over his chest, unfolds them and smoothes out his pants. He’s having the hands problem too.