The Seven Torments of Amy and Craig (A Love Story)

by Don Zolidis

  Groash stretched out and got up from his spot on the other side of the bed.

  “Now it is time…for Godfather II,” he said.

  Amy stretched. “I’m getting really tired,” she said. It was after midnight.

  “That’s cool,” said Groash. “I won’t bother you. I’ll just stay here watching this movie. It’s awesome. There’s like fifty murders.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Huh,” I said.

  “I’m gonna go for a walk,” she said.

  “It’s really cold outside,” I said.

  “Nevertheless, Craig, I am going for a walk.” She looked at me and raised one eyebrow a bit. “You want to join me?”

  Time froze.

  We were in a hotel filled with teenagers with limited chaperoning, so the whole place was a hurricane of chaos. People were running down the hallways. There were loud banging noises. In some rooms, people were singing songs. If there were any normal adults anywhere in this place, they were most likely filled with murderous rage.

  We got our coats and went outside, where we could be with the drunk college students, who were, at least, respectful. It was snowing—big, wet beautiful flakes. They fell over the pavement like a fleet of feathers and caught in our hair.

  We walked slowly, under the buildings that were already lit with Christmas lights. I concentrated on keeping one foot in front of the other. We walked close together, our shoulders occasionally brushing each other, which sent a shiver of electricity running through me.

  “I liked your speech,” I said.

  “Thanks. I had to stay up last night working on it—I was sure I was going to read something wrong. I have to…I have to practice a lot.”

  “I thought it was great.”

  “People didn’t really clap.”

  “Well, you basically called everybody failures,” I teased.

  “I didn’t want it to be another rah-rah-we’re-so-awesome kind of thing.”

  “Because clearly, some people are not awesome.”

  She poked me in the ribs, which was incredible. “That’s not what I meant!”

  “You should’ve thrown in a joke. ‘Hey, what’s wearing a suit and failed today? You guys.’”

  “Shut up.” She smiled, stabbing me with her mittened fingers.

  “‘It’s my job to prepare you for a life of crushing disappointment. That horrible feeling you’re experiencing right now—expect it to continue. In conclusion, this is the best moment in your lives; some of you will die in car crashes soon.’”

  Amy shouldered into me, knocking me slightly off-balance and nearly into a squad of drunk college girls. I smiled at her.

  “I did like it,” I said, brushing the wet snow out of my hair.

  Amy cocked an eyebrow and headed down the street. “Good.” She reached out her hand and something gave way inside of me. Why not tell her how I feel?

  “I miss talking with you,” I said.

  “I miss talking with you too.”

  “I hate this—I hate pretending I don’t know you and…”

  “I know.”

  We made our way down State Street, which was the heart of Madison. No cars were allowed on the street except the occasional bus, so the snow fell uninterrupted all around us.

  “You know,” I said, “I kind of thought the speech was directed at me. ’Cause I…” I stopped and looked down at the pavement. “I failed.”

  She brushed up against me.

  “You didn’t fail.”

  “No, I mean—I had a bill and everything and, um…I thought it would be cool if I got it to you, so…it’s stupid…I mean, it was a stupid plan.”

  “I didn’t know you had a bill.”

  “I know…. I…It was a surprise. I didn’t even tell Chelsea about it. It’s obviously not a surprise now, so the effect is kind of lost.” I looked away from her. “Like, I almost did this awesome thing. Partial credit.”

  Amy stroked my arm through my coat. “What was your bill about?”

  I looked down again. “Um…so I wrote a bill about, um…funding diagnostic testing for learning disabilities in elementary school. So…just funding for people to test for dyslexia and other things in elementary school…I thought it would be a good idea.”

  Amy’s hand went to her heart. “Oh.”

  My eyes focused on the pavement. It all sounded so dumb. Not like the bill was real. Not like I was a real senator either.

  Then I felt her forehead against mine. The fresh smell of her shampoo invaded my senses. In the background I could hear the people moving past us, laughing and joking and talking, but we didn’t move. I wanted to keep my forehead touching hers forever. The snow drifted down on top of us.

  “I have to tell you something,” she said quietly, holding on to me. “I broke up with Chad.” A chorus of angels began to sing. Rainbows sprouted from the gutters.

  “Oh. Why?”

  The Kaitlyn voice exploded in my head. Did you just ask why? Are you an idiot?

  “I decided that I didn’t want to be with him.”

  “Huh.”

  “Because I want to be with you.”

  She lifted my face and kissed me. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of her breath on mine and the soft tug of her mittens on my back. We stood there, kissing, and the world passed by, and the snow fell, and I felt whole.

  Later we found out the capitol was left open, so we laughed and danced our way around the giant Christmas tree until a security guard named Karl chased us out.

  I was high as a kite when I got back from Madison, although still probably not as high as Amanda. I had been granted a stay of execution, or rather a reversal of execution. My head had been reattached to my body after the guillotine had severed it. Let’s call it a resurrection, then. My entire future had once again snapped back into glowing view. Everything came back, the spring break plans, the magical night at prom, a hot, lazy summer spent skinny-dipping in lakes.

  Things went downhill almost immediately. It started with our car.

  The vehicle in question was a 1986 Plymouth Voyager, baby blue, with faux-wood paneling on the bottom half. It was a first-generation minivan, the primordial evolutionary leap that crawled onto the beach and emasculated every man who saw it. The Voyager had a four-cylinder engine, which whined and sputtered when the car reached the speed limit—it handled like a garbage can and had a hole in the muffler, so it sounded like one too. We loved it.

  Unbeknownst to us, Dad had placed an ad in the newspaper on the day he got laid off. I’m sure it said something like Awful vehicle available. Do you want your son to be humiliated and never get laid? Take this car. So much for the “someday we might have to sell the car” plan. Generally, when Dad decided to take action, it was swift and terrible and involved horrible repercussions for us.

  “Sure you can come take a look at it,” he said on the phone as Kaitlyn writhed on the couch like she had been bayonetted in the stomach. “Tuesday at noon? No problem.”

  “No…” she said weakly.

  Within five days, he had three calls. Clearly the Janesville Gazette was a hotbed of people salivating over the latest minivan offerings.

  “But it’s Christmas,” moaned Kaitlyn. “You can’t sell the car over Christmas. That’s not how we honor baby Jesus.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Baby Jesus does not care if we have a minivan or not.”

  “The hell he doesn’t!”

  “Jesus, get over it,” I said. Inwardly, of course, I was dying too. Losing the car was going to reverberate in my life as well, but it was more fun to needle Kaitlyn about it.

  “Am I gonna have to take the bus to school? Is that what you’re saying? This is a nightmare.”

  Taking the bus to school in the winter was no fun. And by no fun I mean, life-threateningly awful. We took the bus every day in middle school, which was a kind of living hell—the buses were old, 1960s vintage, with art deco stylings and a tendency to break down. One February the buses’ windows fr
oze open, and we rode to school every day in temperatures below zero, shivering and huddling together for warmth, while the exhaust stink of the dirty engine flooded our mouths with the taste of corruption. When you waited for the bus, you stood on the side of the street, ensconced in snowdrifts, before the sun rose. It was cold and dark and horrible; that’s not even counting the fact that you were likely to be bullied by the tribes of mean kids that rode the bus like some kind of apocalyptic biker gang from hell. When we had gotten the car, I had said good-bye to that life forever. I had thrown a little party for myself. Now I was sliding back down the ladder.

  “Guys,” sighed Dad. “There’s just no way we can keep it—”

  “How much are you even gonna get for it? It’s not like it’s worth anything.”

  “It’s the insurance,” he said. “Someone in this family has a pretty poor driving record. Think of it this way—I have to pay a lot of money because the insurance company is convinced you’re going to wreck the car someday.”

  Kaitlyn frowned and twisted her hair. “Can I borrow your car, then?” she said.

  I realized the side benefit to the absence of the car almost immediately: I could ask Amy for rides home from school. Her car was not exactly a paragon of functionality, but it worked, and it had heat, and it also happened to have Amy in it. The rides home usually ended in make-out sessions in the car as we contorted ourselves around the stick shift.

  Of course, her duties as student body president and President of All the Clubs kept her after school most days until five thirty. But it was a small price to pay. I would wait in the hall, or in the back of whatever room she was in, reading some monstrously large Russian novel and sighing dreamily. When I wasn’t doing that I was surreptitiously trying to draw sketches of her, but I kind of sucked at that, so her nostrils usually ended up kind of piglike.

  Maybe I overdid it. (Okay, yes, definitely, I overdid it.) But I had lost her once, I had felt the pain of having her ripped out of my life, so I was going to make sure that she never made it out of my sight again.

  I called her every night. I waited for her between classes. I thought about her continuously.

  I’m not going to lie: I was annoying as hell.

  Maybe things would’ve naturally settled down. Maybe I could’ve found a way to navigate the new feelings without becoming overwhelmed by them. I probably could’ve managed that, had it not been for the fact that it was Christmas. And Christmas required getting her a Christmas Present. And the Christmas Present must be so amazing that it must perfectly encapsulate all of my feelings for her, if the continuous commercials for diamond companies were to be believed.

  Elizabeth had suggested a couple of funky-looking charm things that her mother got from the hippie crystal store, and I got one of them, and then I got something else, and then I returned that present and got something different. Then I went back for a third thing.

  Then it was time to visit the Janesville Mall, where I wandered about like a phantom, stumbling from store to store, hoping for inspiration. The mall was home to roving bands of middle school kids, who clustered together, sometimes linking arms and legs (don’t even ask, it was a thing) as they flirted and annoyed everyone. Even the mall Santa hated them. (Probably because when they got bored they would get in line to sit on his lap and ironically ask for presents.)

  I spent a miserable Saturday there until Kaitlyn spotted me and verbally harassed me to cut it out.

  Then I had to get a card.

  Anyway, that was my mind-state: total insanity. And that’s probably why when Amy invited me to have dinner with her family on December 27th I stupidly agreed.

  The letter from Gustavus Adolphus arrived the morning of the fateful dinner.

  I stared at it. With all the drama with Amy and my dad, college had drifted into the back of my mind. It was there, and I knew it was happening, but I wasn’t focused on it.

  Had they liked my Dostoevsky essay? Had they been impressed by my list of two or three extracurricular activities? It wasn’t a super-fat letter. Two sheets of paper at most. Is that good or bad?

  What happens if I don’t get in?

  You could always move to Los Angeles and live in Amy’s closet next year.

  That is a terrible idea and you are stupid.

  If I don’t get in I’ll go to Madison. See my sister every day. Want to die.

  I opened it.

  WE ARE DELIGHTED TO OFFER YOU A POSITION IN CLASS OF 1998

  “Fuck yes!” I yelled.

  “Why are you swearing?” called my mom from the other room.

  The second piece of paper was instructions for completing the financial aid application, which I pressed into my mom’s hands immediately. GAC cost $25,000 a year, which was more than half of my mom’s salary. If you put that together with the cost of Kaitlyn attending UW-Madison, my parents could afford to send us both to college if they moved into a cardboard box and ate saltines for every meal. So, yeah, financial aid. Fingers crossed.

  But I was in a terrific mood when I arrived at Amy’s house in preparation for…

  Dad managed to unload the minivan for a handful of magic beans (and $500), so I was forced to drive my mom’s Buick LeSabre over to Amy’s. I got there about an hour early and slowly circled the neighborhood like a stalker in order to not seem overeager.

  Amy’s mom had set up the dining table and put out the good china. There was a red tablecloth with fancy embroidering. Actual silver silverware. Fancy goblets for our water.

  I shit you not, they had dressed up.

  They had dressed up for dinner in their own house.

  I was doomed.

  I was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt under a flannel shirt, and my jeans had holes in them. I had embraced the whole “grunge” thing, which basically meant that I was trying to look homeless. It was not a good look on anyone. It was an especially poor look for a fancy post-Christmas dinner at your girlfriend’s house.

  Glenn wore a fucking tie.

  I wondered what would cause a thirteen-year-old to put on a tie for dinner in his own house. They must’ve been torturing him behind the scenes or something.

  I set my little sack stuffed with an ill-advised number of presents near the Christmas tree and embraced my doom.

  “What’s Chad doing this break?” asked her dad about halfway through.

  “Um…I don’t know,” said Amy. “I haven’t talked to him.”

  “Oh. Why not?”

  “Dan,” said her mom. “They broke up.”

  Amy’s dad rocked in his chair a little bit. “Nobody told me that!”

  “It was like a week ago,” said her mom.

  “It wasn’t a week ago,” protested Amy. “It was like three weeks ago.”

  “I can’t keep up,” said her dad. “First it’s one guy, then it’s another guy. There’s like a revolving door.”

  “There’s not a revolving door. I was going out with Chad and now I’m going out with Craig.”

  “Oh,” said her dad. “What was wrong with Chad?”

  Amy put her face in her hands.

  “Hon,” said her mom. “You’re embarrassing her. She obviously doesn’t want to talk about it with us.”

  “All right, I won’t talk. I won’t say anything. I’ll just sit here confused.”

  “Craig,” said her mom. “Did you have a nice Christmas?”

  “I did,” I said. “Actually I got my college acceptance letter today.”

  She made a high-pitched happy sound. “Oh my goodness, that is wonderful! Did you hear that, Dan?”

  “Chad’s already in college.”

  “Oh jeez, get off of Chad! He’s gone! It’s over!”

  “Fine.”

  “Of course, Gustavus is close by. Not too hard for his parents to come and visit. Maybe you should’ve applied, sweetie.” Amy bit her tongue. “Of course, it’s a tough school to get into. You might not’ve made it.”

  “Mom, I’m the valedictorian—”

  “Oh sur
e, but they look at all sorts of things. There’s your SAT scores, which, come on—”

  I envied Glenn. Glenn had his head down and was focusing on his food. He had heaped a thick swath of gravy on his turkey and was trying to plow through dinner without being noticed.

  “I did fine on the SAT.”

  “Fine isn’t great. I told you you could take it again.”

  “I didn’t need to take it again.”

  “I’m pretty sure Amy would’ve gotten in anywhere she applied,” I said. “I mean she’s freaking brilliant.”

  Amy’s mom lifted her eyebrows. “I’m sure she is.”

  “Glenn,” said Amy, noticing that he had escaped unscathed so far. “What’s new with you?”

  “Nothing,” he mumbled, then kept eating.

  “Sometimes I wonder what’s going on in his noggin,” said Amy’s mom. “Whatever it is, it’s profound. He’s a thinker.”

  Glenn tried to focus on his food.

  “Whatcha thinking about over there, Glenn?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Mom,” said Amy, trying to call off the torrent.

  “You know it was so funny,” said Amy’s mom. “The other day Glenn came home with a CD—what was it? He was hiding it in his backpack, it was the funniest thing.”

  Glenn froze.

  “What was it, sweetheart?”

  “I don’t—I don’t remember.”

  “Oh, it was so weird. It was from Cabaret. The musical.”

  Everyone was dumbfounded. Glenn tried to hide. “Um…I heard it was really outrageous,” he said.

  “Oh, sure,” said Amy’s mom. “There’s a man dressed like a woman on front. I mean, whatever floats your boat, right?”

  “Why is he dressed like a woman?” asked her dad.

  “That’s what the Nazis did, hon.”

  “The Nazis didn’t dress like women.”

  Amy tried to leap in. “I think that’s kind of a subversive take on club life.”