TWENTY-SEVEN
Late that night, Mrs. Fox pushed open the door to Lily’s room, the way fingers might gently probe a flesh wound, and found Jude, arms splayed, asleep on his sister’s bed.
The boy did not stir, and so the mother stepped closer until she saw the heave of his chest, heard the air escape past his parted lips.
Standing there, watching her son sleep, Mrs. Fox seemed to break a little, another one of the heart’s small fractures. She left, vanished into the hall like a whisper, and shut the door behind her. She returned to her own bed to stare at the wall with sand-dry eyes, no tears left to cry, her heart in ruin, thinking, thinking.
When Jude woke, he felt oddly serene. He’d never before slept in Lily’s room, didn’t even remember deciding upon it. He opened his eyes, saw Lily’s things: framed photos, a poster of a cat on a limb with the words HANG IN THERE! printed in purple letters, drawings, picture books—Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar—a shelf of dolls, and stuffed animals. He stretched, touched the sacred treasures, allowed his fingertips to rest on Lily’s photograph, landing softly on her smiling lips. He pulled open a dresser drawer. Girl colors, lavenders, pinks, and yellows. The clothes were neatly pressed and folded by the loving hand of his mother. Jude lifted out a large, brown folder from the bottom drawer. Bound by an elastic band, it was filled with Lily’s artwork, drawings of cats mostly, with round eyes, pink triangle noses, and three straight whiskers on each side. He sat on the bed, leafing through the pictures one by one. Toward the bottom, Jude found a drawing that took his breath away. Two crude figures standing hand in hand, a yellow sun in the top right corner, a zigzag line of blue grass across the bottom.
Crayoned across the sky: I LOVE JUDE.
TWENTY-EIGHT
He found breakfast waiting for him on the kitchen table. A green place mat, white bowl, spoon, grapefruit, and folded napkin. A slender glass of orange juice had already been poured, and a box of cereal set out. Jude stood, looking at this, perplexed, when his mother entered the room. She was dressed in baggy clothes, old jeans, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, hair tied back under a scarf. “I hope cereal’s okay,” she said, not quite looking at him.
She turned and left the room, dragging a vacuum cleaner by the hose as if it were a reluctant dog on a leash.
Jude scratched his head, yawned, sat down. He poured himself a bowl of cereal.
His mother returned. “Here’s today’s paper. Those Mets, they’ll break your heart.”
Jude looked up at her in amazement, but again she was gone, off hunting for the furniture polish. They did not speak of last night’s argument. No one apologized, no one sought comfort. It was a new morning. But Jude knew his mother, and knew that she had made a peace offering. He did the only thing he knew how: He ate the breakfast, drank the juice, and piled his dishes neatly into the sink.
* * *
Corey had been dead for twenty-seven days, and everyone—Roberto, Lee, Vinnie, even Jude’s parents—agreed that it would be a good idea for Jude to get out of the house, try to have some fun. It was like a huge CIA conspiracy between them, but instead of overthrowing the government, their big goal was to get Jude showered and dressed. Baby steps, baby steps.
“Sounds like a plan,” Jude finally relented. His voice flat, obedient.
So Jude followed his feet, hands at his sides, and went. It was Vinnie’s fault mostly. He was the one who kept after Jude. He talked Jude into going to some big party in Guffy’s woods, where there would be a log to lean on, a small fire, and a loose tribe of teenagers dedicated to the proposition of getting toasted.
The reason for this night’s debauch—as if a reason were needed beyond the ecstatic double whammy of it’s summer and it’s Saturday—was some girl’s seventeenth birthday. Susan something. And so a wide assortment of people Jude knew, and some he didn’t know, were there to ring in the festivities. He arrived by car with Lee and Vinnie, the tragic trio reunited—to celebrate (or lubricate) they downed a six-pack before meeting up with the others—and traveled by foot down a wooded path. As they moved deeper into the underbrush and pines, Jude saw broken glass, tree limbs shot up by air rifles and BB guns, thick ruts made by muddy four-wheelers and hardened in the dirt, remains of old fires, crushed beer cans strewn along the way like so many dead soldiers.
The gathering was monstrous, more than fifty strong, way bigger than Jude had expected, and the sight overwhelmed him at first. Everybody was there. Even under normal circumstances, Jude wasn’t a dive-right-in kind of guy. He gestured to a large fallen tree limb on the periphery. “Go ahead,” he told Vinnie and Lee. “You guys scout ahead. Find out where the beer’s at. Come back with refreshments.”
“You okay?” Vinnie asked.
“Totally,” Jude reassured him.
The party was well under way. Jude leaned against the log and watched the partiers laugh and flirt and howl at the moon. Well, that was mostly Terry O’Duffigan—the Duffmeister—who was already well-oiled. One guy climbed a tree, doing the Tarzan thing, trying to impress somebody, anybody, but old Jane was probably already off in the bushes with bigfoot. No one else seemed to care.
Vinnie came back fifteen minutes later, listing a little to the left, and plopped down beside Jude. Could he be bombed already? Jude wondered. Vinnie handed Jude a red cup filled with beer. He slipped an arm around Jude’s shoulders. “I’ve missed you, bud,” Vinnie said, a hint of a slur in his voice. “Where’ve you been? You never come out anymore.”
“I know, I suck,” Jude apologized.
Vinnie surprised Jude by hugging him, squeezing hard. He pulled back, stared at Jude a little bug-eyed, and whispered intensely, “I think about him every day.” Vinnie kept on staring at Jude, waiting for something. “I’m really feeling messed up,” Vinnie confessed, “ever since, you know,” and his eyes rolled back in his head a little.
Jude realized Vinnie was already skunked. “Did you take something?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you swallow a pill or something?”
Vinnie’s head lolled a bit, and his eyes focused somewhere six inches to the right of Jude’s forehead. “Less just say I’m feeling no pain tonight,” he confessed.
“Careful,” Jude said, but Vinnie didn’t catch the words.
“You—you,” Vinnie said, suddenly stabbing at Jude’s chest. “He was your best friend. In the world. You guys were like—”
“I know,” Jude said. They drank to Corey’s memory and to friendship and to going to college in another year and getting the hell out of town.
“Partying is such sweet sorrow,” Vinnie said, polishing off the last of his beer. He got up to work the crowd.
“Hey, Stallion,” Jude called after him, “try not to fall into the fire.”
“Oh, dude,” Vinnie said, “I almost forgot. Freakin’ Becka’s here.”
“Shit. She see you?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
“She saw you a little bit?” Jude repeated. He couldn’t keep from smiling. “What’s that mean, Stallion?”
“It means I need another beer, my brother,” Vinnie said, standing to full height. He adjusted his belt, burped, and part swaggered, part staggered back into the breach. One arm outstretched, empty cup leading the way.
Jude too needed another beer.
Becka must have gotten invited to the party somehow, obviously, a friend of a friend Jude guessed, and what did it matter, anyway? They weren’t a couple anymore. Still, Jude felt a pang when he first spied her across the clearing, talking with a group of girls. She stood cross-armed, pulling on the skin of her elbows. Listened to someone tell a story, laughed a little. Her presence made Jude uneasy.
He found the keg, jostled with some guys, and there she suddenly was, at his side. “Hey, stranger,” Becka said.
“Hey, yeah, Becka,” Jude greeted. He filled her cup from the hose. “I didn’t realize you knew … um … Susan something.”
“It sounds
like you’re the one who doesn’t know her,” Becka replied. There was an edge to her voice, a hint of warning, as if she had sprinkled a handful of tacks on the ground before her feet.
Jude nodded, scanned the crowd. “First time I’ve been out in a while,” he said.
Becka nodded, shifted her feet. She glanced back at her friends. “Look, I—,” she paused, jerking a thumb toward her friends. “You take care, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be around, party’s just getting started,” Jude replied. He leaned in for a moment, almost imperceptibly, as if for a hug or to kiss her on the cheek. Becka turned and twirled away.
“I’ll be around too,” she called over her shoulder. It didn’t sound to Jude at all like an invitation.
Well, that sucked.
Later on, maybe a little drunk now, or maybe kind of a lot, Jude got to talking and laughing with Dani Remson. She looked crazy-beautiful, as usual, her skin smooth and radiant. Dani had dated Corey, briefly, and Jude saw the way she looked at him, the sweet empathy in her eyes, poor Jude, and he knew he could have her if he wished.
Dani must have noticed Jude glance in the direction of Becka. “I’m confused,” she said. “You keep looking at her. Are you two, like, still a couple?”
“Were,” Jude said. “It’s over.”
Dani smiled, flashing her perfect teeth. “Good.”
Jude looked around, leaned into Dani. “This party—”
“—is played out,” Dani said. She placed her hand on Jude’s chest. “Maybe … a change of scenery?”
And without another glance back at Becka, or Stallion, or anyone else, Jude left the party with Dani Remson at his side.
That’s the way things go sometimes. You want to hurt somebody—maybe a friend, maybe a stranger, maybe yourself—and, hell, you go and you do it. Some friends you bury, others you leave at parties holding a red plastic cup.
* * *
The next afternoon Becka stopped by the house without a word of warning. She arrived on the pretense of returning a few music books he’d lent her. Jude didn’t invite her inside; she would have refused anyway, he could see that on her face. They talked out in the front yard, under the scraggly limbs of his butt-ugly tree. The scene felt about right, depressing as hell. Becka didn’t appear that angry. Over it, he guessed. At long last, Becka straightened her shoulders, sighed a weary sort of resignation, and resolved, “I lost you out on that road, didn’t I?”
Jude didn’t argue. It had to be this way to make his isolation complete. He was traveling now between two steel rails running parallel into the distance. No steering wheel, no brakes. Jude followed the path carved out for him, gobbling up track, toot-toot. Get out of the way and nobody gets hurt.
Becka was the one who walked away after that, not looking back.
Deleted.
And nobody gets hurt.
Jude went inside, up the stairs, and climbed out onto the roof. It had become his alone place, a refuge he had formerly shared with Corey. Up there, above it all, he felt closer to Corey, remembered his friend more keenly. Up there, he wrestled with a world gone wrong. The pale sun dropped down to nest momentarily in a stand of high trees to the west before setting entirely. Sundown, sundown.
A car pulled up, idled in front of the house. Jude recognized it instantly. The dark blue, practical Ford. Corey’s parents’ car. The passenger door opened, a woman got out.
It was Jude’s mother.
She leaned down, poked her head through the passenger window. Corey’s mother was behind the wheel. In all these years, Jude had rarely seen the two women together. Here and there, maybe, but it’s not like they were friends. Why now? Then Jude understood. It was obvious. Mrs. Masterson had buried a child. She was now a member of the club. Two mothers, brought together in shared recognition of their unspeakable grief.
The earth’s ceiling turned crimson and orange, before deepening to blue and black, the sky a great bruise. Time passed. No stars yet, but Jude knew they were up there, needing the darkness to shine. That’s what Becka told him: each star, a soul.
Jude lay on his back and waited for the darkness to swallow him, for the stars to appear, for mourning to come. He couldn’t pray, didn’t have the words, didn’t have the God, but he could grieve, and maybe that was a prayer of its own. Jude wondered, like Becka, why he didn’t float off the earth and fly away. What anchor kept him tethered to this place?
TWENTY-NINE
Roberto at Jude’s front door waving an envelope. “S’up, Jude,” he said. “I thought I’d deliver your last check from work. You never came to pick it up.”
“Oh, hey, thanks,” Jude managed. “You didn’t have to; they could have mailed it.”
“Could’ve, would’ve,” Roberto said. “I figured I’d bring it over, see how you’re doing.”
Jude waited for Roberto to hand over the check. It didn’t happen.
“So how’s it going?” Roberto asked.
Jude shrugged his answer.
“You going to invite me inside?”
Jude looked past Roberto’s shoulder to the car parked by the curb. “Mom’s Taurus, huh? I see you’re still riding in style.”
“Yeah, well, the red Lamborghini is in the shop,” Roberto explained. “And I only drive the yellow one on Tuesdays.”
Jude grinned, shifted his feet, opened his shoulders. “Come on in,” he offered. Jude led Roberto downstairs into the finished basement, which was set up with video games, a flat-screen television, Jude’s music gear, places to sit.
Roberto whistled, head swiveling, taking in the room. “Wow, it’s like a recording studio. You know what else you need down here?”
Before Roberto could fill in the blank, Jude reflexively quipped, “More cowbell?” The words slipped from his mouth out of habit. An old joke he shared with Corey. It was the first funny thing he’d said in weeks. But Roberto stared blankly. He didn’t get the joke.
“What?”
“More cowbell,” Jude repeated. “It’s from the SNL skit. Will Ferrell, Christopher Walken, ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.’ Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it.” He looked hopefully at Roberto, who shook his head.
“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” Roberto confessed.
Jude did his best impression of Christopher Walken, barking out lines from the skit: “Guess what? I’ve got a fever. And the only prescription … is more cowbell!”
Jude turned on the computer, a virus-infested IBM clone—he definitely regretted the Great Laptop Toss; what an idiot—and found the skit on YouTube. “I can’t believe you don’t know this,” he said, shaking his head. Jude felt a jigger of old enthusiasm rising up inside him, an approximation of his normal self. For the next hour, the two boys swapped favorite funny videos pulled from the Web, cracking up over the dumb things people do.
Roberto’s howling, cackling laughter was infectious. He talked up a stream of stories about life at West End Two. Adventures with Kenny, dumb lifeguards, surprise inspections, softball games, and postwork parties in the dunes. Roberto had a way of finding the comical in most things. “So get this,” he said. “I walked into the back office and caught Kath sucking face with Denzel. I didn’t know whether to pretend I didn’t see it, go all invisible or something, or get in line. They should lock those doors is all I’m saying!”
Jude roared at Berto’s bug-eyed delivery.
“This one’s crazy, Jude, check it,” Roberto said, leaning forward, gesturing with his hands in excitement. “Billy Motchsweller got arrested at work last week for selling ecstasy.”
“What!”
“It was a whole freaking scene. So, like, he was stuffing the pills between the hamburger buns—that was his distribution system, see—and Billy accidentally sold to an off-duty cop!”
“Oh, my God,” Jude said, stunned.
“He’s so screwed, man,” Roberto said.
“Well, I guess that explains the long lines,” Jude commented.
“Never thought
of that.” Roberto chuckled. “Sales have really dropped off since the arrest.” He pointed to Jude’s gear in the corner. “That your guitar?”
“Obviously, you’re not a golfer,” Jude deadpanned.
Roberto laughed. He pulled a DVD off the shelf. “I can’t believe you own Plan 9 from Outer Space. I love that movie!”
“Worst film ever made,” Jude said. “Actually, I sort of inherited that copy from Corey. He brought it over one night and…”
A leaden silence filled the room, threatening to sink the lightness of the past hour.
“We should watch it,” Roberto piped up. “Get some people together. Come on, Jude. It’s a good idea. Corey would approve.”
Jude shook his head, placed the movie back on the shelf. “I don’t think so, not now.”
“Another time,” Roberto said. He glanced toward the stairs, pondering his options. “You were pretty trashed the other night at the log,” he said.
“Yeah, I just—”
“—cut out with that girl,” Roberto said, completing Jude’s sentence.
The memory embarrassed Jude. He wasn’t proud of it.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Jude, with Becka there. That was cold.”
Jude didn’t try to explain, couldn’t explain even if he wanted to. It was like kicking a dog. What could you say? The dog deserved it? He finally asked, “How is she?”
“Becka’s good.” Roberto paused, thinking it over. “Don’t ask me, Jude. You’ve got her number.”
“You think I should call her?”
Before You Go Page 12