When I came back from the bathroom, Adrienne was there. She flashed me a quick lascivious smile. It said to me: Stay away. She was helping Chase get ready to grill; she was making patties for him—and, because of the meat on her hands presumably, she could not come directly to greet me. So I stepped down into the den.
This was her world then. A lot of the kids were already drunk. They were nice kids, not cutthroats, but I couldn’t sit down in their badinage. They were filling up the pseudo-rustic den with dirty jokes. Had they been worthy of Adrienne, had they presented a gradual declension from her awesomeness, plateauing at a still-competent level, I would have sat down in their company and listened. But they were talking about drawing dicks on each other’s faces. Of course, this was where their authority came from: being like this with each other, being paid up in full in some psychic way. It made me crazy. And it had nothing to do with membership: Cam, arguably a greater outsider than me, was sitting there talking their language. It was inevitable that I, instead, would take up position at the window, and notice how dour the conifers looked outside. I went into the next room and watched TV.
Later, I was probably the only person still indoors; I was watching the Tulsa local news when Adrienne came in and switched off the TV.
She had a younger girl in tow. “Have you met Jenny?”
I had not.
“You guys both write poetry.”
I looked helplessly at Adrienne—who was already leaving. Chase was setting up his briquettes outside. I should have been furious. Jenny was obviously cute. She was a foot shorter than me and had bright, slow-moving eyes.
“You just met Adrienne?” Jenny asked.
“Um, I go watch her paint sometimes. We’re going through an art history course that I give her with different books—”
“Oh my god. Her paintings are so good.”
I shrugged. “They’re very postwar, which I like.”
Her eyes lit up. “They’re totally postwar.”
“I mean, if she ever really gets an idea it could be interesting.”
Jenny looked hurt, but she nodded.
“Where are you in school?” I asked her. I thought I was trying to be nice, but I wasn’t.
“I’m going to Union upper next year.”
Something in me was on the point of snapping. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll definitely see you later.”
I went striding through the woods, trying to rush the gullies and boulders with old hiker’s footwork, and hurried. The forest was getting dark. Only continuing on because of an obscure claim to self-righteousness, I felt sick. I couldn’t stop chewing on this feeling that I had blundered. Night turned black. So I had to turn around, poking in the dark with my little key chain LED, dreading the slush of leaves beneath each footfall. I almost prayed to God with relief when I finally came back and saw the lights of a house and, untangling myself from the branches, could confirm it was Albert’s.
I found some chicken on the grill, cold, wrapped in foil. I ate it with my fingers, and sat on the porch, staring into the woods. I wished I could just sit and guard the house, like a dog.
Finally I went in.
There were shapes up in the living room, dancers, trying to make a night of it. Edith sat in the kitchen, part of a big card game. I went in and got a glass of whiskey, but made eye contact with no one.
Later, having curled up under a desk in some upstairs storage room, I woke. I heard voices from below. So people were still awake. I had been drooling, and fronds of acrylic carpet were sticking to my lips. I rose, and veered out into the hall.
I met Jenny on the staircase, and we abruptly sat down. As if we had planned to meet. Jenny sat on a step below me and I started to tell her about the banister: turned wood uprights carved into the shape of pineapples, and beneath the pineapples some other kind of wooden flourishment. She was really paying attention. The only way I could explain it to her, I said, was the way toy soldiers would use the banister to convey themselves down if they were invading the ground floor, swinging from pineapple to pineapple with grappling hook and line. Sometimes, alas, plummeting away to the soft carpet below. Poof. And then silence. Jenny gripped my knee. Then we opened our mouths partway, lined up, and kissed.
I was screwed around like a bird, to kiss her; despite the terrible sleep-taste in my mouth she was locked on me; she took my face in her hands and immediately scooted up to my step, quite competent. At least it’s something that’s happened, I said to myself. It was Jenny who stood us up, and suggested we go out and watch the sun rise. As we flew out the door I plucked a bottle of gin off the table, and she swept up an afghan on top her head. It felt like the sky was lightening faster than we could cross the yard.
The next night was similar. After a dull day of campfire chatter, and the ceaseless back-and-forth of new people up from town, band people off to the studio, and after the much-hyped assembly of turducken, I was fading into the background, having drunk all afternoon; I found myself heading upstairs again, taking the stairs in giant steps, slowly, wobbling, turning into the same storage room, and curling up for a nap just the same, shortly after dark. I slept for a long time. And when I woke up, deep in the night, with the carpet imprinted on the side of my face, it felt like time had looped, and I resolved to myself to do something good with my life, to break the loop.
I didn’t go down the stairs this time but continued around the landing, and careened truly innocently into a bedroom where the light was on. Beneath the light, Adrienne and Chase lay there sleeping. They were strewn on the bed below me, covered with blankets. I was riveted. I stood there with a rocky feeling on my face. I stood and studied Adrienne’s nose, pressed flat on its side, an intense rose color smushed on the white pillowcase. Adrienne cracked an eye.
But it was Chase who got it together and unfurled an arm to greet me. “Join us,” he said, his voice hoarse.
I didn’t believe it.
“Come on,” said Chase. “Come get some sleep?”
They weren’t touching; they were sleeping in different halves of the bed. I stepped out of my shoes.
To climb in, I had to plant my knee and hand beside Chase. Then I hesitated. “Should I turn out the light?”
Chase smiled, amused. “Yes.”
Then I made my way back to the bed and, planting a knee without touching Chase, I tried to bridge across them to get down on the far side of Adrienne. She rolled away, however. And then Chase just pulled me down like a dog. He laid his arm across me. “It’s cool,” he said. He fumbled with the sheets, and I helped him. We were all three tucked in now. I didn’t know whether either of them had pants on, or were naked below the waist. “Time to sleep,” Chase said. I squirmed so as to be faceup, neither ass nor lips toward Chase—but I could already hear his even breathing.
From Adrienne’s direction, silence. To be in the same warm bed with her was like a lightbulb turned on in my belly. I lay there, waiting to see if her leg would move. I waited for what seemed like hours, to see if she would touch me, afraid all the time on the other side that Chase would stir. Chase was a bear. He would roll over on me without differentiating. From Adrienne’s side I waited for a sign. I inched my leg nearer her, but was nowhere near touching. I had no idea how long it was, my eyes had adjusted, when I finally turned on my side to look at her. Her face was sleeping. The emotion that usually held her face was gone. I raised my head so I could look at her ear—her head looked like it was carved out of soap. Her nose was softer than usual, her cheeks more substantial. Her open mouth was the only thing that was completely dark. I stared, and made my body quiet. Adrienne would have wanted me to control myself. I slept, but it was sleep like in airports, waiting. I saw her sometimes. I opened my eyes and she rolled away, but when hours—maybe minutes—had passed, she rolled back, and I kissed her. She opened her eyes to acknowledge it and moved her sleepy arms to pull me closer. I kept my eyes open too. The kissing was perfect, slick, and noisy. Adrienne got on top of me, and pushed my hair back, and
pressed her thumbs to my temples as if it was her own forehead she was trying to clear, to keep from going crazy. She looked down at me—I thought it was the long look of someone completing their love, but of course Chase had woken up, and Adrienne was only looking to see if I was okay, before she moved. After crawling over, she sat on his stomach as she had sat on mine—it was like she was harvesting something from him, the way she kissed him, with her eyes closed, rutting her chin forward and back. His eyes slid open and he looked at me, unmistakably amused. It was not unfriendly though. The sun was coming up and we were beginning to be able to see better. I was completely out of time. If I felt jealous, I was not anguished. More than anything I was eager. I was rapt, until Chase put his hand out to me. We held hands, like people about to fall off the bed. He kind of gripped to give me strength. And then Adrienne disengaged, and got off him, and squatted at the foot of the bed. Nothing happened. We heard stirrings from the floor below. Inspired beyond reason, I dragged myself on my elbows over to Chase, and kissed him as Adrienne had. I took both of his shoulders with my hands. His tongue was rough, his teeth larger than any girl’s. He was responding—I had been dared to do this. I let him rear up sort of, onto his elbow, so we posed as equals, but it was an uncomfortable angle for my neck. I had never been very good making friends with boys. Here was a great bastard. I hugged Chase, and pushed him back down, and looked at him. He was ugly. His blond eyelashes were stubby, his eyelids wrinkled. He grunted and moved away. Then Adrienne embraced me from behind, and kissed me inside my ear. It was not sweet, it was not straightforward. I wanted to wriggle away so I could face her—but I didn’t. Adrienne clamped her arm across my breast. “The it-boy,” said Chase, looking at me. He was grinning hugely. We were all, absurdly now, waddling on our knees—there was more stirring from belowstairs—I worried my face would give away all my thoughts. Chase leaned in for more kissing. Adrienne held me. My heart was racing. Finally he stopped. Adrienne had let go. I lumbered around and looked at her. Her face was blank. I was in there now, I kissed her. Our lips were soft this time, and quiet. Each other’s faces felt composed. We breathed louder. Her cheek was inside my neck, her nose was inside my eye, and I breathed and mutely talked to her. “I’m going to take a shower,” we heard Chase say. We heard the water from the adjoining bathroom. Adrienne pushed down my pants with her thumbs. She got back under the covers and I followed. She pulled the blankets over us. I thought she would look at me intensely; I thought she would still be deciding, while I was inside her, whether she wanted this. But it wasn’t like that at all. She edged her chin back, gasping. Her throat worked, and her teeth showed, eyes wide open and straining at the headboard. Like she was biting a stream of ice. Then she moaned, so Chase could hear. I could not believe how okay I was in this situation. Her eyes tilted into her forehead. With the blankets over us I felt that we had moved into a tent and were going to live in it together. When she finally looked at me I came. Her look was calm, accepting, betrothal-like. With her arm crooked over my head I didn’t have anything to give her, so I worked both arms beneath her and squeezed, but that felt insincere. Chase was going to come out of the bathroom and see us—but Chase was not going to care, and that was the lesson. She slid her leg over me. She was hot. I worked myself up so that I could penetrate her again. This time was not so urgent, and it was not so honest, it was a little violent, it was in large part to cover for ourselves for when Chase came out, so that he could not interrupt us, so that he would have to shut up. But it was going even better mechanically than before. Adrienne was sweating. When I heard the bathroom door open I stopped, but she kept moving, and I felt like a hog. I glanced, looking for Chase. He was somewhere behind me, getting dressed. He didn’t hurry or anything. Adrienne had stopped too. My face was planted in the pillow. The only movement in the room was him getting dressed. Then he left and we resumed (nothing felt better); we could hear him jogging downstairs.
We slept. A bit later, the sun already high, our bedroom—somebody’s bedroom, Albert’s guest bedroom—was warm. I plowed my hands into the empty regions of the sheets to feel their coolness. Adrienne turned over. We probably stank, we had already stunk of sleep when we started. We would be craving showers. I laid my nostrils on Adrienne’s arm, in the crook of her elbow. She smelled like a Band-Aid. The skin pressed the rims of my nostrils. I didn’t quite have rights to her body yet: she stirred, and I drew back. She opened her lazy eyes onto me, and didn’t move or avert them: it was the most intimate thing. I wanted to have some cynical remark, about layabouts, about exhaustion, but affection overwhelmed me. Her gaze persisted, staring, I shambled onto her, dazed, locked in this time, sweating.
At noon, again, on purpose. With empty bellies, with an inexplicable hoarse feeling in our throats. In full color. Like an apology to the people downstairs. The cords of her throat straining red, like it wasn’t fun. But I did not let her get out into the clean air. I held her in the burning sheets. We fell asleep with all our skin touching, just to make the heat worse, to sweat more.
Much later, Chase poked his head in. “Um, people are leaving.”
Adrienne ripped off a sheet, flipped it in her arms once, and then drew it over her head, hunching like a crone. She was going to go home with Chase, of course. “I must cover zee head,” she said, “for modestee.”
As I was loading Edith and Cam’s stuff back into my car, Chase came up and punched me in the gut. He was friendly, grinding his fist in my belly. “Okay,” he said, looking appraising, ironic: he approved. He waved goodbye as Edith and Cam and I drove off.
“You should be nice to Chase,” said Edith. Our windows were still down; we had not yet left the property. The soft tinkle of tires on gravel was all our tired ears wanted to hear.
“Why?”
“You’re not in competition with him.”
“How do you know?”
“They’ve never been like boyfriend and girlfriend. They’re like siblings.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said.
We got onto the main road and we rolled up our windows. Edith rode in silence for a while. “You know Jim, Adrienne grew up really unsupervised. Eventually she started dating guys in bands. It got pretty intense. They heard her sing and…have you heard her sing? She was fourteen. There were all these guys. Without Chase she never would ever have survived.”
“You mean literally survived?” I asked.
“Yeah. Maybe not, Jim.”
The late-afternoon sun glared in my windshield. It was dirty. I wondered if it would seem passive-aggressive if I stopped at a gas station to wash it. I felt irritated: I should have had that drive home to myself.
Edith had said: “Adrienne and Chase were little kids together, their families were friends. I don’t know how gradual it was, but he just started being there for her. And no matter who she was seeing she always had Chase. He gave her a lot of stability.”
“You mean she slept with him and other men too?”
“I guess!”
“And so I can be a new version of those other men.”
My parents complained about the cigarette smell in my car. They had not driven it since I came home. I arrived back from Bartlesville however and fell asleep, and that was when my dad took it upon himself to get my oil changed.
“I guess because people don’t roll their windows down,” I said.
This took place not at the dinner table, which would have been too theatrical for my parents’ tastes, but cleaning up afterwards. I was carrying plates, while my dad washed the dishes. My mom took up position in the doorway and lobbed questions at me.
So who were these friends, that I let them smoke in my car?
It didn’t seem necessary that I should name them. “People,” I said. “I don’t know. Are you worried about secondhand smoke?” But that obviously wasn’t the point, any more than olfactory contamination was the point. My mom persisted. “Look,” I said. I took up the chopping knife and the cutting board. “My friends smoke. So I l
et them smoke in my car.”
“But how do you know they’re your friends?”
I looked at her. She had gone too far. And she knew it. “By looking at their art,” I said. “I know them by their works.”
I was trying to pretend to be exasperated. But my Bible quote was gratuitous. “I know it seems all bohemian,” I said, “and therefore stupid—or stupid and unconvincing to be bohemian, maybe, in this day and age.” I still tried to shrug. “I don’t know, I learn more from them than I do from my professors. I guess that seems naïve.”
This was the biggest fight I had had with my parents in memory. They were very quiet. My dad stood by afterwards, sort of waiting as I dried the dishes. I told him about a Kissinger book I was reading, transcripts of Kissinger’s telephone conversations with Golda Meir and others from 1973. I knew it would interest him. He took up the plates to shelve them.
“I guess what I should say to Mom is something like—I won’t lose track of who I am.”
My father had an equilateral nose with long, wolfish nostrils, and thin, neat lips, and it seemed to cost him nothing to process what I had said, to find a kernel of goodwill and good sense in it. I immediately regretted having said anything at all, and at the same time was helped, beyond reckoning, by my father’s grace.
The day I brought Adrienne her gun—I’m still so proud of how crazy that was. I parked outside Adrienne’s studio one bright July morning with a small blue pistol in my glove compartment. Which I retrieved and hefted—the way you heft any present for which you have paid too much and which, held in your own hand before you give it, trembles less with the recipient’s desires than with your own.
A Map of Tulsa Page 6