by Chris Lynch
I was afraid to look at her face, and when she didn’t say anything I got all embarrassed, started walking fast again. “Never mind,” I said. “Don’t listen to me. I’m a dope.”
We bought pineapple-banana whips and fat oily fried doughs, the powdered sugar soaking up the oil and making little balls on the top. We took them back to the motel and sat on the swing eating them, waiting for Toy. It was getting cloudy and misty, the wind from the ocean bearing in and leaving us coated in cold salty spray.
“I should probably go check out,” I said. “You want to wait here?”
She nodded, staring off into the rough, incoming tide.
Upstairs I pulled the chair to the window, and sat staring out with my chin on my hands. I saw those waves way off again but coming closer, and still loud through the closed window. The delicious salt wind rattling the old loose sash. I could see why refugee types would come to this town. Twenty-four hours or so had sure made me feel I was in the right place. I wondered if this was where Toy came on all those field trips.
The peace was shattered, though, when I felt the rumble of the engine through the crash of the waves. I grabbed the bags and left reluctantly. Downstairs I paid the front desk lady with bills from the bag I’d stolen from my brother.
Toy was on the swing with Evelyn when I stepped out onto the porch.
“I don’t ever want to leave here,” I said. “I’m never going to leave here.” I looked past him, up and down the silent boulevard, loving it, meaning what I was saying. The thought that this perfect windswept world and that vile little place I’d bolted existed so close together and that I could choose to be in either one of those worlds... well, that thought was too big for me. It steam-rolled me.
“Yes you are, Mick, you’re going back,” he said. “Come Memorial Day, you couldn’t afford a week here. And I hope you’ve thought about this: You can’t stay here, and you sure can’t go back home. So where you gonna go?”
“Maybe I could go to your house? For a while?”
“Maybe you can’t,” Toy answered, not mean, but firm anyway.
“How come? Your mother did—”
“Because my life is my life. And while we’re on the subject, stop sniffing around my mother.”
I turned to Evelyn. Hopefully.
She smiled sympathetically. “Maybe we better count that bag of money and see what you can afford.”
I had no place.
Toy fired up the Harley.
The ride home down the wide open of route 95 seemed to take no time at all. Sixty-five miles to go, said the sign. Then, suddenly, twenty-five. At every mile marker my stomach tightened a little more, fear and a thumping anger hitting me from sights unseen and unexpected until, by the time we were in the city, I was pumping my jaw like there was a wad of gum in my mouth.
Toy looked at me for the answer to the question he hadn’t asked.
I pointed. A left here, a left there, a right here, all the way to the end, then another left. I still hadn’t thought it out, still hadn’t heard the words in my head, but I suppose I just already knew. Toy pulled in front of the house and I got out. I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even say thanks. But it didn’t seem to bother either of them. I waved. They waved.
My decision after all was no decision at all. Where did I always go? When Terry cooked frozen eggrolls at three A.M., nodded off, and the firemen came because of the smoke, where did I go? When my mother was away and my father forgot to come home from the O’Asis and the lights went out all over the block, and I was only nine, where did I go? When they had given my bed away to yet another late guest and I couldn’t bear to sleep on the couch because sleeping out in the open spooked me, where did I go? When I was older and I couldn’t sleep because it was New Year’s Eve and my parents’ friends couldn’t stop screaming over and over the only five words they knew from “Auld Lang Syne,” where did I go?
I didn’t even have to whistle or ring the bell. The motorcycle noise brought Sully to the door. He stared at me hard.
“S’pose you heard things,” I said.
“S’pose I did,” he answered.
“So, will you take me?”
I never had to ask before, just walked in when the door opened.
He didn’t stop looking at me hard.
“No.” He slammed the door in my face.
I had no idea in the world where I was walking to when I turned away from that door. There was no bottom for me now.
The door flew back open.
“Get in, asshole,” he said.
He just left the door open and walked away from it, back into the house. A combination invitation-slap. Inside he continued on, through the hall and up the stairs toward his room. I followed at a distance, looking this way and that for anybody else, his parents, or Honey. The place was empty.
Upstairs, Sully walked to the door that led to the attic, right next to his own bedroom door, and threw it open the same unfriendly way he did the front door. Then he went into his room.
I took the hint. Instead of messing with Sully yet, I took my bag up the second flight of stairs to the attic. To the guest room. To my old room. Sully’s parents actually own their house, and a long time ago fixed up the attic for guests. It even has its own bathroom except that they never quite finished it so the toilet is still just the drain pipe opening up out of the floor. It works fine, though, as long as you don’t get too sloppy. The bedroom part of the attic is a little cramped with the slope ceilings and the two single beds tucked into the eaves at either end, but it is comfortable. There’s a thick brown carpet, night tables next to each bed, and pictures of the Kennedys looking like backlit angels on the wall. And a couple of those fifties floor lamps, spring rods that are pressed between the floor and the ceiling, with four cone-shaped lights pointing in every which direction. There’s only one tiny radiator, and the place is drafty as hell, but with the thick rug, with the calico down comforter on the bed, with a couple of those lamps trained just right throwing that yellow light, there was a lot more warm about it than cold. I remembered that from every time I stayed there before. It was doubly true this time.
So it wasn’t such a hard place to kill some time even though it was eerie quiet and the two dwarf doors that opened to the crawl spaces were spooking me. I couldn’t do that forever, though. I had to go down and see him.
I stood in his doorway. He lay flat on his bed, his eyes closed.
“Um, thanks,” I said.
“Don’t,” he said, nasty.
“You want me to leave?”
“Up to you.”
“Why’d you let me in?”
“Why’d you come?”
“’Cause this is where I come. You know that.”
“This is where you used to come.”
“Then why did I come?”
“Then why did you come?”
“Then why’d you let me in?”
“’Cause I’m a dope, I guess.”
“You are, but that don’t answer the question.”
“Then I don’t know the answer.”
“Yes you do.”
“Shut up, I said I don’t.”
“Well I do. I know why you let me in.”
“Oh that’s right. You know every damn thing now, dontcha?”
“Not every damn thing, but some.”
“So?”
“So, you let me in because...” I felt it building, didn’t want it to, but couldn’t stop it. “You let me in because you love me, Sul.”
Without opening his eyes, he reached back over his head and grabbed a tall green Tupperware cup full of water off the night table and winged it at me. “Get outta my goddamn house,” he yelled as the cup bounced and splattered off the door and I ran.
But I didn’t run out of the house. I ran upstairs to my room. Because I knew he didn’t mean it.
I flopped down on my bed and was asleep before I could even kick my shoes off. I don’t know how long I slept, only that I could have slept
a lot longer if the light hadn’t woken me. When I heard the click and saw the lamp glowing pink through my eyelids, I opened them to see Sully’s father, John J. Sullivan II, hulking over me. I was startled, but I didn’t jump or yell or gasp. My startle muscles didn’t seem to work anymore.
Besides, I liked Mr. Sullivan. Mostly because he had basically no use for anybody at all. He looked like the actor Sean Connery, big, about six-three, half bald, with a thick gray mustache and hands like catcher’s mitts with fingers added on.
Mr. Sullivan had only turned on one of the lights, and aimed it right at me. So he was kind of lurking in the shadow behind it.
“Hey, Mr. Sullivan.”
“Hey, Mick.”
I could see him smiling a know-everything grin.
“Y’ain’t been to stay with us in a long time. Nice ta see ya.”
“Nice ta be back,” I said.
“Your old man called. Ya know I can’t stand your old man, dontcha, Mick?”
“Ya, I know.”
“But I listened to him anyway. He asked was you here and I told him ya, you was. So he says, okay.”
“Okay? Okay what? Does he want me to come right home? Does he want me to call?”
Mr. Sullivan shrugged the big beefy shoulders. “Okay, he says.”
I nodded, thought about getting up, standing, sitting, something that required action. But then I couldn’t think of a reason, so I didn’t move.
“There’s a little refrigerator in the basement,” he said, walking away. “I’ll bring it up.” He disappeared down the stairs, then suddenly reappeared, walking backward up the same stairs. “But Mick, if I find any beer in it I’ll throw your ass out on the street. Right?”
I gulped. “Right.”
In a few minutes he was back, carrying the small square refrigerator in front of him like it was a shoebox. He set it down in the corner, plugged it in. “Now this doesn’t mean you can’t come down and eat with us if you want sometimes. It’s just... well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, is all.”
He really doesn’t like people very much.
As soon as Mr. Sullivan was back down the stairs, I heard Sully coming up. His footsteps were a lot lighter. He stood near the top of the stairs for a few seconds, his thin face peering through the bannister.
“Comin’ in?” I asked.
He did. He walked to the other bed, the one across the room from me, flicking on the light closest to it. He spread out on his bed on his side, just like me on mine. We lay there, each floating in our narrow cone of light.
“I feel like I don’t know you now, Mick.”
“Good.”
“Why? Why is that good?”
“Because I’m not the same anymore. My house, my family, my rotten neighborhood, I ain’t a part of that anymore, Sul. I just can’t connect myself to it. So I guess if you want to know me again, you have to get to know me.”
There was a long silence while Sully worked on that.
“I don’t like it. Don’t like the sound of it, Mick. You’re really sounding kinda fulla shit lately. Like you really do think you’re better than everybody.”
“I am,” I blurted.
Sully hopped up off his bed. “You suck, man.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I said, sitting up now. “That’s not what I meant exactly.”
“I’m listening,” Sully said, folding his arms and refusing to sit back down. “But not for long.”
“Well, I’m better than Terry, that’s what I mean.”
“No shit, Sherlock, who isn’t?”
“Us, you and me. We didn’t used to be any better than him. Baba ain’t no better than him. And think about this: You see what an animal Baba is? Well, we all were like, best friends not too long ago. Y’know, it looks like there’s a zillion miles between him and us, but really, there ain’t much at all. Here’s my problem, Sul. I can’t stop seeing that anymore. I can’t look at anyone around me without seeing Baba, and me. And Terry, and me. And Augie, and me...”
“And Sully, and you? That what you’re sayin’? Old friend?”
“No,” I said, weakly.
“Yes it is. I gotta tell ya, Mick, the superiority thing doesn’t make you sound so great.”
“I know,” I said. I was up on my knees now, talking more urgently to him. I had the feeling of a stakes now, of something I had to get done. I was losing Sully here, and I was all of a sudden convinced—desperately—that I couldn’t lose Sully.
“I know I sound like a shit, but I don’t care. I am better than those sons of bitches and I can say it because for the first time ever I feel it. I feel like I’m better than someone.”
Now a lighter expression bloomed across Sully’s face. He nodded smartly. “Ohhh, I get it. You got laid, didn’t ya?”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Sully, you stupid—”
“I’m leavin’,” he said.
“Don’t,” I pleaded.
“Mick, I gotta go. All I wanna know is, where are we at, me and you? Huh? You outgrown me too?”
I opened my mouth to answer twice before anything came out. The third try, something came out.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“That’s a great answer, friend.”
“Well, I guess it depends on what you want to be. You can’t be partway ignorant, Sully, that much I know.”
“I ain’t ignorant,” he said.
“I believe that’s the truth.”
“But I won’t pretend I’m not who I am. Like you’re doing.”
“Bullsh—”
He stuck out both hands in front of him, like a traffic cop. “Maybe this is good enough for now, huh? You said a little something, I said a little something, that should hold us for a while. This naked truth shit is starting to make my brain hurt.”
“Fine, as long as you understand things are gonna be changing around here, big time.”
Sully headed back toward the stairs, shaking his head. “You know I don’t like change, man. You know that.”
“Cambio está bueno,” I said.
“Don’t start with me,” he growled, then disappeared through the floor.
I was left there again, alone. I paced. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do. Nothing. I paced my A-shaped room with nothing but that thought in my mind.
Sully poked his head back up. “You gonna come down and eat, or what? The old man says you better not go expectin’ this all the time, but. ...He really likes you, actually.”
I was happy, walking down the stairs behind Sully, though I knew Mr. Sullivan meant it.
“And one more thing,” Sully said, without turning back to face me, without slowing down, trying to sound as casual as he could. “If you ever say that thing to me again—that thing, the one you said in my room, about why I let you in—if you ever say that thing to me again, I’ll get the old man’s handgun—and it’s a goddamn cannon—and I swear I’ll put you away.”
He made me laugh, which felt awfully good. “So then it’s true,” I said.
“I’ll kill ya right now, waste ya right at the dinner table in front of my parents and everything.”
“Okay,” I said, not laughing anymore but smiling hard. “I won’t mention it again, Sul.”
Cambio
SULLY AND I HEADED out together in the morning, back to school, like a couple of brothers. Like when we were kids. I was even wearing his clothes, a red-and-white-striped oxford shirt, stiff dark-blue jeans, and loafers. Most of my stuff was still at... the other house.
“Y’know, Sul, I think it’s only fair to tell you, I’m probably going to be a little too popular these days, with Terry and Augie and Baba.”
“I know,” he said. He tried to look brave, tried to swagger a bit as he walked by my side. But I could see his tightened white lips. “Not a problem,” he said, staring straight ahead.
“What I’m trying to say is, I’ll understand if you don’t—”
He shook his head a million times in a sec
ond, like the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. “New subject. Something else,” he said.
I let it go, impressed with his take on bravery. And, in a short while he seemed to have forgotten about it and returned to what he was before—happy to have me back. In a few minutes, he started smiling, to himself.
“What?” I asked, forced to smile along with him.
“Baba, at least, ain’t gonna be a problem for ya. Not for a while anyway. Not for, oh, about twenty-eight days.”
“Detox? Sully, Baba’s in detox? You’re joking.”
He shook his head, giggling. “Nope. His old man stuck him in down at Edgehill. Seems that toward the end of May Day weekend Baba came home a little mental and killed their dog.” Sully stopped and did a shudder, a full-body wiggle. “Hear it was pretty grim, Baba chewin’ the dog up and shit.”
I burst out laughing, without feeling particularly amused.
“So,” he said, slapping my back, “it’s early summer vacation for old Baba.”
I let out a sigh at those words. Suddenly, school was a better place, without the guy who was once my protector. Sully felt it too. He bopped around a lot, joked, punched me when he talked, acting like a little kid allowed to tag along with his big brother.
“Whoa, watch out for him,” he said, clearing a path for me up the school steps. “He’s better than you are, y’know.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Hey, he’s homeless, but he’s still better than you are,” he called down the hall to the principal, who ignored him like he does all students.
It shot through me when he said that. “Stop calling me homeless, Sully.”
“That’s right, I forgot. You have a home, you just don’t live there.”
“Have I told you lately to shut up? Shut up.”
Thank god nobody listens to the guy. He just kept laughing and telling the world the great joke that I was better than them. Until we came to the group, outside Evelyn’s homeroom. Evelyn, Toy, and Ruben. Then he shut up.