by David Connor
“You’re not saving water at all!” His loud, squeaky rebuttal echoed in the small, porcelain environment. “I can see where one might, but after you shut it off, it takes you forever to adjust it to the right temperature again before you step back under, thus allowing just as much water down the drain as if you had left it running full blast the whole time.”
Maybe he had a point. “Not when I brush my teeth, though.” He’d bitched about that the night before, when it was my turn to spit, as we’d tended to oral hygiene together as a substitute for oral sex.
“I guess.” He reluctantly had to admit I had one there.
“I do my part to keep our water bill manageable. I guess you don’t think about such stuff.”
Neither did I. It was a lie. We had a private well.
“Whatever.” Mathias grabbed a towel and got out of the shower. So much for our sneaky first time. I stubbornly finished mine long after I was perfectly clean. Then I decided to scrub down the entire bathroom, and then jack off, so I wouldn’t be tempted to forgive and fuck him. After all that, I went out the kitchen door without even looking for him and took a long walk.
That weekend, my father moved the baby and the others upstairs for two nights, put quarrelsome Mathias in with Devon and me, and then taught the three of us how to tape, clean paint off vinyl, do detail work—who knew you were supposed to remove the switch plates?—and roll ocean fog paint on large walls. He kept the paint color, and even got a nice darker gray to go with it for the trim. It looked pretty good by the time we had finished, though it still didn’t seem like Dad’s taste, or Beth’s, but no one ever complained.
MY PARENTS threw us a bon voyage party at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in town a few argumentative days later, mere hours before it was time to head off to Cloverton University and the next step on the path to Rio 2016.
“Surprise!”
Who doesn’t want a surprise party just once in their lives? I always had, and the thrill of everyone jumping out of dark corners when I flicked on the lights was pretty awesome. I was equally bowled over when I spotted Cal. “Hey!” I hadn’t seen much of him since we’d all watched the London Olympics, even once I’d come back home to stay and train. When I’d dropped by the Bellamys’ for a visit one day in mid-August, his mom had told me he’d already left for school. I hadn’t even known he’d been considering Dutchess Community College. I certainly hadn’t known he’d signed up and started more than a week ahead of us. He was back at the factory too.
“Thanks for coming!” I hugged him. He didn’t hug me back.
“I didn’t come for you,” he said. “They just don’t trust me home alone. I might fall over and break a lamp.”
“Cal….” I knew he wanted me to react, but in what way? I hoped I had chosen well. “How are you? How’s school?”
“Fucked-up. Me and them. So college ain’t happening.” He went to walk away.
“Wait. What?”
“I’m done. A few days in, I had a seizure. I quit. They found out at work and pulled me off the floor again. I guess three and a half weeks falls short of forever, huh? Got my hopes up too soon. Still think my future’s not wrecked, Reed? Enjoy your party.” He’d stopped only long enough to fill me in, and then he took off again. I considered following him, but then I noticed Mathias standing all alone in one wood-paneled corner of the cavernous basement party room. He didn’t know any of the other guests. Well, he knew Caryn, but she was chatting with my mom at that moment. I decided to save him, but my father took my elbow as I walked by.
“We invited Mathias’s parents.”
“Oh. Cool.”
“They haven’t arrived yet.”
“I get the impression they’re rarely on time for anything. They’re pretty busy,” I explained.
“Is that so?”
“Something like that,” I said sadly. I couldn’t really picture the Webbers in a room that smelled like beer, Doritos, varnished walls, and the sweat of a couple dozen people on a ninety-degree August day. “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Did you know Cal dropped out of college?”
“I did.”
“He said he had a seizure.”
“I heard it was what they call an aura… just a warning sign.”
“From who?”
“His boss at the factory.”
“Oh. That’s good, right, that it wasn’t a full-on seizure?”
“I would think so.”
“Then why did he get fired?” I asked.
“I don’t believe he did,” my father said.
“Oh. Demoted… maybe.”
“That’s too bad.” My dad brushed my arm, thankful, I think, that I was still pretty much untested by life.
“I should spend more time with him before I leave for Cloverton. I think he’s more depressed than anything else.”
“Which is understandable.”
Mathias caught my eye again. He was tapping the wall, and I wondered what he was telling it or maybe me. Though I didn’t realize it at that precise moment, I forgot about Cal almost entirely to rush to Mathias’s side. Our petty squabbles had continued. We’d fought all morning. In fact, I’d barely gotten him to come with me to the VFW. I wasn’t even going to ask. The ruse used to get me there had been my dad’s request for our assistance in moving an old refrigerator. Dad was a member—a veteran—and supposedly needed two strong, young men to lug the worn-out Kenmore to the curb. I’d determined it was easily a two-Watson job, me and Dad, since Devon was somewhere with my mom. But then I decided, at the very last moment, to include Mathias, just so my father wouldn’t have to labor after a half day at work. I should have figured something was up the night before, when my mom asked Mathias what his favorite dinner was so she could cook it for him before we left.
“Definitely meatloaf.”
It must have been a new fave, for sure. Somehow, I just couldn’t imagine the Webbers ever having their meat course in loaf form, but my mother’s cooking was stellar, and I could certainly see why he’d chosen what he had.
“Do you cook?” she had asked him.
I’d been standing right there, biting my tongue not to say “They have a guy for that.”
“No. Not really,” Mathias had told her.
I’d also hoped she was saving my pick—fried chicken and mac and cheese—for our very last night.
“Come on,” Mama had said, “I’ll teach you.” And she did, all the way from supermarket to table. Seeing Mathias’s biceps bulge as he got right down and dirty in the bowl of ground beef, eggs, garlic, salt, saltine cracker crumbs, and cornflakes—“My secret double whammy,” Mama had shared—oozing all between his fingers, it was pretty hot. The way his tongue had stuck out as he’d peeled the potatoes, as if he’d been summoning every ounce of concentration he could muster, I’d wanted to bang him right there against the hot stove.
“I helped with dinner,” he’d bragged as he set the table. My Dad and Dev had already sat down with great anticipation, the smell summoning them before it was ready.
“Forget helped, he basically did it all by himself,” my mother had said. “With just a little coaching.”
“I even nuked the frozen corn.” Mathias’s pride in doing so shone in his eyes. Just in case it hadn’t, he’d tapped out the word on my forearm while setting down the butter. It was one of our words and always would be.
“Tastes a little better than usual,” Dad had teased. “From amazing to downright spectacular!”
With the image of last night’s dinner in my mind, and my fried chicken and macaroni laid out on the buffet table, I was glad I’d included Mathias, and so I crossed the room to beg for forgiveness.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a grouch, Reed.” He pled his case before I had the chance to plead mine.
“Let’s go outside.”
“We can’t ditch our own party.”
A banner up high and stretched across the front of the room said it was for us, but as most of the gue
sts were standing beneath it cooing over Desiree, I had my doubts. As ungrateful as it would have been to say so, I doubted any get-together featuring a mix of ages from newborn to a hundred—some of the church ladies Mama had invited seemed at least that—would be much fun for the ones between fourteen and twenty-one. I couldn’t even find Caryn and was ready to bolt.
“We’ll never be missed.” I’d been studying the dots-and-dashes system diligently and tapped Come on against his thigh just up inside the hem of his shorts.
“Yeah. But what if…?”
The door opened, and Mathias spun around. We both knew they weren’t coming, but the look of disappointment on his face every time someone walked in that wasn’t one of his parents, it was truly heartbreaking.
“My parents will find us if yours come. I promise.”
We made it to the kitchen and the rear exit. I had my hand on the doorknob, just about to turn it, and Mathias had two beers in his.
“Where you going?”
“Dad.”
We were both so startled I worried for Mathias’s shorts. My father looked stern, but then his eyes lightened and his mouth began to quiver.
“No more than one each.” He laughed. “And don’t let your mother see.”
Pretending one brew made us tipsy led to quasi-sex against the side of the dumpster a couple hundred feet from the building. We were so romantic. Loud, sloppy kisses left my whole face wet as Mathias explored it with his tongue, while his hand on the back of my neck made me tingle. I hoped both of mine did the same to him, uninhibited, down the back of his shorts. I could hardly wait to sniff them like he had my hands at his lake.
“Hey!” But we were caught in the act once again.
“Fuck!” I couldn’t get my hands out fast enough.
“Pretty close, by the look of it.” This time it was Coach Keller. “Knock it off and get back inside.”
Though we sort of had permission from my dad and Mathias’s guardian to drink and feel each other up, we obeyed our coach and headed back to the party. Another couple hours later, I leaned the huge push broom against the wall and hugged my parents sincerely and tightly. The VFW was spic-and-span. I didn’t even mind cleaning up after my own going-away bash.
“Thank you so much for this, Mama.”
“We’re so proud of you.”
“I haven’t done anything yet,” I said.
“You’ve done so much.” She started to cry. “Both of you.”
Mathias looked a bit shocked when she threw her arms around him next. Then he started to cry. He tried to hide it, and though there was no blubbering or even a sniffle, his gorgeous eyes were wet and shiny, and he kept them averted from mine.
THOSE WEREN’T the last tears I saw before heading out of Dover. I had to try one more time with Cal that evening.
“I’m not abandoning you,” I promised.
He ignored me and my pleading for a good five minutes as I stood in the archway between his kitchen and living room. He was watching QVC this time. I can’t imagine he really was, though, because some overly excited redhead with a Southern accent and her chubby, out-of-breath sidekick were droning on about vacuum cleaners. I’d known Cal a long time, and I had never seen him all that interested in carpet care.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around much this summer. I had that school thing and….” I didn’t want to mention swimming or being at Mathias’s. I didn’t want to mention Mathias at all. Cal mentioned him, though.
“You ditched me the day you met that snooty-ass Webber,” he eventually said.
“Cal….” I glanced behind me. Mrs. Bellamy had gone out to the trash cans, and I wanted to make sure she was still there. Moving closer, I dared to touch him, his shoulder first, and then his cheek with the back of my hand. It was already wet. “I love you so much.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. I’m just not sure I’m in love with you… or… if you even want me to be.”
Cal bit the corner of his lip for what felt like such a long time. When he finally spoke, it was like a punch in the gut. “I want a whole lot of things, Reed. And I can’t have any of them.”
“Hey. Even if the seizures aren’t gone, they’re less frequent. You’re getting better.”
“Am I?” He finally turned away from the TV. “What if I asked you to stay? What if I said I do want us to be together? Would that make a difference? Or is bringing up my sexual confusion just a way to throw it all back on me so you don’t feel bad for kicking me aside for something prettier, shinier, whiter, and richer?”
I wondered who’d brought up that phrase—“sexual confusion”—it hadn’t been me. “Mathias’s money has nothing to do with any of this. If anything, I wish he had way less of it. As for the color of his skin….”
“Your skin too, pretty much.”
“Low blow Cal. And so what? My first crush was on you. Well, my first one was on Junior from My Wife and Kids.” My attempt to get him to smile failed miserably. “I’ve always been attracted to guys who look like… us.”
“You don’t look like us. It was just a matter of time before you realized that.”
“I would still be attracted to Mathias if he was black.”
Cal said nothing.
“I would.”
He still didn’t answer, so I started to go. I couldn’t, though. “I sometimes wish I was blacker, just so you know. I… I know I can’t see the world exactly like you do, because when other people see me, they can’t see what I feel.” I turned back, but Cal was watching the vacuum cleaner pitch again, not me. “On the outside, I’m white to most of the world… some of it, at least. I know what’s inside me, though.” I thought of the Good & Plenty box again. “I get that doesn’t make me….”
“Black.”
“Yeah. But none of that has anything to do with Mathias and me… or you and me. It doesn’t.”
“Color has to do with everything.”
“Why? When will that stop?”
“Never.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere with the race stuff, so I changed direction. “We can talk sometime about you struggling with the idea of liking guys and girls, if you want.”
“Liking girls isn’t a struggle. I like girls, Reed. There’s no issue there, and the ones I get with aren’t a consolation prize.”
“I never said—”
“Fuck you. You thought I’d do that to someone—to Caryn—use her because I ‘struggle with liking guys’?” He said it quite angrily. “Maybe you think the accident was a punishment because of it.”
“I sure the fuck never said that.”
“Suppressing the desire to bang a guy ain’t really that hard, so keep your damn pity to yourself.”
“Unless that guy’s me?”
Cal huffed, and then he was quiet again. I was lucky I’d gotten as much as I had, I supposed.
“You and me… if the timing….”
“If a lot of fucking things, Reed.”
I figured I might as well leave. The scene was accomplishing nothing.
“Wait.” He grabbed my hand.
“What?”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
He still held on tight, like prom night, only longer.
“I wish we’d have stayed together that night, Cal,” I said.
“Yeah?” He must have known what I meant. “So I’d be okay?”
“Yes.”
“What if we’d stayed together and you ended up like me? Would this feel better then? Would you still make that wish?”
“You’ll be okay, Cal,” I told him.
“I’m glad we went our separate ways. I think that’s better.”
I couldn’t get air. “I’ll see you next weekend.”
He let go. “Don’t bother.”
I walked away slowly, headed home, and locked myself in the bathroom to reminisce about Cal working the barber shears and cry.
MATHIAS AND I got more hugs the next morning. Devon’s l
asted longest. He took off Mathias’s watch and handed it back to him after he finally let me go.
“You can keep it if you want, Devon. Really.”
“Naw. That’s okay,” Devon said. “College might not have a streetlamp.” My kid brother was awesome.
Mathias and I snapped at each other the whole way up to the Cloverton campus. We snapped like two dogs with one slice of bologna. That was one of my dad’s favorite sayings, and it sure did apply. I told Mathias it was a defense mechanism in order to distract us from the fact we were going to be separated more than we’d be together from then on.
“No,” he told me. “It’s because you drive like an old person in need of a new eyeglass prescription.”
“I’m not used to your car.” Everything lit up in blue. I felt like I was on the starship Enterprise or in a dance club for Smurfs.
“Even when we rode in your dad’s, you never slowed down for a red light. You just stopped all of a sudden, way too close to the bumper ahead of us. And why do you wait and turn the signal on after entering the intersection or the next lane over? You almost got us hit five times already.”
“Maybe because it’s fucking forty degrees in here and my reflexes are slow from hypothermia. I guess there’s no sense having AC unless you run it full blast, huh? I feel like a goddamned frozen pizza.” I still had a problem holding back the truth.
“So why don’t you turn your side down?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out how for an hour. Your car has more buttons than a Victorian overcoat or an elevator in a building with five hundred floors.”
“What?”
My Dad had said that once too, concerning the newest cable company remote. “Nothing.”
“If you’re too damned stubborn to ask, freeze, then.” He reached over and closed the vent on my side anyway.
“If I’d driven up myself—window up, window down—it wouldn’t have been that complicated.” My dad’s car had AC, of course, but I felt the need to get in one more dig at the Webber fortune. Judging by the total number of matching bags Mathias had crammed into the back of his 2012 silver Infiniti—a going-away gift—it was evident the son of a Webber didn’t do anything partway. Plus, he’d shipped eleven boxes ahead. Forget one outfit for a week. Apparently he’d changed his strategy and was now planning on redressing for every class.