Perfectly Good White Boy

by Carrie Mesrobian

  “Sean, I think something’s wrong.”

  “He’ll be okay,” I said, stepping out to him. His tail wagged a little. “Good boy, Otis. That’s a good boy. Come here, boy.”

  My mom started crying. “Sean. Sean. We have to take him to the vet, honey.”

  But I wouldn’t listen to her and even when Otis licked my hand, I could see she was right, but I wouldn’t believe her and then he sort of sat down weird on the ground, like he wanted to sit or lay down but couldn’t figure it out so I went to pet him and saw he was covered in burrs and something wet, too. Piss, his own piss. Which he’d been pissing out everywhere, on my backpack and on the kitchen floor and on a pile of Krista’s wedding craft crap, ruining the ribbons for something they needed to decorate the reception with and then I lifted him up and carried him into the house and my mom said that I needed to listen to her, because Otis was hurting and something was wrong and he needed the vet but I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t, because that couldn’t be what happened next. It couldn’t.

  I brought him down to my room and I laid on the carpet with him, just listening to him breathe, his chest rising and falling. I pulled out the burrs softly and gently and wiped him with my Pokémon towel so he wasn’t all piss-wet and I just stayed there, all night, telling him I was sorry and it was going to be all right, and it was, as long as I was listening to him breathing and feeling for his heartbeat.

  In the morning, when my mom came into my room, I handed her his collar, the little charm still jingling, even though he was gone, and I told her, both of us crying, how in the middle of licking my hand, the sun not quite up, Otis’ chest stopped and stiffened and there wasn’t anything after that. No more breathing. No more Otis.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The day of graduation, my mom and I went to pick up Otis from the vet. My mom didn’t want to do it, saying we could wait another day, but I refused to let it go. I wanted him back and I wanted to bury him and I didn’t care about graduation or the stupid Senior Lock-In that night either.

  “Sean, honey,” she said, a million times, until I told her I’d go without her if she wouldn’t come already.

  But when we got to the vet, I didn’t want to go in. I wanted to cry.

  “Come on, honey,” my mom said, and we went in, and there in the vet’s office were all these other pet owners, holding their cats in their laps or hanging onto their dopey-looking little puppies on leashes and all along the back wall were the bags of expensive pet food, which I felt guilty we couldn’t afford because maybe if we could have, Otis still would be alive and not dead from kidney failure or whatever the vet said he thought it was.

  My mom stood at the counter and got out her credit card, like she was buying something normal, not her dead dog’s ashes in a little marble container, and I stood beside her, wondering if we’d have to talk to the vet or something formal, but it was just the receptionist lady having my mom sign a receipt and then handing us a heavy box that was now Otis. My dog, now a box I could hold with one hand. My dog, now a thing that could fit under the seat of my car.

  When we got back home, Krista and Brad and Grandpa Chuck were there, all dressed up for graduation, Krista in an orange dress, Brad and my grandpa in collar shirts. It was hot, and I was still wearing what I’d dug the hole in the backyard in and I smelled and I was dirty and my jeans had a big tarry stain on the knee, and but Krista still hugged me and said she was so sorry and she smelled like Juicy Fruit gum, and Brad even looked a little like he might actually feel bad.

  Grandpa Chuck helped me put Otis’s little box into the hole. And then we all stood there and looked at the box in the black dirt and I didn’t know what to say. Though it seemed like we should say something. Like a normal funeral.

  “He was a good dog,” my mom said. “Gentle. So loving.”

  I nodded. Krista started sniffling.

  “The best,” I said.

  Then Brad took a picture, with his phone. And I whirled around and screamed, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “For dad,” he said. “Dad loved Otis too.”

  “You asshole,” I said. “You are such an asshole.”

  “What the fuck is your problem, Sean?” Brad said. “You act like you’re the only one in the world.”

  Grandpa Chuck stood between us. Yelled, “Enough. Enough. Brad, I mean it. Sean, go get ready. You need to be at commencement soon.”

  Krista was crying now, openly, ruining all her makeup. My mom took my hand and led me into the house and said, “Your shirt’s ironed and on your bed, honey.”

  I showered and put on the dumb collar shirt she’d laid out for me and some dorky pants, just like Brad’s and Grandpa Chuck’s, and slapped on deodorant since it was hot as fuck. When I came out again, Krista’s makeup was fixed and Otis’s box was covered up by dirt and my mom was finishing planting flowers all over the top of it. Yellow and orange ones and something green with no petals yet and she told me the names—yarrow and poppy and Shasta daisies, “all things that are perennials, so they’ll always come back every year” and I wanted to say, But will we always be here? We don’t even own this shithole. Will you? Because I won’t. But I couldn’t talk, and then we got into the car and drove to celebrate my graduating from high school.

  About the actual graduation, well, it was stupid. Because I was trying not to think about Otis and I was sitting by people I didn’t want to talk to, even though I’d had my locker by them for years (Charlotte Norton and Asher Nyander) and I wore sunglasses, which was douchey—Tristan Reichmeier wore sunglasses too—but I had an actual reason, because I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been crying. Some minister led us in prayer, which seemed like bullshit, because, separation of church and state, right?

  But no one said anything and then a teacher I’d never had did a funny speech that everyone laughed at and then the genius kid of our grade, this guy named Brandon Houseman, did the speech and because he had gotten into Princeton, we all were supposed to worship him or something. All the fucking possibilities. When it was over, my mom and Grandpa and Brad and Krista took pictures, me with Eddie and everyone, even some kids from the track team, and Neecie and even Ivy Heller, which was a stretch, but everyone had all this goodwill now that high school was over. Tristan Reichmeier and the hockey players posing with the football team and all their dumb girl equivalents from the dance team and it was all so phony but also sincere, with some of the girls crying, which seemed unreasonable, as if this was some accomplishment, surviving high school. And then Sergeant Kendall was there, and he hugged me and said well done, and I introduced him to my family and I thought for a minute that my mom would get mad at him, but then she was nice to him, though distant, while he listed off all my wonderful qualities, which Brad smiled at, as if he knew better. Then Steven-Not-Steve was there for some reason, and it turned out that Brandon Houseman was his godson or something so I got my picture taken with both of them, too. And just when I wanted to leave and go home and lie in bed and never come back out, my mom handed me a duffel bag and said she’d packed some other clothes for the lock-in and my toothbrush and stuff, and I told her I didn’t want to go, that I didn’t have to, and then Neecie slipped beside me and said, “Come on, Sean. It’ll get your mind off things,” and I couldn’t argue because Neecie knew Otis was dead and my alternative was staying home and doing last-minute wedding crap with Krista and my mom.

  “I really don’t want to do this,” I said to Neecie as we were herded through a line back into the school, the hellhole we’d supposedly officially escaped, but she just pushed me forward to the assembly line, where we all stripped out of our caps and gowns and signed forms and checked in all our stuff and learned all about our diplomas being mailed and whatever.

  “You have to go in for a little while, Sean. Just try. Just an hour, try it.”

  “Then can I leave?”

  “If you leave, you can’t come back.”

  “Sounds fine to me.”

  But I stayed, for m
ore than an hour. All the guys went down to the locker room, where people’s dads were, supervising that we weren’t fucking off or smuggling in booze or anything, just changing out of our dorky fancy clothes and into our normal stuff, and it was loud in the school, all the fans running because there was no air-conditioning. Then Eddie and me spent a while eating all the free food, pizza and sub sandwiches and chips and tacos and Mountain Dew, and after that we ripped open pull tabs for all these prizes, like bicycles and dorm fridges and gift certificates and even a car, and I won a dorm fridge, which I had no use for, so I gave it to Neecie to claim and she hugged me and smelled like cake, and I wanted to get her alone, because, The Horn, of course. I was hypnotized by her long hair and The Horn and how sad I didn’t want to feel, because she was smiling that I was still there, staying, like she thought I’d listened to her and taken her advice. She and Ivy went off to the library, which was now a beauty salon where everyone got their nails and hair done and henna tattoos, and it all smelled like chemicals that gave me a headache, so I went to play basketball in the gym with Eddie, and I ended up on Brandon Houseman’s team, and he said his uncle was a Marine Corps master gunner sergeant and had been to Iraq three times, and it was badass and congratulations, and then I went to get some water and found Neecie and said, “Now. Now can we leave?”

  And she turned, from where she was getting her fingernails painted next to that one Hannah chick, the one who was with (or had been with) Tristan Reichmeier, and said, no, she wasn’t leaving, she didn’t want to go.

  And I might have yelled or gotten pissed, but I couldn’t do that, because I wasn’t a baby or her boyfriend. I don’t know what I was, but I was someone who she tossed the keys of her car to and said that once they unlocked the doors at six a.m., everyone was going down to the trestle to party, and while that sounded horrible, I could go down there and meet her later, pick her up.

  “Sure,” I said. And then I walked out past someone’s dad who told me if I left I couldn’t come back again and I said fine.

  It wasn’t even nine o’clock, so I drove home, and surprised the fuck out of my mom and Steven-Not-Steve, who looked like they’d been fooling around on the couch instead of folding programs for the wedding. Steven-Not-Steve was kind of red in the face and my mom was all giggly and weird, but I didn’t say anything to them. I mean, they were grown adults, right?

  Then Krista came over with a bunch of snacks, and so I sat and folded programs and watched some TV with everyone and then a dog food commercial came on and I started crying and Krista said, “Oh, honey” and my mom rubbed my back and said I couldn’t keep making wedding stuff or I’d get all my sadness into everything, like in that one movie set in Mexico where the sister cries into the soup and everyone who eats it feels sad.

  Then she laughed a little and kept patting my back, and I felt like she was my mom again, like she loved me after all, and I wasn’t just tiring her out. She took my hand and led me down to my bedroom and I took off my shoes and got in bed and she pulled the covers over me and sat there while I cried and tried to be cool about it, which is stupid to try to do in front of your mom, who used to give you baths and change your diapers and knew every horrible thing about you anyway.

  But my mom didn’t say anything. No lectures, no telling me it would be okay. Just scooped a bunch of hair away from my ear—hair that would be gone soon enough—just like she did when I was a little boy and was sick or couldn’t sleep, her fingers soft around my temple until I fell asleep.

  I woke up at five and couldn’t get back to sleep. Almost called Otis. Then remembered. A sock to the gut. How many times would I do that before I figured out he was really gone?

  Not many. You’ll be gone in two weeks.

  I pissed. Showered. Dressed. It was raining and grey. I went out back and looked at Otis’s grave. The flowers all wet and hanging over at weird angles. A big streak of lightning cracked over the freeway then, and I went inside and drank a ton of orange juice. Then went into my mom’s room.

  “Sean? Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Gonna go grab some breakfast with everyone. The lock-in’s done soon.”

  “Okay.”

  “See you later.”

  “Sean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really going to miss you. You know that? I really am.” I nodded.

  “I’m worried about you, though.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m trying not to be,” she said. “Steven has been talking me off the wall about it. He’s been good at reminding me of my locus of control.”

  I nodded again. Like I knew what a locus of control was.

  “Steven’s my boyfriend,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think you’re surprised,” she added, sitting up now, her purple-flowers comforter going around her. She tucked her knees up under her nightshirt and ducked her head.

  “Thought I might have walked into something there,” I said.

  “Sorry,” she said, looking more embarrassed. “We just didn’t hear you because . . .”

  “Because Otis didn’t bark.”

  “Right,” she said, and she looked like she might cry. I couldn’t handle it. And I couldn’t cry anymore. I’d cried way too much already.

  “Do you like him? Steven? I mean, do you have a good time together?”

  She tipped her head to the side. “You know, I do like him. I mean, I wouldn’t say he’s like a roller-coaster ride kind of boyfriend—having a good time isn’t exactly the same for me as it might be for you—but yeah. We enjoy being around each other. It’s nice. Very nice.”

  I was glad about that, though I wasn’t in any rush to see her kiss him for real. Not just because it was Steven-Not-Steve, but also because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her kiss my actual own father. How depressing that was, to get old and know that you didn’t even get to do stuff like that anymore! Like you just had to work and pay bills and deal with your house crap and never have any fun. Never have anyone be nice to you.

  “Well . . . good,” I said. “You deserve that stuff. To, you know. Make out with someone nice for a change.”

  “Sean!” She laughed.

  “I just . . . I’ll make more noise, try to knock, from now on.”

  “For the next fourteen days, you mean.”

  “Yeah. After that, you can go crazy.”

  “Wait till I tell Steven you said so!”

  “Do not tell him I said that, Mom.”

  “Oh, I’m just kidding,” she said, smiling a little. “He’s kind of private about that stuff.”

  “Well, who isn’t?” I said.

  “Is Neecie . . . is she your girlfriend or something, honey?”

  I sighed. “Well, no. Not really.”

  “Oh. Did you have a fight or something?”

  I shook my head. “I just didn’t want to stay at the lock-in thing.”

  She kept looking at me, though. “Go have your breakfast, honey. I’ll see you later. Krista’s having us over to the apartment to do the seating plan, okay? Plan to be there around six, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you, Sean.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I said. “I love you too.”

  Outside the front of the school, there were Neecie and Eddie and Ivy, and Neecie saw her own car, because I drove her Blazer back, or maybe she just heard it, being as loud as a fucking 747 like it was, and all three of them looked kind of blown-out and hung-over, which was funny, given that the point of the Senior Lock-In was keep everyone sober and not have any tragedy strike on our Very Special Day.

  They all got in, Neecie in front, Ivy and Eddie in the back, and when I asked where to go, none of them said to the trestle, because nobody gave a shit about trying to drink after staying up all night. So we went to IHOP and ate a bunch of pancakes and bacon and shit, and Ivy was laughing about how she grabbed this one girl’s ass when they were standing in line for popcorn in the movie area, and the girl thought Tristan Reichmeier did it, and then
she cried and Tristan got bitched at by somebody’s mom, and it was so funny but goddamn was Ivy glad neither of her parents ever did shit like volunteer for things like that, because she would have been so embarrassed, so thank fucking god her mom was never around anyway, because she hated her mom, since she was a fucking selfish drunk bitch.

  And I kind of stared at Ivy for the rest of breakfast because I didn’t think I’d ever have one thing in common with her, ever, and I kind of wished I could just say things like that, just balls out, about my dad being a drunk and hating him.

  Eddie paid for the whole breakfast. I think he was trying to impress Ivy, mostly, but it was really nice of him, and I thanked him a whole bunch while the girls were in the bathroom.

  “I’m sorry I hit you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That day in the library. That was shitty. I shouldn’t have.”

  “Why are you saying this, man? That was like a million years ago.”

  “Because. Because I should have said it before. It was pussy not to. And I’m leaving soon, and who knows when I’ll be back.”

  “You’re not gonna get killed in basic training, dumbass,” Eddie said. “It’s not gonna be like Full Metal Jacket or anything.”

  “Has everyone seen that movie besides me?”

  “You haven’t seen it yet? Dude, you have to see it. It’s fucking hilarious. Well, not all of it. But a lot of it.”

  “You and Ivy? You guys should come to Brad’s wedding.”

  Eddie laughed. “Just so you won’t die of boredom?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, kinda. I’m gonna have Neecie come.”

  “Don’t I need an official invitation, though?”

  “What? No.”

  “Dude, you better ask. When my sister got married, my mom was super tight about the invites. Like, I was shocked she let me invite you.”

  “I came with my family, idiot,” I said. “Your family probably got an invite, right?”