I Will Be Okay

by Bill Elenbark

  “Stop it!”

  The laughter continues but I don’t mind, I’m in on the joke this time, and most of the time the women in my family find me hilarious—I mean, who wouldn’t, even Stick thinks I’m funny, that has to be the reason he spends so much time with a skinny freak with bad hair and questionable teeth.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Mom says and heads back to the stove as Titi sets the fish on the counter. I step out behind Nana.

  “Sammy?”

  “Heyyyyy,” he says, kind of slow and dramatic and trying to be cool, or cooler than he is. He said he was coming by, but I forgot in the midst of the sea bass debacle.

  “Hi Sammy,” Mom says and moves over to embrace him. Puerto Ricans love to hug.

  “Hello, Mrs. Tirado.”

  “You like fish?” Mom asks, reaching for the pan.

  “No, stop!” I say. “Sammy’s not insane.” I grab his shirt to pull him away from the kitchen and all the laughing women down the hall through the party up the stairs, as far from the deadly fish as I can get. Sometimes I think it would be nice to live in a normal family.

  Sammy’s dressed in a white soccer T-shirt and oversized shorts that cover most of his legs, which are really hairy—hairier than any guy I know from school and he’s pretty self conscious about it so he doesn’t ever wear shorts but it’s hot as hell outside so I guess he ditched the jeans.

  “Who was that fine Latina in the kitchen?” Sammy’s planted on my bed, made nice and neat today because Mom insisted, once she stopped yelling for me to get ready for the party. “The chick with the fish.”

  “Umm … my aunt?” I say, and I know he means Titi because he’s met my mother a million times and everyone else in the room is way old. And ewww.

  “Yeah, she’s sweet.”

  “That’s sick.”

  My bedroom is smaller than the one at my old house and I shift the clean clothes Mom laid on my chair to the floor. She does my laundry but she refuses to put it away so the clothes end up in loose piles around the room, without a home, mixtures of clean and dirty and sort of clean spread out on the carpeting, and the only way I can tell the difference is the sniff test, which isn’t the best, but I have no time for home organization.

  “Dude, don’t tell me you never thought about it.”

  “She’s my aunt!” I say, a little too loud, and I glance out the window to the back. Nico is outside now, running around beside the fence with our cousins.

  “Is she single?” Sammy says.

  “Get out.” I point to the door, but Sammy’s sprawled out already, legs spread, the air conditioning blasting because of all the people in the house, and Dad’s going to be pissed if it breaks again.

  “I’m just messing,” Sammy says. “You got my brother’s games?”

  I squeeze around Sammy’s legs to close the door to the bedroom so I can open the closet—it’s a tiny room—and I pull out the plastic bag full of Xbox discs Sammy brought over one time and left behind, because his brother had their system down at Rutgers and he couldn’t play them.

  “Thanks, man,” Sammy says. “He’s throwing a party tonight and the only way I’m invited is to take him the games.”

  Sammy doesn’t have an accent, not like his parents, but he doesn’t speak normal—he’s always playing like he’s some kind of rap star who gets all the women instead of a skinny Indian who’s never had a date.

  “Wait—your dad’s letting you go to a college party?”

  Sammy’s playing with his phone, he’s always playing on his phone, half the time you can’t even talk to him because he’s flipping past porn on his screen.

  “Ah hell no, he thinks I’m just visiting, like we’re going to tour the campus library or something. He got no clue.”

  The sound of fireworks crack outside my window, out on the lawn next to the house, and I hear children screaming, hyper screaming, Nico by the smoky remains of a firecracker near the fence, where the grass is worn down into dirt. Dad has another one in his hand and lights the flame in the same place, and one of my cousins runs around in a mad circle behind Nico, like she just did thirty-eight hits of Sour Patch Kids and needs her next fix.

  “I hope they got weed, though,” Sammy says. “I been shy and tripping all week, you know.”

  I shake my head. Sammy smokes a lot of pot, I mean most of my friends do, but I only smoked once in my life and I couldn’t keep it down, I just kept coughing and Trevor kept laughing and Stick held my hand to take the joint away.

  “You want to come? My dad’s driving me,” Sammy says.

  Another set of firecrackers explodes in a flood of smoke, and the kids launch into an instant game of tag across the lawn. I glance at my desk, where Kakashi’s Story is placeheld by a sock.

  “I can’t. No way I can leave the party. And Stick’s supposed to come by later.”

  “How is he?” Sammy says. “Is he okay?”

  I check my phone again, but there’s still no text. I’m not on the phone constantly like Sammy is, or most people are, I mean it’s still a lot but Stick’s never on social media, so I try to resist and I’m starting to lose my shit that he isn’t texting.

  “That stinks about his father. Is he home from the hospital?”

  “What?”

  Sammy doesn’t look up, he’s just scrolling through screens.

  “What do you mean, hospital?”

  “Wait—you don’t know?” I shake my head as Sammy puts his phone away. “Dude, his father had a heart attack last night. There was an ambulance and everything.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah my grandfather was out on one of his roundabouts when he saw an ambulance show up. My pops went over and he said they took Mr. Turner to the hospital.”

  “Oh my god.”

  I reach for my phone and check the five messages I sent to Stick since the kiss to see if they’ve been read. They haven’t.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No. I haven’t heard anything from him. I thought he was at work.”

  “Shit. Yeah, it’s like really bad maybe.”

  “Should I call him?”

  “I don’t know, man,” Sammy says. Always helpful.

  I let the phone ring on speaker, but it goes right to voice mail and I hear Nico screaming outside the window again, Dad and Uncle Willie by the fence with their drinks, the fiery embers of sparklers smoking on the lawn. I don’t know what’s happening.

  “Where did they take him?”

  “JFK? I could see if my dad knows.”

  Sammy texts and I scroll through Stick’s messages, from before we met in the field to watch the fireworks, before the kiss. I feel a brief jolt of relief that what’s going on with his dad kept him from texting, not our kiss, and it’s wrong, I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help it.

  “He won’t reply,” Sammy says. “My dad sucks at texting.” There’s a blast of music from the front of the house, loud booming hip-hop replacing the salsa. “I gotta go anyway, let me ask him.”

  “Thanks,” I say and follow him out of the room.

  The tent out front is filled to the brim with grilling and eating and a whole lot of drinking, the hip-hop so loud I can’t hear Sammy say goodbye. The neighbors’ lawns are as packed as ours now, and several guys are kicking a soccer ball in the street, the Dominican DJ sweating through his shirt as he switches between songs. I fast walk through the side lawn, past the swirls of screaming children, Dad by the fence with Uncle Willie, who tries to say hi and I wouldn’t ever ignore him but I’m in a rush and Stick needs my help. I’m desperate.

  “Mr. Mateo, get your ass back here!” Willie shouts but I round the corner through the fence, pulling my bike out of the shed. According to the mapping app on my phone, there’s a train to Edison that drops you off about three miles from JFK Hospital, so if I can bike to the station then bring it on the train, I can cycle the rest of the way and get there in two hours. Assuming I can take a bike on the train and I have enough cash
for a ticket, which I don’t, I don’t know what I’m thinking, I just need to get my bike from the shed and take it to Stick’s, maybe someone there can tell what’s happening.

  I jerk the bike through the gate, out onto the lawn, pressing hard on the pedals to guide the tires through the grass behind our neighbors’ houses.

  Stick lives in this huge house further up the street, half a dozen bedrooms for over a dozen children, literally, Stick is one of thirteen kids and he always laughs when I bitch about Nico bothering me, he says he never gets time alone.

  I struggle up the hill in the stifling heat and spot their family van pull into the driveway. I pick up the pace on the pedals.

  The Turner clan piles out, first Stick’s brothers and then a couple sisters then Sherry and Aileen – the oldest – climbing out the front. Stick’s the last to emerge, from the back behind Michaela. I don’t see his father.

  I speed up to a sprint despite the hill, the field to the right where we spent last night in the distance and Stick spots me. He looks up and finds me. I start to smile but he drops his head, shaking it back and forth in an exaggerated motion so I stop, heavy on the brakes, a quick flash of pain shooting into my ankle through the shin.

  Stick keeps his head low, following the rest of his family down the driveway toward the house and it’s a little too far to be sure, but I think he’s crying. I see him crying. I stand on the bike, hands tight on the brakes, as he walks up the path with his arm around Michaela. The pain is overwhelming.

  FOUR

  THE LAST FUNERAL I ATTENDED was for my grandfather, and I didn’t want to go. I mean, I knew I had to and I knew it would be miserable, but I was frightened by the thought of seeing his body in the casket. All I could think of were zombies.

  I loved my grandfather—of course I loved him, because you’re supposed to love your grandparents and he was nice to me the once or twice a year that they came down to visit or we went up for Christmas, I just didn’t want to go to the funeral and I didn’t want to see his body, not up close, Grandpop’s hollow face brightly decorated around his cheeks and above his eyes, odd layers of makeup over his skin and I didn’t know where to begin, where to hold my eyes, so I latched onto the casket to steady myself and tried not to think about zombies.

  At the service the priest spoke about a better world, a better place, where we might end up someday if we’re good enough or holy enough to hang out with the angels in the clouds and Jesus, I guess, I zoned out for a bit because church bores me mostly and my mind wanders to Naruto eating ramen at his favorite counter serve because that calms me somehow, and church doesn’t calm me at all. Not that I hate church. I mean I think I should because the Catholic Church pretty much hates us gays, but I don’t mind that much, the new pope seems okay and I like the architecture of the buildings, the dark stained wood along the rafters and the cathedral ceilings, high above us on our hard wooden seats, waiting for the priest to finish. Stick’s head is down, on an aisle near the front, his father’s body in the casket up on the chancel, like he’s on a stage. It’s devastating.

  They reserved the first eight rows for Stick’s family members, his brothers and sisters and older siblings’ spouses and children, even his mother is here, dressed in black and sobbing noticeably, but sequestered on the other side, away from the family. We had the viewing first and that was even worse, seeing Stick’s father’s body up close, the makeup on his face not as extreme as my grandfather but just as unsettling—he’s a big man and it’s a big casket and when I saw Stick on the receiving line, I hugged him close and felt him cry.

  We haven’t talked much, which I understand—his father died of a massive heart attack—but it’s been hard, not hearing from him, and when we talk it seems like his whole world is ending. I don’t know what to say, and Mom says it’s good to just be there for him but it’s hard to even listen, to watch his face deflate, it feels a piece of me gets ripped apart every time we speak.

  I glance over again, across the packed pews between Janice and Michaela, Stick alternating between propping them up and holding on for life. Mom’s holding onto my leg and I’m glad that she’s here with me but she’s been smothering, more than her usual smothering, asking if Stick needs anything and what’s happening at their house and whether she should bring over a casserole—like her cooking could possibly help the situation. I’m wearing my gray wool suit, my only suit, too tight in the legs and too short in the arms and inappropriate for summer but Mom said it was fine, she wasn’t about buying me a new one. Dad came to the viewing but left before the service and the only good thing to come out of all of this is that I missed a day of baseball camp.

  I see Stick’s face fall into his hands, and I shouldn’t be staring, or I shouldn’t keep staring, I don’t want him to freak if he happens to notice but I want him to notice. After everything. The priest is going full sermon now, the same repeated verses and the same boring speeches to explain the verses but this is a bigger church than ours in Woodbridge, not that I’ve attended enough to even remember where ours is located—the last time we went was on Easter and we got there so late there weren’t any seats so we had to stand in an alcove just off the entrance, too far to hear what the priest was saying. Like Jesus would have wanted, I’m sure.

  Sammy’s up front with his grandparents and we were talking at the viewing—I mean it’s so shocking, I just saw him, Stick’s father, vacuuming the pool at the side of their house. The line for the viewing stretched out the door and wrapped through the parking lot all the way into the street, all the teachers and students who knew someone from the Turner clan showing up to pay their respects. I saw Staci for a brief fleeting moment, but I didn’t talk to her and I don’t think Stick did either. They dated in the spring, but he said he didn’t like her and then we kissed as the fireworks exploded over Woodbridge High. The priest mercifully exits the stage.

  The church empties with the family first, from the front, so it’s Stick’s mom, gasping, led down the aisle by some other old lady and a younger guy—I wonder if that’s the guy she left Stick’s dad for because she’s still with him, and my mom asks about it when she passes—she doesn’t know the full story so I just nod and mouth “later.” Stick is the second youngest of the thirteen children and most of them are adopted, all the ones closest to his age, but he’s the natural born “mistake” that kept the marriage together until his mom cheated on his dad and Stick hasn’t forgiven her since.

  His face is blocked by the crowd in the aisle, so he doesn’t see me as he passes, holding hands with Michaela. I know it’s selfish to think about right now, but my mind keeps wandering to the field between our houses and our kiss. And what to say to him now. After everything.

  The older siblings are receiving the guests with handshakes and forced smiles and Stick is standing next to Janice and Michaela, out on the sticky asphalt where the hearse is parked. I tell Mom I’ll meet her at the car and head straight to him.

  “Hey.”

  His face drops when he sees me. “Hey.”

  “Hi Mateo,” Janice says, pulling me in for a hug, which feels strange, we’ve never hugged before, but she holds me close, like I want to do with Stick. “Thank you for coming.”

  Janice is shorter than me, with the same olive skin as my family, her curly black hair tied up behind her head.

  “It’s good to see you,” she says. She rolls her S’s in the corners of her mouth when she speaks.

  “Thanks. How—” I look over to Stick but his head is low so I turn back to his sister. “How’s he holding up?”

  “He’s able to understand words now,” Stick says, almost like he’s joking but he doesn’t smile. His suit is wrinkled from sitting in the pews and his tie is askew, half unknotted.

  “He’s still a jerk,” Janice says, without edge, slinging an arm through his arm to pull him closer. She’s pregnant but not quite showing and Stick is pissed that she’s moving out of the house. “He’s struggling. We all are.”

  I nod to
acknowledge Stick’s brothers—David, Marcus, Anthony, and Jarrett, and say hi to Michaela. Jarrett graduated in the spring and he’s going to college up in Maine, but the other brothers are kind of a waste, they sit around getting high all the time and Stick doesn’t hang out with them anymore. He says it was different when they were younger, when all of his siblings lived in the house, this big crazy family of multiple races that he spent all his time with.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. He doesn’t respond.

  The sun is bright so I need to squint and Stick’s hair is slicked down at the side, a style he must save for formal occasions, but the ends are so shaggy that it’s sticking up in the back, slick wet with jagged edges trying to break free. Janice thanks some other guests as they move past us. I find Stick’s blue eyes.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say because I don’t know what to say and he won’t look at me. I feel the sweat on my neck from inside my suit.

  “Yeah,” he says. No one can hear us.

  “I’m here if you need me.”

  It sounds stupid when I say it out loud—it’s like something an adult would say, not me. But I mean it.

  “Yeah,” he says. His eyes are cloudy like he’s been crying. All week maybe. I didn’t know Stick’s father well, we had like three actual conversations in my life but once I saw Stick at the viewing and as soon as I saw his body—cold and still and deflated, the same size as a human being but flat somehow, like a tire slowly leaking but the air already escaped. I close my eyes and it’s all I can see.

  “I just mean, you know like—it doesn’t matter—” I forget how to speak so I’m just spurting words and I don’t know what to do with my hands. I think I should hold him—if it weren’t for the kiss I would reach out and touch him, but I don’t want to scare him. “No matter what, you know—if you just want to talk or whatever, I’m here.”

  I’ve been working out what to say all week, alone with Stick if I could see him like this, to let him know the kiss was just a thing, it doesn’t have to mean anything. I memorized some words but I forget them now and it doesn’t matter anymore. He grabs hold of my hand.