Now Nava clicks pause on the show. “Fucking Laleh,” she says, shaking her head. “Your mom is the worst. Can I just say that?”
No, Amir thinks. But he doesn’t say it.
Carly’s mom takes Carly and Britt to Dylan’s Candy Bar, down the street from Bloomingdale’s, as an after-school treat.
“Get whatever you want, okay? Anything, sweetie.”
Britt knows this is how adults talk to you after a thing happens, like them being nice to you will make it all better. It doesn’t. But, candy. So. She shrugs and pockets the two twenties Carly’s mom gives her, and she walks toward the penny candy bins on the first floor. She loads up on sour belts and sour cherries and sour peaches and pink gummy bears. As Carly runs around giving Britt updates on where she’s going next—“C’mon! Let’s hit the Jelly Bellys! We can get unicorn gummy kabobs!”—Britt silently but intently gets a little bit of everything she loves.
Then she sees the tiny, colorful, tinfoil-wrapped chocolate bottles that look like the bottles Dad has in the big cabinet in the living room. One is gold and reads JIM BEAM. Another is reddish orange and reads COINTREAU.
How funny would it be … ? she thinks.
The cashier, though, doesn’t find it so funny.
“Yeah, you can’t even close to buy these,” the girl says. She’s a few years older than Tillie was, maybe, before she died. “There’s alcohol in there.”
“Oh,” says Britt, and she pays for the rest.
Then, before she goes to meet Carly and her mom at the front door, she detours back to where the tinfoil bottles were. She takes three Jim Beams and one Cointreau and she stuffs them in her down jacket pocket when no one’s looking.
She’s pretty surprised when the security lady stops her as she and Carly and her mom get to the door.
“Excuse me, please. Will you empty your jacket pockets, please?”
Aaron calls Dr. Laudner’s office after school and says he can’t make it in. He leaves a message.
Why bother with a doctor? He feels great! Better than great! Pretty sure talk therapy isn’t needed anymore, thanks!
Instead, he goes to Riverside Park and he stands on the green benches, facing the field of dust and grass where he used to play tag with his friends back in third grade, and the West Side Highway, and beyond that, the frigid Hudson, where … What a difference less than a week makes! He thinks of the falling girl, of Tillie, and then he shakes his head—no. No time for those feelings right now. He throws his jacket down and allows the chilly breeze to raise the light blond hairs that are beginning to appear on his arm. He’s got a whisper of approaching manhood there, of the fur he’ll have, like his dad. He wishes his dad were here, that he could see him more confident, could see the new, improved, becoming-a-man Aaron, and he stands on the bench and belts “In My Corner” at the top of his lungs, over the highway noise, the barking dogs, the screaming kids in the enclosed playground down about a hundred feet. He half hopes someone will ask him what he’s doing so he can say, I’m practicing. For the studio tomorrow. This is going to be a huge hit. Just you wait. You’ll want to remember this moment. It’s okay that no one asks, but he kinds of wishes they would.
Back home, he makes dinner for his dad, which is not something he generally does, but he decides to experiment a little with an amuse-bouche and microwave a couple of French bread pizzas. He gives his dad the one with mushrooms because ew.
“So what is all this?” Dad asks when Aaron meets him at the door with a napkin tucked into his shirt. He put it there because it was his best way of approximating a maître d’.
“Bonjour, monsieur!” he says. “Velcome to Chez Boroff!”
His dad laughs and shakes his head. “We gotta lower your dose, dude,” he says. “By the way, did you skip your appointment? Got a call from your doctor.”
“Had to stay after school,” Aaron says, and Michael is about to launch into a whole thing about priorities and how nothing is more important right now than getting better, but then he sees his son and the look in his eye, that expression he gets when he’s playing, which he hasn’t seen in a while. So he gives Aaron a hug and Aaron resists hugging him so tight that he’d almost lift him, although he wants to, in a way. Instead, he says, “Put down ze briefcase. Ze dinner ees thees way.”
“Your accent,” his dad says. “It’s like being in Paris. Paris, Texas.”
“Ah, oui,” Aaron says. “J’aime les cowboys.”
His dad cackles. “Oh boy,” he says, but he follows Aaron to the dinner table.
“For ze first course, ve have what is called, ze French onion zoup.”
His dad looks down. In a bowl, Aaron has heated up a half a can of onion soup. On top of it, he’s put a slice of American cheese, which is all they had. It floats uncertainly, like a half-melted impostor afraid of being made.
“You are too much,” his dad says, and he laughs, and Aaron is glad because, yeah, it’s meant as a joke and for a moment there he thought maybe he misfired but now he sees how fucking funny this is. And his dad laughs more and their mirth trips over each other until they both sit and try to eat their not-so-French soups.
“So what, exactly, is going on, kiddo?” his dad says. “You are so extremely different in just about a day or two. Have you talked to Laudner about this shift in your mood? Should I be worried?”
“Worried? About me being happy? Yeah, probably not. I feel great, Dad. I feel like I’m becoming—”
Aaron feels tears behind his eyes and he gulps down some air, trying to steady himself. So many emotions. He loves them and fears them because he can’t hardly keep them in.
“What?” his dad asks. “What are you becoming?”
“A man,” Aaron says, and his voice squeaks on the word man, which makes them both laugh some more, and the conversation just goes like that, and Aaron, who was thinking about telling his dad about Darrell, decides he’ll tell him later. After.
It’ll be something to celebrate.
Winnie feels utterly beat down and humiliated when Carly’s mom delivers Britt.
Patti is nothing but nice. The fucking bitch. Try having a dead daughter and an AWOL husband and now, apparently, a thief. She’s doing the best she can, and all she wants to do is wipe that simpering smile off Patti’s face.
“It’s to be expected,” Patti says as Britt hightails it to her room, and Winnie nods and averts her eyes, not because she’s going to cry, but because she’s going to fucking scream.
“Thanks. She’s never—”
“She’s acting out,” Patti says. “You know what you should do? Have a spa day. Why don’t I stay for a bit and the girls can—”
“Please just leave,” Winnie says as the first tear falls. Better than the scream it’s holding back.
“Of course,” Patti says. “Call. Anytime. Really, Winn.”
Winnie nods, and when Patti leaves, Winnie counts to twenty and then groans like she’s going through childbirth again. She groans and she rests her head against the wall and she thinks maybe Tillie had it right. Because she sure as hell doesn’t want to be here right now, either.
She collects herself and knocks on Britt’s door and enters before her daughter can answer.
Britt’s lying in bed, eating sour belts. She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t say she’s sorry. She just lies there, like nothing’s happening.
Winnie sees it again, just more clearly this time. Who Britt is a little bit like. And it scares the fucking shit out of her.
CHAPTER 8A: APRIL 26
When Aaron wakes up on Friday, he has the beginning of a rap in his head.
He’s not a rapper. In fact, when he raps it out loud, it sounds totally wrong. Like a (relatively) privileged white kid co-opting someone else’s culture, which is what he is. And it’s too bad, because he has a whole story in his mind about being the first gay, white rapper—is that true? He’ll have to google it, but he’s certainly never heard of one. The first mainstream, famous one, maybe.
&nbs
p; So maybe this isn’t for him, but more like a featured rap in “Can’t Forget Your Smile,” like between the chorus and the third verse, or, like, the song doesn’t actually have a bridge—some of his do, this one doesn’t—so maybe this is the bridge, and he sees it as it would be written on Spotify: Aaron B. Feat. X, where X is the rapper’s name, and who from school could he ask? Vonte Mendoza? It would be so cool to be the kind of person who offers fame to someone else; that would be awesome. And no, he’s not sure how I am who I am relates to “Can’t Forget Your Smile,” but there has to be an angle; there’s always an angle.
There’s a knock on the door.
“You up? Getting ready for school?”
“Yes and yes!” yells Aaron.
“Good. I wanna talk to you before you go, okay? Can you come out here? Like now, or in five?”
“In five,” Aaron says, and he gets up, looks in the mirror at his body. He’s never been to the gym but what he has is thin and tight and maybe he should start working out? He flexes his muscles and nothing jumps out but maybe it does a bit. Just a little gym time and he’d look even better, and Darrell, would Darrell like him more if he—wait. Darrell might like him exactly as he is. He did say hi on the street after all, and he might not even be gay but he might be, and that part of the intrigue just makes today almost unbearably exciting, and he shimmies his hips in the mirror and smiles and tries to imagine an album cover with Aaron Boroff’s face on it.
Aaron’s dad is waiting for him when he pokes his head out the door.
“It’s been ten,” his dad says.
“Sorry.”
“Did you even shower yet?”
“Been busy with other stuff.”
“Aaron … I was going to say something last night, but you had that whole dinner thing planned. I’m a little concerned about what I see.”
“What? Why? I just went from depressed to not in, like, three minutes. You should be thrilled. I’m thrilled, obviously. I feel like I’ve been reborn into this new person and I have plans for the world, I actually have plans, and you know? I’ve never had plans before, I—do you think it’s possible that I was meant to be famous? For my music. I mean, would that be okay? I wouldn’t change. If I were famous I wouldn’t treat you any different, it would not change our thing at all. I’d just be Aaron-but-famous.”
“What? What are you—so this is hard for me, but you know I’m always real with you, right?”
Aaron stares. His chest feels tight, and he feels coiled up and ready to attack.
His father goes on. “I’m concerned that you’re manic. I see all this energy—and in general, energy is a good thing. But this feels extreme. To me it does. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Aaron looks at his dad like he’s never seen him before.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Aaron!”
“Are you fucking kidding? I almost jumped off a bridge last week. You should be, like, celebrating. I’m celebrating, Dad. Because I don’t feel like jumping off a bridge for once in my goddamn fucking life. There are people—like this one girl I know, she didn’t know how to feel like this, so she jumped. I don’t want that. So maybe you can stop shitting on my good mood and celebrate with me?”
“Aaron,” his dad says.
“I mean. I’m trying new things. Is that a crime? Would you rather me mope around like I was doing for all my life?”
“I—no. I want you to be happy.”
“Which I am! You should have seen me at school yesterday. I have friends, Dad! Did you know that? I’ve never actually had friends, because I’m a fucking drag to be around, let alone be. So now I’m being new. Different.”
“I see that, I just—”
“Maybe don’t interrupt?” Aaron says it and looks away. He meant it like don’t interrupt my good mood, but it sounds like he’s saying his dad interrupted him while he was speaking, which is assholish and not like him. But he’s on a roll, and he’s not going to stop now.
“Yeah,” he adds. “Yeah.”
His dad looks punched. Like punched in the chest, maybe. His face would be comical if it weren’t his dad, his closest everything. Instead it’s just, like, sad. That his dad is caught up in the cross fire of something he couldn’t even possibly understand. He doesn’t even know about Darrell. The music. He wants to surprise his dad, and he doesn’t want him to worry. It just seems smarter that way.
“So. I’m gonna, you know, go off now. To school. And you. Don’t worry so much. Maybe it’s a boomerang thing. And I know I’m different. But different is good because same was almost terminal. Got it?”
His dad nods, speechless.
As soon as Aaron leaves, his father makes a phone call that has him feeling right on the edge of a cliff.
“He’s manic. He’s absolutely, definitely manic.”
“So what do you want to do?” Morris asks.
“I don’t know. This is so much fucking easier when it’s someone else’s kid.”
“Is there any way I can support you?”
“No, I’m good. I just need to get off my ass and call his doctor. He’s not right. I know it.”
“Make it happen,” Morris says.
“I will.”
As Aaron walks south on Broadway to the subway, passing the outdoor fruit market of the Westside Market with its bright red tomatoes and the orangest of tangelos, passing all the specialty shops with high-end shaving accoutrements and French patisserie and luxury fragrance—imagine a whole store that sells air! Maybe he could become an oxygen mogul?—Aaron feels oddly dirty, unshowered. He feels like he’s been awake thirty hours straight and this plaintive voice in his head is screaming for his daddy and his mommy and he pushes it down, away, because no. He’s this person now, he doesn’t need anything, anyone. He just needs—this. His burgeoning célébrité, his face on billboards, his arrival at school with an entourage, maybe, Evan Hanson fawning over him. He giggles, walking, and covers his mouth with his hands like people are watching. They aren’t, but soon they will be.
He takes the subway south instead of north, feeling dangerously free and on the precipice of something—just you wait, just you wait—he hears it in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s voice, as Hamilton. History has its eyes on him, oh boy, oh boy, and for some reason he thinks of his mother, and that day in Central Park, fifth-grade baseball. He rolls his eyes because—stupid memory.
His dad couldn’t make it, and she was going to be there. And there was this moment the night before, when she kissed him good night, that it was like he knew she didn’t want to come. That he wasn’t worth watching, and he wanted to say to her that it was okay. That she didn’t have to, that he knew he was terrible at baseball. But he didn’t, and then the next day, he sat on the bench, and he saw Manny Sanchez’s mom, and Corey’s dad, and Yanni’s moms. All of the kids’ parents, so far as he could tell. But his mom didn’t show, and he totally didn’t care. Not even a bit. He didn’t feel numb in his chest and he didn’t think, I’m all alone and no one cares. Because he was a burden and anyway he was just sitting his skinny butt on a frigid metal bench, chattering his twig legs like a loser. In short, he was no one special, and it didn’t matter, anyway.
The subway screeches into the Fiftieth Street station, and everyone is New Yorking. The college-aged kid sitting there playing some game on his phone. The Orthodox Jew reading his Hebrew newspaper. The older Black lady twisting worry beads around her fingers while staring into space.
No one sees anything. No one looks. And he’s had enough. Enough of that. He sees people. He says hello on the street now. He’s worth others looking back at and he cannot wait hardly a second more until the world realizes that it should see Aaron Boroff. That he is worthy of a look.
And then Aaron is standing in front of the building: 430 W. Forty-Fourth Street. It’s an orange-brick brownstone next to the Actors Studio. It doesn’t look like a recording studio, and momentarily Aaron feels a twinge of something sour waft through
his gut. And then he realizes: Of course. He said it was a home studio.
He climbs the steps to the entrance and peruses the buzzers. None say Clancy. Darrell Clancy. He’s thought about that name a lot since two days ago, and he knows it’s the right name because of Facebook.
He texts Darrell.
He waits for the bubble to appear that shows Darrell is typing.
It does appear, and more bubbles form … in Aaron’s throat and esophagus.
Then the bubble goes away.
Aaron resists the urge to repeat the text or send question marks. Patience, he tells himself.
He tells himself that again after a minute. Again after two. Then four. The sour feeling comes back.
No bubble this time.
Darrell has never not responded before. Not once.
Aaron sits on the steps and stares at his phone. It’s 11:36 a.m. on a Friday, he’s playing hooky, and he’s in front of an address in Hell’s Kitchen. Darrell is not responding. How long does he wait? He thinks this and then he laughs because where else does he have to be? He’ll wait here forever if he has to.
There’s no backup plan. They are recording the song today. It’s more than his hopes that are up. His entire everything is hooked into this happening.
It has to.
But 11:36 becomes 12:12. There’s no response. He calls the number and it goes straight to voice mail, like the way a call goes to voice mail when someone rejects the call. He goes back to texting.
Nothing.
He zips up his down jacket and squeezes his gloved hands into the poofy pockets. He thinks of the day his mom came in and told him.
He was sitting on the floor doing a puzzle. What eight-year-old does puzzles alone on their floor? Ones like Aaron. His mother came in. She was wearing skinny jeans. They were fundamentally not mommyish. He knew that even then. He saw it and it registered but he didn’t know why, or how, it mattered. But it did.
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