by Sean Boling
Chapter Six
The sun was low on the eastern horizon and the wind had yet to pick up when I went out the next morning to see if Blaine and his family were preparing to launch. The boat was hitched to the massive SUV that the mom drove. The garage was open, and from my vantage several front yards away, I could faintly hear some activity in the garage. Soon Blaine and his dad emerged on each end of a cooler they hustled starboard. They hoisted it up onto the edge of the boat, and Blaine hopped up on board to guide it in the rest of the way. He saw me and waved, as did his dad upon turning around to see what Blaine was waving at. They beckoned and I gestured “one minute”.
I ducked back into the house to call upstairs for my parents, but they were already dressed and in the kitchen with coffee brewing. Twelve-packs of light beer and diet soda were on the counter ready to be brought over as gestures of gratitude. They saw my look of surprise and grinned.
“Wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Mom cracked.
They also saw the look of surprise on Blaine’s dad’s face as we approached, and Dad whispered to me before we were within earshot, “Are you sure we were invited?”
“That’s what Blaine said,” I muttered, and glared at Blaine as he came out of the garage to join his dad in continuing to prepare for the trip. His dad rebounded and acted like nothing was wrong by the time we reached their driveway, and I realized I should probably do the same, though I wanted so badly to call Blaine on his oversight and ask him why he was so determined not to invite Miggy that he would fabricate an invitation to my parents on the spot and not be interested enough in covering his tracks to follow through on it.
The best I could manage when it came to concealing my anger was to stare really hard at things out the window from our seats in the absolute rear of the hulking vehicle and pretend to be concentrating on them, and then imagine my ire was still stuck on those things when I had no choice but to look at Blaine and remain as straight-faced as possible. He did briefly seem to suspect that something was amiss, as he asked me at one point during the drive to the lake if everything was okay. But my reply that everything was fine was apparently all he needed to convince himself that everything indeed was okay, if he really cared to begin with, and he went back to talking about himself.
Thankfully, most of Blaine’s attempts at conversation were drowned out by the talk between the two dads in the front seats, even though we seemed to be dozens of yards away from them. My dad’s background as an investigator and the self-promotion that characterized Yuri/Steve worked in tandem to create a steady, shallow stream of words, the only depth coming from the baritone of their voices. Everything was bluster and deflection; Dad would ask him about the engine and Blaine’s dad would say that it was the equivalent of a long haul truck, and then talk about the truck engine because that’s apparently what he knew more about. Dad would ask him how he knew so much about trucks, and Blaine’s dad would say that he had a business that required a lot of items to be shipped via truck, and proceed to talk about the shipping industry, and how wise other businesses would be to emulate their model. Dad would ask him what his business was that required all that shipping, and Blaine’s dad would say that he no longer had the business and talk about how stifling the regulations and taxes were and how difficult it was to keep a business open, any business, and compare the business climate in the United States to that of Albania, and suggest ways that America could benefit from Albanian practices. Dad would ask him how he knew so much about Albania, and Blaine’s dad would say that he once had a business partner from Albania, and proceed to talk about the time he and this business partner ordered really great steaks at this place in Fresno…and on it went as we sped across the crusty basin, the dads getting louder, my dad occasionally interjecting some arbitrary fact regarding the subject Blaine’s dad was currently lecturing about, neither one really listening to what the other was saying, listening instead for a pause to fill with something they knew that would add to their word count.
The moms, meanwhile, occupied the seats immediately behind the dads and engaged in an interrogation and evasion of their own, but in shorter bursts at lower volume. My mom was a bit more blunt in her efforts to uncover the financial situation faced by Blaine’s family, her background in mining paper for information rather than people revealing itself clearly as she would ask Blaine’s mom about her handbag or her sunglasses, and dive right into a follow-up question about its price tag; if Blaine’s mom actually quoted a price, Mom would marvel at how successful they must be to afford it; and if Blaine’s mom remained cagey about the cost, Mom would praise her reticence, and observe that the people most comfortable with their success felt no need to flaunt it. Considering Blaine’s mom had spent an intense portion of the previous night berating her husband for dishonesty, I was hoping she would crack and scream that it was all built on a foundation of sand, but her smile held tight.
There was still one more bank of seats between us and the adults, which remained vacant since we were going to stop in High School Town to pick up Kelsey and her boyfriend. The town became visible in the distance several miles before we reached it, like a holy city in a desert thousands of years ago. The closer we drew, the further the resemblance faded: no walls surrounding it, no bazaar, no prophets shouting out their visions; just a couple hundred homes, the newer ones looking as though they were built in a matter of days, the older ones looking as though they may be torn down in a matter of days, many of them with brand new pick-up trucks and SUVs parked in front like some sort of consolation prize everyone gave to themselves. There was a shopping center with a box store and grocery franchise anchoring it, the parking lot practically empty at this hour on a Sunday, and a couple blocks’ worth of downtown store fronts, half of which were vacant with “For Lease” signs in the darkened windows.
We didn’t drive past the high school, which was disappointing because I had never seen it before. But when we pulled in front of Kelsey’s boyfriend’s house, I noticed some light standards rising above the houses a few blocks away, and I assumed they surrounded the football field. I thought about asking if we could swing by the campus on our way out of town, but as Kelsey and her boyfriend slouched out of the house, I could imagine their eye rolls and condescending snorts and decided against it.
Everyone else seemed afraid to say anything, too, as the couple took their seat and Kelsey wrapped herself around her boyfriend, barely getting the words “hi” out of her mouth while her boyfriend gave a “what’s up” nod to nobody in particular. After a few brief attempts by Blaine’s mom at obtaining some information about what had been happening at school and what was to come, the vehicle became quiet the rest of the way to the lake, as if the verdict of a beautiful young woman matters most in judging one’s self-worth.
Our traveling party finally spoke up to help guide the boat into the water, shouting directions to Blaine’s dad as he backed it down the ramp, telling each other to watch our steps as we boarded the vessel, and making sure out loud that everything and everyone was “okay”.
Everything was okay, it turned out, and we were all okay, and actually feeling pretty good about ourselves, since we all had a chance to give orders or follow them accurately, and ask questions or answer them correctly. Then we hit the open water and the engine noise and wind prevented any detailed conversation; the adults could shout accurate observations about what a beautiful day it was and how beautiful the water was, while Blaine and I could stick our heads into the spray and hands into the water, and Kelsey could hunch next to her boyfriend and they could take turns running their fingertips over each other’s palms and forearms. Everyone could do something easy, that they couldn’t screw up, at high speed on the water under a clear sky. It felt great.
We had to stop eventually. Since it was a manmade lake created by flooding a valley, there were no beaches or flat shorelines aside from the marina, just the steep grades of the hillsides that once stood even taller. So when it was deemed time to pause and snack
, socialize, perhaps save some gas, Blaine’s dad simply cut the engine upon arriving in a heavily-wooded cove and we drifted in silence for several moments, the lack of any noise at all leaving us a bit stunned. A slight breeze broke the spell, animating the lightest branches of the pine trees that climbed the banks rising above us, around us, and someone said “how pretty.”
It was Blaine’s mom. Her statement was true enough, but also served as an introduction to take drink orders from the cooler and open bags of snack foods to pass around. As we settled into eating and drinking and admiring the surroundings, every so often one of the adults would remind us all that it was great to be there, or that the day was so relaxing, or they would just take a deep breath and exhale in a long, contented sigh, until my mom decided it was time to converse rather than comment.
“So how did you two meet?” she said in the direction of Blaine’s parents.
They looked at each other and seemed to agree that it was a wife question.
“In Las Vegas,” she replied, which prompted a playful “ooh” from my mom, chuckles from the dads, and a trip to the platform on top of the bow for Kelsey and her boyfriend, who wanted nothing to do with anything that involved other people.
“It’s not like that,” Blaine’s mom continued in sporting fashion. “It’s quite dull, actually. I was at a training seminar for the bank I worked for, and he was at some New Business Expo. A friend of mine knew someone at the expo and said she could get us into one of their parties, and well…there he was.”
She looked slyly over at her husband, who played along with a shrug of false modesty. I wondered if this was the moment in which they were making up after their fight from the previous night, or if they were that adept at acting like nothing was wrong.
I glanced at the bow and watched Kelsey strip down to a bikini. She was very good at undressing. I suspected that even when she was alone, she would arch her back melodramatically while pulling off her shirt and bend over with her legs straight while pulling down her shorts, because it was so rehearsed. I still wanted to have sex with her in the worst way, but now felt like I wanted to have sex with her and then tell her afterwards that she wasn’t so hot. This was of course even more implausible than ever having sex with her in the first place. I had no doubt that if it somehow happened, I would be begging for more before we were even finished.
My parents, meanwhile, were contributing their own Las Vegas story.
“Was that convention at The Hilton?” Dad asked.
“The business expo was,” Blaine’s dad answered.
“That place is huge,” Dad said.
“We got lost there,” Mom added. “We walked around that big convention center area looking for our insurance retreat, asked for directions and everything. It was like trying to find an address. Half of it wasn’t even being used.”
“I took a nap on a bench in one of the empty ballrooms I was getting so tired,” Dad said.
“You couldn’t have been that tired,” Mom quipped, and they shared an inside moment.
Blaine’s dad picked up on it. “We did something like that at the Moscone Center in San Francisco,” he said. “But we were behind a curtain in our booth with hundreds of people walking by.”
The moms cackled, while Blaine and I shared an inside moment of our own, deciding it was time for a swim. We shed our clothes down to our bathing suits about fifty times faster than Kelsey had, and dove in practically in unison. As we resurfaced, our parents teased us about being prudes.
“Yeah right,” Blaine muttered to me as we treaded water. “Who doesn’t like to hear stories of their parents having sex?”
I laughed and swallowed some water, which made Blaine laugh. As soon as we caught our breath, we established a race course and some rules and started our competition. Even though I knew Kelsey wasn’t watching, I fought extra hard to finish first, in case one of the parents asked us who won. However, as was usually the case when going up against Blaine in anything, I lost. But I consoled myself with a reminder that for Kelsey to care about the results, she would have to hear them in the first place, which would require her to listen to somebody other than her boyfriend. Which reminded me…
“Has Kelsey’s boyfriend said anything today?” I asked Blaine as we leisurely swam towards the boat backwards, jellyfish-style.
He snickered. “Has that guy ever said anything?”
I felt even better about Kelsey not being attracted to me. I took some time to pay closer attention to the hills and the trees, and to feel the water flowing past my body, which was pulsing with a satisfying exhaustion after our race. I found it all so much more beautiful than before, now that no one was telling me how beautiful it was.
We reached the boat and rested our arms over the stern on opposite sides of the motor. Our parents’ conversation had turned from sex to money. And assuming the tales of public quickies had been true, they were being far less honest with each other about money.
“We’ll probably end up selling before too long” Blaine’s mom was saying.
“Part of being an entrepreneur is never being satisfied,” chimed in the dad.
“You’ll be selling at quite a loss, though,” said Dad.
“You win some, you lose some,” the dad replied. “That’s the other part of being an entrepreneur.”
“We’re going to stay and hope the value goes back up,” Mom said, never glancing at Dad to see if the plan was to lie.
“We’re not kidding ourselves,” Dad picked right up on her story. “We know it’s never going to get back to where it was.”
Only then did they look at each other with brave, sad glances. “But we’re happy where we are,” Dad continued. “So I’m sure we’ll be around long enough to get it close.”
I couldn’t see Blaine’s expression since the motor separated us. That was my only chance to see if he understood what was going on as well as I did, at least when it came to his parents, for I couldn’t imagine talking to him about it in the first place, much less getting an honest answer from him.
He was rather quiet on the way home. Of course, so was everybody. It had been a long day, people were tired. But the expressions I saw in the reflections in the windows and in the rear-view mirrors were not contemplative, but brooding. The eyes were not looking back at a fulfilling day, but looking forward, and what they saw worried them. Even Blaine was missing the smugness that usually marked his moments of silence.
When we dropped off Kelsey at her boyfriend’s house and she leaned back into the car with a forced, brief smile to accompany her forced, brief “thank you” before they melted back into the house, Blaine murmured “It must be nice” as he watched them go.
“What must be nice?” I said, matching his low volume.
“Having such a clear head.”
I breathed a short laugh through my nose, taking his joke at face value, but wondered as we drove toward the sunset if I should read it as a cue to discover more about what he knew as soon as the chance presented itself. We weren’t going to be neighbors much longer. Maybe an honest discussion about our circumstances would deepen what was turning out to be a shallow friendship that, as it stood, was going to end once we were no longer down the street from one another.
We said good night and I looked for another signal from him. My mom reminded me to “say thank you to Blaine’s parents” as though I was five years old again, and Blaine just smiled at me, trying not to laugh. I smiled back at him and dutifully did as I was told. I would have to conduct my search some other time.