Looper

by Michael Conlon

  Rather than go home, I jump on the trampoline while worrying about whether Rocket’s in one piece. JUMP! My head feels light and woozy as my body thrusts high and my eyes hover at the roofline of the Olivehammers’ garage. A bat swoops across my hairline.

  Bounce, booounce, boooounce.

  Flip.

  I land with two feet in the long jump pit. A frontward flip! I’ve never, ever done that before. After making the first one, the rest fall like dominoes. Six more flips, three perfect landings. Even a Soviet judge wouldn’t deny me a perfect Nadia Comaneci-10.

  A faint clap bubbles up from the ground. Rocket crawls out from beneath the flattened tent along with a bag of frozen peas in his hand. His right eye is swollen shut, his left a small slit. He lifts his battered red head and garbles from pufferfish lips: “Gorilla bot me, but I’ll way him back wood.” Translation: Gorilla got me, but I’ll pay him back good.

  “Why did you get into a fight?”

  “I pinched some wooze from Joel Krickstein’s wide.”

  “What’s that got to do with Gorilla?”

  “Joel is his vest fend.”

  I step closer, eyeing his wounded face. “You should be in the hospital. Shouldn’t we wake your mom?”

  “No. Just yelp me put this rent up.” I raise the tent and secure the sides. “I need to well you some …” Before he can finish his sentence, his head falls on the grass. I drag him by the legs into the tent and zip it closed behind me. Goodnight, Rocket.

  I wonder what he wants to tell me, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I rumble toward home in the still-night glow. A katydid chorus sings from a secret hiding place. Katydid … Katydidn’t … Katydid … Katydidn’t … Katy…

  At the edge of my front yard, a figure rushes past me along the hedge. A door bangs closed at the Clark house. Pauley? I tiptoe around the back of the house, entering through the mudroom. Lightbulb beams escape underneath the kitchen door. A rustling sound inside.

  Who’s up at this hour? Fluffy whines inside. Just the freaking cat. The quietest way to open our back door in the middle of the night is to turn the knob until it stops before opening the door. You never turn and open at the same time, or you’ll wake the dead.

  “Hey, Fluffy, knock off the noise, will … Mom?”

  The cat rubs her spine against Virginia’s right shin. A Pall Mall packet lays on the table next to a mountain of ash. “Sit down, Ford.”

  I’m in no mood for Virginia. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for some fresh air.” I wave my hand through smoky Pall Mall air.

  She points to the kitchen table chair. “Ford, take a seat.”

  I make a futile excuse. “Thanks, but I have to get some sleep. Early loop in the wee mornin’.”

  She crosses her legs beneath her long white nightgown and takes another slow drag on a stubby cigarette. “I need to tell you a couple of things.”

  “Do you have to smoke in the house, Virginia?” I don’t need any lecture or self-help spin after tonight.

  “You’re not my mother, Ford.”

  Fluffy whines again, so I open a can of Purina. The cat growls, groping my knees with her paws at the sound of her snack bell. I shuffle the tin across the linoleum floor with my foot. Fluffy pounces.

  “Sit down, will you?” Mom pleads.

  The front door opens and slams. Must be brokenhearted Kate or an early night for Billy. I ask Virginia why she isn’t in bed at this late hour.

  “You know I have terminal insomnia.” She pauses. “I could ask you the same question.”

  “Already told ya.”

  “Listen.” She sighs, flicking ash off her cigarette. “The Olivehammers are moving to Australia for a year … Mr. Olivehammer’s been transferred there for his job.”

  I take two wobbly steps toward the sink, feeling like I might puke, before turning to face Virginia. “Don’t tell me Rocket’s leaving, too?”

  She shakes out a new Pall Mall, tries to ignite it with an empty Bic lighter to no avail. “Shit.” I grab a match from a matchbook with a cover featuring the Village Women’s Club and light Virginia’s cigarette. She inhales nicotine. “Everyone, except for Mrs. Olivehammer.”

  At least Virginia’s closest friend is staying—good for her. I throw the matchbook on the kitchen table. “Why isn’t she going?”

  “She’s decided to look after the house.” Right.

  “Are they getting divorced?” I think of Mrs. Olivehammer’s therapy session with Dr. Clark. Don’t think it worked so well.

  Her voice lowers an octave. “Sometimes couples just need time apart.”

  Parent translation: They’re divorcing. I hear Kate sobbing upstairs in her bedroom, which is right above the kitchen. Theo’s not worth an ounce of tears, Kate.

  An ancient memory bolts through my head: Rocket’s freckly face at the door when I was no more than four, barging his way into my new house, taking off to roam the house like it was his own. “When are they leaving?”

  Virginia hangs her head, staring at the floor like she’s thinking of something besides the Olivehammers’ move to Australia. “Soon.”

  “Why can’t Rocket stay behind with his mom?”

  She shakes her head and taps cigarette ashes into a blue crescent-shaped ashtray. “I’ve already asked, honey. His dad’s making him go, along with Basil.”

  In the land of hopping kangaroos and extinct Tasmanian devils, the seasons are reversed. Rocket will be able to enjoy two summer vacations in a row. Just his good luck. But I’m pretty sure his parents are splitting up, and that isn’t so lucky. Poor Rocket. Perhaps I should say something to him, but what would I say?

  “One more thing.” Virginia blows an O-Ring to Venus, and her eyes seem a million years away. “Sit down, Ford.”

  “There’s more?” I’m losing my only good friend who’s never let me down. What if Rocket’s mom ends up moving to Australia, too? He’ll have no family connection left in the Hills and no reason to return. Who would I hang out with besides Owen? There’s still an outside chance I could throw a Hail Mary and penetrate the Lund Gang. Jason is hip, Jack Lott is mythical, but Rocket’s like a brother to me.

  She pushes out a chair and pats the seat. I sit down and notice a milky wet film to her eyes. The same shade as those tiny square Kodachrome slides she pulls out of the filing cabinet in the laundry room whenever our Ohio relatives visit and starts clicking her way around the humming Carousel projector. Grainy color photos projected on the dining room wall of a young, hopeful Virginia in the late fifties, riding cool in her convertible with her friends while wearing pointed white sunglasses and a red crew neck cardigan. Then toward the end of the Carousel ride down memory lane, a young Clark Gable look-alike in a fancy light-blue sport coat is chasing Billy around in his diaper in the early sixties on the front lawn of the old red-brick ranch on Lincolnshire Lane before the family moved to Dorchester. Pop in his prime, grinning for the camera.

  Virginia clicks her own moist eyelids and snaps me back to reality. She takes one long drag on a Pall Mall cig before detonating a Soviet hydrogen bomb on my world. “We’re selling the house … We can’t afford the real estate taxes.” She extinguishes her cig along with my former life in an ashtray and pops a Tic Tac.

  I want to yell and scream at Virginia, but I know it’s not her fault. No one’s tried harder than her to keep our house boat floating in the Kensington Sea. So I just say to myself, Damnit, Pop.

  I bolt upstairs, slam the door shut, and cry in my bed next to Chimney. After an hour of fitful tossing and turning, I pull out my telescope, point it out the window, and spot nothing in the night sky because of the full moon.

  How am I supposed to survive in this stupid, messed-up world now? After plugging my headphones into my stereo, I turn the volume to high infinity to drown out Kate’s sobs and my own muffled cries. I feel sorry for myself, but more t
han anything I feel awful for that young, awkward, happy smiling lady in the fuzzy Kodachrome images, oblivious to what her future holds. Maybe I could make her happy again by getting that caddy scholarship. At least I’d make her proud.

  “Live and let die,” I say to the room that will soon be someone else’s.

  check up on Rocket’s condition the next afternoon, and the bruising on his face has gone from peach to prune. He tells me what led to his face getting pulverized. He had mouthed off to his dad after Mr. Olivehammer told him he had to move to Australia, but what got him mad was he begged to let me go with them, but his dad had refused. He’d been grounded but snuck out that afternoon to leave me the note to meet him at the party later that night. He’d turned his lights off in his bedroom, stuffed rolled-up blankets under his bed cover, and after his parents had left for dinner at the Sign of the Beefcarver, snuck out into the night. He stole the alcohol from Gorilla’s friend’s car so the two of us could drown our sorrows together on the news we wouldn’t be hanging out with each other for a year.

  I wonder whether Mr. Olivehammer doesn’t want me to go with them, or if he asked Mom or Pop and they’d said hell no. If I’d been asked, I would have had to think real hard because of Cleo and the Evans scholarship, and I wouldn’t tell any of them this, but I think I’d miss my family, too.

  A lunar phase later, I drown Cheerios around an Annie Oakley souvenir breakfast bowl for dinner and try not to think about Rocket moving halfway around the globe. He’d come home next year, trespass through the back door, and find a new family eating at the kitchen table. Probably a new best friend, too.

  Life sucks. Big time.

  A knock comes at the mudroom door. I ignore it—probably one of Kate’s friends to console her from the Theo nuclear fallout—but the pestering raps keep coming. I yank open the door to Gigi Arnold standing in our mudroom.

  “I need to talk to you.” She barges past me and sulks at the kitchen table. I ask her what’s wrong. We know each other well through the country club, but of course she’s Owen’s girl. She pulls a pack of Marlboros from the back pocket of her jeans. “Every-fucking-thing.”

  “Join the club.”

  This garners a slight smile from her. “You, too, huh?”

  “Forget about me.”

  Gigi takes a long, sad drag on her cigarette. Why does everyone mope and smoke in this dreary ugly yellow wallpapered kitchen?

  “You can’t smoke in the house.” Virginia can smell the scent of any foreign brand. “Follow me.” I lead her back through the mudroom and outside onto the patio. Clear sky, brilliant stars. Some people like oceans or lakes or mountain views. I love the night sky. Gigi hands me her Bic lighter, and I light the tip of her cigarette. She passes it to me, and I inhale. Smoke singes my lungs. We sit for a while without saying a thing as Gigi tilts her chin up and blows tiny, misshapen smoke rings at the sky. In another lifetime, Gigi and Virginia would be best buds. “What’s up, Gigi?”

  She taps her nervy foot on the wrought iron table. “My mom ... that’s what’s up. She lost her job at the Gas ’N Go.”

  Below a bright moon, the golden planet Saturn shines down on the patio bricks from the constellation Scorpius.

  “Sorry.” If I grab my telescope, Saturn’s ring might come into focus.

  “We’re being thrown out of our house,” she says casually between blow rings. “And that’s not all.” She shifts her tight jeans on the rubber-lined seat. A Clark cat sneaks between my legs, rubs its torso against my calf before slinking onto the driveway toward home.

  “There’s more?” Didn’t I just have this conversation with Virginia? Perhaps the whole world’s disintegrating, and if they make it out alive, the Iranian hostages will be returning to an arid wasteland of teenage zombies ruined by their parents’ poor decisions.

  Gigi gets up and sits next to me; our knees touch, electricity sparks. “Mom’s threatening to move us in with Bogart.”

  “Bogart? As in the caddy master?”

  She reclines back and exhales to Saturn. “They’ve been kinda seein’ each other.”

  A firefly turns her lamp on and off. Suitors swarm.

  “Jesus, Gigi. Bogart?”

  “Why do you think I hardly have to wait for a loop at the club? I can’t imagine living with him.” She tosses a butt end into the fake charcoal of our gas grill and shakes out another cig. “You know how he looks at me.”

  No, I didn’t quite notice that, but then I remember the comment he made to Owen after we’d passed our honor’s test.

  “What does Owen say?” She should be confiding in her boyfriend.

  “I’m not sure he gives a flying turd.” Her eyes follow a puff of smoke. “Hey, let me ask you something, Ford.” She slides her ass closer to mine. “Can I move in with you guys?”

  Now I know why she’s taken a sudden interest in me. “We don’t have any extra rooms.”

  We night-dream into an ocean of a milky sky for an epoch.

  “Hmm, I know.” Gigi presses her leg against mine. Conjoined twins now. “What if I slept in the basement or bunked in with your sister?”

  Horny fireflies spark, dart, and date.

  “My mom would have a cow, Gigi.” I’m sure the Palms Motel has a vacancy.

  “I thought I’d ask with your house being so big and all.”

  I can smell her fresh lemony scent, and consider for a second how I’d convince Virginia to take on a new guest with a penchant for pouting. I don’t see Kate sharing her bathroom with Gigi. “Sorry, Gigi, but my mom never takes on boarders.”

  Mom’s talked about renting out the basement for extra income. She figured it would have covered half the real estate taxes. But with Pop barely working, she feared the new tenants would leak the news and ruin her upscale reputation with the Hills bridge crowd. I don’t feel like telling Gigi the truth—the Quinns are on their way out of Kensington Hills.

  I ask Gigi where she’s going to live. There’s no way she can live with Bogart, can she? It’d be like opening Dracula’s coffin lid. She shakes her head and tucks a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out some lip gloss, twisting off the top. “Maybe I’ll just move in with my brother.” She wipes glistening gloss across her lips. “At least I could score some weed from him. He’s a total dope fiend.”

  I struggle for something encouraging to say to her. Why don’t you just tell her you won’t have any place to live if Virginia gets her way? Maybe I’ll end up asking her if I can move in with the Bogart Bunch family. “Don’t worry. He can’t be that bad. I’ve never had a beef with Bogart.”

  A smile grows above her lovely dimpled chin. “You’re not so bad, Ford Quinn.” She holds my hand. I hold my breath. She gently pulls me toward her.

  “Gigi, stop.” I push her away.

  She lets out a laugh. “You saved my life for just talking to me tonight. I owe you something now.”

  What’s she mean by “something”? “Owen’s my friend.”

  “He won’t know a thing. I promise.” She lets go of my hand, kissing my cheek instead, and disappears into the night. Two minutes later, a car roars off down the street. I sit for an eternity, contemplating life without Rocket and Gigi fouling up my life at the country club. I wish I was a zillion miles from the Hills.

  Two days later, Virginia gathers us kids around the living room table. Pop’s out somewhere, perhaps Finney’s Pub, the nineteenth hole for the public-course golfing crowd. I stand in front of the huge glass window in the living room, staring out at our patio and backyard. Pop had installed a gas lamp pole when the patio was built years ago, which glows bright all day long, and I wonder if the new owners will keep it. Perhaps they’ll tear out the patio and build a pool. Kate pesters my parents every summer for an in-ground pool.

  What dumb planet has been she living on? They cost a small fortune. Anyw
ay, she can forget that now. Rocket has a hand-drawn map of all the pools within a four-block radius of Dorchester—the Babcocks over on Berkshire were smart enough to invest in an electric pool cover you can’t get operate without a key—and we used it to pool crash any house with newspapers piled high on the porch. I notice a robin sipping from our pedestal bird bath, and then it soars into a tree. Chimney presses her nose against the glass.

  Virginia snaps her fingers in front of my nose to get my attention. “I’m getting a job,” she announces. “Full time at a bank in Detroit.”

  “We’re moving to downtown Detroit?” Kate shrieks.

  “Yeah, Kate,” Billy says, “like Pop would ever move to Detroit.”

  Virginia groans. “Just stop, you two.”

  “You’re going to drive all the way to Detroit every day?” Kate asks.

  “No, I’m taking the bus. It drops me off right in front on the First National Building downtown.”

  “Does this mean we’re not selling the house?” My hopes soar before quickly plummeting.

  “’Fraid not, Ford.”

  Kate scrunches her face. “Where are we going to live?”

  Virginia slowly closes her eyes, bracing for our reaction. “We’ll get an apartment before we find a new house somewhere.”

  Kate screams. “Noooooooooooo … How I am supposed to have any friends over?”

  That sums up the situation, Kate. Geez.

  A full-time job is a huge deal for Virginia. She hasn’t worked at a real one since she was a substitute teacher in my kindergarten class. She quit her Mix-Fare distributorship due to sluggish sales. We’ve housed enough boxes of Mix-Fare chocolate mix and Super-V to feed the entire state of Michigan and clean I-75 from Cheboygan to the Ohio border.