And Sons (53 page)

J
AMIE PROMISED HER THAT HE WAS FINE
.

It was morning and he and Alice were in bed and she was staring at his face as if his eye and lip were a brutal scene from an otherwise sweet movie.

“Seriously, I’m okay,” he said, “just hungover.”

He had sneaked into her apartment late last night, after putting his father to bed and rehashing the evening with his brother, often with laughter, which was nice, until the effect no longer sustained the cause and the question of Dad was unavoidable. What to do about him? Call a doctor? Hire a nurse? Become—egads—dutiful sons? The laughter likely resumed when I poked in and gave them a goodbye wave. Why? I have no idea.

“It looks worse than it is,” he told her.

Jamie had crawled into bed with ninja stealth, timing his moves against Alice’s snores. The sheets came to his chin without a break in her breathing, which confirmed his ability to ease through the world undetected. But then she shifted and draped an arm over his chest, murmuring, “You’re here,” followed by a tired yet happy sigh. Jamie tightened, like a net trawling through the sea and sweeping up another poor unfortunate. Those looks of hope and confusion.
Please
and
No
and
Help
trying to squeeze through reticular gaps. Jamie closed his eyes. We are all trapped, he thought, and only those closest to freedom can understand the futility of escape. It was a decent line and he wanted to remember it, but by morning it was gone.

“Really, I’m fine,” he told Alice.

That’s when Alice noticed the tooth—or lack of tooth—and gasped.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said.

“Look at you.”

“I haven’t been to a dentist in a long time, it was probably rotten.”

“So the guy did you a favor?”

“I think he did.”

Alice probed her own front teeth as if confirming via contrast.

“Seriously, I’m fine,” he said.

“You got attacked.”

“I got hit. Twice.”

“For no reason?”

“I don’t know. Who knows? It happens. It’s still a dangerous city.”

“Were they drunk? Are we talking bar fight?”

“Just a him, and it was a random, on-the-street,
boom-boom
kind of thing.”

“Did he rob you?”

Jamie tried channeling patience. “Nope.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Nope.”

“You should call the police. They should know about this.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“They would want to know about this, for their records.”

“No they wouldn’t.” Jamie could hear his tone splinter. The post-injury giddiness had gone blunt, and he could glimpse himself through the advertising: love me, so I can have some power; care about me, so I can break your heart. Normally this is where he reached for the rolling papers. And if weed proved useless, he would start to thumb through newspapers for the latest upheaval and think about calling his buddies at Magnum Photo and add more vertical feet to his unwatchable monster. People, good and bad, naturally liked Jamie, and Jamie hated them for that. But Alice didn’t deserve this. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“About what?”

“My mood.”

“I have no problem with your mood. I’m just worried about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know, I know, you’re fine, you’re great.”

“I’ll get a fake tooth.”

“It’s not about that. You’re just so blasé.”

“What can I do about it now?”

“I don’t know,” Alice said, “acknowledge that you got hurt.”

“I hereby acknowledge that I, Jamie Dyer, got hurt. I also got drunk.”

“No need to be a jerk.”

“Now you’re blaming the victim.”

Alice aggressively moved to the other side of the bed.

“That was a joke,” Jamie said.

“Hilarious.”

“Look, I had a weird night.”

“You could have called me.”

“What?”

“After you got beaten up.”

“I wasn’t … You were at work.”

“So?”

“I’ve never seen a waitress take a phone call.”

“What, are we like surgeons? You could have left a message. A text. I can leave if it’s an emergency.”

“It wasn’t a fucking emergency, Alice. I didn’t need you.” Jamie clenched his jaw and could feel Ed Carne slugging him all over again, the taste of blood seeping through. Alice, sweet naked Alice, his almost girlfriend Alice, she was simply asking for the minimum when waking up next to a swollen eye and a missing tooth, wanted to see her concern registered on his face, while Jamie was prepared to end the relationship, projecting years of misery within a single human need.

“I’m sorry,” he tried.

“Don’t be.”

“But I am.”

“I prefer the honesty,” Alice said, swinging her legs over the side. Her bare back was pale and freckled, the ridge of her vertebrae hinting at those mysterious animal beginnings. “One day, when I’m older, like in twenty years, I’m going to think back on myself as being so young here, so young, my God I was young, but right now I feel really old.”

Alice got up, resigned to whatever she was resigned to, but definitely resigned. Or resolved. The sight of her naked gave Jamie a terrible ache and added another complicating kink: no matter how familiar, her body always seemed newly hatched.

“Hey, sexy,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m just saying you look good.”

She balled up her eyes. “I’m taking a shower.” She went into the bathroom, closed the door, and soon showery sounds came from within, water snapping against the map-of-the-world shower curtain, changing tones as Alice moved across its flow, tilting her head, running her hands through her hair, the sound sliding down her skin like light projected on a screen—Jamie could picture this as clearly as if he were standing in the bathroom himself watching her through translucent oceans.

“Fucking idiot,” he said out loud.

He was doing her no favors by staying; in fact, he was doing her harm. Best put on the Dyer crown and disappear and let her avoid the creeping doubt and inevitable bitterness, the slow poisoning of the well until her pleasant existence became as tainted and barren as his own. Alice deserved better. She was probably realizing this as she watched the water drain. Pants, shirt, shoes, and Jamie thought he should leave a note, nothing serious but perhaps an ushering toward the future.
Sorry, maybe I’m more upset than I’m letting on, I’ll call later
. Instead of trying to find a pen and a piece of paper and suffering through his hateful man-child cursive, Jamie went to her computer. He would email her. The computer awoke onto a website for an acting class: Jonathan Ray & the Art of the One Person Show. Alice in another acting class, perfecting another monologue. The endless endeavor. But he supposed nothing could keep the end from being hard. We’re all trapped. The joint in his pocket tried to comfort him with a suggestion of a walk along the Hudson and maybe see that excellent tumbledown pier, a thing of beauty rather than a thing of ruin, and maybe he could continue all the way down to Battery Park, to where the post-traumatic skyline was being stitched. Jamie was in Jerusalem when all of that
happened, waiting for random bombs while shacking up with an Israeli reporter, her name long gone but her backside memorable. He watched the whole thing on her television, shocked and envious, the envy worse than the shock. And when Hadara, or maybe Hadasa, when she got home from work and found him drunk on two bottles of Gamla red, she asked him, sounding unexpectedly sexy, “How are you?”

Within a few clicks he navigated through YouTube to the video for
12:01
P.M
.
It presently had 5,356,389 views, about the size of a large city, he thought. The municipality of Sylvia Carne. It was strange to think of that number as a collection of individuals, to think of himself in terms of that basic math. Determined now, he hit play. It started with the title superimposed over a vegetable stand, a few seconds later a voice, his voice, off camera, asking the question, and Sylvia stepped into frame and commenced with answering, day after day after day, in the garden, at lunch, on a walk—
I’m fine
—Jamie watching beyond nervous and scared—
I’m okay, thanks
—his insides huddling like a boy about to be discovered, listening to those voices grow closer, wanting to be discovered so that the fear could end—
Good, and you?
—Sylvia hiking in the mountains, Sylvia with her dogs, with her daughters and husband, Sylvia painting—
Hanging in there
—Sylvia by Jamie’s side, folding against him and forming into a memory of Sylvia, then Weston, when they had broken into the Exeter library after curfew—
Pretty good, thanks
—and climbed up to the Latin seminar room on the fourth floor and thrilled by their epic boldness started to fool around on top of the Harkness table—
Not bad, and you?
—their fingers tracing the seams, their youth embracing clothes as an essential part of the process, as heady as skin, jean grinding jean, the buttons and zippers and clasps, the constriction versus the slow release—
I’m doing okay, and you
?—Jamie and Sylvia by then familiar with fucking and fucking in just about every nook available, reckless with their fucking, notorious for their fucking, the faculty displeased with all their fucking like they were a gateway drug, a corrupting influence—
Good, thanks
—on the student body, Jamie lowering Sylvia onto the table and kissing her asterisk-like belly button and edging down her jeans, every inch a mile-long journey, occasionally glancing up and pretending to be in
class, “I thought the scene where they boned in the classroom was quite excellent,” which made Sylvia cover her face—
I’m all right, really
—her fluid beauty filling whatever volume you needed filled—
Okay, how about you?
—those eyes, even toward the end and particularly in the beginning, like when he first saw her crossing Front Street and she smiled, those eyes seemed bottomless—
Pretty good
—like you were a smooth stone forever sinking, and Jamie smiled at her in return—
Fine
—and for weeks looked for her in assemblies and on sports fields, in halls and quads, everywhere and anywhere—
I am well
—and when he did see her he drew her in with a series of half glances that he defined as love since up till then love had no definition—
Can’t complain—
and pure hard attraction equaled fate—
I’m good, and you?
—as they found each other more often—
Hanging in there
—and no longer parted after hello but lingered, shoulders bumping, hands playing games of Indian wrestle, until a Saturday dance rolled around and when Supertramp played they ran outside and stumbled into the nearest shadow—
All is good
—and morphed from sculpted marble into messy flesh—
I’m okay, thanks
—and over the next few months transformed into couple, an exotic intermediary form of adult, in other words they fucked, which leads us back to the seminar room and the Harkness table and Jamie on top of Sylvia, pants around ankles, shirts pushed up, the two of them connected by the savory middle
—I’m good, I’m good
—when they heard the chatty approach of campus security, who preferred company to efficiency, and Jamie and Sylvia rolled to the floor and hustled under the table—
Just fine, thanks
—and crouched sweaty and unfastened and petrified, as the door to the neighboring seminar room opened, Jamie and Sylvia staring at their own door and the epic mistake of coming here, the pure stupidity, the definite suspension from school and very possible expulsion and likely wrecked future, and Jamie said, “We could run,” and Sylvia whispered, “Shhhhh,” and their door did its inevitable creak and the overhead fluorescents flickered on and two sets of comfortable shoes stepped in—
No complaints really—
these four legs seeming to stand there forever—
Plugging along
—Jamie battling intense crazy insane holy shit panic—
Okay
—while Sylvia held him calm by smiling and shrugging and being impish and cute with
her eyes until one of the pairs of shoes came over—
Terrific, thanks—
and picked up something from the table and tossed it in the trash
—I’m basically good
—before leaving—
Ça va bien
—Jamie and Sylvia staying still for another half hour before regaining a modicum of nerve and getting up, drained and sore, Jamie going over to the trash—
I’m okay—
and removing the foil wrapper for a condom, the two of them forever unsure if their escape was determined by luck or charity or institutional laziness—
Not bad
—though charity seemed the more likely cause and made for the better story.