Before You Go (15 page)

Jude squandered most of the next week on the couch, remote in hand, blitzing through the channels. Sometimes he didn’t pause on a single station, just cruised through flashes of light and color, and he’d roll through them all two or three times before resigning himself to some game show or
America’s Funniest Videos.
The idea was not to think or feel, just go dull and dim like a mushroom in the rain. There was a long list of things not to think about.

He sensed, however, a change in his parents; they hovered more, seemed newly solicitous, circling him like moths around a porch light. One early evening, Jude lay on the couch, a blanket pulled up to his chin, mangled bag of chips on the coffee table. His father sat in the leather recliner, leafing through a magazine. But out in the kitchen, his mother banged ominously, rattling dishes, slamming drawers, simmering.

She marched into the television room, just stood there like an announcement nailed to the wall, angry at the television, raging at fate, staring at Jude, then back to the television again. “Jude, I haven’t heard you play your guitar in the longest while.” There was honey in her voice, but poison in her eyes.

Jude didn’t stir. Returned his gaze to the television screen, as if something fascinating was happening there, instead of a commercial for some bank.

“Why not turn that thing off,” she suggested. “Bring out the acoustic, Jude, play some oldies for your mom, Neil Young or something. You know how much I love the Beatles. Remember ‘Blackbird’?”

Jude again made the slow, lazy effort of looking at her, swiveling his head. “I don’t feel like playing right now.”

“Get up and get your guitar,” she snapped with surprising ferocity. “We’ve spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on lessons for you, and I’m not going to sit here and watch you throw it all away. Snap out of it!”

His father put down the magazine. “Honey,” he cautioned.

“No, no, no,” she said. “This boy has got to snap out of it. Jude, get off that couch and play guitar—now.”

“Mom, what’s wrong with you? I said I don’t feel like it. I’ll pay you back if it’s about the money.” Jude threw off the blanket and stood, making to flee.

“He walks!” his mother mocked.

“Why don’t you go back to bed, Mom,” Jude exploded. “It’s better when you’re zonked out.”

“What did you say to me?”

“Joan, Jude, don’t,” Mr. Fox was on his feet now, palms open, beseeching.

She moved swiftly and snatched at Jude, her thin fingers clenched like a bird’s claw on his upper arm.

He turned and glared at her, body coiled, hostile, vibrating.

“You can’t talk to me like that—I’m your mother. You can’t say those things!” she hissed, fingernails squeezing into his skin.

Jude yanked his arm away. He looked at his mother’s red-splotched face, saw the sad crazy panic in her eyes, and he knew he had hurt her badly and simultaneously knew there was nothing he could do to make the pain go away.

Jude leaned in to her, and through gritted teeth said, “You don’t know. You don’t
understand
how I feel.”

She staggered back as if pushed. “Jude,” she whispered, “Don’t you realize? I do … I know so well.”

No, not Lily
, Jude thought.
I’m not going there. This isn’t about her.
He grabbed his iPod off a counter, stalked to the front door, pushed it open hard with a bang.

“Jude!” his father called. “Come back here—I want you to come back right now. Jude!”

*   *   *

And he ran. Barefoot. Ran without hope, without destination … ran to burn off the anger, ran as if he were chased. He started out too fast, puffing hard like a sprinter, churning through the changeless sprawl, the suburban streets named after Civil War generals, Sherman and Grant, Thomas and Meade. Then came the streets with the names of colleges, Princeton and Adelphi, Yale and Amherst. Finally his gait evened out, the strides became long and powerful, his breathing regulated. Becalmed. He stopped for a moment, flicked a thumb across his iPod, found Arcade Fire, and turned it up loud.
You don’t know how it feels
, he thought.
How it feels to be me.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Late that night, Mrs. Fox pushed open the door to Lily’s room, the way fingers might gently probe a flesh wound, and found Jude, arms splayed, asleep on his sister’s bed.

The boy did not stir, and so the mother stepped closer until she saw the heave of his chest, heard the air escape past his parted lips.

Standing there, watching her son sleep, Mrs. Fox seemed to break a little, another one of the heart’s small fractures. She left, vanished into the hall like a whisper, and shut the door behind her. She returned to her own bed to stare at the wall with sand-dry eyes, no tears left to cry, her heart in ruin, thinking, thinking.

When Jude woke, he felt oddly serene. He’d never before slept in Lily’s room, didn’t even remember deciding upon it. He opened his eyes, saw Lily’s things: framed photos, a poster of a cat on a limb with the words
HANG IN THERE
! printed in purple letters, drawings, picture books—
Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar
—a shelf of dolls, and stuffed animals. He stretched, touched the sacred treasures, allowed his fingertips to rest on Lily’s photograph, landing softly on her smiling lips. He pulled open a dresser drawer. Girl colors, lavenders, pinks, and yellows. The clothes were neatly pressed and folded by the loving hand of his mother. Jude lifted out a large, brown folder from the bottom drawer. Bound by an elastic band, it was filled with Lily’s artwork, drawings of cats mostly, with round eyes, pink triangle noses, and three straight whiskers on each side. He sat on the bed, leafing through the pictures one by one. Toward the bottom, Jude found a drawing that took his breath away. Two crude figures standing hand in hand, a yellow sun in the top right corner, a zigzag line of blue grass across the bottom.

Crayoned across the sky:
I LOVE JUDE.

TWENTY-EIGHT

He found breakfast waiting for him on the kitchen table. A green place mat, white bowl, spoon, grapefruit, and folded napkin. A slender glass of orange juice had already been poured, and a box of cereal set out. Jude stood, looking at this, perplexed, when his mother entered the room. She was dressed in baggy clothes, old jeans, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, hair tied back under a scarf. “I hope cereal’s okay,” she said, not quite looking at him.

She turned and left the room, dragging a vacuum cleaner by the hose as if it were a reluctant dog on a leash.

Jude scratched his head, yawned, sat down. He poured himself a bowl of cereal.

His mother returned. “Here’s today’s paper. Those Mets, they’ll break your heart.”

Jude looked up at her in amazement, but again she was gone, off hunting for the furniture polish. They did not speak of last night’s argument. No one apologized, no one sought comfort. It was a new morning. But Jude knew his mother, and knew that she had made a peace offering. He did the only thing he knew how: He ate the breakfast, drank the juice, and piled his dishes neatly into the sink.

*   *   *

Corey had been dead for twenty-seven days, and everyone—Roberto, Lee, Vinnie, even Jude’s parents—agreed that it would be a good idea for Jude to get out of the house, try to have some fun. It was like a huge CIA conspiracy between them, but instead of overthrowing the government, their big goal was to get Jude showered and dressed. Baby steps, baby steps.

“Sounds like a plan,” Jude finally relented. His voice flat, obedient.

So Jude followed his feet, hands at his sides, and went. It was Vinnie’s fault mostly. He was the one who kept after Jude. He talked Jude into going to some big party in Guffy’s woods, where there would be a log to lean on, a small fire, and a loose tribe of teenagers dedicated to the proposition of getting toasted.

The reason for this night’s debauch—as if a reason were needed beyond the ecstatic double whammy of it’s summer and it’s Saturday—was some girl’s seventeenth birthday. Susan something. And so a wide assortment of people Jude knew, and some he didn’t know, were there to ring in the festivities. He arrived by car with Lee and Vinnie, the tragic trio reunited—to celebrate (or lubricate) they downed a six-pack before meeting up with the others—and traveled by foot down a wooded path. As they moved deeper into the underbrush and pines, Jude saw broken glass, tree limbs shot up by air rifles and BB guns, thick ruts made by muddy four-wheelers and hardened in the dirt, remains of old fires, crushed beer cans strewn along the way like so many dead soldiers.

The gathering was monstrous, more than fifty strong, way bigger than Jude had expected, and the sight overwhelmed him at first. Everybody was there. Even under normal circumstances, Jude wasn’t a dive-right-in kind of guy. He gestured to a large fallen tree limb on the periphery. “Go ahead,” he told Vinnie and Lee. “You guys scout ahead. Find out where the beer’s at. Come back with refreshments.”

“You okay?” Vinnie asked.

“Totally,” Jude reassured him.

The party was well under way. Jude leaned against the log and watched the partiers laugh and flirt and howl at the moon. Well, that was mostly Terry O’Duffigan—the Duffmeister—who was already well-oiled. One guy climbed a tree, doing the Tarzan thing, trying to impress somebody, anybody, but old Jane was probably already off in the bushes with bigfoot. No one else seemed to care.

Vinnie came back fifteen minutes later, listing a little to the left, and plopped down beside Jude.
Could he be bombed already?
Jude wondered. Vinnie handed Jude a red cup filled with beer. He slipped an arm around Jude’s shoulders. “I’ve missed you, bud,” Vinnie said, a hint of a slur in his voice. “Where’ve you been? You never come out anymore.”

“I know, I suck,” Jude apologized.

Vinnie surprised Jude by hugging him, squeezing hard. He pulled back, stared at Jude a little bug-eyed, and whispered intensely, “I think about him every day.” Vinnie kept on staring at Jude, waiting for something. “I’m really feeling messed up,” Vinnie confessed, “ever since, you know,” and his eyes rolled back in his head a little.

Jude realized Vinnie was already skunked. “Did you take something?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Did you swallow a pill or something?”

Vinnie’s head lolled a bit, and his eyes focused somewhere six inches to the right of Jude’s forehead. “Less just say I’m feeling no pain tonight,” he confessed.

“Careful,” Jude said, but Vinnie didn’t catch the words.

“You—you,” Vinnie said, suddenly stabbing at Jude’s chest. “He was your best friend. In the world. You guys were like—”

“I know,” Jude said. They drank to Corey’s memory and to friendship and to going to college in another year and getting the hell out of town.

“Partying is such sweet sorrow,” Vinnie said, polishing off the last of his beer. He got up to work the crowd.

“Hey, Stallion,” Jude called after him, “try not to fall into the fire.”

“Oh, dude,” Vinnie said, “I almost forgot. Freakin’ Becka’s here.”

“Shit. She see you?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“She saw you a little bit?” Jude repeated. He couldn’t keep from smiling. “What’s that mean, Stallion?”

“It means I need another beer, my brother,” Vinnie said, standing to full height. He adjusted his belt, burped, and part swaggered, part staggered back into the breach. One arm outstretched, empty cup leading the way.

Jude too needed another beer.

Becka must have gotten invited to the party somehow, obviously, a friend of a friend Jude guessed, and what did it matter, anyway? They weren’t a couple anymore. Still, Jude felt a pang when he first spied her across the clearing, talking with a group of girls. She stood cross-armed, pulling on the skin of her elbows. Listened to someone tell a story, laughed a little. Her presence made Jude uneasy.

He found the keg, jostled with some guys, and there she suddenly was, at his side. “Hey, stranger,” Becka said.

“Hey, yeah, Becka,” Jude greeted. He filled her cup from the hose. “I didn’t realize you knew … um … Susan something.”

“It sounds like you’re the one who doesn’t know her,” Becka replied. There was an edge to her voice, a hint of warning, as if she had sprinkled a handful of tacks on the ground before her feet.

Jude nodded, scanned the crowd. “First time I’ve been out in a while,” he said.

Becka nodded, shifted her feet. She glanced back at her friends. “Look, I—,” she paused, jerking a thumb toward her friends. “You take care, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be around, party’s just getting started,” Jude replied. He leaned in for a moment, almost imperceptibly, as if for a hug or to kiss her on the cheek. Becka turned and twirled away.

“I’ll be around too,” she called over her shoulder. It didn’t sound to Jude at all like an invitation.

Well, that sucked.

Later on, maybe a little drunk now, or maybe kind of a lot, Jude got to talking and laughing with Dani Remson. She looked crazy-beautiful, as usual, her skin smooth and radiant. Dani had dated Corey, briefly, and Jude saw the way she looked at him, the sweet empathy in her eyes,
poor Jude
, and he knew he could have her if he wished.

Dani must have noticed Jude glance in the direction of Becka. “I’m confused,” she said. “You keep looking at her. Are you two, like, still a couple?”

“Were,” Jude said. “It’s over.”

Dani smiled, flashing her perfect teeth. “Good.”

Jude looked around, leaned into Dani. “This party—”

“—is played out,” Dani said. She placed her hand on Jude’s chest. “Maybe … a change of scenery?”

And without another glance back at Becka, or Stallion, or anyone else, Jude left the party with Dani Remson at his side.

That’s the way things go sometimes. You want to hurt somebody—maybe a friend, maybe a stranger, maybe yourself—and, hell, you go and you do it. Some friends you bury, others you leave at parties holding a red plastic cup.

*   *   *