City of Boys (17 page)

—We’ve decided to send Glen away, she finally says. —To a school.

She glances in the side mirror. I roll my window up and
down and stare at the landscape. So quickly have I become accustomed to the gentle hills of the East that this flat stretch of ground surprises me.

—Away? I say. —What kind of school?

—A special school. She glances at me, but I look away quickly, straight ahead. —We have to, she says, changing lanes and driving right into the splat of a bug on the windshield. —Damn, she says, turning on the wipers.

—Have to? I say. She turns the wipers off, but there is still a greenish smear where the bug hit the glass.

—Well, she says, —we can’t, and she pauses, pretending to search for the words they have already decided upon, —control him. He has a problem, she says, glancing at me quickly. —With girls.

I feel the world shrinking, narrowing around me, and I open my window wider. My mother has found her voice again and she goes on.

—He forced himself, she says, pausing to push in the cigarette lighter, —on a girl at school. Get me a cigarette, will you, honey?

She pushes her purse toward me.

—What do you mean? I ask her. I know what she means, but I want to make her say it again. She looks in the mirror, takes the cigarette I offer her.

—We don’t exactly know what happened. The janitor caught them. It was after school one day. In the auditorium. Behind the stage. She waits for me to say something. I roll my window up, down.

—He’s just different, is all I can finally come up with. —I’m sure it wasn’t his fault, I say. I smile reassuringly at her, but I can imagine Glennie smiling secretly at the girl, following her secretly behind the heavy velvet curtains. I have no doubt he did it.

—Oh, honey, my mother says. —You don’t understand. All
he does is eat and sit in his room, or watch your father in the garden. He doesn’t even watch TV. Without you here he’s impossible.

—He’s your responsibility, I say, but my voice is hollow. We both know this is not true.

—Oh, honey. She reaches over to stroke my cheek. It is a gesture left over from a time I don’t remember, a time that may never have actually happened. I let myself feel nothing except the touch of her hand; the smell of smoke clings to her skin and hair and clothing. I will start smoking myself soon, and that sweet compelling presence of smoke will carry my mother with me through all the gestures of my life. We drive the rest of the way in a silence broken only by the occasional drumming of her nails on the wheel and the pop of the cigarette lighter.

Glennie has grown larger in my short absence, so that, rocking on his heels in the yard, he topples backward into the leaves. He sits up suddenly, surprised by this betrayal of his body, and looks at the ground around him as if searching for some ballast to loose. His ankles are puffy and he looks up when I slam the car door.

One night is all I have agreed to spend here, and I lock my door when I go to bed, but Glennie is already in his room, his door closed. I listen all night long for him, but hear nothing, not even the whispers of my parents, or the occasional rustle of a squirrel outside my window. In the morning, I smooth the blankets up over my pillow, and go down to breakfast, eager to show the sleepless circles under my eyes.

—Elizabeth, my mother says, looking at my father, who stares glumly out at his bare, ruined garden, dreaming of summer and spring. —We want you to drive your brother to the school. It’s all arranged.

I feel as if I have come home to find a pet savagely neglected in my absence; all I can think is if only I hadn’t left, and all I can think is if only I hadn’t come back. This is not something I want to see. So much is happening now. Soon I will fall in love. Soon my father will die of a heart attack in his garden, and my mother will turn her face to me at last. Glennie will run away from the school, and I will wait here until he comes. These things will all happen, but for now all that is happening is this: we will drive together to the school. My parents will wave us off from behind their closed door; then they will turn and fall into each other’s arms.

The boy I will love is awakened suddenly by some noise, but when he opens his eyes, there is nothing there. He thinks of what it must be like to touch my breasts, my white legs, and he swoons in a dream of heat and longing, but I do not let him touch me.

The world rushes by us as we drive across the vast, flat waste of the Midwest.

Glennie rubs his lips against the window. —Lizzie, he says.

—I don’t want to go.

—I don’t want you to go either, I say.

—I want to go to school, he says. —Like you.

—You are, Glennie. You are going to school. That’s where we’re going now.

I feel his head turn slowly to face me, but I keep my eyes on the road. He closes his eyes and dreams, his head rocking against the window, and the miles go by like minutes.

—Lizzie, he says, looking up from a book of travel games.

—I’m bored.

A huge truck pulls up on the right and slows. The driver
stares down at us for a moment, then waggles his tongue between his teeth.

—Look, Glennie, I say. —That truck is from California. Why don’t you count license plates? Remember, you used to love to do that.

He gives me a scornful look. —I’m not a baby, he says, and savagely darkens a square on the page of his travel book. I want to ask him why he did it, what was he thinking, who was that girl, and what did he say as he held his hand to her face, his other hand round her neck. I want to ask all this, but already I know that answers are never really answers, they are only more questions. He would only smile sweetly and tell me it was me.

—Lizzie, he says, —I’m hungry. Let’s stop and eat.

He points at signs along the highway, for truck stops or restaurants, and I tell him we have sandwiches in a cooler in the back.

—I don’t want sandwiches, he says. —I hate sandwiches. He throws his book to the floor of the car and turns his face to the window. After a while I hear him whisper to himself:

—Ohio, Indiana, Ohio. His voice flutters against the window, and I keep my eyes on the road, the long strip of black that will take me there and take me back.

Glennie pulls down the sunshield and looks in the mirror that Mother uses to comb her hair. —Lizzie. Look how round my cheeks are.

—Like apples, I say.

He looks again, turns his face from side to side, touches his cheeks. —Do we have any apples? he asks.

—We have sandwiches. And cookies.

—No apples?

—No apples.

—Let’s stop and get some apples, he says. His face bobs at the window, searching for signs to the next exit.

—Glennie, I say, —why don’t you just have a cookie? You don’t even like apples.

He turns on me furiously. —How would
you
know? he says.

—How would you know what I like? You haven’t even been here. I love apples. I
love
them.

These child’s words sound strange in his changing throat. He rocks in his seat and his eyes are as slick as oysters blue and full of tears.

—Look, Glennie, I say. —There’s an exit. We can stop and get some apples.

He does not look at me, but rolls down his window and gazes at the driver of the car we must pass to get into the exit lane. The driver glances over at Glennie and looks quickly in his rearview mirror. When he slows down, we pass and move into the exit lane.

From the store, I can see Glennie blowing against the car window, then drawing sloppy hearts in the steam left by his breath. He does not see me. He breathes against the glass and draws my name, then wipes it off with his moist hand and smiles to himself as I come back with the apples.

As I wait here, it grows chilly and wet. Boys and girls turn off lights, put away books. My roommate wonders for a moment where I am, then turns out the light in our room.

Glennie’s school has tall fences and a guard, who waves us in without stopping to check our forms. Glennie does not look around, but continues to draw thick circles around jumbled words in his travel book. In the office they seem somewhat surprised that I am the only one with him, but they adjust quickly, and reach out to him with kind, efficient
hands. He pulls away and stands by aloofly, watching while we make arrangements. I look up from the papers and his eyes meet mine, unbelieving: surely I am not going to leave him here; surely we can regain all that we have lost.

—This will be fun, I tell him. —You’re going to like it here. He nods, but we both know that this is a place in which nothing can be believed. Boys stand around sullenly, leaning against walls, waiting for someone to claim them, and now he is one of them.

We walk to his room and are left alone for a few minutes. I do not ask him what he was looking for in that girl, but as I say goodbye to him at the door of his blank white room, he turns away from me and says to the thin mesh covering his windows: —I didn’t do anything to that girl, Lizzie. I just missed you.

Walls rise behind him and his hands open and close at his sides like tiny wings.

Driving home from the school, I am for the first time alone; I feel as if I have reached the end of my life, and a new life can now begin. I push Glennie from my world; he is fine, I tell myself, he will be just fine there, and all I will let myself notice from this night are the stars overhead, a sky packed full of them. I close my eyes a moment, and Glennie whispers, —Owlcake, but when I open my eyes, all I can see is a sky full of stars.

When my mother calls, I know something has gone wrong, because it is the only reason she would have to call me.

—Elizabeth, she says, —Glennie’s gone.

—Gone? I repeat. My roommate looks up from her legs, then goes back to spreading lotion along the smooth dark skin.

—From the school. He ran away.

I’ve been waiting for this call, but I don’t want it. I know he will ruin everything, and I would rather spend my life alone, unobstructed by his gaze as he stares past me into a darkness I can only see reflected in his eyes.

The library has closed now, and most of the lights have gone out in most of the buildings, but cars still rush by, on their way to Boston or New York. The drivers pay no attention to me standing here waiting. I have brought all the money I could find, and still I know it’s not enough. When Glennie comes, I want to turn away or hide. I see him across the busy highway, moving closer in his dark jacket and pants. He has grown taller in his short time at the school, taller and thin, and his white face catches the moonlight. Like a raccoon or a possum, he creeps along the side of the road, waiting for a break in the traffic, and his eyes gleam in the rushing lights. He is dressed like a thief, moves like a thief, crosses the road like a thief. Our eyes meet and we both look away, suddenly shy.

—Look, I say. —I brought you some money.

I hold it out and he looks down at it, then glances around the campus, then at me. —Lizzie, he says. —I want to stay here. With you.

He looks around me at the campus, his eyes moving from lighted window to lighted window; I can tell he is wondering which room is mine, what it looks like.

—You can hide me.

He holds his fists balled up tight in the pockets of his thin jacket. —I’d be careful. I could stay in your room.

—I have a roommate, I say. —She’d tell. I make my voice as earnest as possible, but really I am not sure she would much notice him.

Glennie looks around wildly, trying to plan. —Lizzie, he says finally. —There’s no place I can go. You know that.

He stares at me, his eyes the color of a piece of sky on a snowy day, blue then gray then white, light and dark at the same time.

I take him by the shoulders, bony and frail through the cloth of his jacket. I wonder where he got these clothes, who bought them for him.

—Glennie, I say. —You have to go. But listen: I’ll come and get you. When I get out of school, I’ll come and get you.

He looks at me suspiciously. I stuff the money in his pocket and tell him where to catch the bus. I do not want him here another minute.

Awakened by my voice, the boy I love lifts his head a moment, then lays it back down.

—Lizzie, Glennie says. He stares at me, his eyes like scars against the scared lonely white of his face. —I have to stay here.

I am falling in love right now. He is going to get in my way.

—I have to stay here, Glennie says again. He moves past me onto the campus and reaches up to touch the white stone wing of the statue, gazing up at the cracked neck with a thoughtful, considering look, as if he has nothing but time. —You can’t, I say. —I won’t let you. This is my life. I don’t want you here.

He stares at me while I talk, then looks around the campus again. It is a peaceful, sleepy place, with only a few shining lights.

He turns and begins to walk away. I know he won’t go back to the school, and I know he won’t return here. My heartbeat rises and I wonder what it is he sees now, what the cars and
streets and lights look like to him. I turn away, back to my world, but in front of me is only a long blind stretch of black, and I look back at Glennie and call his name.

He stops, waits a beat, then turns around. Even from here I can see the tears that have risen in his eyes, blue the color of the veins on the back of my wrist. Where the head of Winged Victory belongs sits the dead pitted face of the moon. Glennie comes back, his body fitting against mine as though it has always been there, as though all the years have passed for this, and all the motions of our world are like butterflies falling to the ground. As he leans against me, the moon drifts away, under a cover of clouds. If I wait long enough, it will return. I am falling in love right now, and whatever happens, this is what I remember.

My brother David’s new car is a Toyota and it’s all he wants to talk about. Even in the middle of another conversation, he’ll stop abruptly.

—But you know, he’ll say, looking earnestly from my
mother to me and back again, —the Japanese really do make better cars. They really do.

Or he’ll stop chewing a moment and stare down at his plate. —Do you
know
how many miles to the gallon I’m getting? He shakes his head almost unhappily, as though no matter its virtues, his new car can’t make up for all the misery he suffered at the wheel of his previous car, an old yellow Pinto.