Fingerless Gloves (15 page)

Silence overtook us for a few long moments. Not the kind of silence that sits between sentences, or the kind of silence that indicates Streets Anderson is thinking really hard about something. It wasn’t the kind of silence that made you anticipate what was coming next. This silence was manufactured by the labor of years…a remnant of some time when my hair was more full, and had just a few less gray strands. A time when I had this high-school free pass to wear fitted hats…absolutely any fitted hat. People would write the gaudy logos off as youth being young. Now, I was working a job, not a career, but a job. I pretended it was a career, but I was only tricking the poor storyteller residing in my head. You build careers and you work jobs. “Beth Fallow was the career I could have had,” says the voice in my head speaking without a filter, trying to make sense of things. Despite this reasoning, on that night, I knew my career choices were still ahead of me. There was a sense that what I was doing was teaching me something…teaching me to be humble…teaching me that I might never have as much as my parents. It’s difficult to not get caught up in certain thoughts.

The Hitch was starting to get old and the view started to feel exhausted. Ironically, there’s only so much serene beauty you can take in one sitting. “You feel like going somewhere else, or do you want to head home?” I asked.

Beth slowly turned to me with heavy eyes and before she said anything…I knew what her answer was going to be. She asked, “Go somewhere else? I think I’m okay with going home. I’m between buzzed and intoxicated and fuzzy weird. I wish that bottle was either more or less full so I could tilt in a more certain direction. Fuck it all. Time to go I guess.”

As my car shifted into reverse, the Hitch seemed to not want us to stay. It was expelling us back into the night. The black sky, the scantily-lit bridge, the handfuls of buildings in the city were all squeezing the very last out of the evening, knowing full well the light that was about to break through. The view had grown stale, and we had polluted the grounds after Beth threw the empty bottle of vodka out the window. It thudded in the dirt, scraping against rocks as it found a place to settle. We had probably disturbed the sleeping patterns of countless species of animals. In a few hours, maybe two, Beth’s father would begrudgingly wake up. He was a very regimented man - always up early, always the same walk to get the paper, the same way he took his coffee and the same bran muffin for breakfast. He had a handful of work outfits…and barring a recent shopping spree, over the years I think I had seen them all. I never matched him, in appearance or routine. He always jarringly woke me up when I slept on the couch. He emptied the dishwasher, knocking glasses together and shifting silverware. He was this constant…necessary to solve any and all equations, but never changing actual form. I started to wonder if, when he was a much younger man, he had ever stayed out until five in the morning with a girl. I wondered if he had ever done drugs or drank until his cheeks were numb. Was he a partier, a loner, into music, into sports? He never mentioned any of it. I wondered if the man had ever wanted to be a great painter or an expert auto mechanic.

We drove away from the Hitch silently just the mechanical sounds of the car kept us from total awkwardness. Beth had her knees held up against her chest as I watched the abandoned hospital fade away in the rear-view mirror. I had said something wrong…maybe about sharing the bottle, maybe something else. I think that I always say something wrong…to Beth, to anyone. There was still no use in trying to get inside her head and I figured it was best to let her keep to herself. In all the years I’d known her, I never tried to think like her…never tried to put myself in her shoes…I was content to just let her be. No need for a 4am fight or some big blowup. We’d had enough of those already. We didn’t have colleges to go back to anymore. If we fought, there was no escaping it. We were stuck.

James Squire had sex for the first time when we were in 10th grade. The girl, who will remain nameless, had not yet had her reputation tarnished. She would go on in the annals of high school history to become notoriously easy. Her defiled youth, perhaps hinging on other people talking about her eventual exploits, would begin with my best friend. After high school abruptly ended, she went away to college, only to drop out after three semesters. The last any of my friends/acquaintances heard about her, she was living somewhere unfamiliar out in the Midwest, maybe with some guy she met, maybe not. Stories circulated about how she had four kids, each in a different state…moving town to town living out of the full trunk of a minivan. You can choose to believe these things… I’m not sure I believe anything.

Back in 10th grade, boys still had to work to get the attention of this girl. She hadn’t figured out the power that comes with female sexuality. When James made his move, it had to be perfect. She wasn’t, and would never go on to be, James’ girlfriend or close friend. In fact, I can’t remember her being around our group of friends at all in high school. She was nice enough to me, always saying hello in the hallways and making small talk between classes. I hardly saw her outside of school. I knew, even back then, that she was into James. It was obvious simply because, when you’re that young, you haven’t yet learned to hide or mask certain things. Girls, when they’re 16 and into you, look at you differently… like you’re life is syndicated on national television and you’re always saying something terribly, terribly important.

It was a Friday afternoon, and James and I were at our lockers packing up weekend homework and enjoying the last few moments of school before two straight days off. There was this look on his face. Without me asking him anything, he volunteered the details of the night he had planned. Upon gaining prior knowledge of his parents leaving for some dinner or party or some other social occasion, he had managed to rent some horror movies and hide a bottle of his dad’s bourbon in their downstairs coat closet. I don’t think he had any expectations except some blood and gore and achieving some dizzying level of drunk. He never mentioned anything about the girl…if he found her attractive…if he had intentions for her. We didn’t engage in any traditional hallway guyspeak.

I didn’t hear from James the rest of that night. I sat home and snacked on the pizza my mom ordered until I realized the grease was congealing into small orange ovals on top of the cheese. Speaking of gore, the small white plastic table in the middle of the pizza was covered in tomato sauce. I played video games…some shooters, some baseball…I watched some sleazy late night cable. Without much fanfare, I went to bed…never once thinking that my best friend, along this same timeline, was swiping and being the swipee of a gigantic, laminated V-card. Sexual careers are built on moments like that…they define countless bedroom futures. I’ve always been of the opinion that sex and how it’s built up, taught, and eventually first performed has the potential to make or break all future intimacy. The girl, nondescript, would apparently go on to infamously sleep with an inordinate number of guys. James Squire, for all I knew based on what he told me, would remain discerning.

Fumbling in the dark on a couch covered in microwave popcorn, with screen-screams blocking out heavy breathing, the night must have become most epic. Then again, it wasn’t really something James and I ever talked about. Some things, fair enough to say, cannot be described in detail, even to best friends. Some situations go unspoken simply because they’re too weird, confusing…too personal.

I wondered, in the moments before Beth Fallow got out of my car, whether James was sleeping, in a coma, awake, walking around the hospital. I wondered, whatever state he was in, if he was thinking about that girl, and the bourbon, and the bad horror movies.

After that intimate night, James and her spoke on and off for about two months. Things just sort of faded away. I don’t think they ever made it a second time…and before we all knew it, reputations were in place and things were changing. We were older, with more at stake.

Beth Fallow’s house was still as dark as it was when I picked her up. I pulled up to the curb and slowed the Escape to a stop. My window was down and the smell of night air, clean as suburban air gets, wafted into the car, sticking its particles to my cloth interior. There was a moment I could tell Beth didn’t want to step back through the early autumn cool. I pushed up on the power lock switch and the doors made a grinding sound, then opened. I’d been neglecting those power door locks for months. I thought to myself that I should finally get around to bringing the car to the shop. Beth got out without saying anything. She sort of stumbled, then caught her footing at the last moment. She turned back around and motioned for me to open up the passenger’s side window. The power window slid down evenly as Beth pressed her face back into the car…

”I just want you to know” she started, “That you should probably quit smoking pot. You’re going to end up fat and unpleasant. I’m not sure you know what you’re doing…or if you’re doing anything at all…so you smoke…and it’s what you’ve done since I’ve known you. But it’s aging you. Let me know how James is when you talk to him tomorrow.”

I didn’t have a chance to say anything before her face was pulled back and out of the window. She was sort of zig-zagging back up her driveway… starting back towards her house. I missed Beth Fallow and the select few nights we spent in the same bed together. I missed the way she slept in her underwear, the way she rolled over and curled up half next to me and half on top of me.

That night, when she left, she sounded like an “Above the Influence” commercial. She was too pretty to be cast in something as plebeian as a television commercial…Beth Fallow was built for feature films and it’s a shame I didn’t realize it sooner. I could have yelled back to her…tried to find the right words to set things right. In fact, one of my signature moves, usually after a good date, was to call girls back to the car as they were walking away. This wasn’t for any self-centered or pompous reason…just because it took me that long to think about what I actually wanted to say. The thought crossed my mind to call Beth back, to tell her some epic thing, to reassure her that I could be fixed…that we could be fixed. Instead, as the clock ticked away 4:30am to hand me 4:31am, I let her go. I watched each tipsy step she took up that walkway and I waited for her to unlock her door and get inside her house safe. It was the same way I had waited for years.

The night Beth Fallow cheated on me, no one was there with me… to make sure I was okay. I was at home and James was at school. Beth told me via phone call. That November I was reeling from a class load and the life of a pathetic commuter. I used to wander around campus, admiring the people who dormed at my tiny college. Whenever Beth called, if I was on campus, I took the phone call outside those dorms. That night I had a late class… 6:30-9pm. She called later, around 9:30. I was still hanging around on campus so I headed towards the bridge overlooking the center quad and the library, tucked between the two dorm buildings. No one bothered me there. No one went there to smoke cigarettes or make out. No one hid from campus security there. It was, perhaps, the only secluded place left on our campus… and ironically, it was right in the center of everything. That’s where I was the night I found out. I was listening to her justify and explain things, her voice crackling and the cell phone removing any hints of empathy. As I watched the dead campus, with the last few students either going back to their rooms or their cars, I tried to listen. I did my best to comprehend her story, her internal struggles, the fact that we were over. There were no stragglers outside of the library. No couples struggling to get home from the bar. No security vans driving around wasting gas. In fact, other than her voice, I could have sworn I heard the air moving, in and out of the dorms, spying on students studying, interrupting video games, having a say in arguments.

After she was done explaining her infidelity to me over the phone, needless to say I got that weird feeling, like a sinkhole was slowly opening up inside my chest. It was the feeling of a piano falling from the back of my throat right down to my feet. I wanted to reach out and do something, anything…but all I could do was brace for the impending impact. There was a weight building in me, like someone was constructing a brand new gym right behind my spine. It was a weight that would not be lifted easily. I replay that night in my head often. I wonder if it would have been different had we been home and together…if we talked about it face-to-face. I wondered if, on weekends, she missed me driving her around and making her laugh…if she missed the sleepovers we’d have, the house parties we’d attend, the movies, the sex-iling of her roommates when I’d come to visit. On the worst night of my life, just after 4:30am, Beth Fallow basically told me to lay off the drugs, then left me to the darkness on the other side of her front door. I waited for silence, or at least partial silence over the idling of the Escape. I began to pull away from her house.