Hairstyles of the Damned (31 page)

I had never seen the man cry, except the one time at his own dad’s funeral, and that one was so quick I was never sure if I remembered it the right way or not. My dad looked down at his folded hands, nodded, wiped his eyes, and then stood, putting out his arms like he wanted me to hug him, so I did, starting to cry a little too, I guess, and I put my face against his shoulder which smelled like Tootsie Rolls, and he sucked back some tears and said, “I’ve got to leave you guys, Brian, I’m so sorry,” and I said, “I know, Dad,” really crying hard for some reason, and then he said, “Please, I don’t want you guys to hate me,” and I said, “I could never hate you, Dad,” and he said, “I just can’t be here anymore,” and I said, “I know, Dad, I get it,” and he said, “I won’t be here tonight when you get back,” and I nodded and he patted me on the shoulder, then sat back down on the couch, staring down at his hands. I ran like hell up the stairs and out into the night, my hands shaking.

I didn’t end up going to the show. Nick and I just drove around all night, which was really nice of him. We didn’t talk, we just drove around listening to Naked Raygun, which Nick had started getting into because they were from Chicago. Them and, well, Big Black, who were more techno-sounding because they had a drum machine instead of a drummer.

When I finally came home, my dad’s car was gone and he wasn’t down on the couch and the house was very, very quiet, and I thought about calling up Gretchen to tell her what happened, but it was still real weird between us because of the make out session and everything, and so instead I put in the mix-tape she had made me, the one about her mom dying, Carol, and I listened to that over and over, and even though I was only listening to punk now and the tape, well, it was mostly sissy kind of Smiths songs, I ended up rewinding that side all night anyway.

fourteen

Resurrection Cemetery on Roberts Road was supposed to be haunted too. There was this story about a traveling salesman who was driving past one night and this young girl in a white slip came out of the dark and he almost ran her down with his car and he pulled over and saw she was only wearing a slip and kind of noticed she looked like she had been robbed or raped or whatever, and he asked her for her name and she said it was Mary and she kind of reminded the traveling salesmen of his daughter, and he asked her if he could drive her home, and she got in, and he dug into the backseat and put this shawl around her shoulders, which was his daughter’s, and he like drove her home, and she thanked him and began to hand the shawl back to him, and he said,
No, it’s all right
, and she ran up to this house and disappeared inside, and you know the whole ghost-story thing, he went back the next day to see if she was all right and the mother answered the door and said the girl, Mary, had died like five years before, on the exact same night, but Nick, who told me the story, didn’t know what night it was exactly.

We took his car, the green 1985 Caprice, over to the cemetery at like midnight on this weeknight—because my dad was really gone now and my mom, well, she would begin talking to me and all I would hear was this silence, the kind of totally complete death-like silence that had been running between her and my dad already, and at home I felt like I was really invisible, maybe because I wanted it that way, so I had started doing whatever the fuck I pleased and I had decided I would stay out as late as I wanted, even during the week—so we parked in the forest preserve about a half-mile away and walked over and stood before the wide, iron cemetery gates that simply said RESURRECTION, and there along one of the gates was the spot where supposedly Mary’s hand had forced it open, because there was a kind of indentation like the shape of someone’s hand, though I wasn’t really convinced, and Nick and I started walking inside and I started hoping there were such things as ghosts because it would kind of give me hope, knowing some people got second chances or that the end wasn’t the end or that resurrection could really happen and you could go through the worst of it and come out something else—changed somehow, untouchable, invulnerable—because I was like a ghost now, or that’s how I had been feeling anyway, and it made me happy to believe there was somehow maybe some other chance for me.

fifteen

In the few minutes before fifth period, like two weeks before senior prom, Bobby B. got expelled for putting this other kid in the hospital because he hit the kid in the head with a baseball bat and the kid lost, like, vision in one of his eyes and it would be, like, permanently damaged for the rest of his life and everything. I felt let down for some reason. It was totally fucking unbelievable to me. One day Bobby B. was strutting down the hallway of Brother Rice, flipping off the Holy Brothers behind their backs, smoking in the bathroom, getting high after lunch, copying test answers off of the weaker kids around him, spitting in the water fountains, pissing in the bathroom sinks, taking the freshman class’ lunch money, ditching sixth period to go hang out in the school parking lot to rev up his van and crank “Dream On” by Aerosmith on its stereo, greasing his hair down to hide under the back of his collar, selling dope to the juniors, making obscene tongue gestures at Miss Lannon while she was writing a new Spanish word on the blackboard, shooting milk out his nose in the cafeteria, and giving me the devil sign in the hallway. I mean, like, one day he was my friend, and the next day I saw Coach Alberts, who used to play college football, a big, big man with a square chin and shiny silver whistle around his neck, shoving Bobby B. down the hallway by his neck. It was right before fifth period and classes were changing and Bobby B. tried to knock Coach Alberts’s hand off his neck, but the coach was just too big and he kept shoving Bobby B. down the hall toward the dean’s office, and I looked up and saw him and he rolled his eyes and kind of shook his head, as if to say,
Dude, I have no clue why they’re hassling me now,
but by then everybody pretty much knew what happened the night before—the upperclassmen anyways—and so a lot of people had just been waiting to see what the school administration would do and this was it. Expulsion. Like two weeks before his senior year was going to end. That was it.

OK, what happened was this: The night before, a Thursday night, some dudes from Brother Rice, our school, and this other Catholic boy’s school, Mt. Carmel, were supposed to fight these other kids from the rich, preppy boy’s school, Marist. I didn’t even know why for sure, really, but it had something to do with some kid, Derek Duane, this baseball player–type jock from our school, getting the fuck beat out of him by two Marist kids the weekend before at some stupid prep party in the suburbs. I mean, it was all pretty sketchy why all these meatheads and stoners decided to fight each other, I guess. I mean, most of them were seniors and about to graduate like in two weeks. Who the fuck really cared? But Gretchen had heard about it from Kim and Bobby B. had told me himself during school, just saying, “There is going to be a serious ass-beating tonight at Oak Lawn Park. Bring a tire iron or something,” and I nodded, having no idea what the fuck he meant really, but I walked up there by myself and saw Gretchen, all alone, sitting on the hood of her car and I sucked in a breath, trying to, like, smile and not seem all awkward and nervous, and then I went up and stood beside her, not saying anything, just watching to see what would happen, I guess. She was wearing a blue jean jacket and her boots and a plaid skirt and she was looking really cute and I almost started off by saying that and I got flustered and walked up and waved instead.

“What’s up?” I said, nodding in her direction like eight hundred times.

“What’s up?” she asked back, her cheeks kind of going red.

She wouldn’t look me in the eyes and I was feeling nervous and so I said, “Oh, you know, nothing.”

“Cool,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah.”

“Yep,” I said. I kind of kicked the tire of her car and started to say, “Gretchen, about the other day—” when she cut me off.

“Please, just fucking stop talking about it.”

“But, I mean …”

“Duh. It was stupid. Just don’t say another word about it or I’ll fucking lose my shit. Seriously.”

“OK,” I said. “No problem. But if you do want to talk about it …”

“No,” she said. “Not ever. Seriously.”

“OK,” I said, and turned to look back at the park. Like everything, the park was kind of run-down, small, right in the middle of a residential area, street after street of nice little houses, brown brick bungalows mostly, some newer ranch-style houses, just a regular kind of neighborhood, except that Oak Lawn Park was where the kids from Marist, usually hung out. There were some redwood picnic tables and a swing set and metal slide and sandbox and then some paths to walk on and, at the corner of the park, a basketball court. Both of the basketball hoops had metallic chain nets. It was real warm that night and almost felt like summer, and Gretchen and I were just sitting on the hood of the Escort. There were like fifteen cars parked along the curb all around the park already, some kids waiting, leaning against their vehicles, some watching from their front seats. There were rough-looking dudes sitting on the swings, maybe eight or nine kids in red and white Marist nylon varsity jackets with big M’s on the right side of their chests, with different sports written on their backs—wrestling, football, baseball—and they were sitting there with their hands in their pockets, some standing and smoking. I guess they were the ones who were going to be doing the fighting if there was any. They didn’t look any different from the sport-os at our school, really. They had the same cro-mag build and bullish facial expressions, like maybe they were contemplating what they were going to say or do.

Out of nowhere came Bobby B.’s purple wizard van. I could see it rolling down the street, the engine hissing and rumbling. It was blaring “White Room” by Cream, where the song is loud and the guitar is kind of distorted and full of wha-wha, and it kind of begins with this Spanish matador riff, with the drums pounding like a conquistador—
bump舒badda-ba-bum舒badda-ba-bum舒badda-ba-bum-da-da-bum-da dad-bum
—and the purple metallic flake of the van was glistening because it had rained earlier that day, and the wizard airbrushed on the side—his dark blue cloak rippled with wind, his mouth open as if casting a spell, his wooden staff outstretched, churning and exploding with pure purple and white lighting—seemed to look vaguely ominous instead of just weird and goofy, his dark hood covering his triangular face like the cowl of death. The purple wizard van pulled up right beside the swing set, the sliding side door opened, and about eight or nine kids jumped out, shouting, some of them with wood two-by-fours, some of them carrying baseball bats. They didn’t have varsity jackets on. They were not really jocks, I didn’t think. They were mostly the stoners, the burnouts, the hoods, in their jean jackets, a few older dudes like Tony Degan, who was wearing a beat-up black baseball hat, and, of course, Bobby B., who had left the wizard van running, the headlights still burning, casting shadows all along the jungle gym set. It had begun raining again, just white and silver flickers of it in the field of light, the radio still blaring Cream as Bobby B. hopped out of the driver’s side, carrying a narrow, whitish-yellow baseball bat, down low, almost touching the ground, then charging right up to the biggest Marist kid there, a bruiser with a square head in a puffy red and white wrestling varsity jacket. Bobby B. lifted the bat and swung in one quick fluid motion, catching the corner of the bigger kid’s face, knocking him flying completely off his feet. It made this sound, loud and cracking but kind of soft too. The big kid went down, slumping onto his side as Bobby swung again, hitting him over the shoulder. Nobody else fucking moved—none of the other kids. They just looked at the big kid on the ground who was knocked out—or worse—and I think I almost vomited. None of the kids did anything for a while, they kind of just stared at the big kid on the ground and then at Bobby B., who was still holding the bat, pointing it from kid to kid. “What the fuck,” someone whispered, and then some Marist dude charged Bobby and started hitting him. Tony Degan punched the kid in the back of the head just before some other Marist jock pounded Tony in the side of the ear. I had never seen anything like it before in my fucking life. It was fucking madness. They all began punching each other and fighting.

From the hood of the superbad Escort, Gretchen and I just watched, not doing anything, just fucking staring. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” she said, hopping off and starting the car quick. I looked over my shoulder and kept on watching and Gretchen was starting to pull away and I got inside the Escort and I could see her face was wet with tears and all she kept saying was, “What the fuck? What the fuck was that?” over and over and over again.

sixteen

On the way to the mall to drop Kim off at work after school the next day, everyone was quiet as hell. I was riding in the backseat but feeling like Gretchen did not want me there, like she had been surprised to see me show up waiting at the car in the first place. It was very weird for everybody. Finally, Kim cleared her throat and turned to Gretchen and said, “Um, did you know your boyfriend got arrested last night?”

“I know.”

“What?” I asked.

And then Kim said, “He got his stupid ass thrown in jail with Bobby.”

“I know,” Gretchen muttered with a whisper.

“What do you mean you know?”

“I was there, with Brian. We saw it happen,” Gretchen said.

“You were there too?” she asked me. “Why didn’t you guys tell me you were going?”

“I dunno. I just went,” she said.

“Well, what I heard was there were these like ten kids from Marist and like ten kids from Rice and the kids from Rice kicked their asses.”

“Yeah. That’s pretty much what happened.”

“So. Are you worried?” Kim asked.

“Worried? About what?” Gretchen replied.

“I dunno, that Tony was hurt or something?”

“No, I dunno. I dunno. He didn’t look hurt when we took off.”