Heft (19 page)

Kel, says Dee, you remember when we played at that court on Warburton all the time?

He’s talking about basketball. When we were twelve we played there after school every day. I nod. I am filled with happy certainty that I fit in here, that I am the king or the prince of something here.

A little blond girl comes up to Dee drunkenly and sits on his lap and I know her, I went to school with her once upon a time.

Sit on
his
lap, says Dee, who is trying to roll another blunt, and the girl obliges. She is light as a feather and swaying back and forth.

You remember me, she says, not asking.

Of course, I say.

I put my hand on her back, on the small of her back, unswervingly.

Peters comes into the room then wagging his phone. He looks happier or drunker.

Yo Kel! he says. Kurt’s on the phone. How the hell do you get to this place?

Toss it, I say, and Peters chucks it across the room dangerously.

Kel? Kel?
Kurt’s saying on the phone.

I’m here, I say.

I’m so lost, says Kurt.

While I give him directions, the girl on my lap leans her head against my shoulder sweetly and casually and sort of pats my face. Her friends, three girls on the floor in front of us, fall over laughing.

Fuck
you!
she tells them, springing up, but it’s a joke, and then she tells them she’s sorry and she loves them too.

One by one the boys from Pells make their way into the living room and I see that they’ve found girls to talk to. The girls don’t know what to make of them. They are halfway between humoring them and liking them. One of them is Steph Callahan who was always the most popular girl when I went to school here. She’s strong and pretty and Matt Barnaby is trying to talk to her and she’s trying to talk to Stacey Cavalieri.

Park behind Trevor’s car, I tell Kurt. Drive till you see Trev’s car and park behind it. There’s a spot.

I hang up the phone. The girl on my lap kisses my cheek. A little murmur goes up from her friends.

I turn toward the girl on my lap and take her head and kiss it. I kiss her mouth. She takes my hand and I stand and we walk as if we are going toward the kitchen. Dee, behind me, says something I can’t understand. I don’t stop. We walk past my friends from Pells, who look at me and say nothing. We walk up the stairs, which are sticky with beer and maybe puke, and the girl leads me to a room that I know as Jim’s from having been in there countless times when I was younger.

Jim’s room, I say, and laugh because I think this is suddenly funny.

The girl doesn’t know what she’s doing. She opens the door and sees no one’s inside and turns on the light. I see it is the same as the last time I was in here: basketball posters everywhere, clothes on the floor, a slanted ceiling, an unmade and sheetless bed. A ratty comforter slinking toward the floor on one side. Flat naked pillows. The girl turns the light off again and shuts the door and leads me toward the bed. I hit my head so hard on the slanted ceiling that I see stars and
Oh my God!
the girl says, but I’m OK, I’m fine.

Sit down, she says, and I sit on the mattress, shoving the comforter off entirely.

In the dark I imagine she is Lindsay Harper. I think of Lindsay’s face and touch this girl on the cheek and ear.

We kiss. For a long time we kiss. I lie down and then she lies down and we kiss some more. I take her clothes off. She is smaller than Lindsay and thinner. She has none of Lindsay’s firmness. She feels breakable, her bones are showing. I take my clothes off. She has gotten sleepy or afraid. She stops moving. I keep moving. I cover her. I hover over her.

Do you know my name, she says quietly.

And I know it, it’s Jenny, but for some reason I say No, no, what is it?

And she says, Jennifer! and tries to make it sound like a joke, like a playful thing, but in her voice I hear that she is filled with self-doubt and regret.

I do it anyway. We do it. She is still and quiet as a stone. I don’t finish. I stop before I finish.

The two of us lie on our backs next to each other. My head is pounding. The dark ceiling is moving slowly. I can see all the walls of Jim’s room in the dark now because my eyes have adjusted. Most of the posters are basketball stars from the ’70s to the present. Walt Frazier. Shaq, huge arms outstretched, mouth open. LeBron. Michael Jordan in his heyday, flying winglessly toward the basket for a slam dunk. Once Jim and Dee and I made a vow in this room to make it to the NBA together. We were eight or nine. Already I cared more about baseball but I wanted to fit in. Afterward I walked home to my mother’s house.

I think maybe Jenny is crying. I don’t want to find out. I want to cry too but I don’t allow it. I want to put my hand on her hand and I want to cry. We lie on Jim O’Leary’s bed silent and still. Until it becomes impossible to move, until I feel I am a statue, heavy and concrete.

•

There’s a loud pounding on the door and Jenny clutches the comforter to herself and I try to do the same before the door flies open and lets in the light from the hallway.

Peters is there with Matt Barnaby.

What
the
hell
, says Peters.

Get out! I say, but he says You gotta come downstairs, dude. Trevor’s plowed and starting shit.

Shut the door! I say. Jenny has covered herself completely with the comforter and is pretending she does not exist, but her little feet are sticking out below it.

Who is that, says Matt Barnaby, laughing, just before Peters pulls the door shut.

Who was that, I hear him say again from the hallway.

We put our clothes back on and still we haven’t spoken. She pulls the elastic out of her hair and piles it on top of her head again and ties it up tightly. Then she goes out ahead of me without a word.

When I walk out the boys are looking at me with raised eyebrows.

Where’s Trevor, I say. I’m still drunk and I clutch the banister as we go down the stairs.

Trevor’s out front, five inches from the face of someone much bigger than he is, and swaying.

This your boy? somebody says, and I nod sorrowfully because I wish he weren’t.

Better get him under control, says the somebody. But suddenly I don’t care. I stand back with the rest of the crowd. Kurt, who has found the place, apparently, and Peters step forward cautiously and go to pull him away but I say, Let him. Let him.

The kid Trevor’s challenging is practically cracking his knuckles now, ready to go, when by some miracle, some fluke, the blue lights of a cop car come flashing up the street.

Bloop
bloop,
goes the car, and the crowd scatters like mice, into backyards and houses and down a little alley between Jim’s house and his neighbor’s. And we scatter too, grabbing Trevor on our way, dragging him. We each put a hand on the waistband of his jeans and his toes are rasping miserably along the pavement. He is saying things we can’t understand.

Matt Barnaby takes out his iPhone and, giggling like an idiot, snaps a picture of him. Oh
man,
he says, blackmail.

Before Trevor gets in the car he says
Guys, guys, I can
handle
it
, stands on his own feet, sways like a leaf, and collapses.

Silently Kramer fishes in Trevor’s pockets for his keys and then gets in the driver’s seat.

I go with Kurt.

For the first five minutes of the ride we’re silent.

I’ve sobered up a little but I’m still unpleasantly high and I’m starving.

Well, Kurt says finally, that was Yonkers.

No it wasn’t, I say.

Kurt looks at me but I don’t feel like explaining. Tomorrow, I know, and next week at school, my friends will tell stories about their
crazy
night in Yonkers, and how Trevor almost got into a fight, and how drunk Trevor was, and how there were all these people at this party, how the girls looked trashy, how the boys looked tough or poor or stupid.

Trevor’s an asshole, says Kurt. It’s unexpected.

Why? I ask.

Kurt shrugs. I dunno, he says, he just is. He always has been. When we were little he used to hit me with his trucks.

I think his mom is nice, I say.

Me too, says Kurt.

Both his parents are, I say.

Kurt nods. He turns the radio to a station that plays old-school rap after 9 p.m. He is doing it for me, to be nice.

We pull into the Cohens’ driveway and Kramer pulls Trevor’s car in behind us. Immediately I know we’re in trouble. It’s one in the morning and all the downstairs lights are on. The front door flies open and Mr. Cohen comes out onto his steps.

• • •

F
riday morning I wake up at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of my
cell phone’s alarm clock and feel as if I have been dried out completely, as if I have no water left in my body. I tiptoe to the bathroom and guzzle water straight from the sink and then I put on my clothes from last night without showering. I stink of processed alcohol and smoke and filth. I smell in some ways like my mother.

The hood on my sweatshirt goes up again.

I throw as much of my stuff as I can fit into a duffel bag and sling the strap across my body.

I find the unopened envelope with my mother’s letter in it, the word
Kelly
smudged now from wear, and stick it into the back pocket of my jeans.

I poke my head out into the hallway and listen for a moment. I don’t hear anyone which is good. I tiptoe down the stairs.

Last night, after Mr. Cohen came outside, Kramer and Peters dragged Trevor out of the car and up the driveway toward the house. He could walk a little better on his own by then but he was still swaying.

Oh my God, said Mrs. Cohen, joining her husband. She had apparently sobered up herself while waiting for her son to return. She was wearing her bird-covered robe and had her arms crossed around her middle so tightly that her hands could have touched in the back.

Oh my God, Walt, look at him, she said, and Mr. Cohen said I see him.

Heeeeey, said Trevor, waving a lazy hand above his head.

The other boys did not know what to do and hung back. I knew just what to do and I walked up to Trevor and slung an arm around him, very responsible, and I said to them, I think we better get him some water.

The Cohens cleared a path for us and I brought their son inside and flung him on the first couch I saw and went into the kitchen and got him some water which he immediately spilled down his shirt. Then he lay back on the couch like a rag doll.

Oh
Trevor,
said Mrs. Cohen.

She went and tried to lift his head up with her hands and dropped it again.

Geddoud, said Trevor. Grronabed.

Walt,
said Mrs. Cohen, and Mr. Cohen tried uselessly to do what his wife could not. Mrs. Cohen meanwhile went across the room and sat on the edge of a chair. Her knees stuck out of her bird-covered robe. The top of it fell open just a bit and I saw the inside of her right breast. Her bone-ridged chest. I looked away.

When Mr. Cohen had Trevor sitting up, he looked at his wife and then he looked at me.

Well, said Mr. Cohen. You know, I’m not quite sure how to handle this. He laughed a little angrily and squeezed the back of his neck.

I don’t want to put you on the spot, he said. Trevor needs to hear this too. Maybe we should wait until morning to have a talk. Don’t you think, Sharon?

Mrs. Cohen nodded, her head in her hands.

OK, then, said Mr. Cohen. Why don’t you get some sleep.

I looked at them both.

I’m sorry, I said. I’m just really sorry about this.

No one said anything.

I walked up the stairs.

I set my cell phone alarm and lay awake until I could not keep my eyes open anymore.

This morning I leave the house as quietly as I can. I get in my car which takes three tries to start. By the time the engine turns over I am certain I have woken the whole house.

Pells Landing is silent. My car is making a noise like a tin can dragging. After a moment it begins to snow.

It’s still dark out and some of the houses have Christmas lights on for the first time this year. My mind turns to Lindsay Harper and the things I sometimes dream of giving to her and for a moment I’m happy. It’s not too late for us, I think. If I apologize to her. If I crack myself open to her and tell her all the things that so far I have kept hidden from every friend I have. I imagine doing this: sitting before her cross-legged in her strawberry-scented basement, taking her hands in mine, letting words spill out of me like water, confessing to Lindsay Harper every sin I have, every fear I have, every hope. Then resting my head in her lap—my head, unburdened, light. I could do this. Suddenly I can see myself doing this and it seems to me the simple and lovely solution to every problem I’ve ever had.

The snow has picked up by the time I park in the hospital’s parking lot and the cars on either side of me are white with it.

I’m underdressed in my sweatshirt and jeans and I run slipping across the lot, swerving to avoid an ambulance that roars in from the street.

The woman at the front desk looks at me lazily. Help you? she asks.

I’m here to visit Charlene Keller, I say.

Visiting’s at eight, says this woman, fat and yellowheaded and unhappy.

But I’m her son, I say.

She looks at me. What unit, she asks.

I don’t know, I say. She’s—Dr. Moscot’s patient.

Name again, says the woman.

Charlene Keller, I say, and this time I spell it.

Aright, says the woman. Fourth floor. Elevator down that hall. Tell the nurse up there what you want.

It’s funny to think that this is only my mother’s fifth day in the hospital. It feels like months. She’s still in the last place I saw her, a curtained room, one of many centered around a nurses’ station in the middle. This way, says the nurse on duty, and I follow her. She’s wearing pink scrubs with teddy bears on them.

She leads me to my mother’s bed. When I approach her, I see she looks just like she did last time. Her lips are slightly parted. She looks clean and restful. The tubes coming out of her don’t look quite as frightening.