Last Night at the Circle Cinema (13 page)

“So that was me?” Bertucci asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “but I didn't know it was you yet. So my mom says, ‘How bad could he be? Purple pants. Now that's a friendly sight.' And I'm blushing ....”

“And then what?” Bertucci unfolded his legs so they just about reached mine. I tried not to picture what Lissa and Codman were doing wherever they were.

“So ... it's like a week later, still freshman year, and I haven't thought about the purple pants at all. But then I get out of mandatory Freshman Focus—it was How to Be a Good Peer, by the way, fat lot of good that did.” I took a deep breath, the cinema's quiet enveloping us. “It was fall but one of those days that made it feel like summer? Anyway, I remember scanning the crowds for Marta—you know I've known her since fifth grade, right? But I didn't see her.”

As I sat there, talking to Bertucci, so many details came back to me, like remembering a dream, piecing the memory back together. Had I begun to do that? Erase the stuff that had actually happened so I didn't have to deal with the fact that it was gone?

When I didn't see Marta, I'd gone to find shade under a pine tree so I could study my schedule. I remember I had French next, and though they were pressuring me, I had no intentions of joining Vive la France!, mainly because I couldn't deal with their exclamation point. “No, thanks!” I wrote when the clipboard had been passed around. “Non, merci!” Codman had added. What if I had taken Spanish instead? What if? What if? What if? I thought but didn't say aloud.

“So,” I said to Bertucci, who could wait just about forever for someone to get a point across, “without knowing why, I looked up from my schedule. And across the quad was a splotch of color. Your purple pants.” I looked at him and he looked sad, maybe remembering that day, everything that had happened since. “You made me smile that day, Bertucci. I couldn't help it. Purple pants? I mean, who wears purple pants except someone with extreme confidence or no public shame?”

“Me, I guess,” he said. “And as you well know, I suffer form both of those afflictions.”

“You know, I'm not even sure I realized I'd been staring. But then, the boy—you, I mean—noticed me. You didn't wave exactly. More like you lifted your hand like there was a fly or something. Absentminded ... and yet specifically directed at me.” I felt my eyes fill up. I'd never have that first time wave again. I bit my top lip. “It was a gentle wave. Friendly.” I stared at Bertucci, wishing we had more time together. “And just like that, I kind of knew we'd be friends.”

Then the next song began, and before I really I knew what was happening now, we were dancing.

Bertucci was staunchly anti–school dances, and I wasn't super-coordinated, but I liked the idea of it. There, in the stained lobby light, with stale popcorn under my feet, I swayed slowly, thinking of the shitty midwinter formal junior year when he'd draped my arms on his shoulders, and we'd swayed Frankenstein-style to some song he'd put on by hijacking the DJ booth. What if I'd kissed him then? Now, my body moved to the iPod music, the lyrics washing over us.

“The Last Day of Our Acquaintance.” He'd made a good-bye mix a few months before. Would we ever be able to listen to it all the way through?

Was I crying? God, how embarrassing. Yes, but not hard. Just drops falling like musical notes from my eyes to my cheeks, onto my own arms and then the floor. It, everything—this night signifying the end of it all, the unresolved crap between the three of us, the good-byes that weren't
good
, just
bye
. Too much ending. I would never have both Codman and Bertucci.

Or I might never be with either of them.

This moment, like all the other moments, would end.

I looked at Bertucci but couldn't get him to look right back at me. He had a habit of doing that, looking away from me when I tried to get him to focus. “Was this what you wanted?” I asked, but as I said it, even I didn't know if I meant did he want me—us—or did he want all three of us to just recognize that we were over.

That this night was really only about saying good-bye.

The song continued, and my feet crunched on popcorn. My elbow banged the snack counter and I ignored the pain, my arm rustling against the Twizzlers that were unopened. All manner of crap crunched beneath my shoes, and I had visions of having to chuck them out in the morning. I vowed to get rid of my ugly, candy-ruined shoes if I actually made it out of the Circle.

The lyrics kept coming, and I danced seriously, like I was being graded or like I was part of the music itself, somehow wound into the chords. There was nothing else to do but to let go of Bertucci, so I did and I spun around and around.

My eyes closed, and I was dizzy and transported. I swung my arms as the guitar picked up tempo, playing harshly. I moved my legs, my arms, spinning, singing. It was like being on one of the rides I loathed.

When the track ended I was stunned and out of breath. I opened my eyes, and I was alone.

19

Bertucci

It was Codman who put together the handout for my mother's funeral, picking quotes he'd heard her say over the years, choosing songs she used to hum, a hymn I hadn't even realized she knew but that Codman and Livvy understood to be her favorite. Grass and lambs, find shelter from the rain, blah blah blah. I couldn't even think about Photoshop or printing presses or being organized enough to do more than show up.

Livvy and Codman pretty much functioned for me at that point. I had a big commitment to staring into space for hours at a time, becoming well-acquainted with my pillow, forgetting my shower, and disregarding food.

Were you supposed to keep the memorial pamphlet as though, like the yearbook, it was something on which to reflect over vanilla-bean blended drinks this summer?

Lissa was on the yearbook committee and as a result, among the senior candids, there was a huge shot of her and Codman under the senior doorway. Honestly, I had no recollection of taking that picture, though when I'd roped her into the night at the Circle, she'd told me I deserved photo credit.

I counted on Lissa coming to the Circle, but I did not count on the fact that, for once, Codman would keep his mouth closed and not quickly or at least quietly explain to Livvy that he knew nothing about it. Livvy assumed Codman had invited Lissa along on our adventure, and I couldn't very well tell her otherwise. Plus, even though I hated to see Livvy's tears, she looked beautiful when she cried, all glassy-eyed and dramatic, so different from her usual poised self.

When I got to the top of the disabled ramp, Codman was there, pacing, his shirt untucked. “What the hell, Bertucci?” he was saying.

“I'm not going to wait all day, Alex!” Lissa's yell was muffled from the bathroom.

What did Lissa expect? To show up here with a foil-wrapped tray of coconut brownies and find her place in the shape of us? Had I in some way wanted that? Maybe.

“What is she doing here?” Codman demanded. His hands swept through his hair.

I shrugged and leaned into the door. Maybe I wanted Lissa to prove she could be her own person, connecting in a way that didn't involve her mouth, and maybe I hoped Codman would demontrate what I knew—that he wasn't a disrespectful schmuck but a person who would do great things in this world.

“I'm screwed. I ... what's the point ... am I just supposed to tell her to leave?” Codman looked down and then at me, pleading. “She's actually waiting in there.” He seethed. “On the low toilet, the one with the rails? I mean, come on.”

“You can't be with her,” I told Codman, but he was too busy wringing his hands to hear. Before she got sick, my mom had given me a book for Valentine's Day. This was so sad on so many counts that I found it hard to think about; to get a gift from your mom on a day meant for chocolates, cards, and romance wasn't tragic, but it was certainly lame. But I felt bad for thinking so because my mom only meant it to show she was thinking of me. Plus, the book was expensive, hardcover, and she didn't have the cash for vegetables half the time, let alone new books.

But the real problem was that she'd already given me the book back in seventh grade. I'd been in a puzzle phase, trickery of the eye, puns, hidden pictures. This book—that I now had two of—was
What the Eye Can't See,
and it had overlapping images and double pictures, hexagons on their sides, all sorts of things. You were meant to have your eyes relax enough so that the focus loosened. This revealed another picture, something silly like a dolphin with a hat on or a turtle with roller skates. I'd put the book on my shelf next to its older twin and then packed it away, but I couldn't help but feel that Codman suffered from the hidden picture dilemma. He was so busy looking at the overlapping breasts that he was unable to see the real picture beneath.

It was obvious to me how much he cared for Livvy—in a way I would never be able to—but as the spring had turned into near summer, with graduation looming, our caps and gowns on order, it dawned on me that it was quite possible that Codman didn't know this. Either he wasn't aware of his own feelings, or he was and this scared the shit out of him and so he chose to be around Lissa and not around Livvy, or us. As though he was—without knowing it—planning his own future regret.

“Help me, Bertucci,” Codman said under his breath.

“Should I block the door or push you in?” I asked.

Codman wiped his hands over his face, feeling his stubble, buying time by saying through his cupped hands on the door, “Give me a minute, Lissa.” Codman stepped away from the door, and I took this as my cue to go into the bathroom, but when I tried the door it wouldn't budge. I raised my eyebrows at Codman.

It was possible that this was payback. Codman has burst in on me in the Bensons' bathroom—caught me in there with one of the twins, and I knew he couldn't even say her name because he couldn't tell them apart. What he didn't know is that being in no way, shape, or form able to handle an encounter with a Benson or anyone else, I'd turned Lindsay Benson down, which was embarrassing for her. And she'd caught me looking through the prescription bottles in the medicine cabinet, which was embarrassing for me, and Codman was embarrassed that he'd walked in and caught us doing whatever it is he thought we were doing. It was a three-way mortification.

As a result, he probably wanted to prove to me that he was perfectly capable of making full use of the handrails and the large mirror.

Just as I was set to pound on the door, it opened bit by bit until Lissa, the strap of her tank top off her shoulder, looking alluring enough that even I had to acknowledge it, stepped out. “I'm guessing you're not coming in,” she said to Codman, ignoring me.

Codman and I both shook our heads. She looked at me like I meant nothing. “Why am I even here, anyway?” she asked. I looked at the package in her hands. She knew why.

“I didn't ask you to you come,” Codman said.

“I know that,” Lissa spoke tersely to him. “I figured it out—it's not rocket science. I mean, we placed an ad.” She looked everywhere but at me. “Brookville Outdoor Rec and Sport? Hello? That's my family.” She shook her head.

“So you just read the note?”

“It wasn't a secret,” Lissa said. “I mean, it's sitting in there for the whole school to see.”

“No one reads those ads,” Codman said.

“Except you, apparently,” Lissa said.

“And you, in fact,” Codman said, his back to me. “Can't you picture Bertucci swapping the layout, moving ads around?”

“Anyway, I brought you this,” Lissa said. She held out the rain-wrinkled package, looking past me. Probably pissed I hadn't invited her outright.

In her peelable layered tank tops, she really was just the messenger. Someone to help get my friends to deal with their shit. Maybe I wanted closure. Not only was it satisfying in a mathematical parenthetical kind of way, it was also what was right. Codman had a way of shirking duties or slinking away, Livvy had a way of accepting Codman's shirkage, and Lissa had fallen prey to the Greek tragedy of hookup dilemmas—obvious to everyone where her storm of self-loathing was headed.

“Just figure your shit out already,” I said to no one, to everyone.

“Guess I was just here to add a little action,” Lissa said as she brushed past me and down the ramp. “So we're really broken up. That's it, isn't it?” she asked. She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, my block writing visible.

I shrugged. It was inevitable, wasn't it? Codman didn't confirm or deny, but we all knew she spoke the truth. She gestured with the note but didn't give it away. “Robert Frost,” Lissa read. “He's the two-roads guy, right? Like in English class? There's always a choice?” Her voice faltered. It was possible she had more depth than we gave her credit for, that she'd been more affected by the events of this spring than we knew. She shook her head. She'd go off to college in the fall, become a logo designer or inherit her parents' sporting store and just recede in the rearview mirrors of so many lives. “Anyway. It's just a quote. ‘The best way out is always through.'”

Codman shifted back and forth, chewing the words. “Lissa ...”

She bounded down the ramp so fast I thought she might fall.

The best way out is always through. Would we ever be?

There were dumpsters out back, and I imagined Lissa kicking one or chucking anything she had of Codman's in there. His body, if she could get her hands on it. “She really wanted to stay,” Codman said softly as he held the package in one hand. He took a few steps to go after her but stopped before I even had to reach out to stop him.

20

Codman

Bertucci had a nasty habit of saying things I didn't want to hear—that the reason I'd tanked the Physics AP wasn't because it had a bias against Jews, as I so aptly argued to my therapist, but rather because I had not studied and despite wanting to be the kind of student that Bertucci was—that is, the kind who barely seemed to crack a book and yet excelled—I wasn't. He didn't do this as a mark of cruelty, only as a way of setting things right.