Perfectly Good White Boy (27 page)

“You don't like dick stories?”

“No.”

“Why did you punch Eddie, but you guys are still friends?”

I didn't say anything. I was not expecting her to ask that, obviously, and not expecting her to care about it, or need to have more explanation. Guys hit each other; they did that and they moved on and that was life. Sometimes it was better after the hitting, with some guys. Sometimes not. All I knew was that guys hitting seemed a lot less involved than the way some girls acted with each other, cat-fighting and saying assholey shit and spreading rumors and whatever. Waging constant war on each other in the cuntiest way possible.

I must have been quiet for too long, because she sighed and said, “Fine,” like she was bored and tired. “Berniece. Berniece Diane. My middle name's my dead aunt's name. Berniece was my great-grandmother. My mom loved her very much.”

“Oh.”

“Stop saying ‘oh' every second. You sound like a mouth-breather.”

“Maybe I am. They call Marines ‘grunts,' did you know that?”

“Someone's been on the Internet. Did you watch
Full Metal Jacket
yet?”

“No.”

“You should.”

“Get it for me, and I'll watch it.”

“Did you punch Eddie over a girl or something?”

“A girl?” I laughed. “No. God. Nothing like that. Eddie just said something he shouldn't have said. It didn't have anything to do with him.”

“What did he even say?”

I didn't want to say it, because it sounded so lame.

“He just called me a pussy.”

A
fucking
pussy.

“Why?”

“Because I wouldn't skip study hall and English with him to go talk this St. Albans girl he liked.”

“But that's so dumb!”

“I know.”

“I mean him. Not you.”

“I was dumb too. Why break someone's nose for them calling you something? Stupid.”

“He shouldn't have said that.”

“Whatever. He did.”

“Wow.”

“But, that's not really it. Not the whole thing.”

“What's the whole thing?”

“It's what happened that week. Before. There wasn't any way Eddie could have known. I mean, he could have. I just never told him.”

“What happened, Sean?”

I sighed. Sighing, not because I was weary or whatever. Though I felt exhausted just that second. Sighing, because it's a way to hold back tears. To try to suck in your sinuses when they're starting to drip down your nose. Sighing, instead of crying. Which I didn't want to do in front of anyone, ever. Especially Neecie.

But she could totally tell. Saw everything.

“Oh, Sean,” she said, hugging me, the stadium blanket falling around my shoulders. It smelled like mothballs. And Neecie. Who smelled like that lotion she put on her face when she got all red. And cake. She smelled like cake and flowers. Or some other plant. Good, though.

I let her hug me and I sniffed up my leaking nose-tears and then I kind of pushed her back, because it wasn't over yet, and I cleared my throat and just explained it.

How that day, the day before I punched him, my mom was going to the after-hours clinic she worked at for extra money and how I had dicked around all afternoon with Eddie, screwing around in my car and him texting this girl he was going to St. Albans with, and it had been fun, because though I was a little jealous, he and I would both go to the dance, this chick would get us in, because their dances were invite-only or something and I hadn't hooked up with anyone in a long time, and besides that, never had a girlfriend to go to actual dances or dates with, for any reason, and how that sounded fun, like maybe I'd meet a new girl, one I hadn't been stuck with since junior high, a new girl, someone who was cool and cute and fun to hang around with.

So I was supposed to be home, but I wasn't because the St. Albans girl was sending Eddie stupid pics of her and her friends and we'd been idiots about it, but it was really funny and good and I didn't want to be home, anyway, because two days earlier, my mother had told my dad he had to move out, go to rehab, or go live with Grandpa Chuck, it didn't matter, she wasn't living with an alcoholic anymore, and we were going to lose our house, since he'd been out of work for over two years, and Eddie knew that part—about the money and no job—but not the alcoholic thing. Or maybe he did, but he didn't know what that really looked like inside our house. And he didn't know what I found, when I came home, which was Otis barking all strange, and randomly, like he was distressed or something, and I knew things were wrong because his bark was wrong. And that's when I went and found my dad, half in the running bathtub, water all over the floor, wasted out of his mind and vomit everywhere and piss in the tub water and him looking basically dead and how I did nothing. Not a thing. Just stood there and calmly reviewed how long, exactly, it'd been, since I'd wished him dead, since seventh grade, probably, when things got really bad, and the fighting was constant and him passing out on the couch was constant and him checking into the hospital rehab to “clean himself up” or “get himself right” was constant, and Brad had to do everything, then, fix stuff and shovel snow and jump my mom's car if the battery died and carry in the groceries and tell me to shut up and go back to my room if I went to his room to ask him if we should do something, and so I just sat there and did nothing but hate my dad. Because I was in charge of hating him. Hating him and wishing him dead.

He was just lying there, in the water. The water spilling everywhere. Piss. Barf. His skin looking blue.

But maybe I hadn't been wishing he'd be dead. Maybe, I was just wishing he'd be gone. He didn't need to leave the earth permanently, I thought, while I turned off the water and started draining the tub. Just leave. Be absent. Not make me listen to my mother cry all night from across the hallway in the house we couldn't live in anymore, because my dad wouldn't stop drinking and broke his whole rule about drinking and driving which was why his job fired him: he needed a valid license and having a DUI, even one, was grounds for dismissal.

I didn't know he took pills, too, before he got into the tub. We didn't find that out until later. Until my mom—by total accident—came back home to get her phone charger and found us, my dad and me, in the bathroom, and she didn't even ask me anything, how long it'd been or what had happened because she knew. She wasn't an idiot like her youngest son. She was on her barely charged cell phone with the 911 dispatcher, pushing me out of the bathroom, saying, “Sean, call your brother, right away.” Giving me a job to do. Which I did. I called Brad and told him that dad had passed out in the tub and mom was calling 911 and to come home.

“You mean the hospital?” he said.

“No, we're at home.”

“Jesus, what's the matter with you? I'm going straight to the hospital,” he said, and hung up.

By then my mom had hung up with the 911 people, but my dad was still in the tub. I could see his dick and balls. He looked grey and horrible. I couldn't tell if he was breathing. My mom was checking his pulse, on that big vein in his neck or whatever, and she nodded at me, like to say, yes, he has a pulse. Then my mom asked me for a towel and to help her wrap him up and we had sort of done that—sort of—when the paramedics came and we had to get out of the bathroom and then they were pulling him out the door on a stretcher, and then she got in the ambulance with them and told me to wait for Brad to come, and I didn't want to say that he wasn't coming, that he was going to the hospital because he wasn't me, he was brave and normal and strong, and so the ambulance jetted off and I stood there, in the dark, though it was just, like, six thirty, and the neighbors were out on their stoops, looking at us, looking at me, while I did nothing. Continued to do nothing but look straight back at them for a little bit longer. Waiting for fuckall. Waiting for nothing.

And then I just drove myself to the hospital, where Brad ignored me and my mother said nothing and Krista, still in her Applebee's uniform, hugged me and said, “Come here, Sean, it's okay, he's stable, they pumped his stomach, you were lucky you found him when you did, oh, honey . . .”

I had stopped talking. Neecie was crying. Also, I was crying. Though I wasn't making a lot of noise about it. It was more like I was dripping. Leaking.

“I'm so sorry,” Neecie said. She turned off the car, and suddenly everything was much quieter. “So sorry about all of that. Come on. Come here.”

We got in the backseat of her car and she put the blanket on me and then we didn't say anything more, or do anything, either, and that's how I spent the whole night sleeping with a girl for the first time in my life, not even kissing or anything, just sleeping next to her, next to each other, not touching anywhere except maybe my shoulder nudging her shoulder, in the back of her car, sleeping like the dead, fully comfortable and good, though not in a bed, all night, until the sun came up.

Chapter Seventeen

Kerry tossed another twig into his little fire pit thing. It was drizzling out, but he insisted the weather was going to clear up by noon.

“Can't believe you're doing it,” he said. “Fucking military.”

“He's doing it,” Eddie said.

“I feel like it's all a fucking joke,” Kerry said. “It doesn't even sound like you.”

What Kerry knew about me was next to nothing, really. Or really, what Kerry thought he knew about me was nothing. He'd been my boss for a bunch of months; this didn't really qualify him as an expert on my life.

Shane came out then. Nodded at me and Eddie. Sat down in a chair, lit a cigarette. He smelled like he'd just taken a shower; he was barefoot, his hair was wet, and he'd shaved off his goatee.

“Going somewhere special?” Kerry asked, in his mean way.

“Maybe,” Shane said. Then he started cleaning out his toenails with a toenail clipper. Eddie looked away; Eddie was always squeamish about that kind of thing. He had sisters, so he couldn't freely be disgusting and open about his personal habits. Plus, he was pissed; he only was here because he wanted some weed, and Ivy was waiting for him and was probably wondering what was going on because he kept getting texts-beeps every second.

Then my phone beeped and I checked it. Hallie. Fuck.

Hallie, who was texting me again. Hallie, who said she was better now. Hallie, who I think I almost liked better when she was depressed. I hadn't been responding to her texts. Though once I'd been a dick and sent back a photo of a topless girl milking a cow that Eddie'd sent me.

“Got any weed you want to sell?” Eddie said, suddenly.

“They piss test you before boot camp, you know,” Kerry said, looking only at me.

“I'm not the one who asked,” I said.

Shane laughed, started clipping his toenails. Clip, Snip, Click, Snap. Fucking gross.

“It's not the mellow kind,” Kerry said, to Eddie.

“That's okay.”

“All right,” Kerry said, staring at me another minute before finally acknowledging Eddie. “You want it, come inside.”

Then they went inside to do the whole dirty money-exchange business, and I was stuck with Shane and his toenails. Which he was done clipping, at least. How he'd managed to smoke while clipping his toenails was kind of miraculous. Though still gross.

“When you go to boot camp?” Shane asked.

I told him. Now he was working on his fingernails. The bits were flying everywhere. Christ.

“You going on a date or something?” I asked.

“Why's everyone got such a problem with a guy wanting to clean up? Jesus.”

I didn't know what to say. It wasn't like I wanted him to be gross. I guess I just didn't want to look at it, mostly. It seemed really unmanly.

“Hey, tell that friend of yours I finally did download that movie she was telling me about.”

“Who?”

“Blond chick. Neecie?”

“Oh,” I said. “What movie?”

“
Full Metal Jacket
. Turns out I saw it a long time ago. Good fucking movie, though. You ever see it?”

“No.”

“That's a boot camp movie you probably don't want to see,” he said. He laughed. “My brother said they can't do half that shit anymore. Can't even touch you. Still. Fucked-up movie. Tell her I liked it, though.”

“Why don't you tell her?”

He laughed. “Maybe I will. Haven't seen her for a couple of weeks, though.”

A couple of
weeks
?

I stood up and didn't say shit, but I got Eddie from Kerry's room, where they were doing bong hits, and was like, “We gotta leave. Now.”

And Eddie didn't get it, but I didn't want to explain it and Kerry just shook his head at us like we were completely worthless, his whole,
how'd I end up with these assholes
routine again, and Eddie was like, “What's your deal, Sean? You're acting like a prick.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck you,” he said, getting in my face. Kerry was behind him, smirking, looking down.

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie said. “Been sitting here all fucking morning but once you get something up your ass, then it's time to leave?”

Kerry set down his bong on his dresser, far away from us.

“You think you're so superior or something? For not smoking weed anymore? Because you're going into the Marines or something?”

“I don't fucking think that.”

Eddie shoved me in the chest.

“What the fuck, Eddie?” I shoved him back, but not as hard. Just so, you know, he'd know to stay in his own lane and everything. But that's not how he saw it. He shoved me again, right into my chest hollow, and it actually hurt and I wanted to kill him.

But he walked out and I rushed after him, Kerry behind me.

“He's right, you know,” Kerry said. “You are being a prick, Sean. It's already starting.” He shook his head, smiling a little.