Raveling (9 page)

When it became completely dark and my father lit the torches around the pool, I pulled myself out of the water, toweled myself
dry, and went back inside and changed, putting on all clean, dry clothes. Eric and Dawn had disappeared to a teenage make-out
party at Brian Kessler’s house. I had last seen Fiona sitting on the blond man’s lap in the dining room. There had been drinks
on the table, ice in the glasses. The music had grown louder in the house, and it had become the new music now. This was “Light
My Fire.” This was rock. Had the blond man put it on? Fiona was still in her red bathing suit and had the daisy towel wrapped
around her tiny body. But now she was wearing her red high-top sneakers, untied, floppy on her feet.

She giggled and squirmed. He tickled and joked.

Later, when I went back down, they weren’t there. The dining room was empty, in fact, only their glasses remained, and the
party had moved completely outside.

“Don’t you look nice!”

“I just put on some clothes,” I told my mother. “Relax.” But these were my best clothes—a polyester shirt with the Declaration
of Independence printed on it and a pair of white jeans.

“A young gentleman,” a tall black woman said.

“Would you like something to drink, Bob?” I heard a voice say.

“How about you?”

The population of this party had mostly moved to a single patch of flagstones beside the pool. It was the only lit area of
the backyard, and it forced everyone to stand together closely, uncomfortably. I had to weasel my way through these people
toward the sound of my father’s voice. He was finishing one of his flying stories.

My father was tall, blue-eyed with dark hair. He had a somewhat ridged brow and a strong nose. When he told stories he gesticulated
wildly, his hands opening and closing for emphasis. His stories always ended the same way: with him setting his teeth together
and bracing himself for some act of insane bravery, only to be saved at the last moment by an unnatural act of luck or serendipity.
He was in the Australian outback, for instance, and almost crashed into a desert mountain—until an unexpected gust of wind
lifted his airplane over the ledge. He was in Vietnam and crash-landed a helicopter in the middle of a strange, unknown jungle—only
to discover he had landed directly on top of a secret American CIA base. I had heard every one of my father’s stories by that
time in my life but hadn’t tired of any of them. And I still believed them, every single word. “Come over here,” he said to
me now.

I went to his side and leaned onto his lap and looked up at his large muscly face—the face Eric would later grow into.

“That’s a hell of a story, Jim,” one of the people standing around him said. “Too bad it isn’t true.”

Everyone laughed.

“It’s true,” I said. “It’s totally true.” I shook my head at these people.

“I was only kidding, Pilot,” the man said. “Of course it’s true. Of course it is.”

They all smiled at me like I was an idiot.

“Are you hungry?”

I nodded.

“Go into the kitchen,” Dad said. “There’s all kinds of stuff in there. Just help yourself.”

“Can I have another sip of your drink?”

Hilarity all around.

“Get out of here.”

I weaseled my way through the party once more toward the kitchen, just off the sliding doors on the patio. Hannah was putting
her arms around some man’s shoulders. He wore a white office shirt that was totally open, revealing his entire chest. They
were dancing. It was only joking, I could tell. But it was dancing.

“Mom?” I said.

She kept dancing.

“Mom?”

She stopped. “What?”

“I’m getting something to eat. Is that all right?”

“Yes, it’s all right.” She shook her head in exasperation. “Get something for your sister, too,” she said. “Make sure Fiona
gets something to eat, too. Okay?”

I nodded and went into the kitchen.

There were soda and liquor bottles on every counter. There were bags of potato chips and boxes of pretzels. There was a fondue
pot, yellowy cheese bubbling over. There were raw slices of crisp vegetables. There were various dips. Some guy was dancing
around and pouring all kinds of different drinks. He wore a blue shirt and tie, like he had come here directly from work.
But there was a big spot on his shirt where he’d spilled something.

“Are you Eric?” he asked.

“I’m Pilot.”

“A very interesting name. Can you fly?”

“Someday I’ll fly. But now I’m too young.”

“What can I get for you, young Pilot? A gin and tonic? A whiskey and soda?”

“Are you kidding?”

He eyed me with mock suspicion. “What do you mean? You don’t drink?” he said. “A drinking problem at your age?”

“You’re an idiot,” I said.

He just looked at me.

I shrugged and left the room. Maybe I wasn’t so hungry. “Fiona?” I yelled. Where the heck was my sister?

Often, if I found myself alone in the house, I’d go into Eric’s room, even though he had explicitly told me not to. I wanted
to look at his trophies, which he kept in a tall bookcase our mother had painted sea-green. I’d run my fingers over the swimming
ribbons and the gold statues of football players, their bodies caught in motion. I’d read again and again the certificates
of achievement he’d received in the Thomas Edison Junior High School and the Albert Einstein High athletic departments. On
the top shelf of the bookcase, all the way up, was the New York State Junior Scientist cup, a large silver bowl with his name,
Eric Richard Airie, etched in scrolly letters. It was way too high for me to reach, of course, so I would pull Eric’s desk
chair over and stand on it just so I could run my fingers along the silver rim. Someday I would have trophies like this, too,
I told myself. I used to pretend that Eric would say those words:
Someday, Pilot, you’ll have trophies like this, too
.

Upstairs in my room, I could hear my parents and their guests outside raising their voices. I could hear the sound of
all those glasses being filled, of all those ice cubes rattling around inside them. Our mother had recently redecorated my
bedroom with a racing-car motif, and everywhere were old-fashioned blue-and-white and red-and-white-striped race cars, the
drivers hunched over the wheels, those funny egg-shaped helmets on their heads, the bold prime numbers—
3, 5, 7
—on their hoods. I lay down, curling up against the sound of all those voices rising into the air outside my open window,
and I imagined myself in one of those race cars. All those voices became the sound of the engines gunning around the track,
and I saw myself in one car and my brother in another, and we drove side by side, not trying to outrace each other, neither
one of us trying to win, but going as fast as we could.

When I woke up, the house was silent except for the clinking and clanking sounds of my parents collecting glasses and emptying
ashtrays. It must’ve been three or four in the morning, before any light had crept into the sky at all—pitch black. All the
windows and doors were still open, and a chill had invaded every room. It felt damp and there was a smell of wet towels. I
sat up and listened for a bit, hearing my father muttering to my mother every now and then, and after a while I heard nothing,
so I went downstairs.

In the living room he sat with his legs far apart, his head down, his hands holding his face.

“Dad?”

He rubbed his hands roughly over his eyes and forehead.

“Dad?”

He groaned. “Go back to bed, Pilot.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s late,” he said. “It’s really, really late.”

“I never ate anything,” I told him. “I’m really, really hungry.”

“You’re hungry.” He said this flatly.

I waited. I was still wearing my polyester Declaration of Independence shirt and the white jeans.

“You want some cereal?”

“Okay.”

“So go get yourself some cereal.”

“All right already.” I made a face at him, but it was probably too dim to see, so I walked into the kitchen. Hannah was in
there, humming. “Was it a good party?” I asked.

“Was it? Oh, I don’t know.” She touched the top of my head, her fingers wet from the sink.

“I’m hungry.” I grabbed a handful of potato chips from a bowl on the counter. “Can I have a soda?”

“I’m so tired,” Hannah said. “I’m just so tired. Have you seen your father? Did he go to bed?”

“He’s in the living room.”

“Did Eric come home yet?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you turn out the lights, dear?”

I nodded again, and she walked out of the kitchen with the back of her hand to her forehead.

For a while I ate the chips off the counter and drank a warm Coke. Then I went out to the living room again and saw that my
father had disappeared. Good, I thought. I sat down on the couch where he had been sitting and rubbed my face the same way
he had. Now my face was covered in potato chip grease. I lay down and rubbed my face against the rough blue material of the
couch to get the grease off. Comfortable now, I stayed that way until I fell asleep again. On the couch that night, for the
first time, I think, I dreamed I was the wolf boy in the woods, naked, running with a pack of
dogs. In this dream the woods behind our house had grown larger and had swallowed the house. I was wild. In the dream I tore
out the throat of another animal with my bare hands. I opened my eyes from this dream and saw Eric’s fourteen-year-old face
only inches from mine.

“You are such a fucking moron,” he was saying.

“Leave me alone.”

“I’m going to drag you out into the woods by your feet,” he said, whispering. “I’m going to take an ice pick and push it through
your hand, right through the middle, and then I’m going to push the ice pick into your ear—”

“Eric.”

“—just far enough so you can’t even hear yourself screaming out of that ear but you’re not dead yet, and then I’m going to
pull it out and push it into your other ear.”

“Please, Eric.”

“And then I’m going to stick the ice pick into your eye.”

“Please stop.”

“And then your other eye.” At this, I squeezed my eyes shut, imagining my brother really had blinded me. I was trembling all
over. “And then I’m going to leave you in the woods for a while, and I’m going to watch you stumble around, all deaf and blind,
screaming like an idiot, you fucking moron—”