Reality Boy (31 page)

“Helen is too old,” a brother says.

His wife smacks his arm. “Age shouldn’t matter. You’re such an idiot.”

“She’s not that old,” a sister-in-law offers. “She’s only twenty-nine, I think.”

“Like you’re twenty-nine.”

“$%#* off,” the sister-in-law says.

“Jennifer is better at the sexy stuff. Helen is better at the older-woman stuff.”

“Christ,” someone says. “The older-woman stuff? What the $%#* does that mean?”

“It means more men will vote for Jennifer,” a brother-in-law teases.

“No doubt.”

“Do you guys ever think about anything other than sex?”

Most of the men in the room shake their heads.

“Helen is more talented. If she loses, then I’ll lose faith in the whole world. She deserves it,” Mrs. Joe says.

I think:
Wow. And I thought I was the only one who was allowed to base my faith in the whole world on reality TV.

“Sex sells,” a sister says.

“It’s why you married me, right?” her husband says.

She hides her head in her hand and says, “Not in front of my parents, Don.”

Joe Sr. says, “How’d you think we brought you all into the $%#*ing world?”

The sister’s face gets redder with embarrassment. “Oh god.”

“I’m just saying Helen is a better dancer. It’s
Dance On, America!
It’s supposed to be about who the best dancer is.”

“I think Jennifer is the better dancer,” a brother says.

“That’s because you’re a man.”

“You’re a $%#*ing idiot,” he replies.

“And you’re a lazy asshole,” someone says.

A sister—the youngest-looking one, maybe in her early twenties—stands up and throws her empty plate at the floor to shut everyone up. It works. We all stare at her. “Who gives a $%#* about
Dance On, America!
?” she says. Everyone looks at her, ready to pounce on whatever she says. Then she smiles and looks at her boyfriend/husband, who’s sitting next to her. “We’re $%#*ing pregnant!”

After the loud response and the many claps on the back and hugs, the women start clearing the table. I excuse myself and go back to the chalet. Hannah stays. Joe Jr. eventually shows up at the chalet and knocks on the door before he lets himself in.

“Sorry,” he says. “My family is a freak show.”

“Not really,” I say.

“Totally. We’d be candidates for some reality TV show. People would love to watch us fight over who’s going to win $%#*ing
Dance On, America!
”

I chuckle. He senses my mood.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. Just taking a break. It’s been a weird week,” I say.

As Joe Jr. takes out a cigarette and lights it and then digs around in the kitchen of the chalet for an ashtray, I try to figure out what day it is. I think it’s Monday. I ask, “Is it Monday?”

“Yep.”

“Shit,” I say.

“You supposed to be somewhere else?” he asks.

“Kinda.”

“I was serious when I said all that shit today, Gerald.”

“I know.”

“You have choices. You have so many things you can do,” he says, spreading his arms wide. “So many things.”

“So do you,” I say. “Are you chained here? I think not.”

He takes a drag on his cigarette.

“The reason I stayed friends with you is because you were like an escape,” I say. “When the shit hit the fan at home, I could dream of coming down here with you. We could clean the buses together. We could bitch about your dad together. You could teach me how to smoke.”

“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t be here. You don’t want to learn to smoke. You shouldn’t want to live like this,” he says. “You’re either born into it, or you’re not.”

I think about what I was born into.

He drags on the cigarette again. “And being born into it isn’t as great as it seems. But it means I have something. Like roots, but not roots.”

“Do you know who I am?” I ask. I feel like I don’t have control over my mouth.

“What do you mean? Like—should I?”

“Maybe. Depends.”

He looks at me more closely. “I don’t recognize you from
America’s Most Wanted
or anything. You’re not in trouble, are you?”

“Do you remember a little kid named Gerald? From
Network Nanny
?”

He cocks his head to the side to think better. “Nope. I don’t remember that,” he says. “When was it on?”

“When we were little. Probably six or seven,” I say. “The kid crapped on stuff all the time.”

Joe Jr. cracks a smile. “Oh! The Crapper! I’ve heard of him but never saw him. Dad makes jokes about how bad the talent is sometimes and says he might as well have got the Crapper for the second act and stuff like that.” He nods as if this is all great until he realizes that I might be the Crapper. “Hold on,” he says. “Is that you?”

I raise my eyebrows and smirk.

I demand to be the Crapper and be proud of being the Crapper.

“Shit,” he says. “Sorry.”

“You’re not the only person who grew up in a circus,” I say.
“And maybe my staying here wouldn’t be as bad as you think, you know?”

“Except that you can’t. I mean—it’s the off-season. We don’t go anywhere for another month and a half. We sent the crew home. There’re no paychecks until we start again.”

“Oh,” I say, and I feel a distant relief because I didn’t really want to clean buses for minimum wage anyway.

“Yeah,” he says, then stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray.

Once we get out into the darkness, he says, “No shit—you’re the Crapper?”

“Yep.”

“I never saw you in action. I’ve heard stories, though.”

“I bet.”

“You’re not going to crap in my chalet, are you?”

I hit him on the arm. “Dude. I’m seventeen.”

“So?”

“So, no, I will not crap in your chalet,” I say.

“Why’d you really come down here?” he asks.

“We wanted to run away, so this was as good a place as any. Plus, I’ve been watching this video.” I stop here. I don’t want him to know about my obsession with the video.

“Porn?” he asks.

“No!” I say. “Shit.”

“What’s wrong with porn?” he asks.

“It’s a trapeze video. From Monaco,” I say.

“It’s $%#*ing incredible, isn’t it? The one with the Chinese girls?”

“Yeah.” I nod. “$%#*ing amazing.”

We walk to the main house and don’t say much more. There’s something about Joe Jr. that makes me know that we’ll be friends for life. I can see me taking my kids to his circus. I can see us drinking beers on a summer night in my backyard or something. We stand outside the back door of his house and listen to the family arguing. It’s loud. Someone bangs a table. There is cackling laughter. There is outrage and more laughter.

“Welcome to my hell.”

“You can always come to New York with us,” I say.

“I thought you were from Pennsylvania.”

“I thought you thought I was from New York.”

We look at each other. I think:
Why did I just make it easier for him by saying I was from New York?

I demand to demand that I am from Pennsylvania.

I demand to stop being such a $%#*ing pushover.

“Forget it,” I say. “I mean you can always untie your roots and come visit us, wherever we end up.”

We walk into the loud celebration. Someone has found a bottle of champagne to celebrate the new baby-on-the-way. Someone else is still talking about how Jennifer shouldn’t win and that the world is an oversexed mess because of people like Jennifer.

Hannah is sitting in the middle of all of it on her own, smiling. When she sees us walk in, she smiles even wider. I take my place next to her at the table and we hold hands.

She says, “I always wanted a big family.”

I don’t know if this is some weird hint about babies and
our future, but I don’t care. I can’t think of one seventeen-year-old guy who wouldn’t be freaked out by this. But I’m not. I can totally see us having a big family. I can totally think of our future—how we’ll do what we want and be what we want. Surrounded by aquariums, eating cookies, not being pushovers.

Hannah called her mother while I was writing. She went outside and paced while she talked. Her mom asked her aunt to find them some help, including help for Hannah’s mother’s increasing mental issues. The aunt went to a few places and thinks she’ll be able to find some solutions. Anyway, Hannah’s mom isn’t sending her a hundred crazy texts a day anymore.

I call my dad in front of Hannah. This is what she hears.

When I hang up, she stands there waiting for the story, but instead of telling her, I hug her and say, “I told Joe I’d meet him in the barn. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“But are we leaving? Today? Didn’t you just say that?”

“If you want to, then yes. If you don’t, then no. We can do what we want.”

“YOU JUST JUMP,”
Joe Jr. says. “And hold on to the bar.”

He’s sitting in a chair on the edge of the makeshift ring. Thirty feet below me.

I’m standing on the tiny platform with the bar in my hands. My sweaty hands. I hook the bar to the hook at the side and I cover my hands in chalk for the fifth time.

“Come on,” he says. “There’s a net. Nothing to be worried about.”

I close my eyes and see Lisi on the other side. I promise myself ice cream if I do this. Any flavor I want. All I have to do is jump. My hands get too sweaty again, so I hook the bar up and rechalk. This happens at least four more times.

Joe Jr. starts to play on his phone and has stopped encouraging me. He looks so small down there, in his tiny chair. His phone is the size of an ant. He is the size of a large spider. The net is so far away.

I look at my hands. Very chalky, but not shaking.

I look at the other platform—across the rigging. Snow White is sitting there with her bluebird. She also looks small, but not as small as Joe Jr. or his phone. She is superimposed—unreal. Not really there. She’s just a projection.