The Belief in Angels (46 page)

I drive up there anyway.

“I’m not going to make out with you,” I tell him when we park up at the Forts. I figure I’ll be honest in case this is what he has in mind.

He acts shocked. “I know. I mean … it’s not why … that’s not what I asked you up here for.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

He glances at me and out the back car window. It’s like he’s concerned someone else might be there, although no one else is around. I think he might be worried someone might interrupt him or hear what he wants to tell me.

It’s scary sitting there in the dark. The Forts are scary at night, and, parked there with Nick, I sense an almost ominous energy.

“I wanted to ask you about prom.”

“Prom?”

I’m stunned, then afraid he plans to ask me to the senior prom. I have absolutely no intention of going. I plan to go see my grandparents and go to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts on prom weekend. I already went to prom with Timothy last year and had a blast. I don’t need to go again.

“Nick, I—”

“Do you think Leigh would go with me?”

Nick thinks Leigh and I are still close, although we barely speak anymore.

“Nick, I guess you don’t know, but Leigh has a boyfriend. She’s been seeing a guy who goes to college in Quincy. She’s wrapped up. I don’t see her often myself.”

“Oh, I didn’t know, huh.”

“But, you never know. She may be single by the time prom comes. You’re a nice guy, I’m sure you’ll have a shot if she’s single.”

He doesn’t seem disappointed to hear this. I can’t tell how he feels.

Then I hear a sound. A loud, rough-sounding gang of boys comes driving up the hill behind us, weaving wildly, their headlights waving. My car windows are up and I can still hear them yelling. They sound drunk, rowdy.

My car lights are out and I’m afraid they won’t see us parked by the side of the road. I lean in to turn my lights on, and Nick grabs my shoulders and pulls me down onto his lap. I don’t understand why he does this. At first I’m completely terrified. Are they going to attack us?

The other car slows down right next to us and the boys shout at our car. I try to push Nick’s hands off my shoulders, to pick my head up and make out what they’re shouting about, but Nick has a vise-like grip on me.

I think he might be trying to protect me from something. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

“Stay down.”

I’m angry now—I’m not going to let a bunch of kids my own age threaten me. I fight off Nick’s hands and turn around to see what they’re shouting about. As soon as I do I realize what’s happening.

The kids in the car explode with laughter at what they think they’ve interrupted. Several crude comments about “giving head” are thrown out. I turn to
Nick. “That’s what this was all about—you set me up in front of your football buddies to make it look like I gave you a blow job?”

Nick avoids my eyes and doesn’t answer.

“Get out of the car,” I say quietly.

“No.”

I’m pissed. I turn on the car, throw it into drive and peel out so fast Nick doesn’t have a chance to catch himself. He’s thrown backwards in his seat. My heart is pounding in my chest, hard and hot. My entire body is aching with pain that feels unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. My blood burns. Every muscle stabs. Even my bones throb.

I am completely present, and every action feels precise and, in a strange way, predestined.

“Hey, slow down.”

“Fuck you.” I push my foot as far down on the pedal as I can. I fly down the hill toward the cliff” across the road from the Forts.

“Hey, cut it out. Stop the car. Stop. I’m sorry!” he yells at the top of his lungs.

I slam on the brakes. Nick’s arm shields his head against the dash. The car skids for a long time before it stops sickeningly close to the edge of the cliff.

“Get out!” I scream at him. I watch as he fumbles with the door handle and practically falls out. He’s kneeling in the gravelly sand at the edge of the cliff. I throw the car into reverse so fast sand spits up at him. He’s still cowering there when I peel off.

I’m trembling with anger and adrenaline from nearly going over the cliff. I drive around and think about what an asshole Nick is. How scared and angry I was when those boys were screaming in the car next to us.

How I hadn’t known what was going to happen and how terrifying that was.

I’m certain Marcy’s story about Wendy has been spread all over the school. I’m sure it inspired a number of cruel jokes. Nick did this to me because of a dare from a group of bored, low-minded, sexually frustrated young boys.

Nothing happened. I haven’t been raped or molested. It was a prank, a joke. A stupid, puerile exercise. I can handle it.

What bothers me most is that I trusted Nick. I went along with him, believing he wanted to talk to me, wanted to share something important with me. I hate that I’m a fool. I’m humiliated.

What also bothers me is that the whole scheme was hatched out of gossip about Wendy and her behavior.

It pisses me off that Wendy’s “Who cares what the neighbors think!” mantra was the cause of a horrible experience for me.

I’m angry that I have to be the daughter of a mother who does these things. I’m tired of having to live in Wendy’s mess. Her life reflects on mine, influences the way people think about me.

I’m tired of the whole thing.

I don’t want to stop believing my life will somehow transcend this bad part, this bad beginning, but I’m starting to think that maybe this isn’t the bad part. Maybe this is just how life goes.

I drive back to my house.

Wendy is gone.

I think about calling Leigh, but I’m too angry and too proud to let her know how badly I miss her. Plus, I’m a mess. I don’t want her to know how much her leaving me has hurt me. I want her to think I haven’t noticed her absence. I figure she must not notice mine.

Timothy will be back tomorrow, but I don’t think I’ll share what happened. I’m too embarrassed to tell him how stupid I was, and I definitely don’t want to tell him the story about Wendy.

On the way to my room I decide to open Moses’s bedroom door.

It took about a year after he drowned for any of us to go inside and go through his things. No one wanted to. But now we’ve all been in there at some point, separately, sifting through his belongings, trying to catch a bit of him.

A year or so after he died, we gave all his clothing and most of his belongings to The Salvation Army. But we kept his collections in boxes, which have sat gathering dust since then. No one could bear throwing them away. We gave away the toys. We gave away all the things that might have had value to other people.

Now all that’s left are the feathers and pebbles, the shells and the sea glass.

I drag the afghan my Grandmother Ruth made for me from my bed into Moses’s room, wrap it around myself, and curl up on his bed.

I can’t sleep. I lie there thinking about Moses when he was a little boy and how he used to smell his food before he ate it.

I think about how carefully he acted and about the meaning of the word careful.

I wonder if Moses collected all our caring, all our goodness. Did we all give Moses permission to store all the things that we were afraid or unable to share with each other?

He’s gone, and it’s all lost.

Everything bad that’s happened to me has been punishment for letting Moses drown. I know I’m never going to be able to make it up, to make it better.

Every action, every word, every day since his death has been tarred with this truth.

Inside of me are tiny silver daggers that cut me with this knowledge every time I draw a breath.

I start to cry, and I can’t stop.

Jules, 17 years | December 23rd, 1978

WHEN RAIN BENDS DOWN THE BOUGH

I HAVE NO memory of Thanksgiving with my grandfather at Pier 4.

David spent his college break with a fraternity friend and his family.

Timothy called while he was home that weekend, but I pretended I had the flu.

Wendy and Jack are back together. Wendy flew down to Florida to meet him. He’s running fishing tours on a charter.

Wendy, without asking me, purchased a plane ticket for me to join them for the holidays in Palm Beach. I think she wants to make sure she has company if Jack flakes out.

David decided to spend Christmas with his new girlfriend. I understand. Our new friendship and occasional phone calls began to falter before Thanksgiving. I didn’t share what was happening. I wouldn’t have been able to find words to explain, and I know he can’t do anything to change my situation. Most of all, it’s important to me that he moves into a life without the interference of our family’s history. We’ve stopped calling one another.

I understand his absence—it’s the familiar absence of the days before Moses died, the days where the Stooges entertained and Freddy reigned—but I feel the loss of his attention more keenly now, having finally gained it, than I ever did before.

Something inside me started to shift after the night in Moses’s room. I’ve fallen into the same sleepwalking state I was in after he died. Each day is a blur.
I’ve stopped talking to kids at school and no one talks to me. It frightens me, but I don’t know what to do about it.

I quit my job at the newspaper.

I’ve tried to find a way to stay present, to focus on my schoolwork or an art project, but it’s all fragile and contrived. It’s too exhausting for me to manifest desire for anything. I don’t want to wake up in the morning. I constantly show up late to school. I’ve lost interest in eating and have lost weight, which I only noticed because one day I put on a pair of pants and they slid right off me and onto the floor. When that happened, I tried on a pair of pants I’ve had since middle school, and they fit.

I’ve begun to forget homework assignments and the day of the week.

My teachers sometimes stop me in the hall with small encouragements about a drawing I’ve done or a paper I’ve written. Their efforts to connect might be genuine, but I’ve become embarrassed by the attention and fake a cheeriness to appease them.

I’m numb.

This is the part where I begin to think about checking out.

At first the idea snuck into my brain when I was especially tired. I’d tell myself I needed more sleep. Then it was the same after I slept, and I’d tell myself I needed to make it through another day. After each day was finished, I’d set my clothes out for the next day thinking that if I went through the motions—papers done, clothing selected, one step in front of the other—I’d push myself to the other side of wherever I was.

But I still got lost.

I don’t have a specific reason. Nothing truly horrible happened. Not any one thing, anyway.

Each day slides by like the last one.

Most nights I have the old nightmare about drowning.

Sometimes when I wake up struggling to find my breath, I’m afraid to fall into sleep again, and I spend the rest of the night fighting to stay awake. Other times, I fight to keep my place in the nightmare. I try to find a different ending.

I have a stack of college applications sitting on my bureau, but it’s pointless to think about next fall when I can barely imagine next week. The applications sit there in their crisp packets, collecting dust and taunting me with all my past hopes.

I’ve lost my ability to believe in certain things … friendship or honesty or happy endings. Collusion is intolerable. I want to find a way to slide out of life in the most painless way possible. The other day I realized that Wendy’s pharmacy might provide a perfect escape.

When Wendy told me about the Palm Beach vacation, I took it as my opportunity. I told her I have term finals to take, and I’ll meet them down there on Christmas Eve. She changed my departure date and left without me.

It arranged itself so easily it seems fated.

I am on my own.

Sitting on my bedroom rug, I stare at the carefully arranged members of Wendy’s pharmaceutical family in front of me.

About two hours ago I positioned myself before her famous drawer, examining the labels and trying to find the most toxic-sounding selections. I now have about forty pills of various shapes, colors, and sizes creating a three-dimensional, almost hypnotically enticing, pattern before me. Now all I have to do is choose the right combination of pills to make certain I create a permanent ending and not a brain-damaged nightmare.