The Boys of My Youth (23 page)

Divorce papers, with a smiley face on a Post-it note from her husband. “That was bugging me, you in the bathtub,” I tell her.
“Jim’s the one who should get his head smacked off. Or Tina.” Tina is Jim’s receptionist, and the woman he left Elizabeth
for.

“I’m not smacking anybody’s head off,” she replies dreamily. “Because I don’t even care.” When Jim first left her for Tina,
Elizabeth made the mistake of asking why, and he told her. In the course of the conversation he mentioned a specific sex act
that men tend to like a lot.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“Not only am I not kidding,” she replied. “But the thing is,
it’s true. I mean, you hate to simplify these things, but he’s the one who said it.” She sighed hugely. “That’s what they
sit around doing.”

Her voice had the same dreamy quality it has now, but a week later, when it had sunk in, she’d been ready to take out after
him with a baseball bat. She’d tried to call him at work to tell him he was a dead man, but Tina wouldn’t put her through.
“Uh, I don’t
think
so, Liz,” she had said smugly, right before disconnecting her.

So, any idea why Madelyn’s dad slept in a coffin?

“He thought it was funny, of course,” she said. “Men.”

Jeff Bach, blond, the fifth Beatle, a student at our school. Lived below the hill and hung around with guys who were Mexican,
which made him seem even more blond. Danny Garcia, one of his friends, yanks on my hair in science.

“Hey,” he whispers. “You and Liz like Jeff.”

I turn around and roll my eyes, trying for sarcasm. “I’m
sure
,” I whisper back.

Forty minutes later, Elizabeth and I are side by side in the nurse’s office. The next cot is occupied by someone who appears
to be truly sick, not faking it. The nurse is excited by this and keeps poking her head in and staring at him.

News has been leaked, if Danny Garcia knows then everyone knows. If everyone knows, then Jeff must know. We think we could
actually puke; we groan and stare at the paint on the ceiling. The nurse hears us and thinks she might have an epidemic on
her hands.

“You should’ve said
Jeff who,”
Elizabeth hisses.

I never thought of that. I start pretending like I’m beating myself up. We do our silent screaming routine. The guy on the
other cot opens one eye. “I’m not really sick,” he says.

“Us neither,” we whisper back.

Pretty soon they both go back to class and I get kept for another hour and released at lunch.

“Eat some meat if you can,” the nurse advises.

My own husband didn’t have a receptionist, but he had a best friend, and the best friend had a wife. On a bitterly cold Sunday
morning he went out to get doughnuts and didn’t return for two hours. I took a bath, using my toes to turn the hot water on
and off. Pretty soon my knees were brilliant pink, my forehead was sweating, and it came to me that I’d been in there a while.
I wondered how come my doughnuts weren’t back yet and then suddenly the answer hit me, the way a math problem can solve itself
when you’re not paying attention.
Oh
, I thought,
he’s having an affair
. I stood up immediately, like the tub had ejected me, and began drying off.

When he came home I was dressed, standing in the middle of the living room with an ashtray in my hand, smoking a stale French
cigarette I’d found in my desk. I hadn’t smoked for four years but was quickly getting the hang of it again; only halfway
through my first cigarette, and I already wanted another one. He was clattering around in the kitchen, putting breakfast on
a blue plate, pouring a cup of coffee. I prepared a smoke ring and launched it in his direction as he walked into the living
room.

He stopped. “What?” he said. His face turned into clay; on the blue plate were giant melting doughnuts, some with multicolored
dots on top, some with white cream oozing from their back ends. “What?” he said again.

I told him and he didn’t disagree. The only thing that happened was his face twitched, like a horse’s hide, when I said the
word.
Affair
. You are. And I am very. Upset. Actually I also
wailed, like a baby in its crib. That scared him and he set down the doughnuts and coffee, took a step toward me, a step back,
then sat down on the edge of the couch. Unbelievably, he began to cry, which shut me up instantly.

Do I want to know who?

This from my husband Eric, who had held my hand when they lowered my mother into the ground, who put me in a bathtub once
and poured cold water on me to break a fever, who whispered the names of the constellations again and again because I could
never remember them. I guess I need to know who.

He tells me the name and the howling baby comes out again before I collect myself.
Kim?
She’s a passive-aggressive
rat
, everyone knows that,
nobody
likes her. You like
her?

Not really, he acknowledges. In some ways she’s pathetic, the way she lets Bruce talk to her. He’s no longer crying, he suddenly
looks pious and overburdened. In as flat a voice as I can manage I suggest he go sit around somebody else’s house for a while.

When the door closes behind him I stand in the center of the room and light another prehistoric cigarette. Off in the distance
the phone rings. It’s Bruce, wondering if Eric’s around. I set the receiver back in the cradle without saying a word, and
as I do so, the house settles over my shoulders like a stucco cape.

A spring night, one
A.M.
, we have just escaped through the barricaded door of Elizabeth’s bedroom into the inky darkness. We let our eyes adjust,
breathing in the dusty smell of geraniums. A bridal wreath bush stands laden with tiny white bouquets, the sky is velvety
beyond the branches of a sycamore, the stars are tiny pinpricks of light. We have six half-rolls of toilet paper borrowed
from various gas stations and public toilets. We are on a mission.

“Let’s go,” I whisper and we move out silently, going from house to house, staying in the black shadows of the flowering bushes.
Four blocks from her house we find ourselves trapped up against a garage while a man and a woman have an argument in the driveway.
They’ve just pulled in and gotten out of the car, a station wagon with wood on the sides. The concrete driveway is ghostly
blue in the moonlight, their faces are doughy.

“Why her?” the woman says over and over again. “Why her?”

The man tries to pet her head like she’s a dog. “Honey, don’t,” he says each time she asks why her.
Honey, don’t, honey, don’t, honey, don’t
. And then they kiss, staggering sideways. We seem to be standing in some unflowering rose bushes, absolutely still in the
darkness, like a black and white photograph of two girls who have done this before. Something hits my arm and buzzes, I look
down and see a June bug flapping around. Another one hits my cheek. I take Elizabeth’s elbow and try to pull her away. She
resists and glares at me, points one finger toward the people standing in a blue pool of moonlight twenty feet away. I grab
her arm and yank her onto the driveway and run through the next yard and the next, her panting fast and loud behind me. We’re
laughing silently and hysterically. A ravine appears on the right and we run for it, diving down the hill, where we lay, gasping.

“You
queeb,”
Elizabeth whispers. She punches me in the arm. “Why did you
do
that?”

I pause. “There were June bugs smacking into me,” I tell her gently.

She immediately stops laughing and squeezes her eyes shut. A moan escapes from her lips. “I can’t,” she says without opening
her eyes. “I can’t keep going if there are June bugs.”

“There aren’t,” I say. “It’s not even June — those two are the only ones.”

She still has her eyes closed. “No sir,” she says in a small voice.

I try to think for a minute. Finally I say, “Don’t wreck everything because of two June bugs.”

She opens one eye and looks at me with it. “What about if there were
worms
, you wouldn’t even walk in case one might
touch
you.” I consider this a low blow and remain silent. “And you know it,” she finishes.

A minute goes by, both of us staring through the ravine trees at the black sky. “You
know
it,” she says once more. We get up slowly, like old people, readjust the toilet paper rolls that are tied around our waists
on pieces of rope, and set out, subdued, to complete our mission.

A woman friend stops over to visit me one afternoon. She is lonely, melancholy, and at loose ends. Do you ever feel like this?
she asks me. That’s how the entire world feels, I say. Sit down, have some chips, have some dip. She’s not one of my favorite
people, but I’d rather talk to her than write, which is what I was doing when she dropped by. She’s having husband troubles
apparently, and winds up telling me she’s thinking of having an affair.

“Have you ever done that?” she asks. Her head is tilted to the side quizzically, a trace of sour cream is adhered to her lower
lip. I feel immensely warm and slightly guilty all of a sudden, and the walls of the room step in an inch or so, crowding
me.

“Oh, Kim, it’s not good to do that,” I tell her. And I mention some lovely traits her husband Bruce has, not the least of
which is that he’s my own husband’s best friend. She takes that for what it’s worth and drifts back through the front door,
gets in her little yellow car, and peels out.

Danny Garcia’s house is on a cul-de-sac it takes us forever to find. By this time we are walking in the no-June-bug zone in
the middle of the street, and talking in normal voices. As it turns out, his house has no trees, so we’re momentarily at a
loss. There are small bikes and wrecked toys in the front yard, and a sign that says
Koolade 4 Sale
. We caucus for a minute, crouched next to a blue sedan parked at the curb.

“Now what are we supposed to do?” I say. Elizabeth stares up at the split-level ranch house and thinks. She outlines a plan
that involves only what we have available — if there are no trees, there are no trees. Simple, really.

Twenty minutes later we have draped giant strands of toilet paper over the roof of the house, seven of them, from one end
to the other. We had to hurl them, unraveling whitely against the night sky, one of us in the backyard and one in the front.
Our contingency plan was if a light came on or if anyone came out, we would run in two separate directions and meet at Renee’s
house, five blocks away. The strands are anchored on either side of the house with trikes and dump trucks. We meet in the
shadow of the blue car to survey the situation.

“It needs more,” I whisper.

“I’m too tired,” she whispers back.

“We walked all the way over here and it only looks like about two
strands
,” I insist. “Let’s just get rid of the rolls.” So we patiently unwind them, leaving pools of white against the pavement.
We travel back up into the yard and, carefully holding the ends, throw the rolls over the roof, one after the other. The last
two don’t make it, our arms are too tired, and they land with a thud and roll back down the roof and into the bushes in front
of the porch. In an instant a light goes on, the door bursts open, and Danny and Stuart Garcia are running
barefoot, sixty-five miles an hour. Elizabeth and I are half a block away by this time, and we veer off suddenly, one to the
left, one to the right, like a dividing amoeba.

The yards are hard to navigate, there are things lying around everywhere, lawn mowers, rakes, bicycles, and, in one case,
a tied-up dog who runs out to the end of his chain and stands up on his back legs, wagging his tail and pedaling his front
paws. I can’t tell which Garcia followed me, but I can hear him crashing around, one yard over. I stop and crouch under the
awning of the dog’s plywood house. The dog climbs in beside me happily and we both sit in the straw, me listening for the
sounds of a Garcia, him biting a flea. There is a pale light burning in the kitchen of the house, illuminating an ornate clock
and the corner of a fridge, harvest gold. Pots of African violets, a mound of spilled potting soil and a pair of gloves are
sitting on a table by the back door. The dog, a beagle mix with long silky ears, leans up against me and yawns. I put one
arm around him and we’re buddies together, in the shade of his little abode. You can tell he doesn’t get many visitors in
here, but he’s a good host. A gnawed-on bone is tucked in the corner. I hold it out and he tilts his head quizzically, then
takes it only when he’s sure I don’t want it, and begins absentmindedly chewing.

From inside the plywood shelter we watch the night tick along. After fifteen minutes or so I hear voices, and I pull my legs
farther inside and scrunch up into the black corner. Through the yard amble Danny and Stuart, wincing on their bare feet,
talking in whispers and making little aggressive gestures toward imaginary enemies. The dog fades out into the night and stands
on his hind legs again at the end of his chain. Stuart stops for a second and lets the dog rest his front paws against him.
All I can see are their legs and hands, they can’t see anything of me. Stuart lifts the dog’s ear and touches the soft part
inside. The dog stops wagging and holds himself very still, in paralyzed pleasure. They walk on, whispering, and the
dog gets a drink of water from a dishpan and then wanders back into his shelter. I’m sorry, but I have to go. He’s pretty
philosophical about it, following me to the end of his chain and then stretching out on the damp ground, back legs stuck out
terrier-style, tail moving slowly back and forth.