The Other Way Around (13 page)

Jesse loves this neighborhood. I wonder if he would love Glens Falls. Or if he ever knew anybody with an in-ground pool. Does he love it because he senses the truth behind the heavy oak
doors and alarm-sensitive windows? Does he know the houses are empty inside? These are depressing thoughts, and I don't want to be standing here in the dark all alone with them.

It's dark
, I tell myself as I pull down my pants and then my boxers. I try not to look at anyone or see anything as I slip out of the trees and walk naked towards the edge of the pool. The water is within sight, and nobody is looking my way. I take a deep breath and in that same instant stub my big toe on the concrete path surrounding the pool. “Shit!” I curse loudly, and five heads whip around in my direction. There's nothing else to do in this situation. I take another big step and cannonball into the pool.

When I come up for air Jesse is laughing and shaking his head. “Come on, man, there's no way that went unnoticed. We gotta bolt.” I take a minute to scrub at the paint on my skin before hopping out of the pool and back into my pants. Sure enough, we're barely dressed when the outdoor lights flicker on. We scamper out the driveway, holding our shoes and shaking our dripping heads. A few blocks away from the house, we stop to put our shoes on. I briefly examine the gash on my big toe before stuffing it back into my sock. Hopefully the chlorine sterilized it a little. We walk back toward the park and the van quietly. Jesse seems to know where he's going, and I just follow behind, floating really. These houses could be the houses of any of the towns I've lived in. The kids zoning out in front of the TV could be any of the kids I've sat beside in class for the last ten years. But they're in there, and I'm out here. As we're walking Emily skips up to me and pulls my arm around her shoulders. Her teeth are chattering wildly. “I'm fuh-fuh-fuh-freezing, Drew. Keep me warm.”

I pull her in towards my body. For whatever reason, adrenaline, excitement, blood loss, I'm not cold at all. I rub her shoulder with my hand, and she wraps an arm around my waist. By the time we get back to the van I'm getting cold, but I'm still sad that our moment together is ending. And I'm a little bummed out when Lyle and Emily sleep up and the rest of us are down below, but mostly I'm too tired to care. My Spidey sack is warm and dry, and as I'm drifting off, I think about the sweetness of the ice cream and the warmth of the pool and the sensation of being painted on by a hundred different fingers. It's the oddest thing, but even though I'm miles from home and Mima's gone and Dad's a shit, the only absence I feel is the absence of loneliness.

In the morning Jesse ministers to my injured toe with some hydrogen peroxide from what looks like the world's oldest first aid kit. “Is that thing from World War I?” I joke as he pokes around in the metal tin for a Band-Aid that still has some adhesive power.

“I don't think you need stitches, but you're definitely going to lose the nail at some point,” he assesses. Gingerly I place my sock over my foot, trying hard not to knock the Band-Aids.

After oatmeal and a brief cleaning of Shirley's floor, we are on the road again. It's only an hour to Buffalo, and there's some debate in the van about whether it's even worth stopping. Jesse and Lyle seem to think Cleveland would be busier and a better bet for making money, but G and Emily are concerned that by the time we get there it will be too late to scout a good location. Emily keeps talking about a squat she heard about on the outskirts of town that she wants to check out, and since I have no opinion about where we go and no idea what a squat is, I keep quiet. Finally everyone agrees to let Tim make the decision. G jabs him in the ribs, so he takes off his headphones, and explains the two choices. He listens carefully to both ideas and
says, “I've never been to Buffalo, man. Let's stop there.”

Jesse smiles and shakes his head. “Good enough,” he says.

It's the second time I've witnessed the curious decision-making process they call consensus. Sometimes it seems as random as throwing a dart against a wall of swaying balloons. But the results are as good as any so-called adult decisions I've ever witnessed, and as long as they make decisions and we keep moving, I don't care.

I flip open the divorce journal to where there's a page called
Spending Time Together
. I know it's not my title. In fact, I don't even think it's my handwriting. But underneath two columns, labeled
mom
and
dad
, are lists of ways I spent time with my parents. There are only two things under Dad's column: shirt shopping and ice cream.

They're not bad memories. Dad used to take me with him when he'd go to Bloomingdale's to pick out a new dress shirt. He always did this before a job interview. I liked the way a man in a suit would come and ask us if we needed help, but Dad and I liked to go through the shirts ourselves, looking carefully at slight differences in stripes or buttons and checking the neck size, which I still remember was 15 1/2. Then we would go out for ice cream sundaes. It was always a school night.

There are a lot more things on Mom's side of the paper. Things like shoe shopping and groceries, soccer practice and skiing, picking out old movies at the library. But none of them have the clarity of this one memory with Dad.

***

“Okay,” Tim says after we've been riding in silence for a while. “This is the game: desert island. You can only bring two movies
for the rest of your life. What would they be?” He looks at me.

“I'm not going first,” I protest. I know one of them right away, but I need to think about the other one.

“
Citizen Kane
,” Lyle says. “And
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
.”

Tim looks at him with disbelief. “Dude, that's a messed-up island you live on.”

Lyle shrugs. “Whatever.”

Now I know I won't try and impress anyone with my answer. I'm tempted to say
The Muppet Movie
, just to point out how pretentious he's being, but I decide to be honest instead. “
North by Northwest
and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I guess.”

“Classy and dorky,” Tim assesses. “I'm not sure the Lord of the Rings can count as one movie, but I'll let it go this time.”

“Thanks,” I say. G picks Lord of the Rings too, and something called
The Breakfast Club
, which I've never heard of. And then, before anyone else can respond, Tim goes into this long description of some Spanish movie he really likes where all these people are competing to see who can have the most luck. It sounds pretty weird.

“What about you?” I lean over and ask Emily quietly.

She shakes her head like she's embarrassed, but I can tell she's glad I asked. “I have really cheesy taste in movies,” she whispers.

“So?” I say.

“And it's been ages since I saw one at the movie theater anyway.”

“Come on. Just tell me,” I nudge her.

“I really like
Grease
,” she says and then looks up to see if I'm laughing. “And
Dirty Dancing
. Any Jane Austen movie, or anything
with Meg Ryan. And musicals in general. I loved
Mamma Mia
,” she gushes. She looks up, and I'm smiling. “You think I'm a total dork, don't you?”

“Hey, Emily,” Tim interrupts. “What about you? Come on, two movies.”

She shoots me a look. “I like books,” she says.

“Luh-ame answer,” Tim says. But he moves on to Jesse. Meanwhile Emily smiles at me like we have a secret.

Finding a place to perform in Buffalo turns out to be trickier than expected. After one sparsely attended performance the group decides to pack it in and head for the squat. In the meantime, I find out from Tim that a squat is abandoned real estate where people live without paying rent or owning the place. This is a new concept, and I write it down on my list of useful information, even though it doesn't sound like anywhere I would want to live. It's a funny list so far, considering a definition for the word
squat
comes right after directions on how to get the bus to pull over when you have to take a crap.

I'm picturing some sort of squalid apartment building or abandoned factory, so I'm pretty surprised when we pull up in front of an enormous home with a brick walkway and overgrown lawn. I guess I was expecting some kind of industrial zone, but the neighborhood is as suburban as the one I live in. Only after we pass through the gap in the eight-foot-high hedges on either side of the walkway do I start to notice anything out of the ordinary. Hanging from a branch in one of the hedges is a wind chime made entirely of twisted forks. In one window, Tibetan prayer flags hang in place of curtains, and in another there are strings of red glass beads. Jesse knocks, and when no one answers, he turns the handle and lets himself in.
We all follow close behind. The first room we pass might have been a living room. The only furniture left is a long, low coffee table pushed up against one wall and ten or so mismatched cushions spread out on the floor. There's an upright piano, an amplifier, and a couple mike stands set up on one side of the room. An enormous banner painted on canvas hangs over this setup and reads, “Dance Like No One Is Watching”.

The place isn't filthy, but it's not exactly clean either. A few abandoned plates and bowls are stacked in the living room with the remnants of what looks like soup molding inside. The carpet is curling up along one wall and sprinkled with patches of bread crumbs. There's still no sign of inhabitants as we walk down the hallway towards the back of the house. The walls of the hallway are covered with intricate finger-painted art resembling tribal designs. I'm admiring these when I slam into the back of Lyle. He turns around and gives me a glare as I blush and apologize. He's still not really warming up to me.

There's a warm, yeasty smell floating in from somewhere in front of us. “Hi,” I hear Jesse greeting someone. We all push forward into the kitchen. The bread baker is a short guy in his twenties with curly brown hair and wire-rim glasses. He's wearing camouflage pants and is shirtless except for a dingy white apron.

“Welcome to the Shire,” he says and smiles warmly. “I'm Mark.”

Everyone introduces themselves, and we sit down on benches around a long wooden table. Mark talks at us for a while, explaining the workings of the house and the various roles that the five current full-time residents play. He makes bread and hummus every day, or as needed, and is also responsible for
cleaning the bathrooms. I raise an eyebrow, thinking back to the state of the living room. The bread smells incredible, and I try to ignore the fact that he keeps wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

“I call it Alien Garlic Bread,” he says. “Because it's out of this world.” He laughs hardest at this until he snorts. Then without any segue, he adds, “If you guys want to crash here tonight, we're having a tempeh stir-fry and vegan chocolate cake.” My stomach lets out an audible groan.

Mark snorts again and says, “I guess that's a yes, huh, man?”

***

After we set up our sleeping bags on the floor of an unused bedroom, I wander around back, where there's a swimming pool that's been filled in with dirt and turned into a garden. Aside from a few withered and blackened tomato vines, most of the rows are covered with hay. I turn my head at the faint sound of strumming and see a guy, at least a few years older than I am, hanging his legs off the second-floor balcony, a battered guitar in his lap. “Hey, man,” he calls. I give a little wave in return. “Did you just roll in with those guys in the bus?”

I nod.

“Cool,” he says. “I'm Dylan.”

“Andrew,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says like he already knows or isn't listening. “Is, um, Emily, is she like with anyone?”

“What?”

“Like that short anarchist guy? Are they like together?”

“Um, I'm not really sure. I haven't really been with these guys for all that long.”

“Yeah,” he says and blows his stringy bangs out of his eyes. “Sorry about that.” He picks up his guitar and goes inside. I keep walking around the side of the house, but I stop when I hear voices. It's Emily and Lyle, and neither of them sounds happy.

“I know you don't believe me,” Emily is saying, “But I didn't know he would be here.”

“And now you want to leave?” Lyle says, sounding exasperated. “And I'm supposed to explain what exactly to everyone else? What's the big deal? It's only one night.”

There's a long pause during which I slowly creep backwards to avoid getting caught eavesdropping.

We eat our tempeh stir-fry and vegan chocolate cake with spoons and knives. The squat had a visitor last month who turned all their forks into wind chimes like the one I saw walking in. Mark's been living there the longest, almost four years. He said no one bothers them because the place was such an eyesore before they moved in. They've actually improved the property values just by keeping the lawn and the bushes tidy. Mark says the owner is a real estate company in Cleveland, but Bess, one of the other housemates, insists it's an actual person whose aunt lived there with a bunch of cats until she died about ten years ago. Apparently the power company will give you service without proof of legitimate residency as long as you're willing to pay the bill. Another useful fact for my life-after-high-school list.

Besides Dylan and Mark, the three other housemates are women, so it's not hard to figure out that it's Dylan whom Emily has some problem with. Every time he speaks, she winces. She barely touches her food during dinner, but with the
crowd around the table, her silence goes unnoticed, except by me and probably Lyle. Dylan offers to play music after dinner, so everyone grabs a seat in the living room except for Emily, who disappears, muttering something about a walk.