The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second (28 page)

“I don't get it,” I said as we climbed into the Jeep. “Are you and Dad getting back together?”

The sun was coming up, which still bugged me a little, so I slipped on the Ray-Ban Wayfarers I'd been wearing since Sunday. There's something about sunglasses that lets you get away with stuff you normally wouldn't. Like people won't call your bluff when they can't see your eyes. I thought they made me look good in a geeky-cool kind of way. Mom didn't agree.

“You look like a drug addict wearing those,” she said, looking over her hands as she lit a cigarette. She waved the pack at me, offering me one. I shook my head. “I know, I know. I should be the one telling you not to smoke. But if you smoked, I wouldn't feel guilty doing it.”

“Yeah, Mom, that makes perfect sense. So are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Getting back together with Dad?”

Mom exhaled, smoke streaming from her nostrils like a cartoon bull. “Your father's worked hard for this. The least we can do is show him some support.”

“So, are you letting him move back in?”

I wasn't sure I knew what I wanted her answer to be. I actually kinda missed not having him constantly breathing down my neck—at least, a little bit.

“We'll see.” Ending the conversation, Mom fiddled with the radio dial, searching for something other than WAIT's Iraq War–boosting broadcast (“Rock the Casbah” and “Midnight at the Oasis”). She'd almost breezed past what sounded like the Velvet Underground, but I grabbed her elbow and made her stop.

“This?” Mom asked, snickering. I nodded, and she threw her hands up in a what's-to-understand shrug as she pulled into the entrance of South's parking lot. Then Lou had to go and embarrass us, ordering Severin to taste the whip, kiss the leather boots. I couldn't have gotten out of the car faster if I'd been pushed.

Even before classes started, things were different at school. The guys from the soccer team wanted me to sit in the Pit with them, wondering why I hadn't been there all season. Funny, if I'd known a concussion'd get me entrance to South's
sanctum sanctorum
(who'da thunkit, nearly three-and-a-half years of Latin and I finally find a use for it), I'd still wanna sit in the cafeteria. Jon Bales kept telling anyone who'd listen about me Technicolor-yawning on the referee (
It was totally volcanic—we're talking Mount St. Helens. The ref actually stopped the game so he could shower and change.
) and how Josh went batshit-crazy on Bob, earning himself what had to be a one-of-a-kind state record—a red card and immediate ejection from the game for spitting, unsportsmanlike conduct, violence, and swearing—all directed at a teammate.

The way Bales tells it, Coach decided Bob should sub for me. After Bob blew our lead, giving up four shots back to back, Josh lost it. He got right up in Bob's face and started shoving him around, screaming about how much better the team was when it had a
real
fag for a goalie. The problem with guys like Bob was they let in anything and everything. I guess Bob, trying to be a team player, said something about showing the Crusaders that we came to play. Not missing a beat, McCullough mouthed off, “Oh, yeah, Collins, you asshole, you came to play all right—with yourself in the shower.” Then Josh spit in Bob's face, snatched his red card from the ref, and stormed off the field, saying that he should've joined the golf team four years ago, 'cuz at least in golf all the queers are rug-munchers.

After Bales shut his mouth, Marshall wanted to know if it was true I couldn't remember anything from Saturday (
wow, just like amnesia
), and then Bink complained about his Mom wanting to bring me chicken soup.
(She's whining, Neil, it's Jewish penicillin, and I said, Mom, he's got a concussion, not pneumonia.
) And Dana—Dana was as humorless as always. She berated me for trusting the neurologist and thinking I
only
had a concussion, because for all I knew, it could be a contusion, a hematoma. I could go from being fine one moment to suddenly stroking out and bleeding out of my eyes.

Trying to get to third-hour choir during passing period wasn't easy. After years of being the dork who even preschoolers would point and laugh at, I was suddenly, maybe not popular, but at least not invisible. I got
What's up?
s and
Dude, how's it hanging?
s from guys on the varsity basketball team. Chicks—and not just the fat ones who asked me to school dances, but ones Bink said he'd like to bang—tugged me into their fog of hairspray, perfume, and Binaca, wanting to know if I was okay. They'd heard from Bales that I,
oh, my God
, went into a coma right there on the field and,
can you believe it
,
almost totally died
in the hospital. And then, this was way too weird—
Have you ever, like, you know, tried doing it with a girl? Dana says some people with head injuries, like, get whole new personalities, you know?

I ended up getting to choir late, but I wasn't worried. I'd just tell Mrs. Reed I'd felt a little light-headed before class and needed to sit.

The problem with choir, though, was wearing sunglasses and trying to navigate the dark corridor separating the entrance from the rest of the room. It wasn't easy. I felt my way through the dark, groping for the walls and trying not to trip over my own feet.

“Jesus,” someone said as I staggered into the room, “it's true. Charlie's blind.”

Mrs. Reed covered her mouth, trapping a short gasp; the tenors reeled backward, blinking wildly; a high-strung soprano, looking too much like a horror-movie chick about to take an axe to the head, dug her fingernails into her cheeks; but it was Rob who actually shocked me.

I kinda expected him to throw his head back in maniacal
muwahahahaha
laughter and greedily rub his hands together. It didn't happen. Rob's mouth was slack and his face went dead-people white, like some plug inside him had been pulled to drain his color. He dropped his sheet music. He gulped, his Adam's apple vanishing then barely reappearing. Rob seemed to be saying something, but his lips tripped on the words.

So it was one of those stupid, split-second daydreams, but how's this for a disconnect with reality:

Rob has one of those mom-with-her-kid-trapped-under-an-18-wheeler adrenaline rushes. He lets out this rafter-shaking, animal-dying howl, flails through the altos and sopranos crowded on the risers below him, his arms thrashing wildly, and rushes to me. He throws himself into me, a hand wrapping around my waist, the other gently cupping the base of my head. He's crying, his face in my neck, whispering how sorry he is. He never meant to hurt me. Everything will be okay. We'll be together always, he promises between the sobs and gasps. We'll drop out of South, and hand-in-hand, we'll run from the chorus room to his car.

We'll move to Chicago. Find a cheap studio apartment. If he has to, he'll take some money from a trust left to him by some dead rich family member, maybe he can't get all the money, but he figures what he can get will be enough for a year's rent. The place—our place—won't be much. We won't be able to afford electricity at first, but we'll steal candles from churches and fancy nightclubs. The shower won't work and we'll sponge each other clean from the bathroom sink, playing this game where each of us kisses the spot on the other we like best.

Each night, we'll sit together on the queen-sized mattress on the kitchen floor, in nothing but our skivvies, eating from the carton of ham-fried rice we'll splurge on with what Rob will always say is the last of our cash. Miraculously, it never is. And feeling frisky, Rob will crawl over to me, and with chopsticks I've never figured out how to use, he'll grab the elastic band of my underwear, and tug it past my hipbone. I'll get hard and he'll ask if it's for him. I'll blush and nod, and then he'll roll on top of me, the two of us nipping at each other like puppies. Then, shy and tender all of a sudden, Rob'll ask if he can—and I'll kiss him, wrap my legs around him, my ankles in the small of his back. Afterward, he'll smooth my eyebrow with his thumb. I'll smile up at him and we'll laugh like we were drunk.

It wasn't until Mrs. Reed tapped her baton against the metal sheet music holder, ordering everyone to settle down, that I stopped daydreaming. The best thing, though, was Rob was looking at me like he still cared. But I gotta face it, he only seemed like he cared 'cuz that's what I wanted from him. Once he found out I wasn't blind and I wasn't gonna die, Rob didn't look at me again. I tried telling myself it didn't matter, but it pissed me off.

I wish I could just grow up and get over him, but I can't.

I gotta run. Mom's saying we need to meet up with Dad to see if there's anything we can do before the polls close.

Wednesday, November 7

Well, the big news, I guess, is that Dad won with a margin so wide that, even if he'd been running as a Democrat and not an Independent, the McHenry County Republican party can't whine that their rightful, ordained-by-God ascension to power was stolen from them by a vast left-wing conspiracy involving class warfare, race baiting, and entire cemeteries of registered voters magically punching ballots.

This morning there were a bunch of articles in the
Herald
, talking about how Dad's victory as an Independent was an “upset,” which makes sense. It seems like adults are always bitching at election time about how there's no viable third-party candidates, but if they saw Dad's campaign headquarters last night, it'd be pretty clear why.

The restaurant where everyone had gathered to watch the returns—which, let's face it, were practically a footnote as far as Chicago TV producers and political reporters were concerned—was, without a doubt, an ecumenical clusterfuck. The Binkmeyers—Crystal Lake's self-appointed last bastion of liberalism—were there, pushing petitions for McHenry County to make reparations to virtually every minority group that ever had a hangnail and thought they could pin the blame on the federal government; referendums on a woman's right to choose the nail polish for her mani and pedi while getting an abortion and microderm abrasion facial; and, of course, they were soliciting donations—AKA begging—to build a center for radical feminist, vegan, Wiccan house pets.

Believe it or not, Mr. and Mrs. B were tame compared to everyone else. There were the libertarians who—as best I can figure—were a bunch of self-employed, middle-aged, hydroponics and
High Times
, toke-'em-if-you've-got-'em white guys who couldn't stop bitching about how The Man kept them down; how the Constitution gave them the right to personally own more nukes than were banned in either SALT Treaty, but it didn't give the government the right to tax them—even if no taxes meant the local police force would basically be the equivalent of a group of lard-asses who couldn't qualify for the mall's rent-a-cop position. Another part of the crowd seemed to be either a) lost; b) looking for a place to keep warm; c) under the mistaken impression that there was a bus stop nearby; or d) looking for a more attractive place to die than their local assisted-living senior center. And last, there were the county's “don't ask, don't tell” closet case Democrats—the L.L. Bean-wearing, Republican-acting/-appearing liberals—who spent the night praying that if Dad won the election he wouldn't go mad with power and try to ban National Public Radio.

After being elbow-to-elbow with so many freaks for ten minutes, I was looking for any excuse to get the hell out of there, which is why I was glad when Dad's campaign manager—a short, severe woman who was all pearls and nylons—thrust a clipboard at me and “suggested” my time would be better spent drumming up votes at the train station.

Dad stared at her like she was one of those retreads who can recite the first thousand digits of pi, but can't work a knife and fork without stabbing herself in the forehead. Dad patted her head—actually, patted it—and “suggested” she take the rest of the night off.

“She's right,” Mom said. “Somebody should be at the station. Charlie and I'll go hand out voter's guides.”

“For what, Laura?” Dad asked, his hand circling Mom's waist. “So you can get frostbite? Look at him.” Dad thrust his chin at me. “The kid doesn't want to stand outside freezing his nuts off, do you, Charlie?”

I didn't, but I was smart. I glanced at Dad's campaign manager. Her eyebrows double-stitched together and her bullfroging gullet strained her necklace, threatening to machine-gun the room with cultured pearls. “Say ‘yes,'” she mouthed silently, nose scrunched, razor teeth chewing the air. “Tell him you'll do it.”

“I'll do it,” I said, hands in my coat pockets. Dad's manager exhaled and her neck shrank from its DEFCON 1 proportions. I wouldn't be picking imitation-Tiffany's shrapnel out of my spleen.

“No one's doing anything. Whatever happens, happens.”

“What?” the campaign manager asked. Her look was priceless—she was like a little kindergartener and Dad was this big bad man who'd come along, snatched the cocker spaniel puppy from her arms, squeezed it by the neck 'til its soft brown eyes popped out of its little puppy skull, and then handed her its limp and lifeless body. She blubbered.

Dad spent the next few hours “working” the room, which meant dragging me from table to table and alternating bragging about his family with hand kissing, baby shaking, and puckering-up-and-planting-a-big-wet-one on his donors' sphincters. Around eight, when the polls showed he was a shoe-in for state's attorney, Dad disappeared. A few minutes later, he came back, plucked a water glass from the nearest table, and rang its edge with a spoon.

“May I have your attention, please,” Dad said. “I have an announcement.”

The crowd turned, looking at Dad with smug smiles and wet-eyed expectancy. Arthritic fingers crossed, the gummy ends of cigars were pulled from thick lips. Some young nogirl's-gonna-make-me-put-my-Ding-Dong-in-her-Ho-Ho-'cuz-True-Love-Waits, home-schooled, there-was-
sooo
-nothing-gay-about-my-boy-parts-getting-tingly-when-I-practiced-mouth-to-mouth-on-Billy-for-my-merit-badge freak cheered.