The Tragedy of Dane Riley

by Kat Spears

  After a few minutes, I get in my car and drive the same way, catching up with her about a quarter mile from our houses.

  I’m guessing I’ll have to take a little bit of hell from her for what I told her dad about Eric. I’m not sure what she remembers about our conversation when she was drunk. There’s no way I’m going to be the one to mention it, but maybe she will.

  “You want a ride?” I call to her from the car window.

  She keeps walking so I have to coast along beside her at three miles per hour. She’s mad, I can tell, and won’t even acknowledge me.

  “You should have kept your mouth shut about Eric,” she says after about a tenth of a mile of silence.

  “Why?” I ask, testing out my newfound bravado on her. I might have been screaming at Chuck and Eric fewer than twelve hours ago, but with Ophelia I am less certain. “Eric didn’t give a shit about you when you were passed out on the bathroom floor Saturday night. He wanted to leave you there.”

  “No shit. As if the whole thing isn’t humiliating enough, you have to rub it in by telling everyone. Make me look like an idiot.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and I’m not sorry at all. “You were going to get grounded either way. Getting Eric in trouble was just a bonus.”

  She stops suddenly and turns to look at me through the half-open window. “Is that why you told them? Because you wanted to get Eric in trouble?”

  I put the car into park and sit there for a minute, thinking. I want to tell her the truth. I just lack the courage. But maybe the truth is the only thing that will make her not angry with me.

  “I told them because I figured it was the best way to guarantee you never see Eric again. If he comes within fifty yards of your house now, your dad will shoot him. He’s a total loser and he doesn’t deserve you.”

  She nods at that, just once. And I can feel her forgiving me by degrees. The fact that I admitted I wanted to keep Eric away from her is enough to make her happy. For now.

  I wait, patiently, for her to finish thinking it through.

  “My dad will kill me if he sees me talking to you,” she says, looking up and down the street for signs of anyone.

  “No, he won’t. He must have already paid the deposit on your tuition for next year. I’m pretty sure it’s nonrefundable if you kill your kid.”

  “I don’t think he’ll care at this point.”

  Finally, she concedes and reaches for the door handle. I wait while she gets herself settled, putting her books on the floor and buckling her seat belt.

  Ophelia and I don’t say much on the ride to school, partly because I’ve got the music turned up.

  “You listen to the Smiths a lot,” Ophelia says.

  “I identify with Morrissey’s existential angst.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “What’s wrong with The Smiths?”

  “Morrissey is a racist.”

  “He is?” I ask, genuinely surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “Damn. First plastic straws, now Morrissey,” I say as I reach for my phone and switch to another playlist.

  “All of our heroes die in the light,” Ophelia says to the window.

  We’re in the parking lot at school now and I cut the engine but neither one of us makes a move to get out of the car. The first bell hasn’t rung yet and there are plenty of people still milling around in the student parking lot.

  “I’ve never skipped school before,” Ophelia says suddenly, like she’s blurting a confession.

  “Seriously?” I ask.

  “Nah. I actually like school.”

  “Weird.”

  “I like school, but I kind of can’t wait for the whole thing to be over. I can’t wait to have the freedom to do what I want, when I want.”

  “And what do you want to do, Ophelia?” I ask her. We’re still just sitting. She hasn’t even unbuckled her seat belt.

  “Right now? Or with the rest of my life?”

  “Pretend like right now is the rest of your life. One day left on earth. What do you do with it?”

  “Dane, are you asking me to spend my last day on earth with you?” she asks me with just the hint of a smile.

  “Sure. Yeah. I guess that’s what I’m asking you.”

  “Well, if you put it that way…”

  * * *

  As it turns out, Ophelia and I aren’t very creative about how we would use our last hours on earth. First, we hit the Starbucks drive-through for provisions. It’s not as if I would plan my last day on earth that way if I had any advance warning, but not everybody gets the luxury to plan their last day.

  “The school is probably going to call my dad,” Ophelia says around a mouthful of muffin as I drive away from the Starbucks.

  “I doubt it,” I say. I’m driving aimlessly, heading away from McLean, wondering how far we can get and if never coming back is a viable option.

  “I suppose it’s not as if I can get in any more trouble than I am already.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “So what are you worried about?”

  She doesn’t even hesitate before she says, “Having a psychotic break during my freshman year at college. I worry about that.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s a really specific worry.”

  “It’s not my only worry. Maybe just the most likely.”

  “Why do you say that?” As the Mercedes glides to a stop at a red light I take the opportunity to turn and look at her. Really look at her. And maybe see something other than the fact that she’s pretty and fierce.

  She shakes her head. “I’m already stressed out about the school calling my dad, and me getting in even more trouble than I already am. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “Fair enough. You want a Klonopin?” I ask. “Take the edge off a little?”

  “No, thanks,” she says, and then, with a wry glance in my direction, “My family isn’t rich. We actually have to feel things.”

  “Whatever. You live in McLean.”

  “My dad only has that house because he knows the owners. They’re stationed overseas for a few years so they agreed to rent it to us cheaply. My dad wanted to live in McLean because the schools are good.”

  “Well, either way, you aren’t exactly living in poverty.”

  “We used to, my mom and me,” Ophelia says. Her face clouds with a thought outside of our conversation.

  “It makes sense that you grew up without money,” I say, “why you seem so normal.”

  “I guess. Whatever normal is.”

  “Were you happier living with your mom?” I ask, wondering if maybe my family would be happier if we had less money.

  “I’m not sure,” she says, seriously considering my question. “My mom can be great. Really great. But she can also be really terrible.” There’s more there, under the surface, that she isn’t saying, but I don’t push her.

  We’re approaching a light when it turns yellow and I decide not to risk getting pulled over. I brake suddenly and put my hand out instinctively to stop her from pitching forward in her seat.

  Ophelia looks at me, looks at my hand on her arm. “Thanks,” she says.

  “De nada,” I say, keeping my hand on her arm longer than is probably necessary but it doesn’t seem to make her uncomfortable. “Anyway, you’re practically eighteen. You’ll be on your own soon. Gone.”

  “Gone,” she says with almost a sigh, like the idea really appeals to her. “Mentally I’m already gone from my dad’s house. Have been for a while.”

  I pull onto the George Washington Parkway, a road that’s fun to drive because of the curves, both sides of the road flanked by thick forest. We ride in silence as I take the bridge into DC and then loop back along the tidal basin to pick up the parkway headed back the way we came. The tidal basin is surrounded by hundreds of cherry trees that explode into pink clouds every year. Even though it’s only late spring, the cherry blossoms have already come and gone. The blooms last only a few weeks, which is supposed to be li
ke a metaphor for life—enjoy the little pleasures while you can, because life is going to suck and then be over. It probably sounds better in haiku.

  I pull off the parkway into Fort Marcy park. I’ve come to this park dozens of times and never run into any other people here. Only occasionally do I see another car in the parking lot.

  “I’ve never been here,” Ophelia says as I pop the trunk to the Mercedes and take out Chuck’s golf clubs.

  “Yeah? I come here sometimes when I want to be alone. Which is often, I guess.”

  “What are the golf clubs for?” she asks.

  “Practice.”

  “I didn’t know you golfed.”

  “I don’t, usually. My dad liked to play.”

  The park is an old Civil War fort, which you’d never know by looking at it. There’s an open green space and a steep hill that climbs to a bluff overlooking the Potomac River. Ophelia walks beside me as we follow the trail up to the open green space above the parking lot. At the top of the hill we leave the trees behind and here the landscape is shaped like a large bowl, with grass and a few picnic tables and, on top of the hill, a single cannon, a reproduction of the cannons that would have lined the top of the hill during the Civil War. We walk down, then up to the other side of the grass bowl, to the ridge that overlooks the river.

  We stand silently watching the river, slow and wide at this point. “There was a famous guy, he was a politician or something—he killed himself here,” I tell her. Today the sun is shining and it’s warm away from the shade. It’s easier to forget you are sad when the weather is good. When you live through winter in sadness, it’s easy to imagine spring will never arrive. But somehow it does, and even if you are sad, you have to notice the earth warming and the birds singing and the flowers blooming. “I always wonder where he did it,” I say, looking around.

  “Stop it,” Ophelia says, and her shoulders shake, as if she’s caught a chill.

  “It was a long time ago. Like, in the nineties. The articles about it don’t say how he did it. But I always wonder, you know, if this, or that,” I say as I point first where I’m standing, then over by the tree line, “is where he died.”

  Chuck’s golf bag will balance upright on a kickstand. I set it on a flat patch of turf, then take out two clubs, one for me, one for Ophelia.

  I put a tee from the bag into the turf, then balance a ball on the head of it and hand Ophelia a club. I nod at the golf ball but she takes a step back and says, “You first.”

  My swing catches some of the turf but the ball sails high and away and we both watch it disappear into the river. Then I lift the golf club high over my head, in a two-handed grip, and bring it down hard against packed earth and jagged rocks. The head of the golf club breaks off and skitters across the ground for a few feet before falling off the edge of the overlook. I drop the shaft of the club on the ground and reset the tee and a new ball for Ophelia.

  “Whoa,” she says under her breath. “Okay.”

  “Sometimes I like to break shit when I’m mad,” I say.

  “Whose clubs are these?”

  “Chuck’s.”

  “Oh. You mad at him? Because he’s with your mom?”

  “I’m mad because it was so easy for everybody to forget my dad. I’m mad because I’m the only thing left to remind people that he ever existed. And I’m utterly forgettable.”

  “You’re not forgettable, Dane,” she says, and her voice is as soothing as a fuzzy blanket. “I’m sure there are people who think about you all the time.”

  “Like who?” I ask.

  She sighs, impatient with me, which is our natural state together. “Girls at school, I guess.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask. “I’m not good-looking. I’m terrible at sports, except for skateboarding, I guess.”

  “Girls like you. Because you are good-looking. And mysterious. And sad.”

  “Like Morrissey?” I ask, trying to make a joke.

  “Morrissey is old enough to be my dad. My grandad,” she says after a moment’s consideration.

  “Some people are into that.”

  “Gross. Anyway, a lot of girls at school have asked me about you.”

  “What girls?” I ask.

  “What do you care?” she asks, and she sounds irritated.

  “I’m just curious. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Like you said, you can never be in a relationship because you don’t know how. That’s me, too. I’m pretty sure something’s seriously wrong with me. I go to therapy, take meds.”

  “I think you’re just sad. But not in a bad way,” she’s quick to add. “Believe me, I’ve lived with crazy. My mom is a nutjob. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  In the two years I have lived next door to Ophelia and her dad, she’s never given her mom more than a passing mention. I’m curious about Ophelia’s family, mostly because it’s always comforting to hear about a family that is more screwed up than your own.

  She works her hands around the grip of the club as she settles back into a golfer’s stance. I watch in silence, appreciating the curve of her hip, the length of her leg, as she shifts her weight into position.

  Her swing is better than mine, catching only the ball with a resounding thwack. The ball sails like a rocket and is out of sight, flying too far for us to even see it land in the river.

  Instead of hitting the club on the rocky ground, she swings it hard against the trunk of a tree. The shaft bends at an alarming angle, but does not break in half.

  She laughs as she brushes the hair back from her face, then tosses the twisted golf club aside and resets the tee with another ball.

  The snick of a new club being drawn from the bag. Thwack, as another ball sails high. Then a gust of breath as I put all of my strength into swinging the third club against another tree. Ophelia ducks instinctively as the club head breaks free and spins across the clearing.

  I watch her silently as she takes out another club and sets up to tee off.

  “Is your mom white?” I ask.

  The look Ophelia gives me is hard to read, but I get the sense I have, once again, met her expectations, and they weren’t that high. “Yes,” she says. “My mother is white.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “You didn’t. It’s just that the color of my parents is more important to other people than it is to me.”

  “Where is she?” I ask. “I mean, why isn’t she around? You’re a great kid. You work hard in school. You do sports and sing and do the school play. If I was like you, my mom would think I was the greatest.”

  “She lives in Ohio with her parents. She went back home after her most recent failed marriage.” She pauses then, and the weight of her feelings fills the silence before she speaks again. “She was in the hospital for a while.”

  “Yeah? What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s crazy,” Ophelia says. Just a statement, without emotion. I wonder how many times she practiced saying that before it came out so easily.

  “Like, legit crazy?” I ask.

  “Define ‘legitimately crazy.’”

  “I don’t know. There’s depressed, and mixed up, and then there’s crazy,” I say as I use my hand to chop out the lines along the sad to deranged spectrum. “Does she hear voices? Does she wear a tinfoil hat?”

  “Maybe. To both. I haven’t seen her in a while. Her official diagnosis is bipolar. But not the celebrity kind. She doesn’t like to take her medication. When she’s up, she meets a guy, falls in love, sometimes she ends up married. When she’s down, she’s usually in the hospital or staying with my grandparents.”

  “Your dad seems like a pretty stable guy,” I say, though thinking his universal soldier persona is maybe a little less than stable.

  “He is, I guess. Other than the fact that he was once married to my mom. They were only married for a couple of years. He won’t say it, but I think they just got married because my mom was pregnant with me.”

  “She was already
pregnant when they got married?”

  “Yes. He’s never told me that, either, but I figured it out when I was old enough to do basic arithmetic.” Her smile is kind of quirky as she says this, and I feel sorry for her. I know she probably feels like there was a time when she was unwanted. Maybe she still does.

  “Anyway,” she says, shrugging it off, the way people learn to do, “I used to live with my mom, but my dad sued for custody after she left me home alone one weekend to go to the beach with her girlfriends.”

  “How old were you?” I ask, fascinated now by her story. Even if my mom is a morally bankrupt adulteress, she would never have left me home alone when I was little.

  “I was eight,” Ophelia says.

  “Seriously? She left you alone for a weekend when you were eight?”

  “I was fine,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand, though somewhere inside there must be an eight-year-old who still can’t quite believe it. As if to make it all seem socially acceptable, and failing to, she adds, “I was doing all the cooking and cleaning by then, anyway.”

  “So, what happened?” I ask, now able to picture it in my mind—eight-year-old Ophelia, home alone eating microwave mac and cheese, when the phone rings and it’s the Colonel, wanting to know how she’s doing. “Your dad called the house and found out you were there alone?”

  “Basically. So, he sued for custody, saying my mom was unfit. The judge agreed, obviously, and I’ve lived with my dad ever since. We move every couple of years, but he said we’d stay here long enough for me to finish high school. I didn’t want to start at a new school senior year.”

  “Like me,” I said.

  “Right,” she says with a sympathetic nod. “I forgot.”

  “I don’t really care. I mean, I don’t have any friends at school, and I’m not a great student, and I don’t do any sports or anything—” I stop, realizing I sound like I really do care.

  “When you said that earlier, about your mom and her boyfriend wanting to forget about you because you are the only reminder that your dad ever existed, I feel that way about my mom. My dad pretends like she doesn’t exist. And I feel like if I talk about her, I’m just reminding him that half of me is her.”