“Why didn’t you defend me?” I asked.
“Defend you? You were the one attacking both of us, her and me. You need to mellow the fuck out. Have a beer. At least smoke a joint.”
11
I didn’t break my sober streak that night, although Gay had made a good point about me not drinking, and how it was making me less mellow.
A few nights later—or it could have been the next night, or a week later—we went to a party.
The party was way out near Brooks Road. Krishna’s friend John Larsen lived out there in a rooming house. His family used to live across the street from me. I’d played doctor with him when we were little.
The Larsens had always owned that rooming house, but I had never been in it before. John and his little sister Julie would tell me that they were going to the rooming house for the weekend, or that they had to go out and clean it. I didn’t know what a rooming house was, but what I pictured in my mind was pretty much exactly what I found: a large, old, Victorian house with many small rooms. The rooms were not laid out in any orderly fashion, which made it seem like there were more of them.
What a perfect place for a party. It seemed like all the rooms were empty. I knew, realistically, that this couldn’t be true. This was a primary income source for the Larsens, so there had to be renters.
Like the quarry party, it seemed all the high-school kids had somehow heard word of this party, and many different groups had shown up. The punks, freaks, jocks, and other groups and subgroups.
I sat in one of the rooms, staring at the walls, staring at the teenagers, observing them, detached. Most of these people weren’t my usual punk friends. I mean, Krishna walked by occasionally and made a comment, but for the most part these were jocks.
Gay had been sitting next to me for a long time, though I was only barely aware of her until she said, “You’re no fun anymore, now that you’re not drinking.”
I was sitting on a bed in one of the rooms. The bed had old-fashioned, crocheted bedspreads. There was a yellow lamp sitting on the bedside table. Its red lampshade made the light that reflected on the cream-colored bedspread orange.
Near the bedside table was a window with one of those old, wooden, heavy windowsills. Hard to open. Hard to close. And it hadn’t been painted in a while. When it last had been, it had been painted red. I examined the bedspread, the bedside table and lamp, and the black night.
“Give me a beer then,” I said to Gay. I had a blank face. I knew I did. I could feel it not smiling. I hadn’t been smiling at anything anyone said or did. My arm stretched out behind me, hand open. I knew she would grab it for me. I felt it in my hands almost immediately. It was as if she had been waiting there with it. Waiting for me to ask.
It wasn’t cold, but I couldn’t have cared less. I didn’t need to rip the bottle top off; she had already taken care of that for me. I could feel her smiling behind me.
I put the bottle to my lips and tasted the nasty, carbonated piss-water that was Buckhorn beer. I drank half of it before lowering my hand back to my knee, all the while gazing out at the blackness.
“Here comes fun,” I said to her.
She said, “She’s back!”
She announced it as if to a crowd of people waiting. And then it was as if they had been waiting, because Krishna instantly appeared from behind the door, from the narrow hallway in which she had been talking to Johnny, the boy I’d played doctor with. I knew she wanted to play doctor with him, too.
Gay and Krishna exchanged small cash, one of them presumably winning the bet of how long it would take me to drink again. I think it was Gay who won.
I finished the beer and had her hand me another one. I downed two more before the next song. The music wasn’t the normal music we played. It was a high-school party. That meant headbanging crap, and acid rock, and Zeppelin and Floyd. Most of the people we hung out with weren’t there. I think it was just me, Krishna, and Gay that night, and the freaks and jocks. They loved to drink.
There was a red curtain hanging over that window, but only about three-fourths of the way down. It hung by cheap, large, gold rings from a wooden curtain rod. I could imagine Johnny Larsen’s mom hanging it up there. She was a nice lady. I remembered her dressing like 1950s moms as depicted down at Walter’s grocery store, the ones pushing shopping carts and smiling and wearing dresses. Mrs. Larsen wore dresses. For some reason, I always pictured her in a red dress and white pearls. She had black hair, curled in rollers. She wore lipstick. I could picture her hanging that curtain rod there and then the cheap drapes. Why was everything red?
The lampshade, the curtain, the woman’s dress, the windowsill. Why was everything always red?
12
I sat on the cement driveway with my back against the white garage, drinking beers with Ziggy. I watched Paul from a distance. I had been watching him all night. It was graduation night. Graduation for him, Raj, Ziggy, Walter, and the Transistors. I wasn’t graduating. I still had a few more years to go. I wasn’t sure how many, and I didn’t care.
I had been making a fool of myself in front of Paul. At one point, I had climbed up a tree to observe the party outside Walter’s house. Paul and Walt had stood for a while, pointing up at me. Later Paul told me why. He said, “Walt was predicting everything you would do. I used to find you unpredictable and mysterious. But Walt was telling me exactly what you would do and then you would do it. It was hysterically funny.”
I told Ziggy what Paul had said.
“I don’t find you predictable at all.” Ziggy turned to me, squinting into the setting sun. He shaded his eyes as if saluting me. “Candy, now, she’s predictable.”
“She’s not here. I couldn’t have predicted that,” I said.
“Maybe not. You know her better than I do.”
“I got to know her hoping it would help me get Paul back. I can’t imagine why I thought that would help.”
“You probably thought you could steal him from her, the way you stole him from Lucy. But the problem was, you were no longer the new girl. The shiny, new object. She was.”
“Yep, she’s a shiny, new object, that’s for sure.”
“If it’s any consolation, you’re far more interesting than she is. I don’t believe he will stay with her any longer than he does any girl.”
I put my cigarette out on the pavement and stared at the ashes.
The rest of the evening was a blur, as were the next few drunken nights after graduation. My parents decided to send me to my aunt’s in California for most of the summer. The night before I left, I sat with Krishna’s boyfriend Ames, parked in some parking lot outside some bar, or some party where the music blared. I felt the beer bottle clink against my teeth. Suddenly, I had the most sickening feeling. I didn’t know what was wrong. I turned to Ames and told him, “I think I’m sick. I think there’s something wrong with me, like I’m terribly ill.”
“Really,” Ames said, with curiosity and compassion. I always liked Ames. “Do you suppose it’s the alcohol?”
“No,” I said. “This isn’t a drunk sick feeling like I have to throw up or anything like that. This is something else.”
“Maybe it’s your diet. Are you eating a lot of meat?”
Ames always had some weird angle on everything health related, always some theory, but I liked that about him. I sat and listened to his theory about meat while I stared at the teenagers off for the summer in their cut-off shorts and tank tops. I leaned my head back against the seat and finished my beer.
“I think I need to get home. I’m too sick to be out anymore. I’m leaving for California in the morning.”
“Are you flying? You shouldn’t fly; it’s terrible for your brainwaves,” he said.
“No, I’m not flying. We’re driving. My parents are driving me there to be with my aunt. Have I ever told you about my aunt?”
“No, I don’t think you have,” he said. “Are you close to her?”
“I admire her. She’s a doctor. She’s a fei
sty woman,” I said, and smiled at my memories of her. She always told it like it was.
We left in the morning. I was sick all the way there. I complained the entire time about how sick I was. Then we hit the Arizona desert heat and I couldn’t complain anymore. I lay in the backseat, limp, staring vacantly at the front seat. My mom put a cold rag on my forehead. She changed the rag, dipping into an ice bag she had bought from a gas station.
After what seemed like an eternity in the desert, we finally arrived at my aunt’s house. I couldn’t remember a time I wasn’t wide awake in anticipation to arrive there, but today it was different. My mom had to wake me up when we pulled in.
“We’re here.” She tapped my hip.
I lay stretched out in the backseat, half-asleep and in pain. I hurt all over. “Oh,” I said, and tried to lift my head. I was excited to see my aunt, but couldn’t keep my head up. My mom practically had to carry me out of the car.
“Oh, she is sick,” my aunt said to my parents. She was waiting for us on her beautiful porch. I loved the plants and atmospheric lighting that surrounded her garden. There always seemed to be a mist in the air in her front yard. We had arrived at night.
“She is very sick,” my mom responded.
“Yes, we’ll take her in to see my colleague tomorrow. He’ll do some tests.”
I practically passed out on the front couch, barely taking the time to notice the changes in decoration. I heard her talking about these changes to my parents. Out of the corner of my eye, I did notice the fancy improvements, but truthfully, I preferred the house the old way. The way it used to look. Now that my cousins were growing up, the house was taking on a different look. A more elegant look.
If I’d had the energy, I would have asked where my cousin Amber was, but I didn’t. Anticipating the question, my aunt told me, “Amber spent the night at her girlfriend’s.”
I didn’t even have the energy to feel bad that she hadn’t stayed at home to see me.
“You will take her room for the summer, and she will take David’s old room.”
I didn’t wake up for a long time. They moved me up to Amber’s room at some point, the next day. I must have walked, but didn’t remember doing it.
My aunt took such good care of me. I was grateful to be there. She was much nicer when I was sick than my mom. I never had a single problem with her—except one time.
It had been the year before. We had been standing out on her driveway. I had been angry with my dad. Actually, I probably hadn’t been angry with him, I had just been used to talking to him a certain way. I had wanted something, and had been shocked when my aunt had interceded and spoken to me in a harsh tone. “Don’t you talk to my brother like that,” she had said.
I didn’t have the energy to speak to my father that way, or my mom, so never had any problems with my aunt that summer. I often heard her defend me in the other room. Sometimes my mom would complain about me. I would only hear bits and pieces of what she said, but caught the general idea. Then I would hear my aunt say, “Just give her time. She’s not finished growing up yet.”
My parents left after a few days. I was so sick I barely remembered saying good-bye to them.
My aunt would put me on a bus to go back to Wisconsin when the summer was over.
After the doctor diagnosed me with mononucleosis, I was given a shot in the behind I’d never forget. Once I started feeling a little bit better, I started obsessing about Paul again. And I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself. This brought on a bunch of wise statements from my aunt. The first piece of advice I received from her was: never drink. Especially now that I’d had mono.
She had good advice, if only I could have listened to it. Some part of me did understand it, and filed it away for future retrospection. She said things like, “You need to think about your future, not his.”
Wow, I thought. But I didn’t say it out loud. Instead, I looked her in the eye and said, “What I need is to lose weight and get a tan.”
I was able to sit up, and drink coffee with her on her beautiful terrace out back by the pool. We sat under a leafy, vine-covered, lattice awning. It felt cool in the shade, and I was finally beginning to feel good again.
“Lose weight? You’re a skinny toothpick! And your natural skin tone will never be dark; all you’ll get is skin cancer, like I did.”
Aunt Katie did have skin cancer, I remembered, because at one time she too had been a sun worshipper, and had fallen asleep in the sun lying on her stomach. She still had a large scar on her back.
“But I want to look good. Isn’t it normal for me to want to be attractive?”
“Of course, but you already know you are attractive, and attractiveness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” she said. “And the reason you think you’re fat is that the fashion designers in New York are gay men, and don’t like a woman’s curves.”
Fascinating theory. I loved listening to my aunt.
When the summer came to an end, she put me back on the bus. She gave me more than enough money for food on the way home. I can’t imagine what I spent it on, but I ran out very quickly.
I sat staring out the window at the night, feeling my stomach churn and grumble. I thought about Paul. Krishna had called me at one point, and during our conversation she’d told me that Paul was thinking about me.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Do you remember that song you were always trying to find the name of? You finally found the name, but for a long time you couldn’t remember it and all you could do was hum the tune.”
“‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’?” I asked.
“That’s it. We were standing on Ziggy’s porch last night. It was quiet, and no one was saying anything, and then Paul slowly, out of nowhere, started playing those chords on his guitar, the ones you used to hum. And everyone said how they missed you.”
“Paul did that?”
“Yep. He was thinking about you.”
Out the window, the desert rushed by in the dark. I had felt a sort of high ever since she told me that, and couldn’t wait to go home.
I fell asleep on the bus, but in the middle of the night, I woke up from hunger. I had never known hunger, really. There had only been a few odd times, like before a picnic, when I had been young, and my mom hadn’t let me spoil my appetite. But this time I was alone, and out in the middle of nowhere, with nobody I knew. And no money.
Unable to go back to sleep, I watched the sunrise. I had been sharing my seat with a priest. He noticed when we stopped that I didn’t leave the bus to go in and buy some food.
“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked.
“I’m starving,” I said, looking at him with what felt like hollow eyes.
When he came back from the café, he brought me a bag of almonds, and gave me ten dollars.
My dad picked me up at the bus stop.
He looked sad when he saw me, which I didn’t understand at all. I said, “Take me home; I need to use the car.”
“Don’t call Krishna,” he said.
“I haven’t seen her all summer; I’m going to call her.”
When she answered the phone, she sounded giddy with delight and said, “You’re home? Come over!”
“I don’t have the car. Can you get me?”
“I’ll be right over. I just got my license!”
13
Krishna picked me up. She had her dad’s car. We picked up Chrystal, bought a six-pack at Pat’s Tap, and planned to drive to Ziggy’s.
“That’s where Gay is. Wait,” Krishna said, “let’s surprise her. You wait here at Pat’s on the steps and we’ll trick her. We’re tell her we’re looking for dope, and then we’ll drive past Pat’s Tap and say, ‘Oh look, there’s Jane! Maybe she has dope.’ Then you get in the car.”
We giggled at this.
I waited in the sun.
I loved being drunk in the middle of the afternoon when it was sunny. There was something magical about it. It was normal to be completely inebr
iated in the evening, but there was something special about it in the middle of the day. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the blueness of the sky, the bright-green leaves on the trees.
I loved the warm stones against my skin. I wore short shorts and a tank top. I lit a cigarette, and in the time it took to finish it, they drove up.
I sat in the car. Gay was in the backseat, trying to light a cigarette. I climbed in and slammed the door. Gay continued trying to light her cig, but kept staring at me with wide eyes.
“You need me to help you light that?” I grabbed her lighter and lit her cig.
Then she started laughing that hyena laugh of hers, and saying, “Oh my God, you guys tripped me up bad. You tricked me good.” She was nodding and slapping her knee. “I had no idea you were back in town. They said, ‘We’re going to look for some pot,’ and I was like, ‘Whatever,’ and then suddenly Krishna said, ‘There’s Jane. Let’s see if she’s got any dope.’”
We couldn’t have played this trick if we’d been in my car. Good thing Krishna had turned sixteen.
“We are going out to County Park,” Krishna said. “We have to get more beer. It’s Ziggy’s birthday. They’re already there.”
By the time we arrived there, I was so drunk that I wasn’t sure what was happening. There was the lake, and the blue of the sky. I don’t remember seeing Ziggy at all. I don’t remember seeing anyone but Krishna and Gay, and always laughing hysterically. We sat on the stone benches under a picnic table.
They told me later how funny I was. They told me things I’d said and done. When we had gone back to my house, my mom had offered us ham. For some reason, according to them, this had struck me so funny that I’d kept falling off my chair laughing. When she’d served the ham on the dining-room table, I’d again fallen out of my chair laughing. They told me she’d said, “What is so funny?” which had only made me laugh harder. After dinner, she’d cleared the table, replaced the mess with a tidy tablecloth with lace frills, and set a bowl of peaches in the middle. They told me I’d said, “What a lovely bowl of peaches,” and then proceeded to take a bite out of each peach in the bowl, completely ruining the display.
Thin Ice (The Oshkosh Trilogy) Page 6
