Getting Off Clean

by Timothy Murphy

  I shoved his hands away. “Shut up, you idiot!”

  “You wanna take me home for dinner? You wanna take me home for dinner, and lemme suck your dick at the table? Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick! Hey Grammy! Guess who’s coming to dinner? Sidney Cock-sucker!” He couldn’t stop laughing. Suddenly, I wanted to cry, I was so unhappy, and I desperately wanted to leave.

  “Come on, Brooks, get up,” I said, tugging at his right arm and reaching for his backpack. “You’ve got to get back to the dorms. You should just get in bed and sleep this off. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “No,” he whined. “I want to fuck your brains out, Eric. Don’t you wanna get fucked, you little dago faggot? Just like that little girl they thought I fucked before I sliced her up?”

  “Brooks, shut up and get the fuck up!” I said, clenching my jaw and yanking at his right arm. “You’ve got to walk across that campus and get to bed and not make a scene, or you’re gonna get expelled.”

  “Naw. Lemme sleep right here.”

  “You can’t. Somebody might find you. And it’s cold.”

  “It ain’t so cold, Eric.”

  “Yes, it is. Now get your bag and come on. I’ll go down first, and I’ll spot you.”

  “Aw, Jesus Lord!”

  “Get up!”

  Somehow, by pulling and tugging, and strapping his backpack onto his shoulders, I got him on his feet and led him toward the ladder, where he missed the last five rungs and fell on me. Outside in the cold, behind the barn, he lost his playfulness and receded, again, blank and unreachable, hands in pockets.

  “Can you get back all right, or should I sneak back with you halfway?”

  “I’ll be just fine, thanks,” he said, deathlike, not looking at me, staring off toward the white clapboard buildings with their squares of yellow light.

  “Can you get back all right?” I asked him again, holding his elbow. I didn’t know why I asked again, but looking at him looking away from me, concentrating intently ahead of him at nothing, I felt the emptiest, sorriest pit in my stomach. What I felt then was a kind of terror—faintly for me, but much more acutely for him—and the deepest, deepest gratitude that I wasn’t him, the deepest regret that we had ever met, and the deepest, edgiest resolve that I wouldn’t toss him away.

  He was freezing on me, turning to stone in my grip. I wondered what kind of horrible chorus, what kind of white noise, was screaming in his head, and I desperately didn’t want to know, and I pulled him closer toward the barn and reached up and kissed his frozen, unmoving lips, and held him, awkwardly, while he stood there with his arms at his sides, like a tin man.

  “Brooks, are you listening to me? Please get back safe. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? Get a good night’s sleep.”

  “Okay,” he said, looking over my shoulder, past me, God knows where.

  “Good night, Brooks. You’re my special friend, okay? Like Gertrude and Alice, just like you said.”

  I thought he smiled faintly, but it could have been at anything. “Okay.”

  “Get back safe. Good night.”

  “Nighty.”

  I gave him a little shove in the right direction, and watched him start off toward campus, walking stiffly, hands in pocket, his whole body tilted forward—the gait of either an awkward young boy or a rheumatic old man. When he was well ahead of me, I was seized with fear that he might pass out cold on the abandoned soccer fields before he made it back, and I ran forward to watch him. He didn’t look back once, and I stood at the top of the rise as he descended into the vale, onto a gravel pathway, in the direction of two girls with flowing blond hair who gave him a wide berth as he scissored past and around behind the long row of white clapboard buildings.

  I ran back to the car and sped home, stuffing the afternoon and thoughts of him away as I did every afternoon, so I could walk in the house with a clean face. And I entered a house so busy with its own preoccupations that, as I did every other night, I got away with it—coming in the back door, setting the table for dinner, sitting through dinner, then later, in my room, plowing through assignments—but behind it all, I couldn’t shake the sight of his dazed, stoned face and his low, slurred voice, saying things he didn’t even know he was saying, telling me what he wanted us to do.

  * * *

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. That was our last meeting to date, almost two months after that night on the pond in Boxford. The day after that night, a Saturday afternoon, the house was quiet. My mother had taken Joani grocery shopping, Brenda was at work, Grandma was either sleeping or saying her rosary in Joani’s bedroom, and I could hear my father snoring on the couch in the den with the sound of an old war movie on the television. All afternoon, immersed in college application forms and essays, I had managed to put the night before out of my mind so I was twice as startled to see the headline at the bottom of the front page of the Leicester Evening Tribune, which was lying by the front door in the hallway.

  “St. Banner Student Questioned by West Mendhem Police in Connection with Lanouette Murder,” ran the headline. I peered into the den to make sure my father was asleep, then took the paper into the kitchen and sat down queasily at the kitchen table.

  The West Mendhem police picked up a St. Banner Academy student they said they found walking along Great Lake Drive, about a mile from the prestigious private school, this morning at about 1:45 A.M., according to Police Chief Ryan McElroy. The student, who was found off campus several hours after St. Banner curfew, was taken to the West Mendhem police headquarters, where he was questioned by the police, then claimed at 3:12 A.M. by St. Banner officials, who are putting him on probation for violating school curfew regulations.

  Officer Anthony DeMarco said he was making his nightly rural patrol when he stopped Francis Tremont, 18, a senior at St. Banner Academy, for questioning approximately halfway between the St. Banner campus and the Boxford town line. Tremont attributed his late-night walk to anxiety from academic pressure and insisted he was on his way back to campus, but he was taken back to police headquarters for questioning because, according to DeMarco, he fit the description of the primary suspect in the murder of a West Mendhem woman, Kerrie Lanouette, which took place in Harold Porter State Park two days ago. “It was standard procedure,” said DeMarco, who said that in addition to an ongoing investigation into the murder by West Mendhem, Leicester and state police, officers have been instructed to take in for questioning anyone fitting the current description.

  Tremont repeatedly insisted that he did not fit the description of the man in question. (The composite drawing depicts a dark-skinned man, presumably in his thirties, heavyset, with a slight mustache. Tremont, who is black, is slight of build, clean-shaven and several years younger than the suspect.) Austin Trilby, dean of students at St. Banner, also pointed out the lack of resemblance and confirmed that Tremont had been in his first day of classes the afternoon the murder is presumed to have taken place. After Trilby’s promise that Tremont would be disciplined for breaking curfew, the two were escorted back to campus. Tremont has no previous criminal record.

  “He was a bright kid, very educated, very polite, and we felt real bad about having to take him in,” Chief McElroy said today. “But everybody’s in a panic about this killing and if we spot someone who fits the description walking around West Mendhem in the middle of the night, we can’t just let it go. Besides, he was breaking curfew, and he shouldn’t have been doing that. He could’ve gotten run over.”

  The search for the suspect in the Lanouette murder continues, say local and state authorities, but so far there are no new leads.

  At first, all I could feel was relief that he had gotten off so easily, that (presumably) they hadn’t questioned him about where he had been, and that he hadn’t mentioned my name. I told him not to walk home, I thought to myself, remembering my plea just before he ran out of the car and into the dark. Why does he go around looking for trouble? I seemed to linger on the word trouble, and some kind of chill started s
ettling in around me, a danger sign. What was I doing in the middle of the night with this guy I hardly knew? He had fled the car; he could have been going off to kill someone—but no, he wouldn’t do that, he wasn’t a murderer, he was too bookish. Now here I was, linked to Kerrie Lanouette’s murder, however tenuously, and my next thought was that if I were smart—which I was, ostensibly—I’d be getting out of this before it went any further.

  I warmed up some leftovers in the microwave, trying to decide what to do. I knew it probably wasn’t right for the police to take him in just because he was black, but I had to be honest: if I had seen some lone black guy walking down Great Lake Drive in the very middle of the night, I would be suspicious, too. Now he was in trouble at St. Banner, they’d probably kick him out, and he’d go—where? Home? (But he really didn’t consider it home.) Paris? To find his mother?

  I crept up to my parents’ bedroom, closed the door behind me, looked up the main number at St. Banner, and dialed it. It was a Saturday; probably no one was in the office and I’d have to sneak up there and try to find him, which might create even more problems. But someone picked up the phone.

  “Admissions, St. Banner, may I help you?” said a woman’s voice. It wasn’t a local voice. The woman had that rich, accentless, TV way of talking that everybody up there had. She also sounded bored, and indignant at being interrupted.

  “Yes.” I cleared my throat. “I’m trying to get in touch with Brooks Tremont.”

  “Brooks? Do you mean Francis Tremont, one of the students?”

  “Um … yeah. Francis.”

  “I see,” she said, and paused. She sounded immediately suspicious. “Well, he lives in Goolsbee House across campus, and there’s only a pay phone over there.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. Can I take a message and pass it to him?”

  “No,” I said, too shortly, but the thought of him calling my house terrified me. (Whoever answered the phone would wonder about that voice immediately.) “I mean, I’m an old friend from Virginia, and I don’t even know if he’d remember me.” Then, for authenticity, I said, “I ran into his great-aunt a while back and she told me he was at boarding school up in Massachusetts.” I said all this taking great pains to conceal my own accent.

  “I see. You’re a friend from Virginia.” She didn’t sound convinced at all.

  “That’s right. But I’m away at school now, too. I’m at—Middlesex,” I said, because that’s where Charlie was supposed to go, but he didn’t get in.

  “Oh, really?” The woman perked up, suddenly entirely familiar. “How’s Kratsy? Is he still there?”

  “Um, I think so. I just started this year, just like Francis did at St. Banner.”

  “Well, I hope you have Kratsy for classics. He’s a marvelous teacher. Would you ask him, please, if he remembers Susannah Bailey? I was Trey’s little sister, class of ’79. Would you tell him I’m on staff now at Mendhem? He’ll be absolutely furious!”

  “Susannah Bailey, class of ’79,” I said dutifully.

  “That’s right. Trey’s little sister. I’m so happy you’re at Middlesex! It’s a wonderful place. Will this be your first New England winter?”

  “Yes, it will.”

  “Well, I hope your folks sent you long johns and a good coat, because winters here are killers. But Middlesex is beautiful at Christmastime. They put candles up everywhere.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I can’t wait to see it.”

  “Mmmmmm,” the woman cooed happily on the other end of the line.

  “So, can I call into that phone over in Goolsbee House? I’d love to catch up with Brooks—Francis.”

  “Oh, of course. He may be out of the house right now in a meeting, but you can give him a try.” And she gave me the number, which I scrawled down on the back of a bank envelope.

  “Thanks a lot, I said. “I’ll look around for Kratsy for you.”

  “Susannah Bailey—” she began again.

  “Class of ’79,” I finished. “I won’t forget.”

  “Goody! ’Bye now.” And she hung up.

  I checked out my parents’ bedroom window to make sure my mother and Joani weren’t pulling in yet. Is that what everybody at Yale is like? I asked myself, and then, What did she mean, Brooks might be in a meeting? They’re kicking him out. He’s getting kicked out. I felt queasy again as I dialed. After about sixteen rings, some random guy picked up the line.

  “Is Francis Jefferson in?” I asked. He told me to hold; he’d go see, he mumbled. He sounded either very fatigued from studying, or stoned.

  I waited for what must have been about five minutes, picking up bits of grunted conversation in the background (they all sounded stoned there) and constantly watching out the window for my mother’s car.

  Then, finally, “Yes, this is Francis.”

  He sounded so businesslike I couldn’t help a grunt of laughter. “You told me your name was Brooks.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Who do you think it is?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize the voice.”

  “It’s Eric,” I said, closing the bedroom door behind me. “Your friend from last night?”

  A pause. “Ah. Mr. Fitzpatrick.” Another pause. “May I call you back? I’m in conference at the moment.”

  “You can’t call back. I’m—I’m going out in a minute. I won’t be here.”

  Silence on the other end of the line. Did I lose him? “Listen, Brooks—or Francis, or whatever—I just saw the newspaper. I read about the police.”

  “Oh, really?” he said, casually, as though I were talking about someone else. “That was an unfortunate business, wasn’t it? I’m presently paying the piper.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m quite intact. Your local police force is very cordial. They almost seemed to hold me in awe. They told me they didn’t think anyone of my hue went to Mendhem.”

  “Of your what?”

  “My hue, Eric. You know, as in ‘hue and cry’?”

  “Oh. Well, are you okay?”

  A laugh from the other end. “Yes, I’m quite fine. They were perfectly gentle with me. Thank you for your concern.”

  “I mean, is everything okay at school? Are they going to let you stay?”

  “Um. That’s currently being negotiated. I’m supposed to make a fervent plea for forgiveness, but I can’t seem to muster the fervor. I’m already dreaming of cathedrals and the Louver.”

  “But you should make a plea. Don’t you want to at least finish the year out? Otherwise, you’ll be in high school forever. Don’t you want to finish?”

  A big, weary sigh from the other end. “Well, I suppose if it means that much to you.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with me!” I snapped. “But you don’t want to be in high school for the rest of your life. That’s so depressing. Don’t you want to get on with your life?”

  “Who says I have to stay in this godforsaken place?”

  “But you have finish high school. Even if you don’t go to college—fine, that’s your choice. But everyone needs a high school diploma. Otherwise, you’re not good for anything.”

  “My dear boy, I am loaded.”

  “That’s not going to get you everything!”

  “Oh, dear, you are awfully conventional.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I’m just kidding. Listen, Eric, if it allays your fears at all, I think they’re going to take pity on me. They asked how to get in touch with my parents, and I said that I honestly didn’t know. Then they asked about my aunt, and I said she was going senile and the whole issue would just confuse her. I think they see me as some sort of foundling. I think they feel like I’m their responsibility, God forbid. Their project, and they want to rehabilitate me. They’re demonstrating an enormous amount of Yankee guilt.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s in your favor.”

  He laughed. “I suppose so.”

  Then neither one of us said anything, and th
ere was a funny silence over the line. I wondered if he was thinking at all about the night before, if he even remembered it, or if he wanted to just forget all about it. I wanted to forget all about it—in the light of day, it seemed like a disjointed, murky dream—but at the same time I didn’t, and I didn’t want him to, either. It was wrong, it was not supposed to happen, but for him to pretend it didn’t, to pretend he didn’t know me that way, seemed like the worst kind of fakery.

  “Why did you tell me your name was Brooks? The paper said Francis, and so did the woman at the main office.”

  “My name is Brooks,” he said. “It’s my name for myself. I picked it.”

  “Then who’s Francis?”

  “It’s my father’s name. It’s my given name. I reject it.”

  “Oh. Where’d you get Brooks from?”

  “Gwendolyn Brooks, my mother’s favorite poet. Cleanth Brooks, my favorite literary critic. Well, one of them. It seemed appropriate.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. “That’s a nice name. It’s aristocratic-sounding.”

  He laughed. “C’est moi. What’s your real name?”

  “Eric. It’s my only name.”

  A mock gasp. “What? You mean you didn’t give me a pseudonym to protect yourself?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “What if I wanted to blackmail you? I could destroy your life, and all your dreams.”

  I started to feel a little ill again. “You wouldn’t do that,” I said, wanting to sound breezy, but not really feeling it.

  “Hmmmmm. How can you be so sure?” Then, before I could answer, “No, you’re absolutely right. I think now I want to have as little as possible to do with the whole wonderful world of West Mendhem. I don’t want to make the papers again. I can only handle so much celebrity.”

  “That’s good,” I said weakly, before another long silence. It’s time to get off the line, I was thinking to myself, but I didn’t know what to say, how to end it.

  “My dear boy?”