Getting Off Clean

by Timothy Murphy

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Why, exactly, did you feel compelled to call me?”

  The question hit me with a kind of sick thud. I shouldn’t have called was all I could think. “Why did I call you?”

  “That was the question.”

  “Well—I don’t know. Because I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I was worried they were going to kick you out. Isn’t that reason enough?”

  “Don’t you have enough to worry about in your own whirlwind life? Yale awaits you.”

  “Oh, shut up. You know, this might be hard for you to believe, but maybe despite all our differences I consider you a friend.”

  “That’s so sweet! A boy raised on Sesame Street.”

  “Oh, shut the fuck up! Do you even have any friends?”

  “I guess I do now, whether I like it or not,” he said, before bursting out laughing.

  “Jesus Christ, shut up!” I started to get the same furious, blubbery feeling I had gotten before with him, that second time in the car when he said he had a knife. “Why do you always have to be like this? You’re so fucking—”

  “Look, Eric, I’m sorry.”

  “Fucking sarcastic, like everything’s a—” But then I stopped short. My mother and Joani were pulling into the driveway; in a moment they would need help with the groceries. (They’d be blabbing, blabbing, blabbing, and this would hang over me, unfinished.) I cleared my throat. “Look, I gotta go, my mother’s home—”

  “Eric. Eric. Eric.” He sounded serious now, but I could hardly hear him, I so badly wanted to get out of the bedroom. “Eric—”

  “I gotta get out of here. Off the phone.”

  “Eric. You’re my friend. You’re my friend. We’re friends, okay?”

  “Eric!” I heard my mother scream from the front door. “Come help with the bags!”

  “Hurry up, Erky!” Joani yelled after her.

  “I’ll be down in a sec!” I yelled back, then, into the phone, “Okay? Gotta go!”

  “Eric, did you hear what I said? I said we’re friends.”

  “Huh? Okay, that’s good. Don’t worry about it.” I could hear Joani coming up the stairs, slowly, huffing like an old woman. I was starting to sweat.

  “Do you want to get together again?”

  “What?” I barked into the phone, too loudly, disoriented. Downstairs I heard my mother yell again: “Eric, get down here! Everything’s gonna melt!”

  “Do you want to get together again? I can’t leave school, probably, but you could sneak over here.”

  “Okay. That sounds great.”

  “Phone, all right?”

  “All right. Great. Great. ’Bye.”

  “Good-bye, dear boy. Don’t let a simple—”

  Joani flung open the bedroom door, breathing heavily, looking flushed from the grocery trip and the flight up the stairs. I hung up the phone. “Who’re you talking to, Erky?” she asked coyly, standing there sucking on a Popsicle.

  “Just Phoebe,” I said, frozen for a minute before her.

  She smiled at me with the Popsicle still in her mouth. “Ohhhhh,” she said, singsong. “You guys are in love.”

  I exhaled, smiled back, moved toward her and scruffed her on the head. “That’s right, Joani. Phoebe and I are madly in love. We’re gonna run away together and get married. You guessed it. How’d you get so smart?”

  She just shrugged, loving the game, with the goddamned Popsicle still in her mouth. I bolted down the stairs to get the groceries, shaking out my head, shaking out the phone conversation and all its loose ends, shaking out the booming sound of his voice in my ears, even though his voice was beginning to stick there between meetings, even though I was beginning to hear it clearly there now, even when I was alone.

  Again, that was all back in September. It’s November now, colder, with holidays coming. We’ve discovered that old, cold barn, and, like I said, it seems to be the eye in the middle of a hurricane. So what can I do? I hope and pray that no one finds us out, and I should probably know better. But I still go.

  Six

  It’s a Saturday afternoon about a week before Thanksgiving, and I’m working an extra shift at B.J.’s (Sal needed someone up front while he fixed the walk-in in the back room), trying to slice mushrooms and read The Waste Land at the same time, which isn’t easy, when the phone rings. I turn down the radio and pick it up.

  “B.J.’s. Can I help you?”

  There’s a pause, then: “Eric?”

  “Yeah? Bren, is this you?”

  “Yeah. I’m glad you picked up.”

  “Are you home or at work?”

  “Um. I just got home.” Brenda sounds strange, like she’s been crying or something—or she’s about to. “Nobody else is here. They’re all out somewhere.”

  “Oh,” I say, and she says nothing. “Bren, are you okay?”

  “Listen—actually, I was kinda hoping you could come home for a minute. I gotta go over some stuff with you.”

  “Bren, what do you mean? I’m at work. Can’t you come here? What kind of stuff?”

  “Just—stuff!” Brenda says with a snort. There’s another pause while I hear her trying to pull herself together. “Look, I had a big fight with Frank last night—”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. It was really bad.”

  “Did you finally tell him no wedding?”

  “Yeah, and he freaked out. He was really drunk. He said to me, ‘I know you’re fucking some other guy, and I’m gonna mess you both up,’ and he totally wouldn’t believe me when I said no way. Then he said he wasn’t gonna leave me alone. He said he was gonna come take the baby as soon as I had it, and he was—he said he was gonna slap all kindsa lawsuits on me and stuff for being an unfit mother, and—and—oh, I don’t—just scary shit.” I can hear her start to cry again.

  “Bren, take it easy,” I said, low, turning the radio back up so Sal can’t hear me. “Frank was just talking stupid because you took him by surprise and he was drunk. He’s not gonna do that stuff.”

  “Anyway, Eric, that’s not all of it. I’m takin’ off, and I need you to come over here and help me write a note. I was up all night. I can’t think anymore. I can’t get my head straight.”

  “You’re taking off? Where are you going?”

  “Look, I’ll tell you when you get here, okay? Just say—just tell Sal you gotta drop me off somewhere. Sal’s cool, right?”

  “No, Bren! Tell me now. Where the hell are you going?”

  “I’m goin’ to live in Billerica with this friend of mine, Lori, that I work with. She’s got her own apartment there, and she’s real nice. She’s Italian.”

  “Brenda, what does that have to do with anything? Look, you can’t just move out when you’re pregnant. What’ll Ma think? She’ll freak out.”

  “Eric, you idiot, don’t you get it?” Brenda hisses at me. “I can’t take any more of this! Frank is gonna be all over my case, and Ma’s at work all the time anyway, and Dad is so weird, it’s like he won’t even talk to me, and when he does, his eyes get all leaky. And Doris”—she spits out the word—“Doris is prayin’ for me night and day ’cause she thinks I’m going to hell. And everybody around town is looking at me funny. I can’t take this fuckin’ town anymore!”

  “Well, what about me?” I say softly. “Can’t you just talk to me about this? Can’t we just talk through this?”

  “Oh, Eric, look—” She sounds exasperated, like she called for a specific favor and her patience with me is wearing thin. “Eric, you know you’re my favorite, but—but you’re all in your head and shit. It’s, like, you give me all this intellectual advice, and—and then I take it, and look where it ends me up.”

  “Bren, you didn’t want to marry Frank just now. Don’t blame me for that.”

  “I know. I’m not sayin’ that,” Brenda says. “I’m just saying I need a girlfriend for this. And I gotta get away from the family.”

  “Bren, look, Sal’s working in the back. Can’t yo
u just come down here and have some lunch with me, and we’ll work this out?”

  “Eric, no! I’m outta here today. Are you gonna help me or not?”

  I’m thinking that if I don’t get to Brenda fast, Ma will beat me home and there’ll be a serious fight. “Hold on,” I say into the phone. Then I call back to Sal, asking him if I can take off for a half hour or so to give my sister a ride somewhere. He yells back that I can, and to pick him up a pack of Salems at Cumberland Farms, and to say hi to my sister for him.

  “All right, Bren. I said I’m coming to pick you up.”

  “Thanks, Eric. You’re excellent.”

  Sal comes out to relieve me while I’m getting my coat. “Make sure you lock up your car when you leave it,” he says to me, wiping his hands on a dirty rag. “You hear the news on the radio this morning about the old lady?”

  “No, what news?” I ask, distracted. I’m thinking about getting to Brenda as soon as possible, and defusing a potential disaster.

  “Old lady—a Mrs. Haley, I think her name was. Lives way out-country, almost into Boxford. Two fuckin’ assholes broke in and woke her out of a sound sleep. Then they tied her up and gagged her and cleaned out her house.”

  “That’s horrible,” I say, knee-jerk, but I’ve only got one ear on Sal.

  “And the poor old lady stayed like that until the meter man came around this morning and heard her moaning. It’s a wonder she didn’t have a fuckin’ heart attack before he got there.”

  “Did they catch the guys?” I ask.

  “No, not yet,” Sal says darkly. “But I bet you can guess what she said they were.”

  “No, what?” I ask, making for the door.

  “Fuckin’ spics, that’s what. From Leicester, probably.” He just stands there, nodding slowly at me. “Ohhhh,” I say, fake knowingly, but I’m really just wanting to get to the car.

  “Things are comin’ to a head, buddy,” he says, picking up where I left off with the mushrooms. “They are comin’”—and he chops emphatically—“to”—another chop—“a head.” One final chop. He just looks at me and keeps nodding meaningfully.

  “I hope not,” I say with a wan little smile, and leave. It doesn’t surprise me that Sal and Frank were good buddies in high school.

  When I get home, Brenda’s upstairs in her room, packing stuff into one of my father’s suitcases, clothes and cosmetic stuff everywhere, and I wonder why it is that whenever I have a private confrontation with Brenda these days she’s packing a suitcase.

  “Hey,” I say, coming into the room and standing over the bed.

  “Hey.” She only glances at me for a second before looking back down at the suitcase. She doesn’t seem hysterical anymore, just resolute. I think I see a bruise or something on her left cheek, but her head is bent down, and I can’t really tell. It could just be makeup smudged from crying.

  “Thanks for coming,” she says, not looking up.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I gotta get back pretty fast, though. Sal just heard about another Hispanic-related crime on the radio, and he’s exacting revenge on the mushrooms.”

  “Wow,” Brenda says, rolling up clothes and stuffing them in the suitcase, and it’s obvious that she didn’t hear a word I just said.

  “Ma thinks we’re all having dinner tonight,” I say carefully.

  Brenda laughs sharply, and shrugs. “Yeah, well—”

  “You sure about this, Bren?”

  She looks at me, smearing her hands across her face. “Uh-huh” is all she says. She’s weirdly subdued, resigned. She looks beat up, if not literally then inside. Suddenly, standing there, watching her pack up her things in her usual slobby way, getting fatter every day, I start to feel like if I don’t think of something else fast, I’m going to cry, which will really piss Brenda off. So I say, “What did you want me to do for you, again?”

  “Huh?” she says, too loud, as if I’m distracting her, and staring me blankly in the face.

  “Didn’t you say on the phone you wanted me to help you write a note or something?”

  “Oh. Yeah. So I can leave it for Ma and Dad. They’ll find it tonight, but don’t let on like you knew I was goin’, or anything. Just don’t make a big deal about it.”

  “Brenda,” I say, trying to sound sensible, “it is a big deal, whether I make a big deal out of it or not. They’re not gonna be happy.”

  “They’ll deal,” she says flatly, getting a notebook and pen from the top of her bureau. “They’ve got other stuff to worry about now, anyway. Grandma, and Joani, and putting you through school. I’m gonna try to get a temporary spot at the franchise of the card shop in Billerica, so I’m not around town.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” I say. “What about the baby, and the doctor’s appointments and stuff?”

  “I’ll come back for that. Billerica’s only fifteen minutes away.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to wait to leave until tomorrow, and talk to them tonight?”

  “No. I want you to help me write this note. You can write it and then I’ll copy it out before I go. I gotta get my thoughts straight. I can’t make sense of anything talking to anyone anymore. No one in this family listens to anyone, anyway.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You know what I mean,” she says, annoyed. She seems to lose her place in the packing and walks over to her dresser, where there’s a statue of a little baby Jesus dressed in a crown and a genuine lacy white gown. Grandma gave it to her for her First Communion, and it’s been on her dresser since then, surrounded by hair products and some of Frank’s old football trophies and other stuff. Brenda’s probably never thought to put it away somewhere. Now she picks it up and fluffs out the little gown and blows dust off of it before putting it back, at a funny angle.

  I decide not to press her any further, at least not yet. “What do you wanna say in the note?” I say, opening up the notebook and uncapping the pen.

  “Um,” she begins, coming back to the suitcase, “I don’t know. Well, first of all, that I talked to Frank and that the wedding plans are off, at least for now. And that if he calls, everyone should just say that I’m taking some time off and I’ll get in touch with him when I’m ready.”

  I scrawl all this down. “Like, when is that?” I ask. “Three weeks? A month?”

  “I don’t know. Probably longer. Just leave that part blank.”

  “All right. What else?”

  She sits down on the bed for a minute and rubs her hands absentmindedly over her belly. “Um. And that I’m not doing this to hurt anyone, but I’ve got a lot of stuff to sort out in my mind right now, and I need some peace and quiet.…”

  I take this down dutifully, and when I look up, I catch her looking at me expectantly, as though she’s impatient for me to record the rest. “Uh-huh?” I ask.

  “And that even though Ma and Dad have been pretty good about this, not freaking out and everything, I don’t think anyone really knows what I’m going through right now. I don’t think anyone really understands.”

  Then, all of a sudden, I look up at Brenda, who’s staring out the window with this far-off look in her face, and I want to shake her, she’s making me so angry. It’s funny, I don’t even know where the feeling’s coming from, because I’ve always been Brenda’s supporter and confidant and I’ve been worrying a lot about her lately—but suddenly I look at her, and, right then, I think she’s the most selfish person in the world.

  I probably shouldn’t say it, but I’m feeling kind of harsh, so I ask, “Brenda, does it ever occur to you that you’re not the only person in the world with problems? Or even in this family?”

  She looks up at me, betrayed and defiant. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, maybe you’re not the only person in this family who’s going through tough stuff right now. What about Ma?”

  “What about Ma?”

  “Maybe she’s really stressed out,” I snap back, my voice rising higher than I want it to. “Maybe
she’s worried about how she’s gonna take care of Grandma, and Joani, and keep her job on top of it. And maybe—even though you can’t believe it—maybe she’s worried about you, and she wants you to be around so she can look after you. She’s just not saying anything about it to you because you’ve been so cold and distant lately.”

  “I can’t help it!” Brenda says. “This is how I feel!”

  “And what about Dad?” I go on, ignoring her. “Don’t you think he wants to reach out to you? Do you really think he sits there reading the paper and watching TV and he’s not thinking about it? Because if you do, you’re wrong. That’s what his leaky eye is—that’s how he expresses his emotions. But you’ve always been so sarcastic and mean to him, he’s terrified of opening up to you. And you’re his oldest kid!”

  “I’m not mean to him!” Brenda protests. “I just don’t know what to say to him.”

  “What about ‘How was your day?’ instead of your usual ‘Hey, Art’?” Before she can answer, I plow on. “And then Joani! Bren, our sister is retarded, she can hardly read, who knows how long she’s gonna be around, and you don’t give her the time of day!” I don’t know where this is all coming from, I’m scaring myself as I say it, but it’s the first time in a long time I’ve blown up at anyone in my family, and it’s giving me this scary excellent feeling, like I could go on forever.

  When I brought up Joani, Brenda started crying all over again, but now she looks me full in the face and shouts, “Who the fuck are you to say this to me?”

  “I’m your brother, that’s who, and I’ve always been there for you. You know that,” I say righteously, calmly, wanting to steer this whole conversation away from me. But she keeps screaming.

  “I know you have, okay? What do you want, a fucking medal? You’re already got enough anyway! You’ve never had a fucking problem in your life! You just glide through everything, and you’re everybody’s pet, and you never make any trouble, you’re like—you’re like a fucking robot!”

  “Brenda, shut up, okay?”

  “Well, you are! And you tell me I have to stay around for my family, but what are you gonna do next year? You’re gonna go off to little la-di-da Yale or Harvard or wherever the fuck you’re gonna go, and you’re not gonna give a shit about us. You’re gonna hang around with a bunch of hippie Phoebes and Charlies and just let us all sit here and rot!”