Getting Off Clean

by Timothy Murphy

  I don’t know how long I sit drinking, trying to sort out thoughts and feeling nothing but a block, like a lump that’s passed from my throat to my brain, but when I finally look at my digital watch, it reads one-thirty in the morning and it occurs to me that I’m not going anywhere, at least not until light comes. It also occurs to me that I’m rather drunk now, in a pleasant, fuzzy way that makes any hysteria impossible. I set my watch alarm for five-thirty in the morning, stand up, pull off all my clothes in about three gestures, and throw them in a heap on the floor along with his. I climb in the bed and press my nose into the dirty pillow until I locate his smell—cedar, cigarettes, some kind of hair jelly? Then I press my whole face into it, wrap my arms around it, clasp the opposite end of it with my pulled-up knees. I’m dropping off now, conjugating thickly: Frottage, frottage. Je frotte, tu frottes, il frotte, ils frottent, nous frottons. Now I’m seeing those old monster cartoon tombstones in my head: Florentina Jefferson was here. Kerrie Lanouette was here. Jesús Antonio de la Costa was here. B.J.T. was here. Brickhouse was here. Fudgie Fudgepacker was here. E.F. was here.

  You were here. We were here. I was here. I swear to God, I was here.

  * * *

  Four hours later, there’s a digital trill in my ear. At first I think it’s the familiar whine of my radio clock, in my bedroom in West Mendhem, summoning me to school, to a bathroom competition with my father or Joani. Then sight clicks in—books, smoked butts, boxer shorts—and memory—“You’re droll, Brickhouse”—and I’m scared shitless, wondering how I’m going to get the hell out of this house, flooded with white morning light, and to the bottom of Calvary Hill before they return. I give myself thirty seconds to think. Then I pick up the phone, call the operator, ask her to dial me a cab company, get one, submit the address, hold my breath for a refusal. None comes, and, emboldened, I ask them to come quickly. I dress, picking my clothes out of the salad of his own, throw my bag over my shoulder, piss in the porcelain bathroom, whiter now for Saturday morning sun, race down the four flights of stairs, and perch at the window in the cavernous abandoned foyer. If they come, I tell myself, I’ll find a back door and head into the woods. But they don’t; the cab comes first, honking at the foot of the flagstone walk, the engine a trembling valedictory report. I open the front door, signal “Five minutes” to the cabbie, then, like a madman, run back up the four flights of stairs and into the bedroom.

  I want to leave something, but I don’t know what. My eyes seize upon the empty pizza box, the cardboard flapping open like a huge panting mouth, the inside dark with old grease stains. I find it on the desk: a blue Flair marker holding a page of Racine in place. I prop the pizza box on the bed, uncap the pen, and kneel over it—poised, stumped.

  The pen strokes immediately bleed over the stained parts, but I leave my headstone for him: “I was here. Where were you? Je t’aime encore. EF.”

  “What were you doing up on the Hill?” the cabbie asks me as we drive away. I’m seeing them now, the groomed, prosperous folk of Calvary Hill on this fine Saturday morning, walking dogs, walking strollers, watering incandescent green lawns. They stare right into the cab at me as we pass, and I stare back, wondering if they would have descended upon me if I had been found on their village green on a midnight Friday, a lone white boy with a duffel bag, revealed in the light of the cross—a looming black T-bar of bulbs and wires as we pass it now, in the stark God-given light of day—with a connection to one of their own I couldn’t dare utter in my defense?

  “Visiting a friend. A guy from school,” I say to the back of the cabbie’s head.

  “Oh, yeah?” He laughs, a knowing little laugh. “Rich friend, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Rich nigger friend, right?”

  I stare at the back of the head, picturing the eyes on the other side of the outgrown sandy blond crewcut.

  “Yeah,” I say slowly. “A rich nigger friend.”

  “Yep,” the back of the head says, vindicated. “Had to be.”

  Blessedly, the bus is waiting at the stop when the cabbie pulls up. “That’s fifteen bucks,” he says affably, “but take ten off. Make it five, okay?”

  “Thanks,” I say, standing at his window, handing him bills. I look into his face now; his eyes are slack, following the trajectory of three high school girls in shorts as they walk down the sidewalk and into the Arby’s on the corner.

  I stare off with him, then look back into his eyes and say, “You know my friend I mentioned?”

  His eyes turn back to me, pleased. “Yeah?”

  “We—” I choke on myself, then recover. “We fucked each other once. It was so great. I wish you could know.”

  His face turns red, and mine does too. “Get the fuck away from me,” he says, and starts the cab.

  “I just wanted you to know,” I say again, but he’s already off. I shrug my bag up high on my shoulder and step up into the dry heat of the bus. After I pay the driver, I walk the aisle for a seat, and faces look up sleepily and smile.

  Twelve

  On a Sunday morning in May, I wake up to a finger jabbing me in the back. Phoebe, Charlie, and I spent last night getting stoned on the docks at Lake Chickering; it was still too cold to swim, so instead we sat there playing Either Or, as in “You either have to give Goody Farnham an erotic sponge bath or wrestle naked with Mr. McGregor in front of Honors Math.” Charlie grimaced a lot, Phoebe found everything kinkily exciting, and my mind kept wandering away from the faces I knew toward other scenarios, and I kept yanking it back into place. My first thought this morning is that I’m going to have a fuzzy head all day.

  The jabbing persists until I roll over. “Joani, baby, what is it?” I mumble, making room for her on one half of the bed, an invitation she immediately seizes.

  “Today’s the day,” she says gravely.

  “What day?”

  “What day? What do you think? My Confirmation! I’m gonna wear the dress.”

  “The dress I took you to buy the stuff for?” She nods at me: Duh. “I thought it wasn’t ready yet.”

  “I finished it early. Erky?”

  “Yeah?” I’m focusing now. Joani has her hair in an approximation of braids, with some white ribbon woven through them unevenly.

  “What’s Confirmation, anyway?”

  “It means you’re now an adult in the eyes of the Lord,” I say, repeating the same old thing everyone always said to me.

  “That’s what Grandma says. But what is it?”

  “Joani, I don’t know,” I say, exasperated, because I honestly don’t. “Think of it as a chance to wear your new dress. And everyone comes, just to see you. And after, you get to have your picture taken in front of the church with Eddie, and you guys can smooch.”

  “You’re gross, Erky,” and she pushes my face away with a scowl. Then, brightening: “Everybody’s comin’, aren’t they? Even Grandma.”

  “Yep. All for you, babe. You’re a legend.”

  “You think Brenda’s comin’?” she asks, frowning.

  I feel like I know the answer to that right away: if Brenda hasn’t come home since Christmas, not even for Easter, not even now, in what are supposed to be the last weeks of her pregnancy, it’s unlikely she’s coming home for Joani’s Confirmation today, when she would have to see not just us, but everybody. “We’ll see” is all I say to Joani, as brightly as possible. “She’s really big now, Joani. She might not fit in the church.”

  “Shut up!” Joani explodes laughing. “She’s not that big!”

  “How do you know? You haven’t seen her. Maybe her baby is as big as this house. Maybe it’s a monster.”

  “Erky, I’m not stupid,” she says, sensibly.

  I look at her. She’s been getting bigger in the past year, and she scared us this past February when she caught a cold that lingered for two weeks. I’m glad that her dress is ready—it’s been her all-consuming project for months—and I’m glad that today is going to be all about her, a Joani-fest, and that I�
��m here to see it.

  “I never said you were,” I say, kissing her on the forehead and getting out of bed. “How could you be? You’re my sister, after all.”

  “I know.” She groans sarcastically. “Lucky me.”

  “Lucky you,” I parrot, throwing on clothes. “Lucky Joan Erin Fitzpatrick. Are you coming downstairs to have some doughnuts?”

  “In a sec. I gotta finish my braids.”

  “Why don’t you just let Ma help you with them later? It’s too early in the day to do them now, anyway.”

  “I’m practicing!” she enunciates.

  “All right, all right. Excuse me, ma’am!”

  Downstairs, my parents are sitting around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading the Sunday Leicester Tribune. Grandma is sitting there, too, with an untouched glass of grapefruit juice and a slice of toast in front of her. She’s permanently settled in with us now—it just worked out that way—and even though she seems to be slipping fast, the fact that her mind is going has made her more subdued than ever before (with the exception of a rare outburst, à propos of nothing, usually delivered in Italian, which in her lifetime she only spoke to her husband, because she always felt that Americans should speak American.) Her quiet, though eerie, is sort of a blessing to all of us, although no one, least of all my mother, would dare admit it.

  “Hi, honey,” my mother says, leaning back for a kiss. “You sleep good?”

  “Okay. Morning, Grandma.” I step over to plant a kiss on her cheek, which makes her smile and mumble approvingly at her toast.

  “Hey, look at this.” My father waves some of the paper at me. “There’s a little notice about graduation with your name in it.”

  Sure enough, there’s a sidebar with the rundown for the forthcoming West Mendhem High graduation, including “Keynote Speaker: Eric Fitzpatrick.”

  “That’s nice,” I say, handing back the paper. The reminder of the speech leaves me feeling slightly queasy, because I haven’t given it any thought at all. I don’t want to make any more speeches, and I don’t want to stand up in front of any more crowds. I just want to graduate and slip out of town, as quietly and inconspicuously as possible. To those ends, everything is going as planned. I have no reason to complain, but West Mendhem has started feeling sort of haunted to me.

  “Big, big year,” my father says. “When you get to Yale, how you gonna stand being a little fish in a big sea?”

  “I’m actually looking forward to it.”

  “He’ll be big soon enough,” my mother says matter-of-factly, ripping out a coupon for chicken breasts at the supermarket. Grandma declares something in Italian—I think something about a little bird learning to use its wings, but I’m not sure, since my knowledge of Italian is scattered and secondhand; then she trails off.

  “Okay, Mama,” my mother says soothingly. My father squirms a bit in his seat, clears his throat, and glances my way.

  “Is Bren coming to Joani’s Confirmation thing today?” I ask of no one in particular, as casually as possible.

  There’s an awkward pause, as there always is whenever someone brings up Brenda. By this point, she’s brought my mother and father such grief that they can hardly bear to say her name. My mother is also going into a panic that Brenda is due within the next week or two and she hasn’t even been in touch. On top of it all, whenever Brenda’s name comes up, Grandma doesn’t make a sound: she just mashes her lips together and her eyes bulge out of her head like they’re going to explode.

  “I don’t know,” my mother says, tight-voiced, shrugging too vigorously and not looking up from her clipping. “I left two messages with her roommate—that good-for-nothin’ airhead little thing—”

  “Hey, Terry, easy—” my father interjects.

  “—but she didn’t return ’em, so who knows? Maybe she’ll come, maybe she won’t. It’s no skin off my back.”

  “Hm” is all I say, sipping coffee.

  “Why don’t you call her yourself? I don’t think she hates you as much as she hates me.”

  “Hate’s a bad word,” Grandma splutters, leaning toward my mother.

  “I’m sorry, Ma,” my mother says wearily. “I didn’t mean it. I meant, Eric, maybe she’ll listen to you.”

  “Actually,” I say, thinking of Joani and the white ribbons falling out of her faulty braids, “I think I’ll drive over there and see if I can get her to go.”

  My mother shifts around in her seat. My father looks up, arching an eyebrow over his bifocals. “You mean you’re gonna go all the way to Billerica?” My mother sounds scandalized.

  “It’s not that far, Ma,” I say, gulping down the rest of my coffee. If I’m going to do this, I think, it’s going to be now or never.

  “Here,” my father says, handing me his keys. “Take my car. It’s better on the highway.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my car on the highway!” my mother pipes up now, offended. “I take excellent care of that car.”

  “Terry, you need to get your brakes tightened.”

  “I do not! I just got them tightened six months ago!”

  “Fine, don’t listen to me.” My father shrugs and turns back to the paper.

  “My brakes are fine!” my mother persists, her pitch cresting.

  Grandma, who’s been taking all this in with her eyes bugging out, finally slams her palm down on the table and sputters, “Listen to your husband! He knows these things!”

  My father and I burst out laughing. “Thanks, Ma,” my father says, patting her on the hand. Then, triumphant, he turns to my mother and says sweetly, “See? Listen to your mother, Terry. She knows best.”

  Her eyes narrow. “I’m gonna get you later,” she says to him, under her voice. Then she turns to me, as though nothing had happened at all. “Eric, we don’t expect you to perform miracles,” she says, smoothing down my hair and kissing me good-bye. “But if you can’t bring her back, would you at least get her to promise that she’ll call me when she’s ready to go in the hospital? And tell her we’ll come get her?”

  “Okay, Ma.”

  “And tell her she’s breaking her mother’s heart?” She hugs me, her voice breaking. Then she abruptly unlaces me. “No, don’t tell her that. Just tell her we’re here for her. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  It’s a glorious day outside when I pull onto the highway in my father’s car. I know that all over the Merrimack Valley, all over Massachusetts, people are celebrating confirmations and weddings and other rites of spring, and it’s only when I notice that my father has taken the picture of Brenda, Joani, and me at Disney World, the one of the three of us sticking out our tongues at the camera and pretending we have boobs, that he’s taken the picture out of my parents’ bedroom and mounted it on the dashboard of his car, it’s only then that I concede I’m going to see Brenda as much for myself as for Joani. She hasn’t been in the house for months, but then again, in a way, neither have I.

  Her friend Lori’s apartment complex is a sorry-looking collection of two-story fake Colonial buildings set amid winding driveways, marked on the road by a battered scroll-like sign that says “Billerica Arms” in chipped Olde English–style letters. After wandering around the driveways, I finally spot the number Brenda gave me, for emergency purposes only, months ago. Her car is parked outside.

  I park on the street and walk up to the building. There are eight entryways; each screen door leads into a living room that faces out on the parking lot through cheesy little bay windows. I walk up to Lori’s apartment, then decide it might be smarter to peek inside before I ring the bell. I pick my way around the grim little bushes below the bay window and press my nose against the window screen.

  The living room is a disaster: clothes, tote bags, women’s magazines, dirty plates strewn everywhere—on the floor, on tabletops, over the tacky-looking furniture, including the unmade foldout sofa. The only adornment on the walls is a giant poster of the faceless Soloflex man taking off his shirt, from which I immediatel
y avert my eyes. The back of an armchair is facing me, the front of it facing the TV, which is blaring Home Shopping Club loud enough for the whole apartment complex to hear. Some southern woman with big hair is pitching an E.T. commemorative Hummel figurine. I’m not sure if anyone is sitting in the chair until I see it rock a bit.

  “Bren,” I call through the screen.

  The chair lets out a scream, and I know immediately it’s Brenda. “Who the hell is it?” she lets out, angry. I make out someone trying to struggle out of the chair, then giving up and wheeling it around. It’s Brenda, with neon apricot masque on her face, her hair pulled back grotesquely with a rubber band, barefoot, splayed there in a tent-sized nightshirt that reads “Contents Undisclosed Until ???” in big pink bubble letters. She looks frightening, frightened, and, sure enough, as big as a house. I couldn’t have imagined her that big if I had tried; she must be carrying quintuplets.

  She just sits there, glued to the chair, her face a frieze of shock and fury. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Bren, you’re huge!” I cry out in spite of myself.

  “Eric, what the fuck are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?”

  “You gave me the address once, remember?”

  “I did not!” She’s struggling out of the chair now, pulling the nightshirt down around her mountainous middle. The sight of her propping her hand behind her back and groaning just to stand up stabs into my chest.

  “Yes you did! Way back. In case of emergencies.”