“Hey, Binky, that little blondie girl you all brought here is so fucked up. You got to get her out. I took her out onto the balcony because I was afraid she was going to lose it on my mom’s rug, and she started grabbing me, trying to kiss me and shit.”
“Melanie’s drunk?” Erika looked up from her cards. She, Morris, Binky, and Christopher Primrose had been sitting in the kitchen for most of the party, playing cards. Something had changed. Christopher was no longer shepherding Binky around, moving her to dark corners of the room. He was sitting next to her, hand on her knee, as if they were going out. Erika had been transfixed by that change the entire night, contemplating what it might mean if Binky were now Christopher Primrose’s girlfriend. She had almost completely forgotten about Melanie and Jess.
“Shit. Where is she? Where’s the other one?” Morris got up, his enormous headphones resting behind his protruding ears, and began following James Jamison in his pirate costume back to the balcony.
“I guess she freaked when I told her to get off of me, and she came back inside. I thought she went this way. . . .” James led Erika, Binky, Christopher, and Morris down the windowed hallway, past the burning jack-o’-lanterns, the stunning cityscape. James walked stiffly, full of concern, evidently eager to rid himself of responsibility for the drunk Melanie. “She must be passed out somewhere.”
“Oh my God, my mother’s going to kill me,” Erika said.
“Not your fault.” Morris tried to shut her down.
“I should have at least watched out for her. We were supposed to watch out for each other. Mom kept telling Melanie she should check in on me during the party. She forgot to remind me to check on Melanie.”
Morris shook his head. “Your mom is great, but she has this weird idea Melanie is about eighteen years old and you’re about ten.” Erika smiled. But she understood why her mom thought like that. Melanie was tough. She was the sort of person you didn’t think needed looking after.
Then suddenly James raised his hand for them to stop, his cardboard-cutout hook still attached at the wrist. Someone was retching loudly in the bathroom off the hallway, and James opened the door slightly. It was Gerald. He was shirtless and he was kneeling over the toilet. Just above his head was a little row of the prettiest hand towels Erika had ever seen. They were off-white and had tiny yellow and green daffodils stitched on them.
“That’s one of ours,” Morris said. “I feel so proud.”
James shut the door and raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “One down, two to go.”
When James opened the door at the end of the hall, though, he blocked the doorway. Then he shut it again quickly behind him. “Hey, buddy, let’s let the girls deal with that, all right?—we’ll get bathroom boy cleaned up.”
Melanie lay on a white bear rug in the middle of the wood-paneled, book-lined room, with Jess kneeling over her, her back to the door. Erika could see Melanie’s bare calf, her black patent leather heels, a strand of blond curls. Jess turned around when Erika and Binky came into the room. “I found her like this,” she said.
Erika’s first thought was: Is my sister alive?
Erika let Jess pull Melanie’s panties back up, and her black Lycra leggings. Erika lifted Melanie’s butt off the floor, and supported her upper body, while Jess did the pulling. Melanie’s hair fell across Erika’s face. The bump-it in her hair, which had been the cause of hilarity earlier in the evening, had come loose and banged Erika across the forehead. Erika felt a surge of nausea. Erika was not, as her mother often explained to relatives, a hugger. The smell of another human body so close to her, the press of skin against skin, had always produced in her a nervous reaction. She could see why it would be soothing to lose oneself in the feel of another’s touch, but she had never had that experience. The one possible exception was her mother. With her mother, Erika liked to be close enough to lean into her on the couch or in the kitchen when she was cooking dinner. Mom called it “the Erika,” this leaning in, as if it were a dance move.
But this closeness to Melanie was not that kind of closeness. This was more like being a nurse, moving her sister’s body from one position to another. Oddly, it was only once she envisioned herself that way, as a sort of medical professional, a person who should be in uniform, a white jacket, rather than in a Halloween costume with a fluttering black silk veil over her head, her version of “see no evil,” that it occurred to Erika that her sister had been raped. The shock of finding Melanie drunk, lying helplessly on the floor, had somehow registered first as catastrophe enough.
“We have to call 911,” Erika said. “I have to call my mom. . . .”
“I don’t know,” Jess said. “I think we ought to wake her up. Maybe it’s not what we think.” Jess was leaning over Melanie, nudging her, calling softly, “Melanie, Melanie,” as if she were just waking her up from a particularly sound sleep.
Erika jabbed Melanie hard between the ribs. “You’ve got to really whack Mel to get her up. She’s the soundest sleeper in the family.” Erika jabbed Melanie again, then a third time. Finally, Melanie opened her eyes. Her blue eyes were red and squinty. She saw where she was and sighed and put her head back down. “Mel, Mel, we’re here, talk to us,” Erika said. Melanie groaned and turned away. She curled her shoulder forward, as if she were in her own bed and could roll over and go back to sleep. “Mel, you can’t sleep here, you hear me? You’ve got to get up or they’re going to call the police.” Something in Melanie was roused at that, and she came to with surprising quickness. She sat up and looked around and seemed to recall something vaguely unpleasant. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck, Jess, fuck . . . that punch was so strong . . . and then someone passed me a joint.” Melanie paused then, and looked around. “And we came in here and then . . .” She put her head in her hands. “The two of you found me? Just you two?”
“Yeah,” Jess lied before Erika could open her mouth.
“Good,” she said. She smiled faintly at Jess. Then she looked at Erika, her eyes steady but bloodshot. She raised her finger and pointed at her sister. “If you tell Mom about this, I’ll fucking kill you.” She spoke steadily, emphasizing both fucking and kill. There was something about Melanie’s look that made Erika feel the threat was not an overstatement. Erika recoiled. Melanie’s breath was foul with the smell of stale alcohol. Her heart skipped a beat. It was not a secret she could keep, but she couldn’t tell it either. What did people do in such situations, she wondered, and she wished, not for the first time, that the truth could be conveyed in some way other than in words.
“Let’s get you home,” Jess said softly, still kneeling in her black Rizzo capris. “We’ll find the guys and go.”
“Let them get their own way home,” Melanie said. “The thought of Gerald makes me want to puke.”
9
Jan hated Halloween, but would have felt like a loser if she wasn’t doing something that weekend. Fortunately, Adam was visiting and Andy had heard of the perfect party, an “uncostume” party off-campus. The uncostume party was down near Fox Point, a corner of the east side of Providence that remained heavily immigrant and was somewhat low-income. It was the perfect place for a Halloween party. The Portuguese families in the neighborhood all had the groove, with lots of little kids in Batman and princess costumes roaming around. The drug dealers who stood on the corner of Wickenden and dealt to Bostonians who used the convenience of Interstate 175 to score their weed and coke were in scant evidence. Police presence was too much for them on Halloween night.
Andy, Adam, and Jan stopped in at the tiny storefront wine shop on Sheldon Street, just before heading into the less affluent part of the neighborhood. “Here’s the place, if we want wine to bring,” Jan said. “The other liquor stores down there are only going to have Cold Duck.”
“All right. How much are we getting, ladies?” Adam had his ID, which was pretty flawless as such things go. He stopped in front of the door of the liquor store and stuck his hands in his pockets. It was just what Jan was afraid of.
“We should probably get two bottles,” Jan said, and handed Adam forty dollars. Thankfully, Andy didn’t seem notice, or she didn’t seem to care, that Adam wasn’t paying for the wine.
“Cool. Andy, are you participating in this illicit purchase, or are you taking your chances on what they’ve got down there?” Adam had already folded the forty dollars and put it in his pocket.
“Oh,” Andy said, looking at Jan and shrugging. “I guess I kind of figured Jan was covering it. Thought maybe I’d get you guys brunch or something.” Andy was cool, Jan thought, letting the whole thing slide. But Adam wouldn’t let up.
“Oh, we’re eating in the dorm. So, you know.” Adam’s face betrayed no emotion. He stood there blankly, as if his insistence had no meaning, put no pressure on Jan.
“Jesus Christ, Adam, just get two bottles and don’t worry about it. Andy and I are always owing each other ten or twenty. It’s nothing.” Jan wished she had kept control of her voice, wished she didn’t feel a warm blush spread across her face.
While Adam was in the store, Jan and Andy waited outside. The wind had kicked up and it was blowing moist, cool air in from the river. “Sorry about that,” Jan said with a grimace. “Not sure what it is.”
“He’s just funny about money. Lots of people are,” Andy said.
“You don’t understand, Andy, this is a thing with him.” Jan spoke in hushed tones, glancing occasionally through the lightly fogged liquor-store window. There was a long line. Adam was still three or four patrons back from the wood-paneled checkout counter. “He used to be sort of careful with money. Now it’s like all he thinks about. Well, not all, but it seems like it figures into everything. It’s like he thinks of everything anyone does in terms of what it’s worth.”
Andy laughed. “Well, at least he’s thinking about stuff. Maybe more people should think about what everything’s actually worth.”
“I don’t think Adam is thinking about money in any deep way. It’s like he doesn’t know he does it.”
Andy began to speak, but Jan shook her head. Adam was at the register. His face looked soft and boyish through the window as he reached into his pocket and handed over his ID. He didn’t look nervous as the clerk peered at him, then at the license, then back at Adam. “Anyway, I know what you’re going to say. I have to talk to him. I know.”
“Yep. That you do.” Jan shot Andy a warning look, as the string of bells on the liquor store door tinkled and Adam strode out with his plastic bag. He handed Jan two dollars and forty cents change and grinned broadly. “They had some seriously cheap Bulgarian merlot. I got us three bottles.”
The crowd filled an old warehouse building that had been converted into mini lofts. The party was in two adjacent lofts and spilled out into the hallways. The invite was specific: no costumes permitted. You showed up in costume and you were automatically disinvited.
The hallways of the building were a dark gray, almost black, with high ceilings and weird flickering fluorescent lights. The crowd was mostly sophomores and juniors. Andy had been invited by a guy in her poetry workshop. It wasn’t the edgy crowd that hung around the central quad, with their dreadlocks, motorcycle boots, and hipster thrift-shop sweaters—the Stainless Guy’s group, as Jan had come to think of them. The music was loud enough so you had to shout to be heard at all, but Jan felt good. Adam was holding her hand and swaying to the beat of the music. The lights were dim. Both apartments had huge black sheets covering all the furniture and candles for lights, which made the whole thing feel kind of spooky and Halloweenish. Jan had on a black thrift-shop peasant skirt with a black tee and lace-up low-heeled black boots, and she was, with her asymmetrical haircut and her bangs, about as edgy as anyone else. Adam seemed to be loosening up. He was on his second or third glass of merlot. He didn’t seem worried about who drank what or who’d paid what anymore. Maybe the money thing was a form of anxiety he was feeling in the first months of school. That could happen to anyone.
It was close to midnight when the guy from Andy’s poetry workshop passed Jan and Adam a little orange plastic bag. It was someone’s idea of party favors. In it were a few dried mushrooms that looked like the shriveled ears of a small animal—a cat or a squirrel. “A little late for that now, isn’t it?” Jan said.
Jan had tried mushrooms once before. It had been in the mountains at the cabin of her high school friend Marcy, and Marcy’s brother had broken the ’shrooms out one afternoon, when the parents had gone off to a barbecue with friends.
At first, she hadn’t felt anything. She and Marcy had decided to take a hike on a nearby trail. They’d hiked the same trail at least once already that summer. Marcy led the way, with her long, curly blond hair pulled back in a braid. Marcy was a jock—captain of the basketball team at Rose Dyer—and she moved briskly through the woods and up the rocky trail with Jan following several paces behind. Suddenly, Jan felt the struggle to keep up with Marcy give way to a feeling of nearly limitless energy in her limbs. It was as though she were springing forward effortlessly. At the same time, the green in the woods around her had intensified. Marcy stopped suddenly in her tracks and both girls started laughing at some unspoken joke. The green was too hilariously green. The rocks too vehemently real. The clouds, foolishly mobile. The whole world had begun to exaggerate itself.
Jan remembered standing in a small clearing in the woods, watching the clouds pass overhead, and the gray-blue creek water run over the gray-blue creek stones, laughing at the unnecessary beauty, the startling particularity of things, and then running back down the wooded chaos of the path, until it was all over and they were somehow back at the cabin. How thirsty she’d been then, horribly thirsty, and with an aching behind her eyes she felt would never go away.
And here was Adam now, a little after midnight, holding this bag of mushrooms, looking questioningly at Jan. He didn’t want to do them, she could tell, but he was deferring to her. She wasn’t sure what to say. But it didn’t seem to her like a time in their relationship for caution.
“I guess it is Halloween and all,” Adam said. “What do you think?”
“Maybe it’s something we should do. Something you and I should do together?”
“What about Andy?” Adam asked.
“She left with that guy from her class.” Jan laughed. Andy had tapped Jan on the shoulder as she walked past her and pointed toward the door. The guy was cute enough, but Andy gave Jan a slight shrug of her shoulders as if to say she didn’t know what she was doing. Andy had her hot-and-heavy guy down at Columbia, but they weren’t supposed to be exclusive.
Maybe it was the wine, or maybe Adam, too, felt the relationship was in need of some crucial step, but without saying anything more, Adam pulled out a mushroom cap and popped it in his mouth.
The Silver Top diner was somewhere downtown, though Jan was never quite sure where. They had walked there, that she knew, but when the diner appeared, it was as if out of nowhere. They hadn’t had a destination. They’d left the party and walked west on Sheldon Street, the streets emptied of costumed children, littered with Halloween debris—toilet paper and shaving cream cans, candy wrappers, and the odd plastic toy. Adam had picked up a green and white plastic whistle on a green plastic cord and blown into it, but it had failed to produce a sound. He’d blown again and again, puffing out his cheeks, in a way that should have been funny, but which had struck Jan as symbolically futile. There was nothing sweet about those plastic toys, that landfill trash. She wished people would stop making such things, and she’d felt an actual pang in her chest at the instant realization that they would not, that the factories were permanent, wherever they were; factories now were essential to the landscape. She’d wanted to tell Adam what she was thinking, and to put the damn whistle down, but she couldn’t get started. A terrible silence had begun to fill her. It was as thick as the outer dark. It was like being hungry but too ill to eat. There were terrible things that needed to be said, but the silence within her had kept swallowing them up. She couldn�
�t even say his name. If she could have, she was sure the rest would have come tumbling out, but there’d been something acrid now in those syllables. Adam—no, she couldn’t say it. She’d felt like crying, but tears had also been impossible, so she’d walked on, trailing him by half a step, the pathetic whistle now hanging around his neck from the plastic cord. She’d wanted to tell him it was no good, to get rid of the thing, but she’d kept quiet, and it had remained hanging there, extraneous and obscene. They’d kept walking toward the water, then toward downtown, then along a street that no longer curved around itself in the concentricity that was Providence, and then they had arrived, mysteriously, at the Silver Top.
It was necessary, with the sun beginning to rise, and a breeze kicking up off the water, to be in the Silver Top diner with a cup of coffee and a fiesta omelet. Adam was rumpled, his eyes half closed and his lips pursed in a way Jan had never seen before. He looked at Jan across the white Formica table and took her hand. For the past hour or so of walking, she had been trapped in her silence. Each of them had been in their own sealed-off world of darkness, of the light they were heading toward. In the end, something had loosened in her, the effect of the drug perhaps wearing off, and she’d reached for him, and they’d held hands tightly. It had been terrible, and lonesome, but they had walked their way out of it. They had been like children, Jan felt, wandering alone in the dark, helpless, but ultimately good and brave.
The only other customers in the diner were a couple of truck drivers and a table of costumed party kids. One girl was a vampire. Another was wearing a pink and white cardboard box on her head, which at one point in the evening had probably been a part of a clever costume. There was a small, sharp-jawed boy with them, and a stocky boy, who nodded at her when they came in. It was Mr. Stainless’s friend, Roberto.
“What I don’t remember is how we got on this walking thing. Why didn’t we just go hang out in the quad, or in your room?” Adam’s voice was hoarse and his skin had a yellowish tint under the fluorescent diner lights. Jan needed to use the bathroom, but wasn’t ready to leave the table, to confront her own reflection in the hard-edged, unforgiving solitude of the diner’s ladies’ room.
The Word for Yes Page 7
