Sons of the 613

by Michael Rubens

  Lisa is already asleep in her room. She can sleep through anything. She slept through a thunderstorm in which lightning hit the tree outside and hailstones shattered her window.

  It’s so packed, all of our other neighbors might be here, too, as far as I know. It’s hard to describe the crowd: imagine some sort of high-energy collision between twelve very different types of nightclubs, resulting in an entirely novel and unstable element. There are hipsters, and young businessfolk, and punk-rock friends of Patrick’s who look like they’re going to rob the businessfolk, and stripper-girlfriends of Terri who look like they’re going to seduce and rob everyone, and small solid men who look like the Mexicans who work behind the scenes in restaurants, and college students, and high school students, and muscly dudes who must have been on my brother’s various sports teams, and then just random people that I can’t categorize.

  And then a handful of scrawny, pimply junior high kids, scurrying around like rodents under the dinosaurs’ feet.

  “It’s not the static weight, it’s the shock load,” Steve is saying to Paul, the two of them still arguing over the structural integrity of the living room and whether there will be PARTY TRAGEDY headlines in the paper tomorrow. “Look at the amount of displacement of the floor,” he adds, indicating the worrying manner in which the floor is flexing under everyone’s weight.

  My peeps.

  “Isaac! Hey! You hear me?” Danny grabbing my arm, pulling my attention back from scanning the crowd. “I said, check out the tits on that girl!” He’s indicating one of Terri’s friends. Appreciative noises from Steve and Paul.

  “What? Yeah, nice,” I say. It seems cheap to tell them that I’ve already checked them out at the club, and without any fabric intervening between my eyeballs and her nipples. I go back to my distracted crowd scanning.

  “You waiting for someone?” asks Paul.

  “No.”

  I am. Partially, I’m waiting for the police to show up and drag Josh away.

  But I’m also waiting for Lesley. Not because I want to see her. I don’t.

  Danny grabs my elbow again. “Isaac, check it out!”

  Eric Weinberg. He’s wandering amid the forest of larger folks, searching for a familiar face.

  “What is he doing here?” says Steve.

  “I invited him,” I say.

  I did. I sent him an e-mail and then called him and then texted him from Josh’s phone. I didn’t think he’d actually come, but I’m not unhappy he’s here. It seems somehow right that he would be.

  He spots us and holds up a hand in greeting, makes his way over to us. When he reaches us I notice that he’s got a plastic cup of beer in the other hand.

  “Hey,” he says, or shouts, when he’s close. Heys all around. It’s loud enough that we all have an excuse to just sort of stand there without talking, pretending we’re observing the party all around us, which is what we do for a stretch. Then there’s a pause in the music.

  “Is that a beer?” says Danny.

  “It’s a party, right?” Eric says, and takes a cautious sip. It’s his magic item to regain entry to the world, I realize, his way of one-upping us all: Long have I walked the dark realm of Loserdom, he’s saying, but I return now, beer in hand, cooler than you all.

  “Yeah, where’s the beer?” says Steve to me. Eric’s gambit is working.

  “Guys—look!” says Danny.

  No.

  Sarah Blumgartner.

  No.

  “Oh, snap!”

  “Damn!”

  “Oooh, your girl is here!”

  “I didn’t invite her!” I say, to jeers and derision, and then she has spotted us and is heading over.

  “Someone’s getting laid tonight!” says Danny, elbowing me. More hilarity.

  “Hi, guys!” she says.

  If Eric was out before, he’s in now, the boys instantly bonded into a unit by the arrival of Sarah, the enemy.

  “Hey, Isaac,” she says.

  “Hi.”

  “Are Theresa and Erica here?” she asks.

  No, and you know they’re not, because I didn’t invite them, and I didn’t invite you, either.

  “Haven’t seen them.”

  “Weird—they said they were coming.”

  “She’s all yours, big guy,” Danny whispers in my ear.

  “We’re gonna go get some beers,” says Steve, indicating a group that clearly doesn’t include me and Sarah.

  “I’m coming,” I say.

  “I’ll come,” she says.

  “It’s okay—we’ll get you some,” says Paul, and they all vanish, leaving me with her.

  So there we are.

  “Everyone’s been talking about this party,” she says, by way of excusing her presence. “It’s like the whole school knows about it.”

  “Huh,” I say. I’m wishing the music would start again.

  “Are you all right? What happened here?” She reaches out and touches my black eye. I shy away, not hiding my annoyance.

  “Nothing.”

  “Haven’t seen you in school.”

  “Haven’t been there much.”

  She nods. I can see her expression changing. Whatever hopes and dreams she had when she came are meeting the hard wall of reality, which is that I don’t like her. I know I’m being insufferable and rude, but I’m angry that she’s here, that she decided to invade this celebration.

  “Okay,” she says. “Well . . .”

  Then I see Lesley.

  She’s just across the room, watching us. When our eyes meet she smiles and waves to me.

  I reach out and grab Sarah’s hand.

  “C’mon,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Let’s go. Let’s go get a beer.”

  I pull her away and we dodge our way through the bodies just as the music is starting up again.

  We swim our way through the various strata of the party until we’re out back, and wait our turn at the keg. She goes right at the beer, drinking it like she’s done it a hundred times before, and looks at me expectantly, so I drink, too. She’s talking to me, and I’m nodding and responding, but my brain isn’t really engaged. I’m on full alert for Lesley, hoping to see her again. Hoping she’ll see me with Sarah. The backyard is far less populated than inside, the crowd densest near the house. I’m nodding, yessing, noing, looking for Lesley, sipping my beer from its soft plastic cup.

  “Want another?” asks Sarah, her cup empty. I realize mine is, too. I feel a bit dizzy, but warm and almost happy.

  “Sure,” I say.

  We stand and sip our beers and talk about bar mitzvahs and math class and the blood red Jell-O mold her mother makes at Passover dinner and what classes we’ll be taking next year. I’ve known her forever. She’s not a bad person, really, and not so annoying outside the context of school. My mother says she thinks Sarah is beautiful, which, uh, no, but then again she doesn’t seem that hideous at this moment.

  She’s standing very close to me, which makes sense, because it’s loud out here, too, and hard to hear each other. Every once in a while she reaches out and puts a hand on my lower back when she leans in to listen to me, and I don’t mind it. At one point she says, “Wanna go inside?” Lesley’s in there, I think, so I say yes. On the way in I catch a glimpse of Josh in the midst of everyone. Someone is talking to him, but Josh isn’t hearing, his attention focused on texting something, brow furrowed.

  Sarah and I end up in the packed basement, gravitating toward a dark corner. People are talking around us, but I feel hidden in our spot. I don’t see Danny or Paul or the rest of them. Sarah’s standing even closer now, and her hand is on me more often. Once or twice I mirror her gesture, my hand on her back, both our heads inclined toward each other, nearly touching.

  Lesley. She’s nearby, watching me. Watching us. I’m midsentence when I see her, my eyes flicking over briefly, then returning to Sarah. She’s leaning in close to listen to me, her eyes luminous and full and never leaving my face.
Aware of Lesley watching, I lean just a little bit closer and Sarah responds and I put my chin up just a bit and she responds and her hand reaches out to rest on my forearm and we’re closer and we’re kissing.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  BACKFIRE

  MERIT BADGE: FIRST KISS

  One of those moments when everything changes. One of those moments when you realize you’ve crossed a border. Forever.

  I’m kissing Sarah Blumgartner. We’re kissing. It’s happening. Ten seconds ago I was the Isaac who had never really kissed anyone. I am now a different Isaac, an Isaac who has kissed someone. Is kissing someone.

  Her lips are soft. She opens her mouth and her tongue is in my mouth and it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced. Her hands are caressing my face. Her breath smells good. I pull her in close, but not too close, because I have a sudden hard-on and don’t want her to feel it, so our chests are touching but not our lower bodies, her breasts pressed against me.

  We kiss. We kiss more. We kiss and kiss and kiss, tilting our heads back and forth like they do in the movies, noses first on one side, then on the other, mashing our faces together. Part of me is saying, This is incredible. Why did it take me so long to do this with Sarah? Sarah is smart and funny and cute, and we could have been doing this for a long time. Another part is saying, I really hope Lesley is watching.

  I disengage to check. Lesley’s still there. She is watching. It’s almost like she was waiting for me to look again. I’m hoping to see jealousy, a frown, anger. But what she does is smile at me. It’s a maternal, I’m-happy-for-you smile, a condescending pat on the head of a smile. A farewell of a smile. Then she turns to go.

  I realize that Sarah is talking to me, saying my name.

  “Isaac? Isaac.”

  “What?”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  But I’m not. I’m furious.

  “What happened? Do you want to stop? Isaac?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to—”

  “I want,” I say, “to pierce my ear.”

  “Pierce your—”

  “Yes. I want to pierce my ear. I want you to.”

  “Me? Now?”

  “Yes. Will you do it?”

  She starts to laugh. “Okay.”

  I pull her into the crowded kitchen and spot Josh standing against the wall near the center island where the stove is. And yes, there she is, Lesley, talking to him, her hand resting on his arm. He’s upset about something, but isn’t he always?

  I steer Sarah so that we walk near them, making sure that I don’t glance over at Lesley as we pass, then park us just a few feet away.

  “Which ear should I pierce?” I say, loud. “Which ear should I pierce?”

  “The left one,” says Sarah, but I’m worried that Josh and Lesley might not have heard me, so I say it again, louder. “Which ear should I pierce?”

  “Left! The left one!!”

  I position her by the stove, just a few yards from Lesley and Josh. I tell her to wait, then shoulder through the crowd to the corkboard on the wall and remove the pushpin that’s holding up the NO PARTIES sign. Back to Sarah, handing her the pin, turning on the gas flame.

  “Here, sterilize it,” I say.

  “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes!” I leave her again, going to the pantry to get a potato. When I return, Sarah is holding the needle over the flame, the tip glowing red. I know Lesley has noticed me now, know that she’s watching me and Sarah, her eyes leaving Josh now and then to glance over distractedly.

  “Here? Like this?” I say, holding the potato up behind my ear. “And then you just jab it through?” I motion with my other hand, pantomiming it, aware that I’m overdoing it for Lesley and Josh’s benefit.

  “Don’t you want to ice it?” says Sarah. “Make it numb?”

  “No, just do it,” I say.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Do it! Just do it!”

  She’s grimacing, wrinkling her nose, suddenly girly and squeamish. Out of the corner of my eye I can tell that Josh has turned to see what Lesley is looking at. They’re both watching. Now is the time. Now. Sarah is hesitating, lining up the needle, pausing, aiming, pausing, saying, “Ewww! Ewwww!”

  “Do it! Go!”

  Sarah makes one more ewwww sound and jabs the pin into my ear.

  There. Done. Good.

  Then: “Ow, shit!”

  “Oh my God!” says Sarah, “I totally messed that up!”

  The line at the bathroom is long, several songs’ worth of waiting. My hand is cupped over the side of my head so that other people can’t see the pin still hanging out of my ear.

  When I finally get in I lock the door and go directly to the mirror. The pin is sticking straight out of my ear, about a half-inch north of where it should be. It’s in the cartilage, the tip barely protruding through the other side. I grit my teeth and yank it out—“Ow, shit!” again—then squeeze out a few drops of blood and wash it with soap and water and finally dump rubbing alcohol over the whole area, someone pounding on the door the whole time.

  When I go out again, I can’t find Sarah. I can’t find her, I can’t find my peeps, I can’t find Josh, I can’t find Lesley. The party seems to have intensified and grown more wild, more dangerous. Like people have taken the part of them that makes them obey all the Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots and drowned that part in alcohol and put it away in a box for later. I wasn’t scared of it before, but I’m scared of it now, my buzz totally gone.

  I see Sarah. She’s there across the room. I start walking toward her. Wait. She’s not alone. She’s with Eric. Eric Weinberg. They’re close. They’re—no. No. They’re kissing. She’s kissing him. She was kissing me ten minutes ago, and now she’s kissing Eric. Eric! I had Lesley, and then I lost her, and then I had Sarah, and now I’ve lost her, too, and now I’m nothing.

  While I’m trying to take that in and figure out what I’m going to feel when the shock wears off I see Josh coming toward me, looking even more upset than before, and Lesley is right behind him, harrying him. He passes right by me like I’m not there, and she does too and she’s saying, “What’s wrong? Trish busy?”

  I take all those awful emotions, the ones that were about to slam into me and crush me, and put them on pause.

  Josh stops in his tracks, close enough to me that I could almost reach out and touch him.

  “Why?” he says. “Why do you have to start with me?”

  “Oh, no, did she stand you up?” She’s still smiling as she says it, but it’s brittle and mean, and she sounds drunk and slurry. I don’t move, not wanting to call attention to myself. “This big party’s all for her, isn’t it, and she didn’t even show up?” says Lesley. “What a surprise!”

  “You know what I don’t need right now? I don’t need you giving me crap.”

  He pushes past her and starts to walk back the way he came, and she follows.

  “Do you know how many guys she’s with?” she says loudly as she walks after him. “Do you? Listen to me!”

  She grabs his elbow and he shakes her off, tries to keep walking.

  “She doesn’t love you! She never loved you!”

  He reverses direction again, coming back toward me, attempting to lose her.

  “You know it’s true!”

  He stalks past me and goes down the hallway toward his room, Lesley still in pursuit, and I fall in line behind them. He goes back into his room and slams the door shut to escape, but Lesley pushes it back open and goes in. I can hear her saying something, crying now. I follow and stand just outside the door, unable to resist. It’s the key to everything, the mystery, all to be revealed now, and I can’t miss it. Through the half-open door I can see Josh pacing back and forth, hands pressed against his head like he’s trying to hold his skull together. Lesley is sloppy crying, screaming at him: “I love you! I love you! And you screw me and pretend it doesn’t matter! She never loved y
ou!”

  He’s seated on his bed now, hunched over, still holding his head.

  “And now you’re just running away, running away and doing this stupid thing . . .”

  “They were all assholes anyway.”

  “Who? Everyone at college? Why, because they didn’t buy your act and didn’t give a shit about you being such a tough guy? Who cares? That’s not why I love you!”

  He’s shaking his head now, trying to shake her words away from his ears.

  “I love you, Josh! I love you! Why do you have to be so stupid?”

  She looks so drunk and small and needy. I’m ashamed for her, embarrassed to be watching, but I can’t stop.

  “Why can’t you answer me!” she says to him, and he suddenly springs up from the bed and I have to step aside as he storms out of the room.

  “Great! Great! Go get yourself blown up in Afghanistan!” she screams after him. I’m not sure which direction to go in, to follow him back into the party or go to Lesley, who’s lying on the floor, bawling. I go to her and kneel down, touching her tentatively on the shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” I say, even though it’s pretty clear she’s not.

  “Why’see goddabeli’thah!!” she says, or something like that, impossible to tell through the alcohol and the tears. “Why!!?”

  “Lesley, what did you mean about Afghanistan?”

  “She doesn’t fuggin’ love him!”

  “What did you mean about Afghanistan?!”

  “He’s not going bag to shchool, he’s joining the fuggin’ Marines!”

  While I’m frozen there in shock, thinking, Oh, shit, and also, Of course he is, Patrick leans into the room, his nose bleeding, and says, “Yo, Isaac, you gotta go talk some sense into your brother.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  FLAMEOUT

  MERIT BADGE: HONEST-TO-GOD BAR BRAWL

  “Move your fucking car!” Josh is bellowing as I run out the front door. The blond-haired guy he’s talking to looks terrified, but he’s saying, “Josh, I don’t think you should be driving.”