“That had a little accident.”
“Oh.” Long silence. Long, awkward. Heavy. Strange. “Donald broke up with me.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I guess that was at least half true. I wasn’t sorry Donald was gone. I couldn’t be. But I was sorry he’d made her feel like this. Guys like that always will, I think. Not that I’m this big expert on guys or anything. But it seemed obvious to me. Like, whatever he is now. Whatever it is right now, that’s what it’s always going to be.
“I thought this might be a good moment to discuss the best time for you to move.”
“Move?”
“Come home.”
She was still staring down at the table, forehead in her palm.
I couldn’t answer. I just couldn’t force out any words. I could feel that my mouth was too wide open, so I focused on closing it again.
After a while, she looked up.
“Well?”
“Mother. I’m not coming home.”
Looking back, it seems I might at least have considered it. What with Frank moving away. And me being a little scared about living alone. But I didn’t consider it. Not for a second. It was impossible. I knew that the minute it hit my ears. Some things, like independence, only go one direction. Independence has no reverse gear. Fear or no fear.
“What do you mean? Of course you’re coming home. I’m so sorry I put you through this, darling. I lost my head. But it’s over now. We can go back to the way things were before.”
“No. We can’t, Mother. We can’t go back to the way things were before. It’s impossible.”
She looked into my eyes for a minute, then started to cry. I guessed that meant she saw.
“You know,” she said, “I pay your rent. You can only live here as long as I pay your rent. I could insist you come home.”
I wanted to be mad, but I just felt too sorry for her. I didn’t even feel like I needed to fight her now. Fighting is for when you’re not sure if you’re strong enough to win. When you have to test it out. When you know who’s stronger, you don’t have to fight. You can be invited to a fight and just choose not to show.
“I know you wouldn’t do that,” I said.
She fell all into sobbing, her head down on her arms on my table.
I came around behind her, and put my arms around her, and just let her cry it out.
After she left, I couldn’t get the Janis thing going again. It’s like she stole all my wind.
So I sat on the fire escape for an hour or so, wishing Frank would come out and sit with me. But he never did. Then I remembered that Molly was taking him to an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. Something about getting an X-ray of the pins in his elbow to check them for something.
I think it was around two or three in the afternoon when I heard a knock at the door.
I climbed back inside to go see who it was.
Freaking Grand Central Station, I was thinking. I was wishing that at a time like this everybody would just leave me alone.
I opened the door to see Wilbur, Shane, and The Bobs standing in my hall. Big Bob was carrying a paper grocery sack.
Shane’s hair was indeed green. Quite noticeably green.
So, I guess I did have Shane and The Bobs. I guess Wilbur had been right.
I said, “I hope that grocery sack is full of beer. I could use some.”
Shane said, “Wilbur’s trying to cut down.”
I nodded. As if I’d known that. But, truthfully, I’d really thought that was only a joke.
“Can we come in?” Also Shane. “We come bearing ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” I wasn’t quite getting it yet.
Wilbur said, “I hope you don’t mind. I told them you were feeling bad. You know. About Frank moving away.”
For a minute, I was stunned. I felt like that was so out of character for Wilbur. He doesn’t just run off and tell people what you told him. But then I put two and two together with the ice cream. And it hit me. Wilbur knew I needed help. So he brought me some.
So, maybe that’s why I had Shane and The Bobs. Because of Wilbur. Because he told them … what? That I needed them? That I wasn’t as bad as they thought? I had no idea.
I only know that I was suddenly able to see, as if through someone else’s eyes, that I needed help. Much more so than I’d realized.
Trouble was, I still mostly wanted to be left alone. I’ve practiced “alone” a lot, and I’m good at it.
I’m guessing this must all have shown on my face. Because they began inventorying the ice cream. Big Bob set the bag down on the hall carpet, and Little Bobby took the quart cartons out one by one, held them up in a perfect impression of Vanna White, and announced their flavors.
“Chocolate chip mint …”
A few soft oohs and aahs from Shane.
“Rocky road …” He scrambled into the bag for another. “Mocha almond fudge … butter rum … and last but not least … chocolate chip cookie dough!”
A few more oohs and aahs.
“That would be a shitload of ice cream,” I said.
“Nothing’s too good for our friend,” Little Bobby said.
I just stood there for the longest time. Not knowing what to say. I don’t do grief in a crowd.
Finally, I said the only thing I could think to say. “Mocha almond fudge, huh?”
Little Bobby said, “A whole quart all for you, if that’s your favorite.”
“I guess you’d better come in.”
We sat in a circle on my living-room hardwood. Cross-legged, like some kind of campfire circle or Native American sweat lodge. Except we each had a spoon.
Four of the cartons of ice cream sat in the middle of the circle, looking a bit liquidy around their peripheries. The mocha-almond-fudge carton sat in the middle of my crossed legs, nearly one-third polished off. The sugar rush was making me feel emotionally numb. I liked the feeling.
“Okay,” Shane said. “Enough small talk. Who wants to be the first to tell their very worst breakup story?”
“Ooh,” Little Bobby said. “That’s hard. I have so many to choose from.”
“Breakup story,” I repeated.
“Yeah.” Shane.
“I’m not breaking up with anybody. I was never with him in the first place.”
“So? It’s still a loss.”
“But it’s not a breakup.”
“Okay,” Shane said. “Who wants to be the first to share the worst, most painful loss they ever had that wasn’t actually a breakup?”
Three hands shot up. Shane, answering her own question, and both Bobs.
I ate another big spoon of ice cream. I hadn’t asked for this. Wouldn’t have asked for it. But some weird part of me wanted to hear the stories. Don’t ask me why, but the idea of hearing about other people’s heartache sounded strangely appealing.
I looked over at Wilbur, and he looked a little green around the gills.
“You okay, Wilbur?”
“I don’t think I want to play this game,” he said. “It sounds painful.”
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want.”
He didn’t answer. He just kept looking down into the mint-chocolate-chip carton.
“I’ll go,” Little Bobby said. “It was my pediatrician. I was madly in love with my pediatrician. Until I was fourteen. Which, on the one hand, was really humiliating, when your parents still send you to a pediatrician at fourteen. But on the other hand, I sure as hell wasn’t about to argue for a new doctor. Anyway, I was sick a lot.”
A smattering of laughter. No, not even laughter, really. Just little snorts of sound.
“And then one day he got me on the table and really read me the riot act. He said I wasn’t sick and I was wasting his time and wasting my parents’ money and I should go home and act like a healthy boy and stop all this nonsense. I was so incredibly humiliated. I slunk out of there feeling about an inch high, and then when I was passing by the desk, his two receptionist-type women were laughing behind thei
r hands about something, and I was sure they were laughing at me. Now I think maybe they were just telling a joke or something. But at the time, it hit me all at once that if the doctor knew, then maybe everybody knew. I felt like the whole world was laughing at my most important secret. I went home and went to bed and didn’t get up for six days.”
Silence. I shoveled in more ice cream. I had no idea what you say about a thing like that.
Shane said, “Done?”
Bobby nodded once.
“There was this girl when I was thirteen. She was in my history class. We used to write all these notes in class. And they got more and more … well, you know. It’s kind of personal. Anyway, we were making plans. You know. In the notes. Like a romantic thing. But then she got cold feet. And she not only didn’t want to be my girlfriend, she didn’t even want to talk to me. Or look at me. Except one day she cornered me in the girls’ room and said she wanted to borrow the notes back. She knew I saved every one. She said she wanted to see what they said. Like, how incriminating they’d be. So I loaned them to her, even though they were just about the most important thing I owned. And she took them home and burned them. I know it sounds stupid. It was just a stack of papers. But it was the closest I’d ever come to having a girlfriend. I was so brokenhearted I stayed home from school for a week. I came to dinner every night with sunglasses on.”
I couldn’t help interjecting here. “What did your parents say?”
“Nothing. They didn’t notice.”
“How can you not notice sunglasses at the dinner table?”
“Well, they didn’t let on that they noticed. I tried to get them to let me transfer to another school, but I wouldn’t say why, and it didn’t fly. So I wore my sunglasses in school for the rest of the year, and stayed as far away from the note burner as I could. Are we depressing you?”
“Sort of. But I was sort of depressed to start with. So it’s okay.”
After a bit of an awkward pause, Big Bob said, “You have to promise not to think I’m totally sick if I tell you I was in love with my cousin.”
He paused for reaction, but no one reacted. Just a lot of spoon action.
“Actually, he was just a second cousin. It’s not like I thought we’d get married or anything. It’s just that he was really handsome, and a couple years older, and he was smart and athletic and funny and he was nice to me. So I admired him, you know? Looked up to him. I loved him, but in a lot of ways. Anyway, when I was thirteen, we were at this family party for another cousin’s wedding. And he took me out and got me high. So we were hanging out in the bushes in the dark, smoking weed and talking. And I thought I could really trust him. So I told him I was gay. He didn’t say much. Just listened. But then the next day I found out he told everybody. Everybody. My parents. All of our relatives. All his friends from school. And I never really saw him again. I mean, if you don’t count from across a room.”
I looked down into my ice cream carton and was stunned to see I was an inch or two from the bottom of the quart.
“That’s so sad,” I said.
Big Bob said, “Which one of them?”
“All of them.”
Shane said, “Should we have just kept shut?”
“No. No. I’m actually glad you told me. It actually almost sort of helps in a weird way. Not that it changes anything, really. But it’s like you get this thing in your head where you think life’s being unfair to you. And from the outside it looks like it’s being more fair to everybody else. But then you hear more about the inside of them, and you feel like … I don’t know. I don’t know how to say it. Like it’s just life. Like life is unfair to everybody sooner or later, and it just happens to be my turn. You know?”
Only, really, if I was to be completely honest, life was being fairer to me than most. Because Frank hadn’t hurt or betrayed or humiliated me. He just had to go.
Silence. I dipped again with my spoon and hit the bottom of the carton. My knees and hip joints and sitting bones were aching from sitting cross-legged so long. But I didn’t move.
Wilbur spoke up suddenly. “I’m going next, then.”
I said, “You don’t have to, Wilbur.”
“No. I’m going. If it helps you, then I’m going.”
I scraped the bottom of my ice cream carton while he gathered himself up to go.
“When I was eleven, my mother had this boyfriend named Enrique. And Enrique had this brother. Esteban. And Esteban came and lived with us for a while. And he paid a lot of attention to me. A lot. He played games with me. We went for walks. He taught me how to fish. He cooked special lunches for me. Refried beans and tortillas from scratch. We even sat on the couch every night and watched TV together, just the two of us. I’d never gotten much attention before. So I thought the sun rose and set on him. And then one time, after about five months, my mom and Enrique went away for the weekend and left me alone with Esteban. And he molested me. And not in that sort of statutory-but-not-really-forcible way, either. He was rough. And I was scared. And he hurt me a lot. And then, I don’t know if he felt guilty, or if he was just afraid he’d get in trouble, but he took off and I never saw him again. And I missed him so much. I know that sounds weird. But I missed him every minute of every day. I hated what he did. I didn’t want him to come back and do it again. I wanted him to come back and be nice to me like before. But … this is the really weird part … I’ve never said this to anybody, so the next part stays right here in this room, okay?”
He looked to each of us in turn, collecting four solemn nods. Shane even put her hand over her heart.
“I didn’t want him to come back and hurt me, but if I’d only had two choices, I would have chosen having him molesting me over not having him at all.” Silence. “Is that really sick?”
“It’s really sad,” I said.
“No,” Shane said. “It’s just human. Kids need attention. They’ll pay anything.”
Nobody said anything for a long time. I just scraped the last of my mocha almond fudge out of the carton and thought about something I’d never considered before. I thought about how little attention anybody had really paid me. At least, until I met Frank.
Later that night, right after they left, I stuck my head out the window. Frank was out on the fire escape. Just staring off into the dark. So I quick climbed out.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“I was hoping you’d come out.”
“Oh. My friends were here.”
“So, you’re still friends with them. That’s good. I guess you got around whatever you were mad at them for?”
“It wasn’t their fault, anyway. It was my fault.”
“Well, anyway. I’m glad you came out. I thought maybe you didn’t want to talk to me.”
I didn’t answer at first, because I didn’t know what to say. Then I said, without knowing I was about to, “Do I owe you an apology?” Something about Frank thinking I wasn’t speaking to him, I guess.
“No,” he said. Very fast and definite. “Do I owe you one?”
“No. Why would you owe me an apology?”
“Maybe I should have told you sooner. Like when we first started being friends.”
So he did remember.
The sudden change of direction made my stomach turn. I guess the quart of mocha almond fudge wasn’t helping. I wanted to ask if we could talk about something else. But I couldn’t say that to Frank.
So I just said, “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
And we sat for a while without talking.
While we were doing that, I decided that not talking is like a litmus test for a real friend. You can just sit there and be. Not always be filling up the air with words.
After a while, I figured I’d have to go in soon. I had to go to the bathroom, and I hadn’t fed the cat. I said something unusually honest.
I said, “I have no idea what to do with how much I’m going to miss you.”
He digested that for a minute. Didn’t le
ap up to try to fix it like most people would.
“You know,” he said, “there are a variety of communication devices than can bridge the gap between New York and South Carolina.”
“What will they think of next?” I said, playacting as if I hadn’t known. “Are you going to have e-mail?”
“Even if I have to do dial-up. But hopefully we’ll be able to afford high-speed. You could e-mail me and tell me about your day.”
“That would be nice. Would you e-mail me back?”
“Of course I would. The longest e-mails I can bring myself to type with my left hand.”
We sat quiet for a minute more, and then I said I had to go in.
“I wish I didn’t have to leave, too,” he said.
“I’m scared that people will be more prejudiced in South Carolina. I’m worried about you.”
“I survived it the first time.”
“Well,” I said. “Good night, I guess.”
“Good night, Elle.”
For some weird reason, it felt good to hear him say my name. I knew it wouldn’t be the same to see it in an e-mail typed with his left hand.
Then, on the other hand, I’m guessing that Shane’s note burner and Little Bobby’s pediatrician and Big Bob’s second cousin and Wilbur’s mother’s boyfriend’s brother hadn’t encouraged them to keep in touch by e-mail.
Maybe I should just have been happy for what I got.
FIFTEEN
Say Something Brilliant Before You Go
The last time I got to spend any serious time with Molly was the day she let me use her darkroom. Of course, I didn’t know enough to use it on my own. She helped me. Together we developed the Wilbur pictures.
Well. Mostly she developed them. But I was there.
We didn’t say much at first. I think I was a little nervous about how they’d turn out.
When Molly hung up the first few prints to dry, I could barely contain my disappointment. Whatever I’d seen in my head I hadn’t caught on film. They were just ordinary snapshots. At best.
I withdrew. I went and sat with my back against the wall. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her work in the dim red glow. I was feeling like I’d miss her when she moved away, but I didn’t know how to say it.
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