Burn ended up staying with us for the rest of the week. Which meant me staying up all night every night to make sure he wasn’t going to go off the deep end in my house and kill us all.
Tuesday night he finally talked more about Roxanne, who, I found out, had been sent to a special psychiatric clinic for drug abusers and suiciders. Apparently he had gone to see her that afternoon with his aunt, and she was doing OK, not talking about what had happened even though he tried to get her to tell him stuff.
Wednesday night he helped me with my English paper.
Thursday I got home after practice to find him hanging with Jamie on the couch, but get this, the TV wasn’t on and they were talking.
That was it, as far as I was concerned, because Jamie had no idea how corrupt his mind could be, and Jamie was innocent about mostly everything except the stuff she learned on TV. I knew instantly that for as long he continued to stay at my house, I would have to be home whenever he was there. No way could I chance him talking to her again about suicide or anything else for that matter.
Short version, he had to go.
Except Friday, he was still there. I had to wonder what had happened to Mrs. Burnett after all this time. Had she abandoned him?
For what it was worth, Lindsey, being Lindsey, never actually said one word to Burn in all that time. Not a single word, got to give her credit, not even to ask how Roxanne was. But of course, Lindsey, being Lindsey, didn’t care, so no need to pretend.
Which left me home on a Friday night while my boys were playing poker at Pete’s house because Burn said he hated card games, didn’t think they were challenging enough, complained that it was all about luck, not skill, so it didn’t matter who won and lost really, did I want to play chess; because that he could do, but, of course, I refused to play chess or any other game with him. So we sat in front of the TV watching movies, with him laughing sometimes when nothing was funny and seeming to get all teary-eyed during, like, Everybody Loves Raymond, I swear I’m not making this up.
Kenny called, “Where are you? Aren’t you playing?”
Then Newman called, “You gotta ditch him, Crash. The game’s not the same without you. And definitely don’t bring him, no one wants him to play.”
Here’s the thing: We had learned during the course of freshman year that most of the girls in our grade had no desire to do anything with us and started partying with the sophomores. Not like it mattered to most of us, as we totally bonded over poker, which we played every Friday and Saturday night, switching houses, except for Pete’s house, because his parents were like superreligious and thought that poker was gambling, which made it totally inappropriate and against the church. His mom even called my mom to ask whether my mom was concerned that we were developing into gambling addicts or some such thing. My mom dismissed the comments, but apparently Pete’s mom was riling up some other parents like Newman’s mom and Evan’s, who actually had a talk with us as a group when we were at his house, and we had to assure her that we had everything under control.
Which it pretty much was, except that as the winter wore on, a few of us would sneak six-packs and vodka, and this is how we started drinking as a group. Also, we had other secrets.
Which brings me back to Burn, because by Friday, he was not looking so good, mostly nodding to himself and, as I said, laughing one moment, then supersad the next. Getting totally into the lyrics of American Idiot like it was the Bible and reading them to Jamie, trying to convince her how important they were.
Good news was he went home Saturday. And me and Jamie were picked up by limo that afternoon and taken into Manhattan to spend time with Jacob and Felicia, which for me was perfect, because while I continued to hate seeing Jacob, Felicia was the only adult I could talk to. And I desperately needed to talk to someone.
I finally had my chance later that afternoon, with Jamie disappearing into what was designated as the “girls’” bedroom in their apartment, doing her TV thing, and my father on his business calls, so it was just Felicia and me, sitting on the couch together, as if she knew that I need to spend time with her alone.
First things first. I told her about Jamie’s conversations with Burn, and she said that she wasn’t surprised, given all that Jamie and the rest of us had been through, with our parents divorcing and other changes, not to mention having a sister like Lindsey who excelled in everything, and, no offense, but I wasn’t the easiest kid. Besides, kids react to things the way they do, they just do, each one different from the next. She agreed with me that she didn’t see Jamie as suicidal or anything, but she did think it was a good idea to mention it to my mom, who should have a talk with Jamie’s therapist. Also, she promised that she would have her own conversation with Jamie, just so she could confirm for herself that Jamie had no intention of hurting herself.
Which brought us to talking about Roxanne, which was natural since we were talking about suicide and all and she had heard about what happened. She asked how I was handling the news. I said it wasn’t about me. She just shook her head, like my answer was not the one that she was looking for, and said, “Of course, it’s about you. You have feelings for this girl.” Which was a statement from her, not a question, like there was no doubt in her mind.
And that made me real quiet because, OK, in my mind, there was something special about Roxanne, and sometimes I thought about her even when I hadn’t seen her for a while. But she was also two years older than me, and, not gonna lie, pretty much out of control, even before she tried to kill herself.
Plus she was Burn’s sister.
So no, it wasn’t about me, even though on some level, it was. So I said “yeah,” knowing that what I said would stay between us, because that’s the way Felicia always was.
After she finally got the answer she was looking for, she was the one who got real quiet. It looked like she was trying to decide whether to tell me something that she never told anyone before, and she even said as much, that there was something she never talked about, not even to my father.
And then she told me.
There was a time when things were not so good for her when she was around Roxanne’s age, back in her country, when some things happened to her that were unspeakably bad.
And I asked how bad, wanting to know exactly. And she paused again and told me that when she was Roxanne’s age, someone she trusted betrayed her, and when she had nowhere to turn, she tried to do it too, tried to kill herself, just like Roxanne. And someone saved her life.
She told me this with an honesty that I had not seen before in anyone else and in a voice that seemed to take her back to that time in her life so completely that, for a fleeting second, I could actually see the pain in her eyes that she had experienced at that time.
I pretended not to be shocked, which I was, not going to lie. Because it never occurred to me that anyone would want to kill themselves, least of all someone as beautiful and totally together as Felicia. If she could imagine herself dead, then what about regular people?
Also, I could tell that there was something else that she wasn’t telling me, something that she was still dealing with, something that she couldn’t tell anyone.
Now I knew something about her that even Jacob didn’t know, something that she trusted me with in complete confidence. So now we were even.
Thinking back now, that may have been my first adult moment. Even then, I felt weighted by the responsibility of knowing something that I shouldn’t, at my age, have known.
“And because you understand now, you must be there for Roxanne,” she told me. “You neet to visit her in de hospital. To tell her that you care about her.” Felicia took my hand. “Dis is empordint, Cresh. She neets to know someone is dere for hir.”
“Why does it have to be me?” I bounced back when I realized what she was trying to tell me. Like no way could I get to whatever mental institution they were keeping Roxanne at in the first place, even if I wanted to go, which, of course, I did not. Not in the least.
“I
f not you, den who? I remember her. She is a very sensatif soul. She must be nurtured, Cresh. And she likes you. She trusts you. No, I think it must be you. Hir own brother is useless, no?”
“I’m gonna take a pass on this,” I said emphatically, imagining myself wandering around the hospital with zombie psychos reaching out to me, like in one of those horror movies or at the very least an episode of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror.
“You cannot take a pess on dis,” she responded. “If it was Jammie, vood you be dere?”
“Roxanne is not Jamie,” I told her. “Besides, I’m pretty sure Roxanne didn’t mean to kill herself. More likely, she was just experimenting. . . .” This was me repeating a line that I heard from my mother, who said it to a neighbor on the phone.
Felicia looked at me sternly, pointing those eyes of hers at me like spotlights, eyebrows up, head pointed down, watching me. “CRESHHHH . . . Veren’t you listening to me at all?” Which was all she needed to say, because the way she looked at me, I knew I was out of excuses, because now I understood why Felicia had confided in me in the first place. It wasn’t for me at all, but for Roxanne, a girl she hardly knew.
“It’s settled den. I vill haf a car take you dere tomorrow. Ve vill neet to get dee adderess,” she told me, leaning her hands on my legs and pushing herself up off the couch. “Dere is sometink else,” she said, leaving me to watch her move as she left the room. “Sometink that somevon vonce gave me.”
She returned, holding something I couldn’t see, her hands cupped together. Then, kneeling down over the couch, she opened her hands and scattered what appeared to be dried beans across the coffee table. Maybe a dozen, at most, white beans, the kind my mom uses to make soup.
I stared down at the beans, wondering if this was some kind of Slovakian ritual or something.
“You must give deese to her.”
“Beans?”
“Not just beanz,” she told me. “Magik beanz.”
OK. I stared at those beans for a really long time in silence. They didn’t jump, they didn’t move, and they weren’t pretty or spotted or at all unusual. Absolutely nothing was magical about them. They were beans. Just beans. I couldn’t help but to point this out.
“There is nothing magical about them.”
“How can you be so certin dat dey are not magik? Haf you askt dem to grant your vish? Haf you pictured sometink in your mind and held dem? Haf you tossed dem into a corner and vatched dem fall or used dem to predikt de future? If you haf not tried deeze tings, how are you so sure dey are not magik?”
“OK, I can’t say for sure.” But in my mind, I was saying for sure. These were ordinary, run-of-the-mill beans. Beans for cooking, beans for eating (well, not for me as I hate beans), but magic? Not so much.
“Besides,” she told me, “dey are not intendit for you. Dey are for Roxanne. It is only your job to convince her that dey are magik.”
“So let me get this straight. Not only do I have to go to a hospital for psychos, but I have to give one of the psychos these beans, plus convince her that they are magic beans.”
“Dat is how it verks.”
“What if they decide to keep me there? I mean, if Roxanne tells anyone that I am trying to give her magic beans, they’ll think I’m as crazy as everyone else.” Which got Felicia to laugh, and she totally lit up a room when she laughed.
“I see your point,” she said. “Still, dis is vat you musdew.”
I gathered up the beans and held them in my hand. They felt like they looked: ordinary, run-of-the-mill beans. She handed me a small plastic bag.
I dropped them in, staring at her in disbelief.
“It’s settled, den,” she said, dismissing me with a wave of her hand. “One other tink, maybe you shoot cut down on de carbs, Steefin. You are gaining weight.”
I instinctively sucked in my gut, not that I had one, at least I didn’t think so, but I was starting to get a complex.
“It’s settled then” is all I had to say.
Which is how I found myself standing at the front desk of this sprawling hospital building in the middle of the Westchester woods, in the middle of a midwinter Sunday afternoon, while my friends were at Evan’s house, watching the football playoffs, playing poker, and eating box after box of Mario’s pizza.
As promised, Felicia arranged for a limo to take me on this superlong drive to get me there. Then I panicked when my name was announced to the nurse lady, who put in a call and informed me that Roxanne would be there shortly.
Nervously, I checked out the lobby, which to be honest looked more like a hotel than a mental hospital. There were a few people, all different ages, wandering around, none of them dressed for winter, so I had to believe they were patients, which made them crazy, didn’t it? Crazy or drug addicts.
And then there was Roxanne, coming down the stairs in a pair of old sweatpants and her brother’s University of Maryland sweatshirt, her hair not combed at all, with all these clips sticking out, looking pale and pasty and pimply, and I couldn’t help but notice again the strong resemblance between her and her brother, which only made things stranger for me.
She drifted over to me. Slowly, like she was on drugs or something. She looked as if she didn’t have enough strength to talk.
“Crashinsky?” she exclaimed in total disbelief. “What the frig are you doing here?” Sounding very much like the Roxanne I knew.
“Visiting you?” I asked more than said.
“Why, in fuck’s name?”
This was a tougher question than I was prepared for. I couldn’t tell her the truth, which was that Felicia convinced me to go, as she would have no idea what I was talking about.
“I thought it would be a good idea?”
“Who the frig brought you here?”
“My dad got this limo for me.”
“Your dad’s fucked up,” she said, still superhostile for some reason I did not know.
“Yeah, my dad’s pretty fucked up,” I answered. “But his girlfriend is cool.”
Apparently that line got through to Roxanne, who was suddenly twirling a piece of her hair with her forefinger. When she lifted the twirled hair up, I saw that underneath she had shaved a part of her head. A jagged pattern, like she had attempted it on her own, then stopped midway. I tried not to look, which of course made me stare.
“Yeah, I know, I fucked myself pretty good,” she said, noticing me noticing her. “You wanna sit down?” She gestured over to the huge modular couches in the center of the room, where other random, spacey-looking people were sitting. I did not want to sit with them but couldn’t tell her that. Those people could be friends of hers for all I knew.
She wrapped her arm around mine and escorted me, whispering, “Don’t worry, those fuckheads will move when they hear us talking,” as if reading my mind.
“Yeah, OK,” I said, realizing that she realized just how uncomfortable I was.
We sat down on one end of the main couch. Just as Roxanne predicted, the others on the same couch moved simultaneously to other couches, giving us some privacy.
“They watch us here, like, every fucking move we make.”
I looked around the room and noticed two black men in white uniforms doing nothing but looking around. They were conspicuous as they were the only black people there, besides the receptionist.
“I don’t fucking get why you’re here,” she said again.
“Just thought it would be a good thing to do. Like I said, I was at my dad’s apartment, talking to Felicia. And she agreed. So here I am.”
This seemed to satisfy her. “I can’t believe she’s still with him.” Then, switching gears, “What the fuck are people at school saying about me?”
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t hear anything at all.” Which of course could not be further from the truth.
“Don’t you fucking lie to me, Crashinsky. I’ll cut your fucking heart out.” Still twirling her hair, or what was left of it.
“Most kids in my grade know yo
u only as Burn’s sister. I don’t have to tell you that I don’t spend much time talking to Lindsey, so what the fuck do I know?”
“Still, they must be talking. And you’re not. Not being honest with me.”
I was caught in a tough place, not willing to tell her what I knew, but knowing that Roxanne was relentless. And also, being a Burnett, smart enough to catch me if I lied.
“They say you were drugged out. That you were doing all kinds of stuff. You know, weed, coke, heroin.”
“What else?”
“You were like hanging out with a bunch of older people in the city.”
“What else?”
“That you, you know, would have sex with anyone . . .”
“What else?
“That you were always crazy.”
She nodded, seemingly to herself, like she had finally gotten the right answer.
“What do you think?”
“I dunno.” Which was honest, because honestly I hadn’t thought about it like that, actually, but I guessed that I believed everything I heard, believed that she was on drugs, that she was into stuff that she shouldn’t have been, and yeah, a little crazy, although not as crazy as her brother. “You did seem different to me that day in the hallway, when we were talking about your brother, and so I’m thinking, maybe I should have noticed.”
“How could you? You don’t know me,” she said. “Not really.”
I wanted to tell her that everything she told me about being better than that, about being special, applied to her, because she was special too. What came out was:
“Did you really try to kill yourself?”
“Yeah, Crashinsky.” She kept nodding. “I really did.”
“I just don’t get it” is what I said, only because if I didn’t say anything, neither of us was going to say anything. At that instant I wondered what the hell I was really doing there and thinking when was it the right time to give her the beans. It seemed like such a stupid idea now that I was there in person. So after I said “I just don’t get it,” we sat in silence, which was what I was afraid of. I started looking around at the others in the room, and I turned away from her, which must have made her more comfortable talking, because she started, real softly, almost whispering . . .
Crash and Burn Page 22
