The Book of Joe

by Jonathan Tropper

“It's okay.”

  “I'm sorry, Joe. I don't mean to lay this all on you. It's just—I don't know. I'm so frustrated.”

  In that moment I understood something new about Lucy. Until she'd given birth to Sammy, she'd sailed through life on the wind of her looks. Then she got divorced, and her life became filled with a new breed of tribulations that were largely impervious to her beauty. She seemed to feel unqualified to help Sammy, and despised herself for feeling that way.

  “It's okay,” I said again. “I just wish I could do more to help.”

  “Just don't stop coming here,” she said. “He needs a friend so badly right now.”

  “He doesn't want me around. He barely talks to me.”

  She reached out for my arm and held it with both of her hands. “Don't stop trying, Joe. He'll come around. He always does.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I won't.”

  But I did. I couldn't stop blaming Sammy for what had happened to Wayne, and every time I saw him staring forlornly into space, I was seized by a fury so raw it threatened to overwhelm me. I wanted to scream at him, pound him into a bloody pulp, and tell him how much I wished he'd never come to the Falls. I had offered him friendship, and he'd repaid me by shredding the very fabric of my life. On some level, I knew that I was taking a childish view of things, that there were greater and more complex truths in play here, but that knowledge did nothing to dissipate my anger.

  “Stop hounding Mrs. Hargrove,” my father said to me one night, sticking his head into my bedroom as he passed by on the way to his own. He was slouched and sweaty from work, his eyelids sagging with exhaustion. His chinos were worn nearly to transparency in the knees and frayed at the cuffs, and I felt a brief flash of intense sympathy for him. It wouldn't have occurred to him to buy some new pants without my mother there to tell him to do so.

  “What?”

  “That poor lady's been through enough. She doesn't need you calling her night and day and reminding her.”

  “I don't call her night and day,” I said.

  “Well, she practically attacked me in the parking lot at Stop and Shop and told me you were making her crazy.”

  “She was already crazy.”

  “You show some respect,” he said sternly, stepping fully into my room for what had to be the first time since Reagan was elected. “If I found out one of my sons was a homosexual, I don't know if I'd handle it any better.”

  “Well then, take it from me,” I said bitterly. “You wouldn't.”

  I saw the anger flare up briefly behind his eyes, but he was too tired to fight with me. “Wayne left of his own accord. If he really wanted to hear from you, he'd let you know how to reach him.”

  “You're glad he's gone,” I accused him.

  My father nodded. “Wayne needed to leave. It was best for everyone, including him. He understood that. And when you get a little older, maybe you will too.” He turned to leave.

  “That's bullshit,” I said.

  He stopped in his tracks for a second but didn't turn back around. “Just leave her alone,” he said. “I don't want to have this conversation again.”

  When he was gone, I punched my wall repeatedly until my knuckles were scraped and swollen, and then did it some more, the small streaks of my blood smearing like chocolate onto the flat finish of the ivory paint. He no doubt heard the racket but apparently didn't feel compelled to investigate.

  A few days later, my father left for an overnight business trip and Carly came over to have sex in my bed. The luxury of making love in an actual bed without the constant fear of discovery inhibiting our every move was rare, and we never missed an opportunity to take advantage. We'd been going at it for something like two hours when the doorbell rang. “Who's that?” Carly said. I was lying on my back and she was lying on top of me on her back, her arms and legs spread precisely over mine. She liked to lie like that sometimes when we'd just finished, her goal being to have our bodies touching at as many points as was physically possible.

  “No one,” I said. “Just ignore it.”

  But the doorbell continued to ring insistently, so I slid out from under her and threw on some shorts. “I'll be back in a minute,” I said.

  “I'll keep your spot warm.” She stretched out on the bed, affording me a full view of her naked body still glistening in the sweaty afterglow of our lovemaking. “Joe.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  My smile faded when I opened the door to find Sammy sitting on my front stairs, fiddling with his car keys. “Hey, Joe,” he said, standing up. “I didn't think you were home.”

  Then why did you stay? “How's it going?” I said.

  “It's okay.”

  “That's good. What's up?”

  “What's up?” he repeated, pondering the question. He was dressed in jeans and a blue windbreaker, his hair greasy and limp against his scalp, clearly lacking the benefit of a recent shower. On the edge of his chin and below his sideburns were small, asymmetrical patches of dark stubble, the first evidence I'd ever seen that Sammy was capable of growing facial hair. “I don't really know what's up,” he said. “I was sitting in my room, listening to ‘Bobby Jean' for like the millionth time, and I just couldn't breathe anymore. I had to get the hell out of my house.”

  “Why ‘Bobby Jean'?”

  “Have you ever listened to the lyrics?”

  “Maybe. I don't know.”

  Sammy flashed his customary disdainful frown reserved for those philistines who didn't fully appreciate the complex beauty of Springsteen. “The song is about someone whose best friend leaves town without saying good-bye,” he said. “You should listen to it again sometime.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  Sammy nodded, lost deeply in thought. “Joe,” he said, “before all of this happened, we were friends, weren't we?”

  “Sure.”

  “So why aren't we anymore?”

  The naked directness of his question caught me off guard and I had to look away for a minute before answering. “I don't know. I've tried to stay your friend,” I said, my words ringing false in my own ears.

  “Do you hate me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Because I would understand it if you did,” Sammy said. “I wouldn't agree with it, but I would understand it.”

  I sighed deeply. I didn't want to be talking about this right now. “I don't hate you, Sammy.”

  He looked into my eyes intently, trying to measure the level of truth behind my statement. After a few moments, he nodded. “Good,” he said. “I don't think I could stand to be hated by you right now.”

  “Let me know when would be good for you,” I said, belatedly flashing him an exaggerated smirk so he would know I was joking.

  He smiled. “I will.” He turned to go down the stairs and stopped midway, started to say something, stopped, and then looked up at me. “You know, I never meant to be like this,” he said hesitantly.

  “Like what?”

  He smiled and waved his hand around to indicate himself. “Like this. A fag. Believe me, I tried like hell for a while not to be one. Even when we moved here, I still thought maybe in a new town where no one knew me, I could change.” He flashed me a small, sheepish smile. “Obviously, I couldn't,” he said. “And neither could Wayne.”

  “I don't think Wayne's really sure about what he is or isn't,” I said, sounding a bit more defensive than I'd intended. “I think he's probably gone somewhere to work it all out.”

  Sammy looked at me for a long moment and then shook his head. “If Wayne wasn't sure, Wayne wouldn't have left,” he said.

  “Whatever,” I said, and quickly changed the subject. I didn't need to hear Sammy speaking like an expert on my best friend. “Where are you headed?”

  “I don't know,” he said with a shrug. “I think I'll just drive around for a while.” He looked up the stairs to me. “You want to come along?”

  I almost said yes. S
ince Wayne's departure and Sammy's subsequent depression, I hadn't really had any friends to just hang out and be stupid with, and I realized that I missed it. But Carly was waiting, naked and primed, on my bed upstairs, and it was really no contest. “Maybe tomorrow,” I said. “I'm kind of in the middle of something.”

  Sammy looked past me into the house and then grinned. “I should have figured.” He turned and stepped into the street, heading around the front of his mother's Chevy.

  “Sammy,” I called out to him.

  “Yeah?”

  “I'll see you around.”

  He swung open the door and looked over the roof of the car at me. “Take care, Joe,” he said.

  The finality of his salutation struck me as somewhat odd as I made my way back upstairs, but I didn't have long to contemplate it, because when I stepped into my bedroom, I found Carly jumping up and down in the center of my bed, still magnificently undressed, and all thoughts of Sammy, like my blood, fled rapidly from my brain. “I got a little bored,” she said sheepishly.

  “So I see.”

  “Are you particularly attached to those shorts?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “Because if they're still on five seconds from now, I'm going home.”

  I smiled and charged the bed, and for the next few hours the world faded to black and nothing existed beyond the universe contained within my four bedroom walls.

  Later that night, after Carly had gone home, I pulled out my cassette of Born in the U.S.A. and played “Bobby Jean” on the stereo. Sammy was right. I'd never really paid attention to the lyrics, and it amazed me how well they articulated what I'd been feeling ever since Wayne had left town. Springsteen carefully avoided referring to Bobby Jean as male or female, leaving the listener free to associate as needed. When he sang the last verse, about Bobby Jean's being out on that road somewhere, on some bus or train, and how he wished he could have just seen him or her one last time, I began to tremble. “I miss you,” came the Boss's voice mournfully through my speakers. “Good luck, good-bye, Bobby Jean.” He lingered on the name for an extra beat, and then Clarence's sax came on strong, wailing and rasping with a chilling despondence, and I sat down on my bedroom floor, rocking back and forth to the music, only aware after the fact that I had started to cry.

  I didn't know yet that Sammy was dead when I got to school the next morning and found Carly giggling with some girlfriends near her locker. When she saw me, she excused herself and came running over to give me a kiss. “Hey, stud,” she said, falling easily into step with me. “I had a lot of fun last night.”

  “What's all the giggling about?” I said, indicating her friends, who were still locked in an animated huddle.

  “Cheryl lost her virginity last night,” Carly said. “She was at the falls with Mike, and someone went over.”

  “Cheryl Sands was a virgin?” I said skeptically.

  “Strictly in a technical sense.”

  “I see. So, did someone really go over the falls?”

  “That's what they're saying.”

  “I miss out on all the good stuff.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Carly said sternly. “If I'm not mistaken, you got about five hours' worth of the good stuff last night, and you didn't have to wait for some moron to risk life and limb for you to get it.”

  “Which begs an interesting question,” I said. “Who went over?”

  Carly shrugged indifferently. “I don't know.”

  Nobody did. The buzz around school was simply that someone had gone over the falls the night before, and those boys that had been present were proudly embellishing tales of the sexual harvest they'd reaped in the face of this major event. Details were not yet available as to the identity of the daredevil or the outcome of his alleged plunge into the Bush River.

  If news travels fast in small towns, it spreads at light speed in small-town high schools. We were all in our respective homerooms by the time Mouse arrived late to school, practically bursting with the news of Sammy's suicide, but somehow the information managed to permeate the very walls of our classrooms, carried like deer ticks through a network of hall monitors, latecomers, and students returning from bathroom breaks. “It's just a rumor,” Carly whispered to me, placing her hand on my arm as I sat trembling in my seat. But I thought of the way Sammy had stopped by to see me that night, how strangely formal his good-bye had been, and I knew better.

  Lyncroft's voice came over the PA system, as usual too loud and brimming with spit, announcing an immediate assembly in the auditorium. Everyone grabbed their books and bags and filed into the rapidly filling hallway, speaking in hushed tones as they went. I felt a cold sweat break out on my forehead and I knew that Sammy was dead. I also knew that there was no way I would be able to sit in a crowded auditorium and listen to our drunk of a principal confirm it for me. Carly had gotten a few steps ahead of me down the hall, and suddenly the effort of telling her that I was cutting out seemed too much for me, so I just took a quick left turn and walked purposefully toward the exit. I'd long since learned that teachers were far less likely to question you if you moved with authority.

  I sat in my father's car in the parking lot, rocking back and forth and pounding on his steering wheel, screaming out a steady string of curses until my throat was raw. After a while I started the car and drove it toward Sammy's house. It was a warm, cloudless day, and as I drove through downtown Bush Falls, the utter normalcy of the streets began to override the insanity in my head, working to convince me that I was mistaken, that someone had simply spread a nasty rumor. It could very well have been that the assembly had been called over another matter altogether. With every passing block I became increasingly confident that Sammy was just cutting and that I would find him hanging out in his bedroom, probably brooding, but certainly alive. I would tell him about the crazy rumor and he'd grin and say, “They wish,” and I'd tell him that I was taking the day off and see if he wanted to do something.

  I managed to keep reality at bay in this manner for the remainder of my drive. Then I pulled onto Sammy's block and saw the cars from the Sheriff's Department parked outside his house, and the truth reasserted itself like a well-aimed kick in the crotch. I pulled over to the curb and sat there for about fifteen minutes until Sheriff Muser and a deputy emerged and climbed somberly into their car. Once they were gone, I got out of my car and quietly climbed the stairs to the Habers' porch. The front door had been inadvertently left open behind the storm door, so I could see down the long hallway and into the kitchen, where Lucy sat at the table, her head in her hands, crying loudly and steadily.

  I don't know how long I stood there just watching her, rocked by the desolation of her wails and paralyzed by my own feelings of sorrow and guilt. I had just decided to leave when she happened to look up and see me through the storm door. I thought of running, even felt my feet turning in my sneakers, but her gaze froze me in my tracks. “Joe,” she said softly, with no trace of surprise in her voice at having discovered me lurking on her porch.

  I walked into the kitchen and stood awkwardly against the wall as she looked up at me, her eyes swollen into slits and raw from crying. “My Sammy's gone.” Her voice was high and unsteady, like a young child speaking indignantly between sobs.

  “I know,” I said.

  “He was all I had,” she said, gracelessly wiping at the snot running from her nose with the back of her wrist. “And now I don't know what I'm going to do.” This last sentence segued into a long, mournful sob as she buried her face in her hands on the table. I sat down and put my arms around her and she collapsed into me as if her bones had suddenly come loose in their rigging, her body convulsing against me with each new wave of tears. “Now I have nobody.”

  I wanted to tell her that she had me, but I knew that wasn't true anymore, so I just held her and said nothing. We sat like that for a while, suspended in our pathetic, futile symmetry, a motherless boy and a childless mother with no place in between to meet and nothing of any real val
ue to offer each other. I left there feeling neither grief nor sympathy but only a burgeoning fury at my abject worthlessness and a growing certainty that the time had come for me to get the hell out of the Falls.

  They'd pulled Sammy's body out of the Bush River early that morning. His car was found in the woods near the waterfalls, and although there were never any published reports of the circumstances of his death, I could imagine in vivid detail what had happened. Just as Carly and I were finishing our marathon sex session in my bedroom, Sammy drove his car up to the falls and parked. As all around him couples in parked cars clumsily groped and petted each other, Sammy stuck some Springsteen into his tape deck, maybe even playing “Bobby Jean” at the same moment that I was listening to it in my bedroom, and drank enough beer to blind himself to the consequences of what he planned to do. Eventually, he stepped out of his car and stared down at the waterfalls, the combination of darkness and alcohol obscuring the churning waters below so that they didn't appear particularly frightening to him. Then Sammy took a last, deep breath and hurled himself determinedly off the cliff and into the falls.

  And maybe in that last moment it felt good to be so bold, to have made that decision. And for that brief instant of flight, before the waters angrily swallowed him into their tumultuous darkness, maybe he finally felt free. And maybe I just told myself that because I knew that if I'd simply chosen to go for that drive with him instead of staying home to have more sex, Sammy would never have jumped.

  The rest of the year flew by in a blur. I went to school, hung out with Carly, and graduated, but I experienced it all from behind a gauzy veil of detachment, seeing everything and feeling none of it. It was like a switch in me had been turned off that day in Lucy's kitchen, and I became one step removed from my own life.

  Sean Tallon made a crack about Sammy as he passed me in the hall one day, and without hesitation I punched him square in the nose, drawing a shocking spray of blood. He was more surprised than hurt, but he got over it quickly and pounded the shit out of me, bashing my skull in with the worn plaster cast on his broken arm while Mouse looked on, cackling hysterically. I studied my bruises in the mirror with an almost clinical interest, but I didn't recall feeling any pain.