“Will you go, Harper?” Mom’s voice is a mixture of relief and eagerness.
“That would be a fine thing for you to do, Harper.” Nanny’s voice is calm again.
“And probably pointless,” I say. “I don’t know. I’m in the middle of a project. If I can organize some time off. What the hell. I promised Uncle Ned.”
“Oh, Harper. You’re such a good son,” Mom says.
Nanny says, “Your brother’s keeper.”
Car Pool
1983
Harper hated his mother’s car. It was a Buick Century with a bizarre hatchback box shape, a style that was only made for a year due to abysmal sales, which Franklin had bought new for half price from the dealer who gave discounts to the dozen Episcopal clergy in Baton Rouge. Over the years since they’d bought it, from the age of nine to thirteen, Harper’s loathing of the car grew with the onset of adolescent hormones until the sight of his mother standing by the hunchbacked Century in a shining line of Mercedes, Cadillacs, Thunderbirds, and Broncos filled him with resentment. So did her smile, the big smile always glued to her face twenty-four hours a day.
Standing by the flagpole at Louisiana Episcopal School, Harper watched a thousand uniformed students swarming out of the long pink-brick and white-columned buildings, encircled by verandas on two stories like giant South Louisiana plantation homes, fanning across the lawn for yellow buses on the boulevard and mothers parked along the oval drive by the chapel. In the midst of the teeming uniforms, Harper could see the Century and his mother’s smile at fifty yards.
Father Crewes couldn’t get her on the phone, Harper thought; she wouldn’t be smiling if he’d told her. He walked toward her with three classmates, Robert Crespo, Trent Nightengale, and Rebecca Mornier. The boys wore blue trousers and white polo shirts with gold knight logos over their hearts, Rebbeca blue plaid, which reached her knees and hung by thin straps over her shoulders. The weather was so hot only a few of the girls wore white blouses under their dresses.
“Nice ride,” Crespo said for the hundredth time since September.
“Watch out.” Trent pushed Crespo from behind. “He’ll break your nose.”
“The blood was all over his face.” Crespo sidestepped a few feet to avoid Nightengale so that the two shorter boys book-ended Harper, bobbing at his shoulders while Rebecca trailed quietly along a few feet behind.
“One punch,” Trent said.
“Sounded like smashing a pumpkin,” Crespo said. “You could be the first thirteen-year-old to knock someone out. I’ve never heard of a kid KO’ing anybody. Have you?”
“I’m sure Ali did when he was a kid,” Harper said. “Any number of people.”
Margaret Rutledge waved from thirty feet.
“My mother hasn’t heard.”
“What do you think she’ll do?” Trent asked.
“Yell a lot,” Harper said. “Ground me. I don’t know.”
“Averatte had it coming.”
“Thanks, Crespo.”
“He’s an asshole,” Trent said. “I’ll tell your mom you were right.”
“Execute with extreme prejudice,” Harper said, echoing a phrase he’d heard Cage use. Crespo and Nightengale laughed.
“Extreme prejudice,” Crespo said between cackles. “That’s what you did. Fist to nose. Whap!” Crespo stopped laughing and tried to look serious as Margaret Rutledge called out, “Hello, boys. Hi, Rebecca.”
Harper set his jaw. Margaret saw the brooding in his eyes, wondered vaguely why he was always so smoldering. She glanced at her watch. The damn car pool always fell on a day when an important visitor wanted a tour. Margaret was the most charming and knowledgeable guide at the Louisiana Historical Association, the first one to be called when VIPs were coming to town, often at the last minute. Today a group of Exxon executives from the Houston headquarters suddenly wanted to see Magnolia Mound and Oak Alley. If the traffic didn’t catch her, she could be at the Hilton without keeping them waiting.
“Pile in, boys. I’m late for an appointment.” She opened the driver’s door and brought her seat forward. Trent and Crespo crawled into the backseat.
“Let Rebecca ride in front, Harper,” Margaret said. “Where are your manners?”
“It’s his turn.” Rebecca spoke for the first time in five minutes.
As Rebecca climbed in the back, Harper looked down her uniform, glimpsed the top of her bra and a sliver of round flesh. Sometimes during car pool Rebecca felt his eyes on her and nervously covered her throat or adjusted her dress.
Margaret sat rod-straight behind the wheel. She craned her neck to see the traffic on Robin Hood Boulevard, gunned the heavy car across the oncoming lane, and swerved around the break in the median, a strip of grass with spindly young live oaks planted in the sixties every thirty feet for a mile to the gate of Sherwood Forest. The developers cut the original oak giants. The largest now looked like big broccoli spears. Perhaps in a hundred years these would shade the land again from the deadly ultraviolet heat of the Gulf sun.
“How was school?” Margaret asked. No one answered. “Harper?”
“Long.” Harper adjusted the radio from NPR to KISS FM.
“Robert, how was your day?” Margaret moved on brightly.
“It was okay,” Crespo said. “I think I failed the science test.”
“I’m sure you did better than you think.” Margaret smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Rebecca, how was your day?”
“Fine.”
One-story homes with the odd low-sloping Louisiana roofs flashed by on either side, identical except for the color of the brick—brown, yellow, red—and the trim around the windows and gutter line. Margaret’s attempts at conversation failed. She wondered why they were so quiet today. Usually she had to raise her voice to make them quiet down or stop Trent from beating on Robert. Outside the subdivision, after passing a Denny’s and McDonald’s, several gas stations, she forced the Century with the pedal to the metal up the ramp to the freeway, off-white concrete divided in short sections that thwapped the underwheels every few seconds.
“Why on earth is everyone quiet?” Margaret asked as she reached cruising speed, seventy miles an hour, fifteen over the limit.
Harper looked out the window. He might as well go on and tell her. Still gazing at the cars in the slow lane, he mumbled, “I hit Joey Averatte.”
“Beg your pardon?” Margaret said.
“Harper broke Joey Averatte’s nose,” Rebecca said clearly. “Knocked him out cold.”
“Averatte had it coming,” Crespo nearly shouted.
“Just one punch,” Trent said.
“You should have seen the blood,” Crespo crowed.
“He deserved it,” Trent said. “Everyone hates Averatte.”
“He’s not popular with the guys,” Rebecca said. “But all the girls like him.”
“He’s a jerk,” Crespo said.
“Hush, now,” Margaret shouted.
Elton John sang “Island Girl” into the silence. Margaret reached over and flicked the radio off.
“Harper,” she said calmly, “tell me exactly what happened.”
“Joey Averatte has been bugging me all semester, teasing me about being on a clergy scholarship.” Harper massaged the knuckles of his swollen right hand. “He cut in front of me in lunch line today. I told him to get in the back of the line. He said, ‘Make me.’ We squared off and I hit him once in the nose.”
“Knocked him out cold.” Crespo leaned over the seat. “With extreme prejudice.”
“Robert, sit still and shut up!” Margaret dropped her mask of southern grace, which rarely happened in public.
Crespo inhaled loudly, clutching his backpack to his chest, and leaned back.
“You broke his nose?” Margaret’s voice, meant to be calm, was low, strained. She glimpsed Harper smiling and raised her voice, whispering, “It’s not funny, young man. This is very serious. My Lord, they could sue us, though I don’t think they are that kind of people. Th
ough you never know. Jim Averatte is a lawyer. What did Father Crewes do?”
“He made me apologize to Joey in the infirmary. The nurse told me if the swelling in my hand doesn’t go down, I should have it X-rayed.” Harper blew on his hand.
Margaret glanced at his hand. “What did Father Crewes do?”
“He called the disciplinary committee. Commander Lirt, a few teachers.” Harper didn’t say that he had started crying in front of them, that Father Crewes had kindly pushed a box of tissues across his desk. “Father Crewes asked me if I learned that punch from watching TV.” Crespo and Trent laughed and Harper fought back a smile. “I thought I should agree with him, so I told them that I saw those cops punching out bad guys on CHiPs.”
Trent and Crespo laughed again.
“It’s not amusing, young men,” Margaret scolded. “Harper, continue.”
“I said there’s a lot of anger on TV shows and I think it affects the way I express anger. They bought it hook, line, and sinker.” Harper tensed his chest to keep from laughing.
“Harper, are you saying that you lied to the committee?” She looked ready to slap him.
“No, ma’am. Um . . .” Harper tried to think of the best thing to say. “I am affected by TV.”
“What’s the punishment?” Margaret glanced at him.
“They gave me three days of in-school suspension. I have to eat with the fifth graders. I have to spend all my free periods in a little room under the staircase doing homework.”
“The hole,” Crespo said.
“I wonder if that is enough,” Margaret said coldly.
“Don’t ground me,” Harper said.
“We’ll talk about it with your father,” Margaret said. She looked at Rebecca in the rearview and said, “You don’t know how many times I’ve wished for girls.”
“Girls. You’d like Cage and me to be girls,” Harper said angrily. “Except for Nick. Your precious one.”
“Nick is certainly more restrained than you.” In the heat of the moment Margaret forgot Dr. Spock’s injunction to never compare your children to one another.
“Nick is sweet-tempered.” Harper sprayed flecks of saliva. “Nick is perfect.” He pulled up the lock and pushed the long door open. “Nick is God.” Wind rushed into the car. “You don’t love me like you love Nick.” He held the door wide open with his leg. The edge nearly scraped a Volvo station wagon-load from Episcopal in the slow lane.
“Close the door, Harper,” Margaret shouted over the wind. She checked the traffic behind her, started braking, then looked back at Harper and wasn’t sure if she caught the last of a smile at the boys in the backseat as she swerved in front of the Volvo. “Shut the door, Harper.”
Harper glared at his mother.
“Please, pull the door shut.”
Harper turned to watch the yellow line along the shoulder and the grass bank that swept down to tract homes and a shopping center. Margaret was slowing the car down. The yellow line disappeared underneath the floor. She was pulling onto the side, had slowed down to fifty, when Harper removed his leg and leaned forward, stuck his hands on each side and his head out the door like a parachutist, turned his face into the wind, and let slip a rebel yell that would have impressed Cage. Margaret lunged over to grab him, but her short arms wouldn’t reach without letting go of the wheel.
Harper turned and looked back at Rebecca. With her shoulders slightly hunched she was leaning forward, with one hand on the seat by his mother’s shoulder. He could see down her dress, two perfect young breasts, the cup of the bra fallen forward revealing the two rings of darker skin. Harper gawped and swung back into his seat, pulling the door closed, in one smooth motion.
“Harper, you nearly gave me a heart attack.” Margaret checked the mirror, accelerated back on the freeway, deciding it was best to stay calm, think pragmatically. She thought he was bluffing, histrionic. Still, there was a moment when she believed he was ready to jump and a cry from her soul filled her with a strong adrenaline rush. In any event it was peculiar behavior and she decided right then to put him in therapy. Crespo and Trent thought it was the eccentric bravado of their hard-hitting hero. Rebecca was in love. Without conscious decision she had pulled the front of her dress forward, raised herself up a few inches off the seat, and tilted her shoulders to loosen her bra, giving Harper a glance at what he’d been trying to see all year. Feeling his eyes on her nipples made her tingle between her legs. Mooning over him since she moved into his neighborhood two years before, she described him in her diary as funny, cute, and nice. Now she would add brave, strong, and kinda crazy.
“Sorry, Mom.” Harper stretched his right hand open slowly, winced. “I think I need an X-ray.”
“Do you have your medical insurance card?” Margaret pushed the Century up to seventy-five. They passed a Monte Carlo full of upper-school girls smoking cigarettes who ignored them as Harper fished around in his wallet.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve got it.”
“Good. I’ll drop everybody at Robert’s house and take you to Doctors’ Hospital across from the Hilton, where I’m picking up a tour. Maybe Trent’s father will examine you.” Margaret brushed her wind-swirled hair back into shape with one hand. “You may call your father from the emergency room.”
“Are you driving them around in the Century?”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Harper. You’ve seen the association’s van.” She touched his thigh. “I’m sorry I can’t stay with you at the emergency room. It’s always a long wait.” She thought of when Cage turned over the thirty-five-gallon vat of boiling water on his leg while removing crawfish, the time he nearly cut off his toe with a lawn mower. “I’m sure Dad will get there before the doctors see you.”
“It’s okay, Mama.” Harper heard Crespo giggling about something in the backseat. He turned and raised his eyebrows at Crespo and Trent, did his impression of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
“I’ll swing by the hospital after the tour.” Margaret patted his thigh. She felt morose. Harper’s anger perplexed and saddened her. “I hope you haven’t fractured it.”
Rebecca leaned over the seat to look at his hand.
Harper clutched it in a loose fist, released it again slowly. “Fu . . . udge!”
“I’ll wait with him at the hospital,” Rebecca said.
Harper looked up, surprised, and blushed slightly.
“That’s very kind of you, Rebecca, but you should get home.” Margaret had long suspected that the girl had a crush on her son, though she wasn’t sure if Harper was aware of it. “Harper’s father will meet him.”
“It’s like a balloon now!” Crespo said.
“It’s broken. You’re getting a cast,” Trent said with the authority of an orthopedic surgeon’s son. “I told you that at two o’clock.”
Rebecca thrilled at the image of her beloved in a cast.
“Well.” Margaret cleared her throat. “We’re almost home.”
After a big green sign for Acadian Thruway, she angled the Century down the ramp toward a stoplight.
Cage
I open my eyes into half-light. Something in my dream scared me but I can’t remember what. What is this room? Blank white walls. Institutional. Where am I? Am I in a lockdown? I yell out, “Nooooo!” Then I see my backpack and guitar on the floor in the red neon light glowing through the curtain and I remember the Tinker Bell junkie who brought me here from Haight-Ashbury in her black cocktail dress and the terror stops. I laugh. “Take hold, son.” I press the button on my watch, which lights up 7:13 p.m. I turn on a lamp and climb out of bed. Her syringe is in a pan of water on the single burner, still warm, boiled not that long ago. There’s a full packet of yellow-brown powder. She hasn’t gone out to score. She must get money monthly from her parents, which runs out before the first, so she sells some of her mom’s clothes. “Yes, Dr. Watson, that is how it appears to me.” In an empty cupboard is a box of Kashi cereal, some soy milk in the minifridge. I wolf down three bowls in under six minutes. No
w I am calm. I sit in lotus position on the floor and breathe through my nose, filling up the bottom of my belly, not moving my chest, slowly, as if through a straw. One hundred breaths. I like the way I feel now—light, at ease—so I dig in my pack for the lithium and take a couple, wash them down with some soy milk, and start to look for some socks before remembering that I threw them all away because they were stinking up the pack.
The clothes I took off last night are soaking in the bath. Emma is the tidiest junkie I’ve ever met. I drain the tub, turn on the tap, and rinse the clothes out, wring them dry, hang them from the shower curtain. I put my boots on barefoot, grab my Patagonia coat, and leave the room.
There’s a hunched old guy at the desk who looks like William Burroughs.
“Evening,” I say.
He looks up with no expression.
“Emma said you’d have a key for me. Room 411.”
“What’s your name?”
“Cage.”
“Get it when you come back.”
“Okay. Ciao.”
He looks back at a catalog of guns.
Wearing a bathrobe, the transvestite smokes a cigarette on the stoop. Stepping past her, I say, “Good evening, Tiffany.”
She looks up and smiles. With her wig crooked and her long lashes gone, the illusion isn’t working. “Hey, baby, take a walk on the wild side.”
“Hadn’t heard that in a while,” I say. “Can I bum a cigarette?”
“Sure, darling.”
I sit down beside her. It’s chilly, the stone cold and damp against my butt.
She lifts a pack of American Spirits toward me, one flicked out longer than the rest. “You’re from the South.”
I nod as she holds out a lighter, lean forward, and navigate the tip into the tiny flame.
“I got a ear for accents. The southern men I know, white we’re talking, are heavy drinkers. Yeah, I think they must drink heavier back there than out here on the coast. You like to drink?”
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