Nick and Tom could barely look at her until she said, "Aw, come on, boys. I'm just teasing you. I'm flattered."
They smiled sheepishly while they shook hands with Holly. I didn't like it, seeing Nick and Tom so close to Holly. I didn't like the fact that Nick and Tom knew what Holly looked like and where she lived, that they were on her back porch, that they were drinking her beer. It was like buying some beautiful cabin in the woods, on a secluded, pristine lake, and then having some developer building an amusement park right next door. All the stupidity and chaos of my life had followed me to Holly's house, and now she seemed less real than ever.
BY AUGUST, I had started to go over to see Holly every day. I had not found another job—not that I was really looking—and if I stayed home, I'd be stuck in the bustle of packing boxes and wrapping china.
Mack was waiting up for me one night.
"It seems like you have a new girlfriend," he said. "You're gone a lot."
"Hey, you've got no right to butt into my life," I said.
"I wasn't," he said. "I think it's great. Love—women, heck, let's be honest, women and their beautiful bodies—are the only thing that makes life worth living."
"What about God or whatever?" I said. "What happened to all that?"
"When you love a woman, when you know her intimately, that's when you know what God is capable of," he said. "That's all the proof you need."
I shook my head. I didn't want to hear that my mother's naked body was proof of a divine being.
What Mack wanted to tell me was this: he didn't need the money from the sale of the house. He was going to take down the FOR SALE sign.
"If you want to go Northville with us, great," he said. "But we shouldn't force you. If you want to stay here, well, welcome to your new home. It's all yours. We'll sign it over to you. We don't need the money, and well, given the fact that your parents bought it twenty years ago, it's got a very low monthly payment. It's almost paid off."
I asked Mack why he was doing this for me. I wasn't used to my mother dating men who had any concern for me at all.
"Because I'm bad with money, I guess," he said. "And because if I learned anything as a priest, it's to try and put myself in somebody else's shoes, and man, when I looked at your shoes, I could tell how hard it would be to move now."
"You don't have to do this," I said.
"Look, Michael, it's not like this place would sell very fast anyway," he said. "People aren't flocking to Maple Rock. Once you're on your feet, you can take over the payments and taxes. You'd be doing us a favor."
"Geez," I said.
"Anyway," he said. "This place is all yours now. And you can keep the Buick."
I managed to say thank you, but I couldn't think of anything else to say, even though the conversation seemed to beg for some closure.
In the morning, over cereal, my mother said, "I heard Mack talked to you last night."
"He did," I said. "Thanks."
She looked at me like I was this little kid who'd just come out of his room after a tantrum. "Don't thank me, thank him."
"I want Kolya to stay here with me," I said.
"Like there's a fucking chance of that!" Kolya hollered, then banged his spoon on the table laughing. "Mikey, you're so fucking miserable."
"Watch your language," I said.
"He learned it from you," my mother said.
The three of us laughed like maniacs. If you walked by our open kitchen windows that morning, we probably sounded insane. But laughing was all we could do right then, and sometimes it still is.
LATER THAT DAY, I asked Holly: "Do you believe in God?"
"God is within you," she said. "Within us. Don't you see God in me?"
I shrugged.
"I see God in you," she said.
"Me?"
"Look," she said. She opened her mouth wide and then came at my face. She put her wide-open mouth over each of my eyes. She was crawling up my shoulders, shoving her open mouth in my face. She was laughing so hard she bit my nose by mistake. I hollered.
We started kissing.
I felt out of control. She said she could sense it. She said, "Easy, steady your heart."
I said, "I see Him now."
"Him who?" she said.
"God."
"God is a her," she said.
I agreed. God, if anything, had to be a woman.
IN THE MEAN LIGHT of an August afternoon, I sat on the couch and watched my mother and Mack packing boxes. They never asked me to help, and I didn't offer. I wanted there to be some kindness between us, but I didn't know how to offer it. I knew already that their gesture—giving me a house—was vast and generous. Still, I was not ready to be happy for them. I watched them dismantle things I'd known all my life—a floor lamp, a kitchen table, a shelf full of my mother's old books.
It was a Friday, and the moving company was coming in a few days. Kolya came out of his room with a box of toys for the Salvation Army. I volunteered to take them to the drop box—I wanted a good excuse to leave—and I stopped by Holly's on my way.
She fell into me as soon I stepped in the house.
"I'm trying to clean out his room," she said. "And I can't."
She watched helplessly on the floor while I did the work. She said that she'd like to have a yard sale the next morning, and I took all the toys and children's books and old clothes into the garage. The rest of her house was airy and free of clutter that I was surprised by the amount of things Manny had.
"These are just things," she said. "These things aren't Manny. Something just spoke to my spirit and told me so."
Once Manny's room was empty, we started to move other things out of the house too—boxes of books, chairs, futons. Some of the furniture had come with the house when she rented it, but most of the landlord's stuff, she said, was hideous to look at that she'd stowed it in the basement and in the third bedroom.
"Don't you want any of this stuff?" I asked.
"My lease is month to month," she said. "I'm planning on leaving."
"Where are you going?" I said. "When?"
"I don't know. I keep thinking about the desert. I haven't been out that way for a long time."
"Will I see you again?" I said.
"I have a better question: If I send for you once I find a place, will you come?" she said.
"Yes," I said.
We kept packing up boxes and moving furniture. And I believed that she would send for me, that I would actually go and find her wherever she ended up after this. The desert was a distant and beautiful place that I had never seen, but I could picture the two of us there, in a small adobe house, with white linens on a clothesline in the yard, and a dog or two. I could see Holly dressed in a loose-fitting blouse and denim shorts and I could see myself wearing jeans and no shirt, snakeskin boots and a turquoise and silver belt buckle. My skin was a deep bronze color from the sun, and on my head was a dark cowboy hat that shaded my face and made me look older.
THE NEXT DAY, we sat in Holly's yard with a giant YARD SALE banner over our heads. The banner was decorated with rainbows and singing birds that Holly had drawn. We hadn't put prices on anything, and half the time when somebody asked Holly what something cost, she'd say, "That? That's free, take it."
"Why are you giving things away?" I asked.
"If I sense somebody has positive energy and really needs something, I don't drag money into it."
"You're a head case," I said.
She kissed me in the garage and we grabbed the cash box and snuck inside for a few minutes, leaving all of the sale stuff unattended. While we were in the bedroom, someone called out for us, and Holly yelled from the bed, "Oh, take anything you want. It's all free!"
By the end of the day, we took the few things that were left, along with the box of Kolya's old toys, to the Salvation Army drop box.
We got back to the house and Holly started to fix something to eat. The air filled with the smells of butter and garlic. I drank a beer and sat in the kitchen, watching her co
ok.
We ate noodles in tomato sauce, a boring, uninspired dinner for Holly. She looked drained and pale. She walked around the empty house and I suggested we go to sleep.
"It's been a hard day," I said.
"I'd like to be alone tonight," she said.
"Why?"
"I just want to be alone."
"Did I do something wrong?" I asked.
"Michael," she said, "you really have no idea what my world is like right now. I've lost a child. I've been through a dark, dark time."
"I know all that," I said.
"I've given you a lot of my energy and attention," she said. "And I feel drained."
The tone of her voice carried an accusatory undercurrent, and I realized it would be a long time before I saw the desert. That adobe house? Those blowing white linens? That tan image of myself in a cowboy hat and snakeskin boots on the porch of our adobe house? These things were no more real than any other future I had imagined for myself. I felt small and stupid, and I left Holly's house without saying goodbye.
I didn't want to go home that night and watch Mack and my mother continue to pack away my childhood. Part of me knew that I was being immature and melodramatic, but part of me believed that being any other way was too easy a surrender. I would let my mother move on and have her new life, I would let Kolya get a fresh start in a richer suburb. And yes, I would let Mack become part of our family, I would accept his generosity and his attempts at friendship, and my bitterness would turn to affection. But not yet; I wasn't ready.
I drove around Maple Rock until I found Nick and Tom sitting on Nick's front porch smoking cigarettes.
"Clyde Warren is over," Nick said. "We're out here so we don't drown in his sincerity. He bought me a TV-VCR combo for my bedroom. He felt bad because he and my mother are always watching old movies and hogging the TV."
Aunt Maria had started dating Clyde a few months ago. Clyde worked as a librarian at Schoolcraft College and was effeminate and thin. He was one of the nicest men any of us had ever met—considerate, generous, and soft-spoken—and he was intelligent. He loved art museums, classic films, and pottery. We all kind of hated guys like him in Maple Rock. Even my mother and Mack referred to Clyde Warren as Clyde Borin' when my aunt wasn't around.
"We're going to Ann Arbor tonight," Tom said. "Sunny's having another party. Mostly hippie chicks again, but lots of weed."
"Sure," I said. "Sounds good. Let's go."
"Seriously?" Nick said. "Where is your sophisticated lady tonight?"
"I think she's sick of me," I said.
"It was worth the ride, Mikey," Tom said. "Those tits were amazing!"
"He's grieving, asshole," Nick said. "Let the man grieve for lost pussy."
"I wish I had some other friends," I said.
But when we got into the car, and Nick and Tom started singing along to some hip-hop tape, I felt the old excitement of flying down the freeway, looking for trouble or fun or both. I felt glad to be with them. I hadn't outgrown them yet.
The party was visible from several blocks away. It was a hot night and people spilled out onto the big front porch and down the wooden fire escape that ran up the side of the house. I hung around in a tiny third-floor bedroom, smoking weed with two dreadlocked girls, then wandered downstairs for a beer. Blues Traveler was the band of choice that summer, and an endless harmonica solo wailed from the speakers on the wall. In the dining room, which was empty of furniture, dancers swirled and spun on the hardwood floor. Sonya spotted me and came over to kiss my cheek and ask me how I'd been.
"I see a lot of your sidekicks around here," she said, "but you've been a total stranger."
I shrugged. "Been busy."
"Nick tells me you're dating an older woman," she said. She draped her hands on my shoulders and looked up at me, her beery breath in my face. "Does she do things to you that I couldn't do? Older and experienced is always a plus, isn't it?"
She was really drunk and I should have forgiven her for her comments. I think she was attempting to be affectionate toward me, and to make me feel welcome in her home.
"Sonya," I said, "to be honest, I barely remember anything we did."
"Fine, asshole," she said. She was still smiling, but I thought I'd wounded her a little, which felt almost good. She blew some cigarette smoke in my face and said, "Where's Nick? I want to make sure he stays away from my roommates."
I walked out to the front porch to look for some beer, but the giant cooler there was empty. I was about to head out for a walk, maybe go wander around the Law Quad, when I heard someone call my name.
It was Janice. She was dressed like she was dressed at work—khaki miniskirt, blue T-shirt, blue canvas sneakers. She tucked her hair behind her ears. Her tan was even deeper than it had been last month.
"This is so weird," she said. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm friends with Sonya," I said. "She lives here. Some people call her Sunny."
"Oh my god, my friend Monica lives here too!"
"Great," I said. She, like everybody else, was pretty drunk. She'd been drinking beer, she said, but her friend had gotten her started on Jell-0 shots and now she was completely fucked up.
"I'm mad at you," she said and stuck her tongue out at me.
"Why?" I said.
"You left me with that old couple," she said, "and went away without giving me your phone number."
"Did you want it?" I said.
"I'm really drunk, so I'll be honest," she said. "I think you're really-really-really cute."
"Well, I'll see more of you then, I bet."
"Are you leaving?" she said.
"I was going to go for a walk," I said.
She grabbed onto my arm. It looked like she was coming along. I didn't mind. She had wonderful skin. She was closer to my age than Holly. She was drunk and obviously liked me. I figured she had an apartment somewhere and that we might end up in it.
We walked for a few blocks, passing house parties that looked exactly like the one we'd just left. We passed the sculpture of a spinning cube, which Janice had shown me on the tour. The sight of it launched her into a tirade against the campus. She said how sick she was of seeing it and talking about it, how much she hated trying to convince people to come to school there.
"This is not what I want my life to be like," she said.
"Let's not go there tonight," I said. "I'm not into self-pity."
Janice looked deflated. I could tell she wanted to have some deep, meaningful exchange.
It was the kind of invitation I'd accepted many times before, fueled by alcohol or drugs and a little sexual tension, and I knew how it would go. We'd talk about ourselves until we were so sick of talking about ourselves that sex seemed the only escape from the conversation. But I was thinking of Holly again, even though I had vowed not too. I didn't picture Holly as the jealous type. She certainly never called me her boyfriend or partner or anything like that. Still, I didn't want to talk to Janice about her post-college angst. I wished I had brought along a few beers.
"Well, nobody knows what they really want out of life," I said. It sounded terse and nihilistic—a term I only learned a few weeks ago, from Holly, but one that I thought I might struggle to embody from time to time. It seemed aloof and sexy. I was still waiting for the right moment to tell somebody I was a nihilist, but I didn't want to waste the line on Janice. She was sweet and bright-eyed and beautiful and drunk, and a little desperate for some sort of connection. She was holding on to my arm, stopping to look at me when she spoke and to get me to look back. We walked through the Law Quad together. In the dark, with just the faint campus floodlights and sliver of a moon, the place looked even more imposing than it had before. I wanted to lie there on the grass and stare at the gargoyles and the Gothic towers. But it was Holly I wanted to be with, not Janice, tucking her hair behind her ears like crazy and showing me how her eyes even looked almost purple in the dark.
"See?" she said. She was about two inches from my face. "Pu
rple!"
Halfway through one of the tunnels, she stopped walking. I leaned over and kissed her and I felt her tongue push into my mouth like a wave.
It took us less than ten minutes to get to Janice's apartment. I started to take her clothes off in the living room, even though she was laughing and telling me that she had roommates. I didn't care. I undid my pants and we rolled down onto the couch together. I tried to pull off her skirt, but she stopped me. She was too drunk, she said. The room was spinning. I complained that we should at least do something, so she used her hand on me. Nothing about it was at all gentle or tender. Afterward, while she was in the bathroom, maybe getting sick, I zipped up my pants quickly. I was headed for the front door just as a pretty dark-haired girl came into the apartment. She was wearing a strapless black dress and holding a pair of high heels in her hand. I winked at her.
"Who are you?" she said.
"Nobody," I said. "I think Janice is sick."
I went out into the fresh air. Back on the street, I had to stop into a pizza shop and ask directions back to the corner of Fifth and Jefferson, where Sonya lived.
As soon as I felt sober enough to drive, I got in my car and headed down M-14. I had a feeling that I would never get into school at Ann Arbor, that the whole world of that campus and those students were a world I would never get myself into, and that I was okay with that.
I didn't care how Nick and Tom got home. They were fools, I thought, going to Ann Arbor all the time, just to find a party. I wanted to convince myself that I was better than them, that I liked quiet evenings alone with Holly and that was all that I wanted. I tried not to think about Janice, but every time I thought about Holly, I'd see Janice's face, too. I pictured Holly in that rundown apartment, sitting in the corner watching me get a drunken hand job from a girl I didn't really know anything about. I made a vow that I would never go to a party in Ann Arbor again. I never wanted to run into Janice again. Besides, weren't there any parties in Maple Rock?
I SPENT MOST OF the weekend in my basement bedroom, trying not to listen to Mack and my mother packing up the house. They kept having this kind of exchange:
Please Don't Come Back from the Moon Page 10
