Ballads of Suburbia

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  Dad immediately started in on Mom. “If you had just gone about this like we discussed—”

  “Like we discussed? You discussed, Jack! You begrudgingly went to one counseling session and made it your divorce planning session instead!”

  “We’ve been miserable for years.”

  “But I wanted to fix things.”

  They entirely forgot me as they yelled at each other. And more important, they forgot about Liam.

  “Hey!” I stomped on a vase that had toppled to the floor during Liam’s dramatic exit. “Are you going to go after him or do I have to? Can you do one last thing together?”

  Dad said, “I didn’t expect him to—”

  “Shut up and get your keys, Jack. I can’t drive like this!” Mom’s face was a wreck of mascara and snot.

  So they left me there alone with the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life. I picked up one of the ceramic vase shards, rolled up my sleeve, and desperately slashed at my scarred arm. The result was scrapes, not the smooth, easy slices that brought me the usual wave of relief. I barely bled from the ragged, disconnected lines. Tears blurring my vision, I swiped at my forearm a few more times before tossing the shard to the floor in frustration. I stumbled upstairs to my room, seeking my faithful knife, and used it to cut deeper than ever before.

  The blood wooshed to the surface like a geyser. I felt lightheaded and scrambled for a dirty towel on the floor of my bedroom. I was still trying to stop the bleeding when the pounding at my door began.

  “Kara, please, you gotta help us find him. We drove around the block, but he’s gone and I have no idea where he went!” Mom sobbed through the heavy wood.

  I threw on a flannel shirt, not caring if the blood seeped through and they saw that I’d been cutting. It was their fault. They ought to feel bad about it. Besides, I knew no one would notice. I knew that as soon as we found Liam, Mom would cry herself to sleep and Dad would straighten up the living room. Actually, since he was selfish and the cleanliness of the living room was no longer his problem, he would probably begin to pack his things.

  When I opened my bedroom door, Mom nearly toppled into the room. Dad stood a few feet down the hall, rubbing his temples like he did right before a proposal was due. I considered holding out my hand and demanding the car keys. I’d gotten my license a few months ago, and Liam would be more likely to come along with me than with either of them. But I knew Mom wouldn’t go for it, fearful that she wouldn’t see either of us again. So I informed her, “I’ll take you to find Liam. He”—I glared at Dad-“can stay behind.”

  Mom was still too messed up to drive, so I drove us to Scoville Park. “I think I know where he is, but you should wait in the car so he doesn’t run off again,” I told her when we got there.

  She didn’t have the energy to object. She remained in the passenger’s seat and watched me get out and walk toward the statue.

  At first, when I didn’t hear the whir of skateboard wheels, I thought I was wrong, but then I spotted him, skateboard propped against a bench, sitting with Christian of all people. I hung back for a moment, watching them.

  “I just don’t know what to do,” Liam was saying.

  “At least you have your sister, man. When my dad got divorced, my stepmom took my little sister, Naomi. I only see her like twice a month. She’s eleven years younger, but having her around would’ve made it easier. The two years that my dad and stepmom were married were the only stable years of my life. You and your sister should stick together. Get each other through this.”

  Christian’s eyes met mine over the top of Liam’s spiky ginger hair. He flicked his chin upward at me, indicating that I should come to them. I walked slowly, feeling a little sheepish since he was aware of my eavesdropping.

  My brother-his back to me, eyes on his ratty Vans-didn’t notice my approach or Christian’s gesture. “I want to…I mean, Kara and I are close, but there’s always been a gap between us. She has her own issues and sometimes she forgets about everything else around her. Not that I blame her or anything.”

  “Liam,” I whispered, trying not to spook him, but he turned with that expression an animal gets when it’s about to bolt.

  Christian murmured, “It’s okay,” not to either of us in particular, but it seemed to settle both Liam and me. Liam stayed where he was and I kept talking, my eyes leaking tears. I don’t know if I’d been crying the whole time or if Liam’s words did me in.

  “It is my fault. The gap, I mean. But there’s nothing bigger than this. And I’ll be there for you. Just please come home with me. Don’t leave me alone with them.”

  My brother cried, too-I hadn’t seen his eyes that red since the summer he’d practically lived at the pool, refusing to wear goggles. Liam didn’t usually cry. When Stacey and I messed with him or the kids at school teased him relentlessly about his Johnny Cash act, he hadn’t cried. But this…this was different. This was more painful than either of us wanted to admit.

  Liam bit his lip. I could tell from the way it trembled that he was glad to see me, but he was still pissed. “Who’s with you?” He half growled the words, sounding like a dog tired of barking.

  “Just Mom. I wouldn’t let Dad come.”

  He gave me a sharp nod of approval, but scanned the car in the distance warily.

  “I won’t let either of them bother you, I promise. And I won’t bother you either, but whenever you want you can come to my room. We’ll listen to music. We can even get high and cover up the smell with my incense.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Worried, I dug my fingernails into my palm and asked in a small voice, “Where else are you gonna go?” Cass’s brother had left her, but mine couldn’t possibly, right? He’d just graduated from eighth grade last week.

  Liam shrugged. “I guess I don’t really have a choice.”

  “You just have to sleep there, man,” Christian encouraged. “I’m sure you’ll be able to get away with almost anything now. At least that’s how it was with my dad after the divorce.”

  “And I’ll be there,” I added.

  Liam finally looked at me instead of my mom’s parked car and bit his lip again. “I guess I’ll come home. For you.” He turned to face Christian. “Thanks, man.”

  They did a halfhearted skater-boy handshake-a cross between a low five, a handshake, and a finger snap all at once. “No problem,” Christian told him. “If you ever need anything, you know where to find me.” He extended his arms as if Scoville was some great prize he was presenting, a living room set on the Showcase Showdown of The Price Is Right.

  My brother cracked a smile. Then he put his board down on the cement, opting to take the path instead of cutting through the grass like I had.

  Left with Christian, I felt awkward. We suddenly knew way too much about each other. “Thanks for looking out for Liam.” I leaned in the direction Liam had exited in, tugging on my frayed sleeves.

  “No problem. I was just here skating, waiting for Maya. Liam showed up, he was upset, and I’ve been there.”

  “Well, thanks. I better go. Tell Maya I said hi.”

  But as I turned, he stuck his hand out, grazing the inside of my forearm, fingers lingering over the flannel. The sticky, bloody flannel. “If you ever need to talk sometime…well, you know where to find me, too.”

  Had he noticed the blood? Was that what jarred his speech? I couldn’t look at him, my face hot with embarrassment. “Yeah, thanks. Bye.” I waved lamely over my shoulder.

  “Bye.” I could feel his concerned eyes on me as I scurried off.

  Liam waited for me where the grass met the sidewalk, still hesitant to face Mom. I got in beside her, but that didn’t prevent her from sliding between the two front seats and grabbing for Liam.

  Through her tears, Mom apologized for things she couldn’t change or make up for in any way. “I’m so sorry,” she choked. “I tried…he’s just so unhappy…I wanted us to be a family…I want to fix it.”

  “Mama, we don’t blame
you,” Liam assured her.

  And with that, we chose a side. We took care of our mother and refused to speak to our dad. He moved out just three days after announcing the divorce. Even though I hated malls, I went shopping with Mom all over the place-Oak Brook, Yorktown, and Woodfield-to buy crap to fill the holes where Dad’s books and knickknacks had been. But Mom still cried herself to sleep that night, like she had been doing every night since the family meeting, so Liam and I went to one of Shelly’s parties and stayed out until two in the morning.

  Like Christian said it would, the divorce gave us a free pass to do what we wanted. There was no talk of curfews. I only got lectured halfheartedly when I started smoking in my bedroom. Liam’s sudden use of incense wasn’t commented on at all, even though it barely veiled the reek of pot smoke. Maybe we were taking advantage of Mom’s depression, but we didn’t think about that. We did what we needed to get through the loss of our family. By the time Mom had the strength to try to rein us in we ignored her, no longer used to rules.

  There are so many ballads about divorce. Achy-breaky country songs about the cheaters. Mournful pop songs about the heartbroken. Then there’s the rare punk song that tells it from the view of the kids. Feelings aren’t laid bare in those particular ballads. There’s no crying and moaning. Divorce is shrugged off like it’s no big deal, just a messy part of so many kids’ life stories.

  That’s how I treated it. When my friends asked if I was doing okay, I waved off their concern and said, “Whose family isn’t fucked-up, right?” I didn’t admit to anyone that the divorce totally, irreversibly changed me.

  Before my parents split, I got high sometimes, partied a little bit, but was still basically a good kid. After my family disintegrated, I lived my life as loud, fast, and angry as the music I listened to. The songs I adored warned me about addiction and love that was no good. But I didn’t care about what happened in the long run. I focused on escaping the pain one night at a time.

  Back then, I didn’t tell anyone what I was running from, but now I want to make it clear: my self-destruction started with the divorce, not with Adrian Matthews like everyone thought.

  CHORUS

  JUNE-SEPTEMBER 1994

  [SUMMER BEFORE JUNIOR YEAR]

  “That legendary divorce is such a bore.”

  —Nirvana

  1.

  IHADN’T EXPECTED ADRIAN TO REMEMBER ME, since he’d been so wasted the first time we met. A week after that incident, we’d crossed paths at one of Shelly’s parties.

  It was a warm May night, about a month before my parents split. Adrian sat on the back porch with Quentin and Craig. I went out there looking for Liam, but when Adrian called out to me-even getting my name right-I immediately forgot about everything else.

  “Kara, want to smoke with us?” He offered me a joint.

  My insides did somersaults as I lowered myself into a cross-legged position beside him, trying to maintain a facade of cool. The long inhale I took from the joint helped. After passing it to Quentin, I pointed to an open notebook resting on Adrian’s lap. “What’s that?”

  “Oh, this?” Adrian grinned lazily and detangled the top of the notebook’s spiral binding from the strings surrounding the hole in the knee of his jeans. He looked particularly good that night in a faded Operation Ivy T-shirt, his free-flowing dark waves hanging down his back. “Quentin and I have been working on this since junior high. It’s kind of like a scrapbook.”

  He plunked the heavy five-subject onto my lap. I traced the ransom-note-style lettering on the cover; it was the “Stories of Suburbia” notebook Cass had been writing in. I opened it, skimming the contents in the weak light that shone through the kitchen window onto the porch. The pages were filled with newspaper clippings about crimes and unsavory incidents from suburbs around the country. Prominent doctors murdered their wives, prominent attorneys were killed by their children, suicides were committed by seemingly happy high school seniors, and then there were a few lighthearted things in between.

  Adrian indicated a police blotter from our local paper, the Oak Leaves. It reported sightings of three teenage boys vandalizing cars with rotten fruit. “Drive-by fruitings,” he said, laughing. “That’s me, Quentin, and Wes.”

  Adrian’s fingers graced mine as he flipped through the articles, and I reached for the joint again to keep from visibly swooning at his electric touch. He flicked past a handwritten page that had “The Confession of a Ritalin Zombie: Quentin Hawthorne” written in tiny print in the margin. Quentin cited Bad Religion lyrics before launching into his tale. Several pages beyond that I recognized Cass’s meticulous writing beneath a Tori Amos quote. I started to read it, but finished only the first sentence—Crazy runs in my family, matrilineally at least—before Adrian turned the page.

  “I don’t like rules, but I did make one for this book,” he informed me, face uncharacteristically stern. “You have to write your confession before you can read anyone else’s.”

  “What do you have to confess to?”

  Adrian tapped one of the doctor-turned-wife-killer stories. “In these articles, they act like people just go crazy, do terrible shit, and it’s a big anomaly, but everybody in suburbia has a fucked-up secret, an event or series of events that made you who you are. That’s what you’re confessing to here.”

  “So, it’s like your ballad,” I murmured.

  “What, like a Whitney Houston song or some crap?” Adrian snorted.

  “No,” I said quickly, not wanting him to think I was an idiot. I was well versed in this subject thanks to Liam, the Johnny Cash fanatic. I quoted my brother: “AA true ballad tells a story about real life.’” Then I elaborated, giving it my own spin: “I’m sure you know the Rancid song ‘The Ballad of Jimmy and Johnny,’ about two friends who fight because they have different ideas about what being a skinhead means.”

  Adrian nodded. His wary expression vanished and he leaned in, interested.

  “It’s stupid for them to fight, but they do anyway,” I continued. “A lot of ballads are about the mistakes we inevitably make while trying to figure out how to live our lives. Some of those newspaper articles remind me of ‘Cocaine Blues’ by Johnny Cash. You know, ‘I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down,’” I sung softly, watching Adrian’s lips curl into a smile. Blushing, I shook my finger at him. “Don’t make fun of my singing.”

  “I’m not! You’re good. And I know the song.” Adrian had a voice deep enough to mimic Johnny’s baritone, but he made no attempt to sing. He recited the rest of the first verse and concluded, “Gotta love songs about outlaws.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a grin. “There’s something more genuine about Johnny Cash singing about going to prison than those articles, though. Those are so sensationalized. They don’t get inside people’s heads like Johnny does. Tim Armstrong, Mike Ness, all those punk singers, they do that. You guys are doing that by writing firsthand accounts of the things that changed you and the mistakes you made.” My voice rose, growing more passionate with each example, but then my insecurity returned. Even though the three boys listened intently, not laughing or looking at me like I was nuts, I concluded quietly, “That’s why I instantly thought of them as ballads. Sorry if it’s totally stupid…”

  But Adrian shook his head in awe. “That’s not stupid. It’s fucking brilliant.” He paged through the notebook and crossed out “confession” wherever it was written, replacing it with “ballad.” When he finished, he offered the notebook to me. “Since you understand this so well, you wanna write one?”

  I shook my head, mumbling, “I don’t know what mine is about yet.”

  “Really?” I could tell Adrian was preparing to interrogate me, but fortunately Liam poked his head outside, shouting, “Kara, we should get going.”

  “My brother.” I shrugged sheepishly, though secretly I was relieved to exit while everyone still thought I was cool.

  As I walked away, I heard Adrian declare, “We gotta hang out with Kara more often.�
��

  A hopeless crush had never made me feel so good before.

  Of course, it never made me feel so miserable either. Things with Adrian did not go nearly as well a month later.

  The weekend my father moved out, Christian made it his mission to get me and Liam wasted. He’d filled a two-liter with a concoction of everything in his dad’s liquor cabinet plus some 7UP and lemonade. It looked like piss and tasted like cough syrup, but he, Maya, Liam, and I sat at the booth in the farthest corner of Shelly’s basement, gulping it down like water.

  I got drunker than I’d ever been before and even though depressing thoughts about my parents still nagged at me, I tried to push them away, focusing on more pleasant things. “Where’s Adrian?” I slurred. “I like him a lot. We should offer him a drink.”

  My friends shrugged, but Jessica, who stood nearby, irritated that we wouldn’t relinquish her usual table or share our booze, rolled her eyes and laughed. “Adrian’s rather busy.” She gestured to a couch across the room where Adrian lay, stretched out on top of some purple-haired girl and doing extremely vampiric things to her neck.

  My stomach turned. I swallowed the rest of my drink and stumbled up, announcing, “I have to pee.”

  Actually, I went out on Shelly’s back porch and puked over the railing. I puked and cried, hating myself for thinking that when Adrian called me brilliant, it meant something. When I heard footsteps on the porch, I assumed it was Liam coming to check on me. Without turning around, I whimpered, “I want to go home.”

  Adrian’s husky voice replied, “Oh? Jessica said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “That stupid bitch,” I muttered, spinning to face Adrian. It looked like there were five of him standing in front of me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You should go back to your girlfriend.”

  “Viv’s not my girlfriend. She’s just…a girl.”

  This statement confused me and I wobbled slightly.