Ballads of Suburbia

by Stephanie Kuehnert

“I care…”

  “But you also said…”

  Christian extended his arms toward me. I rounded the bed tentatively and let him take my hands. “I’m falling in love with you. Does that surprise you? I wouldn’t have slept with you if I wasn’t.” His cheeks reddened and he added almost inaudibly, “That was my first time.”

  Suddenly I understood how shocked Adrian had felt when I’d told him I loved him. I liked Christian a lot and he got my hormones raging, but love? Unable to respond to that part of his statement, I murmured, “That was my first time, too.”

  My confession threw Christian for as big of a loop as his use of the L-word had thrown me. “But Adrian…didn’t you…”

  “Oh, did you believe what Mary said about me being a slut? Thanks!” I spat, dropping his hands and surveying the floor for my shoes.

  “I never thought you were a slut!” Christian objected as he reached for me again. “I’m sorry. I guess we should have talked about this before just…doing it. But it’s a big deal. We can’t let it end like this. We shouldn’t fight. Here.” He scooted over to the side of the bed I’d been occupying and patted the space beside him. “Please lie down.”

  Even though I was thoroughly confused, I stretched out on my back and he-rather ridiculously, since we were both fully clothed-pulled a blanket over us. He hugged me and said, “I really am falling in love with you. I’m not just saying that ’cause, you know…”

  As he tenderly stroked my hair, I remembered my mother’s words about finding a guy who was capable of loving me. Adrian couldn’t, but Christian could. Christian was right; I should stop dwelling on the bad guy and give the good guy a chance. I rolled over to face him. “I think I’m falling in love with you, too.” Maybe it wasn’t entirely true, but I was sure it would be in due time. Besides, I knew how much it hurt not to hear it back.

  Christian smiled, pulling me closer so that my head rested just below his chin. “I’ve been trying to find a girl like you since I was eleven.”

  “Puberty?” I joked, trying to lighten things.

  “No.” He kissed the top of my head. “Five years ago yesterday, on the eve of my first real family Thanksgiving with a mom, a dad, and a little sister, my stepmom, Claire, got a letter from this chick my dad was screwing behind her back. She took Naomi and left us that night.”

  I felt tears trickling into my hair and squeezed Christian hard, encouraging him to keep talking.

  He took a deep breath and continued. “Claire tried to explain things before she left. She didn’t want me to hate my dad, so she told me this whole story about how my dad was a womanizer because the only woman he’d ever loved was my mom, who died when I was a baby. Claire even told me where my dad kept this ring he’d given my mom back in high school. A promise ring. The next day, I stole it from my dad’s nightstand so I’d have it when I found the perfect girl. I’ve been looking for her ever since.”

  Christian released me, pulling back to dry his tears and lowering his head onto the pillow beside mine. He bit his lip. “I guess that sounds stupid, huh?”

  “No.” I smiled and caressed his damp cheek. “It’s a sweet story. What does the ring look like? Can I see it?”

  He shook his head. “You’ll see it if you’re the right girl. I think you are, but I have to totally trust you first. Claire left my dad because of his secrets and lies. I don’t wanna get hurt like she did. That’s why Maya and I couldn’t be together. She kept secrets.”

  I nodded, recognizing why he’d flipped out when he saw my arm. “It’s why you don’t like my cuts, right?”

  “They represent things you won’t talk about with me.”

  “I will from now on,” I vowed.

  “Good,” he said. “And I just told you my biggest secret, so now everything is out in the open between us.”

  I snuggled against his chest. “I like that. It makes me feel safe.”

  “You’ll always feel safe with me,” he promised, tightening his grip on me.

  The Ballad of a Hopeless Romantic: Christian Garrickson

  “Raised by my dad, girl of the day He was my man, that was the way.”

  —Red Hot Chili Peppers

  November 1993

  THANKSGIVING DAY 1989 MY DAD GAVE ME some unsolicited advice about girls: “Don’t date chicks with small tits. They’ll blackmail you into paying for plastic surgery.”

  I was eleven.

  He’d been out drinking because my stepmother, Claire, had just left him. Not because he wouldn’t pay for her boob job. No, Dad slept with a twenty-two-year-old intern and apparently she was in the market for some fake double D’s. When Dad didn’t pay up, she wrote a tell-all letter to Claire.

  Dad was a god to me when I was little. I was two when my mom died of cancer, so he was all I had. Whenever people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “My dad.” I bragged about his cool job, pointing out buildings in the Chicago skyline and saying, “My dad designed that one.”

  He worked long hours, but made sure to be home when I went to bed every night so he could remind me that I was his “best buddy.” And unlike other dads with good-paying jobs, since mine actually liked his, he didn’t look old and stressed-out and he still had all his hair, so he landed hot chicks. According to him, that was very important. Personally, I wished he’d find someone to settle down with. I wanted a real family. A dad instead of a buddy. A mom to give stuff to on Mother’s Day instead of a grave to visit.

  Finally, when I was in third grade, Claire entered our lives.

  On the outside, Claire resembled every other woman my dad dated: a blond at least five years his junior who could have stepped straight out of the Victoria’s Secret catalog. But whereas those other chicks fawned over Dad’s salary, Claire thought the best thing about him was me. She felt sorry that I didn’t have a mom and insisted that a lot of their dates be kid-friendly. We went to Kiddieland and Cubs games and all the museums downtown. Needless to say, I was impressed. Dad was, too. He said a woman who treated his son like her own was a woman worth marrying. So he did.

  Right before I started sixth grade, my sister, Naomi, was born. Maybe other eleven-year-olds would have been annoyed with a new sibling, babysitting duty and all of that, but I was thrilled. The first time I held Naomi, all tiny, pink, squirmy, and perfect, I realized I finally had the complete family I’d always wanted.

  Three months later, Dad fucked everything up.

  If there was one thing in my life that I could do over again, I would have forgotten to bring the mail in on Wednesday, November 22, 1989. I always brought the mail in when I got home from school and handed it to Claire. But that day I wish I’d been so excited about Thanksgiving, my first holiday as a part of a genuine, all-American family of four, that I’d just left the mail in the box for Dad to get. He would have recognized the intern’s handwriting on the seemingly important envelope from his office and thrown it away. Instead, Claire opened it.

  The rosy, new-mother glow to her cheeks faded and she went straight for the phone and called my father, demanding he come home. When he walked in, Claire ordered, “Christian, go to your room. Put Naomi down for a nap in there. Your dad and I have to talk.”

  They didn’t talk. They screamed and stomped around upstairs for three hours. Even with Naomi’s nonstop shrieking, I heard all about the dirty stuff Dad had been doing with some barely legal for more than a year.

  When things finally got quiet and Naomi buried her exhausted, red face against my shoulder, I opened my bedroom door to find Claire standing outside of it.

  Whenever I think about Claire, one of two images comes to mind. I either see her on the day she joined my family or the day she abandoned it. On her wedding day, she was perfect. Could’ve been one of those fresh-faced, blond brides on the cover of a wedding magazine. But after that blowout with my father, Claire was a completely different person. Her hair stuck to her skin with snot. Her face was splotchy and I noticed wrinkles near the corners of her mouth and eyes that
I hadn’t seen before.

  “Christian, I’m sorry,” Claire whispered in a raw voice, like an old woman with emphysema, and she collapsed against me, momentarily as weak as someone that sick. She hugged me tight and took Naomi from my arms in the process. She cradled her daughter, rubbing her downy head. As we sat on my bed, Claire took my hand and asked, “Did you hear everything?”

  I nodded, waiting for her to explain it away like a bad dream.

  Claire sighed and rolled her reddened eyes heavenward, blinking back tears. “I’m really sorry about that. Your father…he’s the only family you had for the longest time and he loves you so much. I don’t want you thinking bad things about him. That’s not right. What happened between him and me is between him and me. You and Naomi”—she paused to kiss Naomi’s cheek—“you guys are innocent.”

  I stared at her like she was speaking in tongues, because to my eleven-year-old ears she was. In my mind, she was my mom and the only thing I wanted to hear from her was “It’ll be okay.” I kept waiting for it, but she just babbled about how my dad was my family, acting like he was my only family, and I was not about to go back to that again.

  Finally, I spoke up. “We’re a family and things will be fine and tomorrow we’ll have turkey…”

  A flustered laugh leaked from Claire’s lips and she covered her mouth to excuse it. Tears dangled from her long eyelashes. “Oh, Chris.” She searched for the right words, surprising me with, “What has your dad told you about your mother?”

  I shook my head, confused. I hadn’t heard her come into the argument.

  “Your mother was the love of your father’s life. They fell in love when they were sixteen and if she hadn’t died, they would’ve lived happily ever after and you would’ve had twenty sisters and brothers.” Looking out the window, perhaps seeing my mother’s ghost, Claire smiled and I was completely mystified. To this day, I still don’t understand women’s logic. How can they smile at somebody else’s story when their own fairy tale is falling to pieces around them?

  “My mother died,” I said bluntly, trying to bring Claire back to earth. “And my dad met you.”

  Claire’s gaze shifted from the window back to my face. “Yes, your mother died. And your dad never got over it. He still has some of her things in a cigar box in his nightstand. He has her wedding ring, but more important than that he has the promise ring he gave her back in high school. It’s not this big diamond.” She gestured to the band that I was glad to see still occupying her ring finger. “But it was worth a million times more because when your dad gave your mom that ring, he promised to be true to her and her alone. And he’s kept that promise. She was the only one who he could ever be faithful to.”

  I finally saw how this connected back to Dad’s cheating. I tried to comfort Claire, pulling my hand out of her grip and patting her shoulder. “But you’re my mom now.” I reached for Naomi, who had her fingers shoved into her mouth, peacefully asleep in Claire’s arms. “And we’re a family and my dad loves you and things are gonna be okay.”

  “Chris, you’re such a hopeless romantic.” Claire sniffled. “One day you’re going to grow up and meet a beautiful girl. You’ll give her that ring your daddy gave your mom and nothing will screw it up. You’ll get your perfect family then, baby, I promise you. As long as you two can trust each other it will all work out.” She rose shakily to her feet.

  Panic seized me. “Where are you going?”

  She didn’t have to answer. When she opened my bedroom door, I saw what she’d left just outside. Two big suitcases loomed, packed in such a rush that I could see the tiny purple sleeve of one of Naomi’s shirts sticking out.

  “No! You can’t leave. Don’t take my family!” I charged past Claire, heaving my shoulders into the door, blocking her way out.

  Naomi started to cry again and Claire rocked her. “Christian, please open the door,” she requested calmly. “I’m not leaving you. You can see me and Naomi whenever you want, you just can’t come with us.”

  “That’s leaving! You can’t leave!”

  Claire reached for the doorknob and that was when I snapped and started hitting her.

  Wait, that sounds really horrible, and it was, but you have to understand I was a little kid who’d been told he was losing everything. I wasn’t hitting Claire, the woman I thought of as my mother, I was fighting for my family. And really, I just flailed at her stomach. It was still slightly padded by the weight she’d gained with Naomi, and it felt like hitting an overstuffed pillow. But then, I lost further control of my hands and slapped Claire across the face, leaving a red mark on her pasty cheek and causing her head to ricochet against Naomi’s. It sounded like the first break of the balls in a pool game, and that awful noise brought me back to reality.

  Claire stood strong, seemingly unhurt. I guess my fists weren’t as powerful as they felt. But I dropped to my knees and curled into a ball, feeling like I was about to puke. “I’m sorry,” I cried over and over again.

  I prayed for Claire to bend down and hug me, comfort me like she did Naomi. I could hear her murmuring, “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right,” as she massaged Naomi’s sore head. Claire didn’t touch me, though, but as she opened the door, nudging me slightly so she and my sister could slip out, she said very clearly, “Christian, it’s not your fault.”

  It was my father’s fault. I knew that. He’d broken Claire’s heart, broken our home, and broken me so badly that I’d lost control and taken my anger out on Claire instead of him.

  I avoided Dad the next day—the Thanksgiving that was supposed to be my first with a real family—until he gave up on getting his “buddy” to talk to him and went out drinking. Then I went upstairs and rifled through his nightstand to find the one pure thing left in my house: the ring Claire had mentioned.

  I had it in my pocket while Dad slurred his messed-up speech about chicks with small tits. I rubbed the ring between my fingers, the simple gold band smooth except for the front of it, where two gems were set—my parents’ birthstones. Pretending the ring was like a magic lamp, and Claire the genie inside of it, I tried to hear her whispers about true love over Dad’s ugly words.

  I keep the ring in my nightstand now. Dad hasn’t even noticed it’s gone. When I’m really lonely and wishing more than anything that Claire and Naomi still lived with us, I get the ring out and remember what Claire told me before she left. About how somewhere out there I’ll find a girl I can trust completely, someone worthy of my mother’s ring, and then I won’t be alone anymore.

  I know it’s weird, a guy my age looking for that instead of just wanting to get laid. I sound like a hopeless romantic like Claire said. But really I’m afraid that if I don’t find that girl, I’ll turn out like my dad, and he’s the last person on earth I want to be.

  7.

  “IS YOUR MOM AS HUNGOVER AS my dad this morning?” Christian joked between bites of his Grand Slam.

  We’d met up for brunch at Punk Rock Denny’s the day after Thanksgiving.

  Punk Rock Denny’s was a regular Denny’s, but for some reason, the one in Oak Park employed mostly punks and skinheads, hence the nickname. The staff was very cool, letting us take over the smoking section for hours on end and only charging us for half of what we ordered. It was our cold-weather hangout. Once November hit, everyone stopped going to Scoville. Winter arrives fast in Chicago. One day all the leaves fall and next thing you know everything is blanketed in snow. It hadn’t snowed yet, though, so Liam had run off to the park to skate first thing in the morning. I didn’t blame him.

  “Facing my mom today was really awkward,” I told Christian as I pushed my plate away and lit a cigarette. “She kept apologizing and offering to make breakfast, but I could tell that would make her puke. I made her toast and reassured her that she was a good mom, so she’d stop beating herself up. I’m glad she’s not normally a big drinker because I don’t know how I’d deal with her morning-after remorse all the time. Now I know where I get it, though,” I add
ed with a wry laugh. “Every time I get too drunk or high, I wake up hating myself.”

  Christian leaned across the table and asked in a concerned whisper, “You didn’t wake up regretting things this morning, did you?”

  I reached for his hand, shaking my head. “Not the things we did. The thing I did before that…” I pointed at my left arm with my cigarette and sighed. “Waking up with cuts is worse than waking up hungover. I don’t cut because it’s fun. I always tell myself I won’t do it again. This morning when I saw those cuts, I was so pissed at myself that I wanted to cut again. It’s a fucked-up cycle.”

  “You didn’t cut, though, did you?” Christian squeezed my hand so tightly my fingers throbbed.

  “No.”

  “Good.” He released his grip and kissed my fingers. The sweet gesture made me smile. “I don’t want you to cut anymore. I want you to call me or Maya. Or think about Florida and how we’re all gonna live on the beach as soon as we finish high school.”

  “As soon as Liam finishes high school,” I corrected. Ever since the night that Christian and I had bumped into Liam and Maya at Scoville when they were talking about running away to Florida, it had become our group fantasy. Whenever things were rough for one of us, we’d talk about the house on the beach that we’d escape to one day. Liam was two years younger than the rest of us, so we always reassured him that we wouldn’t leave him behind like Wes had done to Maya and Cass.

  “Maybe we can kidnap Liam and homeschool him or something,” Christian suggested with a grin. His gaze drifted over my head, so I turned to see my brother and Maya approaching.

  Liam nodded earnestly. “I’m all for that. Get me out of Oak Park as soon as possible, please.” He and Christian slapped hands.

  Christian stood so Liam and Maya could take his side of the booth and he could sit beside me. When he wrapped his arm around me and I leaned my head on his shoulder, Maya exclaimed, “Aw! Now why are you two extra cute today?”

  My face flushed and Christian cleared his throat. I threw my lighter at Maya, hissing, “Shut up!” and indicating Liam. Fortunately, he was too engrossed in the menu to notice Maya’s teasing. I really doubted that he wanted to think about his sister sleeping with his best friend.