Ballads of Suburbia

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  “And my dad said”-Adrian took on a gruff monotone-”‘Adrian, the car is ours. You can’t have it until you get some help.’ I said fuck that and put my fist through another window. Of course my asshole dad called the cops, so I took off, all bloody and everything.” Adrian stubbed out his smoke.

  “Where did you go?”

  “I wandered the city for a few days. The Blue Line runs all night, you know, so I slept on the train. I spent a lot of time by the lake, got high with strangers in every neighborhood in Chicago. It’s a beautiful city.” He smiled.

  “I know.” I thought of the way the lights blurred against the lake when we sped along Lake Shore Drive in his car.

  “But I had glass in my arm and the wound was getting infected, so I had to come home.” Adrian shrugged nonchalantly, but I gaped at the thick scars on his right wrist, noticing them for the first time. “As soon as I walked in, my dad called the cops again. I didn’t go to jail or anything. My parents checked me into a psych hospital.”

  “Really?” I asked, horrified.

  Adrian grinned darkly. “I’m a sociopathic drug addict. But I’m also really good at playing the game. I was out in twenty-eight days and now”-he reached for the cigar box he kept his stash in-“back to old patterns. My parents don’t care as long as it’s not in their face. That’s the point of my story, Kara,” he said wisely as he spilled heroin onto the slick, razor-scarred top of the cigar box. “Parents are surface level. If yours get back together, it’s an appearance thing. Don’t trick yourself into believing otherwise, and get the hell out of there as fast as you can. Okay?”

  He chopped two thick lines with a razor blade and handed me the straw.

  “Okay.” I snorted my line.

  After he snorted his, we settled under the covers of his queen-size bed. We drifted off for a while, and when I came to Adrian was talking. His voice sounded distant and delayed, like he was calling from another country and the connection was bad. “I really want to apologize for how things ended between us. I’m glad we’re getting a second chance. I…” He nodded off for a moment before picking up midsentence. “…really fucked up. You were the first girl who actually mattered and it scared the shit out of me. That’s why I couldn’t sleep with you or, you know, say…”

  “I love you?” I finished his sentence, hoping he’d repeat my words.

  He didn’t take that particular second chance, though. He cleared his throat. It was like telephone lines crackling; suddenly our connection was clear. His voice grew louder and he spoke at a normal pace. “When you left I realized that you were the only girl I’d ever given a shit about. I never had girlfriends because I never clicked with anyone like that. I had friends and I had chicks I hooked up with. Then there was you and you were both and it confused me.” He laughed and it sounded strange, like an echo from somewhere else. “I’m a sociopath, remember. I don’t understand human interaction.”

  I laughed and it sounded just as strange, like it came from another room or another time or maybe it was left over from last summer. Lots of things were left over from last summer. Like kisses. My lips found Adrian’s and when we kissed, it felt raw and pink like the thick scars on his wrist. I pulled back, let my head drop against his shoulder, and drifted off for a while.

  Then we were kissing again and it felt better this time, like drinking cold water. I drank for a long, long time. His hands started to explore my skin and vice versa, but his touch felt like sandpaper and his skin like a rocky beach with all the scars and the bumpy tattoos. I imagined mine felt the same. So I let go of him and curled into a drug haze.

  I awakened to the sound of him chopping more lines and sat up to snort another. Then came more cool-water kisses and this time touching each other felt smooth like wet pebbles. Adrian pulled the gray blanket over our heads. I felt safe, enveloped by a cloudy sky. I got naked under the comforter and so did he.

  Sex with Adrian for the first time was gentle, painless because of the drug, but there was none of the wild passion that fueled our make-out sessions in the past. Heroin made it all about sensation and less about emotion. We wouldn’t sleep together often, but when we did I was high; it was the only way I could do it without remembering Christian.

  That particular night was a blur of me and Adrian nodding in and out, waking up to kiss and do more lines. My first heroin binge. At one point, I called my mom to tell her I was sleeping over at Shelly’s. I stayed in Adrian’s room until six the next evening. Then he dropped me off at my dad’s apartment, which was a block away from Scoville Park. Time to face reality.

  Dad’s place was sparsely decorated without so much as a photograph on the fridge. In the kitchen, Liam stared at the wood grain of the table, refusing to look at Dad or me. I felt momentarily guilty about sleeping with Adrian and about the line I’d snorted before I left his house, certain my brother could sense these things, but as I sat down beside him, I caught a whiff of pot smoke in his tangled, unwashed hair. I wasn’t the only one who’d walked into the situation with drug-induced armor.

  Even though Dad offered to take them, neither Liam nor I removed our coats. Gesturing to the empty table, I said, “I thought we were having dinner.”

  Dad cleared his throat nervously. “I thought we’d go out together.”

  I looked up at him. He seemed to have gotten smaller, skinnier in the past seven months. His closely shaven hair was graying faster and thinning at the top. His hazel eyes had lost their sheen, looked more sunken and beady. Without Mom and the two of us, he’d lost his luster. He’d gone from being my overworked but loveable daddy to an old man. That’s why he wanted us back, I assumed. And this dinner would be to celebrate it. Mom would be waiting at the restaurant, smiling.

  Dad asked, “Can I get either of you something to drink?”

  He pulled a beer from the fridge for himself, so I requested, “Vodka and 7UP?”

  “Not funny, Kara,” he replied with a grimace.

  Dad sat down, took a deep breath, put his palms flat against the table, and then clasped them together. Jesus, how nervous did his own children make him? Just because he’d left us for a few months? Surely, he thought we’d be thrilled by his news and revert to our giddy little-kid selves, who adored him. Why was he so freaked?

  After a long pause that made me think he was nodding out on heroin, too, he finally said, “So, I got a promotion.” He droned about the details for a while. Money. Blah-blah-blah. I waited for the part where he had the revelation about wanting to be a family again, but it never came. Instead, I suddenly tuned in to the words “moving” and “Wisconsin.” The next full sentence I heard twisted a knife in my guts. “Your mother said to tell you both that you have the option to come with me or to stay.”

  Liam stood up and launched Dad’s beer across the room, the glass smashing against the white cabinets. “You’re abandoning us again?” he raged. “First you move out. Then Kara betrays me, and now you abandon us again.” He stared at us for the first time, jade eyes murderous. “Fuck both of you.” Then he took off for the door.

  Dad stood there openmouthed and I snapped, “Don’t worry, I’ll go after him. But no, obviously neither of us wants to move to Wisconsin with you.”

  It was the divorce announcement all over again. I chased Liam to Scoville Park like I had then, but now he hated me as much as he hated our father. I screamed his name three times before he finally whirled around in the center of the frozen hill and screamed back, “What the hell do you want?”

  I rushed over to him, panting as I said, “I didn’t betray you. At least I didn’t mean to. And we need to stick together now.”

  “Wasn’t it Christian who suggested that last summer?” Liam crossed his arms over his chest and glared into my eyes. “When you betrayed him, you betrayed me.”

  “This isn’t about Christian. This is about our family—”

  “Christian and Maya are more of a family to me than you, Mom, and Dad have ever been!”

  “I’m sorry.”
I winced, blinking back tears and begging, “Please tell me how I can help you.”

  “Give me all your money so I can get the hell out of here,” he demanded, extending a cold, bare palm.

  I laughed uncomfortably. “We can’t really run away.”

  “Who said anything about ‘we’?” Liam growled, shoving his hand into the pocket of his winter coat. “Just leave me alone. That’s what you’re good at. I don’t want to talk to you any more than I want to talk to Dad.”

  Before he could stomp off, I grabbed his sleeve. “You aren’t really going to run away, are you?”

  Liam wriggled out of my grip. “I’m surprised you aren’t running away right now. To Adrian. To you know…” He put his finger to his nose, holding one nostril closed and pretending to snort a line. “Go get high, sis. I’m fine.” He took off down the hill before I could stop him.

  “Liam, I’m going home,” I shouted after him. “I’ll be there all night. Just knock on my door if you want to talk!”

  And I did exactly that. I went home, stayed sober, resisted any urge to call or go see Adrian and waited up for Liam. I did not want to let him down again. But he never came to me.

  In the morning, Mom woke me up screaming that Liam and her car were gone.

  2.

  WHEN I CALLED ADRIAN IN HYSTERICS to tell him my brother was missing, he told me, “Cass’s freaking out because her cousin took off last night, too.”

  “Can you please bring Cass over here?” I asked, knowing that my mother wouldn’t let me out of her sight.

  After what I’d said to Cass the last time I’d seen her, I half expected her to punch me. Instead, she hugged me. “They’re out there with Christian, aren’t they?” she whispered as we embraced.

  I nodded, tears streaking my face.

  “You think they’ll go to California, to Wes?” Cass asked hopefully as she wiped away her own tears.

  “No, I think they’ll go to Florida.”

  And that’s what we told the cops. Cass and I faced that interrogation together. Normally, we wouldn’t rat out our friends, but we were too worried.

  We spent the afternoon huddled together on my front steps, chain-smoking in the cold. Despite the weather, it reminded me of last spring when I sat with Cass on Shelly’s porch while she wished for Wes’s return, dropping acid to numb herself. Now I was the one with the chemical escape.

  I snorted only one line, just enough to stay calm without getting sleepy. Mostly, I resorted to my old method of anxiety relief. First, I straddled the toilet and used the razor blade to cut a line of powder on top of the tank. Then, as the drugs soothed my brain, I rolled up my sleeve and drew the blade across my forearm. The bleeding slowed my racing heart.

  Cass slept over and after we turned out the light, I confided, “I can’t lose my brother. I don’t know how you live without Wes.”

  “Well, I know he’s safe and healthy where he is and at least I had Maya,” she murmured from the floor beside my bed.

  “Neither of them should be out there with Christian.” I started to cry, but tried not to let it into my voice. “I should have made them understand what he’s really like. If anything happens…”

  I heard the swish of sleeping-bag material and Cass was in the bed beside me, teetering on the edge until I scooted back to give her more space. She said, “If anything happens, I’ll never forgive myself. I saw what Christian did to you, but I let you push me away. I should have gone to Maya. I should have actually done something. Instead, I threw myself into schoolwork because I couldn’t deal with your problems or with Adrian and Quentin using as much as they have been. I’m supposed to watch over you guys. I promised Wes that I would.”

  I heard her sniff and took her hand. “You can’t take care of everyone. Sometimes you have to take care of yourself,” I reassured her, trying to assuage my own guilt as much as I was hers.

  She squeezed my palm and we fell asleep in my bed, holding hands.

  3

  A WEEK PASSED BEFORE THE COPS FOUND my mom’s car in a beach town near Fort Lauderdale and brought Liam, Maya, and Christian back to Oak Park.

  My brother arrived home in handcuffs with a big, purplish bruise across the left side of his face. He’d gotten into a scuffle on the beach, but since the police hadn’t picked him up until after the fight, they couldn’t charge him. My mom didn’t press charges over the stolen car either because she was so relieved to see him. I listened from upstairs as she and Dad both wept and screamed at Liam before confining him to his room. I desperately wanted to see if he was okay, but Liam slammed his door without stopping at mine, so I assumed he still wasn’t speaking to me.

  Hurt, I pulled out the Altoids box that I stored heroin in and did a line. I zoned and woke to a knock that I recognized as Liam’s. I shoved the box under my pillow as Liam shut the door behind himself and sat down at the edge of my bed opposite me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” he replied. There was nothing for an awkward moment until he said, “I’m sorry. I was wrong about you and…” He grimaced as he spat the name. “Christian.”

  I sat up from my nest of pillows and leaned toward him. “If you want to talk…”

  “I don’t,” he snapped.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” His voice softened. He studied my face for so long it made me uncomfortable. His gaze flitted from my bangs, which were stringy and greenish since I hadn’t bothered to touch up the blue in three weeks, to my chapped lips to the bags under my eyes. “You are using heroin, though, aren’t you?”

  There was no tone of judgment in his voice, but I stiffened and didn’t respond.

  “Let me try some,” he pleaded, his eyes growing huge. “Pot, it’s just not enough anymore…”

  And I felt the same tug-of-war Adrian must have. Because you know that even though you do it and you like it and it feels good, it’s a bad drug. You know that even though you say you aren’t a junkie, you were hooked from the first taste. And you don’t want someone you love to get into something so bad. But I knew Liam had been through something worse: Christian. Though Liam refused to talk about it, I was sure Christian was the one who’d bruised his face. I knew how badly Liam needed to feel good.

  I unearthed the Altoids box and reached for the hand mirror on my nightstand. I shook brown powder out of a plastic baggie, divided it into lines, and handed my little brother a rolled dollar bill.

  I only let him do one line and he was fine for about fifteen minutes. Then he curled up at the foot of my bed, moaning that he felt like he was going to throw up. I put my Strawberry Shortcake trash can on the floor next to him and he puked into it repeatedly, looking how I must have when I was eight, had the stomach flu, and vomited into that very trash can for a day straight. I’d heard that most people puked their first time on heroin and I’d given Liam such a tiny amount, I knew he wasn’t OD’ing. Still, I fought off my own drug haze to keep watch over him.

  “I’m never doing this shit again,” he swore, wiping bile from the corners of his lips. “This sucks.”

  Heroin had never made me sick, so I couldn’t agree, but I was pleased he felt that way. I didn’t care enough about myself to stop using, but I cared enough about Liam not to want him to start.

  That night I couldn’t fall asleep until Liam did. I awoke the next morning to find him sobered up and staring at me. He said, “I wanted to repeat that I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about Christian.”

  I propped myself up on my elbow. “Why do you believe me now?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to apologize again.”

  And with that, he smiled sadly and left the room.

  The Ballad of Fallen idols: Liam McNaughton

  “And the lonely voice of youth cries, ‘What is Truth?’”

  —Johnny Cash

  April 1995

  ALL MY HEROES LET ME DOWN.

  It started in third grade with Johnny Cash. He’d been my idol since I wa
s four, so naturally when we were assigned an oral report on the person who influenced us most, I picked Johnny. I even sang “Walk the Line” a cappella in hopes of impressing Lizzie Jordan, the most beautiful girl in our class.

  The room filled with snickering before I got to the chorus. Lizzie laughed loudest of all. “Now we know why he dresses like such a weirdo,” she told the girl next to her. I should’ve known from her New Kids on the Block lunch box that she wouldn’t appreciate the Man in Black. I ran to the bathroom in tears, wishing I’d played it safe and picked Ozzie Guillen, my favorite guy on the White Sox. All the other boys had picked either baseball players or their dads.

  I don’t know if I ever considered my dad a hero. I can’t remember worshiping him that much because he was barely around. Kara tells all these stories where he’s the center of the universe, but in my mind she was the brightest star.

  My first memory is literally looking up to her. I was probably about three, just waking up from a nap, and Kara hovered over my bed, waiting for me. “What do you want to do, Liam?” she asked, eyes glowing with the possibilities. Back then, we did everything together. She read to me and taught me to read. She sang to me and listened to me sing. She came up with elaborate imaginary games: we looked for gold in the Old West, flew spaceships thousands of years into the future, and had our own band in the present day.

  My sister mattered more than my mother, father, and Johnny Cash combined. She also let me down worse than any of them. Part of the reason I didn’t concern myself with making friends when we moved to the suburbs was that I thought she’d always be there. Then she met Stacey and ditched me. I was hesitant to trust her when we got close again two years ago. But at least she brought me into her world at Scoville Park.