by JJ Strong
I took his hand, and he stood. We leaned imperceptibly into each other. Cullen started unbuttoning his shirt. I helped him finish, then went for his belt buckle and fly.
I kneeled to tug his pants down and tickled a hand across the back of his thighs. His legs, unlike his chest and shoulders and chin, and despite being covered in a fuzzy mess of hair, were decidedly boyish—skinny and without form. No calves. Knobby knees. Barely a butt to be found.
I stood between him and the mirror, intercepted his reflected gaze with my own, and then we were kissing again, and I reached back, about to unhook my bra, strands of his hair at my chin, my nails in his neck . . . when the inevitable knock on the door sounded out.
“Bri?” Mom’s soft voice, then a failed attempt to open the locked door.
“Oh shit.” Cullen raced in a slapdash circle to dress. His belt buckle clicked and clanked loudly while his feet shuffled across the carpet.
I laughed. “Yeah, Mom?”
Cullen buttoned his shirt, whispering to me, “What are you doing? Why aren’t you getting dressed?”
“Bri, why is it locked?”
I glanced at the pile of clothes on the floor, peeked at myself in the mirror one more time, then marched over and yanked open the door. Mom stepped in, saying, “We’re ready downstairs,” before she paused to look up and see Cullen sitting on the bed and me in front of her, in my underwear.
“Cullen. Where did you come from?”
I planted my hands on my hips. Cullen wouldn’t look at me.
“Front door this time, Mrs. O’Dell. I promise.”
“Bri?”
Mom stared at me. I grinned like everything was perfectly normal.
“Yeah, Mom?”
“What are you . . . ?” She glanced at my bare legs and my chest and then met my eyes. “I . . . I don’t think it’s a very good idea for you two to be in here with the door locked, do you?”
“Dad said it was okay.”
Mom shook her head, confused. There was no telling what she was thinking—if she was thinking at all. She was dressed for church, but her face was pale. Her grimy, unwashed hair appeared more brown than red in the dark hallway. I knew she could be so beautiful and hated that she chose not to be.
“What are you two doing in here?” she said. “Where are your clothes, Brielle?”
“I was . . .” I laughed loudly—too loudly. Obnoxiously loudly. “Oh God, you thought we were . . . No! Mom! Come on. I was just getting dressed for church. I made Cullen look the other way.”
She offered a look of disappointment, like it insulted her to know how little I thought of her ability to see through this most transparent, preposterous lie.
“I think you should get dressed right now.”
“I know that, Mom,” I shot back at her. “That’s exactly what I was doing until you interrupted me.”
“We’re all ready downstairs,” she said.
I nodded at her. She stared.
“Can you close the door?” I said. “So I can finish getting dressed?”
She was mad, the first time I’d seen her mad in I don’t know how long. But she didn’t do anything about it. She didn’t even ask Cullen to leave. She stepped outside and, very carefully, very quietly, shut the door.
* * *
Later we sat five in a row in church—Mom, Dad, me, Cullen, Ray. The great hall of the chapel smelled of incense and pine, and the faithful huddled together throughout the business of the mass. Row after row of cardinal coats were thrown over pews. Impatient girls in black-and-white buckled shoes squatted at the feet of their fathers, while boys wriggled in their seats and fussed with their little ties. Mothers patted their nests of hair, and men with shaved faces, folded hands, and ashen suits nodded off under the weight of a desperate fatigue that was finally allowed to surface with the holiday break in the workweek. Ray sat at the end of the pew and didn’t move throughout the mass. When the congregation stood, when they knelt, he didn’t move. Hands resting on his thighs. Head bowed. Eyes blank.
A week earlier, Ray had shown up to the dinner table with a bloody, swollen eye and an awful bruise on his chin. Dad and I asked him one question after another, but all he did was eat and tell us that he was fine and to leave him alone. Mom ate her dinner, saying little. Thin and gray-faced, she wouldn’t look at Ray. Could not be confronted with what she had been denying for a long time now—that something was wrong with her son.
Finally, when Ray rose and attempted to retreat to his room, Dad blocked his way.
“What happened to you?” Dad said.
Ray hung his head and said, “What do you think happened, Dad?”
“I have no idea, Ray. Tell me. Did you get in a fight?”
Ray laughed and wiped his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s it. I got in a fight.”
He took a step back from Dad and unbuttoned his shirt. He hardly ever changed out of his school outfit anymore, like it didn’t even occur to him to put on normal, comfortable clothes after school. Bruises were smeared all over his thin arms. He removed his undershirt to reveal more across his ribs and chest. A grotesque purple blooming of pain.
“A fucking fight, Dad,” Ray said. “That’s exactly what happened.”
Mom put a trembling hand to her mouth and excused herself. Dad said, “Karen, please,” but she waved him off and skittered past him. She walked so lightly we didn’t even hear her going upstairs. You could see Dad wanting to chase her. Wanting to fix both his wife and his son at the same time, but only able to choose one. This time he stuck with Ray.
Ray held his arms across his torso. Dad turned back to him and looked pained—more frightened than concerned.
“Ray?” I said. “Who did it?”
Tears came out of Ray like a burst bubble, and he wiped his nose and choked it all in.
“I just want to go upstairs,” he said. “Please.”
“Okay, Ray.” Again Dad reached out a hand, but again Ray flinched away. “Can you tell us who? And then you can go.”
“Nick O’Dwyer. Okay?”
Dad nodded. “How about some ice?”
“You said if I told you.”
Dad stared at Ray for a long time while Ray shrunk under his gaze. Finally Dad stepped aside, and Ray hurried past him. Dad picked up the phone and called the school. The office had cleared out for the day, but he left a stern, quiet message, insisting he be called back as soon as possible. Then he sat down across from me, picked up a fork, and stared at his pasta.
“Dad?” I said.
“Yes.” He was stuck in that pose—fork poised, eyes unblinking, gaping at the plate of food.
“Can I go too?”
“You’re not hungry?”
“Not really.”
He put down the fork and exhaled. “Me neither.”
There was nothing I could say to him that would change what we’d seen. It was all so sudden and terrible, but the truth is that as much as I was also concerned about Ray, I didn’t want to be the one left behind with my father.
“So,” I said. “Can I go?”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s fine.”
Now, at mass, Dad snuck glances at Ray, rotating his head to Ray then back to the altar then back to Ray, hoping with each new glance to find some promising change but always finding the same glitch of his troubled son, like tonguing the tender roof of your mouth after a burn.
Father James recited a homily about joy. He noted the crowds of celebratory families and called for us to fill the church with so much joy year-round, not only at Christmas and Easter. “Tonight and tomorrow morning,” he told us, “we rejoice with joy. And not only because we’re getting all those great presents.” He paused to let the soft chuckles whisper through the cathedral. “We rejoice with joy because this is the day that Christ is born anew in our hearts. It is a day
of hope for all the love that our lives can bring, here and ever after.”
Ray’s eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks hollow. He looked thinner than usual. When we all rose and snaked through the pews and down the center aisle to the altar to take communion and then shuffled back along the stained-glass sidelines of the chapel, Ray remained seated, lost in himself, a ghost. Mom put one hand on Ray’s thigh, but he flinched at her touch, and she pulled the hand back. Ray moved to the very end of the pew, where no hand could reach him. The wound on his chin was scabbed and ugly.
* * *
Back at the house, Cullen stood tall and shook my father’s hand. I stepped down the drive with him to his car. “Cullen,” I said. “This thing tonight.”
“Yeah.”
“Please don’t do it.”
“You should talk to Ray about it,” he said.
“He listens to you. Don’t you think it’s a dumb thing to do?”
“No,” he said. “No, I think it’ll be fun.”
“But why?”
“You should talk to Ray about it. I’m not making him do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
“He won’t listen to me!”
“He’ll be okay. Trust me.”
“The gun,” I whispered.
“It’s not loaded.”
“You promise?”
He nodded. “I got it under control.”
There was a pause during which neither of us said anything. Cullen gave me a quick kiss, and then I was watching him drive away.
The family dispersed for the night with little fanfare or discussion. Ray sat in the kitchen with a glass of water in front of him, and my father asked him if he was okay. Ray nodded, and Dad tilted his eyes up to the ceiling, lips colorless and pressed together.
“All right,” Dad said. “Good night then.”
At twelve thirty, the light in Mom and Dad’s bedroom clicked off. I joined Ray in the kitchen, where he still hung a long gaze over the glass of water that had not been touched, and I informed him that I was coming with him.
Calmly, like he’d anticipated this very moment, he said, “I don’t want to end up arguing and then Mom and Dad hear us, so fine, you can come, I don’t care. But you have to wait in the car.”
“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll wait in the car.”
“And don’t make me nervous. Don’t worry so much.”
“I’ll just be there. That’s all.”
Ray pursed his lips and clenched his fists. I saw him leaving us—burrowing into some place within himself from which, I worried, we might never completely get him back.
“Why are you doing it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Why not?”
“A million reasons why not.”
“Just feel like it, I guess.”
“Are you mad?”
He looked at me as though this was the first time he’d thought to put the word to what he was feeling. “Yeah.”
“Mad at what?”
“Just everything,” he said. “Everyone.”
* * *
At one thirty A.M., we walked out the front door without waking our parents. We hurried down our quiet street to the corner where Cullen waited for us. We passed houses whose holiday lights had been switched off for the night and whose children had long since fallen asleep, dreaming of Santa and all that the morning would bring. We passed the houses and felt the cold. I watched my brother rub his hands and I wished I had something to wish for other than that predictable hope of retreating home and crawling under the covers to encounter down there in the softness and whiteness of my childhood bed some familiar but long-lost dream.
At the corner we found Cullen’s car idling and spitting white exhaust tinged cherry from the taillights. The driver’s side window slid down to reveal not Cullen at all, but Roman. We didn’t move. A quiet hip-hop beat and a wall of warmth snuck out of the car. Roman clamped his hands between his thighs. “Well, get the fuck in. Freezing out here.”
Cullen leaned over from the passenger seat and stuck his face up toward us. He blinked slowly when he saw me, not able to hide his surprise, then smiled and turned to Ray. “We need a driver, buddy. Roman’s got this.”
Ray hesitated. Stared at the ground, calculating.
“Hop in, guys,” Cullen said. “It’s cool.”
“Ray?” I said.
Roman rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Nice neighborhood,” he said, looking around. “Shit.”
Finally Ray shook off his stupor and climbed into the backseat, and I followed. Roman talked the whole ride. “This is some shit,” he kept saying. “This is sooome shit.”
We drove into East Orange and cruised by a twenty-four-hour QuickChek that was lit up, radiant with fluorescent-tinted products.
“There she blows.” Roman momentarily swerved the car across the double yellow line, then glided it back.
We pulled into an empty parking lot three blocks away and parked in the alley behind a mattress store. Roman killed the engine. We sat in silence. Cullen hadn’t said a word to me during the ride, but I’d promised Ray that I wouldn’t worry so much or make him nervous, so I kept quiet. The more he thought about my being there, the harder it would be for him to do the thing he had come to do. I understood that. And the truth was that I was as curious as the rest of them. A big part of me was just as electrified by the senseless act we were about to perform as the boys were.
Cullen handed the gun to Ray, who stared at it for a long moment and then fiddled with the handle.
“Careful,” Cullen said.
“Safety’s on, I’m fine.”
“What are you doing?” Cullen asked.
“The clip,” Ray said. “I want the clip.”
“Why?”
“I want to check it.”
“It’s loaded,” Cullen said.
“Here.” Ray handed the gun up front to Cullen. “Show me.”
“Ray, it’s loaded. Just like we said.”
“I believe you. Show me.”
Cullen looked briefly at me and then at Ray. He sighed. “Look, Ray . . .”
“Where are the bullets? In the trunk?”
“There’s no reason for it to be loaded!”
Ray stepped out of the car. “Are they still in the trunk? From the target-practice trip?”
Ray walked around to the back of the car. The rest of us sat in silence. I yelped when Ray pounded on the trunk.
“Open it!” he yelled.
Roman looked to Cullen, who nodded, and Roman reached down to pop the trunk.
“Cullen,” I said.
“It’s fine.” He opened the door.
“Cullen, you promised.”
“It’s fine!” he said. “I promise. It’s under control.” He grabbed gloves and ski masks from the glove compartment and exited. I turned to see Ray, but the raised trunk blocked my view.
“This is some shit,” Roman whispered.
The trunk slammed shut. Cullen and Ray, putting on gloves, hurried past the car, moved into the shadows of the alley, and then, turning the corner, disappeared.
Ray
CULLEN AND I hurried toward the store, and I wasn’t thinking at all about God or Heaven or life before or after death, because none of that meant anything to me in that moment. What I felt, above all else, was emptiness. I trusted the emptiness. I had faith in the emptiness. Bloodfire, I thought. Bloodfire. Bloodfire.
“Get in and out,” Cullen said. “No distractions. Got it?”
I nodded, even though I wasn’t really listening to the words he was saying. They were just sounds, but I agreed with the general feeling coming from them.
“And do not shoot the gun. No matter what happens, for the love of God, Ray, do not shoot that fucking gun. You want him to think you’ll shoot it, but you’re not
going to.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve shot it before. You know how to handle it. Show him that. Show him this is your gun and you’ve used it a thousand times before and will not hesitate to use it on him.”
“Okay.”
“We get in and get out, and you don’t shoot the fucking gun, and nobody gets hurt.”
We stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the light to change, even though there were no cars. Behind us a slope of muddy grass covered with broken liquor bottles and losing lottery tickets rose to a small wooded area. The road to our left followed a line of green traffic lights into the depths of East Orange. In front of us, across the street, was the store.
Cullen nudged me with his elbow. “We’re out there now, kid,” he said. “You feel it?”
The whole thing took maybe three minutes, but it felt much longer. We paused at the curb to let the store’s only customer amble into his minivan and pull out of the lot, then we put on our masks and marched inside. Without breaking stride, and without thinking about it, and with my head humming from a violent rush of blood, I sprinted up to the counter and held the gun at the guy and screamed at him just like Cullen had told me to do—just like we’d rehearsed in the garage of his grandmother’s house.
“Show me your hands, hands up, show me your hands, motherfucker!”
The clerk was a dark-skinned, broad-chested guy who seemed somehow familiar. He looked about Cullen’s age, considering that Cullen looked almost five years older than he really was. The idea was to submit him to my will. Tonight I was going to puppet someone else the way so many had done to me. To flex and then watch someone cower.
The guy put his arms over his head and tried to duck away from the gun’s aim. “Okay!” he said. “Okay, man, don’t shoot.”
“The register!” I said.
“Okay!” On the way to the register, he touched an alarm button under the counter.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “What the hell was that?! You want to get shot over a few hundred fucking dollars?!”
