“Yup. I know.” He sipped his beer. “How is your mother, by the way?”
“She’s fine. She’s doing really well, actually. She misses you.”
“No, she doesn’t.” He made a noise that was more of a snort than a laugh. I didn’t know why I said it, either. We both knew it wasn’t true.
“I miss you, though, kiddo,” he said. “You know, I can’t figure out how to fold a bottom sheet to save my life?”
“Yeah, you’re shit at housekeeping.”
“Wanna watch that mouth?”
“Sorry.” I couldn’t help it. Did he really miss me, or did he miss having somebody to keep the linen closet in order? I looked out at the long willow branches swinging gracefully as the breeze picked up again. They looked like slow, dancing arms. I thought about what Nina told me, that my dad had gone to New York all those years ago to be a country singer. The old guitar in our closet must have been his. I wanted to ask him why. Why did he do it in the first place, and why did he quit? But there was something about my dad that made him impossible to talk to. It was like he had this invisible wall around him that absorbed sound. Stupid questions, and sometimes even important ones, never actually got through to him. He would mutter something noncommittal, like “Well, I reckon,” or “Probably not, but you never know,” or, the worst, “That’s a story for another time.” Only it was never another time.
My mind wandered to Mom and Travis. I wondered what they were doing for Thanksgiving. If they were eating sushi and stuffed grape leaves and watching Buckaroo Banzai on videotape.
“I was thinking.” I cleared my throat. “That, um, since I’m down here now, for Thanksgiving, that I could stay with Mom for Christmas.”
“No. You’re coming home.”
“Why? That’s not fair. I never get to spend the holidays with Mom.”
“Victoria doesn’t care about the holidays. Not like your grandmother and I do.” He took a long drink of his beer.
“Mom cares. She cares a lot about Christmas.” Dad gave me a look. “Why wouldn’t she? Anyway, I thought you hated coming down here for the holidays.”
“I don’t care for the drive, but I like the holiday. It’s an important time. It’s a time to be with your family.”
“Mom is my family. You’re the one she divorced, not me.” At that, my dad gave a heavy sigh, then he got quiet. He took another long sip of his Coors. I knew I’d gone too far.
“Okay, fine, whatever. I’ll come back down here. Jesus.”
“Watch it.”
“Sorry.”
I kicked at the porch and sent the swing off its rhythm again. My father planted his feet and steadied it. He pushed with his heels to start the rocking again, but now I kept my feet flat. The chair jerked, refused to glide smooth. I stood up. This game was stupid. I was going back inside.
“So what do you want, anyway?” he asked.
“What?” I stopped at the screen door. The breeze blew again, and I shivered. “What do you mean, what do I want?”
“For Christmas. What do you want for Christmas this year?”
“Oh.” I thumbed the latch and looked back at him. He wasn’t even looking at me. He stared out at the willow branches and rocked back in the swing. It didn’t matter what I said. He’d forget it, like he forgot everything, just like Grandmother said. In one ear and out the other.
“A motorcycle,” I told him. I saw a faint smile on his face right before I went back inside, the door slapping shut behind me.
PART THREE
10
Travis had the TV on with no sound and the stereo going full blast. He sat on the floor with his guitar in his lap, but he wasn’t playing it.
“Hey.” I dropped my bags. “Where’s Mom?”
“Oh, hey. Whoa.” He looked over his shoulder. “When did you get back?” His voice sounded thick, like he’d just woken up.
“Just now.” Grandmother had called Nina and arranged for her driver to pick me up at the airport.
“Your mom’s at—she’s at Lee’s—he’s back in town. You’re supposed to meet her. I think she left you a note. Somewhere …” His head dropped suddenly, like he was falling asleep. Then he jerked it back up.
“Travis? Are you all right?” I knelt down next to him. He was pale and clammy.
“I’m good.” He breathed a snorting breath full of snot. “I’ve got this cold. Or the flu or something. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Do you want me to get you something? I think we’ve still got some NyQuil from when Mom was sick.”
“No, no.” He closed his eyes. “No. Maria. Hey. Come here and listen to this for a second.”
“I’m right here.”
“Are you listening? It’s the second Voidoids album. Bob Quine, man. This guy’s a … this guy’s a genius.”
Crouched next to Travis, in between the speakers, the genius of Bob Quine was all I could hear. The only lyrics I could be sure of, though, were the ones repeated in the chorus. Staring in her eyes.
“He’s, uh …” I struggled to come up with the right thing to say about the song. “He’s got a cool voice.”
“No, not the—” Travis cackled a rasping laugh. “Not the singer. That’s Richard Hell. Quine’s the guitar player. Listen to this solo coming up.” Travis reached for the volume knob and cranked it even higher. The guitar around his neck put him off balance, though, and he fell back, almost landing in my lap. The guitar jabbed into my thigh. Travis went limp in my arms, like a bony cat. There was a smell coming off of him, a pungent smell like something poisonous on fire.
“Travis?”
“Sorry, sorry …” he mumbled, crawling back to his spot on the floor.
“I think I’d better call a doctor.”
“No doctors. I, uh—I don’t have insurance. I’ll be fine, okay? Just listen to this song with me, Maria. Just for a minute, before you go.”
“I don’t know if I should leave you.”
“I’ll be fine. Just listen to this song.”
I listened. Travis closed his eyes. The guitars swept and squealed and lifted into the air around us, bright and clean and warm. It was like there was a dark room, but someone had opened a door and you could see that outside it was sunshine, summer.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. But when I looked back at Travis, his head was tilted against the futon, and he was asleep. I undid the strap and lifted his guitar off him. I propped it up carefully against his amp. Then I went back for Travis. I slid my arms beneath his and pulled with all my strength. I managed to get him up on the futon and lay him out straight. He murmured a little but didn’t wake up.
Mom’s note was on the kitchen counter, telling me that she had a surprise for me at Lee’s, with directions written into a sketch of a bunch of postcards falling out of a mailbox. But I was worried about leaving Travis. I got a glass of water from the kitchen and put it on the floor next to him. I couldn’t find any Kleenex, so I left a roll of toilet paper next to the glass. He was sweating, but I was afraid he’d wake up chilled, so I found a clean sheet in the laundry basket in Mom’s room and pulled it over him. Just in case, I found the NyQuil bottle in the bathroom and left it with the toilet paper and the water glass. That was everything I could think to do for somebody with the flu. I turned the stereo down and the television off and decided I’d wait for a while, to make sure Travis didn’t wake up needing something he didn’t have, and find himself all alone.
Mom’s note had precise directions on how to get to Lee’s loft and, once I was there, how to get in. I had to press the button for L. Kulczek, wait for the door lock to buzz open, then find the freight elevator, get in, shut both grates, hit the red button, and hold it down until I saw the “5” for fifth floor.
Mom met me at the elevator. “I thought you’d never make it! What happened? Was the plane delayed?”
“No, I was worried about Trav—”
“Did you walk down Twenty-Third Street and see the Chelsea Hotel?” She slammed the elevat
or grate closed behind me. She wasn’t listening. “Everybody lived at the Chelsea. Sid and Nancy. Leonard Cohen. Patti. Jim Carroll. Lee! Maria’s here!”
Mom’s voice rang out as we walked across the loft, our footsteps echoing. The loft was one long room, one side of which was lined with bookshelves and dominated by a giant, brightly colored painting of a pouting blonde. Along the other side of the room, the tall windows made the city outside seem like a living mural. Cars moved along the West Side Highway, the city edged into the river, and, far off, you could see the bridge into New Jersey. It wasn’t dark yet, but the lights along the bridge twinkled in the haze.
“Let me see the infamous offspring.” Lee stood behind a bar, uncorking a bottle of wine. He wiped his hands on a kitchen towel and clipped toward me, his eyes narrow behind lime-green glasses. He was short, bald, and dressed entirely in black silk.
“My God, Victoria.” He gave an exasperated sigh. “Look at her. It’s positively sickening.”
“I know!”
“Tall and thin. Mmm.” He shook his head, then reached out to rub my arm. “Well, God bless you, honey. Some folks get all the breaks, don’t they?” He broke into an abrupt laugh. “Don’t look so scared, kiddo! I don’t bite.” He held out his hand. “Lee Kulczek, at your service.”
“Maria.” I shook his hand.
“And so shy!” He turned to my mother. “She doesn’t get this from you, obviously.” Lee put his arm around me. “Your mother and I survived the Jersey Shore together in the seventies. We go back forever.”
My mother nodded. “Lee saved me from an overdose of bar bands with saxophones.”
“So, girls, who’s helping me drink this wine?” Lee wagged his finger at both of us, eeny meeny miny mo.
“Ooh, I am!” Mom held up her hand like a kid in school. Lee went back to the bar.
“Maria?” He held up a wine glass.
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
“My goodness, you don’t have to be so polite!” Lee laughed again. He handed my mom a glass of wine.
“She’ll loosen up,” she said, taking the glass. I wondered what happened to her AA meetings.
“Is it me?” Lee turned a serious gaze to me, his hand to his chest. He mock-whispered, “Am I your first gay man?”
“No,” I told him.
“Of course not. Surely you must get a few of those repressed, Tennessee Williams types down there in the South, don’t you?”
I shrugged. I’d had to read The Glass Menagerie last year for English, but I didn’t know what that had to do with gay men. I thought about the gay club I went to with Dory.
“I dunno. We get RuPaul types, though.”
At that, Lee roared, a giant, cackling laugh. He walked around the bar, put his arm around my shoulder, and led me to a mirror riveted to the brick wall.
“In that case, come with me, dollface. Your mother wants me to fix you up.”
“Work your magic!” Mom called out, settling down on the oversized blue velvet sofa with her wine glass and a thick magazine. “I’ll just be over here with Debbie and the latest issue of Vogue.”
“Now, don’t you start with me, Victoria.” Lee shot her a look. “She doesn’t care for my latest acquisition,” he whispered back to me, gesturing to the picture of the pouting woman. “It’s an original Warhol,” he called out to Mom.
My mom muttered something under her breath that sounded like “disco cheesecake.”
“Victoria!” Lee stamped his foot. “I have told you time and again: I don’t care what you do in the privacy of your own home, but in my presence you are not to refer to Miss Deborah Harry as anything less than the goddess she is.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mom waved her wine glass at him.
“What about you, kiddo? Blondie fan?”
“Me?” I shrugged. “I dunno. Aren’t they, like, disco?”
“Ach!” Lee held up both hands and walked back to the bar. “Both of you! You say ‘disco’ as if it’s a bad thing.” He brought one of the bar stools over to the mirror. “I’m sure your mother’s been filling your head with Patti Smith and Lou Reed and all kinds of scary things. Sit,” he commanded.
“I like Patti Smith,” I protested.
“Of course you do. Your mother would not let you into the house otherwise. Now.” Lee put both his hands on my shoulders, studying my reflection in the mirror. “I realize this is a terrible cliché, but not only am I a gay man, I am a gay hairdresser .” He feigned shock. “I know, right?”
“Mom told me you work with models. She said you were over in Milan or something.”
“I was indeed. Models, ecch.” He rolled his eyes as he ran his fingers through my hair. “In my next life, I’m going to wrestle alligators for a living. It’s safer and less stressful.” Lee looked back at my mom, then leaned down to whisper in my ear. “I know Vic wants me to set up an appointment for you to have headshots. But I’m telling you now, don’t do it. Get out before you get in. They’ll eat you alive. In the meantime”—he stood up straight and his voice got loud again—“what are we doing with you? Your mom says you need a new look.”
“I do?” I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was pretty boring. Long and straight. Plain black. Like my dad’s.
“Don’t take it personally. Everybody needs a new look once in a while.” Lee pushed a rolling cart over from the far wall and opened one of its drawers. He took out a cape and snapped it open, fastening it around my neck. “Even the beautiful people like yourself.”
I studied my face in the mirror as he combed out my hair. I saw my dark eyes, the shadows beneath them. The long planes of my cheeks. The nose was my grandmother’s. Aristocratic, she called it. But my eyes, the way my mouth turned down, those were my father’s. As Lee worked, I studied my jaw, my forehead, my ears, looking for signs of my mother. Sometimes I thought we had the same smile. But, searching now, I couldn’t find anything of her in me. I couldn’t see any way that we were built the same.
Mom was practically bouncing down the street. I had to hurry to keep up with her.
“Okay, for the millionth time, your hair looks so amazing! Isn’t Lee, like, a total god?”
“I like it,” I said, trying to convince myself. Lee had hacked off a good five inches of my hair and made it all different lengths. Then he took what was left and tousled it all around until it looked like I’d just gotten caught in the wind. Or like I was the runner-up in a contest of people trying to look like that guy from the Cure. I didn’t think it was possible, but when I saw myself in the mirror, I actually looked five inches taller.
“People are staring,” Mom whispered.
“Yeah, because they think I’m Larry Bird.”
“No, silly.” She whacked my arm. “Because you look like a supermodel! Oh, wait, this is us!” She stopped at the brick building on the corner, sweeping her arms out like one of the girls on The Price Is Right. Except the item up for bid was a cartoon sketch. A movie poster.
“Ta-da!” she sang out. “Rock ’n’ Roll High School! This might just be my favorite movie of all time. Come on.” She tugged at my sleeve. “You are so going to freak out over this movie.”
We got in line at the ticket booth, the guy in front of us sporting a Mohawk, the two behind with their hair hanging in their eyes and wearing faded Ramones T-shirts.
“Shouldn’t we go check on Travis?” I’d been bugging her about him since we left Lee’s.
“He’s fine,” Mom said, rolling her eyes. “He knows what happens when he doesn’t take care of himself. Anyway, look, how often do we get to spend girl time together? Like, never. So let’s just hang out, enjoy ourselves for once.”
“I know. It’s just—he seemed really sick.”
“Two, please.” Mom passed a twenty-dollar bill to the girl at the ticket booth.
“He was, like, passed out when I left. And he was all sweaty, and I think he was running a fever.”
“Why are you so concerned about Travis all of a sudden?”
She handed me my ticket, looking annoyed. “What are you, his nursemaid?”
“I just—I was kind of freaked out when I left because it seemed like he was pretty bad off, that’s all.” I followed my mom into the theater, where we took a couple of seats on the aisle.
“Okay. All right.” Mom jumped up as soon as she’d sat down. “Will it make you feel any better if I go call Travis? Make sure he hasn’t died tragically from a nose cold?”
“Yeah, it would.” I didn’t see why she was so upset. It was Travis, after all. And he was sick.
“I’ll be right back.” She squeezed past me, digging in her pocket for change. The lights dimmed as soon as she’d left, and the previews began. Previews for old black-and-white movies. Movies with strange, jumpy edits and subtitles in French.
“He’s fine,” Mom whispered, back already.
“Good,” I replied. But I could tell she was irritated from the way she sat, so stiff, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
“I didn’t mean to keep bugging you about Travis,” I whispered to her. “I just thought you’d be worried about him, too.”
One of the kids in the Ramones T-shirts shushed us. I sank down into my seat as the movie began, feeling prickles against my neck where tiny hair clippings had fallen into the collar of my shirt. On-screen, a girl in bright spandex cranked the Ramones on the school loudspeaker, and all the kids danced. I couldn’t concentrate, though. I couldn’t stop thinking that somehow I’d ruined our girl time, that I’d been a worrywart and a bore, and my mom was sick of me.
But then finally, when the evil principal, Miss Togar, came on-screen and tried to shut down the Ramones party, and the girl in the spandex introduced herself as Riff Randall, Rock ’n’ Roller, my mom giggled and relaxed in her seat. She leaned over to me and whispered again.
“Remind me to pick up some orange juice on the way home,” she said. The kid behind us shushed us again.
“Oh, shush yourself,” Mom said over her shoulder, and laughed.
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