How to Survive a Summer

by Nick White

  Hot tears leaked down my face. “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “How could the mother not find them? How far could they go?”

  I pushed away from my mother, clawing at her terrible fat breasts, but she wouldn’t let go. She held me tighter. I wanted to shake myself loose—from her, from her stories. I wanted something true but didn’t yet know how to ask for it. “Please, just listen, just listen,” she was saying. She was crying now, too, her face drenching my shoulder. Suddenly, we were falling, the full weight of her body pushing me into the couch. Across the breezeway, my father had stopped snoring, and I wondered if he was awake. If he could hear his family sobbing and what he would possibly make of this scene we were making on the couch.

  “Shh,” I said. “Mama, please.”

  She leaned up, and I was able to breathe again. Her face was swollen and wet. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushing her hair back from her face. We sat on the couch and stared at the doorway as if we expected my father to come walking through it and admonish us. But he was snoring again, and she took my hand and led me into the kitchen. “Sit,” she told me, and riffled around in the fridge. We had eaten all the Sugar Dump earlier, but that didn’t matter—my mother’s fridge was full of many delights. When she reappeared from behind the fridge door, she toted a half gallon of chocolate milk. She sat the jug down on the table and went to the cabinet above the sink, where she found a large plastic cup. She filled the cup to the brim and then plunked two straws inside. “On three,” she said, and sat down beside me. I knew this game. She and my father had played it before. They’d sip through their straws as fast as they could and use the kitchen timer on the microwave to see how long it took them to drain the cup. We didn’t bother with the timer tonight, but I pulled on my straw as fast as I could anyway. I imagined my body infected with the deep-down blues, which maybe it was, and the chocolate milk was the antidote.

  We slurped till there was nothing left but bubbles at the bottom of the cup. My mother tilted back her head and sighed. “Dear Lord,” she said, “I hope heaven has chocolate milk.”

  “Do you think your brother is in heaven?”

  My mother took the cup and rinsed it out with water and left it upside down on the sink counter. The kitchen had more cabinets than we had silverware, so she filled the empty ones with other stuff. My father’s baby pictures, his thick books from his days in seminary. It never occurred to me that she would keep relics from her own past in there, too. I had thought I knew all the secrets in the parsonage. But she surprised me. She stood on her tiptoes and reached for something on the top shelf of the cabinet beside the window unit. This shelf held, I knew, a fedora that collected loose change, a calculator my mother used when paying the bills, and the koozie with the kitschy expression scrawled across it. Her arm snaked around and through these known things for something unknown: a wooden box. She placed it on the table where she had set the milk jug.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Open it.”

  The hinges cracked as I flipped the lid back. Like an old book spine. The inside was lined with this red fabric that felt like how I imagined velvet would feel: soft and rough at the same time. A sash was inside the box, folded into a rectangle with the same sort of tight precision I’d seen with flags, and beside it, a tiara. Some of the rhinestones were missing in it, but the crown still caught what little light there was in the kitchen and twinkled.

  “Your daddy says that when we go to heaven, we get crowns to lay at the throne of Jesus.” My mother took out the sash and unfolded it, revealing glittery letters sewn into the fabric: HOMECOMING QUEEN 1968. “But some of us get crowns here on earth, too.”

  I picked up the tiara. At both ends of the band were these little combed teeth that secured it into your hair. My mother didn’t tell me to put the crown back or to be careful with it. In fact, she wasn’t saying anything I would have expected of her in this moment. She said, “Johnny had a flair, nugget. Like you do.” And this was as far as she would ever come to giving me permission to do what I did next. When I placed the tiara on my head, she laughed—that warm and lusty laugh of hers—and reached over. At first I thought she was going to take the tiara off. But she only straightened it, pushing the combs deeper into my scalp. Then her fingers moved down my face, lightly touching the place on my cheek that had bruised.

  “There he is”—my mother tried to sing, her voice nothing like her sister’s—“Mister Mississippi.”

  THREE

  ■

  THE NEW FAMILY

  I recognized the recklessness of leaving my life with no warning to anyone, no preparation for the trip, and no goal, really, except seeing my father, a man I’d actively avoided for nearly half a decade. The first night on the road, I arrived in Cincinnati when most of the stars had already faded back into the navy fabric of the sky. Doll cruised along at sixty, five miles under the limit, the high beams illuminating slices of road in increments of six feet or less at a time. The interstate took me straight into the heart of the city through a tightly packed tangle of narrow roads and bridges free from any sort of traffic at so late an hour. I checked into a motel on the outskirts of everything important. It was a single-floor block of rooms facing Big Tally’s 24-Hour Truck Stop, the convenience store’s checkout counter also serving as the motel’s front desk. I used my credit card to pay for the room since the available cash in my checking account was dwindling and a long summer of unemployment lay ahead of me once school let out later in the month. The room smelled of bleach and cigarette smoke. But the two twin beds were neatly made with bedsheets in neutral colors, and the carpet appeared clean enough to walk on barefoot. I had no luggage to unpack. No toothbrush to use. Not that I would have done either of those things if I could have. Soon after walking in, I crashed on top of the mattress closest to the window and passed out.

  I slept hard. Though I hadn’t spoken to Bevy or Zeus since the day before, when I awoke the next morning, I first called Cheryl, my adulterous officemate. Her voice was high-pitched when she answered, her cell phone probably not recognizing my number. “Oh, Will,” she said, after I told her my name. “We share an office,” I added, and she laughed. “Of course, of course!” Still unsure if she knew who I was, I cut to the chase. I asked her to take over my class, the freshman composition course I taught three days a week as part of my assistantship for the university. “Just until Wednesday,” I said. Wednesday was six days away. I had no way of knowing if that was enough time, but it was better than asking her to teach the class until the end of the semester two weeks from now. The university could fire me for that—or I thought they could. I wasn’t exactly up-to-date on departmental policy regarding the absences of teaching assistants, but I knew enough to know the optics of my not finishing out the semester in person looked bad. “They’ll submit their final papers online to me, and I’ll send you all my lesson plans,” I said. “All you will have to do is stand and deliver.” I also promised to deplete my checking account even further, adding a hundred dollars to whatever the university forked over for her filling in for me. Turns out, I was gilding the lily. Cheryl needed the extra cash, which I should have known—what grad student didn’t? Before saying good-bye, she mentioned how she hoped everything was okay back home—no sick family members or the like. “Oh, nothing like that,” I said, and when I didn’t elaborate, she said, “We should get coffee when you’re back in town.” I told her that sounded nice. And it did, it really did, though I was sure it wasn’t likely to come to pass. My friends were people I disappointed on a regular basis nowadays, and I’d feel guilty adding another name to the list.

  Case in point: Bevy. For this conversation, I sat down and took a breath. I selected her name on my cell-phone screen and hit call. “Before you say anything to me,” Bevy said, after answering on the second ring, “just tell me one thing: Are you hurt?” I was fine, I said, and then she went off. Calling me everything but a child of God. “You motherfucker, you son of a bitc
h, do you know that I was this close to calling the police? And I hate the police!” When I reminded her she couldn’t report a person missing until twenty-four hours had passed, she said, “Well, by God, we were just going to lie.” She proceeded to tell me what had happened after I didn’t show up at the restaurant, as if the story were a punishment in itself. When thirty minutes went by with no word from me, they tried calling. When their calls went straight to voice mail, they panicked. “I’ve told you about turning your phone off, Will!” Her voice sounded like she had been crying or had just woken up. I preferred to think the latter. “We drove to your place,” Bevy continued, telling how she kept knocking until Elementary Ed came to the door. “And her dog was going ape shit—you know how Alix is afraid of most animals, so she nearly collapsed with fear right there on your goddamn doorstep.” Elementary Ed claimed to have seen me leaving the apartment earlier in the afternoon. “A real jewel that one. She wanted to know if we’d like to come inside and partake of a fresh batch of pot cookies while we waited for your return.” At this point I wanted to jump in to add my neighbor had not once asked me inside to sample her potent edibles, but Bevy kept on at such a feverish pace of chatter that there was no room in the conversation for my voice. “I remembered how you didn’t park your car on the street,” she said, so they walked over to the garage. There, they discovered Doll wasn’t in her usual parking spot. Seeing this, Zeus made a prediction. “He said you’d most likely gone back home and I said, ‘Gone back where?’ and he said, ‘Wherever the trouble happened,’ and I said, ‘How do you know so damn much?’ and he said, ‘He had that look,’ and I said, ‘What look, Zeus? And please stop speaking in riddles,’ and he said, ‘The look of someone with loose ends.’ You know, sometimes I think Zeus likes the sounds of words more than their meanings.”

  She paused, finally, and I asked if Zeus was upset. “He doesn’t really get upset—that one knows how to keep his temperature cool. Listen to this: I asked him if we should call the police, and he just sort of shrugged.” I wanted to know what kind of shrug. “Like shrugging because he doesn’t know or shrugging because he doesn’t care?” I asked, and Bevy snorted. “Knowing Zeus,” she said, “probably a little of both—why do you care which one?” I ignored the question and answered one she hadn’t asked yet, telling her I was headed back to Mississippi to take care of some things. “Wait—I thought you were from Tennessee?” she said, and I said, “Yeah, well,” and she clicked her tongue. “I know that’s about as much of an explanation as I can expect.” When she figured out I wasn’t speaking because she was correct, Bevy continued, “I don’t have to know. But if you are going into enemy territory, then I expect you to check in twice a day.” I told her that was too much to require of me, so she lowered the bar. “Okay, hotshot, once a day.” I agreed. “But voice calls only,” she said. “None of this texting bullshit. I like to hear the other person’s voice when I talk to them.”

  Both conversations had drained me. I walked over to Big Tally’s for a cup of coffee and, while there, perused for toiletries in the travel aisle, picking up a toothbrush and a stick of deodorant. The other aisles were stacked with all the delicious foods I avoided in my day-to-day life: powdered doughnuts, cookies, and potato chips, kettle cooked or otherwise, seasoned to taste like everything but a potato. In the end I purchased a greasy sausage from the rotating metal spit by the register, convincing myself it was meat and therefore low in carbs and practically harmless. The heavyset woman behind the register had a name tag that said PEGGY pinned to her chest. She asked me if I’d like anything else. I did. Or, I guess, it’s what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to check out. If I hit the road now, I’d be in Mississippi by evening. That seemed too soon. I asked Peggy if I could extend my stay for an additional night, and she said that would be just fine. She even seemed pleased. Walking back to my room, I ate the sausage in four bites and found I was pleased, too. It was close to noon, and I planned on spending the rest of the day in bed, napping, listening to podcasts, watching free HBO on the room’s outdated TV set. But first, I wanted to call Zeus. Which was surprising. I rarely wanted to call anyone.

  He didn’t answer. Then he shot me a text message: “At movies,” it said.

  “Which movie?” I replied, already knowing.

  “THE movie,” he wrote back.

  “WTF.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Explain.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Try.”

  He didn’t respond anymore. And I didn’t know how to feel about that or if I had any right to be offended. His silence stretched the minutes like taffy. They eked by as I checked, and rechecked, my phone for some acknowledgment from him. Last night I’d slept on top of the covers, my body wallowing in the same clothes I’d been in all day. Now they stank. I filled the sink with warm water and soaked my polo shirt and khaki shorts, then hung them over the shower rod in the bathroom to dry. I did the same for my underwear and socks. In my nakedness, I stood over the air conditioner, the cold air whipping at my balls.

  I checked my phone again: nothing. I rolled down the covers and slid into bed, flicking off the switch to the table lamp. My body, even after years of living in it, was still a mystery to me. I lay in the dark, aroused, my dick so hard it ached to cover it with a thin bedsheet. Zeus’s silence worked on my skin as potently as a caress. I pictured where he was at this exact moment: in a theater, perhaps back at Cinema Station, watching a butchered version of my story unfold. The deep planes of his face made more lovely by the projector’s silvery light blasting from the wall behind him. He slouched in his seat. His faded shirt was hiked back, showing a belly covered in hair, the product of almost two years on testosterone.

  My erotic life existed primarily in the subjunctive. Past encounters filled with disappointment, the fumbling and embarrassment due, in part, to my own clumsiness. The future didn’t promise any change—I was what I was no matter the expertise of the person in bed with me. But when alone, I found great pleasure in thinking about what might have been. Now I lay in my motel room bed revising that night at the movies with Zeus. I didn’t have one of my spells. In this version I didn’t leave my seat to throw up in the bathroom, either, and Zeus kept his mouth ringed around my dick, his eyes wide open and looking directly into mine. The movie playing on the screen was not the movie, but just a movie, something forgettable and routine. It had been a while since I had come, so when I was finished, I felt light-headed, my muscles twitchy and sore as if I’d been swimming laps. I looked at my phone. Still nothing.

  I moved my clothes from the bathroom and draped them over the air-conditioner vent so they’d dry faster, then I stepped into the shower. The hot water pelting my skin made me pink and tender. After drying off, I slipped on my still-damp underwear. The soap had left a sticky residue on my chest. I didn’t feel any cleaner, only layered in perfume. When my phone still had no messages for me, I broke down and sent him another text: “???” I was sure Bevy had filled him in on my whereabouts, so he knew I was safe. I didn’t understand his silence now when before he had been so eager to talk. I only knew I wanted to be busy when he did reach out to me. Nothing seemed more pathetic than waiting for his call like some heartsick teenager. I looked up zoos and museums nearby. All of them were downtown, an area I wanted to avoid because parking was a hassle and nothing made the lonely lonelier than close proximity to small groups of friends laughing and carrying on. An idea came to me, a bolder one: I’d go to the damn movies myself. At least it’s dark enough in a theater to pretend the others seated around you are alone, too.

  I used my phone to find a theater nearby. One was a mile away, near a Walmart Supercenter. The next showing for Proud Flesh was in an hour. Enough time for me to dress. My clothes were dry but carried on them a faint sourness like rot. Before leaving, I pulled Doll up to a gas pump at Big Tally’s and filled her up. Eschewing the card machine attached to the pump, I went inside the store to
pay. I wanted to see Peggy again, maybe tell her I was going to the movies. “Not just any movie,” I’d tell her, “but the movie Hollywood based on something that happened in my life. Can you believe that, Peggy?”

  This conversation would never come to pass. Her shift, I discovered, had ended some time ago. A man named Tom stood behind the register. Pimply and sullen, he removed his earbuds and gave me a stretched-out smile, showing too many teeth. When I handed over my card, he informed me I could’ve paid outside. “You know that, right?” he said, and I acted like I’d forgotten. “Oh, yeah,” I said. He ran my card then asked if I wanted a receipt. I said, “I sure would, Tom!” startling even myself with the enthusiastic sarcasm in my voice.