by Joshua Furst
“Jarod?” The voice quavered less than Cheryl remembered, but its needy whine was as grating as ever.
Afraid that if she did nothing the ho-bag would hobble into the room, Cheryl got up and poked her head around the door to the woman's bedroom. There she was, on the bed as always, but instead of being beached helplessly on her back, she was propped up on pillows against the headboard. Though all the lights were off, a sad little copy of Soap Opera Digest was splayed open on the mattress beside her and the television was tuned to the same stupid travel show Cheryl had been watching in the other room.
“Hi,” Cheryl said, lifting her fingers in an embarrassed little wave.
“Oh, it's you.” Jarod's mother gazed at her blankly.
Leaning against the wall, her hands clutched together behind her back, Cheryl waited for the woman's judgment to come snaking out toward her. The ho-bag. In the TV's ghost light, she was even spookier than Cheryl remembered. Icky was the word, like besides her evident physical ailments, she carried some secret disease around with her, a kind of mental deficiency that couldn't be cured—sadness beyond sadness, terminal hopelessness—and if Cheryl got too close, she'd catch it. She knew exactly how this disease worked. It crept out of your brain, down into your bloodstream and suddenly your body became heavy and useless, a trash bag filled with water that jiggled but wouldn't budge when you tried to lift it. She'd seen me come down with the very same thing, right before I'd exploded that night. Jarod's mom and I were similar people. We both knew the dark secrets for which there were no words. We'd both accidentally exposed these secrets to our children.
“What do you want?” The words shot from the woman's mouth like lugies.
Cheryl refused to say. She didn't have to answer to anyone.
“Where's Jarod?” the woman asked. “Did he bring me my aspirin?”
“He's not here.”
Gazing off, the woman appeared almost wistful.
“You want me to get you some?”
The woman turned spiteful. “You can't really do that if he hasn't bought it yet, can you?”
A wounding confusion jittered through Cheryl. She might as well have been back in middle school, cornered again by that roly-poly busybody girl who wore too much perfume and trapped her in conversations about things she didn't know, things she couldn't have known and did not need to know—which Beanie Babies were worth the most money, that the Teletubbies were gay. Whenever Cheryl admitted her ignorance, the girl would shudder, aghast, and pat her shoulder. “That's okay,” she'd say in a tone that made clear it was very much not okay. Oh, what was her name, I want to say Randi—it ended in an i, I remember that. Her mother was the leader of Cheryl's Brownies troop, and she was as bad as her daughter except she added “dear” to the end of every “That's okay.”
I can't believe I'm forgetting these things. I shouldn't be forgetting these things. They're all I have.
Jarod's mother's eyes were full of distrust and, Cheryl thought, hate. “The ho-bag? Don't worry about her,” Trent had said that first night while they'd been upstairs in Jarod's room. “She doesn't give a fuck what we do.” But she did give a fuck. She cared immensely. Cheryl had heard her come home in the middle of it. And they'd left the dirty sheets for her to find later. She'd figured it out, or maybe Jarod had collapsed in her room and spilled all the emotions he'd hoarded inside himself. Maybe he'd cried. She'd comforted him.
Cheryl wanted to bolt from the room. She could hear Jarod's mom's thoughts hissing through the silence, I haven't forgotten. I might not be able to do anything about it, but that doesn't mean I have to like you.
In self-defense, she said, “Jarod told me I could come by whenever I wanted.”
There was no reaction. The dull contemptuous stare just continued, holding Cheryl in place like a searchlight. She swayed diffidently, waiting to be dismissed. When the woman released her and reached for her magazine, Cheryl fled back into the living room. She wasn't wanted here—but she couldn't bring herself to leave.
Sitting on the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest, she let herself sink into unhappy thoughts of me. This was where she always went when she was upset. The events of her life were arranged in a spiral, spinning faster than she could keep up with, and when she tried to stop their vertiginous movement, she found that the void at their center, the dark outline that was sucking them in, had the contours of my silhouette. Whatever kindness she'd felt toward me before was gone now. Ruined by the ho-bag's self-pity and scorn. The good me, the reasonable one who knew how to listen and was careful to preserve the balance between watching her passively and guiding her along, had been corrupted again, turned green and ghoulish by the associations she'd found between myself and this woman.
If only she could think of somewhere else to go, somewhere she wouldn't immediately want to flee. She could hop a train. It couldn't be that hard. Stupider, more strung-out kids than her did it all the time. But trains reminded her of that sad Tom Waits song Trent had played for her back when he'd still thought she was worth impressing. They'd been hopped up on some meth he'd picked up from she had no idea where, and he'd been doing his DJ thing, playing song after song after song after song, each one the greatest piece of music in the world. “It's the lyrics,” he'd say. “They're fucking so fucking great. Listen.” And then he'd talk through them. “No, wait, listen.” He'd start the song over and proceed to talk through them again, explaining each line, shaking his head in rapture. “You hear it? Don't you think it's the fucking greatest thing ever?” Cheryl would nod, because regardless of how good the song actually was, she thought he was the greatest thing in the world. The one by Tom Waits really was pretty great, though, about a bunch of scraggly little kids protecting each other from a brutal society. She could only remember the last couple of lines: something something all the way down the drain to New Orleans in the rain.
And New Orleans was right there on the TV in front of her. This could be a sign, but she didn't believe in them. Signs and symbols and the resonances they contained, that was my arena. She refused to trust anything that wasn't real.
She zapped the TV off—its glimmer was only making her feel more hollow—and sat in the gray light that filtered in through the windows, picking dog hairs one by one off the couch, berating herself for still, unbelievably, being hung up on Trent.
In the kitchen, on top of the fridge, she found a carton of Pep-peridge Farm goldfish, and under the sink, a bottle of Gordon's Gin. She poured a shot into a Burger King/Lion King giveaway glass and carried it and the goldfish back to her nest on the couch. There, she killed the time with handfuls of greasy, smiling crackers, washing them down with sips of piney liquor. Sip after sip. She didn't want to be falling-down drunk, she just wanted to be what she and her friends called happy, to occupy herself with something other than thought.
By the time Jarod finally got home, she'd gone through a third of the bottle, rationing it out in ever larger slugs. This'll be the last one, she'd told herself, screwing the cap back on after each pour until finally she'd just brought the bottle in with her so she could drink straight from the source.
“Jarod!” she said. “Have some gin!”
He was carrying a load of shopping bags, brown paper inside of white plastic. Food stuff—not junk food, not Pringles or Ding Dongs or anything she'd want to eat, but bread and eggs and cartons of juice and milk—bulged out of the pinched openings. Cocking his head and squinting for a second, he registered her presence, then wandered into the kitchen. The light came on. She heard rustlings and plops as he unloaded the bags, the refrigerator door opening and closing.
She took another gulp from the gin. Then, reminding herself not to act drunk, she hopped off the couch and headed after him with the glass in one hand and the bottle slung low in the other. “Have some gin!” she said again, leaping up to sit on the lip of the sink. She was suddenly, absurdly giddy “What's with all the food?”
Ignoring her, he continued to unpack, organizing items by kitchen loca
tion and making space for them where they belonged. There was butter and clementines and baby carrots. He took a bottle of Advil from a bag and set it on the table apart from the food.
“It's like you're a suburban dad or something, I mean, not like mine, but like somebody else's.”
He glanced at her and returned to the fridge with a block of American cheese slices. “Where'd you get that gin?” he said.
“It was here.”
She picked the bottle up off the counter and studied its label, then poured a couple fingers into her glass. “Here, have some. It gets better the more you drink it.”
“It's my mother's.”
“So?”
“So, you shouldn't be drinking it.” He was suddenly so proper.
The giddiness began to deflate inside of her. She gulped down a mouthful of the gin and stared into her glass. A small fleck of black floated there, but she didn't bother to fish it out. “Don't tell me you're pissed at me too,” she said quietly.
“I'm not pissed. You just shouldn't be drinking it.”
There was something strong about him today that she didn't remember being there before, like he'd figured out a way in which to be less lost. It made her jealous. The whole point of Jarod had been that he was one of the few people she knew who was weaker than her.
“Hi, Jarod,” she said with theatrical sarcasm. “How are you? I'm cool, Cheryl, how about you? Oh, you know, I'm alright. Sort of shitty, but you know, whatever. Life sucks, then you die or whatever, right? Thanks for asking, though. It's nice to know at least one person cares about what's going on in my pathetic little life.”
“If you drink all her liquor there won't be any left for her and then she won't be able to get to sleep.” He knelt down and dug around in the back of the fridge. “Here,” he said, pulling out a can of Busch. “Drink this.”
Cheryl popped the tab and took a swig. It was cold and fizzy and it tasted like aluminum. She watched him clear cans of refried beans and tuna off the table and wondered if she should offer to help. “I talked to the ho-bag a little bit ago,” she said. “She's pissed at me, isn't she?”
“Don't call her that.”
“Why not? You do.”
“Not anymore.”
This news struck Cheryl as hilarious. Beer sloshed from the lip of the can as she laughed, dripped onto her wrist, her jeans, the floor. “Since when?”
He hedged. He withdrew. His face went flat.
She reached out and flicked at his shoulder, but missed. “Since when?” she said again, then teasing, “Don't tell me you've gone all goody-goody on me.”
“Can you just not call her that?” He'd stopped what he was doing to stand in front of her, shoulders slumped, a jar of store-brand spaghetti sauce in his hand. He looked like he was pleading for mercy.
“Anyway,” Cheryl said, “she hates me.”
Jarod shrugged and went back to stacking things in the cupboard.
“She does, right? What did you say to her?”
He was doing his I'm-so-wounded-that-I-can't-speak thing again.
“I know you talked to her. What did you say?”
As he passed her on the way to the fridge, she punched his bicep. “What's the big fucking deal? Just tell me what you said.”
She didn't think she'd hit him hard, but his response was to brace himself, legs wide, and shove back with all his might. The beer flew across the room and ricocheted off the lip of the counter. Cheryl went sprawling onto the wet floor.
“Jesus Christ, Cheryl, I didn't say anything!” He was shouting at her. “We talked about me and her, okay? And I don't want you to call her ho-bag. She's not a ho-bag. She's just … hurt.”
She picked herself up and slumped into a chair, laid her head on the cold white Formica of the table.
“Everything isn't always about you,” he said.
She tried not to move. When Jarod had arrived, she'd started having fun. She wasn't anymore.
“I know,” she said. “Nothing's ever about me. I'm—” Something large and sharp was stuck in her throat. She tried to swallow, but it wouldn't go down. It hurt. Insignificant. Nothing, she'd been planning to say.
The table was empty except for the Advil.
She knew he didn't understand what he'd said. He was confused, afraid. He regretted having shoved her. But she knew she deserved it. She wondered how hard it would be to get him to hurt her—to really hurt her.
He plucked the Advil off of the table, and pausing on his way out of the room, placed a hand softly between her shoulder blades. She shuddered. She yanked at the ring in her lip with her teeth. Though he had very little will of his own, he was kind. He'd been sort of nice to his dog. He was devoted to his mother the ho-bag. That was worth something.
The gin buzz was gone. Now Cheryl was tired. Numb. The cool Formica was soothing on her forehead. She concentrated on that while Jarod was off in the other room with his mother.
“WANNA GET STONED?” he said when he returned.
He led her out the back door and they sat on the mound of concrete that served as a stoop there. After double-checking that the door was shut tight, he sparked up the joint he had lodged behind his ear.
“Smoking outside. That's new,” she said.
As he pulled on the joint, his neck stretched forward like he was straining to grab something just out of reach with his teeth. He was concentrating and gave no sign that he'd even heard Cheryl.
“Did the—” She stopped herself. “Your mother suddenly wig out on you or something?”
Jarod shrugged.
“Does Trent know you're here?” he asked, holding the joint out between his thumb and forefinger, pinched inside an okay sign.
“Can we just not talk about Trent?”
“I guess that's a no.”
She took a deep pull off the joint and held her breath. “So what if he doesn't?” she said, the smoke leaking out around her words. “I don't belong to him. Really, though. Your mom's got something against me, doesn't she?”
“She's got something against everyone.”
“Did she—” She dropped it, reminding herself not to fixate on her paranoia. “Did you guys hire a maid or something?”
“You think we have the money to hire a maid?”
“Everything's so clean.”
“She's been getting up off her fat ass every once in a while and doing shit.”
“Your mom?”
Jarod nodded. “Since she lost her job.”
“Yeah, I heard about that.”
He threw her a suspicious glance.
“Trent told me.”
Taking a risk, she reached out and patted him on the shoulder, but when his muscles seized up under her touch, she pulled away again.
“The fuckers won't even let her get unemployment. You have to be fired for that.”
“Trent said she was fired.”
“That's because Trent doesn't pay attention. He'll sort of listen, but he's really just looking for something to be pissed about.” He gauged her reaction. “Sorry … It's true, though.”
The tight little smile frozen on her face hid her insecurity. She wasn't sure, but she sensed that she and Jarod were falling into a kind of intimacy. Edging ever closer to admitting that they'd abandoned something—she'd abandoned something—when she'd run off to Sabotage with Trent. “He's a dick,” she said. “You can say anything you want to about him. What's this I heard about your mom's knee?”
“It got all swelled up again. What's it called. Gout. And for like a week, she couldn't walk at all.”
“That's happened before, though, right? I mean—”
With another shrug, which both downplayed the importance of what he was saying and deflected any further questions from her, Jarod explained, “And they replaced her while she was out because she didn't call in sick. It's not the same as being fired because when they do the paperwork or whatever, they call it 'abandonment.'” He made little quotes with his fingers.
“That suck
s.”
“Yeah, well, they don't want to have to pay her unemployment.”
So, this was why he was working at Rainbow Foods and why he hadn't come around the café much—it really hadn't been Cheryl's whatever with Trent. And this was the reason the dog had to die too. Jarod's whole life was centered around his mom. She understood that she was stretching, that the reasons Jarod had transformed from the lethargic adolescent she'd first met into the serious young man sitting next to her were too complex to be cracked this easily. For a moment, she felt an empathetic urge to raise herself up to his new sober demeanor, but this urge passed quickly, leaving a ghostly regret in its place.
Something rustled in the tree growing through the chain-link fence at the far edge of the yard. When she peered, all she could see were the dense leaves swaying slightly.
“She should go on disability,” she said.
“She's not eligible.”
“Just look at her! It's not like it's hard to tell she's fucked-up.”
“You need insurance and paperwork and shit like that.”
“She should sue.”
“Cheryl, fuck! Can't you shut up about this for a while?”
Here, she now realized, was the essential difference between Jarod and Trent. Where Jarod sadly wondered at the injustice of it all, letting the world push him in one mystifying direction after another, Trent would know exactly how and why whatever was thwarting him had occurred. He'd know how disability worked. He'd have researched it on the Internet and written to the federal government or the city or the state or wherever for the official forms he needed to file his complaints and get what he wanted. He'd throw a tantrum, fight so long and hard that he no longer remembered who he was fighting against. Anger flared like a match in her. Trent might know how to shout and smash shit up, but Jarod knew how to endure.
The joint in her hand had gone out while they talked. She relit it and took another long drag. The dry leaves crackled. A seed hidden inside popped. She handed it back to Jarod. He was shrinking into himself in the same wounded way he had that afternoon at Sabotage, disappearing into the sweatshirt bulked up around his ears. Moist brown veins crawled up the thin paper as he pulled on the joint, causing it to canoe. Licking his fingers, he concentrated like a different kind of kid than he was, a kid more likely to hulk over model airplanes or die-cast figurines of dwarves and wizards. He delicately ministered to the joint in his hand, rolling it in his fingertips and rubbing spit like lotion into the quick-burning paper.
