by Steve Almond
I felt I deserved Astrid. I worked hard in school, and during the summers. I worked hard at listening to people, and helping them, and I had a mom who was difficult to live with, crazy, and this craziness carried a kind of taint that I had to battle against all the time, to convince everyone, myself included, that I was just a normal kid, maybe a little goofy, but normal.
“The guy’s a jerk,” I said. “Milikan. He doesn’t know a good thing when he sees it. Really. He’s making a big mistake.”
“You’re sweet,” she said.
“Really. He acts like he’s God’s gift. You should hear the way he talks.”
This was a mistake. Astrid’s eyes sharpened. “What does he say?”
“Oh, you know. Just the standard bullshit.”
“Does he talk about the girls he’s scammed on?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Nothing like that. He talks about other guys’ girlfriends, how a particular girl looked at a party. Shit like that.”
Astrid seemed relieved and then, in the space of a sigh, simply tired of worrying the situation. She was a big, cheerful girl and some of that cheer was obviously in place as a way of holding dark feelings at bay.
“Hey,” she said, “when’re you heading out?”
“Beginning of September.”
“Psyched?”
“Yeah, I guess. It’ll be good to get out of Nashua.”
We were right in front of Astrid’s house, a house I used to pass every day on my way back from grade school. It was a green colonial, two stories high. I’d been inside a couple of times, for parties. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a big shot in the PTA who made unbelievably good cupcakes. When I was a little kid I imagined it would be nice to have Astrid as a girlfriend because I could have those cupcakes whenever I liked. My mom didn’t bake.
“I’m jealous,” Astrid said, and sighed. “I’d like to get out of this whole county.”
“State’ll be cool,” I said. “I mean, there’ll be plenty of people you know.”
“That’s the problem,” she said. “Everywhere I go around here I already know everybody.”
“Just think of it as an option,” I said. “You can hang out with them, if you want. But they’ll be plenty of new people.”
“Right,” she announced. “The best way to be a grown-up is to be a grown-up.”
I was hoping for an invitation to come inside, or at least sit on her porch. She might want some company, and we could shoot the breeze in the way grown-ups do, talking into the night, having some wine and cheese, maybe. Sophisticated food. And then, when the time came, one or the other of us would make a very sophisticated reference to getting ready for bed, and we would go about our business like nothing special was going to happen, just two grown-ups getting ready to have consensual intercourse.
“Listen, Tommy, thanks for walking me home. You’re the best. Really. You should go see about the philosopher.” Astrid gave me a quick hug and I looked into her round face for something, anything, beyond friendship. Her lipstick was crumbling at the edges.
The quick hug was the worst, most deadly sign of friendship. It showed just how little physical contact could mean. Even cold shoulders were better than quick hugs, Holden maintained, because they at least signified some sort of tension.
I was sure Valentino never got a quick hug.
There wasn’t much left of the party by the time I arrived. A few couples were lumbering to some old Lionel Richie song. Liz Wheaton herself was in tears for some reason and her friends were huddled around her. The keg was suds. A snub-nosed little blond who had once kissed Holden at a junior high dance and never forgiven him looked up when I opened the gate. “If it isn’t the fucking Good Humor man,” she said.
I stood there on that lawn and stared at the drunk dancing couples and the few guys picking at chips and felt an intense need to be free of it all. It was like Astrid said: everywhere I went, I knew everybody, and they knew me. I was the sweet, skinny kid who scooped ice cream in a smudged white shirt, who got put into soccer games at the end, when it no longer mattered.
I was happy to see Holden’s car in front of my house. He could tell me what happened at the party, at least. I put my bike away and slipped in through the garage door. I didn’t like to make too much noise because my mom was a light sleeper. Anything you did might wake her up.
I flicked on the light in my room but Holden wasn’t there. Then I heard a door close down the hall. I bumped right into him in the hallway.
“Hey dude,” he said. His shirt was unbuttoned and he stunk of beer.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Nothing,” Holden said. “I decided to crash over here, thas all. Too lit to drive home.”
“Who let you in?”
“Your ma.”
I didn’t like the way Holden kept angling his face away.
“Were you in there?” I pointed to my mom’s room.
“Shit, dude. Lemme take a piss.” Holden ducked into the bathroom. I reached for the doorknob but Holden held it shut. “I’ll be out inna sec,” he said. “Just hold on.”
I knocked on my mom’s door, but there was no answer. Holden took what sounded like the world’s longest piss. Finally, he appeared in the doorway.
He held up his hands, like the light from my desk lamp was hurting him. Then I saw that one eye was all red and swollen. His lip was swollen too.
“Fuck, dude, what happened?”
Holden touched his lip. “You ever been punched? Man, gettin’ punched sucks.”
“Who punched you?”
“Aw shit. My head really hurts. I wanna go sleep. Lemme go sleep.” He leaned into my room and slumped against the wall and slid down, until he sat with his head between his knees.
“He hit you, didn’t he?”
Holden stayed where he was and waved his arm a bit. I could see that his knuckles were bruised, and I hoped that meant he’d gotten in a few shots of his own.
“Yeah,” Holden said quietly.
“Why’d he hit you?”
Holden’s head, with all its shaggy hair, bobbed a bit. Then it stopped. “I was lit,” he said. “Whatever. I talked back. I told him what I really thought. Christ he hits hard.”
“Did you call the cops? The cops could arrest him for hitting a minor.”
“No. No cops.”
“So that’s why you came back here? You were talking with my mom?”
“Yeah,” Holden said. His head began bobbing again and I could hear wet breath rattling through his nose. From down the hall, I heard my mother start wailing. Then Holden began crying too.
There are moments when life requires you to rise to the occasion of some deep, otherwise irrational understanding. This is what separates friendship from acquaintance, kindness from consideration, grace from goodness, maybe, and in the sound of both of them, Holden and my mother, weeping and weeping in the small house where I had grown up, in our shitass town, on this too-warm July night, with snot dripping from Holden’s nose onto his bloodstained shirt, I saw how desperate he was. The feeling of a life going nowhere, of being an enemy in his own home, of having no place to put his thoughts or feelings except into sad, overblown theories, his desire to replace one mother for another, and, in a moment of weakness, his desire to touch and be touched, and all the anger, and how all these feelings might make him want to do something taboo and full of betrayal. I understood all of this. I even wanted to forgive him. But I knew also that I needed to get out of the house, needed to get away from the two of them, to clear my head.
“You’re in pretty rough shape,” I said. “Why don’t you take the bed.”
“Hey Tommy,” he said. “Yer the best, man. I gotta tell you something, okay?”
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“No, lemme tell you man. Hey man.”
“I’m gonna go get the fan. Go to sleep.”
“No man, you listen to this, man! You’re my best friend and you gotta listen.
” Holden was hyperventilating. I didn’t know what to do. I stood in the doorway with my chest clenching and unclenching.
Holden tried to get up. He wanted to address me face to face. But his legs gave way and he hit the carpet and lay there palming his forehead. “All that stuff about Valentino,” he said. “That stuff was bullshit. I made it up, okay? Valentino was born beautiful. He was a beautiful fuckin’ little baby.” Holden looked up for a sec. His eyes were wet and starting to blacken. “Look, your ma and me were jus talkin.”
“Sure,” I said. “Go to sleep.”
I slipped outside and let my feet march me through the neighborhood I knew so well that even the cracks in the sidewalks seemed reminders of a history I did not want, that I was going to have to rewrite anyway. I got the idea that I wanted to see my old grade school. I did this sometimes, late at night. Or had done this, anyway, in the days after my dad left. I liked how small everything seemed, small and peaceful, the playground stuff and the murals and even the doors to the classrooms.
The lights were out at Astrid’s house, but I walked over to the window I was pretty sure was hers and knocked. I tried to imagine what it was like inside her room, what it smelled like and where the bed was, and what the sheets felt like. I saw a light flick on and after a minute a hand cleared the curtain away. For a second I thought I’d fucked up, because the face hovering behind the pane looked saggy and webbed. Then I saw the volleyball T-shirt and realized it was Astrid after all, only that she was tired.
When she saw me her shoulders fell a bit. She cranked open the window. “Tommy. What are you doing?”
“Hey,” I said. “I’m heading over to Palmer. You know, to the playground, to hang out. It’s quiet over there, and I thought, you know, you might want to come.”
The lamp behind her was shining through her T-shirt. I could see the outline of her chest, each breast swelling over her ribs, and I guess I must have been staring because she went and got a robe and came back and sat on the sill. “It’s late, Tommy.” She yawned. “I was sleeping.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
She yawned again. I worried she was going to ask me to leave.
“You’re going to Palmer?” she said. “Why’re you going there?” She peered at me more carefully now. “What’s going on, Tommy?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I just wanted to talk.”
Astrid played with the belt on her robe, ran it between two fingers, let it fall. “Do we have to go to Palmer?” she said. “It’s creepy over there. I don’t like the apartments near there. Just come around to the porch.”
“Sure,” I said. “Cool.”
“Shhhh. Quiet down, Tommy. If my dad hears you, he’ll kill me.”
“Sorry. Sorry.”
I went around and sat on the porch swing, and thought about the last time I had been on that porch, which was five years ago, at a big Memorial Day picnic. My mom had her hair piled on top of her head, and a summer dress, and fresh lipstick every time she turned around. All the girls from my year in school were there, and Holden in his sad little leisure suit. I watched my mother lean over the table to serve potato salad. Her arm moved like a swan’s neck and her lips were the wings of butterflies and I can see now that it took a lot of effort for her to look as put together as she did. It was days like that, I guess, that kept my dad around a couple more years.
But now Astrid was padding toward the door and I looked down and arranged myself, sort of puffed my crotch and finger-combed my hair. Astrid had her robe on and a baseball cap. She looked around and then sat down on the wicker chair across from me.
“What’s going on?” she whispered. “You’re acting weird, Tommy.”
“Weird?”
“Knocking on my window like that. You nearly broke the glass.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You were so upset before.”
“And this thing of going over to Palmer? What kind of crazy thing is that to do?”
I was glad Astrid hadn’t turned on any lights, because the way she said this rattled me. Her tone reminded me of my dad during his visits, the way he questioned me, as if frisking my heart for sorrow. What I’d envisioned when I woke Astrid was this romantic scene which would involve her realizing that she loved me, or at least liked me enough to take off her clothes. And also, later, afterward, that she would understand me, that I might be able to put my head in her lap and explain some of the things that had happened and the feelings I was having.
But now it was going the other direction and I was having to realize that I’d had all these crazy desires, and that they were just that: crazy. That rather than being rescued by the love of Astrid Miller, I was actually exposing myself in a foolish way, and this was dangerous. I felt like I might start bawling. “I was just worried about you,” I said quietly. “You know, you’re usually a pretty happy person, a strong person, and I wanted to make sure you were okay, that’s all.”
“I’m fine,” she said. I could tell she wanted to say something more, to maybe defend herself from so much caretaking. But what she said was this: “How’s your mom?”
I don’t know how much she knew about my home situation, but she must have known some because her dad worked at the clinic where my mom got her medication.
I said nothing.
“I used to think about your mom,” she said. “She is such a beautiful woman. Is she all right, Tommy? Is that what this is about?”
I felt something shutter up inside me and shook my head and tried to laugh. “No. It’s like I told you, I just wanted to talk. No big deal.”
Astrid nodded.
I tried to make my mind go blank, and when that didn’t work I heard myself say, “Listen, Ast, I just wanted to tell you a story. That’s the truth. As I was walking back to my house I was thinking about this story I heard recently. About Valentino. Rudolph Valentino.”
“The old movie star?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed, and waited for my voice to firm up. “Do you know anything about Valentino?”
It was a warm night in Nashua and the crickets were sawing away on their legs, and I could see, for a moment, that I was going to leave it all behind, that I didn’t have much longer, and that made the night, with its dark air and failed moon, almost beautiful. And then Astrid did something that was also quite beautiful, something that probably saved my life, in the sense that I could keep it in my memory forever, and return to it, and let it stand against everything else that seemed so awfully true at that moment.
She loosened the strap of her robe and pulled it open a bit and fanned herself, and I could see the tops of her breasts there, rising from the white of her chest. And she nodded at me, nodded me forward, and I saw from her expression that this was like a gift she was giving me, a final gift, and I got up slowly and knelt down before her. And she closed her eyes and took my head in her hands and moved me against her skin, which was warm and smooth and smelled like lotion. And she said, “Tell me.” And I said, “Tell you what?” And she said, “Tell me what you were going to tell me. Tell me about Valentino.”
How to Love a Republican
I met Darcy Hicks early in the primary season, at a dive in Randolph, New Hampshire. She was sitting at the bar in a blue skirt, sipping from a tumbler and looking bored. The locals had hit on her already. But they were missing it. Her edges were too crisp for the room. Her makeup was nearly invisible.
The stool next to her opened up and I sat down. A Kenny Loggins tune came on the jukebox and the bartender began to sing along. Darcy glanced at her drink, trying to decide whether another would make matters better or worse. I’d had a miserable day and was feeling sorry for myself, lonely, a little reckless. I introduced myself and asked her please not to take offense if I bought her a drink.
Darcy turned slowly. In profile she had seemed dangerously icy. But straight on her face was sweet and a little flushed.
“Jack and ginger,” she said.
I ordered two.
It turned
out we were both in New Hampshire doing issue work. Darcy was pitching agricultural subsidies to the Republicans; I was pitching drug counseling to the Dems. I’d spent the past week trolling rehab centers, listening to earnest social workers and sad, unconvincing ex-junkies. At night, I squeezed into the tiny hotel bathtub and tried to wash the smoke out of my pores. Darcy was faring no better. She’d twisted her ankle that morning touring a derelict strawberry farm.
“Who farms here?” she said. “What would they farm, granite?”
“Maybe they thought they’d sent you to Vermont.”
She shook her head. “There are no Republicans in Vermont.”
The truth is, we were on the fringes of the campaign, miles from the action; our duties were more ceremonial than anything. But there was in each of us the bug of politics, a talky competitiveness, a desire to impose our sense of right on the world. We carried, along with our clattery Beltway cynicism and our Motorolas, a tremendous vulnerability to hope. And now, as we talked and drank, this vulnerability became shared property, like the pack of Camel Lights that lay between us, or the tales of Model UN coups, the geeky adolescent versions of our adult passion.
Outside, the December night was crisp. A fog had rolled in and lay draped over the pine barrens like gauze. We stood beside my rental car, shivering, swinging a little. Darcy was packed neatly into her blue cotton blend. Her hair was the color of wet straw and fell to her clavicle. A flower belonged behind her ear. Kissing her seemed the most uncomplicated decision I had made in years.
So there was that, an evening of esprit de corps, some very fine necking in the great hither and yon of the electorate. Back in D.C., the situation was a little less clear.
Darcy worked at the Fund For Tradition, a think tank devoted to—as the swanky, four-color pamphlets told it—fiscal restraint and the defense of traditional values. I was at Citizen Action, a relic of the LBJ era. We didn’t have pamphlets. Our mission was to lobby the halls of power on behalf of the disenfranchised. To piss, in other words, up the mighty tree of capitalism.
We conducted the same basic life at a slightly different amplitude. The brutal hours of apprenticeship, the hasty lunches and reports whose sober facts gummed our thoughts. We were both involved with other people, people more like ourselves, who satisfied us in a placid way. I might never have seen her again. Except that I did.
