“I think I don’t want to miss that party,” he said. “Do you think she’ll really come? I mean, if it’s her. It’s probably—”
“If we invite her right,” I said, “and if it’s her. But the thing is, Al, you’re our only chance for Pensieri.”
“What?”
“For the cookies. You gotta have that in the shop, right? It’s weird and Italian.”
“So everything about the stolen-sugar whatevers will be stolen?”
“Well—”
“Because there’s no way my dad’s giving us a bottle of that. They’re like seventy-something dollars, made from rare baby plums or something.”
“Have you ever had it?”
“If I’d had it, Min,” Al said, gentle and sighing, “it would have been with you. You’re the only one.”
“So you’ll get it for me? Us?”
Al looked at his watch. “Now would be a good time, actually. We’ll take the truck, I have the keys.”
“Will you get in trouble?”
“Nah, I do the inventory now. They’ll never notice, nobody buys that stuff.”
“Thank you, Al.”
“Sure.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, thank you. For tonight, all of it.”
Al gave that sigh again. “What’s,” he said, “the use of friendship?”
Ed, I’ll tell you what’s the use of friendship, because we never were friends. The use is racing off into the night, is what the use is. Rolling down the windows, the rained-out air in our faces all the way to the shop. The use is the good talking, and the not talking as we got there. The use is the fun bicker of what the best robbery movie is as we slipped into the shop and the hilarity at the final right answer, Catty Cat and the Cat Burglar, which we saw together in second grade and never forgot, the badly animated cape of Catty Cat, the British voice of villain Doghouse Wiley, the theme song, Catty Cat, Catty Cat, cape and boots and crazy hat, fighting crime, doin’ fine, would you take a look at that?, singing it down the darkened aisles of the shop, casting the shadows of strange bottles in our path, the imported shapes of oil and pickled whatnot and skyscraper square boxes of pasta, salamis swinging like bats sleeping upside down over the cash register, the green-red-white neon stripes on the clock shining on the baby photo of Al, huge and faded, up on the wall. This is what the use of friendship is, Ed: Al coming down from the stepladder, leaning so close I thought, was afraid for a sec, he would kiss me, sliding this bottle cold and dusty into my hands.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
He waved it away, but then, “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah. Look at this label.”
“Min, why didn’t we ever talk like this before?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you went out with Joe for how long, and you never asked me anything about what would a guy think.”
“Well, but Joe was like you. Us.”
“No, he wasn’t. Not to me, anyway.”
“You liked him, I thought.”
Al put the ladder away. “Min, Joe was a manipulative dick.”
“What?”
“Yes.”
“You never—”
“I can tell you now.”
“You said you had no opinion. When we broke up, that’s what you said.”
“I know what I said.”
“Well, do you know what you’re saying? I asked you something tonight, and now it’s like I don’t know if I can trust it, what you told me.”
“What?”
“Don’t what? like that. Al, I’m going out with Ed Slaterton. I think I—I told you I love him and you are my best friend and I want to know you’re not a liar about it.”
“Stop this. You say this when you’re holding an expensive bottle I stole from my dad for your scheme?”
“I thought it was our scheme,” I said. “Al, what do you think of my boyfriend and don’t say no opinion.”
“Don’t ask me then. Because I don’t know him.”
“Don’t lie to me. You don’t like him.”
“I don’t know him.”
“It was him tearing down that poster, right? It was just a poster, Al.”
“Min.”
“Or the jukebox at Cheese Parlor, but you can’t blame him for that, because you guys, Lauren especially, were totally—”
“Min, no.”
“Then what?”
“What what?”
“What,” I said firmly, “do you think of him?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“I am asking you.”
And Ed, I never told you what he said. He didn’t say he had no opinion. He had an opinion.
The night broke apart then, and I never told you about it, and now it’s scarcely something I can put in order—shouting outside the shop, knocking over one of the displays, Al’s insistence, the way he gets when he decides this time he will not be, not be, not! Be! Wrong! Crying on the bus, realizing it was the wrong bus goddamnit, Al calling after me in the parking lot not to be an idiot. Me, being an idiot, slamming into the house, waking up my mother. Al mad and silent, the door of the shop open and the lights on to clean up the mess. Nothing like a movie, nothing I like, telling my stupid mother I was with Al and that she doesn’t have to fucking worry about that anymore, it would never, never happen again. Asleep. Crying. Throwing my clothes off, putting the bottle carefully in the drawer, it not fitting in the drawer, getting a box from the basement. Shrieking “Nothing!” at my mother, crying. Slamming the basement door, wiping my nose. I never told you any of this. Emptying the drawer into the box, muttering out loud to myself. Asleep, crying again, a bad dream. And then the phone ringing in the morning and it was you, Ed.
“Min, I tried to call you before.”
“What?”
“Last night. But I couldn’t—it just rang, so I hung up.”
“I was with a friend.”
“Oh.”
I sighed. “Or maybe—”
“Joan’s gone.” You sounded hoarse. “She’ll be gone all day and my mom’s at the Center and I want to talk to you. Can you come over?”
I swear I was walking in your door before I hung up the phone, looking at you. You looked a wreck, your eyes angry and unslept. I put the Pensieri down on the table, but you didn’t even look at it, circling around like you were on the court, kitchen-hallway-living room-kitchen, sweaty. I felt crazed to see you, each glimpse of your eyes a reply, a new win of the argument against Al, my mother, anybody in the whole world, all the liars, everybody and everyone.
“Listen,” you said, “I want to say sorry about what Joan did. I couldn’t believe it when I woke up and you were gone.”
I’d almost forgotten about it, sort of. “That’s OK.”
You slapped a bookcase. “No, it isn’t. She shouldn’t have done that shit.”
“You had a family thing, it’s OK.”
“Ha!” Ed said. I couldn’t help it, it made me giggle. You gave me a grin, surprised, a sharp smile, and said it again. “Ha!”
“Ha!”
“Ha! You want to know what a family thing is, for Joan? It’s, she wants to talk to me, so she sends my friends away. It’s such bullshit, a family thing. My mom is who she got it from, but it’s not working, she’s not my mom.” You looked scared, for some reason, to say that, a look I’d seen you get at practice when Coach blew the whistle and you thought maybe you’d screwed up and you were in trouble.
“It’s OK,” I said.
“I mean, she could have waited, you know, to talk to me. But of course she couldn’t, because she’s out all day today! With Andrea! But if it’s my girlfriend, then throw her out of the house because we have to talk right this minute!”
“What did she want to talk to you about?”
You stopped pacing and sat down real sudden on a chair in the corner. And then got up, almost comical, like a Piko and Son movie, except you weren’t switching hats with anybody. “Listen,” you said. �
��I want to tell you something.”
“OK.” This was about your mom, I decided, wrong again Ed, wrong always is what I idiot am.
“What she wanted to say was that with you I was, that we’re going too fast is what she said. You told her about the movie-star thing and she knew I’m not like that and she said it was one thing with, like, the other girls I go out with, before. But that you were so smart and like, I don’t know, inexperienced is what she said, but not like that, you know?”
“Yes,” I said, my stomach on the floor. You were dumping me because your sister said so?
“And, OK, I see what she means, but she doesn’t, Min, know what she’s talking about. She’s so, everybody’s so stupid, you know? Christian too, Todd, whoever says stupid things, you’re from different worlds, like you dropped here in a spaceship.”
I had to say something. “Yeah,” I said. “So—?”
“So they can fuck themselves,” you said. “I don’t care, you know?”
I felt a smile on my face, tears too.
“Because Min, I know, OK? I’m stupid I know, about faggy movies, sorry, fuck, I’m stupid about that too. No offense. Ha! But I want to do it, Min. Any party you want, anything, not go to bonfires. Whatever you want to do, for the eighty-ninth birthday, even though I can’t remember the name.”
“Lottie Carson.” I stepped close to you, but you held your hands out, you weren’t done.
“And they’ll say things, right? I know they will, of course they will. Your friends are, probably, too, right?”
“Yes,” I said. I felt furious, or furiously something, pacing with you and waiting to fall into your moving arms.
“Yes,” you said, with a huge grin. “Let’s stay together, I want to be with you. Let’s. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Because I don’t care, virginity, different, arty, weird parties with bad cake, that igloo. Just together, Min.”
“Yes.”
“Like everyone is telling us not to be.”
“Yes!”
“Because Min, listen, I love you.”
I gaped.
“Don’t, you don’t have to—I know it’s crazy, Joan says I’ve really lost it, but—”
“I love you too,” I said.
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ve been wanting to,” I said, “say it. But everyone says—”
“Yeah,” you said. “Me too. But I do.”
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t care what they say about it, any word of what they say.”
“I love you,” you said again, and then you stopped and we went at it, laughing and hungry on the sofa with our mouths open in a long, desperate kiss, sliding off to the floor, which was hard, ouch, too hard without the cushions there. We were laughing. We kissed more, but it was uncomfortable on the floor.
“What happened to the cushions?”
“Joan did that too,” you said. “But fuck that and fuck her.”
I laughed.
“What do you want to do now, Min?”
“I want to try the Pensieri.”
You blinked. “What?”
“The liquor for the cookies,” I said. “I got it. I want to try it.” I hoped you wouldn’t ask where I got it, and you didn’t, so I never told you.
“The liquor for the cookies,” you said. “OK. Yes. Where is it?”
I went and got it, no glasses, just twisted at the top until it was open and the strange rich smell was in my face, like wine but with something running through it, herbal or mineral, dazzling and weird. “You first,” I said, and handed it over. You frowned into the bottle, then smiled at me and took a slow swig and immediately spat it out down your T-shirt.
“Criminy!” you shrieked. “That is, what is that? It tastes like somebody killed a spicy fig. What’s in that?”
I was laughing too hard to answer. You grinned and threw off your T-shirt. “I don’t even want to touch it! Criminy, it’s on my pants!” You tried to pour the bottle into my shrieky mouth, spilled it on my top. I squealed and grabbed it, threatening Pensieri everywhere like a hand grenade, you undid your pants smiling, I felt the liquor sticky on my skin and put the bottle down, took off my shirt without unbuttoning it, a ripping sound, a button skittering under the television, heaving there in my bra, laughing at you struggling with the last bit of your jeans. I’ve seen Now Calls the Wilderness on the big screen, Ed, I’ve seen a fully restored print of The Acrobats. I have never seen anything so very beautiful as you in your underwear like a little boy, then naked, hooting with laughter, the drink a streak on your chest, excited, looking at me in the living room. I kept that beautiful sight deep inside me, all the way home hours later, the Pensieri in the pocket of the coat I bought you, which you gave back to me because the weather had gotten cold and worse, wrapping me in what you’d never wear again, buttoning it so it might hide my ruined top, all the way home thinking of your laughing naked face. Nothing else came close. Not even what you managed to do with me later, breathless and open and flushed after I answered your next question, patient with your fingers and your mouth so warm on me I could not tell one from the other, what no boy could ever pull off because no boy asked so sweet and happily for help, as terrific and gasping as it was, not even that overcame the sight of you there laughing. I never told you that, even after telling you I love you, all those times all that day, I never told you how beautiful it was then, like everyone was telling us not to be. I never told you that, it was too tremendous a thing to tell until now in tears in Leopardi’s with my friend restored to me, just something to gaze at in the light of that gorgeous morning smiling at me smiling at you.
“And now, Min,” you asked me then in a pant, “what do you want to do now?” and I’m flushing now at what I said then.
Indelible is the word the book uses, When the Lights Go Down, indelible images is what they keep saying. The brass mask of the emperor, floating faceup in the churning water before slowly sinking into black in Realm of Rage. Patricia Ocampo’s sad, contemptuous gaze at the departing stagecoach in The Last Days of El Paso. Paolo Arnold screaming at the sky and carving the Sphinx. Bette Madsen’s legs they call indelible, the splits she does in What a Hoot! with those impossible stockings, the children playing as the assassin bleeds on the other side of the fence is indelible in The Body Is a Machine (Le corps est une machine), the flying saucers in The Flying Saucers! indelible too. All it means is, I looked it up online to be sure, stays in your head. I’d only heard it about ink.
One I have is me in the empty band shell of Bluebeard Gardens. I can see it: I was wearing jeans, the green top you told me you like but probably couldn’t pick out of a lineup now, my black Chinese slippers falling off my feet, my sweater tied and drooping around my waist because it was sweaty to walk all that way from the bus. Sitting where they play the marches for the Fourth of July, where long-past-cool folk singers come to sing for free about overcoming injustice, just cold gray cement in the off-season, with dead leaves and the occasional squirrel in a frantic hurry. And me, sitting with my legs stretched out in a V, eating the pistachios your sister spiced and put in this elegant tin for you. It’ll never fade. It’s not what I saw—it’s not something I could have possibly seen—because we were together there, but when I see it, you’re not in the picture. In the indelible image, I am alone eating the pistachios and lining up perfectly the shells in half circles getting smaller and smaller like parentheses in parentheses. Really, you were just checking for electricity.
“There is,” you called happily from behind a pile of tarps, “a whole row of outlets here.”
“Working?”
“Should I stick my finger in them? I’m sure they’re working. Who would turn them off? Enough for lights and music. Joan’s old boom box thing should do it, it’s ugly but loud.”
“And lights?”
“We have Christmas lights, but it’s a pain to get them. Do you have them somewhere better than our messy attic?”
I waited.
“Oh, right.”
“Right.”
“No Christmas for you.”
“No Christmas for me,” I said.
“But Hanukkah lights?” you said, bounding back to me. “They have those. I mean, it’s the Festival of Lights, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“I read about Jewish. I wanted to know.”
“Come on.”
“Annette told me,” you admitted, frowning a pistachio open. “But she read it someplace.”
“Well, I don’t have them. I’ll help you get them out of the attic. They’re not too Christmas-y, are they?”
“White, some of them are.”
“Perfect,” I said, and stretched my legs out further. You stood over me watching, munched, pleased.
“Is it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And you laughed.”
“I didn’t laugh.”
“But you didn’t think of it,” you said, and did a few quick steps back and forth on the stage, athletic and cute. It was perfect, Bluebeard Gardens, fashioned crumbly and quaint like Stage Door Kisses or And Now the Trumpets. There were chairs down in the audience to sit in. Space for dancing, a platform where we could put the food. And out past the stage and the seats, the beautiful statues would keep stern and silent watch. Soldiers and politicians, composers and Irishmen, all along the perimeter, angry on horseback or proud with a staff. A turtle with the world on its back. A few modern things, a big black triangle, three shapes on top of one another, surely a spooky shadow at night. An Indian chief, nurses of the Civil War, the man who discovered something, the ivy too thick on the plaque to see, a test tube in his hand where birds had shat, a clipboard held at his side. Two women in robes representing the Arts and Nature, given to us from our sister city of somewhere in Norway. If we invited no one, it would still be a beautiful crowd of glamour, the commodore, the ballerina, the dragon for the Year of the Dragon 1916. I’d been here before as a kid for a few picnics, but my dad always said, I can hear him now, indelible, it was too loud. But without the hullabaloo it was the perfect, perfect place for Lottie Carson’s eighty-ninth birthday party.
“Are there cops here at night, I wonder,” I wondered.
Why We Broke Up Page 11
