Then, in high school, the upper classes changed my name to Squirrel Nuts or Squirrel Nut and didn’t invoke Rein Stone as much, and I felt like Squirrel Nuts—jumpy and flinching, staring out across the lunch room, nibbling my food fast. My shiny, secret rocks and crystals were squirreled away in my leather pouch in my pocket, and I was so wary of the dangers present—ready to hop and hightail it.
Romance, gay or otherwise, didn’t occur to me, not even when I searched for Ladies in Swimsuits on the Internet (which I did a lot all sophomore year).
Then I grew tall and strong and hairy and fast and a famous African American pianist, the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my entire life, told me she’d be playing music for me when I showed up at her house in the morning to drop off the paper.
As I lay in bed that night, I thought, “Aleah Jennings, you are my girlfriend.” Yes, that was a little…What’s that word? Presumative? Presumptive? Let me look it up.
Presumptuous!
Then, because I’d lifted weights and changed into another human being completely in one day (evolved from squirrel nut donkey boy to big) and was thus completely exhausted, I slept like a freaking rock.
CHAPTER 19: JERRI DRINKS SOME WINE
I can’t say that any real alarm bells had gone off before then. Yes, Jerri had called me an f-bomber, and yes, I’d made a pledge not to speak to her or Andrew ever again. But as I’ve said, Jerri had always been a little strange, and I’d just figured out that normal for me was not normal at all, not remotely, and I suppose I figured we’d just keep rolling along and we’d all figure it out or whatever, and I didn’t follow through on not speaking to my family, and Jerri had seemed warm and happy while the Jenningses were over.
But the next morning was the first morning of the rest of my life.
My alarm went off, and I turned to stop its music but could almost not turn at all. “Whoa. Ouch.” I struggled and had to basically fling my hand at the alarm clock because I could not control my shoulder muscles. “Owwww.” I moved to leave bed, but everything burned. All my muscles were on fire. “Ahhhh!” I cried out. Had I caught polio or multiple sclerosis or cystic fibrosis or cirrhosis of the liver? Every little piece of me just totally killed. “Ahhhhh!” I had to lift my legs with my aching arms to get them out of bed. “What the hell is going on?”
I lumbered into shorts and a shirt and a windbreaker. I stumbled up the stairs, using my aching arms to steady me so I wouldn’t fall over. I stumbled down the hall into Jerri’s room, convinced she’d have to drive me on the route or I wouldn’t make it because I’d caught multiple sclerosis.
But Jerri’s room was empty.
The light was off. I pressed on the bed, but she wasn’t in there. I moved to the door and leaned out into the hall. “Jerri?” I whispered, trying not to wake Andrew.
No one answered.
I lumbered back down the hall, holding myself against the wall.
“Jerri?” I said louder.
No one answered.
The light was out in Andrew’s room, but the door was open a crack. I pressed my lips into the crack and whispered, “Andrew?”
No one answered. No one made a noise.
Andrew didn’t seem to be breathing in there. I reached through the door and turned on the light in his bedroom. I poked my head in. His bed was made. He was gone.
“What the hell is going on?” I shouted. No one responded.
As fast as I could on my broken limbs, I rumbled through the house shouting, begging for a response. The house was totally empty. I began to panic. Had aliens attacked us overnight? Had they taken Jerri and Andrew and poisoned me so my body would not work, so I could not pursue them (I pictured poor Andrew and Jerri undergoing total butt probes and screaming in pain)? Had kidnappers released gas into the house, knocked us all out, robbed us blind, taken my little brother and mother? I flipped on light switch after light switch, shedding light in every room. Nothing was out of place. If robbers had robbed us, I couldn’t see what they’d taken.
I tripped back downstairs calling for my family, nearly in tears from the pain and the loss of my potentially butt-probed family.
I do have experience with the world turning inside out. This was all so weird, like the day when I was five when my dad died. I was five. Five. But everything felt out of whack, was out of whack. Bizarro world.
While I stumbled around the house, everything felt out of whack.
Should I call the police, I wondered? I couldn’t do it. Not yet. Maybe Jerri was outside. Maybe she was gardening at dawn. Maybe Andrew was helping her. Andrew never helped her, but maybe, because he knew he wasn’t the best piano player in town, he was looking for a new career. As a gardener. Or a butt-probe victim.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” I mumbled, stumbling down the hall to the garage door.
I kicked open the garage door, terrified of what I might see on the other side (as I saw something terrible in the garage once before). This is what I saw: The light was on. Jerri’s Hyundai was gone. Andrew was standing in there next to his bike, looking out the open garage. He turned to me and said, “Good morning, Felton. Ready to deliver some papers?”
“Where’s Jerri?” I shouted.
“What’s wrong with your head?” he asked. “It looks crooked.”
“Where the hell is Jerri?”
“You look like Quasimodo. He’s the hunchback of Notre Dame.”
“Andrew. Where. Is. Jerri?”
“I heard her leave around midnight.”
“Where’d she go?”
“I don’t know. It’s really none of my business. She’s an adult, you know.”
“God dang it!” I shouted. I didn’t know what to think. I had no idea what was going on. I stumbled over to my Schwinn Varsity. I had to do my paper route.
“Why are you dragging your leg like that?” Andrew asked.
“It’s really none of your business!” I shouted. I grabbed my paper bag, hunched my head, and let the bag drop painfully over my shoulder. Then I grabbed my bike and leaned it way down, using my left arm to pull my left leg over the seat.
“Okay,” Andrew said. “Let’s deliver some papers!”
Before I pedaled away, I turned to Andrew and said, “You wait right here. You wait for Jerri. If she shows up, call my cell.”
“Can’t do that,” Andrew told me. “I’m going for a bike ride.”
“Stay here!” I shouted. I biked away down the driveway, my aching legs straining against the pedals. At the main road, I stiffly looked back over my shoulder. Andrew was pedaling down the hill, about a football field behind me.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, shaking my painful Quasimodo head.
***
At each stop on the paper route, I’d look up the street and find Andrew ghost-like about a block away, riding his bike in circles, waiting for me to move on. He never got any closer because he knew I’d go off on him. I sort of knew what he was up to. He either: A) wanted to see Aleah play the piano, or B) wanted to make sure I didn’t spend time with her alone. I believed the correct answer was “B” because he could’ve ridden directly to her house, skipping all the Felton tailing, if he just wanted to see her in action. In either case, I was terribly irritated and freaked (Jerri).
If my muscles weren’t killing me, I’d charge you like a drunk elephant. I’d go gorilla all over your little monkey ass.
Fortunately for Andrew, I didn’t have the strength to charge, and I was preoccupied with Jerri’s absence, which I found really scary.
Jerri had never been gone when I woke up in the morning. Up until that moment, she’d been there every single morning of my life. Before she turned weirder recently, she wouldn’t let me start a day without hugging me. After she turned weirder but before I got the paper route, she’d have breakfast for me in the morning, and she’d stare at me and try to say something nice, even if incomprehensible. Since the paper route, at least I knew where she was because her car was in the garage when I’d go out
there, and it didn’t seem remotely possible that she’d ever leave me. But now gone? Left at midnight? Jesus Christ! Where the hell did she go?
Her absence didn’t faze Andrew one bit.
After hitting the first half of the route, I noticed that my muscles were loosening. By the time we got to Aleah’s block (or the block next to Aleah’s block, in Andrew’s case), the kinks in my neck and shoulders were pretty much gone. My chest and biceps and thighs still hurt, but I felt looser. It occurred to me, coming around the corner, that my muscle disease could have something to do with the weight lifting the day before. The looseness might have meant two things: 1) That I could make my gorilla charge on Andrew, and 2) I could enjoy Aleah’s playing, etc., in relative comfort—if my brain wasn’t torturing me about Jerri’s absence, of course.
But speaking of Jerri, as I rounded the corner, something stunned me so hard I stopped thinking at all and nearly crashed. Jerri’s Hyundai was parked on the street in front of Gus’s house. That is, Jerri’s car was parked in front of the Jenningses’.
I squeezed the front brake on the Varsity so hard that the back wheel came off the ground, threatening to flip me completely over. I jumped off the pedals and steadied myself, staring at this most horrifying sight. Behind me, Andrew had come to a halt. I waved him toward me, my breathing getting thinner and thinner. Andrew kept riding in circles until I hissed, “Get over here, Andrew!” Then he slowly, nervously biked toward me.
When Andrew got to me, he whispered, “I don’t know why Aleah would even like you, you athlete.”
I pointed down the street at Jerri’s car. “Look.”
“Jerri? What the ass?” Andrew’s mouth hung open.
“Come on,” I said.
There was no piano sound floating as we biked slowly forward. The whole neighborhood was still, totally silent. I actually feared noise. I imagined Jerri sitting in that living room, babbling on to Aleah or Mr. Jennings, showing off what a freak show she actually is, talking about Tayraysa and turnips and “engagement” and Tito.
But it was worse than that.
As I approached the car, I saw Jerri’s body folded over the steering wheel. “Oh, no. Oh, no. Andrew.” As Andrew pulled up next to me, he began to scream.
Immediately, Mr. Jennings came bounding out of the screen door.
“Quiet,” he shouted, trying to whisper at the same time. “Steady kids. Steady,” he said. “Your mother’s okay.”
“Jerri’s dead!” Andrew shouted, both of us staring at Aleah’s dad.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the car. Jerri looked up at us and rolled down the window. “I’m not dead,” she said so quiet. “I’m stupid.”
“Um, Felton. You have a paper for us?” Mr. Jennings asked.
I was so confused, but I reached in my bag and handed Mr. Jennings a paper.
“Andrew,” Jerri said, popping open the trunk from inside, “put your bike in the car. Let’s go.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive, Ms. Reinstein?” Mr. Jennings asked.
“I’m Mrs. Berba,” Jerri said.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Jennings. I’m so sorry,” Jerri said. “I’ll take Andrew home now. Finish your route, Felton.”
“Okay,” I said. But I didn’t move. Mr. Jennings stared at me holding his newspaper in both hands in front of him. Andrew stared at me. Jerri slumped in the front seat. I thought of her hugging me back when I was little. I thought of her singing John Denver songs by the campfire at Wyalusing.
“Jerri,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“Andrew,” she said, “get in the dang car.”
Andrew’s eyes were huge. He looked at me and shook his head. I looked over at Mr. Jennings, who was stuck in place.
“Go, Andrew,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“Okay,” he said, then put his bike in the back of Jerri’s Hyundai.
“Have a good morning, Mr. Jennings,” I said to Mr. Jennings.
And then I biked off, totally shaking.
When the mail comes to our house, it’s addressed to Jerri Berba because my mother never took my dad’s last name. They were married though. Andrew established that fact later in the summer.
At the nursing home, that sort of young lady inmate screamed when I walked through the door. I didn’t even pay attention to her.
I rode my bike home slowly because I wasn’t exactly looking forward to getting home. My stomach hurt more than my achy muscles. I’d already thought Aleah and I were together, which was, yes, presumptuous because she didn’t know me. I was sick over our breakup, even though we’d never been together for real. I was also sincerely, completely, totally terrified of what I’d find at home. What Jerri would tell me about what she did. What the consequences would be if she was even at home—she might be gone. What if she left?
As I got to the top of the hill on the main road heading down to our place, there was a buzz in my pocket. I stopped my bike.
I was wrong about Aleah. It was a text from Aleah. We’d exchanged cell numbers the day before. I couldn’t believe it.
We sent several texts as the sun came up, me standing over my Schwinn Varsity, facing the east bluffs.
It went like this:
That was weird.
Sorry. Don’t know what happened. What happened?
LONG STORY. Stop by tonight. 8pm?
What about your dad? Sure OK?
Understands domestic drama. Too much. Worried about you. Andrew too.
OK. Definitely. 8pm.
See you then…
The voice in my head simply said I’ll be damned. Yes, unbelievable, I responded to my own voice. Aleah Jennings, Aleah Jennings, Aleah Jennings. My heart swelled!
Dang, yeah, how freaking selfish. My own mother was suffering some unknown breakdown, and I was up on the hill by our house all swollen in love. I don’t know what to say about that, so I’ll just move right along.
If I hadn’t been facing a serious domestic drama back home, I might have exploded all squirrel nut crazy and biked a million miles an hour down the hill. But the terror…the terror…Home was at the bottom of that hill. So after my swelling, I stared down at the house, swallowed, and then rolled down the hill slowly.
I was totally right to be terrified.
***
I rolled my bike up into the garage and found Andrew sitting on a lawn chair in there, his face totally red and his eyeballs red from crying. I know this because he was still sort of crying. Andrew cried out as I flipped down the kickstand on the Varsity.
“Jerri’s an abusive alcoholic!”
I stopped in my tracks. Paused. I couldn’t believe that.
“Did she hit you?”
“No.”
“What do you mean alcoholic?”
“We drove home, then she barfed, then she drank wine.”
Jerri was no drinker. Not at all.
“Where’d she get wine?”
“She bought like ten bottles for Aleah’s dad for their visit yesterday.”
Jerri hadn’t served wine when the Jenningses were over the day before. This was completely out of character. Jerri could barely stand the smell of alcohol. Her own dad was an alcoholic, and she hated it. We could never go out for pizza because she thinks Steve’s Pizza smells like beer.
“Okay. Okay. How is she abusive, Andrew?”
“I went to…I began to…” Andrew could barely get this out. “I played piano because I thought it would make her happy because it always makes her happy, and she told me to go make my crappy noise someplace else.”
“That’s bad,” I nodded at Andrew. It really was about the worst thing you could say to the poor kid.
I went inside, even though I didn’t want to. I found Jerri upstairs sitting on the couch with a wine bottle in front of her. She was staring out the picture window across the room.
“Um, hey, Jerri. Having some wine?”
She turned and looked at me.
“
Felton, you look just like your father.”
“I’m six-one,” I said.
“Yeah, you are.”
“He was short. Remember?”
“Right.”
“Uh, you okay?”
“What do you think?”
“No.”
“Right again.”
“You really want that wine?” I asked.
“I do, but it makes me throw up, which isn’t really that great, Felton.”
“Did you drink wine before you went over to the Jenningses’ last night?”
Jerri looked out the window again. Then her cheeks began to tremble. She spoke out the window too, like she wasn’t talking to me at all.
“I haven’t had a decent conversation with a man in years,” she said.
“No. You have…Tito…”
“Don’t you bring up that ass.”
“Okay. You talk at the grocery store.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about!” she shouted. Then she started sobbing really hard, which was terrible.
“I don’t know what to do, Jerri.”
“You don’t have to do anything, Felton. You’re a damn kid.”
“I want to help.”
“It’s not your problem! It’s not your problem! You got that, kid?”
I stared at her.
“Please go away, Felton,” she said, sobbing.
So I did. I went downstairs. What was I supposed to do?
I could’ve called Grandma, but that didn’t occur to me.
CHAPTER 20: I REALLY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO
Jerri was an only child. There were no aunts or uncles or cousins to call, which I only thought about recently because Cody Frederick seems to be related to about ten percent of everyone in Bluffton, so this kind of thing couldn’t have happened to him.
My dad, of course, was not around. His parents and sister didn’t call us or write us or probably even think about us.
Gus and his parents, who were the closest thing me and Jerri had to people who cared about us, were in Venezuela.
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