Ask Again, Yes

by Mary Beth Keane

  His classmates’ graduation parties were spread across the summer, and Peter had gone to most of them, though at each of these parties, he always wondered why he’d come. Every one of them was an incongruous mingling of friends and elderly aunts and oddball neighbors, all of whom had different ideas of what to expect from such gatherings. Peter grinned for group photos but he knew when the pictures were developed that the reluctance would be clear on his face, and that made him never want to see them. At one party, Henry Finley’s parents had gotten a keg they told Henry was full of Budweiser, but it turned out to be full of O’Doul’s, and the adults laughed at the kids who pretended to have gotten drunk. At the same party, his friend Rohan asked him if he ever saw that old girlfriend of his anymore.

  “Once in a while,” Peter said. “Not often.”

  “But you’re still into her,” Rohan said. “That explains why you never came to hang out with the girls from Higgins.”

  Did that explain it? Peter wondered.

  He had to report to Elliott for cross-country practice, which began a week before freshman orientation, then classes would start. At graduation he had thought, maybe, you never knew, maybe he’d look over and see his father at the back of the gym, or his mother with two orderlies next to her, a van running outside at the curb, and three months later, on the day he lifted his suitcase and his duffel into the trunk of George’s car, he had the same feeling, like his parents might come walking quickly down the street, afraid they would miss the chance to say goodbye. Sometimes it seemed like a lifetime since he’d seen either of them. On the night before he left, George took him to eat at an Italian restaurant in the city, and over dinner he told a story about a man he knew a long time ago who couldn’t do the thing that was right, and the longer he waited to do it the more difficult it became, but it didn’t mean the man didn’t want to do it.

  It was a parable, Peter realized, and gave up trying to follow.

  “It’s okay, George,” Peter said. “I know what you’re trying to tell me.”

  The next afternoon, after checking out Peter’s room and walking around campus for a while, George handed Peter an envelope and said it was time for him to take off.

  Peter clapped his uncle on the shoulder, shook his hand. “Well, thanks for everything,” he said. His chest hurt.

  “Hey, hey,” George said, pulling Peter in for a tight hug. “Don’t look so worried. Okay? You always look so goddamn worried, Peter. It’s all good stuff. Okay? I’ll see you at Thanksgiving. That’s no time at all.”

  Several hours later Peter remembered the envelope, which he’d shoved into the pocket of his shorts. Inside were five stiff hundred-dollar bills.

  * * *

  Practices weren’t much different than those under Coach Bell, and Peter saw immediately that he was the best on the team. He wasn’t used to practicing with girls—with the women’s team—as Coach called it. Not that the men and the women saw much of each other once they finished warm-ups. He liked that no one knew anything about him except that his name was Peter Stanhope, that he came from Queens, that he ran the fastest eight hundred meter in the city the previous spring. No, he didn’t have a girlfriend. No, he didn’t know his major yet. His parents? Yeah, they split a few years back. His mom lived in Albany now. Yeah, he saw her when he could.

  On the third day of practice, one of the seniors on the girls’ team said something about having been home for the summer, back to her hometown of Riverside, which bordered Gillam. Peter calculated: she would have been a junior at Riverside High when everything happened. For the rest of the week he made sure to stretch on the opposite side of the circle, to drop his head in case she might turn to look at him when Coach called out his name. But when she didn’t seem to recognize him or his name, he felt the heavy cloak of worry he’d been wearing grow lighter, until it was as if he’d simply shrugged it off his shoulders and let it fall to the ground. Little by little, he felt the shiver of a new idea forming, a new space opening up wide enough for him to stand in.

  Friday was move-in day for the rest of the freshmen, and Peter left a note for his roommate to say that although he’d already chosen a bed, a dresser, he didn’t mind switching. The first note he wrote seemed too formal so he tore it up. The second draft seemed too brusque. So in his third draft he added a few exclamation points and only a few minutes later, when he was crossing the quad, did he worry that exclamation points might seem kind of gay. All week he’d been looking at the proximity of the two beds in his room, trying not to think about the fact that he’d never—not even in George’s apartment—lived in such close quarters with another human being. He didn’t know if his habits were normal, if he was too neat or too messy, if he was too quiet or too loud, when a person should ignore one’s roommate in order to grant a sort of false privacy, or if it was better and less weird to always acknowledge the other person and try to keep up light conversation. And would that be possible if they were to sleep and study and hang out all in the same ten-by-twelve-foot space? Wouldn’t conversation run out by Halloween? He’d known for a long time now that his tendency to be careful was part of what kept him apart. The guys on the team showered after practice and walked around in their underwear and laughed at each other’s privates and then went on to eat together, play video games.

  That night, not long after the last of the parents had kissed their darlings goodbye, a ritual Peter had been observing all around him, all day long, there was a late-summer storm that brought down branches, pried power lines from the sides of buildings. When his dorm lost power, his roommate, Andrew, a husky guy from Connecticut whose first words to Peter were, “What are you listening to right now? Hip hop? Metal? Don’t say country,” kept saying that his mother should have packed candles, his mother should have packed a flashlight, he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t. So Peter told him to come on, and they gathered in the common area with the other freshmen who’d just moved in. Peter suggested they have a scavenger hunt in the dark and for the first time in a while he thought of Kate, thought about how much she’d have loved that idea. He wondered where she was at that moment. He tried to imagine what he’d do or say if he showed up to his first class and there she was, sitting with her notebook open. Would he even recognize her? Would she be glad to see him, or would she blame him for what happened, for his long silence.

  At orientation, Peter groaned along with the others at the corny icebreakers, the forced fun meant to bond them. He was grouped with three other freshmen for a trust exercise, and the leader had barely finished explaining the instructions when the blond girl in his group was literally falling into his arms.

  “You almost dropped me!” she said.

  “I wasn’t ready,” he said, defensive.

  After, the other boy in their group said, “Dude, she was flirting.”

  When orientation was over, all that was left to do was buy books, register for classes. Peter headed to the main campus bookstore one morning and had to stop in the crosswalk for a bus to pass by, the words “41st Street Terminal” lit up above the front windshield. He stopped walking and stared at it until he realized a car was waiting for him to cross.

  The next day, the bus was there again. The driver pulled into the wide cul-de-sac outside the bookstore just before nine. What started as a stray thought began to take shape. The upperclassmen were arriving now in droves, taking up all the picnic tables and grassy spaces of the quad, and on the day before classes were set to begin, Peter climbed the steps of the bus and confirmed the destination was Manhattan. It was an express, the driver said. He stopped at another college in New Jersey, then two park and rides along the turnpike, and then the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Peter patted his back pocket and felt for his wallet, and then he climbed aboard. He didn’t bring a book or a magazine. He didn’t tell his roommate or his coach or his RA. He refused to ask himself what he was doing.

  It was a Tuesday morning in September 1995, the day after Labor Day, and the roads were empty. From the Po
rt Authority he took the subway one stop to Penn Station. He approached the first Amtrak teller he found. The train he wanted was departing in fourteen minutes.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time he got to Albany. From the Rensselaer station he took a taxi to the hospital, but he was too anxious to go in right away so he walked a lap around the entire complex, and then he sat on a bench and tried to calm down. All day, all week, all summer, he’d felt in himself a weather vane swinging around wildly to face one direction, and then another, whenever the wind blew. Now, here, he’d settle things, face the chill he’d felt between his shoulder blades for four years, tell his mother he loved her no matter what and find out if she loved him, too. When he felt more ready, he told the man at reception who he was, whom he wanted to see. He’d gotten a Coke out of a vending machine at the train station and had clutched it all through the taxi ride and as he walked across the hospital grounds. He was afraid if he opened it now it would explode, so he set it on the narrow ledge that ran along the bottom of the reception window while the man squinted at his computer screen.

  “First time visiting?” the man asked. Before Peter could answer he said, “No cameras, recording devices, tobacco products, drugs, drug paraphernalia—that includes prescription medication, insulin pens, syringes. No weapons, chemicals, personal property including keys or identification. No tapes or DVDs, no Walkmen or headphones. No electric toothbrushes or electric razors. No metal cutlery, any beverage that has caffeine.” At this he glanced at Peter’s Coke. “No solid-colored clothing, or clothing with solid-colored patches. No paint, pens, highlighters, scissors, knitting needles, weights, magnetic devices.”

  He let that sink in. “So,” he said. “What do you have?”

  “Nothing,” Peter said. He dropped the unopened soda into the trash bin next to the desk, and it landed with a heavy thud. He was sweating so much that he was afraid to lift his arms in case there were rings there.

  “Can you repeat the patient’s name?” The man leaned closer to his computer monitor.

  Peter did, and tried to read what it meant when the man pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes tight, told Peter to take a seat because he had to call upstairs.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Just take a seat.”

  A woman who was older than his mother was also waiting, and on her lap were two enormous bags of cookies. She had another clear Ziploc that held toothpaste, floss, plastic razor blades. He worried the razor blades would be taken from her. Peter was wearing a polo shirt, shorts. After a few minutes of waiting he went into the grim men’s room and used a wad of paper towels to wipe his forehead, his neck, under his arms. On his way back to his seat he asked at the desk if they’d called his name while he was in the restroom. He waited another forty minutes and watched other visitors get escorted through the double security doors. He watched through the murky windows as security guards lifted their bags to the light, went through them, and every once in a while plucked items out, set them aside. He went back up to the desk, and the man told him he had to wait longer. It was late afternoon already. Soon it would be dinnertime. Would a patient be allowed to see a visitor during dinner? He listened to everything and tried to feel her presence in the building, some distant sound that he would know came from her. Whenever he pictured his mother, he always saw her alone in a room somewhere. He remembered a time years ago when she sat on the edge of his bed and told him about a rooster she once knew that crowed all day long, and how she thought it so strange until she found out that almost all roosters crow through the day. It’s only the sunrise crowing people notice, because the world is so quiet at sunrise.

  “But you noticed the other crowing, too,” he had said. “You’re the only one?”

  “I’m the only one,” she said.

  Eventually, a buzzer sounded and a sunken-eyed man with a hospital ID hanging around his neck stepped through the double doors and said Peter’s name.

  The man put his hand on Peter’s shoulder and led him over to a potted tree, an attempt at privacy. “I’m afraid your mother won’t see you today,” he said, and Peter nodded vigorously as if this were what he’d been expecting all along. They were willing to bend the rules a bit—Peter hadn’t applied to be a visitor, hadn’t gone through the requisite waiting period—but his mother simply wasn’t up to it.

  “She isn’t up to it or she doesn’t want to see me?”

  “You might try again in a few weeks,” the man said. “You could arrange a particular date, give her some advance notice. That way she might prepare.”

  “Is she doing well, though? What can you tell me?”

  “Just try again. Register first. Go through the protocols. By then . . .”

  But Peter tuned him out. He knew he would not be trying again in a few weeks. Something had carried him onto the bus that morning, and it wasn’t a feeling that would come over him twice. Already, the journey back to his dorm room seemed impossibly long, and the return bus didn’t even go all the way to Elliott. He’d have to disembark in the little town nearest to the college and then take a taxi. He thanked the man and as he left the hospital, he hurried across the wide lawn. He walked as the crow flies—cutting through residential blocks, strip malls, parking lot after parking lot, keeping the skyline of the city center in front of him. He walked over a footbridge and passed a bar where people were sitting quietly, watching something on television. Baseball. The strike had just ended. When Peter approached another bar, he decided to go in. Except for a bag of M&M’s on the train, he hadn’t eaten since that morning. He sat at the end of the bar and ordered a soda and a plate of fries. Then, as soon as the bartender stepped away, Peter called him back and told him to make it a beer. He looked at the row of tap handles and picked one, though he didn’t know one from another. The bartender didn’t ask for ID, so when he finished that beer he ordered another. Then one more after that. Three pints of some kind of dark beer, heavy for a summer day, but once he made a choice he thought he’d better stick with it. The only time the bartender seemed to be appraising him was when he handed over one of George’s hundred-dollar bills. He held the bill up to the light.

  Peter got to the train station with twenty minutes to spare. He felt warm, easy in his body, realized he might be a tiny bit drunk. He didn’t know it would feel so cozy.

  “I know what I’m going to do,” he said aloud, and made for the bank of telephones. He picked up a phone and pushed random coins through the slot until the dial tone went steady. Then, his finger poised over the pad, he realized he’d never called her, not once, and didn’t know her number. Why memorize her number when he could just stand outside and look up at her window?

  But he did know her address, just one digit different from his own. He returned to the newsstand, bought a small spiral notebook, a box of envelopes, a pen. They didn’t sell stamps, but an elderly woman overheard his query and told him she’d sell him one for a quarter.

  He didn’t want to think too much about what to write or what not to write, so he bent his head over the page and filled it with his scrawl, a list of stray thoughts, maybe, but ones that she would understand. He wrote about Queens, about George, about running, about the trouble he had making close friends. He wrote that he missed her and had tried sending her telepathic messages a few times, years ago, and also how sometimes a week or two might go by without thinking of her. He told her that there were times when he was certain that she hated him and other times when he was certain she’d forgive him for everything that happened. He asked if she thought it was weird that he felt like he still knew her very well, and that she knew him, even though they hadn’t seen each other in more than four years. He wrote that he’d like to see her. When he was finished he tore out the pages and left the ripped bits along the side. He folded and stuffed them inside one of the envelopes, wrote her name and address on the outside. He’d passed a blue USPS mailbox on the sidewalk, two or three blocks from the station. He looked at the departures board and knew he
’d make it. He ran like someone had a clock on him, pushing out the swinging doors and dodging commuters hustling toward him. He sprinted two blocks, crossed a street, and dropped the envelope into the mailbox. He was back on his train’s platform in less than three minutes.

  For the whole journey home, the long two-hour ride to Manhattan, and then another two hours back to Elliott, the bus’s air conditioner blasting despite the mild evening, Peter thought of his letter to Kate sitting in the dark belly of that mailbox. He flipped through the spiral notebook where he’d torn the pages out, running his fingers over the blank top page as if it might help him recall what he’d written. He felt a few misgivings but was still glad he’d done it, and he looked forward to what might happen next. By the third hour he was having trouble tamping down his panic. It had seemed like such a great idea in the moment and he’d let that enthusiasm carry him. Now, he only felt ill. He tried to imagine George’s voice in his ear, saying, Peter, buddy, you worry too much.

  When he got off the bus it was after midnight, and he stood alone on the lighted sidewalk, listening to the crickets of central New Jersey. The air smelled like peaches, and along the main road there were signs for orchards everywhere, as many peaches as a person could pick. The houses lining the wide avenue were modest but sweet looking, and Peter imagined the kids inside sleeping among their toys and their books, their ceilings dotted with glow-in-the-dark stars. In the distance, from the direction of the college, came the sound of car horns beeping—a call and an answer.

  He toed the edge of the circle of lamplight and fought the urge to howl, to wake all the people in all the houses. Instead, he crossed his arms tight across his chest and began the long walk back to campus. He should have been wilder, he thought. He should have been out roaming the streets of the city at night, no parents to tell him not to; he’d have had a ready excuse for any trouble he might have gotten into. He should have broken things, stolen things, listened to music so loud that the neighbors pounded on the door. He should have tried smoking pot when the other kids did. He should have tried coke that time Rohan had gotten hold of some; he should have followed the other boys when they filed into the bathroom of a Pizza Hut in Kew Gardens to see what it was like. He should not have hung back at the table, worried that their waiter would think they were skipping out on the bill. He should have found a girlfriend, multiple girlfriends, one from one school and one from another like some of the other boys did, and then he should have smirked about it in homeroom. He should have been so wild that George would have had to hunt his father down and make him come back, so wild he would have had to get his mother’s lawyer involved to figure out what could be done. But instead, he’d been so very good.