Perfectly Good White Boy

by Carrie Mesrobian

  “Yeah.”

  “Keep that in mind, then. You’ve got some explaining to do, Sean. This isn’t the easy way out.”

  I nodded. But I didn’t agree with him and it bugged me, him saying that. He had no idea how hard it’d been, the whole thing. Easy was the last thing I’d call it. But I didn’t want to get mad at him. He looked sad and old, and I loved him, my grandpa. I didn’t want to fight with him.

  Before he was even back in the house, I was speeding down the highway. Straight to Neecie’s house, no detours or stops or regrets. No delays. And she was standing on her stoop, wrapping her hoodie around her in the cold when I pulled up. Waiting for me. Which I had known she would be.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’ve never really liked being alone.

  I mean, I can be alone. I’m not incapable of it. But it’s harder. There’s just too much going on in my head when I’m alone; being around other people sort of quiets down all the noise. I wouldn’t be alone in the Marines, either. Especially boot camp. It was something I didn’t mind about it, when I thought about it. So making myself run down the frontage road, in the not-quite-warm spring air, seemed temporary. Something I’d get through. Outlast.

  One night, though, it was the end of April and the world was getting warmer and greener, I kind of felt it. Felt the point of running. Why people like Eddie’s dad did marathons and trained by themselves all the time. Because I was running down the frontage road, two miles from home, and the moon was out and it was cold, but there was something so good about it too. Like, I was a man and no one told me to go running, but I had, anyway, all on my own, and it was like the Marines secret had been. All mine, and fuck you for thinking you know me.

  Fuck you, Hallie and Brad.

  Fuck you, Grandpa Chuck for saying it was the easy way out.

  Fuck you, Mom. Well, not her, directly. Just her I accept your decision. I am proud of you robot voice, with her eyes looking like I killed something already.

  Fuck you, to everyone, in general, really.

  Well, not Krista. And not Otis. And certainly not Neecie.

  Who was sitting in her Blazer in the gravel drive when I came up, sweating and panting.

  “What are you doing here?” I said when she jumped down from the Blazer.

  “Waiting for you,” she said. “Go take a shower. Let’s go do something.”

  “Okay,” I said. She followed me in and told me to hurry and so I went into my room and stripped down but it was weird, because she was there, and I was naked and she was upstairs somewhere, and that normally never happened, and then I was in the shower, with The Horn, and thinking I was pretty fucking great, for no good reason, except for the running under the full moon thing.

  When I came upstairs, I grabbed a bagel and some juice, but she was gone. In the driveway, she had already started the Blazer. Hair dripping, I got into the car, turned on the heat so my hair wouldn’t freeze into gel-icicles.

  “There’s a party at the river trestle,” she said, pulling out of the driveway.

  I couldn’t say anything, either, because her car was so damn noisy, even with the radio off. I had no interest in going to the river trestle. The last time I’d been there was the weird breakup with Hallie.

  But I didn’t want to bring that up. Not because she would mind; I just didn’t want to think about it, really. But Neecie didn’t mind if I was silent, especially in the car when she had music on. And I was just glad we were friends again. It sort of killed me, when I thought how long we’d gone not talking. How dumb that was. How I could have fixed it with just one text, too.

  Once we got there, it didn’t seem like much of a party. There were a few cars down there, but the people were all seniors from St. Albans, no one I knew or gave a shit about.

  “I thought Ivy’d be here by now,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “Let’s get cups,” she said.

  “I don’t have any cash.”

  “I’ll get you one,” she said. Jesus. She really must have wanted to get wasted. So we got out and got cups. But it was weird. We stood by each other and looked around. It was muddy but a little too cold for a party outside. I felt like a baby for being cold.

  “See that guy, there? The one with the green jacket?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I made out with him once. At a party.”

  I stared at the guy. He was drinking something from a water bottle. He looked completely forgettable. A regular guy. Just sitting there, not talking.

  “What was his name?”

  “Aidan. I can’t remember his last name. It was a boring last name. Something like Smith or Anderson? He was cousins with the kid whose house the party was at. Ivy and I went with some people she knew from St. Albans. I wonder what he’s doing back here. I thought he lived somewhere else, I guess. I never thought I’d see him again.”

  “Oh.”

  “He was the first penis I ever touched.”

  “Jesus, Neecie!”

  “What,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and shivering. “It was.”

  “But . . . why? Why are you telling me this?”

  “No reason,” she said. “It’s not like I expected him to be here. I’m just noting it. It’s a strange coincidence. Strange coincidences get talked about, Sean. Like your mother’s sudden happiness with you and the Marines.”

  “I wouldn’t call it happiness.”

  “Acceptance, then.”

  “Whatever.”

  We didn’t talk. I tried not to look at that guy whose dick she’d touched. Failed.

  “Was it big? That dude’s wang?” Blurting.

  “How should I know? They all seem about the same size to me, really.”

  Jesus. How many had she touched?

  “How many have you touched?”

  She laughed. “You think I keep track?”

  “I know you do. A guy would.”

  “I’m not a guy.”

  “Still.”

  “Six.”

  “Wow.”

  “You think that’s a lot. But really, you should probably touch the dicks that go inside you first, don’t you think?”

  “You’ve fucked six different guys?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re annoying the shit out of me, you know that?”

  “No, you’re just in a pissy mood. You want another beer?”

  We refilled a couple more times, and though she seemed buzzed, seemed up for some kind of adventure, I just felt bored. Which quickly turned into feeling annoyed. Especially because I couldn’t stop searching out that Aidan kid she’d pointed out.

  Then, when she checked her phone to call Ivy, I looked at mine; Eddie’d sent a text of two people in clown masks fucking.

  “God,” I said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Ivy’s still at home,” she said. “She just got out of the shower.”

  “So . . .?”

  “So I’m supposed to be staying at her house tonight.”

  “Oh.”

  “So we could stay out all night.”

  “Oh.”

  “But this is boring.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re kind of boring, too, Sean.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s go back to the car. I’m freezing.”

  “Okay.”

  Once in the Blazer, Neecie pulled a stadium blanket from the backseat. White with yellow squiggles. She offered me some of the blanket, and though I wanted to take it—I was still cold and my hair was feeling icy—I shook my head. Finished my beer, set it in the cup holder. Neecie turned on the car so we’d have some heat, and I leaned back and stared at the cracked vinyl ceiling.

  I hated that we were here, with all these people we didn’t know. That I didn’t want to know, either—even though all of them seemed hell-bent on knowing each other. It seemed like all these St. Albans seniors were tripping over themselves to p
arty one last time “while we’re still all together”—that kind of thing was pretty common lately. Reminded me of all the parties with Hallie and her friends. It was a waste, though, that Neecie could stay out all night and there was nothing worth doing. I didn’t want any more beer. And I couldn’t think of anything to say. Anything I really wanted to bring up, that is. I didn’t want to hear about the cocks Neecie had touched and now fondly remembered like some a third-grade spelling bee ribbon. All of these people I just wanted to fast-forward through. Though not Neecie. I didn’t mind being with her. Around her.

  “Will you ever tell me your real name?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Melanie and Jessamyn won’t tell me, either.”

  “I’ve trained them well. Put fear in their hearts.”

  “I could ask your mom.”

  “She respects my wishes as well.”

  “Gary?”

  “Gary is clueless.”

  “Why won’t you tell me? Why do I get dick stories? The name thing; that’s something I’ve always wondered.”

  “You don’t like dick stories?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you punch Eddie, but you guys are still friends?”

  I didn’t say anything. I was not expecting her to ask that, obviously, and not expecting her to care about it, or need to have more explanation. Guys hit each other; they did that and they moved on and that was life. Sometimes it was better after the hitting, with some guys. Sometimes not. All I knew was that guys hitting seemed a lot less involved than the way some girls acted with each other, cat-fighting and saying assholey shit and spreading rumors and whatever. Waging constant war on each other in the cuntiest way possible.

  I must have been quiet for too long, because she sighed and said, “Fine,” like she was bored and tired. “Berniece. Berniece Diane. My middle name’s my dead aunt’s name. Berniece was my great-grandmother. My mom loved her very much.”

  “Oh.”

  “Stop saying ‘oh’ every second. You sound like a mouth-breather.”

  “Maybe I am. They call Marines ‘grunts,’ did you know that?”

  “Someone’s been on the Internet. Did you watch Full Metal Jacket yet?”

  “No.”

  “You should.”

  “Get it for me, and I’ll watch it.”

  “Did you punch Eddie over a girl or something?”

  “A girl?” I laughed. “No. God. Nothing like that. Eddie just said something he shouldn’t have said. It didn’t have anything to do with him.”

  “What did he even say?”

  I didn’t want to say it, because it sounded so lame.

  “He just called me a pussy.”

  A fucking pussy.

  “Why?”

  “Because I wouldn’t skip study hall and English with him to go talk this St. Albans girl he liked.”

  “But that’s so dumb!”

  “I know.”

  “I mean him. Not you.”

  “I was dumb too. Why break someone’s nose for them calling you something? Stupid.”

  “He shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Whatever. He did.”

  “Wow.”

  “But, that’s not really it. Not the whole thing.”

  “What’s the whole thing?”

  “It’s what happened that week. Before. There wasn’t any way Eddie could have known. I mean, he could have. I just never told him.”

  “What happened, Sean?”

  I sighed. Sighing, not because I was weary or whatever. Though I felt exhausted just that second. Sighing, because it’s a way to hold back tears. To try to suck in your sinuses when they’re starting to drip down your nose. Sighing, instead of crying. Which I didn’t want to do in front of anyone, ever. Especially Neecie.

  But she could totally tell. Saw everything.

  “Oh, Sean,” she said, hugging me, the stadium blanket falling around my shoulders. It smelled like mothballs. And Neecie. Who smelled like that lotion she put on her face when she got all red. And cake. She smelled like cake and flowers. Or some other plant. Good, though.

  I let her hug me and I sniffed up my leaking nose-tears and then I kind of pushed her back, because it wasn’t over yet, and I cleared my throat and just explained it.

  How that day, the day before I punched him, my mom was going to the after-hours clinic she worked at for extra money and how I had dicked around all afternoon with Eddie, screwing around in my car and him texting this girl he was going to St. Albans with, and it had been fun, because though I was a little jealous, he and I would both go to the dance, this chick would get us in, because their dances were invite-only or something and I hadn’t hooked up with anyone in a long time, and besides that, never had a girlfriend to go to actual dances or dates with, for any reason, and how that sounded fun, like maybe I’d meet a new girl, one I hadn’t been stuck with since junior high, a new girl, someone who was cool and cute and fun to hang around with.

  So I was supposed to be home, but I wasn’t because the St. Albans girl was sending Eddie stupid pics of her and her friends and we’d been idiots about it, but it was really funny and good and I didn’t want to be home, anyway, because two days earlier, my mother had told my dad he had to move out, go to rehab, or go live with Grandpa Chuck, it didn’t matter, she wasn’t living with an alcoholic anymore, and we were going to lose our house, since he’d been out of work for over two years, and Eddie knew that part—about the money and no job—but not the alcoholic thing. Or maybe he did, but he didn’t know what that really looked like inside our house. And he didn’t know what I found, when I came home, which was Otis barking all strange, and randomly, like he was distressed or something, and I knew things were wrong because his bark was wrong. And that’s when I went and found my dad, half in the running bathtub, water all over the floor, wasted out of his mind and vomit everywhere and piss in the tub water and him looking basically dead and how I did nothing. Not a thing. Just stood there and calmly reviewed how long, exactly, it’d been, since I’d wished him dead, since seventh grade, probably, when things got really bad, and the fighting was constant and him passing out on the couch was constant and him checking into the hospital rehab to “clean himself up” or “get himself right” was constant, and Brad had to do everything, then, fix stuff and shovel snow and jump my mom’s car if the battery died and carry in the groceries and tell me to shut up and go back to my room if I went to his room to ask him if we should do something, and so I just sat there and did nothing but hate my dad. Because I was in charge of hating him. Hating him and wishing him dead.

  He was just lying there, in the water. The water spilling everywhere. Piss. Barf. His skin looking blue.

  But maybe I hadn’t been wishing he’d be dead. Maybe, I was just wishing he’d be gone. He didn’t need to leave the earth permanently, I thought, while I turned off the water and started draining the tub. Just leave. Be absent. Not make me listen to my mother cry all night from across the hallway in the house we couldn’t live in anymore, because my dad wouldn’t stop drinking and broke his whole rule about drinking and driving which was why his job fired him: he needed a valid license and having a DUI, even one, was grounds for dismissal.

  I didn’t know he took pills, too, before he got into the tub. We didn’t find that out until later. Until my mom—by total accident—came back home to get her phone charger and found us, my dad and me, in the bathroom, and she didn’t even ask me anything, how long it’d been or what had happened because she knew. She wasn’t an idiot like her youngest son. She was on her barely charged cell phone with the 911 dispatcher, pushing me out of the bathroom, saying, “Sean, call your brother, right away.” Giving me a job to do. Which I did. I called Brad and told him that dad had passed out in the tub and mom was calling 911 and to come home.

  “You mean the hospital?” he said.

  “No, we’re at home.”

  “Jesus, what’s the matter with you? I’m going straight to the hospital,”
he said, and hung up.

  By then my mom had hung up with the 911 people, but my dad was still in the tub. I could see his dick and balls. He looked grey and horrible. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. My mom was checking his pulse, on that big vein in his neck or whatever, and she nodded at me, like to say, yes, he has a pulse. Then my mom asked me for a towel and to help her wrap him up and we had sort of done that—sort of—when the paramedics came and we had to get out of the bathroom and then they were pulling him out the door on a stretcher, and then she got in the ambulance with them and told me to wait for Brad to come, and I didn’t want to say that he wasn’t coming, that he was going to the hospital because he wasn’t me, he was brave and normal and strong, and so the ambulance jetted off and I stood there, in the dark, though it was just, like, six thirty, and the neighbors were out on their stoops, looking at us, looking at me, while I did nothing. Continued to do nothing but look straight back at them for a little bit longer. Waiting for fuckall. Waiting for nothing.

  And then I just drove myself to the hospital, where Brad ignored me and my mother said nothing and Krista, still in her Applebee’s uniform, hugged me and said, “Come here, Sean, it’s okay, he’s stable, they pumped his stomach, you were lucky you found him when you did, oh, honey . . .”

  I had stopped talking. Neecie was crying. Also, I was crying. Though I wasn’t making a lot of noise about it. It was more like I was dripping. Leaking.

  “I’m so sorry,” Neecie said. She turned off the car, and suddenly everything was much quieter. “So sorry about all of that. Come on. Come here.”

  We got in the backseat of her car and she put the blanket on me and then we didn’t say anything more, or do anything, either, and that’s how I spent the whole night sleeping with a girl for the first time in my life, not even kissing or anything, just sleeping next to her, next to each other, not touching anywhere except maybe my shoulder nudging her shoulder, in the back of her car, sleeping like the dead, fully comfortable and good, though not in a bed, all night, until the sun came up.