by Wizner, Jake
“Why don’t you go?” I asked.
My mother shuddered. “I can’t stand the two of them together. Besides, I need to go back to the hotel and finish packing.”
“I don’t want to go out with them,” I said. “We’ll probably end up in jail.”
“I’ll go,” my brother said.
My mother shook her head. “You’re coming back to the hotel with me. You’d probably just encourage them.”
And that was how I came to spend my last night in Italy in the company of two extremely drunk grown men.
My biggest concern was that they would lose me. I had no desire to be deserted in a foreign country in the middle of the night. I shouldn’t have worried. My father and Robert were so loud I was sure I would be able to hear them even if we got separated.
“How old are you, Shakespeare?” Robert asked as we wandered the narrow alleys of Campo de’ Fiori.
“Sixteen.”
He burped loudly. “When I was sixteen, I was a real asshole.”
You’re still an asshole, I thought.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
I felt myself blush. “Nah.” I shook my head.
“Good. Girls are nothing but trouble. You know, your father used to be a real womanizer.”
I did not want to hear this.
“Before he met your mother, he used to—”
“Robert,” my father slurred. “There are children present.”
Robert looked at me and smiled, then began to gyrate back and forth. “Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.”
Please, Lord, I thought. Just take me now.
“You know what we should do?” Robert said.
A feeling of dread enveloped me. “What?”
“Get some more drinks, then go jump in the Trevi Fountain.”
“That’s nowhere near here,” I said.
“So? Have you got someplace you need to be?”
As far away from you as possible, IF thought.
My father seemed indecisive.
“You’re leaving tomorrow,” Robert said.
“This is your last night.”
“It is my last night,” my father said, and I could feel him gaining momentum. “What do you think?” he said, looking at me and smiling.
What did I think? I thought my father should act like someone his age and not go running around Rome all night like a drunken teenager. I thought we should say good night to Robert and go back to the hotel before anything worse could happen. I looked at my father and could see that he wanted to go, and the only thing holding him back was at winge of fatherly concern for my well-being. Why wasn’t my brother here instead of me? He would have been happy to go with them, and I could be back at the hotel in bed, watching television. I realized suddenly how pathetic that was. My brother, two years younger, would be reveling in a night like this, and all I was doing was complaining. Here I had an opportunity to be out all night in Rome, and I wanted to be in bed, watching television. No wonder my brother had so many friends and so many girls who seemed to like him. He knew how to embrace life instead of shying away from it. I was sixteen already, and what did I have to show for it?
“I think I need a drink,” I said.
“That’s my boy,” Robert said, clapping me on the shoulder.
“What the hell?” my dad said. “There’s no drinking age here anyway.”
We sat outdoors at a café on the Piazza Navona, and Robert ordered a bottle of wine. By the second bottle, my father and Robert had moved from a hyperactive state to a philosophical one, and as we sat outside, sipping wine and looking at the Fountain of the Four Rivers, the conversation became downright comical.
“You know what’s bullshit?” Robert said.
My father drained his glass. “What?”
“The Bible.”
“The Bible’s total bullshit,” my father agreed.
“Why’s the Bible bullshit?” I asked.
Robert turned his attention to me. “Take any story and analyze it. Go ahead, pick a story.”
I said the first thing that came to mind. “Noah’s ark.”
Robert gave a triumphant laugh. “That’s about the most obvious piece of bullshit in the whole damn book.”
“Two of every species,” my father said.
“How did Noah keep the lions from eating the zebras when they were on the ark?”
I smiled and took a sip of wine. “Well, what about Abraham?”
“Abraham!” Robert roared. “The guy who knocked his wife up when she was ninety?”
“What about Methuselah?” my dad chimed in. “The Bible says he lived to be nine hundred and sixty-nine.”
“Bullshit,” Robert said. “All of it.”
“You know what else is bullshit?” my father said, pouring himself another glass.
“What?” I asked.
“Water.”
“Water?” I said. “What are you talking about?”
My father swirled the wine in his glass and sniffed it. “It’s bullshit. I don’t drink things that have no taste.”
“I’ll tell you what’s bullshit,” I said.
My father looked amused. “What?”
“Everything that’s coming out of both of your mouths.”
“The boy’s on to us,” Robert said. “What should we do?”
My father made a slashing motion across his neck. “Kill him and get rid of the body.”
I laughed, and my father put his arm around me. “You’re a good kid,” he slurred.
We finished the wine and began to walk without purpose or direction. I was feeling a bit light-headed, but I was certainly in better shape than either of the adults. We rambled down moonlit streets and alleys, through piazzas that suddenly opened up before us, across a bridge, and then across another.
It was close to 3:00 a.m., and though there were still people out, the city felt like it was winding down and going to sleep.
“Where the hell are we?” my father asked as we walked past yet another church.
Robert looked around. “Beats me. Everything here looks the same.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
My father lay down on the ground. “I’m just gonna take a little rest here,” he said.
I looked down at him sprawled out on the concrete. A young couple passed by and pointed, then walked away laughing. This is my father, I thought. God help me.
At breakfast the next morning, only my mother was smiling.
“Your father has a hangover,” she told us cheerily. “That’s what happens when a grown man acts like a twenty-one-year-old fraternity boy.”
My father managed a sheepish grin and winked at me.
“You’re supposed to drink a lot of water before you go to bed,” my brother said.
“How are you such an expert?” my mother asked.
“Water is bullshit,” I said.
My father started to laugh, then grabbed his head. “Oh,” he said. “I feel awful.”
We made it to the airport and boarded our flight. The trip home ended up being about what I expected. Without going into all the lurid details, here are some of the highlights:
1. My mother accidentally gave me an estrogen pill instead of a Valium. “Oh my God,” she said, “don’t take that.” I told her I already had, and she started to laugh. “You just took 2.5 milligrams of female hormones.” So I spent most of the flight feeling my chest to see if I was growing breasts.
2. My father smelled my Salisbury steak airplane lunch and vomited into his barf bag.
3. I ate my Salisbury steak lunch, felt my constipation begin to give way, and found myself behind five other Salisbury steak victims inline to use the lavatory. We hit a patch of turbulence just before my turn.
4. The in-flight movie was A Room with a View, which is a boring British film that features a scene of naked men running around with their penises flapping. It’s hard to tell whether or not they’re circumcised.
MAY
Even thoug
h we don’t graduate until the middle of June, the sense of impending freedom has begun to sweep through the ranks of the senior class. Lateness is up, attendance is down, students linger in hallways between classes, talking in clusters and hugging each other. We are by no means done with our work—we have finals in most classes and our memoirs are due at the end of the month—but with everybody into college already, with the warm weather around us, and with the senior prom just ahead, it is hard to worry too much about anything.
I am a nervous wreck. My first problem is that I have no idea how to end my memoir. I wouldn’t care so much, except Mr. Parke has been telling me that if I finish strong, I have a good chance of being chosen as a finalist for the writing award at graduation. What happens is that each writing teacher chooses two memoirs from each of his or her classes. Mr. Parke, Ms. Glass, and Ms. McCurry each teach two sections of writing, meaning that out of one hundred and forty-four total memoirs, only twelve are chosen. The twelve final memoirs are sent to a panel of three judges made up of previous winners of the award. Although the twelve finalists know they are finalists, nobody, except the judges, knows who the award recipient will be until graduation. I don’t expect to win, certainly not after reading what Charlotte has written, but how sweet would it be if I was chosen and Celeste was not. We’ve been friendly to each other ever since she cried to me about missing Jordan, but I’m still angry at her for leading me on.
And then there’s my other worry. Prom. The ultimate testing ground for the haves and have-nots. When the year started, when I made my list of girls to go along with my list of colleges, it was with prom in mind. When I suffered through Montezuma’s Revenge with Celeste, I imagined how good I would look with her at my side. When I made a pass at Jane Blumeberg, even though I had ignored her all year, I did so because at least I would have a date. Now Celeste is going with Jordan, and Jane is going with Eugene Gruber. Everybody is going with somebody, except me.
“Why don’t you just ask Charlotte?” Neil keeps saying. He is going with Katie and wants me to ask Charlotte so we can all share a limousine.
Of course I have thought about this but come up with a dozen reasons not to. “She wouldn’t want to go,” I say.
“How do you know?”
“Prom isn’t her kind of thing. Plus, it’s all so expensive. She can’t afford to buy a ticket, a dress, and chip in for a limo.”
“Well, why don’t you offer to pay for her?” Neil asks.
“I would, but I don’t think she would let me.”
“Well, it can’t hurt to offer.”
I keep putting it off, but with Neil hounding me and with prom less than a week away, I finally agree to do it. It feels strange asking Charlotte, because our whole relationship has been so odd and because we are neither a couple nor close friends. What will she think? Will she be surprised? Suspicious? She already turned me down once when I invited her to our house for Passover.
I do it as casually as possible as we walk from math class to the cafeteria. “Hey,” I say, as if the thought has just occurred to me. “I was thinking it might be fun to go to the prom. Do you want to go with me?”
“Wow,” she says, smiling. “That came out of nowhere. It’s this Friday, right?”
“Yeah.” I try to seem relaxed, though I’m shaking inside. “Listen, if it’s too short notice, I totally understand.”
“I’d like to go,” she says simply, “but I have to check a few things. Can I tell you tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I say, feeling both relief and gratitude. “Listen, if it’s an issue of money—”
“No,” she says quickly. “It’s not that.” Her tone has become sharper, and though I am not at all convinced, I know better than to press her.
The next day on our way out of math class she tells me she can go.
“You can?” I say. “That’s great. Do you want to share a limousine with Neil and Katie? They’ve already reserved it.”
“That sounds fun,” she says, but she has a slightly troubled look.
“Neil’s parents are paying for the whole thing,” I lie. “It’s an early graduation present.”
“Are you sure they want to share it?”
“Definitely. They invited us.”
She takes a moment to process this, and I make a mental note to talk to Neil and Katie before Charlotte has a chance to thank them. This, I realize, will be extremely difficult if she is coming to lunch right now.
“Do we all meet somewhere first?” she asks.
“I’m sure we can pick you up at your apartment.” I am so focused on trying to figure out how I will get to Neil and Katie before Charlotte does that I do not even consider how private Charlotte is about her home life.
“It’s out of the way,” she says quickly. “It will be easier if I just come to your house first.”
This is not a great option, either. There is no telling what my parents might do to embarrass me.
“We’ll figure it out,” I say.
As we approach the cafeteria, Charlotte stops and turns. “I should go to the library,” she says. “I have a ton of work I need to finish in the next few days.”
“See you,” I say. I enter the cafeteria with a tremendous feeling of relief.
The next day Charlotte is absent, and the day after that, too. Her absence makes me paranoid. Is she sick? Is she avoiding me because she has changed her mind? Has something happened with Henry again that will prevent her from going? I leave lunch early on Thursday, call her house from my cell phone, and discover that her number has been disconnected.
“What should I do?” I ask Neil at the end of the day. “Prom’s tomorrow night, and Charlotte’s been out the last two days.”
“Just buy her a ticket,” Neil says. “She can always pay you back.”
“What if she doesn’t come to school again tomorrow?”
Neil laughs. “Why are you so worried? She said she was gonna go. Just call her.”
“I tried. Her phone’s disconnected.”
“So go by her house.”
“It’s not so simple,” I say, and because I am a nervous wreck and because Neil and I have always shared everything with each other, I tell Neil everything I know about Charlotte, about what I read in her memoir and about what I saw when I visited the apartment and about Charlotte’s absences and about the precariousness of her family’s existence.
Neil listens to everything I say with an astonished look. When I finish, he is silent for a moment, and then he says, “Jesus, Shakespeare, that’s some heavy shit.”
I nod.
“Do you think they got evicted?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Well,” he says, “I still think you should go over there and see. I’ll go with you if you want.”
“I don’t know.” The whole situation is making me extremely uneasy.
“Look, Shakespeare, if she’s there we can iron out our plans for prom. If she’s been evicted, don’t you think we should be trying to help her?”
So instead of going home that day, we take the long trip to Fairville and get off in front of the huge housing development where Charlotte lives. I expect Neil to show some discomfort in the surroundings, but he is swept up in our adventure and marches alongside me across the playground and to the entrance of Charlotte’s building. The lock has been fixed, and we stand outside wondering what to do next.
“I guess we should just wait for someone to come let us in,” I say.
We wait a few minutes, and then Neil asks what floor she lives on.
“Third,” I say. “Why?”
“Does their window face out to us?” he asks.
“You’re not gonna yell up?”
“Why not?”
“Look where we are,” I say, sweeping my hand around to display our surroundings. “We’ll probably get mugged or something.”
“You are so paranoid,” Neil says. He tips his head back and yells, “CHARLOTTE!”
“Jesus, Neil,”
I whisper.
“CHARLOTTE!”
I am about to walk away when a window above us opens and Charlotte looks out. She seems astonished to see us and tells us to wait. Thirty seconds later the door to her building opens and she walks out.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. She is wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and flip-flops, and she does not seem happy to see us.
“I tried calling,” I say lamely, “but your phone’s been disconnected.”
She looks at me, then at Neil, then at me again. “What did you want?”
Suddenly the whole trip seems so preposterous I don’t know what to say. “You’ve been absent, you know, and I was getting nervous…” I stop because I have no idea how to finish the sentence.
Charlotte’s eyes go back to Neil, and he says, “We just wanted to make sure everything was all right, and that you didn’t get evicted.”
Charlotte looks at me once more, her mouth turned down, her eyes narrowed. “I’m fine,” she says. Then she turns, unlocks the door, and disappears inside.
“Charlotte, wait,” I say. I catch the door before it closes, but she continues up the stairs.
“Wait for me,” I say to Neil, and I chase after her.
She stops on the second landing and allows me to catch up. There are tears in her eyes, and she brushes them away.
“Charlotte,” I say.
“Why did you bring him here? Why are you talking about me with your friends?”
“I’m not. I mean, it’s just Neil.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte, I just got nervous. You weren’t in school.”
“I’m not in school a lot. So what?”
I stand there, not knowing what to say.
“Just go, Shakespeare,” she says angrily.
“What about prom?” I ask.
I see tears forming in her eyes again. “Just go.” She turns and hurries up the stairs, and I hear her door open and slam shut.
At a little past 8:00 on prom night, a limousine pulls up in front of my house, and Neil and Katie—he in a tuxedo, she in a black dress and combat boots—drag me off the couch, order me upstairs to change, and, ignoring my protests, lead me into the limo and make me take a drink of vodka from Katie’s flask. The two of them are already well on their way to getting hammered, and I decide that if I’m going to be miserable all night, I might as well be miserable getting drunk with my two best friends. I take another drink and smile at Neil, who is watching me and beaming.
