“So wait a minute?” Sully said, swiping a cigarette from Mason’s pack that was on his bed. “You guys,” he pointed at Swain and Balliol with his cigarette, “and Mercurio were plotting to put me back with Chris?” He held out his hand and Mason gave him a lighter while he squinted and lit it.
“Not gonna happen,” he grinned and said through clenched lips.
“I think it should,” Mason said.
“Oh, fuck! You too?”
“See, we all think it’s a good idea.”
“I don’t, and Chris hasn’t come to me or called me and he’s not about to. I’d rather be alone right now.”
“Does this mean the discussion is over?” Mason said.
“Could it be?” Sully said. “I don’t know what’s so amazing about my love life.”
“It takes my mind off of things,” Balliol said, frankly. “It’ just a hell of a lot easier to think about your love life than it is about... other things.”
Sully’s face changed. He put his cigarette down.
“Oh,” he said. Then, “Oh.”
He got on his knees and crawled across the bed. “Bailey. Listen. This thing has just started, and your dad’s coming home in a few days. We don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s no point in seeing the worst.”
“Sullivan’s right,” Swain said.
Balliol looked at Sullivan and said, “No, he isn’t.”
“Bai—”
“Sully,” Balliol continued, “I can’t see the bright side of something I know is dark. I have too much to lose that way. I have to look this business in the face.”
Sully turned away from him and said, “I can’t do that, Bailey.”
The smoke from his abandoned cigarette corkscrewed into the air.
Mason’s door opened and Bonnie Metzger walked in, her eyes darting about. “Swain!”
Swain, twirling a braid around her finger, looked up at Bonnie and said, “Yes?”
“Sorry,” Bonnie assessed the mood in the room. “But I have to talk to you.”
She turned to Mason. “Addison’s going to want to talk to you.”
“Hum?” Mason looked at her.
“Just... Mason trust me. Swain,” Bonnie gestured to the hallway.
‘Oh,” Swain shot up. “Here I come.”
“Bonnie?” Mason called. “Do I want to know what this is about?”
Bonnie looked at him, frowned and said, “No, Mason. I doubt it.”
BALLIOL
I’m entering a different phase and start living in a different place. I don’t mean this in a good way. I guess it isn’t in a bad way either. The blissful joy I felt I no longer feel. I am discontent, even when I am not anxious. Whatever my body looks like my spirit has tentacles that reach out for other things, things I don’t know... Something is telling me... “Go deeper.”
I don’t sleep at night anymore. I wake up right in the middle of the night. At first I thought it was fear, but I am not afraid. I am certain. There is something past fear that comes when you know what will happen. I know it even if I don’t want to speak of it, and it makes me different.
I can’t look forward to what I use to look forward. None of it really matters. It’s funny to think I actually did look forward to senior year and all the things coming up. I can’t look forward to what comes after. In fact I’ve lost the power to look forward completely. I never knew how important that was. The ability to look forward gives you wings, really, it makes you like the angel on the hood of a Mercedes. You are always stretched forward, flying into something ahead while your feet are in the now.
But now I am solidly in the now. I am stuck in each minute. Everything is bigger now, all the minutes are bigger. I see everything. Sometimes things drag. I can’t recognize myself. I dabble in trivial affairs for relief.
Sully’s love life isn’t trivial, not really. I want him to be happy. All of his life he’s been so sad. His love life isn’t trivial. It really becomes increasingly important. It is something I can do. I can help it, change it, make it better. Not just sit here and watch the downfall. Maybe I can affect his love life because I can’t affect my father’s life at all.
Even before I knew I knew. I sensed that there was something beyond a throat cold. But now we can’t do anything but wait for things to happen. I think he’ll go on chemo. It’s a mistake. He’ll fight it all the way. Maybe we shouldn’t fight everything. I wonder if I would. I wonder if I’m too much of a fatalist, but I know that I’m not.
My father is dying. I’ve never written these words before. The sun is so hot in the day. All of our lives, my life included, march on and I feel like its not real. Even the death isn’t real. All of it is calling me to go down, down to this deeper place. I don’t know where that place is, but I’ve felt like its there my whole life. I think it’s where Tommy tried to go when he got saved. I think Sully went there with Justin, or to the beginning of there. I think Mason goes there in his heart. In church, on Sunday, at High Mass, when I’ve drifted off, I’ve gone there too. Or maybe to the gate. But I have the oddest feeling it should be my home.
I don’t want to go there alone. I think about all of my friends who I love so much though I don’t tell them that. Maybe I should, but it would just ruin everything, I feel, if I did. Mason and Sully especially I think could go there with me. I think the three of us are especially equipped for a descent into darkness.
It is strange the other people you think of, who come to your mind unbidden. Like, I wonder if maybe someone like Chris Powers would be a good friend to have. I’ve always discounted the fact that his mother died when he was little, but now I’m about to be an orphan too. It must have done something horrible to him. Or Mr. Powers who lost a wife the way my mother is about to lose her husband.
Or Matt.
I couldn’t tell Matt today. Something weird happened between us after Andy died. Matt’s emotions are so close to the surface. I remember the day we went to Andy’s grave and he just started crying over it and I envied that a little. I can still feel the imprint of him embracing me, though I made like it didn’t matter. All of Matt’s emotions seem to bleed into me when he’s around. I should have told him what was going on. It honestly didn’t occur to me at the time, but part of me wishes I had told him and known he would be around.
Friendship is so odd. Matt is one of those people who, for some reason I treat like an acquaintance. I wouldn’t call him. I wouldn’t ask for his address at college. I wouldn’t expect him to ask for mine. But I honestly wouldn’t want him not to be in my life.
Not now, especially not now, when everything has gone dark and I feel like I’m relying on different senses, these tentacles. Whatever my body looks like, my soul is like some deep sea squid, or some octopus in the dark, swimming about, taking in, reaching.
“So?” Bonnie said when she was finished.
Swain just looked at her, blinking.
“I’m still trying to get past the ... you made a sex tape?”
“I made several sex tapes, but that’s not the point.”
“I think it is,” Swain began, then switched subjects. “And you got... the wrong one?”
“I didn’t keep the tape. I didn’t want the tape. Seth made the tape.”
“Seth is a freak,” Swain decided. Then added, “But so are you.”
“I know,” Bonnie said in a tone that sounded something between shame and excitement.
“Anyway, the tapes were at Seth’s house, so I had to go to his apartment, his new one, which he doesn’t lock, but I was going to pick the lock if he had. Can you believe he doesn’t lock his door?”
Swain cocked her head and stared at Bonnie.
“Yeah, right,” Bonnie said. “Get back to the point. Well the point is I just grabbed any old tape and this is the one I found.”
“The one with Seth and Addison’s old girlfriend?”
“Yeah,” Bonnie said. “Only I don’t think she gave her consent. I think it was more like a hidden camera job. She’s kind of a bitch, I can’t see her going in for something like a sex tape.”
“Well, how old do you think the tape is? I mean, you think Seth was with her when she was—”
“No,” Bonnie said. “In fact I know he couldn’t have been because Seth didn’t get with Becky until after she and Addison broke up. And then he hooked me up with Addison to make himself feel better for taking his girlfriend.”
“That’s dirty,” Swain said
“Well, sort of,” Bonnie assented.
“I mean, to watch movies you’d think Black people corner the market on dirty sex schemes but...”
“No,” Bonnie waved it off. “We’ve been doing this shit for years. But the real question is what are we—No,” Bonnie interrupted herself putting her hands together. “The real thing is that Addison has known nothing about any of this. Not how I was hooked up with him—”
“When you say hooked up…” Swain said.
“I mean Seth asked me to have sex with Addison while he was trashed,” Bonnie said levelly. “The amazing thing is that if I was the person I am now—and I’m still a slut, I know, but not the slut I used to be—if I was the person I am now, I would have told Seth no. I mean, Seth and I were fooling around at the time. See? And then he just sort of passed me off. So the only way I became the person I am now is by being the person I was.”
“So Seth was never your boyfriend?”
“No,” said Bonnie. “Because Seth didn’t believe in love. And neither did I. And then we got surprised. We weren’t even friends with benefits cause I don’t like Seth that much. We were just benefits.” Bonnie stopped to think for a moment. “That’s gotta be a category.”
They were quiet for a moment, and then Bonnie said, “Are you totally disgusted with me?”
“I’m fascinated,” Swain said, her eyes getting round. “I mean, I don’t know what it’s like, running around having sex with people. Actually I don’t know what it’s like having sex with one person either.”
“You know what?” Bonnie said, pushing her hair back. “It’s not as glamorous as you might think.”
“You hear about the Midwest, and it’s supposed to be all this corn, and all these simple people and you get here and everybody’s fucking everybody and.… I’ve decided,” Swain said. “I’m going to stay.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to go back to New York. I didn’t like my school anyway. And with everything happening I should be here. I want to stay.”
Bonnie shrieked.
“What?”
“This is so great!” she enthused grabbing Swain. “You have to understand. I don’t have any friends. I mean NO FRIENDS. The girls at Magdalene are bitches.”
“I go to a private Anglican boarding school an hour north of Manhattan,” Swain said. “I’m used to bitches.”
“But I’m sick of bitches and being alone. This’ll be great. This’ll be great for all of us.”
“Well, it’s not certain,” Swain said. “I mean, I just decided right now. I have to run it by my mother and everything. And by Aunt Ruth. She’s got enough to deal with.”
“See, that’s my problem too,” Bonnie said.
“Hum?”
“I’m selfish. All this time I haven’t asked about your aunt or your uncle.”
“All this time I’ve been hoping you wouldn’t. It’s good to get away from that.”
Bonnie looked around the hallway.
“Would you like to get away to the mall? How ‘bout I tell the boys we’re going out?” she suggested.
“Is shopping the answer to everything?”
Bonnie looked at her strangely.
“That was rhetorical, right?”
“What are you doing?” Mason said.
“Reading Bailey’s journal.”
Mason made to snatch it from Sully, but Sullivan moved just in time and read the last paragraph before firmly putting the book down.
“You can’t just read his journal,” Mason said, shutting it and wrapping the black band back around it.
“Well, I’m not supposed to,” Sully agreed. “But I sort of feel like I have to.”
Mason waited for the rationalization and Sully explained: “When Bailey wanted to find out what was going on with me he took the trouble to break into my AOL account, scroll down through my favorites, go on a chat lie as somebody else and get it out of me. When I need to find out what’s going on inside of him I come to his house and read his journal.” Sully looked around. “I can’t believe they don’t lock this place up.”
“I can’t believe you all are this dysfunctional.”
Sully shrugged. “It works. We’re both private”
Although Mason opened his mouth in protest, Sully continued.
“But the extent of what he’s saying is.... Well, we have to be there for him, Mason. Cause he thinks we’re the ones who’ll understand him the most.”
Mason raised an eyebrow.
“You know how you said I was... How I keep my stuff close to the skin? Well, he said the same thing. That he was going through this darkness and we would be the two people who would understand what he was going through. Us and Tommy. And that he hoped we’d be there for him.”
“I feel so much better knowing that,” Mason said and then, frowning, “and so much worse for how we know it.” He pushed the journal further back on Balliol’s desk.
“He also says he cries a lot,” Sully said at last. “I can’t imagine it. I’ve never seen him...”
“Not together?”
Well, you know, that’s not true, Mason. We’ve both seen him not together. But he’s got class, really. I’ve never seen him fragile. I think even Bailey fragile is better than most people at their strongest.
“And.…”
“And what?”
“He thinks it’s really important for me and Chris to get back together. I can’t believe he’d write about that in his journal. At a time like this.
“Whaddo you think?” Sully asked him.
“About?”
“Me and Chris.”
“I make it a rule to not hand out my opinions about... most things.”
“Yeah, I know,” Sully said. “And generally that’s a good idea, but not right now when I’m asking you.”
“Well, then I think... Wait a minute?”
“Hum?”
“How did your mom take the whole coming out thing?”
“Shit!” Sully said, suddenly pissed off. “Would you believe she just put it out of her head and is pretending I was just stressed? It was just something I said. That ticks me off. Coming out is some hard work. I don’t think I can do that shit again.
“So back to me and Chris.”
“Well,” Mason resumed his thought, “when I think about it... I don’t know. I didn’t even know it was happening till it was done.”
“But you know Chris and you know me. You’re Chris’s godbrother.”
“True,” Mason said. “But that doesn’t tell me what kind of a boyfriend he would be. Especially not to another boy.
“I think,” Mason said. “That if you’re thinking about him this much, then it’s sort of a sign. And if everyone else is bringing it up, that’s sort of a sign too.”
“A sign that I should get back with Chris?”
“How about a sign that you should at least speak to him? I mean,” Mason added, “he’s better than Justin Reily, and you spent a whole summer with him almost.”
Sully’s eyes flew wide open. Then they closed into the usual slits.
“Nothing gets past you?”
“No, Sullivan,” Mason agreed. “Not a lot.”
Becky’s father tapped on the door, and, climbing off the bed she said, “It’s open, Daddy.”
“You’ve got a visitor,” he told her.
“Really?”
“Yeah, Addison. I always thought he was a good kid. It’s a shame things didn’t work out.”
“I always thought you thought his hair was too long,” she said tying her own hair in a Scrunchee and wondering what the hell Addison Cromptley was doing at her house.
“Well, it is. But that doesn’t mean he’s bad. And then I was just thinking, he has a long face and if he cut his hair he’d probably look like a horse.”
Becky just cocked her head. Mr. Angstrom always said things like this in a mild voice, with a gentle smile, as if he were talking to himself.
“You’d better go downstairs. Your sister’s talking his ear off.”
She came downstairs and Samantha was in the middle of telling Addison about her new boyfriend.
“I liked him. Right?” she said. “And I thought he was cute and all, because I used to watch him play dodgeball all the time, but now he’s always calling and I think he sort of smells funny. Addison do boys smell when they’re thirteen?”
“Sometimes,” Addison told her seriously.
“Well, does the smell go away?”
“Only if thee bathe,” Becky surprised them both as she walked into the kitchen.
“Go upstairs, Samantha.”
“I want to stay. Addison never comes over.”
Becky opened her mouth to say something, looked at Addison and then said, “Addison’s busy lately. Go upstairs, Samantha.”
“You think you’re the boss of everything,” Samantha complained. but she went upstairs.
“What’s up Addison?” Becky tried to play it cool. She thought of being friendly, but there hadn’t been a lot of friendliness between them in the last year.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“You might want to go outside.”
“Why would I—?” Becky started, and then decided there was no point in being lighthearted. There were so many things he could say to fuck up her home life.
She sighed and all of her pretty breeziness was gone.
“Let’s go.”
They went into the backyard, waving at her parents who were watching TV.
“Are you excited about school?”
“Yes, Mrs. Angstrom.”
“I’m sure you’ll do well, Addison,” she gave him an indulgent smile and as they closed the glass door behind them Addison said, “Did you ever tell them we broke up?”
“I think they refused to admit it. They really liked you.”
“Well, at least someone in this house did.”
“I liked you too, Addison,” she said as they moved into the trees, away from the view of her parents. “I still like you. But like isn’t enough to keep a relationship going. Not our kind of relationship.”
“No, you need a little lust too, don’t you?” he said.
“What?”
“Like when you’re fucking Seth.”
Becky’s eyes flew open.
“How long have you been fucking him?”
She opened and shut her mouth and then retreated into dignity.
“Please don’t say that.”
“Well, then how long have you been letting his manhood penetrate your... let’s see... quivering cave of femininity? Does that work?”
“Go to hell,” Becky said. “It’s none of your business.”
“I think it is,” Addison said. “In fact I bet if it wasn’t my business I’d probably know about it. That’s ironic isn’t it? But you know what I’d really be curious about? Were you fucking him when you broke up with me—”
“No!”
“Or was it after you decided to abort my kid on Christmas?”
Becky didn’t say anything. She went pale. She was trembling. She felt like she was going to be sick. She just stood there quivering for a long time
“You don’t know,” she said at last, her voice a hiss. “You don’t know anything. You don’t know what it was like. You don’t. No one does. You don’t know. You don’t know.”
She was still shaking.
There was an electric charge between them, something thrilling and terrifying filling the space between them. Addison sucked it up. It scared him for a moment and then he sucked it up and said:
“Your parents probably think you’re still a virgin?”
“Go away,” she said, miserably, suddenly deflated. “Just go away. You’re killing everything. Go away, Addison.”
That’s all you can say is go away Addison. What the fuck did I do that was so bad to you? I loved you. That was it. And you,” he ticked off on his fingers, “…broke up with me, got rid of my kid which you never, never even asked me about it. You just said, I’m doing—”
“YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SAY NO!” she screamed.
“You were supposed to say something! You weren’t supposed to just say all right. You were the father. You were supposed to step in and do something. I was all on my own.” She punched him. “I was alone.” She hit him again. “What the fuck was I supposed to do? You don’t do anything. You didn’t do anything.”
She kept pounding on his chest and wailing, “You bastard! You son of a bitch. You didn’t do a goddamn thing. You just let me walk off and do it. Don’t you dare... lecture me about hurt feelings. What I did wasn’t about you. You weren’t even fucking around,” her voice wound down to a defeated murmur, her face was red and wet.
“Seth was. And Seth was after you and afraid to tell you because he’s your friend. He understood. He knows what it’s like to... have a stain. He knows and you don’t. You don’t.”
She sat on the ground under the pine tree, in the litter of twigs and brown needles, her shoulders heaving.
Addison stood over her thinking: I don’t know why the fuck I came.