My father sat down next to me on the couch, but not so close that we were in any danger of touching. All of a sudden, I felt disgusted that he had a body with hair and snot and thousands of dead skin cells, a body that had rubbed against my mother. I didn’t see how kids with two parents living in the same house, sleeping together in the same bedroom, could stand the constant reminder of geriatric sex. I scooted to the furthest cushion, away from him.
“She wants you in October. You can go to school in Florida, where she’s living; she lives right next to a school, a good school.”
I closed my eyes, which had started to feel like two raisins pressed into my skull. It was funny how they could seem dried out when all that I wanted to do was cry.
“And while you’re gone,” he said, “I might take a trip. I’ve been thinking about going away for a little while.”
“A trip.”
“Yeah, a road trip, in October, when you go to stay with your mother. Raising a kid by myself, I haven’t been able to take any trips. But before all that happens, think about this: we’ll have a month and a half together, you and me; we can do whatever you’d like. It will be fun, probably, the two of us.”
My body was hot; my body was cold; the temperatures swirled together and made me feel kind of crazy. “When is the last time we did something fun? Why don’t you just go now? Pack up your truck and leave. I’m old enough. I’ll be fine.”
“Benny, don’t act like that. Come on.”
“Don’t call me a baby name just because you don’t want me to be mad at you.” The angry heat moved through me in waves.
“Listen, we can talk about this in the morning. Okay?” He stood up like an old man, pressing his hands against his knees to help with leverage. “We’re both tired. We need some rest. Then we can talk.” He disappeared into the back of the house.
Even if I slept for a hundred years, I wouldn’t be able to really talk to my dad: just like when older kids had tortured me on the playground, or when I’d convinced myself a lump on my head was cancer, or when I’d become weirdly depressed after I ran over this cute little mouse thing on my bike and killed it, I would keep to myself. The couch pillow dented beneath my fist over and over again, the sound of the thing being crushed no more than a sad little whoosh.
That night, I couldn’t sleep; I thought about the time I’d decided to join a church to feel closer to my mother. When we’d lived in Texas, she would go to this Catholic church every Sunday, a big, dark-stone place. She’d take me with her in a stroller and sit me on her lap during the ceremony so that she could clamp a hand over my mouth if I cried. Her fingers always tasted of vanilla from the lotion she carried in her purse. In Delaware, when I was eleven, I went through this phase of missing her that I decided to address with a trip to church. I found a Catholic church, white clapboard, but with a couple of stained glass windows that reminded me of the place back in Texas. At the Sunday service, the priest’s sermon about Mary, mother of Jesus, sounded like a lecture. When everyone lined up to take communion, I followed, but I could feel the old ladies’ eyes burning into me. One of them stepped on the back of my shoe and this made me want to crumple up and explode at the same time. They didn’t want to welcome me at all. Since then, I had pretty much stopped missing my mother, stopped obsessing over her, until now, with my dad throwing her back into my life.
Chapter 9
The following morning, when I left for school, my dad was still asleep in his room. I waffled between the possibility that he was okay, just on a special assignment; or that he’d gotten fired, and the “special assignment” excuse let him pretend that he didn’t have to go to work until later.
At school, Toshi and I met up in our usual spot and stood around, waiting for Jay. “I have to go down to Florida,” I told him, “in October.”
“For what?” Toshi said. “Vacation? Last year, there were six reported cases of malaria in Florida. I wouldn’t go.”
“I’ve never gone anywhere for vacation.”
“Oh no,” Toshi said and bit his bottom lip, “did your dad really get fired? And you have to move right away, just like you thought?”
“It’s not that. I’m staying with my mom for a little bit.”
He clutched at the case of his French horn as if it were something precious. “Are you serious? That’s going to be weird. I mean, you haven’t seen her in…”
“Tosh, stop sounding like a little prick just because my mom actually wants to see me.”
He curled up into himself then, and I took pleasure in the way his face crumpled like a used-up paper bag. Everyone at school would see that he was the weak one, the wannabe mama’s boy, not me.
I left him there, looking pathetic, and walked towards Stella and Jay, who had just arrived. Compared with Toshi, I was a real man; Stella should be able to see that. Since I was leaving mid-semester, it meant I needed to convince her to come with me to New Veronia, and fast.
But just as I entered Stella’s bubble of candy perfume, I veered away, towards Jay. I had no idea what to say; Stella and I never conversed in front of other people. I needed Jay. A pep talk. He would help me figure out what to do.
We cut first period: Jay showed me how to wait in the bathroom until a few minutes after the bell rang and then just walk out the double doors. I’d never really cut class before—I’d always felt afraid of what I might miss—but none of it mattered now. I was leaving this place.
We sat in a far corner of the football field and Jay concentrated on the problem of pussy. “You can’t move away, man, not when we’re so close to getting some. So close. I mean, how long will this whole situation last? When are you coming back? Are you definitely coming back?” As he spoke, he picked at a scab on his elbow.
“Of course I’m coming back,” I said, before realizing that I really didn’t know. Florida was so far away. My dad might disappear on the road, or get into a car crash, or decide he didn’t want me anymore. I was that kind of kid, I guess.
I plucked some grass and threw it down. “Remember what you said before about kicking Toshi out of our group?”
“Yeah.”
I waited, but Jay, working on his scab, kept silent.
I shrugged. “Everything has to happen fast, now. Maybe we should ditch Tosh. Do you think he’s holding us back on getting girls?” It seemed like Jay and Toshi had been hanging out together without me more often, lately, and that worried me: what if Jay decided I was the one to kick out of the group? What if he forgot me after I left?
“Sometimes it’s better to keep someone close,” he said. “You get what I mean? Keep an eye on them that way.”
My stomach felclass="underline" Toshi wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe Jay did like Toshi better than me. Toshi would be around to make sad faces and worry over my dad’s drinking and steal away Jay’s attention until I left, and then it would be just the two of them. They could share secrets about Jay’s mystery brother, the one he’d never told me about. None of it was fair. I said, “Yeah, well. Now that I’m moving in October, the main thing is, we have a deadline. For New Veronia.”
“Absofuckinglutely we do,” Jay said. He flicked his scab to the ground. “And the sooner, the better, for me. I mean, I can’t wait. I really can’t.”
“Yeah,” I said, “me, too.” The way all the girls stood in a tight, impenetrable circle on the blacktop made me despair every morning, but if Jay really put his mind to it, I knew that we could get some of them out to New Veronia. “Hey—do you think that you could talk to Stella for me? Maybe, just—convince her to come out? For me?”