"Bro," said Pat, "I have no intention of outstaying my welcome. I came, I saw, I rocked, I made no money, I got Hep C. End of story."
Pat pulled a fifth of whiskey from the gym bag at his feet. He took some clandestine pulls, offered it up.
"No thanks," I said
"It's decent stuff."
"I'm trying to cut back."
"Dude who says that is never cutting back. He's either drinking or not drinking. I know all about it."
"All the same," I said.
Pat slipped the bottle back into his bag. We both put our seats back and stared out the window for a while. Night fell and I stared at the dark shapes of trees until they were just dark shapes.
There was city darkness and the dark outside the city, the Nearmont dark, the Eastern Valley dark, which, being only one town over, was pretty much the Nearmont dark. I pictured the Pangburn Falls dark as something else. Darker, maybe. Did Purdy ever stay the night in those upstate motels, cuddle with Nathalie under scratchy bleached-out sheets, kiss her shoulder to wake her before his dawn drive home? Or did Nathalie leave first, nervous about young Don, his dinner, his suspicions? Only Purdy knew. Only Purdy's version would ever stand for truth. Maybe that was what Don finally understood. There was no use fighting it. Especially when all you were really fighting for was the love of a man you hated.
Nobody was going to tell Nathalie's story. Stories were like people. We pretended they all counted, but almost none of them did.
"Hey," said Pat. "Want to rethink your decision?"
He was hunched over with the bottle near his knee.
"What the hell," I said, took a sip.
"That's the way," said Pat. "This country was built on the backs of dudes who drank on buses. What we do honors them. Anyway, it's all highly dealable in the end."
"What's that?" I said, drank some more.
"Everything. As long you don't choke on your puke. That's my golden fucking rule."
Twenty-nine
We rolled into Nearmont late. I stepped off the bus and walked the berm of the county road. Big Jeeps and minivans roared by and a cold wind blew off Grandy Pond. It was hard to see inside the cars, but I could almost make out the mothers and fathers and children in them, the dirty cleats and grocery bags, the lulling glow of dashboard lights. Everybody wanted to get home. Home could be a ruined place, joyless, heaped with the ashes of scorched hearts, but come evening everybody hustled to get there.
Once I walked this road on early spring evenings, knapsack slung on one shoulder, the cars ripping along, headlights slashing the yard barrels and wet lawns, my hair wet, too, from the track team showers, my body sore and buzzy from the weight room, all those snatches and squats and curls.
I threw the javelin then, was no champion, not even a contender for regional ribbons, just good enough to know the happiness of making your body a part of that spear, to get a good trot up to the throwing line, to slip into a rabbity sideways hop and snap your hips, launch a steel-tipped proxy of yourself at the sky.
I would savor the long walk home, the sweet, achy daze of it, drift into the jagged excitements of my future, paintings, parties, people, women people, a ceaseless celebration of my greedy, spangled destiny. There was nothing noble about such want. But it was me, and maybe some of you, walking home from school in April drizzle, dreaming.
And maybe it was me and some of you who took a nap before dinner, lay back on the sofa with a book, the assigned reading, another novel with the old-fashioned folk, their stiff speeches and chafed hearts. Maybe some of you, like me, shut your eyes with the book open on your chest, tumbled into another world, near and impossible, homeroom skin beneath rain-damp denim.
Certain noises would sever the reverie, a cough, my mother in the kitchen, the local news flipped on the kitchen TV-arson and elevator assaults across the river, or Don Mattingly, Donnie Baseball, with his leopard swing and porn-star mustache, on another hitting streak for the Yankees-the sounds of dishes pulled from their shelves, the rubber smooch of the refrigerator door, the tepid click of salad tongs, the hiss of garlic, frying.
No, Claudia never cooked with garlic. Maura did.
But this house in Nearmont, with all its woes, a Jolly Roger here and also never here, and the poison sadness seeping from my mother, even then this house in Nearmont was always a home, heated, with food, and familiar noises, and I was lucky to have it, this home to trust and hate, to launch myself from like a javelin that tails and wobbles and does not drive into the turf but skids to a halt at a slightly less-than-average distance, a mediocre distance, from the lumped lime line.
This is what the blessed get. A heated box, a stocked pantry, a clumpy metaphor.
The blessed get legs. The unblessed get humps, titanium girls.
I turned onto Eisenhower. Lights blazed in the bay window. Francine opened the door before I could knock.
"Come in, honey," she said.
I stepped into the foyer, heard Purdy's voice.
He sat with my mother on the sofa, sacks of chocolate and licorice between them. Michael Florida tipped forward in the rocking chair, winked.
"Purdy," I said, took a seat on the hassock.
"How come you never invited me to your mother's house? She's a force!"
"I've been calling you," I said.
"Your friend is making me fat," said Claudia. "I'll never fit into my racing suit."
"Give me a break," said Purdy. "You're a knockout."
"I like this guy," said my mother.
"Did you get my messages?" I said.
"I'm sure I did."
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"Sweetie," said Claudia, "you seem a little wound up."
"Your mom was just telling us some funny stories about young Milo Burke."
"Hilarious stuff," shouted Francine from the kitchen. "Hey, guys, I've got stone-ground crackers and pony cans of pumpkin beer. Who's game?"
"Bring on the crackers!" called Michael Florida. "Heck, let me get in there and help."
Michael Florida trotted off to the kitchen.
"What kinds of stories?"
"Well, we just heard the one where you brought this nice Japanese girl home and then, just as you were about to kiss her, you shit your jeans," said Purdy. "That was pretty good."
"That never happened."
"Plausible deniability. Well done."
"I don't care. It just didn't happen. My mother is conflating."
"It's true," said Claudia. "I'm a notorious conflater. And we shouldn't tease Milo. He's always been thin-skinned. A very nervous boy. Anxious."
"I wonder why," I said.
"These things are chemical," said Claudia. "We all have different temperaments."
"So you think the nurture bit was top quality? Even the sociopathic cokehead dad part? And your perpetual war on flatware?"
Claudia smiled.
"Who knows what helps and what hurts, honey. Francine! Let me do something! Purdy, would you and your friend like to stay for dinner?"
"Love to," said Purdy. "But we've got to get back to the city. Melinda really appreciates me being around these days."
"Of course. It's so wonderful. A baby."
"Mom, you hate children."
"You know that's not true, Milo."
"Just mine."
"Don't be silly."
Claudia rose, joined Francine in the kitchen.
I leaned forward on my elbows toward Purdy.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Purdy glanced over at the glass door that led out to the patio, the yard.
"Tetherball? Lordy. May we?"
We walked out to the rusted pole. A shrunken ball, just a hunk of desiccated leather, dangled from the cord. Years ago, during a rare moment of domestic tranquillity, Jolly Roger had dug the dirt and sunk the pole and poured the cement. We'd played a few spirited games after the cement dried, to "test the apparatus," then never again. Later, in my teens, I liked to stand out there alone, punch the ball, watch it whip and switch directions, duck as the thing looped back around, asteroidal, screaming.