Bright Before Us (13 page)

Stop thinking so hard,
I said quietly. And then I threw the chair.

The shelves—planks of unfinished wood on cinder blocks—dissolved. The books, the CDs and their cases, the swimsuit issues, playing cards, and loose change—all of it avalanched. The house went silent, my roommate and his girlfriend apparently suspended.
Shit,
I said: it was a mess,
my
mess, with no one to attend to it but me. The stillness held until a framed Bob Marley poster, seconds late, hit the floor and splintered. The girlfriend's frantic yelps resumed.

Suddenly, I
was
that mad, and heartbroken too. Angry and sad was a recipe for violence in men of conviction—but I knew whatever painful rage I felt would manifest itself in wallowing self-criticism, binge drinking, phone calls soliciting your sympathy with a telemarketer's shamelessness. I fished a clean pair of boxers from my laundry. I would drive up to my mom's house, block her car in the driveway, let her feed me low-fat pudding and vodka-Sprite cocktails. She owed me—she said it every time I saw her. When my mother was, by virtue of a highball or two, willing to speak
seriously about my father, she apologized for him breathlessly, emptily, as though begging pardon for stepping on my toe. There was always a new permutation.
He seemed so different when we were younger. You kids adored him when you were babies. We thought if we were better than our parents then we were good enough.
I think she believed it was a matter of locating the correct phrasing.

Being a parent,
she said once,
isn't like you think.
She closed her eyes for a moment, ruminating.
You, as a person? You're gone. Your past is over. You watch your old self die.

Her eyes were like a startled cat's. She clutched her bathrobe to her chest. I looked away.

I shoved the boxers into my pocket, hating that I had nowhere else to go. I had no real friends other than you. Greta would be primed for an all-night delirium of bitter rage, unanswerable questions, tearful recrimination. So I would regress alongside my mother, watch her terrible TV programs, wake up hungover with her twenty-pound cat on my chest.

I stepped into the hall and saw the front doorknob rattling. I could hear keys. I walked to the door and opened it. You looked up, sheepish.

I couldn't get it open,
you said.

We were interrupted by my roommate's noises; they were still at it. You peered down the hall.
You're not having an orgy, are you?

Just taking a break,
I said.

And then you pushed me against my bedroom door in the style of a locker-room bully. You put your lips to my neck, your hands on my chest. And then you worked my
ear with your tongue, your breathing pornographic. But when I enveloped your shoulders with my arms, surging with relief, you slowed to hug me like I was a lost child.

I brought a toothbrush,
you said into my neck.

For once, I didn't let myself think. As events unfolded, I would evaluate them on their individual merits. Thus far, the list was short. You had brought a toothbrush: plus.

Plus.

You looked into my eyes, except then I realized you were looking near them.
I want to take your glasses off,
you said.

Don't,
I said.
I can't see.

But you did anyway.
Do you take them off to have sex?
you asked.

I tried not to look startled.
Yes,
I said.

This is how you look,
you said, your fingers touching my hairline.
Without your glasses you look like the purest you.

Okay,
I said.

You look weird,
you said, smiling.

In my bedroom you saw the mess, and your smile faded. I kicked some of the spilled junk off my mattress.
Rough night?
you said.

Not anymore,
I said.

I shut off the light and we lay down in our clothes. We were still: my nose in the red web of your hair, my arms around you—one you used as a pillow, the other I curled around your rib cage. The hand of that curled arm was the one you held all night, chastely, between your breasts. I slept, long and black and dreamless. When my alarm went off I waited for you to panic. Instead, you turned onto
your back, grinning. I propped myself up on one elbow.

We didn't kiss on the mouth,
you said.
I slept in your bed and we haven't kissed.

We're all out of order,
I said.
Do you want to kiss me now?

You made a face.
I need to brush my teeth first.

We walked to the bathroom in our rumpled clothes and brushed our teeth side by side, regarding each other in the mirror with pleasant suspicion. We went back into my room, and sat facing each other on my bed. You leaned toward me, eyes shut, and pressed your closed, dry lips to mine. Neither of us breathed. And then our minty mouths opened, and it was happening.

 

Before it all ended, in those few days we had after your parents died, our history was recast. Every trivial thing suddenly meant, meant, meant. We wanted to know all the stuff we hadn't learned in the first decade and a half. We wanted to line it all up and check for patterns, look in hindsight for prophetic synchronicity: Did we ever have pets that had the same name? Had we ever lived close by each other without knowing it? We needed to rehash it. I didn't touch you; we were happy to get there in due time. We barely left my room for eighteen hours, knocked out by the one-two punch of cinematic romance and easy, familiar company. If we left to pee we rushed back, eager to return to our private undertow.

I did something silly,
you said.
When you went home the other night? I called the psychic hotline.

She said yes,
you said.
Everything I asked her, she said yes to.

You were on your back in my white T-shirt and a pair of panties. The blanket was pulled down, your bottom half uncovered. In a first stab toward sex I leaned down, my lips brushing the hard knob of your hipbone.

I asked if they were proud of me,
you said.
She said yes to that, too.

They should be,
I said, lying down again.
They are.

 

You told me things I hadn't known: in Spanish II, the boy next to you showed you his penis during class.
Where the hell was I?
I said, retroactively protective. You said he gave you such a mournful look as he did it that you couldn't tell on him. You told me Ms. Jefferson had a retarded son, grown, who lived with her; that she could never get to class on time because he refused to put on his shoes. You came for a makeup test once and she told you this, sobbing. You told me all the small things I hadn't known about your college years: where you ate burritos, all the times you did mushrooms, the worst grade you ever got (a C-). You told me you had dated boys from your dorm.
Boys,
you said—you didn't name any. And you told me, too, that those swirling letters you had composed in class were addressed to boys. Some were to me. They stayed in your backpack until you threw them away. I confessed something myself: when Mr. Wilkerson asked us to pass our papers forward and you put your hand over your shoulder expectantly, I would hold the paper for two, three,
four seconds, before passing it up, spiteful enough to make you wait. You said,
That was during our big fight?
Your head was on my shoulder.
What was it about again?

I wondered if you could tell from my heartbeat that I was about to lie.

I don't remember,
I said.

Twilight had made the room one encompassing shadow. I could hardly see.

We haven't had sex,
I said, bristling.

In all the years I had lived in San Francisco—the nut jobs yelling, the noisy patrons at the Indian place downstairs, the thumping nightclub around the corner, the sirens, parades, marches, street fights—in all those years I had never experienced a more silent moment in that city.

I nuzzled your hair.
I will.

I could say anything right now and you'd do it,
you said.

Test it out,
I breathed, my hand on your back.

You sat up, kneeling over your purse. You put something into my hand and I looked at my palm: a small bronze key.

Move into the house with me,
you said.

Because you didn't remember, I'll tell you now. Our big fight during senior year was this: you said something true, and I said something mean.

I called you one night, upset. Greta and I had fought. She wanted me to spend Christmas Eve with her family
the following month, but I had no interest in the extended company of her Christian Scientist parents, who eschewed aspirin, kept pet parakeets, and regarded me as a charity case with a psychotic father.

She's going to break up with me,
I said.
I know it.
I was genuinely sad, and pissed off that I even cared.

She's not going to break up with you,
you said.

You lowered the boom.
You think she's got guys waiting in the wings?

Seconds slipped between us. I let my voice freeze over.

You're a bitch,
I said.

Okay,
you said, ultracasual. I began to yell, calling you that again, calling you worse. You kept your tone quiet and lethal. It was only after I hung up and played it all back in my head that the waver in your voice was real to me—that I could hear me, hurting you.

You made it a policy never to say anything unkind, even when it was deserved. It's only these years later that I understand why you broke your code of decency. I met a girl, and you suddenly had something nasty to say. I missed the sign. And I moved those desks around, spending months pretending I was still angry, having increasingly boring sex with a girlfriend I had never asked for. The timing murders me. Say you hadn't gone to the bathroom at the prom. Say you had given me one of those spiraling letters in Zelner's class.

Say I had been brave, rushing you to that balcony. Say I had just said to you what I wanted to say:
Please let me kiss you.

I kept thinking, when you were finally in my bed: all that time wasted.

A
s Idrove to school on Tuesday morning, I devised a plan for survival: Be elsewhere, quietly retreat into your own head. I thought about feigning a sore throat, pretending my voice was gone—no one asks questions of those who can't answer. I thought about tasks that would take the kids all day and accomplish nothing. Here, sort these lima, pinto, and kidney beans; here, write down all the animals you can think of. I would create a baseline of normalcy and wouldn't attempt to better it. I downed more pills, which now seemed a given, in traffic; not enough to put me out, but plenty to achieve the spacedout order of the day.

I parked outside Hawthorne, walked carefully up the hall, and found the door open. I stepped into the classroom, expecting to see the janitor.

Mr. Mason,
the principal said gently. She was one of several adults in the room: six or seven parents stood along
the walls or crouched beside their children. Mr. Noel was sitting at my desk, holding Caleb's backpack.

Mr. Mason,
the principal said again.

You shouldn't lean against the whiteboard,
I told Mariana's mother, swallowing.
It'll rub off on your clothes.

She stepped forward an inch, frowning. The clock's second hand was deafening. The children were silent, curious about why the grown-ups were present. Some of the parents stared in my direction. I followed their gaze to my hands, which were thrust downward, clenched into fists.

 

Our task that morning was to learn to sing in a round, and I said a prayer of thanks that I had scheduled something easy. The parents were concerned. This I understood. I knew their children must have been saying alarming things. It made sense to me that the parents had come; they were offering their support, making my job easier—there were so many children and just one teacher. We would need to work together.

The principal pulled me aside and confirmed this.
Frank,
she said gently,
nothing to worry about, just—the kids had a rough weekend, as I'm sure the parents told you last night ... I know I got several calls—