Bright Before Us (19 page)

I know,
you said.
Me either.

You didn't.

Because its roots are so deep in the ground,
I said.

The teeth of my jacket's zipper grazed the back of your collar. I felt us reset; however far we had come—sleeping next to each other, holding hands, your naked breasts gracing my lowly bedroom—every time the next step presented itself, it carried with it an undertaste of alarm. As we gained momentum, we were acquiring weight, not shedding it. I was growing more nervous, not less. The seconds plummeted past, the pond crawling over itself, tingling with activity. I could feel you waiting. The smell of that place was sharp and clean.

Ready?
you said, turning to leave.

Yeah,
I said, defeated.

We got to the entrance across the street from the car.

I wanted to kiss you in there,
I said.

We have all the time in the world,
you said.

 

We drove past an advertisement, hanging from a lamppost, for the Conservatory of Flowers. We wanted to go somewhere to warm up and it turned out to be just the place: inside that glass building was a fleshy, palpable heat, like being in a mouth. We passed a child in a stroller, laughing
as an overzealous koi splashed water up out of the pond. I blinked and then the fish was on the floor, everyone exclaiming.
It jumped right out,
you said. An unaffected guard stepped forward and scooped it up, tossing it back into the pool. Everyone applauded. It took a moment for him to laugh at what he had just done.

There was a man-eating plant.
I thought it would have teeth,
you said. I don't know what made me do it, but before I had considered it, my finger was in the thing's mouth. The guard never stopped me. You gasped, but then we just watched my finger.
This is the worst man-eating plant I've ever seen,
you said. You inspected the plaque.
Oh,
you said, disappointed.
It just slowly dissolves your flesh with chemicals.

I'll be sure to wash my hands,
I said.

We were on our way out when we saw the bulletin boards. On one were pictures from 1906, and on the other were pictures from 1989. In the pictures, people had pitched tents on the park lawns, catastrophe looming in the distance—belches of smoke, sunken foundations, wire girding splayed like bent fork tines. And in the foreground sat those impromptu shelters; a campground at the foot of apocalypse.

Outside was a sundial that told the incorrect time. When we passed it I said,
Oh, it's early yet.

You looked at your watch and shook your head no.

 

We had just parked the car outside your parents' house. We were on Eighth Avenue, walking toward Clement Street, when it happened.

My hair's all wet,
you said.
I must look ridiculous.

Oh, ha ha,
you said, rolling your eyes.

No, I'm serious,
I said, because I was. Your hair had plastered to your head like a skullcap.
You know the phrase you used earlier, bone on bone?

Your face soured.

It's like that,
I said.
It's having the same effect.

Wow,
you said. You stopped, absently mussing your hair.
I've never heard someone work so hard at being mean.

I saw the injury in your expression and I couldn't move, couldn't talk.

Let me make sure I understand. You're saying that the sight of me, right now, is as grating to you as if two bones were rubbing together.
You didn't wait for an answer: you hurried ahead of me into an aquarium store. You wanted to get away from me, you didn't care where. The worst part was, I had wanted to show you those fish tanks—dozens of them, alive with odd aqueous beings. It was why I had taken you down there.

I know now where that remark came from. We were too happy. I had to rough things up a little, break you down a little. I had to show you not to expect too much from me.

 

We ate in silence at a barbeque place on Clement, our fried chicken saturated with hot sauce. The waiter was rude, disinterested. Whenever you asked him for something he wandered away wordlessly to retrieve it. You were fuming. When the check came I didn't let you pay it, though it was just about the last forty dollars I had in the world.

I thought you didn't have any money,
you said.

I pretended not to hear.

I think I'm out of things to talk about with you,
you said.

I don't mind,
I said, pretending as though your anger amused me. You sulked while I sat there acting pleased and impenetrable, vowing never to speak again.

 

Once home, after that silent dinner and a jaunt around the bookstore (
What are you reading?
I asked;
Someone you've never heard of,
you snapped), we settled onto your parents' couch in silence. And then came the most improbable moment. I put on a movie and dimmed the lights. I made us each a cup of chamomile tea. You curled your legs beneath you and leaned against the arm of the sofa. Your softening came in degrees. You let me lean against you, and vertical became diagonal. I rested my head on your hip. I paused the movie to get us a blanket, and when I came back I put my head on your chest instead, tucking your icy feet between my legs to warm them. You placed a hand on my forehead and stroked my hair, pulling the blanket up over us. We pretended to watch the movie as I put my hand under your shirt, against your back, the lace there like Braille. You put a hand up my long sleeve, holding my forearm. You would lean down, your neck at an awkward angle, and kiss my forehead, like a mother.
Can you get the blanket off my face?
I said. I didn't want to move my hands from your body. A moment later, again—
Can you get the blanket off my face?
We laughed.
I have a new idea,
you said.
Get behind me.
I did. The movie ended, and we stared at the revolving DVD menu.
This feels good,
I said.
We should have been like this the whole time.
We were warm and dry, and outside it was quiet. Through the bay window we could see the people across the street knitting in their living room. Your back was suctioned to my chest, concave to convex, as though we had stumbled upon some stroke of anatomical destiny.

We fit,
I said, without asking for confirmation. I was just declaring it.

 

I never apologized for what I said on the street. I ought to be glad that, by then, we had stopped looking for signs.

B
efore my mother lost interest in God—the result not of any great crisis of faith, but rather an increasing distaste for Sunday morning obligations—she put me to bed with Bible stories. She knew only the greatest hits: Bethlehem, the populous ark, David's victory. But one night, around my sixth birthday, she pulled out the big guns, and I was transfixed.

Who made the crown of thorns?
I asked.
Why did they hate him so much?
The story made no sense: everybody I knew liked Jesus.

She forced out a raspy smoker's cough.
They didn't like the things he said. So they nailed him to a cross and he died.

I don't know,
she said.

Every night after that, I requested it.
Tell me about how they poked the holes in him.
Every night, she obliged—I wonder now if she mistook my interest for a budding piety. The story grew to encompass the days after, half explaining the mysterious link to the plastic eggs I found hidden, annually, in the mailbox and dog's bowl.

One night, she concluded with a question.

I told her I didn't.

I felt an instantaneous, shattering fear: I didn't put my toys in the right color-coded bin; I once hit another kid with the play iron in the domestic area at preschool—and God was restraining himself only because Jesus had those holes poked in him?

I don't like that,
I told her.

No, it's a good thing, because when we die we get to be with baby Jesus and God in heaven.
Her eyes were imploring.
Do you know what forever means?

A long, long time,
I said automatically.

She fiddled with her ashtray.
It's all of the time. It doesn't ever end.

I closed my eyes and saw white: white, white, white, and then I installed edges to the white, and then I removed them—no ends, no edges. It just kept going.
I can see it,
I said. After she turned out the light, I kept imagining: installing hurdles in that great expanse of white and then plucking them out, reaching its parameters and then seeing there could be none. It felt like too much. I panicked, pulling my
hands into fists and rapping my knuckles against my skull. I already felt too dwarfed by the universe to survive.

I cried the next time Mom asked if I wanted a story, because I didn't know how to say I wanted a story but not that one. She backed out of the room—
Okay, Frankie, okay.

My father grudgingly took his turn. His stories were all about unsuspecting men—usually named Manute Bol or Clyde Drexler—out on a jaunt and encountering things on the street, every twist prefaced by “when suddenly ...” The unfairness pained me: I didn't like that those going about their business could suddenly be called upon.
But Hakeem Olajuwon was just walking down the street, Dad.
I remember my father's face as I reached a breathless state of anxiety: pure puzzlement. Usually the challenge they encountered was only another ball player, and then they played oneon-one until the hero triumphed with the requisite threepointer.
Goddammit, Frankie,
my father said, shaking his head.
Jill,
he called to my mother,
I give up.

Then they installed a tiny TV/VCR in my bedroom, and I took comfort in
Peter Pan
and
Pinocchio
, singing along before bed. Even now, decades later, I can remember those movies from beginning to end. My eyes would grow heavy in the faint glow, and I'd wake up to whine if they turned it off too soon—I couldn't fall sleep without it. I dreamed in graphic cartoon outline. Around the house I used a plastic golf club as Jiminy Cricket's cane, singing, until my parents forbade it, about the benefits of whistling when my conscience threatened to fail me.

I slept in the master bedroom—her parents' bedroom. Or rather, I reclined on one side of the bed, staring all night out the window at lights going on and off in the homes along the street, and then at the slow crawl of the pink dawn. I witnessed the automatic snuffing of the streetlights, and listened to my breathing. I watched shadows pass across the ceiling and in my comedown discomfort—I was out of booze money—I considered never leaving that spot, that room. Who would know where I was? No one would find me; there was no one alive who would know to look for me there. And yet in my stupor I tensed with every passing car.

Thursday morning I got to Hawthorne later than usual, a few seconds before the bell would ring. Let them wait, I remember thinking, startled by the severity of the thought. The kids, the parents, Buckingham—surely he was in there, ready to discreetly guide me out of earshot before explaining to me that I was—what? A person of interest? A criminal?
A piss-ant liar?

Let them all wait. I didn't cower, didn't flinch. I walked right up to the classroom, soles sliding against the buffed floor tiles. I saw the kids and some parents congregated outside the classroom, blocking the hallway in a swarm.

Morning,
I said, nodding curtly like they were coworkers.

Hi, FRANK,
Marcus said. It was a game they played when they were feeling pushy, nasty—they called me by my first name, testing my reaction.
You're late, FRANK.

Hi, Marcus,
I said, fiddling with my keys and chewing on my fingertip, my messenger bag hanging from my shoulder.

As they went inside and scattered to their desks, the parents followed. Their number had decreased. Mr. Noel had
come again, and Mrs. Stone. Jacob's mother had returned. I was surprised to see Simon's mother absent—twice she had bent my ear for twenty minutes about Simon's nightmares, his every question since the field trip. I had imagined she would be the one who stuck around longest.