Last Night at the Circle Cinema (20 page)

The reel ended and flashes of white brilliance darted across the screen.

We sat there in crackled silence with the cat meowing, when something hit me.

“Something's wrong.” I looked at her and saw my own fear mirrored back to me. “Didn't he say something about that once?” I tried to remember, my lungs filling fast now, my pulse quickening. “Film can catch fire. Weren't you there when he gave me that lecture? With that story about some movie house back in the thirties and how all these people perished and—”

Though she said she hadn't been there to hear that story, we both bolted from the balcony back toward the projector room, the urgency building all around us. It was easy to imagine—us burning to death in a romantic and tragic end, the balcony in its entirety crumbling under the weight of the flames, the whole building razed with only charred remains left for someone to find.

28

Livvy

We got there in what felt like the nick of time. I unbuckled the reel from the projector and tried to hold it but it was heavier than I thought, unwieldy. It fell out of my hands and onto the floor with a crash. Codman crouched to pick it up and I met him on the floor, my pack sliding off, the cat still there, peeking out at the whole scene.

The room wasn't dark exactly, but faded, like it couldn't get light but wasn't ready to wilt completely. On the wooden shelves all around us, old filmstrips dangled from their reels, blowing ghostly in a slight breeze.

Codman knelt by me, his hands on the reel, the reel of us and everything we'd been, up until now.

I looked at him, and he set the reel down.

He moved in toward me, and I moved forward, closing the gap between us. His mouth looked ready, and his eyes went from mine to my lips and then back to my eyes. He put one hand on the back of my head, the other gently on my neck.

“Why haven't we ever been able to be together? Really be together?” I asked when he was only inches away. That weekend at the beach I'd had high hopes—we'd played Scrabble late into the night, the waves splashing outside, the air tinged with expectation.

How many of my memories were of the three of us? We overlapped like rope twists, unable to be untangled. Rumors had started, faded, started again about the three of us being too close, about me dating them both, about them dating each other. “It was always the three of us,” I said.

“And that's why.” Codman's hands were solid and light on my skin, his fingertips electrifying and comforting all at once.

“Yeah,” I said, “but I can't help thinking that ... tonight ... now? That we're supposed to—”

“That the plan is
us
?” He drew an invisible line back and forth between his chest and mine and then put his hands right back onto me.

I nodded. “Is that what you think?”

Codman's breath was shaky. “Olivia.”

“Livvy.”

“Livvy—you're ... I know I am the sad-sack son of people who talk about feelings for a living and that of anyone, I should be able to tell you how I feel. But ... I'm not some sort of film montage genius. I can't write poems or equations.” He whispered into my ear, making my hair stand up, my already-racing heart pound. “But I can't leave here without knowing we're together.”

I nodded into him. “Together together?”

“Yes yes,” he said and I semi-laughed. “You can repeat it however many times you want, but the truth is that we should be together and everyone knows it. And I'm sorry I left you.”

I leaned in to kiss him, and we were close enough that I could feel his lips but not firmly. I backed up slightly. “What if Bertucci walked in now?”

Codman flinched. “He won't.”

“But if he did,” I said.

Codman let go of me. The absence I felt without his hands stung me and I was cold, shaking. He took a deep breath and tried one more time, sweeping his arm around my waist and right as the kiss was about to happen, we could see him.

Bertucci.

“Bertucci,” I whispered.

Codman nodded.

He had interrupted us and I hated him for that, but what I hated him for wasn't only that. “I hate this,” I said. And then, unable to fight it any longer, I began to cry. I missed Bertucci so much it clawed at me.

“I know,” Codman said, his green eyes fighting it too.

Bertucci said nothing.

He would never say anything.

Not another word.

Whether I could see in the box or not, whether I could admit the truth aloud or not, he was dead. And we'd known that for weeks.

29

Codman

It was Memorial Day. Livvy and I had gone to the Cape to her parents' house, and Bertucci had begged off. Said he wasn't feeling up to it. Ever the caretaker, Livvy had pestered him for symptoms, eager to come up with a diagnosis—strep throat, flu, chronic fatigue. She didn't want to leave him alone, but I sort of backed her into a corner. I had a feeling she wanted to go with me but that she was afraid. Worried about cutting class for the first time ever. Worried more about what could happen between us.

“Come on, you're a senior. With like three weeks until graduation. What do you care?” But she did care. She played by the rules. One of them unspoken but very real—a sort of pact we had. The three of us were the three of us. Not pairs.

But we'd taken off and left him.

••••

In the film projector room, the ghost of Bertucci looked at us, fading, popping up whenever I least expected it.

“Did you know he was off his meds? I don't even know when I figured out he was on anything,” I asked. “I should have said more. But, I mean, to who? Bee died, and ...”

Olivia patted the cat's head as she cried. “I did know. Or, I sort of knew. But I wasn't supposed to know. And I wasn't sure. Once when I was there with Bee, he was in the bathroom, and I thought he was looking at his mother's pills.” She paused. “No. That's not true. I knew they were his. I just didn't want it to be true. I couldn't admit that he was dumping them. That he was that ...”

We'd read this essay in English, “The White Album” with a line “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” At the time, I hadn't been that into it. But after Bertucci's funeral, when I'd ditched Olivia and the cold cuts and the stale stifling air at Bertucci's house, I'd reread it. “That's what we did, you know? We lied to ourselves. Just to get through the day with him. I mean, what would have happened if I actually called him on his crazy shit?” My hands shook. This was all the stuff I hadn't said aloud. All the stuff that piled up so huge that I felt crushed sometimes. “I talk all the time. But about nothing.”

“That's not true!” Livvy insisted.

“I mean, how hard would it have been to grab him and make him take some fucking pills?”

Livvy shook her head. “He didn't want to take them anymore. That's the thing. He was done. He wasn't ever going to get better, and I think he didn't feel alive on them either.”

“He was supposed to be at the hospital. That day I recycled all his father's empty bottles at his house. I did sort of have it out with him.” My voice got louder as I told her. “I cornered him, you know? I was like, dude, get some fucking help. And what did I think? That he would? That I could change the outcome? No. So I get my parents involved and he's at my house all the time and I'm, like, finally able to relax for one freaking second because my parents can handle it, right? And they did. They would have. They were so good to him.”

I started sobbing, which I hadn't yet. Not when we found him at his house, unmoving at the top of the stairs, and not at the funeral with his stupid shiny gold coffin, with Livvy retching in the graveyard because she had thought she was helping pick his mother's coffin but was picking Bertucci's too.

I hadn't cried then, but nothing could stop the flood now. “He said he would. Get some help, I mean. He lied.”

Livvy nodded. “I don't know if you're going to think I'm crazy, but I still see him.” She paused and looked around the room. “At school not so much because he just ... wasn't there recently. But I drove by his house. And tonight—God. Tonight! He was there. Standing there, outside before we went in and ...”

“You already had his sweater?”

She nodded. “You didn't come that night at my house. He told me about the cat and the cat was him, you know? Alive and dead at the same time. I needed you there, Alex.”

“I was there. I did show up.”

“You did?” She pushed her hair back from her face. “Oh, I guess so. But late. Too late.

“Hey—you called me Alex.”

“That is your name, isn't it?”

“Yeah. But you always call me Codman. Why?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. I don't know half of what I do. Do you? I mean, that's the thing about Bertucci. He's ... he was always on, always thinking. His mind was like that coaster you went on—the Big Twister. Fast, swerving, repeating, whether you asked for it or not. He was trapped.”

I looked at her, the tears slipping from her cheeks to her arms. She brushed a few away with the back of her hand. “Livvy?” She looked up at me. “It's not our fault, you know. I mean, I ... part of me doesn't believe that yet, but I know it's true. He had this planned—the whole thing—for a long time. Probably before us.”

Livvy put her head in her hands, her voice a little garbled as she spoke. “I had this stupid idea. That, even though I liked you ... that if I'd just put my arms around him in his bathroom when I found him in there, maybe it would have changed things.”

I nodded and made her look at me. “But it's not true! That's the fantasy we're telling ourselves.” I rubbed my face with my hands like I was trying to wake up. “This might sound dumb, but I'll just tell you. I had a thought, too, right? That you and I ... well ... you and I would be together, or whatever, and Bertucci would somehow partner up with Lissa—I mean, she's fun and never mind that. The point is, it was so easy to picture it. The four of us down by Westside Park. Summer. The food truck scene picking up, and all of the laughing and going to Gordough's.”

“You pictured us eating donuts?” Livvy asked.

I semi-laughed. “Maybe. It was just so real, you know?”

Livvy nodded. “I thought of things like that, too. Even with Lissa. Like in my mind I stitched together this place where he was okay.”

“It's all just fantasy,” I said and got the chills. “Because ... say you're there in the bathroom, and he's thinking—well, God knows what—but you fling your gorgeous self at him and you become a couple, right? It doesn't change him. It can't affect his brain. The wiring. It's faulty.”

I'd told this to my dad and he'd listened in perfect quiet, letting me churn it all up. In all of our fantasies, my dad had noted, we somehow saved him. Managed to provide such good times, such love, that he would stay.

“He stopped taking his meds.”

I nodded. “He stopped his meds. Nothing we could have done—and we did stuff, Liv. My parents couldn't help and they're trained in this. His mother couldn't help and he loved her.”

“I never told mine how bad it was. My parents. I just—I knew they'd try and protect me and probably make me stay away from him just so I wouldn't be hurt or something.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “After we ... after you and I found him, I told them, obviously.”

I sighed. “He was so perfect at planning.”

“Except for that.” Livvy took my hand, and I remembered showing up at his house, barefoot from the beach.

The night before had been pretty much perfect. Scrabble, pizza, Livvy and I had the house all to ourselves with the double bed in the front room. We'd gone to the beach, stripped down, waded into the water that was cold, too cold to stay in, and maybe I'd only gone in so I'd have an excuse to warm up in the outside shower. Which we had. And when I'd seen Livvy, her face clear in the slanted moonlight, I knew I loved her. I'd told her and we'd gone upstairs, slipped into the clean sheets and spent the whole night together.

First thing in the morning, she'd woken me. The sun wasn't even up, just rays of pink streaking the horizon.

“We have to tell him,” she'd said, and I knew I wouldn't convince her to stay the rest of the weekend. Mainly because I knew she was right. You couldn't delay the inevitable.

We couldn't let Bertucci slip away from us like that. Couldn't keep the truth from him. There we were building a new future together—the whole summer and everything after, possibly together without him.

So we'd gathered all our crap and climbed into the car, laughing and exhilarated, stopping only at Dunkin' Donuts for coffee and Munchkins, licking powdered sugar from each other's fingers as we drove away from the beach and back to town.

“We'll just surprise him,” Livvy had said. The sunlight crackled on the car's exterior, burning my hand as I let my palm rest out the window.

“We'll tell him we thought he should have been there with us,” I said.

Livvy slowed the car outside Bertucci's, the tires popping on the random bits of gravel on the scrubby driveway. “We can't say that,” she'd said. “Because it's not really true anymore, is it?”

I tried to picture Scrabble with Bertucci. He would have won, of course, and liked the fact that I'd played “ukulele,” but he wouldn't have let us swim or shower or share a bed. “No. I guess you're right.” I sighed and squeezed her hand. “But it's hard, you know? Telling him. Like the end of something.”

We'd parked and, like so many times before, gone around to the porch with its ripped screens and discarded folding tables, the withering houseplants and multiple cardboard boxes all filled with more bottles.

••••

“The house was so, so still,” I said to Livvy, and she nodded, remembering. The door squeaked. It was sunny and quiet and empty in the kitchen. “What if,” I said, “we hadn't come back then?”