Robin and Ruby (30 page)

It made an impression, the word “jerk” like a sudden jolt, an impact. The jerk is the one who upsets things, the one heedless of other people’s feelings. He carried her admonishment around as warning, the danger of being selfish, of being petty, even vengeful. When his mother had smoked cigarettes in the car despite the fact that it was making Ruby sick, he understood that
she
was being a jerk. Last night, Peter had been a jerk, but Robin had only made it worse by exploding. Earlier in the car, his own defensiveness with George caused him to act like a jerk again. Had he done it again with Ruby, by yanking her away from a boy she seemed to feel something for? Or have the roles reversed, and is Ruby, for a change, the one who has selfishly knocked everything out of place?

Traffic clogs and opens up, clogs and opens up, all along the drive northward, as the shore roads empty onto the Garden State Parkway. As highways go, it’s not a bad one to be stuck on. Rolling green slopes line either side, and a wide grassy median separates north and southbound lanes. There are wooden guardrails instead of metal and no billboards. Still, New Jersey drivers are infamous for a reason, and Robin tenses up as cars shift across multiple lanes without warning. George’s driving is as bad as anyone’s. The long day seems to be wearing on him, and he’s become impatient, heavy on both the brake and the gas, taken to muttering, and sometimes shouting, “asshole” and “idiot.” There’s a truly scary moment when a car on the shoulder makes a move back onto the road, jutting quickly in front of them. George speeds up, even though the other guy is clearly about to merge, and lands his fist on the horn as he swerves. Robin gets thrown from side to side, grasping for equilibrium. George says, “Sorry,” but it sounds more like a challenge than an apology.

From behind him, Ruby stirs.

“I don’t feel good,” she says. “Can we pull over?”

“Are you going to be sick?”

“I need some air.”

“There’s a place coming up,” George says, reading the sign for the Cheesequake Service Area.

Robin sings, “Cheesequake, hit the brakes, let’s go eat a piece of cake.” The lyrics burst forth unbidden, a little tune invented during a family vacation, way back when. He seems to remember that his father, who is more prone to corniness than his mother, was the one who made it up, but he’s not entirely sure. The song is a mystery, like the word Cheesequake itself (which could be derived from some Indian language, butchered by white people, or could also be nonsense). He looks back at Ruby to see if she’s remembered this song, too, but she doesn’t seem to be paying attention. She’s looking more than a little green.

As soon as George moves them into a parking spot, Ruby bounds out of the car toward the restrooms.

Inside, a crowd lines up for fast food; another group mills around at a little gift counter, perusing bumper stickers and T-shirts with the slogan
NEW JERSEY AND YOU
,
PERFECT TOGETHER
.

Robin looks through the racks, hoping to find a Father’s Day card. No luck. So he buys an oversized postcard with a picture of the Cheesequake Service Area. On the back, he writes, “Dad, Here’s a trip down memory lane for Father’s Day. Love, your prodigal children.”

Next stop is the men’s room. Along a wall of urinals, a couple old men are spaced intermittently; a father in a baseball cap keeps an eye on his young son at the kid-sized pisser. Robin heads for the farthest one. George takes the spot next to him.

He can hear their streams hit the porcelain at the exact same time, which secretly pleases him. Sometimes, pissing in public, he becomes inexplicably pee-shy, and no matter how bad he has to go, it takes forever to start up. But since moving in with George, this hasn’t been a problem. They’re sometimes in the bathroom at the same time, one of them peeing while the other brushes his teeth, and though it’s not something they’ve bothered to talk about, Robin figures George probably takes the same kind of comfort in this brotherly intimacy as he does. Brotherly, because it reminds him of Jackson. Some of his earliest memories are of the two of them “crossing streams” into the bowl in the upstairs bathroom, the one with the fuzzy gold bathmat always bunched up against the tub, and talking with playful fascination about arcs and splashes, the varying smells and colors. It was their game, regular and unremarkable, and no one knew about it. How long would it have continued, if Jackson had lived? Or would having a gay brother have driven Jackson away from anything resembling physical closeness?

George is the nearest thing to a brother in his life now. And maybe that’s what’s so confusing about the line they stepped over last night. You put people into compartments, but they break out of them, and then what? Can you seal yourself back in, or are you forever changed?

At this very moment he can glimpse George’s cock as George shakes off, which should be no big deal but after last night seems tinged with taboo. George senses it, too, if the quick eye contact he makes with Robin is any indication.

Down the wall, father and son have departed, and one by one the old men leave; and then it’s only the two of them inside the cavernous, tiled room. Now the eye contact is not so subtle. Their glances drift across each other, mischievous, expectant.

George turns sideways. He thrusts his pelvis out. He slaps his cock onto Robin’s, saying, “Swordfight.”

Robin’s mouth drops open, giddy with the audacity of it.

George does it again. Slap, slap, slap. And then he steps closer, lingering, more gentle. Rub, slide, rub.

But that’s all. There’s the squeal of a door hinge, the sound of entering footsteps. Robin moves back to his urinal and shields his crotch. His heartbeat quickens in the rush of nearly being caught.

George flushes. “Meet you outside.”

Robin spots him near the curb, standing in profile studying an oversized map under glass. The sun hits him softly from behind, hugs the solidity of his neck, highlights the texture of the twists in his hair. There’s the undeniably beautiful way the arch of his lower back becomes the curve of his muscular ass.

George finally sees him and waves him over. “I had you speechless in there,” he says through a smile.

“Definitely.”

“Is something wrong?” George asks. “You’ve got some look in your eyes.”

“I guess I’m just thinking about last night.”

“Is that a good thing?”

Robin nods. Speechless again.

George glances around. There’s no one in close range, but people and cars are coming and going every which way. “Fuck. This is crazy! We’ve created a problem.” He looks down at his pants, where Robin can see that the
problem
isn’t easily concealed. “You need to walk away and let me think about something else.”

“Gotcha.” Robin steps back, scans the parking lot, remembers where they are, what they’re in the midst of. “I’ll go find my sister. Have you seen her?”

George shakes his head. “Actually, for a minute I forgot all about her.”

S
he hasn’t eaten meat in years, but impulsively, guiltily she orders a bacon cheeseburger and devours its fatty, salty bulk in record time.

While she sucks a Cherry Coke through a straw, all the way down to the ice, she hurries to the pay phone and dials the Island Beach Motor Lodge. The old guy at the desk puts her through to the room.

The phone rings and rings. Eventually he comes back on the line and states the obvious, “No answer.”

“Did you see him come in? The guy I was with last night?”

“What’s a’matter, honey, lost your
husband
already?”

“I’m not your
honey,
” she snaps. “That’s totally sexist.”

“Oh, I got a real women’s libber here,” he says.

“How about I call the Better Business Bureau on you?”

He begins an answer, but she hangs up without hearing the rest of it. And immediately she’s wishing she’d ignored his condescension. Her anger today is an undertow. She’s barely aware of it until it’s pulling her in deep.

Collecting herself, she calls back. She swallows her pride and apologizes, and in the sweetest voice she can muster she asks him if he’ll leave a message for Chris. She can only hope that he actually writes down the phone number, Clark’s phone number in Greenlawn, which she recites carefully.

At the next phone, a young mother—flowered bikini top, dingy white shorts, sandals too tight for her doughy feet—rocks a baby over her shoulder while carrying on a loud conversation, the receiver balanced against her neck. The baby stares with unblinking eyes at Ruby as a string of spittle falls from its tiny mouth to a discolored towel on its mother’s bare shoulder. Ruby smiles at the smooth, blank face, trying to draw out a happy reaction, but all she gets is a wince that quickly turns into tears. The mother shifts her child around, shushing the sudden wailing without halting her own irate conversation. Ruby hears “child support” and “delinquent” and “You don’t know a fucking thing,” and in glimpses she comes to see just how young this “woman” is, maybe even younger than she is. A teenager. Suddenly it all seems shocking—the foul language, the crying baby, the tacky clothes. Then the girl catches Ruby’s stare and squints suspiciously, and Ruby turns away, ashamed.

There are kids everywhere she looks. Little kids being dragged along by their mothers. Sleepy kids being lifted by their fathers. Boys shouting as they dash into the parking lot without looking—that’s the kind of kid Jackson was, untamable. She roots around her purse for more change. She might have enough to call home, though she dreads the idea, and anyway Robin said he talked to Clark, so there’s no need to call now. She’ll see her father soon enough.

Still there’s this urge to talk to
someone
. Among the clutter at the bottom of her purse she finds Wendy’s phone number. She dials, wondering why she’s even bothering.

“Hi, this is Ruby, from last night?”

“Holy shit! What’s happening?”

“Well, I never checked in with you again, so—”

“Are you still with that guy?”

“I was with him all day. We ran into Joanne on the boardwalk.”

“Really? I’ll get the scoop from her, you can be sure.”

“She told me you got in trouble.”

“Yeah, you owe me a total apology.”

“Oh, I’m really sorry—”

“
Psych!
” Wendy exclaims. “J.K.—just kidding. Don’t worry about it, my mother always grounds me. It lasts for like two days. It’s her way to get me to do a bunch of housework for her. I call her the Sheriff, ’cause she totally runs a jail around here.”

She listens to Wendy launch into the same story that Joanne told her today. (Recalls, too, how rude Chris had been in that moment. What was that about? As soon as they left the hotel room, their problems began.) Finally, she gets a chance to interrupt. “Listen, I didn’t get to thank you. You guys saved me.”

“Aw, you’re so sweet. That was so fun last night. I’m psyched we ran into you.”

“You are?”

“You’re the coolest person I’ve met here all summer. Most people who come down here, I can’t
stand
’em.”

Ruby laughs. Such a relief to know there’s one person in the world who wasn’t put out by her behavior.

She looks up and sees Robin coming her way. He calls out, “Train’s leaving the station.”

“Wendy, I gotta go.
My
sheriff just blew his whistle.” They say good-bye with promises to keep in touch. Maybe we will, Ruby thinks. I could use some new friends.

She catches up to Robin and walks alongside him, out of the building onto the hot pavement. The uncomfortable silence between them is hard to bear. When he showed up at Alice’s, she was so happy, felt like finally she’d be able to emerge from the purgatory of the party, wouldn’t simply be sliced to ribbons by the cats clawing at her from every direction. Why did it go downhill from there? Because Robin was convinced she’d done the wrong thing. Because he wouldn’t give Chris a chance. Because he still treats her like his baby sister, still bosses her around and expects her to yield.

“Sign this,” he says to her. He’s holding out a postcard. A picture of the rest area and the Parkway. The kind of postcard you see and think, who would buy that? She turns it over, reads the message and smiles.
Prodigal children.

“I know, it’s pathetic,” he says, looking so crestfallen that even though she’s mad at him, she feels the need to reassure.

“That’s OK, we’re both pathetic, today. It’s the thought that counts.”

He throws an arm around her shoulder, pulls her towards him, squeezes. Just for a moment, it makes things better.

It wasn’t fair of her, she knows, to make that crack about Calvin’s movie. Robin doesn’t need Calvin—he just got into that London program. He’ll probably wind up in some costumed Shakespearean tragedy, a doomed prince soaking up applause. Or he’ll catch the eye of some art-film director looking to fill the role of a sensitive American boy. Robin’ll do well. He always does, eventually. His successes have seemed like hers, too, by association. His exploits, for better or worse, have been hers, vicariously. But that’s the problem, right? This—all of this—isn’t
his
. It’s hers, hers alone.

She can read him so well, knows his moods, the subtleties of his expression. She’s pretty sure that there’s more on his mind besides her. It’s something about the way his overly responsible attitude reads like a role, like he’s playing the part of big brother—“Big
Bother
” was a name she’d once called him after he’d grilled her about one of her early dates with Calvin.

In the car, in the backseat again, moving onto the Parkway, that queasy feeling bubbles up, like the red light pulsing on the answering machine, a message you’ve been avoiding but will be forced to listen to sooner or later. The radio is filling the dead air of the car with another inescapable pop song:
I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong, after the boys of summer have gone.
What is it about the summer that makes people nostalgic for it even before it’s over? All those romantic feelings, ignited by long days and warm nights—must they all end once temperatures drop and days shorten? And yet she can’t deny that things
do
disappear. Things you can’t imagine ever not being there can wither, dry out, crumble. Is she going to lose Chris? A year ago, it would have been hard to imagine hating Calvin the way she does now. Not hating, but—what is it? Just having nothing left for him, no patience, no tolerance, no interest, really. It was so easy to watch him walk out the door of that house.

The music is loud enough that she can’t hear what’s being said up front. But she sees, in the space between the seats, Robin’s hand resting on George’s thigh, lingering there. And then George’s hand falls on his and stays. Both boys stare straight ahead, which only confirms for Ruby that this is more than just a friendly pat. Has she ever seen this kind of touch between them? She’s never even imagined it, in part because George has never really seemed gay to her—not the way Robin does. Robin’s not a flamer, but there’s a pitch to his voice and a fluidity to his gestures, plus his enthusiasm for dance music and fashion and—well, if you can pick up on that kind of thing—if you have what he calls
gaydar
—you can’t miss it. But George has always seemed so serious, bookish, almost asexual. The gayest thing about him has been his friendship with Robin. Of course, now that she thinks about it, George seems different—he has attitude. He has big arm muscles and fuzz on his chest. The dreads in his hair are so carefully twisted and evenly spaced out that they don’t so much look like a Rasta statement as a fashion choice.

George is looking at her in the rearview mirror. Caught her staring. “Are you OK?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” she says. Something isn’t right with her stomach. The bacon cheeseburger and Coke were a mistake. Her gut is expanding with what she imagines to be fist-sized bubbles of sugar and fat, pressing against the lining of her intestines. The sensation of trying to suppress it is leaving her light-headed. She closes her eyes, but all she can form is the image of those floppy strips of bacon and that overdone beef patty transforming themselves into noxious gas. And then suddenly it’s upon her, the very sensation she felt back at Alice’s house, and she has cover her mouth for fear that she’ll lose it all.

“Pull over,” she croaks through her fingers. “I need to pull over.”

“What?” George says. “Now?”

“Please.”

Robin is looking back at her in alarm. “Hold on, OK? He can’t just—”

Oh God oh God oh God—

The lurching of the car toward the side of the road, the crunching of the pebbly surface beneath the wheels, the rush of air as she pushes open the door while they’re still moving—

She hears Robin command, “Wait! Until we stop!” but it sounds like it’s coming from very far away, on the other side of a membrane that’s formed between them, and before they’ve completely halted she’s tumbling from the car. She gets knocked to her knees, crawls to get away from the road and then, with a pain like a spear rising up from her stomach, the enlarged bubble forces itself through her throat into her mouth. She tastes it in a hot wet stream rushing across her tongue and teeth. It shoots through the air—
splurshhh
—a bulging wet beast forcing itself out. Chunks splatter across dried grass and bleached-out garbage and the splintered wooden guardrail.

Just one big blast. She braces herself for more. Her throat is on fire, her lips sting.

Behind her, cars zoom by with the speed of missiles.

Robin is beside her. He’s holding out a bottle of Diet Coke. One perfumey whiff and her throat convulses all over again—why do they drink so much of this stuff?—but this time nothing comes up—a dry heave, like a screw tightening in her skull. Robin comes back a moment later with a different bottle. She gulps warm water from the bottom, then fills her mouth again and swishes out the sourness.

She can breathe again, deeply. It’s like her head has been released from too long underwater. “I think that’s all.”

“Take your time,” Robin says. She can hear the concern in his voice.

She stands up. “We should go.”

“I should have given you the front,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well…” She’s not feeling particularly forgiving. She knows she could push it if she wanted to, if she had any strength left to argue. So let him feel bad. He could definitely stand to remember that he’s far from perfect.