What They Always Tell Us (20 page)

They make a plan to meet at four o’clock at Monnish Park, the little park that is adjacent to school, though it is blocked from view by rows of hedges and old, fat oak trees.

After he hangs up he tries to read, but there’s too much crowding his head. Nathen. Alex. The weird shit going on next door. Clare. Greer. Preston. Colleges. And now Alice.

After tennis practice the next day he drives his car over to the park, even though it’s a short walk away. He wants to be able to get away quickly, if he has to. He wonders what Alice wants to talk to him about. It has to be something bad—why else meet in person, shielded from their classmates’ eyes?

From his car James sees her sitting on a bench close to some monkey bars, where no kids are playing. He walks to her, feeling apprehensive each step of the way. As he gets close he can tell that she looks tired, worn out. She is wearing her royal blue down jacket over some jeans and brown flats. She is not wearing much—if any—makeup, so her eyes look funny, naked and unkempt. Still, she almost seems prettier this way.

“You came,” she says, smiling faintly.

“I said I would.” He sits down next to her and looks around the park, which is strewn with dead leaves and pinecones and downed brittle tree branches. Behind him, he can hear the traffic of Fifteenth Street.

“Thanks,” she says. “I didn’t mean to cry last night. I’m sorry if that freaked you out.”

“Nah,” he says, though it did freak him, a little bit.

“Shane dumped me, so I guess that was part of it. But that was, like, a while ago, and I’m over it.”

“That sucks,” James says, though he feels a surge of satisfaction. He’s no longer the only bad guy.

“Yeah, but I feel better today. Actually, I kind of feel silly now.”

“Why?”

“Well, I don’t know. I guess we could have just chatted over the phone instead of meeting like this. But I just wanted to see you. And apologize.”

“Okay.”

“You know, for being so…well, for acting so emotional back in November. And for being a real bitch since then.”

“Okay,” he says again, not really knowing what he should say. Part of him feels like he is owed this apology, that it is overdue. But he knows he was a jerk, too.

“You were always real nice to me. I mean…when we were together. We had some good times, didn’t we?”

He only nods.

“You’re not like a lot of the other guys.”

“Yeah, I am,” he says.

“Not really.”

They pass a few moments in silence. Then he can’t bear it anymore. “You know where you’re going to school in the fall?” he asks. This time he looks at her, but quickly. It’s like she has this weird aura of calm about her. Like she’s a different person.

“Not yet. I mean, maybe Bama. But I may have to go to Shelton State at first. My mom says I have to pay my own way, and I don’t know if I can afford Bama. So, we’ll see…. What about you? Did you get into Duke?”

He almost feels guilty answering, because his choices are limitless. He can go anywhere he wants, if he gets in. But not Alice. “No, I haven’t heard yet. They actually rejected me for early admission. But I should hear soon. Hopefully before spring break. It’s driving me nuts. I just want to know.”

“Oh, you’ll get in. You always get what you want. Things always go your way,” Alice says, though she says it without bitterness, like it’s just a fact.

He wants to dispute this, but he doesn’t. He rubs his hands, which are callused from tennis. They sit there for a while, not saying anything more. He wants to leave, but he knows he should stay put until Alice dismisses him.

“Well, I better go,” Alice says. “Lots of homework.” She stands, her hands tucked into her jacket.

“Yeah, me too.”

They walk together toward the little parking lot, which is empty except for their cars. It’s a funny park. No one ever seems to come here, and he wonders why. Sure, Fifteenth Street is noisy and busy, but the park is like a little sanctuary.

“Thanks for coming,” Alice says. “It means a lot that you showed up. I hope we can be friends now.” She reaches in for a hug, and James is powerless to stop her. It feels nice, actually, like all the anger they both carried around is melting away into a puddle beneath them. And he thinks maybe Alice senses this, too, because it seems like forever before she lets go.

When James gets home, Henry is outside sitting on the curb, elbows on his knees, looking rejected. He isn’t wearing a coat, just some brown pants and a yellow sweater, with white sneakers. Since he has to go to the mailbox anyway, James knows he has to talk to him.

“Hey, Henry,” James says. That’s when he notices the extra car in their driveway. A shiny black Mercedes, like the one they saw that night weeks ago, dropping off the envelope.

Henry looks up. “Oh, hey.”

“What are you doing outside? Aren’t you cold?”

“Yeah. But some old man is inside arguing with Mom,” he says.

“Who?”

Henry shrugs. “Mom told me to go outside. She says they need to talk privately.”

James pauses at the mailbox and eyes Henry’s house. “You can come in our house if you want.”

Henry shakes his head. “I want to wait.”

“Okay,” he says, about to open the mailbox, that nervous twitch rising in his chest. But before he does, an old man comes out of Henry’s house and slams the door shut. The man heads straight for the Mercedes, not giving Henry or James the time of day, like he is purposely ignoring them.

“Oh,” James says, but softly. He knows this man, of course. It’s Jack Pembroke, the rich guy who probably owns half the city. The grumpy owner of the country club. Mrs. Burns’s boss, right?
And
her landlord. He’s seen the man countless times—in person and in the paper.

When Jack Pembroke gets in the Mercedes and zooms away, Henry dashes to the front door and disappears inside, leaving James standing there.

There’s nothing else to do but open the mailbox. There are two magazines inside—Dad’s
Newsweek
and Mom’s
Vanity Fair
—and one thin envelope. Another thin envelope from Duke, the blue letters of the return address blaring at him. He feels sick. His hands feel fat and heavy, too. But he wants to get it over with, so he tears along the edge and yanks out the letter. It is on creamy white paper, folded tightly. He unfolds it, steeling himself, all but ready to rip it in shreds when he reads the bad news.

But it isn’t bad news. “Holy shit,” he whispers, “I got in.”

Alex

S
pring break arrives in early April. And although the cold weather seems to be slowly fading away, Alex doesn’t think it feels like spring yet—flowers are not blooming, the bees aren’t littering pollen everywhere, the grass is still yellowed and dry, and he still needs a jacket outside.

At school the run-up to spring break had been intense. All of Alex’s teachers piled on the homework and stepped up their lesson plans, packing in as much stuff as possible before everyone went off for a week and forgot everything.

And Coach Runyon had intensified their practices. “Our first meet is right after spring break,” he’d said on the Friday before the break began. “So I don’t want you slacking off over the holiday. You’ve got to sneak in some workouts next week. And don’t screw up your eating habits.”

He and his mom are going to spend the break at the beach house in Gulf Shores. His father and James were supposed to come, too, but now that James has gotten into Duke, they are headed up to North Carolina to tour the campus and stuff like that, to make sure this is where James really wants to spend his next four years. Nathen is doing the same sort of thing—he got into NYU and Columbia, so he is going to the Big Apple with his parents, to check out both schools. So, while Nathen and James are off preparing for their future lives, Alex and his mom are heading south, just the two of them. Alex is glad to get away—from school, therapy, Tuscaloosa—even if the trip will be a little boring.

They leave on Saturday and take turns driving the five-hour trip. Alex drives first, cruising down Highway 69, but then his mother takes over after lunch at McDonald’s. Just past Thomasville, she hits Highway 43, a four-lane highway that courses through southern Alabama, past one sleepy town after another. The landscape shifts from rolling hills and pine trees to flat fields and streets lined with cypress trees and stately oaks.

Perched at the side of one vast cotton field there is a white billboard with fading red lettering that says:
GO TO CHURCH OR THE DEVIL WILL GET YOU
! It has been there as long as Alex can remember, and he finds it amusing, ridiculous even—anything but sinister.

“Your father and brother are probably still driving through Georgia,” Mom says.

“I guess so,” Alex replies.

“We’ll still have fun, just the two of us,” she says, slapping him playfully on the thigh.

“Yep,” Alex says. He’s actually kind of glad that James won’t be here. James had been moody and grumpy for many weeks, until he got the Duke news. And he still mostly avoids Alex. Or, when not avoiding him, looking at him oddly, Alex can’t help feeling, as if trying to read his mind.

As they get closer to the Gulf, Alex notices how the horizon seems bluer, like the sky is announcing the ocean. When they hit Mobile, his mother drives through the Mobile Bay tunnel. When they were kids and came down to the Gulf, he and James would hold their breath when their father drove through this very tunnel. They pretended that they were truly underwater, instead of protected by tons of concrete and beams, and the first one to exhale was the loser. James always won.

When they clear Mobile, all the stores and shops along the highway start to look familiar—the shops that sell seaside bric-a-brac; the stores fronted with colorful displays of inner tubes and rafts and folding beach chairs; fruit stands stacked with watermelons, cantaloupes, and strawberries.

“We’re almost there,” his mother says.

Even now, when it’s just the two of them, he gets the same excited feeling that he always did when they first catch sight of the Gulf and its green-blue choppy waters and pale sand dunes. When they come here, it always feels like they have driven to the edge of the world.

The house they own is at the western side of Gulf Shores, far from a lot of the development in the center of town—the high-rise condos, the arcades and tacky gift shops, the bait shops and boat rental places, the seafood restaurants with white gravel parking lots. But some smaller condos are popping up on the western end, here and there amid the private residences, a fact that his parents lament every time they come down here.

All the homes are on stilts and made of wood, but they are all painted different colors—dusty pale blue, canary yellow, plain old white, a wintery gray—and are different sizes, some large, others no bigger than the garages beneath them. Their house is yellow with white trim, with three bedrooms and a large deck that looks out over the Gulf. It’s the perfect size for a family—nothing huge or showy. Years ago his mother named the house “Happy Returns,” and over the garage there is a little blue-and-yellow-painted sign that acts as the house’s name tag.

When he steps out of the car, Alex smells the salty sea air that blows at him. He can hear the afternoon waves crashing peacefully.

“This is wonderful, isn’t it?” his mother says, standing next to him, gazing out at the beach. The temperature is mild, warmer than at home, though the ocean wind provides a little bite.

“Yeah, it’s nice,” he says. But even as he drinks in the air and the beauty of it all, he thinks it would be that much better if Nathen were here.

They spend their first few days lying on the deck, sunning and reading, occasionally taking mostly quiet walks along the beach. The ocean is still way too cold for swimming. In the afternoons, Alex goes for runs down the beach road—not on the beach, since the shifting sand is bad for his feet. It’s not very crowded on this end of the beach, but when they go into town for dinner each night—Mom refuses to cook on her vacation—the restaurants are bursting with families and rowdy spring breakers. Their favorite place to eat is called Sea and Suds, and it is perched on a pier that juts out into the Gulf, where fishers cast their lines and kids lean over the railings and try to spot jellyfish and other creatures. Tonight, as always, Sea and Suds is busy and noisy. Waiters and waitresses zip by, taking orders on little notepads, dropping off baskets of food or taking them away, refilling glasses of water.

“What a lovely night. Don’t you just love it down here?” she says while gazing out the window. She has had a few glasses of Chardonnay, and Alex can tell that it is loosening her tongue, feeling contemplative.

Alex nods and takes a sip of his Coke. He sees two other boys that look his age at a booth nearby, and they are with two girls. He wonders where they are from, and if they are on dates with these girls, or if they are brothers, and did they meet here or travel together. It’s sometimes hard to believe that there are other kids his age all over the country, other kids living their own lives at different schools. After he got out of the hospital, Alex had fantasized about moving to a new city and changing his name. No more Alex, no more Alexander—just Xander. He imagined an entirely different life for himself with a name like that—he would be the cool kid, the rebel, the wild child. Happy-go-lucky Xander. No one would know the old Alex, and he could start over, with new friends, where no one knew anything about his past. He wonders if that’s how Henry feels each time he lands in a new city. Like he’s been given a fresh start. In the end, it doesn’t seem to have mattered much—Alex figures Henry will be an oddball no matter where he goes. And maybe Alex will, too.

“What a difference a few months makes,” his mother says, gazing out the window. She then turns to him and smiles. “You’re happy now, aren’t you, honey? Happier, I mean.”

“Yeah,” he says.

She nods. “I can tell. I’m glad.”

Alex can see tears welling in her eyes. “Aw, Mom, not here.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. She grabs her napkin and wipes her eyes, then smiles. “I won’t be sappy. But your father and I…we’re so proud of how far you’ve come.” She gazes at him warmly, and for a second Alex thinks about telling her about Nathen. About what is happening between them. He wants to share that with someone, his secret happiness.

But right then the waiter comes and asks if they want dessert. “I’m full,” his mother says.

“Me too,” Alex says.

The waiter leaves to get the bill.

The moment has passed. But that’s okay. It’s too soon to tell her, to tell anyone. He has considered telling Dr. Richardson during one of their sessions, but so far he has held back. He thinks that it is better for him and Nathen to live in their secret little world. He’s not sure how she or his father or Dr. Richardson would react. It’s the great, scary unknown.

When they get home, they put on their pajamas and watch TV. When the phone rings, his mom says, “That’s probably your father.” But when she answers, she says, “Yes, he’s here,” looking over at Alex.

“For me?” he says.

“I think it’s Nathen,” she says, and hands him the cordless.

“Hey,” Alex says, walking with the phone to his bedroom, speaking softly.

“Hey there,” Nathen says. “How’s the beach?”

“It’s good. Relaxing. I’ve been jogging every day. How’s the Big Apple?”

“It’s awesome, Lex. It really is. But it’s cold as shit up here.”

“It’s nice down here.”

“Listen,” Nathen says, “I can’t talk long. I’m down in the lobby. But I wanted to call.”

“Okay,” Alex says, his disappointment tempered by the fact that Nathen called in the first place. He’d given Nathen the number here, but he figured he’d be too busy to use it. Too busy to even think about Alex.

“I get home Sunday, so I’ll call you then, cool?”

“Cool.”

“Okay, buddy. Listen,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Uh,” Nathen starts, sounding unsure about what he wants to say next. “Uh, okay, yeah, I’ll see you Sunday. I better go!”

“Bye,” Alex says. He turns off the phone and brings it back to the front room.

“That was sweet of Nathen to call,” Mom says.

Alex doesn’t look at her. “Yeah, it was cool.” He can feel her eyes on him, like she’s reading the secret right off of his face. “Did I miss anything?” he says, staring at the TV show he doesn’t care about, his mind somewhere very far away.

Later that night, Alex lies in bed, listening to the sound of the waves landing against the shore. Something gnaws at his brain. He climbs out of bed and puts on his jeans and a jacket—but no shoes—and steps out onto the deck, careful not to make too much noise. He could stay on the deck, sit in a lounge chair, and take in the night air. But he feels like moving. So he walks down the steps of the deck onto the beach. The sand is cold and gritty, but it feels good on his bare feet. He starts walking in a westward direction. It is dark, but there is faint moonlight, so he can see where he is going, can see that the beach is empty. The houses he passes are mostly dark except for an occasional floodlight.

He can’t sleep, he realizes, because he misses Nathen. Their brief conversation earlier has only made him miss Nathen more. He is used to seeing him every day. Used to sneaking kisses when possible, used to trading secret glances with each other. In bed each night, he grabs his pillows, pretending that he is holding Nathen. He pretends that he smells him—the Lever 2000 soap, sour and fresh at the same time, his minty shampoo, and that unique scent of his that Alex can’t even describe, really. But he knows, in the end, that he is just holding a pillow and that Nathen is really miles away.

He walks and walks and finally sits down on the beach, facing the dark ocean. The water is calmer, the waves smaller, now that no boats or Jet Skis disturb it. He doesn’t know how far he has walked, but there are still houses behind him, at least, so he knows he hasn’t walked past the point where the road dead-ends up to a private property. James once said that some crazy old rich lady lived in a cabin at the end of the road and that if you happened onto her beach she would shoot you with a shotgun, but he is sure that that is just one of the dumb stories that James used to tell him.

Sitting there, Alex feels an odd mixture of sadness and happiness. Sad because he misses Nathen, but happy because he has someone to miss. Maybe, he thinks, this is what love is like. All of those people in movie love stories, acting so mopey and dramatic, tormented and ecstatic. It all seemed silly to Alex, but not anymore.

It hits Alex that if he misses Nathen so badly now, then it will be even worse when Nathen goes away to college. Far worse. He pictures Nathen now, up in New York, meeting new people, excited by the life ahead of him, far from Tuscaloosa. It’s a future that does not involve Alex.

He leans back in the sand and looks up at the sky, but it’s too cloudy to see many stars. He thinks about what his mother asked him earlier.
Are you happy?
He said he was, and that is true. But he realizes how his happiness is built on a shaky foundation. If Nathen goes away, does his happiness collapse? Maybe, maybe not. Dr. Richardson has said that happiness is fleeting, that no rational person could be happy all the time. But he said that is okay, that is normal. So maybe Alex’s life will always be that way—fleeting happiness surrounded by the ever-present reality of life, with all of its problems and difficulties and shitty occurrences.

Alex stands and dusts the sand off his jeans and his back. He walks back to the beach house, tired and cold. He has a few more nights here, and he is determined to make the best of them. He crawls back into his bed and clutches his pillow. He knows it’s not Nathen, but for now it will do.