What's Important Is Feeling: Stories (14 page)

Parties in summer are a whole different scene, a melting pot of stragglers: townies, people’s high school friends, neighbors—whoever’s around. It’s easy to get laid because things that happen in summer don’t feel like part of real life. Still, I didn’t want to try, though I’d given up on Annie. She hadn’t responded to my letters, and I knew it was because they were weird.

I hardly recognized anyone at the party. Mike F.’s Fenway friends were there, and Mike C.’s girlfriend had shown with some girls from her hometown. There were frat dudes and hippies. Everyone got along fine. We had two kegs of cheap beer and a lot of marijuana.

At some point the Porchies showed up. They weren’t usually around on weekends. I had invited them but assumed they wouldn’t come. They took their spot on the porch. They didn’t have pizza this time.

The Porchies had a lot of company. The porch is a popular spot in summer, especially during parties. People like to smoke outside and mingle. I watched from the window as drunk people talked to Jeff. Jeff made the drunks laugh easily.

I didn’t spend the whole time watching the Porchies. I’m not a stalker or anything. I walked around, mostly to and from the keg. I talked baseball with Mike F.’s Fenway friends and said hello to people I hadn’t seen in a while. Mike C.’s girlfriend introduced me to her home friends. They were cute and younger, and I thought I could hook up with one if I wanted. But I didn’t have it in me, and I remember feeling like I’d never have it in me again.

When I went back to the window, Grace was out there, sitting on Jeff’s lap. She held a beer and looked up at the streetlamp as if it were a full moon. Her mouth was curved slightly upward in a soft smile. It was a secretive smile, almost embarrassed, but clearly there as she fixed on the artificial light and Jeff bounced her on his knee, blowing smoke rings.

I felt an arm around my shoulder and immediately knew it was my brother. It was strange to feel another person’s skin against my own, his red cheeks inches from my face. It was the first physical contact I’d had with another human being in a long time.

“Who is that guy?” Derek asked me.

“Jeff Porch,” I said.

“Pretty weird, “ he said. “He told me he was gonna shove a tube of toothpaste up my ass.”

“Sounds about right,” I said. “I think he’s a good guy though.”

“Tell that to your neighbor,” Derek said.

“What?”

“Jeff Porch called him a douche and then said he fucked his daughter with a corn on the cob.”

“Shit,” I said.

I looked at Jeff. He was smiling.

The party wound down. People left, drifting out the door, lingering in the doorway to say good-bye, or else disappearing hand in hand to a patch of grass outside because it was still warm and the neighborhood was quiet. I didn’t notice when the Porchies left, just that they were gone. My roommates were gone too, and I guessed that most of them were getting laid.

Derek had passed out on the couch. Even in sleep he didn’t look peaceful. His breath was heavy, and his legs kept kicking, trying to bend into comfort on the too-small couch. I grabbed one of the blankets that C-Slice usually used, a worn-out red one with a Coca-Cola logo sewn into the stitching. I placed it on my brother with light hands, knowing I wouldn’t wake him but trying to be considerate anyway.

When I got down to the basement the music from Grace’s room was really loud. Her door was cracked open. Their bodies were obscured. All I could see was Grace’s head from the side, tilted back over the edge of the bed. She was making the same face that I saw her make on the porch, only this time her eyes were closed and her lips were slightly parted to reveal a front tooth biting hard on her bottom lip. A thin trail of blood dripped from her lip, over her chin, and down the nape of her neck.

I avoided the Porchies for a while after July Fourth. When they were on the porch I’d hide in my room listening to CDs. I wanted to write, but I’d given up on writing to Annie and didn’t know what else to say.

July moved slowly. Donny was busy with work and couldn’t go fishing. I had trouble keeping track of the rest. C-Slice was still around, and we hung out a lot, staring into the television in the hope it would bring us with it to the land of palm trees and police drama. I liked C-Slice because he never asked about my problems and didn’t expect to be asked about his. He was unhappy in a way I understood. I don’t know what spawned it in him, but it’s a certain type of sadness that paralyzes you in front of the television or the fan, chains you to the house.

The Junkie Sisters were the same, and the more I began to realize that, the more I despised them for it—despised them for the fact that they were human beings beneath the shell of intoxication and indifference. To me, they didn’t even have names.

They did have names, of course. Louise (Lulu) Dupont and Sarah Grossman. They were both blond. Lulu was from Louisiana and of Cajun origin. Sarah was a Jewish girl from North Jersey. I assumed they both came from money because neither of them worked but they could always afford drugs. They were attractive enough—skinny and pale. But they had those vacant eyes that scared me. I was certain my eyes were the same.

Toward the end of the month, Lulu’s mother came. C-Slice and I were on the porch when someone pulled up in a shiny Ford Focus. It must have been a rental. A tall woman appeared. Her blond hair was stringy and pulled back. Mrs. Dupont looked just like Lulu. She stood up straight, marched to our door.

“I’m looking for Louise,” she said calmly. “I was told I might find her here.”

“Lulu’s inside,” C-Slice said.

Mrs. Dupont looked through the window. Lulu was sitting on the couch with a cigarette between her fingers. For a second I thought Mrs. Dupont might cry at the sight of her daughter through the window, but she fixed herself, pulled her shoulders back, and remained stoic as she walked through the door to do what she’d come to do.

“How’d you find me?”

“I called your roommate. She said you were probably here.”

“I’m not going with you.”

Mrs. Dupont stood in front of the TV. I could see Sarah attempting to peer around her at the screen. Lulu put out her cigarette.

“You can’t stay here forever,” Mrs. Dupont said.

It seemed to apply to all of us. She was looking around, noticing the broken windows, fast-food wrappers, discarded beer cans. They were things I hadn’t thought about in a while. Mrs. Dupont leaned over and turned off the TV. You could hear the fans humming.

“C’mon, Louise,” she said. She grabbed her daughter’s hand and pulled her limp body from the couch.

“Get your things,” Mrs. Dupont said. “We’ll have to fumigate them.”

Lulu tossed a few scraps of clothing in a backpack. As they were walking out she said to me, “Tell Jay good-bye.”

I never did. He never asked about it either.

Once Lulu was gone, Sarah didn’t last long. I saw it coming. She hardly watched TV anymore. She started putting on makeup and getting out of the house during the day. One day she never came back. No one was sure when, but I’d say it was the last week of July.

She probably found another guy, maybe a houseful of guys like us. Another place where she could watch television and put powder up her nose without the guilt of seeing sad mothers come to rescue their daughters, and without the sadness of not being rescued herself. We weren’t special. Boston is a young person’s town and was littered with houses exactly like ours. If she was smart, she found a cleaner one.

C-Slice was the next to go. I sensed he was incomplete without the Junkie Sisters. He rarely spoke to them and didn’t seem to like them all that much, but they were his in a way that no one else could touch. Lulu and Sarah had shared Dan and Jay’s beds at night, but their souls were on the couch, and the couch was C-Slice’s territory.

He gave more warning than the others. It was a couple days after we noted the permanent disappearance of Sarah. We were all sitting on the porch drinking. It was the first time the whole gang had hung out together in a while. The Porchies had already left, but even Grace was there, nursing a beer in the corner. It was one of those nights in August when you can still go shirtless at midnight. We all did except for Grace. I noticed how pale my own body looked compared to my roommates’ tanned skin. Donny sat on the steps lighting candles, dripping wax onto his forearm. Mike F. tossed a baseball up and down.

“Think it might be getting time to head on out of here,” C-Slice said.

“Is that what you reckon?” Donny replied.

I wanted to tell him to stay, but that’s not the kind of guy I am, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

C-Slice stuck around for a couple more days. He and I watched the street in the mornings like we used to. On Wednesday he walked to the T and was gone.

“Take care of yourself,” I told him.

“No doubt, bro,” he said.

We stayed friends. I didn’t see him much, but if I was ever in New York we’d have drinks and talk about who we’d seen. One of us would always bring up the Porchies.

“Remember Jeff Porch?” C-Slice would say.

“Yeah,” I’d reply. “He asked me what’s crappening.”

We’d laugh for a bit and mutter, “Jeff Porch, dude. Fucking Jeff Porch.”

After C-Slice left I was bored and started to watch the Porchies again through the window. One day I even joined them on the porch, bringing out an extra chair from the kitchen. They didn’t seem to mind my presence, but I didn’t feel included either. I didn’t join in when they recited (as they did every day) the inscription on the Budweiser can: “This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to brew and age. Our exclusive Beechwood Aging produces a taste, a smoothness and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price.” But I did listen to the Sox games on their radio and make comments, and I did sit and drink with them.

I was surprised at how little they talked. For some reason I’d imagined their conversations to be interesting. In actuality they were at least as boring as my own discussions with my roommates. Jeff talked a lot, but he didn’t have much to say. Mostly he swore and made sodomy threats. Steve hardly said a word. Al, I learned, was a communist. He worked in a Coca-Cola factory and was big into unions and conspiracy theories. You would think this would spark some good discussion, but in truth, his rhetoric was no different from that of the kids in my sociology classes who I’d grown to hate for their self-righteousness. I guess Al was more deserving of his beliefs; he was, after all, an actual member of the proletariat. But I still found him boring.

“I’ll Castro your dick off,” Jeff would say. He had a habit of repeating jokes.

Jeff would still make his pre-sex announcement before heading down to Grace’s room, but it was awkward because I was the only one he was talking to. I could sense that he felt superior to me in a way, because he was having sex and I wasn’t.

One day Jeff was the only Porchie to show up. It was the second week of August, and I wasn’t feeling ready for the upcoming school year and the return of life to the city and campus. He was sitting on the porch by himself doing an Axl Rose impression and trying to light a match on his belt buckle.

“Hey, Jeff,” I said.

He continued singing, “
Take me down to the Paradise City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
,” playing air guitar for my benefit.

“Jeff,” I said, “how come Grace never hangs out on the porch?”

“Honestly,” he said, “she’s just shy. I don’t make her stay in the basement or anything. She’s just not that into partying like me.”

“I see,” I said.

“I’m gonna head down there. I guess you know what I’m gonna do.”

The next day there was a knock on the door. Big Frank stood with his arms crossed. He handed me a piece of paper.

“I have to evict you guys,” he said. “Jimmy from next door’s been complaining. Said someone’s been harassing his daughter, threatening her. Been going on for a while now. Jimmy’s an old pal of mine, and he said if it doesn’t stop, he’ll call the cops. I don’t have time to figure out which one of you fuckheads is causing this problem, and I don’t care either. I can’t have any cops coming here. You knew that when you moved in. I expect you’ll all be out by the end of the week.”

I was the last one to pack up and leave. Dan and Jay had moved all their stuff to some other friend’s house and were staying there until they found a new place. Mike C. said peace out and went to stay with his girlfriend for the rest of the summer, which is where he’d wanted to be the whole time anyway; now he had an excuse to go. Mike F. was from Acton, just a quick drive down Route 2. Donny left in the morning while I was sleeping. He had work at the lab.

No one said good-bye. Everyone knew they’d see each other when school started.

I helped Grace load up her car just as I’d helped unload it at the beginning of the summer. She didn’t have much stuff.

“Where you heading?” I asked her. I assumed she was going to Jeff’s.

“Florida,” she said.

“What about Jeff?”

“Don’t think I’m really invited. Besides, these things end sometimes.”

She didn’t seem sad.

“I guess,” I said.

I looked at the house. It wasn’t really empty. We’d decided to leave the furniture because it was shitty and falling apart and no one had a car big enough to take it. There was trash everywhere, a sort of fuck-you to Big Frank—literally. Dan and Jay had spelled out “Fuck you” in beer cans on the living room floor.

I didn’t have much to take. Mostly clothes, CDs, and the TV from the living room. I carried the TV out to my car and then up to my room in the house I grew up in, which I began referring to as “my mother’s house.” I watched a lot of TV when I got home, for hours, days, weeks. My brother and I would drink beer on the porch sometimes.

I hardly saw my mother. She stayed in bed most of the time, and when she got up her nightgown would be slipping off one shoulder and her hair would be all crazy and her eyes were barely open. I didn’t want to look.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said a couple times, which was strange because it didn’t even seem as if she’d noticed I was there, but she put her hand on my forehead and ran her fingers through my hair, and I knew she was being honest.