Calling Home Page 2

  “My heart’s not in the right place,” his dad said, chewing a fingernail, or stubbing out a cigarette. “I’d go for a walk with you guys, but my heart’s not in it!”

  Mead’s mother was a big, soft-voiced woman who loved her husband too much to show him much sympathy. “You have a rotten sense of humor, Gordon,” she’d say, in the tone of a high compliment. “Have the doctor put your sense of humor in a cast.”

  Angela told me one afternoon that she expected Mead’s father to die.

  “What a horrible thing to say,” I protested.

  “It’s not like I want it to happen. He just doesn’t look like he has what it takes.”

  “I like Mead’s dad—”

  Angela rolled her eyes. “He’s okay. I didn’t say I didn’t like him or anything like that. He’s just real sickly.”

  “Don’t say anything like that around Mead.”

  “I wouldn’t say anything like that to Mead. I’m not crazy. I do have some respect for people’s feelings. You’re a very strange person, Peter. You have these great areas of real hypersensitivity, and then you have other parts of your brain that are made of solid rock.”

  “I just don’t want Mead to get upset,” I said.

  All of our lives were going well. Reasonably well. My studies had faltered. “Studies” was a word Mr. Tyler used. The way I would put it was that I had gone from an A student two years ago, to a D student, and I didn’t know why. But Lani had the piano, Angela had her face, and Mead had whatever it was Mead had. Life, and happiness.

  And it was all about to end.

  3

  My mother was on the phone. The fact that she was using her cheerful, cute voice told me she was talking to one of her boyfriends. “You silly. What makes you say that?”

  I sat on the bottom step and tied my shoes.

  “Oh, stop it. Don’t be mean to me.” She turned her face, aglow with virtual baby talk, toward me. Her face went blank and she shut the door.

  It was nearly dark out. The freeway made its usual rumble in the distance. Ted switched on the lights in his basement across the street. The top of his head paused in the window just above the line of geraniums. He was intent on something, probably something in his hands, a transformer or one of those intricate little electric motors that are made so well but look so ugly and leave that thin, yellow oil all over your fingers.

  I slipped along the sidewalk beside my house, brushing the fuchsia. I put my hands over the top of the fence and hiked myself over, into the backyard next to mine. My feet shushed among the dried weeds. I could barely make out the old hose that coiled in the middle of the dried-up lawn like a reminder to someone who did not exist that the place should be watered. The window with the one hole in it the size of a hand, the one I had made with a ball bearing, glowed orange with the sunset. It was the only glass left in the entire house. It bothered me to see it. It wanted to be knocked out.

  The padlock was black and looked like it would be able to protect something, but all I had to do was jiggle it in my hand and it dropped open. I unhooked it, and looked back at the dried-up backyard, actually thinking that someone might be watching, even though we always came here and no one ever saw us, or would have cared even if they did happen to see us. This was a dead house. I couldn’t even remember who had ever lived here; the house did not count any more than a bum you see walking along Franklin Street counts. You don’t say hello or meet his eyes; you ignore him as if he wasn’t there.

  I hung the padlock on the latch; it dangled there like a sex organ on a robot and the sight of it aroused me in a way that made me feel dirty. I stood on the basement steps for a moment, thinking that the place was not a good place that night. It smelled of wet concrete and house rot; its wetness soaked into me. I dug into my pocket for the matches and panicked. They weren’t there. I patted my pocket and felt the cardboard of a matchbook and bent it pulling it out.

  I touched the match to the candle stub, and the flame burned with a sizzle. My shadow was huge, and I shivered as I knelt to drag the boards away from our liquor cache. It was always cold in the cellar, and mice or rats or other creatures I could not stand to think about were always scurrying around the abandoned house above.

  We had two bottles. One was a bottle of Christian Brothers Tawny Port from One Stop, a bottle that didn’t even count, it was so low-rent, and then there was a prize, so special it still had a businessman’s card Scotch-taped to it, with a signature scrawled on it, a heavy brown bottle of cognac Angela had smuggled out to us before her father even knew it existed. I had been saving this for two days, and tonight Mead and I were going to drink it.

  Mead was late. He was often late. It wasn’t negligence that would make him dance, panting, to a place half an hour after everyone had gone home. He was always so busy, so caught up in things.

  I opened the bottle of Tawny Port, and the wine went down without a struggle. The batteries were dead, so I couldn’t listen to music. I sat there in the silence, drinking port, feeling less and less cold.

  He took a long time. The empty house above me made that big not-sound things make when you pay too much attention to them. Mead did not show up, and then he continued not to show up, and I kept drinking. As I drank, I began to get angry. Mead had no right to fool around all the time, and never show up when he was supposed to.

  He had no right to waste my time.

  The door rattled, and candlelight gilded Mead. “You should have seen it!” he said. “A power line got knocked down in an accident, and firemen had to block off the street. There were gigantic sparks. It’s almost fixed now. You ought to come look. They have this giant cherry picker—”

  “I’ve been sitting here for an hour, waiting before I started on the cognac, and you’ve been out watching firemen.”

  “A car hit a telephone pole. Nobody was hurt—which is a miracle. But it was a dramatic moment. You can still come watch.”

  “Dramatic moment! You could be drinking cognac, and you’re watching a dramatic moment.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said, too quietly.

  I dug at the cognac seal with my fingernails, and pried the cork. “Angela stole this especially for us, and you’re out there watching firemen like a little boy.”

  Mead held forth his hand. “Let me have the first taste,” he said.

  “You don’t deserve it.”

  “Let me—”

  I lifted the bottle, and drank.

  “There are other things in life than drinking, you know,” said Mead.

  The gulp of brandy had me gasping. “I’ll drink this all myself, then, and you can go back out and watch the Big Men.”

  “Let me have some now,” he said.

  He held the bottle into the candlelight, the light dancing along the outline of the bottle and the fine hairs on his wrist. He held the bottle by the neck, and extended his arm, all the time smiling because this was fun to Mead, a joke, a kind of sport that would prove something to me and do no harm.

  He opened his hand, and the bottle fell.

  The cognac fragrance was everywhere, and the glitter of liquor and broken glass shivered as the spreading puddle reshaped itself, thinning out.

  I leaped to my feet, strode forward, and punched him. It was a straight, solid, true blow that whipped his head and ended beyond him, in the darkness.

  He was down at once. And at once I knew I should not have done it. At once, as the perfume of the cognac became only so much stink, I cringed.

  It would be all right, I promised myself. I would apologize. I would make everything fine, if I said the right things.

  I sat against the wall, broken glass crunching under my shoes. “I’m sorry,” I said, panting.

  I knew that an ordinary apology was puny, under these circumstances. But nothing I could think of was right. I felt stupid with shame, and my knuckles began to hurt. I was glad. I deserved to have them hurt.

  “I just didn’t think it was funny,” I continued. �
��I just didn’t feel like laughing about wasting all that cognac. But I shouldn’t have hit you. That was wrong, and I’m very sorry.”

  He did not move.

  “We can go watch the firemen if you want to. I don’t care. That would be fine with me.”

  Then I realized that a person could be dazed and not even hear an apology after being hit, so I crept carefully toward him, candlelight in the glass and cognac, and I stretched forth a hand to touch him.

  I shrank.

  I studied the tread of his running shoes. The tread was well-worn. This was typical of Mead. He always wore out his shoes quickly. Soon he would stir, and we would go watch the crew mending the power line.

  I shivered.

  I gazed into my open hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I just—” I put my hands under my arms to warm them; they were suddenly very cold. “I just lost my temper.”

  He was still. I watched the candle flame for a while, observing the island of blue just above the wick, considering what fire was, not a solid, but not energy either, something in between, solid being turned into energy, perhaps. I don’t know. I couldn’t stop trembling, and I could barely stand when I finally decided to move. The only sound was the snap and whisper of broken glass under my feet, and the tinkling of a shard that danced away from my shoe.

  My entire body shivered, hard shudders that convulsed me and left me, only to return in a few moments. I could not control my hands or feet, but stood there in the candlelight. I could not look at Mead, and I could not bear to move my feet and hear the pop of the broken glass, and so I stood for a long time and did nothing. I thought I would stand like that, like a shivering statue, all night, and all the next day, and every night after that; I had no plan of moving and I could not move even if I wanted to, except to shiver like that and crouch inward like someone trying to protect himself from a tremendous beating.

  But then, like magic, I moved. My foot went out to a place on the concrete where there was no broken glass, a simple, comforting space of floor which I considered for a long time. I took a step, or actually, my body stepped, because I simply went along with what was happening.

  I swallowed convulsively. There was something vile-tasting inside me, like cheap booze or sweet liquor, Pernod or too much sherry wanting to belch up out of me, except that the vomit mechanism didn’t work any better than anything else and so the stuff stayed down, shivering like a jellyfish inside me. I sensed my own shadow as I knelt, stretching out behind me distorted and gigantic.

  Mead had one eye open. An expression like a smile, but not. I stood. Just like that. I did not move. One eye and a smile that was not a smile. I did not shiver so much. I began to breathe normally. There was so much glass everywhere. It was like seeing it for the first time, a galaxy of golden stars all over the floor.

  I began to collect it, fragment by fragment, and place it all into a corner of the basement. I was very careful not to cut myself, remembering all the while that nothing is as treacherous as broken glass. Every splinter that could be pinched and carried into the corner was gathered and, when I was done, the place looked much better. I would bring a broom and a dustpan later, I promised myself. But it was tidy enough for now.

  I flexed and swung my arms. Stiffness crept over my body, and cramps stabbed my back down by my kidneys. I wondered if I had some serious illness. It could happen. I could have a heart attack or a stroke as well as anyone; you don’t have to be old to suffer that sort of thing. I stepped carefully, as though the floor were still cluttered with broken glass, and stood before the candle. It was a stub of red wax, except that only the outside of the candle was red. The heart of the candle was fat-colored, and tiny specks of the red skin floated inward to be consumed by the fire.

  4

  My mother washed her hair in the kitchen sink. “Did you eat somewhere?” she asked, squinting through the soap.

  “I had a hamburger with Angela.”

  She rinsed her hair. I sat at the kitchen table for a few minutes, reading the labels on the spices on the lazy Susan. The spice containers were sticky from being handled by buttery fingers. The salt container had a decal of a red and yellow rooster on it. The decal was beginning to flake off. I sniffed the pepper through the holes in the shaker, wanting the smell of something sharp and real.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Just a little tired.”

  “Go away. I’m washing my hair.”

  Actually, she was finished. She was drying her hair, her face pale and washed-out without any makeup. I deliberately opened the newspaper to the television schedule and stared at it without reading just to give myself some time to score points, then I sighed and folded the paper and stood.

  I froze on the stairs. The half-darkness stopped me, and the solitude that waited for me in my bedroom held me back like a straight-arm. I held the banister, then forced my feet to climb one step, then another.

  My books were on the bed, inert, dumb objects that did not know or care anything; just lying around exactly where a person left them. I opened the Latin book and stared at it. I fanned the pages of Modern Geometry. I leafed the pages of my binder until I found the assignment for the next day and stared at my handwriting, amazed in a stupid way that I had written those casual words just a few hours before.

  Even the amazement had a certain dull feel to it. What surprised me was how calm I was, and how little details like the lint at the end of my ballpoint still had their idle interest. Life goes on no matter what, I thought. Things remain the same. The pajamas hang on their hook with the same weight and the same folds, making the same shape on the closet door, no matter what happens to me or anyone else.

  I thought like this for a while, shivering a little from time to time, a spasm seizing my hands or my feet like I was senile all of a sudden, and had no more future than a comfy wheelchair in a nice, quiet rest home, among dozens of droolers just like me, relics too palsied even to masturbate. When I tried to move my arms in a coordinated gesture, to turn a page, or shift a book, they creaked nearly audibly and faltered. I was an android badly in need of servicing. I was not supple, I told myself. “Supple” is a word that appeals to me.

  It was five minutes after midnight, and I was nonfunctional. My mother had watched a show on TV, had turned it off, flushed the toilet, and gone to bed. I stared into my geometry book as if I were, for the first time in my life, transfixed by Euclid. The book had been used by several years of students before me, and on one page someone had drawn a picture of a penis. Dots came forth from the penis, sperm or pee, it was hard to tell, or even hard to be interested; it was a very desultory sketch. The artist himself probably had taken little interest in it, although I was curious as to why he had chosen a penis as his subject. But I examined this sketch and thought that whatever happened, this little drawing would remain in my memory.

  I piled my books in my desk and pulled the desk drawer all the way out. My mother never enters the room, but you never know. I took out the cracker box and sorted through it looking for something to let me sleep, but I didn’t have anything respectable in the way of pills, only Valium and the little yellow and aqua five milligram Librium that wouldn’t put a two-year-old to sleep, much less a muscular, active person such as myself. I also had a half-pint of Cutty Sark which I had been saving for a special evening. I like to do that—save something for a day in the future; it makes you feel you have a control over the future, which, of course, you don’t.

  I swallowed a few Librium and drank half of the Cutty Sark, just wanting a little slowdown, a little less clarity. The Librium strolled into my nervous system like a blind detective, bumbling, missing the point, and having no effect. The scotch didn’t even make me yawn, and the taste of it didn’t please me either, although I usually like it. The flavor of all that burned peat smacked, that night, of too much bacon. I stumbled into the doorjamb of the bathroom and lifted the toilet lid. I vomited the smallest amount a person can vomit, perhaps half a te
aspoon worth of something that looked like a mixture of scotch and pus; it was a disagreeable thing to have to look at there in the toilet bowl, but nothing more respectable erupted so I went back to my room and undressed.

  I lay down and what I did then was like sleep, but it was more like having to read something long and unending, a telephone book that for some reason simply had to be read, and no skimming. Every name, every address, every phone number had to be read, and cheating would simply make something horrible happen, although there was no way of guessing what.

  I woke suddenly and sat up. Something terrible had happened and I could not remember what it was. Then I remembered. I lay back down, wilted, but immediately jumped from the bed, exhilarated. I didn’t have a plan; I didn’t need a plan. Everything would be fine; I could tell by the way the pajama top unsnapped as I pulled it open and it took its place on the hook.

  But I kept trembling, big holes of feeling opening in me.

  Mead’s father would die if he knew about Mead. And suddenly I wanted more than anything to save Mead’s father. I wanted him to live.

  I wanted the world to continue and to have no more harm happen to anyone. I wanted everything to be all right.

  And there was only one way for that to happen.

  5

  Mr. Dixon was tired. He was fat, and his face was always flushed from having to carry himself, but now he was tired of me. He handed me my geometry test while second period filtered in through the departing first period. He leaned back in his chair and appraised me, like he was examining my future in the world of math and deciding that something had to be done one way or the other. “Talk to your counselor,” he suggested.

  “I never see my counselor. He’s a dim old man who eats Rolaids.”

  “See him. Get transferred out. Either that or study, Peter. You’re a smart kid. But you aren’t working.”