Bright Before Us (22 page)

I fished around the bottom of the box until I found the striped pebble Ed had given me. I looked at it one last time, before setting it at his place. I put my key ring on the chalkboard ledge. I walked to the door, pressed the lock button from the inside, and pulled it shut behind me.

Between the outer door and the street, just beyond a hole in the playground fence, was a massive mud puddle left over from a recent storm. I heard Benjamin's voice again—
I didn't do it but the other boys did
—and remembered the filth on his hands: a small blue chair, bearing the construction-paper numbers I put on each of the ones in my classroom, was half-submerged in the gray water.

I said aloud,
Make it to the car.
I would make it there, sit down, close and lock the door, the weight of my body sinking in, bonding to the fabric. I would envelop myself in that small space, tightening the seat belt around my frame for safety.

By then, I had grown used to the sense that however far down I fell, there would always be another gradient to plummet. But now I thought, This is permanent. What you did today is permanent.
What you did today
—I couldn't bring myself to name it. I closed my eyes and tried to picture eternity, like I had when I was small. But what adulthood does to your imagination—limiting it, narrowing it, clogging it with too many associations for any pure thought to exist ... I envisioned that large expanse of white and tried to see its infinite expanse, but all I felt was the opposite. Forever wasn't a wide-open span. Forever was something that fell on top of you. It wasn't a breadth of possibility. It was the reverse; it was suffocation. And that biblical, childhood terror reemerged: the fear of something so big that the mere task of comprehending it could crush me.

Make it to the car.
I would depress the pedals and make that space move, so that it would take me to the warmth of my own house. I would walk past the greeting at the door and move swiftly inside, say that I was taken ill, lie down on the coverlet, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

Or I would stay in that car, bypass the house entirely. I would get on one road and just drive—until the road ended, until I found something else.

I sat and turned the ignition. The engine hummed and the car spurted forward, and I found the familiar streets,
each one emerging from the ever-present fog as though it were coming out of hiding.

 

I went back to the abandoned house, the psychic's footprints still visible in the mud out front. The light coming through the bedroom window had turned a bleak gray, but I stayed a while without flipping on the switch, staring at the novelty phone, thumbing through the desk. It was full of stacked papers and nubby pencils, rubber bands, half-scrubbed erasers, bent thumbtacks, gum wrappers. It felt intimate, looking at those objects. All those odds and ends that belong to us say something: a person could know me if he looked in my kitchen drawer and saw three different-sized lightbulbs—because I never went to the hardware store prepared, I bought whatever seemed right and then found, once home, that I had misjudged. Junk has a language. Every piece-of-shit mistake I made, I hung on to the evidence.
Not with any accuracy
I had said to Buckingham: the other story of my life—miscalculated leaps, aims taken and overshot. The distance, always, between what I said and what I meant. What I wanted and what I got. What I hoped and what turned out to be real.

The DVD player finally shut itself off. We held still, reluctant to move. After being in the wet and cold, it had taken forever to get warm.
Are you ready for bed?
I asked, hopeful. I felt like it was time. I wanted it to be time.

You sat up and reached for your shoes.
Let's go out.

We were out all day,
I said.

I didn't want to drink those shitty party margaritas, always ninety percent crushed ice. I didn't want to stand around watching you talk to people who weren't me. I didn't want to share you. But you were happy, feeling good despite my various bunglings. I had done enough to sabotage your night.

I know a party,
I said.

By the time we arrived, it was clear that the event had veered from its intended trajectory: it was supposed to be grownup and tasteful, but had slipped into your average college kid's chandelier-swinger. There were decorations, and not just silly drugstore decorations but really deliberate, arranged decorations: green Spanish moss over the fireplace mantle, white pumpkins nestled on the end tables, spicescented candles strategically placed. My roommate Sam's girlfriend, Renee—she of the erotic auditory assault you had overheard—was our age, but it was as if someone's mom had thrown a party. She had spent a grip on top-shelf liquor, but only one bottle of each. The graveyard of empties held court on a card table. For a while we stood awkwardly by the door, and then gave in and headed for the booze.

The only thing left is gin,
you said, holding up a teal bottle.

This isn't really a gin crowd,
I said, people-watching.
How long are we staying?

You want a martini?
you said.
They've got vermouth.

That's ridiculous,
I said.
Make me one.

Someone had put in a karaoke tape but no one was singing, just grinding to beats missing their raps, lifting drinks to a decade-old sample. Everyone was in costume but us. An embarrassment of bottled beer sat in ice buckets, cans of it sweating in paper cases. I swiped one and it was gone in moments, before you had even finished with the cocktail shaker. I opened another, and it vanished too. Parties were always like magic acts for me: making alcohol disappear, pulling drunken confessions from thin air. I was two beers in, draining the martini you had made, and already I felt sick.
What's the rhyme again?
I asked.
Beer before ... no, whiskey
before beer...

This is awful,
you said.
This is an awful party.

I looked at your drink: empty. When had that happened?

Twenty minutes passed, the music getting louder. The revelers around us looked like they were melting, their costume makeup separating on their faces in greasy streaks.

You never said if you want to live with me,
you said.
Was that a yes or a no?

Oh,
I said,
I guess I just—

Never mind. I want to finish this and go.
Another drink had materialized in your hand.
I'm going to have sex with you tonight.

I took the drink from you.
What are you, drugged?

I'm tired,
you said, tearing up.
I'm just tired of how I do things.

In the corner, somebody put on vintage Snoop and started dancing all ungainly. Some kid in a police uniform walked past and pointed at my two martini glasses.
Double-fistin',
he said.

What do you mean?
I said to you.
How do you do things?

You looked small.
Oh God, Nora, nobody
—I gestured around the room—
none of us knows what we're doing.

You do,
you said.
You're going to be a teacher.

Probably not a very good one,
I said.

Do you want to live with me, yes or no,
you said, your shoulders sagging.

Fireworks!
somebody shouted.
The roof! Everybody on the roof!

And before I could answer, you had turned to follow.
Up there, some guy had cigarettes and you asked him for one. He lit it for you, looking at your breasts. You picked up an almost-full beer from the roof's railing, taking deep swallows. Someone lit a bottle rocket and chucked it a few yards. It went off disappointingly, so more were lit, their bearers running a ways before making the throw, as though three drunken paces would add to the velocity.

Hold this,
you said around your cigarette, pulling your hair back and handing me your bottle. I watched, rapt, as my fingers opened and closed around it.
Oh shit,
I said.
I'm drunk.
I set the bottle down, afraid I would drop it.

I'm done pretending to smoke,
you said, stumbling and holding out the cigarette.
What do people do with these when they're through?

I took it from your hand and tossed it off the roof, both of us taking quick side steps to the ledge. We watched it vanish into the narrow alley below, reappearing in a small orange burst as the ash hit the ground. From up there we could see the sharp spokes of the city, puncturing the hazy sky.

Don't you ever get sick of living here?
you said.

The wind lifted our hair in hanks.
Where else would I go?

Somewhere where there's weather. And things to see and do.
Your empty bottle fell on its side, rolling on the black tar.
Sometimes I feel like, fuck San Francisco.

On the ground below lay a splayed mop, its wrung tentacles flattened. I could feel you staring at me: that crawling sensation of being eyeballed.

You drive me around all the time,
you said, your voice heavy.
I'm so completely used to the side of your face.

You've got the booze blues,
I said.
You're thinking too much.

I'm always like that,
you said.

What you meant was, you were always like that now.

Some kid turned on a boom box and poured beer over his head.
How much longer do you want to stay?
I asked. Everyone was a stranger; everyone was turned up too loud.

You motioned toward the horizon—the Transamerica pyramid like a fountain pen's nib, the piers, the ferries docking, the black, light-studded hills beyond.
I'm sick of looking at it,
you said, shouting over the music.

Why?
I said, trying to hide my panic.
People come from far away to see this and we get to see it every day.

My house is this way,
you said, and then you realized you had miscalculated, swinging your arm in the opposite direction.
No, that way.
Those around us suddenly wanted to figure out where their houses were, too: how far they had to go, from there, to be home again.

Bullshit,
you said, a minute late.
People come from far away to jump off our bridge.
You laughed.
People come here to die.

I don't know if we can go yet,
I said, shivering.
But I want to soon.

A tiny spark flared in me, lifted itself weakly, and died.
No,
I said; I never had.
I meant, I don't think I can drive yet. I don't think I should drive us home yet.

You nodded, pulling—inexplicably—a purple rubber ball out of your pocket.
I think I stole this. Shit, from the toy store.
You looked up, alarmed.
It was an accident,
you said.

It's okay,
I said.

You leaned over the edge.
How high will it bounce, you think?

Not all the way back up,
I said.

You let it go: it came up about one story to our three. You picked up a bottle and before I could stop you it was out of your hand. It caught the streetlight glare as it shattered: a hundred stars dying on the pavement. My insides sloshed.

You shouted,
Keep throwing things!
Your face had become serious.
Find more things.
You took off your sweater and tossed it over the side, the arms extending on the wind—an invisible person, jumping off the roof in your clothes. Some kid ran up from behind us and threw a drumstick over the side.
I still totally need this drumstick!
he shouted, hurling it over his head.

Our faces were wind-smacked.
Hey!
you yelled.
Twenty-two years!

What?
I said.
I don't—

I'm dropping them off the side!
You held out your arm and opened your hand, letting go of nothing.
Now they're gone! I'm zero years old! Today can be my birthday!

Somebody in a fake Afro and bow tie set off one of those high-pitched fireworks. The noise made everyone squint.

Let's get married,
you screamed.
Share all that money with me!

What the fuck!
I said.

You know how many places there are?
you said.
All these places we've never been!
The firework died halfway through that sentence, leaving you screaming for no reason.

My ears rang so bad they ached, throbbing somewhere deep. You reached in your jeans pocket and found
everything collected there: the lawyer's business card, a wad of lint, a ticket to the Conservatory of Flowers. Receipts, tissues, coins, who knows what else, because over it went, falling in a hail of junk to the abandoned stretch below.

Nora,
I said,
I love you.

You grabbed at my thin jacket, reaching into my pockets and pulling out handfuls: more receipts, my car keys, a clump of dollar bills. And another small item—as soon as I saw it, before I even understood what it was, I felt my throat catch with its familiarity. Me, mine, my head said. Don't. Those thoughts were wordless, amounting to a large exclamation point inside me as I reached out to save it and missed: the little red toy car I had bought you, sinking toward the earth, surrounded by the last scraps of cash I had in the world.