Gone, Gone, Gone (11 page)

I had one therapist who was convinced all my problems came from
feeling my brother even though he isn’t here. Phantom pain. Like losing a limb.

I gave that some thought and came to the reluctant conclusion that it was definitely bullshit. I don’t feel Theodore. I don’t remember how eight years old felt. Most of the time I’m grateful for that.

There’s this bird outside my window. It’s so loud. I wish someone would shoot it. Ha.

So this is dumb, but every Saturday I end up considering calling Mom. I hate talking on the phone, and I’d probably end up just breathing loudly like a creeper. I don’t know her number, either. I’d have to ask Dad. That would be horrible. So I never call, but I always think about it.

I’m thinking about it right now when my cell phone rings. Who the fuck would call me? I check the screen, but it’s not Craig.

Fuck Alexander Graham Bell. I hate being forced to talk.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Lio, this is Amelia.”

Amelia. It could be worse, easily. She’s from school. She’s definitely into me. She’s also really good at statistics and has a knack for witty IMs, so I keep her. But if she thinks our relationship has progressed to phone calls, I feel bad for leading her on.

I say, “Hey.”

She says, “So sorry for cold-calling, and ohmyGod this is so
lame but my dad realized our country club—I know, I totally wouldn’t blame you if you hung up now—closes like tomorrow or the next day and we still have all these kind of pseudo-free dinners still available under our membership. If we don’t use them, the money kind of goes to waste.”

She leaves a space here for me to say something.

“So, anyway,” she continues. “My parents can’t go tonight, so they told me, ‘Amelia, why don’t you invite someone from school,’ so I was wondering if you’d like to go with me?”

I say, “Oh.”

There are a lot of reasons I should say no to her. The fact that I’m gay is probably the first reason, but it’s not the only one by any stretch. There’s the fact that I’m in love with someone else, unavailable though he may be. Or that making small talk over small portions isn’t exactly my thing.

So, I should say no, but apparently my
no thanks I’m fine
disease doesn’t apply here. I say, “Let me ask my dad, okay?”

That is the worst thing I’ve ever said. I essentially just cut off my penis.

I say, “We might have plans. I can get out of them.” I realize I’m trying to compensate for what I said about asking Dad for permission. I’m trying to get her to think I might be cool.
Way to go. Woo back the straight girl.
Jesus, I can’t win.

“Oh, sure,” she says. “Just call me back?”

“Yeah. Um, I’ll IM you.” I hang up because I sound like a jackass and that shit needs to end.

Okay,
Dad is going to tell me what to do. Even though I haven’t come out to my family, I’m pretty sure there’s an unspoken understanding that I’m gay ever since I sang “Man, I Feel Like a Woman” in my mother’s high heels, completely bald, for one of our family talent shows.

I don’t remember this, but the pictures are pretty fabulous.

I step into the kitchen. “Dad?”

“He’s napping,” Jasper says. Shit, when did they get home? The shoes Michelle’s wearing must be new, because she’s studying the reflection of her feet on the oven.

“I don’t know that they’re exactly right,” she says, and then she looks up at me. “What’s up? You look like shit.”

Wow thanks. “I just . . . I have something I need to ask him, okay?”

“Okay,” Michelle says. “God. You don’t have to verbally abuse us.”

Jasper says, “Leave him alone. Can I help, Li?” She gives me a hug. “Is everything okay?”

Maybe I really do look like shit. I say, “This girl invited me to dinner. I don’t know what to say.”

My sisters light up like candles. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” Jasper spins me. “Oh, my God, Lio, your first date! This is bigger than your bar mitzvah!”

I hope someone gives me money and cufflinks for this.

“What are you going to wear?” Michelle asks me. “Please tell me you are
not
going to wear a T-shirt. Let’s not wear
anything with words on it, Lio, okay?” She’s touching me all over like she’s trying to clean me off. “And something besides black? You must have colors in your closet somewhere. You have some red and pink, don’t you? If we choose one to accent the black . . .”

Oh, God. They think I’m straight.

I say, “I haven’t said yes yet . . .”

Jasper says, “Oh, Jesus, Lio, don’t play hard to get. Call her and tell her you’re coming. You don’t have to act so uptight just because you’re gay.”

Now I’m entirely confused.

“Go get ready!” Jasper says. “Call her! Get dressed! Just don’t kiss her at the end, that would be cruel. Unless you like her! Don’t limit yourself, Lio!”

“Remember, wear
nothing
with words!” Michelle calls after me. “And find a hat that isn’t falling apart. Don’t you dare show her your hair!”

I do not understand my life.

Dad drives me. Maybe my sisters are aware this is all some kind of ruse, but I’m getting the feeling my father has no idea this date isn’t going to end in marriage and children. He’s babbling on about his first date, and his first car he drove to go pick her up. And how in his day they didn’t have these fancy electric car window openers, you had to crank them down by hand. God, I want to crank my head off right now.

He says, “You brought money to pay?”

“It’s her country club, Dad. She’s
going to pay. Or her parents.”

“Oh, then they might give you a menu without prices. I’m not sure. It’s been a long time since I ate at a country club. But don’t order anything too expensive. But don’t order anything too cheap, either, that’ll insult her. It’s best to stick with some kind of chicken or fish.”

I like how he thinks I’m straight but has managed to deduce that I’m basically the girl in this situation.

“And don’t linger outside,” he says. “You know.”

I say, “Yeah, I know.”

He doesn’t need to tell me.

My heart starts pounding like after a nightmare, so I close my eyes and take some deep breaths. I know how to calm myself down. I just hate that, ever since that argument with Craig, I’ve had to do it so often.

There is no reason for me to be scared. No one has been shot in hours. Feeling vulnerable isn’t new to me.

Thinking my vulnerability is significant is.

The voice in my head saying,
Cody’s dad shouldn’t have died—
yeah, that is, too.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but this isn’t the headspace I need to be in right now.

The outside of the country club is deserted. It’s hard to walk in these stupid shoes. They’re my dad’s and too big. It’s like my feet are fish. It takes me too long to get from the car to inside. I breathe.

Amelia is wearing a pink silky dress that falls off her shoulders. I realize now how poorly I know her. I don’t think I would have recognized her if she weren’t the only teenage girl standing alone. But she’s funny over IM. And her dress is pretty.

She gives me a little wave. “Thanks so much for coming,” she says. “I think if I hadn’t found someone to treat, my dad would have been really concerned that I had no friends or something.”

I smile a little. Is she familiar with the fact that I don’t talk? I can’t remember if she’s ever tried to interact with me in real life. Why did she invite me? Maybe she really doesn’t have any friends. At least that’s something we have in common. That can be our conversation starter. Too bad I’m the official conversation finisher.

We get a table. There’s a little useless candle between us. When I was a kid, my sisters and I used to set the napkins on fire whenever we were at a place nice enough to have candles at the tables. That wasn’t very often, since every time we went, my sisters and I would try to set everything on fire.

Amelia makes small talk about movies. I nod and say a few words when I can. We order, and I get chicken in some
kind of wine sauce. It’s in the price range my dad would like, but it feels really gay. I feel like Amelia can tell, even though of course she doesn’t say anything.

Really, I ordered it because it has the shortest name on the menu. Seriously, I’m pathological.

“So how are you liking D.C.?” she asks.

People around here have a weird habit of calling it D.C. This is Maryland.

I say, “It’s okay.”

The food tastes like something an old person would eat, but it’s not so bad, really, just suspiciously easy to chew. I get self-conscious about how many sips I take from my water glass and how many times I have to wipe my mouth on the scratchy napkin. We’re not talking anymore, and for the first time ever, I hate it. I hate the silence and I hate this date. Why did I let my sisters force me into this?

It’s not like they pushed very hard. I folded.

I was afraid of saying no to something I would like. And look where that got me. I think I need to figure out what it is, exactly, I would like.

Besides a boy who won’t have me.

I make a lot of efforts to smile at Amelia.

The evening’s ending. Our plates are empty enough to not be embarrassing. She says she doesn’t want dessert, and I don’t drink coffee, so I guess that’s it. She sees me checking my watch. “Is your dad going to pick you up?”

“Yeah. I’ll call him. You?”

“Oh, I live just a
little bit away, through the woods. I’m going to walk.”

I look up quickly. “You’re going to walk through the woods?”

“Yeah.” She must catch my expression. She laughs a little, back in her throat. She sounds old. Old enough for the food. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Lio. Don’t get paranoid like . . . I’ll be fine.”

I say, “Listen, my dad can drop you off.”

“No, really. I brought shoes to walk in and everything. It’ll help me burn off some of this dinner.” She laughs. But she didn’t eat that much, not enough to die for.

I say, “Hey . . . please?”

She blows me off again, and I don’t know any other ways to ask.

Dad calls me when he’s at the door. I run to the car.

“Did you have fun?” he asks me.

I nod and look out the window. Amelia’s in the woods, alone.

She is probably, probably, probably not going to get shot.

Unless she gets shot, I don’t think I’ll remember her in a few years. But if she gets shot, I’ll remember. I’ll regret it forever. I’ll get fucked up again.

Breathe.

Statistics. It is statistically impossible that she will die.

This is how I calm myself down.

Breathe.

Theo was a fluke.

Cody’s dad shouldn’t have died.

What do two flukes make?

“Dad?” I say.

He glances at me while he drives. His eyebrows are all together.

I say, “Are you scared?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” I look out the window again.

He doesn’t ask me if I’m scared. I hope that’s because he knows, not because he thinks I already have a therapist and he doesn’t need to know.

He reaches underneath my cap and messes up my hair. I haven’t had a cigarette in days, and it’s really getting to me. But I’m too scared to step outside and smoke one. If my dad knew I smoked, he’d eat me alive. He’d cry.

CRAIG

I SLEEP.

I sleep.

Heavy, breathless, unbelievable, I sleep.

I sleep.

That was a horrible dream.

I look at my clock: 3:27 a.m. As soon as I swing my feet onto the floor, cold floor cold feet cold Craig, Kremlin starts pawing at my leg. No time like the present, so I hook the dogs up to their leashes and disable our new fancy burglar alarm. I make sure the cats don’t get out, and we go for a run.

I wish I were a good runner.

In my dream, Cody was screaming at me to run faster, and I don’t know what the metaphorical significance of this is because nothing about running ever happened to us. I could make it into some extended thing about me running into the Pentagon, but that feels like a stretch. A huge stretch, like a full stretch further than a regular stretch, even.

I don’t think he and his father were that close. They never seemed to be. Once I saw them scream at each other so hard Cody’s throat went raw, and that was when I was there, when company was there, and even though I didn’t like to think of myself as company in my boyfriend’s house, his mom kept going, “Quiet,
quiet,
we have company!” but they didn’t listen. God knows what they did when I wasn’t there. One time Cody showed up with a big bruise across his mouth and asked if he could sleep over, but that and the time he hit me are the only evidence I have, and even evidence isn’t proof.

For a while after September 11th, it looked like he was going to be okay. Once they gave up hope that Mr. Carter was coming home—and that took a long time—he and his mom squished together and supported each other. Cody came over to my house all the time, and that was nice, to see him, to have a chance to make things right. He was sad. We’d bake cookies. We’d have sex. We’d watch stupid movies, we’d cry, we’d fall asleep. We slept, in my bed upstairs, in my room upstairs.

Then around January he started to forget where he’d put things, kind of like Dad does, except Cody never had a head injury. And then he was returning phone calls I never made, and then he stopped sleeping. Stopped sleeping completely, and that was the beginning of the end, I guess. He lost his mind and maybe it’s never coming back. At least, it’s probably never coming back to me.

He hasn’t emailed.

Why am I such a slow runner?

If I continue not to sleep, maybe I’ll totally lose it and get shipped out to where he is. And I’ll see what he’s seen, and it’ll be like I’m being him, like I understand. And someone will finally, finally, bring me to him. I’m so lame. Someone has to bring me to him? I’m not a damsel in distress. I could go. I could hop on a bus or go with his mom next time she invites me or I could beg Mom and somehow I could go.

I’m not going to go, but maybe I’ll go insane.

My neighborhood is eerie and dark, but it’s familiar, and I’m only circling it over and over. And, to be honest, more people have their lights on than I would have expected at this time of night. It’s like they set out beacons for me.