Real Life (25 page)

He felt a chilly excitement deep inside his bones. In a daze, he finished the algebra and waited for the class to be over. He kneaded his hands together on the desk, trying to calm down, rehearsing what he would say. In the crowded corridor he walked the familiar route to his locker without knowing what he did. Say it on the bus. No: get off at her stop and say it. Nina, I wondered if you'd like to…

He always tried to board the bus first so he could sit right in front, behind the driver. The nerd seat, he was aware. The Jamie-types and their girls sat in back. As the bus emptied, the kids who were left moved toward the back, so that he became more and more isolated up in front with Mr. Wicker, the driver, who never spoke but who whistled old songs, a sad, burbling sound that Hugo rather enjoyed. He didn't know where Nina sat, or whom she sat with. He didn't want to know. From his front seat, with his face turned antisocially toward the window, he could sometimes hear her voice, joining in the general fooling around, but often she seemed on the ride home to be as silent as he.

The bus ride that day was unbearable. Wasn't there some book,
The Agony and the Ecstasy?
That was the ride home. He would force her to speak to him. He would get her back. She would scorn him. She would laugh at him. She would fall into his arms. She would get off the bus at her stop and there would be some boy in a car to pick her up. She would cry and say she was sorry she'd been so mean to him. She would cry and say her mother was terminally ill, her father, her grandmother; and she hadn't been herself. She would say, Oh, Hugo, my darling. She would refuse to speak to him. He leaned his head against the cold window, enduring the bumps as the bus leaped along the roads. It went too fast; it went too slow. Agony, ecstasy, agony.

The bus was half empty when they got to her stop. Several kids got off there—it was the town stop, on Main Street, by the drugstore—and Hugo joined them. Mr. Wicker didn't notice or didn't care that Hugo got off three stops early; his whistle didn't cease. Hugo went down the steps last and walked behind Nina. There was no boy in a car. Nina walked alone down Main toward her street, and Hugo walked faster to catch her up. She had on her old summer overalls, and a dirty tan windbreaker. Her hair billowed out behind her like autumn leaves. “Nina,” he said in a voice not his own.

She turned. “Hugo! What on earth?”

His heart turned over. She was smiling, even looking pleased. Her beauty nearly blinded him, her little brown eyes, her pointed lips. Under her windbreaker she wore a blue sweater. There were tiny gold hoops in her ears: something new.

“I want to ask you,” he said.

“Well, what?”

She stood facing him, still smiling, her books propped on her hip, but he could see that her friendliness was phony and polite; she would just as soon be gone. But he went on, forcing it out: what else could he do? “I wanted you to go somewhere with me.”

“Oh. Well. I don't really know, Hugo.”

“I wanted you to break into the Garners' with me and get drunk.” It was the only way to do it, blurt it out wildly before she turned and walked away. “Some Saturday night when they're out of town or something.”

Her eyes widened, and then her smile spread out and became genuine. He felt blessed, glorified, rewarded. She said, “What?”—spilling the word out slowly in the intimate, confiding way she had, that he remembered so well, as if they had just been lured together into some magical place, some chamber of wonders.

“I just want to get drunk for once in my life,” he said. It came easily now, the kind of thing to say and the nonchalant way of saying it. “I'm sick of everything. School, home, the whole bit. I just want to—” He shrugged. “Let's just get drunk and say the hell with it, Nina.” He couldn't believe he was uttering these words. In the midst of his triumph he felt intense shame. He almost despised her, just for a moment, for responding so easily. It was like a bad day on
Upton's Grove
, one of those episodes when the scriptwriters seemed to have fallen asleep. She shouldn't be standing there smiling—impressed. She should tell him he was a fool and walk away from him. She should say, I am perfectly aware that all this is just a ploy so you can kiss me, poor Hugo. “They're going away some weekend soon, I know that. I heard Mrs. Garner tell my aunt. I can't remember when, exactly.” He wished he had listened better, even joined in that boring conversation: Mrs. Garner at the door collecting money for some disease. He tried to remember. Where were they going? A wedding? No, it was Dorrie who was going to a wedding. “Their place would be simple to break into. I've been all over it. I could get their cellar door open in about five seconds.”

She stood looking at him, her eyes bright. “Are you sure you're not drunk right now, Hugo?”

“Do you want to do it?”

“Need you ask? Of course I do.”

“I'll find out when.”

“Let me know. I'm available.”

What did that mean? Did it mean anything? Now was the time to do something masterful. Grab her right here on Main Street? No. Don't screw up. He remembered when she had drawn the eye on the back of his hand with a pen, how when she had leaned over her hair had brushed his arm. He had wanted to pick up a bit of it and press it to his lips, but he hadn't. He remembered how he had held her tight when the kittens were born. He searched for what to say. “Bring your guitar.”

It seemed the right thing. She touched his arm, his jacket, with one finger, and said, “I'll play my song for you. The one about your aunt. I wrote it, finally.”

“Oh. Yeah. I'd really like to hear it.”

“It's called ‘Heart of Clay.' Isn't that a great title?”

“Yeah, it sounds really good.”

She looked seriously into his face, and there was a moment of silence. “I'm sorry, Hugo,” she said at last. “I've been preoccupied since school started.”

“That's okay, Nina.” Everything was okay. She would come to the Garners'. She was apologizing. God, he hoped it wasn't her mother, her father, dying hooked up to tubes. He imagined comforting her at the funeral. She would turn to him in her grief as her truest friend.

“I've been in love,” she said.

“Oh.” He clutched his books to his chest.

“But it isn't working out.”

“Oh.”

“I'll tell you about it,” she said, and her smile returned. “Over drinks.”

His aunt said to him, “Would you like to go and see the Wylies?”

It startled him. He hesitated, then decided the only safe response was “Why?”

“I had a letter from Mrs. Wylie. They would like to see you, Hugo.” He made himself look interested. “I thought you might like to visit them. Maybe over Christmas vacation.”

They were at breakfast. Alex, the weird paramour, was asleep in the bedroom. Hugo looked down at his eggs.
Nina Nina Nina
was all he could think. “It's hard to say. I mean—”

“Your friend David seems to miss you a lot. What's he like, really?” Her voice was false and bright. What did she care?

“You met him that time.”

“Yes, but he didn't say much. I guess he just stays quiet and observes people, and then writes about them. I suppose there are some writers who work that way.” She smiled, thinking no doubt of Alex in the bedroom, who was certainly anything but quiet and David-like. “What kind of poems does he write?”

“Oh—just poems. Not the kind that rhyme or anything.”

“His mother says he seems to be having some trouble making new friends.”

“He's kind of shy.”

“He seemed nice, though.”

“He's nice, yeah. Dave's a good kid.” He thought: why all this pumping? What did it matter? David and the Wylies seemed far away, long gone. He remembered David sitting on the floor with his notebook on his knees, writing poems. When he finished one he would look up and say, “Da
da
!” and read it to Hugo. “I kind of miss him sometimes. Yeah, I guess I'd like to see him one of these days. Sure.” His aunt's face was expressionless behind a bland smile. Was she going to send him back to the Wylies? “I don't know about a whole vacation.”

“Well, you don't have to decide now.”

There was a pause while he looked at his eggs; like everything else in his life, they said,
Nina Nina Nina
. He and Nina had cooked eggs in this very kitchen, eaten them off these very plates. Heavy blue plates, made by his aunt, with carved borders of lily like flowers. “These aren't bad, actually, considering,” Nina had said, running her fingers over the carving. He looked up at his aunt and said, uncontrollably, “Nina and I are sort of friends again.”

She understood that this was not a non sequitur, and said, “Hugo, that's wonderful,” overdoing it. “I thought you seemed more cheerful the last week or so. Even this—I mean, getting up at a decent hour and having breakfast with me.”

He shrugged. “I woke up hungry.” That wasn't all the truth. He had woken up, in the alcove room he hated, hungry for human companionship—specifically, for someone to whom he could say her name.

“Well, I'm glad you're here. Have some more bacon. I don't want to pry and intrude and all that, but I think you've been needing a friend like Nina lately, someone you could talk to.”

We have a date to get drunk, he thought.

“I knew you were missing her.”

He looked at her cautiously. How had she known that? “She just got busy,” he said. “School and everything.”

“And now she's not so busy.”

“Right.” She had been in love, it hadn't worked out, she would tell him about it, cry in his arms. He pushed the eggs around on his plate, imagining, then suddenly wolfed them down in three bites and reached for another piece of toast.

“That's wonderful, Hugo, I'm so glad,” his aunt said again. Why was it so wonderful? he thought. She didn't use to like Nina much. He studied her suspiciously. Her intelligent eyes were exactly like his father's, that funny pale blue. He remembered, suddenly, his father, with a clarity of detail that hadn't come to him in years, and with the same incredulity with which he remembered his summer with Nina. His father's eyes, his square white hands, his thick black eyebrows. His father's monstrous belches when he drank beer. His father's crazy laugh. Had he really been with him, sat at tables with him and ridden in cars? His father used to swing him up and carry him on his shoulders. Once he had taken him for a motorcycle ride, Hugo propped in front of him on the narrow part of the seat, held there only by the force of his father's right arm clasped tight around his stomach and his father's strong, lean body behind him. He remembered terror and absolute confidence, both at once. He had been—what? five? six? What had happened to the motorcycle? What had happened to anything? He thought, suddenly, that what he would like to do when he was drunk was to demand the truth from his aunt. Otherwise he'd never have the nerve. The Garners' wine would be a medicine to make him brave and carefree. Drink a little wine and you could do anything. Kiss Nina. Demand the facts. Tell people off. The very thought of it made him daring. “How long is
he
staying?” he asked, gesturing across the kitchen and living room to the bedroom door. Behind it, he heard the bed squeak.

“He has to get back to Boston early,” Dorrie said. “He'll probably leave after breakfast.” It annoyed him, the infatuated way she said “he,” as if she were talking about a king.

“Maybe we should go over and see the Garners later.” She stared at him, and he realized what a bizarre suggestion it was, after these solitary and hostile months. He thought about how he would do better, now that he had Nina, now that he had resolved to get his aunt to tell him things. He made himself smile. “Just to kind of pay a call,” he said, spreading jam carefully on his toast. He took a bite. “I feel bad I haven't seen them lately,” he said with his mouth full. “They've been so nice to me.” He swallowed his toast, feeling like a rat. The truth was that he wanted to go over there and check out the place once more, and also find out when they were going to be away. But as he spoke he knew that he did miss them, that they
had
been nice to him, nicer than nearly anyone. They had even sent him a birthday card—a funny Snoopy one signed “Love, Mary and Ross Garner.” How could he even consider sneaking into their house to drink their wine?
For love
, he answered. There was no other way. Dorrie never kept more than a couple of bottles of beer in the refrigerator. Everything else
he
drank up. It would have to be the Garners. But just take maybe one bottle, he said to himself. Forget the sun room and the TV. They could bring the wine back to his abandoned loft, with a blanket. Two bottles? Three? How much wine would it take to get drunk? How much could he remove without the Garners' noticing? Eating his toast, feeling his aunt's eyes on him—his father's eyes—he kept himself by an act of will from blushing red. What would his father think of him? He was a rat: a rat in love.

The bedsprings squeaked some more, and Alex emerged from the bedroom, old and rumpled in jockey shorts and a denim workshirt that, like Alex, had seen better days. Hugo thought he looked disgusting, with his hairy bare legs. He couldn't believe his aunt slept in the same bed with this man; it was an idea he didn't care to dwell on. Alex muttered, “Good morning,” and headed for the bathroom. Dorrie jumped up and began scrambling more eggs. From the bathroom, Hugo heard unabashed farting.

When Alex came in and sat down he said to Hugo, “To what do we owe this honor?”

“I was just going.”

“Hell, don't go,” Alex said at the same moment that Dorrie rushed in with, “Stay and have some more eggs, Hugo.” Hugo shrugged, and sat on the edge of his chair.

Alex drank some orange juice. Hugo watched his Adam's apple go up and down. When he finished, there was juice on his moustache, which he wiped away with his napkin. “Give us a report on the younger generation,” he said, starting on his eggs. “How's life in the world of Michael Jackson and cocaine and algebra?”