All These Things I've Done

To my dad, Richard Zevin,
who knows everything

‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.’

contents

I.
i defend my own honour

T
HE NIGHT BEFORE JUNIOR YEAR
– I was sixteen,
barely
– Gable Arsley said he wanted to sleep with me. Not in the distant or semi-distant future either. Right then.

Admittedly, my taste in boys wasn’t so great. I was attracted to the sort who weren’t in the habit of asking permission to do anything. Boys like my father, I guess.

We’d just gotten back from the coffee speakeasy that used to be off University Place, in the basement of a church. This was when caffeine, along with about a million other things, was still against the law. So much was illegal (paper without a permit, phones with cameras, chocolate, etc.) and the laws changed so quickly, you could be committing a crime and not even know it. Not that it mattered. The boys in blue were totally overwhelmed. The city was bankrupt, and I’d say maybe seventy-five per cent of the force had been fired. The police that were left didn’t have time to worry about teens getting high on coffee.

I should have known something was up when Gable offered to escort me back to the apartment. At night at least, it was a pretty dangerous trek from the speakeasy to where I lived on East Ninetieth, and Gable usually left me to fend for myself. He lived downtown, and I guess he figured that I hadn’t been killed making the trip yet.

We went into my apartment, which had been in the family practically forever – since 1995, the year my grandma Galina was born. Galina, who we called Nana and who I loved like nobody’s business, was busy dying in her bedroom. She had the distinction of being both the oldest and the sickest person I had ever known. As soon as I opened the door, I could hear the machines that were keeping her heart and everything else pumping. The only reason they hadn’t turned the machines off, like they would have for anyone else, was because she was responsible for my older brother, my little sister and me. Her mind was still sharp, by the way. Even confined to the bed, not much got past her.

Gable had had, maybe, six espressos that night, two of them with shots of Prozac (also illegal) – and he was mad up. I’m not making excuses for him, only trying to explain a few things.

‘Annie,’ he said, loosening his necktie and sitting down on the couch, ‘you got to have some chocolate in here. I know you do. I’m gagging for it. Come on, baby. Hook Daddy up.’ It was the caffeine talking. Gable sounded like a different person when he was on the stuff. I especially hated when he referred to himself as Daddy. I think he’d heard it in an old movie. I wanted to say,
You aren
’
t my daddy. You
’
re seventeen years old, for God
’
s sake.
Sometimes I did say this but mostly I let it go. My actual daddy used to say that if you didn’t let some things go, you’d spend your whole life fighting. Chocolate was why Gable’d said he wanted to come up to the apartment in the first place. I told him he could have one piece and then he had to leave. The first day of school was tomorrow (my junior year as I mentioned; his senior), and I needed to get some sleep.

We kept our chocolate in Nana’s room in a secret safe in the back of her closet. I tried to be real quiet as I walked past her bed. Not that there was much of a need for that. Her machines were as loud as the subway.

Nana’s room smelt like death, a combination of day-old egg salad (poultry was rationed) and overripe honeydew melons (fruit was pretty scarce) and old shoes and cleaning products (purchase permitted with voucher). I went into her walk-in closet, pushed her coats out of the way, and entered the combination. Behind the guns was the chocolate, which was Special Dark, with hazelnuts, and came from Russia. I put a bar in my pocket and closed the safe. On my way out, I stopped to kiss my grandmother on the cheek, and she woke up.

‘Anya,’ she croaked, ‘what time did you get home?’

I told her that I’d been home for a while. She’d never know the difference anyway and she’d only worry if she knew where I’d been. Then I told her to go back to sleep, that I hadn’t meant to wake her. ‘You need your rest, Nana.’

‘What for? I’ll be resting forever soon enough.’

‘Don’t talk like that. You’ll be alive a really long time,’ I lied.

‘There’s a difference between being alive and living,’ she muttered before changing the subject. ‘First day of school tomorrow.’

I was surprised she remembered.

‘Go get yourself a nice chocolate bar from the closet, OK, Anyaschka?’

I did what she said. I put the bar from my pocket back in the safe and replaced it with a different, identical one.

‘Don’t show anybody,’ she said. ‘And don’t share it unless it’s with someone you really love.’

Easier said than done, I thought, but I promised I wouldn’t. I kissed my grandmother’s papery cheek again. I closed the door softly behind me. I loved Nana, but I couldn’t stand to be in that awful room.

When I went back out to the living room, Gable wasn’t there. I knew where he’d be.

Gable was lying in the middle of my bed, passed out. As I saw it, that was the problem with caffeine. A little of it, and you had a nice buzz. Too much, and you were a goner. At least, that’s how it was for Gable. I kicked him, not too hard, on the leg. He didn’t wake up. I kicked him again, harder. He grunted a little and rolled on to his back. I figured I’d let him sleep it off. If worst came to worst, I’d sleep on the couch. Anyway, Gable was cute when he slept. Harmless, like a puppy or a little boy. I suppose I liked him best that way.

I took my school uniform from my closet and laid it out on my desk chair for the next day. I organized my bag and charged up my slate. I broke off a single piece of dark chocolate. The flavour was strong and woodsy. I rewrapped the rest in its silver foil and put it in my top drawer for safekeeping. I was glad I hadn’t had to share it with Gable.

You’re probably asking why Gable was my boyfriend when I barely wanted to share chocolate with him. The thing is, he wasn’t boring. He was a little dangerous and, stupid girl that I was, I guess I found that sort of thing attractive. And – God rest your soul, Daddy – it could be said that I lacked positive male role models. Besides, sharing chocolate wasn’t some casual thing: it really was hard to come by.

I decided to take a shower so I wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. When I got out ninety seconds later (everyone’s showers ran on timers because of how expensive water was getting), Gable was sitting cross-legged on my bed while stuffing the last of my chocolate bar down his throat.

‘Hey,’ I said, my towel wrapped around me, ‘you went into my drawer!’

Chocolate was smudged on his thumb, index finger, and the inside corners of his mouth. ‘I wasn’t snooping. I sniffed it out,’ he said in the middle of a bite. He paused chomping long enough to look up at me. ‘You look pretty, Annie. Clean.’

I wrapped my towel tighter around myself. ‘Well, now that you’re awake and you’ve had your chocolate, you should leave,’ I said.

He didn’t move.

‘Come on, then! Out!’ I said this strongly, if not loudly. I didn’t want to wake my siblings or Nana.

That’s when he told me that he thought we should have sex.

‘No,’ I said, wishing very much that I hadn’t been so foolish as to take a shower while a dangerous, over-caffeinated boy lay in wait on my bed. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Why not?’ he asked. And then he said that he was in love with me. It was the first time a boy had ever told me that. Even as inexperienced as I was, I could tell he didn’t mean it.

‘I want you to go,’ I said. ‘We’ve got school tomorrow, and we both should get some sleep.’

‘I can’t go now. It’s past midnight.’

Not that there were enough cops to enforce it, but midnight was the citywide, under-eighteen curfew. It was only 11.45, so I lied and told him he could still make it if he ran.

‘I’ll never make it, Annie. Besides, my parents aren’t home, and your grandma will never know if I stay. Come on. Be sweet to me.’

I shook my head and tried to look tough, which was somewhat hard to do while wearing a yellow, flowered towel.

‘Doesn’t it count for anything that I just told you I love you?’ Gable asked.

I considered this briefly before deciding that it didn’t. ‘Not really. Not when I know you don’t mean it.’

He looked at me with big, dumb eyes like I had hurt his feelings or something. Then he cleared his throat and tried a different technique. ‘Come on, Annie. We’ve been together almost nine months. That’s the longest I’ve ever been with anyone. So . . . Like . . . Why not?’

I gave him my list. One, I said, we were too young. Two, I didn’t love him. And three, the most important of all, I didn’t believe in sex before marriage. I was a mostly good Catholic girl, and I knew exactly where the type of behaviour he was suggesting would get me: straight to Hell. For the record, I very much believed (and believe) in Heaven and Hell, and not in an abstract way either. More about this later.

His eyes were a little crazy – maybe it was the contraband he’d consumed – and he got up from the bed and walked closer to me. He started tickling my bare arms.

‘Stop that,’ I said. ‘Seriously, Gable, this isn’t funny. I know you’re trying to get me to drop my towel.’

‘Why’d you take that shower if you didn’t want—’

I told him I’d scream.

‘And then what?’ he asked. ‘Your grandma can’t get out of bed. Your brother’s a retard. And your sister’s just a kid. All you’ll do is make them upset.’

Part of me couldn’t believe this was actually happening in my own house. That I’d allowed myself to be so witless and vulnerable. I hooked my towel under my armpits, and I pushed Gable away as hard as I could.
‘Leo is not a retard!
’
I yelled.

I heard a door open at the end of the hallway and then footsteps. Leo, who was tall like Daddy had been (six feet five inches), appeared in my doorway wearing pyjamas with a pattern of dogs and bones on them. Even though I had been handling things, I had never been so happy to see my big brother. ‘Hey, Annie!’ Leo wrapped me in a quick hug before turning to my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. ‘Hello, Gable,’ Leo said. ‘I heard noise. I think you should leave now. You woke me, which is OK. But if you wake Natty that won’t be good, because she has to go to school tomorrow.’

Leo led Gable to our front door. I didn’t relax until I heard it shut and Leo had latched the chain.

‘I don’t think your boyfriend is very nice,’ Leo told me when he got back.

‘You know what? I don’t think so either,’ I said. I picked up Gable’s discarded chocolate wrappers and crushed them into a ball. By Nana’s standards, the only chocolate-worthy boy in my life was my brother.

The first day of school stank more than most first days of school, and they tend to stink as a rule. Everyone had already heard that Gable Arsley and Anya Balanchine were over. This was annoying. Not because I had had any intention of staying with him after the foul he’d committed the night before, but because I’d wanted to be the one to break up with him. I’d wanted him to cry or yell or apologize. I’d wanted to walk away and not look back as he called my name. That sort of thing, right?