Best Boy (11 page)

“Me?” yelled Beth loudly. “Now you're blaming me?”

No one had returned to eating. In fact the whole room had become completely quiet to watch better.

“I'm not blaming anybody,” my brother said. “But come on, Beth.”

“I was gone less than three minutes, for god's sake!” she shouted.

My brother looked down at Cam who was crying but more
softly and said, “I know it stings, sweetie, but we'll get you fixed up in a jiffy.”

“Give him to me now, goddammit!” Beth screamed.

But Nate continued to look down at Cam and whisper things to him while ignoring her. Then Steven left Nate and went running towards Beth who started screaming again just as sirens suddenly got loud outside the restaurant and the doors flew open and burly ambulance-men came rushing into the room.

Later that day, my brother drove me back to Payton to drop me off instead of having me stay with them at their hotel for the long weekend as we'd planned. He said, “I know you didn't mean anything. Beth just shouldn't have left you in charge. Believe me when I tell ya it's nobody's fault, but . . .”

Then my brother didn't say anything for a little while. When he started talking again he told me Cam would probably be fine and both he and his wife hoped there wouldn't be scars but they were cutting their trip short and leaving that day. Also, I might not be coming back home as we'd planned for the future and he hoped I understood. He said he really hoped that I understood. He said he thought there was “a lesson here for everybody involved.” He knew that I had a “good soul, the Aaron family unit,” and he was almost positive that everything would “eventually blow over.”

But all that was several years ago and I'd never gone home or seen his wife and children again and in the meantime I was still on the phone with my brother on the same call where he'd been talking about our Dad. It was a long call and he'd been drinking steadily and he was now very drunk. I could hear he was very drunk because he had the same falling-loose voice Daddy did when he'd been drinking. “Tubes,” he said, “all I ever wanted was for you to be safe and happy. Mom made me swear to look after you when she was gone, did you know that?
Cried in my arms over it, actually, and she was a tough old girl. Well, I have.”

“Have what?”

“Taken care of you.”

“Okay,” I said, “but Nate?”

“Don't ask.”

“When can I come—”

“Enough!”

There was a silence during which I heard the ice cubes clinking as he drank. In a low voice like he was talking partly to himself he said, “Just 'cause you're sick doesn't mean you can't also be selfish as hell.” He made a sound in his chest that wasn't a word.

“But Nate?” I repeated.

“What, Todd?” he yelled. I could hear him breathing heavy on the phone.

“After Bob's Cabin you said I could come home one day.”

“Ah, fuck.”

“Nate?” I said.

There was a silence.

“Nate?” I said again. But the phone coughed in my ear and spit out a hiss and I realized that my brother had hung up.

EIGHTEEN

M
ARTINE AND
I
MET FOR ME TO LEARN HOW NOT
to take my meds under a large tree the villagers called Mr. Breeze. It was called that because it was alone on the lawn and whenever the wind blew it made a special rushing sound of air through the leaves. I was excited as I watched her come towards me with her back hunched and her head fallen forward. Soon she was under Mr. Breeze where no one could hear us. Maybe no one could see us either. The branches came out of the trunk and lowered thickly around us. She stood up straight and smiled.

“Hi!” she said

“Hello, Martine.”

“It's already working!” she said.

I looked at her. “What is?”

“My not taking the pills.”

“How do you know?”

“Can't you tell?”

“No.”

“Let's sit down.”

“Okay,” I said, and the two of us sat down at exactly the same time. Martine laughed.

“Would you like to see my dead eye?” she asked.

“Your dead eye?”

I looked around through the hanging branches. I could see that no one anywhere was coming towards us from any direction and that we were alone.

“Sure,” I said.

“I don't usually do this,” she said.

“No.”

“But you're a pal.”

“Thank you.”

“Or something. Come closer.”

Her eyepatch was very dark and covered a big part of her face. I'd wondered what was behind it before, and whether there was a black hole that you could see her brain through, or a bunch of veins, or did she use it like a wallet in her head where she kept keys or coins. Using my hands I pushed myself closer until our knees were almost touching. I'd never been this close to her before. Light, interrupted by leaves, fell all over us. The wind breathed quietly. Liquid was pouring into my mouth from places inside my throat when, “Here,” she said, and slipped the entire eyepatch off her head. Where the clear pond of the eye would normally be there was a milky blue thing that bulged in the socket.

“This is it,” she said.

Maybe it looked like an agate or a stone. Maybe it was like she was wearing a rock in her head.

“Wow,” I said, “that's your eye.”

“It
was
my eye. Now it's just a shell. After it healed we decided to keep it there rather than put a glass one in.”

“Your eye,” I said again, because I didn't know what to say.

“My eye,” she said.

“Hunh.”

“Now show me something of yours,” she said.

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Something to match.”

“I don't have anything like that.”

“I bet you do. What part of you don't you like?”

I didn't know what she was talking about but what I did know was that she was very close to me, under the tree with the stuck-out branches. Also I knew that everything was slowing down and then slowing down further. Usually I felt a kind of fatigue all the time because of the Risperdal but I didn't feel that just now. It was warm out. Sweat was coming onto my skin. I could feel it running down my forehead. But her forehead was dry.

“Show me,” she said, but not in a harsh way like she sometimes spoke.

As I thought of what I could show her I continued looking at her face. Without the eyepatch on it was now a regular face except one of the eyes was clouded. I noticed that when she moved the one normal eye the cloudy eye moved also. It was like having two people in one head.

“I like you,” I said. I couldn't remember ever saying that to a girl or if I did it was many years ago. Usually, I only said it to staff.

“I know,” she said. “So, what part don't you like? Your gut?”

I didn't mind my gut. I didn't mind that I sometimes breathed so much through my mouth that little scabs formed on my lips. I didn't mind that I shaved badly and left patches of sprouted hair
on my face or that I sometimes smelled from various parts of myself. I didn't mind at all. I still didn't understand her question.

“I told my parents about you,” she said.

I was so close to her that I could see the tiny, individually alive silver hairs on the skin of her face.

“Your parents?” I said.

“I said you were a new friend, and very nice, and smarter than you seemed.” She laughed.

“Thank you.”

“Todd, do you want to touch it?”

“What?”

“My eye.”

“Your eye?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know.”

“The nerves in it are dead and I can't feel anything. You can touch it, as long as your hands are clean. Are your hands clean, Todd?”

I'm what Raykene and other staff call a “real stickler” for cleanliness. I wash my hands several times a day.

“Yes,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

So under the big branchy tree I reached forward very slowly and holding out my finger I touched her naked eye. It was warm and slightly sticky. It felt like the inside of a body that happened to be in your face.

“Martine,” I said.

“My eye,” she said.

“Your eye,” I said slowly, “is warm.”

“Well, duh.”

Then we stayed under the tree silent for a little bit while the
breeze picked up. After a while I thought I heard the humming of insects, but it was Martine's voice. She was talking. I realized that in the meantime I'd forgotten where I was. I was a little disappointed to remember. But she was talking about the pills. She was saying that it was actually easy. She was saying that whenever they checked on you about taking the meds you had to first distract them by telling a joke or asking a serious question.

“Then you palm the pill like this,” she said, and placed a pill she'd brought in the little fold of flesh between her thumb and index finger. She put the palm to her mouth.

“Gug,” she said. “You actually say the word ‘gug.'”

“Okay.”

“It sounds like swallowing. And remember the joke.”

“Right.”

“Do you know any jokes?”

“No.”

“I'll teach you one.”

“Thank you, Martine.”

Not taking my pills meant something so bad would happen to me that I'd never let myself even think about it. But it was exciting to be this close to Martine under Mr. Breeze. She was like the princess out of the giant book of fairy tales my Momma read me who could change crawling animals into pretty winged birds with a snap of her fingers and make people fall asleep while talking out loud. The wind in my pants rose upwards into my head.

“I like you,” I said again.

“I can tell,” she said and winked at me with the good eye.

NINETEEN

L
OVE WAS INVENTED IN
1177. A
MAN NAMED
Chrétien de Troyes discovered it. According to Mr. B, he felt something that he hadn't felt before and he looked at what it was that caused that feeling and he realized it was a girl. She was sitting on a rock near him and he was looking at her from his horse. A lot of people rode horses at this time. Chrétien was so surprised at his feelings that he wrote a very long poem about them. This poem became very famous. In the poem he was named Lancelot and the girl he loved was named Queen Guinevere. Chrétien used very fancy language when talking about how he felt about Guinevere. Now we describe these feelings differently. Mr. C says that some of the ways to describe a person in love today are:

1. emotionally inebriated

2. endorphin-flooded

3. inexplicably buoyant

4. erotically fixated

In 1177 Lancelot thought the sun was always shining on Guinevere. He thought she was as pure as the snow. He thought she was a perfect person. He thought that maybe there had never been anyone more perfect than her before in the history of the world.

Lancelot actually believed this.

That was love.

After seeing Martine under Mr. Breeze and touching her sticky eye with a finger I stayed awake one whole night and day thinking about her. Then I almost cut myself very badly the next afternoon at the Demont High School cafeteria from being tired. When I finally did fall asleep that second night, the first thing I did when I woke up the next morning was to remember Martine's instructions to stop taking my Risperdal. I had taken it for so many days in a row that it wasn't easy to stop. I kept starting to take it several times before I finally flushed it down the toilet. I hadn't seen Martine since our time under the tree but as I watched the little pill go down into the swirling water of the toilet I thought of her. I also began immediately to feel anxious.

Later that same morning I was given a work assignment to do with Mike. My vocational manager Dave told me that Mike had requested it. He explained that our job would be a walkaround of the property line of Payton to make sure the fence was mended. We'd carry twists of metal that we could use to patch the fence and bolt cutters and pliers and also red flags that we'd place if there was a hole too big to fix. Then a crew would come by with power tools later on and whole pieces of fencing and cover the hole. He sent me out to meet Mike and as I came up to him Mike looked at me.

“So, sport,” he said.

I didn't say anything.

“How's it going?” he asked.

“Fine.”

We walked across a lawn together and he pointed to a hole in the fence. “Take this patch here and hold it over the hole while I twist the wire.”

I did.

“Anything you wanna tell me?” he asked.

“Um.”

“About your girl, for example.”

“My girl?”

“I told you before, don't pretend. How's it going with one-eye?”

“Martine,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I like her,” I said loudly.

“Congratulations.”

“She showed me her eye!” I said.

Mike gave one of his coyote-chuckles. “Keep it down,” he said. “I can tell you're excited.”

There was a silence. It had been several hours since I'd skipped taking Risperdal and I began to feel something. It was a cramp in my stomach like from eating rotten food. We worked on the fence.

“What else she show you?” he asked.

“Just her eye.”

Mike snorted. “Please. I've seen her file. Here's something you didn't know. Our little Miss Martine was thrown out of a place for what they're callin' “inappropriate social conduct.” That's code, guy. It means hanky-panky, if you catch my drift. You picked one helluva live wire.”

Then he bent down and began fitting the mesh screen over the fence. I was holding the pliers in my hand while I looked at all the open flesh at the back of his neck.