Ordinary People (20 page)

“The guy’s a nothing,” Lazenby says. “A zero upstairs. What d’you expect from somebody whose class votes him least likely to grow up? Listen, you used to know that about him, Connie. Since fourth grade you’ve known it.”

“So?”

“So. You make yourself look stupid when you let him get to you like that.”

“So, I look stupid,” he says. “Is that the message?”

“No. No, it isn’t.” Lazenby looks away, staring out into the darkness. “What is it with you, man? We’ve been friends for a long time—”

“Laze,” he says, “we’re still friends.”

“Are we?” Lazenby’s voice is flat, strained. “Look, I don’t know why you want to be alone in this, but I wouldn’t shit you, man. I miss him, too.”

A blow he is not expecting at all. He concentrates on the cold bunching of metal, his car keys under his hand, against his thigh. He looks out at the bare, black-limbed trees.

“I can’t help it,” he says. “It hurts too much to be around you.”

The keys dig into his thigh. Next to him, Lazenby sits, elbow against the door, his hand propping his cheek. What he said is true. The three of them were always together, why does he think of it as only his grief?
Because damn it it is.
His room no longer shared, his heart torn and slammed against this solid wall of it, this hell of indifference.
It is. And there is no way to change it.
That is the hell.

His heart pounds painfully in his chest. He slows his breathing with an effort, staring out of the window at nothing.

“I’ve got to go.”

Lazenby stirs, not looking at him. “Yeah. Okay.”

The door opens and he is gone. Conrad waits until he has crossed the parking lot and gotten into the red Mustang. He lets him pull out first, holding himself tight, control is all, he will not, will not. Not here. Not again.

 

 

He lets himself into the house with his key. Wednesday. His father is working late on tax returns; his mother is playing tennis. The house is quiet; empty. Good. He does not want to talk. He looks down at his jacket. Blood drying into the brown suede. He should try to get it off. It feels stiff under his fingers.

He sinks into a chair in the kitchen, staring wearily at the wall. He takes off the jacket. There is blood on his shirt; flecks all over it, as if he had slapped a loaded paintbrush against his hand. He strips to his undershirt, and works awhile at the stains on the jacket. The blood runs off into the sink, a pale brown that mixes with the water and looks like beef broth.

Carefully rinsing his hands, he lays the jacket on the counter. He takes the shirt into the laundry room. Maybe she won’t notice. Or else she will think it is mud. No. He scrapes at the spots with a thumbnail. Pinpoints of brownish dye on the pale blue fabric. No, too definite. Mud would blur; rub out.

He holds the shirt under the faucet; runs water over it. The spots dissolve, washed away in the sink. He squeezes the water out of it and throws it in the dryer; spins the dial to ON. Since they were little, they have done this, getting rid of the evidence, Buck called it. He shivers suddenly. The house feels cold.

He heads for the kitchen again; searches the refrigerator for the TV dinners, bought for him for Wednesdays. Fried chicken. Peas and carrots. Mashed potatoes. Apple slices. He turns on the oven. “Take the dinner out of the cardboard envelope, tear back foil to expose chicken, cook 35-40 minutes.” Obey all rules and do as directed, punishment may be lessened.

Punishment? Of course, for losing control. Always. One of life’s unwritten laws.

He heats water in the teakettle; looks in the cupboard for the jar of instant coffee. Sees Stillman suddenly lying on the ground knees raised his mouth a round O of surprise his eyes widen the head snaps back
Goddamn you Jarrett!
A cold sensation in the pit of his stomach; his skin prickling with fear.
How many times did I hit him?

He sits at the table to eat his dinner. No TV tonight. And no music. Each small punishment he inflicts could lessen the larger one
But it was no big deal just a stupid fight.

The telephone rings, sharp and insistent, and his stomach knots. He lets it ring. Nine, ten, eleven times. It stops. His father, maybe. He sometimes calls on Wednesdays, to talk over the day, to have him pass a message to his mother. Surely it was him. Who else?

He looks down at his dinner, and quickly looks away.
Out of control. Don’t doubt that there will be punishment.
It was Stillman’s father, calling from the hospital. His nose is broken, his jaw is broken. And he sees them all again—Truan, Van Buren, Genthe—all watching; the parking lot a huge stage lit up and Mr. Knight telling his father they must expel him. He is dangerous, they cannot have these attacks occurring in the parking lot. No control, it is shameful, terrible—
Oh God I didn’t mean to!

He picks up his dinner, goes to the sink with it, and flushes it down the disposer. He stares out the window into the chill February darkness.
How many times did I hit him?
And how will he be punished? He doesn’t want to think about it: he could punish himself first, but how? You are always. Fucking up.
You never mean to. Never mean to doesn’t mean shit.

He picks up his coffee cup and drinks the scalding liquid. It bums his mouth as he swallows it. A hot blur of pain in his throat, in his chest. He stands rigidly at attention, absorbing it, knowing that it is not enough. Not enough.
And it wasn’t Stillman, anyway it wasn’t even him but some other fucking bastard I didn’t even know who said it the world is full of fucking bastards so it’s all pointless you can’t fight everybody and what goddamn difference. would it make if you could?

He goes to the laundry room, retrieving his shirt from the dryer. The spots are gone. It is clean, warm, and he slips it on and goes to sit on the couch in the den. He leans his head back. His body feels churned up; brutalized. He needs to move around, but he will not allow this, either; he will allow himself no comforts tonight. Waiting is part of the punishment. So he waits.

The distance between people. In miles. In time. In thought. Staggering, when you think about it. Here he is, driving on the Edens, and he catches a glimpse, in the lane to his left, of a passing car. The driver is raising an angry finger at him, behind the double space of window glass separating them. And he is amazed. What has he done to deserve this gesture of contempt? Of course. Glancing at his speedometer, he understands. Thirty miles an hour. You don’t do this on the Edens, drive thirty in a fifty-mile zone, even at eleven-thirty at night: it can get you more than an obscenity, it can get you into an accident. No thanks. No more. The quota is all used up.

Well, he should catch up with the driver. Thank him for the reminder. Really, it was an act of kindness. Only the guy would not understand, would suspect him of playing some kind of game, of trying to get back at him.

Communication. The bridge between the distances. He passes a sign, high off the highway and to his left:
Are you on the right road?
In the shape of a cross, leaves and flowers entwined around it. That is not communication. That is alienation. Like the car he saw one day on 1-94. A huge sign on top of it:
Repent!
You can only wonder about the sign-carrier. Who the hell is he and what does he think he’s doing?

So, can there be no communication without contamination ? Without that peculiar message of
This is me telling you?
In the end that does more to separate people than unite them. People don’t like to be told things. There has to be a way of getting a message across, without setting yourself up as a holy man. But, shouldn’t the need to send the message be proof enough that you are not a holy man?

Doing it again, Jarrett, straighten up, no more circular thinking.
Exhausted, disgusted with himself, he leaves the Edens to the faster drivers, turns off on Half Day Road. He looks at his watch. Nearly twelve. He will be home in five minutes and he can go to bed. Leave the rest of the world to the faster drivers—that’s what he ought to do tonight.

He pulls into the driveway, gets out of the car, and opens the garage door. Her car is there; Conrad’s is parked on the circle in front of the house. Good. Everybody safely home and waiting for him. He pulls in, closes the door, lets himself in through the kitchen. The oven light is on; an eerie glow in the dark room. He switches it off and makes his way toward the den, where another light is burning.

Conrad is asleep on the couch, sitting up, his head back, hands in his lap. The television set is off. Cal stands a minute, looking down at him, his mind blank, thinking nothing, thinking only that he is very tired, so tired that he must get to bed immediately, or he will be flat with exhaustion again tomorrow. If he can help Ray clean up the worst of the work, he will not feel so guilty about leaving.

He sets his briefcase down and takes off his coat. He touches Conrad’s shoulder, gently. “Hey.”

He snaps upright, his eyes open; blinking. He rubs a hand over his mouth. “Wait,” he says. “Wait a minute.”

Cal smiles. “Okay.”

But he is still not awake, staring vacantly ahead, confused and dazed. Waking up has always been a painful process for him, ever since he was a baby. A struggle. Sometimes he would spout gibberish, staring intently, the words formed from unknown syllables of a dark and primitive language. They would ask him questions: “What are you talking about? What do you want?” And he would answer, but not in any tongue they could understand. They would laugh and tease him about it the next day. He didn’t believe it; never remembered anything. “What did I say?” he would ask. They would try to make the sounds, but it was a dialect known only to him, only at the edge of consciousness.

He is conscious now, shading his eyes with his hand against the light. “Time’s it?”

“Twelve.”

“You just get home?”

“Yeah. What’re you doing down here?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Cal laughs. “I see that.”

“Time’s it?”

He turns away to hang up his coat. “I just told you. Twelve o’clock. Let’s go to bed, okay? I’m bushed.”

“Wait a minute,” he says. “I need to talk to you.”

A note of urgency in the voice. He turns back; drops his coat on the arm of the chair.
Oh
,
shit.
“What’s the matter?”

He is wiping his hand nervously again across his mouth. He does not look at Cal directly. “Something happened today. At school. I got in a fight.”

“A fight?” He sits down in the chair. “Who with?”

“Just a guy. You don’t know him. Kevin Stillman.”

“Sure I know him. Diver on the swim team, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. I forgot. You’d remember him, yeah.”

“What was the fight about?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. He’s just a jerk, but I didn’t —I shouldn’t have—I know that’s no excuse ...”

“What happened?” Cal asks. “Did you get hurt?”

He looks up, then. “Me? No.” He takes a breath and lets it out nervously. “I think I hurt him, though.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I don’t know, there was a lot of blood. His nose—”

“Was he on his feet?”

“Yeah. I mean, not at first, but he was when I left. Lazenby took him home, I think.”

“Joe was there?”

“Everybody was there,” he says. “Everybody from the swim team. I stayed to watch the meet. Then I hung around for a while. They were all coming out of the locker room. That’s when it happened.”

“And it wasn’t about anything?”

He shrugs. “I guess it was about how he bugs the shit out of me, and I bug the shit out of him.”

“Well, now you know it,” Cal says. “Maybe you won’t have to fight about it any more, huh?” He rubs the back of his neck with his hands. “I called you around seven. You weren’t here. I wondered where you were.”

“I was here.”

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I don’t know.” He looks at the floor, his hands folded between his knees. Cal sees the start of a small mouse under his left eye. “I thought it might be somebody else.”

“Who?”

He won’t look up, won’t say what he is thinking.

“Relax,” Cal says. “He’s all right.”

“How do you know?”

“I know,” he says. “It was just a fight. Guys have been getting in fights since school was invented. Think about it. Think about the last fight you were in.”

“I was never in one,” he says.

“What?”

“I wasn’t. This is it. The first one.”

“You’re kidding. I can’t believe that.”

He shakes his head.

Cal looks at him, thinking hard. “Listen, a bloody nose is nothing. I’m telling you, he’ll be there tomorrow. Nothing to worry about. Once, I broke my finger in a fight, knuckling a guy on the head. Doctor told me next time to use a baseball bat.” He laughs, remembering, and Conrad looks up at last, grins faintly.

“You’re not mad, then?”

“Mad? No,” he says.

“I shouldn’t have gone out of control like that,” he says. “I shouldn’t have blown up.”

“You never blow up,” Cal says; then corrects himself. “Hardly ever. I can count all the times you’ve blown up. You owed yourself. So, forget it.”

Not just to comfort, it is the truth. A disposition like an angel’s, Ellen used to say. Sunny and sweet, he never got mad. And that wasn’t good. Everybody has resentments, everybody has anger. He was one who kept everything inside. Cal has learned a thing or two from Crawford: razoring is anger; self-mutilation is anger. So this is a good sign; he is turning his anger outward at last. But something bothers him still. “You don’t want to tell me what it was about?”

Conrad shrugs. “I told him he was a crappy diver. The guy’s got no sense of humor.”