Rooster (15 page)

“Oh, ya think?” said Rooster. “You think that may have been something you just put in a little container marked ‘None of anybody's damn business' and leave alone on your shelf?”

“Jayson can see that keeping it all inside is not having a good effect on you, that's all,” said Jayson.

“What are you talking about? It wasn't having an effect on me at all until you brought it up.”

“Sure it was.”

“No it wasn't. How could it? I didn't know about it.”

“Denial is a cancer that has no cure,” said Jayson.

“What?”

“You heard the big guy.” Jayson finished his drink and looked over at Puffs, who was still standing by the freezer, but had not yet opened the door to check for pizza. “Open her up there, Puffy,” he said, abandoning the subject. “Let's see what you got.”

Puffs hesitated. In his mind, he knew that Jayson was indeed right: It was time to clear the air. It was time to tell the two of them about his innocent little joke that was now turning into a monster large enough to seriously threaten the steely bonds of their friendship. He thought about what to say and who he should apologize to first. Then the phone rang. Thinking it was likely his mom, he answered it.

It was Elma.

“Elma?” he said, his face registering his surprise. He passed the phone to Rooster. “Elma wants to talk to you.”

“Hello?” said Rooster, more confused than ever.

Elma immediately began to cry. “Oh God, Rooster. I'm so glad I found you. You're the only one who understands me right now. You're the only one who can feel what I'm feeling.”

Rooster took a moment to respond. Instinctively, he felt like hanging up or at least saying something sarcastic. But in truth, at this particular time, he could appreciate the true meaning of her words. He, too, was feeling the heavy burden of sadness in his heart. Even when he was talking with Jayson and Puffs, he knew it was there.

Furthermore, the Elma who had just spoken did not sound much like the Elma he knew from school or, worse, from the bowling alley.

“Are you drunk?” he said to her.

“No. I don't think so. Maybe I am. I don't know.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“Yes.”

“What have you had?”

“Vodka. It's my mom's favorite. They went out tonight to some school board year-end party. She asked me if I was okay to be left alone, and I said yes. I thought I was. I've been crying all weekend.”

Rooster felt the lump in his throat begin to rise.

“Anyway, I need to get out and none of my friends are around and I remembered you saying that Jayson liked me, so I phoned his house to see if he was there, and his mom said he was with you, and your mom said you were at Puffs' house, so … that's how I found you.”

He took a deep breath and turned to Jayson.

“Is he there?” said Elma.

“Hang on a second.”

He cupped the mouthpiece with his hand. “Elma would like to spend some time with you tonight.”

Jayson stared at Rooster without responding. Puffs, who had returned to his chair at the table, cupped his hands around his forehead and began to shake his head slowly back and forth.

“She's very upset about Dorothy-Jane-Anne.”

Jayson, his forehead folded into a frown, continued to say nothing.

Rooster heard Elma say something over the phone.

“What's that?” he said, raising the receiver to his ear. Expecting to hear Elma's voice, he got a dial tone instead. “Huh,” he said, lowering the phone. “She hung up.”

At that point, Jayson spoke. “Elma wants to spend time with Jayson tonight?”

“Uh-huh,” said Rooster. “Up until a second ago, anyway.”

“Because she's upset about — ”

“— Dorothy-Jane-Anne.”

“Dorothy-Jane-Anne?”

“I think that's what that was all about.”

“But she's not on the phone anymore, right?” said Jayson.

“Right.”

“So she probably realized she was doing something really dumb and hung up before she embarrassed herself.”

Rooster glanced at Puffs, who still had his head buried in his hands. “That could be it.”

“What else could it be?”

“I don't know. Does Elma know where you live, Puffs?”

Reluctantly, and without moving his hands, Puffs nodded his head up and down.

“Get the hell outta here,” said Jayson, rising to his feet. “Are you guys saying she might be coming here right now?”

Rooster shrugged his shoulders.

“If she is, Jayson's leaving.”

Rooster stopped him. “Hey, you said you'd go out with her one night at the bowling alley. What's the difference between that and spending time with her here?”

“There's a big difference. This is the weekend. We've all been drinking.”

“You're not saying you're afraid you might actually do something with her, are you?” said Puffs, raising his head.

“You know what kind of rumors could come out of this?” said Jayson. “She's half-cocked already. What's she gonna be like when she gets over here?”

“Could take your mind off Jolene for a while,” said Rooster, sitting down.

“Shut up about that,” said Jayson. “You know what Jayson was getting at.”

“I don't have a clue what Jayson was getting at. Jayson was sounding pretty weird, I can tell you that. And he was hitting pretty close to home too.”

“I think I can explain where he was coming from,” said Puffs, preparing once again to come clean.

Rooster ignored him. “But anyway. Enough with all that. As hard as it may seem to believe, I happen to be feeling sorry for Elma right now. She knew Dorothy-Jane-Anne a lot better than I did, and I feel like absolute crap. So I can just imagine what state she's in.”

Jayson finished putting his jacket on but did not move toward the front door.

“This woman was literally alive and well one minute. I was talking to her. She was bowling. She was telling me about eating potato chips and being sent to bed by her mother. Twenty minutes later, she is dead.
Dead
. So maybe,
maybe
tonight would be an even better night to be with her than next week at the bowling alley. I don't even know if next week at the bowling alley is even gonna happen.”

Jayson stood still and thought for a moment. Then, with a heavy sigh, he moved back to the kitchen table. “Jayson never lets his friends or his teammates down. If you need him to do that for you tonight, he'll be there.”

Rooster nodded his appreciation. “Thank you.”

“But there'll be no physical contact.” Jayson established the ground rules. “Jayson can sit with her. He can talk to her.”

“What if she's fun?” said Puffs, tossing in a fresh new perspective.

“What if she's what?” said Rooster.

“What if she turns out to be a lot of fun to be with?”

Rooster and Jayson looked at each other.

“We'll blow up that bridge when we get to it,” said Rooster, raising his new drink to his mouth. “Besides, we don't even know for sure if she's coming here or not. Maybe Jayson was right. She got embarrassed and hung up.”

“Good point,” said Jayson, looking hopeful.

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. Elma stepped inside the massive foyer of Puffs' mother's home wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt, a light blue windbreaker and running shoes. She carried in her hand a half-empty bottle of vodka.

“You walked over here with that in your hand?” said Puffs, who had opened the door for her.

“No,” said Elma. “I rode my bike.”

She joined Rooster and Jayson in the kitchen. She put the bottle on the table, then walked over to Rooster and gave him a hug. He responded, somewhat awkwardly, in kind. When they separated, she had tears in her eyes. “I need something to take my mind off this for a while,” she said, her voice cracking. She took a Kleenex out of her pocket and blew her nose. “I'm so glad I found you. Thank you so much for letting me come over.”

“No problem,” said Rooster.

“I'm just so overwhelmed.”

“I'm feeling that way myself.”

“And you guys. To just say yes to me joining you. That is so kind. It is so nice of you.”

Rooster, Jayson and Puffs exchanged glances with one another. The Elma they knew had never used such language before.

“How drunk are you, Elma?” said Puffs.

She smiled. “Not very. But you should know, this is how I get when I've been drinking. I become nice
.
Extremely nice.
Some people say nauseatingly nice, if that's even a word. Mary Carter had a volleyball wrap-up party two weeks ago, and I got drunk and started thanking everybody for being such valuable teammates. Gina Rosen threw a bucket of water over my head to shut me up. I said thank you to her and left.”

“So you're nice when you're drunk?” said Rooster.

“I prefer to think of it as the real me with all the pressures of my life stripped away. That's what makes me nasty. But anyway, if you're about to tell me I should drink more often, I've heard it a million times already, and the answer's no, I'm not about to do that. I get drunk maybe three times a year, tops. I'd rather find different ways to relax. Not tonight though.”

The evening moved on from there.

Puffs baked an extra-large pepperoni pizza he found in his mom's freezer. Rooster phoned Jolene to tell her about the most recent developments.

At around eleven, they were all sitting in the living room when Puffs decided to ask Real Elma, as they had taken to calling her, if she thought Rooster had any skills worth developing. “He was showing us earlier that he can be a very good drunk when he puts his mind to it, but we think it might be a bit early to declare that a career.”

“Oh, Rooster,” said Elma. “You're good at so many things. I wish I was as good as you.”

Rooster closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the recliner he was sitting in. Real Elma was taking a little getting used to. “At what?” he said.

“At so many things.”

“Name one.”

“Okay, I will. You're good at standing your ground and being who you are even when you have a real bitch standing in your face, telling you to be someone different.”

“That's not a skill.”

“Sure it is.”

“It's laziness. It's being stubborn. It's ignoring someone even when they're telling you the truth.”

“But it's not, though. It's not the truth. It's my version of the truth. It's me expressing my frustration that you're not doing what I want you to do the way I want you to do it. It's me getting impatient. It's me being so concerned that I do what my mom wants me to do that I become this crazy person who gets angry all the time and drives nice people like you away from me.”

Rooster sat up in his chair. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I'm serious. Why do you think I took this project on? Because my mom told me to. She wanted to make sure it worked. The school board's been after her for ages to get students actively involved in the community. This was her big chance.”

Sitting on the couch next to Elma, Puffs interrupted their conversation. “Are you in therapy, Elma?”

“Yes, I am. How did you know?”

“You just sound like someone who's in therapy.”

“How do you know what someone who's in therapy sounds like?”

“Because before my parents got divorced, we all went to see this family therapist. My mom really liked her, so she kept going to her even after there was no hope of saving the marriage. She took me with her all the time so I could learn more about relationships. That's how she explained it to me, anyway.”

“So you'd sit in on your mom's therapy sessions?”

“Just sometimes. When it got really personal, the therapist would send me out to the waiting room to watch TV.”

“You're in therapy?” said Jayson to Elma.

“That surprises you?”

Jayson shrugged his shoulders. “Jayson always thought you were one of the most confident people on the planet.”

“No. I'm not. My therapist says I'm like a lot of other seventeen-year-olds with demanding parents.”

“You're like Jayson, then,” said Jayson.

“Why do you say that?”

“My old man says to me before every game I play, ‘
Be
the difference.' He wants me to stand out all the time. He wants people to notice me.”

“But people do notice you,” said Elma.

“Exactly. And it's a great feeling most of the time. I like being noticed. I like opposing coaches coming up to me after the game saying, ‘Man, if we had stopped you, we'd have won that game.' But it gets tiring. God. Sometimes I just wanna be one of the guys on the team.”

“But if you shave your head, cover your body with tattoos and talk about yourself in the third person, it's hard for people not to notice you,” said Elma.

Jayson nodded. “Those are my props.”

“Lose your props. You might blend in better.”

“I don't know if I could do that. That would make it even harder.”

“You've lost one of them already.”

“I know that. It's temporary though. Jayson'll be back in the morning.”

“Let's get back on topic,” said Puffs. “Rooster doesn't know what he's gonna do when he gets out of high school. He doesn't think he can do anything.”

“I've never said that.”

“You don't have to. Besides, that bar routine was too scary to ignore. That was real, man. You were depressing. We've gotta find something for you.”

“You sound like you're fixing me up with a date.”

Elma shifted her position on the couch so she could see Rooster better. “Let me ask you a question,” she said. “Pretend I'm your therapist and you're my client.”

“You're my therapist?”