The Grievers (22 page)

“No,” I said.

“Our buddy here decided to take a field trip down to the bridge where Billy killed himself,” Dwayne said.

“Allegedly killed himself,” Greg corrected him.

“Fuck
allegedly
,” Dwayne said. “The bastard jumped.”

He wasn’t even drinking.

“That’s hardly appropriate,” Greg said. “Given the circumstances.”

“I don’t believe it,” Sean said. “You went to the bridge, and you didn’t invite me?”

“It wasn’t exactly a good time,” Neil said.

“Schwartz nearly killed himself,” Dwayne said. “I had to wrestle him to the ground.”

“That’s not what happened,” I said. “That’s not what happened at all.”

“Given the details you’ve just related, I find it more than a little curious that I’m the target of this evening’s intervention,” Greg said, emptying our second pitcher. “Perhaps next time we should all show up at Charley’s house unannounced. He clearly needs more counseling than I do. Who’s up for more beer?”

“I wasn’t going to do it,” I said. “I was never going to jump.”

“Could have fooled me,” Dwayne said.

“I wasn’t,” I said.

“Okay,” Neil said. “Let’s all take a breath.”

“I don’t see why that’s necessary,” Greg said. “Especially when all of the evidence would suggest that Charley’s the one who’s unhinged.”

“I’m not unhinged,” I said, looking to Neil for confirmation. “Right? I mean,
you
were there. I wasn’t going to jump, was I?”

“Let’s focus on Greg,” Neil said.

“You think I wanted to jump?”

“I don’t know,” Neil said. “I was trying to hold my lunch down.”

“Why the hell would I do something like that?”

“Why did Billy do it?” Dwayne asked.

“He was in a bad place,” I said.

I didn’t need to think about it anymore. The phrase came automatically.

“Well, the good news, gentlemen, is that I’m not in a bad place at all,” Greg said. “In fact, I’m in a very good place. Life with mother is no bed of roses, but I have
Down in the Stalag
to look forward to. After that, who knows? Hollywood? Broadway? Briefly, to be sure, but long enough to make a name for myself and, above all, to meet and marry the woman of my dreams.”

“You’re right, Greg,” Dwayne said. “You’re definitely in a good place. A sane place? No fucking way. But a good place nonetheless. An awesome, wonderful, glorious, fan-damn-tastic Nirvana of a place, and I hope you like living there because I’m done trying to pull you out of it.”

Dwayne signaled the waitress and asked for the check.

“But we’re not done here,” Sean said, scanning his pamphlet, apparently for information on what do when an intervention goes south. “We still need to—”

Neil raised a discreet hand and shook his head. The check would be fine, he told the waitress when she paused at our table. After we dropped Greg off at his house, Sean suggested we find an all-night diner where we could grab a cup of coffee and try to figure out where we went wrong.

“Where
we
went wrong?” Dwayne demanded. “I don’t know about you guys, but I sure as hell wasn’t invited to the conception.”

“I’m just saying it would be good for next time if we could figure out what to do differently.”

“Next time?” Dwayne said. “Please. Unless we’re luring him into Philly, you can count me out.”

“He’ll be at the memorial service,” I suggested. “You could haul him in then.”

“No one’s getting hauled in,” Neil said quietly. “Greg has to do this on his own.”

“Do what, exactly?” Dwayne asked.

“I wish I knew,” Neil said.

No one spoke for the rest of the drive. When we arrived at my house, Dwayne barely paused long enough for the rest of us to jump out of his car. He’d see us at the memorial service, he said before speeding away.

“So,” I said, as Sean ducked into his own car and followed suit.

“So,” Neil said.

We sat on my porch in the warm June air as a train rattled by and the cars and trucks hummed along Route 30.

“Do you ever get the feeling that no matter what you do, nothing’s going to work out the way you want it to?” Neil said.

“All the time,” I said.

“Like all you want is to fix everything, but the harder you try, the worse it gets.”

“This isn’t about Greg, is it?”

“I’ve been offered a job in DC,” Neil said. “Health and Human Services.”

“I guess this is it, then. The end of the road.”

“Give me a break,” Neil said. “I’m getting the same static from my mom. She told me yesterday she had to take the knobs off the stove to keep dad from burning the house down. She thinks I’m leaving because I don’t want to deal with him.”

“She’s just scared,” I said. “Believe me, I know how she feels. I’ve been trying to be you for the past week or so, but I don’t think it’s working.”

“That’s funny,” Neil said. “Why would you want to be me?”

“Got tired of being me, I guess. That and you’re the only sane friend I have.”

Neil laughed. “Please. If I were sane, I’d shack up in Mrs. Packer’s Christmas room and join the cast of
Down in the Stalag.
”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “There’s something oddly attractive about that boy’s life.”

“He’s so damn sure of himself.”

“It’s his model of the universe,” I said. “You’d be sure of yourself, too, if you had it all figured out.”

“That’s the thing,” Neil said. “Sometimes I think I do. It’s just a matter of getting all the pieces to fit. The only problem is they never hold still. As soon as the puzzle’s out of the box, you realize the pieces are all screwed up. Half of them don’t even go together, and the ones that do start moving and changing and losing their minds before you can even start to figure out what’s going on. You could force them, of course.”

“But then you’d be Greg,” I said.

“Yeah,” Neil whispered. “Stone cold crazy.”

“It’s like that time on the two bus,” I said. “Remember when the riot broke out?”

“Yeah,” Neil said. “Clubs and chains and two-by-fours.”

“And a knife, I think. Broomsticks and a soup ladle.”

“Fist grabs broomstick,” Neil said. “Broomstick sweeps pool cue.”

“You just keep playing and hope the driver knows what he’s doing.”

“That’s fine when you’re a dumb kid,” Neil said. “But what happens when you wake up one day and find yourself behind the wheel?”

“You open the door and let the crazies on,” I said. “Or off, depending on what they want.”

“Meanwhile the bus keeps moving,” Neil said.

“It has to,” I said. “Otherwise?”

“Otherwise,” Neil said.

He left it at that, and we sat quietly as a pair of moths slapped the porch light above with an unsteady rhythm. It wasn’t the end, I told myself. We’d always be friends. Yes, there would be distance, yes, there would be work and wives and probably children, and, yes, there would be long stretches of silence where neither of us would hear a peep from the other for months or maybe even years; but each of us would always know the other was out there somewhere, a phone call away, an email, a thought, a joke, a dream, making the world a more bearable place, divining some measure of sense from the chaos, laughing and crying in the same breath because neither is ever enough on its own and the alternative is to give up on the game altogether. As we sat on my porch, two men, not quite old, but no longer boys, I knew that Neil was my friend, and at the moment, it was all I needed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN  

T
wo days before Billy Chin’s memorial service, Karen and I received separate invitations to see Greg perform in the world premiere of
Down in the Stalag
. Printed on heavy stock, the invitations made no mention of Billy whatsoever. They simply stated that Gloria Packer was pleased to announce that her son, Gregory James Packer III, would be starring as Sergeant Schlitz in the production. Certain words in the invitation were printed in block capital letters. GREGORY JAMES PACKER III, for example. STARRING and WORLD PREMIERE as well. Our kind attendance, the invitations informed us, would not be overlooked, and Karen’s included a handwritten note from Greg’s mother stating that she would be more than delighted if Karen would see fit to enjoy the musical seated next to her in a row reserved for friends and family.

When I called Neil to find out if he’d received an invitation as well, he told me that in addition to inviting every member of our graduating class, Greg’s mother had invited anyone with whom Greg had come into contact over the past ten years. The list included (but was not limited to) aunts and uncles, college professors, women he’d met online, the doctor who prescribed his painkillers, a fourteenyear-old opera singer, a cadre of lesser-known conservative radio personalities, a retired professional wrestler named Crusher Helgstrom, the police officer who arrested Greg at the grocery store, and the Mayor of Philadelphia. Naturally, Greg was furious at his mother for meddling in his personal affairs, and he vowed that vengeance upon her would be swift and merciless.

“Sullivan’s pressing for another intervention,” Neil said.

“And you?”

“I don’t know.”

“We could make it a weekly event,” I said. “Rotating cast. Celebrity guests for the February sweeps.”

“Madeline would love that. We barely see each other as it is.”

“You did what you could,” I said.

“I told him to give it up—this thing with his mother, I mean. I told him to let it go. It’s not healthy, I said. You’re not getting anywhere.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“I can only say it so many times.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to let him go,” I said. “It’s his life. Let him live it.”

“That’s what Madeline says.”

“That’s what
everyone
says.”

“She wants to know why I bother.”

“Good question,” I said.

An audible shrug. “I wish I knew.”

“Listen,” I said. “There’s something I need to tell you. I really screwed things up between us.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“No, it was stupid. I don’t care what Ennis thinks. Or Frank Dearborn, or any of those guys.”

“Yes, you do,” Neil said.

“I know. But I wish I didn’t.”

“Let it go,” Neil said. “Whatever you have against them, let it go.”

“Right,” I said. “As soon as you let Greg go.”

“As soon as he lets this war with his mother go.”

“Like that’ll happen any time soon.”

“We need to move on,” Neil said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess we do.”

And I would have. Or might have. Conceivably. But then I saw Frank Dearborn on the morning of the memorial service, and it all came back to me—the anger, the fear, the panic, the doubt, the envy and self-pity. Who was I trying to kid? I didn’t know a thing about Billy Chin. Yeah, we were friends, but only in the sense that we’d gone to the same school and hadn’t managed to become enemies, only in the sense that we used to talk once in a while, only in the sense that his name never made it onto the evergrowing list of things that pissed me off. But beyond that?

I tried to conjure a picture of Billy in my mind, to reconstruct him with memories and anecdotes, but the best I could do as Karen and I got in the car and headed for the Academy that morning was to imagine a stick figure. Billy was skinny. He wore a blue suit. He played ping-pong and chess and was a member of the debate team. He ate rice for lunch and carried his books in a giant duffle bag. If I really thought about it, I could wrestle a few more details from the dim corners of my mind, but they were either too sketchy or tinged with regret to be of any use.

He scored summa cum laude on the National Latin Exam—or was I only making that up? He had an encyclopedic knowledge of breakfast cereal commercials from the 1980s—or was that someone else? He nearly threw up in biology lab when we first cut into our cat—or was that me?

“Are you okay?” Karen asked as we slowed to a stop at an intersection on the edge of the city. “You seem a little distracted.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just thinking about what I’ll say at the service.”

“You don’t have anything prepared?”

“Of course I do,” I lied, tapping my breast pocket as if my remarks were all mapped out and folded in quarters an inch away from my heart. “But I want to make sure I didn’t forget anything.”