The Vast Fields of Ordinary (11 page)

“Classy joint, right?” Lucy said, gesturing around the room. “Flags and figurines and all that shit. God, sports are lame.”

I laughed. “Yeah, they are.”

“Glad you agree,” she said, putting ice into the cup.

“Dana said you’re from California.”

“I am,” she said. “Los Angeles. My parents are both in the industry. Before you ask, they’re no one famous. And I’m not one of those kids who skip class and spend the day doing coke in the dressing rooms at Fred Siegel or anything.”

“What’s Fred Siegel?”

“It’s where Satanists shop.” She laughed at some private joke. She poured a liberal amount of rum into the cup, followed by a splash of soda. “This kid from my high school used to tell people he was a Satanist. He was always talking about how the devil was his biological father. It was so ridiculous. Meanwhile, his parents were super religious. His dad, like, wrote books about how to have a Christian marriage. People are so weird. Should we see what brand of moron they’re showing on MTV?”

We took our drinks and sat on the floor in front of the television. Lucy fooled around with the remote control for a few seconds, trying in vain to turn the thing on. The television was so big that I felt like it was looking back at me.

“So you’re gay, right?” she said distractedly.

I almost spit out my drink. Her bluntness caught me off guard. She just went on fooling with the remote control. How did she know? I didn’t know how to respond. She finally figured out how to turn the television on and promptly turned it to MTV. Girls in bikinis on a beach having a conversation about a boy they all liked. Lucy looked over at me and laughed.

“What? What’s up with the look of shock? Are you not out yet?” A look of genuine concern crossed her face. “Oh my God. Do you not even know it yet? Do you have a girlfriend? Am I, like, rocking your world right now?”

“Jesus God, no. I know that I’m—”

“Gay?” she finished. “Well, that’s good.”

“Yeah. I just . . . I just never have talked about it because there was never really anyone to talk about it with.”

“Really?” she asked.

I nodded slowly. It occurred to me then just how much of my life was lived inside my head, invisible to the outside world.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m a lesbian.” She seemed more into what was happening on the screen than the subject at hand. “It’s not a big deal. Not to me, at least.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m here. My parents aren’t cool with it. I had to convince them to not to send me to this camp where they brainwash the gay out of you. They sent me here instead.”

“I’ve seen stuff about those places on TV,” I said. “They scare me.”

“Do your parents know about you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ll tell them after I’m out of the house. I don’t want to have to be around them after I tell them. I don’t think they’d ever send me to a camp or anything, but I’m sure it’ll be awkward.”

“Totally terrifying,” she agreed. “You got an escape plan?”

“Yeah. Going to Fairmont College in the fall. It’s in Michigan.”

“I know where Fairmont is. That’s a good school.”

“I guess,” I said.

“You smart?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a yes,” she said. “I’ve got another year of high school. Then I’m taking off. Getting away from my parents, from California. I don’t wanna end up giving stress tests to people outside the Beverly Center like some zombie, like some people I know.”

The girls on the show were now at a party in a glass mansion that looked out over the ocean. Guys in Abercrombie shirts and backward baseball caps trolled around the pool. The camera kept panning to the girls’ panicked and insecure faces. The girls kept talking about a boy named Cross, about how hot he was. The boys took their shirts off and started throwing each other into the pool. A helium-voiced girl sang along to a rock track in the background, and whatever canned beverage the girls were drinking was scrambled by some post-production visual effect. Cross grabbed the prettiest girl by the waist and pulled her close. She giggled as he whispered something in her ear, and the soundtrack soared.

“I’ve slept with girls like that,” Lucy said. “They always taste like spearmint gum. You got a boyfriend?”

“There was a guy named Pablo, but that’s over now.”

“Why is it over?” she asked.

I thought about it for a few seconds before I spoke. “I guess you could say that he just couldn’t handle it.”

“You just fool around buddy-style, right? God, been there, done that. Ninth grade. Vanessa Shimmer. She was a violin prodigy. Played with symphonies all over the world. I was so obsessed. Now she lives in Rome and bones the sons of shipping moguls. Do you do him or does he do you?”

I took a drink. “Um . . . he does me.”

She smiled. “I figured.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Nothing. Just did.”

I didn’t know whether I should be offended.

“Do you really think you’ll be giving stress tests outside of that center?” I said during the commercial.

“I was being silly,” she said. “I don’t think that’ll happen. What about this Pablo guy? What’s his story?”

“Well, he’s got a girlfriend. And it was never really about love. I just realized that recently. And I want to be in love with someone.”

I thought of driving through the countryside with Alex, of the songs on his stereo and the fireflies out the window. I pulled out my phone to see if he’d called or sent me a text. But there was nothing.

“Well,” she said in a quiet voice, “that’s a good thing to figure out. Some people run into that problem and don’t get that until it’s too late.”

“It was too late a while ago.” A smile crept up on my face. “There is this boy that I really like. He’s really cute.”

“Oh yeah? What’s his name?”

“Alex Kincaid.”

“Sounds like a doctor from a soap opera. Does he do brain transplants? Does he have an evil twin? Or is
he
the evil twin?”

“He works at a taco joint.”

She gave me a stern look. “From now on you should tell people he’s a restaurateur or something like that. A taco joint doesn’t cut it.”

I laughed.

The boys on television were wrestling by the side of the pool. A little window popped up in the corner of the screen and one of the girls started talking about which guy she thought had the best body.

“Oh my God,” said Lucy. “I think I went to preschool with that girl. She used to eat crayons.”

We stayed like that for almost an hour. We laughed at a commercial that featured a hapless twentysomething guy fleeing from a horde of women gone mad by the scent of his $3.99 shower gel and joked about ordering an eight-disc best-of grunge box set. I even took out my phone and made like I was going to call. I wanted to make her laugh, and I did. Every so often Dana called our names from the top of the stairs. I was more than a little tipsy and looking around the Savages’ basement when I noticed the picture on the mantel amongst the plastic figurines of famous athletes. It was a gold-framed eight-by-ten picture of the Savages’ deceased daughter. It looked like it was probably a high school picture. She was blond and wide-eyed and smiling hugely. I could almost hear her voice echoing off the walls of my brain, boys’ names and weekend plans.

“Did you know her?” I asked.

Lucy followed my gaze up to the picture. “Lindsay? Of course. She was my cousin.”

“What was it like?” I asked.

She turned and looked at me. “What was what like?”

I found myself wishing I hadn’t brought it up. “No one close to me has ever died. And all that stuff about that girl who disappeared has me thinking about it. It’s just that it’s everywhere. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Only a matter of time until what?”

I thought for a moment. “Until I experience it, I guess.”

“Well, you’re lucky if no one you’ve known has ever died,” she said. “I’ve known a few people who’ve died. It’s more weird than anything. Suddenly someone just isn’t there anymore. We have these ideas of heaven and hell and all that, but what is that? What
is
that? That’s why people like my parents get involved in crazy religions and start becoming other people. We’re all trying to avoid it. Or to at least make it not so bad. But no one’s ever going to come up with anything big enough to smother death. It’s stupid to even try.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I remember when my parents weren’t the way they are now,” she said, staring blankly at the television. “They got involved with this crazy church about three years ago and now they’ve totally changed.”

“I think that same thing about my parents. I remember when they were different.”

She looked over at me. “What’s the matter with your parents?”

“I can’t even describe it,” I said. “I think maybe they’re just sad. But I’m not sure. There’s more to it than that. I don’t quite understand it, but I know there’s more.”

“Story of the world,” she said.

A voice called our names from the top of the stairs. This time it was my mother.

“Let’s go,” Lucy said, standing up. “We can’t stay down here forever.”

We dumped what was left of our drinks down the sink of the Savages’ bar and went upstairs. My mother and Dana were in the kitchen amongst a gaggle of other housewives. My mother handed me a tray of deviled eggs and I took them outside, leaving Lucy to help her aunt with the condiments. I sat the tray on a picnic table where several younger kids were sitting around eating marshmallows from a bag. They eyed me suspiciously, waiting to see if I was the adult they were expecting to come out and tell them to knock it off.

“How are them marshmallows?” I asked.

They all stared at me. One little girl finally nodded, her mouth full of goo. My father was across the yard standing separate from the group of men taking the meat off the grill. He was holding a Heineken. He looked like a guy who’d just cleaned up after several dirty years outside of society, a recently released prisoner or someone just rescued off a deserted island. I felt a little spike of sympathy cut through all the anger I felt toward him. When he saw me, he slowly raised his hand and gave a little wave. From across the distance, I waved back.

I woke up that night to the sound of my phone ringing. I crawled out from under some dream whose details vanished the moment I woke up, and grabbed my phone off the nightstand. It was Pablo.

“You sleeping?” he said.

“It’s three a.m.,” I said. “What do you think?”

“I’m outside your house.”

“Why?” I asked. “What are you doing?”

“Just come outside,” he said. “I need to see you.”

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I didn’t say anything for a long time. Light from a streetlamp outside was coming through my window. I’d forgotten to close my blinds. I imagined him slouched in his little pickup under that same light, his phone up to his ear while his other arm dangled out the open window.

“I don’t want to see you,” I said. “I feel like there’s nothing left to say.”

“Come on, dude. Don’t be like that. If you don’t come down I’ll ring your doorbell over and over until you do.”

“You wouldn’t,” I said.

“Try me.”

“You’re a jerk,” I said. “I’m coming down.”

There was a small part of me that expected to open the front door and find he wasn’t there, to get a giggling call back from him and Judy and God knows who else saying that it was all a joke and that I should go to hell. But he was there, parked in his little gray pickup truck down a bit on a darker stretch of the block between the glow of two streetlights. The chrome on the grille and around the headlights glinted in the night and made his truck look like some dangerous reptile biding its time in the shadows.

The passenger door was unlocked. Pablo was slouched in almost exactly the same pose I’d imagined in my room. Some generic modern rock track was playing softly on the stereo. His eyes were fixed straight ahead and far off into the distance. He didn’t even blink as I slid in the cab and shut the door behind me.

“You have three minutes,” I said, crossing my arms.

“Good to see you too,” he said. He still didn’t look over at me. “Just wanted to say hi. See what’s up.”

“You woke me up, man.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Go inside and go back to bed if it’s that goddamn big of a deal.”

“Fine,” I said, opening the door.

He grabbed my arm. “Wait.”

I saw a flash of something vulnerable in his face.

“What do you want?” I asked. “Seriously.”

“I just want to figure out if there’s maybe some way to make things work,” he said blankly. He stared out the windshield again. “I don’t see where there’s a problem.”

“Judy,” I said. “The fact that you have a girlfriend is a problem. The fact that you’ve never acknowledged the significance of all the things that have happened between us is a problem. You’re constantly acting like I don’t really exist and it makes me feel like the last two years have meant nothing to you. And they meant a lot to me, man.”