Chapter 5 #4
Around us, the noise of the kitchen tamped down. I had never been the target of our mother’s anger—it was reserved for Cassie—but something in the vibrating pitch of her voice scared me. I yanked my hand away. “No.” My mind scrambled for something else to say, but I came up with nothing. “No.”
And then, from the other side of the kitchen—“Jesus, Mom. Calm down.”
We both turned to the sound of Cassie’s voice, unaware until then she was there.
“You gave your brother a cigarette?”
She sprang toward Cassie so quickly, I heard the crack of her hand before I realized what was happening.
Cassie’s cheek glowed with a hot, pink streak.
Her hair had fallen into her face but I could see the shine of water welling in her eyes as she fought to hold back tears.
I braced myself for the insult she would hurl at our mother.
I was frightened she would anger her further with some cruelty I didn’t think she deserved, even if she had just hit Cassie.
But Cassie was silent. The caterers kept their heads low, sweeping from the room so just the three of us remained.
Finally, it was our mother who spoke.
“You disgust me,” she said, her voice drained of heat, and walked from the room.
Cassie said nothing and made no move. I couldn’t look at her.
The shame of my betrayal consumed me. I trained my eyes at the floor and traced a thin, spidery crack running through a tile until it disappeared under the edge of a cabinet.
I stayed there, frozen in place, listening to the sound of Cassie’s breathing—short, quick swallows of air, one after the other.
Robert’s speech was long, as Safie warned. The room simmered with restless energy. I whispered to Stephen, “I’ll be right back.”
“Everything okay?”
“Just a bathroom break.”
I stepped from the crowd, looping through the house.
I stopped at the kitchen—empty—and went in.
I pulled out my phone. The muted rumble of Robert pontificating echoed from the other room.
I opened up Facebook. (After a few weeks cycling through deleting, downloading, deleting, I had given in.) I glanced side to side then clicked on Tyler’s page.
There was a new post, something from Kennedy.
Addison had commented and then Tyler replied with a photo of a cat in giant sunglasses; for some reason I couldn’t glean, most of their posts seemed to be about cats.
As usual, I could make no sense of any of it.
Tyler and I had kept our distance since Columbus.
Despite our talk on the library steps, he remained mute in class.
If we passed each other in a hallway or quad, he nodded hello, nothing more.
It felt we were becoming strangers to each other—which should have filled me with relief, but somehow was making me desperate to know more about him.
I wasn’t totally sure why. Boredom? Maybe, but not only that.
His life in college seemed so different from mine—he was connected to the community, comfortable in his skin.
Nothing like my own solitary, awkward years.
And this despite the fact that Sawyer must be a totally different world from North Carolina.
But he seemed completely at home, and some part of me wanted to understand how.
I’d check on his page throughout the day, when I first woke in the morning, during a lull in office hours, at night before bed.
I was gathering moments of his life, like bits of sea glass on a beach; the act of accumulation made them precious.
I pushed the small square of Addison’s profile photo.
His page showed restraint compared with Tyler’s, more composed.
Lots of family photos, each scene dripping with wealth: heavy, rich drapes framed towering windows in the backdrop of group portraits; ski trips to Vail, scrubbed and glowing faces squinting in white light bouncing off virgin snow.
Addison was someone whose entire life would go exactly as planned; whatever he wanted, he could have. A golden existence.
Tyler had left two posts on Addison’s page since that morning; a still from a movie I couldn’t place, and a single line of text—two exclamation points, nothing else.
Despite living together, Tyler and Addison were in constant communication via their pages.
The friendship had a boyish quality, or it was puppy-like; in photos together, they were always proximate, touching.
I wondered if there was something more than friendship between them.
I’d found photos of Addison’s high school girlfriend; she disappeared after his first semester at Sawyer.
I’d seen many students cling to hometown romances but they rarely survived the transition to college.
It was a normal progression, but maybe there was some other reason here, something to do with Tyler.
Kennedy appeared regularly as well. The three had taken a road trip the year before, during spring break.
From what I could gather, Addison’s car had broken down in the middle of Texas.
They stayed in whatever town for two days and then paid to have the car towed all the way back to Sawyer before flying home.
What was that like for Tyler, having friends who could drop money like that?
Had Addison paid for Tyler’s ticket as well?
A round of applause and polite cheers sounded from the other room.
“Hiding out?”
I jerked my phone to my chest and looked up. “Sorry.” Elaine stood before me.
“Not at all.” She smiled. “Robert can go on a bit.”
I lifted the phone. “My mother,” I lied.
“Mothers come first,” Elaine said. “Although not for me.”
“Motherhood’s not for you?”
“That, too. Where’s yours?”
I explained that my parents lived in Florida, where I’d grown up. Elaine remarked that she worried she and Robert would end up down there. She said it seemed an inevitable destiny that all Jews finish their days in South Florida, with nothing to do but get skin cancer and complain.
“Some of us begin there,” I said. “Complaining from birth.”
“You’re Jewish?” she asked, and I nodded. She tilted her head, sizing me up, and clucked her tongue. “Yes. I see it now.”
“You and Robert seem happy at Sawyer.”
“Happiness, I’ve discovered, is something made not found. Same as misery. It doesn’t happen to you.”
“Are you sure you’re a Jew?”
She laughed and it made me glad. I liked Elaine, her costumey clothes and ridiculous house.
“Stephen’s great,” she said.
“He is.”
Two of the caterers came in, a young guy and a girl, both early twenties, both with jet-black hair and huge luminescent eyes.
I could see it immediately—they were siblings.
It was time to serve a dessert round, slices of dark, wet cake on ceramic plates.
The girl of the pair sneezed, so light it made no sound, and reached for a dish.
“Throw that out,” Elaine said.
“What?” The girl froze, fingers skimming the edge of the plate.
“You sneezed on yourself and touched the food. Throw it out and wash your hands.”
The girl looked stricken and rushed for the sink, mumbling an apology. The boy lined his arm and moved from the room. The girl followed a few paces behind.
Elaine sighed. “It’s better, you know, to tell them when they make a mistake. Mexicans don’t have the same standards of hygiene. It’s not their fault, it’s cultural, but you’re not doing them any favors, letting it slide.”
A scattered crowed remained in the sitting room.
Stephen was talking with Safie. She was laughing at something he’d said, her smile broad and easy.
Stephen waved his hands, reenacting some scene, and I thought about the care he put into his stories.
It was an invitation. He wanted you to share the experience—the meal he’d eaten, the book he’d stayed up all night finishing, an unexpected view on a drive that took his breath away.
Elaine might be racist, but she was right about one thing: Stephen was great.
There with Safie, he looked handsome in the late afternoon light.
I felt bad about earlier on the stairs. Why did I act this way?
“He returns,” Safie said.
I smiled and squeezed Stephen’s arm. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Had enough?”
“I’ve had a nice time, actually. You were right.”
“See?” he said. “Sometimes I know a thing or two.”
We stepped into Stephen’s house, shutting the door on a cold gust behind us.
Before he’d even taught his first classes at Sawyer, Stephen had closed on the house, a compact new build.
“I just wanted to feel like this is home,” he’d said.
He bought all the furniture at once, matching sets for the living and dining rooms, one for the main bedroom and another for the spare.
A guest room seemed like something for another life.
I pulled two of Robert’s beers from my coat. “I grabbed these for us.” I dropped next to Stephen on the couch and passed him a bottle, taking a pull from mine. “We should order something. I’m starving.”
“There was so much food at the party.”
“I’m so gross when I eat. I didn’t want to force that sight on everyone.”
“You’re not gross.” Stephen lifted my legs across his lap.
“Come on. You’ve seen me eat.”
“Alright, you are a little gross. Sometimes it seems like you don’t know where your own mouth is.”
“Right here.” I gulped at the beer and bent forward, kissing him roughly, biting at his lip.
“Someone’s feeling frisky.” He kissed me back, his breath yeasty and warm. I smiled against his mouth. Frisky was a funny word, I thought—for old ladies trying to flirt with the bag boy at the grocery store.
I sat up and pulled Stephen to his bedroom.
I shoved him onto the bed, clambering on top.
He was bigger than me, pleasantly solid, thick around the torso.
He smelled good, a mulchy mix of sweat and cologne.
His scent was the thing that had really turned me on our first night together, and there in the bedroom I felt it had been a long time since I’d taken in the smell of him.
I pulled at the buttons of his shirt. He raised his hand and I pushed him away, his wrist thick in my palm.
“Let me.” I ran my fingers from his chest to his shoulder.
The hair grew in patches across both shoulders and he shaved it off, but the stubble had come in and I wondered why he didn’t just leave it.
He shifted beneath me, lifting his hips and mumbling softly.
“What did you say?”
“I said—” he exhaled, voice rough and thick—“I said I want you inside me.”
I pictured a miniature version of myself, like a Russian nesting doll, tucked into him. I tried to hold back a laugh, but it spilled out.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” I laughed again. “Sex is just so weird if you think about it.”
I pulled off the rest of his clothes and then my own and hoisted his legs, probing. I rubbed the head of my dick against the edge of his asshole, coiled with hair.
“Hold on.”
Stephen reached into the bedside table. His hand swum around and found it—a bottle of lube. He squeezed some out and rubbed it against himself. He grabbed a condom and passed me the bottle. I oozed some into my palm.
I closed my eyes and Tyler filled the dark of my head, unbidden, pulsing and bright.
I saw him in the soccer field, the twist of his body, his face lowering to himself.
The white, white of his skin, the spun golden-blonde of his hair.
I grew hard. I ripped open the condom and mashed it on.
I leaned and licked at Stephen’s mouth, maneuvering my dick toward him.
I stared past him to the windowsill. A lone houseplant perched there, one droopy leaf leeched of color.
For all his competencies, Stephen could not keep a plant alive.
I pumped in quick thrusts, trying to hold thoughts of Tyler at bay.
“Let’s try this.” I rearranged us, moving the angle of Stephen’s legs.
I bore down, shifted again, and then my penis popped out.
It was going soft and the condom sagged around it.
“Hold on.” I pushed with my thumb against his hole.
The hair, gummy with lube, splattered around it.
My thumb slipped; the condom slid off. It stuck, plastered to his thigh.
“Shit.” I rolled onto my back. A faint stain bloomed in a corner of the ceiling. Had that always been there?
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry. I think I drank too much on an empty stomach.”
Stephen nuzzled against me, hand moving in loops across my stomach.
We stayed like that for a while. I got up and went to the bathroom.
I stood around, doing nothing, waiting for enough time to pass.
In the mirror, a face stared back, slack with disappointment.
I flushed the unused toilet and ran the tap.
When I returned, Stephen was sitting on the corner of the bed in a T-shirt and boxers.
He’d brought in his stash of take-out menus.
They were fanned out, dog-eared and grease-stained, across the empty space of the mattress where I had been.