You, Me, and Infinity

Chapter Ten #2

In the middle of “Loved and Missed,” your phone vibrated.

Your hips were locked onto mine, and I actually felt it.

We were so into the song, and into each other, and then the mood broke.

You reached into your pocket and looked.

Honestly, we didn’t have to look to know who it was.

You always got calls from your mom when we were together.

She couldn’t stand for anyone else to be first in your mind; that was just the truth.

You shoved it back in your pocket, ignored. “I’m tired of this bullshit,” you shouted.

Already, I felt a sense of a clock ticking, even before you did that. Like something was going to be either over or starting, and soon.

But first, that song was. “Loved and Missed” ended with Dre’s heartbreaking keyboard solo, and then Solar Flare began the last song of the evening, “Greetings in Fifty-Five Languages.” Wow, that one was pure wild energy, showing off Maurice’s playing, drumming like a man possessed, sweat rolling from his face, his T-shirt clinging to his chest.

That summer, everything was music. All of the concerts, yeah.

The way you and I danced our butts off right then, yeah.

Warren Zevon at the houseboat, “Keep Me in Your Heart,” swaying to your mom’s old LPs, yeah and yeah and yeah.

And the Golden Record itself. A phonograph disc ready to spin on some intergalactic player, hovering in the heavens above us as we moved together at Chop Suey, bathed in violet light.

The Golden Record was full of music, and so were we.

The only handwriting on the records was a secret message snuck between its grooves: To the makers of music—all worlds, all times.

It might as well have just said: To life.

Driving home that night, Maurice and me, we were both giddy.

I used to be the person who always carried a paperback and who was usually only quietly pleased, too, but we had both been transformed.

Two cousins loved us, and we would never be the same.

Maurice was dropping me off before heading around the corner to his place, where Sandrine would meet him.

It was logistically convenient, but, too, I couldn’t chance you driving me home late at night.

I wondered when Sandrine was just going to move in with Maurice.

That’s how serious it was getting. Or maybe her staying with him was also logistically convenient, instead of her trekking back and forth to North Bend.

It was hard to know where you were exactly when you were dating, when things weren’t permanent.

There was a lot of guessing. Even you were guessing, feeling insecure about not meeting the rest of my family yet.

Why was I hiding you? you asked. Why couldn’t I trust you to handle my dad?

Well, trust me, I didn’t want you to meet my parents like that, showing up at my house at almost three a.m.

Maurice and me—we were all hyped up that night.

It’s how we all felt after one of those concerts.

Tired in the best way, exhausted, so it looped around on itself and became energy again.

The success of the night poured fuel into Maurice, into the usually half-empty vessel of his confidence, and he was playing me a new song of his, “Baby Blue.” On the recording, he sang, and he wasn’t a singer, and wouldn’t be singing this, so it was distracting.

But he was playing it loud, and it boomed out of the truck, and I could tell how good he felt about what he’d made.

“I love it!” I said.

“Yeah?” His eyes shined. He smelled pretty sweaty after that night, to be honest, though maybe it was me.

“Yeah!” I didn’t know if I loved it. Maybe not yet. Not before it got a little better, but I was sure it would. I had to picture Sandrine singing.

We were totally forgetting the thin, old-days metal of the truck, the way that, well, if we could hear and feel every sound and rumble that happened outside, it worked in reverse, too.

We sounded like thunder on wheels, probably, and at three a.m. on our silent street, everyone was sleeping except the particular neighborhood cats who liked trouble.

When Maurice pulled up to the curb, I could see the green, glowing eyes of Mrs. Thiebold’s tabby peeking underneath her Camry.

The cat was innocently named Ginger, but she weighed a good fifteen pounds, hissed whenever you got close, and clearly had a chip on her shoulder.

We were talking really loud, too, I’m sure. In our joy, we’d forgotten to be careful. When Maurice yanked the parking brake, he treated me to a drum solo on his steering wheel, the end of the new song. I applauded, and he bowed, and then the door of our house flung open.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“Let me handle it,” Maurice said.

He couldn’t handle it any better than I could, but okay. Mom couldn’t even handle it.

My heart started to pound. Dad was wearing that plaid flannel robe from some past Christmas, though we were still deep in summer.

Even at this hour, you could feel the warmth in the asphalt, trying to release into the cooler night air.

My father’s feet were bare. Under the streetlights, I saw that his hair was threaded with silver, something I hadn’t noticed before.

It was like it happened overnight, or just my realization had.

That he was older, you know. That Maurice looked young and strong beside me.

I, uh, forgot to mention that our windows were down. That old truck didn’t have air-conditioning. Or if it did, it stopped working a long time ago. The noise, you know. What were we thinking? We weren’t. We were just in life, one hundred percent. The way two cousins had shown us.

My father put his face right in the window. “What the hell are you guys doing? I could hear you from inside. Your mother is trying to sleep.”

As if he always put her first, ha. And he was being way louder now than we’d been. But he could totally lose the thread of logic once he got rage-y. His anger was a pot of soup where the water boiled, and everything got thrown in.

“Sorry, Dad,” I said. “We were having fun and just forgot.” It was always my first instinct—to explain, to show all the reasons why something might make sense—but understanding was never his goal. Silly me, I thought that understanding was always the goal, but it just wasn’t true.

“I don’t want your excuses! It’s sorry and only sorry!”

“I’m not excusing, I’m just trying to expl—”

“YOU’RE DOING IT AGAIN!”

“Okay! I’m sorry about the sorry.”

Maurice got out of the truck. There was no need for him to get out.

He should have just dropped me off and driven home.

So, of course, I felt the temperature go up.

It was all in Maurice’s silence, the way I could see the tightening in his jaw.

Give me the tiniest facial movement, and I’ll predict what might happen next.

Maurice—he never talked back to Dad; none of us did.

Or else, we tried it once or twice and learned our lesson.

Rage is pretty effective at silencing you.

Efficient. But it sure looked like Maurice was about to talk back now.

He walked around the truck to the sidewalk where our father stood.

Now I got out. My body readied itself to prevent something.

Right. Like it could. I was also silent, but panic shot through me, a sense of things going out of control.

But I remembered that one time George told Dad he should be nicer to Mom, and how the pan of lasagna went sliding across the table like a heavy cheese toboggan, crashing against the kitchen cupboard and creating an instant murder scene.

I remember, too, when Maurice bought that motorcycle.

What are you, crazy? You trying to kill yourself?

The fight rattled the windows. He’s just worried about you, our mother had told Maurice, but it seemed like worry would look different.

I’m sorry, all right? Dad had said later, his voice raised, his eyes intense.

It seemed like an apology would look different, too. It seemed like love would.

The motorcycle went back to the shop.

I’m not sure what we thought might happen if we disobeyed him.

It seemed like we’d be annihilated. Maybe none of us wanted to risk finding out.

He was scary, but…How to explain? There was a sense that we’d be destroying him, too, if we stood up to him.

A sense that telling him the truth about himself would wither him.

He couldn’t control himself, we said. But that was a lie.

We’d all seen him with customers, or with his longtime friends, Mortimer and Jack and Terry.

He never lost his shit with those guys. They would sometimes tease him in a mean-true way, and you could see the flicker of fury, but he always managed to keep his mouth shut.

He felt free to be a shit to the people who tried hardest to love him.

It was difficult to understand. Certain people under your own roof…

Well, if everyone saw what we saw, let’s just say that maybe Papa Angelo’s wouldn’t be so crowded.

“Come on. Back off,” Maurice said.

Oh, God.

“What’d you say to me?” The me—that was the important part.

“We were just having fun. Lay off.”

For the briefest of seconds, it seemed like he might. Like maybe this was the way all this time, standing up to the bully. But the bully was always bigger. Bullies have power because they’re willing to use it in ways other people aren’t.

“And what kind of fun were you having? It’s three in the morning.

Don’t you have friends your own age to play with, Maurice?

What exactly can you do at this hour with a sixteen-year-old?

” I swear to God, he sniffed us. Like, wondering if we were somewhere smoking weed or drinking alcohol, which was a joke.

Maybe Maurice did those things, but never with me.

I was too scared to try either one. I didn’t like the idea of being out of control, in some altered state of mind where I couldn’t be aware of what might happen.

“I’m seventeen, Dad. Fuck!”

The fuck popped right out, in an exhale of frustration. The funny thing is, I don’t even really swear, either. Even that’s a risk. You might offend someone. You might actually feel the anger of the word, and who knows where that might lead.

Oh, man. Maurice sucked in his breath when I said it. My father’s face—it transformed, like those Hulk movies.

“What did you just say?”

“Dad!” Maurice intervened.

“I said fuck, okay? So what! Plus, I’m seventeen.

You don’t even know how old I am.” Stuff was just pouring out of my mouth in a stream of who cares.

Maurice was standing right there, making me brave, but the music had made me brave, too.

Sandrine had, up on that stage. And so had loving you, and you loving me.

“Don’t you dare use that kind of language with me. You little shit.”

“Come on, Dad, stop. It’s late.” Maurice had zoomed into peacekeeper mode now. Two antagonists against one father was entirely too dangerous. Our neighbors, the Guptas—their porch light went on. I worried they might call the police.

Now my father faced Maurice. “What have you done with my girl? Huh? She used to be so sweet, and now look. Sneaking around at all hours, with a foul mouth.”

He was blaming Maurice for my downfall, and I wanted to be blamed for my own downfall.

My downfall was mine, thank you. I was too sweet to even get to own it, I guess.

Sweet—you know what that means. You do what other people want, without complaining.

You go along. Sweet and scared can look a lot alike.

I wish people understood that. I wondered it, not then, but later, if every sweet person had a lot of experience with a bully.

But here’s a truth about sweet people: No one really knows them, and it’s a secret power.

“Go inside, Margaret,” Maurice said.

“No.”

“Go inside.”

Fine. I went. I could hear the rumble and rise of their voices, the sharp tones. I heard It’s your job to protect her, not lead her down—I couldn’t make out the rest. I would never understand it, how girls were treated like dangerously sexy adult women one minute, and little babies the next.

“What’s going on?” Mom was halfway down the stairs, hovering.

The thing is, she didn’t look sleepy, not at all.

She looked like she’d been up for a long time, and now we both hovered there.

She had stayed inside when Maurice and I were out there.

And now here we both were. Passive. Sweet.

A couple of cowards. No power at all, who was I kidding.

Poor Maurice. I hoped he ran away with Solar Flare and became a famous musician.

There was the slam of Maurice’s truck door and the screech of him driving off.

He wasn’t the type to screech. He drove safely.

I felt embarrassed already, that the neighbors heard all that.

They knew we were a mess. That things were going on under our roof that were abnormal, that I doubt went on under theirs.

At least I’d never heard Mr. and Mrs. Gupta yelling at each other at three a.m. Now I’d have to hide my face every time I got the mail or dragged in the garbage cans.

Or, at least, feel the shame crawling up my spine.

I was trying to avoid him, but I ran into Dad right when I was coming out of the bathroom. His eyes had grown cold, and he looked at me like I was air. No, something less consequential, but more disappointing. Spoiled meat. Something you’d better toss.

But he also looked tired. Very tired. Big bags swelled under his eyes, and I hadn’t realized it, either, but his ears had gotten larger, his nose, too, the way they do when they’re on their way to becoming an old man’s nose and ears. It must be exhausting being that mad all the time.

He was losing us.

Too bad we belonged to ourselves.