Californium (13 page)

S
aturday morning there's bacon and eggs in the air, but it's all wrong because only my dad is up. It almost feels like one of those Tuesdays back in Paterson where I'd come out of my bedroom and Uncle Ryan would be there in the kitchen, a huge breakfast ready to go as soon as everyone woke up.

I'm wearing my best ripped jeans and Property of New York Yankees T-shirt, and my hair's done so it's perfectly messed up and my dad will think that's how I slept on it. “I'm not having anything,” I say.

“Eat,” he says. “I scrambled the eggs the way you like.”

My stomach feels quivery, like the first at bat of the season, so I pick up the bacon. My dad sips his coffee and explains how we'll carry everything in so that it's laid out in the order we'll put it together. I nibble the bacon long enough that the eggs are still sitting there when my dad stands up. He looks down at them, sighs, and says, “Let's go.”

Mr. Thompson's excited when we get to the front door, and he takes us straight back to the family room. Everything's cleared out and the floor feels spongy and reeks of new carpet. Mr. Thompson's going on about stain-resistant chemicals and my dad's nodding like that's the most amazing thing ever.

“I guess you won't know when Astrid has parties now,” my dad jokes.

“Well, that's what neighbors are for,” Mr. Thompson says, and they laugh. “Seriously, though,” he says. “She always tells us.”

Mrs. Thompson comes in the room wearing her silky robe, carrying a tray with cups on it. “Breakfast shake?” she says and holds the tray out to my dad.

He grabs two, shoving one into my hand without asking. “Thanks, Ashley. You're too good to us.”

The stuff in the cup really looks like a shake, kind of frosty and thick, and it's nice until the smell hits you. My dad tips his back and powers the whole thing down in three chugs.

Mr. Thompson grins. “One of my fraternity brothers could do that.”

“Do you like it, Pat?” Mrs. Thompson says.

My dad wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oh yeah. You'll have to give Eileen the recipe.”

“Oh, it's easy,” Mrs. Thompson says. “Plain yogurt, skim milk, brewer's yeast, whey protein, soy, lecithin, and a little vanilla extract.”

My dad nods, like,
Yes, I thought I detected a little vanilla extract in there.

Mr. Thompson pats his belly. “I'm starting to get rid of this flat tire here. Diet and exercise.”

“Honey,” Mrs. Thompson says. “Why don't you help out today?”

My dad is straight-faced, nodding. “We could use an extra hand, Alex. If you've got time.” He pulls out the plans he sketched and hands them over and you'd think it was Lou Gehrig's autograph the way Mr. Thompson takes the notebook paper so gentle, studying every last pencil scratch.

“Wonderful,” he says.

“Great,” my dad says. He wrinkles his forehead and nods the same way he does when Brendan wants to help change a spark plug or Colleen wants to pour her own milk.

We get started and Mr. Thompson has a hundred questions for every task my dad gives him, then re-asks a minute later. It gives me a chance to go slow and time things so that I'm installing a hinge or lining up a cabinet every time I hear a noise somewhere else in the house. I'm thinking,
If Astrid comes gliding into the room, I want her to know I can really sink a screw, you know?
Then I sink one at the wrong angle so it's not totally flush and my dad's all over me about staying focused. He looks at Mr. Thompson and at the exact same time they say, “Teenagers,” like they're singing a duet. It's the only thing I've done wrong in an hour. I'm not the one who tried to attach a hinge, which moves, where a joint, which does not move, was supposed to go. And when Mr. Thompson put one of the cabinet doors on backward, my dad didn't get high-and-mighty on him. He just said, “Let me help you out, Alex. Those are tricky.”

If Uncle Ryan were here, we'd have been done in half an hour and he'd be at the new bar, grinning and saying, “Let's test this thing out.”

When my dad starts explaining to Mr. Thompson, again,
how we'll putty all the screw holes and he won't see the screws, and even shows him how he bought a shade of putty that matches the wood, I ask to use the bathroom.

“You'll have to use the one upstairs,” Mr. Thompson says. “I just had tile laid in this one yesterday.” He stops working and tells my dad about “this thug” who laid the tile, and my dad's shaking his head like it's such a tragedy.

It's quiet upstairs and Astrid's shut door is right across from the bathroom. I walk soft, listening for Astrid's sleep breathing and happy that even if I can't hear it I don't hear snoring, either.

The bathroom counter is a mad scientist's laboratory, only with makeup and lotion and perfume bottles spread across it. I'm letting the diet shake go where it belongs, looking down at a basket full of magazines. There's a
Tiger Beat
peeking out from the pile, but right on top is a
Cosmopolitan.
The woman on the front is staring so hard and so sexy it's like she sees me. Her earrings look like they're worth more than our house. And her dress has me needing a deep breath. It's not just that it's got no sleeves so you can see her creamy arms; the whole middle has been ripped out so you can see her belly button, and her cleavage, and her collarbone, and
Oh my God she can't be wearing a bra if I'm seeing all that.
Astrid reads this? What does it tell her?

I need to look somewhere else if I'm ever going to fit back into my jeans, and there, in the bathroom mirror, I see them: Astrid's panties. There's a bunch of them slung over the shower rod with matching bras—white lacy ones like you'd expect, and a maroon one to match our school colors. There's one pair of
black ones, the stringiest and smallest, and my eyes blur for a second. My brain can almost put Astrid in them, and now the smell of lotions and potions wafting around the bathroom is like the soft parts of a girl you're not supposed to touch if she's not your girlfriend—her cheek and the back of her neck, her stomach and thighs. I still haven't put myself away, and there's no way I'm going to be able to now unless I do what my old confirmation teacher told us was “officially forbidden by the Catholic Church. But,” he went on, “you should also know is scientifically natural and—now, this is my opinion here and not the Church's—nothing to be embarrassed about. Just be discreet.” Then he told us what
discreet
meant.

I'm trying to be discreet fast. My breath goes shaky and loud, like holding a shell to my ear, and for a few seconds it's me and Astrid right there on the bathroom counter until a crack rings out. My heart launches from my chest and I'm stuffing myself back into my jeans fast, trying to zip up, and did I ever lock the bathroom door? What if Mr. Thompson walks in? Or Astrid? I peg-leg step over to the door to keep my dick from breaking in two and turning into hafnium. It's locked. Has been the whole time. Then I let go of the breath I didn't know I was holding and start washing my hands in cold water. This should calm me down, but Astrid's soap leaves a spicy perfume on my hands. And as I go to dry them on a towel slung over the shower rod, it hits me: This must be the towel Astrid used last night after her shower. It's been everywhere:
All. Over. Her. Body.
I'm inches from the black bra and panties and somehow the bra brushes across my cheek. The palm of my hand folds around
one of the cups. The lace panties are scratchier than you might think and they weigh about a feather squared. And in the mirror, you can't even tell they're in my front pocket.

I have this vision of the panties slipping out when I'm leaning over to hold a bracket and the whole Thompson family looking at me like I'm some perv, which I must be because even before hanging them back up I know I'm going to let them brush across my cheek. They feel so sexy on my face and I don't know why but I want to smell them. I mean, who does that? Me, I guess, because I press the thin crotch against my nose soft and take a deep breath like I'm at the doctor's office. It smells like nothing, maybe detergent, and I let the panties glide across my cheek once more before hanging them up.

Now, as much as I wanted to see Astrid in her robe and pillow hair, if she's waiting outside the door, I don't know how I'll wipe the panty-sniffing look off my face. My chest and arms and legs are warm and tingly and my face is so flushed with school spirit that splashing cold water on it only gets me back to almost normal.

I take another deep breath and open the door. It's clear all the way back downstairs, where my dad is sanding out scratches on the cabinet door Mr. Thompson dropped when he was trying to install it. My dad doesn't give me anything to do and that's the worst. If Astrid comes downstairs now, I'm not sure how to look at her without feeling like I stole something; you know, like I saw the answers to the test before taking it.

We're cleaning up when the phone rings, and a second later Mrs. Thompson is jingling keys, saying she's off to pick up Astrid from Karen's.

.

After church Sunday, my dad lets us pick up doughnuts
and
makes a big Irish breakfast with all the meats and puddings. He brags about our bar project, so my mom makes Brendan and Colleen each say something interesting they did this weekend too, I guess so my dad can keep up with who we are.

In the afternoon, I get away to my room to start writing songs. Nothing comes at first and pretty soon I'm writing a letter to Uncle Ryan instead, bringing him up to date on the bar project and how it wasn't too awful, plus the band and how Treat says we're supposed to write songs about anarchy and injustice and consumerism and how the world won't listen. Then I ask if he ever did anything crazy for a girl without explaining what I mean by “crazy.”

I'm back at it again after dinner and homework, trying to write songs. Nothing.

Astrid's light clicks on, so it must be after eight. She's less than fifty feet away, probably in a silky robe and definitely in lace panties. It's all I can think about, but I'm not going to get discreet. I don't want anything to happen with Astrid in my imagination anymore. If it isn't real, what's the point? And the only way to make it real is to bring DikNixon to life.

I go over to Brendan's room, the stink of sweaty socks hitting me as soon as my head's through his door. He's lying on his bed, looking at the pictures in
Sports Illustrated
(he never reads the articles).

“You know any punk songs?” I say.

His head drops over the side of the bed and he looks at me upside down. “You like punk?”

“Some. Do you know any or not?”

“Is Devo punk?” He sits up. “‘Satisfaction' is a good song.”

“That's a Rolling Stones song.”

Brendan looks back down at the magazine. “I like how Devo does it.”

I walk down the hall thinking how the Devo version of “Satisfaction” doesn't even sound like the original. How it's pretty much a different song except for the lyrics. Isn't that stealing? And why doesn't anyone care? I mean, they played that song all over the radio for a while; people must have thought it was okay. Next thing I know, I'm downstairs flipping through my parents' albums, wondering what DikNixon can steal. There isn't anything good, no Rolling Stones or Beatles. My dad won't listen to English bands because of the things he says the English did to the Irish. The only time he ever got red-faced at Uncle Ryan was when a Rolling Stones song came on the radio, and there's my dad, trying to change the station, and Uncle Ryan saying the only thing Mick Jagger ever did to the Irish was introduce them to soul, and then my dad laughed and said fine, just this one time.

Back at my desk, I've got some albums that have the lyrics printed inside the cover or on the sleeves. I reach over to my cassette player and pop in one of
The Nixon Tapes.
The music seems pretty good at first, an easy, thump-thump-thump beat and then guitars flying in like a plane landing. It's fast and distorted and every once in a while everything stops except the drums. The singers fire through the lyrics and change the shape
of some words so it almost sounds like another language. I read through the lyrics of the albums I've got and copy down a few. They're not exactly punk, but at least they're real songs. I tuck the lyrics into a new folder with a >I< logo on it.

Astrid's light is off when I crawl into bed. Treat will probably have some better songs tomorrow, and I think about how good we'll look playing in front of Astrid, those lacy black panties hiding beneath her jeans while she sways to our music. I almost get discreet, but I fight it off by thinking about the periodic table. When that doesn't work, van Doren shows up next to Astrid, only he's not swaying. He's staring me down, looking kind of shocked and mad that we can be this cool. That works so perfect my hands start behaving themselves and instead I just feel kind of nervous.

.

I've got my lunch and my song folder with me at the Bog on Monday. Edie and Cherise are already standing there with Keith. Edie's sandwich, juice, apple, and carrots are laid out perfect on the bricks. Cherise has a plastic bag full of almonds and a can of V8 vegetable juice, with a straw. Keith's food is still in the bag, and he's talk-singing from a paper in his hand: “They don't respect you / won't infect you / all they want to do / is connect you.”

“‘Connect you'?” I say.

“Yeah,” Keith says. “
Connected.
Like in
The Godfather.
”

Edie grins. “What do you have?”

“Some things you can't hear.”

She gives me an
Oh really?
smile. “Love songs about Astrid?”

There's a million people out there in the quad, and every one of them goes quiet right as Edie says that. Cherise takes a drink of her V8, her eyes getting big all of a sudden like the can is sucking back; then Treat comes trouncing up behind me, through the planter. He hops down, throws his arm over my shoulder, and looks at Edie, like,
Don't mind me.