Jumpstart the World (17 page)

“No.”

“Oh. Good.”

Then I wasn’t sure what to say.

“So … what?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. I guess I just felt like talking.”

No response. Then I looked up to see him standing in my bedroom doorway, wrapped in the blanket I’d given him. I wanted to see if he’d cleaned off all that mascara, but the only light came from behind him. The streetlight mostly shone through the living-room window. So I couldn’t see his face.

I moved over a little and patted the bed beside me, and he came and lay down. Huddled tightly in the blanket. As if it were about twenty degrees in there.

“How’s Frank?” he asked. Quietly.

“Better.”

“Good.”

“He’s moving away.”

“Oh. Bad.”

“Yeah. Very bad.”

“When did you find out?”

“Just earlier tonight.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t think so. But I can’t really tell yet. I know that sounds retarded.”

“No. It doesn’t. I never feel things until later.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

Silence. Silence. Silence. I wanted to say more about Frank leaving. So many more things. Only … what were they?

“I keep wanting to tell him I’m sorry for the way I treated him. You know. After I found out.”

“So why don’t you?”

“Because I think he might not remember it. I know he doesn’t remember a lot from those last few days before the accident. He didn’t even remember that Toto was sick. So I’m thinking maybe he doesn’t even know what a jerk I was. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m trying to weasel out of it. It’s more that … Well, if he doesn’t know I did something to hurt him, then he isn’t hurt. Right? So if I tell him … Only, what if he does remember?”

The mental twisting and turning was making my brain hurt, so I stopped to rest. For quite a few beats.

Wilbur didn’t say anything.

“What would
you
do? If it were you?”

A pause while he thought that over.

“I think I’d go with the living amends.”

“The what?”

“Living amends. That’s when you just don’t do the thing you’re sorry for anymore. You just do better. Some people think that’s better than words anyway.”

“Both might be best.”

“Yeah, but it’s like you said. If he doesn’t know, then he’s not hurt. You might be opening a can of worms.”

I gave all that a minute to soak in. Find a place to sit down.

Then I said, “I met Frank the very first day I moved in here. My mother was just throwing me out, and I’d never lived alone before. And I was scared to live alone. But I never really did live alone because he was there. Right from the start, he was there. So I was never really alone. But if some strangers move in next door …” The thought was so horrible that it stopped me in mid-sentence. I hadn’t tried on that image before. Strangers in Frank and Molly’s apartment.

Wilbur spoke up before I could get back on track.

“I know it’s not really much,” he said. “But you do have me. And Shane and The Bobs.”

Did I have Shane and The Bobs? After the way I’d been treating them? But I figured Wilbur must know, so I said, “That’s true.”

“Probably not much consolation.”

“Some,” I said.

Then we didn’t talk for a long time, and I wasn’t sure if we would ever start up again. I figured I might just lie awake all night looking at the outlines of him in the dark.

Next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and it was light. My eyes
felt grainy and sore, and my stomach was a little rocky. Almost like a hangover.

Wilbur lay fast asleep beside me, still mummified in his blanket. The streaks of mascara still marking his face. Still betraying the fact that he really did feel. Whether delayed or not didn’t seem to matter much in the light of dawn.

FOURTEEN
Mocha Almond Fudge and Loss. The Perfect Companions.

A
fter Wilbur left, I spent most of that next day dancing.

Sounds happier than it actually is.

I have this thing about Janis Joplin. Her music, that is. Not Janis herself, who, of course, is long dead.

I think I want to be her.

Only not dead.

Anyway. It’s the music. People might expect I’d be put off by the fact that it was all recorded a quarter of a century before I was born. They would be wrong.

I have a bunch of it on an iPod. A different one than I have all my mixed music on. So after Wilbur left, I stuck the earbuds in and just got into it. And none of that “Me and Bobby McGee” crap, either. We don’t need no stinking slow ballads. Thirty-two
really hard-rock tracks, and every other one was “Piece of My Heart.” I just can’t get enough of that one. Never really could.

I still had one beer in the fridge, left over from the weird, upsetting party. I drank it all during the first play of “Piece of My Heart,” and then used the bottle as a microphone. It’s sort of like playing air guitar, only with singing. I didn’t actually sing. Just mouthed the words perfectly into the beer bottle and moved my body, and every time I opened my mouth, this perfect Janis Joplin shriek coincided.

It’s very satisfying in a way I can’t really explain. Believe me, I’ve tried. It also makes me tired, which I appreciate when I’m feeling crappy.

I think I’d been at this for somewhere between two and three hours when I saw my front door open. I pulled out the earbuds.

In walked my mother.

Before I could even open my mouth, she said, “Now, don’t say I should have called, because I’ve been calling you for hours.”

“I had music on.”

“But you can’t say I didn’t try.”

“Why did you come over if I didn’t answer the phone? Didn’t you figure I was out?”

“I took a chance,” she said. “I needed to talk to you. It’s important.”

Only then did it hit me. Things were not okay with her.

I honestly thought, at least from the look on her face, that she was having a worse day than I was. If such a thing was possible.

She sat at my kitchen table with her forehead in one palm. I’d made her a cup of tea, and it sat on the table right under her face,
and the steam swirled up like she was getting a facial, or trying to breathe steam to clear her sinuses. Actually, she did look like she’d been doing some crying.

She still wasn’t telling me what this was all about.

“What’s up, Mother?”

She took a sip of the hot tea. Made a face. “Don’t you have any coffee?”

“No. Sorry. I don’t drink coffee.”

“But I got you that nice coffeemaker.”

“That had a little accident.”

“Oh.” Long silence. Long, awkward. Heavy. Strange. “Donald broke up with me.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I guess that was at least half true. I wasn’t sorry Donald was gone. I couldn’t be. But I was sorry he’d made her feel like this. Guys like that always will, I think. Not that I’m this big expert on guys or anything. But it seemed obvious to me. Like, whatever he is now. Whatever it is right now, that’s what it’s always going to be.

“I thought this might be a good moment to discuss the best time for you to move.”

“Move?”

“Come home.”

She was still staring down at the table, forehead in her palm.

I couldn’t answer. I just couldn’t force out any words. I could feel that my mouth was too wide open, so I focused on closing it again.

After a while, she looked up.

“Well?”

“Mother. I’m not coming home.”

Looking back, it seems I might at least have considered it.
What with Frank moving away. And me being a little scared about living alone. But I didn’t consider it. Not for a second. It was impossible. I knew that the minute it hit my ears. Some things, like independence, only go one direction. Independence has no reverse gear. Fear or no fear.

“What do you mean? Of course you’re coming home. I’m so sorry I put you through this, darling. I lost my head. But it’s over now. We can go back to the way things were before.”

“No. We can’t, Mother. We can’t go back to the way things were before. It’s impossible.”

She looked into my eyes for a minute, then started to cry. I guessed that meant she saw.

“You know,” she said, “I pay your rent. You can only live here as long as I pay your rent. I could insist you come home.”

I wanted to be mad, but I just felt too sorry for her. I didn’t even feel like I needed to fight her now. Fighting is for when you’re not sure if you’re strong enough to win. When you have to test it out. When you know who’s stronger, you don’t have to fight. You can be invited to a fight and just choose not to show.

“I know you wouldn’t do that,” I said.

She fell all into sobbing, her head down on her arms on my table.

I came around behind her, and put my arms around her, and just let her cry it out.

After she left, I couldn’t get the Janis thing going again. It’s like she stole all my wind.

So I sat on the fire escape for an hour or so, wishing Frank would come out and sit with me. But he never did. Then I remembered that Molly was taking him to an appointment with
the orthopedic surgeon. Something about getting an X-ray of the pins in his elbow to check them for something.

I think it was around two or three in the afternoon when I heard a knock at the door.

I climbed back inside to go see who it was.

Freaking Grand Central Station, I was thinking. I was wishing that at a time like this everybody would just leave me alone.

I opened the door to see Wilbur, Shane, and The Bobs standing in my hall. Big Bob was carrying a paper grocery sack.

Shane’s hair was indeed green. Quite noticeably green.

So, I guess I did have Shane and The Bobs. I guess Wilbur had been right.

I said, “I hope that grocery sack is full of beer. I could use some.”

Shane said, “Wilbur’s trying to cut down.”

I nodded. As if I’d known that. But, truthfully, I’d really thought that was only a joke.

“Can we come in?” Also Shane. “We come bearing ice cream.”

“Ice cream?” I wasn’t quite getting it yet.

Wilbur said, “I hope you don’t mind. I told them you were feeling bad. You know. About Frank moving away.”

For a minute, I was stunned. I felt like that was so out of character for Wilbur. He doesn’t just run off and tell people what you told him. But then I put two and two together with the ice cream. And it hit me. Wilbur knew I needed help. So he brought me some.

So, maybe that’s why I had Shane and The Bobs. Because of Wilbur. Because he told them … what? That I needed them? That I wasn’t as bad as they thought? I had no idea.

I only know that I was suddenly able to see, as if through someone else’s eyes, that I needed help. Much more so than I’d realized.

Trouble was, I still mostly wanted to be left alone. I’ve practiced “alone” a lot, and I’m good at it.

I’m guessing this must all have shown on my face. Because they began inventorying the ice cream. Big Bob set the bag down on the hall carpet, and Little Bobby took the quart cartons out one by one, held them up in a perfect impression of Vanna White, and announced their flavors.

“Chocolate chip mint …”

A few soft oohs and aahs from Shane.

“Rocky road …” He scrambled into the bag for another. “Mocha almond fudge … butter rum … and last but not least … chocolate chip cookie dough!”

A few more oohs and aahs.

“That would be a shitload of ice cream,” I said.

“Nothing’s too good for our friend,” Little Bobby said.

I just stood there for the longest time. Not knowing what to say. I don’t do grief in a crowd.

Finally, I said the only thing I could think to say. “Mocha almond fudge, huh?”

Little Bobby said, “A whole quart all for you, if that’s your favorite.”

“I guess you’d better come in.”

We sat in a circle on my living-room hardwood. Cross-legged, like some kind of campfire circle or Native American sweat lodge. Except we each had a spoon.

Four of the cartons of ice cream sat in the middle of the circle, looking a bit liquidy around their peripheries. The mocha-almond-fudge carton sat in the middle of my crossed legs, nearly one-third polished off. The sugar rush was making me feel emotionally numb. I liked the feeling.

“Okay,” Shane said. “Enough small talk. Who wants to be the first to tell their very worst breakup story?”

“Ooh,” Little Bobby said. “That’s hard. I have so many to choose from.”

“Breakup story,” I repeated.

“Yeah.” Shane.

“I’m not breaking up with anybody. I was never with him in the first place.”

“So? It’s still a loss.”

“But it’s not a breakup.”

“Okay,” Shane said. “Who wants to be the first to share the worst, most painful loss they ever had that wasn’t actually a breakup?”

Three hands shot up. Shane, answering her own question, and both Bobs.

I ate another big spoon of ice cream. I hadn’t asked for this. Wouldn’t have asked for it. But some weird part of me wanted to hear the stories. Don’t ask me why, but the idea of hearing about other people’s heartache sounded strangely appealing.

I looked over at Wilbur, and he looked a little green around the gills.

“You okay, Wilbur?”

“I don’t think I want to play this game,” he said. “It sounds painful.”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want.”

He didn’t answer. He just kept looking down into the mint-chocolate-chip carton.

“I’ll go,” Little Bobby said. “It was my pediatrician. I was madly in love with my pediatrician. Until I was fourteen. Which, on the one hand, was really humiliating, when your parents still send you to a pediatrician at fourteen. But on the other hand, I sure as hell wasn’t about to argue for a new doctor. Anyway, I was sick a
lot
.”

A smattering of laughter. No, not even laughter, really. Just little snorts of sound.

“And then one day he got me on the table and really read me the riot act. He said I wasn’t sick and I was wasting his time and wasting my parents’ money and I should go home and act like a healthy boy and stop all this nonsense. I was so incredibly humiliated. I slunk out of there feeling about an inch high, and then when I was passing by the desk, his two receptionist-type women were laughing behind their hands about something, and I was sure they were laughing at me. Now I think maybe they were just telling a joke or something. But at the time, it hit me all at once that if the doctor knew, then maybe everybody knew. I felt like the whole world was laughing at my most important secret. I went home and went to bed and didn’t get up for six days.”