Revolution (4 page)

Dad was holding the key in his palm. He closed his fingers around it and squeezed it tight. “Thanks, Tru,” he said, his voice husky. And then he pulled my brother to him and hugged him.

“I love you. Both of you. You know that, don’t you?” he said, holding Truman and looking at me.

There was a muffled yes from Truman. I nodded, kind of embarrassed. It felt weird, like getting too-nice a present from a relative you barely know. I heard a sniffle. Mom was standing in the doorway. Her eyes were wet.

It was good. For a month or two. And then he did it—cracked the genome. He got the Nobel and then he was barely home at all. There were trips to Stockholm, Paris, London, and Moscow. Even when he was in New York, he wouldn’t get in until after we’d gone to bed, and he’d be gone again before we even got up. There were more fights. And then, one night, after we hadn’t seen him for two weeks, Truman went into Dad’s study and took the key back. I saw him out in the backyard, clutching it in his hand and looking up at the first star of the evening. He didn’t have to tell me what he was wishing for. I knew. I also knew it would never come true. Genius isn’t a team sport.

It was on him when he died, the key. I went through his clothes after a guy from the medical examiner’s office brought them back. It was in the front pocket of his jeans. I washed the blood off, put it on a ribbon, and tied it around my neck. I’ve never taken it off.

I take my meds now. One 25-milligram pill of Qwellify twice a day. That’s what the bottle says. I say 50 milligrams twice a day. And sometimes 75. Because 25 isn’t Qwelling anything anymore—not the anger or the sadness or the overwhelming impulse to step out in front of moving cars. It’s tricky, though. Not enough and I can’t get out of bed, too much and I see things. Small things, mostly—like spiders crawling up the wall. But sometimes big things—like my dead brother standing in the street.

I turn out the light, lie down on my bed, dial up the Floyd on my iPod, and listen to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” my homework. There are two minutes or so of some far-out synthesizers, a moody guitar comes in, there’s a pause, and then four notes, clear and stunning: B-flat, F, G, E.

I play along in the dark, fingering an invisible board. Four notes. Nathan was right. David Gilmour got sadness down in four notes.

I keep listening. To songs about madness and love and loss. I listen over and over again. Until I fall asleep. And dream.

Of my father holding a bird’s nest filled with blue eggs.

Of a small boy playing violin for men with eyes like black holes in the sky.

Of Truman.

He’s in the parlor, stepping out of a painting. He crosses the room to me, walking slowly, strangely. His back is broken. He bends his head to mine, kisses my cheek. His lips, bloodless and cold, whisper in my ear:
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine …
.

6

“H
ey, Ard! Where’s the night-
mère
?” Tillie Epstein, a senior from Slater, yells from across the street.

“ ’Toxing,” Arden yells back, tossing her blond hair.

Arden’s walking home on this fine Saturday afternoon, turning every head with her tanned legs, suede boots, and micromini. She’s got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for
insecure
. She just came out of a deli carrying a Diet Coke, a pack of cigarettes, and a bottle of Evian. The first two are lunch, the Evian’s for her bong. Tap water is, like,
soooo
toxic.

“Bo or Dee?” Tillie shouts.

“Dee.”

Botoxing moms are hard to call. The injections don’t take long. Half an hour at the doc’s office, a bit of shopping, lunch, and then she’s back home and barging in on your afternoon X party. Most inconvenient.

Detoxing moms are safer bets. Detox usually involves a flight to California, as well as high colonics, yurts, burnt sage, and teary dealings with the inner child. Painful, yes, but vastly preferable to teary dealings with the outer child.

“Cool! Party at your house?”

“Can’t. The feng shui man’s there. Our karma’s, like, really blocked, you know?”

Roto Buddha. Only in the Heights.

“Nick’s having some people over tonight, though,” she says.

Tillie gives her a thumbs-up and disappears into a yoga studio.

Nick is Arden’s boyfriend. He goes to St. Anselm’s, too. As I continue to walk behind Arden, far enough behind so there’s no possible chance of having to talk to her, he comes out of Mabruk’s Falafel, grabs her, and gives her a big, sloppy kiss.

His full name is Nick Goode, aka Not Guilty, for all the time his dad’s lawyer spends saying those exact words in front of a judge. For DUI. Possession. For throwing up in Starbucks on three consecutive mornings. And for peeing off the top of the slide at the Pierrepont Street playground. He’s English. His dad and stepmom, Sir and Lady Goode, keep parrots.

Nick’s messy curls gleam gold in the winter sun. His chin is bristly with stubble.

He’s wearing boots, a kilt, and a long-sleeve tee. No coat, even though it’s December. Beautiful people don’t need coats. They’ve got their auras to keep them warm.

He spots me as he comes up for air. He lopes over, takes my hand, and sings “
I know a girl who’s tough but sweet.… She’s so fine she can’t be beat.… I want Andi, I want Andi …
” to the tune of “I Want Candy.”

His voice is beautiful, a knee-weakening sandpaper growl. He smells like smoke and wine. He stops singing suddenly and asks me if I’m coming to his party.

“Nicky!” Arden yelps from down the sidewalk, alarmed.

“Relax, Ard,” he yells over his shoulder. “Ard, short for arduous,” he whispers to me, grinning.

He takes the bags I’m carrying out of my hands and puts them on the sidewalk. One has sandwiches in it. The other has seventeen different tubes of blue oil paint in it. Mom’s still struggling with Truman’s eyes. She went nuclear about it this morning. The only way I could talk her down was to tell her she had the wrong paints, that’s why she couldn’t get the eyes right, and then promise to go to Pearl Paint to buy her the right ones.

He takes my hands in his, touches his forehead to mine. “Come to my party. I’m nobility, after all, and you’re only a serf so you have to do what I say. Play your guitar. Entertain me. My life’s so bloody dull I could weep,” he says.

“Wow, that’s some offer. Jester at the court of the bored-oisie.”

“Come on, you sexy beast. You acid-tongued, black-hearted little witch. You’re the only interesting girl in all of Brooklyn.”

I roll my eyes. “How much did you smoke today? A kilo?”

“Please come. I want you to,” he says. His lips brush mine. He tries for a kiss.

Bad idea. The very worst. I push him away. “Dude, hey. I’m not radicchio.”

“What?”

“Radicchio. You know? The nasty red lettuce? All those goddesses you sleep with, Nick, they’re cloying your palate. You’ve had too much sweet stuff and now you’re craving something bitter.”

Nick laughs himself silly. Pot makes anyone sound funny. Even Letterman.

“I gotta go,” I say, breaking away.

“Andi, wait.”

But I don’t wait. I can’t. Standing here on Henry Street with him brings it all back. He doesn’t remember much. At least, that’s what he says. But I think he remembers everything and that’s why he gets high all the time.

He lets me get ten steps down the sidewalk, then says, “I’ll take out my godfather’s guitar.”

Wow. The big guns. His godfather happens to be Keith Richards.

I turn around. “What do you want from me, Nick?” I ask him. There’s an edge to my voice.

“It’s gorgeous,” he says. “He used it when he wrote ‘Angie.’ ”

“What do you want? Can’t be sex. You get plenty. Can’t be drugs. You’ve got more pills than CVS. You need help with your French homework? Is that it?”

“He gave it to me last month. When I was in England,” he says. His voice is soft now. Pleading.

I almost say it out loud. I almost spit it at him, the word for the thing he wants—forgiveness. But then the pot haze lifts and his eyes meet mine and I can see the pain there. So I don’t say it. I let him be nice to me. It’s not what he wants, but it’s the best I can do.

“You’re blagging,” I tell him. “It’s not Uncle Keith’s. You bought it on eBay.”

He smiles. “I’m not. It’s his,” he says.

“Yeah? What kind is it?” I say, testing him.

“It’s a … um … it’s a Fender Bender. No, it’s a Paul Gibson sort of thing … some kind of stratoblaster. Bugger me, I don’t
know
what it is. But it’s his; I swear it. We’ll call him up and he’ll tell you. He gave it to me. If you come, I’ll let you play it.”

“Okay. I’m there.”

I pick up my bags, tell him goodbye, then walk past Arden. If looks could kill, I’d be vapor. “Hey, thanks for the invite,” I tell her. She doesn’t deign to reply to me. She’s saving all her lovin’ for Nick.

“Why didn’t you just hook up with her right there on the sidewalk, Nicky? You wanted to. The whole world could see that!”

“Piss off, Arden, will you? You’re giving me a headache.”

Ah, young love.

I smile as I turn onto my street. Winter break’s looking up. I decide to give Vijay a call, see if he’ll go with me. Apart from that guitar, which I very much want to play, this party has possibilities: bored rich boys, jealous rich girls, plenty of illegal substances, maybe even a loaded gun.

If I’m lucky.

7

T
urns out I’m not. Lucky, that is. Not remotely.

The party’s crap. Literally. I’m not in Nick’s house for ten seconds before a drippy white pile of it lands on my shoulder.

I look up. Above me, a huge green parrot sits preening in a chandelier.

Rupert Goode, Nick’s dad, hobbles up behind me with a dishrag in one hand. “Iago, you scoundrel!” he shouts, shaking his cane at the bird. “I shall wring your neck! I shall pluck you and gut you and stuff you into the oven!”

“Why, thou silly gentleman!” Iago squawks, flying off to strafe someone else.

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” Rupert says. “He’s a blackguard, that bird. Allow me.…”

Rupert’s an actor. He played every male lead Shakespeare wrote, made a ton of indie films, then cashed out with four or five Harry Potters. He can’t work much anymore. He shakes. His voice is still beautiful, though. The Parkinson’s hasn’t ruined it yet.

I look around as he wipes the poop off me, eyeing the water-stained wallpaper in the hallway and the crumbling ceiling above it. A faded painting in a battered frame. A reeky terrier asleep on a coat. Teetering piles of scripts. If it belonged to anyone else, this house would be on the city’s condemned list, but since it’s Rupert Goode’s, it’s in
Vogue
.

“I don’t see you anymore,” Rupert says. “I used to see you at Cranberry’s with Marianne, getting coffee in the morning.”

He’s friends with my mom. Or used to be. Back when she had friends.

“I’ve been really busy. Senior thesis. College applications. You know.”

What he knows is that I’m lying.

“How are you, Andi? Really?” he asks, giving me a searching look.

“I’m fine,” I say, looking away. He cares. I know that. Which is why I don’t tell him how I really am.

“No, I don’t think so. How could you be?” he says. “I never think of that day without thinking of Lear’s speech to his poor dead Cordelia. ‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life / And thou no breath at all?’ It’s a comfort, the Bard’s work. Do you find that, too? Shakespeare poses such monumental questions.”

“So does SpongeBob. Problem is, they both fall short on the monumental answers.”

Rupert laughs but his eyes are sad. “Nick misses you. So do I,” he says. Then he hugs me. People do that a lot. It seems to help. Them.

“Off you go, then. Join the fun,” he says, handing me a pink paper parasol.

“Um, Rupert? It’s not sunny in here.”

“It’s a shield, my dear. Iago’s bad, but Edmund, the new one, is the devil himself.”

I pop the parasol open and walk from room to room, feeling like Cio-Cio-San searching for Pinkerton. Half my class is in the kitchen. There are empty bottles everywhere, spent cigarette packs, parrots and parasols, but no Nick.

Someone offers me a glass of wine, but I decline. Alcohol doesn’t mix well with my pills. It brings on some nasty side effects.

I started on the drugs about a year ago. I was seeing Dr. Becker, a psychiatrist, because I couldn’t eat or sleep or go to school. Beezie recommended him and my father made me go by threatening to stop my lessons with Nathan if I didn’t. I was supposed to talk about things with Dr. Becker, but I barely opened my mouth—except to say what a waste of time it all was. After a few weeks of that, Dr. Becker prescribed Paxil. Then Zoloft. When those didn’t work, he bumped me up to Qwellify, a tricyclic antidepressant. If that doesn’t cut it, it’s antipsychotic time.

I keep moving through the Goodes’ house, looking for Nick. I wish Vijay had come with me so I’d have someone to talk to, but it’s a Saturday night during winter break, so of course he’s home working on his thesis “Atom and Eve: Technology, Religion, and the Battle for the Twenty-first Century.” So far, he’s managed to get quotes from five world leaders.

I veer off into the parlor. Music’s blaring. Kids are making out on the sofa, a chair, the floor. There’s a portrait over the mantel, a huge black-and-white nude by Steven Meisel of Lady Goode IV. She’s twenty-three. And a model. And not around very much. But as Rupert himself will tell you, and often does, “With breasts like those, one can do as one likes.”

I head into the library. Shiva Mendez is sharing slides of her latest art installation,
Void
, which involves three hundred and sixty-five bottles of laxative and some unspeakable footage. It’s part of her senior thesis. The Whitney’s including it in an emerging-artists show. Bender Kurtz, fresh out of rehab for the second time this year, is talking up his thesis—a memoir of addiction. He’s already got a book deal. Now he’s trying to pimp the film option. “My agent’s really excited,” he’s telling some girl. “Wes might attach.”

They make me feel tired, my classmates. Achingly, crushingly, epically tired. Listening to them makes me want to lie down on the floor and sleep for twenty years, but I can’t—there’s too much bird poop on the rug—so I decide to leave. Nick’s nowhere in sight. At least, not anywhere down here. He might be upstairs, but I’m not brave enough to start opening bedroom doors in this house. As I head for the hallway, I feel an arm circle my waist and lips press against the back of my neck. A gravelly voice says, “I knew you’d come. But who did you come for? My guitar or me?”

“Your guitar. Most definitely.”

“Coldhearted siren,” he says, tugging on one of my earrings, and then hands me the guitar. Like it was nothing. Like he was handing me a stick of gum.

“I can play it?” I ask. In a whisper.

“Yah. Absolutely,” he says, barely paying attention. Arden’s giggling in his ear and hooking her thumb toward the kitchen. And then they’re gone, and I’m holding Keith Richards’s guitar, and the weight of it in my hands feels thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Like I’m holding a cobra, a bag of diamonds, a bomb.

I strum it. My fingers curl around the board into A minor, E7, then G—the first chords of “Angie”—but I can barely hear them because I’m in the front hall with people all around me. I run upstairs, to the first landing, and then the second, but it’s more of the same. So I keep going, all the way up to the roof. It’s cold up here, but quiet.

There’s some old lawn furniture scattered around. I sit on a rusty chair and pull the guitar strap over my head. I’m not worthy of this, not by a long shot, but that kind of thinking only stops the best of us, not the worst. So I play. I play “Angie” and “Wild Horses” and “Waiting on a Friend.”

I play until my fingers are blue and stiff from the cold, and then I keep on playing. Until I’m lost in the music. Until I am the music—the notes and chords, the melody and harmony. It hurts, but it’s okay because when I’m the music, I’m not me. Not sad. Not afraid. Not desperate. Not guilty.

I play for an hour or so, then jam my hands into my pockets and walk around, looking up at the night sky. I can’t see any stars. I almost never can in Brooklyn. They fade away in the sodium glare. But I can see the Templeton, dark and ugly. The windows of its shiny new apartments are all lit up. Here and there, a Christmas tree twinkles.

It was almost Christmas then, too. The day Truman died. It was cold and there were lights in the shop windows. A guy was on the corner, selling trees. Christmas carols were playing. Max was standing on the sidewalk, shouting.

I don’t remember Christmas Day that year. I remember taking the tree down, though. In April. It had turned brown and dropped its needles. There were still presents under it. No one wanted to open them so Dad put them in garbage bags and took them to Goodwill.

I start walking. It’s nine steps from where I’m standing to the edge of the roof. I count them as I go. Then one step up to the cornice. And then I’m looking at the street below. It would be so easy. One more step and it would be over. One small step, and no more pain, no more anger, no more anything.

A voice behind me says: “Please don’t. Really. Please.”

I turn around. “Why not?”

Nick says, “Because I’d miss you. We’d all miss you.”

I laugh out loud.

“All right, then, I’d miss that guitar. I really would. So put it down before you jump, okay?”

I realize I’ve still got Keith Richards’s guitar strapped around me. I would have taken it with me and smashed it to pieces. I’m horrified. I take a step toward him, down off the cornice. “I’m sorry. God, I’m really sorry, Nick—”

And then my foot lands on a patch of ice and I lose my balance and I’m twisting and screaming and Nick grabs my arm and it feels like we’re both going over, but then he jerks me toward him and I stumble back onto the roof.

He lets go of me and lets loose on me. He’s yelling. Loudly. His voice is raspy and ragged. I don’t know what he’s saying because my heart is pounding in my ears. I don’t know what to do so I put the guitar down and try to leave because I think that’s what he wants, but no.

“Pick it up!” he shouts. “Pick it up and play something. It’s the least you can do. You nearly killed us both.”

So I do. Crappily. Because my hands are shaking. I start with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which seems fitting in the circumstances. Then “Far Away Eyes.” And “Fool to Cry.” And then I stop to warm my hands.

Nick doesn’t say anything. He’s totally quiet and I’m guessing he’s still really mad, or thinking that I suck, but then he says, “That was amazing. Play something else.”

“I can’t. My fingers are frozen.”

He comes close, takes my hands in his, and blows on them. His breath is wine-sweet and warm. He smells good. And he looks good. And when he takes my face in his hands and kisses me, he feels good, too.

The guitar’s still around me. I slip it off and put it down. I want to feel him. To feel his breath on my neck. The warmth of his skin. To feel something other than sadness.

Hold me, I tell him silently. Hold me here. To this place. This life. Make me want you. Want this. Want something.
Please
.

And suddenly I hear, “Oh. My.
God.
”

It’s Arden. She’s here. On the roof.

“You’re
such
a
jerk
, Nick!”

“Arden … It’s not … It’s nothing … We were just … She was upset, you know? And I was …”

Arden throws a beer bottle at him. It smashes against the chimney. The shouting starts.

“You better go,” he tells me.

I do. Quickly. Down the ladder, down three endless flights of stairs, and out the door. I’m halfway down Pineapple Street but I can still hear them shouting on the roof.

“I can’t
believe
you! I don’t mean
anything
to you, do I?”

“I told you it was nothing!”

It never is. Never was. Why didn’t I jump when I had the chance?