What Happened to Lani Garver (16 page)

He didn't react to her at all, just kept smiling that searing way at me. I felt kind of keyed up, like a little kid hearing about the Jersey Devil for the first time.

"He wants you to think he really
is
one of these creatures." Cooper giggled, and I thought the statement might snap Lani's eyes from me, but it didn't.

Lani turned his fingertips, all pressed together, so his indexes were pointing dead center at my chest. His voice wasn't the icy, judgmental one I expected. It was so quiet I could hardly hear it. "I was just watching what you were doing while Ellen and Cooper were talking about their problems."

I looked down. There was a major dent in the ice cream, like, two-thirds gone. I pulled my pinky out of my mouth and realized I'd been sucking whipped cream off it.

I lay on my bed after dinner, with my electric guitar across my chest. Now that I wasn't under the dimness of the single bulb suspended from the basement ceiling, I could see dust and dirt in the frets.
Clean it,
I thought. But my right arm was flung over the side of the mattress, while my left hand absently played along with the same Jonny Lang CD over and over again.

I stared at the ceiling, liking this image wandering through my head of me flanking my guitar pick in some black leather glove. My imagination grew to include me in black leather pants and, like, snakeskin boots, and a hat with a feather.

No, I don't think so,
I thought, but smiled hazily. It was one of those fun flip-side-of-your-real-life imaginings that you could only dream about. While running through progressions with Jonny Lang, I set myself to more realistic thoughts—like what to do about this weekend.

It was Thursday, and Friday night was coming up. Half of me really wanted to be with my friends and celebrate that I was cancer free. I could relax again, so long as I could keep off the regimented eating mentality. But I couldn't stop thinking about Ellen and Cooper, how their hard times had paid off in talent. "Got to pay your dues to sing the blues" was how Lani had put it. Half of me wanted to stay holed up in this room and play around with some weird twitches.

I would remember something awful, like the first time my hair clogged the drain in my dad's shower after chemo, and then try to play along with Jonny Lang. Looking at the memories instead of trying to block them kind of froze me at first. But Jonny Lang's most noteworthy signature is his anger, a very passionate bitching that wails up and down the guitar frets. I felt like I related to it all of a sudden and started pulling into a few of his slides and reverbs—major details that I'd hardly noticed before.

It was the first time in weeks I had picked up my electric guitar and had not wanted to play my bloody basement lyrics. I hardly thought about them, except to shrug.

I had told my mom I was going to bed early, and every time the phone rang, she would shout from the living room, "
Claire. It's (fill in the blank)! Don't you want to talk?
"

It happened, like, six times, and with the seventh, I could hear her chatting on and giggling, letting me know it was Macy. Sometimes my mom thought she and Macy were best friends, instead of Macy and me. They could chatter on the phone, and usually I thought it was fine, until sometimes I'd catch them talking about
me.
Macy would recite some dorky thing I had done that day ... my mom would tell her that I was my dad all over again, a social-retard musician.

I turned down Jonny Lang to listen, scared one of these days my mom would talk to Macy while too drunk and slurring. Macy was pretty sharp, but my mom was pretty careful. If she was way drunk, she wouldn't say more than "hey, hey" to my friends.

At the moment, she just sounded happy drunk. But I kept listening, hoping that Macy wouldn't mention that I wasn't in school today, thinking my mom knew. As my mom's footsteps trudged slowly up the stairs, I could hear her say, "Well, some girls just have to kiss and tell, Macy. It's their only way to feel significant."

She slurred slightly on
significant,
but I relaxed. It wasn't
120
too bad. And obviously they were gossiping about somebody other than
moi.
I turned out the light, but Mom opened my door without knocking and said over Jonny Lang, "Claire, Macy said she really needs to talk to you, and to stop being a twit who falls asleep too early."

I took the phone.

"Are you really sleeping?" Macy demanded.

"Sort of."

"Could you have called me at least once today, dork? I didn't know what was up. I knew you split your head wide open last night, and all of a sudden you're nowhere."

"Wow ... I didn't think," I breathed.

"You never think! I didn't want to ask your mom what was up, in case you cut school without her knowing."

"Thanks, Macy. That was really smart of you."

"So she thought you were in school?"

"Yeah." I sat up slowly, trying to figure out how to tell Macy what had actually happened today. Now that she wouldn't have to be freaked out over bad news, the idea of telling her seemed easier.

"The problem was a little worse than my head," I started. "In fact, I've had a problem for the past few weeks. I just didn't want to spew and scare everybody half to death. I thought, well ... that I might be relapsing."

"What's 'relapsing,'" she muttered, then quickly gasped. "Oh! Claire. Jesus. I thought ... you told me once ... you were cured, that nothing could happen now."

I rolled my eyes, thinking I probably said that at some point, just to avoid conversations about it. I hurried on. "It turned out to be something else. I'm okay. I promise."

I could hear her breathing in the phone, like I had stunned her into remaining more calm than she usually was. She finally said, "Like, what is it? You could have told me. Why didn't you tell me?"

I shut my eyes and sighed. "I didn't want anyone flipping
121
out or not knowing what to say. But at any rate, I found somebody to talk to, who knows a little about stuff like this and was really helpful."

"A teacher?"

"No. Don't freak, okay? Remember Lani Garver?"

My stomach bottomed out when she said, "Oh shit, Claire."

I didn't completely bug, because her tone was not the judgmental one. There was a tremble in her voice, more like she was scared than angry. She kept starting syllables and stopping them. I had rarely heard Macy left speechless, so when she started spewing questions, I figured I'd upset her too much.

"Forget it! How are you? Are you all right? Why didn't you
tell
me?" she asked again.

I sighed. "What could you have
done,
Macy?"

There was a long silence.

"What could you have told me that would have made it any better? If I'd told you not to tell anyone, would you have been able to handle it on your own?"

"When have I ever spewed your secrets?" she demanded, despite that she'd just got caught spewing about my electric guitar the night before. I stayed politely quiet. "I could have, well,
been
there for you. What could anybody do? What did
he
do?"

I told her about the clinic and how it allowed me to get a grip on things without sending Mom into cardiac arrest. "I'm okay. It's just an eating disorder. Small one—"

"Claire, you don't have any eating disorder! That's bullshit."

"I guess there's other kinds of eating disorders besides getting by on a lettuce leaf a day, or heaving. It's not so much how much you diet, but why, they told me—"

"But you've always been skinny! They're making a big deal out of nothing."

She was giving me the facts about myself, which felt annoying. But I was freaking her out, plain and simple, and that's why she was talking like that. It made me want to say, "Yeah, you're right," even though I didn't know what I thought. She didn't give me the chance.

"So let me get this straight," she went on. "You cut school, and you went to a clinic. With Lani Garver."

"Yeah. It was an amazing day..." I started slowly, looking for some words to make her see the good in him. "It's funny. He's got that nondescript little voice, so you would never guess he can be so rock solid in a crisis—"

"Just stop. Claire, I don't know how to tell you this, but Tony Clementi almost took that kid's head off in front of the Rod 'N' Reel about half an hour ago."

I shot up and tossed the guitar on the foot of the bed. "No way."

"Yeah. I was there."

I searched my frantic memory. Getting off the bus, he only said he was going to the library. Now I wondered if I should have thought to go with him.

"I saw the whole thing. Listen, Claire. I'm really sorry you were in trouble and I'm glad you're, you know, not sick. But do yourself a huge favor. Do not repeat that story to Scott and Phil. Okay? Did I tell you that kid would be in trouble soon enough? Listen to me this time—"

"He ... told me he was going to the library...," I stumbled, trying to make sense of this.

"The
library?
And you just believed him." She sighed. "I don't know how to say this, but he was bullshitting you."

"No way. Why would he lie?"

"Claire, come
on.
You can't even smell a kid who refuses to wear deodorant. How are you supposed to see a pervert coming?"

I wanted to defend myself, but she hurried on before I could think of any defense. "Me, Phil, and Scott were in Vince's car, and we were stopping to pick up Tony in front of the Rod 'N' Reel. Bartender took his keys again, and someone had called Vince. Lani Garver was out there, having an argument with Tony, who was plowed, as usual."

She was silent for a moment, but then a huge laugh snorted out her nose, like the scandal was too much. She kept saying, "Claire, I'm sorry," like she didn't mean to be laughing.

I just shut my eyes, silently cursing at this bad luck. I had some picture in my head of Lani coming out of the library, which was a couple of blocks past the Rod.
Should have warned him not to walk past that stupid bar
... I figured it was lost on Macy that somebody would actually go to the library for fun.

"Why Tony Clementi? Why not somebody else? Did you hear Tony last night, barking about queens and all that—"

"Of course I heard it. I
caused
it, darling.
I
called him a queen. But..." She kicked in with more laughs. "Claire, I'm really glad if Lani Garver did something that helped you. What can I say? But he left his brain at that clinic or something. Can he be a little bit smarter about who he tries to pick up?"

I didn't get it at first. It took me a few seconds to remember Tony's name had come up more than any other. She was trying to say that Lani came on to Tony. I laughed, too, but for very different reasons. It's the kind of thing where if you don't laugh, you'll end up clobbering somebody for their insanity.

I finally said, "Macy, that's a lie. Lani would not do that. Tony's the type who would definitely gay bash, and so he made up the first excuse he could think of to—"

"Uh, sorry, hon. I heard it with my own ears."

"You did not."

"Are you calling me a liar?" she demanded loudly, but she still couldn't stop laughing.

I got a bad feeling about this. Macy could get mean, but it all had to do with her bluntness.
She always told the truth.
My jaw dangled as I listened, totally confused.

"We jumped right out of the car, because Tony was already in his face, loudly. Tony was kind of slurring, but he was real plain in what he was saying: 'Don't you ever try that on any guys on this island ever again. And especially don't you come on to a Clementi! Do you understand?' And Lani Garver said back to him, 'If you don't want anything, then you shouldn't be standing alone on a street corner, blowing smoke rings. Didn't you know that's a gay thing?' Tony was way drunk, but he managed to yell, 'This isn't the city, and I wouldn't know a goddamn gay thing if I fell over it.' And Tony hit him. Not hard. He had a pretty big load on. I don't think Tony hurt him, but the guy just took off."

Smoke rings ... propositioning someone ...
I sat there frozen, remembering the funny kids from art school, eating ice cream with them on South Street, finding out I wasn't relapsing—and I got mad.

"I ... don't believe you!"

"Claire? Listen to me." Her voice was sympathetic, and I could hear that condescending tone that I didn't much like, but she was trying to stay calm, for once, and for once
I
was losing it. "You know how things always go with us. I'm the one who sees someone's idiot side first. You never believe me. A week or two later, you feel stupid. I'm telling you, you've got to trust me this time and back off from him. Whatever reason he had for helping you, I don't know. But he's not all he's making himself out to be. How often am I wrong about people?"

I shut my eyes tight. She was waiting for an answer, and I found the only thing in this crazy tale that made any sense to me. "This just smells of Tony twisting something around," I stumbled. "Weren't you mad enough at him last night to practically drown him? You know he's an upstart."

"He's a lush, yeah. And obnoxious. And if Vince didn't have the car, you know we probably would not see either of them as much. But Tony did not instigate that fight. He was not gay bashing, Claire. He was defending himself. If you don't believe me, Phil and Scott were standing right there, too."

My gut was telling me something was sincerely wrong here. I couldn't imagine Macy lying any more than I could imagine Lani picking up a date on a street corner. But my imagination rarely did me right.

I commanded myself not to cry, but it didn't work. I was sniffing, and Macy was threatening to come over and "be there for me."

"Claire, I am really, really sorry to lay this on you. You've had the day from hell, the three weeks from hell. I promise I will not call you stupid for this one, okay? I'll pick you up on the way to school, okay? You think you have an eating disorder? Fine, whatever. You wanna pig out? Gain some weight? Let's go to Sydney's before school and we'll get the gooiest, nastiest doughnuts, and we'll totally mow down. I won't tell anybody about what happened to you, okay? Claire?"