Althea and Oliver (14 page)

“I'm sorry I haven't come around,” she says.

“I get it. You've been busy.” Coby turns on the TV and grabs a video game controller from the floor.

She couldn't see herself in Oliver, except when he was sick. Those were the only times he collapsed to her level. But Coby has been down here all along. Nobody would ever look at Coby and wonder what he's doing with someone like Althea, just as Coby would never look at Althea and ask her why she is the way she is. If she hadn't been blinded by history and circumstance, she might have seen it sooner, but here on the couch, alcohol clarifies everything. Despite the many ways in which she finds him wanting, there is something endearing about Coby, something reassuringly
boy
about the way the cuffs of his jeans hit the tops of his shoes, and the tendons that flex in his thumbs when he plays video games.

They toast again—
a thousand more
—and this time Althea takes it literally, imagining her future in this stifling apartment, playing Mortal Kombat and stealing liquor from Coby's parents, who would eventually evict them for wrapping his father's Mustang around the inevitable telephone pole. Renting another apartment somewhere, filling it with drunken arguments and cigarette smoke instead of furniture until they set it on fire during a match game tournament and end up sleeping in her car, a fifth of whiskey in the glove compartment amid Minty's vegan propaganda and maps of places they would never visit. Someday, there would be a mobile home and a trailer park and eighteen identical white wifebeaters flailing on a clothesline.

Soon Althea's apathy returns, a warm blanket she wraps around herself, pulling it tight as she joylessly plays Duke Nukem until the bottle is empty and Coby takes the controller and tosses it to the floor. Placing one hand unceremoniously on her breast and winding the other through her hair, suddenly he mashes his face to hers, and she is clinging tenuously to her indifference. His lips are oddly cold, and the Mexican rap album is on repeat for what must be the third or fourth time. Moving her tongue mechanically inside Coby's mouth, she tries to translate the lyrics in her head; all she can pick out are random words, something about a flavor, a butterfly. She raises her arms impassively as he slips off the bloodstained suit jacket of her Halloween costume and removes her tank top. He fumbles with the clasp on her bra; a full twenty seconds pass without success. She brushes him away and unhooks it herself. The sooner this is finished—well, then the sooner it will be finished. So she pulls his T-shirt up over his head, and when he reemerges from underneath it, he kisses her with even more enthusiasm; he's mistaking her impatience for lust, for excitement. Desire, even. He takes her hand and leads her into the bedroom. They flop onto the mattress, unbuttoning, unzipping. Coby kicks off his pants and Althea wriggles out of her skirt and then they are naked, and the look in Coby's eyes terrifies her because it's victorious. Althea has never been more grateful for the anesthetic properties of alcohol; maybe tomorrow she won't even remember this.
People black out all the time from drinking,
she thinks.
Maybe I'm blacked out right now and I just don't know it yet.

She thinks of Oliver crushing himself into her. All the parts of him that were so familiar, and still, so much was new. The look on his face when he pulled her down to him. Not victory, but need.

Coby fumbles with a condom and sits up when he's ready.

“Turn over,” he says abruptly. “Get on your knees.”

With every one of Coby's grunts she's sobering unwillingly, like a diver headed for the surface before she's ready. When it's over, the panic goes away and is replaced with something worse when Coby pulls out and looks down with disdain and says:

“By the way, you're bleeding.”

“Excuse me?” she says.

“You're bleeding.”

“I'm bleeding?” she says, her voice ringing shrilly in her ears. “The fuck did you do to me?” Althea rolls over and wipes herself with her hand; sure enough, her fingers come away red.

“Lots of girls bleed their first time,” he says. “It gets better, you know. It hurts less.”

It seems impossible that anything could ever hurt more.

“That
was
your first time, right?” he says.

She grabs her underwear and pulls it on impatiently. The rest of her clothes are in the living room. Coby follows her there, smugly watching her dress. She stalks out the door, not feeling the gravel under her bare feet, not stopping or looking back. She gets herself to the car and steadies herself on the bumper. Bending over, she sticks a finger down her throat, evacuating as much of the tequila and beer as she can. Doubled over in pain. The night has wound up pretty much where she predicted it would.

Althea is tired of being right all the time.

There's a rumbling in her chest like a train pulling into the station, and then she is crying. Althea can't remember the last time she cried that wasn't at a movie, but here she is, the final shreds of dignity dispersing, her breath still sour with tequila vomit, her pubic hair itching because it is matted with her own blood. Suddenly the last four months seem like nothing but a series of tactical errors made in quick succession.
If ever there was a time to let the tears rip,
she thinks,
this would probably be it,
so she sits on the ground and lets them.

• • •

Oliver knows her schedule so well he can avoid her easily; by lunchtime on Monday, she's convinced that's what he's doing. When the last bell rings, she races from her class to his, waiting eagerly by the door as the other students file out, but Oliver does not emerge. She looks inside the classroom, but he isn't there.

“Hey, Al.” It's Coby, sallow and thin, wearing a black pro-vegan shirt Valerie and Minty Fresh have been selling to support Bread and Roses. It says
MILK IS FOR BABIES
in white ink, and Althea remembers the day she helped Valerie make the screen for it, spreading some of Nicky's old newspapers on the floor of Oliver's kitchen while Minty Fresh played his guitar at the table and Oliver searched an old cookbook for new recipes to make for BAR on the Internet. Coby's shirt is stained, his pants are too long, and the torn cuffs have wrapped around the soles of his tennis shoes. He's smiling that awful smile at her, and even though he has her attention now, his hand lingers on her shoulder. “If you're looking for Oliver, I don't think he's here today.”

Althea just stares at him, saying nothing.

“You feeling better?” he asks.

Later, when she tries to tell the story, the best Althea will be able to say is, “And then my head exploded.” But it is so much more than that. It's like that dream everyone has when you're trying to run away from something or run toward something, but your legs won't work right and you can't get any traction. When Althea throws the first punch and it connects squarely with Coby's jaw, it's how that dream would feel if everything came together, and instead of having to convince your body to do what you want, it's your mind that can't process how fast your body is suddenly able to go.

Coby doesn't see it coming. It lands beautifully, snapping his head to the side. The pain shoots up her hand and wrist, quick and electric. He turns to look at her, mouth agape, and he must think she was just making a point, because he doesn't see the second one coming, either. This one catches him in the nose, and something gives inside his face; blood leaks matter-of-factly from his nostrils.

“What the fuck—” he starts, wiping the blood and looking at his hand in disbelief.

The third punch is a left, aimed at his cheekbone, and this time it blows his head back and his feet go out from under him. On the third punch, Coby goes down.

Around her all motion has ceased, everyone is staring, and Althea doesn't understand why no one has tried to stop her, and she hopes it's because Oliver is standing right behind her and everyone is waiting for him to do it. She waits for his familiar tackle but it doesn't come, and she has the thought, tender but fleeting, that Oliver doesn't want to stop her, Oliver wants to see Coby torn to pieces also, and before Coby can get up, Althea drops to her knees and straddles him, switching back to her right hand as she hits him again and again, remembering the future she imagined for them, how a picture of the two of them eking out their pathetic life together came to her so easily, had been so real she could smell his dirty socks poisoning their trailer. Blood is oozing from a cut above his eye, from his split upper lip, and there is a stir in the crowd as they realize she isn't going to stop until somebody stops her, and that's when the arms wrap around her, dragging her to her feet, but it's not Oliver, it's someone else, a hostile grown-up, probably Principal Nelson, whose stubble scrapes against her cheek as Minty Fresh and Valerie rush to get Coby out of harm's way. He pushes himself backward with his feet and hands, crab-walking, as he looks up at her, bewildered. Minty and Val help him to his feet while eyeing Althea with what she supposes is justified trepidation.

Even though she's not struggling, Nelson keeps his arms locked around her while Coby disappears around the corner of the hallway, and her face aches from her first smile in days.

OLIVER'S JACKET IS ZIPPED,
his duffel bag over his shoulder; he's watching Nicky sift through the mess on the kitchen table when the doorbell rings. “That's probably the taxi,” he says.

Fanning out a pile of medical journals, she discovers a thick paperback, the title in raised red lettering. “What the hell is this? Is this yours?”

“It must be Garth's.”

“What's it doing in our kitchen?” she asks.

“I don't know how half this crap gets in here.”

“Should we take it back?” There's a bookmark two-thirds of the way through. “He wasn't even finished with it. Maybe we should drop it off before—”

“No. Give it to me.” Oliver snatches it. “We have to go.”

“Althea should be home from school by now; don't you want to say good-bye?”

“We already said our good-byes. Hurry up.”

“I'm almost ready,” Nicky insists.

“You need to be really ready. Ready like Freddy.”

The doorbell rings again.

“Just tell him to wait a minute. I'll be right there.” She compiles a haphazard stack of random sections from the newspaper.

“Mom, you're never going to read the business section.”

She threatens him with the offending material. “Get the fucking door!”

Oliver expects to find an irate cab driver standing on the porch, but Valerie and Minty Fresh greet him there instead. They're strangely lacking in their typical enthusiasm, nervously pacing the rotting wood boards in their combat boots, hands identically stuffed in their back pockets. Had they been worried by his unexplained absence at school? Had they somehow gotten wind that he was leaving for New York and wanted to say good-bye? Instead of being heartened by the possibility of their concern, Oliver's irritated. He'd been so close to a clean getaway.

“What's going on?” he asks.

“Something's happened,” Minty Fresh says. He hesitates and looks at Valerie, one of those best-friend glances loaded with meaning, in this case probably something like
Do you want to tell him or should I?

“I'm actually on my way out, so maybe we could make this kinda quick?” says Oliver.

“It's Althea,” Valerie says. “Something happened at school today. She was still in Nelson's office when we left; I think they were trying to find her dad, but we're pretty sure she's going to get expelled.”

Oliver puts up his arms like he's fending off an attack. “Stop right there.”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“Not another word. Whatever it is, whatever she did, I don't want to know.”

“You're going to have to hear about this sooner or later,” Valerie says.

“I don't think so.”

“Are you and Althea in a fight or something?”

“Something,” says Oliver.

“Does it have anything to do with Coby?” Minty asks.

“What does Coby have to do with anything?”

Valerie and Minty Fresh have another of their silent exchanges. Without his permission, Oliver's brain starts sorting and compiling information—Althea, expulsion, Coby—and presenting him with possible scenarios involving these three elements. The results sound like the titles of dysfunctional children's stories:
Althea and Coby and the Aborted Arson Attempt
.
Althea and Coby and the Locker Full of Pills
.
Althea and Coby and the Inevitable Felony Charges
. “Never mind. I said I don't want to know, and I mean it.”

“We're really worried about her,” Valerie says. “Can't you at least talk to her, make sure that she's okay?”

“Fuck her if she's overwhelmed by the trappings of her totally normal adolescence,” he yells, dodging Valerie's outstretched, sympathetic hand. “And just shut the fuck up about Althea and Coby. As far as I'm concerned they can have each other.” His eyes have filled.

“Oh, Oliver,” Valerie says, putting her arms around him. “I'm sorry.”

“Fuck off,” he says, sniffling. “You and your pigtails.”

“What's with the luggage?” Minty asks, noticing Oliver's duffel.

“I'm going away.” Grasping the strap of his bag, Oliver reminds himself of his own story,
The Mysterious Case of Oliver's Medical Problems
. This is the only one that interests him now.

“Where?” Valerie presses.

Here's what Oliver had imagined: slipping away undetected. His absence gradually dawning on everyone, who would initially assume, with reason, that he was just home sick with another episode. Eventually someone—Althea, of course—would come by the house and find it empty. No Oliver, no Nicky. The school knew where he was going, had instructions to send him his assignments, but none of his teachers would volunteer the information, and it might be weeks before anybody thought to ask. And in the meantime, they—Althea, really—would have no idea where he was, and yes, as juvenile as it was, he hoped this uncertain time would be spent reflecting on her mistreatment and underappreciation of Oliver McKinley.

It hadn't started that way. He hadn't mentioned the study in New York to anyone because it would have undermined all his efforts to act like everything was normal. Then, after the show at Lucky's, when he was finally trying to screw up his courage to tell Althea he was leaving in two days, she had dropped the sleep-fucking bomb and made it clear that the Normal ship had sailed months ago. After all his anxiety about telling her, knowing it would send her into a rage that he hadn't mentioned it sooner, he ended up screaming at her for a change and was surprised to find the act intensely cathartic. This bit of insight, however, had been eclipsed by his disgust at her. And now, as he's about to make his quietly melodramatic exit from Wilmington, she's apparently one-upped him again.

“There's a doctor in New York. He wants to check me in to the hospital for a while.”

“Oh,” Valerie says.

“When will you be back?” asks Minty Fresh.

The taxi pulls into the driveway and honks.

“I don't know. Don't tell Althea, okay?”

“Are you sure you don't want to know what happened today?” Valerie asks.

“Of course I want to know. That doesn't mean I want you to tell me.”

• • •

LaGuardia Airport doesn't seem like the kind of place that would send a person on a visceral nostalgia trip, but Oliver is still surprised to see Nicky emerge from the terminal into the chilly November evening without so much as a sentimental glance in either direction. He's in a daze himself, head still aching from the plane's dry recycled air. The last time he was on an airplane—the first time, really—he went to visit Mack's parents in California, but that was a long flight, and there had been time to make the mental transition from east coast to west. This trip was only a couple of hours, not nearly long enough to prepare himself.

Nicky, on the other hand, is all business, waiting in line at the taxi stand, hustling Oliver into a cab, and giving the driver directions as if she disembarks from planes here all the time. The inside of the taxi smells like vinyl and sweat; there's a miniature ear of Indian corn hanging from the rearview mirror in anticipation of Thanksgiving.

Settling back into his seat, Oliver tries to mask his excitement and mirror Nicky's indifference instead. But as they hurtle toward Manhattan, the skyline growing larger above them until they disappear into a tunnel underneath it, he's heedlessly optimistic. Wilmington had seemed big until Althea got her car and they realized they could traverse the entire city in fifteen or twenty minutes. New York fills Oliver with a sharp, euphoric hope. Looking at this city now, grasping its size and scope—someone here is going to be able to help him. He indulges that thought as their cab sits in traffic, the buildings rising around them like cliffs. He thinks about being able to make promises, saying “Yes, I'll be there” without having to add the “unless.”

The cab driver leans on the horn, with no discernible effect. Nicky reaches across the backseat to rest a hand on Oliver's neck, keeping her eyes on the meter.

After they check in to the hotel near the hospital, Nicky insists they go out to dinner. At home they hardly ever eat in restaurants. Even if they could afford to, Nicky prefers the womblike environs of Magnolia Street, where she can drink her wine and her tea and smoke at leisure. But the hotel has that sterile feeling that makes her insane—the air freshener smell, the printed strips around the toilet seat, the pillows that crinkle like they're filled with newspapers. She asks him if he would like to have sushi, real sushi, not the boxed kind they buy sometimes in the supermarket. He almost asks for pizza instead. She's gone on about New York pizza for his entire life, slices so floppy and enormous you have to fold them in half and wolf them down while the oil runs up your wrist. But they passed enough pizzerias in the taxi for Oliver to realize it's the kind of meal you eat in five minutes perched on a plastic stool. Nicky's looking like, for once, she could do with a little more ceremony.

At the restaurant, Nicky acts like he's never even seen a California roll. She shows him how to break apart his wooden chopsticks and rub them together to smooth out the splinters. She explains that he's supposed to eat the pickled ginger by itself to cleanse his palate, not drape it over each piece of fish like that idiot at the next table. When she starts to explain what the wasabi is and how much of it he should eat with each bite—“Do not rub it around in your dish of soy sauce, you will embarrass us both”—he loses his patience.

“Mom, I understand wasabi. I've seen it, I've ingested it. We're old friends, wasabi and me. Relax.”

There's a candle on their table, flickering inside its smoky votive, and a shallow waterfall built into the wall behind Nicky, whispering a steady cascade from the ceiling to the floor. The combination has a hypnotic effect. She fiddles with her chopsticks. In her favorite red sweater with her hair loose around her shoulders, the candlelight soft on her face, she is still sort of beautiful, Oliver has to admit, and he wishes there were more waiting for her in North Carolina than a sink full of dirty dishes and a roster of clients who want their chakras opened through the healing power of massage.

“How long are you going to stick around?” he asks her.

“A few days. I'll spend some time with Sarah and Jimmy. It's been too long since I've seen them. I guess I'll have to go out to New Jersey to see my parents.” She sighs, clearly unenthused by the prospect. “Anyway, I'll wait until you're all settled in and then I'll head back to Wilmington.”

“You and Sarah got big plans?”

“We're not going to take acid, if that's what you're implying.”

“Why don't you move back here?” he asks.

“To New York?”

“Yeah.”

“And where will you live?”

“I mean, after.” He wants to say
after I go off to college
, but that's a big question mark for now. “Once I move out, eventually.”

She blows into her teacup and stares at the ripples. “I don't know.”

“I think you need to spend some time around people your own age.”

“You're not in a position to be giving advice, my son.”

“Don't you think Dad would say the same thing?”

Nicky sets her tea aside and pours a cup of hot sake from the carafe. “It's not so easy to consult your father on these matters, considering he's been dead for ten years.”

“That's what I mean. He's been dead for ten years.”

Nicky smiles. “Are you worried about me? Is that it? You think I'm lonely?”

“Never mind.” He rattles the ice in his water glass, the sound reminding him instantly of Garth.

“Of course I'm lonely sometimes. But you know what?” She gestures around the restaurant with her chopsticks, singling out a couple her age eating their sushi in silence. The husband drops his piece into the dish of soy sauce and it splatters all over his blue button-down shirt. His wife shakes her head while he dabs at the stain with a wet napkin. “They don't look particularly happy, do they?”

Oliver follows his mother's utensils as she points out other people—another couple, younger, is holding hands under their table, but across from them their friend is compulsively tucking the same piece of hair behind her ear and watching the door, bowing her head slightly when the waiter comes by and clears the fourth, unused place setting.

“What about her?” Oliver asks. In the corner, a girl in her twenties is sitting alone, holding a book open with one hand and deftly maneuvering a glass of wine toward her mouth without looking. Setting the wine down, she turns a page, then eats a single piece of sushi, chewing it slowly, resting her chopsticks on her plate. After a moment she takes another sip of wine, smiling at something she just read.

Nicky refills her cup. “When she goes to bed tonight, she's not going to lie there wondering if she said the right thing. And at the end of the day, there's not a lot of people who can say that.”

“You think that will be enough for you? For the next forty years?” His voice is abruptly unkind.

“Why are you harping on this tonight? You think after you move out I'm going to start taking in stray cats just to have someone to talk to? I'm going to start spying on the neighbors and stealing their recyclables just to keep myself busy?”

“I guess I've assumed that going crazy was always part of your plan.”

“And you're the only thing standing between me and insanity? I'm touched, Ol, thank you for keeping the darkness at bay all these years.” She throws back the rest of her drink.

“Maybe you should take it easy on the rice wine,” he says.

“Maybe you should take it easy on your mother.” She plays with a lock of her hair. “I'm not saying I don't see your point. The other day, Sarah asked me what I thought the rest would be like. I didn't know what she was talking about. She said, ‘The rest of our lives. What do you think it will be like?' And I honestly didn't know. Another forty years is a long time to spend in Wilmington. But the idea of living here again, but alone this time . . . I don't know.”