Fortunate Son: A Novel (9 page)

“This alley was blocked off a long time ago,” Monique was explaining. “An’ it go all the way to the end of the block. All you got to do is climb through the fence next to the church and cut through the back’a there an’ you across the street from the school. Not so many other kids do it ’cause the hole is too small.”

“Thank you, Monique.”

“What’s your real name?” she asked.

“My name is Tommy, but everybody calls me Lucky.”

“You right, Bruno,” Monique said. “He do talk funny.”

7

E
IGHT YEARS
after Thomas met Monique, a fourteen-year-old Eric Nolan was getting ready to play a match on a public tennis court above Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. He was set to play against an older boy from his school, Hensley High, which was known as the Yale of private high schools. The boy, Drew Peters, was a seventeen-year-old twelfth-grader who had already been accepted to three Ivy League schools for the following year.

Drew had called Eric’s class a bunch of pussies, and then he pushed around Limon, a delicate Peruvian boy who was also in the tenth grade. Eric told Drew that he couldn’t even play tennis and challenged him to a match. Eric agreed that if he lost he’d pay Drew a hundred dollars and carry him around the track on his back. But if Drew lost he’d have to go down on his knees and ask Limon to forgive him.

Both classes showed up for the match, which took place at 4:00 p.m. on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. The upperclassmen came into the bleachers all cool and superior. The sophomore class was loud and cheering. And even though Eric was a year younger than most of his classmates, he was the best of them, and they loved him for daring to challenge a boy who was almost four years older. Drew was in the California Junior Tennis League and had placed second in the statewide tournament.

In the front row of the senior side of the bleachers sat Christie Sadler, whose father, it was said, owned a riverfront block in Paris. Christie was the prettiest girl in any class at Hensley. She looked like a woman already, tall and lithe with violet eyes and skin that defied comparison. Mr. Mantel, the English teacher, had been fired midyear for suggesting to Christie that she would get the grade she was looking for if they could go out on a date.

Christie and Drew were the perfect couple at school. They’d be king and queen of the prom. They were definitely having sex.

Eric wasn’t thinking about any of that when he came out onto the court. He liked playing tennis. It was a sport where he didn’t need clumsy teammates who competed with one another. He liked things one on one or, even better, sports where he could excel without competition, like diving or running.

But Drew had roughed up Limon, and Limon was the closest thing to a friend that Eric had. Not that they were really friends. Limon talked too much, and he always wanted advice about how to be more popular and better in school. He wasn’t satisfied with his life, and Eric looked down on that.

Don’t you mind it when you lose at tic-tac-toe?
Eric had asked Thomas sometime before his brother disappeared forever.

Nuh-uh.

Why not?

I’ont know,
Thomas said.
I guess it’s just fun to play. And anyway, if you win and you’re my brother, then in a way I win too.

The day of the match was cloudy and cool. So was Drew, with his light-gray tennis clothes and serious brow.

Drew’s father had offered to judge the match. Mr. Peters was hale and tall. He had red hair everywhere and skin that had seen a lot of sun. The Peters family made their money in construction. He was a hard man, and Eric was confident that he wouldn’t cheat to favor his son.

But even if he did, Eric expected to win the match anyway. He always won when it was important. He was, as his Episcopalian minister, Uncle Louis, always said, “born in the circle of light.”

Eric hadn’t told his father about the match. He never wanted Minas or Ahn to be anywhere where he was the center of attention. Something about that talk with Ahn the night after Lester Corning was scarred had made him leery of the trouble he might cause. For the next few weeks after the accident, Eric asked about his real mother and what had happened.

She succumbed after childbirth,
Minas had said in simple doctorese.

Having me,
Eric said.

It wasn’t you who killed her.

But having me killed her.

But . . .
Minas couldn’t say any more.

Eric could tell that his father blamed him, not angrily, not wishing that his son had died instead, but simply knowing that Eric’s being born had killed Joanne. Between mother and son Eric had won the coin toss.

While Eric was thinking about his luck, Mr. Peters cried, “Heads up.”

Drew served, and Eric returned with an easy backhand. He felt weightless on his toes out there, predicting where every volley would land. He watched Drew’s effortless movements and saw that this was a kindred spirit on the court. Here they both ruled. Who cared who won? They were one, the same side of the coin. And while Eric watched Drew, Christie found that her gaze, more and more, drifted toward the sophomore Adonis.

She noticed his strong legs first and then the careless precision with which he returned each volley. Where Drew had an angry, snorting demeanor, Eric was neither angry nor glad. The sophomore moved freely, not worrying when he lost a point or even a set. He flipped his blond hair out of his face naturally, with no posing or apparent knowledge of his beauty. He only got serious when he saw a hole in Drew’s defenses. Then he came down on the ball like a predatory feline clamping down on the throat of a fawn.

Christie felt her heart skip when she thought that Eric might miss a return. She found herself, for no reason that she could name, hoping that Eric won the game—or, at least, that he didn’t lose. She clutched her hands and watched the carefree youth make her boyfriend run back and forth like a gerbil cornered by the devil-pawed tomcat that lived on her family farm in Santa Barbara.

No one knew what the high school beauty was thinking. The match was very close. No matter who was receiving there was something to worry about.

On Eric’s final match point, Drew lobbed the ball to the back of the court when Eric was playing the net. Christie gasped loudly as Eric ran toward the foul line swinging at the ball with his back turned. He connected, but the ball flew high and slow. The exertion made Eric stumble and fall. The senior class let out a loud whoop (except for Christie, who was inexplicably near tears). At that moment the clouds parted, and a shaft of concentrated sunlight shone in Drew’s eyes. He swung wildly, hitting the ball so hard that it flew off the court and into the park beyond.

“Game!” shouted Mr. Peters.

“No!” screamed his son.

The tenth-graders leaped and hollered for their hero. Even some of the seniors applauded the incredible play.

The only incident that scarred the game was Drew’s rage at the sun. He was so angry that instead of going to the net to shake Eric’s hand, he threw his racket at the victor. But Eric merely held up his own racket, deflecting the force of the missile, then catching it handily by the haft.

Eric walked to the net, holding out the racket as if Drew had merely dropped it.

“Take it,” Drew’s father commanded.

The audience had gone quiet.

Christie felt a tremor between her legs that her boyfriend had never made her feel.

Drew was taken off the court by his father. The sophomore class put Eric on their shoulders and carried him three blocks to the Beanery, the coffeehouse that, until that day, only the senior class inhabited.

As Christie watched him float away on the shoulders of his class, she felt an ache inside her that she feared might never completely subside.

“ERIC?” MINAS SAID
outside the boy’s half-open door.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Phone.”

“Who is it?”

“A girl.”

Girls called sometimes, but they soon gave up because Eric had become a loner in his teenage years. He learned how to dance but never went to parties. He’d gone out now and then, but found kissing in the backseats of cars and on porches unexciting. It’s not that he didn’t think about sex. He dreamed about naked women every night, often waking with an enormous erection.

Don’t you want somebody to love you?
Limon once asked him when the conversation drifted to girls.

No,
Eric replied.
Not really. I like being alone.

“What’s her name?” Eric asked his father.

“I’m not your secretary, son. Ask her yourself.”

Dr. Nolan pushed the door open and threw the cordless phone onto the bed.

“Hello,” Eric said into the receiver.

“Eric?”

“Who’s this?”

“Christie. Christie Sadler.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“I’m just calling to apologize for what Drew did today. I mean, he shouldn’t have thrown that racket at you.”

“He was just mad,” Eric said. “He should have nailed me on that last shot, but the sun got in his eyes.”

“But he’s a senior. He should be more gracious. I bet you wouldn’t have thrown anything at him.”

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “I mean, I was thinking how hard it must be on him because he always does the best. But you can see that he’s doing it for his father.”

“What do you mean?”

“His father’s all big and strong and sure of himself. Drew just wants to make him proud, and so losing to me like that means that everything else doesn’t matter at all.”

“How do you know all that?”

“You can see it in the way his father talks to him and the way he’s so serious. He makes Drew nervous. I bet if his father wasn’t there, he would have beat me easy.”

“And would you care?”

“Sure. I’d have to carry him around the track on my back.”

Christie laughed. Her voice sounded like chimes to Eric. His erection came on without him knowing it.

“Whenever we go out he’s real worried about how I look,” Christie whispered into the phone as if it were a big secret. “I can’t ever wear loafers or jeans when we’re on a date, even if it’s only at the pier.”

“Wow. That wouldn’t bother me. You’d look good in an overcoat and brogans.”

There were a few moments of silence then. Eric realized that there was something different in the way he felt. His mind wasn’t wandering away from the conversation. His attention was fully concentrated on Christie.

“Do you want to go get something to eat?” the senior asked.

“When?”

“Now.”

“I don’t have a license. I’m only fourteen, you know.”

“I have a car.”

“What about your boyfriend?”

“You won the match,” she said, and for the first time since Branwyn lived in the house with them, Eric felt his heart stutter.

AT THE PANCAKE
House Eric asked Christie about her aspirations for college. She’d been accepted to all the schools that Drew had and was making up her mind whether to go to the same school or one that was driving distance away.

He wanted to know what she planned to study. Her strength was in science, but she loved poetry. T. S. Eliot was her favorite, “The Waste Land” in particular, but she worried that it might not be responsible to want to be a poet.

“Most kids in school never know what they want to be,” Eric said. “I read an article once that the average college student changes majors three times, and a lot of them still take jobs in different fields from the ones they majored in.”

“You read that?”

“Yeah. In the
Times.
I like reading the paper in the morning . . . with my father.”

“Are you close to your father?”

Eric didn’t know what to say. He sat with Minas reading the paper every morning because his father liked the time together. The boy’s heart was thumping because of those violet eyes staring so intently at him.

“You want to take a drive with me?” Christie asked before Eric could formulate an answer about his father.

THEY STARTED KISSING
as soon as Christie parked at the lookout point in Topanga Canyon. Eric knew that he had never really kissed before that night. Christie told him that she loved Drew and so all they could do was kiss, but a moment later she was unzipping his pants. Eric thought of reminding her about just kissing, but instead, when he felt her cool fingers on his erection, all that came out was a deep, very masculine sigh. Christie echoed him in a higher register, and their kissing became more urgent.

She leaned back at one point and said, “Drew asked me to marry him and I said yes.”

Eric nodded to show that he understood, but at the same time he thrust his pelvis forward, putting the straining erection near to her lips. She took it in her mouth and they both hummed.

When the boy came he roared out her name. She stared into his eyes, seeing both pain and gratitude. Her grip tightened until she worried that she might be hurting him, but she didn’t ease up or slow down.

After the tremors subsided, Christie lay down on top of Eric in the front seat.

“I’ve never met a guy like you, Eric Nolan,” she said, kissing the tip of his nose.

“Was that okay?” he asked.

“What?”

“I mean about Drew. You said we should just kiss.”

“That was like kissing,” she said. “I mean, we didn’t do it or anything.”

Eric noticed their breath misting chilly air.

“I think you should be a poet,” he said then. “I mean, people need poetry just as much as they need chemicals.”

Christie kissed him and reached down.

“You’re still hard,” she said, only slightly in awe.

“Let’s get in the backseat.”

She took her time rolling the condom down on his erection. He kissed the side of her neck and the cleft between her breasts while she did so. Eric felt awkward at first, but Christie didn’t seem to mind. She told him to be careful because she hadn’t had a lover so well endowed as he. When they came for the fourth time, they still shuddered as violently as the first.

“We shouldn’t do that again,” Christie told Eric the next night on the phone.

“Okay,” he said, still feeling spent from the night before.

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Isn’t that what you want me to say?”

“I don’t want you thinking I’m a slut who would do something like that with just anybody.”

“That was my first time,” Eric confessed. “I never even knew how wonderful it could be.”

“Oh. I didn’t know . . . you seemed like . . . I don’t know . . . experienced.”

“But we could see each other, right?” Eric asked. “I mean, we don’t have to do that. You know, I could ride my bike over.”