Hearts In Atlantis (50 page)

“You act as though it's funny,” she said.

“It's not funny,” I said. No, it wasn't funny.

“Then why don't you quit it?”

Now
I
was the one starting to feel angry. She had pushed me away and clapped her knees shut, had told me she was going away just when I was starting to not only want her around but need her around, she had left me with what was soon going to be a world-class case of blue balls . . . and now it was all about me. Now it was all about cards.

“I don't
know
why I don't quit it,” I said. “Why don't you find someone else to take care of your mother? Why doesn't this friend of hers, Rawanda—”

“Ri-
on
-da.”

“—take care of her? I mean, is it your fault your mother's a lush?”

“
My mother is not a lush! Don't you call her that!
”

“Well, she's sure something, if you're going to drop out of college on her account. If it's that serious, Carol, it's sure something.”

“Rionda has a job and a mother of her own to worry about,” Carol said. The anger had gone out of her. She sounded deflated, dispirited. I could remember the laughing girl who had stood beside me, watching the shreds of Goldwater bumper sticker blow away across the macadam, but this didn't seem like the same one. “My mother is my mother. There's only Ian and me to take care of her, and Ian's barely making it in high school. Besides, there's always UConn.”

“You want some
information?
” I asked her. My voice was trembling, thickening. “I'll give you some whether you want it or not. Okay? You're breaking my heart here. That's the
information
. You're breaking my goddam heart.”

“I'm not, though,” she said. “Hearts are tough, Pete. Most times they don't break. Most times they only bend.”

Yeah, yeah, and Confucius say woman who fly upside down have crackup. I began to cry. Not a lot, but they were tears, all right. Mostly I think it was being caught so utterly unprepared. And okay, maybe I was crying for myself, as well. Because I was scared.
I was now flunking or in danger of flunking all but a single subject, one of my friends was planning to push the
EJECT
button, and I couldn't seem to stop playing cards. Nothing was going the way I had expected it would once I got to college, and I was terrified.

“I don't want you to go,” I said. “I love you.” Then I tried to smile. “Just a little more information, okay?”

She looked at me with an expression I couldn't read, then cranked down her window and tossed out her cigarette. She rolled the window back up and held out her arms to me. “Come here.”

I put out my own cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and slipped across to her side of the seat. Into her arms. She kissed me, then looked into my eyes. “Maybe you love me and maybe you don't. I'd never try to talk anyone out of loving me, I can tell you that much, because there's never enough loving to go around. But you're confused, Pete. About school, about Hearts, about Annmarie, and about me, too.”

I started to say I wasn't, but of course I was.

“I can go to UConn,” she said. “If my mother shapes up, I
will
go to UConn. If that doesn't work out, I can take courses part-time at Pennington in Bridgeport, or even CED courses at night in Stratford or Harwich. I can do those things, I have the luxury of doing those things, because I'm a girl. This is a good time to be a girl, believe me. Lyndon Johnson has seen to that.”

“Carol—”

She put her hand gently against my mouth. “If you flunk out this December, you're apt to be in the jungle next December. You need to think about that, Pete. It's one thing for Sully. He thinks it's right and
he
wants
to go. You don't know what you want or what you think, and you won't as long as you keep running those cards.”

“Hey, I took the Goldwater sticker off my car, didn't I?” It sounded foolish to my own ears.

She said nothing.

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. I have a ticket on the four o'clock Trailways bus to New York. The Harwich stop isn't more than three blocks from my front door.”

“Are you leaving from Derry?”

“Yes.”

“Can I drive you to the depot? I could pick you up at your dorm around three.”

She considered it, then nodded . . . but I saw a shaded look in her eyes. It was hard to miss, because those eyes were usually so wide and guileless. “That would be good,” she said. “Thank you. And I didn't lie to you, did I? I told you we might be temporary.”

I sighed. “Yeah.” Only this was a lot more temporary than I had been expecting.

“Now, Number Six: We want . . . 
information
.”

“You won't get it.” It was hard to sound as tough as Patrick McGoohan in
The Prisoner
when you still felt like crying, but I did my best.

“Even if I ask pretty please?” She took my hand, slipped it inside her sweater, placed it on her left breast. The part of me which had begun to swoon snapped immediately back to attention.

“Well  . . .”

“Have you ever done it before? I mean, all the way? That's the information I want.”

I hesitated. It's a question most boys find difficult,
I imagine, and one most lie about. I didn't want to lie to Carol. “No,” I said.

She slipped daintily out of her panties, tossed them over into the back seat, and laced her fingers together behind my neck. “I have. Twice. With Sully. I don't think he was very good at it . . . but he'd never been to college. You have.”

My mouth felt very dry, but that must have been an illusion, because when I kissed her our mouths were wet; they slipped all around, tongues and lips and nipping teeth. When I could talk I said, “I'll do my best to share my college education.”

“Put on the radio,” she said, unbuckling my belt and unsnapping my jeans. “Put on the radio, Pete, I like the oldies.”

So I put on the radio and I kissed her and there was a spot, a certain spot, her fingers guided me to it and there was a moment when I was the same old same old and then there was a new place to be. She was very warm in there. Very warm and very tight. She whispered in my ear, her lips tickling against the skin: “Slow. Eat every one of your vegetables and maybe you'll get dessert.”

Jackie Wilson sang “Lonely Teardrops” and I went slow. Roy Orbison sang “Only the Lonely” and I went slow. Wanda Jackson sang “Let's Have a Party” and I went slow. Mighty John did an ad for Brannigan's, Derry's hottest bottle club, and I went slow. Then she began to moan and it wasn't her fingers on my neck but her nails digging into it, and when she began to move her hips up against me in short hard thrusts I couldn't go slow and then The Platters were on the radio, The Platters were singing
“Twilight Time” and she began to moan that she hadn't known, hadn't had a
clue
, oh gee, oh Pete, oh
gee
, oh
Jesus
, Jesus
Christ
, Pete, and her lips were all over my mouth and my chin and my jaw, she was frantic with kisses. I could hear the seat creaking, I could smell cigarette smoke and the pine air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, and by then
I
was moaning, too, I don't know what, The Platters were singing “Each day I pray for evening just to be with you,” and then it started to happen. The pump turns on in ecstasy. I closed my eyes, I held her with my eyes closed and went into her that way, that way you do, shaking all over, hearing the heel of my shoe drumming against the driver's-side door in a spastic tattoo, thinking that I could do this even if I was dying, even if I was dying, even if I was dying; thinking also that it was information. The pump turns on in ecstasy, the cards fall where they fall, the world never misses a beat, the queen hides, the queen is found, and it was all information.

The next morning I had a brief meeting with my Geology instructor, who told me I was “edging into a grave situation.”
That is not exactly new information, Number Six
, I thought of telling him, but didn't. The world looked different this morning—both better and worse.

When I got back to Chamberlain I found Nate getting ready to leave for home. He had his suitcase
in one hand. There was a sticker on it that said
I CLIMBED MT. WASHINGTON.
Slung over his shoulder was a duffel full of dirty clothes. Like everything else, Nate looked different now.

“Have a good Thanksgiving, Nate,” I said, opening my closet and starting to yank out pants and shirts at random. “Eat lots of stuffing. You're too fuckin skinny.”

“I will. Cranberry dressing, too. When I was at my most homesick that first week, my mom's dressing was practically all I could think about.”

I filled my own suitcase, thinking that I could take Carol to the bus depot in Derry and then just keep on going. If the traffic on Route 136 wasn't too heavy, I could be home before dark. Maybe even stop in Frank's Fountain for a mug of rootbeer before heading up Sabbatus Road to the house. Suddenly being out of this place—away from Chamberlain Hall and Holyoke Commons, away from the whole damned University—was my number-one priority.
You're confused, Pete
, Carol had said in the car last night.
You don't know what you want or what you think, and you won't as long as you keep running those cards
.

Well, this was my chance to get away from the cards. It hurt to know Carol was leaving, but I'd be lying if I said that was foremost in my mind right then. At that moment, getting away from the third-floor lounge was. Getting away from The Bitch.
If you flunk out this December, you're apt to be in the jungle next December
. Be in touch, baby, seeya, as Skip Kirk usually put it.

When I latched the suitcase shut and looked around, Nate was still standing in the doorway. I jumped and let out a little squeak of surprise. It was like being visited by Banquo's fucking ghost.

“Hey, go on, bug out,” I said. “Time and tide wait for no man, not even one in pre-dent.”

Nate only stood there, looking at me. “You're going to flunk out,” he said.

Again I thought of how weirdly alike Nate and Carol were, almost male and female sides of the same coin. I tried to smile, but Nate didn't smile back. His face was small and white and pinched. The perfect Yankee face. You see a skinny guy who always burns instead of tanning, whose idea of dressing up includes a string tie and a liberal application of Vitalis, a guy who looks like he hasn't had a decent shit in three years, and that guy was most likely born and raised north of White River, New Hampshire. And on his deathbed his last words are apt to be “Cranberry dressing.”

“Nah,” I said. “Don't sweat it, Natie. All's cool.”

“You're going to flunk out,” he repeated. Dull, bricky color was rising in his cheeks. “You and Skip are the best guys I know, there wasn't anybody in high school like you guys, not in
my
high school at least, and you're going to flunk out and it's so
stupid
.”

“I'm
not
going to flunk out,” I said . . . but since last night I had found myself accepting the idea that I
could
. I wasn't just
edging
into a grave situation; man, I was there. “Skip, either. It's under control.”

“The world's falling down and you two are flunking out of school over Hearts! Over a
stupid fuckin card-game!
”

Before I could say anything else he was gone, headed back up the county for turkey and his mom's stuffing. Maybe even a through-the-pants handjob from Cindy. Hey, why not? It was Thanksgiving.

I don't read my horoscope, have rarely watched
The X-Files
, have
never
called the Psychic Friends Hotline, but I nevertheless believe that we all get glimpses of the future from time to time. I got one that afternoon, when I pulled up in front of Franklin Hall in my brother's old station wagon: she was already gone.

I went inside. The lobby, where there were usually eight or nine gentlemen callers sitting in the plastic chairs, looked oddly empty. A housekeeper in a blue uniform was vacuuming the industrial-strength rug. The girl behind the counter was reading a copy of
McCall's
and listening to the radio. ? and The Mysterians, as a matter of fact. Cry cry cry, baby, 96 tears.

“Pete Riley for Carol Gerber,” I said. “Can you buzz her?”

She looked up, put her magazine aside, and gave me a sweet, sympathetic look. It was the look of a doctor who has to tell you gee, sorry, the tumor's inoperable. Bad luck, man, better make friends with Jesus. “Carol said she had to leave early. She took the Black Bear Shuttle to Derry. But she told me you'd be by and asked me to give you this.”

She handed me an envelope with my name written across the front. I thanked her and left Franklin with it in my hand. I went down the walk and stood for a moment by my car, looking across toward Holyoke Commons, fabled Palace on the Plains and home of the horny hotdog man. Below it, in Bennett's Run, leaves flew before the wind in rattling drifts. The bright colors had gone out of them; only November's dark
brown was left. It was the day before Thanksgiving, the doorstep of winter in New England. The world was all wind and cold sunshine. I had started crying again. I could tell by the warmth on my cheeks. 96 tears, baby; cry cry cry.

I got into the car where I had lost my virginity the night before and opened the envelope. There was a single sheet of paper inside. Brevity is the soul of wit, according to Shakespeare. If it's true, then Carol's letter was witty as hell.

Dear Pete
,