Lawnboy (4 page)

I began studying all night long. I began achieving perfect grades, throwing off the curve for the entire class. My teachers were amazed by me. Princeton, Stanford, Swarthmore, Michigan—all of them wanted me by the end of the year. I kept on going. I was giving myself up to the powers. I swam, I ran, I beat off constantly, sometimes so much that it stung to pee. I was burning, a saint, purifying myself in these blaring fires. A dream would often come to me, and I’d force the dream, force myself to watch it, though it made me sick. I’d be standing over my young self, the sweet, boyish, optimistic self, punching his face until his mouth fell open.

We were eating dinner one Saturday night. My mother stepped out, then back in the kitchen, holding a cake rimmed with candles. My father handed a wrapped present to me. Then I realized it must be my birthday. I’d completely forgotten all about my birthday.

“We’re so proud of you, Evan,” my mother said blankly. “You’re doing everything right.”

My father added: “I’m so glad you’ve changed.”

I nodded, smiled. I unwrapped my present and stared at the watch in the box. It meant nothing to me. I should have broken it right in front of their needy eyes.

“Thank you,” I said, and kissed them. Their foreheads were dry. I might have been kissing the brows of the dead.

Months passed. Jane and I were walking along the bay front. A new high-rise was being thrown up in record time, and we watched the construction workers in their orange hard hats stepping across the open girders. I’d just been offered a full scholarship to Princeton and I suppose we were celebrating that fact. I hadn’t even talked to Jane in seven, eight weeks. Somehow I’d learned to live without her in my life.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she said out of nowhere.

“Well, that’s a non sequitur.”

“I’m serious. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. I’ve never been better in my life.”

A green-eyed man with black hair jogged by us. He looked me up and down, grinned, then trotted ahead.

“Did you see that?” Jane said warmly. “Did you see the way he looked at you?”

“Faggot,” I muttered, and walked ahead of her.

“Hey!”
Something wet bounced and spread across my back. “That doesn’t sound like you. He was exactly your type. What’s with you?”

She annoyed me terribly. First her judgment, then her rancor. I watched the people walking by us. I watched their simpering, self-satisfied faces and threw a mental message to each one:
Fuck you.

“You’re changing,” she said quietly.

She sat down on a slatted bench. “You used to be so much fun. You used to have such an amazing sense of humor.”

“I was never funny.”

“Yes you were. And we always talked when things got bad. We buoyed each other.” She folded her arms over her chest, frowned. “Fucker,” she mumbled.

“Fucker?”

“You heard what I said.”

“Keep talking like that and I’m going to leave you right here.”

“So leave.”

It came as unexpectedly as a fish in a flooded street gutter. I glanced to my right and saw William sitting in his parked car, with newspaper and coffee cup. I didn’t think he was looking at me. He was simply another office worker spending his break in his car. The intensity of my argument with Jane diminished. I wasn’t scared or sick or excited. I’d known this moment would come, but I never thought it would be so dull. My vision went runny; my words sounded stupid in my mouth. I might have been sitting on the mucky bottom of the bay. I glanced again, the car was gone, and I was afraid.

Why the hell hadn’t I said hello?

We didn’t speak for the longest time. A long train of motorcycles paraded past us down the street. When I looked back at Jane, her eyes were fixed upon a dead patch of grass. “What’s up?” I said finally.

“I don’t know. I was thinking about Mr. Hovnanian.” She tried to laugh a little, embarrassed. “Don’t ask me why. Remember that stuff about the eclipse?”

“Sure.”

It wasn’t so long ago: our tenth-grade class sitting before the TV, watching the total eclipse sweeping across North America. It was terribly, horribly beautiful, the quality of that darkness—birds falling silent, streetlights trembling on. Liquidy fires jetted around the rim. Then, just when the sky went dark and the corona shivered, Mr. Hovnanian switched off the set. “What makes you think that wasn’t a hoax? How did you know that that wasn’t a computer image, fabricated to drum up ratings?”

For weeks Jane seemed to take it personally, ineffably sad about the whole matter.

I said, “Is something wrong? You don’t seem like yourself.”

“Why am I thinking of tenth grade, for God’s sake? What’s gotten into me?”

We stared at a fallen tangelo while the heat crept into our scalps.

***

I couldn’t sleep. I felt something simmering in my body, a slow cooking, spreading up through the stem of my torso, then prickling, exploding in my throat like salad oil. I wanted to molt, I wanted to cut away the baggage of my skin. I kicked the wet covers off the bed, threw on some clothes, and left the house. I was going to walk it off. I was walking through developments, through people’s backyards in the dark, over culverts, canals, retention basins. Hours had passed. I passed airport runways with their raucous blue lights, sanitation plants vast as cities, signs fizzing and sparking, arrows pointing in all directions. Two towns over, the boat factory was working overtime, and the junky hot smell of plastic lingered in the atmosphere. A storm threatened from the Everglades, then receded, pushing the humidity even higher. I took off my shirt and roped it around my waist. I decided to walk and walk, possibly to the Keys, possibly to the Card Sound Bridge, until I finally got rid of this feeling.

Hours later I was standing in William’s front yard. I expected the lawn to be overgrown, ruined, bits of scale and dollarweed eating at the turf. But no. It looked even better than before. Moist, lush. I knew it: William had found another Lawnboy. I had lost him for good. I fumbled for some broken shells and started tossing them, one after another, at the glass of the window:
ping ping ping ping.

Was I ready to give myself over to desire?

I knew myself too well: hyped up, charged, I’d lose everything. I saw myself fretting, always looking for something other, something better, something outside myself. I saw myself utterly alone in the world, a gleaming wasp inside a bright orange hive, alone with my anguish and raging hot need, and who’d be there to still me?

Was there anyone else at that moment who knew the pressure and potential of changing everything? I raised my hand and linked myself up with him, the longing, imaginary one, then pressed forward, my fingertip upon the doorbell, standing on William’s front porch, waiting.

My childhood suitcase was a rude, bulky thing, its surface marred by chipping decals—Kennedy Space Center, South of the Border, Sunken Gardens—which recalled family travels too heartbreaking to ponder. The packing proved harder than I’d imagined: what to take, what to leave behind. Forever? Was that the way it was going to be? My stomach simmered and groaned. I wanted to get it over with before they knew I was leaving.

Down the hall my mother was cooking pot roast. I thought about the signifying implications of pot roast: convention, structure, clean right living.

“Get ready for dinner,” my father said.

He’d been standing at my door the entire time. I looked to the open window, thinking to toss the suitcase onto the hedge.
Don’t let him get to you.
I turned my back to him, pitching in some socks and shirts. He still had the power to scare me sometimes, and he knew it; it incensed him. Was he going to hit me again?

“Beautiful night,” he said, stepping into the room. He picked up a tiny statue of Grover Cleveland from my Hall of Presidents—something he’d given me for my tenth birthday. He’d stared at its bloated gaze as if he’d never seen it before.

“You’re right,” I replied.

“Front’s sweeping down from the Plains tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Highs in the eighties with a light north breeze.”

Tears burned in my eyes. Outside a Good Humor truck careened down the street.
Don’t you understand what’s happening?
I wanted to yell.

A complex expression drifted across his face: defiance, jealousy, regret, fatigue. He left for the kitchen. Seconds later liquid plashed inside a glass. “On the rocks,” I said, toasting my wall.

An ice cube popped, cracked. I waited until they were safely ensconced in their meal before I left through the mud room.
Bye, Mom,
I whispered.
Bye, Dad. I loved you once.
I hurried back to my room and shoved Grover Cleveland deep inside my pocket.

***

Traffic roared past me on the street. Palms thrashed in the wind. I felt criminal and delicious, imagining a stocking cap pulled down over my face. I half expected the police to pull up, to ask me questions, to search through my belongings before taking me back home. Dogs barked as I passed. Lights flipped on in the windows. I pictured myself through someone else’s eyes: a hushed, hungry boy, feet flying in the dark, switching his leaden suitcase from hand to hand.

I knocked twice on William’s door. I watched him through the sidelight, his gestures frantic and distorted through the gold bubbled glass. He hurried from table to table, glancing under papers, feeling behind furniture. To my right, a white wicker chair rotted behind the bushes.

“Can I help you?” A lady in a paisley dressing gown hosed off a lavender Mercedes beneath the floodlights next door. She stepped toward me. Somewhere a bird—parakeet?—shrieked.

“No, I’m just—”

“Run along now,” she gestured. “He hates solicitors.”

William’s door flew open, almost knocking me off balance. “Evan,” he said.

“I’m taking you up on your offer.”

He glanced down at my suitcase, a swab of shaving cream beneath his left ear.
What offer?
he might have said. He stood there in a pink polo shirt and tight, tight 501s. A splash too much cologne.

“I know this seems hasty,” I laughed.

“Yes, but—”

“Didn’t you say I always had a place?”

“I wish you’d called,” he said, his eyes vaguely stricken.

My scalp felt tight. I kissed him. Awkwardly, I missed his mouth, pecking his warm whiskered neck. I tried again, inhaling his shirt this time: crushed plants, limes, beer foam. I turned my cheek against his chest.

“Listen,” he said. “I have to find my keys. I’ve been looking for a half hour.”

We stepped through the front door. “You’ll find them,” I murmured. I glanced down at a pulled loop in the aqua rug. An emptiness, wide as a body, opened inside me. I saw myself falling inside the body, reeling, tumbling, swallowed up by it.

“Welcome,” he said, lips on my mouth. That was it, that was all I needed. Heat saturated my face, trickling down my spine to my groin, toes. I felt larger, warmer. Heaven. My leg muscles glowed.

“Jesus,”
I mumbled.

“Are you okay?” he said suddenly.

“Mmmm, hallelujah.”

“You look a little crazed.” His forehead creased. He tested the weight of my suitcase. “God, what’s in here?”

I tried to recover myself. “Stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“You know, books, clothes—” I shrugged. “Scary, huh?”

“Sorry. If only I could find those keys.”

We stared at each other until he couldn’t hold my gaze.

“Let’s see what you think of this,” he said finally.

I followed him down the hall. Claws scratched behind a wooden door, and William opened it to let the Dobermans—Pedro and Mrs. Fox—lick wet tracks on my shirt. He gestured to the utility room, a converted laundry, with smelly green carpeting and water-stained magazines along the walls. I glanced at the titles:
Bee Culture, Modern Liturgy, Physique Pictorial, Tom of Finland’s Loggers.
Beside the futon an uncapped pipe jutted through the floor. I stared at him. “Not here,” I said.

His eyes brightened, then dimmed. He rubbed at his forearm, as if warming himself.

I reached out for his shoulder. “But I wanted to sleep with
you.
”

He wagged his head. “Listen, we’ll talk about it later. I have to leave for a few hours. There’s a zoning-board meeting at seven.”

“You’re leaving now?”

“Have to. I don’t want to see those condos approved. Once that starts the whole neighborhood goes.”

“But what about your keys?”

He glanced at his watch. “I’ll walk.
Jog,
” he said. “There’s pancake mix in the fridge, sausages on the stove. Be back by ten.” And then he pressed a fist into my rib cage.

I sat on the futon with my head in my hands. The dogs drooled clear strings upon my sneakers. “No biscuit,” I said. “No biscuit.”

***

I hurried about the kitchen, opening cabinets, drawers. As my cooking repertoire consisted of sandwiches, spaghetti, and instant chilled puddings, I was in trouble. Still, I gathered what I could find—blue mesquite chips, party dip, cut vegetables—and arranged them on the coffee table. I clipped some ginger lilies from the garden and put on an old-fashioned party hat, a silver cone with an elastic string. It wasn’t Joe’s Stone Crab, but at least it was something. I sat with my feet up on the coffee table, waiting.

By ten o’clock my eyes felt the weight of their lids. By ten-forty-five they felt scratchy, hot in their sockets. My week had been wearing, and I stretched myself out on the couch, too rattled for sleep. The next thing I knew the front doorknob was shaking. Burglars? I bolted upright on the couch, panting. 12:45 a.m.

“What’s this?” he said.

I looked up at him, rubbing the silt from my eyes. The silver cone lay by my side, dented.

He gave an appreciative smile. “A little shindig, a little wingding.”

“What took you so long?”

“Ugh,”
he said. He undid his pink polo shirt and flopped into the sofa beside me. “Relentless. This woman, some ex-colonel from the military, actually insisted that condos were going to upgrade the neighborhood. She monopolized the floor for twenty minutes. Imagine—cheap townhouses trucked in from Indiana. Forget about mangroves. Forget about roseate spoonbills. ‘You can’t stop progress,’” he mimicked.