Rats Saw God (16 page)

You know in movies how they speed through the sickening falling-in-love thing by showing clips of the couple walking along the beach holding hands, studying together until one of the wiseacres tosses a pillow at the other, riding a two-seated bicycle in the rain? Feel free to insert said footage now, though I don't think we did any of that, and I'm positive in regard to the two-seated bicycle. My recollection is we made out a lot and talked on the phone.

I conceded York Manor entirely to the astronaut and began spending all my time at the Varners'. Francis ran his own advertising firm called Solutions! and Maureen was an editor for
Texas Monthly,
but they both arranged ways to make it home for dinner. Francis cooked—pasta for the most part—and the women of the house cleaned. None of them, he claimed, could boil water. Neither Wanda, Maureen, nor Dub's older sister, Sylvia, took offense at his assertion. The ironic aspect, I always thought, was that given the first names of the Varner women, they really should have opened a diner. (Dub explained to me sometime later that she and her sister had both been named for famed great-great aunts, key players in the suffrage movement.) The novelty of parents younger than forty never lost its
power to astonish me. Francis blasted his complete Rolling Stones CD collection over a state-of-the-art Yamaha stereo system. This despite Dub's and my phony studying at the dining room table aimed at disguising the serious footsy action below. I could see him in the kitchen air-guitaring “Can't You Hear Me Knockin.'” It took several scoldings from the Varner elders before I would refer to them by their first names.

At school, anyone who cared could have recognized that the two of us were a couple. We walked each other to class. We went to lunch together. We shared our lockers. But, please, we weren't one of those couples attempting conception against the classroom doors, stretching salivary umbilical cords every time they parted.

•   •   •

“So when am I going to meet your little girlfriend?”

The astronaut smirked at me. If there had been any doubt in his mind when he asked the question whether I did, in fact, have a girlfriend, my hand-in-the-cookie-jar reaction erased it. In the three weeks I had been seeing Dub, neither she nor I had called the other girl/boyfriend. I admit I liked her being referred to by that title.

“She's not my girlfriend. She's just a friend,” I lied. I screwed the lid back on the jar of mayonnaise we had been sharing.

“Well, you're sure spending a lot of time with her,” he said, sealing the Baggie of sliced turkey. “I think it's great that you're starting to take an interest in girls.”

Like I had just noticed them.

The astronaut was in his pajamas (tops and bottoms). He
had come back downstairs for a midnight snack at the same time I was returning from a night at the Cineplex. I was surprised he had been able to deduce anything about my personal life. I had always assumed that Mom briefed him about his children's affairs while he listened absently and requested more coffee over the morning sports page.

“I'd like to meet her. Even if she is only a friend.”

Why?
I thought.
So you could disapprove of her, too?
But I said nothing. I filled my mouth with sandwich and gave a noncommittal grunt.

The bullfrog-deep voice, the clipped and precise diction, left no doubt about the identity of the caller. My only previous conversation with the astronaut came long distance at Christmas. He spent his holiday at his soon-to-be in-laws' in North Carolina; I spent mine in San Diego. He called to thank Sarah for the monogrammed, leather racquetball gym bag and me for the shirt (Sarah picked it out; I paid for it). I thanked him for the shirt (a bronze, polished cotton Perry Ellis with jade buttons, the stylishness of which left no doubt his fiancée had picked it out).

This time he called expressly to talk to me.

“Steve, congratulations. I just heard.”

“About what?”

“About being named a Merit finalist. That's very impressive.”

Where was he going with this? I took note of his phrasing: “very impressive,” not “great” or “I'm proud of you.” Nope, his concern was with how other people would view the accomplishment.

“I just got lucky,” I said.

“Nonsense, you've got great blood. Your mother is a very smart lady.” He chuckled, but I heard something in his voice, something unfamiliar. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was uneasiness—a condition on which I thought I had the York monopoly. He continued, “So where are you thinking of going to school?”

“Dunno.”

He didn't speak immediately. I figured he was contemplating how hard he could push me about the right college or whether he should shoot for a reverse psychology approach and conspicuously avoid the subject. When he eventually spoke, I understood it was neither.

“Steve, I have a favor to ask.”

I didn't respond.

“I was hoping you would be the best man at my wedding.”

Certainly not,
I wanted to say.
What makes you think I would? Is your life really so pathetic that you'd feel compelled to ask me? Isn't there some other fastidious, fascist, jet jockey who'd consider it an honor to be in an American hero's wedding? God, don't you have any friends?
Deeply perturbed and disoriented by this conversation, I gazed out the sliding glass doors leading to the back porch, wishing I could escape through them. Beyond was the Pacific, a vast gray-green slate crawling with bright reflections from the low hanging sun. The orange glow of the horizon reminded me of my second date with Dub, a kite lodged behind my backseat… just in case. I felt tears sneaking in behind my eyes.

“I'll probably have college orientation around that time,” I
said. It was a lame excuse: Most colleges run orientations all summer.

“It's a standing invitation,” the astronaut said. “Let me know… when you know something for sure.” Again I thought I heard anxiety in his voice, but I didn't have time to consider the ramifications—I was about to lose it.

“All right,” I said. I hung up immediately. I ran up to my room and pulled the Battleship game down from the shelf in my closet.

My girlfriend spoon-fed me another bite of Banana Pudding Blizzard as I lay across her lap in the El Camino in the Dairy Queen parking lot. We had become an official couple—licensed to use the terms
boyfriend
and
girlfriend
—a week earlier. Our geometry teacher, Mrs. Lanigan, had called us down for the second time, not very aggressively—we were both acing her class—but she croaked something about hating having couples in her class. This elicited an obligatory
ooooh
chorus. Exiting the classroom, Dub assured Mrs. Lanigan that she would try to keep her “boyfriend” in line. After that, we quit correcting acquaintances who spoke of us in those terms. The two of us never discussed it.

“Why don't you get along with your father?” Dub asked, shoveling another bite in my mouth. The ice cream gave me time to frame my answer eruditely.

“He's a dick.”

“Thank you for that contemplative and comprehensive assessment.” She tapped my nose with the dripping plastic spoon.

“What do you want to know?”

“He must have done something to you; you hate him so much.”

I sat up and faced her. “I can't stand the fact he's in better shape than me. I hate it that he buys American. He watches CNN nonstop. He drinks bottled water. He reads the entire newspaper, section by section, and he folds it back the way it was delivered. He thinks it's normal to work sixteen hours a day. He's never air-guitared the Rolling Stones. Hell, I don't think he knows who they are.”

“Well, I can see what you mean. I don't see how you put up with it.”

“Okay, those are just the things that piss me off on a day-to-day basis. You want to know what really gets me?” She nodded. “I always feel like I'm disappointing him, like he's waiting for his share of the gene pool to kick in. I'm sure he thinks that one day I'm going to rush into a burning building and save an orphan's life or jump out of the stands at a football game and run back a punt for the winning touchdown, and then he'll finally know, ‘Yep, that's my boy.'”

“Would you even tell him if you saved an orphan?”

“Hell, no. I'd lose my only weapon against him… if he were proud of me.” The conversation was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for me. I sat up and put my key in the ignition.

“So why do you need a weapon?”

“Because of what he did to Mom.”

“Which is… ?”

“He stole from her. Years of her life she can never get
back. He treated her like a show pony who did the dishes. I'm just happy that she finally got rid of him, and you know what? I don't think the astronaut even saw it coming.”

“Sarah doesn't seem to have a problem with him.
She
even calls him Dad.”

“Sarah's a couple years younger than me. She doesn't remember everything as clearly as I do.” I turned up the stereo and drove us back to school.

“Yo, Bro!”

The Wakefield hallways were jammed and I couldn't see Sarah, but I knew she was out there somewhere. I spotted her on the third step of the stairs leading to the foreign language classrooms. She beckoned me like an overanimated traffic cop—the kind you see only in television commercials.

“You are a stud!” she said when I got near enough.

“Yes… and?” I did the rotating-backward handflip, implying more information should follow.

“Mom said I could go to the Pearl Jam concert.”

“Bonus,” I said, mimicking my idiot stoner friends.

“Yeah, whatever line you fed her, she swallowed it. But what really sold her was when I told her you'd be going with us.” Sarah fished two tickets out of her book bag and pressed them into my hand. “You owe me fifty bucks.”

I stopped tracing the letters that spell
I want you now
on Dub's back when I heard the announcement.