Real Live Boyfriends (5 page)

Sunny Meadows was a day camp connected to Nora’s church. She was a sports leader for them that summer, until August, when her parents would take her to Decatur Island.

“That’s great,” I said.

“He goes to Lakeside,” she said. “His name is—

don’t laugh.”

“What?”

“Say you won’t laugh.”

“I won’t laugh.”

“His name is Happy. Happy Mackenzie.”

I had heard of Happy Mackenzie, actually. He was stroke for the Lakeside heavy eight, and Jackson, who was a rower, had been at some kind of crew team sports intensive with him. It’s not the kind of name people forget.

“And is it a thing thing?” I asked.

“We went out twice last week,” Nora said. “And I see him every day at Sunny Meadows. So yeah.”

“A thing thing.”

“Pretty much so.” She grinned.

Nora has never had a boyfriend her whole entire life. Not that she isn’t attractive—she’s got gorgeous curls and huge boobs and she understands basketball, plus she can bake—but somehow she’s never gone out with anyone. “That’s really great,” I said.

This was like, the most generic thing anyone could say in such a situation, but Nora and I had been angry at each other for so long I didn’t feel like I could just dive in and interrogate her about Happy’s kissing ability or his giant crew muscles or any of the things I would normally want to know about.

“Did you read about the gay male penguins at the Chinese zoo?” I asked.

Nora looked at me funny. “No.”

“Yeah, well, there are gay penguins. That’s a documented fact. But these particular gay penguins kept trying to steal eggs from the straight penguins.” Nora looked at me like: where was I going with this?

“They would steal an egg and leave behind a rock as substitute,” I continued. “To try and trick the biological parents. Then the gay ones would adopt the egg. Zookeepers kept taking away the egg and giving it back to the bio parents, and they kept stealing another one, again and again.”

Nora shook her head in disbelief.

“It’s true,” I said. “Finally the gay couple had to be segregated from the other penguins with a little picket fence, because they wouldn’t stop trying to get a baby of their own.”

“Okay. What’s the point?”

“The point is, they shouldn’t have done what they were doing, and even though they were penguins, they probably knew it; I mean, they were doing the worst, meanest possible thing to their friends and neighbors—but they just couldn’t stop, because they wanted a baby so, so desperately.”

“What happened?” asked Nora.

“Well, for a while they were ostracized, but finally zookeepers gave them an egg to take care of, from a straight penguin couple that had rejected one. And the gay penguins were so happy! They turned out to be excellent dads.”

“Cool.” Nora shifted from side to side.

“I mean, penguins in general are excellent dads.

The dads hatch the eggs, pretty much. But my point is these guys weren’t sociopaths or crazy penguins or anything. They just couldn’t behave like normal people when they wanted a baby more than anything in the world. It was like the intense wanting made them psycho.”

“Ruby.”

“What?”

“You still haven’t gotten to the point.”

“I’m the gay Chinese penguins,” I said. “That’s the point.”

“What?”

“I know what it’s like to want something so desperately you feel like you can’t stop trying to get it,” I explained, “even when it’s not supposed to be yours.

I know what it’s like to do something wrong, really wrong, because you want the thing so badly you can’t help it. And I know what it’s like to have everyone hate you for doing it too.”

“People can help things,” said Nora quietly. “Saying you couldn’t help it isn’t fair.”

Ouch.

“You made a choice to take Noel,” she said. “Don’t act like it wasn’t a choice.”

Okay.

Was that true?

Can people help behaving badly? Are we always able to say no?

My uncle Hanson can no longer help himself.

Alcohol grips him and makes him do things—like it’s bigger than him and he’s weak in comparison with it.

But shouldn’t he be stronger? Shouldn’t he quit, or join a program, or get therapy, or something? Is he, in some way,
choosing
alcoholism the way Nora was saying I chose to pursue Noel?

If you think the person can’t help it, you can forgive him more easily.

If you think the person
should
help it, you get angry.

But if you think the person can’t help it, they’re probably not going to change.

And if you think he
should
help it, there’s some hope.

“Maybe it’s easier for some people to help things than others,” I said to Nora. “I think it’s easier for you than for a lot of people.”

“Possibly,” said Nora. “But I don’t think the penguins should have stolen eggs.”

Part of me wanted to say: You should have forgiven me ages ago. You should have tried harder to understand me. Noel never liked you back, so he was never yours to start with.

But then I thought: She came to the funeral. And I am not at all sure that after everything that happened between us, I would have come if it was
Nora’s
grandma who died.

For all her rules and accusations, Nora is definitely the kind of person who will show up at a funeral. And say the right thing. And bring flowers.

She had done that today. Which was something like an apology.

So I decided not to ask for another.

“I’m sorry I’m a gay Chinese penguin,” I said.

We looked around, and most of the cars had cleared out, driving over to the cemetery. The lawn in front of the funeral parlor was empty.

“Do you have the car?” Nora asked.

“No. My parents ditched me,” I said.

“So you need a ride?”

“Uh-huh.”

We got into Nora’s car, which was a silver Saab—

very clean except for a back window cluttered with stickers that read EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE, TATE PREP B-BALL and other team-spirited-type things. We couldn’t see any of the procession that was heading out, but we had directions on a printed sheet of paper from the undertaker, so Nora pulled into traffic.

It was awkward in the car.

We didn’t know what to say to each other.

It wasn’t clear if we could really be friends or if being on speaking terms was the best we could hope for.

We pulled into the line of cars as it was entering the cemetery. Moving slowly, we snaked through and eventually stopped near a path that led up to an open grave with a coffin beside it. Grandma’s friends began to get out of their cars. All wearing black, they walked gingerly up the steep pathway. A few of them were crying. Others were chitchatting. I looked for Noel, Hutch and Meghan, but I couldn’t see them. That was probably for the best, since having Noel and Nora together would have made things even more awkward than they were.

“I need to give my condolences to your parents,” said Nora.

“They’re probably up at the top already,” I said. “We were the last car.”

Nora and I trudged up the hill in silence. Some of Grandma’s friends moved very slowly, and it didn’t seem right to pass them. When we got to the top, we gathered round the grave. It was crowded enough that I couldn’t really see, but I half listened to a funeral home guy read a passage from the Bible.

I thought about Grandma Suzette and how she loved me even though she didn’t really know what went on in my life. How she didn’t know how neurotic I could be, or how bad things had gotten with my friends, or what my sense of humor was really like.

She just knew I was Ruby, and my face looked like my dad’s, and she loved me ’cause I was her grandchild.

My actual personality didn’t much matter.

I was crying and Nora was giving me a tissue when we heard the pastor say: “Alvin Hyman Fudgewick, may you rest in peace.”

Wait.

Alvin Hyman Fudgewick?

We were in the wrong place.

In the wrong line of cars, at the wrong grave site, in the right cemetery, at the wrong funeral.

Alvin Hyman Fudgewick’s.

“Alvin Hyman Fudgewick is not my grandma,” I whispered to Nora. I grabbed her elbow. We walked away as quickly as we possibly could, before bursting into smothered laughter at the bottom of the hill.

“Quiet!” whispered Nora. “Alvin Hyman Fudgewick is dead and he would not like us laughing at his funeral.”

I snorted. “We are horrible people. I can’t believe we’re laughing.”

“Where is your family?”

“I have no idea.”

“Should we look for them?”

“Probably. Shal we tell them about Alvin?”

“You can’t call him Alvin,” said Nora. “You don’t even know him. You have to call him Mr. Fudgewick.”

“I cried at his funeral. I think I can call him Alvin.” Nora paused. Then she just said: “Alvin Hyman Fudgewick.”

I burst out laughing.

We got back into Nora’s car and drove around the cemetery. Whenever it seemed too quiet, or there was a pause in the conversation, one of us would say

“Alvin Hyman Fudgewick” and we’d collapse into

giggles.

It was me and Nora.

Not the way we had been. We might not ever be like that again.

But laughing, which is something we’d always been good at together.

Alvin Hyman Fudgewick.

Alvin Hyman Fudgewick.

Eventually, we found my family, far at the other end of the graveyard.

My dad was sobbing on Hutch’s shoulder.

Grandma Suzette was already in the ground.

Uncle Hanson was drinking from a flask, sitting on the hood of his rental car.

My mom was furious with me.

I didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

Another video clip:

Hutch is in Kevin Oliver’s greenhouse repotting a bonsai tree. His haircut is growing out and he has it tied off his face with a blue bandana. His acne flares in the summer heat, so his forehead and chin look swol en and irritated.

Roo: (behind the camera) I’m asking
people to define words for me. It’s a project
for my film school applications. You’re my
first victim
.

Hutch: Rock on
.

Roo: So. What’s your definition of love?

Hutch: (laughs) Nature’s way of tricking
people into reproducing
.

Roo: Come on
.

Hutch: A reason people kill themselves
.

Roo: Ahem. Would you like to know why
you’re single?

Hutch: (smiles regretfully) Oh, I know why
I’m single
.

Hutch has been going to school with me since kindergarten. He’s been a roly-poly1 since seventh grade due to a tragic case of acne, the cruelty of middle schoolers and a tendency to quote retro metal lyrics

in

place

of

making

ordinary

human

conversation. He works for my dad as an assistant gardener, and somehow we’ve become friends.

Just from proximity, I guess.

And because everyone else at Tate Prep shuns us.

Anyway, Hutch is funny, once he starts talking. He doesn’t like his parents much, and they don’t seem to like him either, since they never come to any school events. He seems to think hanging out with my dad and eating raw food for dinner at our house is preferable to whatever he might be doing at home, so he’s around a fair amount. I’m taking his cinematic education in hand. We made our own documentary film festival that we named The Kirk Hammett Festival of Truth and Glory, Hammett being Hutch’s favorite guitar player and subject of the best movie in our whole series:
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
, which is all about a dysfunctional metal band in group psychotherapy. We also saw this film about a guy who lived with grizzly bears (until they ate him) and another about all the incredible grossness of fast food.2

More from the Hutch interview in the greenhouse:
Roo: What’s your definition of popularity?

Hutch: I used to think people were popular
because they were good-looking, or nice, or
funny, or good at sports
.

Roo: Aren’t they?

Hutch: I’d think, If I could just be those
things, I’d—you know—have more friends
than I do. But in seventh grade, when
Jackson and those guys stopped hanging
out with me, I tried as hard as I could to get
them to like me again. But then … (shaking
his head as if to clear it) I don’t really wanna
talk about it
.

Roo: What happened?

Hutch: They just did some ugly stuff to me
is all. And really, it was for the best
.

Roo: Why?

Hutch: Because I was cured. I realized the
popular people weren’t nice or funny or
great-looking. They just had power, and
they actually got the power by teasing
people or humiliating them—so people
bonded to them out of fear
.

Roo: Oh
.

Hutch: I didn’t want to be a person who
could act like that. I didn’t want to ever
speak
to any person who could act like that
.