Riding In Cars With Boys (9 page)

Beatrice and I smoked some pot, then rode the Fer ris wheel. Then we saw a trailer advertising Siamese twins. Inside there were two boys around my age, attached at the hips. They sat back to back watching the same shows on separate TVs. The pink printed sheet we were handed at the door said they were born that way and that their parents had put them in the carnival to help pay for college. The twins just sat there, their eyes riveted on their TVs, as though they were completely unaware that hundreds of people were walking behind a rope in their living room, gawking. I felt so sad after I saw those twins, I wanted to cry. The twins, I knew, would never go to college. I got the idea that maybe the next day I could drop by, real early, before the carnival opened, and make friends with them. Have a real talk, maybe about books. I didn’t tell Beatrice any of this. I just said I felt depressed. She said, “Me too.”

We drove back to my house, where Peter Dodd had said he might stop later.

Ocho Perez’s truck was in the driveway, which meant some of the guys from the Animal Pack were probably with Raymond.

When we walked in, Raymond was in the rocker and three guys dressed in black and blue sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch. I only knew Ocho Perez, who was in the middle, his thumbs in his belt, his head on his chest, snoozing with everyone else. Raymond heard the screen door slam, pulled his head up, opened his eyes, which took a while to focus, then he blinked at the TV. It was flashing silver specks. “Hey, man,” he said. “Why don’t one a you change the fucking channel?”

“Why don’t you change the channel, man?” Ocho said when he pulled his head up too.

“It’s my house, man. My TV. You want to watch it, you change it.”

“For Christ’s sake,” I said, embarrassed at Raymond’s rudeness. “What channel do you want? I’ll change it.”

“Shit, Bev,” Ray said. “You home?”

I whispered to Beatrice in the kitchen that I thought the pot was making Raymond retarded.

“Do you think it can?” Beatrice asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. But they’re all like that. Look at them.”

“Maybe they’re just tired,” she said.

“I don’t know what from. None of them work.”

“What’s dat show?” one of the guys said.

“I don’t know,” Raymond said.

“Ain’t that Clint Eastwood?”

“Shit, man,” Ocho said. “If that’s Clint Eastwood, I’m John Wayne.”

“John Wayne?” Raymond guffawed. “Try Sal Mineo.” Ocho was small and dark and Puerto Rican, just about the only one in town.

“That ain’t Clint Eastwood, man. That’s what’s his face,” the other guy said. “You know, man.
The Rifleman.”

“That was a good show,” Raymond said.

“It sucked,” Ocho said.

I rolled my eyes at Beatrice.

Peter Dodd came in the front door, and Raymond said, “Pete, my man.” The guys on the couch just looked at him.

“Hey, Ray, how’s it going,” Pete said. “Bev, Beatrice.” He smiled, walking toward the kitchen. The guys on the sofa obviously didn’t know or didn’t like Peter, and vice versa. This made me uneasy.

I decided it was time Raymond found some work and stopped hanging out with the Animal Pack.

The next day I suggested he look for some kind of part-time job, maybe under the table so he could still collect unemployment, and mentioned that the motorcycle we’d been hotly awaiting seemed stalled indefinitely. Ray’s reports on the state of the bike went like this: First the guy wasn’t sure he wanted to sell it after all; then Raymond decided the guy should fix the exhaust before we handed over any money; then the guy cracked up the front fender and didn’t have the bucks to fix it; and on and on. I told Ray we should take this opportunity to stockpile some money for our trip across country.

To my surprise, Raymond agreed with me and went out nearly every day looking for work. It was a drag not to have a car and boring to be stuck home alone with Jason again. There was only so much you could do with such a little kid. We danced to
Sgt. Pepper,
the “White Album,”
Abbey Road.
I lay on the floor and he sat on my belly. I pushed his features around like his skin was made of Play-Doh. He touched his finger to my eye and said, “Nose.” I said, “Eye.” We played patty cake, this little piggy, itsy bitsy spider. He tried to sing along. I bent my knees and stood him on my feet and lifted him high in the air like an acrobat, which made him laugh and fall forward so I’d catch him. Jason spent as many waking hours on my lap as off it. When he napped, I read and then reread
Rebecca
and dreamed about living in a mansion and having no children, just a maid who ran my bath while I sat at my desk every morning and answered letters with a gold pen.

Then one day Ray left home around noon as usual and didn’t return till nine in the evening. I was a little worried, but mostly I was bored to death and had such a craving for a Dairy Queen ice cream cone I thought I’d go out of my mind. Of course there was no way to get a Dairy Queen without a car or a baby-sitter, and watching that clock creep forward little by little, later and later, while I envisioned that vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles, made me furious. I was beside myself. It wasn’t like this was the only time he’d been too late for dinner lately, and always with some lame excuse like a flat tire. I was so pissed I couldn’t sit still. I thumbed through an old Life magazine that had pictures of all the dead soldiers who got it that week, but I couldn’t concentrate. I sat on the front stoop, but the Uglies were planting things on their side of the yard, so I went back in and shuffled through our records. I pulled out the Jefferson Airplane album Raymond had bought. We’d had an agreement that we couldn’t buy anything because money was too tight. I said, “Raymond, I thought we agreed.”

“I didn’t buy it. Ocho gave it to me.”

“He just gave you a brand new record?” It was still sealed in cellophane.

“It was a present,” he said. Later I found a receipt from Spinner Records in his pocket. There were other records too—Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Led Zeppelin, but they were used. Did Ocho Perez really just lay them on Raymond out of the goodness of his Animal Pack heart?

Thinking like this just added fuel to the fire, so when Ray finally rolled in, I was fuming. I ran to the door and locked it.

Ray broke the window with his fist to unlock it.

I thought about the Uglies watching outside and would’ve giggled if I wasn’t so crazy with fury. I stomped into the kitchen, then handed Raymond a whisk broom and dustpan. He took it and began sweeping glass when he realized what he was doing and dropped the broom like a hot potato. “I don’t believe it. You fucking lock me out of my own house. My fucking hand’s bleeding. Then you give me a broom to sweep it up? You are a bitch, you know that?”

“Where were you, Raymond?” I said, determined not to believe a word he said.

“What is this, the Inquisition?”

“Let me guess. You ran over a dog and had to bring it to a vet.”

“I don’t have to take this.” He turned around and left.

Why did he always get the car? Wasn’t it both of ours? I kicked myself for not taking off first. I could’ve gotten a Dairy Queen, then gone to visit Beatrice.

From the moment Ray left until the moment he walked through the door at midnight, hunger, boredom, and frustration worked together to clear my head. I knew like a clairvoyant that Ray hadn’t been looking for work the past weeks and had probably been getting screwed up every day. I decided when Raymond returned I would talk to him calmly and maybe he’d tell me the truth.

When Raymond returned he bumped into the hassock, then slumped into the rocker. “You’ll never guess who I talked to tonight,” he said.

“Look, Raymond,” I said. “I don’t care if you don’t get a job. I’ve been thinking I like it better when you’re home anyway. But you’ve been lying, haven’t you?”

“Your old boyfriend Robby Costa…” I stopped short. Robby Costa was the first boy I’d ever kissed. I was in the eighth grade and we kissed on a hammock, then the next day when we went for a walk, he held my hand and rubbed his middle finger up and down my palm. It made me nauseous and I never went out with him again. “Robby Costa was not my boyfriend,” I said.

“That’s not what he says. He says, ‘That old lady of yours is a nice piece of ass.”’

I just looked at him.

“How am I supposed to feel when some guy tells me my old lady’s a nice piece of ass? That’s why I got fucked up.”

“You’re making this up.”

“Were you really a virgin or were you lying?”

I threw the first thing that came to hand, which happened to be Jason’s workbench with different-colored pegs. I threw it as hard as I could at his head. He deflected it with a forearm.

“Are you saying I wasn’t a virgin?” I was screaming now.

“All I want to know’s how am I supposed to feel?”

“How you feel?” I threw the contents of Jason’s toy box one by one. Raymond tried his best to dodge them. “I was a goddamn virgin when I fucked you and got fucking pregnant and ruined my life. You lousy son of a bitch. How dare you come in here and tell me some ass-wipe moron imbecile told you I’m a pig. Why didn’t you punch him out? You’re a wimp and a retard. I should’ve killed myself before I ever married you.” I was crying uncontrollably now. I was pum meling him with my fists now. He was backed up against the wall, blocking my blows. “Jesus, Beverly,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d get so upset.” I believed I could beat him up, tear him limb from limb, kill him with my bare hands, but he really looked sorry, and scared. I ran out the door and peeled out. I had to stop every mile or so because I was crying so hard I couldn’t see. I decided to kill myself and drove around looking for the right spot.

I found it by the old reservoir. A huge oak. But then I thought, What if I ram the car into it and I just total it then we won’t have any wheels, and I might get arrested and my father would kill me. Then I thought, And what about Jason? Do I want him to be raised by Raymond? To use double negatives when he speaks? Raymond probably wouldn’t even raise him. He’d give him to my parents or, worse, his mother. I got out of the car, leaned against the tree, then slid down the oak and sat with my back against it. Raymond obviously had brought up Robby Costa to deflect any blame from himself for not looking for work and for lying, and I’d fallen for it. But that Raymond could stoop so low as to accuse me of not being a virgin, when it was sex with him that had ruined my life, was unforgivable.

It was dawn when I got into bed.

“Hon?” he said.

I didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry.”

I ignored him.

“I know you were a virgin.”

Silence.

“I don’t know why I said that. I’m a loser. I’m no good. I wouldn’t blame you if you divorced me.”

“You are a loser.”

“You hate me.”

Silence.

“Bev?”

“All right. All right. All right. I don’t hate you, now can I go to sleep? And you get up with Jason.” Raymond fell right back to sleep. I inspected his arm for needle tracks, but there weren’t any.

When I got up at noon, Raymond looked like a ghost and so did Jason. Jason’s forehead was hot, so I took his temperature. It was one hundred degrees. I gave Raymond our last money—which was five dollars, until he got his unemployment check in a couple of days—to pick up some baby aspirin and orange juice. This was noon. By four o‘clock he still hadn’t shown, which I was figuring was grounds for murder, but Raymond wasn’t that much of a creep. Something bad must’ve happened. I was worried. Finally, the phone rang. It was my mother. “Bev, your father called from the station. He has Raymond with him,” she said.

I pictured him handcuffed in a cell.

She said my father was coming home with Raymond and that he wanted to talk to me. She would pick me up.

I put on Jason’s sweater. His cheeks were flushed. Jason might grow up and say, My father is an ex-con. In a way, it was Jason’s fault. He should’ve never been born. I hugged him to me and felt his hot face against my neck and his hands holding on to my shoulders while I waited for my mother. When I walked out of the house, she moved to the passenger’s side so I could drive and she could hold Jason. “Poor honey,” she said, taking off his hat and pushing his hair away from his face. “You coming to your Mimi’s? I made you some chicken soup. We can put pastina in just like you like it. Poor baby. It’s awful when your throat hurts.”

“Ma, what do you think this is about?”

“I don’t know a thing.”

Why was she so worried about Jason and not worried about me?

I left Jase with my mother and went down into the basement recreation room, where Ray and my father were sitting in chairs, not talking. I sat on the couch and my father nodded to Raymond. “He has something he wants to tell you,” he said.

Raymond stared at my knees as he said, “I spent the money for Jase’s aspirin on dope. My son’s sick, and I spent the money on dope.”

“What dope?”

“Heroin.”

“You’re a junkie?”

He nodded his head. “I went to your father for help. I’m no good, Beverly.”

“You went to the police station?”

“He wanted to talk to me. He’s sick, Bev,” my father said.

“Where are the tracks?” He turned his arm palm upward and exhibited a purple scar on the cleft of his left arm. I’d looked at his right.

“We’re going to help him straighten out,” my father said.

I could only breathe in short spurts. All I could think was, This is a coward’s maneuver. He was scared to face me alone, so he’d gone to my father for protection. How could I be mad at him with the representative of the law, and my own father, on his side? And why was my father sticking up for him, anyway? What about the time he called me to the station and believed some stupid jerk instead of me? Tried to bully me into admitting I was drinking? Threatened me with a lie detector? What was this anyway? Guys against girls?