Chapter 3: Post-script
Bright
The house is a tomb.
Or, at least, that's what it feels like to Bright. To the right, there's the kitchen, bowls of cereal stacked in a crusty tower in the sink, dried pizza splatters on the microwave. To the left, there's a quiet, dusty living room whose windows are hazy with grime.
And to the back and down the hall, there's his mother, possibly dying.
Only she remembered to do those stupid windows. The refrigerator is full of microwaveable food, something she'd never have allowed before. Now Amy makes Hot Pockets for dinner and retreats to her room, flipping on cartoons to drown out the silence. His dad eats popcorn most nights, propping up his sock feet on the coffee table with one ear cocked towards Rose's room, watching the news on mute.
This is what it feels like to watch it come unglued quietly.
It's not like Amy's meltdown. Then there was tension and electricity and anger but it was alive, everyone was so real. No, he thinks to himself, this is worse. On a tragedy scale of one to ten, one being No More Football and ten being Colin Dying, this is a fifteen, maybe a twenty.
He wonders where losing Hannah would rate on that scale.
It's worse without her here – and Ephram gone – the summer stretching out long and cool, with late evenings; the days are filled with halogen lights and freezing classrooms at the community college. He tries to concentrate – honest to God, I do – but it's hard. He keeps thinking of home, of the new, empty apartment, of Hannah.
If you were here, he thinks, I'd be busy, too busy to think. You'd be nice and warm and right beside me, and you wouldn't say stupid stuff that pissed me off like "oh my gosh, Bright, I'm soooooo sorry 'bout your mom" like that moron, Jen Ludley at the drugstore yesterday. You'd be quiet and you'd stroke my hair, pet my head the way you do with Amy sometimes when she's all ...down and stuff.
But she's not.
There's no cheerful voice in the foyer. Nobody cooking, cutting stuff and stirring and spicing in the kitchen. No giggles from Amy's room. No days playing hooky, nobody else...whose parent is dying too.
Yeah, that's it, he says to no one. The real attraction. God, what a sorry couple–one half-dead parent each and two completely different directions.
But it's no use trying to be sarcastic. He knows it's more than that.
It's everything. There are some things that jolt him awake in the night, leaving him staring at the ceiling, wondering how something so small can be so disturbingly sexy. It's not the sexy Bright's used to – cleavage, ass, minis, a tanned stomach, a shirt getting flung off. He remembers walking into her room that time, when she'd been dressed in her pajamas. How she'd stood up, grabbing the blanket around her, hiding herself. It's strange –after all, she was dressed like a five year old.
At least they weren't footsie pajamas with a zipper down the front, he grins to himself.
But immediately, his mind had gotten stuck on her body, with that abrupt, embarrassed gesture. Wanting the blanket to go away. Wanting to see what was under it. Suddenly it became sexy. And her shyness, her slenderness, the sweet curve of her waist came into view slowly, and it was strange, the electricity they gave off.
He had been glib, joking, so self-absorbed.
And strangely embarrassed to find out she was not the center of his world. Somehow upset, put off. He'd started wondering if she was over him.
He wants to tell her things. It's so unfathomable, with her nervousness, her delicacy, to imagine her slowly stepping out of her clothes, a shirt sliding off a shoulder, the whisper of a zipper. It makes his stomach turn deliciously, his nerves cord and snap like rubber bands. It seems almost impossible, and that somehow makes it even more erotic.
You're setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment, Bright, he muses. In a million years, maybe, after you stick that ring on her finger and fly off to Maui.
But maybe that's part of the appeal.
The thought knocks him over. Marry Hannah?
Dude, no way. Not for another ten years, no way in hell I'm getting married.
Am I?
No.
But if he ever got married? Or if someone held a gun to his head and told him to marry or die? If his mom had five years to live and she told him she wanted to see a grandkid?
It'd be Hannah, he realizes with a shock. She's the only one who's good for the long run, for forever, for when people die and things get rough.
He wonders what she'd think if she knew.
Bright,
I swam in the lake at sunset. The woods were all purply and the water was dark blue like the sky and it was just so...beautiful. I guess it made me think of Everwood, the way the pine trees on the ridge get black with sun flaming out behind them when it goes down. I laid out on the dock till it got night and I wished you were there so that it'd be less quiet, and so that I'd be laughing instead of thinking.
I think too much. I shot a streetlight, because you're rubbing off on me – I feel like I'm getting ballsier and somehow less rational at the same time, as if bravery had to be equated with craziness in order to leave any sort of impression. Besides, I had to match your swimming pool caper. Maybe when I get back we can knock up a liquor store, build a viking burial raft and douse it in vodka and set it on fire in the middle of the lake, shoot a deer and leave it on the counter at Mama Joy's, or steal a few cars and sail them off a cliff. (Please don't get any ideas. I'm just joking.)
I hope everything's alright at home. You know where I am if it's not.
Hannah
He reads the letter again, lying on top of his bed with his ankles crossed, and folds it back up. It's creased and worn along the lines from folding and unfolding – he's read at it at least ten times in the last couple of days, pulling it out from under his mattress where he used to keep the girlie mags.
He doesn't think about his mom slapping him that day. About how disappointed she had been, the sadness in her eyes. It feels too horrible, to remember how he'd let her down; he never thought all the screwing around he'd been doing meant anything, that the endless parade of girls through the living room and bedroom were of any significance to her.
She'd be so ecstatic, he thinks wryly, if she knew about Hannah.
A year ago, the thought would have annoyed him.
Now, it just sort of makes him feel warm.
Hannah
She's never had the sex talk.
The talk where your parent – or parents – come in and they sit down on your bed and they both looks mildly nauseous or maybe sad and definitely edgy. And they tell you it's time you all discussed some things, now that you have a boyfriend, and if you know where and how-
You know.
She's watched this a million times on after-school specials, old reruns and Lifetime movies. Boy Meets World. Home Improvement. American Pie. Birds and bees and old anatomy books flutter around in her head, flashing in and out of sequence. Is this what everybody's family does? Then, on-screen, everybody hugs and passes out condoms. She thinks it's all a little weird.
But it doesn't keep her from wishing somebody was there to do that for her too. To embarrass her, so she could yowl MOO-ooo-mmm! Like the shiny-haired teens with the laugh-track behind them spurring on the facial contortions.
It won't be her mom, with her wet-naps and feeding tubes and needles, pills and sheets and sponges. It won't be her dad, now silent and hazy-eyed.
It'll probably be Amy. Or Nina.
But probably Amy. It's not that there's anything wrong with Nina; she's nice, and encouraging, and that pep-talk she doled out after the Bright-kiss-ketchup disaster was Lifetime-movie worthy. Yes, Nina could do the job. However, after an unfortunate incident that involved accidentally finding something that looked like a foot massager in Nina's closet – and realizing later what it actually was – she's a bit terrified of Nina.
The thought just kinda freaks her out, that's all. It's not that she thinks it's...perverted, or anything, gosh! No! but she can't imagine – ahem – doing that and oh, the whole mess it too adult and complicated and cartoonish, almost.
No, she'd ask Amy. Amy would be jokey and casual and deprecating, and she can handle that. Not a serious, sentimental talk with a vibrator user who was responsible for you and might potentially flip out.
But Amy – yeah, Amy'd do the trick. Amy knew what it meant to be there – after all, she'd gone through the same thing with Ephram – hadn't she?
She's scared maybe Amy hasn't. Maybe Amy and Ephram were just like a movie where they danced around looking pretty, flung each other's clothes off and went at it happily, ending with a bang, and then cooing sweet things afterwards.
No, no way, she thinks. That can't be real life. It sounds too much like a Jennifer Lopez movie. She imagines Amy snorting with laughter, and feels better.
It's easier to put it all out of her mind – but it keeps sneaking back in.
There's a difference between someone who's never kissed a boy and someone who's been with half of County.
He's like Tiger Woods and you're...mini golf.
I've never even held a club.
Heh.
She can joke. She's brave now. You're brave now, remember? You shot a streetlight?
But somehow, it's still not enough.
Hannah:
Stuff at home is ok, I guess. I'm tired of microwave food and those mini-pizzas, which were good to start with but then I ate a whole bag and got sick and switched to bagel-bites which are sort of better, but not really.
So I wish you'd come home and cook. Damn those were some good looking sandwiches you made, and the spaghetti sauce and remember when you made stir-fry one night?
I'm hungry now so I'm going to stop. Well anyway. Amy is getting all down and shit again without you here. It's weird but I'm actually doing good in school and I have this public speaking class where teacher is in love with me or something. She wants me to transfer to Colorado A&M for a business major and she's helping me get all my shit in order – transcripts and classes. She keeps a bottle of Jack Daniels in her bottom drawer. Me and the Mike guy got halfway wasted looking for an eraser last week.
So. That's all the new things. I'm glad you wrote. You're a super writer.
Bright
Ps. That's not all I wanted to say also that God it would be good to hug you because your hair always smells so nice and you're not too tall or too short and just right. Which sounds stupid but is very important and you feel so good God I hope that didn't sound bad but you do, you know.
Ps.2. never mind