Why We Broke Up Read online

  Though I didn’t, did I, give you the keys. The day cooled to dusk while I did a little homework, dozed, missed Al, thought about calling Al, didn’t call Al, got dressed, and headed out with a dagger-glare at my mother pouring little candy bars into a bowl she’d sit and eat while waiting for youngsters. The boy I used to babysit was out on the corner throwing eggs at cars while the sun set. He flipped me off. The world was getting worse I guess, like this Japanese remake of Rip Van Winkle called The Gates of Sleep that Al and I left early from, each time the hero awoke it was more depressing, wife dead, sons drunks, city more polluted, emperors more corrupt, the war dragging on and more and more bloody. Al said that one should have been called Are You in a Good Mood? We’ll Fix That: The Movie.

  I should have known when an old guy on the bus, totally not kidding, thanked me for my service, that my costume was going to be another disaster, but not until I walked under the archway of orange and black balloons looking for you did it really hit me clear, from Jillian Beach of all people. “Oh my God,” she said, already tipsy in red-and-white-striped shorts and a bra of blue bandanas. She was porcupined with goose bumps from the evening cool, Annette was right, I didn’t have to be afraid of her.

  “What?”

  “You really are out there, Min. A Jewish girl dressing as Hitler?”

  “I’m not Hitler.”

  “They’re going to expel you. You’re gonna get expelled.”

  “I’m a warden, Jillian. What are you?”

  “Barbara Ross.”

  “Who?”

  “She invented the flag.”

  “Betsy, Jillian. I’ll see ya, OK?”

  “Ed’s not here,” she said back to me.

  “That’s OK,” I said, but I didn’t even try to be convincing, a Nazi too early for an outdoor party. A nest of freshmen walked around me chattering in mouse ears. A bunch of Draculas preened in a corner. They were already playing that song I hate. The coaches were sipping coffee and sweating in their capes. It was Trevor, who would ever think, who rescued me, limping over with his foot in a cast.

  “Hey, Min. Or should I say Officer Green?”

  Better a cop than Hitler. “Hey, Trevor. What are you?”

  “A guy who broke his foot yesterday and so can’t be in the chain gang.”

  “You’ll do anything to get out of dancing onstage.”

  He laughed loud and pulled a beer out of somewhere. “You are funny,” he said, as if someone had said otherwise, and took a swig before handing it to me. I could tell he did this with any girl, any person, and that never until me had it been handed back unsipped.

  “I’m good.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “You don’t like beer.”

  “Ed told you.”

  “Yeah, why, am I not supposed to know?”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said, looking for you.

  “Because, you know, he’s always going to tell me.”

  “Yeah?” I said, and then gave up and looked him in the eye. He was drunk too, as usual, or maybe he was never drunk, I realized I didn’t know him well enough to know the difference.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Slaterton girlfriends need to learn that and scoot if they can’t handle it.”

  “Scoot?”

  “Scoot,” he said with a wobbly nod. Even drunk, if he was drunk, he was tough-enough-looking to say words like scoot. “We talk, Ed and me.”

  “So what does he say?”

  “That he loves you,” Trevor said instantly, without embarrassment. “That you passed the test with his sister. That you put up with his math thing. That you’re planning a weird movie-star party and that I have to get the fucking champagne or he’ll kick my ass. And you don’t let him say gay anymore, which is—can I say gay?”

  “Sure,” I said. “You’re not my boyfriend.”

  “Thank God,” he said, and then, that’s where you got it I guess, “no offense.”

  “None taken,” I said.

  “I just mean, I don’t think we’d get along like that.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “We’re just, I mean, I like a fun girl who doesn’t change me around with movies or stores that open first thing in the goddamn morning, you know?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I wouldn’t take you there.”

  “I’m just, you know, trying to stay fun. Happy on the weekends, you know, sweating hard at practice.”

  “I get it.”

  He threw an arm around me like a companionable uncle. “I like you, I don’t care what anybody says,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said, stiff. “I like you too, Trevor.”

  “Naw,” he said, “but you’re a good sport about it. I hope you hang around a long time, really I do, and if you don’t I hope it’s not all drama and shit.”

  “Um, thanks.”

  “Now don’t get all puckered,” he said, finishing a beer and starting another. “I just mean, you guys are like those two planets that crash together in a movie I saw on TV when I was a kid once, the blue people and these weird red guys.”

  “When Planets Collide,” I said. “It’s a Frank Cranio film. At the end they’re all purple.”

  “Yeah!” he said loud, his eyes toggly with wonder and joy. “Nobody I ever knew ever knew that.”

  “The Carnelian’s showing some Cranio in December,” I said. “We could double-date, you know, with Ed and whoever girl you’re—”

  “Not in a million years,” he said agreeably. “That theater’s gay.”

  “You say that,” I said, “when you’re part of a group of guys chained together dancing.”

  “Not me!” he said, raising his broken foot, and we laughed hard, loud, wild, and I even leaned into him, just as you arrived with your chain gang, everyone in striped pajamas and black plastic loops around their ankles. Underneath your flimsy hat your face was flushed and suspicious. “What the hell, Trev,” you said, too loudly, and pulled me away.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Trevor said, shielding his beer. “We’re just goofing, Ed. She’s waiting for you.”

  “And what are you doing, asshole?” you asked him. “Keeping her warm for me?”

  “Hey, Ed, happy Halloween, good to see you,” I said pointedly like a person. I’d never seen this version, this shouting boy jerk, with your eyes frazzled wrong and your hand a claw on my shoulder. It was nothing I’d seen, but I hadn’t, I was thinking, known you that long.

  “Dude,” Trevor said to you, smirking like the punch line was coming. “Don’t accuse like that. You know everything but’s not good enough for me.”

  The whole chain gang oohed. The tears came to me so quick it was like I’d been saving them up for just this thing. I wished I were Hitler, I would have killed the whole set of them. “Min!” you called to me, your anger chased away in panic, and even took a few steps toward me. But your gang was chained to you, and they wouldn’t let you follow me and make it right. Not that you could. Though you did.

  “He’s sorry!” one of the stupid boys called, and laughed. “We all did Viper shots to practice our dance, it always makes Slaterton an asshole.”

  “No way!” Trevor said in jealous delight. “You’re doing Viper? Where is it where is it where is it?”

  You looked helpless at me, and then the party surged around us like the panic in Last Train Leaving, the coaches starting off the festivities with their fat, dumpy dance to “I’m the Biggest Man.” Go to hell, I thought to everybody, and we were there, everyplace a nightmare of terrible people, screaming, flashing lights, more screaming, worse than a bonfire because there was nothing gorgeous to look at, just the gleamy makeup on people’s faces, the rubber masks like roadkill on boys’ heads, the slutty costume skin on the girls shiny with sweat, the thum-thum thunder from whoever carried in drums, screaming whistles around people’s necks like neon nooses, and then the rhythmic chantings, spread out across the crowd as each school started in, different words cropping up for each team, Eagles! Beavers! Tigers! Maraud
ers!, a clashing of syllables like the mascots were fighting to the death in the sky, and then the captains hoisted up onto drunken shoulders, each school shouting its competing hero, McGinn! Thomas! Flinty! and winning out, Slaterton! Slaterton! Slaterton! as the chain gang clumped up to the stage and began their fake-sissy moves to “Love Locked Up” by Andronika, who sounded in the speakers like she also hated this shit, the hoots of the crowd, realizing you were famous even at other schools, your whole linked gang reaching down your pants to your crotches in gross unison and pulling out bottles of Parker’s when the lyrics said “Drink every drop,” and even with the coaches pretending disapproval the place devastated itself with screaming volume, toppling the cardboard Applause-O-Meter that Natalie Duffin and Jillian were game show gyrating around, and you won, triumphant in gift certificates, blowing kisses, bowing awkwardly with your legs tangled up, and then Annette crashing the stage in chains and silver boots and a big stagy ax, kissing the whole gang, mwah mwah mwah, just a little longer on you, before raising her weapon and chopping through the chains and setting you free to leap thrilled and drunk, deep into the roaring crowd and vanish for thirty-eight minutes before finding me finally, handsome, beaming, gorgeous, sexy, a winner through and through forever.

  I hated you so much.

  My face must have blazed with it like Amanda Truewell in Dance to Forget when Oliver Shepard walks into the nightclub with his unexpected innocent wife. Fuming and furious hurt, I was bustled away by the surging crowd and was soon trapped at the goalpost with a guy I half knew from homeroom telling me a story about his dad’s new wife’s white wine problem. I was so angry I knew it would boomerang someplace sometime soon. It growled in me something awful as I just stood frozen and lost. The Bash kept at it, boiling and twisting in costume, until you finally reappeared during the even-worse song, the crowd crying Hey! Hey! Get down I say! frantic with your stripes half-unbuttoned and sweaty hair. “I want to tell you something,” you said, before I could decide which scathing line I’d been polishing to use first. You held both hands in front of you, spread out, a filthy streak on one palm, like I was about to roll a boulder on you. I stepped back and you stayed there, you stood your ground in the blaring battlefield, and you began to count on your fingers, counting the number of times you were saying what you were saying, both hands twice and then almost again. It was the only thing you could say, the perfect thing, is what you said.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry.

  “Twenty-six,” you said, before I could ask you. Everyone was gathered around, or anyway they were around us, swirling like loud, bad surf. The crowd was low in the mix, a few yelps, a few catcalls. “Twenty-six,” you said again, to the crowd, and took a step toward me.

  “Don’t,” I said, though I couldn’t decide.

  “Twenty-six,” you said. “One for each day we’ve been together, Min.”Somebody oohed. Somebody shushed them.

  “And I hope that someday I’ll do another something stupid and I’ll have to say it a million times because that’s how long it’ll be, together with you, Min. With you.”

  I allowed you another step. The homeroom guy realized he was still there gaping, and stopped and vanished. There was a tremble in my shoulder, behind my knee. I shook my head, shoveling my anger into a shallow grave waiting to be dug up in some plot twist. But, also, your beautiful self, the way you could move and talk to me. I could not look away.

  “Anything,” you said, a vast answer to nothing I’d said. “Anything, Min. Anything, anything. If Willows was open, the flowers would be gone, I’d buy every scrap.”

  “I’m mad at you,” I said finally. How many are there, movies where the man, or the actress, apologizes in public? I can’t watch them.

  “I know,” you said.

  “I’m still mad.”

  But you’d reached me. Your hands moved to my face and held it. I don’t know what I would have done if you’d kissed me but Ed, you knew better. You just held me like that, warm on my teary cheeks. “I know. That’s fair.”

  “Really mad. It’s bad what you did.”

  “OK.” The crowd was still there but losing interest.

  “No, not OK,” I said, the only fish to fry. “Yes. It was bad.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t say it twenty-six times again. Once was enough.”

  “Was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anything, Min. Anything, but tell me what.”

  “I don’t want to tell you anything.”

  “OK, but Min, please.”

  “This isn’t OK.”

  “OK, but what can—how can we start?”

  “I don’t know if I want to.”

  You blinked fast fast fast. Your hand shivered on my face, and I thought suddenly that now my face was dirty. And, also, that I didn’t care. It wasn’t OK, Ed, but maybe—

  “How, Min? Anything. What can I do, what can I—how can I make you want to start?”

  I couldn’t. No, I thought, do not cry while you’re saying it. But then, fuck it, you’re crying anyway, and he made you cry. Min, I thought, it’s love is what it is. “Coffee,” I said, crying. “Coffee, extra cream, three sugars,” and you took us away, fast with your arms on me across the field, not a single good-bye to anyone at the Bash, cold through the night to the huddle on the bus, holding my face again, the sweet things you said so soft over the motor, and then marching into In the Cups, pushing the double doors wide slamming open, to proclaim that in penance for mistreating your true love, Min Green, you would like to buy a large coffee, extra cream, three sugars for each and every patron of this fine establishment, which was one bewildered old man with the newspaper who already had a coffee. Insisting that the man be a witness to your solemn promise that never would a drop of Viper touch your lips again. And returning from the bathroom with this tag—

  saying, look at this cool tag for a show we have to go to tomorrow, because look it’s Carl Haig who used to play drums with Hawk Davies who’s that guy you and Joanie like, just hanging on the bulletin board like thumbtacked destiny near the bathroom where you’d neatened your hair and buttoned back up decent and sobered, please go with you because you loved me.

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh Min, please don’t say maybe like that.”

  “OK, yes,” I said, as the coffee rolled down inside me. I felt embarrassed, boarding the 6, to still say I was angry about something two buses ago. Trick-or-treaters sat across from us, young with the dad madly scrolling through something on his phone. Total strangers, is what I thought. If I was still mad I was alone, Saturday night, Halloween, on the bus. “Yes, OK? But I’m still mad.”

  “That’s fair,” you said, but I didn’t want you smiling.

  “Still.”

  “You told me, Min. And I’m still sorry and this is us.”

  “I know.”

  “No, our stop, I mean. Time to get off.”

  And we did, to the cemetery, hushed and welcome in the chilly dark, knowing the Ball was still coming, this stupid bad night. Our feet crackled and trampled on the shadowy grass. “Are you sure you want to go?”

  “Yes,” I said. “My friends—look, I went to your thing.”

  “OK.”

  “So you have to suffer through mine. A
nything, you said.”

  “Yes, OK.”

  “And I mean suffer. Because I’m still—”

  “I know, Min.”

  I gave you my hand. It was a little less terrible then, just to walk in the quiet. Something rustled, off to one side, but I was safe there, in the dark light on the graves, the crosses of stone, and the dead leaves, almost OK.

  “You know,” you said, your breath mist, “I thought of this place for the party.”

  “What?”

  “Lottie Carson.”

  It was the first time you remembered her name. “It’s nice,” I said.

  “But then I realized,” you said, “probably insulting, a bad place for an eighty-ninth birthday.”

  “True,” I said. Headlights veered from the street through the trees, the headstones stock-still in the glare, like deer. I could see the numbers of the dates, the life spans long and not long enough. “Maybe she’ll be buried here,” I said. “We’ll have to visit, bring flowers, make sure there aren’t any condoms on her grave.”

  You held my hand tighter, we walked on. You must, Ed, have been thinking about your mom and where, when, she’ll end up. You must then, I hope, have meant some of these things you said.

  “Maybe we’ll be buried here,” you said, “and our kids will visit with flowers.”

  “Together,” I said, couldn’t help whispering. “Together right here.”

  It was that lovely thing, that time so beautiful there, that led me back to your corner, Ed. We stayed there a minute and then kept walking. The grass was thick, we stopped holding hands, but we were together heading to the rest of the bad night.

  The Scandinavian Hall looked like shit, the same old shit with halfhearted streamers fluttering on it. The same gargoyle cooing the same green-lit steam was there at the door like a drunk uncle. We walked in together but nobody noticed because somebody was already fighting, or maybe just a table knocked over, and then with an embarrassed smile you jolted away, desperate for a bathroom. Someone’s coat was ruined on a table. I walked blinking, turned aside, past Al, sad in his Pure Evil outfit of a blood-splattered clown, sitting silent with Maria and Jordan, who were dressed as Republicans with oil stains and flag pins. I never told you what happened in the cloakroom. But now I’ll tell you because it was nothing. In the cloakroom was the fruit punch in a bowl marked HOPE, but if no chaperones were looking, the boy ladling it out would turn the lazy Susan around, and an identical bowl would come through the curtain with the spiked stuff. And the boy with the ladle was Joe.