Authors: Blake Nelson
I
n January, I return to UMass and start my second semester. I’m a little smarter about classes this term, and manage to get into a good Russian Lit course.
As the semester proceeds, I get a second chance to hang out with Smith people, since one of Gina’s friends is an associate professor there and we end up at several Smith cocktail parties.
Best of all, I also take a highly recommended comparative religion class at Mount Holyoke, which is the exact scenario I wanted so badly: a small class of prissy, smart girls in pink sweaters, all worshipping at the feet of a pompous professor blathering on about himself. Why did I think this would make me happy? I do not know. It is sort of funny, though. And it gives me something to joke with Gina about.
When summer comes, Gina insists I come live with her and some other grad student friends in an old house in Northampton. I ask my parents and they are of course skeptical and worried, but I remind them: I am now nineteen. I have not been in trouble for three years. I don’t drink. I get good grades. I am basically a reasonable, responsible person.
They finally agree to it, and when school lets out, I move in with Gina. This turns out to be a fantastic summer. I work part-time at Village Books and spend the other time hanging out with Gina, going to parties and concerts and drinking iced teas in the humid summer nights.
My parents still want to see me, so I go home for a week at the end of August. No one’s around, though, so I don’t really see anyone. I call Simon and we go on a long hike one day. Otherwise I lay low.
A
nd so it is that an entire year passes in which I do not see or hear from Stewart or Kirsten. I do think about the call from Kirsten sometimes. They must have broken up. Poor Kirsten. Poor anyone who fell too far in love with Stewart.
Not that my own boy situation is going any better. The first semester of my sophomore year becomes my “Time of the Bad Date.” It begins with three different guys asking me out in the first week of school. Michael, a senior who is very cute, turns out to be bland and smothering. Another guy, a fellow sophomore, is the guitarist in a band that turns out to be terrible and embarrassing. A third guy, who I meet at Village Books, is a cute computer guy. None of these work out, but I make out with the computer guy once, which reminds me how nice physical affection can be.
No sooner have I worked through these first three guys than new guys appear to take their place. It’s a little weird. I’ve never been popular before. Or whatever you call it when guys show up wherever you are, with that starry look in their eyes. But that’s what happens now. Maybe they were always there,
and I didn’t notice. Or maybe I’m just not so toxic anymore. Maybe I’ve healed in some way I’m not aware of.
There’s one boy who I never mind hearing from: Simon. He starts e-mailing me from Reed during fall term and we end up talking on the phone on a semi-regular basis. A real friendship develops, and he’s the first person I call when I go home to my parents for my sophomore winter break.
I meet him at Nordstrom for a coffee a couple days before Christmas. We sit in the upstairs café with the rich ladies and chatter happily about our college lives. He tells me about a big New Year’s party his friends are having. He wants me to come.
“You remember I don’t really drink, don’t you?” I say.
“That’s okay. I barely drink myself. Especially on New Year’s. I hate champagne.”
I smile when he says that. I like Simon so much. He always says the right thing. Could he become my first college boyfriend? Gina always tells me: “You’re gonna have to like somebody someday.”
Outside Nordstrom, we stand together on the sidewalk. It’s cold, with a few tiny wisps of snow in the air. There are Christmas wreaths hanging from the streetlights above us.
I put on my hat. Simon puts on his gloves. This is when I see a little gang of street kids standing across the street at Pioneer Square. One of them is Jeff Weed. I think it is. I can’t really tell. Another one also looks familiar. He’s tall, lanky, I can’t see his face but his stance, it reminds me of something.…
“It’ll be a great party,” Simon is saying. “And I really want you to meet my friends. You’re gonna love Josh and those guys.”
“It does sound like fun,” I say, distracted, watching the person across the street.
“So what do you think? Wanna go?”
I’m about to answer, but at that moment, the tall, lanky guy turns in our direction. That’s when I see who it is. The recognition hits me so hard it knocks the air out of my chest.
It’s Stewart.
For a moment our eyes lock across the street. We’re both so shocked and surprised we cannot look away. For one impossible moment, my heart leaps. I want to run to him, throw my arms around him.
But then I see him as he is: Neon blue hair. Filthy trench coat. Hollow, gaunt face.
A bottle of cheap whiskey is hanging out of his pocket.
I’m embarrassed. I’m horrified. I don’t know what to do, where to look. I turn away. My heart feels like it’s stopped in my chest.
“Maddie?” says Simon. “What is it?”
I have to leave. I turn and begin walking in the opposite direction. I hurry down the sidewalk, then dash through the intersection, against the light. A car slams on its brakes, honks.
Simon dodges traffic to chase me. He looks around, trying to understand what just happened.
“Maddie?” he yells. “Maddie! Wait!”
Across the street, I walk as fast as I can. I don’t look back, I won’t even turn my head. “I have to go,” I yell to Simon as he runs to catch up. “I forgot I have to do something.”
“What happened?” he asks. “What’s the matter?”
I walk. My eyes fill with tears. I round a corner and I can see my car. I clear my eyes with my coat sleeves.
“Maddie…?” says Simon, finally catching up.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m sorry.”
We get to my mom’s Volvo. “No, it’s okay,” he says, out of breath. “You just scared me.”
“I have to go,” I tell him. I unlock my door. I wipe my eyes again.
“Seriously, Maddie, what is it? What just happened?”
“I’m fine. I’ll call you about the party.” I get in my car.
He stares. I shut the door and lower my window.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I get stressed out sometimes over the holidays.”
He stands, baffled. But he accepts what I’m telling him.
I start the car and he moves a few steps back. “Will you call me?” he says.
I nod that I will and watch him walk away. I pretend I’m going to drive away but I don’t.
When he’s gone, I turn the car off. I lean my forehead against the steering wheel. I close my eyes and breathe and try to comprehend what I just saw.
I
drive home and spend the rest of the night in a daze, staring at the TV as my parents fuss around.
I tell them nothing. I don’t dare.
I take a hot bath that night, brush my teeth in my brightly lit bathroom, crawl into my clean bed of fresh linen.
Outside it is cold and raining. Stewart is out there somewhere sleeping on concrete.
I toss and turn in my bed. I get up at 2:00 a.m. and call Susan, my old AA sponsor.
She is asleep but she wakes up immediately when she hears my voice.
She stays up and talks to me for an hour. She understands my situation. But she is very afraid of it.
“I know,” I tell her. “But I have to go down there. I have to try to find him.”
She reminds me of the drowning-man scenario. You try to save the drowning man but he grabs you, clings to you, takes you down with him.
And then you have two drowning people to contend with.
I
don’t care. I’m going.
The next day, I dress for the weather: jeans, a thick sweater, my rain parka. I drive downtown.
What will I say to him? I have no idea. Why didn’t I call Kirsten back a year ago? Why didn’t I stay on top of that?
I park and walk the streets around Pioneer Square. That’s where the street kids usually are. They are here today too, little pockets of them, like litters of abandoned puppies.
I walk through the square. I walk farther downtown. I find the shop where Kirsten sold flowers. A girl is helping customers. I approach her. “Do you know a girl named Kirsten? That used to work here?”
“No, but the woman back there probably does.”
I go to the back of the shop. There’s an older woman there, moving bags of dirt around.
“Do you know Kirsten?”
The woman looks back at me. “Yes. What about her?”
“Does she still work here?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“I would guess she went home to Centralia.” The woman avoids looking at me. She looks sad, though. She must have liked Kirsten.
Kirsten was a sweet girl.
I hope she’s okay, wherever she is
, I think to myself.
A
n hour later I find Stewart.
He’s on the River Walk with four other guys under the Morrison Bridge. They’re sitting on the cement wall, out of the rain. One of them has a skateboard; they’re taking turns on it. They drink beer from forties they have stashed in brown paper bags.
I walk up slowly, my hands in my pockets, my clean, college-girl hair neatly tucked under my clean, college-girl hat.
Stewart wears fingerless gloves, the same ragged trench coat, a black hoodie underneath. He doesn’t see me at first. He takes the skateboard from a short Mexican and rides it in circles, doing kick turns and nearly falling off backward.
I walk closer and then stop, standing on the edge of this gang, watching them. They are hardened streeters. They are some scary dudes.
The short Mexican is the first to notice me. “Hey, señorita!” he calls to me.
I say nothing. The other guys gawk at me. Finally, Stewart turns. When he sees me the others grow quiet.
Without taking his eyes off me, he reaches for his forty, takes a deep swig of it, and replaces it on the wall.
He belches loudly.
“That ain’t no way to address a fine chica like that!” jokes the Mexican kid.
Stewart says nothing. He stares at me. He’s still tall. He’s still imposing. But now he looks like a skeleton.
He begins to walk toward me. My heart skips a beat. The bottoms of my feet tingle with fear.
But I stand my ground.
“What do you want?” he says.
“Nothing,” I answer. “I…wanted to see you.”
“What for?”
“No reason.”
He looks over my head for a moment, like he doesn’t know if it’s worth wasting five minutes talking to me.
“You got a cigarette?” he says.
“I don’t smoke. Remember?”
He leads me away from his friends. We walk across the grass toward Front Avenue. He stops at a little store to get cigarettes, but he only has a dollar, so I put in four dollars of my own.
He takes the pack and we walk to another little park, also covered. He seems to know all the places where there’s shelter from the rain. We sit on a bench and he lights a cigarette with dirty, knobby fingers.
“I saw you last night with your boyfriend,” he says.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
He smokes. Slowly I begin to look at him. He’s deeply dirty, the way homeless people are. His face, so young and carefree before, now looks ravaged. His eyes shine in a sickening way,
as if they want to burn themselves out as fast as humanly possible.
It’s too much. I can’t face him. I look away.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asks.
I shrug. “You don’t look too good,” I say into the ground.
“Yeah? Well, life’s not too good at the moment.”
“You look like a junkie.”
“Well, I am a junkie. What did you think I was?”
I say nothing.
He smokes.
We sit and watch the rain falling in the street.
“You look different too,” Stewart says when we’re walking again. “You look older.”
“I am older.”
The rain has let up for a moment. We walk in the open air. You can see patches of fog in the hills above the city.
“How’s college?” he asks.
“Good.”
“You learnin’ anything?”
“Probably not. But it’s good. It’s a good life.”
He’s so skinny, so starved. I want to buy him some food. I delicately steer us toward a burrito trailer I saw earlier. Without asking him, I stop and casually order us two burritos.
“What happened to Kirsten?” I ask.
“She left.”
“She called me. Like a year ago.”
“Yeah, that’s what she said. She said you didn’t want to talk to her. She said you didn’t care about us anymore. You’d washed your hands of us.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“That’s what she said.”
“Don’t be like that. I did my best with her. You know that.”
“She sure thought the world of you. She couldn’t shut up about you going back east to college. I tried to tell her the truth. You were born into that. Your dad’s a rich business guy.”
I say nothing. I take our two burritos and lead him to a covered table where I’m hoping he’ll eat.
“What are you gonna do now?” I ask, pushing his burrito toward him.
He ignores the food. He lights another cigarette.
“You can’t stay on the street forever,” I say.
“You’re right about that. People die down here. That Mexican kid I was with just now? A cop tried to run him down last week, tried to kill him with his car. Fuckin’ pigs. We have ways, though. We’re not as helpless as we seem. We can make you pay, if you mess with us.”
I watch his face as he says this. I’ve never heard him talk like this before. He’s like a totally different person.
I set down my burrito. “Stewart?”
“Yeah?”
I choose my words carefully. I speak as clearly and calmly as I can. “Whatever you think you see right now. This whole situation. Whatever you think is right or logical or makes sense…none of it is real. It’s an illusion. You can walk right out of here. You can go back to Spring Meadow. You can clean up. You’ve done it before. You know that it works.”
“I can’t, though,” he says.
“Why can’t you?”
“Because. It’s just delaying things. It’s delaying the inevitable. This is where I’m supposed to be.”
“But it’s not, though. You know that. I know that. We forget. Of course we do. I forgot that time I got drunk at that
party. You forgot that time in Redland. That’s why we have to stick together.”
He stares into the distance.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say. “My car is four blocks from here. We can just walk up the street, get in my car, and drive to a detox. And then this whole nightmare is over. We can end it right now. In the next twenty minutes.”
He shakes his head. “I…I can’t.…”
“Why can’t you?”
“Well, look at me. You have eyes!”
I absorb this sudden outburst. I remain calm, patient, clear. “You’re right, you look terrible. But it doesn’t matter. Not in the slightest.”
He thinks about this. He knows I’m right. I can see that it’s sinking in.
But then he takes a violent hit off his cigarette. “I cheated on you. You know that, don’t you?”
“Stewart, it doesn’t matter. None of that matters.”
“But it does matter. Because I screwed you over! And then I screwed Kirsten over!”
“Nobody cares.”
“Kirsten cares. Just ask her if she cares. You don’t know what I did to her. I stole from her. I took her rent money that she made selling flowers. I lied to her face.”
“Those things are fixable. The point is, nobody wants you to die out here. Not her. Not me. Not the people in Centralia. Remember those people? At the AA meeting? How proud they were of you? People care about you, Stewart. People
love
you. Don’t you know that?”
Suddenly his face changes. He’s pissed. He stands up, throws down his cigarette, and begins striding back toward the river.
I jump up too. I hurry after him.
“Kirsten made you do this,” he snarls at me.
“No,” I plead. “It’s not true!”
“You’re both just trying to get back at me. I’m not going to be some pawn in your game. You can’t control me.”
He suddenly turns back toward me. He looks like a man possessed. His face has become an ugly, twisted sneer. That phrase people use:
He was struggling with his demons.
I see them. I can see the actual demons.
“Come down here on your high horse,” he growls. “Telling me what I have to do. What about you? What do you have to do? Huh? Why don’t you take some responsibility for what goes on around here? The cops almost killed my friend. They think they own the streets. They don’t own nothing!”
I stand there, staring at this person, this crazy street person.
For a brief moment, I don’t see anyone I recognize.
He won’t come with me. He walks back toward the river and I follow him, though he isn’t speaking anymore. I try to give him money but he slaps the bills out of my hand. He tells me to get away from him. He never wants to see me again. He hates me. He spits on the ground at my feet.
I stop then. I let him go.…