Way of Telling 

Way of Telling

It's 3:30 some fall afternoon, and we're stoned, like we always are when the weather is fine and school is out and we're 16. Spirit is playing on the 8 track: "It's nature's way of telling you---something's wrong--" But it doesn't feel like anything's wrong. Because we're young, and school's out for the day, and we're riding in Bobby's van, and Bobby and I are in love. My best friend tells me it's Narcissus resurrected,because Bobby and I have the same hair, waist length and wavy, and we're both tall and skinny and wear flannels and Levis and big hiking boots that slap a rhythm when we walk the halls between classes. But it's not the sameness that attracts me to him. He's all light outside, but darker, and deeper than me beneath that. He writes me poems; thick, strange pieces I show to no one. He calls me late at night-- we plan it to the second, so I can catch the phone before anyone else knows it's ringing-- and he tells me stories, true ones that leave me shaky and lead to twisted dreams.

Bobby comes from New Mexico, from Roswell--and that part sort of figures, because he landed like an alien last fall in our tidy Midwest town. His long hair, his thoughtful writer father with whom he shares a fancy northside townhouse-- they both seem foreign to this predictable place. I fell in love with him the minute I saw him walking down the school hall, looking both lost and familiar at the same time.

Bobby's mother is still in New Mexico. His dad split from her and moved here three years ago, but Bobby hung it out a couple years longer. She's an alcoholic. Not a happy, sentimental life-of-the-party drunk like my dad, but a passing-out, throwing up, desperate and dramatic alcoholic like you read about in those novels in the Young Adult section of the library. The kind the kid has to peel off the kitchen floor, spatula in one hand and whiskey bottle in the other, when you come home from school. The kitchen's filled with smoke, and the cookies in the oven-- her aborted attempt to play out the expected suburban mom role-- stare at you when you take them out, angry briquettes. And you want to leave her there, thinking maybe she'll be embarrassed to find herself on the floor with a urine puddle spreading out from her wrecked polyester pants, when she finally wakes up. But you don't, because maybe a neighbor kid will show up, and she's safer in the bedroom, where you can close the door and go on with the afternoon, turning on the TV and starting a casserole. The smokey smell still hanging in the kitchen, an accusation.

Sometimes if it's late, and Bobby can't sleep at all, there might be a tap on my window, or two or three. Sweetgum balls for the tree round the corner, usually, because I'm on the second story and it's an old house, with thin wavy glass panes, so his aim better be true but gentle.

I usually tell him I love him, then tell him to go away-- I don't want to wake the house up, don't want to risk my father's wrath-- but tonight, when I hear the tap, and it's 2 a.m., he ignores my waving him on after I greet him. And standing in the moonlight, he looks like an angel-- a tall thin Michael, both martyred and blessed. I slip down the stairs, out the side door, the one farthest away from my sleeping parents, and run to the sylvan enclave where he's waited before.

He's not there.

I wait a moment, look around, come out of the trees and see his van, lights off, motor running, Bobby at the wheel with his head bent. He doesn't look up when I walk to the window. "Hey, Bobby?"

I open the door, climb in, and he looks at me, and I see his face is all puffy from crying. He doesn't say anything, just slips the van into gear, and we roll away, tape deck setting the background. It's Nature's way of telling you---

"What's wrong, Bobby?" I ask him. "Wait", he says. We drive in silence. He turns at the entrance to a nearby park, pulls the van off the road. We walk to the lake's edge-- Shawnee Lake, home by day to golfers, sailboats, and noisy, giggly children. Deserted now, it seems a somber, empty place.

"Well", he begins. "She called tonight, crying. Said she couldn't take being alone anymore. Couldn't take my being so far away. She was drunk-- of course she was drunk!-- and I got angry. Told her she'd ruined enough of my evenings in New Mexico, and I'd be goddamned if she'd ruin them now, from a thousand miles away. Told her if she didn't like being alone she could damn well stop running everyone off. And I hung up."

We sit a long time, on a flat rock by the shore, watching the silver light play on the water. Bobby's head is tilted up, as if he's listening for something. I don't know what to say, so I don't say anything.

"She called back. She always does. I didn't even bother picking up, just let the machine get it, but I think she knew I was there, listening. She started right back in, raving about what an ungrateful son-of-a-bitch I was-- then stopping to laugh at her own word play-- 'Son of a bitch, huh? Is that what you call me? Drunken bitch? Well, maybe I am, but I know enough to take care of family, not run off on them when they're down in the worst way---'

"I turned the volume off. I couldn't stand it. I went out, went looking for you, or for dad. He was out working I guess. Couldn't find either one of you. I needed to talk. Wanted reassurance it was reasonable for me to be angry. I've fed her pity for years--- and it's milked me dry. I ended up driving around, feeling alternately confused and self-righteous. After a while I drove home."

"My father met me at the door. I could tell by the look on his face something was wrong."

"He'd listened to the message, the whole thing. At some point -- well, first she screamed at me some more, then she started in on him for a while. At some point she yelled, 'Pick up the phone, you heartless bastard!' Then nothing."

"Our old neighbor found her. Dad called him up, asked him to go check on her."

Bobby's face is a marble mask in the moonlight. We sit together, silently. Bobby leans over and picks out a smooth stone, sends it skittering across the path the moon has made on the water. The path breaks where the rock touches it; like glass, like porcelain, like a heart.