The Youth & Young Loves of Oliver Wade: Stories (21 page)

“
Lookit
you,” I said, “you do have
a little mohawk, a little baby mohawk.” We stood and I rocked her and we looked
out the window together. I could see our reflections in the glass. Calmly I
whispered to her, “Don’t be like me, little girl. Belong. Belong better than
me. OK?” I rocked her and looked at us in the glass.

***

By the time I got home the late-setting summer sun was
gone.

Corey was on the couch in the living room playing
Grand Theft Auto
.

“Did you see your kid?” he asked over the squeal of tires.

“Yup.”

“Ten fingers, ten toes?”

“She’s perfect.”

“Nice.”

He didn’t ask to see a photo but if he had I wouldn’t have
had one to show him. I hoped Trudy would email one to me soon. I was afraid of
forgetting what Abbey looked like. I seemed to have so little of her.

“I’m hitting the sack,” I told Corey, but he didn’t reply.

I went to my room and undressed and lay in bed for a while.
The sheets still smelled like that Dylan guy. Now the cologne that had smelled
so intoxicating last night when I needed a distraction from Harriet’s labor
smelled sour and sad. I got up and walked to the bathroom. There in the pinkish
light from the row of bare bulbs over the sink I looked at myself in the
mirror. I was a father now. I had a daughter now. Abbey. Abbey with the mohawk
hair.

I squatted down and searched under the sink, found the box
with the hair clippers, unwound the cord and plugged them in. I clicked the
trimmer guide down to its shortest setting. I looked at myself. Holding the
buzzing clippers, I tilted my head side to side. I raised the clippers to my
head. I took a breath. Hair dropped into the sink, big brown tufts of it. When
I was done the sides of my head were reduced to short bristles, and down the
middle I was left with a thick crest of hair.

“Abbey,” I said to myself. It was a good name.

(Age
25)

LUMBERJACK SLAMS & HURRICANE SWIRLS

It was the ass-crack of a Tuesday dawn in early July and I
was on my way to meet my old friend Shelley in Boston. We were going apartment
hunting together. I was ready to get out of Amherst, ready to stop living with
straightboys and shuck off the lingering tentacles of college. Meanwhile the
rent on Shelley’s South End studio was going up in September, so it was a good
time for us both to get moving. She’d picked out a bunch of apartments she
wanted us to look at—two-bedrooms strewn across the city—and set up
a bunch of appointments that day for us to see them. The first appointment was
at 8:30. I got to her building at 7:33 and parked on the street. She buzzed me
in.

“Two things,” she said when I entered her cramped but neat
fourth-floor apartment. She was very concise, had always been very organized.
She liked lists. “One, there’s an emergency at work and I have to go in.”

This news relieved me somewhat. I could take a nap. Standing
on my toes I spotted her mattress in the loft. It looked soft. “No problem. Um.
For how long?”

“The morning,” she said. “Possibly the whole day. I’m sorry—”

I dropped back on my heels. “Shelley! The whole day! I drove
all that way! I got up at 4:30 in the morning!”

She held up her hand with her palm facing my face and I
stopped. “I know you did. Which is why: Two, my cousin Angel is in the city and
he’s going with you instead.”

“To look at the apartments? Why would your cousin even want
to do that?”

“Because he’s a dumbass and he’s got nothing better to do. I’ll
let him explain to you.” She went in the bathroom, which was about three feet
away from where we were standing—which was about three feet away from
everything in this studio. I followed her and slouched in the doorway.

“Shelley, I’m going to feel so stupid dragging him around on
my errands. He’s going to be so bored. —Angel was the soldier, right?
Didn’t you say he re-enlisted?”

“He’s in the process,” she said. She held some of her bouncy
black curls in place and blasted them with hairspray.

I stepped back from the toxic cloud and pulled my t-shirt
over my mouth. “I don’t know what I’ll possibly talk to a soldier about all day,”
I complained through the fabric. “Shelley, this’ll be weird.”

“Talk about the apartments. It’ll be good for him.” She gave
her hair two more blasts. “He came out a few months ago. Gay
gay
gay
. Did I tell you? I was
thinking maybe you could—”

“He’s gay? The soldier? You did
not
tell me!” My mind started to wander. “I could what?”

“I don’t know, talk to him about things.” She flicked off
the bathroom light and walked past me into the main room.

“About being gay?” I said.

“Sure, yeah.”

“Shelley, I know about being gay working at the Holyoke Mall
taking pictures of kids dressed like princesses, I don’t know about being gay
getting shot at in Afghanistan.”

“But he’s been working at a lumber yard in Vermont for the
past two years. You’re not so different. Talk to him.” She picked a big
envelope up off a dresser that stored, I knew from earlier visits, both
underwear and canned soup, and handed it to me. “This has everything you’ll need
for the apartments today. The listings, et cetera.”

I took the envelope from her but ignored it. “I’ve seen
pictures of Angel on your MySpace, Shelley; he’s like beautiful. I’ll be lucky
if I can remember my own name when I’m talking to him.”

She laughed. “Oliver, just look at the apartments and find
us a good one, OK? He’s going back into the Army tomorrow, so just— He’s
off limits.”

Shelley only had one key to her apartment, so when she
left for work she locked the door behind us and left me sitting in a small
square of grass, curbside, in front of her building. Angel was in a cab
somewhere on his way from the airport but, with the morning traffic (which I’d
purposely left early to beat), it was taking him forever to get here. In the
meantime I perused the papers in the bulging envelope Shelley had given me.
They were printouts of apartment listings: pictures, prices, maps; details
about first, last, and security; hot water included or not; even little meters
hand-drawn in purple ink indicating how friendly the landlords had sounded on
the phone. One place in Jamaica Plain looked especially nice. Lots of light.
Landlord earned an eight out of ten.

When a cab pulled up I stuffed the papers back in the
envelope. The cab idled there double-parked while the passenger paid. A minute
later Angel got out dragging a huge green military duffel bag behind him.
Pulling the strap up over his thick shoulder, he said thanks to the cabbie and
shut the door.

He turned and, squinting in the sun, sort of pointed at me. He
was shorter than he looked in the pictures I’d seen, shorter than me, but with
a glance you could tell he was built like a tank, which I was also not
expecting even though Shelley had told me he spent a lot of time at the gym. He
was bigger than I ever was. Biceps like my thighs, a chest like Superman,
sturdy calves. He had on khaki shorts and a gray t-shirt with an American flag
on the chest.

“Angel!” I said, standing up slowly, cool. I had hoped to
make it seem like we already knew each other, like we’d seen each other just
yesterday, but I was thrown off my game by his body, his face; he was pretty.
His eyebrows were thick and black but ended cleanly on his brown forehead
rather than thinning to fine hairs. He smiled. His teeth were straight and white.
Friendly dark eyes.

“Ollie? Hi, hey, nice to finally meet you, finally.”

“Yeah, so, uh. Yeah! You too! Hi!”

We looked at each other for an awkward moment. I felt like
we were both thinking, of ourselves,
You
dumbass
—or at least I was. He rubbed his hair, black in a slightly
overgrown military high-and-tight cut. I wondered what he was thinking about me
and my decidedly un-military mohawk. Once upon a time I had been told I was
cute, but she turned out to be a lesbian.

Finally he bent to put the duffel on the sidewalk and, sue
me, but I sneaked a peek of his butt. There was a lot of it.

“You made it,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. He held out his hand and I shook it. He had
a firm grip. “I guess my cousin has a real estate adventure or something set up
for us or something?”

I wondered if he was as nervous as he sounded. But, too, I
was practically shaking. “It seems so. She and I are trying to find a place.”

“Cool, cool. Moving in together.”

“Yeah, yup, moving in.”

“Where do you live now?”

“Amherst.”

“Oh, sure. Right on 91.”

“Basically.”

“I’m from Brattleboro. Vermont.”

“I know it. We could’ve carpooled today.”

“Ha. Yeah. I took a bus.” He put his hands in his pockets;
the shorts were kind of tight on him and his hands only went in up to the
knuckles. “So all around the city or something?”

“Yeah, all around. Various neighborhoods. But I have my car,
don’t worry.” I pointed to where my Jeep was parked on the street.

He turned and looked. Then he rocked back on his heels
boyishly. “Is it OK if I drive?”

“My car?”

“Sometimes I get car-sick when I’m in the passenger seat.”

“Oh. Sure. Yeah. That’s cool.” I paused. “Think you can
handle Boston traffic, a Vermont guy like you?”

“I’ve driven tanks,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Are you calling my car a tank?”

I didn’t know what I meant by it. My prediction had come
true: I could barely remember my name.

It was awkward, as I guess it was bound to be, being
driven around in my own car by someone I’d just met. Conversation came in
clunky sentences that dropped with a thud and then went nowhere—commentary
about pedestrians, other drivers, fast-food joints, the heat. We busied
ourselves with Shelley’s envelope and the city map she’d included. Numbers
written in purple ink on the map coordinated with the printed rental ads.

I commented on all the paperwork and Angel only smiled and
said that was Shelley. He seemed quiet in a way that made me worry he wasn’t
totally into this errand despite Shelley’s assurances that he had nothing
better to do. I started zoning out wondering what the rest of the day would be
like, if it would get easier, if it would drag.

After a few minutes of driving he got a call from someone
named Daniel Rodriguez (I could see the caller ID on his phone), and the name
in its Latino-ness made me feel like he had his own people and I was not really
belonging here even though it was my errand and my car. He talked for a minute
while I squiggled my finger around on the map, content not to have to say
anything for a while. Then he hung up.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“No problem.”

He stopped at a red light and reached for the seat’s
adjusting lever and pulled the seat closer to the wheel. He was settling in. It
was annoying and then endearing, and I felt myself relax a little.

“What time are we supposed to be at this first apartment
again?” he said.

“Eight-thirty.” It was 8:22 now. “I think we’ll make it.”

The first apartment was in a big building near a place
called Kenmore Square, a busy area near where the Red Sox played. Angel
parallel-parked the Jeep skillfully in a space I wouldn’t even have tried to
fit in. I wondered where a guy from Brattleboro learned to city-park like that,
and if he’d really learned it in a tank.

“Look,” he said, pointing at the rooftops as we got out of
the Jeep, “it’s the Citgo sign there. You’d be close to games.” He swung an
invisible bat; the invisible weight made his visible biceps bulge.

“But the crowds, though,” I said. “I’m surprised Shelley put
this place on the list.”

“It could be good,” he added optimistically.

The woman smoking on the front steps turned out to be the
building manager. She brought us inside. The apartment itself was OK—I
could see why Shelley wanted to see it—spacious with in-unit laundry—but
it was between an apartment with a crying baby and another one with a barking
dog. This early, it was easy to write off. I told the woman I’d have to think
about it. She looked at Angel as if to solicit his opinion, but he didn’t say
anything, and we left.

“You’re not really going to think about it, are you?” Angel
said.

“I’m holding out for something better,” I replied.

Angel started the car while I looked for the next page of
Shelley’s itinerary. I’d gotten them all mixed up when I was sitting in her
yard.

“Next is in—Brighton,” I said. “Nine-fifteen.”

He looked at the clock. It was 8:52. “Is Brighton close?”

“Doesn’t look too far. But she really spread some of these
out.”

“It’s OK,” he said, tapping the dashboard, “we’ve got plenty
of gas.”

For a few blocks he silently followed my navigations. Then
he said, “Are you making notes?”

“Notes?”

“Your feelings about these apartments. Are you writing them
down?”

“I figure I’ll know the right one when I see it.”

“My cousin is going to want notes,” he said confidently.

“Hmm. You’re probably right. I don’t have a pen.”

“Check the glove compartment,” he said.

I laughed. “This is
my
car, kiddo.” But I did check it, and found a mechanical pencil, and Angel
smirked. “Aren’t you smart,” I added, and clicked out some lead.

I wrote for a minute.

“What are you putting?” he said.

“
Too close to
ballpark, barking dog, heat and hot water not included despite ad...
.”

“That laundry was nice.”

“
Nice laundry
,” I
wrote, and figured that would do. I placed the pencil in the cup holder.

He was looking at me. “By the way, I like the hair.
Ya
punk.” He said it matter-of-factly but I felt I could
get away with taking it as flirty if I wanted to, and I kind of wanted to.

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks!” I rubbed my mohawk. In an effort to look
more presentable to landlords, I hadn’t put anything in it today, and it was flopping
around in the breeze from the open window. After a while I added, “I did it for
my kid.”

His thick eyebrows went up. “You’ve got a kid?”

“A daughter. Abbey. Yup.”

“I thought you were a gay guy.”

“Oh I am. Big time.
Giant
homo.” And I added, “I donated to my lesbian friend Harriet. She went to UMass
with Shelley and me.”

After a period of what appeared to be intense thought he
said, “Cool.”

“Yeah.” I reached for the stereo. There was a CD already in
it. “Mind some R.E.M.? I’m a fan.”

“Sure,” he said. “They’re OK.”

“They’re my favorite. This album came out last fall.
Around the Sun
. I’m a little obsessed
with it. And by a little I mean a lot.”

Angel laughed.

“And by a lot I mean completely.”

I felt more relaxed now that Michael Stipe was in the car
with us, and maybe somehow more so now that Angel had approved of my kid.

“So there’s some funny reason you’re in the city?” I said. “Shelley
said you should tell me.”

He sighed. “No big story. I’m flying out tomorrow. I thought
it was today. I took a bus, got to the airport at 7:00. Twenty-four hours
early. D’oh!”

“Wow, that sucks so much.”

“Right?”

“Shelley called you a dumbass.”

He smirked. “I was.”

“Flying out to where?”

“Fort Hood.”

“Where’s that?”

“Texas.”

“Like, good Texas or bad Texas?”

“Near Austin,” he said. “Is that good?”

“I hear Austin is good.”

“Good.”

“So this is for an Army thing?”

He paused. “Most of my things are Army things.” Then he
added, “I’m going back in, and that’s where they put me.”