The Lucky Kind (4 page)

“It was a small town and …” He pauses, and keeps leaning forward, like he’s trying to get closer to me, but I’m still leaning back against my chair and away from him. I think he’s literally biting his tongue, trying to keep himself from saying anything. “Goddammit, in any town, it’s a big deal.”

“Okay, I believe you. In any town.” I lean forward again so that he knows I’m not blowing him off. “You’ve been sneaking around the house like there was this big dark secret, and I can’t remember you ever having had a secret. I thought maybe Sam Roth was some guy trying to extort money from you.”

I laugh, even Mom laughs. But Dad doesn’t. He just says, “No, nothing like that,” and he gets up from the table, and when his back is turned, I notice my mother shaking out her hand. I see that her fingers are white, like no blood had been getting to them, and I realize that for the last five minutes, none had, because my father, under the table, had been holding her hand so tightly.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now. Am I supposed to go to my room? I guess he thinks my response was too small. Well, sorry, I don’t know the proper response to finding out your father made stupid mistakes when he was younger. Things like that don’t happen here. Not to anyone I know, not to anyone I go to school with. Maybe they weren’t allowed to have sex ed at the public high school in Troy where Dad went. We all have sex ed, we all know we’re supposed to use condoms, and any of the girls I know—I think they would all know what to do, early on. I almost asked why Sarah didn’t do that, but then I thought that I had no idea what the abortion laws were in Ohio now, let alone—I do the math—twenty-nine years ago. And now that I think about it, I guess it wouldn’t be a very nice thing to say, given that Sam Roth is now a living, breathing twenty-nine-year-old person.

“Did he grow up in Troy, too?” I ask, finally, to my dad’s back.

“Hmm?” he says, turning around, looking down at me.

“Where did he grow up?”

“In Texas.”

“Texas?”

“Yeah, we knew that when we signed the papers. That it was a family in Texas.”

“Did you know they were Jewish?”

“What?”

“The name Sam Roth.” I say it carefully now, allowing the name to hold weight when before it was hollow. “It sounds Jewish.”

“No, we didn’t know. Actually, I haven’t asked him. He might be Jewish.”

“You didn’t think that when you heard that name?”

Dad shakes his head. Sometimes Mom and I forget that he’s not Jewish, so he doesn’t think of things like that. I’m sure it was one of the first things Mom thought. I bet she wonders if he was raised religiously. I wasn’t.

“I’ve never been to Texas.”

“Me either,” Dad says, “not even on a business trip.”

I try to think of something that I know about Texas, something that would help explain Sam Roth.

“Is he a Republican?” I say, and finally, Dad laughs.

“You know,” he says, “I’ve been thinking about that for almost thirty years. I’m too scared to ask him.”

Counting the Steps

M
aking Dad laugh seemed like the right time to make my exit, so I said I had homework. But I’m in my room now and I haven’t even made the pretense of picking up a book. I haven’t sat down on the bed or the floor or at my computer. No, I’m standing in the middle of my room looking at the floor, and then at the ceiling, and then out the window, and then at my bed, and at the pile of books beside it, calculating just how many steps it will take me to get from the center of my room to the bed (I figure five), and then how much effort it would take to reach my arm out to lift a book from the top of a pile, and then how heavy it would feel while I brought it down onto my lap, and then how far I would have to lean back to turn on the lamp on my nightstand, and then how long it would take me to fix my pillows so that I could sit up while I read. But wait, I’d need a pencil to underline and make notes while I read, and my pencils are on my desk, next to my computer, clear on the other side of the room. So if I’d done that, if I’d made all that effort to get to my bed, get my book, turn on my light, and adjust my pillows, I would have had to get up, walk a good seven or eight steps to my desk (wait, how big is my room, anyway?), pick out the right pen or pencil, and then go all the way back to the bed, pick up the book again, adjust the pillows again, and it would have been a ridiculous amount of effort to expend before I could even begin to do my homework.

I think I’m better off standing right here instead. And I try to come up with something that I can do from right here, the center of the room, a place I’ve begun to think of as my spot, like actors who have spots they have to hit on a set or onstage. If they’re not in the right spot, then whole scenes can be ruined. Enormous efforts are made that surround their being in their spot—lighting arrangements, camera arrangements—to say nothing of the spots of the other actors with whom they’re performing. One actor blows his spot and then all those other details would need to be adjusted.

And so I think, I really do think, that I should stay in my spot right now.

My cell phone is on my dresser, and that’s only an arm’s length away. I can reach my phone without leaving my spot. I grab it, careful, very careful not to drop it, because if I did, surely the battery would pop out and slide along the hardwood floor, and then I’d be shit out of luck, because I’d never be able to retrieve it without leaving my spot, and I’m sure as hell not leaving my spot right now.

I hold it in my hands for a minute, begin scrolling through my contacts. I can’t call Stevie, even though his number was probably the last one I’d called so I’d just have to hit send to redial him, minimal effort for sure. But I can’t call Stevie because I’d tell him about my dad, and I get the feeling that my dad doesn’t want me to tell Stevie about this. I can’t think of anything I’ve ever not told Stevie, but I can’t think of ever having had a secret before. Only little things like sneaking out at night or the first time I smoked pot or got drunk, which of course I told Stevie, and eventually probably even told my dad about, too.

But I don’t want to tell Stevie about Sam Roth, because first I’d have to admit how I was a big baby who was jealous that some stranger’s phone calls were taking my dad away from me, and then I’d have to admit that I came up with that ridiculous extortion theory, and then I’d have to tell the truth, and then I’d have to talk about how pissed I am, and I just don’t feel like explaining anything right now.

But who else is there, besides Stevie, to call? And I have to call someone. Otherwise, I’m just some creep who’s psychologically glued to his spot, holding a cell phone and pressing the buttons like he doesn’t know which ones do which things.

I call Eden. Her number’s been in my phone for months. I got it from someone else—how pathetic is that—but I call Eden, who maybe won’t pick up when she doesn’t recognize my number, but I call Eden, because it’s not like I can make a bigger ass out of myself than I did last night, right? I mean, it would be rude not to call her and say sorry about your shoes; did I get your shoes?

“Hello?”

I don’t say anything. I really didn’t think she’d pick up.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Oh God, she doesn’t recognize my voice and she’s just pretending she knows who I am. Who does she think I am? Some other guy, some guy who calls her all the time, whose voice she would recognize. Maybe she has a boyfriend from another school.

“It’s Nick,” I say. I want to make sure that’s clear.

“Yeah,” she says. Maybe she did recognize my voice after all. “What’s up, Nick?”

I’m up, I think. I’m standing up in my spot.

“Nothing much. How about you?”

“Arrr,” she purrs, and I imagine that she’s still in bed maybe, maybe she’s exhausted from last night, too, maybe she’s reaching her arms up over her head to stretch, and maybe as she does so, her shirt lifts up a little, exposing her midriff. I imagine her stomach white, whiter than her arms and legs, because she would wear a one-piece at the beach, one of those suits that look like they’re from the 1950s. Her stomach would feel like a mattress with clean sheets pulled tightly over it, and it would be warm when I touched it.

“Just hanging out. Procrastinating, mostly,” she says.

“What’re you supposed to be doing?”

“Studying for Barsky’s history quiz on Tuesday.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess I’m supposed to be doing that, too.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” I echo. “So,” I say, and as I say it, I take a step, outside of my spot, screwing up the whole scene. And then another step, and another, and then back, stepping back toward my spot, but then I step right through it, and on behind it. I’m pacing.

“So, how about we procrastinate together? Or maybe study together—tomorrow, after school?”

“Study?”

“Well, we’d have every intention of studying, of course.”

“Of course.” I imagine she’s rolling over now, resting her chin on her hand, waiting to hear what else I have to say.

“But if we just happened to get distracted—”

“By what?” she interjects, and now I imagine that she’s sitting up. Shit, did she think I was coming on to her? Or wait, did she like that I was coming on to her?

I mean, I don’t want to not come on to her. But I shouldn’t be too overt about it. And I certainly shouldn’t do it accidentally, like I think I just did.

“Like, things that might come up.” Shit, did I really just say things that might come up? I’m a walking cliché of bad, bad lines from bad, bad movies.

“Like, you know, meals that need to be eaten, highlighters that run out of ink. Paper cuts, which, you know, we could incur while studying, that would then have to be attended to.”

“Studying can be fraught with danger,” she says.

I think she’s flirting with me. Halle-friggin-lujah.

“It can. Best not to do it alone.”

“Absolutely.”

“So, tomorrow, after school.”

“Absolutely.”

Well, now at least if I call Stevie, chances are I won’t find time to say anything about Sam Roth.

After School

T
he subway is pretty crowded on the way down to Tribeca. Crowded enough that I stand while Eden sits. She can’t cross her legs because that would take up too much space, so her feet are firmly on the ground. I stand with my legs on either side of hers, my hand on the metal bar above both of us so that I don’t fall with every stop and start. I try not to look down her shirt; as much as I want to see her chest, this isn’t exactly the way I had in mind. But I can’t help seeing the edges of her bra, white and shiny, and even though I’m hanging on, my legs bang into hers at every stop, my knees hitting her thighs, and even through my khakis, I can feel the warmth of her bare legs. I want to hold her like that, my legs pressing on hers from either side, to show that she is mine; but she isn’t, so I don’t.

Before I met Eden in the school lobby today, Stevie pulled me aside to wish me luck. He stuck a handful of condoms in my backpack.

“Got these from the nurse’s office for you,” he said, patting my shoulder.

“You’re an asshole,” I said.

“You’re blushing,” he replied.

Eden’s apartment is one of those where the elevator opens right into the apartment, but not like Stevie’s, where it opens into a foyer where you see all this art with even a Rodin and a Miró that they inherited from his grandparents. The Reisses’ elevator opens right into the living room, and you can see an open kitchen to the right, and the only artwork is huge framed photographs mounted on exposed-brick walls. It’s kind of the cliché of a Tribeca loft, like from a movie about artists living in downtown Manhattan made by people who’ve never been to Manhattan. One of those movies that have scenes where something happens on East 59th Street and then a character has to take a cab to get to Bloomingdale’s, which is on East 59th Street.

I’ve seen Eden’s mother before, at school functions and things, but she’s always dressed, obviously, when I see her, so I’m a little thrown by the woman walking toward us in flannel pajama pants and T-shirt. I notice that she’s obviously not wearing a bra and her breasts swing with every step, but in a way that is so unattractive that for a second I actually worry about what Eden’s boobs might look like without a bra, and I really hope they don’t swing like that.

“Nick, right?” she says to me, and I nod, trying not to stare at her chest.

“How are you, Mrs. Reiss?”

“Becker, actually. My maiden name.”

I nod. That happens with my mom all the time. She kept her maiden name, too—Ellerstein—and hates when people assume that her last name is Brandt.

“I used to use Reiss,” she continues, “but I’ve decided I’m going back to Becker now.”

I nod again. I don’t actually want to ask why.

“Okay, Mom,” Eden says, and I’m relieved she’s taking control. “We have that history thing to study for, remember?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay,” Eden says, and turns to the right. I begin to follow her when Ms. Becker says, “Staying for dinner, Nick?”

I look at Eden. I don’t know if I’m invited to stay for dinner. She hadn’t mentioned that.

“We’ll probably get pizza or something,” Eden says, though I’m not sure if she’s telling her mother that, or me.

“Because, you know, Nick, I might cook something, so I would just need to know how many people to cook for. Eden’s father never tells us when he’ll be home, and it’s very annoying not to know for whom you are cooking.”

I look at Eden again. Ms. Becker said “for whom you are cooking” very slowly, with an emphasis on the words “whom” and “are.”

“You never cook, Mom,” Eden says finally. “If we decide to order something, I’ll let you know, in case you want in on it.”

Ms. Becker doesn’t say anything. I think she’s pretending not to hear. Eden starts walking again and I follow her into her room and she closes the door firmly behind her. My mother wouldn’t let us do that, and even though I suspect it’s more to do with the fact that Eden’s mom isn’t entirely, well, aware, I mostly just feel lucky that Ms. Becker isn’t the kind of mom who notices when her daughter closes the door to her room with a boy on the other side of it.

“I’m sorry about that,” Eden says.

“About what?” I say.

“Don’t pretend to be clueless,” she says, and she sounds angry at me.

I nod. I think how I would feel if my mother met one of my friends with her breasts swinging low and complained about my father, intimating that she was thinking of leaving him by changing her name. I don’t think Eden is embarrassed; I think she’s angry.

I say, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, either,” she says, and sits down on the floor, leaning against her bed. I sit down next to her. I’m not touching her, but being this close to her makes my stomach hurt.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “you’ll probably be gone before my dad gets home and their bickering begins. He works late. Later and later, actually. I don’t blame him; I’d avoid it, too. I mean, I can’t believe she said that, about changing her name.”

“It’s okay,” I say, and then, realizing how condescending that sounds, I add, “I mean, I won’t tell anyone about it.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She shrugs. “I mean, anyone can tell by looking at them. They’re not going to last much longer, or if they are, it certainly won’t be any good.”

“Oh?”

“You should hear the things she says when he does get home. You wouldn’t know what to make of it. Nothing like that happens at your house.” She says it like she knows it for a fact.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, and I’m surprised at how defensive I sound, like it’s an insult that she thinks that my parents don’t fight.

“Dude, your parents
hold hands
on parents’ day.”

“They do?”

“Yeah. You never noticed?”

I shrug.

“I saw them, sitting in the back of the room. Like this,” she says, and she takes my hand in hers. “Your dad even squeezed her hand,” she says, “like this,” and she squeezes my hand. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but my skin where she is touching me feels so hot that I can’t believe she hasn’t let go, like the way you’d drop a hot plate.

“I didn’t know,” I say, thinking only of the fact that she may be the only person, other than, say, my parents and my grandparents, whose hand I’ve held. Her skin is so soft it’s almost slippery.

“I was watching them,” she says, kind of wistfully, leaning her head back against her bed, loosening her grip on my hand, but not letting go.

I should say something. This is an opportunity. I mean, I’ve been in rooms alone with girls before. I’ve leaned toward them and kissed them, at parties, maybe snuck off to someone else’s bedroom or even their bathroom, tried sticking my hands up a shirt or under a waistband. But being alone with Eden is nothing like that, and it certainly doesn’t feel like a moment to make a move. Our hands are resting in the space between our legs, but loosely, like we’ve been holding each other’s hands for years, like it’s not a big deal. It doesn’t even feel like she was really taking my hand, only that she was trying to show me something. But I should at least say something.

But she speaks first. “I guess we should study now, huh?” she says, and when she gets on her hands and knees to reach for her backpack, she drops my hand.