So she says yes to the party.
No one is officially invited to Charlie’s party; everybody just knows about it. I convince David Yee to come with me. I want a night of darkness and chaos, of getting openly trashed. I figure he’ll have forgiven me by now, and it seems he has. To my relief, Lisa has no interest in joining me. We say good-bye as she gets into her parents’ car for the drive home to Brookline, neither of us making any noises about a summer meeting or even exchanging letters. We are both utterly content to be rid of each other.
Asking around, I find a ride with a day student I hardly know. When he and David and I get to Charlie’s place
around 9:00
PM
, the party is in full swing. There’s a half moon low in the sky and it’s very dark outside the farmhouse proper. People wander with bottles in their hands, beer or whiskey, searching out private spots to talk, drink, screw. In the basement of the big house, near shelves holding a few onions and potatoes, there is a Ping-Pong table and an enormous freezer and refrigerator. The fridge holds beer and the freezer vodka, along with huge hunks of meat wrapped in white paper. Scattered across a stainless-steel table are open bags of chips and pretzels.
I play Ping-Pong for a while with David and then go out to get some air. There are hayfields behind the house, an empty structure that someone claims is an old chicken coop, and, farther away, an archery range with targets pinned to bales. I’m wondering if Aviva is here tonight. After Seung’s body was found, she left Auburn for a couple of days; a cousin or aunt from Connecticut drove up to collect her. When she came back we all studied her, looking for something—we weren’t sure what. She had some dark knowledge inside of her, something vast and slumbering that might shoot quills at us if we got too close. From the outside, though, Aviva appeared more or less the same as always, or at least the same as she’d come to look over the course of the year: thin, pale, a little less bold in her carriage. But it was hard to get a handle on her. Seung’s crowd closed around her, protecting her, hiding her from curious eyes.
They are with her now. I’ve circled back to the farmhouse and see her walking in my direction, flanked by
Sterne and Giddings and some of their Weld hangers-on. There’s something loose but careful in her walk that makes me think she might be drunk. That would be interesting—a drunk Aviva. I’m not going to be able to get close to her, though, so I bushwhack into the fields until I come across a group spread out on blankets, drinking and nodding to a boom box blaring the Allman Brothers. It isn’t my kind of music, but it’s loud, loud enough that I can get swamped by the noise, lose track of the outside world for a while. I lie down on my back and close my eyes. Someone puts a beer in my hand.
Time goes by. It must be about an hour, because I remember the Allman Brothers finishing and then both sides of
Aqualung
being played. I’m liking this little pocket of existence, where people come and go every so often, unspoken to, unmolested. I’m inclined never to leave. But some instinct makes me open my eyes just in time to see David Yee pass by in the company of some girl, looks like a lower maybe, a tiny little thing who will be sorry later when she figures out what a dork she’s attached herself to.
Well, well, David,
I think. Somebody in the pile of bodies finally speaks, commenting slurringly that “they” are setting off firecrackers at the archery range, and when I listen I can hear the sharp spattering sound. I get up, take a swig of Heineken, and leave the bottle with someone else.
I haven’t gotten far when I see Aviva on the stoop of the chicken house. She’s with Cort, of all people. I don’t think the two of them have ever spoken in their lives. I wonder
where Seung’s crowd went. They wouldn’t have left her; she must have separated herself from them. She’s got her eyes closed and Cort’s arm is draped around her.
For chrissakes, Cort,
I think.
You’re a faggot!
Aviva is wearing a long skirt and an oversized oxford that in the light of the bulb fixed above the stoop seems to be either white or pale blue. It was Seung’s shirt, maybe. I am sure it was Seung’s. I go cold looking at it. It is as if Aviva has draped Seung’s dead body around her shoulders. Does no one else notice this? Does it make no one else recoil?
Cort greets me drunkenly. Aviva raises her head from his shoulder and blinks at me indifferently. Though this doesn’t amount to much of an invitation, I crouch down opposite them. It’s a humid but bug-free night.
“Aviva’s going to Europe,” Cort tells me.
“Oh.”
“With Lena,” Aviva adds unexpectedly. Her eyes close again. “Two months, Eurail Pass, everything. My father told me about the tickets this morning.”
“That must be nice,” I say, “to have a father who gives you tickets to Europe.”
“I was supposed to find a job this summer. And see a shrink. But Lena’s aunt called my mother and my mother called my father. It’ll be cheaper than an actual shrink—I’m sure that’s what convinced my dad.”
“Come on, you don’t know that,” I say.
“Traveling will be good for you,” Cort tells her soothingly. I wonder when he developed such a confident sense
of Aviva’s psychological needs. I despise the sound of her name in his mouth.
Aviva.
I believe he has no right.
“Cort will be taking math this summer,” I inform her. “University of Maryland only agreed to take him provisionally. No hittee grade level, no gettee in.”
“Right, Bennett-Jones. I’ll be haunted all my life by the shame.” He lifts a flat bottle to his mouth, takes a swig, passes it to Aviva. She hesitates, then puts her narrow, fragile-looking fingers around it.
“Cort.” All three of us look up. No one heard Voss approach, and now he looms above us. His shirt is unbuttoned to midchest; he’s sweating exhibitionistically. His feet are planted like a man expecting a fight.
Cort disentangles himself from Aviva and struggles upright. “Hey, man.”
“Billy Lavery is shooting a Winchester rifle out there. I want to check it out.”
“He has a gun?” Aviva asks. She stands, too, batting a leaf out of her hair.
“Bradley’s folks have a whole room full of guns and rifles and even some Civil War shit, but it’s fricking triple-locked. This one, though, Charlie found in the basement.”
“It’s dark,” Aviva says. Her hands are on her hips. She seems less drunk now.
“Billy’s got a lantern.
Cort.
”
“Coming, for fuck’s sake.”
“Someone could get hurt,” insists Aviva.
“No one’s going to get hurt,” says Voss. “Billy isn’t stupid.”
“Don’t be such a thickheaded dick,” says Cort. “Think of what Aviva’s been through, man.”
Voss looks briefly at his sneakers. “Billy’s had only, like, two beers,” he says. “And Charlie isn’t going to let anyone else shoot.”
He strides off in the direction of the archery range. Cort hurries to join him.
“Idiots,” comments Aviva.
She looks around, as if distressed to find herself all alone, as if I am not still crouched there a few feet from her. The bulb light makes the buttons of her shirt gleam, and I try again to figure out what color it is. I’m regretting giving away that beer I had.
“I wish I hadn’t come,” Aviva says.
She turns and walks after Cort and Voss. I scramble up to follow.
She must hear my steps, but she doesn’t speed up or tell me to go away. In a moment I’ve caught up. She doesn’t acknowledge my presence.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m out of breath, from nerves. “I’m sorry about Seung.” Just now, I
am
sorry. I’m sorry about everything. I want things to be better for her. I want her to stop looking so depleted and vulnerable.
“All right,” she says. “Thanks.”
She increases her pace; apparently, she’s done with the conversation. But a few moments later, she stops short and makes an impatient gesture. “What do you want?” she asks.
“It must be terrible,” I say. I mean nothing in particular by this. I just need to say sentences to her. They form themselves without my thought or involvement. I need her to acknowledge me.
Her lips are closed, contemptuous. “It’s not terrible,” she says. “It’s not anything. It’s nothing,
nothing.
”
I can’t truly hear her. I keep talking. “Of course I can’t really know what it’s like when someone you care about dies. I can’t really know what . . .”
“I don’t feel
anything,
” she interrupts. “Do you get that? Does anybody get that? I’m cold. I’m cold all the way through. There’s something missing in me, just like I always thought.”
“It’s not true,” I say.
I don’t see it coming. Her hand strikes me across the face. She looks surprised. She clutches the hand with the other one and shuts her eyes. “What the fuck do you know?” she says.
“Okay, okay,” I say. I feel, with alarm, that tears are rising to my eyes. I beg them to stay away. The skin around my left eye prickles.
“Okay,” I repeat. I believe that I’m backing away from her; I even see myself turning toward the farmhouse, moving back toward the big porch and the lights. But clearly I don’t do this, because I find I am on my knees, my arms around her legs, my head against her belly, weeping. Her belly is flat, a little bony, but very soft too. Her hand comes down and rests on my head.
“Please,” I say. “Please.”
I reach up and undo the bottom button of her long shirt—Seung’s shirt. Then the next button. I want to put my cheek against her and tangle in the warm metal of her necklaces and feel the warmed skin beneath. Then I realize it’s not her I need to be naked but me. I turn my shaking hands to myself. I pull off my shirt and kneel there with my short, fleshy chest, my ugliness exposed.
There’s the report of a gun going off, then cheers. I rise and take Aviva’s hand and lead her into the hayfield. We lie down on the ground, breaking the stalks under us, and kiss. Her mouth is warm and tastes of rum. She does not make a sound but I feel her breathing slow and thicken, and, just as I’ve imagined so many times, she raises her arms around me. Her mouth is a tunnel I can get lost in. I reach down and feel the whole length of her—her own intimate shape, plane and slope, curve and bone. She’s shivering. I spread my shirt on top of her, on top of the man’s shirt she’s already wearing. I unbuckle myself, pull off my jeans and underpants. She sits up, clutching my shirt, waiting. Her skirt is pushed up above satiny-looking panties. I don’t know if I can bear it anymore. My cock is going to split out of its skin, break open like a fruit. For a moment the old violence comes up in me and I feel as if I could maul her in my desperation to have her to myself. But I hold back, I hold back. She lets me lower myself onto her and stroke her; I can feel her chest and belly soften underneath me and yet she keeps her legs rigid. I stop. I ask her if I should go on.
—Yes.
She sounds far away. I kiss her again, and again she feels warm and receptive, but then she turns her mouth away as if to say, Get on with it. I nudge her apart as best I can and she squirms to accommodate me. I push in slightly; she’s wet but tight. Then with pent-up impatience I push again, harder, and she cries out sharply.
I fall back on my knees, apologizing. She lifts her head, tries to smile. “It’s okay,” she says. I know it’s all going wrong but I can’t stop now, my greed and joy send me on. I push in again, more gently this time. She is quiet now, very still. I feel as if I am moving in a horrific emptiness. I thrust in once more, and she makes a little
ah
!—of pleasure or discomfort I can’t tell—and then, all at once, all happiness and will drain from me and I pull out, panting, my cock throbbing in painful protest.
Aviva sits up, her eyes wide. “No,” she says. “Don’t stop.”
I crawl away from her, let the hay close behind me. And there, with my back to her, I tug and yank at myself until—it doesn’t take long—I spill. I wipe myself off, cry quickly and quietly, rub my eyes with my forearm. Everything is humid, sticky, soiled.
When I come back to our spot, she’s fled. My shirt and jeans and underpants lie here and there on the ground. I gather them up and my hands find something else: a ring, at least it feels so in the darkness, smooth and bumpy. I pull my clothes on slowly, slip my find into my pocket, spit to get the taste of something out of my mouth. I walk dizzily
toward the farmhouse, stopping once to piss in the weeds, and, after grabbing a fresh beer from the cooler, seek out a dark spot against the back wall outside, where few people see me or speak to me for the rest of the evening. At some point I fall asleep, and I don’t wake until someone shakes me by the shoulders. It’s the day student, who has been decent enough not to leave without me and is prepared to drop me and David at the Greyhound station in Portsmouth as promised. David is wearing a shit-eating grin. He must have gotten somewhere with that lower girl.
In the light of the bus station, as we wait for the first of the day’s buses to Boston, I examine Aviva’s ring, gold with little ruby chips, narrower at the bottom than at the setting, as delicate as she is. I lost a ring to Seung and from Aviva I gained one. I slip it back into my pocket.
Many hours later, in my parents’ home, disheveled, still hungover, I step into the shower to rid myself of the crud and grime of the previous evening, and I see the dried blood on my penis. It takes me a minute to realize that’s what it is. Aviva was starting her period, is what I think at first. Could that be right? Maybe that’s why she was so ambivalent, so tense. Still, I can’t help feeling that it’s the blood of a wounding, an assault. I can’t make sense of it all—this thing I wanted so much to do, waited to do, then fled from again. What is its meaning to me now? When I was inside of her I thought of Seung stretched out on his back at the Bog, his head in the dirt, that weed smile on his lips, still alive, breathing, blood pumping throughout his
veins and valves. “The shape of a pull toy,” he’d said of a
THC
molecule. I’d thought of that, pressing into Aviva, moving in and out, until, looking at her face, so stricken and impoverished, I couldn’t go on.