The Absolute Value of -1, page 8
“Hey, Simon,” I said.
“This is Suzanne,” he said, without looking at either of us. “Bye, Suzanne.”
She laughed and gave him a hug and kiss on the cheek while he screwed up his face at me. “Bye. I’ll be back in three hours.”
She started down the path back to her car in our driveway, walking sort of backwards. “Nice to meet you, Noah!”
“Come on in,” I said to Simon.
“Who’s there, Noah?” my mom called from the solarium.
I closed the door after Simon stepped inside. “Take your shoes off, okay?” I said, then I called over my shoulder. “Just a friend from school, Mom. For a science project.”
That’s when the goddamn intercom crackled into life. “Is it a girl?”
Simon looked at me. I looked back. I couldn’t talk.
“Are you a girl?” the speaker asked flatly.
“Um, no. I’m . . . not.”
The speaker laughed. “Of course you’re not. Because my son is a homo.”
“He’s kidding,” I said. Simon glared at me. “No, he’s really kidding. He’s got a terrible sense of humor, my dad.”
“He’s an asshole,” Simon replied as he kicked off his shoes. “So what do you know about molecules?”
“Dude.”
The voice was far off, but it kind of woke me up. I’m not sure I’d actually fallen asleep, but I was deep enough in my head so it wouldn’t have made any difference. One thing I know for sure, I was still on my back, and staring straight up at a mostly clear sky. The clouds were hurrying across the blue. I heard the flag in the front of the school flapping. I heard trees shaking, and right over me I saw the maple tree Lily loved. Its leaves were completely changed for the fall, but they hadn’t done much falling yet.
“Today will be the day,” I said quietly. “Windy day like this, no way they’re going to hold on.”
“Dude.” This voice drawled over the lawn. It was Danny Goodman, I could tell, and he was getting closer. There aren’t too many people who would (A) come looking for me in the middle of second period, and (B) know where to look: under a goddamn maple tree. Not to mention the goddamn announcement: “Duhhhhoooood,” immediately followed by a very throaty laugh.
He sounded far away still. He had probably come out the back doors, spotted me, and immediately duded from all the way across the field. The goddamn back doors must be like a hundred yards from where I was.
“Hey, Goody,” I called out without getting up. “What’s up, dude?”
Danny Goodman. If one man smokes more weed, buys more weed, and talks more fucking shit about Early Girl and Northern Lights and Swiss Miss than yours truly and Simon Fisher, it’s definitely Danny “Goody” Goodman.
The sound of his shoes on the grass got closer, and soon he leaned over me and smiled right in my goddamn face. “No, dude.”
“No” is short for Noah. It’s not “no.”
“Ha ha, you’re flat out, dude,” he said. His breath smelled like a goddamn breakfast sandwich.... with sausage. “How fucking high are you, No?”
I looked up at his smiling, weakly bearded face. “I was looking for you yesterday. Do you think I enjoy carrying around a fucking ounce for you the whole day?”
He laughed. “Where is it, dude? I have money today.”
“All right, back up off me a little, you faggot.” He laughed again, but stood up straight and backed up so I could stand without knocking into his face.
“Follow me to my locker, all right?” I said, shaking my head. He saluted me and walked next to me toward the back door. “You and Hilly should come by this weekend, man, by the way.”
“Oh yeah?” Goody asked. He was barely there, his mind totally on the ounce in my locker.
“Yeah,” I said. “Bring Kyle too, if you want. More the merrier. Mom and the asshole will be away all weekend— some trip out west. But I just got the new Madden, and Hilly’s been psyched about it.”
“That’s cool,” Goody said.
Listen, I know Goody and Hilly are kind of douche bags. But to be honest, they get laid a lot. It’s only fair that I, as the person who supplies their weed, should get some of that action. It’s not like they’re such bad guys, anyway, and I’d been thinking a lot about sort of ditching Simon and Lily, once in a while, like I said.
The halls were pretty quiet, but not empty or anything. The seniors rarely go to class. Typically, if a senior has already missed homeroom twenty times—yes, twenty—they only show up for that, and ditch everything else. There’s no point in going for them. Most of them have already had their transcripts sent off to the college of their choice anyway. Unless they get wait-listed or something, no school will ever care how they do in high school from this point on.
Of course, that’s not to mention the people in every grade that cut regularly, including yours truly. Goody and I walked down the central hallway, and people were huddled in little groups near the library, or at the big windows off the snack bar, or on the handicap ramp by the gym entrance. Some people nodded hello or didn’t look up at all, or a group of girls laughed so you’d want to vomit— but whatever caused it, this thought crossed my mind: I don’t belong out here with these people; I belong in my goddamn remedial math class, which I could ace with one hand tied behind my back, so I could get on with my life, turn eighteen and get out of here and never look back.
But I shook it off, like I always do. And I opened my locker—15, 39, 22—and reached up to the back of the top shelf and pulled out a paper bag and handed it to Goody.
He swung his backpack around and jammed the paper bag inside.
“And bring some chicks, okay?” I said.
“What?” Goody mumbled. He pulled his canvas wallet out of his backpack; it had a cheesy picture of a sunset on it and said “Aloha!”
“If you come by this weekend, bring girls.”
He laughed. “Right, dude.” He paid me. “You know it.” As he turned away, he slapped himself in the forehead. “Man, Aaronson’s party is this weekend. You should come by that.”
“Oh right,” I said. “Planning on it.”
“Bring some product, too, ’cause I know that dude will buy,” Goody added. “Probably half the damn varsity team would.”
Then he put out his hand, and snapped my fingers. “All right, dude. I’m out. Peace.”
Goody turned around and walked through the front doors, out to the traffic circle, where Hilly was sitting on a railing with Megan Zaretsky.
Goody grabbed Hilly by the arm, and Hilly hopped down, reached for Megan’s crotch, and laughed. Megan laughed too, and Goody and Hilly walked away. I heard Hilly shout, “Later, ho,” and my face got hot. I didn’t know who I wanted to punch in the fucking face, but it was someone.
By the way, me and Lily went to that party at Kyle Aaronson’s place. I’m not getting into that whole mess, though.
| chapter 3 |
Everything at home went to shit in December. It was a Wednesday.
When I got home that afternoon, there was broken glass all over the floor in the entrance. I looked down and saw my face looking back up, but in slivers on the hard marble floor. All that was left of my mom’s antique mirror was the silver-plated frame, still on the wall, crooked.
I called out to her: “Ma? What happened?”
She came out of the kitchen, shuffling, with her head down. She was holding a dustpan and brush, and she immediately got on her knees at the broken glass.
“I’ll do it, Ma,” I said. I joined her on the floor and tried to take the brush from her, but she wouldn’t let me.
“I’m fine, sweetie,” she said. She looked down at the pile of glass so her hair fell over his face. “It’s no big deal. I knocked the mirror with my shoulder and it broke. I can clean it up myself.”
“That’s bullshit, Ma.” My mom didn’t “knock” shit. The only knocking that went on was compliments of Dear Old Dad, I assure you. Specifically, he knocked his wife and the mother of his beloved son into a wall, and the mirror got in the way.
I tried to push Mom’s hair out of her face and she turned away from me, but I saw that she had been crying.
“Noah, please,” she said with a little laugh, like I was overreacting or something. Like it was possible to overreact in our house. “And keep your voice down, will you?”
That made it pretty obvious that Dad was home and on a fucking rampage. I heard a TV go on in his office.
“Why is he home so early?” I asked. Dad usually stayed at his office pretty late. He and his partners would sit around in their lounge smoking cigars and watching the financial news. Anything beats coming home to this place, I guess. Anyway Dad was usually home at seven at the very earliest, and here it was not even four.
My mother sighed and relaxed her shoulder. Then she reached up and pushed her hair behind her ears.
“Your father’s former partners back in California are suing him.” She put an arm around me, like I’d need comfort after hearing this earth-shattering news.
“What took them so long?” I replied. I almost smiled.
“Noah, I know you have had your differences with your father”—understatement of the fucking millennium, by the way—“but this is very serious. Your father could lose his practice.”
Seriously, I couldn’t give a shit about his practice. Hell, if Dad ended up getting totally reamed, I was all for it. But I also knew that when the world fucked Dad, Dad took it out on Mom.
So I left my mom there in the entryway, slipped down the basement, called the cops, and called my grandma in Bellmore. You don’t need to hear all that dialogue. Just believe it wasn’t fun for anyone. But that was that. And about four hours later, the house was empty—Dad was at the police station, Mom was at her mother’s—and I had the place to myself.
I decided to throw a goddamn party.
| chapter 4 |
I didn’t go to school the next day. Instead, I was up until four in the morning, rolling godfathers out of my dad’s twenty-dollar cigars and crying like a bitch, if you want to know the truth. The minute I woke up the next afternoon, I hit the basement, flipped on the Xbox, and lit one of those godfathers. By the time the doorbell rang that night, I was out cold on the couch. I woke up to the incessant buzzing of the front door intercom and the occasional pound on the door itself. The Xbox was cycling through the annoying music and cut scene it plays if you don’t start a new game. My eyes were dry as hell. I leaned over and hit the button on the phone.
“Who is it?”
“No, dude,” the phone crackled back. “Open the door, you moron.”
“Seriously, dude,” the phone added in a second voice. “We’ve been out here for days ringing this stupid bell.”
“It’s cold!” the first phone voice added.
“Okay,” I mumbled to the phone, and I rolled off the couch and found my way upstairs and opened the door. In my state, I half expected to see the basement phone standing there, bigger than life, hugging itself to keep off the chill.
It was just Goody and Hilly. They barged in, pulling off their ridiculous Sherpa hats.
“Finally,” Hilly said. “What the fuck, Noah? Were you jackin’ off or something?”
Goody thought that was completely hilarious. “You do look pretty out of it, No.”
The two of them made themselves right at home, hitting the fridge, pulling glasses out of the cupboard. Hilly had his head in the pantry when he called out, “Noah, do you have any chips?”
We didn’t have chips, and the plate Goody was using to reheat a slice of old pizza in the microwave was a meat plate. He might as well have taken a shit on the lambskin rug in my dad’s office. But whatever. That asshole wasn’t coming home soon.
I ignored everything Hilly and Goody were doing, and asked, “Just you two?”
“Who did you expect?” Hilly replied. He’d found some cold chicken and was eating it out of the Tupperware, which at least wasn’t soiling the goddamn house.
“I thought you were going to bring some girls.” I tried not to sound whiny, but I think I did. “Some ladies,” I added to cover.
Goody laughed. “Ladies!”
Hilly shook a drumstick at me and practically shouted—with his mouth full, spitting everywhere— “Dude, think about what you just said. What ‘ladies’ do you think are going to jump at the chance to hang out at casa de Noah da Stonah?”
“Whatever, Hilly. You idiots are stoned more than I am.”
Hilly stared at me. “But we also rule the JV football team and get mad cheerleader tail. You just smoke.”
I held his eyes for a minute, felt my face get hot. The microwave beeped and Goody jumped up from the table to retrieve his pizza.
Suddenly Hilly’s face broke and he laughed. “Dude, relax,” he said to me. Then he dropped the Tupperware into the sink. “Is there beer or what?”
Goody took a huge bite of pizza and said, “Basement fridge, am I right, No?”
“Yeah, basement,” I said. “Help yourself. I’ll be down in a minute.” And I grabbed the phone and took a seat at the kitchen table. First I called Simon, but there was no answer.
“That fucker better show up tonight,” I mumbled to myself, then I dialed Lily and stood up. She answered on the first ring.
“Hi, Noah.”
“Hey, Lil,” I said. I walked in a circle around the kitchen table. “You coming over tonight or not?”
“I guess so. Who’s there now?”
“Um, just Goody and Hilly. They’re tearing my house apart.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“You have to come over. Simon will be here soon and if you’re not here too Goody and Hilly will probably kill him with their bare hands. They hate that guy, you know.”
Mostly I had to drop Simon’s name to get her off her ass. I know how things work.
“Yet another reason for me to not be near those guys. Why do you even like them?” She sighed big. “Okay, I’m on my way. See you later.”
“Cool. Bye, Lil.”
I put the phone down and looked at the open basement door. The sound of the Xbox reached the kitchen table, along with the smell of my weed no one had paid for. I sat down again and slumped, let my head hang back so I was looking across the room upside down. My dad’s office door was closed, locked, most likely. Behind it was the good scotch, two leather chairs, an oak desk, a flat-screen TV, two computers, a sheepskin rug. But the best part, the part that really defined my dad—defined me—was the seething hate and the violence, and that we stashed neatly under the rug.
I was almost fourteen the first time I hit my dad. I guess I’d like to say I did it in a moment of passion, like I was blind with rage or some shit. That was one injustice over the fucking line, Pops! I might have shouted. But really, I’d been thinking about it for years. My dad had never hit me, he’d never done much more than dropped these little nasty comments on me, like calling me a homo in front of my friends, or muttering under his breath that when he was my age, he was spending every weekend knee deep in snatch.
I’m his son. I don’t know why he liked making me feel like shit, but he obviously did.
So I fantasized a lot about hitting him, making him cower, making him bleed from his nose. It didn’t go down like that at all.
I was sitting at the kitchen table one night, not doing anything. The lights were off, and I was just sitting and listening to the house. Mom was in the solarium, hiding out. Dad was in his office. I could hear his TV, on the financial news channel. I could hear him get up every so often to refill his drink. Once he walked past me—right past me—to refill his ice bucket. God forbid he have room temperature scotch. Or say anything to his son sitting in the dark kitchen.
I waited a little while longer, sitting in that kitchen chair, leaned forward, tapping my feet, flexing my fists. I had counted five scotches, and after the first they had probably all been doubles. He was good and drunk. My mother’s music, piped into the solarium, was Beethoven’s Ninth—conducted by Leonard Bernstein; she listens to him constantly—and a crescendo would cover for me as I pushed open Dad’s office door and found him leaning, his elbow on the mantle of his gas fireplace, his head hanging. The only light in the room came from the blue flames and the TV. Dad’s glasses were on his desk, on a stack of papers. His eyes were closed.
I stepped up to him, and his voice rang in my ears, though he didn’t say anything. I heard him laugh quietly like he does. I heard homo and faggot, and I saw the crinkle of his eyes when he smiles at me with no love, only scorn. I heard my mother crying out, crying so hard that her chest heaved and she hiccupped and coughed.
I gritted my teeth and faced him, and he had no idea I was in the room. The chorus of the fourth movement was belting out German praises to the Father, and I muttered, “I hate you.” Then I hit him. My fist struck his left cheek, and it hurt—my hand stung then throbbed, and Dad shook awake from his trance. “Ode to Joy” soared through the room as Dad turned to me and wiped his cheek. His eyes crinkled as he looked into mine and the corners of his mouth turned up, just a little.
I don’t know what I thought. Maybe that he would go down like a sack of flour, drunk as he was, and just pass out—forget the whole thing, but I’d have a nice, fuzzy memory. Instead I got a broken nose and started a war.
I didn’t get up from that chair until Lily rang the buzzer. When she did, I groaned and went for the door.
“You look like shit,” she said.
“You look fucking ravishing,” I replied, because I’m very smooth like that. She stuck out her tongue and pushed past me. At the top of the basement steps, she stopped and turned to me.
“Simon’s not here?”
I shrugged. “Not yet. Have a beer, relax.”
“I’m not going down there with them.”
