Byrd Read online

  She thought he would tell her not to leave, not yet, instead of rolling off the bed and scooping up his clothes and ducking into the bathroom and turning on the faucet and calling out over the water that it’s too bad she can’t stay.

  “Sex changes everything,” Shelia says.

  “It wasn’t really sex,” Addie says. “We stopped before it got that far.”

  “Good thing,” Shelia says.

  They are in Betsy’s pushbutton Dodge, driving to the health clinic, a flat brick building on the highway. They pull into the gravel lot and park in back so that no one can see the car from the road.

  Before they can get their pills they have to sit through a class with girls they don’t know while a nurse explains their bodies. The nurse puts diagrams on an overhead projector. She passes around a big doll to show them how to check their breasts for lumps. When it’s Addie’s turn the other girls break out laughing. “Them doll baby titties bigger than hers,” one says.

  “Class,” the nurse says.

  If sex changes everything, not-sex changes everything even more.

  This is what Addie learns in high school. If you’re a guy, if you’re Roland, it might be okay to fail French or algebra, but it’s not okay to fail at sex.

  And if you’re a girl, if you’re Addie, there’s nothing you can do or say to make it okay. She would like to tell Roland, Please, it doesn’t matter. But it does matter, all of it—the dance, him watching her undress, their bodies touching while his father’s lawnmower rattled outside, his bare, slender ass when he rolled away from her. What happened between them was as intimate and daring as she imagines sex could ever be.

  They don’t talk about it. Every day, they sit together in counterculture class, they share cigarettes at the smoking wall, and they don’t talk about it.

  She doesn’t want to go back to his basement without an invitation and he doesn’t invite her, so they don’t talk about it there.

  Weeks go by and they don’t talk about it.

  She asks about his music.

  He’s putting together a band, he says, a blues trio. They practice in the drummer’s garage. “We’re going to play for senior assembly.”

  “That’s great,” she says.

  He doesn’t invite her to the drummer’s garage.

  He doesn’t ask to read her new poems.

  They don’t write a song together.

  A Friday night in late May. The air is warm and humid, full of the smell of cut grass and burning charcoal, almost too thick to breathe. A thunderstorm would be a relief, but no one wants rain for the party, which is a cookout because Pet doesn’t want Roland’s friends coming in the house.

  There are two long tables pushed together in the carport with “Happy Birthday” tablecloths and plates and napkins and streamers and balloons. Addie sits at the far table, across from Danny Brewster with his stringy ponytail and too-tight “Keep On Truckin’” T-shirt. He keeps glancing out at his car parked along the curb. Danny’s car is his life; it’s all he talks about. A shiny banana-yellow Barracuda with a black 440 decal, fender fins, chrome wheels, wide tires. He sat in it for his senior picture.

  Roland is at the head of the main table, flanked by his sister and her friend Louise White. Louise is a sophomore whose older brother died in Vietnam. People at school treat her like a hero.

  Addie doesn’t believe in war.

  Louise has strawberry-blond hair and freckles. Whenever Roland talks, she laughs, tinkly as a bell. Roland passes her things out of order, the hotdogs and chili before the buns, the baked beans twice before anyone else has had them. Even Pet is kind to her, sprinkling her with questions like how is her father getting along and what’s she going to do this summer. Louise sits up straight and holds her elbows at her side and delicately pinches her fork. Her dad, she says, has lined up a job for her at the tile plant, second shift. She’s grateful he could get her on, jobs being so scarce and all. She’s trying to save money for college.

  She is so open, so uncomplaining.

  Pet tut-tuts and says she’s sure Louise will get a scholarship.

  Louise smiles serenely. She has a heart-shaped smile and straight white teeth. “I hope so,” she says.

  She lives behind the Presbyterian Church, in a yellow house with an ivy-covered yard. When her brother died, her mother had a breakdown. Now Louise has to take care of things at home and isn’t available for after-school activities. But she’s popular anyway, because of her perfect smile and perfect figure, and because she knows how to act in any situation. Tonight she’s smiling, sugary, but when she and Roland’s sister pass Addie in the hall at school, they look down and don’t speak.

  “I love this neighborhood,” she says. “My grandfather remembers before they built the golf course or any of these houses, when this was all farmland. He and his friends would come over in winter when it snowed. They would start up there”—she points, her arm sleek and confident—“and go sledding all the way down to the creek. It’s one long hill, if you look at it.”

  Roland’s parents are fascinated—the idea of people sledding through their living room! Roland stares at Louise like she invented snow.

  “Remember those big round Coca-Cola signs?” she says. “They could get three people in one of those signs. But there was no way to steer, so they’d go spinning like crazy and about half the time end up in the creek.”

  “I know where we can get one,” Danny Brewster says loudly, to nobody.

  “Where I grew up,” Pet says, “it never snowed. That’s one thing I’ve liked about moving up here, how it gets cold enough to snow.”

  “It used to snow more,” Addie says. “Even in my lifetime. I remember when I was small, it snowed more than it does now.”

  “I wouldn’t want any more,” Pet says.

  Roland’s birthday cake is from Fancy Pastry, chocolate, in the shape of a cutaway electric guitar. Everyone sings the birthday song, Roland makes a wish and blows out his candles, and Pet cuts little pieces of cake that everyone eats with plastic forks, scraping the frosting off their plates. Before they can ask for seconds, Roland stands up.

  “I want to thank you all for coming.” He speaks in his deep, practiced, performer’s voice. “You’re the best friends anybody could ever have.”

  “Keep on truckin’!” Danny yells.

  “I wish you could stay here forever. I really do. And”—laughing his dry, amused-with-himself laugh—“you can if you want to. But I’ve got to go. I promised Louise a ride, and she has to be home by nine-thirty.”

  No one else laughs. Louise blushes, but only slightly, as if she can control even the flow of her blood. Addie glares at Roland but be ignores her. Of course, she thinks. He doesn’t want to know how he’s wrecked her night. She’s here without a car or a ride home; she walked over hoping he would take her home, hoping that, for at least the short drive down Fairview, they could be alone again. Now he’s leaving without her, leaving his own party, and it’s too late to call her parents. Claree can’t drive at night and Bryce will be drinking. He would come anyway if she called, driving fast and loud like he does, screeching up to the curb, blowing his horn.

  Roland doesn’t want to know any of that.

  He opens the car door for Louise, closes it behind her, gets in and drives away. Addie imagines them cruising across town, Louise telling stories, Roland huck-hucking, laying his arm along the seat behind her. Louise leaning her head back.

  He won’t just drop her off. He will walk her to her front door. Addie pictures them standing there, Roland pressing his hand into the small of Louise’s back, waiting for her to invite him in.

  Louise’s house will be quiet and clean: no blaring TVs, no spilling-over ashtrays. Louise’s father will be sitting up in the den, reading a magazine under soft yellow lamplight, listening to jazz on the radio. Louise will whisper to Roland, “He’s so protective.” Which will make Roland think about Louise’s dead brother and broken mother and feel sorry for her. He will kiss her�
��not on the mouth; on the cheek, maybe, or forehead. He will take his time with her. He’ll think to himself, With this one I’m going to get it right.

  Across the table, Danny Brewster taps his plastic fork on his plate. Danny has a horse-shaped face and thick glasses that make his eyes seem closer than they are. “I can give you a ride,” he says to Addie, more quietly than she knew he could talk.

  “Can we leave now?”

  “Fuckin’ A.” Danny forks up his last few crumbs of cake and pushes himself up from the table. “Far-out party,” he tells Roland’s parents.

  Addie doesn’t bother with good-byes or thank-yous.

  The yellow ’Cuda gleams under the streetlight. “Hop in,” Danny says, opening the door. The seat is slippery, like it’s been polished. Danny cranks the engine and his eight-track blasts Edgar Winter, the bass boosted so loud it rocks the car. Addie buckles her seat belt. She hopes Roland’s parents are watching. She hopes they all are. She hopes the neighbors are flocking to their windows.

  Danny reaches into the glove box and pulls out a joint big as a cigar. “Happy birthday, Roll,” he says, and hands Addie a lighter. “Do the honors?”

  “Fuckin’ A,” she says.

  Late that night, when her family is sleeping, Addie sneaks out of bed, tiptoes into the kitchen, lifts the receiver on the new harvest gold wall phone, and dials Louise White’s number.

  “Hello?” Louise says, her voice muffled. “Hello, who is this?”

  Addie hangs up.

  She calls again the next night, and the next. One night Louise’s father answers. Addie starts hanging up faster, before anyone can pick up. She starts calling at all hours. Midnight, five in the morning, different times—whenever she’s near a phone. During the day, when no one’s home, she can let it ring longer. She can let it ring and ring and ring.

  Addie’s senior yearbook contains no evidence of Roland-and-Louise, even though at school they have become one word. There are no pictures of Roland propped against Louise’s locker, none of him with his arm draped across Louise’s shoulders or smiling at Louise from the stage during senior assembly. All the pictures are from before.

  There is no evidence of Roland-and-Louise in Roland’s inscription to Addie. He fills her entire back page, as if she’d been saving it for him.

  Addie,

  You made life very interesting for me this year. I am really appreciative to you for all the things you gave me. You have a way of reassuring me like nobody else can.

  I hope we can see each other this summer. I’m sure we’ll see each other at the beach after graduation. That’s really going to be wild. After that I doubt I will be around too much because the band and myself are going to lead very secluded and mysterious lives living together somewhere.

  When I think back on high school I think, what a waste of our formidable years. I really am glad to be moving on, although the future for me is unpredictable. All I can say when someone asks me what I’m going to do is “other plans.” No one would understand if I told them my real ambitions. You are one I think that can understand to some degree what I am trying to pull off.

  Lots of love and luck,

  Roland Rhodes

  Underneath he has drawn a genie lamp, a flat thing with a curved spout and a cloud coming out. His words are in the cloud, as if by magic—Addie’s wish, being granted.

  Beach

  But they don’t see each other. Graduation week at Ocean Drive is supposed to be for graduates, but Roland brings Louise and rents a motel room instead of sharing one of the big houses with everybody else. Addie imagines them sunning by the motel pool, Roland rubbing Louise’s back with coconut oil while he tells her the story of his diving injury.

  They don’t show up at any of the parties. This ought to be a relief, but Addie is in no mood to feel relieved.

  At the last party on the last night, she gets drunk and loses her virginity once and for all, to J.C. Green. They don’t plan it; she and J.C. barely know each other. They just happen to be the last ones still conscious after everyone else has gone home or to bed or found another place to pass out. They are sitting on a gritty sofa in the living room of a big oceanfront house. Someone has left the tone arm of the stereo cocked back and a Doobie Brothers album plays endlessly. Addie doesn’t know why she came to the party at all or why she’s still here. She gets up to leave and staggers, whirly-drunk. J.C. catches her. He’s fat, with a beery, greasy smell, mildly sickening. But his fatness is also a comfort, something to sink into.

  Addie lets him hold her. She can feel a thumping through his jeans, like a lowdown heartbeat. She doesn’t care. She lets him turn her around and fold her over the arm of the sofa. She lets him take down her striped shorts and hump her from behind to the beat of “Long Train Runnin’.” J.C. is relentless and annoying, like the song, which she will never be able to listen to again.

  She thinks of Roland. This is his fault. Because of him, nothing is special.

  She Leaves

  All year, Sam watches his sister leave.

  He watches her leave for school every morning—the same time as him, but not the same school.

  He watches her graduate, orange sash across her gown.

  After graduation she leaves for the beach. A week later she comes home sunburned and won’t talk to anyone.

  That summer she leaves every morning for her job at the library. She goes out after work every night, he doesn’t know where. Weeks go by when he doesn’t see her at all.

  At the end of summer she leaves for college.

  “Write me letters,” she tells him.

  He does. In the beginning he writes to her almost every week.

  Dear Addie, we got a new TV with a remote control. Now Bryce can change his own channels.

  Dear Addie, they won’t let me try out for sports.

  Dear Addie, I took my bicycle apart, cleaned and lubricated all the parts and put it back together. It flies.

  Dear Addie, Bryce fell. In the kitchen. He hit his head on the counter. We picked him up and Claree put a cold washcloth on his head.

  Dear Addie, thanks for the sweatshirt. What exactly is a Spartan?

  Dear Addie, the Davenports came over for a cookout and Bryce set the poplar tree on fire.

  Dear Addie, they have a new rule at school. Everybody has to be in a club. I was in the chess club but there were only two of us and it got boring. I joined the travel club but we never traveled, we just sat around looking at slides. So my friends and I started our own club, the Apathy Club. For homecoming we made a banner, MAY THE BEST TEAM WIN. It won for Most Appropriate, but no one went to pick up the prize.

  Dear Addie, this time he fell in the street and Mr. Davenport had to help us bring him in.

  Dear Addie, when are you coming home?

  Dear Addie, I can’t wait to be the one who leaves.

  Greensboro

  The university is forty minutes and a world away from Carswell.

  A world of books—at the heart of campus is a gleaming new library tower, big as God.

  A world of flyers—on every wall in every building, on every telephone pole on every street corner, flyers advertise readings and concerts and lectures and rallies and auditions and art openings and roommates wanted and things for sale, cheap.

  A world of rolling lawns and majestic shade trees and people reading, arguing, laughing, making out, working calculus problems, playing guitar, playing Frisbee, playing Hacky Sack. There’s always someone to talk to, someone to go to the new film festival at the Janus with, wander the bars of Tate Street with, smoke pot and eat Mexican food with. Addie is infatuated with all of them. Jimmy the physics major, who cooks her pancakes in his dorm room. Stephen, who does yoga and smells faintly of patchouli. Geoff with a G, who shows her his poetry, which is so raw and wild and charged she decides to give up trying.

  No one gives her the deep-down panic of real love, the jolt she always felt with Roland. But Roland would not fit in this place. She thinks of him only r
arely, and with only the smallest tug of sadness—for him or for herself, she couldn’t say.

  She studies literature—the seventeenth-century metaphysical poets, the Germans in translation. She studies history and Latin and logic, which she loves for its perfect reliability. She studies the philosophy of literature, the philosophy of science. All of her philosophy classes are taught by the same professor—a compact, muscular man with round glasses, neatly combed hair, and neatly pressed shirts tucked into neatly pressed pants. He never lectures without a piece of chalk in his hand and never strays too far from the board.

  He lectures about retrocausality. He draws pictures of the space-time continuum on the board to show how the future influences the past, except he doesn’t use those words.

  “Is it the same as predestination?” the class asks.

  The fallacy of that question, he says, lies in the use of “pre-”. There is no before or after, no pre- or post-. No past, present or future. “Every event,” he says, “affects every other event.”

  He is intense. When he talks, a bead of white spittle forms in the corner of his mouth. He has hair in unexpected places, on his knuckles and elbows and the undersides of his forearms. He tells Addie she’s the best student he’s had.

  She has never felt so important.

  Roland, on the road with his band, wonders if he will ever feel important again. He tries to think of himself as an adventurer like Kerouac, fearless and crazy and free. It would help if he could write like Kerouac, though he doubts even Kerouac could find poetry in this cramped, stinking van. Or in guys who are always fucking each other’s women, using up each other’s drugs, fighting over money, which there is never enough of, and never bathing or brushing their fucking teeth.

  All he ever writes is an occasional postcard home. He likes the plain black ones that say “Georgia at night,” or “Louisiana at night.” Keep his parents guessing. Sometimes he calls them. Always collect, always from a different place—a pay phone or somebody’s apartment.