Fortunate Son

7

Eight years after Thomas met Monique, a fourteen-year-old Eric Nolan was getting ready to play a match on a public tennis court above Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. He was set to play against an older boy from his school, Hensley High, which was known as the Yale of private high schools. The boy, Drew Peters, was a seventeen-year-old twelfth-grader who had already been accepted to three Ivy League schools for the following year.

Drew had called Eric’s class a bunch of pussies, and then he pushed around Limon, a delicate Peruvian boy who was also in the tenth grade. Eric told Drew that he couldn’t even play tennis and challenged him to a match. Eric agreed that if he lost he’d pay Drew a hundred dollars and carry him around the track on his back. But if Drew lost he’d have to go down on his knees and ask Limon to forgive him.

Both classes showed up for the match, which took place at 4:00 p.m. on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. The upperclassmen came into the bleachers all cool and superior. The sophomore class was loud and cheering. And even though Eric was a year younger than most of his classmates, he was the best of them, and they loved him for daring to challenge a boy who was almost four years older. Drew was in the California Junior Tennis League and had placed second in the statewide tournament.

In the front row of the senior side of the bleachers sat Christie Sadler, whose father, it was said, owned a riverfront block in Paris. Christie was the prettiest girl in any class at Hensley. She looked like a woman already, tall and lithe with violet eyes and skin that defied comparison. Mr. Mantel, the English teacher, had been fired midyear for suggesting to Christie that she would get the grade she was looking for if they could go out on a date.

Christie and Drew were the perfect couple at school. They’d be king and queen of the prom. They were definitely having sex.

Eric wasn’t thinking about any of that when he came out onto the court. He liked playing tennis. It was a sport where he didn’t need clumsy teammates who competed with one another. He liked things one on one or, even better, sports where he could excel without competition, like diving or running.

But Drew had roughed up Limon, and Limon was the closest thing to a friend that Eric had. Not that they were really friends. Limon talked too much, and he always wanted advice about how to be more popular and better in school. He wasn’t satisfied with his life, and Eric looked down on that.

Don’t you mind it when you lose at tic-tac-toe? Eric had asked Thomas sometime before his brother disappeared forever.

Nuh-uh.

Why not?

I’ont know, Thomas said. I guess it’s just fun to play. And anyway, if you win and you’re my brother, then in a way I win too.

The day of the match was cloudy and cool. So was Drew, with his light-gray tennis clothes and serious brow.

Drew’s father had offered to judge the match. Mr. Peters was hale and tall. He had red hair everywhere and skin that had seen a lot of sun. The Peters family made their money in construction. He was a hard man, and Eric was confident that he wouldn’t cheat to favor his son.

But even if he did, Eric expected to win the match anyway. He always won when it was important. He was, as his Episcopalian minister, Uncle Louis, always said, “born in the circle of light.”

Eric hadn’t told his father about the match. He never wanted Minas or Ahn to be anywhere where he was the center of attention. Something about that talk with Ahn the night after Lester Corning was scarred had made him leery of the trouble he might cause. For the next few weeks after the accident, Eric asked about his real mother and what had happened.

She succumbed after childbirth, Minas had said in simple doctorese.

Having me, Eric said.

It wasn’t you who killed her.

But having me killed her.

But... Minas couldn’t say any more.

Eric could tell that his father blamed him, not angrily, not wishing that his son had died instead, but simply knowing that Eric’s being born had killed Joanne. Between mother and son Eric had won the coin toss.

While Eric was thinking about his luck, Mr. Peters cried, “Heads up.”

Drew served, and Eric returned with an easy backhand. He felt weightless on his toes out there, predicting where every volley would land. He watched Drew’s effortless movements and saw that this was a kindred spirit on the court. Here they both ruled. Who cared who won? They were one, the same side of the coin. And while Eric watched Drew, Christie found that her gaze, more and more, drifted toward the sophomore Adonis.

She noticed his strong legs first and then the careless precision with which he returned each volley. Where Drew had an angry, snorting demeanor, Eric was neither angry nor glad. The sophomore moved freely, not worrying when he lost a point or even a set. He flipped his blond hair out of his face naturally, with no posing or apparent knowledge of his beauty. He only got serious when he saw a hole in Drew’s defenses. Then he came down on the ball like a predatory feline clamping down on the throat of a fawn.

Christie felt her heart skip when she thought that Eric might miss a return. She found herself, for no reason that she could name, hoping that Eric won the game — or, at least, that he didn’t lose. She clutched her hands and watched the carefree youth make her boyfriend run back and forth like a gerbil cornered by the devil-pawed tomcat that lived on her family farm in Santa Barbara.

No one knew what the high school beauty was thinking. The match was very close. No matter who was receiving there was something to worry about.

On Eric’s final match point, Drew lobbed the ball to the back of the court when Eric was playing the net. Christie gasped loudly as Eric ran toward the foul line swinging at the ball with his back turned. He connected, but the ball flew high and slow. The exertion made Eric stumble and fall. The senior class let out a loud whoop (except for Christie, who was inexplicably near tears). At that moment the clouds parted, and a shaft of concentrated sunlight shone in Drew’s eyes. He swung wildly, hitting the ball so hard that it flew off the court and into the park beyond.

“Game!” shouted Mr. Peters.

“No!” screamed his son.

The tenth-graders leaped and hollered for their hero. Even some of the seniors applauded the incredible play.

The only incident that scarred the game was Drew’s rage at the sun. He was so angry that instead of going to the net to shake Eric’s hand, he threw his racket at the victor. But Eric merely held up his own racket, deflecting the force of the missile, then catching it handily by the haft.

Eric walked to the net, holding out the racket as if Drew had merely dropped it.

“Take it,” Drew’s father commanded.

The audience had gone quiet.

Christie felt a tremor between her legs that her boyfriend had never made her feel.

Drew was taken off the court by his father. The sophomore class put Eric on their shoulders and carried him three blocks to the Beanery, the coffeehouse that, until that day, only the senior class inhabited.

As Christie watched him float away on the shoulders of his class, she felt an ache inside her that she feared might never completely subside.

“Eric?” Minas said outside the boy’s half-open door.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Phone.”

“Who is it?”

“A girl.”

Girls called sometimes, but they soon gave up because Eric had become a loner in his teenage years. He learned how to dance but never went to parties. He’d gone out now and then, but found kissing in the backseats of cars and on porches unexciting. It’s not that he didn’t think about sex. He dreamed about naked women every night, often waking with an enormous erection.

Don’t you want somebody to love you? Limon once asked him when the conversation drifted to girls.

No, Eric replied. Not really. I like being alone.

“What’s her name?” Eric asked his father.

“I’m not your secretary, son. Ask her yourself.”

Dr. Nolan pushed the door open and threw the cordless phone onto the bed.

“Hello,” Eric said into the receiver.

“Eric?”

“Who’s this?”

“Christie. Christie Sadler.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“I’m just calling to apologize for what Drew did today. I mean, he shouldn’t have thrown that racket at you.”

“He was just mad,” Eric said. “He should have nailed me on that last shot, but the sun got in his eyes.”

“But he’s a senior. He should be more gracious. I bet you wouldn’t have thrown anything at him.”

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “I mean, I was thinking how hard it must be on him because he always does the best. But you can see that he’s doing it for his father.”

“What do you mean?”

“His father’s all big and strong and sure of himself. Drew just wants to make him proud, and so losing to me like that means that everything else doesn’t matter at all.”

“How do you know all that?”

“You can see it in the way his father talks to him and the way he’s so serious. He makes Drew nervous. I bet if his father wasn’t there, he would have beat me easy.”

“And would you care?”

“Sure. I’d have to carry him around the track on my back.”

Christie laughed. Her voice sounded like chimes to Eric. His erection came on without him knowing it.

“Whenever we go out he’s real worried about how I look,” Christie whispered into the phone as if it were a big secret. “I can’t ever wear loafers or jeans when we’re on a date, even if it’s only at the pier.”

“Wow. That wouldn’t bother me. You’d look good in an overcoat and brogans.”

There were a few moments of silence then. Eric realized that there was something different in the way he felt. His mind wasn’t wandering away from the conversation. His attention was fully concentrated on Christie.

“Do you want to go get something to eat?” the senior asked.

“When?”

“Now.”

“I don’t have a license. I’m only fourteen, you know.”

“I have a car.”

“What about your boyfriend?”

“You won the match,” she said, and for the first time since Branwyn lived in the house with them, Eric felt his heart stutter.

At the Pancake House Eric asked Christie about her aspirations for college. She’d been accepted to all the schools that Drew had and was making up her mind whether to go to the same school or one that was driving distance away.

He wanted to know what she planned to study. Her strength was in science, but she loved poetry. T. S. Eliot was her favorite, “The Waste Land” in particular, but she worried that it might not be responsible to want to be a poet.

“Most kids in school never know what they want to be,” Eric said. “I read an article once that the average college student changes majors three times, and a lot of them still take jobs in different fields from the ones they majored in.”

“You read that?”

“Yeah. In the Times. I like reading the paper in the morning... with my father.”

“Are you close to your father?”

Eric didn’t know what to say. He sat with Minas reading the paper every morning because his father liked the time together. The boy’s heart was thumping because of those violet eyes staring so intently at him.

“You want to take a drive with me?” Christie asked before Eric could formulate an answer about his father.

They started kissing as soon as Christie parked at the lookout point in Topanga Canyon. Eric knew that he had never really kissed before that night. Christie told him that she loved Drew and so all they could do was kiss, but a moment later she was unzipping his pants. Eric thought of reminding her about just kissing, but instead, when he felt her cool fingers on his erection, all that came out was a deep, very masculine sigh. Christie echoed him in a higher register, and their kissing became more urgent.

She leaned back at one point and said, “Drew asked me to marry him and I said yes.”

Eric nodded to show that he understood, but at the same time he thrust his pelvis forward, putting the straining erection near to her lips. She took it in her mouth and they both hummed.

When the boy came he roared out her name. She stared into his eyes, seeing both pain and gratitude. Her grip tightened until she worried that she might be hurting him, but she didn’t ease up or slow down.

After the tremors subsided, Christie lay down on top of Eric in the front seat.

“I’ve never met a guy like you, Eric Nolan,” she said, kissing the tip of his nose.

“Was that okay?” he asked.

“What?”

“I mean about Drew. You said we should just kiss.”

“That was like kissing,” she said. “I mean, we didn’t do it or anything.”

Eric noticed their breath misting chilly air.

“I think you should be a poet,” he said then. “I mean, people need poetry just as much as they need chemicals.”

Christie kissed him and reached down.

“You’re still hard,” she said, only slightly in awe.

“Let’s get in the backseat.”

She took her time rolling the condom down on his erection. He kissed the side of her neck and the cleft between her breasts while she did so. Eric felt awkward at first, but Christie didn’t seem to mind. She told him to be careful because she hadn’t had a lover so well endowed as he. When they came for the fourth time, they still shuddered as violently as the first.

“We shouldn’t do that again,” Christie told Eric the next night on the phone.

“Okay,” he said, still feeling spent from the night before.

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Isn’t that what you want me to say?”

“I don’t want you thinking I’m a slut who would do something like that with just anybody.”

“That was my first time,” Eric confessed. “I never even knew how wonderful it could be.”

“Oh. I didn’t know... you seemed like... I don’t know... experienced.”

“But we could see each other, right?” Eric asked. “I mean, we don’t have to do that. You know, I could ride my bike over.”

“Um... I think it would be better if we didn’t. You know, guys get kinda possessive after their first time.”

“Okay,” Eric said.

Christie didn’t reproach him this time.

“Well... I guess we should go,” she said.

“All right. Bye.”

For the next four nights Eric lay on his back in the bed for hours with his heart pounding and his mind on Christie. He’d seen her in school three times. She always turned away when their eyes met. He didn’t know what he wanted more than to hold her again and to feel the release she gave him. He didn’t think he was in love. It was something else. Love for Eric had always been about smiling and swooning, about people who couldn’t live without each other. He lived without his mother and Branwyn too. He survived even when they took his brother away without a word of warning. He didn’t need anybody, but he sure wanted Christie.

That Friday, on the lunch court, Drew Peters confronted Eric.

“I’m not apologizing to that little faggot because you didn’t really win,” the brooding boy said. Drew was a head taller than Eric and twenty pounds heavier, but the sophomore didn’t draw back.

“That’s your decision,” he said.

“It’s true,” Drew yowled. “The sun shined in my eyes.”

Eric noticed Christie on the other side of the court looking at him with a worried expression on her face. It was in that moment that his sleepless nights crystallized into knowledge. He could see that she was worried about him, not Drew. His heart began to race, and Eric took a deep breath to slow it down.

“The dog ate my homework,” Eric said, mimicking Drew’s whining. “My hand slipped. I didn’t do anything.”

The quiver of the senior’s lower lip warned Eric. He was already ducking down when Drew threw the first punch. Missing completely, the senior stumbled. Eric’s blow connected with Drew’s chest. Then Drew hit Eric on top of the head. Eric heard the finger snap and the cry of pain from the upperclassman. Then they fell into each other’s arms, wrestling and punching.

A sudden fear entered Eric’s mind. He didn’t want to be fighting. It wasn’t that he was afraid of being hurt but of the harm that might come from their fight. A moment later, Mr. Lo, the gym teacher, was pulling them apart. Drew clutched his broken finger. Christie was looking directly at Eric.

She called his house at four.

“Do you want to get together?” she asked.

“What about your boyfriend?”

“I’m still going to marry him.”

They made love in Branwyn’s old room, which had been left untouched since her death. Ahn was always away on Friday evenings, and Minas got home later every year. So they were alone from five that afternoon until late. Eric kissed Christie everywhere. She complimented his physique and his loving nature.

“No man has ever made me feel like this,” she said.

She confessed that she’d flirted with Mr. Mantel, the fired English teacher. Eric told her that Mantel was a grown man and should have known better than to proposition a student.

“How do you know so much?” she asked him.

“I don’t know a thing compared to you,” the fourteen-year-old said.

Christie put her hands over her breasts and said, “I’m still marrying Drew.”

“Can I still see you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and he kissed her covering hands.

She uncovered one nipple.

“You can’t tell anybody about us,” she said.

“That’s easy. I don’t know anybody.”

“You’re crazy. The whole class carried you off on their shoulders.”

Eric took the free hand and placed it on his erection. They both shuddered.

“Every time you call me I’m here,” he said. “I don’t talk to anybody but Limon, and nobody talks to him either.”

“But why don’t you have friends?” she asked. “You’re really handsome and friendly and smart.”

“I don’t know why,” he lied. “But I’m happy now because I never knew I could feel like this.”

At nine they went to dinner down in Santa Monica.

Over roasted chicken and lasagna, Christie told Eric that Drew had broken his finger and that the school suspended him for picking a fight with a sophomore.

“They said that he’d be expelled unless he apologized to you.”

“Really? What did he say?”

“That he wouldn’t.”

“That’s stupid. He’ll lose his place in all those schools if he doesn’t.”

“His father won’t let him leave the house until he does.”

“That’s why you can be here with me?”

For some reason this embarrassed Christie. She ducked her head.

“You should call Drew and tell him that you talked to me and I said that he could tell the school that he apologized. If they ask me I’ll tell them he did.”

“You’d do that?”

“I don’t want your future husband to be a dishwasher.”

Christie and Eric saw each other at least twice a week until the end of the semester. All that time she warned him that she was going to marry Drew and live with him in the East. Eric didn’t mind. Now that he had experienced sex, he was aware of all the girls at school who wanted to be with him. When Christie left, he knew he would find somebody else.

And so he was surprised in the late summer when Christie came to his house crying.

They went out in the overgrown flower garden and sat on the marble bench there.

“What’s wrong?” Eric asked.

“I told Drew.”

“About us?”

“No. I told him that I wasn’t going to Yale with him.”

“Really? You’re not going to the East Coast?”

“No. I can’t leave you,” she said.

“But what are you going to do?”

“I’ll get a job at my father’s office and rent an apartment. Then we can spend more time together. I know you’re still in high school and you might not even want me, but I can’t go with Drew. I don’t love him. I haven’t since I saw you on the tennis court that day.”

Christie had on a small cranberry-colored dress. She stood up and took it off, revealing that she wore nothing underneath. It was four in the afternoon on a Friday. The sun was bright, and they were the only ones there. As they made love on the marble bench, Christie moaned and cried, dug her nails deep into Eric’s back, and begged him please, please, please.

“I’m yours,” she said at the door that evening, “if you want me.”

She drove off leaving Eric to think about the past semester. He wondered not about Christie but about Drew. The darkly handsome senior had everything before they tangled over Limon. Eric had borne no animosity toward the older boy. He hadn’t meant to take his girl away. On the school yard the boys had been civil. Drew appreciated Eric not making him apologize.

A week after his first night with Christie, she’d told him that Drew had seen a semen stain that Eric had made on the inside roof of the car.

“I told him that he made it, but you know his never shot out like yours does.”

Eric had felt embarrassed for Drew. He wasn’t competing. He just couldn’t say no to Christie’s surrender. He still couldn’t.

“Mine,” Eric said to himself, watching the red lights of Christie’s Honda recede down the street.