The English Teacher

SIX

THE PARTY WAS OUT IN SUTTON, A FORTY-MINUTE DRIVE NORTH. IT WAS the first senior party Peter had ever been invited to. The entire upper school had been invited — Scott Laraby’s parents had gone to St. Croix for a week.

Jason’s sister Carla drove them. She was back from college and had brought her roommate with her. They were listening to the worst music Peter had ever heard, more breathing and talking than singing, with one screeching instrument in the background. When Peter looked up front to see what radio station would play such awful music, he saw that the two girls were holding hands.

Jason told Carla to drop them off at the end of the Larabys’ long driveway. As they walked toward the light flickering through the trees, Peter asked about Carla and the roommate.

“Neither of them have boyfriends,” Jason said, “so they practice with each other. That’s what my dad says.”

They continued in silence up the road. Peter could smell the stain on his hands, and he was glad. He’d spent most of the afternoon with Tom in the garage, helping him work on a table he was making for one of his assistants who’d recently gotten engaged. Peter had taken shop at school; he’d made a napkin holder and a stool the shape of a turtle. He’d never found any pleasure in the dry noisy room with Mr. McCaffy. He didn’t like being around wailing machines that could cut off fingers or fighting with his classmates over the best scraps of sandpaper. He felt like stuff was always in his eyes. But with Tom it was different; it was peaceful. Fresh air came in freely through the open garage doors. People driving by saw them working together and waved. The brand-new sandpaper came in large sheets. They started with the coarse brown squares and finished with the soft black ones. The whole table felt warm and velvety smooth when they were done, more like skin than wood.

Tom threw out the used pieces of sandpaper and brought out the stain. He pried open the can, stirred it with a wooden stick, and placed two brushes beside it. There was a certain tenderness to each gesture, and Peter understood that he was in the presence of someone doing something he loved. He wasn’t sure he’d witnessed that before. Most of his teachers had probably once loved their subjects, but their passion was hidden under layers of frustration, years of repetition.

Staining, it turned out, was even more satisfying than sanding. Stain had none of the stress of paint, which Peter remembered glopped and streaked and never went on as evenly as you hoped. It was hard to make a mistake with stain. Sometimes they talked; sometimes there was just the sound of their brushes. He’d never really been comfortable with a grown man before. Nothing was worse than being stuck alone with Jason’s father, who stood with arms crossed over his broad chest and stiff black hair coming out of his nose as he assaulted Peter with questions. He felt awkward around all his male teachers and coaches; perhaps it was his less than stellar performances, or perhaps it was their knowledge of the absence of his father, their fear that he was looking for a substitute, or Peter’s fear that they had this fear. He even felt uncomfortable in the presence of his great-grandfather’s bronzed head in the vestibule. But with Tom after a while he just felt himself, the self he was when he was alone. Things just came out of his mouth; he didn’t rehearse his lines first, as he often did with Stuart or before speaking in class.

“Peter,” Tom said into one of their comfortable silences. “Did you ever meet your grandparents? You know,” he added hastily, “your mother’s parents?”

“No.”

“Has she ever told you about them, or told you about her childhood?”

“She didn’t like them much. They moved around a lot and my mother read in the backseat of the car. That’s all I know.”

Tom waited a while, then asked, “What was your mother like when you were little? Do you remember?”

“I don’t know,” he stalled. He knew Tom wanted him to say she was different somehow. “She played more games, maybe.” He wished they didn’t have to talk about her. He wished he just lived with the Belous without her getting in the way.

“Has she always had a few drinks at night?”

“No, not always. I think it was more on weekends, if she went out.”

“Did she go out a lot?”

“Probably once a month.” Peter kept staining, watching how quickly the wood absorbed the color.

Tom nodded, then asked softly, “And would she come home drunk?”

“Not drunk. Not like she couldn’t walk or talk. Just kind of happy. She’s actually a lot nicer that way.” Ever since that fight in the kitchen, he’d wanted to tell Tom this.

“My father drank himself into his grave before he was fifty.” Tom’s voice was slow and hard and his mouth had fallen down into his chin. “I won’t let that happen to anyone else I love.”

The front door and all the first-story windows of the Larabys’ house were open. As he and Jason crossed a circle of wet grass, the machinelike hum they’d hardly been aware of broke into separate human voices. Kristina. Kristina would be here. His heart thumped heavily. Peter could see people holding beers.

“Aren’t they worried about the neighbors telling?” he said.

“What neighbors?”

It was true. The property was encased in woods; the last house Peter had seen was miles back.

“I’m going to get laid tonight,” Jason said.

“Yeah, right.” But Jason’s confidence made him uneasy, and Peter worried that that was how you had to be to get a girl, even just to kiss a girl.

They stepped into the front hall, where a group of seniors leaned against paintings on the wall.

“Hey, J-man,” Kent Scully said. “Keg’s in the kitchen.”

“Cool.”

Peter wasn’t exactly sure what a keg looked like. Jason was starting to know a lot more than he did. Peter watched him lead the way, greeting juniors and seniors, being greeted. There was no mockery in it anymore for him. Peter got the same twisted smiles and the funny voices he got in the hallways at school. “Does your mommy-mommy know where you are?” he heard someone say behind him. Peter had learned to block it out. Kristina was his only thought. It was the only thought he’d ever had since he’d started going to parties. And so useless. He’d heard that week at school that she’d broken up with Brian again, but even that, if he was really honest with himself, would never matter.

They passed a small den filled with kids from his grade holding plastic cups and trying to act like they’d been to senior parties before. Kristina, who certainly didn’t have to fake that, would never be among them.

Scott Laraby, the host, lay spread-eagle and fast asleep on the kitchen table. A girl with a few of Scott’s features, the same stunned eyes and pushed-in nose, was in the corner, operating what Peter guessed was the keg. It didn’t need an operator — all you had to do was press a little button at the end of a hose — but she had put herself on a stool with the cups stacked between her knees just to be able to talk to everybody. It was the kind of thing Peter would do if he had the chance, and it made him instantly dislike her.

He and Jason got in line.

“Easy does it this round, sailor,” she said to a guy in a blue-and-white-striped shirt.

When it was their turn Jason asked if she was Scott’s sister.

She nodded at her brother, passed out on the table. “Some girls have all the luck.”

“So why don’t you go to Fayer?”

“Oh, it was decided long ago I’m not private school material. Red or blue?”

“Whichever’s bigger,” Jason said, though of course he knew the cups were the same size.

“You like ’em big?” she said.

“Always have.”

Peter was left out of these kinds of provocative, senseless exchanges. He couldn’t respond to them any better than he could initiate them. As if sensing this, Scott’s sister handed Peter a blue cup without a word and poured. Other people, even girls, even now Jason, exuded something he did not. He was as bland as water, as unremarkable as air. He and his cup of foam moved on while Jason stayed at the keg bantering with the sister.

Peter had no choice but to head to the room of tenth graders. He took the long way around, glancing into the dining room. At the far end of the long table was Kristina with two guys he’d never seen before, older guys, maybe even older than seniors. She was holding a small pleated paper cup, the kind you rinse with at the dentist’s, up to the mouth of a bottle with a fancy gold necklace around it. When it was full, she knocked back the liquor in one swallow. Her throat was much paler than her face and arms. The guys were smiling at each other. Peter knew what they were after; probably Kristina knew, too. She wouldn’t want him to intervene. Although the sight disgusted him, something — that oval of pale skin, the already drunken shape of her lips — aroused him and he tugged down the front of his sweatshirt over the tightening of his pants.

He tried to imagine Stuart at this party, standing with his perfect posture. He’d drink water instead of beer and make it seem cool. In a half hour he’d be able to get any girl he wanted. Trying to invoke Stuart’s spirit through the meditative techniques he’d taught him, Peter straightened his spine, became aware of his organs, and dissolved his tension. He took a long deep breath, a long gulp of beer, and vowed he’d fool around with someone, nearly anyone (it didn’t have to be Kristina — it could never be Kristina), tonight.

When he turned away from the dining room, he noticed that the three most lusted-after junior girls were watching him. He tried to look at them the way Stuart looked at his girls through the window, pleased but unsurprised. They buckled, all three of them, to the floor in heaves of laughter. He retreated immediately to the den, grateful for the flat chests and sympathetic voices of the unpopular girls.

Jenny Mead made room for him in the circle. She asked about the game yesterday, and about the French test he’d barely passed. As she listened, she ran a finger around the lip of her cup. Did she have a thing for him? He could see her searching for another topic.

“Your mom’s the hardest English teacher I’ve ever had,” she said at last.

Everyone said this to him. “Really?” he said, stretching his spine as high as it would go. She was tall, and her bushy hair didn’t help.

“I don’t understand what she’s talking about half the time.” But Jenny had clear blue-green eyes and a small nose like a fawn’s. It wouldn’t be awful, kissing her.

“She probably doesn’t know what she’s talking about either.”

Jenny snorted, her upper lip revealing too much gum. He looked away, at a funny kind of sofa across the room. It was like a figure eight, with the two cushioned seats facing in opposite directions.

“Are you close, you and your mom?”

Girls loved to ask him this. “I guess,” he said. Then he looked at the little sofa as if he were just noticing it for the first time. “The guy who made that must have lost his job pretty quick.”

Jenny laughed, though he could tell it was fake. “It’s a Victorian love seat.”

He’d been about to ask her if she wanted to sit in it, but he couldn’t now that she’d used the word love. They stood there staring at it.

“Should we try it out?” she said. In the end, girls were so much braver.

Peter chose the seat that faced the doorway, in case Kristina walked by. It was far more comfortable than it looked.

“Hey.” Jenny’s face was unnaturally close. It was a Victorian make-out couch. Stuart would kiss her right now. Right now. But Peter couldn’t.

Disappointed but not discouraged, she asked, “What kind of things do you talk about?”

“When?”

“With your mom?”

“Let’s see.” He knew it had to be provocative. “Marijuana, condoms, pornography — the usual topics.”

She flung her head back, leaving her mouth wide open. He couldn’t tell if she was really laughing now or just putting together all the elements of laughing — except the sound. When she tipped her head forward again, she said, “No, really. Does she ever talk about what she was like when she was our age? I mean, some teachers you can completely imagine as teenagers, but your mom …” Jenny’s clear eyes widened as if she were staring into the pitch dark. “No amount of rationality can convince you that she was ever young.”

He’d forgotten that if you talked to Jenny Mead long enough, her sentences would start getting weird.

He looked around the room for other possibilities. The handful of other girls were either unobtainable or unthinkable. He had this awful feeling that Kristina had left the party with those two guys. It was Jenny Mead or nothing. The thought of hinting to Stuart when he got home that he had gotten some action spurred him on.

“Of course my mother was young once. She was wild. She grew up in Skaneateles, New York.”

“I thought she was from the South. She has that accent.”

“She was born in New York, then moved away later. Her parents were so strict they wouldn’t let her go to any parties, so she had to sneak out onto the roof and shimmy down a rope she hid up there.”

“Why wouldn’t her parents let her go out?”

“They were Christian Scientists.” He couldn’t remember exactly what Stuart had said.

“They go to parties. They just don’t go to the hospital.”

“Mormon. Sorry. Mormon.”

“But—”

“Do you want to talk about religion or hear about my mother?”

He meant to be playful but it came out snippy, the way Fran was to him sometimes. He wondered if she, too, didn’t always mean her snips. He remembered his conversation with Tom this afternoon, and his stomach rolled over. It wasn’t just a little chat; it was a warning.

He saw the extent of Jenny Mead’s interest and excitement only as it drained out of her face. Just as he was about to apologize, Kristina came into the den and flopped sideways in an armchair. Alone. Not just her lips but all around her mouth was red, like someone had been scrubbing it clean. Her cheeks were flushed in two bright splotches and her eyes moved around the room without latching onto anything. She was smashed. He remembered a time when she wasn’t like this, when at parties they made lemonade from scratch and had cookie-eating competitions. He remembered Stephen Ball’s birthday party and how she asked to be Peter’s partner in the three-legged race and how when they’d fallen her hair had gone in his mouth and it tasted like pizza he’d said and they’d laughed because she’d actually had three slices of pizza for breakfast. He ached with a love for her that had existed for as long as he could remember.

“It was nice talking to you, Peter,” Jenny said bitterly and rejoined her clique in the corner.

Peter remained in his side of the love seat, pretending to read the spines of the hardcover mysteries on the wall. He tried to catch Kristina’s eye for a sort of comradely shrug about being alone in chairs at a party. But her eyes were three-quarters closed. He didn’t know if she was actually seeing through the quarter that was left, though he remained prepared for anything.

Then one of the older guys from the kitchen was in the doorway. He was pointing Kristina out to someone else, some tall, thickarmed guy with lime-green hair. A swimmer. He crouched in front of her chair and whispered into her right ear. Her feet twitched, her stomach bobbed, then a smile came across her flushed face. It was like he was breathing life into her one puff at a time. When he straightened up and left the room she followed, holding on to his fingers in front of her with both hands.

The swimmer led her up a flight of stairs. It was easy to trail them. Everyone in the hallway and on the staircase was moving, shifting, craning necks in search of a better place or better companions. Peter didn’t recognize any of them. The house was now packed with kids from other schools who had sniffed out a party. They wore varsity jackets from Sutton High and Whaley High and St. Andrew’s Prep. As he climbed he became aware of tension down below. Scott Laraby was awake and asking people to get off the piano. It was a Steinway, he said apologetically. People were arguing in the kitchen. The back of the swimmer’s shirt said Beer: It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore. Upstairs the hallways were empty but there were small parties in each of the bedrooms he passed. Someone lying stomach-down on a beanbag chair called out to Kristina. She didn’t turn. In one room with a linoleum floor Peter saw an oven and smelled brownies baking. The swimmer opened the next door with one hand and pulled Kristina in with the other. The door shut quickly behind them.

Peter listened. The party below made it impossible to hear within. He gave them thirty seconds to come out. Then he went in.

The swimmer stood a few feet from the door. Peter expected him to be furious, maybe even to punch him, but he just shook his head. “She’s really out of it, man. You can give her a try. I’m not into laying corpses.”

“Get out of here,” Peter said, but the guy was already gone.

Peter pulled the door shut and locked it. The bedroom was huge, with several mahogany bureaus the size of mastodons hulking around its edges. In the center of the bed, her head wrenched up on overstuffed pillows, was Kristina. Her eyelids were still lowered; her eyes didn’t seem to follow his approach.

He sat, like a doctor, at her left side, one foot raised, one foot firmly on the ground.

At the sudden depression in the mattress, she tilted her head. Then she said his name. Her parents were Russian, and though she had arrived in this country with no English, not a trace of an accent remained. Except if you listened very carefully to her saying your name. Then you would hear a faint long o where the first e should be. Poter. If there was one sound he could take with him into eternity, that would be it.

“How’s it going, Kristina?”

“I’m drunk.”

“Yeah.” Already, this was the most they had spoken all year.

“She wouldn’t let me spend the night at Sarah’s.”

“So she’s coming to pick you up?”

“My father,” she whimpered.

“When?”

“Eleven-thirty.”

He looked at the alarm clock. Sixty-three minutes. He saw there was an adjoining bathroom. Water. He filled the two heavy crystal glasses by the sink and she drank obediently. “I’m going to get in so much trouble.”

He went to the bathroom for more. When he returned, she was sleeping.

“No!” He clapped his hands. “Wake up!”

No response.

He got on his knees beside her. “Kris.” He’d never called her that before. It was reserved for Sarah, her best friend, and Brian. “Kris,” he said again, and touched her arm. He meant to shake it, but once his fingers met the plushness of her flesh — how different a girl’s arm was; was there any muscle at all? — he couldn’t bear to disturb any part of her. Without letting go, he pulled his legs up under him and sat close to her.

Of course he knew she was pretty, but he had long since stopped being able to see it. He had loved her so much and for so long that when he saw her at school her whole body seemed encased in an iridescent haze, a sort of body halo so bright he couldn’t see inside. But now with her eyes shut and her body so still, her light was diffuse and he saw everything. Her hair was blacker than he ever imagined, weakening only to dark blue where the lamplight fell on it. Between his fingers the strands were thick, horselike. He brushed her bangs sideways and found that, like her throat, her forehead was pale and unfreckled. She had a cluster of blackheads along the curve of her left nostril. The redness was gone from around her mouth and her heavy lips, pooled to one side, advanced and receded with the tide of her breath. He thought of that sonnet they’d spent so much time on last year, about the girlfriend’s breath not being like perfume, and her cheeks not like roses and her lips not as red as something else. And then the last two lines — he wished he could remember them — that confessed the speaker’s rare, unending love. At the time, he’d thought it was stupid like all the other poems and crap they had to read, but now it stepped out from the rest like a friend who had known all along about this night with Kristina, understood how beautiful she was here before him, more beautiful than she had ever been within her shining halo.

What was stopping him from lifting her shirt, taking a look — most likely his only chance ever — at what lay beneath? He knew it was neither respect for her body nor fear of shame if she woke up. It was something more like pride. He wasn’t sure he’d ever used this word outside of English class before. But he knew it was the right one. He wanted the invitation. He would wait for that.

The numbers on the digital clock changed all at once. Eleven o’clock. How had he wasted thirty-three minutes? Gazing, touching, remembering poetry of all things. Her father was going to come banging on the door and Peter would never be allowed near her again.

“Wake up!” he shouted, shaking her with both arms.

Her eyes flashed open. Her lips tightened. “Jesus Christ.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry but thank God you’re awake. Your father is coming in a half hour.” He thought this news would alarm her into action, or at least panicky tears, but she just shut her eyes again.

“Kristina!”

He pulled her by both arms up to sitting, then pushed her to the edge of the bed. Her eyes were back to those inscrutable slits. He spun her legs around so that they were dangling with his off the side. “C’mon. Up you go.” He slung her arm over his shoulder and fastened it with his hand like they did in movies. He put his other arm around her waist. “Let’s walk.”

The room was large enough that they could make a loop of about twenty paces. After his neck got used to the pain, he let himself enjoy the fact that he had her — he had her! — in his arms. She was unbelievably soft, as if there were cushions beneath her skin. He had no idea girls felt like this. No one had told him! He and his mother had hugged so rarely, but his memory of it was all bones, his fingers falling between the ribs in her back, his ear bent by her collarbone. A general thrill at the squishiness of girls momentarily engulfed the specific thrill of Kristina finally beside him. He caught himself in a mirror. He had never seen his face with such a smile.

He began counting their revolutions around the room. For the first twelve, she took very little responsibility for her own weight. Then, just when he began to give up hope, his load lightened.

“Poter, what’re we doing?” Her head lifted from his shoulder; her legs, which had been dangling like a doll’s, buoyed her up. The cessation of pain from his right ear all the way through to his elbow was instant, though the relief was not worth the loss of her hair against his cheek.

“We’re getting you sober.”

“Oh.”

He waited for her to pull away from him, but she didn’t.

They kept walking. In the mirror their eyes met and she burst out laughing.

“What?” he said.

“Did you ever read Pride and Prejudice?”

“No.” He figured it was some story about a beautiful woman and a pathetic man who had no chance with her.

“Those people were always taking ‘turns’ around drawing rooms. They walked very straight and proper and they held each other like this. Look.” Her words were clear, but she had a hard time slipping her arm through his like she wanted.

“What did they talk about?”

Her drunkenness seemed to come in waves now. She made a strange noise, as if several words had piled on top of each other. She hung on tight to him and tried again. “Lotsastuff. Secrets. Gossip. Whas rich, poor, pregnant.”

He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to push her down on the bed. Even though she was carrying her own weight now, her whole body knocked against his as they walked. He had an erection but she wasn’t going to notice and he was too overwhelmed by his good fortune to care.

“So what are your secrets?”

He was not above taking verbal advantage of her.

“Oh God. I have too many.” She let go of him then and fell onto a corner of the bed.

“You’ve got to keep moving, Kristina.” He slipped his arm back through hers and tried to lift her up.

“Cut it out!” She jerked her arm away, then brought the elbow back and sunk it into his ribs.

He cried out. He hated this kind of unexpected pain. He knew it was what kept him from being a better athlete and he hated that, too. But the thought of her leaving the room checked his anger.

“How about some more water?”

He brought her a glass from the bedside table. The clock read 11:16. She drank, then had trouble setting it on the floor. It spilled, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Tell me one of your secrets,” he said.

“Okay. But you’re hovering.”

Peter sat down near her feet.

“Okay,” she said again, “I’m going to give you a good one.”

He nodded. He didn’t care now how much he was smiling. He was happy; he was with her.

“Miss Whitmore tried to kiss me last year.”

“Oh c’mon. It’s got to be real.”

“That is one hundred percent true. I swear.”

“After a game or something?”

“No, in her office. She was taping up my stick after practice and showing me this little crack at the tip and when I leaned down she leaned up and I had to jerk away. It was incredibly awkward.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not lying.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“You’re the first.”

“Now that’s a lie.”

“You have serious problems trusting people.”

“Why would you tell me of all people that story?’

“What do you mean you of all people?” She lay back on her elbows. From his angle on the floor her breasts nearly blocked out her face. Even when they were horizontal they were huge.

“We’re not exactly close friends.”

“What do you mean? We grew tomatoes and leeks together.”

“That was in sixth grade.”

“We canoed down the Pawcatiqua River.”

“Piscataqua. In seventh. With everyone else in our class.”

“But we collected firewood together the first night.”

“We did?” Was it possible there was a moment with her he’d forgotten?

“And we got lost and had to sleep curled up next to each other all night for warmth.”

“That definitely did not happen.’

“No, but I wanted it to.”

“Really?”

“C’mere,” she said, patting a space beside her. C’mere, cutie was what she said to Brian.

He lifted himself up onto the bed. His heart was cracking his ribs.

“Lie down,” she said.

He lay on his side and she rolled over to face him. Their knees touched. He was trembling all over — even his lips were trembling — but she didn’t seem to notice. The only way he knew she was still very drunk was that she would never be this close to him otherwise.

Her eyes hooded over. She had very thick eyelids. And Belou earlobes. A smile came to her lips. “Are you thinking about sex?”

Peter laughed. “No.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Earlobes.”

He knew he could kiss her, should kiss her, but he wanted to wait till his nerves calmed down a bit. Otherwise he wouldn’t feel it. And he might bite her or something spastic like that.

“Earlobes,” she said without curiosity. Then her eyes opened and she tilted her head up. “You know what I think about sex? I think we only know a fraction of all there is to know about it. It’s like in psychology, how Freud said our consciousness is only the tip of the iceberg. I think we only understand the tip of our sexual urges and how to fulfill them. What our parents’ generation knows about sex, what they do, depresses me so much. Is that all there is? Kissing, feeling up, feeling down, then sex. Peg in the hole. Guy on top or girl on top. It’s so completely limited. I think there’s another universe — many universes — waiting out there for us, and we have to find them.” She was breathing heavily now; all those words had taken a lot of effort.

He saw at that moment that they hadn’t just taken different paths; she had traveled around the sun and the moon and was bored, while he hadn’t begun moving yet.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think, with the right person—”

“Oh spare me. You sound like my mother.”

“You talk to your mother about all this?”

“Of course not, but if I did that’s just what she’d say. ‘Brian’s just not the right person for you. Wait for the right.’” She had slipped into her mother’s accent. “‘Then you know.’”

Through the mockery Peter could sense some hope that her mother’s theory was true. He knew he should kiss her, that she was waiting, that she was ready to believe. But he also knew that he would fail. It would be like going to the Olympics with no training. Why hadn’t he taken the practice when it had been offered to him — Jill at last year’s class movie night, Amy at the fall dance? Even Jenny Mead on the love seat would have helped him practice for this moment. He hadn’t because he was waiting for the right person. There had only ever been one right person but he never realized that when she finally lay beside him he’d wish that he’d kissed all those wrong ones first.

She was looking at him, though the alcohol made her eyes sink repeatedly down to his shoulder and it seemed to take a great deal of effort to raise them up again. Her breaths through her nose were short and loud. If he kissed her now, even managed to travel to another universe with her, she’d never remember it. He couldn’t think of a time in the past two years when she hadn’t been drunk at a party or a dance. It had started in eighth grade, at their very first dance. Billy Chesney had gotten his brother to buy a case of beer and leave it in the woods. He remembered Kristina coming into the gym that night. She looked so happy, like she’d just gotten really good news. He doubted he’d have had the the courage to ask her to dance, but he didn’t even get the chance. She just went out onto the floor and started dancing. All the other girls stood around the edges waiting to be asked but Kristina just danced with whoever came to her. He knew she was different that night, but he didn’t find out why until the next week when Lloyd discovered the empty carton in the woods. After that there was always drinking outside of school. He used to like watching her get happier, goofier. Sometimes he could even get her to smile at him across a room. But this year she seemed to skip the happy stage and go right to blotto. He doubted she’d even remember the swimmer or those guys at the dining room table tomorrow.

“Kristina?”

Her eyes swam up slowly toward him. “Mmm?”

Her hands were gathered under her chin. He took one out and held it in both of his. It was warm and sticky. “Do you think you might have a problem, a problem with drinking too much alcohol like this, at parties?” Oh God, why had he said it? She had a vicious temper. She would bolt.

But she didn’t move. She just squeezed his hand hard. “Sometimes I think I might,” she whispered. “Oh God, Peter, I don’t want to be drunk right now. I wish I could just take a pill and feel normal. I don’t know what happens. The idea of going to a party and not being buzzed — and now my father’s going to come and—”

“Damn.” Peter looked at the clock. “It’s eleven-thirty-seven.”

“Shit!” She sat up as he knew she would. “Holy fuck. He’s here. He’s never late.” She slapped her face. “And he’s going to know. He’s going to know.”

Out in the hallway her name was being called.

“See? He’s incapable of being late.”

“There’s a back staircase. There has to be. C’mon.” He yanked her up, unlocked the door, and led her down the hall, away from the way he came. People were yelling her name outside and in. He released his grip on her arm and took her hand. It felt familiar already. Why hadn’t he kissed her?

They came to a stairwell. He’d kiss her there at the bottom, before he delivered her to her father. With her free hand she wiped away tears and patted her face. “Sorry, I was in the bathroom,” she said to herself, practicing.

The steps bent around to the kitchen. Sarah was at the bottom looking up. “Jesus Christ. There you are. Your father is having a shit fit out there.”

Kristina let go of Peter, pushed past him, as if he’d been in her way this whole time. “Daddy, I’m right here,” he heard her call out, irritated, as if the only trouble had been her father’s eyesight.

From the front hall window, Peter watched them walk out into the driveway. Her father was examining her and she was pretending not to notice. When he had decided she was sober, he put his arm around her shoulder and guided her to the green Mercedes whose license plate, 210514, Peter knew by heart. She rolled down the window and waved to people on the grass as her father turned the car around. She didn’t look toward the house. Perhaps she had already forgotten him.

Carla came at midnight, and when they got on the highway, Jason leaned into the front seat. “Can you turn it up a bit?” This meant he wanted to talk. He sat back and waited for Peter to ask.

“You and the sister?”

“An hour and a half in the poolhouse.” Jason shut his eyes.

“Sounds cold.”

“I was amazing.”

“You were amazing?”

“I think she must have had fourteen orgasms.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow.”

If Peter asked anything more specific, Jason would get prickly, so he kept quiet. Up front they were giggling. The roommate kept wiping the fogged-up windshield with what looked like a brown bra.

“So where were you?” Jason asked, expecting little.

“With Kristina.”

“Kristina Luhzin?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Peter said. A small elated laugh slipped out.

“Where?”

“Upstairs.”

“In a bedroom?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“We talked.”

“Talked? I saw her. She was bombed.”

“I was trying to sober her up. Before her father came.”

“You were alone in a bedroom with her all that time and nothing happened? You got nothing off her?”

“A lot happened. I mean, I could have kissed her. She wanted me to, I think.”

“But you didn’t.”

“She was drunk.”

“Of course she was drunk. That’s the point of parties. Girls get drunk because they want us and can’t ask for it unless they’re drunk.”

“Kristina doesn’t want me.”

Even Jason couldn’t argue with that. “Well, she asked for it tonight and you didn’t have the cojones to do it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? Try fucking her.”

Peter had never hit anyone before, not like that. It didn’t even feel like a decision — he just watched his right fist cross his chest and smash into Jason’s face. Jason pummeled him four or five blows so fast he couldn’t get another swipe at him. Carla was swearing at them in the rearview mirror and just when Peter was about to land another solid punch, he was shoved hard against the door handle. The roommate was sprawled above them like a hawk, one flat palm pressed against Peter’s chest, the other against Jason’s.

“Fucking cut it out.” They were the only words he ever heard her say.

She flexed her arms, shoving him and Jason simultaneously slightly farther apart, then withdrew and settled in even closer to Carla.

Why hadn’t he kissed Kristina? Why had just lying there talking to her been enough? Why hadn’t he jumped her with the same unconscious passion and urgency with which he had just punched Jason? That’s what it was like for other guys in love. In movies they leapt out of chairs, dashed across rooms, clutched and grabbed and pressed themselves against the women they loved. Why hadn’t he had any of those impulses? Why was he so self-conscious, so controlled? What was wrong with him? Was he gay?

It was a long ride home. Peter told himself he wasn’t going to say anything to any of them when he got out of the car, but a small “thanks” slipped out anyway.

The house had not been waiting for him, not the way his old house waited, the way it seemed glad when his feet touched the porch steps in the afternoon. When he lived there, he’d never really thought of it as home. Home was something in books and always had more than two people living in it. Home wasn’t a borrowed gardener’s cottage on a school campus, even if it had once belonged to his grandparents. But now he missed the smell of it, a blend of cheese popcorn and wet dog. They still bought the cheese popcorn, and Walt still smelled, but the Belou house had its own smell that he and his mother would never alter, no matter what they brought into it.

He could see that someone, probably Stuart, was still up watching TV. Normally the prospect of hanging out on the couch with Stuart would have cheered him, but tonight he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He shut the door quietly and headed to his room. But he felt bad, felt rude, not even saying hi, and he glanced over to give at least a wave. It was Fran on the couch, her head turned away from him, one knee drawn up to her cheek. And she was shaking.

“Fran?”

She shook her head. “Just go to bed, Peter.”

He moved to obey, then heard a huge gasping sob, as if she’d been carefully holding it in since he’d come through the door.

“Are you okay?” He moved closer and sat at the far edge of the couch.

“She hates me. She hates me so much.” She raised her head, and her mouth, readying for another sentence, opened then kept opening, far wider than necessary, and the lips quivered as she struggled and failed to get control of it. A long moan careened out instead, ending in sharp, short cries. After a deep breath she said, “I was just talking about this stupid book I got out of the library and suddenly she’s screaming at me, wanting to know my ‘position,’ telling me to clarify and then going on about ‘girls like me’ and how our brains are jellyfish or something. God, Peter, no wonder you’re so—”

“What book?” He couldn’t bear to hear her adjective for him.

“The Thorn Birds.”

“Oh. She hates that kind of book.”

“Aren’t English teachers supposed to like books? My teacher last year used to cry when he read us poetry. All I did was tell her what it was about and before I knew it she was screaming at me.” She broke down again and hid her head.

“You can’t take it personally. It’s how she is about stuff like that.”

“I was trying so hard.” She wiped her nose, which was red and wet, and then wiped her palm on her shirt. It made a long filmy streak. In someone else he might have found that a little disgusting but Fran was exempt in his mind from those kinds of judgments. She did everything with such self-confidence he didn’t dare question her, even to himself. It was this composure that made her tears, her complete lack of control of her mouth, so disturbing to him. She usually operated with such coolness and detachment, like nothing could ever really bother her.

“Things began really well. After I put Caleb to bed, it was just the three of us and Dad seemed happy that I was there, hanging out.” He couldn’t help noticing that her shirt was tighter than most things she wore and he could see, against her thigh, the outline of her right breast. “Daddy told his story about breaking his collarbone on a date in high school and your mother was laughing. Then she told us about a straight-A student who always had to wear this white fur hat of his grandmother’s during tests. But then we started talking about books and she just snapped.” Fran’s face twisted up and her voice creaked but she was determined to get her next sentence out. “My mother never ever …” The rest of her words got lost in another long moan.

Peter touched her back. She was crying so hard he wasn’t sure she could even feel his hand. He gave her a few pats, then began stroking her slightly. Her spine was like a row of marbles down her back, nothing like Kristina’s padded bones. The memory of touching Kristina made his stomach hollow. Why hadn’t he kissed her? What was wrong with him?

“I don’t think my father has the strength to deal with all her problems. He’s been through so much already. It doesn’t seem fair.” She began to cry so hard now that she made no sound at all except a little click click deep in her mouth. Peter let his fingers drift up to the ends of her hair and, on the next stroke, to her head. It was hot and moist at the roots. His heart was pounding so hard, harder than it had even with Kristina. With her head still down, Fran said, “I don’t understand her. She’s not like any other mother I’ve ever known. She’s lucky you’re such a … good kid. You could have turned out really badly. You could fly to the moon and back and she wouldn’t even know you’d gone. She doesn’t wash your clothes or tell you to pick up your room or even kiss you hello or good night or anything. She just reads her books, mixes her drinks, and smokes her cigarettes so she can get cancer one way or another and die, too.” Peter barely heard her through the racing of his blood, daring him, urging him. She was talking and he was touching and she hadn’t told him to stop. He watched his hand disappear into the hair in the back of her head. Then he felt it rising up and she looked at him for the first time that night. His hand was still tangled in her hair. “You’re bleeding,” she said. And he kissed her.

It was wet and salty with tears and blood and when she opened her mouth Peter did the same and their tongues met and it felt slimy, like kissing Walt. It felt like being a tadpole more than being human, a tadpole with a tiny brain and a big mouth and everything wet and silty all around. A rattle of breath from her nose poured out onto his cheek and he was so focused on his mouth he didn’t know what he was doing with his hands though they were moving the whole time. It was noisy, this kind of kissing, and the noise made him like it even more. And then, in an instant, that whole briny, underwater world became memory. She hit him hard on the upper arm and stood up, wiping everything off her mouth. She was still crying as she told him he was gross and shouldn’t be kissing his stepsister. Then she disappeared down the hall to her room.

Peter waited a long time before he got up. In the bathroom, Mrs. Belou was stern.

I thought it might come to this.

I’m sorry.

She’s my little girl.

I know.

You don’t know. What do you or your mother know about anything?

Peter turned away from the picture to the mirror. No wonder you’re so — What had she been going to say? Wimpy? Boring? Dense? “Unfocused” and “distant” were words that appeared regularly on his report cards. Was his mother somehow responsible for that? He’d never thought of his mother in this way. She was like a building to him, tall, brick, permanently adjacent and absolutely necessary, whose shape he had never questioned, whose shadow he had never noticed until he stepped back and stood with the Belous at a safe distance. Now he could see the dilapidated frame, the broken windows, the rotting roof.

He sat on the toilet cover looking at the thin hand towels with the embroidered bluebells and the jar of dried petals on top of the wicker cabinet — decorations his mother would never have chosen. She would have left all those places bare and ugly.

He thought of how, not all that long ago and for as long into the past as he could remember, he used to fear her absence, and how the sound of the Dodge pulling up beneath his window could make him whimper with relief. He doubted he could ever feel that way about her again and for a moment, as the great building was razed swiftly to the ground, he felt guilty and ashamed. Then he turned back to the picture and saw a deepening smile.

Stuart was not in their room, and he was relieved. In his bed in the dark his body reexperienced, in random order, moments of the long night. The bra on the windshield, the smell of stain, the salty metallic slippery kiss, the blue black of Kristina’s hair in his fingers, Jenny Mead’s head tipping back. His mind could find nothing to rest on, nothing that made him feel safe.