Real Life(56)

“Shit,” Miller says. Wallace breathes. The wind pulls back through the trees. The air is cold and dark. “Shut that, will you?”

Wallace nods. He slides the door shut as Miller picks up the glass. The room is suddenly, with the door closed, quiet.

“Is that your answer?” Wallace asks.

“I don’t have one,” he says, resting against the counter. “I don’t have an answer, Wallace. He was this kid from home. He followed me and my friends around. It wasn’t like it is here. I’m not like Yngve. Or Lukas or Emma. I’m not from this.” He gestures broadly, taking in the house and the yard and their neighbors who sleep soundly, deeply, encompassing the capitol and the square and the lakes and the trees and the whole bright world. “Anyway, his dad was an engineer at the plant where my dad worked, and all this kid could talk about was going to Purdue. Early decision.” Miller’s face is knit tight. Closed, like he’s seeing it all again. “He was just this little pissant kid, Wallace. He was just so sure.”

“You attacked someone because they were sure?”

“No,” Miller says, shaking his head. “No, it wasn’t that. But it was, I guess. It comes down to that. He was sure. All I had waiting for me was some job making brake shoes like my old man. And this kid is just walking around like, I’m going to Purdue. I’m going to be an engineer! And I went around mad because nobody out there wanted me. Nothing I wanted wanted me back.”

“I understand that,” Wallace says.

“Do you? One day, we steal some cigarettes, right? And we’re out behind the old grocery store, smoking and talking shit. Usual stuff. This kid, five feet, no inches, leans over, and he just plucks the butt right out of my mouth.” Miller smiles as the memory surfaces, like he can taste the perfect, gritty flavor of his rage. He breathes deeply. “And he says, I’m really gonna miss you guys. Talking about missing us while smoking my cigarette. I’m like, This kid. This kid has got it coming. So I get even.”

Wallace feels a little dizzy. He wonders if he hurt his head. Miller, having given himself over to the story now, looks content. He wets his teeth and then his lips. There is the hint of a smirk on his face, as if he is enjoying himself, or he is inhabiting the version of himself who enjoyed hurting someone. Get even sounds like the rallying cry of weak people who have no other way to bargain with the world. What does that mean, Wallace wonders. There was no hurt done to Miller in this story. What score is he trying to even? Miller turns to him and his face shifts. His eyes widen slightly. Wallace feels a momentary chime of panic, that he’s been caught out, and that Miller can read his mind, knows what Wallace thinks of him. No, Wallace thinks. Miller is afraid. That’s what this is. He is afraid that he is bad and that no one wants him back.

“You wanted to get even,” Wallace says quietly.

“I just wanted him to feel like I felt. What else was I supposed to do?” Miller’s voice breaks as he says it. This is not from some long-ago memory, something reluctantly remembered. It’s been there near the surface this whole time. What else was I supposed to do? Anything else, Wallace wants to say. You didn’t have to hurt that boy. But Miller is not asking him to justify it. Not really. He wants someone to be on his side.

“It was impossible,” Wallace says. “You were in an impossible place.” What an ugly thing this is.

Miller turns to him then, fully. He draws Wallace close and puts his face against Wallace’s neck.

“I didn’t want to,” Miller says. “I didn’t want to do that. I try to be good. I try to be good. I try to be good.”

“You are good,” Wallace says, mildly alarmed at himself.

Miller laughs coolly. “I don’t know, Wallace. What I just told you makes me sound like a really bad person.”

“There are no bad people,” Wallace says with a shrug. “People do bad things. But after a while they’re just people again.”

“So I guess that means you’ve forgiven your parents?” Miller says, and a sharp streak of hurt flashes behind Wallace’s eyes. “I thought not.” He pauses. “There are bad people. I kept thinking about that kid’s face when you told me about what happened to you. I could feel his bones breaking. And my bones breaking. And I just kept going. Because I was mad. How sick is that?”

“You were trying to escape your life,” Wallace says.

“By tearing a hole in someone else’s.”

Wallace lets it lie. Whatever Miller wants from him, it isn’t this.

Miller takes his hand. “Let’s go to bed,” he says. Wallace nods and follows him up the stairs. There is so much trouble in the world. There are people suffering everywhere, at every moment. Who is happy, truly happy, ever? What is a person to do with it all? Except to try to slide laterally out of one’s life into whatever gray space waits for them.

Miller’s room is as they left it. He shuts the door, and Wallace climbs back onto the bed. Miller gets into bed with him, and they slide under the quilt. Soon it will be fall, too cold for just a quilt, but by then Wallace might be hundreds of miles away. He might be somewhere warm. He might be anywhere at all. And Miller will still be here, in this room, changing over his clothes and his bed for winter. The contrast makes Wallace uneasy—how unrooted he is in this place, how tenuous a grasp it has on him. Miller wraps his arms around him, and for a moment, at least, Wallace feels anchored, moored.