What's Mine and Yours(37)
“Why not? There’s nothing wrong with a little crush.”
“She’s my friend.”
Linette wiggled her eyebrows at Gee. It was so goofy he couldn’t help but laugh. Linette had dressed up for the meeting in a crisp blue blouse, her nails polished. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her that way. Usually, she looked rundown, her hair undone, gunk at the corners of her eyes. She spent most of her time watching the television, cooking their meals, and keeping the house together while Jade was at work. She didn’t seem very happy, but she wasn’t miserable either. She was tender with him, and she got along with Jade fine. The two of them orbited each other, ate their meals together, as if this life wasn’t really theirs; it was temporary, filler, and they were biding time, counting down the days until something changed. What? Until he went off to school? Until they were all far enough from what had happened to Ray?
They rolled farther east, down the wide, quiet roads.
“It can be good, you know, to let somebody close,” Linette said.
“Like you and Ma?”
“You mind the way you talk to me, young man.”
“Sorry.” Gee didn’t mean to be rude with Linette, but he had nowhere to put all his bad feelings. He made a point of sighing, fluttering his lips, to ease the tension in his jaw. It made no difference.
Through the rearview, he saw Jade’s turn signal blink. They were still a mile from home. He watched her make a left, and then she was gone. He turned to make a face at Linette, as if to say, See how much she cares? But she kept her eyes on the road.
At home, Linette parked herself in front of the TV. Whatever attention she’d had for him had dried up now, and she went straight for her needlepoint and the evening news. He left her, retreated to his room upstairs. It had been a walk-in closet, but now it was his: a narrow bed, a desk with his computer, big speakers to play music, a hanging light bulb, and a picture of him and Ray.
It was the photograph that had hung in the shrine before Jade took it down. She said Ray was in their hearts; they didn’t need to keep him on the wall. It was the same year his nightmares started, although he couldn’t remember how old he’d been, whether it had started in the old apartment or here at Linette’s. First, he was sleeping too much, then he wasn’t sleeping at all. Then he had headaches, real ones that gave credibility to the fake ones he used as excuses now.
The dreams were all the same at the beginning. He was in a car, riding somewhere. Then he was alone: on a dark street, or in the woods, or the old fairgrounds. They all ended with him being snatched from behind, someone dragging him away, although he didn’t know where. He woke one morning because he felt himself choking; he spit a pearly shard into his hand and saw he’d split his front tooth in two. He didn’t know how much it had cost to repair, but he knew Jade had put it all on a credit card and it took her a long time to pay it off. The dentist said he had other internal fractures in his teeth, and it was only a matter of time before they cracked, too, if he kept grinding. He had said it as if Gee had a choice in the matter, as if he could stop, if only he put his mind to it.
He had retrieved the photograph of him and Ray at the park from a box in Jade’s closet, put it up on his own with thumbtacks. It wasn’t that he liked the picture much; he didn’t. It was the portrait of a stranger, a dead person. And he didn’t recognize himself, either, in the dimpled, sun-lit little boy. It didn’t capture how it had felt to be Ray’s son, to sit with him in the kitchen in the morning to test out recipes, to fall asleep against his shoulder in the windowsill at Superfine. All his memories of Ray were hazy, so it wasn’t that he missed him, exactly, but he thought of him every day. When he saw a boy his age with his father. Or a happy pair of parents with their child. When he ate a good slice of cake, when he saw rusting old sedans, green, like the one Ray had driven. He didn’t remember watching him die, although Linette and Jade had asked him what he saw, and they had asked him, too, in court. He remembered only saying he didn’t know and feeling he had disappointed them, all those watching grown-ups with faces that betrayed there was something more they had hoped to hear.
Alone in his room, Gee flopped into bed, started tapping his tongue against the veneer. It seemed fine for now, still intact, unlike the mouth guard he used overnight, which was covered in dents. He didn’t know why he did it; he didn’t go to sleep worrying about anything, and the nightmares were rare. But there was evidence of his habit every morning. His jaw ached, and it took a few moments to unseal his teeth, open his mouth, and feel again that he could speak.
It didn’t seem to be a problem in his mind—no matter the kind of day he had, no matter his thoughts, the grinding wasn’t any better or worse. The trouble was in his body. It wasn’t only his receding gums, the blood in the sink when he brushed his teeth. Sometimes, he found himself standing with his shoulders up by his ears, or his fists clenched, or he’d be lying in bed listening to music and he’d notice suddenly that his legs were as rigid as planks of wood. He tried to help himself by discharging the ugly feelings. He did it in the bathroom at school, under a blanket in front of the TV, here in his room. The trouble always came back, but it still helped to snuff it out for a while.
Gee reached up to turn off the light, slid his hands into his jeans. He started working on himself. His skin was dry, but it felt good, and he ignored his routine unease about what he was doing. There was no question that he wouldn’t stop. He rubbed harder, and it became smoother, more fluid. His hand glided along, and he helped himself with his thoughts. These were not his fingers; this breath was not his breath. There were women in his brain, women in his room. Women who were older, women who loved him. Women with no faces, with body parts he’d never seen close up. Women who didn’t exist, except for now. They told him he was perfect. They told him he should come. They told him and told him and told him. Soon he took off, the pleasure where he was holding, and elsewhere, too: his toes, his buzzing skin, his warming face. He was nowhere, free. He felt himself lighten; he felt himself float. Everything inside him flowed into the air, became big energy, rippling around. He was empty. He was wet and spent and fine. His jaw unclenched.