On fire island, p.15
On Fire Island, page 15
“What’s it to you?”
Boy, he was in a mood.
“Just asking.”
Shep waited a bit before saying, “You’re gonna have to get into some sort of routine, you know.”
“I have a routine,” Ben insisted.
“Waking up and suffering does not constitute a routine.”
Ben shook his head, thought for a bit, and then threw Shep a bone. “It does seem like you’re way better than I am.”
“Well, I have a few months on you, and besides, I’m mourning Caroline and what was, while you’re mourning Julia, what was, and what should have been.”
“I feel like I have nothing, nothing. What do I have?”
“Well, for one thing, you have a magnificent head of hair!” Shep ruffled his hands through it.
Ben didn’t find it amusing.
“Saw Joel this morning, he said that Goldilocks fellow broke in to his house last night. Made pancakes.”
“Hm. Any damage?”
“No. But he used up all their syrup.”
Ben didn’t even crack a smile.
They both looked east to see a famously annoying couple, the Kerchaikens, on their daily exercise walk. The Kerchaikens weren’t ballplayers or tennis players. They were a paunchy, rather boring pair who walked, or more aptly strolled, all twelve blocks from one end of town to the other under the guise of exercise. My kind side would say “to each his own,” but they acted like they were marathon runners on account of it. Aside from that, Shep held on to an old grudge with Mr. Kerchaiken with the vengeance of Taylor Swift after a breakup.
“Please don’t let them stop, please don’t let them stop, please don’t let them stop.”
Yes, Ben said that out loud, three times. It was clearly one of those days when he presented as getting worse, not better. At least he was aware of it.
Ben developed an issue with small talk quickly after my diagnosis. I was beginning to wonder if he would ever embrace chatting again. He used to be relatively fond of it, especially when it involved sports. Not with the Kerchaikens though; he never enjoyed talking to them. On the nights that we ventured into town for a scoop of ice cream—him, Moose Tracks, me Graham Central Station—they always seemed to be on line. Mr. Kerchaiken was the kind of guy who started a conversation with, “Did you hear about this?” or “Did you hear about that?” regarding a multitude of things we didn’t care to hear about.
The Kerchaikens made their move, angling from the shoreline to our chairs. The sand had formed a cliff-like wall between the ocean and the beach, making Ben and Shep difficult to access. Ben especially hoped it would deter them, but they were clearly determined to make a condolence stop-by.
The beach configures differently throughout the summer. In June it is often flat and wide, but in late August and early September things can get funky. Sometimes tide pools form: shallow lakes in the sand carrying foam and sea life and a host of children swimming and boogie boarding and catching errant fish with nothing more than nets or beach pails—screaming in delight over what they may remember as the best day in their young lives.
Walls of sand, like the one that appeared today, are fun as well, albeit briefly. I love the feeling of standing at the edge, pointing my toes over the side, and leaning back to slide down the humble cliff on my heels. I counted it as another gift from the island that tickled the kid in me.
The way up, though, is always clumsy and awkward.
After a few failed attempts, the Kerchaikens pulled each other up.
“Fuck,” Ben mumbled, I thought quite audibly.
“I got this,” Shep, the self-proclaimed King of the Conversation Stopper, promised.
Mrs. Kerchaiken spoke first. “How are you doing, Benjamin?” She paused and added in a consolatory tone, “And you, Shep? Such tragedy.”
“I’m doing OK, thanks.” Shep smiled at them mischievously. “But you see that rock over there?” he continued. “The big one that looks like only the ocean could move it.”
They did and nodded.
“Ben wants to bash in our skulls with it and then strap it to his back and drown himself.”
“We should be on our way,” Mr. Kerchaiken responded. The Mrs. was visibly shaken.
“Thanks, Shep.” Ben smiled before putting his earphones back in his ears.
BUMP, bump-bump bump. BUMP bump-bump bump.
twenty-five
To Town!
The summer continued in a two-steps-forward, three-steps-back kind of manner, with Ben enjoying playing ball, sometimes, but lying in my closet in tears, inhaling the scent of my sweaters at others. Matty had gotten no further in his quest for a rubber. And each of Shep’s daughters canceled their visits. They said they would come individually. Shep said he only wanted them together, and no one backed down. Family is often ridiculous.
The only one who was truly happy was Renee. The drummer was still in the picture, and from the look of her, she was having sex, good sex and plenty of it.
“That guy’s hanging around an awful lot,” Ben had commented one morning while he and Matty were on deck at the game. “Do you think it will continue in the city after the summer?”
“I don’t think so,” Matty contemplated. “I’ve never even seen him wear shoes.”
Ben laughed, though I didn’t think Matty meant it as a joke.
“You know, if it gets to be too much, Shep’s offer to bunk with us is good for me too.”
That night, when Renee announced “we” will be staying out for all of August, Matty gave up. He showed up across the street a few hours later with a duffel bag and his mitt.
The meal choices were dwindling, but Shep put in a bit more energy since it was Matty’s first night. He made a fresh salad and some garlic bread and defrosted Elissa Cron’s five-meat lasagna—no one could figure out what the fifth meat was, which was why it was a late taker. The bread was the biggest hit.
Neither Shep nor Ben put much effort into their dinner conversation since becoming partners in grief, but with Matty at the table, their usual routine of lamenting and languishing felt tiresome. Shep did the honor of breaking the ice with a hatchet as opposed to a pick.
“So, your mother’s still banging the drummer?”
“Shep! You need a seven-second delay, like on television,” Ben exclaimed.
“Oh please. He was caught necking with Dylan in the dunes. No need to watch his virgin ears.”
“I’m sure he still has virgin ears. You do, right?” Ben asked.
“Yeah—for now. How does everyone know?”
“Come on, Matty, how does everyone know that Moe Schwartz has hemorrhoids or that Kelly Kramer is a screamer? Everyone knows everything in this town.”
Like I told you—bungalow colony.
“You better be careful, Matty,” Ben warned. “Jake Finley’s only daughter.”
“That’s an understatement. I’d think twice before deflowering that girl,” Shep piped in.
Matty clearly didn’t get the archaic lingo. Ben rolled his eyes and brought it at least to this century.
“He means popping her cherry.”
“You mean taking her v-card?” Matty asked.
“Never heard that one,” Ben admitted.
“Whatever you call it nowadays, I’m pretty sure the phrase ‘Don’t knock her up’ still applies—you better get a hold of a banana slicker or two first.”
Between the popping cherries and the banana slickers, it sounded more like they were sharing a recipe for fruit salad than encouraging safe sex. I wished they would just speak to the poor kid in English. In the end, Matty took care of that himself.
“About that . . . do either of you have a condom?”
I could almost see the words sink into their brains and release in the most welcome sound I’d heard in months, joyous and hysterical laughter. It was the kind of laughter that begets more laughter until your stomach hurts and your eyes water with happy tears. After what felt like minutes, Ben managed an apology.
“I’m sorry, Matty, it’s been so long since I laughed . . .” He broke down again but got himself together. Tears were now pouring down Shep’s cheeks, but Matty wasn’t even slightly amused.
“Sorry, Matt, but really, look who you are asking for a condom,” Ben offered.
Shep barely squeaked out “The widower fornicators,” which started them both up again. Shep finally regained control, sipped his glass of water, and stated, “I don’t think there will be many rubbers in my future.”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed, adding, “The Brisket Brigade probably doesn’t have one good egg between them.”
They laughed some more, but stopped as Matty asked earnestly, “Really? What am I supposed to do? I can’t exactly buy one at the market, and I can’t swipe one ’cause they’re behind the counter.”
“That’s true. Miss Sullivan hasn’t left that counter since 1998,” Shep noted, adding, “the Ex-Lax brownie incident.”
They all grimaced in unison, remembering it.
“Can’t you get one in town?” Ben suggested. Matty had already thought that through.
“No way. Jake would find out in under an hour. ‘Matthew Tucker bought condoms at Ocean Beach Trading.’ ”
“He’ll be castrated before he gets to use it. You know who probably has one?” Shep asked.
“Don’t even say it!” Matty countered. “I can barely look at that guy. Every time I see him my mind goes right to my fifth-grade holiday concert where we sang ‘Little Drummer Boy.’ It must be some kind of coping mechanism. I had the opening solo, you know, ‘Come, they told me, pa rum pum pum pum.’ ”
Ben loved Christmas music, literally knew every word to every Christmas song, from Mariah Carey to the Chipmunks. It’s one of those contradictory things about him that makes him who he is. The chance to sing a Christmas carol in July lit him right up.
“ ‘A newborn king to see pa rum pum pum pum.’ ”
Matty loosened up too. “You got it.”
And he smiled as Shep stood up and bellowed, “ ‘Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum.’ ”
They all laughed and crooned together, “ ‘To lay before the king, pa rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum.’ ”
Inspired by the Christmas spirit, I imagine, Shep proudly announced, “I’ll do it! I’ll get the rubber in town!”
Ben quickly put a pin in it. “You’re going to walk into the Ocean Beach market and ask for a condom?”
“Yup. What’s the big deal, Scrooge?”
“You really understand the repercussions of this?”
“Maybe word will get out that I am interested in the premenopausal set!”
Their faces reflected their doubt. Shep reaffirmed his resolve.
“I got this. Battle conditions! I’ll get in, do my best, and get out.”
He placed his plate on the ground for Sally, then raised his hand in the air like Napoleon leading the troops to Waterloo.
“To town!”
The three men jumped on their bikes and rode off, with Shep leading them in their new battle hymn as they pa-rum-pum-pum-pummed all the way there.
twenty-six
Whack-a-Mole
It was a Monday night, when town is usually desolate, and tonight was no exception. Matty and Ben sat on the bench outside of OB Trading while Shep did the deed. The weather was unseasonably cool, and none of them had thought to grab a sweatshirt. They sat closer than usual on account of it. The physical intimacy seemed to beget emotional intimacy.
“So, is this like your first love, or is it just a sex thing?”
“I don’t know. To be honest, this is all Dylan’s idea. I mean, we really only started messing around last summer ’cause we had covered every other inch of this place.”
“That’s kind of funny.”
“I guess.”
Ben paused. His expression got serious.
“I know Dylan is pretty headstrong, I mean, is this what you want too?”
Matty responded just how he did when Dylan asked him. “Yeah, sure.”
Ben may be onto something, I thought. Matty wasn’t very convincing.
“Do you have any questions? I mean, I know you’re not tight with your dad right now.”
“Nah, I’m good. I’ve seen porn.”
“Yeah, it’s not really like it is in the movies, Matty. Don’t expect to be moving heaven and earth.”
Matty was listening intently, now. Seeing Ben as a father figure definitely tugged at my heart. I hoped he still had the chance, or took the chance, I should say, to become a dad. I worried he would never get there again. He continued with his version of a sex talk, and as with most things, there were plenty of sports references thrown in.
“Later on, maybe, but the first time, the first time is pretty rudimentary, not a lot of moaning and groaning . . . and you won’t need much time. . . . It’s kind of like, keep your eye on the ball, make contact, and boom! Maybe one moan.”
This from the man who wrote . . .
Erin lay spent at day’s end, thinking back to making love to Patrick in the fields, their breath fast, their flesh warm and wet. She slipped her hand beneath her stockings and moved her fingers as he had until she climaxed, burying her face into the ground as if to inject the sound of her ecstasy into the earth.
Shep walked out with three bananas—and as far as I could see, no condoms.
“Banana?” he offered the guys.
They looked at him blankly.
“I couldn’t do it. Maybe a drink will help. Let’s go to Housers.”
Housers sat just around the bend from the Ocean Beach market and mostly attracted locals on a weeknight. We had spent many an evening there drinking tequila, playing darts or pool, and dancing to eighties songs on their old jukebox. Tonight felt different. For starters, I didn’t recognize anyone except for the staff, and there seemed to be a shady element hanging around.
The three of them slid into one of the few booths as a familiar salty face came over to take their order. The conversation between the waiter and Shep was priceless.
“What can I get you?”
“Three shots of tequila.”
“Not for him.”
“What, he’s eighteen.”
“He’s not eighteen, and the drinking age is twenty-one.”
“Twenty-one? When did that happen?”
“1984.” The waiter tickled Matty under his chin, adding, “Decades before his mother wheeled her cute little baby boy off the Bay Harbor ferry.”
Ben smiled, as did Shep and the waiter. Matty did not.
“I remember that day.” Shep beamed. “You were such a cute baby, Matty. Caroline would push you up and down the block in your pram like you were her grandchild.”
Matty buried his head as Ben took control.
“Bring us two each and a cola for him.”
When the drinks arrived, Shep held one up to toast. “To young love!”
“It’s not really like that,” Matty explained. “And besides, look at my parents. I don’t even believe in that crazy-in-love shit anymore.”
“You may be better off,” Ben piped in, in a voice more similar to Eeyore’s than his own.
Shep wasn’t having it. “You don’t really mean that, Ben.”
“Well, I never want to feel like this again.”
“You may want to rethink that, because your life is gonna suck with that attitude. I’m just passing time till I can be with Caroline again, but you have a ways to go. You can’t just pass forty-odd years of time.”
As the drinks were placed on the table, Shep ordered another round.
The waiter looked at him skeptically but nodded in agreement as Ben pronounced, “All that better-to-have-loved-and-lost nonsense feels like a crock.”
He dramatically drank his shot and headed for the dartboard.
“Don’t listen to him, son.” Shep discreetly passed a shot to Matty and took one himself. “Even your scorned mother has gotten back on the horse.” He held up his shot glass hopefully.
“I’m not drinking to that,” Matty lamented.
“Go ahead and drink yours to misery, but I’m drinking mine to your mother banging the drummer.” Shep drank his shot, slammed it on the table, and got up.
Matty mumbled and drank his as well. He winced at the taste and placed the empty glass back across the table. As time passed, the shot glasses increased by threes to a dozen, plus a couple of bottles of beer, and I wondered how they would make it home. Especially Matty, who was now asleep with his head flat on the table. Ben and Shep were playing darts with some equally liquored-up, bad-ass day-trippers sporting an abundance of tattoos and seventies-style facial hair. Shep, who needed to steady one hand with the other to even hit the board, somehow managed a bull’s-eye. He and Ben reacted like they had defeated Russia for Olympic gold. On Shep’s way down from his victory jump, he reached up to his big bad-ass opponent and swiped the red baseball hat off his half-bald head. It was a big mistake—HUGE, I would say. The bald day-tripper went nuts, grabbed Shep’s arm and blasted him. He did not seem to care that he was getting into it with an old man.
“You can fuck with my friends, you can fuck with my wife, but never, ever, fuck with my hat.”
Ben had no choice but to get between them—though his choice of words was questionable. He came back with, “So, where’s your wife?”
A childish grin took hold of his face until the angry bald man let go of Shep, whose eyes were now popping from his head, and went for Ben. I worried Ben would go full-on Mike Tyson on the guy, especially since his jaw and fists had been clenched since the day of my diagnosis. I wondered if he could even feel physical pain in his current numb condition. While the release of a good punch may have done him good, his opponent was massive, and I had no desire to see him in the afterlife just yet. Luckily, he wiggled from Red Hat Guy’s grip.
