Kings of bmore, p.4
Kings of B'more, page 4
The only other possible member of the Phalanx was Mondale Berz, who, to Harrison, wasn’t so much Sad as he was On Another Planet. Mondale, a lanky Black and Filipino boy, was built like a collapsing Jenga tower, all angles and collarbones. He went everywhere with his enormous pink headphones resting just above his ears, like the eraser on one of those weirdly shaped pencils. Mondale got straight As even though he never had any idea what anybody was talking about in class or in casual conversation—probably because of the headphones. He didn’t really seem to need to be friends with the rest of the group; he kept his own company. But he always accepted an invitation when offered, he always invited the Sad Boys to his house to watch anime, and he always gave the best gifts—for birthdays, the one year they randomly decided to do Secret Santa, or just because he was thinking about one of them. Mondale was thoughtful; he was, it seemed, constructed completely out of thoughts. And that made him seem sad sometimes, Harrison guessed.
Harrison didn’t think of himself as Sad, present circumstances excluded. Everybody said he was quiet, but that’s just because he didn’t talk much. It wasn’t the same thing. Sure, he felt insecure; sure, he worried that he wasn’t going to be popular, ever; sure, he was anxious about the future. But he wasn’t sad about it. Everybody got down sometimes. Best not to think too hard about it. Maybe a crystal!
Linus was Sad, though. Harrison knew that.
Sometimes it snuck up on him; sometimes it hung just over his head; sometimes it felt a part of his body, like the hunch of his shoulders around his ears or the way he sort of leaned when standing, his hip jutting out like it was searching for a wall to crumble on.
Linus was sad. And sometimes they were sad together. Harrison didn’t know what they’d do when they had to be sad apart.
Harrison realized he’d never answered Corrine’s question. And she’d let him stand there, moping in silence. He replied now. “It does suck.” He hesitated and looked away. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“I just told you I don’t know what to do!”
“First of all, take that bass out your voice. I didn’t realize you meant you actually didn’t know. Linus is always plotting and you stay going along with any harebrained scheme.” She swept her head wrap from around her neck and stuffed it in the pocket of her jeans as she stood up. She leaned down and picked up the bowl of crystals, cradling it in her arm as if it were a baby. A baby that held the power of the universe. “So come up with some harebrained scheme.” She turned and started up the back stairs.
“You’re leaving?” Harrison called.
“You obviously came out here to be sad, and I think you have that right.”
“You could stay, though.”
Corrine curled her lip and growled like a gunslinger from a Western. “This yard’s not big enough fer the both uv us.” She laughed at herself. “Enjoy the sun!”
“Wait.”
“What?”
Harrison looked down the alley. A half-empty carton of what looked like fried rice was sitting on the ground just beyond their yard. The fork was still in it.
“What?” Corrine said, this time in italics.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
Corrine didn’t respond right away. Harrison regretted even saying anything.
“You’re sad. Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”
“Just surprised you care is all.”
“Your energy is truly awful. You need to get some help.”
“Okay!”
“That was easy.” Corrine could see that Harrison was in no mood for needling. She set the bowl on the railing. It looked precarious, but maybe it was being balanced by space power. “You’re my brother.”
“And?”
“And . . . and what?”
“And when did you start caring about any of us?”
Corrine cocked her head curiously. “I’ve always cared.”
“I don’t believe that,” Harrison said.
“I don’t care what you believe.” Corrine threw her hands up, jostling her bowl. The crystals teetered and she caught them. She scowled at Harrison. “Any other questions?”
“Thanks for the pep talk. You’re a great sister.”
“You’re an asshole,” Corrine said quietly. She swept into the house and let the screen door slam behind her—a huge transgression if their parents were home.
Harrison slumped into the newly empty chair and glared at the world around him: the chain-link fence, the alley, the tiny herb garden, the bird feeder that had been lying on its side since a squirrel knocked it down, the fried rice container, and the little patch of grass that nobody cared about but which, for some reason, Harrison still had to mow with a Weedwhacker every other week. The sounds of a summer afternoon in his neighborhood came to life around him. Kids shrieking and giggling in the street, the hungry growl of revving motorbikes, the exhausted grumble of buses sighing to a stop and then heaving themselves forward again like old men hoisting themselves off the couch, the ever-present horror-movie soundtrack of the ice cream truck, and the white noise of cars driving by or idling on the corner with their stereos turned up. Everyone was having a great damn day.
And to make matters worse, it seemed that every car, every radio station, every playlist had “Press the Sky Higher” on it. Harrison heard it so many times wafting through the air over the scuttle of the neighborhood that he knew all the lyrics by midafternoon. He finally gave up and retreated to the air-conditioning. He could put up with the oppressive heat, but the ubiquitous song of the summer was a bridge too far.
What did the lyrics even mean? “We been down and we been broken, but we’re pushing up and over / hard times ain’t coming back no more”? Up and over where? Hard times ain’t coming back? Says who?! Ridiculous. And also, shouldn’t it be “push the sky,” not “press the sky”? Everyone loved the new song, but no one was talking about the fact that it was completely inaccurate. Even before the recent development with Linus, Harrison had had his doubts about the victory anthem’s message: that we have the power to lift the sky, to change the world. It was a song about hope in the future, and for Harrison, the sky had never seemed so low.
7:00 p.m.
“PIZZA TRACKER IS ON AND POPPING!” Harrison’s dad called through the door.
“Yeah. Okay! I got it,” Harrison said. Under his breath, he muttered, “You need to chill out, Obed.” Lately, he’d experimented with calling his parents—Sheree and Obed—by their first names like he was some kind of wealthy white child of divorce. He only did this in his head, of course, because he was none of those things, and Sheree and Obed didn’t play those kinds of games. When he’d come home from Plowshares one day in third grade and asked his parents when he could call them by their real names, they’d looked at him like he’d just revealed he knew they were in a witness protection program and living double lives.
“When . . . what?” Obed, or rather, Dad, had asked.
Harrison had explained that Dario called his parents by their real names, and he was just curious about whether he’d missed a cue.
“Oh!” Sheree had said. “Um, I think . . . I think Mom and Dad is fine for now.”
“Are you sure?” Harrison asked. The whole thing was very anxiety-producing. New identities at this late age?
“Yeah, Dario’s folks—Don’t worry about it. When you’re grown, you can call us by our first names. If you need to.”
Well, he wasn’t all the way grown, but he’d found that he liked the way their names sounded when he tossed them about in his head; he liked the feeling of saying them under his breath. It felt like power.
He sat up in his bed and pulled up Linus’s text from hours earlier. Normally Harrison would respond to one of Linus’s oblique messages by just calling, which was what Linus wanted anyway. Linus had a janky bare-bones phone that didn’t do much more than make calls and text, so it was basically useless. It might as well have been a telegraph machine. But it connected them. When Linus texted one word, it was the same as his raised eyebrow or his hunched shoulder or the electric space that hung in the gaze between the two of them. It said everything. It said Let’s talk forever. And Harrison always responded.
But . . . Harrison didn’t have anything to say now. He swung his feet out of the bed, pretending that was true. He ignored, for once, the pull of the tether that connected the two of them. He didn’t have time to work through it at the moment. It was almost MANDATORY FUN O’CLOCK.
What the Meredith family needed, he decided, was an excused-absence policy. He surveyed the rumpled mass of his clothes from earlier in the day, furiously whipped off and thrown to the corner. They bore the brunt of a resentment that was really aimed at the sun, and the heat, and the summer, and also the state of South Carolina, and the ghost of his junior- and senior-year plans with Linus and, most of all, Linus’s dad, Wallingford Munro (yes, Harrison was using his full government name now; it was that serious). He went to another pile of clothes, picked up a shirt, sniffed it, and put it on. It was snug and uncomfortable and clung to the parts of his body that he, honestly, felt ambivalent about but which seemed to be a point of commentary for everyone else. He tugged the sides of the shirt down over the curve of his stomach, found a pair of shorts, and left his room, closing the door carefully behind him (but slamming it in his mind).
Sheree and Obed were already posted up on one of the couches when Harrison got to the living room. Corrine had assumed her usual place, draped at odd angles in an overstuffed chair. That left Harrison alone on the other couch, where he lay down.
“Finally!” Corrine said. She reached forward and snagged a slice of pizza from one of the boxes on the table.
“Grace?” their mom warned.
Corrine closed her eyes and moved her lips as she held the pizza aloft. It looked like praying, but what she was saying was only known to her and God and the rocks.
Harrison buried his head in one of the throw pillows on the couch.
“You’re going to love this one, boy-o,” Obed called.
“Nnnff,” he replied into the pillow.
“It stars Matthew Broderick,” said Sheree. “He was in The Producers. On Broadway.” She pulled a slice of pizza for herself and paused to say grace over it silently.
Harrison turned his head slightly and looked at the TV, where a baby-faced teenager in a bathrobe was frozen on the launch screen. He held an absolutely gargantuan phone in his hand. It was, indeed, the guy from The Producers.
“What movie is this?” he asked.
“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, an absolute classic,” his dad said, shifting giddily on the couch. “It’s about—”
“He’s going to find out what it’s about in a minute, baby,” Sheree interjected.
Harrison had already read the description on the screen: A clever teenager and his friends play hooky, enjoying the day with the principal in hot pursuit. What was “hooky”? Harrison figured without video games and normal-sized phones, back then teenagers had to find other things to play.
He skimmed down the screen and looked at who was in it. Mia Sara. Alan Ruck. Jennifer Grey. Wait a minute . . . Harrison pulled out his phone and googled.
“No phones at movie night,” Obed warned.
“Joel Grey!” Harrison crowed. “You should have led with that!”
Everyone looked at him as if he was going to explain, when they all should have known damn well by now that he wasn’t going to. Jennifer Grey was Joel Grey’s daughter; Joel Grey was the emcee in Cabaret. Now that was a classic. He shrugged at his family. He was so misunderstood, and he was in no mood to watch a couple of teenage friends from the Dark Ages playing “hooky.” He hated sports. He sent his head flying back into the pillow.
He felt someone shifting his legs over and sitting next to him on the couch. Harrison looked up and came face-to-face with Linus holding a soda.
“Hello,” Linus said.
“What are you doing here?” Harrison scooted over to give Linus room and then scooted back to bump his shoulder against Linus’s.
“Come on, now. It’s movie night. My dad dropped me off like always.”
“Oh. Nice.” Harrison leaned forward and grabbed a slice of pizza.
“You ain’t text me back.”
“I was sleeping.”
“Are you okay?” Linus asked.
“Ummmmmmmmmm.”
Linus let out a sound that was half groan, half whine and threw his head back into the couch. Harrison collapsed back into the pillow. They were dead; leave them behind.
“What’s going on over there?” Obed asked.
“They’re sad,” Corrine said.
“Baby girl! We are more than sad!” Linus confirmed. “Mr. and Mrs. Meredith, no lie, I feel as if these movie nights opened up a whole universe for me. You all have some real interesting taste, I gotta say. Did I like it all? No, I did not. But I liked coming here every time. I don’t think I ever would have heard of any of these movies if not for your movie nights, so it was like a class, which was nice.”
“Is he giving a speech?” Corrine asked.
“Just some remarks,” Linus replied, setting his soda down on a coaster. “When my dad was laying out his reasons for moving, he said that my aunt Bird is our people, and since we don’t have other people up here, that’s why we’re going to live with her. But I feel as if you all are my people, too. I hope you don’t mind.”
“What do you mean, you’re going to live with her?” Obed asked.
“We’re moving. To South Carolina.”
“Oh, Linus! No! When?” Sheree asked.
“Sunday.”
Harrison’s dad let out a sound like he was in pain. Obed pulled out his cell.
“No phones at movie night!” Corrine said. Obed hushed her.
As usual, Linus’s speech was not finished. “I don’t know what kind of entertainment they have down in Charleston. Do they have movies? I don’t know. Like, for all I know, it’s cotillions and Jack and Jill dancing or some such. So, obviously, I’m pressed. But I appreciate you all.”
“You can Zoom in with us on movie nights,” Sheree said.
“That’s ridiculous.” Harrison sniffed.
“Excuse me?” Sheree leaned back and looked at him askance.
“You can’t watch a movie over Zoom,” he said.
“I think I understand how Zoom works,” said his mother. “What I’m struggling with understanding, however, is this tone.”
Obed tapped Sheree on the arm and showed her his phone. She read it and they talked to each other with just their expressions for a moment. Harrison couldn’t make sense of it. Now he knew how other people felt when he and Linus had silent conversations. He nudged Linus: What are they talking about?
They’re your parents. How should I know?
They’re weird.
A whole room full of people talking with their eyes. A Zoom call on mute.
“Oh-kay. Can we—?” Corrine acted like she had someplace to go.
Harrison’s dad turned down the TV, which had started cycling between previews on the streaming platform. “What was your favorite movie, Linus?”
“I feel like I have to say one of your picks,” Linus said, laughing.
Every member of the family got one week a month to choose the movie for the mandatory fun night. When there were five weeks in the month, Linus got to choose, but since he wasn’t a movie person, he always gave it to Harrison. Corrine always demanded a recount.
Linus thought for a second and then answered the question. “I really did like everything. I especially liked that documentary on James Baldwin that Corrine chose last winter.”
Internally, Harrison rolled his eyes. Linus must have sensed it, because he turned to Harrison and exclaimed, “I did!”
“I didn’t say anything!” Harrison shrieked, cutting his eyes at Corrine and then back to Linus.
You stay so mad, Linus’s eyebrows said.
How dare you choose one of Corrine’s homework assignments disguised as family bonding? Harrison retorted.
Just hold on! You’re so annoying, Linus replied. He turned back to the family and continued the conversation out loud.
“Anyways, I think my favorite was Hamilton.”
Harrison let out a whoop like he’d actually won something. Family bragging rights were one step below a Tony, honestly. Corrine threw her hands up in frustration.
“Hamilton isn’t even a movie!”
“You’re just mad,” Harrison shot back.
“I’m just stating the facts of the situation.” She turned to their father. “Dad!”
“It’s true,” Obed said. “It’s a filmed stage musical.”
“Thank you!” Corrine sat back heavily, as if she’d achieved some great moral victory. “So, Linus, your favorite movie was my pick and your favorite filmed staged musical was Hamilton. Just. So. We’re. Clear.”
