Althea and Oliver (30 page)

Everyone pauses. Will looks at Oliver with eyes that are half-closed but suddenly lucid. “Tell her about the lithium,” he says. “See what she has to say.”

Althea and Oliver watch as the two women steer him inside the lobby, toward the elevators. Once the strange trio has disappeared, there's nothing left but for the two of them to turn and face each other. Althea awkwardly adjusts her frog hat.

“We'd better get going,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess we'd better.”

• • •

It's dark by the time they return. To Oliver, the inside of the house looks like someone took Nicky's kitchen and wiped it all over Garth's basement, lit the whole thing on fire, and then threw a party. An elfin guy with dark, spiky hair, wearing a plaid shirt and chewing a cinnamon stick, greets Althea warmly and asks what music she wants to hear; the luscious brunette with the red lipstick asks Althea if she needs a drink. Someone hands Oliver a can of Natural Ice, and he sips it automatically. Althea takes him by the hand and leads him through the filthy kitchen—the whole place smells like curry, wet cat, and burnt coffee—and out back.

The yard is a narrow rectangle, about half the size of Oliver's or Althea's. Old rusty bicycles are propped up against the warped wooden fence, and the remains of a zip line stretch from a second-floor window to a lone tree tucked in the back corner. White Christmas lights are strung all along the fence, although several lengthy sections have gone dark, and in the spots where the snow has melted it's apparent there's no grass to speak of. The centerpiece of the whole thing is an enormous sculpture made of empty Natural Ice cans, currently being admired by Matilda and about thirty of her friends.

“Who are all these people?” Oliver asks. “Do they all live here?”

“Of course not. Some of their friends are in from out of town. They're having a big New Year's party tomorrow.”

“So who does live here?”

“The Warriors. Let's see.” Althea shivers, and Oliver puts his arm around her. He's a little surprised when she leans into him instead of pushing him away. “You met Matilda. The other girl is Leala; they're, like, best friends from way back.”

“Like us?”

Althea laughs. “Not exactly like us, no. Kaleb is the really rambunctious one. At some point tonight he'll probably take his pants off for no reason. He and Leala are together. The guy with the hair and the cat is Gregory. He's sweet, kind of loud sometimes, but funny. He really loves that fucking cat.”

Oliver nods toward the skinny guy with glasses who was shouting on the porch earlier. “Who's the redhead?”

“That's Ethan. He's okay.” She points at a heavily tattooed guy with black plugs in his ears, leaning over Matilda and lighting her cigarette. “That's Dennis; he's a tattoo artist. He's good. I think he has a thing for Matilda. He crashes here a lot. So does the guy in the plaid shirt; he's a drummer, between bands and apartments.”

“I'm never going to remember all this.”

“It took me a while.”

“So who's your favorite?” Oliver asks.

“My favorite?”

“Yeah.”

Althea finishes her beer and smiles. “You are. Obviously.” She holds up her empty can. “I'm going to give this little guy a home and grab another one.”

Oliver watches as she joins the group, looking for a place for her contribution in the ridiculous aluminum structure. Their ranks widen to make a space for her, then close around her again, absorbing her seamlessly. She stands shoulder to shoulder with Kaleb, surveying his work, talking to him with such ease, an effortlessness she's never had with other people, ever. They like her. He's ashamed of himself for even thinking that—of course they like her. Why wouldn't they like her? If Althea's never really had friends before, besides him, it's only because she's always looked at other people with derision. And the friends she did have were because of him, because he would never go where she was not welcome. It's strange to see her surrounded by people of her own, people who have nothing to do with him. For all of his complaining about her petulance and sudden mood swings, it's always worked to his advantage. He's never had to share her, not with anyone, not really. And something else occurs to him, perhaps the most surprising thing of all: She likes them.

“I'm sorry about before.” Matilda has slipped away from her friends and joined him by the back door. “I'm not usually that hostile.”

“It's okay. I'm sorry I showed up uninvited like that.”

“Is your friend going to be okay?”

“Will? Yeah, we got him back to the hospital. He'll be all right.”

“Look, I don't know what your plans are, but I hope you'll at least stay for New Year's. We like to make a big deal of it.”

“Althea mentioned you guys have some wild party.”

“The Champagne Derby, yeah. I hope you'll stay for it. It's a good time.”

Oliver just stands there watching his every frozen breath dissolve from a vapor cloud to nothingness. “Thanks for the invite.”

“Anyway. I'm gonna go do my part for the Natural Iceberg. Tell Althea I said you guys should sleep in my room tonight. Everyone's all riled up; you won't get any peace in the kitchen.” Matilda leaves him and returns to the group, where she whispers something to Althea, who looks at Oliver like she had almost forgotten about him for a second, then reluctantly separates and comes back to him.

“You look miserable,” she says.

“No fucking kidding,” he says. “Look, I need to make a phone call.”

“Nicky?” she asks.

“I just don't want her to worry.”

“Sure. Here.” She goes inside and returns with a cordless. “Call collect.”

Oliver ducks out the front door onto the porch and makes his call. “Hi, Mom.”

“Oliver, I'm going to fucking kill you.”

“Please don't.” Sitting on the steps, Oliver's entire body sags at the sound of his mother's voice.

“Where the hell are you?” she shouts.

“Stop yelling, okay? I'm in New York, I'm totally fine.”

“I'm about to leave for the goddamned airport to try to get a flight up there.”

“Don't bother. You don't need to come up here and stomp around the city like Godzilla looking for me. I'm at some punk house in Brooklyn with some friends of Valerie's, and I'm leaving tomorrow.” Oliver impresses himself by coming up with this lie on his feet.

“To come home? Or to go back to the hospital?”

“That part I don't know yet.”

“And when are you planning to decide?”

“I'm going to flip a coin tomorrow, when the ball drops at midnight.”

“Come on, Oliver, don't be smart.”

“I mean it, I really don't know. To be totally honest, neither one sounds particularly appealing.”

Nicky pauses to light a cigarette; Oliver can hear the Bic's wheel sparking. “Why did you take off like that? You really scared the shit out of me.”

“I felt like I was trapped in an elevator that was stuck between floors. I just wanted out. Bad enough I spent Christmas in a coma. If I had to do New Year's with those gorillas, I think I'd open up my wrists.” He picks at some peeling rubber on the heel of his tennis shoe. “So do you have a boyfriend or what?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“When I was in the hospital, before I went down, you told me you had a date. So how did it go? Is he your boyfriend now?”

Nicky laughs. “Oh, that guy. God, that feels like a million years ago. No, it didn't work out.”

“What happened? Didn't he pay for everything? Didn't he pull out your chair at the dinner table?”

“He got all the little stuff right,” Nicky says.

A lone deliveryman rides down the street on a bicycle, an insulated red pizza pouch strapped to his handlebars. “So what was the problem?”

“I don't know, Ol. The effort required at this point doesn't even seem worth it. Sometimes it's easier. To pretend this is the way it always was. Just you and me, the two of us.”

“But why—”

“I don't want you to think of me as sad. Okay? I'm not, I'm not the sad mom. But when your dad was—I was—Look, maybe we just never got a chance to grow old and miserable like everybody else. We had a good run. Too good. It spoiled me for anybody else.”

“So you're shopping for housecoats?” Oliver asks. “Watching your stories with Mrs. Parker?”

“Listen to me, you ungrateful wretch, if you're not back at that hospital or headed for the airport first thing New Year's Day, I'm going to shake Valerie down for that address, and then I really will be like Godzilla.”

Godzilla versus the Natural Iceberg,
Oliver thinks, and smiles. “What are you doing for New Year's Eve?”

Nicky snorts. “Are you kidding?”

“I thought you might have plans.”

“Actually, Garth invited me to some faculty party. Said he could introduce me to some adjunct history professors.”

“You should go.”

“New Year's with academics? I don't think so.”

“Come on, Mom, shave your legs, pull something shiny out of your closet, and go.”

“Can we get back to the topic at hand, please? Are you still making up your mind about the lithium?”

“Do you want to decide? Lithium or not, home or hospital?”

“I don't exactly relish the idea of being to blame for the outcome, should you not be pleased with whatever it is. This one is really up to you.”

“It's complicated,” he says.

“Yeah, isn't just about fucking everything?”

After he hangs up, Oliver makes no move to return to the backyard and rejoin the party, opting instead to remain on the porch thinking spiteful thoughts. Mostly he wonders how long he'll have to sit here miserably before Althea tears herself away from the revelry and comes looking for him.

Twelve minutes later, she opens the door. “Come on.”

She leads him by the hand upstairs to the second floor.

“Nobody leaves!” someone shouts below. Under Oliver's hand, the banister shudders with the force of the house's reply.

Althea closes the door behind them. They sit on the bed, kick off their shoes. The glare from the streetlights turns the window into a hazy mirror; otherwise it's dark.

“You sleep in the kitchen?”

“Usually. How's your nose, by the way? Will really got you good. You're lucky he didn't break it.”

“Speaking of broken noses, I talked to Coby today. He says—”

Althea grimaces at the mention of Coby. “Is that what you came here for? To give me a message from Coby?”

“I came to New York to go to the hospital. What did you come here for?”

“It doesn't matter now.”

“Of course it matters. Aren't you going to tell your father where you are?”

“I guess I'll have to.”

“You've been living here for a month? In this house? With those people?”

“They're my friends, Ol.”

This statement hits Oliver like a gutshot. He wants to throttle her. Friends?
Friends?
They don't know the first thing about her—not her savage temper, not her fevered dinosaur dreams. Do they have any idea what she can do with a felt-tip pen and a paper napkin? Have they ever seen her tear down the street on roller skates or leap from a rope swing in the middle of the night? How could she possibly think these people are her friends?

“I know what you're thinking,” she says.

“Oh, and what's that?”

“You think I'm like your imaginary friend. You think you're the only one who can see me. You think I'm difficult and spoiled and you can't understand why anybody else would want me around. But you didn't make me up. You didn't invent me. They can see me, too.”

“And what about Coby? Does he see you, too? Just how much of you has Coby seen?”

“You know,” she says thoughtfully, “when you're sick, it's the only time you and I have anything in common.”

“That's not true,” he says.

“I'm not talking about history or anecdotes or shared experience. I'm not talking about height and eye color. I'm talking about what I am and what you are. I am nothing like you. But when you're sick, I get it. I see myself in you. That look on the fat mouse's face—you remember it? It was desperation. And then one day you opened your eyes and you were looking at me that way. Like it was me you were desperate for, not a fucking sandwich, for once. But I am sorry, Ol—I'm sorry I couldn't wait until you were really awake and ready to look at me that way. I guess I was scared you never would.”

“You think you're more like Coby than you are like me?”

“I don't know. But I know I don't want those to be the only two options. You know? On a scale of one to Oliver, I'm a Coby? I just want to be an Althea.”

She's managed to skillfully evade his question about Coby, but he doesn't need her answer anymore. As usual when Althea is concerned, he's well able to draw his own conclusions once presented with a certain amount of information, and it's all starting to fit together now. She had slept with Coby, sure, probably right after Oliver had stood in her driveway and told her she was a terrible person. And afterward she had been sorry, sorrier than Oliver is equipped to understand, and she'd wanted a do-over, she'd wanted to take it back, but she couldn't, so she did the next best thing and broke Coby's nose so he'd understand she'd changed her mind. It made sense, in an Althea sort of way.

“I did come all the way here for you. I came here to apologize and to ask you if you really meant it when you said you didn't even like me very much. And now you're here, so I'll say it again, Oliver—I'm sorry. And if I had my way it would be me who was sick and not you and you know that, so incidentally fuck you for throwing that in my face.”