Authors: Rick Moody
It was no particular honor that he’d gotten invited to Foster’s Halloween party. It was not evidence of diversity in the matter
of invitations. Foster invited every student in their class. All the sophomores and juniors at the day school. And he invited
the kids on his street, Brookside. Most of the kids from the school didn’t want to come to Darien to go to a Halloween party.
A lot of them were from the next town over. They had mischief in their own neighborhoods. They soaped windows on the hospital
in their own town.
Gerry Abramowitz’s mother had theories about Halloween. Her maiden name was Callahan. She was a psychologist. She argued that,
according to recent monographs on the subject, Halloween was a counterproductive American holiday tradition, inherited from
Druids and other pre-civilized groups, one which encouraged
liberty hysteria
among children of the upper-middle class (the term, of course, derived from the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,
third edition), itself a dangerous condition of lawlessness upsetting to children even as they coveted it.
Liberty and security are at opposing ends of an essential continuum, and security is important enough in the ego formation
of children that liberty should be tightly controlled in order to create and nourish feelings of safety.
The real ghouls depicted in Halloween outfits, in masks, his mother argued, were the ghouls of lawlessness residing in young
people. When faced with drugs, explosives, incendiary devices, pint flasks, premarital sex, well, children of the suburbs
began to panic, to beg for regulations,
for maximum-time allotments for television-watching, for curfews, and so forth.
His mother went further. The most popular costume of the Connecticut region was the
vagrant.
The
bum,
as the young called this sinister figure. And who was this archetype? He was the children despairing of themselves, of course,
of their place in affluent civilization. He was their feelings of homelessness and dispossession writ large. The windows that
got soaped, the shaving cream in the mailboxes, toilet paper in all the trees,
liberty hysteria,
an upsurge of the stratum of destructive fantasy that must be suppressed in a democratic society if it wished to function
securely, equitably, peaceably. Gerry’s mother therefore concluded that the Fosters’ party was an affront to commu
nity standards. Gerry had no business being there at all, but his father had the final say.
Party,
blessed word, blessed state, thank God for parties, for ounces of dope, harder drugs. That hippie shit, that vestigial
tune in, turn on, drop out
business that mainly expressed itself in sleeping overnight in front of record stores until concert tickets went on sale
—this was horse shit. And yet
partying
was a holiness. It survived even a squabbling over music. A little squabbling at a party was a good thing. A fistfight over
a
billiards table, drinks flung at a girl, someone’s car stolen, beds of parents befouled with teenage bodily fluids.
Get the intoxicants together! Night had descended! So his parents loaned Gerry their Jeep, because other parents were doing
it too, and he was driving it over to Foster’s place, though he could have walked; this was his mothers negotiated compromise:
I
don’t want you walking miles in the dark and the cold on a night like this.
His father intervened, at last,
Let the kid do what he wants. I could swear you were a kid once, too.
Looking up from the day’s most active trading. Gerry exploited this gap in consensus, procured the car keys, drove.
There was one kid he would know well at the party, Julian Peltz. Peltz was of the persecuted faith, too, Gerry was sure. He
was of the wanderers on the globe. But Peltz would never answer any questions about it. A cloud passed over Peltz’s face when
Gerry asked,
Is your family German or Polish, or what?
Peltz was not noteworthy in any way. He wasn’t good in school, wasn’t good at sports, wasn’t extracurricular, didn’t play
chess, had only one record: a scratchy copy of
Classical Music for Young People,
conducted by Leonard Bernstein. He was a guy in school whom people
liked all right but with whom they would stop to talk only if unobserved. However, a subject on which Peltz was really well
informed was
human sexuality,
and that was why Gerry liked him. Since his own mother was a mental health professional and every discussion on any subject
was laden with doctoral revelation, Gerry couldn’t stand talking to her about sex,
Honey, I know that you’re expressing your need to individuate, but it’s important that you understand my authority and allow
me access to your bed and your underthings when I am in the process of cleaning your room. And furthermore, Gerry, I need
to know about how much information you’ve gathered in your social network on the issues of the erotic drives. Can we have
an honest dialogue about this?
His social network consisted mainly of Julian Peltz. At lunch, at school, Peltz constructed quizzes.
You know what frottage is, right? It’s really cool Like you’re on a bus, okay. You’re on a bus and it’s really crowded, crowded
with girls, let’s say. And there’s no room left to sit. You’re going to the big game and you’re on this bus, with all these
girls, and you know you could just sort of brush up against one of those girls, while she’s standing there, you brush up against
her using the lower part of your torso as the targeting mechanism, right? And then everybody clears out of that end of the
bus and bingo, you get a seat. It’s really easy!
Gerry antiphonally replied:
You are totally fucked up.
Nevertheless, he had an alibi when his mother entrapped him and demanded if he knew what
protection
was, or how a girls menstrual cycle fluctuated, or the precise location of the clitoris. Peltz had explained all this to
him, over the years, had given him a package of rubbers. There’d also been the instruction of
Mr. Smith, school psychologist, of whom everyone said
he touched students inappropriately.
(Peltz:
I’d just about pay someone to touch me inappropriately. How come I always get overlooked when the inappropriate touching is
going around?)
Mr. Smith recently slipped a rubber on a banana for the tenth grade kids. Gerry knew about protection. Gerry had ideas about
love. Gerry was therefore able to rebuff his mother’s theoretical overtures. Meanwhile, Peltz:
Today I’m going to tell you about a particular taste of some guys, which is how they like to go down between their wives’
legs during the time of the month, when
… Or one day it was necrophilia, and how Peltz said that necrophilia was a perfectly reasonable
lifestyle choice,
especially since it only required the consensual input of one adult, so what difference did it make?
Victimless crime!
Often Gerry would show up at school, late, and kids would be loitering out front, getting ready to go to their first classes,
and he’d see Peltz a hundred yards off, talking to a tree or to a dog or to a chipmunk, probably on subjects such as double-digit
inflation or Jimmy Carter’s
adultery of the mind.
No one noticed Peltz’s loneliness. If Peltz neglected to show up for school, it would have been weeks before anyone would
have inquired. He was a library assistant, it was true, and probably, eventually, people would have had trouble checking out
their library books, but, at the same time, he was of such diminutive stature that he was almost invisible behind the counter
in the library, and Gerry wasn’t sure anyone really knew Peltz was there. They probably believed the checking-out procedure
was automated. The line would back up, if he vanished, and people would demand copies of
I
Never Promised You a Rose Garden
and
A Separate Peace,
and there would be library complaints, because Peltz was dead.
Loud popular music emanated from the Foster house. The Californian idiom,
soft rock,
like a perfumed glob of used toilet tissue or a sample of imitation American cheese food product or meatless chili. He liked
the crass stuff coming out of England and New York City, where people couldn’t play their instruments very well. But
soft rock
was no surprise here. Peltz was standing at the edge of the driveway poking dead leaves with a stick. His absurd ringlets,
about which he constantly complained, could not be combed down. He was dressed the same way he always dressed, in the regulation
nondescript corduroy trousers and blue pullover sweater
So much for the costumes of a Halloween party. Gerry was careful to lock the doors of the Jeep. Somebody’s car would get
rolled before night was over. Its canopy would be crushed. And allowing his own parents’ car to be crushed would be a sign
of
adolescent pathology,
and he would be grounded until receipt of his first social security check.
—You’re late, Peltz said.
—Nice costume.
—I’m a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Peltz replied.
—Lots of thinking went into that.
—What are you?
Gerry, too, wore
nondescript corduroy trousers,
matched with a navy blue turtleneck.
—I’m a lupus sufferer. Peltz mulled it over.
—They look just like everybody else, Gerry said.
—What about the skin problems?
—The turtleneck is covering my rash. I’m telling you, we have hopes and fears just like you do.
Another car pulled up. Parked on the lawn. Out of it came a procession of attractive girls, more girls than should have been
able to fit in a Honda Civic. Amazingly, these classmates were also wearing
nondescript corduroy trousers.
But with frilly blouses. They paid no attention to this pair of boys, these interlopers of Eastern European extraction secreted
in the shady grove of the Fosters’ yard. The girls themselves disappeared in and out of shadows of oaks and maples on their
way across the enormous lawn. As if these sylphs were the muses of his fantasies and daydreams, Peltz announced that he had
a plan for the evening.
In order to make the party more happening. Multiple conquests,
he elaborated.
Like see that carload of girls just got out here, well, there’s Nancy Van Ingen, heir to the Weyerhauser paper fortune, at
least I think her dad is somehow involved with those paper products, paper towels, and next to her, that’s Bernie Cooper,
a Rockefeller through an aunt, her family goes back to the dawn of time, which was when her family rented out the space on
cave walls for the guys who did the cave paintings. They were already going to France for vacations, see, and they cornered
the market in cave walls. Next to her is Annie Win-ningham. Annies great-great-grand aunt owned the boat where the Boston
Tea Party took place, actually sold tea to protesters at a huge markup, and that’s not all. Lots of them are inside, heiresses,
women who’ll rule the world, Gerry, they’ll rule the world. They’re related to the kings of all different countries, they’re
related to the kings of Monaco and Estonia and Macedonia and Bhutan, and one of them is actually the God Queen of Krakatoa,
no shit, these girls, they’re coming to this party
expecting that something memorable is going to happen, that there’s going to be a surprise, because it’s Halloween, and even
though these women will probably figure out later on that really they’d rather be with
other heiresses,
not with the guys they’re supposed to marry, well, eventually they’ll get married anyway so that their fortunes can be given
away to kids instead of to charitable foundations. We still have to be ready to offer them the stuff that they need, Gerry,
we have to be able to tell them, look, we have pot, we have booze, and we’re ready to teach you what premature ejaculators
on the football team won’t be able to teach you how to, you know, experience it, feel the whole thing, feel the feeling called
love. But that’s what we have to be able to do. We know all there is to know about love. We know everything. That’s what I’m
saying, Gerry. Heiresses of Fairfield County, they’re here for us.
Gerry didn’t believe a word of this speech, but it was made more impressive by the sight of the Fosters’ mansion, which loomed
in the distance. Up over the rolling hill just ahead was the sand trap where the foster patriarch once practiced his chips
and putts, back before liver disease. Gerry sprinted to the edge of it, out of the sheer enthusiasm for sprinting on a night
in October, but at the lid of the trap he almost tripped over a
body.
Sand billowed. He tumbled to the side of the trap. It was Lyle Hubbell. Wearing the obligatory
nondescript corduroys,
of course, affixed with a few patches, a T-shirt, a denim jacket. Lyle Hubbard, completely unconscious. Expressions of shock
issued from Gerry, instinctively, at the insult of this corpse. And yet it was consistent with Hubbell’s character that he
was here. Hubbell failed all the tests of human company. And he was always
sneaking beers.
It was said that the diet sodas that Hubbell frequently
carried around school were actually filled with intoxicants. He was even rumored to have his own distillery out in the woods,
by the retirement facility next to the school. Since, in this tableau, there was a six-pack of pull-tab Millers in Hubbell’s
left hand, and a couple of loose cans nearby, prejudice on the matter of his condition was justified.
—Bodes well, Peltz remarked.
—I almost kicked him in the head. You know, head injury leads to a lifetime of impulse-control problems.
—We could put a sign up.
Teenager trying to escape from feelings of isolation, use caution.
People would steer clear.
Next, on the landscaped walkway, the goldfish pond, brightly illumined with subaqueous lamps. The pond was in season, too,
because the color of the fish, their unearthly orange, was a near match with the pumpkins, actual and plastic, that were strewn
widely across the premises. The fish were demonic, possessed. Casting off their usual lethargic demeanor, they streaked from
end to end in the little pond, as if unfed or disturbed by pressure from without. Perhaps it was the fact that two teens,
Steven Dodge and Eloise Falk, were sitting in one end of the water, the pond rippling well above their waists, ruining their
outfits. They talked calmly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Julian Peltz wished them a good evening
with exaggerated felicity. They looked up briefly.