Inexcusable (8 page)

I took one delicious Ritz peanut butter and jelly cracker sandwich and popped it into my mouth. Then I sent another one in there to join it. Together they were awfully noisy.

“Now you are being childish,” she said.

She may have had a point. I may not have cared. I popped another cracker.

Fran simply slapped the phone down on some hard surface, and Mary picked it up.

“Keir,” Mary said immediately, in her gruff Mary tone. “Are you being an immature jerk about this? Just tell me, because if you are, then I win five dollars, because I bet Fran you would do this and she insisted you wouldn't.”

That would be about right. That would be how it
would go. Fran would bet on me, while Mary would bet against. Fran would be hopeful while Mary would be dubious.

Fran would be wrong, while Mary would be right.

“I am not,” I said, trying to repay Fran for her perverse misguided loyalty to me. “Put Fran back on, would you, Mary?”

“Can't. She's gone. Listen, Keir. We want to be there for your graduation. You know that. You cannot deny that. You know we are dying to see you and Dad.”

“So, why Wales?”

There was a pause. Unlike Fran, Mary had no problems with pausing.

“You're unbelievable, do you know that? Really, Keir. Wales is Wales. Wales is a wonderful opportunity, socially, educationally, geographically, all that. It is not a reflection on you or Dad. You have to stop seeing things that way. We love you. Got that, goofus? We love you, to bits and pieces. Dad, too. But you'll see, when you're out, when you're here. You'll see.”

“What am I going to see, Mary?”

“Are you eating crackers? Are you eating Ritz sandwiches? God . . . Fran, did you know Dad had him on the tranquilizer crackers for this?” she called.

Fran was back on the line. I was back to being silent.

“Come on, Keir,” she said softly. “Don't do this. I feel bad enough. Please?”

“You all set up there?” Dad called from downstairs. “Need any more . . .”

Suddenly I got it. It had to be.

“You're pulling my chain,” I said happily.

“Oh, Keir—”

“You'll be here.”

“Keir, we won't. We can't. You know you're going to have a fantastic time anyway. Wouldn't even notice—”

“You'll be here,” I said again. “You wouldn't dare. You're just messing with me, I know it. You'll be here.”

“Please—” she said once more.

“Ray,” I called, depositing the receiver on my empty plate on the telephone table. “Fran wants to talk to you.”

G
igi Boudakian lies facedown on the rug on the bed. There's a strange throw on there, a deep red swirly Turkish type of design, the kind like the carpets her dad would sell, that she will probably also sell eventually when the business is hers if she wants it. It's even possible that throw came from her dad's very shop, handled by her dad's very hands. Gigi Boudakian has her face pressed so hard into that thin foam mattress I am afraid she is going to break her nose on the wood platform beneath.

I can see, without even getting all that close, the bits of fiber and the swirly pattern of the throw's woolly design lying like tiny crop circles on the perfect surface of Gigi Boudakian's perfect face. I have to be able to see it without getting close because she won't let me get close. Which is
a shame. A crime and a shame. That is the only crime here, and I desperately need to get her to understand that.

“Listen, please, will you listen to me? You're not listening to me.”

That doesn't help anybody, her refusing to listen to me and refusing to speak. I hate it when people I love refuse to speak to me.

“Speak,” I say to her. But she is not listening to me.

She goes to the window, turning her back to me and staring away off to nowhere. I don't like the way she is now, all brooding and silent, hugging herself. She worries me.

She bears no resemblance to any version of herself I have ever seen, and that is the saddest statement I can think of.

Slowly and in complete silence I creep up to her at the window. I don't think she can hear me. There are my bare feet, and my carefulness, so I think I am safe, coming up behind her.

I am just behind her, to where I can just about breathe on her, when she moves. She quickly reaches out and grabs the bottom level of the window sash and throws the window open.

Quick as a snake I reach out and around her and seize the window frame and Gigi Boudakian at the same time. I slam the window back down and I wrap her up firmly, pulling her away from the window.

“What are you doing?” I say nervously, angrily. “We're three floors up—you want to get killed? What are you doing?”

She's still not talking. I have her wrapped up snugly, her arms pinned to her sides, my nose right in her ear, smelling her skin, her hair. For a second I cannot hold my eyes open, the way you can't when you sneeze. Only it is the overwhelming sense of Gigi, and of what I feel for Gigi, that has my eyes shut.

How can things go so wrong? How can people be so wrong?

“You have to talk to me, Gigi. If people don't talk to each other, then they get everything wrong. You have got everything wrong.”

She is breathing a little faster, but still there are no words coming. I can feel her heartbeat, through her back, into my chest. That makes my own heart kick in triple-time with I don't know what of a feeling, but it is a massive feeling. It's a lot of feelings, and they are all massive, and they are fighting one another and they are killing me.

“You hurt
me,
you know, Gigi. That's right. You're the one who punched me and scratched me, and I would never, ever even think of doing anything like that to you. You don't have to be afraid of me, because I have never hurt you and I would never hurt you, and I'm not even keeping you here so that whole window thing was just crazy.”

I feel a slight shifting of her position in my arms, and I have to respond by squeezing her just a little bit tighter. I don't want to restrict her. But she has to understand. She has to hear me out and talk to me and work this out before we can go anywhere, and I know we can do it. And, I have to say, the harder I squeeze Gigi Boudakian, feel her bones and smell her skin, the more helplessly I love her and the less I want to let her go.

“Please speak to me,” I whisper into her ear, squeezing her. “Please speak to me.”

But all she does is make a whimpering noise.

T
he graduation ceremony was exactly as boring and stiff as it was supposed to be. I was on the brink of nodding off at almost every moment. Once, emerging from a pleasant mini nap, I almost walked out, flashing back, thinking I was sitting sweating out a graduation from the past, a graduation I didn't actually have to be at, so why bother. I did that at Mary's sweaty boring graduation, and again at Fran's sweaty boring graduation. I walked out. But I came back, too. I was clapping for them at the end, just as hard as anybody there was clapping for theirs.

Fran and Mary weren't walking out on mine, though, and they weren't clapping that I could hear. They'd made good on their threat not to come.

I was there for them. Just as I always had been and always would be there for them. Their absence was inexcusable.

But I had Ray. Like they had Ray. Like my mother had Ray and still has him, dead as she is, like everybody has Ray. That's loyalty right there. That's the way your people should be, through thick and thin, if life is going to mean anything at all.

“Thanks, Dad,” I said as we headed to the car after the ceremony.

He was crying a little bit. We tended to talk less, when Ray was crying. We tended, actually, to talk about not much more than his crying.

“Could you stop that, now?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Thanks, though. Anyway. Thanks, Dad. Ya big baby.”

“What, thanks?”

“You know what for. You want me to drive home?”

“I can drive. Why wouldn't I drive? I'm still the father here, y'know.”

“Here, let me drive. You're scaring me. Like when Father Murphy died.”

Oh, no. Father Murphy, his dog. I said it. I didn't mean to. Big mistake.

“Aw. Remember ol' Murph?”

He still never knew I hated ol' Murph. He still refused to acknowledge that his dog and I didn't get along. Was that a bad thing or a beautiful thing? I don't know, but it made me want to give the old man a squeeze, except that might make him more wobbly still.

“There, you drive,” he choked, dangling the keys.

Emotional guy, my dad.

We pulled out of the parking lot. We got waves from all over. From lifelong friends, from new friends, from guys I'd be pressed to even name. Call me. I'll call you. You coming by later? Don't blow me off. I wouldn't blow you off. I'm surely blowing him off. Ray kind of slumped in his seat while I spirited him out of there, like some big-timer trying to dodge the paparazzi on the way out of his court appearance.

“Thanks,” I said, “for, like, raising me and all that. You know. Remember? All that stuff you did.”

He sniffed. “Oh right,” he said, “that.”

We drove the rest of the way home in silence, the two of us just appreciating the lovely warm afternoon through familiar streets, windows wide, radio playing low from Ray's old jazz station.

It was altogether too somber when we pulled into the driveway and walked, still so silent, up the walk to the house like we had done fifty million times before, but that felt like we would never ever, not even once do again. I knew this was not entirely rational, but it was the feeling all the same. Everything right now had the feeling of lasts, of finishes, of playing out for good, forever. We would do these things again, me and my dad, surely. Surely we would, another fifty million times, just like this, and fifty million more in other ways. Nothing was finishing,
nothing had to finish if we didn't say so, no matter how it felt right now.

I did something then that I hadn't done since I was a small somebody else. I took Ray's hand, reached out and took it as it swung there, as he ambled up the stone path in front of me.

And he took mine, without looking, without commenting, without even seeming to notice. His fingers curled tight around mine and held on.

“Risk?” he said as we came into the living room.

We had an hour before Rollo was supposed to pick me up.

“Indubitably,” I said. A word I picked up early, and used to sound light and sparky when I needed.

“Refreshment?” I said.

“Indubitably,” he said.

We sat down to two icy cold Heinekens and a large bag of Bugles, across the globe from each other, to settle the events of world conflict and control.

But first we did the natural thing: Each capped the fingertips of one hand with Bugles, held them up for show, then ate them off one by one before getting down to serious military business.

We had, in the past months, each been guilty of blatantly pathetic strategy when necessary, in order to keep this one continuous game alive and balanced. But now time thundered on. We seemed to have just sat down. We seemed
to have just started. We seemed to have plenty more time and turns still in front of us when Dad glanced at his watch and reminded me that Rollo would be here any minute now.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

We hunched over the board, staring and studying, more like chess than silly old Risk, more like a fresh and interesting compelling new contest than the same peanut we had been nosing back and forth across the table at each other since the day Fran left the house.

What do I want to do?

“About what?” I asked.

“About the game, of course.”

I pondered.

“Keep playing?” I suggested.

“You sure?”

“I don't know.”

“Maybe somebody ought to win,” he said.

“You think?”

“Well, no. Not necessarily. But I thought maybe you thought . . .”

“No. Not really.”

Rollo pulled up outside, with his usual fuss. He beeped his horn. The car had many horns, which Rollo changed like people change cell phone ring tones. This one played “Pomp and Circumstance.”

The two of us got up from the table and went to the door to greet Rollo.

“Hey,” Rollo said as soon as the door opened.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” Dad said.

“Ray,” Rollo said. “You going to get all weepy here? You haven't been getting all weepy like you do, spoiling the kid's day, have you?”

“Nah, he hasn't,” I said.

“Yes, I have,” Ray said, all solemn and repentant like a schoolboy.

“Well, cut it out. This is a joyous occasion, one of the finest times in a boy's life, maybe the best time he'll ever have what with everything that's waiting for him out there in the world, and you shouldn't be raining on his damn parade. So grow up, ya big fat baby.”

“All right, all right,” Ray said.

I turned to face him, to shake his hand before leaving. “Rain if you want, Ray,” I said, then, pulling him close and hugging his soap-smelling neck, added, “but I do wish you wouldn't.”

He hugged me back, then pushed me away. “Got a minute?” he asked.

“Meter's running,” Rollo said, and we all knew he meant it.

“Shut up, Rollo,” Dad said, and shut the door, leaving him standing on the step.

He went to the hall closet and brought out a box, neatly wrapped in luminous green foil paper. His packages were
always wrapped perfectly, in the nicest papers, like he had taken some wrapping course someplace.

“What is this, Ray?” I said, looking it over as if I could tell anything from the paper.

“It's your present,” he said.

“What are you doing? Rollo is my present, remember? And he's not a cheap present either.”