Authors: Matthew Quick
What do you do when the person you admire most literally turns his back on you?
I’m not sure.
How the hell did we end up at the police station last night? I think when I pass it.
Where did Mr. Vernon go?
When I pull into the parking lot across from the Manor, I see Portia’s rental car, and my heart leaps, because it gives me a chance to call her right away, to hear her voice without coming off as needy.
So I dial her cell phone.
“What took you so long to call me?” Portia says. “I’ve missed you, Mr. Bass.”
It takes me a second to answer, I’m so giddy—I feel like a teenager again—but then I say, “Forget something at the Manor last night?”
“Shit. The rental car.”
“Should I come get you?”
“Please.”
“I’ll be there in five.” I hang up, and when I check myself out in the rearview mirror, I see a happy man—more elated than he’s ever been in his entire life.
Tommy gets attached to Portia really fast, which scares me a little, even though Portia is great with him. For months, almost all of our dates are sexless because the little man is along for the ride, usually right between us, actually, holding both our hands.
We take him to the movies, where we see all of the animated films; to the Franklin Institute, so he can climb around in that huge beating human heart they have there; to the Academy of Natural Sciences, so he can marvel at the reconstructed dinosaur bones looming above; even to Longwood Gardens to smell the spring flowers, which I never dreamed Tommy would be into, but he is in a big way. Especially the tulips, of all things, like just how many there are, endless amounts—he even tries to count them, but quits around one hundred or so. We go to a few Phillies games at Citizens Bank Park when my Manor customers float me tickets as tips, and even though none of us really like baseball we have a good time watching the Phillie Phanatic dance, goof on people, and throw his big green belly around; we run the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and victoriously hold our hands up in the air like Rocky before we eat cheese steaks at Pat’s in South Philly, where Tommy—with electric-yellow Cheez Whiz all over his face—innocently asks, “Who’s Rocky?” so we immediately rent the movie that weekend, and Tommy says, “Yo, Adrian!” for weeks. We go to the beach a lot when the weather warms up, and Portia looks drop-
dead gorgeous in a bikini; at the zoo we take a ride up in their hot air balloon, which freaks me out a bit, to the point where Tommy reaches up and holds my hand because he sees how nervous I am; and when the temperature breaks into the nineties, we go fountain hopping, even though it is technically illegal now. “How can you make a Philly tradition illegal?” Portia says as she strides into the first fountain like a seasoned lawbreaker. We do all the stuff that most normal families do every weekend in and around Philadelphia.
Portia plans these adventures with a regularity and reliability that none of us have ever known before, maybe because our parents were too poor or lazy or, in the case of Portia’s mother, mentally unwell to give us these experiences back in the day. It’s like Portia’s trying to prove something to Tommy and me—maybe to herself as well.
I tell myself to just enjoy this—this amazing gift that seems to have magically appeared, right when Tommy and I needed it most—but I wonder a lot about my good luck and just when it will run out.
Tommy does too, I can tell. He always hugs Portia for too long when he says good-bye to her, and I often have to peel him off her limb by limb.
At first Danielle joins us on a few of these family trips, though she’s distant and she bristles when Portia pays for everything, which I understand, believe me. I do realize it’s the twenty-first century, and I’m really not a sexist asshole, but I don’t like letting Portia pay either, even though she insists she’s doing it to get back at her husband, who is apparently loaded. But after the first few excursions, Danielle just stops joining us on our adventures, saying her feet hurt from waitressing, or she wants some time alone. Portia and I each talk to Danielle privately, asking her to be a part of things. Then we both ask to spend time alone with my sister, but she re
fuses, making up excuse after lame excuse. It’s like we’ve suddenly caught some deadly disease. Portia takes it hard.
“What did I do wrong?” she keeps asking.
“My sister’s not used to kindness,” I offer. “And she has difficulty trusting people—especially people who are good to her. She pushes them away before they can let her down. It’s a pattern that has nothing to do with you.”
But we both feel bad and maybe even guilty about the situation.
I can tell that Danielle quitting our new family bums Tommy out, makes him feel conflicted, even though he never says anything.
After Tommy and I return home from watching Fourth of July fireworks with Portia in the park across the street from Collingswood High School, when Tommy says he had an amazing time and begins to list all of the cool snacks Portia packed for our picnic that was in “a real wooden basket” and “on a blanket in the grass like families on TV would do,” my sister just says, “It’s late, Tommy. You should have been in bed hours ago. Now brush your teeth, buddy.”
When he blinks at her, confused, Danielle says, “You can tell me all about your picnic in the morning.”
Tommy looks like he’s not sure what to do, so I say, “Time to brush those teeth. You heard your mother.”
He nods once at me and does as he’s told.
Danielle has no steady boyfriend, and I’m madly in love. It’s been hard for her, being the only Bass sibling not high on life these days. So I let her hostility slide.
Danielle quit drugs cold turkey, without rehab, and she still drinks alcohol, which I’ve always admired in a slightly suspicious way, because I needed a lot of help to quit drugs. Alcohol is also a dangerous drug for me, which is why I don’t drink. And I worry that Danielle’s never having been to rehab makes her more suscepti
ble to a backslide and prone to start using again. But she seems okay lately, working a full-time job even.
I pour myself a Diet Coke and sit down on the futon.
In the bathroom, Danielle’s getting Tommy ready for bed, and I hear him trying to tell his mother all about what happened tonight—which fireworks he liked the best, and the little American flags on sticks that Portia brought, and everyone chanting “USA! USA! USA!” after the grand finale—but Danielle only gives him instructions, moving him closer to bed.
After a short bedtime story, Danielle returns. She pours herself a large Jack Daniel’s and then sits down next to me.
“Do you wanna watch TV?” I ask.
“You’re not his father, you know.”
“Tommy’s?” I say, which is dumb, I admit, because I know who she’s talking about. It’s a strange comment, because when Tommy’s real father left, Danielle practically begged me to take them in, and when I did, she gave me a big speech about how I
needed
to be her son’s father, because we never had one.
“I appreciate all that you and Portia do for him, but he’s still my son,” she says.
“I’m aware of that.”
“Good.”
“What do you think about Portia and me?” I ask. “Truthfully.”
Danielle looks down at the drink in her hands. “She’s still married, you know. She could move back to Florida with her rich husband.”
“My worst fear.”
“You asked.”
“So you don’t trust her?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t trust anyone. Remember?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Maybe eighty percent.”
“What?” I say and then laugh. “You don’t trust me twenty percent of the time?”
“Eighty percent is the most I’ve ever trusted anyone. Be proud.”
“How much do you trust Portia?”
“Five percent. Tops.”
My stomach drops. “So you think she’ll hurt me?”
“Everyone hurts you eventually, big brother.” Danielle sips her whiskey. “Can I have your keys? I could really use a drive.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just out to clear my head.”
“Are you okay to drive?”
“Should I walk a line for you, Officer Bass, or say the alphabet backward?” She smiles at me in this wonderfully sarcastic little-sister way. “A short drive around town is healthier than Jack Daniel’s. I won’t be long.”
“Okay,” I say, offer her my keys, and then she’s gone.
I pick her barely sipped Jack up off the floor and dump it out in the sink.
A minute or so later, I hear, “Uncle Chuck?”
I turn around, and Tommy’s standing there in his PJs, wearing my old Quiet Riot mask, which means he’s crying and doesn’t want me to see.
“Did you have another bad dream?”
He nods. “Where did Mom go?”
“Just for a drive,” I say.
The boy leaps up into my arms, and I can feel his little heart beating too hard, which reminds me of all the nights I spent alone in bed trembling when I was his age, hoping my mother or one of her many dickhead boyfriends wouldn’t enter the room I shared with Danielle.
“Can we watch your Mötley Crüe
Carnival of Sins
DVD?” He loves watching that concert, and his mother sometimes says—depending on her mood—that he’s too young to be taking in metal shows, especially since there are women dressed like strippers onstage with the band. Danielle and Tommy gave me the DVD for Christmas, and watching it has become what Tommy and I do when his mother isn’t home.
“Sure,” I say, because I’d do anything to help the kid forget a nightmare.
I get him situated on the futon and fast-forward through the opening where two strippers simulate sex, the whole time feeling as though I too may be a horrendous role model for the kid, exposing him to 1980s metal at such a young age, and then Mötley Crüe is playing “Shout at the Devil” as pillars of fire explode upward behind them to the beat.
Tommy raises up the devil’s horns through the first chorus, but then he takes off his Quiet Riot mask and nuzzles his head against my chest.
He’s sound asleep before they finish playing “On with the Show,” my favorite Crüe song of all time.
I hit stop on the DVD player and carry him into his bedroom.
Once he’s under his sheet, I hang the Quiet Riot mask on the nail over his headboard for protection from nightmares.
I watch him breathe for a while, and I think about how there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for this little guy—not a thing in the world.
And then I crawl into my own bed on the opposite side of the room, and I think about where Danielle might have gone.
I’m woken up by laughter, and when my brain kicks in again, I hear Danielle in the living room with a man.
They put the B side of
G N’ R
Lies
on the turntable, and while
I agree that it is one of the best late-night B sides to put on after a party, they’re playing “Patience” loud enough to wake up the entire fucking neighborhood.
“What’s happening?” Tommy says.
“It’s okay,” I say, looking at my cell phone: 4:44 a.m.
“Stay here,” I say.
I turn on the light so Tommy won’t be afraid and then close the door behind me.
In the living room, my sister is slow dancing with some guy wearing a skintight Sex Pistols “Anarchy in the UK” T-shirt. His hair is all spiked up. There’s a dog collar around his neck, and covering his arms are dark sleeve tattoos, which I instinctively scan for track marks, the old junkie in me thinking, What is this guy hiding?
“Who are you?” he says when he sees me.
Danielle laughs. “That’s just my brother, Chuck. What the Fuck Chuck, I call him.” She has never once called me that before. She’s slurring her words a little and holding onto Johnny Rotten for support because she’s hammered. “Chuckie Fuckie!” she adds, and then laughs uncontrollably.
I appeal to Johnny Rotten. “Her son’s in the back, trying to sleep.”
“You mean him?” Johnny Rotten says, and points with his long goatee, through which a thin white scar runs.
I turn around and see Tommy staring wide-eyed.
“Back to bed, Tommy,” I say. “Everything is okay.”
“Who is that?” Tommy says.
“Com-ear, Tom-hee!” Danielle says and then opens her arms. “You can stay up all night if you just give me a hug and a kiss.”
Johnny Rotten laughs, and Tommy looks up at me with scared eyes.
“She’s just drunk,” I whisper to him. “She’ll be okay tomorrow.”
“I’m just
happy
,” Danielle says, “which ain’t no crime,” and then tries to walk over toward me, but she trips and face-plants on the floor.
Johnny Rotten rushes over to my sister.
“Uh-oh,” Danielle says, and when she sits up, her hand and nose are red.
“Mommy!” Tommy says.
“It’s okay,” I say to Tommy as I try to help Danielle up.
Guns N’ Roses is now playing “Used to Love Her” on the turntable, which is still cranked up high.
“That tickles!” Danielle says when I put my hand under her armpit.
Johnny Rotten says, “Maybe we should put her to bed.”
“You think?” I say.
“You can go home, man,” he says to me. “I can take it from here.”
“This
is
my home.”
“Oh.” Johnny Rotten looks genuinely surprised. “So they’re staying with you.”
“Yeah, he’s like a superhero, my brother,” Danielle says. “Likes to save people like me and Tommy. Best guy you’ll ever meet. Chuck Bass. Gotta love him.”
“Okay, drunk girl,” I say. “Let’s get you into your room.”
“I love you so much, big brother. I really do.”
The little man looks at me, and I can tell seeing his mother smashed like this scares him. “Tommy, go to our room,” I say. “I’ll be right there, I promise.”
He listens, even though Danielle says, “No! Let’s stay up all night long!”
Johnny Rotten and I get Danielle onto her mattress, and then I say, “
I’ll
take it from here. Thanks.”
“You sure you’re good?”
“Yeah,” I say, and escort him out the front door.
When I return to her bedroom, Danielle’s giggling on her back with a fistful of bloody napkins on her nose.
“Please tell me you didn’t drive home,” I say to her.
“Relax. We were drinking at the Manor. Lisa made him
walk
me home,” she says and then starts laughing. “But I do like him. Very cute. Noticed a rather large bulge in his pants too.”
“You need to sleep it off, Danielle.” I bring her some water, and then I go back to Tommy, who looks whiter than the sheet covering his legs and torso.
“I didn’t like that guy,” Tommy says.
“Neither did I,” I say, wondering what would have happened to drunk Danielle if I weren’t here to put her to bed and send her escort home.
Of course Danielle sees our man again and makes him her regular boyfriend. Johnny Rotten’s real name turns out to be Randall Street, which has to be the dumbest name ever.
Many times, Tommy tells Portia and me that he doesn’t like Johnny Rotten, and we fumble around for what to say back to him, because Danielle seems happy, albeit distant. I ask her to double date with Portia and me, so I can get to know Johnny Rotten better and alleviate my fears, but Danielle just laughs and says, “We’re dating people from different planets. Let’s not start an intergalactic war, okay?”