Modern Lovers (7 page)

T
his time, Eliza and Thayer didn't even pretend to say hello to Harry. They turned, saw him walk in with Ruby, and continued their conversation with no visible break. Rebecca, their fearless leader, was shuffling papers on her makeshift desk beneath the projection screen. Thick blue mats that the karate school used to teach people how to not get murdered by ninjas were still out, and a few kids in the class were doing somersaults.

“Oh, they are
totally
getting into Harvard,” Ruby said.

“I think that one looks more like a Yalie,” Harry said, pointing to one guy who had toppled over onto his side. “Maybe Princeton.”

“Barf,” Ruby said.

This was the only way that Ruby would talk about the future. She knew that Harry must be wondering why she was taking the class—no one took an SAT prep class for fun, especially not after their senior year—but Ruby never volunteered any information. She made fun of everyone who was going to good schools, but she also made fun of everyone who was going to big party schools and everyone who was going to tiny liberal-arts schools. It was open season on everyone but her. It wasn't anyone's business. So what if she'd applied to eight schools and not gotten into any of them? It didn't make her a bad
person, it made the admissions committees look like idiot snobs who deserved to be covered in honey and walked into the bear cage at the zoo. There wasn't even really a point to going to college, not anymore, not for her. The thought of sitting through another four years of bullshit lectures about things that happened and books that were written hundreds of years ago was the world's biggest waste of time and money. Ruby's personal essay had been to that effect, and it appeared to have accomplished its goal. If either of her parents had thought to proofread her applications, they might not be in this pickle. She'd written the essay half as a joke, but then the joke had turned into her actual life. Ruby was sure that someone would stop her eventually. When she clicked the button to send in her applications, knowing what the attached documents looked like, Ruby kissed college good-bye. She wasn't surprised when the applications were all rejected. At first, her mothers didn't even know, because they were waiting for letters to show up in the mail, not realizing that nowadays letters only showed up if the news was good.

“Wait, that's actually the best idea,” Ruby said.

“What is?” Harry asked. They were standing four feet inside the door. Rebecca clicked on her computer, and a drawing of a cat taking the SATs popped up on the projection screen.

Ruby folded over herself, her hands clutching her stomach. “Oh, no,” she said. “Rebecca, I really need to go home, I think I'm going to throw up.”

Thayer and Eliza turned around, their mouths open. Harry folded over in sympathy. “Are you okay?” he said, their faces both upside down. Ruby winked.

“Is it okay if I make sure she gets home?” Harry said, righting himself. Rebecca hustled over with some handouts. Ruby made a sound, dark and low and rumbling, that sounded like an approaching subway. No one wanted to see what was on that train.

“Of course,” Rebecca said, pulling the corners of her mouth down into a cartoon pout. “Feel better, okay!” She patted Harry on the back.

Ruby grabbed onto Harry's wrist. “We have to get out of here right now, or else I am going to puke all over the dojo,” she said. “What belt would that get me?” Harry let her lead him out the door. Ruby kept moaning until they'd crossed Church Avenue and rounded the corner. Even though they were now out of sight, Ruby went over to a waiting mailbox and pretended to vomit into it, complete with sound effects. Then she stood straight up and took a deep, graceful bow. Harry looked at her with awe, and Ruby saw the rest of her summer in his face: he could be her project, her hobby, her doll.

“I'm hungry,” she said. “Do your parents have food?”

“Your parents own a restaurant,” Harry said.

“Which is exactly why they never have food. I can tell you right now what's in the fridge: yogurt, three different kinds of fish sauce, and pâté.” Ruby had once searched online for a support group for children of those in the food-service industry, for kids like her who'd never been allowed to eat milk chocolate or Cheez Whiz or Marshmallow Fluff or the extra-sweet supermarket peanut butter, but she hadn't found anything.

“I think we have some chips and salsa,” Harry said.

“That'll do.”

•   •   •

T
he living room was empty when they walked in. Harry called out “Hello?” but his parents didn't respond. It was nine forty a.m. “My mom's got some open houses, I think,” Harry said. “I don't know where my dad is.”

“Whatever,” Ruby said, and walked straight into the kitchen. “If he comes home, just tell him that I got sick, and that your house was closer, so we came here.”

“Like fifty feet closer.”

“If you're barfing, fifty feet is a lot of feet.”

“I guess that's true.”

Ruby loved being in other people's kitchens. Her mothers were such total freaks—the salt had to be a special kind of salt, unless it was for baking, in which case it had to be some very particular kind of normal salt, that sort of thing. Elizabeth and Andrew were just regular. They had Diet Cokes and a giant block of orange cheddar cheese. Ruby took the jar of salsa and the bag of chips off the counter. “Want to go to your room?”

“S-sure,” Harry said. Iggy Pop slowly climbed down from his perch over the refrigerator, and Harry scooped him up and held him like a baby. Ruby walked past the two of them toward the staircase.

Ruby hadn't been upstairs in the Marxes' house since she was little, but not much had changed. The walls were still a very pale orange, like a melted Popsicle after a rainstorm, and the same pictures were on the walls. There was one painting hanging by the door to Harry's bedroom that Ruby had always liked, a village scene, with a Japanese woman watering some flowers in one corner and some free-range chickens in another. The Marxes' house was always neat. Everything had its place. Unlike Ruby's mum, who came home from every trip with some colorful trinket to put on a shelf to gather dust forever and ever, Elizabeth and Andrew seemed to have no useless objects. Ruby wandered down the hallway, poking her head into rooms.

“My room's over here,” Harry said, behind her.

“I know,” Ruby said, still walking. “What's this?” She stopped in front of an open door—the smallest room in the house.

“It's the guest room,” Harry said. “The couch folds out. Plus, it's just, like, storage, I guess.”

Ruby walked in, and over to the metal shelving along the wall. There were big clear plastic bins, each of them labeled. She ran her finger along the bins. “Wow, your mom is kind of OCD, huh.” Harry
shuffled in after her and sat down on the couch, his hands in his lap. Iggy Pop, who had darted up the stairs after them, jumped into his lap.

“I don't think so,” he said. “She's just organized.”

“Is this what that looks like?” Ruby asked. “Oh, shit, wow!”

Harry stood up quickly, sending Iggy back to the ground. “What? Is there a mouse?”

Ruby turned around to look at him, her purple hair flying. “Why would I say ‘wow' if I saw a mouse, you weirdo? No, look, it's all Kitty's Mustache stuff.” She pulled one of the bins on the top shelf down to the floor and unlatched the lid. The box was filled with stuff—flyers and cassettes and seven-inches and posters and zines and college newspapers with reviews of their shows. Ruby leafed through the pile on top and pulled out a glossy photograph. “Check this shit,” she said.

From left to right, it was a picture of Lydia, Andrew, Zoe, and Elizabeth. None of them smiled or looked at the camera. Her mum was wearing a suede jacket with fringe and had a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, like a pissed-off movie star who'd just come back from a bender in the desert. Elizabeth was wearing a floor-length black skirt, with dark lipstick, her then-long blond hair tucked behind her ears, her body pointed toward the rest of the band. Andrew wore a white shirt and a flannel tied around his waist, his hair curling past his shoulders. Lydia was sitting cross-legged on the ground, holding her drumsticks in an X over her head.

“When is this from?” Harry said, taking the picture out of Ruby's hands.

“Ninety-two,” Ruby said, pointing to the date in the corner, in Elizabeth's handwriting. “OCD.”

“They're so young,” Harry said. “It's kind of horrifying. Look at my dad's jeans. And his hair!”

“Look at my mum's boobs!” Ruby pointed. Zoe wasn't wearing a
bra, and her nipples were clearly visible, even across time and space and this many years. Harry covered his eyes. “And look at Lydia.”

It was weird, knowing that your mother had had a life before you were born, but everyone had to deal with that eventually. Everyone's mother had had sex at least once, and lots of people's mothers had gotten drunk and been wild. Ruby knew she wasn't alone. But it was extra weird to know that your mother had been drunk and wild with someone famous. And not someone famous for no reason, like the stars of a reality show, but someone actually famous and important because she was really good at what she did and people loved her. Ruby pretended that she didn't care about Lydia because she knew that her mum would find it . . . annoying? Amusing? Her mum would have thought it was adorable. That was the worst fate of all, for your parents to look at you with their parent eyes and to call your inner turmoil cute. Zoe would have loved it if she knew that Ruby had Lydia's two solo albums on her phone and that she listened to them when she walked down the street by herself, that they made her feel invincible and angry, but there was no way in hell that Ruby was ever going to tell her.

Ruby shuffled through the stack of posters and photos on top. There were a few more of the band, including one with Lydia standing in the middle with her mouth open in a scream, the rest of the band standing diagonally behind her. Unlike the others, this photo actually looked like Lydia, the real Lydia, the Lydia whose face would be taped on bedroom walls and printed on T-shirts.

“Do you know how much money we could get for this on eBay?” Ruby said. Her mum sometimes sold her old clothes on eBay, vintage dresses she'd had for decades and finally decided she didn't need.

“No,” Harry said.

“Well, good thing you have me,” Ruby said. Her hobby was paying off already.

A
ndrew had waited until Harry left for his class, and then slid his feet into his rubber-bottomed slippers and walked quickly to Stratford Road. This time, he didn't hesitate before walking up the stairs and into the house. The sign was still outside—
WE ARE HERE, ARE YOU?
—but now Andrew knew the answer. He was.

Dave was in charge, if anyone was in charge, but it wasn't that kind of place. EVOLVEment was a co-op, and everyone who lived there worked there, too. It wasn't about ownership, or hierarchy. It was about people, and mindfulness.

A young man with a beard and skinny legs said hello and offered Andrew a cup of tea.

“Is Dave around?” Andrew asked.

“Have a seat wherever you like, make yourself comfortable,” the man said. Normally, Andrew would have been annoyed that the guy hadn't actually answered his question, but that was how things worked around here, he got it. There were stacks of cushions on the floor. Andrew took one, plopped it down next to a wall, and sat. He was happy to wait. A few other young people flitted around quietly, all of them in bare feet. Andrew pulled off his slippers and tucked them under his knees. After a few minutes, there was some laughter at
the top of the stairs, and then Dave was walking toward Andrew with a huge smile, like he'd been expecting him.

“Nice to see you again, Andrew,” Dave said. He was short and stocky, like a gymnast, densely packed. Dave lowered himself down next to Andrew and touched him on the shoulder. They were only a few inches apart, as close as you'd be to a stranger on the subway, but in the big, open room, it felt remarkably intimate, as if Dave had stroked Andrew's cheek with the back of his finger.

“Sure,” Andrew said. He felt himself blush a little bit. “I'm interested.”

And he was—Andrew was interested in philosophy, and the mind-body connection. He was interested in getting out of his own house and his own brain, seeing if he could link up to something outside, like the cables that ran between houses. He was interested in channeling his anger into something else, into a color, into air, into positivity. It was that kind of talk that Andrew's parents hated: they didn't give a shit about process, they only cared about the bottom line. His whole childhood had been wasted that way, bouncing from one after-school enrichment class to another, from one prep school to the next, as if those places were actually preparing him for anything other than a corporate job, where he was sure to be surrounded by all the same people he'd grown up with. Those people made him feel sick to his stomach, their chinos and boat shoes, their scuffed leather luggage with their initials on the side. No one cared about anything except whether the boat was going to be ready for Memorial Day. They were shitty to women and to the people hired to help their lives run smoothly. All Andrew had ever dreamed about was living somewhere with the barter system, someplace where money meant nothing unless it was all in the collective pool. His Oberlin co-op had been his wet dream, everyone cooking tofu together and baking dense little brown loaves of bread. If Elizabeth had been less type-A, and if they hadn't
had a baby, they'd still be living like that, with Zoe or whomever. Not that he'd trade a moment with Harry for anything in the world—if he'd done one thing right in his life, it was being a dad, Andrew knew that much for sure. Everything else was the problem. Andrew wanted to push every angry feeling he had down into his stomach and cover it with mulch and love until it was a goddamn flower bed.

The house—Dave's house, the collective—was really coming together. The front rooms were used for yoga and meditation classes, open to anyone. If you came to class, or to meditate, or to qigong, someone would slide a finger with essential oils over your temples and you'd go home smelling like lavender and orange and eucalyptus. They were working on getting the permits or the licenses to serve food, but that seemed legally complicated. It might just be juice. Dave was from California, and it showed. He talked like the words were stuck in the back of his throat and he had to coax each one out individually. In his most secret thoughts, Andrew believed that he should have been born to a surfing family, the kind who traveled up and down the California-Mexico coast, sleeping in a Winnebago on the beach. Dave didn't say, but Andrew was sure that was his story. Sand in a sleeping bag, the waves crashing at night.

A few young women in yoga clothes came into the room. Dave said hello to them, and the women began to roll out a number of yoga mats at the other end of the room, gently placing blankets and blocks beside each place. The women looked no older than Ruby, but then again, Andrew was always surprised by people's ages now. When he was a teenager, anyone over the age of twenty looked like a grown-up, with boring clothes and a blurry face, only slightly more invisible than Charlie Brown's teacher, but life had changed. Now everyone looked equally young, as if they could be twenty or thirty or even flirting with forty, and he couldn't tell the difference. Maybe it was just that he was now staring in the opposite direction.

“We're about to have class,” Dave said. “You should stay.” He patted Andrew on the shoulder again and then stood up and walked over to the women at the front of the room, crouching between them and touching them both on their shoulder blades. Then Dave stood up again and pulled off his T-shirt, displaying his bare chest. He picked up a blanket off a stack, unfolded it, refolded it in a different way, and dropped down to his knees. Dave cupped his hands together on the blanket, nestled the crown of his head into the web of his fingers, and then slowly raised his legs up behind him until he was standing on his head.

The two women turned around and nodded at Andrew. One of them pulled her hair into a ponytail, and the other began to stretch, shifting her body this way and that.

“Okay,” Andrew said, not sure what was about to happen. He crawled forward onto one of the yoga mats on the floor. More people filtered in and took the spaces around him, and pretty soon the room was full—ten people, maybe twelve. At the front of the room, Dave lowered himself back down and came to a lotus position. He lit a few candles and began to chant so quietly that Andrew wasn't sure if it was him or a passing car, a low rumble that got louder and louder until all the other voices joined in and Andrew could feel the room begin to vibrate. He closed his eyes. Elizabeth would have laughed, but Andrew loved it. It reminded him of when he was little and his older cousins would use him as their hairdressing doll, braiding and brushing his hair for what felt like hours, how good their fingers felt on his scalp. Andrew had tried reiki before, and that's what was happening in the room: energy was being pushed around and manipulated in order to heal. He was being healed, even before Dave stopped chanting and asked them to put their hands on their knees and set an intention for their practice. Andrew's intention came to him, clear as a bell: Be here. Be here. Be here. And when Dave asked them all to
move into downward-facing-dog pose, Andrew did. He was the oldest person in the room, and he was going to be whatever he was told. Maybe EVOLVEment needed some shelves built for the yoga equipment, or a small table for the candles so that they didn't sit on the floor. Andrew was going to meditate on it.