Sidecar (10 page)

Joe was quiet until the explosion of cold in Casey’s head went away. When Casey looked up, Joe had a glass of tepid water at his elbow, and Casey drank that, grateful to feel the last of the ice cream headache go away. Good. Casey wasn’t finished wiping out the half gallon yet.

“So…?” Joe asked, and as high as Casey undoubtedly was, he wasn’t high enough to forget the question. God, if only he could fucking forget
something
.

“So I wanted to be high and asleep when you got home,” Casey said miserably, thinking that the ice cream, rich, creamy, full of milk and carbohydrates, might be the only thing that understood him.

Joe nodded and gently put the roach out in the ashtray Casey had been using. It didn’t get a lot of service in Joe’s house—Casey had been lucky to find it.

“So this was part of a
plan
,” Joe prodded, and Casey took another bite, then swirled the melty ice cream around his mouth moodily before answering.

“Yes,” he decided after a moment. “I
planned
to get high.”

“And when did you
plan
to get high, Casey? I’ve got to say, after three months of stone-cold sobriety, I’m sort of wondering why this suddenly seemed like such a good plan.”

Casey put the ice cream down dispiritedly. “I don’t really like getting high,” he confessed. “I didn’t like it before, either. I just… people keep saying that you do it to forget shit. I wanted to forget something.”

Joe laughed a little. “You mean like, I don’t know, a magic potion?”

Casey nodded, not seeing any irony in it at all. “Yeah. I wanted a magic potion to make me forget.”

“What did you want to forget so bad, Casey?” Joe asked, and Casey couldn’t look at him.

“It’s your fault, you know,” he said, meaning it and seriously pissed off because it was true.

“What is?”

“You said you were mad at me because you gave a shit and I scared you. And I thought….” Casey squished his eyes shut so hard he saw stars. “I thought that meant they were worried about me.”

Joe grunted, but Casey still couldn’t open his eyes.

“So I called them up, right?” God. His hands had been shaking so hard on Joe’s rotary dial phone. He’d had to try three times, and he’d been so surprised he remembered the number, even though they’d lived in that house his whole life.

“What’d they say?” Joe’s voice was so soft, it was almost a whisper.

“It was Mom, right? And she… she sounded glad to hear from me at first, you know? Like she was so excited and almost in tears. And… I didn’t know Dad would be home, which is stupid, because it was after six, you know? He’s always home after six.”

“So that’s good, right?” Except Joe had a sound in his voice, like he knew what came next, and Casey snapped at him in irritation.

“Would I have gotten this high if it was good?”

“No.”

“It was great! For a minute, I thought I could… I love it here, Joe, I do, but you keep telling me to be a kid, and I thought, you know, maybe—” He couldn’t finish because it sounded so lame and so ungrateful. He’d been living a good life here, and the thought that he would leave it, willingly, just—

“You wanted to go home and be a kid again,” Joe said softly. “It’s okay, kid. I get it. You don’t have to feel ashamed.”

Casey nodded and wiped his face with the back of his hand, feeling worse now than he had at the beginning, when he’d gone through three rolling papers to make his first joint. “What the fuck ever,” he mumbled. “I just thought it would be nice if they knew where I was, and for a minute, it was great. Mom wanted to know if I was okay and if I had a place to stay and if I was getting enough to eat, and I told her yeah, I was in school, and I had a job, and she’d be real proud of me, and she… she sounded like she used to. I’d come home with a good report card and she’d be happy for me, you know, before I hit high school and suddenly Dad had to just be there to fuck with everyone and make sure they all knew I was fucking perfect and everything.”

There was a silence, and he looked up at Joe, only to find those fine, wide, brown eyes looking back at him with what seemed to be immeasurable patience. Casey knew it was only partly true. Joe could lose his nut like everyone else on the planet, but right here, right now, he was simply there, waiting, without judgment or hurry. Casey wiped his cheek again, with the flat of his hand this time.

“My dad started shouting,” he said, hearing the sharpness, the anger, in the background all over again. “He told her to ask me if I was still a fag.” Casey swallowed and looked at Joe helplessly. “I mean, I turned down a date with Dev to make this phone call, right? He’s… he’s getting damned good at the hand job… thought we might progress from there… and she’s asking me if I’m still ‘one of them’ and I’m thinking, ‘One of what? A boy? A high school student? What the hell am I one of?’ and I say, ‘I still like boys, Mom,’ and suddenly Dad’s got the phone and he’s shouting at me that I didn’t get to come home, ever, if I was still a sissy little—”

Joe didn’t let him finish the sentence. Suddenly Joe wasn’t on the big stuffed chair, he was on his knees in front of Casey and holding him so tight as Casey sobbed in his arms.

He cried hard, the pot and the beer loosening that thing in him that would have let him stop, and before he was done, he was all but sitting in Joe’s lap and whimpering on his shoulder. Finally, finally he was down to whimpers and chin quivers and deep, shuddering heaves of breath, and that was when Joe finally said something.

“My sister,” he said quietly, “she was something really special. She… she would make me these no-bake cookies, with oatmeal and cocoa powder, or frosting and graham crackers—every day, after she got home from school.”

Casey nodded like he understood, content to let Joe’s resonant voice wash over him and tell him a story.

“And she loved me. She was… she told me stories and sang to me. My older brother was maybe a little too old when he was born, but he’s also sort of ornery—doesn’t ever relax, I guess—but she and Peter never really got along. Paul and David were only about thirteen months apart; they played like twins, and Cheryl—well, she was jealous of me because she thought
she
should have been the baby. But Jeannie loved me. I was her favorite, and I thought the sun rose and set in her hair.”

“She sounds wonderful,” Casey said, thinking his mother hadn’t loved him that much—even when he’d believed she loved him, she hadn’t loved him that much.

“She
was
wonderful,” Joe whispered. “She died when I was six.”

Casey gasped and looked sideways and up at Joe and thought maybe the pot had done something to him too, because his eyes were really red and watery, just like Casey’s felt.

“How?”

“She… she went out with a boy, and he talked sweet to her, and then, after the Valentine’s dance, he didn’t talk to her at all. He spread all these rumors, which were true, right, and he should know, because he was there too. And then she went to a drunk butcher with a fold-out table to try to take the baby out of her belly because she was so afraid… so afraid of letting us down.”

Casey found he was patting Joe’s shoulder and crying again, this time without the earth-shattering sobs. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“The thing is,” Joe said, talking straight over Casey’s shoulder like he was talking to air, “the thing is, she was so afraid of what we would say, that she… she
literally
got killed trying to hide who she was. And my folks—they would have been disappointed, sure. But they wouldn’t have yelled at her, and they wouldn’t have hurt her or kicked her out. I know that, sure as the sun would rise. But the thing is, she never asked. See, kid, as fucked up as your folks are, at least you had the courage to ask. You have the courage to ask, you have the courage to live your life, you see? So you got slapped down, and I’m sorry, but I’m so proud of you. God, kid. You’ve got so much heart.”

Joe sounded wobbly, and for a wild minute, Casey hoped. Casey hoped that Joe would break down and sob too, so Casey wouldn’t feel like such a pussy. But Joe really was older than he was, and instead, he pushed at Casey until Casey stood up and then turned and gave Joe a hand up.

“You go to bed, kid,” Joe said fondly, his voice almost steady. “I’ll clean up the ice cream.”

“What are you gonna do with the pot?” Casey asked, looking fearfully at the last few joints, like someone was going to make him smoke them for punishment.

“Flush it down the garbage disposal with some baking soda.”

Casey turned a shining smile at him. “God, Joe. You’re the best man on the entire face of the planet. We really gotta get you a VCR.”

Joe squinted at him. “That again? Why?”

“Because next time I feel like getting high, maybe I’ll just watch a movie instead.”

With that, Casey wandered off to bed. He woke up headachy and queasy the next morning, with a mouth that tasted like recycled pig shit, and a solid knowledge that getting high was really not his thing.

He got out of bed and showered first thing, because although he didn’t have to work until later that evening and he wasn’t scheduled to be in school that day, his BO could have knocked a shit bug into a dead coma. He padded out of the bathroom wearing scrubs because they were cheap, comfy, and Joe brought home plenty, and was surprised to see Joe sitting cross-legged in the front room with a rather hefty piece of metal and plastic on his lap. He was reading a set of directions with the patience of a hound dog waiting for spring by a winter’s fire.

“What are you doing up?” Casey asked. Joe usually slept in after a run of twelves. “And what the hell is that?”

Joe squinted up at him, bleary-eyed. “I never went to bed,” he confessed. “I cleaned the house, went upstairs and sanded the drywall some, and then went out to town first thing this morning.” He looked down at the object in his lap. “I bought tapes for it,” he said, almost disconsolate in his befuddlement, “but I can’t figure out how to set it up.”

Casey, who had still been a little tired after he got out of the shower, was now completely awake. “You bought a VCR?” The thought made him dizzy.

Joe looked back down at the mess of cables in his hand. “Don’t get excited, junior. It’s not like it’s working yet.”

God, Joe was exhausted. Casey had a sudden thought that Joe might seem like a grown-up, but coming home to find your sixteen-year-old ward high as a kite and breaking his heart must have been a new experience, even for Joe.

“Here,” Casey said, keeping his voice soothing. “Tell you what. You go sleep for a couple of hours, and when you wake up, I’ll have breakfast made and the damned thing set up, okay?”

Joe’s relief almost had smell. “Really? Can I take a shower?” Or maybe that was Joe himself.

“Yeah, big guy. Go take a shower, put on some scrubs, be dead to the world, okay?”

Joe nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll… I’ll….” He wobbled for a moment, even as he sat. “I’ll do something when I get up.”

“You plan on that.” He’d been awake for nearly thirty hours, by Casey’s estimation. Casey wondered if he could get someone to sub for him at work, just so he could make sure Joe would be okay that night, and then shook off that thought. He’d go rent
The Breakfast Club
and see if maybe Joe could catch up on his pop culture education.

But first, he bent down and lifted the VCR off Joe’s lap and put it on the couch, because it was frickin’ heavy, and then gave Joe a hand up. Joe smiled beatifically, and Casey slung an arm over his shoulder to steer him down the hallway. He probably would have killed that same shit bug Casey had worried about when
he’d
woken up, but Casey didn’t mind. There was a simple trust in him that Casey enjoyed. Joe was good people. It was okay.

And after he heard the water running, indicating a shower and (probably) a better sleep when Joe was out, Casey sat to figure out the VCR—which was not nearly as hard to him as it had been to a befuddled Joe—and managed to get it hooked up to the television. There was a bag full of used VHS tapes that came with it, and Casey’s eyes watered just looking at them.
Splash
,
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
,
Footloose
—Joe might not know about it or even understand it, but he certainly got
Casey
, and if Casey wasn’t so embarrassed from his cry the night before, he might have sat down and had another one.

As it was, he set up a roast and some potatoes and broth in the Crock-Pot and then sat down and watched
Footloose
, thinking both that Kevin Bacon was really hot and that Joe, in his quiet, patient way, had been right. Casey had had the courage to ask—and even if he’d been turned down, he at least knew, for certain and in his heart, that right here, on Joe’s old couch, eating cold cereal in hospital scrubs, was exactly where Casey belonged.

A
MONTH
later, Casey lay on the couch in the dark, waiting to see if Joe would prove him right or make their entire time together a colossal lie.

He was on the couch because his room was being used, and his room was being used by a pretty girl named Stacia with a nice rack and hard eyes.

Stacia had offered Casey a blowjob when Casey had gotten off work, if only he’d give her some leftover food. She’d been wearing jeans—thin in the seat and the knees—and a sweater that was almost too warm for March weather. Her dirty blonde hair was ragged at the ends, like it had been cut to layer and perm but all the styling had come out.

Casey had told her that they’d compacted all the leftover food for the night, and then asked her if she wanted to come home with him to Joe’s.

The invitation had been issued without thinking. Joe had taken Casey in, so Joe would probably take in other people. But as Casey had tried to explain Joe to her, her eyes had narrowed and her look had turned speculative.

“Just lets people stay in his house? Sounds like a sucker. Why haven’t you taken him?”

Casey glared at her. “Because he’s a nice guy. And if you try to take him, I’ll kick your ass!”

Stacia rolled her eyes. “Don’t get all snippy. It would just be nice not to have to turn tricks for food, right?”