The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (20 page)

I wanted to roll down my window and reach for fireflies—the
snowflakes hanging lazily in the air would suffice. We were driving along a
windy street full of low cottages facing white woods when out of the corner of
my eye I saw a deer step into the road.

Griff slowed down and stopped and we sat idling in the road
as another deer, and then a little one, emerged from the woods and followed the
first slowly across the road. The second adult turned and looked at us. And
then they disappeared into the brush and trees on the other side.

“Looks like a river down through there,” Griff said,
straining against his seatbelt. “I want to go have a look.”

“Should we leave the car?” I said.

“Just quick.”

He pulled over onto the slushy shoulder and we got out.
After a car went by we crossed the street and Zane and I followed Griff down a
brambly slope. There was a river at the bottom, its banks crusted with ice, and
the deer were standing beside it peering around with their big black eyes but
not drinking.

Griff squatted down on the slope to watch them but his foot
slid out from under him and he ended up on his ass. The deer flicked their ears
and walked farther up the riverbank.

“Are you OK?” I said.

“Just a cold bum,” he said, wiping it off.

“The baby’s going out on the ice,” Zane said, pointing.

“That’s not a good idea,” Griff said. “Let’s go down a
little more.”

Zane was a few steps ahead of me down the slope when he lost
his footing. As he went down he grabbed at a pine branch that sprang back up
and clocked me in the chin. The ground rushed up behind me and slammed my back,
and all the breath in my lungs turned into a big white cloud over my face.

***

Griff put his hand on my bare shoulder. “Zap!”

I squirmed, pulled up the blanket. His fingers were
freezing.

“Wake up,” he told me, “there are big boxes in the
Dumpster.” He had his jacket on, and his hat.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes until I could read the numbers
on the clock on my desk: 2:07 a.m. “There are what? Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Boxes!” he said. “Let’s go sledding.”

“In a box? Who are you, Snoopy?”

“You rip the box apart,” he told me, making a tearing motion
with his hands, “and use the sheet of cardboard as a sled.”

“Why do you have your jacket on?”

“I was taking a stroll on the Esplanade.”

“...?”

“Got sick of studying.”

“...” I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “Where are
my pants?”

Out of the darkness of the room they came flying at me.

Gia, Beth’s roommate, was sitting on the common
area couch highlighting scribbles in a notebook. When we were locking our door
she looked up and asked where we were going.

“Out,” Griff said.

“Are you going to the basement?”

“No, we’re going outside.”

“If you go to the basement could you get me a Diet Coke?”
She held out four quarters.

“All
right
.” Griff
took them and stuffed them in his pocket.

“And if you don’t I need my quarters back.”

It was cold out, but a nice cold. We swiped two cardboard
boxes from the Dumpster behind the dorm and tore and stomped them into flat
sheets. Then we made our way up Beacon Street, past the snow-covered angel
statue in the Gardens, to Boston Common. Carrying the cardboard we climbed to
the top of the hill and leaned against the base of the tall phallic monument
there. The moon was big and bright and the snow was frosted with an icy glaze
that reflected us like we were walking on water.

Griff spread his cardboard on the snow and sat down, folded
the front edge up against his knees. He shimmied forward until gravity began to
take over.

“Coming?” he said. The snow scratched at the bottom of his
cardboard and soon he was racing down, hair
fwapping
the edges of his blue hat. In front of him rose the city and all its tall
buildings still lit at this hour, all glowing and white like a city of the
future. It seemed as though at any moment Griff’s cardboard would lift off the
ground and he would sail up through the night and fly into it.

“Whoo hoo hoooo!”

I dropped my cardboard on the ground and belly-flopped onto
it and whipped down the hill with my fists stretched out in front of me like I
was flying. The slope wasn’t incredibly steep but it was long and gave you plenty
of time to build momentum. Cold air pressed into my lungs and made me gasp.

“Aw yeah!” Griff cheered as I flew. He’d reached the bottom
and was standing, cardboard clamped under his arm. “Watch out for the light
post!”

Shit—the light post. I tried to rudder the sled with
my legs but instead of steering it just spun me into a pinwheel. I crashed into
Griff at the bottom and my cardboard shot out from under me, slicing through
the air across the plowed footpath and crumpling against a snow bank.

“Owh, wipe-out,” he said in a giggling groan as we struggled
to our feet. “I told you you’d fly.”

“Let’s go again.”

“Haha. Nah, I think once is enough for me.” He was brushing
snow off his legs.

“Are you
serious
?”
I said, but when I turned around again he’d already taken off running back up
the hill.

“See you at the top, sucker!” he called.

“Bastard.” I grabbed my cardboard and chased him. The snow
was icy and I kept slipping. We stood together at the top looking out.

“Funny how all that can feel like home, isn’t it?” I said.
“So big and yet so cozy.” But I wondered if it only felt that way because I was
looking at it with him.

“I’m just looking for one little place,” Griff said. “One of
these little houses I draw for class, just to live in with the One.” He pushed
up his sleeve and looked at his watch. “Speaking of which, I have a Western Civ
final in five hours. And I don’t even care.”

“You slack with such finesse.” I dropped the cardboard to
the ground and stepped on it to keep it from sliding away. “Who should I go as
this time?”

“The Silver Surfer,” he said.

“Yeah, right.”

“Hey, you asked me.”

“Fine, but you better be ready to haul my broken body back
to the room,” I said. “Here goes.”

For nearly five seconds I rode it like a surfboard before
falling on my ass and skidding the rest of the way down. Griff followed me down
sitting, legs out, the missionary position of sledding, and zoomed past,
grinding to a halt fifteen feet away.

“That was graceful,” he said. “Seriously. You could turn
pro.”

“I think next time I’ll go on my ass.”

“So you don’t end up that way.”

“Haha!”

We ran up the hill and sledded down, and ran up and sledded
down, and each ride down made the next trip up inevitable. We were laughing,
swearing, getting the wind knocked out of us, and it was perfect, because when
you’re twenty in the city at 3:00 a.m
.
with your best friend, everything is always perfect.

On one run I skidded to a stop at the bottom, my cardboard
now damp and floppy, and leapt out of the way before Griff crashed into me. He
sat up and dusted snow off his hat.

“Holy fucking shit, Vince.”

“What?”

He pointed behind me. “Look.”

I turned around and saw nothing, a nothing that made me
gasp.

No dorm, no Prudential building, no Hancock, just an absence
that stretched across the city. Behind us, the State House and the Financial
District were still lit, but everything beyond the trees of the Public Gardens
on the other side might as well have been open sea or the edge of space. In the
distance we heard fire trucks wailing. We would see on the morning news that a
power transformer under Copley Square had caught fire and cut electricity to
most of the Back Bay.

“That’s freaky,” I said.

“This is as close to the apocalypse as we’ll probably ever
see,” he said, bending down to pick up his cardboard.

“The end of the world.”

“Let’s go out sledding,” he said, and he turned around and
started running once more up the hill.

*

Griff and Zane were kneeling over me. Griff’s lips
were moving but all I could hear were our three deer splashing across the river.
Through my fluttering eyelids I could see him peering at me. He had his hand
against my cheek and when he withdrew it I saw blood on it. My blood?

“Just a tissue but it’s dirty,” Zane was saying.

Now Griff was touching my front teeth with his thumb, and
then he had his fingers in my mouth, rubbing his index finger against my teeth,
top and bottom. They were rough against my inner cheeks. It was the oddest
feeling.

“I think he just bit his tongue,” he said. “His teeth are
all there.”

Why were they talking about me like I wasn’t here?

“His chin, though,” Zane said.

“That’s just a scrape. Don’t worry about that.” Griff leaned
down at me, his face close enough to mine almost to give me an Eskimo kiss. His
features were bent with worry, his hair messed, one side pushed behind his ear.
I could see beads of sweat on his forehead, even though it was below freezing
out. “You’re OK, Vin,” he told me, studying my eyes. “You took a pretty good
knock on your chinny-chin-chin.”

“Oh.”

“But you’re fine, right?”

“OK.”

“Can you move?”

I started to sit up, could feel Zane’s hands slide under my
shoulders to help me.

“Sit a minute before you get up,” Griff told me, and then he
stood up and went down to the river. He took off his hat, but put it back on.
Then he took off his jacket and laid it on the snow, and quickly wriggled out
of his top layer, a long-sleeve t-shirt. After putting his jacket back on
he dipped his shirt in the water, wrung it out and brought it over to me. It
was cold against my face.

I love you
, I
wanted to say.

“Want me to carry you?” he said. I shook my head; my stomach
felt a little funny but I was OK to stand. “Remember that time
you
carried
me
?” he said, and I nodded. “I’m sorry,” he added, “I shouldn’t
have had us out chasing deer.”

“It was my fault,” Zane said. “I pulled the branch.”

“I’m fine, guys,” I said, but the words felt clumsy on my
lips. I touched them and they were big. Griff’s white t-shirt was pink in my
hands. I raised it back to my face.

We crossed the street. Griff started the car and aimed the
heater vents at me.

“You’ve shed blood for this car, Vince,” he said, rubbing
the dashboard like it was the neck of his prized pony. “Now I have no choice
but to buy it.”

By the time we got back to the dealership, though,
he seemed less sure.

“I should do this, right?” he whispered to me. We were
parked in the dealership lot. Ashby was walking out to meet us.

“Yeah. You sure about gray, though? I would’ve pictured you in
something more colorful.”

“I’m always in something more colorful,” he said. “I like my
vehicles neutral.”

“Then do it.”

“I’m gonna do it.”

“Good.”

We went into the dealership with Ashby—he noticed my
face and his eyes bulged and his mouth dropped open but then he looked away and
brought out the paperwork.

“You know what, guys,” Griff said, “you can get going. You
don’t have to stay here for this stuff.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Go put something on that. I’ll see you at your
house.”

The cold air outside felt better on my forehead. I scooped
some clean snow off the bumper of the yellow Beetle and pressed it to my face.

“Want to drive?” I said to Zane.

He shrugged and we swapped keys for plant. On the way home I
sat with my head back and my eyes closed, listening while Zane speculated about
the new creative team on
Action Comics
.

When I woke up we were parked in Zane’s driveway
and he was poking at my chin with a green stick. No, not a stick—it was a
snapped-off branch of the aloe, gently dribbling sticky liquid into the pain.

“That’s for burns,” I told him, blinking myself awake.

“I don’t want it to get infected or anything.”

“I’ll wash it when I get home.”

“Do you want me to drive you? I can get Ralph to pick me up from
your place.”

I wanted to say yes. Waves of throbbing pain were rolling
one after another across my jaw and mouth, and I wanted the company, wanted him.
Just wanted him.

“I can manage by myself,” I said, faking a smile that made
my lips ache. “Thanks for taking care of me today.”

He reached over and wiped his thumb against my chin; it came
away glistening with milky liquid. We both seemed to realize at the same time
how much it looked like jizz.

He cleared his voice and turned away, grinning. “I like
taking care of you,” he said finally, but not in a romantic or sentimental way;
it was only a statement. He put his hand on my hair for a few seconds—I
was sure he was going to kiss me—and then he opened the door very slowly,
allowing me all the time in the world to tell him to stay.

“You should take the plant,” I told him instead, holding it
out with both hands as a dilapidated peace offering. I felt like E.T. “And—Zane?”

“Yeah, Vince?” A hopeful smile appeared.

“—Don’t forget you’re opening tomorrow.”

“Oh. Yeah. I won’t.”

I slid over into the driver’s seat and watched him slice
through the headlights on his way to the door. He disappeared into a rectangle
of light and then the door closed behind him.

I drove myself home. When I got there, the new mattress Griff
ordered was leaning against the garage door wrapped in plastic. I balled up my
fist and punched the fucking thing, as hard as I could, when I walked by.

I stood naked in front of my bathroom mirror, a
double dose of aspirin dissolving in my stomach. A purple bruise had formed
around the scrape on my chin and there was a painful bite on the side of my
tongue—but it only made me look like how I felt.