“I never hang out around this part of town,” Efrem told Isaac on the other side of the booth they sat in at McDonald’s. The cars whizzed by this part of Aramy.
“I never hang out...” Isaac was trying to remember Efrem’s neighborhood. But Efrem grinned at him knowingly and said, “You could end it right there and be perfectly honest.”
“I guess,” Isaac said. “It’s just hard to know people, you know. I can’t get into this whole college party thing. I’m.... I’m deep,”he laughed at himself. “I’m one of those people that wants real friendships, and people I can really talk to. So, paradoxically, I’m a loner. I was surprised you even knew me.”
“The reason being?” Efrem said, sucking down his shake.
“You’re popular.”
“Really?” Efrem looked dubious.
“You know. In class you look sure of yourself, and you say all this witty stuff.”
“I thought you didn’t pay attention to what went on.”
“I pay enough attention. And you’re even good about your dad. I mean. I’ve never, never been able to talk about what Mom did. But you just come right out and say it.”
“Well, at least you feel bad about it,” Efrem said. “You actually feel hurt by it.”
“Don’t you?”
Efrem shook his head. “Honestly? No. I felt a little upset. Angry even. And then over it. I didn’t miss him. I never... That’s what I feel bad about, the inability to feel really bad.”
“You don’t know what I’d give,” Isaac reported twisting around a cold French fry, “to not feel it for once. You don’t know how nice it would be, for just a day maybe, to be free and happy. Doesn’t McDonald’s make the shittiest fries?”
Efrem said, solemnly, “I prefer Burger King’s. Would you like me to free your mind?”
Isaac looked a little taken aback then said, “I wish someone would. Sure. Free my mind.”
Sitting back, satisfied, Efrem said, “I just did.”
“Hey, wait a minute. That’s a koan!”
“No shit!” Efrem said.
“That’s from the Wumengangen. You’ve read it?”
“I’ve read it, and I can pronounce it.”
“You’re fate.”
“I’m Efrem!”
“We gotta be friends,” Isaac decided. “This is too much. We’re supposed to be friends. Wait a minute.”
Isaac hopped up. Most of his food was untouched because he hardly ever ate. He was scrawny, and a littler taller than Efrem. He opened a ketchup packet and squirted the contents on his right wrist.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Efrem demanded.
“We’re gonna be ketchup brothers.” he made a fist and gave Efrem his wrist.
“Are you serious?” Efrem Walker said.
“Dead.”
“You’re absolutely mad. You’re the biggest nut I’ve ever met.” Efrem told him. “And you’re white to boot.”
“I’m actually Jewish,” Isaac reported.
“Get the fuck out.”
“Non practicing.” Isaac added.
“Jewish, non practicing? You’re almost Black. How can I resist?” Efrem rolled up the sleeve of his hoodie, and plunged his wrist into the pool of ketchup on Isaac’s wrist.
Isaac
The first time I went to church with Jinny, I almost didn’t want to go again because I thought the priest was the biggest moron in the world, and he preached this sermon about What if every Christian was just like you. The whole thing was about how you could measure how good you were by if you’d want every Christian in the world to be just like you. And, of course, you were supposed to stare at your feet and feel ashamed because you didn’t really want anyone to be just like you.
I told Jinny that firstly, the whole time the priest was talking I wanted to go up there and say, “Hey, dude, I’m a Jew! I don’t believe in Jesus. How you like that?” Only I don’t think most of the people in church believed in Jesus, and I’m pretty sure Jinny doesn’t believe in him anymore than I do. Which is alright. Jesus is a pretty tall order.
But then I’m not much of a Jew. I had a bar mitzvah because my aunt made me. Otherwise I haven’t been to Temple Beth El since I was thirteen. “Today you are a man. Now go wash the dishes, do your homework and go to bed. You got school tomorrow.”
Anyway, what I was getting at was the whole thing about people being just like you. Frankly, I wouldn’t want every anything to be just like me. And I think I like myself. I can admit that I didn’t always like me.
When I met Efrem I thought, here is someone just like me despite the obvious fact that he was Black. But hell, I’m Jewish so I’m not totally white. I mean, I’m not Christian, I got the little ethnicity thing going on. You couldn’t really tell I was Jewish, not like with my Dad, but still.
I’m digressing again.
It only took me a week to realize that I am nothing like Efrem. We are different as night from day. No racial puns intended.
Actually it’s probably better to say we’re as different as we are alike. I always understand him better than anyone else when I think I don’t. And when I think I finally understand him I’m missing the boat completely.
Efrem Walker is the only guy I’ve ever felt was smarter then me. I mean, Jinny and Cecile say guys are dumb and it’s basically true. I don’t know why it is. I’ve got a few theories, but men are idiots. Except for Ef.
Efrem is also the loudest most talkative person I’ve ever met. He’s all over the place. He does everything he shouldn’t. He makes it easy for me to be me because he’s easy being himself. No matter how weird something I do is, he’s capable of doing something weirder, and when he doesn’t want to be weird, he takes it in stride when I decide it’s my turn. Like once, I bought a hat that was made like the top of an umbrella, and decided to walk around the whole weekend with it. Here I am, this white boy walking around with an umbrella on his head and Efrem is with me the entire weekend, around his family and cousins, and doesn’t so much as bat an eyelash.
I know he gets embarrassed because we’ve been friends for a long time now. But he doesn’t get embarrassed by me, and I appreciate that.
Efrem also makes me afraid. I don’t mean like he terrorizes me because he’s scary. I mean I get afraid because around Efrem I do the right thing. Around him I know what makes sense and what doesn’t. What I do and what I don’t have any business doing. Like now I’m getting my Masters at City College, and thinking about transferring across town to Mc.Cleiss next year for a Ph.D program. I’m not really enjoying what I’m doing, and Ef never says don’t do it. He just shrugs in this certain way when I tell him that. It’s the most merciless shrug I’ve ever seen, and he doesn’t have to say a word to say, Well if you don’t like it, get out you idiot. And maybe I’m just putting words in his mouth, or words in his shrug. But I don’t think so. I’ve known him too long.
Ef is a senior this year at Saint Clare, and that’s because he took a year off... to do what he wanted, he said. Because he damn well felt like it, he said. That shit kind of sticks in my head. Makes me a little mad when I think maybe he might be condemning me for not doing what I think I should be doing. Then I realize that this is when I really amputting words in his mouth, in his shrug.
He comes into the store, sends Nick out. Nick is a good guy. From Michigan. Ef starts cleaning up without a word, reproaching me for leaving Nick alone. This is the way it has always been. We will go out in a few minutes. Here comes Jinny. It doesn’t really matter where we go, we’re bound to have a good time.
“Lives or dies or whatever ghosts do,”right Anne? Why do ghost always stay in the same place where they died? Because they don’t want to move on? No. Because we haven’t let them. We don’t know how to.
“Lives or dies or whatever ghosts do…”
The same way people are living, ghost are always dying. They’re always in the moment they went. They’re stuck in the past and so are we. The Headless Woman is always taking her head off. You don’t need to tell me.
Sometimes I’m still nine years old. For two years I stayed nine. If I hadn’t have passed my classes so well people would have thought I was retarded because I didn’t talk. And I was retarded. I mean I had slowed. I hadn’t just slowed. I had stopped.
It’s like a scab. And sometimes it’s like this terror that rises and rises and rises like an endless scream and I just cannot get a hold of it. Sometimes I feel frozen and afraid, and I think that I am all alone and completely disconnected. Sometimes I have wanted to die. I remember being just a little kid and thinking about all the ways I could kill myself. I just wanted to stop this suffering. I didn’t even want to feel better. I just didn’t want to feel.
Sometimes I stop in and stare at this room I used to love. This place used to be a general store, and this room used to be a storeroom back when Aramy Street was a dirt road. But by the time my parents lived in it it was just a large bedroom overlooking Aramy. It was the master bedroom and it had beautiful curtains and a bed with soft off white colors, and there was this vanity with all these bottles of perfume and it smelled like my mom. For years it smelled like her after she was gone.
I can still see it. I can still remember waking up from my nap and wondering what was on the floor. Being fascinated and frightened and innocent and watching. Like cough syrup or like sauce the red trailed out of the bedroom. And me going closer and closer. It was the last time I was okay. I remember walking into that room. Sometimes I can still see... what you couldn’t see. Jesus Christ, she didn’t even have a face. I just backed away. I kept shaking my head and then I went to my room and curled up like a fetus and just trembled until Dad came home. He found Mom before he found me, and he tried to get me to talk. He tried to help me, but he could hardly help himself in those years.
Sometimes I just want to hold onto somebody and cry. I want to just bawl out everything and get rid of it. I want to ask Ef, “Don’t you feel this way?” I want to confess it to him because he knows about it and for some reason I just want him to take it all away and make it better.
Jayson Laujinesse thinks he knows everything. Anne is right. She’s right when she says watching sunrises will keep you sane. If I watched sunrises and sunsets I’d know when it was time to turn the light on. I wouldn’t be standing here stuck in my head waiting for someone to save me. I don’t have to go to the cemetery to be with my mother. I’ve always known that. That’s why I never go. She’s right here. Her blood and her brains are polished in the floor. And I don’t have to go to Anderson Parkway to meet a ghost, I’ve got my own headless woman right here on 4516 Aramy Street.
Roma House was out past Mc.Cleiss, where Route 6 joined the Parkway and bulleted north through less and less frequent signs of civilization. While Isaac drove, he and Jinny talked about the day and while Jinny could see Isaac’s face dimly by the infrequent light of road signs or headlights shining off of his square, black rimmed glasses, she wanted to see him clearly again in the light.
She was in deep green. Cecile and Anne both said it made her hair stand out and showed off the green of her eyes. She almost never wore a skirt, but tonight she had one on, loose and creped, and her hair was pulled back a little, a few crinkled curls had escaped and hung loose about her face. She had thought about a shawl, but Cecile said it was too much.
“We don’t want you looking tooold,” she said.
“We’re here, Ms. O’Muil,” Isaac told her, and rounded the car to open the door for her.
“You are such a gentleman.”
“Well, yeah,” Isaac said and offered his arm.
Now it smelled of fresh rain and the air was a little cool. The parking lot was slick and the concrete walk up to Roma House was dark with the remains of the downpour. In the car, when she couldn’t see him, she could smell Isaac. She had always loved the smell of him.
Isaac lifted a finger to indicate she should wait, and he went up to the desk and then came back. He looked so take charge, or he looked like he wanted to look take charge, and it made Jinny smile. Isaac had never gotten very tall. He was only about five nine. He was five seven when she met him. He was so handsome tonight, all in black. He was wearing the one tailored coat he had, and his shoes were shining, and he had a little wine colored handkerchief peeking out of his jacket pocket, and a tie the same color, sharp against his white shirt.
“We’ll have to wait a few minutes,” he told her, and then grinned.
“What?” he said.
“What do you mean, what?”
“The way you’re looking at me,” Isaac said.
“You’re so cute,” Jinny told him.
“I was shooting for GQ.”
“You’re GQ cute, Mr. Weaver.”
Isaac pushed up his glasses and murmured, “Why thank you.”
Jinny timed that they waited fifteen minutes to be seated. After waiting for a waiter and then the waiter assuring them he would return, and then waiting for their order, there was another forty five minutes before their main courses to finally arrive. Midway through her Lobster Newberg she wondered--along with how the hell Isaac was going to pay for this—when he was going to propose. She was chewing and watching him chew. He lifted his wine glass and toasted her merrily, and she was totally in love with the idiot. She took a swig of wine and then kept eating and moaned.
“Oh, shit, what’s—” she started. People looked around. Isaac’s eyes widened. Jinny felt her tongue go through a circle. She fished around in her mouth, her eyes scanning the crowd to see if anyone was looking.
“Oh, Isaac,” she said, her mouth full, feeling like she was getting ready to cry.
“Virginia!” he said, plaintively.
She stuck out her tongue. She had curled it so that the diamond ring was perched right on the end like a crown.
“I will,” she said as best she could.
Isaac took the ring off her tongue, and slipped in on her finger.
An old woman came up to the table and said, “That is the sweetest thing I have ever seen.”
Jinny was about to say, I hope not. But she only smiled.
