Feral opened up my old room. It was packed solid with boxes. You really couldn’t get in there. A wall of cardboard boxes filled to the gills. Records. Tapes. Posters. Figurines. Trinkets. “Everything there?” Trish asked.
“EVERYTHING HERE? HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW FROM LOOKING IN THE DOORWAY?”
“What an asshole you are,” Trish said. She walked into their bedroom. “I found the TV, so that accounts for all of our valuables.”
I went to sit down at the dining room table (force of habit), but it was gone. So I just stood there, uncomfortably, in front of the invisible dining room table. No dining room either. The wind blew a plastic bag off the street and into the house.
I heard the house phone ring. It was unmistakable. Quacking. Trish answered and then yelled my name.
“For me?”
I took the duck and put its ass to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Lee?”
“Who’s this?” I asked.
“Mark,” the voice said, “Seth’s brother.”
He was wondering how I was doing, what was going on in New Jersey. I looked around at the house that was half leveled to the ground. Right beyond my feet was the concrete foundation. Twisted electrical wires with plastic wire nuts were poking out.
“Things are good,” I said.
“I’m glad. Look … this is awkward, but you’re a stone mason? My brother said that. He said you do great work.”
“He was just being polite,” I said.
“Seth wasn’t polite.”
“So, what, you want me to make a headstone?”
“Was thinking.”
“Sorry, Mark, I sold my saw.”
“I understand that you feel weird being asked.”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
“When we were kids, we used to go to my grandfather’s cabin in the mountains and sail on his boat up there. Seth was always happy there.”
Seth had talked about that place. I knew it from his description. Golden lake. Dirt roads. Swans, ducks, and turtles. Old wood. Sailboat with mildewed ropes. A tire that swung over the water. Squeaky floorboards. Wine cellar. River rushing through the stone. His grandfather’s grave.
“It’s all our idea to be buried there together.”
“Oh.”
“As a family,” he said. “It’s important to me that it gets done right. By someone who loved my brother.”
So, then, that was it. No matter what, I had to do it.
Mark said he wanted to build Seth a tomb up in the mountains at Aunt Kathy’s house, “To house my brother’s ashes.” He said it’d been Seth’s favorite place in the world. He wanted me to have the job. A stone tomb to house his brother’s ashes.
“Will you do it?”
Feral was still yelling. He was arguing with Trish about their prospects, about having to go and live with Trish’s off-the-boat, Irish mother. Where else would they go?
“I’ll do it.”
“Oh, good. That makes me happy,” he said.
We talked about money, he wanted to know where to send the check.
“I’m kinda in-between residences right now.”
“I’ve had enough of you. I’m outta here,” Trish screamed at Feral.
“Everything okay?” Mark asked.
“Oh, just some wild animals,” I said. “I live amongst them — thrashing.”
“Super. Then I’ll mail the money to the mountain house. It’ll be in the mailbox when you get there.”
The whole thing happened so quickly, I didn’t know what to say. Life is like that sometimes though, isn’t it? I hung up the phone and walked out of the room. Feral was still spazzing out, pretty much rightfully so I supposed. After all, his house was gone.
“Can you believe Trish? She wants me to go live with her mother. Her mother is a nasty woman. A total bitch.”
I said, “Really? She seemed alright to me.”
“In what way?”
“Well,” I said, “I crashed into her. Totaled the back of her LeSabre. When I got to her house, she’d made me dinner. She had a place set for me and everything.”
“Made you dinner after a wreck? Well, whatever. I’m still not excited about the idea.”
I helped him load the F-250 with all his cardboard boxes. We drove away from the house, out of the marshes. Trish was at the Wawa smoking a cigarette next to the pay phone.
“Come on,” Feral said. “Let’s go to your mom’s.”
17
The road opened up. We drove in a caravan towards Mount Mercy. Tull Lake. Everyone was excited in their own way. Leaving. We were all leaving. That’s what we all wanted from our lives, what the whole world wanted. Feral and Trish were leaving the mother’s house. Myself, June, and K were getting away from Studio Mike’s pullout couch.
June said she very much wanted to help me with my work. K seemed indifferent to the entire thing. What else was new?
I was sitting by the passenger window with my hand on K’s knee. K had her hand on June’s knee. The windows were down, and we were cruising along. The summer air poured into us as the mile-markers flashed by. June drove the truck. Ten and two — her hands at all times. She was nervous, because she hadn’t done any real driving before.
“I’m great as a bus passenger.”
“It’s easier in a big truck like this,” K said. “Don’t worry.”
“Why’s it easier?”
“Everything will get out of your way,” K said, kissing June’s cheek.
“Within reason, everything will get out of your way,” I offered. “Don’t hit a mountain or anything.”
June smiled, but the smile faded quick. Each approaching road sign, fork in the highway, car in her rearview, and cop on the side of the road made her nervous.
We’d crossed the New York State Line many hours before. New Jersey peeled away. The ocean went first. Then the industrial wastelands disappeared as we crossed through the Meadowlands and past Giants Stadium, Elizabeth, Newark airport. We saw the urban sprawl of New York City. Once we were over the George Washington Bridge, we’d officially entered NY. Then, the suburbs of Westchester. River town after river town. After that, railroad lines cut through the center.
“Just keep pointing north,” I said. “Keep pointing north. Aim for those mountains.”
“What mountains?”
“They’re there. You just can’t see them yet.”
June was so serious when she drove. I think that’s when I first really started to develop a major thing for her. K was fooling around. She’d reach down and play with my dick and give me little bites on my ear, but my attention was locked in one hundred and fifteen percent on June Doom — the way she sat with her chest up close, into the steering wheel, while biting her lip. I kept stealing glances of her while K threw herself at me.
Feral and Trish followed behind in the van. He’d agreed to help me do the work without much prodding.
“This house is a secluded paradise in the mountains near a little river and a clear lake.”
“Can’t wait.”
I said, “I even think there’s a little pier to fish off. Maybe, if I remember right, there’s also a rowboat.”
We barreled up the highway, closing the gap to this place of seclusion. My pulse quickened, and it wasn’t because K was practically jerking me off. She started to play with my fly like she was gonna unzip me and start to make me feel really good. I kept looking over at June. There was something about her. I didn’t get the same feeling from K. She just wasn’t all there for me.
June took her eyes off the road for a moment, looked at me. The truck was just gliding forward. June Doom and me stared at each other as if we were saving each other from some unstoppable force. K kept kissing my neck. June let out a sigh and looked back at the road.