On the way back to Gena’s he said, without rehearsing it, almost without knowing he was going to speak, “I like it here.”
“I do too,” his mother said, to his unexpected relief.
FOURTEEN
October, 1980
THE TRIP FROM GENA’S TO BERKELEY WAS LESS THAN AN HOUR. PETER WISHED it were longer. When the bus wheeled into a slot in the terminal, he didn’t look out the window at the trickle of people coming through the heavy doors to greet them. Stuart says there’s an eleven o’clock bus and you should be on it, Fran had written. The driver was opening up the luggage bin below him. Why was he so nervous? He’d had far more nerve-rattling days than this. In the past year he’d started a new school, called up three different girls for dates, and read two of his own poems aloud at assembly.
He was now the last person on the bus. He forced himself to stand. It was Fran he dreaded most. Stuart would intimidate him, reduce him. But Fran would bring back the shame of that night he kissed her and disgusted her so thoroughly. He didn’t know why she had written, why she’d wanted to include him in her visit with Stuart. He wondered if Tom had pushed them into it.
They were right there at the bottom of the steps, as if they were about to get on the bus themselves.
“We thought you’d blown us off.” Her voice brought back breakfasts at the green table.
“I didn’t,” Stuart said. He was fuller, not fat, just inflated to the proper size.
They didn’t hug.
“It’s weird to see you guys,” Peter said, aware that he was only looking at Stuart. He hadn’t seen Fran yet, just heard her voice and felt the vague mass of her body to his right.
Fran and Stuart agreed but Peter could feel the old lopsided attachment. He wondered again why he had come. He felt tired already from the effort the day was going to take.
“How’s Caleb?” he asked as they walked through the terminal to the street. It was the most innocuous place to start.
“He’s moved into your guys’ room,” Fran said.
“What?” Stuart yelled.
Your guys’. His mother would have a fit over the expression, but Peter marveled at it for other reasons. He’d only been in that room six weeks. Was it really still partly his?
Fran laughed at her brother’s outrage. She’d probably been saving this piece of information since September, to deliver it in person for the reaction. “He’s painted all the lightbulbs different colors and he lights the incense and has his little friends over and they recite all that crap on the walls.”
“What is one is not one,” Peter said.
“And what is not one is also one,” Fran finished.
“Does he have girls tapping at his window at night?”
“Watch it, Pete.” Stuart gave him a shove with his shoulder and Peter bumped into Fran.
“Sorry,” he said to the sleeve of her red jacket.
“You’re different,” she said, too quietly for Stuart to hear.
“Where are we going?” Peter asked, hopeful now, for different could only mean improved. They’d been walking fast and purposefully down one street, across to another, and were now headed up a hill.
“I’ve got class in ten minutes,” Stuart said. “I thought you guys could drop me off, then we can grab lunch after.”
“How long’s your class?” Peter asked, too quickly, not concealing his panic.
“An hour and forty minutes.”
Holy shit, he thought.
Soon Stuart veered up a long flight of stone steps and was gone.
They were in a large quad that had been drained of people within seconds. A clock at the top of a tower struck the quarter hour.
“College,” he said, thinking of Stuart’s imitation of Tom, and the great relief Tom must feel now, thinking, too, what a mystery it was to him, this kind of life.
“Yeah,” Fran said uneasily.
They walked toward a fountain in the center of the quad.
“I never got it,” she said, “why Stuart dragged his feet about all this. But now that it’s my turn I feel like I’d be abandoning her. My mother, I mean.” But Peter knew who she was talking about.
He nodded. “She’s a pretty powerful presence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her love. It was really strong. She loved you so much.”
Fran’s eyes filled even though she was smiling. “She did,” she whispered.
He could tell she knew he was going to hug her and she let her chin fall heavily on his shoulder. She smelled like the shampoo they all used to use, and he remembered what it felt like to stand in the bathroom after a shower looking at the picture of her mother. He wondered if there was a word for missing something you never had.
When they stopped hugging, he said, “I’m sorry about the kiss.”
“Oh God. Don’t be. I wanted you to kiss me.”
He thought about reminding her of what she’d said. Instead he kept quiet, and they sat on the rim of the fountain, shoulders touching.
A guy wearing sandals with thick noisy buckles trudged past, looking at all the buildings, then back down at his map.
“That’s going to be me next year. Completely clueless,” she said.
He thought of how his mother was taking a training class to teach self-defense in addition to her English classes at the community college. “Go help him.”
“What?”
“Go help him find where he’s going.”
“I’ve been here a day.”
“He’s got a map. How hard can it be?”
“Peter.”
“Do it.”
“Shit,” she said, and pushed herself off.
He watched her in her red jacket smoothing down her hair just before she reached the guy and tapped him on the the back. He spun around, and a smile bloomed. Together they looked at the large map. Fran turned it around for him, and pointed to the clock tower. The guy laughed and shook his head. Peter remembered the way Fran could make pancakes, bacon, toast, and scrambled eggs and have it all arrive hot on the table at the same time. And when Tom brought home a game for Caleb, a three-tiered maze for marbles that had loops and pulleys and zillions of tiny plastic pieces, Fran put it together without taking the directions out of the box.
They were talking now. Peter watched the guy’s eyes dart to her face, wondering how he’d see her again, daring himself to ask.
It was all about courage. To live even a day on this earth required courage. All these things they read in school—The Odyssey, Beowulf, Huckleberry Finn—were all about courage, but the teacher never said, You may not have to kill a Cyclops or a dragon but you will need just as much courage to get through each day.
They shook hands and Fran came back carrying a corner of the map.
“His phone number?”
“Address.” She was flushed and happy. “We can be pen pals, like your mom and my dad. He asked if you were my boyfriend.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said you were my little brother.”
Peter punched her. It was exactly what he’d hoped she’d say.
Stuart emerged in a thick wave of people and stood at the top of the stairs for a few minutes talking to a girl. Others joined them and Stuart broke off, descending the stairs alone.