by Amanda R. Howland
Originally published in Contraposition Magazine, February 2015
It wasn’t his going away party because he wasn’t going far. It was just his last Friday night in Stow, Ohio. And Ryan Bakan felt a touch stoned. He was moving to Cleveland in a week for no reason, other than that’s what he’d casually told a woman online that he was. He strolled around the hilly yard, smiling here and there, avoiding direct conversation. He had no job up in Cleveland, no people, nothing. It was a hot September and the sun was making its long way west. The yard was bare save for a young crabapple tree. Other yards stretched on. Ryan’s skinny stomach stretched tight with regretted hot dogs. The beer wasn’t working anymore. The warm blue can sweat in his hand.
The last two years had felt like five years, but he couldn’t name what had happened. Two years ago he was just thirty, which was still almost in his twenties. Two years ago he was with the pregnant girl and worried all the time. Now it was past Labor Day, and he hadn’t seen his daughter since Memorial Day. He nodded at his dude Matt, who pointed at Ryan’s aviator glasses and gave him thumbs up: “Brah! What’s up.” They shook hands. Ryan was known for his sleazy sunglasses. He didn’t care if Matt said he wore them to make up for being a tiny man, a man who looks like a kid.
He thought he felt a vibration in his pocket, but no, no text. He was waiting from a text from Rochelle—a girl he’d known in junior high. She lived in Cleveland. He’d found her online. He felt like an asshole thinking she was the reason he was moving, but there was no other reason.
His dudes were setting up the cornhole stuff. His heart hurt. Grass stains on the white paint of the cornhole board. He told them he’d be down all the time—it wasn’t even an hour away. Something else—some other feeling hit him that was not the anticipation of missing his dudes. It seemed like they’d been playing cornhole forever, but also, like it was a new thing. New like pushing their hair up with gel and the new century and reality television, but look at the thing. It was banged up, and it seemed kind of sad, like, how long had they been slinging those bags around, and why hadn’t there been a new game?
He stood aside, his hand on his phone. Cari, a girl he knew, stood beside him. Cari had the knobby bruised legs of a child and sticky dirty-kid skin, but the lines in her forehead were deep. They’d hooked up the summer before and now she was with his dude Matt. She looked at him, though. As if it had been something.
“Days are getting shorter, you notice that?” She rubbed her nose. Her voice was scratchy like a young boy.
“Fucking sucks.” It had been nothing. Electrical shorts of wasted late night. The bar lights coming up, then a warm body under him in his bed. Waking up thinking, will she stick? Will she stick around – will one of us have to decide?
But, as it happened, she broke her leg playing softball that day after she spent the night, and he didn’t hear from her again. He heard about the break, and understood that the interruption erased the evening. But still, after she hooked up with his dude, and he started seeing her at parties, she looked at him. She said things about the weather, upcoming holidays, time.
Rochelle, the girl who he was holding his phone for, wasn’t even single. Or a girl. She was two years older than him, had two kids, was married. But he remembered her rising up from behind the seat in front of him on the school bus, twenty years before. He was in seventh grade and she was in ninth. She knew he liked her. The joyful sun of that year played in her smile. Sometimes she asked him to tell her blond jokes, and she’d laugh, even though she was blond. Sometimes she didn’t talk to him but just listened to Nirvana on her Walkman. On those days she didn’t smile: grey Ohio days, her face pressed to the cold glass, Nirvana jingling around her head, her eyes serious against tears, angry acne on her high cheekbones. Ryan watched her on any kind of day, sometimes just her reflection on the window through the gap between the arc of the green leather seat and the glass.
Now, Matt came up and put his arm around Cari. She shrunk a little bit. “Dude—you in?”
Ryan was startled. He needed another drink. He didn’t meet Matt’s eyes, just looked at his long thin chin with the dimple at the end. His face seemed to pulse. “Sit this one out.”
“What?” Matt’s sleepy mouth hung open a little. He moved slightly from side to side, breathing hot beer, and gave Cari a couple irregular shoulder squeezes.
“I’m going to sit this one out.”
“Oh, right on.” Matt scampered off. Ryan turned away from Cari and walked back to the cooler. He put his hand on his chest—it felt like his rib cage was fusing tightly together.
Rochelle rising on the bus twenty years ago. Popping up. She wore a painted drainpipe around her neck. Her hair was blond, curly, frizzy and all over the place. A year before, she would have worn it pulled into a ponytail. She would have kept her head down. Because, a year before, it wasn’t cool to be weird, and people attacked anything that stuck out. To cut it off. But in 1993, freaks rose up—girls with burgundy hair, boys in army fatigues—tall boots, green shoes, bands bands bands, suddenly music was everywhere. It was ok to be silly. It was ok to be dark.
Rochelle hadn’t given a shit that Ryan wasn’t cool—he still wore his hair in a crusty 80’s spike, he still wore starter jackets, he was a head shorter than her. His voice was still the voice of a child. She talked to him because he was nice, because he smiled at her with the open face of a kid in love.
He remembered his little hard-on riding his jeans that whole year on the bus. Listening to Rochelle talking, doing impressions of teachers, gossiping about kids in her grade. His prick a spark of light.
Now, as the sun slipped slowly west, and he turned from the cooler with just a can of diet caffeine-free Coke because he was really thirsty and the beer wasn’t working anymore, Cari lingered.
“So, Ryan. How many times have you been to Cleveland? Do you like Cleveland?”
He looked past her. His dudes were slinging sacks. Some girls stood by the grill. A little lapdog zipped past and one of them scooped it up. This house belonged to one of those girls, but he couldn’t remember which one. “Yeah. I like it.” Duh. Though he’d only been up there twice, and one of those times was just to drive his uncle to the Cleveland Clinic.
Cari waited for Ryan to say more. She made him kind of sick—he couldn’t believe he put his dick in it. She must have wanted more because she always gave him that look—even though she was with his dude. A look like the thirsty clerks in the cell phone store where Ryan worked. Ryan kept his cool around customers, and he did better than his needy associates.
He adjusted his sunglasses. “Whose house is this?”
“What house.” She knit her brow and shook her head.
“Here. Where we are now. I know I should know, but I forget.” He put his hand to the back of his neck where a drop of sweat slipped down. “One of those girls, right?”
“Jenn. Jenn’s house. Her parents’ house. We come here all the time, Ryan.” She rolled her eyes and pulled out a pack of Misty slims. Maybe she didn’t roll her eyes, but it seemed like it.
He nodded and looked off. She didn’t have to be a bitch about it. Sure, we partied here, but we were always here all at once, right?
Ryan had been cyber-stalking Rochelle. So, she was a mom in her mid-thirties. But she still seemed arty. No, not arty, that’s a word his mom would use. Bohemian. She was in some kind of band. She posted paintings of lions and moons. Bohemian.The word felt good in his mouth—it was something secret—linens and incense and secret sexual positions. Bohemian.
“What?” Cari shifted her hips.
He felt blood fill his face. She must have been watching his mouth. “What. What. Nothing.” He walked past her. Pushed past her. The late afternoon sun hit his eyes out the corner of his shades and he staggered: Had he pushed her? No. He felt like pushing her, but he hadn’t. Relief flooded. He had to get out of this sun for a minute. He touched his phone.
His dudes called to him to come over! They were going to smoke a bowl in the garage. But there was a sting in his eyes like sweat. He turned away, had to get out of the light, into the house. He avoided eye contact on his way to the bathroom.
His image above the bathroom sink. The quiet in the house was loud. For just a flash, his face crumbled like a baby about to burst into tears, but then recovered. Solidified. The air-conditioning was powdery soft, soft like the dusty blue toilet paper and cushy toilet seat cover. All of it too much and too monochromatic. His mouth felt full of lint. It wasn’t hot enough for air conditioning. Maybe it was, but it was too cold in here. The cold air hurt his feet. What was happening to him? He’d lost his shit out there for a minute.
Cari—in her overly large t-shirt with the cartoon character. It was supposed to be a sponge, but always looked to Ryan like a block of cheese, it’s eyes dumb and gaseous. Cari—when they’d fucked, she hadn’t taken off her shirt. It was a better shirt, black and tight—but he remembered in a flash that she wouldn’t let him peel it off. Her lips went tight as she kept it down. How did he remember that, after all the shots they’d done and with only the dim street light coming in through the bedroom window?
He turned on the water. Someone knocked.
“Just a minute.”
“What?”
“Occupied.”
No response. Had he yelled? Did he sound pissed?
Rochelle had responded to his long Facebook message. He’d been confident enough to confide his childhood crush to her: ha ha, boy I sure had a crush on you back then! How are ya?
She’d said that she’d liked him a lot, too. Ryan looked up her husband. He was black. He looked at the man’s picture. His face was hard to read: stoic, military. He wore a shaved head. Ryan had been expecting some bearded hipster, or working class punk guy or something. What did it mean?
His heart beat in his narrow chest. He could chase it. His narrow chest. He never had a hard time getting girls, though. Rochelle had been really cool in her response. She even asked him if he ended up becoming a veterinarian. So, she hadn’t looked at his profile. But she did remember he loved animals, wanted to be a vet.
Ryan was the guy who loved animals and was going to be a vet. Into his twenties, or the slower first half, that’s how he was known. But at the huge state college he partied, just like everyone else, listening to leftover 90’s rock and blowing loans on glass bongs only to shatter them at the worst possible moment on the hard black and white checked linoleum on the tiny dorm floor. Lost at OSU. He didn’t flunk out, but he couldn’t pass organic chemistry, so eventually, he dropped out. All those half semester loads still left, it seemed as if the longer he went, the longer there was left to get a degree, even a worthless general degree. So he came home.
Home to Stow and his older cousin who’d raised him, and the dogs. The dogs’ stink he’d been so used to as a kid—it was just the smell of home. He’d roll with them, grab their skins like a brother, they’d kiss his face, and he’s say, ok ok,cut it out guys but really, the big sea lion mouths lunging toward him made his heart ache.
Returning, he smelled their stink. He washed his hands, after gingerly petting them, and he didn’t get down on the floor with them anymore. His cousin, on disability for morbid obesity, noticed the change. But he was kind enough to say nothing. Ryan hid in a drugstore cologne shield. It felt blue and crisp and carried it’s own nauseating reek of those early fall semesters in Columbus, the big city.
The TV as background noise. Endless company from sarcastic newspeople and bacon hawkers. It was no longer home. The TV was an old big wooden one, a piece of furniture anchoring the living room. One day, not long before he left for good, he tripped over one of the dogs and jammed his finger in the doorway. The hound wiggled her ass and shuffled out of the way. Ryan’s cousin pulled himself away from the flashing primary colors and teeth on the TV—he turned with effort in his chair and said, “Hey Ry, you ok? You hurt?”
Ryan wanted to squeeze his cousin’s face, dig his nails in, close his fat mouth, close his eyes. Then cold shame flashed in his belly and Ryan looked away. “When are you going to get a flat screen—you waiting for the magic polar bear or some shit?”
So, no, he wrote Rochelle that he didn’t end up becoming a vet. Or a vet assistant, or a clerk at Petworld. He didn’t add that he didn’t even love his dogs any more—they literally made him gag. And when he got his own place in this little suburban complex, where everything is single guy quiet, there wasn’t even a fish.
Rochelle asked what do you like to do? What did he do—he had a daughter he didn’t see. He worked at a cell phone store. He went to top 40 bars in shopping plazas and fucked girls like Cari. All he could say was he was moving to Cleveland.
It was a lie—but it became something to do.
The water ran. How long had he been in the bathroom? Someone would think he was taking a shit.
On cue, the door thumped. He popped like a pussy: “Just a minute!”
He opened the door on a little girl with big brown glasses, not the pissed off character he expected. He had to hang on to his nerves.
Outside the sun hit the grass too hard. He heard, from a distance, his dude say, “dude.”
He didn’t turn, felt a sweat bee in his sleeve, wiggled his shoulder.
It was as if he couldn’t see any of them clearly anymore. It was his sinuses, making his head feel stuffy and weird. He saw his dude charging at him from across the yard, Cari behind him, pulling his arm. Everything seemed farther away than it probably was. He saw the guys and girls near the picnic table with the plastic green cloth by the skinny crabapple tree. He knew there were baked beans with bacon and potato salad and two of the girls wore crocs, those big plastic shoes he didn’t understand. He knew there was some music coming out of some little speakers in the grass, but he couldn’t tell if it was country or hip hop or metal: lazy whole notes of some instrument that could have been a guitar, or synthesizer or even a voice.
The sky—something about the sun. The weird angle of the sun made his head feel like a mushroom whose cap is slightly separated from its stem. It hurt and it was scary. He wanted to ask the others if they’d ever seen the sun at an angle like that before: something was wrong with the sun.
He turned then, and started walking away, down the hill, not running.
Did Rochelle think he was a creeper? Rochelle laughing in that younger sun, the same sun, but not so runny and white. Rochelle with her blue spiral notebook, a face carved into the cover. An old man, or woman, a face like wood grain, carved hard during long class days. The bridge of the nose gone over so much that white showed through the black ink.
Did she think he was rapey? He written, “I’d crushed on you hard, lol.” The words: crush, hard, the qualifying lol, did they make him sound like a creep?
But there she was on Facebook—her face rising up, and there was a picture he’d taken! From back in the day: her arms out, looking at him with her head cocked, flirtatious, some third party had posted it—he remembered grabbing some girl’s camera. And there was Rochelle now, her hair a shade darker, her neck just a little thicker, but beautiful, tending a baby, and why was it so strange to think, we could just slip out and have a drink and marvel at—the possibility of knowing each other across this divide.
“Dude.”
This time there was a vibration—Ryan slid his hand in his pocket.
The hit to the side of his face registered a second after contact was actually made.
Stars, light and meat. The earth rushed up and slapped the left/back of his body: hip, occipital bone, then ear, shoulder blades. And there was a brief expansive void – time taking a swallow, silence and then the noise, people around him on either side.
A voice, his voice: something was supposed to happen, something should have happened, why didn’t anything happen, and then, blocking out the scene unfolding in real life, images rose up from his mind, filling his eyes: of Rochelle laughing, her frizzy hair whipped into and out the little rectangular window of the bus, the heat in his lower belly, the primary colors throbbing from the ear buds of their Walkmen.
And then he saw his baby girl, suddenly, his baby—he was there when they held up the baby pulsing blue and pink and wet with vernix—she turned her black almond eyes to him, opened her mouth and howled.
The hit hadn’t even seemed to come from Matt, but it must have. That’s the only thing that made sense. Ryan, still on the grass, craned his neck forward as his body closed in defense like a pill bug, and he saw dudes holding Matt back, and Cari looking not proud but ashamed, her face in the shadows of her hand. Matt tried to break free because he was supposed to, but his face was slack, worried.
All the shit talk they’d talked over the years: punch that little bitch in the nuts when you see him, he’s gonna have my crusty dick in his mouth, if I see that punk-ass bitch, I’m gonna make him wish his daddy were still sticking it up his ass: for all the talk of all the nights of shit-talking, none of these thirty-something bros had ever been in a fight.
Ryan sat up, hands trembling. The people: he looked side to side and didn’t recognize them, some guys and girls he knew sure, his friends, but he didn’t make eye contact. Their support felt like shame, as if they were pulling his pants down.
“Dude!” said Matt as he pulled away from the guys holding him back, took a couple steps toward Ryan, still on the ground but sitting up somehow, then turned and stormed off. Didn’t run away, but walked off pissed. Didn’t need to specify as to whether he was pissed with Ryan, Cari or himself because his walk was general: no regret, but no pride in the act. Cari ran after him. More material for their relationship.
Ryan looked around. A girl, Jenn, was asking if he was ok, did he want a paper towel or some water? His hand was to his mouth and it came away wet with blood. He couldn’t answer. Did not know the right thing: to take comfort? When all he wanted was to blow it away, make like it never happened. He looked at her mouth. She held her eyes and mouth set in concern, but the corners of her lips were twitching up in pleasure. She couldn’t help herself. Something was happening, here in the yard.
“I feel like I should know you, but I don’t,” he said to her.
“Oh my god,” she turned to a girl with short hair, spiky bangs and short shorts. “Julie – he’s had a concussion.”
Right. Ryan knew. Julie was a nurse. “No—I know you’re Jenn. But I don’t know if we just met this summer at parties, or if your friends with dude, or if we’ve ever had a conversation, or why you’re here—why are you here?”
“Ryan. You’re moving to Cleveland. You met me three years ago at Rob’s. We’re here cause it’s Friday. We’re here to give you a send-off.”
Ryan stood up and walked away from her, after letting her hand drop, both their hands limp like ghost hands.
“Plus, it’s my folks’ house!” She said after him.
They stopped calling and let him go. He walked through the grassy dip between houses, what was once called a side yard in cities where yards were scrappier, not flowing verdant green, fertilized and caressed like here. Someone’s parents’ house, even though they were all grown ass men and women. He remembered his phone, and pulled it out. The text was just from his dude at work.
Three weeks later Ryan stood on the upper level of the James Garfield Mausoleum at Lakeview Cemetery on the east side of Cleveland. It was a squat castle tinged black. He looked out over the blue sky and orange trees, red trees of Cleveland. From there he could see downtown skyscrapers folded into the distance, and to the right, the vast lake. Jolly graves poked through clean grass that would soon enough be dirty with winter. Behind him on the stone floor of the balcony, an old man sat on a blanket. Ryan turned to the old man, who was picnicking alone. He asked the man if he was from Cleveland.
“No, boss, I’m from Kansas. I been here since the seventies though, early seventies, came out here to work with my cousin. He’s dead now.” The man had a mouth like a shovel and a flannel shirt—cheery blue, like the October sky.
“It’s a good city?”
“Sure enough. Want an apple?” He held up a green waxy apple with a small circular sticker. Ryan waved away the apple, then changed his mind and took it.
“Thank you.” It was good—gushing sweet, sour water. The water of a living thing. The skin gave way to his teeth, and Ryan devoured the fruit. Even this corporate apple that had come from far away, maybe grown under artificial light, that hadn’t had the chance to live an honest, wild life. It was still a life, and life has a taste and he was tasting that life. The water molecules stitched from atoms eternal, had grown up through the tree, passed through to her daughter apple, and now flowed into her son, Ryan Bakan.