The Grown Ups Read online

  Christmas morning/afternoon had been as depressing as a Swedish movie, yet oddly comforting. Sam and Michael had opened the boxes of socks, underwear, and identical Norwegian wool sweaters from their grandparents, along with the cards containing their dad’s checks to them, by the glow of the flickering lights of the television, having abandoned the pretense of a tree. If Michael had looked at Sam even once with any interest Sam would have begged to go to New Hampshire with him the following day. But he didn’t, and instead Sam had spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s in Peter Chang’s basement along with Frankie Cole, Stephen Winters, and Johnny Ross. Each day was a minor variation on the day before.

  Sam wasn’t looking forward to spending three days with his brother. He couldn’t remember if he had agreed to call Michael and tell him that he was coming alone or if his father was supposed to. Either way, Sam was pretty sure Michael wouldn’t be waiting for him at the station. The truth of it was, without their mother, there was no one to remind them that they once shared something other than a fist bump as they passed in the night.

  Michael lived with two other guys in an apartment on the top floor of a five-story building on Benefit Street. After Sam rang the buzzer ten times and no one answered, he went to the sandwich shop on the first floor and spent twenty minutes reading the chalkboard menus filled with sandwiches named for people he didn’t know and whose only similar characteristic was satire. His stomach rumbled from the chips and the soda, so he ordered a Godfather sandwich with the money his father had given him to take Michael out to dinner and sat at a table, hunched over the mound of bread, meat, and cheese, not coming up for air until he was done.

  When he tried the bell again at Michael’s he was surprised to be buzzed in. The paper on which his father had scribbled the address said top floor, number nine. Sam glanced at it before he started up the stairs and then shoved it back into his pocket. He didn’t want to arrive on his brother’s doorstep with a piece of paper pinned to his jacket like a kindergartner.

  The sandwich was heavy in his gut and Sam burped his way up. After the air cleared he discovered he was still hungry. He could never seem to get enough of anything these days. On the top floor he hung a right down a hall that had only three doors, one on each side and one at the end. For a place that housed college students, the halls were surprisingly quiet. He’d expected something out of the movies: open doors, music blaring, guys walking around in their boxers.

  The door to his brother’s apartment swung open before Sam had even raised his hand to knock, and then Michael stood before him in bare feet, shorts, and a T-shirt. It was March and cold outside, but waves of heat snaked out the open door around Sam’s ankles.

  “Sammy,” Michael said casually, as if they were used to talking to each other. He turned and Sam followed him over the threshold, closing the door behind him. Sam was careful not to follow too close, not wanting to seem eager, the last puppy picked from the pound.

  Michael stopped in the center of the large living room. One entire wall was taken up by stereo equipment, shelves of record albums, two turntables, speakers and receivers, and several pairs of headphones. On the opposite wall was an old red couch that dipped in the middle, covered with a tapestry.

  “Your bed,” Michael said when he saw Sam looking.

  Sam shrugged out of his backpack and his coat and tossed them on the floor by the couch.

  “You might want to take that off.” Michael pointed to the sweater Sam was wearing, a stretched-out navy blue pullover that Bella Spade once told him made his eyes look really blue. “In case you didn’t notice, it’s like Africa in here.” He shrugged. “That’s what you get for living on the top floor in a student slum.”

  Sam did as Michael suggested and peeled the sweater off and added it to his pile. Under the sweater he was wearing the Smelly Eddie’s T-shirt that was so old it was nearly transparent. Smelly Eddie’s had been a bar that their parents had frequented during college. When their parents had been together they liked to tell the story about how Hunt won this T-shirt in a game of quarters the night he met Elizabeth. Sam had rescued the shirt from the bottom of a pile of laundry his mother had left to mold in the basement. When his dad saw him wearing it he averted his eyes but said nothing. Michael, however, narrowed his eyes and raised an eyebrow at Sam, as if to say, seriously?

  Sam crossed his arms over his torso and waited for the tour to continue. Kitchen, bathroom, and three bedrooms. Michael’s was farthest down the hall with its own separate entrance. The light in the room was dim, with one small window placed high to the left, like it was trying to escape. The only thing illuminated was the desk, which was just as well, considering the floor was ankle deep in everything else. The surface of Michael’s desk was covered in textbooks and notepads split open with edges curled, stacked one atop the other in winding piles, pencils and pens cradled in the cracks. Tacked to the wall above his desk were multicolored index cards, at least fifty of them, maybe more, each covered in scrawl that already looked like a doctor’s handwriting.

  Michael flopped down on his mattress. The sheets were bunched up in a ball at the end of the bed. There were stains all over the exposed mattress like tiny archipelagoes. Sam waded through clothes and books to the desk chair and sat down, continuing to look around. Several large, abstract paintings hung on the wall opposite the bed, along with a pencil sketch of what looked like Michael’s profile. Michael’s bike leaned against the back door.

  “I signed you up for a tour of campus tomorrow,” Michael said.

  “Oh,” Sam said. “I guess I thought you were showing me around.”

  “I have a heavy load all day tomorrow. Fridays are my worst day, I told Dad that. But we’ll hang out tomorrow night. Okay?”

  Sam nodded. Hang out? Them?

  Michael sat up and leaned back on his elbows. “Do you want to go to Brown?”

  “I don’t know.” Sam shifted in the chair. “This was Dad’s idea. He wanted me to get started.”

  “Get started? You should be making the decisions now on what colleges you want to apply to . . . get started?” Michael shook his head.

  “Hey, don’t blame me. Dad’s been a little preoccupied, okay?” Sam and Michael had never talked directly about their mother leaving, about Mr. Epstein and the pictures of their mother, and definitely not about Suzy Epstein. Michael had been at Johns Hopkins that entire summer and then he went right to college. Sam had no idea how or when he found out about everything that happened, and he never thought to ask.

  Michael sighed and looked across the room at the paintings. He looked like their mother, the same coloring, the same eyes and cheekbones. Slowly he turned his head to look at Sam. “Your grades? Are they good?”

  His grades barely landed Sam in solid B territory. “I guess.”

  “So that’s a no. What about your guidance counselor? What does he say?”

  “She says that the CUNY and the SUNY schools are great.”

  “Ah,” Michael said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a state school,” Sam said defensively. Truthfully, he had no vested interest in the CUNY or SUNY schools, but Michael’s sounding like a self-important junior at an Ivy League college was starting to annoy him.

  Michael shrugged and rubbed at his eyes. “You can still take the tour.”

  “You mean I don’t have ‘state school’ written all over my face?”

  Michael ignored him as he rolled off the bed and went to the doorway. “I have to study. I’m making coffee; if you want some it’ll be here.” He nodded his head in the direction of the kitchen before he disappeared.

  Sam met Michael’s roommates and had a cup of coffee even though he hated it, and then hung out on the couch staring at the wall of albums while Michael studied in his room. After a while he picked up a paperback from a pile next to the couch and leafed through the curled, damp pages. He was surprised that he became as absorbed as he did in the story of the Russian officer and his family. He was startled
out of the book when Michael reappeared wearing a coat.

  “Hey—I’m going out and I might not be back tonight. Why don’t you go sleep in my bed?” He nodded at the book in Sam’s hands. “You a Tolstoy fan?”

  Sam nodded even though he had no idea what Michael was asking. Where was Michael going all night? What happened to studying?

  “Oh, and I called Dad and told him you got here safely. So don’t worry about that.”

  Sam nodded again and felt stupid that he hadn’t thought about calling. Would he ever think about the right things? He pictured their father in his chair by the television, chopsticks poised over a carton of black bean chicken. No triumph tonight, that was for sure.

  Michael went back toward the bedrooms. Sam heard a door slam and realized that Michael must have left from his room. When Sam got down there Michael’s bike was gone, but he had tossed a sheet over his mattress and straightened the pillows. Sam almost felt as if he cared.

  Sam was awake when Michael came back. It was too hot in the room to sleep and he had stripped down to his boxers. He was weighing how much he wanted a glass of cold water against his feeling too lazy to get up and get it when the back door opened and a bike tire appeared, followed by his brother.

  “You’re missing something,” Sam said as Michael leaned the tire against the wall without explanation and shrugged out of his jacket. Without acknowledging Sam he plopped down on the edge of the mattress and dropped his head into his hands. “You okay?” Sam asked.

  “Fucking exhausted, my eyes are on fire.”

  “Too bad, I’d rather be exhausted from fucking.” Sam chuckled at his lame attempt at a joke.

  Michael lifted his head and twisted around to look at him. “Are you a moron?”

  “It was a pun. A play on words. You know, wouldn’t most people want to be exhausted from fucking? Not just fucking exhausted?”

  “What are you talking about?” Michael ran his hands through his hair and slowly stood up. From the look on his face Sam could tell Michael was not even going to comment on what he’d said.

  Maybe Sam was a moron. He’d had sex with Bella Spade after the winter dance when she told him his eyes looked blue when he wore that navy sweater. It had been the first time for him, but he wasn’t so sure about Bella. If he was to believe Johnny Ross, Johnny had had sex with her in the deserted pool house at the club in ninth grade and again the summer after tenth grade. He thought that piece of information wouldn’t bother him, but it did.

  Before Bella, Sam had considered himself only a semi-virgin because of Suzie Epstein. They might not have had sex, but they had done everything but. As it was, that night with Bella they did it twice and he could have gone again and again if they’d had more condoms. Sam would have liked to experience exhaustion from fucking, but he wasn’t about to tell Michael any of this.

  “Jesus Christ, Sam.” Michael was staring at Sam strangely. “I have class at nine. I’m going to take a shower. Your tour is at noon and meets on the steps of the library near the admissions building. If you want food you can take whatever you want from the middle shelf in the refrigerator, that’s mine, and the cabinet next to the stove without a handle, also mine.” As he talked he grabbed clothes and a towel and left the room.

  Sam realized his boxers had formed a tent over his dick and he batted it down out of embarrassment. Obviously that was the reason for Michael’s annoyance. Well, nothing he could do about it now. He closed his eyes, remembering Bella Spade that night. They had gone to the high school winter dance in their usual group, attending mostly as a joke. They had made screwdrivers in Peter’s basement before they left, and they were buzzed but not drunk, as they walked through the streets. The houses were already lit up for Christmas even though it was only the first week of December. Sam had been surprised when Bella caught up to him and slipped her hand into his jacket pocket, curling her cold fingers around his. There had been something so innocent about that gesture, reminding Sam of the games they used to play in the closet during sixth grade. Her breath had smelled like the licorice they had been eating moments before. He had kissed her on the cheek and they had held hands for the remaining minutes in silence, letting everyone think what they wanted when they emerged from the closet.

  What happened after the dance was unexpected, but also somehow not at all. Sam was attracted to Bella for sure, and she was always so nice to him. He noticed her sometimes in the library writing in a marbled composition book that she carried with her everywhere. But she had also been Suzie’s best friend. It was hard for him to see her and not think of Suzie. As far as he knew, none of them had heard from her. In the beginning the girls still talked about her like she was still around, but that eventually stopped. He hadn’t bothered writing Suzie even though he really wanted to ask her why she had given him the photographs like she did. Sam realized he already knew the answer: Suzie hadn’t cared for him at all. The private humiliation was enough. He didn’t need written confirmation.

  Still, that night after the dance, it had seemed stupid for Sam to stay away from Bella because of what had happened the summer he was fifteen years old. No one even knew about it; it was like it had never happened. Certainly Bella would never have to know.

  Sam sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. If he gave any thought at all to Bella Spade’s mouth and hands he was a goner. He needed to get up, get dressed, eat, and then go find the fucking library and admissions office. It was the least he could do for his father.

  Almost everyone in the tour group was with one or, in most cases, both of their parents. From where Sam was standing, alone, the parents seemed to want to go to Brown way more than the kids. The tour guide, Carrie, a junior English major, did her best to answer every one of the parents’ questions, and made it seem like she hadn’t answered these same exact questions a million times before.

  The last part of the tour was cookies and coffee and informal discussion with some other Brown students. Carrie caught Sam at the cookie tray, his hand hovering over the Milanos. “Only one per prospective student,” she said from behind his left shoulder just as Sam snatched up a handful of cookies.

  Sam dropped the cookies back onto the tray before he heard her laugh. “Oh man, that was way too easy.” He felt his face go red and then she nudged his shoulder like they were old friends. “I’m sorry. I am so tired of doing tours today.” She wriggled her jaw from side to side. “My mouth hurts.” Sam gave her a sidelong glance and picked the cookies back up. She laughed again. “Where are you from?”

  “New York.”

  “Is your lifelong dream to come to Brown?”

  Sam paused, trying to figure out how not to sound like he’d never get in, not in a million years, and she said, “I’m teasing again.” She picked a cookie off the tray and studied it before she nibbled an edge. “I’m just the tour guide working for my work-study dollars. Not admissions.”

  “My brother goes here, so . . .” He shrugged.

  “Who is your brother?”

  “Michael Turner.”

  “No kidding? Why didn’t you say something?” She squinted at Sam through a fringe of bangs that fell into her eyes. “Then you must know Kate.”

  Sam frowned and shook his head.

  “His girlfriend?” Carrie said. “She’s one of my roommates. He must talk about Kate. They’ve been together for at least a year by now.”

  “Michael talks?” It slipped out before Sam thought about it. Michael had had a girlfriend for a year?

  Carrie laughed. “You are funny.” She nibbled some more of the cookie. “So I’ll probably see you tonight. Then you can meet Kate. You’re coming with Michael, right?”

  “Uh, sure, yeah. Tonight.” Michael had said the previous day that they were hanging out, so maybe he was planning on telling Sam later that they were going to a party, and about his girlfriend.

  Carrie popped the rest of the cookie into her mouth. “Okay, well, my tour duties are officially over. I’m just going to hand out
these info packets to the parental units and then I’m out of here.” She put her backpack down on the floor and pulled out a sheaf of folders with the Brown University logo, offering one to Sam before she wandered away. He watched her calves in diamond-patterned tights squeeze and release as she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet in her scuffed black Doc Martens. Then he turned back to the cookies and swiped half a dozen off the tray and a can of Coke. It wasn’t until he was back at Michael’s apartment that he realized he had left the folder she had given him on the table.

  Their father went about the business of divorcing their mother like he did everything else: silently and away from the house. He worked as an attorney for a large firm in Manhattan. He never talked about his work, and Sam’s childhood memories of him consisted of a bulging briefcase and progressively bad eyesight.

  Sam found out about the divorce one night after dinner. His father was at the sink; it was his turn to wash because Sam had cooked. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow and suds clung to the hair on his forearms. Sam was hunched over the table, pretending to do his English homework and hoping he could sweet-talk Mindy Stevens into letting him see her vocabulary paragraphs, when his father started talking about things being official.

  Sam looked up and tapped his pencil on the table. “Huh?”

  “I just want you to know that you are mine. Officially.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I have custody of you. Your mother has visitation.”

  Sam tapped his pencil again. Since his mother left, there had been several awkward phone calls. So far he had refused to join her for the meal she kept offering to buy him.

  “She has you for a week in the summer and one weekend a month, if you want.”

  “And if I don’t?”