She peered into her Maybelline compact. The hard-lined eyes, the long jaw, studs in her ear, greasy hair. You’re an ugly fucking cunt, she told herself, face screwed up in a monstrous way.
The sky was an incandescent backdrop, and she felt a physical phenomenon she would never forget. It was a cracking, a separation. She was finally and irreparably removed from the pack, the gang she never understood or belonged to, that she ran with to look right, that she tried to join. You are on your own, kid, she thought, and she could barely catch her breath because there was so much heartbreak to this, such devastation.
But then, after an hour of sitting there and letting this news run through her, she also started to feel—up there on this crest of earth, its tall dead wildflowers tangled with Kleenex and gum wrappers and plastic straws and bird shit—she felt free.
When he gets home, after making milky, distracted small talk with family, and telling everyone Elise had a stomachache, and they pursed their mouths with compassion—Poor thing, I hope she feels better—he finds her on the couch with Buck.
“Well,” he says, uncomfortably. “That sucked.”
Elise is glaring at Geraldo.
“I understand your leaving,” he tries. “I wish we could have handled it differently.”
Elise turns red eyes at him. “You know what sucks? You do.”
She gets up and throws herself on the bed, the headrest vibrating.
After a moment, he approaches, biting his lip, cufflinks winking as he puts hands on hips.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
He lies on the bed, spoons her, kisses her sweaty neck.
Apparently that’s not the right thing to do.
“What are you doing?” she moans, pushing his hand away. “Get offa me.”
She cries, sobbing.
“What?” Jamey asks stupidly.
“What? How come you let me walk out by myself?”
“I didn’t even know what you were mad about!” he tries, his voice shrill.
They’re sitting up now, disheveled and mad.
“You couldn’t feel what those people thought of me?”
“I mean—”
“You didn’t see the way they looked at me? Are you fucking blind?”
“No one said anything but nice things to you, Elise,” he says weakly, without conviction.
Her jaw drops.
Suddenly she’s hitting him—he grabs her wrist and she bites his forearm as hard as she can, tearing his shirt, breaking skin— He manages to contain her, holds her down on the bed, and breathes I’m sorry into her hair, over and over.
“You’re saying I’m crazy,” she weeps.
“You’re not crazy,” he admits. “You’re not.”
“Why would you say that?” she sobs.
“I’m not saying that now, I won’t say it ever again,” he tells her, over and over.
They don’t even eat dinner that night; they just eventually fall asleep. Jamey dreams in a jittery, jagged way, a bandage taped onto his arm. Elise snores, nose stuffed from crying, her eyeliner smeared.
When they wake, they seem hungover though neither drank. He makes breakfast, takes care of her like she has the flu. He watches her eat toast and drink juice, her face swollen, and he asks her what else she needs.
He thinks about an exchange between Bats and a friend once on the salty porch of the Newport house, a conversation he always tried to forget. Jamey was on the other side of the screen door when he overheard Bats say: I didn’t blame Alex at first, she’s a looker. His friend said: Yeah, no offense, Bats, but every good family can use a showgirl or stewardess in the bloodline once a decade, spruce things up. They laughed together. Bats sighed: Truth in that, Harold, truth. Doesn’t mean he had to go marry a Jew.
It’s a dark Saturday, and Elise and Jamey go to the Museum of Natural History.
They gawk at the whale model hanging from the ceiling. A Japanese family tilt their heads back too, exclaiming in their own language, pointing.
A stuffed monkey family stands in a fixed jungle environment, the parents holding their kids’ hands. Elise slings her arm over Jamey’s shoulders and points her lollipop at the world inside the glass.
“Happily ever after.”
In another room, she runs her hand down a bear’s arm. “So soft,” she murmurs.
“Hey you,” snaps a guard. “No touching the animals.”
“Sorry,” she says with aggressively fake contrition, and the guard makes a surly mouth.
Watching her act like that to security guards (and bossy cashiers and cops), Jamey realizes he’s always been nice to these people. But not because he’s nice. Because they’re beneath him, and above him for being beneath him. But Elise is just a dick back if they’re dicks to her.
The gemstones room! Like standing in a jewelry box with black velvet walls, surrounded by rocks chiseled into luxuries. They gape at all the dazzle.
When they come out, it’s raining so hard the drops bounce back up from the sidewalk.
They stand under the awning and watch the city get pummeled, green leaves falling off stems onto the sidewalk, coffee cups floating in the gutter.
“I’m not going back to school,” he says, hands in pockets. He looks at her with derelict glee.
“What?” Elise asks, incredulous.
“Not going back.”
Elise is elated—and crushed. They’ll blame her, and she knows it.
“How long you been thinking about this?” she asks, hands cupped to light a cigarette.
Jamey looks at the sky. “It’s possible I knew before we left New Haven.”
“Well, Christ,” she says gruffly, exhaling, trying not to smile.
When the rain lightens, they jog to a café and drink cappuccinos, and share a slice of coconut cake. They take turns sketching people sitting at nearby tables on napkins, making cartoons of them, furtively studying bunny teeth and heart necklaces and stoned eyes. Outside, a rainbow appears over the Bronx.
On Sotheby’s stationery, Jamey jots a letter to his dad about not going to school. After he mails it, he grins at the Rolodex, the Limoges teacup, the pale blue telephone on his desk, absorbing his decision. I have to do this in stages, he thinks, and even he doesn’t quite know what he means.
He tells Clark he has to run an errand, and ducks into the first bar he sees on leaving, an Irish pub. It’s three in the afternoon, and a construction crew rolls in. Jamey lets their conversations boom around him.
His dimple deepens as he smiles at his beer.
He told Alex he was taking off the semester to restrategize, so his last year’s course load will be calibrated for his HMK “career.”
Jamey had lied with joy. A ruthlessness burns the tallow around his heart. Maybe it’s one way to become honest.
The men collect under a neon-light bow-tie Budweiser sign, and the biggest guy orders a round of Bushmills.
“Give one to this dude over here,” the guy said, pointing a bruised-black fingernail at Jamey. Then to Jamey: “You gotta drink with us, buddy.”