Roo: What happened?
Hutch: They just did some ugly stuff to me is all. And really, it was for the best.
Roo: Why?
Hutch: Because I was cured. I realized the popular people weren’t nice or funny or great-looking. They just had power, and they actually got the power by teasing people or humiliating them—so people bonded to them out of fear.
Roo: Oh.
Hutch: I didn’t want to be a person who could act like that. I didn’t want to ever speak to any person who could act like that.
Roo: Oh.
Hutch: So then I wasn’t trying to be popular anymore.
Roo: Weren’t you lonely?
Hutch: I didn’t say it was fun. (He bites his thumbnail, bonsai dirt and all.) I said it was for the best.
After Grandma’s funeral, and after Hanson went home to crawl into whatever hole he lives in, Dad had to clear through Grandma’s things and field condolence notes from all her friends. One afternoon, he came home from walking Polka-dot with tears streaming down his face.
The next day I found him weeping into a pot of miniature roses. And from then on it was pretty typical to have him sobbing into his salad at dinner, or to find him lying on the couch in the morning, insomniac, staring at the ceiling fan with a quivering lip.
Mom got progressively impatient with him—she’d say things like “Kevin, if you have to sob, do it in the bedroom. I’m trying to write an e-mail here” and “Kevin, blow your nose like an adult human being, won’t you? There’s no reason there should be snotty tissues on the table while I’m trying to eat my kiwi.”
“He was always overly attached to her,” Mom said one day when she was driving me to my job at the Woodland Park Zoo. Polka was sticking his ginormous head out the back window of the Honda.
“She was his mother,” I said. “She died.”
“Yeah,” said Mom. “But Kevin has always been something of a mama’s boy. That’s why he’s such a wreck now that she’s gone. Overattachment.”
“Shouldn’t people be attached?” I asked. “Isn’t that the point of human relationships, to be attached?”
“Well, there’s such a thing as too much,” she said, pulling off the freeway. “Still”—she checked her eye makeup in the rearview mirror—“he’ll get better in a couple days, I bet. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
But I was.
And Dad didn’t get better in a couple of days. He got a lot worse.
1 Roly-poly: A roly-poly is a bug, technically a woodlouse, that curls up in a hard little ball if you touch it. But what I mean is, Hutch is a social outcast.
2 In case you care: Grizzly Man and Super Size Me. We watched a bunch of others, too, but those were the best.
Agony and Love Poems!
a video clip:
Noel sits before an outdoor table at the coffee shop down the road from Roo’s house. In front of him is a sesame bagel with cheddar cheese. His favorite.
Noel: Whenever you’re ready.
Roo: (behind the camera) So. How do you define … friendship?
Noel: (bitterly) My dad says it’s something that gets in the way of a business deal.
Roo: Ag.
Noel: Yeah. Well. That’s probably why he’s divorced.
Roo: No kidding.
Noel: And my brother Claude says friendship is a method of castration that doesn’t use a sharp object.
Roo: Huh?
Noel: Like, friendship is a word girls use when they want to turn down guys. As in, “Oh, I can’t go out with you because I’m afraid of what it will do to our friendship.”
Roo: Oh.
Noel: Or in Claude’s case, guys use it to turn down guys.
Roo: But how do you define it?
Noel: A lot of people see friends as something you have on Twitter or Facebook or wherever. If someone wants to read your updates and you want to read their updates, then you’re friends. You don’t ever have to see each other. But that seems like a stupid definition to me.
Roo: Yeah.
Noel: Although on the other hand, rethink. Maybe a friend is someone who wants your updates. Even if they’re boring. Or sad. Or annoyingly cutesy. A friend says “Sign me up for your boring crap, yes indeed”—because he likes you anyway. He’ll tolerate your junk.
Roo: You have a lot of friends.
Noel: No, I don’t.
Roo: You do. You know everyone at school. You get invited to parties.
Noel: I get invited to parties, yeah. And I know people. But I don’t want their updates.
Roo: Oh.
Noel: And I sincerely doubt they want mine.
Roo: I want your updates.
Noel: I want your updates. (He looks down, bashfully.) I do. I want all your updates, Ruby.
Roo: Trust me. You don’t want them all.
Noel: I do. Even the boring ones.
Roo: It’s not the boring ones that are the problem. It’s the crazy ones.
Noel: (shakes his head disbelievingly)
Roo: I have some very deeply mental updates, Noel. You don’t need to be around for those.
Noel: You’re not mental. You think you’re mental. That’s a different thing.
Roo: Isn’t that mental?
Noel: Can I have the updates, please? I said I wanted all the updates.
Roo: (laughing) Fine. Your funeral.
Noel was leaving Seattle for most of August. He was headed to New York City to stay with his brother Claude and Claude’s boyfriend Booth on the Lower East Side. He had gone last year and the year before, too. He and Claude were really close.
Noel talked about his brother like he was golden. Smart and brave. Comfortable in school or in nightclubs or biking the dangerous streets of New York City. A sharp dresser. I think Claude treated Noel like a grown-up, even though they were almost four years apart. Made him feel like his opinion mattered.
Booth and Claude were a funny couple, Noel said. Booth was bitter and probably partied more than was good for anybody, while Claude was quieter: idealistic, a dreamer. Still, they had been each other’s real live boyfriend since the end of their freshman year of college. Now they were juniors and had a four-bedroom apartment with a bunch of fellow students in a converted factory, living in what Noel described as “domestic bliss and squalor.”
Noel was my real live boyfriend, so when he got to New York he called me on his cell from places like the Guggenheim, a cheap dumpling place in Chinatown, a flea market in Chelsea—leaving messages on our machine saying he was thinking of me.1 His e-mails were full of rhymes he made up, links to silliness on the Internet, descriptions of the city.
Number of languages heard on the street yesterday: 8. English, Spanish, Portuguese (I think), Russian, French, German, Japanese, Chinese.
Number of miles Booth and I biked yesterday, going to the Met and home again: probably 10.
Number of pizza slices consumed while walking, since arrival: 6.
Minutes spent staring at the water lily painting in the MoMA: 13.
Number of Spider-Man-shaped ice creams bought from the truck on the corner of Broadway and Prince: 1.
Number of guys actually dressed as Spider-Man I saw while eating the ice cream: 1.
(I love New York.)
(But I miss you.)
Noel
Then one day, a day like any other as far as I knew, he didn’t pick up when I called his cell.
Later that day, he still hadn’t replied to my last two e-mails.
Next day, he didn’t answer his cell or call me back.
And the day after that, still nothing.
The day after that was my seventeenth birthday, and I was sure Noel would call, or a present would arrive, or something. My parents gave me a stack of mystery novels and a new Speedo for swim team, but because of Mom’s raw food obsession, there wasn’t any cake. There were dehydrated banana-barley cookies with candles.
r /> I couldn’t even laugh at them.
Hutch drove over in the evening and brought me a cupcake.
I cried because it wasn’t from Noel.
Why hadn’t he called?
He knew when my birthday was.
It was so strange, his sudden absence from my life.
The day after my birthday, a short e-mail made everything wonderful again, if only for a moment:
I miss you
like a limb
like a leg I’ve lost
in a war, maybe
in an accident, maybe
in a tragedy.
But I can still feel my leg,
pumping with blood,
itching to move.
I can still feel it,
so that I think it is there,
still part of my body,
and when I wake up in the morning
I am surprised to remember it’s gone.
Then I am sad,
and disabled without it.
I limp through my day,
off balance,
needing it.
He’d sent me a love poem.
A weird and bloody love poem, but a love poem.
I tried to write him back a poem, but I couldn’t. I didn’t feel inspired, the way Noel must have: biking the streets of New York, seeing amazing paintings, going to the theater, eating hot pretzels on the street. So I wrote back, but I just wrote about regular stuff. I told him about my birthday presents, and joked about the foul barley cookies, and told about Hutch and the cupcake.
Actually: I’m not telling you the whole truth.
I was still mad he hadn’t called me back, I guess. And hadn’t answered my e-mails. I’d spent the last few days wondering if he’d call, wondering why he didn’t call.
So I was angry.
Even though I loved the poem.
Even though it had made me happy for a few minutes.
What I wrote back was meant to make him feel guilty. For my lonely birthday. The sadness of no cake. The fact that Hutch had shown up and done what Noel should have done. I wrote it all as if I were cheerful as could be—just “Let me tell you this funny story about yesterday”—but all the cheer was fake. Secretly, I wanted him to read the e-mail and notice he’d forgotten my birthday and feel horrible and make it up to me.
Later, I would wonder, over and over, what would have happened if I’d written Noel a poem back.
Or even an honestly angry note.
If, instead of being fake and cheerful to cover up how hurt I was, I had been raw and true and told him everything that was in my heart.
Anyway, he didn’t write back.
For one day. Two. Three.
I called.
He still wasn’t picking up his phone.
Then one day, another e-mail:
Sixteen days (I’ve been gone)
Plus eight more days (till I come back).
That’s twenty-four days,
A ridiculous number of hours,
an insane number of minutes,
when every minute lasts an hour
and every hour lasts a day.
The clocks have nearly stopped themselves.
No batteries will speed them up.
No power boost, no winding.
They hardly move, these clocks.
Watching the hands go round is like
watching someone’s blood drip onto the street
while you wait for an ambulance
and wait
and wait
and the blessed siren does not sound.
The clocks will hardly move
and hardly move
and hardly move
Until
I
am
home.
Maybe when I see you they will start again.
Oh.
Wow.
That.
For me.
How can you be mad at a guy who writes you a poem like that?
Most people would say you can’t. Noel was so honest on the page. When I first read his words, I felt like he was reaching out to me through them.
Except, when I thought about it later–he wasn’t. Not really.
He loves me! Poemy poem goodness! Romance!
No. If he loved you, he’d call you back.
Maybe his phone broke.
Then he’d e-mail you that his phone broke.
But a poem! Two poems! Romantic poems!
Yeah, but what’s stopping him from writing you back about Hutch’s going-away party? He needs to write back about that. A real live boyfriend would write back about that.
Yeah. That’s true.
He’s not writing about you, anyway. He’s writing about phantom limbs and clocks. The poems could be about anyone.
In a way, it’s like he’s writing to an idea of some ideal Ruby who’s not really the same as the Ruby who exists.
Yeah. Because the Idea of the Ideal Ruby loves the poems and feels fulfilled, but the Ruby Who Exists really wants to talk to him about Hutch’s party.
Shouldn’t the Ruby Who Exists not be so demanding and just be thankful for the poems?
But when he doesn’t call me back I feel insecure!
He wrote you poems!
But he hasn’t called.
But he wrote you poems!
But he hasn’t called.
And so on. I was driving myself even more insane than on an ordinary day.
Finally, I just planned the party for Hutch without any input from Noel, and tried to go about my life ignoring the shaky, needy feeling in the center of my chest. I only allowed myself to call Noel’s cell once a day.
He never picked up.
At some point I stopped leaving messages.
1 I missed his calls because I am the last person on the planet without a cell phone. My parents insist that if I want one I have to pay for it. But I got the video camera instead.
Distraction Caused by a Bare Chest!
a video clip:
Finn Murphy—barista, soccer stud-muffin, Meghan’s boyfriend—stands behind the counter at the B&O Espresso, wearing an apron over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His light blond hair has grown out a bit from his crew cut, and he smiles shyly.
Roo: (behind the camera) You ready?
Finn: Unless a customer comes in.
Roo: I’ll be quick. So, what’s your definition of love?
Finn: Oh. Ah. Love is trust, I think.
Roo: How so?
Finn: Love is when you give someone else the power to destroy you, and you trust them not to do it.
Roo: Ag.
Finn: Why do you say ag?
Roo: What if they do destroy you?
Finn: You have to trust that they won’t.
Roo: But what if they do? Was it love, then?
Finn: I don’t know. I guess if you trusted them not to, then what you felt was love, yeah.
Roo: But what if they didn’t destroy you for a while, and then all of a sudden they did destroy you? Was it love for them, before they suddenly went all destructive?
Finn: (laughing) What?
Roo: What about the other person? If they start destroying you, does that mean they never loved you?
Finn: Ah. Maybe?
Roo: Or could they be destroying you by accident, because they love you but don’t understand you?
Finn: Ruby—
Roo: Or do you measure love by how they felt in the trust department? Like, they could totally destroy you, but they still loved you because they trusted you not to destroy them, and that’s what love is.
Finn: Can this be over now?
Roo: Are you sure we should be giving anyone the power to destroy us?
Finn: Ruby.
Roo: What?
Finn: Can this please be over?
Roo: Why?
Finn: I have an unsold piece of yesterday’s dobosh torte in the back. You can have it for free if this can be over.
One day, while al
l that badness was happening with Noel not answering his phone, Gideon Van Deusen showed up shirtless on the dock of our houseboat. I was helping in the greenhouse, because Meghan was off with Finn as usual and Dad was seriously behind in photographing his summer blooms for the newsletter. Instead of working, he was moping around all day saying stuff like: “My mother always kept her kitchen sink clean.” And “My mother will never get to see this year’s gardenias.”
I was trying to make a short video for his blog (Container Gardening for the Rare Bloom Lover had finally gone digital) that would rotate 360 degrees through his greenhouse, enabling all six of his maniacally loyal fans to have the full-surround experience of the “plant haven” he has been writing about. Hutch was hiding the junky old CD player and various other unsightly things that would mar the beauty of the shot, and I had just stepped out to film the exterior when I heard a speedboat putt-putt up to the dock.
Gideon hopped out wearing nothing but a pair of board shorts and a bead choker. His dark brown hair was wet and hung over his face. I had never seen him without a shirt on and for a second I didn’t recognize him. Maybe it was the wet hair and maybe it was the bead choker of my seventh-grade fantasies. Or maybe it was just his extremely nice-looking bare chest. In any case, I thought: It’s Tommy Hazard.
The surfer-boy version of Tommy Hazard, all grown up.
I must be hallucinating.
But then he said, “Ruby, hey. How are ya? We’re nearly out of gas. Isn’t there a station up at the top of the hill?”—and I realized it was Nora’s brother.
“Hi, Gideon,” I said. Meaning: Nice abs. “Yeah, there’s a station. Do you have a can to put the gas in?”
I looked at the boat, where two more shirtless guys were tying up to the dock. They headed toward us, one dark-skinned and slightly heavy with long dreaded hair, one Caucasian and beaky, carrying a presumably empty gas can; both were clearly friends of Gideon’s from Evergreen. I could tell by their sideburns, hemp bracelets and sandaled feet.
“Yeah, we got a can,” said Gideon. “We were wakeboarding in the middle of the lake when I suddenly realized we’re on empty. It didn’t seem safe to try to make it all the way across to fill her up. We might have gotten stranded. So we docked here.”