Chapter 6
I arrived at Tony’s that night, expecting to do what I usually did, to sneak around to the side of the house where there was a door that led down to the basement, so Tony’s mom, who worked varied hours as a nurse at the local hospital, wouldn’t be awakened by noise if he had to let me in, however, when I arrived that night, the front door was slightly ajar and the screen door was the only barrier between the inside of the house and the cool night. Walking, up to it, I noticed that some of the lights in the house were on, and I could see Tony through the screen, heading up the front stairs. I clasped the sleeves of my red sweatshirt around my hands as I made my way up the green, wooden steps of the front porch. It was chilly for June evening.
“Tony.” I said as softly as I could, but apparently too softly, because he didn’t seem to hear me. I thought I could hear a television on somewhere in the back of the house, and after a second I figured just so long as I was really quiet, I could probably manage to get in without waking Mrs. Crane, or Cindy, as she often reminded me to call her. I pulled the screen door open, trying as best I could to make sure it didn’t make any creaking noises, using only my fingertips to lead it to a slow close behind me. Then I slipped in and stepped out of my shoes and onto the wooden floor with just my socks, so I wouldn’t make noise on the stairway to the second floor. At that point, I started to creep up the stairs, taking them two at a time, so I would make less noise if it could be avoided and get to the top faster. I could hear Tony as I got further up the stairs and being familiar with the house as I was, it sounded to me as though he was in the upstairs bathroom where door was open down the hall and a dim light shone from inside of it and cast dull shadows onto the hallway floor.
“Oh, God!” I thought to myself. “Please tell me he’s not using the bathroom with the door open.”
I approached the bathroom, soft step after soft step, being extra careful by the creakiest boards, tiptoeing when necessary. I had the wooden boards memorized from having crept around to help Tony find something in the dark one time before while his mom slept in her room, just further down the hall from the bathroom. I braced myself as I got closer, preparing to hold my breath to protect my lungs from the stench I was certain would hit me at any second like a brick wall, and knock me backwards onto my back, immobilized.
“Tony!” I whispered sharply into the dark. “Tony!”
I was more than a little surprised to hear an answer as loud as the one that responded from just inside of the bathroom.
“Yes, dear?” I heard him laugh. “Breaking and entering, eh? You may come in. I’m just in the tub.”
I had started to waltz right around the corner and into the bathroom, when the full sentence he had just uttered registered with me. “Um, no that’s cool. I really don’t need to see that.” I said cracking up, surprised at his openness.
“You know you wanna peek just a little!” He said in a squeaky and fake southern accent, then pretended to giggle girlishly. A white washcloth flew from the dim room, hitting the wall directly opposite the bathroom, before landing dead center on the green rug in the center of the hallway. “Ooops!” He continued in the voice. “Laura, dear, wanna be a peach and grab that for me?”
“Nope, I think I’m good.” I whispered in the hallway, even though it was pretty clear that Mrs. Crane wasn’t even home at this point. I could see her bedroom door completely ajar from my position in the hallway, where the bed was still completely made up. And I knew Tony wouldn’t dare be talking that loudly if she was trying to sleep after one of her practically fifteen hour shifts at the hospital. It was just a habit at this point, that any time we were upstairs, we whispered.
“I’m just drilling some holes for a new shower caddy mom wants to hang on the wall.” He now admitted.
Still suspicious, I came around the corner of the doorway very slowly, keeping my hands close to my face, just in case this was some kind of a joke. But sure enough, as I peered into the dimly lit bathroom, I could see Tony, fully clothed, sitting cross-legged in the bathtub, facing the wall, with a pencil in his hand, making dots on the wall and then appearing to examine them, his face inches from the blue ceramic tiles.
“Told you I was in the tub!” He looked back at me laughing. “Hand me that level on the counter though.”
I grabbed the level and walked up to the tub, pretending I was going to whack him with it before laying it gently at his side in the tub.
“Does that look straight to you?” He asked me. “Because honestly I could give a damn, but I don’t want her having me come all the way back up here to do this again.”
“I think it looks alright.” I scratched my head. It was kind of funny to see my friend doing something productive. Not a scene I was much accustomed to, but I knew he often came back home to do little things such as this for his mom, since his dad had passed away a few years before.
“Good.” He said with a sigh. “Because now when she asks me why it isn’t straight, I’m going to blame you.”
He looked at me solemnly, seriously even, just before the grin crept back onto his face.
“And I’m going to tell her not to hire a bum contractor next time.” I said. “Here, scoot over and let me see.” I motioned with my hands for him to make room, since Mrs. Crane would be seeing it mostly from the angle of sitting down in the tub. I plopped down beside him and examined the dots on the wall, too.
“Straight?” He asked me.
“As Richard Simons,” I answered him, returning the serious look he’d given me a minute before.
“So wrong, but I do like ambiguity!” he said. “You better hope these holes are straight, Hewitt.”
The air coming through the window screen felt heavy upon my face and somewhat in the distance just outside of it, I thought I heard what sounded like the sound of a car door being thrown shut.
Suddenly I could hear someone downstairs coming up the stairs, and then Mrs. Crane’s voice trailing up the stairs.
“Tony?” She called out softly.
“Yep,” he answered back.
“I was just seeing if you were still around here.” She said in a tired voice. “Was that Laura’s car outside too? Is she here?”
Tony and I, still sitting side by side in the tub, without hesitation looked right at each other before shouting back in unison.
“We’re in the tub!”
Mrs. Crane’s airy laugh permeated throughout the house. “That’s alright I like her better than some of the little skanks you used to bring around here.”
After a minute, I turned my heard only to see her standing in the doorway. She was short and stout, nothing like Tony, which had always led me to believe that Tony must have resembled his father. Even his mother’s hair color was much lighter than his. Going simply on looks, mannerisms and sarcastic tendencies aside, it would have been difficult to tell that they were even related. Yes, Tony must take after his father, I had finally settled in my mind one time. Thinking about it, during the many occasions I got to see the two of them together, sometimes caused me to think about my own family. Every now and then, it had caused me to wonder if I looked like my mom. It was probably pretty clear to those who saw our family that I did not resemble my anyone in my household, with my tan skin and dark hair, which in no way resembled my fair complexioned father and stepmother.
During much of high school, I had grown pretty used to looks, from both friends and strangers, which seemed to ask if I was adopted. Stares that seemed to beg me to fill in blanks that I was not interested in filling. It was probably very confusing for those who were unaware of my family situation, those who had not known me before I had moved to Indiana years before…pretty much everyone I knew. I typically referred to my dad’s wife as my mom and her kids as my siblings. Not usually because I legitimately thought of them that way, but more because it was easier to go through than the truth. If people wanted to believe I had been adopted, they could think whatever they wanted as far as I was concerned, just so long as
they minded their own business.
Tony was still examining the dots. “Gee, mom, no privacy whatsoever in this house. Now you see, this is why I moved out.”
She laughed, “Hello, Laura. At least you guys are having an exciting Friday night.”
“Hi Miss Cindy,” I said back. “All we need now is a bottle of tequila and we’ll be in business.”
“Very, nice.” She winked at me.
Tony’s mom had always seemed to like me for some reason. She always made a point of inviting me over for dinner and asking Tony how I was doing if I hadn’t been over for awhile.
“Well, drill those holes pretty soon so it doesn’t sound like a chainsaw massacre after I pop this large aspirin and die for a few hours.” She said yawning. She took off her plain white shoes and placed them by the door before pulling the clip out of her sandy brown hair and turning to make her exit.
“I got you, mom,” Tony made a salute as she left the bathroom and headed down the stairs, probably to get her usual, lethal dosage of aspirin. When Tony and I finally decided that the dots were as straight as we were going to agree upon, he drilled the holes and told me he’d meet me in the basement after he put the drill back in the shed.
I headed down the stairs, as quietly as I could, unsure as to whether or not Mrs. Crane had already passed out for the evening. Tony, following closely behind, finally informed me,
“At this point you could literally crank up a chainsaw and not wake her up.”
I stifled a laugh there in the dark and nodded my head in agreement.
Once we got to the bottom, I made my way to the left and down the set of stairs to the basement as he headed around to the front door to go put the drill back in the shed. I heard him carefully closing the screen door behind him. I sat in the basement, on the big blue couch I was so used to and started flipping through the channels when I noticed my cell phone was blinking. I looked down at it, expecting it to be some wild, nonsensical text from Jolene about nothing. The only kind of messages she really ever sent. I was mildly surprised to see the voicemail icon lit up as I continued halfheartedly flipping through the channels.
“So where’s your boyfriend these days?” Tony asked from behind me, as he reached over my shoulder and set a diet coke can in my hands. He always remembered.
I drank enough diet coke, that summer, to float a small battleship and probably took enough pills to sink one. I was sure my blood was the same consistency as water. It was to the point where I knew that one paper cut alone could cause me to bleed out and die. Between that combination and the endorphins from my long runs, I was surprised I could feel anything anymore. But then again, maybe that was the point.
I popped the can open and leaned further back on the couch. “Don’t know. Don’t care.” I laughed.
Tony laughed as he came around the side of the couch and dropped down right beside me, before lounging back also, with a coke can in his hand. I always thought it was funny that I knew Tony’s usual drink of choice was alcohol, and despite all the stories I had heard and the evidence of cans around his basement, he never really drank in front of me. He always remembered. I always attributed it to one night during the school year when I had gone to walk him back from a party to his apartment after he’d had a long night of partying. He was somewhat tipsy and had called me sometime after midnight one Thursday to ask if I’d mind walking him back so he wouldn’t fall into the street or something in the dark narrow neighborhood he had to walk back through. He’d been so stumbling drunk, he’d seemed like a different person altogether. He was happy and sweet even, but numb to the rest of the world.
It must have brought back memories on a night like that, because the next thing I remember I was talking about mom. Before I knew it, I was going on about a night I hadn’t previously realized that I remembered from childhood. I described, vividly, how she had stumbled around after a heavy night of drinking, and I had helped her to her bed.. I recalled to him how she had stripped off all of her clothes after complaining about how hot the apartment was right before passing out. I laughed lightheartedly, as Tony grew quiet. I’d ended the discussion, the moment I realized it and luckily for me, Tony had never brought up the subject again. Since then, I hadn’t seen him drunk or even hold a beer in his hand. I had long held onto hope that maybe he had been so drunk that night that maybe he didn’t remember the conversation, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he must have remembered it.
“I don’t think so.”
“What?” He looked over at me questioningly, as if to say “How do you not know?”
I just shrugged. “Well, I haven’t called him back in a few days. And I don’t plan on calling him back.” I was looking at the tv, but I caught a side glance at Tony, who was shaking his head laughing. “So it doesn’t look good.”
“Reasonable.” He cracked.
“Well, you’re the one who told me that the power of the relationship lies with whoever cares least, so I’ll let him figure out if we’re still going out anymore. And this way we get around all the usual let’s stay friends bs, that everyone knows is bs.”
I said as I watched the dumb girl in heels go into the beach house, about mid-movie probably, and then as she was followed seconds later, by the chainsaw wielding beast.
Tony nodded his head triumphantly. “I’ve taught you well, grasshopper.”
This was a pretty typical scene of my summer vacation too. Not chainsaws and beasts, but hanging out with Tony. He lived in our college town, in a house that he rented, but since his mom lived in Indianapolis, pretty close to my house, he was usually in town about once or twice a month. We had met through mutual friends a couple of years ago, in Indy. There had been four of us, three guys, which included Tony and then me. We had all been a pretty close group during those awkward, up and down, years. There’s actually a good stretch of my teen-aged years where I can’t remember associating with anyone other than those three.
After the other two had decided to leave Indy after graduation, however, Tony and I had continued to hangout every now and then. We’d watch movies at his house, go for drives, talk, or just in general hangout. He was one of the most laid-back people I’d ever known, and I completely supported his lifestyle. He was tall and skinny, probably right around six feet, with dark-brown hair. He was also always very pale, probably from his obsessive use of sunscreen, which he claimed made his skin softer (which caused me to question his sexuality from time to time). He practically never wore anything other than sweats and some kind of “other people suck” themed t-shirt, unless it was a special occasion of some sort and he always sported a sarcastic or inappropriate comment. Often, people put up a facade to come across as nonchalant, but not Tony. He was founder and president of club IDGAF. During high school, our collective group spent more time in his basement than a classroom. That basement was a memory-filled place for me. Every detail, from the aroma of cigarettes that lingered on the couch, to the chipped paint on the far wall where Jolene had face-planted, one summer before, trying to teach us how to Dougie. We still jokingly referred to it as the incident that may or may not have involved alcohol. Late nights playing Dance Dance Revolution and making fast food runs before it was time to sneak back home, ran through my head sometimes, after everyone else had gone their separate ways. I still had a vase of dried up blue roses from a high school science project that Tony had stayed up half the night helping me with so I wouldn't fail chemistry. Even if Tony and I were the only two who still made a habit of hanging around the old place anymore, I knew I would never forget learning to dance right before my high junior prom, or how at the end of the night we all got back and fell asleep on the couch watching horror movies until the next day...memories of moments I always wished I could go back to.
“Weren’t you like going steady with that pothead or some crap like that, I heard?” Tony asked me.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, for like two weeks maybe, if even that, I guess. Who says going steady anymore???
?
He just smirked, “What did he do?”
“This movie is stupid.” I said. “Everybody has now died in it, but the monster. What the hell?”
“Well, you picked it, sweetie pie.” He said. “Besides, you’re just changing the subject. That’s cool too.”
There was a long pause, where I tried to lose myself into the movie and maybe get some idea of what the plot was even supposed to be.
Then Tony continued, “It’s probably all for the best, anyway. If things had ever gotten serious, Danny’s kids would be fugly little bastards, and probably creature-like, as much pot as he smokes.”
He rolled his eyes back in his head and began pretending to have a seizure, moaning and muttering the words, “I like…CHEESE!”
I started laughing. “If Jolene were here, she’d say you were going straight to hell!”
It’s true what they say about most jokes only being funny because they have some element of truth to them.
He continued with his fake seizure, reaching over grabbing my shoulder and my knee, screaming in a high-pitched voice, “CHESSE, CHEESE, CHEESE!!!”
“TONY! You’re going to make me spill my drink!” I laughed, while at the same time, trying to escape his reach. “You really are going straight to hell.”
“No,” he finally stopped. “You’d go to hell for making babies that ugly. You better believe the only Uncle Tony they’d know would be Tony the Tiger from the commercials. Well, till the dreaded day that one of them caught their reflection on the tv screen, then they’d be shit out of luck there too.
Tony had such a way with words.
After I had leaned over to set my drink on the floor, I noticed Tony’s mom’s cat, lurking in the corner of the room, so I slid off the couch and sat on the floor to play with her. And with that, Tony and I settled right back into watching the movie, as I leaned my head back into the couch and dozed off with Frannie in my lap.
It felt like I had been asleep for five minutes, but the next thing I knew, I was waking up on the couch, as Tony was shaking my shoulder, saying “Good morning, sunshine!” in an exaggeratedly high-pitched voice.
I sat up on the couch and realized there was a blanket spread across me.
“MORNING?!” I gasped. “WHY didn’t you wake me up? My dad is going to kill me!”
Tony looked at me, surprised. “Well, you were sound asleep. You didn’t even almost wake up when I moved you from the floor to the couch.”
“CRAP! Oh my GOD! I have to hurry up and get home!” I said, standing up, reaching in my pockets for my keys and my phone. “What time is it!?”
“One-thirty.” He said, with a puzzled look on his face. “You seem mad? You’re nineteen years old. What are they going to do? Ground you?”
“WHAT THE HELL, TONY!” I could feel the anger boiling already. Why had he not woken me up? I thought I was going to shoot him. “I missed work too! I have to go!”
I hurried for the backdoor of the basement, behind the laundry room, right beside the garage. Keys in hand, I was scrolling through my cell phone to see if I had gotten any frantic, missed calls from my parents or from work, cursing Tony’s name under my breath, the entire time. All I could think about was how I was going to get fired from work and then reemed by my parents. How in God’s name had I slept for over twelve hours like that though! But as I swung open the back door to leave the house, I was surprised to see it was still dark outside. Now, I could hear Tony’s laughter behind me, from the other side of the basement.
“What?” I said to out loud to myself, confused.
Tony must have heard me, because his laughter persisted, even louder.
“It’s one-thirty in the morning dumbass!” I heard him laughing.
I stared out the back door, into the darkness, as everything slowly sank in, and I realized that the whole thing had been a prank. I closed the door back and threw my keys down on the floor as I walked back around the laundry room to find Tony laughing so hard, he was gasping for air on the couch.
“GOD, you should have seen your face!” His face was bright red and tears ran down it, as he held his stomach, still trying to catch his breath.
“I am going to kill you.” I said, looking at him with disbelief.
He just kept laughing though. Eventually, I had to join in too.
“I thought for sure I was going home to be killed.” I sighed, sinking back down into the couch, smacking him a few times.
“I know you did!” He continued laughing, trying to protect himself from the blows. He began imitating me, in a squeaky voice, “WHAT THE HELL, TONY! Your face went so pale!”
“Pure evil,” I laughed, shaking my head. “You truly are going straight to hell.”
After another few minutes or so, I figured I probably should get headed back home. That or risk falling asleep again and being subjected to another dose of Tony’s sick humor. So I stood up from the couch and hunted my keys down where I’d thrown them on the floor, next to the edge of the back door. Then I walked back around the corner, where Tony looked to be falling asleep on the far edge of the couch.
“Good night, jerk.” I said laughing.
“Good night, bestie!” He grinned, struggling to keep his eyes open.
I got in the car and made the short drive home, walking through wet grass in my flip-flops. Once inside, I crept through the house and down the long basement stairwell that led to my bedroom, so that I wouldn’t wake anyone, particularly any nosy or tattle happy family members. Once I made it, I climbed in my bed with an unsaid prayer that I wouldn’t oversleep for real, but the more I thought about working the next day, the more I secretly hoped that I would.