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Red Rover, Red Rover
“When did you become little-red-dog-sweater people?” asks James. He’s finished perhaps half a bottle of Scotch and still is not slurring his words. I am glad not to have taken off the boots because laces might prove unmanageable at this hour, in this state. Laura has to be pushed off the couch and Dane thrusts her arms through coat sleeves. “I need a little nap,” Laura complains. “It’s a party,” says Dane. Everyone seems to be saying so, as if we’d all forgotten. The model’s boyfriend pukes in the street almost as soon as we are outside. Effluvia hits the tail end of a BMW and sets off the car alarm. “I should take him home,” says the model. It is cold enough to freeze our nostrils together, to make us cough as we run down the sidewalk, away from the noise. The model and her boyfriend flag down a cab and are driven away. We wave after them. “What a pair,” says Esther. “I don’t know why we hang out with them. Do you?” Teddy says, “You always invite them at the last minute. When you can’t think of anyone else.” “It isn’t a party with only six people,” says Esther. “Don’t forget the dog,” I say. “The dog doesn’t count,” says Teddy. “No one else wanted to come to our fling.” “That’s not true,” argues Esther. “I was deliberately selective.” We cross the street and skid down a hill that was filled with families on sleds earlier in the evening. The puppy is off her leash, barking and weaving and snapping at her red sweater. She tears a corner loose and threads dangle. “Oh no, your little poo-poo sweater,” says Esther, attempting a futile mittened repair. The puppy growls and plays with the threads, rolling in the snow, inflicting further damage. The car alarm still sounds, honking and flashing. I run further and further along the brink of the steep and slippery hill. Below us cars pass on the highway that runs like a river through a sunken valley. On good days, I can pretend it is a river and the noise and exhaust of the cars a constant tide pulling toward the unseen but believable ocean. Why are some things more believable when unseen? And then, some things are less. There is a stone fountain, silent for the season, a cherub rising from its middle, fat and insouciant, cheeks bulging to blow on a stone bugle. It has no penis, nor did it ever have one, neutered and ridiculous from its inception. On the far side of the fountain, I pull off my mitten and bend over the finger that is blessed with the ring. The diamond does not glisten as it should. I have run so fast, lungs splitting, that no one else is nearby. I hear their voices laughing and shrieking, spreading in all directions. But here is Teddy. He pants as he falls at my feet. He buries his lean, dark face in my lap and holds the exposed hand, draws the fingers into his mouth. I slip from the fountain’s rim and into the snow, my knees bared beneath the coat that is not quite long enough, the boots that are not quite tall enough. “We won’t,” I say. It is impossible to tell who is on top, who presses whom into the cold, whose lips avoid whose. “We could,” he says, but he doesn’t. “Let’s roll down the hill,” I offer. It seems to me to make no difference, one impulsive error or the other. It is not a river, after all. The cars are unknowing, brutal. It would not be a kiss either. It would be the end of the game. We look at each other – artificial light from tall black lampposts, glare from the snow. We cannot stop smiling. “You’ll be okay,” I say. “I won’t,” he says. “I’m dying.” “You won’t die,” I say. The smiles are torn and taut, the gravest smiles in the universe. “You will,” he says. “I will. We’re all dying.” “Not yet,” I say. When the tumour was deemed inoperable, Esther called to say she was throwing the party. The last fling. Or the first of many last flings, she said. Oh no, I said to James, hanging up the phone. I can’t do this. James wrapped his arms around me, like he does when he doesn’t know how else to care, and pinned me to him. I felt mummified by his embrace. One remedy for panic. “It’s not catching,” Teddy tells me, his breath bright, frozen heat. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll kiss you. But why?” “Because I want you to,” he says. Ahh. I lean in and against him, wet and cruel, tongues and teeth, the scamper of blood through veins, flicker on the skin like shock. His hands press my ears, push me into the snow. I am fallen. Sadness is warm, spreading like a leak, pooling inside my mouth. Dane reaches the fountain. “Hey guys,” he says casually, kicking sparks of snow onto my splayed boot. He sits heavily on the rim of the fountain and fumbles through his pockets. “You don’t smoke,” I say when he pulls out a tarnished cigarette packet. “And you’re getting married,” he says. Teddy and I are still not parted. Teddy wants to warm my red hand, the one crippled by the ring; he breathes on it as I sit up. My knees are numb. “It’s not what it looks like,” I say. Teddy laughs. Still holding my hand, he lurches onto the fountain beside Dane. “It’s exactly what it looks like,” he says. “Give me one too.” The two of them fumble with the lighter, heads bent together, united. Before tonight, they had never laid eyes on each other. But I am glad it is Teddy sitting beside Dane on the fountain rather than me. In my mind is the inverted picture: me on the fountain beside Dane, Teddy in the snow. I couldn’t bear to partake in that scene. I would rather pretend sacrifice. Esther finds us next. “Oh my God, you’re smoking? You gave him a fucking cigarette?” “Esther,” says Teddy. “Give me that.” She doesn’t notice me knelt in the snow. She yanks the cigarette from Teddy’s hand and throws it, spinning and flaring. The puppy gives chase. “Do you have any idea how enormous that dog is going to be?” I stand and walk toward it, though I can hardly bend my legs. I find the cigarette, glowing, undampened by the fiercely chilled snow, and put it to my lips. I draw lightly. It’s been two and a half years since I quit. The butt end is fat and awkward in my mouth, foreign and unwanted. But it is right to be wrong. “Off the wagon?” slurs Laura. She and James hold hands as they approach. “I’m so drunk, it doesn’t count,” I declare. “How is it?” asks James. He is leading Laura, which is why he has her hand. “Do you know those dreams where you’re holding a cigarette and you can’t remember how you got it and it’s already too late because without even noticing or doing it on purpose or actually making a choice the cigarette has found you? And you’re, like, this isn’t me. I’m not doing this.” I could be shouting, if only there were breath enough. The puppy is at my laces again, tugging and growling. I stand firm. “Do you know what I mean? Do you know that kind of dream?” “Yes,” says James. “And what a relief it is to wake up and realize you’re only dreaming?” “Yes,” says James. I take one more drag and drop the cigarette into the snow, kneading it beneath the surface with the toe of my boot. My perfect new boots, perfect with this skirt; my perfect old skirt, perfect with these legs; my perfect familiar legs, perfect with this body; my perfect known body, uninvaded, far from mutiny, lit. Esther is holding Teddy, smashing his face into her face, kissing him, so that he won’t have to hear what I am saying. Her mittens press his ears. Dane struggles upright, takes Laura by her free hand. With James on the other side, arms swinging, the three of them look like children playing a game: Red Rover, Red Rover, let Jenny come over. But I am loose. I could kick free from the puppy’s growl and snap. I could plunge to the snow, rolling rolling rolling, into the ravine and the endless currents of water pulsing, flashing, passing. Or I could turn and run back toward the nagging car alarm and the apartment with too many stairs where await more glasses of vodka or gin or Scotch or some sweet liqueur that will make me want to vomit. Teddy will pour, his hands shaking uncontrollably, the lip of the bottle smacking the glass. A nightcap. I’ll wake up hours later and stumble to the bathroom and expunge myself of all ill. That is what I choose. Easier, of course. Less dramatic. Bloodless. There’s probably a fence at the bottom of the hill anyway. There would be. Hours later, James calls from the bedroom. “Do you need me, Jenny?” And he waits for an answer, for some return. He is patient, not because he needs to be, but because he is. “Do you think Teddy is really dying?” I say into the toilet. “Do you really believe that he will?” |
