Drumbeats

THE IDEA BEGINS to make noise softly in his mind, with the subtlety of wind chimes, more like background music at this point. He sits on the lawn at UNLV, practicing a new pattern on his leg, and he hears it every few minutes or so when there’s a pause in his drumming: Break up with Helen.

He hasn’t called her for five days, a veritable record, and every day he doesn’t speak to her, the thought grows louder so that now it is becoming more forceful than the wind chime message, closer to the hard tat of a snare drum: Break up with Helen, break up with Helen.

Why would he entertain such an idea? he wonders. He has not fallen out of love with her; in fact, the picture of her that rises in his mind right now, as he rises from the lawn and walks back toward orchestra practice, clutches at his heart, sends a tremor from chest to throat and back. But five nights ago, when the condom broke, something shifted between them. He could feel it, strongly in that cramped, awful bedroom of his but less so in the car, where the wind, singing through the windows with a plaintiveness that brought him close to crying, cleared out the space around and between them so that their old patterns returned. So that his love returned, his yearning, his wish to keep Helen as close to him as possible.

But then a day passed without a call between them. Then another. And each day he recalled what had happened in his bedroom, the simultaneous dread and rage that had boiled up when he saw the broken condom, when he felt what it could mean for him, and these thoughts made him keep his silence.

She is going to leave him anyway. If he once imagined she might continue their relationship long distance while she was in college, he no longer harbors such hopes. No, despite her claim she wants to marry him, despite even their midnight visit to the chapel last summer, he knows the truth, and the truth is that she will leave and grow and change and meet another guy, then another, and another, until they all are piled up along her past like a cast of extras, not true actors in the movie of her life. And he will be among them. Sure, he will have a slightly more important role—the first boyfriend, the first love—but it will not be enough. With Helen, it will never be enough, and he is beginning to realize this; little pieces of doubt are rising to the surface on a daily basis now, and soon, enough will be accumulated to convince him. Then he will do the leaving.

Inside the band room, notes, discordant and raucous, float toward him. Flutes and clarinets, the high whine of violins, a tuba in the corner, trumpets and trombones. Everyone is tuning up, preparing to go through the score one or two more times today. Then there will be a break, then dinner at the student union, then practice again until eight; then he will make his way home, where he will convince himself once more it is too late to call Helen.

He takes his place behind the timpani and stretches out his wrists and hands before picking up the mallets. The room is almost full now, though the conductor, an acerbic, demanding woman with radiant red hair whom everyone in the orchestra, including the girls, has a bit of a crush on, has not yet returned from lunch. Leo tunes his drums, then looks around the room. He has made a few friends here, the other drummers and one trombonist who lived in his dorm last year; but there are plenty of pretty girls, and he has hardly talked to any of them yet.

One of the flutists looks familiar. He has been thinking this for several weeks now, but can’t figure out where he knows her from. She is plump in a very nice way, with short, firm arms that hold up her flute with delicate ease. Her hair is very dark brown and all one length, swinging at mid-neck. Leo has found himself watching that white, exposed neck—no bones visible at all, unlike Helen’s—as he counts through his rests during a piece of music. Her face is round and pleasant and bare of makeup except for dark red lipstick, which she wears without fail. She has chosen the prettiest part of herself to emphasize, Leo thinks now, watching her talk to the girl on her right. Her lips are not especially full; but she has an almost perfect bow at the top, and when she talks, as she is doing now, they are a flashing bit of color on her otherwise pale face.

The conductor, Ms. Sullivan, arrives holding a cup from 7-Eleven and drinking through its straw. “All right, people,” she says loudly, exchanging her drink for her baton and stepping up to the lectern. “Let’s run through the Copland piece again, and try not to sabotage it so much this time.” There is laughter from the trumpet section. “Oh, yeah,” she says, “it’s really funny what bad musicians we are.” She smiles in a very small way after this, not too encouraging, but just a little, then sets the beat with her baton, and they are off.

ON THEIR WALK across campus to dinner, Leo decides to talk to the familiar flutist and find out, if possible, who she is. It seems incredibly lucky to him that she is walking alone tonight, off to the side of the other flutists, and he increases his pace until he is beside her. “Hi,” he says.

“Well”—she looks up at him with a smile—“I was wondering when you were going to get around to talking to me.”

He still can’t figure out where he knows her from, and now it appears that he’s been rude, waiting until now to speak. “We were in that history survey class together, right?”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t started school here yet. This fall will be my first semester. I took a year off to work.”

“Great,” he says, stalling for time. Who is she? Who is she? “You’ll love it here.”

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“It’s coming to me. Give me a minute.”

“I guess I do look really different, so this isn’t exactly a fair test. Here, I’ll give you a hint.” She pulls at a thin gold chain hidden under her red T-shirt, then lets the necklace fall against the cloth.

The pendant is a small piece of cursive writing, and Leo leans closer to read it, then pulls away with a jolt of surprise. “Traci?” he says. “From the Dunes? It can’t be you.”

“I stopped dyeing my hair and wearing all that makeup. And”—she shrugs and frowns—“I put on a little weight. After I quit smoking.”

“You look great.” He gives her a large smile to show he means what he says. They are walking down a path now toward the union, flanked on either side by pale green lawns and mulberry trees. Most of the musicians are ahead of them. An evening breeze filters through their hair, providing a moment of cool from the sun, which still sits halfway down the sky, presiding over the campus with its usual yellow intensity. For some reason, he is inordinately happy to have found out who she is, and on impulse he takes her hand and squeezes it as they walk, then drops it back safely at her side.

She laughs. “I thought you were avoiding me.”

“Of course not,” he says, thinking his voice sounds insincere, although that is not his intent. It occurs to him she may not be so pleased to see him. After all, he did lead her on, then told her about Helen, then saw her a few more times after that. They spent a couple of afternoons in his bedroom, kissing and listening to music, removing one or two articles of clothing until he felt so guilty he ended it a second time. But that was two summers ago, and to him it feels as if a million years have passed.

“Well, I’m glad we finally got to talk,” she says with a smile. “I need to catch up with my friends.” She points to a group of girls ahead. “I promised I’d eat with them.”

“Okay.” He nods, then watches as she runs a little bit ahead of him, thinking maybe now he is ready for a girlfriend like her, someone who is completely different from Helen.

AFTER THE EVENING’S final practice session, he drives home, wishing he were still living in the dorms, or better yet, that he had his own apartment. Every night when he winds up at his house—his mother’s house is the way he thinks of it now—it seems he’s taken a step backward, out of his new life and into his old.

During the school year he had a single dorm room, some random stroke of luck bestowed on him, because almost everyone else had a roommate. There was a twin bed by the single window, a desk with bookshelves set into the wall above it, a soft swivel chair, and a small refrigerator in the corner. Leo kept it neat and spare, with only a drum pad for practice. (Mostly he used the equipment in the band room.) Books from his classes were lined up tidily on the shelves, and his desk possessed a notebook, several pens in a cup, a CD Walkman (a gift from Helen), and a small plant he bought at a campus sale, though when Helen told him the name of it—dumb cane—he regretted the purchase. Still, he watered it once a week, then transported it to his bedroom at his mother’s house, where it continued to flourish, and he looked at it now as a symbol of his return, a promise that he would soon have his own space again.

He put no pictures on the walls of his dorm room, no rugs on the floor, kept nothing in his refrigerator but a quart of milk, and one of his drummer friends, Evan, took to calling him Leo the Monk, a nickname that he pretended to think stupid but secretly liked, because his life always seemed so cluttered to him—full of records and drum equipment and condoms and clothes and sex—so unmonastic, and the idea that he could change, could free himself of his past, made him feel clean and talented and happy.

Leo parks his Nova in the driveway, behind his mother’s car, then enters through the side door, expecting to smell smoke and hear the television talking nonsense as he usually does. Instead, he hears two voices spilling animatedly from the living room: his mother’s and Helen’s. He stops in the dark kitchen, listening to them for a few seconds, not wanting to round the corner and see them both sitting there, waiting for him. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before,” Helen exclaims, but Leo has missed what she’s talking about and feels adrift here in the darkness, privy to only a small sliver of this girl’s—his girlfriend’s—life. It strikes him suddenly that this is the way he often feels in Helen’s presence, as if he were hearing only half a conversation. She doles out only small portions of herself at a time, and it seems to Leo there are layers and layers he will never even be allowed to glimpse. It also occurs to him that this is part of her hold on him, what creates the intense yearning he feels even now, listening from the kitchen.

“Leo, is that you?” his mother calls, and he is forced to turn the corner, to walk into the dim light of the living room.

“Hi,” he says. They sit at either end of the couch, bodies turned toward each other, though now their faces are turned to him. He moves automatically to sit by Helen on the couch, putting his hand on her bare leg and feeling its warmth beneath his palm, a reminder of the day’s heat.

“I was just going to bed,” his mother says, standing up. She is wearing her lavender terry-cloth robe over a summer nightgown, and when she bends to kiss Leo on the cheek, he smells her too-sweet, lilac talcum powder. “Good night,” she tells them both, and then they are alone. Leo removes his hand from Helen’s leg, realizing that it may not be welcome with the lack of phone calls between them.

“Sorry I haven’t called,” he tells her. Why does he always speak first?

She shrugs. “You’re busy.”

He is strangely disappointed by her lack of anger, so he adds, “Not that busy.”

“I could’ve called you.”

“True.”

They sit for a minute, looking at each other, and Leo tries to decide if this is the right moment, if he should break up with her right now and be done with it, but then she takes his hand and smiles, and she looks so beautiful that leaving her seems foolish. He likes her best at night, when her hair is messed up and the day’s makeup has dissipated, leaving the occasional sultry smudge of black beneath her eyes. Her skin is warm and brown from a day’s worth of poolside sun and she smells of chlorine, a clean scent he always associates as her own, though he supposes everyone who swims must smell that way too.

“I got my period today,” she whispers.

He breathes out deeply and leans his head against the back of the couch. “Thank God,” he says, then laughs. “I guess I acted a little crazy the other night. I ruined that album cover, you know.”

She laughs too. “Oh-oh. Your Iron Maiden collection will be incomplete.”

“Doesn’t matter. I took them all down last night. The walls are completely bare. It’s much better.”

“I’ll have to buy you a Mirό print or something to re-liven up the room.”

Mirό. What is she talking about? Even with a year of college behind him she is still somewhere up ahead. Instead of speaking anymore, he pulls her head against his chest and holds on to her. With her chlorine-scented hair beneath his cheek, her rib cage expanding with breath beneath his hand, Leo knows he will never be able to do the leaving.

THE NEXT DAY during lunch Leo makes a trip to the mall. Helen is turning eighteen at the end of summer, and Leo decided last night that he’d better start looking for a present right now, since he has no idea what to give her. If he takes a month to find the gift, he can’t go wrong. It must be something unusual, he thinks, a gift that will reveal in a perfect and beautiful way all the complicated lines of love that run through him when he thinks of her.

On his way to the car from the band room, he sees Traci, eating a sandwich beneath a tree. He crosses over to say hello and on impulse asks if she’d like to come along. She agrees, then rises from the grass to follow him, and he feels buoyant crossing the parking lot, but when they get into his Nova, heat covers them, weighing Leo down and making him wonder why on earth he asked Traci to come with him. Best to tell her everything this time, he decides, rolling down his window as he pulls out of the lot, best to enlist her as a friend before he does something stupid and unkind.

“So,” he says. “I should probably tell you up front this time that I still have a girlfriend.”

“Okay.” She looks out the window so that he can’t read her expression, but her voice sounds bland and happy, unsurprised.

“She’s going to college in Ohio at the end of summer, though.”

“Cool,” she says, then turns to him. “I have a boyfriend too. Well, he’s not exactly a boyfriend yet, just someone I like, and I think the feeling might be mutual.”

“Who is it?”

“One of the trumpet players.” She smiles, and he notices again the way her front teeth lightly cross each other. He found that appealing in her before and recognizes that he still does. “I don’t want to say who it is, in case nothing comes of it.”

“Fair enough,” Leo says. There are five trumpet players, and Leo can’t quite fill his mind with their faces. Later he will inspect them more closely.

THE BOULEVARD MALL is not very crowded, and when they walk through the revolving front doors, a sheet of cool air wraps around them, putting Leo back into a good mood. Benign, watery music hovers above them, and Leo recognizes the tune, some rock song he once slow-danced to in junior high. Hearing it now, turned into a harmless instrumental number, serves to calm him, helps him believe he can handle this situation: being friends with Traci.

They stop by a glass-topped map of the mall in an effort to spend their hour and a half as wisely as possible. “So, you’re a girl,” Leo says, smiling. “What’s the perfect gift for Helen’s eighteenth birthday?”

“I don’t know. Jewelry? Perfume?”

He shakes his head. “She doesn’t wear either.”

“What is she, some sort of nun?”

Traci winks at him, to show she is joking, he supposes, but the wink riles him up, makes him in the mood to flirt. He grabs her around the waist with one arm and pulls her close with a laugh. “Yes, she is, and it’s a good thing she’s leaving at the end of summer and I can find someone else, or I might die from lack of physical contact. Humans need contact for survival, you know. There was a study, with babies.”

“I’ve never heard of that study,” she says, dipping away from him.

They both laugh, then stare down at the map again, but Leo is not paying attention to the lists of stores. Instead, he is thinking of the way her waist felt beneath his hand, neat and firm despite her plump limbs. There is something almost tangible between them right now, Leo thinks. It strikes him as a color, a series of reddish orange, zigzagging lines connecting her body to his.

“I have an idea,” she says, turning to face him. “How about a pet?”

He nods thoughtfully, “Yeah, maybe a dog. I think she’s always wanted a dog. Of course they probably won’t allow it in the dorm rooms where she’s going.”

“It could be smaller. Maybe a fish … or a lizard!”

“Very romantic,” Leo says. “Here you go, Helen. Here’s a lizard to show you how much you mean to me.”

Traci laughs. “Well, let’s go look at least.”

He agrees, and they make their way over to the pet store, which is playing different music, or not even music, Leo realizes, but sounds—waves rolling in and out, the cries of seagulls. Small, forlorn-looking dogs peer out at them through cages, and Traci and Leo hurry past to the back of the store, where the smaller animals are kept. The fish are beautiful, swimming placidly behind glass, but he can’t help feeling that giving Helen a fish would say something negative about the quality of his passion, since the expression cold fish is one he often hears the other drummers use to describe a girl who won’t put out. Of course he can’t explain this to Traci, so he takes her arm and pulls her away toward the birds.

Leo considers getting Helen a lovebird, but it strikes him as too obvious and almost needy, asking too plainly for her please to remember him when she goes away. The parrots are fun but abrasive, and then Leo sees exactly what he wants to give her, a canary. The bird is thin and yellow and in a cage of its own, singing so poetically Leo instantly knows this is the bird for Helen. A gift of music, Leo thinks. A reminder of him, but not obviously so.

He can’t buy it now—Helen’s birthday is still weeks away, and she’ll see it in his room—so he tells Traci he’s going to see if he can reserve the canary.

“I doubt that’s possible,” she tells him. “It’s not like a shirt or something. You can’t put it on hold.”

“Sure you can,” he says, then on impulse grabs her hand and pulls her with him toward the front of the store, past the lizards and mice, down a pet food aisle before he turns the corner, too quickly, and bumps into someone.

The woman he’s hit turns around, frowning, then sees him and smiles. “Leo,” she says. It is Helen’s mother, Mrs. Larkin.

“Oh, hi,” he says, dropping Traci’s hand, but it is too late; Mrs. Larkin’s eyes flickered to their linked hands immediately. “This is my friend Traci.” He points to her. “She plays the flute in my orchestra. Traci, this is Helen’s mother.”

Traci holds out her hand politely, and the two women shake. “Very nice to meet you,” Traci says in a way that sounds more mannered, more cultured, than Leo would’ve expected.

“Hey, Kath,” they hear from across the store, and all three of them turn. “What do you think of this one?”

There is a man holding up a very small white poodle, and it is a man Leo knows he’s seen before, but he can’t immediately place where. Then it hits him: the man is Helen’s boss, Gerard.

“I’ll be there in a second,” she calls, holding up one finger. “He wanted me to help him pick out a dog for his daughter,” she explains with a shrug. She says good-bye, then walks across the linoleum to stand by Gerard, where Leo watches her say something as she frowns and shakes her head. Gerard hands the dog back to a boy in a blue smock; then they both turn and leave the store. They do not touch or walk close to each other, Leo doesn’t even see them speak again as they disappear around the corner of the store; still, he senses something is going on between them. He recalls, suddenly, that Helen saw her mother at Gerard’s party, two years ago. Leo has completely forgotten about that until now, and he wonders if they’ve been having an affair and whether or not Helen knows. And if she does know, why hasn’t she confided the information to him?

“C’mon, let’s go ask about the canary,” Traci reminds him, then asks, “Are you all right?”

“Um.” He looks down at her. “Yeah, that was just weird. What if Helen’s mom is having an affair?”

Traci shrugs. “It wouldn’t be the first time in the history of the planet.”

“Yeah, but, I don’t know, Helen’s parents are just … I just thought they were above those types of things. Everything always seems so perfect at their house.” He can hear how naive he sounds but is unable to stop. “I mean, I have to say I kind of secretly looked up to them as having an ideal marriage.”

Traci gives him a sympathetic frown and pats his arm. “We’d better head back,” she says, “or Ms. Sullivan will give us hell.”

“Okay,” he agrees, and they are already in the car and halfway back to campus before Leo remembers he forgot to ask about holding the canary.

WHEN HE GETS HOME that evening, a little after seven, the house is empty. He makes himself a ham sandwich and eats it standing at the kitchen counter, looking out the window at the yellow, sun-baked lawn, at the dying palm tree by the driveway, at his Nova, which is beginning to look used up; the blue paint is starting to peel around the wheels, and he hasn’t washed it in weeks. He presumes his mother is out on a date, and the idea depresses him. Her new boyfriend—a dentist, this time, with overly white teeth and rounded shoulders that make him look older than he is—depresses Leo. It’s as if this man, Ray Washburn, hoped his perfect bleached teeth would block out all his other inadequacies with their bright glare.

When he finishes his sandwich, he picks up the phone to call Helen, then, after hitting the first three numbers, realizes he can’t do it and sets the phone back in its cradle on the kitchen wall. If he speaks to her, he will want to mention that he saw her mother today, and he doesn’t think this is a good idea, so instead, he heads back outside and begins walking toward Odyssey Records.

The chant begins again as he walks, increasing its intensity and depth so that now Leo imagines it is a bass drum telling him: Break up with Helen, break up with Helen. Why is this idea still a presence in his mind, he wonders, when last night on the couch beside the actual Helen he knew he’d never even consider such a rash move? Is it simply self-preservation? he wonders. Merely his rational self warning his love-struck one to get out before she cuts him off and he’ll have both pain and embarrassment to deal with? If he were the one to leave, at least he would maintain a measure of dignity.

He walks past the last of the houses onto the wide expanse of parking lot containing the minimart and Luv-it Frozen Custard, and seeing the familiar white ice-cream store—he still insists on calling it ice cream; what the hell is frozen custard?—he is bombarded by even more thoughts of Helen. They have sat together on that outside bench so many times, talking about music or people at school or their families, or poetry and love—how very much they love each other—or even fighting, over who knows what, usually his jealousy, he guesses, and her annoyance with it. Even the memories of those arguments make Leo smile as he passes the bench, where another couple sits right now, a middle-aged couple eating sundaes without speaking to each other but looking content all the same.

Don’t be crazy, he tells himself, passing Luv-it and approaching the stoplight of Las Vegas Boulevard. You hate fighting with Helen, he tries to remind himself, dredging up all the past instances when jealousy—for Miles or just some guy who looked at her too long—ate away at his insides until he felt like nothing, like an absence. As he waits at the light, he turns again to look at the bench, which is empty now, and tries to picture himself there with Traci. The image is a pleasant one, her plump white legs neatly crossed as she eats a dip of strawberry on a sugar cone, her free hand placed on his knee, maybe absently practicing a difficult flute passage, though he’s not certain that would be possible with just one hand. Would they fight too? he wonders. Would the same familiar fires burn through him, leaving him blackened out inside, sickened with ashes. He doesn’t think so; for some reason he expects any jealousy for Traci would be much less intense, if only because he is unwilling to let it reach so deeply inside him anymore. He is almost twenty years old, after all, and in college now. Leo decides right there, waiting for the light, that he will never let jealousy wound him again with such ferocity.

Across the street the sign for Odyssey Records glows red through the evening light, which is still quite bright as the sun is just now beginning its descent behind the mountains. Leo is welcome there again; in fact, the clerk who busted him last summer for the tape in his pocket was fired during the school year. He wants to listen to a new Moroccan drummer he’s heard about and buy a Thelonious Monk CD Evan played for him the other night, and maybe he’ll buy something for Traci while he’s at it, a tape to say thank you for helping him shop for Helen today. That’s all it will be, just a gift to show his appreciation for her friendship.

ON THE WALK HOME, an hour later, he feels a yellow happiness rising within him, the same joy he always feels after buying new music. When he gets home, he’ll make some microwave popcorn, pour himself a glass of orange crush—or maybe a glass of his mother’s wine if she’s not home yet—then go into his room, put on his Walkman headphones and listen, listen to the new Thelonious Monk CD over and over until he is sick of hearing it, then tomorrow he’ll be ready to listen to it again. His Odyssey Records’ bag also contains a tape for Traci, a jazz flutist whose name Leo can’t recall right now, and he knows he’ll be tempted to open it up and listen to it too but hopes he will be able to abstain and present the gift intact.

The sun has set, but the sky is still very light with its memory, and streaks of orange cross the deepening blue to his right like a school of goldfish. The houses on his left look better in the dimming evening air, and Leo can almost ignore the fact that their paint is chipping away or that their curtains are yellowed with cigarette smoke and age. Of course they are still obviously squat and dull-eyed, flanked by balding, cluttered lawns, but who cares really, Leo tells himself, because soon he will be gone, tucked once again into his spare dorm room, listening to whatever new CD he happens to have as if it were a religion.

He is so anxious to get inside and open his music that when he sees Helen from a block away, pulling into his driveway on her ten-speed, he is disappointed. He’ll have to postpone his listening session and pretend he bought the flute tape for himself. Of course, as a consolation, they can have sex, and this thought buoys him up a bit, but still, he is disappointed.

However, as he draws closer to home and waves, he sees that the girl on the bike is not Helen at all, but her sister, Jenny, and Leo hurries his step, extremely curious what she would be doing here and a little worried too: Has she brought bad news?

“Jenny, what’s up?” he says when he reaches her. Her face, beneath the brim of a lavender ball cap is set into a worried frown, so he adds, “Is something the matter?”

She shrugs in the exact manner Helen always does and says, “Not exactly. I was just riding around and thought maybe, since I was in the neighborhood, I’d come and talk to you.”

“Okay, sure.” He ushers her away from her bike over to the front stoop, where they both sit down on the warm concrete step, facing out toward the street.

“I’m worried about Helen,” she tells him. “She’s been acting weird.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she hasn’t gone to work for two weeks; she’s pretending to be sick or something though my mom knows she isn’t. She seems to have stopped brushing her hair at all and she hangs out with that Ernie girl all the time and it’s weird because they’re starting to look alike, except for their stomachs, of course. She’s constantly rude to Mom, and Mom just takes it! She doesn’t punish Helen or anything. It’s very strange.”

So Helen does know about her mother, Leo thinks. She must know. So why hasn’t she mentioned anything to him? He also didn’t know she’d been staying home from work for so long. Two days off were all she’d told him about, and she claimed they were due to a sick stomach. This information makes him desolate, as separate from Helen as he has ever been, and the drumbeat pumps through him for the second time that evening: Break up with Helen. “What do you think’s going on?” he asks Jenny.

“I don’t know. I’m worried she has some fatal disease or something and nobody’s telling me.”

He puts his arm around her shoulders, in an attempt to be brotherly, and says, “Oh, I don’t think she has any disease, Jenny.”

“Then what?”

She turns to face him, and Leo sees how much she is beginning to look like Helen, enough to make his heart clutch with love. “I think maybe she’s trying to protect you from something. You know, be a good older sister, and all. She’ll tell you when she’s ready.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what it is, and I’ll promise not to say anything?”

Leo considers this. How exactly would he phrase it? I think your mother is sleeping with the pool manager at the Dunes Hotel. But of course he can’t do this. It would wound her deeply, alter every perception of her parents, of her family, that she has. As he realizes this, it occurs to Leo how Helen must be hurting, how this knowledge must be changing her, altering her entire landscape, that hilly, complex inside that is becoming more and more like foreign ground. “I don’t have anything to tell,” he says.

“Right,” she says with a touch of sarcasm, then stands up. “You know, I’m not a little kid anymore. I can handle the truth.”

“Maybe you can,” Leo says, looking up at her with a smile, “but why do you want to if it’s painful?”

“See, you do know something!”

“I was just speaking philosophically.”

“The truth shall set you free,” she says, then asks, “What’s that from again?”

“The Bible.”

“Oh.” She looks down at her feet and kicks at the brittle grass, then says, “Well, I’m not so sure I believe in God, so I guess I shouldn’t be quoting from the Bible.”

It strikes Leo as incredibly sad that she doesn’t believe in God, even though he’s not so sure he does either. It seems an admission of lost faith, of a jadedness she is too young to possess. He hopes Helen doesn’t tell her about their mother and make matters worse. Leo stands beside Jenny and pulls her into an embrace, patting her shoulder and kissing the top of her ball cap. “Don’t worry so much,” he says.

She holds on to him for a moment, pressing her face into his chest, then pulls away and gets on her bike. “Don’t tell Helen I came by.” Then she frowns and adds, “Actually, I don’t care what you say. Don’t tell her any lies.”

He nods and waves good-bye, then watches as she pedals off down the sidewalk and out of sight around the corner.

HE LISTENS TO his new CD for a while but can’t really focus on the music as he usually does, and he accidentally burned the popcorn he made so that the entire house is corrupted by the smell. His mother’s wine tastes bitter to him, but he drinks it anyway and feels a small headache creeping up his neck when he is finished.

He attempts sleep around midnight—his mother is not yet home—but can only lie there wide-eyed, staring at the bumpy stuccoed ceiling and thinking about the divide between himself and Helen, a divide she appears to be intent on widening. By 1:00 A.M. he is even more wide awake, so he rises and dresses in the dark, then walks through the house and out the front door.

The thought of walking occurs to him, but he is drawn to his Nova’s promise of the radio, and once inside he feels almost content against the cracking vinyl seat, his hands resting lightly on the warm steering wheel as he pulls out onto the street, listening to a late-night classical guitar program he likes but rarely stays up late enough to catch. There are still a few cars on the road; but for the most part the night is quiet, and he takes the back way, through sleeping neighborhoods, around the curved edge of Circle Park, until he is in a nicer area, one with more trees and tidy lawns, each house a different pastel color like a line of ice-cream cones or Popsicles.

Helen’s house is sky-blue, almost a gray, with white trim and a roof composed of peaks and valleys. The windows are dark, and Leo parks across the street, then shuts off the car and sits for a moment in the silence, though at this time of summer there is never absolute silence, since the cicadas continue to wail throughout the night.

He has sneaked into her bedroom before, so Leo does not need to create a plan. The chain-link fence on the far left side of the house is where he will make his entrance, so he crosses the yard, then steps carefully through the sagebrush and around the pomegranate tree before catching a toehold in the fence and leaping over into the backyard. Helen’s bedroom window faces him now; it begins lower than his waist and rises above his head, shut tight to keep in the air conditioning and curtained to keep Helen from the view of people or cars passing by on the street, though in truth, the plants and pomegranate tree conceal this section of the backyard and house fairly well.

The moon is half full tonight and casts a chalky glow on this portion of the lawn. Several feet away he can see the neighbor’s house, over the low wooden fence that divides the two properties. An older couple lives there with a large basset hound, and Leo worries, as he did the last time he completed this feat, that the dog will hear or smell him, come outside, and bark loudly, revealing Leo’s unwelcome presence to Helen’s parents.

He taps on the window with his knuckle, so softly he can’t imagine Helen will hear him, even though her bed is directly beside the window; but in less than a second the curtain is pulled aside, and then the window is opened, and Helen steps outside, completely naked, into the night. There is not a shred of coolness to the air—in fact, Leo is sweating—but her nakedness makes him crazy with fear, and she must sense this because in the next second she reaches back in through the window and pulls out a silky yellow robe, then puts it on, tying it tightly at the waist.

Despite the fact Helen’s just woken up, Leo can tell Jenny is right about one thing: Helen hasn’t combed her hair in a while. It looks thicker than usual, arching out from her head in an intractable mass, and a single matted lock has escaped its confines and lies against her throat like the small paw of an animal. She pushes it back impatiently, then waits for him to speak.

“What’s up with your hair?” is the first thing he can think to say, though once it’s out he feels embarrassed; he did not come here to discuss trivial matters.

“I’m thinking of trying to do dreadlocks,” she says.

This strikes him as a lie, and he hopes it will be the last one between them. “Helen.” He steps closer and lowers his voice to a whisper. “Helen, why didn’t you tell me about your mom and Gerard?”

She shrugs and looks away, out toward the street. “I don’t know.”

“I thought being in love meant telling each other everything.” Once this is out of his mouth he longs to call it back; he has kept many things from Helen, hasn’t he? No longer, he tells himself, from this moment on things will be different.

“How did you find out?” Her eyes flicker back to him.

“I saw them together. At the mall.”

“Great!” She gives a whispered shout. “Now they’re doing their shopping together too. What were they buying? A wedding dress? A bed? A set of china?”

He tightens his mouth to show her he won’t even consider laughing at the situation. They are still not touching, and he wonders why this is. It strikes him as unnatural, so he moves a step closer and takes her hand, which is warm and smooth with long, thin fingers. Often her nails are dirty, a fact that strikes him as endearing since the rest of her is so clean and bright. He is going to miss this hand, he thinks now, pressing it more tightly; he will miss many things about her when she is gone. “You should have told me about it,” he says, sounding more stern and reproachful than he’d meant to.

“Why? Why should I have told you? How is it in any way your business?” She withdraws her hand from his and steps back toward the window.

“Because I love you.”

“Is that why you were driving around with some girl today? Because you love me so much?” He is shocked into silence, and she takes the blank space of air to add, “Ernie saw you.”

“Helen, it’s not …” he says, trying to devise an elaborate defense, but suddenly he changes his mind. “Nothing’s going on with her,” is all he says, though he knows even this is not quite the truth. “Look.” He takes a deep breath and shifts his gaze to the ground; if he looks at her, he will not be able to do this. “I think maybe we should break up.”

When he glances at Helen, she is crying, sitting awkwardly on the window ledge with her hands over her face. She is emitting no sound, but her shoulders shake; then a small sob escapes, propelling him toward her.

“Never mind,” he says quickly, moving to sit beside her, putting his hand on her leg. “I didn’t mean it. Never mind.”

“You did mean it,” she says, keeping her hands over her face. “You can’t take it back.”

“Yes, I can. I’m doing it right now. Forget I said anything.”

“No.” She lifts her face. “It’s probably a good idea.”

And with these words, he begins to cry, standing and turning to the wall, propping a forearm above his head, then leaning his face into the sky-blue wood and sobbing, as quietly as he possibly can, but sobbing all the same. Helen is behind him in moments, her arms around his waist, cheek pressed to the back of his head. It is a small warm pressure, as if a bird had landed there, and this makes him think of the canary he wants to give her, and he cries all the harder. He’ll still buy it for her, he decides. He wants her to have that canary.

They hear a noise from within the house—a door shutting, perhaps, or a sleepy elbow hitting a wall—and both of them are instantly quiet. “You’d better go,” Helen says, then unwraps herself and climbs back through the open window; in the next second she pokes out her head and tells him, “We can talk later. Tomorrow.” Then she closes her window, and he is left alone on the grass.

He climbs back over the fence and begins to cross the front lawn, when he hears his name called from the direction of the porch. He turns and sees Helen’s father sitting on the red-brick steps in his pajamas. Edward beckons to Leo with a wave of his arm, so Leo walks over to him, trying to devise an apology that might explain this situation, but he can think of none. He is too tired, too sad and tired to come up with anything that will save him.

“Did I wake you?” Leo asks politely when he is standing before Helen’s father. The question sounds ludicrous once it is out.

Mr. Larkin shakes his head. “I was listening to this classical guitar program I like because I couldn’t sleep, and then I thought I heard your car; it’s pretty distinctive-sounding.”

A polite way of saying his muffler needs work, Leo thinks, then sinks onto the step beside Helen’s father, suddenly too exhausted to stand for another second. “I was listening to that guitar program on the way over,” he says.

Mr. Larkin nods, and Leo turns toward him, trying to formulate his story. Helen’s father looks tired and unguarded without his glasses on, though otherwise, he is neat and crisp in pale green, striped pajamas, his thinning blond hair parted on the side and groomed as if it were the middle of the day rather than very late at night. “I know I shouldn’t be here,” Leo says, “but I had to speak with your daughter.”

“I understand.” Edward nods. “Important matters of the heart and all.”

Leo breathes out, noticing for the first time how tight all of his muscles feel, as if he were preparing to pounce, to spring into the night and seek out prey. “We just broke up,” he tells her father. Once the words are out, he knows it is true, that if there is any talking to be done tomorrow, nothing will come of it.

Edward turns to Leo and creases his brow in concern. “No,” he says. “No, you need to work it out, whatever it is.”

For the first time Leo catches a whiff of wine and thinks that perhaps it is an explanation for all the emotion in Mr. Larkin’s voice. “We can’t,” Leo says simply.

“Is there someone else?”

Leo shakes his head no, though an image of Traci—the soft dip in the back of her neck as she plays her flute—swims instantly into Leo’s vision, and he realizes he is anxious to see her tomorrow, to give her the tape he bought today. “It’s just,” Leo says, wanting, for some reason, to be as honest as possible. “it’s just that sometimes I feel as if I don’t even know Helen. She has all these hidden parts to her, and it’s interesting and even, I don’t know, exciting, I guess you could say, but it’s making me crazy. I want to know everything about her, and I never will, and I just can’t take it anymore. Does that make any sense?”

Mr. Larkin nods. “It does, Leo; it does indeed, but one day you’ll see it’s not really possible to know any person completely. There are hidden parts to all of us. We do the best we can with what we’re given, with what we can glean through conversation and lovemaking … and through separation too. Sometimes we learn a lot through separation, or bad times, if you will.” He rubs his chin, then asks with a smile, “Do I sound like a dottery old professor?”

“No.”

“But of course you and Helen are teenagers, and you’re not married and she’s going away and maybe it makes sense to break up, though it still makes me a little wistful.” He pats Leo’s leg, then stands up. “ ‘Do not go gentle,’ ” he says, “though I won’t call the night good.”

Leo rises too, confused by Mr. Larkin’s good-bye and chalking it up to the wine and late hour. They shake hands on the porch; then Leo climbs back into his Nova and begins the drive home.

About halfway there, he realizes Mr. Larkin was quoting a line from a poem: “Do not go gentle into that good night.” No other lines come to him as he makes his way through the neighborhood, but he knows that at some point Helen read it to him, maybe one day in his bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the floor by his drum set? He can almost conjure the image, and he realizes, as night air hums over him, that no matter how hollowed out he feels right now, no matter how much it seems as if Helen has only stolen from him, that he is taking away something too, that the store of words and images, the array of perceptions and knowledge and feelings that soar out of him when he thinks of her, will most likely remain somewhere inside him until he dies.