Billy
“Tell me what happened, neighbor,” Jesse said, leaning over him and touching the ice pack gently to first one of Billy’s eyes and then the other. “Somebody on the street do this to you?”
Rayleen had already gone home, in search of better, non-cat air to breathe. It made Billy edgy to be so completely alone with Jesse, but of course he didn’t say it.
“No,” he said in barely over a whisper. He had entered into a state of utter surrender. “I did it to myself.”
“But not on purpose.”
“No. I was dancing Grace to school, and I tripped on a big crack in the sidewalk.”
“The dangers of crack,” Jesse said.
Billy surprised himself by laughing. Or, actually, something between a snort of laughter and a cry of pain. It wasn’t only his nose he’d hit, it was his ribs, too. But he hadn’t shared that with anybody yet. For some reason he wanted that to be his little secret. At least until the more obvious wounds had been assimilated.
“Well, good,” Jesse said. “Good to know it was only you, and not on purpose. Now I don’t have to kick anybody’s ass for hurting my friend Billy. Not even yours. So, what else did you bang up? Your ribs?”
Oh, my God, Billy thought. He really is magic. He’d heard Grace say so, but had assumed she was speaking figuratively.
“How in God’s name did you know that?”
“It wasn’t hard. I could hear how much it hurt you to try to laugh. Now come on. Let’s see.”
He moved to lift Billy’s sweater, and Billy exploded.
“No!” he shouted. “No,” he said again, gathering calm around himself like an old blanket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. But no. I don’t want to be seen like this.”
Jesse took his hands back, and they sat in silence for a moment.
“OK, fine. Here,” Billy said, and raised the sweater himself.
Jesse looked, and Billy looked at the same time. He hadn’t looked yet. There had always been somebody around, somebody who was already too worried. It was bad. Worse than he thought. A road map in black and blue. His head ached imagining how it would look in the morning, or in three days. Well. His head ached anyway.
Meanwhile Jesse’s hands moved in the direction of his naked, unguarded torso.
“I just want to feel around and see if anything’s broken.”
“No,” Billy said. But this time he was careful to keep it to a whisper. “No, please don’t touch me. I mean, putting your hand on my shoulder is one thing. But not that. I couldn’t bear it. I love you and I just couldn’t bear it.”
He could feel a tingling sensation along his scalp, a sort of tangible feedback from the words he had just spoken.
He noticed his eyes were squeezed shut, but could not remember closing them. He heard Jesse’s hands rubbing together, and he waited for something to happen, but nothing did. Except that, in a few moments, he felt a sort of warm tingling in the area of his damaged midsection.
“Are you doing reiki on my ribs?” he asked, eyes still shut.
“I am. Is that OK?”
“Yes. It’s fine. Thank you.”
He received the blessing in silence for what might have been several minutes.
“It seems to be helping not just with the pain in my ribs. It seems to be helping a little with the anxiety. Not like it isn’t there any more. More like it isn’t stuck. Like a chunk of it wants to move up and out of me.”
“Let it,” Jesse said.
Oh, God. That voice.
“I don’t know if I can go on Monday,” Billy said.
He still did not open his eyes.
“But you have to,” Jesse said. “You have to, for Grace. And you know that. So I know you will. Because you promised her, and she’s depending on it.”
“But what if I can’t?”
“I think you have to anyway.”
“Literally can’t.”
“Not sure there’s any such thing,” Jesse said.
“See, this is why I was by myself all those years. Because as soon as you let people in, they start depending on you. And then, if you can’t be everything they think you should be, you’ve let them down. It’s easier not to have anybody around at all.”
“Too late, though. You got Grace already. Like it or not. So, look. Try this on for size. Let’s say I’m magic like Grace thinks, and I can wave my wand and make Grace disappear from your life. Retroactively. Like she never existed for you. Then you don’t have to go to her school on Monday. Want me to do it?”
He tried it on. Amazingly. He was in so deep, feeling so desperate, that he actually tried it on for size. Disappearing Grace.
“No,” Billy said. “Don’t disappear her.” He sighed. Jesse was right. He was stranded. “I can’t stand to be seen in public looking like this.”
“Hat and sunglasses.”
“I don’t own a hat or sunglasses.”
“I do.”
“And there’s another thing. I haven’t been inside a school since I was in school. And it was the most dreadful, most traumatic era of my entire life, and I just have to add here: that’s a tough competition to win. And I think I’m going to freak out when I get inside. I think I never should have shot off my mouth and said I could do this. I thought I could learn to walk her to school, but now look what happened. Look what happens when you go out in the world.”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “I see. The world gave you a bloody nose. It’ll do that from time to time.”
His eyes still closed, Billy felt the energy from Jesse’s hands move to his forehead, eyes and nose.
“So how do I get back up?”
“With help from your friends. There’s an upside to having people depend on you. Life turns around, and then you get to depend on them. You get to say, ‘I’m in over my head and I need your help.’”
“I could never say that to anybody.”
“You already did,” Jesse said.
? ? ?
Grace came over three times on Saturday, once on Sunday morning, and then again on Sunday evening, when she brought Billy homemade chicken soup.
“Did Rayleen make this?” he asked.
“No. Jesse made it,” she said, scooping up the cat. “So…I came to ask you a question that I keep wanting to ask you, but then I get scared. You’re still coming tomorrow, right? Even after what happened?”
“Seems like I have to find a way,” he said, quietly, from the kitchen, where he had gone to get a soup spoon.
“That doesn’t feel like a definite, definite yes.”
He took a spoonful of the soup, which was intensely good. On top of everything else, Jesse was a good cook. Amazing. It bordered on the unfair.
“I’m going to tell you the most honest thing I can possibly tell you. I feel like I can’t. Like I just don’t have it in me. But I promised you I would. So I’m going to see if it’s possible to do something even though it’s impossible. Jesse says he’ll help, but I’m not sure what he can do.”
“Jesse can do it. Jesse can do anything. So, here’s how it’s gonna go. The assembly is last period. So you guys’ll get there a little before two. You have to go to the office and get a visitor pass. And then you just go into the auditorium. First there’s going to be this really stupid little play. See, not all the kids can do a talent, so they had to find a part for everybody. So then after the play this kid named Fred is gonna play the trumpet, and then Becky sings a song, and then me. I’m the big finish, which I think is a good sign. Saving the best for last, and all that. And then school’s over and I can go home with you guys. I know you’ll be there, Billy. I just know you will.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Are you going to sleep tonight?”
“I hope. Jesse said he’d teach me a meditation for relaxing. Are you going to sleep?”
“I doubt it,” Billy said.
And, of course, he didn’t.
? ? ?
At noon on Monday, Jesse came to his door. It hurt to get up to answer it, but Billy did anyway. He was already clean, dressed and ready to go. Too ready. Too early.
“Grab some water to take these with,” Jesse said.
He dumped about twelve capsules from his hand into Billy’s. Billy stared at them as if they might identify themselves verbally.
“Not drugs,” Jesse said on their behalf. “Herbs. But pretty strong ones. Valerian root and kava kava. In large dosages. They should have a calming effect. They might make you a little drowsy.”
Billy barked a short laugh, and it hurt his ribs.
“Right. In public, in a school, relaxed enough to doze. That’ll be the day.”
“They can’t hurt.”
“True. Thank you.”
“You might want to go across the hall in about an hour. Rayleen wants to put some make-up on your black eyes and bruises. So you’ll feel more presentable.”
“Well, it’s a nice thought, but I don’t think we’re the same shade.”
“She made a special trip to the drugstore yesterday to buy foundation and concealer in a shade she thought would be a good match for you.”
“Oh. Then I’m incredibly sorry I just made that rude comment.”
“Don’t be. Don’t waste any energy on anything but what’s in front of you.”
“Good advice,” Billy said, feeling even more sobered by the terror of the day.
He swallowed all twelve of the capsules standing at his kitchen sink.
? ? ?
Billy sat at Rayleen’s kitchen table, awkwardly unsure of where to look as she tenderly applied make-up to his nose and around his eyes. Now and then he winced, and she apologized. And he had to tell her over and over again to stop apologizing.
“Where’s Jesse?” he asked.
“Helping Mrs. Hinman down the stairs. Then he’s going to bring the car around.”
“Mrs. Hinman’s coming? But she can’t…Wait. Car? Jesse has a car?”
“Sure. How’d you think he was getting back and forth to see his mother?”
“But he flew out here.”
“And then he bought a cheap used car to get around while he was here.”
Billy wanted to ask what Jesse’d do with the car when he flew home. But he didn’t want to introduce the idea of Jesse flying away. Not to Rayleen. Not to himself.
“There,” Rayleen said. “Not bad if I do say so myself. Here. Take a look at yourself in the mirror.”
Billy accepted the mirror, and, for the second time in three days, regarded his own face. She’d done a great job on the bruises. They had all but disappeared. Of course she couldn’t fix the swelling of his nose or the broken blood vessel in his eye. It was hard to focus off that, but he tried. He tried to just take in his face.
“Much less beaten-up-looking,” he said. “Still older.”
“None of us are getting younger.”
“But you got older one day at a time. I took on twelve years all in one sitting.”
? ? ?
Jesse held the door of the school open for him. Billy walked into the tiny hallway, his vision darkened by the loan of Jesse’s sunglasses. He felt Jesse’s shoulder pressed against his on the right, Felipe’s shoulder on the left. He felt their arms hooked through his, as if holding him up, transporting the wounded. In Jesse’s other hand Billy saw a single long-stemmed red rose. Billy assumed he’d brought it for Grace, but hadn’t asked. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure Rayleen and Mrs. Hinman were still back there. Rayleen pointed toward the office as if she knew exactly where to find it. Maybe she did.
“Everything is so tiny,” Billy whispered to Jesse.
“Is it freaking you out?”
“Very much so. It makes me claustrophobic. Like I’m in a doll house. It reminds me of my school days. And I really thought I’d managed to forget them.”
“Are you breathing?”
“Not very much, no.”
“I’d recommend it.”
Rayleen held the office door open, and they massed in. A young black woman with close-shaved hair looked up from behind a desk.
“We’re here to see Grace Ferguson’s dance performance,” Jesse said.
The woman looked baffled for a moment. She looked them over, stopping to pay particular attention to Billy. Or was that his imagination? No. He didn’t think it was.
“All five of you?”
“All five of us,” Jesse said, without missing a beat.
“And you would be…”
“Her neighbors.”
“Ah. I see. You know her mother is already here, and with a family friend.”
“Good,” Jesse said.
Billy admired Jesse’s ability to answer only the question in front of him, and not the subtext of the situation.
“Well, OK, then,” the woman said. She pulled open a drawer while sneaking another glance at Billy. “Five more visitor’s passes. That makes seven just for Grace. I think that’s a new record.”
“She’s an unusually popular girl,” Jesse said.
? ? ?
Billy struggled with the clip on his visitor’s pass as an excuse not to look at the lockers and water fountains and classroom doors. When he looked up, he saw the sign for the auditorium, and his heart jumped.
“Was it just me?” he asked. “Or was that office lady looking at me funny?”
“Oh, no,” Rayleen said. “It wasn’t just you. I think it was the sunglasses. And the fact that you look nervous. But it doesn’t matter now.”
They stopped in front of the auditorium. Billy could hear the din of hundreds of grade-schoolers inside. Jesse opened Billy’s hand and pressed something into his palm.
When he examined his hand, he saw two little foam cylinders.
“Earplugs,” Jesse said. “It’s going to be noisy in there.”
“It’s noisy out here.”
“Here, I’ll show you how to put them in.”
Jesse tugged gently on the outside of his ears, one at a time, and slid the compressed cylinders into place.
“They’ll expand,” he said. “You’ll still hear, but it should muffle things.”
Then he swung the door to the auditorium wide, and the sound of kids’ voices hit Billy, a solid wall of noise. He couldn’t imagine what it must sound like unmuffled. But the earplugs created a sense of distance, which felt almost like dreaminess. As if he were dreaming the sound. And maybe the herbs were making him just a tiny bit sleepy. So he decided to pretend he was dreaming about a grade-school auditorium.
They sat together in a roped-off area of seats, the first two rows in the center section. Billy glanced around briefly and found himself eye to eye with Grace’s mom. She was sitting with Yolanda, one row forward and five or six seats over. She glared at Billy and then made a point of looking away.
“Eileen is shooting daggers at me,” he whispered to Rayleen and Jesse, wondering if the earplugs made him talk too loudly without knowing it.
“Oh,” Rayleen said. “To be expected, I guess.”
Silence. If you could call the din of three hundred noisy kids silence.
Then Rayleen said, “Did I ever tell you that was my mother’s name? Eileen?”
Jesse said, “Yes,” and Billy said, “No,” at exactly the same time.
“I meant Billy, actually. And my dad’s name was Ray. Ray and Eileen.”
“Oh,” Billy said.
“So…”
“So…Oh! Right. Ray and Eileen. Rayleen.”
A grown-up took the stage and demanded quiet, so the show could begin. And, amazingly, the kids shut up. Not on a dime, but in a matter of tens of seconds. So it was a quieter dream after that.
? ? ?
“How long is this whole thing?” he whispered in Jesse’s ear. “Is this play part an hour all in itself?”
“The whole assembly is fifty minutes. Including Grace’s dance.”
“My God, it’s been more than fifty minutes already. Hasn’t it?”
Jesse peered at his watch.
“It’s been nine minutes,” he whispered.
“Oh, dear God.”
A moment later Billy glanced down to see Jesse’s hand close to, but not touching, his panicky gut. Billy breathed deeply and received all the healing he could gather.
? ? ?