Sex & Violence Read online

  “Have you ever written a letter to anyone, Evan?” Dr. Penny asked. “Or a long e-mail? Something that went on at length?”

  “No,” I said. “I used to write my mother from Scout camp. But I quit going after she died.”

  “Didn’t you like Scout camp? Being outdoors?”

  “No,” I said. “I like the outdoors fine. I just didn’t like going somewhere like that and … then, you know, how something bad could happen while I was gone.”

  Then I felt stupid, because my eyes filled with tears, which I didn’t expect.

  But Dr. Penny said, “I want you to think of someone you’d like to write a letter to. You can send it. Or not. The sending isn’t the point. Just think of someone. This week, write a letter telling that person how you are now. Where you are. What you are doing.”

  “Do I have to bring it in?” I asked. “Like homework?”

  “You can if you want,” she said. “You don’t have to show me. But you have to do it. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Our time is up for today,” she said. “I will see you next week. Same time.”

  As I left Dr. Penny’s office, my right hand was already in a fist. Ready to explode at my father. I felt like a giant loser for having to talk to this woman, for having to write a letter I wouldn’t send, like I was in some bullshit English class. Though I’d never hit anyone before, the thought of smashing my father’s face sounded pretty satisfying.

  But when I got to the car, my father shocked the shit out of me.

  “I know you’re pissed,” he said, holding up a hand. “So I’m giving you two choices. You can unload on me all you want. Scream your damn head off. Or I can just buy you a car. Right now.”

  He opened his wallet, and I saw a huge flap of hundreds. My father always carried around cash, but never that much. He made a lot of money, but rarely spent it and always forced me to get a job to pay for stuff I wanted. He had never offered me a car, would barely let me drive his Mercedes once I got my license.

  “So,” he said. “What’s your decision?”

  It wasn’t a decision at all. I felt further tricked as I drove behind him back to Pearl Lake in my new car, a used Subaru Outback, the only four-wheel drive on the lot that I could stand, I had said, again sounding whiny. I bitched that the bumper was mashed in and the interior smelled like wet dogs. Though I actually really liked the car a lot.

  My father took the scenic route back to Pearl Lake. I couldn’t tell if this was his idea of letting me enjoy myself or just showing me where things were. Either way I felt mixed. I felt bought and I felt awesome and I felt like I would get a headache if I didn’t do something about the goddamn rattly ski rack on the roof.

  So now I had a therapist, and now I could drive myself places, in my own car. Where I would go besides Dr. Penny’s office was a good question. And with who, another one.

  Dear Collette,

  I’m writing because another redheaded woman is currently bossing me around. Apparently, I have a thing for redheads. I would tell this to Dr. Penny, but she might think I was hitting on her and things are already crazy enough. Plus she’s like fifty years old and wears Swedish grandma clogs. I don’t think I have a thing for redheads, though I always thought you were cute. Thinking of you makes my stomach hurt, though. And not just because of the hole where they yanked out my spleen. It was all my fault, what they did to you. Makes me think of a million other things I’d like to do that aren’t legal or sportsmanlike. Which I don’t have the balls to do anyway. I hope you’re enjoying whatever you’re doing in Boston. Your new school. I’m sorry I caused this.

  I live on a biologically unique lake. I’ve been reading all about it. The study of lakes is called limnology. “Limnos” is Greek for “lake.” Pearl Lake was formed by glacial movement, as well as the result of an oxbow lake from the Beauchant River. This means one side of the lake is amazingly deep and the other is shallow. The shallow side is subject to much agricultural runoff, while the deep side is colder, ideal habitat for a large fish with teeth called a northern pike. Did you know that all lakes experience a phenomenon each spring and fall called turnover? Because of the density of water, as the temperature increases in the spring, the water from the top sinks, while the water at the bottom rises to the surface. The reverse happens in the fall. I wonder what the fish think of that shit or if they even notice, since it happens every year. If they just get used to that kind of turbulence to the point it doesn’t even register anymore.

  I would never send you this, Collette, because a) I doubt you’d care b) we never talked about anything, anyway. I never knew if you liked chemistry, for example. I know you thought I was good at chemistry, but it’s actually not my favorite science. Beyond that you were from Boston and swore a lot, I just knew you liked track and liked me. And I liked you too, but mostly I just wanted to get naked with you, because I was miserable at Remington Chase and you were one thing I could look forward to. Because I am a dick. A slutty seventeen-year-old guy who didn’t care what it cost you until it cost me something. A spleen and a left ear and a broken nose and ribs. More stuff too, but I’m too pussy to talk about it to you or anyone else.

  Later, Evan

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Friday of Memorial Day weekend, I drove into Marchant Falls for my appointment with Dr. Penny. I passed the high school, and again, all the kids were outside. Guys playing Frisbee. Girls in short skirts lying in the grass on their backs as if they were on a beach instead of suffering through the last days of school.

  I brought my letter with me, but Dr. Penny didn’t ask for it. She wore a sleeveless blue dress, and her skin was creamy and freckly like Collette’s. Which sort of shocked me. Would Collette look like Dr. Penny when she got old? It was hard to imagine Collette getting old.

  This time Dr. Penny asked me questions. Where did I live before Charlotte? What were the names of the schools? What sports and activities did I do? What subjects did I like? Did I have a job outside of school?

  I listed it all off, from the most recent: Charlotte, San Diego, Richmond, Tacoma, Washington, D.C., Oberlin, San Francisco. I swam and ran track. My favorite subject was science. In San Diego, I worked in a mall, running a carousel in the food court, a job everyone called the Merry-Go-Round Master. In Richmond, I worked at a greenhouse. In Tacoma, I worked in a cupcake shop. In D.C., and Oberlin and San Francisco I was too young to work anywhere.

  She was like a cop interrogating me, one question after another. It was a little dizzying, but I’d taken a long swim while I washed up in the lake the night before and had slept better than normal, so I kept up okay. Until she asked the next thing.

  “Did you have any friends in any of those places, Evan?”

  I stammered and shrugged.

  “Evan?”

  “I guess. But nobody really, you know. Nobody I still talk to.”

  “Girlfriends?” she asked. “I’m assuming something here, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.”

  Like I was gay?! I thought. I looked down at my clothes. I tended to dress boring. Today I wore jeans and a grey T-shirt and flip-flops. My hair was cut close to the scalp, trimmed just this morning with my dad’s shaver, any extra bits clipped away with a little scissors I kept in my shave kit. The bump on my nose where it had been broken tingled, and my elf ears burned, the wound on the left one throbbing like suddenly there was a big lighted arrow pointing at it. Even wearing a baseball cap didn’t quite cover it. What about me looked gay?

  “I’m not suggesting you’re gay,” Dr. Penny said, reading my mind. “I’m just wondering if you had any romantic attachments. It doesn’t matter to which sex.”

  “I’m … I like girls,” I said. I looked down, my face hot.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I didn’t hang out much with guys,” I admitted. “I had better luck … with girls. I mean, I knew a lot of girls. Hung out with them a lot. But not as friends, because we were usually always, you know, uh …”

&n
bsp; “Physically involved?” Dr. Penny said, holding up a hand as if to make me stop. “I get it, Evan. Don’t feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.”

  I nodded, completely uncomfortable and embarrassed, anyway.

  “Do you still talk with any of those girls?”

  I always deleted girls’ numbers as soon as we moved. Some of them even got deleted immediately after we’d had sex. Not that some of them weren’t cool girls or anything. But sometimes, I just couldn’t face them again. But there was no way of saying this that didn’t make me sound like a dick.

  “Some of them,” I lied.

  Dr. Penny pressed her fingers to her mouth, like she was about to come to a conclusion, give me a lecture maybe. But she was quiet.

  “I wrote that letter,” I said, because I couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

  “How did that go?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Who did you write it to?”

  “A girl from my last school.”

  “Hmmm,” she said. “How do you mean, it went fine?”

  “Just … that it went … fine?”

  “I’ll be more specific, I apologize,” she said. “Was it difficult to get started? Difficult to choose whom to address it to?”

  “No,” I said. “I wrote it pretty quickly.”

  “Good, good,” she said, glancing above my head to the clock where she could track when the hour was up.

  “I want you to write another letter this week,” she said. “Same idea—you don’t have to send it; you can pick to whom you write it. This time I want you to tell about the kind of person you were in just one of the places you lived. Tell the story of your time there.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t get it. I was in therapy for getting the shit kicked out of me and my inability to shower in a human bathroom like a civilized person. And my insomnia. And probably my obsessive haircutting, but I wasn’t sure that my father had noticed that, really. He probably dug it that I was almost as bald as him, actually.

  “I’m interested in establishing your patterns of attachment and trust,” Dr. Penny said, again somehow reading my mind. “I know it might not seem relevant, but it’s something I need to understand as we go forward, in order to help you build relationships with people, Evan. Trust me on this, okay? Have a great weekend.”

  Almost to the turnoff to Pearl Lake, I heard a pop, and then the whole car started rattling even worse than usual.

  I pulled over and got out to look. Flat tire. Completely stripped to the rim. Goddamnit.

  I was flipping through the owner’s manual from the glove box to figure out where the spare was when a giant green pickup truck pulled up behind me. Instantly I was on high alert. I unbuckled my seat belt. I locked the door. I unlocked the door. It had looked like one guy—just one guy, no big deal, fucking chill—but when I looked in the rearview, whoever it was had already gotten out. So I wasn’t ready. I jumped out of the car and bashed into a kid in a Minnesota Twins T-shirt.

  “Whoa, easy buddy,” he said, his voice that weird nasal Minnesota twang that reminded me of rednecks on helium. He was as tall as me, not as skinny, though. His hair was spiky, a blondish color, but not yellow blond. More like the color of snot in a Kleenex, the greenish tint swimmers get from too much chlorine.

  “Got a flat?” he asked.

  Okay. This is okay. Safe enough.

  “Looks that way,” I said.

  “Let me give you a hand,” he said. “You got the jack?”

  “I just got this car last week,” I said. “So …”

  I couldn’t finish my sentence. Because I was an idiot who didn’t know where the jack for my own car was.

  “You buy this used, by any chance?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thought I recognized that dented bumper. It used to belong to my neighbor on the lake. I’m Tom Tonneson.”

  “Evan Carter,” I said. We shook hands in this very polite, wholesome way that made me think this kid did that all the time. At least Tom Tonneson was an easy name to remember.

  “You and your dad are a couple doors down, right? Next to Brenda and Baker? That empty A-frame?”

  I nodded. I was a little embarrassed that anyone knew us or knew what we were doing.

  “My uncle used to look after the place,” he said. “He’s the one who tuned up the boat for you and cleaned the inside and everything.” Tom asked me to flip up the hatchback, where he pulled the jack and the spare from under the carpet mat on the floor. He had the car jacked up in less than five minutes.

  “Thought I saw this car the other day,” Tom said from the ground, the tire iron clanking. “Thought maybe they were back for the summer, but then I remembered Brenda sold it, and it was kind of early for Baker and her to be back. Me and my dad, we always fish from Mother’s Day until October.”

  I didn’t say anything. My head was jumbling with names. I had never gone fishing with my dad. I never did anything with my dad. Besides pack up U-hauls and move, of course. And never anything on Mother’s Day, obviously.

  “You’ve got a bum wing, man,” Tom said, when I asked if he needed help. “Don’t worry about it. What happened?”

  “Skateboarding accident,” I said.

  I thought he’d ask me for details, which would have been hilarious, as I’ve never stepped on a skateboard in my life. But Tom just asked me to hand him the tire iron again. A few minutes later, the tire was changed and I stood there feeling stupid but grateful.

  “You heading back to the lake?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for the help.”

  “No sweat,” he said. “Come on over for the bonfire tonight. Bonfire’s the Tonneson Memorial Day tradition. Baker and Brenda have their barbecue tomorrow. But my mom’s all about the Friday bonfire. She’s kind of a freak, but what can you do? Tell your dad too.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve got some whiskey we can drink if it gets boring.”

  “All right,” I said, knowing full well I’d never attend.

  I didn’t mention the Tonneson bonfire to my father, but somehow he knew about it. Seemed excited to go, even. He showered and tucked in a clean white shirt and put a bottle of wine under his arm, asked me if I was ready to go, which was weirder than hell. We never did anything social together; I couldn’t imagine standing beside him, his bald nerd self; and me, the cancer patient/accident victim, shaking everyone’s hands, both of us pretending to be normal. I told him I needed to shower, that I’d head over later.

  At the word “shower” he looked a little surprised, a little hopeful. “There’s lots of kids your age around here.”

  “Yeah,” I said. He nodded, like he wanted to say more but couldn’t access the proper vocabulary, and I started making myself a bowl of cereal so I wouldn’t have to look at him until I heard the front door shut.

  I ate three bowls of cereal and then made a fire and sat on the couch reading a book I had found on the living room shelf. It was old, and the pages were full of diagrams and figures. It was a history of Pearl Lake called Under the Waves written by a very dry-witted individual named E. Church Westmore in 1974. From this book I had learned about turbidity and turnover and the difference between the hyperliminion, hypolimnion, and thermocline. It didn’t seem like it would be terribly interesting, but frequently old E. Church would hit on a turn of phrase that cracked me up. And the book helped me fall asleep too, which was good, because I’d slept for shit since the hospital. Before when I couldn’t sleep, I’d just yank it. But now it was like a major undertaking to work myself into a sex mood. So instead, I’d read Under the Waves and fall asleep with it on my chest. Both were pathetic: masturbating or reading a book about the cycle of fish spawn and the habits of muskrats but whatever. It was better than lying awake thinking shitty thoughts.

  I was reading about the biological aspects of the sublittoral zone when someone banged on the door. Which scared the piss out of me. Nobody ever knocked on our doors. Nobody ever came to our house besides food d
elivery people or the FedEx man. I shot up, put on my flip-flops, and looked at myself in the mirror above the fireplace. Elf ears, bump on the nose, that fucking cut in the corner of my mouth, baldish head. One good thing about cutting my hair every day was that it never got messy, but I still looked horrible. Plus, there was a grease stain on my T-shirt and my jeans needed washing. But the banging kept on, so I ran to answer the door.

  It was Tom Tonneson—with two cute girls. Not how I expected him to roll. I mean, Tom wasn’t ugly or anything, but he gave off a pretty strong Totally Regular Guy vibe. Which I didn’t have a problem with, really. The last thing I wanted was some douchebag like Patrick Ramsey for a neighbor.

  “What’s been taking you so long, man?” Tom stepped inside. “Bonfire’s been going on for an hour. Your dad sent us over to get you.”

  “What?”

  “And he told us we could hang out inside too, because you have a fire going and I’m freezing cold,” said one of the girls, who was wearing a miniskirt.

  “It’s like fifty degrees; don’t be such a baby,” said the other girl, who barged in after Tom. “Tom, did you bring the Coke?”

  “No, I’ve got the whiskey,” he said, sitting on the sofa. “Didn’t Kelly bring that two-liter?”

  “I wish you’d got Cherry Lick instead of whiskey,” the girl Kelly said. “Cherry Lick is way better with Coke.”

  I stared at her. She had weirdly dark hair, like she’d dyed it black. She was pretty, but the hair made her look like she’d escaped from a burning building.

  They fanned out in the living room, and Kelly Burnt Hair asked me if I had any Coke in the fridge, so I got the Coke and some glasses. Tom did all the introductions. Burnt Hair was his girlfriend, Kelly Some-Last-Name-Starting-With-K. Kelly K. knelt in front of the coffee table mixing everyone drinks. The other girl, with long brown hair, was Baker Trieste, my neighbor next door. Before I could even compute how weird a name that was for a girl—for anyone, actually—Tom explained that I had bought Baker’s mother’s car.