Chapter Twelve

-- Late July, 1999

Elliott Smith – “Somebody that I Used to Know”

We had known about the trip for a while. The adults wanted to get away and Sheila’s family had a home in Bermuda. I wanted to go along, but they said this “wasn’t a kid’s trip.” Kevin was to stay here and watch us.

Typical of Sheila, she showed up to take Mom and the others to the airport in a long, black stretch. I asked to go for a quick joy ride, but they were running late.

“Remember,” Mom said before shutting the door, “Uncle Kev is picking you up after he gets off work, so be where he can see you. No rolling down hills!”

“I haven’t done that since I was five!”

Sheila’s voice issued from deep within the limo. “Janet, we’re gonna be late--”

“Okay, we gotta go! Bye, honey!” Mom slammed the door and the car immediately took off down the road.

When Uncle Kev came by several hours later, he seemed like a man unleashed. He smoked cigar after cigar in his Suburban, the windows barely cracked. His kids were all sunburnt because no Lynn meant no one to remind them that suntan lotion existed. I was seated next to Dean, who had just gotten his stitches out. We were on good terms, if somewhat awkward.

I swatted the secondhand cancer that came my way as Kady leaned past us to ask, “Daddy, how much money do we get when you die?”

Kev looked at her in the rearview with mock concern. “Not enough to kill me, sweetheart.”

Dinner at the club was a rarity because Uncle Kev was a notorious tight wad. He guarded the family’s chit number with an iron first. It was the code you’d write at the top of orders say, at the canteen or in the pro shop, so the club would know which members to charge. He had had to change it multiple times because when his kids ultimately found out what it was, they would charge up a storm.

I don’t know why he was surprised by their behavior; rich kids live to spend their parent’s money. It’s them pushing boundaries. And their parents spoil them right back because that’s all they know about parenting. Especially if they were raised wealthy themselves. But with Lynn gone and the possibility of having to cook for five kids looming over his head, Kevin weighed the choices and picked “throw money at the problem.”

The dining room at night looked even more decked out than when I’d seen it on my first interview. The candelabras that hung overhead lit everything with a soft, special occasion light.

Mr. Mayer greeted us as we entered. If possible, he was even more obsequious and fawning than he normally was. He led us to a choice table in a prime location where we had more utensils than any human could conceivably use in a lifetime. A cadre of waiters stood waiting nearby should anyone drop one.

During dinner, I noticed two of the guys I worked with in the canteen all dressed up in the required salmon top and tails. I waved at Diego and Jesus, but they chose to ignore me. They were very committed to their roles.

When the meal was finished, the patio near the pool was cleared of deck chairs and golf umbrellas and live music started playing. After dinner drinks led to dancing, which suited Uncle Kev just fine. I don’t know if he requested it, but Boz Scagg’s “Lido Shuffle” came on and Kevin lost his mind, dancing with different people’s wives who looked just tickled pink to be included. I watched him smoke cigars out in the open, do shots with the tennis pros, and schmooze with the best of them.

When we left, he took a sippy cup with him into the Suburban, calling it a “roadie.”

“Really?” I said. “Cause it smells like Vodka.”

“God, you’re smart. You’re so smart.” He insisted I sit in the front seat to talk to him during the ride home. I quickly found out he drove the same way he did when he was sober. He swerved in and out of lanes as cars screeched and honked to get out of his way. He would remember he needed to take an exit on the highway seconds too late, so he’d pull onto the shoulder and actually reverse against traffic until he was able to take said exit. “Taylor, my boy – that was a fun night!” he said, clapping me on the back.

“It sure was – eyes on the road.”

“Why didn’t you dance more?”

“Well, I’d have to dance at all to dance some more.”

“That’s a good point.”

The music that Kady had turned on was loud enough that we were basically having a private conversation. “Can I ask you something?” I hollered over the music.

“Sure thing!” he yelled back.

“I saw you flirting back there with some of the housewives...”

Uncle Kev grinned. “That’s not a question.” When I didn’t continue, he elaborated. “When you’ve been with someone as long as I have you’ve gotta find little ways of showing them you’re worth being with.”

He leaned in to confide to me, his breath almost flammable. “Lynn’s so beautiful... sometimes... I don’t even know why she’s with me.”

I nodded, letting him talk. “You do know I would never cheat on her, right? But sometimes it’s good to hear that your husband still had fun when you were away.”

It seemed like backwards thinking to me, but he was being honest, so I thought I would be too. “It’s not just women though. I think you handle people.”

“Handle people?” he asked, not entirely hearing me.

“Yeah, handle people. You give ‘em nicknames and clap ‘em on the back. You say, ‘there he is!’ whenever someone enters a room to make them feel good, when actually you don’t remember their fucking name--”

Kevin laughed, caught. I continued. “You handle people. You’re phoning it in. You’re a big fish in a small pond and you like it that way.”

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He took a long, serious pause and then smiled at me from under his eyebrows. “You think I’m a big fish?” he finally said.

“You’re ridiculous.”

He caught his kid’s reflections in the rearview mirror. “Look, all I ever wanted to be was a father. Everything else is just extra. So what if I flatter some dummies at the club? Every conversation can’t be deep and involved like the ones we have.”

I began to smile as he pulled into his driveway. Then I realized what he was doing. “Uncle Kev - are you HANDLING me?!”

He took a sip of his road soda and turned the car off. “You’ll never know.” And with that, he went inside.

**

When the weekend rolled around, Uncle Kev was tired of watching us and jumped at the chance to drop us anywhere in town. We opted for Avi Schmidt’s house. Avi’s father was a criminal defense lawyer, so they lived in a McMansion on the tony side of town. It was modern without being over the top. It had a fire pit and a swimming pool in back, and the fact that it sat on eight acres of land meant that there was still a considerable front lawn.

By coincidence, Avi’s parents were also on vacation. They’d be gone all weekend. Somehow word of this slipped out to the entire student body of Caldwell Junior High, leading to a hundred drunk teenagers showing up on Avi’s doorstep. Faced with devastating peer pressure, Avi had no choice but to let them in the house. Once inside they spread out to all the rooms, but the majority of them headed for the basement.

In those days, we couldn’t go anywhere without drinking. We got booze where we could, usually someone’s older brother. But that required forethought, negotiations and a heavy mark-up. Instead, we found a homeless guy hanging out at the train station who we paid three dollars to buy us beer. Once we had it, we covered the haul with our jackets and fled back to Avi’s house.

It was supposed to be a toga party, but only the girls took it seriously. The boys probably looked for any reason NOT to look silly. There were kids everywhere. Children take note: if you want your parties to continue, then keep your guests in the basement. That was not the case here. Uninvited party crashers multiplied exponentially. They were in the upper rooms and spilling out into the backyard. This party had a shelf life of forty-five minutes, tops.

I looked around at everyone who was there. Layla looked great as usual, but I guess even she felt awkward in social situations because she started to drink. A lot. And she was not what you’d call a good drinker.

Next to her, a group of high schoolers had gotten into Avi’s father’s liquor cabinet. They kept cheers-ing with his booze. Someone figured out there was a mini fridge and started pulling out half-bottles of champagne. One of the corks shot across the room, shattering a glass. But instead of cleaning it up, the guy who did it just said, “it’s cool, it’s that Jewish kid’s house, no one cares.”

If Avi knew any of this, he didn’t seem to care. Having resigned himself to the inevitability of the party, Avi set about completing “the trifecta,” which involved kissing three different girls in the same night. He had gotten two easily enough, but a third proved elusive, so much so that he was actually considering going for a girl that most people thought was mentally retarded. She was cruelly, but accurately, nicknamed “Sloth” after the mongoloid from “The Goonies.”

In the weeks since Rich’s house, Hudson had been finding it harder and harder to make excuses for not smoking weed. His latest end around was only “taking shotguns” of a blunt instead of actually smoking. This involved flipping the blunt around and having another person blow smoke into your mouth. It always looked like he was necking with the person doing it to him. Not that any of these homophobic fucks ever called him out on it. I guess he thought that if push came to shove and he was caught that he could still honestly tell his mother “I didn’t smoke ma, honest – someone blew it into my mouth!”

Hudson wanted to be edgy, but still please his parents. I think he actually believed that he’d never get high this way. I saw the moment when he finally did. He smiled stupidly, a look on his face that said, “this is what I’ve been running from?!”

Dean was also being annoying, playing the role of an experienced drinker by lying about the number of beers he’d had to make himself sound cooler. It seemed like everyone at this party was flirting with the idea of being older.

In revenge for Schmidt’s slushie prank, Lauren decided to mock him by doing exactly what he was doing, except her trifecta would be a collection of hickeys. She began circling the party in her toga, offering her neck to willing boys. For some reason, it reminded me of my mother and Glen Tonche, so I steered clear.

But this was becoming increasingly harder to do. Everything and everyone in my life was saying date this girl. It’s terrible to admit, but I thought I could do better. Me, the autistic freak, thought he could do better than hilarious and kind and fun to go to the movies with Lauren. In hindsight, I picked a really shitty way to share my feelings...

She found me in the darkened kitchen hiding from everyone. Sidling up to me, she drunkenly whispered, “Taylor… kiss me.”

If I had a time machine, I would go back and kiss that drunken, frat girl right there in that kitchen and never let go. But I was fourteen and all I could think about was what Layla was doing. So, when Lauren asked me to kiss her, I reacted poorly, responding with an emphatic, “No!” The little she could see of my face was disgusted. She laughed it off and I hoped that by tomorrow it would be a distant, drunken memory for her.

I wandered downstairs to see if I could find Layla. The girl was in the middle of what people like to call “an incident.” She was drunk and had fought with Stephanie. Now she was crying on the toilet. Steph was trying to console her, but the door was open, and a crowd had started to form. From where I stood, I could see her through the crack of the door. Her jeans and underwear were around her ankles, her full hips on display. She was too drunk to care or notice. The makeshift tunic she had constructed for the yoga party barely covered her midriff and I could see her landing strip. If I pivoted just right, I knew I’d be able to see everything. But something stopped me from doing that.

I remembered Bill looking in Simone’s window. I didn’t want that to be me. For once in my deviant little life, I would do the right thing. This girl was miserable. Unfortunately, that was the moment she looked up and caught me staring. Before I could wrench myself away, I noticed that she didn’t look embarrassed. She looked lost.

That’s when she screamed, “Taylor, you pervert - shut the fucking door!” It caused a scene. Suddenly, Hudson was there, showing off in shining armor knight mode. There was hardly any time to explain before he shoved me. Instinctively, I pushed back, and Hudson tripped over the person behind him. When he tried to catch his fall, his elbow went straight through the basement drywall, tearing out a two-foot wide section.

Hearing the crash, Avi stormed over. He took one look at the damage and ordered everyone out. The crowd was pissed. And they were pissed at me! I had single-handedly ended the party. Once again, the poor kid was going to take the wrap. I had to get out of there.

Every few feet, someone shoved me or yelled at me. People asked rhetorically “why doesn’t he hang out with people his own age?!”

The high schoolers who had gotten into Schmidt’s dad’s brandy cornered me just as I tried to grab my coat and leave. The angriest one of them claimed that my coat was actually his coat. He started pulling it out of my hands, so I pulled back. I was in a tug of war with a freshman. He asked me if I was crying, which hadn’t occurred to me until right then, but it seemed like a good idea. Fortunately, Dean separated us and shoved me out the front door.

Hot tears burned from my eyes as I walked ahead of him. “Taylor, what the fuck happened back there?!” he demanded.

I tried not to answer, knowing my voice would betray me. “Guy tried to steal my coat--”

“Fuck the coat, you ruined Schmidt’s wall!”

I couldn’t believe what I has hearing. He was standing up for the enemy. “No, Hudson ruined Schmidt’s wall!”

“Yeah, you pushed him!”

“He pushed me first!”

“He was defending Layla!”

“He was trying to get laid!”

“You gotta go back and apologize!”

“Are you serious?! I can’t go back in there! They’ll eat me alive!”

“You can’t act like this!”

“Neither can you!”

“I bring you around, I introduce you to people, and this is the thanks I get--”

“Yeah well, don’t do me any favors!”

“If that’s the way you want it then, you’re out! Get your own fucking friends!”

I stood there, silently furious, wiping the embarrassed tears from my eyes. It took a moment before I finally spoke up. “I deserve better friends than you.”

Dean stared at me, coldly. “Then I hope you get them.”