Extraordinary Adventures Read online

  His mother hugged him tighter than he would have thought possible. She let go and looked at him.

  “My little boy,” she said, “plans never go according to plan. That’s what makes them exciting. It’s all chance and luck and timing. I never wanted a kid, not ever, and look—I got you. And I’m glad I did. I am unbelievably happy you’re my son. But I don’t think you understand how life works yet, and maybe that’s my fault, but what the hell, my job here is done.” She stood on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Oh—re-inter Barney for me? The hole’s still there. Just drop him in and cover. Thanks, sweetie. Good night.”

  He went through the house turning off all the lights; she liked to sleep with them on when she was here by herself. At night her house shone like an ocean liner against a velvet sky. In the kitchen, he picked up Barney’s skull and took it out back and, by the occasional light of his cell phone, re-interred him. But he held his skull for almost a full minute before setting him down in the hole he came from. He wondered about Barney’s last breaths on earth, running free, the whole world spread out before him, nothing but possibility and one meaty bone after another in his future. Then came that car. It seemed impossible that these bones were ever him. Barney, a basset hound, wasn’t really lively, but he had a specific personality. Even-tempered, habitually unimpressed, even melancholic, the tips of his ears always a little wet from where they fell into his water dish. He had a theatrical sigh and an air of disappointment that seemed to weigh him down. He was the perfect dog for Bronfman.

  Bronfman buried him and, stumbling over rocks and roots, went back inside. He took a swig of the scotch right out of the bottle, and it almost killed him. Doors locked, lights off, he went up the stairs to his old room, the one he had lived in all his life until he left it, where he dreamed his secret dreams and where, when he was fifteen, he almost removed the shirt of Cathy Biggs, vice-president of the honor society, but who at the last minute changed her mind. Chance, timing, luck. He thought about her, and he thought about his mother, and Barney, and he thought of Mary Day McCauley, as he did so often, Mary Day—the girl he may well have had sex with nineteen years ago—and of Sheila McNabb, Sheila whom he would never see again. Luck: bad. Of course (he told himself over and over), he didn’t know what might have happened if she had been at her desk this afternoon. It was possible that he wouldn’t have been able to speak to her, and if he had and they had continued their conversation later, maybe at a wine bar, with a cheese plate, it was possible they wouldn’t have liked each other at all. But he didn’t think so. He thought that, had they gone out that evening, one thing would have led to another and they would really have hit it off, clicked, and he would probably have kissed her good night (a fantasy if there ever was one) and, as she was turning to leave, he would have told her about the condominium in Florida. “Something to think about,” he might have said. And she would have smiled. Though that may have been rushing things. Regardless, it was possible that she would have liked him.

  As he masturbated in the very bed where he had learned how to masturbate, where he had practiced masturbating for so long, he imagined the two of them—Sheila and him—not on the balcony holding hands, watching the waves swell and fade, the sun glow, the breeze blow; and not even in the bedroom, naked beneath those slightly scratchy new-condo sheets. He imagined them sitting side by side at the short presentation, in uncomfortable folding chairs, watching the young/old, short/tall, skinny/fat man/woman highlight all the wonderful things about Sandscapes—its location, its square footage, its affordable luxury. But they would not be listening. They would be sharing secret silent thoughts with each other—thoughts like armadillo, cormorant, kookaburra, buffalo.

  SEVEN

  Mary Day McCauley. His first, his only, love.

  Not his first crush. His first was in third grade; he was eight years old, and her name was Ellen Peters. She had the glossy mane of a golden filly, though at the time Bronfman thought of her hair merely as soft-looking, pretty. He never touched it, but that was all he wanted to do with his life at the time—touch it once, or maybe a million times, and not even with his fingers but with the palm of his hand, his right hand, stroking it gently, as you might the back of a cat. He was an awkward boy, goofy, his pants too short and his shirt too tight, too quiet to be smart or smart enough to stay quiet. It wasn’t clear which then, and it never would be clear, not for the rest of his life. Ellen’s skin was golden-brown all year round. For show-and-tell once she brought a photo, cut out of the local newspaper, of her on a beach with a manatee. She was in a bathing suit of unknown color, it being newsprint, black and white. The lower half of her body was invisible behind the hulking mass of the gentle giant, and you could imagine, as maybe Bronfman did, that Ellen was a mermaid, a very young one. So she was famous now, which made her both more and less desirable to him, but mostly more.

  How did she know how he felt? He never even spoke to her. She sat three rows away, two rows behind; the only time he got a good look at her was when they filed out for lunch or to the playground. She could sense his obsession, his overweening desire, and—wise as she was, even at eight—she did not accept his valentine on Valentine’s Day, even though it was the rule that you brought one for every member of the class and everyone brought one for you. He tried to hand her his valentine (sealed in its tiny white envelope), and she turned away. No favoritism here. Quite the opposite: unfavoritism. It stuck with him, this cold rebuff, like a tattoo. It marked him not as the man he was but as the man he would become.

  Unrequited love. That was too big a word—too big an idea—for Bronfman, and it didn’t really apply. Unrequited love implies a possibility, however remote, of requital, and there was none with Ellen, not in this or in any world. So it happened then and so it would happen later. Ellen Peters became his heart’s motif, the poorly wrapped package that romance came to him in, this girl with the hair of a beautiful animal, friend of the manatee, exotic, famous, forever tanned, perfect and perfectly remote.

  And the next? Mary Day McCauley, almost a decade later. This is how it happened with her.

  Since ninth grade Mary Day McCauley had been swimming around in Bronfman’s brain like one of those dusty floaters he saw when he closed his eyes. So many years had passed and she had remained more than a memory. Memories fade, grayed out by time. Mary Day was destined to stay fresh forever, an indelible persistence in the swampy cortex of his brain.

  Back at Baldwin High, he saw her all the time, at a distance, as if he were under a self-imposed restraining order: at school, around town, and on weekends at parties so huge—ragers, they were called—even he was invited. He watched her with her boyfriend, Corey Spaulding. He saw them kissing at least four different times: once in the hallway at school, once outside the school against Corey Spaulding’s car, once at the mall where Bronfman was shopping with his mother, and another time in the aisle of a drugstore where Corey Spaulding bought a pack of Trojans.

  Corey was a sixteen-year-old skateboarder with wiry blond hair, an icy smile, and pale gray eyes that seemed to be looking at you as if from underwater. He was stoned most of the time, but that was back when most people were stoned most of the time. Mary Day was fifteen. High-school girls always liked the slightly older guys. The older guys didn’t seem scared the way Bronfman did. Girls—even the wispy, elfin, shy girls, the girls who had some equalizing deficiency—frightened Bronfman. Corey didn’t seem scared of anything, the way he weaved in and out of traffic on his skateboard and smoked a cigarette while doing it. Corey stayed Mary Day’s boyfriend for more than two years, off and on (they had a couple of very public, very emotional breakups), and probably would have hung around even longer had he not become addicted to something like cocaine or meth. Nothing worked out for him after that. Eventually, he just disappeared.

  Mary Day wasn’t wild. She was just fun, open-hearted. She was so beautiful and game—a spitfire, his mother would have called her. One of those rare girls who were genuinely sweet,
even though she was so pretty she didn’t have to be. Long brown hair, bangs, green eyes, a smile that spanned her face like a silver sliver of the moon. She was full of grace and energy. One summer she helped build a house for an indigent family, and every Christmas she caroled with a traveling choir, singing to the homeless, and leaving them with a hot meal of turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, and collards. Bronfman didn’t have to idealize her, because she was the ideal, a wonder of the world, not unlike the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  * * *

  It was one of those Saturday-afternoon concerts they used to have in the amphitheater at Caraway Park, where garage bands would play loud and sing unintelligibly, songs that never seemed to end but, rather, petered out, as if the musicians simply got tired of playing. Bronfman knew that most of the people in the park were high on something. He wasn’t high, of course; he never felt compelled to part that curtain, then or now. A couple of creepy old men in tattered hats with tangled beards had openly tried to sell him stuff, from pot to other items with mysterious names, but he waved them away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Thank you, but no.” He listened to the bands sitting directly on the patchy grass, his knees pulled up to his chest. He sat with a couple of the guys he knew from school—Frank Brower, Marcus Collier. Two boys who, like him, lived uncomplicated, risk-free lives. There was something perfect about that afternoon, a spacey freedom that made his life seem magical. Sun breaking through the branches as if through chinks in heaven, sometimes a breeze, singing, Frisbees, careless laughter. Good times.

  That Saturday afternoon in the park the grass was a lush bed of green, the sky as blue and deep as the ocean, the sun a pulsating buttery yellow. Even the shadows felt more real, substantial as the trees that cast them. Bronfman was wearing the blue-jean shorts his mother had bought for him—not even cutoffs but actual shorts!—and a tie-dyed T-shirt manufactured by a corporation, probably overseas. He had taken his shoes off and secreted them behind an oak. Already he had stepped on a rock and bruised a heel, and he was trying not to pay attention to the pain when Mary Day McCauley sat down beside him.

  “Hey, Edsel,” she said.

  Hey, Edsel. He had no words, no voice to respond. Why was she speaking to him? It didn’t make sense. The first thing he thought to say–You know my name?—he wisely chose not to share with her.

  “Hey, Mary Day,” he said. It came out weird, stilted and wooden, as if he were in class answering a question that he wasn’t sure he knew the answer to. She was wearing a pink spaghetti-strap blouse and cutoff jeans and no bra. Her breasts, which he could see without really trying to look, were actually quite small and simple. Perfect.

  She gestured toward the band. “They’re good.”

  “I think so, too,” he said, though he had no real opinion about them. Maybe they were good, maybe they weren’t, but now he knew: they were good. “The drummer can really play.”

  “Nicholas Brown,” she said. “I’ve known him since pre-school. He used to pick his nose obsessively and wipe it on the back of his shorts.” She laughed and hit her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Oh, my God! That’s a terrible thing to say.” She fell back onto the grass laughing. “I’m awful.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  She stopped laughing but stayed down where she was, staring up into the sky. “I like Reese,” she said. “You know her? Reese Alexander?”

  He shook his head.

  “She sings here sometimes,” she said. “Pretty. Really long blond hair? She goes to Baldwin.”

  He shook his head again. He wished he could stop shaking his head. He wished he knew something.

  “Look at this,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Get down here.”

  He lowered himself backward until he was lying on the ground beside her, the rounded edge of her bare shoulder touching his. He didn’t breathe, for fear an inhalation would separate them. Already he was in love with her. There was no doubt about it. He’d pledge allegiance to her. He’d have stolen a car and run over a dog if she’d asked him to.

  He stared upward.

  “See how the branches of that tree are poking into the bottom of that cloud?” she asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “It looks like a marshmallow on a stick, about to be roasted by the sun.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what it looks like.”

  He wasn’t just saying that, either. This was exactly how it looked. He never would have thought of it himself, but, now that she’d said it he saw it clear as day. A marshmallow on a stick. They were quiet for a minute—one full, entire minute. Bronfman was a human chronometer even then. He felt time, knew it the way other people had perfect pitch.

  Then she spoke.

  “Your parents named you after a car,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Edsel. It’s an old car, right?”

  “It’s a family name.”

  “I see.” He glanced at her. She was still gazing at the sky. “It’s a weird family name,” she said.

  “Edsel was the name of Henry Ford’s son,” Bronfman said, parroting his mother, whom he had heard give this rationalization a hundred times. “My grandfather was Edsel Ford’s best friend.”

  “Then that’s not a family name,” Mary Day said. “That’s somebody else’s family name.”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess so,” Bronfman said, and they laughed and laughed.

  There was more of her arm against his arm now, and this was how it went for the next hour. They talked about nothing—how dirt felt between your toes, ticklish grass, what clouds might taste like, the best way to prank a sub, and the odious Mrs. Watson, the principal of Baldwin High. It was the longest conversation Bronfman had ever had with a person who was not his mother.

  Then she stopped talking, and so did he, and they let the rock-and-roll assault them, until Bronfman felt sure she was staring at him. He let his head loll to one side and, yes, yes, she was staring at him, and her face was close enough to his that he could feel her breath on his nose. Her lips were pink and wet; her cheeks were freckle-scattered. Her eyelashes were long and thick enough to catch raindrops—eye awnings.

  “So,” Bronfman said.

  She took his hand, found it without having to look for it, breathing in short and shallow breaths. “There’s something about you I love,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I said there’s something about you I love. Everything about you. Everything. You’re a person.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Neither do I! It’s just how I feel.”

  But she didn’t laugh. She smiled at him. It was okay that neither of them knew what she meant. It was okay.

  He would not say another word. Could not. Their eyes were locked in a never-ending gaze, his drawn into hers as if through a tractor beam. She drew her fingers down his cheek, to the very edge of his lips. It felt as if she was trying to open his mouth with her index finger, but she didn’t linger there. She traced the outline of his chin, and then explored the inner regions of his ear, watching her finger as she did it, as if she didn’t know what it might do next and she wanted to see. Bronfman watched himself lying on the ground beside her, circling above them both like a falling leaf.

  “I took a little ecstasy,” she said. “Not much, but, you know. A little.”

  “Oh,” he said. He wasn’t sure what that was, and it didn’t really matter to him. “Sounds good.”

  “It is,” she said. “Very. I like how it feels.”

  Then she said she had a friend, or a friend of a friend, or maybe it was her older sister’s friend. Anyway, this guy had a place near the park, a room in a house, and she knew where he kept the key. “Come with me there,” she said, and she pulled him up from the grass and they walked not talking, just taking the necessary steps, traversing the distance. The key was hidden beneath a foot-worn black rubber WELCOME mat. Welcome, Bronfman. Welcome to the rest of your li
fe. They walked inside. Welcome to the new world, Bronfman, one so murky after the flashy bright of that July day that he saw nothing at all. Mary Day lit a candle. It was a bare place: a futon with a blue milk crate beside it, on one wall the torn poster of a rock-and-roll celebrity whom Bronfman couldn’t name but felt he should be able to. One lonely white sock in a corner.

  “Here.” She pulled him by his wrist down onto the futon and laced her arms around him. She was pushing against him with her body, breathing in gasps, her warm breath against his neck, sweating. Then, all of a sudden, she held him so tight. As if she were about to fall through the floor and he was the only thing that could save her. He felt her full-on then, all of her. She was made of sturdy stuff.

  As he looked back on it now it all seemed so unreal, but it seemed unreal the second it was actually happening to him, too. He remembered wishing he could stop thinking so much about being with her when he actually was with her, but even then, in the present, he couldn’t stop thinking about how truly incredible it would seem in the future, how far-fetched, and how being here with Mary Day was something he would remember for the rest of his life, this watching her lift her blouse over her head the way she did, as though she were unveiling a piece of art. It was an experience he would have traded a year of his life to have again. Really. A year.

  And then he lost track of time—Bronfman, who never lost track of time. Or no, not lost. He got off the track of time. Somehow she unbuckled his belt and pushed off his pants with her feet. And then, though he had never had instruction of any kind, ever, from anyone (is this something a father would have taught him?), he found himself on top of her. A shaft of sun exploded through a break in the blinds and the air was all tight and still and hot, and there was a fan now—he remembered the sound of a fan, the white plastic fan that did nothing to keep them from pouring sweat—and then the yellow cat that was suddenly there, staring at them with those crazy black eyes. Where did the cat come from? Face to face with Mary Day, eye to eye, and she lifted her knees into the air and bent her legs and guided him into her with her right hand while her left rested on the small of his back.