{"id":19118,"date":"2024-10-16T15:00:04","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T20:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=19118"},"modified":"2024-11-01T21:11:09","modified_gmt":"2024-11-02T02:11:09","slug":"illinois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/19118","title":{"rendered":"Illinois"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were throwing eyes onto the train tracks when Bobby asked me to be his best man. Our knees dangled from basalt escarpments where he\u2019d spraypainted <\/span>Bobby+Heather4ever<\/span><\/i>. Apparently, Heather\u2019s ex, Reynolds, still sent her wild horny messages. Bobby couldn\u2019t stand it. So he and Heather were getting married. He pitched an eye. Colored glass exploded, glinting on the rails. Our dads were ocularists. Eyes they didn\u2019t sell to taxidermists, schools, and hospitals accumulated in our garages. Lately more and more. As kids, we used to play while our dads drank Mickeys. We played with their empty bottles, lengths of plastic pipe, with the eyes that lay around our houses, staring from everywhere. When people looked at me, giving their full gaze, I struggled to relate any feeling to it. When Bobby said Marla would be one of Heather\u2019s bridesmaids, I bit my cheek. But I didn\u2019t say no. Bobby was my oldest and best friend. By the time of his asking, I\u2019d fallen away from everyone else in our loose orbit. We were freshly eighteen, \u201cgrown-ass men,\u201d and the possibility of finding myself alone was a new sound whistling from a distance.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

Bobby\u2019d fallen for Heather a year ago, at the twins\u2019 house. Brenda and Marla were identical with burnished-copper curls and upturned noses. You couldn\u2019t tell them apart except an Illinois-shaped birthmark behind Marla\u2019s ear. Bobby and I\u2019d brought some of our dads\u2019 eyeballs to their Halloween party. The eyes looked real but were cold in your hand.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a basement crowded with halfhearted costumes, we drank their dad\u2019s beer. Marla handed me a Budweiser. I handed her an eye. She wore an XL <\/span>Slipknot<\/span><\/i> T-shirt and said she was supposed to be her last shitty boyfriend. What was I supposed to be? But I hadn\u2019t dressed up. I wasn\u2019t supposed to be anything.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone knelt in a circle and spun a bottle. We were all too old for this, and that made it fun, like nails in a doll\u2019s head. Some pecked lips and hurried back to their spots\u2014the bold claimed seven minutes in the closet that was more of a repurposed root cellar and smelled of earth and insulation every time the door opened. My knees ached from kneeling. I hoped the bottle didn\u2019t pick me. I wouldn\u2019t know what to do, whether someone would want me or flinch when our lips brushed. I kept my eyes down, not looking at anyone, but Bobby had eyes for Heather from the start.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Everything bored Heather since breaking up with Reynolds. At some other party, he\u2019d ran around on all fours, yelping like a coyote and sniffing crotches. She loved telling that story and looked sort of deflated when she\u2019d finished and we\u2019d all heard it before. When the bottle aimed at Bobby, Heather shrugged\u2014these were just games. Bobby crawled across the circle, put an eyeball in her hand, and whispered, \u201cI\u2019ll win any game you wanna play.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The bottle picked me next. Across the way, Marla, dressed as her last shitty boyfriend, pushed back her hair where her birthmark showed like a tattoo of a jagged wound behind her ear. But before anything happened, the twins\u2019 dad came home bellowing mad: his beer fridge was empty, his house full of teenagers. We scraped bellies and shins, escaping out the basement window. We fanned across the neighborhood, kinetic, and weightless. We shouted down alleyways and between the naked alders of the shadowed park.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Marla caught me by the wrist. Her eyes, thrown wide open, pulled all the scant light. \u201cYou still owe a kiss.\u201d She pointed to Bobby and Heather making out on a park bench. \u201cThat\u2019s how the game works.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

By February, Marla wanted us to be Billy-Bob Thornton and Angeline Jolie, sharing vials of blood like she\u2019d read about in <\/span>Star<\/span><\/i> magazine.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We were alone in her basement. Sarah McLachlan played loud so her dad couldn\u2019t hear us. We kept falling out a window and never hitting the ground. Afterward, we counted rug burns on our backs and knees. I stared at the knife in Marla\u2019s hand. She was ready to feel this. When I couldn\u2019t do it, disappointment tumbled in her rolling eyes. Marla lay the knife down on the carpet by her knee, pulled on her shirt. Turned down the stereo, while McLauchlan cooed, \u201c<\/span>We are born innocent<\/span><\/i>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

One night, we dusted backroads in Bobby\u2019s Corolla. Pines saw-toothed in the moonlight. Heather propped her feet on a box of our dads\u2019 eyes and splayed her fingers, admiring the engagement ring. In the backseat, Marla said she loved me. I\u2019d never said that to anyone. That wasn\u2019t something said in my house. My dad and I didn\u2019t say much of anything in my house.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Heather\u2019s phone kept chirping in her coat pocket like an orphaned baby bird. Bobby accelerated, turned up the stereo, blasting some nu-metal band.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Marla pressed our foreheads together. Her breath hot and apple. She said it again.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow you say it back.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Corolla struck a pothole. A big cavity in the blacktop. For a second, everything lifted. We rejoined the road with a bang. In the wrinkling gravity, my chin spilt Marla\u2019s lip, and her brow filled my head with loud white light. By the time my eye began to swell and blacken shut, I still hadn\u2019t said anything. Words thickened and webbed, stuck down where my breath had left me like it was never coming back.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

By wedding day, Marla and I hadn\u2019t talked in months. I knew she was there in the church, but I hadn\u2019t seen her. In the basement, the groomsmen changed into our rented suits and cranked Foo Fighters on a boombox. A spoiled veggie platter was stinking up the church basement\u2014something between mold and fart. No one knew who\u2019d brought it or left it there. I took this for a bad omen but couldn\u2019t say so<\/span> while<\/span> knotting my tie<\/span> minutes before the ceremony<\/span>. Bobby grinned, air-drumming to \u201cEverlong.\u201d I held my breath and smiled back. The night before, we\u2019d drunk Mickey\u2019s on the escarpment. Trains cleaved the dark and scattered broken eyes like eggshells. We\u2019d imitated how our dads talked\u2014low, woozy\u2014as though this were something near to us now. When rain fell over us, it felt like nothing, like it\u2019d fallen yesterday over someone else. We were tomorrow\u2019s weather.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After the I-dos, Bobby and Heather donned sunglasses, threw the bouquet. Marla and I were paired in the procession. My hands shook as we converged into the aisle. But her arm hugged mine tenderly, and I felt the soft velocity of how we were before.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou guys stink,\u201d she whispered, giggling. \u201cDid a sink back up?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0The wedding party spilled onto the sidewalk. An errant wind pushed its fingers through everyone\u2019s hair. It lifted and tossed all the girls\u2019 and women\u2019s careful arrangements. Where Illinois should\u2019ve been mapped in pink behind Marla\u2019s ear, the wind revealed another skin, the color of cold butter. I watched Brenda, not Marla, tame her curls down.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlease don\u2019t tell.\u201d Brenda said. \u201cMarla owes me bigtime for swapping with her.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

***\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The newlyweds moved into a tiny walk-up behind the Thriftway. No one had cared for the building in years. The rickety stairs to their door swayed, on the verge of collapse. Whenever I visited, Bobby and Heather appeared bewildered by their lives, their apartment, marriage. The air lay stiff with weed smoke. Bobby described his new HVAC job in mundane detail. I tried to at least look like I cared. Heather studied her fingernails so hard they might\u2019ve been tiny TV screens, a fly\u2019s eyes\u2019 view of whatever occupied her thoughts. Bobby always played music loud so we couldn\u2019t hear Heather\u2019s phone going off. But I saw the white-blue flashes on the wall whenever her screen lit up with a text.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

***\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At another party in the twins\u2019 basement, everyone snorted crushed pills off a Ouija board. I didn\u2019t come to these parties anymore. But supposedly, Reynolds showed up after everyone had gotten crooked. He\u2019d come directly from getting a scorpion tattoo, his forearm still bound in saranwrap. By then, Bobby\u2019d passed out, sleeping in his coat in the corner. Plugging her nosebleed with a tissue, Heather pulled Reynolds toward the closet that had once been a root cellar. She smiled at the twins before closing the door\u2014it was all games, just stupid games.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By night\u2019s end, Brenda had to put Marla in the bathtub\u2014a reaction to something, a bitter ghost, a chemical hex, working its bad magic in her blood. She wouldn\u2019t take her shoes off or let go of her phone. I woke up to garbled texts, a tumble of letters shaking behind the screen. It took a while, arranging them into words, incantations, you could never take back.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

That summer, Brenda and I got jobs stocking shelves at Thriftway for minimum wage. She told me that Marla had moved in with a guy over in The Dalles and was going to be a dental hygienist. I asked Brenda what she was going to be. She flipped me off. \u201cRight back atcha!\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On sale days, we tied balloons and hit off a helium tank as the hours perforated. When Brenda related Bobby and Heather\u2019s drama, her voice squeaked like a cartoon chipmunk: Reynolds was driving Heather around in a Pinto everyone knew he\u2019d stolen. While Bobby had tail-spun out of sight. He hadn\u2019t said anything to me.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d gone to the apartment, up the rickety stairs, but Bobby didn\u2019t live there anymore. I went to his dad\u2019s house where his dad answered the door in a bathrobe and didn\u2019t invite me in. His eyes were red and broken, but not from crying. About a month ago, Bobby\u2019d called to say that he was driving regional trucking routes out of Spokane. That was the last he\u2019d heard. When the door closed behind him, I tasted bitterness like licorice all the way home.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brenda palmed me some warm linty pill. I didn\u2019t ask questions. We washed them down with bright green Jones Soda we pulled from fridges along the Thriftway\u2019s back wall. The bottle\u2019s label was a black-and-white photo\u2014people mailed in pictures to get picked and printed on the labels: a pair of arms raised a small child to a cloudless sky, and the child, leaving<\/span> those arms, reached out to swim up through summer.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We discounted cans of creamed corn while Lyle Lovett played in the overhead. He sang summer too, but for a better season, one that\u2019d passed before we\u2019d been born. It was getting harder to feel my hands. Canned vegetables rolled around our feet. Lovett drawled on sweetly and not for me. I kicked away cans I\u2019d dropped and drank my Jones Soda<\/span> spilling green down my shirt. It was summer and it would be again. But never weightlessness and careful arms waiting beneath you.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But it should\u2019ve been.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tract lighting snowed down the aisles. Through the static-frosted air, I reached to brush the curls from Brenda\u2019s neck. She laughed and didn\u2019t pull away. Closing my eyes, I attempted time travel\u2014I\u2019d never thought to at least try! But instead of going back, I just fell down among the canned vegetables. When I opened my eyes, there was no Illinois pinked behind her ear. Brenda helped me up, laughing her head off in our own time. It didn\u2019t matter who we were.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A sharp bubble rose in my chest. I felt it pop\u2014something unstoppable crushing through me. In a fluorescent blizzard, among the aisles, I heard the furrowed steel of trains punching down the tracks. The low gutting whistle. The distance from here to then went on, telescoping out and out until I couldn\u2019t say a word.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, Brenda was laughing. She laughed for a long time.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Desmond Everest Fuller<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were throwing eyes onto the train tracks when Bobby asked me to be his best man. Our knees dangled from basalt escarpments where he\u2019d spraypainted Bobby+Heather4ever. Apparently, Heather\u2019s ex, Reynolds, still sent her wild horny messages. Bobby couldn\u2019t stand it. So he and Heather were getting married. He pitched an eye. Colored glass exploded, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2318,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[82],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6Jypy-illinois","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19118"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19293,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19118\/revisions\/19293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}