What's Important is Feeling Stories by Adam Wilson

Author:Adam Wilson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

One night at Weinberg’s, me, him, and Mike took ecstasy. We sat in his basement and listened to the techno remix of that Rusted Root song with the African drumming. I took off my shirt, rubbed my naked back against the leather recliner. We played Mario Kart and chewed gum. We each took a second pill; they were called Mercedes and had the logo imprinted on them. No girls came over. At sunrise we drove down to the lake. Lying in the grass I felt like I was lying in a hammock. I thought about my family and imagined them as pieces of clay that only needed to be fused together and fired in a kiln in order to take a shape and hold it.

We fell asleep outside for a couple hours. We were late for school. Weinberg swung me by my house so I could grab my backpack. My father was at work already. Before I got in I could hear my mother’s piano. It was Bach, a piece she used to play for me when I was a kid. Father Larry was sitting in my father’s chair, listening. Both their eyes were closed, but sunlight came in the window, and I knew they were seeing bright colors beneath their eyelids.

I stood in the doorway. Father Larry had his legs crossed like he was meditating. A carton of OJ and an empty champagne bottle were on the table. The floor was wet from where the champagne had spilled.

My mother made mistakes but played through, as if they were part of the piece. I grabbed my backpack and left.

At school I could barely stay awake. Matt Poncett was in my Spanish class, and he kept looking at me, smiling. I raised my hand. “Can I go to the nurse?”

“¡Hable en español!” Ms. Vasquez said.

I shrugged and put my head on the desk. In the hallway after, Matt Poncett winked at me and said, “Hola, amigo.”

When I got home, Father Larry and my mother were napping on the window seat in the living room. They were on their backs, head to toe, legs slightly intertwined. Peter Gabriel sang, “In your eyes, the light the heat.”

For a moment I considered curling up between them, resting my head in the nook of my mother’s armpit, lulled by the mingling smells of sweat, coffee, and pH-balanced deodorant. Instead, I went up to my room. I turned off all the lights and lay in silence, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling.

Later, I heard my mother on the phone. I peered through the crack in the door. She wore a bathrobe, paced.

“I’m not even a woman anymore,” she said. “There’s nothing left for them to remove.”

Then there was a long pause, and she stood, looking out the window.

“There’s no point in going through it again,” she said. “There’s nothing left.”

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