Suzanne Halmi
No More Happy Birthdays

There wasn’t much to do in Woodhouse on a Friday night in May unless someone was having a party, usually outside, maybe in the woods, because their parents weren’t crazy, and unless the person having the party invited you, or one of their friends invited you, or it was some kind of paying sort of party. Beyond that, there still wasn’t much to do. You could go to the movies. You could stay home and watch TV. That’s how it was in Woodhouse, in northwestern New Jersey, in 1986, a nice, country kind of place to grow up, still very rural, lots of farms, with the one intersection of downtown and a single square block of shops and other businesses, like the best pizza place in the area, but nothing to do if you were a teenager and the parental bonds had loosened and you weren’t in college yet (that is, if you got to go), and you were bored out of your mind on a Friday night. Ted was looking to get high, primarily because he wanted to get Laurel high, since she was his (relatively) new girlfriend and talking her into having sex wasn’t working and she didn’t like to drink. So he asked Shaun Keck if he knew where he could buy a joint and Shaun said come with me and Randy, and we’ll hook you up.
      Randy was Shaun’s brother, about ten months younger but they might as well have been in the womb at the same time, they were so alike, so totally alike, even though they didn’t look alike. Ted knew twins who weren’t as close as Shaun and Randy. It was freakish, sometimes, how even though they had different colored hair and didn’t look alike, everybody got them mixed up. They lived in a rundown house up Railroad Avenue, past where the old railroad tracks cut through town and there was always junk all over their yard, pissing off the neighbors, and it was pretty obvious that there was something wrong with the way the parents took care of the kids that had nothing to do with money, or perhaps everything to do with money, Ted thought, because didn’t money touch everything? His own parents, currently embroiled in a nasty divorce, each talked about money all the time, to the exclusion of everything else, and Ted assumed it was like that for most adults, and certainly for all parents. Thus, he tried not to think too much about Shaun and Randy’s parents and what they did or did not do for their sons, or their daughters, one of whom looked like an albino even though she wasn’t one, especially when he didn’t really want to hang out with those two or be friends with them, he just wanted them to hook him up and get lost so he could get laid, in that order.
      He told his parents some bullshit about going to the early movie and then he walked from their house on Old Oak Road, in one of the newer developments that used to be cornfields not too long ago, down Essex Avenue to pick up Laurel. She lived in a nice Victorian house that her parents had spent years and tons of money renovating on their teachers’ salaries. His parents approved of Laurel and her family: she was a nice girl, that was what they said.
      Anyway, in order to get four hours, the story was: they were going to the early show, but then he and Laurel would call home around quarter after seven to say they’d missed the show and were going to go for pizza downtown and then to the nine o’clock show. And everything went off as planned. By seven-thirty, he and Laurel were standing a little hangdog in front of the Kecks’ homestead with Shaun, waiting for Randy to finish in the bathroom, before they could go wherever it was the brothers would lead them. Laurel made a face at Ted behind Shaun’s back. She didn’t like this, she’d said on the way over; they were going to get in trouble. She was such a goody-goody, Ted thought. What the hell did he see in her besides her hot bod? He took out a brand new pack of Marlboros he’d bought at the newspaper store next to the pizza place where he supposedly was at the moment, and he and Shaun lit up. Why buy when you can bum? Ted thought bitterly. Like he was rich! Finally, Randy was done and he came out of the house, bounding slightly like a young dog, and followed by a loud string of curses from his father. It was a slowly sagging-into-ruin, formerly-white, old wooden house with a lopsided front porch and a side porch filled with firewood and junk. He and Shaun, shoulder to shoulder, led the way out of the rutted yard, turning right up the street toward the old cemetery, saying nothing. Ted followed, holding Laurel’s hand, which was chilly in his own much warmer, somewhat sweaty one. He was nervous, there was no getting around that.
      The cemetery was up on a steep hillside above the Dairy Queen. It was pretty old, Ted had heard, and there were a bunch of murdered people buried toward the back. The whole place was in extreme disrepair; nobody was really into fixing up a bunch of graves of people dead so long their relatives didn’t even live in Woodhouse any more. Or maybe they did, but didn’t care. Ted didn’t care either way, himself. Laurel hesitated at the entrance, pulling Ted back a little. “No,” she whispered, even as the brothers headed in among the plots, the broken stones and little hillocks and holes that were from the upheavals of earth caused by settling graves. It was past dusk now, but there was a faint glow in the air from the single street lamp. The top of Laurel’s hair looked shiny and wet from the light, greasy almost. Ted pulled at her hand, trying for playful. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to lose them.”
      “I don’t like this,” she said.
      “Come on,” he said again, a little less friendly. “They’re fast.”
      Laurel, to whom the idea of “boyfriend” was new and exciting, felt as if she might lose her own new identity as “girlfriend,” and end up back among all her friends who envied her the new status she’d achieved by agreeing to go out with Ted. She felt so proud walking through the corridors in the high school holding his hand, how he waited for her in the hall after class and sat with her at lunch. It was as if this were the kind of armor she’d been looking for all her life, perhaps since she’d stopped being attached to her mother, carried around, settled in a stroller, strapped into her highchair. She felt so secure with a boyfriend. And now, what if he left her here, too disgusted with her even to take her home? She didn’t want to say, but she was frightened of the graveyard, she couldn’t bear the idea of walking among, over the old graves. She was so torn, she nearly burst into tears. Finally, responding to the increasing pressure on her hand, the pressure that was not tender or gentle, and to which something in her responded almost against her will, she went in with him.
      It was a pleasant evening, and the susurrus of traffic on the highway provided a comforting background noise as they picked their way along. “What a mess,” Ted said, tripping on another broken headstone. “You’d think someone would care.”
      “Yeah,” Laurel said. She wondered if she looked as white, as drained of blood, as she felt. What was she doing here? “Where are they? I don’t see them.” She didn’t want to say, your friends. She didn’t despise the brothers, for all that they were well-known petty criminals and lowlife druggies. They were out of her sphere. She would no more hang out with them than she would hang out with adults or small children. Ted had not been entirely clear on why they were with the Kecks that night, she was afraid it had something to do with drugs, but she didn’t want to know, really, the truth, any more than she wanted to see what she was stepping on.
      Ahead of them, they saw the flare of a match, and quickened their pace. Laurel felt as if she was being dragged along, but at the same time the flame looked like sanctuary, safety, and she wanted to get there as fast as possible. When they reached the brothers, they were simply waiting, smoking their cigarettes. They looked at Ted and Laurel with a mixture of contempt and sexual interest, as if they might have been waiting for a couple who were screwing among the graves, necking in the cemetery. Laurel felt a little naked, and guilty, even though it wasn’t true. She couldn’t exactly say, We weren’t doing anything! when they hadn’t said anything. But it was the way they looked at her, as if they knew about stuff she couldn’t even imagine, deviance that was a way of life. Oh, she could imagine anything of the brothers, she knew so little about them!
      Ted didn’t like the way they looked at Laurel, kind of eyeing her up. She was his girlfriend. But it wasn’t like they had a chance, right?
      “What’s up? What are we doing here? Are we meeting somebody?”
      “Shortcut,” Randy said.
      “You’ll see,” Shaun said, more mysteriously, as they turned and began to lead on again.
      In this section, obviously the oldest part of the graveyard, huge flat slabs listed like drunkards leaning into an imaginary wind. The ground was even worse. Ted thought of all the horror movies he’d seen, the way the skeletons always reached up and grabbed for whoever was nearest and dumbest. Well, he might be nearest but he wasn’t dumbest. Wasn’t one of the arguments his parents kept having about him going to college, where he should go, how much they should pay? His dad kept saying, scholarship, scholarship, and his mother kept telling his father, You can’t rely on that, you cheap bastard! Ted wanted to go to college, but he wasn’t sure he wanted the pressure that would come with his parents paying a big price for it. Wouldn’t they always be able to hold it over his head? Wouldn’t it be one more thing that would make him their boy? It was tantamount to slavery, that kind of debt. He wanted out of his parents’ house, out of Woodhouse, out of frigging New Jersey. He knew he would be better off somewhere else, somewhere better than this hick town. His cousins from Bloomfield were always telling him, Man, there’s nothing out here, when they deigned to visit with his aunt and uncle. They didn’t deign very often anymore; they had stuff to do. You wouldn’t see them, running through some old fucked-up graveyard in the evening after the Kecks. Right now, he thought, burning with envy, they were probably heading into the city on the bus, or better yet, in someone’s car, all set with their fake IDs, looking to get drunk, dance, make out with some girl they didn’t even know and would never see again. That was how it was when you lived somewhere much cooler than Woodhouse.
      They followed the Kecks out of the cemetery and into a gully that ran between the cemetery and the houses of the development: bi-level after raised ranch after split-level along the road that eventually dumped back out onto the highway. There were offshoots of the road that went up into the hills, up to the Shrine. Ted was never really sure what the Shrine was; he thought maybe it had something to do with nuns and the military, like some kind of joint venture. He had never had anything to do with nuns, having been raised completely free from religion. Laurel was Catholic. He should ask her, maybe, one day, but then, she might wonder if he was making fun of her religion. He felt her hand in his slip a little: his hand was getting sweaty, he couldn’t help it. He gave her fingers a little squeeze and then let go, to wipe his hand off on his jeans, but when he reached for her hand again, she had stuck both of them in her jacket pockets. He fumbled for his cigarettes, to hide his annoyance and disappointment.
      And after all, after all the shortcut crap, it was only a party, a little beer can party in the gully, with a few of the kids from along the road and a couple from up by Port McCullough. Hard-eyed, the kid whose party it was hit Ted up for five bucks for himself and Laurel and shrugged when Ted said Laurel wouldn’t drink. “Pay up or fuck off,” he said. Ted paid. He shoved a crumpled five at the kid, some kid he hardly knew but who might have been in shop class with him last year, he thought he was, and took two cans of Bud ostentatiously, to show them he was going to get what he paid for. The Kecks were making the rounds, looking like the stars of the party, the guests everyone had been waiting for. Ted drank one beer as quickly as he could, belched as discreetly as he could, and looked for an obvious place to chuck the can. There was none. He crushed it under his new work boot and kicked it into the undergrowth. He started on the second can, slipping his arm around Laurel’s shoulders as smoothly as he could. “I’m cold,” she whispered. “I really want to go back.”
      “Wait a little,” he said. He watched Randy Keck, fooling around with some skanky girl with bleached hair who was bouncing a balloon on a rubber band. She looked like an idiot, and they were laughing as she hit Randy over and over again in the face with the balloon, like two stupid little kids. He supposed they were stoned and he got pissed. Where was his? What the hell? Why couldn’t you just buy the joint or whatever and go? How come you had to hang out, be friends, to get what you wanted? The Kecks made it too hard. He was going to have to find someone else at school who sold pot.
      But not tonight. Tonight he had two goals and he was going to achieve both of them, no matter what. He told Laurel he’d be right back and even though she bleated in alarm at being left alone, he walked away from her and found Shaun Keck sitting on a fallen tree, drinking a can of beer and looking as scruffy as if he lived in the gully. “Come on,” Ted said. “What’s the story? Do you have it or not?”
      “Have what?” Shaun asked, looking up at him from his tree. His mouth remained open a little, looking up.
      “The stuff, man, the…you know,” Ted said.
      “Oh, yeah.” Shaun drank. “I think Randy has it. Ask him.”
      Ted turned and stalked off toward Randy. The girl was nowhere to be seen, but Randy had a red balloon between his lips, in his teeth, and was half blowing it up and then letting it go back down, the stale air whooshing back into his mouth. He looked dazed. In response to Ted’s query, he said, “Oh, yeah, no.”
      “Yes or no?”
      “No,” Randy said, and the balloon filled and emptied. “Not now. Later. Got to meet our connection and get it. But it’s worth the wait. Really. Worth the wait. Gold.” He spoke around the balloon.
      Ted, who had no experience of connections or pot, stood there, feeling like more of an idiot than either brother, and suddenly scared, too. There would be other people involved in this. Perhaps adults. Or at least older teenagers, people graduated from high school a few years ago. He was getting even more nervous now. After all, there was always the chance they’d get caught, wasn’t there? And then what would his father say about paying for college? What answer would his mother have? They might make him take out loans and get a part-time job. He didn’t mind working for pocket money, but to really have to pay for stuff! For everything! He glanced over at Laurel who stood hunched over into herself, obviously miserable, and realized that it would take more than getting a joint to make her give it up tonight. The look she gave him when she noticed him looking said it all: no fucking way, nothing doing.
      But then in desperation, he thought, If I get the joint tonight, maybe next weekend. Maybe he could get her stoned next weekend without having to go through all this beforehand. He turned back to Randy and asked, “When?”
      “I don’t know, man,” Randy said. He blew the balloon up and shook his head at Ted. “Just chill out, okay?”
      Deflated, Ted turned to walk back to Laurel. He hadn’t even reached her when there was a shout, followed by more shouts, and he heard someone yell, “Cops!” He paused in the midst of the sudden chaos, the crazy upheaval of bodies seemingly flying through the air all around him, and thought, Laurel? Or just run? “Freeze!” the cops shouted over all the other shouts and Ted, as frightened as a little kid, froze. He realized he still had the can of beer in his hand and threw it, not even looking to see where.
      After that it was all anti-climactic. The cops, finding themselves left with five teenagers where there had been at least twenty, were at first brusque and then jocular. Ted recognized Karl DeRosa, a big heavy-set cop, talking gently to Laurel, who was crying. “But I didn’t have anything to drink!” she sobbed, while he talked soothingly to her. A heavy hand descended on Ted’s shoulder and he was pushed down, to sit on the ground, his legs straight out in front of him, his hands in the dirt. From this vantage point, he saw cops’ legs and the legs of the others who’d been caught: Randy Keck and Boyd Johnstone, who was two years behind them in school, himself and Laurel, and some other girl he didn’t recognize who had a broken arm in a scribbled-over cast. She sat facing him on the ground, her moon face sullen. Maybe she was from another town; she might as well have been from another planet, she looked so alien to him. The beer he’d drunk so quickly sat in his stomach like stolen candy, making him feel even worse. He wanted to put his head in his hands and cry, but he sat there, staring back at the girl until she looked away.
      They were picked up and placed into a couple of patrol cars, and driven to the station up in Towertown, a pretty nice location for a police station, tucked up in behind a bunch of centuries-old houses and farms, nice property, quiet. Ted walked in behind Randy and Boyd and they put them in one cell and the two girls in the other. Ted stood near the bars, looking out. He refused to look at Laurel. He wouldn’t ever look at her again. He hated her. This was all her fault. If she had just had some kind of normal sex drive like these girls were supposed to have, he wouldn’t be in this position. He knew enough to know they were in the cells to teach them a lesson, that the cops out there, joking around now, would probably be laughing their heads off at them when their parents came to get them, but for now they ignored the kids and went about their business, which mainly looked liked filling out forms and telling jokes.
      He heard a cough behind him and then another noise. Ah, man, someone was puking! He turned to complain and saw Randy Keck clawing at his throat. The girl in the next cell screamed for the cops. “He’s choking!” she shrieked. “He’s choking!”
      Ted stood, watching, as the cops opened the door to the cell, seemingly never locked in the first place, and were on Randy as fast as Ted had ever seen anyone move. “What is it?” they shouted at each other, wrestling Randy to the floor, ripping at his cruddy old vest, his shirt, his dirty, stained undershirt, forcing his mouth open and shoving fingers down his throat. Someone knocked into Ted and he fell back against the bars, hurting his shoulder. He would have a huge bruise for weeks. He said, “It’s a balloon,” but he didn’t think anyone heard him and all he could do was whisper it again, and then again, and then he fell silent. But in the end, there was nothing anyone could do and Ted closed his eyes, and lay there, while things quieted down, slowly quieted down, and he heard Karl De Rosa say, “Oh, Christ!” In the next cell, the girls were both crying. Ted wanted to scream at them, Shut up! Shut the fuck up! But he didn’t want to yell at the cops and he didn’t want to open his eyes to see who he was yelling at, so he just lay there, half propped up against the bars, his eyes squeezed shut.
      They took the kids out then, and settled them in chairs at the officers’ desks, leaving Randy alone in the cell, on the floor, covered with a blanket, and tried to get the kids not to look in that direction, while they called their parents, and the Kecks. Laurel said again, “I wasn’t drinking, I really wasn’t drinking,” but no one answered her this time, or tried to make her feel better.
      It turned out the moon-faced girl with the broken arm was a year behind him in school, and she lived in Towertown with her mother and when her mother came, she yelled at her daughter and nearly dragged the girl out of the station by her hair. Next was Boyd, and his parents, who both came, and took him out in complete, chilling silence. Then Laurel’s father came in, looking as if he might cry himself, and, since he seemed to know all the cops, he had a brief, concerned talk with Karl, and then he held out his hand to Laurel, who took it and burst into tears, clutching at him as they left, holding her father around his waist, his arm around her shoulders, half-carrying her, really, and not looking at Ted at all. Ted sat silently, waiting. Who would come for him? Who would be angrier? What could he say to his parents besides, “Sorry?” “I’m sorry.” That wasn’t going to cut it.
      But instead of his parents, Randy’s came, and Shaun was with them. Mr. Keck was swaying on his feet, obviously drunk. Shaun’s face was completely white. Mrs. Keck nodded at the cops and followed her husband into the cell. There were two paramedics in there now, too, and they spoke in soft voices to the Kecks, who grouped around the still form now on a gurney. Ted glanced at them and then away. “I want to know what the fuck happened.” Mr. Keck said. “I want to know right now.”
      Ted was distracted by a couple of cops who came rushing in. One of them threw himself into a chair at another desk, his legs splayed, cursing. The other cop grabbed a first aid box from somewhere and said, “Can you take them off?”
      “I don’t know!” the first cop said through gritted teeth. “Jesus,” he moaned.
      “I’ll cut them up,” the second cop said. “They’re finished anyway. Hold still,” he said and with a sharp knife he ripped up the cop’s right pant leg all the way to his crotch.
      “Watch what you’re doing,” the first cop snarled.
      “Don’t worry. Oh, shit, man, right through the skin.”
      “Like I didn’t fucking know. I’m bleeding! If I find out he’s got AIDS, I’m going to fucking kill that motherfucker!”
      The second cop touched the wound with a cotton ball and the first cop wheezed with pain. “Bit me. I can’t believe he bit me. I took him down and he bit me. The fucking scumbag! I’m going to kill him if he has AIDS!”
      In the cell, Ted could hear Mr. Keck again, and now he said, “You kids. You damned kids.” Ted turned, almost against his will, from the bitten cop and his tentative nurse to the Kecks, in time to see Mr. Keck punch Shaun in the stomach, before the paramedics, and then more cops, could wrestle him to the floor, where he struggled and all was chaos and unintelligible shouts, and in the middle of all of this, in the middle of it all, Ted’s mother came in and came up to him and said, “Like I need this, too, right now,” and the bitten cop said, to no one in particular, “And it’s my fucking birthday, too.”

[Read an interview with Suzanne Halmi.]