belled sleeve fell loosely from wrist to elbow as she did this, exposing a little knot of waxy white scar tissue on her left inner forearm. Mikey tried to avert his eyes and suppress the pained twinge of deep discomfort, a vicarious instinct that always, for whatever reason, hailed from his groin.
Lynn had never gone into detail about her personal problems in her emails to the others over the years. Mikey recalled that an injury in Lynn’s early twenties had prevented her from pursuing the piano competitively, and although she never fell completely out of touch, there were a few years when her emails were less frequent and less coherent, often containing some weirdly banal and clichéd message that she presented as deeply profound. Dance like no one is watching. You have to look through rain to see the rainbow. In recent years, Lynn was not bashful about her current role in leadership with AA, but it was clear that she hadn’t wanted to provide the others with so much as a glimpse into her troubles until they had been sorted out.
Fortunately, Lynn’s attention was elsewhere as Mikey’s eyes darted to and from her scarred forearm. She was gazing out over Mikey’s shoulder, and cheerily announced, “Sam-Jam!”
Mikey followed Lynn to greet Sam at the coatrack.
Sam was ginormous. His blond hair had gone wispy at the crown. He wore a dark brown polyester suit, and a seam at his left shoulder had burst. His belly was a barrel. He looked puffy, kind, sad, and distracted. The pores on his nose were cavernous. His pink face cracked into a smile as he hugged his old friends. Sam’s face had always worn emotion oversimplified, as plain as a puppet’s.
Mikey felt tears blistering beneath his eyelids. Seeing the faces of both Lynn and Sam for the first time in over a decade filled him with longing and joy and some type of uncanny despair. It occurred to him, too, in that same moment and with nearly the same measure of despair, that he could not recall the last time he had been touched by another person.
Lynn said to Sam, “Did you drive all this way?”
Sam nodded. “Justine’s sorry to miss it,” he said. “She was gonna come but wasn’t feeling up to it in the end.”
Mikey said, “You drove all that way by yourself? You’re south of Atlanta, aren’t you?”
Sam said, “Got ten hours in yesterday, stayed in Ohio last night, only about five hours on the road this morning.”
“Where’d you stay in Ohio?”
“Heck of a motel,” Sam said. “Just outside Cincinnati. Place was decorated like a boat. The whole motel I mean, just like a big cruise ship from the outside, and the inside, the rooms all done up like a little cabin. Lifesaver things hung on the wall. The shower curtain a, like, what’s the word? A nautical pattern, seashells on everything. Neat. You wouldn’t believe the continental breakfast either. Waffle iron. You make your own.” Sam clapped his hand over Mikey’s shoulder. “How’s life in Lackawannie?”
“It’s good,” Mikey said.
“Your pop still on Ingram?”
Mikey nodded. “Same house and everything.”
Sam said, “You see much of him?”
“Every Sunday,” Mikey said. “Not my favorite part of the week,” he added.
Mikey knew that his childhood friends had always feared and disliked his father, who never raised a hand against any of them but who bristled noticeably at their presence in his home, spoke roughly to them. And there was always that vague smell of blood, blood beneath his father’s fingernails, the suggestion of violence.
“How long are you in town?” Mikey asked Sam.
“I’ll have to hit the road tomorrow morning. Got work Tuesday.” Sam’s lips were the same color of the flesh surrounding them.
Lynn said, “Us, too.”
Sam said, “Awful nice of Jimmy, inviting us to the house for dinner and the night. Shame about his flight.”
Mikey said, “Sounds like if they get him on the next one, he’ll get in at Buffalo-Niagara around seven, out to the house by eight.”
Lynn said, “Anybody know how Sally’s mom is doing?”
Mikey shook his head. “Don’t think I’ve seen her yet today . . . Not a hundred percent sure I’ll know her if I do.”
“What was her name?” Sam said softly. “Karen?”
“Corinne.”
Alice had made a crack about Sally’s mother once when they were young, pointing out to the others that Corinne “looked the way grapefruit juice tastes.” She wasn’t wrong, but Jimmy had jumped all over her for it, even though Sally wasn’t present at the time. He said, “Don’t do that. Sally’s sensitive.” Alice had snorted defiantly, but she hadn’t brought it up again, at least not that Mikey could recall.
Lynn leaned forward. Her voice was a whisper, and it vibrated when she said, “Corinne mentioned depression in the obituary remarks, right?”
Mikey had finished his coffee, and he dug fingernail crescents into the lip of the Styrofoam cup. He said, “Seems that way.”
Sam said, “No note, though.”
Lynn said, “Sam, are you doing okay?”
Sam said, “Still reeling. But . . .”
An organ had begun to play inside the sanctuary, and Issa had rejoined them.
Lynn said, “Should we go in and grab a seat?”
The four of them filed into a pew.
Mikey felt his whole body go languid and loose as a wrung-out rag the moment he sank into a seated position. He had slept poorly the night before, fitfully, waking many times with a dry throat and racing heart and the sensation that he had been panting and running like hell through his dreams, but not sure if he had been running toward something or away from it. Next to him, Sam smelled of a hair too much cologne and stale sweat, presumably from a previous occasion when he had worn this same suit.
Chapter 8
Sam introduced the others to Blackout when he was twelve. He had been taught the game by his weird older cousin, Marcus. Marcus spent several weeks at Sam’s house every summer because he was a freak whose own parents couldn’t stand him, or at least that’s what Sam’s mother always said before Marcus arrived and after he had left.
Marcus had left town that afternoon, and Sam pulled the mattress to the center of the floor in The Gunner House that evening, announcing that he was going to teach them Blackout.
“You make yourself pass out,” Sam explained. “I’ve been doing it all week with my cousin. It’s the biggest high. It’s really scary.”
Jimmy said, “How do you do it?”
“You get on your hands and knees like this . . .” Sam moved to the center of the mattress and crouched on it, his big bottom balanced on his ankles. “Then you hyperventilate a hundred times”—he demonstrated this now, whooshing breath in and out vigorously—“and then you do this—like, you bear down like you’re
