Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

“Hi, honey,” Elizabeth said. She didn’t know why she was asking him — Harry had never taken anything that wasn’t his, not a pack of gum from the supermarket, not an extra piece of Halloween candy out of a neighbor’s bowl. He didn’t fib. Harry was their little golden ticket. Whenever she got together with other mothers of kids in his class, she would listen to them complain and rail against the demons living in their houses, and Elizabeth would just smile and nod politely. “This is probably silly, but did you happen to be in my storage boxes?” She pointed to the wall. “You know, in the guest room?”

Harry would have made any poker player very, very happy. His face melted instantly, and his lower lip began to wobble. “Um,” he said.

Elizabeth took another step into the room, her hands on the edges of the door. “Honey, what is it?”

He was trying not to cry. “It was just a couple of things. I didn’t know you’d miss them. If I’d known, we wouldn’t have done it.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Elizabeth asked. Harry’s friends were the sort with glasses and dirty sneakers, the sort of boys who’d worn sweatpants to school long after they should have. Arpad, Max, Joshua — those boys weren’t thieves. Together, they were a motley crew, like the geeks she remembered from her own high-school days, with squared-off glasses and overbites.

“Me and Ruby,” Harry said. “She thought they were worth a lot of money.” He temporarily brightened, thinking this information might scuttle him out of trouble. “And she was right! We’re already way past the reserves, look!” He opened his laptop and clicked some keys, then spun the computer screen toward his mother. Sure enough, there were her photographs on eBay, each going for over two hundred dollars already.

“Harr,” Elizabeth said. It was unlike him in so many ways — too entrepreneurial, too sneaky, too thoughtless.

Andrew poked his head in. “Did you find them?”

“Oh, we found them all right. Ruby Kahn-Bennett put them on eBay.” She grabbed the computer from Harry’s bed and showed Andrew the screen.

“Are you kidding? What are you going to do next, sell the television set for drug money?” Andrew frowned, his forehead creases deepening into hard lines, as even as ruled paper.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said. He shrugged. “I mean, I guess I knew I shouldn’t, but Ruby thought that it wasn’t a big deal, and that we’d make all this money….”

“Which you were going to do what with? Buy your mother flowers?” Andrew’s voice was veering close to a shout, which made Elizabeth’s ears ring. He never yelled at his son — maybe three times in the last sixteen years. Elizabeth knew how important it was to him to keep his temper in check. It had been a problem in their youth, Andrew always flying off into the stratosphere with rage over something totally inconsequential, but since the birth of their son, it had vanished almost completely.

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” His cheeks were bright red.

“Andrew, relax,” Elizabeth said. She was upset that Harry had taken the pictures, but it was so clear — so perfectly obvious — that it wasn’t his fault. He was under Ruby’s spell. “It was Ruby’s idea.”

“And that makes it better? I’m going to call Zoe. Right now.” He slid his phone out of his back pocket and dialed Zoe’s cell. In the band, there had been two distinct teams: Elizabeth and Zoe, and Lydia and Andrew. It wasn’t that Andrew and Zoe weren’t friends, officially, it was just that they weren’t friends, actually. Sometimes Elizabeth wondered what her life would have been like if she’d hit it off with Lydia instead of Zoe, what dominoes that would have sent knocking together.

“Oh, my God,” Harry said. He dropped his face into his hands.

“It’s not your fault,” Elizabeth said. He’d been taken hostage, simple as that. In the hall, Andrew’s voice got louder and louder, and Elizabeth walked over to the bed and put her arms around her son.

After screaming at Zoe (and then Jane) about their delinquent daughter’s theft, Andrew took a walk around the block, walking away from the Kahn-Bennetts’, just in case the three of them were staring out the window and ready for a rematch. He could feel his blood pumping in his ears. Andrew exhaled loudly through his mouth, once, and then again. Harry’s offense wasn’t so horrible, he knew that, but it was sneaky and wrong, and it was because Zoe was as shitty a mother as she was a person. She’d always been totally self-centered, and Elizabeth couldn’t see it, the way Zoe treated her like a dog. Worse than a dog! Zoe loved her dog, but Andrew wasn’t sure she felt the same way about his wife.

Andrew was at EVOLVEment before he realized that that’s where he was headed. He took the stoop steps two at a time. The door was open, and there was a meditation group in session. A girl with two braids pinned to the top of her head motioned him in, pointing to a blanket toward the front of the room, where Dave was sitting. Andrew climbed over everyone as quietly as possible and sank to his seat. He closed his eyes and felt better already. He sat in silence for an indeterminate amount of time — it could have been fifteen minutes, it could have been an hour. Dave rang a singing Tibetan bowl to reawaken the room, and they all started to move their bodies, sliding their hands over their knees and faces. When Andrew opened his eyes, Dave was looking right at him, smiling.

• • •

He hadn’t seen the upstairs, and was excited when Dave offered the full tour. Like the first floor, the stairs and the upstairs hall had all been painted white, and the only rugs and curtains were white as well, which made the space seem much more open than it really was. Most of the houses in Ditmas were Victorian, which was code for small, dark rooms with lots of wood, but this house had been ripped apart by enough owners that none of the original millwork remained. Young people walked around barefoot, the soles of their feet making gentle sucking sounds. It wasn’t like one of the yoga studios in the Slope, where everyone was wearing ninety-dollar yoga pants, all the logos on their asses lining up perfectly when they were in downward-facing dog. These kids were wearing whatever they wanted, shorts and T-shirts and filmy little dresses. One kid standing near the kitchen was wearing a headband with flowers on it and an open robe, a millennial Hugh Hefner. Andrew ran his hand up the banister. He and Elizabeth had always been on the minimal side of things, but being in EVOLVEment made him want to get rid of everything unnecessary — he wanted blank walls, open windows.

“This is one of the body-treatment rooms,” Dave said. “Reiki, massage. We have so many talented body workers in our community.” He kept walking, with Andrew a half step behind. “This is another treatment room.” A young woman was lying on her back while another dripped something onto her forehead. “Ayurveda.”

“So who lives here?” Andrew asked.

“Right now there are six of us — me, Jessie, who I think you’ve met”—Dave pointed toward the girl with the braids—“three artists-in-residence, plus Salome, who leads the cosmic trances on Friday nights. She’s amazing, you should come. The vibes in this house are incredible. I swear, for three days after, the whole place is still vibrating.”

“I will,” Andrew said.

There were more rooms — bedrooms filled with potted ficus trees and rubber plants, rooms with futons and candles and musical equipment. Every so often, a young woman or man would squeeze by them slowly, touching Dave on the arm and then smiling. Andrew never wanted to leave.