celebration is over.”
After the attic’s musty gloom, entering the well-lit halls of the Dunbar house was like stepping into sunlight, and that instant clarity alerted me to the fact that I was drunker than I’d realized. I couldn’t tarry, however. Dr. Dunbar would soon be coming down the stairs, and I had no desire for another confrontation.
I pulled on my overshoes and buttoned my coat as quickly as I could, but when I walked out the door, Dr. Dunbar was already there, standing beside his Chrysler, his medical bag in hand.
“You sure you don’t want a ride, Matt? It’s twenty below.” Although his words were issued in icy little clouds, his tone was more gentle than it had been in the attic.
“That’s okay. It’s not that far.”
“You might think what you were doing tonight was real grown-up, but trust me, it wasn’t. On your walk home you might give some thought not only to what you’ll tell your mother about your shenanigans tonight, but about what it means to be a man. Because judging from tonight’s behavior, Matthew, you have a long way to go. A hell of a long way.”
No doubt the doctor was right. I should have used the distance I had to travel to contemplate the defects in my character. But I had only reached the bottom of the Dunbar’s long driveway when I felt compelled to look back up at the place I had just been banished from.
The house’s Victorian architecture—its chimney, dormers, tower, and turret—gave it a looming, jagged silhouette against the moonlit sky. Most of the windows were dark, but the two tall rectangles that were Johnny’s bedroom windows glowed faintly. I chose to believe that Louisa had left a light on for Johnny so that when the room began to spin like the wheels on a baby carriage he could find a spot to focus on and thereby slow the revolutions.
Dr. Dunbar was right in a sense. I did want to be a man, with all accompanying powers and privileges. But I also wanted Louisa Lindahl to tuck me into bed, and right now that seemed more likely to happen to a little boy.
7.
WHEN MY MOTHER WOKE AT NOON on New Year’s Day, I asked what she’d recommend for a hangover. I didn’t explain why I wanted to know, and she didn’t ask.
“Aspirin and Pepto-Bismol,” she said. “Good for the stomach and for the head.” My mother specialized in practical lessons that helped with the rigors of daily living. Airy, abstract advice on setting life goals or finding happiness was not for her. Aspirin and Pepto-Bismol. That was classic Esther Garth. And asking for her hangover cure constituted my confession of my New Year’s Eve misbehavior. After that, I no longer worried about the doctor’s call. Not that I’d been especially concerned. My mother might well have told the doctor that he could go to hell, and that she didn’t need his or anyone else’s help in raising her son.
But while the prospect of my mother’s anger didn’t distress me, the possibility of never entering the Dunbar home again did. Following my New Year’s Eve expulsion I believed that was quite possible, and as the first days of 1963 came and went with no word from my friend or his family, my anxiety increased. What I felt was more than worry, more like an alteration of my being. In English class we’d just finished a unit on Greek and Roman mythology, and I felt as if I were living my own variation on the myth of Antaeus. I had to be back in the Dunbar home in order not to be diminished.
Fortunately, before a week was out Johnny phoned and invited me to come over. The science project we’d been collaborating on for weeks would soon be due, and we were far from finished.
“I don’t think your dad would appreciate having me around,” I said.
“Nah, he won’t mind. He’s not mad anymore. Besides, he and Mom won’t be here. They’re taking the twins to the Saint Bartholomew’s Carnival.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Now get your ass over here.”
Despite Johnny’s