Losing Charlotte by Heather Clay Page A

held his breath. He folded his hands in on eachother, making fists, and scratched at layers of palmy sweat with his fingernails. He was glad when Toby kicked the sack over, though he hesitated to do anything but hold it still in the hollow of his ankle and stare at it, as Toby had.
    “Have you?” he said finally.
    “Met him? No. But I know he’s a dick. He builds houses in my town,” Toby said. “I guess he built one on our street.”
    It looked like Toby was going to cry, which caused Bruce’s excitement to constrict and go colder inside his chest. Just then the headmistress came out of her office and told them that Mr. Van Wyck had agreed to pick Toby up at Bruce’s apartment at six o’clock. They were free to leave.
    “Yes!” Bruce said, exhaling held air with the word, listening as it went more whispery than he’d meant it to. He pocketed the sack and followed Toby out into the too-bright sunshine.
    He and Toby didn’t speak about the boyfriend for the rest of the afternoon. They did what they sometimes did on weekends: hung out behind the doorman’s podium in Bruce’s building, watching the live footage of people going up and down in the elevators and passing by outside. They hooted when someone picked his nose or, better, grabbed or scratched anywhere near the vicinity of his balls. They made a few crank calls from the extension in Bruce’s room. They hacked in the living room, the largest space in the apartment, and yelled monosyllabic answers to the questions Bruce’s mother called from the kitchen, where she was making dinner. The questions went like this: Tob, would you like to spend the weekend with us? And: Bruce, wouldn’t that be great? Bruce could tell that his mother was trying to make the best of the situation, so that Toby wouldn’t feel worse. He was grateful for his mother’s good manners. He was grateful and, under the circumstances, vaguely ashamed that she loved his father. Toby’s mother never called. At six o’clock sharp, Mr. Van Wyck buzzed from downstairs. No, he crackled over the intercom, thanks, but he couldn’t come up for a drink. He and Toby had better get on home.
    Toby said goodbye. Bruce held the door out for him, handling the knob carefully, as if it could break up, an eggshell in his hand.
    At dinner Bruce brought it up. He took a breath and said, “Toby thinks his mom …”
    “What?” said his mother, peering at him.
    Bruce felt the same mix of excitement and dread that he’d felt in the school lobby when Toby had told him. He almost laughed, for some reason. “Has a boyfriend,” he said.
    From the way his mother looked quickly at his father, Bruce knew that it could be true.
    “Well,” his mother said. “Maybe Toby’s confused. Do you think that could be?”
    “I don’t know,” Bruce said.
    “Did he talk to you about it very much?”
    “Not really.”
    “Here’s the thing,” his mother said, turning her unused spoon over on the tablecloth. “Sometimes things go on in families that are tough to understand, and all we can do is be there for our friends.”
    Bruce looked at his father. His father was nodding. Bruce nodded, too.
    L ATER HE LAY in his bed, thinking of Mrs. Van Wyck with a man who was not Toby’s father. In his mind the man asked her to undress, and Mrs. Van Wyck just smiled and stood where he imagined her standing, behind the butcher-block island in Toby’s kitchen, her hands encased in the oven mitts that were worn and burnt in places, with metallic thread shining through. In front of her, resting on the island, was a cookie sheet with rows of warm rolls arranged and rising and browning upon it, the kind of rolls that came out of the refrigerator in a cardboard tube, which Mrs. Van Wyck always let Bruce twist open until it popped thrillingly and gooed cold, colorless dough. She let him do this on those nights when he had come to sleep over, come in anticipation of Tang and Stouffer’s spinach soufflé and Kraft macaroni and