The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [125]
The Disease, which otherwise distorted his perception, brought such personality defects into painful clarity.
But it wasn’t just himself Leonard despised. He hated the jocks at school, he hated the Portland “pigs” in their cruisers, the 7-Eleven clerk who told Leonard that if he wanted to read Rolling Stone he had to buy it; he hated any and all politicians, businessmen, gun owners, Bible-thumpers, hippies, fat people, the reintroduction of the death penalty in the execution by firing squad of Gary Gilmore in Utah, the entire state of Utah, the Philadelphia 76ers for beating the Portland Trailblazers, and Anita Bryant most of all.
He missed the next week of school. But by the end of the following weekend he was up and around again. This had largely to do with the appearance of Godfrey outside Leonard’s bedroom window on Friday afternoon. Around three-thirty that day, Janet came home from school, dropping her books on the kitchen table. A few minutes later, Leonard smelled her heating up a mini frozen pizza in the toaster oven. Soon she was on the phone to her boyfriend. Leonard was listening to his sister, thinking how fake she sounded and how Jimmy, her boyfriend, didn’t know what she was really like, when someone tapped on his bedroom window. It was Godfrey. When he saw Godfrey out there, Leonard wondered if maybe he wasn’t as depressed as he thought. He was happy to see his friend. He forgot about everything in the world that he hated, and got up to open the window.
“You could use the front door,” Leonard said.
“Not me,” Godfrey said, climbing in the window. “I’m strictly a back-door man.”
“You should try the old lady next door. She’s waiting for you right now.”
“How about your sister?”
“O.K., you can leave now.”
“I’ve got weed,” Godfrey said.
He held up the baggie. Leonard stuck his nose into the bag and his depression lifted another notch. It smelled like the Amazonian rain forest, like putting your head between the legs of a native girl who had never heard of Christianity. They went out behind the garage to smoke some of it up, standing under the roof overhang to stay out of the rain. And that was where, figuratively, Leonard pretty much stayed for the remainder of high school, under an overhang, smoking pot in the drizzle. It was always raining in Portland and there was always an overhang nearby, behind the school, under the Steel Bridge in Waterfront Park, or beneath the leaky branches of a wind-desolated white pine in somebody’s backyard. Leonard wasn’t sure how he managed it, but somehow he dragged himself back to school the following Monday. He got used to crying secretly in the bathroom at least twice a day and to pretending to be all right when he came out. Without knowing what he was doing he began self-medicating, getting stoned most every day, drinking tall-boys at his or Godfrey’s house in the afternoons, going to parties on the weekends and getting totally baked. The house was party central every weekday afternoon. Kids came by with six-packs and weed. They always wanted to hear about the murder. Leonard embellished on the tale, saying that there were still bloodstains when they moved in. “Hey, they might still be there if you look close.” Janet fled these parties as if from raw sewage. She always threatened to tell but never did. By five o’clock Leonard and his friends were out in the alleys, riding their skate-boards and crashing into things, laughing hysterically at spectacular wipeouts.