The Boyfriend

by Abigail Barnette

  I flushed with embarrassment at that. I had tried, and I’d failed. I shouldn’t have gotten credit just for making the offer. “Sasha, I’m not bragging when I say this, I’m just trying to be straightforward: I have a lot of money. Like, more than I’ll ever be able to spend in my lifetime. If Molly wants to go to NYU, she’s going to get in. If she wants to go to freaking Harvard, I will find a way. If she wants to, I don’t know, buy a theater and run her own productions out of it, whatever she wants to do, I’m there for it. And that goes for you, too. I remember when my mom would have car trouble and we’d have to eat ramen for a month because she didn’t want to worry my grandparents by asking for money. I know what it’s like to struggle. There’s no reason you guys should ever want for anything.”

  Sasha’s eyes filled with tears. “Even after what your father did to you?”

  “He’s not my father.” I was officially ready to close that chapter of my life. I’d wasted enough time mourning a relationship that would never happen. “He chose not to be. But Molly is my sister. That’s not something he gets to opt out of on my behalf.”

  “Hey guys,” Susan said, appearing in the doorway. Her long black hair swung over her shoulder as she leaned in. “Dinner is as served as it can be.”

  I got to my feet. “Hi, Susan. I didn’t know I’d get to see you tonight.”

  Get to see her. It was an intentional word choice. I didn’t want her to think I was upset that she was there. Out of everyone involved in the weird situation we’d found ourselves in, Susan was the one who’d been the most prickly. Maybe it was because I’d come crashing into her life as unexpectedly as she’d crashed into mine. All she’d been trying to do was go to her husband’s high school reunion, but she’d ended up face-to-face with a long-lost half-sister she’d had no interest in meeting.

  Susan shrugged and slid her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, an unambiguous “no hugging” signal. “I ended up in town.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said as we went into the kitchen.

  The combination kitchen and dining room was as big as the entire living room, but here there was no open loft overhead. The slanted roof had two long skylights and a small chandelier made out of deer antlers—a popular decor choice in the area—hung over the big dining table. Molly had set out paper plates and paper towels for napkins; I felt right at home with that setup.

  “Molly, we have company. You could have gotten some real dishes out,” Sasha said, laughing a little in embarrassment.

  I shook my head. “Don’t do that on my account. I’m a big fan of dishes you don’t have to wash.”

  “I’m sure things are a lot different when you have someone else washing the dishes,” Susan said, and I couldn’t tell if it was a dig at me or what.

  Susan didn’t like me. I’d just come to accept that as fact. A big part of that not liking me stemmed from our disastrous first dinner together. Susan’s husband had been openly resentful of our money, and Susan had been uncomfortable herself. It had set the tone for all of our interactions after that.

  The fact that she’d made it clear she was only interested in my kidney, and nothing else, hadn’t helped at all.

  We took pizza and breadsticks from the boxes in the center of the table, and Molly got us red plastic cups for pop. When we were all seated, Sasha asked, “So, Sophie. What have you been up to these days?”

  I was glad I’d just taken a bite so I could consider my answer while I chewed. Anything I’d been “up to” probably wasn’t anything they’d appreciate me sharing at the dinner table. And nobody wanted to hear about how I’d bought a yacht or run off to Venice with my boyfriend, anyway.

  I swallowed and said, “Well, we’ve been pretty busy with my mom’s wedding.”

  Not really. But they didn’t know that. And weddings were a topic everyone was reasonably neutral on.

  “Congratulations to your mother,” Sasha said with a smile. “How exciting for her.”

  “She’s never been married before,” I went on. “So, we’re really going all out.”

  “Is she getting married at the Plaza?” Molly asked, her face lighting up. “That’s where everyone rich gets married in New York.”

  “Molly!” Susan said, horrified at the mention of money.

  “No, she’s getting married at my house on Long Island.” I tended to say “Long Island” instead of “Sagaponack” or “The Hamptons” because it didn’t sound quite so snobby. “But I got married at the Plaza.”

  “Can I see pictures?” Molly asked. “Do you have any on your phone?”

  “Do I have my wedding pictures on my phone?” I reached for it in my back pocket.

  Sasha made an “ah-ah” noise as I did. “No phones at the table.”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said sheepishly.

  “Mom. She’s not a child,” Susan said with a roll of her eyes. “You’ll have to excuse my mother, Sophie. She’s been anti-cellphone ever since Renee got caught playing some maze game on her flip phone in tenth-grade biology.”

  “I promise I’ll show you sometime,” I told Molly. Heck, I’d let her see the video if she wanted when she came to our house.

  “It’s too bad we couldn’t go to your wedding,” Molly said, taking a bite of a breadstick. She finished her statement around it. “We didn’t find out about you until after.”

  That wasn’t true. Molly and Susan hadn’t found out about me until after her father had died, but Sasha had known for a long time.

  “Well, you should invite me to your wedding, then, to make up for it,” I said with a smile to mask the feeling of my rib cage being crushed.

  I loved my family. I loved my mother. But sitting in the kitchen with the Tangen family, knowing that they’d had many meals just like this one as one big, loving unit, made it really hard to keep my pizza down. I was in my father’s house, but he’d never been my father. Would he have even wanted me there now, when he’d never wanted me before?

  After dinner, Susan stepped outside for a cigarette. I went with her with the excuse that I could use fresh air to help the pizza settle. She didn’t argue, but she didn’t seem thrilled, either.

  I sat beside her on the wide porch steps. “This place is gorgeous.”

  “Not what you were expecting?” She took a drag off her cigarette and blew it out, staring across the clearing. “You probably thought you were coming to a trailer or something.”

  “What’s wrong with trailers?” I asked. “I grew up in a trailer. I mean, not like a nice, new trailer. They make them so fancy now. But it was fine. And I was way too poor then to ever think about looking down on anyone now.”

  “Dad built this house,” she said, glancing up at the porch eaves over our heads. “I was so mad that I had to leave Iron River right in the middle of seventh grade.”

  “Yeah, your mom said the kitchen was a new addition, and that you guys had to share a room before that?”

  “Well, Renee and I had to share a room. Molly came along later. She got her own room by being so much younger.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair. It seems like the eldest should get the room to herself,” I mused.

  “Thank you!” Susan said, finally turning to face me. “I mean, would it have been fair to stick Renee with a literal baby? No.”

  She didn’t add a “but.”

  Shaking her head fondly, she flicked the ash from the end of her cigarette. “You know how it is with siblings, though.”

  “No, I don’t.” I shrugged. It was cold out. Really cold. The snow stretched off into the trees, where it would stay until early-June, probably, where the sun didn’t touch it. “I don’t have any siblings.”

  After a long pause, Susan said, “Well, you didn’t. Now you do.”

  “I’m glad you said that.” I wrapped my arms around my middle and wished I’d brought my coat out with me.

  Susan gave me a puzzled look.

  “I don’t want to be presumptuous,” I said, not knowing how, exactly, to put my inner
turmoil into words. “I’m not trying to make you feel guilty when I say this, but...I don’t get the feeling that you want me around.”

  “I didn’t,” she admitted plainly. “I hated you. Like, really, really hated you. You have all this money, you could help Molly in a way I couldn’t, and so much was riding on you caring. You held my baby sister’s life in your hands, practically.”

  “And you thought I would use it to punish you?” It made a lot of stuff about our interactions make a hell of a lot more sense. I’d thought she’d just been envious that we were able to help Molly and that Molly had started to like me as a result of the material things I’d given her.

  Susan shook her head. “No. I thought you might use it to punish dad.”

  The statement hung between us, Joey Tangen’s two daughters, sitting together on the porch he’d built.

  “I can’t hurt your father,” I said, my throat raw with pain I tried to hold back. Though she and I were sisters, it hurt to call him her father. “And even if I could, there’s no way I could ever hurt him as much as he hurt me. What would be the point?”

  Susan inhaled again. The white smoke mixed with the fog of her breath and drifted out through the deepening twilight. “I hated him more than I hated you.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded, her jaw set hard. “How could he have done this to us? To have a daughter he just hid the whole time? How could he love us and abandon you? Did that mean he could have done it to any of us?”

  “I ask myself the same questions. Like, all the time. Even before I knew about you.” I took a deep, shaky breath. “How could he not want me? How could he walk away from his child? When I found out about you guys, all of that came rushing back. And to be honest...I kind of hated you guys, too.”

  “I can see why,” she admitted. “I mean, mom knew about you. She could have made him...”

  “Love me?” I finished for her so she could hear out loud how silly that sounded. “Your mom couldn’t have made him do anything. If he’d wanted to be a part of my life, he would have been. And yeah, your mom does some spectacular rationalizing about why it was better for me to have never known about them, but I don’t accept it. I do think she was just doing the best she could with the shit situation he put her in. I don’t see the point in holding it against her.”

  “You don’t see the point, but you probably still do hold it against her, right?” Susan asked.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes, yes. Other times, like now, when she’s welcoming me into her home and your lives...I wonder if she wishes things had been different. I wonder if she might have wanted me, after all.” I paused at the sound of Sasha’s voice inside. “But he didn’t. And he was the one who really mattered.”

  “We can never make up for what dad did to you,” Susan said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. “And I can’t promise that I’m going to have all these sisterly feelings toward you suddenly and I’ll never feel any resentment that you kind of showed up in the narrative of our lives. But I don’t want you to feel unwelcome. I want this to be something we can get over together.”

  Though it had been years since I’d smoked a cigarette, I reached over and plucked hers from her fingers. She watched me with amusement as I took a quick puff from it. I coughed a little and handed it back. “I’d like that.”

  The door behind us opened, and Sasha stuck her head out. “What are you girls doing out here still? You said a quick smoke! It’s freezing!”

  Susan took a final inhale and dropped the butt into the snow. “Okay, mother. We’re coming.”

  From behind Susan, Molly popped up and said, “Who’s playing Cards Against Humanity?”

  Even though I’d never spent time with my father under that roof, even though I’d never lived my sisters, for a moment, I felt like I was family.

  * * * *

  The last day of my visit arrived. This time, Sasha, Susan, and Molly met me in Houghton for lunch at the Ambassador. With a promise to Molly that she could come to New York when school was out if she wanted to, I told them goodbye and headed back to Calumet a little bit sad. I was actually going to miss them. I’d never considered that would have ever been a possibility, with the exception of Molly.

  When I arrived at my grandma’s house, there was a car in the driveway. I recognized it immediately; Mrs. Hanner had been driving the same Buick for as long as I could remember. A neighbor from the end of the street, Mrs. Hanner usually always walked down to have her coffee and chat; it was unlike her to have to drive the short distance. I hoped that wasn’t an indication that she was having health troubles. She was one of Grandma’s only remaining living friends.

  I entered the mudroom to the rhythmic chugging of the brand new front-loader washing machine I had bought grandma when her old machine—an ancient drum on legs with an honest to god mangle on it—had broken, and no replacement could be found at the dump. The scent of dryer sheets was overpowering.

  Mrs. Hanner was a tall, skeletally-thin woman, also in her eighties. She’d never changed her hairdo the entire time I’d known her. I suspected she slept perfectly still to keep her ultra-volumized bouffant from getting messed up between beauty parlor visits. She sat at grandma’s table, coffee mug clutched in her aged hands, a cigarette perched between two knobby fingers. The ash was at least an inch long and somehow remained attached; that was a skill I’d noticed most old ladies had.

  “Oh, Sophie’s here,” she said, rising from her chair to hug me. She put her coffee on the table but kept her cigarette, which came dangerously close to my hair as she embraced me. “Look at you! You’re so beautiful. And so slim!”

  “Thank you,” I said, though she said the same thing every time she saw me.

  “But then, you always have been,” Mrs. Hanner went on. “Because you never had any children.”

  “Sophie has a granddaughter, though,” Grandma said from her place at the sink, where she washed her breakfast dishes.

  “Step-granddaughter,” I clarified.

  “There’s no such thing as stepfamily. Family is family.” Grandma said, lightly scolding me. To Mrs. Hanner, she said, “The little girl lives with Sophie and her husband. Her parents died.”

  “Oh, how awful.” Mrs. Hanner sat back down and took a long, slow inhale from her cigarette. Her eyes zeroed in on my arm. “Honey, come here, you’ve got a little string.”

  She was right; a part of my sleeve had begun to unravel. I obediently put out my arm, and she finally ashed her cigarette so she could use the glowing cherry to burn my errant thread off.

  “Joan had to come down and do her wash,” Grandma explained.

  “My machine broke,” Mrs. Hanner said, shaking her head sadly. “Last year, it was the refrigerator. The year before that, it was the stove.”

  “Wow, talk about a run of bad luck,” I said sympathetically. “Is the washing machine fixable?”

  “Oh, no. But it’s just me these days, and your grandma said that since I come down here anyway for my coffee, there’s no sense in buying a new machine. Especially when I could go home to Jesus any day now.” She said the last part with a weird, grim sort of hope.

  I’d been away from the realities of my upbringing for so long, I’d almost forgotten that appliances even broke. When I’d been younger, Mom’s oven had broken. The stove had worked just fine, though, so there hadn’t been a pressing need to replace the oven part. We hadn’t had any baked things in our house from the time I was eleven until I was sixteen. All my birthday cakes had been made right in the kitchen where I now sat.

  “Mrs. Hanner,” I began cautiously. “Would you be offended if I offered to buy you a new washer and dryer?”

  The risk of offending was very real. Working class people in our town didn’t care to be the recipients of charity, despite giving away what little extra they had to others. It was a harsh truth I’d learned by becoming rich: the poor gave to each other more than those with a hundred times their wealth ever offered.

  “Oh, no, dear,
that’s too expensive,” Mrs. Hanner said, pressing her hand to her sunken chest. “Do you know how much they are?”

  “Sophie bought me mine,” Grandma said with pride. Apparently, she was fine with me spending money as long as she could brag about me to her friends. “And my new refrigerator. She’s a billionaire.”

  “I know she’s a billionaire, but she won’t be if she gives away all her money,” Mrs. Hanner said. Most people didn’t have a real understanding of how much a billion dollars was; the number was simply absurd.

  The thought of that only made me angrier. We were ridiculously rich. Sure, Neil had the rape crisis center, and I was proud of that. But there was more we could be doing, and so much more that other people in our position could do. But it seemed once they hit the max for charitable deductions on their taxes, they just stopped. Because the poor and working class weren’t a sound investment. No one gained anything by buying a poor little old lady a washing machine.

  “How about this,” I said, rising to get my purse from the mudroom. I brought it back and pulled out my checkbook. “I’ll write you a check for a thousand dollars. That way, you won’t have to buy top-of-the-line and feel guilty.”

  “Sophie, no,” Mrs. Hanner protested, but when I started writing out the check, her protests ceased.

  “Let her do it,” Grandma said. “She’s not going to run out of money.”

  My god, had the old woman actually listened to me for a change?

  I handed over the check. Mrs. Hanner’s hand shook a little as she took it. “Oh, honey. This is just too much.”

  “It’s really not. And if you want, you can make it up to me by sending some of your Buckeyes and peanut brittle to me at Christmas.” Honestly, it was a fair trade; her peanut brittle was worth a thousand dollars, at least. Even if I wasn’t supposed to eat it.

  When I left for the airport the next morning, I couldn’t help but notice the new siding on some homes that reached only about halfway up. The area had experienced catastrophic flash floods the year before, and it still bore some of the scars. Homeowner’s insurance didn’t always cover that kind of damage.