Privilege

by Mary Adkins

  “Ready for Virginia?” he said. Regionals were at UVA in two weeks.

  “Hope so,” she said. “Why?”

  “I want you to do the monologue there.” She widened her eyes at him. “I know. It’s not in the spirit of improv to assign it. So I’m not assigning it. I’m just saying that I want you to, okay? Step out.”

  She was flattered. “Okay.”

  He smiled and lifted his hand for a high five.

  That night, for the first time in weeks, she signed into Facebook, curious what her maybe-father who’d never answered her message was doing. There it was, the introductory note she’d sent. She clicked it open to find a “read” receipt, dated the week she’d sent it. So he’d gotten it and read it. He just hadn’t wanted to respond.

  24

  Stayja

  NOVEMBER

  LA had been arrested by town police within an hour after Stayja called campus police, and by the end of the day he’d been fired. He’d spent two nights in jail for defacement of public property before his arraignment and come home to no job to await his trial.

  “It really broke him that you did that to him,” Nicole said one morning as they took turns mowing the grass. LA usually mowed their small lawn for them, but he’d stopped after Stayja turned him in. His Netflix password was no longer working either.

  “You destroyed him,” Nicole said, taking off her gardening gloves, tossing them to Stayja and sitting down on the grass.

  “It’s not my fault he’s an idiot,” Stayja said, standing as she pulled on the soiled canvas gloves.

  “He really thought if it came down to it, you’d be loyal to him. I mean he is family,” said Nicole.

  “He’s not family just because he lives next door and once gave me a good deal on a car when he was getting a better one,” Stayja said.

  “He was making seventeen an hour there. He’ll be lucky to find something that pays nine,” Nicole said. “Chet is trying to get him a job with the property management company at his office.”

  “Might be hard now that he has a record,” Stayja said.

  Nicole shrugged. “Chet’s well liked,” she said.

  Stayja reached down and yanked the mower to life, drowning out anything more Nicole could say. She was done with her cousin’s attempts to guilt her. LA had brought his situation on himself. It wasn’t her fault that he’d made a stupid decision.

  EVERY YEAR IN mid-November, the four of them—joined by LA for the last two—would gather in Donna and Stayja’s house for early Thanksgiving. Their annual tradition was a feast essentially designed to consolidate Adrienne’s grief over her late husband’s death into one holiday rather than forcing her to suffer through two: the anniversary of his death on November 12 followed by Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of the month.

  In the early afternoon of November 15, before both girls had to head into work, they sat around the table.

  “Why isn’t LA coming?” Donna asked, removing the fifth place setting she’d laid out for him.

  “He doesn’t feel well,” Stayja said, avoiding Nicole’s eyes.

  “I haven’t seen him around lately,” Donna thought aloud.

  “He’s looking for a new job,” Nicole said pointedly.

  “Oh? Didn’t work out at Carter?” Donna said, distracted by the cranberry sauce she was shoveling onto a platter in the middle of the table. For Donna, job turnover was no big deal. But not for Adrienne.

  “Wait, what happened?” Stayja’s aunt asked.

  “Ask Stayja,” Nicole said.

  Stayja turned to shoot daggers at her cousin.

  “Nice necklace,” Stayja said. Nicole was now sporting a razor thin, white gold chain, at the bottom of which hung a heart pendant full of tiny Swarovski crystals. Chet had given it to her for her birthday on November 2. Their mothers knew this, just as they knew about Chet—Donna and Adrienne liked to bug Nicole about when they were going to meet him—but they didn’t know he was married.

  The hush-hush nature of it all was the result of a sort of unspoken arms race between the cousins, as neither daughter wanted her mother to know her secret: for Stayja, that she was half-dating someone who’d been accused of rape and, for Nicole, that she was full-on dating a married man.

  Donna set down her ladle. “What are you girls doing? What’s going on?”

  The cousins looked down at their empty plates.

  “Whatever it is,” Donna said, “work it out. Hear me? Work. It. Out. It’s Thanksgiving, and family is what matters.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stayja muttered.

  “Nicole?” Donna said. “Okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” Nicole said.

  “You think I’m kidding! Family comes first,” Donna said, growing heated and breathless and plopping into her chair. “Everything else comes after. Boys. Jobs. School.”

  Nicole rolled her eyes.

  “I saw that, missy. How do you think your mom and I managed to stay so close all of our lives? By putting boys before each other?”

  “By getting into a fight every year and not speaking to each other for three months?” Nicole said.

  A moment of tense silence passed. Then Stayja laughed. Adrienne joined in.

  Donna’s fury lasted several more seconds before a small smile broke through and she reached out, picked up a dinner roll, and chucked it at Nicole. It bounced off Nicole’s forehead and onto the table. Without pause, Nicole grabbed it and took a bite, grinning.

  FOR THE NEXT two weeks, Stayja did her best to take her mother’s words to heart by forcing herself to get along with Nicole, and she could tell that Nicole was trying, too.

  Still, all the small things about Nicole that had always bugged her continued to, leaving her irritated and resentful and fighting like mad to hold her tongue, just to keep the peace. The tax bill was still tucked away in her bedside table, unpaid and overdue, tormenting her with its impossible, crushing mandate, while Nicole’s sudden influx of more money than she’d ever had before, coupled with the fact that Nicole herself had no living expenses or bills, had led her to indulge in things that made Stayja want to pull her skin off. Like microblading, which Stayja had never heard of until Nicole got it—eyebrows tattooed on your face. That cost a hundred dollars. Fake permanent lashes. (Stayja didn’t know how much they had cost.) An eighty-nine-dollar pair of casual boots.

  Had it never occurred to Nicole that, with her new income, maybe she could pay Stayja back for all the times Stayja had covered her ass?

  But Stayja did her best to keep her resentment to herself, along with her condemnations of Chet for being a cheater. When Chet gave Nicole his old Apple TV and his HBO GO and Hulu passwords, the cousins were both elated. “This is so much better than Netflix!” Nicole exclaimed the night they started Game of Thrones.

  Watching a movie on Stayja’s couch after she got home from work became their nightly routine. Nicole invented a new game in which they’d take turns identifying an actor’s “parents”—two celebrities whose faces, combined, resembled the actor or actress in question.

  During Legally Blonde, Nicole said of Reese Witherspoon, “Carrie Underwood and Aaron Paul.”

  “Who?” Stayja said, pulling up Aaron Paul’s IMDb page on her phone, then yelling, “I see it!”

  Stayja would have to google at least one of the actors every time, but Nicole’s mental stock of cinematic trivia was shockingly extensive.

  For her turn, Stayja said of Selma Blair, “That girl from Parks and Rec with the brown hair and that hot Hispanic guy who won Ali Fedotowsky’s season of The Bachelorette.”

  “You mean Aubrey Plaza and Roberto Martinez?” Nicole asked without pause.

  “If only you could use your encyclopedic memory of useless facts for something productive,” Stayja said. In truth, she was impressed with Nicole’s ability to remember every name she ever came across, floored by it really.

  Donna would occasionally join them on these nights even though she hated being in suspense. She would leave
the room for the scary parts, puttering around in the kitchen, cleaning what was clean. Stayja and Nicole tried telling her the plot of the movie in advance, but that didn’t help. Donna explained that it wasn’t her not knowing that got to her, it was the characters’ not knowing.

  “It doesn’t matter what I know. I can’t stand watching them.”

  Mostly this amused Nicole and Stayja, who took bets on the number of minutes before Donna invented an excuse to leave the room.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” she’d say, and they’d burst into laughter.

  “It’s not even scary yet!” Stayja would yell. “They’re just eating hamburgers!”

  “But I know they’re not going to finish them!” Donna would holler from the bedroom, not even pretending to have been telling the truth.

  THANKSGIVING ARRIVED, which meant all Carter eateries as well as the bookstore were closed for the holiday. Stayja and Nicole were both off work for four full days—a long weekend, the longest break Stayja had had in months.

  Tyler had disappeared again after LA’s arrest. Stayja didn’t know whether it was because he was mad at her, busy, or something else, but she obsessively checked his Instagram over the holiday, hating herself for it but unable to stop. He was at his family’s home in Houston. There were many photos of the family dog, Waldo, a Saint Bernard. Waldo in the park. Waldo on a chair. Waldo in a turkey sweater.

  On Black Friday, she and Nicole went to the Carter art museum, which was still open and free to them as employees, where Nicole took photos of all the paintings and posted them online. They drove out to the outlet mall thirty minutes away, where Nicole bought Chet sunglasses for his birthday at the Sunglass Hut outlet, and Stayja chose not to ask how much they cost. They went food shopping at Sam’s and ate all the samples, and Stayja bought a book of crossword puzzles, thinking of the bill in her bedroom as she handed the cashier a ten. She’d never done a crossword puzzle, but she wanted to be someone who did.

  They didn’t fight or talk about LA or Chet or Tyler. The only time Stayja snapped at Nicole was when Stayja accidentally cut off a guy in a gold truck, and, after he flipped them off, Nicole threw her upper body out of the window, cursing.

  She missed Tyler.

  Lying in bed the Saturday after Thanksgiving, she wondered if perhaps she was being too prideful in not asking him about the tax bill. He might have some insight into what she should do. More important, it gave her an excuse to text him again. Around midnight she caved.

  I could really use your advice about something. I’m sure you’re busy, but do you have a second later?

  She fell asleep and awoke to the edges of her window glowing. She checked the time—it was sunrise. She quickly navigated to her messages. No reply.

  That evening, Stayja and Nicole went to Stayja’s favorite library branch, where Nicole read Cosmo while Stayja stocked up on new books. She searched the poetry section for anything by someone with the last name Brand and found nothing, but she did find several volumes that looked interesting. She pulled a handful off the shelf and added them to her pile to check out.

  As they passed LA’s house to pull into their own driveway on the way home, Nicole noticed that he hadn’t put out his trash. Pickup was Monday morning, and LA always pulled out his barrels on Sunday afternoons—they knew this because he usually did theirs as well.

  “Oh, we need to bring the barrels down,” Stayja said. “I’ll get them.”

  “Where are LA’s?” Nicole wondered aloud.

  “He just hasn’t done them yet,” Stayja said, bracing herself for a guilt trip.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” Nicole said. “That’s unlike him.”

  “I don’t know, Nicole,” she said with a sigh. “And I don’t care.”

  JUST AFTER NINE, Stayja was reading a book of poems titled Likenesses by someone named P. K. Fox and came upon one called “Turns Out We Underestimate the Sun:”

  Even these days people

  measure up light

  in candles.

  Candela: noun—

  how many candles

  does it take to

  light your office?

  350.

  Outdoors, say, noon?

  A thousand.

  Ten thousand?

  Ha! One hundred

  thirty thousand.

  Turns out we underestimate

  the sun.

  It’s our pupils that fool us,

  blocking what’s too bright

  for our wide-eyed souls.

  The final lines felt personal, like a dare. She sat contemplating them when Nicole burst into her room.

  “He’s not fine,” Nicole said, pacing.

  “Huh?” Stayja said, sitting up and setting her book on her bedside table.

  “I went over to check on LA. He’s lost his mind. He’s got no food in his house. He hasn’t showered. He smells like a toilet. He smashed his TV. I don’t even know how you do that. The thing is shattered.”

  “Jesus,” Stayja said.

  “He broke everything in his house. He broke his dishes. He broke his window. There’s a goddamn hole in his wall. He would have broken his furniture if he could, I’m sure.”

  Stayja rubbed her eyes.

  “He must have had a complete freak-out.” Nicole sat on Stayja’s bed, took in a loud inhale, and let it out slowly. “What do we do?”

  “What do you mean what do we do?”

  “He doesn’t have anyone but us.”

  “Yes, he does. Ronald.”

  Nicole glowered.

  “You mean the guy who just fired him? No, Stayja, that doesn’t count.”

  “I’m sure they’re still friends. It wasn’t Ronald’s decision to fire him.”

  “That’s right,” Nicole said, standing. “It was yours.”

  “Stop guilting me!” Stayja said, pounding her hand on her bedside table. “He lost his own job! I’m so fucking sick of being blamed for other people’s mistakes. I’m sick of being associated with any of this bullshit. This isn’t my fault, none of it. Stop making stupid decisions and then blaming them on me. All of you.”

  “What do I have to do with this?” Nicole said, crossing her arms, daring Stayja to say aloud what she meant.

  “You’re flouncing around spending money left and right, when I’m dealing with this!”

  Stayja opened the drawer to her bedside table and reached in to pull out the tax bill. But it wasn’t there. She gaped, confused.

  “Wait, where is it?” she mumbled.

  “I took it,” Nicole said.

  “What?” Stayja said.

  “I took it,” Nicole said again. “Why didn’t you tell me about it, anyway?”

  “Why would I tell you about it? It’s not like you could do anything to help me.”

  Nicole laughed.

  “That’s funny,” she said, “because that’s exactly what I did. I gave it to Chet. He got us on a payment plan. So, yeah, you’re welcome. Merry early fucking Christmas.”

  Stayja stared at Nicole, frowning.

  “Hi? I just said something really nice I did for you?” Nicole said.

  “I don’t want Chet to know my business,” Stayja said. “I don’t trust him.”

  “Oh, my God!” Nicole put her hands on her head and resumed pacing to the window and back. “Unreal. You tell me to take responsibility and then get mad when I do it.”

  “Snooping in my stuff isn’t taking responsibility,” said Stayja. “Neither is passing it off to your married boyfriend to deal with.”

  Nicole pushed her hair out of her face and bit her lip.

  “Chet isn’t handling it, Stayja. I am. He got us on a payment plan. I’ve already made the first payment.”

  When Stayja didn’t respond, Nicole said, “You know what you are? A walking double standard.”

  “All right,” Stayja said nastily. “How is that?”

  “You’ve decided LA is not worth your time because you’re better than him. But that guy T
yler? He gets a pass. He’s not better than you. And you’re not better than the rest of us.” When Stayja still didn’t react, Nicole said, “While you’re dumping the fuck-ups, why not dump me, too?”

  “You’re family,” Stayja said. “I can’t.”

  Nicole’s chin began to tremble.

  “You know what? I think you’re jealous. Chet has made me a better person. I’m thriving, and you can’t handle that.” She stormed out, leaving Stayja sitting in the dark. The sun had gone down during their argument.

  It was all so pathetic, Stayja thought, turning on the lamp and signing into Instagram.

  She needed to get out of Cartersboro. She was made for more than this, for something greater than this.

  I can handle the brightness, she thought.

  25

  Annie

  LATE NOVEMBER–EARLY DECEMBER

  My home in Pineville was single story, and, as a kid, I assumed this was because we weren’t as rich as some of my classmates. I filed our lack of a staircase alongside other disparities, like the sweaters others received for Christmas labeled J.Crew versus mine labeled Old Navy. We still lived in that same wood-paneled, three-bedroom ranch house—my brother and I got our own rooms and shared a bathroom. But it was bright. My mother’s only stipulation in finding a home, she told me once, was that it be well lit.

  “You know me, a sucker for sun,” she would say.

  When I arrived home for Thanksgiving, I hadn’t spoken to Cory in almost two months, apart from occasional text conversations about trivial stuff—TV, the Carter football team, our mother’s annoying habit of “cleaning up” by pouring out your drink to wash your glass before you were finished. Only two years apart in school, we had spent our entire lives together—carpooling to school, hanging out with each other’s friends. It had been the longest we’d ever gone without talking. With all that had happened, I hadn’t thought much about him.

  I could tell by the way he said hi to me from the living room couch that he was angry.

  “Hey,” I said as my dad rolled my suitcase to my room and my mother went to the garage pantry to dig up some brownie mix.

  “Hi,” he said, not looking away from his video game.