Or maybe that was how she’d always felt each word from Meg, even before the aneurysm. Meg and Danny worked and played and slept together. Even now, she was there every moment that Greta was except Tuesday appointments, and Meg would be there tomorrow for the party.
Goody.
* * *
Greta dug around in the storage unit for a gift for Danny, and there she found the largest silverfish she had ever seen. She grabbed the plastic container that had held her sandwich and caught it. It rammed into the side, wheeling over on itself in a thirty-legged cartwheel. Its feathered body righted again. Ancient insects—simple. One of the few that appeared identical from its newly hatched form to adult stage. Greta squinted at the creature before she snapped a picture on her phone. She thought about all those months ago and the forgotten caterpillar at the airplane pickup. She sent both picture and the words, “Does Gary want it?” to Max.
Three floating bubbles appeared, and Max texted back. “Now?”
Greta carried the Ziploc container with her and placed the writhing bug in her passenger seat. “I can drop it off at your place.”
He texted back a thumbs-up.
After finding the picture she was after, she locked up the storage unit. She realized on the drive over that she missed Max. It was more than just being used to him, this missing. She found herself thinking about him and the way he ran a hand through his hair when he was working on a hard problem. The way he sketched ridiculous cartoons on the corners of his notes. Even the scent of Old Spice from the next cubicle over, or the next bar seat in Mikey’s. She wondered if he would invite her in—worried that he might. Parents. Handshakes. But she also worried he might not.
She parked in front of his house. The porch featured a swing and a dozen potted plants blooming in welcome.
The front door opened before she had a chance to knock, and Max stared out at her from behind the screen door.
She held the container up and showed him. He opened the screen door a crack and accepted it, holding it up to the light like a jeweler might. The screen door closed behind him as he stepped out onto the porch. “Big one. I’m sure Gary will be thankful.”
“You can tell when a whip scorpion’s thankful?”
“It’s all in the eyes.”
A breath. A pause. “Okay,” she said. “There’s still time to come to the party if you want. Give me cover from Meg.”
Max chewed his cheek. “You should be nicer to her.”
“Can’t.”
“Won’t?” he asked. “Sorry, I have to go. Happy birthday.”
* * *
Danny was napping when Greta arrived. Meg was in the middle of hanging blue streamers around the apartment and tying inflated balloons to every lamp in the place. Greta noticed Meg didn’t meet her eyes. It also figured that Meg didn’t wish her a happy birthday. You don’t do that with the people you hate. “Here,” Meg said, and handed Greta a roll of paper.
“What do I do with this?” Greta asked.
“Make it festive?” Meg said, that questioning rise in her voice.
Greta had always been shafted on their birthday, the one who didn’t get her locker decorated in high school. Once the entire pep band serenaded Danny while the bus pulled away—“Happy birthday, dear Danny.” Dear Danny. The words flowed so easily, but few people had ever considered her “dear Greta”’ She didn’t even want to pretend this party was for her, but she was also having trouble helping set up this one for Danny. Was the party more to soothe Meg’s sense of normalcy, or did Danny really want one? Either way, Greta’s decorative imagination being as limited as her patience, she tore a dozen arm-length strips of crepe paper before deciding where to hang them. Meg had hung paper from the ceiling fan, looped it from the corners of the room to the drapes, and whirled it around chairbacks. The room looked like a Smurf had a cold and left discarded Kleenexes everywhere. Greta attached her blue crepe paper to the furnace near the window. It shook, waving blue ghost arms when the fan kicked on and fell into limp piles when it stopped. Good enough, or at least good enough for Danny, who, she knew, couldn’t care less.
On the other side of the room, a balloon popped, inflated too much. “Oh shit,” Meg said.
“I didn’t know you swore.”
“Well it’s not going to un-pop this damn balloon,” Meg said, her voice thick. The scraps of rubber lay scattered in twenty different directions around her feet.
Danny groaned from the other room.
Meg heard it too. “Shit,” she said again rushing off to the bedroom.
Greta trailed a few steps behind and lingered at the doorway. She hadn’t seen Danny’s bedroom since he’d come home. Hell, she hadn’t been welcome in the apartment. Danny’s walker stood in the corner, ready to be returned to the medical supply company. A more streamlined walking stick would take its place. A sentinel of pill bottles lined the dresser. With Meg’s back turned from the doorway, Greta pressed herself against the hallway door to listen. Meg spoke to Danny in soft tones. “I’m sorry, babe.”
His eyes were open, and he reached an arm over to the night table to grab his glasses. The hand fell on top of the glasses but didn’t close enough—a weak claw game, losing the prize.
“Let me get those,” Meg said. She placed them on his nose, which wrinkled under her fingertips.
“I need to do this myself.”
“I don’t mind.”
He swatted his glasses off his face with his left hand. They fell onto the bed next to him, and Meg didn’t say anything. His right hand closed around the glasses, and he raised them slowly to his face, but the temple piece on the left side wasn’t open and swiped against his forehead. Meg waited. Greta waited, the jamb of the door pressing against her forehead. He lowered the glasses to his lap and took a deep breath. He pressed one wire temple, then the other, and slowly lifted them to his face.
Danny sighed, glasses in place. At that, Greta let out her breath without realizing she had been holding it and went into the living room to pretend she had been there all the time with the overpriced, dyed toilet paper.
A few seconds later, Meg beckoned Greta to follow her into the kitchen.
Danny’s favorite dinner before had been pork, sauerkraut, and beer. Each component was a problem now. Danny couldn’t cut with a knife well. He couldn’t drink with the meds he was taking. Also, in Greta’s opinion, sauerkraut was disgusting.
Meg bought beer-less beer, the kind pregnant women on television shows used as cover before they showed. All the flavor of beer minus the buzz. Meg’s solution to the knife debacle was pork burgers with optional sauerkraut topping. Meg explained she didn’t want to cut up his food in front of other people when they had company. Greta’s eyebrows rose at the word “company.”
Just a few of their friends, Meg said. The past few months had been hard on them all. Meg listed off birthday meal elements—burgers, veggies, cake—using her fingers to mark each course.
Greta shifted her weight. “I forgot to get the veggie tray.”
Meg’s smile skittered to a halt. “Greta, I asked you for one thing. There’s still an hour before anyone else gets here. HyVee is, like, three blocks away.”
Danny stood in the doorway. “I can come too.”
Meg bit her lip, but the action failed to stifle her nag. “You sure you don’t want to rest more?”
Five minutes later he was in the car. Greta hadn’t seen him move that fast since his recovery began. “Happy birthday, big sister.”
“Bigger by all of ten minutes. Anyway, happy birthday, little brother,” Greta said as they merged onto Lincoln Ave. Greta might have cut off a pickup truck in the process, and the driver switched lanes and gave her the finger.
Danny laughed at that, the first laugh she’d heard from him that day. “I survived just long enough to die in a fiery car wreck,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” Greta said. “We don’t have to tell Meg about that.”
“Worried you’ll lose privileges?”
If she was, she wouldn’t tell him that. “I’m afraid to get demerits. Detention. Is that how they do it at your school?”
“And you won’t get to have field day with the other kids. Parachutes and popsicles and the whole nine yards.”
“You think pretty highly of yourself if you think you’re as good as field day was.”
“It’s my birthday, so give me a break.”
It only took five minutes to pick out and pay for a black plastic tray with a clear clamshell cover. The platter contained squat orange carrots and thirds of celery stalks with a small bowl of ranch dressing in the middle. For their ridiculous cost, the carrots should have been cut with an ancient, magic scimitar. After they paid and got back into the car, Danny put his head against the window and stared out at the parking lot.
“Want to go for a drive?” Greta asked.
“Sure,” he said.
Danny didn’t like music in the car anymore, so the road noise hummed under the tires as she made aimless turns past the mall, into the Somerset neighborhood, circling by the horse barns on campus. Max’s voice prodded her: “Ask him how he is. Ask him. Ask him.” She cared, but she didn’t want to know, afraid to hear his answer out loud.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They returned to the apartment an hour later. The celery looked as flaccid as the only other limp thing Greta could think of, but she plopped it on the entrance table and forgot about it. In the time since they had left, Leanne and Ginger had arrived at the apartment and now sat with Meg on the overstuffed blue couch, sipping nearly empty highballs. The accusing clink of ice cubes against glass sounded as the three women fell silent at their arrival.
“Happy birthday, Danny-boy,” Leanne said, rising. She wore a white turtleneck, which accented her dark skin. Her head had been freshly shaved, and she was the only person in the room with less hair than Danny. Ginger pulled Danny into a tight hug while Leanne turned and offered Greta her hand. “Nice to see you again, Greta.”
Greta just nodded.
Ginger moved to the couch after greeting Danny and waved a hand lazily. “We’ve met. I’m Ginger. Remember?” Ginger had a round face and painted her mouth in a dramatic red. She wore a black chin-length bob, as neat as Greta’s hair was eternally mussed. She reminded Greta a little of Madeline Kahn in Clue. Leanne took one of Danny’s arms and led him to the couch. Danny had quite the entourage of women.
“Where are your guy friends?” Greta asked.
Danny looked over his shoulder toward her spot in the entrance hall. From her perspective, with the blue balloons and banners draped around the room, it could have been a baby shower with Danny as the expectant mother.
“Busy,” Meg said. “I mean, I wrote to some friends, but …”
“Henry’s on tour, if that’s what you mean,” Danny said. It was what Greta meant. The one guy friend that Danny clung to from before Meg. From Oberlin.
“Sure she’s not asking to be set up?” Meg asked, elbowing Danny.
If Greta had been drinking, she would have choked. “No thanks. They can help themselves,” Greta said, gesturing vaguely at Leanne and Ginger.
That seemed a hilarious thing to say, because all three women erupted into laughter.
Talk descended into a flurry of conversation that Greta didn’t track. Names and places that didn’t mean anything to her. She shuffled into the kitchen to sniff out the alcohol that the others were consuming and leaned against a counter to check her text messages. Quiet.
It was okay to be quiet. What did she expect, Brandon to text out of the blue? Meg’s offer bubbled into her head. Be set up? By Meg? God forbid. She’d be just as likely to eat leftovers off someone else’s plate.
She found the liquor above the refrigerator and took a steadying shot.
As they ate, Franz circled the dining room table, shark-like. Franz always breathed loudly—Greta had noticed that when she lived there, so his begging lacked a stealth factor. Danny hardly touched his burger and slid the sauerkraut off the top into a soggy pile on the side of the plate. Greta noticed Danny palm a chunk of burger and lower it below the table level, much to Franz’s noisy satisfaction.
After Meg cleared the dinner plates away and returned with clean forks, Ginger glanced at Leanne. Greta noticed they were holding hands under the table and blushed to remember the raucous laughter earlier when she’d suggested they get set up.
Leanne cleared her throat. “We have some news.”
Ginger freed her hand from Leanne’s, and it rose above the tabletop.
“Oh wow,” Meg said. She sounded shocked, then adjusted her tone—turned down the contrast and upped the brightness. “Oh wow. That’s wonderful.”
Leanne held up her hand too. The rings were identical—black platinum, dun at first, but when Ginger wiggled her finger, something starry caught the light. “They’re kind of subtle,” Leanne said, “but we didn’t like a lot of the traditional rings.”
Ginger cut in, “Not that we don’t like your ring, Meg.”
Meg touched the small stone of her ring with a finger, then removed it as quick as though she’d touched a hot burner. “No, of course not. Did you set a date?”
“We were thinking July. August maybe. Nothing fancy, but something simple, summery.” Ginger looked to Leanne now, and their hands disappeared under the table again. “And you? How are wedding things going?” Ginger smiled her widest, reddest smile.
Meg glanced at Danny, but Danny’s body language replicated the slump of sauerkraut that had just been cleared. “Things are fine.”
“October fifth, right?” Leanne’s tone was conspiratorial.
No glance needed this time. “We’re delaying it a bit. Because of Danny’s health …”
“And the bills,” Danny added, his voice sharp. “Don’t forget about those.”
“Anyway”—Meg dragged out the word, half-singing it, filling the pause—“we still have to officially call it off, to get most of the deposits back. So, we’ll let you know. When we reschedule.”
First Greta had heard of it, but then again, she hadn’t asked.
The birthday cake was chocolate chip, the little Dalmatian spots mostly hidden under a white buttercream frosting spread thin and unevenly. Thirty green candles ringed the top like a dartboard.
Meg lit a piece of uncooked spaghetti with a match and touched each of the candles in turn. By the time the last was lit, the outer candles sweat wax onto the white frosting. Meg turned out the light so that their faces were ghostly in the flicker.
They obviously didn’t know about Danny’s aversion, and Greta felt him tense next to her as Ginger and Leanne broke into the birthday song. Greta saw him cringe out of the corner of her eye. Leanne’s voice squeaked on the high note, and Ginger harmonized the bottom.
When they finished, Ginger shoved the cake closer to Danny’s spot. The flames of the candles wavered like drunks, but remained lit—like drunks again, Greta guessed.
Danny stared at the candles.
“What, do you want us to leave you to blow these out alone?” Meg asked, her tone joking. She was unable to help herself, or really, unable to help herself from helping him.
“I’d like a piece of cake without wax, please,” Leanne said.
Danny stood from his chair and shoved his hand over the flames before anyone had a chance to react. Meg stood too, her chair knocking backward with a slam. His palm was only big enough to flatten half of the candles in the first swoop, but he shot his hand to the right and left like a windshield, knocking the candles flat on the cake.
Thirty little fires hit his palm and went out. With them, went the rest of the lights. Greta moved near the wall, a shadow in the shadows. Danny sat back in his chair with a deep breath. The room breathed too, the undercover breath of a stowaway avoiding capture. After a minute, Greta reached for Danny’s hand.
Lights went on, revealing Meg’s face frozen with a smile that resembled that of a kid terrified of a costumed character at Disneyland.
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Together, Danny and Greta examined his hands, globs of green wax stuck like points on a map. Greta barely noticed Meg helping the guests collect their things, find the door. Alone now, Danny let his hand rest in Greta’s, still sticky from its contact with the frosting. She suddenly remembered holding his hand at their father’s funeral. Her hand in his, two people alone together in front of a hole full of dirt. Even with so many guests, everyone from their father’s old unit—old coworkers, and church members—she had needed no one except the brother next to her. He had sung. She had given the eulogy. They shook hands with the attendees, and after everyone had left, they only had each other and a table full of leftovers in strangers’ Tupperware.
“I forgot to give you your birthday present,” Greta said, wax finally peeled off Danny’s palms. She dug the picture out of her purse. She had found that silverfish yesterday in the box of photos; the photos themselves had been hole-ridden so that this one had gone swiss-cheesey at the corners. Its sacrifice to Max’s pet seemed appropriate, like the picture had been the one at fault. Lepisma saccharina—so named because it consumes polysaccharides. Sugar, book glue, paper, photos. This photo was of Danny, Greta, their father, their mother—all smiling and holding up fish they had just caught. Greta stood at the edge of the picture; both she and Danny were nine years old. While Danny’s face had lengthened, grown manly and stubbled, Greta could have been part-silverfish herself. In many ways, she looked the same now—flat jaw, closely set hazel eyes. She was tall even at that age, and thick with prepubescent fat. Greta’s fish had been a prop, caught by their father. She hadn’t caught a single one that day. It was almost like the silverfish had known the photo was a lie, because it ate around the corners, starting near Greta. But Greta had caught the silverfish. Greta had done at least that.
“I love it,” he said.
Quietly, Greta said to him, “So, what did you wish for?”
After a surprised second, something like a laugh came out of Danny. “A different brain, maybe.” He leaned against her shoulder.
The Butterfly Effect Page 15