by Brea Brown
I wasn’t as positive. In fifth grade, I’d discovered boys. Which means by the time I met Rae, I was well indoctrinated in the cult of pre-teen girls, where image is everything, despite not having any idea at that age what image entails. I did know, however, that it involved regular bathing, cute hair, and trendy clothes, none of which seemed high on the new girl’s list of priorities.
I couldn’t resist an underdog, though. I’m a born-and-bred Chiefs and Royals fan, after all. When Rae declared us “best friends,” I thought, All right. I can work with this. She’s a little rough around the edges, but what is life without a project?
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that Rae wasn’t like other girls. Probably because she came right out and told me, the first time I tried to give her a makeover.
“I don’t do girlie stuff.”
“What do you mean, ‘girlie stuff’? This isn’t about being girlie. I like sports, too, and it’s cool that you help your dad fix things, but if you let me do your hair and dress you in some of my new school clothes, I can show you how fun it is to—”
“That stuff’s lame.”
“No, it’s not! All the girls at Kennedy are going to have these jeans this year.” I held up my mom’s latest purchase for me. “Aren’t they cool?”
She wrinkled her nose. “They’re pants. I have plenty of pairs.”
“Not these, though. Yours are all… straight and stiff. Like something Greg would wear.”
“As long as it’s not a dress or a skirt, I’m okay with that.” She slid down from my high canopy bed. “Let’s go see what the guys are doing. Did I hear Greg say he got a new video game with his allowance money?”
“They’re not going to let us play.”
“So? Watching is fun, too.”
I disagreed, but already at that young age, I hated conflict and avoided it at all costs, so I dropped my efforts to prissify my new friend. I revisited the topic several times over the next few years, as it became a bigger and more exhausting job to play protector and champion to Rae, the nonconformist.
Being different at that age isn’t easy. It’s not like I was the most popular girl at school, but I wasn’t an outcast, either, so I took it upon myself to help Rae settle into life at Kennedy Middle School. I introduced her to my respectable-sized group of friends, who tolerated her until about halfway through high school, when I suddenly realized Rae and I were now a duo and were increasingly being left out of group activities.
It was about that time, during our sophomore year, that Rae disabused me of any lingering hopes of her assimilating.
Facing each other, we were sitting on the floor of my room one Friday night during a sleepover involving just the two of us, oohing and aahing over whichever baby-faced idiot teenaged celebrity we (supposedly) were into at the time, when she suddenly got quiet and closed the magazine between us.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Nothing. I don’t feel like looking at that anymore, that’s all.”
“Oh. Whatever. Wanna go see what kind of chips my mom got?” I moved to stand, but she stopped me with a hand on my arm.
“Wait. I— I need to tell you something.”
I could tell by the slightly sick look on her face that whatever it was would be juicy, so I settled in for some meaty gossip. “I knew it! You like Jeremy Ward, don’t you? I’ve been telling Kimi for weeks that there’s something going on there, but she keeps saying, ‘No way! Jeremy’s going out with Brandi,’ as if that matters. I mean, if you like someone, you like someone. Danny Ashland’s been going out with Heather-the-Feather Poole since eighth grade, but that hasn’t stopped me from being, like, totally in love with him. So, when did you start to feel… you know… wiggly about Jeremy?”
She ducked her chin at me. “‘Wiggly’? What the hell does that mean?”
Secretly, Rae’s fascination with cussing made me uncomfortable, but I suspected that made me an unsophisticated goody-goody, so I tended to pretend I didn’t hear the bad words. In this case, it was easy, because I was more intent on answering her question. “You know! Wiggly!” Sitting with my legs folded under me and my feet under my bottom, I squirmed and pretended to tickle my own stomach. “Like when you look at someone you like, and you feel all… fizzy.”
For the first time in several minutes, Rae’s face relaxed, and she laughed. “You’re such a dork.”
“But you know what I’m saying!”
She nodded. “Yeah. I do. Exactly.”
“Then I’m not a dork. I’m good at describing things.”
I was reveling in the satisfaction garnered by her conceding shrug when she dropped, “But Jeremy Ward doesn’t make me feel like that.”
“Whatever. Then why do you follow him and Brandi around all the time? I see you watching them when you think nobody’s looking.”
Her shoulders sagged, and she picked at the fringe on my area rug. I figured her big confession was about to happen—and I was confused as to why she was so hesitant to admit it—so it took me a while to comprehend what she meant when she said, “I’m not looking at him. I’m looking at”—she inhaled, reinflating her chest and sitting straighter once more—“Brandi.”
Still so dumb (and young and Midwestern and wrapped up in my own narrow experience with life), I was on the verge of saying, “Why? Do you like Brandi’s new haircut? It would look super-cute on you, too,” when the penny finally dropped. I swallowed. Hard. “Brandi makes you feel all wiggly?”
Rae rolled her eyes. “Yes! Duh. I don’t like boys.”
She said it like someone would say, “I don’t like onions,” like it was no big deal. But to me, it was a big deal.
I also knew my next response was a bigger deal. In a matter of seconds, I processed what she was telling me—what I already knew, if I were being completely honest with myself—and merely said, “Oh.”
“Oh? That’s it?” She scoffed, then muttered, “‘Oh,’ she says.”
Recovering more fully, I laughed at myself, then said, “Well, I mean, girls don’t do it for me, but hey! I guess we never have to worry about fighting over the same guy.”
“Never.” She shook her head and widened her eyes. “Danny Ashland? Barf.”
I jumped to my feet and grabbed a pillow from my bed, swinging it at her head, “Hey! Danny is gorgeous!”
“And dumber than a box of rocks.”
“He’s not dumb, just quiet.”
Struggling to stand while still under heavy attack, she crawled to my bed and pulled herself up by the eyelet comforter, almost laughing too hard for me to understand her when she retorted with her arms in front of her face, “Because he’s too busy listening to the sound of his brains rattling around up there.”
After the third swing and hit across her chest, she grabbed the pillow and wrenched it from my hands. Her short hair standing in a static-induced spike, she grinned at me. “Did you say your mom got chips?”
Not much later, Rae came out to everyone. Looking back, I’m honored I was the first person she told. At the time, though, as a stupid, selfish teenager, it was a burden I’d have rather not shouldered. Every time she told an adult or one of our distant acquaintances, they’d ask, “Did you know this? Why didn’t you tell me/us?” How do you answer that? As a nearly thirty-year-old, with the benefit of hindsight, I can think of plenty of ways, some of them not polite. Back then, I was stumped and chose the non-answer, “I thought everyone already knew.” It got me off the hook and shut people up, because nobody likes to admit they’re clueless. It made me look like I wasn’t.
Then, of course, came the ignorant questions from some (mostly male peers):
“Are you a lesbian too, now?”
Because it’s contagious?
“Do you and Rae… you know?”
Because being gay means being attracted to and unable to resist everyone of the same sex, and the targets of their attraction are powerless to stop it, you know? They’re trying to take over the world!
“Are you still going to be friends with her?”
Because she’s no longer technically a human now, right? So you can cast her aside.
Of course, Rae’s news wasn’t news to most people close to us. I might have been the person she chose to formally come out to first, but I was far from the first person to know. Nobody in our group of friends was shocked. Suddenly, it made sense why she and I were being pushed out. Which pissed me off. But I wanted to hear it straight from them. I wanted them to admit that was the reason.
After months of mustering the nerve to ask, I approached one of them. Kimi confirmed my suspicions. “Rae’s weird. She says things that make the rest of us uncomfortable, and she doesn’t like boys, so she rolls her eyes when we talk about them.”
I laughed. “Okay. But that’s all about Rae. Why don’t you guys invite me to hang out anymore?”
Kimi fidgeted when she answered, “You two are kind of a package deal now, right? You’re always together. Like you’re a couple, or something.”
While that was factually inaccurate, I could tell by Kimi’s wrinkled nose that if I were to deny her implication, it would somehow get back to Rae that I was disgusted by the prospect, and that would hurt her feelings. Not because she had romantic designs on me—she didn’t and still doesn’t and never will—but because she was constantly being rejected for who she was, by friends, family… everyone. I refused to let her think for a second she could add me to that list.
So I gracefully bowed out of the larger high school social scene (who wants to be friends with people like that?) and concentrated all of my friendship efforts on Rae. We went to UMKC together and were roomies for most of that time, after we had a choice.
After graduation, I bought my own place, deciding it was time to at least pretend to be a grownup and live on my own. Although I was the one who moved out, Rae’s much more grown-up than I am, still. She has a career, after all, while I have a placeholder job that pays my bills and funds my silly movie hobby.
Living alone has meant that I’ve widened my friendship base to include people like Colin and… Okay, just Colin. Still, that’s a one hundred percent increase in friends, which is pretty dramatic for me.
Dating has been easier, too. Not that I’ve done much of it or have been successful at it. But when I have dated, I’ve found that not having someone to answer to at home makes things less complicated. Rae never stood in my way of dating, obviously, nor vice versa, but when we lived together, it seemed like we felt the need to vet each other’s potential partners, which could get dicey, considering she’s never approved of the guys I’ve liked.
“Why do you always pick the dumb ones? I don’t get it! Is it so you feel smarter, by comparison? Because you’re plenty smart, Mo. You could date a real brainiac and still be the smart one. Stop dumbing it down so much. What do you even talk about with these bozos? And don’t say, ‘movies.’”
But that’s usually the answer. Because the dumbest person on the planet—and despite what Rae thinks, I’ve never come close to dating men of that description—can talk about films. They may not delve into the deeper meanings behind shot composition and selection, but they can at least pinpoint their favorite films and say why they like them. I’ve found that a good discussion about movies is a decent way to get a feel for someone’s personality.
And while I’m not a cinematic snob, there are some red flag responses to, “What’s your favorite movie?” It’s not that I think I could never be with someone who replies, “The Star Wars prequels,” but there’s a good chance that’s not going to be a lasting love. Depending on a few other factors, I might let him wave his light saber at me and call me Queen Amidala (in private) for a short time, though. Loneliness is a powerful motivator.
Right now, after a stint of dead-end relationships, with me being the dead end of the street,, I choose loneliness over the eligible guys my age who seem to be looking for uteri more than companionship. I’ve had a few first dates whose ticking biological clocks drowned out the paltry conversation to the point that all I could hear by the end of the night, no matter what the guy said, was, “Have my babies.” Needless to say, there haven’t been many second dates.
Rae’s not experiencing that problem, because she’s rarely dating at all these days. She doesn’t have time for it, with her work and travel schedule. She doesn’t have much time for me, either. Which is fine. She’s not much fun to be around right now, anyway.
Prickly with everyone else in her life, she’s tended to give me a pass—until recently. I’ve chalked up being at the receiving end of her more cutting barbs lately to the stress of her relatively new job. It was a highly contested position, so being chosen from the hundreds of applicants was a big deal. Plus, it’s been her dream for as long as I’ve known her to work for the NFL, in general, not to mention our hometown team. Achieving and keeping a goal like that must come with plenty of pressure. Since I wouldn’t know firsthand, I have to assume that’s the case.
So, I get that she’s on edge lately, even with me, the person who’s been at her side through everything it took to get here. I also get that she needs to focus her attention on work and immerse herself in it. But the less time we spend together, the further apart we’ve grown. I guess it was an inevitability of growing up (which I’d like to go on record as saying pretty much sucks), and maybe there’s nothing we can or should do about it, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less awkward while we’re adjusting to our new dynamic.
Part of this new reality involves going to a party together, then not hearing each other’s voices for more than a month and communicating exclusively via text message, if at all. Because that’s happening. But you know what? That’s life. She’s living her dream, and I’m… living. Beats the alternative, right? Most days?
Five
Bah, Humbug!
“How are the potatoes? Do they seem bland to you? I think they’re bland. Flat. There’s nothing I hate more than flat potatoes.”
“They’re fine,” I reassure my future sister-in-law. “And the duck is fabulous.”
That’s right. Duck. There will be no pedestrian turkey at this Christmas dinner. Or, heaven forbid, ham. Greg and Deirdre, the future Mr. and Dr. Snow-Richards/Richards-Snow (they’re still debating the order of their hyphenated moniker), are duck people. We’re eating by candlelight.
I’ve never felt more like a third wheel in my life. That always makes me belligerent.
When I’m finished eating, I set my silverware on my plate, lean back in my chair, pull out my huge pot-stirring ladle, and ask, “How are the wedding plans going?”
Deirdre answers, “Fine,” then purses her lips so tightly they could be mistaken for her butthole.
Greg says, “Fine,” then adds after a few seconds’ pause, “if you ignore the fact that we still haven’t been able to agree on the flowers. I want understated; she wants… gaudy.”
She adjusts the position of her wine glass in relation to her plate. “The arrangements I like aren’t gaudy! They’re dramatic, which is going to be necessary, because the venue is so large. Your ‘understated’ bouquets will blend in with the woodwork.”
“Why do you care about flowers, Greg?” I ask. “Seriously. That’s so not the groom’s territory.”
“And that’s a sexist statement.”
“Answer the question.”
“Sue me for not wanting the flowers to be towering over us in all the pictures, like something out of Little Shop of Horrors.”
Deirdre looks at the dainty watch on her bony wrist. “Well, we’re running out of time on that decision.”
“Show me pictures of the two options, and I’ll decide,” I offer, straight-faced. “Break the tie.”
The two of them laugh stiffly.
“Or you could postpone the wedding until you end your floral stalemate.”
Deirdre’s face goes from tight amusement to wide-eyed earnestness in 0.2 seconds flat. “The wedding is happening on the first Satu
rday in June, and that’s not negotiable.”
“Not at all,” Greg concurs. “If we slide back the date of the wedding, that will affect all the other dates in our five-, ten-, and fifteen-year plans. Not an option.”
I attempt—and fail—to stifle a snicker. If I didn’t know them better, I’d think they were kidding about all of this. But they’re dead serious. Scarily serious.
“Well, if the flowers are your biggest sticking point, then you’ve made progress since the last time we talked. You must have decided on your last name and which house you’re going to live in, huh?”
Robotically, Deirdre starts stacking the china and gathering the silver. “Those decisions aren’t as critical.”
I continue to stir. “Oh, but with the housing market the way it is, you guys need to pick which house you’re going to sell, right?”
“Hers is more marketable right now,” Greg points out. “Fewer bedrooms, lower price point, easier to move. This place, on the other hand, is perfect for a growing family. It’s hardly worth discussing.”
Deirdre chuckles mirthlessly. “Oh, but it is worth discussing. This house is too big for us, but we could get more money out of it. Money that we could invest in our children’s college funds.”
“Where are these children of yours? Is there something the two of you haven’t told me? What are their names? Bring them out to meet Aunt Maura.”
Greg shoots me a look that probably was supposed to be withering but seems more indulgent when he can’t catch his smile in time. “Maura.”
“Oh! You’ve named one of them after me?” At Deirdre’s panicked expression, I say, “Kidding, D! Gosh. I can’t say it enough: you two need to chill. Take a deep breath.”