“Thanks a lot,” I say.
He laughs a bit. “No, not because of you. It was a couple of months after we broke up. I’ve always wondered about it, and I felt like I was losing my fucking mind studying for final exams, so I decided to try it.”
“How’d you do on the exams?” I crane my neck to look for the train when I hear it rumbling in the near distance, but I can’t tell which direction it’s coming from.
“Aced them.” He frowns when I look at him. “Why?”
“Every single time I wanted us to go to a party with Laz, you said we were too smart for it.”
He blushes again. “I did?”
“Don’t even start with me, Mitchell. You know you did.”
He sighs. “Do you have to keep reminding me of what a prick I was? But this is medicine, not a party drug.” He throws his hands in the air when I stare at him. “Seriously, Dove. It helps with my anxiety.”
The train whooshes down the tracks on the other side of the platform, sending a tunnel of wind through the air.
“You have anxiety?” Mitchell never seemed anything but cool and calm when I was around him. Probably the most nervous he seemed was during those few minutes on the Ferris wheel.
“Yup,” he says, reaching for the vape pen to take another hit.
We end up at Portillo’s for lunch. It’s predictably packed inside, so I creepily watch people eat, waiting for a table to open up, while Mitchell orders for us at the counter. I scramble across the room when a couple finishes their meal and stand inches away from the table until they get up and dump their trash.
Mitchell comes back with two trays. I got what I always order, the Italian beef with sweet peppers and crinkle fries. Mitchell got a beef and cheddar croissant.
“That smells amazing.” I lean down to inhale before I reach for my wallet. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing,” he says, already unwrapping his lunch.
“Mitchell—”
“I didn’t do a lot of nice things for you when we were together. Let me buy you lunch.”
We did always split the bill wherever we went, but I thought it was normal. Neither of us had jobs. But now that I think about it, Booker has paid for everything when we were out: frozen yogurt, a snack at one of the food booths at Pride when we were wandering around trying to find a place to eat, and then our real dinner after that. I know he doesn’t have a lot of money, but he’s never let me pay, even though I offered each time.
“Thank you.” I look down at my still-wrapped sandwich. “But… this isn’t a date, just to be clear.”
“Loud and clear,” Mitchell says, laughing. “What, are you seeing someone or something?”
And there it is, that hint of superiority that used to sit on the edge of every sentence. Like I’ve just been waiting around to go to lunch with him. Like he can’t believe I could be with someone else besides him. My heart is beating fast and angry, and I make myself take a couple of deep breaths before I answer.
“I am, actually. He goes to school with Laz. We’ve been seeing each other all summer.”
Which is really only a few weeks, but it sounds more impressive to say all summer.
“Oh.” Mitchell nods. “Cool. Good for you.”
But it’s not the good for you that people mean when they’re actually happy for you, typically followed by a smile. It’s dismissive and he’s smirking. And the most annoying part is that he’s not acting like this because he’s jealous. There are no feelings between us—if they were ever there to begin with.
He’s acting this way just to be a dick.
I slowly peel the paper away from my Italian beef as I try to calm down. Whenever he’d annoy me like this before, I’d do something to distract myself so I wouldn’t start yelling about how condescending he could be. Like testing his knowledge of random facts.
“What do you know about CTE?” I looked it up after Booker mentioned it, but I can’t even remember what the letters stand for.
Mitchell wipes his mouth after chewing a big bite. “Chronic traumatic encephalopathy?”
I nod. Of course he knows the name off the top of his head and pronounces it perfectly.
“It’s a brain disease,” he says. “Brain degeneration. First found in boxers back in the 1920s, but the last few years doctors have been focused on football players. It can show up in anyone with repeated brain trauma, though—like military vets or people who’ve been physically abused. They can only diagnose it after death, but there are all kinds of symptoms: aggression, depression, anxiety, bad judgment, memory loss, dementia.…”
“How do you know all this?” I don’t think Mitchell has played a sport that wasn’t mandated by a PE teacher.
“When I hear about something I don’t know, I look it up.” He shrugs like I should already know this. “Why are you asking about it?”
I pause, not wanting him to dismiss my… whatever it is with Booker. But I have to admit, the more I looked into CTE the more uneasy I felt. Did the football he played have something to do with him snapping on his coach? Would he have gotten worse if his dad hadn’t made him quit? He sounded like he thought his dad’s concern was silly, but maybe he was right to make him stop playing.
“The guy I’m seeing used to play football, but his dad is worried about CTE and made him quit.” I squirt ketchup into a pool on my sandwich paper and swirl a fry through it before I pop it in my mouth.
“Probably a good call,” Mitchell says. “They don’t know enough about it, but it’s a pretty nasty disease and totally avoidable in that case.”
“Except avoiding it means he doesn’t get to do the thing he loves.”
“Well, yeah.” Mitchell takes another bite, chews, and looks at me. “You’re really into this guy?”
“I am, yeah.” I take a deep breath. “Can I ask you something?”
He nods as he takes a sip of his soda.
“Why did you stay with me so long if you weren’t interested in me?”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
“You… you never seemed, like, physically interested in me.” I lower my voice even though it’s so loud in here someone would have to be sitting in our laps to hear us. “Whenever we fooled around, you didn’t seem like you wanted to be there. With me. Like, ever.”
Mitchell’s face is instantly engulfed in flames. Honestly, it’s so red it makes me feel bad, and when he doesn’t say anything back, I take the biggest bite of my Italian beef that I can manage because I’m embarrassed now, too. For him, and a little bit for myself for asking in the first place.
He drinks from his soda until the dregs of it slurp loudly in his straw. He shakes the ice in his cup and tries again until nothing more will come out. Finally, he looks at me, watching as I chew. “It wasn’t you, okay? And I…” He looks down and then back at me again. “It wasn’t you, Dove.”
“Okay,” I say, watching his skin fade back to its normal shade.
We finish our meals without talking and I don’t feel good about it.
It seemed like Mitchell and I were forging some sort of post-breakup civility, weird as it was, and now I wonder if that’s been totally squashed by my question.
I DON’T SPEND A LOT OF TIME WITH JUST MY FATHER, SO I’M SURPRISED and pleased when we find ourselves alone for dinner a couple of nights later.
“Where is everyone?” I ask when I walk out to the living room to greet him. I yawn, still groggy from my nap.
“Clearly not sleeping like you,” he teases me, tweaking the end of a braid. “Your mother is still downstairs, working on a late appointment. I don’t know where Carlene is, but your mom said we’re on our own tonight for dinner. You cooking?”
I give him a look. He and Mom are both good cooks; I didn’t get that gene.
“I had to try.” He laughs. “How about I fire up the grill? We’ve got those rib eyes I picked up the other day.”
“I can make a salad,” I offer. It’s just about the only thing I can make, but it�
��s something.
Dad seasons the steaks, then goes up to the roof to heat the grill. I toss together an easy salad of chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and feta cheese that Mom showed me how to make, set it in the fridge, and take the stairs up.
It’s still light out, and the air is warm and breezy on the rooftop. I kick back in one of the lawn chairs, watching my father fiddle with the grill.
“Is this the first time you’ve used it this summer?”
He groans. “Don’t remind me. Someone’s gonna take my title of master griller if I keep this up.”
“Master griller?” I giggle. “Okay.”
He smiles. “How you been, Dovie? I miss you.”
“I’m good. Glad I’m not still grounded.”
“Me too, but I’ll deny it if you ever tell your mother.” He slides the steaks carefully onto the grill.
“Dad?” I sit up, folding my legs. “How long do you think Carlene will stay with us?”
He looks over at me, surprised. “I don’t know. Do you not like her being here?”
“No, I love it. I was just wondering. It doesn’t seem like Mom really wants her here.”
He eyes the steaks, then walks closer to me. “Kitty and Carlene have a complicated relationship. They always have.”
“Because of Carlene’s drinking?” I’m not sure why I’m asking, as if I don’t already know this. I guess I’m hoping my father will tell me a story, like Carlene did the other night.
He hesitates. “Because of a lot of things, Dovie. They’re sisters.”
“Mimi and I are sisters and we’re not complicated.” Well, not really. She didn’t say anything else about Booker before she went back to Milwaukee, but I also knew she wouldn’t like it if I brought him up.
“Everyone’s different.” He checks on the grill.
“Then how were things complicated for them? Did they fight all the time?”
Dad looks at me and sighs. “They’re getting along pretty well now. Are you trying to jinx it?”
“Nobody ever tells me anything,” I say. “You all still treat me like I’m a baby who can’t handle the truth.”
He sits down across from me, arms folded on the table as he leans forward. “Carlene lied. All the time. So much that Kitty and I knew not to believe a word that came out of her mouth. I saw and heard about some pretty bad fights between them”—he shudders, and I wonder if he’s thinking of the baseball bat and broken glass—“but there’s one night I’ll never forget. It was just so sad.”
“What happened?”
Dad points his chin at me. “Don’t repeat this, please. I don’t want to dredge up any old feelings.”
I cross my heart and lock it with an imaginary key. Tuck it away in my pocket and wait.
“Carlene showed up needing a place to stay. We hadn’t seen her in about a year. Mimi had just turned five, so you weren’t even two yet. Your mom didn’t want her around, but she never could tell Carlene no back then. Kitty would bite my head off if I even said the word enable.” Dad sighs. “She told us she was sober, that she was going to meetings. Neither one of us believed her, but Kitty wanted to. She really wanted her to be doing the right thing. Carlene lied a lot, but she also manipulated your mother.”
“My mother?” I can’t imagine Mom letting anyone manipulate her into anything. She’s the strongest-willed person I know.
“Well, that was the time Carlene talked Kitty into letting her come to the dinner party Kitty was having for her best friend’s birthday. It was a small group, but almost all their friends worked at the shop she was at then, and her boss would be there, too. She was nervous about hosting and wanted everything to go right and—well, I told her not to let Carlene come, but she thought if she showed that she trusted her, Carlene would have the motivation to stay sober.”
I cringe. “How bad was it?”
“Awful. She was forty-five minutes late, showed up completely drunk, and ended up spilling red wine on two of the guests. She also insulted your mother’s boss and got a second-degree burn from the stove when she was trying to ‘help,’ so I had to spend the second course doctoring up her arm.”
“That really happened? All in one night?”
“All within an hour,” he says, getting up to poke at the grill again.
I stand up, too, needing to move around after that story. “I can’t believe she’s the same Carlene as the one I know.”
“It was hard to watch,” he says. “I’ve always liked Carlene, but she turned into a different person when she was drinking or using.”
“Do you think addiction is a disease?” I ask. I realize there’s no easy answer, but I want to hear what my father believes.
“Yes,” he says after a pause. “I do, Dovie. I think it’s a really cruel disease, because when your aunt was going through a relapse, it was hard for me to remember that. All I kept thinking about was how if it runs in families, why was she the only one causing problems?”
What if Mimi or I have the gene? When would we know? Does something cause it to happen, or is it lying there dormant, waiting to be kicked into action? Is that why Mom was so angry when she smelled alcohol on my breath—because she was worried I started a cycle I won’t be able to stop?
I’m glad my father is looking down at the steaks and not at my face, where I’m sure all of my worries are written.
“Still,” he goes on, “like I said, I don’t want to jinx it. And Carlene seems to be doing real good this time. Better than she ever has.”
I walk around the roof, trailing my fingers over the lights strung along the railing. “What was Mom like in high school?”
I already know the answer to this—I must have asked him dozens of times, usually in front of my mother—but I like hearing him talk about what she was like back then. Sometimes, when I look at everyone else’s parents, I can’t believe mine are still together. Nobody takes high school relationships seriously, but they’ve been in love since they were my age. Could I fall in love with someone like that? I look up at the sky and smile.
“Your mother was exactly the same person then as she is today. Serious. Driven. A little bossy, which means she gets things done.” My father uses tongs to lift the edge of a steak. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And one of the most generous.”
“What about you?”
He shakes his head. “Me? I was a knucklehead, through and through. The stars must’ve been aligned the day I asked Kitty to go out.”
I go down to get the salad and dishes while he flips the steaks one last time. The meat smells delicious, and I’m practically ravenous when Dad cuts into it.
“Hey, do you want to come to a game in a couple of weeks?” The master griller finally retires his tongs and takes a seat at the rooftop picnic table. “I’ll be working, but I have a couple of extra tickets. Front row. You can bring a friend.”
“Of course.” Booker immediately comes to mind, but I don’t know if I’d want to be on a date in front of my dad, no matter how cool he is. I’d have to figure out how to introduce Booker to my parents within the next couple of weeks without letting on that we’ve been seeing each other all this time—and hope that my mom didn’t do her own research on his family before the game actually happens. “I’ll ask Laz. He always loves a Bulls game.”
“It’s a plan, then,” my father says.
I nod, wiping my mouth. “The steak is so, so good, Dad.”
“Yeah? The master griller still got it!”
He pumps his fist in the air and I roll my eyes, but I can’t help laughing, too.
Mom comes home just as we’re done cleaning up the kitchen.
I wipe my hands on a dish towel and kiss her hello, then grab my phone. I heard it buzzing while I was stacking plates into the dishwasher. I stand in the doorway while Mom opens a bottle of wine and pours two glasses. I notice her look at the bottle for a moment before she slides it back on the counter, flush against the wall.
I pull up my texts.
Couldn’t wait to say g’night so… hi
“Who’re you talking to, Birdie?” My mom isn’t asking in a nosy way, more like conversational. She must think it’s Laz.
But it startles me so much that I don’t even think to lie. “Booker.”
“Oh?” She stops on her way to the living room, glass of wine in hand. She doesn’t look upset, just confused. “Who’s Booker?”
“He’s, um, Laz’s friend.” I hesitate before I go on. “And he’s my friend, too. I met him through Laz.”
Dummy, of course you met him through Laz if he’s Laz’s friend. She’s totally going to know he’s something more to me.
Maybe it’s the long day or maybe it’s just that my mother really doesn’t think I would date someone without having her meet him first, but she doesn’t seem to notice my nerves. Or the way I look when I think about Booker.
“And his name is Booker?” She takes a sip of wine and nods. “Interesting.”
“He really likes basketball, so I’m going to ask him to go to a Bulls game with me. Since Laz gets to go all the time.” I look over at my father so I won’t lose my nerve. “Is that okay, Dad?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says easily, turning off the light above the sink. He picks up his glass of wine and then he’s next to my mother. “Any friend of Laz’s is a friend of mine.”
Mom smiles and they go into the living room, turning on the TV to the singing competition Dad pretends to hate but clearly keeps up with week to week. I lean against the doorframe and watch them curl up on the couch.
“Hard day?” my father asks, pressing his lips to the top of Mom’s head.
“Long day.” She sighs. “My feet are killing me.”
Dad pats his lap and she swings her legs over for a foot rub. Gross.
Is it that easy, though? I just pretend like Booker is my friend and I’ll get to hang out with him, no questions asked? It can’t really be that easy—but if it weren’t, my mother would still be standing here, asking me questions. And if this does work, how long will I be able to keep it up?
The Revolution of Birdie Randolph Page 12