by Callie Hart
Coralie hands the serving spoon to Tina, who hands it directly to Shane so he can dish her food up like a fucking child. “I don’t think I’d like to be trapped in a room all day by myself,” she says. “I suppose your work would be fairly similar to that, wouldn’t it, Callan?”
Oh. So finally she speaks to me. I give her a tight, shitty smile. “Nope. I’m surrounded by people all day. The kid that gets my coffee. The kid that answers the phone. The kid that alters the lighting. The makeup and hair people.”
“I was actually referring to the wildlife shoots you go on. Y’know? Like the one that prevented you from coming to our wedding.”
“Ahh. Yeah. I suppose the wildlife shoots can be pretty solitary.” I do not look ashamed, sorry, or even slightly remorseful. If that’s what she’s expecting, then she can go fucking whistle. Shane glares at his wife, who refuses to acknowledge his silent plea for civility and instead smiles sadly at Coralie.
“I’m sorry we didn’t invite you to the wedding, Coralie. We just had no idea where to send the invite. We did ask Callan, but…”
“It’s not Callan’s fault we couldn’t send her a wedding invite, Tee,” Shane says. “Let’s just nip this in the bud right now, shall we? It’s been a very long time since all of us shared a meal together. Let’s not ruin it.”
Sitting back in her chair, Tina folds her arms across her chest, pursing her lips while she stares at me. “How about this. I won’t bring up Callan letting you down at the very last minute, if he apologizes to you. Sincerely.”
“He already has.”
“When?”
“Earlier this morning.”
“Well he hasn’t apologized to me.”
“I’m truly sorry, Tina, for having to fulfill my work responsibilities. Nothing would have brought me greater pleasure than attending your nuptials. Taking photographs of turtle eggs hatching on a beach in Costa Rica paled in comparison to watching you mash wedding cake into this poor bastard’s face.”
“Oh my god. Why are you such an asshole?” Tina leans back in her chair, and I see it’s not only Shane that’s gotten a little rounder in the waistline. I think about mentioning this, but then I catch the look Friday is wearing and I clamp my mouth shut. Jesus, the woman could freeze hell over with that look if she really felt like it.
Before she can demand that I apologize to Tina in a more genuine, less sarcastic manner, I decide it might be better to do so off my own bat. “Okay. You’re right,” I tell her. “It was crappy that I didn’t come. I should have figured it out somehow. I really am sorry. I guess these things are always more important to people than I realize. If you guys renew your vows in a decade, I’ll be there with bells on. You have my word.”
Tina looks a little shocked. She probably didn’t expect me to react to her calling me an asshole by moderating my behavior and giving her what she wanted. If I’ve learned anything over the past ten years, working with highly strung women, it’s that it’s far better to own your faults and acquiesce to their demands than it is to go to war with them. Horrible though it sounds, I don’t care if Tina bursts a blood vessel giving me hell. I care about Friday, though. I don’t want to ruin her night. She gives me an approving nod.
Tina and Shane spend the next thirty minutes while we eat firing question after question at Coralie. Is it really sunny every day in California? Does she ever see Leonardo DiCaprio at the grocery store? Does she have a boyfriend?
I nearly choke on my gumbo when she says yes to that last question. She’s young and she’s insanely beautiful, so of course she has a boyfriend. It shouldn’t come as a shock to me that she would be with somebody; after all I’ve taken a run at half the female population of New York over the years. I suppose I just never thought I’d have to hear her talk about being with someone else. It never occurred to me that one day perhaps I’d be sitting down at the same dining table with her, eating a meal, and she might be telling me about some douche bag called Ben.
I hate the name Ben.
“Yeah. He’s a lawyer. He works mostly on pro bono cases for the city,” Coralie says, sliding a forkful of food into her mouth; she looks like she’s going to be sick.
“So cool! He does a lot of charity work, then?” Tina coos.
Coralie nods.
So this Ben jerk is a goddamn saint by the sound of things. He’s stable, does good works in the community, and helps others in need. He already makes me want to punch something. I never want to meet him.
“Do you think you’ll end up marrying him?” Tina asks.
Coralie drops her fork onto her plate, and it makes a loud crashing sound. Gumbo spills everywhere, all over the tablecloth. “Shit, I’m so sorry. Friday, sit down. It’s okay, I’ll clean it up.”
Friday’s already on her feet and grabbing a wet cloth from the sink, though. “All good, child. You stay sittin’, now. Answer Miss Tina’s question. It was a good one.”
“Of course she’s not,” I say. “She’s not going to marry Ben.”
Everyone turns and looks at me. Shane’s eyebrows are migrating up his forehead, and Friday looks stunned. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so assertive in my statement, but it’s the truth. Coralie’s hands tighten around the white napkin she’s holding onto, and I can see the horror in her eyes.
“Why wouldn’t I be marrying Ben?”
“Because. You told me twelve years ago you were never getting married. You seemed fairly adamant at the time.”
“That was twelve years ago, Callan. I could have changed my mind by now, surely?”
I shake my head. “Not possible. Sorry.”
“Bullshit. Why is it not possible? I used to hate mayonnaise. Now I can’t eat fries without it.”
“That’s hardly the same thing and you know it.” I can feel my temperature rising, approaching boiling point. There’s just no way she would…
Coralie pushes back her chair, clearing her throat as she stands from the table. “I’m not good enough for anyone to marry?” she says. “I’m too damaged? Too crazy? I’m dragging too much baggage around with me? That it, Callan?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. Not even close.”
“Then what? You can’t possibly know the depths of my relationship with my boyfriend, of whether I’d marry him.”
I lean across the table, “Oh, but I do. I know. I know perfectly well. You might say yes if he asked you. You might even make it to the fucking church on your wedding day. But you know as well as I do that the moment you started to walk down that aisle, you’d see that it was wrong. That you shouldn’t do it. Because there’s only one man on the face of this planet you should ever be getting married to, and it’s sure as shit not Ben the Good Samaritan. It’s me.”
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe, god damn it.
I gently set my spoon down in my bowl, my ears burning like they’re on fire. I can feel my veins and capillaries expanding, opening wider for the rush of blood that’s muscling its way through my arms and my legs, my torso and my head. Fuck, I feel like…I haven’t felt like this in years. Not since I was a teenager, still wrestling with my hormones and my runaway emotions.
Shane, Tina, and Friday…all three of them sit in absolute silence, staring down into their food. Coralie looms over me on the other side of the table. She seems to have grown a foot in the last few seconds. She’s deadly still, frozen like a menacing marble statue of Boudicca I saw once at the London Museum, her eyes screaming fire and brimstone. Her hands shake by her sides.
“You…you do not get to speak to me like that, Callan. You do…not….get to talk to me about marriage. You shouldn’t even be here. Why did you come back? Why? To torment me? To break my heart? Because let me tell you…” She snatches up her bag and fights to get the straps over her shoulder. “I can’t be any more tormented. And my heart can’t get any more broken. Both tasks are already complete.”
I can’t watch her go. I am so done with watching her storming out of my lif
e. I stare at a painting on the wall, clenching down on my jaw as she whispers an apology into Friday’s ear and kisses her on the cheek. I continue to stare at the painting as she mumbles a very weak goodbye to Shane and Tina, and I’m still staring at the painting as she rushes out of the room, the front door to the house slamming five seconds later.
The painting is of Algie, a small, yappy dog Friday used to own, presumably long dead by now. He looks like he’s laughing at me from the oil and canvas portrait; the little shit always did like Coralie better than he liked me.
Shane clears his throat, spooning more gumbo into his mouth. “Well,” he says around his stew. “I’ll admit, that honestly went better than I thought it would.”
CHAPTER TEN
CORALIE
Happy Birthday, Weirdo
THEN
The first time Callan Cross knocks on my front door, I’m not as terrified as I should be. Over the past six months, he’s walked me to school every morning but he catches up with me six blocks down the road, far enough from my house that my father has no hope of seeing us together. Every morning, he arrives breathless by my side, grinning from ear to ear, his Walkman headphones tangled in a mess around his throat, on the verge of strangling him, and every morning without fail he tells me I should ‘stop making eyes’ at him otherwise he’s going to kiss me.
I deny the making eyes part, but I secretly want him to kiss me. We haven’t come close to that—we haven’t even held hands—but it seems to me, and I sometimes think it seems to him too, that we’re more than just friends.
So yes. This morning is different because Callan doesn’t catch up with me down the street. It’s a Saturday, and he comes to the front door and knocks politely on the glass pane of the front door as though it’s completely normal and not a cause for concern at all. On any other day, his actions would be grounds for major anxiety. Not today, though. Today is special. I open the door and there he is in all his ripped-jeaned and t-shirted glory, brandishing a killer smile on his face and a parcel wrapped in blue paper in his hands.
“Happy birthday, weirdo,” he tells me.
My heart feels like a balloon floating up, up, up in my chest. “You’re the weirdo.” I step back in order to let him into the house, and Callan enters, not even trying to conceal his curiosity as he looks around the hallway and into the living room to our right.
“You realize,” he says, offering the blue paper wrapped parcel out to me, “that it’s really fucked up that your dad leaves town on your birthday every year. Most parents want to stick around and celebrate the birth of their kids with them.”
I take his gift, trying not to blush too fiercely when our fingers graze each other. “My dad’s not like everyone else’s dad. Obviously.”
A stormy look passes over Callan’s face, his eyebrows banking together to form a confused line. “Yeah. Well. Obviously.”
Strangely, my father’s been away more and more often recently. And he hasn’t raised his hand to me as often as usual either. That’s not to say that he’s left me be entirely, but my bruises have been more infrequent. Less vivid stories in black and blue and purple. I don’t want to talk about my father, though. I don’t even want to think about him. Not today. I curl my fingers around the shape of the parcel in my fingers, feeling odd layers and shapes inside. “Should I open this now?” I ask, whispering.
“You should absolutely open that now. I’ve been picturing the expression you’re gonna make when you see what’s inside all week. I must have my satisfaction. I demand it.”
I glance around, biting down on my lip. “Here? In the hallway?”
Callan waggles his eyebrows. “Nope. Upstairs in your bedroom. I want to see what kind of creature you are.”
“You know what kind of creature I am.”
“Wrong. I’ll only be able to tell when I’ve seen what band posters you have hanging on your walls.”
It’s ironic that he thinks I’d be allowed such things. Still, I angle my head up the wide staircase behind me, motioning that he should follow me; I like the idea of Callan Cross in my room. He whistles as he follows me inside my bedroom, a look of confusion and then despair flitting over his features. “Jesus, Coralie. I didn’t know you were from a long line of strict Quakers. Where’s all your stuff?”
I cast my own eyes around my room, trying to picture how he’s seeing it for the very first time, through brand new eyes: The plain white walls; the plain white bed sheets and duvet cover; the simple wooden chest of drawers at the far end of the room; my desk, where my schoolwork is neatly arranged; the tiny ottoman sitting at the end of my bed that used to be my mother’s, embroidered with birds.
“I know. It’s simple. Boring.”
Callan looks aghast as he pivots around on the balls of his feet, taking in the nothingness. “For someone who draws and paints so well, CT, this place is seriously lacking in color.”
“I know, I know. If it were up to me—”
Callan exhales, pushing out the air in his lungs in a slow, long sigh. “Right. Malcolm. He won’t let you have it the way you want it?”
I shake my head. “He says that when I move out and go to college, he should never know I was here.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
Callan walks over to the window and looks out of it, down onto the small area of roof where I sleep sometimes. “Can it take both of us?” he asks.
“Probably.”
“Good.” He opens up the sliding window and climbs out before I can object. Sitting himself down Indian style on the roof below, he turns and grins back at me through the opening. “You can totally see into my bedroom,” he says. “Have you been spying on me?”
I’m sure I go a deep shade of plum. “No! Why in god’s name would I do that?” I’m blustering as I climb out of the window and sit myself down next to him. Our kneecaps touch—not the sexiest of places for two bodies to meet, but I take great delight in the places we connect. Elbows. The tops of our arms occasionally. Callan places his hand on my shoulder sometimes when we’re walking through the walls of Port Royal High, and I’m sure he has absolutely no idea of the effect he has on me.
“This feels lumpy,” I say, manhandling his gift as I try to ignore the pressure between our knees and the pressure building in my lungs. “What the hell is it?”
“Are you used to people spilling the beans and telling you what they bought for you before you open your gifts, Ms. Taylor? Because where I’m from, people usually like for it to be a surprise.”
I think he’d feel sorry for me if I told him about the one utilitarian gift—underwear—I get from my aunt every Christmas, so I don’t mention that. Instead, I poke my tongue out at him.
“Careful,” he advises me. “I’ll have that one of these days.”
Oh boy. Kissing someone with tongue is a weird concept that’s always kind of repulsed me in the past. But thinking about my tongue in Callan’s mouth, and his in mine…it’s enough to make me dizzy. Dizzy enough that I can’t even look at him right now. Slowly, I slide my finger inside the lip of the wrapping paper, opening the parcel at one end. I’m methodical as I go about opening the other taped areas of paper, and even more so as I carefully fold it back.
Within, I find a book: The Artist’s Guide to Drawing Birds, Volume II. On the front cover, a beautiful color drawing of a finch is depicted captured in flight, and my ribcage feels like it’s being squeezed. On top of the book rests two more prizes—a metal tin containing fifty colored pencils that apparently turn to water color paint when wetted, and next to it a Kodak disposable camera housed in bright yellow and blue cardboard. Beneath the book, a huge, folded bundle of material. I recognize it immediately as calico.
“This…this is incredible,” I sigh.
“I couldn’t find volume one,” Callan says, pointing at the book and then scratching the back of his neck. “I looked high and low, but turns out they discontinued the print run or something. Don’t worry. The woman in the store
said that it didn’t matter any if you started here or there. And I figured you were already really good at drawing birds, so…”
I feel like bursting into tears. Is that a normal reaction when someone gives you a gift? I have no idea, but I do my damnedest to prevent it from happening as I flick through the pages, growing more and more excited with each new illustration and tutorial.
“And the material. I know it’s not the best to paint on, but I figured if you stretched it onto a canvas it might look rustic or something.”
Weeks ago I told Callan that my father refused to buy me materials to work with because he considered it a waste of money. When I’d plucked up the courage and dared to ask him for some canvases, he’d elbowed me so hard in the ribs that it hurt to breathe for a week. It’s amazing that Callan has paid for all of these wonderful things for me. Amazing that he remembered.
“If you were a bird, what kind would you be?” Callan asks quietly. He seems closer all of a sudden, like he’s leaning into me. His arm brushes up against mine, sending warm, frantic pins and needles shooting up into my neck and down my back.
“I don’t know. I suppose…I suppose I would be a bluebird,” I say, staring down at the page. “They’re my favorite. We have lots of Bayou bluebirds here in South Carolina. They’re very...” My words catch in my throat when Callan rests his chin on my bare shoulder, looking over my shoulder. His breath skates down my arm, and my senses are filled with the nearness and the warmth and the smell of him.
“Beautiful?” Callan finishes for me. “You know I think you’re very beautiful, don’t you, Coralie?”
I close my eyes. “I—I didn’t—”
“Because I do. And if you say you’d be a bluebird, then I’d love it if you were my bluebird.”
The earth’s atmosphere seems somehow lacking in oxygen as I try repeatedly to fill my lungs. In, out, in, out—no matter how deeply I expand my diaphragm, I don’t seem to be able to catch a breath.