Know Not Why: A Novel

by Hannah Johnson

  “Don’t knock it,” Dad orders. “Jane Austen told me that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Tell your mom she says hi.”

  “Will do.”

  “She really liked Mansfield Spark.”

  “Sick.”

  “Totally.”

  We watch the stage for a little while. Amber moves her hands in eerie, eloquent gestures in time to the words I can’t hear. The sound of Kristy’s crying is amplified, though, precise as a pin drop in an empty room. Arthur keeps his head bent down, his hands moving reverently over the keys. I realize that it’s a song I know, but I can’t quite figure out what.

  “He’s talented, this guy,” Dad observes.

  “Yeah,” I say. “He’s sort of like … I don’t know, this thoroughly awesome human being.” And then, just because I still can’t quite tell whether he gets it, I add, “He kissed me in the fake flower aisle.”

  “Good for him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure,” Dad says easily. “Somebody had to.”

  “Huh,” I say.

  Dad heads over to the nearest row of seats, takes a load off. He props his legs up on the seat in front of him. They never like you to do that, but I guess it’s not really a big deal considering there’s no one here but us.

  I don’t know if I’m supposed to sit down next to him or not. Instead, I keep standing. It’s like this a lot of the time with him. I guess I started to forget that part.

  “Better get off those feet, bud,” he says, an invitation.

  I accept, sitting next to him. The chair creaks as I sit down. I can’t quite bring myself to prop my feet up the way he did with his. I don’t really want to look at them.

  “Amber’s very good,” Dad says, keeping his eyes trained on the stage.

  “I don’t really get what she’s doing,” I admit.

  I watch a smirk curve at his mouth. “The trick to women,” he says, jokily all-knowing, “is—” He trails off abruptly.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” he says. “Forgot. I’m not supposed to tell. It’s the rules. Although,” he adds, chuckling, “I guess it doesn’t matter so much in your case, does it, kiddo? Not exactly essential knowledge.”

  Here we go. This, I’ve been waiting for. “So you get it.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” he says. He still hasn’t looked at me. “’Course I get it.”

  “That your son’s a faggot.”

  “Hey,” he says, turning to look at me. He’s got really blue eyes, my dad, but my mom’s are brown, so that’s what Dennis and I got. “Shut your mouth.”

  “I just thought you should know,” I say, but I feel stupid and good all at once. Like I called this wrong to start with.

  He looks back at the stage, and he crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Nobody talks like that about my son.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say quietly.

  Arthur stops playing, and for a second, there’s just silence. Then he starts up something else, something a little sweeter.

  “What are you going to do?” Dad asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  He laughs, which I didn’t expect. “It’s great, isn’t it?”

  “No,” I say, with my own laugh, though it’s more in the incredulous vein of None of This Is Funny. “It’s friggin’ terrifying.”

  “Hold onto that, though,” Dad advises. He seems so all-knowing. I feel five all over again. “That’s a good feeling. Knowing it could go any which way.” He sighs. “Possibility.”

  My mom walks out onto the stage, which seems like good timing to me. Her hair’s down loose and she’s wearing a white nightgown. She hovers awkwardly around, glancing out into the audience like she’s expecting someone who hasn’t shown. I realize that none of them can see us. The stage lights must be too bright, so for them it’s just looking out into a whole lot of nothing.

  “Miranda,” my dad murmurs. I figure he must miss saying her name.

  “I think she’s looking for you,” I point out.

  “Is that what she’s doing,” he replies, not quite making it a question.

  “You should ask her to dance,” I suggest.

  “Kiddo,” he says, “I’m dead.”

  “Well, yeah,” I say, a little frustrated. “But—”

  “No buts,” he interrupts. “I’m just dead.”

  I know and everything, but it still hurts to hear it. “That sucks.”

  “Not really,” he answers, kind of serene. “It makes everything clear.”

  “Shouldn’t we get back to the quest?” I ask. “The tree?”

  “There’s already a tree,” he reminds me. “With angels. And popcorn.”

  I think I knew that somewhere in the back of my head, but still, it’s confusing. “Then what are we doing here?”

  He smiles a little. He doesn’t say anything, and so neither do I. I sink back into my seat. We watch.

  +

  I wake up in the morning. I get out of bed and I look down at my feet. Still there, still flesh-colored. Excellent. Weird dream.

  What are you going to do?

  I reach for my phone on the bedside table, and I call Arthur.

  “How is everything?” he asks right away. I feel a surge of gratitude.

  “Better. Except for the part where the texty Christmas song actually, no lie, haunted my dreams last night.”

  “You were the one who insisted on coming. I can’t quite bring myself to lament you suffering the consequences.”

  “You’re a sick bastard, you know that?”

  “Yep.” I’m pretty sure I can hear him smiling. Magnificent super-hearing. It’s a thing.

  “I dreamed about you, too,” I add.

  “You did?”

  “I did.”

  “What was I doing?”

  “Playing the piano.”

  “Hmm.” I remember I used to really hate how he’d do that, the ‘hmm’-ing and ‘mmm’-ing and noises that aren’t technically words. Oh, past Howie. You foolish, foolish soul.

  “How’s Kristy?” I can’t help asking.

  “She went to Cliff’s for the weekend.”

  “Oh.” I try not to let myself get consumed by a sudden sinking feeling.

  “It’ll be all right, Howie,” Arthur says gently. “A little time apart will do both of you good.”

  I can’t quite bring myself to agree; it sounds dangerously optimistic. Instead, I decide to soldier forth to the point. “What are you doing for Christmas?”

  “Sitting around this apartment alone, I imagine. My family will be in Hawaii, but it seems supremely impractical for me to—”

  “You want to come over to my house?”

  “Really?” He sounds like I just asked if he wanted to spend all day at a farmer’s market.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I wanna show you off, you motherfucking rockstar.”

  “Well, when you put it like that, how can I refuse?” Sarcasm present and accounted for, but there’s warmth in his voice, this most excellent warmth.

  “I’m pretty sure the right answer to that one is ‘you can’t.’”

  “I can’t,” he agrees.

  And he doesn’t. And this, this would be moving forward.

  +

  “I had a dream about Dad last night,” I tell my mom later in the kitchen. I feel a little jittery saying it. We don’t talk about him a whole lot. I watch her back, nervous, but when she turns around from the fridge, carton of milk in hand, she’s smiling.

  “Oh yeah?” she asks, pouring some milk into her coffee. “What were you two up to?”

  “Looking for a damn Christmas tree.”

  “Ah. Lucky boy. I know how you love that.”

  “Barefoot. My feet froze off.”

  “He didn’t even check to make sure you were wearing shoes first?” She shakes her head. “Oh, Graham.”

  “Aside from that, it was kinda cool. I mean, I know it was just my brain going haywire from excess cookie consumptio
n, or whatever, but … I dunno. When I woke up, I felt like I’d really been with him.”

  Her smirk softens into a real smile. “That’s good.”

  “Yeah,” I agree.

  The fact that we’re actually talking about him seems to sink in for both of us at once, because she starts stirring her coffee with more focus than necessary. I shove a huge spoonful of Corn Pops into my mouth. Chew, swallow. More Corn Pops. The thing is, I have to tell her. I get the feeling that it won’t exactly be the best Christmas ever if Arthur randomly shows up on the doorstep. Besides, I want to tell her. It’s just a weird, special kind of wanting, the kind that likes to hang out with all-consuming terror.

  Three more bites of cereal, and I muster up my courage.

  “Hey, Mom, about Christmas—” I say, and at the exact same time, she goes, “Hon, I actually wanted to talk to you about Christmas—”

  What are the odds of that?

  “You go,” I say.

  “No, you.”

  “Seriously. Mom. You go.”

  “All right.” She looks nervous. This is distinctly bizarre. “I invited a boy. Um. A man. Well. David. Professor Herrick. Is coming over.”

  The hell?

  That’s all I got.

  The hell?

  “What?”

  “Last night at dinner, I happened to—”

  “Dinner. Wait.” Things suddenly start to come together. I’d really, really much rather they didn’t. At all. “Business meeting. I thought that was a business meeting.”

  “Well, we are coworkers. And we did spend a portion of the time talking about school, so I’m sure that—” She stops herself, with great restraint. Then, very gravely, she says, “A date. It was a date.”

  “You lied.”

  “Accidentally.”

  “He took five points off my perfect paper.” It seems very important at this moment. “He is a fundamentally crappy person.”

  “Oh, Howie, he was just trying to push you to be better!”

  “How do you kn—did you talk about me? Mom! Jesus!”

  “Well, people do talk about their children, Howie! As parents, it tends to be most of what we have going for us. Besides, he told me in great detail about his daughter’s breakup with her boyfriend, so really, it could have been worse for you—”

  “You’re, like, dating?”

  “I don’t know what we’re doing,” Mom says, sighing and bringing a hand to her temple. “But he’s just been through a divorce, and he had no other holiday plans, and so I invited him. Thoughtlessly, but … there you are.”

  I don’t really know what to say. Instead, I just sit. Sitting is good. My Corn Pops are getting soggy.

  “I just scarred you for life, didn’t I?” Mom says anxiously.

  “I can’t really tell yet,” I reply blankly.

  She sighs, and looks kind of lost. I stare at her. Finally, looking down at the table, she says, “I love your dad, Howie. He’s still my best friend, and believe me, I’m aware of the several levels of dysfunction and insanity inside that statement. Lord knows spending time with him isn’t precisely easy, considering the circumstances. But I’ve begun to feel like if I just keep missing him forever, I’ll – well, God only knows what I’ll do. But I don’t think I can—”

  Who are you to give her crap about this, Dater of Arthur? my brain questions inconveniently. And so, while I am many levels of freaked out, I try to get my cool back.

  “It’s okay,” I interrupt. “You don’t need to explain it to me.”

  “We can talk about it,” she insists. “I don’t want you to feel like I was keeping secrets from you and Dennis, or – or betraying you, or your father. None of that was my intention. I’ve just been lonely lately, and David’s been a good friend to me.”

  I try to discern whether friend means friend or friend means, like, sex buddy, in which case I would have to murder him and then chop out my own brain, oh God, oh God, okay, we are not going there, there is a place we are not going to go.

  “Nah,” I say, summoning as much composure as I can. “We’re okay.”

  “Okay,” she agrees, although she still seems pretty reluctant. “What did you want to tell me?”

  Oh, right. That. In a way, it’s a relief. Now, this doesn’t seem like such a big deal. “I invited a boy. Too. Also.”

  “Oh,” she says. I can tell it strikes her as anticlimactic.

  “Arthur,” I add. “He hasn’t got anybody to hang out with on Christmas either.”

  “Well, that’s just fine,” my mom says. She’s got her Extra Momly voice going, like she’s trying to score back maternal points. “It’s nice of you to reach out to a friend like that, and I wouldn’t mind getting to know him better. I’m glad that the two of you seem to have—”

  “Mom, I’m in love with him.”

  Well, whoa, shit, bam. I did not see that one coming.

  My mom falls totally silent. Goodbye, Extra Momly voice. Her eyes get huge. Like, huge. Her mouth is still open.

  “W-what?” she finally sputters.

  In love with him? In love with him? Really, brain? Really, mouth? What sappy nonsense is that?

  “Or – I dunno.” Backtracking. I am backtracking to the max. “That came out sort of strong. I don’t know if I – I mean, he’s cool, but it’s not like I’m, like, writing him sonnets in my head all the time or whatever. I just –” But, okay, no, we are not doing that, we are not moving backward here; forward, forward damn it! “—he’s like my boyfriend though. We’re together. In a sexy way.” Oh, fuck, why, WHY. “Or, uh – romantic. Way. Fuck.” I stare down at the table. My stomach is friggin’ French braiding itself. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “Don’t throw up,” my mom orders.

  “I—”

  “Howie Andrew, if you throw up on this tablecloth, you’re grounded until the end of time.”

  “Okay,” I say, and take a deep breath. “Okay.”

  I stare down into my soggy Corn Pops. They’re so soggy. I want to go swimming in them. Percy Bysshe Shelley style.

  “What about Amber?”

  “Amber?”

  “I always thought you two would—”

  Oh, God. The end of an era. Goodbye, misconception that has followed me my whole life. “We’re buddies, Mom. Bestest buddies. But that’s … ya know, it.”

  “Oh,” she says faintly. “I thought otherwise.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

  “Oops.”

  I stare down into my cereal. She stares at me. I continue to not throw up, which is the best thing I can say about this moment.

  “How long have you known?” she finally asks. “You were …?”

  “Not so long,” I say, deciding it’s best to leave certain prom nights buried. “He sort of made me realize.”

  “Oh,” she says again.

  “I’m sorry,” I say helplessly. To my soggy Corn Pops.

  “What?” She sounds so sharp that I actually look up.

  “I don’t know. First you get Dennis dating Emily, and now me and a dude. This must be the worst—”

  “Don’t,” she interrupts, so fiercely it would be hilarious under different circumstances. “Don’t you dare. I’m all right with this.”

  “You are?” It is not exactly easy to buy. “You look sort of messed up.”

  “I’m processing. But acceptingly. Supportively.”

  “Okay.”

  Silence again. Oh, Jesus. Who or what made me decide this was a good idea? It was probably Dream Dad’s fault, that bastard. Damn it, Dream Dad. Damn it, subconscious.

  “Well, then, I’m going to have to get to work around here,” Mom says very crisply all of a sudden. “We’ll have to straight – er, clean things—”

  “Did you seriously just avoid the word ‘straight’? Mom, seriously, you don’t have to—”

  “Processing.”

  “Right.”

  “We’ll have to clean things up around here. He seem
s very neat. Is he very neat? Oh, God, the last thing I need is for this boy to think we live in some sort of hellhole. Those hotdogs, those ancient hotdogs, are they still in the fridge?”

  “Nah, Mitch took care of those.”

  “All right. Well—” She stands up, stares around the kitchen, and then, at a loss, sits back down again. I haven’t seen her this flustered in – possibly, literally ever. She takes a very abrupt sip of her coffee, swallows, and looks right at me. I force myself to look right back.

  “You have a boyfriend,” she says, very steadily.

  “So do you,” I say back, without quite thinking first.

  She laughs. “Touché.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, no. That was good. That was fair.” She stares at me for a long time again. I don’t really like it. It’s like she’s trying to figure out how she’s supposed to look at me now, or how she could have missed it, or – something weird. I try my damndest to deal. “Are you happy?” she finally asks, which surprises me.

  “It’s complicated,” I reply awkwardly.

  “How?”

  “I’ve spent the past two months lying like crazy to just about everyone I know. Last night I made Kristy Quincy slap me.”

  “Kristy? But she’s such a nice girl.”

  “Exactly. But–” I consider it. “I think maybe if everyone knew, and stuff settled down … then yeah. I’d be happy. I’m a lot closer to happy than I have been in a really long time.”

  “Arthur makes you happy,” she surmises.

  “Yeah,” I reply. And then, because that doesn’t quite seem to communicate it all the way: “Definitely yeah.”

  For a second, it seems like she might cry. She smiles and then her whole face sort of crumples, her eyes turning bright. “Oh, thank God.”

  “What?”

  “I know you’ve been miserable here,” she says, blinking a lot. To which I say, keep on blinking. I so cannot handle Mom tears on the top of everything else. “I’m not blind. I’ve spent the past few years feeling awful for doing this to you—”

  “Mom,” I hurry to say, because that’s exactly what I haven’t wanted her to think for the past ever, “I chose to stay here, it’s not like—”