What's Mine and Yours

by Naima Coster

  “That’s terrible,” Lacey May repeated. They stood silently, letting Robbie’s story settle between them. He asked about the girls.

  “Oh, they’re fine.” Lacey May decided against telling him any more. What would be the point? What could he do? He had enough troubles of his own.

  “Noelle is in this play,” she said. “You should come.”

  “Yeah, great idea. I should come,” he said.

  Lacey May watched him smoke, his fingers trembling as he drew from the cigarette. Lacey May realized that if she didn’t know him, she would have assumed he was homeless. His palms were stained orange, his neck scruffy and unshaven. He still managed to clean up, most of the time, before she saw him, before he saw the girls. They weren’t too far from Central right now. There was Cedar’s, that place the kids liked to go, a few streets away.

  “Let me drive you home,” she said.

  “Sure, if you’ve got nothing better to do.”

  They were crossing the street, Robbie shuffling behind her, when Lacey May told him about Jenkins. Robbie stopped dead in his tracks.

  “You checked the pound?”

  “I’ve been calling every day, and nothing. You know they don’t keep dogs for very long.”

  “Maybe somebody picked him up and adopted him right away?”

  “He’s so old,” Lacey May said. She saw Robbie’s face and went on. “But maybe.”

  Robbie stood still in the street, his brow furrowed, his mouth hanging open.

  “He was such a good dog,” he said. Lacey May took him by the arm and pulled him out of the street.

  In the car, his odor was even stronger. Lacey May rolled down the window.

  “My poor girls,” he said. “What are they going to do without their dog?”

  Lacey May started the engine. “They’ll get over it.”

  “No, Lacey.”

  His voice was urgent, and Lacey May saw his eyes were burning, bulging, as he stared at her.

  “How could you say that? How could you say—?”

  Robbie slammed his hands against the dashboard. He bunched his fists and punched. Goddamn it, he screamed. The car rattled with the force of his blows.

  When he was done, he was panting, seething, his cheeks red. He put his head in his hands and slumped over.

  “It isn’t fair,” he said, and Lacey May rubbed him between the shoulders. There were things she had done, things she hadn’t done, to spare him. What had she spared him at all?

  “Take it easy,” she said. “Maybe I was wrong. He might still turn up after all.”

  The morning of the first dress rehearsal, Gee woke up early to practice his big speech. It was from the beginning of the third act, when Claudio tries to convince his sister Isabella to trade her virginity to Angelo for his freedom. It was twisted, the biggest sign Claudio wasn’t all good intentions. He was selfish, pleading, but Gee empathized with his feeling, his terror of death. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where, he said. To lie in cold obstruction and to rot. Those lines came readily to him. He tripped over the middle parts of the monologue, the ’tis, the clauses so long they lost their meaning. He rushed until he got to the phrases that anchored him, reminded him of what he was trying to say. The weariest and most loathed worldly life…is a paradise to what we fear of death.

  He did all right, and when he was through, he kissed his fingers, pressed them to the picture of Ray on the wall. He wished his father could come and see him in the play. He went downstairs.

  Linette was already dressed and frying eggs in the kitchen. She had agreed to drive him to the school. To his surprise, Jade was at the table, too, her eyes rimmed in black, an untouched cup of coffee in her hands. She was in her pajamas, but she didn’t look as if she’d been sleeping at all. Gee wouldn’t be surprised if she had slipped in that morning, changed into her pajamas, and come back down. She liked to pretend. He was sick of it.

  “Linette told me where you’re going.”

  “It’s no big secret.”

  “You don’t listen, Gee, do you? You don’t listen at all.”

  “We already talked about this,” he said, but Jade went on.

  “You’re playing with fire, and I’m trying to help you see that the wrong choice can ruin your life.”

  “Why don’t you just say that having me ruined your life, if that’s what you mean?”

  “Gee!” Linette interjected. “Show your mother some respect.”

  “She should just come out and say it, instead of pretending I don’t know what she means.”

  Jade sat calmly at the table, knitting and unknitting her fingers. “My life isn’t ruined,” she said. “But believe me, I know things about that girl that you don’t want to know.”

  “I wouldn’t care.”

  “That’s cause you’re not thinking with your head.”

  Gee felt a rush of shame. He said nothing, stepped back onto the stairs as if he could turn and run for his room, shut the door.

  “If you go on with this play, don’t you expect me to come and see it.”

  Gee was struck dumb, silent. “You would do that?”

  “If you want to act like a man, then I’ll treat you like one. If you think you’re grown, then you be grown.”

  “But all the other parents will be there.”

  “Don’t expect me to sit there and cheer, like I’m proud, when I’m not.”

  Gee felt that his mother was testing him. She wanted to show him how weak he was, compared to her. She wanted him to give in. And she was right—he was weak. He wanted her to say she’d changed her mind, she didn’t mean it. He waited, and she didn’t.

  “Linette, will you take me now?”

  Linette had stopped working over the stove. She leaned against the wall, biting her lip hard, and she looked as if she’d burst into tears. She nodded at him, turned off the burner, left the eggs in their oil in the skillet. She gathered her things in a hurry, and Gee slumped out to the courtyard. He heard Linette and Jade arguing. When Linette came out, she flung an arm around him, ferried him to the car, and headed for Central.

  “I’m sure by now I’ve told you why I never wanted to have kids.”

  “Mm-hmm. You spent your whole life taking care of them, and you didn’t want to anymore.”

  “And look at me. Will you look at life? I’ve been watching over you for ten years.” Linette seemed to blink back tears. “Although you hardly need me now.”

  “Come on, Linette,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. Did he need her? He liked having her around. Did anybody really need anybody?

  “It’s been the great privilege of my life. Do you know why?”

  “Cause you loved Daddy.”

  “No, sir. I’m no martyr. Even in my old age.” She caressed his face, where he was tender. “I’m with you because I want to be.”

  Gee was unmoved; he was still thinking about Jade.

  “Right. She’s the one who got stuck with me,” he said.

  “You’ve got to understand. If your father had lived longer, she might have become a different kind of person. He helped her. But this is the mother you got. And she’s trying.”

  Gee didn’t care. He was tired of everyone making excuses for grown-ups who didn’t know how to act. He’d woken up feeling triumphant: he was going back to Central, claiming his role in the play. And she’d taken that from him. She saw no good in anything he did.

  “I got beat up.”

  “I know, sweetheart.”

  “And she still has to have her way.”

  “I know.”

  They were off the freeway, rolling across the train tracks that crossed behind the old factories. Soon, they’d be at the school.

  “Well, I know I’m not your mother, but you can count on me,” she said.

  “Linette, I’ll be fine. Just watch the road.”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been driving in this city since before you were born. I could get us there with my eyes closed. Now did you hea
r me? I said, I’ll be there. Front row. Even if I won’t understand a word—”

  A tear loosened itself from Gee before he could stop. He was laughing. He felt lighter, although not completely. The weight Jade had put on him was still there. If he could forget her, he would. If he could erase her, he would.

  “So what’s this play about anyway?” Linette said. “Explain it to me now so I can follow along.”

  She listened, pinching her eyes to mime concentration. She looked silly and lovely, all her uncombed hair curling around her ears. He wished he could take a picture of her, the way she was right then.

  He told her about Claudio being hauled to jail, how he meant well but wound up in trouble all the same. He had a big speech, a few other lines here and there, but besides that, all he did was pace in his cage, fight off despair while he waited to be released.

  “Well, that’s more than it sounds like,” Linette said. “That’s all I’ve been doing for going on fifteen years.”

  When Gee walked into the rehearsal, there was a riotous round of applause: whistles and hoots and stomping feet. He felt himself burn under the attention, but it felt good to see the faces of his friends cheering for him: Adira, Shawn, Rosa, the whole cast, except for Beckett, who wasn’t there. Mr. Riley clapped his hands on Gee’s shoulders, pulled him into their circle. Noelle stood before the stage in an oversized flannel shirt and leggings, her usual boots. Her face was pink and she was clapping fiercely, beaming at him. Gee could sense his morning, all those bad feelings, vaporize around him. He went and stood beside Noelle, and she wrapped an arm around him. Gee felt the ugly parts of him float away.

  Eventually, Mr. Riley called them to business, and they all settled down. They would run the play from the top without stopping, but before that, he wanted to talk through the ending, the slurry of betrothals—Juliet to Claudio, the duke to Isabella, Mariana to Angelo. He explained there were many ways they could play the final scene. They could try to make it simple and joyous, but any audience member who was paying attention would see the cracks—all the marriages weren’t meant to be equal. But to play it all as uneasy, absurd was a risk—the audience could think they’d botched the play. The audience would be quicker to assume the cast had gotten the ending wrong and acted it badly than to assume Shakespeare had written it to feel strange. Mr. Riley decided to let them vote on how they wanted it all to end.

  Noelle was the first to speak up—let it be strange. The audience was bound to be confused anyway, and they shouldn’t try to make it all so neat. Nothing in life was like that, anyway, even the good parts.

  Adira and Rosa favored a festive end, and they said so. The cast was split down the middle.

  Mr. Riley asked Gee to break the stalemate, and this time he didn’t hate Mr. Riley for putting him on the spot. He knew exactly what he wanted to say.

  “Let’s do it like Noelle said,” he answered. “Let’s do it her way.”

  And so Gee had the final word, and they ran the play from the top.

  After, the theater emptied out, and Noelle stayed behind to put away the props. Gee offered to help her, and Mr. Riley left them alone. He was being too lax, they knew, but neither of them protested. He told them to turn off the lights before they left.

  They were hanging costumes back on a rack when Noelle touched his forehead, the cut over his eye, smeared in ointment.

  “Does it hurt?”

  Besides the cut, he still had a bruise on his cheek, his finger set in a splint, an achy tailbone.

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “Stop that,” Noelle said. “You know it is.”

  “My mother wanted me to quit.”

  “So why’d you come back?”

  “You know why,” Gee said, and Noelle’s cheeks turned a beautiful peach color.

  “When’d you get so bold, Gee?” she asked, and he shrugged, his nerve running out on him.

  “Come here,” she said, and tugged him offstage into the empty rows of chairs. She wanted to ask him something. They sat beside each other as she fished in her book bag. She withdrew the program, simple black text on flimsy blue-green paper.

  She pointed to his name, listed near the top, across from the role of Claudio. “Explain it to me,” she said.

  “Well, my father is the one who started calling me Gee. His last name was Gilbert, and I was Little Gee. It’s the only thing I ever remember anyone calling me. But I wanted to use my real name in the program.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  Noelle nodded solemnly. “Well, I like it. Nelson James Gilbert.”

  “Just Nelson is fine.”

  Noelle smiled at him, the program clutched in her hands. She looked down, almost bashfully. For once, she was waiting. Gee had been sure she would be the one to move first. After all, she was the one with experience, and he didn’t know what he was doing. Still, he lunged forward and kissed her. She kissed him back. He closed his eyes, gave himself over to feeling.

  It was different than he’d imagined. Sloppier, wetter, more exhilarating. He had thought he would be scared. He had thought he might feel guilty, dirty, the way he did when he watched his videos and was swallowed up by desire he knew he shouldn’t have. What he felt instead was clear, sure. He felt himself liquefy. He hung his hands around her neck. She looped her arms around his chest. They were close, closer. He opened his mouth, and she opened hers, and Gee tried to transmit everything he had ever felt, everything he was feeling now, with his tongue, his mind. He sent her missives and hoped that she could hear. You are beautiful, he said, and I want you. Forever, he said. I am yours.

  17

  February 2020

  The Piedmont, North Carolina

  Alma wore a pink gown, a tiny veil that sliced across her eyes. Her hair gleamed even redder than usual in the glow of dusk, the barn doors flung open despite the cold, so the guests could see the golden sky over the fields of the farm.

  Her shoulders were bare under a knit cape, her cheeks and lips bronze, and Diane waited for her at the front, with her sisters, and their dog Princess, who wore a pink bow tie for the occasion. The guests turned to watch Alma with an attention they hadn’t for Diane, but Diane couldn’t begrudge them. She felt glorious simply to be the one waiting for Alma, and she knew she looked good in a simple white dress, cut to her knees. She blended in with her sisters, also in white. Noelle wore a dress to her ankles, and she held Baby Agnes, outfitted in white lace, on one hip. Margarita wore a dress that looked like a white dressing robe, cut low in the front, barely covering her thighs, tied at the waist with an enormous sash. They had never looked so much alike, the three of them, and they had marveled at how kindred they looked as they posed for pictures before the ceremony, in front of the barn. They had never been the kind of sisters complimented for their similarities; some had even said they looked as if they’d been born of different parents. But in the light, in their white clothes, they were indisputably born of the same blood.

  It had been the first great joy of the day—posing with her sisters—feeling gathered between them. She held her niece for a few of the pictures, Baby Agnes cupping her hands around the curls of her hair. Alma’s grandmother was a hairdresser, and she had brought her entire kit with her from the Bronx. She had done all the sisters’ hair, and Alma’s too, that morning in their little house, while they all drank coffee and fretted about the time. Margarita had switched between recording them on her phone, doing makeup, and volunteering to lead the group in a collective breathing exercise.

  The second, greater joy was now, watching Alma parade toward her, the tulips in her hand so violently pink they seemed to be aflame. It was a small wedding, no more than seventy people assembled in the barn, and they would all help to rearrange the chairs and set up the dance floor before the reception began.

  Lacey May and Hank sat in the front row, Lacey May in a white skirt suit and her new auburn hair. Hank wore a blazer. When the pastor asked who gave Dia
ne in marriage, it was the two of them who stood, and Diane could see Hank was crying. She blew him a kiss, and he waved his soggy handkerchief at her.

  She and Alma held hands during the short sermon about faithfulness and trust, the need for mercy in every bond, especially marriage. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do, the pastor said. There was a reading of a poem that Alma loved, and then they exchanged rings and made their vows. They were promises the women had already made and kept for years, but to say it all out loud, in public, tipped Diane into rapture. She kissed Alma, drew her body close; the dog wedged its nose between their knees.

  The party started, and they danced to nineties hip-hop and romantic salsa, “Wagon Wheel” for the North Carolinians. Alma and Diane fed each other slices of the vanilla-and-rose pink cake. They tossed their bouquets. Margarita and Noelle gave speeches, Hank spun a spindly Lacey May around the oak dance floor, and the dog barked whenever the music got too loud. Diane and Alma didn’t bother dancing with anyone else, although Diane wasn’t particularly good, especially not at the salsa. Alma steered her around the room. They nestled their heads together and cooed over Baby Agnes, the pretty lanterns hung from the beams of the ceiling. They didn’t mention Robbie, how he’d never checked into the motel room they had reserved for him, hadn’t called. For once, Diane didn’t worry he was dead—he was simply elsewhere, himself.

  The closest Diane came to mentioning his absence was when she whispered into Alma’s ear, “Tonight is better than it has any right to be,” and Alma had furrowed her eyebrows and said, “What are you talking about? We’ve got every right.”

  They hadn’t created a seating plan, so Nelson sat himself with the staff of the doggie day care. They spent their time pummeling bourbon and saying things like I always knew, and they look so natural together about Alma and Diane. They asked Nelson how he knew the couple, and he was honest, explained that Noelle was his ex-wife. They glanced at Baby Agnes, her fair skin and inexplicable red hair, and pieced together that things had ended badly. They pretended to be interested in his work and asked him whether he ever shot weddings, and when he said he wasn’t that kind of photographer, they turned their attention away. Nelson finished one glass of wine and then another, did his best to look preoccupied by his plate of shrimp and grits, instead of Noelle.