Dumplin'

by Julie Murphy

  Our hands sit splayed out on the carpet, our fingers not even an inch apart. “Do you still help him?”

  He shakes his head. “Things changed when I started going to Holy Cross. I was always busy with basketball. And friends, I guess. I don’t know. Life started feeling too important for his stupid keys. You know how you start getting these big plans for your life and suddenly all the work your parents do feels so meaningless? And I guess I was embarrassed by him. I got pretty used to seeing all the dads at Holy Cross in their polo shirts and khaki pants that I started to beg my dad not to pick me up in his van.” He shakes his head. “I was an asshole. I still am sometimes.”

  “I think being embarrassed by your parents is as much a part of growing up as getting taller.”

  He smiles with his lips closed. “I used to love watching him pick locks. Just the way he’d stand there listening to the lock like it was his favorite song. And then it would click.”

  “I don’t know if it matters, but I don’t think you’re an asshole. For the most part.”

  “It wasn’t my dad,” he says. “My ex-girlfriend. Amber. I was horrible to her. She wanted so badly to be there for me. She went to every single one of my games. Even the away games if she could swing it. And all I did to thank her was take her to dark movie theaters to fool around or hang out in her dad’s TV room and watch basketball. I thought she was using me as some kind of status symbol, so I figured it didn’t matter. But she wasn’t getting anything from me she couldn’t get anywhere else.”

  My mouth goes sour. This scenario sounds too familiar. And it’s nothing I want to revisit. “What does Loraine do?”

  His entire body blushes and he covers his face with his hands so that I can barely see him. “She throws romance parties.”

  “Wait.” I try so hard not to laugh. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  He throws his head back against the bed. “Romance parties.”

  “Like, um, sex toys?”

  He turns an even deeper shade of red.

  “My mom works at a nursing home,” I tell him to try to save him even if his blushing may be the most adorable thing ever.

  He turns to face me, his color fading. “I thought she was the beauty pageant lady.”

  “She is. She’s the beauty pageant lady who wipes your grandparents’ asses by day.”

  “Wow,” he says. “I never would’ve thought.”

  I sigh. “The glamorous life.”

  “So you really entered the pageant?”

  “Yeah,” I nod. “Why?” Everyone seems to have something to say about me entering and I’m sure Bo is no different.

  “Well, I’ve always thought pageants were dumb, but I thought that about Dolly Parton, too.”

  I smile. “Right answer.”

  “What about your aunt?” he asks. “The one that passed away.”

  I swallow. “She didn’t work. She was on disability.”

  “Oh, so it was kind of expected? I mean, that doesn’t make it better. I meant that—”

  “No.” My voice is soft, but he hears me. “It wasn’t expected.”

  He waits for me speak.

  “She was big. Not like me. Like, five hundred pounds big. She had a heart attack. She took care of me, though. Like a second parent.”

  “I wish there was something better to say than ‘I’m sorry.’”

  We sit there for a few minutes watching the shadows created by the blowing tree limbs outside of his plastic blinds.

  “I think he was kind of happy when I lost my scholarship.”

  “Why would he be happy about that?” I ask, knowing without a doubt who “he” is. He crosses his arm and when he does, his hand brushes mine. Every little thing—hands touching and doors sealing—sends a shooting warmth up my spine.

  “I don’t even mean happy, really. More relieved.” He leans his head back again and watches the mini basketballs hanging from the chains of his ceiling fan. I imagine it must be weird to live in this shrine dedicated to a sport he can’t play anymore. “I think I was on this path to get out of here. I was good at basketball. Good enough to get noticed by some smaller colleges, and maybe he saw that, too. But I was never supposed to leave Clover City. Before Holy Cross, I was supposed to live here and die here, working with my dad.”

  Each word is familiar to me. His truth is my truth. There’s a version of the future in my head where I stay here forever. I watch my mom work until the day she dies. And then it’s just me in that house with its broken front door, full of pageant supplies and Dolly Parton records. Bleak, I know. But, still, there’s a bit of comfort that comes with knowing how your life is going to turn out. I’ve never had a surprise turn out in my favor.

  “I don’t blame him,” he continues. “It’s that feeling of people leaving. It’s scary.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” I think maybe we’re both talking about a different kind of loss. The kind that can’t be fixed with a plane ticket.

  There’s a knock at his door.

  “Come in.”

  “Hey, son.” Bo’s dad is a shorter version of Bo. Sturdy and broad. He notices me and nods.

  “Dad, this is Willowdean. We go to school together. She works at Harpy’s, too.”

  I stand up. “Good to meet you, Mr. Larson.”

  He waves a hand at me. “Call me Billy.” He turns to Bo. “I need your help swapping this tire out on the van real quick.”

  “Sure.” Bo hops up and promises he’ll be right back.

  I stand there for a moment. In Bo Larson’s bedroom. By myself. On his desk, next to the signed basketball, are three frames. The first one is Bo from a few years ago. He’s wearing a Holy Cross jersey and has a basketball tucked beneath his arm. He looks younger with his close-cropped hair and his stubble-free face, but the outline of his biceps foreshadows the next few years. A promise of the Bo I know today. The next one is old and kind of grainy, like it might have been taken on a cell phone. It’s Bo’s dad, Bo, and his brother, Sammy. Bo looks no older than nine. The three of them are on a dingy-looking beach—definitely a Texas beach—with the water at their backs. Bo stands alongside his dad, with his arms crossed and his feet spread wide. Mr. Larson holds Sammy over his head like a dumbbell. The final frame is his parents’ wedding photo. And now I see where Bo gets his height from. Mrs. Larson had at least three inches on her husband. She wears a light yellow tea-length dress with gold sandals and her hair loose around her shoulders. It’s a candid photo. Mrs. Larson’s head is thrown back in laughter, while Mr. Larson wears the grin I’ve seen on Bo so many times.

  “She was beautiful. A total Scorpio, too.”

  I turn. Loraine stands in the doorway, wearing a quiet smile.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, but for what I don’t really know. “I was waiting for Bo to get back.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for.”

  I chew on my lip for a moment before asking, “Did you know her?”

  “Only in passing, but, from what I hear, she was a good one to know.”

  I look at the picture once more.

  “Come have some iced tea with me,” Loraine says.

  Most women in the South take great pride in their iced tea and pass their recipes down from generation to generation. But Loraine is not most women. She mixes her tea with powder from a box. To my mom, powdered iced tea is almost as bad as the possibility of being left behind in the wake of the rapture.

  “You want some lemons?” she asks.

  “Yeah, that’d be great.” I squeeze two lemons before taking a sip. Delicious. Like frozen lasagna. Wherever my mom is she’s just fainted.

  Loraine sits down in front of me with a glass for herself. She’s one of those people who could be twenty-five or forty-five and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. “What’s your sign, Willowdean?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your star sign? Astrology?”

  “I—well, I don’t know.” According to my mom, astrology is two steps away fr
om demonic possession. “I never really paid attention before.”

  She shakes her head and tsks. “I’ll never understand how it is people navigate their whole lives without knowing their signs. What’s your birthday?”

  “August twenty-first.”

  “Ah,” she says. “A Leo, but barely.”

  I lean in. “What’s that mean?” I’m learning a whole new language for the first time.

  “You, my dear, are a lion.” She says it with such great dramatics, but it’s lost on me. She sighs. “You’re the king of the jungle, baby. Walking confidence.”

  Yup, this is total bullshit.

  She waves a finger at me. “Don’t write me off so soon. There’s more. You’re a fire sign. You love big, but you hurt big, too. But you don’t always let the hurt show, because it’s a vulnerability. You’re the sun. Always there. Even when we can’t see you.”

  She believes this so wholly that it’s pretty difficult for me not to buy into it, too. And I like the idea that somehow I am the way I am because it was meant to be.

  “But”—here it is, the other shoe is about to drop—“you need approval, too. And that flaw is big enough to stop you. What’s important to remember though is that despite our signs, we still make our destiny.”

  It’s hard not to notice how true her words feel. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “Everyone’s got their own religion, right?” She shrugs. “Even if their religion is no religion.”

  “What are you?”

  She grins. “A Sagittarius, but what’s really interesting is Bo’s sign in relation to yours.”

  I am hooked. She’s got me. And she knows it.

  “Bo is an Aquarius. Just like his dad. Detached and brooding, but with a good heart.”

  It takes me a second to realize I’m nodding.

  “According to the stars, you two are quite the pair.” She sips her tea and winks at me.

  I know that pair could mean anything. Friends, cohorts, partners. But that doesn’t stop my cheeks from feeling as warm as a sunburn.

  She reaches for my knee. “Oh, sweetheart, are you okay?”

  I nod a little too fast. “Do you— Where’s the restroom?” My face is on fire.

  Her brow wrinkles with concern. “Two doors past Bo’s on the left.”

  I get up, and turn back to her as I stand on the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room. “I liked talking to you,” I tell her.

  I hear the garage door open.

  “You’re always welcome to come by for a chat.”

  In the bathroom, I splash my face a few times. I want to wake up every day, like that old movie Groundhog Day, and relive this day over and over again.

  Here, though, by myself, it’s hard not to wonder if he ever brought Bekah home. Or if Amber got along with his stepmom as much as I feel like we did.

  Bo is waiting in his room. He’s changed his shirt and has moved our books and notes to his bed. TO. HIS. BED.

  But the door’s open, and I’m slightly grateful for it, too. Because how do people even function like this? Like, how is it that people can even pump gas or pay bills or tie their shoes when they’re in love? Or might be in love. Or are in love. Or are in between the two.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket.

  MITCH: what are you doing tonight? wanna grab some tacos? watch a movie?

  I exit out of my messages.

  “Who’s that?” asks Bo.

  “No one,” I say. “Just my mom.”

  We study for the next few hours until it’s time to turn his bedside lamp on. We’ve both slid from sitting positions and are slumped against pillows in a sea of papers.

  When he drives me home, I find myself addicted to the comfort of him. I’ve spent an entire day being so myself. Not a daughter, or a niece, or a token fat girl. Just Willowdean. The feeling of it makes me miss El. But I’m tired of other people making me feel this way. I’m ready to make myself feel this way.

  “I like Loraine,” I tell him.

  “She has a way of making people do that. Infectious, my dad says. I tried really hard not to like her. But the harder I tried, the more I wanted to like her. She doesn’t try to be my mom. Not like some other ladies would. She’s something else to me, though. Not a friend, but not a mom. I don’t know.”

  And that—right there in those handful of words—is how I feel about Lucy. But there’s no real term for it, and I sometimes think that makes the pain of losing her that much harder to reconcile.

  He parks in front of my house. “So is that what you normally do on Saturdays? Study at home?” I want to know everything about every minute of his life.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Unless my dad needs me.”

  “What about Sundays?” We’re off every Sunday, which means it’s this one day a week where Bo is a complete mystery to me.

  “I go to church. Mass. I go to mass.”

  “Wait, you’re actually Catholic?”

  He doodles designs on his steering wheel with his finger. “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know?”

  The streetlight reflects off the silver chain peeking out from his collar. “Coach used to always have us go to mass during the season, and I guess I got in the habit.”

  “How punny.”

  His lips form an uneven smile. “I like the tradition of it.”

  “Does your family go, too?”

  He laughs. “Not a chance.”

  The quiet of my street seeps in through the cracks of his truck.

  “I better go,” I whisper.

  He leans toward me and hooks his hands behind my ears, pulling me to him. Our lips brush, so light it tickles. But it’s not quite a kiss. “I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you very soon.” His words spill right into my mouth. “But I’m not going to mess us up this time.”

  I have so many questions, but I think I’ve got enough for today.

  He drops his hands, letting his fingers trail down my cheeks.

  “Come to mass with me tomorrow.”

  I bite in on my lips. “Okay.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The minute I walk inside, reality crashes down around me. Mom is working on my dress and watching some Lifetime movie with the volume turned up too high.

  I want more than anything to call El and tell her about every inch of these last two days. Lee Wei, Dale, Bo, Loraine. All of it. I slump down into a chair at the kitchen table and swipe through my phone until I find our last texts from almost two months ago. I hit compose.

  ME: I spent the day at Private School Bo’s house. He likes me a lot. We talked about everything and nothing. He almost kissed me and it was the most amazing non-kiss ever. I’m trying not to think about Mitch. I’ve ignored his texts all weekend. How can having such an incredible day make me feel like such a shitty person? I miss Lucy. And I miss you so fucking much. I apologize. I apologize for everything I have ever done wrong. A blanket apology.

  I stare at the words, wondering what might happen if I hit send. I press the delete button because the fear of her not responding is too great for me to risk it.

  Bo texts me when he arrives, which is perfectly timed because my mom is getting in the shower.

  “I’ll be back later!” I call to her.

  If she asks where I’m going, I don’t hear her over the water.

  I’m not even trying to hide that I’m going somewhere with Bo. It’s that I’m going to a church with Bo, because my mother would rather me not go to church at all than go to a Catholic church. Which makes no sense to me. Catholics, Protestants, Christians, Baptists . . . they all believe in the same things, I think. They just have different ways of saying it. I guess we’re Baptist. I mean, my mom goes to Clover City First Baptist, and so do I on holidays.

  Bo, in his pressed khaki pants and black polo, is leaning against the passenger door, waiting for me. I feel slightly overdressed in my black dress, the one I wore to Lucy’s funeral, but it’s the only church-appropriate thin
g I own.

  He holds the door open for me, and we drive the whole way there with our hands on the bench seat between us. Nothing but our pinkies touch, and it feels like a spark on the verge of a flame.

  I have never in my life been inside a Catholic church. I imagine they’re all these ancient buildings with steeples, stained-glass windows, and those kneeling benches like you see in movies.

  Holy Cross is newer though. There are still pews with kneeling benches and stained-glass windows. It’s quieter than my mom’s church. More peaceful. There are no boisterous greeters or gossipy Sunday school teachers.

  It’s nice.

  At both sides of the altar are candles in red votives, but not all of them are lit.

  “What are those for?” I whisper to Bo after we’ve found a seat in the middle of the church.

  “You’re supposed to leave a dollar or something in the collection box and light a candle in memory of someone. And, I guess, say a prayer if you want.”

  Service starts and after a few announcements and some hymns, the collection plate is passed around. Bo pulls a crumpled ten from his wallet and drops it on the plate before passing it along. Father Mike gives his sermon. I guess I expected it to be in Latin or something, but it’s not, it’s in English. Each word is measured. The whole thing feels a little bit like a ceremony, like when I was in Girl Scouts and I went from Daisy to Brownie.

  After the service, I follow Bo to the candles where a few other people have gathered. He drops a few dollars into the lockbox and gives me a stick to light a candle from a larger candle. We both light a candle. Neither of us says who the candles are for, but we don’t have to.

  I imagine what it might be like to do this every Sunday with Bo. Even if I don’t know if all of this is something I believe in, it’s nice to be a part of something. With him.

  We walk outside to the parking lot, where all the socializing is happening. Bo waves to a few people. He points to a man in a navy blazer and khaki pants. “That’s my coach.” It breaks my heart to hear him talk about this man so firmly in the present, as if he still was his coach.