by Natalie Lund
She wanted to tell him about Dot. It was practically bursting from her, but he had never believed in that kind of thing. It felt like she would be giving away an important piece of herself. “I’ve been kicked out,” she said instead. She sought his dark eyes, bloodshot but still sparkling. He used to listen to her complaints about her mother and repeat “I hear you” before he launched into a story about his own parents. The stories never compared—not really—but that “I hear you” had felt like enough.
He frowned. “God, your mom is such a bitch. You’re better off on your own anyway.” Brenna raised her eyebrows. He still had confidence in her—or at least, the her he’d cast her as.
“How’s school?” Brenna asked.
Colin shrugged. “I mean, it’s more of the same. But once I’m done with these general classes, I’ll get into something real.”
“Like what?”
“Philosophy, art, sociology. You know, stuff that makes you think.” He rolled up the loose sleeves of his sweater, but they slid back down to his wrists.
Brenna nodded.
“Have you thought about college? What you’ll do?”
“Not really.” Brenna’s parents had not gone to college. Nor had Manny or any of her older cousins. What was it like to grow up in a family like Colin’s, where college was just a given?
“You’ll figure it out.” He looked at her in that way that made her aware of her exposed skin, of bareness. She shivered.
He cleared his throat. “Hey, you want to get out of here? Catch up?” he asked. There was a tiny part of Brenna shaking its head. It wanted her to remember his betrayal.
“What about your girlfriend?” she asked, but her voice didn’t rise above the crowd and instrument tuning.
“What?” Colin leaned in, cupping his hand next to his ear. She wasn’t even touching him, but it felt like his body was sending off solar flares, like its heat was licking her.
Just then Dot walked out onstage in the same polka dots and blocky Mary Janes. The roadies moved around her—never addressing her—a dance of shadows around a shining woman. She took center stage, under the lights, and closed her eyes. If Brenna tunneled through the crowd and reached up to grab Dot’s ankle, would it be cold? Would there be something sinister in her eyes as she looked down from the stage? Or would it make her stronger because Dot knew the real her? If she opened her eyes and met Brenna’s gaze, Brenna vowed she would have the courage to stay, to confront the truth.
“Bren?” Colin asked, stepping closer. His heat and scent made her hungry, a humming want. And the wanting offered safety if only because she knew it, recognized it as her own.
“Do you see her?” Brenna asked.
Colin wrinkled his brow. “Who?”
“In the polka dots.”
He turned toward the stage and then shook his head. “Who are you talking about?”
Could no one see Dot but Brenna? As if in response, Dot’s eyes fluttered open. She scanned the crowd. Brenna waved her arms above her head and tried to get Dot’s attention. See me, Brenna pleaded, but Dot turned and walked from the stage.
“Who are you waving at?” Colin asked, squinting at the stage.
“Never mind,” Brenna said. “Forget it. Let’s go.”
Colin waved at his friends before encircling her wrist with his forefinger and thumb. He tugged lightly, but enough that whatever Brenna had assembled of herself, whichever version she was in that moment, gave way.
After everyone left, Callie and her dad sat on opposite ends of a table littered with green cloth napkins, red frosted glasses, and crumbles of parmesan. The piece of pepperoni pizza Callie had forced down in the face of her father’s disappointment burned in her stomach and chest. She wanted to vomit, and Leslie still hadn’t texted back.
“Before you even start in on me,” Callie said, “I blew up at Leslie because I didn’t want a party and she didn’t listen.”
Without a word, her dad folded his napkin, stood up, and headed for the exit.
Callie jogged after him.
“Are you going to tell Mom?” She couldn’t handle another bedside lesson.
He pushed open the door and let it swing behind him. Callie caught it with her forearm and followed. “Dad?”
“Callie, this isn’t just about Leslie.” He spun around, and she could see the artery in his temple pulsing. “Your mother asked me the other day why you don’t want to hug her anymore. I shouldn’t have to tell you that she needs you more than ever right now. That every hug is precious. That you’re hurting her feelings.” His voice cracked then, an anguished sound that wrenched everything inside her to the surface. All at once, Callie felt guilty and wretched and angry and sorry and just so sad.
Under the weight of it all, Callie’s legs became rubber. She sank to the pavement and leaned back against the sturdy brick building. Everything was tinged with gray—the parking lot, the sky, her dad. Her eyelids felt leaden. A cold sweat prickled her hairline. Was this the short-circuit she’d wished for?
Her father said something about her needing counseling. But his voice was distant, as though he were calling to her from the next room. He needed some time to think, he said, to cool off. Counseling? Time? Had she messed up that badly? Had she pushed away the only other person still by her side?
She allowed her eyelids to close for a second. Just one. They were so heavy. Open, she had to think. And then finally managed to, but he was gone. How much time had passed? Did it matter? It was her fault he’d left. Her fault her mother was hurting. Open, she thought again. Open.
EVENTUALLY OUR TOWN WATCHMAN
Eventually our town watchman, Eleanor, returned to her post. The inn reopened. The antacids, the sheets beneath the maple, and the shovel faded from our minds. When Celeste took the bus home, the spaniel—white-faced and rheumy-eyed—trotted out to greet her. Celeste always invited her friends in, and we’d sit in the kitchen doing our homework while Eleanor washed dishes, stirred sauces, and tossed salads with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her apron hanging on her like a bib because she refused to knot the ties. Our mothers told us not to get in her way while she worked, but we were confident she liked having us there. She’d put out butter crackers and cheese balls rolled in nuts. And while the conversations between her and Celeste were halting and awkward, she chatted easily with us.
One afternoon, not long before the tornado, some of us were over at the Vidals’ house, preparing for the homecoming dance. We stood in the kitchen in pajamas, our hair in curlers. Celeste’s eyelids were painted blue, which only accentuated the fact that she had blue circles under her eyes. Celeste was the girl who did everything: bowling league, student council, waitressing at the drive-in.
Eleanor had set out a plate of apple slices and carrot sticks for us, but Celeste kept reaching over the counter for a pinch of cheese her mother had shredded for a lasagna.
Eleanor swatted her hand away with a tsk sound. Celeste was heavier than most of us, heavier than her mother, certainly. Pleasantly round, with a fullness that matched her flushed cheeks and bright hair.
Eleanor went back to straightening a layer of noodles and ladling meat sauce on top. “My Sky,” she said softly, as though not wanting us to hear. “I worry that working at the drive-in while school is in session is too much for you.”
Celeste picked at one of her cuticles. “Are you and Papa going to pay for college then?”
Eleanor sighed. She was always trying to convince Celeste that she didn’t need college to run a successful business like the inn. “Maybe I could pay you a little for working here,” Eleanor responded instead. We stopped munching on our carrots to listen.
“I’m not cleaning up a stranger’s hair in the drain.”
“I think you’ll find that cleaning can be relaxing, that it feels good to make something neat for others.”
“Doubtful.”
/> “And I can teach you to cook.” Eleanor—we knew—had learned how to cook from her own mother, and her mother had learned from her mother before her, and so on. We’d eaten scrambled eggs sprinkled with fresh-cut chives, ingredients that descended from Margaret Peterson’s first chickens and herbs. Because Eleanor had been depressed for so long, Celeste hadn’t ever learned to cook spaghetti, create luminaries to light the sidewalk in the winter, or tuck the sheets around the corner of the mattress the proper way like her mom. Eleanor seemed to want to make up for the lost lessons, to have her daughter by her side—no matter how stilted their conversations.
Celeste used her pink-painted fingernail to scrape at something on the counter. “Don’t you want more for me?”
Her mother was silent. We began to think she wouldn’t answer, but she finally said: “I just want you to be happy.”
Celeste smiled at this, as though she’d won an argument, but we think she misinterpreted her mother’s response. The inn, we knew, made Eleanor happy. Why wouldn’t she want that for her daughter?
“You’re just looking a little peaky,” Mrs. Vidal said.
Celeste reached for the bowl of cheese again.
“And all that sugar and salt.” Eleanor pulled the bowl out of her daughter’s reach. We sat back in our seats, embarrassed, as though we’d spotted our neighbor’s torn underwear on the clothesline.
Celeste’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see. You think I look tired and fat.”
“I just want you to be happy,” Eleanor repeated.
“Jeez Louise, Mom. I am happy. You can’t leave well enough alone.” Celeste stood. “Let’s go to Mary’s to finish getting ready,” she said to us.
Celeste’s father stepped into the kitchen, a corsage in his hand. “How are you, mes chéries?” he asked.
“Tu lui demandes!” Celeste said, pushing her way through the door to the foyer. The few of us who spoke French knew she’d said, “Why don’t you ask her?”; the rest of us knew only that tone. The spaniel groaned to its feet and padded after. We murmured our thank-yous and apologies, and retreated from the kitchen.
Later we stood in the city park and our mothers took photographs of us leaning chastely into our dates, poking one another with corsage pins, and linking arms with our friends.
Eleanor watched from the porch as Celeste, in a dress the color of a spring sky, spun from group to group with a smile that seemed a bit too huge, as though she wanted her mother to see it from across the street, wanted to jab her with its sharp joy. Too proud, her mother remained on the porch, her camera inside—undoubtedly consoling herself that there’d be another year, another dance, another chance to photograph her daughter.
The smell of wood struck Joshua when the sliding glass doors parted. He hadn’t been to the hardware store since his grandfather had passed away. His grandfather had always released Joshua and Ruthie into the spruce-scented warehouse with only a reminder not to steal. It was that farm-freedom, tucked into everyday errands, that he missed. They’d fan out the paint strips and rename them—onion, cicada, tentacle—climb into the display bathtubs, and knock on the sample doors, taking turns being the salesman of plungers, doorknobs, and palmfuls of screws. Joshua wanted to gather it all to him, to hold it against his chest, but he forced the memories back down. They settled in his stomach, solid as fruit pits.
Lawrence pulled a crumpled receipt out of his pocket and smoothed it out. Impatient to be home and learning more about Luke, Joshua drummed his thumbs on his thighs. Lawrence began pushing the cart, muttering, “Wood first.” Joshua trailed behind, grinning at the potential joke. Without Ruthie as an audience, there wasn’t much of a point. Plus, this errand was for his mother, for the way she’d hugged her knees in the grass.
They made their way to the back of the store, and Lawrence eyed the display.
“I need a two-by-four and a two-by-six.”
He reached for a pale-blond board that Joshua and Ruthie probably would have named plain Jane.
“I can’t really imagine that in the kitchen,” Joshua said.
“Oh. Yeah. I don’t know much about this kind of thing,” Lawrence said. Joshua wondered if he was blushing because he was reminded Joshua was gay, and therefore, in his tiny mind, more likely to know about design, or if it was something else—shame at not knowing, not understanding.
Joshua shrugged. “I don’t either. But maybe you could use a stain? So it’s darker. You know, like warmer.”
Lawrence nodded, and Joshua led him down an aisle to the stains.
As they reviewed the options, Joshua heard a voice, its vowels drawn out and thin with exhaustion or annoyance. A second voice—a booming, jolly one that Joshua hadn’t heard in years—answered. Tyler and his father.
Mercer had a way of producing the people you loathed at the most inopportune times. Joshua wanted both to hide behind Lawrence’s large frame and to show himself, proving he was unaffected by bullying, that he was out doing what other boys did with their fathers. Instead he did nothing, inspecting the colors as closely as he could: mahogany, light oak, cherry, walnut. Tyler wouldn’t bother talking to him, but his father was a wild card, as interested and engaged in his role as town alderman as Tyler was disinterested in everything except, apparently, smoking.
Tyler and his father rounded the corner and started down the aisle, Tyler’s eyes on his phone.
“Hey, look who it is!” his father called out. “Joshua Calloway.”
Joshua’s shoulders tensed, and he turned away from the stain samples. He’d refuse to smile—at least he could do that.
Without looking up, Tyler shoved his hands in his pockets. “That’s not him,” he said, his voice a snarl.
Really? Joshua thought. Tyler was going to take a “mistaken identity” approach? Or maybe he meant it literally. That Joshua wasn’t the Joshua Calloway they knew anymore—the straight boy who played Pokémon in the hayloft.
Lawrence hovered behind Joshua, emanating nervousness like heat. It occurred to Joshua then that maybe his stepdad was shy. That was why he fumbled awkwardly on the phone and only ordered online. Joshua felt himself softening a little more toward the man.
“Course it is, Tyler. Hi, I’m Victor Barrett,” Tyler’s father said, reaching toward Lawrence for a handshake. “You must be Joshua’s stepdad. Tyler and him are good friends.”
Lawrence wiped his hand on his T-shirt and shook the man’s hand. “Lawrence,” he mumbled.
“Why haven’t I seen you around?” Mr. Barrett asked Joshua.
Joshua shrugged and Tyler smirked, tapping out a message on his phone. It was probably to Clayton, his companion asshole.
Nodding like he’d had the greatest idea in the world, Mr. Barrett said, “You should all come over next weekend. Get both families together.”
Joshua expected Lawrence to blush and fumble for a response, but his eyes narrowed and he was looking back and forth between Tyler and Joshua, figuring it out. “Is that the kid who did it?” Lawrence asked Joshua, almost under his breath. Joshua had to give him credit. Maybe former linebackers were smarter than they looked.
“Did what?” Mr. Barrett asked.
“Dad,” Tyler said sharply.
“The shiner on Josh’s face.”
“Excuse me. Are you accusing my son of punching your son?”
“I am,” Lawrence said, and Joshua felt amazed at the way the two men seemed to elongate their necks and lift their chests, like strutting roosters. Even more than that, he was amazed that Lawrence hadn’t corrected the word son.
“There’s got to be more of a story here,” Mr. Barrett said.
“There ain’t. Your kid picks on Josh.”
“They’re friends. Why would he do that?”
Say it, Joshua thought. Tell him why. Lawrence flushed. “It’s not a fair fight.”
“Not fair?” Tyler’s father said,
angry now. “Your kid could crush my son just by looking at him.”
With his eyes finally on Joshua’s face, Tyler stage-whispered, “It’s because he’s a faggot, Dad.”
Joshua felt punched by the word, its guttural g’s, the arcane heaviness of it. Mr. Barrett looked like he was choking on his own tongue. Lawrence was still red-faced with shame or anger. Joshua wasn’t sure which.
Defend me, Joshua thought. All you have to say is “Don’t use that word.”
But Lawrence said nothing.
“Come on,” Mr. Barrett said, swinging the cart around and heading back down the aisle. Tyler looked smug, as though they were back in the barn and he’d just won a battle with his Pokémon. Lawrence’s fists were balled, but he just stood there, unwilling—or unable—to enter the fray again.
Joshua smacked the stain display so the sample strips fluttered to the ground like falling leaves.
“Josh, what the heck?” Lawrence said, grunting as he squatted to catch them. Joshua headed for the sliding doors, glad they’d close behind him, sealing Lawrence, Tyler, and his dad in that wood-scented case.
Are we going to your place?” Brenna asked when she and Colin were outside. She wanted to know what his room was like now that he didn’t live with his parents. Did he hang posters? Did he bother to fold clothes? His parents’ house was new compared to hers, the walls white and decorated with wooden letters that spelled love, hope, and trust. Colin once rearranged them: thrust, lope, ove.
He shook his head. “Roommates.” He led her across the bike path, down the riverbank, and under the railroad bridge. They were in the shadows then, blocked from the view of the parking lot and path. Up close, the river was the color of eggplant and smelled dank, like laundry left in the washer too long. She shivered.
Colin flipped open his cigarette carton and pulled out a joint and his Zippo. He clinked it open, the flame illuminating the scar on his thumb. Brenna wanted to put his thumb in her mouth, to taste his skin, dirt and copper and salt. He lit the joint, taking one puff, and then handed it to her. She took two hits, wanting to be relaxed, as cool and collected as him, when in truth her body was buzzing with anticipation and her mind was reeling.