A Little Friendly Advice

by Siobhan Vivian

  Beth stands back up, divides her hair into two messy little buns, and smiles. “Thanks for helping me, Ruby.”

  “Shut up,” I tell her. After all, what am I going to do? Beth is still my best friend. And regardless of all the craziness going on, I’ve got a lot of friendship debt to pay back.

  We work in between spurts of conversation about how to best set up the room — where the stereo should be (on her dad’s worktable), where to send people to pee (her neighbors’ bushes), and places for people to sit down if they want (plastic lawn furniture, an old beanbag chair, a garden bench). We drag out the biggest stuff, like the bicycles and the plastic snowmen and the lawn mower, and hide it behind the garage for the time being. It only takes us a few trips before the space really opens up.

  We are inspired and hungry after an hour. Beth disappears into the house to get us some snacks and to bring in her collection of decorations from parties past. Meanwhile, I stack a few of her father’s plastic planters into each other and stick them underneath his workbench. That’s when I knock something over. I reach deep into the darkness and pick it up.

  It’s a heavy, glass mason jar filed with a bubbly, opaque oily mixture. I hold it up to the light and see the remains of a soggy Q-tip sink to the bottom. My knees go weak.

  It’s one of the batches of bathroom poison we created to use on Jim. The idea was that, if he ever tried to come back, I’d pour a few glugs of this into his morning coffee.

  Without a second thought, I grab my camera from my book bag and set up a shot with the jar poised on the edge of her father’s worktable. I take a big step back and inch slightly to the left, so that the raw bulb hangs in the background. It makes the whole shot look that much more depressing.

  “Ruby,” Beth says flatly. I look over my shoulder at her in the doorway, holding two tall glasses of apple cider and a plate of cookies. “What are you doing? Why would you want a picture of that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. But I turn away from her and take the photo anyway.

  Beth sets down the tray and picks up the poison, cupping it carefully with both hands. “I don’t understand you. Do you want to make yourself upset?”

  “No.” It’s not like I went looking for the jar. I just happened to find it. I cross the room and bury the photo and my camera deep in my book bag.

  “Well, what is it, then?” Beth asks, following me. She sets the jar down and gives my shoulder a supportive squeeze. “You can’t be mad at yourself for this!”

  “I’m not mad at myself,” I say. I pick up the jar and hurl it into a nearby trash can. The weight sends it ripping through the layers of dead leaves and brittle newspaper until it thuds at the bottom of the can, puffing up a cloud of dust. “But you know, maybe I wouldn’t have had to go through all this if my mom and I could have just talked a bit more about what happened. I mean, don’t you think it’s a little weird we’ve never discussed him? At all? Even to this day, after he randomly shows up?”

  Beth’s face is blank. Totally emotionless. Which is crazy to me. I mean, this whole secret-letter business wouldn’t even be a thing to hide if everything could have just been out in the open from the start. Beth should get it. She should blame my mom too. Maybe I’m not explaining myself enough, so I struggle to string more words together.

  “I didn’t even tell you that she was hiding behind the curtains, watching me kiss Charlie yesterday. That was after we’d had a fight about her moving on and trying to date someone else. It doesn’t get more messed up than that.”

  Beth’s shoulders rise and fall with even, measured breaths. “I’ve never heard you talk like this about your mom,” she says softly. Definitely disappointed.

  “I’m just saying, you know, that she could have made it easier on me if she wasn’t so closed off.”

  “Ruby, your mom’s put up walls to protect herself. Like you did.”

  I throw my hands up in the air. “But we don’t need to have walls from each other! We’re supposed to be in this together.” I stare at her. Hard.

  “I’m not taking sides, Ruby. Even though I always have your side.” Beth says this with a tiny smile. “I just think it’s probably weird for her to talk about it now. I mean, so much time has passed.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. I really don’t. I don’t understand anything.

  Beth shifts her eyes onto a knot of fake spiderwebs that need untangling. “Look. All I am saying is that if your mom still isn’t ready to deal with things, you can’t force her. There were times I’d get super frustrated with you. But I didn’t say anything. I had to let you work it out on your own.”

  Beth has a point. You can’t force someone to get over something, as much as you want them to. You just have to let them work it out on their own. But if my best friend really did believe what she was saying, she’d have given me the letter from Jim instead of stealing it. She would have let me deal with it on my own, in my own way, and supported me no matter what. And that, as much as I don’t want to admit it, makes her whole speech pretty much a crock.

  “Wow,” Beth says, drawing out the vowel sound with all the breath left in her lungs. She leans over the edge of the loft. “I never thought we’d be able to top the basement, but the garage looks freakin’ amazing!”

  I grit my teeth, tear the roll of yellow caution tape, and tie the last of three sagging streamers that form a crude and extremely unsafe railing. Then I inch carefully to the edge of the plywood and peer over my toes. Countless lit candles flicker an eerie light on our progress from the last five hours.

  A toothy, silver power saw on her dad’s workbench digs violently into a plastic hand. A huge pumpkin is punctured by a million nails. A Christmas reindeer has a sparkly gunshot wound to the abdomen, made from Elmer’s glue and red glitter, and black electrical tape Xs over his eyes. Plugged in, he’s a glowing corpse. Some old red paint splatters a bloody outline for the dance floor and five white-chalk outlines of my “dead” body freeze-dance on the concrete.

  My arms tingle with goose bumps, because it really does look awesome.

  Our hard work was also a distraction from the earlier tension. We cleaned, then brainstormed decorating ideas and made things, both of us keeping our minds on the tasks at hand or the music on the radio. At least, I tried my best to.

  But with every cool idea we had for the party, I kind of wished that Charlie could see what we were doing. I knew he’d be impressed, considering the lameness of those Fisher Prep socials. Maybe, if things were still all right between us by the end of the week, I’d ask Beth if I could invite him.

  Still, I don’t really like the idea of Charlie creeping into my mind so often, so soon. I don’t want to memorize his freckles or collect a bunch of his adorable buttons that I’d just have to throw away if things didn’t work out.

  Maybe I won’t call him tonight, even though he asked me to.

  “Hey,” Beth says, snapping her fingers near the tip of my nose. “Don’t think so much. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  I laugh weakly at that, and Beth echoes with a hollow chuckle of her own. Then a deafening silence suffocates us.

  We climb down the rickety wooden ladder, her first, me second. When I get to the bottom, Beth’s mouth opens and closes, like a lawn mower that needs its cord pulled a few times before it can start up.

  But the last thing I want to do is be here longer than I have to. I feel like I’m on the verge of totally losing it with Beth; but as upset as I am about everything, I don’t want that to happen. It’s just going to make things worse. So I plaster on a smile and beat her to the punch. “I guess I should take off, before I pass out cold and end up sleeping on the floor.”

  “Oh,” she says, and matches my phony smile. “Okay.”

  While I put on my peacoat, Beth disappears into the house and returns with a bag of felt scraps she’s swiped from her mom’s sewing room. They’re for me to make Girl Scout badges with.

  I hesitate taking them from her outstretched arm. “But
what if your mom needs them for something?”

  “Shut up,” Beth says, swatting me with the bag, so I take them and follow her into the yard. The sky is dark blue and littered with stars. “Ooh. And I also printed out some original Scout badges from the Internet. So you can copy them.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” My stomach growls audibly.

  “You sure you don’t want some leftover pizza? My mom ordered extra for you.”

  Over Beth’s shoulder, I watch through the big bay window as her family clears the dinner table assembly style — her mom with the plates, her younger sister Martha collecting the silverware, followed by Mr. Miller stacking the cups. Everyone is smiling, like it’s fun to do chores or something. That’s part of the reason I was over here so much when I was growing up. But something about tonight feels different and empty in a way that’s bigger than just my belly.

  I take a couple of backward steps away from her and paw around behind me for the fence gate until the wood scrapes my hand. “Thanks, but I better get back home.” Beth’s mouth wrinkles up. I turn away and speed walk toward the street.

  I guess it’s just hard sometimes to have a happy, functional family like Beth’s in my face, when all I have is a mess that my mom can’t talk about and my best friend doesn’t really understand. I don’t even understand it. My knees bump into the plastic bag as I walk, sending it spinning in circles, tightening around my wrist like a noose. My fingertips throb red.

  It doesn’t make sense to rush back to an empty house with nothing but old birthday ziti in the refrigerator. I check my wallet. Skimping a bit on lunch every day usually nets me about an extra ten dollars a week. I’ve got twenty on me — enough for a comfort-food feast of epic proportions, courtesy of Dodie’s 24-hour breakfast menu. I head in that direction and try to replace my discontent with the thought of pancakes.

  I don’t know why I’m letting all this get to me right now anyway. It’s stupid. My mom is going to do what she wants, and if she’s hell-bent on pining away for Jim, then whatever. Beth is right. There’s really nothing I can do about it.

  But there’s just a part of me that can’t believe how easy Beth seems to lie to me, again and again and again. I wonder if it’s something she’s struggling with. Is it hard for her? If I were holding in a secret that big, I’d have it painted all over my face. It’d be really tough to keep it from her. Probably even impossible.

  When I arrive at Dodie’s, the sight inside is anything but a comforting one. The late-night dinner crowd is in full effect. Everyone has silver hair, if they have hair at all. They dine solo across from empty chairs, the living halves of partially deceased couples, slowly sipping their coffee, counting out pennies from their pockets to pay their bills, and stuffing those same pockets back up with sugar packets and creamers and little tubs of jelly.

  There’s something so lonely and unavoidable about it. I take out my camera and point it though the window. In a strange way, I’m discovering that things become easier to look at through my viewfinder. But I can’t get a good shot. The glare from the Highland movie theater marquee next door shimmers off the glass and makes it hard to see.

  I cup my hand to shield away the blurry reflection of the people leaving the eight o’clock show. There’s only a handful. The Highland isn’t popular, especially with the cushy megaplexes that are just across the highway. This one is small, the uncomfortable seats make your butt cheeks fall asleep and tingle, and they always play an old ENJOY THE SHOW reel with cheesy lasers and weird robotic music from a 1970s exercise video. That’s actually something I like. Every time I go with Beth and Maria, we pretend to dodge the lasers or fake ooh and aah at the screen.

  I notice one straggler leaving, lingering behind the rest of the crowd. He walks toward a blue truck parked across the street.

  Oh my God.

  I duck into the shadowy doorway of Dodie’s, pull up the hood of my sweatshirt, and watch. Jim unlocks the door of the truck and removes what looks like a small cardboard box the size of a loaf of bread. After feeding the parking meter some change, he walks in the direction of where I live, with that box tucked under his arm.

  It’s like I’ve got magnets in my pockets or something, the way my body just follows him without even thinking. I keep a wide distance between us. I glide from tree to parked car to mailbox to trash can, like some kind of burglar. I curse myself repeatedly for ever going to his dumb hotel and calling him up on the lobby phone. That only encouraged him, made him think I wanted to see him. What a stupid, stupid move.

  At first I think Jim is lost. He’s walking in long, loping strides, and he keeps looking around at the other houses and into the sky, like he’s hoping for a landmark to help him figure out just where he is. But after a few blocks, he takes a turn that makes me feel sick to my stomach. He knows exactly where he’s going. To Rose Lane, to our old house.

  When he gets there, he stands across the street. I look down at my feet, afraid of how it might make me feel to watch this. But eventually I lift my chin. A few lights are on in the house, and the windows flicker with the shadows of people moving around upstairs. Smoke curls out of the chimney. I shiver.

  Dad walks right up to the house. He doesn’t use the path, just trudges up the lawn. I can hardly breathe. He wedges himself between two shrubs and rubs his hands over the new siding, which I notice now is blue instead of the peeling white it used to be when we lived there. The repairs he never made.

  I glance around. If someone sees him here, they’d definitely call the cops. But the street is eerily quiet. He finally walks away and makes a left.

  After fifteen minutes and a few wrong turns, he finds my street. His pace was slow before, but now it gets even more lumbering. Like he has to convince himself of every step forward.

  I turn the corner and duck for cover behind a big green bush in a neighbor’s yard. My house looms on the other side, catty-corner across the street. The wet ground seeps through the knees of my already dirty jeans. I crack spindly branches aside and make a little peephole through the yellow, dying leaves.

  When he gets to my front door, he stands still for a while and lights up a cigar. The smoke catches on the breeze and blows in my direction. With every inhale, he shifts his weight. Thank God our driveway is empty and Mom has a late shift at work. He takes in the house until he is interrupted by a deep guttural cough that I can hear even from across the street. He gasps for breath and his shoulders shake. Then he approaches the top step, sets the box he’s been carrying on the welcome mat, and starts walking back down the middle of our street. I close up the bushes and pray for invisibility as he walks past where I’m hiding. On the way, he drops his lit cigar stub. Half-smoked, it burns red against the street. I track him, not breathing, not even blinking, until he turns the corner and disappears.

  My mom will be home any minute. I stand up and sprint across the street, up the stairs, and skid to a stop at the cardboard box. It has my name on it, traced over and over and over again in that blue Bic pen. Beth isn’t around to intercept it this time, to protect me from what might be inside. It’s here, just for me. And I am so afraid.

  I think for a second about throwing it into one of the trash cans that sit just to my right. But instead, I take one last cautious look over my shoulder, reach up for the spare key, and take the box in my shaking hands.

  After locking my bedroom door, I use a dirty fork sitting on my desk to cut through the tape. I peel back the cardboard flaps.

  There are a bunch of old photos inside. The prints are perfect squares, rimmed with a white scalloped border. Some are of Jim, some are of him and Mom. Some are of my mom with a baby bump, smiling. Mom’s hair is really long, hanging down over her boobs like a mermaid. Jim is struggling to grow a beard. He looks rugged and handsome. His hands are dirty in some shots, shoved deep in his pockets in others. They don’t look in love. They just look young.

  The rest of the stuff in the box is pretty random. Jim’s old Goodyear company ID, a few badges from the forestr
y service, a pocketknife that’s rusted closed.

  There’s no note. No explanation.

  He’s delivered his best garage-sale items. He expects me to rummage through a box of old junk to figure out who exactly he is. This isn’t the retro stuff I like, the vintage goods to make up stories for. I know how this one ends. Before I can stop myself, I hurl the entire box against my wall, sending the contents fluttering everywhere.

  A twinkle grabs my attention. A silver watch clouded by smoky gray tarnish lies a few feet away. I bend over, pick it up, and try to clasp it to my wrist. But the latch is broken. So I just hold it there and try to think for a second.

  It was our routine.

  First, Dad would drive us to the Giant Eagle and we’d head straight for the frozen-food aisle. He loved Stouffer’s brand macaroni and cheese in the bright orange boxes. He said it wasn’t as good as Mom’s homemade, but he’d still scrape the plastic clean with his fork and, when he thought I wasn’t looking, his tongue. I’d get the French bread pizza, usually pepperoni. Then we’d stop off at the newspaper shop and buy a couple lottery tickets.

  After baking our meals side-by-side in the oven, we’d eat in front of the television and hang out until the nine o’clock drawing came on. My dad loved the lottery. He’d play my birthday and Mom’s, and his mother’s — the grandmother who died before I was born. We’d had a deal that if he ever won, I’d get to stay up an extra hour. If he lost, I had to go right to bed. He always let me hold the pink paper tickets.

  Unfortunately, Dad usually lost.

  But on one particular night, the lottery lady counted out my mother’s birthday. Dad and I whooped and hollered — he’d won one hundred and thirty-five dollars. And I won an extra hour before bedtime, so I stayed put on the couch.

  Sometime later, I started to doze off. But instead of bringing me upstairs. Dad got me a blanket. “Mom is going to be so excited to know she’s lucky,” he said. “We’ll stay up and surprise her.”