Girlish

by Lara Lillibridge

  Because the shop serviced at least four weddings every Saturday, Girl often had to drive herself. Whenever possible, Ryan would let her use his car, a white 1978 Mercedes, instead of one of the big white vans. He didn’t care that she’d only just gotten her license. Stepmother wouldn’t even let Girl drive her five-year-old Toyota. “It’s too special to risk at the hands of an inexperienced driver,” Mother had explained. Ryan treated Girl like he treated his son. “Here’s the car, be careful, fill it up on your way back, but be sure to go to full serve, so you don’t get fuel on your hands.” He even offered to let Girl use the Mercedes to drive to her senior prom, just like his son, Ryan Jr., did. Ryan insisted that when it was time for her prom Girl would have to come to the shop in her gown so he could see her in person, just like his son had the month before.

  The florist from Rhode Island, Bob, started working there shortly after Girl did, and they shared sandwiches and played gin rummy when it was slow. Bob looked like the Marlboro man and even wore a black leather cowboy hat on occasion. He told her stories of ’70s discos. “I could spin on a dime!” he said. Bob lamented the fortune his family left behind in Cuba when Castro rose to power.

  All six of the men at the shop were openly gay. It was fun—even though Mother was a lesbian, Girl hadn’t really met any gay men before, and the guys were always flirting with her and with each other, laughing and joking and calling each other Mary. Bob was the only one who minded it, which caused them to tease him even more. Whenever the shop phone rang, whoever answered would affect the deepest phone-sex voice they could muster, and Girl was almost as good at it as they were—in her mind, anyway. They all kissed each other on the lips in greeting, and the unexpected intimacy of it made Girl feel glowy and vulnerable at the same time. She had never had much extended family, or even a large group of friends. Going to work was like going to hang out with long-lost cool uncles—even on days when her fingers flew at top speed, her mouth moved just as fast, laughing, teasing, and talking about men.

  “Just me!” she called as she entered the store one afternoon, a few months after she had been hired. Tony was approaching from the back to see if the ringing bell signaled a customer.

  “Did you miss us?” Tony asked with a smirk. Tony’s dark brown locks were pulled back into a ponytail only as thick as her index finger. His frizzy hair was receding too far to wear as long as he did, but somehow, it fit him. “Fuck you if you don’t like it,” Tony always said. “Fuck you with a meat hook.” He was the least pretty of the six gay men she worked with, but Girl didn’t think pretty was his goal. He wore his combat boots and ponytail with an appealing fierceness. There was something about his brown eyes—his gaze was somehow more intense, he held eye contact a little longer than most people. If you saw him coming in a dark alley, you’d run—he was tough and hip and still listened to death metal even though he was almost forty.

  Tony wasn’t a florist—he mostly did setup and delivery. Girl had learned that Tony didn’t know how to read, but he knew the city streets like the back of his hand. He could create elaborate tenting out of bolts of fabric and transform rented party halls into wonderlands of bridal fantasy when he was sober. When he was drunk he had a history of knocking over expensive vases, but drinking at work was not a fireable offense. South Wedge was a family, and you don’t fire family. Girl no longer drank, smoked, or did drugs, but it didn’t bother her that most of the other guys at the shop did. Besides, if Ryan was high he’d sometimes pay her an extra few bucks an hour.

  “Of course I missed you, Tony! I always miss you!” she said, playfully drawing out her words and over-emoting in the affectation that was the shop dialect. “I’ll tell you who I didn’t miss, though—William!” She didn’t normally snipe, but the manager, William, was such a prig, and besides, Tony was so cool, she wanted him to like her. William—never the informal Will or the affectionate Billy—was prissy and arrogant. If alligator shirts were still in style, William would wear them perfectly ironed and buttoned all the way to the top. Now he made do with crisp designer dress shirts and creased trousers, but the snooty effect was the same. He was always shuffling papers and scuffing his feet as he walked back and forth, his dress shoes sounding like they were slippers.

  “I wish he would pick up his fucking feet and walk like a normal person!” Bob always bitched to her when William was out of the room. William’s sole job seemed to be waving papers around and admonishing everyone to work faster, though he rarely put a flower in a vase himself. He had criticized Girl’s wardrobe several times. She wore solid color shirts with Dockers every day, but she didn’t own scarves or pins to dress them up, and she didn’t like how she looked in lipstick—her lips were too thin or something. She kept her hair out of her face to look neat and professional, but she knew she wasn’t trendy or cool, and William never failed to comment on how she lacked the flair he felt befitted a South Wedge employee. Still, Girl loved her job. She’d rather be at work than home alone, even though it was summer and she could have lain in the sun all afternoon if she had wanted to. The only good thing about her few days off from work was not having to listen to William’s voice nagging her to be better, prettier, and faster than she was capable of.

  “Now, now, it’s not nice to speak ill of the dying,” Tony said as they walked into the back.

  “What?” She was confused. She had only been off work her usual three days. They walked to the work area in the middle of the store, and she could hear the radio playing “Everything I Do, I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams. That song was so sappy, and Girl was so sick of hearing it. Apparently the DJ didn’t feel the same way, because it was on the air at least once every hour.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “William’s in the hospital.” Tony turned toward the far counter and laid flowers out next to the row of vases so Bob, the head designer, could assemble them faster.

  “He might not make it this time,” Tony said, his lips moving slightly as he counted off the Gerbera daisies, liatris, and Stargazer lilies that were the shop’s signature look.

  “Oh,” she said, hating the childlike banality of her response, but not sure what she was supposed to say. “No one told me.”

  “You should really go visit him,” Tony said. “It might be your last chance.”

  She set up her workstation with green florist wire, tape, and the bows she pre-made and kept on a pegboard. She was in charge of the bodywork—the corsages and boutonnieres. Ryan had taught her to mix bear grass and seeded eucalyptus in between her rosebuds and filler flowers, and now Girl was the only one who made them. She loved Fridays. Her mind could wander down any path while her fingers worked automatically, taping and wiring the stems together. Girl loved making pretty things, and she loved that Ryan trusted her enough to delegate one section of his business to her teenaged hands.

  “Was this, um, self-inflicted?” Girl asked as she pulled buckets of flowers from the cooler, using her thumbnail to detach the rosebuds from their stems, leaving the headless spines in the bucket to deal with later. William is such an arrogant asshole, she thought. I wonder if he tried to kill himself? Mother always said people who acted full of themselves generally didn’t have great self-esteem. Suicide was the only thing that made sense—William was young, just twenty-four. The only people Girl knew who got sick enough to go to the hospital were her mother’s age or older.

  “Well, I guess you could say that,” Tony said. “I mean he didn’t take care of himself properly. He was always out partying till three or four in the morning, and never got enough sleep. You can’t burn the candle at both ends like that.”

  “Huh?” She was totally confused. Staying up late and getting up early was what most of her friends did in high school. It didn’t seem like something that would make you wind up in a hospital.

  “You know he’s HIV, right?” Tony asked.

  “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  She remembered how last month Ryan had asked her t
o clean the bathrooms and Tony had insisted that Girl wear a pair of old, white medical gloves with stains on the fingers. It was weird—Mother never wore gloves when she cleaned. Girl had gone into the bathroom and the toilet rim was covered in diarrhea splatter. She was glad Tony had found the gloves after all. She wondered if gay men got diarrhea more often than straight people, because both toilets were in covered in such a variety of color that it couldn’t have been just one person. Ryan should hire someone to clean the bathrooms, she thought. Then it hit her—he had. At just over minimum wage, she was the lowest-paid employee in the shop. She was probably cheaper than a cleaning service. After that Girl stopped bitching to herself when she cleaned. It was worth it to work there. She never wondered if the guys were HIV positive, but it wouldn’t have kept her from cleaning the bathrooms if she had. She knew that you couldn’t get AIDS from a toilet seat. At least, Mother said so, and right now Girl clung to that. Mother was so sure of it that when her seventh grade health teacher had said, “no one knows if you can get AIDS from a toilet seat,” Mother had not only called the principal but had left work early to talk to him in person. If there was any doubt, she wouldn’t have done that, right?

  Girl had taken an AIDS test once, but was too scared to ever go back and get the results. In her senior government class they had debated quarantining people who were HIV positive, and honestly, Girl had been all for it. Send ’em to an island and keep the rest of us safe, she had thought back then, but now Girl was ashamed of herself. It was different when you knew someone who had it, someone regular and young and not a freak at all.

  “What hospital is he at?” Girl asked Tony, not looking at him. The work area had two counters on opposing walls, and she was glad it wasn’t set up for eye contact. They sat on tall, backless stools diagonally across from each other, and Girl kept her eyes on her work so he wouldn’t see her face. For him, people with AIDS were common, and Girl didn’t want him to think she was shocked or appalled or anything. She didn’t want to betray herself as a dumb straight girl.

  “St. Mary’s.”

  She had heard of the hospital down in the bad part of the city, but had never been there before. Mother had had seven eye surgeries since Girl was a kid, including three cornea transplants, so she had been in most of the local hospitals at one time or another. Only one of Mother’s surgeries had been at St. Mary’s, the very first one, when Girl was too young to visit. Mother said the hospital was so bad that after the first surgery she always asked the doctors to schedule her at one of the other hospitals. Dirty, she had said, and understaffed. Girl wasn’t sure why William went there when Genesee Hospital was right down the street. She didn’t really understand that AIDS patients weren’t welcome everywhere.

  “I didn’t know what to bring,” Girl told Mother, sliding into the blue front seat of her Toyota. William was a florist, so it seemed weird to bring him flowers. Instead, Girl got a small box of Russell Stover’s chocolate and a get-well card.

  “Candy is good,” Mother said, “If he isn’t allowed to eat it, he can give it to the nurses. It’s always good to bribe the nurses, then they like you and come to your room more often.”

  Mother had agreed to drive Girl down to see William in the hospice wing after work, because she didn’t have a car and the bus to that part of town might not be safe for a teenaged girl to ride alone. Since Girl had moved out her relationship with Mother was strained, but they still got together for lunch or dinner once a week and they talked on the phone every few days.

  Girl looked at the round unicorn sticker on the glove compartment as Mother drove. Mother wasn’t into frilly or girly things at all, but she always bought herself one stained-glass sticker from the museum gift shop to put on the glove box of her car. Mother wouldn’t spring for power windows or even an automatic transmission, always voting for cheap and practical over luxurious, but she’d made a special trip for that one unicorn. Girl was somehow proud that her practical, short-haired mother would spend money on an expensive sticker. It spoke of dreams and yearnings for beauty that must flow inside Mother as much as they did inside Girl.

  “I’ll just wait in the car,” Mother said when they pulled into the circular drive of the hospital. “I brought a book.”

  “Are you sure?” Girl asked.

  “It’s not really appropriate to see someone in bed that you have never met. It might make him uncomfortable.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t be too long,” Girl said, but didn’t move to open the door, still looking at the unicorn on the glove box. Girl hated going to new places and feared getting lost in corridors. She was a month away from graduating high school and was living on her own, but inside, she was still small and scared.

  “It’s okay, I have a book, I told you. I’m fine,” Mother said, and that was the end of it. Girl would have to go alone.

  There was an old lady at the volunteer desk who looked up William’s room number for Girl and gave her directions to the proper floor. It turned out that St. Mary’s wasn’t very big and it was easy to find the elevators. When Girl walked in, William was sitting up in bed, wearing a dull blue hospital gown with little anchors printed on it, the white sheet pulled over his lap. Although she had noticed the dark red spot behind his ear at work, Girl hadn’t thought much about it. Now, she noticed maroon spots on his skinny, nearly hairless arms below the short sleeves of his gown. Girl had heard of Kaposi’s sarcoma, the AIDS-related skin cancer, and she guessed that must have been what it was, but she didn’t ask. Girl always figured William wore long sleeves every day because he was prissy and formal, not to hide his disease. He had never looked sick.

  “I’m so glad you came!” William’s eyes lit up. “You came at the perfect time! I have had nonstop visitors since I’ve been in—exhausting really. I can’t believe you picked a time when no one else was here.”

  He hadn’t been watching TV or anything when Girl came in, just sitting there in his bed, staring into space. She hadn’t thought he’d be so excited to see her. He had never seemed to like her very much.

  “I didn’t know what to bring,” she said, putting the candy on the rolling bed tray that covered his lap. It was a small box, the kind that was $4.95 and only had four pieces, but then Girl only made five dollars an hour and couldn’t afford much.

  “I love candy!” he said, opening the card and reading it quickly without comment. There weren’t any cards or proof of other visitors in the room. Girl was sure his boyfriend, Walter, and all the guys from the shop had come by, but she guessed they hadn’t brought anything.

  “Did you see the flowers at the nurses’ station? I had so many arrangements in here it set off my allergies. I just told the nurses to take them home. They were so excited. The nurses are really nice to me.”

  Girl hadn’t seen any flowers, but she didn’t say so. Girl couldn’t have really been the only person to bring him something, could she? Not that William would have told her if she was. He needed to see himself as the life of the party, surrounded by friends, even if there was no evidence to prove it. It seemed unlikely that the flowers had disappeared so quickly, though.

  “I didn’t know if you were supposed to bring a florist flowers. My mom said if you couldn’t eat the candy you could give it to the nurses or whatever.”

  “I always like to have something for visitors. I have these abscesses on my esophagus, so I can’t eat a lot of chocolate. But Walter will love it.”

  William’s boyfriend was one of the most beautiful men Girl had ever seen: tall, with dark hair and startling light blue eyes. Walter was always tan from working construction outside, and he seemed sweet; maybe because he was always really quiet when he came in the shop, never catty or condescending. Walter was the opposite of William—no one would ever think he was gay to look at him in his work jeans and flannel shirts. William looked as stereotypically gay as you could get.

  “So tell me what’s been going on at the shop!” William demanded.

  “Well, we did the wedding fo
r Schmidt and the Gerbera daisies came in light pink instead of raspberry and the bride had a complete meltdown! I didn’t know what to do, but Ryan told her to focus on spending her life with the man she loves and sent her down the aisle. She didn’t dare talk back to him.” They gossiped for a while, but Girl could tell he was tired. After twenty minutes or so she stood up to leave.

  “Can you turn off the light? I can’t reach it.” William asked. “I’m gonna sleep until Walter gets here.” His skin was yellow next to the white sheet. He folded his glasses and Girl put them on the side table for him. His eyes closed before she left the room. He looked vulnerable without his glasses, and small and fragile beneath the sheets.

  There was a song Girl used to sing back in ninth grade called, “A.I.D.S.—Anally Inflicted Death Sentence.” It was the summer Girl was filled with hate for her parents and their gayness, when she was tired of being bullied and different and on the fringes of society. That’s what you get for having a penis up your ass. That’s what you get when you swallow another man’s load. She sang it because Stepmother would hate it if she knew, but more than that, it would hurt her. Girl wanted so badly to be normal, she wished so hard to be just like everyone else. She was tired of interrupting gay jokes to tell her friends they were being insensitive, the way Stepmother had schooled her to do. She hated being called Lezzie. It wasn’t fair that Mother had chosen to be a lesbian—she always said that she could have been just as happy with a man—so she had willingly chosen a life of ostracism and secrets. Should have used a condom, Girl sang angrily that summer. Now Girl wished that she could take it all back, revoke her mocking, bullying song, pull the lyrics out of her brain like threads of spider web and throw the memory away forever.

  A week or so later, William was back at the shop, but now his attitude toward her had changed. On Fridays, he’d take her to the Italian restaurant next door for lunch, and they’d stay twice as long as her allotted thirty minutes. William always paid for her, but Girl was careful to order the cheapest thing on the menu, like her mother taught her.