by Meg Leder
I fix him with a furious glare. “I’m not perfect. And I’m not associating with Finn Casper!”
Ruby looks surprised. “You and Finn aren’t friends?”
“We are,” I start.
But Charlie snickers, muttering to himself. “ ‘Not perfect’? As if.”
“What does that mean?”
“Four point oh? Weekends spent cramming for the SATs? Harvard? Scholarships? Future doctor? Never once disappointing Mom and Dad? Your noble, noble life?”
If he only knew about the internship, about the e-mail Em sent me telling me to tell my parents, about the way my eyelid twitches and my heart races.
“That’s not true,” I say, but he ignores me, turning to Ruby.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m the real kid and Parker’s the cyborg version, the one our parents ordered from a factory, customized with ‘good grades and a friendly disposition’!”
Ruby smiles awkwardly, and Charlie takes it as encouragement, getting even more animated, adopting an infomercial voice.
“Our Parker four-point-oh model does her chores, has excellent manners, and never ever talks back. Plus, she has a four-point-oh average, hence the name!” He winks.
“Shut up,” I say.
“Parker four-point-oh model is the perfect child to make all your parenting dreams come true!”
“Stop it.”
“And don’t worry, kids. Parker four-point-oh will always do the right thing, no matter whose future it screws up.”
“Well, have you ever thought I’m this way because you got cancer?” I snap, then stop, surprised at the words that just came out of my mouth.
Charlie lets out a slow whistle between his teeth, shaking his head, satisfied. “Finally, there it is. After all these years, a glitch in the system. Honesty.”
“You’re being an asshole.”
“At least I’m being an honest one. You should try it sometime.”
Ruby glances between us, tapping her fingers uneasily on the table, her bracelets chiming, and then she must make a decision, because she leans toward Charlie, holding out the bottle of hot sauce.
“Tell me, what do you do with this again?”
Charlie looks like he’s not done with me, but Ruby shakes the bottle so insistently at him, it’s clear he doesn’t have a choice. He sighs and begins an elaborate demonstration of how you find the ideal oyster cracker and add the perfect amount of sauce. Ruby tries the concoction, her nose wrinkling up.
“Why in the world would you want to do that?” she asks, after gulping down half her glass of water.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Charlie asks.
I only half listen to Charlie enumerating all the reasons eating oyster crackers with hot sauce is awesome and then Ruby sharing all her counter-reasons for why it violates the “sacred integrity of the oyster cracker.”
I’m not hungry anymore.
Instead, I’m too busy thinking about the words I just said, the unbidden truth in them.
It’s like when you surprise a flock of birds, how they swoop out of rafters and eaves in a wave of flustered feathers, half squawks, how they leave you standing there, heart startled and terrified, as they take flight.
Thirty-One
THE NEXT DAY, MY shift at Carla’s is quiet. The ladies from Wild Meadows Retirement Community have a field trip to see the butterfly exhibit at Krohn Conservatory, and the kids’ birthday party I was supposed to supervise canceled late yesterday. I offered to stay home in case Carla didn’t need me, but much to my happiness, she insisted I come in anyway.
Each day, I love being at Carla’s more and more. And it’s not just the fact that no one there calls me Dr. McCullough or that my eyelid never twitches when I’m around the Wild Meadows ladies. It’s more that Carla’s feels like home, a place where my shoulders aren’t tight, where I laugh without thinking about it, where I can simply breathe.
After I finish dusting and straightening the front room, I sit at the counter for a second, watching the dust motes in the sun coming through the room, then reread the e-mail I got from Em last night.
Park, so I haven’t written you back since you told me you were a grown-up and I shouldn’t worry about you, as I figured I pissed you off and you needed some space. But I miss you too much to give you any more space, so here I am! Seriously, I’m sorry if my advice rubbed you the wrong way. I still think you should tell your parents (sorry not sorry), but I will try not to push you on it. That being said, I cannot promise I will stop worrying, because you are my best friend and I want good things for you and that’s just how I’m wired. But please know that whatever you decide, I’m here for you no matter what, okay?
Things here are good. We’ve been hiking in the Lake District. I know! I’m all naturey now! Do you remember when we read that Wordsworth poem in Mr. Fontana’s English class about the lake and the sublime? At the time, I thought, “Ugh, another white guy poet,” and I *still* maintain that our syllabus that semester was crap, but being here, I kind of get part of it now. It’s otherworldly. This morning I got up and sat by the lake and just sketched. There was mist coming off the lake and I honestly expected a sword to rise out of the water, like it was Excalibur. It was totally badass.
Also, maybe, just maybe, I met a very nice Scottish girl named Tamsin who is also backpacking through Europe this summer and is going to school at Indiana University next year and perhaps we might have made out a little bit before promising to stay in touch when she moves to the States this fall.
Maybe.
(Actually, totally. She is gorgeous. And smart. And kind. I think you’d like her.)
Please write back and let me know you’re okay, that we’re okay.
Miss you bunches,
E.
PS: Matty says hi to you and Charlie. Evidently, Charlie e-mailed him and the two of them are getting along again? Who knows. Boys are weird.
PPS: Your parents will love you no matter what.
I don’t know how to respond.
I wish she’d stop pushing me to talk with Mom and Dad.
If she really trusted me, like she says, she’d drop it.
I let out a frustrated sigh, deleting her e-mail, and then decide to see what Carla’s up to.
I make sure the register is locked before I call out her name down the steps.
“Come on down, Parker,” she calls.
I walk carefully down the narrow basement steps.
The studio downstairs is a completely different world from the one upstairs. While the main room is bright and cluttery, crowded with shelves of white to-be-painted ceramics, this room is shady and cool and organized, eight pottery wheels accompanied by stools arranged in a half circle in the space, the door in the back opening directly to a patch of grass in front of the creek. I see a picnic table out there covered with lumps of clay drying in the sun.
Carla’s currently hunched over one of the wheels, a lump of wet red clay smacking against her hands as the wheel spins.
Her arms push strong against the clay—I can see her muscles working as she shapes the mess. She lifts her hands, sprinkles water over the clay, and then drills a finger down the middle, opening it up.
She sees me, nudges her head toward an empty stool.
I can’t take my eyes away from the wheel spinning.
“How long have you been doing this?” I ask.
“Since freshman year of high school. Art elective. But I loved it so much, I took it all four years and fit it in through college, too.”
“Did you start the studio after college?”
“Oh no. I majored in business, got a job as an account manager at Proctor and Gamble after graduation, and rented a wheel through a space downtown. But about seven years ago, my dad passed away and left me some money. Finn and his brother had just moved out, and I was feeling out of sorts, so after talking with my husband, I decided to try opening a studio of my own. I quit P and G, got a business loan, covered the rest with all of my savings. It di
d better than I hoped, and this spring I decided to find a bigger space. And here I am.”
Carla’s fingers are so light against the clay right now, they’re barely touching it.
“I didn’t know Finn lived with you,” I say.
“He didn’t tell you how we met?”
I shake my head.
She straightens, turning the wheel off. It slows to a stop, leaving a large bowl, its graceful walls rising like arms welcoming the sun. Her eyes meet mine. “My husband and I fostered Finn and his brother for two and a half years, while their dad was serving time. Finn was six when he moved in, Johnny was eleven. For two and a half years, those boys were ours.” She smiles wistfully. “Johnny hated every single day, but I still would have adopted him if I could. And Finn? Letting him move back in with his dad was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” She sighs. “So, I put all that love into my own pottery place. Speaking of, you ready to try?”
I want to ask her more, but it doesn’t feel like it’s my place.
“Try what?” I ask.
“Throwing some clay.”
“But don’t you need me to do some work? Like cleaning or . . . ?” My eyes sweep the room.
Carla rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Parker, this is still work, you know. Besides, it’s good for you to know how to do this, in case I need you to watch a studio class for me someday. Come on. Grab an apron, and let me show you how to wedge the clay.”
I follow her to a smooth counter in the back, where we each scoop out handfuls of red clay from a bucket. She shows me how to knead the lump over and over, folding it in on itself. The clay is cool against my hands, leaving a brownish-red tint on my palms.
“You have to work any potential air bubbles out of the clay. They can threaten the stability of what you’re throwing,” she says.
When both piles of clay meet her approval, she digs through a jar of tools, handing me a few, as well as a sponge and a bucket. “You can borrow these, though someday you can get your own set.”
She points me to a wheel, and I sit down as she hands me a removable round plate called a bat to put on top of my wheel. She grabs the stool next to me, takes her huge lump of clay, and throws it down hard right in the center of her own bat, the clay making a thick thwacking sound. She pinches the edges onto the surface.
“Try it,” Carla says.
I move my clay from hand to hand and then let it fall.
“Harder. You’re giving it its foundation. You want it to be a good, stable one.”
I throw it with force this time, pleased with the satisfying smack it makes.
“Good!”
Carla wets her clay with water from the bucket. “You ready?” She starts the wheel spinning slowly and leans over and puts her hands in a V around the clay. “It comes from your shoulders, not your hands.”
She begins walking me through what she calls centering—getting the clay evenly weighted on the wheel through pushing and shaping—and then beginning to turn the lump into a bowl.
I try to follow her directions.
“Slow down your wheel,” she says. “And when you pull up the walls, don’t let your wrists touch. Push hard with the left hand, use the bend of your index finger on the right.”
My hands are covered in muddy wet clay, my arms, too.
I’m pretty sure I’m doing it all wrong.
It’s weird, the feeling of my hands against the clay, how my fingers seep into the messiness. I’ve always hated for my hands to be dirty—I hate syrup on pancakes because it makes my fingers sticky; I hate manicures because it feels like there’s dirt I can’t see underneath the bright colors.
Charlie’s the exact opposite—or at least he used to be. When he was a kid, he loved playing in dirt. He went through an entire stage where he thought if he dug hard enough, long enough, he could reach China. Then he gave up and began digging for buried treasure. Dad wasn’t pleased when he found the holes all over the backyard.
I always watched from the porch, because the few times I did help out, I couldn’t shake the feeling of mess on my clothes and skin, the disorder in the previously smooth green yard.
This is a similar feeling, but surprisingly, I don’t totally hate it.
Sure, my hands are covered in glop, and I’m grateful I can periodically wipe them on the apron. But I’m so focused on the wheel, the constant calming hum of the spin, my arms strong in front of me, that when I finally do pause, I realize I haven’t thought once about the internship or worried about Charlie.
The quiet in my mind feels like a certified miracle.
I look over and admire Carla’s creation. Her bowl is sturdy and graceful at the same time—something of dirt and earth made light and lovely.
But before I can even compliment hers, one of the sides on my bowl completely flops over, the walls collapsing inward on themselves.
“Crud,” I mutter, turning the wheel off, my eyelid giving a warning twitch. I don’t want to seem ungrateful that she taught me in the first place, so I shrug and smile. “Clearly, a career as a potter isn’t in my future.”
“Parker McCullough, are you seriously giving up after the first try? I think it took me about one hundred tries before I ever threw something worth firing. And then I picked an ugly glaze and didn’t apply it well.”
She points to a small crooked bowl sitting in a spot of honor amid other beautifully glazed vases and dishes.
It looks like the sad runt of that litter.
“High school art class, 1992. The first bowl I ever successfully threw. No matter what stuff I throw today, that one will always be my favorite. Go on. Go look at it.”
I walk over and pick it up, careful not to knock into either the green-hued bowl that’s the color of April leaves or the luminous fluted blue vase on either side of it.
Carla’s old bowl is glazed brownish red, and the bottom is super heavy. One side is thicker than the other, and the glaze on the inside isn’t consistent, spots where it didn’t stick showing speckled stoneware underneath. There’s a chunk missing from the corner and several big cracks running around the base, like it was glued back together at some point.
“This is your favorite?” I ask, unable to help myself.
Carla nods. “We all have to start somewhere. That little pot was the beginning of my love affair. Besides, it’s got character, don’t you think? If it came to life in a Disney movie, some cantankerous old-man actor would definitely voice it.”
“But it’d still have a heart of gold?” I ask, smiling.
“Indeed.”
I let my finger run over the rough edges of the bowl, wondering what it’d be like to make a mistake and let myself love it.
Thirty-Two
AS SOON AS THEY open the gates at Kings Island Amusement Park, Ruby breaks into a half walk/half run, dodging around some families with small kids and jogging backward to make sure Charlie and I are following her.
“If we hurry, we might be able to be first in line for the first ride of the day on the Beast!” she says. “Come on, this way. We can totally beat the crowd!”
Right then Ruby reminds me of Em and how sometimes she gets so excited it’s like her body can’t even begin to contain all the possibility in the world around her.
For Ruby, evidently, that possibility is roller coasters.
I look over at Charlie, irritated all over again that he’s crashing my hangout time with Ruby.
This morning, when I was waiting outside on the porch for Ruby’s mom to pick me up, Charlie came out, swinging Mom’s keys.
“You ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“To go pick up Ruby?”
“Her mom’s picking me up. And since when do you care?”
“Since I’m driving you to pick her up, and we’re all going to Kings Island together. She invited me to join.”
I fixed him with a disgusted look. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Nope. I’m serious as death right now. Which, you know, I know
all about, because—”
I held up my hand, cutting him off, and walked to the car.
When we got to Ruby’s, I gladly relinquished shotgun, using any chance I could to glare at Charlie from the backseat while Ruby outlined her roller coaster plan: spending the day trying to ride the first seat in all of the park’s roller coasters.
So here we are now, weaving around families, following Ruby through the crowd, and I’m convinced the whole day is a loss.
But then, in our haste to keep up with her, Charlie nearly runs smack into a group of preteen girls, and they giggle when he bows in apology. He turns and shoots me a smile before jogging to catch up with Ruby.
It stops me in my tracks.
Charlie just smiled at me.
There was no irritation there, no hidden agenda. Just my brother smiling at me without thinking twice. It’s such a small thing, but it’s also big as the universe.
And the thing that’s even weirder is I’m pretty sure I smiled back.
Maybe it’s not so terrible that he’s here today after all.
Sure, it’s not great. It’s not what I wanted.
But maybe it’s not terrible.
I feel good until we reach the nonexistent line for the Beast. Ruby is downright gleeful as she tears through the winding path toward the front of the coaster, scooting into the line for the first seat behind two men holding hands, and beckoning me to join her.
Crap. I didn’t think this through.
I haven’t been on a roller coaster since the summer before third grade. I was so scared, I started shrieking before the ride even pulled out of the station. Em tried to calm me down, but I wasn’t having it, and the teenagers working the booth had to stop the ride and let me get out before the train left the station.
I thought I’d be fine by now, but looking at the tracks in front of me, I realize I seriously overestimated my ability to get over it. I have no desire to ride this roller coaster.
I look up at Ruby to confess, but she’s bouncing on her toes.
“I’m so excited to do this with you guys. I have wanted to ride the first seat on every coaster for ages.” She motions us into a huddle. “I have no clue how these people beat us here,” she says in a too-loud whisper, pointing to the couple in front of us in the turnstile. “I really thought we’d be the first seat on the first ride of the day.”