She whispered, “I keep doing this because I really like you, Evan.”
Which made me almost lose it. I wanted to cry. Crush her with happiness too.
“I like you too,” I said, my throat filling up with a salty lump. Then I kissed her, as if that would make all the Weepy go away.
All sweaty together under the blankets, I wanted it to both stop and keep going. The huge sadness seemed to get closer. Tears rained down my throat, my nose. Twice she asked me if I was getting a cold or had allergies. Both times I pretended not to know what she was talking about. Finally, I got up to piss. Something I’d never done when getting down with a chick. Which was probably good—pissing with a boner’s tricky. But I had to do something about the Goddamn Weepy.
In the bathroom with the door locked, I looked at myself. Flexed in the mirror. I had become a total strutting douche about my muscles, though I was private about it. For some reason, just seeing myself, alone, made me feel a little better. Made the fucking Weepy recede, at least.
Back in my room, under the blankets, my hands discovered a now all-the-way-naked Jordan.
“Is that okay?” she asked.
“Jesus, don’t be crazy.”
“I am crazy, Evan.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I have condoms,” she said. “If you want to.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yeah. But only if you do.”
“Jesus!” I said. “Yes. Of course I do. But only if you want to.”
“We sound like total idiots.”
“I don’t care.”
“They’re in my bag.”
I didn’t feel right telling her I had my own condoms. My own condoms felt somehow unlucky. So I grabbed her bag and handed it to her. Regardless of which Evan I was, neither one enjoyed rummaging through a girl’s purse.
She pressed a condom square on my chest, like a little medal, instantly activating Dirtbag Evan. I didn’t want to be gross and grabby, but Jesus Christ she felt great. She felt like relief. Like the antidote to Weepy. I struggled to be cool. Slow and gentle. I decided that this had to be good, since it was her first time since the Almost-Rape. But then she crawled on top of me and completely took charge. Which was surprising. And unbelievably hot.
And pretty much flushed away any ideas of me being good. I didn’t last long and once she pitched herself off me and I’d gotten back to life, I felt dumb about it. We laid there breathing and listening to the faint noise from the waves coming through my open window. I rolled over, wanting to amend things somehow, but the only thing I could think to say was, “Sorry.” Which is a shit thing to say to a girl after you’ve done it with her, really.
So I just stared at her, the first girl I’d ever brought home to my bed. Though my father was often absent, physically and mentally, I had avoided bringing girls back to my rooms in all the anonymous condos. Only Collette had been in my bed, but I never thought of the bed in Connison as really mine. I always saw myself as a kind of adventurer, exploring the exotic, potentially hostile habitat that was a girl’s bedroom. Piles of clothes on the floor. Candles and jewelry on the dresser. Posters and pictures on every available surface. Parents lurking nearby.
Jordan’s own bedroom was like that, and her bed had nicer, fancier sheets than mine and probably better mood lighting than my stark reading lamp too, but looking at her naked on my boring, needing-to-be-changed white sheets, with her short hair all rucked up and sweaty, it was like seeing something so perfect. Beyond seeing her naked, which, of course, was nice. But it was like I also could see her. All of her. Jordan, Almost-Raped girl, turning into a story. But something more than just a story too.
She whispered that this wouldn’t be our only opportunity; though I knew the math on that, I nodded into her neck. I waited for the huge sadness to roll over us again, but it didn’t come. Not even when she cried a little and then laughed, called herself stupid for crying. My head still hiding in the soft skin of her neck, I said that she was beautiful. And good. And, yeah, crazy, but so was I, so we were perfect together. Which was probably a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t help it. Then I pulled the covers up, because the breeze from the window was suddenly cold, and though my bed was just a twin, nothing like Jordan’s giant deluxe one, we fell asleep together.
The next morning, I woke up thinking about Collette. Though I hadn’t dreamed of her, not in a while. It was very Dirtbag Evan to think of other girls with one in my bed, but the truth was that I never really stopped thinking about Collette. The letters to her in my notebook under the bed, next to the gross lotion, the unlucky condoms. I’d written the last letter just a few days earlier.
I sat up, with an idea, but Jordan woke up and pulled me back to her. I almost stopped her, because the idea was so strong, but Jordan had some ideas of her own. So we did hers first. In my bed and on the floor. Also, my tiny shower. She had lots of good ideas.
Jordan’s final good idea was that I should make her breakfast. Do girls always have their good ideas the minute you’ve realized you’ve got something important to do? But since there was nothing in the fridge, I used that as my chance. Got dressed, gathered up the Collette letters. Put on my shoes and grabbed my keys.
“You’re not running away and never coming back, are you?” Jordan asked.
“You’re not going to college and never coming back, are you?”
“Evan …”
“I’m kidding. I’m just going to grab some stuff at the grocery.”
There was a post office branch in Cub Foods, so I slid the notebook into a cardboard mailer, paying extra so it would get there sooner. Then trying not to think about it too much, I dropped it in the outgoing slot.
Layne was in produce, looking pissy. Some idiot had set up the strawberry section wrong. He waved to me, shaking his head, and I waved back. Then I got a cart and filled it up with everything I could think of to eat for breakfast.
Dear Collette,
It’s June. Everyone’s due back to Pearl Lake soon, but until then it’s weird and quiet. I’m a little nervous to see everyone again but mostly excited. I thought about contacting you so many times, but I just can’t. This is my compromise, just text on a page, something that takes a while to get sent, something you can put down or tear up. I’m guessing it’s hard enough to forget that shit and that my dumb ass is probably insignificant in comparison, but I didn’t want to pile on, you know? I’ve always wanted to talk to you, I guess, even though I didn’t know why. I don’t know why it’s important that you know all this.
What will you do with the rest of your life? I’ve been thinking about what I’ll do with mine. There’s no college plans, no good job in my future. I’m your basic loser at this point. But I don’t care. I’m wondering if the answer’s in my Uncle Soren’s belief in cycles. That we grow when other things die. That water rises, then falls. That circle necklace, the one you asked about the day we first skipped chapel, was his. My mother gave it to him, but Soren gave it back when she chose my father.
My dad, of course, was no help on the whole cycle thing. Cycles, yes, he said, but circles have no exit. What the fuck does that even mean? Maybe it’s math genius speak for “I don’t want to agree with my brother.” But this isn’t what I want to tell you.
I’ve never told anyone about the Cupcake Lady of Tacoma. The first redheaded girl I’d ever touched. She was the first Everything, actually. Before Dirtbag Evan existed and took over. She managed a shop called Hey Cupcake! in downtown Tacoma. Some relative of hers owned it. She was taking a year off before college, and I was fifteen. She hired me as counter help, but later, when she realized I was a decent worker, she took me on as a baker’s apprentice.
The Cupcake Lady of Tacoma was very quiet, like me, so we worked well together. Which sounds terrible—someone preferring your void over your voice—but once I realized that she wasn’t waiting for me to say anything, I felt really comfortable there. Just watched her mix batter and whip frosting, so quiet. A
lot of cute chicks came into the shop, some of them older than the Cupcake Lady too, and none of them subtle about flirting, even though I wore a goddamn pink apron that said HEY CUPCAKE! on it. But I had no game to speak of with girls back then. Every day after school, I went into that shop that smelled like butter cream frosting and was quiet, but not alone. The Cupcake Lady didn’t even hum while she worked. It made me feel calm.
One night we were at the shop late. I had cocked up a special order due the next morning for someone’s bridal shower, several dozen white cupcakes. The problem with all-white anything is that it’s just that much harder to hide any mistakes, and the bride-to-be wanted them arranged on tiered cake plates where you could see every angle. It was ten o’clock and we still weren’t done and the Cupcake Lady made us Irish coffees. To wake us up and amuse us, she said. I’d never had Irish coffee; I’d never drank any alcohol prepared in a kitchen on purpose like that.
Irish coffee made me chatty. I sat on the counter while we waited out the oven, and I just started complaining. I’d never done that before, but the Cupcake Lady just listened while I kept knocking shots of whiskey into my cup.
I was telling her about everything in the world that bugged me. The idiot kids at my school. The stupid way customers acted all sinful about eating our cupcakes. That I had no mother and that my father was never home and that I ate from takeout menus seven nights a week. How my dad looked at me funny when I told him I liked baking stuff.
The Cupcake Lady sat beside me on the counter. Put her arm around me. That’s the way it goes sometimes, Evan, she said. Sometimes the elevator, sometimes the shaft.
In my whiskey haze I kissed her. The Cupcake Lady froze, but then she kissed me back, which was pretty amazing to me at the time. Pretty amazing to me now, actually. Then the timer went off, and she jumped down to pull the cupcakes out to cool. Then she set the timer again. And we kissed, while the cupcakes cooled, her face red as her hair.
When the timer went off, she handed me a bag of butter cream frosting, and we got to work. Once we finished frosting everything, she sent me to her office in the back, where she kept a sofa if she had an early morning or a late night. I thought that maybe she didn’t want to deal with me anymore, that she wanted me to sleep it off. She was an adult; I was a dipshit high school kid. I wanted to say I didn’t mean it, that I’d go home.
But then she was there, saying, Shh, Evan. It’s going to be all right. This won’t last forever. It feels that way, but it won’t. And then there was sex, but I’ll spare you the awkward details. I can barely stand to think of what a dumbass I was myself. I mean, the whole thing was so different from other times I’d been with girls, and not just because I was a virgin. Probably my mouth was dropping open in shock, but she never acknowledged my dumbassery in any way. When it was over, she told me to sleep. But I couldn’t. I just wanted to keep touching her. Finally, she told me to go home and I did. I walked all the way home, like a billion blocks in the dark, but I didn’t care, because I was so happy. Not just because of sex. Because of how she listened. Because I loved her and knew she loved me too. Because who would put up with my virgin idiocy otherwise? This was my excellent life, then: selling cupcakes in the front of the shop, sleeping with her in the back. Getting paid on top of it. What a dumbass.
The next time I came into work, she barely acknowledged me. I thought maybe she’d act different when we were alone. But that night when we closed up, she wouldn’t even look at me. I thought I was maybe fired. It was terrible. I mopped the floors with tears in my eyes like a little boy. I considered making a big show of quitting. Leaving my pink apron on the counter, stalking out. Daring her to fire me. All sorts of dramatic scenarios. But I was too pussy to even talk to her. We just went back to quietly making cupcakes. A month later, we moved.
Yes, I know why she didn’t fire me. Why she was embarrassed. She knew what she did was wrong and did it, anyway, but I was too dumb about love to get that. It wasn’t the sex part that bothered me, though I will never, ever forget how that went, especially the parts where I was a shaking, drooling idiot. What sucked was how she was good to me for no reason and then suddenly not. I felt like a dumbfuck. So small. When we moved, I was glad to escape.
This story compares to yours in no way, Collette. Don’t think I’m trying to say I know how you feel. But it brings me, circling back—ha-ha—to my Uncle Soren. I used to imagine Soren as some kind of freak, someone you’d see mumbling in an alleyway or hopping freight trains, but it turns out he’s a pretty cool, smart guy. Still, I’m not sure life goes in a circle, like he thinks. But when I bother to pay attention, it seems like there are patterns, at least, things that match up. So here’s a shitty thing that happened, and I’ve told you for no reason. Beyond you’re a girl with red hair who was good to me, for no reason. And then a shitty thing happened to you. But I hope people will be good to you too. I don’t know what I plan to do for the summer. Or my life. The only thing that really sounds good now is going to Story Island and reading through Barrett Archardt’s old books. If I read anything interesting, I’ll write and tell you about it.
Later, Evan
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A few words of thanks.
My family, for being incredibly kind as I’ve shirked my tasks as wife, mother, daughter and sister in order to write. Thank you for sending me to writing camps and college and especially for listening to me as I lurched from euphoria to neurosis and back.
Mary Blew, for patiently guiding early drafts of this story.
Jim Heynen, for encouraging me to write and for leading me to The Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.
Kirstin Cronn-Mills, for her excellent brain-storming and friendship.
Michael Hettich, for his beguiling poem.
Maria Blum, MSW, for her insight and expertise on trauma and therapeutic practice.
Several readers also offered much help: Melinda Brown, Kari Fisher, Sid Johnson, Holly Keller, Meagan Macvie, Kristin Mesrobian, Laura Bradley Rede, Heather Reinert.
Much of what I learned about lake ecology I owe to Bruce M. Carlson. His book Beneath the Surface: A National History of a Fisherman’s Lake (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007) is a great source on the topic.
Laura Rinne, for the beautiful cover art.
Finally, thank you to Andrew Karre. I don’t even know how to say this in a couple of sentences. You’re just so damn nice, for one thing. But also: your patience with me, your way of seeing what I could not see, your giant literature-soaked brain. I am very lucky to know you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carrie Mesrobian is an instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Sex & Violence is her first novel. Visit her online at www.carriemesrobian.com.
CARRIE MESROBIAN is an instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Sex & Violence is her fi rst novel. Visit her online at www.carriemesrobian.com.
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