After Ever

by Jillian Eaton

  “Ugh,” I reply. Opening one eye I watch Brian make a wild leap from my bed to his. He lands on his feet and begins to bounce, stretching his fingertips towards the ceiling.

  “D’you think they’ll have donuts? I love donuts. And hot chocolate. You forgot my hot chocolate last night. Winnie! Winnie? Are you up? WAKE UP!”

  “Ugh.” I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a morning person and having a five year old demon for a brother doesn’t exactly help the situation.

  Dragging the comforter off the bed and I wrap it around my shoulders and slink into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.

  I let the comforter drop to the floor before I brush my teeth and wash my face. Once I would have spent over an hour in the bathroom applying teeth whitener, painstakingly straightening every strand of hair, and worrying over any new zits. Now I just pull my hair back from my face with an old scrunchie and ignore the little pimple forming on my chin.

  When my teeth are minty fresh and my face is tingling, I pull out my makeup bag from the cabinet under the sink and stare into it, silently considering the black tubes of lipstick, eyeliner and mascara. I was never big on makeup before. Probably because my mom wasn’t either. I wonder what she would say if she could see her daughter now.

  Winnifred Coleman! You scrape all that dark crap off your face and throw it away. You know better than that. And while you’re at it take out those piercings too. An eyebrow and a nose and a lip piercing? What are you doing, going for the trifecta? This is not a horse race young lady.

  What about freedom of expression, Mom?

  Feel free to express yourself without makeup and holes in your face.

  Well guess what, you’re not here anymore. So I’ll do whatever I want.

  With my mom’s voice still echoing in my ear I smear the liner on, circling it around and around my eyelids until I get the desired effect. Shadow comes next, then mascara. I skip the lipstick only because I’m going to be eating soon and it tastes disgusting. I leave my lip ring out for the same reason – plus it tends to collect bits of food which is totally gross – and exchange the hoop in my left eyebrow for a little diamond.

  Brian is still bouncing on the bed when I finally emerge from the bathroom.

  “Get down and get dressed,” I say with a yawn. He does a cannonball off the edge of the bed and rolls to his feet, his brown hair sticking out in all sorts of directions.

  “That was fun! You have to try it Winnie.”

  “Jumping on the bed? No thanks.”

  He makes a little humming noise in his throat and trots over to me. I help him pick out clothes – a red long sleeved shirt with Goofy on the front, jeans, and white Velcro sneakers because he still can’t tie his own shoelaces – before I get dressed myself.

  “How come you don’t wear what you used to?” Brian. His eyes travel up and down my body in a disapproving sweep. “All you wear is black. It’s ugly. You look like a turd.”

  I not only tolerate Brian’s criticism, I welcome it. He is still young enough to be completely honest, a trait adults seem to lose the same day they turn eighteen. “I like the color black,” I say.

  “You didn’t used to.”

  “Yeah, well, I do now.”

  “’Cause Mom died.”

  My skin goes clammy. I have to swallow twice to get the lump past my throat. Brian watches me closely, waiting for my reaction. His blue eyes are too wide for his round face. I look past him, to the white wall behind his head with the picture of lupines hanging on it. I would like to see lupines in real life. They look so beautiful. So vibrant. But the only time we come to Maine is during the winter and they’re dead by then. Every last one of them.

  “Let’s go down to breakfast,” I say at last.

  Brian’s face crumples. “Winnie, I –”

  “Come on.” I snatch up the room key I left sitting on top of the television and hit the lights. The room dims, throwing everything into shadow. Brian follows me out to the hall. I can hear the quiet sucking of his mouth as he chews on his fingers and for the first time in a long time I just let him do it.

  My dad and Girlfriend #3 are already sitting in the dining room by the time we get downstairs. They have plates of food in front of them but the only thing my dad has touched is his coffee. Interesting.

  “Good morning!” I call out brightly. My dad’s head lifts automatically at the sound of my voice and not for the first time I am struck by how much he has aged in the past year. His skin is pale and wrinkled. Shadows linger under his eyes. He has lost weight, so much so that his green sweater and khakis hang off of him. He is a shell of his former self, both inside and out. And everyone says I’m the one who has changed.

  Girlfriend #3, on the other hand, fairly sparkles with good health. The brightness of her neon pink ski suit is almost blinding and I have to avert my eyes when I take the seat next to hers. Brian squirms in beside my dad and earns a light noogie for his efforts.

  “How did you sleep?” my dad asks. The question is directed solely at Brian. He still can’t look me in the eye without trying really, really hard. You would think with my dyed hair and black makeup and piercings I wouldn’t remind him of Mom, but somehow I still do. It’s so unfair they need to invent a new word for unfair.

  “Really good,” says Brian. He drinks in our dad’s attention like a dehydrated man would water. It’s sad to see, so I focus on Girlfriend #3 instead.

  “Not hungry?” I ask, glancing at her untouched plate.

  “No,” she says shortly. Her brown eyes – she must not have gotten around to putting in her contacts yet – flick left and right. In a near whisper she says, “Tom just told me the eggs aren’t organic. Can you believe it?”

  My eyebrows lift. “Wow. That’s crazy.”

  “I know, right?” Her shoulders tremble in what I assume is supposed to be a delicate shudder. “They say the milk is all natural, like I would trust them now. Tom is going grocery shopping for me after he finishes his breakfast.”

  So that explains why my dad has yet to touch a single thing on his plate. I pile my own high with scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes. Brian chatters on between mouthfuls of cereal while my dad does his best to look interested and Girlfriend #3 flips through a fashion magazine she brought down from the room.

  “I’ll go grocery shopping,” I say suddenly, taking everyone by surprise – including myself.

  “You will?” My dad sounds shocked.

  “I wanna go,” says Brian.

  “Make sure everything is organic. You have to check all the labels. Don’t go by what is printed on the shelf,” Girlfriend #3 instructs me.

  “Okay.” I nudge my half eaten plate aside and rest my elbows on the table.

  Get those elbows off the table young lady!

  I’m all done eating Mom.

  Good manners are good manners.

  Too bad you’re dead.

  My dad frowns. “How are you going to get there? You don’t have a driver’s license.”

  “Oh, let her go Tom,” Girlfriend #3 says dismissively. “She has her permit. We’re in the middle of no where for Christ sakes. There aren’t going to be any cars on the road.”

  Disappointment cramps my stomach when I see the pensive expression on my dad’s face and realize he is actually considering it. A year ago he would have laughed at the notion of sending his daughter down the side of a mountain without her license, and now he rubs his chin and scratches his ear as if it might be an okay thing to do.

  “I can take Brian with me,” I suggest, just to see what he will say.

  “Brian?” His hand falls away from his chin and lands flat on the table. “No, that’s not a good idea. I will ask the front desk if someone can drive you.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll do it.” I push back from the table so hard my chair flips over, but I don’t bother picking it up before I stalk out of the dining room.

  Winnifred Amelia Coleman! You get back here this minute and pick this chair up! T
hen you can go apologize to the staff for making such a ruckus. What is the matter with you?

  Sorry Mom.

  I hesitate at the double doors that lead into the lobby and peek over my shoulder. No one is looking in my direction except for an elderly couple with disapproval written all over their faces. The chair I knocked over has already been picked up. Girlfriend #3 says something and my dad and Brian laugh. I open both doors and slam them behind me as hard as I can.

  Bridget the receptionist ends up driving me to town. She isn’t happy about it but the twenty dollar bill wave in front of her face shuts her up.

  All the way down the mountain she sneaks sideways glances at me, as if she expects me to do something crazy like hit her over the head or jump out of her rusted out ’89 Oldsmobile while it’s barreling down the road at fifty miles an hour.

  When we finally pull into the pot hole riddled parking lot in front of the grocery store she makes a show of locking the car and pocketing the keys after I get out.

  “I have to pick up a prescription at the drug store,” she says. “It shouldn’t take long. I’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”

  I nod and we go our separate ways. Outside the resort Bridget is very different from inside the resort Bridget, not that I’m surprised. It is scary how easily people can change their personalities to suit their environments. As I walk briskly across the parking lot I wonder which Bridget is real – the bubbly one who sits behind the desk and greets people or the sullen faced one who thinks I am going to steal her car?

  The grocery store is curiously busy for a Monday morning. Weaving around the foot traffic I pull a cart out of the cart line and swing it towards the far left aisle where the fresh fruits and veggies are. A lady with a squalling toddler is blocking the oranges, so I veer around her and grab a tote bag of apples instead. The apples look brown and feel a little mushy, but Girlfriend #3 will just have to live with what I get her. Any idiot knows apples aren’t in season.

  I’m on my third aisle – canned goods and pastas – when I see him. He is crouched down in front of the spaghetti, easily identifiable by his horn rimmed glasses and sweater vest. It’s a different color than the one from last night, but it still screams geek.

  Before I am whip my cart around and make a beeline for the opposite direction, Sam straightens up, a box of spaghetti in hand, and sees me. His eyes light up with recognition behind his dorky glasses and he ambles over.

  “Good to see you again,” he says, all kinds of polite.

  “Uh, goodtoseeyoutoo,” I mumble. I can’t quite look him in the eye, not after how I acted last night. Why do I have to be so damn rude all the time?

  “What are you doing here?” he asks.

  “Shopping.” Just in time I bite off the duh. “My dad’s girlfriend is on this organic kick and they don’t have what she wants at the resort.”

  “You didn’t mention your dad’s girlfriend last night,” he says.

  “Sorry. Next time I’ll be sure to give you a full report.”

  One corner of his mouth quirks. “Are you like this all the time?”

  “Like what?”

  “Full of sass and vinegar.”

  It is such an unusual expression that it takes me a couple of seconds to think up a reply. I always know what to snap back when people call me a bitch, or a brat, or – my personal favorite – a queer goth chick. But full of sass and vinegar? That one takes the cake.

  Sam waits patiently, his crooked smile unwavering.

  “You are so weird,” I say at last. My shoulders slump. That was lame, even for me.

  “Tell me about it,” he says sincerely, taking me by surprise. “What do you have to get next?”

  I consult the hastily scribbled list grocery list Girlfriend #3 passed to me on her way to the indoor heated pool and try to ignore that all the I’s are dotted with hearts. “Uh, eggs and milk.”

  “Eggs and milk. A staple on any grocery list. Do you mind if I walk with you?”

  “Uh, yeah. I mean, no. No. I don’t care. Do whatever you want. I don’t care.” What is wrong with me? I wait for Sam to snicker and say ‘yeah right, loser’ for despite his sweater vest and those goofy glasses he is cute, cuter than I thought he was last night. My fingers tighten around the cart handle. Cute guys used to talk to me. Now they give me a wide berth and whisper behind my back. Things must be pretty desperate in Sam’s personal life if he has no one better to walk around a grocery store with than me.

  “The dairy section is this way,” he says, nodding to the left.

  I steer the cart around a display of potato chips and follow him. When we get to the eggs I reach down automatically for the carton marked ‘free range organic’, but Sam grabs my wrist. It is a fleeting touch, gone almost before I have time to register it was there, but it is enough to have my hand recoiling back. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Why get those ones?” he asks.

  I glance down at the carton I was about to grab. I have never been able to taste the difference between an organic egg and a regular one, but some part of me does kind of like the idea of free range chickens.

  I imagine them running through a meadow eating sunflower seeds and laying their eggs in pretty nest boxes lined with straw. I’ve seen the specials on TV that show the chickens in their cages, piled ten high. Some of them barely have enough room to move. If I’m going to eat baby chickens – let’s face it, that’s what eggs are – I would rather eat one that came from a happy mom.

  When I tell this to Sam in so many words, he just shakes his head.

  “You don’t know anything,” he says.

  My mouth drops open. “Excuse me?”

  “About chickens,” he clarifies. “You don’t know anything about chickens.”

  “And you do?”

  “I know what happens to a free range chicken when she isn’t laying enough eggs.”

  “They let her retire?” I ask hopefully.

  Sam’s gray eyes bore into mine. “She gets stuffed in a semi truck with her free range sisters and shipped to slaughter.”

  “Well at least she had a good life before she died,” I reason even as I wonder what the point of this rather strange conversation is. I never pegged Sam for a chicken advocate.

  “Dead is dead, Winnifred,” he says. “You should know that better than anyone.”

  I go absolutely still. I would ask Sam to repeat what he just said, except I heard every word clear as day. Dead is dead, Winnifred. You should know that better than anyone.

  “You’re an asshole,” I say flatly. Blindly I snatch up two cartons of the free range organic eggs, slap them down hard enough to break every single one, and spin my cart towards the register.

  Girlfriend #3’s list is only half complete. I don’t care. After paying for everything with my dad’s credit card I barrel out of the grocery store and race walk to Bridget’s car.

  She is slouched in the driver’s seat and makes me wait ten seconds before she hits the unlock button. The wind whistles, rattling the plastic bags and wreaking havoc with my hair. I ignore it. I ignore everything except the rage slowly building inside of me. How dare Sam say something like that to me. How dare he. Who does he think he is? He is no one. Nobody. A loser. A weird loser freak who wears sweater vests and prowls around parking lots in the dark.

  “Are you coming or not? I’ve been waiting here for like an hour.” Bridget leans across the passenger seat and opens the door, pushing it towards me. I get in and dump the grocery bags between my feet.

  Bridget turns the car on and pulls slowly out of the parking lot, weaving around the biggest pot holes and having no choice but to hit the smaller ones. I don’t say a word and she must sense something is wrong, because before we’re even halfway up the mountain she is trying to coax me into conversation.

  “So what did you get?” she asks.

  I stare vacantly out the window at the passing pine trees. Sam’s words keep playing through my mind like a stuck tape. Dead is dead, Wi
nnifred. Dead is dead. Dead is dead. Does he think I don’t KNOW that? Does he think I don’t know that better than anyone? “There was a guy in the store,” I say suddenly, catching Bridget off guard.

  “Was he cute?”

  “He wears glasses.”

  She nods, as if that explains everything. “What was his name?”

  “Sam. I met him last night. He said he was staying at the resort, but now I’m not so sure. I think he might be a townie.”

  “Sam… Sam…” Bridget taps her fingertips along the top of the steering wheel as she thinks.

  It dawns on my that if anyone would know who Sam is, it would be the receptionist at the resort. Not only does she check everyone in, but she lives in town. Or at least I assume she does, since the town we just left is the only one within an hour’s drive.

  “Is he really tall and gangly? Blond hair, blue eyes?” she asks.

  “No. He’s tall, but filled out in kind of a… you know,” I gesture vaguely. “Athletic way I guess and his hair is dark brown, not blond.” I can tell by the way Bridget’s eyebrows are squeezed together she is taking guessing Sam’s identity very seriously which is just fine by me. I want to find out everything I can about the jerk, starting with how he knew my mother was dead.

  “I know!” she gasps, as excited as if she has just discovered winning lottery numbers. “It must be Samuel Ratchett. He wears glasses and does temp work at the resort once in a while. Cleaning, running errands, stuff like that. It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “No, I don’t think so. He said his name was Sam, not Samuel. I can’t remember his last name. I think it starts with a T, though. Oh, and he has a weird thing for sweater vests.”

  Bridget’s fingers stop tapping. She turns her head to look at me and her expression is so filled with loathing it takes my breath away. “What the hell is wrong with you? That’s not funny. At all. I knew you were a psycho from the first minute I met you but Jesus, have some respect.”

  My eyes widen. “What? What did I say? That’s what he said his name was. I saw him last night and again today at the grocery store.”