Nothing but Life

by Brent van Staalduinen

  UNTIL NOW.

  thats right, lucky (only) neighbourhood friend, ur it. u get the job. (insert congratulatory clapping and polite cheering.) now, this is totally last minute, but u have to come to my bday picnic tonight. (i know, i know, birthday picnic?! lame. but still, its my bday, so u have to come.)

  u probably finish ur trash-picking-upping around 5, which gives u about an hr to shower and dress in ur sunday best and come over to the old lawn bowling green for 6. (yes, shower. ull need one after sweating in the park all day. believe me. i know. im bffs with vinyl mats that stink of feet and sweat and unwashed boy, so i know smelly. and yes, sunday best. mia is birthdaying and will be playing dress-up herself (gag). DO NOT MAKE HER DRESS UP ALONE.)

  so, ya, thats it. ur invited.

  this was long. sorry. (i hope u read it all.)

  mia

  I read it again. And I nearly drop my iPod again. Me. Invited to her birthday. And she’s funny. I laugh in the same places the second time through. Which has to mean something.

  I look at the clock. It’s not even lunchtime, yet I have this weird need to get ready now. Which is impossible because of garbage and courtrooms and charges and LoJacks and all the time I need to make things right again. I wonder who else’ll be there. If I’m the designated summer friend, who does that leave? That thought carries me back to the park to finish my day.

  SO GROWN-UP

  Here’s my afternoon: repeatedly grabbing the paracord lanyard and pulling my watch out to stare at it to see if time is moving any faster, but of course it isn’t. I don’t know how many times I do that. Takes forever.

  When I finally get home, I hear clanging and cursing in the basement. Mom’s awake and working. I yell a “Hey, Mom, I’m home!” down the stairs and make straight for the bathroom for a shower. Realize when I’m finished that the towel racks are bare. Mom must’ve done a load. I dry myself by squeegeeing my body with my hands, but it only goes so far. My clothes are a dirty, damp, not-an-option-dumbass pile on the floor. There’s a closet in the hall with clean towels, but it’s out there. For a millisecond, I debate a mad run in the buff down to my room, but only a millisecond. Today, the house is not my own.

  I crack open the door. Steam wisps around me into the hall. “Mom!”

  “What?”

  Her response is muffled. Her workshop door is closed. I cringe. A closed door means “I’m Creating. Do Not Bug Me Unless There’s Blood or the Apocalypse.”

  “Can you get me a towel?”

  “In the closet! There’s a whole pile of them right there! Folded and ready!”

  “I’m naked!”

  Awkward silence. A door opening, feet stomping up stairs, the closet opening, the soft movement of laundered towels. Annoyed mother muttering about finally getting some work done despite the distractions and teenage boys she’d like to strangle. Footsteps outside the bathroom. I hide behind the door and reach my hand into the hall. But all I grab is air.

  There’s a pause. A long, long pause full of a mom’s unasked questions.

  “I’m freezing here!”

  “Uh huh. So, why the shower?”

  “I always shower.”

  “Sure, but only after you grab a snack, drink a glass of milk, stare into the fridge for an hour while you scratch your guy parts.”

  “Mom.”

  “It’s gross. Don’t think I don’t notice.”

  “I’m still naked, you know, right here behind this door. A foot away from you.”

  That’s my trump card. My best play. Embarrass the mother who joked about guy parts into action by reminding her of teenage boys and puberty and the changes she never wanted to happen to her baby.

  But no. She laughs instead. A dismissive little laugh. “Yeah, I got that. So what’s up? Have an accident at work?”

  “Mom!”

  “I can wait all evening, my friend.”

  She’s enjoying herself enough to make it happen, too. It’s nice to hear the lightness that has been eclipsed for the past while. Haven’t I been telling myself I need to do more for her? Part of me wants to let her savour it. A small part. The rest of me is butt naked and anxious about a certain girl waiting for me and about wanting to time things so I’m arriving precisely at six so she’ll be impressed with my promptness and discipline.

  “I’m meeting Mia.”

  “I figured. The mad shower dash was a classic move.”

  And the towel is placed into my hand and I can bring it in and close the door. I wait for her footsteps to head back downstairs so she can reimmerse herself in her work and leave me alone. Instead, I hear her head into the kitchen and rattle some things around to make tea. Stall tactic. She doesn’t do tea when she’s creating.

  I dry off, wrap myself in the towel, go down to my own room, and get dressed in a light-blue golf shirt and a new pair of cargo shorts, the nicest clothes I own.

  Well, the nicest non-funeral clothes. At the far-left side of my closet there’s a suit and a dress shirt and a navy-blue tie with diagonal stripes. All hung on the same hanger in the same clear dry-cleaning bag that lets you see the stripes are red. And the stripes remind you of how you stared down at them all through a bunch of funerals for your school friends and teachers, who probably wouldn’t have cared that the stripes look like blood, but you did and felt guilty through every eulogy and tribute. Of how you insisted on going to every service and insisted on wearing that tie even though your mom sensed that it was making things worse and said you didn’t have to go. But you kind of did have to. Anyhow.

  When I finally go upstairs, Mom is waiting for me. Leaning against the counter and drinking a steaming cup of something, holding the mug with both hands, like it could drop. No burnt-rice smell this time. Instead it’s berries and cinnamon and something herbal, like hemp. Jesse called Mom’s eclectic collection of rare teas “hippie brews.”

  “Earth mom’s getting all unified, man. Far out. Dig it?” he’d joke. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Mom make a cup of the hippie stuff for herself.

  She levers a single finger from the mug and points at my wrist. “What’s with the bandage?”

  “Dressing,” I say without thinking.

  “Right. Dressing. PI rash from the park, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m not surprised. You should get your Aunt Viv to tell you some of her rash stories.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  She smiles. “You’re getting some nice colour, too. From the sun. The white of the dressing really makes it stand out.”

  “Uh, thanks?”

  “You look good. Older. Like your dad.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. My bio-bad (never my real father — that title belongs to Jesse) gone but still always casting a shadow on the wall behind us. But Mom is smiling slightly, like she’s all right with the reminder of him in me. That’s a first.

  “He’d like you, I think.”

  Like. A strange word for dads and sons. Even dads like him and sons like me.

  Mom seems to read my face. “I’ll have to tell you more about him sometime.”

  I shake my head. “This is so weird.”

  “How so?”

  “You’ve always talked about him as the guy who left. Like you didn’t want me to know more.”

  “He did leave me. And you. But he wasn’t a bad person.”

  “Did he know about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he still left.”

  “He was nice enough, but not dad material. He knew it.”

  We fall silent. A lot to process. Mom suddenly letting on that her relationship with my bio-dad was more than a passing thing. I wonder how long they were together. What they were like. If I might’ve liked him. That last thought burns. Emotional heartburn for the betrayal against Jesse. I suppose it’s natural to wonder about the what-could-have-beens, but I feel like even admitting that I’m curious will stain what Jesse was to me. Is.

  “Good thing Jesse stepped up,�
�� I say. I can hear an edge to my voice. Almost anger.

  Mom looks at me and breathes deep. Nods. “Jesse stepping up was the best gift a mom could ask for, Dills. The two of you were such a good team.”

  “Are, Mom.”

  “Right. Are.”

  “How much of him do you see in me?”

  “So much I can hardly stand it sometimes. So much goodness, I mean.” Her eyes well up as she says it. The twist of heartbreak. Mismatching the man she loved — the man who made so much of me actually me — against the thing he did.

  I say, “No, not Jesse. Him.”

  “Oh. I …” She tilts her head, considering. “I’m not sure, really. I’d have to think about it. I haven’t thought about him in a long time.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Alan.”

  “Alan what?”

  She wipes her eyes and looks me in the eye. Shakes her head. A quick motion, sharp. “Just the first name, kiddo. Jesse made you who you are. That’s where we leave this.”

  “We should —”

  Mom’s phone rings, the electronic chimes more like gongs in the quiet of the kitchen. Cutting through the intensity of this new discussion. Drowning it out. We both look over at it, our conversation falling away like a rope cut from a cliff. The screen is lit up and I can see Aunt Viv’s face and name in the centre, her expression annoyed, like Mom caught her in the middle of something important when she took the photo for her contact list. The call buttons red and green and huge.

  “Weird,” Mom says. “She always texts.”

  Another cycle of chimes begins, as loud and brash as the first. Mom grabs the phone. “Viv, what’s —”

  Mom falls silent, listening. Some seconds pass. “No, tell me now.”

  Another few seconds. Five. A thousand, maybe.

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a few. Bye.”

  Mom pulls the phone away and stares at it, like she’s trying to figure out how to end the call, though it’s one of those things we’ve all done a million times. The red button fades as she watches it. Aunt Viv hit hers first. The screen goes dark to save power.

  “Mom?”

  “That was Aunt Viv.”

  “I know. What’s up?”

  She looks around the kitchen and at the living room beyond the counter, mumbling about corners and dust and doing a load of sheets. Staring at nothing, though. Not really seeing. Her eyes are so wide.

  “Mom?”

  She grabs a scrap of paper and starts a list of groceries, as though the fridge and cupboards are empty. They aren’t. They’re as full as we need them to be.

  I put my hand on her shoulder. I’ve seen people do that when they need a person to respond. A person who isn’t in the present. I’ve seen lots of hands on lots of shoulders. Lots of minds struggling to keep pace, struggling to process any of what’s happened.

  “Mom. Talk. To. Me.”

  Lots of voices that are firmer than they would be otherwise. So the person will hear them.

  Mom turns toward me and her eyes clear. She tries to smile. “Gramma Jan’s coming home. They’ll discharge her in the morning.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “She was supposed to be in for another few days. I guess the heart thing wasn’t as serious as they thought. Your aunt said there was something else, something serious, but she wouldn’t tell me on the phone.”

  “It’s after working hours. I can come with you to the hospital.”

  Mom looks down at me. At my clothes. “Your thing with Mia. You should go.”

  I look down, too. Creases and laundered cloth. Skin so clean it’s almost new. I want to go see Mia but I also want to go with Mom — she looks like she needs the support. I feel the conflict rising, that ancient tension between girl excitement and family obligation. I say that I can see Mia anytime, that this thing with Gramma Jan is more important, but Mom shakes her head.

  “I should do this on my own. I don’t know what Viv is going to say.”

  As though to protect me. I get that. “But —”

  “Dills. Go get your girl. She’s waiting for you.”

  And Mom turns away from me, ending the conversation. Sending me out. But not making me feel better in the least.

  DEFIANT

  It feels strange to walk through the park without my safety vest and helmet and trash spike. As though I’ve forgotten how to be a normal person. I have to resist the urge to stop at every tree and bush to make sure new trash hasn’t wedged itself into the places I’ve already cleaned. Like getting all sweaty and dirty again would be an appropriate penance for abandoning my mother.

  I’m here. Come see me.

  Jesse’s voice seems to walk with me. I can’t tell whether it’s more or less insistent. My resolve to go see him is finding all sorts of reasons to put itself on hold.

  “I should turn around, right?” I ask, hoping he’ll walk me through this. Knowing he won’t. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

  Mom, I mean. Gramma Jan, too. But mostly Mom.

  Have you ever found yourself asking questions you already know the answers to? Not knowing why you’re asking, yet not able to stop yourself? Jesse would say, One, your mom is a tough cookie and can handle this. Two, she’s not a person you go against. Ever. She told you not to come, so that’s it. We honour the requests of people we love, Dills, and we follow orders from those who can order us around. And this was definitely an order. Clear as mud? Jesse has this way of making everything plainer. Even when it’s not.

  It’s still hot out, the low sun doing nothing against the humidity and heat. My clothes lost their laundry stiffness as soon as I stepped out the door. My rash is itching extra hard. I walk by the splash pad, where families on blankets sit and eat while miniature formations of kids attack the ice-cold spray and mist. Squealing and laughing. I frown at them, but no one notices. Their play like armour.

  The bowling greens lie at the southern end of the park. When the community lawn-bowling club went out of business, no one stepped in to maintain the perfectly trimmed greens. Now they’re covered in the same grass as the rest of Churchill Park, while the benches and sunshades rust away.

  Mia and her family have set up under one of the old sunshades. Smoke from a trio of low silver barbecues rises straight up in the windless air. The smell of grilled meat and veggies makes my mouth water. Sudden, powerful hunger.

  Mia sees me. Smiles. That smile like the sun. Melting my cold scowl away. I wave back, noting in a detached way that there are few things more awkward than waving while walking. But not caring.

  A few adults stand in a loose circle around the food, men in collared shirts and dress pants offering advice to the guy working the grills, women in dresses and head coverings. There are a couple of toddlers hanging on to skirts. Grade-school kids dashing around like the only reasonable thing to do in such situations is to chase each other. A few older kids, various tweens and teens, sit at the appropriate distance from embarrassing families. When Mia waves, the conversation stops and suddenly every eye is on me, adult and otherwise.

  My feet slow down. I don’t tell them to, they just do. All that attention. Like I’m walking into the thousand-pound spray of a firehose. Mia turns to all the grown-ups and says something to them. No one moves, their need to stare as heavy as gravity. You can’t move gravity. She hisses something at them — a bunch of words I can’t hear, then “Yella, yella! ” That makes them all chuckle and smile and return to their whatevers.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hi.”

  “Thanks for coming. You look nice.”

  “You, too. You’re …” I stop. My goal was to come up with some astute, creative compliment, but my words refuse to try. The sight of her makes them impossible. She’s wearing a sundress with a beige and green floral print that would look like camouflage on anyone else. She’s tanned and strong, and the dress fits like it’s supposed to make my down-belows get all worked up. What she wears isn’t about me, I know. But in
the moment? All that blood moving south? Sure feels like it is.

  “You, too,” I say again.

  “Thanks.”

  “Your family?” I ask, nodding at the group, who’re trying to respect her wishes not to stare but can’t help themselves.

  Mia nods and does a run-through of names, all of which I forget as soon as she says them. Except for her parents. The guy on the grill is her dad. The tall woman with the deep purple headscarf and her arms folded is her mom. Neither are smiling. This doesn’t surprise me. Boys everywhere never expect anything resembling acceptance from parents. You’re trying to steal their biggest accomplishment, after all. And obviously corrupt her beyond redemption.

  “What happened to your arm?” She points at the dressing covering my rash.

  And just like that, my mind returns to Pat pissing on me, and the buzz I had from seeing her in her dress is gone. Replacing it is a kind of abrasion, sand somehow getting behind my eyes. I didn’t get the same feeling when Mom asked. But here, now, I do.

  “Nothing much. A little PI.”

  “PI?”

  “Poison ivy.”

  “I’ve never had it. Does it itch?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I can hear my words and tone as they spill out like acid. I should stop them. I want to. Yet I can’t. “Foul,” Jesse would call it when Mom or I would get grumpy: “Wow. You’re acting so, so foul.” Saying that would, of course, make it worse. Nothing more annoying than someone else not playing along with your anger.

  “Okay,” she says, her smile dimming.

  “Am I the only one here?”

  “The only what?”

  “Non-family member.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are your wrestling friends?”

  “I don’t really have any.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’m a girl, and I’m advanced for my age, so I win a lot. No one likes a girl who wins too much.”

  “That’s dumb.”

  Her eyes narrow. “What’s wrong with you? A second ago, you were —”