by Deb Caletti
There was the rap of knuckles on glass.
“Break it up, kids,” Frances Lee said.
I was embarrassed, but I wasn’t. That kiss was so good that the evening news could have been there filming, and so what.
“Wow,” Jake said. He was looking in my eyes, and my eyes were awake now too. The me I could tell he saw—she was someone I’d never seen before. She was brave. She walked toward the things she wanted. Maybe she was even beautiful; I saw that there in his eyes.
“Kissy, kissy,” Sprout said.
OLIVIA THORNTON:
You’ve had kisses that make you cringe? Kisses that make you want to run? Body knowledge and all? If you listen, a kiss tells the truth.
“Brie is very beautiful,” Sprout said. “And kind. And she smells good.”
“Great,” Frances Lee said. “I’ll be sure to sniff.”
“One time she made these cupcakes with little pirate swords in them for Malcolm. Some mothers might have thought that was dangerous, but she knew that the cool factor was bigger than the danger factor,” Sprout said.
“Did one cupcake challenge another to a duel?” Frances Lee said.
Sprout wasn’t listening. It was one of those times where the telling is more important than the give-and-take of actual conversation.
Jake held his guitar; I couldn’t see his face, only his head of dark curls. He was playing something slow that made you think of new grass and the necks of babies. I wanted his breath again, in my mouth. It was a kiss that didn’t have a place. A kiss of Daniel’s belonged in the kiss department, but this kiss was wild and borderless. It was fantastic and frightening. I understood something for the first time—I saw the wide land of love, which stretched out far with infinite possibilities of jagged peaks and cool rivers. I saw the trip I was embarking on, across ground that was both timeless and well traveled, and completely new. And I had nothing on my back, really—just a few handed-down tools. There were no certain maps or powerful weapons to protect myself should I encounter danger. There was only the unknown landscape ahead, and me, standing before it with my heart in my hands.
Chapter Seventeen
“Malcolm has very shiny hair,” Sprout said.
“Shiny is nice,” Frances Lee said. She’d been very patient. For the last hour into Portland we’d heard about everything from the time Malcolm shaved off his eyebrows with Brie’s razor, to the color of Brie’s toenail polish (Taste of Mango). Being back in Portland made my chest tighten. The hard parts were here. Brie and our recent, suddenly dropped past; Abigail Renfrew, my mother’s enemy; my father’s house, empty of his token objects. The nice thing about being on the road is the temporary illusion that you will always be on the road.
“Sometimes he smells like jam,” Sprout said.
“I got to warn you right now. I don’t like sticky, noisy children,” Frances Lee said.
I only knew Brie when she lived with Dad, in Dad’s house, surrounded by Dad’s things, so I was surprised to see her own house. It was large, with angled, contemporary windows and clean lines, more like her statue than Dad’s shingled, ambling home. Brie’s house knew where it was going.
“Check the address,” Sprout said. She seemed doubtful, too, that this was where Brie lived. It was maybe a case of that weird out-of-place sense you get when you see your teacher at Safeway.
“We’re here. Let’s go,” Frances Lee said. She meant, Let’s get this over with. When we talked about Brie before, Frances Lee had said, I’ve seen her picture, as if that told her everything she needed to know. She added young and blond together and got stupid.
“Remember what I said about becoming a doctor?” Jake asked. “I’m going to be a…What does she do again?”
Before anyone could answer, Malcolm flung open the door and headed right for Sprout, until he saw the rest of us behind her and froze. He suddenly had the face of a little businessman nervous about the deal.
“Malcolm!” Sprout shouted. She put her arms around him and lifted him up and his tennis shoes were hanging somewhere near her knees.
“I remember you, Charles,” he said rather formally.
“You better remember me,” she said. “You got so big.” And she was right. He was taller, but it was something more. He looked like a boy, not a baby. It had been only a few months, but you could see muscles in his arms, not just squidges of baby fat. “You have a big-boy haircut.”
“I was coloring,” he said.
“Oh, cool.” She set him down.
He looked at me as if I were the grilled cheese sandwich and not the potato chips. But then he said, “Quinny, Quinn, Quinn.” Like Dad did sometimes.
“Hi, guy,” I said as Brie rushed down the hall to the open door.
“You’re here!” she said. She looked like summer—golden haired and happy, barefoot, and in a dress the color of the sky. “God, I didn’t even hear you drive up, I was drying my hair. Malcolm, you know you’re not supposed to open the door!”
“They’ve got a big man with a cheeseburger,” Malcolm said.
“I see that,” Brie said. “A story I want to hear.” Brie held out her arms and Sprout went to her, hugging her shyly. “Charlotte, my God, look at you. You look so grown-up.”
“I was coloring my dog,” Malcolm said.
“Ouch,” Jake said.
“You got a dog?” I asked, but Brie only rolled her eyes and shook her head to indicate an ongoing issue. “Don’t ask,” she said.
“We’re getting one,” he said. “Mom said.”
“I said we’d think about it,” she said.
Malcolm gave a nod, as if this proved his point. We made introductions, followed Brie in. Jake wiped his shoes on the mat even though it was a dry, warm day.
The house was all shiny wood floors and soft, pillowy furniture; Malcolm dive-bombed into the center of one couch when we walked in, as if this is what was required of the host. We’d agreed to spend the last night here, to give Sprout some time with Brie, and so Brie showed us Malcolm’s playroom, laid out with air mattresses and sleeping bags. Some heaven-smell of warm garlic and butter was coming from the kitchen. I remembered this now about being with Brie, although I hadn’t thought of it in that way before, Being with Brie. The way everything just worked. The way there was dinner and order, but only enough order, not too much. The kind of order that lets you relax because everything is going fine. The kind of order you feel safe in—there are no sudden crises of potholders on fire or abruptly being out of the one ingredient that can’t be done without, or of parking brakes being left off in a car that makes an escape and ends up on the neighbor’s lawn. Even with Malcolm in the house, there were Band-Aids and fish crackers and calm scooping up when there was screaming.
I had always thought of this as Being at Dad’s, not Being with Brie until now. But feeling this again, I realized its absence. Since Brie had been gone, there’d been a certain unease at Dad’s, that feeling a dog must have when he paces around trying to find (but not finding) that place to bury his rawhide. Some anxiety of being not one place or another. Some sort of emotional equivalent of the crackle that separates the radio stations.
“I need a dog,” Malcolm said. “They help you grow up.”
“You’re doing a beautiful job of growing up, all on your own,” Brie said. “Pass Momma the bread.”
Malcolm handed the basket to me, and I handed it to Jake, who smiled at me and passed it on. Jake was on his second plate of pasta.
“You must be, what, eight now?” Frances Lee said to Malcolm. She kept a straight face, but Sprout grinned as she twirled pasta around her fork. She’d taken her hair from her braids, and it fell down her shoulders in wide, wavy lines. Frances Lee had taken her shoes off. She’d relaxed enough to take a nap upstairs before dinner but was still walking such wide circles around Malcolm that it seemed like she thought babies and children might be catching.
“I’m four.” Malcolm was so proud that his eyes were star-beams.
“Five,
” Brie said. “In two weeks.”
“On my birfday,” Malcolm said.
“I thought seven, eight, for sure,” Jake said.
“Finished,” Malcolm announced. For little kids, the end of dinner is always very sudden.
“Salad,” Brie pointed. He ate a couple of bites. “Why don’t you get some books and maybe Charlotte can read with you.” He shoved back his chair, and Brie caught it before it tipped. She watched him disappear up the stairs. “Okay, so, chatter, chatter, chatter. He doesn’t stop. And I never got to thank you for bringing my statue back. I’m not sure if I can express how much it means to me—it was one of my father’s most treasured possessions. So, to have it back, and to know, I don’t know, that maybe we don’t have to be cut off from each other forever?” She rubbed the top of Sprout’s arm.
“We were surprised. Just, suddenly you guys weren’t there anymore,” I said.
“I wanted to talk with you, spend another weekend with you, have the chance to say good-bye, make some sort of plan for moving out. But Barry, but your dad, he wanted me to leave right then. I told him I couldn’t do it anymore, the relationship, and an hour later my car was packed and Malcolm and I were driving down the driveway, and Malcolm was crying because he hadn’t even eaten and I had no idea where I was going to go.” Brie put down her fork. Closed her eyes for a moment, as if seeing herself there. “God. I had to kick the poor renters out. But I was lucky I had this house.”
“Barry’s not the sentimental sort,” Frances Lee said. “Unless he’s playing the Barry Being Sentimental role, and then he’ll even cry. Otherwise, you cross him, it’s over. You’ll get silence. He’ll pretend he’s forgotten you, because anyone who doesn’t see him the way he sees himself is just not worth remembering.”
“I don’t want to bad-mouth him,” Brie said. “You’re his kids, plus one.” She smiled at Jake, who missed it because he was buttering another roll.
“We want truth,” Sprout said.
I could feel Jake’s foot, then, reach out and touch mine. We met eyes. They made some sort of promise. Truth, at least.
“Truth, then.” Brie told us how she met Dad when Malcolm was just a couple of months old and her father had just died. “At that point, I was in caretaking overdrive,” she said. “Father, baby, husband. If someone needed me…I met your dad when some friends and I went to a party he was at. He sat with me and had a drink, and he juggled a wine bottle and salt-and pepper shakers—” She laughed.
I laughed, too. Maybe it’s hard to understand, but I still liked to hear about his good parts.
“But then he got serious. He told me this story, you know, how he had these kids he couldn’t even see, and how it just broke his heart. He got tears in his eyes.”
“Oh, man,” Frances Lee said.
“And I was just there. He had me.”
Sprout looked down. She just poked at her pasta with the tines of her fork.
“I don’t get it. What is it with women and guys like this?” Jake said.
“We love a pathetic loser who needs a mommy and sociopath bad boys,” Frances Lee said.
“Maybe it’s a problem with strength,” Brie said. “You want to feel strong and capable, so you take care of some guy who can’t take care of himself. You don’t feel so strong, so you get with some guy who feels powerful,” Brie said. “Tough guy. Bad boy. Makes you feel safe.”
“Those guys are pricks,” Jake said. Inside, I grinned a little. His appearance screamed bad boy. But Jake was more than a two-word description.
“Some guy in tight jeans and a cowboy hat…Cigarette hanging out of his mouth?” Brie said, and pretended to fan herself. “Oh, God. I was nuts for this guy in college who was like that. Something about the way he smelled like cigarettes when we kissed, and the weird part was, I hate cigarettes.”
“Vicarious rebellion,” Frances Lee said. “Good girls being bad the only way they know how.”
“I don’t know,” Brie said. “I think the bad boys hit us in some I’m-all-alone-in-the-forest place. We see the bad and we think strong. He’ll protect me, all those times I’ve felt small.”
“He won’t take shit from anyone,” Frances Lee said. Her fork waved in the air like it was one tough fork. “Me Big Jock. Me Protect Woman. Me Get Big Scholarship Even If I’m Stoo-pid.”
“Kyle Simpson,” Sprout said.
Kyle Simpson was a football player who’d been in my Spanish class. She’d heard me talk about him—he was one of the guys who terrorized Ms. Little and whom the girls loved. A superjock who dumped anyone who didn’t have sex with him, and who drove a minivan. A minivan he’d put racing stripes on and drove like a sports car.
“Kyle Simpson,” I agreed.
“Great, but someday he’ll punch out a cop and won’t be able to hold down a job,” Jake said.
“So true,” Brie said. “Maybe our evolution hasn’t caught up to us.”
“Evolution.” Frances Lee looked doubtful.
“We’ve got some physical reaction, some gut instinct that a guy like that will protect us. But that kind of protection doesn’t even work in the world anymore.”
“The Western is dead,” Jake said.
“Exactly. The truly powerful now—”
“Computer geeks,” Jake said.
“A guy who knocks out someone’s teeth and barely graduates—you hook up with him, and you’re going to end up more vulnerable than you could ever imagine. No money, no real relationship. God forbid you marry the guy and have kids, and then you’ve just bought yourself a lifetime problem. Trust me, I know about this.” She pointed her manicured finger in Sprout’s and my direction. “You feel attraction to some guy like that, you better ask yourself some serious questions.”
“I’m not going to do it,” Sprout said. “I hate cigarettes. And cowboys are just okay.”
Everyone laughed. Sprout’s cheeks flushed. She hadn’t meant to be funny, but decided to be pleased about it anyway.
“Why can’t you find both?” I said. “You know, strength. But someone with—”
“Integrity. Integrity is what makes you truly safe,” Brie said.
“Okay, integrity.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find it yet,” Brie said.
“Gavin has both those things,” Frances Lee said.
“Lucky,” Brie said. “Lucky you.”
“But, still. Cowboys are more than okay,” Frances Lee said. “Right, Brie?”
“Musicians are better,” Jake said.
“Oh, God, musicians,” Brie groaned.
“Wait a second. Musicians with integrity.” Jake smiled.
“And college degrees,” Brie said. She waved her fork again, at him this time.
“Of course,” Jake said. “School of Business. UW. Next fall.”
“Really?” I said.
“I believe in a backup plan,” he said.
“Wonderful,” Brie said.
“Moooom,” Malcolm yelled from the other room. “I can’t carry all these!” We heard the sound of books sliding and dropping.
“Charlotte, you’ll be reading until midnight,” Brie said.
“I hope he has Curious George,” Sprout said.
“And that bear that pulls the button on the mattress,” Frances Lee said. “I love him.”
“Corduroy,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s right!” Frances Lee said.
Brie stood. She leaned forward, her palms on the table. “I am so happy, I could just hug you all. I knew I missed you, but I was trying not to feel how much,” she said.
“Moooom!” Malcolm yelled.
“I’m sorry you were hurt,” Sprout said.
“Me too,” I said.
“I’m sorry you were hurt,” Brie said.
“He shouldn’t have treated you like that,” Sprout said.
“I’m to blame too,” Brie said. She came around the table on her way to help Malcolm. She kissed the top of Sprout’s head, squeezed my shoulders. “I
thought he was drowning,” she said. “And I’ve always been a very strong swimmer.”
DOROTHY HOFFMAN SILER PEARLMAN HOFFMAN:
My own grandmother told me something I never forgot. She died at ninety-something—old. Probably because of that glass of red wine she drank every night. We thought she was a bit of a boozer, but now they say it’s good for the heart. I was a young woman, so this was a long time ago. She was talking about marriage, but it’s true for any two people. She said a marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own.
I’ve thought about this over the years, and I’ve seen many a porch collapse. To know that you can stand alone, to know that he can too—it seems very good advice.
Sprout read a stack of books to Malcolm. Brie asked if we’d like to watch a movie and then apologized because all she had were G-rated ones about fish and lost dinosaurs and toys that came alive. Jake put in a cartoon movie about two race cars that loved each other, and we sat on the couch with Frances Lee, and soon Malcolm migrated over, snuggling beside Frances Lee and leaving the big squishy chair for Sprout to squeeze into with Brie. Brie and Jake got up to make popcorn midway, and Malcolm fell asleep against Frances Lee before the race cars married, and Jake held my hand and didn’t bother to hide it.
Before bed, I was brave and checked my messages. There was just one. Motels don’t have gift shops, Mom said. There are no Hunts at the Candy Cane Inn. I’m going to call your father.
I turned off the phone again. I tucked it way down deep inside my bag, under my extra jeans and the just-in-case sweatshirt. I could put this in another compartment in my mind; I was good at that. That was one thing I learned on this trip, how good at that I actually was. It was easy, really, to hide away the things you didn’t want to look at, and easier still to turn one thing into something else by the simple force of your will.