What We Left Behind

by Robin Talley

  “How am I supposed to know?” She takes a drag off her imaginary cigarette.

  I don’t have an answer for that, so I just call, “We’re ready.”

  Carroll comes out from behind the pillar with his head down. His hands are clasped behind his back like he’s hiding something. I wonder if his real plan is to shoot his parents. Maybe he’d prefer that.

  “Son, it looks as though you want to talk to us,” I say to start him off.

  “Yes, Mom, I do.” He looks at Samantha, takes in her crotch-grab and purple fishnets, and manages to stay in the scene. “You, too, Dad.”

  Samantha takes another drag.

  “Go ahead, Carroll,” I say. “You know you can always tell us anything.”

  Carroll frowns at me, then turns to look at his hands.

  Samantha and I wait. And wait. I wonder if he expects us to give him another prompt, and I try to think of what else I could say, but he says, “Forget it. I can’t.”

  He stomps back to the pillar.

  “Carroll!” I jump up and go after him. “Yes, you can. It’s just us. Just practice.”

  “You threw me off,” he says. “With that part about how I can tell them anything. They’ve never said that. They would never.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, well.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I’m all off track now.”

  “Can we try again?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m too freaked.”

  “How about we take a break and then come back to it?” I say. “Let’s go out. We can get some candy at the deli.”

  “The novelty of that has worn off, my dear.”

  I can’t tell if he means for that to hurt my feelings, but it does.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say.

  “It’s okay. I’m tired anyway. Let’s just go upstairs.”

  We go. Samantha keeps up the dirty-old-man act in the elevator, still smoking her imaginary cigarette, not noticing Carroll’s disdainful expression. My phone buzzes with a text from Toni.

  Dead from work. Cannot write anymore. Cannot read anymore. Going 2 fail, get expelled, etc. Send help.

  “What’s the missus want this time?” Carroll asks.

  “Nothing,” I tell him.

  I text back.

  You’re such a liar. You just finished your last paper didn’t u.

  Toni replies:

  Whatever. I’m dead from work all the same.

  I smile down at the phone. It’s nice to have a normal exchange with Toni. Lately we’ve been having all these tense conversations that seem an awful lot like fights. We always pull back before we actually start to argue, but I can still feel the anger there, bubbling below the surface.

  The elevator gets to our floor, and now I’m exhausted, too. Samantha has dropped her cigarette act. She yawns.

  As she opens the door to our room, Carroll pulls me back. His eyes are shiny.

  “It’s going to go okay, right?” he asks once Sam’s closed the door behind her.

  I can’t remember the last time I saw him this earnest. No joking around, no over-the-top gestures.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’ll be fine. Just remember to relax. It won’t work if you go in there all wound up.”

  He nods superfast, turns on his heel and takes off down the hall. I go into my room. Samantha has already fallen into bed, still in her fishnets.

  “Hey,” I say, nudging her foot. “You’re going to rip those if you sleep in them.”

  “No, I won’t.” Her eyes are closed but she sounds wide-awake. “I’ve been falling asleep in fishnets for years. There’s an art to it. You bend your legs just so before you fall asleep so you won’t be tempted to kick all night.”

  “Or you could just take your fishnets off,” I say.

  Sam opens her eyes and glares at me. Then she sits up, pulls up her skirt, pulls down her fishnets and collapses back into bed.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t trying to be annoying.”

  “I know,” she says. “You never actually manage to be annoying. By the way, that is, itself, annoying.”

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  It’s still late, but I’m not tired anymore. I change into my sleep T-shirt and shorts, and think about doing my Met Studies reading. Instead I stare at my phone, wondering if I’ll hear from Toni again or if that complaint about homework was all we had to say to each other today.

  “If you want to really succeed in not being annoying,” Sam says, “you could turn out the light.”

  I flick the switch. “Hey, can I ask you something, or are you sleeping?”

  “I am obviously not sleeping.”

  “How did you decide to be goth?” I’ve been wondering since September. I know it’s not the music, because all Sam listens to is Katy Perry. “Was it because you liked the clothes, or was it something your friends were already into?”

  “None of my friends at home were goth,” she says. “Ridge Spring, South Carolina, does not have a goth scene.”

  “Oh. So was it, like—did you really like Vampire Diaries? Or—”

  “Look, not all of us are gorgeous blond lesbians, okay?” She yawns. “Some people have to work to get noticed.”

  The first part of what she said makes me squirmy, so I only answer the second part.

  “Maybe that’s how it was back home, but it doesn’t have to be that way here,” I say. “This is New York. Nobody stands out here anyway.”

  That might be my favorite thing about New York. The anonymity. In this city you can be whoever you want. No one knows any different.

  “I guess,” Sam says. “It did pretty much suck back home. No one there got it. I was worried that when I met real goths they’d turn out to be obsessed with blood and animal sacrifice and Ouija boards, but now that I’m up here it’s actually pretty fun. None of my goth friends ever really wants to talk about the scary stuff. We just hang out and wear cool clothes. Plus goth guys are cute, when they remember to wash their hair.”

  I laugh. “Okay. Forget I said anything. Go to sleep.”

  She fake-snores. I laugh again.

  My phone buzzes. I take it out to tell Toni I’m going to bed, but Toni’s text says:

  Btw think I’m not going to dc 4 tgiving. Might volunteer at a food drive here. So I won’t have 2c the scary mother.

  I jump up, grab my keys and my computer, go out into the deserted hallway, sit down on the floor and open video chat.

  Toni doesn’t answer my call. Instead I get another text.

  Sorry, I can’t get online right now. Battery almost out and outlets all taken.

  I roll my eyes to the ceiling and press the Call button on my phone. Toni answers on the third ring.

  “I can’t talk, either,” T says. “Ebony’s sleeping and the demon twins are in the common room.”

  “So go out in the hall. That’s where I am.”

  There’s rustling. Doors opening and closing. Then Toni sighs. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “What’s up?”

  “What do you mean, what’s up?” I ask. “Tell me you’re not serious about Thanksgiving.”

  There’s a long pause. It’s strange, not being able to see Toni’s face. I’m used to video chat. It’s still not the same as being together, but at least online I can see what’s going on. Get some sort of clue from Toni’s face.

  Finally Toni says, “It’s just...the closer it gets, the worse it seems.”

  I suck in a breath. “I’ve only seen you once since the beginning of the semester.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I want to see you, I just...really, really don’t want to go down to Thanksgiving. I hate being around my mother. You know
that.”

  I want to cry. Instead I chew on my lip and look straight ahead. There’s a stain on the carpet in the shape of Idaho. I focus on that so I can keep my voice steady.

  “You already canceled your trip here so you can go to England for your interview,” I say. “If you don’t come home for Thanksgiving, we won’t see each other until Christmas. That’s another five weeks from now.”

  I’m angry, but I feel guilty at the same time. If I’d gone to school in Boston, we wouldn’t be having this problem.

  Toni sighs into the phone again. “I’m so tired. Can we talk about this later?”

  “When?” The anger in my voice masks the guilt. “You know Thanksgiving is next week, right?”

  “Please don’t be mad at me.”

  Oh, God. I suck. That was such an un-Toni-like thing to say. We never get mad at each other. “T, what’s really going on?”

  “Nothing. I’m just tired, and it’s cold here, and I have so much work to do still, and I’ve had a sinus infection for three months, and I hate my roommates, and I’m having a really tough time adjusting to using they pronouns and I think I need to try using ze instead but I’m afraid that’s going to be even harder, and I told Derek I’d come out to my sister over Thanksgiving but now I think I’m too scared, and also I really, really, really, really cannot possibly emphasize how much I do not want to see my mother next week or, really, ever again.”

  Whoa. “You’re coming out to Audrey? As trans? I mean—as gender nonconforming?”

  Toni sighs into the phone, long and heavy. “I don’t know. I was going to, but I don’t know.”

  Well, that explains it. This isn’t really about me or even Toni’s mom. Toni’s just nervous about coming out. I soften my voice.

  “You don’t need to be scared,” I say. “Audrey will be okay with it.”

  Toni breathes out so long I can’t tell if it’s a sigh or a groan. “It’s so easy for you to say that.”

  I close my eyes. Toni’s right, obviously. I’m not the one taking the risk.

  The thing is, I’m right, too. Audrey adores Toni. Toni could come out to her as a secretly evil warlord of some country we’ve never heard of and Audrey would be cool with it.

  “I know, but seriously,” I say. “I promise you, Audrey will be completely fine with you being...you know. Look, to be honest, I think she already suspects.”

  “Why would Audrey suspect? They have no frame of reference. They’re only a kid.”

  It takes me a second to figure out who Toni means. I hope Toni’s serious about switching pronouns again, because the they stuff is hard to follow.

  “Audrey’s sixteen,” I say. “When you were sixteen, you’d already founded the GSA. Of which, by the way, Audrey’s an active member. She’ll get this. Trust me.”

  Toni mumbles something.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I said, would you come with me?”

  “Come with you?”

  “When I tell my sister. Audrey likes you. It won’t be weird if you’re there.”

  It might be kind of weird, actually, but if it will make it easier for Toni, then of course I’ll be there. It’s one thing I can actually do to help.

  “I absolutely will,” I say.

  “I think I can do it if you’re there.”

  “You can do it. I know you can.”

  “I’m glad you called me.”

  “Same here,” I say. “Toni?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  “I know. Me, too.”

  We get off the phone, but I don’t go back to my room. I check my email. I check my friends’ latest updates. Then I play one of those gem-drop games on my phone until my battery is almost dead.

  I’m so absorbed I don’t see Carroll coming until he sits down next to me. I let my last game die and look over at him.

  “I can’t sleep,” he says.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Why are you out here?”

  “I was talking to Toni. Didn’t want to keep Sam awake.”

  He laughs. “You are such the übergirlfriend. Always at her beck and call.”

  “I called Toni.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I bet you still wound up the selfless comfort-giver while she sobbed in your ear.”

  Sometimes Carroll irritates me.

  “You should go ahead and get married,” he says. “You’re such a little fifties wife already. Hey, if she becomes a guy it’ll be legal even in, like, Russia, right?”

  I know I should tell him not to say that kind of stuff, but I don’t have the energy. I lay my head on his shoulder instead. He puts his arm around my waist.

  “Mind if I practice my monologue, as long as we’re not talking?” he asks after a minute.

  “Sure.”

  He drones on, something from Shakespeare about the air and the glorious sun and an elephant. I tune him out and close my eyes and think that maybe everything will be okay, after all.

  That’s when I realize what’s been bothering me this whole time. Why I’ve been sitting in the hall playing games instead of lying in my nice warm bed listening to the “Ocean Waves” audio track Sam plays to get to sleep every night.

  That phone call was the only time I’ve ever said “I love you” to Toni and not had Toni say it back.

  11

  NOVEMBER

  FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE

  3 WEEKS APART

  TONI

  “Harvard’s a disgrace!” Chris screams into the crowd. “I bite my thumb at all y’all!”

  “Yo, your friend is a dork, T!” Nance howls.

  Nance is the only one enjoying this. The rest of the crowd is booing Chris, who’s balanced precariously on the John Harvard statue.

  The game was this afternoon. The only football game of the season that anyone pays attention to—Harvard versus Yale. Yale won, thirty-five to three. So Chris has a point about us failing. Screaming Shakespearean insults about it in the Yard in front of hundreds of drunk Harvard students while wearing a bright purple Yale sweatshirt still isn’t a great idea, though.

  Ironically, Chris is one of the few people in the Yard who isn’t drunk. Chris is on a so-called “detox diet” and has turned down every single offer of alcohol, even though the offers have been coming in since before we woke up this morning. Ebony’s new boyfriend, Paul, showed up in our common room with three bottles of champagne at 8:00 a.m. and nearly poured it all over Chris’s head at the sight of that purple sweatshirt.

  Chris decided this trip would serve as a “post-dumping pick-me-up weekend.” That’s right—Chris and Steven have officially broken up. I heard the story on the bleachers this afternoon, Chris shouting over everyone else’s cheers so I could hear. “Steven decided he needed to explore some new horizons. I believe their names were Brandon, Justin, Cameron and Travis.”

  I know getting dumped is rough, but if I’d known Chris intended to climb the statue, I wouldn’t have agreed to come back to the Yard. My friends all planned to go straight to their house after the game, but Chris spotted the crowd and ran right for it. The rest of us had no choice but to follow. Me because I felt obligated, and Nance and the others because they think Chris is hilarious. I keep explaining that ze’s normally much better behaved, but no one believes me. I think it’s partly because they all keep laughing whenever I try to pronounce one of the gender-neutral pronouns I’ve started using. Apparently whenever I try to say ze or hir out loud, I take a long pause first, and when I finally say it my voice gets really high and hoity-toity. The whole effect is, I’m told, quite entertaining.

  “You got your asses kicked today!” Chris screams to the crowd. “And guess who’s number one in the new U.S. News & World Report? Huh? Huh?”

  �
��Stanford, you loser!” someone shouts back. Chris gives hir the finger.

  “You’ve got to get him down from there,” Derek says. “They’re turning vicious.”

  “I’ll help,” Eli says.

  Eli and I shove our way toward the statue, where a few people are waving their beer bottles menacingly at Chris. It’s slow going since Eli and I are both five-foot-one on a good day, but people take pity and let us pass. I doubt Chris is in any actual danger—Harvard isn’t a beer-bottle-throwing kind of school, game or no game—but it isn’t a good scene either way.

  “Hey,” I say to Chris when we’re close enough to be heard over the jeers. “Time’s up, dude. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Okay, but first!” Chris holds up a stern hand. “Repeat after me, T. ‘Yale rules, Harvard drools.’”

  “I absolutely will not say that,” I say.

  Eli reaches up to help Chris down. “They’ll kill you, man.”

  “Okay, okay.” Chris takes Eli’s hands and carefully jumps down from the statue. The crowd cheers. Two freshmen immediately climb up to take Chris’s place, holding their Harvard beer cozies over their heads in triumph. I wonder if they’re drunk enough to think we actually won.

  “Glad to see you all survived,” Derek says when we get back.

  “It was thisclose.” Chris holds up a thumb and forefinger.

  “Can we go home now?” Eli asks. “You two are coming with us, right?”

  Chris throws an arm around my shoulders. “Can T and I meet up with you guys later? I need to whine to my girl some more.”

  Derek and Eli both do double takes at the “girl” thing. I shake my head and they let it go.

  Nance hands me a Bud Light from a cooler. Chris and I say goodbye to the guys and go stand on the front steps of my dorm. People are celebrating all around us—it’s very Ivy League to celebrate losing a football game—which means we can talk without being overheard.

  “So, what’s happening in your life, Toni, my love?” Chris asks. “Clearly it’s better than mine, since you don’t appear to be a miserable wreck. Of course, you’ve always been good at faking it.”

  I hate that Chris hasn’t been drinking. I’ve had two beers already. It makes me feel vulnerable. I pass my beer can to Chris, and ze tries to pry off the tab without actually opening it.