Bittersweet

by Shewanda Pugh

  Hassan propped up his furry football travel pillow on the window, settled in, and shut his eyes. “You’re not going to sleep, are you?” he said.

  “No. Probably not.”

  “Is your face better?”

  It turned out the jock had known something about face plants after all. The tenderness had subsided and her cheek felt only a little puffy.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It does.”

  The overhead lights illuminated, the PA system chimed, and the usual announcements about exit doors and evacuations via land or sea began.

  Edy spent that flight and the connecting one flipping through in-flight magazines and contemplating the prices of next generation litter boxes, pet dining tables, and GPS pet tracking devices. Her mom used to say that Americans treated their Fidos better than their Phils who sat cold and hungry on the street. Then again, her mom used to say a lot of things.

  At baggage claim, Hassan muscled the last of their luggage off the carousel, staving Edy’s help off with an absentminded arm. She could help now that her ice pack had since melted and been discarded, and they argued over that, as a rough looking black man—real haggard like—with mutton chop sideburns and grease down Dickies showed up in her peripheral. Edy gave up on helping Hassan with the luggage and contemplated how best to mark off her personal space. She stepped back, leg bumping the carousel, and he stepped forward, eyes oversized and unblinking.

  “Edy? Hassan?”

  Okay, no.

  Hassan stood and shot Edy a look of barefaced confusion. “Yeah?”

  Before them was a man that had lived hard and worked hard with wind and sunlight leathering him, with time straining to stoop his back. He had bright, defiantly young eyes, though, that swept Edy as if memorizing her.

  He snatched off his cap, balled it in weathered hands, and snapped his gaze south. “Sorry about that. I apologize for the hat.”

  The hat looked okay to Edy. A little dirty, but whatever.

  “Um,” Hassan said. “Are you our … driver?”

  The old man’s mouth creased. “Yeah. I’ll be … driving you.”

  Were it not for him knowing their names, Edy wouldn’t have gone four steps with him. But what else could they do? Their itinerary had no next step. They certainly couldn’t live at the airport. Edy exchanged a cringe with Hassan.

  “I should call mom,” she said.

  “Good idea.”

  The old man bit his lip. He waited through three tries and two voicemail messages, one for her mom and one for her dad. Never did he say a word.

  “Try mine,” Hassan suggested.

  No answer there either.

  “Then I guess we’re off,” the old man chimed in and started for the exit. After a second’s hesitation, Edy followed, then Hassan.

  “What should I call you?” Hassan said.

  “Frank,” the old man said. “Frank Reynolds.”

  Reynolds. Her mother’s maiden name.

  A riot of panic tickled Edy, bubbling so much beneath the surface, but she nonetheless kept moving. They followed Frank curbside and onto an economy parking shuttle, where she wandered off until plopping down under a blast of dry heat. Hassan stowed their luggage on the racks facing a front set of windows and dropped down next to her. Frank eased into the seat facing them and graced them with an oddly boyish smile.

  “You’re a dancer,” he said to Edy.

  Hassan eyed him with a brow raised. “How do you know that?”

  Frank gestured at her wrist. “She’s got ballerinas on her bracelet.”

  Oh. Edy touched the gift from Hassan and watched it glint when she turned.

  Their airport shuttle eased on through traffic before coming to a sudden stop. At their destination, Hassan rooted around for his wallet, only to be touched on the wrist by Frank. It took four nods past forever, but he managed to rescue a few crumpled dollars from one pocket. He smoothed them out and offered them to the driver with a warm, whole-faced smile.

  They started off on foot in crisp, eye watering cold that reached under clothes and soaked clear to bone.

  “Maybe he parked in Cleveland,” Hassan said after awhile.

  Maybe they’d wake up in a minute.

  Frank’s stride took on sudden purpose. He cut between a set of cars, and then another, before disappearing behind a green Scooby Doo-like van.

  “I guess he found it,” Edy said.

  “Come on!” Frank called. “I’ll get the heat going. It’ll knock off the chill in a second.”

  Heat. The exact word to get them moving. Edy and Hassan ushered on, sliced the same right as Frank, and halted. Halted at the Scooby Doo van with its door wide open.

  “This is wrong,” Edy said as Frank took a bag from Hassan. “Don’t. Just … get the luggage back Hassan. I’m calling my mother.” She fished out her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans.

  On the other end, the phone began to ring. Meanwhile, Hassan looked from her to Frank, who continued packing up their bags.

  “Would you—” Edy flailed an arm at Hassan. “Do something! Don’t let him kidnap us.”

  “There’s no one else here to get us!” Hassan shot back.

  Edy’s mother finally picked up. “Jesus Christ, mom! Where have you been? What’s going on? This guy here that says his name is —”

  “Edith,” her mother said. “Listen to me. There was a last minute change in plans. You’re staying with Frank for the holiday season.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because he’s my father. If you don’t like it, sleep at the airport.”

  The line went dead.

  Five

  On squeaking wheels they crept from airport to highway. Hassan said nothing. Edy even less. She’d started gnawing on her thumb and shifting, back and forth in her seat, as if every position ached her.

  She’d had a tycoon grandfather once and a circuit court judge for a grandmother. Those were the parents of Rebecca he remembered. Not that he ‘remembered’ them, unlike Nathan’s parents; Hassan had never met them, let alone bonded. But there’d been stories, or bits of stories, or maybe not even that. Actually now, he couldn’t recall Becca ever reminiscing about her parents. But who had ever heard Becca reminisce? It all felt like smoke and fire now, hot and confusing, choking him still.

  Damn if this drive didn’t go on. Cincinnati wasn’t much like Boston; they had tons of trees and flat land and, and … had he just been welcomed to Kentucky? Hassan looked over at Edy, balled up and snoring in the corner near some checkered blanket.

  Now she wanted to sleep.

  He sat up straighter. “Uh, Frank? Where are you taking us?”

  He laughed. “My house. Where else?”

  His house. “And where’s your house?”

  He must’ve taken the question as some incentive, because the engine revved.

  “Same place it’s always been: Gaitlin, Kentucky.”

  The house turned out to be more land than home and they arrived just as Edy woke, with her looking more confused and as hesitant as ever. But he knew her. This wasn’t about stuff. It was about everything she’d ever been force fed suddenly upchucked on command.

  Edy looked at him with the question in her eyes.

  “Gaitlin, Kentucky,” he said. “Where your mother grew up.”

  He threw open the door and jumped out, pissed for her and unable to hide it. Still, this was her show and he’d do his best to feel whatever she felt. If this was all okay and wound up being some big happy reunion with relatives they forgot from their infancy, then great. If it was all too much and Edy wound up pushing down Kentucky highway on rubber soles, well, then that made two of them.

  With his back to the van, Hassan took in the house. One floor. Wasp narrow. Robin blue scrapped clapboard. It leaned to one side as if surprised that the earth sloped right there. The place did have grass as far as the eye could see. And then he did see.

  Edy appeared at his side. “Are those chickens?” she said pointing to a small
red shed off a bit from the house and the little bodies that roamed before it, pecking at the ground.

  “Definitely chickens. Hungry?” he said.

  “Oh, don’t get too excited,” Frank said. “We only keep a few for the lean season.” He came around to touch Edy on the arm. “C’mon. Mary’s going to die when she sees you.”

  They grabbed the luggage, waited for Frank to wrestle with the screen door, and eased past it with their luggage as it battered them. Then a woman screamed.

  No. Hell no. This was Rebecca, right down to the severe, gothic kind of beauty, the dancing, glittering dark eyes, and the black sweep of hair. He wasn’t crazy, right? No. Four hundred conflicting emotions warred on Edy’s face. Fear. Uncertainty. Confusion. Distrust.

  “You made it!” The woman squealed and smothered them to her bosom like long lost children.

  She’d gone and done it. She’d done the worst, most contradictory thing she could manage while wearing Rebecca’s face.

  Edy thrashed, shoved off, and tore for the front door, spilling wild over the handle of Hassan’s luggage and into the front yard.

  Shit. “Excuse me,” Hassan said. “Excuse us a minute.” He discovered Edy out front, head down, pacing hard.

  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said and wiped at her face.

  Brisk wind battered and bent naked branches under its onslaught, while the ground’s few dead leaves swooped and danced at their feet. Edy walked among them, back and forth, back and forth.

  “Do you believe they’re my grandparents?” she asked. “Do you, really?” Hope glinted faint in her eyes.

  He felt bad about that. Real bad.

  “Yeah,” Hassan said. “I do.” He pulled her from the pace and wrapped her in his arms, squeezing tight as he dared. He looked up to find her grandfather in the doorway, sheepish, with a hat in his hand.

  “Let me talk to her,” he said.

  Hassan hesitated.

  “It’s okay,” Edy said and pulled away from him. “I’ll talk to him.”

  So, he left them to the Kentucky cold and returned indoors.

  The Reynolds had the smallest living room he’d ever seen. Everything looked sanded down or hand crafted. A rickety wooden couch with peach cushions faced a low lying pine coffee table, bright with wild flowers jutting from a ceramic vase. Adjacent to that sat a dug out and stamped down fireplace.

  “Hassan,” Mary said in a curling, delicate Southern drawl. She shoved aside the flowers to take a seat on the low pine table. “You are a pretty thing. And thoughtful, too. Don’t you worry though; your dove will be just fine. Frank’s used to sorting out Becca’s messes. Or rather, he used to be.”

  She squeezed his hand with such absentminded affection that Hassan found himself smiling before he buried it, feeling weirdly disloyal to Edy. He glanced toward the front door and earned a wild laugh.

  “My goodness, boy, you are lovesick! Good thing she is, too.”

  Hassan’s head jerked. “What did you say?”

  She stood and pursed her lips as if bored with his antics already. “Help me with these dishes, boy. I haven’t got time for you to figure out which lie you want to tell me.” She sauntered off to what looked like the start of a kitchen. Apparently, it ended there, too.

  Wait a minute. Did she just ask him to do dishes?

  And yeah, Hassan busted suds—by hand—during his first few hours among the Reynolds. So much for Southern hospitality. Wasn’t someone supposed to bless his heart or offer him sweet tea or something like that? Housework wasn’t exactly where his experiences lie. As he had the thought, a plate shattered against the counter while he still held a chunk of it.

  Jeez. “Sorry,” Hassan said.

  Mary lifted a brow and grinned. “Klutz.” She dragged the word out, fingers on his chalkboard.

  Hassan’s fingers clenched on the plate. “I am not a klutz. I’m an athlete. I—I just spaced out for a minute. Again, I’m sorry.” And he really was.

  “Yeah?” she said and poked him in the side with a finger. “Well, you broke my damned plate.” Edy’s grandmother threw a wet hand on her jutting hip, oblivious to the suds running down her leg.

  “I’ll replace it if you want,” he said. “Or give you what it’s worth.” He had cash and credit cards to rely on.

  Mary returned to the dishes as if she hadn’t heard. “I guess your reflexes must be bad,” she finally said.

  Hassan flared, nearly chipping the next dish as he reached for it. “Listen. My reflexes are impeccable. I’m the fastest running back in Massachusetts—”

  “That ain’t saying much in Kentucky, baby.”

  Okay, seriously? “Just forget it.” It was a plate. Why was he letting her get under his skin? This was Rebecca’s mom, right? He didn’t have to prove anything to—

  “Race me,” she said.

  Hassan shot her a look. “Stop it.”

  She dried her hands on a dishtowel. “Klutz. Clown. Oaf. Dunce. Nincompoop.”

  Was this old lady for real? Hassan had shelves of trophies, hardware that proved his worth. He wasn’t racing his girlfriend’s grandma.

  She raised a brow at him. “Slowpoke.”

  “Let’s go.” He threw down his towel.

  She clapped her hands in triumph. “You have to give me a head start.”

  “Take whatever you need.”

  They rounded to the back of the house before Mary pointed at the chicken coop.

  “First one there,” she announced.

  “Now’s the part where you tell me you were some kind of college track star, right?” Hassan said. He stretched first one leg, then the other. “All state? Olympic Gold Medalist?” This was Edy’s family, after all.

  “Nope.” She sniggered and took off, clothes flapping in the wind.

  Nice try. He sliced the distance between them in three steps, stride wide, form perfect. Only Mary dove for him when he neared, looping like hangman’s rope so they collapsed to the packed dirt together.

  “Nobody wins!” she cried.

  What the hell ever.

  Hassan peeled off first her left arm, then the right, as Edy’s grandmother hooted, wild in her efforts to reattach and cling, not caring about the dirt she—they thrashed in. Hassan unwound, laughing despite himself, and swatted her from his leg before sprinting for the chicken coop.

  He looked up to find Frank and Edy staring wide eyed, struggling with confusion, then confusion turned to laughter. It struck Hassan how alike their eyes were.

  “You lost, pretty boy!” Edy’s grandmother cried.

  “What! You didn’t even make it to the chickens!” He glanced back at the chicken coop, as if to verify that he still stood where he stood. “And you’re still not here!”

  She threw her hands on her hips, hair wild in the wind, and smiled a smile just a blink past wild. “Chickens?” she called. “The bet was on whether you’re a klutz. Now did you see yourself fall? Look at how dirty you are.”

  Hassan looked down at his mud streaked clothes, then at Edy, who seemed pretty pleased at the moment. Well, him losing a footrace to her grandma had at least made Edy smile. That was worth something in the middle of madness.

  Six

  Edy slipped off her knit cap and dropped into the bottom bunk of a pillow-cramped full sized bed. She ran a hand over the crocheted covered pillowcase enmeshed with interlocking Rs and wondered how long it took her grandmother to make it and how little her mother appreciated it. She kicked off her sneakers and stretched out, before folding her hands behind her head to stare up at the wooden anchors that supported the top bunk.

  Her mother’s bed. Her mother’s walls. Her mother’s hands, fingers, toes, and body in this bed, in this moment, older, younger, different, obtuse, uncaring, unaware.

  Edy rolled to one side, nose to cool wall, and inhaled. How out of place had her mother felt in this drafty, narrow house? Alienated enough to fashion a history of falsehoods, a lineage of fables as credible as the Brothers Grimm? Or amb
itious enough to use lies as stepping stones, not caring who she trampled on the way?

  Maybe she’d felt like Edy did when the girls styled their hair at school in the bathroom and talked fashion as they glossed their lips just so. Or was it more like the brittle smile and nausea of watching Bollywood wedding scenes with Rani?

  Edy looked up to find Hassan and her grandfather in the doorway. She sat upright, trying on a smile in her best attempt to look upbeat. She knew Hassan would feel her mood and she hated to drag him down with her. He had an avalanche of thoughts and emotions to contend with, without him piling on concern for her. She wouldn’t break. But as her grandfather ran a hand along the frame of the door, Hassan x-rayed her face with worry. She wouldn’t break. Not even seeing her best friend shot had done that.

  “I didn’t know the both of you were coming,” her grandfather said and glanced at Hassan, “until after you’d boarded the plane. So, you’ll have to forgive what you see. I can tell you’re used to better.” He stood to run a thumb along the pine of the door frame and turned a stern eye on Hassan. “I had plans to put you on the couch, boy, but I hadn’t counted on you being bigger than the furniture. So, new plan.”

  Edy’s grandfather yanked the top mattress off the bed and tossed it to the floor. “Edy stays in this bed. And you stay in yours. I have a rifle in my bedroom that, while it ain’t loaded, can get loaded pretty quick if the two of you get confused about this part.”

  He pivoted back and slipped a finger through the belt loop of his Dickies, mouth swung down like a horseshoe. He was John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in caricature.

  Edy stared at him. “You’re not really threatening him, are you?”

  Her grandfather’s glare melted into shame and sheepishness. “Listen. I don’t want to, okay? So, behave. They say you two are like brother and sister anyway. I’m just covering the bases.”

  Edy felt a stab of guilt for shaking him free of his threat. He seemed so uncomfortable without it.

  He turned an appraising eye on Hassan. “Now, there’s too much furniture to stick you in the living room without your head or feet winding up in the fireplace. My wife says it’s uncivil for you to sleep in the hall. So, you’re in this here bedroom. Don’t make me regret it. I’m talking to you both.”