We Contain Multitudes

by Sarah Henstra

  The thing about your house is there’s nothing just for looking at. It’s all for using. There’s that massive stereo with all those separate parts: turntable and receiver and CD player and huge speakers. Even a cassette deck. There are all those stacked wooden crates full of records and books and cassettes. And I mean there must be at least ten different musical instruments in your living room. Some I didn’t even recognize, like that long wavy one with the little hearts carved into it and that rectangular one with the big silver circle under the strings.

  On our way out the door Sylvan asked Lyle about this clocklike object made of brass and wood on the wall. A barometer, Lyle said. My son dragged it home from somewhere. He’s a fan of the obscure and the obsolete, aren’t you, Jojo?

  There were two words on the face of your barometer: regen and mooi. When I got home I looked them up. They’re Dutch words that mean rain and fair. Apparently what a barometer does is measure changes in air pressure and tell you whether it’ll rain soon. Useful as well as beautiful, see?

  I’ll see you tonight, Jo. Thank you for specifically inviting me.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Tuesday, October 13, 10 p.m.

  Dear Kurl,

  Your uncle Viktor strikes me as a difficult man to please sometimes. He seemed pleased enough with the meal (Lyle makes a decent enchilada, doesn’t he?) and the drink (you have to admit that breaking the vodka out of the freezer even before we sat down to the table seemed another stroke of brilliance on Lyle’s part. My father is a genius at anticipating needs).

  My sister had to be fetched down for dinner. Lyle had called up the stairs three times, but she hadn’t responded. I found her humped under her blankets like a badger, dead asleep. From what I could tell she’d been in there all day. I knew she wasn’t at school, anyway.

  “I’m not hungry,” Shayna mumbled, when I was finally able to rouse her.

  “We have company,” I said. “The Kurlanskys, remember?”

  She came downstairs fifteen minutes later wearing a pajama top and a pair of overalls, rubbing her eyes like a toddler, her hair a comical tangle.

  Viktor was in the midst of addressing Lyle, adult to adult. He was complaining about you, Kurl. “You would not believe how much trouble it is to get this lazy son of a bitch to lift a finger. The biggest and dumbest of them all, and he thinks he’s too good for a day’s work.”

  “Adam’s in school, Uncle Vik,” Sylvan said. He sounded somewhat weary, like he’d had this argument with your uncle about a thousand times before.

  “But why? Why is he in school?” Viktor said. “He has no reason to be in school. He doesn’t even have football anymore. All that big muscle for no reason.”

  Shayna looked around the table with sudden interest. She asked, as an obvious-bordering-on-sarcastic change of topic: “So have any of you guys ever been to this bar downtown called the Ace?”

  You Kurlanskys shook your heads.

  “It’s this awesome music venue nobody knows about. Lyle, didn’t the Decent Fellows used to play there a million years ago?”

  “Nope.”

  Everyone looked at Lyle, who picked up a leaf of cilantro from his plate and shredded it into smaller pieces over his pork al pastor.

  “There’s a picture of Mom on the wall, over the bar,” Shayna said.

  And I suddenly recalled that the Ace was pictured on the postcard Shayna showed Bron and me at school, the one with what she thought was Raphael’s handwriting on the back.

  Lyle stared at her. “What were you doing there? You’re underage.”

  Shayna rolled her eyes.

  “These kids,” said Viktor. Again he appealed to Lyle, as if the two of them were out at some pub together, commiserating about their good-for-nothing children, and we children weren’t all sitting there listening. He pointed again at you, Kurl. “You know this one can lift two bundles of shingles with one arm. Like Popeye!” A nasty laugh. “He is costing us money every day he isn’t up there with his family. His own brother, his own father.”

  “You’re not my father,” you said.

  This produced a decidedly awkward silence. The rest of us stared politely down at our plates. It occurred to me that the vodka bottle next to Viktor’s glass was nearly empty, though Lyle and Sylvan had only had one shot each. I couldn’t remember whether the bottle had been completely full when it came out of the freezer, but I think it was close.

  Why am I recounting this whole scene detail by detail? Why have I just written all this out, pausing to remember as accurately as possible the vocabulary each person used, the precise tone of voice, the glances exchanged among the others sitting at the table? You were there, after all. You don’t need me to reconstruct the scene for you.

  Perhaps I’m retelling it in order to understand something in it, something about its emotional undercurrents. Obviously Shayna is trying to get under Lyle’s skin by flouting her breaking of rules like that in front of company. But that’s nothing new. Or rather, I suppose it’s new in that it’s more dramatic, more in-your-face. Your family dynamic is more mysterious to me, of course, because I haven’t observed it often. Kurl, I honestly don’t know how to describe what I was feeling as your uncle talked about you like that. I kept trying to read the expression on your face—but as I’ve observed before, your expression is always perfectly, immaculately serene.

  Yours truly,

  Jonathan Hopkirk

  Wednesday, October 14

  Dear Little Jo,

  So I found the part you were talking about in Walt’s book, about the butcherboys. It goes,

  The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market,

  I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and breakdown.

  I wasn’t actually looking for it specifically. It just jumped out at me, and it was exactly like you said—right away I pictured that little jerkoff Dowell. It’s the way he walks I think. The way he shuffles along with his head down and his shoulders hunched.

  Meanwhile there’s you. This morning I saw those gray felt things you were wearing over your shoes. They reminded me of baffles, these things you use on a roof along with insulation to stop heat transfer. So I thought about how all your Walt outfits operate kind of like baffles for you. A way of stopping school from leaking in and stopping you from leaking out. I looked up those shoe covers, so now I’m aware that what they’re actually called is spats.

  I guess I never really explained about my uncle, did I? He married my mom three years after my dad died. I was thirteen. Sylvan had had his own place for a while by then, and Mark left for the army that spring right after graduation, so it was just her and me left with Uncle Viktor.

  Shuffle and breakdown. Somehow it’s really hard to picture Walt the poet just hanging around the slaughterhouse listening to the butcherboy talk. I wonder how he gets away with it. I mean he never gets beat up or anything, does he? Nobody says, Why don’t you put down the goddamn poetry notebook and quit staring at us? I don’t know. Somehow Walt is immune to all these people. He just gets to enjoy everybody and everything in the world.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Thursday, October 15

  Dear Kurl,

  My wardrobe is mostly composed of thrift shop garbage, in case it’s not obvious. I shoulder right in there beside the old ladies at the Goodwill, looking for bargains. However, I do attempt to bolster the overall quality and style of my outfits with a few one-of-a-kind vintage pieces procured for me by Mr. Ragman.

  Do you know his store, way out on Lake Street? It’s probably never been on your radar. The owner actually goes by the surname Ragman; I’ve seen him sign an invoice. His first name is Mischa or perhaps Michel, but I’ve always called him Mr. Ragman. He has slicked-back hair and a fat belly, and he wears a black shirt with a vest and gold rings on every finger like a movie mobster. He’s in his late sixties now, and I am terrified that he’ll decide to retire before I’m old enough to
drive to auctions and estate sales, or wealthy enough to buy antique clothing at market prices.

  I can’t afford much of what Mr. Ragman sells. Most of his stock is women’s designer clothes, labels like Gucci and Prada. But Mr. Ragman has my measurements on file and will put things aside for me whenever they have a moth hole or two, or frayed cuffs, or anything else that will slow a sale. Shabby, some of it. But even the shabbiest of these items will still outshine the quality of anything you can buy in a store at the mall.

  Yours truly,

  Jonathan Hopkirk

  Friday, October 16, 9 p.m.

  Dear Little Jo,

  Sylvan was supposed to have finished the chimney cap on your roof yesterday, but it was regen not mooi. Now they’ve moved on to a job across town so he asked me to come by after school and take care of it.

  Shayna answered your door and said, Lyle’s not home but whatever, go ahead. It was a five-minute job that turned into forty minutes thanks to Shayna and Bron throwing cookies up to the roof for me and stealing my ladder and pointing out to me all of Lyle’s pot plants hidden among the tall weeds in your backyard. I guess it’s party time at the Hopkirk house when Lyle has an out-of-town gig.

  They asked me to stay for supper. They asked if I wanted a Coke. They asked if I was a pad thai fan, because Bron was making her vegan pad thai and they defied me to miss the meat. Bron’s words: I defy you to miss the meat.

  I said, I don’t care about meat as much as people think.

  I didn’t think about how weird it would sound until it came out. Bron started laughing, saying, What does that even mean? So I had to explain that people always assume I must be this strict carnivore because I’m so tall. And because it’s a football cliché. Steak and eggs for breakfast et cetera.

  I didn’t ask them about you, Jo. It seemed weird to ask I guess. But I pictured you upstairs lying in your tent. I don’t know why I thought you would be in your tent at that time of day, but I did. At one point I went upstairs to use the bathroom but your bedroom door was closed.

  So Bron is in the kitchen cooking her pad thai. Shayna’s telling us all these stories from school. At first I sit in the living room with her, but Bron is not really happy being in the kitchen by herself. She keeps popping out to say, What? Who said that? No way. That’s not how I heard it. Et cetera. She’s spending more time in the kitchen doorway dropping bits of green onion on the rug than she is actually cooking.

  Finally I go stand in the kitchen doorway so the three of us can talk back and forth and Bron can stop abandoning the stove. She’s making big piles of carrots and cabbage and ginger. Everything cut into tiny slivers. I mean I actually like to cook, so I was watching how she did it.

  Bron has these amazing ideas, but she isn’t the best on the follow-through is she? She fries up the onion and ginger okay. She puts the rest of the vegetables into the pan but then leaves them just sitting in there. We’re out in the living room talking to Shayna, and I can tell Bron is not even thinking about the food anymore. She is describing how a tanker car on a train will explode if it derails. Apparently they want to route these oil tanker cars right through downtown Minneapolis, so Bron is planning to write an article about how dangerous it is.

  But I mean I can smell the carrots starting to scorch. So I go back to the kitchen and stir it all around. I find a lid in the cupboard and add a bit of water to the pan and cover it.

  Bron follows me and goes, Oh, awesome, thanks, but she’s still not really paying attention. You should see the way they buried the public safety and risk statistics in their report, she says.

  Listen, listen to this. Shayna, listen, your voice says.

  It’s you, Jo. You’ve come tearing downstairs right past the kitchen without noticing me standing in there. You’re sitting next to Shayna on the couch with your mandolin. You’re barefoot. Still in your starchy, high-collar shirt from school, but it is unbuttoned and hanging off one of your shoulders.

  You don’t look up to see us in the kitchen doorway, and Shayna lifts her finger to her mouth and grins, so I stay quiet.

  What is that song you sang? I had never heard it before. I’ve been listening to bluegrass but it didn’t sound like bluegrass. Some kind of Renaissance song maybe. Some ballad. The song itself didn’t even matter once you started to sing though. The whole point was your voice.

  Bron is standing there beside me in the doorway with a package of tofu in her hands. I mean none of us even moves after you start to sing. We barely breathe.

  You sit right at the edge of the couch with one bare foot reaching forward for balance, tapping the beat. Your collarbone sticks out when you strum. When you sing you lean forward with your eyes closed and your head tilted up to the ceiling. It’s like you are listening to some other person singing inside you.

  And it sounds like another person too. Or it’s not a person at all—maybe more like a creature. An animal. Your voice has broken, is breaking. I mean I guess that’s what you are demonstrating to Shayna. What did she call it afterward? The ravages of puberty.

  You are singing in this new voice of yours. A crazed split-note tenor crawling up the scale like a creature outrunning death. Like a wild creature’s death song. I guess it was something about the contrast. Such a civilized, old-fashioned love song sung in a savage voice like that, and watching your throat make such a sound. I mean it made the hair stand up on my arms and my scalp prickle. I felt Bron shiver beside me.

  You sang these words: And still I hope someday that you and I will be as one. And meanwhile your voice somehow sang the opposite: that there was pretty much no hope of any reunion or happy ending. It must have been the contrast that was so beautiful and creepy.

  Afterward Shayna reached over and put her hand over your mouth even though you’d already finished the song. Goddamn, Jonathan Hopkirk, she said.

  You laughed and tossed your mandolin onto the sofa cushions and butted your head into her side. You heard that, you said. You heard it, right? Did you hear that voice? That was me!

  Bron tucked the package of tofu under her arm and started applauding to signal that we were standing there.

  I turned fast and ducked back into the kitchen. I don’t know. I needed a minute to get my face in order. I mean it’s one thing to write letters. It’s another thing to be invited by your dad for dinner. But it’s a different thing to show up by surprise. To watch you doing something private. Or something not quite public, anyhow.

  Sure enough when I came back into the living room you were hiding behind the sofa, down between the sofa and the front window.

  Hi, Kurl, you said, but you sounded strangled.

  Hi, I said. Shayna and Bron were killing themselves laughing. I came over and looked behind the sofa but you held up your hands to shield your face.

  Oh, don’t cry, Jojo, Shayna said. Come on out. We love your totally fucked-up voice, don’t we, guys?

  We love it, Bron said.

  We do, I said. We love it.

  So you came out. You had buttoned up your shirt, but your hair had rubbed along the back of the sofa or something because it was sticking out everywhere.

  Saying not to cry makes him cry, Bron explained. It’s like Pavlov and his dogs.

  Something’s burning, I told her.

  The peanut sauce! Bron gave a shriek and ran to the kitchen.

  It’s not real crying, you said. I just wasn’t expecting you.

  I know, I said. I’m sorry.

  I was asleep before, you said.

  I figured, I said. Your Inner Sanctum.

  His what? Shayna asked, but neither of us told her.

  You smiled, still sort of teary.

  I don’t know exactly what to say about Bron’s pad thai. The noodles were all stuck together. It tasted like ketchup, basically. I ate three helpings because I was shaky with hunger by then. I volunteered to cook next time. I make an excellent schnitzel, I said. I thought schnitzel was a normal food that everyone knows about, but I guess it isn’t. It had th
e three of you rolling around laughing.

  After we ate, we all took turns arm wrestling. When it was you against me, Shayna put her hands over ours to pull in your direction. I’ll save you, Jojo! she said.

  Don’t call me that, you said. And don’t help. I’ve got this. You stood up and leaned your weight into it. Oh my God, you said, it’s like felling a tree.

  Strong oaks from tiny acorns grow, I said, and again you all thought it was the most hilarious thing you’d ever heard. I don’t know where I even got it from.

  Ancient Kurlansky wisdom! Bron said, and maybe she was right.

  I’m aware I’m doing the same thing you did in that letter after Lyle had us to dinner. I’m writing a blow-by-blow of everything everybody said. Every little joke and look and movement. I mean you were there in the room too, so you hardly need me to do this. But I get why you wanted to do it. It all feels like it goes by pretty fast, like I could miss something happening unless I take some extra time and write about it afterward.

  We got you to sing some more. Bron requested “Imagine” and it was like the apocalypse.

  It hurts, Bron said, and I mean that literally. Physically. She said, It makes my tits ache.

  I have to say I understood exactly what she meant. The sound of your voice pressed on my chest like my ribs had shrunk. My throat felt like I’d been screaming.

  One thing I was noticing was that every time Bron or Shayna called you Jojo, you said, Don’t call me that. But a few minutes later they would do it again.

  So just before I left, I asked you: Do you mind it when I call you Jo?

  That depends, you said. Does it still mean Jerkoff?

  No! I laughed. I swear I’d forgotten all about that since the first few letters. I said, It’s just that I’ve come to think of you as Jo.