by Emma Straub
Chapter 32
Friendship Loveship
Porter hugged Cecelia first, quickly enveloping her niece in her arms, and then asked what had happened.
“This is my homeroom teacher, Ms. Skolnick,” Cecelia said, now casually stepping out of Porter’s arms. “I guess you two know each other?” A few strands of hair were plastered to her forehead; she looked a bit wild-eyed. Porter stroked Cecelia’s cheek with her thumb and waited for Rachel to get out of the car. The driver’s door swung open, and Rachel planted her feet on the gravel and then pulled herself up to standing.
“Hi, Rach,” Porter said.
“Rachel Skolnick, look at you! Must be a boy, you’re all belly!” Astrid said. She pointed, as if Rachel might be confused as to which belly she was talking about.
“You never say that to me,” Porter said.
“You’re having a girl!” Astrid said.
“I meant about being ‘all belly,’ what am I? All hips? All arm fat?” Porter rolled her eyes.
“Hi, Porter; hi, Astrid,” Rachel said. It was true; she looked wonderful, which was not how Porter felt except in fleeting moments when she caught sight of her current silhouette in the mirror or a shop window. Porter wanted to hug her but Rachel stayed on her side of the car. “Nice to see you both,” Rachel lied politely. “Cecelia is a wonderful student.”
“I am?” Cecelia asked.
“Of course you are!” Rachel said. “And it’s been great to have her in Parade Crew too.”
“You’re doing Parade Crew?” Porter asked. “Like, building a float? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Such a joiner!” Astrid said. “Porter was Harvest Queen.” She squeezed her daughter’s arm. It was a fact that sounded almost like a compliment.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Cecelia said.
“Would you like to come in, Rachel?” Astrid asked. “Let me pull the car in, you can park in the driveway.” She didn’t give Rachel a chance to respond before jumping back into the car and zipping back up the drive.
“I’m so sorry, we didn’t have any cell service,” Porter said. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Rachel gestured for Cecelia to answer.
“The short version is that my hand collided with someone’s face.” Cecelia immediately covered her own face with her hands.
“What?!” Porter grabbed Cecelia’s forearms and moved them aside, like curtains.
“Now tell her the longer version,” Rachel said.
Astrid honked the horn and then slammed her car door shut. “Come on, let’s go inside, I don’t want to miss anything, and there’s no reason that everyone else should hear,” she said from the front door, as if there were more foot traffic than her dog-owning neighbors jogging by twice a day. Rachel dutifully maneuvered herself back behind the wheel of her car to pull up the driveway, and Porter and Cecelia walked behind it up to the house.
* * *
—
Cecelia sat down at the kitchen table, and the other women filled in around her. Astrid quickly grabbed a bowl of blueberries from the fridge and shoved it in front of her, then thought better of it, took back the bowl of blueberries, and replaced it with a pint of ice cream and a spoon.
“I should punch people more often,” Cecelia said.
“You punched someone?! They didn’t say that on the message! They just said that you’d been in a fight and needed to be picked up!” Astrid put her hands to her cheeks. She turned toward Porter. “Do I take away the ice cream?”
Porter waved her hand. “No, don’t be ridiculous. What happened, Cece?”
Cecelia picked up the spoon and dug into the hard surface of ice cream, scraping off a quenelle of chocolate. “There is a very mean girl in my math class, and we had a disagreement. She thought that it was okay to try to shame and humiliate someone, and I disagreed.” She put the spoon into her mouth and pulled it out clean.
“Who is this girl?” Astrid asked. “What did she say? This is shocking, Cecelia! It sounds like you held the moral position, at least until you hit her. You can’t hit people, you understand. I’m sure your father will be horrified. Hitting! He never killed a bug.” She turned to Rachel. “Nicky’s a Buddhist.”
“I didn’t kill anyone, Gammy. It was one punch.” Cecelia dug out some more ice cream and then offered her spoon to Porter, who slid into the chair next to her.
“So who is this cow, anyway?” Porter asked. “I am fully prepared to hate her with you, I don’t care if she’s a child.”
“Get ready,” Rachel said. “This is actually the best part.” She looked at Cecelia—“I’m here as a family friend, not as your teacher.”
Cecelia rolled her eyes. “Her name is Sidney Fogelman. And I think she might have a broken nose. But probably not. It probably takes a lot to actually break a nose, right?”
Porter coughed up some ice cream. Astrid looked at her, eyes wide. “Fogelman? Is that Jeremy Fogelman’s daughter?” She put her hands flat on the table. “Oh dear.”
“Is he sort of good-looking, for a dad, and smells like a wet dog? That’s who picked her up. Strangely, he didn’t introduce himself.” Cecelia held out her hand for the spoon. Porter was still coughing into her napkin. Rachel sat back, put her hands on her belly, and laughed.
“No, yeah, I’m fine,” Porter said, her mind reeling. “I’ll be right back, are you guys okay? I have to pee. I’ll be right back. Don’t hit Gammy, Cecelia, okay? Rachel, you’re in charge.” Porter patted Cecelia on the head and then rolled her eyes at her mother.
* * *
—
Rather than go into her old bedroom, which was of course now occupied by Cecelia, Porter went into what had been Elliot’s room. It looked much the same as it had when Elliot was in high school: neat as a pin, with a much-used dartboard hanging on the back of the door and several New York Yankees pennants hanging on the walls. Porter thought that his love for the Yankees might explain most of her problems with her brother: more than anything else, more than money, even, he wanted to win. Now he was trying to win a contest with himself, a contest that he (clearly, so clearly) was destined to lose.
The full-size bed was made, as always, with a plaid bedspread and fourteen pillows too many for a normal person. Porter flopped backward onto the bed gently, the way a scuba diver had to fall into the sea. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and then rolled onto her side, shoving two of the pillows in between her knees.
Jeremy answered after two rings.
“Hey,” Porter said. “I just heard.”
“About Sidney’s nose? You’re lucky I’m a doctor! Otherwise I’d charge your crazy brother’s ass.”
“I mean,” Porter said, her voice lowering, “you’re not a doctor doctor.”
“Oh, you want to be like that, do you?” Jeremy asked. He was purring. “Is this how you apologize?”
“I thought I could apologize later,” Porter said. “If you’re free?”
“I’ll meet you in the barn at ten,” Jeremy said. “I anticipate a sick animal. An emergency call.”
“SOS, and sorry,” Porter said, “about the nose.” She waited for Jeremy to hang up, and when the phone clicked to dead air, she stared at Elliot’s bookshelf, which was full of paperbacks he’d read in high school, several volumes of The Guinness Book of World Records, sports trophies, and no sign of a personality whatsoever.
There was a knock at the door. “Yeah?” Porter called, still horizontal.
Rachel opened the door. “Hey.”
Porter struggled to sit up elegantly and failed. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry, I was about to come back down.”
Rachel shut the door behind her and leaned against it. “Pretty funny that Cecelia punched Sidney Fogelman. That girl is a dick.”
“You know, I got that impression,” Porter said. “Is Cecelia going to get in trouble, y
ou think?”
Rachel shook her head. “I’m not sure exactly what Sidney said, but I think it’s covered under the umbrella of ‘hate speech,’ so if anyone is in deep shit, it’s her.”
They were quiet for a minute.
“How are you?” Rachel asked. “You said you were at the hospital?”
“I had some spotting,” Porter said. “But I’m okay. How are you?”
“I’m okay too,” Rachel said. “Josh and I have been talking a little. He came over for dinner. I don’t know.”
“That seems good,” Porter said. “Right?”
Rachel shrugged. “I still want to kill him. I’m just testing it out, just in case I might not always want to kill him. How about you?”
Porter wanted to tell her friend the truth, she did. And even more than that, she wanted to be the kind of woman who wouldn’t stand for bad behavior in herself or anyone else. She wanted to be a woman with standards. And she would be. The dividing line was so clear—the finish line, the checkered flag, the whole thing. That was how Porter saw it—an expiration date. She had until the baby was born—until she grunted and pushed her way from one kind of person to another. She’d push it all out—along with the baby, she’d push out this part of herself, the part that was juvenile and selfish and on the wrong side of her own history. Just not quite yet. “I haven’t seen him much. What was going to happen, really?” Porter was going to say more but found that she couldn’t. Rachel walked over and gave her a tight hug. Lies by omission weren’t as bad, Porter told herself, and she willed herself to believe it.
Chapter 33
Shear Beauty
Cecelia’s punishment, such as it was, was to help Birdie in the salon: an internship, for which she would not be paid. August, who very much supported the punch, volunteered to join her, and so Birdie now had two eighth-grade assistants. Two other hairdressers had chairs in the shop—Ricky, who would only say that he was “older than he looked,” with tight jeans that were always cuffed high enough to show off his colorful socks, and Krystal, who had cropped blue hair and wide hips and a good loud laugh. As everywhere in Clapham, Shear Beauty was a place to chat with neighbors about the weather, the president, one’s offspring, Barbra Streisand, and though Birdie and her employees didn’t know about sports, they knew enough to get through a haircut.
August and Cecelia took turns sweeping up the cut locks of hair, and carrying towels and capes to the laundromat around the corner. On the weekends, they ran across the roundabout to Spiro’s to fetch coffee and pastries. They practiced shampooing each other’s hair, and then helped each other clean up the water they’d accidentally sprayed on the floor. Mostly they chatted up the customers as they waited, which was easy enough, and August quickly taught Birdie how to install a credit card reader on her telephone, so that she could save some of the fees she was currently being charged.
After the fight, Cecelia had asked August what she should call him. In public, in private, in front of her parents, in front of the idiots at school. The answers were clear: Alone, she was Robin. In public, he was August. Not forever, just for now. Cecelia’s brain toggled inexpertly, but she understood that it was one thing for her to try to get it right and another, much harder thing for Robin to have to figure out. Mostly they talked about other things, like how cute Mr. Davidson was, and whether Shawn Mendes was beautiful and talented or just plain beautiful, and whether Cecelia’s parents were the very worst parents who had ever lived, if cheese fries were better than regular fries all the time or only sometimes.
The salon closed at eight P.M. on Fridays, which meant that Birdie would make sure they had dinner before they went home. Her last client was usually out the door by 7:30, and then they just had to sweep one last time and clean all the brushes and make sure all three stations were well stocked and that the electric teakettle was unplugged and that all the lights were turned off before they locked the door. Spiro’s and Sal’s Pizzeria stayed open late, but otherwise, downtown Clapham was dark and empty by nightfall.
August was sitting on the chair nearest the window—Birdie’s chair—while Cecelia rotated shampoo bottles so that all the labels faced in the same direction.
“What do you guys want for dinner?” Birdie called from the back.
“Mustache pizza!” Cecelia yelled.
August shrugged, swiveling the chair back and forth with his foot.
“Do you think I should cut my hair?” Cecelia asked, coming and standing behind August. She picked up a clump of her hair on each side of her head and held them out to the sides, Pippi Longstocking. “My hair is so dumb. It’s dumb hair. You have great hair.”
“It’s not dumb,” August said. “It’s classic. I do have good hair, though.” August blew a kiss into the mirror.
“What do you think, Birdie? Give me your professional opinion.” Cecelia tapped August, and they swapped places. Birdie made her way out from the back. She was wearing her reading glasses on a chain around her neck.
“Hmm,” Birdie said. “Let’s see.” She fluffed Cecelia’s hair, scratching here and there. Birdie tilted her head to the side. “You know, I think you could have an angle. Or some color. Have you ever thought about some color?”
Cecelia had never considered doing anything to her hair that would make other people notice it. Her hair was a color that no one would ever describe, like a dun-colored female peacock, as drab as mouse droppings and the straw bristles of a broom.
Birdie wasn’t finished. “Okay,” she said, raising Cecelia’s chair with the foot pedal and spinning it around so that Cecelia was facing her. “Okay, I see it. A bit of a chop—chin length. Then, we go for flames. Bright red. Run Lola Run. Have you seen that? I think it came out before you were born.”
“Oh, yes!” August said. “I have! Cecelia, do it. Why not?”
Birdie picked up a pair of scissors and put her hands on her hips. “August, want to run across the street and order us a pizza? I’ll get started.” She slid her wallet out of her back pocket and handed it to him.
Cecelia reached for August’s arm, pretending to be scared. It felt like she should ask someone for permission, but there was no one to ask. “Don’t leave me! Or, no, I want pizza! Do leave me but come back soon!” August nodded.
“Lock the door behind you, will you?” Birdie asked. “My keys are on the desk.”
August scooped them up and went out the door, pulling it shut behind himself. Main Street was dark—it was fully fall now and already cool enough to need a sweater. August was only in a T-shirt and thought about going back inside, but the pizzeria was warm. He sat and waited for a few minutes and then, carrying the pizza box out of Sal’s, he saw two men walk out of the corner building.
August’s parents had a theory: Someone was sitting on it, waiting for big money to come to town. A few years ago, Rite Aid had bought an old grocery store just outside the village line, and everyone lost their minds, as if Clapham would transform into a soulless shopping mall in the blink of an eye. August’s parents started a petition, Keep Local, Shop Small. They still refused to shop at the Rite Aid. Ruth and John talked about the place on the roundabout all the time—if someone local had bought it, and was just waiting to have enough money to renovate, Ruth would have known from the town committee. If it were some corporate giant, she would have known that too. Ruth and John were hoping for a really good ice-cream parlor or a great sandwich shop.
The street was mostly dark, but there were streetlamps every so often, tall shapely ones that made August think of Paris, though he’d never been, wrought iron with a delicate bend that made you forget it was made of something so impossibly hard. There was one puddle of lamplight right on the corner, and August watched as Cecelia’s uncle Elliot stepped into the center of the yellow circle, shook hands with another man, and then stood there on the sidewalk as the other man walked away. He then turned toward Shear Beauty, and both August and Elliot look
ed through the window at Cecelia and Birdie. Cecelia was laughing, and Birdie was, too, and August—Robin, in her head she was always Robin—started to think about what she’d like to do to her hair, someday. She was thinking mermaid hair, like her mother’s, the kind of hair she’d accidentally sit on.
“Why don’t you come in?” August said. Elliot looked startled. “I’m friends with Cecelia. Want some?” He pointed to the window with the corner of the pizza box.
“Sure, okay,” Elliot said. August watched as he ran his hands through his hair a few times and then jogged across the street, taking the pizza from August while he unlocked the door.
Birdie was working fast. There were at least four inches of Cecelia’s hair on the floor. “Things are happening,” Cecelia said, her face pointing toward the floor.
“Chin down,” Birdie said.
“I found your uncle Elliot,” August said.
“Huh?” Cecelia said, peering up from behind a wall of hair.
“Hi, Elliot,” Birdie said. “What a nice surprise.”
August slid a slice out of the box and onto a paper plate and set the plate gently in Cecelia’s lap before curling into the chair next to her with his own slice.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Birdie.” Elliot took a slice of pizza and folded it in half.
Birdie looked up, her scissors still. She made eye contact with Cecelia in the mirror. All Cecelia wanted was to stop being a person who other people confided in. Not really, not forever—but temporarily, absolutely. Not that her uncle had confided in her—he hadn’t. And she hadn’t told anyone about what she’d seen in his desk drawer, which meant that she could plausibly pretend she hadn’t seen it at all. It might not exist.
“What’s going on?” Birdie asked. Her glasses were halfway down her nose; she was making Cecelia look better, and she was doing it for free. Cecelia had never met her grandfather, so she didn’t know what he’d been like, but she liked watching Gammy and Birdie cuddle together in the kitchen when they thought she wasn’t looking. Sometimes Cecelia thought that her superpower was her ability to fade into the background like a neutral wallpaper. Katherine had expected her to keep her mouth shut. August too. Elliot had invited her into his house, assuming she wouldn’t open drawers. Cecelia was never the subject, she was an object. Even now, Birdie was doing the transforming; Cecelia was just a head in a chair.