Sycamore

by Bryn Chancellor

  Jess walked behind Iris through the trees, almost skipping to keep pace with the bald pinball woman. She tried to determine the smell: a lemony tang, combined with wet dirt and sun-heated grass. The buds will break soon. The shaking season. The words flitted through her mind, and goose bumps rose on her arms.

  On Jess’s second weekend working at the orchards, as she addressed envelopes for the monthly sales flyer, a young man in a tank top and nylon shorts jogged past the office window. Paul Overton, she guessed. He was tall, several inches taller than her, as Iris had said, and whip-thin. He had dark curly hair, unruly as a fern and hanging to the middle of his neck, now plastered to his sweaty forehead and cheeks. As he passed the window, he lifted the hem of his damp shirt to wipe his face, and Jess glimpsed his lean, muscled stomach. The sight made her mouth soften, a nervous flick in her belly. She remembered the Boy, his warm flesh against hers, the flare of his hipbones under her fingers, before she tamped down the memory.

  About a half hour later, Paul came into the office. He’d showered, his mass of wet hair dripping onto a dry T-shirt and shorts. He lifted a hand in greeting.

  “You must be Jess,” he said. “I’m Paul. My mom said you started working here.”

  “That’s me,” she said.

  “How’s it going so far? Do you like it here?”

  “The orchard? Or Syc-to-my-Stomach?”

  He laughed. “We call it Suck-a-more.”

  She grinned back. “Noted.”

  The bell on the office door dinged, and Jess turned to greet the customer. Dani Newell stood in the doorway. Jess blinked, confused. What was Dani Newell doing at the orchard? She had started to call out a greeting when Paul grinned. He stepped forward and pulled Dani toward him, lifted her right off the ground and almost to the ceiling, her tiny feet dangling, her giant glasses knocked askew.

  Jess looked away from their embrace, trying to hide her surprise. Dani Newell was his girlfriend? In ten million years, she never would have guessed they were a couple. Caught up in his hug, Dani laughed, red-cheeked, so different from the wound-tight girl who sat across from her, avoiding eye contact. Even her hair had loosened, the sides falling around her face.

  Paul dropped her to the ground, and they whispered to each other. Jess pressed a stamp on an envelope and smoothed its ridged edges.

  Dani said, “How are you?”

  Jess looked up, and Dani was staring straight at her. Me? she almost said. She sat up straighter. “Fine.”

  Dani said, “I hear you scared the hell out of Marci Tennant.”

  Jess rubbed the stamp, wondering if this was a trick of some kind. She gave a tentative smile. “I don’t know. I guess. She definitely hates my guts.”

  “She’s an idiot,” Dani said. She shook her head, pushing her glasses up her nose.

  Jess smiled for real then. “Blithering,” she said. “She and her wicked scrunchie minions.”

  Dani nodded, the corner of her mouth quirked. As Paul took her hand and led her toward his house, she turned and waved at Jess. “See you at lunch then.”

  Jess waved back. “See you.” A lump rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard on it. Seeing. To be seen. She pressed her thumb hard on the stamp.

  The next day at lunch in Ms. G’s classroom, Dani sat at her desk again, wrapped up in her reading, and for a moment Jess thought nothing had changed. She moved toward her usual seat.

  Dani spoke without lifting her eyes from the book. “There’s a chair here.” She pointed at the desk next to her. Jess saw then she’d angled the desks. So they could talk.

  Jess said, “Sure.” She slid into the desk and dropped her bag.

  Ms. G watched them and nodded. “About time. Thought I was going to have to issue a written invitation.” She smiled and returned to her grading.

  Dani kept reading, and Jess peered over at her book.

  “Maus? For Mr. Manning?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Me, too.” Jess pulled the books from her bag.

  “I figured. What do you think?”

  “About the book? It’s great,” Jess said.

  Dani looked up, her eyes large and serious behind her glasses. “No, don’t be facile. What do you think?”

  Jess tilted her head and leaned back in the desk, stretched her long legs. She shrugged. “I think it exposes the largeness of the evil through the smallness of the detail, through its attention to moments. I think it doesn’t flinch. I think Art Spiegelman is a genius. Does that meet your approval?”

  Dani smiled her hooked smile. “Fucking A.” She launched into her own analysis, gesturing with her hands, her owl eyes bright. As she spoke, she held out a baggie full of chocolate chip cookies. Jess reached out and took one. Biting down on the cookie, she wished she had something to offer in return besides a handful of browned apple slices and some crumbled pretzels. She chewed, content not to speak, to listen, to hear the happy thump of her heart.

  On the Saturday of the first week of May, a few weeks before school was out, Jess finished up her shift at the orchard in the afternoon. Before leaving, she rode her bike through the trees, her sweatshirt tied around her waist, her puffy coat already stuffed into the closet. Grass grew tall and dense in the rows between the trees, and the bike wheels left a narrow wet cleft. The once bare branches now teemed with green leaves and long, hairy strands—pollination time, Iris said. The nut clusters would be forming soon, and then they’d begin mowing and irrigating. Iris said Jess could have more hours once school was out, that she’d show her the ropes outside. Jess let her feet dangle off the pedals. The grass tickled her bare shins, and the spring sun warmed her face. Quiet, except for wind in the shells of her ears. The air smelled to her like grated citrus rinds and iron. Earth, she thought. Crust, mantle, core. How far down was the core again? She pictured the diagrammed images from her science textbook, the world peeled and cored, splayed open to the molten orange layers and hot white center. Unearthed. And what did that smell like?

  Instead of taking the right turn to Roadrunner Lane, she turned left on Quail Run and kept riding toward town, taking College Drive toward the neighborhood across from the college. She was going to Dani’s house, to work on their final Humanities paper and to study for a trig test. They’d met twice at the school library with Paul, but Paul was away at a track meet that weekend, so it would be just the two of them—and the first time she’d been invited to someone’s house since Angie’s. She hit a slope and picked up speed. The wind plucked at her hair, and she stood up on the pedals, lifting her face skyward.

  She rode past the iron gates of the college and turned into the neighborhood—built for the miners and their families in the early twentieth century, but taken over by faculty and staff in recent decades. During their drives, Angie had called the area Yuppieville. Dani’s narrow street, Piñon Drive, was shaded by large pines, ash, and sycamores, though they weren’t as dense as the clusters along the river. Unlike in her own neighborhood in Roadrunner Heights, the yards had no rusty patio furniture, no bicycles ditched and upended on the dry grass. Instead there were neat squares of grass behind low pickets, shrubs edged with military precision. Pulling into Dani’s driveway, Jess dragged her feet on the cement to stop the bike. The house was old and red brick, with an arched entryway to a shaded porch. Jess propped her bike against the porch railing and climbed the steps, taking a deep breath before knocking. Through an etched sidelight window, she could see movement.

  A man swung the door open with a smile. He wore a white T-shirt smudged with what looked like black grease and jeans, but no shoes.

  “Hi there. You must be Jess. I’m Dani’s father. Adam.” He started to hold out his hand, but then wiped his palms on his jeans. “Sorry, just washed up. I was in the garage. Lost track of time, and now I’m running behind.”

  “Hello.” She reached out and shook his hand. It was warm and still damp, but she could feel calluses on his palms. She would have known he and Dani were related from looking at him.
Same round face, same gray-blue eyes blinking behind glasses, though his frames were smaller, square, and black. His nose was big, with large nostrils and a knuckle-like knot at the center. He looked more like an older brother than a dad. Nothing like her father, whose thinning gray hair tended to stick up in flyaway wisps, whose belly had grown round and soft, a warm pillow on TV nights.

  “Come in, come in. Dani!” he called out behind him. “Your friend is here.”

  Jess stepped inside, hefted her backpack higher. She was almost as tall as him, and she slouched down a little.

  He said, “She’s in her room. Can I get you anything? Something to drink?”

  “No, sir, I’m fine, thank you.”

  “No need for sir. You can call me Adam. We’re not very formal around here.”

  She nodded but doubted she would. She tried to imagine one of her Phoenix friends calling her father Stuart. Not a chance. She watched his back as he walked away, his bare feet noiseless on the wood floor.

  Jess stood still in the entryway. The foyer—was it foy-er or fo-yay?—with its mahogany walls and grandfather clock, its polished wood floors, its welcoming breath of cinnamon potpourri. No chipped ceramic bowl crammed with keys and pencils and receipts, no hooks cluttered with jackets and purses and tote bags. None of her mother’s guilty-pleasure celebrity gossip magazines—her Trashy Mags, she called them—piled on the end table, or dust bunnies that Jess had been supposed to vacuum and forgot. She fought the urge to check the bottom of her shoes.

  “Jess?” Adam stood smiling at the end of the hall, his head tilted in question. “You can come in.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She took her pack off and hugged it to her chest. “Your house is really nice.”

  “Thanks. We like it. Of course, it’s old, so it’s been a work in progress. Always a project. And we’ve had a bit of family upheaval of late.” He pointed to a stack of boxes at the end of the hall. “Dani’s room is this way.” He led her through the living room and dining room. Jess glimpsed large bookcases full of books and knickknacks, a brown tweed sofa and rocking chair, a long dining table with a vase of wildflowers in the center.

  They went through the kitchen, which was stark white, from cupboards to sink to tile. Jess was admiring the cherry-red towels when a woman rushed in, wearing a loose robe, her hair wrapped in a towel, a toothbrush sticking out of the side of her mouth. She saw Jess and started, her eyebrows jumping. Her dark eyebrows were arched like wings.

  “Oh!” she said around the toothbrush. She went to the kitchen sink and spit. “I’m so sorry. I’m a mess and running behind as usual. You must be Jess. I’m Rachel, Dani’s mom.”

  Dani walked into the kitchen, her brow furrowed. “What, Dad? Oh, Jess. Hey! It’s already three?” She saw her mother, and the corner of her mouth hooked into a grin. “Nice outfit.”

  “I’m so late,” her mother said.

  “Shocking,” Dani said.

  “I’m going to get us out of rehearsals by dinner, though.” Dani’s mother returned to brushing her teeth, spit again, and then cupped her hand under the faucet to rinse. She wiped her mouth with the robe’s sleeve. “Scout’s honor.”

  Dani’s father said to Jess, “My wife teaches at the college, in theater. She’s in rehearsals for Hamlet. Lots of late nights and weekends.”

  Dani sighed. “First stop, Sycamore, next stop, Broadway.”

  Her dad said, “All right, smart-ass.” He ruffled her hair, and she wrinkled her nose at him. “Pizza for dinner?”

  “Sounds good,” her mother said. “I’ll be home by seven. At the latest.”

  Dani and her father groaned in unison and rolled their eyes, smiling identical hooked grins.

  “Seven! Bet me, clowns,” she said. “Jess, you’re welcome to stay.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Definitely stay,” Dani said.

  “I’ll have to call my mom to let her know.”

  “Good news. We have a phone.” Dani quirked her left eyebrow, her grin still hooked.

  “How modern.” Jess smiled, too.

  Dani’s mother glanced at the clock. “Crap.” She yanked the towel off her head, and her long dark hair spilled down her back. She rushed toward the hall, trying to drop a kiss on her daughter’s cheek, but Dani ducked out of range. “Later, gators.”

  Dani’s father frowned and checked his watch. “Me, too. I’m supposed to show a house in fifteen minutes. Oops.” He pressed at his grease-streaked shirt, and his big nostrils flared. “See you in a few hours, clever girls.”

  Dani pulled Jess by the sleeve toward her room. “Don’t mind them. Another ordinary day at the mental asylum.”

  Jess was surprised to find that Dani’s bedroom was messy. Clothes were piled on the two twin beds taking up one side of the room, and her desk was strewn with loose paper and drinking glasses. A yogurt cup with a metal spoon lay toppled on its side. One wall was a bookcase, crammed with books and magazines shelved both upright and stacked on their sides. Above the desk was a giant world map, the globe of Earth cut and spread flat. Multicolored pushpins dotted multiple countries.

  Jess pointed. “Are those the places you’ve been?”

  “Not yet. Where I’m going to go.”

  Jess peered closer. Colors in all continents, in countries Jess couldn’t even name. She wasn’t sure what her own map would look like. She had the vague word overseas in mind, images of trains, of bicycles with a loaf of bread in the basket, of tile-roofed casitas perched on a steep hill. Sometimes she pictured a loft—massive windows, burnished wood floors—in an unnamed city, skyscrapers strung like a child’s paper cuttings; sometimes she saw Phoenix and its clean, straight lines, its dusty flatlands and jagged peaks.

  “Check it out,” Dani said, pulling her by the wrist closer to the desk, where a microscope sat. “I found a dead horned toad in the yard today.”

  “You have a microscope?”

  “My mom got it for me. A hand-me-down from a biologist at her school. Look.”

  The reptile lay on a piece of cloth next to the microscope. The creature looked intact, not squished or injured. She’d always thought of the sharp spikes on their heads as Mohawks. Punk-rock lizards. “I used to call them horny toads when I was a kid,” Jess said.

  Dani put her eye to the microscope and twisted a dial. “Phrynosoma platyrhinos. When they feel threatened, they shoot blood from their eyes. Here,” Dani said, pointing at the lens. Jess leaned over and peered in. Cells whooshed into focus, a cluster that looked as if it had been scribbled and scratched in pencil, the lines fuzzy and blurred.

  “That’s part of its eye,” Dani said.

  Jess pulled her face away and looked at Dani, whose face was lit with energy.

  “You’re a weirdo,” Jess told her.

  She grinned. “Well, how often do you get to see a lizard’s eye like that?”

  “Not often,” Jess said. “Practically never.”

  Dani changed her voice, affecting the accent of a hokey 1940s movie director. “Hang with me, kid. I’ll make you a star.” She waggled an imaginary cigar.

  Jess laughed. “What?”

  “I don’t know,” Dani said. “Just in a goofy mood.” She shrugged. She took off her glasses and wiped them with the hem of her shirt, then sighed and put them back on. “I guess we have to study.”

  “I guess so,” Jess said.

  They sat across from each other on the beds and pulled out their books and notebooks, spreading them across the matching blue bedspreads. No, duvets. The cloth was soft as talc.

  Jess had finished most of her Humanities essay on Antony and Cleopatra, so she thumbed through the play, double-checking her quotations, and then they exchanged papers. Dani wrote notes in the margins with a purple pen. Sometimes her lips moved as she read, and when she focused intently, she put the tip of her tongue against her teeth.

  Dani said, “God, I’m going cross-eyed.” She pushed her glasses up and rubbed her eyes and then shut her book with a
snap. “Let’s do something else. Something we don’t usually do. What do you usually do?”

  Jess thought about it. Write bad poems. Read. Listen to music. Watch sitcoms with her mother over dinner. Flip through the dictionary and encyclopedia, close her eyes, and pick entries at random. Sneak out and roam around in the dark streets of a town she still didn’t know. Try not to think of the Boy, of her father with his new family, of her mom crying in her sleep, but then think about all those things anyway, the images flipping fast behind her eyes like an animation.

  “Not much,” she said.

  Dani said, “Do you think being only children makes us smarter? Or weirder?”

  Jess shrugged. “Both, probably.” Except she wasn’t an only child anymore. She said, “I have a sister now. My dad had a kid.”

  “Really? Where are they?”

  “California.”

  “Do you visit him?”

  “No,” she said. She wished this was because she’d refused, but the truth was, he hadn’t asked. He had started including his phone number in the cards, though, with a note: “Call if you need anything.”

  “Do you miss him?” Dani said.

  Jess looked at the microscope, at the lump of the toad next to it. She had told herself she didn’t, but in that moment she could feel his shoulder where she so often rested her head, the scratchy hair on his knuckles. She smelled the scent of basil from his “world-famous” spaghetti. She heard the sound of his honking laugh. She didn’t know how to express this kind of missing. It was as if he was both there and not there, like the horned toad, and she squinted at the microscopic moments, looking for answers. She didn’t know how to say any of that. She nodded instead, offering a small shrug.