The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  “I am myself,” she says. “This, here, is myself.”

  “This is you cranky. You are not cranky by nature, Dinah! Exasperating, but generally cheerful, when you are not furious.”

  “I am sorry I am not my usual dippy self for you, Mrs. Beach.”

  Her mother sighs and makes like to smooth Dinah’s hair but Dinah rears her head out of the way. Her stomach is killing her.

  Isn’t she supposed to do caring? Isn’t she supposed to feel awful when something is awful? Why does her mother want her to stop?

  Dinah hurries down her driveway and past the Harps’ house next door with its little fenced-in field, past all the other houses on her street, too, until she reaches a stand of white pines that loom ancient and needle-sleeved overhead. The road forks at these pines and its right tine is Skint’s street. While most of the houses near Dinah’s are little and old and hug close to the road, the ones on Skint’s street are mostly split-levels or one-story ranches, dark and low with long driveways winding their way up to garages. The whole area up here used to be a farm, but it’s been gone for forty years or more and the fields that haven’t had houses built on them are grown over now with thin paper birches and new evergreens.

  Just ahead, Skint is coming down his driveway to meet Dinah in their usual spot by his mailbox. After last night, Dinah is especially glad he never has her meet him in his house. She has no interest in another encounter with Ellen.

  “Let’s go,” Skint says as soon as their paths intersect, and together they continue down the road. There’s a shortcut ahead that loops them around to the bridge over the river not too far from the town center. From there the church is just a few minutes’ walk. So is the high school, for that matter.

  Dinah puts a rock cake in Skint’s unmittened hand. “Here.”

  “Thank you.”

  Skint has a squiggle between his brows and does not look like he is thinking about cookies. But he gives it a couple of approving hefts. “Dense,” he says.

  Dinah beams and nods. That’s the way they like them.

  “Me and Beagie made them,” she says. She eyes his coatless torso. “Jog!” she orders. “We’re nearly late!”

  They are not even close to late, but Dinah’s ruse works: Skint bites off half his cookie and grabs her arm and they’re off.

  Hurrying, trotting, practically running—despite the ice patches and snow, Skint and Dinah move along at quite a clip. Too hot for Dinah in her extra-puffy coat but good for skinny Skint and his skinny cold bones.

  Mr. Beach offered to drive them (“I have a meeting with the man who’s fixing the church roof”), but Dinah told him no. Mr. Beach’s meeting wasn’t for another hour and she wanted to go to Skint right away. Besides, they had to get a move on if they were to finish cleaning the church before the weekly AA meeting got started in there at nine. Skint would be happy if they biked but Dinah won’t, not in winter. Too many ice clumps waiting to grab your wheel and make you fall.

  “It was nice to see your dad last night,” Dinah dares to say.

  Skint glances at her sharply, eyes narrowed.

  “What about him?” he asks.

  Dumb, dumb, dumb, Dinah thinks. Can she please quit mentioning his dad?

  “Nothing,” she says. “He’s nice, is all. Too many raisins in the rock cake?” she ends hastily.

  Skint snorts. “No,” he says at last. “It’s good. Come on.”

  Just before they reach the bridge is the Rural Routes’ house. It’s as old as Dinah’s and sits gray and still under the trees. The Rural Routes themselves are on their porch. They are people, not roads. Two people, old; unfathomably old. Skint and Dinah call them after their mailbox, which has only RURAL ROUTE 1 stenciled on it and no name, just a faded E on the front.

  The woman Rural Route is thin and wears tablecloth-looking dresses, thick-soled shoes, and a knitted hat pulled over her ears. The man Rural Route’s pants are buckled high over his pelvis and skim the tops of brogans that look heavy as stones.

  After school, every day, even when it’s snowing, they are on their porch when Dinah and Skint go by. The woman sits and the man stands, though the porch holds a second chair. What a lot of work for such an old skeleton, Dinah thinks. Does the man stand up at the time of their coming, or is he all the time standing? Do the Rural Routes have a name for her and Skint, too?

  Every day there is waving, Skint and Dinah at the Rural Routes and the Rural Routes back at them. One tired hand up from each Rural Route; one hand up, still, arm bent at the elbow. Skint and Dinah wave back the same way. No words or helloing, though Dinah always smiles. She’s not sure whether the Rural Routes do. Their little house is far enough from the road that she can’t see their faces.

  But look: The Rural Routes are out this morning, even though it’s early and gray, with Skint and Dinah jogging and it not a school day.

  Two old hands up, arms bent at the elbow.

  Skint’s and Dinah’s hands up in response as they jog past.

  “What keeps them on the porch, do you think?” Dinah puffs as they run. She is boiling. Maybe Skint has the right idea after all.

  “Better than most places—why not?” Skint puffs back, but that isn’t what Dinah means. She means their skinniness, their arms, so porous and light. She means she keeps expecting them to float off the porch and up through the trees.

  “Those shoes,” she mutters darkly. “They must pin them down. Good thing, or they’d clonk their heads on the branches.”

  Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  Years ago, the whole Girls’ Friendly cleaned the church together, but it’s been a one-person job for some time now. Dinah took it on about four years ago and Skint joined her when he took up with the Friendly, too. The two of them split the ten-dollar per week salary. Even though Dinah has not attended services or Sunday School at St. Francis since kindergarten, nobody has ever said she shouldn’t be allowed in the Friendly because of this, or oughtn’t to be let to clean. Probably because the Friendly is so low on members, and anyway, who would want to clean the church besides her? Or maybe it’s that they feel that at least they’ve got her in the church at all, whatever her reasons.

  Now the nave of the church smells of old candles and stone and the fetid air of Dinah’s vacuuming. But at least she and Skint are done in here and are ready to tackle the detritus of last night. Skint heads into the bathroom off the church foyer.

  “Ah, my nemesis,” he mutters to the contents of the bowl. “We meet again.” He whacks away with his plunger. “Jesus!” he cries. “It’s like they save it up for rehearsal nights!”

  “Well, they are singing Thomas Tomkins. It is very dolorous and stressful.” Dinah stuffs old cups and plates into her garbage bag.

  “Your dad should switch to show tunes, then,” says Skint, bashing away. “Every week I’m an hour with this plunger, breaking up choir-loosened poo.”

  “That is not a very socialized thing to say.”

  “If you can’t take the conversation of a church sexpot, Dinah B—”

  “Sexton—”

  “—let alone the nature of the work, then I don’t know if you’re the girl for this job.”

  “Grr.” But at least he is not thinking about monks.

  Dinah is exhausted. Sad-mad Skint, monks and all that running. She wouldn’t mind lying down on the couch in the big room for a nap. But that couch smells awful and there is that meeting at nine, and plus, she promised Bernadine. And a promise about cleaning is also a promise to Dinah’s father, because, along with maintaining the integrity of the building, the cleanliness of the church is within the purview of the warden. Doubly beholden, then, is Dinah. Oh, well. At least it is vacation week. There will be plenty of time for sleeping.

  “What the hell!” Skint’s voice is far away.

  “What?” says Dinah, looking up from her garbage. Where is he?

  “Over here.” The toilet conquered, Skint is outside the door to the food pantry, leaning over a box of food left as a
donation.

  Oh, no. The food pantry. The St. Francis Food Pantry is not something that is going to distract Skint from thinking about monks.

  Though the Pantry is technically another warden domain, Bernadine’s the one who runs it, and Dinah and Skint hate everything about the way she does the job. There’s a pile of cod that’s been in the freezer for over three years now, for example, and Bernadine refuses to throw it away, even though it’s gone gray and furry with age. And she’s always putting the Pantry mop back in the closet before it’s dry so it gets full of mildew and stinks the place up. Worst of all, from Skint’s point of view, at least, she arranges the cans on the shelves by height and color rather than by food type.

  But at the moment, it isn’t Bernadine and her ways that are bothering Skint.

  “Look!” he cries, shaking a can in Dinah’s direction. “Creamed corn? Nobody eats creamed corn! Nobody eats ‘salted mushroom stems,’ either,” he continues, flashing her another can, “or ‘pearl onions in faux butter sauce.’ What is wrong with people? If you’re hungry, you want food, not cans of crazy crap. People in this town donate garbage!”

  Skint flings down the can and lurches into the Pantry with the box. Dinah follows him, pulling the garbage behind her. Entering the Pantry is unavoidable; they need the sink in there to fill the bucket for mopping.

  Skint runs hot water into the bucket. “People only donate what they wouldn’t eat themselves.”

  “I like creamed corn.”

  “Not pureed, you don’t.” Skint shuts off the faucet. “You might as well eat the contents of someone else’s stomach.”

  “Ugh.” Dinah takes up a broom. “Not everybody does that, though, with donations. I brought those sardines in our box last month.”

  Dinah adores sardines and had had her eye on that particular can of them for some time. They were part of a Christmas basket full of fancy things someone had sent the Beaches, the can of sardines even labeled in Italian. Her father had had his eye on them, too. Both of them love the salt and calcium crunch of the bones.

  “I will disown you if you eat those without me,” Mr. Beach threatened her.

  “I won’t,” Dinah promised. And she didn’t. Peeved at his unenthusiastic reaction to her Christmas gift (a CD of New England string quartets performed and arranged by Tommy Tune and the Boston Pops), Dinah gave the sardines away to the Pantry instead.

  “Giving away those sardines only made you feel good, Dinah,” says Skint.

  It certainly did make her feel good, but not in the way Skint means. “Anybody would be happy to get sardines,” says Dinah. “You are just picking on me because you can’t yell at the other can-bringers for being stingy.”

  Skint sets the bucket on the floor. “You’re right,” he says. “Besides. Who’m I to talk? I have brought and done nothing for anyone. I am a whole lot of talk about the base nature of man but do jack-all to elevate our status.”

  Dinah thwaps him with the handle of her broom.

  “Your plunging,” she tells him. “That is your donation.”

  “Stool loosening for Jesus,” Skint agrees. “Me and your dad both.”

  A small head pokes round the door of the pantry.

  “Hello,” it says.

  “Hello,” says Dinah.

  “Hello,” says Skint.

  The owner of the head moves into the doorway. It’s K. T., in his too-big winter coat with the pirate skull on the back, hands tucked into his pockets.

  “Could I come in?” he asks.

  “Sure,” says Dinah. “It’s nice to see you again.” Let’s hope the Vole isn’t here, too.

  K. T. steps carefully over the threshold.

  “What are you guys doing?”

  “Cleaning,” says Skint.

  “What are you cleaning?”

  “Everything,” says Skint. “The whole church.”

  “Oh.” K. T. squeezes a tiny blue Super Ball in his palm. His eyes take in the shelves. “You have a very big amount of cans,” he says.

  “We do, indeed,” says Skint, glancing around. “God. The floor in here is disgusting.” He leans the mop against the counter and grabs another broom and starts sweeping.

  “What’s the matter?” K. T. asks Skint.

  “People are messy,” Dinah explains. “It’s okay. K. T., who is taking care of you right now?”

  K. T. thinks. Then: “You?” he guesses, holding his Super Ball up to one eye. His other eye is on Skint, who sweeps the floor with hard, irritated strokes.

  “Well, yes, I guess I am, right now here in the food pantry. But I mean, who brought you here to the church?”

  “My dad brought me.” Good. Not the Vole. “He has a meeting.”

  “I bet it’s with my dad,” says Dinah. K. T.’s father is a builder and must have something to do with the roof.

  “Beets in with potato sticks,” Skint mutters, sweeping and glaring up at the shelves. “That woman. Does your father know you’re in here, K. T.?”

  “I’m not sure.” K. T. holds his Super Ball up so Skint can see it. “I just got this,” he says. “At the mini-mart.”

  “Very cool, K. T. Great color.” Skint turns to Dinah, bashing his broom upright against the Pantry sink beside the mop. “I am sick of this, Dinah. I am sick of everything. I am sick to death of Bernadine and her messes and her talking over me and her crazy-ass theories about this Pantry and everything else. Enough!” He points at the freezer across the room. “I’m defrosting that freezer. And I’m getting rid of that god-awful ancient cod for once and for all.”

  “Skint!”

  “What? We’re supposed to clean, aren’t we? It’s our sworn responsibility. So we’ll clean everything. Including the freezer.”

  “Well—” Dinah hesitates. It would be awfully satisfying to get rid of that cod.

  “Indeed.” Skint stalks over to the deep freezer and flings it open.

  He stands stock-still.

  “Holy shit,” he says.

  “You say a lot of bad words,” says K. T.

  “He does,” says Dinah. “Skint, stop saying bad words.”

  “That bitch.”

  “Skint!”

  “Dinah, please come here.”

  K. T. sails his ball slowly through the air. “C’mere,” he murmurs, “c’mere, c’mere.”

  Dinah steps over to the freezer and peeks in. “What?” she asks. She sees nothing untoward; the freezer is chock-full, as always, and bordered with its usual cuff of ice.

  “Look closely,” says Skint. “Compare the contents as you see them now to the contents as we have previously noted them.”

  Dinah looks again. “Oh,” she says. “No cod.”

  “Exactly!”

  “What are you on about? Aren’t you glad she got rid of it? Or are you just mad because you can’t thwart her by throwing it away yourself?”

  “Shut up, please, Dinah, and think. The cod is no longer in the freezer, but could you please note what is here in its stead?”

  Dinah peers back into the freezer. Instead of flat, plastic-wrapped parcels of fish, the freezer is filled with large, round, netted shapes.

  She looks at Skint questioningly. “Turkeys?”

  “Exactly!” Skint shouts again.

  Dinah stares at him. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Skint cries plaintively. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Hey,” says K. T.

  “Is this Turliff-related?” Dinah asks. “Because I don’t think it matters if people eat turkey outside of school—”

  “No!” Skint says. “Think, Dinah! Two dozen oven-ready turkeys? Hannaford labels?” He stabs at one of the turkeys with his forefinger. “Dated last December?”

  Dated last December?

  “Oh. Oh!”

  “Yes!” cries Skint. “That troll never gave them away! And not only that—”

  Dinah gasps and nods. In her mind’s eye, she remembers Mrs. Samatar carrying a parcel out of the pantry. A curiously fl
at one, not at all humped-up like a turkey.

  “She gave people that horrible, spoiled cod in their Christmas parcels!” she cries. “Instead of the turkeys!”

  “Exactly!”

  “What’s a parcel?” asks K. T. He holds up his ball. “This guy is a bird. A person. A birdperson.”

  “Oh, but it’s too horrible, Skint! Even for Bernadine.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” says Skint. “What are we thinking? It’s not assholery—it is our very own Christmas miracle! An avian version of the loaves and fishes with a net deficit of fish! Jesus has acted amongst the freezer parcels, right here in Aile Quarry!”

  “But why would she do that?”

  “Because she is a hateful, god-awful woman,” says Skint. “You know how she’s always going on about the poor not doing enough for themselves. Jesus! I have had it with her bullshit.”

  “We have to report her immediately!” Dinah cries.

  K. T. is resting with the back of his head on the counter, balancing his ball between lip and nose like a squat little moustache. “Who are you guys mad at?” he asks. His talking disrupts his ball and it rolls off and drops to the floor. He scrambles after it.

  “Nobody, K. T.,” says Dinah hurriedly as Skint says, “Beelzebub’s best minion.”

  “Oh,” says K. T., straightening up. He points to a can on the bottom shelf. “What’s that stuff?”

  “Ranger hash.”

  “Could I please have it?”

  “Sure.” Skint tosses it to K. T. “Consider it yours.”

  “To keep?” asks K. T., catching it against his chest.

  “Certainly,” says Skint.

  “Thank you,” says K. T. He smiles at Skint, who smiles back.

  “Skint,” says Dinah, “you can’t do that. The Inventory!” Bernadine has lists and charts all over, cross-referenced and dated.

  “Who cares about the Inventory at this point, Dinah! If there’s any justice on the planet at all she’ll be out on her ear and the Inventory torn to shreds.”

  K. T. picks up his Super Ball and holds the can up in front of his face. He carefully sets the ball on top. “My birdperson just landed on this building.”