The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  Look at her face. Why does he do this? Why does he want her to feel so terrible? He’s an asshole. Dinah is the kindest person he knows.

  “What’s your problem? Say something.”

  Dinah looks miserable. Bleak-eyed and sad. What the fuck has he done?

  “Dinah. I’m sorry. I’m being a shit.”

  “No, you aren’t. I mean, yes, you are, but you are right. I’ve been a jerk. It’s worse because I always think I’m nice. Even though I talk about punching people all the time, I secretly think I am pretty good.”

  “Dinah. You are. You’re the best. My favorite.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s not good for me.”

  “Dinah, it only just hit me, too. That their house is too dark and they are twig thin.” Skint is the selfish one. The Rural Routes are so skinny and old and always alone; why has he never thought about if they are okay? “I’m an asshole to throw it on you.”

  “Me, too, though,” Dinah says miserably. “I am also an asshole.”

  Even though he is being so mean, Dinah is full of shame, hot streaks of it piercing her insides. Skint is right about her. How can she not have been thinking about the Rural Routes? What if they are cold in there? Why hasn’t she helped? Be honest, awful girl; be honest.

  Part of it must be how she dreads being around old people, but it’s right, what Skint said, about her making the RRs not real. The truth is that they have always seemed imaginary to Dinah, a thin-boned pair, like people in a dream, untalking and light as clouds. Oh, Dinah. How dare you pretend they are not real?

  The Rural Routes solid up in her mind with the thought, and Dinah’s spine slopes into the lady Rural Route’s stoop. Sharp stream of spinehurt and Dinah’s neck hairs rise. Stop stop stop.

  But she can’t. That thin and that old with only shoes to pin them down.

  Candy, maybe; they could send them some chocolates. A lot of old people have sweet teeth. She remembers from Great-Granny, who ate loads of sweets, even though she wasn’t supposed to.

  No.

  Don’t think about all that right now.

  Her mother says it a lot about old people having sweet teeth, too. She confiscates care packages of candy and cookies from them at the Center, because if she doesn’t, they eat it all in a go. She saves it for them instead and doles it out, one piece at a time.

  “Dinah, stop!” Skint bumps her with his hip. “You are the anti-asshole.”

  “Bluck. That is a disgusting thing to picture.”

  “Honestly, Dinah B. I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about the meeting.”

  “Okay,” says Skint. “But I am. I’m sorry. I am such a jerk.”

  “No,” says Dinah. “You aren’t.”

  Dinah tucks her hand under his arm. Cold Skint, cold Rural Routes. She better get her act together.

  They walk on.

  “Dinah?”

  It is good they always have hot bevs at the Girls’ Friendly meetings.

  “Dinah!”

  Ten more minutes, though. His toes must be ice.

  “For God’s sake! Dinah!”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “What?”

  “If you could pay attention for more than five seconds at a time, please—”

  “I am paying attention!” Look at those cheeks. Dinah unwinds the scarf from her neck. It is one of her crocheted creations and awfully bright.

  “What was I saying, then?”

  “My name!” says Dinah, waving her scarf. She flaps it at him menacingly. He skitters his torso to one side, but Dinah is faster. She snaps it up over his head and wraps his head up as smooth as a balloon.

  “Much better,” she says, satisfied. “Now no one has to look at your mean head.”

  Skint squawks and flails. Dinah uncovers his eyes and he looks at her steadily.

  “Hello,” she says and squashes the scarf down around his neck. “There,” she says. “A goiter.”

  Skint growls and rears his chin up over the wool.

  “Dinah. Shut up. Please. Just listen a second.”

  “All right.”

  “We have thinking to do.”

  Handcreature pokes up her head inquiringly.

  Skint pats her firmly.

  “No,” he says. “This is a mouth-talking topic.”

  Handcreature sulks back down.

  “We haven’t talked about quitting the Friendly, after what we found out today about Bernadine.”

  Dinah starts. But she says only, “That is true.”

  “Why haven’t we talked about quitting the Friendly?”

  The back of Dinah’s neck pricks and grows hot. They haven’t talked about quitting the Friendly because she has always strenuously deflected Skint from the idea any time she has sensed him creep up on it in all previous instances of their being peeved with Bernadine. Dinah knows she’s a hypocrite, a jerk and a wuss. But even now with all this new material for outrage, when she thinks of what will happen if she quits, she could barf.

  It’s not just the guilt of depleting a too-small membership. If Dinah leaves, the Friendly will fold. There’ll be no girl-aged Girls left at all. And without a girl to mentor, they won’t be allowed to keep their charter and there would be no more meetings for people to go to. Dinah can’t bear the thought of people—Mrs. Chatham, for one, or even people Dinah hates—home by themselves all the time, home all alone with cups of tea and no people, with nothing to do and no one to talk to, all because Dinah left and killed the Friendly. Trouble and shouting are all kinds of good, but misery and isolation are not things Dinah can inflict on anyone. Unless maybe they were murderers or something. And no one actually died from that cod.

  “Because,” Dinah says.

  “Well, maybe tonight we should.”

  What? Her stomach is killing her.

  “How can you quit something you aren’t officially a part of?” she asks, stalling for time.

  “Shut up,” says Skint. “You know what I mean. I think tonight is the night. The timing is perfect. And the Friendly is betwixt and between projects, so it’s a good time for a shake-up.”

  Dinah is silent.

  “Come on!” says Skint. “If we keep participating, we’re tacitly approving what Bernadine does. That means we are complicit! If we aren’t stopping her, we’re aiding her! Inaction is passive action! Why have we kept doing that?”

  “Because!” Dinah wraps her arms around her stomach and racks her brains. How can she get him off this? “Change from within! That’s what you always say the whole time. If we quit, how will it ever be different?”

  “Well, our staying has done jack,” Skint points out. “We have done jack. Our appeals to higher authority have gone unheeded and all our oblique hinting has done nothing. All our ideas have been thwarted.”

  It’s true. Skint’s vote isn’t allowed to count, of course, and Bernadine keeps a pretty tight hold on the discourse anyhow. Plus Bernadine’s mother always has to take Bernadine’s side, so even if Ms. Dugan votes with Dinah, it’s not enough to get anything done.

  “Well, that is because we have been wusses,” says Dinah.

  “Exactly.”

  “We should do more.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  “We should do something control-wresting.”

  “Like what?”

  Dinah thinks. “A coup?”

  “What?”

  “Yes,” says Dinah. “A coup. I think that is better than quitting.”

  “I am completely up for a coup! Usurp the power!” Skint rubs his hands together, for which Dinah is glad because it warms him and also he is off the quitting topic, but now she has to think of what she means by a coup.

  “Maybe we could try to get them to do a different kind of project,” she says. “Instead of the ones Bernadine proposed.” Bernadine wants them to do a can drive for disaster relief overseas, and she also wants them to schedule regular visits to the Center.
r />   “What’ll that accomplish?”

  “It would show her we have some muscle! We can think of an idea quick right now that would make her look bad if she doesn’t agree.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much of a coup. And I really have no problem helping with the disaster relief idea. I think it’s a good thing to do.” Skint kicks at a stone. “Though I could do without visiting the Center.”

  Dinah feels exactly the same way, but nonetheless she is surprised. “Does that make us jerks?” she asks. “After what we were just saying about the Rural Routes?”

  “That is different,” says Skint. “That is not the same as a field trip to the Center to make God’s eyes out of Popsicle sticks.”

  “I don’t want them to think I don’t want to help the elderly, though.”

  “Well, you don’t. You hate being around old people. You get all skittery.”

  “I do not,” says Dinah, and considers bringing up the Rural Routes to support her case, but technically speaking, she is not exactly around the Rural Routes. She is more like at a respectable distance from them. So she says nothing.

  It’s not that being near old people makes Dinah skittery, exactly. It’s seeing what getting old does to them that makes her miserable. Being with old people makes Dinah’s stomach sore, even though her mother’s whole job is to do with old people, and Dinah used to visit the Center a lot herself when she was small. It’s that getting old is such a terrible way for things to work. All that aching and sitting, unhappy. Bones that hurt and glasses. Great-Granny asleep for so long in her chair with one slipper on, the other foot in a woolen sock.

  Who ever thought that was a good way to make human beings? No. Dinah can’t bear it. She can’t. And she won’t. She has a plan. Well, more of a resolve. She calls it Backwards Aging. She is willing to go up to fifteen—Skint is already there, and has always looked much older to boot—but starting after that she’s going backward back down to one. Why grow up and be an adult when it only means you’re that much closer to dying, to breaking down and being gone? Forget it. She won’t. She refuses to grow all the way up.

  For his part, Skint thinks the time between being a teenager and being dead sounds a whole lot better than either one, but he says he is willing to go along with Backwards Aging for Dinah’s sake. To keep her company.

  “Plus,” says Skint now. He stops, then continues. “From my point of view,” he says, “visiting the Center is redundant.”

  “You’re right,” Dinah agrees. “Everybody is always going there. All those trips from the elementary school. My mom’s whole job. Beagie even visits as a project.”

  Skint glances at her. “I mean my house is its own geriatric ward.”

  Jerk. Jerk! Think, Dinah! What else can you talk about?

  “Let’s invite the Rural Routes to do Backwards Aging with us!” she cries. “We could have them do it in increments of five.”

  Skint could put her through a wall.

  Calm down, calm down. You love this about her, remember? Calm down.

  No. Fuck calming down. Fuck all manner of bullshit and prevarication. If he goes along with that he will explode.

  “The hell with it,” says Skint tightly. “The hell with it, Dinah! Forget just switching up the projects. Let’s burst this shit open.”

  “What do you mean?” Dinah takes away her hand.

  “Forget all this dancing and pussyfooting and willful not-doing. Just tell everyone what Bernadine did!”

  “In the meeting?”

  “Yes!” says Skint. “Name her perfidy! Out loud to the group!”

  The trees on the sides of the road are heaped with snow, their peaky heads leaning in as if listening.

  Dinah is silent. Publicly calling Bernadine out seems somehow more cowardly, not less. Shouldn’t they at least take her aside? Dinah’s stomach twists up even to imagine it.

  “Come on!” says Skint, reading her face. “Don’t you want it to stop? Do you want the same shit to go down with the hams come Easter?”

  “No,” says Dinah. “No.”

  Yelling at Bernadine might feel very splendid in that moment, but afterward . . . her dad, Ms. Dugan, everybody angry? Bernadine empurpled or deflated and sad? What if everything snowballs and Bernadine is made to give up the whole church?

  Mr. Beach. He should have done something about Bernadine ages ago. He should be dealing with this very thing, right now. He is cowardly and weak and now look what’s happening.

  “Say something,” says Skint.

  “Is it mean of us?”

  “So what? You reap what you sow!”

  Dinah is silent, thinking, thinking. Bernadine living all alone with her mother. Dinah’s own stupid dumb father.

  “For God’s sake, Dinah! Why do you think the world keeps on sucking? This is why! People are too weak! We have to take a stand!”

  “I know,” says Dinah.

  “But what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  Dinah is quiet.

  “You love this stuff!” says Skint. “You are always the one who wants to do shouting.”

  “I know,” says Dinah. She wishes she were home right now. “I do usually like to shout.”

  “So you’ll do it? Or at least join in when I do?”

  Dinah pauses. She wants so badly for Skint to be happy. Plus he is right. You should speak up. Stand up for your principles even when it’s hard. She can’t not do that, not if he’s willing to be so brave. Not if she is ready to shout at her own father for not doing the same thing.

  “All right,” says Dinah. “I’m in.”

  Skint cuffs her on the arm.

  “Great,” he says. “We’ll seize an opening.”

  After several hectic minutes of planning, they are silent for the last bit of the walk.

  As they near the church steps, Dinah breaks the silence.

  “I do love the Rural Routes,” she says. “I do love them.”

  Skint feels awful again. He knows she loves them. Why does he get so mad? “I do, too,” he says, and does deer head-butting. He would like to point out that, in addition to the Rural Routes, the way Dinah loved her own great-granny is further proof of her non-assholery in regards to the elderly. But he would never do that, never wake up that grief for her. Never.

  “Do I really love them, though?” he wonders. “It’s not as if I really know them.”

  “We’ve waved to them for years.”

  “Yeah,” says Skint. “But I’ve never even called out hello, much less gone up on the porch and asked them how they are, or offered to pick up something for them.”

  Dinah nods. “Me either,” she says.

  “I love some idea of them,” says Skint. “I have no clue who they really are. What kind of love is that?”

  Dinah squeezes his arm. “We will say hello out loud next time,” she says. “And maybe bring them something nice.”

  Skint smiles at her and holds the door.

  He has got to get it together with his temper.

  Ms. Dugan mans the tea station in the kitchen, cigarette dangling unlit in the corner of her mouth. Behind her is one of the bulletin boards where people tack notices about church doings. “Woman’s Auxiliary Meeting!” announces one. “Evensong!” cries another. “Saint Francis Episcopal Choir performs a selection of music by Thomas Tomkins. William Beach, director.” The poster of Walter is still up there, too.

  “Well, well, well,” says Ms. Dugan around her cigarette. “If it isn’t my favorite couple of so-and-sos.”

  “How goes it, Ms. D.,” says Skint, hitching his gaze upward to a more appropriate place.

  Ms. Dugan shrugs and winks at them. The wink is barely perceptible, what with the way Ms. Dugan’s eyelids droop so far down they threaten to take over her irises. Not because Ms. Dugan has her gaze fixed downward on an inappropriate spot but because that is the kind of eyelids she has. Ms. Dugan’s mother had the same kind, only even more so. Once, during a field trip to t
he Center when Dinah was seven, the senior Mrs. Dugan beckoned her over with a finger and handed her a roll of tape.

  “Tape my lids up for me, toots,” she said. “Stick ’em right to my brows.”

  Horrifying. Both the taping and the way she looked after.

  “Come on, doll,” Ms. Dugan says now to Skint. “Grab a cup of tea and warm the hell up.”

  Dinah starts pouring.

  “MS. DUGAN.” Bernadine. “COME HELP ME MOVE THIS WHITEBOARD.”

  “Whiteboard.” Ms. Dugan mutters, dragging pointlessly on the cigarette. “You’d think we were the goddamn CIA around here, the way Chatham tracks the twists and turns of our game plan. I’m going in there, kids, and I don’t know if I’m coming out.”

  She grins at them and moves toward Bernadine.

  Dinah turns around so Skint can get into her backpack.

  “Ha-ha! Little does she know!” Skint mutters under the cover of Ms. Dugan and Bernadine wrestling the whiteboard into submission. “Operation Take-Her-Down about to commence!”

  “Shh!” Dinah hisses as Skint unzips her pack and fumbles within. “Do you want to give us away?”

  Though she can’t help but think it would be kind of great if he gave them away and his plan were cut off at the knees.

  “Oh, stop,” Skint scoffs as she turns back around. “They’re making too much banging to hear us.”

  “You know she has bionic ears.”

  Skint rolls his eyes at her. He shakes out the sarong he’s just fished out of the backpack and ties it snugly around his hips. Pink and printed with umbrellas and mai tais, it slits right up the thigh and shows a daring amount of Skint’s jeaned leg. The sarong is an old one of Mrs. Beach’s. Skint wears it to the Friendly every week.

  “ALL MEMBERS OF THE GIRLS’ FRIENDLY PLEASE ASSEMBLE IN THE ALCOVE.”

  Dinah and Skint look at each other and nod. Dinah doesn’t want him to think she will wuss out, so she makes like to do power fists with him. But he rears back and looks at her warningly. “Who’s giving us away now?” he whispers. He is right. This is no time for a public mark of solidarity. They head into the meeting room.