The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  “Dude, one thing at a time. Come on. You can get him when he gets home.”

  But it’ll be tomorrow, most likely, what with all this potlucking. Dinah hates waiting.

  Still, Skint is right. They should get a move on, if they are going to get the baking done before church is over. Then they can do the fun part, the parcel-making and leaving and all of that. Besides, her dad really should get over to St. Francis.

  “We should give Reverend Michaels some of the cookies too,” Dinah says, remembering.

  “Fine,” says Skint. “But let’s go.”

  “Have a good morning, kids.” Mr. Beach kisses Beagie and hands him over to his wife as he leaves the room. “I won’t see you until later. More Evensong rehearsal after church.”

  “Come!” says Skint, a hand in the small of Dinah’s back. He propels her toward the door.

  “I want this kitchen spick-and-span when you’re done with those cookies,” says Mrs. Beach. “I need to come home from church with a whisk in my hand, practically, in order to get everything ready for this potluck. Nobody ever brings a main course! Good old Penny, they think! She’ll bring something!” Mrs. Beach disappears into the hallway, muttering darkly to herself.

  “Let me look at our cans first, Skint,” Dinah says, resisting his propulsion. “I want to make sure we have lots of nice ones for the Rural Routes so we can do the parcel right after. Otherwise I can get some more when I buy the chips.”

  Skint groans in irritation. “I have a ton of cans for them at my house,” he says.

  “Really?” There is never any food at Skint’s.

  “Yes,” says Skint. “Let’s just use those. We’ll stop at my house and get them on the way to delivering the parcel.”

  “No!” Dinah squawks. “I want to do the parcel up all nice, not just slap a bunch of stuff together any which way.”

  Skint groans some more. “Fine,” he says finally. “You go get the chocolate chips, then, and I will go home and get my cans, and then we’ll meet back here. Come on!”

  “Fine,” says Dinah. “Bossy!” She grabs a tote and they head for the door.

  “Where is your coat, Skint?” says Mrs. Beach, poking her head back in the kitchen, with Beagie’s head bobbing inquiringly below. “It’s cold out there!”

  “Don’t like coats, Mrs. Beach.”

  “Skint, you need a coat. Take one of Mr. Beach’s.”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Beach. I’m fine,” says Skint and hustles Dinah bodily out the door.

  They take the reverse route to town this time. It’s faster for Dinah to get to the store that way. No Rural Routes are out today; their house is empty and dark. Nonetheless, Dinah calls out, “Just wait!” as they dash by. Then she stops short and wheels around.

  “Skint!”

  “What?” His eyes are wide. “What?”

  “I never thanked the donkey man!”

  Skint exhales.

  “I think he’ll live, Dinah B. Come on. Let’s go.”

  He pushes her lightly toward the bridge and town, and turns up the shortcut path to his street.

  Why do they call it ‘creaming’ the butter?” Skint flicks the recipe card with his hand. “Butter doesn’t turn into cream; cream turns into butter.”

  Dinah snatches the card from his hand.

  “We have made cookies one million times,” she says. “You know what they mean. Give me the spoon.” She whacks away at the butter and sugar in the bowl. “Is it because of the Friendly that you are all keyed-up and cranky?”

  “For God’s sake, Dinah, let’s shut up about the Friendly.”

  “Fine.” Whack whack whack with the spoon. “Be useful, at least, then. Put in the eggs.”

  Skint cracks them against the side of the bowl. “Watch us poison the Rural Routes with salmonella,” he says grimly.

  Dinah stops stirring. “You are making this about as much fun as a root canal.”

  “Sorry,” says Skint. “Hooray, cookies.”

  Dinah looks at him beakily. But she takes up the spoon again and stirs. “Where did you put your cans? I want to see what you brought.”

  “I left them on your porch,” says Skint, nodding at the door.

  “Why?”

  “To save us a schlep. Why bring them in when they’re only going out again?”

  “But we have to arrange it nicely!”

  “We will,” sighs Skint. “Later. But it’s all top-notch chow, believe me.”

  “Let me see!” Dinah makes as if to head out the door to the box but Skint grabs the hem of her sweater.

  “Later,” he says. “We have cookies to finish first.”

  Dinah allows herself to be pulled back to the table and its bowl.

  “I have to put at least a couple of our cans in, too, though,” she says. “Otherwise I’m not contributing anything.”

  “All the ingredients for these cookies are from you, dork.” Skint pulls the bowl over to himself and gives the mixture a stir or two before adding oats. “And you’re contributing the sweat of your brow as well.”

  “Ugh,” says Dinah, imagining droplets.

  Skint’s phone goes off. He glances at the name on the screen and makes a face. Ellen.

  “Hello,” he says. “Why? Where’s yours? What? I’m just asking. Fine. I’m at Dinah’s.” He pauses. “It’s no big deal,” he says. “They’re not here.” He hangs up. “My mom,” he says to Dinah. “She can’t find her house key, so she’s coming here to get mine.”

  “She and your dad are out?”

  “Yes. At one of my uncles’.” Ellen has a lot of brothers, all of them younger than she is and always having trouble with their jobs and apartments and breaking up with their girlfriends. Ellen spends a lot of time bashing them into shape.

  “Lucky for her you have an extra key.” Dinah should know. She has lost more of the Beach house keys than she cares to admit.

  How could Ellen lose her key? Skint wonders. And just that one, with the others still firm on the ring?

  His dad. It must be. Thinking the keys are his. Thinking he’s going to work, a late night, the paper going to press.

  His father’s hand, thin as a leaf, holding a key in its palm. Like jewelweed, Skint can imagine his dad thinking, like the wing of a winter bird. Oh, let’s toss it, let it fly. Watch it float away on the wind.

  Dinah takes up a measuring cup and fills it carefully with flour. “When do you suppose Bernadine will report us to my dad?” she asks.

  “Jesus Christ but can you talk about anything but the Friendly!” Skint takes the flour from her and dumps it in the bowl. “Who cares? What did we do that’s so bad? Make a proposal to give people stuff they need? Speak up in the face of injustice?”

  Dinah slumps over the table, chin in her hand.

  Skint pours some chocolate chips into his palm and tosses them into his mouth.

  “Right?” he says. “Right?”

  “Quit stealing the chocolate chips.”

  Skint eyes her steadily and pours himself another handful. “You were all intent on telling your dad yourself not an hour ago.” He puts three chips in Dinah’s non-chin-holding hand. “Which is it? You want him to know or don’t you?”

  Dinah considers the chips. “I want something to happen, is what.”

  “Well, if that something is more recriminations and action and everything changing, forget it. People love the status quo.” He adds nutmeg to the dough. Also cloves and a plop of cinnamon. “This,” he says, holding the bowl firmly, spoon poised, “is how you stir a batch of cookie dough. Take note of my manly technique.” Whack, whack, whack.

  “I’m agog,” says Dinah. “Your forearms are terrifying in their might. So what do you think about the church bust-in?” she asks. “I can just see the Vole clobbering up there in the night, smacking around and bashing stuff. Trust him to not even have enough imagination to think of a new crime. Trust him just to copy last year’s.” The Vole cuffed and led into the station house to be booked on charges�
��oh, it is a wonderful image. “Don’t you think so? Doesn’t it all just smack of Voleishness?” Poor K. T., though. Own brother to a felon.

  Skint shrugs irritably. “How do I know?”

  “Who else would do it? Harlan, maybe. But he wouldn’t act alone.”

  “Who are you, the new chief inspector? Who cares.”

  “You,” says Dinah, “are impossible today.”

  “Let’s just get a move on,” Skint says impatiently. “We need milk for brushing the tops, please.”

  “Bossy.” But Dinah gets up and goes to the fridge.

  “Let’s get these mothers onto the cookie sheets and into the oven before the flesh-and-bone kind of mothers start infesting the place,” says Skint just as someone knocks on the kitchen door. “Too late.” He sighs and opens it. “Speak of the devil.”

  Ellen enters in a rush of cold air.

  “Me? Am I the devil?” she asks. “Oh,” she says, catching sight of Dinah. She looks back at Skint.

  “She lives here,” says Skint.

  “Funny,” says Ellen.

  “Hello,” says Dinah.

  “Hello,” says Ellen. “Parents not home? It’s just the two of you?”

  Skint’s grip on the spoon tightens. Ugh! Dinah has always suspected that Ellen thinks she and Skint are a secret couple and she’s sure Ellen believes Skint came over here so he and Dinah could make out. Oh, please, thinks Dinah. Just get the key and leave.

  “They’re at church,” Dinah says. “With my brother.”

  “Oh,” says Ellen and glances at Dinah’s hair and skirt.

  What’s wrong with her hair and skirt? Maybe the hair is a little messy, but the skirt is just a skirt, with regular old pajama pants on underneath.

  “Is everything okay with Uncle Joe? Did you guys already go over there?” asks Skint.

  “We tried.” Ellen turns to look back out the open door. “Things were a little protracted at home this morning. When you weren’t there. Sorry we missed you. I guess you must have cleared out pretty early.”

  “What do you mean?” Skint asks lightly. “What happened?”

  Ellen looks at him sharply. “Nothing,” she says. “The usual complexities.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “In the car.” Ellen glances out the still-open door.

  Dinah sets down the container of milk and tries to catch Skint’s eye. His face looks like nothing. “We’re making cookies,” she says inanely.

  “I’ll go out and h—say hello,” says Skint.

  “Don’t bother,” says Ellen. “Just let me have your key.”

  “Okay,” says Skint. “But I just want to say hi to Dad first.”

  Oh, blarp, don’t leave me in here alone with Ellen.

  “Were you planning to be here much longer?” Ellen asks Skint. “When are you coming home?”

  “We can finish quickly—” Dinah begins, but Skint is already saying “I’m going to be out all day.”

  “Really,” says Ellen.

  “Yes,” said Skint. “I thought you’d be at Joe’s.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” says Ellen.

  Dinah detests her.

  “It’s no disappointment,” says Skint. “I’m glad to see you, actually. We should talk. You can fill me in on last night.”

  Ellen’s eyes narrow.

  “It looked like you had a pretty active time,” says Skint, his voice light. “I’m interested to hear about it.”

  “This isn’t anything that would make for interesting conversation with your friend, Skint,” says Ellen.

  “You’re right,” says Skint. “I guess you should head out, then. We’ll bring you each a cookie when they’re done. And then we can talk.” He looks at Ellen. “I did the dishes before I left this morning. That cereal bowl. The spoon. The ones you left from last night.”

  Ellen face goes blank.

  “I scrubbed the floor as well.”

  A figure appears framed in the doorway behind Skint’s mother. “I’m thinking about it,” it says. “I’m trying to weigh the consequences.”

  Ellen starts. It’s Mr. Gilbert.

  “Hello, Mr. Gilbert,” says Dinah.

  Mr. Gilbert does not answer her, but steps into the kitchen and stands motionless, his arms dangling at his sides.

  “Come on, Thomas,” says Ellen quickly, taking his arm. “We’re going!”

  Mr. Gilbert is thinner than Dinah remembers, and smaller, somehow, as well. It strikes her that, aside from the ride home from the church the other night, it has been a long time since she has seen him in person, and even longer since she’s seen him standing up rather than sitting in his chair, framed by the kitchen window, with Dinah outside at the mailbox waiting for Skint.

  “How are you, Mr. Gilbert?” she asks. He stands like a Center person, frail-boned and a prominent skull. Dinah hesitates, then makes as if to stand. “Shall I take your coat?” she asks.

  “No,” says Ellen. “We’re leaving. Skint, the key!”

  Skint hands it over. “Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad.” Mr. Gilbert raises a hesitant hand and unzips his coat.

  “I said we aren’t staying, Thomas!”

  “Mom,” says Skint.

  Ellen rezips Mr. Gilbert’s coat firmly. “Jesus,” she mutters.

  “We’re in someone else’s house,” says Skint, his voice light, and Ellen glances at Dinah as Mr. Gilbert reaches up again to unzip his coat once more. But he stops partway, his hand dropping down.

  Didn’t Mr. Gilbert used to be tall? He looks the same as when they were small, but also not, like his body is a slim, bent copy of itself.

  He raises one hand to his chest, then lowers it again; stands motionless, gaping at the kitchen as though it were a spaceship.

  Dinah slides her eyes to Skint, but he is looking, implacably, at Ellen. Dinah stands the rest of the way up. “Mr. Gilbert?” she says hesitantly.

  He starts at the sound of her voice, then glances down at his coat. With uncertain hands he tries to tug it off, but because of the half-zipped front, it gets stuck partway down his arms.

  “Could I help you?” she says, even as Skint himself says, “Dad, can I fix your coat?” and stands the wooden spoon up in the cookie dough. He pushes past Ellen to his father and eases the jacket back up over his father’s shoulders.

  Mr. Gilbert’s eyes grow dark, set deep in his skull, brows drawn sharp over top.

  “Young lady?” he says to Dinah. “Young lady? Can you tell me, is this my home?”

  Mr. Gilbert. So calm and quick at the playground when they were small, tall with bags of rock candy and all the time speaking with large words. “Dinah the cat, the Wonderland cat,” he used to call her, and gave her and Skint extra-high pushes on the swings.

  “No, it isn’t,” says Ellen shortly.

  “Tone of voice,” Skint says casually.

  Ellen gives him another look.

  “Come on,” she says to Mr. Gilbert. “We’re going.”

  Mr. Gilbert, re-coated, turns to his wife.

  “And you, young woman?” he says. “Who might you be?”

  Oh, Mr. Gilbert.

  It’s too sad, too much, too sad. Sadder and worse than the last time she saw him; sadder—worse. Dinah wishes she could put her arm around Mr. Gilbert’s shoulders, rest her cheek in his sparse gray hair; she wishes she could run straight out the door and yell, find something to break or punch or kick.

  “Come on.” Ellen tugs at her husband.

  “Skint.” Dinah looks at Skint standing there, tall, his face looking like nothing. Skint says nothing, just looks at Ellen.

  “Skint?” cries Mr. Gilbert. His head snaps toward Dinah. He’s beaming with delight. “Did you say, ‘Skint’? I have a son with that name!”

  Dinah’s heart breaks in two.

  Oh, Mr. Gilbert. Oh, Skint. Her Skinty, her Skint, her favoritest Skinty Skint. Puzzled staring eyes of his dad. He does not remember her Skint.

  Dinah can’t bear it, Skint having to be
here for this. Grab him, escape; get away from them. Go!

  “Let’s freeze the dough, Skint,” she cries, “and bake the cookies later. We’ll do the parcel in parts, the cans part right now, and then later the cookies. Come on, Skint, let’s go.” Moving. Fast walking. That helps him—they’ll go right now.

  “That’s your son, mister,” says Ellen as Dinah whirls around the kitchen like a mad thing. Cover the bowl—dough in freezer—put the milk away. “The tall one. Come on.”

  Mr. Gilbert looks incredulously at his wife. “I have two sons named Skint?”

  “No, no,” says Skint. “Just one, Dad. Just me.”

  “But my little boy is five!” Mr. Gilbert cries.

  Out. Run. They can make up rude songs about their classmates or skip stones; she’ll do pratfalls. She’ll sing. Then they can come back here later, play with Beagie, when the ghost of all this is gone.

  “Used to be,” says Ellen. “You’ve missed a few years in between.”

  Skint flinches.

  “Let’s go, Skint.” Dinah pulls at his sleeve. “We have to get our act together; come on.”

  Dinah tugs at Skint’s sleeve again. He doesn’t budge. Mr. Gilbert does, though. He looks outside and steps carefully onto the porch.

  Ellen follows him. “Come home whenever,” she says over her shoulder to Skint. “Everything is peachy. I’ll just head back to the house with the—”

  Skint cuts her with a look.

  “I’ll head home with your father,” she says. “You and your friend can do what you need to do.”

  “The parcel, Skint,” Dinah chatters. “Let’s arrange your box of cans.”

  “We’ll do it later, Dinah,” says Skint. “I’ll come back and meet up with you later.”

  “Don’t even,” says Ellen sharply. “We’re fine. Just stay here with your—with her.”

  Skint looks at Ellen. He leans out the door. “Dad?” he says softly. “Dad?”

  Oh, Skint. How can Mr. Gilbert have gotten so much worse? Please let her magic him better; make him remember her Skinty Skint. Make him remember, make it different, make it the way it ought to be.

  All this wearing out, giving out, people leaving and being left; people leaving, gone forever so you can never be with them again. Never any more singing or holding their hands. What a way for things to be.