The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  She won’t have it. No. Not for Skint. Outside; let’s go. She’ll cheer him up better than ever—who cares about neatness—they’ll bring Skint’s cans now to the Rural Routes and leave them on the porch—then onto other plans—monk letter-writing, maybe. Running around outside and looking for things in the woods. At the end of the day the rest of the parcels, done up nice and also the cookies.

  “Skint!” she cries, and tugs again at his wrist and arm.

  “We’re out of here, anyway,” says Ellen. “See you later.”

  The Gilberts are gone.

  “Give me the sponge!” Dinah cries. She gives the counter a frantic swipe and tosses the measuring cups in the sink. “Come on!” She pulls on her coat and grabs up her own keys and flings open the door. “Let’s go!” She pushes Skint out onto the porch and grabs up his box of cans. She tugs him harder, and they’re away at last; they’re gone.

  “Skint.” Dinah’s voice is chittery: all these cans and also running.

  “What.” Skint’s voice is chittery, too.

  They reach the bridge. “Stop,” Dinah pants. “Stop.” Overhead, icicles creak from the evergreen branches; gray clouds up above and wind. The air slaps at their cheeks. “Skint.”

  Skint stops. He kicks at a stone.

  “Skint,” says Dinah. “Skint.”

  Eyes streaming. Buzzy singing and eyes closed under blankets on the chair. Mr. Gilbert’s brain undoing; Mr. Gilbert’s coat.

  Skint is still. When he speaks, his voice is so quiet she has to strain to hear it over the wind. “You can understand her, though, can’t you?” he says. “She loves him. She had to take care of her brothers all those years when her mom was sick. She thought my dad would be taking care of her.”

  “What?”

  “My mom,” says Skint.

  His mom? Muffled big sound and a tree branch is crazy shaking, like someone grabbed hold of it and is swinging. Snow shed, naked king bones gray.

  Mr. Gilbert. Backwards Aging, but perverted; mind falling backward but erasing as it goes, his body falling forward, stumbling into decline.

  “Backwards Aging,” she stutters. “Oh, Skint. Your dad. Your dad.”

  Backwards fucking Aging? She wants to invite his dad to do Backwards fucking Aging?

  Panic threatens to explode Skint’s brain, his skull, but his chest sears in and holds it. What’s he going to do, though? Even Dinah doesn’t see. He can’t keep leaving his father alone with Ellen. He can’t keep her contained.

  Skint’s face is blank and dark.

  “The Center,” says Dinah. “Skint. My mom would know how to make things nice for your dad.”

  “NO!”

  Dinah stumbles back as if he’s pushed her.

  “Don’t you say a word about this to your mom!”

  Of course not—what was she thinking? Skint doesn’t want to talk about this any more than he ever did. Why would she make that worse by spreading it around? Stupid, insensitive Dinah!

  “Let’s write to Walter!” she cries frantically. “Let’s make him a fan club! Of two! Us!”

  Skint’s face goes blank again. Two red spots rise in his cheeks and spread. He brings his hands to the sides of his face, one of them scraped red and raw.

  “What?” Dinah is bewildered. “What?”

  The Rural Routes’ house is still dark, no lights on, no smoke. The box of cans is heavy, and Dinah uses her knee to shift it higher.

  “Nothing,” says Skint. He mashes his cheeks in with his fists. “Nothing. Come on. Let’s just go.”

  In the box, cans slide over each other and resettle from the shifting. On top is a small one, squarish with rounded edges.

  LE SARDINE D’ITALIA, it says on its label, and underneath, in parentheses, SARDINES.

  Skint?

  Skint?

  Skint is the food pantry break-in person?

  He broke in to steal sardines? The ones she donated at Christmas?

  Dinah’s head squashes in on itself, a tangled nerve jangle of kitchens and coats. Skint and forgetting and his dad fading away; and now Skint has become a thief?

  No! No! That can’t be right. The reverend said nothing was missing. Skint must have bought the sardines himself because he knew it would make her laugh. But as soon as she thinks that, Dinah knows it’s not true. Of course Reverend Michaels said nothing was gone; why would he notice if something were missing from the Pantry? She glances into the box. Beets, potato sticks; she’s seen them all before. Alphabetized and color-coded. Skint stole every one.

  He’s watching her face. He knows she knows.

  “Skint?”

  Skint puts his hands in his pockets and rocks on his toes.

  “After the Friendly?” She searches his face. “Was it because you were mad at Bernadine?”

  “No,” says Skint. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Why, then? Why would you bust into the church and steal?”

  “Oh, come on, Dinah. It wasn’t like stealing stealing.”

  “What kind of stealing was it, then?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Dinah! It’s cans, not the Hope Diamond! It wasn’t stealing for personal gain! I took the stuff for the Rural Routes, Dinah. They deserve that food as well as anybody.”

  “Skint, you busted down the door!”

  “It can be fixed in five minutes with a nail gun and a strip of plywood, Dinah.”

  “You scared the pastor!”

  “Jesus Christ, it’s not like I burned the place down! It’s only giving what’s needed to the needy! You’re acting like I set off a bomb.”

  “We have cans at home we could have given,” says Dinah. “I would have given the Rural Routes all our cans.” Skint is a smasher of churches, a break-in robbing thief. Dinah’s head is about to explode.

  “But not sardines. You don’t have sardines at your house,” Skint says, and baps her with his elbow. She pulls away but then remembers about his dad and does not know what she should do.

  “Don’t you want the Rural Routes to have your most favoritest food in the world?” he asks wheedlingly.

  “Backward reason-making,” Dinah starts to say, but this is more than backward reason-making. This is wrong; this is more; this is too much; this isn’t Skint. This is not normal angry Skint, mad about monks or Bernadine. Skint has busted up a church.

  Is he right, though? Maybe it does not matter if it was only cans. Skint was going to give them away again—isn’t he more Robin Hood than robber?

  Dinah shakes her head hard. She is used to angry sad Skint, angry and sad about people, but he has never been destructive or a robber. Unless you count him swiping the Pop-Tarts yesterday and Dinah does not count him taking those Pop-Tarts.

  Skint rears his own head back and looks at her, defiant. “Are you going to tell your dad?”

  “My dad?”

  “Because I don’t care if you do,” Skint says. “I stand by my actions.”

  Dinah’s eyes prick. She is not much of a crier but here are all these tears anyway, grown large and threatening to betray her by spilling.

  Skint wilts.

  “Don’t, Dinah B. Stop. Stop, Dinah! I’ll fix the door!”

  “My stomach hurts,” she says, bending over. The box drops to the ground.

  “Dinah, stop. Don’t be sick. We can take the stuff back. Immediately. Right now.”

  “No! What if someone sees?” Not the Vole but Skint led out in cuffs and booked on charges, maybe even jailed. How do you break someone out of jail? Obviously not the same way you spring them from the Pit—

  “You heard your dad—nobody thinks things were taken,” says Skint. “If someone sees us, they’ll just think we are helping with donations, that kind of thing.”

  That is probably true.

  “And after that we can raid our own houses for cans for the Rural Routes,” Skint continues, searching her face. “Though I can tell you right now all I have to offer is a near-Paleolithic can of tuna.”

  He baps her again an
d makes a smile. Dinah manages to make one at him in return.

  “Come on,” says Skint. “Let’s take them back now.”

  “Okay,” says Dinah. “Then after let’s just do my house. We have cling peaches, I think, that we could give them. Plus a lot of soups.”

  “Swell elegant fare,” Skint says. “You’ll make the Rural Routes very happy.”

  He looks so beseeching. Dinah can’t bear that, either. She takes his arm and squeezes. Her chest is hollow and cold. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do.

  Walter and evening and letter-writing and snow. Dinah wishes it were before yesterday ever started and they were at the donkey dance again, or even yesterday morning before church cleaning, with none of this having happened. Only she and Skint, alone, outside, maybe. Walking. Listening to the ice shift in the river and being glad about no school.

  Soul-deep pleasure of wood bursting beneath his palm; crack of the lock and his boots in the dark. Fuck, yes, it was him. Fuck, yes.

  Dinah looks up the hill to the church and freezes.

  “What?” says Skint.

  Dinah points. The parking lot is full and more cars line the road. They forgot about it being church hour. St. Francis will be full of people, the nave full of grownups and the nursery full of babies, even the basement stuffed up with kids in Sunday school.

  “So what,” says Skint. “We’ll use the side door.”

  “No!” She doesn’t want him anywhere near that side door. “Too risky! What if the police are in there, investigating?” Hiding in the cupboards and dangling from the eaves, ready to pounce and lead Skint away—

  Skint rolls his eyes. “I think you’re seriously overestimating the fuzz’s response to this, Dinah.” But he swallows.

  “I don’t want you to have to live on the lam!”

  “I’d be great on the lam,” says Skint. “I’m a fast runner. Faster than the fuzz, anyway.”

  Anybody would be faster than the Aile Quarry fuzz. There are only the two policemen in town and both of them are rather thick of middle. Dinah is comforted by the thought.

  “I’d have to keep bringing you parcels of food, though,” she says.

  “Nah,” says Skint. “I’m very resourceful. With my mad church-cleaning skills, I’d get a janitor’s job with no problem.”

  Not in a stripy suit with a leaden ball chained to his ankle, he wouldn’t. But Dinah says only, “No one would hire a fifteen-year-old janitor.”

  Skint shrugs. “Everyone thinks I am older the whole time. Who’d question me?”

  “Stop.” Dinah jigs from one foot to the other. “Let’s just take the cans and go back to my house right now.”

  “No,” says Skint sharply. “I don’t want that box to be anywhere near you or on your person. I was stupid to bring it over there to begin with. I’ll take it back home with me.”

  “No,” says Dinah. “I don’t want it near or on you, either.”

  They fall silent, staring up at the church.

  If he’s caught, it won’t go on his record, will it? Don’t they overlook that if you’re under eighteen? Oh, please don’t let Skint get caught. His life will be wrecked even more than it already is. What got into him to make him so dumb?

  But Dinah knows it’s more than stupidity. It’s anger. Look how upset he was about the monks. The business with turkeys on top of that, and then the Friendly meeting—curse that Bernadine! And all of it mixed with the new worry about the too-thin Rural Routes and the way that nobody helps. It put him over the edge.

  “We’ll hide the box someplace and take the cans inside another time, when it’s all clear,” says Dinah. Meaning she will take them inside. Dinah alone when Skint is home and not anywhere nearby.

  “Like where?”

  Dinah looks around. “What about behind the bulkhead? It won’t be for very long, and if anyone sees the box they’ll just think it’s a donation someone brought by when the pantry was closed.”

  “Until it is brought in to Bernadine. Who will recognize the contents as those missing from her Inventory.” Skint kicks at a piece of ice. “Not that I care,” he adds.

  “We’ll wait, then,” says Dinah. She picks up the box again. “We’ll wait with it over there by the bulkhead right now until the service is over and everybody clears out. It’s almost time for it to be over, anyway. Then we’ll quick go in and put the cans away.”

  “Whatever. Fine.” Skint reaches for the box. “Let me take it.”

  Dinah swings away from him. “No.”

  Skint shrugs and puts his purple hands in his pockets.

  The wind is strong on the bulkhead side of the building, and even though the sun is shining now, it is freezing, so cold Dinah’s nostrils feel as though they are lined with straw. It’s too cold for Skint to wait out here with no coat. What can she do?

  Dinah points down at the squat little corner formed by the bulkhead and the church. “There is even a tarp we can cover the box with.” They’ll cover it, and then she can send Skint someplace warm to wait.

  “This is one crusty, manky tarp.” Skint peels back its edge. “Ugh. Put the box down.”

  Dinah releases it and shakes out her aching fingers.

  Skint tugs the edge of the tarpaulin over the cans and wipes his hands on his thighs.

  The wind whips their hair back and forth into points.

  “You have sharp hair,” says Skint, batting it away with his hand. Dinah catches it in one fist.

  “Go to my house to wait,” she says. “I can do this part.”

  “No,” says Skint. “You go. I should be the one to do it, anyway.”

  “No,” says Dinah. “It’s freezing out here. You can meet me here after the service.”

  Skint looks dark-eyed again and tired. “I’m not leaving,” he says. “No.”

  Dinah hesitates, then gives in. “Fine,” she says, “but I’m staying here with you.”

  “There’s no need for you to.” Skint pushes his hair out of his eyes. “Besides, I don’t feel like very good company right now.”

  “I don’t need good company.”

  Skint opens his mouth, then closes it again and shrugs. “Suit yourself.” He crouches down by the bulkhead, rests his head against the church and closes his eyes.

  Dinah crouches down beside him, her back against the bulkhead. The relief from the wind is immediate. Thank God. At least he won’t be quite as cold.

  Opposite them is the play yard, with its wooden climbing structure, swings, and trees.

  She thwaps at Skint’s arm.

  “Let’s climb to the top like we used to when we were little,” she says. “Let’s hang down from our knees.”

  “Hanging like that makes your shirt bunch up around your armpits and leaves your stomach exposed.” Skint’s eyes are still closed. “I don’t really want to add flashing to the list of my crimes.”

  “We can tuck our shirts in,” Dinah says. “Be fun.”

  “You do it,” says Skint. “I don’t feel like it right now.” He shifts his weight and settles more stolidly against the church.

  Dinah would like to poke him but thinks maybe she should leave him alone. She gets up and makes for the structure.

  Skint tucks his hands into his sleeves. Thank God. He can finally breathe a minute, be alone. Not think about cans or churches or Ellen or the bank; not about the money or not getting it and losing his—

  No. Stop. Breathe.

  The weather-beaten shingles are rough against his head. He’s nearly asleep, near dreaming of Dinah hanging by her knees, hair floating down. The gray man is in front of her, hand on Walter’s neck. A second Walter stands solemn next to Skint, facing away from him toward the woods. Skint’s cheek is against the donkey’s and Skint breathes into the petal of his ear.

  “—go—”

  Sunlight breeze and stones in Dinah’s hand.

  Dinah holds her coat flat against her stomach. Trees upside down, snow drifting in the wind. Drifting down, sifting down, ground
overhead like a sky. Her eyes and nose stream in the cold, tears heading templewards into her floating-down hair.

  Blood rushes to the top of her head and fills the whole of her mind, stilling her chatter and frantic planning.

  Nothing. No more thinking right now. Just hang and sway. When they were five, she and Skint used to hang upside down like this until their noses felt like fire and their cheeks sagged up into their eyes, marveling across the yard at the tops of the apple trees swaying weirdly below their knees.

  Great-Granny always sang when she ran the vacuum in the nave. When Dinah was big enough, in kindergarten, she came along and helped with the singing. She also held the dustpan for Granny when she needed it. Each Saturday, when they were done with the cleaning, Granny took Dinah outside to play.

  Almost every time, Dinah climbed the apple trees.

  “Would you look at that sky,” said Granny. “I have a mind to get up that tree with you and get a closer look, Dinah.”

  “You can’t, Granny!” said Dinah. “Your shoes are too slippy. You need to wear sneakers to climb up this tree. Plus you need to be a good climber, like me.”

  Dinah leaned back against the trunk and pretended about flying while Granny closed her eyes and rested on one of the swings.

  Dinah was supposed to be at kindergarten, but here she was in the churchyard instead, breeze on her face and apple branches overhead. A petal drifted by her nose and wafted away across the play yard. Three stones rested in Dinah’s hand.

  This one was for Skint. This one was for Granny. One more in her pocket for if she saw her granny’s shoes.

  Pear-smelling cotton buzzy singing overhead.

  Dinah’s eyes filled with tears.

  Two feet in sneakers stood in front of where she lay. Skint crouched down beside her.

  “Why are you on the ground?”

  Dinah didn’t answer. Petals fell from the trees like soft and scented snow.

  “Are you angry?”

  Dinah was quiet.