The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  “I hate the choir.”

  “So do I, of course. But I hate them less today. And you only hate them because of your dreadful, dolorous singing voice. You are afraid you would fit right in. You—”

  “Bill,” Dinah’s mother’s voice admonishes from the pantry. She thinks it is awful for Mr. Beach to twit Dinah for her lack of tunefulness. Normally Dinah would seize the opportunity to sing with great purpose and volume, but not right now.

  Mr. Beach takes his hands down from his ears. “What?” he says. “Not even one note? So to speak?”

  Dinah crosses and uncrosses her feet. “I do not feel much like singing.”

  Two other feet, stampy and small, emerge from the pantry and race toward her. A small head burrows into her leg.

  “What were you doing in there, Beagie?” Dinah picks him up and kisses him. They regard one another soberly.

  “I was letting him sort Tupperware,” says Mrs. Beach, emerging with a casserole dish in her hand. “It bought me fifteen minutes to get on with things. Because some people would rather thumb through the shape-note songbook than do their bit to stir things on the stove.”

  Mr. Beach looks guilty and closes the book over his thumb; long and faded blue, it’s Granny’s old book, a harp gilded on its cover.

  Dinah’s eyes prick and grow warm. Do not, do not cry, you.

  Beagie rests his head on Dinah’s shoulder. She takes his small foot in her hand. Small as a dinner roll and soft as one, too. One day it won’t be so; it’ll grow big and smelly, tendoned and knotted with veins. What if they hurt him when it’s cold out, or damp? What if walking grows hard?

  “Is something wrong, Dinah?”

  The whole thing is wrong; all of it’s wrong. The whole stupid way we are.

  “When do you leave?” she asks. She needs to call Skint, talk to him, now.

  “Never,” says Mrs. Beach levelly, setting down the dish. “We’ve decided to stay home and spend the evening with you instead. We’ll start by braiding your hair—”

  “I’m to tie on the bows,” agrees Mr. Beach.

  “Then we’ll work out an interpretive dance for us to perform as a family.”

  “Please, just when are you leaving?”

  “Dinah Christine, why are you no fun?”

  Because she is, right now, an egg with a too-thin shell, a glass of water barely gripped.

  Beagie rears up his head and applies his plush horse forcefully to her chin. “Iss!” he says. “Iss!”

  The horse smells awful, of old food and drool. Dinah kisses it. “Someone should wash your horse, Beagie.”

  “I shall scrub it in my old tin tub,” Mr. Beach agrees, “directly after I have told you some more about the day’s triumphs with the choir.”

  The choir; the choir; can he talk about anything besides that choir?

  (trickling, breath-caught notes from the nave—“. . . and thus he said, ‘O, my son . . .’ ”)

  Oh, Dinah doesn’t want to talk about the choir.

  “Although I sense the topic is not fascinating to you,” says her father.

  “Could you chop the rest of the artichokes, do you imagine, Dinah?” Mrs. Beach indicates a stinking pile on the cutting board.

  “I will!” says Mr. Beach, eager to make up for his lack of stirring. Mrs. Beach hesitates and catches Dinah’s eye. Her father wielding a knife is a clumsy, terrifying thing.

  “I’ll do it,” says Dinah. Better to do it quickly and be done and out than have a production about not and have to tend to her father’s inevitable wound. “Hold my brother, please.” Coat still on, she passes Beagie to Mr. Beach and moves to take up the knife.

  “Wugh!” Beagie protests, so Mr. Beach sets him down on the floor instead. Beagie lies down straightaway and drums his heels on the floor, sucking absentmindedly on his horse.

  Chop chop chop chop chop.

  “So we met about the break-in,” says Mr. Beach.

  Dinah’s stomach jolts, but she covers it with chopping. Did Skint leave evidence? Fingerprints? What if his boots left distinctive prints in the snow?

  Be calm, Dinah Beach. Even if they found fingerprints, Skint does not have a record they could match them to, and there are so many footprints stamped around that door all the time it wouldn’t matter if he left some of those, too. And if he tracked any snow inside, it would long since have melted. Skint ought to be safe.

  Unless he left some other enormous clue because he was too mad to take good precautions. Or just didn’t care.

  Those defiant eyes, that head tossing, almost glad. Dinah is terrified she is the only one to whom it would matter if Skint gets caught.

  “Are there any other clues?” Dinah asks carefully, trying to sound offhand. “As to the perps?”

  That was clever, her use of the plural.

  “No, none,” says Mr. Beach.

  Dinah sags inwardly with relief.

  “But I don’t know that anyone thinks it is much of a mystery,” Mr. Beach continues. “You know this town. I’m sure it was high-school kids who probably got scared off. Area teens.”

  Good. Let them keep thinking that.

  “It was area teens last year,” she says.

  “Thank God you are sensible, Dinah,” says Mr. Beach. “We never worry that you will become part of a pack of ravening kids.”

  Dinah flushes red. She knows she is more dork than sensible. And she makes mistakes the whole time. They are just not mistakes about drinking. She is not interested in a lot of those things, which is hard in a different way, at least at school. She is lucky that Skint doesn’t care about any of that either, because otherwise she would be pretty much the only one.

  “Dump those artichokes in the pan, Dinah.” Mrs. Beach nods at the casserole dish on the counter.

  “Did the police come out in force?” Dinah asks, scooping up handfuls.

  “Oh, in force. Both of them.” Mr. Beach smiles briefly. “Any thoughts, Dinah, about who it might be?”

  “No! Why would I have thoughts?”

  Mr. Beach raises his eyebrows. “Because you and Skint are generally popping with commentary on the daftness of your peers.”

  “Well, I am not popping right now. You shouldn’t grill me.”

  “I’m not grilling you, cranky,” says Mr. Beach. “Aren’t you going to give me a cookie?”

  Dinah’s stomach falls. “No,” she says.

  “Not one?!” Mr. Beach hauls himself to his feet. “Not even one for your aged papa?”

  “My aged papa is always saying he has got to watch his middle,” Dinah says. “Plus we . . . we didn’t finish them yet.” She puts her hands in her pockets. Her left hand hits the tin of sardines. “Could I go, please? Your dip smells awful.”

  Beagie scooches backward toward her across the floor and places his horse on her foot.

  “Dinah Beach, you are rude.” Mr. Beach glowers with the aid of his eyebrows. “And strange.”

  “You are the one who lies down on the floor the whole time.”

  Her mother furrows her brow.

  “Is something wrong, Dinah?” she asks. “Did something happen with Skint?”

  “Why would you think something happened with Skint!”

  “Easy, there, old thing!” says Mr. Beach.

  “You two always think something is wrong with Skint!”

  “We never think anything is wrong with Skint!” Mr. Beach is indignant. “I adore him. I think he’s a capital kid. You, on the other hand. Cranky and morose and all the time difficult.”

  “Well, why don’t you let me just leave, then?” Dinah’s eyes threaten to fill, but she will not let them, she won’t. “You never let me just leave.”

  “Dah!” Beagie pulls himself up on her legs and tugs at her hands, marching pleadingly in place. Dinah picks him up, gulping, but she can’t stay in this kitchen for another minute. She hands the baby to Mr. Beach and leaves.

  Beagie wails.

  “She’s a peevish, grumpy old thing,” says her fathe
r in the kitchen.

  “I hate you,” Dinah whispers as she goes up the stairs.

  Nose running and stupid weeping eyes. All this crying all the time, all these tears and no more laughing.

  Go back, go back. Undo these days and let us go back to before.

  An hour later her parents are prowling around, getting ready to go to the potluck. Dinah sits in the living room window seat, sardine tin in her hand. Her bones are as heavy as lead. She wants to call Skint, but she can’t while her parents are still here. She needs to be able to concentrate, to listen for if he is angry or sad.

  “Dinah Beach!” Her father is in the doorway. “Are those sardines in your hand? The fancy ones from Christmas?”

  Dinah stares at the can. Visions of Bernadine and her Inventory flash through Dinah’s head. What can she say? Does her having the sardines in any way implicate Skint?

  “But you donated them!” her father squawks. “You gave them away!”

  Help! Dinah considers saying that there is more than one can of sardines in the world, but there isn’t, not in the world of Aile Quarry, anyway, especially not one labeled in Italian. She can’t pretend she bought these herself in town, and if she were to pretend she bought them anywhere else, she’d also have to pretend she stole the car, and also that she’d learned, illegally, to drive. And forget saying she got them online—that would mean packages and deliveries and her mother or somebody would have had to have signed, oh, help, help, help.

  “I never did donate them,” she says finally. “I hid them.” She swallows. “I wanted to hog them for myself.”

  Her father looks at her, one eyebrow raised.

  “On account of how I love them. I filched them out of our donation box before I even brought it to the Pantry.”

  She is lying all over the place and feels oddly awful that her father will think she is grasping and greedy but she can’t care about that right now. Better that than he starts dusting for prints in the Pantry, or remembering about the cuts on Skint’s hand.

  Skint.

  Dinah gives the can a surreptitious rub on her thigh to erase all fingerprints and holds the can out to Mr. Beach. “Here,” she says. “Take them. I’m sorry.”

  He waves the can away with his hand.

  “Please,” she says earnestly. “I don’t want them. I’m sorry.”

  “This is not like you at all, Dinah. What’s got into you?”

  “Nothing has got into me.”

  Her father’s brows draw in. “Dinah Beach, you have been known to be shouty and hyperbolic, but never a liar. I have seen and coveted those sardines in that Pantry, many times. You did donate them. I don’t know why you are saying otherwise.”

  Dinah is silent.

  “Twice taking food from the Pantry, Dinah? In as many days?

  “Twice?”

  “Yesterday,” Mr. Beach says. “With your odd snack-giving for that little boy—”

  Oh. She forgot she took the blame for that, too.

  “—and again, today, to satisfy your insatiable need for sardines?”

  “I don’t have an insatiable need for sardines!”

  “When did you take them?” Her father is stern. “It wasn’t last night, was it?”

  “No!”

  “Is that why you are all upset? Were you part of the area teens?”

  “Dad!”

  “Did you sneak out to join them?”

  “Dad!”

  Mr. Beach stops. He wilts.

  “Oh, Dinah. I’m so sorry. What’s the matter with me? I know you would never do such a thing. Forgive me, darling.” He crosses the room toward her.

  “Don’t you have to go now?” she says, near tears, drawing herself away. “Don’t you have to go?”

  “I truly didn’t mean it, Dinah. I am just so worried about you. You are low-moody and difficult and you seem so upset.”

  “I am not upset. Bring me my brother.”

  “You are upset. Did something happen with Skint? Did you two fight?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Beach is quiet.

  “How is his father?” he asks.

  Thin Mr. Gilbert. Frightened, puzzled eyes. Spoon in Skint’s hand and petals coming down.

  Dinah picks at the window muntins and doesn’t answer.

  “He’s fine,” she says finally, mindful of her promise. Her eyes fill with tears.

  Mr. Beach crosses the room and sits down beside her on the window seat. He rests his hand gently on her foot.

  “It’s awful, isn’t it,” he says. “Thomas Gilbert is a very fine man. Skint must be very sad to see him changing.”

  Dinah takes her foot from under his hand and wipes her eyes with an angry palm.

  “It’s ridiculous,” she says. “It’s beyond the stupidest thing.”

  “No, Dinah,” says Mr. Beach. “It’s human to be sad. You need to let your friend be sad.”

  “I don’t mean Skint,” says Dinah. Though what kind of friend lets a friend be sad? “I mean the whole thing. People getting old and giving out and getting sick and hurt. It’s the stupidest thing in the world.”

  Mr. Beach is quiet. “I think it’s more complex than stupid,” he says.

  “It’s not complex! It’s just dumb. What good is it to have everybody die the whole time?” Dinah’s breath catches. She holds it and studies the neighbor horse’s blanket-coat, slung over the fence at the edge of the yard.

  Her father is silent. Then he sighs. “You don’t really like my ideas about that, I don’t think.”

  Dinah swallows. The horse blanket blurs, then clears, then blurs again.

  Her father moves as if to hug her, but she jumps up and away from him and heads toward the door. “I’m going to go get Beagie for his dinner.”

  And she’s out of there, she’s gone, flying away upstairs.

  Beagie stares heavy-eyed out the window toward the neighbor’s yard. His cheeks are smeared with peas.

  “Oss!” he shouts, waving his hands and feet. Dinah switches on the light and he turns toward it wonderingly.

  “Not your feet,” Dinah tells him. “That was me, pulling the switch.”

  Beagie grunts briefly and turns back to the window. His face crumples. “Oss!” he wails.

  “He must be asleep in his shed, Beagie. It must be the horse’s bedtime. You can see him again tomorrow.”

  Beagie turns back to her and opens his mouth for more peas.

  “That was good talking, though, Beagie Bee. Horse, horse, horse.”

  “Oss.”

  All Skint took was cans. To give is why he took them; to give, to help. He couldn’t have wanted to break anything.

  But he did want to. He must have. Otherwise he could have gone in the Pantry the normal way if he wanted to pilfer from it: in the daytime while they did cleaning, or right before the Friendly.

  The distant look Skint had on his face, hard and far away. Dinah doesn’t know what to do.

  Beagie slaps at his high-chair tray. “Duh, duh, duh!” he sings.

  “Duh, duh, duh!” Dinah joins in for a bit, but her heart isn’t in it and she trails off. She wipes the peas from Beagie’s cheeks and fingers. He extends an imperious foot when she’s finished; he always demands his toes be wiped, too.

  Her father and his believing and heaven and God and design. She understands, though. She understands why her father believes. He believes because it is too terrible not to.

  It’s too awful to believe that dead is just dead, that the people you love are just gone. That their bodies just gave out or gave up and you’ll never have them to love or hug or be near again. That there is no reason for it or anything else, none but the reasons people make up for themselves. The only real things are the things people decide to do and what other people decide to do to them. And nothing is enough to keep anybody safe, to keep anybody well or alive. Believing there are reasons for things keeps the hell of all this away. Believing keeps people alive.

  “Buhh!” Beagie demands to be fr
eed from his chair. Dinah lifts him out and stands him on her thighs. He grabs at her head to steady himself and pushes his forehead against hers, crowing to see her go one-eyed.

  “Praying brings Granny near,” Dinah’s father used to tell her. He believes that, too, that his words are magic, that they can change things, make something less dead than it is.

  He’s so lucky he thinks that.

  It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while, just for an instant, Dinah wishes she still believed, too.

  Dinah catches her breath. No tears, no. But she can’t help it. All of us are like Beagie, wishing his feet were magic, believing he is the boss of light.

  It’s dark. Skint’s still walking, away from Main Street and town. There’s the Rural Routes’ house, shut-up-looking and cold.

  Why doesn’t he go up there? Right up to the door? He’d like to meet them. Hear if they have actual voices.

  Clomp stomp jump—he’s up on the porch. Skint cocks an ear toward the house and lifts his hand to knock on the door. Stillness inside; no voices or rustling. Skinny little house narrow one-room deep; where are the Rural Routes if not inside?

  Skint glances in the windows, leaning in, looking. The road over his shoulder is oddly far away. He and Dinah must look like action figures to them, like pretend kids walking by. Spindly legs scissoring along the road; Dinah’s cloud of dark hair shining.

  Anybody in there? Anybody home? Skint touches the door. It opens beneath his hand.

  “Hello?” he says. Ticking, from inside. Musty, dark. Furniture, doilies, an andiron like an owl.

  Why not just go in?

  No.

  Skint closes the door, tight and fast. He jumps off the porch and bolts up the road, striding, running, running.

  Beagie is asleep at last. Dinah goes into her room and calls Skint.

  “Hello,” he says.

  She sags with relief.

  “I have a possible FoE for us,” she tells him. “A magic show. On Saturday, at the library. I just saw it in the paper. Mr. Presto the magician with a troupe of beginner Portuguese dancers. It will be perfect! Skinny little girls with knee socks, dancing in circles. We will love it.”