The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  “I want to go somewhere,” says Skint.

  His cellular telephone is not a very good one. Dinah can barely make out his words.

  “Come here, then,” she says, sitting up straight. “Why don’t you just come over here?”

  “I mean I want to go someplace big. I want to go someplace and do something. Flarping do something about all this crap.”

  “What crap?”

  “All of it. Refugees, people. All the stuff I talk about the whole time.” He pauses. “I want to go overseas.”

  Dinah’s stomach drops. “Overseas? What would you do overseas?”

  “Help those monks. Help. Do something to stop all this insane crap.”

  “How do you do that? Who would take you?”

  “What do you mean, who would take me? I would take me.”

  Dinah sits up straight. Does he have a secret money stash she doesn’t know about? Does he have friends to help him overseas? “How can you, though, alone?” she asks. “People will notice you are only fifteen.”

  “You know no one notices that, unless they already know me. I’ll work, talk my way over.”

  Dinah doesn’t know what to say. Her only idea to distract him and cheer him up was the Portuguese dancers. She twines the edge of her blanket around her hand.

  “Why can’t I?” cries Skint. “Why can’t I just go? It’s what I want to do. What is there here to keep me?”

  Dinah swallows.

  “I would miss you,” she says.

  Skint’s voice is defeated, edged with cold. “Well, it’s not like I can do it anyway.”

  Dinah shifts onto her knees. “Where are you?”

  “Outside, by the river. It’s beautiful.”

  “I wish I could come see.” She pauses, but he doesn’t say he wishes it, too. “Skint, it’s too cold for you to be out so late.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Come over,” she says. “Please.”

  “No.”

  Dinah twists and twists her blanket. “Are you mad at me?” She hears his boots crunch in the snow.

  “No.”

  “We could play a game or something,” she says.

  “I’d rather swill bourbon.”

  What the heck kind of comment is that? Does that mean he’d rather swill bourbon than come, or swill bourbon than do a game?

  “Besides,” he continues, “if I come over there in the dark of night, your parents will think we are secret lovers.”

  That’s more your mom’s purview, thinks Dinah, but she says only, “Of course they won’t think that.”

  Skint sighs. “God knows that’s true.”

  What does that mean? That she is a sex moron? Dinah’s cheeks flame. “Just come. We can plan about the parcel.”

  “No.” Crunching. “I went by the Rural Routes’,” he says suddenly.

  “You did? Were they in their regular spots?”

  “No. They weren’t home.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I went up on the porch.”

  Dinah sits up straight, her neck searing with alarm. “You did?”

  “Yeah. Not for long, though. They weren’t there so I just left.”

  Dinah sinks back down, relieved. “I don’t think of the Rural Routes as having evening outings,” she says.

  “Me either,” says Skint. “The house was freezing, Dinah.”

  Dinah sits up again. “I thought you only knocked.”

  “I did, detective. I could just tell. No smoke in the chimney. The way the door sounded when I knocked.” He’s quiet for a minute. “The hell with it,” he says abruptly. “If we can’t help the monks, we could at least follow through on helping the Rural Routes.”

  “Yes!” says Dinah, made jubilant by his “we.” She grips the phone tightly to her ear. “We can do that. Don’t you want to come over? To plan?”

  “We should give them blankets,” says Skint. “Your crazy crochet hats. Gloves, stuff like that.”

  “I don’t know if we have any extras of gloves.” There was that weird box Bernadine gave them a couple of Christmases ago containing seven black gloves—singles, not pairs—all of them sized for a giant. But Dinah thinks her mother already got rid of those. “But I can make some, I bet.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” says Skint. “They can have mine. We have a ton of extra blankets as well. We’ll give them a couple of those.”

  “Will that be okay with—” Dinah stops herself. “Swell,” she says. “Come over in the morning and we’ll plan more.”

  “Okay,” says Skint. Then: “No. Wait. You come to my house. I don’t feel like schlepping blankets back and forth.”

  Dinah opens her mouth, then closes it. What? “Your house?” she says. Why does he suddenly want them to hang out there? Dinah can’t remember the last time she was inside. Is he forgetting that Ellen will be there, Ellening around the place, jabbing people with looks about their clothes?

  “Why the hell not,” says Skint. His breath is heavy over the line. He must be walking very fast. “Why not. They’ll be out. An appointment at the bank. She’s waited forever to get it. She won’t miss it. They’ll be gone all morning. We can gather all the stuff for the parcel and then we can finish the cookies at your house after.”

  “Are you sure about this?” asks Dinah.

  “Yes,” says Skint. “Shut up. I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” says Dinah. If his parents aren’t home, then it’s a different story, although it’ll be odd to be in that house again. She wonders if it will look just the same.

  “I’ll come by for you,” says Skint. “I want to ride first thing in the morning. I’ll come to your house on my way back and pick you up.”

  “Don’t you want to meet and go for a walk early, instead of riding? We could go under the bridge and skip stones.” Dinah loves to do that, skip stones on ice. They twang as they bounce, with an otherworldly hum.

  “No,” says Skint. “I’m riding. If you weren’t such a candy-ass, you could come with me.”

  “I’ll get my brave ass back in the spring,” says Dinah. She relaxes a little, and leans back against her headboard.

  “I’m sure.”

  Dinah swallows. “Maybe after we do the Rural Routes we can think about ways to expand our helping idea. Like we wanted to with the Friendly.”

  “Why not,” says Skint. “I’ll be old enough to get my permit soon and we could have a wider scope.”

  “Old enough, schmold enough!” says Dinah. “That is not the talk of someone who has promised to Backwards Age!”

  Skint is silent.

  “I’m sorry,” she says rapidly and swallows again. Skint in his black sweatshirt and jeans, outside in the cold, biking too fast over ice. “Come over, Skint. Please.”

  “No,” says Skint, “I have to go. Bye.” He hangs up without even saying he’ll see her tomorrow.

  Dinah hangs up too. She feels unhappy again, unformed and sad, like a child whose balloon has come undone from her wrist. She is not entirely sure why she feels this way, though, or what she meant when she said she was sorry.

  She goes downstairs to pilfer the kitchen. All of the best things will be given to the Rural Routes.

  Bourbon. Bourbon. Skint remembers sixth-grade Dinah and her bourbon, stuffing liquor-soaked towels in his mouth for his tooth. And that god-awful poultice; what was that stuff? Some kind of spice, he doesn’t remember.

  She was supposed to tell her mom. He waited for the phone to ring but it never did. Not until he got caught.

  “What were you thinking, Skint?” the teacher cried. “What got into your head?”

  He wanted to say, I am a demon for liquor. He wanted to say it was adolescent experimenting. But before he could stop himself, he heard himself say, “I read it was good for teeth.”

  “What do you mean?” the teacher asked.

  But the principal knew. Skint was made to open his mouth.

  “Fabulous, Skint! Thanks ever so! Now they think I don’t wa
tch out for my own kid.” Ellen burst into tears. She has never forgiven him about that social worker being sent to their house.

  Infection in the bone. The dentist pulled out the tooth and did surgery on Skint’s jaw. Three weeks later he was fine; he was dandy, he couldn’t believe how much better he felt. He felt light as a feather, floating in air.

  Dinah brought him treasures and ice cream and parcels of treats while he recuperated. She sobbed and sobbed.

  “It’s okay!” he told her. “Look what great shape I am in now!” He thumped out a rhythm on his cheeks until she laughed through the crying.

  Dinah; Dinah; this girl was Dinah. Dark-haired girl with ponytails to steer her turned into this girl with the hanging-down hair. All those games with stones and snow, pretending about trees being kings. He wondered about her when he was in Kentucky. He hoped she would still be here, if you really want to know. He thought about her all the time.

  Dinah sounded so forlorn on the phone just now that Skint can’t bear it. He also hates her and he can’t bear that, either, nor the thought of her playing or her whimsy or anything else about Dinah right now. All he wants is to get on his bike, not wait until morning, just get on his bike and ride hard in the dark, down frozen dirt roads, tearing from ice chunk to rut, jumping over rocks and nearfalling downhill.

  What is the point? What is there to keep him here at all? What makes him not just off himself and be done? His eyes burn and he covers his face in his hands.

  He loves them all so goddamned much.

  Oh, go to Dinah’s, be over there with her right now. Be with her and stop there, suspended; never get older or go home. He can’t, though. He has to go home.

  Skint enters his house through the kitchen, his goal to steal soundlessly up to his room.

  The kitchen light flicks on. Ellen gazes at him steadily. There are circles under her eyes.

  Skint is silent.

  “How stupid are you?” she says. “What the hell were you thinking? Delaying us in that kitchen! Of all the people to get a load of your father it would have to be the one with the mother—”

  “I’ll try to hang out only with orphans in the future.”

  “Don’t be smart. Don’t you be smart!” Ellen raises her voice to a whisper-shout. “Don’t you know what tomorrow is for us? Do you want him taken away from us? Do you want some social worker coming around again?”

  Skint’s chest constricts so tight and fast it’s as though it’s been squeezed by a fist.

  “Do you?” Ellen asks, neck craned forward. “Because your actions sure as hell suggest—”

  “My actions?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you. It means if you want to talk about actions, let’s talk about yours. How hard would it have been for you to just take the key and walk Dad back out to the car and go? Why did you have to make such a big deal over his coat? You could have left right away. But no. You had to—”

  “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare. You’re the one who took off at the crack of dawn to get away from us. You’re the one who left before the whole process of trying to get your father dressed and—” She breaks off. Then: “What did your dotty girlfriend have to say?”

  Skint’s stomach clenches. “Nothing,” he says.

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m serious.” Eye sockets hot and clenched, his head aching. “She was oblivious.”

  “You don’t know that,” says Ellen. Her eyes grow dark and she covers her mouth with her palm. “You don’t know what she thinks, or who she’ll say something to.”

  “I do know. She won’t say anything.” Dinah promised not to say a word about his dad, and he knows she won’t. And in any case—“Believe me,” he says bleakly, “Dinah didn’t notice a thing.”

  Ellen stares straight ahead, taut-boned and thin.

  “I can’t lose him. I can’t bear the thought of—” Her voice breaks. “I’ve been waiting for her mother or someone to call all day. I’m exhausted.”

  Skint rubs the side of his hand. He has no energy left to confront her about whatever it was that happened last night. “So go to bed, then,” he says. “Go.”

  My heart breaks for that poor man.” Mrs. Beach’s voice floats out from the kitchen as Dinah comes down the stairs early the next morning. “Seventy-three years married. Seventy-three! I can’t imagine how he’ll live without her. Here, grate this cheese, please. No, wait. I’ll do that; you do the eggs.”

  “I can work the grater safely,” Mr. Beach says indignantly as Dinah enters the kitchen. “Good morning, dear Dinah!”

  Why is he always so appallingly cheerful?

  “Who is dead?” Dinah asks.

  “Ruth Ennethwaite,” says Mrs. Beach. It’s Monday, so she is in her professional aspect, ready for work in pants of a businesslike material and an unstained shirt. “Ninety-seven. Set the table, please, Dinah.”

  “No,” says her father. “I need her to run to the mini-mart and get me the paper. I want to make sure they ran the announcement for the Evensong. I don’t want to have done all this work with that choir only to play to an audience composed of the two of you.”

  “What am I, some kind of lackey?” Dinah cries.

  “No, you are some kind of dependent child that I feed daily at enormous cost to myself and feel strongly can do her part every once in a while.”

  “I do my part the whole time.”

  “Go get the paper, Dinah.”

  “I’ll get Beagie up and change him instead.”

  Mr. Beach frowns. “You will go get that paper or be fed nothing but sink scraps until further notice.”

  “Who cares.” Dinah grabs her coat from the hook by the door. “Food is stupid. Give me money.”

  Her father glowers at her. She pulls her coat over her pajamas.

  “Dinah Beach, you go get dressed!” says Mrs. Beach.

  “No,” says Dinah. “Flannel is warmer, anyway.” She’s got her boots pulled on and the door open, and is holding her hand out for her father’s folded five-dollar bill.

  “What an enormous pain in the neck she is,” says her mother as Dinah goes through the door.

  “So are you, Mrs. Beach,” Dinah mutters darkly to herself on the porch.

  “She is indeed a pain, our Dinah,” says her father, wrongly imagining her out of earshot as he moves to close the door behind her. “We are lucky, though, that she’s such an odd little duck. Imagine if she were out there stirring up trouble.”

  Dinah stops in her tracks.

  Odd little duck?

  Punching!

  Skint can’t concentrate on the news this morning. Did he even sleep last night? Some twilight minutes, maybe, licking at the edge of a dream, but always coming back to awake. Doesn’t matter, though. It’s getting light out again, finally. He can go out and ride.

  Skint cocks an ear toward the hall. Voices; they’re awake, too. Ellen must be giving herself plenty of time to get his dad ready for the appointment at the bank. He can’t catch her tone from here, though, so he folds the paper and gets up and eases down the hall.

  The bathroom door is open. Mr. Gilbert stands in the bathtub, leaning against the wall by the window, his fingers spread over one of its panes. Ellen, her back to the hall, mops a puddle from the floor with a wad of paper towels under her foot.

  “This is a new one,” she mutters. “Peeing is one we haven’t had before. You can’t do this, Thomas, not unless you want to send me right over the edge.”

  Skint’s chest seizes.

  Mr. Gilbert is silent, eyes on the trees. Then: “What for a world,” he says softly. “What for a. For.”

  Dad.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ellen says, wiping. “Come on, Thomas. We have to get you dressed. I have to be there on time. We need that money.”

  Mr. Gilbert stares out the window.

  “Especially if I’m going to have to add Depends to the budget.”

  Skint’s heart pounds. Mr. Gilbert is
still.

  “Thomas.”

  Skint’s father turns and looks around the bathroom, his brows knit. His gaze falls on the bottle of bleach sitting at the edge of the sink, and he starts.

  “Don’t throw that!” he cries. Skint jumps.

  But Ellen only picks up the wet wad of paper towels off the floor and flushes it. She begins again with a dry one. “Come on. You have to get out of those pajamas.”

  Mr. Gilbert’s eyes are puzzled. “Why is it all wet down there?” he asks.

  “Because I was trying to make the tiles slippery enough that I’d fall and crack my head open,” says Ellen. “I long for the sweet release of death.” She throws the second wad in the toilet. “Jesus Christ,” she says, looking into the bowl. “The last thing we need is a clog.”

  But Mr. Gilbert has already turned away and is staring out the window again.

  Ellen leans over and grabs at the hem of his pajama top. “Come.”

  Mr. Gilbert doesn’t move.

  “Come!”

  He bows his head.

  “Thomas. We have to go.”

  “I can’t.” Mr. Gilbert’s voice breaks. “How can I go, when so many others have no recourse but to stay?”

  Skint’s heart drops like a stone.

  Ellen jiggles the toilet handle. “I’m sure everyone would want you to go.”

  “How can you say that, Gus? How can you say that when you’ve never even come over here to see?” Mr. Gilbert’s eyes fill with tears, and Skint lays his palm on the wall. Dad.

  Mr. Gilbert’s tears recede, and his gaze grows hooded and dark.

  “Come on,” says Ellen. “Let’s go.”

  Skint’s father leans his head on the glass.

  “Tom! Get out of that tub!”

  He is still.

  “I said, get out! Come on! We’ve got to get out of here; let’s go!”

  Skint steals away down the hall. Grabs his bike. Goes.

  It’s only seven thirty. Nobody else is up or out yet. Dinah, newspaper in hand, picks her way down to the river’s edge in her pajamas and boots. She wants to skip a few stones. The bridge is above her, to the left, and the river in front of her is frozen. You’d never know, to look at that expanse of solid white, that underneath it there’s water rushing, waving riverweed and silt. Up here everything is quiet: wind small, the just-risen sun. None of the winter birds are singing.