Love Edy

by Shewanda Pugh

  “Not us.” Mason said. “Sawn.”

  “How?” Hassan said. He looked up from the phone.

  “You’ve got a key,” Matt pointed out. “Use it and walk up to her room.”

  “Like Nathan isn’t up? Waiting?” Hassan said.

  “Window,” Lawrence said. “Climb up. Look in. See if she’s there.”

  Her window. Their secret rendezvous place since Hassan had learned to climb trees at six. It was a decent idea. He could only hope that her father wasn’t sitting on the bed, waiting for his now-late daughter.

  They parked on the tail end of Hassan’s street, Dunberry, behind a cluster of oaks and a stop sign. All four boys climbed out, hunched low, and scurried covertly to 2260, Edy’s address, while Chloe waited behind in the car. On arrival, the Dyson brothers clustered around a sweeping, aged, and red-tipped chestnut, squinting upward as Hassan scaled it. They watched with a nervous eye for Edy’s parents, or his, next door.

  Hassan made it to the thick “V” of limbs that split half toward Edy’s house, half toward his. He hoisted himself up, grabbed a gnarled branch for balance, and found a knot of familiar footing to stand on. A square of darkness stared back at him. He reached forward and yanked up Edy’s window.

  “Edy!” Hassan hissed. “You in there?”

  Silence.

  “Ed—”

  She emerged from the shadows, hair in an oversized ponytail, pajamas ultra-pink and wrinkled, the epitome of a been-sleeping girl. Only, he knew better. She stared back at him, evenly, eyes wider in the night.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. “Why aren’t you answering your phone? We’ve been looking for you. We didn’t know what to think.”

  “I’m here because I live here. You can go back to your party now.”

  “What? I can go back—” Hassan flared. “Why didn’t you say you wanted to leave? Mason would’ve taken you. Or Matt. I would have walked you, if nothing else.”

  “I don’t need anyone to take me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired.”

  But he couldn’t excuse her. Not like that. Her anger, whenever he earned it, sat with him, needling like a shoe that didn’t quite fit.

  “Cake?” he said uncertainly.

  His name for her. It had always been his name for her. But she jerked as if the word itself burned.

  He needed to do something. To fix whatever was happening. Only . . . he hadn’t the faintest idea what was happening.

  “Edy, please. If I did something, just tell me. ”

  She ran fingers along the sill. They were long, slender, curving beauties that had climbed trees with him, and been laced with his a thousand times.

  He had an urge to make it a thousand and one.

  “Good night, Hassan,” Edy said.

  She looked up at him with puffy eyes and closed the window between them.

  “Night, Cake.” He whispered it to darkness.

  Three

  The next morning, a Saturday, Edy watched her father’s pearl-black BMW ease out the driveway, windows down to conserve energy. With no traffic in either direction, his speed matched that of an old lady’s scooter. Once out and facing Mass Avenue, he offered her a curt wave. Edy waved back, keeping up the motion as her father rolled away, apparently without the use of gas. Hassan’s dad always did say that his best friend drove as if headed to select his own grave.

  Hassan.

  Edy had earned the indulgence of last night’s tears, but she would permit no more. Instead, she told herself that the party had been an awakening of sorts, about Hassan, about herself, about the parameters of their relationship. After all, she had been the one bleeding through the line that divided friend and more. Last night, he had only made clear what he expected “more” to look like, and it was not much.

  She could live with that.

  She would have to live with that.

  Edy took her eyes off her father as he turned the corner and a massive moving truck across the street caught her attention. Washboard white, peeling, with sun-stripped letters on the side, it proclaimed itself to be the property of Joseph & Son. Odder still was the house it sat at. Unlike the reserved Queen Annes and Victorian relics of their block, the pink Painted Lady of 2265 Dunberry was lavish to the point of gaudy. Empty since the departure of Widow Meade, the nauseatingly fanciful dollhouse had whole sections of ruby paint chipped from its bulbous towers and fanciful pearl trim that stood thick like the twisted icing of a wedding cake. It beckoned in some misguided bid for attention, like the sinister home in a Brothers Grimm tale. It was a cheap imitation of the charm and splendor around it.

  The truck’s back doors flung open, and a spindly white boy backed out, shoulders hunched, the edge of a navy couch in his grip. Lengthy and paler than a ghost in winter, only his hollowed cheeks had splotches of red. Blond hair plastered to a hard skull with a wayward bit blowing free in the wind as his mouth clamped with the weight of his burden. Edy stood, curious. The couch was a plain thing draped in simple fabric, no wood carvings as far as she could see, and certainly not new, imported, designer or antique. In fact, its lumps were so prominent she could see them from across the street.

  The other end of the sofa emerged, and with it, a middle aged, beer gut of a man, and the reason for the boy’s struggles. The man’s end of the couch rode low, nearly to the ramp they moved down. He fumbled in his pocket for something, and Edy caught snatches of the boy yelling. The man shot him a look of exasperation, but picked up the slack anyway. Hair sandy brown, skin oyster white, his five o’clock shadow, pouting belly, and Dickey blue pants confirmed Edy’s suspicions. They were hired help. But for whom?

  The Pradhan’s front door swung open, and Hassan stepped out. Clad in a fitted, long-sleeved ribbed sweater and fashionably tattered jeans, he hopped the fence that separated his house from Edy’s and made his way across her yard.

  “I can’t believe someone’s moving in that circus tent,” Hassan said.

  He planted a kiss on Edy’s forehead—habit—then paused—not habit—before giving her a once-over as if to see how she’d taken it.

  Edy couldn’t help but wonder if those lips had been on the redhead the night before.

  “Could be a family of architects,” she said, turning away. Edy heard the raspiness in her voice and hesitated. Get it together. “With plans to fix the place up.”

  She looked from the house across the street to him. Still, she had his attention. Too much of it. His gaze searched her face as if committing it to memory.

  “Cake?” he said. She blistered with thoughts of the night before, of fingers entwined, of ascending to privacy, of a place Edy couldn’t follow. She had expected to fool the one person she’d never been able to, to be nonchalant. And now that she couldn’t, she hadn’t time for a plan B. He was looking right at her.

  “You okay?” Hassan said.

  “Fine.” Find something else to do.

  “You don’t look fine,” he said.

  She looked at him. “Well, I am.”

  Hassan exhaled. Contemplated. She could feel him thinking. “Listen, Edy. Last night—”

  “Last night I decided to go home. End of story.”

  His mouth clamped shut, opened, then shut again. Finally, he turned to the scene across the street. Minutes ticked by. “What do they look like?” he said.

  “Not sure. I’ve only seen the help.”

  Hassan grinned as the pair emerged again from the house. “Hired help? They must not charge much.”

  As if to underscore his point, the pot-bellied man dropped down on the porch and lit a freakin’ cigarette. Jeez. She couldn’t believe people still smoked.

  Edy’s mother strode from their house, clad in a stiff and layered Armani suit of runway perfection. It cut and flared where it needed to.

  “Oh. Hey, plum,” she said to Hassan. She paused long enough to mess his hair and fuss and say whatever mothers said to the child they wished was theirs. Whatever warmth radiated from her evaporated when sh
e turned to Edy.

  “Today’s Saturday,” she said. “That means study your Latin, brush up on the biology, and then, if there’s time, make it to ballet.”

  She started off for her Lexus.

  “Shut up,” Edy and Hassan chimed under their breath in unison. She hadn’t kept her mother’s impossible schedule since the day she realized no one made sure she did. That had been a year ago, thank God.

  Hassan led the way into her house, shoving open the door and heading straight for the kitchen. Once there, he snatched a plate from the cabinet, grabbed a fistful of pancakes, and stuck his head in the fridge for more food. When he came away again, it was with a carton of strawberries and a can of whipped cream. He stacked that on his plate and took a seat.

  “Your dad’s going over some stuff with me this week. He’s been studying film and working out theories. Something’s got him wired. He thinks we can make a run for a state championship, if you can believe that.”

  Hassan rolled a pancake, toppings and all, and jammed half of it in his mouth. “West Roxbury’s the monster to fear, though.”

  Edy’s father was a professor by trade, but football was his lifelong passion. A former kicker for Harvard with a talent too short of his love, it had been her dad who’d bought Hassan his first football, taught him game fundamentals, and sat huddled for hours with him, cultivating an understanding and philosophy so nuanced that only the two of them could make sense of it.

  “We start this morning,” he said apologetically. “I’m heading up to Harvard Yard in a bit. He has a break he wants to spend with me.”

  Of course. This was the way it started. And he probably wasn’t even meeting her dad. Maybe he was meeting the redhead. She would know by Monday in any case. Toenails didn’t get clipped without making the South End High grapevine.

  “So. You’re not walking me to ballet.”

  She’d meant to say it with more indifference, with a slice that cut him instead of her. Instead, the words only depressed her, a reminder that three years of a ritual could disappear in an instant.

  He reached over and yanked on her ponytail.

  “Hey, long face,” he said. “I’ve been walking you there forever. Don’t I get credit for time served?”

  Time served.

  When she didn’t answer, he snorted and returned to his pancakes.

  “What are you in for today?” he said in that oblivious way that belonged only to boys. “After ballet?”

  Edy unclenched her teeth. “I don’t know. Bake some cookies and bringing ’em to the newcomers. Extend the Suzy Homemaker welcome.”

  “Like hell,” Hassan said, surprising her with his fervor. “This isn’t 1950, June Cleaver. And I don’t like the look of them, anyway.”

  “You didn’t even see them.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  Edy raised a brow. It was his habit to assume the role of big brother, taught to him by their parents, perfected with practice, despite them being exactly the same age. Nonetheless, he had little room to talk, after boinking the redhead. “Funny. Turns out I can ignore you as easily as Mom.”

  “Listen to me,” he said. He stared at her, stared until her outrage, her annoyance; her urge to defy him began to melt—because hard feelings between them always did. Edy snorted at the trick. He then rose, loaded his dishes in the dishwasher, and planted a kiss on her forehead in what had to be goodbye.

  “Stay away from the new neighbors.”

  He disappeared.

  ~~~

  Edy didn’t get a chance to venture across the street until the following morning. Ballet practice ran long, and afterward, she spent the evening making chocolate chip cookies for the new neighbors, only to roast them to a fine, thin crisp.

  Instead of marching over empty-handed, she waited for an opportune time to visit. Sunday morning, Edy plopped down on the porch with a fresh glass of mango lassi, her dancer’s feet creaking in protest as she watched her father back out the drive. The lassi, a sort of Indian yogurt smoothie, had as many variations as imagination allowed. Edy, who’d made her first with the aid of a stool and Hassan’s mother, had an arsenal assortment of the drinks under her command. Though she could make them, she preferred his mother’s lassis still. Hassan’s mother had a way of adding special touches just for Edy—flaxseed for energy, ginger for pain, and extra honey when her sweet tooth raged.

  Shaded from the heat of a persistent sun in ambivalent hot-then-cold-then-hot autumn, Edy waited for the new folks to make an appearance. A baby blue Dodge F-150 sat in their drive, chipped, rusted, and slumped to one side. Next to it was yesterday’s truck. The old beat up Dodge, she figured, must have belonged to a carpenter or contractor of some sort.

  When the front door opened, yesterday’s pair stepped out. They crossed the yard and disappeared into the back of the moving truck, emerging later with odds and ends. They retreated and returned again and again, bearing assortments on each turn—a lamp, small boxes, garbage bags stretched full and misshapen by who knew what. When the boy came out alone and with an oversized CVS bag, hanger jutting from the bottom, Edy knew the contents wouldn’t hold.

  He struggled with it, even as the man brushed past him and went inside the house, content with muttering at his own burden. Edy was on her feet without knowing it.

  “Your stuff!” she hollered and broke into a trot as the plastic bag began to seep clothes. “It’s gonna fall!”

  She crossed the street, threw open the gate, and scooped up the pile of fallen fabric, dashing to his side as his bag tore completely, vomiting shirts and old Converses, tattered boxers and ripped jeans right onto her feet.

  They stared at each other, him red-faced, her cringing, before Edy decided to pick up the escaped clothes and be done with it. Except when she did, her hand brushed Swiss cheese underwear and she jerked in revulsion. Resolve melted under the fury of a blush they both shared.

  “Please!” He puked the word. “Let me do it! I can—” He snatched the clothes from her and shoved them into his bottomless bag, so that they fell to the ground at once. He looked straight at her, at her as if every item was exactly where he intended it to be, and he had amply proven his point. He looked at her as if all those shirts and pants and shoes, weren’t piled right on their feet.

  Edy’s cheeks inflated on a laugh she wouldn’t let go. She couldn’t let go. She held it until her insides ruptured and the dam burst, and oh, it broke free. He eased her a reluctant grin, cheeks aflame, before sliding into a grin himself. They dissolved into eye watering silliness. Underwear on their feet and instant friends somehow.

  “I’m Edy,” she said when their laughter died down.

  He let the bag drift to the ground. “Wyatt Green.”

  “I live across the street,” Edy said. “At 2260.”

  They stared at each other.

  “Well, then,” she said. “Guess I’ll see you around.”

  She began to back away.

  His face pinched. “Wait! I mean—”

  He glanced back at the house, just as the front door swung open.

  “Thanks for your help,” Wyatt blurted. He scooped the fallen clothes in a single swoop and rushed to the door, leaving Edy to frown in confusion.

  Four

  Edy saw the boy named Wyatt Green the next morning and blushed with the recollection of touching his underoos. Even as she leaned forward for a better view from the center backseat of the twins’ Land Rover, two thoughts occurred to her.

  Wyatt wasn’t hired help.

  He was headed to their school.

  “Stop!” Edy cried, so loud that Matt stomped the brake. He looked around as if expecting to find an animal, car, or child in the road.

  “What? What happened?” he said.

  All eyes were on her. Mason, Matt, Lawrence, Hassan, and even Chloe Castillo, with them once again.

  “I know him,” Edy said, indicating the tall and rawboned guy standing on the curb and muttering to himself as he adjusted the strap
on a battered backpack. “Give him a ride.”

  Every male set of eyes turned on the figure, collectively sizing him at once.

  “No room,” Matt announced and stomped on the gas.

  The sound of screeching tires jerked Wyatt’s head up. Edy ducked in horror.

  There they were, piled door to window, squashed to make room for Princess Chloe. The boys shoved each other to make allowances for her, barking commands to slide over, nudging Edy if she wasn’t quick enough. She was never quick enough.

  “You guys aren’t being fair,” Edy said. “Why can’t we give him a ride?”

  Already, Wyatt Green was out of view, left behind on a corner they’d long since turned.

  “I told you,” Matt said and shot her a look of warning in the rear view mirror. “There’s no room.”

  Edy met Chloe’s gaze evenly. She was a pretty and sparkling thing who’d only noticed Lawrence when the sureness of his hands and the quickness of his step emerged. Six years of elementary school, three years of middle, and Edy could no more place a conversation between Chloe and Lawrence than she could between herself and Abraham Lincoln. There was room for tinsel and glitter and falseness in the Rover, but none for anyone she knew.

  “If there’s no room” Edy said, “then maybe she should get out.”

  “Maybe you should chill out,” Matt said.

  Edy sat back in a huff. Defeated. Pissed. Outnumbered.

  She could feel Hassan’s eyes on her. Fire, Edy thought. More golden in fury, like flames.

  “That dude just moved here the other day,” Mason said. “So, you don’t know him. And if you want to get to know him, you sure won’t be doing it in my car.”

  “Hear, hear,” Matt said.

  Hassan continued to stare. Edy looked straight ahead, unwilling to meet his glare just yet.

  South End High had the look of old New England: three stories of blood red brick, stately, old and resolute, stretching out for half a block. A sweep of concrete stairs led to its heavy oak doors, propped open before and after school. On its front, a legion of old, fogged, single pane windows stared out like blinded black eyes. The above-door placard that greeted them every day said what had been drilled into every South End student at orientation: That the school grounds had three centuries of history, it was a former meeting place for a chosen few plotting against the British Crown on the eve of the Revolution, and that the building had official recognition from the National Historic Registry.